I have sympathy with Cyclefree and her piece but the nature of this pandemic has been to devastate the hospitality and travel industry and, while help has been given, it was always going to have constraints with the huge demands from other sectors, not least the health and care sector
With the vaccine on the horizon let us all hope that by mid 2021 these industries will see a sharp uptake in demand and begin their road to recovery
On foreign aid I have no issue with reducing it, but as has been suggested some of the savings should be folded into the vaccine programmes to directly help third world countries with their own vaccinations
On public sector pay freeze I support it purely on the grounds of fairness and expect mp's to lead by example. Additionally I would support abolishing the triple lock thereby freezing our own pension rise next year
On Brexit a deal is really needed, indeed as far as I am concerned any deal, but our relationship with Europe will develop over many years and may eventually lead to 'de facto' membership and at the very least membership of the single market
On Christmas I fail to understand why people just cannot see the safest thing is to treat this Christmas as if we are in lockdown and curtail family gatherings in the greater interest of all of us. No matter the four nations agreeing a convoluted number of rules for this year, my wife and I have already cancelled Christmas day for the 10 of us and will spend it on our own at our on home.
Better safe than sorry
Good post. Re freezing the wages of public sector workers, the government must gain the moral authority to do things like this by also enacting measures which extract a significant contribution to the cost of the pandemic from the relatively affluent. There are many such people in this country and many ways to do it. If the government flunk this aspect it will be a case of "same old Tories" and I predict big trouble. They got away with it last time - making the poor bear much of the pain for the collapse of the financial sector - but I don't think the trick can be repeated. Perhaps Johnson & Co realize this themselves. I hope they do. If so there will be a serious attempt to make "those with the largest shoulders bear the load" in reality rather than as platitudinous soundbite.
Agree - good post.
On foreign aid I am not sure that a reduction to say 0.5% would do that much harm.
There was an interesting session on "Wealth Taxin the light of COVID" in Parliament the other day. One aspect was an attempt to brand IHT and CGT as 'wealth taxes'.
Another was a suggestion that the amount to be raised could be £250-500bn over several years, which is a little loopy - ask Mgr Hollande.
But enough unanimity that reform of things like Stamp Duty to a more continuous setup may be imaginable.
Make next years foreign aid budget free Oxford vaccine to any country in the world who wants it. It would be a small reduction in the % cost, improve the effectiveness of the aid, improve UK reputation worldwide and also give the department a year to work out a plan to spend the budget more effectively for the next decade.
It is indeed a great opportunity for soft displays of power at the same time as knocking this bloody thing on the head. It looks like the three most likely candidates to end up in the third world are the Oxford, Russian and Chinese efforts, so it would be great if the U.K. effort can be distributed free to poorer countries.
Not a bad idea. At £3 a dose, our £10 billion could cover half* the planet!
*Ok, maybe a quarter to a third, depending on the protocol.
“The issue of herd immunity is difficult,” Anders Tegnell, Sweden's state epidemiologist, said at a news briefing, according to Bloomberg News.
“We see no signs of immunity in the population that are slowing down the infection right now," Tegnell said...
...“I want to make it clear, no, we did not lock down like many other countries, but we definitely had a virtual lockdown,” Tegnell said. “Swedes changed their behavior enormously. We stopped travelling even more than our neighboring countries. The airports had no flights anywhere, the trains were running at a few per cent of normal service, so there were enormous changes in society.”
Bloomberg noted that Swedes have faced more exposure to the coronavirus than residents in other Nordic areas and data published this week showed that every third person tested in Stockholm has tested positive for antibodies.
Meanwhile, recent lockdown in London seems to have made no difference.
I have sympathy with Cyclefree and her piece but the nature of this pandemic has been to devastate the hospitality and travel industry and, while help has been given, it was always going to have constraints with the huge demands from other sectors, not least the health and care sector
With the vaccine on the horizon let us all hope that by mid 2021 these industries will see a sharp uptake in demand and begin their road to recovery
On foreign aid I have no issue with reducing it, but as has been suggested some of the savings should be folded into the vaccine programmes to directly help third world countries with their own vaccinations
On public sector pay freeze I support it purely on the grounds of fairness and expect mp's to lead by example. Additionally I would support abolishing the triple lock thereby freezing our own pension rise next year
On Brexit a deal is really needed, indeed as far as I am concerned any deal, but our relationship with Europe will develop over many years and may eventually lead to 'de facto' membership and at the very least membership of the single market
On Christmas I fail to understand why people just cannot see the safest thing is to treat this Christmas as if we are in lockdown and curtail family gatherings in the greater interest of all of us. No matter the four nations agreeing a convoluted number of rules for this year, my wife and I have already cancelled Christmas day for the 10 of us and will spend it on our own at our on home.
Better safe than sorry
Good post. Re freezing the wages of public sector workers, the government must gain the moral authority to do things like this by also enacting measures which extract a significant contribution to the cost of the pandemic from the relatively affluent. There are many such people in this country and many ways to do it. If the government flunk this aspect it will be a case of "same old Tories" and I predict big trouble. They got away with it last time - making the poor bear much of the pain for the collapse of the financial sector - but I don't think the trick can be repeated. Perhaps Johnson & Co realize this themselves. I hope they do. If so there will be a serious attempt to make "those with the largest shoulders bear the load" in reality rather than as platitudinous soundbite.
Agree - good post.
On foreign aid I am not sure that a reduction to say 0.5% would do that much harm.
There was an interesting session on "Wealth Taxin the light of COVID" in Parliament the other day. One aspect was an attempt to brand IHT and CGT as 'wealth taxes'.
Another was a suggestion that the amount to be raised could be £250-500bn over several years, which is a little loopy - ask Mgr Hollande.
But enough unanimity that reform of things like Stamp Duty to a more continuous setup may be imaginable.
Make next years foreign aid budget free Oxford vaccine to any country in the world who wants it. It would be a small reduction in the % cost, improve the effectiveness of the aid, improve UK reputation worldwide and also give the department a year to work out a plan to spend the budget more effectively for the next decade.
It is indeed a great opportunity for soft displays of power at the same time as knocking this bloody thing on the head. It looks like the three most likely candidates to end up in the third world are the Oxford, Russian and Chinese efforts, so it would be great if the U.K. effort can be distributed free to poorer countries.
Not a bad idea. At £3 a dose, our £10 billion could cover half the planet!
Yep, should be distributed free and without conditions with the aid budget. That's what it is there for, right?
I have sympathy with Cyclefree and her piece but the nature of this pandemic has been to devastate the hospitality and travel industry and, while help has been given, it was always going to have constraints with the huge demands from other sectors, not least the health and care sector
With the vaccine on the horizon let us all hope that by mid 2021 these industries will see a sharp uptake in demand and begin their road to recovery
On foreign aid I have no issue with reducing it, but as has been suggested some of the savings should be folded into the vaccine programmes to directly help third world countries with their own vaccinations
On public sector pay freeze I support it purely on the grounds of fairness and expect mp's to lead by example. Additionally I would support abolishing the triple lock thereby freezing our own pension rise next year
On Brexit a deal is really needed, indeed as far as I am concerned any deal, but our relationship with Europe will develop over many years and may eventually lead to 'de facto' membership and at the very least membership of the single market
On Christmas I fail to understand why people just cannot see the safest thing is to treat this Christmas as if we are in lockdown and curtail family gatherings in the greater interest of all of us. No matter the four nations agreeing a convoluted number of rules for this year, my wife and I have already cancelled Christmas day for the 10 of us and will spend it on our own at our on home.
Better safe than sorry
Good post. Re freezing the wages of public sector workers, the government must gain the moral authority to do things like this by also enacting measures which extract a significant contribution to the cost of the pandemic from the relatively affluent. There are many such people in this country and many ways to do it. If the government flunk this aspect it will be a case of "same old Tories" and I predict big trouble. They got away with it last time - making the poor bear much of the pain for the collapse of the financial sector - but I don't think the trick can be repeated. Perhaps Johnson & Co realize this themselves. I hope they do. If so there will be a serious attempt to make "those with the largest shoulders bear the load" in reality rather than as platitudinous soundbite.
Agree - good post.
On foreign aid I am not sure that a reduction to say 0.5% would do that much harm.
There was an interesting session on "Wealth Taxin the light of COVID" in Parliament the other day. One aspect was an attempt to brand IHT and CGT as 'wealth taxes'.
Another was a suggestion that the amount to be raised could be £250-500bn over several years, which is a little loopy - ask Mgr Hollande.
But enough unanimity that reform of things like Stamp Duty to a more continuous setup may be imaginable.
Finance guy in Spectator this week has interesting take on CGT: sort out the way private equity types can class 'carried interest' earnings as CG rather than income.
It'll lead to some bad press, no doubt, but it's an easy target even with the manifesto committment (and subsequent - why proceed with these other manifesto commitments you say still need to happen? - comments) and if that's the worst that comes from the announcements they'd take that, I bet.
Boris needs to find a politically acceptable way to square the circle.
The COVID Vaccine way does seem a good idea. As was the original (but I think, frustrated) idea to develop a production facility in an African country was (going back to I think April).
He needs a Machiavelli with a black heart to point out these cynical but useful balances to him.
I have sympathy with Cyclefree and her piece but the nature of this pandemic has been to devastate the hospitality and travel industry and, while help has been given, it was always going to have constraints with the huge demands from other sectors, not least the health and care sector
With the vaccine on the horizon let us all hope that by mid 2021 these industries will see a sharp uptake in demand and begin their road to recovery
On foreign aid I have no issue with reducing it, but as has been suggested some of the savings should be folded into the vaccine programmes to directly help third world countries with their own vaccinations
On public sector pay freeze I support it purely on the grounds of fairness and expect mp's to lead by example. Additionally I would support abolishing the triple lock thereby freezing our own pension rise next year
On Brexit a deal is really needed, indeed as far as I am concerned any deal, but our relationship with Europe will develop over many years and may eventually lead to 'de facto' membership and at the very least membership of the single market
On Christmas I fail to understand why people just cannot see the safest thing is to treat this Christmas as if we are in lockdown and curtail family gatherings in the greater interest of all of us. No matter the four nations agreeing a convoluted number of rules for this year, my wife and I have already cancelled Christmas day for the 10 of us and will spend it on our own at our on home.
Better safe than sorry
Good post. Re freezing the wages of public sector workers, the government must gain the moral authority to do things like this by also enacting measures which extract a significant contribution to the cost of the pandemic from the relatively affluent. There are many such people in this country and many ways to do it. If the government flunk this aspect it will be a case of "same old Tories" and I predict big trouble. They got away with it last time - making the poor bear much of the pain for the collapse of the financial sector - but I don't think the trick can be repeated. Perhaps Johnson & Co realize this themselves. I hope they do. If so there will be a serious attempt to make "those with the largest shoulders bear the load" in reality rather than as platitudinous soundbite.
Agree - good post.
On foreign aid I am not sure that a reduction to say 0.5% would do that much harm.
There was an interesting session on "Wealth Taxin the light of COVID" in Parliament the other day. One aspect was an attempt to brand IHT and CGT as 'wealth taxes'.
Another was a suggestion that the amount to be raised could be £250-500bn over several years, which is a little loopy - ask Mgr Hollande.
