So whoever gave Scotland control over income tax, created a bigger mess by accidently making Income Tax unchangeable.
Oops, I bet Osbourne didn't think about that when he did it.
When Scot Nats pointed out the partial devolving of income tax powers was filled with nonsensical procedural issues that would cause problems in the future they were denigrated as being "too scared" to accept the powers rather than being lauded as clear sighted visionaries.
The problem is the Barnett formula.
If the Barnett formula was abolished and the Scots simply kept rather taxes they raised, without HMRC getting involved, that would be a much better solution.
That would mean exposing that they are stiffing us and no chance they will hand over any real powers to Scotland any time. The income one was meant to be a ball and chain that hampered Scotland not helped. As ever the Fcukwits made a real arse of it.
The Scottish Government are going to stiff you, anyway
So whoever gave Scotland control over income tax, created a bigger mess by accidently making Income Tax unchangeable.
Oops, I bet Osbourne didn't think about that when he did it.
When Scot Nats pointed out the partial devolving of income tax powers was filled with nonsensical procedural issues that would cause problems in the future they were denigrated as being "too scared" to accept the powers rather than being lauded as clear sighted visionaries.
Well they've done a grand job of complicating things:
For Scots....
Have they? They've smoothed out the function of tax take against income, which is always a laudable thing.
Not very nice for pensioners in Scotland receiving more than £44,000 pa, they have to pay nasty 41%. In England they only pay 20% up to £50,000
It is only money , would take more than that to make me move. I could try to slum it on £44K but doubt I would last long. Nice of you to be concerned for me though
The idea that given all the expenses of Covid, the NHS and social care, let alone anything else, we can avoid raising taxes on working people, as @MaxPB seems to want, is for the birds.
Taxes will have to rise and all will have to pay. That's all there is to it. All these demands for special exclusions is just self-interested nonsense.
Should we be raising taxes only on working age people?
"1% on NI" is a 2% tax rise on the employed, and a 0% tax rise on pensioners.
1%, 2% or whatever on income tax is a tax paid by all.
I did put forward the typically centre moderate view of 2% on income tax on here last night (I think). So workers and pensioners both contribute.
2% hike in income tax isn't moderate. It's almost Corbynite.
I'm absolutely disgusted with the Tory leadership. I campaigned hard in 2019 and believed the no tax rise manifesto promise. Fiscal drag is the order of the day.
In fairness it was not contemplated in 2019 that the government would spend more than £400bn on helping the economy cope with an 18 month pandemic which has devastated tax revenues as well. Politicians are all too keen to argue that circumstances have changed when breaking a promise but I struggle to think of a government that has a better base for such an argument than this one.
Tories should stand for sound money, careful management of the country's accounts and limitations on the role of the state. In some circumstances that requires more spending and thus, responsibly, more taxes, than others. This is such a time. I am more worried about having stable and sustainable public finances than current tax rates.
Now is not the time to put taxes up on working people. I don't care about my personal situation, an extra £1.6k per year in tax between myself and my wife is unfortunate but it doesn't really make a big difference to us. There will be millions of middle income people across the country that will find that kind of income cut very, very difficult to take.
Using my dad as an example again, his net income in retirement is about £60.5k. A working age person with an equivalent gross has a net income of £55k. In what world does it make sense that my dad, with no responsibilities, no kids, no mortgage and no real costs pays £5.5k less in tax than a working age person who will have a mortgage/rent, kids, possible nursery fees, school expenses, commuting costs etc...
The whole system is needs rethinking. Why is anyone in the higher rate tax bracket getting 100% of the state pension? In what world does that make sense?!
With respect a net pensioner income of 60K plus is a million miles from most pensioners income
It is not the average, but it is not particularly unusual either, especially for those from the public sector final salary schemes.
Poor pensioners are still better off than poor workers. Rich pensioners are better off than rich workers. They are also richer than the workers are forecast to get to when they are retired.
Yet new taxes go on workers, most public (and private) sector workers get a pay freeze. The retired get no new taxes and 8% increase in state pension.
This will only make the generational conflict deeper and wider.
I'm not sure about your first paragraph; it is often mentioned on here, but I'm yet to see the evidence.
I'm on a 'gold-plated' public sector (Civil Service) final pension salary scheme. I was well-paid, retiring on a salary of c. £82K after 38 years service, a couple of years ago. But my pension, generous though it is, is nowhere near £60K - much nearer £20K. I'm not complaining at all, quite happy with it, but I do wonder whether non-public sector workers have an exaggerated view of the value of public sector pensions. You would have to be retiring on a salary well over £120k to get anywhere near £60k in pension; there's not many in that category.
I've just had a pension review, actually. I knew my public sector pension was better than my previous private sector pension, but I'm slightly shocked just how much better. Most private sector workers do not have final salary pensions. The IFA I talked to told me that the average private sector workers amassed a pension pot of around £50k by retirement. Whereas if you work as, say, a hospital admin worker - or some other not desperately well paid public sector job - for 40 years you can amass a pension with a trade in value in excess of three quarters of a million pounds.
Yep. I tried to calculate the benefit once and I reckoned add 40% on the salary and you're getting close. We see many public sector retirees who have lump sum and income entitlements (always index-linked and with death benefits) that you would need over £1m to purchase in the real world. But, hey, let's pay the public sector more.
PS pensions are good but generally the pay rates certainly used to be less than in the private sector. Also remember the monthly contributions were compulsory if you didn't opt out after the first couple of years or so. I'm very content with my arrangements but the idea that we have lived lives of idleness and luxury since the mid-70s is frankly rubbish. Like most generations we had our fair share of hardship. I well recall my first London flat - £15k - with strict borrowing rules and high interest rates. I lived hand to mouth for a good few years just to cope. I had bare floorboards for the first 3 years - not the varnished/sealed jobs of these days - I could not afford carpet. All of my furniture was begged, borrowed or second-hand. And I was by no means alone.
I'm reading Dominic Sandbrook's "Seasons in the Sun: the Battle for Britain 1974-1979" at the moment and my goodness does it sound shit.
I pity anyone who has to live through that.
The 70's were brilliant, pay rise every month , cheap beer , great music , will admit looking back the fashion was dodgy. We had the times of our lives and far superior to the shithole the country is just now..
I have just done a long tour of far north Scotland - Ullapool, Assynt, Cape Wrath, Caithness and the Orkneys. Much of it looked magnificent in generally fine weather,; tho I will confess John o Groats (where we mostly stayed) is a toilet (albeit with majestic views of the Orkneys)
Why do the Scots in that corner of Scotland INSIST on building houses in a dung-brown or birdshit-grey colour? Like they want them to be ugly. The far, flat north east of Scotland is never gonna be a beauty - unlike the Highlands and Islands - but it would be much improved if everyone just painted their houses white, like the crofts of old. Or even pink. Tartan?
Anything would be better than the colour of untreated sewage you get now. It is most perplexing
Probably don't want to have to paint it twice a year. Could have done with more posts on your trip by the way. PS: I see others now, I obviously missed them.
I was actually having too nice a time to comment on the trip. It was brilliant fun. Food was great too. I had one of the nicest scones of my life overlooking the Kyle of Tongue. And a fantastic tarka dahl in Strathness Hotel in Inverness. And superb haddock wraps and seafood soup at the Seafood Shack in Ullapool
The big culinary letdown was lunch in Stromness in the Orkneys, a town which seems to pride itself on refusing to serve stuff you want and stuff they advertise. So the bistro eagerly told us they would not serve alcohol before 7pm and NOR WILL ANYONE ELSE HAHAHA and then the cafe next door "famous for its crab rolls" said they had no crab and weren't expecting any.
My daughter and I ended up eating two cheddar baps on a bench by the harbour while I downed a bottle of screwtop white wine from the Co-op like a hobo. Then we went to Skara Brae
Glad you enjoyed it and took on a bit of Scottish jakieness to boot. Your daughter would have probably ended up murdering you after two days in Millport.
Yes, John O Groats turned out to be a superb choice, because there's so much to see all around it, and it has a real sense of wildness. So thankyou for that!
A suburban island near Glasgow would have been dull if not disastrous.
Even John o Groats, despite being a toilet, has a kind of perverse charm. We had a brilliant apartment looking straight out to the Orkney, right on the harbour, which was a big bonus, and the weird cafes and shops are so quirky or kitsch they have a kind of fascination. There is a gift shop with an entire wing dedicated to insane Christmas knick-knacks, like hologram santas in crystal boxes continuously singing Jingle Bells. WTF
Also you can get tartan clocks. Clocks made from actual tartan. Genius
How did you like Skara Brae?
But commiserations re the Stromness lunch modeller style. Derek Cooper the food writer used to tear his hair out over the difficulty of getting local fish and crusties in the very areas they were fished, though things have improved a lot since the 1980s (believe me).
I believe you. Food in Scotland has improved markedly, sometimes fabulously, just like everywhere else in Britain. And you can generally get seafood on the coast, now, across the UK (it was crazy when you could not)
The Orkneys - Orkney - was (is?) highly intriguing. Not sure I could ever live there, the lack of trees and abundance of wind would drive me nuts. But it's fascinating. Skara Brae is of course remarkable, the stone circles are poetically lonely and lovely.
But the biggest surprise, for me, was Kirkwall, which was much nicer than I anticipated, and has that unique cathedral in the middle. A medieval Viking Cathedral made of faded apricot sandstone! Wondrous
OK now I must stop doing brand marketing for North Scotland and do my own work. Anon
Glad you found the far North worth visiting! And St Magnus is one of my favourite cathedrals beside Wells and Durham - with its little wood nearby jam packed with birds beside the two ruined palaces.
