I think this is going to go down like a lead ballon outside those who aren't big fans of Boris government. Adding a £200-300 to families food bills.
Is that carelessly worded or are you saying Boris's sugar and salt taxes will be hated by Boris-supporters? If the latter, you may be right, but surely it implies they will not be introduced.
Sorry...been working too many hours straight.
I am saying those that will probably like this policy, don't like Boris and no intention of ever voting for him. Where as his current support base, e.g. the likes of your white working class, inspires to have a middle class lifestyle, types, isn't going to like the sound of £200 extra on his food bill nor the nanny stating.
Cool. In that case, it probably won't happen.
You would think so, but the current government seem to make lots of irrational and often counterproductive decisions (for their own ratings).
Remember the government are really pushing ahead with the eco stuff, that isn't going to be winning them many red wall voters. Again something that non-Tory voters want e.g. electric vehicles coming in much sooner, but it won't make them vote Tory while Boris is in charge.
Oldies heavily skew Tory, they are scared of covid, and Boris is saying open everything up, masks they are optional, etc.
Disagree
Electric vehicles being accelerated >>> Urgent need to provide government incentives to secure manufacturing >>> well paid secure jobs for red wallers >>> located in appropriate seats >>> well paid secure jobs for Tory MPs
Yep - a new Gigafactory has been announced at Coventry "Airport". And two of the 3 seats there would be Tory were it not for Farage.
You can buy a beat up old banger for less than a single month's lease on a BMW.
I can lease a 216i for less than £250/month. If you can get a functional car that doesn't need work and provides long term reliable transport for less than that it's by sheer luck.
When I lived in Wiltshire, the poorest locals all drove old bangers. Fully "functional" and "long term reliable" weren't options for them.
Road pricing.... that's another thing that got the electorate absolutely steaming when it was talked about 15 years ago.
Talk of higher taxes on fuel / airplane travel, road pricing, id cards, those 3 things seemed to really piss a lot of people off when Labour was in power. Hence why the second two got ditched.
Maybe things have changed now among the electorate in regards to this. We will see.
It hasn't but if get £800 a car from duty on fuel and need to get that money from somewhere there really isn't that many options.
Road pricing will have to be investigated as the other options are worse in different ways
Fuel was taxed because fuel had externalities and was environmentally toxic.
Now that drivers are switching away from fuel, there seems to be a desire to keep raising revenues from drivers rather than simply accept that fuel has gone and that society as a whole needs to pay for its costs.
Its like having if smokers all quit smoking placing a tax on ex-smokers to replace tobacco taxes.
Motorists should still pay some form of tax to, as a bare minimum, fund the road network.
Absolutely that is reasonable. VED raises nearly as much as is spent on the roads. Fuel duty raises about £40bn more than is spent on the roads.
Keeping VED and having approximately half a penny per kWh would replace all of fuel duty and be "fair". Drivers would be paying via when they refuel their electric cars and would still pay more tax from that than is spent on roads - but the rest of society would pay its fair share too.
again - adding it the electricity isn't fair on those who don't have a car, it's regressive because it impacts people who don't currently pay that tax.
And it needs to raise £28bn to offset the tax fuel duty collects (2019/20 figure - last years was surprisingly £21bn)
Just because the justification for the tax has gone that doesn't mean the need for the money disappears.
Why's it unfair on those who don't have a car? Considering almost all of the money raised isn't spent on the roads, why should they be exempt from paying taxes?
The need for the money to fund the NHS or pensions or whatever else you want to spend on is not the same as the need for the money to come from drivers.
And taxing driving is far more regressive than taxing electricity. Poor drivers pay an estimated 10% of their disposable income on fuel duty, that's currently justified due to the green externalities on fuel but if they cease to use fuel why should they remain so heavily taxed?
They aren't exempt from paying taxes but you've just increased the level of tax on the very poorest people in society.
Oh and unless I'm missing something the tax on each kwh needs to be 73p not 0.5p... 0.5p would raise £185m
Tax things you want less of, tax exempt (or subsidise) things you want more of. Price in externalities.
Most damage caused to roads is by HGVs, especially on local roads. We don’t want that. So tax the balls off them, if necessary to be replaced by smaller vehicles. Costs won’t change too much when the drivers disappear.
Things we don’t want: congestion. Things we do want: mobility. So dynamic road pricing. No need to tax the rural driver popping to the local shop. Meanwhile the person driving to Harrods…
We don’t like air pollution, noise and carbon emissions. So grade tax for all three.
We also don’t like inefficient capital allocation to underused assets. So incentivise car sharing by applying a zero income tax band to income from sharing your car. Will be even more important when autonomous driving gets here.
Think that’s it.
Unless you know something I don't (and I watch automation like a hawk) we aren't going to see fully automated driving anytime soon.
Define soon. I have full confidence that the private sector will achieve it earlier than the Whitehall is operationally ready to implement dynamic road pricing.
anytime before 2040 - it really is a 99.999/0.0001 problem rather than a 90/10% problem as other IT solutions are.
Johnson is a cypher, people see in him what they want to see. The left hate him as he can be portrayed as the worst of right wing excess. Some see him as likeable, willing to call a spade a spade etc. our kind of chap... I think he's a clown, unfit for office. Does anyone know the real face, if indeed he has one?
AFAIK none of his ex-wives (etc) have written a book, or even given a long interview on 'their time with Boris'. I've always assumed that that was because, in the case of the wives, the divorce settlement included a 'commitment to silence'
Morning, OKC!
Or maybe there is a superinjunction. How would we know?
Boris Johnson was involved in at least one injunction.
Or rather, prima facie, involved in the events that led to the injunction, which was taken out by the lady in question, I see. But it's a curious story, not least why have a photoshoot if one is complaining about lack of privacy?
Johnson is a cypher, people see in him what they want to see. The left hate him as he can be portrayed as the worst of right wing excess. Some see him as likeable, willing to call a spade a spade etc. our kind of chap... I think he's a clown, unfit for office. Does anyone know the real face, if indeed he has one?
AFAIK none of his ex-wives (etc) have written a book, or even given a long interview on 'their time with Boris'. I've always assumed that that was because, in the case of the wives, the divorce settlement included a 'commitment to silence'
Morning, OKC!
Or maybe there is a superinjunction. How would we know?
If there were a superinjunction then any of his political opponents could use Parliamentary privilege to break the injunction and the media could report that.
Why has not one of his political opponents done so? Only logical answer is there is no superinjunction.
Indeed.
There exists one very good reason, however: mutual deterrence.
All this demonstrates is that higher education = progressive political views, particularly amongst people lower than 60. Higher education, particularly in the humanities and social sciences, can involve a significant element of political indoctrination, and this has been increasingly so for 40+ years.
No that really is not 'all' this demonstrates.
The idea that higher education is full of political indoctrination is terribly old hat and no longer particularly true. But your argument is unravelled by the fact that this divide has never before been seen so starkly. Theresa May did not attract such levels of distrust among the educated. Nor did David Cameron. Nor Gordon Brown. Nor Tony Blair. Nor, even, did Margaret Thatcher.
The reason is not the one you've given. It's because we have a charlatan, a shamster, a blaguer, a serial liar, in charge of this country.
We can see it. Clearly.
The evidence about the left wing bias in universities is overwhelming. Look up the work that Eric Kaufmann has done recently. It is inevitable this has an impact on graduates.
Boris is like Trump, he upsets the values of the educated progressive elite; making no attempt at all to placate them unlike his predecessors. That explains his success with the less educated, who have always been easier to herd for political purposes than intellectuals.
I find the Kaufman studies pretty limited - all self report perceptions, where there would be, for example, scope to look at actual progression by political viewpoint (promotions, for example, in my uni at least are assessed on written application at university level by a central committee who don't know you personally, at least at lower grades and certainly don't know your politics). Lack of confidence intervals on graphs, lack of headline data on sampe sizes. Questions about recruitment to studies. The question to postgrad students about whether their political views fit in - well, students - even postgrad - are mostly young and a bit lefty, but that's an age thing more than a university thing - and it's an odd way of putting the question unless you look for a prticular result. A seeming lack of the same question being asked of more senior/older academics. If I was trying to do this and get to the truth rather than the answer I wanted, I would do it differently.
I could produce a similar study showing how left-leaning academics believe they are discriminated against by society (after all, society keep returning right-leaning governments!). When reading any study like this, it's important to keep in mind that it's very easy to get a study to show what you want by making outwardly reasonable choices about question, sample etc. It's harder to get that through peer review, but not impossible. Producing a not peer reviewed 'report' to show what you want is trivial.
I don't doubt that academia is probably more left leaning than the general population. Academia skews young, for one thing - there's a pyramid with lots of postgrad students, fewer post-docs, fewer still at senior positions - it gets harder and harder to get funding and all but the most able tend to find they can do better in the private or public sector where being competent is enough. Different careers do attract different kinds of people. We don't wring our hands about the right-wing bias in investment banks (if there is one) and the impact of that on funding for parties, projects based on political bias. Nor the Brexit bias of builders (again, made up, no evidence for that!) and the difficulties residents in Remoania have getting building work done!
Anecdata - among my colleagues, who are health science/social science, so in theory among one of the more left-leaning, the 2015 split among those who expressed an opinion was pretty even between Cameron and Milliband. I can only think of two staff members (out of 20 or so whose opinions I knew) who expressed any enthusiasm for Corbyn as Labour leader. We're not all reds. In GEs I've voted Labour once only* and I can't say I feel at all discriminated against.
I don't know of any Johnson-supporting colleagues, but you have to bear in mind we're mostly not idiots
I mean I'd rather have the backing from people who attended the University of Life than those that went to the Universities of Oxford, Hull, and Brighton.
That's a very specific list. Not that I am complaining about the first item on it, of course.
Well Oxford and Hull complete dumps.
A few months ago a friend and I were trying to come up with the most left wing city in the UK, we decided on Brighton because they elect a Green MP.
I mean I'd rather have the backing from people who attended the University of Life than those that went to the Universities of Oxford, Hull, and Brighton.
That's a very specific list. Not that I am complaining about the first item on it, of course.
The hatred of some for Boris is visceral and deep. Yes, he's pompous, full of himself, and acting out a role, but he hardly rates as Hitler or Stalin. The only sensible thing he's done is to appoint someone sensible to head the vaccine task-force, but some people hate him for doing that.
In some ways, he's an effective politician, despite his faults. That may explain some of the anger. Being educated can bring a misplaced arrogance.
I dislike the man, but he might be better than a rabid idealist with daft views. I'm sure BoJo's principles will bend with the wind.
Why do people who write glowingly about the Prime Minister feel it necessary to add the rider that they personally don't like him. Is it supposed to add weight to the eulogy?
It's like wearing a condom, better safe than sorry if/when BJ's trajectory ends in the equivalent of a suppurating mass of STDs.
I think this is going to go down like a lead ballon outside those who aren't big fans of Boris government. Adding a £200-300 to families food bills.
Is that carelessly worded or are you saying Boris's sugar and salt taxes will be hated by Boris-supporters? If the latter, you may be right, but surely it implies they will not be introduced.
Sorry...been working too many hours straight.
I am saying those that will probably like this policy, don't like Boris and no intention of ever voting for him. Where as his current support base, e.g. the likes of your white working class, inspires to have a middle class lifestyle, types, isn't going to like the sound of £200 extra on his food bill nor the nanny stating.
Cool. In that case, it probably won't happen.
You would think so, but the current government seem to make lots of irrational and often counterproductive decisions (for their own ratings).
Remember the government are really pushing ahead with the eco stuff, that isn't going to be winning them many red wall voters. Again something that non-Tory voters want e.g. electric vehicles coming in much sooner, but it won't make them vote Tory while Boris is in charge.
Oldies heavily skew Tory, they are scared of covid, and Boris is saying open everything up, masks they are optional, etc.
Disagree
Electric vehicles being accelerated >>> Urgent need to provide government incentives to secure manufacturing >>> well paid secure jobs for red wallers >>> located in appropriate seats >>> well paid secure jobs for Tory MPs
Yep - a new Gigafactory has been announced at Coventry "Airport". And two of the 3 seats there would be Tory were it not for Farage.