But enough unanimity that reform of things like Stamp Duty to a more continuous setup may be imaginable.
I'd say that IHT and CGT are wealth taxes. Any tax levied on assets rather than revenue fits that bill imo.
I have sympathy with Cyclefree and her piece but the nature of this pandemic has been to devastate the hospitality and travel industry and, while help has been given, it was always going to have constraints with the huge demands from other sectors, not least the health and care sector
With the vaccine on the horizon let us all hope that by mid 2021 these industries will see a sharp uptake in demand and begin their road to recovery
On foreign aid I have no issue with reducing it, but as has been suggested some of the savings should be folded into the vaccine programmes to directly help third world countries with their own vaccinations
On public sector pay freeze I support it purely on the grounds of fairness and expect mp's to lead by example. Additionally I would support abolishing the triple lock thereby freezing our own pension rise next year
On Brexit a deal is really needed, indeed as far as I am concerned any deal, but our relationship with Europe will develop over many years and may eventually lead to 'de facto' membership and at the very least membership of the single market
On Christmas I fail to understand why people just cannot see the safest thing is to treat this Christmas as if we are in lockdown and curtail family gatherings in the greater interest of all of us. No matter the four nations agreeing a convoluted number of rules for this year, my wife and I have already cancelled Christmas day for the 10 of us and will spend it on our own at our on home.
Better safe than sorry
Good post. Re freezing the wages of public sector workers, the government must gain the moral authority to do things like this by also enacting measures which extract a significant contribution to the cost of the pandemic from the relatively affluent. There are many such people in this country and many ways to do it. If the government flunk this aspect it will be a case of "same old Tories" and I predict big trouble. They got away with it last time - making the poor bear much of the pain for the collapse of the financial sector - but I don't think the trick can be repeated. Perhaps Johnson & Co realize this themselves. I hope they do. If so there will be a serious attempt to make "those with the largest shoulders bear the load" in reality rather than as platitudinous soundbite.
Agree - good post.
On foreign aid I am not sure that a reduction to say 0.5% would do that much harm.
There was an interesting session on "Wealth Taxin the light of COVID" in Parliament the other day. One aspect was an attempt to brand IHT and CGT as 'wealth taxes'.
Another was a suggestion that the amount to be raised could be £250-500bn over several years, which is a little loopy - ask Mgr Hollande.
But enough unanimity that reform of things like Stamp Duty to a more continuous setup may be imaginable.
Make next years foreign aid budget free Oxford vaccine to any country in the world who wants it. It would be a small reduction in the % cost, improve the effectiveness of the aid, improve UK reputation worldwide and also give the department a year to work out a plan to spend the budget more effectively for the next decade.
It is indeed a great opportunity for soft displays of power at the same time as knocking this bloody thing on the head. It looks like the three most likely candidates to end up in the third world are the Oxford, Russian and Chinese efforts, so it would be great if the U.K. effort can be distributed free to poorer countries.
Not a bad idea. At £3 a dose, our £10 billion could cover half* the planet!
*Ok, maybe a quarter to a third, depending on the protocol.
Exactly. If you’re going to have an aid budget, vaccinating a substantial proportion of the global population against this damn virus is the best possible use of it!
It's probably been well picked over but I'm reminded it's 30 years since Margaret Thatcher was ousted by Conservative MPs after eleven and a half years in office and three GE wins.
My recollection of the period was it was perhaps the most extraordinary in British politics - from the dismissal of Sir Geoffrey Howe which set in motion the chain of events leading to Thatcher's own demise it was completely addictive and yet not quite in the days of the 24/7 news cycle. The 60 hours from the declaration of the result of the first ballot to Thatcher telling her Cabinet she was going have been extensively covered in literature but still seem remarkable.
Meanwhile, the backdrop was the likelihood of military action in the Gulf following Saddam's invasion of Kuwait and the seismic changes in Russia and Eastern Europe following the events of the previous year.
As part of the seismic changes the EEC had just 7 weeks before gained 16M people overnight with only three member states (Germany, France and the UK) having agreed to it.
The other curious point to this story was that John Major was not really on the radar as next PM at this stage. He was already Chancellor, but was not widely known except ba those who followed politics. It was only once he appeared to be the "better than Hurd and not a Hestletine" candidate, when he became favourite to be the new PM.
What got John Major over the line were the polls the weekend after Thatcher's departure showing he would do as well against Kinnock's Labour as Heseltine if not better.
There's a key point for the future - the Conservative Party (and it's not alone in this) will only remove a leader when it's clear the leader itself is the problem and the problem would be solved by another leader.
With Thatcher, Labour led by ten points, with Heseltine, the parties were level. Conservative backbenchers with small majorities faced electoral oblivion with Thatcher but a chance for salvation with Heseltine. That encouraged Heseltine to stand.
Last year, once it became clear only Johnson, of all the leadership challengers, could deliver a majority for the Conservatives, the leadership election, as a contest, was over and once Prime Minister, the General Election was also over as a contest. The only way a non-Conservative Government could have been elected would have been for the Conservative-Leave vote to have been split with a sizeable chunk going to Farage. A divided Leave vote and a divided Remain vote would have produced a Commons with no overall majority (again).
Yes, ultimately the reason that the Conservatives defenestrated Thatcher is that in her third term she had rapidly become an electoral liability. It wasn't just lefties that had gone off her, but her own party and voters.
“The issue of herd immunity is difficult,” Anders Tegnell, Sweden's state epidemiologist, said at a news briefing, according to Bloomberg News.
“We see no signs of immunity in the population that are slowing down the infection right now," Tegnell said...
...“I want to make it clear, no, we did not lock down like many other countries, but we definitely had a virtual lockdown,” Tegnell said. “Swedes changed their behavior enormously. We stopped travelling even more than our neighboring countries. The airports had no flights anywhere, the trains were running at a few per cent of normal service, so there were enormous changes in society.”
Bloomberg noted that Swedes have faced more exposure to the coronavirus than residents in other Nordic areas and data published this week showed that every third person tested in Stockholm has tested positive for antibodies.
Meanwhile, recent lockdown in London seems to have made no difference.
Not to be funny, but if you were to show the graph up until end of October and then extrapolate the November figures from it before they had happened, I think you’d have been challenged if you’d said that the former impled the latter.
To end of October, you’ve got a steady rise, mitigated by a dip at half term. Through November, you’ve got a flat line.
I would have assumed that something changed at the start of November to flatten it, without any other information input. Wouldn’t you?
Wouldn’t want to be in the Chancellor’s shoes today. Anything that’s not directly related to pandemic spending is likely to be under serious review. After riding a wave of relative popularity, he’s now going to disappoint almost everyone to some degree.
You wait until the serious tax rises come.
I've always thought he's the most overrated politician since Tony Blair. His only reflex is to fling lots of borrowed money at every problem, and not even particularly competently at that. In the next six months we'll see if I was right or not.
Serious tax rises would be an economically illiterate absurd idea.
Serious tax cuts would be better.
We have to grow ourselves out of this, sure, but we should steady the ship first - I`m not sure about tax cuts.
The difference between 2020 and 2007 is that there is no structural deficit this time around.
We have a deficit not because we are structurally overspending as we were in 2007 even before the GFC hit, but because there is a pandemic and the economy is depressed.
We couldn't "grow our way out of the deficit" in 2010 as the economy was growing and the deficit was structural. That's not the case today.
Today the deficit is entirely due to the pandemic, it is temporal not structural. Tax cuts would allow more spending and investment and allow the economy to grow which will close the deficit. Tax rises will kick the economy while its down and strangle any chance of growth.
If in 2-3 years we see that we do actually have a structural deficit after some sustained growth then that would be the time to look at closing the deficit. Not yet, it is too premature today.
I think what you meant to say was that the difference between 2020 and 2007 is that they can't blame it on the Labour Party. Cyclically adjusted borrowing in 2006 was 3.0% of GDP. In 2019 was 2.5% of GDP. That 0.5% difference is a very small number on which to claim that the entire fiscal outlook is different, especially as debt was 33% of GDP in 2006 and 87% of GDP in 2019. I have tried to educate you on this subject before...
Of that 87% a lot of it doesn't attract interest and I'm not sure you can class it as debt if no interest is payable. I guess the issue is that liability needs to be rolled over and if QE isn't available at that point it becomes real.
My big worry is that the west is rapidly exhausting debt monetisation and it's our generation (and our kids) that is going to be left picking up the pieces. Our parents generation won't be around to suffer from the damage that they are inflicting on the economy with the huge debt they are running up.
I hadn't thought of the debt rollover/QE interchange but had kind of assumed that when BoE-held debt expires then the BoE could purchase some new debt to replace that which they held which has expired and it would not be considered QE?
My understanding was that the Bank is operating to a QE limit, which was raised earlier this year, which acts kind of like the drama we get perennially from the States when they raise their debt limit. Once risen the limit is never dropped back down, so if the debt expires then they can replace that within their pre-existing limit.
Yes it does operate on a ceiling, my point is that we're rapidly approaching the limit of QE and the Bank may need to reduce asset holdings to gain credibility with markets in the future.
If we are rapidly approaching the limit to QE somebody needs to inform the BOE, who have agreed to buy another £150bn in gilts over the course of next year.
Sterling is currently held in reserve and having the largest financial services industry in the world basically allows the Bank to get away with it. They're betting that neither of those changes. One of the reasons I liked Carney was that he had an outsider's view of the UK economy and that gave him an objectivity that I think Bailey lacks.
Bailey is all upside all the time, when realistically there are huge downside risks coming in the near future.
Even in a deal brexit and vaccine environment the UK economy has got lots of structural weaknesses related to decades of underinvestment in infrastructure by the state and businesses by corporates, a management class more interested in their individual bonus than long term company performance, unions more interested in squeezing as much from companies for their members rather than ensuring the overall health of the company and the world's most selfish pensioner class living on defined benefit schemes they pulled the ladder up for which our generation is going to end up funding through higher taxes for public sector pensions and significantly reduced dividends and capital growth in the private sector as dividends and investment will be sacrificed to keep those defined benefit schemes funded.
Anyway, all of these things will have a severe depressive effect on trend growth in the UK and we will become a second rate economy and lose our ability to monetise debt.
Not sure I am that pessimistic, if only because global savings have to be parked somewhere and the problems you describe with respect to our economy are not unique to us. There is a limit to QE's effectiveness when the curve is already so low and flat, but I think we are still some way off the point where it becomes positively damaging to the outlook.
I have sympathy with Cyclefree and her piece but the nature of this pandemic has been to devastate the hospitality and travel industry and, while help has been given, it was always going to have constraints with the huge demands from other sectors, not least the health and care sector
With the vaccine on the horizon let us all hope that by mid 2021 these industries will see a sharp uptake in demand and begin their road to recovery
On foreign aid I have no issue with reducing it, but as has been suggested some of the savings should be folded into the vaccine programmes to directly help third world countries with their own vaccinations
On public sector pay freeze I support it purely on the grounds of fairness and expect mp's to lead by example. Additionally I would support abolishing the triple lock thereby freezing our own pension rise next year
On Brexit a deal is really needed, indeed as far as I am concerned any deal, but our relationship with Europe will develop over many years and may eventually lead to 'de facto' membership and at the very least membership of the single market
On Christmas I fail to understand why people just cannot see the safest thing is to treat this Christmas as if we are in lockdown and curtail family gatherings in the greater interest of all of us. No matter the four nations agreeing a convoluted number of rules for this year, my wife and I have already cancelled Christmas day for the 10 of us and will spend it on our own at our on home.