So whoever gave Scotland control over income tax, created a bigger mess by accidently making Income Tax unchangeable.
Oops, I bet Osbourne didn't think about that when he did it.
When Scot Nats pointed out the partial devolving of income tax powers was filled with nonsensical procedural issues that would cause problems in the future they were denigrated as being "too scared" to accept the powers rather than being lauded as clear sighted visionaries.
Well they've done a grand job of complicating things:
For Scots....
Have they? They've smoothed out the function of tax take against income, which is always a laudable thing.
Not very nice for pensioners in Scotland receiving more than £44,000 pa, they have to pay nasty 41%. In England they only pay 20% up to £50,000
It is only money , would take more than that to make me move. I could try to slum it on £44K but doubt I would last long. Nice of you to be concerned for me though
This idea that now is not the time to raise taxes on those who work is odd. For the last 18 months or so working people have been supported by furlough. Others who worked from home in secure jobs have built up savings.
Now the bills have to be paid. Not just for Covid but for social care and everything else.
So everyone will have to pay: workers - and I include those past pensionable age who are still working - and those with savings and assets. And all generations will have to pay because (a) all generations benefited from the support for the economy; (b) all benefit one way or another from public services; and (c) all benefit from social care - either now (directly) or by not having to pay for parents or by not losing a possible inheritance or directly in the future.
It won't be nice. But no group should be immune from paying the bills. Far too much special pleading going on.
NI is an odd choice because it is in effect a tax but only on some. So it should be extended to all who are working if it is going to be raised.
What a load of rubbish. The economy was shut down to primarily benefit older people who are most at risk and to protect the NHS which is another service that is used mostly by older people.
Businesses like your daughter's was sacrificed to protect older people and now it's time for older people to bear the cost of that shutdown. A stat posted here showed that 16% of pensioners have earnings in the higher rate tax bracket, that's a huge number of people to target for more tax before we even think about putting up taxes on working age people.
The country is currently being fleeced by the generation above who have decided they want an easy life and the best way to get that is to claim a larger share of the economic pie for themselves and if they have to impoverish working age people then that's a bonus.
You ducked out of paying for your parents care, you're ducking out of paying for your own care, you've piled on cost after cost on young people, you bought all the property then accused young people of being incapable of saving all while charging us ridiculous rents on crap flats that aren't fit for animals to live in.
Your generation has a lot to answer for, you've ruined the legacy of what your parents left behind and now you're trying to take away any chance my generation has of leaving behind a better world for our kids. You destroyed the climate, made the rich much richer, the poor much poorer and now won't pay for the bill that was accumulated to protect your generation from dying. It wasn't 20-50 year olds dying of this.
Solidarity, comrade. Welcome to the barricades.
(I joke, I have a lot of sympathy with your anger and the points you make.)
Honestly, is the kind of stuff that makes me want to vote for Labour just to fuck with the old wankers but then I remember Labour are also part of the gerontocracy and will do exactly the same as the Tories because they want the votes.
@HYUFD was put in time out for libelling Bill Gates. I shan't repeat the claim.
Please don't libel people on the site, as it results in OGH getting nasty letters from Carter Ruck, and could have severe financial consequences for people.
I know Covid's expensive at the moment and all, but could long term endemicity actually end up improving the nation's finances a bit ?
Its certainly going to change them. The property market is on fire as people try and move to the sticks / get somewhere with space to live & work. Suspect the halcyon days of vastly priced rabbit hutches stacked in close proximity to the train station are behind us.
Changes to how people live and work only come along once in every x number of generations. Covid really could be the end of the mass commute into town era that's been going since the late 19th century.
And yet, bizarrely, the NYC property market has roared back to life - including the inner city/skyscrapers. London tends to follow NYC pretty closely
I wonder if we seeing generational churn rather than secular change. Oldsters are moving out of cities, but some younger people are keen to get back in.
See my earlier comment about the dawning, nascent realisation of the sheer costs of working. If rents/prices fall a bit in London, then it is feasible to live where you can walk/ cycle to work, and eat in your own home at a reasonable hour. Rather than pay thousands, and waste hours, travelling for the privilege of being too knackered to cook. Or do anything at weekends other than sleep and recover. So you end up paying for cleaning, simple repairs, takeaway, eating out etc., etc.
Yes, very true. The centre/inner centre of cities might actually become MORE appealing as the suburbs and commuter towns fall away. Why live in Guildford, a town designed for commuting, if you barely ever commute? Especially if, with all the money you save from not commuting, you can have a nice flat in Islington or Bayswater near to all the attractions of a World City? Some will move closer in to the West End, some will move away entirely to Herefordshire, Northumberland and Portugal for bigger gardens, or guaranteed sunshine
It's complex and hard to predict. There will be flows and contraflows
My girlfriend has a flat just near the Greenwich Foot Tunnel (you can see me running through it on my insta, to the sound of my one celebrity friend, Andy C’s ‘Valley of the Shadows’!) - the price has stagnated/dropped but I feel you’re never go wrong being in Zone1, 2 mins from the Thames even if wfh took over
Greenwich Foot Tunnel is in Zone 2.
Almost zone 3 now I look it up. Oh well still handy for the city
Two DLR stations flank the foot tunnel.
Island Gardens DLR is in Zone 2, while Cutty Sark DLR is in both Zones 2 and 3.
Nearly thirty years ago, I lived on the Isle of Dogs. One of the best places I've ever lived. It was in the middle (well, a bit more than that) of the change from derelict wasteland to yuppiedom, with some dereliction still visible. An area accelerating massively towards modernity, with the local populace somewhat stunned by the changes. Derek Beackon (sp?) spreading his poison, and the city so nearby. Some pleasant green spaces as well.
I haven't been back for over a decade. I should change that...
I presume H was banned for defending this vile Texas abortion law. Good call if so.
No. He got so enthusiastic trying to prove that atheists weren't charitable at all, or something, that he ended up putting OGH at risk of a potential defamation suit.
@HYUFD was put in time out for libelling Bill Gates. I shan't repeat the claim.
Please don't libel people on the site, as it results in OGH getting nasty letters from Carter Ruck, and could have severe financial consequences for people.
Totally unrelatedly, which vaccine did you say you had?
This idea that now is not the time to raise taxes on those who work is odd. For the last 18 months or so working people have been supported by furlough. Others who worked from home in secure jobs have built up savings.
Now the bills have to be paid. Not just for Covid but for social care and everything else.
So everyone will have to pay: workers - and I include those past pensionable age who are still working - and those with savings and assets. And all generations will have to pay because (a) all generations benefited from the support for the economy; (b) all benefit one way or another from public services; and (c) all benefit from social care - either now (directly) or by not having to pay for parents or by not losing a possible inheritance or directly in the future.
It won't be nice. But no group should be immune from paying the bills. Far too much special pleading going on.
NI is an odd choice because it is in effect a tax but only on some. So it should be extended to all who are working if it is going to be raised.
What a load of rubbish. The economy was shut down to primarily benefit older people who are most at risk and to protect the NHS which is another service that is used mostly by older people.
Businesses like your daughter's was sacrificed to protect older people and now it's time for older people to bear the cost of that shutdown. A stat posted here showed that 16% of pensioners have earnings in the higher rate tax bracket, that's a huge number of people to target for more tax before we even think about putting up taxes on working age people.
The country is currently being fleeced by the generation above who have decided they want an easy life and the best way to get that is to claim a larger share of the economic pie for themselves and if they have to impoverish working age people then that's a bonus.
You ducked out of paying for your parents care, you're ducking out of paying for your own care, you've piled on cost after cost on young people, you bought all the property then accused young people of being incapable of saving all while charging us ridiculous rents on crap flats that aren't fit for animals to live in.
Your generation has a lot to answer for, you've ruined the legacy of what your parents left behind and now you're trying to take away any chance my generation has of leaving behind a better world for our kids. You destroyed the climate, made the rich much richer, the poor much poorer and now won't pay for the bill that was accumulated to protect your generation from dying. It wasn't 20-50 year olds dying of this.
Solidarity, comrade. Welcome to the barricades.
(I joke, I have a lot of sympathy with your anger and the points you make.)
Honestly, is the kind of stuff that makes me want to vote for Labour just to fuck with the old wankers but then I remember Labour are also part of the gerontocracy and will do exactly the same as the Tories because they want the votes.
but if Labour arent getting the oldies votes anyway why not double down on their offering for the workers? they can't vote Tory twice because you've pissed them off. just write off that cohort as a source for votes.
This idea that now is not the time to raise taxes on those who work is odd. For the last 18 months or so working people have been supported by furlough. Others who worked from home in secure jobs have built up savings.
Now the bills have to be paid. Not just for Covid but for social care and everything else.
So everyone will have to pay: workers - and I include those past pensionable age who are still working - and those with savings and assets. And all generations will have to pay because (a) all generations benefited from the support for the economy; (b) all benefit one way or another from public services; and (c) all benefit from social care - either now (directly) or by not having to pay for parents or by not losing a possible inheritance or directly in the future.
It won't be nice. But no group should be immune from paying the bills. Far too much special pleading going on.
NI is an odd choice because it is in effect a tax but only on some. So it should be extended to all who are working if it is going to be raised.
What a load of rubbish. The economy was shut down to primarily benefit older people who are most at risk and to protect the NHS which is another service that is used mostly by older people.
