It is another example of Labour’s disorganisation and lack of focus at the moment that Balls is giving Osborne cover on this. The repeal of various benefits for better off pensioners will be in the next Parliament and Labour can now say nothing about it. What is more Labour will get nothing from this realism because the money “saved” will already have been spent and not available for any other pet projects.
If you wanted to freeze cash spending at Brown's levels the implications for departmental expenditure (Avery do you have the figures?) would have been horrific.
Strange quote. But as you believe Osborne has won the spending debate by outspending Labour under Brown no surprise really.
Ludicrous claim. You must be really desperate.
Given the increasing debt interest payments were increasing and needed to be funded. Additionally, managed expenditure was expected to increase because of the economic situation. Consequently departmental expenditure had to be squeezed to keep the overall spending envelope in acceptable limits.
If you wanted to freeze cash spending at Brown's levels the implications for departmental expenditure (Avery do you have the figures?) would have been horrific.
These things have to be done over a period of time
This has been pointed out so many times now by so many people that it is getting a little boring. Entirely not your fault of course.
Apologies for the crap formatting/spelling/etc. I'm trying to tap this out on a not very good nokia phone (don't buy one, they're awful)
Anyway, on topic
it's about time the boomers started contributing, but it needs to go much further than just axing the free bus passes. I don't doubt that it will seem unfair to the pensioners that they were promised all this stuff and now it's being taken away, but they need to understand they were sold a lie. The boomers had too few children and are living far too long for their children (and grandchildren) to pay the bill. The generational settlement is null and void & needs renegotiating.
We should do these things immediately;
1. Make retirement much more flexible - the general retirement age needs to rise to the mid-70's. that's what todays young people can expect 2.pop the btl/house price asset bubble With german-style renting rights. Your grandchildrens right to rent/buy an affordable house to live & raise a family in trumps your right to a btl property portfolio. 3. backdate £9k tuition fees to all graduates. Charge interest at commercial rates, but allow penalty-free immediate repayment. That would make a decent dent in the national debt 4. Expand the scale of the QE programme to cover much more of the total debt, then go for a bout of hyperinflation. I'm convinced this is the plan anyway, but we can be more aggressive about it. It's the most painless way to default on the unaffordable obligations to the oldies.
94. Remove free bus passes
3. is an interesting idea. It'd be painful, and cause a lot of squealing, but does have the appeal that it is fair both across generations and because those who have benefited most are being asked to pay. I guess you would need to add in a minimum income, though, which means you wouldn't catch many pensioners.
(Although, the headmaster at my old school tried it: he called us all up and tried to argue that since they had mispriced our education at the time we had a duty to contribute...)
No it's not! You can't go around retrospectively slapping taxes on people decades after they took the decision to go to university under the terms then prevailing.
Princes Charles and William both score very highly in polling (far ahead of any politician and William has polled ahead of the Queen herself), while Prince Harry is adored by many.
@another_richard But those four are admirably monosyllabic working class names, a world away from cricket's image of catering for out-of-touch public school fops. There's no pleasing you.
I think you're getting me mixed up with tim.
And though they might have 'monosyllabic working class names' I think they all went to private schools.
But if you want the names of some cricketers, here's a team of what you presumably regard as polysyllabic posh names:
I am not sure if this has already been mentioned as it was from yesterday's Telegraph but given his very strident statements that this simply will not happen I wonder what RCS is making of the latest announcement from Ofgem?
I have never quite understood why Robert is so firm that blackouts will not happen.
I think the best reason why I am sceptical of blackout is this line in the article:
"Mr Atherton said the risk was not of blackouts but of a “substantial price spike” needed to attract mothballed gas plants back on. “You are looking at 15pc to 20pc on retail bills,” he said."
Alternatively, we can introduce a scheme to pay people to put capacity in now that we don't need. That would, however, require payments to generators to develop plant they would not otherwise develop, which would raise rates now.
So: do you think the government will (a) raise power prices now, to prevent possible power price rises in 2015/2016; or (b) chance power prices rising 20% in 2015/2016?
Your reasoning assumes that raising prices will make people use less electricity. This in turn is based on the idea that a significant portion of electricity use is discretionary. I simply don't believe that to be the case. If we do not have the capacity to supply everyone's needs (as opposed to their wants), then no matter how much prices go up you will not cut demand sufficiently to cope with the shortfall - unless of course the price rises are so punitive they drive companies out of business and so reduce demand that way.
So: do you think the government will (a) raise power prices now, to prevent possible power price rises in 2015/2016; or (b) chance power prices rising 20% in 2015/2016?
Depends if they think they'll win the election or not. If it is in the bag, then (a).
Strange quote. But as you believe Osborne has won the spending debate by outspending Labour under Brown no surprise really.
Ludicrous claim. You must be really desperate.
Given the increasing debt interest payments were increasing and needed to be funded. Additionally, managed expenditure was expected to increase because of the economic situation. Consequently departmental expenditure had to be squeezed to keep the overall spending envelope in acceptable limits.
If you wanted to freeze cash spending at Brown's levels the implications for departmental expenditure (Avery do you have the figures?) would have been horrific.
These things have to be done over a period of time
This has been pointed out so many times now by so many people that it is getting a little boring. Entirely not your fault of course.
I know you don't like Osbornes own predictions from 2010 being brought up, it's hardly surprising given the scale of the failure on the coalitions central tenet.
I would ask if the many explanations given for this required smaller words but that is clearly not the problem as you are clearly smart enough. So it is just a form of trolling.
Apologies for the crap formatting/spelling/etc. I'm trying to tap this out on a not very good nokia phone (don't buy one, they're awful)
Anyway, on topic
it's about time the boomers started contributing, but it needs to go much further than just axing the free bus passes. I don't doubt that it will seem unfair to the pensioners that they were promised all this stuff and now it's being taken away, but they need to understand they were sold a lie. The boomers had too few children and are living far too long for their children (and grandchildren) to pay the bill. The generational settlement is null and void & needs renegotiating.
We should do these things immediately;
1. Make retirement much more flexible - the general retirement age needs to rise to the mid-70's. that's what todays young people can expect 2.pop the btl/house price asset bubble With german-style renting rights. Your grandchildrens right to rent/buy an affordable house to live & raise a family in trumps your right to a btl property portfolio. 3. backdate £9k tuition fees to all graduates. Charge interest at commercial rates, but allow penalty-free immediate repayment. That would make a decent dent in the national debt 4. Expand the scale of the QE programme to cover much more of the total debt, then go for a bout of hyperinflation. I'm convinced this is the plan anyway, but we can be more aggressive about it. It's the most painless way to default on the unaffordable obligations to the oldies.
94. Remove free bus passes
3. is an interesting idea. It'd be painful, and cause a lot of squealing, but does have the appeal that it is fair both across generations and because those who have benefited most are being asked to pay. I guess you would need to add in a minimum income, though, which means you wouldn't catch many pensioners.
(Although, the headmaster at my old school tried it: he called us all up and tried to argue that since they had mispriced our education at the time we had a duty to contribute...)
No it's not! You can't go around retrospectively slapping taxes on people decades after they took the decision to go to university under the terms then prevailing.
From those to whom much is given, much is expected.
They have benefited hugely from the education the country has provided for them. Now the country needs their help.
They need lessons from me. Why, only on this thread, I've managed to persuade another_richard to research the schooling of four cricketers and compile a list of working class Yorkshiremen with multisyllabic names.
So this evening people have suggested on this site as I understand:-
A tax on pensioners' housing wealth because they are no longer working. A tax on all graduates from whenever. A removal of a tax incentive to save for old age.
Now this thread is about the possibility of reforming pensioner benefits by reducing them somewhat (I agree) but the others make me scan the exits from the country. Basically, work, save, get something behind you for your benefit ( and also for society as you won't be a burden on the state) and we'll find a way to get you, tax you in to oblivion ( so I fear )Why bother then I ask myself?????? God help us.
The Monarchy is going nowhere in Britain. But it is going to leave Australia very soon after Elizabeth dies and the probably New Zealand and Canada within 15 years after that.
I think once the Queen dies we will re a resettlement of the monarchy anyway. A slim downed official family and a redefined role.
Apologies for the crap formatting/spelling/etc. I'm trying to tap this out on a not very good nokia phone (don't buy one, they're awful)
Anyway, on topic
it's about time the boomers started contributing, but it needs to go much further than just axing the free bus passes. I don't doubt that it will seem unfair to the pensioners that they were promised all this stuff and now it's being taken away, but they need to understand they were sold a lie. The boomers had too few children and are living far too long for their children (and grandchildren) to pay the bill. The generational settlement is null and void & needs renegotiating.
We should do these things immediately;
1. Make retirement much more flexible - the general retirement age needs to rise to the mid-70's. that's what todays young people can expect 2.pop the btl/house price asset bubble With german-style renting rights. Your grandchildrens right to rent/buy an affordable house to live & raise a family in trumps your right to a btl property portfolio. 3. backdate £9k tuition fees to all graduates. Charge interest at commercial rates, but allow penalty-free immediate repayment. That would make a decent dent in the national debt 4. Expand the scale of the QE programme to cover much more of the total debt, then go for a bout of hyperinflation. I'm convinced this is the plan anyway, but we can be more aggressive about it. It's the most painless way to default on the unaffordable obligations to the oldies.
94. Remove free bus passes
3. is an interesting idea. It'd be painful, and cause a lot of squealing, but does have the appeal that it is fair both across generations and because those who have benefited most are being asked to pay. I guess you would need to add in a minimum income, though, which means you wouldn't catch many pensioners.
(Although, the headmaster at my old school tried it: he called us all up and tried to argue that since they had mispriced our education at the time we had a duty to contribute...)
No it's not! You can't go around retrospectively slapping taxes on people decades after they took the decision to go to university under the terms then prevailing.
From those to whom much is given, much is expected.
They have benefited hugely from the education the country has provided for them. Now the country needs their help.
How many graduates who got free university education in this country are there? I have no idea but it must be less than 10 million given the lower rate of graduates in times past. At £9,000 a skull, ignoring details like whether they have enough money, that would raise about £90bn, almost enough to fund government spending for a year but not enough to make any kind of a dent in the public debt.
It is back of a fag packet calculations like this which make you realise we are in a very deep and dark hole.
Apologies for the crap formatting/spelling/etc. I'm trying to tap this out on a not very good nokia phone (don't buy one, they're awful)
Anyway, on topic
it's about time the boomers started contributing, but it needs to go much further than just axing the free bus passes. I don't doubt that it will seem unfair to the pensioners that they were promised all this stuff and now it's being taken away, but they need to understand they were sold a lie. The boomers had too few children and are living far too long for their children (and grandchildren) to pay the bill. The generational settlement is null and void & needs renegotiating.
We should do these things immediately;
1. Make retirement much more flexible - the general retirement age needs to rise to the mid-70's. that's what todays young people can expect 2.pop the btl/house price asset bubble With german-style renting rights. Your grandchildrens right to rent/buy an affordable house to live & raise a family in trumps your right to a btl property portfolio. 3. backdate £9k tuition fees to all graduates. Charge interest at commercial rates, but allow penalty-free immediate repayment. That would make a decent dent in the national debt 4. Expand the scale of the QE programme to cover much more of the total debt, then go for a bout of hyperinflation. I'm convinced this is the plan anyway, but we can be more aggressive about it. It's the most painless way to default on the unaffordable obligations to the oldies.
94. Remove free bus passes
3. is an interesting idea. It'd be painful, and cause a lot of squealing, but does have the appeal that it is fair both across generations and because those who have benefited most are being asked to pay. I guess you would need to add in a minimum income, though, which means you wouldn't catch many pensioners.
