No matter how fast we go, still not fast enough for the moaners...
Now get on with the vaccines and end lockdown: Boris is urged to seize on Britain halting Covid surge by DOUBLING jabs target to 30million to ease restrictions by mid-February
I don't even see how that's possible. It would need 1m jabs per day from tomorrow to reach it, we simply don't have the supply. Even if we had the logistics in place to do 1m jabs per day those people would be sitting around waiting for vaccine doses all day.
Why the lack of ambition? We should have jabs for everyone. Tomorrow. 64 million jabs in the morning (just magic up a vaccine that is suitable for all age groups. 67 million in the afternoon (magic up a vaccine that only needs 10 minutes between shots)
All we need is a hash tag on Twatter.
Isn't the hashtag #CaptainForesight?
Lol. "We said the government should do 30m vaccinations per day and now that they've failed our test we face another 3 months of lockdown". It's honestly the kind of rubbish I expect from Starmer and his idiotic front bench at the moment.
I thought that there were reports just yesterday saying that the vaccine in Israel did massively reduce the transmission of the virus?
That would be welcome but we still don't know how long protection from the virus lasts? Will we need to vaccinate everyone again in the late summer/autumn or will it get us through to this time next year?
That seems like less of a worry to be honest. If regular vaccinations are required I see no reason why that wouldn't happen.
With the mRNA technology (especially if the Imperial ideas for room temperature storage work out), we should be seeing faster change cycles for new vaccines.
I would strongly suspect, go forward, that the annual flu vaccine campaign gets expanded to cover most people and it will be more a matter of "What do we target in the national vaccine campaigns, this year?"
Clearly he misses out the fact - cheap food = full of sugar and other crap to keep costs down.
The only difference between now and the 19th century is that then cheap food was poor quality and often featured things that weren't food (so you were under weight). Now it contains calories that aren't easy to burn off.
If you were a one parent family with say two kids and struggling financially this would seem a cheap way to feed the family for three or four dinners
500g of pasta, one tin of tomatoes and 1kg of chicken is not going to provide 12 dinners, unless they are all for Tiny Tim. What planet are you on?
Two tins of tomatoes.
I am on planet normal - that could easily make one adult and two kids half a weeks dinners
It works out at about 300 calories per meal for 12 meals. An adult needs 2000-2500 calories per day and a child aged 6-12 needs 1600-2200. So 300 for your main meal of the day looks pretty inadequate. I shop and cook for a family of five and I can tell you that your meal would do us for about one dinner, maybe with a bit left over. Our kids are far from fat (in fact most clothes don't fit them because they are too skinny) so we are definitely not overfeeding them.
Fair enough, let them buy double what I suggested - three or four meals for less than £12
I think there is general agreement that people can just about afford to eat a decent diet on benefits as long as they don't buy anything else. Unfortunately people also need to pay for clothes, transport, heating, etc. Some people compound their difficulties by not knowing how to cook (a widespread problem not only affecting the poor; not helped by schools no longer teaching home economics). Some people working long hours and shifts don't have time to cook. Some people don't have the equipment. I just find all this smug wisdom being dispensed by well off people a bit too Marie Antoinette* for my liking. (*I know she was misquoted).
How much do you think is required to feed a family of four 2 children 2 adults per week? As a pound figure?
About £150. Less if the kids are on free school meals. The Food Standards Agency have a report on the cost of a healthy food basket in Northern Ireland in 2018, they have it as £159 for a family of 4 with 2 school age kids. Presumably it is higher in 2020 with inflation, but NI may have higher costs than GB. I think we probably spend about £200/week on food for a family of 5. We don't shop at the cheapest supermarket and get organic meat and milk, but we cook everything from scratch which saves money and don't normally buy any alcohol.
And on uc the least that family would get per week is 229£ the most 253£
Add in 100£ per month for gas and electric 25£ per month for internet two sim only deals for the adults 10£ a month comes to another 33£ a week
So using your figure we come to 183£ leaving them between 46£ a week and 70£ a week
Aha you say they may need to pay some towards rent well lets add in another 100£ a month for rent and 60 for council tax thats another 34£ a week
Still leaves a net of 12£ a week to 36£ a week
Clothes and bus fares. Car needs a repair. Haircuts. Furniture and appliances need to be replaced. School trips. Curtains and bedding. This all assumes your benefits are paid on time, you don't get sanctioned unfairly, you're not subject to the bedroom tax etc.
The last sentence brings us back to UBI...
I'd like to see fair minimum determined by focus group and explicit listing of what, on average, should be covered as basic (what speed of broadband etc etc) year by year. And I'd mandate from government that contract exits are made available for discretionary services for change of circumstances (e.g. get sacked, you may bin Sky Sports: when you so wish)
That I would expect it to almost always work out at pretty much the 60% of median relative poverty line that the right love to whinge about is besides the point. The fact the right like to whinge about it is reason enough to sink government money into making an explicit calculation.
And UBI, plus a restructuring of tax to make good the difference (e.g. if you take UBI, you go on higher tax rates for a period of time, your call. And 'something, something' for the self employed), yes please. And btw, state pension, child benefit, student financing - yes, ultimately, they're going to be UBI too.
The contract exits seem a good idea or for that matter contract breaks. However what did I not list that you consider necessary?
Both adults have a mobile, they have internet access, they have gas and electric,they have food a roof some money left over for discretionary spending on clothes etc. That is by its very definition a safety net. The purpose of benefits is to provide support when you fall on hard times not to provide a living.
UBI is a pipedream that will never happen because it would cost too much. Merely giving every adult in britain 1000£ a month ubi would cost in the region of 480 billion and 1000 a month would not be enough to live on it would probably need to be double that assuming housing benefit and other benefits would be axed. Add in the NHS, defence,schools etc and you are pretty much looking at the entirety of GDP going to the government coffers. When that happens no one is getting enough extra from working to bother. Why would a surgeon do a hugely stressful job when he is not getting a lot more than the ubi recipient
Your maths is completely flawed because you're assuming that it would be new money.
If the UBI replaces the tax-free threshold then it is effectively cost-neutral for anyone over the tax-free threshold. Or is not much extra cash for those above the tax-free threshold.
For anyone on benefits it would replace or supplement the benefits they were getting previously - so again not much extra cash up front.
It should lead to major cost reductions. You could essentially abolish Job Centre Plus and streamline much of HMRC. Job centres should be about helping people find work because they want to rather than because they need to pretend they want to and need to attend meetings or they'll get sanctioned.
Done properly people should actually want to work anyway as the poverty trap the current benefits system creates would be abolished.
A surgeon would be earning well more than the UBI, that is ridiculous. In fact done properly every single person who works would be earning more than the UBI, the UBI would be the floor not the ceiling that benefits currently create.
Over on Twitter, @Cyclefree is not impressed by my defence of Kate Bingham.
Not remotely surprised.
Why let the fact someone's doing a good job get in the way of the fact you've got a bee in your bonnet?
I think it woule be awfully churlish to suggest it has not worked out on this occasion, but you would still want to make sure processes for appointment (even expedited appointment) are sound (if indeed there was an issue this time, I cannot remember the details), as you won't always get so lucky.
No matter how fast we go, still not fast enough for the moaners...
Now get on with the vaccines and end lockdown: Boris is urged to seize on Britain halting Covid surge by DOUBLING jabs target to 30million to ease restrictions by mid-February
I don't even see how that's possible. It would need 1m jabs per day from tomorrow to reach it, we simply don't have the supply. Even if we had the logistics in place to do 1m jabs per day those people would be sitting around waiting for vaccine doses all day.
Gordon Brittas would find a way....
I don't understand how the interviewer didn't challenge that idea immediately and ask where the UK would magic up an additional 15m doses from. Which countries would we be taking those away from? By what mechanism would we convince Pfizer to give them to us rather than Germany, Italy or Belgium?
These kinds of ideas need to be robustly challenged. I think Hancock needs to come out swinging against this kind of idiot thinking today and challenge Ashworth to present the maths behind the demand and talks with Pfizer to secure an additional 2m doses per week on top of current supply.
Well if Newsnight last night was anything to go by, they are onboard the idiot train... government failing, needs to rethink strategy, why aren't you willing to tell us when we will get deliveries, do you think the Germans are stealing from us, are you going to override committee advice on groupings, shouldn't we vaccinating the poor first...
They have their narrative and will find a way to push it regardless. Even I've been impressed at the ramp up of the vaccine since the new year. Today should go above 350k total doses administered across the 4 nations putting us ahead of the daily required target. That's something to celebrate, not criticise.
I don't think i have seen one positive headline. Yesterday bbc news was pushing the london not getting enough supply angle and general regional differences. Sad really for all those working their arses off to make this happen.
I think I mentioned the other day, a journalist's reaction to the whole Cameron Direct thing.
Essentially, in journalist world, a positive story is somewhere between kissing arse and a shit, non-story that might provide some make-work for an intern.
I thought that there were reports just yesterday saying that the vaccine in Israel did massively reduce the transmission of the virus?
That would be welcome but we still don't know how long protection from the virus lasts? Will we need to vaccinate everyone again in the late summer/autumn or will it get us through to this time next year?
As RobD says, I'm not sure that's a big problem right now, though it would have implications for production and supply of doses that we've arranged.
What matters is how many take it in total - but clearly "social pressure" will be greatest at the top of the list, lowest to non-existent at the bottom.
9% saying no, that's down from 15% a couple of weeks ago I think and 25% a couple of months ago. We're going to be in low single figures saying no by the time we get to the 15m target.
I thought that there were reports just yesterday saying that the vaccine in Israel did massively reduce the transmission of the virus?
That would be welcome but we still don't know how long protection from the virus lasts? Will we need to vaccinate everyone again in the late summer/autumn or will it get us through to this time next year?
That seems like less of a worry to be honest. If regular vaccinations are required I see no reason why that wouldn't happen.
With the mRNA technology (especially if the Imperial ideas for room temperature storage work out), we should be seeing faster change cycles for new vaccines.
I would strongly suspect, go forward, that the annual flu vaccine campaign gets expanded to cover most people and it will be more a matter of "What do we target in the national vaccine campaigns, this year?"
Year 1: Covid-19 vaccine Year 2: Flu vaccine Year 3: Brain altering devices. Also Flu vaccine again.
Sorry to hear that. It used to be pretty good but I haven't listened to it for a number of years, since more radio stations became available. At one time it was the only thing to listen to in the middle of the night.
Over on Twitter, @Cyclefree is not impressed by my defence of Kate Bingham.
Not remotely surprised.
Why let the fact someone's doing a good job get in the way of the fact you've got a bee in your bonnet?
I think it woule be awfully churlish to suggest it has not worked out on this occasion, but you would still want to make sure processes for appointment (even expedited appointment) are sound (if indeed there was an issue this time, I cannot remember the details), as you won't always get so lucky.
Who was it who first said: "The harder I work, the luckier I get".
I have no qualms with expedited appointments so long as someone is prepared to say "this is who I appointed, this is why I did, and I take responsibility for the results of what they do". Which is what happened.
If the procurement had gone badly the government would have been held to account and been forced to take responsibility for how it had screwed up. The fact that they had appointed someone wouldn't shield them from criticism.
Over on Twitter, @Cyclefree is not impressed by my defence of Kate Bingham.
Not remotely surprised.
Why let the fact someone's doing a good job get in the way of the fact you've got a bee in your bonnet?
I dont follow twitter so not sure what the argument is but as a general point if the criticism is ethics related, how much does doing a good job come into it? Should CEOs be allowed a spot of insider trading or a handful of payouts and NDAs for sexual harassment if they do their jobs well otherwise?
Clearly he misses out the fact - cheap food = full of sugar and other crap to keep costs down.
The only difference between now and the 19th century is that then cheap food was poor quality and often featured things that weren't food (so you were under weight). Now it contains calories that aren't easy to burn off.
If you were a one parent family with say two kids and struggling financially this would seem a cheap way to feed the family for three or four dinners
500g of pasta, one tin of tomatoes and 1kg of chicken is not going to provide 12 dinners, unless they are all for Tiny Tim. What planet are you on?
Two tins of tomatoes.
I am on planet normal - that could easily make one adult and two kids half a weeks dinners
It works out at about 300 calories per meal for 12 meals. An adult needs 2000-2500 calories per day and a child aged 6-12 needs 1600-2200. So 300 for your main meal of the day looks pretty inadequate. I shop and cook for a family of five and I can tell you that your meal would do us for about one dinner, maybe with a bit left over. Our kids are far from fat (in fact most clothes don't fit them because they are too skinny) so we are definitely not overfeeding them.
Fair enough, let them buy double what I suggested - three or four meals for less than £12
I think there is general agreement that people can just about afford to eat a decent diet on benefits as long as they don't buy anything else. Unfortunately people also need to pay for clothes, transport, heating, etc. Some people compound their difficulties by not knowing how to cook (a widespread problem not only affecting the poor; not helped by schools no longer teaching home economics). Some people working long hours and shifts don't have time to cook. Some people don't have the equipment. I just find all this smug wisdom being dispensed by well off people a bit too Marie Antoinette* for my liking. (*I know she was misquoted).
How much do you think is required to feed a family of four 2 children 2 adults per week? As a pound figure?
About £150. Less if the kids are on free school meals. The Food Standards Agency have a report on the cost of a healthy food basket in Northern Ireland in 2018, they have it as £159 for a family of 4 with 2 school age kids. Presumably it is higher in 2020 with inflation, but NI may have higher costs than GB. I think we probably spend about £200/week on food for a family of 5. We don't shop at the cheapest supermarket and get organic meat and milk, but we cook everything from scratch which saves money and don't normally buy any alcohol.
And on uc the least that family would get per week is 229£ the most 253£
Add in 100£ per month for gas and electric 25£ per month for internet two sim only deals for the adults 10£ a month comes to another 33£ a week
So using your figure we come to 183£ leaving them between 46£ a week and 70£ a week
Aha you say they may need to pay some towards rent well lets add in another 100£ a month for rent and 60 for council tax thats another 34£ a week
Still leaves a net of 12£ a week to 36£ a week
Clothes and bus fares. Car needs a repair. Haircuts. Furniture and appliances need to be replaced. School trips. Curtains and bedding. This all assumes your benefits are paid on time, you don't get sanctioned unfairly, you're not subject to the bedroom tax etc.
The last sentence brings us back to UBI...
I'd like to see fair minimum determined by focus group and explicit listing of what, on average, should be covered as basic (what speed of broadband etc etc) year by year. And I'd mandate from government that contract exits are made available for discretionary services for change of circumstances (e.g. get sacked, you may bin Sky Sports: when you so wish)
That I would expect it to almost always work out at pretty much the 60% of median relative poverty line that the right love to whinge about is besides the point. The fact the right like to whinge about it is reason enough to sink government money into making an explicit calculation.
