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.
This isn't in line with my experience. My view is that telematics has been a miserable failure, and other than cases where they physically can't buy a policy without one, drivers tend to opt out.
It's worth remembering that telematics doesn't reduce insurance costs in aggregate - in fact it increases them, because the cost of the box and monitoring driving ability is non-zero. All it does is help the better drivers to prove they're deserving of lower premiums faster than they would normally (ie by not claiming over the course of several years). The worse than average drivers (50% of the population) will see no benefit from informing their insurer of the fact.
Just Insure says "hello!"
You have an interest mate ;-)
Very true: but the stuff I've seen (which I'm NDA'ed on) would turn your hair grey.
And I would also note that some companies - which make such a big fuss about being privacy friendly - are among the worst sellers of their customers' information.
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.
In theory smart meters could be used to work out what people use their electricity for. Most devices have a recognisable signature.
They could even work out which TV channel you are watching.
These measures also bury what was arguably George Osborne’s major legacy as chancellor; he dragged corporation tax down during his six years in office, but Rishi Sunak’s plans would largely reverse the Osborne cuts, with the rise generating an extra £16bn for the Treasury by the end of this parliament. This is much closer to Jeremy Corbyn’s policy for corporation tax at the 2019 election than Boris Johnson’s. Sunak’s plans would also raise an extra £6bn a year from income tax by the end of this parliament, through fiscal drag, with more people dragged into the higher rate. Disraeli once said the secret to a “sound Conservative government” was “Tory men and Whig measures”. Perhaps this is what they look like.
And yet, as Sir Keir Starmer argued in his response, a Labour budget would be different. There was nothing on social care, little on welfare (the row about cutting the £20-per-week uplift has just been postponed) and little that sounded truly transformational in terms of work and learning.
Sunak ended with an announcement intended about free ports to persuade the public there will be a Brexit dividend. This was the first budget since the UK properly left the ambit of the EU. During the 2016 referendum campaign Boris Johnson and Vote Leave said that, if the UK left the EU, VAT on fuel would go. Fuel duty has been frozen in this budget, but - like other Brexit promises - the pledge to scrap VAT on fuel seems to have vanished.
Yes, on corporation tax Sunak has adopted the 2019 Labour manifesto, which said that CT would be raised but would stay below the 2010 level (28%).
It does seem to me that most of the budget was about putting things on hold until we see where we are in a couple of years time. No grand vision, no radical reform on tax, NI, social care etc. I suspect in a few days time, once the excitement has worn off, people may well conclude 'Is that it? And what's a freeport anyway?'. Not a lot for the 'typical voters' so beloved by Tories on here to get excited about (other than the short-term Covid handouts, of course).
Problem for Sturgeon is that she told so many whoppers, or ‘contradictory statements’ the Committee is obliged to scrutinize them. Moreover, Salmond’s team will be all over them. This is just going to carry on, and on. It’s that kind of thing that does, in the end, lead to a resignation
Help - I want to look back at my posts from a year ago. When I click on "comments" in my record you can page back in time one page at a time. This would take ages to go back 12 months. Is there a faster way?
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.
This isn't in line with my experience. My view is that telematics has been a miserable failure, and other than cases where they physically can't buy a policy without one, drivers tend to opt out.
It's worth remembering that telematics doesn't reduce insurance costs in aggregate - in fact it increases them, because the cost of the box and monitoring driving ability is non-zero. All it does is help the better drivers to prove they're deserving of lower premiums faster than they would normally (ie by not claiming over the course of several years). The worse than average drivers (50% of the population) will see no benefit from informing their insurer of the fact.
Driving, as monitored, is probably not normally distributed on a risk scale, so quite possible that more than 50% get lower premiums if the system identifies the really high risk people. (For example, massively oversimplified, 10 people, 1 has risk score 91, other risk score 1 each - the one with 91 gets clobbered but the other 10 get a lower premium as they are not assumed to have average - 10 - risk score).
On the other hand, the really high risk people, unless very stupid, will not get the box. Which pushes things the other way.