Better safe than sorry
Good post. Re freezing the wages of public sector workers, the government must gain the moral authority to do things like this by also enacting measures which extract a significant contribution to the cost of the pandemic from the relatively affluent. There are many such people in this country and many ways to do it. If the government flunk this aspect it will be a case of "same old Tories" and I predict big trouble. They got away with it last time - making the poor bear much of the pain for the collapse of the financial sector - but I don't think the trick can be repeated. Perhaps Johnson & Co realize this themselves. I hope they do. If so there will be a serious attempt to make "those with the largest shoulders bear the load" in reality rather than as platitudinous soundbite.
Agree - good post.
On foreign aid I am not sure that a reduction to say 0.5% would do that much harm.
There was an interesting session on "Wealth Taxin the light of COVID" in Parliament the other day. One aspect was an attempt to brand IHT and CGT as 'wealth taxes'.
Another was a suggestion that the amount to be raised could be £250-500bn over several years, which is a little loopy - ask Mgr Hollande.
But enough unanimity that reform of things like Stamp Duty to a more continuous setup may be imaginable.
Make next years foreign aid budget free Oxford vaccine to any country in the world who wants it. It would be a small reduction in the % cost, improve the effectiveness of the aid, improve UK reputation worldwide and also give the department a year to work out a plan to spend the budget more effectively for the next decade.
It is indeed a great opportunity for soft displays of power at the same time as knocking this bloody thing on the head. It looks like the three most likely candidates to end up in the third world are the Oxford, Russian and Chinese efforts, so it would be great if the U.K. effort can be distributed free to poorer countries.
Not a bad idea. At £3 a dose, our £10 billion could cover half* the planet!
*Ok, maybe a quarter to a third, depending on the protocol.
Exactly. If you’re going to have an aid budget, vaccinating a substantial proportion of the global population against this damn virus is the best possible use of it!
“The issue of herd immunity is difficult,” Anders Tegnell, Sweden's state epidemiologist, said at a news briefing, according to Bloomberg News.
“We see no signs of immunity in the population that are slowing down the infection right now," Tegnell said...
...“I want to make it clear, no, we did not lock down like many other countries, but we definitely had a virtual lockdown,” Tegnell said. “Swedes changed their behavior enormously. We stopped travelling even more than our neighboring countries. The airports had no flights anywhere, the trains were running at a few per cent of normal service, so there were enormous changes in society.”
Bloomberg noted that Swedes have faced more exposure to the coronavirus than residents in other Nordic areas and data published this week showed that every third person tested in Stockholm has tested positive for antibodies.
Meanwhile, recent lockdown in London seems to have made no difference.
Not to be funny, but if you were to show the graph up until end of October and then extrapolate the November figures from it before they had happened, I think you’d have been challenged if you’d said that the former impled the latter.
To end of October, you’ve got a steady rise, mitigated by a dip at half term. Through November, you’ve got a flat line.
I would have assumed that something changed at the start of November to flatten it, without any other information input. Wouldn’t you?
Tbh, the flat line starts before the end of October.
I have sympathy with Cyclefree and her piece but the nature of this pandemic has been to devastate the hospitality and travel industry and, while help has been given, it was always going to have constraints with the huge demands from other sectors, not least the health and care sector
With the vaccine on the horizon let us all hope that by mid 2021 these industries will see a sharp uptake in demand and begin their road to recovery
On foreign aid I have no issue with reducing it, but as has been suggested some of the savings should be folded into the vaccine programmes to directly help third world countries with their own vaccinations
On public sector pay freeze I support it purely on the grounds of fairness and expect mp's to lead by example. Additionally I would support abolishing the triple lock thereby freezing our own pension rise next year
On Brexit a deal is really needed, indeed as far as I am concerned any deal, but our relationship with Europe will develop over many years and may eventually lead to 'de facto' membership and at the very least membership of the single market
On Christmas I fail to understand why people just cannot see the safest thing is to treat this Christmas as if we are in lockdown and curtail family gatherings in the greater interest of all of us. No matter the four nations agreeing a convoluted number of rules for this year, my wife and I have already cancelled Christmas day for the 10 of us and will spend it on our own at our on home.
Better safe than sorry
Good post. Re freezing the wages of public sector workers, the government must gain the moral authority to do things like this by also enacting measures which extract a significant contribution to the cost of the pandemic from the relatively affluent. There are many such people in this country and many ways to do it. If the government flunk this aspect it will be a case of "same old Tories" and I predict big trouble. They got away with it last time - making the poor bear much of the pain for the collapse of the financial sector - but I don't think the trick can be repeated. Perhaps Johnson & Co realize this themselves. I hope they do. If so there will be a serious attempt to make "those with the largest shoulders bear the load" in reality rather than as platitudinous soundbite.
Agree - good post.
On foreign aid I am not sure that a reduction to say 0.5% would do that much harm.
There was an interesting session on "Wealth Taxin the light of COVID" in Parliament the other day. One aspect was an attempt to brand IHT and CGT as 'wealth taxes'.
Another was a suggestion that the amount to be raised could be £250-500bn over several years, which is a little loopy - ask Mgr Hollande.
But enough unanimity that reform of things like Stamp Duty to a more continuous setup may be imaginable.
I'd say that IHT and CGT are wealth taxes. Any tax levied on assets rather than revenue fits that bill imo.
Warren started to call her new tax the ultra-millionaire tax instead of a wealth tax. Multi-millionaire would fit better here, but I think differentiating between normal taxes on wealth like IHT and CGT, and taxing the super elite is important to get enough of the middles classes supporting it.
The super elite avoid IHT in particular through trusts, so it is a middle class wealth tax rather than an elite wealth tax.
Higher taxes are always popular with individuals if they are to the disbenefit of others (people that are richer than they). I have always thought there should be a voluntary tax, to enable those that believe in higher taxes to show a genuine commitment. If a majority participate it can then be rolled out to others.
Some Councils do write to top band Council Tax payers asking for contributions to a voluntary fund (generally for purposes going above and beyond the local authority's legal obligations but which have a level of local support). They don't get a huge payment rate in relation to the turnover of a local authority, but the sums raised aren't insignificant either.
I do agree with your general point. An interesting idea and I think it would raise a fair amount if for a specific purpose.
I have sympathy with Cyclefree and her piece but the nature of this pandemic has been to devastate the hospitality and travel industry and, while help has been given, it was always going to have constraints with the huge demands from other sectors, not least the health and care sector
With the vaccine on the horizon let us all hope that by mid 2021 these industries will see a sharp uptake in demand and begin their road to recovery
On foreign aid I have no issue with reducing it, but as has been suggested some of the savings should be folded into the vaccine programmes to directly help third world countries with their own vaccinations
On public sector pay freeze I support it purely on the grounds of fairness and expect mp's to lead by example. Additionally I would support abolishing the triple lock thereby freezing our own pension rise next year
On Brexit a deal is really needed, indeed as far as I am concerned any deal, but our relationship with Europe will develop over many years and may eventually lead to 'de facto' membership and at the very least membership of the single market
On Christmas I fail to understand why people just cannot see the safest thing is to treat this Christmas as if we are in lockdown and curtail family gatherings in the greater interest of all of us. No matter the four nations agreeing a convoluted number of rules for this year, my wife and I have already cancelled Christmas day for the 10 of us and will spend it on our own at our on home.
Better safe than sorry
Good post. Re freezing the wages of public sector workers, the government must gain the moral authority to do things like this by also enacting measures which extract a significant contribution to the cost of the pandemic from the relatively affluent. There are many such people in this country and many ways to do it. If the government flunk this aspect it will be a case of "same old Tories" and I predict big trouble. They got away with it last time - making the poor bear much of the pain for the collapse of the financial sector - but I don't think the trick can be repeated. Perhaps Johnson & Co realize this themselves. I hope they do. If so there will be a serious attempt to make "those with the largest shoulders bear the load" in reality rather than as platitudinous soundbite.
Agree - good post.
On foreign aid I am not sure that a reduction to say 0.5% would do that much harm.
There was an interesting session on "Wealth Taxin the light of COVID" in Parliament the other day. One aspect was an attempt to brand IHT and CGT as 'wealth taxes'.
Another was a suggestion that the amount to be raised could be £250-500bn over several years, which is a little loopy - ask Mgr Hollande.
But enough unanimity that reform of things like Stamp Duty to a more continuous setup may be imaginable.
Make next years foreign aid budget free Oxford vaccine to any country in the world who wants it. It would be a small reduction in the % cost, improve the effectiveness of the aid, improve UK reputation worldwide and also give the department a year to work out a plan to spend the budget more effectively for the next decade.
It is indeed a great opportunity for soft displays of power at the same time as knocking this bloody thing on the head. It looks like the three most likely candidates to end up in the third world are the Oxford, Russian and Chinese efforts, so it would be great if the U.K. effort can be distributed free to poorer countries.
Not a bad idea. At £3 a dose, our £10 billion could cover half* the planet!
*Ok, maybe a quarter to a third, depending on the protocol.
Exactly. If you’re going to have an aid budget, vaccinating a substantial proportion of the global population against this damn virus is the best possible use of it!
I missed the ONS/NRS/NISRA figures were updated for week ending 13th November
Deaths still up but they've stopped their strict adherence to the fortnightly doubling, 2,838 dead compared to 1,598 two week previously. A mere 77% increase compared to the doublings we saw over the last two months.
I have sympathy with Cyclefree and her piece but the nature of this pandemic has been to devastate the hospitality and travel industry and, while help has been given, it was always going to have constraints with the huge demands from other sectors, not least the health and care sector
With the vaccine on the horizon let us all hope that by mid 2021 these industries will see a sharp uptake in demand and begin their road to recovery
On foreign aid I have no issue with reducing it, but as has been suggested some of the savings should be folded into the vaccine programmes to directly help third world countries with their own vaccinations
On public sector pay freeze I support it purely on the grounds of fairness and expect mp's to lead by example. Additionally I would support abolishing the triple lock thereby freezing our own pension rise next year
On Brexit a deal is really needed, indeed as far as I am concerned any deal, but our relationship with Europe will develop over many years and may eventually lead to 'de facto' membership and at the very least membership of the single market
On Christmas I fail to understand why people just cannot see the safest thing is to treat this Christmas as if we are in lockdown and curtail family gatherings in the greater interest of all of us. No matter the four nations agreeing a convoluted number of rules for this year, my wife and I have already cancelled Christmas day for the 10 of us and will spend it on our own at our on home.
Better safe than sorry
Good post. Re freezing the wages of public sector workers, the government must gain the moral authority to do things like this by also enacting measures which extract a significant contribution to the cost of the pandemic from the relatively affluent. There are many such people in this country and many ways to do it. If the government flunk this aspect it will be a case of "same old Tories" and I predict big trouble. They got away with it last time - making the poor bear much of the pain for the collapse of the financial sector - but I don't think the trick can be repeated. Perhaps Johnson & Co realize this themselves. I hope they do. If so there will be a serious attempt to make "those with the largest shoulders bear the load" in reality rather than as platitudinous soundbite.