And UBI, plus a restructuring of tax to make good the difference (e.g. if you take UBI, you go on higher tax rates for a period of time, your call. And 'something, something' for the self employed), yes please. And btw, state pension, child benefit, student financing - yes, ultimately, they're going to be UBI too.
The contract exits seem a good idea or for that matter contract breaks. However what did I not list that you consider necessary?
Both adults have a mobile, they have internet access, they have gas and electric,they have food a roof some money left over for discretionary spending on clothes etc. That is by its very definition a safety net. The purpose of benefits is to provide support when you fall on hard times not to provide a living.
UBI is a pipedream that will never happen because it would cost too much. Merely giving every adult in britain 1000£ a month ubi would cost in the region of 480 billion and 1000 a month would not be enough to live on it would probably need to be double that assuming housing benefit and other benefits would be axed. Add in the NHS, defence,schools etc and you are pretty much looking at the entirety of GDP going to the government coffers. When that happens no one is getting enough extra from working to bother. Why would a surgeon do a hugely stressful job when he is not getting a lot more than the ubi recipient
Your maths is completely flawed because you're assuming that it would be new money.
If the UBI replaces the tax-free threshold then it is effectively cost-neutral for anyone over the tax-free threshold. Or is not much extra cash for those above the tax-free threshold.
For anyone on benefits it would replace or supplement the benefits they were getting previously - so again not much extra cash up front.
It should lead to major cost reductions. You could essentially abolish Job Centre Plus and streamline much of HMRC. Job centres should be about helping people find work because they want to rather than because they need to pretend they want to and need to attend meetings or they'll get sanctioned.
Done properly people should actually want to work anyway as the poverty trap the current benefits system creates would be abolished.
A surgeon would be earning well more than the UBI, that is ridiculous. In fact done properly every single person who works would be earning more than the UBI, the UBI would be the floor not the ceiling that benefits currently create.
It would also give people something of a luxury to hold out for work they want to do, which 1. would result in workforce shortages in jobs that are inherently unattractive, so 2. forcing employers in those sectors to increase both wages and prices, which 3. might depress some economic activity, but, at least in theory, should lead to a more equitable division of the nation's income and hence 4. also lead to a faster speed of money within the economy resulting in 5. increased economic activity
Where the overall balance would lie on economic efficiency, I do not know. I don't think it's just a matter of costs' impact on the supply and demand curve, as a workforce concentrating on what they want to do will be more innovative and productive. But, regardless of the net result on the efficiency side, on the equity side, I think we'd end up with both a happier and more equitable society.
Over on Twitter, @Cyclefree is not impressed by my defence of Kate Bingham.
Not remotely surprised.
Why let the fact someone's doing a good job get in the way of the fact you've got a bee in your bonnet?
I dont follow twitter so not sure what the argument is but as a general point if the criticism is ethics related, how much does doing a good job come into it? Should CEOs be allowed a spot of insider trading or a handful of payouts and NDAs for sexual harassment if they do their jobs well otherwise?
Insider trading is a crime. No crime has been committed (or even alleged) here.
If someone engages in criminal activity then there are consequences for that.
I thought that there were reports just yesterday saying that the vaccine in Israel did massively reduce the transmission of the virus?
That would be welcome but we still don't know how long protection from the virus lasts? Will we need to vaccinate everyone again in the late summer/autumn or will it get us through to this time next year?
That's unnecessarily negative, the biggest threat is probably a mutation that evades the vaccine response but we can eliminate the risk of that by closing the border.
It does rather seem as though you're looking for the cloud in every sky at the moment, Stodge. Have you thought about speaking to someone about it (and I say that out of concern, not a glib comment or insult).
You've mentioned this before.
I'm asking the questions some people don't seem willing to ask and looking a little further ahead than the next vaccination.
I'll be taking the vaccination because the alternative is to risk catching and dying from the virus so that's a no-brainer. I'm not looking forward to the triumphalism of the Government and its supporters nor do I feel we should have a big "party" to celebrate when 80,000 people or more have died.
Indeed, while there's a lot for which to be thankful, I also think we've had a real kick in the complacency about how we live. Basic personal hygiene and health care wouldn't have stopped the virus - might have slowed it down a little -but it angers me some very simple measures we could all take would slow the transmission of colds and other bugs with the consequent losses in time and productivity prevented or reduced.
A prediction. This comes from a left-leaner who voted Labour last election.
The UK's vaccine rollout will continue as a stunning success story. Within 8 months covid rates here will have dropped to the point when they are no longer mentioned in daily updates. The vast majority of the population will have immunity and global travel visas. Although mutations will continue to evolve, pharmaceuticals will be up to the mark and the covid jabs will be like seasonal flu ones.
Apart from bitter remainers, Brexit will be behind us and the long haul of rebuilding will be underway.
Sir Keir Starmer will continue to seem like a very decent, competent and entirely unexciting leader of the opposition.
Boris Johnson will not stand down. He will win another thumping majority.
Clearly he misses out the fact - cheap food = full of sugar and other crap to keep costs down.
The only difference between now and the 19th century is that then cheap food was poor quality and often featured things that weren't food (so you were under weight). Now it contains calories that aren't easy to burn off.
If you were a one parent family with say two kids and struggling financially this would seem a cheap way to feed the family for three or four dinners
500g of pasta, one tin of tomatoes and 1kg of chicken is not going to provide 12 dinners, unless they are all for Tiny Tim. What planet are you on?
Two tins of tomatoes.
I am on planet normal - that could easily make one adult and two kids half a weeks dinners
It works out at about 300 calories per meal for 12 meals. An adult needs 2000-2500 calories per day and a child aged 6-12 needs 1600-2200. So 300 for your main meal of the day looks pretty inadequate. I shop and cook for a family of five and I can tell you that your meal would do us for about one dinner, maybe with a bit left over. Our kids are far from fat (in fact most clothes don't fit them because they are too skinny) so we are definitely not overfeeding them.
Fair enough, let them buy double what I suggested - three or four meals for less than £12
I think there is general agreement that people can just about afford to eat a decent diet on benefits as long as they don't buy anything else. Unfortunately people also need to pay for clothes, transport, heating, etc. Some people compound their difficulties by not knowing how to cook (a widespread problem not only affecting the poor; not helped by schools no longer teaching home economics). Some people working long hours and shifts don't have time to cook. Some people don't have the equipment. I just find all this smug wisdom being dispensed by well off people a bit too Marie Antoinette* for my liking. (*I know she was misquoted).
How much do you think is required to feed a family of four 2 children 2 adults per week? As a pound figure?
About £150. Less if the kids are on free school meals. The Food Standards Agency have a report on the cost of a healthy food basket in Northern Ireland in 2018, they have it as £159 for a family of 4 with 2 school age kids. Presumably it is higher in 2020 with inflation, but NI may have higher costs than GB. I think we probably spend about £200/week on food for a family of 5. We don't shop at the cheapest supermarket and get organic meat and milk, but we cook everything from scratch which saves money and don't normally buy any alcohol.
And on uc the least that family would get per week is 229£ the most 253£
Add in 100£ per month for gas and electric 25£ per month for internet two sim only deals for the adults 10£ a month comes to another 33£ a week
So using your figure we come to 183£ leaving them between 46£ a week and 70£ a week
Aha you say they may need to pay some towards rent well lets add in another 100£ a month for rent and 60 for council tax thats another 34£ a week
Still leaves a net of 12£ a week to 36£ a week
Clothes and bus fares. Car needs a repair. Haircuts. Furniture and appliances need to be replaced. School trips. Curtains and bedding. This all assumes your benefits are paid on time, you don't get sanctioned unfairly, you're not subject to the bedroom tax etc.
The last sentence brings us back to UBI...
I'd like to see fair minimum determined by focus group and explicit listing of what, on average, should be covered as basic (what speed of broadband etc etc) year by year. And I'd mandate from government that contract exits are made available for discretionary services for change of circumstances (e.g. get sacked, you may bin Sky Sports: when you so wish)
That I would expect it to almost always work out at pretty much the 60% of median relative poverty line that the right love to whinge about is besides the point. The fact the right like to whinge about it is reason enough to sink government money into making an explicit calculation.
And UBI, plus a restructuring of tax to make good the difference (e.g. if you take UBI, you go on higher tax rates for a period of time, your call. And 'something, something' for the self employed), yes please. And btw, state pension, child benefit, student financing - yes, ultimately, they're going to be UBI too.
The contract exits seem a good idea or for that matter contract breaks. However what did I not list that you consider necessary?
Both adults have a mobile, they have internet access, they have gas and electric,they have food a roof some money left over for discretionary spending on clothes etc. That is by its very definition a safety net. The purpose of benefits is to provide support when you fall on hard times not to provide a living.
UBI is a pipedream that will never happen because it would cost too much. Merely giving every adult in britain 1000£ a month ubi would cost in the region of 480 billion and 1000 a month would not be enough to live on it would probably need to be double that assuming housing benefit and other benefits would be axed. Add in the NHS, defence,schools etc and you are pretty much looking at the entirety of GDP going to the government coffers. When that happens no one is getting enough extra from working to bother. Why would a surgeon do a hugely stressful job when he is not getting a lot more than the ubi recipient
Your maths is completely flawed because you're assuming that it would be new money.
If the UBI replaces the tax-free threshold then it is effectively cost-neutral for anyone over the tax-free threshold. Or is not much extra cash for those above the tax-free threshold.
For anyone on benefits it would replace or supplement the benefits they were getting previously - so again not much extra cash up front.
It should lead to major cost reductions. You could essentially abolish Job Centre Plus and streamline much of HMRC. Job centres should be about helping people find work because they want to rather than because they need to pretend they want to and need to attend meetings or they'll get sanctioned.
Done properly people should actually want to work anyway as the poverty trap the current benefits system creates would be abolished.
A surgeon would be earning well more than the UBI, that is ridiculous. In fact done properly every single person who works would be earning more than the UBI, the UBI would be the floor not the ceiling that benefits currently create.
It is your maths that is flawed I am afraid. The tax free threshold is 12500 or so about a 1000 a month. That saves you paying tax of 200£ a month so giving someone a 1000 a month is a net loss of 800£.
Yes if you abolished housing benefit and uc that would be a saving but lets face it that won't happen and if it did the howls of protest would be huge as people would be getting even less than they are now.
Going back to that family of four they currently get
1100 a month uc 1000 a month housing benefit about 150£ a month reduction on council tax
That is before we add in free school meals, prescriptions etc.
You plan to replace this with 2X1000 ubi leaving them 250£ less well off
In addition you are giving every basic rate tax payer a boost to their pay of 1000£ a month in pay while charging them 200£ more tax
Clearly he misses out the fact - cheap food = full of sugar and other crap to keep costs down.
The only difference between now and the 19th century is that then cheap food was poor quality and often featured things that weren't food (so you were under weight). Now it contains calories that aren't easy to burn off.
If you were a one parent family with say two kids and struggling financially this would seem a cheap way to feed the family for three or four dinners
500g of pasta, one tin of tomatoes and 1kg of chicken is not going to provide 12 dinners, unless they are all for Tiny Tim. What planet are you on?
Two tins of tomatoes.
I am on planet normal - that could easily make one adult and two kids half a weeks dinners
It works out at about 300 calories per meal for 12 meals. An adult needs 2000-2500 calories per day and a child aged 6-12 needs 1600-2200. So 300 for your main meal of the day looks pretty inadequate. I shop and cook for a family of five and I can tell you that your meal would do us for about one dinner, maybe with a bit left over. Our kids are far from fat (in fact most clothes don't fit them because they are too skinny) so we are definitely not overfeeding them.
Fair enough, let them buy double what I suggested - three or four meals for less than £12
I think there is general agreement that people can just about afford to eat a decent diet on benefits as long as they don't buy anything else. Unfortunately people also need to pay for clothes, transport, heating, etc. Some people compound their difficulties by not knowing how to cook (a widespread problem not only affecting the poor; not helped by schools no longer teaching home economics). Some people working long hours and shifts don't have time to cook. Some people don't have the equipment. I just find all this smug wisdom being dispensed by well off people a bit too Marie Antoinette* for my liking. (*I know she was misquoted).
How much do you think is required to feed a family of four 2 children 2 adults per week? As a pound figure?
About £150. Less if the kids are on free school meals. The Food Standards Agency have a report on the cost of a healthy food basket in Northern Ireland in 2018, they have it as £159 for a family of 4 with 2 school age kids. Presumably it is higher in 2020 with inflation, but NI may have higher costs than GB. I think we probably spend about £200/week on food for a family of 5. We don't shop at the cheapest supermarket and get organic meat and milk, but we cook everything from scratch which saves money and don't normally buy any alcohol.
And on uc the least that family would get per week is 229£ the most 253£
Add in 100£ per month for gas and electric 25£ per month for internet two sim only deals for the adults 10£ a month comes to another 33£ a week
So using your figure we come to 183£ leaving them between 46£ a week and 70£ a week
Aha you say they may need to pay some towards rent well lets add in another 100£ a month for rent and 60 for council tax thats another 34£ a week
Still leaves a net of 12£ a week to 36£ a week
Clothes and bus fares. Car needs a repair. Haircuts. Furniture and appliances need to be replaced. School trips. Curtains and bedding. This all assumes your benefits are paid on time, you don't get sanctioned unfairly, you're not subject to the bedroom tax etc.
The last sentence brings us back to UBI...
I'd like to see fair minimum determined by focus group and explicit listing of what, on average, should be covered as basic (what speed of broadband etc etc) year by year. And I'd mandate from government that contract exits are made available for discretionary services for change of circumstances (e.g. get sacked, you may bin Sky Sports: when you so wish)
That I would expect it to almost always work out at pretty much the 60% of median relative poverty line that the right love to whinge about is besides the point. The fact the right like to whinge about it is reason enough to sink government money into making an explicit calculation.
And UBI, plus a restructuring of tax to make good the difference (e.g. if you take UBI, you go on higher tax rates for a period of time, your call. And 'something, something' for the self employed), yes please. And btw, state pension, child benefit, student financing - yes, ultimately, they're going to be UBI too.
The contract exits seem a good idea or for that matter contract breaks. However what did I not list that you consider necessary?
Both adults have a mobile, they have internet access, they have gas and electric,they have food a roof some money left over for discretionary spending on clothes etc. That is by its very definition a safety net. The purpose of benefits is to provide support when you fall on hard times not to provide a living.