Businesses like your daughter's was sacrificed to protect older people and now it's time for older people to bear the cost of that shutdown. A stat posted here showed that 16% of pensioners have earnings in the higher rate tax bracket, that's a huge number of people to target for more tax before we even think about putting up taxes on working age people.
The country is currently being fleeced by the generation above who have decided they want an easy life and the best way to get that is to claim a larger share of the economic pie for themselves and if they have to impoverish working age people then that's a bonus.
You ducked out of paying for your parents care, you're ducking out of paying for your own care, you've piled on cost after cost on young people, you bought all the property then accused young people of being incapable of saving all while charging us ridiculous rents on crap flats that aren't fit for animals to live in.
Your generation has a lot to answer for, you've ruined the legacy of what your parents left behind and now you're trying to take away any chance my generation has of leaving behind a better world for our kids. You destroyed the climate, made the rich much richer, the poor much poorer and now won't pay for the bill that was accumulated to protect your generation from dying. It wasn't 20-50 year olds dying of this.
Solidarity, comrade. Welcome to the barricades.
(I joke, I have a lot of sympathy with your anger and the points you make.)
Honestly, is the kind of stuff that makes me want to vote for Labour just to fuck with the old wankers but then I remember Labour are also part of the gerontocracy and will do exactly the same as the Tories because they want the votes.
Let the pensioners eat cake
No thanks, Malc. Think I'd allow you all bread and water, maybe the odd bit of scotch every so often.
And it is so prevalent because traditionally the bricks were of such poor quality they would erode it not covered.
Only for substandard housing. Plenty of decent stuff, and it is irrelevant to stone building areas and crofts.
Render is usually more to do with howling gales and horizontal rain. Because damp does eventually soak through brick walls.
In London and other urban settings render is sometimes more likely to be related to poor quality building by Georgian/Victorian speculative developers.
So whoever gave Scotland control over income tax, created a bigger mess by accidently making Income Tax unchangeable.
Oops, I bet Osbourne didn't think about that when he did it.
When Scot Nats pointed out the partial devolving of income tax powers was filled with nonsensical procedural issues that would cause problems in the future they were denigrated as being "too scared" to accept the powers rather than being lauded as clear sighted visionaries.
The problem is the Barnett formula.
If the Barnett formula was abolished and the Scots simply kept rather taxes they raised, without HMRC getting involved, that would be a much better solution.
That would mean exposing that they are stiffing us and no chance they will hand over any real powers to Scotland any time. The income one was meant to be a ball and chain that hampered Scotland not helped. As ever the Fcukwits made a real arse of it.
It's weird, because I've been using the phrase "stiffing us" for decades and have clearly been getting its meaning completely wrong. Thanks Malc.
And it is so prevalent because traditionally the bricks were of such poor quality they would erode it not covered.
Only for substandard housing. Plenty of decent stuff, and it is irrelevant to stone building areas and crofts.
Render is usually more to do with howling gales and horizontal rain. Because damp does eventually soak through brick walls.
In London and other urban settings render is sometimes more likely to be related to poor quality building by Georgian/Victorian speculative developers.
Indeed re wind and rain. And some stone too. IIRC in my granddad's shop/house the front was made in high quality ashlar sandstone imported from quite some way away, but the sides and back were in ordinary local sandstone which is a little friable with time and was therefore harled.
I have just bought and android phone for my business - the first one I have owned in years, after many years of iphones. It is driving me mad. Firstly, it was impossible to turn off google assistant, despite blocking it in the settings. Secondly, it buzzes about every 10 minutes. I have spent an hour going through it, turning off every possible notification, and it still inexplicably buzzes. I only want a phone to make calls and for tethering, google maps, and occasional internet use, and a few business related apps.
I am not a technophone, but it seems to me like the phone is essentially programmed to make you submit to and become reliant on its features, rather than you being in control of them. (Thus nicely proving the argument set out by Shoshana Zuboff in the book 'the age of surveillance capitalism')
I have spent hours on this already. Can anyone recommend some way of getting some independent technical support with this problem?
This idea that now is not the time to raise taxes on those who work is odd. For the last 18 months or so working people have been supported by furlough. Others who worked from home in secure jobs have built up savings.
Now the bills have to be paid. Not just for Covid but for social care and everything else.
So everyone will have to pay: workers - and I include those past pensionable age who are still working - and those with savings and assets. And all generations will have to pay because (a) all generations benefited from the support for the economy; (b) all benefit one way or another from public services; and (c) all benefit from social care - either now (directly) or by not having to pay for parents or by not losing a possible inheritance or directly in the future.
It won't be nice. But no group should be immune from paying the bills. Far too much special pleading going on.
NI is an odd choice because it is in effect a tax but only on some. So it should be extended to all who are working if it is going to be raised.
It is not the workers pleading! The solution being proposed, as you point out in the final paragraph, is that only workers under 65 pay.
There is no additional tax being proposed for workers over 65. There are no new wealth taxes being proposed. Pensioners are also getting 8% increase on state pension vs wage freezes for most workers.
Saying that is unfair on workers under 65 is not special pleading, divisive or odd, just standing up for basic fairness.
Rubbish, people retiring now do not get the state pension till 67 and rising and so many over 65's will pay the NI.
This idea that now is not the time to raise taxes on those who work is odd. For the last 18 months or so working people have been supported by furlough. Others who worked from home in secure jobs have built up savings.
Now the bills have to be paid. Not just for Covid but for social care and everything else.
So everyone will have to pay: workers - and I include those past pensionable age who are still working - and those with savings and assets. And all generations will have to pay because (a) all generations benefited from the support for the economy; (b) all benefit one way or another from public services; and (c) all benefit from social care - either now (directly) or by not having to pay for parents or by not losing a possible inheritance or directly in the future.
It won't be nice. But no group should be immune from paying the bills. Far too much special pleading going on.
NI is an odd choice because it is in effect a tax but only on some. So it should be extended to all who are working if it is going to be raised.
It is not the workers pleading! The solution being proposed, as you point out in the final paragraph, is that only workers under 65 pay.
There is no additional tax being proposed for workers over 65. There are no new wealth taxes being proposed. Pensioners are also getting 8% increase on state pension vs wage freezes for most workers.
Saying that is unfair on workers under 65 is not special pleading, divisive or odd, just standing up for basic fairness.
Rubbish, people retiring now do not get the state pension till 67 and rising and so many over 65's will pay the NI.
The Canadian Liberals are averaging 30% in the polls as you can see below. It's difficult to imagine them staying in office with a share as low as that.
This idea that now is not the time to raise taxes on those who work is odd. For the last 18 months or so working people have been supported by furlough. Others who worked from home in secure jobs have built up savings.
Now the bills have to be paid. Not just for Covid but for social care and everything else.
So everyone will have to pay: workers - and I include those past pensionable age who are still working - and those with savings and assets. And all generations will have to pay because (a) all generations benefited from the support for the economy; (b) all benefit one way or another from public services; and (c) all benefit from social care - either now (directly) or by not having to pay for parents or by not losing a possible inheritance or directly in the future.
It won't be nice. But no group should be immune from paying the bills. Far too much special pleading going on.
NI is an odd choice because it is in effect a tax but only on some. So it should be extended to all who are working if it is going to be raised.
What a load of rubbish. The economy was shut down to primarily benefit older people who are most at risk and to protect the NHS which is another service that is used mostly by older people.
Businesses like your daughter's was sacrificed to protect older people and now it's time for older people to bear the cost of that shutdown. A stat posted here showed that 16% of pensioners have earnings in the higher rate tax bracket, that's a huge number of people to target for more tax before we even think about putting up taxes on working age people.
The country is currently being fleeced by the generation above who have decided they want an easy life and the best way to get that is to claim a larger share of the economic pie for themselves and if they have to impoverish working age people then that's a bonus.
You ducked out of paying for your parents care, you're ducking out of paying for your own care, you've piled on cost after cost on young people, you bought all the property then accused young people of being incapable of saving all while charging us ridiculous rents on crap flats that aren't fit for animals to live in.
Your generation has a lot to answer for, you've ruined the legacy of what your parents left behind and now you're trying to take away any chance my generation has of leaving behind a better world for our kids. You destroyed the climate, made the rich much richer, the poor much poorer and now won't pay for the bill that was accumulated to protect your generation from dying. It wasn't 20-50 year olds dying of this.
Solidarity, comrade. Welcome to the barricades.
(I joke, I have a lot of sympathy with your anger and the points you make.)
Honestly, is the kind of stuff that makes me want to vote for Labour just to fuck with the old wankers but then I remember Labour are also part of the gerontocracy and will do exactly the same as the Tories because they want the votes.
Let the pensioners eat cake
How about letting them have what they paid for?
New welfare like what is being proposed here was never paid for, so why should they be exempt from paying for it today?
I have just bought and android phone for my business - the first one I have owned in years, after many years of iphones. It is driving me mad. Firstly, it was impossible to turn off google assistant, despite blocking it in the settings. Secondly, it buzzes about every 10 minutes. I have spent an hour going through it, turning off every possible notification, and it still inexplicably buzzes. I only want a phone to make calls and for tethering, google maps, and occasional internet use, and a few business related apps.
I am not a technophone, but it seems to me like the phone is essentially programmed to make you submit to and become reliant on its features, rather than you being in control of them. (Thus nicely proving the argument set out by Shoshana Zuboff in the book 'the age of surveillance capitalism')
I have spent hours on this already. Can anyone recommend some way of getting some independent technical support with this problem?