Thus, I conclude, as all good scientists looking for future funding conclude, that more research is needed!
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.
This isn't in line with my experience. My view is that telematics has been a miserable failure, and other than cases where they physically can't buy a policy without one, drivers tend to opt out.
It's worth remembering that telematics doesn't reduce insurance costs in aggregate - in fact it increases them, because the cost of the box and monitoring driving ability is non-zero. All it does is help the better drivers to prove they're deserving of lower premiums faster than they would normally (ie by not claiming over the course of several years). The worse than average drivers (50% of the population) will see no benefit from informing their insurer of the fact.
Just Insure says "hello!"
You have an interest mate ;-)
Very true: but the stuff I've seen (which I'm NDA'ed on) would turn your hair grey.
And I would also note that some companies - which make such a big fuss about being privacy friendly - are among the worst sellers of their customers' information.
I have said many times, especially when people criticise Cambridge Analytica et al, to read through the Graun's "privacy" policy. Perhaps that name is part of the problem. They should rename it a something else "data compensation and remuneration policy", perhaps.
Problem for Sturgeon is that she told so many whoppers, or ‘contradictory statements’ the Committee is obliged to scrutinize them. Moreover, Salmond’s team will be all over them. This is just going to carry on, and on. It’s that kind of thing that does, in the end, lead to a resignation
Can they call back Salmond to add, er, clarifications to the evidence they have heard today?
Labour has however got stuck, they're still focussing on the small things when what they need to is paint big picture and have a vision of what the country might look like under them. They are offering very little at the moment
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.
This isn't in line with my experience. My view is that telematics has been a miserable failure, and other than cases where they physically can't buy a policy without one, drivers tend to opt out.
It's worth remembering that telematics doesn't reduce insurance costs in aggregate - in fact it increases them, because the cost of the box and monitoring driving ability is non-zero. All it does is help the better drivers to prove they're deserving of lower premiums faster than they would normally (ie by not claiming over the course of several years). The worse than average drivers (50% of the population) will see no benefit from informing their insurer of the fact.
Well my experience with my daughter is exactly as I set out. She had the black box fitted when she passed the test and her initial year's insurance was £1300. It more than halved when she renewed for the second year based on her performance during that first year. The incentives were so large she was more than willing to pay attention to how she drove.
That's great to hear!
The questions are: 1) will she be happy to keep the box long term, or will she get rid as soon as the incentive is no longer meaningful, and 2) is the proportion of young drivers who'll benefit to a similar extent high enough to make the tech widespread?
My youngest drove like a saint when he had a box fitted, but the renewal premium was so high it led to us changing insurer. The box continued to work however, and the next day I was able to see that he exceeded 100MPH driving to school. Unfortunately the box died shortly afterwards, but I was able to keep up the pretence of it working for the next year.
Help - I want to look back at my posts from a year ago. When I click on "comments" in my record you can page back in time one page at a time. This would take ages to go back 12 months. Is there a faster way?
Put that link into your bar, that loads the 4th page of your posts. Now change that number, eg p40 loads the 40th page which is November last year. p100 loads April last year.
You can search by changing the number in leaps until you get close to what you want, then narrow it down by going a page at a time once you're close.
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.
TBF to them - which is hard but one should try - the pandemic was a black swan event and their mandate from GE19 is simply to govern rather than to do anything in particular. They were elected to implement Leave and for the PM to be "Boris" and not Jeremy Corbyn. That's the extent of it. And it's all done. We should have an election really, once the vaccine rollout is finished.
You mean the bit where he stood up and said the threshold at which the tax starts being paid will be frozen until 2026 after a rise this April.....so stealthy. It wasn't hidden in the small print on page 297.
The BBC reporting is more and more the Mail / Sun / Mirror level.
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.
This isn't in line with my experience. My view is that telematics has been a miserable failure, and other than cases where they physically can't buy a policy without one, drivers tend to opt out.
