"The number of people leaving London has jumped more than 80 per cent in the past five years, with more than 93,000 people departing the capital last year, figures have suggested. Research by Savills shows the exodus is being led by those in their 30s, with the number of those between the ages of 30 and 39 leaving the capital rising 68 per cent between 2012 and 2016, to 34,540."
Have you explained to them that their debt is tax and that you paid more tax at their age than they do?
Are you sure this is the case ?
Employer NI (13.8%) + Employee NI (12%) + PAYE (20%) + Student Loan (9%) on everything over 21,000 is a "decent" marginal tax rate.
What was the tax on 20k 30 years back and 45k for a plan II graduate now - those are reasonably comparable figures with inflation and so forth (And in terms of purchasing property the 20k went ALOT further than 45k today...) ?
My tables show the 'true tax' burden on a salary of 40k for a plan II graduate is 39% right now.
Britain's participation in World War One was all the fault of the self serving Liberal Government - who declared war on Germany.
From Wikipedia ...................
Domestically, the Liberal Cabinet was split and in the event that war was not declared the Government would fall as Prime Minister Asquith, Edward Grey and Winston Churchill made it clear they would resign. In that event, the existing Liberal Cabinet would lose their jobs. Since it was likely the pro-war Conservatives would be elected to power this would lead to a slightly belated British entry into the war in any event, so wavering Cabinet ministers were also likely motivated by the desire to avoid senselessly splitting their party and sacrificing their jobs
British Foreign office mandarin Eyre Crowe stated:
"Should the war come, and England stand aside, one of two things must happen. (a) Either Germany and Austria win, crush France and humiliate Russia. What will be the position of a friendless England? (b) Or France and Russia win. What would be their attitude towards England? What about India and the Mediterranean?"
So the Liberals and Foreign Office mandarins jointly responsible for a million UK deaths and 1.6 million UK wounded - all for the sake of less bad relations with some countries after the War.
That's rather unfair. Britain would almost certainly have been pulled in anyway as the German army occupied Belgium and made for the Channel ports, all the more so because as the article says, had the Liberals opted not to join then the government would have fallen and a new one with a pro-war bent would have taken its place.
In theory, yes, Britain could have stood aside and watched Germany fail in 1914 but probably win in 1916/17, gaining huge advantages from loans and arms production to both sides and consolidating a global leadership role. Overall, never mind for the UK, that would probably have been a better outcome but I don't think it was ever realistically an option. There might be a good alternative history thread in it though.
Had the German Army gone for France directly, and not involved Belguim things might well have been different. In spite of the Entente Cordiale.
In terms of British involvement, that's certainly possible. There were good reasons why the German armies were directed through Belgium (and Luxembourg) rather than further south but then there were good reasons to go through the south of the Netherlands too and not create a bottleneck but the Germans decided to amend their plans so as not to bring the Dutch in.
I just did a Google search, and all the top results were stories from the last couple of weeks about him "going back" on the supposed promise, rather than stories from the time itself.t case my seat must have been very atypical because people weren't mentioning it here.
Of course, that's how Google orders its search results.
Keep scrolling, you'll find plenty of reports from the time.
I'm not very surprised that it didn't show up much in canvassing. How many students were in and awake when you called?
Any stories on the BBC from the time? (Genuine question)
We actually did canvass quite a lot of people in their mid-to-late-20s (who are presumably the people who would've benefitted from the supposed "promise" on writing off student debt), but they rarely mentioned tuition fees at all, they were mainly concerned with the NHS, cuts generally, lack of good employment prospects, Corbyn's personality as compared to May's, and very occasionally, Brexit. The people who talked about tuition fees were usually parents, but this would usually be by reference to kids who were going to university in future, and how they didn't think it was fair for them to be saddled with debt - no-one ever mentioned that they had kids who'd already gone through Uni, and that they'd heard Labour were going to write off their already-accumulated debts.
My eldest two are out of university now and up tot he eyes in student debt. Both are firm Corbynistsas. However, neither was that fussed on the specifics of the loan policy. What they like about Corbyn is that he speaks about issues that affect the young and seems to understand they have it very tough. I doubt this loans thing will have much of an impact.
Have you explained to them that their debt is tax and that you paid more tax at their age than they do?
I tend to take a better view of French, Haig and the other leaders of the day than some. What were they supposed to do? They couldn't sit on the defensive for three years and wait for tanks to be developed and ultimately, the staffs did develop tactics which won the war (it's not as if the French, German, Austrian, American or Russian generals had any greater success).
The casualties at Waterloo or Borodino 100 years earlier were proportionately comparable to those at the Somme (about 20% of the forces engaged). Likewise those in Normandy in WW2 were similar to those in WW1.
Britain has generally sought to use proxies to do the land fighting because the cost and manpower in policing the sea required it. But the casualties in sea battles have always been lower. I think Trafalgar was about 7,000 killed and wounded among both sides.
The EU will take an uncompromising line with us. It's not entirely good from their point of view to be so inflexible, but to a large extent their hands are tied. They are a legal construct governed by a very intricate set of treaties. Given that, we will either have to accommodate their demands (little say in the rules and regulations we follow; being bound by their jurisdiction) or reject it all, when there isn't an alternative that doesn't damage our prospects. The heart says reject; the head says accommodate. I am fairly sure the head will win and the heart will be mightily pissed off. Our relationship will be very frustrating.
The problem is that the UK wants the product of the multilateral approach while having no understanding of the necessary structures that make that product possible. The EU on the other hand hasn't addressed the membership issue. They can say take it or leave it, but when people say, actually we will leave it, they might do better to be a bit more flexible within the constraints they do have.
There won't be a war, even metaphorically. We wouldn't win it (metaphorically) either.
I recommend this article for anyone interested in the EU position:
Yes, I know. I'm not saying they are necessarily bad things. I can see they have their place, and in some countries they might work particularly well.
All I'm saying is that referendums are not synonymous with democracy. They might be features of a healthy functioning democracy, but they are not the same thing, and the tendency to elevate them to some sort of apotheosis of democratic virtue is bewildering and misleading.
Government by referendum generates obvious problems, as Brexit amply illustrated. Calling it 'democratic' is a deception. I'm amazed how many people here fall for it.
I see that you think that, but needless to say, I don't agree that the Brexit referendum has caused problems. I think that it is a triumph for the wisdom of crowds. It's not seen that way by many, but it was never going to be.
The wisdom of crowds, eh? You must know some different crowds to me. In my experience, most crowds couldn't tell shit from clay.
But maybe the Brexit crowd is different.
The point isn't whether they can tell shit from clay, it's that collectively they have a sort of instinct. They got it right on Iraq for instance. Right to reject Scottish independence but vote in the SNP as a strong voice. And then punish the SNP for continuing to threaten independence.
And I believe right to take us out of the EU, a system deliberately (and probably rightly, if you look at the EU as a whole) designed to transfer resources away from this country.
Have you explained to them that their debt is tax and that you paid more tax at their age than they do?
Are you sure this is the case ?
Employer NI (13.8%) + Employee NI (12%) + PAYE (20%) + Student Loan (9%) on everything over 21,000 is a "decent" marginal tax rate.
What was the tax on 20k 30 years back and 45k for a plan II graduate now - those are reasonably comparable figures with inflation and so forth (And in terms of purchasing property the 20k went ALOT further than 45k today...) ?
My tables show the 'true tax' burden on a salary of 40k for a plan II graduate is 39% right now.
I worked it out for my own case a month or so back.
Roughly, in 1985 on my graduate starting salary of £8,500 a year, I lost 27% in tax and NI. That salary was 120% of the then average wage, so it's equivalent today would be £31k. On such a salary, a graduate today would pay 23% in tax and NI, a non-graduate 20%. They pay less, and when I was a graduate, non-graduates paid the same as graduates.
What they perceive as debt is just a tax that takes their tax up to less than their parents paid.
There is a good case for rebadging it as a graduate tax, however. What is stupid about it now is that the repayments are fixed at 9% of earnings above ~21k at the same time as the principal amount owed goes up because the interest rate on it is not fixed - it is some rate like 6%, which is a farcically high rate for long term borrowing stopped out of earnings. It should be something like BOE rate plus 0.25%, so that they can see it depleting.
If we oldies really want to make the youngsters jealous, tell 'em about MIRAS...
Lol tell them you could get double miras as a couple before 1988.Lawson ended it giving a future date , so a rush boom ensued then a collapse in the early nineties in house prices .Then to even it up tell them about the 15% interest rate and re possessions.Great times.
which is £1,800 in today's money. Today TV recording is basically free off the likes of iPlayer.
