An oddity is the widespread use of The Hun, which is apparently down to Churchill's misconception that the Germans were somehow descended from Atilla.
I doubt if it's anything to do with Churchill. More likely it came into popular usage because of this 1914 poem (widely misinterpreted, like much Kipling):
Thanks Richard, that's interesting, but I think Churchill is implicated somewhere. Maybe he picked it up uncritically from Kipling. I'm sure he uses the term in his WW2 volumes, but I don't want to look it up in case I am wrong.
He is reported in John Colville's wartime diary as planning to end his speech, in the event of German invasion, with "The hour has come; kill the Hun.".
As many of you know, I started an auto insurance company in Arizona. It's different from most insurers in that it is pure "pay per mile" (and it's liability / third party only for now). This means we get pretty good data on how much people are driving.
In March, when there was a full lockdown, our customers drove about 480 miles. In April, 550. In June almost 600. This month, as Arizona has de facto locked down again, we might be below March's number - it could be as little as 450. Now, this is one state, and our sample size is small, and schools are now closed for the summer, and July 4 was a public holiday weekend. But miles driven are probably a fairly good proxy for economic activity. And the message from July is that - in Arizona at least - economic activity has come crashing back down again.
(Oh yeah - please watch the explainer video, and share and click like. Thank you!)
Really. It's like the BBC is intent on self harm. Like it *wants* to get defunded.
Don't the stats show they are already more diverse than the country?
Not when it comes to diversity of thought . . .
I've thought for a while that the BBC was heading into trouble - its model is unsustainable in the era of streaming. For the first time, I think its demise will come quite soon, maybe in the next decade.
All the Tories have to do is decriminalise non-licence-fee-paying. Then that's it. Everything collapses. It is a perfectly legitimate move, on moral grounds, and it instantly demolishes an institution which is hellbent on annoying anyone remotely conservative.
Contrary to tabloid mythology, this is partly because the Conservatives of the late 1980s and early 1990s destroyed much that was conservative about the BBC. Sometimes patrician highbrow cultural values were replaced by a sort of revolutionary, commercially-focused managerialism, as in many parts of British life at the time.
A Wealth Tax is an exciting prospect. But will a Conservative government really do that? One for the 'believe it when I see it' basket.
Just like my argument on CGT on residential properties it does seem to be a very anti Conservative thing to do, so would be a bold move.
I also think a wealth tax would be difficult to implement.
There is a need to tap into wealth - of which there is oodles - if we are to maintain the sort of public realm we have become used to.
Your CGT on homes makes sense imo but it has next to no chance of happening because of the way we view home ownership here. There's a strong intellectual and moral case for it though.
I'm not really sure about that.
They used to think that mortgage tax relief was untouchable for political reasons. Then it went.
Main dwellings are treated as an investment - used for raising finance, saving for retirement, supporting children etc. As such there is not much reason to keep the unearned gains tax free.
Consider that one George Osborne has just trousered £3.1m of gains for which he has not done an hour's work. Is it really unacceptable that that should only be say £2.5m of unearned gains after tax rather than £3.1m?
I think the strategic clincher is that the £25-30bn of lost tax due to the allowance is overwhelmingly handed to the wealthier people in the wealthier areas of the country.
How will that play in the Red Wall when pointed out, and perhaps combined with a more generous CGT Allowance or reintroduction of indexation?
Personally I would abolish it at a stroke, but perhaps an initial cut followed by death on the vine is an alternative.
I agree the case (CGT on homes) is good. There would be more winners than losers and by and large the losers can afford to lose and the winners need the win. But I sense the public can't be sold on it. Why? Because of how property ownership is perceived. "You work hard, pay your tax, scrimp and save instead of spending so you can buy a nice house for you and your family, and then the government is going to come along and take a big slice when you sell it? NFW!" This sentiment. It's the same reason that IHT is so hated. Just replace "sell it" with "die". I find this irrational and borderline selfish but I accept I'm in a minority.
A Wealth Tax is an exciting prospect. But will a Conservative government really do that? One for the 'believe it when I see it' basket.
Just like my argument on CGT on residential properties it does seem to be a very anti Conservative thing to do, so would be a bold move.
I also think a wealth tax would be difficult to implement.
There is a need to tap into wealth - of which there is oodles - if we are to maintain the sort of public realm we have become used to.
Your CGT on homes makes sense imo but it has next to no chance of happening because of the way we view home ownership here. There's a strong intellectual and moral case for it though.
I'm not really sure about that.
They used to think that mortgage tax relief was untouchable for political reasons. Then it went.
Main dwellings are treated as an investment - used for raising finance, saving for retirement, supporting children etc. As such there is not much reason to keep the unearned gains tax free.
Consider that one George Osborne has just trousered £3.1m of gains for which he has not done an hour's work. Is it really unacceptable that that should only be say £2.5m of unearned gains after tax rather than £3.1m?
I think the strategic clincher is that the £25-30bn of lost tax due to the allowance is overwhelmingly handed to the wealthier people in the wealthier areas of the country.
How will that play in the Red Wall when pointed out, and perhaps combined with a more generous CGT Allowance or reintroduction of indexation?
Personally I would abolish it at a stroke, but perhaps an initial cut followed by death on the vine is an alternative.
I agree the case (CGT on homes) is good. There would be more winners than losers and by and large the losers can afford to lose and the winners need the win. But I sense the public can't be sold on it. Why? Because of how property ownership is perceived. "You work hard, pay your tax, scrimp and save instead of spending so you can buy a nice house for you and your family, and then the government is going to come along and take a big slice when you sell it? NFW!" This sentiment. It's the same reason that IHT is so hated. Just replace "sell it" with "die". I find this irrational and borderline selfish but I accept I'm in a minority.
You are absolutely right but then when did logic win over politics in the matter of taxation?
A Wealth Tax is an exciting prospect. But will a Conservative government really do that? One for the 'believe it when I see it' basket.
Just like my argument on CGT on residential properties it does seem to be a very anti Conservative thing to do, so would be a bold move.
I also think a wealth tax would be difficult to implement.
There is a need to tap into wealth - of which there is oodles - if we are to maintain the sort of public realm we have become used to.
Your CGT on homes makes sense imo but it has next to no chance of happening because of the way we view home ownership here. There's a strong intellectual and moral case for it though.
I'm not really sure about that.
They used to think that mortgage tax relief was untouchable for political reasons. Then it went.
Main dwellings are treated as an investment - used for raising finance, saving for retirement, supporting children etc. As such there is not much reason to keep the unearned gains tax free.
Consider that one George Osborne has just trousered £3.1m of gains for which he has not done an hour's work. Is it really unacceptable that that should only be say £2.5m of unearned gains after tax rather than £3.1m?
I think the strategic clincher is that the £25-30bn of lost tax due to the allowance is overwhelmingly handed to the wealthier people in the wealthier areas of the country.
How will that play in the Red Wall when pointed out, and perhaps combined with a more generous CGT Allowance or reintroduction of indexation?
Personally I would abolish it at a stroke, but perhaps an initial cut followed by death on the vine is an alternative.
I agree the case (CGT on homes) is good. There would be more winners than losers and by and large the losers can afford to lose and the winners need the win. But I sense the public can't be sold on it. Why? Because of how property ownership is perceived. "You work hard, pay your tax, scrimp and save instead of spending so you can buy a nice house for you and your family, and then the government is going to come along and take a big slice when you sell it? NFW!" This sentiment. It's the same reason that IHT is so hated. Just replace "sell it" with "die". I find this irrational and borderline selfish but I accept I'm in a minority.
Agree that the narrative is the rub.
Where the hell were you two when I needed you this morning?
Famously on here, many of those who clutched their pearls at the phrase Little Englander were perfectly happy to call French people Frogs.
Funny old world.
