More re lab tests vs real world....recent lab tests said immunity probably lasted for years. Pfizer seen real world data for Israel and they think it is waning a bit after 6 months, and a 3rd shot is the way forward.
What is surprising is they don't seem to be planning on deploying a reformulated version to specifically target the variants. I thought it was a day job in the factory to retool and then surely sensible to repeat the same real world test agreement with Israel?
I think we are all getting booster shots though now.
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.
2010 manifesto, or subsequently?
The 2019 Conservative Manifesto said:- On entering Government in 2010, the Conservatives acted decisively to protect the UK’s pensioners. The ‘triple lock’ we introduced has meant that those who have worked hard and put in for decades can be confident that the state will be there to support them when they need it. We will keep the triple lock, the winter fuel payment, the older person’s bus pass and other pensioner benefits, ensuring that older people have the security and dignity they deserve.
More re lab tests vs real world....recent lab tests said immunity probably lasted for years. Pfizer seen real world data for Israel and they think it is waning a bit after 6 months, and a 3rd shot is the way forward.
What is surprising is they don't seem to be planning on deploying a reformulated version to specifically target the variants. I thought it was a day job in the factory to retool and then surely sensible to repeat the same real world test agreement with Israel?
I think we are all getting booster shots though now.
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)?
To have a chance of an overall majority and make serious inroads back into the Red Wall Labour would probably need Burnham.
As it is the best they can hope for in 2024 is to pick up a handful of Red Wall seats and hope the LDs pick up 20-30 Tory Remain seats in the South to force a hung parliament and put Starmer in
More re lab tests vs real world....recent lab tests said immunity probably lasted for years. Pfizer seen real world data for Israel and they think it is waning a bit after 6 months, and a 3rd shot is the way forward.
What is surprising is they don't seem to be planning on deploying a reformulated version to specifically target the variants. I thought it was a day job in the factory to retool and then surely sensible to repeat the same real world test agreement with Israel?
I think we are all getting booster shots though now.
Do you think 40 - 50 age group will ?
I don't know, but even if it means me paying, I will be trying to find a way to get one.
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.
There are a number of cases where automation wasn't very good, but due to low labour costs, automation hasn't been tried again, in more than a decade.
The building site examples actually fall into that - perviously machinery was inconveniently sized, over priced and required alot of maintenance. But in the decades since cheap labour came in.....
Automation is actually a bit of an art.
When I was in Rome, I used a Revolut card in a cash machine. That failed in mid-transaction. Normally your money would get stuck for a days. Online chat to Revolut customer services on the mobile. Fixed then and there. Plus they directed me to a cash machine that was working (they could see other transactions that had worked on it) just round the corner.....
Good result for the Tories in Harlow there, taking a seat from Labour
Though as in Hartlepool Westminster by-election, the Conservative increase correlates pretty well with the disappearance of UKIP, who got 24.6% last time the seat was up.
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.
The remaining quarter will have been relatively poor anyway and likely claiming housing benefit even before they retired, so no reason they cannot still use housing benefit to pay their rent on retirement.
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.
Don't give Boris ideas! The Prime Minister was on £10,000 a year which would now be about half a million. Of course, in those days the Prime Minister was expected to pay for his own wallpaper, butler and other servants.
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.
It strikes me as very talented trolling.
Contemplating backing both sides score and Italy wins in the 90 minutes, at 6/1.
I wish I could hear just ONE commentator somewhere make the point that higher-rate tax relief for contributions is only really saying - ok, you are already paying tens of thousands a year in income tax, you can get some relief if you decide to be sensible and not rely heavily on the state in retirement. The constant references to those taxpayers obtaining “double the rate of tax relief” are NEVER balanced by the fact that, for example, a £60k taxpayer is paying around 4 times the income tax and NI of someone on £24k. I personally never understood the trumpeting of taking so many people out of tax altogether - many have low paid jobs, around the minimum wage, but I’m not sure why they shouldn’t pay a little more towards the services we all use.
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
Tim Spector says from ZOE app data, says its about 1 in 50.
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.
--AS
Ah, I stand corrected on LGPS. It's also (or was, at least) much more generous than USS. Yep, the USS issues existed well before the pandemic, it's true.
I think you're right on fudge. Employers sign up for some extra risk and hope it all looks a bit better in a few years. The alternatives are massively unpalatable.
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.
It depends a great deal which part of London you are in. In the more suburban parts of London - which were created by villages being swallowed as London expanded - where the layout hasn't been "improved" by planners, very often you get the feeling/social sitaution you describe.
In the parts where everything has been swept away and replaced with massive towers, the atomisation is quite intense. The modern version of this is often clean and neat. But still soul less....
More re lab tests vs real world....recent lab tests said immunity probably lasted for years. Pfizer seen real world data for Israel and they think it is waning a bit after 6 months, and a 3rd shot is the way forward.
What is surprising is they don't seem to be planning on deploying a reformulated version to specifically target the variants. I thought it was a day job in the factory to retool and then surely sensible to repeat the same real world test agreement with Israel?
I think we are all getting booster shots though now.
Without wishing to sound cynical, 3rd shot is the way forward for Pfizer's bottom line, for sure!
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.
There are a number of cases where automation wasn't very good, but due to low labour costs, automation hasn't been tried again, in more than a decade.
The building site examples actually fall into that - perviously machinery was inconveniently sized, over priced and required alot of maintenance. But in the decades since cheap labour came in.....
Automation is actually a bit of an art.
When I was in Rome, I used a Revolut card in a cash machine. That failed in mid-transaction. Normally your money would get stuck for a days. Online chat to Revolut customer services on the mobile. Fixed then and there. Plus they directed me to a cash machine that was working (they could see other transactions that had worked on it) just round the corner.....
That was then and maybe now, but just wait till they staff the help desk with AI chat bots and see if the bot knows about the working ATM round the corner.
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.
--AS
Ah, I stand corrected on LGPS. It's also (or was, at least) much more generous than USS. Yep, the USS issues existed well before the pandemic, it's true.
I think you're right on fudge. Employers sign up for some extra risk and hope it all looks a bit better in a few years. The alternatives are massively unpalatable.
Perhaps the wider problem is that pension fund valuations are little better than guesses. Aiui the USS used to be either in credit or deficit depending on its value decades hence. During the 80s and 90s, companies stopped contributing to over-valued funds, and other companies were taken over in order to strip pension funds. The markets changed and suddenly defined benefit schemes are rarer than hens' teeth.
More re lab tests vs real world....recent lab tests said immunity probably lasted for years. Pfizer seen real world data for Israel and they think it is waning a bit after 6 months, and a 3rd shot is the way forward.
What is surprising is they don't seem to be planning on deploying a reformulated version to specifically target the variants. I thought it was a day job in the factory to retool and then surely sensible to repeat the same real world test agreement with Israel?
I think we are all getting booster shots though now.
It's still got to be trialled and once approved there's a 3-4 month lead time on it reaching the end of the supply chain into people's arms. The UK government asked if Pfizer could supply the gen 2 vaccine for the second order but was told it would mean waiting until 2022 Q1 because it wasn't likely to be ready in time for H2 delivery. The government then decided to get 60m of gen 1.
The only company that might be ready with a gen 2 by Q4 is AZ.
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.
Decent user interfaces and processes probably require customisation and that involves spending real money which defeats the object.
I need to see how much the trainline redesign actually cost to implement - it's easier to use but I'm sure the actual design and development costs were in the £ms.
As we both know creating decent systems costs large amounts of money.
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.
There is a genuine difference.
In a city, if you're not a particularly sociable person, or you're a bit different, it's really easy to hide in the crowd and live as an atomized individual - except when you're mixing with your specially curated social group. Most of the people on your street wouldn't be able to pick you out of an identity parade.
In rural areas with a strong community this is much harder. Even if you're a recluse who lives on their own land, everyone in the area will know who you are and what your backstory is.
There are advantages and downsides to both, but there is a difference that "community" is shallower, less comprehensive and more optional in a city.
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.
There are a number of cases where automation wasn't very good, but due to low labour costs, automation hasn't been tried again, in more than a decade.
The building site examples actually fall into that - perviously machinery was inconveniently sized, over priced and required alot of maintenance. But in the decades since cheap labour came in.....
Automation is actually a bit of an art.
When I was in Rome, I used a Revolut card in a cash machine. That failed in mid-transaction. Normally your money would get stuck for a days. Online chat to Revolut customer services on the mobile. Fixed then and there. Plus they directed me to a cash machine that was working (they could see other transactions that had worked on it) just round the corner.....
That was then and maybe now, but just wait till they staff the help desk with AI chat bots and see if the bot knows about the working ATM round the corner.
True - but the alt-banks are built around a different business structure to the traditional banks.
For example, I worked with one, where the entire system was a single database. Obviously replicated and backed up etc. but the whole bank was represented in a single data structure. Their entire software stack could fit on CD. Creating an instance of the whole thing for testing purposes was simple and took minutes. Literally a copy of the whole bank in VM.....
A comparable traditional bank will have dozens - some have hundreds - of systems that barely talk to each other.