(Although, the headmaster at my old school tried it: he called us all up and tried to argue that since they had mispriced our education at the time we had a duty to contribute...)
No it's not! You can't go around retrospectively slapping taxes on people decades after they took the decision to go to university under the terms then prevailing.
From those to whom much is given, much is expected.
They have benefited hugely from the education the country has provided for them. Now the country needs their help.
Not all have, so how do we administer that? More civil servants? And those that have, financially, have probably created a lot more wealth all round as a result and paid more tax already ( fair enough ). Anyway why stop at graduates? Why are they so special ? Footballers? Made a career choice at 18 earned loads if in the upper echelons let's bung a retrospective tax on them, or other sports stars, or successful writers or whoever. We can all watch the emigration figures go up. It's just retrospectively singling out a group years after the event and deciding out of jealousy "ah ah you can pay".
Apologies for the crap formatting/spelling/etc. I'm trying to tap this out on a not very good nokia phone (don't buy one, they're awful)
Anyway, on topic
it's about time the boomers started contributing, but it needs to go much further than just axing the free bus passes. I don't doubt that it will seem unfair to the pensioners that they were promised all this stuff and now it's being taken away, but they need to understand they were sold a lie. The boomers had too few children and are living far too long for their children (and grandchildren) to pay the bill. The generational settlement is null and void & needs renegotiating.
We should do these things immediately;
1. Make retirement much more flexible - the general retirement age needs to rise to the mid-70's. that's what todays young people can expect 2.pop the btl/house price asset bubble With german-style renting rights. Your grandchildrens right to rent/buy an affordable house to live & raise a family in trumps your right to a btl property portfolio. 3. backdate £9k tuition fees to all graduates. Charge interest at commercial rates, but allow penalty-free immediate repayment. That would make a decent dent in the national debt 4. Expand the scale of the QE programme to cover much more of the total debt, then go for a bout of hyperinflation. I'm convinced this is the plan anyway, but we can be more aggressive about it. It's the most painless way to default on the unaffordable obligations to the oldies.
94. Remove free bus passes
3. is an interesting idea. It'd be painful, and cause a lot of squealing, but does have the appeal that it is fair both across generations and because those who have benefited most are being asked to pay. I guess you would need to add in a minimum income, though, which means you wouldn't catch many pensioners.
(Although, the headmaster at my old school tried it: he called us all up and tried to argue that since they had mispriced our education at the time we had a duty to contribute...)
No it's not! You can't go around retrospectively slapping taxes on people decades after they took the decision to go to university under the terms then prevailing.
From those to whom much is given, much is expected.
They have benefited hugely from the education the country has provided for them. Now the country needs their help.
How many graduates who got free university education in this country are there? I have no idea but it must be less than 10 million given the lower rate of graduates in times past. At £9,000 a skull, ignoring details like whether they have enough money, that would raise about £90bn, almost enough to fund government spending for a year but not enough to make any kind of a dent in the public debt.
It is back of a fag packet calculations like this which make you realise we are in a very deep and dark hole. </blockquote
£9k x 3 years. Not insubstantial & we've got to start somewhere (no, George hasn't even started).
yeah, we're in a hole. Do you not agree we have an obligation to pay our generations debts rather than the current plan, which seems to be to put it on the grandkids credit card?
OK. Long and involved post on energy. Feel free not to read :-)
Why we will not have blackouts:
Countries will modern electrical grids simply do not have blackouts, or at least not due to demand for electricity exceeding supply. Why? Because there are quite sophisticated demand management systems in place. In particular, there are a lot of users of power who act as 'backup generators'. That is, they are industrial users who buy electricity at - say - 12p per kilowatt hour; should the price of wholesale electricity rise to - say - 20p an hour, then said user will choose to be paid at 20p/kwh not to take electricity. This is known as peak shaving or load shedding.
It's worth noting that Japan went into the Fukashima disaster with (a) lower reserve margins than we currently have (exacerbated by the fact there are two, incompatible, electrical grids in Japan), and (b) 28% of electrical production coming from nuclear. Post Fukashima, and despite losing 28% of electrical production essentially overnight, Japan was able (through efficient demand management) to 'keep the lights on'. Likewise, in Germany eight nuclear powerplants were turned off following Fukashima: and yet German reserve margins have turned out to be just fine (and, indeed, the price of wholesale electricity keeps falling).
Why does the market disbelieve OfGem?
I am not at my Bloomberg, but last time I checked, the 2015 baseload electricity price was essentially unchanged from the current price. (Or, to put it another way, are below current levels including inflation.) Now, markets are not perfect. However, all market participants know the details in OfGem's report, so one would expect there to be a reason for the market to be sceptical.
And there are, indeed, several good reasons:
1. While renewables are inherently intermittent, it is quite unlikely that *all* the turbines in the UK would be idle at the same time. This is especially true of off-shore wind. It is also worth noting that the time of year in the UK when electricity demand is highest (the winter) is also the time when the wind is most reliable. This does not mean it is not possible for us to record very, very low wind farm utilisation in the UK, but it does make 'blackouts' much less likely than the headline numbers suggest.
2. UK gas plant is idle because coal is cheap relative to gas right now. This is a consequence of the US shale gas boom, which meant that gas fired power generation was used rather than coal on the Eastern seaboard. This Appalachian coal therefore sought out new markets, and a lot of it was shipped to Europe where it depressed the price of coal relative to natural gas (which is usually priced on an oil linked basis). Over the next five years we are going to see quite substantial new LNG export capacity come on stream in the US, specifically Sabine Pass and Freeport on the Gulf Coast, and quite possibly Cove Point and others. This will have the effect of lowering the international LNG price, and raising the coal price. (Henry Hub gas will become more expensive, and therefore Appalachian coal will stay home.) In other words, cheaper LNG should mean that fears of gas plant shutdowns are excessively pessimistic.
3. DECC's forecast for UK capacity comes down far less than people think. The headline of 'one fifth of UK generating capacity is to close' is a gross number, and ignores the following new CCGT that have been constructed and commissioned: Grain "B", Pembroke, Staythorpe and West Burton. Together, these add almost 7GW of power to the grid, and mean that between 2010 and 2014 UK capacity dips from 78GW to 74GW - not the scary fall off that people who read headlines think.
4. It's OfGem's job to try and persuade people to spend money on new power plants. OfGem will never produce a report saying 'All well in UK generation'.
Apologies for the crap formatting/spelling/etc. I'm trying to tap this out on a not very good nokia phone (don't buy one, they're awful)
Anyway, on topic
it's about time the boomers started contributing, but it needs to go much further than just axing the free bus passes. I don't doubt that it will seem unfair to the pensioners that they were promised all this stuff and now it's being taken away, but they need to understand they were sold a lie. The boomers had too few children and are living far too long for their children (and grandchildren) to pay the bill. The generational settlement is null and void & needs renegotiating.
We should do these things immediately;
1. Make retirement much more flexible - the general retirement age needs to rise to the mid-70's. that's what todays young people can expect 2.pop the btl/house price asset bubble With german-style renting rights. Your grandchildrens right to rent/buy an affordable house to live & raise a family in trumps your right to a btl property portfolio. 3. backdate £9k tuition fees to all graduates. Charge interest at commercial rates, but allow penalty-free immediate repayment. That would make a decent dent in the national debt 4. Expand the scale of the QE programme to cover much more of the total debt, then go for a bout of hyperinflation. I'm convinced this is the plan anyway, but we can be more aggressive about it. It's the most painless way to default on the unaffordable obligations to the oldies.
94. Remove free bus passes
3. is an interesting idea. It'd be painful, and cause a lot of squealing, but does have the appeal that it is fair both across generations and because those who have benefited most are being asked to pay. I guess you would need to add in a minimum income, though, which means you wouldn't catch many pensioners.
(Although, the headmaster at my old school tried it: he called us all up and tried to argue that since they had mispriced our education at the time we had a duty to contribute...)
No it's not! You can't go around retrospectively slapping taxes on people decades after they took the decision to go to university under the terms then prevailing.
From those to whom much is given, much is expected.
They have benefited hugely from the education the country has provided for them. Now the country needs their help.
How many graduates who got free university education in this country are there? I have no idea but it must be less than 10 million given the lower rate of graduates in times past. At £9,000 a skull, ignoring details like whether they have enough money, that would raise about £90bn, almost enough to fund government spending for a year but not enough to make any kind of a dent in the public debt.
It is back of a fag packet calculations like this which make you realise we are in a very deep and dark hole.
in the 1980s, about one in ten jobs were for graduates. Taking that as a ballpark, it means that in the 1980s, 10% of the workforce were graduates, so about 2.5 million. Forgetting the retired, and assuming no long term growth before then (i.e. steady numbers of graduates over the preceding thirty years or so), we're left with about 3 million.
Of course, this is likely to be an over estimate, as the number of graduates had been increasing (due to the university expansion in the 1960s.
I am assuming here that all graduates got graduate level jobs, i.e. they weren't working at Costa (or whatever we did in the 1980s).
Apologies for the crap formatting/spelling/etc. I'm trying to tap this out on a not very good nokia phone (don't buy one, they're awful)
Anyway, on topic
it's about time the boomers started contributing, but it needs to go much further than just axing the free bus passes. I don't doubt that it will seem unfair to the pensioners that they were promised all this stuff and now it's being taken away, but they need to understand they were sold a lie. The boomers had too few children and are living far too long for their children (and grandchildren) to pay the bill. The generational settlement is null and void & needs renegotiating.
We should do these things immediately;
1. Make retirement much more flexible - the general retirement age needs to rise to the mid-70's. that's what todays young people can expect 2.pop the btl/house price asset bubble With german-style renting rights. Your grandchildrens right to rent/buy an affordable house to live & raise a family in trumps your right to a btl property portfolio. 3. backdate £9k tuition fees to all graduates. Charge interest at commercial rates, but allow penalty-free immediate repayment. That would make a decent dent in the national debt 4. Expand the scale of the QE programme to cover much more of the total debt, then go for a bout of hyperinflation. I'm convinced this is the plan anyway, but we can be more aggressive about it. It's the most painless way to default on the unaffordable obligations to the oldies.
94. Remove free bus passes
3. is an interesting idea. It'd be painful, and cause a lot of squealing, but does have the appeal that it is fair both across generations and because those who have benefited most are being asked to pay. I guess you would need to add in a minimum income, though, which means you wouldn't catch many pensioners.
(Although, the headmaster at my old school tried it: he called us all up and tried to argue that since they had mispriced our education at the time we had a duty to contribute...)
No it's not! You can't go around retrospectively slapping taxes on people decades after they took the decision to go to university under the terms then prevailing.
From those to whom much is given, much is expected.
They have benefited hugely from the education the country has provided for them. Now the country needs their help.
How many graduates who got free university education in this country are there? I have no idea but it must be less than 10 million given the lower rate of graduates in times past. At £9,000 a skull, ignoring details like whether they have enough money, that would raise about £90bn, almost enough to fund government spending for a year but not enough to make any kind of a dent in the public debt.
It is back of a fag packet calculations like this which make you realise we are in a very deep and dark hole.
I think that is quite complicated. Those who have recently retired or are retiring now from either the public sector or final salary pension schemes will be a golden age of the richest pensioners in history, many of them receiving more in pension than they ever earned, let alone contributed.
Those of us still in work certainly got a leg up that our children are not getting but we are paying a lot of tax to fund these golden agers. Asking us to pay even more to make up for the generation that thought voting for Gordon Brown was a good idea seems a little harsh.