Not sure what your point is there. 'Frog' is a harmless informal word for any French person. 'Little Englander' is not a word denoting a person's nationality but a word describing specifically a narrow-minded English person, with the emphasis on the narrow-minded. There is no equivalence between them.
Yes, "Frog" was harmless in the 1970s in episodes of "Mind Your Language", but we have moved on.
Where are the re-runs of "Love Thy Neighbour" when one craves some xenophobic and racist comedy?
Where are these French people who are offended by the word Frog? I don't know any, and I have lived in France and spent a lot of time there. For that matter I don't know a single English person offended by the word Rosbif, which is exactly equivalent.
The indignation about totally harmless informal words is pure Guardianista offence-mining.
No offence taken. Frog is in exactly the same context as Rosbif. Until Mr Thompson's earlier intervention I had heard neither since 1974.
Yes, they are both old-fashioned. But words sometimes come back - I'm delighted that the splendid 'toff', which had all but died out, is now reinstated,
In the 1980s some French people called the English "les fuckings", because of our constant use of the F word. They've stopped doing it now, which is a shame, as it was quite funny
An oddity is the widespread use of The Hun, which is apparently down to Churchill's misconception that the Germans were somehow descended from Atilla.
It was a Great War term of opprobrium, was it not? I don't think it was solely down to WSC, though he may have perpetuated it ...
I think he preferred to call them the "Narrzees"
He wasn't uncritically anti-German. He seems to have laid much of the blame for German militarism on the Prussians.
Absolutely, which is why he preferred to refer to the evils of the "Narrzee Party" rather than refer to the Germans themselves, whom I think he otherwise quite admired.
Really. It's like the BBC is intent on self harm. Like it *wants* to get defunded.
Don't the stats show they are already more diverse than the country?
Not when it comes to diversity of thought . . .
I've thought for a while that the BBC was heading into trouble - its model is unsustainable in the era of streaming. For the first time, I think its demise will come quite soon, maybe in the next decade.
All the Tories have to do is decriminalise non-licence-fee-paying. Then that's it. Everything collapses. It is a perfectly legitimate move, on moral grounds, and it instantly demolishes an institution which is hellbent on annoying anyone remotely conservative.
Contrary to tabloid mythology, this is partly because the Conservatives of the late 1980s and early 1990s destroyed much that was conservative about the BBC. Sometimes patrician highbrow cultural values were replaced by a sort of revolutionary, commercially-focused managerialism, as in many parts of British life at the time.
Yes that's fair. The Reithian BBC, while a bit up itself, had a lot going for it. And it still managed to produce wildly popular TV at the same time
Now the BBC, as Philip Thompson points out, does a lot of things that lots of other companies do better - sometimes a LOT better - and they charge us a poll tax to churn out this mediocrity. It's pointless.
Look, I am on the Trump toast train but it is unarguable that more people are excited to vote FOR Trump than they are FOR Biden. True vastly more people are firm ion wanting to vote AGAINST Trump than Biden but the question that I don't think is answered is what is a better motivating force in a Presidential Election rather than a midterm
People did get excited to vote AGAINST Corbyn (correctly IMO). That is why we ended up with a clown for PM, rather than a terrorist sympathising Marxist. People preferred The Clown. Ridiculous was less frightening than dangerous.
I specifically interested in Presidential elections though. I think the evidence of US midterms is pretty clear that 'negative' enthusiasm is a huge driver of the vote. I think the Dems did well in2018 based on negative enthusiasm. But I am unsure that it is the key for Presidential elections.
Most people don't know much about the way barristers work, so it likely makes little sense. Even if you understand the point, it's a bit of a wishy-washy one, and certainly not something that's worth repeating.
Am I missing something?
The "More briefs than Calvin Klein" has a good ring. Missed the target nevertheless. Firstly, Starmer's job is to ask questions - the clue's in the PMQs title. Secondly, Starmer's rather clever question was "What would the PM say to those that have lost loved ones to the virus, to ensure lessons have been learnt?" This clearly prepared joke and attack on the LOTO comes across as crass and arrogant.
Johnson has a long history of tone-deaf "jokes" that are either at the expense of others or indifferent to their suffering. That part of our soul that most of us devote to our thoughts of others in him is a gaping hole that he fills with his own ego.
It's funny when his critics don't get that the 'jokes' aren't aimed at them. They just plough on regardless giving it even more publicity.
I don't care for Johnson but I recognise that he has a person that many like. However I'm not sure that his personna is the right one for the public mood during a national crisis. Making the highlight of his PMQ response a silly joke just underlines his lack of gravity to me.
I suspect that is why Starmer has made up so much ground on him personally since becoming LOTO. He clearly leads Johnson on almost every metric according to the last polling I saw. I expect that trend to continue.
I agree the case (CGT on homes) is good. There would be more winners than losers and by and large the losers can afford to lose and the winners need the win. But I sense the public can't be sold on it. Why? Because of how property ownership is perceived. "You work hard, pay your tax, scrimp and save instead of spending so you can buy a nice house for you and your family, and then the government is going to come along and take a big slice when you sell it? NFW!" This sentiment. It's the same reason that IHT is so hated. Just replace "sell it" with "die". I find this irrational and borderline selfish but I accept I'm in a minority.
You misunderstand the psychology. It's the arbitrary nature of it which would (rightly) be unpopular. Someone who moves house (or downsizes if you include roll-over relief) gets a £100K bill, someone who doesn't move house doesn't. Now of course many taxes are arbitrary - stamp duty is subject to the same criticism - but they aren't so draconian, amounting to confiscation, when the arbitrary axe falls. It's even more arbitrary if it's not index-linked.
If you try to design round this by making it index-linked and including 100% rollover relief, then it won't raise all that much and it will just be a tax and therefore a discouragement on downsizing, which (as @Philip_Thompson has pointed out) is the opposite of a good policy outcome.
Also in this discussion there has been an assumption that house prices always rise. Ain't so, as anyone who remembers the 1990s will testify. So would we also include a tax rebate if you make a capital loss?
Really. It's like the BBC is intent on self harm. Like it *wants* to get defunded.
Don't the stats show they are already more diverse than the country?
Not when it comes to diversity of thought . . .
I've thought for a while that the BBC was heading into trouble - its model is unsustainable in the era of streaming. For the first time, I think its demise will come quite soon, maybe in the next decade.
All the Tories have to do is decriminalise non-licence-fee-paying. Then that's it. Everything collapses. It is a perfectly legitimate move, on moral grounds, and it instantly demolishes an institution which is hellbent on annoying anyone remotely conservative.
Contrary to tabloid mythology, this is partly because the Conservatives of the late 1980s and early 1990s destroyed much that was conservative about the BBC. Sometimes patrician highbrow cultural values were replaced by a sort of revolutionary, commercially-focused managerialism, as in many parts of British life at the time.
They can't keep giving it away for free. It may be too late to go behind a paywall. Quite a dilemma
^They also cannot continue writing bullshit, they need to get real journalists doing real journalism, papers in UK are pathetic nowadays and their lies and guff are quickly shot to pieces on social media. Circling the drain is what they deserve.
Famously on here, many of those who clutched their pearls at the phrase Little Englander were perfectly happy to call French people Frogs.
Funny old world.
Not sure what your point is there. 'Frog' is a harmless informal word for any French person. 'Little Englander' is not a word denoting a person's nationality but a word describing specifically a narrow-minded English person, with the emphasis on the narrow-minded. There is no equivalence between them.
Yes, "Frog" was harmless in the 1970s in episodes of "Mind Your Language", but we have moved on.
Where are the re-runs of "Love Thy Neighbour" when one craves some xenophobic and racist comedy?
Where are these French people who are offended by the word Frog? I don't know any, and I have lived in France and spent a lot of time there. For that matter I don't know a single English person offended by the word Rosbif, which is exactly equivalent.
The indignation about totally harmless informal words is pure Guardianista offence-mining.
No offence taken. Frog is in exactly the same context as Rosbif. Until Mr Thompson's earlier intervention I had heard neither since 1974.
