Mr. Z, entirely possible that the bookie might have specific conditions forbidding such betting patterns, as per bans on using free cash to repeatedly back red and black in roulette to satisfy a wagering requirement.
If you have a Betfair account then make counterbets there. It'll achieve the same effect without risk of voiding, and allow you to do so six rather than three times. Obviously check the odds first to ensure they line up*, but as the bookie bets are profit only with zero risk of loss that should be rather straightforward.
*Edited extra bit: to your satisfaction.
Where's the fun in that? Forget guaranteeing a small return and use the lot for one of:- England winning; Kane top scorer; Sterling MVP; Maguire first scorer Favourite in every Grand Prix Favourite in every race at an evening race meeting
Sunak should be bold, not only should be get rid of the triple lock he should introduce things like NI for (working) pensioners.
I am less than a decade away from the state pension, that and my relatively pathetic private pension won't cut the mustard so I will remain scratching around to make a living until I drop. And you want to tax me more!
The people who should have been taxed are the current and recently departed pensioners who enjoyed tax free jam and cream final salary pensions and triple locks, and you want me to cough up NI.
Currently home owning, BMW driving, 'I done good' Boris voters of my generation are going to get a big shock when they arrive at the day they draw their pensions, and when we hit 85 and incontinence and immobility are the order of the day. We will realise then, that our split-level executive style Barratt houses from the 1990s will be the downpayment on the incontinence nurse's salary.
And you want to tax me more ..
Yup, for the greater good
I mean you don't hear me complain paying 45% income tax.
The whole system is messed up.
I'm a diabetic, so I get my prescriptions for free.
Yet someone who earns slightly above the minimum wage, has to pay for theirs.
Although 90% of prescriptions are, IIRC 'free'. What seems to me very unfair is that the prescription charge bears no relation to the cost of the medicines; it's simply an easily collectable tax for using the NHS. The 'average' cost of the medicines is below the level of the tax.
All very true Richard but like everything else in the Coalition government the Lib Dems have been willing participants in airbrushing out their contributions for good and ill alike. Very foolish to my mind but a deliberate choice.
The thing which is particularly odd about it is that, in 2010, it was a quite sensible policy, provided it was time limited. Pensions had fallen back very substantially compared with average earnings, and gradually correcting this over (say) five years and protecting pensioners (many of whom are very poor) from the fall-out of the financial crisis was perfectly defensible.
The trouble is that, like many such policies, it has now become a totem in its own right. As a general rule, governments should never tie themselves into straitjackets, but they repeatedly do.
They're aiming to tie the Opposition into a straitjacket, but their aim is awry.
Which is that while on the one hand it is just a sporting occasion, on another it is an opportunity where the hopes and dreams of a whole people come together – even for a moment.
We all focus on the same ball, we all focus on the same goal. There is nothing bad about this. It reminds us that there can be things that unite us and that they should survive off the pitch as well as on it.
Douglas never put it like that but, to be fair, London *has* become a foreign country. It's spun-off and transcended itself to become a global mega-city with every sort of language spoken on the streets, and people from all over the world, but also all rather individualised. Many Londoners with roots stretching back generations have moved out, and Britons are now in a minority. Most of those you see and hear speaking English in the City and Westminster are commuters. London is intense, dynamic, interesting, but also rather transient. It's become rather a strange place.
We know it's true because someone posted that video of London in the 1970s on here a couple of days ago, and the differences are obvious - the changes of the last 30 years, in particular, have been vast.
Now, you might well welcome those changes and think they're all for the better, and to an extent I agree with that, but London has a very different feel and culture to much of the rest of the country now - even to Hampshire - so it's not mutually-exclusive or unreasonable to say it feels like an alien world and celebrate the successes of a diverse England team at the same time.
London is very different, for sure, but it's only strange if you're not used to it. When I leave London it feels very strange to me to be surrounded entirely by white people, for instance, really jarring. Takes a while to get used to it. I would also dispute the idea that it's transitory. Where I live in SE London (zone 2, one train stop from London Bridge) most of our neighbours have lived here for years, decades even. Our next door neighbour is in his 50s and was born on this street. Many ethnic minority communities in places like Brick Lane or Southall or Brixton have lived there for 60 years plus, maybe on the third generation born there, so they're not really transient either. Over time as people move in and out of London the rest of the country is only going to become more like London. So I'd recommended people spending some time here, we are your future. (And it's great).
we are your future. (And it's great)
How do London's home ownership and inequality levels compare with the rest of Britain.
I imagine homeownership rates in London are lower and inequality higher as is typical in a large densely populated city where land is expensive. I'm not sure why those characteristics would be replicated if the rest of the country gradually took on a demographic profile more similar to that of London. Could you explain your logic please?
Apologies if this has already been pointed out, but, err, no, the Tory programme at GE2010 did not include the triple lock. It was a LibDem policy, a fact which oddly enough seems to have been airbrushed out of history. It became government policy because the LibDems insisted on it. What's more, it was Theresa May who wanted to end it, in the 2017 manifesto. Both Labour and the LibDems said they'd keep it. In fact, back in 2014 the Libdems vowed that making it permanent would be a pre-condition for any future coalition deal:
In other words, the idea that it is specifically the Conservatives who feather-bed their pensioner voters with this policy is codswallop.
On the politics now, no, I don't think Sunak will be overruled. The effect of applying it this year is so grotesque that I don't think it will happen. The political cost of suspending it will be zero. No-one thinks it's sensible to uprate pensions so steeply because of a temporary quirk in the figures caused by the quite exceptional circumstances of the pandemic. The only thing preventing this is the manifesto promise, but who on earth thinks Boris ever feels himself bound by a promise?
It's worth noting that the PM and Chancellor this week have both been using the exact same language in talking about this. About maintaining the triple lock, being fair to pensioners and fair to taxpayers.
The solution is blindingly obvious. Wages have not risen by 8% this year, we all know that, it's a technical abberation. So the Treasury will come up with a technical fix to how earnings are measured and say that they're maintaining the triple lock.
Which is so eminently reasonable that it may get mouthings off but people will reasonably accept it.
Which is that while on the one hand it is just a sporting occasion, on another it is an opportunity where the hopes and dreams of a whole people come together – even for a moment.
We all focus on the same ball, we all focus on the same goal. There is nothing bad about this. It reminds us that there can be things that unite us and that they should survive off the pitch as well as on it.
Douglas never put it like that but, to be fair, London *has* become a foreign country. It's spun-off and transcended itself to become a global mega-city with every sort of language spoken on the streets, and people from all over the world, but also all rather individualised. Many Londoners with roots stretching back generations have moved out, and Britons are now in a minority. Most of those you see and hear speaking English in the City and Westminster are commuters. London is intense, dynamic, interesting, but also rather transient. It's become rather a strange place.
We know it's true because someone posted that video of London in the 1970s on here a couple of days ago, and the differences are obvious - the changes of the last 30 years, in particular, have been vast.
Now, you might well welcome those changes and think they're all for the better, and to an extent I agree with that, but London has a very different feel and culture to much of the rest of the country now - even to Hampshire - so it's not mutually-exclusive or unreasonable to say it feels like an alien world and celebrate the successes of a diverse England team at the same time.
London is very different, for sure, but it's only strange if you're not used to it. When I leave London it feels very strange to me to be surrounded entirely by white people, for instance, really jarring. Takes a while to get used to it. I would also dispute the idea that it's transitory. Where I live in SE London (zone 2, one train stop from London Bridge) most of our neighbours have lived here for years, decades even. Our next door neighbour is in his 50s and was born on this street. Many ethnic minority communities in places like Brick Lane or Southall or Brixton have lived there for 60 years plus, maybe on the third generation born there, so they're not really transient either. Over time as people move in and out of London the rest of the country is only going to become more like London. So I'd recommended people spending some time here, we are your future. (And it's great).
You're assuming London has reached some sort of Utopian level of perfection never to be changed. Unlikely in my view. Also to assume that London emigres' will 'civilise' the RoUK is somewhat patronising. Movement, assimilation andintegration is more complex than that. Finally, if London is so great why do so many want to leave?
It's worth noting that the PM and Chancellor this week have both been using the exact same language in talking about this. About maintaining the triple lock, being fair to pensioners and fair to taxpayers.
The solution is blindingly obvious. Wages have not risen by 8% this year, we all know that, it's a technical abberation. So the Treasury will come up with a technical fix to how earnings are measured and say that they're maintaining the triple lock.
Which is so eminently reasonable that it may get mouthings off but people will reasonably accept it.
Sunak should be bold, not only should be get rid of the triple lock he should introduce things like NI for (working) pensioners.
He should just get rid of the waste of space that is NI
A former Chancellor once said that is the policy goal of every Chancellor, sadly it can only be introduced with a government with a majority of 400 and in year one of a ten year term.
Full abolition might be complicated by Employer NI rates, he thinks clever people would move plenty of their salary as benefits where the NI rate is what just under 14%?
There are very few things you can claim via salary sacrifice nowadays - literally the only worthwhile options are pensions and electric cars.
But the increase of Employer NI over the years has made combining Income tax and National insurance an impossible task.
But it's also exactly why it should be done. Having a jobs tax like that is completely counterproductive. It also means whole segments of the economy find a mammoth incentive for employer and employee to mutually agree to underreporting of wages.
Not something I've ever engaged in but I know many people who made no secret of the fact that their wages were eg £100 a week cash in hand better than what was reported on their payslip. Employer dodges NI, Employee dodges NI and IC and keeps UC. Everyone's a winner except honest employers competing and honest taxpayers.
Oh I know of some people who were doing that and then the furlough scheme come along - they were not happy, no cash in hand money and minimal furlough amounts.
Being blunt though those firms would be doing the same even if there were no Employer NI savings - one of the large umbrella firms has introduced a new expenses policy because they were losing workers to a different umbrella firm due to that firms generous expenses rules.
It's like RCS1000 always says about illegal working and the Swiss; one party should always be better off from being honest. If that happens you give a tremendous incentive to be honest.
We currently penalise employees for earning more and penalise employers for paying more then act shocked that people cooperate to underreport wages.
For employers wages are an expense not an income so the logical situation is that the more an employer reports in wages the lower their tax bill should be, not the other way around. That would largely eliminate the employers incentive to engage in fraud.
The incentive for employers to engage in fraud is simply their ability to retain employees - see my previous reply.
But that is getting to be far harder than it used to be - as an example did you know that one of the sectors where wages increased most between 2009 and 2018 was private hire drivers - where real wages increased 40%.
They didn't but it's far harder to hide money when it's no longer paid in cash and the taxi firms / uber need to report all payments.
Employer NI should be rewiewed, once it’s clear what the market for labour looks like after the pandemic, and without an almost unlimited supply of foreign workers.
It’s literally a tax on jobs, and over time with a more constrained labour market will encourage replacement of labour with capital. Which may be a good thing, and may be a bad thing.
Which is that while on the one hand it is just a sporting occasion, on another it is an opportunity where the hopes and dreams of a whole people come together – even for a moment.
We all focus on the same ball, we all focus on the same goal. There is nothing bad about this. It reminds us that there can be things that unite us and that they should survive off the pitch as well as on it.
'Genocide is fine if you're doing it for Jesus' is not a hot take I ever expected to read outside of The Onion/Daily Mash.
Well ISIS and Al Qaeda are fine with terrorist murder in the name of Allah and Muhammad.
There will always be a minority of extremists within any religion prepared to kill for it but there is no evidence the deaths of native children in Canada in the 19th century in mainly Catholic schools were intentional, indeed most died of disease
Which is that while on the one hand it is just a sporting occasion, on another it is an opportunity where the hopes and dreams of a whole people come together – even for a moment.
We all focus on the same ball, we all focus on the same goal. There is nothing bad about this. It reminds us that there can be things that unite us and that they should survive off the pitch as well as on it.
'Genocide is fine if you're doing it for Jesus' is not a hot take I ever expected to read outside of The Onion/Daily Mash.
It's the only logical conclusion from the (batshit) Christian premise that Christ died for everyone, but initially confined the good news to a handful of Palestinian Jews and hoped it would kinda spread by word of mouth. The Church routinely OKed slavery because if you are enslaved but also Christianised, you come out ahead.
"Genocide is fine if you're doing it for {insert noble cause here}" is a sadly common response to "{insert noble cause here} result(ed) in genocide/mass murder"
Apologies if this has already been pointed out, but, err, no, the Tory programme at GE2010 did not include the triple lock. It was a LibDem policy, a fact which oddly enough seems to have been airbrushed out of history. It became government policy because the LibDems insisted on it. What's more, it was Theresa May who wanted to end it, in the 2017 manifesto. Both Labour and the LibDems said they'd keep it. In fact, back in 2014 the Libdems vowed that making it permanent would be a pre-condition for any future coalition deal:
In other words, the idea that it is specifically the Conservatives who feather-bed their pensioner voters with this policy is codswallop.
On the politics now, no, I don't think Sunak will be overruled. The effect of applying it this year is so grotesque that I don't think it will happen. The political cost of suspending it will be zero. No-one thinks it's sensible to uprate pensions so steeply because of a temporary quirk in the figures caused by the quite exceptional circumstances of the pandemic. The only thing preventing this is the manifesto promise, but who on earth thinks Boris ever feels himself bound by a promise?
It's worth noting that the PM and Chancellor this week have both been using the exact same language in talking about this. About maintaining the triple lock, being fair to pensioners and fair to taxpayers.
The solution is blindingly obvious. Wages have not risen by 8% this year, we all know that, it's a technical abberation. So the Treasury will come up with a technical fix to how earnings are measured and say that they're maintaining the triple lock.
Which is so eminently reasonable that it may get mouthings off but people will reasonably accept it.
One obvious thing - if wanting to keep the triple lock in princple - seems to be to look at the ernings difference from 2019 to now and divide by two (or do the maths to include compounding). If that's more than the 2.5% given last year (which I very much doubt) then backdate it too, so that pensions will still have kept pace with earnings 2021 compared to 2019.
Sunak should be bold, not only should be get rid of the triple lock he should introduce things like NI for (working) pensioners.
He should just get rid of the waste of space that is NI
A former Chancellor once said that is the policy goal of every Chancellor, sadly it can only be introduced with a government with a majority of 400 and in year one of a ten year term.
Full abolition might be complicated by Employer NI rates, he thinks clever people would move plenty of their salary as benefits where the NI rate is what just under 14%?
There are very few things you can claim via salary sacrifice nowadays - literally the only worthwhile options are pensions and electric cars.
But the increase of Employer NI over the years has made combining Income tax and National insurance an impossible task.
But it's also exactly why it should be done. Having a jobs tax like that is completely counterproductive. It also means whole segments of the economy find a mammoth incentive for employer and employee to mutually agree to underreporting of wages.
Not something I've ever engaged in but I know many people who made no secret of the fact that their wages were eg £100 a week cash in hand better than what was reported on their payslip. Employer dodges NI, Employee dodges NI and IC and keeps UC. Everyone's a winner except honest employers competing and honest taxpayers.
Oh I know of some people who were doing that and then the furlough scheme come along - they were not happy, no cash in hand money and minimal furlough amounts.
Being blunt though those firms would be doing the same even if there were no Employer NI savings - one of the large umbrella firms has introduced a new expenses policy because they were losing workers to a different umbrella firm due to that firms generous expenses rules.
It's like RCS1000 always says about illegal working and the Swiss; one party should always be better off from being honest. If that happens you give a tremendous incentive to be honest.
We currently penalise employees for earning more and penalise employers for paying more then act shocked that people cooperate to underreport wages.
For employers wages are an expense not an income so the logical situation is that the more an employer reports in wages the lower their tax bill should be, not the other way around. That would largely eliminate the employers incentive to engage in fraud.
The incentive for employers to engage in fraud is simply their ability to retain employees - see my previous reply.
But that is getting to be far harder than it used to be - as an example did you know that one of the sectors where wages increased most between 2009 and 2018 was private hire drivers - where real wages increased 40%.
They didn't but it's far harder to hide money when it's no longer paid in cash and the taxi firms / uber need to report all payments.
Employer NI should be rewiewed, once it’s clear what the market for labour looks like after the pandemic, and without an almost unlimited supply of foreign workers.