Agree - good post.
On foreign aid I am not sure that a reduction to say 0.5% would do that much harm.
There was an interesting session on "Wealth Taxin the light of COVID" in Parliament the other day. One aspect was an attempt to brand IHT and CGT as 'wealth taxes'.
Another was a suggestion that the amount to be raised could be £250-500bn over several years, which is a little loopy - ask Mgr Hollande.
But enough unanimity that reform of things like Stamp Duty to a more continuous setup may be imaginable.
Make next years foreign aid budget free Oxford vaccine to any country in the world who wants it. It would be a small reduction in the % cost, improve the effectiveness of the aid, improve UK reputation worldwide and also give the department a year to work out a plan to spend the budget more effectively for the next decade.
It is indeed a great opportunity for soft displays of power at the same time as knocking this bloody thing on the head. It looks like the three most likely candidates to end up in the third world are the Oxford, Russian and Chinese efforts, so it would be great if the U.K. effort can be distributed free to poorer countries.
Not a bad idea. At £3 a dose, our £10 billion could cover half* the planet!
*Ok, maybe a quarter to a third, depending on the protocol.
Exactly. If you’re going to have an aid budget, vaccinating a substantial proportion of the global population against this damn virus is the best possible use of it!
I have sympathy with Cyclefree and her piece but the nature of this pandemic has been to devastate the hospitality and travel industry and, while help has been given, it was always going to have constraints with the huge demands from other sectors, not least the health and care sector
With the vaccine on the horizon let us all hope that by mid 2021 these industries will see a sharp uptake in demand and begin their road to recovery
On foreign aid I have no issue with reducing it, but as has been suggested some of the savings should be folded into the vaccine programmes to directly help third world countries with their own vaccinations
On public sector pay freeze I support it purely on the grounds of fairness and expect mp's to lead by example. Additionally I would support abolishing the triple lock thereby freezing our own pension rise next year
On Brexit a deal is really needed, indeed as far as I am concerned any deal, but our relationship with Europe will develop over many years and may eventually lead to 'de facto' membership and at the very least membership of the single market
On Christmas I fail to understand why people just cannot see the safest thing is to treat this Christmas as if we are in lockdown and curtail family gatherings in the greater interest of all of us. No matter the four nations agreeing a convoluted number of rules for this year, my wife and I have already cancelled Christmas day for the 10 of us and will spend it on our own at our on home.
Better safe than sorry
Good post. Re freezing the wages of public sector workers, the government must gain the moral authority to do things like this by also enacting measures which extract a significant contribution to the cost of the pandemic from the relatively affluent. There are many such people in this country and many ways to do it. If the government flunk this aspect it will be a case of "same old Tories" and I predict big trouble. They got away with it last time - making the poor bear much of the pain for the collapse of the financial sector - but I don't think the trick can be repeated. Perhaps Johnson & Co realize this themselves. I hope they do. If so there will be a serious attempt to make "those with the largest shoulders bear the load" in reality rather than as platitudinous soundbite.
Agree - good post.
On foreign aid I am not sure that a reduction to say 0.5% would do that much harm.
There was an interesting session on "Wealth Taxin the light of COVID" in Parliament the other day. One aspect was an attempt to brand IHT and CGT as 'wealth taxes'.
Another was a suggestion that the amount to be raised could be £250-500bn over several years, which is a little loopy - ask Mgr Hollande.
But enough unanimity that reform of things like Stamp Duty to a more continuous setup may be imaginable.
Make next years foreign aid budget free Oxford vaccine to any country in the world who wants it. It would be a small reduction in the % cost, improve the effectiveness of the aid, improve UK reputation worldwide and also give the department a year to work out a plan to spend the budget more effectively for the next decade.
It is indeed a great opportunity for soft displays of power at the same time as knocking this bloody thing on the head. It looks like the three most likely candidates to end up in the third world are the Oxford, Russian and Chinese efforts, so it would be great if the U.K. effort can be distributed free to poorer countries.
Not a bad idea. At £3 a dose, our £10 billion could cover half* the planet!
*Ok, maybe a quarter to a third, depending on the protocol.
Certainly investment in a vaccination programme in developing countries is a highly appropriate use of our aid budget. I think though that your sums neglect the cost of the medical and administrative infrastructure needed for such a programme. That is likely to be more expensive than the vaccine, but also useful in the long term for other similar vaccines and public health programmes.
“The issue of herd immunity is difficult,” Anders Tegnell, Sweden's state epidemiologist, said at a news briefing, according to Bloomberg News.
“We see no signs of immunity in the population that are slowing down the infection right now," Tegnell said...
...“I want to make it clear, no, we did not lock down like many other countries, but we definitely had a virtual lockdown,” Tegnell said. “Swedes changed their behavior enormously. We stopped travelling even more than our neighboring countries. The airports had no flights anywhere, the trains were running at a few per cent of normal service, so there were enormous changes in society.”
Bloomberg noted that Swedes have faced more exposure to the coronavirus than residents in other Nordic areas and data published this week showed that every third person tested in Stockholm has tested positive for antibodies.
Meanwhile, recent lockdown in London seems to have made no difference.
Not to be funny, but if you were to show the graph up until end of October and then extrapolate the November figures from it before they had happened, I think you’d have been challenged if you’d said that the former impled the latter.
To end of October, you’ve got a steady rise, mitigated by a dip at half term. Through November, you’ve got a flat line.
I would have assumed that something changed at the start of November to flatten it, without any other information input. Wouldn’t you?
Tbh, the flat line starts before the end of October.
Is this a case of policy catching up with behaviour?
“The issue of herd immunity is difficult,” Anders Tegnell, Sweden's state epidemiologist, said at a news briefing, according to Bloomberg News.
“We see no signs of immunity in the population that are slowing down the infection right now," Tegnell said...
...“I want to make it clear, no, we did not lock down like many other countries, but we definitely had a virtual lockdown,” Tegnell said. “Swedes changed their behavior enormously. We stopped travelling even more than our neighboring countries. The airports had no flights anywhere, the trains were running at a few per cent of normal service, so there were enormous changes in society.”
Bloomberg noted that Swedes have faced more exposure to the coronavirus than residents in other Nordic areas and data published this week showed that every third person tested in Stockholm has tested positive for antibodies.
Meanwhile, recent lockdown in London seems to have made no difference.
Not to be funny, but if you were to show the graph up until end of October and then extrapolate the November figures from it before they had happened, I think you’d have been challenged if you’d said that the former impled the latter.
To end of October, you’ve got a steady rise, mitigated by a dip at half term. Through November, you’ve got a flat line.
I would have assumed that something changed at the start of November to flatten it, without any other information input. Wouldn’t you?
Fake graph of fake data of a fake disease, showing fake results of fake actions.
Christ, and this guy is actually worried about supposedly fraudulent votes?
Donald Trump is not concerned in the slightest about fraud. He's concerned about his own self-image as a Winner. Indeed, the Trump story over the next few years is fairly likely to end with the courts concluding that he's something of a fan of fraud.
I have sympathy with Cyclefree and her piece but the nature of this pandemic has been to devastate the hospitality and travel industry and, while help has been given, it was always going to have constraints with the huge demands from other sectors, not least the health and care sector
With the vaccine on the horizon let us all hope that by mid 2021 these industries will see a sharp uptake in demand and begin their road to recovery
On foreign aid I have no issue with reducing it, but as has been suggested some of the savings should be folded into the vaccine programmes to directly help third world countries with their own vaccinations
On public sector pay freeze I support it purely on the grounds of fairness and expect mp's to lead by example. Additionally I would support abolishing the triple lock thereby freezing our own pension rise next year
On Brexit a deal is really needed, indeed as far as I am concerned any deal, but our relationship with Europe will develop over many years and may eventually lead to 'de facto' membership and at the very least membership of the single market
On Christmas I fail to understand why people just cannot see the safest thing is to treat this Christmas as if we are in lockdown and curtail family gatherings in the greater interest of all of us. No matter the four nations agreeing a convoluted number of rules for this year, my wife and I have already cancelled Christmas day for the 10 of us and will spend it on our own at our on home.
Better safe than sorry
Good post. Re freezing the wages of public sector workers, the government must gain the moral authority to do things like this by also enacting measures which extract a significant contribution to the cost of the pandemic from the relatively affluent. There are many such people in this country and many ways to do it. If the government flunk this aspect it will be a case of "same old Tories" and I predict big trouble. They got away with it last time - making the poor bear much of the pain for the collapse of the financial sector - but I don't think the trick can be repeated. Perhaps Johnson & Co realize this themselves. I hope they do. If so there will be a serious attempt to make "those with the largest shoulders bear the load" in reality rather than as platitudinous soundbite.
Agree - good post.
On foreign aid I am not sure that a reduction to say 0.5% would do that much harm.
There was an interesting session on "Wealth Taxin the light of COVID" in Parliament the other day. One aspect was an attempt to brand IHT and CGT as 'wealth taxes'.
Another was a suggestion that the amount to be raised could be £250-500bn over several years, which is a little loopy - ask Mgr Hollande.
But enough unanimity that reform of things like Stamp Duty to a more continuous setup may be imaginable.
Make next years foreign aid budget free Oxford vaccine to any country in the world who wants it. It would be a small reduction in the % cost, improve the effectiveness of the aid, improve UK reputation worldwide and also give the department a year to work out a plan to spend the budget more effectively for the next decade.
It is indeed a great opportunity for soft displays of power at the same time as knocking this bloody thing on the head. It looks like the three most likely candidates to end up in the third world are the Oxford, Russian and Chinese efforts, so it would be great if the U.K. effort can be distributed free to poorer countries.
Not a bad idea. At £3 a dose, our £10 billion could cover half* the planet!
*Ok, maybe a quarter to a third, depending on the protocol.
Exactly. If you’re going to have an aid budget, vaccinating a substantial proportion of the global population against this damn virus is the best possible use of it!
I don't think anyone would disagree with this.
HMG, in their infinite wisdom, might.
I think it will get hit from both sides within govt. Traditionalists wont like the aid budget being diverted and the populists wont want to pay for other countries. So unlikely to happen even though it should do and is clearly the best use of the 2021 aid budget.
I have sympathy with Cyclefree and her piece but the nature of this pandemic has been to devastate the hospitality and travel industry and, while help has been given, it was always going to have constraints with the huge demands from other sectors, not least the health and care sector
With the vaccine on the horizon let us all hope that by mid 2021 these industries will see a sharp uptake in demand and begin their road to recovery
On foreign aid I have no issue with reducing it, but as has been suggested some of the savings should be folded into the vaccine programmes to directly help third world countries with their own vaccinations
On public sector pay freeze I support it purely on the grounds of fairness and expect mp's to lead by example. Additionally I would support abolishing the triple lock thereby freezing our own pension rise next year
On Brexit a deal is really needed, indeed as far as I am concerned any deal, but our relationship with Europe will develop over many years and may eventually lead to 'de facto' membership and at the very least membership of the single market
On Christmas I fail to understand why people just cannot see the safest thing is to treat this Christmas as if we are in lockdown and curtail family gatherings in the greater interest of all of us. No matter the four nations agreeing a convoluted number of rules for this year, my wife and I have already cancelled Christmas day for the 10 of us and will spend it on our own at our on home.