I hear Frogs every so often, but it is always used "ironically" - ie in a knowing, supposedly jocular way, by people well aware it is archaic.
Rugby fans use it quite a lot. I have a Welsh friend who takes great pleasure in "beating the Frogs, though not as much as beating the f*cking English." I tell him he's a Taff with an inferiority complex. Etc.
No one gets remotely offended.
You wouldn't just drop it into an otherwise sober internet post about the economy then? No. Clearly not. Which is why it jarred with me when somebody did.
Really. It's like the BBC is intent on self harm. Like it *wants* to get defunded.
Don't the stats show they are already more diverse than the country?
Not when it comes to diversity of thought . . .
I've thought for a while that the BBC was heading into trouble - its model is unsustainable in the era of streaming. For the first time, I think its demise will come quite soon, maybe in the next decade.
All the Tories have to do is decriminalise non-licence-fee-paying. Then that's it. Everything collapses. It is a perfectly legitimate move, on moral grounds, and it instantly demolishes an institution which is hellbent on annoying anyone remotely conservative.
Contrary to tabloid mythology, this is partly because the Conservatives of the late 1980s and early 1990s destroyed much that was conservative about the BBC. Sometimes patrician highbrow cultural values were replaced by a sort of revolutionary, commercially-focused managerialism, as in many parts of British life at the time.
Yes that's fair. The Reithian BBC, while a bit up itself, had a lot going for it. And it still managed to produce wildly popular TV at the same time
Now the BBC, as Philip Thompson points out, does a lot of things that lots of other companies do better - sometimes a LOT better - and they charge us a poll tax to churn out this mediocrity. It's pointless.
The weirdest thing is when they congratulate themselves for having the best ratings for things like the Queen's Speech, which is just a function of being Channel 1, not some expression of love for the BBC.
They can't keep giving it away for free. It may be too late to go behind a paywall. Quite a dilemma
^They also cannot continue writing bullshit, they need to get real journalists doing real journalism, papers in UK are pathetic nowadays and their lies and guff are quickly shot to pieces on social media. Circling the drain is what they deserve.
I can't afford to support the Guardian with a subscription. Sorry.
"Professor Stephen Holgate FMedSci, a respiratory specialist from University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust, who chaired the report, said: “This is not a prediction, but it is a possibility. The modelling suggests that deaths could be higher with a new wave of COVID-19 this winter, but the risk of this happening could be reduced if we take action immediately.”
“With relatively low numbers of COVID-19 cases at the moment, this is a critical window of opportunity to help us prepare for the worst that winter can throw at us.”
An advisory group of 37 experts were rapidly assembled to create the report following a request by the Government’s Chief Scientific Advisor. The report was guided by a patient and carer reference group that provided information and advice on the key issues for those who would be most affected by a bad winter."
It does seem odd for a government to commission a report of "nonsense".
I note the 120 000 second wave deaths has Confidence Intervals of 25 000-250 000, and is only hospital deaths, not community and nursing homes. It is based on an r value sticking at 1.7. The whole point is to forecast what happens without planning to mitigate.
So what are the chances of us not planning to mitigate? Thats why its nonsense, its produced a prediction on something that will never happen. Its like producing a report stating that if you don't look before you cross the road the chances of you dying are higher than if you do look.
I'm frequently involved in writing reports that present a realistic worst case. The point is to provide a framework in which to determine the potential value of mitigation efforts.
If this report came back with a worst case of 500 deaths, then probably no mitigations would be worth considering, certainly nothing with high cost. This report suggests that actually a lot of mitigations are worth considering, up to potentially quite high costs (exactly what costs are a political decision).
This also enables answering questions like do we need to set aside extra mortuary space, burial facilities, do we need to keep Nightingale hospitals online, do we need to train more medics/buy more PPE/more ventilators? All valuable things.
Fair enough but it just allowed the despicable media to start on the scare stories again. Context is everything and unfortunately Joe and Joanna public don't tend to due nuance.
I agree the case (CGT on homes) is good. There would be more winners than losers and by and large the losers can afford to lose and the winners need the win. But I sense the public can't be sold on it. Why? Because of how property ownership is perceived. "You work hard, pay your tax, scrimp and save instead of spending so you can buy a nice house for you and your family, and then the government is going to come along and take a big slice when you sell it? NFW!" This sentiment. It's the same reason that IHT is so hated. Just replace "sell it" with "die". I find this irrational and borderline selfish but I accept I'm in a minority.
You misunderstand the psychology. It's the arbitrary nature of it which would (rightly) be unpopular. Someone who moves house (or downsizes if you include roll-over relief) gets a £100K bill, someone who doesn't move house doesn't. Now of course many taxes are arbitrary - stamp duty is subject to the same criticism - but they aren't so draconian, amounting to confiscation, when the arbitrary axe falls. It's even more arbitrary if it's not index-linked.
If you try to design round this by making it index-linked and including 100% rollover relief, then it won't raise all that much and it will just be a tax and therefore a discouragement on downsizing, which (as @Philip_Thompson has pointed out) is the opposite of a good policy outcome.
Also in this discussion there has been an assumption that house prices always rise. Ain't so, as anyone who remembers the 1990s will testify. So would we also include a tax rebate if you make a capital loss?
Not convinced by the idea but the issue with losses is already sensibly covered by the current system, you dont get a rebate, but you can use it to offset against other gains.
Really. It's like the BBC is intent on self harm. Like it *wants* to get defunded.
Don't the stats show they are already more diverse than the country?
Not when it comes to diversity of thought . . .
I've thought for a while that the BBC was heading into trouble - its model is unsustainable in the era of streaming. For the first time, I think its demise will come quite soon, maybe in the next decade.
All the Tories have to do is decriminalise non-licence-fee-paying. Then that's it. Everything collapses. It is a perfectly legitimate move, on moral grounds, and it instantly demolishes an institution which is hellbent on annoying anyone remotely conservative.
Yes, it's so annoying to conservatives. When I lie awake every night listening to the National Anthem at 1am as BBC R4 closes, and then think ahead to the next episode of Antiques Roadshow, and all the other really subversive left-wing stuff on the BBC.
In reality, the bulk of the BBC's output remains conservative with a small c, with a few bits of more radical, challenging programming. But I really don't get this notion that the BBC is a hotbed of lefties.
Not convinced by the idea but the issue with losses is already sensibly covered by the current system, you dont get a rebate, but you can use it to offset against other gains.
But if you're downsizing to retire, you'll have no future gains to offset it against - and it's your only asset in most cases. How is that fair or sensible?
I agree the case (CGT on homes) is good. There would be more winners than losers and by and large the losers can afford to lose and the winners need the win. But I sense the public can't be sold on it. Why? Because of how property ownership is perceived. "You work hard, pay your tax, scrimp and save instead of spending so you can buy a nice house for you and your family, and then the government is going to come along and take a big slice when you sell it? NFW!" This sentiment. It's the same reason that IHT is so hated. Just replace "sell it" with "die". I find this irrational and borderline selfish but I accept I'm in a minority.
You misunderstand the psychology. It's the arbitrary nature of it which would (rightly) be unpopular. Someone who moves house (or downsizes if you include roll-over relief) gets a £100K bill, someone who doesn't move house doesn't. Now of course many taxes are arbitrary - stamp duty is subject to the same criticism - but they aren't so draconian, amounting to confiscation, when the arbitrary axe falls. It's even more arbitrary if it's not index-linked.
If you try to design round this by making it index-linked and including 100% rollover relief, then it won't raise all that much and it will just be a tax and therefore a discouragement on downsizing, which (as @Philip_Thompson has pointed out) is the opposite of a good policy outcome.
Also in this discussion there has been an assumption that house prices always rise. Ain't so, as anyone who remembers the 1990s will testify. So would we also include a tax rebate if you make a capital loss?