UBI is a pipedream that will never happen because it would cost too much. Merely giving every adult in britain 1000£ a month ubi would cost in the region of 480 billion and 1000 a month would not be enough to live on it would probably need to be double that assuming housing benefit and other benefits would be axed. Add in the NHS, defence,schools etc and you are pretty much looking at the entirety of GDP going to the government coffers. When that happens no one is getting enough extra from working to bother. Why would a surgeon do a hugely stressful job when he is not getting a lot more than the ubi recipient
Your maths is completely flawed because you're assuming that it would be new money.
If the UBI replaces the tax-free threshold then it is effectively cost-neutral for anyone over the tax-free threshold. Or is not much extra cash for those above the tax-free threshold.
For anyone on benefits it would replace or supplement the benefits they were getting previously - so again not much extra cash up front.
It should lead to major cost reductions. You could essentially abolish Job Centre Plus and streamline much of HMRC. Job centres should be about helping people find work because they want to rather than because they need to pretend they want to and need to attend meetings or they'll get sanctioned.
Done properly people should actually want to work anyway as the poverty trap the current benefits system creates would be abolished.
A surgeon would be earning well more than the UBI, that is ridiculous. In fact done properly every single person who works would be earning more than the UBI, the UBI would be the floor not the ceiling that benefits currently create.
As to your surgeon point. Mine was the amount of extra tax needed would raise taxation to the point that you would take so much in tax it would erode the differentials
ON TOPIC. “ For if that goes against him he is out of politics for good.‘.
Is that really true though?
He is popular now despite everything. MAGA will become even more popular in opposition, constantly sniping away at the democrats, and the GOP response too. The focus shifts now to the democrats, and all their little socialist, woke, BLM, defund the police, squads seen as holding the balance of power.
You have yet to convince me even if Trump loses in the senate, which had to be odds against at the moment, even if senate have a vote debarring him from being a candidate, that can actually legally stop Trump let alone growth of MAGA candidates and power holders.
I agree its odds against anyway, but there is a major reason Trump being unable to stand would have a huge impact - hed need a proxy to run in 2024, and however much Trump would do they would to some degree stand and fall on their own merits, which wont be as good, for his base, as Trump himself.
It is possible he could lose influence quickly or as you suggest remain very influential, but as the end result would not be him in the Oval Office, some of the spark may not be there.
I wonder though- barring him would be a majority vote, after conviction (not that I expect conviction). Coukd a simple majority revoke that? Would be a powerful motivator for him to stay focused on senate races.
Who'd want to be a Trump proxy? Only someone in the family I suggest - and even they could get thrown under a bus by Donald. In any case if DC and Puerto Rico become States the senate will become more Democrat firendly.
I don't think he'd accept anyone but a family member as a proxy either. They're loyal, but frankly they should try living their own lives not be beholden to his goals all the time.
With Mitch no longer able to block it coming to the Senate, and given the referendum, is Puerto Rico now a lock for new state as there is an amount of cross party backing?
DC though...
Puerto Rico Could return two GOP senators
Could do, makes no difference to me. It's just I'm aware it is not just Democrats who support that one becoming a state (nor do I know if all Democrats do support it), so it's presumably easier to get support for it than DC, which voted 92% for Biden.
DC likely +2 Dem but if Rico +2 GOP that = neutral
Hard to tell - do it because it should be done and worry about it afterwards.
“We’d never get the Senate back again,” Arizona Sen. Martha McSally recently told NBC News. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell voiced the same concern while campaigning in Kentucky, citing the prospect of Puerto Rican statehood as an example of Democrats’ extreme agenda. But talk to political experts in Puerto Rico—and look at the underlying data—and you’ll see something else: Republicans might have it totally backwards. “People in the continental U.S. think that Puerto Ricans are going to vote Democratic, but on the other hand, the conservative values and Latin traditions are more akin to the values of a Republican Party,” said José Garriga Picó, a political scientist and former member of the Puerto Rican Legislature. “You can’t really predict what voters are going to do here.” https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/09/09/puerto-rico-statehood-politics-democrats-republicans-senate-409191
There's a very interesting debate on whether you can be malnourished and still be fat - I think you probably can. This is an extreme case, but we do live in a culture that sees being fat as a sign of overnutrition rather than poor nutrition, or perhaps we should call it 'misnutrition'. We find it hard to square being fat with being too poor to eat well, but actually the two are not mutually exclusive at all.
I thought that there were reports just yesterday saying that the vaccine in Israel did massively reduce the transmission of the virus?
That would be welcome but we still don't know how long protection from the virus lasts? Will we need to vaccinate everyone again in the late summer/autumn or will it get us through to this time next year?
That seems like less of a worry to be honest. If regular vaccinations are required I see no reason why that wouldn't happen.
With the mRNA technology (especially if the Imperial ideas for room temperature storage work out), we should be seeing faster change cycles for new vaccines.
I would strongly suspect, go forward, that the annual flu vaccine campaign gets expanded to cover most people and it will be more a matter of "What do we target in the national vaccine campaigns, this year?"
That's a rather grim view of the future. Why exactly should it be that humankind in the 21st century are at the mercy of infectious diseases flying about in a way that our ancestors were not? I don't subscribe to it.
ON TOPIC. “ For if that goes against him he is out of politics for good.‘.
Is that really true though?
He is popular now despite everything. MAGA will become even more popular in opposition, constantly sniping away at the democrats, and the GOP response too. The focus shifts now to the democrats, and all their little socialist, woke, BLM, defund the police, squads seen as holding the balance of power.
You have yet to convince me even if Trump loses in the senate, which had to be odds against at the moment, even if senate have a vote debarring him from being a candidate, that can actually legally stop Trump let alone growth of MAGA candidates and power holders.
I agree its odds against anyway, but there is a major reason Trump being unable to stand would have a huge impact - hed need a proxy to run in 2024, and however much Trump would do they would to some degree stand and fall on their own merits, which wont be as good, for his base, as Trump himself.
It is possible he could lose influence quickly or as you suggest remain very influential, but as the end result would not be him in the Oval Office, some of the spark may not be there.
I wonder though- barring him would be a majority vote, after conviction (not that I expect conviction). Coukd a simple majority revoke that? Would be a powerful motivator for him to stay focused on senate races.
Who'd want to be a Trump proxy? Only someone in the family I suggest - and even they could get thrown under a bus by Donald. In any case if DC and Puerto Rico become States the senate will become more Democrat firendly.
I don't think he'd accept anyone but a family member as a proxy either. They're loyal, but frankly they should try living their own lives not be beholden to his goals all the time.
With Mitch no longer able to block it coming to the Senate, and given the referendum, is Puerto Rico now a lock for new state as there is an amount of cross party backing?
DC though...
Puerto Rico Could return two GOP senators
Could do, makes no difference to me. It's just I'm aware it is not just Democrats who support that one becoming a state (nor do I know if all Democrats do support it), so it's presumably easier to get support for it than DC, which voted 92% for Biden.
DC likely +2 Dem but if Rico +2 GOP that = neutral
Hard to tell - do it because it should be done and worry about it afterwards.
“We’d never get the Senate back again,” Arizona Sen. Martha McSally recently told NBC News. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell voiced the same concern while campaigning in Kentucky, citing the prospect of Puerto Rican statehood as an example of Democrats’ extreme agenda. But talk to political experts in Puerto Rico—and look at the underlying data—and you’ll see something else: Republicans might have it totally backwards. “People in the continental U.S. think that Puerto Ricans are going to vote Democratic, but on the other hand, the conservative values and Latin traditions are more akin to the values of a Republican Party,” said José Garriga Picó, a political scientist and former member of the Puerto Rican Legislature. “You can’t really predict what voters are going to do here.” https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/09/09/puerto-rico-statehood-politics-democrats-republicans-senate-409191
"do it because it should be done and worry about it afterwards" You do know we're talking about US politics, don't you?
"While plenty can still go wrong [with vaccine plan], ministers remain pretty confident – and more than they let on. Some in government think the official target will be easily surpassed – although they’ve been told never to confess as much in public."
Over on Twitter, @Cyclefree is not impressed by my defence of Kate Bingham.
Not remotely surprised.
Why let the fact someone's doing a good job get in the way of the fact you've got a bee in your bonnet?
I dont follow twitter so not sure what the argument is but as a general point if the criticism is ethics related, how much does doing a good job come into it? Should CEOs be allowed a spot of insider trading or a handful of payouts and NDAs for sexual harassment if they do their jobs well otherwise?
Insider trading is a crime. No crime has been committed (or even alleged) here.
If someone engages in criminal activity then there are consequences for that.
Labour did indeed allege that a crime may have been committed.
Rachel Reeves MP, Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, added: 'These revelations are deeply concerning - not only because trust in a government official is in jeopardy but because the law could have been broken."
I am giving no view on whether those criticisms are deserved or not, but a good defence of them would be she is not guilty, rather than she is doing a good job, which was the defence RN gave earlier.
There's a very interesting debate on whether you can be malnourished and still be fat - I think you probably can. This is an extreme case, but we do live in a culture that sees being fat as a sign of overnutrition rather than poor nutrition, or perhaps we should call it 'misnutrition'. We find it hard to square being fat with being too poor to eat well, but actually the two are not mutually exclusive at all.
Malnourished absolutely doesn't just mean underweight. The quality of food, including vitamins, minerals, balanced diet is key. Quite a few African countries have overwieght populations of malnourished people.
Clearly he misses out the fact - cheap food = full of sugar and other crap to keep costs down.
The only difference between now and the 19th century is that then cheap food was poor quality and often featured things that weren't food (so you were under weight). Now it contains calories that aren't easy to burn off.
If you were a one parent family with say two kids and struggling financially this would seem a cheap way to feed the family for three or four dinners
500g of pasta, one tin of tomatoes and 1kg of chicken is not going to provide 12 dinners, unless they are all for Tiny Tim. What planet are you on?
Two tins of tomatoes.
I am on planet normal - that could easily make one adult and two kids half a weeks dinners
It works out at about 300 calories per meal for 12 meals. An adult needs 2000-2500 calories per day and a child aged 6-12 needs 1600-2200. So 300 for your main meal of the day looks pretty inadequate. I shop and cook for a family of five and I can tell you that your meal would do us for about one dinner, maybe with a bit left over. Our kids are far from fat (in fact most clothes don't fit them because they are too skinny) so we are definitely not overfeeding them.
Fair enough, let them buy double what I suggested - three or four meals for less than £12
I think there is general agreement that people can just about afford to eat a decent diet on benefits as long as they don't buy anything else. Unfortunately people also need to pay for clothes, transport, heating, etc. Some people compound their difficulties by not knowing how to cook (a widespread problem not only affecting the poor; not helped by schools no longer teaching home economics). Some people working long hours and shifts don't have time to cook. Some people don't have the equipment. I just find all this smug wisdom being dispensed by well off people a bit too Marie Antoinette* for my liking. (*I know she was misquoted).
How much do you think is required to feed a family of four 2 children 2 adults per week? As a pound figure?
About £150. Less if the kids are on free school meals. The Food Standards Agency have a report on the cost of a healthy food basket in Northern Ireland in 2018, they have it as £159 for a family of 4 with 2 school age kids. Presumably it is higher in 2020 with inflation, but NI may have higher costs than GB. I think we probably spend about £200/week on food for a family of 5. We don't shop at the cheapest supermarket and get organic meat and milk, but we cook everything from scratch which saves money and don't normally buy any alcohol.
And on uc the least that family would get per week is 229£ the most 253£
Add in 100£ per month for gas and electric 25£ per month for internet two sim only deals for the adults 10£ a month comes to another 33£ a week
So using your figure we come to 183£ leaving them between 46£ a week and 70£ a week
Aha you say they may need to pay some towards rent well lets add in another 100£ a month for rent and 60 for council tax thats another 34£ a week
Still leaves a net of 12£ a week to 36£ a week
Clothes and bus fares. Car needs a repair. Haircuts. Furniture and appliances need to be replaced. School trips. Curtains and bedding. This all assumes your benefits are paid on time, you don't get sanctioned unfairly, you're not subject to the bedroom tax etc.
The last sentence brings us back to UBI...
I'd like to see fair minimum determined by focus group and explicit listing of what, on average, should be covered as basic (what speed of broadband etc etc) year by year. And I'd mandate from government that contract exits are made available for discretionary services for change of circumstances (e.g. get sacked, you may bin Sky Sports: when you so wish)
That I would expect it to almost always work out at pretty much the 60% of median relative poverty line that the right love to whinge about is besides the point. The fact the right like to whinge about it is reason enough to sink government money into making an explicit calculation.
And UBI, plus a restructuring of tax to make good the difference (e.g. if you take UBI, you go on higher tax rates for a period of time, your call. And 'something, something' for the self employed), yes please. And btw, state pension, child benefit, student financing - yes, ultimately, they're going to be UBI too.
The contract exits seem a good idea or for that matter contract breaks. However what did I not list that you consider necessary?
Both adults have a mobile, they have internet access, they have gas and electric,they have food a roof some money left over for discretionary spending on clothes etc. That is by its very definition a safety net. The purpose of benefits is to provide support when you fall on hard times not to provide a living.
UBI is a pipedream that will never happen because it would cost too much. Merely giving every adult in britain 1000£ a month ubi would cost in the region of 480 billion and 1000 a month would not be enough to live on it would probably need to be double that assuming housing benefit and other benefits would be axed. Add in the NHS, defence,schools etc and you are pretty much looking at the entirety of GDP going to the government coffers. When that happens no one is getting enough extra from working to bother. Why would a surgeon do a hugely stressful job when he is not getting a lot more than the ubi recipient
Your maths is completely flawed because you're assuming that it would be new money.
If the UBI replaces the tax-free threshold then it is effectively cost-neutral for anyone over the tax-free threshold. Or is not much extra cash for those above the tax-free threshold.
For anyone on benefits it would replace or supplement the benefits they were getting previously - so again not much extra cash up front.
It should lead to major cost reductions. You could essentially abolish Job Centre Plus and streamline much of HMRC. Job centres should be about helping people find work because they want to rather than because they need to pretend they want to and need to attend meetings or they'll get sanctioned.
Done properly people should actually want to work anyway as the poverty trap the current benefits system creates would be abolished.
A surgeon would be earning well more than the UBI, that is ridiculous. In fact done properly every single person who works would be earning more than the UBI, the UBI would be the floor not the ceiling that benefits currently create.
It is your maths that is flawed I am afraid. The tax free threshold is 12500 or so about a 1000 a month. That saves you paying tax of 200£ a month so giving someone a 1000 a month is a net loss of 800£.
Yes if you abolished housing benefit and uc that would be a saving but lets face it that won't happen and if it did the howls of protest would be huge as people would be getting even less than they are now.
Going back to that family of four they currently get
1100 a month uc 1000 a month housing benefit about 150£ a month reduction on council tax
That is before we add in free school meals, prescriptions etc.