Better safe than sorry
Good post. Re freezing the wages of public sector workers, the government must gain the moral authority to do things like this by also enacting measures which extract a significant contribution to the cost of the pandemic from the relatively affluent. There are many such people in this country and many ways to do it. If the government flunk this aspect it will be a case of "same old Tories" and I predict big trouble. They got away with it last time - making the poor bear much of the pain for the collapse of the financial sector - but I don't think the trick can be repeated. Perhaps Johnson & Co realize this themselves. I hope they do. If so there will be a serious attempt to make "those with the largest shoulders bear the load" in reality rather than as platitudinous soundbite.
Agree - good post.
On foreign aid I am not sure that a reduction to say 0.5% would do that much harm.
There was an interesting session on "Wealth Taxin the light of COVID" in Parliament the other day. One aspect was an attempt to brand IHT and CGT as 'wealth taxes'.
Another was a suggestion that the amount to be raised could be £250-500bn over several years, which is a little loopy - ask Mgr Hollande.
But enough unanimity that reform of things like Stamp Duty to a more continuous setup may be imaginable.
Make next years foreign aid budget free Oxford vaccine to any country in the world who wants it. It would be a small reduction in the % cost, improve the effectiveness of the aid, improve UK reputation worldwide and also give the department a year to work out a plan to spend the budget more effectively for the next decade.
But that would be offensive to countries that want to take the aid *and* hate on us.
Next you will be saying that having "UK" stamped on the containers for aid is acceptable.
It would be an unconditional offer, available for everyone from North Korea to the USA. If anyone takes offense they can just say no. Or they can take it and carry on hating if thats what they want to.
You don't understand - offering the Oxford vaccine would be an insult to the people shouting "Death to the "
Their feelings are important. or something.
I do understand, I just think the constant culture war trolling is a bit pathetic and not very funny.
I know. But there are people out there in, some in positions to change things, who think like that.
Personally, I *want* upset the Death To The West types. Doing it by vaccinating people against disease would make me giggle.
An article in Nature explaining why the Oxford Astra-Zeneca reporting may be incorrect, why the actual efficacy may be 66%: not 62% nor 90% nor 70%. It may all be down to the way the data was handled across the two different dosing regimes.
Until further data is analysed we just don't know but at the moment there is no doubt in my mind that Moderna and Pfizer are frontrunners with Oxford in third.
Finding it odd that Trump authorized the transition yet is still fighting and also that he is retweeting Sidney Powell stuff after she was fired. Looking like he is not in control of some of these events.
“The issue of herd immunity is difficult,” Anders Tegnell, Sweden's state epidemiologist, said at a news briefing, according to Bloomberg News.
“We see no signs of immunity in the population that are slowing down the infection right now," Tegnell said...
...“I want to make it clear, no, we did not lock down like many other countries, but we definitely had a virtual lockdown,” Tegnell said. “Swedes changed their behavior enormously. We stopped travelling even more than our neighboring countries. The airports had no flights anywhere, the trains were running at a few per cent of normal service, so there were enormous changes in society.”
Bloomberg noted that Swedes have faced more exposure to the coronavirus than residents in other Nordic areas and data published this week showed that every third person tested in Stockholm has tested positive for antibodies.
Meanwhile, recent lockdown in London seems to have made no difference.
Not to be funny, but if you were to show the graph up until end of October and then extrapolate the November figures from it before they had happened, I think you’d have been challenged if you’d said that the former impled the latter.
To end of October, you’ve got a steady rise, mitigated by a dip at half term. Through November, you’ve got a flat line.
I would have assumed that something changed at the start of November to flatten it, without any other information input. Wouldn’t you?
Tbh, the flat line starts before the end of October.
If I’d been shown that at the end of October and before lockdown, I would have assumed a temporary dip caused by half term that was expiring at the end of October.
We have the rise starting at the beginning of September. Separately, we have estimates that schools being open add 0.25 to R, and, since that date, ONS surveys showing a big rise in infections in school-aged children since schools reopened (especially secondary school children). We also have seen migration of infection from infectees of that age to older demographics.
The rise between then and the end of October is linear. Given that viruses spread exponentially, and with no further input data, I would speculate from the graph alone that levels of restrictions were being progressively increased, but not by enough to flatten it.
The dip in late October correlates with a dip in secondary school aged children in the ONS survey, which ended and resumed an upwards slope after about a week. This coincided with half term, and correlates well with the earlier estimates that schools being open adds to the infection rate.
I would therefore expect, in a counterfactual, that the linear rise would have resumed through November without other measures being taken.
Essentially, I would say it points to:
- Half term/schools being closed + Tiered restrictions pull R below 1. - Tier 4/soft lockdown + schools being open hold R at 1.
A corollary would be that a long Christmas break would obviate need for the current lockdown (unless there was otherwise increased mixing - which we fully expect to happen, anyway).
I have sympathy with Cyclefree and her piece but the nature of this pandemic has been to devastate the hospitality and travel industry and, while help has been given, it was always going to have constraints with the huge demands from other sectors, not least the health and care sector
With the vaccine on the horizon let us all hope that by mid 2021 these industries will see a sharp uptake in demand and begin their road to recovery
On foreign aid I have no issue with reducing it, but as has been suggested some of the savings should be folded into the vaccine programmes to directly help third world countries with their own vaccinations
On public sector pay freeze I support it purely on the grounds of fairness and expect mp's to lead by example. Additionally I would support abolishing the triple lock thereby freezing our own pension rise next year
On Brexit a deal is really needed, indeed as far as I am concerned any deal, but our relationship with Europe will develop over many years and may eventually lead to 'de facto' membership and at the very least membership of the single market
On Christmas I fail to understand why people just cannot see the safest thing is to treat this Christmas as if we are in lockdown and curtail family gatherings in the greater interest of all of us. No matter the four nations agreeing a convoluted number of rules for this year, my wife and I have already cancelled Christmas day for the 10 of us and will spend it on our own at our on home.
Better safe than sorry
Good post. Re freezing the wages of public sector workers, the government must gain the moral authority to do things like this by also enacting measures which extract a significant contribution to the cost of the pandemic from the relatively affluent. There are many such people in this country and many ways to do it. If the government flunk this aspect it will be a case of "same old Tories" and I predict big trouble. They got away with it last time - making the poor bear much of the pain for the collapse of the financial sector - but I don't think the trick can be repeated. Perhaps Johnson & Co realize this themselves. I hope they do. If so there will be a serious attempt to make "those with the largest shoulders bear the load" in reality rather than as platitudinous soundbite.
Agree - good post.
On foreign aid I am not sure that a reduction to say 0.5% would do that much harm.
There was an interesting session on "Wealth Taxin the light of COVID" in Parliament the other day. One aspect was an attempt to brand IHT and CGT as 'wealth taxes'.
Another was a suggestion that the amount to be raised could be £250-500bn over several years, which is a little loopy - ask Mgr Hollande.
But enough unanimity that reform of things like Stamp Duty to a more continuous setup may be imaginable.
I'd say that IHT and CGT are wealth taxes. Any tax levied on assets rather than revenue fits that bill imo.
Warren started to call her new tax the ultra-millionaire tax instead of a wealth tax. Multi-millionaire would fit better here, but I think differentiating between normal taxes on wealth like IHT and CGT, and taxing the super elite is important to get enough of the middles classes supporting it.
The super elite avoid IHT in particular through trusts, so it is a middle class wealth tax rather than an elite wealth tax.
Yes there's a difference between a tax on wealth and a tax on the wealthY. For example, I'd say an income tax of say 75% on earnings over £1m p/a is not a wealth tax in the first sense but it is in the second. In practice I think you have to be catching people who are relatively affluent but are not rich. The top decile perhaps. Not sure. One would have to look at the numbers. The trouble with just targeting the truly rich is that it doesn't raise enough.
“The issue of herd immunity is difficult,” Anders Tegnell, Sweden's state epidemiologist, said at a news briefing, according to Bloomberg News.
“We see no signs of immunity in the population that are slowing down the infection right now," Tegnell said...
...“I want to make it clear, no, we did not lock down like many other countries, but we definitely had a virtual lockdown,” Tegnell said. “Swedes changed their behavior enormously. We stopped travelling even more than our neighboring countries. The airports had no flights anywhere, the trains were running at a few per cent of normal service, so there were enormous changes in society.”
Bloomberg noted that Swedes have faced more exposure to the coronavirus than residents in other Nordic areas and data published this week showed that every third person tested in Stockholm has tested positive for antibodies.
Meanwhile, recent lockdown in London seems to have made no difference.
Not to be funny, but if you were to show the graph up until end of October and then extrapolate the November figures from it before they had happened, I think you’d have been challenged if you’d said that the former impled the latter.
To end of October, you’ve got a steady rise, mitigated by a dip at half term. Through November, you’ve got a flat line.
I would have assumed that something changed at the start of November to flatten it, without any other information input. Wouldn’t you?
Tbh, the flat line starts before the end of October.
Is this a case of policy catching up with behaviour?
School half term.
Like the boffins said in the summer, you can have pubs or schools but not both.
Good news: collectively, we might get away with Christmas socialisation, since schools will be closed.
“The issue of herd immunity is difficult,” Anders Tegnell, Sweden's state epidemiologist, said at a news briefing, according to Bloomberg News.
“We see no signs of immunity in the population that are slowing down the infection right now," Tegnell said...
...“I want to make it clear, no, we did not lock down like many other countries, but we definitely had a virtual lockdown,” Tegnell said. “Swedes changed their behavior enormously. We stopped travelling even more than our neighboring countries. The airports had no flights anywhere, the trains were running at a few per cent of normal service, so there were enormous changes in society.”
Bloomberg noted that Swedes have faced more exposure to the coronavirus than residents in other Nordic areas and data published this week showed that every third person tested in Stockholm has tested positive for antibodies.
Meanwhile, recent lockdown in London seems to have made no difference.
Not to be funny, but if you were to show the graph up until end of October and then extrapolate the November figures from it before they had happened, I think you’d have been challenged if you’d said that the former impled the latter.
To end of October, you’ve got a steady rise, mitigated by a dip at half term. Through November, you’ve got a flat line.
I would have assumed that something changed at the start of November to flatten it, without any other information input. Wouldn’t you?
Tbh, the flat line starts before the end of October.
If I’d been shown that at the end of October and before lockdown, I would have assumed a temporary dip caused by half term that was expiring at the end of October.
We have the rise starting at the beginning of September. Separately, we have estimates that schools being open add 0.25 to R, and, since that date, ONS surveys showing a big rise in infections in school-aged children since schools reopened (especially secondary school children). We also have seen migration of infection from infectees of that age to older demographics.
The rise between then and the end of October is linear. Given that viruses spread exponentially, and with no further input data, I would speculate from the graph alone that levels of restrictions were being progressively increased, but not by enough to flatten it.
The dip in late October correlates with a dip in secondary school aged children in the ONS survey, which ended and resumed an upwards slope after about a week. This coincided with half term, and correlates well with the earlier estimates that schools being open adds to the infection rate.
I would therefore expect, in a counterfactual, that the linear rise would have resumed through November without other measures being taken.
