And, lordy, lordy - I didn't hear the whole of it, but if the bit of Sir Keir's response which I did hear was typical, boy is he useless. It was cringe-makingly bad. I had to turn it off.
I can see why the Left are annoyed -- they were told SKS was a winner. He was not what they wanted, but hw would win. They were sold a pup.
SKS looks as much a winner as Long Bailey with a heavy cold.
Labour should have gone for Rayner or Nandy.
It is not too late ....
SLAB have mucked it up as well, with another vacuous suit in charge.
To be fair, the Scottish vacuous suit is at least a big step up from his predecessor.
Quite. And as there were only two candidates, I think they chose OK.
You have to wonder why Baillie wasn't a candidate after this inquiry. She seems a rising star for SLAB.
And, lordy, lordy - I didn't hear the whole of it, but if the bit of Sir Keir's response which I did hear was typical, boy is he useless. It was cringe-makingly bad. I had to turn it off.
I can see why the Left are annoyed -- they were told SKS was a winner. He was not what they wanted, but hw would win. They were sold a pup.
SKS looks as much a winner as Long Bailey with a heavy cold.
Labour should have gone for Rayner or Nandy.
It is not too late ....
SLAB have mucked it up as well, with another vacuous suit in charge.
To be fair, the Scottish vacuous suit is at least a big step up from his predecessor.
Starmer isn't?
Yes he is, but it's looking increasingly as though there won't be much electoral benefit for Labour from that.
I really think Labour need a cross of Corbynite passion and Blairite politics, and that means Jess Phillips. Sir Keir is just too dull - he is Brown, Miliband, IDS, Howard, Hague. A year in and he hasn't captured the public's imagination at all- low 30s in Positive Leader Ratings is EdM territory. I think that means he never will
Covid means past comparisons is a bit unfair but I really do think that Jess was (and still is) the best option to go up against Boris.
I momentarily read 'Jess' as 'Jesus' there. I know Boris is a political megastar and all that but...
And, lordy, lordy - I didn't hear the whole of it, but if the bit of Sir Keir's response which I did hear was typical, boy is he useless. It was cringe-makingly bad. I had to turn it off.
I can see why the Left are annoyed -- they were told SKS was a winner. He was not what they wanted, but hw would win. They were sold a pup.
SKS looks as much a winner as Long Bailey with a heavy cold.
Labour should have gone for Rayner or Nandy.
It is not too late ....
SLAB have mucked it up as well, with another vacuous suit in charge.
To be fair, the Scottish vacuous suit is at least a big step up from his predecessor.
No more of a winner than SKS though
You really have a downer on him, don't you?
SKS's response was fine. He came up with the right narrative of pushing responsibility onto the Conservatives. He had earlier avoided the elephant traps set by the fifth columnists on his own side who wished to paint him into a corner before Sunak spoke. The corporation tax increases and personal taxation increases to come will now be owned by the Conservatives.
And, lordy, lordy - I didn't hear the whole of it, but if the bit of Sir Keir's response which I did hear was typical, boy is he useless. It was cringe-makingly bad. I had to turn it off.
I can see why the Left are annoyed -- they were told SKS was a winner. He was not what they wanted, but hw would win. They were sold a pup.
SKS looks as much a winner as Long Bailey with a heavy cold.
Labour should have gone for Rayner or Nandy.
It is not too late ....
SLAB have mucked it up as well, with another vacuous suit in charge.
To be fair, the Scottish vacuous suit is at least a big step up from his predecessor.
Quite. And as there were only two candidates, I think they chose OK.
You have to wonder why Baillie wasn't a candidate after this inquiry. She seems a rising star for SLAB.
Agree, but she is now Deputy Leader and Finance Lead. It's good to have a bit of depth in the party, not just leader and nobody under them with any kind of reputation (at least not for anything good) a la Sturgeon.
And, lordy, lordy - I didn't hear the whole of it, but if the bit of Sir Keir's response which I did hear was typical, boy is he useless. It was cringe-makingly bad. I had to turn it off.
I can see why the Left are annoyed -- they were told SKS was a winner. He was not what they wanted, but hw would win. They were sold a pup.
SKS looks as much a winner as Long Bailey with a heavy cold.
Labour should have gone for Rayner or Nandy.
It is not too late ....
SLAB have mucked it up as well, with another vacuous suit in charge.
To be fair, the Scottish vacuous suit is at least a big step up from his predecessor.
Quite. And as there were only two candidates, I think they chose OK.
You have to wonder why Baillie wasn't a candidate after this inquiry. She seems a rising star for SLAB.
Everywhere you look in Labour, there is a failing, crappy male at the top and highly competent women below him -- who have been overlooked.
Llafur should have gone for Eluned Morgan not Mark Dumbford, as well.
Hard to believe this is not institutionalized sexism.
And, lordy, lordy - I didn't hear the whole of it, but if the bit of Sir Keir's response which I did hear was typical, boy is he useless. It was cringe-makingly bad. I had to turn it off.
I can see why the Left are annoyed -- they were told SKS was a winner. He was not what they wanted, but hw would win. They were sold a pup.
SKS looks as much a winner as Long Bailey with a heavy cold.
Labour should have gone for Rayner or Nandy.
It is not too late ....
SLAB have mucked it up as well, with another vacuous suit in charge.
To be fair, the Scottish vacuous suit is at least a big step up from his predecessor.
Starmer isn't?
Yes he is, but it's looking increasingly as though there won't be much electoral benefit for Labour from that.
I really think Labour need a cross of Corbynite passion and Blairite politics, and that means Jess Phillips. Sir Keir is just too dull - he is Brown, Miliband, IDS, Howard, Hague. A year in and he hasn't captured the public's imagination at all- low 30s in Positive Leader Ratings is EdM territory. I think that means he never will
Covid means past comparisons is a bit unfair but I really do think that Jess was (and still is) the best option to go up against Boris.
I momentarily read 'Jess' as 'Jesus' there. I know Boris is a political megastar and all that but...
Starmer would do well to model his policies on those of the Big JC!
And, lordy, lordy - I didn't hear the whole of it, but if the bit of Sir Keir's response which I did hear was typical, boy is he useless. It was cringe-makingly bad. I had to turn it off.
I can see why the Left are annoyed -- they were told SKS was a winner. He was not what they wanted, but hw would win. They were sold a pup.
SKS looks as much a winner as Long Bailey with a heavy cold.
Labour should have gone for Rayner or Nandy.
It is not too late ....
SLAB have mucked it up as well, with another vacuous suit in charge.
To be fair, the Scottish vacuous suit is at least a big step up from his predecessor.
No more of a winner than SKS though
You really have a downer on him, don't you?
SKS's response was fine. He came up with the right narrative of pushing responsibility onto the Conservatives. He had earlier avoided the elephant traps set by the fifth columnists on his own side who wished to paint him into a corner before Sunak spoke. The corporation tax increases and personal taxation increases to come will now be owned by the Conservatives.
The problem with Starmer is, the problem with Starmer is, that he can't seem to go more than half a sentence - more than half a sentence - without repeating himself. Repeating himself.
Seriously though, that's probably the first major speech of his I've actually sat through and he was dire. Corbyn at least would have shouted a lot, and wouldn't have been that much more waffly and hard to follow.
And, lordy, lordy - I didn't hear the whole of it, but if the bit of Sir Keir's response which I did hear was typical, boy is he useless. It was cringe-makingly bad. I had to turn it off.