But it is the next generation, who in fairness did not vote for Brown who I feel sorry for. They face a life of high taxes and poorly funded services with very little by way of pension at the end of it.
Very off topic - I'm watching the sun set over the highlands with my head stuck out of a train window. It's a bloody incredible feeling. The Caledonian sleeper is probably the last train in Britain on which you can do that. Until they 'upgrade' the trains in 2015, no doubt with some unopenable Pongproof windows. Progress, eh?
Your reasoning assumes that raising prices will make people use less electricity. This in turn is based on the idea that a significant portion of electricity use is discretionary. I simply don't believe that to be the case
Richard: there is a very clear correlation between price of electricity and the amount people use. Demand for electricity, like anything else, is price elastic. The best example of this is California, where they have tiered system of electricity price, such that as you move up through the usage bands, you pay higher and higher prices. The result of which is that the 'top tier' pricing is much more expensive than even Europe, and Californians pay 50% more than average for their electrons. The consequence of this system - one would think - would be that the average electricity bill in California would be much higher than elsewhere.
This is not the case: actually, household electricity bills in California are only just above average for the US. The structure, with marginal kilowatts hours becoming more expensive, encourages people to be energy efficient.
I suspect that if you did a chart across countries with similar income (and climate) characteristics, you would discover an almost perfect correlation between the price of electricity and how much people use.
That is not to say that electricity usage could drop by 20% without us noticing it (that would be ridiculous), but businesses and homes would be take substantial steps to mitagate price rises.
(In parts of Switzerland, they actually have two separate electricity circuits in peoples' homes. On one circuit is the stuff you *need* to have working all the time, such as lighting. On the other, you have *nice to have* stuff, like your tumble dryer or air-conditioning. The off peak circuit has a very different price of electricity, but is only available at certain times.)
Been browsing for a new TV and some of them don't seem to have SCART sockets, so I wouldn't be able to hook up my PS2. It's a special sort of progress that would make a new TV less useful than my old one.
Apologies for the crap formatting/spelling/etc. I'm trying to tap this out on a not very good nokia phone (don't buy one, they're awful)
Anyway, on topic
it's about time the boomers started contributing, but it needs to go much further than just axing the free bus passes. I don't doubt that it will seem unfair to the pensioners that they were promised all this stuff and now it's being taken away, but they need to understand they were sold a lie. The boomers had too few children and are living far too long for their children (and grandchildren) to pay the bill. The generational settlement is null and void & needs renegotiating.
We should do these things immediately;
1. Make retirement much more flexible - the general retirement age needs to rise to the mid-70's. that's what todays young people can expect 2.pop the btl/house price asset bubble With german-style renting rights. Your grandchildrens right to rent/buy an affordable house to live & raise a family in trumps your right to a btl property portfolio. 3. backdate £9k tuition fees to all graduates. Charge interest at commercial rates, but allow penalty-free immediate repayment. That would make a decent dent in the national debt 4. Expand the scale of the QE programme to cover much more of the total debt, then go for a bout of hyperinflation. I'm convinced this is the plan anyway, but we can be more aggressive about it. It's the most painless way to default on the unaffordable obligations to the oldies.
94. Remove free bus passes
3. is an interesting idea. It'd be painful, and cause a lot of squealing, but does have the appeal that it is fair both across generations and because those who have benefited most are being asked to pay. I guess you would need to add in a minimum income, though, which means you wouldn't catch many pensioners.
(Although, the headmaster at my old school tried it: he called us all up and tried to argue that since they had mispriced our education at the time we had a duty to contribute...)
No it's not! You can't go around retrospectively slapping taxes on people decades after they took the decision to go to university under the terms then prevailing.
From those to whom much is given, much is expected.
They have benefited hugely from the education the country has provided for them. Now the country needs their help.
How many graduates who got free university education in this country are there? I have no idea but it must be less than 10 million given the lower rate of graduates in times past. At £9,000 a skull, ignoring details like whether they have enough money, that would raise about £90bn, almost enough to fund government spending for a year but not enough to make any kind of a dent in the public debt.
It is back of a fag packet calculations like this which make you realise we are in a very deep and dark hole.
I think that is quite complicated. Those who have recently retired or are retiring now from either the public sector or final salary pension schemes will be a golden age of the richest pensioners in history, many of them receiving more in pension than they ever earned, let alone contributed.
Those of us still in work certainly got a leg up that our children are not getting but we are paying a lot of tax to fund these golden agers. Asking us to pay even more to make up for the generation that thought voting for Gordon Brown was a good idea seems a little harsh.
But it is the next generation, who in fairness did not vote for Brown who I feel sorry for. They face a life of high taxes and poorly funded services with very little by way of pension at the end of it.
This post is an oasis of sanity on here this evening.
They need lessons from me. Why, only on this thread, I've managed to persuade another_richard to research the schooling of four cricketers and compile a list of working class Yorkshiremen with multisyllabic names.
I already knew where Cook and Root went to school and you helped me remember the long forgotton pleasure of team picking.
They have benefited hugely from the education the country has provided for them. Now the country needs their help.
They will help, by voting at the next election.
And I was looking forward to all those leftie academics and journalists finding reasons why they shouldn't contribute but today's graduates have to :-(
On the Epping Ongar Railway today we had Metropolitan No. 1 (4-4-0T), the tank engine L150 (2-6-2T) and the N2 loco 1744 (0-6-2T) as part of the ongoing London Underground 150 anniversary celebrations. They will all be around next weekend too.
Apologies for the crap formatting/spelling/etc. I'm trying to tap this out on a not very good nokia phone (don't buy one, they're awful)
Anyway, on topic
it's about time the boomers started contributing, but it needs to go much further than just axing the free bus passes. I don't doubt that it will seem unfair to the pensioners that they were promised all this stuff and now it's being taken away, but they need to understand they were sold a lie. The boomers had too few children and are living far too long for their children (and grandchildren) to pay the bill. The generational settlement is null and void & needs renegotiating.
We should do these things immediately;
1. Make retirement much more flexible - the general retirement age needs to rise to the mid-70's. that's what todays young people can expect 2.pop the btl/house price asset bubble With german-style renting rights. Your grandchildrens right to rent/buy an affordable house to live & raise a family in trumps your right to a btl property portfolio. 3. backdate £9k tuition fees to all graduates. Charge interest at commercial rates, but allow penalty-free immediate repayment. That would make a decent dent in the national debt 4. Expand the scale of the QE programme to cover much more of the total debt, then go for a bout of hyperinflation. I'm convinced this is the plan anyway, but we can be more aggressive about it. It's the most painless way to default on the unaffordable obligations to the oldies.
94. Remove free bus passes
3. is an interesting idea. It'd be painful, and cause a lot of squealing, but does have the appeal that it is fair both across generations and because those who have benefited most are being asked to pay. I guess you would need to add in a minimum income, though, which means you wouldn't catch many pensioners.
(Although, the headmaster at my old school tried it: he called us all up and tried to argue that since they had mispriced our education at the time we had a duty to contribute...)
No it's not! You can't go around retrospectively slapping taxes on people decades after they took the decision to go to university under the terms then prevailing.
From those to whom much is given, much is expected.
They have benefited hugely from the education the country has provided for them. Now the country needs their help.
How many graduates who got free university education in this country are there? I have no idea but it must be less than 10 million given the lower rate of graduates in times past. At £9,000 a skull, ignoring details like whether they have enough money, that would raise about £90bn, almost enough to fund government spending for a year but not enough to make any kind of a dent in the public debt.
It is back of a fag packet calculations like this which make you realise we are in a very deep and dark hole.
£90bn would be 7.5% of UK government debt (c. £1.2trn) and would also reduce public spending by c. £4.5bn p.a. going forward (I've used 5% interest rate as a proxy for long-term government borrowing rate)
Apologies for the crap formatting/spelling/etc. I'm trying to tap this out on a not very good nokia phone (don't buy one, they're awful)
Anyway, on topic
it's about time the boomers started contributing, but it needs to go much further than just axing the free bus passes. I don't doubt that it will seem unfair to the pensioners that they were promised all this stuff and now it's being taken away, but they need to understand they were sold a lie. The boomers had too few children and are living far too long for their children (and grandchildren) to pay the bill. The generational settlement is null and void & needs renegotiating.
We should do these things immediately;
1. Make retirement much more flexible - the general retirement age needs to rise to the mid-70's. that's what todays young people can expect 2.pop the btl/house price asset bubble With german-style renting rights. Your grandchildrens right to rent/buy an affordable house to live & raise a family in trumps your right to a btl property portfolio. 3. backdate £9k tuition fees to all graduates. Charge interest at commercial rates, but allow penalty-free immediate repayment. That would make a decent dent in the national debt 4. Expand the scale of the QE programme to cover much more of the total debt, then go for a bout of hyperinflation. I'm convinced this is the plan anyway, but we can be more aggressive about it. It's the most painless way to default on the unaffordable obligations to the oldies.
94. Remove free bus passes
3. is an interesting idea. It'd be painful, and cause a lot of squealing, but does have the appeal that it is fair both across generations and because those who have benefited most are being asked to pay. I guess you would need to add in a minimum income, though, which means you wouldn't catch many pensioners.
(Although, the headmaster at my old school tried it: he called us all up and tried to argue that since they had mispriced our education at the time we had a duty to contribute...)
No it's not! You can't go around retrospectively slapping taxes on people decades after they took the decision to go to university under the terms then prevailing.
From those to whom much is given, much is expected.
They have benefited hugely from the education the country has provided for them. Now the country needs their help.
Not all have, so how do we administer that? More civil servants? And those that have, financially, have probably created a lot more wealth all round as a result and paid more tax already ( fair enough ). Anyway why stop at graduates? Why are they so special ? Footballers? Made a career choice at 18 earned loads if in the upper echelons let's bung a retrospective tax on them, or other sports stars, or successful writers or whoever. We can all watch the emigration figures go up. It's just retrospectively singling out a group years after the event and deciding out of jealousy "ah ah you can pay".
(Just to be clear, I would be paying, so it's not jealousy).
There is pretty clear academic analysis showing that people who have graduate education earn significantly more than non-graduates.
Yes they have paid more tax on this, but for 25 years (i.e. anyone under about 45) they would have kept 60% of it themselves.
This personal enrichment has come off the basis of the state's investment in their education. It's not unreasonable in moral terms to ask for some of it back.
Twitter George Osborne @George_Osborne 7m With thanks to all my cabinet colleagues and hard work of Treasury team, today we've settled all departments ahead of the spending round
Apologies for the crap formatting/spelling/etc. I'm trying to tap this out on a not very good nokia phone (don't buy one, they're awful)
Anyway, on topic
it's about time the boomers started contributing, but it needs to go much further than just axing the free bus passes. I don't doubt that it will seem unfair to the pensioners that they were promised all this stuff and now it's being taken away, but they need to understand they were sold a lie. The boomers had too few children and are living far too long for their children (and grandchildren) to pay the bill. The generational settlement is null and void & needs renegotiating.
We should do these things immediately;
1. Make retirement much more flexible - the general retirement age needs to rise to the mid-70's. that's what todays young people can expect 2.pop the btl/house price asset bubble With german-style renting rights. Your grandchildrens right to rent/buy an affordable house to live & raise a family in trumps your right to a btl property portfolio. 3. backdate £9k tuition fees to all graduates. Charge interest at commercial rates, but allow penalty-free immediate repayment. That would make a decent dent in the national debt 4. Expand the scale of the QE programme to cover much more of the total debt, then go for a bout of hyperinflation. I'm convinced this is the plan anyway, but we can be more aggressive about it. It's the most painless way to default on the unaffordable obligations to the oldies.
