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Is Sunak going to give state pensioners an 8% increase? – politicalbetting.com
Is Sunak going to give state pensioners an 8% increase? – politicalbetting.com
This morning’s Daily Express raises what is almost certainly going to be the biggest, and potentially most politically damaging, decision that Sunak has to make – should state pensions rise in line with the triple lock formula which because of COVID could give them (and me for that matter) an 8% rise.
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The UK state pension comes bottom in a league table of net replacement rates for average earnings at just 28 per cent, according to an influential global pensions report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
This compares with a 59 per cent average across the 36 members of the international organisation of rich democratic countries analysed in its latest report
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2021/07/19/15/45490449-9803095-_Source_OECD_-a-22_1626706388588.jpg
The Triple Lock, like the FTPA and so much else the Heir to Blair did is long overdue for the scrapheap.
Such consistency is statistically improbable:
https://twitter.com/AlexKokcharov/status/1425055635041886222
Improbable is generous.
Of course the rest of us aren’t perfect either, but this is absurd.
The modern iteration of the Tory party:
- English Nationalist, not One Nation
- Revolutionary, not Conservative
- High tax/high debt, not Friedman
- State control, not free market
- Social engineering, not conservatism
- Nasty, not paternal
- Reactive, not confident
- Populist, not principled
- Clown, not competence
- Degenerate, not moral
- Cash for pals, not good governance
- Fiscal spaffing, not fiscal moderation
- Fuck business, not pro business
- Proroguing parliament, not the rule of law
- Lying to the monarch, not respecting institutions
- Authoritarian, not liberal
- Corruption, not ethics
The only constant is the blue rosettes.
Summary results for ivermectin for COVID-19 from the large TOGETHER trial were just released
No benefit whatsoever for ivermectin on risk of hospitalization or mortality in a mild outpatient group
https://twitter.com/GidMK/status/1425611418276024325
A breakthrough study lead by scientists in Oxford has revealed 'devastating' findings on blood clotting in some adults after Covid-19 vaccination.
… the overall mortality rate of patients with VITT was 23 per cent.
… "In those aged under 50, incidence is around one in 50,000 people who have received the vaccine. But our study shows that for those who develop VITT, it can be devastating. It often affects young, otherwise healthy vaccine recipients and has high mortality.
… Some 85 per cent of the patients studied were under the age of 60, despite most of the elderly population having been vaccinated.
Almost all of those presenting to hospital experienced the condition between five and 30 days after their first vaccination with the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine.
https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/19506046.blood-clots-oxford-astrazeneca-vaccine-rare-devastating/
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.06.21261707v1.full.pdf
What’s interesting is the significantly reduced effectiveness of the Pfizer compared to the Moderna vaccine in preventing infection, while both seem equally effective in preventing severe disease.
Also notes the big difference in dosing for what are very similar vaccines.
BNT162b2 is administered as 30μg/0.3mL (100 μg/mL) doses 21 days apart20 and the Moderna vaccine is administered as 100μg/0.5mL (200 μg/mL) doses 28 days apart.21 Assuming similar sized constructs, this means that each mRNA-1273 dose provides three times more mRNA copies of the Spike protein than BNT162b2, which could result in more effective priming of the immune response. …
https://old.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/p1dd63/comparison_of_two_highlyeffective_mrna_vaccines/
Please don't comment there unless you actually know something or have an intelligent question.
… the lack of information-sharing had caused diplomatic strain, with US law enforcement and diplomats raising the matter with their British counterparts.
The lack of cooperation now spans three years of reported attempts by the US authorities to gather facts from the royal who, in a statement from 2019, said he would be willing to help US law-enforcement with investigations. However, in January last year, Manhattan US attorney Geoffrey Berman said the country’s authorities had received “zero cooperation” from the prince…
Of particular interest to the US authorities is how money transfers may be linked to the movement of young women and girls. The various interested bodies, including the FBI, believe these may offer insights into ongoing organised criminal operations.
The authorities’ interests are understood to include multiple trips by the royal to Epstein’s Caribbean island, Little St James, as well as Florida and New York. Last year, prosecutors in the US Virgin Islands, which includes Little St James, alleged Mr Epstein abused hundreds of young women and girls up until 2018.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/prince-andrew-america-epstein-probes-cooperation-b1900854.html?amp
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.11.21261885v1.full.pdf
From a much younger average population.
The results include 1.2m vaccinees, so are pretty robust - though there were a literal handful of cases for severe disease, so the statistical difference between the two vaccines is unclear.
No, the Chancellor isn’t going to increase pensions by 8%.