That the English language did not have the verb ESCALATE until the 1920s. Absolutely amazing. It was only after the escalator was invented that it appeared in the language.
I've doubled checked with the Oxford English Dictionary and indeed they have no usage of the word prior to the 1920s.
I have just bought and android phone for my business - the first one I have owned in years, after many years of iphones. It is driving me mad. Firstly, it was impossible to turn off google assistant, despite blocking it in the settings. Secondly, it buzzes about every 10 minutes. I have spent an hour going through it, turning off every possible notification, and it still inexplicably buzzes. I only want a phone to make calls and for tethering, google maps, and occasional internet use, and a few business related apps.
I am not a technophone, but it seems to me like the phone is essentially programmed to make you submit to and become reliant on its features, rather than you being in control of them. (Thus nicely proving the argument set out by Shoshana Zuboff in the book 'the age of surveillance capitalism')
I have spent hours on this already. Can anyone recommend some way of getting some independent technical support with this problem?
Is it a Samsung?
It is a motorola - chosen due to its apparently brilliant battery life
I have just bought and android phone for my business - the first one I have owned in years, after many years of iphones. It is driving me mad. Firstly, it was impossible to turn off google assistant, despite blocking it in the settings. Secondly, it buzzes about every 10 minutes. I have spent an hour going through it, turning off every possible notification, and it still inexplicably buzzes. I only want a phone to make calls and for tethering, google maps, and occasional internet use, and a few business related apps.
I am not a technophone, but it seems to me like the phone is essentially programmed to make you submit to and become reliant on its features, rather than you being in control of them. (Thus nicely proving the argument set out by Shoshana Zuboff in the book 'the age of surveillance capitalism')
I have spent hours on this already. Can anyone recommend some way of getting some independent technical support with this problem?
Still got the receipt? Get another iPhone, you know it makes sense.
This idea that now is not the time to raise taxes on those who work is odd. For the last 18 months or so working people have been supported by furlough. Others who worked from home in secure jobs have built up savings.
Now the bills have to be paid. Not just for Covid but for social care and everything else.
So everyone will have to pay: workers - and I include those past pensionable age who are still working - and those with savings and assets. And all generations will have to pay because (a) all generations benefited from the support for the economy; (b) all benefit one way or another from public services; and (c) all benefit from social care - either now (directly) or by not having to pay for parents or by not losing a possible inheritance or directly in the future.
It won't be nice. But no group should be immune from paying the bills. Far too much special pleading going on.
NI is an odd choice because it is in effect a tax but only on some. So it should be extended to all who are working if it is going to be raised.
What a load of rubbish. The economy was shut down to primarily benefit older people who are most at risk and to protect the NHS which is another service that is used mostly by older people.
Businesses like your daughter's was sacrificed to protect older people and now it's time for older people to bear the cost of that shutdown. A stat posted here showed that 16% of pensioners have earnings in the higher rate tax bracket, that's a huge number of people to target for more tax before we even think about putting up taxes on working age people.
The country is currently being fleeced by the generation above who have decided they want an easy life and the best way to get that is to claim a larger share of the economic pie for themselves and if they have to impoverish working age people then that's a bonus.
You ducked out of paying for your parents care, you're ducking out of paying for your own care, you've piled on cost after cost on young people, you bought all the property then accused young people of being incapable of saving all while charging us ridiculous rents on crap flats that aren't fit for animals to live in.
Your generation has a lot to answer for, you've ruined the legacy of what your parents left behind and now you're trying to take away any chance my generation has of leaving behind a better world for our kids. You destroyed the climate, made the rich much richer, the poor much poorer and now won't pay for the bill that was accumulated to protect your generation from dying. It wasn't 20-50 year olds dying of this.
I think you need a lie down Max. You shouldn't get too worked up before the cricket on Sunday, that will provide you with enough stress!
He is an obnoxious arse. What a joke trying to pretend he has lived in a crap flat unfit for animals, and that after he spends his time on here boasting about jetting away for long weekends and holidays all the time and how much money he makes, his Dad gives him. An absolute hypocritical clown. A breakdown looks on the cards as he gets ever more hysterical.
The idea that given all the expenses of Covid, the NHS and social care, let alone anything else, we can avoid raising taxes on working people, as @MaxPB seems to want, is for the birds.
Taxes will have to rise and all will have to pay. That's all there is to it. All these demands for special exclusions is just self-interested nonsense.
Should we be raising taxes only on working age people?
"1% on NI" is a 2% tax rise on the employed, and a 0% tax rise on pensioners.
1%, 2% or whatever on income tax is a tax paid by all.
I did put forward the typically centre moderate view of 2% on income tax on here last night (I think). So workers and pensioners both contribute.
2% hike in income tax isn't moderate. It's almost Corbynite.
I'm absolutely disgusted with the Tory leadership. I campaigned hard in 2019 and believed the no tax rise manifesto promise. Fiscal drag is the order of the day.
In fairness it was not contemplated in 2019 that the government would spend more than £400bn on helping the economy cope with an 18 month pandemic which has devastated tax revenues as well. Politicians are all too keen to argue that circumstances have changed when breaking a promise but I struggle to think of a government that has a better base for such an argument than this one.
Tories should stand for sound money, careful management of the country's accounts and limitations on the role of the state. In some circumstances that requires more spending and thus, responsibly, more taxes, than others. This is such a time. I am more worried about having stable and sustainable public finances than current tax rates.
Now is not the time to put taxes up on working people. I don't care about my personal situation, an extra £1.6k per year in tax between myself and my wife is unfortunate but it doesn't really make a big difference to us. There will be millions of middle income people across the country that will find that kind of income cut very, very difficult to take.
Using my dad as an example again, his net income in retirement is about £60.5k. A working age person with an equivalent gross has a net income of £55k. In what world does it make sense that my dad, with no responsibilities, no kids, no mortgage and no real costs pays £5.5k less in tax than a working age person who will have a mortgage/rent, kids, possible nursery fees, school expenses, commuting costs etc...
The whole system is needs rethinking. Why is anyone in the higher rate tax bracket getting 100% of the state pension? In what world does that make sense?!
With respect a net pensioner income of 60K plus is a million miles from most pensioners income
It is not the average, but it is not particularly unusual either, especially for those from the public sector final salary schemes.
Poor pensioners are still better off than poor workers. Rich pensioners are better off than rich workers. They are also richer than the workers are forecast to get to when they are retired.
Yet new taxes go on workers, most public (and private) sector workers get a pay freeze. The retired get no new taxes and 8% increase in state pension.
This will only make the generational conflict deeper and wider.
I'm not sure about your first paragraph; it is often mentioned on here, but I'm yet to see the evidence.
I'm on a 'gold-plated' public sector (Civil Service) final pension salary scheme. I was well-paid, retiring on a salary of c. £82K after 38 years service, a couple of years ago. But my pension, generous though it is, is nowhere near £60K - much nearer £20K. I'm not complaining at all, quite happy with it, but I do wonder whether non-public sector workers have an exaggerated view of the value of public sector pensions. You would have to be retiring on a salary well over £120k to get anywhere near £60k in pension; there's not many in that category.
I've just had a pension review, actually. I knew my public sector pension was better than my previous private sector pension, but I'm slightly shocked just how much better. Most private sector workers do not have final salary pensions. The IFA I talked to told me that the average private sector workers amassed a pension pot of around £50k by retirement. Whereas if you work as, say, a hospital admin worker - or some other not desperately well paid public sector job - for 40 years you can amass a pension with a trade in value in excess of three quarters of a million pounds.
Yep. I tried to calculate the benefit once and I reckoned add 40% on the salary and you're getting close. We see many public sector retirees who have lump sum and income entitlements (always index-linked and with death benefits) that you would need over £1m to purchase in the real world. But, hey, let's pay the public sector more.
PS pensions are good but generally the pay rates certainly used to be less than in the private sector. Also remember the monthly contributions were compulsory if you didn't opt out after the first couple of years or so. I'm very content with my arrangements but the idea that we have lived lives of idleness and luxury since the mid-70s is frankly rubbish. Like most generations we had our fair share of hardship. I well recall my first London flat - £15k - with strict borrowing rules and high interest rates. I lived hand to mouth for a good few years just to cope. I had bare floorboards for the first 3 years - not the varnished/sealed jobs of these days - I could not afford carpet. All of my furniture was begged, borrowed or second-hand. And I was by no means alone.
I'm reading Dominic Sandbrook's "Seasons in the Sun: the Battle for Britain 1974-1979" at the moment and my goodness does it sound shit.
I pity anyone who has to live through that.
The 70's were brilliant, pay rise every month , cheap beer , great music , will admit looking back the fashion was dodgy. We had the times of our lives and far superior to the shithole the country is just now..
Seem to recall this being the decade my family, and our neighbours, got a car, indoor toilets, central heating, colour telly, washing machine, gas fire, etc. They were unusual in 1969. Ubiquitous by 1979. Or maybe that's just us. The rest of the nation may have been living in collectivist penury.
and of course the 70s gave us Findus Crispy Pancakes.
They were great in the day , a culinary delight
Angel Delight....."E-numbers in a packet"!
Tasted great though PS: If being really exotic, Vesta curries
I presume H was banned for defending this vile Texas abortion law. Good call if so.
Not knowing the legal implications of making provocative comments which were the reverse of accurate iirc.