If Zarah Sultana lost her seat it would be cause for national celebration. This would be fantastic news for Coventry. Boris is certainly doing more for forgotten corners of the UK than his predecessors, which in contrast to Theresa May shows what can be achieved with a large majority and by getting Brexit done.
Road pricing.... that's another thing that got the electorate absolutely steaming when it was talked about 15 years ago.
Talk of higher taxes on fuel / airplane travel, road pricing, id cards, those 3 things seemed to really piss a lot of people off when Labour was in power. Hence why the second two got ditched.
Maybe things have changed now among the electorate in regards to this. We will see.
It hasn't but if get £800 a car from duty on fuel and need to get that money from somewhere there really isn't that many options.
Road pricing will have to be investigated as the other options are worse in different ways
Fuel was taxed because fuel had externalities and was environmentally toxic.
Now that drivers are switching away from fuel, there seems to be a desire to keep raising revenues from drivers rather than simply accept that fuel has gone and that society as a whole needs to pay for its costs.
Its like having if smokers all quit smoking placing a tax on ex-smokers to replace tobacco taxes.
Motorists should still pay some form of tax to, as a bare minimum, fund the road network.
Absolutely that is reasonable. VED raises nearly as much as is spent on the roads. Fuel duty raises about £40bn more than is spent on the roads.
Keeping VED and having approximately half a penny per kWh would replace all of fuel duty and be "fair". Drivers would be paying via when they refuel their electric cars and would still pay more tax from that than is spent on roads - but the rest of society would pay its fair share too.
again - adding it the electricity isn't fair on those who don't have a car, it's regressive because it impacts people who don't currently pay that tax.
And it needs to raise £28bn to offset the tax fuel duty collects (2019/20 figure - last years was surprisingly £21bn)
Just because the justification for the tax has gone that doesn't mean the need for the money disappears.
Why's it unfair on those who don't have a car? Considering almost all of the money raised isn't spent on the roads, why should they be exempt from paying taxes?
The need for the money to fund the NHS or pensions or whatever else you want to spend on is not the same as the need for the money to come from drivers.
And taxing driving is far more regressive than taxing electricity. Poor drivers pay an estimated 10% of their disposable income on fuel duty, that's currently justified due to the green externalities on fuel but if they cease to use fuel why should they remain so heavily taxed?
They aren't exempt from paying taxes but you've just increased the level of tax on the very poorest people in society.
Oh and unless I'm missing something the tax on each kwh needs to be 73p not 0.5p... 0.5p would raise £185m
Tax things you want less of, tax exempt (or subsidise) things you want more of. Price in externalities.
Most damage caused to roads is by HGVs, especially on local roads. We don’t want that. So tax the balls off them, if necessary to be replaced by smaller vehicles. Costs won’t change too much when the drivers disappear.
Things we don’t want: congestion. Things we do want: mobility. So dynamic road pricing. No need to tax the rural driver popping to the local shop. Meanwhile the person driving to Harrods…
We don’t like air pollution, noise and carbon emissions. So grade tax for all three.
We also don’t like inefficient capital allocation to underused assets. So incentivise car sharing by applying a zero income tax band to income from sharing your car. Will be even more important when autonomous driving gets here.
Think that’s it.
Unless you know something I don't (and I watch automation like a hawk) we aren't going to see fully automated driving anytime soon.
Define soon. I have full confidence that the private sector will achieve it earlier than the Whitehall is operationally ready to implement dynamic road pricing.
anytime before 2040 - it really is a 99.999/0.0001 problem rather than a 90/10% problem as other IT solutions are.
It will almost certainly be available earlier than 2040, and absolutely certainly if we limit the discussion to defined road types.
All this demonstrates is that higher education = progressive political views, particularly amongst people lower than 60. Higher education, particularly in the humanities and social sciences, can involve a significant element of political indoctrination, and this has been increasingly so for 40+ years.
No that really is not 'all' this demonstrates.
The idea that higher education is full of political indoctrination is terribly old hat and no longer particularly true. But your argument is unravelled by the fact that this divide has never before been seen so starkly. Theresa May did not attract such levels of distrust among the educated. Nor did David Cameron. Nor Gordon Brown. Nor Tony Blair. Nor, even, did Margaret Thatcher.
The reason is not the one you've given. It's because we have a charlatan, a shamster, a blaguer, a serial liar, in charge of this country.
We can see it. Clearly.
The evidence about the left wing bias in universities is overwhelming. Look up the work that Eric Kaufmann has done recently. It is inevitable this has an impact on graduates.
Boris is like Trump, he upsets the values of the educated progressive elite; making no attempt at all to placate them unlike his predecessors. That explains his success with the less educated, who have always been easier to herd for political purposes than intellectuals.
Which came first? Are graduates generally more left-leaning because they're indoctrinated, or are universities full of the more intelligent people who see the complexity of life and don't buy the simplistic arguments of Johnson and his ilk?
You cite humanities and social sciences as being havens of left-wing thought. I think that is true, but for the reasons above. They encourage you to consider the shades of grey in life. There are few absolutes. Your personal assumptions are challenged. You have to have think.
Maths, physics, engineering degrees, those based on numbers, probably have a higher degree of right-leaning students. Because they are neat. 2+2 always equals 4. There are always measurable, repeatable, outcomes. They are essentially 'Common sense', if you will.
I don't thing that's necessarily a bad thing, just an inevitable result of what subjects differing personality types are drawn to study.
I don't think it is true at all that only educated people can see the 'shades of grey' in life. All political movements are populist to some degree and craft easy narratives which claim to solve complex problems. I personally see Johnson as a politician with a different style, and it one that clearly agitates educated people; but what he is doing is the same thing as all his predecessors from the year dot. To my mind, he isn't in anywhere near the same league of insanity to Trump, or even Corbyn; the latter being a populist who I note was overwhelmingly popular on university campuses.
I mean I'd rather have the backing from people who attended the University of Life than those that went to the Universities of Oxford, Hull, and Brighton.
That's a very specific list. Not that I am complaining about the first item on it, of course.
Well Oxford and Hull complete dumps.
A few months ago a friend and I were trying to come up with the most left wing city in the UK, we decided on Brighton because they elect a Green MP.
Johnson is a cypher, people see in him what they want to see. The left hate him as he can be portrayed as the worst of right wing excess. Some see him as likeable, willing to call a spade a spade etc. our kind of chap... I think he's a clown, unfit for office. Does anyone know the real face, if indeed he has one?
AFAIK none of his ex-wives (etc) have written a book, or even given a long interview on 'their time with Boris'. I've always assumed that that was because, in the case of the wives, the divorce settlement included a 'commitment to silence'
Wives and those who had a serious relationship including children don't want to drag their families through the mud. I doubt money came into it. The fleeting ones feel embarrassed that they had an affair with someone so gross.
I mean I'd rather have the backing from people who attended the University of Life than those that went to the Universities of Oxford, Hull, and Brighton.
That's a very specific list. Not that I am complaining about the first item on it, of course.
Well Oxford and Hull complete dumps.
A few months ago a friend and I were trying to come up with the most left wing city in the UK, we decided on Brighton because they elect a Green MP.
Didn't Glasgow come into the discussion? Tommy Sheridan and George Galloway.
I mean I'd rather have the backing from people who attended the University of Life than those that went to the Universities of Oxford, Hull, and Brighton.
That's a very specific list. Not that I am complaining about the first item on it, of course.
Ah, another alumni of Fenland Polytechnic?
Oh, is that what they call themselves in the singular as well?
The left hate him as he can be portrayed as the worst of right wing excess.
Boris isn't even all that right-wing by contemporary standards, never mind compared to some Tories of old. There are much sounder complaints to be made about him than trying to paint him as some hard-right nutter.
You can buy a beat up old banger for less than a single month's lease on a BMW.
I can lease a 216i for less than £250/month. If you can get a functional car that doesn't need work and provides long term reliable transport for less than that it's by sheer luck.
There's an auction for classic cars with viewings over the next three days. The company is called Historics. Do you know anything about them?
I mean I'd rather have the backing from people who attended the University of Life than those that went to the Universities of Oxford, Hull, and Brighton.
That's a very specific list. Not that I am complaining about the first item on it, of course.
Well Oxford and Hull complete dumps.
A few months ago a friend and I were trying to come up with the most left wing city in the UK, we decided on Brighton because they elect a Green MP.
Didn't Glasgow come into the discussion? Tommy Sheridan and George Galloway.
It did, my friend is half Scottish, he said Glasgow has two things that prevent it from being really lefty. The Orange Order and Sevco fans (Yes, I'm aware there's a strong crossover element between the two.)
I mean I'd rather have the backing from people who attended the University of Life than those that went to the Universities of Oxford, Hull, and Brighton.
That's a very specific list. Not that I am complaining about the first item on it, of course.
Ah, another alumni of Fenland Polytechnic?
Oh, is that what they call themselves in the singular as well?
It's not a huge sample, but all of the people I know who take (and swear by) homeopathic magic sugar remedies have university degrees.
In fairness, that is better than poisoning yourself with the likes of laetrile and injecting yourself with bleach when you catch covid. (Which is wht the original homoeopaths scored so well against the average Vixctorian doctor, I suspect, given their prescribing habits.) Maybe it demonstrates their intelligence?
I mean I'd rather have the backing from people who attended the University of Life than those that went to the Universities of Oxford, Hull, and Brighton.
That's a very specific list. Not that I am complaining about the first item on it, of course.
Well Oxford and Hull complete dumps.
A few months ago a friend and I were trying to come up with the most left wing city in the UK, we decided on Brighton because they elect a Green MP.
Didn't Glasgow come into the discussion? Tommy Sheridan and George Galloway.
It did, my friend is half Scottish, he said Glasgow has two things that prevent it from being really lefty. The Orange Order and Sevco fans (Yes, I'm aware there's a strong crossover element between the two.)
That is an intelligent and well-argued discussion you two were having.
All this demonstrates is that higher education = progressive political views, particularly amongst people lower than 60. Higher education, particularly in the humanities and social sciences, can involve a significant element of political indoctrination, and this has been increasingly so for 40+ years.
No that really is not 'all' this demonstrates.
The idea that higher education is full of political indoctrination is terribly old hat and no longer particularly true. But your argument is unravelled by the fact that this divide has never before been seen so starkly. Theresa May did not attract such levels of distrust among the educated. Nor did David Cameron. Nor Gordon Brown. Nor Tony Blair. Nor, even, did Margaret Thatcher.
The reason is not the one you've given. It's because we have a charlatan, a shamster, a blaguer, a serial liar, in charge of this country.
We can see it. Clearly.
The evidence about the left wing bias in universities is overwhelming. Look up the work that Eric Kaufmann has done recently. It is inevitable this has an impact on graduates.
Boris is like Trump, he upsets the values of the educated progressive elite; making no attempt at all to placate them unlike his predecessors. That explains his success with the less educated, who have always been easier to herd for political purposes than intellectuals.
Which came first? Are graduates generally more left-leaning because they're indoctrinated, or are universities full of the more intelligent people who see the complexity of life and don't buy the simplistic arguments of Johnson and his ilk?
You cite humanities and social sciences as being havens of left-wing thought. I think that is true, but for the reasons above. They encourage you to consider the shades of grey in life. There are few absolutes. Your personal assumptions are challenged. You have to have think.
Maths, physics, engineering degrees, those based on numbers, probably have a higher degree of right-leaning students. Because they are neat. 2+2 always equals 4. There are always measurable, repeatable, outcomes. They are essentially 'Common sense', if you will.
I don't thing that's necessarily a bad thing, just an inevitable result of what subjects differing personality types are drawn to study.
I don't think it is true at all that only educated people can see the 'shades of grey' in life. All political movements are populist to some degree and craft easy narratives which claim to solve complex problems. I personally see Johnson as a politician with a different style, and it one that clearly agitates educated people; but what he is doing is the same thing as all his predecessors from the year dot. To my mind, he isn't in anywhere near the same league of insanity to Trump, or even Corbyn; the latter being a populist who I note was overwhelmingly popular on university campuses.
Populism isn't populism when it is popular with Ordo Equester or above.
All this demonstrates is that higher education = progressive political views, particularly amongst people lower than 60. Higher education, particularly in the humanities and social sciences, can involve a significant element of political indoctrination, and this has been increasingly so for 40+ years.