I can see why the Left are annoyed -- they were told SKS was a winner. He was not what they wanted, but hw would win. They were sold a pup.
SKS looks as much a winner as Long Bailey with a heavy cold.
Labour should have gone for Rayner or Nandy.
It is not too late ....
SLAB have mucked it up as well, with another vacuous suit in charge.
To be fair, the Scottish vacuous suit is at least a big step up from his predecessor.
Starmer isn't?
Yes he is, but it's looking increasingly as though there won't be much electoral benefit for Labour from that.
I really think Labour need a cross of Corbynite passion and Blairite politics, and that means Jess Phillips. Sir Keir is just too dull - he is Brown, Miliband, IDS, Howard, Hague. A year in and he hasn't captured the public's imagination at all- low 30s in Positive Leader Ratings is EdM territory. I think that means he never will
Covid means past comparisons is a bit unfair but I really do think that Jess was (and still is) the best option to go up against Boris.
I momentarily read 'Jess' as 'Jesus' there. I know Boris is a political megastar and all that but...
Well, if you've got a PM who rose from the dead on Easter Sunday, you kind of need a LOTO with similar experience...
And, lordy, lordy - I didn't hear the whole of it, but if the bit of Sir Keir's response which I did hear was typical, boy is he useless. It was cringe-makingly bad. I had to turn it off.
I can see why the Left are annoyed -- they were told SKS was a winner. He was not what they wanted, but hw would win. They were sold a pup.
SKS looks as much a winner as Long Bailey with a heavy cold.
Labour should have gone for Rayner or Nandy.
It is not too late ....
SLAB have mucked it up as well, with another vacuous suit in charge.
To be fair, the Scottish vacuous suit is at least a big step up from his predecessor.
Starmer isn't?
Yes he is, but it's looking increasingly as though there won't be much electoral benefit for Labour from that.
I really think Labour need a cross of Corbynite passion and Blairite politics, and that means Jess Phillips. Sir Keir is just too dull - he is Brown, Miliband, IDS, Howard, Hague. A year in and he hasn't captured the public's imagination at all- low 30s in Positive Leader Ratings is EdM territory. I think that means he never will
Covid means past comparisons is a bit unfair but I really do think that Jess was (and still is) the best option to go up against Boris.
I momentarily read 'Jess' as 'Jesus' there. I know Boris is a political megastar and all that but...
Starmer would do well to model his policies on those of the Big JC!
For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath. That sort of thing?
Budget: the CPI inflation assumption (that it stays at or below 2.0% until 2026) looks rocky to me. A 1% increase in RPI increases debt costs by £7bn, and 1% in gilts by £9 billion. Rather sensitive. This could budget could be out by £50-60bn by FY2025/26.
The corp tax and income tax freezes yield £25bn a year by 2025, so that's big money. IHT also frozen for an extra 0.4bn yield. If it gets desperate he could up VAT to 22%, I guess to give an extra £10-12bn per year.
Also, has he factored in a progressive degradation of fuel duty? I think he's just TBC'ed it in this. I'd have thought it'd be 10-15% below current levels by 2025, 25-35% by 2030 and 60-70% by 2040. That's probably a £3-4bn hole by 2026 alone.
Carbon neutrality will have a serious fiscal cost, although cheaper than the environmental one of course.
And, lordy, lordy - I didn't hear the whole of it, but if the bit of Sir Keir's response which I did hear was typical, boy is he useless. It was cringe-makingly bad. I had to turn it off.
I can see why the Left are annoyed -- they were told SKS was a winner. He was not what they wanted, but hw would win. They were sold a pup.
SKS looks as much a winner as Long Bailey with a heavy cold.
Labour should have gone for Rayner or Nandy.
It is not too late ....
SLAB have mucked it up as well, with another vacuous suit in charge.
To be fair, the Scottish vacuous suit is at least a big step up from his predecessor.
Quite. And as there were only two candidates, I think they chose OK.
You have to wonder why Baillie wasn't a candidate after this inquiry. She seems a rising star for SLAB.
Everywhere you look in Labour, there is a failing, crappy male at the top and highly competent women below him -- who have been overlooked.
Llafur should have gone for Eluned Morgan not Mark Dumbford, as well.
Hard to believe this is not institutionalized sexism.
You could replace "in Labour" with "in the world" there and have quite a tenable observation.
Claiming the mantle of honesty and responsibility whilst ducking all the serious choices over how to balance the books is neither honest nor responsible.
Were you not listening?
He's forecast the deficit back under 3% before the next election.
I would have thought such a forecast was "brave". If the deficit is back under 3% before the next election then that is extraordinarily rapid so soon after the recession.
That’s precisely my point. This is a speech about serious disease offering very weak medicine.
How is that weak?
The deficit back under 3% within 3 years of the depression isn't weak its a comprehensive cure for the deficit. It wasn't possible 3 years after the GFC to get the deficit back under 3% again.
Which as I have said for the past year is made possible in no small part because we went into this recession in a much better place than Brown's recession.
Give it a rest. Even if you are right that fiscal policy should have been tighter in 2006/7, it made no difference to the global financial crisis. Whatever the implications for a future that did not happen, it had no effect on the crisis that did happen.
It didn't make a difference to the GFC, it made a difference to how the UK came out of the GFC. That's the difference, can't you understand that?
Shocks happen they're a fact of life. Its how you go into them and how you come out of them that matters. The UK was horribly exposed to the GFC with Brown's deficit - and as a result came atrociously out of it.
Covid was a more severe, more awful shock, but the UK was better prepared for it so is coming out better.
Osborne flat-lining the recovery he inherited from Labour did not help.
If only Labour hadnt fked the economy in the first place then we wouldnt have needed a recovery
There's a reason the global financial crisis was called the Global Financial Crisis.
It wasn't global, it was actually quite limited. Most countries didn't experience a financial crisis - UK, US, Iceland, Spain and Ireland did, and the first two, because they are so hugely important to the financial system, exported it around the world. But Germany, Canada, France, Italy, Sweden and Japan, for instance, didn't experience financial crises of their own - only what they imported from us.
The effects of the GFC, and the economic aftershocks, were truly global.
Really? I must have imagined the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis.
Nevertheless the observation that the 08 banking crash was mainly Anglo American in origin is substantially correct.
Sure, as is the observation that World War I was basically all Serbia's fault.
There were clearly major structural weaknesses in the Southern European economies which took an external shock to expose. In the same way as Northern Rock's overreliance on short term borrowing was, in hindsight, always unsustainable, and the precise origin of its downfall isn't all that relevant.
The bank crash and consequent credit crunch was rather more than a mere trigger for other events. A financial bubble was created by malfunctioning credit markets - securitized loans and a mountain of derivatives on top, such that every bad dollar of loan become several bad dollars of potential loss. An abdication of risk management, much fraud, and at the heart of it, Wall St and its mini me, the City. Large and complex exposures were cooked up there and exported to balance sheets across the developed banking world.
All perfectly true, but none of it goes even partway to explaining why Greece had a debt to GDP ratio over 100% throughout the early to mid 2000s, way above the 60% limit in the Growth & Stability Pact. To say nothing of all the countries that were also in breach at some point.
Why are you talking about Jackie Baillee as being a missed opportunity for leader of Scottish labour? She puts Starmer himself in the shade. Get her to Westminster.