You plan to replace this with 2X1000 ubi leaving them 250£ less well off
In addition you are giving every basic rate tax payer a boost to their pay of 1000£ a month in pay while charging them 200£ more tax
In the case of the employed, the UBI would be *entirely* taxed off their wages and given back to them by the government.
At this point, people then say, why bother?
The point is to make the system utterly dependable. You get your UBI each month, no matter what. Lose your job, UBI etc etc
No forms to fill out, no claims to be made.
This has the important effect of reducing the obstacles to getting a job from unemployment - at the moment, there is a whole dance about signing off benefits etc.
In a UBI system, get some work, get some money, pay some tax. Your UBI cannot be effected.
Clearly he misses out the fact - cheap food = full of sugar and other crap to keep costs down.
The only difference between now and the 19th century is that then cheap food was poor quality and often featured things that weren't food (so you were under weight). Now it contains calories that aren't easy to burn off.
If you were a one parent family with say two kids and struggling financially this would seem a cheap way to feed the family for three or four dinners
500g of pasta, one tin of tomatoes and 1kg of chicken is not going to provide 12 dinners, unless they are all for Tiny Tim. What planet are you on?
Two tins of tomatoes.
I am on planet normal - that could easily make one adult and two kids half a weeks dinners
It works out at about 300 calories per meal for 12 meals. An adult needs 2000-2500 calories per day and a child aged 6-12 needs 1600-2200. So 300 for your main meal of the day looks pretty inadequate. I shop and cook for a family of five and I can tell you that your meal would do us for about one dinner, maybe with a bit left over. Our kids are far from fat (in fact most clothes don't fit them because they are too skinny) so we are definitely not overfeeding them.
Fair enough, let them buy double what I suggested - three or four meals for less than £12
I think there is general agreement that people can just about afford to eat a decent diet on benefits as long as they don't buy anything else. Unfortunately people also need to pay for clothes, transport, heating, etc. Some people compound their difficulties by not knowing how to cook (a widespread problem not only affecting the poor; not helped by schools no longer teaching home economics). Some people working long hours and shifts don't have time to cook. Some people don't have the equipment. I just find all this smug wisdom being dispensed by well off people a bit too Marie Antoinette* for my liking. (*I know she was misquoted).
Jack seems to think it is a goer but as you have pointed out, and certainly looking at the illustrations, this does seem to require (quite?) some cooking skills.
But you are the person doing it so have the expertise (no idea if @isam buys for, then cooks for his family every day).
Which is an interesting case. What that is describing is
- brown some chicken in a pan/pot - add water, some herbs and a stock cube. - throw in some chopped veg - cook until... cooked. - add a bit of sauce towards the end.
Is it the language that is putting people off?
Yes good point. I think it is the palaver and the finished product I'm guessing looks so polished that people assume it is a fancy pants chef cooking it (which of course it is but you know...).
But yes, an "all in" with chicken is what it looks like to me but I'm not feeding a family of four seven days a week.
I keep thinking about doing a cook book on the "throw things in a pan" style - get rid of the language. Make it so accessible that it breaks down barriers.
I made a soup yesterday. Remains of a chicken - bones, left over meat etc. In a pot, water, stock cube, any old spare root veg, salt, pepper and some dried oregano. Simmer on the stove for hour and a bit, while I revised the code for generating graphs to annoy people.
I thought that there were reports just yesterday saying that the vaccine in Israel did massively reduce the transmission of the virus?
That would be welcome but we still don't know how long protection from the virus lasts? Will we need to vaccinate everyone again in the late summer/autumn or will it get us through to this time next year?
That seems like less of a worry to be honest. If regular vaccinations are required I see no reason why that wouldn't happen.
With the mRNA technology (especially if the Imperial ideas for room temperature storage work out), we should be seeing faster change cycles for new vaccines.
I would strongly suspect, go forward, that the annual flu vaccine campaign gets expanded to cover most people and it will be more a matter of "What do we target in the national vaccine campaigns, this year?"
That's a rather grim view of the future. Why exactly should it be that humankind in the 21st century are at the mercy of infectious diseases flying about in a way that our ancestors were not? I don't subscribe to it.
Our ancestors were very much at the mercy of infectious diseases flying about. Our additional problems are
Increased encroachment on territory of host species Increased bat- and pangolin-eating Increased gain of function lab experiments
I thought that there were reports just yesterday saying that the vaccine in Israel did massively reduce the transmission of the virus?
That would be welcome but we still don't know how long protection from the virus lasts? Will we need to vaccinate everyone again in the late summer/autumn or will it get us through to this time next year?
That seems like less of a worry to be honest. If regular vaccinations are required I see no reason why that wouldn't happen.
With the mRNA technology (especially if the Imperial ideas for room temperature storage work out), we should be seeing faster change cycles for new vaccines.
I would strongly suspect, go forward, that the annual flu vaccine campaign gets expanded to cover most people and it will be more a matter of "What do we target in the national vaccine campaigns, this year?"
That's a rather grim view of the future. Why exactly should it be that humankind in the 21st century are at the mercy of infectious diseases flying about in a way that our ancestors were not? I don't subscribe to it.
Our ancestors were very much at the mercy of infectious diseases flying about. Our additional problems are
Increased encroachment on territory of host species Increased bat- and pangolin-eating Increased gain of function lab experiments
Also, we are less tolerant than we used to be of x% of the population dying in this years strange illness.
A prediction. This comes from a left-leaner who voted Labour last election.
The UK's vaccine rollout will continue as a stunning success story. Within 8 months covid rates here will have dropped to the point when they are no longer mentioned in daily updates. The vast majority of the population will have immunity and global travel visas. Although mutations will continue to evolve, pharmaceuticals will be up to the mark and the covid jabs will be like seasonal flu ones.
Apart from bitter remainers, Brexit will be behind us and the long haul of rebuilding will be underway.
Sir Keir Starmer will continue to seem like a very decent, competent and entirely unexciting leader of the opposition.
Boris Johnson will not stand down. He will win another thumping majority.
The Mystic has spoken.
The risk with that is you will promote the resulting meme:
Clearly he misses out the fact - cheap food = full of sugar and other crap to keep costs down.
The only difference between now and the 19th century is that then cheap food was poor quality and often featured things that weren't food (so you were under weight). Now it contains calories that aren't easy to burn off.
If you were a one parent family with say two kids and struggling financially this would seem a cheap way to feed the family for three or four dinners
500g of pasta, one tin of tomatoes and 1kg of chicken is not going to provide 12 dinners, unless they are all for Tiny Tim. What planet are you on?
Two tins of tomatoes.
I am on planet normal - that could easily make one adult and two kids half a weeks dinners
It works out at about 300 calories per meal for 12 meals. An adult needs 2000-2500 calories per day and a child aged 6-12 needs 1600-2200. So 300 for your main meal of the day looks pretty inadequate. I shop and cook for a family of five and I can tell you that your meal would do us for about one dinner, maybe with a bit left over. Our kids are far from fat (in fact most clothes don't fit them because they are too skinny) so we are definitely not overfeeding them.
Fair enough, let them buy double what I suggested - three or four meals for less than £12
I think there is general agreement that people can just about afford to eat a decent diet on benefits as long as they don't buy anything else. Unfortunately people also need to pay for clothes, transport, heating, etc. Some people compound their difficulties by not knowing how to cook (a widespread problem not only affecting the poor; not helped by schools no longer teaching home economics). Some people working long hours and shifts don't have time to cook. Some people don't have the equipment. I just find all this smug wisdom being dispensed by well off people a bit too Marie Antoinette* for my liking. (*I know she was misquoted).
How much do you think is required to feed a family of four 2 children 2 adults per week? As a pound figure?
About £150. Less if the kids are on free school meals. The Food Standards Agency have a report on the cost of a healthy food basket in Northern Ireland in 2018, they have it as £159 for a family of 4 with 2 school age kids. Presumably it is higher in 2020 with inflation, but NI may have higher costs than GB. I think we probably spend about £200/week on food for a family of 5. We don't shop at the cheapest supermarket and get organic meat and milk, but we cook everything from scratch which saves money and don't normally buy any alcohol.
And on uc the least that family would get per week is 229£ the most 253£
Add in 100£ per month for gas and electric 25£ per month for internet two sim only deals for the adults 10£ a month comes to another 33£ a week
So using your figure we come to 183£ leaving them between 46£ a week and 70£ a week
Aha you say they may need to pay some towards rent well lets add in another 100£ a month for rent and 60 for council tax thats another 34£ a week
Still leaves a net of 12£ a week to 36£ a week
Clothes and bus fares. Car needs a repair. Haircuts. Furniture and appliances need to be replaced. School trips. Curtains and bedding. This all assumes your benefits are paid on time, you don't get sanctioned unfairly, you're not subject to the bedroom tax etc.
The last sentence brings us back to UBI...
I'd like to see fair minimum determined by focus group and explicit listing of what, on average, should be covered as basic (what speed of broadband etc etc) year by year. And I'd mandate from government that contract exits are made available for discretionary services for change of circumstances (e.g. get sacked, you may bin Sky Sports: when you so wish)
That I would expect it to almost always work out at pretty much the 60% of median relative poverty line that the right love to whinge about is besides the point. The fact the right like to whinge about it is reason enough to sink government money into making an explicit calculation.
And UBI, plus a restructuring of tax to make good the difference (e.g. if you take UBI, you go on higher tax rates for a period of time, your call. And 'something, something' for the self employed), yes please. And btw, state pension, child benefit, student financing - yes, ultimately, they're going to be UBI too.
The contract exits seem a good idea or for that matter contract breaks. However what did I not list that you consider necessary?
Both adults have a mobile, they have internet access, they have gas and electric,they have food a roof some money left over for discretionary spending on clothes etc. That is by its very definition a safety net. The purpose of benefits is to provide support when you fall on hard times not to provide a living.
UBI is a pipedream that will never happen because it would cost too much. Merely giving every adult in britain 1000£ a month ubi would cost in the region of 480 billion and 1000 a month would not be enough to live on it would probably need to be double that assuming housing benefit and other benefits would be axed. Add in the NHS, defence,schools etc and you are pretty much looking at the entirety of GDP going to the government coffers. When that happens no one is getting enough extra from working to bother. Why would a surgeon do a hugely stressful job when he is not getting a lot more than the ubi recipient
Your maths is completely flawed because you're assuming that it would be new money.
If the UBI replaces the tax-free threshold then it is effectively cost-neutral for anyone over the tax-free threshold. Or is not much extra cash for those above the tax-free threshold.
For anyone on benefits it would replace or supplement the benefits they were getting previously - so again not much extra cash up front.
It should lead to major cost reductions. You could essentially abolish Job Centre Plus and streamline much of HMRC. Job centres should be about helping people find work because they want to rather than because they need to pretend they want to and need to attend meetings or they'll get sanctioned.
Done properly people should actually want to work anyway as the poverty trap the current benefits system creates would be abolished.
A surgeon would be earning well more than the UBI, that is ridiculous. In fact done properly every single person who works would be earning more than the UBI, the UBI would be the floor not the ceiling that benefits currently create.
It is your maths that is flawed I am afraid. The tax free threshold is 12500 or so about a 1000 a month. That saves you paying tax of 200£ a month so giving someone a 1000 a month is a net loss of 800£.
Yes if you abolished housing benefit and uc that would be a saving but lets face it that won't happen and if it did the howls of protest would be huge as people would be getting even less than they are now.
Going back to that family of four they currently get
1100 a month uc 1000 a month housing benefit about 150£ a month reduction on council tax
That is before we add in free school meals, prescriptions etc.
You plan to replace this with 2X1000 ubi leaving them 250£ less well off
In addition you are giving every basic rate tax payer a boost to their pay of 1000£ a month in pay while charging them 200£ more tax
In the case of the employed, the UBI would be *entirely* taxed off their wages and given back to them by the government.
At this point, people then say, why bother?
The point is to make the system utterly dependable. You get your UBI each month, no matter what. Lose your job, UBI etc etc
No forms to fill out, no claims to be made.
This has the important effect of reducing the obstacles to getting a job from unemployment - at the moment, there is a whole dance about signing off benefits etc.
In a UBI system, get some work, get some money, pay some tax. Your UBI cannot be effected.
The LDs should be making this a central part of their policy agenda, it appeals to some on the left, some on the right and wont be offered by either main party.
About the only thing he is not too keen on is cinnamon.
I've got a nasty feeling that cinnamon is toxic to some animals. Haven't googled it, so could be wrong, but please check before allowing your dog any more exotic things. It's a sad fact that some dogs adore chocolate but it's terrible for them.
What matters is how many take it in total - but clearly "social pressure" will be greatest at the top of the list, lowest to non-existent at the bottom.
May be that's why the French government don't seem to be tackling the vaccine roll-out with any urgency?
Surely there is going to be an adverse impact in France come the autumn if vaccination rates remain low?
About the only thing he is not too keen on is cinnamon.
Many years ago our labrador puppy started chewing at our back door whenever we were out. We were advised to smear English mustard on to put him off, which we did before going out.
When we came back he'd chewed a hole through the door big enough to put his head through! Wood tastes much nice with a bit of mustard apparently.
What matters is how many take it in total - but clearly "social pressure" will be greatest at the top of the list, lowest to non-existent at the bottom.
Those numbers for Germany raise an eyebrow too. What is their issue? (No numbers coming out of America any longer raise an eyebrow. Just elicit a sigh....)
A prediction. This comes from a left-leaner who voted Labour last election.
The UK's vaccine rollout will continue as a stunning success story. Within 8 months covid rates here will have dropped to the point when they are no longer mentioned in daily updates. The vast majority of the population will have immunity and global travel visas. Although mutations will continue to evolve, pharmaceuticals will be up to the mark and the covid jabs will be like seasonal flu ones.
Apart from bitter remainers, Brexit will be behind us and the long haul of rebuilding will be underway.
Sir Keir Starmer will continue to seem like a very decent, competent and entirely unexciting leader of the opposition.
Boris Johnson will not stand down. He will win another thumping majority.
The Mystic has spoken.
The risk with that is you will promote the resulting meme:
"Getting the vaccine makes you vote Tory....."
Perhaps the DNA alteration pumps blue blood through the veins?
All jest aside, there's nothing quite like a post-crisis bounce. Whilst Labour are moaning about trivialities like drops in population or insider trading, the Tories will be getting on with the business of winning a landslide.
No matter how fast we go, still not fast enough for the moaners...
Now get on with the vaccines and end lockdown: Boris is urged to seize on Britain halting Covid surge by DOUBLING jabs target to 30million to ease restrictions by mid-February
I don't even see how that's possible. It would need 1m jabs per day from tomorrow to reach it, we simply don't have the supply. Even if we had the logistics in place to do 1m jabs per day those people would be sitting around waiting for vaccine doses all day.