It’s literally a tax on jobs, and over time with a more constrained labour market will encourage replacement of labour with capital. Which may be a good thing, and may be a bad thing.
It's completely crazy. An employer paying better wages is an expense for the employer and a social good to be encouraged not an externality to be punished.
Which is that while on the one hand it is just a sporting occasion, on another it is an opportunity where the hopes and dreams of a whole people come together – even for a moment.
We all focus on the same ball, we all focus on the same goal. There is nothing bad about this. It reminds us that there can be things that unite us and that they should survive off the pitch as well as on it.
Douglas never put it like that but, to be fair, London *has* become a foreign country. It's spun-off and transcended itself to become a global mega-city with every sort of language spoken on the streets, and people from all over the world, but also all rather individualised. Many Londoners with roots stretching back generations have moved out, and Britons are now in a minority. Most of those you see and hear speaking English in the City and Westminster are commuters. London is intense, dynamic, interesting, but also rather transient. It's become rather a strange place.
We know it's true because someone posted that video of London in the 1970s on here a couple of days ago, and the differences are obvious - the changes of the last 30 years, in particular, have been vast.
Now, you might well welcome those changes and think they're all for the better, and to an extent I agree with that, but London has a very different feel and culture to much of the rest of the country now - even to Hampshire - so it's not mutually-exclusive or unreasonable to say it feels like an alien world and celebrate the successes of a diverse England team at the same time.
London is very different, for sure, but it's only strange if you're not used to it. When I leave London it feels very strange to me to be surrounded entirely by white people, for instance, really jarring. Takes a while to get used to it. I would also dispute the idea that it's transitory. Where I live in SE London (zone 2, one train stop from London Bridge) most of our neighbours have lived here for years, decades even. Our next door neighbour is in his 50s and was born on this street. Many ethnic minority communities in places like Brick Lane or Southall or Brixton have lived there for 60 years plus, maybe on the third generation born there, so they're not really transient either. Over time as people move in and out of London the rest of the country is only going to become more like London. So I'd recommended people spending some time here, we are your future. (And it's great).
It's not about ethnicity, although that's obviously a visible sign of change, it's about community and culture.
Perhaps it's different where you live but most people I know in London lead highly individualised and atomised lives. People flip in and out of London in a few years, and many don't mix except with those in their nationality group. Even my most Lefty friends who live in London have stayed in bubbles, it's just they are of other white Lefty people who think like them - diversity to them is something around them, and something they signal vociferously about, but it's not something they "do".
I'd say three things are necessary for a diverse city not to feel alien in the UK:
(1) You need to usually speak English (2) You need to be part of and settled in your local community (3) You need to interact with other communities
The rest of the country will certainly become more visually diverse over time, I think Eric Kauffman estimates the year 2120 for a mixed race majority, but if London doesn't change it won't "become" like London. Those people will simply permeate out and into more settled communities along the lines I've described, and inherit longstanding British traditions and culture - think Jessica Ennis-Hill, Ben Kingsley, James Cleverly, Calvin Robinson, Mylene Klass etc.
Which is that while on the one hand it is just a sporting occasion, on another it is an opportunity where the hopes and dreams of a whole people come together – even for a moment.
We all focus on the same ball, we all focus on the same goal. There is nothing bad about this. It reminds us that there can be things that unite us and that they should survive off the pitch as well as on it.
'Genocide is fine if you're doing it for Jesus' is not a hot take I ever expected to read outside of The Onion/Daily Mash.
It's the only logical conclusion from the (batshit) Christian premise that Christ died for everyone, but initially confined the good news to a handful of Palestinian Jews and hoped it would kinda spread by word of mouth. The Church routinely OKed slavery because if you are enslaved but also Christianised, you come out ahead.
"Genocide is fine if you're doing it for {insert noble cause here}" is a sadly common response to "{insert noble cause here} result(ed) in genocide/mass murder"
Same of course also applied to nationalist IRA terrorists who were prepared to kill for a United Ireland, Protestant loyalist paramilitaries on the opposite ground, Hamas who are prepared to kill for a greater Palestine again plus of course Hitler and Stalin and Mao killed millions to enforce their political ideology.
Which is that while on the one hand it is just a sporting occasion, on another it is an opportunity where the hopes and dreams of a whole people come together – even for a moment.
We all focus on the same ball, we all focus on the same goal. There is nothing bad about this. It reminds us that there can be things that unite us and that they should survive off the pitch as well as on it.
Douglas never put it like that but, to be fair, London *has* become a foreign country. It's spun-off and transcended itself to become a global mega-city with every sort of language spoken on the streets, and people from all over the world, but also all rather individualised. Many Londoners with roots stretching back generations have moved out, and Britons are now in a minority. Most of those you see and hear speaking English in the City and Westminster are commuters. London is intense, dynamic, interesting, but also rather transient. It's become rather a strange place.
We know it's true because someone posted that video of London in the 1970s on here a couple of days ago, and the differences are obvious - the changes of the last 30 years, in particular, have been vast.
Now, you might well welcome those changes and think they're all for the better, and to an extent I agree with that, but London has a very different feel and culture to much of the rest of the country now - even to Hampshire - so it's not mutually-exclusive or unreasonable to say it feels like an alien world and celebrate the successes of a diverse England team at the same time.
London is very different, for sure, but it's only strange if you're not used to it. When I leave London it feels very strange to me to be surrounded entirely by white people, for instance, really jarring. Takes a while to get used to it. I would also dispute the idea that it's transitory. Where I live in SE London (zone 2, one train stop from London Bridge) most of our neighbours have lived here for years, decades even. Our next door neighbour is in his 50s and was born on this street. Many ethnic minority communities in places like Brick Lane or Southall or Brixton have lived there for 60 years plus, maybe on the third generation born there, so they're not really transient either. Over time as people move in and out of London the rest of the country is only going to become more like London. So I'd recommended people spending some time here, we are your future. (And it's great).
You're assuming London has reached some sort of Utopian level of perfection never to be changed. Unlikely in my view. Also to assume that London emigres' will 'civilise' the RoUK is somewhat patronising. Movement, assimilation andintegration is more complex than that. Finally, if London is so great why do so many want to leave?
Because a 40sq m flat costs the same as a villa with tennis courts and swimming pool on the med!
Boris Johnson’s confidence that England can drop COVID restrictions on July 19 has raised many questions. We’ve tried to distil the questions and criticisms and the government’s defence.
The government’s opponents seem to think that mask-wearing will become illegal, and nightclub attendance mandatory, rather than people and companies being allowed to make judgements for themselves.
Grant Shapps was (for once) completely clear on R4 - if train companies or airlines (as some have already) want to make mask wearing a condition of carriage they are entitled to do so.
What a pathetic way to run a country. Train operators are licenced by the government. The government is supposed to be responsible for public health. A government-licenced company is not like a friend who invites you into his home and should be able to insist that you wear a mask, or take your shoes off, if he wishes, for whatever reasons he wishes, and who if he feels like it can ask you to leave. To be clear: I have no probs if the government continues to mandate mask-wearing on public transport.
I think the full state pension is £9.3k and the average annuity on a private pension about £3k, so that gets you to about £12.5k - or over £1,000 per month.
When you bear in mind that pensioners won't pay NI or income tax on that, get OAP discounts in most places, get free buses, a winter fuel allowance, and get a free TV licence, then it allows for a decent basic retirement. Particularly if you've paid off the mortgage.
You might want to have a much more luxurious retirement than that, but should it be the duty of the State to pay for it?
IMHO, there are far greater calls on the public purse - particularly for those of working age.
I think most of us on this board are relatively well off and so we don't scrutinise where our money goes. However I have had periods in my life where my income simply wasn't quite enough and so I planned every penny, and when things improved again I continued with that good practice. I've always distinguished between expenses I just have to pay to live, and anything else that's discretionary (car, leisure, coffee, eating out). And I am anal so I now have 25 years' records and a good idea of what it costs me just to exist.
Adding up all the things I can't avoid comes to £638 per month. And assuming the mortgage is paid off you still have to keep your house in good order and although lumpy this averages out at about another 2K per year based on living in the same house for 20 years and assuming I don't have to replace the kitchen or bathroom again. On top of that you need to add the weekly shopping and clothing. Assuming just me to feed and I have time to shop around a bit more than I do now - £250. So that's about £12.5k net. I could live in a slightly smaller house, which would probably save about 10% on bills.
And that assumes I want nothing more out of life than a daily walk in the park and an evening of TV.
I hope this puts the state (or any!) pension in perspective. This is my greatest worry currently - I will be another one who has to work into my 70s as my company pension isn't going to make up the shortfall.
It's worth noting that the PM and Chancellor this week have both been using the exact same language in talking about this. About maintaining the triple lock, being fair to pensioners and fair to taxpayers.
The solution is blindingly obvious. Wages have not risen by 8% this year, we all know that, it's a technical abberation. So the Treasury will come up with a technical fix to how earnings are measured and say that they're maintaining the triple lock.
Which is so eminently reasonable that it may get mouthings off but people will reasonably accept it.
Which is that while on the one hand it is just a sporting occasion, on another it is an opportunity where the hopes and dreams of a whole people come together – even for a moment.
We all focus on the same ball, we all focus on the same goal. There is nothing bad about this. It reminds us that there can be things that unite us and that they should survive off the pitch as well as on it.
Douglas never put it like that but, to be fair, London *has* become a foreign country. It's spun-off and transcended itself to become a global mega-city with every sort of language spoken on the streets, and people from all over the world, but also all rather individualised. Many Londoners with roots stretching back generations have moved out, and Britons are now in a minority. Most of those you see and hear speaking English in the City and Westminster are commuters. London is intense, dynamic, interesting, but also rather transient. It's become rather a strange place.
We know it's true because someone posted that video of London in the 1970s on here a couple of days ago, and the differences are obvious - the changes of the last 30 years, in particular, have been vast.
Now, you might well welcome those changes and think they're all for the better, and to an extent I agree with that, but London has a very different feel and culture to much of the rest of the country now - even to Hampshire - so it's not mutually-exclusive or unreasonable to say it feels like an alien world and celebrate the successes of a diverse England team at the same team.
Well said. I'm always stunned when I visit London on my very rare trips down there. It's really amazing and I think it's great. It's the diversity of the UK which is so remarkable and gives me hope.
Yes, to an extent, but diversity has become a bit of a religion now and we forget how important community is. I think London has lost much of that, except some little gems in Bermondsey, Brixton and places like that.
What I like about the current English football team is how it's bringing everyone together and making national pride fashionable again. I'd like to see a bit more of that.
Yes, there's a lot of variety between in how we look, act and experience life but please, please, let's celebrate what we share too and just have a bit of fun for once.
I meant diversity across the UK, not within communities (although that's a good thing too). I think it makes the country more resilient and opens up more avenues for progress.
Sunak should be bold, not only should be get rid of the triple lock he should introduce things like NI for (working) pensioners.
He should just get rid of the waste of space that is NI
A former Chancellor once said that is the policy goal of every Chancellor, sadly it can only be introduced with a government with a majority of 400 and in year one of a ten year term.
Full abolition might be complicated by Employer NI rates, he thinks clever people would move plenty of their salary as benefits where the NI rate is what just under 14%?
There are very few things you can claim via salary sacrifice nowadays - literally the only worthwhile options are pensions and electric cars.
But the increase of Employer NI over the years has made combining Income tax and National insurance an impossible task.
But it's also exactly why it should be done. Having a jobs tax like that is completely counterproductive. It also means whole segments of the economy find a mammoth incentive for employer and employee to mutually agree to underreporting of wages.
Not something I've ever engaged in but I know many people who made no secret of the fact that their wages were eg £100 a week cash in hand better than what was reported on their payslip. Employer dodges NI, Employee dodges NI and IC and keeps UC. Everyone's a winner except honest employers competing and honest taxpayers.
Oh I know of some people who were doing that and then the furlough scheme come along - they were not happy, no cash in hand money and minimal furlough amounts.
Being blunt though those firms would be doing the same even if there were no Employer NI savings - one of the large umbrella firms has introduced a new expenses policy because they were losing workers to a different umbrella firm due to that firms generous expenses rules.
It's like RCS1000 always says about illegal working and the Swiss; one party should always be better off from being honest. If that happens you give a tremendous incentive to be honest.
We currently penalise employees for earning more and penalise employers for paying more then act shocked that people cooperate to underreport wages.
For employers wages are an expense not an income so the logical situation is that the more an employer reports in wages the lower their tax bill should be, not the other way around. That would largely eliminate the employers incentive to engage in fraud.
The incentive for employers to engage in fraud is simply their ability to retain employees - see my previous reply.
But that is getting to be far harder than it used to be - as an example did you know that one of the sectors where wages increased most between 2009 and 2018 was private hire drivers - where real wages increased 40%.
They didn't but it's far harder to hide money when it's no longer paid in cash and the taxi firms / uber need to report all payments.
Employer NI should be rewiewed, once it’s clear what the market for labour looks like after the pandemic, and without an almost unlimited supply of foreign workers.
It’s literally a tax on jobs, and over time with a more constrained labour market will encourage replacement of labour with capital. Which may be a good thing, and may be a bad thing.
It's completely crazy. An employer paying better wages is an expense for the employer and a social good to be encouraged not an externality to be punished.
It's just a cost of employment - why do you think IR35 rules exist.
And why do you think we have a significant HGV crisis - a lot of that was due to firms abusing tax to keep labour costs artificially low.
Which is that while on the one hand it is just a sporting occasion, on another it is an opportunity where the hopes and dreams of a whole people come together – even for a moment.
We all focus on the same ball, we all focus on the same goal. There is nothing bad about this. It reminds us that there can be things that unite us and that they should survive off the pitch as well as on it.
Douglas never put it like that but, to be fair, London *has* become a foreign country. It's spun-off and transcended itself to become a global mega-city with every sort of language spoken on the streets, and people from all over the world, but also all rather individualised. Many Londoners with roots stretching back generations have moved out, and Britons are now in a minority. Most of those you see and hear speaking English in the City and Westminster are commuters. London is intense, dynamic, interesting, but also rather transient. It's become rather a strange place.
We know it's true because someone posted that video of London in the 1970s on here a couple of days ago, and the differences are obvious - the changes of the last 30 years, in particular, have been vast.
Now, you might well welcome those changes and think they're all for the better, and to an extent I agree with that, but London has a very different feel and culture to much of the rest of the country now - even to Hampshire - so it's not mutually-exclusive or unreasonable to say it feels like an alien world and celebrate the successes of a diverse England team at the same time.
London is very different, for sure, but it's only strange if you're not used to it. When I leave London it feels very strange to me to be surrounded entirely by white people, for instance, really jarring. Takes a while to get used to it. I would also dispute the idea that it's transitory. Where I live in SE London (zone 2, one train stop from London Bridge) most of our neighbours have lived here for years, decades even. Our next door neighbour is in his 50s and was born on this street. Many ethnic minority communities in places like Brick Lane or Southall or Brixton have lived there for 60 years plus, maybe on the third generation born there, so they're not really transient either. Over time as people move in and out of London the rest of the country is only going to become more like London. So I'd recommended people spending some time here, we are your future. (And it's great).
You're assuming London has reached some sort of Utopian level of perfection never to be changed. Unlikely in my view. Also to assume that London emigres' will 'civilise' the RoUK is somewhat patronising. Movement, assimilation andintegration is more complex than that. Finally, if London is so great why do so many want to leave?
London is far from perfect. I only wanted to point out that (A) it's only strange if you're not used to it (and strangeness cuts both ways), and (B) rUK will probably come to share more of London's demographics over time. I'm not making a value judgement about that, other than to reassure people that London is a pretty pleasant place full of friendly people. Why do people leave? Easy, for more space. Land is expensive. I can afford a nice house with a garden so I'm staying, but of course not everyone is so fortunate.
Pensions should rise in line with inflation not earnings but the Tories are bound by their manifesto commitment until the next general election
Why? Do you want people who rely on the state pension only to keep getting poorer compared to the rest of the population.
Only if they are also prepared to face a cut in the state pension too as there was a large fall in average earnings over the last year and a half state pensioners were protected from.
Inflation reflects rises in prices in the shops so is what pensions should be based on
Which is that while on the one hand it is just a sporting occasion, on another it is an opportunity where the hopes and dreams of a whole people come together – even for a moment.