And, lordy, lordy - I didn't hear the whole of it, but if the bit of Sir Keir's response which I did hear was typical, boy is he useless. It was cringe-makingly bad. I had to turn it off.
I can see why the Left are annoyed -- they were told SKS was a winner. He was not what they wanted, but hw would win. They were sold a pup.
SKS looks as much a winner as Long Bailey with a heavy cold.
Labour should have gone for Rayner or Nandy.
It is not too late ....
SLAB have mucked it up as well, with another vacuous suit in charge.
To be fair, the Scottish vacuous suit is at least a big step up from his predecessor.
No more of a winner than SKS though
You really have a downer on him, don't you?
SKS's response was fine. He came up with the right narrative of pushing responsibility onto the Conservatives. He had earlier avoided the elephant traps set by the fifth columnists on his own side who wished to paint him into a corner before Sunak spoke. The corporation tax increases and personal taxation increases to come will now be owned by the Conservatives.
The problem with Starmer is, the problem with Starmer is, that he can't seem to go more than half a sentence - more than half a sentence - without repeating himself. Repeating himself.
Seriously though, that's probably the first major speech of his I've actually sat through and he was dire. Corbyn at least would have shouted a lot, and wouldn't have been that much more waffly and hard to follow.
Corbyn got over 40% of the vote at GE17, people shouldn't discard that achievement so readily. In the other GE he fought he got more votes than Brown and Miliband managed, and maybe more than Sir Keir will too
And, lordy, lordy - I didn't hear the whole of it, but if the bit of Sir Keir's response which I did hear was typical, boy is he useless. It was cringe-makingly bad. I had to turn it off.
I can see why the Left are annoyed -- they were told SKS was a winner. He was not what they wanted, but hw would win. They were sold a pup.
SKS looks as much a winner as Long Bailey with a heavy cold.
Labour should have gone for Rayner or Nandy.
It is not too late ....
SLAB have mucked it up as well, with another vacuous suit in charge.
To be fair, the Scottish vacuous suit is at least a big step up from his predecessor.
Quite. And as there were only two candidates, I think they chose OK.
You have to wonder why Baillie wasn't a candidate after this inquiry. She seems a rising star for SLAB.
More good news on the vaccine front for the developing world: Covaxin, the inactivated virus vaccine from Ocugen and Bharat Biotech, shows 81% efficacy in interim phase III trials:
"Nothing to see here, and if there is, I don't know what it is, and even if I did know it wouldn't have been my responsibility, and there's no evidence because we redacted it, and anyway look at that nasty MAN!"
"Nothing to see here, and if there is, I don't know what it is, and even if I did know it wouldn't have been my responsibility, and there's no evidence because we redacted it, and anyway look at that nasty MAN!"
Budget: the CPI inflation assumption (that it stays at or below 2.0% until 2026) looks rocky to me. A 1% increase in RPI increases debt costs by £7bn, and 1% in gilts by £9 billion. Rather sensitive. This could budget could be out by £50-60bn by FY2025/26.
The corp tax and income tax freezes yield £25bn a year by 2025, so that's big money. IHT also frozen for an extra 0.4bn yield. If it gets desperate he could up VAT to 22%, I guess to give an extra £10-12bn per year.
Also, has he factored in a progressive degradation of fuel duty? I think he's just TBC'ed it in this. I'd have thought it'd be 10-15% below current levels by 2025, 25-35% by 2030 and 60-70% by 2040. That's probably a £3-4bn hole by 2026 alone.
Carbon neutrality will have a serious fiscal cost, although cheaper than the environmental one of course.
I think this is another area where he has to bite the bullet sooner rather than later. There is no longer a need to encourage drivers to take up electric cars - they are going to be forced to do so within 9 years anyway. So he should now look to move to payment per mile for driving with all cars being classed the same. Replace fuel duty and road tax with a completely new system based on how much you drive. If you are worried about the impact on rural areas then you can tinker with rates but basically it will be one system for all with perhaps some regional variation.
And, lordy, lordy - I didn't hear the whole of it, but if the bit of Sir Keir's response which I did hear was typical, boy is he useless. It was cringe-makingly bad. I had to turn it off.
I can see why the Left are annoyed -- they were told SKS was a winner. He was not what they wanted, but hw would win. They were sold a pup.
SKS looks as much a winner as Long Bailey with a heavy cold.
Labour should have gone for Rayner or Nandy.
It is not too late ....
SLAB have mucked it up as well, with another vacuous suit in charge.
To be fair, the Scottish vacuous suit is at least a big step up from his predecessor.
No more of a winner than SKS though
You really have a downer on him, don't you?
SKS's response was fine. He came up with the right narrative of pushing responsibility onto the Conservatives. He had earlier avoided the elephant traps set by the fifth columnists on his own side who wished to paint him into a corner before Sunak spoke. The corporation tax increases and personal taxation increases to come will now be owned by the Conservatives.
The problem with Starmer is, the problem with Starmer is, that he can't seem to go more than half a sentence - more than half a sentence - without repeating himself. Repeating himself.
Seriously though, that's probably the first major speech of his I've actually sat through and he was dire. Corbyn at least would have shouted a lot, and wouldn't have been that much more waffly and hard to follow.
Corbyn got over 40% of the vote at GE17, people shouldn't discard that achievement so readily. In the other GE he fought he got more votes than Brown and Miliband managed, and maybe more than Sir Keir will too
I don't, but there's little denying he was crap at Parliamentary process, in particular speechcraft (when not talking to activists, in other words). If Starmer isn't noticeably better at Corbyn in the Chamber, and I expect he'll be worse on the stump, he is not looking good overall.
Claiming the mantle of honesty and responsibility whilst ducking all the serious choices over how to balance the books is neither honest nor responsible.
Were you not listening?
He's forecast the deficit back under 3% before the next election.
I would have thought such a forecast was "brave". If the deficit is back under 3% before the next election then that is extraordinarily rapid so soon after the recession.
That’s precisely my point. This is a speech about serious disease offering very weak medicine.
How is that weak?
The deficit back under 3% within 3 years of the depression isn't weak its a comprehensive cure for the deficit. It wasn't possible 3 years after the GFC to get the deficit back under 3% again.
Which as I have said for the past year is made possible in no small part because we went into this recession in a much better place than Brown's recession.
Give it a rest. Even if you are right that fiscal policy should have been tighter in 2006/7, it made no difference to the global financial crisis. Whatever the implications for a future that did not happen, it had no effect on the crisis that did happen.
It didn't make a difference to the GFC, it made a difference to how the UK came out of the GFC. That's the difference, can't you understand that?
Shocks happen they're a fact of life. Its how you go into them and how you come out of them that matters. The UK was horribly exposed to the GFC with Brown's deficit - and as a result came atrociously out of it.
Covid was a more severe, more awful shock, but the UK was better prepared for it so is coming out better.
Osborne flat-lining the recovery he inherited from Labour did not help.
If only Labour hadnt fked the economy in the first place then we wouldnt have needed a recovery
There's a reason the global financial crisis was called the Global Financial Crisis.
It wasn't global, it was actually quite limited. Most countries didn't experience a financial crisis - UK, US, Iceland, Spain and Ireland did, and the first two, because they are so hugely important to the financial system, exported it around the world. But Germany, Canada, France, Italy, Sweden and Japan, for instance, didn't experience financial crises of their own - only what they imported from us.