Gordon Brittas would find a way....
I don't understand how the interviewer didn't challenge that idea immediately and ask where the UK would magic up an additional 15m doses from. Which countries would we be taking those away from? By what mechanism would we convince Pfizer to give them to us rather than Germany, Italy or Belgium?
These kinds of ideas need to be robustly challenged. I think Hancock needs to come out swinging against this kind of idiot thinking today and challenge Ashworth to present the maths behind the demand and talks with Pfizer to secure an additional 2m doses per week on top of current supply.
Well if Newsnight last night was anything to go by, they are onboard the idiot train... government failing, needs to rethink strategy, why aren't you willing to tell us when we will get deliveries, do you think the Germans are stealing from us, are you going to override committee advice on groupings, shouldn't we vaccinating the poor first...
They have their narrative and will find a way to push it regardless. Even I've been impressed at the ramp up of the vaccine since the new year. Today should go above 350k total doses administered across the 4 nations putting us ahead of the daily required target. That's something to celebrate, not criticise.
I don't think i have seen one positive headline. Yesterday bbc news was pushing the london not getting enough supply angle and general regional differences. Sad really for all those working their arses off to make this happen.
Defund the BBC and spend the money on ... literally anything else.
About the only thing he is not too keen on is cinnamon.
Many years ago our labrador puppy started chewing at our back door whenever we were out. We were advised to smear English mustard on to put him off, which we did before going out.
When we came back he'd chewed a hole through the door big enough to put his head through! Wood tastes much nice with a bit of mustard apparently.
Beware experts!
During these long days of lockdown, it is a perfect time to draw up and populate two lists:
a) things my dog does like; and
b) things my dog does not like.
Just for future reference, like. Although a) is proving to be a very, very long list.
About the only thing he is not too keen on is cinnamon.
Many years ago our labrador puppy started chewing at our back door whenever we were out. We were advised to smear English mustard on to put him off, which we did before going out.
When we came back he'd chewed a hole through the door big enough to put his head through! Wood tastes much nice with a bit of mustard apparently.
Red hot chilli pepper but don't quote me. It stops all chewing even if it does stain things.
Traditionally some sub-Saharan African mums (still) use it on the breasts to perform an instantaneous weaning of their infant child.
Which is why we need a much stronger travel ban. No one in or out and citizens/residents required to do 14 days quarantine in hotels. We can't let this new variant get hold in this country, it may dilute vaccine effectiveness.
About the only thing he is not too keen on is cinnamon.
The only things my pair won't eat is lead shot and mushrooms.
My sister's dog nicked a piece of fruit cake on Christmas Day. Having worked at a vets she knew that dried fruit could be poisonous to dogs if consumed above a certain quantity, so she cut and dismantled a similar portion of the cake, and carefully counted how many raisins it contained.
Having then satisfied herself that this was probably below the lethal quantity, she turned around to discover that the dog had eaten the rest of the cake.
Clearly he misses out the fact - cheap food = full of sugar and other crap to keep costs down.
The only difference between now and the 19th century is that then cheap food was poor quality and often featured things that weren't food (so you were under weight). Now it contains calories that aren't easy to burn off.
If you were a one parent family with say two kids and struggling financially this would seem a cheap way to feed the family for three or four dinners
500g of pasta, one tin of tomatoes and 1kg of chicken is not going to provide 12 dinners, unless they are all for Tiny Tim. What planet are you on?
Two tins of tomatoes.
I am on planet normal - that could easily make one adult and two kids half a weeks dinners
It works out at about 300 calories per meal for 12 meals. An adult needs 2000-2500 calories per day and a child aged 6-12 needs 1600-2200. So 300 for your main meal of the day looks pretty inadequate. I shop and cook for a family of five and I can tell you that your meal would do us for about one dinner, maybe with a bit left over. Our kids are far from fat (in fact most clothes don't fit them because they are too skinny) so we are definitely not overfeeding them.
Fair enough, let them buy double what I suggested - three or four meals for less than £12
I think there is general agreement that people can just about afford to eat a decent diet on benefits as long as they don't buy anything else. Unfortunately people also need to pay for clothes, transport, heating, etc. Some people compound their difficulties by not knowing how to cook (a widespread problem not only affecting the poor; not helped by schools no longer teaching home economics). Some people working long hours and shifts don't have time to cook. Some people don't have the equipment. I just find all this smug wisdom being dispensed by well off people a bit too Marie Antoinette* for my liking. (*I know she was misquoted).
How much do you think is required to feed a family of four 2 children 2 adults per week? As a pound figure?
About £150. Less if the kids are on free school meals. The Food Standards Agency have a report on the cost of a healthy food basket in Northern Ireland in 2018, they have it as £159 for a family of 4 with 2 school age kids. Presumably it is higher in 2020 with inflation, but NI may have higher costs than GB. I think we probably spend about £200/week on food for a family of 5. We don't shop at the cheapest supermarket and get organic meat and milk, but we cook everything from scratch which saves money and don't normally buy any alcohol.
And on uc the least that family would get per week is 229£ the most 253£
Add in 100£ per month for gas and electric 25£ per month for internet two sim only deals for the adults 10£ a month comes to another 33£ a week
So using your figure we come to 183£ leaving them between 46£ a week and 70£ a week
Aha you say they may need to pay some towards rent well lets add in another 100£ a month for rent and 60 for council tax thats another 34£ a week
Still leaves a net of 12£ a week to 36£ a week
Clothes and bus fares. Car needs a repair. Haircuts. Furniture and appliances need to be replaced. School trips. Curtains and bedding. This all assumes your benefits are paid on time, you don't get sanctioned unfairly, you're not subject to the bedroom tax etc.
The last sentence brings us back to UBI...
I'd like to see fair minimum determined by focus group and explicit listing of what, on average, should be covered as basic (what speed of broadband etc etc) year by year. And I'd mandate from government that contract exits are made available for discretionary services for change of circumstances (e.g. get sacked, you may bin Sky Sports: when you so wish)
That I would expect it to almost always work out at pretty much the 60% of median relative poverty line that the right love to whinge about is besides the point. The fact the right like to whinge about it is reason enough to sink government money into making an explicit calculation.
And UBI, plus a restructuring of tax to make good the difference (e.g. if you take UBI, you go on higher tax rates for a period of time, your call. And 'something, something' for the self employed), yes please. And btw, state pension, child benefit, student financing - yes, ultimately, they're going to be UBI too.
The contract exits seem a good idea or for that matter contract breaks. However what did I not list that you consider necessary?
Both adults have a mobile, they have internet access, they have gas and electric,they have food a roof some money left over for discretionary spending on clothes etc. That is by its very definition a safety net. The purpose of benefits is to provide support when you fall on hard times not to provide a living.
UBI is a pipedream that will never happen because it would cost too much. Merely giving every adult in britain 1000£ a month ubi would cost in the region of 480 billion and 1000 a month would not be enough to live on it would probably need to be double that assuming housing benefit and other benefits would be axed. Add in the NHS, defence,schools etc and you are pretty much looking at the entirety of GDP going to the government coffers. When that happens no one is getting enough extra from working to bother. Why would a surgeon do a hugely stressful job when he is not getting a lot more than the ubi recipient
Your maths is completely flawed because you're assuming that it would be new money.
If the UBI replaces the tax-free threshold then it is effectively cost-neutral for anyone over the tax-free threshold. Or is not much extra cash for those above the tax-free threshold.
For anyone on benefits it would replace or supplement the benefits they were getting previously - so again not much extra cash up front.
It should lead to major cost reductions. You could essentially abolish Job Centre Plus and streamline much of HMRC. Job centres should be about helping people find work because they want to rather than because they need to pretend they want to and need to attend meetings or they'll get sanctioned.
Done properly people should actually want to work anyway as the poverty trap the current benefits system creates would be abolished.
A surgeon would be earning well more than the UBI, that is ridiculous. In fact done properly every single person who works would be earning more than the UBI, the UBI would be the floor not the ceiling that benefits currently create.
It is your maths that is flawed I am afraid. The tax free threshold is 12500 or so about a 1000 a month. That saves you paying tax of 200£ a month so giving someone a 1000 a month is a net loss of 800£.
Yes if you abolished housing benefit and uc that would be a saving but lets face it that won't happen and if it did the howls of protest would be huge as people would be getting even less than they are now.
Going back to that family of four they currently get
1100 a month uc 1000 a month housing benefit about 150£ a month reduction on council tax
That is before we add in free school meals, prescriptions etc.
You plan to replace this with 2X1000 ubi leaving them 250£ less well off
In addition you are giving every basic rate tax payer a boost to their pay of 1000£ a month in pay while charging them 200£ more tax
In the case of the employed, the UBI would be *entirely* taxed off their wages and given back to them by the government.
At this point, people then say, why bother?
The point is to make the system utterly dependable. You get your UBI each month, no matter what. Lose your job, UBI etc etc
No forms to fill out, no claims to be made.
This has the important effect of reducing the obstacles to getting a job from unemployment - at the moment, there is a whole dance about signing off benefits etc.
In a UBI system, get some work, get some money, pay some tax. Your UBI cannot be effected.
The LDs should be making this a central part of their policy agenda, it appeals to some on the left, some on the right and wont be offered by either main party.
It is very attractive to a number of groups.
My personal favourite is the sweeping away of a mountain of rules, regulation, clipboardism and generally fuckery. Make life simpler for lots of people.
The main problem from the progressive point of view is that it would have to be restricted to nationals and settled migrants quite strictly. So they often see it as anti-foreigner/immigrant.
The selling point to progressives is that it gives *everyone* an attachment to the state.
Another small suggested point - link UBI to registering to vote. So you make it really, really secure. This pleases those that want to crack down on potential voting fraud. But it makes sure that people will be really, really incentivised to register to vote.
Q "Hi, you need to feel out some forms and provide some ID" A "Why should I bother?" Q "If you do, the government gives you a thousand quid a month for life. If you don't, they don't"
I reckon we would have 99.9999% registration to vote.
A prediction. This comes from a left-leaner who voted Labour last election.
The UK's vaccine rollout will continue as a stunning success story. Within 8 months covid rates here will have dropped to the point when they are no longer mentioned in daily updates. The vast majority of the population will have immunity and global travel visas. Although mutations will continue to evolve, pharmaceuticals will be up to the mark and the covid jabs will be like seasonal flu ones.
Apart from bitter remainers, Brexit will be behind us and the long haul of rebuilding will be underway.
Sir Keir Starmer will continue to seem like a very decent, competent and entirely unexciting leader of the opposition.
Boris Johnson will not stand down. He will win another thumping majority.
The Mystic has spoken.
The risk with that is you will promote the resulting meme:
Sometimes, people are in deep poverty not because they are lazy, but because something is causing them to function at a level below the average capacity. It might be acute or it might be chronic.
All of the well-meaning discussions below about nice rational choice and careful planning really fail to take that basic fact into account. What they are all doing is saying "you won't starve if you make just a little more effort". Nobody can really deny that this is true, but certain people at certain times, for reasons way beyond their control, cannot.
If your potted theory of how to live on tuppence and spare string doesn't take into account the mental and physical capacity of the person doing it, it's not worth the paper that you really shouldn't bother to write it on.
And I don't want to hear about people feigning illness either. I acknowledge that such things go on but unless you can find a way to sort those people from the genuinely needy, WITHOUT it further eroding the limited capacity of those needful people, you're just making it worse for the genuine cases.
It's all very easy when you're mentally and physically well to make a carefully tabulated budget and choose coolly and rationally at the supermarket. But if your bipolar disorder has you on a manic cycle and you haven't slept because the neighbour's dog barks all night, and your kid is being bullied because of his scruffy trainers, and the landlord hasn't fixed the mould that keeps growing up the walls, and you're frightened and angry and feeling hopeless, your decision making gets so badly fucked up.
So please take that into account whilst you discuss your solutions.
Sometimes, people are in deep poverty not because they are lazy, but because something is causing them to function at a level below the average capacity. It might be acute or it might be chronic.
All of the well-meaning discussions below about nice rational choice and careful planning really fail to take that basic fact into account. What they are all doing is saying "you won't starve if you make just a little more effort". Nobody can really deny that this is true, but certain people at certain times, for reasons way beyond their control, cannot.
If your potted theory of how to live on tuppence and spare string doesn't take into account the mental and physical capacity of the person doing it, it's not worth the paper that you really shouldn't bother to write it on.
And I don't want to hear about people feigning illness either. I acknowledge that such things go on but unless you can find a way to sort those people from the genuinely needy, WITHOUT it further eroding the limited capacity of those needful people, you're just making it worse for the genuine cases.
It's all very easy when you're mentally and physically well to make a carefully tabulated budget and choose coolly and rationally at the supermarket. But if your bipolar disorder has you on a manic cycle and you haven't slept because the neighbour's dog barks all night, and your kid is being bullied because of his scruffy trainers, and the landlord hasn't fixed the mould that keeps growing up the walls, and you're frightened and angry and feeling hopeless, your decision making gets so badly fucked up.
So please take that into account whilst you discuss your solutions.
so the extra 310,000,000,000 is getting close to 150% increase on the rates of income tax to stand still for 1000 a month ubi which is less than people currently get on uc. Raise the ubi amount and it only gets worse.
About the only thing he is not too keen on is cinnamon.
The only things my pair won't eat is lead shot and mushrooms.
My sister's dog nicked a piece of fruit cake on Christmas Day. Having worked at a vets she knew that dried fruit could be poisonous to dogs if consumed above a certain quantity, so she cut and dismantled a similar portion of the cake, and carefully counted how many raisins it contained.
Having then satisfied herself that this was probably below the lethal quantity, she turned around to discover that the dog had eaten the rest of the cake.
I do kinda wonder about the whole raisin thing. I mean, grapes and raisins were plentiful in Roman times as were dogs. I'm guessing many of our four-legged friends consumed stacks of the fruit and were absolutely fine.
Our boxer used to eat chocolate all the time. The real problem was cheese. The farting was something else.
p.s. I was a remainer but this is another example of the fact that we have absolutely nothing in common with the French.
We're far closer in mentality to SE Asia and Singapore.
This is an example where our attitudes differ but having spent some time in France I'd say we have much more in common than we like to admit. Shared genes, shared history, shared cultural evolution.
No matter how fast we go, still not fast enough for the moaners...
Now get on with the vaccines and end lockdown: Boris is urged to seize on Britain halting Covid surge by DOUBLING jabs target to 30million to ease restrictions by mid-February
I don't even see how that's possible. It would need 1m jabs per day from tomorrow to reach it, we simply don't have the supply. Even if we had the logistics in place to do 1m jabs per day those people would be sitting around waiting for vaccine doses all day.