Essentially, I would say it points to:
- Half term/schools being closed + Tiered restrictions pull R below 1. - Tier 4/soft lockdown + schools being open hold R at 1.
A corollary would be that a long Christmas break would obviate need for the current lockdown (unless there was otherwise increased mixing - which we fully expect to happen, anyway).
These is case data which has a 10 day lag from infection to registering the case. The levelling off in London started before half term.
Finding it odd that Trump authorized the transition yet is still fighting and also that he is retweeting Sidney Powell stuff after she was fired. Looking like he is not in control of some of these events.
I think the reality is he's been told by Senate leaders and others that they will play along for now, but only if he fires Powell (who had decided the Governor of Georgia was part of her crazy conspiracy theories, and who was seriously undermining their continuing Senate campaigns there) and authorises transition work (as they want Biden to own any early errors rather than blaming a farcical transition process). As you say, he's a lame duck and events are running ever faster away from him.
I have sympathy with Cyclefree and her piece but the nature of this pandemic has been to devastate the hospitality and travel industry and, while help has been given, it was always going to have constraints with the huge demands from other sectors, not least the health and care sector
With the vaccine on the horizon let us all hope that by mid 2021 these industries will see a sharp uptake in demand and begin their road to recovery
On foreign aid I have no issue with reducing it, but as has been suggested some of the savings should be folded into the vaccine programmes to directly help third world countries with their own vaccinations
On public sector pay freeze I support it purely on the grounds of fairness and expect mp's to lead by example. Additionally I would support abolishing the triple lock thereby freezing our own pension rise next year
On Brexit a deal is really needed, indeed as far as I am concerned any deal, but our relationship with Europe will develop over many years and may eventually lead to 'de facto' membership and at the very least membership of the single market
On Christmas I fail to understand why people just cannot see the safest thing is to treat this Christmas as if we are in lockdown and curtail family gatherings in the greater interest of all of us. No matter the four nations agreeing a convoluted number of rules for this year, my wife and I have already cancelled Christmas day for the 10 of us and will spend it on our own at our on home.
Better safe than sorry
Good post. Re freezing the wages of public sector workers, the government must gain the moral authority to do things like this by also enacting measures which extract a significant contribution to the cost of the pandemic from the relatively affluent. There are many such people in this country and many ways to do it. If the government flunk this aspect it will be a case of "same old Tories" and I predict big trouble. They got away with it last time - making the poor bear much of the pain for the collapse of the financial sector - but I don't think the trick can be repeated. Perhaps Johnson & Co realize this themselves. I hope they do. If so there will be a serious attempt to make "those with the largest shoulders bear the load" in reality rather than as platitudinous soundbite.
Agree - good post.
On foreign aid I am not sure that a reduction to say 0.5% would do that much harm.
There was an interesting session on "Wealth Taxin the light of COVID" in Parliament the other day. One aspect was an attempt to brand IHT and CGT as 'wealth taxes'.
Another was a suggestion that the amount to be raised could be £250-500bn over several years, which is a little loopy - ask Mgr Hollande.
But enough unanimity that reform of things like Stamp Duty to a more continuous setup may be imaginable.
Make next years foreign aid budget free Oxford vaccine to any country in the world who wants it. It would be a small reduction in the % cost, improve the effectiveness of the aid, improve UK reputation worldwide and also give the department a year to work out a plan to spend the budget more effectively for the next decade.
It is indeed a great opportunity for soft displays of power at the same time as knocking this bloody thing on the head. It looks like the three most likely candidates to end up in the third world are the Oxford, Russian and Chinese efforts, so it would be great if the U.K. effort can be distributed free to poorer countries.
Not a bad idea. At £3 a dose, our £10 billion could cover half* the planet!
*Ok, maybe a quarter to a third, depending on the protocol.
Exactly. If you’re going to have an aid budget, vaccinating a substantial proportion of the global population against this damn virus is the best possible use of it!
Although the same could be said of fabulously wealthy individuals, looking for a legacy.
A bunch of them could get together a divide vaccinating the world's 50 poorest countries between them.
I have sympathy with Cyclefree and her piece but the nature of this pandemic has been to devastate the hospitality and travel industry and, while help has been given, it was always going to have constraints with the huge demands from other sectors, not least the health and care sector
With the vaccine on the horizon let us all hope that by mid 2021 these industries will see a sharp uptake in demand and begin their road to recovery
On foreign aid I have no issue with reducing it, but as has been suggested some of the savings should be folded into the vaccine programmes to directly help third world countries with their own vaccinations
On public sector pay freeze I support it purely on the grounds of fairness and expect mp's to lead by example. Additionally I would support abolishing the triple lock thereby freezing our own pension rise next year
On Brexit a deal is really needed, indeed as far as I am concerned any deal, but our relationship with Europe will develop over many years and may eventually lead to 'de facto' membership and at the very least membership of the single market
On Christmas I fail to understand why people just cannot see the safest thing is to treat this Christmas as if we are in lockdown and curtail family gatherings in the greater interest of all of us. No matter the four nations agreeing a convoluted number of rules for this year, my wife and I have already cancelled Christmas day for the 10 of us and will spend it on our own at our on home.
Better safe than sorry
Good post. Re freezing the wages of public sector workers, the government must gain the moral authority to do things like this by also enacting measures which extract a significant contribution to the cost of the pandemic from the relatively affluent. There are many such people in this country and many ways to do it. If the government flunk this aspect it will be a case of "same old Tories" and I predict big trouble. They got away with it last time - making the poor bear much of the pain for the collapse of the financial sector - but I don't think the trick can be repeated. Perhaps Johnson & Co realize this themselves. I hope they do. If so there will be a serious attempt to make "those with the largest shoulders bear the load" in reality rather than as platitudinous soundbite.
Agree - good post.
On foreign aid I am not sure that a reduction to say 0.5% would do that much harm.
There was an interesting session on "Wealth Taxin the light of COVID" in Parliament the other day. One aspect was an attempt to brand IHT and CGT as 'wealth taxes'.
Another was a suggestion that the amount to be raised could be £250-500bn over several years, which is a little loopy - ask Mgr Hollande.
But enough unanimity that reform of things like Stamp Duty to a more continuous setup may be imaginable.
I'd say that IHT and CGT are wealth taxes. Any tax levied on assets rather than revenue fits that bill imo.
Warren started to call her new tax the ultra-millionaire tax instead of a wealth tax. Multi-millionaire would fit better here, but I think differentiating between normal taxes on wealth like IHT and CGT, and taxing the super elite is important to get enough of the middles classes supporting it.
The super elite avoid IHT in particular through trusts, so it is a middle class wealth tax rather than an elite wealth tax.
Yes there's a difference between a tax on wealth and a tax on the wealthY. For example, I'd say an income tax of say 75% on earnings over £1m p/a is not a wealth tax in the first sense but it is in the second. In practice I think you have to be catching people who are relatively affluent but are not rich. The top decile perhaps. Not sure. One would have to look at the numbers. The trouble with just targeting the truly rich is that it doesn't raise enough.
It would if you shook up the treatment of trusts. Credit Suisse have the top 1% owning 24% of the UK.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if Boris didn't U-turn over this - it would fit perfectly with the new One Nation, internationalist, Bidenesque image he's cultivating. Moreover the cut was mainly driven by Rees-Mogg and the Daily Express - both discredited instruments of the Trump era.
Why would he? Cutting overseas aid is about the only spending cut the public suppport
I have sympathy with Cyclefree and her piece but the nature of this pandemic has been to devastate the hospitality and travel industry and, while help has been given, it was always going to have constraints with the huge demands from other sectors, not least the health and care sector
With the vaccine on the horizon let us all hope that by mid 2021 these industries will see a sharp uptake in demand and begin their road to recovery
On foreign aid I have no issue with reducing it, but as has been suggested some of the savings should be folded into the vaccine programmes to directly help third world countries with their own vaccinations
On public sector pay freeze I support it purely on the grounds of fairness and expect mp's to lead by example. Additionally I would support abolishing the triple lock thereby freezing our own pension rise next year
On Brexit a deal is really needed, indeed as far as I am concerned any deal, but our relationship with Europe will develop over many years and may eventually lead to 'de facto' membership and at the very least membership of the single market
On Christmas I fail to understand why people just cannot see the safest thing is to treat this Christmas as if we are in lockdown and curtail family gatherings in the greater interest of all of us. No matter the four nations agreeing a convoluted number of rules for this year, my wife and I have already cancelled Christmas day for the 10 of us and will spend it on our own at our on home.
Better safe than sorry
Good post. Re freezing the wages of public sector workers, the government must gain the moral authority to do things like this by also enacting measures which extract a significant contribution to the cost of the pandemic from the relatively affluent. There are many such people in this country and many ways to do it. If the government flunk this aspect it will be a case of "same old Tories" and I predict big trouble. They got away with it last time - making the poor bear much of the pain for the collapse of the financial sector - but I don't think the trick can be repeated. Perhaps Johnson & Co realize this themselves. I hope they do. If so there will be a serious attempt to make "those with the largest shoulders bear the load" in reality rather than as platitudinous soundbite.
Agree - good post.
On foreign aid I am not sure that a reduction to say 0.5% would do that much harm.
There was an interesting session on "Wealth Taxin the light of COVID" in Parliament the other day. One aspect was an attempt to brand IHT and CGT as 'wealth taxes'.
Another was a suggestion that the amount to be raised could be £250-500bn over several years, which is a little loopy - ask Mgr Hollande.
But enough unanimity that reform of things like Stamp Duty to a more continuous setup may be imaginable.
Make next years foreign aid budget free Oxford vaccine to any country in the world who wants it. It would be a small reduction in the % cost, improve the effectiveness of the aid, improve UK reputation worldwide and also give the department a year to work out a plan to spend the budget more effectively for the next decade.
It is indeed a great opportunity for soft displays of power at the same time as knocking this bloody thing on the head. It looks like the three most likely candidates to end up in the third world are the Oxford, Russian and Chinese efforts, so it would be great if the U.K. effort can be distributed free to poorer countries.
Not a bad idea. At £3 a dose, our £10 billion could cover half* the planet!
*Ok, maybe a quarter to a third, depending on the protocol.
Exactly. If you’re going to have an aid budget, vaccinating a substantial proportion of the global population against this damn virus is the best possible use of it!
Although the same could be said of fabulously wealthy individuals, looking for a legacy.
A bunch of them could get together a divide vaccinating the world's 50 poorest countries between them.
I know we all love to take the piss out of politicians, but the simple act having someone in No.10 pick this up and reply to it will bring smiles to the face, not only of that one kid, but many more who will see the story.
I have two young nephews who just replied to me that they’re so happy Santa will still be coming to visit a month from now, despite everything else that’s happened this year.
Personally, I feel uncomfortable about this kind of tweet from a PM. By all means reply to the kid personally, but don't tweet about it. We've got 500 dying a day from this thing, and I do think leaders need to present in a serious way for serious times. I do also just think tweeting about it rather spoils the gesture, turning a nice personal response to a child who has written in into a PR stunt.
That's not a particular criticism of Johnson, by the way. I think his predecessors of both parties would have done the same. It just leaves a bad taste for me, that's all.
Predecessors of both parties have had a long tradition of replying to picked children letters. And publicising the letters and the replies.