No that really is not 'all' this demonstrates.
The idea that higher education is full of political indoctrination is terribly old hat and no longer particularly true. But your argument is unravelled by the fact that this divide has never before been seen so starkly. Theresa May did not attract such levels of distrust among the educated. Nor did David Cameron. Nor Gordon Brown. Nor Tony Blair. Nor, even, did Margaret Thatcher.
The reason is not the one you've given. It's because we have a charlatan, a shamster, a blaguer, a serial liar, in charge of this country.
We can see it. Clearly.
The evidence about the left wing bias in universities is overwhelming. Look up the work that Eric Kaufmann has done recently. It is inevitable this has an impact on graduates.
Boris is like Trump, he upsets the values of the educated progressive elite; making no attempt at all to placate them unlike his predecessors. That explains his success with the less educated, who have always been easier to herd for political purposes than intellectuals.
I find the Kaufman studies pretty limited - all self report perceptions, where there would be, for example, scope to look at actual progression by political viewpoint (promotions, for example, in my uni at least are assessed on written application at university level by a central committee who don't know you personally, at least at lower grades and certainly don't know your politics). Lack of confidence intervals on graphs, lack of headline data on sampe sizes. Questions about recruitment to studies. The question to postgrad students about whether their political views fit in - well, students - even postgrad - are mostly young and a bit lefty, but that's an age thing more than a university thing - and it's an odd way of putting the question unless you look for a prticular result. A seeming lack of the same question being asked of more senior/older academics. If I was trying to do this and get to the truth rather than the answer I wanted, I would do it differently.
I could produce a similar study showing how left-leaning academics believe they are discriminated against by society (after all, society keep returning right-leaning governments!). When reading any study like this, it's important to keep in mind that it's very easy to get a study to show what you want by making outwardly reasonable choices about question, sample etc. It's harder to get that through peer review, but not impossible. Producing a not peer reviewed 'report' to show what you want is trivial.
I don't doubt that academia is probably more left leaning than the general population. Academia skews young, for one thing - there's a pyramid with lots of postgrad students, fewer post-docs, fewer still at senior positions - it gets harder and harder to get funding and all but the most able tend to find they can do better in the private or public sector where being competent is enough. Different careers do attract different kinds of people. We don't wring our hands about the right-wing bias in investment banks (if there is one) and the impact of that on funding for parties, projects based on political bias. Nor the Brexit bias of builders (again, made up, no evidence for that!) and the difficulties residents in Remoania have getting building work done!
Anecdata - among my colleagues, who are health science/social science, so in theory among one of the more left-leaning, the 2015 split among those who expressed an opinion was pretty even between Cameron and Milliband. I can only think of two staff members (out of 20 or so whose opinions I knew) who expressed any enthusiasm for Corbyn as Labour leader. We're not all reds. In GEs I've voted Labour once only* and I can't say I feel at all discriminated against.
I don't know of any Johnson-supporting colleagues, but you have to bear in mind we're mostly not idiots
* And no, my other votes weren't SWP!
That's really interesting, thanks for taking the time to reply. I suppose that all studies have bias towards getting the answer they want: certainly this seems to be true of opinion polls!
Road pricing.... that's another thing that got the electorate absolutely steaming when it was talked about 15 years ago.
Talk of higher taxes on fuel / airplane travel, road pricing, id cards, those 3 things seemed to really piss a lot of people off when Labour was in power. Hence why the second two got ditched.
Maybe things have changed now among the electorate in regards to this. We will see.
It hasn't but if get £800 a car from duty on fuel and need to get that money from somewhere there really isn't that many options.
Road pricing will have to be investigated as the other options are worse in different ways
Fuel was taxed because fuel had externalities and was environmentally toxic.
Now that drivers are switching away from fuel, there seems to be a desire to keep raising revenues from drivers rather than simply accept that fuel has gone and that society as a whole needs to pay for its costs.
Its like having if smokers all quit smoking placing a tax on ex-smokers to replace tobacco taxes.
Motorists should still pay some form of tax to, as a bare minimum, fund the road network.
Absolutely that is reasonable. VED raises nearly as much as is spent on the roads. Fuel duty raises about £40bn more than is spent on the roads.
Keeping VED and having approximately half a penny per kWh would replace all of fuel duty and be "fair". Drivers would be paying via when they refuel their electric cars and would still pay more tax from that than is spent on roads - but the rest of society would pay its fair share too.
again - adding it the electricity isn't fair on those who don't have a car, it's regressive because it impacts people who don't currently pay that tax.
And it needs to raise £28bn to offset the tax fuel duty collects (2019/20 figure - last years was surprisingly £21bn)
Just because the justification for the tax has gone that doesn't mean the need for the money disappears.
Why's it unfair on those who don't have a car? Considering almost all of the money raised isn't spent on the roads, why should they be exempt from paying taxes?
The need for the money to fund the NHS or pensions or whatever else you want to spend on is not the same as the need for the money to come from drivers.
And taxing driving is far more regressive than taxing electricity. Poor drivers pay an estimated 10% of their disposable income on fuel duty, that's currently justified due to the green externalities on fuel but if they cease to use fuel why should they remain so heavily taxed?
They aren't exempt from paying taxes but you've just increased the level of tax on the very poorest people in society.
Oh and unless I'm missing something the tax on each kwh needs to be 73p not 0.5p... 0.5p would raise £185m
Tax things you want less of, tax exempt (or subsidise) things you want more of. Price in externalities.
Most damage caused to roads is by HGVs, especially on local roads. We don’t want that. So tax the balls off them, if necessary to be replaced by smaller vehicles. Costs won’t change too much when the drivers disappear.
Things we don’t want: congestion. Things we do want: mobility. So dynamic road pricing. No need to tax the rural driver popping to the local shop. Meanwhile the person driving to Harrods…
We don’t like air pollution, noise and carbon emissions. So grade tax for all three.
We also don’t like inefficient capital allocation to underused assets. So incentivise car sharing by applying a zero income tax band to income from sharing your car. Will be even more important when autonomous driving gets here.
Think that’s it.
Unless you know something I don't (and I watch automation like a hawk) we aren't going to see fully automated driving anytime soon.
Define soon. I have full confidence that the private sector will achieve it earlier than the Whitehall is operationally ready to implement dynamic road pricing.
anytime before 2040 - it really is a 99.999/0.0001 problem rather than a 90/10% problem as other IT solutions are.
It will almost certainly be available earlier than 2040, and absolutely certainly if we limit the discussion to defined road types.
Once you limit it to defined road types you've still got a driver in the lorry so your savings have gone.
All this demonstrates is that higher education = progressive political views, particularly amongst people lower than 60. Higher education, particularly in the humanities and social sciences, can involve a significant element of political indoctrination, and this has been increasingly so for 40+ years.
No that really is not 'all' this demonstrates.
The idea that higher education is full of political indoctrination is terribly old hat and no longer particularly true. But your argument is unravelled by the fact that this divide has never before been seen so starkly. Theresa May did not attract such levels of distrust among the educated. Nor did David Cameron. Nor Gordon Brown. Nor Tony Blair. Nor, even, did Margaret Thatcher.
The reason is not the one you've given. It's because we have a charlatan, a shamster, a blaguer, a serial liar, in charge of this country.
We can see it. Clearly.
The evidence about the left wing bias in universities is overwhelming. Look up the work that Eric Kaufmann has done recently. It is inevitable this has an impact on graduates.
Boris is like Trump, he upsets the values of the educated progressive elite; making no attempt at all to placate them unlike his predecessors. That explains his success with the less educated, who have always been easier to herd for political purposes than intellectuals.
I find the Kaufman studies pretty limited - all self report perceptions, where there would be, for example, scope to look at actual progression by political viewpoint (promotions, for example, in my uni at least are assessed on written application at university level by a central committee who don't know you personally, at least at lower grades and certainly don't know your politics). Lack of confidence intervals on graphs, lack of headline data on sampe sizes. Questions about recruitment to studies. The question to postgrad students about whether their political views fit in - well, students - even postgrad - are mostly young and a bit lefty, but that's an age thing more than a university thing - and it's an odd way of putting the question unless you look for a prticular result. A seeming lack of the same question being asked of more senior/older academics. If I was trying to do this and get to the truth rather than the answer I wanted, I would do it differently.
I could produce a similar study showing how left-leaning academics believe they are discriminated against by society (after all, society keep returning right-leaning governments!). When reading any study like this, it's important to keep in mind that it's very easy to get a study to show what you want by making outwardly reasonable choices about question, sample etc. It's harder to get that through peer review, but not impossible. Producing a not peer reviewed 'report' to show what you want is trivial.
I don't doubt that academia is probably more left leaning than the general population. Academia skews young, for one thing - there's a pyramid with lots of postgrad students, fewer post-docs, fewer still at senior positions - it gets harder and harder to get funding and all but the most able tend to find they can do better in the private or public sector where being competent is enough. Different careers do attract different kinds of people. We don't wring our hands about the right-wing bias in investment banks (if there is one) and the impact of that on funding for parties, projects based on political bias. Nor the Brexit bias of builders (again, made up, no evidence for that!) and the difficulties residents in Remoania have getting building work done!
Anecdata - among my colleagues, who are health science/social science, so in theory among one of the more left-leaning, the 2015 split among those who expressed an opinion was pretty even between Cameron and Milliband. I can only think of two staff members (out of 20 or so whose opinions I knew) who expressed any enthusiasm for Corbyn as Labour leader. We're not all reds. In GEs I've voted Labour once only* and I can't say I feel at all discriminated against.
I don't know of any Johnson-supporting colleagues, but you have to bear in mind we're mostly not idiots
* And no, my other votes weren't SWP!
I should add that Johnson and co upsetting the metropolitan liberal elite (of which I must admit I am objectively one) and instead focusing on others in society is no bad thing. Someone should do it/offer that and Labour seem to have lost sight of that other than for those right at the bottom. There was a large part of society that none of the parties were talking to.
You can buy a beat up old banger for less than a single month's lease on a BMW.
I can lease a 216i for less than £250/month. If you can get a functional car that doesn't need work and provides long term reliable transport for less than that it's by sheer luck.
There's an auction for classic cars with viewings over the next three days. The company is called Historics. Do you know anything about them?
Yep, their reputation is no worse than anyone else in the car game.
There's very rarely value at high end auctions though. Cars go to that sort of auction because there is either no liquidity for that type of car which makes it hard to price or the owner is greedy and hasn't been able to get the price they feel they deserve by any other means.
I mean I'd rather have the backing from people who attended the University of Life than those that went to the Universities of Oxford, Hull, and Brighton.
That's a very specific list. Not that I am complaining about the first item on it, of course.
Well Oxford and Hull complete dumps.
A few months ago a friend and I were trying to come up with the most left wing city in the UK, we decided on Brighton because they elect a Green MP.
Hull, the uni, has some good bits. Hull-York Medical School, the environment/geography departments do good stuff (others may too, but those are the ones I know). The new bits of campus are also very nice. I wouldn't choose to live in most of the city, but then neither do the Hull academics I know.
'The discovery makes it “probably the oldest intact domestic interior in the UK”, said Simons. “We have churches from this kind of date but we haven’t got anywhere where people slept and ate and prayed, all that kind of thing. Here, we’ve got one. It is quite remarkable.”'
I think this is going to go down like a lead ballon outside those who aren't big fans of Boris government. Adding a £200-300 to families food bills.
Is that carelessly worded or are you saying Boris's sugar and salt taxes will be hated by Boris-supporters? If the latter, you may be right, but surely it implies they will not be introduced.
Sorry...been working too many hours straight.
I am saying those that will probably like this policy, don't like Boris and no intention of ever voting for him. Where as his current support base, e.g. the likes of your white working class, inspires to have a middle class lifestyle, types, isn't going to like the sound of £200 extra on his food bill nor the nanny stating.
Cool. In that case, it probably won't happen.
You would think so, but the current government seem to make lots of irrational and often counterproductive decisions (for their own ratings).
Remember the government are really pushing ahead with the eco stuff, that isn't going to be winning them many red wall voters. Again something that non-Tory voters want e.g. electric vehicles coming in much sooner, but it won't make them vote Tory while Boris is in charge.