When you add in the buildings, the pyramids of fools etc at the trad. banks... It is easy to see why the alt-banks own the future. Their cost model is built around being very lean on the operations side. And makes a profit at the current scale, generally....
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.
I don't doubt any of what you are saying, however this was definitely not my experience in the decade or so that I lived in London. It was totally a totally anonymous experience, much like the stereotype.
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.
I disagree. If you realise that the objective of most customer service is to get the customer to abandon a complaint and the attempt to gain any redress, then a lot of customer service automation is well-designed to achieve that aim.
What is the customer going to do? Switch to a different company with the same customer service strategy? Why should they care - they'll get as many switching in the other direction...
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.
It depends a great deal which part of London you are in. In the more suburban parts of London - which were created by villages being swallowed as London expanded - where the layout hasn't been "improved" by planners, very often you get the feeling/social sitaution you describe.
In the parts where everything has been swept away and replaced with massive towers, the atomisation is quite intense. The modern version of this is often clean and neat. But still soul less....
That's probably true, but much more of London is low rise and relatively low density terraced housing or low rise council blocks than high rise and high density, which is of course one reason for high house prices in the city. We also had friendly neighbours when we lived in a low rise council block closer to the centre, so it's certainly not just a leafy suburban thing - and neither Tim (hi neighbour) nor I live in the real burbs in any case.
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.
There are a number of cases where automation wasn't very good, but due to low labour costs, automation hasn't been tried again, in more than a decade.
The building site examples actually fall into that - perviously machinery was inconveniently sized, over priced and required alot of maintenance. But in the decades since cheap labour came in.....
Automation is actually a bit of an art.
When I was in Rome, I used a Revolut card in a cash machine. That failed in mid-transaction. Normally your money would get stuck for a days. Online chat to Revolut customer services on the mobile. Fixed then and there. Plus they directed me to a cash machine that was working (they could see other transactions that had worked on it) just round the corner.....
That was then and maybe now, but just wait till they staff the help desk with AI chat bots and see if the bot knows about the working ATM round the corner.
If the question is asked often enough - the chat bot will be provided with the ability to check that information when required.
Chat bot development roadmaps are really very simple, you pick the most frequently answered questions and automate them away...
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.
The remaining quarter will have been relatively poor anyway and likely claiming housing benefit even before they retired, so no reason they cannot still use housing benefit to pay their rent on retirement.
What! You have just said exactly the same thing as you said in the previous post and given a stat and link to that stat that I just gave you which is just weird. Do you read the posts that you reply to? I did respond to the point you made already and you have ignored them so I won't repeat them.
Have a go at answering my earlier question though. I repeat:
Would you be happy to be paid the same salary for your job in 1910 plus inflation and if not why do you think it is ok to impose that on others?
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.
I don't doubt any of what you are saying, however this was definitely not my experience in the decade or so that I lived in London. It was totally a totally anonymous experience, much like the stereotype.
It depends in which part of London you live. Chiswick, Islington, Hampton (to name a few) are villages that got merged into the whole.
Other parts are an array of tower blocks - the modern ones are nice enough to live in. But still very sterile.
More re lab tests vs real world....recent lab tests said immunity probably lasted for years. Pfizer seen real world data for Israel and they think it is waning a bit after 6 months, and a 3rd shot is the way forward.
What is surprising is they don't seem to be planning on deploying a reformulated version to specifically target the variants. I thought it was a day job in the factory to retool and then surely sensible to repeat the same real world test agreement with Israel?
I think we are all getting booster shots though now.
It's still got to be trialled and once approved there's a 3-4 month lead time on it reaching the end of the supply chain into people's arms. The UK government asked if Pfizer could supply the gen 2 vaccine for the second order but was told it would mean waiting until 2022 Q1 because it wasn't likely to be ready in time for H2 delivery. The government then decided to get 60m of gen 1.
The only company that might be ready with a gen 2 by Q4 is AZ.
What i meant is i am surprised as Israel has been their test bed that gets priority, i am surprised they aren't using them again to test gen 2.
I don't think this is a problem. The 8% figure is an upper bound of the estimated range anyway, and even if it does come in that high, it won't be because the economy is booming - just because of some weird effect of the way furlough impacts the calculations. Since it's clear that the triple lock is designed to force pensions to at least keep pace with earnings, it should be easy to argue that the fairest thing is to just strip out the effect of furlough, and base any increase on "actual" wage inflation. Possibly that will mean it falls below either or both of 2.5% and price inflation, in which case, so be it.
Price inflation could be running well above the long term target rate by then anyway, in which case the decision becomes a bit easier. Can't see it getting to 8%, though.
Pension tax relief. For those (like me) who think it should be limited to 20%, it is worse than the 40% relief you think it is.
0% personal allowance is lost at rate of £1 for every £2 earned over £100k, so If someone earns a little over £100k then their marginal rate of tax is 60% and so they will get 60% tax relief on contributions which bring their income down towards 100k.
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.
There is a genuine difference.
In a city, if you're not a particularly sociable person, or you're a bit different, it's really easy to hide in the crowd and live as an atomized individual - except when you're mixing with your specially curated social group. Most of the people on your street wouldn't be able to pick you out of an identity parade.
In rural areas with a strong community this is much harder. Even if you're a recluse who lives on their own land, everyone in the area will know who you are and what your backstory is.
There are advantages and downsides to both, but there is a difference that "community" is shallower, less comprehensive and more optional in a city.
It's definitely not shallower. People in our neighbourhood set up a huge mutual aid project to make sure that vulnerable people were fed and looked after during the Covid crisis. There are really strong bonds between people here, often across cultural and social differences. It's quite humbling sometimes to be honest.
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.
That's right. The earnings link is key. Without that, in a society growing more prosperous, a pension linked only to inflation would condemn those relying on it to abject relative poverty - and relative is the only meaningful metric here - over the long run. Time would work its magic and in this case it would be of the black variety.
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.
There are a number of cases where automation wasn't very good, but due to low labour costs, automation hasn't been tried again, in more than a decade.
The building site examples actually fall into that - perviously machinery was inconveniently sized, over priced and required alot of maintenance. But in the decades since cheap labour came in.....
Automation is actually a bit of an art.
When I was in Rome, I used a Revolut card in a cash machine. That failed in mid-transaction. Normally your money would get stuck for a days. Online chat to Revolut customer services on the mobile. Fixed then and there. Plus they directed me to a cash machine that was working (they could see other transactions that had worked on it) just round the corner.....
That was then and maybe now, but just wait till they staff the help desk with AI chat bots and see if the bot knows about the working ATM round the corner.
If the question is asked often enough - the chat bot will be provided with the ability to check that information when required.
Chat bot development roadmaps are really very simple, you pick the most frequently answered questions and automate them away...
Chat bot development roadmaps are the service company buys from a chat bot vendor and then discovers it costs a fortune to change anything. Though your version is perhaps how things should be.
Pension tax relief. For those (like me) who think it should be limited to 20%, it is worse than the 40% relief you think it is.
0% personal allowance is lost at rate of £1 for every £2 earned over £100k, so If someone earns a little over £100k then their marginal rate of tax is 60% and so they will get 60% tax relief on contributions which bring their income down towards 100k.
There is almost no pension tax relief once you earn over 150k or so, though.
Pension tax relief. For those (like me) who think it should be limited to 20%, it is worse than the 40% relief you think it is.
0% personal allowance is lost at rate of £1 for every £2 earned over £100k, so If someone earns a little over £100k then their marginal rate of tax is 60% and so they will get 60% tax relief on contributions which bring their income down towards 100k.
That's just two wrongs making a - not exactly a right, but maybe about 20% of a right. The 60%+ marginal rate that kicks in above 100k is just plain evil. Being able to manipulate it away somewhat is absolutely necessary.
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.
The remaining quarter will have been relatively poor anyway and likely claiming housing benefit even before they retired, so no reason they cannot still use housing benefit to pay their rent on retirement.
What! You have just said exactly the same thing as you said in the previous post and given a stat and link to that stat that I just gave you which is just weird. Do you read the posts that you reply to? I did respond to the point you made already and you have ignored them so I won't repeat them.
Have a go at answering my earlier question though. I repeat:
Would you be happy to be paid the same salary for your job in 1910 plus inflation and if not why do you think it is ok to impose that on others?
If I was paid the same salary for my job in 1910 plus inflation it would be significantly higher than it is now.
I also repeat the same point you have ignored because 74% owning their homes outright amongst over 65s is clearly higher than the '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' you were suggesting earlier.
So the vast majority of over 65s have neither rent nor mortgage payments to pay which is the main payment those earning and in work have to pay each month
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.
Not all such schools were Catholic, but the majority were.
Victims haven't seen much in the way off apology in more recent times... https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/30/my-relatives-went-to-a-catholic-school-for-native-children-it-was-a-place-of-horrors ...Just days before the survivors were set to go to court in 2010, the then Republican governor of South Dakota, Mike Rounds (now a US senator), signed a bill into law prohibiting anyone 40 years or older from recovering damages from institutions responsible for their abuse, except from individual perpetrators themselves. The act crushed the lawsuit, effectively shielding the Catholic church from any responsibility or accountability...