Gordon Brittas would find a way....
I don't understand how the interviewer didn't challenge that idea immediately and ask where the UK would magic up an additional 15m doses from. Which countries would we be taking those away from? By what mechanism would we convince Pfizer to give them to us rather than Germany, Italy or Belgium?
These kinds of ideas need to be robustly challenged. I think Hancock needs to come out swinging against this kind of idiot thinking today and challenge Ashworth to present the maths behind the demand and talks with Pfizer to secure an additional 2m doses per week on top of current supply.
Well if Newsnight last night was anything to go by, they are onboard the idiot train... government failing, needs to rethink strategy, why aren't you willing to tell us when we will get deliveries, do you think the Germans are stealing from us, are you going to override committee advice on groupings, shouldn't we vaccinating the poor first...
They have their narrative and will find a way to push it regardless. Even I've been impressed at the ramp up of the vaccine since the new year. Today should go above 350k total doses administered across the 4 nations putting us ahead of the daily required target. That's something to celebrate, not criticise.
I don't think i have seen one positive headline. Yesterday bbc news was pushing the london not getting enough supply angle and general regional differences. Sad really for all those working their arses off to make this happen.
Defund the BBC and spend the money on ... literally anything else.
Channel 4 24-hour news channel?
Yes, even that. Although when viewers tried to tune in, all they would get is endless reruns of the Teletubbies, none the wiser that they weren't watching the real C4 News...
ON TOPIC. “ For if that goes against him he is out of politics for good.‘.
Is that really true though?
He is popular now despite everything. MAGA will become even more popular in opposition, constantly sniping away at the democrats, and the GOP response too. The focus shifts now to the democrats, and all their little socialist, woke, BLM, defund the police, squads seen as holding the balance of power.
You have yet to convince me even if Trump loses in the senate, which had to be odds against at the moment, even if senate have a vote debarring him from being a candidate, that can actually legally stop Trump let alone growth of MAGA candidates and power holders.
I agree its odds against anyway, but there is a major reason Trump being unable to stand would have a huge impact - hed need a proxy to run in 2024, and however much Trump would do they would to some degree stand and fall on their own merits, which wont be as good, for his base, as Trump himself.
It is possible he could lose influence quickly or as you suggest remain very influential, but as the end result would not be him in the Oval Office, some of the spark may not be there.
I wonder though- barring him would be a majority vote, after conviction (not that I expect conviction). Coukd a simple majority revoke that? Would be a powerful motivator for him to stay focused on senate races.
Who'd want to be a Trump proxy? Only someone in the family I suggest - and even they could get thrown under a bus by Donald. In any case if DC and Puerto Rico become States the senate will become more Democrat firendly.
I don't think he'd accept anyone but a family member as a proxy either. They're loyal, but frankly they should try living their own lives not be beholden to his goals all the time.
With Mitch no longer able to block it coming to the Senate, and given the referendum, is Puerto Rico now a lock for new state as there is an amount of cross party backing?
DC though...
Puerto Rico Could return two GOP senators
Could do, makes no difference to me. It's just I'm aware it is not just Democrats who support that one becoming a state (nor do I know if all Democrats do support it), so it's presumably easier to get support for it than DC, which voted 92% for Biden.
DC likely +2 Dem but if Rico +2 GOP that = neutral
Hard to tell - do it because it should be done and worry about it afterwards.
“We’d never get the Senate back again,” Arizona Sen. Martha McSally recently told NBC News. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell voiced the same concern while campaigning in Kentucky, citing the prospect of Puerto Rican statehood as an example of Democrats’ extreme agenda. But talk to political experts in Puerto Rico—and look at the underlying data—and you’ll see something else: Republicans might have it totally backwards. “People in the continental U.S. think that Puerto Ricans are going to vote Democratic, but on the other hand, the conservative values and Latin traditions are more akin to the values of a Republican Party,” said José Garriga Picó, a political scientist and former member of the Puerto Rican Legislature. “You can’t really predict what voters are going to do here.” https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/09/09/puerto-rico-statehood-politics-democrats-republicans-senate-409191
"do it because it should be done and worry about it afterwards" You do know we're talking about US politics, don't you?
It's right to give representation to US citizens in DC and Puerto Rico amd will probably at least short term result in more Democrat representation. It would be right to take steps to reduce gerrymandering, which would also help the Democrats. Being seen to do the right thing would also help the Democrats with unaffiliated voters. It's a win/win situation.
What matters is how many take it in total - but clearly "social pressure" will be greatest at the top of the list, lowest to non-existent at the bottom.
Those numbers for Germany raise an eyebrow too. What is their issue? (No numbers coming out of America any longer raise an eyebrow. Just elicit a sigh....)
There is a fairly high level of distrust of authority/the government and fierce independence in Germany (perhaps not surprising given the history - I'm thinking more of GDR here than 1930s/40s - but it's also partly an innate thing I think, where it's cool, in a way, to be different and non-conformist). See also the fairly large anti-lockdown protests seen there.
I once asked something similar over a beer in Berlin, when AfD were doing quite well and my German friend/colleague said something along the lines of "the problem you have is that you only meet and mix with the sane Germans like us, so you don't see the nutters". She also remarked that the reverse was true and that, having worked with me and my English colleagues she wouldn't have expected the English to be a nation of football hooligans.
About the only thing he is not too keen on is cinnamon.
The only things my pair won't eat is lead shot and mushrooms.
My sister's dog nicked a piece of fruit cake on Christmas Day. Having worked at a vets she knew that dried fruit could be poisonous to dogs if consumed above a certain quantity, so she cut and dismantled a similar portion of the cake, and carefully counted how many raisins it contained.
Having then satisfied herself that this was probably below the lethal quantity, she turned around to discover that the dog had eaten the rest of the cake.
I do kinda wonder about the whole raisin thing. I mean, grapes and raisins were plentiful in Roman times as were dogs. I'm guessing many of our four-legged friends consumed stacks of the fruit and were absolutely fine.
Our boxer used to eat chocolate all the time. The real problem was cheese. The farting was something else.
Dogs will of course eat all the chocolate they can get. But it causes them serious kidney problems in later life IIRC.
About the only thing he is not too keen on is cinnamon.
I've got a nasty feeling that cinnamon is toxic to some animals. Haven't googled it, so could be wrong, but please check before allowing your dog any more exotic things. It's a sad fact that some dogs adore chocolate but it's terrible for them.
Onions - very, very bad.
Grapes too, I think, are to be avoided.
If you give dogs small amounts of chocolate and then build it up a bit, it seems to give them a degree of immunity. My wife was very thankful of this when her two Westies raided Robert Plant's bag and stole then devoured his man-size Yorkie (chocolate bar, not dog).
No matter how fast we go, still not fast enough for the moaners...
Now get on with the vaccines and end lockdown: Boris is urged to seize on Britain halting Covid surge by DOUBLING jabs target to 30million to ease restrictions by mid-February
I don't even see how that's possible. It would need 1m jabs per day from tomorrow to reach it, we simply don't have the supply. Even if we had the logistics in place to do 1m jabs per day those people would be sitting around waiting for vaccine doses all day.
Gordon Brittas would find a way....
I don't understand how the interviewer didn't challenge that idea immediately and ask where the UK would magic up an additional 15m doses from. Which countries would we be taking those away from? By what mechanism would we convince Pfizer to give them to us rather than Germany, Italy or Belgium?
These kinds of ideas need to be robustly challenged. I think Hancock needs to come out swinging against this kind of idiot thinking today and challenge Ashworth to present the maths behind the demand and talks with Pfizer to secure an additional 2m doses per week on top of current supply.
Well if Newsnight last night was anything to go by, they are onboard the idiot train... government failing, needs to rethink strategy, why aren't you willing to tell us when we will get deliveries, do you think the Germans are stealing from us, are you going to override committee advice on groupings, shouldn't we vaccinating the poor first...
They have their narrative and will find a way to push it regardless. Even I've been impressed at the ramp up of the vaccine since the new year. Today should go above 350k total doses administered across the 4 nations putting us ahead of the daily required target. That's something to celebrate, not criticise.
I don't think i have seen one positive headline. Yesterday bbc news was pushing the london not getting enough supply angle and general regional differences. Sad really for all those working their arses off to make this happen.
Defund the BBC and spend the money on ... literally anything else.
Channel 4 24-hour news channel?
Yes, even that. Although when viewers tried to tune in, all they would get is endless reruns of the Teletubbies, none the wiser that they weren't watching the real C4 News...
Just remove BBC's 24 hour news channel - then they won't need to spend time creating news to fill the time
p.s. I was a remainer but this is another example of the fact that we have absolutely nothing in common with the French.
We're far closer in mentality to SE Asia and Singapore.
This is an example where our attitudes differ but having spent some time in France I'd say we have much more in common than we like to admit. Shared genes, shared history, shared cultural evolution.
I've lived in France and published there & I'm fluent in the old language. Have popped up a few times on French tv giving interviews and having chats n' all that. But I'm not sure I entirely agree with you. I don't think we have a shared cultural evolution: for everything you cite I'll demonstrate something at variance.
Can anyone explain reasonably briefly what this is about? It seems to have been allegations that recipients of child welfare benefits have been prosecuted for fraud on the back of a defective system, a bit like the Post office problem here but it is not easy to make out from the article which clearly assumes a lot of background knowledge.
so the extra 310,000,000,000 is getting close to 150% increase on the rates of income tax to stand still for 1000 a month ubi which is less than people currently get on uc. Raise the ubi amount and it only gets worse.
I know why you've chosen to put all those zeros in rather than use £xM but f*ck me it makes your working hard to follow. I gave up tbh.
So, will you be willing to praise a successful vaccination programme in the UK?
Thought not
A great many Johnson Government detractors have given credit where it is due, particularly over vaccine provision. I don't think it means they are obliged to give a free pass to earlier incompetence, much of which may have cost lives.
so the extra 310,000,000,000 is getting close to 150% increase on the rates of income tax to stand still for 1000 a month ubi which is less than people currently get on uc. Raise the ubi amount and it only gets worse.
As I mentioned below - the people with jobs get nothing. In effect their tax free allowance is paid to them by the government in a true UBI. Hence no net change for the employed (who earn more than the tax free allowance).
About the only thing he is not too keen on is cinnamon.
The only things my pair won't eat is lead shot and mushrooms.
My sister's dog nicked a piece of fruit cake on Christmas Day. Having worked at a vets she knew that dried fruit could be poisonous to dogs if consumed above a certain quantity, so she cut and dismantled a similar portion of the cake, and carefully counted how many raisins it contained.
Having then satisfied herself that this was probably below the lethal quantity, she turned around to discover that the dog had eaten the rest of the cake.
p.s. I was a remainer but this is another example of the fact that we have absolutely nothing in common with the French.
We're far closer in mentality to SE Asia and Singapore.
This is an example where our attitudes differ but having spent some time in France I'd say we have much more in common than we like to admit. Shared genes, shared history, shared cultural evolution.
I've lived in France and published there & I'm fluent in the old language. Have popped up a few times on French tv giving interviews and having chats n' all that. But I'm not sure I entirely agree with you. I don't think we have a shared cultural evolution: for everything you cite I'll demonstrate something at variance.
If the EU was just its current members, minus those countries bordering the Mediterranean, we would be happy and contented members of it.
Sometimes, people are in deep poverty not because they are lazy, but because something is causing them to function at a level below the average capacity. It might be acute or it might be chronic.
All of the well-meaning discussions below about nice rational choice and careful planning really fail to take that basic fact into account. What they are all doing is saying "you won't starve if you make just a little more effort". Nobody can really deny that this is true, but certain people at certain times, for reasons way beyond their control, cannot.
If your potted theory of how to live on tuppence and spare string doesn't take into account the mental and physical capacity of the person doing it, it's not worth the paper that you really shouldn't bother to write it on.
And I don't want to hear about people feigning illness either. I acknowledge that such things go on but unless you can find a way to sort those people from the genuinely needy, WITHOUT it further eroding the limited capacity of those needful people, you're just making it worse for the genuine cases.
It's all very easy when you're mentally and physically well to make a carefully tabulated budget and choose coolly and rationally at the supermarket. But if your bipolar disorder has you on a manic cycle and you haven't slept because the neighbour's dog barks all night, and your kid is being bullied because of his scruffy trainers, and the landlord hasn't fixed the mould that keeps growing up the walls, and you're frightened and angry and feeling hopeless, your decision making gets so badly fucked up.
So please take that into account whilst you discuss your solutions.
Sometimes, people are in deep poverty not because they are lazy, but because something is causing them to function at a level below the average capacity. It might be acute or it might be chronic.
All of the well-meaning discussions below about nice rational choice and careful planning really fail to take that basic fact into account. What they are all doing is saying "you won't starve if you make just a little more effort". Nobody can really deny that this is true, but certain people at certain times, for reasons way beyond their control, cannot.
If your potted theory of how to live on tuppence and spare string doesn't take into account the mental and physical capacity of the person doing it, it's not worth the paper that you really shouldn't bother to write it on.
And I don't want to hear about people feigning illness either. I acknowledge that such things go on but unless you can find a way to sort those people from the genuinely needy, WITHOUT it further eroding the limited capacity of those needful people, you're just making it worse for the genuine cases.
It's all very easy when you're mentally and physically well to make a carefully tabulated budget and choose coolly and rationally at the supermarket. But if your bipolar disorder has you on a manic cycle and you haven't slept because the neighbour's dog barks all night, and your kid is being bullied because of his scruffy trainers, and the landlord hasn't fixed the mould that keeps growing up the walls, and you're frightened and angry and feeling hopeless, your decision making gets so badly fucked up.
So please take that into account whilst you discuss your solutions.
I was talking about the other 99.9%
If you ever get chance, spend some time volunteering for Citizens Advice.
I can tell you from experience, it's an education.
Can anyone explain reasonably briefly what this is about? It seems to have been allegations that recipients of child welfare benefits have been prosecuted for fraud on the back of a defective system, a bit like the Post office problem here but it is not easy to make out from the article which clearly assumes a lot of background knowledge.
I think you have accurately summarised the situation. For British readers perhaps the confusion arises from the alien concept of government ministers resigning over their incompetence.
p.s. I was a remainer but this is another example of the fact that we have absolutely nothing in common with the French.
We're far closer in mentality to SE Asia and Singapore.
This is an example where our attitudes differ but having spent some time in France I'd say we have much more in common than we like to admit. Shared genes, shared history, shared cultural evolution.