Oldies heavily skew Tory, they are scared of covid, and Boris is saying open everything up, masks they are optional, etc.
Disagree
Electric vehicles being accelerated >>> Urgent need to provide government incentives to secure manufacturing >>> well paid secure jobs for red wallers >>> located in appropriate seats >>> well paid secure jobs for Tory MPs
Yep - a new Gigafactory has been announced at Coventry "Airport". And two of the 3 seats there would be Tory were it not for Farage.
If Zarah Sultana lost her seat it would be cause for national celebration. This would be fantastic news for Coventry. Boris is certainly doing more for forgotten corners of the UK than his predecessors, which in contrast to Theresa May shows what can be achieved with a large majority and by getting Brexit done.
If the boundary reviews go through, Sultana will be slightly safer as the trade of Lower Stoke for Binley and Willenhall is advantageous to Labour in Coventry.
Johnson is a cypher, people see in him what they want to see. The left hate him as he can be portrayed as the worst of right wing excess. Some see him as likeable, willing to call a spade a spade etc. our kind of chap... I think he's a clown, unfit for office. Does anyone know the real face, if indeed he has one?
I see him as likeable but untrustworthy, and mostly unfit for office because of his inability to take responsibility for his mistakes. But still much better than his main opponent in the 2019 GE.
I do wonder if we've been lucky that Johnson won in 2019. I mean, Hunt or Stewart may have dealt with Covid better, but I've got no doubt that Corbyn's handling it would have been an absolute disaster.
Jeremy Corbyn was not known for his aversion to state intervention, spending or the NHS. I expect we'd have done all right.
I mean I'd rather have the backing from people who attended the University of Life than those that went to the Universities of Oxford, Hull, and Brighton.
That's a very specific list. Not that I am complaining about the first item on it, of course.
Well Oxford and Hull complete dumps.
A few months ago a friend and I were trying to come up with the most left wing city in the UK, we decided on Brighton because they elect a Green MP.
Didn't Glasgow come into the discussion? Tommy Sheridan and George Galloway.
It did, my friend is half Scottish, he said Glasgow has two things that prevent it from being really lefty. The Orange Order and Sevco fans (Yes, I'm aware there's a strong crossover element between the two.)
That is an intelligent and well-argued discussion you two were having.
You'd have liked the discussion, like America we're seeing the big cities heading leftwards and the other places rightwards, and we were discussing if London Independence might become a thing in our lifetimes.
NI affairs committee hears that truck driver shortage also hitting NI. Sarah Hardy, biz dev of AM Nexday says even with salary hikes of 15% to 20% she cannot get drivers. Hardy: Its "perfect storm of covid and Brexit" people happy to remain on furlough and EU drivers staying away https://twitter.com/lisaocarroll/status/1415596383336288260
Road pricing.... that's another thing that got the electorate absolutely steaming when it was talked about 15 years ago.
Talk of higher taxes on fuel / airplane travel, road pricing, id cards, those 3 things seemed to really piss a lot of people off when Labour was in power. Hence why the second two got ditched.
Maybe things have changed now among the electorate in regards to this. We will see.
It hasn't but if get £800 a car from duty on fuel and need to get that money from somewhere there really isn't that many options.
Road pricing will have to be investigated as the other options are worse in different ways
Fuel was taxed because fuel had externalities and was environmentally toxic.
Now that drivers are switching away from fuel, there seems to be a desire to keep raising revenues from drivers rather than simply accept that fuel has gone and that society as a whole needs to pay for its costs.
Its like having if smokers all quit smoking placing a tax on ex-smokers to replace tobacco taxes.
Motorists should still pay some form of tax to, as a bare minimum, fund the road network.
Absolutely that is reasonable. VED raises nearly as much as is spent on the roads. Fuel duty raises about £40bn more than is spent on the roads.
Keeping VED and having approximately half a penny per kWh would replace all of fuel duty and be "fair". Drivers would be paying via when they refuel their electric cars and would still pay more tax from that than is spent on roads - but the rest of society would pay its fair share too.
again - adding it the electricity isn't fair on those who don't have a car, it's regressive because it impacts people who don't currently pay that tax.
And it needs to raise £28bn to offset the tax fuel duty collects (2019/20 figure - last years was surprisingly £21bn)
Just because the justification for the tax has gone that doesn't mean the need for the money disappears.
Why's it unfair on those who don't have a car? Considering almost all of the money raised isn't spent on the roads, why should they be exempt from paying taxes?
The need for the money to fund the NHS or pensions or whatever else you want to spend on is not the same as the need for the money to come from drivers.
And taxing driving is far more regressive than taxing electricity. Poor drivers pay an estimated 10% of their disposable income on fuel duty, that's currently justified due to the green externalities on fuel but if they cease to use fuel why should they remain so heavily taxed?
They aren't exempt from paying taxes but you've just increased the level of tax on the very poorest people in society.
Oh and unless I'm missing something the tax on each kwh needs to be 73p not 0.5p... 0.5p would raise £185m
Tax things you want less of, tax exempt (or subsidise) things you want more of. Price in externalities.
Most damage caused to roads is by HGVs, especially on local roads. We don’t want that. So tax the balls off them, if necessary to be replaced by smaller vehicles. Costs won’t change too much when the drivers disappear.
Things we don’t want: congestion. Things we do want: mobility. So dynamic road pricing. No need to tax the rural driver popping to the local shop. Meanwhile the person driving to Harrods…
We don’t like air pollution, noise and carbon emissions. So grade tax for all three.
We also don’t like inefficient capital allocation to underused assets. So incentivise car sharing by applying a zero income tax band to income from sharing your car. Will be even more important when autonomous driving gets here.
Think that’s it.
Unless you know something I don't (and I watch automation like a hawk) we aren't going to see fully automated driving anytime soon.
Define soon. I have full confidence that the private sector will achieve it earlier than the Whitehall is operationally ready to implement dynamic road pricing.
anytime before 2040 - it really is a 99.999/0.0001 problem rather than a 90/10% problem as other IT solutions are.
It will almost certainly be available earlier than 2040, and absolutely certainly if we limit the discussion to defined road types.
Once you limit it to defined road types you've still got a driver in the lorry so your savings have gone.
Well no. No you don’t. But I cba to have this convo as your mind is closed to it.
I mean I'd rather have the backing from people who attended the University of Life than those that went to the Universities of Oxford, Hull, and Brighton.
That's a very specific list. Not that I am complaining about the first item on it, of course.
Well Oxford and Hull complete dumps.
A few months ago a friend and I were trying to come up with the most left wing city in the UK, we decided on Brighton because they elect a Green MP.
Didn't Glasgow come into the discussion? Tommy Sheridan and George Galloway.
It did, my friend is half Scottish, he said Glasgow has two things that prevent it from being really lefty. The Orange Order and Sevco fans (Yes, I'm aware there's a strong crossover element between the two.)
That is an intelligent and well-argued discussion you two were having.
You'd have liked the discussion, like America we're seeing the big cities heading leftwards and the other places rightwards, and we were discussing if London Independence might become a thing in our lifetimes.
Not to mention Fen City and Oxford (possibly even joined together with MK, to your horror, if the Bletchley link is completed).
Johnson is a cypher, people see in him what they want to see. The left hate him as he can be portrayed as the worst of right wing excess. Some see him as likeable, willing to call a spade a spade etc. our kind of chap... I think he's a clown, unfit for office. Does anyone know the real face, if indeed he has one?
I see him as likeable but untrustworthy, and mostly unfit for office because of his inability to take responsibility for his mistakes. But still much better than his main opponent in the 2019 GE.
I do wonder if we've been lucky that Johnson won in 2019. I mean, Hunt or Stewart may have dealt with Covid better, but I've got no doubt that Corbyn's handling it would have been an absolute disaster.
Jeremy Corbyn was not known for his aversion to state intervention, spending or the NHS. I expect we'd have done all right.
Well, he's not keen to say whether he's been vaccinated, and whilst I generally think medical matters should be kept private, this is in the middle of an epidemic. People look up to him, and if he was to say 'yes', it would encourage others.
I also wonder whether he'd have been as keen to get going on vaccinations from a philosophical point of view: it would mean working and negotiating with the most evil of private moneymaking corps: big pharma.
Sadly, I think there's a little of his brother about him on this.
All this demonstrates is that higher education = progressive political views, particularly amongst people lower than 60. Higher education, particularly in the humanities and social sciences, can involve a significant element of political indoctrination, and this has been increasingly so for 40+ years.
No that really is not 'all' this demonstrates.
The idea that higher education is full of political indoctrination is terribly old hat and no longer particularly true. But your argument is unravelled by the fact that this divide has never before been seen so starkly. Theresa May did not attract such levels of distrust among the educated. Nor did David Cameron. Nor Gordon Brown. Nor Tony Blair. Nor, even, did Margaret Thatcher.
The reason is not the one you've given. It's because we have a charlatan, a shamster, a blaguer, a serial liar, in charge of this country.
We can see it. Clearly.
The evidence about the left wing bias in universities is overwhelming. Look up the work that Eric Kaufmann has done recently. It is inevitable this has an impact on graduates.
Boris is like Trump, he upsets the values of the educated progressive elite; making no attempt at all to placate them unlike his predecessors. That explains his success with the less educated, who have always been easier to herd for political purposes than intellectuals.
Which came first? Are graduates generally more left-leaning because they're indoctrinated, or are universities full of the more intelligent people who see the complexity of life and don't buy the simplistic arguments of Johnson and his ilk?
You cite humanities and social sciences as being havens of left-wing thought. I think that is true, but for the reasons above. They encourage you to consider the shades of grey in life. There are few absolutes. Your personal assumptions are challenged. You have to have think.
Maths, physics, engineering degrees, those based on numbers, probably have a higher degree of right-leaning students. Because they are neat. 2+2 always equals 4. There are always measurable, repeatable, outcomes. They are essentially 'Common sense', if you will.
I don't thing that's necessarily a bad thing, just an inevitable result of what subjects differing personality types are drawn to study.
I don't think it is true at all that only educated people can see the 'shades of grey' in life. All political movements are populist to some degree and craft easy narratives which claim to solve complex problems. I personally see Johnson as a politician with a different style, and it one that clearly agitates educated people; but what he is doing is the same thing as all his predecessors from the year dot. To my mind, he isn't in anywhere near the same league of insanity to Trump, or even Corbyn; the latter being a populist who I note was overwhelmingly popular on university campuses.
I don't think I said that only educated people can see shades of grey, so I agree with you there. I know very intelligent people who aren't academic at all, left school with few or no qualifications but have been very successful indeed. Who obviously analyse the world, in its many facets, very astutely. I know highly educated people who probably struggle to get dressed on a morning.
Johnson is just doing what politicians have always done. Make complicated stuff seemingly easy. Reduce it to simple soundbites. Make everything black and white. Which generally appeals to those of a lower education, as a rule of thumb. But enhanced by this everyman persona, the bloke you'd love to have a pint with. Which is probably just a construct, let's be honest.
As for Corbyn being popular on campus... Selebian posts upthread about this better than I ever could, but essentially I think it boils down to youthful idealism and it being the only alternative to the Brexit-bringing Tories (yes, yes I know Corbyn was at best ambivalent about Remaining!)
Sometimes you just gotta hold your nose and vote for the least worst option. Bring on PR! *ducks and covers*
I mean I'd rather have the backing from people who attended the University of Life than those that went to the Universities of Oxford, Hull, and Brighton.
That's a very specific list. Not that I am complaining about the first item on it, of course.
Well Oxford and Hull complete dumps.
A few months ago a friend and I were trying to come up with the most left wing city in the UK, we decided on Brighton because they elect a Green MP.
Didn't Glasgow come into the discussion? Tommy Sheridan and George Galloway.
It did, my friend is half Scottish, he said Glasgow has two things that prevent it from being really lefty. The Orange Order and Sevco fans (Yes, I'm aware there's a strong crossover element between the two.)
That is an intelligent and well-argued discussion you two were having.
You'd have liked the discussion, like America we're seeing the big cities heading leftwards and the other places rightwards, and we were discussing if London Independence might become a thing in our lifetimes.
More specifically the big cities are left liberal, rural areas and small towns are conservative and suburbia and the commuter belt are the key swing areas.