Looking at the GDP data today, the decision to open up fully is manifestly nothing to do with our government facing a structurally smaller economy servicing a structurally much larger debt.
These two events are entirely unconnected. Obviously.
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.
There are a number of cases where automation wasn't very good, but due to low labour costs, automation hasn't been tried again, in more than a decade.
The building site examples actually fall into that - perviously machinery was inconveniently sized, over priced and required alot of maintenance. But in the decades since cheap labour came in.....
Automation is actually a bit of an art.
When I was in Rome, I used a Revolut card in a cash machine. That failed in mid-transaction. Normally your money would get stuck for a days. Online chat to Revolut customer services on the mobile. Fixed then and there. Plus they directed me to a cash machine that was working (they could see other transactions that had worked on it) just round the corner.....
That was then and maybe now, but just wait till they staff the help desk with AI chat bots and see if the bot knows about the working ATM round the corner.
If the question is asked often enough - the chat bot will be provided with the ability to check that information when required.
Chat bot development roadmaps are really very simple, you pick the most frequently answered questions and automate them away...
Chat bot development roadmaps are the service company buys from a chat bot vendor and then discovers it costs a fortune to change anything. Though your version is perhaps how things should be.
I don't buy from a vendor - I go to IBM and build my own based on their technology stack.
Yes I do know I've written IBM there, Watson's prices are far more sane than MS in this area...
Also remember I'm a custom software house - you are paying us £000 a day because we will save you that or more, and I will (albeit probably uniquely) point out when the savings stop making sense.
More re lab tests vs real world....recent lab tests said immunity probably lasted for years. Pfizer seen real world data for Israel and they think it is waning a bit after 6 months, and a 3rd shot is the way forward.
What is surprising is they don't seem to be planning on deploying a reformulated version to specifically target the variants. I thought it was a day job in the factory to retool and then surely sensible to repeat the same real world test agreement with Israel?
I think we are all getting booster shots though now.
It's still got to be trialled and once approved there's a 3-4 month lead time on it reaching the end of the supply chain into people's arms. The UK government asked if Pfizer could supply the gen 2 vaccine for the second order but was told it would mean waiting until 2022 Q1 because it wasn't likely to be ready in time for H2 delivery. The government then decided to get 60m of gen 1.
The only company that might be ready with a gen 2 by Q4 is AZ.
It's interesting that Israel seems to be finding less Pfizer efficacy against the Delta variant than we are in the UK (albeit with probably quite large error bars on both sets of figures), and possibly more tail-off in the protection. See good summary here:
Pension tax relief. For those (like me) who think it should be limited to 20%, it is worse than the 40% relief you think it is.
0% personal allowance is lost at rate of £1 for every £2 earned over £100k, so If someone earns a little over £100k then their marginal rate of tax is 60% and so they will get 60% tax relief on contributions which bring their income down towards 100k.
The fact that we can have a marginal rate of tax of 60% under a Conservative Government is what is shocking - who on earth wouldn’t try to mitigate that obscenity?
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte holding press conference at 7 p.m. (1 p.m. ET) after Thursday's coronavirus cases jumped 548% when compared to last week
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.
There are a number of cases where automation wasn't very good, but due to low labour costs, automation hasn't been tried again, in more than a decade.
The building site examples actually fall into that - perviously machinery was inconveniently sized, over priced and required alot of maintenance. But in the decades since cheap labour came in.....
Automation is actually a bit of an art.
When I was in Rome, I used a Revolut card in a cash machine. That failed in mid-transaction. Normally your money would get stuck for a days. Online chat to Revolut customer services on the mobile. Fixed then and there. Plus they directed me to a cash machine that was working (they could see other transactions that had worked on it) just round the corner.....
That was then and maybe now, but just wait till they staff the help desk with AI chat bots and see if the bot knows about the working ATM round the corner.
If the question is asked often enough - the chat bot will be provided with the ability to check that information when required.
Chat bot development roadmaps are really very simple, you pick the most frequently answered questions and automate them away...
Chat bot development roadmaps are the service company buys from a chat bot vendor and then discovers it costs a fortune to change anything. Though your version is perhaps how things should be.
I don't buy from a vendor - I go to IBM and build my own based on their technology stack.
Yes I do know I've written IBM there, Watson's prices are far more sane than MS in this area...
Also remember I'm a custom software house - you are paying us £000 a day because we will save you that or more, and I will (albeit probably uniquely) point out when the savings stop making sense.
I'm reminded of Douglas Crockford (the javascript guy) telling a conference he could not name the company he was talking about "but its initials are IBM".
Pension tax relief. For those (like me) who think it should be limited to 20%, it is worse than the 40% relief you think it is.
0% personal allowance is lost at rate of £1 for every £2 earned over £100k, so If someone earns a little over £100k then their marginal rate of tax is 60% and so they will get 60% tax relief on contributions which bring their income down towards 100k.
Back when I was working and at the same time flush with cash I opened a SIPP with a lump sum equal to my annual salary. I could do this only because my financial situtation was fortunate enough not to need my salary to live on. I was then astonished to get from HMRC a payment equal to all the tax I'd paid inc higher rate. A quite amazingly regressive regime, I thought. Seek out people who don't need money and damn well give them a wodge of it.
I think pension relief should be uncoupled from tax. Government should match fund contributions up to a modest limit. It could be linked to a Citizens Bond. You then get that - depending on performance - plus your state pension. Anything higher should come from personal resources. I've sent this one in to Starmer for the policy review Waiting for him to get in touch to explore further. Maybe a Zoom.
I think that Sunak can get away with a one-off "fairness" adjustment to avoid an unfair 8% pension increase. Sharing the burden of the pandemic etc.
Maybe - and he should be able to. On the other hand some people may say "They're breaking a manifesto promise." That's true and is similar to Nick Clegg and tuition fees.
The dramatisation of the Wannsee meeting makes the uncomfortable point that a majority of the worthies who decided the final solution policy were qualified lawyers.
How many more times. Professional qualifications do not confer morality.
More re lab tests vs real world....recent lab tests said immunity probably lasted for years. Pfizer seen real world data for Israel and they think it is waning a bit after 6 months, and a 3rd shot is the way forward.
What is surprising is they don't seem to be planning on deploying a reformulated version to specifically target the variants. I thought it was a day job in the factory to retool and then surely sensible to repeat the same real world test agreement with Israel?
I think we are all getting booster shots though now.
It's still got to be trialled and once approved there's a 3-4 month lead time on it reaching the end of the supply chain into people's arms. The UK government asked if Pfizer could supply the gen 2 vaccine for the second order but was told it would mean waiting until 2022 Q1 because it wasn't likely to be ready in time for H2 delivery. The government then decided to get 60m of gen 1.
The only company that might be ready with a gen 2 by Q4 is AZ.
It's interesting that Israel seems to be finding less Pfizer efficacy against the Delta variant than we are in the UK (albeit with probably quite large error bars on both sets of figures), and possibly more tail-off in the protection. See good summary here:
I wonder whether the difference might be down to the larger interval between doses which we applied in the UK?
There is also the law of small numbers...Israel data is based on very small sample size so far. Remember the initial horror stories of 1/3 of double vaxxed patients dying in the UK, which was based on a sample size of 52.
UK, Indian variant has been widespread here for several months now, so we have much bigger dataset.
BTW, CFR from delta is now 0.2% according to latest UK data, due to vaccines. Obviously kost of the people dying are still the unvaxxed.
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.
That's right. The earnings link is key. Without that, in a society growing more prosperous, a pension linked only to inflation would condemn those relying on it to abject relative poverty - and relative is the only meaningful metric here - over the long run. Time would work its magic and in this case it would be of the black variety.
No it wouldn't, as most pensioners do not have to pay rent or a mortgage unlike those working and earning as they own their own properties outright.
The only non tax payments most pensioners have to pay on a monthly basis are for shopping and the odd meal or trip out, which can be linked to inflation and they get free bus passes and Freedom Passes for London travel anyway
Pension tax relief. For those (like me) who think it should be limited to 20%, it is worse than the 40% relief you think it is.
0% personal allowance is lost at rate of £1 for every £2 earned over £100k, so If someone earns a little over £100k then their marginal rate of tax is 60% and so they will get 60% tax relief on contributions which bring their income down towards 100k.
The fact that we can have a marginal rate of tax of 60% under a Conservative Government is what is shocking - who on earth wouldn’t try to mitigate that obscenity?
How would you go about doing that? And remember Osbourne created this tapering mess...
The one thing you can't do is £50,001 to £99,999 40% £100,000 to £125,000 30% (but with tapering) £125,001+ 40% £150,001+ 45%
and remember there is another variation of this at £50,000 with child benefit.
I think that Sunak can get away with a one-off "fairness" adjustment to avoid an unfair 8% pension increase. Sharing the burden of the pandemic etc.
Maybe - and he should be able to. On the other hand some people may say "They're breaking a manifesto promise." That's true and is similar to Nick Clegg and tuition fees.
I think the LDs could have got away (with less pain, but still some) with failing to abolish tuition fees, citing the public finances, nasty Tory coalition partners and keeping it as something for a future government when there was more money - i.e. just fail to bring forward a bill on tuition fees. Instead, they failed to do what they promised and made fees three times as large (albeit implementing it as more like a graduate tax).