It was spectacularly dim and so far beyond reason "billionaire philanthropist who has donated massively to vaccine procurement is taking a cut on a not-for-profit vaccine" - up there with "The Queen Mum was driving the white fiat in the Alma Tunnel".....for the avoidance of doubt NEITHER REMOTELY TRUE.
I have just bought and android phone for my business - the first one I have owned in years, after many years of iphones. It is driving me mad. Firstly, it was impossible to turn off google assistant, despite blocking it in the settings. Secondly, it buzzes about every 10 minutes. I have spent an hour going through it, turning off every possible notification, and it still inexplicably buzzes. I only want a phone to make calls and for tethering, google maps, and occasional internet use, and a few business related apps.
I am not a technophone, but it seems to me like the phone is essentially programmed to make you submit to and become reliant on its features, rather than you being in control of them. (Thus nicely proving the argument set out by Shoshana Zuboff in the book 'the age of surveillance capitalism')
I have spent hours on this already. Can anyone recommend some way of getting some independent technical support with this problem?
Is it a Samsung?
It is a motorola - chosen due to its apparently brilliant battery life
there are probably online forums for this sort of thing. must have annoyed plenty of other people already.
The idea that given all the expenses of Covid, the NHS and social care, let alone anything else, we can avoid raising taxes on working people, as @MaxPB seems to want, is for the birds.
Taxes will have to rise and all will have to pay. That's all there is to it. All these demands for special exclusions is just self-interested nonsense.
Should we be raising taxes only on working age people?
"1% on NI" is a 2% tax rise on the employed, and a 0% tax rise on pensioners.
1%, 2% or whatever on income tax is a tax paid by all.
I did put forward the typically centre moderate view of 2% on income tax on here last night (I think). So workers and pensioners both contribute.
2% hike in income tax isn't moderate. It's almost Corbynite.
I'm absolutely disgusted with the Tory leadership. I campaigned hard in 2019 and believed the no tax rise manifesto promise. Fiscal drag is the order of the day.
In fairness it was not contemplated in 2019 that the government would spend more than £400bn on helping the economy cope with an 18 month pandemic which has devastated tax revenues as well. Politicians are all too keen to argue that circumstances have changed when breaking a promise but I struggle to think of a government that has a better base for such an argument than this one.
Tories should stand for sound money, careful management of the country's accounts and limitations on the role of the state. In some circumstances that requires more spending and thus, responsibly, more taxes, than others. This is such a time. I am more worried about having stable and sustainable public finances than current tax rates.
Now is not the time to put taxes up on working people. I don't care about my personal situation, an extra £1.6k per year in tax between myself and my wife is unfortunate but it doesn't really make a big difference to us. There will be millions of middle income people across the country that will find that kind of income cut very, very difficult to take.
Using my dad as an example again, his net income in retirement is about £60.5k. A working age person with an equivalent gross has a net income of £55k. In what world does it make sense that my dad, with no responsibilities, no kids, no mortgage and no real costs pays £5.5k less in tax than a working age person who will have a mortgage/rent, kids, possible nursery fees, school expenses, commuting costs etc...
The whole system is needs rethinking. Why is anyone in the higher rate tax bracket getting 100% of the state pension? In what world does that make sense?!
With respect a net pensioner income of 60K plus is a million miles from most pensioners income
It is not the average, but it is not particularly unusual either, especially for those from the public sector final salary schemes.
Poor pensioners are still better off than poor workers. Rich pensioners are better off than rich workers. They are also richer than the workers are forecast to get to when they are retired.
Yet new taxes go on workers, most public (and private) sector workers get a pay freeze. The retired get no new taxes and 8% increase in state pension.
This will only make the generational conflict deeper and wider.
I'm not sure about your first paragraph; it is often mentioned on here, but I'm yet to see the evidence.
I'm on a 'gold-plated' public sector (Civil Service) final pension salary scheme. I was well-paid, retiring on a salary of c. £82K after 38 years service, a couple of years ago. But my pension, generous though it is, is nowhere near £60K - much nearer £20K. I'm not complaining at all, quite happy with it, but I do wonder whether non-public sector workers have an exaggerated view of the value of public sector pensions. You would have to be retiring on a salary well over £120k to get anywhere near £60k in pension; there's not many in that category.
I've just had a pension review, actually. I knew my public sector pension was better than my previous private sector pension, but I'm slightly shocked just how much better. Most private sector workers do not have final salary pensions. The IFA I talked to told me that the average private sector workers amassed a pension pot of around £50k by retirement. Whereas if you work as, say, a hospital admin worker - or some other not desperately well paid public sector job - for 40 years you can amass a pension with a trade in value in excess of three quarters of a million pounds.
Yep. I tried to calculate the benefit once and I reckoned add 40% on the salary and you're getting close. We see many public sector retirees who have lump sum and income entitlements (always index-linked and with death benefits) that you would need over £1m to purchase in the real world. But, hey, let's pay the public sector more.
PS pensions are good but generally the pay rates certainly used to be less than in the private sector. Also remember the monthly contributions were compulsory if you didn't opt out after the first couple of years or so. I'm very content with my arrangements but the idea that we have lived lives of idleness and luxury since the mid-70s is frankly rubbish. Like most generations we had our fair share of hardship. I well recall my first London flat - £15k - with strict borrowing rules and high interest rates. I lived hand to mouth for a good few years just to cope. I had bare floorboards for the first 3 years - not the varnished/sealed jobs of these days - I could not afford carpet. All of my furniture was begged, borrowed or second-hand. And I was by no means alone.
I'm reading Dominic Sandbrook's "Seasons in the Sun: the Battle for Britain 1974-1979" at the moment and my goodness does it sound shit.
I pity anyone who has to live through that.
The 70's were brilliant, pay rise every month , cheap beer , great music , will admit looking back the fashion was dodgy. We had the times of our lives and far superior to the shithole the country is just now..
I have just done a long tour of far north Scotland - Ullapool, Assynt, Cape Wrath, Caithness and the Orkneys. Much of it looked magnificent in generally fine weather,; tho I will confess John o Groats (where we mostly stayed) is a toilet (albeit with majestic views of the Orkneys)
Why do the Scots in that corner of Scotland INSIST on building houses in a dung-brown or birdshit-grey colour? Like they want them to be ugly. The far, flat north east of Scotland is never gonna be a beauty - unlike the Highlands and Islands - but it would be much improved if everyone just painted their houses white, like the crofts of old. Or even pink. Tartan?
Anything would be better than the colour of untreated sewage you get now. It is most perplexing
Ahhh... A tour of LibDem constituencies. Are St Albans, Richmond and Oxford next?
Is there something you need to share with us?
North East Fife might make a rather nice holiday. St Andrews (with the ruins, shops and restaurants of a mediaeval university town), fishertowns, breezy walks, the odd palace, and so on. Even golf, a nuclear rather than sand bunker, and, at Leuchars, planes; in the old days one could sit on the sea wall at St A with an ice cream and watch the last of the Lancaster family, the Shackleton, crawl up into the sky while the Phantoms zoomed around. Happy days. And the Tay Bridges to contemplate upon mortality and the ephemerality of glory, and Yes City Dundee just over the bridges with the Unicorn, Discovery and sthe new gallery on the seafront.
The idea that given all the expenses of Covid, the NHS and social care, let alone anything else, we can avoid raising taxes on working people, as @MaxPB seems to want, is for the birds.
Taxes will have to rise and all will have to pay. That's all there is to it. All these demands for special exclusions is just self-interested nonsense.
Should we be raising taxes only on working age people?
"1% on NI" is a 2% tax rise on the employed, and a 0% tax rise on pensioners.
1%, 2% or whatever on income tax is a tax paid by all.
I did put forward the typically centre moderate view of 2% on income tax on here last night (I think). So workers and pensioners both contribute.
2% hike in income tax isn't moderate. It's almost Corbynite.
I'm absolutely disgusted with the Tory leadership. I campaigned hard in 2019 and believed the no tax rise manifesto promise. Fiscal drag is the order of the day.
In fairness it was not contemplated in 2019 that the government would spend more than £400bn on helping the economy cope with an 18 month pandemic which has devastated tax revenues as well. Politicians are all too keen to argue that circumstances have changed when breaking a promise but I struggle to think of a government that has a better base for such an argument than this one.
Tories should stand for sound money, careful management of the country's accounts and limitations on the role of the state. In some circumstances that requires more spending and thus, responsibly, more taxes, than others. This is such a time. I am more worried about having stable and sustainable public finances than current tax rates.
Now is not the time to put taxes up on working people. I don't care about my personal situation, an extra £1.6k per year in tax between myself and my wife is unfortunate but it doesn't really make a big difference to us. There will be millions of middle income people across the country that will find that kind of income cut very, very difficult to take.
Using my dad as an example again, his net income in retirement is about £60.5k. A working age person with an equivalent gross has a net income of £55k. In what world does it make sense that my dad, with no responsibilities, no kids, no mortgage and no real costs pays £5.5k less in tax than a working age person who will have a mortgage/rent, kids, possible nursery fees, school expenses, commuting costs etc...
The whole system is needs rethinking. Why is anyone in the higher rate tax bracket getting 100% of the state pension? In what world does that make sense?!
With respect a net pensioner income of 60K plus is a million miles from most pensioners income
It is not the average, but it is not particularly unusual either, especially for those from the public sector final salary schemes.
Poor pensioners are still better off than poor workers. Rich pensioners are better off than rich workers. They are also richer than the workers are forecast to get to when they are retired.