94. Remove free bus passes
3. is an interesting idea. It'd be painful, and cause a lot of squealing, but does have the appeal that it is fair both across generations and because those who have benefited most are being asked to pay. I guess you would need to add in a minimum income, though, which means you wouldn't catch many pensioners.
(Although, the headmaster at my old school tried it: he called us all up and tried to argue that since they had mispriced our education at the time we had a duty to contribute...)
No it's not! You can't go around retrospectively slapping taxes on people decades after they took the decision to go to university under the terms then prevailing.
From those to whom much is given, much is expected.
They have benefited hugely from the education the country has provided for them. Now the country needs their help.
Not all have, so how do we administer that? More civil servants? And those that have, financially, have probably created a lot more wealth all round as a result and paid more tax already ( fair enough ). Anyway why stop at graduates? Why are they so special ? Footballers? Made a career choice at 18 earned loads if in the upper echelons let's bung a retrospective tax on them, or other sports stars, or successful writers or whoever. We can all watch the emigration figures go up. It's just retrospectively singling out a group years after the event and deciding out of jealousy "ah ah you can pay".
(Just to be clear, I would be paying, so it's not jealousy).
There is pretty clear academic analysis showing that people who have graduate education earn significantly more than non-graduates.
Yes they have paid more tax on this, but for 25 years (i.e. anyone under about 45) they would have kept 60% of it themselves.
This personal enrichment has come off the basis of the state's investment in their education. It's not unreasonable in moral terms to ask for some of it back.
Of course it's bloody unreasonable. As I said what about footballers? Why not them? Why not anyone who is a success financially - they've all " benefitted" from the education system. Why not surtax anyone who voted for brother Gordon? They're responsible for a chunk of the mess.
Fortunately none of the insanities on here tonight will come to pass. If they do - to link to another discussion on here - last one out, turn out the lights.
Apologies for the crap formatting/spelling/etc. I'm trying to tap this out on a not very good nokia phone (don't buy one, they're awful)
Anyway, on topic
it's about time the boomers started contributing, but it needs to go much further than just axing the free bus passes. I don't doubt that it will seem unfair to the pensioners that they were promised all this stuff and now it's being taken away, but they need to understand they were sold a lie. The boomers had too few children and are living far too long for their children (and grandchildren) to pay the bill. The generational settlement is null and void & needs renegotiating.
We should do these things immediately;
1. Make retirement much more flexible - the general retirement age needs to rise to the mid-70's. that's what todays young people can expect 2.pop the btl/house price asset bubble With german-style renting rights. Your grandchildrens right to rent/buy an affordable house to live & raise a family in trumps your right to a btl property portfolio. 3. backdate £9k tuition fees to all graduates. Charge interest at commercial rates, but allow penalty-free immediate repayment. That would make a decent dent in the national debt 4. Expand the scale of the QE programme to cover much more of the total debt, then go for a bout of hyperinflation. I'm convinced this is the plan anyway, but we can be more aggressive about it. It's the most painless way to default on the unaffordable obligations to the oldies.
94. Remove free bus passes
3. is an interesting idea. It'd be painful, and cause a lot of squealing, but does have the appeal that it is fair both across generations and because those who have benefited most are being asked to pay. I guess you would need to add in a minimum income, though, which means you wouldn't catch many pensioners.
(Although, the headmaster at my old school tried it: he called us all up and tried to argue that since they had mispriced our education at the time we had a duty to contribute...)
No it's not! You can't go around retrospectively slapping taxes on people decades after they took the decision to go to university under the terms then prevailing.
From those to whom much is given, much is expected.
They have benefited hugely from the education the country has provided for them. Now the country needs their help.
How many graduates who got free university education in this country are there? I have no idea but it must be less than 10 million given the lower rate of graduates in times past. At £9,000 a skull, ignoring details like whether they have enough money, that would raise about £90bn, almost enough to fund government spending for a year but not enough to make any kind of a dent in the public debt.
It is back of a fag packet calculations like this which make you realise we are in a very deep and dark hole.
£90bn would be 7.5% of UK government debt (c. £1.2trn) and would also reduce public spending by c. £4.5bn p.a. going forward (I've used 5% interest rate as a proxy for long-term government borrowing rate)
That's a pretty healthy one time contribution.
Not a fix, but certainly helpful
Well if @Gerry_Mander is right I have exaggerated the maximum possible return by a factor of 3.
Something drastic is needed, I will accept that. We are still kidding ourselves about somehow getting out of this.
Apologies for the crap formatting/spelling/etc. I'm trying to tap this out on a not very good nokia phone (don't buy one, they're awful)
Anyway, on topic
it's about time the boomers started contributing, but it needs to go much further than just axing the free bus passes. I don't doubt that it will seem unfair to the pensioners that they were promised all this stuff and now it's being taken away, but they need to understand they were sold a lie. The boomers had too few children and are living far too long for their children (and grandchildren) to pay the bill. The generational settlement is null and void & needs renegotiating.
We should do these things immediately;
1. Make retirement much more flexible - the general retirement age needs to rise to the mid-70's. that's what todays young people can expect 2.pop the btl/house price asset bubble With german-style renting rights. Your grandchildrens right to rent/buy an affordable house to live & raise a family in trumps your right to a btl property portfolio. 3. backdate £9k tuition fees to all graduates. Charge interest at commercial rates, but allow penalty-free immediate repayment. That would make a decent dent in the national debt 4. Expand the scale of the QE programme to cover much more of the total debt, then go for a bout of hyperinflation. I'm convinced this is the plan anyway, but we can be more aggressive about it. It's the most painless way to default on the unaffordable obligations to the oldies.
94. Remove free bus passes
3. is an interesting idea. It'd be painful, and cause a lot of squealing, but does have the appeal that it is fair both across generations and because those who have benefited most are being asked to pay. I guess you would need to add in a minimum income, though, which means you wouldn't catch many pensioners.
(Although, the headmaster at my old school tried it: he called us all up and tried to argue that since they had mispriced our education at the time we had a duty to contribute...)
No it's not! You can't go around retrospectively slapping taxes on people decades after they took the decision to go to university under the terms then prevailing.
From those to whom much is given, much is expected.
They have benefited hugely from the education the country has provided for them. Now the country needs their help.
Not all have, so how do we administer that? More civil servants? And those that have, financially, have probably created a lot more wealth all round as a result and paid more tax already ( fair enough ). Anyway why stop at graduates? Why are they so special ? Footballers? Made a career choice at 18 earned loads if in the upper echelons let's bung a retrospective tax on them, or other sports stars, or successful writers or whoever. We can all watch the emigration figures go up. It's just retrospectively singling out a group years after the event and deciding out of jealousy "ah ah you can pay".
(Just to be clear, I would be paying, so it's not jealousy).
There is pretty clear academic analysis showing that people who have graduate education earn significantly more than non-graduates.
Yes they have paid more tax on this, but for 25 years (i.e. anyone under about 45) they would have kept 60% of it themselves.
This personal enrichment has come off the basis of the state's investment in their education. It's not unreasonable in moral terms to ask for some of it back.
Of course it's bloody unreasonable. As I said what about footballers? Why not them? Why not anyone who is a success financially - they've all " benefitted" from the education system. Why not surtax anyone who voted for brother Gordon? They're responsible for a chunk of the mess.
Fortunately none of the insanities on here tonight will come to pass. If they do - to link to another discussion on here - last one out, turn out the lights.
Footballers, like everyone else, got basic education. Their success is based on an innate talent.
Graduates got significant more public expenditure on them which has directly allowed them to capture a personal return. This is recognised in that current students are asked to contribute.
OK. Long and involved post on energy. Feel free not to read :-)
Why we will not have blackouts:
Countries will modern electrical grids simply do not have blackouts, or at least not due to demand for electricity exceeding supply. Why? Because there are quite sophisticated demand management systems in place. In particular, there are a lot of users of power who act as 'backup generators'. That is, they are industrial users who buy electricity at - say - 12p per kilowatt hour; should the price of wholesale electricity rise to - say - 20p an hour, then said user will choose to be paid at 20p/kwh not to take electricity. This is known as peak shaving or load shedding.
It's worth noting that Japan went into the Fukashima disaster with (a) lower reserve margins than we currently have (exacerbated by the fact there are two, incompatible, electrical grids in Japan), and (b) 28% of electrical production coming from nuclear. Post Fukashima, and despite losing 28% of electrical production essentially overnight, Japan was able (through efficient demand management) to 'keep the lights on'. Likewise, in Germany eight nuclear powerplants were turned off following Fukashima: and yet German reserve margins have turned out to be just fine (and, indeed, the price of wholesale electricity keeps falling).
Why does the market disbelieve OfGem?
I am not at my Bloomberg, but last time I checked, the 2015 baseload electricity price was essentially unchanged from the current price. (Or, to put it another way, are below current levels including inflation.) Now, markets are not perfect. However, all market participants know the details in OfGem's report, so one would expect there to be a reason for the market to be sceptical.
And there are, indeed, several good reasons:
1. While renewables are inherently intermittent, it is quite unlikely that *all* the turbines in the UK would be idle at the same time. This is especially true of off-shore wind. It is also worth noting that the time of year in the UK when electricity demand is highest (the winter) is also the time when the wind is most reliable. This does not mean it is not possible for us to record very, very low wind farm utilisation in the UK, but it does make 'blackouts' much less likely than the headline numbers suggest.
2. UK gas plant is idle because coal is cheap relative to gas right now. This is a consequence of the US shale gas boom, which meant that gas fired power generation was used rather than coal on the Eastern seaboard. This Appalachian coal therefore sought out new markets, and a lot of it was shipped to Europe where it depressed the price of coal relative to natural gas (which is usually priced on an oil linked basis). Over the next five years we are going to see quite substantial new LNG export capacity come on stream in the US, specifically Sabine Pass and Freeport on the Gulf Coast, and quite possibly Cove Point and others. This will have the effect of lowering the international LNG price, and raising the coal price. (Henry Hub gas will become more expensive, and therefore Appalachian coal will stay home.) In other words, cheaper LNG should mean that fears of gas plant shutdowns are excessively pessimistic.
3. DECC's forecast for UK capacity comes down far less than people think. The headline of 'one fifth of UK generating capacity is to close' is a gross number, and ignores the following new CCGT that have been constructed and commissioned: Grain "B", Pembroke, Staythorpe and West Burton. Together, these add almost 7GW of power to the grid, and mean that between 2010 and 2014 UK capacity dips from 78GW to 74GW - not the scary fall off that people who read headlines think.
4. It's OfGem's job to try and persuade people to spend money on new power plants. OfGem will never produce a report saying 'All well in UK generation'.
I'm a little (lot?) more worried about blackouts than you, but i come at it from a different angle and admittedly a lot less knowledge of the markets.
What we are talking about are odds: even OFGEM do not say blackouts will occur, and give a probability of it occurring. In my opinion their stated odds are worryingly low; you, with good reason, believe the odds are too pessimistic. All I can say is I hope you are right.
As a matter of interest, do you factor load balancing into your reasoning on this? It is fairly easy for electrical networks to get knocked out in a cascading failure which are more likely at times of high network loads and stress, even when the stress is confined to a small part of the network. It's an area I wished I knew more about, and I'm not sure I've explained this paragraph well enough ...
(BTW, thanks for the email; it was very interesting and has caused me to do a little more research. I like research. ;-) ).
@Josias, I was actually in New York during the extraordinary 2003 blackout. I must admit, I am much more concerned about renewables making our grids less reliable, and therefore the risk of such 'cascading failures', than I am about a simple 'supply/demand' imbalance.