I would at least want the carry forwards of capital losses to offset gains made in future years.
Are the last two days reliable? It looks like an implausibly sudden drop in Leicester and the other hotspots.
I'm pretty sure that the case data usually take a few days to update, which makes something of a mockery of this table. It would be more useful if the colour code boundaries were adjusted according to the average percentage of data recorded by a particular time.
Really. It's like the BBC is intent on self harm. Like it *wants* to get defunded.
Don't the stats show they are already more diverse than the country?
Not when it comes to diversity of thought . . .
I've thought for a while that the BBC was heading into trouble - its model is unsustainable in the era of streaming. For the first time, I think its demise will come quite soon, maybe in the next decade.
All the Tories have to do is decriminalise non-licence-fee-paying. Then that's it. Everything collapses. It is a perfectly legitimate move, on moral grounds, and it instantly demolishes an institution which is hellbent on annoying anyone remotely conservative.
Yes, it's so annoying to conservatives. When I lie awake every night listening to the National Anthem at 1am as BBC R4 closes, and then think ahead to the next episode of Antiques Roadshow, and all the other really subversive left-wing stuff on the BBC.
In reality, the bulk of the BBC's output remains conservative with a small c, with a few bits of more radical, challenging programming. But I really don't get this notion that the BBC is a hotbed of lefties.
It is surprising how many of these left- wing-firebrands from BBC News try their hand at politics, becoming candidates and MPs for...the Conservative Party!
Famously on here, many of those who clutched their pearls at the phrase Little Englander were perfectly happy to call French people Frogs.
Funny old world.
Not sure what your point is there. 'Frog' is a harmless informal word for any French person. 'Little Englander' is not a word denoting a person's nationality but a word describing specifically a narrow-minded English person, with the emphasis on the narrow-minded. There is no equivalence between them.
Yes, "Frog" was harmless in the 1970s in episodes of "Mind Your Language", but we have moved on.
Where are the re-runs of "Love Thy Neighbour" when one craves some xenophobic and racist comedy?
Where are these French people who are offended by the word Frog? I don't know any, and I have lived in France and spent a lot of time there. For that matter I don't know a single English person offended by the word Rosbif, which is exactly equivalent.
The indignation about totally harmless informal words is pure Guardianista offence-mining.
There's no indignation, Richard. It's more a style & taste matter. If you're reading a post by somebody active and well-respected on here about the economy - a serious post - do you expect to suddenly come across "the Frogs" or "the Krauts" in reference to France and Germany respectively? You don't. You just don't. So all I did was mention it in a benign "quality control" spirit.
Really. It's like the BBC is intent on self harm. Like it *wants* to get defunded.
Don't the stats show they are already more diverse than the country?
Not when it comes to diversity of thought . . .
I've thought for a while that the BBC was heading into trouble - its model is unsustainable in the era of streaming. For the first time, I think its demise will come quite soon, maybe in the next decade.
All the Tories have to do is decriminalise non-licence-fee-paying. Then that's it. Everything collapses. It is a perfectly legitimate move, on moral grounds, and it instantly demolishes an institution which is hellbent on annoying anyone remotely conservative.
Yes, it's so annoying to conservatives. When I lie awake every night listening to the National Anthem at 1am as BBC R4 closes, and then think ahead to the next episode of Antiques Roadshow, and all the other really subversive left-wing stuff on the BBC.
In reality, the bulk of the BBC's output remains conservative with a small c, with a few bits of more radical, challenging programming. But I really don't get this notion that the BBC is a hotbed of lefties.
I agree the case (CGT on homes) is good. There would be more winners than losers and by and large the losers can afford to lose and the winners need the win. But I sense the public can't be sold on it. Why? Because of how property ownership is perceived. "You work hard, pay your tax, scrimp and save instead of spending so you can buy a nice house for you and your family, and then the government is going to come along and take a big slice when you sell it? NFW!" This sentiment. It's the same reason that IHT is so hated. Just replace "sell it" with "die". I find this irrational and borderline selfish but I accept I'm in a minority.
You misunderstand the psychology. It's the arbitrary nature of it which would (rightly) be unpopular. Someone who moves house (or downsizes if you include roll-over relief) gets a £100K bill, someone who doesn't move house doesn't. Now of course many taxes are arbitrary - stamp duty is subject to the same criticism - but they aren't so draconian, amounting to confiscation, when the arbitrary axe falls. It's even more arbitrary if it's not index-linked.
If you try to design round this by making it index-linked and including 100% rollover relief, then it won't raise all that much and it will just be a tax and therefore a discouragement on downsizing, which (as @Philip_Thompson has pointed out) is the opposite of a good policy outcome.
Also in this discussion there has been an assumption that house prices always rise. Ain't so, as anyone who remembers the 1990s will testify. So would we also include a tax rebate if you make a capital loss?
As I said this morning - if you are looking at a land value tax (say on top of council tax) the very first thing you would do is hint that CGT tax is coming to primary residences.
Then when you replace the idea with a land value tax 0.3% a year looks a lot better than 30% on sale.
They can't keep giving it away for free. It may be too late to go behind a paywall. Quite a dilemma
^They also cannot continue writing bullshit, they need to get real journalists doing real journalism, papers in UK are pathetic nowadays and their lies and guff are quickly shot to pieces on social media. Circling the drain is what they deserve.
I can't afford to support the Guardian with a subscription. Sorry.
No one is going to subscribe, to get content they can have for free, during a hideous economic crisis with millions unemployed.
The pandemic has just demolished the Guardian's model. The more I think about it, the worse it is for them. They have made this their USP: "content is free". Moving to a paywall would look hypocritical, and, more importantly, probably won't work now anyway, as they are doing it so late in the day. They have to build a paywall from the ground up, during a Depression?
Also, a paywall would make their journalism way less visible. And they'd lose millions of visitors.
I agree the case (CGT on homes) is good. There would be more winners than losers and by and large the losers can afford to lose and the winners need the win. But I sense the public can't be sold on it. Why? Because of how property ownership is perceived. "You work hard, pay your tax, scrimp and save instead of spending so you can buy a nice house for you and your family, and then the government is going to come along and take a big slice when you sell it? NFW!" This sentiment. It's the same reason that IHT is so hated. Just replace "sell it" with "die". I find this irrational and borderline selfish but I accept I'm in a minority.
You misunderstand the psychology. It's the arbitrary nature of it which would (rightly) be unpopular. Someone who moves house (or downsizes if you include roll-over relief) gets a £100K bill, someone who doesn't move house doesn't. Now of course many taxes are arbitrary - stamp duty is subject to the same criticism - but they aren't so draconian, amounting to confiscation, when the arbitrary axe falls. It's even more arbitrary if it's not index-linked.
If you try to design round this by making it index-linked and including 100% rollover relief, then it won't raise all that much and it will just be a tax and therefore a discouragement on downsizing, which (as @Philip_Thompson has pointed out) is the opposite of a good policy outcome.
Also in this discussion there has been an assumption that house prices always rise. Ain't so, as anyone who remembers the 1990s will testify. So would we also include a tax rebate if you make a capital loss?
I would at least want the carry forwards of capital losses to offset gains made in future years.
That would be perfectly consistent with the rest of the tax system.
Not convinced by the idea but the issue with losses is already sensibly covered by the current system, you dont get a rebate, but you can use it to offset against other gains.
But if you're downsizing to retire, you'll have no future gains to offset it against - and it's your only asset in most cases. How is that fair or sensible?
Well if you are downsizing it is no longer your only asset class, you will own cash which you should be investing back into the economy, and with average luck and risks taken will often lead to future cgt.
Famously on here, many of those who clutched their pearls at the phrase Little Englander were perfectly happy to call French people Frogs.
Funny old world.
Not sure what your point is there. 'Frog' is a harmless informal word for any French person. 'Little Englander' is not a word denoting a person's nationality but a word describing specifically a narrow-minded English person, with the emphasis on the narrow-minded. There is no equivalence between them.