Taking the knee, fine, sharing the captaincy, absurd. Why not make the other players captain too.
So they're the captains of England, Scotland and Wales. The squad contains 2 Scots,1 Welsh and 19 English. No wonder women's football is a bit of a joke.
Road pricing.... that's another thing that got the electorate absolutely steaming when it was talked about 15 years ago.
Talk of higher taxes on fuel / airplane travel, road pricing, id cards, those 3 things seemed to really piss a lot of people off when Labour was in power. Hence why the second two got ditched.
Maybe things have changed now among the electorate in regards to this. We will see.
It hasn't but if get £800 a car from duty on fuel and need to get that money from somewhere there really isn't that many options.
Road pricing will have to be investigated as the other options are worse in different ways
Fuel was taxed because fuel had externalities and was environmentally toxic.
Now that drivers are switching away from fuel, there seems to be a desire to keep raising revenues from drivers rather than simply accept that fuel has gone and that society as a whole needs to pay for its costs.
Its like having if smokers all quit smoking placing a tax on ex-smokers to replace tobacco taxes.
Motorists should still pay some form of tax to, as a bare minimum, fund the road network.
Absolutely that is reasonable. VED raises nearly as much as is spent on the roads. Fuel duty raises about £40bn more than is spent on the roads.
Keeping VED and having approximately half a penny per kWh would replace all of fuel duty and be "fair". Drivers would be paying via when they refuel their electric cars and would still pay more tax from that than is spent on roads - but the rest of society would pay its fair share too.
again - adding it the electricity isn't fair on those who don't have a car, it's regressive because it impacts people who don't currently pay that tax.
And it needs to raise £28bn to offset the tax fuel duty collects (2019/20 figure - last years was surprisingly £21bn)
Just because the justification for the tax has gone that doesn't mean the need for the money disappears.
Why's it unfair on those who don't have a car? Considering almost all of the money raised isn't spent on the roads, why should they be exempt from paying taxes?
The need for the money to fund the NHS or pensions or whatever else you want to spend on is not the same as the need for the money to come from drivers.
And taxing driving is far more regressive than taxing electricity. Poor drivers pay an estimated 10% of their disposable income on fuel duty, that's currently justified due to the green externalities on fuel but if they cease to use fuel why should they remain so heavily taxed?
They aren't exempt from paying taxes but you've just increased the level of tax on the very poorest people in society.
Oh and unless I'm missing something the tax on each kwh needs to be 73p not 0.5p... 0.5p would raise £185m
Tax things you want less of, tax exempt (or subsidise) things you want more of. Price in externalities.
Most damage caused to roads is by HGVs, especially on local roads. We don’t want that. So tax the balls off them, if necessary to be replaced by smaller vehicles. Costs won’t change too much when the drivers disappear.
Things we don’t want: congestion. Things we do want: mobility. So dynamic road pricing. No need to tax the rural driver popping to the local shop. Meanwhile the person driving to Harrods…
We don’t like air pollution, noise and carbon emissions. So grade tax for all three.
We also don’t like inefficient capital allocation to underused assets. So incentivise car sharing by applying a zero income tax band to income from sharing your car. Will be even more important when autonomous driving gets here.
Think that’s it.
Unless you know something I don't (and I watch automation like a hawk) we aren't going to see fully automated driving anytime soon.
Define soon. I have full confidence that the private sector will achieve it earlier than the Whitehall is operationally ready to implement dynamic road pricing.
anytime before 2040 - it really is a 99.999/0.0001 problem rather than a 90/10% problem as other IT solutions are.
It will almost certainly be available earlier than 2040, and absolutely certainly if we limit the discussion to defined road types.
Once you limit it to defined road types you've still got a driver in the lorry so your savings have gone.
Well no. No you don’t. But I cba to have this convo as your mind is closed to it.
So say you automate motorway driving (logical starting point) - how does the lorry get off the motorway to the factory.
And for what time are you going to pay the driver.
NI affairs committee hears that truck driver shortage also hitting NI. Sarah Hardy, biz dev of AM Nexday says even with salary hikes of 15% to 20% she cannot get drivers. Hardy: Its "perfect storm of covid and Brexit" people happy to remain on furlough and EU drivers staying away https://twitter.com/lisaocarroll/status/1415596383336288260
Time to cut furlough quicker then. Get people off their sofas and being paid for it,
Taking the knee, fine, sharing the captaincy, absurd. Why not make the other players captain too.
So they're the captains of England, Scotland and Wales. The squad contains 2 Scots,1 Welsh and 19 English. No wonder women's football is a bit of a joke.
Are you joking, or is that really the case?
It's simply the Council of the Isles solution, after all.
I mean I'd rather have the backing from people who attended the University of Life than those that went to the Universities of Oxford, Hull, and Brighton.
That's a very specific list. Not that I am complaining about the first item on it, of course.
Well Oxford and Hull complete dumps.
A few months ago a friend and I were trying to come up with the most left wing city in the UK, we decided on Brighton because they elect a Green MP.
Hull, the uni, has some good bits. Hull-York Medical School, the environment/geography departments do good stuff (others may too, but those are the ones I know). The new bits of campus are also very nice. I wouldn't choose to live in most of the city, but then neither do the Hull academics I know.
I literally owe my very existence to Hull University. My parents met there,
Mr. Carnyx, surely if we have churches from that era we have places that people prayed?
He did say "slept and ate and prayed" - but I don't know if the C9 chaps used their cathedrals as shopping malls like the later ones did.
I thought that churches and catherdrals were used as community centres, right from the earliest available evidence?
I bow to your expertise!
I'm not an expert - just some stuff I read. I'd understood that the concept of churches being reserved only for praying etc was actually a very modern concept.
Does anyone with actual expertise in subject have a good reference?
Taking the knee, fine, sharing the captaincy, absurd. Why not make the other players captain too.
So they're the captains of England, Scotland and Wales. The squad contains 2 Scots,1 Welsh and 19 English. No wonder women's football is a bit of a joke.
Are you joking, or is that really the case?
It's simply the Council of the Isles solution, after all.
Sadly that's the case. Not exactly the British Lions is it? Wouldn't be surprised if the Welsh captain is a bit of a representative sympathy pick.
NI affairs committee hears that truck driver shortage also hitting NI. Sarah Hardy, biz dev of AM Nexday says even with salary hikes of 15% to 20% she cannot get drivers. Hardy: Its "perfect storm of covid and Brexit" people happy to remain on furlough and EU drivers staying away https://twitter.com/lisaocarroll/status/1415596383336288260
Time to cut furlough quicker then. Get people off their sofas and being paid for it,
Yes. There are plenty of jobs out there, those on furlough with no jobs to go back to, in some cases, will take them. I’d be surprised if there were a large amount of lorry drivers though.
NI affairs committee hears that truck driver shortage also hitting NI. Sarah Hardy, biz dev of AM Nexday says even with salary hikes of 15% to 20% she cannot get drivers. Hardy: Its "perfect storm of covid and Brexit" people happy to remain on furlough and EU drivers staying away https://twitter.com/lisaocarroll/status/1415596383336288260
Time to cut furlough quicker then. Get people off their sofas and being paid for it,
Figures today suggest that the furlough scheme is now the smallest it has been since, effectively, its introduction. (This still amounts to 1.2m people though but steadily declining.)
NI affairs committee hears that truck driver shortage also hitting NI. Sarah Hardy, biz dev of AM Nexday says even with salary hikes of 15% to 20% she cannot get drivers. Hardy: Its "perfect storm of covid and Brexit" people happy to remain on furlough and EU drivers staying away https://twitter.com/lisaocarroll/status/1415596383336288260
Time to cut furlough quicker then. Get people off their sofas and being paid for it,
Given the life of a long distance lorry driver compared to 80% of the pay for not doing long distance lorry driving.... it doesn't seem much of a choice to me.
Why are lorry drivers on furlough though? Or is this one of those Daily Mail type stories (aka saloon bar bullshit)?
NI affairs committee hears that truck driver shortage also hitting NI. Sarah Hardy, biz dev of AM Nexday says even with salary hikes of 15% to 20% she cannot get drivers. Hardy: Its "perfect storm of covid and Brexit" people happy to remain on furlough and EU drivers staying away https://twitter.com/lisaocarroll/status/1415596383336288260
Time to cut furlough quicker then. Get people off their sofas and being paid for it,
Lots of people on furlough are (quite legally) doing second jobs. This might explain reluctance to go back, or otoh why there are suddenly so many new jobs as people leave furlough.
NI affairs committee hears that truck driver shortage also hitting NI. Sarah Hardy, biz dev of AM Nexday says even with salary hikes of 15% to 20% she cannot get drivers. Hardy: Its "perfect storm of covid and Brexit" people happy to remain on furlough and EU drivers staying away https://twitter.com/lisaocarroll/status/1415596383336288260
Time to cut furlough quicker then. Get people off their sofas and being paid for it,
Given the life of a long distance lorry driver compared to 80% of the pay for not doing long distance lorry driving.... it doesn't seem much of a choice to me.
Why are lorry drivers on furlough though? Or is this one of those Daily Mail type stories (aka saloon bar bullshit)?
They aren't and never have been furloughed (except for some very niche edge cases).
The lorry driver issues is a combination of a very competitive industry, tax abuse (IR35) to keep wages sane and a lack of willingness to invest and pay for training.
I mean I'd rather have the backing from people who attended the University of Life than those that went to the Universities of Oxford, Hull, and Brighton.
That's a very specific list. Not that I am complaining about the first item on it, of course.
Well Oxford and Hull complete dumps.
A few months ago a friend and I were trying to come up with the most left wing city in the UK, we decided on Brighton because they elect a Green MP.
Hull, the uni, has some good bits. Hull-York Medical School, the environment/geography departments do good stuff (others may too, but those are the ones I know). The new bits of campus are also very nice. I wouldn't choose to live in most of the city, but then neither do the Hull academics I know.
I literally owe my very existence to Hull University. My parents met there,
So I'm doing Whitstable Doug. Lovely little place. Don't know why you ever left.
NI affairs committee hears that truck driver shortage also hitting NI. Sarah Hardy, biz dev of AM Nexday says even with salary hikes of 15% to 20% she cannot get drivers. Hardy: Its "perfect storm of covid and Brexit" people happy to remain on furlough and EU drivers staying away https://twitter.com/lisaocarroll/status/1415596383336288260
Time to cut furlough quicker then. Get people off their sofas and being paid for it,
Yes. There are plenty of jobs out there, those on furlough with no jobs to go back to, in some cases, will take them. I’d be surprised if there were a large amount of lorry drivers though.
IR35 abuse would be a better explanation - I cannot see any way in which a driver could be self employed given that they would be named people on the end client's insurance policy.
So misogyny and racism are acceptable if you don’t like the person on the receiving end.
Same goes when it is Diane a Abbott.
There’s something about strong BAME women some people find challenging.
Like rcs1000 I have little time for Patel and she shouldn’t be in the job but the point can be made without resorting to that sort of crap.
Still, if it floats your boat fill your boots.
Fuck off.
I made the point she shouldn't be in the job.
I didn't mention her gender or ethnicity.
She never said she agreed with the booing she just didn’t condemn it and said,correctly, people have a right to boo which they do.
She called it gesture politics. By dismissing it so airily she fanned the flames of racism.
And to anyone who doesn't get this, you can be non-white and bloody racist. I've seen it all-too-often and there's a particularly nasty, thoroughly unpleasant, kind of self-made Conservative (often Asian) who doesn't give a shit about others who haven't made it.
Incidentally, the whole caste system is deeply racist.
‘Darn those “uppity Asians” outrageous that they should make it. They should know their place and vote Labour’
That is a disgraceful position to take. Disgusting and despicable.
Interestingly on Heart Radio this week I've heard multiple adverts for drivers wanted. Never heard that on the station before during the ad breaks.
Almost as if when there's a staff shortage, people can advertise to attract more staff. Nobody had bothered to months ago when certain posters were bemoaning a staff shortage, now firms are starting to bother.
It's not the states job to do a firm's advertising, recruitment or training for them.
Leaving aside the costs to business does anyone actually understand the supposed purpose of “vaccine passports (for domestic hospitality etc”?