We all focus on the same ball, we all focus on the same goal. There is nothing bad about this. It reminds us that there can be things that unite us and that they should survive off the pitch as well as on it.
'Genocide is fine if you're doing it for Jesus' is not a hot take I ever expected to read outside of The Onion/Daily Mash.
What I've seen of what happened in those schools in Canada is some of the most shocking stuff I've read. It reminds me of the abuse meted out in Catholic run orphanages and hostels in Ireland, and Barnado's homes in the UK, in the late 20th Century - but turned up to 11.
You don't get that many deaths without abject neglect and cruelty. It's shameful. The closest parallel I can think of is our concentration camps during the Boer War.
I disagree vehemently with statue-toppling and attacking the symbols and emblems of Canada, which has got so much else right, particularly in contrast to its southern neighbour, but boy is that a sorry chapter.
Sunak should be bold, not only should be get rid of the triple lock he should introduce things like NI for (working) pensioners.
He should just get rid of the waste of space that is NI
A former Chancellor once said that is the policy goal of every Chancellor, sadly it can only be introduced with a government with a majority of 400 and in year one of a ten year term.
Full abolition might be complicated by Employer NI rates, he thinks clever people would move plenty of their salary as benefits where the NI rate is what just under 14%?
There are very few things you can claim via salary sacrifice nowadays - literally the only worthwhile options are pensions and electric cars.
But the increase of Employer NI over the years has made combining Income tax and National insurance an impossible task.
But it's also exactly why it should be done. Having a jobs tax like that is completely counterproductive. It also means whole segments of the economy find a mammoth incentive for employer and employee to mutually agree to underreporting of wages.
Not something I've ever engaged in but I know many people who made no secret of the fact that their wages were eg £100 a week cash in hand better than what was reported on their payslip. Employer dodges NI, Employee dodges NI and IC and keeps UC. Everyone's a winner except honest employers competing and honest taxpayers.
Oh I know of some people who were doing that and then the furlough scheme come along - they were not happy, no cash in hand money and minimal furlough amounts.
Being blunt though those firms would be doing the same even if there were no Employer NI savings - one of the large umbrella firms has introduced a new expenses policy because they were losing workers to a different umbrella firm due to that firms generous expenses rules.
It's like RCS1000 always says about illegal working and the Swiss; one party should always be better off from being honest. If that happens you give a tremendous incentive to be honest.
We currently penalise employees for earning more and penalise employers for paying more then act shocked that people cooperate to underreport wages.
For employers wages are an expense not an income so the logical situation is that the more an employer reports in wages the lower their tax bill should be, not the other way around. That would largely eliminate the employers incentive to engage in fraud.
The incentive for employers to engage in fraud is simply their ability to retain employees - see my previous reply.
But that is getting to be far harder than it used to be - as an example did you know that one of the sectors where wages increased most between 2009 and 2018 was private hire drivers - where real wages increased 40%.
They didn't but it's far harder to hide money when it's no longer paid in cash and the taxi firms / uber need to report all payments.
Employer NI should be rewiewed, once it’s clear what the market for labour looks like after the pandemic, and without an almost unlimited supply of foreign workers.
It’s literally a tax on jobs, and over time with a more constrained labour market will encourage replacement of labour with capital. Which may be a good thing, and may be a bad thing.
It's also £40bn to the treasury and the sole reason IR35 still exists - so Employer NI isn't going anywhere (sadly).
And we really should be replacing labour where possible with capital - that increases productivity and allows wages to rise. The reason why GDP per capita is so bad in the UK is because we've spent the last 10 years using cheap labour and long hours to fill productivity gaps rather than investing money to do so.
Heck the most obvious areas in automation are where minimum wage increases have forced companies to replace labour with fairly cheap machinery, so order taking at McDonalds, self service tills in shops.
Which is that while on the one hand it is just a sporting occasion, on another it is an opportunity where the hopes and dreams of a whole people come together – even for a moment.
We all focus on the same ball, we all focus on the same goal. There is nothing bad about this. It reminds us that there can be things that unite us and that they should survive off the pitch as well as on it.
Douglas never put it like that but, to be fair, London *has* become a foreign country. It's spun-off and transcended itself to become a global mega-city with every sort of language spoken on the streets, and people from all over the world, but also all rather individualised. Many Londoners with roots stretching back generations have moved out, and Britons are now in a minority. Most of those you see and hear speaking English in the City and Westminster are commuters. London is intense, dynamic, interesting, but also rather transient. It's become rather a strange place.
We know it's true because someone posted that video of London in the 1970s on here a couple of days ago, and the differences are obvious - the changes of the last 30 years, in particular, have been vast.
Now, you might well welcome those changes and think they're all for the better, and to an extent I agree with that, but London has a very different feel and culture to much of the rest of the country now - even to Hampshire - so it's not mutually-exclusive or unreasonable to say it feels like an alien world and celebrate the successes of a diverse England team at the same time.
London is very different, for sure, but it's only strange if you're not used to it. When I leave London it feels very strange to me to be surrounded entirely by white people, for instance, really jarring. Takes a while to get used to it. I would also dispute the idea that it's transitory. Where I live in SE London (zone 2, one train stop from London Bridge) most of our neighbours have lived here for years, decades even. Our next door neighbour is in his 50s and was born on this street. Many ethnic minority communities in places like Brick Lane or Southall or Brixton have lived there for 60 years plus, maybe on the third generation born there, so they're not really transient either. Over time as people move in and out of London the rest of the country is only going to become more like London. So I'd recommended people spending some time here, we are your future. (And it's great).
Not sure where you're going to that the rest of Britain outside of London is entirely white to you but near where I live there's both a Mosque and a Hindu Temple and for very good reason for both.
The country isn't entirely divided between London and Midsomer.
Pensions should rise in line with inflation not earnings but the Tories are bound by their manifesto commitment until the next general election
Why? Do you want people who rely on the state pension only to keep getting poorer compared to the rest of the population.
Only if they are also prepared to face a cut in the state pension too as their was a large fall in average earnings over the last year and a half
Yes but that was an aberration caused by the pandemic which should be corrected. The norm is for pay to outstrip inflation. We generally get better off over time and the pension is so small for people who rely on it you shouldn't make poor people poorer relative to the norm.
Sunak should be bold, not only should be get rid of the triple lock he should introduce things like NI for (working) pensioners.
He should just get rid of the waste of space that is NI
A former Chancellor once said that is the policy goal of every Chancellor, sadly it can only be introduced with a government with a majority of 400 and in year one of a ten year term.
Full abolition might be complicated by Employer NI rates, he thinks clever people would move plenty of their salary as benefits where the NI rate is what just under 14%?
There are very few things you can claim via salary sacrifice nowadays - literally the only worthwhile options are pensions and electric cars.
But the increase of Employer NI over the years has made combining Income tax and National insurance an impossible task.
But it's also exactly why it should be done. Having a jobs tax like that is completely counterproductive. It also means whole segments of the economy find a mammoth incentive for employer and employee to mutually agree to underreporting of wages.
Not something I've ever engaged in but I know many people who made no secret of the fact that their wages were eg £100 a week cash in hand better than what was reported on their payslip. Employer dodges NI, Employee dodges NI and IC and keeps UC. Everyone's a winner except honest employers competing and honest taxpayers.
Oh I know of some people who were doing that and then the furlough scheme come along - they were not happy, no cash in hand money and minimal furlough amounts.
Being blunt though those firms would be doing the same even if there were no Employer NI savings - one of the large umbrella firms has introduced a new expenses policy because they were losing workers to a different umbrella firm due to that firms generous expenses rules.
It's like RCS1000 always says about illegal working and the Swiss; one party should always be better off from being honest. If that happens you give a tremendous incentive to be honest.
We currently penalise employees for earning more and penalise employers for paying more then act shocked that people cooperate to underreport wages.
For employers wages are an expense not an income so the logical situation is that the more an employer reports in wages the lower their tax bill should be, not the other way around. That would largely eliminate the employers incentive to engage in fraud.
The incentive for employers to engage in fraud is simply their ability to retain employees - see my previous reply.
But that is getting to be far harder than it used to be - as an example did you know that one of the sectors where wages increased most between 2009 and 2018 was private hire drivers - where real wages increased 40%.
They didn't but it's far harder to hide money when it's no longer paid in cash and the taxi firms / uber need to report all payments.
Employer NI should be rewiewed, once it’s clear what the market for labour looks like after the pandemic, and without an almost unlimited supply of foreign workers.
It’s literally a tax on jobs, and over time with a more constrained labour market will encourage replacement of labour with capital. Which may be a good thing, and may be a bad thing.
It's completely crazy. An employer paying better wages is an expense for the employer and a social good to be encouraged not an externality to be punished.
It's just a cost of employment - why do you think IR35 rules exist.
And why do you think we have a significant HGV crisis - a lot of that was due to firms abusing tax to keep labour costs artificially low.
That's precisely my point. If you think only HGV firms are finding a way around the rules you're very much deluded.
This is probably a much bigger deal in those industries where a lot of cash can change hands, where the fraud of reporting one figure to HMRC while handing another figure over in an envelope is viable and HMRC is currently literally encouraging that fraud by treating higher wages as an externality to be taxed.
Sunak should be bold, not only should be get rid of the triple lock he should introduce things like NI for (working) pensioners.
I am less than a decade away from the state pension, that and my relatively pathetic private pension won't cut the mustard so I will remain scratching around to make a living until I drop. And you want to tax me more!
The people who should have been taxed are the current and recently departed pensioners who enjoyed tax free jam and cream final salary pensions and triple locks, and you want me to cough up NI.
Currently home owning, BMW driving, 'I done good' Boris voters of my generation are going to get a big shock when they arrive at the day they draw their pensions, and when we hit 85 and incontinence and immobility are the order of the day. We will realise then, that our split-level executive style Barratt houses from the 1990s will be the downpayment on the incontinence nurse's salary.
And you want to tax me more ..
Yup, for the greater good
I mean you don't hear me complain paying 45% income tax.
The whole system is messed up.
I'm a diabetic, so I get my prescriptions for free.
Yet someone who earns slightly above the minimum wage, has to pay for theirs.
Although 90% of prescriptions are, IIRC 'free'. What seems to me very unfair is that the prescription charge bears no relation to the cost of the medicines; it's simply an easily collectable tax for using the NHS. The 'average' cost of the medicines is below the level of the tax.
90% are free ?! Jesus no wonder NHS services are so inconvienient if you work a 9-5.
Pensions should rise in line with inflation not earnings but the Tories are bound by their manifesto commitment until the next general election
Why? Do you want people who rely on the state pension only to keep getting poorer compared to the rest of the population.
Only if they are also prepared to face a cut in the state pension too as there was a large fall in average earnings over the last year and a half state pensioners were protected from.
Inflation reflects rises in prices in the shops so is what pensions should be based on
So you would be happy if your current pay was equally to the pay for the same job in 1910 plus inflation would you?
Which is that while on the one hand it is just a sporting occasion, on another it is an opportunity where the hopes and dreams of a whole people come together – even for a moment.
We all focus on the same ball, we all focus on the same goal. There is nothing bad about this. It reminds us that there can be things that unite us and that they should survive off the pitch as well as on it.
'Genocide is fine if you're doing it for Jesus' is not a hot take I ever expected to read outside of The Onion/Daily Mash.
Well ISIS and Al Qaeda are fine with terrorist murder in the name of Allah and Muhammad.
There will always be a minority of extremists within any religion prepared to kill for it but there is no evidence the deaths of native children in Canada in the 19th century in mainly Catholic schools were intentional, indeed most died of disease
Which book of the Bible has the Parable of Whataboutery and the one about it all being an unfortunate accident?
"Delta variant is reinfecting people who have already had Covid-19"
Told you so a month ago, anickdotalleeee.
Does rather change the narrative for vaccinating under 18s, if their current acquired immunity by alpha isn't enough to keep delta away then vaccines need to be considered.
Sunak should be bold, not only should be get rid of the triple lock he should introduce things like NI for (working) pensioners.
He should just get rid of the waste of space that is NI
A former Chancellor once said that is the policy goal of every Chancellor, sadly it can only be introduced with a government with a majority of 400 and in year one of a ten year term.
Full abolition might be complicated by Employer NI rates, he thinks clever people would move plenty of their salary as benefits where the NI rate is what just under 14%?
There are very few things you can claim via salary sacrifice nowadays - literally the only worthwhile options are pensions and electric cars.
But the increase of Employer NI over the years has made combining Income tax and National insurance an impossible task.
But it's also exactly why it should be done. Having a jobs tax like that is completely counterproductive. It also means whole segments of the economy find a mammoth incentive for employer and employee to mutually agree to underreporting of wages.
Not something I've ever engaged in but I know many people who made no secret of the fact that their wages were eg £100 a week cash in hand better than what was reported on their payslip. Employer dodges NI, Employee dodges NI and IC and keeps UC. Everyone's a winner except honest employers competing and honest taxpayers.
Oh I know of some people who were doing that and then the furlough scheme come along - they were not happy, no cash in hand money and minimal furlough amounts.
Being blunt though those firms would be doing the same even if there were no Employer NI savings - one of the large umbrella firms has introduced a new expenses policy because they were losing workers to a different umbrella firm due to that firms generous expenses rules.
It's like RCS1000 always says about illegal working and the Swiss; one party should always be better off from being honest. If that happens you give a tremendous incentive to be honest.
We currently penalise employees for earning more and penalise employers for paying more then act shocked that people cooperate to underreport wages.
For employers wages are an expense not an income so the logical situation is that the more an employer reports in wages the lower their tax bill should be, not the other way around. That would largely eliminate the employers incentive to engage in fraud.
The incentive for employers to engage in fraud is simply their ability to retain employees - see my previous reply.
But that is getting to be far harder than it used to be - as an example did you know that one of the sectors where wages increased most between 2009 and 2018 was private hire drivers - where real wages increased 40%.
They didn't but it's far harder to hide money when it's no longer paid in cash and the taxi firms / uber need to report all payments.
Employer NI should be rewiewed, once it’s clear what the market for labour looks like after the pandemic, and without an almost unlimited supply of foreign workers.
It’s literally a tax on jobs, and over time with a more constrained labour market will encourage replacement of labour with capital. Which may be a good thing, and may be a bad thing.
It's completely crazy. An employer paying better wages is an expense for the employer and a social good to be encouraged not an externality to be punished.
It's just a cost of employment - why do you think IR35 rules exist.
And why do you think we have a significant HGV crisis - a lot of that was due to firms abusing tax to keep labour costs artificially low.
That's precisely my point. If you think only HGV firms are finding a way around the rules you're very much deluded.
This is probably a much bigger deal in those industries where a lot of cash can change hands, where the fraud of reporting one figure to HMRC while handing another figure over in an envelope is viable and HMRC is currently literally encouraging that fraud by treating higher wages as an externality to be taxed.
And?
It's getting harder to do so and when HMRC do find out the person who is receiving the money is liable for the unpaid tax.
People are cheating the tax system isn't justification for risking £40bn especially when the amount being fiddled is nothing like that (it seems to be about £12bn of all which is recoverable when HMRC find a reason to look).
Sunak should be bold, not only should be get rid of the triple lock he should introduce things like NI for (working) pensioners.
I am less than a decade away from the state pension, that and my relatively pathetic private pension won't cut the mustard so I will remain scratching around to make a living until I drop. And you want to tax me more!
The people who should have been taxed are the current and recently departed pensioners who enjoyed tax free jam and cream final salary pensions and triple locks, and you want me to cough up NI.
Currently home owning, BMW driving, 'I done good' Boris voters of my generation are going to get a big shock when they arrive at the day they draw their pensions, and when we hit 85 and incontinence and immobility are the order of the day. We will realise then, that our split-level executive style Barratt houses from the 1990s will be the downpayment on the incontinence nurse's salary.
And you want to tax me more ..
Yup, for the greater good
I mean you don't hear me complain paying 45% income tax.
The whole system is messed up.
I'm a diabetic, so I get my prescriptions for free.
Yet someone who earns slightly above the minimum wage, has to pay for theirs.
Although 90% of prescriptions are, IIRC 'free'. What seems to me very unfair is that the prescription charge bears no relation to the cost of the medicines; it's simply an easily collectable tax for using the NHS. The 'average' cost of the medicines is below the level of the tax.