Yes, "Frog" was harmless in the 1970s in episodes of "Mind Your Language", but we have moved on.
Where are the re-runs of "Love Thy Neighbour" when one craves some xenophobic and racist comedy?
Where are these French people who are offended by the word Frog? I don't know any, and I have lived in France and spent a lot of time there. For that matter I don't know a single English person offended by the word Rosbif, which is exactly equivalent.
The indignation about totally harmless informal words is pure Guardianista offence-mining.
If you're reading a post by somebody active and well-respected on here about the economy - a serious post -
I don't know, this premise is already looking shakey to me. Active, well-respected and serious? We're only human.
Was surprised to see the PM is only 5 foot 9. He always gives the impression of being a big, strapping bloke.
Muscular even..
While one pound of fat and lean muscle weigh the same, their composition varies immensely. Muscle is much denser than fat, which means muscle occupies less space (volume) in the body compared to fat. Muscle has a leaner appearance due to its high density whereas fat occupies more space (volume) in the body.
Hence why a shortish heavy bloke can look pretty damn good. . So it's possible. It's just possible.
Except that in reality Johnson is just an unfit blubbery shortarse.
This is certainly emerging as the consensus position - but beware groupthink.
Famously on here, many of those who clutched their pearls at the phrase Little Englander were perfectly happy to call French people Frogs.
Funny old world.
Not sure what your point is there. 'Frog' is a harmless informal word for any French person. 'Little Englander' is not a word denoting a person's nationality but a word describing specifically a narrow-minded English person, with the emphasis on the narrow-minded. There is no equivalence between them.
Yes, "Frog" was harmless in the 1970s in episodes of "Mind Your Language", but we have moved on.
Where are the re-runs of "Love Thy Neighbour" when one craves some xenophobic and racist comedy?
Where are these French people who are offended by the word Frog? I don't know any, and I have lived in France and spent a lot of time there. For that matter I don't know a single English person offended by the word Rosbif, which is exactly equivalent.
The indignation about totally harmless informal words is pure Guardianista offence-mining.
No offence taken. Frog is in exactly the same context as Rosbif. Until Mr Thompson's earlier intervention I had heard neither since 1974.
Yes, they are both old-fashioned. But words sometimes come back - I'm delighted that the splendid 'toff', which had all but died out, is now reinstated,
In the 1980s some French people called the English "les fuckings", because of our constant use of the F word. They've stopped doing it now, which is a shame, as it was quite funny
An oddity is the widespread use of The Hun, which is apparently down to Churchill's misconception that the Germans were somehow descended from Atilla.
It was a Great War term of opprobrium, was it not? I don't think it was solely down to WSC, though he may have perpetuated it ...
I think he preferred to call them the "Narrzees"
He wasn't uncritically anti-German. He seems to have laid much of the blame for German militarism on the Prussians.
Absolutely, which is why he preferred to refer to the evils of the "Narrzee Party" rather than refer to the Germans themselves, whom I think he otherwise quite admired.
There's also a reference in the "some chicken..." speech: "The tide has turned against the Hun..."
Just a name for the Germans at war, as opposed to Germans, I suspect.
Really. It's like the BBC is intent on self harm. Like it *wants* to get defunded.
Don't the stats show they are already more diverse than the country?
Not when it comes to diversity of thought . . .
I've thought for a while that the BBC was heading into trouble - its model is unsustainable in the era of streaming. For the first time, I think its demise will come quite soon, maybe in the next decade.
All the Tories have to do is decriminalise non-licence-fee-paying. Then that's it. Everything collapses. It is a perfectly legitimate move, on moral grounds, and it instantly demolishes an institution which is hellbent on annoying anyone remotely conservative.
Yes, it's so annoying to conservatives. When I lie awake every night listening to the National Anthem at 1am as BBC R4 closes, and then think ahead to the next episode of Antiques Roadshow, and all the other really subversive left-wing stuff on the BBC.
In reality, the bulk of the BBC's output remains conservative with a small c, with a few bits of more radical, challenging programming. But I really don't get this notion that the BBC is a hotbed of lefties.
It is surprising how many of these left- wing-firebrands from BBC News try their hand at politics, becoming candidates and MPs for...the Conservative Party!
BBC News has moved to the right on economo-political issues, and to the left on identity and representation issues. The non-news output is dominated nowadays by a commercial mindset, rather than the combined patrician and radical one of the BBC in arguably its most creative period.
Are the last two days reliable? It looks like an implausibly sudden drop in Leicester and the other hotspots.
I'm pretty sure that the case data usually take a few days to update, which makes something of a mockery of this table. It would be more useful if the colour code boundaries were adjusted according to the average percentage of data recorded by a particular time.
With cases, most of the data is reported by the time 3 days have gone past - note that this is the publication date of the data, not the date at which PHE and other have and start using the data.
So the last 2 columns are just there for completeness.
They can't keep giving it away for free. It may be too late to go behind a paywall. Quite a dilemma
Newspapers are so bloody expensive. I really enjoy what I read in the FT, but they want £33 a month and I can get a fair bit of it from their Twitter feed.
As I said this morning - if you are looking at a land value tax (say on top of council tax) the very first thing you would do is hint that CGT tax is coming to primary residences.
Then when you replace the idea with a land value tax 0.3% a year looks a lot better than 30% on sale.
You might be right, although it would require a degree of disciplined media planning and controlled messaging not obviously characteristic of this government.
As many of you know, I started an auto insurance company in Arizona. It's different from most insurers in that it is pure "pay per mile" (and it's liability / third party only for now). This means we get pretty good data on how much people are driving.
In March, when there was a full lockdown, our customers drove about 480 miles. In April, 550. In June almost 600. This month, as Arizona has de facto locked down again, we might be below March's number - it could be as little as 450. Now, this is one state, and our sample size is small, and schools are now closed for the summer, and July 4 was a public holiday weekend. But miles driven are probably a fairly good proxy for economic activity. And the message from July is that - in Arizona at least - economic activity has come crashing back down again.
(Oh yeah - please watch the explainer video, and share and click like. Thank you!)
This response seems to confirm that the UK is right to kick out Huawei. Why should we deeply enmesh ourselves to people that threaten such retaliation?
They can't keep giving it away for free. It may be too late to go behind a paywall. Quite a dilemma
Newspapers are so bloody expensive. I really enjoy what I read in the FT, but they want £33 a month and I can get a fair bit of it from their Twitter feed.
They can't keep giving it away for free. It may be too late to go behind a paywall. Quite a dilemma
They made an operating profit last year. Cutting advertising staff and their events business makes sense given the pandemic. They are less dependent on physical sales than other papers I think.
What will be key I suspect is how well their voluntary contributions hold up vs other companies compulsory charges.
Really. It's like the BBC is intent on self harm. Like it *wants* to get defunded.
Don't the stats show they are already more diverse than the country?
Not when it comes to diversity of thought . . .
I've thought for a while that the BBC was heading into trouble - its model is unsustainable in the era of streaming. For the first time, I think its demise will come quite soon, maybe in the next decade.
All the Tories have to do is decriminalise non-licence-fee-paying. Then that's it. Everything collapses. It is a perfectly legitimate move, on moral grounds, and it instantly demolishes an institution which is hellbent on annoying anyone remotely conservative.
Yes, it's so annoying to conservatives. When I lie awake every night listening to the National Anthem at 1am as BBC R4 closes, and then think ahead to the next episode of Antiques Roadshow, and all the other really subversive left-wing stuff on the BBC.
In reality, the bulk of the BBC's output remains conservative with a small c, with a few bits of more radical, challenging programming. But I really don't get this notion that the BBC is a hotbed of lefties.
I know lots of people who work for the BBC. Every single one is left of centre. Some are very left of centre. Denying this is futile.