A retrospective graduate tax has all sorts of issues
What about the 10% of my medical school year now living and working abroad?
What about my medical colleagues who qualified abroad? should they pay also?
What about my colleagues who no longer work because of mental or physical disease, should their benefits be docked accordingly?
What about graduates working in low pay jobs? Why should they pay, when the youngsters of today do not pay unless they earn £26, 000?
Why not just do the much simpler thing and put up the higher rate of tax for everyone, and abolish current university fees?
How about 25% basic rate, 45% top rate, 25% VAT, and 50% inheritance tax on all inheritances over £250 000?
Or is it just that people want "fair taxes"; which simply means taxes on other people?
Surely the only realistic way to pay off the debt is for us to have higher taxes, lower benefits and extended working lives. In other words to be in it together?
Apologies for the crap formatting/spelling/etc. I'm trying to tap this out on a not very good nokia phone (don't buy one, they're awful)
Anyway, on topic
it's about time the boomers started contributing, but it needs to go much further than just axing the free bus passes. I don't doubt that it will seem unfair to the pensioners that they were promised all this stuff and now it's being taken away, but they need to understand they were sold a lie. The boomers had too few children and are living far too long for their children (and grandchildren) to pay the bill. The generational settlement is null and void & needs renegotiating.
We should do these things immediately;
1. Make retirement much more flexible - the general retirement age needs to rise to the mid-70's. that's what todays young people can expect 2.pop the btl/house price asset bubble With german-style renting rights. Your grandchildrens right to rent/buy an affordable house to live & raise a family in trumps your right to a btl property portfolio. 3. backdate £9k tuition fees to all graduates. Charge interest at commercial rates, but allow penalty-free immediate repayment. That would make a decent dent in the national debt 4. Expand the scale of the QE programme to cover much more of the total debt, then go for a bout of hyperinflation. I'm convinced this is the plan anyway, but we can be more aggressive about it. It's the most painless way to default on the unaffordable obligations to the oldies.
94. Remove free bus passes
3. is an interesting idea. It'd be painful, and cause a lot of squealing, but does have the appeal that it is fair both across generations and because those who have benefited most are being asked to pay. I guess you would need to add in a minimum income, though, which means you wouldn't catch many pensioners.
(Although, the headmaster at my old school tried it: he called us all up and tried to argue that since they had mispriced our education at the time we had a duty to contribute...)
No it's not! You can't go around retrospectively slapping taxes on people decades after they took the decision to go to university under the terms then prevailing.
From those to whom much is given, much is expected.
They have benefited hugely from the education the country has provided for them. Now the country needs their help.
Not all have, so how do we administer that? More civil servants? And those that have, financially, have probably created a lot more wealth all round as a result and paid more tax already ( fair enough ). Anyway why stop at graduates? Why are they so special ? Footballers? Made a career choice at 18 earned loads if in the upper echelons let's bung a retrospective tax on them, or other sports stars, or successful writers or whoever. We can all watch the emigration figures go up. It's just retrospectively singling out a group years after the event and deciding out of jealousy "ah ah you can pay".
(Just to be clear, I would be paying, so it's not jealousy).
There is pretty clear academic analysis showing that people who have graduate education earn significantly more than non-graduates.
Yes they have paid more tax on this, but for 25 years (i.e. anyone under about 45) they would have kept 60% of it themselves.
This personal enrichment has come off the basis of the state's investment in their education. It's not unreasonable in moral terms to ask for some of it back.
Of course it's bloody unreasonable. As I said what about footballers? Why not them? Why not anyone who is a success financially - they've all " benefitted" from the education system. Why not surtax anyone who voted for brother Gordon? They're responsible for a chunk of the mess.
Fortunately none of the insanities on here tonight will come to pass. If they do - to link to another discussion on here - last one out, turn out the lights.
Footballers, like everyone else, got basic education. Their success is based on an innate talent.
Graduates got significant more public expenditure on them which has directly allowed them to capture a personal return. This is recognised in that current students are asked to contribute.
Apologies for the crap formatting/spelling/etc. I'm trying to tap this out on a not very good nokia phone (don't buy one, they're awful)
Anyway, on topic
it's about time the boomers started contributing, but it needs to go much further than just axing the free bus passes. I don't doubt that it will seem unfair to the pensioners that they were promised all this stuff and now it's being taken away, but they need to understand they were sold a lie. The boomers had too few children and are living far too long for their children (and grandchildren) to pay the bill. The generational settlement is null and void & needs renegotiating.
We should do these things immediately;
1. Make retirement much more flexible - the general retirement age needs to rise to the mid-70's. that's what todays young people can expect 2.pop the btl/house price asset bubble With german-style renting rights. Your grandchildrens right to rent/buy an affordable house to live & raise a family in trumps your right to a btl property portfolio. 3. backdate £9k tuition fees to all graduates. Charge interest at commercial rates, but allow penalty-free immediate repayment. That would make a decent dent in the national debt 4. Expand the scale of the QE programme to cover much more of the total debt, then go for a bout of hyperinflation. I'm convinced this is the plan anyway, but we can be more aggressive about it. It's the most painless way to default on the unaffordable obligations to the oldies.
94. Remove free bus passes
3. is an interesting idea. It'd be painful, and cause a lot of squealing, but does have the appeal that it is fair both across generations and because those who have benefited most are being asked to pay. I guess you would need to add in a minimum income, though, which means you wouldn't catch many pensioners.
(Although, the headmaster at my old school tried it: he called us all up and tried to argue that since they had mispriced our education at the time we had a duty to contribute...)
No it's not! You can't go around retrospectively slapping taxes on people decades after they took the decision to go to university under the terms then prevailing.
From those to whom much is given, much is expected.
They have benefited hugely from the education the country has provided for them. Now the country needs their help.
Not all have, so how do we administer that? More civil servants? And those that have, financially, have probably created a lot more wealth all round as a result and paid more tax already ( fair enough ). Anyway why stop at graduates? Why are they so special ? Footballers? Made a career choice at 18 earned loads if in the upper echelons let's bung a retrospective tax on them, or other sports stars, or successful writers or whoever. We can all watch the emigration figures go up. It's just retrospectively singling out a group years after the event and deciding out of jealousy "ah ah you can pay".
(Just to be clear, I would be paying, so it's not jealousy).
There is pretty clear academic analysis showing that people who have graduate education earn significantly more than non-graduates.
Yes they have paid more tax on this, but for 25 years (i.e. anyone under about 45) they would have kept 60% of it themselves.
This personal enrichment has come off the basis of the state's investment in their education. It's not unreasonable in moral terms to ask for some of it back.
Of course it's bloody unreasonable. As I said what about footballers? Why not them? Why not anyone who is a success financially - they've all " benefitted" from the education system. Why not surtax anyone who voted for brother Gordon? They're responsible for a chunk of the mess.
Fortunately none of the insanities on here tonight will come to pass. If they do - to link to another discussion on here - last one out, turn out the lights.
Footballers, like everyone else, got basic education. Their success is based on an innate talent.
Graduates got significant more public expenditure on them which has directly allowed them to capture a personal return. This is recognised in that current students are asked to contribute.
Ok to follow your logic do those that went to private school get a discount then as they didn't have as much spent on them? I'm afraid this retrospective thinking is bonkers, there's no moral code about it, it's just dressing up the state's long term failure to control its financial continence and grasping it back any way thinkable.
By the way I emphatically did not have private education - local comp for me - and I personally feel queasy about money buying that education ( though it clashes with my belief in spending it on what you reasonably want but that's my moral dilemma).
Right I'm off now. Work tomorrow. Got a billion Chinese and a billion Indians and 320 million Americans and loads of others too to compete against in international manufacturing markets. Someone has to.
A retrospective graduate tax has all sorts of issues
1. What about the 10% of my medical school year now living and working abroad?
2. What about my medical colleagues who qualified abroad? should they pay also?
3. What about my colleagues who no longer work because of mental or physical disease, should their benefits be docked accordingly?
4. What about graduates working in low pay jobs? Why should they pay, when the youngsters of today do not pay unless they earn £26, 000?
5. Why not just do the much simpler thing and put up the higher rate of tax for everyone, and abolish current university fees?
6. How about 25% basic rate, 45% top rate, 25% VAT, and 50% inheritance tax on all inheritances over £250 000?
7. Or is it just that people want "fair taxes"; which simply means taxes on other people?
8 Surely the only realistic way to pay off the debt is for us to have higher taxes, lower benefits and extended working lives. In other words to be in it together?
1. Lucky them 2. No 3. Minimum income criteria for the payment 4. See 3 5. Why should low-earning non-university graduates pay more to avoid those who benefited most from the state's largesse paying something back 6. Taxes should be low, simple and hard to avoid. 7. No - this would be tax on me to. 8. Yes, but this is only a partial solution.
The fundamental point is that previous generations got a massively positive net gain from the state, with my generation and those of my children and grandchildren paying.
The ask is that some of those people who benefited the most make a contribution to close part of that gap. (subject to minimum income criteria, etc)
We are all in this together - and those who benefit the most should pay the most.
Ok to follow your logic do those that went to private school get a discount then as they didn't have as much spent on them? I'm afraid this retrospective thinking is bonkers, there's no moral code about it, it's just dressing up the state's long term failure to control its financial continence and grasping it back any way thinkable.
By the way I emphatically did not have private education - local comp for me - and I personally feel queasy about money buying that education ( though it clashes with my belief in spending it on what you reasonably want but that's my moral dilemma).
Right I'm off now. Work tomorrow. Got a billion Chinese and a billion Indians and 320 million Americans and loads of others too to compete against in international manufacturing markets. Someone has to.
No, I'm not charging for education pre-university.
The state failed, that's true. But the state needs to get the debt under control - this is about the debt, not the deficit.
The fundamental point is as Kennedy put it: to those whom much is given, much is expected.
People who got a free university education got a massive benefit from the taxes. To ask them to make a small contribution (which would only be a percentage of the value taht has accrued to them throughout their life) is not unreasonable.
At the moment, what we have is a secret robbing of the prudent to pay for the profligate. How is that fairer?
A retrospective graduate tax has all sorts of issues
1. What about the 10% of my medical school year now living and working abroad?
2. What about my medical colleagues who qualified abroad? should they pay also?
3. What about my colleagues who no longer work because of mental or physical disease, should their benefits be docked accordingly?
4. What about graduates working in low pay jobs? Why should they pay, when the youngsters of today do not pay unless they earn £26, 000?
5. Why not just do the much simpler thing and put up the higher rate of tax for everyone, and abolish current university fees?
6. How about 25% basic rate, 45% top rate, 25% VAT, and 50% inheritance tax on all inheritances over £250 000?
7. Or is it just that people want "fair taxes"; which simply means taxes on other people?
8 Surely the only realistic way to pay off the debt is for us to have higher taxes, lower benefits and extended working lives. In other words to be in it together?
1. Lucky them 2. No 3. Minimum income criteria for the payment 4. See 3 5. Why should low-earning non-university graduates pay more to avoid those who benefited most from the state's largesse paying something back 6. Taxes should be low, simple and hard to avoid. 7. No - this would be tax on me to. 8. Yes, but this is only a partial solution.
The fundamental point is that previous generations got a massively positive net gain from the state, with my generation and those of my children and grandchildren paying.
The ask is that some of those people who benefited the most make a contribution to close part of that gap. (subject to minimum income criteria, etc)
We are all in this together - and those who benefit the most should pay the most.
Some more complexities:
Should only those with degrees pay? What about those with HND or nursing qualifications? What about those who did not finish their qualifications?
It seems as if we would need an army of tax inspectors to disentangle all the above.