In 1996 I bought my first laptop. It had Windows 95, a 13" screen and an 800mb hard drive; it cost £2,500 then, which is about £5,000 today. For £150 you can buy a better machine than that in Currys.
I struggle to understand why anyone, whether Kipper or Corbynista, would want to live in the past. Having done so I am glad I no longer do.
If we oldies really want to make the youngsters jealous, tell 'em about MIRAS...
Lol tell them you could get double miras as a couple before 1988.Lawson ended it giving a future date , so a rush boom ensued then a collapse in the early nineties in house prices .Then to even it up tell them about the 15% interest rate and re possessions.Great times.
For consistency, any move to apply CGT to houses should be accompanied by the return of MIRAS, as in the USA.
If we oldies really want to make the youngsters jealous, tell 'em about MIRAS...
Lol tell them you could get double miras as a couple before 1988.Lawson ended it giving a future date , so a rush boom ensued then a collapse in the early nineties in house prices .Then to even it up tell them about the 15% interest rate and re possessions.Great times.
For consistency, any move to apply CGT to houses should be accompanied by the return of MIRAS, as in the USA.
Alice I did not know that .How does the CGT work ? Do they take the price of the house when you bought it to when you sell it.
which is £1,800 in today's money. Today TV recording is basically free off the likes of iPlayer.
In 1996 I bought my first laptop. It had Windows 95, a 13" screen and an 800mb hard drive; it cost £2,500 then, which is about £5,000 today. For £150 you can buy a better machine than that in Currys.
I struggle to understand why anyone, whether Kipper or Corbynista, would want to live in the past. Having done so I am glad I no longer do.
Let's be honest, people liked owning laptops and video players when most people couldn't afford them.
If we oldies really want to make the youngsters jealous, tell 'em about MIRAS...
Lol tell them you could get double miras as a couple before 1988.Lawson ended it giving a future date , so a rush boom ensued then a collapse in the early nineties in house prices .Then to even it up tell them about the 15% interest rate and re possessions.Great times.
For consistency, any move to apply CGT to houses should be accompanied by the return of MIRAS, as in the USA.
How about annual property taxes based on a percentage of the sale price, as in the USA?
If we oldies really want to make the youngsters jealous, tell 'em about MIRAS...
Lol tell them you could get double miras as a couple before 1988.Lawson ended it giving a future date , so a rush boom ensued then a collapse in the early nineties in house prices .Then to even it up tell them about the 15% interest rate and re possessions.Great times.
For consistency, any move to apply CGT to houses should be accompanied by the return of MIRAS, as in the USA.
Alice I did not know that .How does the CGT work ? Do they take the price of the house when you bought it to when you sell it.
CGT on a residential home (as opposed to 2nd properties and rentals) is what civil servants call "brave, minister".
If we oldies really want to make the youngsters jealous, tell 'em about MIRAS...
Lol tell them you could get double miras as a couple before 1988.Lawson ended it giving a future date , so a rush boom ensued then a collapse in the early nineties in house prices .Then to even it up tell them about the 15% interest rate and re possessions.Great times.
For consistency, any move to apply CGT to houses should be accompanied by the return of MIRAS, as in the USA.
My father was a jobbing speculative builder . I moved house 12 times as a child .As he bought and sold houses nearly each year.So he never had to pay CGT as it was his only residence.
German hegemony on mainland Europe was never an acceptable option, in theory or practice.
Except now when it's called 'the will of the people'.
Are you saying the EU is simply Germany winning by politics what it failed to win by wars of aggression? If a Brexiteer said that there would be uproar.
You'll be equating the whole thing with the Nazi's next.
If we oldies really want to make the youngsters jealous, tell 'em about MIRAS...
Lol tell them you could get double miras as a couple before 1988.Lawson ended it giving a future date , so a rush boom ensued then a collapse in the early nineties in house prices .Then to even it up tell them about the 15% interest rate and re possessions.Great times.
For consistency, any move to apply CGT to houses should be accompanied by the return of MIRAS, as in the USA.
Alice I did not know that .How does the CGT work ? Do they take the price of the house when you bought it to when you sell it.
CGT on a residential home (as opposed to 2nd properties and rentals) is what civil servants call "brave, minister".
Very in the UK .I hate paying 20% Vat on repairs and improvements to my own house.
It is just amazing to watch the Trump presidency unfolding in the US. It looks like he is now paving the way to fire his attorney general so that he can appoint another one who will bring the Russian investigations to an end. These are extraordinary times to be living through.
Even more amazing is the fact that the Democrats seem to be completely failing to make any headway against him. Evidence is their lack of success in winning any of the fairly close special elections that have taken place over the last 9 months or so.
Democrats seem to be making the mistakes of Miliband and the other Labour "moderates": thinking that they can just sit back and automatically get back into office purely because the incumbents are so obviously flawed, without actually promising anything better or particularly different themselves. I doubt it will work any better for the Democrats than it worked for Labour at the 2015 election.
If we oldies really want to make the youngsters jealous, tell 'em about MIRAS...
Lol tell them you could get double miras as a couple before 1988.Lawson ended it giving a future date , so a rush boom ensued then a collapse in the early nineties in house prices .Then to even it up tell them about the 15% interest rate and re possessions.Great times.
For consistency, any move to apply CGT to houses should be accompanied by the return of MIRAS, as in the USA.
If there were CGT on residential housing ....
Why should you get Mortgage interest rate relief on a capital investment in your residence when you don't get interest rate relief on other investments?
The solution to the profound intergenerational unfairness introduced by £9k tuition fees (+ the repayment structure) is to backdate them to existing graduates - without the 30 year cut off, reclaiming them from peoples estates if still unpaid at death.
Britain's participation in World War One was all the fault of the self serving Liberal Government - who declared war on Germany.
From Wikipedia ...................
Domestically, the Liberal Cabinet was split and in the event that war was not declared the Government would fall as Prime Minister Asquith, Edward Grey and Winston Churchill made it ...... would lead to a slightly belated British entry into the war in any event, so wavering Cabinet ministers were also likely motivated by the desire to avoid senselessly splitting their party and sacrificing their jobs
British Foreign office mandarin Eyre Crowe stated:
" So the Liberals and Foreign Office mandarins jointly responsible for a million UK deaths and 1.6 million UK wounded - all for the sake of less bad relations with some countries after the War.
.
Unfair? It's a travesty, and a bit of an insult not just to the politicians, who may have lacked nous but not good intentions, but also to the troops who fought so courageously and loyally.
Naturally I am hindsighting, but we should be really proud of what our forefathers did on our behalf. German hegemony on mainland Europe was never an acceptable option, in theory or practice.
e.
Noted with interest, Blue, but disputable.
I think the problem would have been that it's almost impossible to go on the offensive purely with a navy. Even air power was quite limited in a strategic (as opposed to battlefield) sense until the advent of nukes.
Yes, I agree and was certainly not suggesting that the Allies could win through naval power alone. It was however our main strength and we could have focused it on blockading Germany until we had the kind of land force that would make a real difference.
Not sure you are right about Paris falling. I don't want to sound insouciant about the fate of Parisians, but strategically would it have mattered anyway? In the end, Germany lost for logistical reasons as much as anything and taking Paris, and other French cities, would have stretched their resources.
Btw, let's not be dogmatic about this. We are by no means the first to differ on the subject!
Have you explained to them that their debt is tax and that you paid more tax at their age than they do?
Are you sure this is the case ?
Employer NI (13.8%) + Employee NI (12%) + PAYE (20%) + Student Loan (9%) on everything over 21,000 is a "decent" marginal tax rate.
What was the tax on 20k 30 years back and 45k for a plan II graduate now - those are reasonably comparable figures with inflation and so forth (And in terms of purchasing property the 20k went ALOT further than 45k today...) ?
My tables show the 'true tax' burden on a salary of 40k for a plan II graduate is 39% right now.
I worked it out for my own case a month or so back.
Roughly, in 1985 on my graduate starting salary of £8,500 a year, I lost 27% in tax and NI. That salary was 120% of the then average wage, so it's equivalent today would be £31k. On such a salary, a graduate today would pay 23% in tax and NI, a non-graduate 20%. They pay less, and when I was a graduate, non-graduates paid the same as graduates.
What they perceive as debt is just a tax that takes their tax up to less than their parents paid.
There is a good case for rebadging it as a graduate tax, however. What is stupid about it now is that the repayments are fixed at 9% of earnings above ~21k at the same time as the principal amount owed goes up because the interest rate on it is not fixed - it is some rate like 6%, which is a farcically high rate for long term borrowing stopped out of earnings. It should be something like BOE rate plus 0.25%, so that they can see it depleting.