The effects of the GFC, and the economic aftershocks, were truly global.
Really? I must have imagined the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis.
Nevertheless the observation that the 08 banking crash was mainly Anglo American in origin is substantially correct.
Sure, as is the observation that World War I was basically all Serbia's fault.
There were clearly major structural weaknesses in the Southern European economies which took an external shock to expose. In the same way as Northern Rock's overreliance on short term borrowing was, in hindsight, always unsustainable, and the precise origin of its downfall isn't all that relevant.
The bank crash and consequent credit crunch was rather more than a mere trigger for other events. A financial bubble was created by malfunctioning credit markets - securitized loans and a mountain of derivatives on top, such that every bad dollar of loan become several bad dollars of potential loss. An abdication of risk management, much fraud, and at the heart of it, Wall St and its mini me, the City. Large and complex exposures were cooked up there and exported to balance sheets across the developed banking world.
All perfectly true, but none of it goes even partway to explaining why Greece had a debt to GDP ratio over 100% throughout the early to mid 2000s, way above the 60% limit in the Growth & Stability Pact. To say nothing of all the countries that were also in breach at some point.
Yep, there are many stories to tell, other than the malfunction of Anglo American capital markets which led to the GFC, and that is one of them. Greece. And more generally the eurozone sovereign debt crisis.
Looking at her - this is not a politician who feels on comfortable ground and on top of the questioning
The big question is, of course: will any of it make the blindest bit of difference to anything?
I’ve never seen her look so weak. She may well survive but it’s like watching a champion heavyweight taking such a tremendous battering you can see the end of his career
Well short of this time last week. Presumably more stockpiling for the second doses? One can only hope that the anticipated ramping of supplies isn't too slow in coming, or else the under 50s are going to be waiting for quite a long time.
Set alongside the apparently sudden order from India, it is concerning. We need those ‘bumper’ days and weeks
I was under the impression that the India order was long planned? Might be wrong.
Budget: the CPI inflation assumption (that it stays at or below 2.0% until 2026) looks rocky to me. A 1% increase in RPI increases debt costs by £7bn, and 1% in gilts by £9 billion. Rather sensitive. This could budget could be out by £50-60bn by FY2025/26.
The corp tax and income tax freezes yield £25bn a year by 2025, so that's big money. IHT also frozen for an extra 0.4bn yield. If it gets desperate he could up VAT to 22%, I guess to give an extra £10-12bn per year.
Also, has he factored in a progressive degradation of fuel duty? I think he's just TBC'ed it in this. I'd have thought it'd be 10-15% below current levels by 2025, 25-35% by 2030 and 60-70% by 2040. That's probably a £3-4bn hole by 2026 alone.
Carbon neutrality will have a serious fiscal cost, although cheaper than the environmental one of course.
I think this is another area where he has to bite the bullet sooner rather than later. There is no longer a need to encourage drivers to take up electric cars - they are going to be forced to do so within 9 years anyway. So he should now look to move to payment per mile for driving with all cars being classed the same. Replace fuel duty and road tax with a completely new system based on how much you drive. If you are worried about the impact on rural areas then you can tinker with rates but basically it will be one system for all with perhaps some regional variation.
If my clock is read once a year at MOT time, to reconcile my road tax bill for the next year, fine.
But, I do not want to be satellite tracked and monitored for real-time road pricing.
No way do I want any part of the Government knowing where I'm going, when or why, or for how long. Nor do I expect to have to explain myself to anyone: the prospects for abuse are legion.
The fuzz would have dug all over it during this latest lockdown.
Budget: the CPI inflation assumption (that it stays at or below 2.0% until 2026) looks rocky to me. A 1% increase in RPI increases debt costs by £7bn, and 1% in gilts by £9 billion. Rather sensitive. This could budget could be out by £50-60bn by FY2025/26.
The corp tax and income tax freezes yield £25bn a year by 2025, so that's big money. IHT also frozen for an extra 0.4bn yield. If it gets desperate he could up VAT to 22%, I guess to give an extra £10-12bn per year.
Also, has he factored in a progressive degradation of fuel duty? I think he's just TBC'ed it in this. I'd have thought it'd be 10-15% below current levels by 2025, 25-35% by 2030 and 60-70% by 2040. That's probably a £3-4bn hole by 2026 alone.
Carbon neutrality will have a serious fiscal cost, although cheaper than the environmental one of course.
I think this is another area where he has to bite the bullet sooner rather than later. There is no longer a need to encourage drivers to take up electric cars - they are going to be forced to do so within 9 years anyway. So he should now look to move to payment per mile for driving with all cars being classed the same. Replace fuel duty and road tax with a completely new system based on how much you drive. If you are worried about the impact on rural areas then you can tinker with rates but basically it will be one system for all with perhaps some regional variation.
If my clock is read once a year at MOT time, to reconcile my road tax bill for the next year, fine.
But, I do not want to be satellite tracked and monitored for real-time road pricing.
No way do I want any part of the Government knowing where I'm going, when or why, or for how long. Nor do I expect to have to explain myself to anyone: the prospects for abuse are legion.
The fuzz would have dug all over it during this latest lockdown.
Yep that is an issue but there really is no alternative that I can think of.
That said if you carry a mobile phone then the ability to do that is already there.
My conclusion from this committee is that Sturgeon may be telling the truth, in part. She wasn’t involved in a conspiracy - she genuinely pursued it for the complainers and MeToo. However there WAS a lower level ‘conspiracy’ - call it ‘over-eagerness to please the Leader’ - which she discovered to her horror. Everything since has been cover-up
Budget: the CPI inflation assumption (that it stays at or below 2.0% until 2026) looks rocky to me. A 1% increase in RPI increases debt costs by £7bn, and 1% in gilts by £9 billion. Rather sensitive. This could budget could be out by £50-60bn by FY2025/26.
The corp tax and income tax freezes yield £25bn a year by 2025, so that's big money. IHT also frozen for an extra 0.4bn yield. If it gets desperate he could up VAT to 22%, I guess to give an extra £10-12bn per year.
Also, has he factored in a progressive degradation of fuel duty? I think he's just TBC'ed it in this. I'd have thought it'd be 10-15% below current levels by 2025, 25-35% by 2030 and 60-70% by 2040. That's probably a £3-4bn hole by 2026 alone.
Carbon neutrality will have a serious fiscal cost, although cheaper than the environmental one of course.
I think this is another area where he has to bite the bullet sooner rather than later. There is no longer a need to encourage drivers to take up electric cars - they are going to be forced to do so within 9 years anyway. So he should now look to move to payment per mile for driving with all cars being classed the same. Replace fuel duty and road tax with a completely new system based on how much you drive. If you are worried about the impact on rural areas then you can tinker with rates but basically it will be one system for all with perhaps some regional variation.
If my clock is read once a year at MOT time, to reconcile my road tax bill for the next year, fine.
But, I do not want to be satellite tracked and monitored for real-time road pricing.
No way do I want any part of the Government knowing where I'm going, when or why, or for how long. Nor do I expect to have to explain myself to anyone: the prospects for abuse are legion.
The fuzz would have dug all over it during this latest lockdown.
The problem is that all polling on the matter has shown that road pricing is a Fuel Strike moment. No one trusts the government on this.
This is one of the reasons that hydrogen was the promoted clean fuel solution - when the time was right, you would shift the fuel taxes to hydrogen.