Surely it is simpler and fairer to raise the rate of income tax than all the above contortions?
Fair taxes= those paid by others.
Why not add retrospective taxes on windfall inheritances? After all if one retrospective tax is OK then why not others?
Your reasoning assumes that raising prices will make people use less electricity. This in turn is based on the idea that a significant portion of electricity use is discretionary. I simply don't believe that to be the case. If we do not have the capacity to supply everyone's needs (as opposed to their wants)...
After 3/11 we reduced domestic electricity use, both domestic and commercial, by 15%. At the domestic end that's basically voluntary energy-saving, much of it before the prices to consumers even went up.
A retrospective graduate tax has all sorts of issues
Everybody on this topic has focused on taking more money away from people who have earned it to waste elsewhere. Graduates should get a tax rebate instead as they are, generally, economic drivers and achievers. They bring more to the economy than non-graduates and so should be entitled to more of the results of the growth they create.
Or is it just that people want "fair taxes"; which simply means taxes on other people?
Yes, regrettably that's true and that's life. Tax rises for "the wealthy" just mean "anyone with a few pounds more than me" or on "the couple next door with a nicer car than ours".
Your reasoning assumes that raising prices will make people use less electricity. This in turn is based on the idea that a significant portion of electricity use is discretionary. I simply don't believe that to be the case. If we do not have the capacity to supply everyone's needs (as opposed to their wants)...
After 3/11 we reduced domestic electricity use, both domestic and commercial, by 15%. At the domestic end that's basically voluntary energy-saving, much of it before the prices to consumers even went up.
3/11 ? After the 3rd November electric and gas usage decreases. Are you sure, thats the start of winter - precisely when I'd have thought leccy usage would increase.
Your reasoning assumes that raising prices will make people use less electricity. This in turn is based on the idea that a significant portion of electricity use is discretionary. I simply don't believe that to be the case. If we do not have the capacity to supply everyone's needs (as opposed to their wants)...
After 3/11 we reduced domestic electricity use, both domestic and commercial, by 15%. At the domestic end that's basically voluntary energy-saving, much of it before the prices to consumers even went up.
3/11 ? After the 3rd November electric and gas usage decreases. Are you sure, thats the start of winter - precisely when I'd have thought leccy usage would increase.
On topic - Those reductions to pensioner perks are going to make a gnat's fart in the debt/deficit situation. Still every little helps, and they should probably go.
Your reasoning assumes that raising prices will make people use less electricity. This in turn is based on the idea that a significant portion of electricity use is discretionary. I simply don't believe that to be the case. If we do not have the capacity to supply everyone's needs (as opposed to their wants)...
After 3/11 we reduced domestic electricity use, both domestic and commercial, by 15%. At the domestic end that's basically voluntary energy-saving, much of it before the prices to consumers even went up.
3/11 ? After the 3rd November electric and gas usage decreases. Are you sure, thats the start of winter - precisely when I'd have thought leccy usage would increase.
Sorry, I should have been clearer. I'm talking about Japan, and 3/11 is the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami of March, 2011.
Your reasoning assumes that raising prices will make people use less electricity. This in turn is based on the idea that a significant portion of electricity use is discretionary. I simply don't believe that to be the case. If we do not have the capacity to supply everyone's needs (as opposed to their wants)...
After 3/11 we reduced domestic electricity use, both domestic and commercial, by 15%. At the domestic end that's basically voluntary energy-saving, much of it before the prices to consumers even went up.
3/11 ? After the 3rd November electric and gas usage decreases. Are you sure, thats the start of winter - precisely when I'd have thought leccy usage would increase.
Sorry, I should have been clearer. I'm talking about Japan, and 3/11 is the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami of March, 2011.
Can see that being the case with the number of homes and so forth being destroyed.
Apologies for the crap formatting/spelling/etc. I'm trying to tap this out on a not very good nokia phone (don't buy one, they're awful)
Anyway, on topic
it's about time the boomers started contributing, but it needs to go much further than just axing the free bus passes. I don't doubt that it will seem unfair to the pensioners that they were promised all this stuff and now it's being taken away, but they need to understand they were sold a lie. The boomers had too few children and are living far too long for their children (and grandchildren) to pay the bill. The generational settlement is null and void & needs renegotiating.
We should do these things immediately;
1. Make retirement much more flexible - the general retirement age needs to rise to the mid-70's. that's what todays young people can expect 2.pop the btl/house price asset bubble With german-style renting rights. Your grandchildrens right to rent/buy an affordable house to live & raise a family in trumps your right to a btl property portfolio. 3. backdate £9k tuition fees to all graduates. Charge interest at commercial rates, but allow penalty-free immediate repayment. That would make a decent dent in the national debt 4. Expand the scale of the QE programme to cover much more of the total debt, then go for a bout of hyperinflation. I'm convinced this is the plan anyway, but we can be more aggressive about it. It's the most painless way to default on the unaffordable obligations to the oldies.
94. Remove free bus passes
Well I'm not even going to comment on the solutions given the initial diagnosis of this issue is ignorant of the reality.
1. Baby Boomer's were born between 1945 and 1964. Therefore the vast majority have yet to retire with only those women born between 1945 and 1953 and those men born between 1945 and 1948 are currently receiving pension benefits. The vast majority of Boomers are still of working age and presumably are still contiributing (and likely have contributed a damn sight longer than the majority of their critics)
The vast majority of current pensioners receiving benefits were born either during or before World War II. Good luck criticising them given the hardships they had to live through.
2. The Baby Boomer's so called 'Baby Boom' was extremely short only lasting only through 1946 and 1947 before going into rapid decline (dropping 25% in just 5 years) in the UK as austerity and rationing took hold of the population's behaviour. That it is highlighted so often is cheap propaganda for those too naive and too idle to check the facts and was only an equalising reaction to the fall off in birth rate caused first by the depression and then by the Second World War. Birth rates on;ly began rising again as austerity was relaxed in the late 1950's .as the Boomer's era was coming to an end.
3. The real problems with longevity will occur when the mid sixties Generation X group (Cameron's lot) join the Baby Boomers in retirement. Its was the Swinging Sixties baby boom that was the biggest baby boom of them all.
4. Now it would have been those born during the war years and the early baby boomer years who were responsible for the mid sixties Baby Boom so to suggest they did not sprog enough children is equally nonsense. The real problem comes from around 1980 onwards when those born after 1960 onwards (so mainly Generation X) whilst being part of the main boom failed to produce enough children themselves.
Of course the reasons for the changes in birth rate are quite obvious and reflect the economic and social state of the nation over the period (as it continues to do up until recently) but none of that# matters to the selfish morons today who will happily attack their elders over things they clearly know Sweet FA about!
Your reasoning assumes that raising prices will make people use less electricity. This in turn is based on the idea that a significant portion of electricity use is discretionary. I simply don't believe that to be the case. If we do not have the capacity to supply everyone's needs (as opposed to their wants)...
After 3/11 we reduced domestic electricity use, both domestic and commercial, by 15%. At the domestic end that's basically voluntary energy-saving, much of it before the prices to consumers even went up.
3/11 ? After the 3rd November electric and gas usage decreases. Are you sure, thats the start of winter - precisely when I'd have thought leccy usage would increase.
Sorry, I should have been clearer. I'm talking about Japan, and 3/11 is the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami of March, 2011.
Can see that being the case with the number of homes and so forth being destroyed.
LOL, it wasn't that bad...
The issue was simply that all the nuclear power stations shut down in a matter of seconds and a chunk of power generation had suddenly disappeared, probably for good. Unlike the UK Japan isn't connected to an overseas grid, so there wasn't enough electrity to carry on using it like we had been before the earthquake. So the government asked people to save energy, and they did, to the tune of about 15%. There's a lot you can do if you try, without even seriously affecting quality of life.
Your reasoning assumes that raising prices will make people use less electricity. This in turn is based on the idea that a significant portion of electricity use is discretionary. I simply don't believe that to be the case. If we do not have the capacity to supply everyone's needs (as opposed to their wants)...
After 3/11 we reduced domestic electricity use, both domestic and commercial, by 15%. At the domestic end that's basically voluntary energy-saving, much of it before the prices to consumers even went up.
3/11 ? After the 3rd November electric and gas usage decreases. Are you sure, thats the start of winter - precisely when I'd have thought leccy usage would increase.
Sorry, I should have been clearer. I'm talking about Japan, and 3/11 is the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami of March, 2011.
Can see that being the case with the number of homes and so forth being destroyed.
LOL, it wasn't that bad...
The issue was simply that all the nuclear power stations shut down in a matter of seconds and a chunk of power generation had suddenly disappeared, probably for good. Unlike the UK Japan isn't connected to an overseas grid, so there wasn't enough electrity to carry on using it like we had been before the earthquake. So the government asked people to save energy, and they did, to the tune of about 15%. There's a lot you can do if you try, without even seriously affecting quality of life.
Leaving the morals out of it for a moment, and assuming that most graduates actually did pony up - isn't there a major snag with this really cunning plan?
This £90bn that you've just used to pay off the national debt - where do you think it will have come from? Emptying peoples wallets of that much money is bound to cause a huge recession as private sector demand dries up.
The 1881, 1891 and 1901 data looks a bit dodgy - or the years between them do. One of the two.
Indeed they do but in this day and age you'd expect there to be some sort of administrative problem with the data. Still I don't think those born during that period will worry about whether they lose their winter fuel allowance and such like so for the purpose of my argument it doesn't really matter!
Apologies for the crap formatting/spelling/etc. I'm trying to tap this out on a not very good nokia phone (don't buy one, they're awful)
Anyway, on topic
it's about time the boomers started contributing, but it needs to go much further than just axing the free bus passes. I don't doubt that it will seem unfair to the pensioners that they were promised all this stuff and now it's being taken away, but they need to understand they were sold a lie. The boomers had too few children and are living far too long for their children (and grandchildren) to pay the bill. The generational settlement is null and void & needs renegotiating.
We should do these things immediately;
1. Make retirement much more flexible - the general retirement age needs to rise to the mid-70's. that's what todays young people can expect 2.pop the btl/house price asset bubble With german-style renting rights. Your grandchildrens right to rent/buy an affordable house to live & raise a family in trumps your right to a btl property portfolio. 3. backdate £9k tuition fees to all graduates. Charge interest at commercial rates, but allow penalty-free immediate repayment. That would make a decent dent in the national debt 4. Expand the scale of the QE programme to cover much more of the total debt, then go for a bout of hyperinflation. I'm convinced this is the plan anyway, but we can be more aggressive about it. It's the most painless way to default on the unaffordable obligations to the oldies.
94. Remove free bus passes
Well I'm not even going to comment on the solutions given the initial diagnosis of this issue is ignorant of the reality.
1. Baby Boomer's were born between 1945 and 1964. Therefore the vast majority have yet to retire with only those women born between 1945 and 1953 and those men born between 1945 and 1948 are currently receiving pension benefits. The vast majority of Boomers are still of working age and presumably are still contiributing (and likely have contributed a damn sight longer than the majority of their critics)
The vast majority of current pensioners receiving benefits were born either during or before World War II. Good luck criticising them given the hardships they had to live through.
2. The Baby Boomer's so called 'Baby Boom' was extremely short only lasting only through 1946 and 1947 before going into rapid decline (dropping 25% in just 5 years) in the UK as austerity and rationing took hold of the population's behaviour. That it is highlighted so often is cheap propaganda for those too naive and too idle to check the facts and was only an equalising reaction to the fall off in birth rate caused first by the depression and then by the Second World War. Birth rates on;ly began rising again as austerity was relaxed in the late 1950's .as the Boomer's era was coming to an end.