Is it to protect the unvaccinated or the vaccinated? If it’s the latter then the message needs to be made more strongly that protection comes from the vaccine, not from avoiding contact with unvaccinated (and possibly infected) people. If the latter, the message should be that you are acting at your own risk and you should get vaccinated.
It seems to me that the only real purpose is to reduce problems due to mandatory self isolation for all. Which is a stupid policy which is going anyway.
As I pointed out yesterday 46% of men between 18 and 30 in Tayside have not been vaccinated at all. Something just under 7m adults have not been vaccinated in the UK. This is a clear and obvious medical risk and will create a pool of infection, hospitalisation and death going forward. Pretty much all of these people will now have been offered a vaccine but have declined or not bothered.
Do we (a) think that current rates are actually top of the class internationally and accept this risk or (b) try to incentivise the laggards to get their jabs after all? The government is opting for (b) and they are right to do so.
Or we just let nature take its course for people who have refused the vaccine. If some of them die then it's the choice they've made.
No, I think its right that the government does what it can to incentivise those who have not taken up the vaccine whilst making it clear that the rest of us are no longer going to wait for them to do so and will get on with our lives.
NI affairs committee hears that truck driver shortage also hitting NI. Sarah Hardy, biz dev of AM Nexday says even with salary hikes of 15% to 20% she cannot get drivers. Hardy: Its "perfect storm of covid and Brexit" people happy to remain on furlough and EU drivers staying away https://twitter.com/lisaocarroll/status/1415596383336288260
Time to cut furlough quicker then. Get people off their sofas and being paid for it,
Lots of people on furlough are (quite legally) doing second jobs. This might explain reluctance to go back, or otoh why there are suddenly so many new jobs as people leave furlough.
The numbers are running down encouragingly quickly, though.
Now about 80-85% down from the peak to about 2 million. Ish.
Roll on cautious reopening, and we'll find out how the economy has changed.
Another day another column from OGH bashing Boris.
OGH correctly and, literally, against all the odds predicted the Lib Dems would win Chesham & Amersham. He was derived on here by the likes of you who were made to look very stupid by him.
OGH also correctly predicted that Labour would hold Batley & Spen against the odds and against what most other political commentators were saying, even members of the Labour Party.
NI affairs committee hears that truck driver shortage also hitting NI. Sarah Hardy, biz dev of AM Nexday says even with salary hikes of 15% to 20% she cannot get drivers. Hardy: Its "perfect storm of covid and Brexit" people happy to remain on furlough and EU drivers staying away https://twitter.com/lisaocarroll/status/1415596383336288260
Time to cut furlough quicker then. Get people off their sofas and being paid for it,
Lots of people on furlough are (quite legally) doing second jobs. This might explain reluctance to go back, or otoh why there are suddenly so many new jobs as people leave furlough.
The numbers are running down encouragingly quickly, though.
Now about 80-85% down from the peak to about 2 million. Ish.
That 2+ million "floor" occurs twice in that graph. It would be interesting to see what trades etc that breaks down into.
Interestingly on Heart Radio this week I've heard multiple adverts for drivers wanted. Never heard that on the station before during the ad breaks.
Almost as if when there's a staff shortage, people can advertise to attract more staff. Nobody had bothered to months ago when certain posters were bemoaning a staff shortage, now firms are starting to bother.
It's not the states job to do a firm's advertising, recruitment or training for them.
It’s nice to see firms actually trying to recruit rather than running to the media blaming brexit or other people for their woes.
So misogyny and racism are acceptable if you don’t like the person on the receiving end.
Same goes when it is Diane a Abbott.
There’s something about strong BAME women some people find challenging.
Like rcs1000 I have little time for Patel and she shouldn’t be in the job but the point can be made without resorting to that sort of crap.
Still, if it floats your boat fill your boots.
Fuck off.
I made the point she shouldn't be in the job.
I didn't mention her gender or ethnicity.
She never said she agreed with the booing she just didn’t condemn it and said,correctly, people have a right to boo which they do.
She called it gesture politics. By dismissing it so airily she fanned the flames of racism.
And to anyone who doesn't get this, you can be non-white and bloody racist. I've seen it all-too-often and there's a particularly nasty, thoroughly unpleasant, kind of self-made Conservative (often Asian) who doesn't give a shit about others who haven't made it.
Incidentally, the whole caste system is deeply racist.
‘Darn those “uppity Asians” outrageous that they should make it. They should know their place and vote Labour’
That is a disgraceful position to take. Disgusting and despicable.
It is gesture politics. Literally.
My beef remains with the FA, though.
This could have been done in a way which was unifying, and gave people who remember what happens when the game is politicised a route to express support without such an unnecessary dust-up; they chose not to do so.
Fortunately I don't do football games, but I think I would probably stand up and turn my back as a protest.
Mr. Malmesbury, early Christianity in Britain was more about monasteries than churches, before the parish system got going, but the monasteries were rather more open than the cloistered/closed off approach adopted later.
To the point the cartoon is offensive you merely simpered ‘so is she’, a tacit justification.
No
The cartoon does not rely on her gender or ethnicity to make its point.
She said and did stupid things. If another politician had done and said the same things the cartoon would have been equally valid.
She shouldn't be in the cabinet. Not because of her gender. Not because of her ethnicity. Because of her actions.
Why are you so keen to defend all of the nasty things she does by claiming misogyny or racism where none exist?
I agree with you on this one, just as I agreed with the same posters now outraged at "misogyny and racism" against Patel who rightly said it wasn't there against Abbott.
Lets be clear. Both are BAME women and shit politicians. Most of the attacks on Abbott were her ludicrous gaffs, not her skin colour or gender, and frankly this cartoon with Patel is the same. They can't have some kind of "you can't touch them" rule because of their ethnicity or gender - that would be absurd.
Can I remind some of the faux sensitive that Patel was sacked for both carrying out her own private foreign policy and for lying about it. Collusion with a foreign power against the interests of the government whilst a member of it is pretty bad. She shouldn't be Home Secretary
The imagery is about male hands gagging a woman they disagree with. I don’t think it is about ethnicity.
The “Hindu bull” cartoon was more about ethnicity (although there is also a gender / “cow” angle as well).
Cartoonists tend to distort physical features - with Gove his ears, with Boris his blubber etc. But they consistently get it wrong with Priti Patel and it indicates some pretty unpleasant underlying thought patterns
'The discovery makes it “probably the oldest intact domestic interior in the UK”, said Simons. “We have churches from this kind of date but we haven’t got anywhere where people slept and ate and prayed, all that kind of thing. Here, we’ve got one. It is quite remarkable.”'
What a great article. Thank you for sharing. Fascinating period of history.
Another day another column from OGH bashing Boris.
OGH correctly and, literally, against all the odds predicted the Lib Dems would win Chesham & Amersham. He was derived on here by the likes of you who were made to look very stupid by him.
OGH also correctly predicted that Labour would hold Batley & Spen against the odds and against what most other political commentators were saying, even members of the Labour Party.
So perhaps a little less of your crowing, hmmm?
Did he actually predict the results?
I thought he just identified them as value bets
If OGH identified the by-election results as value bets, that means he assessed those results as being far more probable than the consensus of market, pundits or politicians. That is enough to make OGH smarter than the average bear. Probably wealthier too.
Taking the knee, fine, sharing the captaincy, absurd. Why not make the other players captain too.
So they're the captains of England, Scotland and Wales. The squad contains 2 Scots,1 Welsh and 19 English. No wonder women's football is a bit of a joke.
Are you joking, or is that really the case?
It's simply the Council of the Isles solution, after all.
It's an artefact that the FA and clubs have invested a lot of money in the WSL and women's football in general.
Sadly the Welsh, Scots, and Irish football clubs do not have the inclination or resources to develop women's football.
It involves a lot of time and money at the grassroots and youth level, it may happen in the future, I did read a while back that it is something Mrs Sturgeon is looking at doing as part of a wider better health campaign.
Another day another column from OGH bashing Boris.
OGH correctly and, literally, against all the odds predicted the Lib Dems would win Chesham & Amersham. He was derived on here by the likes of you who were made to look very stupid by him.
OGH also correctly predicted that Labour would hold Batley & Spen against the odds and against what most other political commentators were saying, even members of the Labour Party.
So perhaps a little less of your crowing, hmmm?
Did he actually predict the results?
I thought he just identified them as value bets
Indeed. He also said that Labour were value for Hartlepool too didn't he?
People remember the value winners much clearer than the value losers. But get enough value winners and you're up even if you have value losers.
W12 FFS. It's two 15 deg V6 banks with inclined together at 72 deg.
Doh... I really should have known that, espcially as they've been indirectly paying my wages for the last year (although nothing to do with the W12 powered cars, I did get a go in one out of it)
To the point the cartoon is offensive you merely simpered ‘so is she’, a tacit justification.
No
The cartoon does not rely on her gender or ethnicity to make its point.
She said and did stupid things. If another politician had done and said the same things the cartoon would have been equally valid.
She shouldn't be in the cabinet. Not because of her gender. Not because of her ethnicity. Because of her actions.
Why are you so keen to defend all of the nasty things she does by claiming misogyny or racism where none exist?
I agree with you on this one, just as I agreed with the same posters now outraged at "misogyny and racism" against Patel who rightly said it wasn't there against Abbott.
Lets be clear. Both are BAME women and shit politicians. Most of the attacks on Abbott were her ludicrous gaffs, not her skin colour or gender, and frankly this cartoon with Patel is the same. They can't have some kind of "you can't touch them" rule because of their ethnicity or gender - that would be absurd.
Can I remind some of the faux sensitive that Patel was sacked for both carrying out her own private foreign policy and for lying about it. Collusion with a foreign power against the interests of the government whilst a member of it is pretty bad. She shouldn't be Home Secretary
The imagery is about male hands gagging a woman they disagree with. I don’t think it is about ethnicity.
The “Hindu bull” cartoon was more about ethnicity (although there is also a gender / “cow” angle as well).
Cartoonists tend to distort physical features - with Gove his ears, with Boris his blubber etc. But they consistently get it wrong with Priti Patel and it indicates some pretty unpleasant underlying thought patterns
The Hindu Bull thing seemed straight out of some of the extremist attacks on "The Cow Worshippers" that I have seen.
No surprise there as Johnson is a disingenuous racist fat fornicator - i.e. a c*nt!
I love Johnson
Dr IshmaelZ MA Oxon MA Exon PhD
"MA Oxon..." please.
Why not? If you’re offered a free (or nearly free) upgrade take it.
Ugh, it's just a fake title. I have one too but I would never put it on my CV.
1. It winds people up into paroxysms of fury 2. I feel that having a proper one from a proper university retrospectively validates it 3. It is a sign of high intelligence, because it says that at 17 you were bright enough to choose a university where you get an M for the price of a B.
NI affairs committee hears that truck driver shortage also hitting NI. Sarah Hardy, biz dev of AM Nexday says even with salary hikes of 15% to 20% she cannot get drivers. Hardy: Its "perfect storm of covid and Brexit" people happy to remain on furlough and EU drivers staying away https://twitter.com/lisaocarroll/status/1415596383336288260
Time to cut furlough quicker then. Get people off their sofas and being paid for it,
Yes. There are plenty of jobs out there, those on furlough with no jobs to go back to, in some cases, will take them. I’d be surprised if there were a large amount of lorry drivers though.
IR35 abuse would be a better explanation - I cannot see any way in which a driver could be self employed given that they would be named people on the end client's insurance policy.
Don’t get me wrong I fully support reform of the extensive IR35 abuse that has gone on and has for many years. I worked for a while via an umbrella and I was, in every role I undertook, no more than a disguised employee. It was a while ago though. Had the reforms not been botched by new labour and again via Cameron’s govt this would have been put to bed years ago.
Taking the knee, fine, sharing the captaincy, absurd. Why not make the other players captain too.
So they're the captains of England, Scotland and Wales. The squad contains 2 Scots,1 Welsh and 19 English. No wonder women's football is a bit of a joke.
Well done for sexist comment of the day. I watched the women's world cup and was highly impressed by the professionalism and athleticism. Perhaps you think all women's sport is a bit of a joke.
Another day another column from OGH bashing Boris.
OGH correctly and, literally, against all the odds predicted the Lib Dems would win Chesham & Amersham. He was derived on here by the likes of you who were made to look very stupid by him.