Problem is that electricity is everywhere.
The resistance to rebalancing the anti-road structural plans in the light of ZEVs being universal is strong. But it is needed - and it is quite interesting to see some public transport plans in that light....
And, lordy, lordy - I didn't hear the whole of it, but if the bit of Sir Keir's response which I did hear was typical, boy is he useless. It was cringe-makingly bad. I had to turn it off.
I can see why the Left are annoyed -- they were told SKS was a winner. He was not what they wanted, but hw would win. They were sold a pup.
SKS looks as much a winner as Long Bailey with a heavy cold.
Labour should have gone for Rayner or Nandy.
It is not too late ....
SLAB have mucked it up as well, with another vacuous suit in charge.
To be fair, the Scottish vacuous suit is at least a big step up from his predecessor.
No more of a winner than SKS though
You really have a downer on him, don't you?
SKS's response was fine. He came up with the right narrative of pushing responsibility onto the Conservatives. He had earlier avoided the elephant traps set by the fifth columnists on his own side who wished to paint him into a corner before Sunak spoke. The corporation tax increases and personal taxation increases to come will now be owned by the Conservatives.
The problem with Starmer is, the problem with Starmer is, that he can't seem to go more than half a sentence - more than half a sentence - without repeating himself. Repeating himself.
Seriously though, that's probably the first major speech of his I've actually sat through and he was dire. Corbyn at least would have shouted a lot, and wouldn't have been that much more waffly and hard to follow.
Corbyn got over 40% of the vote at GE17, people shouldn't discard that achievement so readily. In the other GE he fought he got more votes than Brown and Miliband managed, and maybe more than Sir Keir will too
I don't, but there's little denying he was crap at Parliamentary process, in particular speechcraft (when not talking to activists, in other words). If Starmer isn't noticeably better at Corbyn in the Chamber, and I expect he'll be worse on the stump, he is not looking good overall.
Yes, I voted Tory for the first ever time in 2019, so not a Corbyn superfan by any stretch. But when I look at the numbers to try and figure out what's going to happen next, not that I claim to be any good at it, I find it impossible to disregard that he captured 40% of the vote, albeit in a strange GE, the way fans of Sir Keir seem to
I like to factor in outliers quite a lot when I bet, rather than dismiss them. Could be wrong to do that... but I do!
Well short of this time last week. Presumably more stockpiling for the second doses? One can only hope that the anticipated ramping of supplies isn't too slow in coming, or else the under 50s are going to be waiting for quite a long time.
Set alongside the apparently sudden order from India, it is concerning. We need those ‘bumper’ days and weeks
My conclusion from this committee is that Sturgeon may be telling the truth, in part. She wasn’t involved in a conspiracy - she genuinely pursued it for the complainers and MeToo. However there WAS a lower level ‘conspiracy’ - call it ‘over-eagerness to please the Leader’ - which she discovered to her horror. Everything since has been cover-up
Just like Nixon. It's not the crime that will get her, it's the cover up
More good news on the vaccine front for the developing world: Covaxin, the inactivated virus vaccine from Ocugen and Bharat Biotech, shows 81% efficacy in interim phase III trials:
North East: Middlesbrough, Thornaby-On-Tees 46 North West: Preston, Workington, Bolton, Cheadle, Carlisle, Leyland, Southport, Staveley, Rochdale 211 Yorkshire and the Humber: Wakefield, Whitby, Scarborough, Grimsby, Castleford, Goldthorpe, Scunthorpe, Morley, Stocksbridge 199 East Midlands: Newark, Clay Cross, Skegness, Mablethorpe, Boston, Lincoln, Northampton, Mansfield 175 West Midlands: Wolverhampton, Kidsgrove, Rowley Regis, Smethwick, West Bromwich, Burton-on-Trent, Nuneaton 155 East of England: Lowestoft, Colchester, Stevenage, Great Yarmouth, Ipswich, Milton Keynes 148 South East: Crawley, Margate 43 South West: Swindon, Bournemouth 41
Isn't that because almost towns are marginals? The cities are Labour, the rural areas Tory and the towns are the marginals?
That's how I'd spin it, yes ;-)
The reality is that places like Fareham, Gosport, Alton, Wellington etc. could really use this money too. But, they're not key marginals.
I get it, but it's a bit obvious (I have a bit of inside info on this btw, because I know there was a shortlisting)
And that gets to the heart of the matter.
All politicians with any sense have balanced wise, principled governance with down'n'dirty electoral pragmatism. If you don't have power, you don't have the chance to change things.
What depresses about the current government is the impression that winning power isn't only a means to an end, but the end in itself.
Coupled with the realisation that, if you take that approach, winning elections is remarkably easy.
North East: Middlesbrough, Thornaby-On-Tees 46 North West: Preston, Workington, Bolton, Cheadle, Carlisle, Leyland, Southport, Staveley, Rochdale 211 Yorkshire and the Humber: Wakefield, Whitby, Scarborough, Grimsby, Castleford, Goldthorpe, Scunthorpe, Morley, Stocksbridge 199 East Midlands: Newark, Clay Cross, Skegness, Mablethorpe, Boston, Lincoln, Northampton, Mansfield 175 West Midlands: Wolverhampton, Kidsgrove, Rowley Regis, Smethwick, West Bromwich, Burton-on-Trent, Nuneaton 155 East of England: Lowestoft, Colchester, Stevenage, Great Yarmouth, Ipswich, Milton Keynes 148 South East: Crawley, Margate 43 South West: Swindon, Bournemouth 41
Isn't that because almost towns are marginals? The cities are Labour, the rural areas Tory and the towns are the marginals?
That's how I'd spin it, yes ;-)
The reality is that places like Fareham, Gosport, Alton, Wellington etc. could really use this money too. But, they're not key marginals.
I get it, but it's a bit obvious (I have a bit of inside info on this btw, because I know there was a shortlisting)
I'd be curious about Preston on the list if only marginals were chosen.
Preston itself is almost as solid Labour as Liverpool-Walton, nearly a 40% margin. Much of what you might consider Preston is in South Ribble which was a 2010 Tory gain but now is pretty safe Tory with an over 20% margin.
Neither seat I'd consider a marginal. Then again Preston is a city not a town too (though similar size to many towns) so altogether odd.
Budget: the CPI inflation assumption (that it stays at or below 2.0% until 2026) looks rocky to me. A 1% increase in RPI increases debt costs by £7bn, and 1% in gilts by £9 billion. Rather sensitive. This could budget could be out by £50-60bn by FY2025/26.
The corp tax and income tax freezes yield £25bn a year by 2025, so that's big money. IHT also frozen for an extra 0.4bn yield. If it gets desperate he could up VAT to 22%, I guess to give an extra £10-12bn per year.
Also, has he factored in a progressive degradation of fuel duty? I think he's just TBC'ed it in this. I'd have thought it'd be 10-15% below current levels by 2025, 25-35% by 2030 and 60-70% by 2040. That's probably a £3-4bn hole by 2026 alone.
Carbon neutrality will have a serious fiscal cost, although cheaper than the environmental one of course.
I think this is another area where he has to bite the bullet sooner rather than later. There is no longer a need to encourage drivers to take up electric cars - they are going to be forced to do so within 9 years anyway. So he should now look to move to payment per mile for driving with all cars being classed the same. Replace fuel duty and road tax with a completely new system based on how much you drive. If you are worried about the impact on rural areas then you can tinker with rates but basically it will be one system for all with perhaps some regional variation.