It's worth remembering that telematics doesn't reduce insurance costs in aggregate - in fact it increases them, because the cost of the box and monitoring driving ability is non-zero. All it does is help the better drivers to prove they're deserving of lower premiums faster than they would normally (ie by not claiming over the course of several years). The worse than average drivers (50% of the population) will see no benefit from informing their insurer of the fact.
Well my experience with my daughter is exactly as I set out. She had the black box fitted when she passed the test and her initial year's insurance was £1300. It more than halved when she renewed for the second year based on her performance during that first year. The incentives were so large she was more than willing to pay attention to how she drove.
That's great to hear!
The questions are: 1) will she be happy to keep the box long term, or will she get rid as soon as the incentive is no longer meaningful, and 2) is the proportion of young drivers who'll benefit to a similar extent high enough to make the tech widespread?
Oh I am sure she will get rid of it once the incentive is gone. But the point I was making at the start is that it desensitises young people to the presence of trackers so you get a shift in public opinion over them. That is what I mean by people like CR and I being dinosaurs. We might have vehement objections to this sort of technology but it is already here and we can do nothing about it.
The trick of course - as with all great survival techniques - is not to meet the threat head-on and try and undo the technology but to embrace it whilst putting in place the proper controls on Government and Private business. Put in laws that make it a criminal offence to use such technology for anything other than its stated purpose. So yes to road pricing but all calculated by computer automatically. Absolutely illegal to use it for any other purpose.
One might argue that Governments will do it anyway but the point is that, short of uninventing the technology, there is nothing you can do to stop them breaking the law if they choose to. All you can do is make the consequences strong enough that they choose not to. Same goes with mobile phone technology.
Sunak's moronic policy of housing continues, extending the stamp duty cut again? Why?
To show I am clued in to how this stuff works. I told you it would get extended again. And lo....
I'm not even sure it will finish in June.
I think you're right - and good prediction you made. Sadly it's no good for people wanting to actually buy houses.
It's no good that a buyer no longer has to pay an extra chunk of cash to the government on top of the purchase price? It's literally a tax cut for buyers.
Just digging into the OBR EFO detail, some of the numbers don't pass the sniff test to me. GDP per capita numbers especially strike me as a bit off because we're in a situation where the population is falling rather than rising, in both 2021 and 2022 I think GDP per capita will rise at a faster rate than headline GDP because a lot of people working in lower wage jobs won't come back from the EU having lost their settled status.
A Labour councillor has been suspended from the party after claiming she had visited a ‘private care doctor’ for a Covid jab - which are only available on the NHS.
Sunak's moronic policy of housing continues, extending the stamp duty cut again? Why?
To show I am clued in to how this stuff works. I told you it would get extended again. And lo....
I'm not even sure it will finish in June.
It might, possibly, but only because there won’t be a fiscal event around to park it and sales cool down in the summer.
But this will not be a usual summer. People may have had the right to go and view property in recent months, but many won't. The market will still have a lot of scope to be a bit crazy from June onwards.
You mean the bit where he stood up and said the threshold at which the tax starts being paid will be frozen until 2026 after a rise this April.....so stealthy. It wasn't hidden in the small print on page 297.
The BBC reporting is more and more the Mail / Sun / Mirror level.
He even went so far as to say that people will consider this a stealth tax so he was being absolutely clear and spelt it out that it would lead to people paying more tax. Sneaky devil!
Sturgeon’s latest excuse is, and I paraphrase, that ‘she’s not particularly interested in politics’ so she’s got no idea what was said in the Salmond trial
Sturgeon’s latest excuse is, and I paraphrase, that ‘she’s not particularly interested in politics’ so she’s got no idea what was said in the Salmond trial
“As First Minister during this scandal, and aware of my appearance before the committee, I haven’t been briefed on the content of any of the key statements” seems to be the line. Bit 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.
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.
This isn't in line with my experience. My view is that telematics has been a miserable failure, and other than cases where they physically can't buy a policy without one, drivers tend to opt out.