OGH also correctly predicted that Labour would hold Batley & Spen against the odds and against what most other political commentators were saying, even members of the Labour Party.
So perhaps a little less of your crowing, hmmm?
Did he actually predict the results?
I thought he just identified them as value bets
Indeed. He also said that Labour were value for Hartlepool too didn't he?
People remember the value winners much clearer than the value losers. But get enough value winners and you're up even if you have value losers.
That’s remarkably similar to Warren Buffets approach to investing.
No surprise there as Johnson is a disingenuous racist fat fornicator - i.e. a c*nt!
I love Johnson
Dr IshmaelZ MA Oxon MA Exon PhD
"MA Oxon..." please.
Why not? If you’re offered a free (or nearly free) upgrade take it.
Ugh, it's just a fake title. I have one too but I would never put it on my CV.
1. It winds people up into paroxysms of fury 2. I feel that having a proper one from a proper university retrospectively validates it 3. It is a sign of high intelligence, because it says that at 17 you were bright enough to choose a university where you get an M for the price of a B.
I always felt it devalues a genuine M and those who work hard for a M.
The first thing that hits me is that people want the cuts austerity created in local amenities that were previously supported by local councils (until the money disappeared) fixed
Taking the knee, fine, sharing the captaincy, absurd. Why not make the other players captain too.
So they're the captains of England, Scotland and Wales. The squad contains 2 Scots,1 Welsh and 19 English. No wonder women's football is a bit of a joke.
Are you joking, or is that really the case?
It's simply the Council of the Isles solution, after all.
It's an artefact that the FA and clubs have invested a lot of money in the WSL and women's football in general.
Sadly the Welsh, Scots, and Irish football clubs do not have the inclination or resources to develop women's football.
It involves a lot of time and money at the grassroots and youth level, it may happen in the future, I did read a while back that it is something Mrs Sturgeon is looking at doing as part of a wider better health campaign.
All this demonstrates is that higher education = progressive political views, particularly amongst people lower than 60. Higher education, particularly in the humanities and social sciences, can involve a significant element of political indoctrination, and this has been increasingly so for 40+ years.
No that really is not 'all' this demonstrates.
The idea that higher education is full of political indoctrination is terribly old hat and no longer particularly true. But your argument is unravelled by the fact that this divide has never before been seen so starkly. Theresa May did not attract such levels of distrust among the educated. Nor did David Cameron. Nor Gordon Brown. Nor Tony Blair. Nor, even, did Margaret Thatcher.
The reason is not the one you've given. It's because we have a charlatan, a shamster, a blaguer, a serial liar, in charge of this country.
We can see it. Clearly.
The evidence about the left wing bias in universities is overwhelming. Look up the work that Eric Kaufmann has done recently. It is inevitable this has an impact on graduates.
Boris is like Trump, he upsets the values of the educated progressive elite; making no attempt at all to placate them unlike his predecessors. That explains his success with the less educated, who have always been easier to herd for political purposes than intellectuals.
I find the Kaufman studies pretty limited - all self report perceptions, where there would be, for example, scope to look at actual progression by political viewpoint (promotions, for example, in my uni at least are assessed on written application at university level by a central committee who don't know you personally, at least at lower grades and certainly don't know your politics). Lack of confidence intervals on graphs, lack of headline data on sampe sizes. Questions about recruitment to studies. The question to postgrad students about whether their political views fit in - well, students - even postgrad - are mostly young and a bit lefty, but that's an age thing more than a university thing - and it's an odd way of putting the question unless you look for a prticular result. A seeming lack of the same question being asked of more senior/older academics. If I was trying to do this and get to the truth rather than the answer I wanted, I would do it differently.
I could produce a similar study showing how left-leaning academics believe they are discriminated against by society (after all, society keep returning right-leaning governments!). When reading any study like this, it's important to keep in mind that it's very easy to get a study to show what you want by making outwardly reasonable choices about question, sample etc. It's harder to get that through peer review, but not impossible. Producing a not peer reviewed 'report' to show what you want is trivial.
I don't doubt that academia is probably more left leaning than the general population. Academia skews young, for one thing - there's a pyramid with lots of postgrad students, fewer post-docs, fewer still at senior positions - it gets harder and harder to get funding and all but the most able tend to find they can do better in the private or public sector where being competent is enough. Different careers do attract different kinds of people. We don't wring our hands about the right-wing bias in investment banks (if there is one) and the impact of that on funding for parties, projects based on political bias. Nor the Brexit bias of builders (again, made up, no evidence for that!) and the difficulties residents in Remoania have getting building work done!
Anecdata - among my colleagues, who are health science/social science, so in theory among one of the more left-leaning, the 2015 split among those who expressed an opinion was pretty even between Cameron and Milliband. I can only think of two staff members (out of 20 or so whose opinions I knew) who expressed any enthusiasm for Corbyn as Labour leader. We're not all reds. In GEs I've voted Labour once only* and I can't say I feel at all discriminated against.
I don't know of any Johnson-supporting colleagues, but you have to bear in mind we're mostly not idiots
* And no, my other votes weren't SWP!
That's really interesting, thanks for taking the time to reply. I suppose that all studies have bias towards getting the answer they want: certainly this seems to be true of opinion polls!
Yep. In any survey-type study looking at whether group X are disadvantaged, you will tend to preferentially get responses from people in group X who feel they have been disadvantaged, because they care and want to tell someone, while people not in group X and people in group X who don't feel disadvantaged have more urgent pressures on their time. Bad for getting to an answer about whether group X are disadvantaged, but very handy if all you want to show is that group X are disadvantaged.
That's why things like the various ONS studies that use random address picking and then follow up doggedly, in person, to minimise non-response, over-sample non-responders and provide weightings for that are great, but they're very expensive and take a lot of time. In the little work I've done with surveys, e.g. one about climate change attitudes (which obviously suffers from the same potential problems), we've always piggy-backed on one of the ONS surveys that cover much more general topics (you can pay to have questions added, if they agree - they're also very strict about how you ask questions, to avoid bias, which to be honest is also useful, peer review before you do the study).
Not sure how you'd do a study like this well in academia - I'd love to see a study as it is interesting and an important issue if people on the right are getting forced out. Probably bury it within a larger study on academia covering lots of different issues with university buy-in so they'd push it to staff and you wouldn't get preferental responses from a particular group as the real quesions of interest would not be obvious to an outsider. That, however, would need serious funding.
Mr. Carnyx, surely if we have churches from that era we have places that people prayed?
He did say "slept and ate and prayed" - but I don't know if the C9 chaps used their cathedrals as shopping malls like the later ones did.
I thought that churches and catherdrals were used as community centres, right from the earliest available evidence?
I bow to your expertise!
I'm not an expert - just some stuff I read. I'd understood that the concept of churches being reserved only for praying etc was actually a very modern concept.
Does anyone with actual expertise in subject have a good reference?
Old St Paul’s, before the Fire, was literally used as a shopping arcade. One of the reasons it was in such bad shape even before 1666.
No surprise there as Johnson is a disingenuous racist fat fornicator - i.e. a c*nt!
I love Johnson
Dr IshmaelZ MA Oxon MA Exon PhD
"MA Oxon..." please.
Why not? If you’re offered a free (or nearly free) upgrade take it.
Ugh, it's just a fake title. I have one too but I would never put it on my CV.
1. It winds people up into paroxysms of fury 2. I feel that having a proper one from a proper university retrospectively validates it 3. It is a sign of high intelligence, because it says that at 17 you were bright enough to choose a university where you get an M for the price of a B.
I always felt it devalues a genuine M and those who work hard for a M.
See point 2. Otherwise I rather agree. And actually I think I'm faking it, I genuinely can't remember whether I ever put the £30 in the post or not. Wouldn't have been like me to do that.
So misogyny and racism are acceptable if you don’t like the person on the receiving end.
Same goes when it is Diane a Abbott.
There’s something about strong BAME women some people find challenging.
Like rcs1000 I have little time for Patel and she shouldn’t be in the job but the point can be made without resorting to that sort of crap.
Still, if it floats your boat fill your boots.
Fuck off.
I made the point she shouldn't be in the job.
I didn't mention her gender or ethnicity.
She never said she agreed with the booing she just didn’t condemn it and said,correctly, people have a right to boo which they do.
She called it gesture politics. By dismissing it so airily she fanned the flames of racism.
And to anyone who doesn't get this, you can be non-white and bloody racist. I've seen it all-too-often and there's a particularly nasty, thoroughly unpleasant, kind of self-made Conservative (often Asian) who doesn't give a shit about others who haven't made it.
Incidentally, the whole caste system is deeply racist.
‘Darn those “uppity Asians” outrageous that they should make it. They should know their place and vote Labour’
That is a disgraceful position to take. Disgusting and despicable.
It is gesture politics. Literally.
My beef remains with the FA, though.
This could have been done in a way which was unifying, and gave people who remember what happens when the game is politicised a route to express support without such an unnecessary dust-up; they chose not to do so.
Fortunately I don't do football games, but I think I would probably stand up and turn my back as a protest.
The FA did not do anything, it was the England team who chose to do it. If you really want a "beef" with people expressing an opinion you don't like, it should be with the players.
Another day another column from OGH bashing Boris.
OGH correctly and, literally, against all the odds predicted the Lib Dems would win Chesham & Amersham. He was derived on here by the likes of you who were made to look very stupid by him.
OGH also correctly predicted that Labour would hold Batley & Spen against the odds and against what most other political commentators were saying, even members of the Labour Party.
So perhaps a little less of your crowing, hmmm?
Did he actually predict the results?
I thought he just identified them as value bets
Indeed. He also said that Labour were value for Hartlepool too didn't he?
People remember the value winners much clearer than the value losers. But get enough value winners and you're up even if you have value losers.
There’s a surprising amount of confusion even on this site (I’m thinking esp of a poster whose name begins with H and ends with D) between finding value bets and picking a winner.
No surprise there as Johnson is a disingenuous racist fat fornicator - i.e. a c*nt!
I love Johnson
Dr IshmaelZ MA Oxon MA Exon PhD
"MA Oxon..." please.
Why not? If you’re offered a free (or nearly free) upgrade take it.
Ugh, it's just a fake title. I have one too but I would never put it on my CV.
1. It winds people up into paroxysms of fury 2. I feel that having a proper one from a proper university retrospectively validates it 3. It is a sign of high intelligence, because it says that at 17 you were bright enough to choose a university where you get an M for the price of a B.
Drives me to a modestly higher blood pressure.
The alleged best universities in the world handing out fake mail-order degrees. Good sign of self-confidence
Fortunately I'm not employer - that would perhaps be one of the early sifting criteria.
Road pricing.... that's another thing that got the electorate absolutely steaming when it was talked about 15 years ago.
Talk of higher taxes on fuel / airplane travel, road pricing, id cards, those 3 things seemed to really piss a lot of people off when Labour was in power. Hence why the second two got ditched.
Maybe things have changed now among the electorate in regards to this. We will see.
It hasn't but if get £800 a car from duty on fuel and need to get that money from somewhere there really isn't that many options.
Road pricing will have to be investigated as the other options are worse in different ways
Fuel was taxed because fuel had externalities and was environmentally toxic.
Now that drivers are switching away from fuel, there seems to be a desire to keep raising revenues from drivers rather than simply accept that fuel has gone and that society as a whole needs to pay for its costs.
Its like having if smokers all quit smoking placing a tax on ex-smokers to replace tobacco taxes.
Motorists should still pay some form of tax to, as a bare minimum, fund the road network.
Absolutely that is reasonable. VED raises nearly as much as is spent on the roads. Fuel duty raises about £40bn more than is spent on the roads.
Keeping VED and having approximately half a penny per kWh would replace all of fuel duty and be "fair". Drivers would be paying via when they refuel their electric cars and would still pay more tax from that than is spent on roads - but the rest of society would pay its fair share too.
again - adding it the electricity isn't fair on those who don't have a car, it's regressive because it impacts people who don't currently pay that tax.
And it needs to raise £28bn to offset the tax fuel duty collects (2019/20 figure - last years was surprisingly £21bn)
Just because the justification for the tax has gone that doesn't mean the need for the money disappears.