I agree, this one of those things only a Labour government could introduce.
Because if anyone else did it then they are attacking a fundamental tenet of the NHS.
Sunak should be bold, not only should be get rid of the triple lock he should introduce things like NI for (working) pensioners.
He should just get rid of the waste of space that is NI
A former Chancellor once said that is the policy goal of every Chancellor, sadly it can only be introduced with a government with a majority of 400 and in year one of a ten year term.
Full abolition might be complicated by Employer NI rates, he thinks clever people would move plenty of their salary as benefits where the NI rate is what just under 14%?
There are very few things you can claim via salary sacrifice nowadays - literally the only worthwhile options are pensions and electric cars.
But the increase of Employer NI over the years has made combining Income tax and National insurance an impossible task.
But it's also exactly why it should be done. Having a jobs tax like that is completely counterproductive. It also means whole segments of the economy find a mammoth incentive for employer and employee to mutually agree to underreporting of wages.
Not something I've ever engaged in but I know many people who made no secret of the fact that their wages were eg £100 a week cash in hand better than what was reported on their payslip. Employer dodges NI, Employee dodges NI and IC and keeps UC. Everyone's a winner except honest employers competing and honest taxpayers.
Oh I know of some people who were doing that and then the furlough scheme come along - they were not happy, no cash in hand money and minimal furlough amounts.
Being blunt though those firms would be doing the same even if there were no Employer NI savings - one of the large umbrella firms has introduced a new expenses policy because they were losing workers to a different umbrella firm due to that firms generous expenses rules.
It's like RCS1000 always says about illegal working and the Swiss; one party should always be better off from being honest. If that happens you give a tremendous incentive to be honest.
We currently penalise employees for earning more and penalise employers for paying more then act shocked that people cooperate to underreport wages.
For employers wages are an expense not an income so the logical situation is that the more an employer reports in wages the lower their tax bill should be, not the other way around. That would largely eliminate the employers incentive to engage in fraud.
The incentive for employers to engage in fraud is simply their ability to retain employees - see my previous reply.
But that is getting to be far harder than it used to be - as an example did you know that one of the sectors where wages increased most between 2009 and 2018 was private hire drivers - where real wages increased 40%.
They didn't but it's far harder to hide money when it's no longer paid in cash and the taxi firms / uber need to report all payments.
Employer NI should be rewiewed, once it’s clear what the market for labour looks like after the pandemic, and without an almost unlimited supply of foreign workers.
It’s literally a tax on jobs, and over time with a more constrained labour market will encourage replacement of labour with capital. Which may be a good thing, and may be a bad thing.
It's also £40bn to the treasury and the sole reason IR35 still exists - so Employer NI isn't going anywhere (sadly).
And we really should be replacing labour where possible with capital - that increases productivity and allows wages to rise.
Yes it’s actually a very complicated situation, with the Treasury now so reliant on it, that they’re making life quite difficult for genuine contract workers.
At the bottom end of the labour market (car washes, fast food), there’s very good reasons for replacing labour with capital, so long as that redundant labour can find alternative employment (or emigrate), and not be a burden on the State.
But if the government continues to disincentivise labour with taxes, while incentivising capex with tax breaks, it could go too far and we see mass unemployment. There’s a careful line to draw, and IMO full employment should be the first goal of government.
Which is that while on the one hand it is just a sporting occasion, on another it is an opportunity where the hopes and dreams of a whole people come together – even for a moment.
We all focus on the same ball, we all focus on the same goal. There is nothing bad about this. It reminds us that there can be things that unite us and that they should survive off the pitch as well as on it.
Douglas never put it like that but, to be fair, London *has* become a foreign country. It's spun-off and transcended itself to become a global mega-city with every sort of language spoken on the streets, and people from all over the world, but also all rather individualised. Many Londoners with roots stretching back generations have moved out, and Britons are now in a minority. Most of those you see and hear speaking English in the City and Westminster are commuters. London is intense, dynamic, interesting, but also rather transient. It's become rather a strange place.
We know it's true because someone posted that video of London in the 1970s on here a couple of days ago, and the differences are obvious - the changes of the last 30 years, in particular, have been vast.
Now, you might well welcome those changes and think they're all for the better, and to an extent I agree with that, but London has a very different feel and culture to much of the rest of the country now - even to Hampshire - so it's not mutually-exclusive or unreasonable to say it feels like an alien world and celebrate the successes of a diverse England team at the same time.
London is very different, for sure, but it's only strange if you're not used to it. When I leave London it feels very strange to me to be surrounded entirely by white people, for instance, really jarring. Takes a while to get used to it. I would also dispute the idea that it's transitory. Where I live in SE London (zone 2, one train stop from London Bridge) most of our neighbours have lived here for years, decades even. Our next door neighbour is in his 50s and was born on this street. Many ethnic minority communities in places like Brick Lane or Southall or Brixton have lived there for 60 years plus, maybe on the third generation born there, so they're not really transient either.
Over time as people move in and out of London the rest of the country is only going to become more like London. So I'd recommended people spending some time here, we are your future. (And it's great).
I wish you were right in everything you say in your last paragraph, but you are remarkably optimistic on several points. First off, the rest of the country is a big and variegated place and most of it isn't becoming much like London.
Which is that while on the one hand it is just a sporting occasion, on another it is an opportunity where the hopes and dreams of a whole people come together – even for a moment.
We all focus on the same ball, we all focus on the same goal. There is nothing bad about this. It reminds us that there can be things that unite us and that they should survive off the pitch as well as on it.
Douglas never put it like that but, to be fair, London *has* become a foreign country. It's spun-off and transcended itself to become a global mega-city with every sort of language spoken on the streets, and people from all over the world, but also all rather individualised. Many Londoners with roots stretching back generations have moved out, and Britons are now in a minority. Most of those you see and hear speaking English in the City and Westminster are commuters. London is intense, dynamic, interesting, but also rather transient. It's become rather a strange place.
We know it's true because someone posted that video of London in the 1970s on here a couple of days ago, and the differences are obvious - the changes of the last 30 years, in particular, have been vast.
Now, you might well welcome those changes and think they're all for the better, and to an extent I agree with that, but London has a very different feel and culture to much of the rest of the country now - even to Hampshire - so it's not mutually-exclusive or unreasonable to say it feels like an alien world and celebrate the successes of a diverse England team at the same time.
London is very different, for sure, but it's only strange if you're not used to it. When I leave London it feels very strange to me to be surrounded entirely by white people, for instance, really jarring. Takes a while to get used to it. I would also dispute the idea that it's transitory. Where I live in SE London (zone 2, one train stop from London Bridge) most of our neighbours have lived here for years, decades even. Our next door neighbour is in his 50s and was born on this street. Many ethnic minority communities in places like Brick Lane or Southall or Brixton have lived there for 60 years plus, maybe on the third generation born there, so they're not really transient either. Over time as people move in and out of London the rest of the country is only going to become more like London. So I'd recommended people spending some time here, we are your future. (And it's great).
we are your future. (And it's great)
How do London's home ownership and inequality levels compare with the rest of Britain.
I imagine homeownership rates in London are lower and inequality higher as is typical in a large densely populated city where land is expensive. I'm not sure why those characteristics would be replicated if the rest of the country gradually took on a demographic profile more similar to that of London. Could you explain your logic please?
A high level of immigration, especially low skilled immigration, correlates to increasing inequality and falling home ownership.
Now you can say, as indeed you did, that there are BAME communities which have been in London for generations.
But they didn't stop the increase in home ownership and general spreading of wealth in London in the 1980s and 1990s.
What concerns me (and perhaps here we are talking at cross purposes) are the rapid demographic changes which have occurred in London since 2000. AndyJS provided some very good data on the changes between census 2001 and census 2011 at the time. Demographic changes which have coincided with London's falling home ownership and increasing inequality.
It is that aspect of London which I find disagreeable and nothing to recommend as a future.
Newly re-elected chairman of the '22 Graham Brady making sympathetic noises about breaking the triple lock suggests it is on the endangered list.
I think the C&A result has completely blown out Tory plans for 2024, red wall+oldies won't get them over the line. They can't afford for middle class working age people to switch to the Lib Dems or Labour.
"Delta variant is reinfecting people who have already had Covid-19"
Told you so a month ago, anickdotalleeee.
Does rather change the narrative for vaccinating under 18s, if their current acquired immunity by alpha isn't enough to keep delta away then vaccines need to be considered.
Whitty always looks terrified when he's talking about vaccination for under 18s. It's as if the UK juvenile vaccinationcovid program is being driven by some odd combination of Andrew Wakefield meets Leah Betts.
Which is that while on the one hand it is just a sporting occasion, on another it is an opportunity where the hopes and dreams of a whole people come together – even for a moment.
We all focus on the same ball, we all focus on the same goal. There is nothing bad about this. It reminds us that there can be things that unite us and that they should survive off the pitch as well as on it.
Douglas never put it like that but, to be fair, London *has* become a foreign country. It's spun-off and transcended itself to become a global mega-city with every sort of language spoken on the streets, and people from all over the world, but also all rather individualised. Many Londoners with roots stretching back generations have moved out, and Britons are now in a minority. Most of those you see and hear speaking English in the City and Westminster are commuters. London is intense, dynamic, interesting, but also rather transient. It's become rather a strange place.
We know it's true because someone posted that video of London in the 1970s on here a couple of days ago, and the differences are obvious - the changes of the last 30 years, in particular, have been vast.
Now, you might well welcome those changes and think they're all for the better, and to an extent I agree with that, but London has a very different feel and culture to much of the rest of the country now - even to Hampshire - so it's not mutually-exclusive or unreasonable to say it feels like an alien world and celebrate the successes of a diverse England team at the same time.
London is very different, for sure, but it's only strange if you're not used to it. When I leave London it feels very strange to me to be surrounded entirely by white people, for instance, really jarring. Takes a while to get used to it. I would also dispute the idea that it's transitory. Where I live in SE London (zone 2, one train stop from London Bridge) most of our neighbours have lived here for years, decades even. Our next door neighbour is in his 50s and was born on this street. Many ethnic minority communities in places like Brick Lane or Southall or Brixton have lived there for 60 years plus, maybe on the third generation born there, so they're not really transient either. Over time as people move in and out of London the rest of the country is only going to become more like London. So I'd recommended people spending some time here, we are your future. (And it's great).
There are ethnic minorities outside of London of course and renters outside of London, however most in London now rent and only 59% of London's population is white and just 44% white British which is quite different to the UK as a whole which is 86% white and where most still own their home
Apologies if this has already been pointed out, but, err, no, the Tory programme at GE2010 did not include the triple lock. It was a LibDem policy, a fact which oddly enough seems to have been airbrushed out of history. It became government policy because the LibDems insisted on it. What's more, it was Theresa May who wanted to end it, in the 2017 manifesto. Both Labour and the LibDems said they'd keep it. In fact, back in 2014 the Libdems vowed that making it permanent would be a pre-condition for any future coalition deal:
In other words, the idea that it is specifically the Conservatives who feather-bed their pensioner voters with this policy is codswallop.
On the politics now, no, I don't think Sunak will be overruled. The effect of applying it this year is so grotesque that I don't think it will happen. The political cost of suspending it will be zero. No-one thinks it's sensible to uprate pensions so steeply because of a temporary quirk in the figures caused by the quite exceptional circumstances of the pandemic. The only thing preventing this is the manifesto promise, but who on earth thinks Boris ever feels himself bound by a promise?
It's worth noting that the PM and Chancellor this week have both been using the exact same language in talking about this. About maintaining the triple lock, being fair to pensioners and fair to taxpayers.
The solution is blindingly obvious. Wages have not risen by 8% this year, we all know that, it's a technical abberation. So the Treasury will come up with a technical fix to how earnings are measured and say that they're maintaining the triple lock.
Which is so eminently reasonable that it may get mouthings off but people will reasonably accept it.
I can't understand why this year can be classed as a technical abberation yet last year wasn't.
Poor Scotland, a eunuch nation, whose existence depends on England failing, yet voted to be a part of Greater England in 2014.
Just imagine how successful Scots would be if they weren't so bitter. This explains Malcolm doesn't it?
Pure Radio Scotland has swapped out its saltire logo for the red, white and green of Italy ahead of England’s World Cup Final game on Sunday.
The DC Thomson Group station has also changed its slogan to Italy’s Best Music and the jingles and voiceovers have been substituted for Italian ones and artists like The Proclaimers and Amy MacDonald, replaced by Black Box and Dean Martin.
Pure Radio socials and even the DAB scrolling text have been changed to show Pure Radio Italy.
Pure Radio breakfast host and DC Thomson Group Head Of Presentation, Robin Galloway explained to RadioToday: “We gave out Danish pastries to workplaces before the Denmark game which went down really well with our audience but the morning after the game, listeners bombarded Pure with complaints about over the top, bias TV commentary, so I thought, let’s flip the station name and go all Italian.
“We even deep fried lasagne in focaccia on our segment Deep FRYday.
Of course, you may well think this is just Scotland being bitter – and you’d be absolutely right.
While we're on pensions, be prepared for 'interesting times' in academia this year - at least in the 'old' universities with USS pensions.* The pandemic has further screwed valuations with respect to the pension fund deficits. These figures may seem incredible, but they are correct.
Current combined employer and employee pension contributions as % of gross pay: 30.7% Planned combined contribution from 1 October this year: 34.7% Three proposed scenarios from combined contributions to address the deficit: 56.2%, 49.6% (USS preferred option), 42.1% (requires the employers to make more commitments to underwrite the scheme)
Needless to say, these are crazy. Employee contributions are 9.6% now, rising to 11% in October. Under the 56.2% scenario employee contributions rise to 18.6%; under the 42.1% scenario, employee contributions rise to 13.6% - so under any of those it woud mean real terms take home pay cuts.
I - and many others - would be out of USS already if our employer would contribute to a defined contribution scheme instead - I'd be delighted if the uni would put ~20% of my pay into a DC scheme while I contributed 10%. I'd be very happy if they'd put in 10%. At the proposed levels, I think many of us will bail out anyway, even if it's only us contributing to a private DC scheme. If many of us do that, USS will be bust.
On the other hand, if the markets pick up then the projected problems might largely disappear.
*Having also worked for a few of years at a scummer university and in the civil service, I also have civil service and local government pension schemes, which - unlike USS which is private - are government backed (also unfunded, but they don't have to worry about that, only taxpayers do).
Edit: And yes, it may have been the same scientists working on the USS doom projections who also did the Covid modelling
Which is that while on the one hand it is just a sporting occasion, on another it is an opportunity where the hopes and dreams of a whole people come together – even for a moment.
We all focus on the same ball, we all focus on the same goal. There is nothing bad about this. It reminds us that there can be things that unite us and that they should survive off the pitch as well as on it.
Douglas never put it like that but, to be fair, London *has* become a foreign country. It's spun-off and transcended itself to become a global mega-city with every sort of language spoken on the streets, and people from all over the world, but also all rather individualised. Many Londoners with roots stretching back generations have moved out, and Britons are now in a minority. Most of those you see and hear speaking English in the City and Westminster are commuters. London is intense, dynamic, interesting, but also rather transient. It's become rather a strange place.
We know it's true because someone posted that video of London in the 1970s on here a couple of days ago, and the differences are obvious - the changes of the last 30 years, in particular, have been vast.
Now, you might well welcome those changes and think they're all for the better, and to an extent I agree with that, but London has a very different feel and culture to much of the rest of the country now - even to Hampshire - so it's not mutually-exclusive or unreasonable to say it feels like an alien world and celebrate the successes of a diverse England team at the same time.
London is very different, for sure, but it's only strange if you're not used to it. When I leave London it feels very strange to me to be surrounded entirely by white people, for instance, really jarring. Takes a while to get used to it. I would also dispute the idea that it's transitory. Where I live in SE London (zone 2, one train stop from London Bridge) most of our neighbours have lived here for years, decades even. Our next door neighbour is in his 50s and was born on this street. Many ethnic minority communities in places like Brick Lane or Southall or Brixton have lived there for 60 years plus, maybe on the third generation born there, so they're not really transient either. Over time as people move in and out of London the rest of the country is only going to become more like London. So I'd recommended people spending some time here, we are your future. (And it's great).