I've lived in France and published there & I'm fluent in the old language. Have popped up a few times on French tv giving interviews and having chats n' all that. But I'm not sure I entirely agree with you. I don't think we have a shared cultural evolution: for everything you cite I'll demonstrate something at variance.
Since the revolution, France's real twin has been America rather than us.
Clearly he misses out the fact - cheap food = full of sugar and other crap to keep costs down.
The only difference between now and the 19th century is that then cheap food was poor quality and often featured things that weren't food (so you were under weight). Now it contains calories that aren't easy to burn off.
If you were a one parent family with say two kids and struggling financially this would seem a cheap way to feed the family for three or four dinners
500g of pasta, one tin of tomatoes and 1kg of chicken is not going to provide 12 dinners, unless they are all for Tiny Tim. What planet are you on?
Two tins of tomatoes.
I am on planet normal - that could easily make one adult and two kids half a weeks dinners
It works out at about 300 calories per meal for 12 meals. An adult needs 2000-2500 calories per day and a child aged 6-12 needs 1600-2200. So 300 for your main meal of the day looks pretty inadequate. I shop and cook for a family of five and I can tell you that your meal would do us for about one dinner, maybe with a bit left over. Our kids are far from fat (in fact most clothes don't fit them because they are too skinny) so we are definitely not overfeeding them.
Fair enough, let them buy double what I suggested - three or four meals for less than £12
I think there is general agreement that people can just about afford to eat a decent diet on benefits as long as they don't buy anything else. Unfortunately people also need to pay for clothes, transport, heating, etc. Some people compound their difficulties by not knowing how to cook (a widespread problem not only affecting the poor; not helped by schools no longer teaching home economics). Some people working long hours and shifts don't have time to cook. Some people don't have the equipment. I just find all this smug wisdom being dispensed by well off people a bit too Marie Antoinette* for my liking. (*I know she was misquoted).
How much do you think is required to feed a family of four 2 children 2 adults per week? As a pound figure?
About £150. Less if the kids are on free school meals. The Food Standards Agency have a report on the cost of a healthy food basket in Northern Ireland in 2018, they have it as £159 for a family of 4 with 2 school age kids. Presumably it is higher in 2020 with inflation, but NI may have higher costs than GB. I think we probably spend about £200/week on food for a family of 5. We don't shop at the cheapest supermarket and get organic meat and milk, but we cook everything from scratch which saves money and don't normally buy any alcohol.
And on uc the least that family would get per week is 229£ the most 253£
Add in 100£ per month for gas and electric 25£ per month for internet two sim only deals for the adults 10£ a month comes to another 33£ a week
So using your figure we come to 183£ leaving them between 46£ a week and 70£ a week
Aha you say they may need to pay some towards rent well lets add in another 100£ a month for rent and 60 for council tax thats another 34£ a week
Still leaves a net of 12£ a week to 36£ a week
Clothes and bus fares. Car needs a repair. Haircuts. Furniture and appliances need to be replaced. School trips. Curtains and bedding. This all assumes your benefits are paid on time, you don't get sanctioned unfairly, you're not subject to the bedroom tax etc.
The last sentence brings us back to UBI...
I'd like to see fair minimum determined by focus group and explicit listing of what, on average, should be covered as basic (what speed of broadband etc etc) year by year. And I'd mandate from government that contract exits are made available for discretionary services for change of circumstances (e.g. get sacked, you may bin Sky Sports: when you so wish)
That I would expect it to almost always work out at pretty much the 60% of median relative poverty line that the right love to whinge about is besides the point. The fact the right like to whinge about it is reason enough to sink government money into making an explicit calculation.
And UBI, plus a restructuring of tax to make good the difference (e.g. if you take UBI, you go on higher tax rates for a period of time, your call. And 'something, something' for the self employed), yes please. And btw, state pension, child benefit, student financing - yes, ultimately, they're going to be UBI too.
The contract exits seem a good idea or for that matter contract breaks. However what did I not list that you consider necessary?
Both adults have a mobile, they have internet access, they have gas and electric,they have food a roof some money left over for discretionary spending on clothes etc. That is by its very definition a safety net. The purpose of benefits is to provide support when you fall on hard times not to provide a living.
UBI is a pipedream that will never happen because it would cost too much. Merely giving every adult in britain 1000£ a month ubi would cost in the region of 480 billion and 1000 a month would not be enough to live on it would probably need to be double that assuming housing benefit and other benefits would be axed. Add in the NHS, defence,schools etc and you are pretty much looking at the entirety of GDP going to the government coffers. When that happens no one is getting enough extra from working to bother. Why would a surgeon do a hugely stressful job when he is not getting a lot more than the ubi recipient
Your maths is completely flawed because you're assuming that it would be new money.
If the UBI replaces the tax-free threshold then it is effectively cost-neutral for anyone over the tax-free threshold. Or is not much extra cash for those above the tax-free threshold.
For anyone on benefits it would replace or supplement the benefits they were getting previously - so again not much extra cash up front.
It should lead to major cost reductions. You could essentially abolish Job Centre Plus and streamline much of HMRC. Job centres should be about helping people find work because they want to rather than because they need to pretend they want to and need to attend meetings or they'll get sanctioned.
Done properly people should actually want to work anyway as the poverty trap the current benefits system creates would be abolished.
A surgeon would be earning well more than the UBI, that is ridiculous. In fact done properly every single person who works would be earning more than the UBI, the UBI would be the floor not the ceiling that benefits currently create.
It is your maths that is flawed I am afraid. The tax free threshold is 12500 or so about a 1000 a month. That saves you paying tax of 200£ a month so giving someone a 1000 a month is a net loss of 800£.
Yes if you abolished housing benefit and uc that would be a saving but lets face it that won't happen and if it did the howls of protest would be huge as people would be getting even less than they are now.
Going back to that family of four they currently get
1100 a month uc 1000 a month housing benefit about 150£ a month reduction on council tax
That is before we add in free school meals, prescriptions etc.
You plan to replace this with 2X1000 ubi leaving them 250£ less well off
In addition you are giving every basic rate tax payer a boost to their pay of 1000£ a month in pay while charging them 200£ more tax
In the case of the employed, the UBI would be *entirely* taxed off their wages and given back to them by the government.
At this point, people then say, why bother?
The point is to make the system utterly dependable. You get your UBI each month, no matter what. Lose your job, UBI etc etc
No forms to fill out, no claims to be made.
This has the important effect of reducing the obstacles to getting a job from unemployment - at the moment, there is a whole dance about signing off benefits etc.
In a UBI system, get some work, get some money, pay some tax. Your UBI cannot be effected.
Well see there is the issue you then have, if for example UBI is 1000 a month and if you work it all gets clawed back....
Working a 37.5 hour week full time means you are working 1950 hours a year. A person working currently and earning 18000 a year loses 12000 automatically to claw back ubi plus the tax to cover the rest of govenment expenditure is probably working 1950 hours a year for 3 to 4000 pounds. A mere 70 to 80 pounds extra in their pocket a week. How many will just say not worth it?
The reproduction number, or R value, of coronavirus transmission in the UK is between 1.2 and 1.3, the Government Office for Science and the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) has said.
About the only thing he is not too keen on is cinnamon.
Many years ago our labrador puppy started chewing at our back door whenever we were out. We were advised to smear English mustard on to put him off, which we did before going out.
When we came back he'd chewed a hole through the door big enough to put his head through! Wood tastes much nice with a bit of mustard apparently.
Beware experts!
During these long days of lockdown, it is a perfect time to draw up and populate two lists:
a) things my dog does like; and
b) things my dog does not like.
Just for future reference, like. Although a) is proving to be a very, very long list.
Get yourself an English pointer, they are very discerning. Ours likes fish but won't touch prawns or crab. No idea why.
About the only thing he is not too keen on is cinnamon.
Many years ago our labrador puppy started chewing at our back door whenever we were out. We were advised to smear English mustard on to put him off, which we did before going out.
When we came back he'd chewed a hole through the door big enough to put his head through! Wood tastes much nice with a bit of mustard apparently.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson will hold a Downing Street press conference alongside England's chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty and the UK's chief scientific officer Sir Patrick Vallance at 17:00 GMT.
Graphic designer Luiz Amorim travelled to Brazil to visit family for Christmas and is now worried he won't be able to return to his wife in London because of the UK's South America travel ban.
Zero f##king sympathy....broke the rules to leave T4 to go there.
The reproduction number, or R value, of coronavirus transmission in the UK is between 1.2 and 1.3, the Government Office for Science and the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) has said.
Not what ZOE is suggesting (or is the Sage estimate more lagging?)
Prime Minister Boris Johnson will hold a Downing Street press conference alongside England's chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty and the UK's chief scientific officer Sir Patrick Vallance at 17:00 GMT.
Cue some pretty incredible numbers on vaccination, I would guess.
so the extra 310,000,000,000 is getting close to 150% increase on the rates of income tax to stand still for 1000 a month ubi which is less than people currently get on uc. Raise the ubi amount and it only gets worse.
As I mentioned below - the people with jobs get nothing. In effect their tax free allowance is paid to them by the government in a true UBI. Hence no net change for the employed (who earn more than the tax free allowance).
As I pointed out a 12500 tax free allowance isnt 12500 in your pocket its the tax you would of paid on it which is about 200 a month
Prime Minister Boris Johnson will hold a Downing Street press conference alongside England's chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty and the UK's chief scientific officer Sir Patrick Vallance at 17:00 GMT.
Cue some pretty incredible numbers on vaccination, I would guess.
And media questions saying not fast enough, way behind Israel, we found a GP surgery in Norwich that hasn't had supply for 2 days, what about vaccinating super market workers now.....
I wrote to Michael Gove on 13 July 2020 with some points and questions about the pet passport.
I just got a reply today, apologising for the delay, going on to say that the Cabinet Office won't respond to matters for which they are not responsible and telling me to write to DEFRA.
Regardless of the rights and wrongs of government policy, that's a truly appalling way to be dealing with casework and enquiries.
Clearly he misses out the fact - cheap food = full of sugar and other crap to keep costs down.
The only difference between now and the 19th century is that then cheap food was poor quality and often featured things that weren't food (so you were under weight). Now it contains calories that aren't easy to burn off.
If you were a one parent family with say two kids and struggling financially this would seem a cheap way to feed the family for three or four dinners
500g of pasta, one tin of tomatoes and 1kg of chicken is not going to provide 12 dinners, unless they are all for Tiny Tim. What planet are you on?
Two tins of tomatoes.
I am on planet normal - that could easily make one adult and two kids half a weeks dinners
It works out at about 300 calories per meal for 12 meals. An adult needs 2000-2500 calories per day and a child aged 6-12 needs 1600-2200. So 300 for your main meal of the day looks pretty inadequate. I shop and cook for a family of five and I can tell you that your meal would do us for about one dinner, maybe with a bit left over. Our kids are far from fat (in fact most clothes don't fit them because they are too skinny) so we are definitely not overfeeding them.
Fair enough, let them buy double what I suggested - three or four meals for less than £12
I think there is general agreement that people can just about afford to eat a decent diet on benefits as long as they don't buy anything else. Unfortunately people also need to pay for clothes, transport, heating, etc. Some people compound their difficulties by not knowing how to cook (a widespread problem not only affecting the poor; not helped by schools no longer teaching home economics). Some people working long hours and shifts don't have time to cook. Some people don't have the equipment. I just find all this smug wisdom being dispensed by well off people a bit too Marie Antoinette* for my liking. (*I know she was misquoted).
How much do you think is required to feed a family of four 2 children 2 adults per week? As a pound figure?
About £150. Less if the kids are on free school meals. The Food Standards Agency have a report on the cost of a healthy food basket in Northern Ireland in 2018, they have it as £159 for a family of 4 with 2 school age kids. Presumably it is higher in 2020 with inflation, but NI may have higher costs than GB. I think we probably spend about £200/week on food for a family of 5. We don't shop at the cheapest supermarket and get organic meat and milk, but we cook everything from scratch which saves money and don't normally buy any alcohol.
And on uc the least that family would get per week is 229£ the most 253£
Add in 100£ per month for gas and electric 25£ per month for internet two sim only deals for the adults 10£ a month comes to another 33£ a week
So using your figure we come to 183£ leaving them between 46£ a week and 70£ a week
Aha you say they may need to pay some towards rent well lets add in another 100£ a month for rent and 60 for council tax thats another 34£ a week
Still leaves a net of 12£ a week to 36£ a week
Clothes and bus fares. Car needs a repair. Haircuts. Furniture and appliances need to be replaced. School trips. Curtains and bedding. This all assumes your benefits are paid on time, you don't get sanctioned unfairly, you're not subject to the bedroom tax etc.
The last sentence brings us back to UBI...
I'd like to see fair minimum determined by focus group and explicit listing of what, on average, should be covered as basic (what speed of broadband etc etc) year by year. And I'd mandate from government that contract exits are made available for discretionary services for change of circumstances (e.g. get sacked, you may bin Sky Sports: when you so wish)
That I would expect it to almost always work out at pretty much the 60% of median relative poverty line that the right love to whinge about is besides the point. The fact the right like to whinge about it is reason enough to sink government money into making an explicit calculation.
And UBI, plus a restructuring of tax to make good the difference (e.g. if you take UBI, you go on higher tax rates for a period of time, your call. And 'something, something' for the self employed), yes please. And btw, state pension, child benefit, student financing - yes, ultimately, they're going to be UBI too.
The contract exits seem a good idea or for that matter contract breaks. However what did I not list that you consider necessary?
Both adults have a mobile, they have internet access, they have gas and electric,they have food a roof some money left over for discretionary spending on clothes etc. That is by its very definition a safety net. The purpose of benefits is to provide support when you fall on hard times not to provide a living.
UBI is a pipedream that will never happen because it would cost too much. Merely giving every adult in britain 1000£ a month ubi would cost in the region of 480 billion and 1000 a month would not be enough to live on it would probably need to be double that assuming housing benefit and other benefits would be axed. Add in the NHS, defence,schools etc and you are pretty much looking at the entirety of GDP going to the government coffers. When that happens no one is getting enough extra from working to bother. Why would a surgeon do a hugely stressful job when he is not getting a lot more than the ubi recipient
Your maths is completely flawed because you're assuming that it would be new money.
If the UBI replaces the tax-free threshold then it is effectively cost-neutral for anyone over the tax-free threshold. Or is not much extra cash for those above the tax-free threshold.
For anyone on benefits it would replace or supplement the benefits they were getting previously - so again not much extra cash up front.
It should lead to major cost reductions. You could essentially abolish Job Centre Plus and streamline much of HMRC. Job centres should be about helping people find work because they want to rather than because they need to pretend they want to and need to attend meetings or they'll get sanctioned.