Alice_Aforethought should be made Minister of Education.
The basic point is that "better than nothing but less than what we have" is a big negotiating space. I have no doubt we will agree something that is much better than nothing and a lot less than what we already have. The problem is that paying more to get less neither satisfies Leavers who thought nothing would change and there would be no cost, nor Remainers who don't see why we are doing this in the first place.
We will certainly not be paying more and much of the 'less' is stuff we don't want.
We will paying not just in money terms but also in having less input into the stuff we do agree. There will be plenty of things we do want want but won't get. The EU has no interest in replicating its systems just for us because we don't like their membership. I doubt for example that we will retain our place in the medical isotypes clearing system. We will either have to create our production facilities at a significant cost or take a hit on the reliability of supplies. We won't be part of their open skies programme, drugs testing programme, financial services regulation and much more. All of these will have a major hit on investment and jobs.
PS I don't expect net payments to EU countries to be much if any less than now, going forward. In fact we will WANT to pay, as a way of buying back some of the influence we have lost. Hypothesis to be tested, I grant you.
Wild speculation based on no actual evidence at all I would suggest.
Ibe a good alternative history thread in it though.
Unfair? It's a travesty, and a bit of an insult not just to the politicians, who may have lacked nous but not good intentions, but also to the troops who fought so courageously and loyally.
It ave made a real difference. As you, David, are no doubt aware, the Force we did send was small, and ineffective not just because of the ineptitude of French and Haig but because it was singularly ill-equiped fr the task.
Naturally I am hindsighting, but we should be really proud of what our forefathers did on our behalf. German hegemony on mainland Europe was never an acceptable option, in theory or practice.
IIRC, the blockade plan was the original grand strategy (and indeed, was ultimately an extremely important part in the winning of the war) but political pressure from the French, the Russians and the public would not have permitted Britain's troops to sit by while Paris was threatened - and later, as the casualties mounted.
I tend to take a better view of French, Haig and the other leaders of the day than some. What were they supposed to do? They couldn't sit on the defensive for three years and wait for tanks to be developed and ultimately, the staffs did develop tactics which won the war (it's not as if the French, German, Austrian, American or Russian generals had any greater success). The unfortunate fact was that the war broke out at a time when the defender had an unusually strong advantage.
Even so, I do wonder about your final point. Would a German victory have been so disastrous? To answer that does depend on when it happened. A war that ended by Christmas 1914, as it might have done had Joffre not performed miracles to reorganise his defensive line while the Germans bore down on Paris (something that the BEF did play a small but possibly critical role in), would have produced a different peace from one which dragged on to 1917 and saw France collapse after being bled white at Verdun. The simple answer is that I don't know. I do know, however, that by continuing past the summer of 1917 produced such horrific consequences for the rest of the 20th century that almost anything would have been better.
Noted with thanks, David. We're fairly close on this (maybe not on the merits of French and Haig though) and I would love to continue, but they are racing at Chelmsford tonite.
If we oldies really want to make the youngsters jealous, tell 'em about MIRAS...
Lol tell them you could get double miras as a couple before 1988.Lawson ended it giving a future date , so a rush boom ensued then a collapse in the early nineties in house prices .Then to even it up tell them about the 15% interest rate and re possessions.Great times.
For consistency, any move to apply CGT to houses should be accompanied by the return of MIRAS, as in the USA.
Alice I did not know that .How does the CGT work ? Do they take the price of the house when you bought it to when you sell it.
CGT on a residential home (as opposed to 2nd properties and rentals) is what civil servants call "brave, minister".
Very in the UK .I hate paying 20% Vat on repairs and improvements to my own house.
VAT on building extensions must be raking in a fair bit of tax for the government from London home improvements such as basement extensions.
At least you don't have to pay VAT on the land which you already have. Plus the Council tax band is unchanged after the extension.
We'd be better off at the back of the queue no doubt.
The Americans have a reputation of being tough negotiators. Trump or no Trump I would expect them to drive a hard bargain. Like the EU in fact. A PTA with the US could be somewhat useful, but you're definitely better off in the system than outside it
Just to get away from 1914, I think one thing John Charmley gets absolutely right is his argument that Britain was finished as a global strategic actor in 1940, not 1945. The decision to fight on alone despite there being no prospect of victory without allies and the exhaustion of foreign reserves in 1941 made us utterly dependent on US goodwill, supplies and money. What Charmley gets wrong is his argument that reaching an agreement with Hitler would have been better.
If the government had taken this to heart, we could have avoided trying to maintain much larger forces and competing in technological arms races that we could never have afforded in the post war period. We should have concentrated on rebuilding our economic strength (as De Gaulle recognised) instead.
I think the ruling classes and man in the street were both deceived by the 'victory' of 1945. It was undoubtedly a moral victory, and the right thing to do, but a defeat in all other respects.
I'm not so sure. Yes, the Empire would have been wound up after WWII, but the UK could have maintained bases across the world, like the USA, had it been willing to pay the price in terms of blood and money. We preferred butter to guns. I'm not saying it was the wrong choice, but it was a choice that was open to us.
The Americans have a reputation of being tough negotiators. Trump or no Trump I would expect them to drive a hard bargain. Like the EU in fact. A PTA with the US could be somewhat useful, but you're definitely better off in the system than outside it
Trump's tweet gave the game away. They just see us as a pawn to get leverage with the EU.
You missed a piece which was mostly critical of the EU. Just the sort of thing to put some tension in your trousers, I'd have thought.
I have no interest in Meeks boring on about the EU. We've been subjected to it for months.
As with almost all of Alastair's thread headers it is an excellent, balanced piece based on a well informed and neutral stance.
Am I to infer that he didn't write the headline?
The headline writing must be our editor's perk?
It's all a bit meta discussing me rather than interesting points of political betting, but to clarify:
1) I usually suggest a headline. Usually my suggestions are fairly rubbish and are rightly not taken up.
2) Occasionally the headline is mine. I expect those are fairly obvious.
3) On this occasion the headline is not mine, but my original suggestion included the phrase "train wreck". I'm entirely content with the revised version, since it fairly reflects the contents.
I thought the train theme might appeal to some of our locomotive-minded posters.
I think the ruling classes and man in the street were both deceived by the 'victory' of 1945. It was undoubtedly a moral victory, and the right thing to do, but a defeat in all other respects.
Which is why is was such a blunder for us to stay out of the ECSC at the beginning. We needed to cash in our moral victory for a position of leadership in the future European order. Instead we squandered the opportunity, and ever since have felt that history somehow cheated us.
which is £1,800 in today's money. Today TV recording is basically free off the likes of iPlayer.
In 1996 I bought my first laptop. It had Windows 95, a 13" screen and an 800mb hard drive; it cost £2,500 then, which is about £5,000 today. For £150 you can buy a better machine than that in Currys.
I struggle to understand why anyone, whether Kipper or Corbynista, would want to live in the past. Having done so I am glad I no longer do.
We are living in your past.
Forgive me personalizing this, as it relates to all pre-2012 students to a greater - or slightly lesser (1998-2012) extent. But;
Your little bit of the national debt that the country took on to pay for your university tuition has come back to bite the country.
The government has asked the next generation to shoulder almost all of their own tuition fee burden as well as handing on the burden of repaying their elders tuition fee debt.
That's not right.
My preferred solution would be to backdate £9k student loans to all graduates. As that's not remotely politically possible, abolition - or substantial restructuring - of the post 2012 loans, with the bulk of the costs reclaimed through general taxation is the least unfair solution.
Tuition fees were a generational f*ckover. Voters voting to shield themselves from spending cuts/tax rises by lumping the burden on not-yet-voters.
Just to get away from 1914, I think one thing John Charmley gets absolutely right is his argument that Britain was finished as a global strategic actor in 1940, not 1945. The decision to fight on alone despite there being no prospect of victory without allies and the exhaustion of foreign reserves in 1941 made us utterly dependent on US goodwill, supplies and money. What Charmley gets wrong is his argument that reaching an agreement with Hitler would have been better.
If the government had taken this to heart, we could have avoided trying to maintain much larger forces and competing in technological arms races that we could never have afforded in the post war period. We should have concentrated on rebuilding our economic strength (as De Gaulle recognised) instead.
I think the ruling classes and man in the street were both deceived by the 'victory' of 1945. It was undoubtedly a moral victory, and the right thing to do, but a defeat in all other respects.
I'm not so sure. Yes, the Empire would have been wound up after WWII, but the UK could have maintained bases across the world, like the USA, had it been willing to pay the price in terms of blood and money. We preferred butter to guns. I'm not saying it was the wrong choice, but it was a choice that was open to us.