3. The real problems with longevity will occur when the mid sixties Generation X group (Cameron's lot) join the Baby Boomers in retirement. Its was the Swinging Sixties baby boom that was the biggest baby boom of them all.
4. Now it would have been those born during the war years and the early baby boomer years who were responsible for the mid sixties Baby Boom so to suggest they did not sprog enough children is equally nonsense. The real problem comes from around 1980 onwards when those born after 1960 onwards (so mainly Generation X) whilst being part of the main boom failed to produce enough children themselves.
Of course the reasons for the changes in birth rate are quite obvious and reflect the economic and social state of the nation over the period (as it continues to do up until recently) but none of that# matters to the selfish morons today who will happily attack their elders over things they clearly know Sweet FA about!
Right now that self-serving stuff is out of the way can I say as a relatively young person politically (31, born in the 80s) that it makes little difference whether it was the 40s, 50s or 60s babies which have messed us around. Its like seeing two vultures squabble over which is the bigger carrion.
I've had to pay tuition fees unlike younger generations, pay an absolute small fortune that 2 incomes struggle to meet just to get onto the property ladder at all, will likely have to work into the mid-70s, and will be paying interest on the debts of previous generations for life and get very few perks that others have taken without bothering to fund, My generation doesn't carry much voting influence yet so get screwed over currently left, right and center.
Pot calling the kettle black about knowing Sweet FA.
Apologies for the crap formatting/spelling/etc. I'm trying to tap this out on a not very good nokia phone (don't buy one, they're awful)
Anyway, on topic
it's about time the boomers started contributing, but it needs to go much further than just axing the free bus passes. I don't doubt that it will seem unfair to the pensioners that they were promised all this stuff and now it's being taken away, but they need to understand they were sold a lie. The boomers had too few children and are living far too long for their children (and grandchildren) to pay the bill. The generational settlement is null and void & needs renegotiating.
We should do these things immediately;
1. Make retirement much more flexible - the general retirement age needs to rise to the mid-70's. that's what todays young people can expect 2.pop the btl/house price asset bubble With german-style renting rights. Your grandchildrens right to rent/buy an affordable house to live & raise a family in trumps your right to a btl property portfolio. 3. backdate £9k tuition fees to all graduates. Charge interest at commercial rates, but allow penalty-free immediate repayment. That would make a decent dent in the national debt 4. Expand the scale of the QE programme to cover much more of the total debt, then go for a bout of hyperinflation. I'm convinced this is the plan anyway, but we can be more aggressive about it. It's the most painless way to default on the unaffordable obligations to the oldies.
94. Remove free bus passes
Well I'm not even going to comment on the solutions given the initial diagnosis of this issue is ignorant of the reality.
1. Baby Boomer's were born between 1945 and 1964. Therefore the vast majority have yet to retire with only those women born between 1945 and 1953 and those men born between 1945 and 1948 are currently receiving pension benefits. The vast majority of Boomers are still of working age and presumably are still contiributing (and likely have contributed a damn sight longer than the majority of their critics)
The vast majority of current pensioners receiving benefits were born either during or before World War II. Good luck criticising them given the hardships they had to live through.
2. The Baby Boomer's so called 'Baby Boom' was extremely short only lasting only through 1946 and 1947 before going into rapid decline (dropping 25% in just 5 years) in the UK as austerity and rationing took hold of the population's behaviour. That it is highlighted so often is cheap propaganda for those too naive and too idle to check the facts and was only an equalising reaction to the fall off in birth rate caused first by the depression and then by the Second World War. Birth rates on;ly began rising again as austerity was relaxed in the late 1950's .as the Boomer's era was coming to an end.
3. The real problems with longevity will occur when the mid sixties Generation X group (Cameron's lot) join the Baby Boomers in retirement. Its was the Swinging Sixties baby boom that was the biggest baby boom of them all.
4. Now it would have been those born during the war years and the early baby boomer years who were responsible for the mid sixties Baby Boom so to suggest they did not sprog enough children is equally nonsense. The real problem comes from around 1980 onwards when those born after 1960 onwards (so mainly Generation X) whilst being part of the main boom failed to produce enough children themselves.
Of course the reasons for the changes in birth rate are quite obvious and reflect the economic and social state of the nation over the period (as it continues to do up until recently) but none of that# matters to the selfish morons today who will happily attack their elders over things they clearly know Sweet FA about!
Right now that self-serving stuff is out of the way can I say as a relatively young person politically (31, born in the 80s) that it makes little difference whether it was the 40s, 50s or 60s babies which have messed us around. Its like seeing two vultures squabble over which is the bigger carrion.
I've had to pay tuition fees unlike younger generations,
One of the main reasons why tuition fees were introduced was to make affordable the expansion of Universities (when Polytechnics were converted). Before that far fewer people were going to university. Your tuition fees is paying for yours and subsequent generations to have access to university places that prior generations didn't have. Of course I'm sure we could revert to far fewer people going to University. That would sort it and perhaps your kids might get the opportunity perhaps they might not.
pay an absolute small fortune that 2 incomes struggle to meet just to get onto the property ladder at all
And you think it was ever different? Be thankful you are'nt (yet) crippled with insane interest rates as previous generations were!
and will be paying interest on the debts of previous generations for life
And who do you think paid for the Second World War. Churchill and Atlee? We were still paying it off when you were born.
and get very few perks that others have taken without bothering to fund,
And exactly who gets these 'perks'?
My generation doesn't carry much voting influence yet so get screwed over currently left, right and center.
And you think previous generations had much influence when they were young? The only difference was we didn't begrudge our elders what they worked all their lives for!
Isn't this a very risky re-branding of the last Labour Governments attempt to define their borrowing as Investments vs Tory Cuts? It would seem that the Labour party still hasn't accepted or learnt the lessons of their economic and political mistakes last time they were in Government. And this kind of political strategy seems to indicate that they are still banking on the UK not returning to any kind of sustainable growth in the next two years, or that they intend to face economic realities of their legacy any time soon. Those posters saying don't let Labour ruin our recovery by turning on the spending taps again will write themselves.
Labour spent the last three years really over egging Ed Balls not so clever 'too far too fast' cuts meme. And to the point that it will make his own strategy of borrowing more to fund investment look totally redundant by 2015, especially if the economy is already growing and the deficit is reducing at a steady trajectory. The electorates memories are still far too fresh on Labour's economic legacy, and their culpability for it
On interest rates here a piece of trivia. Between 1964 and 2001 Interest rates never fell below 5%. Since then interest rates have never only exceeded 5% between Jan 2007 and March 2008 and of course since Mar 2009 its been 0.5%.
Average Base Interest Rates Per Decade
1950's c.4% 1960's c 6% 1970's c 9.5% 1980's c 11.7% 1990's c 7.8% 2000's c 4.4% 2010's c 0.5% (so far)
Short simple post. Why we will not have blackouts:
The political class' energy policy is to make energy so expensive people will use less of it. The economic suicide that will result from this energy policy means there's no need to build the adequate, secure capacity that would be needed by a sane country.
Comments
Realistic but really poor politics.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR_hfQU-4r0
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/23/uk-young-princes-gift-republicans-queen
Princes Charles and William both score very highly in polling (far ahead of any politician and William has polled ahead of the Queen herself), while Prince Harry is adored by many.
And though they might have 'monosyllabic working class names' I think they all went to private schools.
But if you want the names of some cricketers, here's a team of what you presumably regard as polysyllabic posh names:
Boycott
Hutton
Athey
Hampshire
Watson
Illingworth
Blakey
Silverwood
Sidebottom
Trueman
Hoggard
All good Yorkshire proles.
I hope Hogan-Howe can swim otherwise he's going to be drowning under a tidal wave of stories like this from the Met soon enough.
They have benefited hugely from the education the country has provided for them. Now the country needs their help.
They need lessons from me. Why, only on this thread, I've managed to persuade another_richard to research the schooling of four cricketers and compile a list of working class Yorkshiremen with multisyllabic names.
A tax on pensioners' housing wealth because they are no longer working.
A tax on all graduates from whenever.
A removal of a tax incentive to save for old age.
Now this thread is about the possibility of reforming pensioner benefits by reducing them somewhat (I agree) but the others make me scan the exits from the country. Basically, work, save, get something behind you for your benefit ( and also for society as you won't be a burden on the state) and we'll find a way to get you, tax you in to oblivion ( so I fear )Why bother then I ask myself?????? God help us.
Osborne is borrowing too much, I will borrow more.
It's got WIN written all over it.
The Monarchy is going nowhere in Britain. But it is going to leave Australia very soon after Elizabeth dies and the probably New Zealand and Canada within 15 years after that.
I think once the Queen dies we will re a resettlement of the monarchy anyway. A slim downed official family and a redefined role.
It is back of a fag packet calculations like this which make you realise we are in a very deep and dark hole.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2346853/Mother-Marie-Goldies-horrendous-allergic-reaction-Piz-Buin-sun-cream.html#ixzz2X4foR5P9
http://news.sky.com/story/1107276/boat-race-protester-faces-deportation-from-uk
Why we will not have blackouts:
Countries will modern electrical grids simply do not have blackouts, or at least not due to demand for electricity exceeding supply. Why? Because there are quite sophisticated demand management systems in place. In particular, there are a lot of users of power who act as 'backup generators'. That is, they are industrial users who buy electricity at - say - 12p per kilowatt hour; should the price of wholesale electricity rise to - say - 20p an hour, then said user will choose to be paid at 20p/kwh not to take electricity. This is known as peak shaving or load shedding.
It's worth noting that Japan went into the Fukashima disaster with (a) lower reserve margins than we currently have (exacerbated by the fact there are two, incompatible, electrical grids in Japan), and (b) 28% of electrical production coming from nuclear. Post Fukashima, and despite losing 28% of electrical production essentially overnight, Japan was able (through efficient demand management) to 'keep the lights on'. Likewise, in Germany eight nuclear powerplants were turned off following Fukashima: and yet German reserve margins have turned out to be just fine (and, indeed, the price of wholesale electricity keeps falling).
Why does the market disbelieve OfGem?
I am not at my Bloomberg, but last time I checked, the 2015 baseload electricity price was essentially unchanged from the current price. (Or, to put it another way, are below current levels including inflation.) Now, markets are not perfect. However, all market participants know the details in OfGem's report, so one would expect there to be a reason for the market to be sceptical.
And there are, indeed, several good reasons:
1. While renewables are inherently intermittent, it is quite unlikely that *all* the turbines in the UK would be idle at the same time. This is especially true of off-shore wind. It is also worth noting that the time of year in the UK when electricity demand is highest (the winter) is also the time when the wind is most reliable. This does not mean it is not possible for us to record very, very low wind farm utilisation in the UK, but it does make 'blackouts' much less likely than the headline numbers suggest.
2. UK gas plant is idle because coal is cheap relative to gas right now. This is a consequence of the US shale gas boom, which meant that gas fired power generation was used rather than coal on the Eastern seaboard. This Appalachian coal therefore sought out new markets, and a lot of it was shipped to Europe where it depressed the price of coal relative to natural gas (which is usually priced on an oil linked basis). Over the next five years we are going to see quite substantial new LNG export capacity come on stream in the US, specifically Sabine Pass and Freeport on the Gulf Coast, and quite possibly Cove Point and others. This will have the effect of lowering the international LNG price, and raising the coal price. (Henry Hub gas will become more expensive, and therefore Appalachian coal will stay home.) In other words, cheaper LNG should mean that fears of gas plant shutdowns are excessively pessimistic.