Not sure where you're going to that the rest of Britain outside of London is entirely white to you but near where I live there's both a Mosque and a Hindu Temple and for very good reason for both.
The country isn't entirely divided between London and Midsomer.
Which is that while on the one hand it is just a sporting occasion, on another it is an opportunity where the hopes and dreams of a whole people come together – even for a moment.
We all focus on the same ball, we all focus on the same goal. There is nothing bad about this. It reminds us that there can be things that unite us and that they should survive off the pitch as well as on it.
Sunak should be bold, not only should be get rid of the triple lock he should introduce things like NI for (working) pensioners.
He should just get rid of the waste of space that is NI
A former Chancellor once said that is the policy goal of every Chancellor, sadly it can only be introduced with a government with a majority of 400 and in year one of a ten year term.
Full abolition might be complicated by Employer NI rates, he thinks clever people would move plenty of their salary as benefits where the NI rate is what just under 14%?
There are very few things you can claim via salary sacrifice nowadays - literally the only worthwhile options are pensions and electric cars.
But the increase of Employer NI over the years has made combining Income tax and National insurance an impossible task.
But it's also exactly why it should be done. Having a jobs tax like that is completely counterproductive. It also means whole segments of the economy find a mammoth incentive for employer and employee to mutually agree to underreporting of wages.
Not something I've ever engaged in but I know many people who made no secret of the fact that their wages were eg £100 a week cash in hand better than what was reported on their payslip. Employer dodges NI, Employee dodges NI and IC and keeps UC. Everyone's a winner except honest employers competing and honest taxpayers.
Oh I know of some people who were doing that and then the furlough scheme come along - they were not happy, no cash in hand money and minimal furlough amounts.
Being blunt though those firms would be doing the same even if there were no Employer NI savings - one of the large umbrella firms has introduced a new expenses policy because they were losing workers to a different umbrella firm due to that firms generous expenses rules.
It's like RCS1000 always says about illegal working and the Swiss; one party should always be better off from being honest. If that happens you give a tremendous incentive to be honest.
We currently penalise employees for earning more and penalise employers for paying more then act shocked that people cooperate to underreport wages.
For employers wages are an expense not an income so the logical situation is that the more an employer reports in wages the lower their tax bill should be, not the other way around. That would largely eliminate the employers incentive to engage in fraud.
The incentive for employers to engage in fraud is simply their ability to retain employees - see my previous reply.
But that is getting to be far harder than it used to be - as an example did you know that one of the sectors where wages increased most between 2009 and 2018 was private hire drivers - where real wages increased 40%.
They didn't but it's far harder to hide money when it's no longer paid in cash and the taxi firms / uber need to report all payments.
Employer NI should be rewiewed, once it’s clear what the market for labour looks like after the pandemic, and without an almost unlimited supply of foreign workers.
It’s literally a tax on jobs, and over time with a more constrained labour market will encourage replacement of labour with capital. Which may be a good thing, and may be a bad thing.
It's completely crazy. An employer paying better wages is an expense for the employer and a social good to be encouraged not an externality to be punished.
It's just a cost of employment - why do you think IR35 rules exist.
And why do you think we have a significant HGV crisis - a lot of that was due to firms abusing tax to keep labour costs artificially low.
That's precisely my point. If you think only HGV firms are finding a way around the rules you're very much deluded.
This is probably a much bigger deal in those industries where a lot of cash can change hands, where the fraud of reporting one figure to HMRC while handing another figure over in an envelope is viable and HMRC is currently literally encouraging that fraud by treating higher wages as an externality to be taxed.
And?
It's getting harder to do so and when HMRC do find out the person who is receiving the money is liable for the unpaid tax.
People are cheating the tax system isn't justification for risking £40bn especially when the amount being fiddled is nothing like that (it seems to be about £12bn of all which is recoverable when HMRC find a reason to look).
Except HMRC isn't looking most of the time. Which is why so many people were caught off guard when furlough struck. The issue with fraud is that HMRC loses out five ways: they lose the Employer NI obviously, but they also lose the Employee NI, the Employee Income Tax and they continue to pay the Employee more Universal Credit than due and the employer is almost certainly dodging VAT to acquire the off book cash in the first place.
So if officially approximately a third of the amount raised is potentially squandered in fraud then the reality is probably more than that. And if a third of the money raised is squandered in fraud then there should be a better way to raise the money.
Yes £40bn is a heck of a lot of money and a comprehensive reform would be difficult to do, but that doesn't make it the wrong thing to do just very difficult. Merging six different benefits into one with Universal Credit was difficult but it's been done and the reality is despite the complaints things are better for it.
Apologies if this has already been pointed out, but, err, no, the Tory programme at GE2010 did not include the triple lock. It was a LibDem policy, a fact which oddly enough seems to have been airbrushed out of history. It became government policy because the LibDems insisted on it. What's more, it was Theresa May who wanted to end it, in the 2017 manifesto. Both Labour and the LibDems said they'd keep it. In fact, back in 2014 the Libdems vowed that making it permanent would be a pre-condition for any future coalition deal:
In other words, the idea that it is specifically the Conservatives who feather-bed their pensioner voters with this policy is codswallop.
On the politics now, no, I don't think Sunak will be overruled. The effect of applying it this year is so grotesque that I don't think it will happen. The political cost of suspending it will be zero. No-one thinks it's sensible to uprate pensions so steeply because of a temporary quirk in the figures caused by the quite exceptional circumstances of the pandemic. The only thing preventing this is the manifesto promise, but who on earth thinks Boris ever feels himself bound by a promise?
It's worth noting that the PM and Chancellor this week have both been using the exact same language in talking about this. About maintaining the triple lock, being fair to pensioners and fair to taxpayers.
The solution is blindingly obvious. Wages have not risen by 8% this year, we all know that, it's a technical abberation. So the Treasury will come up with a technical fix to how earnings are measured and say that they're maintaining the triple lock.
Which is so eminently reasonable that it may get mouthings off but people will reasonably accept it.
I can't understand why this year can be classed as a technical abberation yet last year wasn't.
Surely they are looking at both. Assuming the net earnings increase for the 2 years combined is under 2.5% per year you simply ignore the earnings figure and apply the 2.5% figure which we got last year.
I don't think any of this is rocket science. For this aberration just apply the same rules but for a 2 year period.
Which is that while on the one hand it is just a sporting occasion, on another it is an opportunity where the hopes and dreams of a whole people come together – even for a moment.
We all focus on the same ball, we all focus on the same goal. There is nothing bad about this. It reminds us that there can be things that unite us and that they should survive off the pitch as well as on it.
Douglas never put it like that but, to be fair, London *has* become a foreign country. It's spun-off and transcended itself to become a global mega-city with every sort of language spoken on the streets, and people from all over the world, but also all rather individualised. Many Londoners with roots stretching back generations have moved out, and Britons are now in a minority. Most of those you see and hear speaking English in the City and Westminster are commuters. London is intense, dynamic, interesting, but also rather transient. It's become rather a strange place.
We know it's true because someone posted that video of London in the 1970s on here a couple of days ago, and the differences are obvious - the changes of the last 30 years, in particular, have been vast.
Now, you might well welcome those changes and think they're all for the better, and to an extent I agree with that, but London has a very different feel and culture to much of the rest of the country now - even to Hampshire - so it's not mutually-exclusive or unreasonable to say it feels like an alien world and celebrate the successes of a diverse England team at the same time.
London is very different, for sure, but it's only strange if you're not used to it. When I leave London it feels very strange to me to be surrounded entirely by white people, for instance, really jarring. Takes a while to get used to it. I would also dispute the idea that it's transitory. Where I live in SE London (zone 2, one train stop from London Bridge) most of our neighbours have lived here for years, decades even. Our next door neighbour is in his 50s and was born on this street. Many ethnic minority communities in places like Brick Lane or Southall or Brixton have lived there for 60 years plus, maybe on the third generation born there, so they're not really transient either. Over time as people move in and out of London the rest of the country is only going to become more like London. So I'd recommended people spending some time here, we are your future. (And it's great).
Not sure where you're going to that the rest of Britain outside of London is entirely white to you but near where I live there's both a Mosque and a Hindu Temple and for very good reason for both.
The country isn't entirely divided between London and Midsomer.
The triple lock is safe, I expect, based on what Rishi and Boris have hinted. What about the 25% tax-free pension withdrwal though? Introduced by George Osborne as part of his pension flexibility reforms.
Btw, if I were opposed to austerity, like HMG, and not wedded to it like previous Conservative governments, then I'd wonder if it is actually better to increase the pension rate in order to get money circulating. Grow the economy, that's the key.
Sunak should be bold, not only should be get rid of the triple lock he should introduce things like NI for (working) pensioners.
He should just get rid of the waste of space that is NI
A former Chancellor once said that is the policy goal of every Chancellor, sadly it can only be introduced with a government with a majority of 400 and in year one of a ten year term.
Full abolition might be complicated by Employer NI rates, he thinks clever people would move plenty of their salary as benefits where the NI rate is what just under 14%?
There are very few things you can claim via salary sacrifice nowadays - literally the only worthwhile options are pensions and electric cars.
But the increase of Employer NI over the years has made combining Income tax and National insurance an impossible task.
But it's also exactly why it should be done. Having a jobs tax like that is completely counterproductive. It also means whole segments of the economy find a mammoth incentive for employer and employee to mutually agree to underreporting of wages.
Not something I've ever engaged in but I know many people who made no secret of the fact that their wages were eg £100 a week cash in hand better than what was reported on their payslip. Employer dodges NI, Employee dodges NI and IC and keeps UC. Everyone's a winner except honest employers competing and honest taxpayers.
Oh I know of some people who were doing that and then the furlough scheme come along - they were not happy, no cash in hand money and minimal furlough amounts.
Being blunt though those firms would be doing the same even if there were no Employer NI savings - one of the large umbrella firms has introduced a new expenses policy because they were losing workers to a different umbrella firm due to that firms generous expenses rules.
It's like RCS1000 always says about illegal working and the Swiss; one party should always be better off from being honest. If that happens you give a tremendous incentive to be honest.
We currently penalise employees for earning more and penalise employers for paying more then act shocked that people cooperate to underreport wages.
For employers wages are an expense not an income so the logical situation is that the more an employer reports in wages the lower their tax bill should be, not the other way around. That would largely eliminate the employers incentive to engage in fraud.
The incentive for employers to engage in fraud is simply their ability to retain employees - see my previous reply.
But that is getting to be far harder than it used to be - as an example did you know that one of the sectors where wages increased most between 2009 and 2018 was private hire drivers - where real wages increased 40%.
They didn't but it's far harder to hide money when it's no longer paid in cash and the taxi firms / uber need to report all payments.
Employer NI should be rewiewed, once it’s clear what the market for labour looks like after the pandemic, and without an almost unlimited supply of foreign workers.
It’s literally a tax on jobs, and over time with a more constrained labour market will encourage replacement of labour with capital. Which may be a good thing, and may be a bad thing.
It's also £40bn to the treasury and the sole reason IR35 still exists - so Employer NI isn't going anywhere (sadly).
And we really should be replacing labour where possible with capital - that increases productivity and allows wages to rise.
Yes it’s actually a very complicated situation, with the Treasury now so reliant on it, that they’re making life quite difficult for genuine contract workers.
At the bottom end of the labour market (car washes, fast food), there’s very good reasons for replacing labour with capital, so long as that redundant labour can find alternative employment (or emigrate), and not be a burden on the State.
But if the government continues to disincentivise labour with taxes, while incentivising capex with tax breaks, it could go too far and we see mass unemployment. There’s a careful line to draw, and IMO full employment should be the first goal of government.
IT Contractors are actually difficult here as (no matter what the people profiteering from it have said) we've not recently been the actual target of the post 2015 changes in expenses rules and IR35, we've just been friendly fire
But I suspect we are a long way from capex resulting in mass unemployment. A lot of people use hand car washes and other things because they dislike the automated versions.
Sunak should be bold, not only should be get rid of the triple lock he should introduce things like NI for (working) pensioners.
He should just get rid of the waste of space that is NI
A former Chancellor once said that is the policy goal of every Chancellor, sadly it can only be introduced with a government with a majority of 400 and in year one of a ten year term.
Full abolition might be complicated by Employer NI rates, he thinks clever people would move plenty of their salary as benefits where the NI rate is what just under 14%?
There are very few things you can claim via salary sacrifice nowadays - literally the only worthwhile options are pensions and electric cars.
But the increase of Employer NI over the years has made combining Income tax and National insurance an impossible task.
But it's also exactly why it should be done. Having a jobs tax like that is completely counterproductive. It also means whole segments of the economy find a mammoth incentive for employer and employee to mutually agree to underreporting of wages.
Not something I've ever engaged in but I know many people who made no secret of the fact that their wages were eg £100 a week cash in hand better than what was reported on their payslip. Employer dodges NI, Employee dodges NI and IC and keeps UC. Everyone's a winner except honest employers competing and honest taxpayers.
Oh I know of some people who were doing that and then the furlough scheme come along - they were not happy, no cash in hand money and minimal furlough amounts.
Being blunt though those firms would be doing the same even if there were no Employer NI savings - one of the large umbrella firms has introduced a new expenses policy because they were losing workers to a different umbrella firm due to that firms generous expenses rules.
It's like RCS1000 always says about illegal working and the Swiss; one party should always be better off from being honest. If that happens you give a tremendous incentive to be honest.
We currently penalise employees for earning more and penalise employers for paying more then act shocked that people cooperate to underreport wages.
For employers wages are an expense not an income so the logical situation is that the more an employer reports in wages the lower their tax bill should be, not the other way around. That would largely eliminate the employers incentive to engage in fraud.
The incentive for employers to engage in fraud is simply their ability to retain employees - see my previous reply.
But that is getting to be far harder than it used to be - as an example did you know that one of the sectors where wages increased most between 2009 and 2018 was private hire drivers - where real wages increased 40%.
They didn't but it's far harder to hide money when it's no longer paid in cash and the taxi firms / uber need to report all payments.
Employer NI should be rewiewed, once it’s clear what the market for labour looks like after the pandemic, and without an almost unlimited supply of foreign workers.
It’s literally a tax on jobs, and over time with a more constrained labour market will encourage replacement of labour with capital. Which may be a good thing, and may be a bad thing.
It's also £40bn to the treasury and the sole reason IR35 still exists - so Employer NI isn't going anywhere (sadly).
And we really should be replacing labour where possible with capital - that increases productivity and allows wages to rise.
Yes it’s actually a very complicated situation, with the Treasury now so reliant on it, that they’re making life quite difficult for genuine contract workers.
At the bottom end of the labour market (car washes, fast food), there’s very good reasons for replacing labour with capital, so long as that redundant labour can find alternative employment (or emigrate), and not be a burden on the State.
But if the government continues to disincentivise labour with taxes, while incentivising capex with tax breaks, it could go too far and we see mass unemployment. There’s a careful line to draw, and IMO full employment should be the first goal of government.
Mechanisation of labour doesn't lead to higher unemployment, historically. Instead the labour is shifted to more productive, and generally higher paying roles.
Newly re-elected chairman of the '22 Graham Brady making sympathetic noises about breaking the triple lock suggests it is on the endangered list.
I think the C&A result has completely blown out Tory plans for 2024, red wall+oldies won't get them over the line. They can't afford for middle class working age people to switch to the Lib Dems or Labour.
Red Wall would if they hold what they have and add a handful with a big BXP vote like Hartlepool.
Even a 10% swing to the LDs in 2023/24 would see them only pick up 27 Tory seats, which would still give an overall Tory majority of 26
"Delta variant is reinfecting people who have already had Covid-19"
Told you so a month ago, anickdotalleeee.
The paper doesn't say that are being reinfected, it says could basdd on in the lab tests, because of neutralising effect of antibodies. But we know we have t-cells. They also say inly 10% protect from one dose, but we know real world data its more like 40%.
We actually have real world data from ONS, and a) reinfection is still rare and b) (really important) first infection viral load, thus severity is a broad range, among confirmed reinfected, all bar the odd unlucky sod, low levels of viral load and minor illness.
To give an idea of magnitude, the ONS report said 15k possible reinfections so far, 600 confirmed.