Sunak 11/4
Starmer 5/1
Gove 12/1
Hunt 27/2
Raab 20/1
Javid 25/1
Truss 25/1
Burnham 28/1
33 bar
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/health/article/Texas-Children-s-identifies-25-cases-both-RSV-and-16380332.php
Texas Children’s Hospital is faced with an alarming problem: There are approximately 45 COVID-19 pediatric hospitalizations, an all-time high for the health system, and many of those patients also have respiratory syncytial virus.
The hospital has identified “25 cases and counting” of children with both RSV and COVID-19 at all three of its campuses, said Dr. James Versalovic, interim pediatrician-in-chief at Texas Children’s Hospital. More than half of those children have been hospitalized.…
Ministers have confirmed that the legal requirement to isolate will be replaced with non-binding advice to take a test for the double-jabbed, as well as those 18 and under. And those who do come into contact with the infected will not be told to isolate while waiting for their results. For people who do test positive, isolation will continue
Randomized Trial of a Third Dose of mRNA-1273 Vaccine in Transplant Recipients
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2111462
https://twitter.com/davidfirn/status/1425495019583119361?s=20
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-58182418
Going to be interesting what they do next year when they open up and start to get COVID cases, as current gen of vaccines don't have high enough effectiveness to stop cases / transmission.
Will they accept it or will it be back to zero covid approach?
BBC News - Australian capital Canberra goes into snap lockdown
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-58182419
Presumably the strategy is going to have to be to vaccinate everyone before opening up, and accepting that there’s going to be a wave of sorts running through the population when they do?
Apparently if you leave NZ at the moment, Feb is the next available hotel quarantine slot.
Even with their domestic economies mostly open as usual during the pandemic, inbound tourism makes up a significant part of the economies of these two countries.
Mr. JohnL, he can, however, claim extenuating circumstances legitimately.
The Times still has some proper journalists like this. The FT also, in a narrower field. No one else has the money to maintain them. Free internet news has had some upsides but there are downsides too.
Last week's column was "Brexit, way more shit than I thought it would be"
Today's column, "BoZo, he's a bit crap, isn't he"
They’ll likely find a way to fudge the average earnings figures, to take out the pandemic factor and leave a more reasonable number.
The former make up their own crap, the latter regurgitate the crap that someone else told them.
Whatever political spin you try to apply, Brexit isn't going well from an economic point of view.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58183519
We are just about to see the universal credit boost removed which may seem like a little thing but is going down badly in red wall seats. If pensioners were to get 8% at the same time it would go down even worse. And as you say, there are a lot of other issues brewing.
The fact is that covid has cost us dearly and we're not through yet. There will have to be austerity, however much Boris wants to wave the Gov't credit card.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/israel/
And has also reached the Balkans and Baltics.
Bulgaria is the country to watch with its very low vaccination rate:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/bulgaria/
Its already suffering daily deaths proportionally higher than the UK and has the equivalent of 12k currently in hospital:
https://coronavirus.bg/
Perhaps that it wasn’t done by a major newspaper or broadcaster limited its reach. BBC and Sky are not going to spend weeks covering a competitor’s story.
But the real reason why the government shouldn’t do it is because it would be totally incompatible with and an absolute insult in light of their decision to cut universal credit.
A poll a few years ago found scrapping it would see over a third of pensioners be less likely to vote Tory
https://www.ftadviser.com/state-pension/2017/04/24/scrapping-triple-lock-would-cost-votes-poll-finds/
Why Putin decided that 800 is the number which must not be reached is the mystery.
This time they have the Walter Mitty character who between all the BS has actually done what he said i.e. sold clubs / been on the board and they got him to follow through with arranging the Derby County introduction. Then obviously it took the left turn of how to hide your dirty money, more evidence of phone hacking type behaviour being deployed, before off to Crypus to reveal how you get yourself an EU passport.
Even though the main two chancers clearly talk a lot of BS, they also are involved in this industry and have been involved in similar previous connects.
https://fullfact.org/europe/pensioners-eu-uk/
Surely they just have to be courageous and spell that out?
In days of yore, midterm austerity was a known thing. Then, about 8 months before the General Election, sweeteners return. Why can't the tories just do that?!
It isn’t defensible in these circumstances. Nobody has had it easy in the pandemic but for pensioners to profit from it while people lose jobs, going onto universal credit (where a temporary uplift is to be removed) and/or have pay frozen would be outrageous and indefensible.
Doesn’t mean Johnson won’t do it, of course.
Finding a way to fudge the numbers, also makes it much easier to face down public sector Union demands for pay rises, which apart from healthcare workers will be unpopular in a period of genuine austerity.