The power came from the prosperity. If you don't have that, you have nothing.
If we oldies really want to make the youngsters jealous, tell 'em about MIRAS...
Lol tell them you could get double miras as a couple before 1988.Lawson ended it giving a future date , so a rush boom ensued then a collapse in the early nineties in house prices .Then to even it up tell them about the 15% interest rate and re possessions.Great times.
For consistency, any move to apply CGT to houses should be accompanied by the return of MIRAS, as in the USA.
Alice I did not know that .How does the CGT work ? Do they take the price of the house when you bought it to when you sell it.
CGT on a residential home (as opposed to 2nd properties and rentals) is what civil servants call "brave, minister".
Very in the UK .I hate paying 20% Vat on repairs and improvements to my own house.
VAT on building extensions must be raking in a fair bit of tax for the government from London home improvements such as basement extensions.
At least you don't have to pay VAT on the land which you already have. Plus the Council tax band is unchanged after the extension.
The Council Tax is not necessarily unchanged after the extension. I know because mine was increased by a band after we did some work.
It seems that if a neighbour makes a complaint that their Council Tax band is too high, given that they know yours is the same and now your house is a bit bigger, then there can be a reevaluation triggered of the example property. I forget all the finer details of how this worked, but we now have to pay more.
Plus I have spent the last four years trying to work out which of the neighbours pulled this stunt!!!
In 1996 I bought my first laptop. It had Windows 95, a 13" screen and an 800mb hard drive; it cost £2,500 then, which is about £5,000 today. For £150 you can buy a better machine than that in Currys.
Not to mention that the 95 model was a giant brick with a battery life of about 5 minutes :-)
If we oldies really want to make the youngsters jealous, tell 'em about MIRAS...
Lol tell them you could get double miras as a couple before 1988.Lawson ended it giving a future date , so a rush boom ensued then a collapse in the early nineties in house prices .Then to even it up tell them about the 15% interest rate and re possessions.Great times.
For consistency, any move to apply CGT to houses should be accompanied by the return of MIRAS, as in the USA.
Alice I did not know that .How does the CGT work ? Do they take the price of the house when you bought it to when you sell it.
More or less. You're allowed $250k per person CGT allowance and any sales price gain over that versus the original buy price attracts CGT. To get the $250k allowance, you have to have lived there for 2 of the previous 5 years, so rental property would not qualify but second homes would if you lived in them efficiently.
There are also dispensations for things like illness or job relocation that get you the $250k allowance even if you don't otherwise qualify. If you sell up below the threshold time, your gain is pro-rated, and taxed like current year income. Above that time it's treated as long-term gain and taxed at whatever CGT rate applies to people in your income bracket, which is 0 to 20%.
The latter point means that pensioners downsizing big houses they bought 40 years ago, but can no longer afford to run on a small pension, probably escape CGT altogether. They owe it, but at a rate of 0%. This is the opposite intent to most proposals we hear of over here, which normally seek to expropriate such people.
which is £1,800 in today's money. Today TV recording is basically free off the likes of iPlayer.
In 1996 I bought my first laptop. It had Windows 95, a 13" screen and an 800mb hard drive; it cost £2,500 then, which is about £5,000 today. For £150 you can buy a better machine than that in Currys.
I struggle to understand why anyone, whether Kipper or Corbynista, would want to live in the past. Having done so I am glad I no longer do.
Let's be honest, people liked owning laptops and video players when most people couldn't afford them.
If most people couldn't afford them they'd never have caught on.
Just to get away from 1914, I think one thing John Charmley gets absolutely right is his argument that Britain was finished as a global strategic actor in 1940, not 1945. The decision to fight on alone despite there being no prospect of victory without allies and the exhaustion of foreign reserves in 1941 made us utterly dependent on US goodwill, supplies and money. What Charmley gets wrong is his argument that reaching an agreement with Hitler would have been better.
If the government had taken this to heart, we could have avoided trying to maintain much larger forces and competing in technological arms races that we could never have afforded in the post war period. We should have concentrated on rebuilding our economic strength (as De Gaulle recognised) instead.
I think the ruling classes and man in the street were both deceived by the 'victory' of 1945. It was undoubtedly a moral victory, and the right thing to do, but a defeat in all other respects.
I'm not so sure. Yes, the Empire would have been wound up after WWII, but the UK could have maintained bases across the world, like the USA, had it been willing to pay the price in terms of blood and money. We preferred butter to guns. I'm not saying it was the wrong choice, but it was a choice that was open to us.
The power came from the prosperity. If you don't have that, you have nothing.
I beg to differ. A country needs sufficient prosperity to maintain its military-industrial complex, but it does not need to be very prosperous to be very powerful. Russia, for example, has always punched way above its economic weight, whether under the Czars, the Communists, or Putin, because of the priority it gives the armed forces.
which is £1,800 in today's money. Today TV recording is basically free off the likes of iPlayer.
In 1996 I bought my first laptop. It had Windows 95, a 13" screen and an 800mb hard drive; it cost £2,500 then, which is about £5,000 today. For £150 you can buy a better machine than that in Currys.
I struggle to understand why anyone, whether Kipper or Corbynista, would want to live in the past. Having done so I am glad I no longer do.
We are living in your past.
Forgive me personalizing this, as it relates to all pre-2012 students to a greater - or slightly lesser (1998-2012) extent. But;
Your little bit of the national debt that the country took on to pay for your university tuition has come back to bite the country.
The government has asked the next generation to shoulder almost all of their own tuition fee burden as well as handing on the burden of repaying their elders tuition fee debt.
That's not right.
My preferred solution would be to backdate £9k student loans to all graduates. As that's not remotely politically possible, abolition - or substantial restructuring - of the post 2012 loans, with the bulk of the costs reclaimed through general taxation is the least unfair solution.
Tuition fees were a generational f*ckover. Voters voting to shield themselves from spending cuts/tax rises by lumping the burden on not-yet-voters.
Tuition fees at least are an exchange people knew about when they signed up to them. To backdate it would be despicable discrimination as it wasn't part of what was agreed when they went to it. Why should a wealthy electrician or plumber in their 40s pay considerably less tax than a more educate but less successful graduate from the same age?
What is manifestly unfair about the current setup is the interest rate. Interest should be inflation only. That way someone who borrows £9k today repays £9k over time in real terms and not considerably more than that.
The EU is doing its best to gain more control over cyberspace and restrict what we can see.
This is from the Open Media pressure group:
"Richard, July has been a brutal month for our free speech rights, and we need your help to fight back.
On July 11th, the European People’s Party (EPP) reversed their stance on the Link Tax, which led to it being passed in two key committees. They also approved dangerous content filtering rules which would force websites to install technology to block and filter what we can post and create online.
It can’t be understated how dangerous this new development is. The EPP is the largest party in the EU, and if their MEPs vote in favour of these terrible policies in the lead committee when Parliament resumes, it will be very hard for us to stop it.
We can stop the Link Tax and content filtering, but only if we reach out to our MEPs and hammer home how many people are paying attention. As elected members, they’ll need to show they’re not just in the pockets of big business.
The Link Tax, known as Article 11 in the EU Parliament, is a proposal that will allow press publishers to charge a fee whenever a link is used on a website that shows even a headline, or a few lines of text with it. This has enormous implications for how websites can link to one another, and it would do untold damage to the Internet ecosystem, crushing smaller voices on the web."
which is £1,800 in today's money. Today TV recording is basically free off the likes of iPlayer.
In 1996 I bought my first laptop. It had Windows 95, a 13" screen and an 800mb hard drive; it cost £2,500 then, which is about £5,000 today. For £150 you can buy a better machine than that in Currys.
I struggle to understand why anyone, whether Kipper or Corbynista, would want to live in the past. Having done so I am glad I no longer do.
We are living in your past.
Forgive me personalizing this, as it relates to all pre-2012 students to a greater - or slightly lesser (1998-2012) extent. But;
Your little bit of the national debt that the country took on to pay for your university tuition has come back to bite the country.
The government has asked the next generation to shoulder almost all of their own tuition fee burden as well as handing on the burden of repaying their elders tuition fee debt.
That's not right.
My preferred solution would be to backdate £9k student loans to all graduates. As that's not remotely politically possible, abolition - or substantial restructuring - of the post 2012 loans, with the bulk of the costs reclaimed through general taxation is the least unfair solution.
Tuition fees were a generational f*ckover. Voters voting to shield themselves from spending cuts/tax rises by lumping the burden on not-yet-voters.