The triple lock is safe, I expect, based on what Rishi and Boris have hinted. What about the 25% tax-free pension withdrwal though? Introduced by George Osborne as part of his pension flexibility reforms.
Btw, if I were opposed to austerity, like HMG, and not wedded to it like previous Conservative governments, then I'd wonder if it is actually better to increase the pension rate in order to get money circulating. Grow the economy, that's the key.
There's always been a 25% tax-free allowance on pension withdrawals. George Osborne's reforms were about what you could do with the rest, and very sensible reforms they were too.
Poor Scotland, a eunuch nation, whose existence depends on England failing, yet voted to be a part of Greater England in 2014.
Just imagine how successful Scots would be if they weren't so bitter. This explains Malcolm doesn't it?
Pure Radio Scotland has swapped out its saltire logo for the red, white and green of Italy ahead of England’s World Cup Final game on Sunday.
The DC Thomson Group station has also changed its slogan to Italy’s Best Music and the jingles and voiceovers have been substituted for Italian ones and artists like The Proclaimers and Amy MacDonald, replaced by Black Box and Dean Martin.
Pure Radio socials and even the DAB scrolling text have been changed to show Pure Radio Italy.
Pure Radio breakfast host and DC Thomson Group Head Of Presentation, Robin Galloway explained to RadioToday: “We gave out Danish pastries to workplaces before the Denmark game which went down really well with our audience but the morning after the game, listeners bombarded Pure with complaints about over the top, bias TV commentary, so I thought, let’s flip the station name and go all Italian.
“We even deep fried lasagne in focaccia on our segment Deep FRYday.
Of course, you may well think this is just Scotland being bitter – and you’d be absolutely right.
Imagine the identity of your country being based solely on hating another one, but then not voting to leave a union with it because they're a bunch bottlers.
Which is that while on the one hand it is just a sporting occasion, on another it is an opportunity where the hopes and dreams of a whole people come together – even for a moment.
We all focus on the same ball, we all focus on the same goal. There is nothing bad about this. It reminds us that there can be things that unite us and that they should survive off the pitch as well as on it.
'Genocide is fine if you're doing it for Jesus' is not a hot take I ever expected to read outside of The Onion/Daily Mash.
Well ISIS and Al Qaeda are fine with terrorist murder in the name of Allah and Muhammad.
There will always be a minority of extremists within any religion prepared to kill for it but there is no evidence the deaths of native children in Canada in the 19th century in mainly Catholic schools were intentional, indeed most died of disease
Which book of the Bible has the Parable of Whataboutery and the one about it all being an unfortunate accident?
There is plenty of killing for God in the Old Testament, the Crusades were fought on the basis of conquest and killing for God and Christianity.
It is the New Testament which is more about love and forgiveness
Pensions should rise in line with inflation not earnings but the Tories are bound by their manifesto commitment until the next general election
Why? Do you want people who rely on the state pension only to keep getting poorer compared to the rest of the population.
Only if they are also prepared to face a cut in the state pension too as there was a large fall in average earnings over the last year and a half state pensioners were protected from.
Inflation reflects rises in prices in the shops so is what pensions should be based on
So you would be happy if your current pay was equally to the pay for the same job in 1910 plus inflation would you?
Inflation by definition means it would not be the same as pay for a job in 1910
Poor Scotland, a eunuch nation, whose existence depends on England failing, yet voted to be a part of Greater England in 2014.
Just imagine how successful Scots would be if they weren't so bitter. This explains Malcolm doesn't it?
Pure Radio Scotland has swapped out its saltire logo for the red, white and green of Italy ahead of England’s World Cup Final game on Sunday.
The DC Thomson Group station has also changed its slogan to Italy’s Best Music and the jingles and voiceovers have been substituted for Italian ones and artists like The Proclaimers and Amy MacDonald, replaced by Black Box and Dean Martin.
Pure Radio socials and even the DAB scrolling text have been changed to show Pure Radio Italy.
Pure Radio breakfast host and DC Thomson Group Head Of Presentation, Robin Galloway explained to RadioToday: “We gave out Danish pastries to workplaces before the Denmark game which went down really well with our audience but the morning after the game, listeners bombarded Pure with complaints about over the top, bias TV commentary, so I thought, let’s flip the station name and go all Italian.
“We even deep fried lasagne in focaccia on our segment Deep FRYday.
Of course, you may well think this is just Scotland being bitter – and you’d be absolutely right.
"Delta variant is reinfecting people who have already had Covid-19"
Told you so a month ago, anickdotalleeee.
The paper doesn't say that are being reinfected, it says could in the lab.
We actually have real world data from ONS, and a) reinfection is still rare and b) (really important) first infection viral load, thus severity is a range, among reinfected, all bar the odd unlucky sod, low levels of viral load and minor illness.
A group of French scientists led by the Institut Pasteur in Paris
Newly re-elected chairman of the '22 Graham Brady making sympathetic noises about breaking the triple lock suggests it is on the endangered list.
I think the C&A result has completely blown out Tory plans for 2024, red wall+oldies won't get them over the line. They can't afford for middle class working age people to switch to the Lib Dems or Labour.
But what does that mean for housing in southern England.
Are the middle class working age people for or against building more ? Does it depend on whether they are already dome owners ?
Poor Scotland, a eunuch nation, whose existence depends on England failing, yet voted to be a part of Greater England in 2014.
Just imagine how successful Scots would be if they weren't so bitter. This explains Malcolm doesn't it?
Pure Radio Scotland has swapped out its saltire logo for the red, white and green of Italy ahead of England’s World Cup Final game on Sunday.
The DC Thomson Group station has also changed its slogan to Italy’s Best Music and the jingles and voiceovers have been substituted for Italian ones and artists like The Proclaimers and Amy MacDonald, replaced by Black Box and Dean Martin.
Pure Radio socials and even the DAB scrolling text have been changed to show Pure Radio Italy.
Pure Radio breakfast host and DC Thomson Group Head Of Presentation, Robin Galloway explained to RadioToday: “We gave out Danish pastries to workplaces before the Denmark game which went down really well with our audience but the morning after the game, listeners bombarded Pure with complaints about over the top, bias TV commentary, so I thought, let’s flip the station name and go all Italian.
“We even deep fried lasagne in focaccia on our segment Deep FRYday.
Of course, you may well think this is just Scotland being bitter – and you’d be absolutely right.
On the last point they have moved their conversation onto long covid. I don't see any mention of that in the bbc piece.
The point is children are at a low risk of covid so logic would conclude that the mantra of thousands of children suffering long covid is just not justified
I don't think that true. The ONS data does show long covid at its highest in 35-49 females, but significant rates in the teens:
I’m not seeing the 20 to 30% long Covid that Pagel thinks is the rate. This is an issue for sure, and we probably should get on with rolling out vaccines to the U 18s but I can see arguments for not doing so.
You do realize that the table is for prevalence, rather than the probability that COVID progresses to long COVID? A lot of people are misquoting its findings.
I have no time for Pagel but this document doesn't really contradict her. On sensible definitions of long COVID (i.e. 12 weeks+, and with more tightly-defined symptoms) it's probably 5-10%.
Poor Scotland, a eunuch nation, whose existence depends on England failing, yet voted to be a part of Greater England in 2014.
Just imagine how successful Scots would be if they weren't so bitter. This explains Malcolm doesn't it?
Pure Radio Scotland has swapped out its saltire logo for the red, white and green of Italy ahead of England’s World Cup Final game on Sunday.
The DC Thomson Group station has also changed its slogan to Italy’s Best Music and the jingles and voiceovers have been substituted for Italian ones and artists like The Proclaimers and Amy MacDonald, replaced by Black Box and Dean Martin.
Pure Radio socials and even the DAB scrolling text have been changed to show Pure Radio Italy.
Pure Radio breakfast host and DC Thomson Group Head Of Presentation, Robin Galloway explained to RadioToday: “We gave out Danish pastries to workplaces before the Denmark game which went down really well with our audience but the morning after the game, listeners bombarded Pure with complaints about over the top, bias TV commentary, so I thought, let’s flip the station name and go all Italian.
“We even deep fried lasagne in focaccia on our segment Deep FRYday.
Of course, you may well think this is just Scotland being bitter – and you’d be absolutely right.
Poor Scotland, a eunuch nation, whose existence depends on England failing, yet voted to be a part of Greater England in 2014.
Just imagine how successful Scots would be if they weren't so bitter. This explains Malcolm doesn't it?
Pure Radio Scotland has swapped out its saltire logo for the red, white and green of Italy ahead of England’s World Cup Final game on Sunday.
The DC Thomson Group station has also changed its slogan to Italy’s Best Music and the jingles and voiceovers have been substituted for Italian ones and artists like The Proclaimers and Amy MacDonald, replaced by Black Box and Dean Martin.
Pure Radio socials and even the DAB scrolling text have been changed to show Pure Radio Italy.
Pure Radio breakfast host and DC Thomson Group Head Of Presentation, Robin Galloway explained to RadioToday: “We gave out Danish pastries to workplaces before the Denmark game which went down really well with our audience but the morning after the game, listeners bombarded Pure with complaints about over the top, bias TV commentary, so I thought, let’s flip the station name and go all Italian.
“We even deep fried lasagne in focaccia on our segment Deep FRYday.
Of course, you may well think this is just Scotland being bitter – and you’d be absolutely right.
Shame on DC Thompson. Sad to see the creator of the Broons sinking to such depths. I expect this can be filed under "all publicity is good publicity"/just bantz.
The triple lock is safe, I expect, based on what Rishi and Boris have hinted. What about the 25% tax-free pension withdrwal though? Introduced by George Osborne as part of his pension flexibility reforms.
Btw, if I were opposed to austerity, like HMG, and not wedded to it like previous Conservative governments, then I'd wonder if it is actually better to increase the pension rate in order to get money circulating. Grow the economy, that's the key.
There's always been a 25% tax-free allowance on pension withdrawals. George Osborne's reforms were about what you could do with the rest, and very sensible reforms they were too.
If they did away with the 25% tax free allowance there would be chaos. Can you imagine 25% of pension funds being removed overnight.
Poor Scotland, a eunuch nation, whose existence depends on England failing, yet voted to be a part of Greater England in 2014.
Just imagine how successful Scots would be if they weren't so bitter. This explains Malcolm doesn't it?
Pure Radio Scotland has swapped out its saltire logo for the red, white and green of Italy ahead of England’s World Cup Final game on Sunday.
The DC Thomson Group station has also changed its slogan to Italy’s Best Music and the jingles and voiceovers have been substituted for Italian ones and artists like The Proclaimers and Amy MacDonald, replaced by Black Box and Dean Martin.
Pure Radio socials and even the DAB scrolling text have been changed to show Pure Radio Italy.
Pure Radio breakfast host and DC Thomson Group Head Of Presentation, Robin Galloway explained to RadioToday: “We gave out Danish pastries to workplaces before the Denmark game which went down really well with our audience but the morning after the game, listeners bombarded Pure with complaints about over the top, bias TV commentary, so I thought, let’s flip the station name and go all Italian.
“We even deep fried lasagne in focaccia on our segment Deep FRYday.
Of course, you may well think this is just Scotland being bitter – and you’d be absolutely right.
Pensions should rise in line with inflation not earnings but the Tories are bound by their manifesto commitment until the next general election
Why? Do you want people who rely on the state pension only to keep getting poorer compared to the rest of the population.
Only if they are also prepared to face a cut in the state pension too as their was a large fall in average earnings over the last year and a half
Yes but that was an aberration caused by the pandemic which should be corrected. The norm is for pay to outstrip inflation. We generally get better off over time and the pension is so small for people who rely on it you shouldn't make poor people poorer relative to the norm.
Most pensioners own a property outright so do not need to spend as much as those still earning in the workforce and paying rent or paying off a mortgage.
Those still renting get housing benefit anyway based on what they need
On the last point they have moved their conversation onto long covid. I don't see any mention of that in the bbc piece.
The point is children are at a low risk of covid so logic would conclude that the mantra of thousands of children suffering long covid is just not justified
I don't think that true. The ONS data does show long covid at its highest in 35-49 females, but significant rates in the teens:
I’m not seeing the 20 to 30% long Covid that Pagel thinks is the rate. This is an issue for sure, and we probably should get on with rolling out vaccines to the U 18s but I can see arguments for not doing so.
You do realize that the table is for prevalence, rather than the probability that COVID progresses to long COVID? A lot of people are misquoting its findings.
I have no time for Pagel but this document doesn't really contradict her. On sensible definitions of long COVID (i.e. 12 weeks+, and with more tightly-defined symptoms) it's probably 5-10%.
--AS
In conversation with others, long-covid is thought of as a permanent issue. But whatever - any definition based on 12+ weeks is absurd.
Poor Scotland, a eunuch nation, whose existence depends on England failing, yet voted to be a part of Greater England in 2014.
Just imagine how successful Scots would be if they weren't so bitter. This explains Malcolm doesn't it?
Pure Radio Scotland has swapped out its saltire logo for the red, white and green of Italy ahead of England’s World Cup Final game on Sunday.
The DC Thomson Group station has also changed its slogan to Italy’s Best Music and the jingles and voiceovers have been substituted for Italian ones and artists like The Proclaimers and Amy MacDonald, replaced by Black Box and Dean Martin.
Pure Radio socials and even the DAB scrolling text have been changed to show Pure Radio Italy.
Pure Radio breakfast host and DC Thomson Group Head Of Presentation, Robin Galloway explained to RadioToday: “We gave out Danish pastries to workplaces before the Denmark game which went down really well with our audience but the morning after the game, listeners bombarded Pure with complaints about over the top, bias TV commentary, so I thought, let’s flip the station name and go all Italian.
“We even deep fried lasagne in focaccia on our segment Deep FRYday.
Of course, you may well think this is just Scotland being bitter – and you’d be absolutely right.
Sunak should be bold, not only should be get rid of the triple lock he should introduce things like NI for (working) pensioners.
He should just get rid of the waste of space that is NI
A former Chancellor once said that is the policy goal of every Chancellor, sadly it can only be introduced with a government with a majority of 400 and in year one of a ten year term.
Full abolition might be complicated by Employer NI rates, he thinks clever people would move plenty of their salary as benefits where the NI rate is what just under 14%?
There are very few things you can claim via salary sacrifice nowadays - literally the only worthwhile options are pensions and electric cars.
But the increase of Employer NI over the years has made combining Income tax and National insurance an impossible task.
But it's also exactly why it should be done. Having a jobs tax like that is completely counterproductive. It also means whole segments of the economy find a mammoth incentive for employer and employee to mutually agree to underreporting of wages.
Not something I've ever engaged in but I know many people who made no secret of the fact that their wages were eg £100 a week cash in hand better than what was reported on their payslip. Employer dodges NI, Employee dodges NI and IC and keeps UC. Everyone's a winner except honest employers competing and honest taxpayers.
Oh I know of some people who were doing that and then the furlough scheme come along - they were not happy, no cash in hand money and minimal furlough amounts.
Being blunt though those firms would be doing the same even if there were no Employer NI savings - one of the large umbrella firms has introduced a new expenses policy because they were losing workers to a different umbrella firm due to that firms generous expenses rules.
It's like RCS1000 always says about illegal working and the Swiss; one party should always be better off from being honest. If that happens you give a tremendous incentive to be honest.
We currently penalise employees for earning more and penalise employers for paying more then act shocked that people cooperate to underreport wages.
For employers wages are an expense not an income so the logical situation is that the more an employer reports in wages the lower their tax bill should be, not the other way around. That would largely eliminate the employers incentive to engage in fraud.
The incentive for employers to engage in fraud is simply their ability to retain employees - see my previous reply.
But that is getting to be far harder than it used to be - as an example did you know that one of the sectors where wages increased most between 2009 and 2018 was private hire drivers - where real wages increased 40%.
They didn't but it's far harder to hide money when it's no longer paid in cash and the taxi firms / uber need to report all payments.
Employer NI should be rewiewed, once it’s clear what the market for labour looks like after the pandemic, and without an almost unlimited supply of foreign workers.
It’s literally a tax on jobs, and over time with a more constrained labour market will encourage replacement of labour with capital. Which may be a good thing, and may be a bad thing.
It's also £40bn to the treasury and the sole reason IR35 still exists - so Employer NI isn't going anywhere (sadly).