The story of how Thatcher's aides wisely refused to put a stamp on her reply to a miner's kid has never been widely publicised.
'I'm really very sorry that Santa will not be visiting your nest of enemies within this year, however your letter has touched my heart and I've asked a very good friend to see if he can Fix It for you.'
I have sympathy with Cyclefree and her piece but the nature of this pandemic has been to devastate the hospitality and travel industry and, while help has been given, it was always going to have constraints with the huge demands from other sectors, not least the health and care sector
With the vaccine on the horizon let us all hope that by mid 2021 these industries will see a sharp uptake in demand and begin their road to recovery
On foreign aid I have no issue with reducing it, but as has been suggested some of the savings should be folded into the vaccine programmes to directly help third world countries with their own vaccinations
On public sector pay freeze I support it purely on the grounds of fairness and expect mp's to lead by example. Additionally I would support abolishing the triple lock thereby freezing our own pension rise next year
On Brexit a deal is really needed, indeed as far as I am concerned any deal, but our relationship with Europe will develop over many years and may eventually lead to 'de facto' membership and at the very least membership of the single market
On Christmas I fail to understand why people just cannot see the safest thing is to treat this Christmas as if we are in lockdown and curtail family gatherings in the greater interest of all of us. No matter the four nations agreeing a convoluted number of rules for this year, my wife and I have already cancelled Christmas day for the 10 of us and will spend it on our own at our on home.
Better safe than sorry
Good post. Re freezing the wages of public sector workers, the government must gain the moral authority to do things like this by also enacting measures which extract a significant contribution to the cost of the pandemic from the relatively affluent. There are many such people in this country and many ways to do it. If the government flunk this aspect it will be a case of "same old Tories" and I predict big trouble. They got away with it last time - making the poor bear much of the pain for the collapse of the financial sector - but I don't think the trick can be repeated. Perhaps Johnson & Co realize this themselves. I hope they do. If so there will be a serious attempt to make "those with the largest shoulders bear the load" in reality rather than as platitudinous soundbite.
Agree - good post.
On foreign aid I am not sure that a reduction to say 0.5% would do that much harm.
There was an interesting session on "Wealth Taxin the light of COVID" in Parliament the other day. One aspect was an attempt to brand IHT and CGT as 'wealth taxes'.
Another was a suggestion that the amount to be raised could be £250-500bn over several years, which is a little loopy - ask Mgr Hollande.
But enough unanimity that reform of things like Stamp Duty to a more continuous setup may be imaginable.
I'd say that IHT and CGT are wealth taxes. Any tax levied on assets rather than revenue fits that bill imo.
Warren started to call her new tax the ultra-millionaire tax instead of a wealth tax. Multi-millionaire would fit better here, but I think differentiating between normal taxes on wealth like IHT and CGT, and taxing the super elite is important to get enough of the middles classes supporting it.
The super elite avoid IHT in particular through trusts, so it is a middle class wealth tax rather than an elite wealth tax.
Yes there's a difference between a tax on wealth and a tax on the wealthY. For example, I'd say an income tax of say 75% on earnings over £1m p/a is not a wealth tax in the first sense but it is in the second. In practice I think you have to be catching people who are relatively affluent but are not rich. The top decile perhaps. Not sure. One would have to look at the numbers. The trouble with just targeting the truly rich is that it doesn't raise enough.
It would if you shook up the treatment of trusts. Credit Suisse have the top 1% owning 24% of the UK.
Why can't our politicians follow Trudeau's example, "if you are thinking of going to visit family, especially eldrely relatives, DON'T. So much simpler.
Why can't our politicians follow Trudeau's example, "if you are thinking of going to visit family, especially eldrely relatives, DON'T. So much simpler.
Indeed.
The vaccine is just weeks away. Why take the risk?
I have sympathy with Cyclefree and her piece but the nature of this pandemic has been to devastate the hospitality and travel industry and, while help has been given, it was always going to have constraints with the huge demands from other sectors, not least the health and care sector
With the vaccine on the horizon let us all hope that by mid 2021 these industries will see a sharp uptake in demand and begin their road to recovery
On foreign aid I have no issue with reducing it, but as has been suggested some of the savings should be folded into the vaccine programmes to directly help third world countries with their own vaccinations
On public sector pay freeze I support it purely on the grounds of fairness and expect mp's to lead by example. Additionally I would support abolishing the triple lock thereby freezing our own pension rise next year
On Brexit a deal is really needed, indeed as far as I am concerned any deal, but our relationship with Europe will develop over many years and may eventually lead to 'de facto' membership and at the very least membership of the single market
On Christmas I fail to understand why people just cannot see the safest thing is to treat this Christmas as if we are in lockdown and curtail family gatherings in the greater interest of all of us. No matter the four nations agreeing a convoluted number of rules for this year, my wife and I have already cancelled Christmas day for the 10 of us and will spend it on our own at our on home.
Better safe than sorry
Good post. Re freezing the wages of public sector workers, the government must gain the moral authority to do things like this by also enacting measures which extract a significant contribution to the cost of the pandemic from the relatively affluent. There are many such people in this country and many ways to do it. If the government flunk this aspect it will be a case of "same old Tories" and I predict big trouble. They got away with it last time - making the poor bear much of the pain for the collapse of the financial sector - but I don't think the trick can be repeated. Perhaps Johnson & Co realize this themselves. I hope they do. If so there will be a serious attempt to make "those with the largest shoulders bear the load" in reality rather than as platitudinous soundbite.
Agree - good post.
On foreign aid I am not sure that a reduction to say 0.5% would do that much harm.
There was an interesting session on "Wealth Taxin the light of COVID" in Parliament the other day. One aspect was an attempt to brand IHT and CGT as 'wealth taxes'.
Another was a suggestion that the amount to be raised could be £250-500bn over several years, which is a little loopy - ask Mgr Hollande.
But enough unanimity that reform of things like Stamp Duty to a more continuous setup may be imaginable.
I'd say that IHT and CGT are wealth taxes. Any tax levied on assets rather than revenue fits that bill imo.
Warren started to call her new tax the ultra-millionaire tax instead of a wealth tax. Multi-millionaire would fit better here, but I think differentiating between normal taxes on wealth like IHT and CGT, and taxing the super elite is important to get enough of the middles classes supporting it.
The super elite avoid IHT in particular through trusts, so it is a middle class wealth tax rather than an elite wealth tax.
Yes there's a difference between a tax on wealth and a tax on the wealthY. For example, I'd say an income tax of say 75% on earnings over £1m p/a is not a wealth tax in the first sense but it is in the second. In practice I think you have to be catching people who are relatively affluent but are not rich. The top decile perhaps. Not sure. One would have to look at the numbers. The trouble with just targeting the truly rich is that it doesn't raise enough.
It would if you shook up the treatment of trusts. Credit Suisse have the top 1% owning 24% of the UK.
Really? Remarkable. So what sort of measures could unlock that iyo?
Why can't our politicians follow Trudeau's example, "if you are thinking of going to visit family, especially eldrely relatives, DON'T. So much simpler.
Why can't our politicians follow Trudeau's example, "if you are thinking of going to visit family, especially eldrely relatives, DON'T. So much simpler.
Beyond me...i would have gone rule of 6 (plus kids) for Christmas Day, but don't invite your oldies.
Instead we have gone for a week hall pass. Bonkers.
I have sympathy with Cyclefree and her piece but the nature of this pandemic has been to devastate the hospitality and travel industry and, while help has been given, it was always going to have constraints with the huge demands from other sectors, not least the health and care sector
With the vaccine on the horizon let us all hope that by mid 2021 these industries will see a sharp uptake in demand and begin their road to recovery
On foreign aid I have no issue with reducing it, but as has been suggested some of the savings should be folded into the vaccine programmes to directly help third world countries with their own vaccinations
On public sector pay freeze I support it purely on the grounds of fairness and expect mp's to lead by example. Additionally I would support abolishing the triple lock thereby freezing our own pension rise next year
On Brexit a deal is really needed, indeed as far as I am concerned any deal, but our relationship with Europe will develop over many years and may eventually lead to 'de facto' membership and at the very least membership of the single market
On Christmas I fail to understand why people just cannot see the safest thing is to treat this Christmas as if we are in lockdown and curtail family gatherings in the greater interest of all of us. No matter the four nations agreeing a convoluted number of rules for this year, my wife and I have already cancelled Christmas day for the 10 of us and will spend it on our own at our on home.
Better safe than sorry
Good post. Re freezing the wages of public sector workers, the government must gain the moral authority to do things like this by also enacting measures which extract a significant contribution to the cost of the pandemic from the relatively affluent. There are many such people in this country and many ways to do it. If the government flunk this aspect it will be a case of "same old Tories" and I predict big trouble. They got away with it last time - making the poor bear much of the pain for the collapse of the financial sector - but I don't think the trick can be repeated. Perhaps Johnson & Co realize this themselves. I hope they do. If so there will be a serious attempt to make "those with the largest shoulders bear the load" in reality rather than as platitudinous soundbite.
Agree - good post.
On foreign aid I am not sure that a reduction to say 0.5% would do that much harm.
There was an interesting session on "Wealth Taxin the light of COVID" in Parliament the other day. One aspect was an attempt to brand IHT and CGT as 'wealth taxes'.
Another was a suggestion that the amount to be raised could be £250-500bn over several years, which is a little loopy - ask Mgr Hollande.
But enough unanimity that reform of things like Stamp Duty to a more continuous setup may be imaginable.
Make next years foreign aid budget free Oxford vaccine to any country in the world who wants it. It would be a small reduction in the % cost, improve the effectiveness of the aid, improve UK reputation worldwide and also give the department a year to work out a plan to spend the budget more effectively for the next decade.
It is indeed a great opportunity for soft displays of power at the same time as knocking this bloody thing on the head. It looks like the three most likely candidates to end up in the third world are the Oxford, Russian and Chinese efforts, so it would be great if the U.K. effort can be distributed free to poorer countries.
Not a bad idea. At £3 a dose, our £10 billion could cover half* the planet!
*Ok, maybe a quarter to a third, depending on the protocol.
Exactly. If you’re going to have an aid budget, vaccinating a substantial proportion of the global population against this damn virus is the best possible use of it!
Although the same could be said of fabulously wealthy individuals, looking for a legacy.
A bunch of them could get together a divide vaccinating the world's 50 poorest countries between them.
Bill Gates has done so, I believe.
I think he backed a bunch of different trials, to ensure we would get a vaccine sooner. I'm talking about the next step once you have that vaccine.
Sensible compromise for public sector wages. Prioritise the lowest earners and the NHS.
There's much more to the NHS than just "doctors" and "nurses".
What's your point?
Why are they less deserving than "doctors" and "nurses"?
Because there's a limit to the money available. Doctors and nurses have been on the frontline kitted out in PPE bearing the brunt of this pandemic. As have care workers and others too outside the NHS.
Have the others you're thinking of who are earning more than £24k per annum been the same?
Sensible compromise for public sector wages. Prioritise the lowest earners and the NHS.
There's much more to the NHS than just "doctors" and "nurses".
What's your point?
Why are they less deserving than "doctors" and "nurses"?
Because there's a limit to the money available. Doctors and nurses have been on the frontline kitted out in PPE bearing the brunt of this pandemic. As have care workers and others too outside the NHS.