If my clock is read once a year at MOT time, to reconcile my road tax bill for the next year, fine.
But, I do not want to be satellite tracked and monitored for real-time road pricing.
No way do I want any part of the Government knowing where I'm going, when or why, or for how long. Nor do I expect to have to explain myself to anyone: the prospects for abuse are legion.
The fuzz would have dug all over it during this latest lockdown.
Yep that is an issue but there really is no alternative that I can think of.
That said if you carry a mobile phone then the ability to do that is already there.
I am actually surprised how poor the govt is at tracking us. "We are looking for a passenger from Zurich on 12th or maybe the 13th February and they could be anywhere in the country" doesnt fit in with my prior imagination of the power of the govt using cctv, phone tracking and similar. It seems if you are not on a watchlist they are either incompetent or ineffective in tracking people.
Budget: the CPI inflation assumption (that it stays at or below 2.0% until 2026) looks rocky to me. A 1% increase in RPI increases debt costs by £7bn, and 1% in gilts by £9 billion. Rather sensitive. This could budget could be out by £50-60bn by FY2025/26.
The corp tax and income tax freezes yield £25bn a year by 2025, so that's big money. IHT also frozen for an extra 0.4bn yield. If it gets desperate he could up VAT to 22%, I guess to give an extra £10-12bn per year.
Also, has he factored in a progressive degradation of fuel duty? I think he's just TBC'ed it in this. I'd have thought it'd be 10-15% below current levels by 2025, 25-35% by 2030 and 60-70% by 2040. That's probably a £3-4bn hole by 2026 alone.
Carbon neutrality will have a serious fiscal cost, although cheaper than the environmental one of course.
I think this is another area where he has to bite the bullet sooner rather than later. There is no longer a need to encourage drivers to take up electric cars - they are going to be forced to do so within 9 years anyway. So he should now look to move to payment per mile for driving with all cars being classed the same. Replace fuel duty and road tax with a completely new system based on how much you drive. If you are worried about the impact on rural areas then you can tinker with rates but basically it will be one system for all with perhaps some regional variation.
If my clock is read once a year at MOT time, to reconcile my road tax bill for the next year, fine.
But, I do not want to be satellite tracked and monitored for real-time road pricing.
No way do I want any part of the Government knowing where I'm going, when or why, or for how long. Nor do I expect to have to explain myself to anyone: the prospects for abuse are legion.
The fuzz would have dug all over it during this latest lockdown.
Yep that is an issue but there really is no alternative that I can think of.
That said if you carry a mobile phone then the ability to do that is already there.
The alternative is an annual reading of the clock for a road tax bill, or a form of a self-assessment of mileage reconciled by the clock at the end. Just as we do for income tax.
Road pricing can be used only for congestion zones or smart motorways.
You can leave the phone at home, turn off the phone off, turn location services and data off on your phone, and, even if you don't do any of that the police/ Government need to pursue a legal route to access the data with a test.
Real time tracking and pricing? No way. I'll just get an old car that doesn't have or it or avoid driving.
He doesn't even get one of those. The only inland Freeport is East Midlands Airport which is well outside the West Midlands.
Is this the Freeport which supposedly the EU was preventing us from having?
So he said. I have no idea of the truth of that because I suppose it depends entirely on what he means as a Freeport compared to what the EU means.
Personally... I think the age of Freeports is rather behind us. They are great for emerging economies with high tariff barriers looking to learn a little bit about the world. But given the UK has relatively low tariffs, and that stuff finished in free port manufacturing zones is often exempted from FTAs, I think they are likely to remain unused except for very low value add "putting stuff in boxes".
50p increase in sick pay. Not really an incentive to isolate.
Sick pay needs reform regardless of covid. At least the first week per year should be at full rate of pay paid in full by the employer. Good employers already do this and more.
I am very disappointed that, at no stage during today's proceedings, did Nicola Sturgeon lose control and shout, "You have no authority here, Jackie Baillie".
Won't the simplest solution for replacing fuel tax ultimately be to just tax electricity? Its not as if people are going to avoid using electricity so a tax per kWh seems the simplest solution?
Claiming the mantle of honesty and responsibility whilst ducking all the serious choices over how to balance the books is neither honest nor responsible.
Were you not listening?
He's forecast the deficit back under 3% before the next election.
I would have thought such a forecast was "brave". If the deficit is back under 3% before the next election then that is extraordinarily rapid so soon after the recession.
That’s precisely my point. This is a speech about serious disease offering very weak medicine.
How is that weak?
The deficit back under 3% within 3 years of the depression isn't weak its a comprehensive cure for the deficit. It wasn't possible 3 years after the GFC to get the deficit back under 3% again.
Which as I have said for the past year is made possible in no small part because we went into this recession in a much better place than Brown's recession.
Give it a rest. Even if you are right that fiscal policy should have been tighter in 2006/7, it made no difference to the global financial crisis. Whatever the implications for a future that did not happen, it had no effect on the crisis that did happen.
It didn't make a difference to the GFC, it made a difference to how the UK came out of the GFC. That's the difference, can't you understand that?
Shocks happen they're a fact of life. Its how you go into them and how you come out of them that matters. The UK was horribly exposed to the GFC with Brown's deficit - and as a result came atrociously out of it.
Covid was a more severe, more awful shock, but the UK was better prepared for it so is coming out better.
Osborne flat-lining the recovery he inherited from Labour did not help.
If only Labour hadnt fked the economy in the first place then we wouldnt have needed a recovery
There's a reason the global financial crisis was called the Global Financial Crisis.
It wasn't global, it was actually quite limited. Most countries didn't experience a financial crisis - UK, US, Iceland, Spain and Ireland did, and the first two, because they are so hugely important to the financial system, exported it around the world. But Germany, Canada, France, Italy, Sweden and Japan, for instance, didn't experience financial crises of their own - only what they imported from us.
The effects of the GFC, and the economic aftershocks, were truly global.
Really? I must have imagined the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis.
Nevertheless the observation that the 08 banking crash was mainly Anglo American in origin is substantially correct.
Sure, as is the observation that World War I was basically all Serbia's fault.
There were clearly major structural weaknesses in the Southern European economies which took an external shock to expose. In the same way as Northern Rock's overreliance on short term borrowing was, in hindsight, always unsustainable, and the precise origin of its downfall isn't all that relevant.
The bank crash and consequent credit crunch was rather more than a mere trigger for other events. A financial bubble was created by malfunctioning credit markets - securitized loans and a mountain of derivatives on top, such that every bad dollar of loan become several bad dollars of potential loss. An abdication of risk management, much fraud, and at the heart of it, Wall St and its mini me, the City. Large and complex exposures were cooked up there and exported to balance sheets across the developed banking world.
All perfectly true, but none of it goes even partway to explaining why Greece had a debt to GDP ratio over 100% throughout the early to mid 2000s, way above the 60% limit in the Growth & Stability Pact. To say nothing of all the countries that were also in breach at some point.
Hang on...
Both Belgium and Italy were both in excess (comfortably) of the 100% debt-to-GDP mark at the beginning of the Eurozone. The Stability & Growth Pact "recognised" this by (basically) saying that your debt-to-GDP had to be either below 60%, or declining towards it.