And we really should be replacing labour where possible with capital - that increases productivity and allows wages to rise.
Yes it’s actually a very complicated situation, with the Treasury now so reliant on it, that they’re making life quite difficult for genuine contract workers.
At the bottom end of the labour market (car washes, fast food), there’s very good reasons for replacing labour with capital, so long as that redundant labour can find alternative employment (or emigrate), and not be a burden on the State.
But if the government continues to disincentivise labour with taxes, while incentivising capex with tax breaks, it could go too far and we see mass unemployment. There’s a careful line to draw, and IMO full employment should be the first goal of government.
IT Contractors are actually difficult here as (no matter what the people profiteering from it have said) we've not recently been the actual target of the post 2015 changes in expenses rules and IR35, we've just been friendly fire
But I suspect we are a long way from capex resulting in mass unemployment. A lot of people use hand car washes and other things because they dislike the automated versions.
The manual option were cheaper than the automated.
Hence people in construction replacing moving steel and concrete on small sites with mini cranes. Previously, the solution for moving a literal ton of steel involved a dozen Polish blokes.
Or replacing manual digging with mini-diggers.....
Poor Scotland, a eunuch nation, whose existence depends on England failing, yet voted to be a part of Greater England in 2014.
Just imagine how successful Scots would be if they weren't so bitter. This explains Malcolm doesn't it?
Pure Radio Scotland has swapped out its saltire logo for the red, white and green of Italy ahead of England’s World Cup Final game on Sunday.
The DC Thomson Group station has also changed its slogan to Italy’s Best Music and the jingles and voiceovers have been substituted for Italian ones and artists like The Proclaimers and Amy MacDonald, replaced by Black Box and Dean Martin.
Pure Radio socials and even the DAB scrolling text have been changed to show Pure Radio Italy.
Pure Radio breakfast host and DC Thomson Group Head Of Presentation, Robin Galloway explained to RadioToday: “We gave out Danish pastries to workplaces before the Denmark game which went down really well with our audience but the morning after the game, listeners bombarded Pure with complaints about over the top, bias TV commentary, so I thought, let’s flip the station name and go all Italian.
“We even deep fried lasagne in focaccia on our segment Deep FRYday.
Of course, you may well think this is just Scotland being bitter – and you’d be absolutely right.
I thought the Triple Lock was the Lib Dems policy not the Conservatives, but it was mandated as part of the Coalition agreement. If I remember rightly it came from a Lib Dem member in Chester, got accepted at all stages of Lib Dems policy formulation, and then the Coalition.
Poor Scotland, a eunuch nation, whose existence depends on England failing, yet voted to be a part of Greater England in 2014.
Just imagine how successful Scots would be if they weren't so bitter. This explains Malcolm doesn't it?
Pure Radio Scotland has swapped out its saltire logo for the red, white and green of Italy ahead of England’s World Cup Final game on Sunday.
The DC Thomson Group station has also changed its slogan to Italy’s Best Music and the jingles and voiceovers have been substituted for Italian ones and artists like The Proclaimers and Amy MacDonald, replaced by Black Box and Dean Martin.
Pure Radio socials and even the DAB scrolling text have been changed to show Pure Radio Italy.
Pure Radio breakfast host and DC Thomson Group Head Of Presentation, Robin Galloway explained to RadioToday: “We gave out Danish pastries to workplaces before the Denmark game which went down really well with our audience but the morning after the game, listeners bombarded Pure with complaints about over the top, bias TV commentary, so I thought, let’s flip the station name and go all Italian.
“We even deep fried lasagne in focaccia on our segment Deep FRYday.
Of course, you may well think this is just Scotland being bitter – and you’d be absolutely right.
I thought the Triple Lock was the Lib Dems policy not the Conservatives, but it was mandated as part of the Coalition agreement. If I remember rightly it came from a Lib Dem member in Chester, got accepted at all stages of Lib Dems policy formulation, and then the Coalition.
The triple lock was a LibDem wheeze originally but since it was in the Conservative manifesto, I think we can safely call it government policy now, a bit like support for "our" NHS.
Pensions should rise in line with inflation not earnings but the Tories are bound by their manifesto commitment until the next general election
Why? Do you want people who rely on the state pension only to keep getting poorer compared to the rest of the population.
Only if they are also prepared to face a cut in the state pension too as there was a large fall in average earnings over the last year and a half state pensioners were protected from.
Inflation reflects rises in prices in the shops so is what pensions should be based on
So you would be happy if your current pay was equally to the pay for the same job in 1910 plus inflation would you?
Inflation by definition means it would not be the same as pay for a job in 1910
Sorry I have no idea what you are saying. I was giving you an analogy. You seem happy that one group in society should only have their pay increased by inflation only forever, so I was asking you if you would be happy with that for yourself by accepting the pay for your job based upon the 1910 pay for it plus inflation.
You do appreciate don't you that, that would almost certainly be a much lower figure than you get now? Yet you are happy to impose that on others in society.
While we're on pensions, be prepared for 'interesting times' in academia this year - at least in the 'old' universities with USS pensions.* The pandemic has further screwed valuations with respect to the pension fund deficits. These figures may seem incredible, but they are correct.
Current combined employer and employee pension contributions as % of gross pay: 30.7% Planned combined contribution from 1 October this year: 34.7% Three proposed scenarios from combined contributions to address the deficit: 56.2%, 49.6% (USS preferred option), 42.1% (requires the employers to make more commitments to underwrite the scheme)
Needless to say, these are crazy. Employee contributions are 9.6% now, rising to 11% in October. Under the 56.2% scenario employee contributions rise to 18.6%; under the 42.1% scenario, employee contributions rise to 13.6% - so under any of those it woud mean real terms take home pay cuts.
I - and many others - would be out of USS already if our employer would contribute to a defined contribution scheme instead - I'd be delighted if the uni would put ~20% of my pay into a DC scheme while I contributed 10%. I'd be very happy if they'd put in 10%. At the proposed levels, I think many of us will bail out anyway, even if it's only us contributing to a private DC scheme. If many of us do that, USS will be bust.
On the other hand, if the markets pick up then the projected problems might largely disappear.
*Having also worked for a few of years at a scummer university and in the civil service, I also have civil service and local government pension schemes, which - unlike USS which is private - are government backed (also unfunded, but they don't have to worry about that, only taxpayers do).
Edit: And yes, it may have been the same scientists working on the USS doom projections who also did the Covid modelling
LGPS is funded, and on a much more sustainable footing than USS.
The USS crisis is more a problem of management and oversight than of markets. Chairman of the board (trustees) too close to the Chief Exec: the old, old story. I think those with a fiduciary duty to the employees and pensioners have completely let us down, but there is no recourse.
Having said that, there's likely to be a fudge to get through the current crisis, and everyone is hoping that CDC comes to the rescue somehow. It might.
I thought the Triple Lock was the Lib Dems policy not the Conservatives, but it was mandated as part of the Coalition agreement. If I remember rightly it came from a Lib Dem member in Chester, got accepted at all stages of Lib Dems policy formulation, and then the Coalition.
The triple lock was a LibDem wheeze originally but since it was in the Conservative manifesto, I think we can safely call it government policy now, a bit like support for "our" NHS.
Poor Scotland, a eunuch nation, whose existence depends on England failing, yet voted to be a part of Greater England in 2014.
Just imagine how successful Scots would be if they weren't so bitter. This explains Malcolm doesn't it?
Pure Radio Scotland has swapped out its saltire logo for the red, white and green of Italy ahead of England’s World Cup Final game on Sunday.
The DC Thomson Group station has also changed its slogan to Italy’s Best Music and the jingles and voiceovers have been substituted for Italian ones and artists like The Proclaimers and Amy MacDonald, replaced by Black Box and Dean Martin.
Pure Radio socials and even the DAB scrolling text have been changed to show Pure Radio Italy.
Pure Radio breakfast host and DC Thomson Group Head Of Presentation, Robin Galloway explained to RadioToday: “We gave out Danish pastries to workplaces before the Denmark game which went down really well with our audience but the morning after the game, listeners bombarded Pure with complaints about over the top, bias TV commentary, so I thought, let’s flip the station name and go all Italian.
“We even deep fried lasagne in focaccia on our segment Deep FRYday.
Of course, you may well think this is just Scotland being bitter – and you’d be absolutely right.
Sunak should be bold, not only should be get rid of the triple lock he should introduce things like NI for (working) pensioners.
He should just get rid of the waste of space that is NI
A former Chancellor once said that is the policy goal of every Chancellor, sadly it can only be introduced with a government with a majority of 400 and in year one of a ten year term.
Full abolition might be complicated by Employer NI rates, he thinks clever people would move plenty of their salary as benefits where the NI rate is what just under 14%?
There are very few things you can claim via salary sacrifice nowadays - literally the only worthwhile options are pensions and electric cars.
But the increase of Employer NI over the years has made combining Income tax and National insurance an impossible task.
But it's also exactly why it should be done. Having a jobs tax like that is completely counterproductive. It also means whole segments of the economy find a mammoth incentive for employer and employee to mutually agree to underreporting of wages.
Not something I've ever engaged in but I know many people who made no secret of the fact that their wages were eg £100 a week cash in hand better than what was reported on their payslip. Employer dodges NI, Employee dodges NI and IC and keeps UC. Everyone's a winner except honest employers competing and honest taxpayers.
Oh I know of some people who were doing that and then the furlough scheme come along - they were not happy, no cash in hand money and minimal furlough amounts.
Being blunt though those firms would be doing the same even if there were no Employer NI savings - one of the large umbrella firms has introduced a new expenses policy because they were losing workers to a different umbrella firm due to that firms generous expenses rules.
It's like RCS1000 always says about illegal working and the Swiss; one party should always be better off from being honest. If that happens you give a tremendous incentive to be honest.
We currently penalise employees for earning more and penalise employers for paying more then act shocked that people cooperate to underreport wages.
For employers wages are an expense not an income so the logical situation is that the more an employer reports in wages the lower their tax bill should be, not the other way around. That would largely eliminate the employers incentive to engage in fraud.
The incentive for employers to engage in fraud is simply their ability to retain employees - see my previous reply.
But that is getting to be far harder than it used to be - as an example did you know that one of the sectors where wages increased most between 2009 and 2018 was private hire drivers - where real wages increased 40%.
They didn't but it's far harder to hide money when it's no longer paid in cash and the taxi firms / uber need to report all payments.
Employer NI should be rewiewed, once it’s clear what the market for labour looks like after the pandemic, and without an almost unlimited supply of foreign workers.
It’s literally a tax on jobs, and over time with a more constrained labour market will encourage replacement of labour with capital. Which may be a good thing, and may be a bad thing.
It's also £40bn to the treasury and the sole reason IR35 still exists - so Employer NI isn't going anywhere (sadly).
And we really should be replacing labour where possible with capital - that increases productivity and allows wages to rise.
Yes it’s actually a very complicated situation, with the Treasury now so reliant on it, that they’re making life quite difficult for genuine contract workers.
At the bottom end of the labour market (car washes, fast food), there’s very good reasons for replacing labour with capital, so long as that redundant labour can find alternative employment (or emigrate), and not be a burden on the State.
But if the government continues to disincentivise labour with taxes, while incentivising capex with tax breaks, it could go too far and we see mass unemployment. There’s a careful line to draw, and IMO full employment should be the first goal of government.
IT Contractors are actually difficult here as (no matter what the people profiteering from it have said) we've not recently been the actual target of the post 2015 changes in expenses rules and IR35, we've just been friendly fire
But I suspect we are a long way from capex resulting in mass unemployment. A lot of people use hand car washes and other things because they dislike the automated versions.
The manual option were cheaper than the automated.
Hence people in construction replacing moving steel and concrete on small sites with mini cranes. Previously, the solution for moving a literal ton of steel involved a dozen Polish blokes.
Or replacing manual digging with mini-diggers.....
There are two different factors in play here
- your example is where labour is cheaper than automation so labour wins (I pointed out earlier that we've let GDP per capita sink because it's been easier to import labour rather than raise productivity).
- mine was more the fact that some automation has just failed over the years - people are more willing to use a hand car wash than an automated machine or insist on queuing for a till operator rather than using self-check out.
In another example First Direct have twice written to me to try and encourage people to use their online systems rather than calling up customer service - which is a surprise for me as the last time I rang customer service was probably 15 years ago.
On the last point they have moved their conversation onto long covid. I don't see any mention of that in the bbc piece.
The point is children are at a low risk of covid so logic would conclude that the mantra of thousands of children suffering long covid is just not justified
I don't think that true. The ONS data does show long covid at its highest in 35-49 females, but significant rates in the teens:
I’m not seeing the 20 to 30% long Covid that Pagel thinks is the rate. This is an issue for sure, and we probably should get on with rolling out vaccines to the U 18s but I can see arguments for not doing so.
You do realize that the table is for prevalence, rather than the probability that COVID progresses to long COVID? A lot of people are misquoting its findings.
I have no time for Pagel but this document doesn't really contradict her. On sensible definitions of long COVID (i.e. 12 weeks+, and with more tightly-defined symptoms) it's probably 5-10%.
--AS
In conversation with others, long-covid is thought of as a permanent issue. But whatever - any definition based on 12+ weeks is absurd.
Difference between a long condition and a chronic one, I think. As for 12 weeks, it depends on the level of disability: being too weak to walk to a shop on the same street for 3 months (as for example happened to me after I had glandular fever as a student) is pretty significant morbidity; having a bit of a cough, not so much.
Pensions should rise in line with inflation not earnings but the Tories are bound by their manifesto commitment until the next general election
Why? Do you want people who rely on the state pension only to keep getting poorer compared to the rest of the population.
Only if they are also prepared to face a cut in the state pension too as their was a large fall in average earnings over the last year and a half
Yes but that was an aberration caused by the pandemic which should be corrected. The norm is for pay to outstrip inflation. We generally get better off over time and the pension is so small for people who rely on it you shouldn't make poor people poorer relative to the norm.
Most pensioners own a property outright so do not need to spend as much as those still earning in the workforce and paying rent or paying off a mortgage.
Those still renting get housing benefit anyway based on what they need
25% who own homes don't own their home outright by 65 and for those that rent you want to force them onto housing benefit. Wouldn't it better if they didn't rely on top ups and got an adequate pension.
I can't believe you actually want to reduce their pension in relation to the rest of the population.
I've lived in London for over 20 years (also SE, 2 stops from London Bridge) and a. it doesn't feel strange at all, b. our neighbourhood is every bit as friendly, familiar, close knit and non-atomised as anywhere else I've lived. Much more so, in fact, than the curtain twitching midlands village my grandparents used to live in where they were still considered newcomers after living for about 3 decades.
My wife will on average stop and chat to about 3 people every time she walks from one end of our street to the other, and significantly more at school pick up time.
The idea London is some soulless, atomised dystopia straight out of Bladerunner is just the same old stereotype people have had of their major cities since the rural Mesopotamians were saying that about Ur. You hear the same in most countries around the world.
Sunak should be bold, not only should be get rid of the triple lock he should introduce things like NI for (working) pensioners.
He should just get rid of the waste of space that is NI
A former Chancellor once said that is the policy goal of every Chancellor, sadly it can only be introduced with a government with a majority of 400 and in year one of a ten year term.
Full abolition might be complicated by Employer NI rates, he thinks clever people would move plenty of their salary as benefits where the NI rate is what just under 14%?
There are very few things you can claim via salary sacrifice nowadays - literally the only worthwhile options are pensions and electric cars.
But the increase of Employer NI over the years has made combining Income tax and National insurance an impossible task.
But it's also exactly why it should be done. Having a jobs tax like that is completely counterproductive. It also means whole segments of the economy find a mammoth incentive for employer and employee to mutually agree to underreporting of wages.
Not something I've ever engaged in but I know many people who made no secret of the fact that their wages were eg £100 a week cash in hand better than what was reported on their payslip. Employer dodges NI, Employee dodges NI and IC and keeps UC. Everyone's a winner except honest employers competing and honest taxpayers.
Oh I know of some people who were doing that and then the furlough scheme come along - they were not happy, no cash in hand money and minimal furlough amounts.