To take the LD approach, Johnson/Sunak would need to calculate the triple lock rise due to pensioners, multiple it by three and then make it a decrease instead!
Pension tax relief. For those (like me) who think it should be limited to 20%, it is worse than the 40% relief you think it is.
0% personal allowance is lost at rate of £1 for every £2 earned over £100k, so If someone earns a little over £100k then their marginal rate of tax is 60% and so they will get 60% tax relief on contributions which bring their income down towards 100k.
That's just two wrongs making a - not exactly a right, but maybe about 20% of a right. The 60%+ marginal rate that kicks in above 100k is just plain evil. Being able to manipulate it away somewhat is absolutely necessary.
It's wrong absolutely but I wouldn't go as far as saying evil.
For those on UC, paying NI and IC it is a minimum of 75% real tax rate.
All these anomalies should be abolished. Merge NI, IC and UC together and get rid of all tapering of anything. Just have flat rates that work consistently.
Pension tax relief. For those (like me) who think it should be limited to 20%, it is worse than the 40% relief you think it is.
0% personal allowance is lost at rate of £1 for every £2 earned over £100k, so If someone earns a little over £100k then their marginal rate of tax is 60% and so they will get 60% tax relief on contributions which bring their income down towards 100k.
Back when I was working and at the same time flush with cash I opened a SIPP with a lump sum equal to my annual salary. I could do this only because my financial situtation was fortunate enough not to need my salary to live on. I was then astonished to get from HMRC a payment equal to all the tax I'd paid inc higher rate. A quite amazingly regressive regime, I thought. Seek out people who don't need money and damn well give them a wodge of it.
I think pension relief should be uncoupled from tax. Government should match fund contributions up to a modest limit. It could be linked to a Citizens Bond. You then get that - depending on performance - plus your state pension. Anything higher should come from personal resources. I've sent this one in to Starmer for the policy review Waiting for him to get in touch to explore further. Maybe a Zoom.
Pension contributions are also very handy for those who want to qualify for tax credit because, as with pension, they have the effect of reducing your income for assessment purposes. You might want to give that to Starmer as well.
The bugbear I have is the tax relief/matching arrangements on charity contributions, with the government coughing up wedges to some charities that I do not believe are worthy of the name - costs the exchequer a fortune every year.
Pension tax relief. For those (like me) who think it should be limited to 20%, it is worse than the 40% relief you think it is.
0% personal allowance is lost at rate of £1 for every £2 earned over £100k, so If someone earns a little over £100k then their marginal rate of tax is 60% and so they will get 60% tax relief on contributions which bring their income down towards 100k.
That's just two wrongs making a - not exactly a right, but maybe about 20% of a right. The 60%+ marginal rate that kicks in above 100k is just plain evil. Being able to manipulate it away somewhat is absolutely necessary.
It's wrong absolutely but I wouldn't go as far as saying evil.
For those on UC, paying NI and IC it is a minimum of 75% real tax rate.
All these anomalies should be abolished. Merge NI, IC and UC together and get rid of all tapering of anything. Just have flat rates that work consistently.
Not possible - sadly - it's tapering of a benefit that is the issue and without a universal income it just isn't possible.
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.
That's right. The earnings link is key. Without that, in a society growing more prosperous, a pension linked only to inflation would condemn those relying on it to abject relative poverty - and relative is the only meaningful metric here - over the long run. Time would work its magic and in this case it would be of the black variety.
No it wouldn't, as most pensioners do not have to pay rent or a mortgage unlike those working and earning as they own their own properties outright.
The only non tax payments most pensioners have to pay on a monthly basis are for shopping and the odd meal or trip out, which can be linked to inflation and they get free bus passes and Freedom Passes for London travel anyway
Pensioners who own their own homes outright do not need to pay a mortgage. Pensioners in rented accommodation still need to pay rent. The full state pension is £10,192.56 a year. Remember the people trying to live on that, not just the ones stuffing it under the mattress because they've got a £60k personal pension from work.
Pension tax relief. For those (like me) who think it should be limited to 20%, it is worse than the 40% relief you think it is.
0% personal allowance is lost at rate of £1 for every £2 earned over £100k, so If someone earns a little over £100k then their marginal rate of tax is 60% and so they will get 60% tax relief on contributions which bring their income down towards 100k.
That's just two wrongs making a - not exactly a right, but maybe about 20% of a right. The 60%+ marginal rate that kicks in above 100k is just plain evil. Being able to manipulate it away somewhat is absolutely necessary.
It's wrong absolutely but I wouldn't go as far as saying evil.
For those on UC, paying NI and IC it is a minimum of 75% real tax rate.
All these anomalies should be abolished. Merge NI, IC and UC together and get rid of all tapering of anything. Just have flat rates that work consistently.
No, return NI to its original intention as a contributory payment for most unemployment benefits, the state pension and state healthcare
Pension tax relief. For those (like me) who think it should be limited to 20%, it is worse than the 40% relief you think it is.
0% personal allowance is lost at rate of £1 for every £2 earned over £100k, so If someone earns a little over £100k then their marginal rate of tax is 60% and so they will get 60% tax relief on contributions which bring their income down towards 100k.
Back when I was working and at the same time flush with cash I opened a SIPP with a lump sum equal to my annual salary. I could do this only because my financial situtation was fortunate enough not to need my salary to live on. I was then astonished to get from HMRC a payment equal to all the tax I'd paid inc higher rate. A quite amazingly regressive regime, I thought. Seek out people who don't need money and damn well give them a wodge of it.
I think pension relief should be uncoupled from tax. Government should match fund contributions up to a modest limit. It could be linked to a Citizens Bond. You then get that - depending on performance - plus your state pension. Anything higher should come from personal resources. I've sent this one in to Starmer for the policy review Waiting for him to get in touch to explore further. Maybe a Zoom.
That would kill pensions overnight, reducing them to an expensive savings/investment account.
It's a tricky fine line that the government have to tread. Try to get people to fund their old age, but still keeping it 'fair'. The people which can fund their old age will be those with money in the first place.
I think reducing the TR to 20% would be sufficent, with maybe a small bonus on top to sweeten the deal a bit, but not as much as it currently is.
Poland’s government takes aim at US-owned broadcaster https://www.politico.eu/article/polands-government-takes-aim-at-us-owned-broadcaster/ Poland’s nationalist ruling coalition is pushing a media bill through parliament that has critics warning it’s an attempt to void the broadcast license of a U.S.-owned television station that’s often critical of the government.
The draft bill — just four pages long — was submitted to the Polish parliament late Wednesday by a group of MPs from the Law and Justice (PiS) party. It proposes only granting licenses to companies not majority-owned by entities from outside the European Economic Area.
That’s aimed at TVN, owned by Discovery of the U.S., which is applying for a renewal of its broadcast permit that runs out in September. The channel is one of Poland’s most-watched, and it also owns influential news channel TVN24....
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%.
Pension tax relief. For those (like me) who think it should be limited to 20%, it is worse than the 40% relief you think it is.
0% personal allowance is lost at rate of £1 for every £2 earned over £100k, so If someone earns a little over £100k then their marginal rate of tax is 60% and so they will get 60% tax relief on contributions which bring their income down towards 100k.
Back when I was working and at the same time flush with cash I opened a SIPP with a lump sum equal to my annual salary. I could do this only because my financial situtation was fortunate enough not to need my salary to live on. I was then astonished to get from HMRC a payment equal to all the tax I'd paid inc higher rate. A quite amazingly regressive regime, I thought. Seek out people who don't need money and damn well give them a wodge of it.
I think pension relief should be uncoupled from tax. Government should match fund contributions up to a modest limit. It could be linked to a Citizens Bond. You then get that - depending on performance - plus your state pension. Anything higher should come from personal resources. I've sent this one in to Starmer for the policy review Waiting for him to get in touch to explore further. Maybe a Zoom.
City traders were always doing this with their massive bonuses. This is why Osborne brought in the Annual Allowance.
Pension tax relief. For those (like me) who think it should be limited to 20%, it is worse than the 40% relief you think it is.
0% personal allowance is lost at rate of £1 for every £2 earned over £100k, so If someone earns a little over £100k then their marginal rate of tax is 60% and so they will get 60% tax relief on contributions which bring their income down towards 100k.
The fact that we can have a marginal rate of tax of 60% under a Conservative Government is what is shocking - who on earth wouldn’t try to mitigate that obscenity?
It's really 66.6%.
On a pay rise of £1,000 for a £100K earner:
Income tax £600 Employee's NI @2% £20 Employer's NI at 13.8% £138
Total tax: £758 Received by the employee: £380 True marginal rate = 758 / (758+380) = 66.6%
Which is an absurdity, as are the true marginal rates for various other situations (withdrawal of benefits etc).
Just getting rid of these absurd perverse incentives would help the economy and boost total tax receipts.
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.
That's right. The earnings link is key. Without that, in a society growing more prosperous, a pension linked only to inflation would condemn those relying on it to abject relative poverty - and relative is the only meaningful metric here - over the long run. Time would work its magic and in this case it would be of the black variety.