Done properly people should actually want to work anyway as the poverty trap the current benefits system creates would be abolished.
A surgeon would be earning well more than the UBI, that is ridiculous. In fact done properly every single person who works would be earning more than the UBI, the UBI would be the floor not the ceiling that benefits currently create.
It is your maths that is flawed I am afraid. The tax free threshold is 12500 or so about a 1000 a month. That saves you paying tax of 200£ a month so giving someone a 1000 a month is a net loss of 800£.
Yes if you abolished housing benefit and uc that would be a saving but lets face it that won't happen and if it did the howls of protest would be huge as people would be getting even less than they are now.
Going back to that family of four they currently get
1100 a month uc 1000 a month housing benefit about 150£ a month reduction on council tax
That is before we add in free school meals, prescriptions etc.
You plan to replace this with 2X1000 ubi leaving them 250£ less well off
In addition you are giving every basic rate tax payer a boost to their pay of 1000£ a month in pay while charging them 200£ more tax
In the case of the employed, the UBI would be *entirely* taxed off their wages and given back to them by the government.
At this point, people then say, why bother?
The point is to make the system utterly dependable. You get your UBI each month, no matter what. Lose your job, UBI etc etc
No forms to fill out, no claims to be made.
This has the important effect of reducing the obstacles to getting a job from unemployment - at the moment, there is a whole dance about signing off benefits etc.
In a UBI system, get some work, get some money, pay some tax. Your UBI cannot be effected.
Well see there is the issue you then have, if for example UBI is 1000 a month and if you work it all gets clawed back....
Working a 37.5 hour week full time means you are working 1950 hours a year. A person working currently and earning 18000 a year loses 12000 automatically to claw back ubi plus the tax to cover the rest of govenment expenditure is probably working 1950 hours a year for 3 to 4000 pounds. A mere 70 to 80 pounds extra in their pocket a week. How many will just say not worth it?
Which is the old, old argument against benefits.....
Yet people do jobs where they get *less* than benefits - rare, but it does happen
Very common are jobs which only make marginally more than benefits. Tons of those. No shortage of applicants...
Over on Twitter, @Cyclefree is not impressed by my defence of Kate Bingham.
Not remotely surprised.
Why let the fact someone's doing a good job get in the way of the fact you've got a bee in your bonnet?
I think it woule be awfully churlish to suggest it has not worked out on this occasion, but you would still want to make sure processes for appointment (even expedited appointment) are sound (if indeed there was an issue this time, I cannot remember the details), as you won't always get so lucky.
Who was it who first said: "The harder I work, the luckier I get".
I have no qualms with expedited appointments so long as someone is prepared to say "this is who I appointed, this is why I did, and I take responsibility for the results of what they do". Which is what happened.
If the procurement had gone badly the government would have been held to account and been forced to take responsibility for how it had screwed up. The fact that they had appointed someone wouldn't shield them from criticism.
Gary Player: "the more I practise, the luckier I get".
Comments
I would strongly suspect, go forward, that the annual flu vaccine campaign gets expanded to cover most people and it will be more a matter of "What do we target in the national vaccine campaigns, this year?"
https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1350060245561864192?s=20
- If the UBI replaces the tax-free threshold then it is effectively cost-neutral for anyone over the tax-free threshold. Or is not much extra cash for those above the tax-free threshold.
- For anyone on benefits it would replace or supplement the benefits they were getting previously - so again not much extra cash up front.
- It should lead to major cost reductions. You could essentially abolish Job Centre Plus and streamline much of HMRC. Job centres should be about helping people find work because they want to rather than because they need to pretend they want to and need to attend meetings or they'll get sanctioned.
- Done properly people should actually want to work anyway as the poverty trap the current benefits system creates would be abolished.
A surgeon would be earning well more than the UBI, that is ridiculous. In fact done properly every single person who works would be earning more than the UBI, the UBI would be the floor not the ceiling that benefits currently create.Essentially, in journalist world, a positive story is somewhere between kissing arse and a shit, non-story that might provide some make-work for an intern.
UK: +71
Denmark: +60
Spain: +52
Italy: +43
Germany: +24
USA: +20
France: +1
What matters is how many take it in total - but clearly "social pressure" will be greatest at the top of the list, lowest to non-existent at the bottom.
Year 2: Flu vaccine
Year 3: Brain altering devices. Also Flu vaccine again.
I have no qualms with expedited appointments so long as someone is prepared to say "this is who I appointed, this is why I did, and I take responsibility for the results of what they do". Which is what happened.
If the procurement had gone badly the government would have been held to account and been forced to take responsibility for how it had screwed up. The fact that they had appointed someone wouldn't shield them from criticism.
1. would result in workforce shortages in jobs that are inherently unattractive, so
2. forcing employers in those sectors to increase both wages and prices, which
3. might depress some economic activity, but, at least in theory, should lead to a more equitable division of the nation's income and hence
4. also lead to a faster speed of money within the economy resulting in
5. increased economic activity
Where the overall balance would lie on economic efficiency, I do not know. I don't think it's just a matter of costs' impact on the supply and demand curve, as a workforce concentrating on what they want to do will be more innovative and productive. But, regardless of the net result on the efficiency side, on the equity side, I think we'd end up with both a happier and more equitable society.
If someone engages in criminal activity then there are consequences for that.
I'm asking the questions some people don't seem willing to ask and looking a little further ahead than the next vaccination.
I'll be taking the vaccination because the alternative is to risk catching and dying from the virus so that's a no-brainer. I'm not looking forward to the triumphalism of the Government and its supporters nor do I feel we should have a big "party" to celebrate when 80,000 people or more have died.
Indeed, while there's a lot for which to be thankful, I also think we've had a real kick in the complacency about how we live. Basic personal hygiene and health care wouldn't have stopped the virus - might have slowed it down a little -but it angers me some very simple measures we could all take would slow the transmission of colds and other bugs with the consequent losses in time and productivity prevented or reduced.
Well, that is good news.
The UK's vaccine rollout will continue as a stunning success story. Within 8 months covid rates here will have dropped to the point when they are no longer mentioned in daily updates. The vast majority of the population will have immunity and global travel visas. Although mutations will continue to evolve, pharmaceuticals will be up to the mark and the covid jabs will be like seasonal flu ones.
Apart from bitter remainers, Brexit will be behind us and the long haul of rebuilding will be underway.
Sir Keir Starmer will continue to seem like a very decent, competent and entirely unexciting leader of the opposition.
Boris Johnson will not stand down. He will win another thumping majority.
The Mystic has spoken.
Yes if you abolished housing benefit and uc that would be a saving but lets face it that won't happen and if it did the howls of protest would be huge as people would be getting even less than they are now.
Going back to that family of four they currently get
1100 a month uc
1000 a month housing benefit
about 150£ a month reduction on council tax
That is before we add in free school meals, prescriptions etc.
You plan to replace this with 2X1000 ubi leaving them 250£ less well off
In addition you are giving every basic rate tax payer a boost to their pay of 1000£ a month in pay while charging them 200£ more tax
“We’d never get the Senate back again,” Arizona Sen. Martha McSally recently told NBC News. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell voiced the same concern while campaigning in Kentucky, citing the prospect of Puerto Rican statehood as an example of Democrats’ extreme agenda.
But talk to political experts in Puerto Rico—and look at the underlying data—and you’ll see something else: Republicans might have it totally backwards.
“People in the continental U.S. think that Puerto Ricans are going to vote Democratic, but on the other hand, the conservative values and Latin traditions are more akin to the values of a Republican Party,” said José Garriga Picó, a political scientist and former member of the Puerto Rican Legislature. “You can’t really predict what voters are going to do here.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/09/09/puerto-rico-statehood-politics-democrats-republicans-senate-409191
SeanT WILL be pleased.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/01/14/vaccine-success-brink-oftransforming-lockdown-debate/
Fraser brings cheering news.
Rachel Reeves MP, Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, added: 'These revelations are deeply concerning - not only because trust in a government official is in jeopardy but because the law could have been broken."
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8902119/Head-UK-vaccine-taskforce-faces-calls-quit-sharing-secret-government-documents.html
I am giving no view on whether those criticisms are deserved or not, but a good defence of them would be she is not guilty, rather than she is doing a good job, which was the defence RN gave earlier.
About the only thing he is not too keen on is cinnamon.
At this point, people then say, why bother?
The point is to make the system utterly dependable. You get your UBI each month, no matter what. Lose your job, UBI etc etc
No forms to fill out, no claims to be made.
This has the important effect of reducing the obstacles to getting a job from unemployment - at the moment, there is a whole dance about signing off benefits etc.
In a UBI system, get some work, get some money, pay some tax. Your UBI cannot be effected.
We're far closer in mentality to SE Asia and Singapore.
Increased encroachment on territory of host species
Increased bat- and pangolin-eating
Increased gain of function lab experiments
Lookup "Sweating sickness" etc..
"Getting the vaccine makes you vote Tory....."
Surely there is going to be an adverse impact in France come the autumn if vaccination rates remain low?
Surely the biggest story of the day? Why the strict silence on the bbc, telegraph and guardian front pages?
Everything else he seems quite (very!!) partial to.
https://twitter.com/NOS/status/1350057399416205312
When we came back he'd chewed a hole through the door big enough to put his head through! Wood tastes much nice with a bit of mustard apparently.
Perhaps the DNA alteration pumps blue blood through the veins?
All jest aside, there's nothing quite like a post-crisis bounce. Whilst Labour are moaning about trivialities like drops in population or insider trading, the Tories will be getting on with the business of winning a landslide.
Thought not
During these long days of lockdown, it is a perfect time to draw up and populate two lists:
a) things my dog does like; and
b) things my dog does not like.
Just for future reference, like. Although a) is proving to be a very, very long list.
Traditionally some sub-Saharan African mums (still) use it on the breasts to perform an instantaneous weaning of their infant child.
https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1350068521192009728?s=20
My sister's dog nicked a piece of fruit cake on Christmas Day. Having worked at a vets she knew that dried fruit could be poisonous to dogs if consumed above a certain quantity, so she cut and dismantled a similar portion of the cake, and carefully counted how many raisins it contained.
Having then satisfied herself that this was probably below the lethal quantity, she turned around to discover that the dog had eaten the rest of the cake.
My personal favourite is the sweeping away of a mountain of rules, regulation, clipboardism and generally fuckery. Make life simpler for lots of people.
The main problem from the progressive point of view is that it would have to be restricted to nationals and settled migrants quite strictly. So they often see it as anti-foreigner/immigrant.
The selling point to progressives is that it gives *everyone* an attachment to the state.
Another small suggested point - link UBI to registering to vote. So you make it really, really secure. This pleases those that want to crack down on potential voting fraud. But it makes sure that people will be really, really incentivised to register to vote.
Q "Hi, you need to feel out some forms and provide some ID"
A "Why should I bother?"
Q "If you do, the government gives you a thousand quid a month for life. If you don't, they don't"
I reckon we would have 99.9999% registration to vote.
Number of adults ~51,000,000
source https://www.statista.com/statistics/281174/uk-population-by-age/
Current benefits bill 221,000,000,000
source https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/benefit-expenditure-and-caseload-tables-information-and-guidance/benefit-expenditure-and-caseload-tables-information-and-guidance#:~:text=In 2017 to 2018 £121 billion was spent on,paid to 12.7 million people.
so if we cut all benefits and paid ubi we get the formula
(221,000,000,000 / 51,000,000 ) / 12 = 361£ monthly
So to pay UBI additional expenditure = ((ubi amount per month - 361) * 12) * 51,000,000
plugging in for example 1000 we get an additional cost of 391,068,000,000
current tax take in the uk is 634,000,000,000 so total tax take would need to be just over 1,030,000,000,000
you can then subtract the tax clawback of 200 per month from abolishing the tax free part
working age adults in the uk 33,000,000 roughly
source https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/bulletins/employmentintheuk/august2019#:~:text=Estimates for April to June,year to reach 24.11 million).
so (200 x 33,000,000) x 12 = 80,000,000 roughly taking the new tax take down to a mere 950,000,000
Most of this extra money will need to be raised on people else companies will shift so we currently raise
194,000,000 on income tax in the uk
source https://www.statista.com/statistics/284306/united-kingdom-hmrc-tax-receipts-income-tax/#:~:text=In 2019/20 income tax,increase of 89 billion pounds.
so the extra 310,000,000,000 is getting close to 150% increase on the rates of income tax to stand still for 1000 a month ubi which is less than people currently get on uc. Raise the ubi amount and it only gets worse.
Our boxer used to eat chocolate all the time. The real problem was cheese. The farting was something else.
It would be right to take steps to reduce gerrymandering, which would also help the Democrats.
Being seen to do the right thing would also help the Democrats with unaffiliated voters.
It's a win/win situation.
I once asked something similar over a beer in Berlin, when AfD were doing quite well and my German friend/colleague said something along the lines of "the problem you have is that you only meet and mix with the sane Germans like us, so you don't see the nutters". She also remarked that the reverse was true and that, having worked with me and my English colleagues she wouldn't have expected the English to be a nation of football hooligans.
Grapes too, I think, are to be avoided.
If you give dogs small amounts of chocolate and then build it up a bit, it seems to give them a degree of immunity. My wife was very thankful of this when her two Westies raided Robert Plant's bag and stole then devoured his man-size Yorkie (chocolate bar, not dog).
Mr. Plant was well pissed off though.
The Tory Government on vaccinations have been absolutely bloody brilliant. An outstanding success.
I can tell you from experience, it's an education.
Working a 37.5 hour week full time means you are working 1950 hours a year. A person working currently and earning 18000 a year loses 12000 automatically to claw back ubi plus the tax to cover the rest of govenment expenditure is probably working 1950 hours a year for 3 to 4000 pounds. A mere 70 to 80 pounds extra in their pocket a week. How many will just say not worth it?
https://twitter.com/JohnRentoul/status/1350069080884195328
Get yourself an English pointer, they are very discerning. Ours likes fish but won't touch prawns or crab. No idea why.
Graphic designer Luiz Amorim travelled to Brazil to visit family for Christmas and is now worried he won't be able to return to his wife in London because of the UK's South America travel ban.
Zero f##king sympathy....broke the rules to leave T4 to go there.
I just got a reply today, apologising for the delay, going on to say that the Cabinet Office won't respond to matters for which they are not responsible and telling me to write to DEFRA.
Regardless of the rights and wrongs of government policy, that's a truly appalling way to be dealing with casework and enquiries.
https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/01/COVID-19-daily-announced-vaccinations-15-January-2021.xlsx
Yet people do jobs where they get *less* than benefits - rare, but it does happen
Very common are jobs which only make marginally more than benefits. Tons of those. No shortage of applicants...