3. DECC's forecast for UK capacity comes down far less than people think. The headline of 'one fifth of UK generating capacity is to close' is a gross number, and ignores the following new CCGT that have been constructed and commissioned: Grain "B", Pembroke, Staythorpe and West Burton. Together, these add almost 7GW of power to the grid, and mean that between 2010 and 2014 UK capacity dips from 78GW to 74GW - not the scary fall off that people who read headlines think.
4. It's OfGem's job to try and persuade people to spend money on new power plants. OfGem will never produce a report saying 'All well in UK generation'.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-22268809
in the 1980s, about one in ten jobs were for graduates. Taking that as a ballpark, it means that in the 1980s, 10% of the workforce were graduates, so about 2.5 million. Forgetting the retired, and assuming no long term growth before then (i.e. steady numbers of graduates over the preceding thirty years or so), we're left with about 3 million.
Of course, this is likely to be an over estimate, as the number of graduates had been increasing (due to the university expansion in the 1960s.
I am assuming here that all graduates got graduate level jobs, i.e. they weren't working at Costa (or whatever we did in the 1980s).
Those of us still in work certainly got a leg up that our children are not getting but we are paying a lot of tax to fund these golden agers. Asking us to pay even more to make up for the generation that thought voting for Gordon Brown was a good idea seems a little harsh.
But it is the next generation, who in fairness did not vote for Brown who I feel sorry for. They face a life of high taxes and poorly funded services with very little by way of pension at the end of it.
This is not the case: actually, household electricity bills in California are only just above average for the US. The structure, with marginal kilowatts hours becoming more expensive, encourages people to be energy efficient.
I suspect that if you did a chart across countries with similar income (and climate) characteristics, you would discover an almost perfect correlation between the price of electricity and how much people use.
That is not to say that electricity usage could drop by 20% without us noticing it (that would be ridiculous), but businesses and homes would be take substantial steps to mitagate price rises.
(In parts of Switzerland, they actually have two separate electricity circuits in peoples' homes. On one circuit is the stuff you *need* to have working all the time, such as lighting. On the other, you have *nice to have* stuff, like your tumble dryer or air-conditioning. The off peak circuit has a very different price of electricity, but is only available at certain times.)
Been browsing for a new TV and some of them don't seem to have SCART sockets, so I wouldn't be able to hook up my PS2. It's a special sort of progress that would make a new TV less useful than my old one.
"Mother, 37, 'suffered allergic reaction to Piz Buin sun cream' as TV show Watchdog is inundated with complaints about the product"
Oh dear. I did a recent ad for them. I better hide
@MrHarryCole
Spot on from Sunday Telegraph leader pointing out how stupid the Olympic opening ceremony looks now: http://pic.twitter.com/Crempd4Zky
On the Epping Ongar Railway today we had Metropolitan No. 1 (4-4-0T), the tank engine L150 (2-6-2T) and the N2 loco 1744 (0-6-2T) as part of the ongoing London Underground 150 anniversary celebrations. They will all be around next weekend too.
That's a pretty healthy one time contribution.
Not a fix, but certainly helpful
There is pretty clear academic analysis showing that people who have graduate education earn significantly more than non-graduates.
Yes they have paid more tax on this, but for 25 years (i.e. anyone under about 45) they would have kept 60% of it themselves.
This personal enrichment has come off the basis of the state's investment in their education. It's not unreasonable in moral terms to ask for some of it back.
George Osborne @George_Osborne 7m
With thanks to all my cabinet colleagues and hard work of Treasury team, today we've settled all departments ahead of the spending round
Will be interesting to review the general election results with that sort of attitude.
There's a reason why the Tories can't win a majority in this country.
Oh yes. Boris says it's time to sue the BBC and the meteorologists who preached global warming.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/10138096/The-weather-prophets-should-be-chucked-in-the-deep-end.html
Fortunately none of the insanities on here tonight will come to pass. If they do - to link to another discussion on here - last one out, turn out the lights.
Something drastic is needed, I will accept that. We are still kidding ourselves about somehow getting out of this.
Graduates got significant more public expenditure on them which has directly allowed them to capture a personal return. This is recognised in that current students are asked to contribute.
What we are talking about are odds: even OFGEM do not say blackouts will occur, and give a probability of it occurring. In my opinion their stated odds are worryingly low; you, with good reason, believe the odds are too pessimistic. All I can say is I hope you are right.
As a matter of interest, do you factor load balancing into your reasoning on this? It is fairly easy for electrical networks to get knocked out in a cascading failure which are more likely at times of high network loads and stress, even when the stress is confined to a small part of the network. It's an area I wished I knew more about, and I'm not sure I've explained this paragraph well enough ...
(BTW, thanks for the email; it was very interesting and has caused me to do a little more research. I like research. ;-) ).
What about the 10% of my medical school year now living and working abroad?
What about my medical colleagues who qualified abroad? should they pay also?
What about my colleagues who no longer work because of mental or physical disease, should their benefits be docked accordingly?
What about graduates working in low pay jobs? Why should they pay, when the youngsters of today do not pay unless they earn £26, 000?
Why not just do the much simpler thing and put up the higher rate of tax for everyone, and abolish current university fees?
How about 25% basic rate, 45% top rate, 25% VAT, and 50% inheritance tax on all inheritances over £250 000?
Or is it just that people want "fair taxes"; which simply means taxes on other people?
Surely the only realistic way to pay off the debt is for us to have higher taxes, lower benefits and extended working lives. In other words to be in it together?
By the way I emphatically did not have private education - local comp for me - and I personally feel queasy about money buying that education ( though it clashes with my belief in spending it on what you reasonably want but that's my moral dilemma).
Right I'm off now. Work tomorrow. Got a billion Chinese and a billion Indians and 320 million Americans and loads of others too to compete against in international manufacturing markets. Someone has to.
2. No
3. Minimum income criteria for the payment
4. See 3
5. Why should low-earning non-university graduates pay more to avoid those who benefited most from the state's largesse paying something back
6. Taxes should be low, simple and hard to avoid.
7. No - this would be tax on me to.
8. Yes, but this is only a partial solution.
The fundamental point is that previous generations got a massively positive net gain from the state, with my generation and those of my children and grandchildren paying.
The ask is that some of those people who benefited the most make a contribution to close part of that gap. (subject to minimum income criteria, etc)
We are all in this together - and those who benefit the most should pay the most.
The state failed, that's true. But the state needs to get the debt under control - this is about the debt, not the deficit.
The fundamental point is as Kennedy put it: to those whom much is given, much is expected.
People who got a free university education got a massive benefit from the taxes. To ask them to make a small contribution (which would only be a percentage of the value taht has accrued to them throughout their life) is not unreasonable.
At the moment, what we have is a secret robbing of the prudent to pay for the profligate. How is that fairer?
Should only those with degrees pay? What about those with HND or nursing qualifications? What about those who did not finish their qualifications?
It seems as if we would need an army of tax inspectors to disentangle all the above.
Surely it is simpler and fairer to raise the rate of income tax than all the above contortions?
Fair taxes= those paid by others.
Why not add retrospective taxes on windfall inheritances? After all if one retrospective tax is OK then why not others?
http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/adams-appeals-for-help-in-finding-ira-disappeared-29363999.html
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2013/03/11/editorials/two-years-after-the-311-disasters/#.UceCfpy2-Qk
1. Baby Boomer's were born between 1945 and 1964. Therefore the vast majority have yet to retire with only those women born between 1945 and 1953 and those men born between 1945 and 1948 are currently receiving pension benefits. The vast majority of Boomers are still of working age and presumably are still contiributing (and likely have contributed a damn sight longer than the majority of their critics)
The vast majority of current pensioners receiving benefits were born either during or before World War II. Good luck criticising them given the hardships they had to live through.
2. The Baby Boomer's so called 'Baby Boom' was extremely short only lasting only through 1946 and 1947 before going into rapid decline (dropping 25% in just 5 years) in the UK as austerity and rationing took hold of the population's behaviour. That it is highlighted so often is cheap propaganda for those too naive and too idle to check the facts and was only an equalising reaction to the fall off in birth rate caused first by the depression and then by the Second World War. Birth rates on;ly began rising again as austerity was relaxed in the late 1950's .as the Boomer's era was coming to an end.
3. The real problems with longevity will occur when the mid sixties Generation X group (Cameron's lot) join the Baby Boomers in retirement. Its was the Swinging Sixties baby boom that was the biggest baby boom of them all.
4. Now it would have been those born during the war years and the early baby boomer years who were responsible for the mid sixties Baby Boom so to suggest they did not sprog enough children is equally nonsense. The real problem comes from around 1980 onwards when those born after 1960 onwards (so mainly Generation X) whilst being part of the main boom failed to produce enough children themselves.
Of course the reasons for the changes in birth rate are quite obvious and reflect the economic and social state of the nation over the period (as it continues to do up until recently) but none of that# matters to the selfish morons today who will happily attack their elders over things they clearly know Sweet FA about!
http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/unit/10001043/cube/BIRTH_TOT
The issue was simply that all the nuclear power stations shut down in a matter of seconds and a chunk of power generation had suddenly disappeared, probably for good. Unlike the UK Japan isn't connected to an overseas grid, so there wasn't enough electrity to carry on using it like we had been before the earthquake. So the government asked people to save energy, and they did, to the tune of about 15%. There's a lot you can do if you try, without even seriously affecting quality of life.
The issue was simply that all the nuclear power stations shut down in a matter of seconds and a chunk of power generation had suddenly disappeared, probably for good. Unlike the UK Japan isn't connected to an overseas grid, so there wasn't enough electrity to carry on using it like we had been before the earthquake. So the government asked people to save energy, and they did, to the tune of about 15%. There's a lot you can do if you try, without even seriously affecting quality of life.
This £90bn that you've just used to pay off the national debt - where do you think it will have come from? Emptying peoples wallets of that much money is bound to cause a huge recession as private sector demand dries up.
I've had to pay tuition fees unlike younger generations, pay an absolute small fortune that 2 incomes struggle to meet just to get onto the property ladder at all, will likely have to work into the mid-70s, and will be paying interest on the debts of previous generations for life and get very few perks that others have taken without bothering to fund, My generation doesn't carry much voting influence yet so get screwed over currently left, right and center.
Pot calling the kettle black about knowing Sweet FA.
Isn't this a very risky re-branding of the last Labour Governments attempt to define their borrowing as Investments vs Tory Cuts? It would seem that the Labour party still hasn't accepted or learnt the lessons of their economic and political mistakes last time they were in Government. And this kind of political strategy seems to indicate that they are still banking on the UK not returning to any kind of sustainable growth in the next two years, or that they intend to face economic realities of their legacy any time soon. Those posters saying don't let Labour ruin our recovery by turning on the spending taps again will write themselves.
Labour spent the last three years really over egging Ed Balls not so clever 'too far too fast' cuts meme. And to the point that it will make his own strategy of borrowing more to fund investment look totally redundant by 2015, especially if the economy is already growing and the deficit is reducing at a steady trajectory. The electorates memories are still far too fresh on Labour's economic legacy, and their culpability for it
Average Base Interest Rates Per Decade
1950's c.4%
1960's c 6%
1970's c 9.5%
1980's c 11.7%
1990's c 7.8%
2000's c 4.4%
2010's c 0.5% (so far)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/jan/13/interest-rates-uk-since-1694
1950's 4.30%
1960's 3.50%
1970's 12.65%
1980's 7.45%
1990's 3.70%
2000's 3.06%
2010's 4.05%
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2009/mar/09/inflation-economics
The political class' energy policy is to make energy so expensive people will use less of it. The economic suicide that will result from this energy policy means there's no need to build the adequate, secure capacity that would be needed by a sane country.