It's worth remembering that telematics doesn't reduce insurance costs in aggregate - in fact it increases them, because the cost of the box and monitoring driving ability is non-zero. All it does is help the better drivers to prove they're deserving of lower premiums faster than they would normally (ie by not claiming over the course of several years). The worse than average drivers (50% of the population) will see no benefit from informing their insurer of the fact.
Well my experience with my daughter is exactly as I set out. She had the black box fitted when she passed the test and her initial year's insurance was £1300. It more than halved when she renewed for the second year based on her performance during that first year. The incentives were so large she was more than willing to pay attention to how she drove.
That's great to hear!
The questions are: 1) will she be happy to keep the box long term, or will she get rid as soon as the incentive is no longer meaningful, and 2) is the proportion of young drivers who'll benefit to a similar extent high enough to make the tech widespread?
Oh I am sure she will get rid of it once the incentive is gone. But the point I was making at the start is that it desensitises young people to the presence of trackers so you get a shift in public opinion over them. That is what I mean by people like CR and I being dinosaurs. We might have vehement objections to this sort of technology but it is already here and we can do nothing about it.
The trick of course - as with all great survival techniques - is not to meet the threat head-on and try and undo the technology but to embrace it whilst putting in place the proper controls on Government and Private business. Put in laws that make it a criminal offence to use such technology for anything other than its stated purpose. So yes to road pricing but all calculated by computer automatically. Absolutely illegal to use it for any other purpose.
One might argue that Governments will do it anyway but the point is that, short of uninventing the technology, there is nothing you can do to stop them breaking the law if they choose to. All you can do is make the consequences strong enough that they choose not to. Same goes with mobile phone technology.
Yes, I think I can agree with all that. My point is they aren't becoming accustomed to the use of tracking technology as such; just accepting (but resentful) of it when there's a clear purpose.
I actually think that mostly, young people aren't really aware of the possible consequences of all this tracking, and they'll become much more so over time. I still think at some point there will be a fair-sized backlash against the intrusion of technology in everyday life, that will take a lot of tech enthusiasts and "futurists" by surprise.
Sunak's moronic policy of housing continues, extending the stamp duty cut again? Why?
To show I am clued in to how this stuff works. I told you it would get extended again. And lo....
I'm not even sure it will finish in June.
It is quite bizarre. We're potentially in the market for a move (otherwise extending) but we're picky on where to move to and finding somewhere could take some time . So we've not factored the holiday in at all - under current announcement we'd get it if completing by June, but not in the taper. Uncertain, so has no effect on our behaviour. If we move and if it happens in time to avoid the duty then great, we take a smaller mortgage or buy some nice things, but it's neither going to make us more likely to move nor increased our max budget as we simply can't count on it.
It would make more sense if the time limit was on agreeing a sale (maybe make people register agreed sales online to qualify, to avoid retrospective trickery) and then has to be completed within x months of the end date or whatever. That could affect our behaviour as we could, with some confidence, factor it in when making an offer.
I'll say it - dishonesty over a meeting held 4 days before Sturgeon claimed is not what appalls me about this. More disgraceful is the blurring of lines between the government/prosecutor and the abuse of complainant anonymity to try and hide the government's actions.
A Labour councillor has been suspended from the party after claiming she had visited a ‘private care doctor’ for a Covid jab - which are only available on the NHS.
Just come back into the Sturgeon inquiry after some hours away. Blimey, Jackie B giving her a hard time. Beautifully sardonic in her treatment of an increasingly rattled FM.
Well known anti- cancer properties (mitotic spindle poison - I teach this stuff). Not sure if that affects viral replication, but could be a possible mechanism. If valid, other spindle poisons may also work (vinca alkaloids and paclitaxol). Not nice drugs, but if it saves your life you'll take it.
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.
You do know that when you buy a new car, and you turn it on, and there's that big screen about Terms & Conditions for using the in car systems (without which your car will basically not work), that you are agreeing they have the right to sell your location data to whoever they want, right?
Anyone buying a new Ford, Tesla, GM, etc., today has already agreed to let Google and Amazon look at your location history so as to work out what things to sell you.