No it wouldn't, as most pensioners do not have to pay rent or a mortgage unlike those working and earning as they own their own properties outright.
The only non tax payments most pensioners have to pay on a monthly basis are for shopping and the odd meal or trip out, which can be linked to inflation and they get free bus passes and Freedom Passes for London travel anyway
Pensioners who own their own homes outright do not need to pay a mortgage. Pensioners in rented accommodation still need to pay rent. The full state pension is £10,192.56 a year. Remember the people trying to live on that, not just the ones stuffing it under the mattress because they've got a £60k personal pension from work.
As I have already pointed out 74% of over 65s, ie the vast majority of pensioners, own their homes outright.
The remaining quarter get housing benefit anyway to pay their rent, that is not a reason to increase the state pension above inflation for the other 3/4
Mr. Contrarian, it was a while ago that I saw it, but I think it's rather more useful than most war dramatisations because it lays bare the bureaucratic, almost everyday nature of the mechanics that can lie beneath genocide and totalitarianism.
Less fun than machineguns and Spitfires, but rather more menacing.
Pension tax relief. For those (like me) who think it should be limited to 20%, it is worse than the 40% relief you think it is.
0% personal allowance is lost at rate of £1 for every £2 earned over £100k, so If someone earns a little over £100k then their marginal rate of tax is 60% and so they will get 60% tax relief on contributions which bring their income down towards 100k.
Back when I was working and at the same time flush with cash I opened a SIPP with a lump sum equal to my annual salary. I could do this only because my financial situtation was fortunate enough not to need my salary to live on. I was then astonished to get from HMRC a payment equal to all the tax I'd paid inc higher rate. A quite amazingly regressive regime, I thought. Seek out people who don't need money and damn well give them a wodge of it.
I think pension relief should be uncoupled from tax. Government should match fund contributions up to a modest limit. It could be linked to a Citizens Bond. You then get that - depending on performance - plus your state pension. Anything higher should come from personal resources. I've sent this one in to Starmer for the policy review Waiting for him to get in touch to explore further. Maybe a Zoom.
That would kill pensions overnight, reducing them to an expensive savings/investment account.
It's a tricky fine line that the government have to tread. Try to get people to fund their old age, but still keeping it 'fair'. The people which can fund their old age will be those with money in the first place.
I think reducing the TR to 20% would be sufficent, with maybe a small bonus on top to sweeten the deal a bit, but not as much as it currently is.
No it wouldn't. Not if the match funding is pitched right. What it'd kill is complexity, angst, inequity, loopholes, and much of the pensions INDUSTRY.
More re lab tests vs real world....recent lab tests said immunity probably lasted for years. Pfizer seen real world data for Israel and they think it is waning a bit after 6 months, and a 3rd shot is the way forward.
What is surprising is they don't seem to be planning on deploying a reformulated version to specifically target the variants. I thought it was a day job in the factory to retool and then surely sensible to repeat the same real world test agreement with Israel?
I think we are all getting booster shots though now.
It's still got to be trialled and once approved there's a 3-4 month lead time on it reaching the end of the supply chain into people's arms. The UK government asked if Pfizer could supply the gen 2 vaccine for the second order but was told it would mean waiting until 2022 Q1 because it wasn't likely to be ready in time for H2 delivery. The government then decided to get 60m of gen 1.
The only company that might be ready with a gen 2 by Q4 is AZ.
It's interesting that Israel seems to be finding less Pfizer efficacy against the Delta variant than we are in the UK (albeit with probably quite large error bars on both sets of figures), and possibly more tail-off in the protection. See good summary here:
I wonder whether the difference might be down to the larger interval between doses which we applied in the UK?
I tried find the article, but a scientist was arguing that the 8 week gap was optimal, based on the antibody studies they did during the vaccine program.
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.
That's right. The earnings link is key. Without that, in a society growing more prosperous, a pension linked only to inflation would condemn those relying on it to abject relative poverty - and relative is the only meaningful metric here - over the long run. Time would work its magic and in this case it would be of the black variety.
No it wouldn't, as most pensioners do not have to pay rent or a mortgage unlike those working and earning as they own their own properties outright.
The only non tax payments most pensioners have to pay on a monthly basis are for shopping and the odd meal or trip out, which can be linked to inflation and they get free bus passes and Freedom Passes for London travel anyway
Pensioners who own their own homes outright do not need to pay a mortgage. Pensioners in rented accommodation still need to pay rent. The full state pension is £10,192.56 a year. Remember the people trying to live on that, not just the ones stuffing it under the mattress because they've got a £60k personal pension from work.
As I have already pointed out 74% of over 65s, ie the vast majority of pensioners, own their homes outright.
The remaining quarter get housing benefit anyway to pay their rent, that is not a reason to increase the state pension above inflation for the other 3/4
That doesn't make sense. Non-houseowners are not the same people as those who are on low income and rely on housing benefit. There are people who rent houses but don't get HB.
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 a very, erm, 'traditional' view. Taking things waaay back to the good old days. Things were so much simpler when dealing with the infidel or heathen.
Pension tax relief. For those (like me) who think it should be limited to 20%, it is worse than the 40% relief you think it is.
0% personal allowance is lost at rate of £1 for every £2 earned over £100k, so If someone earns a little over £100k then their marginal rate of tax is 60% and so they will get 60% tax relief on contributions which bring their income down towards 100k.
Back when I was working and at the same time flush with cash I opened a SIPP with a lump sum equal to my annual salary. I could do this only because my financial situtation was fortunate enough not to need my salary to live on. I was then astonished to get from HMRC a payment equal to all the tax I'd paid inc higher rate. A quite amazingly regressive regime, I thought. Seek out people who don't need money and damn well give them a wodge of it.
I think pension relief should be uncoupled from tax. Government should match fund contributions up to a modest limit. It could be linked to a Citizens Bond. You then get that - depending on performance - plus your state pension. Anything higher should come from personal resources. I've sent this one in to Starmer for the policy review Waiting for him to get in touch to explore further. Maybe a Zoom.
That would kill pensions overnight, reducing them to an expensive savings/investment account.
It's a tricky fine line that the government have to tread. Try to get people to fund their old age, but still keeping it 'fair'. The people which can fund their old age will be those with money in the first place.
I think reducing the TR to 20% would be sufficent, with maybe a small bonus on top to sweeten the deal a bit, but not as much as it currently is.
The efficacy of pension contributions is massively complex. Not just because of unknown life expectancy. Consider that when the time comes to take benefits, after 25% tax free cash is taken, leaving 75% of the fund taxable, tax is levied on the all monies withdrawn rather than the gain on the monies invested. To clarify what I mean - invest money in a bank account and you only pay income tax on the interest on top of your capital. With a pension you pay tax on the withdrawal of capital as well.
In my experience, people with defined benefit (final salary) schemes do not appreciate the value of what they have. It is no exaggeration to say that someone only moderately senior with 40 years in a DB scheme comes out with benefits with equivalence of £1m+.
The dramatisation of the Wannsee meeting makes the uncomfortable point that a majority of the worthies who decided the final solution policy were qualified lawyers.
How many more times. Professional qualifications do not confer morality.
The danger of being a lawyer is that you can become completely detached from the morality of your actions.
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.
It depends a great deal which part of London you are in. In the more suburban parts of London - which were created by villages being swallowed as London expanded - where the layout hasn't been "improved" by planners, very often you get the feeling/social sitaution you describe.
In the parts where everything has been swept away and replaced with massive towers, the atomisation is quite intense. The modern version of this is often clean and neat. But still soul less....
That's probably true, but much more of London is low rise and relatively low density terraced housing or low rise council blocks than high rise and high density, which is of course one reason for high house prices in the city. We also had friendly neighbours when we lived in a low rise council block closer to the centre, so it's certainly not just a leafy suburban thing - and neither Tim (hi neighbour) nor I live in the real burbs in any case.
Everyone on my road knows who I am and my backstory because I'm the one who puts those annoying Lib Dem leaflets through their letterboxes.
A couple of elections ago I had one stuffed back into mine with "Only the Lib Dems will [something or other, probably mend the local potholes]" scrawled out and changed to "Only the Lib Dems would go into coalition with the Tories."
The inner suburbs are what London is best at. Zone 2. Easy to get into the centre, plenty of shops and restaurants, community feeling particularly for parents of school aged children, good parks, nice Victorian housing stock.
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.
That's right. The earnings link is key. Without that, in a society growing more prosperous, a pension linked only to inflation would condemn those relying on it to abject relative poverty - and relative is the only meaningful metric here - over the long run. Time would work its magic and in this case it would be of the black variety.
No it wouldn't, as most pensioners do not have to pay rent or a mortgage unlike those working and earning as they own their own properties outright.
The only non tax payments most pensioners have to pay on a monthly basis are for shopping and the odd meal or trip out, which can be linked to inflation and they get free bus passes and Freedom Passes for London travel anyway
Pensioners who own their own homes outright do not need to pay a mortgage. Pensioners in rented accommodation still need to pay rent. The full state pension is £10,192.56 a year. Remember the people trying to live on that, not just the ones stuffing it under the mattress because they've got a £60k personal pension from work.