And this was fine when the leftiness didn't intrude into the programming too much, and they had a bit of obviously rightwing/conservative stuff to balance it - eg Clarkson.
But now the balance has gone and the Wokeism is becoming painfully obvious and intrusive - another £100m to make it *even more diverse*? Really?
This response seems to confirm that the UK is right to kick out Huawei. Why should we deeply enmesh ourselves to people that threaten such retaliation?
It is surprising how many of these left- wing-firebrands from BBC News try their hand at politics, becoming candidates and MPs for...the Conservative Party!
Famously on here, many of those who clutched their pearls at the phrase Little Englander were perfectly happy to call French people Frogs.
Funny old world.
Not sure what your point is there. 'Frog' is a harmless informal word for any French person. 'Little Englander' is not a word denoting a person's nationality but a word describing specifically a narrow-minded English person, with the emphasis on the narrow-minded. There is no equivalence between them.
Yes, "Frog" was harmless in the 1970s in episodes of "Mind Your Language", but we have moved on.
Where are the re-runs of "Love Thy Neighbour" when one craves some xenophobic and racist comedy?
Where are these French people who are offended by the word Frog? I don't know any, and I have lived in France and spent a lot of time there. For that matter I don't know a single English person offended by the word Rosbif, which is exactly equivalent.
The indignation about totally harmless informal words is pure Guardianista offence-mining.
There's no indignation, Richard. It's more a style & taste matter. If you're reading a post by somebody active and well-respected on here about the economy - a serious post - do you expect to suddenly come across "the Frogs" or "the Krauts" in reference to France and Germany respectively? You don't. You just don't. So all I did was mention it in a benign "quality control" spirit.
Not a big deal.
Isn't this really about the people who use the word 'frog', rather than the word itself? Those who use it nowadays tend to be the same people who use the word 'kraut' - i.e. they use it in a derogatory, belittling, superior fashion, rather than as a humorous, kind Kiwi or Pommie-type nomenclature. I'll bet Mr Farage calls the French 'frogs', for example.
Are the last two days reliable? It looks like an implausibly sudden drop in Leicester and the other hotspots.
I'm pretty sure that the case data usually take a few days to update, which makes something of a mockery of this table. It would be more useful if the colour code boundaries were adjusted according to the average percentage of data recorded by a particular time.
With cases, most of the data is reported by the time 3 days have gone past - note that this is the publication date of the data, not the date at which PHE and other have and start using the data.
So the last 2 columns are just there for completeness.
To be clear, is the third from last column reasonably solid?
Was surprised to see the PM is only 5 foot 9. He always gives the impression of being a big, strapping bloke.
Muscular even..
While one pound of fat and lean muscle weigh the same, their composition varies immensely. Muscle is much denser than fat, which means muscle occupies less space (volume) in the body compared to fat. Muscle has a leaner appearance due to its high density whereas fat occupies more space (volume) in the body.
Hence why a shortish heavy bloke can look pretty damn good. . So it's possible. It's just possible.
Except that in reality Johnson is just an unfit blubbery shortarse.
They can't keep giving it away for free. It may be too late to go behind a paywall. Quite a dilemma
They made an operating profit last year. Cutting advertising staff and their events business makes sense given the pandemic. They are less dependent on physical sales than other papers I think.
What will be key I suspect is how well their voluntary contributions hold up vs other companies compulsory charges.
Well that's it, I think. The voluntary stuff is surely collapsing. Everyone is hoarding money. Their model is shot unless we bounce back quickly.
If you go online you can find lots of people saying they are refusing to contribute - despite being Guardian readers - because the Guardian is "transphobic", or because it "hates Corbyn". Others are saying the opposite, it's too Woke or they abhor Owen Jones.
Really. It's like the BBC is intent on self harm. Like it *wants* to get defunded.
Don't the stats show they are already more diverse than the country?
Not when it comes to diversity of thought . . .
I've thought for a while that the BBC was heading into trouble - its model is unsustainable in the era of streaming. For the first time, I think its demise will come quite soon, maybe in the next decade.
All the Tories have to do is decriminalise non-licence-fee-paying. Then that's it. Everything collapses. It is a perfectly legitimate move, on moral grounds, and it instantly demolishes an institution which is hellbent on annoying anyone remotely conservative.
Yes, it's so annoying to conservatives. When I lie awake every night listening to the National Anthem at 1am as BBC R4 closes, and then think ahead to the next episode of Antiques Roadshow, and all the other really subversive left-wing stuff on the BBC.
In reality, the bulk of the BBC's output remains conservative with a small c, with a few bits of more radical, challenging programming. But I really don't get this notion that the BBC is a hotbed of lefties.
That's because you are one...
No, I'm not a hotbed of lefties. Just one. But you beat me hands down on dumb partisanship every day.
I agree the case (CGT on homes) is good. There would be more winners than losers and by and large the losers can afford to lose and the winners need the win. But I sense the public can't be sold on it. Why? Because of how property ownership is perceived. "You work hard, pay your tax, scrimp and save instead of spending so you can buy a nice house for you and your family, and then the government is going to come along and take a big slice when you sell it? NFW!" This sentiment. It's the same reason that IHT is so hated. Just replace "sell it" with "die". I find this irrational and borderline selfish but I accept I'm in a minority.
You misunderstand the psychology. It's the arbitrary nature of it which would (rightly) be unpopular. Someone who moves house (or downsizes if you include roll-over relief) gets a £100K bill, someone who doesn't move house doesn't. Now of course many taxes are arbitrary - stamp duty is subject to the same criticism - but they aren't so draconian, amounting to confiscation, when the arbitrary axe falls. It's even more arbitrary if it's not index-linked.
If you try to design round this by making it index-linked and including 100% rollover relief, then it won't raise all that much and it will just be a tax and therefore a discouragement on downsizing, which (as @Philip_Thompson has pointed out) is the opposite of a good policy outcome.
Also in this discussion there has been an assumption that house prices always rise. Ain't so, as anyone who remembers the 1990s will testify. So would we also include a tax rebate if you make a capital loss?
I don't really see how a rate of say 15% or 20% can be termed "confiscation".
Yes, I think I would concur on integration into the more general CGT regime - though it gets messy for long-term held properties.
Are the last two days reliable? It looks like an implausibly sudden drop in Leicester and the other hotspots.
I'm pretty sure that the case data usually take a few days to update, which makes something of a mockery of this table. It would be more useful if the colour code boundaries were adjusted according to the average percentage of data recorded by a particular time.
With cases, most of the data is reported by the time 3 days have gone past - note that this is the publication date of the data, not the date at which PHE and other have and start using the data.
So the last 2 columns are just there for completeness.
To be clear, is the third from last column reasonably solid?
Not convinced by the idea but the issue with losses is already sensibly covered by the current system, you dont get a rebate, but you can use it to offset against other gains.
But if you're downsizing to retire, you'll have no future gains to offset it against - and it's your only asset in most cases. How is that fair or sensible?
It isn't.
If we are going to have a property tax, why not one based on planning? The planners arbitrarily increase the value of land without the government taking any of the profits.
It should be payable after a reasonable period to allow for development to take place.
I know this has been mooted before. I don't suppose it would bring in as much money though.
This response seems to confirm that the UK is right to kick out Huawei. Why should we deeply enmesh ourselves to people that threaten such retaliation?
It is surprising how many of these left- wing-firebrands from BBC News try their hand at politics, becoming candidates and MPs for...the Conservative Party!
Care to name some please?>>
Guto Harry, Evan Davis, Andrew Neil, James Harding, Robin Oakley - these are all part of one of the revolving doors, between the BBC and Tory media jobs.
That's BBC News' turn to the right on economic and related issues, and another tranche of staff represent its turn more to the left on identity and cultural issues.
Really. It's like the BBC is intent on self harm. Like it *wants* to get defunded.
Don't the stats show they are already more diverse than the country?
Not when it comes to diversity of thought . . .