Rubbish. The need for student loans came about as a result of the utterly ridiculous idea of trying to get 50% of school leavers into university, the vast majority to do degrees they did not need, in subjects they would not pursue as a career and which in no way benefitted society or the country. It was first and foremost a way to get 18-21 year olds off the unemployment register. It is a failed policy which should be scrapped.
We should go back to having a small number of the brightest and the best go to University with their courses paid for by the state on condition they then work for at least 5 (or more) years in the UK so making sure the country as a whole benefits from their success.
If we oldies really want to make the youngsters jealous, tell 'em about MIRAS...
Lol tell them you could get double miras as a couple before 1988.Lawson ended it giving a future date , so a rush boom ensued then a collapse in the early nineties in house prices .Then to even it up tell them about the 15% interest rate and re possessions.Great times.
For consistency, any move to apply CGT to houses should be accompanied by the return of MIRAS, as in the USA.
Alice I did not know that .How does the CGT work ? Do they take the price of the house when you bought it to when you sell it.
More or less. You're allowed $250k per person CGT allowance and any sales price gain over that versus the original buy price attracts CGT. To get the $250k allowance, you have to have lived there for 2 of the previous 5 years, so rental property would not qualify but second homes would if you lived in them efficiently.
There are also dispensations for things like illness or job relocation that get you the $250k allowance even if you don't otherwise qualify. If you sell up below the threshold time, your gain is pro-rated, and taxed like current year income. Above that time it's treated as long-term gain and taxed at whatever CGT rate applies to people in your income bracket, which is 0 to 20%.
The latter point means that pensioners downsizing big houses they bought 40 years ago, but can no longer afford to run on a small pension, probably escape CGT altogether. They owe it, but at a rate of 0%. This is the opposite intent to most proposals we hear of over here, which normally seek to expropriate such people.
Just to get away from 1914, I think one thing John Charmley gets absolutely right is his argument that Britain was finished as a global strategic actor in 1940, not 1945. The decision to fight on alone despite there being no prospect of victory without allies and the exhaustion of foreign reserves in 1941 made us utterly dependent on US goodwill, supplies and money. What Charmley gets wrong is his argument that reaching an agreement with Hitler would have been better.
If the government had taken this to heart, we could have avoided trying to maintain much larger forces and competing in technological arms races that we could never have afforded in the post war period. We should have concentrated on rebuilding our economic strength (as De Gaulle recognised) instead.
I think the ruling classes and man in the street were both deceived by the 'victory' of 1945. It was undoubtedly a moral victory, and the right thing to do, but a defeat in all other respects.
I'm not so sure. Yes, the Empire would have been wound up after WWII, but the UK could have maintained bases across the world, like the USA, had it been willing to pay the price in terms of blood and money. We preferred butter to guns. I'm not saying it was the wrong choice, but it was a choice that was open to us.
The power came from the prosperity. If you don't have that, you have nothing.
I beg to differ. A country needs sufficient prosperity to maintain its military-industrial complex, but it does not need to be very prosperous to be very powerful. Russia, for example, has always punched way above its economic weight, whether under the Czars, the Communists, or Putin, because of the priority it gives the armed forces.
I must disagree. I don't think Russia post 1991 is very powerful; whether on a economic, cultural influence or technological basis it is continuing to decline vis a vis the West and the other BRICs. It has an ability to be uniquely destructive, but it is unable to use that power to address its fundamental weaknesses (awful demographics, commodity dependence, brain drain).
Prioritising the armed forces fails when it bankrupts the underlying economy. This is a lesson they should have learnt from the USSR but clearly haven't.
To your earlier point, we did prefer guns! We spent billions to maintain military influence in areas remote from our core interests, far more than our European peers. As a consequence, we went from being the largest economy in Western Europe to 3rd (and briefly 4th).
Your little bit of the national debt that the country took on to pay for your university tuition has come back to bite the country.
Since I paid more tax then, and am in the 1% that pays 27% of all income tax now, that is simply not so. Someone who paid 27% tax in 1985 cannot possibly have contributed less than someone who pays 23% on the equivalent earnings today.
What should happen with degrees is that universities offering worthless ones should be allowed to go bust, and their management should be liable for mis-selling claims, as firms that sold PPI are. If that essential piece of the picture were in place, degrees would either be worth having or else they would not be undertaken at all, hence problem solved.
We'd be better off at the back of the queue no doubt.
The Americans have a reputation of being tough negotiators. Trump or no Trump I would expect them to drive a hard bargain. Like the EU in fact. A PTA with the US could be somewhat useful, but you're definitely better off in the system than outside it
Just to get away from 1914, I think one thing John Charmley gets absolutely right is his argument that Britain was finished as a global strategic actor in 1940, not 1945. The decision to fight on alone despite there being no prospect of victory without allies and the exhaustion of foreign reserves in 1941 made us utterly dependent on US goodwill, supplies and money. What Charmley gets wrong is his argument that reaching an agreement with Hitler would have been better.
If the government had taken this to heart, we could have avoided trying to maintain much larger forces and competing in technological arms races that we could never have afforded in the post war period. We should have concentrated on rebuilding our economic strength (as De Gaulle recognised) instead.
I think the ruling classes and man in the street were both deceived by the 'victory' of 1945. It was undoubtedly a moral victory, and the right thing to do, but a defeat in all other respects.
I'm not so sure. Yes, the Empire would have been wound up after WWII, but the UK could have maintained bases across the world, like the USA, had it been willing to pay the price in terms of blood and money. We preferred butter to guns. I'm not saying it was the wrong choice, but it was a choice that was open to us.
The power came from the prosperity. If you don't have that, you have nothing.
I beg to differ. A country needs sufficient prosperity to maintain its military-industrial complex, but it does not need to be very prosperous to be very powerful. Russia, for example, has always punched way above its economic weight, whether under the Czars, the Communists, or Putin, because of the priority it gives the armed forces.
I must disagree. I don't think Russia post 1991 is very powerful; whether on a economic, cultural influence or technological basis it is continuing to decline vis a vis the West and the other BRICs. It has an ability to be uniquely destructive, but it is unable to use that power to address its fundamental weaknesses (awful demographics, commodity dependence, brain drain).
Prioritising the armed forces fails when it bankrupts the underlying economy. This is a lesson they should have learnt from the USSR but clearly haven't.
Irina Hakamada, who was one of the most prominent Presidential candidates against Putin in 2004, predicted in the wake of the Ukrainian invasion that the Russian Federation could end up collapsing in a similar manner to the collapse of the USSR as a result of imperial overreach.
I think the Putin regime is starting to run out of steam and something dramatic could change soon.
And how are they going to police it? If someone posts a comment on my blog containing a link to a newspaper, do I have to pay tax?!
****ing idiots.
If it's possible to track sponsored links for payment purposes, it must also be possible for tax collection purposes. Probably ISPs will be made to do it, and will pass the tax bill as well as the collection cost on, in the form of higher charges.
The EU's FTT will be excellent for London if it comes in. As the UK is something like 50% of the EU financial sector, and the others thus had nothing on an individual country by country basis to lose if it panned out badly, I was never persuaded that the UK's voice was being heard on this. Within the EU we'd simply be ignored and screwed over because we would be the only loser by it.
And how are they going to police it? If someone posts a comment on my blog containing a link to a newspaper, do I have to pay tax?!
****ing idiots.
If it's possible to track sponsored links for payment purposes, it must also be possible for tax collection purposes. Probably ISPs will be made to do it, and will pass the tax bill as well as the collection cost on, in the form of higher charges.
The EU's FTT will be excellent for London if it comes in. As the UK is something like 50% of the EU financial sector, and the others thus had nothing on an individual country by country basis to lose if it panned out badly, I was never persuaded that the UK's voice was being heard on this. Within the EU we'd simply be ignored and screwed over because we would be the only loser by it.
They do that by yah a little bisque URL, don't they? You could just avoid it by deleting the unique bit.
which is £1,800 in today's money. Today TV recording is basically free off the likes of iPlayer.
In 1996 I bought my first laptop. It had Windows 95, a 13" screen and an 800mb hard drive; it cost £2,500 then, which is about £5,000 today. For £150 you can buy a better machine than that in Currys.
I struggle to understand why anyone, whether Kipper or Corbynista, would want to live in the past. Having done so I am glad I no longer do.
We are living in your past.
Forgive me personalizing this, as it relates to all pre-2012 students to a greater - or slightly lesser (1998-2012) extent. But;
Your little bit of the national debt that the country took on to pay for your university tuition has come back to bite the country.
The government has asked the next generation to shoulder almost all of their own tuition fee burden as well as handing on the burden of repaying their elders tuition fee debt.