As I have already pointed out 74% of over 65s, ie the vast majority of pensioners, own their homes outright.
The remaining quarter get housing benefit anyway to pay their rent, that is not a reason to increase the state pension above inflation for the other 3/4
Pension tax relief. For those (like me) who think it should be limited to 20%, it is worse than the 40% relief you think it is.
0% personal allowance is lost at rate of £1 for every £2 earned over £100k, so If someone earns a little over £100k then their marginal rate of tax is 60% and so they will get 60% tax relief on contributions which bring their income down towards 100k.
The fact that we can have a marginal rate of tax of 60% under a Conservative Government is what is shocking - who on earth wouldn’t try to mitigate that obscenity?
It's really 66.6%.
On a pay rise of £1,000 for a £100K earner:
Income tax £600 Employee's NI @2% £20 Employer's NI at 13.8% £138
Total tax: £758 Received by the employee: £380 True marginal rate = 758 / (758+380) = 66.6%
Which is an absurdity, as are the true marginal rates for various other situations (withdrawal of benefits etc).
Just getting rid of these absurd perverse incentives would help the economy and boost total tax receipts.
If the taxpayer doesnt want to pay that rate it is already trivial to avoid by use of pension allowances, EIS, SEIS, VCTs etc. Very few people are actually paying tax at that rate.
Pension tax relief. For those (like me) who think it should be limited to 20%, it is worse than the 40% relief you think it is.
0% personal allowance is lost at rate of £1 for every £2 earned over £100k, so If someone earns a little over £100k then their marginal rate of tax is 60% and so they will get 60% tax relief on contributions which bring their income down towards 100k.
The fact that we can have a marginal rate of tax of 60% under a Conservative Government is what is shocking - who on earth wouldn’t try to mitigate that obscenity?
It's really 66.6%.
On a pay rise of £1,000 for a £100K earner:
Income tax £600 Employee's NI @2% £20 Employer's NI at 13.8% £138
Total tax: £758 Received by the employee: £380 True marginal rate = 758 / (758+380) = 66.6%
Which is an absurdity, as are the true marginal rates for various other situations (withdrawal of benefits etc).
Just getting rid of these absurd perverse incentives would help the economy and boost total tax receipts.
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 a very, erm, 'traditional' view. Taking things waaay back to the good old days. Things were so much simpler when dealing with the infidel or heathen.
Well, obviously.
The infidel/heathen/devil worshiper/pineapple-on-pizza-people aren't just evil. Their existence is an insult to God. So their continued existence risks the Wrath of God.
So it it much better, safer etc for all concerned if we slaughter them.
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.
That's right. The earnings link is key. Without that, in a society growing more prosperous, a pension linked only to inflation would condemn those relying on it to abject relative poverty - and relative is the only meaningful metric here - over the long run. Time would work its magic and in this case it would be of the black variety.
No it wouldn't, as most pensioners do not have to pay rent or a mortgage unlike those working and earning as they own their own properties outright.
The only non tax payments most pensioners have to pay on a monthly basis are for shopping and the odd meal or trip out, which can be linked to inflation and they get free bus passes and Freedom Passes for London travel anyway
Pensioners who own their own homes outright do not need to pay a mortgage. Pensioners in rented accommodation still need to pay rent. The full state pension is £10,192.56 a year. Remember the people trying to live on that, not just the ones stuffing it under the mattress because they've got a £60k personal pension from work.
As I have already pointed out 74% of over 65s, ie the vast majority of pensioners, own their homes outright.
The remaining quarter get housing benefit anyway to pay their rent, that is not a reason to increase the state pension above inflation for the other 3/4
That doesn't make sense. Non-houseowners are not the same people as those who are on low income and rely on housing benefit. There are people who rent houses but don't get HB.
Amongst pensioners they are, only 26% of over 65s do not own their own house and most of those would have been relatively poor and claiming housing benefit when working too.
Yes it is true that at least half if not more of under 40s rent, large numbers of whom rent privately without needing housing benefit and some of whom are on above average incomes.
By 65 however the vast majority do not rent and most own their own homes, so those who rent and are pensioners tend to be poorer than average
Pension tax relief. For those (like me) who think it should be limited to 20%, it is worse than the 40% relief you think it is.
0% personal allowance is lost at rate of £1 for every £2 earned over £100k, so If someone earns a little over £100k then their marginal rate of tax is 60% and so they will get 60% tax relief on contributions which bring their income down towards 100k.
The fact that we can have a marginal rate of tax of 60% under a Conservative Government is what is shocking - who on earth wouldn’t try to mitigate that obscenity?
It's really 66.6%.
On a pay rise of £1,000 for a £100K earner:
Income tax £600 Employee's NI @2% £20 Employer's NI at 13.8% £138
Total tax: £758 Received by the employee: £380 True marginal rate = 758 / (758+380) = 66.6%
Which is an absurdity, as are the true marginal rates for various other situations (withdrawal of benefits etc).
Just getting rid of these absurd perverse incentives would help the economy and boost total tax receipts.
If a pay rise of £1,000 leaves the taxpayer with £380, that's a marginal rate of 62%. Either way, it's obscene.
Pension tax relief. For those (like me) who think it should be limited to 20%, it is worse than the 40% relief you think it is.
0% personal allowance is lost at rate of £1 for every £2 earned over £100k, so If someone earns a little over £100k then their marginal rate of tax is 60% and so they will get 60% tax relief on contributions which bring their income down towards 100k.
Back when I was working and at the same time flush with cash I opened a SIPP with a lump sum equal to my annual salary. I could do this only because my financial situtation was fortunate enough not to need my salary to live on. I was then astonished to get from HMRC a payment equal to all the tax I'd paid inc higher rate. A quite amazingly regressive regime, I thought. Seek out people who don't need money and damn well give them a wodge of it.
I think pension relief should be uncoupled from tax. Government should match fund contributions up to a modest limit. It could be linked to a Citizens Bond. You then get that - depending on performance - plus your state pension. Anything higher should come from personal resources. I've sent this one in to Starmer for the policy review Waiting for him to get in touch to explore further. Maybe a Zoom.
Pension contributions are also very handy for those who want to qualify for tax credit because, as with pension, they have the effect of reducing your income for assessment purposes. You might want to give that to Starmer as well.
The bugbear I have is the tax relief/matching arrangements on charity contributions, with the government coughing up wedges to some charities that I do not believe are worthy of the name - costs the exchequer a fortune every year.
Yes that is abused in places. And ok I'll throw in your other point too. But all of this falls away if my very radical reform is adopted.
The dramatisation of the Wannsee meeting makes the uncomfortable point that a majority of the worthies who decided the final solution policy were qualified lawyers.
How many more times. Professional qualifications do not confer morality.
Some years ago an insurance lawyer and I, who had been concerned in a professional capacity with the reliability of doctors evidence in other than directly medical matters, and where their own money was concerned, were discussing this subject when we were joined by someone who expressed amazement that professional people, such as doctors, didn't always tell the truth where money was concerned.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte holding press conference at 7 p.m. (1 p.m. ET) after Thursday's coronavirus cases jumped 548% when compared to last week
That must have been a very low base, with a horrendous variant, and everyone celebrating 'rub yourself against everyone you see' day.
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.
That's right. The earnings link is key. Without that, in a society growing more prosperous, a pension linked only to inflation would condemn those relying on it to abject relative poverty - and relative is the only meaningful metric here - over the long run. Time would work its magic and in this case it would be of the black variety.
No it wouldn't, as most pensioners do not have to pay rent or a mortgage unlike those working and earning as they own their own properties outright.
The only non tax payments most pensioners have to pay on a monthly basis are for shopping and the odd meal or trip out, which can be linked to inflation and they get free bus passes and Freedom Passes for London travel anyway
Pensioners who own their own homes outright do not need to pay a mortgage. Pensioners in rented accommodation still need to pay rent. The full state pension is £10,192.56 a year. Remember the people trying to live on that, not just the ones stuffing it under the mattress because they've got a £60k personal pension from work.
As I have already pointed out 74% of over 65s, ie the vast majority of pensioners, own their homes outright.
The remaining quarter get housing benefit anyway to pay their rent, that is not a reason to increase the state pension above inflation for the other 3/4
That doesn't make sense. Non-houseowners are not the same people as those who are on low income and rely on housing benefit. There are people who rent houses but don't get HB.
Amongst pensioners they are, only 26% of over 65s do not own their own house and most of those would have been relatively poor and claiming housing benefit when working too.
Yes it is true that at least half if not more of under 40s rent, large numbers of whom rent privately without needing housing benefit and some of whom are on above average incomes.
By 65 however the vast majority do not rent and most own their own homes, so those who rent and are pensioners tend to be poorer than average
Okay, but that is not the same as what you said which is that all those OAPs who rent get HB.
It would therefore seem that public attitudes towards restrictions are far more complex than the headlines and polls may suggest. Public feelings on restrictions are nuanced, and multifaceted — as one would expect, given the benefits, risks and huge trade-offs. Distilling complex issues into soundbites and simple figures only muddies the water further. So next time you see a poll claiming that nearly one-fifth of the population supports a permanent curfew, treat it with a heavy dose of scepticism. Journalists and politicians, that applies to you too.