Most of the Eurozone (except Greece) managed that during the bloc's first eight years, albeit it did Italy's economy no good at all.
Won't the simplest solution for replacing fuel tax ultimately be to just tax electricity? Its not as if people are going to avoid using electricity so a tax per kWh seems the simplest solution?
Yes.
Also, if you're going to tax driving in general, it's better to tax it in the places it does the most damage, not the places it does the least.
This is probably nothing to be concerned about, now that vaccine supply is rapidly growing, but it does show the potential dangers had we allowed the pandemic to run unchecked. Most variants have been the result of single nucleotide changes; this is quite different and unusual (though not unique).
Emergence of a Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 virus variant with novel genomic architecture in Hong Kong
https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid/ciab198/6155931 ...The present discovery highlights the considerable evolutionary potential of SARS-CoV-2. In this case, the tolerance of a major and unusual genomic arrangement led to the formation of ORF6x, which involved recruitment of typically non-coding sequences into the open reading frame. These events greatly increased the genetic diversity of SARS-CoV-2, thereby accelerating the evolution of new potentially advantageous genotypes and compensating for the relatively low mutation rates in coronaviruses. On a more immediate note, caution is warranted when using diagnostic assays targeting only accessory genes or proteins such as Orf8 [4], given the risk of false-negative results from the sporadic emergence of major deletion variants.
Budget: the CPI inflation assumption (that it stays at or below 2.0% until 2026) looks rocky to me. A 1% increase in RPI increases debt costs by £7bn, and 1% in gilts by £9 billion. Rather sensitive. This could budget could be out by £50-60bn by FY2025/26.
The corp tax and income tax freezes yield £25bn a year by 2025, so that's big money. IHT also frozen for an extra 0.4bn yield. If it gets desperate he could up VAT to 22%, I guess to give an extra £10-12bn per year.
Also, has he factored in a progressive degradation of fuel duty? I think he's just TBC'ed it in this. I'd have thought it'd be 10-15% below current levels by 2025, 25-35% by 2030 and 60-70% by 2040. That's probably a £3-4bn hole by 2026 alone.
Carbon neutrality will have a serious fiscal cost, although cheaper than the environmental one of course.
I think this is another area where he has to bite the bullet sooner rather than later. There is no longer a need to encourage drivers to take up electric cars - they are going to be forced to do so within 9 years anyway. So he should now look to move to payment per mile for driving with all cars being classed the same. Replace fuel duty and road tax with a completely new system based on how much you drive. If you are worried about the impact on rural areas then you can tinker with rates but basically it will be one system for all with perhaps some regional variation.
If my clock is read once a year at MOT time, to reconcile my road tax bill for the next year, fine.
But, I do not want to be satellite tracked and monitored for real-time road pricing.
No way do I want any part of the Government knowing where I'm going, when or why, or for how long. Nor do I expect to have to explain myself to anyone: the prospects for abuse are legion.
The fuzz would have dug all over it during this latest lockdown.
The problem is that all polling on the matter has shown that road pricing is a Fuel Strike moment. No one trusts the government on this.
This is one of the reasons that hydrogen was the promoted clean fuel solution - when the time was right, you would shift the fuel taxes to hydrogen.
Problem is that electricity is everywhere.
The resistance to rebalancing the anti-road structural plans in the light of ZEVs being universal is strong. But it is needed - and it is quite interesting to see some public transport plans in that light....
You get billed for KWH in your home. The Government doesn't snoop to see what you're using it on, or when, except at a very macro level - and it's wholly commercial.
The thing is Governments have different policy agendas, supreme power, aren't in competition with anyone, so you can't choose, are able to join lots of dots and are this perfectly corruptable: they could also use this to do you for speeding, as much as pricing per mile, and you could be blackmailed. Or petty personal vendettas could be pursued with it.
I will be making my thoughts known on it to my MP.
Off topic I know there was much rumour that the EU invested in Sanofi because it was French - and didn't sign for more Pfizer early on because the French wanted more in Sanofi to match it - I was just wondering if there was any evidence for that or if it was just a rumour? Does anyone have a link to anything?
Budget: the CPI inflation assumption (that it stays at or below 2.0% until 2026) looks rocky to me. A 1% increase in RPI increases debt costs by £7bn, and 1% in gilts by £9 billion. Rather sensitive. This could budget could be out by £50-60bn by FY2025/26.
The corp tax and income tax freezes yield £25bn a year by 2025, so that's big money. IHT also frozen for an extra 0.4bn yield. If it gets desperate he could up VAT to 22%, I guess to give an extra £10-12bn per year.
Also, has he factored in a progressive degradation of fuel duty? I think he's just TBC'ed it in this. I'd have thought it'd be 10-15% below current levels by 2025, 25-35% by 2030 and 60-70% by 2040. That's probably a £3-4bn hole by 2026 alone.
Carbon neutrality will have a serious fiscal cost, although cheaper than the environmental one of course.
I think fuel duty will shrink faster than that with no change.
Can you elucidate on debt cost increase - I thought that a big majority of national debt was at fixed rates.
Budget: the CPI inflation assumption (that it stays at or below 2.0% until 2026) looks rocky to me. A 1% increase in RPI increases debt costs by £7bn, and 1% in gilts by £9 billion. Rather sensitive. This could budget could be out by £50-60bn by FY2025/26.
The corp tax and income tax freezes yield £25bn a year by 2025, so that's big money. IHT also frozen for an extra 0.4bn yield. If it gets desperate he could up VAT to 22%, I guess to give an extra £10-12bn per year.
Also, has he factored in a progressive degradation of fuel duty? I think he's just TBC'ed it in this. I'd have thought it'd be 10-15% below current levels by 2025, 25-35% by 2030 and 60-70% by 2040. That's probably a £3-4bn hole by 2026 alone.
Carbon neutrality will have a serious fiscal cost, although cheaper than the environmental one of course.
I think this is another area where he has to bite the bullet sooner rather than later. There is no longer a need to encourage drivers to take up electric cars - they are going to be forced to do so within 9 years anyway. So he should now look to move to payment per mile for driving with all cars being classed the same. Replace fuel duty and road tax with a completely new system based on how much you drive. If you are worried about the impact on rural areas then you can tinker with rates but basically it will be one system for all with perhaps some regional variation.
If my clock is read once a year at MOT time, to reconcile my road tax bill for the next year, fine.
But, I do not want to be satellite tracked and monitored for real-time road pricing.
No way do I want any part of the Government knowing where I'm going, when or why, or for how long. Nor do I expect to have to explain myself to anyone: the prospects for abuse are legion.
The fuzz would have dug all over it during this latest lockdown.
Yep that is an issue but there really is no alternative that I can think of.
That said if you carry a mobile phone then the ability to do that is already there.
The alternative is an annual reading of the clock for a road tax bill, or a form of a self-assessment of mileage reconciled by the clock at the end. Just as we do for income tax.
Road pricing can be used only for congestion zones or smart motorways.
You can leave the phone at home, turn off the phone off, turn location services and data off on your phone, and, even if you don't do any of that the police/ Government need to pursue a legal route to access the data with a test.
Real time tracking and pricing? No way. I'll just get an old car that doesn't have or it or avoid driving.
I understand and share your views on this. But like Canute I have to point out the futility of trying to hold back the tide. Most new drivers are now opting for the black boxes in their cars which monitor everything they do and where they go to get themselves cheaper insurance. It is the only way most of them can afford to even get insurance.