That's not right.
My preferred solution would be to backdate £9k student loans to all graduates. As that's not remotely politically possible, abolition - or substantial restructuring - of the post 2012 loans, with the bulk of the costs reclaimed through general taxation is the least unfair solution.
Tuition fees were a generational f*ckover. Voters voting to shield themselves from spending cuts/tax rises by lumping the burden on not-yet-voters.
Tuition fees at least are an exchange people knew about when they signed up to them. To backdate it would be despicable discrimination as it wasn't part of what was agreed when they went to it.
Actually, no.
The tories changed the T&C's (froze the threshold) for post-2012 students, so the amount they will pay back was increased relative to what they agreed when they signed up to the deal, age 16/17.
If they can be asked to pay more, then all pre-2012 students can, too.
Richard_Tyndall said "We should go back to having a small number of the brightest and the best go to University with their courses paid for by the state on condition they then work for at least 5 (or more) years in the UK so making sure the country as a whole benefits from their success."
Roughly speaking I agree with that, only I'm not so sure about the "best". Anyway, do something like that and foster polytechnics and technical colleges too.
which is £1,800 in today's money. Today TV recording is basically free off the likes of iPlayer.
In 1996 I bought my first laptop. It had Windows 95, a 13" screen and an 800mb hard drive; it cost £2,500 then, which is about £5,000 today. For £150 you can buy a better machine than that in Currys.
I struggle to understand why anyone, whether Kipper or Corbynista, would want to live in the past. Having done so I am glad I no longer do.
We are living in your past.
Forgive me personalizing this, as it relates to all pre-2012 students to a greater - or slightly lesser (1998-2012) extent. But;
Your little bit of the national debt that the country took on to pay for your university tuition has come back to bite the country.
The government has asked the next generation to shoulder almost all of their own tuition fee burden as well as handing on the burden of repaying their elders tuition fee debt.
That's not right.
My preferred solution would be to backdate £9k student loans to all graduates. As that's not remotely politically possible, abolition - or substantial restructuring - of the post 2012 loans, with the bulk of the costs reclaimed through general taxation is the least unfair solution.
Tuition fees were a generational f*ckover. Voters voting to shield themselves from spending cuts/tax rises by lumping the burden on not-yet-voters.
Tuition fees at least are an exchange people knew about when they signed up to them. To backdate it would be despicable discrimination as it wasn't part of what was agreed when they went to it.
Actually, no.
The tories changed the T&C's (froze the threshold) for post-2012 students, so the amount they will pay back was increased relative to what they agreed when they signed up to the deal, age 16/17.
If they can be asked to pay more, then all pre-2012 students can, too.
As the tories are fond of saying;
We're all in this together.
They changed the deal after they had signed on the dotted line for the loan?
which is £1,800 in today's money. Today TV recording is basically free off the likes of iPlayer.
In 1996 I bought my first laptop. It had Windows 95, a 13" screen and an 800mb hard drive; it cost £2,500 then, which is about £5,000 today. For £150 you can buy a better machine than that in Currys.
I struggle to understand why anyone, whether Kipper or Corbynista, would want to live in the past. Having done so I am glad I no longer do.
We are living in your past.
Forgive me personalizing this, as it relates to all pre-2012 students to a greater - or slightly lesser (1998-2012) extent. But;
Your little bit of the national debt that the country took on to pay for your university tuition has come back to bite the country.
The government has asked the next generation to shoulder almost all of their own tuition fee burden as well as handing on the burden of repaying their elders tuition fee debt.
That's not right.
My preferred solution would be to backdate £9k student loans to all graduates. As that's not remotely politically possible, abolition - or substantial restructuring - of the post 2012 loans, with the bulk of the costs reclaimed through general taxation is the least unfair solution.
Tuition fees were a generational f*ckover. Voters voting to shield themselves from spending cuts/tax rises by lumping the burden on not-yet-voters.
Tuition fees at least are an exchange people knew about when they signed up to them. To backdate it would be despicable discrimination as it wasn't part of what was agreed when they went to it.
Actually, no.
The tories changed the T&C's (froze the threshold) for post-2012 students, so the amount they will pay back was increased relative to what they agreed when they signed up to the deal, age 16/17.
If they can be asked to pay more, then all pre-2012 students can, too.
As the tories are fond of saying;
We're all in this together.
They changed the deal after they had signed on the dotted line for the loan?
Yes. It's outrageous, isn't it?
If the tories treated their client vote like that, they'd be out of power for a generation - and rightly so.
Just to get away from 1914, I think one thing John Charmley gets absolutely right is his argument that Britain was finished as a global strategic actor in 1940, not 1945. The decision to fight on alone despite there being no prospect of victory without allies and the exhaustion of foreign reserves in 1941 made us utterly dependent on US goodwill, supplies and money. What Charmley gets wrong is his argument that reaching an agreement with Hitler would have been better.
If the
I think the ruling classes and man in the street were both deceived by the 'victory' of 1945. It was undoubtedly a moral victory, and the right thing to do, but a defeat in all other respects.
I'm not so sure. Yes, the Empire would have been wound up after WWII, but the UK could have maintained bases across the world, like the USA, had it been willing to pay the price in terms of blood and money. We preferred butter to guns. I'm not saying it was the wrong choice, but it was a choice that was open to us.
The power came from the prosperity. If you don't have that, you have nothing.
I beg to differ. A country needs sufficient prosperity to maintain its military-industrial complex, but it does not need to be very prosperous to be very powerful. Russia, for example, has always punched way above its economic weight, whether under the Czars, the Communists, or Putin, because of the priority it gives the armed forces.
I must disagree
Prioritising the armed forces fails when it bankrupts the underlying economy. This is a lesson they should have learnt from the USSR but clearly haven't.
Irina Hakamada, who was one of the most prominent Presidential candidates against Putin in 2004, predicted in the wake of the Ukrainian invasion that the Russian Federation could end up collapsing in a similar manner to the collapse of the USSR as a result of imperial overreach.
I think the Putin regime is starting to run out of steam and something dramatic could change soon.
That's overstating the case. Russia is not about to collapse, even with oil at $45 a barrel. What Putin will do instead is drastically scale back his rearmament programme and aid to his vassals (e.g. Belarus) while keeping up the Victory Day parade and testing NATO's air defences.
In 10 years' time, who will buy Russian over Chinese aircraft?
Richard_Tyndall said "We should go back to having a small number of the brightest and the best go to University with their courses paid for by the state on condition they then work for at least 5 (or more) years in the UK so making sure the country as a whole benefits from their success."
Roughly speaking I agree with that, only I'm not so sure about the "best". Anyway, do something like that and foster polytechnics and technical colleges too.
I was using brightest and best as a lazy catchphrase. But hopefully you get my meaning. Those who are academically suited should be given the opportunity of university, those who are not should have options that suit their strengths exactly as you say. We also need top massively increase apprenticeships so people can learn skills on the job.
A good example of the current idiocy would be nursing where we have now got rid of excellent nursing colleges and made them degree courses. Why?
which is £1,800 in today's money. Today TV recording is basically free off the likes of iPlayer.
In 1996 I bought my first laptop. It had Windows 95, a 13" screen and an 800mb hard drive; it cost £2,500 then, which is about £5,000 today. For £150 you can buy a better machine than that in Currys.
I struggle to understand why anyone, whether Kipper or Corbynista, would want to live in the past. Having done so I am glad I no longer do.
We are living in your past.
Forgive me personalizing this, as it relates to all pre-2012 students to a greater - or slightly lesser (1998-2012) extent. But;
Your little bit of the national debt that the country took on to pay for your university tuition has come back to bite the country.
The government has asked the next generation to shoulder almost all of their own tuition fee burden as well as handing on the burden of repaying their elders tuition fee debt.
That's not right.
My preferred solution would be to backdate £9k student loans to all graduates. As that's not remotely politically possible, abolition - or substantial restructuring - of the post 2012 loans, with the bulk of the costs reclaimed through general taxation is the least unfair solution.
Tuition fees were a generational f*ckover. Voters voting to shield themselves from spending cuts/tax rises by lumping the burden on not-yet-voters.
Tuition fees at least are an exchange people knew about when they signed up to them. To backdate it would be despicable discrimination as it wasn't part of what was agreed when they went to it.
Actually, no.
The tories changed the T&C's
The Coalition, no? And didn't universities fall under BIS (prop. V Cable) at the time?
Mr. M, what's your view on Kubica's skill level when he was in F1?