Pension tax relief. For those (like me) who think it should be limited to 20%, it is worse than the 40% relief you think it is.
0% personal allowance is lost at rate of £1 for every £2 earned over £100k, so If someone earns a little over £100k then their marginal rate of tax is 60% and so they will get 60% tax relief on contributions which bring their income down towards 100k.
The fact that we can have a marginal rate of tax of 60% under a Conservative Government is what is shocking - who on earth wouldn’t try to mitigate that obscenity?
It's really 66.6%.
On a pay rise of £1,000 for a £100K earner:
Income tax £600 Employee's NI @2% £20 Employer's NI at 13.8% £138
Total tax: £758 Received by the employee: £380 True marginal rate = 758 / (758+380) = 66.6%
Which is an absurdity, as are the true marginal rates for various other situations (withdrawal of benefits etc).
Just getting rid of these absurd perverse incentives would help the economy and boost total tax receipts.
If a pay rise of £1,000 leaves the taxpayer with £380, that's a marginal rate of 62%. Either way, it's obscene.
Isn't that only between 100-110k due to the taper of the personal allowance?
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 a very, erm, 'traditional' view. Taking things waaay back to the good old days. Things were so much simpler when dealing with the infidel or heathen.
Well, obviously.
The infidel/heathen/devil worshiper/pineapple-on-pizza-people aren't just evil. Their existence is an insult to God. So their continued existence risks the Wrath of God.
So it it much better, safer etc for all concerned if we slaughter them.
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.
That's right. The earnings link is key. Without that, in a society growing more prosperous, a pension linked only to inflation would condemn those relying on it to abject relative poverty - and relative is the only meaningful metric here - over the long run. Time would work its magic and in this case it would be of the black variety.
No it wouldn't, as most pensioners do not have to pay rent or a mortgage unlike those working and earning as they own their own properties outright.
The only non tax payments most pensioners have to pay on a monthly basis are for shopping and the odd meal or trip out, which can be linked to inflation and they get free bus passes and Freedom Passes for London travel anyway
Pensioners who own their own homes outright do not need to pay a mortgage. Pensioners in rented accommodation still need to pay rent. The full state pension is £10,192.56 a year. Remember the people trying to live on that, not just the ones stuffing it under the mattress because they've got a £60k personal pension from work.
As I have already pointed out 74% of over 65s, ie the vast majority of pensioners, own their homes outright.
The remaining quarter get housing benefit anyway to pay their rent, that is not a reason to increase the state pension above inflation for the other 3/4
That doesn't make sense. Non-houseowners are not the same people as those who are on low income and rely on housing benefit. There are people who rent houses but don't get HB.
Amongst pensioners they are, only 26% of over 65s do not own their own house and most of those would have been relatively poor and claiming housing benefit when working too.
Yes it is true that at least half if not more of under 40s rent, large numbers of whom rent privately without needing housing benefit and some of whom are on above average incomes.
By 65 however the vast majority do not rent and most own their own homes, so those who rent and are pensioners tend to be poorer than average
Okay, but that is not the same as what you said which is that all those OAPs who rent get HB.
I would have thought the vast majority do.
If you do not own your own home by the time you are 65 you will likely have been on a low income and probably claiming housing benefit for your rent through much of your working life anyway
Pension tax relief. For those (like me) who think it should be limited to 20%, it is worse than the 40% relief you think it is.
0% personal allowance is lost at rate of £1 for every £2 earned over £100k, so If someone earns a little over £100k then their marginal rate of tax is 60% and so they will get 60% tax relief on contributions which bring their income down towards 100k.
The fact that we can have a marginal rate of tax of 60% under a Conservative Government is what is shocking - who on earth wouldn’t try to mitigate that obscenity?
How would you go about doing that? And remember Osbourne created this tapering mess...
The one thing you can't do is £50,001 to £99,999 40% £100,000 to £125,000 30% (but with tapering) £125,001+ 40% £150,001+ 45%
and remember there is another variation of this at £50,000 with child benefit.
By making additional contributions was my point. I agree there are anomalies. Also, I've never agreed with the removal of the personal allowance at higher-income levels - its very name gives it away.
Mr. Contrarian, it was a while ago that I saw it, but I think it's rather more useful than most war dramatisations because it lays bare the bureaucratic, almost everyday nature of the mechanics that can lie beneath genocide and totalitarianism.
Less fun than machineguns and Spitfires, but rather more menacing.
A bit like the lower ranks of the Inquisition and the Puritans; did what they did not for fun but because it was their duty!
The dramatisation of the Wannsee meeting makes the uncomfortable point that a majority of the worthies who decided the final solution policy were qualified lawyers.
How many more times. Professional qualifications do not confer morality.
The danger of being a lawyer is that you can become completely detached from the morality of your actions.
The other problem is what I call the Lawyer's Syllogism.
1) I can *just* squeeze this action inside the law 2) Therefore it is lawful 3) Since it is lawful, it is moral. 4) Since it is moral, I need to do this.
I first encountered this, when, early in the Blair government, The Chinese president visited. The UK government used some really ancient laws to arrest protestors who were doing things like holding up signs about Tibet.
When I asked a lawyer involved in making the case for doing this, he gave me 1-4 above. Almost exactly.
Pension tax relief. For those (like me) who think it should be limited to 20%, it is worse than the 40% relief you think it is.
0% personal allowance is lost at rate of £1 for every £2 earned over £100k, so If someone earns a little over £100k then their marginal rate of tax is 60% and so they will get 60% tax relief on contributions which bring their income down towards 100k.
The fact that we can have a marginal rate of tax of 60% under a Conservative Government is what is shocking - who on earth wouldn’t try to mitigate that obscenity?
It's really 66.6%.
On a pay rise of £1,000 for a £100K earner:
Income tax £600 Employee's NI @2% £20 Employer's NI at 13.8% £138
Total tax: £758 Received by the employee: £380 True marginal rate = 758 / (758+380) = 66.6%
Which is an absurdity, as are the true marginal rates for various other situations (withdrawal of benefits etc).
Just getting rid of these absurd perverse incentives would help the economy and boost total tax receipts.
If a pay rise of £1,000 leaves the taxpayer with £380, that's a marginal rate of 62%. Either way, it's obscene.
By that logic if we called all tax 'employer's contribution' the marginal rate would be zero. That of course is why employer's NI exists - it's a handy and very effective sleight of hand by which Chancellors can disguise the true rate of tax on your income. It's astonishing how many people are taken in by it.
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.
That's right. The earnings link is key. Without that, in a society growing more prosperous, a pension linked only to inflation would condemn those relying on it to abject relative poverty - and relative is the only meaningful metric here - over the long run. Time would work its magic and in this case it would be of the black variety.
No it wouldn't, as most pensioners do not have to pay rent or a mortgage unlike those working and earning as they own their own properties outright.
The only non tax payments most pensioners have to pay on a monthly basis are for shopping and the odd meal or trip out, which can be linked to inflation and they get free bus passes and Freedom Passes for London travel anyway
It would over time. That's certain given growth. We're talking relativities. It's why the earnings link was introduced.
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 a very, erm, 'traditional' view. Taking things waaay back to the good old days. Things were so much simpler when dealing with the infidel or heathen.
Well, obviously.
The infidel/heathen/devil worshiper/pineapple-on-pizza-people aren't just evil. Their existence is an insult to God. So their continued existence risks the Wrath of God.
So it it much better, safer etc for all concerned if we slaughter them.
Some Corbynites probably secretly think the same about Tories, same applies to Leavers and Remainers
Comments
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/08/pfizer-covid-19-vaccine-booster
What is surprising is they don't seem to be planning on deploying a reformulated version to specifically target the variants. I thought it was a day job in the factory to retool and then surely sensible to repeat the same real world test agreement with Israel?
I think we are all getting booster shots though now.
On entering Government in 2010, the Conservatives acted decisively to protect the UK’s pensioners. The ‘triple lock’ we introduced has meant that those who have worked hard and put in for decades can be confident that the state will be there to support them when they need it. We will keep the triple lock, the winter fuel payment, the older person’s bus pass and other pensioner benefits, ensuring that older people have the security and dignity they deserve.
Bold type as per the manifesto.
As it is the best they can hope for in 2024 is to pick up a handful of Red Wall seats and hope the LDs pick up 20-30 Tory Remain seats in the South to force a hung parliament and put Starmer in
The building site examples actually fall into that - perviously machinery was inconveniently sized, over priced and required alot of maintenance. But in the decades since cheap labour came in.....
Automation is actually a bit of an art.
When I was in Rome, I used a Revolut card in a cash machine. That failed in mid-transaction. Normally your money would get stuck for a days. Online chat to Revolut customer services on the mobile. Fixed then and there. Plus they directed me to a cash machine that was working (they could see other transactions that had worked on it) just round the corner.....
https://twitter.com/BritainElects/status/1413415783368208384?s=20
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/ageing/articles/livinglonger/changesinhousingtenureovertime
The remaining quarter will have been relatively poor anyway and likely claiming housing benefit even before they retired, so no reason they cannot still use housing benefit to pay their rent on retirement.
Contemplating backing both sides score and Italy wins in the 90 minutes, at 6/1.