Yet new taxes go on workers, most public (and private) sector workers get a pay freeze. The retired get no new taxes and 8% increase in state pension.
This will only make the generational conflict deeper and wider.
I'm not sure about your first paragraph; it is often mentioned on here, but I'm yet to see the evidence.
I'm on a 'gold-plated' public sector (Civil Service) final pension salary scheme. I was well-paid, retiring on a salary of c. £82K after 38 years service, a couple of years ago. But my pension, generous though it is, is nowhere near £60K - much nearer £20K. I'm not complaining at all, quite happy with it, but I do wonder whether non-public sector workers have an exaggerated view of the value of public sector pensions. You would have to be retiring on a salary well over £120k to get anywhere near £60k in pension; there's not many in that category.
I've just had a pension review, actually. I knew my public sector pension was better than my previous private sector pension, but I'm slightly shocked just how much better. Most private sector workers do not have final salary pensions. The IFA I talked to told me that the average private sector workers amassed a pension pot of around £50k by retirement. Whereas if you work as, say, a hospital admin worker - or some other not desperately well paid public sector job - for 40 years you can amass a pension with a trade in value in excess of three quarters of a million pounds.
Yep. I tried to calculate the benefit once and I reckoned add 40% on the salary and you're getting close. We see many public sector retirees who have lump sum and income entitlements (always index-linked and with death benefits) that you would need over £1m to purchase in the real world. But, hey, let's pay the public sector more.
PS pensions are good but generally the pay rates certainly used to be less than in the private sector. Also remember the monthly contributions were compulsory if you didn't opt out after the first couple of years or so. I'm very content with my arrangements but the idea that we have lived lives of idleness and luxury since the mid-70s is frankly rubbish. Like most generations we had our fair share of hardship. I well recall my first London flat - £15k - with strict borrowing rules and high interest rates. I lived hand to mouth for a good few years just to cope. I had bare floorboards for the first 3 years - not the varnished/sealed jobs of these days - I could not afford carpet. All of my furniture was begged, borrowed or second-hand. And I was by no means alone.
I'm reading Dominic Sandbrook's "Seasons in the Sun: the Battle for Britain 1974-1979" at the moment and my goodness does it sound shit.
I pity anyone who has to live through that.
The 70's were brilliant, pay rise every month , cheap beer , great music , will admit looking back the fashion was dodgy. We had the times of our lives and far superior to the shithole the country is just now..
I have just done a long tour of far north Scotland - Ullapool, Assynt, Cape Wrath, Caithness and the Orkneys. Much of it looked magnificent in generally fine weather,; tho I will confess John o Groats (where we mostly stayed) is a toilet (albeit with majestic views of the Orkneys)
Why do the Scots in that corner of Scotland INSIST on building houses in a dung-brown or birdshit-grey colour? Like they want them to be ugly. The far, flat north east of Scotland is never gonna be a beauty - unlike the Highlands and Islands - but it would be much improved if everyone just painted their houses white, like the crofts of old. Or even pink. Tartan?
Anything would be better than the colour of untreated sewage you get now. It is most perplexing
Probably don't want to have to paint it twice a year. Could have done with more posts on your trip by the way. PS: I see others now, I obviously missed them.
I was actually having too nice a time to comment on the trip. It was brilliant fun. Food was great too. I had one of the nicest scones of my life overlooking the Kyle of Tongue. And a fantastic tarka dahl in Strathness Hotel in Inverness. And superb haddock wraps and seafood soup at the Seafood Shack in Ullapool
The big culinary letdown was lunch in Stromness in the Orkneys, a town which seems to pride itself on refusing to serve stuff you want and stuff they advertise. So the bistro eagerly told us they would not serve alcohol before 7pm and NOR WILL ANYONE ELSE HAHAHA and then the cafe next door "famous for its crab rolls" said they had no crab and weren't expecting any.
My daughter and I ended up eating two cheddar baps on a bench by the harbour while I downed a bottle of screwtop white wine from the Co-op like a hobo. Then we went to Skara Brae
Glad you enjoyed it and took on a bit of Scottish jakieness to boot. Your daughter would have probably ended up murdering you after two days in Millport.
Yes, John O Groats turned out to be a superb choice, because there's so much to see all around it, and it has a real sense of wildness. So thankyou for that!
A suburban island near Glasgow would have been dull if not disastrous.
Even John o Groats, despite being a toilet, has a kind of perverse charm. We had a brilliant apartment looking straight out to the Orkney, right on the harbour, which was a big bonus, and the weird cafes and shops are so quirky or kitsch they have a kind of fascination. There is a gift shop with an entire wing dedicated to insane Christmas knick-knacks, like hologram santas in crystal boxes continuously singing Jingle Bells. WTF
Also you can get tartan clocks. Clocks made from actual tartan. Genius
How did you like Skara Brae?
But commiserations re the Stromness lunch modeller style. Derek Cooper the food writer used to tear his hair out over the difficulty of getting local fish and crusties in the very areas they were fished, though things have improved a lot since the 1980s (believe me).
I believe you. Food in Scotland has improved markedly, sometimes fabulously, just like everywhere else in Britain. And you can generally get seafood on the coast, now, across the UK (it was crazy when you could not)
The Orkneys - Orkney - was (is?) highly intriguing. Not sure I could ever live there, the lack of trees and abundance of wind would drive me nuts. But it's fascinating. Skara Brae is of course remarkable, the stone circles are poetically lonely and lovely.
But the biggest surprise, for me, was Kirkwall, which was much nicer than I anticipated, and has that unique cathedral in the middle. A medieval Viking Cathedral made of faded apricot sandstone! Wondrous
OK now I must stop doing brand marketing for North Scotland and do my own work. Anon
Glad you found the far North worth visiting! And St Magnus is one of my favourite cathedrals beside Wells and Durham - with its little wood nearby jam packed with birds beside the two ruined palaces.
On harling, it is also part of the vernacular up there, perhaps?
Planning authorities have fairly fixed ideas about the external appearance. Scottish self-building friends tell me that some particularly rural places up there have an attachment to 1.5 stories with dormers.
There are quite a lot I have seen in England which have demanded fake chimneys made of either brick (which is a pain because you have to build something underneath for it to stand on), or grp, because in the village / area / region that is 'traditional'.
I have seen some people argue back using words such as 'fake' or ' pastiche' or "oh no it bloody isn't".
So whoever gave Scotland control over income tax, created a bigger mess by accidently making Income Tax unchangeable.
Oops, I bet Osbourne didn't think about that when he did it.
When Scot Nats pointed out the partial devolving of income tax powers was filled with nonsensical procedural issues that would cause problems in the future they were denigrated as being "too scared" to accept the powers rather than being lauded as clear sighted visionaries.
The problem is the Barnett formula.
If the Barnett formula was abolished and the Scots simply kept rather taxes they raised, without HMRC getting involved, that would be a much better solution.
The whole partial devolution of revenue is insane. Because income tax is devolved if the Scottish government spotted a policy that would crater Scottish corporation tax but raise even just a penny more income tax then Scotland's budget would increase if they enacted the policy despite it lowering Scotland's overall revenue.
Similarly if Scotland spotted a policy that would stimulate economic growth such that the broad tax base increased but resulted in income tax falling then that would cut Scotland's budget despite its revenue increasing.
So whoever gave Scotland control over income tax, created a bigger mess by accidently making Income Tax unchangeable.
Oops, I bet Osbourne didn't think about that when he did it.
When Scot Nats pointed out the partial devolving of income tax powers was filled with nonsensical procedural issues that would cause problems in the future they were denigrated as being "too scared" to accept the powers rather than being lauded as clear sighted visionaries.
The problem is the Barnett formula.
If the Barnett formula was abolished and the Scots simply kept rather taxes they raised, without HMRC getting involved, that would be a much better solution.
That would mean exposing that they are stiffing us and no chance they will hand over any real powers to Scotland any time. The income one was meant to be a ball and chain that hampered Scotland not helped. As ever the Fcukwits made a real arse of it.
The Scottish Government are going to stiff you, anyway
I have just bought and android phone for my business - the first one I have owned in years, after many years of iphones. It is driving me mad. Firstly, it was impossible to turn off google assistant, despite blocking it in the settings. Secondly, it buzzes about every 10 minutes. I have spent an hour going through it, turning off every possible notification, and it still inexplicably buzzes. I only want a phone to make calls and for tethering, google maps, and occasional internet use, and a few business related apps.
I am not a technophone, but it seems to me like the phone is essentially programmed to make you submit to and become reliant on its features, rather than you being in control of them. (Thus nicely proving the argument set out by Shoshana Zuboff in the book 'the age of surveillance capitalism')
I have spent hours on this already. Can anyone recommend some way of getting some independent technical support with this problem?
Still got the receipt? Get another iPhone, you know it makes sense.
I nearly did - my personal phone is an iphone.
However, I had one for my last job, and the battery only lasted a year before it seriously starts failing, ie switching itself off and saying 0% battery when using maps and taking photos and tethering when on the train. I use the phone for work and can't take the risk of this happening, hence the decision to switch.
This idea that now is not the time to raise taxes on those who work is odd. For the last 18 months or so working people have been supported by furlough. Others who worked from home in secure jobs have built up savings.
Now the bills have to be paid. Not just for Covid but for social care and everything else.