Earlier, Mr. Jessop suggested I might be over-egging the cake (also, he was right to point out it's been some years which probably won't have made the Pole any faster).
which is £1,800 in today's money. Today TV recording is basically free off the likes of iPlayer.
In 1996 I bought my first laptop. It had Windows 95, a 13" screen and an 800mb hard drive; it cost £2,500 then, which is about £5,000 today. For £150 you can buy a better machine than that in Currys.
I struggle to understand why anyone, whether Kipper or Corbynista, would want to live in the past. Having done so I am glad I no longer do.
We are living in your past.
Forgive me personalizing this, as it relates to all pre-2012 students to a greater - or slightly lesser (1998-2012) extent. But;
Your little bit of the national debt that the country took on to pay for your university tuition has come back to bite the country.
The government has asked the next generation to shoulder almost all of their own tuition fee burden as well as handing on the burden of repaying their elders tuition fee debt.
That's not right.
My preferred solution would be to backdate £9k student loans to all graduates. As that's not remotely politically possible, abolition - or substantial restructuring - of the post 2012 loans, with the bulk of the costs reclaimed through general taxation is the least unfair solution.
Tuition fees were a generational f*ckover. Voters voting to shield themselves from spending cuts/tax rises by lumping the burden on not-yet-voters.
Tuition fees at least are an exchange people knew about when they signed up to them. To backdate it would be despicable discrimination as it wasn't part of what was agreed when they went to it.
Actually, no.
The tories changed the T&C's
The Coalition, no? And didn't universities fall under BIS (prop. V Cable) at the time?
No, after the 2015 election.
Remember the insane promises the tories made during the campaign? They had to be paid for somehow.
The tories went for the easy option of screwing the kids to balance the books. Standard tory intergenerational theft for the benefit of their client vote.
which is £1,800 in today's money. Today TV recording is basically free off the likes of iPlayer.
In 1996 I bought my first laptop. It had Windows 95, a 13" screen and an 800mb hard drive; it cost £2,500 then, which is about £5,000 today. For £150 you can buy a better machine than that in Currys.
I struggle to understand why anyone, whether Kipper or Corbynista, would want to live in the past. Having done so I am glad I no longer do.
We are living in your past.
Forgive me personalizing this, as it relates to all pre-2012 students to a greater - or slightly lesser (1998-2012) extent. But;
Your little bit of the national debt that the country took on to pay for your university tuition has come back to bite the country.
The government has asked the next generation to shoulder almost all of their own tuition fee burden as well as handing on the burden of repaying their elders tuition fee debt.
That's not right.
My preferred solution would be to backdate £9k student loans to all graduates. As that's not remotely politically possible, abolition - or substantial restructuring - of the post 2012 loans, with the bulk of the costs reclaimed through general taxation is the least unfair solution.
Tuition fees were a generational f*ckover. Voters voting to shield themselves from spending cuts/tax rises by lumping the burden on not-yet-voters.
Tuition fees at least are an exchange people knew about when they signed up to them. To backdate it would be despicable discrimination as it wasn't part of what was agreed when they went to it.
Actually, no.
The tories changed the T&C's (froze the threshold) for post-2012 students, so the amount they will pay back was increased relative to what they agreed when they signed up to the deal, age 16/17.
If they can be asked to pay more, then all pre-2012 students can, too.
As the tories are fond of saying;
We're all in this together.
They changed the deal after they had signed on the dotted line for the loan?
Yes. It's outrageous, isn't it?
If the tories treated their client vote like that, they'd be out of power for a generation - and rightly so.
Like they tried to do when abolishing the triple lock?
Just to get away from 1914, I think one thing John Charmley gets absolutely right is his argument that Britain was finished as a global strategic actor in 1940, not 1945. The decision to fight on alone despite there being no prospect of victory without allies and the exhaustion of foreign reserves in 1941 made us utterly dependent on US goodwill, supplies and money. What Charmley gets wrong is his argument that reaching an agreement with Hitler would have been better.
If the
I think the ruling classes and man in the street were both deceived by the 'victory' of 1945. It was undoubtedly a moral victory, and the right thing to do, but a defeat in all other respects.
I'm not so sure. Yes, the Empire would have been wound up after WWII, but the UK could have maintained bases across the world, like the USA, had it been willing to pay the price in terms of blood and money. We preferred butter to guns. I'm not saying it was the wrong choice, but it was a choice that was open to us.
The power came from the prosperity. If you don't have that, you have nothing.
I beg to differ. A country needs sufficient prosperity to maintain its military-industrial complex, but it does not need to be very prosperous to be very powerful. Russia, for example, has always punched way above its economic weight, whether under the Czars, the Communists, or Putin, because of the priority it gives the armed forces.
I must disagree
Prioritising the armed forces fails when it bankrupts the underlying economy. This is a lesson they should have learnt from the USSR but clearly haven't.
Irina Hakamada, who was one of the most prominent Presidential candidates against Putin in 2004, predicted in the wake of the Ukrainian invasion that the Russian Federation could end up collapsing in a similar manner to the collapse of the USSR as a result of imperial overreach.
I think the Putin regime is starting to run out of steam and something dramatic could change soon.
That's overstating the case. Russia is not about to collapse, even with oil at $45 a barrel. What Putin will do instead is drastically scale back his rearmament programme and aid to his vassals (e.g. Belarus) while keeping up the Victory Day parade and testing NATO's air defences.
In 10 years' time, who will buy Russian over Chinese aircraft?
Many of Putin's vassals are within the territory of the Russian Federation, which is run far more like an empire than a federation. It's one of the things that stokes their paranoia about foreign influence.
Surely big business will put the pressure on the Conservative leadership to make sure there is a functioning deal.They do not give the party money for have not got a f ING clue type ideas.
Rich individuals donate more than big business.
Seanf is that true ? Very surprised , do you have a link to that.Better position for the conservatives if that is the case to not react to pressure from big business.
There are virtually no donations from big business. Look at the Electoral Commission website.
There are plenty of very healthy donations from individuals who work in senior positions in both business and finance, though.
Quite a few big businesses (especially retail business) shy away from large political donations, given that circa 50% of their customers might be offended whichever way they donated.
Richard_Tyndall said "We should go back to having a small number of the brightest and the best go to University with their courses paid for by the state on condition they then work for at least 5 (or more) years in the UK so making sure the country as a whole benefits from their success."
Roughly speaking I agree with that, only I'm not so sure about the "best". Anyway, do something like that and foster polytechnics and technical colleges too.
I was using brightest and best as a lazy catchphrase. But hopefully you get my meaning. Those who are academically suited should be given the opportunity of university, those who are not should have options that suit their strengths exactly as you say. We also need top massively increase apprenticeships so people can learn skills on the job.
A good example of the current idiocy would be nursing where we have now got rid of excellent nursing colleges and made them degree courses. Why?
OK. We might also allow for self support, extra curricular jobs, and scholarships (my case.) The bottom line should be that one *wants to* and *is able to* pursue studies.
Comments
"The number of people leaving London has jumped more than 80 per cent in the past five years, with more than 93,000 people departing the capital last year, figures have suggested.
Research by Savills shows the exodus is being led by those in their 30s, with the number of those between the ages of 30 and 39 leaving the capital rising 68 per cent between 2012 and 2016, to 34,540."
http://www.cityam.com/269004/exodus-number-people-moving-out-london-has-risen-80-per
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jul/24/bloated-london-property-prices-fuelling-exodus-from-capital
Employer NI (13.8%) + Employee NI (12%) + PAYE (20%) + Student Loan (9%) on everything over 21,000 is a "decent" marginal tax rate.
What was the tax on 20k 30 years back and 45k for a plan II graduate now - those are reasonably comparable figures with inflation and so forth (And in terms of purchasing property the 20k went ALOT further than 45k today...) ?
My tables show the 'true tax' burden on a salary of 40k for a plan II graduate is 39% right now.
Britain has generally sought to use proxies to do the land fighting because the cost and manpower in policing the sea required it. But the casualties in sea battles have always been lower. I think Trafalgar was about 7,000 killed and wounded among both sides.
https://twitter.com/telegraph/status/889828832731181056
"Let me guess: Meeks".
Scroll to bottom.
Go straight to the comments.
As has been clear for a long time, if the EU wants "no deal" they can force it.
And I believe right to take us out of the EU, a system deliberately (and probably rightly, if you look at the EU as a whole) designed to transfer resources away from this country.
558.32 PAYE
368.40 Employee NIC
423.66 Employer NIC
180 Student Tax (Monthly figures)
And 38.9% for a 20,000 graduate in 1987.