So the public view is changing. Combined with the ubiquity of mobile phones and other trackable devices I am afraid that people like us who still try to hold on to the illusion of living offline, away from governmental scrutiny, are becoming dinosaurs.
Comments
It is worth remembering that due to the nature of the supply chain, the vaccines for the next few weeks exist and are in the country.
SKS's response was fine. He came up with the right narrative of pushing responsibility onto the Conservatives. He had earlier avoided the elephant traps set by the fifth columnists on his own side who wished to paint him into a corner before Sunak spoke. The corporation tax increases and personal taxation increases to come will now be owned by the Conservatives.
Llafur should have gone for Eluned Morgan not Mark Dumbford, as well.
Hard to believe this is not institutionalized sexism.
Seriously though, that's probably the first major speech of his I've actually sat through and he was dire. Corbyn at least would have shouted a lot, and wouldn't have been that much more waffly and hard to follow.
Not really an incentive to isolate.
https://twitter.com/Gilesyb/status/1367119493357588482
The corp tax and income tax freezes yield £25bn a year by 2025, so that's big money. IHT also frozen for an extra 0.4bn yield. If it gets desperate he could up VAT to 22%, I guess to give an extra £10-12bn per year.
Also, has he factored in a progressive degradation of fuel duty? I think he's just TBC'ed it in this. I'd have thought it'd be 10-15% below current levels by 2025, 25-35% by 2030 and 60-70% by 2040. That's probably a £3-4bn hole by 2026 alone.
Carbon neutrality will have a serious fiscal cost, although cheaper than the environmental one of course.
hmmmmmm
https://twitter.com/euanmccolm/status/1367128969938677760?s=20
https://twitter.com/DaniGaravelli1/status/1367129053413654530?s=20
North East: Middlesbrough, Thornaby-On-Tees 46
North West: Preston, Workington, Bolton, Cheadle, Carlisle, Leyland, Southport, Staveley, Rochdale 211
Yorkshire and the Humber: Wakefield, Whitby, Scarborough, Grimsby, Castleford, Goldthorpe, Scunthorpe, Morley, Stocksbridge 199
East Midlands: Newark, Clay Cross, Skegness, Mablethorpe, Boston, Lincoln, Northampton, Mansfield 175
West Midlands: Wolverhampton, Kidsgrove, Rowley Regis, Smethwick, West Bromwich, Burton-on-Trent, Nuneaton 155
East of England: Lowestoft, Colchester, Stevenage, Great Yarmouth, Ipswich, Milton Keynes 148
South East: Crawley, Margate 43
South West: Swindon, Bournemouth 41
as being a missed opportunity for leader of Scottish labour? She puts Starmer himself in the shade. Get her to Westminster.
https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2021/03/03/2186178/0/en/Ocugen-s-COVID-19-Vaccine-Co-Development-Partner-Bharat-Biotech-shares-Phase-3-Interim-Results-of-COVAXIN-Demonstrates-Efficacy-of-81.html
utterly, utterly deflated
I've got to say, the Aston Martin looks great:
https://twitter.com/ScarbsTech/status/1367130646192283650
Happy to travel to Leeds, provided it's only for 2 days a week - not five!
But, I do not want to be satellite tracked and monitored for real-time road pricing.
No way do I want any part of the Government knowing where I'm going, when or why, or for how long. Nor do I expect to have to explain myself to anyone: the prospects for abuse are legion.
The fuzz would have dug all over it during this latest lockdown.
The reality is that places like Fareham, Gosport, Alton, Wellington etc. could really use this money too. But, they're not key marginals.
I get it, but it's a bit obvious (I have a bit of inside info on this btw, because I know there was a shortlisting)
That said if you carry a mobile phone then the ability to do that is already there.
This is one of the reasons that hydrogen was the promoted clean fuel solution - when the time was right, you would shift the fuel taxes to hydrogen.
Problem is that electricity is everywhere.
The resistance to rebalancing the anti-road structural plans in the light of ZEVs being universal is strong. But it is needed - and it is quite interesting to see some public transport plans in that light....
I like to factor in outliers quite a lot when I bet, rather than dismiss them. Could be wrong to do that... but I do!
I don't know why it failed but I suspect the answer was they asked for too much for too many bits as they couldn't decide on their priorities.
Edit to add: they have now also begun the "rolling approval process with the EMA".
Mansfield already had £10m iirc.
What's Bournemouth doing on the list - they can introduce a Sandbanks Tax and a Grand Designs Tax instead.
What is Cheadle doing in the North-West?
All politicians with any sense have balanced wise, principled governance with down'n'dirty electoral pragmatism. If you don't have power, you don't have the chance to change things.
What depresses about the current government is the impression that winning power isn't only a means to an end, but the end in itself.
Coupled with the realisation that, if you take that approach, winning elections is remarkably easy.
Preston itself is almost as solid Labour as Liverpool-Walton, nearly a 40% margin.
Much of what you might consider Preston is in South Ribble which was a 2010 Tory gain but now is pretty safe Tory with an over 20% margin.
Neither seat I'd consider a marginal. Then again Preston is a city not a town too (though similar size to many towns) so altogether odd.
Road pricing can be used only for congestion zones or smart motorways.
You can leave the phone at home, turn off the phone off, turn location services and data off on your phone, and, even if you don't do any of that the police/ Government need to pursue a legal route to access the data with a test.
Real time tracking and pricing? No way. I'll just get an old car that doesn't have or it or avoid driving.
https://twitter.com/Mij_Europe/status/1367137444827693056?s=20
Both Belgium and Italy were both in excess (comfortably) of the 100% debt-to-GDP mark at the beginning of the Eurozone. The Stability & Growth Pact "recognised" this by (basically) saying that your debt-to-GDP had to be either below 60%, or declining towards it.
Most of the Eurozone (except Greece) managed that during the bloc's first eight years, albeit it did Italy's economy no good at all.
Also, if you're going to tax driving in general, it's better to tax it in the places it does the most damage, not the places it does the least.
Most variants have been the result of single nucleotide changes; this is quite different and unusual (though not unique).
Emergence of a Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 virus variant with novel genomic architecture in Hong Kong
https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid/ciab198/6155931
...The present discovery highlights the considerable evolutionary potential of SARS-CoV-2. In this case, the tolerance of a major and unusual genomic arrangement led to the formation of ORF6x, which involved recruitment of typically non-coding sequences into the open reading frame. These events greatly increased the genetic diversity of SARS-CoV-2, thereby accelerating the evolution of new potentially advantageous genotypes and compensating for the relatively low mutation rates in coronaviruses. On a more immediate note, caution is warranted when using diagnostic assays targeting only accessory genes or proteins such as Orf8 [4], given the risk of false-negative results from the sporadic emergence of major deletion variants.
The thing is Governments have different policy agendas, supreme power, aren't in competition with anyone, so you can't choose, are able to join lots of dots and are this perfectly corruptable: they could also use this to do you for speeding, as much as pricing per mile, and you could be blackmailed. Or petty personal vendettas could be pursued with it.
I will be making my thoughts known on it to my MP.
Can you elucidate on debt cost increase - I thought that a big majority of national debt was at fixed rates.
So the public view is changing. Combined with the ubiquity of mobile phones and other trackable devices I am afraid that people like us who still try to hold on to the illusion of living offline, away from governmental scrutiny, are becoming dinosaurs.