I don't have any of those cars but, yes, I do, and I have similar concerns about the use of my data by private companies too. I'd like to see that regulated by primary legislation.
I don't see why I should "accept" the government - who have the power to arrest, detain or fine me - having access to all of my data in real-time just because it's increasingly a feature in the private commercial space.
I want both regulatory spheres dealt with.
Many seem to make the assumption that because they do all these things like carry a mobile, use gps, use facebook, twitter, always pay electronically, use loyalty cards etc that everyone does it. However a lot of us choose to opt to not doing these things because we are aware of the tracking and do our best to minimize it
Just come back into the Sturgeon inquiry after some hours away. Blimey, Jackie B giving her a hard time. Beautifully sardonic in her treatment of an increasingly rattled FM.
Just come back into the Sturgeon inquiry after some hours away. Blimey, Jackie B giving her a hard time. Beautifully sardonic in her treatment of an increasingly rattled FM.
You've missed the best of the day!
Interesting. My impression of the first couple of hours was that she was breezing it.
I cannot deny that I am looking forward to seeing footage of Sturgeon facing difficulties, but I fear the level of excitement promised by people on here may not be met.
Just come back into the Sturgeon inquiry after some hours away. Blimey, Jackie B giving her a hard time. Beautifully sardonic in her treatment of an increasingly rattled FM.
You missed Shakespearean drama. It ended with her chin wobbling. And tears brimming. She was monstered, and she told many lies
I'll say it - dishonesty over a meeting held 4 days before Sturgeon claimed is not what appalls me about this. More disgraceful is the blurring of lines between the government/prosecutor and the abuse of complainant anonymity to try and hide the government's actions.
I agree, I'm enjoying the theatre but finding it quite hard to follow the importance of certain dates of business. On the other hand the alleged interference by the executive into the judicial process to vindictively pursue criminal charges against a political opponent? This should be sending a shiver down the spine of everyone in Scotland and to be honest calls into question whether the model of devolution is fit for purpose.
Sunak's moronic policy of housing continues, extending the stamp duty cut again? Why?
To show I am clued in to how this stuff works. I told you it would get extended again. And lo....
I'm not even sure it will finish in June.
I think you're right - and good prediction you made. Sadly it's no good for people wanting to actually buy houses.
It's no good that a buyer no longer has to pay an extra chunk of cash to the government on top of the purchase price? It's literally a tax cut for buyers.
Jynx. 100% agreed.
Plus of course its a front-loaded tax that the buyer must pay that has to be paid 100% up front and it can't be put on the mortgage. Even if house prices go up by the same amount as the tax (which isn't how tax cuts work generally) buyers are better off by having the option of being able to either still pay that up front meaning they borrow the same amount but have a bigger deposit %age, or they can load that onto the mortgage and have lower up-front costs.
There is no loss for the buyer by not taxing buyers as much. The idea buyers win by taxing buyers is odd.
Labour has however got stuck, they're still focussing on the small things when what they need to is paint big picture and have a vision of what the country might look like under them. They are offering very little at the moment
I agree. But being optimistic it might just be that they know all is pandemic right now and the time for big picture and big difference is 2022 and onwards.
Their Red Wall focus groups are telling them that "playing politics" is a turn off. In other words, the all powerful floating voters in marginals do not want to hear from anybody bar "Boris" and "Rishi" and the rest of the band at this point in time.
Is that really an accurate summary of what she said? That would be remarkable, if he did not know the basis why did he answer that he did? That would be no defence.
I cannot deny that I am looking forward to seeing footage of Sturgeon facing difficulties, but I fear the level of excitement promised by people on here may not be met.
Oh she has been given a verbal kicking today - utterly unconvincing in her responses and clearly evasive
Thanks to Leon for his reply to my comment about London last night. Interesting stuff.
This was the comment in case anyone's curious.
"You've correctly identified the year London began its revival. 1986. I actually remember, personally, sensing it. On coke. In a restaurant in the City. Around the time of the Big Bang. Suddenly London revved into gear.