I've thought for a while that the BBC was heading into trouble - its model is unsustainable in the era of streaming. For the first time, I think its demise will come quite soon, maybe in the next decade.
All the Tories have to do is decriminalise non-licence-fee-paying. Then that's it. Everything collapses. It is a perfectly legitimate move, on moral grounds, and it instantly demolishes an institution which is hellbent on annoying anyone remotely conservative.
Yes, it's so annoying to conservatives. When I lie awake every night listening to the National Anthem at 1am as BBC R4 closes, and then think ahead to the next episode of Antiques Roadshow, and all the other really subversive left-wing stuff on the BBC.
In reality, the bulk of the BBC's output remains conservative with a small c, with a few bits of more radical, challenging programming. But I really don't get this notion that the BBC is a hotbed of lefties.
I know lots of people who work for the BBC. Every single one is left of centre. Some are very left of centre. Denying this is futile.
And this was fine when the leftiness didn't intrude into the programming too much, and they had a bit of obviously rightwing/conservative stuff to balance it - eg Clarkson.
But now the balance has gone and the Wokeism is becoming painfully obvious and intrusive - another £100m to make it *even more diverse*? Really?
Don't forget that is £100m that only exists because from August 1st over 75's have to pay for a TV license...
Famously on here, many of those who clutched their pearls at the phrase Little Englander were perfectly happy to call French people Frogs.
Funny old world.
Not sure what your point is there. 'Frog' is a harmless informal word for any French person. 'Little Englander' is not a word denoting a person's nationality but a word describing specifically a narrow-minded English person, with the emphasis on the narrow-minded. There is no equivalence between them.
Yes, "Frog" was harmless in the 1970s in episodes of "Mind Your Language", but we have moved on.
Where are the re-runs of "Love Thy Neighbour" when one craves some xenophobic and racist comedy?
Where are these French people who are offended by the word Frog? I don't know any, and I have lived in France and spent a lot of time there. For that matter I don't know a single English person offended by the word Rosbif, which is exactly equivalent.
The indignation about totally harmless informal words is pure Guardianista offence-mining.
There's no indignation, Richard. It's more a style & taste matter. If you're reading a post by somebody active and well-respected on here about the economy - a serious post - do you expect to suddenly come across "the Frogs" or "the Krauts" in reference to France and Germany respectively? You don't. You just don't. So all I did was mention it in a benign "quality control" spirit.
Not a big deal.
Isn't this really about the people who use the word 'frog', rather than the word itself? Those who use it nowadays tend to be the same people who use the word 'kraut' - i.e. they use it in a derogatory, belittling, superior fashion, rather than as a humorous, kind Kiwi or Pommie-type nomenclature. I'll bet Mr Farage calls the French 'frogs', for example.
I don't think so, in my experience its normally used as friendly banter, no different to Pommie or being called a Scouser or other things.
Really. It's like the BBC is intent on self harm. Like it *wants* to get defunded.
Don't the stats show they are already more diverse than the country?
Not when it comes to diversity of thought . . .
I've thought for a while that the BBC was heading into trouble - its model is unsustainable in the era of streaming. For the first time, I think its demise will come quite soon, maybe in the next decade.
All the Tories have to do is decriminalise non-licence-fee-paying. Then that's it. Everything collapses. It is a perfectly legitimate move, on moral grounds, and it instantly demolishes an institution which is hellbent on annoying anyone remotely conservative.
Yes, it's so annoying to conservatives. When I lie awake every night listening to the National Anthem at 1am as BBC R4 closes, and then think ahead to the next episode of Antiques Roadshow, and all the other really subversive left-wing stuff on the BBC.
In reality, the bulk of the BBC's output remains conservative with a small c, with a few bits of more radical, challenging programming. But I really don't get this notion that the BBC is a hotbed of lefties.
I know lots of people who work for the BBC. Every single one is left of centre. Some are very left of centre. Denying this is futile.
And this was fine when the leftiness didn't intrude into the programming too much, and they had a bit of obviously rightwing/conservative stuff to balance it - eg Clarkson.
But now the balance has gone and the Wokeism is becoming painfully obvious and intrusive - another £100m to make it *even more diverse*? Really?
Are the last two days reliable? It looks like an implausibly sudden drop in Leicester and the other hotspots.
I'm pretty sure that the case data usually take a few days to update, which makes something of a mockery of this table. It would be more useful if the colour code boundaries were adjusted according to the average percentage of data recorded by a particular time.
With cases, most of the data is reported by the time 3 days have gone past - note that this is the publication date of the data, not the date at which PHE and other have and start using the data.
So the last 2 columns are just there for completeness.
To be clear, is the third from last column reasonably solid?
This response seems to confirm that the UK is right to kick out Huawei. Why should we deeply enmesh ourselves to people that threaten such retaliation?
The positive data test results clearly shows that Covid is disappearing fast in the UK.
On the Construction economic front, the work continues to flow in. We have a bigger order book than we have ever had, and the work just keeps coming. We will need to employ at least 10 new engineers over the next couple of weeks. The problem is there aren't any available.
I agree the case (CGT on homes) is good. There would be more winners than losers and by and large the losers can afford to lose and the winners need the win. But I sense the public can't be sold on it. Why? Because of how property ownership is perceived. "You work hard, pay your tax, scrimp and save instead of spending so you can buy a nice house for you and your family, and then the government is going to come along and take a big slice when you sell it? NFW!" This sentiment. It's the same reason that IHT is so hated. Just replace "sell it" with "die". I find this irrational and borderline selfish but I accept I'm in a minority.
You misunderstand the psychology. It's the arbitrary nature of it which would (rightly) be unpopular. Someone who moves house (or downsizes if you include roll-over relief) gets a £100K bill, someone who doesn't move house doesn't. Now of course many taxes are arbitrary - stamp duty is subject to the same criticism - but they aren't so draconian, amounting to confiscation, when the arbitrary axe falls. It's even more arbitrary if it's not index-linked.
If you try to design round this by making it index-linked and including 100% rollover relief, then it won't raise all that much and it will just be a tax and therefore a discouragement on downsizing, which (as @Philip_Thompson has pointed out) is the opposite of a good policy outcome.
Also in this discussion there has been an assumption that house prices always rise. Ain't so, as anyone who remembers the 1990s will testify. So would we also include a tax rebate if you make a capital loss?
As I said this morning - if you are looking at a land value tax (say on top of council tax) the very first thing you would do is hint that CGT tax is coming to primary residences.
Then when you replace the idea with a land value tax 0.3% a year looks a lot better than 30% on sale.
Are the Govt hinting at the idea? It was me that floated it this morning (for my sins). If the Govt are as well I was unaware (Great minds or should that be idiots think alike)
It is surprising how many of these left- wing-firebrands from BBC News try their hand at politics, becoming candidates and MPs for...the Conservative Party!
Care to name some please?>>
Guto Harry, Evan Davis, Andrew Neil, James Harding, Robin Oakley - these are all part of one of the revolving doors, between the BBC and Tory media jobs.
That's BBC News' turn to the right on economic and related issues, and another tranche of staff represent its turn more to the left on identity and cultural issues.
It is surprising how many of these left- wing-firebrands from BBC News try their hand at politics, becoming candidates and MPs for...the Conservative Party!
Care to name some please?>>
Guto Harry, Evan Davis, Andrew Neil, James Harding, Robin Oakley - these are all part of one of the revolving doors, between the BBC and Tory media jobs.
That's BBC News' turn to the right on economic and related issues, and another tranche of staff represent its turn more to the left on identity and cultural issues.
Candidates and MP's? All of those?
No, but I did mention revolving doors rather than candidates, though.
It is surprising how many of these left- wing-firebrands from BBC News try their hand at politics, becoming candidates and MPs for...the Conservative Party!
Care to name some please?>>
Guto Harry, Evan Davis, Andrew Neil, James Harding, Robin Oakley - these are all part of one of the revolving doors, between the BBC and Tory media jobs.