4745.25 Tax (20000 - 2425) * 0.27
1155.96 Employee NIC (14820 - 1976) * .09
1883.51 Employer NIC (20000 - 1976) * .1045
(Annual figures)
Ipsos MORI@IpsosMORI
54% ABC1s cite #Brexit as most important issue vs. 25% of C2DEs http://bit.ly/2vVN02K #socialgrade
A bloke who took the missus for granted is obsessed with getting her back now she's left him
It would have been bad news for us if he had been a fan of the EU of course. Being a Remainer is WIN-WIN isn't it?!!
Roughly, in 1985 on my graduate starting salary of £8,500 a year, I lost 27% in tax and NI. That salary was 120% of the then average wage, so it's equivalent today would be £31k. On such a salary, a graduate today would pay 23% in tax and NI, a non-graduate 20%. They pay less, and when I was a graduate, non-graduates paid the same as graduates.
What they perceive as debt is just a tax that takes their tax up to less than their parents paid.
There is a good case for rebadging it as a graduate tax, however. What is stupid about it now is that the repayments are fixed at 9% of earnings above ~21k at the same time as the principal amount owed goes up because the interest rate on it is not fixed - it is some rate like 6%, which is a farcically high rate for long term borrowing stopped out of earnings. It should be something like BOE rate plus 0.25%, so that they can see it depleting.
https://www.measuringworth.com/ukcompare/relativevalue.php?use2=a:5:{i:0;s:3:"CPI";i:1;s:6:"DEFIND";i:2;s:4:"WAGE";i:3;s:5:"GDPCP";i:4;s:4:"GDPC";}&amount=14000&year_source=1987&year_result=2016&button=Submit
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/dec/19/price-christmas-past-boots-catalogue
which is £1,800 in today's money. Today TV recording is basically free off the likes of iPlayer.
In 1996 I bought my first laptop. It had Windows 95, a 13" screen and an 800mb hard drive; it cost £2,500 then, which is about £5,000 today. For £150 you can buy a better machine than that in Currys.
I struggle to understand why anyone, whether Kipper or Corbynista, would want to live in the past. Having done so I am glad I no longer do.
You'll be equating the whole thing with the Nazi's next.
Who knew!
Why should you get Mortgage interest rate relief on a capital investment in your residence when you don't get interest rate relief on other investments?
It would be great for the public finances.
Not sure you are right about Paris falling. I don't want to sound insouciant about the fate of Parisians, but strategically would it have mattered anyway? In the end, Germany lost for logistical reasons as much as anything and taking Paris, and other French cities, would have stretched their resources.
Btw, let's not be dogmatic about this. We are by no means the first to differ on the subject!
Everyone getting suitably excited I hope?
He saves his bias for the comments below the line which shows admirable restraint.
At least you don't have to pay VAT on the land which you already have. Plus the Council tax band is unchanged after the extension.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/07/25/boost-britain-bmw-picks-oxford-germany-netherlands-build-new/
https://twitter.com/SamCoatesTimes/status/889863214099562498
1) I usually suggest a headline. Usually my suggestions are fairly rubbish and are rightly not taken up.
2) Occasionally the headline is mine. I expect those are fairly obvious.
3) On this occasion the headline is not mine, but my original suggestion included the phrase "train wreck". I'm entirely content with the revised version, since it fairly reflects the contents.
I thought the train theme might appeal to some of our locomotive-minded posters.
Forgive me personalizing this, as it relates to all pre-2012 students to a greater - or slightly lesser (1998-2012) extent. But;
Your little bit of the national debt that the country took on to pay for your university tuition has come back to bite the country.
The government has asked the next generation to shoulder almost all of their own tuition fee burden as well as handing on the burden of repaying their elders tuition fee debt.
That's not right.
My preferred solution would be to backdate £9k student loans to all graduates. As that's not remotely politically possible, abolition - or substantial restructuring - of the post 2012 loans, with the bulk of the costs reclaimed through general taxation is the least unfair solution.
Tuition fees were a generational f*ckover. Voters voting to shield themselves from spending cuts/tax rises by lumping the burden on not-yet-voters.
It seems that if a neighbour makes a complaint that their Council Tax band is too high, given that they know yours is the same and now your house is a bit bigger, then there can be a reevaluation triggered of the example property. I forget all the finer details of how this worked, but we now have to pay more.
Plus I have spent the last four years trying to work out which of the neighbours pulled this stunt!!!
There are also dispensations for things like illness or job relocation that get you the $250k allowance even if you don't otherwise qualify. If you sell up below the threshold time, your gain is pro-rated, and taxed like current year income. Above that time it's treated as long-term gain and taxed at whatever CGT rate applies to people in your income bracket, which is 0 to 20%.
The latter point means that pensioners downsizing big houses they bought 40 years ago, but can no longer afford to run on a small pension, probably escape CGT altogether. They owe it, but at a rate of 0%. This is the opposite intent to most proposals we hear of over here, which normally seek to expropriate such people.
US MIRAS is exactly like UK MIRAS was.
What is manifestly unfair about the current setup is the interest rate. Interest should be inflation only. That way someone who borrows £9k today repays £9k over time in real terms and not considerably more than that.
The EU is doing its best to gain more control over cyberspace and restrict what we can see.
This is from the Open Media pressure group:
"Richard, July has been a brutal month for our free speech rights, and we need your help to fight back.
On July 11th, the European People’s Party (EPP) reversed their stance on the Link Tax, which led to it being passed in two key committees. They also approved dangerous content filtering rules which would force websites to install technology to block and filter what we can post and create online.
It can’t be understated how dangerous this new development is. The EPP is the largest party in the EU, and if their MEPs vote in favour of these terrible policies in the lead committee when Parliament resumes, it will be very hard for us to stop it.
We can stop the Link Tax and content filtering, but only if we reach out to our MEPs and hammer home how many people are paying attention. As elected members, they’ll need to show they’re not just in the pockets of big business.
The Link Tax, known as Article 11 in the EU Parliament, is a proposal that will allow press publishers to charge a fee whenever a link is used on a website that shows even a headline, or a few lines of text with it. This has enormous implications for how websites can link to one another, and it would do untold damage to the Internet ecosystem, crushing smaller voices on the web."
We should go back to having a small number of the brightest and the best go to University with their courses paid for by the state on condition they then work for at least 5 (or more) years in the UK so making sure the country as a whole benefits from their success.
Prioritising the armed forces fails when it bankrupts the underlying economy. This is a lesson they should have learnt from the USSR but clearly haven't.
To your earlier point, we did prefer guns! We spent billions to maintain military influence in areas remote from our core interests, far more than our European peers. As a consequence, we went from being the largest economy in Western Europe to 3rd (and briefly 4th).
What should happen with degrees is that universities offering worthless ones should be allowed to go bust, and their management should be liable for mis-selling claims, as firms that sold PPI are. If that essential piece of the picture were in place, degrees would either be worth having or else they would not be undertaken at all, hence problem solved.
And how are they going to police it? If someone posts a comment on my blog containing a link to a newspaper, do I have to pay tax?!
****ing idiots.
I think the Putin regime is starting to run out of steam and something dramatic could change soon.
The EU's FTT will be excellent for London if it comes in. As the UK is something like 50% of the EU financial sector, and the others thus had nothing on an individual country by country basis to lose if it panned out badly, I was never persuaded that the UK's voice was being heard on this. Within the EU we'd simply be ignored and screwed over because we would be the only loser by it.
The tories changed the T&C's (froze the threshold) for post-2012 students, so the amount they will pay back was increased relative to what they agreed when they signed up to the deal, age 16/17.
If they can be asked to pay more, then all pre-2012 students can, too.
As the tories are fond of saying;
We're all in this together.
Or are we not?
"We should go back to having a small number of the brightest and the best go to University with their courses paid for by the state on condition they then work for at least 5 (or more) years in the UK so making sure the country as a whole benefits from their success."
Roughly speaking I agree with that, only I'm not so sure about the "best". Anyway, do something like that and foster polytechnics and technical colleges too.
Not even going to bother.
Are we talking about anything interesting?
If the tories treated their client vote like that, they'd be out of power for a generation - and rightly so.
In 10 years' time, who will buy Russian over Chinese aircraft?
A good example of the current idiocy would be nursing where we have now got rid of excellent nursing colleges and made them degree courses. Why?
https://twitter.com/Sunil_P2/status/732785721145188352
Earlier, Mr. Jessop suggested I might be over-egging the cake (also, he was right to point out it's been some years which probably won't have made the Pole any faster).
Remember the insane promises the tories made during the campaign? They had to be paid for somehow.
The tories went for the easy option of screwing the kids to balance the books. Standard tory intergenerational theft for the benefit of their client vote.