Being blunt though those firms would be doing the same even if there were no Employer NI savings - one of the large umbrella firms has introduced a new expenses policy because they were losing workers to a different umbrella firm due to that firms generous expenses rules.
It's like RCS1000 always says about illegal working and the Swiss; one party should always be better off from being honest. If that happens you give a tremendous incentive to be honest.
We currently penalise employees for earning more and penalise employers for paying more then act shocked that people cooperate to underreport wages.
For employers wages are an expense not an income so the logical situation is that the more an employer reports in wages the lower their tax bill should be, not the other way around. That would largely eliminate the employers incentive to engage in fraud.
The incentive for employers to engage in fraud is simply their ability to retain employees - see my previous reply.
But that is getting to be far harder than it used to be - as an example did you know that one of the sectors where wages increased most between 2009 and 2018 was private hire drivers - where real wages increased 40%.
They didn't but it's far harder to hide money when it's no longer paid in cash and the taxi firms / uber need to report all payments.
Employer NI should be rewiewed, once it’s clear what the market for labour looks like after the pandemic, and without an almost unlimited supply of foreign workers.
It’s literally a tax on jobs, and over time with a more constrained labour market will encourage replacement of labour with capital. Which may be a good thing, and may be a bad thing.
It's also £40bn to the treasury and the sole reason IR35 still exists - so Employer NI isn't going anywhere (sadly).
And we really should be replacing labour where possible with capital - that increases productivity and allows wages to rise.
Yes it’s actually a very complicated situation, with the Treasury now so reliant on it, that they’re making life quite difficult for genuine contract workers.
At the bottom end of the labour market (car washes, fast food), there’s very good reasons for replacing labour with capital, so long as that redundant labour can find alternative employment (or emigrate), and not be a burden on the State.
But if the government continues to disincentivise labour with taxes, while incentivising capex with tax breaks, it could go too far and we see mass unemployment. There’s a careful line to draw, and IMO full employment should be the first goal of government.
IT Contractors are actually difficult here as (no matter what the people profiteering from it have said) we've not recently been the actual target of the post 2015 changes in expenses rules and IR35, we've just been friendly fire
But I suspect we are a long way from capex resulting in mass unemployment. A lot of people use hand car washes and other things because they dislike the automated versions.
The manual option were cheaper than the automated.
Hence people in construction replacing moving steel and concrete on small sites with mini cranes. Previously, the solution for moving a literal ton of steel involved a dozen Polish blokes.
Or replacing manual digging with mini-diggers.....
There are two different factors in play here
- your example is where labour is cheaper than automation so labour wins (I pointed out earlier that we've let GDP per capita sink because it's been easier to import labour rather than raise productivity).
- mine was more the fact that some automation has just failed over the years - people are more willing to use a hand car wash than an automated machine or insist on queuing for a till operator rather than using self-check out.
In another example First Direct have twice written to me to try and encourage people to use their online systems rather than calling up customer service - which is a surprise for me as the last time I rang customer service was probably 15 years ago.
Far too much customer-service automation is badly thought out, poor in QA and execution, and gives the impression to the customer that the company are just trying to save money on staff.
Tom Gordon tells us, "Holyrood’s golden goodbyes are now by far the best-paid of any UK parliament or assembly, roughly twice as generous in fact". The SNP has governed since 2007. They've done nothing about this because they just can't get enough of your money.
Newly re-elected chairman of the '22 Graham Brady making sympathetic noises about breaking the triple lock suggests it is on the endangered list.
I think the C&A result has completely blown out Tory plans for 2024, red wall+oldies won't get them over the line. They can't afford for middle class working age people to switch to the Lib Dems or Labour.
Nope. Tories still polling very strongly overall. And the trend in the North and WWC seats remains positive. LibDems too far behind to take more than a handful elsewhere, if at all. The political grim reaper will come eventually but, at the moment, all seems fair for Boris to win in 2023. After that, becomes more interesting. Can the Tories reinvent themselves (again)?
Comments
England winning; Kane top scorer; Sterling MVP; Maguire first scorer
Favourite in every Grand Prix
Favourite in every race at an evening race meeting
The 'average' cost of the medicines is below the level of the tax.
The solution is blindingly obvious. Wages have not risen by 8% this year, we all know that, it's a technical abberation. So the Treasury will come up with a technical fix to how earnings are measured and say that they're maintaining the triple lock.
Which is so eminently reasonable that it may get mouthings off but people will reasonably accept it.
It’s literally a tax on jobs, and over time with a more constrained labour market will encourage replacement of labour with capital. Which may be a good thing, and may be a bad thing.
Backing Bottas, Perez, and Norris in the British Grand Prix may be worth a shot, with free money.
There will always be a minority of extremists within any religion prepared to kill for it but there is no evidence the deaths of native children in Canada in the 19th century in mainly Catholic schools were intentional, indeed most died of disease
Pre 2010 the LibDems would be the default vote of anyone remotely aggrieved with the world whereas now those voters are more varied in their choice.
The LibDems don't seem to have received any boost from C&A.
Perhaps it's different where you live but most people I know in London lead highly individualised and atomised lives. People flip in and out of London in a few years, and many don't mix except with those in their nationality group. Even my most Lefty friends who live in London have stayed in bubbles, it's just they are of other white Lefty people who think like them - diversity to them is something around them, and something they signal vociferously about, but it's not something they "do".
I'd say three things are necessary for a diverse city not to feel alien in the UK:
(1) You need to usually speak English
(2) You need to be part of and settled in your local community
(3) You need to interact with other communities
The rest of the country will certainly become more visually diverse over time, I think Eric Kauffman estimates the year 2120 for a mixed race majority, but if London doesn't change it won't "become" like London. Those people will simply permeate out and into more settled communities along the lines I've described, and inherit longstanding British traditions and culture - think Jessica Ennis-Hill, Ben Kingsley, James Cleverly, Calvin Robinson, Mylene Klass etc.
Train operators are licenced by the government. The government is supposed to be responsible for public health. A government-licenced company is not like a friend who invites you into his home and should be able to insist that you wear a mask, or take your shoes off, if he wishes, for whatever reasons he wishes, and who if he feels like it can ask you to leave. To be clear: I have no probs if the government continues to mandate mask-wearing on public transport.
Adding up all the things I can't avoid comes to £638 per month. And assuming the mortgage is paid off you still have to keep your house in good order and although lumpy this averages out at about another 2K per year based on living in the same house for 20 years and assuming I don't have to replace the kitchen or bathroom again. On top of that you need to add the weekly shopping and clothing. Assuming just me to feed and I have time to shop around a bit more than I do now - £250. So that's about £12.5k net. I could live in a slightly smaller house, which would probably save about 10% on bills.
And that assumes I want nothing more out of life than a daily walk in the park and an evening of TV.
I hope this puts the state (or any!) pension in perspective. This is my greatest worry currently - I will be another one who has to work into my 70s as my company pension isn't going to make up the shortfall.
And why do you think we have a significant HGV crisis - a lot of that was due to firms abusing tax to keep labour costs artificially low.
However this current situation is clearly an aberration.
Inflation reflects rises in prices in the shops so is what pensions should be based on
You don't get that many deaths without abject neglect and cruelty. It's shameful. The closest parallel I can think of is our concentration camps during the Boer War.
I disagree vehemently with statue-toppling and attacking the symbols and emblems of Canada, which has got so much else right, particularly in contrast to its southern neighbour, but boy is that a sorry chapter.
And we really should be replacing labour where possible with capital - that increases productivity and allows wages to rise. The reason why GDP per capita is so bad in the UK is because we've spent the last 10 years using cheap labour and long hours to fill productivity gaps rather than investing money to do so.
Heck the most obvious areas in automation are where minimum wage increases have forced companies to replace labour with fairly cheap machinery, so order taking at McDonalds, self service tills in shops.
The country isn't entirely divided between London and Midsomer.
"Delta variant is reinfecting people who have already had Covid-19"
Told you so a month ago, anickdotalleeee.
This is probably a much bigger deal in those industries where a lot of cash can change hands, where the fraud of reporting one figure to HMRC while handing another figure over in an envelope is viable and HMRC is currently literally encouraging that fraud by treating higher wages as an externality to be taxed.
Newly re-elected chairman of the '22 Graham Brady making sympathetic noises about breaking the triple lock suggests it is on the endangered list.
Jesus no wonder NHS services are so inconvienient if you work a 9-5.
It's getting harder to do so and when HMRC do find out the person who is receiving the money is liable for the unpaid tax.
People are cheating the tax system isn't justification for risking £40bn especially when the amount being fiddled is nothing like that (it seems to be about £12bn of all which is recoverable when HMRC find a reason to look).
Because if anyone else did it then they are attacking a fundamental tenet of the NHS.
At the bottom end of the labour market (car washes, fast food), there’s very good reasons for replacing labour with capital, so long as that redundant labour can find alternative employment (or emigrate), and not be a burden on the State.
But if the government continues to disincentivise labour with taxes, while incentivising capex with tax breaks, it could go too far and we see mass unemployment. There’s a careful line to draw, and IMO full employment should be the first goal of government.
Now you can say, as indeed you did, that there are BAME communities which have been in London for generations.
But they didn't stop the increase in home ownership and general spreading of wealth in London in the 1980s and 1990s.
What concerns me (and perhaps here we are talking at cross purposes) are the rapid demographic changes which have occurred in London since 2000. AndyJS provided some very good data on the changes between census 2001 and census 2011 at the time. Demographic changes which have coincided with London's falling home ownership and increasing inequality.
It is that aspect of London which I find disagreeable and nothing to recommend as a future.
vaccinationcovid program is being driven by some odd combination of Andrew Wakefield meets Leah Betts.Just imagine how successful Scots would be if they weren't so bitter. This explains Malcolm doesn't it?
Pure Radio Scotland has swapped out its saltire logo for the red, white and green of Italy ahead of England’s World Cup Final game on Sunday.
The DC Thomson Group station has also changed its slogan to Italy’s Best Music and the jingles and voiceovers have been substituted for Italian ones and artists like The Proclaimers and Amy MacDonald, replaced by Black Box and Dean Martin.
Pure Radio socials and even the DAB scrolling text have been changed to show Pure Radio Italy.
Pure Radio breakfast host and DC Thomson Group Head Of Presentation, Robin Galloway explained to RadioToday: “We gave out Danish pastries to workplaces before the Denmark game which went down really well with our audience but the morning after the game, listeners bombarded Pure with complaints about over the top, bias TV commentary, so I thought, let’s flip the station name and go all Italian.
“We even deep fried lasagne in focaccia on our segment Deep FRYday.
Of course, you may well think this is just Scotland being bitter – and you’d be absolutely right.
We hope footballs’ coming Rome”
https://radiotoday.co.uk/2021/07/pure-radio-scotland-rebrands-to-pure-radio-italy/
Current combined employer and employee pension contributions as % of gross pay:
30.7%
Planned combined contribution from 1 October this year:
34.7%
Three proposed scenarios from combined contributions to address the deficit:
56.2%, 49.6% (USS preferred option), 42.1% (requires the employers to make more commitments to underwrite the scheme)
Needless to say, these are crazy. Employee contributions are 9.6% now, rising to 11% in October. Under the 56.2% scenario employee contributions rise to 18.6%; under the 42.1% scenario, employee contributions rise to 13.6% - so under any of those it woud mean real terms take home pay cuts.
I - and many others - would be out of USS already if our employer would contribute to a defined contribution scheme instead - I'd be delighted if the uni would put ~20% of my pay into a DC scheme while I contributed 10%. I'd be very happy if they'd put in 10%. At the proposed levels, I think many of us will bail out anyway, even if it's only us contributing to a private DC scheme. If many of us do that, USS will be bust.
On the other hand, if the markets pick up then the projected problems might largely disappear.
*Having also worked for a few of years at a scummer university and in the civil service, I also have civil service and local government pension schemes, which - unlike USS which is private - are government backed (also unfunded, but they don't have to worry about that, only taxpayers do).
Edit: And yes, it may have been the same scientists working on the USS doom projections who also did the Covid modelling
So if officially approximately a third of the amount raised is potentially squandered in fraud then the reality is probably more than that. And if a third of the money raised is squandered in fraud then there should be a better way to raise the money.
Yes £40bn is a heck of a lot of money and a comprehensive reform would be difficult to do, but that doesn't make it the wrong thing to do just very difficult. Merging six different benefits into one with Universal Credit was difficult but it's been done and the reality is despite the complaints things are better for it.
I don't think any of this is rocket science. For this aberration just apply the same rules but for a 2 year period.
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20210708-tunisia-virus-situation-catastrophic-health-ministry
https://www.rt.com/news/528733-tunisia-health-system-collaspe-covid/
Oxygen shortages. Difficulties getting dead bodies out of hospitals. "The boat is sinking," says health ministry spokesperson.
Btw, if I were opposed to austerity, like HMG, and not wedded to it like previous Conservative governments, then I'd wonder if it is actually better to increase the pension rate in order to get money circulating. Grow the economy, that's the key.
But I suspect we are a long way from capex resulting in mass unemployment. A lot of people use hand car washes and other things because they dislike the automated versions.
Even a 10% swing to the LDs in 2023/24 would see them only pick up 27 Tory seats, which would still give an overall Tory majority of 26
We actually have real world data from ONS, and a) reinfection is still rare and b) (really important) first infection viral load, thus severity is a broad range, among confirmed reinfected, all bar the odd unlucky sod, low levels of viral load and minor illness.
To give an idea of magnitude, the ONS report said 15k possible reinfections so far, 600 confirmed.
It is the New Testament which is more about love and forgiveness
I was fine with 'Jock c*nts' trending on twitter, though a little disappointed in the lack of invention.
Tells you everything, ignore that study.
Are the middle class working age people for or against building more ? Does it depend on whether they are already dome owners ?
There will genuinely be pubs full of Scots on Sunday night, all wearing Italy shirts, waving Italy scarves and shouting for the cup to go to Rome.
For many of them, it’s just light-hearted banter, but for some their hatred of the English is quite clear.
I have no time for Pagel but this document doesn't really contradict her. On sensible definitions of long COVID (i.e. 12 weeks+, and with more tightly-defined symptoms) it's probably 5-10%.
--AS
Honestly, if you don't think Aussies do banter, then you are in for a shock.
And there are such things as piss-takes.
Those still renting get housing benefit anyway based on what they need
Hence people in construction replacing moving steel and concrete on small sites with mini cranes. Previously, the solution for moving a literal ton of steel involved a dozen Polish blokes.
Or replacing manual digging with mini-diggers.....
Coalition agreement. If I remember rightly it came from a Lib Dem member in Chester, got accepted at all stages of Lib Dems policy formulation, and then the Coalition.
You do appreciate don't you that, that would almost certainly be a much lower figure than you get now? Yet you are happy to impose that on others in society.
The USS crisis is more a problem of management and oversight than of markets. Chairman of the board (trustees) too close to the Chief Exec: the old, old story. I think those with a fiduciary duty to the employees and pensioners have completely let us down, but there is no recourse.
Having said that, there's likely to be a fudge to get through the current crisis, and everyone is hoping that CDC comes to the rescue somehow. It might.
--AS
Ditto when we sing ‘God save YOUR Queen.’
- your example is where labour is cheaper than automation so labour wins (I pointed out earlier that we've let GDP per capita sink because it's been easier to import labour rather than raise productivity).
- mine was more the fact that some automation has just failed over the years - people are more willing to use a hand car wash than an automated machine or insist on queuing for a till operator rather than using self-check out.
In another example First Direct have twice written to me to try and encourage people to use their online systems rather than calling up customer service - which is a surprise for me as the last time I rang customer service was probably 15 years ago.
--AS
I can't believe you actually want to reduce their pension in relation to the rest of the population.
My wife will on average stop and chat to about 3 people every time she walks from one end of our street to the other, and significantly more at school pick up time.
The idea London is some soulless, atomised dystopia straight out of Bladerunner is just the same old stereotype people have had of their major cities since the rural Mesopotamians were saying that about Ur. You hear the same in most countries around the world.
Tom Gordon tells us, "Holyrood’s golden goodbyes are now by far the best-paid of any UK parliament or assembly, roughly twice as generous in fact". The SNP has governed since 2007. They've done nothing about this because they just can't get enough of your money.
https://twitter.com/Craig4P/status/1413043005997699079?s=20