This coincides exactly with the Thatcherite reforms and the time London's population began to increase, again, after many years of decline.
And this is where your second statement is wrong. London's decline didn't begin 15 years before 1986, it began waaaaaay before then, possibly 1939. when the population peaked, but arguably much before then, as financial power leaked to New York after World War 1, and as political power ebbed from the "Imperial" capital, increasingly losing its nerve.
I'd say London was in decline from 1914-1986. Then newly resurgent from 1986 to 2016. On hold til 2020. As of now? Who knows.
It may gain from Brexit freedoms and the struggles of other cities. Hong Kong, perhaps even NYC. Or it may tip into long term decline, once more. The loss of 500,000 citizens is not a great sign"
I cannot deny that I am looking forward to seeing footage of Sturgeon facing difficulties, but I fear the level of excitement promised by people on here may not be met.
I expect it to be a slow burning fuse and Salmond or his lawyers response will be interesting
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.
TBF to them - which is hard but one should try - the pandemic was a black swan event and their mandate from GE19 is simply to govern rather than to do anything in particular. They were elected to implement Leave and for the PM to be "Boris" and not Jeremy Corbyn. That's the extent of it. And it's all done. We should have an election really, once the vaccine rollout is finished.
I think if I was Labour that probably isn't the line I'd be taking. The vaccine rollout will see the Tories at the zenith of their popularity, and for Labour, Brexit really needs to be as far in the past as possible. Labour don't want to risk another election on Brexit (particularly as Europe's star hasn't exactly shined of late).
I cannot deny that I am looking forward to seeing footage of Sturgeon facing difficulties, but I fear the level of excitement promised by people on here may not be met.
The third session of the day (the one before this) - is the one to watch
But you need to watch it all. The tv snippets won’t capture it
The best thing about this Sturgeon stuff is that she has no conceivable way to blame it on Westminster. She's got to answer for this without being able to pass the buck, probably for the first time in her career and it's completely destroying her credibility.
The best thing about this Sturgeon stuff is that she has no conceivable way to blame it on Westminster. She's got to answer for this without being able to pass the buck, probably for the first time in her career and it's completely destroying her credibility.
That's my reason to support independence to be fair. 😉
Well known anti- cancer properties (mitotic spindle poison - I teach this stuff). Not sure if that affects viral replication, but could be a possible mechanism. If valid, other spindle poisons may also work (vinca alkaloids and paclitaxol). Not nice drugs, but if it saves your life you'll take it.
My wife had terrible reactions to alkaloids during her chemotherapy, such that she had to stop that aspect of the therapy. It looked like she had 2nd degree burns all over her hands and wrists.
Comments
May election result -
Before Salmondgate: SNP 70 seats, Greens 6, Imperial Overlords: 53
After Salmondgate: SNP 68 seats, Greens 7, Imperial Overlords: 54
Or something very much like that.
And I would also note that some companies - which make such a big fuss about being privacy friendly - are among the worst sellers of their customers' information.
Private. Public. How it works. Checks and balances. Accessibility. Destruction date. Everything.
Far too many of us don't know or understand it, and that includes policymakers as well as consumers.
Just, not usually live on daytime telly.
It does seem to me that most of the budget was about putting things on hold until we see where we are in a couple of years time. No grand vision, no radical reform on tax, NI, social care etc. I suspect in a few days time, once the excitement has worn off, people may well conclude 'Is that it? And what's a freeport anyway?'. Not a lot for the 'typical voters' so beloved by Tories on here to get excited about (other than the short-term Covid handouts, of course).
It seems that I was right, which is unsurprising.
On the other hand, the really high risk people, unless very stupid, will not get the box. Which pushes things the other way.
Thus, I conclude, as all good scientists looking for future funding conclude, that more research is needed!
https://www.theguardian.com/help/privacy-policy
My only ‘hyperbole’ was saying ‘this is gripping political drama’
Which it was. Incontestably
Is this major? Or a very mild bit of cry-for-me contrition tactics for sympathy?