That's BBC News' turn to the right on economic and related issues, and another tranche of staff represent its turn more to the left on identity and cultural issues.
You missed out Craig Oliver, and there are a few regional news reporters from the South east and East Anglia, who have tried their hand too. Can't remember names.
It is surprising how many of these left- wing-firebrands from BBC News try their hand at politics, becoming candidates and MPs for...the Conservative Party!
Care to name some please?
Ruth Davidson, Michael Gove, Chris Grayling, maybe there are others?
As an illustration, I scraped this off the dashboard. What it shows, is the typical distribution in reporting. In this case the update for today.
Thanks. A cumulative version (working backwards) of this graph would perhaps be even more useful for seeing how complete the data are as a function of time in the past.
It is surprising how many of these left- wing-firebrands from BBC News try their hand at politics, becoming candidates and MPs for...the Conservative Party!
Care to name some please?
Ruth Davidson, Michael Gove, Chris Grayling, maybe there are others?
I find this incredible. The government's handling of coronavirus has been one of the worst in the world. Clearly. We can see it in the data.
And they are still cocking it up, eg the stupid belated confusion over masks.
Meanwhile Starmer is popular, and presentable, and Labour policies are not much different to the Tories: welfare socialism.
Yet Boris is 10 points ahead.
?!?
People are still shell shocked for one. We're also still in the moment, so while some conclusions may well be able to be drawn, I assume most people are not thinking for certain we will end up among the very worst (though it looks likely). And of course most people have not suffered direct effects of the inevitable aftermath yet.
I find this incredible. The government's handling of coronavirus has been one of the worst in the world. Clearly. We can see it in the data.
And they are still cocking it up, eg the stupid belated confusion over masks.
Meanwhile Starmer is popular, and presentable, and Labour policies are not much different to the Tories: welfare socialism.
Yet Boris is 10 points ahead.
?!?
People are still shell shocked for one. We're also still in the moment, so while some conclusions may well be able to be drawn, I assume most people are not thinking for certain we will end up among the very worst (though it looks likely). And of course most people have not suffered direct effects of the inevitable aftermath yet.
Yes, quite possibly
However I wonder if the Labour brand has been damaged so badly, by Corbyn, it is hitting a ceiling of support. And I likewise wonder if the Woke Frenzy is making people, quietly, a little bit more conservative
Comments
As many of you know, I started an auto insurance company in Arizona. It's different from most insurers in that it is pure "pay per mile" (and it's liability / third party only for now). This means we get pretty good data on how much people are driving.
In March, when there was a full lockdown, our customers drove about 480 miles. In April, 550. In June almost 600. This month, as Arizona has de facto locked down again, we might be below March's number - it could be as little as 450. Now, this is one state, and our sample size is small, and schools are now closed for the summer, and July 4 was a public holiday weekend. But miles driven are probably a fairly good proxy for economic activity. And the message from July is that - in Arizona at least - economic activity has come crashing back down again.
(Oh yeah - please watch the explainer video, and share and click like. Thank you!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmrRMK84GU4
Now the BBC, as Philip Thompson points out, does a lot of things that lots of other companies do better - sometimes a LOT better - and they charge us a poll tax to churn out this mediocrity. It's pointless.
I suspect that is why Starmer has made up so much ground on him personally since becoming LOTO. He clearly leads Johnson on almost every metric according to the last polling I saw. I expect that trend to continue.
https://twitter.com/ben_bt/status/1283351434717782016?s=20
They can't keep giving it away for free. It may be too late to go behind a paywall. Quite a dilemma
If you try to design round this by making it index-linked and including 100% rollover relief, then it won't raise all that much and it will just be a tax and therefore a discouragement on downsizing, which (as @Philip_Thompson has pointed out) is the opposite of a good policy outcome.
Also in this discussion there has been an assumption that house prices always rise. Ain't so, as anyone who remembers the 1990s will testify. So would we also include a tax rebate if you make a capital loss?
But I stress again - no biggie.
https://twitter.com/AyoCaesar/status/1283395115772452866
In reality, the bulk of the BBC's output remains conservative with a small c, with a few bits of more radical, challenging programming. But I really don't get this notion that the BBC is a hotbed of lefties.
Reporting delays.
What is interesting, is the concentration of the "problem" into smaller and smaller numbers of areas.
Not a big deal.
Then when you replace the idea with a land value tax 0.3% a year looks a lot better than 30% on sale.
The pandemic has just demolished the Guardian's model. The more I think about it, the worse it is for them. They have made this their USP: "content is free". Moving to a paywall would look hypocritical, and, more importantly, probably won't work now anyway, as they are doing it so late in the day. They have to build a paywall from the ground up, during a Depression?
Also, a paywall would make their journalism way less visible. And they'd lose millions of visitors.
They are in a real bind. Could go under.
"The tide has turned against the Hun..."
Just a name for the Germans at war, as opposed to Germans, I suspect.
So the last 2 columns are just there for completeness.
Boris is clearly more effective, as there wasn't a single casualty from Covid-19 during either of Johnson's terms as Mayor.
https://amp.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jul/15/huawei-china-state-media-calls-for-painful-retaliation-over-uk-ban?__twitter_impression=true
You now owe me a beer.
What will be key I suspect is how well their voluntary contributions hold up vs other companies compulsory charges.
Have you forwarded a copy to Trip Adviser?
And this was fine when the leftiness didn't intrude into the programming too much, and they had a bit of obviously rightwing/conservative stuff to balance it - eg Clarkson.
But now the balance has gone and the Wokeism is becoming painfully obvious and intrusive - another £100m to make it *even more diverse*? Really?
If you go online you can find lots of people saying they are refusing to contribute - despite being Guardian readers - because the Guardian is "transphobic", or because it "hates Corbyn". Others are saying the opposite, it's too Woke or they abhor Owen Jones.
It is being killed by its own ID politics.
https://twitter.com/dok_botnik/status/1283377032513101824?s=20
https://mobile.twitter.com/michaelbd/status/1283419046931836931
https://mobile.twitter.com/michaelbd/status/1283421336317157376
Yes, I think I would concur on integration into the more general CGT regime - though it gets messy for long-term held properties.
If we are going to have a property tax, why not one based on planning? The planners arbitrarily increase the value of land without the government taking any of the profits.
It should be payable after a reasonable period to allow for development to take place.
I know this has been mooted before. I don't suppose it would bring in as much money though.
Guto Harry, Evan Davis, Andrew Neil, James Harding, Robin Oakley - these are all part of one of the revolving doors, between the BBC and Tory media jobs.
That's BBC News' turn to the right on economic and related issues, and another tranche of staff represent its turn more to the left on identity and cultural issues.
Don't forget that is £100m that only exists because from August 1st over 75's have to pay for a TV license...
As an illustration, I scraped this off the dashboard. What it shows, is the typical distribution in reporting. In this case the update for today.
On the Construction economic front, the work continues to flow in. We have a bigger order book than we have ever had, and the work just keeps coming. We will need to employ at least 10 new engineers over the next couple of weeks. The problem is there aren't any available.
https://twitter.com/jessicaelgot/status/1283422455613345794
If the figures are not reversed by this time next year, Starmer might as well hand the baton over to RLB to see how she gets on.
And they are still cocking it up, eg the stupid belated confusion over masks.
Meanwhile Starmer is popular, and presentable, and Labour policies are not much different to the Tories: welfare socialism.
Yet Boris is 10 points ahead.
?!?
Ruth Davidson, Michael Gove, Chris Grayling, maybe there are others?
Oh yeah.
CGT on principle residences does the opposite. Why would you want to make an existing problem worse?
However I wonder if the Labour brand has been damaged so badly, by Corbyn, it is hitting a ceiling of support. And I likewise wonder if the Woke Frenzy is making people, quietly, a little bit more conservative