Why's it unfair on those who don't have a car? Considering almost all of the money raised isn't spent on the roads, why should they be exempt from paying taxes?
The need for the money to fund the NHS or pensions or whatever else you want to spend on is not the same as the need for the money to come from drivers.
And taxing driving is far more regressive than taxing electricity. Poor drivers pay an estimated 10% of their disposable income on fuel duty, that's currently justified due to the green externalities on fuel but if they cease to use fuel why should they remain so heavily taxed?
They aren't exempt from paying taxes but you've just increased the level of tax on the very poorest people in society.
Oh and unless I'm missing something the tax on each kwh needs to be 73p not 0.5p... 0.5p would raise £185m
Tax things you want less of, tax exempt (or subsidise) things you want more of. Price in externalities.
Most damage caused to roads is by HGVs, especially on local roads. We don’t want that. So tax the balls off them, if necessary to be replaced by smaller vehicles. Costs won’t change too much when the drivers disappear.
Things we don’t want: congestion. Things we do want: mobility. So dynamic road pricing. No need to tax the rural driver popping to the local shop. Meanwhile the person driving to Harrods…
We don’t like air pollution, noise and carbon emissions. So grade tax for all three.
We also don’t like inefficient capital allocation to underused assets. So incentivise car sharing by applying a zero income tax band to income from sharing your car. Will be even more important when autonomous driving gets here.
Think that’s it.
Unless you know something I don't (and I watch automation like a hawk) we aren't going to see fully automated driving anytime soon.
Define soon. I have full confidence that the private sector will achieve it earlier than the Whitehall is operationally ready to implement dynamic road pricing.
anytime before 2040 - it really is a 99.999/0.0001 problem rather than a 90/10% problem as other IT solutions are.
It will almost certainly be available earlier than 2040, and absolutely certainly if we limit the discussion to defined road types.
Once you limit it to defined road types you've still got a driver in the lorry so your savings have gone.
Yup. As you suggest, it’s not a 90/10 problem, it’s a 99.999/0.0001 problem.
The only way SD vehicles will be deployed, is if they build another Milton Keynes around them, with separate and dedicated roads.
Another day another column from OGH bashing Boris.
OGH correctly and, literally, against all the odds predicted the Lib Dems would win Chesham & Amersham. He was derived on here by the likes of you who were made to look very stupid by him.
OGH also correctly predicted that Labour would hold Batley & Spen against the odds and against what most other political commentators were saying, even members of the Labour Party.
So perhaps a little less of your crowing, hmmm?
Did he actually predict the results?
I thought he just identified them as value bets
Indeed. He also said that Labour were value for Hartlepool too didn't he?
People remember the value winners much clearer than the value losers. But get enough value winners and you're up even if you have value losers.
There’s a surprising amount of confusion even on this site (I’m thinking esp of a poster whose name begins with H and ends with D) between finding value bets and picking a winner.
I rarely bet, I come here for the political discussion and to give a conservative viewpoint, not so much for the betting
Taking the knee, fine, sharing the captaincy, absurd. Why not make the other players captain too.
So they're the captains of England, Scotland and Wales. The squad contains 2 Scots,1 Welsh and 19 English. No wonder women's football is a bit of a joke.
Are you joking, or is that really the case?
It's simply the Council of the Isles solution, after all.
It's an artefact that the FA and clubs have invested a lot of money in the WSL and women's football in general.
Sadly the Welsh, Scots, and Irish football clubs do not have the inclination or resources to develop women's football.
It involves a lot of time and money at the grassroots and youth level, it may happen in the future, I did read a while back that it is something Mrs Sturgeon is looking at doing as part of a wider better health campaign.
I'd say it is institutionalising division.
Nah.
The Premier League is the richest league in the world, the FA is one better run FAs in the world.
In the PL in the last decade only one side have successfully defended their title.
In Scotland you have talk of 10 in a row and the last side other than Rangers or Celtic to win Scotland's top flight was Aberdeen, 36 years ago.
It is why so many of us opposed a closed shop European Super League.
No surprise there as Johnson is a disingenuous racist fat fornicator - i.e. a c*nt!
I love Johnson
Dr IshmaelZ MA Oxon MA Exon PhD
"MA Oxon..." please.
Why not? If you’re offered a free (or nearly free) upgrade take it.
Ugh, it's just a fake title. I have one too but I would never put it on my CV.
1. It winds people up into paroxysms of fury 2. I feel that having a proper one from a proper university retrospectively validates it 3. It is a sign of high intelligence, because it says that at 17 you were bright enough to choose a university where you get an M for the price of a B.
Drives me to a modestly higher blood pressure.
The alleged best universities in the world handing out fake mail-order degrees. Good sign of self-confidence
Fortunately I'm not employer - that would perhaps be one of the early sifting criteria.
Comments
MOTs were feared and avoided.
Or rather, prima facie, involved in the events that led to the injunction, which was taken out by the lady in question, I see. But it's a curious story, not least why have a photoshoot if one is complaining about lack of privacy?
There exists one very good reason, however: mutual deterrence.
I could produce a similar study showing how left-leaning academics believe they are discriminated against by society (after all, society keep returning right-leaning governments!). When reading any study like this, it's important to keep in mind that it's very easy to get a study to show what you want by making outwardly reasonable choices about question, sample etc. It's harder to get that through peer review, but not impossible. Producing a not peer reviewed 'report' to show what you want is trivial.
I don't doubt that academia is probably more left leaning than the general population. Academia skews young, for one thing - there's a pyramid with lots of postgrad students, fewer post-docs, fewer still at senior positions - it gets harder and harder to get funding and all but the most able tend to find they can do better in the private or public sector where being competent is enough. Different careers do attract different kinds of people. We don't wring our hands about the right-wing bias in investment banks (if there is one) and the impact of that on funding for parties, projects based on political bias. Nor the Brexit bias of builders (again, made up, no evidence for that!) and the difficulties residents in Remoania have getting building work done!
Anecdata - among my colleagues, who are health science/social science, so in theory among one of the more left-leaning, the 2015 split among those who expressed an opinion was pretty even between Cameron and Milliband. I can only think of two staff members (out of 20 or so whose opinions I knew) who expressed any enthusiasm for Corbyn as Labour leader. We're not all reds. In GEs I've voted Labour once only* and I can't say I feel at all discriminated against.
I don't know of any Johnson-supporting colleagues, but you have to bear in mind we're mostly not idiots
* And no, my other votes weren't SWP!
A few months ago a friend and I were trying to come up with the most left wing city in the UK, we decided on Brighton because they elect a Green MP.
See also: I'm no fan of Trump, but..
Boris is certainly doing more for forgotten corners of the UK than his predecessors, which in contrast to Theresa May shows what can be achieved with a large majority and by getting Brexit done.
PHE - vaccines have prevented 7.2 million infections and 27,000 deaths
Remarkable
There's very rarely value at high end auctions though. Cars go to that sort of auction because there is either no liquidity for that type of car which makes it hard to price or the owner is greedy and hasn't been able to get the price they feel they deserve by any other means.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jul/15/derbyshire-cave-house-identified-as-ninth-century-home-to-exiled-king
'The discovery makes it “probably the oldest intact domestic interior in the UK”, said Simons. “We have churches from this kind of date but we haven’t got anywhere where people slept and ate and prayed, all that kind of thing. Here, we’ve got one. It is quite remarkable.”'
https://twitter.com/lisaocarroll/status/1415596383336288260
I also wonder whether he'd have been as keen to get going on vaccinations from a philosophical point of view: it would mean working and negotiating with the most evil of private moneymaking corps: big pharma.
Sadly, I think there's a little of his brother about him on this.
Johnson is just doing what politicians have always done. Make complicated stuff seemingly easy. Reduce it to simple soundbites. Make everything black and white. Which generally appeals to those of a lower education, as a rule of thumb. But enhanced by this everyman persona, the bloke you'd love to have a pint with. Which is probably just a construct, let's be honest.
As for Corbyn being popular on campus... Selebian posts upthread about this better than I ever could, but essentially I think it boils down to youthful idealism and it being the only alternative to the Brexit-bringing Tories (yes, yes I know Corbyn was at best ambivalent about Remaining!)
Sometimes you just gotta hold your nose and vote for the least worst option. Bring on PR! *ducks and covers*
For example Clinton won 59% of the cities vote in 2016 and Biden won 60% of the cities vote in 2020 and Trump won 62% of the rural vote in 2016 and 57% of the rural vote in 2020 but the suburbs went from 50% Trump 45% Clinton in 2016 to 50% Biden and 48% Trump in 2020
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election#Close_states
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidential_election#Results
And for what time are you going to pay the driver.
It's simply the Council of the Isles solution, after all.
Does anyone with actual expertise in subject have a good reference?
IR35 reform seems to be an issue here too.
https://www.contractoruk.com/news/0015112ir35_reform_fuelling_100000_hgv_driver_shortage.html?utm_source=NL&utm_medium=News&utm_campaign=IR35
Why are lorry drivers on furlough though? Or is this one of those Daily Mail type stories (aka saloon bar bullshit)?
The lorry driver issues is a combination of a very competitive industry, tax abuse (IR35) to keep wages sane and a lack of willingness to invest and pay for training.
That is a disgraceful position to take. Disgusting and despicable.
Almost as if when there's a staff shortage, people can advertise to attract more staff. Nobody had bothered to months ago when certain posters were bemoaning a staff shortage, now firms are starting to bother.
It's not the states job to do a firm's advertising, recruitment or training for them.
Now about 80-85% down from the peak to about 2 million. Ish.
Roll on cautious reopening, and we'll find out how the economy has changed.
I thought he just identified them as value bets
My beef remains with the FA, though.
This could have been done in a way which was unifying, and gave people who remember what happens when the game is politicised a route to express support without such an unnecessary dust-up; they chose not to do so.
Fortunately I don't do football games, but I think I would probably stand up and turn my back as a protest.
The “Hindu bull” cartoon was more about ethnicity (although there is also a gender / “cow” angle as well).
Cartoonists tend to distort physical features - with Gove his ears, with Boris his blubber etc. But they consistently get it wrong with Priti Patel and it indicates some pretty unpleasant underlying thought patterns
Sadly the Welsh, Scots, and Irish football clubs do not have the inclination or resources to develop women's football.
It involves a lot of time and money at the grassroots and youth level, it may happen in the future, I did read a while back that it is something Mrs Sturgeon is looking at doing as part of a wider better health campaign.
People remember the value winners much clearer than the value losers. But get enough value winners and you're up even if you have value losers.
2. I feel that having a proper one from a proper university retrospectively validates it
3. It is a sign of high intelligence, because it says that at 17 you were bright enough to choose a university where you get an M for the price of a B.
The first thing that hits me is that people want the cuts austerity created in local amenities that were previously supported by local councils (until the money disappeared) fixed
That's why things like the various ONS studies that use random address picking and then follow up doggedly, in person, to minimise non-response, over-sample non-responders and provide weightings for that are great, but they're very expensive and take a lot of time. In the little work I've done with surveys, e.g. one about climate change attitudes (which obviously suffers from the same potential problems), we've always piggy-backed on one of the ONS surveys that cover much more general topics (you can pay to have questions added, if they agree - they're also very strict about how you ask questions, to avoid bias, which to be honest is also useful, peer review before you do the study).
Not sure how you'd do a study like this well in academia - I'd love to see a study as it is interesting and an important issue if people on the right are getting forced out. Probably bury it within a larger study on academia covering lots of different issues with university buy-in so they'd push it to staff and you wouldn't get preferental responses from a particular group as the real quesions of interest would not be obvious to an outsider. That, however, would need serious funding.
ETA and doesn't Cambridge do the same thing?
The alleged best universities in the world handing out fake mail-order degrees. Good sign of self-confidence
Fortunately I'm not employer - that would perhaps be one of the early sifting criteria.
The only way SD vehicles will be deployed, is if they build another Milton Keynes around them, with separate and dedicated roads.
The Premier League is the richest league in the world, the FA is one better run FAs in the world.
In the PL in the last decade only one side have successfully defended their title.
In Scotland you have talk of 10 in a row and the last side other than Rangers or Celtic to win Scotland's top flight was Aberdeen, 36 years ago.
It is why so many of us opposed a closed shop European Super League.