So everyone will have to pay: workers - and I include those past pensionable age who are still working - and those with savings and assets. And all generations will have to pay because (a) all generations benefited from the support for the economy; (b) all benefit one way or another from public services; and (c) all benefit from social care - either now (directly) or by not having to pay for parents or by not losing a possible inheritance or directly in the future.
It won't be nice. But no group should be immune from paying the bills. Far too much special pleading going on.
NI is an odd choice because it is in effect a tax but only on some. So it should be extended to all who are working if it is going to be raised.
What a load of rubbish. The economy was shut down to primarily benefit older people who are most at risk and to protect the NHS which is another service that is used mostly by older people.
Businesses like your daughter's was sacrificed to protect older people and now it's time for older people to bear the cost of that shutdown. A stat posted here showed that 16% of pensioners have earnings in the higher rate tax bracket, that's a huge number of people to target for more tax before we even think about putting up taxes on working age people.
The country is currently being fleeced by the generation above who have decided they want an easy life and the best way to get that is to claim a larger share of the economic pie for themselves and if they have to impoverish working age people then that's a bonus.
You ducked out of paying for your parents care, you're ducking out of paying for your own care, you've piled on cost after cost on young people, you bought all the property then accused young people of being incapable of saving all while charging us ridiculous rents on crap flats that aren't fit for animals to live in.
Your generation has a lot to answer for, you've ruined the legacy of what your parents left behind and now you're trying to take away any chance my generation has of leaving behind a better world for our kids. You destroyed the climate, made the rich much richer, the poor much poorer and now won't pay for the bill that was accumulated to protect your generation from dying. It wasn't 20-50 year olds dying of this.
Solidarity, comrade. Welcome to the barricades.
(I joke, I have a lot of sympathy with your anger and the points you make.)
Honestly, is the kind of stuff that makes me want to vote for Labour just to fuck with the old wankers but then I remember Labour are also part of the gerontocracy and will do exactly the same as the Tories because they want the votes.
Let the pensioners eat cake
How about letting them have what they paid for?
New welfare like what is being proposed here was never paid for, so why should they be exempt from paying for it today?
What are you wittering about , what great new benefit are pensioners getting???????????
That the English language did not have the verb ESCALATE until the 1920s. Absolutely amazing. It was only after the escalator was invented that it appeared in the language.
I've doubled checked with the Oxford English Dictionary and indeed they have no usage of the word prior to the 1920s.
That the English language did not have the verb ESCALATE until the 1920s. Absolutely amazing. It was only after the escalator was invented that it appeared in the language.
I've doubled checked with the Oxford English Dictionary and indeed they have no usage of the word prior to the 1920s.
I am blown away.
Well, you can be blown away again.
Globe 1911
A “new joy,” we read, has been added to the attraction:-, of London the shape of the new escalator at Earl’s Court. Look out for a new pantomime-hit, entitled “ M ill \ou Escalate With Mel”
Liverpool Echop 1914:
"HOW TO ESCALATE OX THE MOVING STAIRWAY AT OXFORD CIRCUS. '"Do you escalate?" is a suggested opening conversation which 15 equally suitable all grades of society in London."
Took me 1 minute on britishnewspaperarchive - though the search function is annoying and won't stop looking for escalator as well as misprints never mind what I do, so there may be earlier ones.
This idea that now is not the time to raise taxes on those who work is odd. For the last 18 months or so working people have been supported by furlough. Others who worked from home in secure jobs have built up savings.
Now the bills have to be paid. Not just for Covid but for social care and everything else.
So everyone will have to pay: workers - and I include those past pensionable age who are still working - and those with savings and assets. And all generations will have to pay because (a) all generations benefited from the support for the economy; (b) all benefit one way or another from public services; and (c) all benefit from social care - either now (directly) or by not having to pay for parents or by not losing a possible inheritance or directly in the future.
It won't be nice. But no group should be immune from paying the bills. Far too much special pleading going on.
NI is an odd choice because it is in effect a tax but only on some. So it should be extended to all who are working if it is going to be raised.
What a load of rubbish. The economy was shut down to primarily benefit older people who are most at risk and to protect the NHS which is another service that is used mostly by older people.
Businesses like your daughter's was sacrificed to protect older people and now it's time for older people to bear the cost of that shutdown. A stat posted here showed that 16% of pensioners have earnings in the higher rate tax bracket, that's a huge number of people to target for more tax before we even think about putting up taxes on working age people.
The country is currently being fleeced by the generation above who have decided they want an easy life and the best way to get that is to claim a larger share of the economic pie for themselves and if they have to impoverish working age people then that's a bonus.
You ducked out of paying for your parents care, you're ducking out of paying for your own care, you've piled on cost after cost on young people, you bought all the property then accused young people of being incapable of saving all while charging us ridiculous rents on crap flats that aren't fit for animals to live in.
Your generation has a lot to answer for, you've ruined the legacy of what your parents left behind and now you're trying to take away any chance my generation has of leaving behind a better world for our kids. You destroyed the climate, made the rich much richer, the poor much poorer and now won't pay for the bill that was accumulated to protect your generation from dying. It wasn't 20-50 year olds dying of this.
Solidarity, comrade. Welcome to the barricades.
(I joke, I have a lot of sympathy with your anger and the points you make.)
Honestly, is the kind of stuff that makes me want to vote for Labour just to fuck with the old wankers but then I remember Labour are also part of the gerontocracy and will do exactly the same as the Tories because they want the votes.
Let the pensioners eat cake
No thanks, Malc. Think I'd allow you all bread and water, maybe the odd bit of scotch every so often.
Not that I'm advocating this, but letting them eat copious amounts of cake (and scotch etc) would tend to shorten the length of time they spend drawing down their (allegedly) over-generous pensions and save the government loads of money. Might increase healthcare costs of course...
The idea that given all the expenses of Covid, the NHS and social care, let alone anything else, we can avoid raising taxes on working people, as @MaxPB seems to want, is for the birds.
Taxes will have to rise and all will have to pay. That's all there is to it. All these demands for special exclusions is just self-interested nonsense.
Should we be raising taxes only on working age people?
"1% on NI" is a 2% tax rise on the employed, and a 0% tax rise on pensioners.
1%, 2% or whatever on income tax is a tax paid by all.
I did put forward the typically centre moderate view of 2% on income tax on here last night (I think). So workers and pensioners both contribute.
2% hike in income tax isn't moderate. It's almost Corbynite.
I'm absolutely disgusted with the Tory leadership. I campaigned hard in 2019 and believed the no tax rise manifesto promise. Fiscal drag is the order of the day.
In fairness it was not contemplated in 2019 that the government would spend more than £400bn on helping the economy cope with an 18 month pandemic which has devastated tax revenues as well. Politicians are all too keen to argue that circumstances have changed when breaking a promise but I struggle to think of a government that has a better base for such an argument than this one.
Tories should stand for sound money, careful management of the country's accounts and limitations on the role of the state. In some circumstances that requires more spending and thus, responsibly, more taxes, than others. This is such a time. I am more worried about having stable and sustainable public finances than current tax rates.
Now is not the time to put taxes up on working people. I don't care about my personal situation, an extra £1.6k per year in tax between myself and my wife is unfortunate but it doesn't really make a big difference to us. There will be millions of middle income people across the country that will find that kind of income cut very, very difficult to take.
Using my dad as an example again, his net income in retirement is about £60.5k. A working age person with an equivalent gross has a net income of £55k. In what world does it make sense that my dad, with no responsibilities, no kids, no mortgage and no real costs pays £5.5k less in tax than a working age person who will have a mortgage/rent, kids, possible nursery fees, school expenses, commuting costs etc...
The whole system is needs rethinking. Why is anyone in the higher rate tax bracket getting 100% of the state pension? In what world does that make sense?!
With respect a net pensioner income of 60K plus is a million miles from most pensioners income
It is not the average, but it is not particularly unusual either, especially for those from the public sector final salary schemes.
Poor pensioners are still better off than poor workers. Rich pensioners are better off than rich workers. They are also richer than the workers are forecast to get to when they are retired.
Yet new taxes go on workers, most public (and private) sector workers get a pay freeze. The retired get no new taxes and 8% increase in state pension.
This will only make the generational conflict deeper and wider.
I'm not sure about your first paragraph; it is often mentioned on here, but I'm yet to see the evidence.
I'm on a 'gold-plated' public sector (Civil Service) final pension salary scheme. I was well-paid, retiring on a salary of c. £82K after 38 years service, a couple of years ago. But my pension, generous though it is, is nowhere near £60K - much nearer £20K. I'm not complaining at all, quite happy with it, but I do wonder whether non-public sector workers have an exaggerated view of the value of public sector pensions. You would have to be retiring on a salary well over £120k to get anywhere near £60k in pension; there's not many in that category.
I've just had a pension review, actually. I knew my public sector pension was better than my previous private sector pension, but I'm slightly shocked just how much better. Most private sector workers do not have final salary pensions. The IFA I talked to told me that the average private sector workers amassed a pension pot of around £50k by retirement. Whereas if you work as, say, a hospital admin worker - or some other not desperately well paid public sector job - for 40 years you can amass a pension with a trade in value in excess of three quarters of a million pounds.
Yep. I tried to calculate the benefit once and I reckoned add 40% on the salary and you're getting close. We see many public sector retirees who have lump sum and income entitlements (always index-linked and with death benefits) that you would need over £1m to purchase in the real world. But, hey, let's pay the public sector more.