I'm not even sure it will finish in June.
https://twitter.com/pagganinni/status/1367146523537133570?s=21
https://twitter.com/jdwraf/status/1367146813879431178?s=21
Put that link into your bar, that loads the 4th page of your posts. Now change that number, eg p40 loads the 40th page which is November last year. p100 loads April last year.
You can search by changing the number in leaps until you get close to what you want, then narrow it down by going a page at a time once you're close.
The truth is... I haven't got a clue what the truth is.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56270941
You mean the bit where he stood up and said the threshold at which the tax starts being paid will be frozen until 2026 after a rise this April.....so stealthy. It wasn't hidden in the small print on page 297.
The BBC reporting is more and more the Mail / Sun / Mirror level.
Englandthe UK since Septemberhttps://twitter.com/PHE_uk/status/1367143680696610819
How do you figure that one out?
https://twitter.com/holyroodmandy/status/1367152494707679240
The trick of course - as with all great survival techniques - is not to meet the threat head-on and try and undo the technology but to embrace it whilst putting in place the proper controls on Government and Private business. Put in laws that make it a criminal offence to use such technology for anything other than its stated purpose. So yes to road pricing but all calculated by computer automatically. Absolutely illegal to use it for any other purpose.
One might argue that Governments will do it anyway but the point is that, short of uninventing the technology, there is nothing you can do to stop them breaking the law if they choose to. All you can do is make the consequences strong enough that they choose not to. Same goes with mobile phone technology.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9320751/Labour-councillor-suspended-claiming-Covid-vaccination-privately.html
https://twitter.com/ReutersUK/status/1367151570316644360?s=20
The convenor is a SNP member
I actually think that mostly, young people aren't really aware of the possible consequences of all this tracking, and they'll become much more so over time. I still think at some point there will be a fair-sized backlash against the intrusion of technology in everyday life, that will take a lot of tech enthusiasts and "futurists" by surprise.
It would make more sense if the time limit was on agreeing a sale (maybe make people register agreed sales online to qualify, to avoid retrospective trickery) and then has to be completed within x months of the end date or whatever. That could affect our behaviour as we could, with some confidence, factor it in when making an offer.
https://twitter.com/Govgg/status/1367152417561804805?s=20
Plus of course its a front-loaded tax that the buyer must pay that has to be paid 100% up front and it can't be put on the mortgage. Even if house prices go up by the same amount as the tax (which isn't how tax cuts work generally) buyers are better off by having the option of being able to either still pay that up front meaning they borrow the same amount but have a bigger deposit %age, or they can load that onto the mortgage and have lower up-front costs.
There is no loss for the buyer by not taxing buyers as much. The idea buyers win by taxing buyers is odd.
England 181,316/27,652
Scotland 27,518/8,105
Their Red Wall focus groups are telling them that "playing politics" is a turn off. In other words, the all powerful floating voters in marginals do not want to hear from anybody bar "Boris" and "Rishi" and the rest of the band at this point in time.
Roger on the other hand thinks the girl did good
Thanks to Leon for his reply to my comment about London last night. Interesting stuff.
This was the comment in case anyone's curious.
"You've correctly identified the year London began its revival. 1986. I actually remember, personally, sensing it. On coke. In a restaurant in the City. Around the time of the Big Bang. Suddenly London revved into gear.
This coincides exactly with the Thatcherite reforms and the time London's population began to increase, again, after many years of decline.
And this is where your second statement is wrong. London's decline didn't begin 15 years before 1986, it began waaaaaay before then, possibly 1939. when the population peaked, but arguably much before then, as financial power leaked to New York after World War 1, and as political power ebbed from the "Imperial" capital, increasingly losing its nerve.
I'd say London was in decline from 1914-1986. Then newly resurgent from 1986 to 2016. On hold til 2020. As of now? Who knows.
It may gain from Brexit freedoms and the struggles of other cities. Hong Kong, perhaps even NYC. Or it may tip into long term decline, once more. The loss of 500,000 citizens is not a great sign"
But you need to watch it all. The tv snippets won’t capture it
I thought I was asked a different question