I think you're right on fudge. Employers sign up for some extra risk and hope it all looks a bit better in a few years. The alternatives are massively unpalatable.
In the parts where everything has been swept away and replaced with massive towers, the atomisation is quite intense. The modern version of this is often clean and neat. But still soul less....
(May well be needed, too, of course)
The only company that might be ready with a gen 2 by Q4 is AZ.
I need to see how much the trainline redesign actually cost to implement - it's easier to use but I'm sure the actual design and development costs were in the £ms.
As we both know creating decent systems costs large amounts of money.
In a city, if you're not a particularly sociable person, or you're a bit different, it's really easy to hide in the crowd and live as an atomized individual - except when you're mixing with your specially curated social group. Most of the people on your street wouldn't be able to pick you out of an identity parade.
In rural areas with a strong community this is much harder. Even if you're a recluse who lives on their own land, everyone in the area will know who you are and what your backstory is.
There are advantages and downsides to both, but there is a difference that "community" is shallower, less comprehensive and more optional in a city.
Freshfields lawyer criticised for joking 'the poor are nothing'
https://www.rollonfriday.com/news-content/freshfields-lawyer-criticised-joking-poor-are-nothing
For example, I worked with one, where the entire system was a single database. Obviously replicated and backed up etc. but the whole bank was represented in a single data structure. Their entire software stack could fit on CD. Creating an instance of the whole thing for testing purposes was simple and took minutes. Literally a copy of the whole bank in VM.....
A comparable traditional bank will have dozens - some have hundreds - of systems that barely talk to each other.
When you add in the buildings, the pyramids of fools etc at the trad. banks... It is easy to see why the alt-banks own the future. Their cost model is built around being very lean on the operations side. And makes a profit at the current scale, generally....
What is the customer going to do? Switch to a different company with the same customer service strategy? Why should they care - they'll get as many switching in the other direction...
Chat bot development roadmaps are really very simple, you pick the most frequently answered questions and automate them away...
Have a go at answering my earlier question though. I repeat:
Would you be happy to be paid the same salary for your job in 1910 plus inflation and if not why do you think it is ok to impose that on others?
Other parts are an array of tower blocks - the modern ones are nice enough to live in. But still very sterile.
Price inflation could be running well above the long term target rate by then anyway, in which case the decision becomes a bit easier. Can't see it getting to 8%, though.
0% personal allowance is lost at rate of £1 for every £2 earned over £100k, so If someone earns a little over £100k then their marginal rate of tax is 60% and so they will get 60% tax relief on contributions which bring their income down towards 100k.
I also repeat the same point you have ignored because 74% owning their homes outright amongst over 65s is clearly higher than the '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' you were suggesting earlier.
So the vast majority of over 65s have neither rent nor mortgage payments to pay which is the main payment those earning and in work have to pay each month
Ransomware-hit law firm gets court order asking crooks not to publish the data they stole
Good luck with that, 4 New Square Chambers
https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/06/ransomware_4_new_square_chambers/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_American_Indian_schools
Not all such schools were Catholic, but the majority were.
Victims haven't seen much in the way off apology in more recent times...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/30/my-relatives-went-to-a-catholic-school-for-native-children-it-was-a-place-of-horrors
...Just days before the survivors were set to go to court in 2010, the then Republican governor of South Dakota, Mike Rounds (now a US senator), signed a bill into law prohibiting anyone 40 years or older from recovering damages from institutions responsible for their abuse, except from individual perpetrators themselves. The act crushed the lawsuit, effectively shielding the Catholic church from any responsibility or accountability...
These two events are entirely unconnected. Obviously.
Yes I do know I've written IBM there, Watson's prices are far more sane than MS in this area...
Also remember I'm a custom software house - you are paying us £000 a day because we will save you that or more, and I will (albeit probably uniquely) point out when the savings stop making sense.
https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1413423095881347077
I wonder whether the difference might be down to the larger interval between doses which we applied in the UK?
The only major change is that hospital severity has been assessed using 2 datasets (SARIwatch & using HES data) And initial data from CO-CIN
🏥 show NO evidence Delta causes a more severe disease once in hospital https://t.co/Z3hskxqyc7
I think pension relief should be uncoupled from tax. Government should match fund contributions up to a modest limit. It could be linked to a Citizens Bond. You then get that - depending on performance - plus your state pension. Anything higher should come from personal resources. I've sent this one in to Starmer for the policy review Waiting for him to get in touch to explore further. Maybe a Zoom.
On the other hand some people may say "They're breaking a manifesto promise." That's true and is similar to Nick Clegg and tuition fees.
How many more times. Professional qualifications do not confer morality.
UK, Indian variant has been widespread here for several months now, so we have much bigger dataset.
BTW, CFR from delta is now 0.2% according to latest UK data, due to vaccines. Obviously kost of the people dying are still the unvaxxed.
The only non tax payments most pensioners have to pay on a monthly basis are for shopping and the odd meal or trip out, which can be linked to inflation and they get free bus passes and Freedom Passes for London travel anyway
The one thing you can't do is £50,001 to £99,999 40%
£100,000 to £125,000 30% (but with tapering)
£125,001+ 40%
£150,001+ 45%
and remember there is another variation of this at £50,000 with child benefit.
As you say Mr Dancer it really is excellent and highly recommended to anyone who hasn't seen it.
To take the LD approach, Johnson/Sunak would need to calculate the triple lock rise due to pensioners, multiple it by three and then make it a decrease instead!
For those on UC, paying NI and IC it is a minimum of 75% real tax rate.
All these anomalies should be abolished. Merge NI, IC and UC together and get rid of all tapering of anything. Just have flat rates that work consistently.
The bugbear I have is the tax relief/matching arrangements on charity contributions, with the government coughing up wedges to some charities that I do not believe are worthy of the name - costs the exchequer a fortune every year.
It's a tricky fine line that the government have to tread. Try to get people to fund their old age, but still keeping it 'fair'. The people which can fund their old age will be those with money in the first place.
I think reducing the TR to 20% would be sufficent, with maybe a small bonus on top to sweeten the deal a bit, but not as much as it currently is.
https://www.politico.eu/article/polands-government-takes-aim-at-us-owned-broadcaster/
Poland’s nationalist ruling coalition is pushing a media bill through parliament that has critics warning it’s an attempt to void the broadcast license of a U.S.-owned television station that’s often critical of the government.
The draft bill — just four pages long — was submitted to the Polish parliament late Wednesday by a group of MPs from the Law and Justice (PiS) party. It proposes only granting licenses to companies not majority-owned by entities from outside the European Economic Area.
That’s aimed at TVN, owned by Discovery of the U.S., which is applying for a renewal of its broadcast permit that runs out in September. The channel is one of Poland’s most-watched, and it also owns influential news channel TVN24....
On a pay rise of £1,000 for a £100K earner:
Income tax £600
Employee's NI @2% £20
Employer's NI at 13.8% £138
Total tax: £758
Received by the employee: £380
True marginal rate = 758 / (758+380) = 66.6%
Which is an absurdity, as are the true marginal rates for various other situations (withdrawal of benefits etc).
Just getting rid of these absurd perverse incentives would help the economy and boost total tax receipts.
The remaining quarter get housing benefit anyway to pay their rent, that is not a reason to increase the state pension above inflation for the other 3/4
Less fun than machineguns and Spitfires, but rather more menacing.
In my experience, people with defined benefit (final salary) schemes do not appreciate the value of what they have. It is no exaggeration to say that someone only moderately senior with 40 years in a DB scheme comes out with benefits with equivalence of £1m+.
A couple of elections ago I had one stuffed back into mine with "Only the Lib Dems will [something or other, probably mend the local potholes]" scrawled out and changed to "Only the Lib Dems would go into coalition with the Tories."
The inner suburbs are what London is best at. Zone 2. Easy to get into the centre, plenty of shops and restaurants, community feeling particularly for parents of school aged children, good parks, nice Victorian housing stock.
I think even if he could get away with it, his colleagues would not wear it because of the influx of angry emails.
The infidel/heathen/devil worshiper/pineapple-on-pizza-people aren't just evil. Their existence is an insult to God. So their continued existence risks the Wrath of God.
So it it much better, safer etc for all concerned if we slaughter them.
Yes it is true that at least half if not more of under 40s rent, large numbers of whom rent privately without needing housing benefit and some of whom are on above average incomes.
By 65 however the vast majority do not rent and most own their own homes, so those who rent and are pensioners tend to be poorer than average
https://unherd.com/thepost/pro-lockdown-polling-is-not-as-clear-as-you-might-think/
(No, other religions are not without incident).
If you do not own your own home by the time you are 65 you will likely have been on a low income and probably claiming housing benefit for your rent through much of your working life anyway
1) I can *just* squeeze this action inside the law
2) Therefore it is lawful
3) Since it is lawful, it is moral.
4) Since it is moral, I need to do this.
I first encountered this, when, early in the Blair government, The Chinese president visited. The UK government used some really ancient laws to arrest protestors who were doing things like holding up signs about Tibet.
When I asked a lawyer involved in making the case for doing this, he gave me 1-4 above. Almost exactly.