Right here right now there are oceans of free money that can be printed out of the air and handed out to Tory friends donors and target voters. So it isn't "we can't afford" to give Pensioners 8% and a pay rise to the police, teachers, nurses etc etc. Its that the Tories won't. You only get a pay rise if you are a Tory applying to your mates for a 9 figure PPE contract where you don't have to actually deliver any PPE.
Even if they cut the pension rise to the 3% that is suggested it will still be more than so many others, and contrasts to the coming cut in UC. Hard for them to say "tough choices have to be made" when handing out the billions to themselves.
Of course the people being reamed hardest by this will display their outrage by voting Tory.
Perhaps they could also look a bit more into Bill Clinton and Bill Gates' links to Epstein before lecturing us
https://www.forbes.com/sites/lisettevoytko/2020/08/18/photos-allegedly-show-bill-clinton-receiving-massage-from-jeffrey-epstein-accuser/
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/business/jeffrey-epstein-bill-gates.html
Telegraph.
Who could have predicted this outcome?
https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1425451412436172806
1) Give pensioners a 8% increase
2) Give NHS staff only a 3% increase
and
3) End the UC uplift
Yeah, if you've not traded out the 250/1 bet on Sunak you should do so now.
Perhaps that is Boris Johnson's masterplan, make Sunak so unpopular they won't replace him with Rishi.
Also I think the optics of Sunak's family wealth will make 2 and 3 look even worse.
Although that’s actually not necessarily a stupid idea, it would rather confirm the Tories are as bad as New Labour in lavishly helping those client base (pensioners who use the NHS) while repeatedly shitting on everyone else.
Is Starmer going to be be saying that of course pensioners deserve 8%, I don’t think he is…
Would oldies really be that pissed off? Given they all got jabbed efficiency, they obviously can see they didn't have to endure being furloughed / losing their job / having to miss school, uni, college etc etc etc.
Especially if it is spun as that allows us to give 3% to NHS staff.
Then see if he can’t come up with some solid proposals for fundamental reform. Now *that* might be a winner.
How he could do it without bankrupting the Treasury is a different question.
Not even Nigel Farage as a main presenter will fix the problem.
There's another week's data though.
......
However, the figure was slightly below the 5% the Bank of England expected."
BBC always there for the angle to piss on the Governments chips!
Quarterly GDP growth of 4.8%, which is great news and on that measure the UK is still 4.4% behind Feb 2020. Monthly GDP growth of 1% in June and on that measure we're just 2.2% behind Feb 2020.
The latter figure is closer to reality. I think the August data (October release) will show we're back to where we were in Feb 2020. I think September and October will also be pretty strong but the catch up element will be around half of what we would have otherwise had. If we get all 18 months worth of lost GDP back it would be quite something. A few of my colleagues think it's possible as long as the government hold firm on no more lockdowns.
To get to where we would otherwise have been had the virus not happened the index will need to hit about 103.2 by the end of the year. It's currently at 97.8, to my mind anything up to 102 on the index should be easy enough from unlockdown euphoria. Above that will be difficult.
Straight out of the Dennis Healey manual of public finance. You know, the one which meant the IMF had to enter Britain and bail us out.
I don't even think you were joking.
It was pretty outrageous that the judge said, in effect, ‘he’s guilty as fuck and should be handed over but because he keeps saying he might kill himself I won’t do it.’ What sort of message does that send?
Leaving aside the fact that he’s a creep, a liar, a thief and by all accounts a pretty nasty piece of work.
I must admit though I still find it ironic that he’s now spent longer under detention and is at far greater risk of going to the US to face trial than if he had gone to Sweden to be questioned, been charged, convicted, imprisoned and deported to Australia.
Karma’s a bitch.
The fact is that even with a surge of economic output public finance needs to tighten its belt. At the moment this Conservative Government resembles a wild leftwing Labour one when it comes to public spending.
There's plenty of evidence that Sunak likes to preen himself for his fans although rather less cravenly than Boris Johnson. However, with Boris Johnson by instinct a reckless spendthrift, someone in Government is going to have to rein this in.
GB News are relying purely on advertising revenue, and anything too controversial will earn the attention of OFCOM. During an election campaign they will have to be studiously impartial. It’s an uphill task for them - not helped by launching early, before they’d sorted out the studio. I still wish them luck though, they do fill a gap in the market and present points of view not seen on other media.
If John Major had lost the 1992 election by five or six seats, he would have been back in power with a thumping majority by 1994 and set for ten years.
His win, however was...counterproductive.