Have the others you're thinking of who are earning more than £24k per annum been the same?
No, only doctors and nurses on COVID wards have been on the frontline kitted out in PPE. Other doctors and nurses have simply worn masks like everybody else.
I'm talking about speech therapists, radiographers, they people who work in the labs analysing blood work, paramedics, etc.
Overseas Aid should be cut to almost £0 for the foreseeable future, we just can't afford it. Spending on disaster relief only.
And vaccine distribution?
Give away what we don't use, but beyond that no. I don't think you understand the scale of the debt we're being asked to take on. Saving £11bn per year on Aid is a minimum necessity to justify this huge increase.
Why can't our politicians follow Trudeau's example, "if you are thinking of going to visit family, especially eldrely relatives, DON'T. So much simpler.
Beyond me...i would have gone rule of 6 (plus kids) for Christmas Day, but don't invite your oldies.
Instead we have gone for a week hall pass. Bonkers.
Its not a hall pass, it is a limitation of just 3 non-exchangeable families.
And Christmas Day alone does not work. Some people for good reason can't or don't want to travel on Christmas Day.
We're thinking of inviting my sister-in-law as our only visitor for this period, or going to see her ourselves. That would be it for us. But we won't see her on Christmas Day - we have a rule in our household that Christmas Day is for our children so we won't leave the house on Christmas Day and due to the lack of public transport she's unable to travel to see us on Christmas Day. So if we do the Christmas visit on the 23rd or Boxing Day then how is that worse than someone else doing that on Christmas Day?
The borrowing forecast figures are far worse than the unemployment forecast figures.
Sorry why are you surprised? You have supported all of this to the hilt. I imagine you ran the numbers in your head.
As Thatcher said: TINA.
That's the absurdity that Johnson is trying to sell to the public, at any rate, even after the numbers of his tame scientists have been shattered by their rivals.
Its clear now that Britain is being bankrupted to keep certain reputations intact and persons in power.
Sensible compromise for public sector wages. Prioritise the lowest earners and the NHS.
There's much more to the NHS than just "doctors" and "nurses".
What's your point?
Why are they less deserving than "doctors" and "nurses"?
Because there's a limit to the money available. Doctors and nurses have been on the frontline kitted out in PPE bearing the brunt of this pandemic. As have care workers and others too outside the NHS.
Have the others you're thinking of who are earning more than £24k per annum been the same?
No, only doctors and nurses on COVID wards have been on the frontline kitted out in PPE. Other doctors and nurses have simply worn masks like everybody else.
I'm talking about speech therapists, radiographers, they people who work in the labs analysing blood work, paramedics, etc.
"Doctors" and "nurses" is just populist bollocks.
I would imagine radiographers and paramedics are being covered in the phrase "doctors and nurses" I'd be surprised if their pay is frozen.
Sensible compromise for public sector wages. Prioritise the lowest earners and the NHS.
I'm sorry it isn't. Teachers have had an enormously difficult task this year and they are being shat on from a great height with this pay freeze. Cut the aid budget to zero and give teachers a payrise.
I have sympathy with Cyclefree and her piece but the nature of this pandemic has been to devastate the hospitality and travel industry and, while help has been given, it was always going to have constraints with the huge demands from other sectors, not least the health and care sector
With the vaccine on the horizon let us all hope that by mid 2021 these industries will see a sharp uptake in demand and begin their road to recovery
On foreign aid I have no issue with reducing it, but as has been suggested some of the savings should be folded into the vaccine programmes to directly help third world countries with their own vaccinations
On public sector pay freeze I support it purely on the grounds of fairness and expect mp's to lead by example. Additionally I would support abolishing the triple lock thereby freezing our own pension rise next year
On Brexit a deal is really needed, indeed as far as I am concerned any deal, but our relationship with Europe will develop over many years and may eventually lead to 'de facto' membership and at the very least membership of the single market
On Christmas I fail to understand why people just cannot see the safest thing is to treat this Christmas as if we are in lockdown and curtail family gatherings in the greater interest of all of us. No matter the four nations agreeing a convoluted number of rules for this year, my wife and I have already cancelled Christmas day for the 10 of us and will spend it on our own at our on home.
Better safe than sorry
Good post. Re freezing the wages of public sector workers, the government must gain the moral authority to do things like this by also enacting measures which extract a significant contribution to the cost of the pandemic from the relatively affluent. There are many such people in this country and many ways to do it. If the government flunk this aspect it will be a case of "same old Tories" and I predict big trouble. They got away with it last time - making the poor bear much of the pain for the collapse of the financial sector - but I don't think the trick can be repeated. Perhaps Johnson & Co realize this themselves. I hope they do. If so there will be a serious attempt to make "those with the largest shoulders bear the load" in reality rather than as platitudinous soundbite.
Agree - good post.
On foreign aid I am not sure that a reduction to say 0.5% would do that much harm.
There was an interesting session on "Wealth Taxin the light of COVID" in Parliament the other day. One aspect was an attempt to brand IHT and CGT as 'wealth taxes'.
Another was a suggestion that the amount to be raised could be £250-500bn over several years, which is a little loopy - ask Mgr Hollande.
But enough unanimity that reform of things like Stamp Duty to a more continuous setup may be imaginable.
I'd say that IHT and CGT are wealth taxes. Any tax levied on assets rather than revenue fits that bill imo.
Warren started to call her new tax the ultra-millionaire tax instead of a wealth tax. Multi-millionaire would fit better here, but I think differentiating between normal taxes on wealth like IHT and CGT, and taxing the super elite is important to get enough of the middles classes supporting it.
The super elite avoid IHT in particular through trusts, so it is a middle class wealth tax rather than an elite wealth tax.
Yes there's a difference between a tax on wealth and a tax on the wealthY. For example, I'd say an income tax of say 75% on earnings over £1m p/a is not a wealth tax in the first sense but it is in the second. In practice I think you have to be catching people who are relatively affluent but are not rich. The top decile perhaps. Not sure. One would have to look at the numbers. The trouble with just targeting the truly rich is that it doesn't raise enough.
It would if you shook up the treatment of trusts. Credit Suisse have the top 1% owning 24% of the UK.
Really? Remarkable. So what sort of measures could unlock that iyo?
Ask a tax trust specialist! From a maths point of view, annual wealth tax of 1% on the top 1% of asset owners in the UK, would raise about £30-35bn extra per year. You wont get full compliance but dont see why half of that isnt achievable.
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*Ok, maybe a quarter to a third, depending on the protocol.
So presumably if you want to stop the increase you need to maintain the lockdown, whereas if you want to cut the rates you'd need to lockdown harder.
Not sure that data says what you want it to say.
The COVID Vaccine way does seem a good idea. As was the original (but I think, frustrated) idea to develop a production facility in an African country was (going back to I think April).
He needs a Machiavelli with a black heart to point out these cynical but useful balances to him.
Is Lord Mandelbrot available?
To end of October, you’ve got a steady rise, mitigated by a dip at half term.
Through November, you’ve got a flat line.
I would have assumed that something changed at the start of November to flatten it, without any other information input. Wouldn’t you?
There is a limit to QE's effectiveness when the curve is already so low and flat, but I think we are still some way off the point where it becomes positively damaging to the outlook.
The super elite avoid IHT in particular through trusts, so it is a middle class wealth tax rather than an elite wealth tax.
Translation - Personal Trump crap.
https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1331404288149643264?s=21
I do agree with your general point. An interesting idea and I think it would raise a fair amount if for a specific purpose.
Deaths still up but they've stopped their strict adherence to the fortnightly doubling, 2,838 dead compared to 1,598 two week previously. A mere 77% increase compared to the doublings we saw over the last two months.
Do catch up.
Poll results: Biden 80,025,880; Trump 73,886,400
Personally, I *want* upset the Death To The West types. Doing it by vaccinating people against disease would make me giggle.
Until further data is analysed we just don't know but at the moment there is no doubt in my mind that Moderna and Pfizer are frontrunners with Oxford in third.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03326-w
We have the rise starting at the beginning of September. Separately, we have estimates that schools being open add 0.25 to R, and, since that date, ONS surveys showing a big rise in infections in school-aged children since schools reopened (especially secondary school children). We also have seen migration of infection from infectees of that age to older demographics.
The rise between then and the end of October is linear. Given that viruses spread exponentially, and with no further input data, I would speculate from the graph alone that levels of restrictions were being progressively increased, but not by enough to flatten it.
The dip in late October correlates with a dip in secondary school aged children in the ONS survey, which ended and resumed an upwards slope after about a week. This coincided with half term, and correlates well with the earlier estimates that schools being open adds to the infection rate.
I would therefore expect, in a counterfactual, that the linear rise would have resumed through November without other measures being taken.
Essentially, I would say it points to:
- Half term/schools being closed + Tiered restrictions pull R below 1.
- Tier 4/soft lockdown + schools being open hold R at 1.
A corollary would be that a long Christmas break would obviate need for the current lockdown (unless there was otherwise increased mixing - which we fully expect to happen, anyway).
Like the boffins said in the summer, you can have pubs or schools but not both.
Good news: collectively, we might get away with Christmas socialisation, since schools will be closed.
Electoral Calculus projects a hung parliament based on that new Comres with Cons on 312, Lab 250, SNP 58 and LDs 7.
So even Cons + the 8 DUP would only get to 320, still 6 short of an overall majority but Labour + SNP + LDs + 4 PC +2 SDLP + 1 Green = 222.
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/fcgi-bin/usercode.py?scotcontrol=Y&CON=39&LAB=37&LIB=7&Brexit=3&Green=4&UKIP=&TVCON=&TVLAB=&TVLIB=&TVBrexit=&TVGreen=&TVUKIP=&SCOTCON=20&SCOTLAB=18.4&SCOTLIB=5.5&SCOTBrexit=1.1&SCOTGreen=1.1&SCOTUKIP=&SCOTNAT=52.6&display=AllChanged&regorseat=(none)&boundary=2019
A bunch of them could get together a divide vaccinating the world's 50 poorest countries between them.
What did you expect?
https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1330571816272793610?s=20
'I'm really very sorry that Santa will not be visiting your nest of enemies within this year, however your letter has touched my heart and I've asked a very good friend to see if he can Fix It for you.'
The vaccine is just weeks away. Why take the risk?
Instead we have gone for a week hall pass. Bonkers.
Have the others you're thinking of who are earning more than £24k per annum been the same?
I'm talking about speech therapists, radiographers, they people who work in the labs analysing blood work, paramedics, etc.
"Doctors" and "nurses" is just populist bollocks.
And Christmas Day alone does not work. Some people for good reason can't or don't want to travel on Christmas Day.
We're thinking of inviting my sister-in-law as our only visitor for this period, or going to see her ourselves. That would be it for us. But we won't see her on Christmas Day - we have a rule in our household that Christmas Day is for our children so we won't leave the house on Christmas Day and due to the lack of public transport she's unable to travel to see us on Christmas Day. So if we do the Christmas visit on the 23rd or Boxing Day then how is that worse than someone else doing that on Christmas Day?
Its clear now that Britain is being bankrupted to keep certain reputations intact and persons in power.
Accountants on the other hand may be different.
I doubt it!
makes whitty's graphs look sound.
Who could have foreseen that?