PS pensions are good but generally the pay rates certainly used to be less than in the private sector. Also remember the monthly contributions were compulsory if you didn't opt out after the first couple of years or so. I'm very content with my arrangements but the idea that we have lived lives of idleness and luxury since the mid-70s is frankly rubbish. Like most generations we had our fair share of hardship. I well recall my first London flat - £15k - with strict borrowing rules and high interest rates. I lived hand to mouth for a good few years just to cope. I had bare floorboards for the first 3 years - not the varnished/sealed jobs of these days - I could not afford carpet. All of my furniture was begged, borrowed or second-hand. And I was by no means alone.
I'm reading Dominic Sandbrook's "Seasons in the Sun: the Battle for Britain 1974-1979" at the moment and my goodness does it sound shit.
I pity anyone who has to live through that.
The 70's were brilliant, pay rise every month , cheap beer , great music , will admit looking back the fashion was dodgy. We had the times of our lives and far superior to the shithole the country is just now..
Seem to recall this being the decade my family, and our neighbours, got a car, indoor toilets, central heating, colour telly, washing machine, gas fire, etc. They were unusual in 1969. Ubiquitous by 1979. Or maybe that's just us. The rest of the nation may have been living in collectivist penury.
and of course the 70s gave us Findus Crispy Pancakes.
They were great in the day , a culinary delight
Angel Delight....."E-numbers in a packet"!
Tasted great though PS: If being really exotic, Vesta curries
we have 2 of those in the cupboard right now! we already ate the paellas.
The idea that given all the expenses of Covid, the NHS and social care, let alone anything else, we can avoid raising taxes on working people, as @MaxPB seems to want, is for the birds.
Taxes will have to rise and all will have to pay. That's all there is to it. All these demands for special exclusions is just self-interested nonsense.
Should we be raising taxes only on working age people?
"1% on NI" is a 2% tax rise on the employed, and a 0% tax rise on pensioners.
1%, 2% or whatever on income tax is a tax paid by all.
I did put forward the typically centre moderate view of 2% on income tax on here last night (I think). So workers and pensioners both contribute.
2% hike in income tax isn't moderate. It's almost Corbynite.
I'm absolutely disgusted with the Tory leadership. I campaigned hard in 2019 and believed the no tax rise manifesto promise. Fiscal drag is the order of the day.
In fairness it was not contemplated in 2019 that the government would spend more than £400bn on helping the economy cope with an 18 month pandemic which has devastated tax revenues as well. Politicians are all too keen to argue that circumstances have changed when breaking a promise but I struggle to think of a government that has a better base for such an argument than this one.
Tories should stand for sound money, careful management of the country's accounts and limitations on the role of the state. In some circumstances that requires more spending and thus, responsibly, more taxes, than others. This is such a time. I am more worried about having stable and sustainable public finances than current tax rates.
Now is not the time to put taxes up on working people. I don't care about my personal situation, an extra £1.6k per year in tax between myself and my wife is unfortunate but it doesn't really make a big difference to us. There will be millions of middle income people across the country that will find that kind of income cut very, very difficult to take.
Using my dad as an example again, his net income in retirement is about £60.5k. A working age person with an equivalent gross has a net income of £55k. In what world does it make sense that my dad, with no responsibilities, no kids, no mortgage and no real costs pays £5.5k less in tax than a working age person who will have a mortgage/rent, kids, possible nursery fees, school expenses, commuting costs etc...
The whole system is needs rethinking. Why is anyone in the higher rate tax bracket getting 100% of the state pension? In what world does that make sense?!
With respect a net pensioner income of 60K plus is a million miles from most pensioners income
It is not the average, but it is not particularly unusual either, especially for those from the public sector final salary schemes.
Poor pensioners are still better off than poor workers. Rich pensioners are better off than rich workers. They are also richer than the workers are forecast to get to when they are retired.
Yet new taxes go on workers, most public (and private) sector workers get a pay freeze. The retired get no new taxes and 8% increase in state pension.
This will only make the generational conflict deeper and wider.
I'm not sure about your first paragraph; it is often mentioned on here, but I'm yet to see the evidence.
I'm on a 'gold-plated' public sector (Civil Service) final pension salary scheme. I was well-paid, retiring on a salary of c. £82K after 38 years service, a couple of years ago. But my pension, generous though it is, is nowhere near £60K - much nearer £20K. I'm not complaining at all, quite happy with it, but I do wonder whether non-public sector workers have an exaggerated view of the value of public sector pensions. You would have to be retiring on a salary well over £120k to get anywhere near £60k in pension; there's not many in that category.
I've just had a pension review, actually. I knew my public sector pension was better than my previous private sector pension, but I'm slightly shocked just how much better. Most private sector workers do not have final salary pensions. The IFA I talked to told me that the average private sector workers amassed a pension pot of around £50k by retirement. Whereas if you work as, say, a hospital admin worker - or some other not desperately well paid public sector job - for 40 years you can amass a pension with a trade in value in excess of three quarters of a million pounds.
Yep. I tried to calculate the benefit once and I reckoned add 40% on the salary and you're getting close. We see many public sector retirees who have lump sum and income entitlements (always index-linked and with death benefits) that you would need over £1m to purchase in the real world. But, hey, let's pay the public sector more.
PS pensions are good but generally the pay rates certainly used to be less than in the private sector. Also remember the monthly contributions were compulsory if you didn't opt out after the first couple of years or so. I'm very content with my arrangements but the idea that we have lived lives of idleness and luxury since the mid-70s is frankly rubbish. Like most generations we had our fair share of hardship. I well recall my first London flat - £15k - with strict borrowing rules and high interest rates. I lived hand to mouth for a good few years just to cope. I had bare floorboards for the first 3 years - not the varnished/sealed jobs of these days - I could not afford carpet. All of my furniture was begged, borrowed or second-hand. And I was by no means alone.
I'm reading Dominic Sandbrook's "Seasons in the Sun: the Battle for Britain 1974-1979" at the moment and my goodness does it sound shit.
I pity anyone who has to live through that.
The 70's were brilliant, pay rise every month , cheap beer , great music , will admit looking back the fashion was dodgy. We had the times of our lives and far superior to the shithole the country is just now..
I have just done a long tour of far north Scotland - Ullapool, Assynt, Cape Wrath, Caithness and the Orkneys. Much of it looked magnificent in generally fine weather,; tho I will confess John o Groats (where we mostly stayed) is a toilet (albeit with majestic views of the Orkneys)
Why do the Scots in that corner of Scotland INSIST on building houses in a dung-brown or birdshit-grey colour? Like they want them to be ugly. The far, flat north east of Scotland is never gonna be a beauty - unlike the Highlands and Islands - but it would be much improved if everyone just painted their houses white, like the crofts of old. Or even pink. Tartan?
Anything would be better than the colour of untreated sewage you get now. It is most perplexing
Probably don't want to have to paint it twice a year. Could have done with more posts on your trip by the way. PS: I see others now, I obviously missed them.
I was actually having too nice a time to comment on the trip. It was brilliant fun. Food was great too. I had one of the nicest scones of my life overlooking the Kyle of Tongue. And a fantastic tarka dahl in Strathness Hotel in Inverness. And superb haddock wraps and seafood soup at the Seafood Shack in Ullapool
The big culinary letdown was lunch in Stromness in the Orkneys, a town which seems to pride itself on refusing to serve stuff you want and stuff they advertise. So the bistro eagerly told us they would not serve alcohol before 7pm and NOR WILL ANYONE ELSE HAHAHA and then the cafe next door "famous for its crab rolls" said they had no crab and weren't expecting any.
My daughter and I ended up eating two cheddar baps on a bench by the harbour while I downed a bottle of screwtop white wine from the Co-op like a hobo. Then we went to Skara Brae
Glad you enjoyed it and took on a bit of Scottish jakieness to boot. Your daughter would have probably ended up murdering you after two days in Millport.
Yes, John O Groats turned out to be a superb choice, because there's so much to see all around it, and it has a real sense of wildness. So thankyou for that!
A suburban island near Glasgow would have been dull if not disastrous.
Even John o Groats, despite being a toilet, has a kind of perverse charm. We had a brilliant apartment looking straight out to the Orkney, right on the harbour, which was a big bonus, and the weird cafes and shops are so quirky or kitsch they have a kind of fascination. There is a gift shop with an entire wing dedicated to insane Christmas knick-knacks, like hologram santas in crystal boxes continuously singing Jingle Bells. WTF
Also you can get tartan clocks. Clocks made from actual tartan. Genius
How did you like Skara Brae?
But commiserations re the Stromness lunch modeller style. Derek Cooper the food writer used to tear his hair out over the difficulty of getting local fish and crusties in the very areas they were fished, though things have improved a lot since the 1980s (believe me).
I believe you. Food in Scotland has improved markedly, sometimes fabulously, just like everywhere else in Britain. And you can generally get seafood on the coast, now, across the UK (it was crazy when you could not)
The Orkneys - Orkney - was (is?) highly intriguing. Not sure I could ever live there, the lack of trees and abundance of wind would drive me nuts. But it's fascinating. Skara Brae is of course remarkable, the stone circles are poetically lonely and lovely.
But the biggest surprise, for me, was Kirkwall, which was much nicer than I anticipated, and has that unique cathedral in the middle. A medieval Viking Cathedral made of faded apricot sandstone! Wondrous
OK now I must stop doing brand marketing for North Scotland and do my own work. Anon
Glad you found the far North worth visiting! And St Magnus is one of my favourite cathedrals beside Wells and Durham - with its little wood nearby jam packed with birds beside the two ruined palaces.
On harling, it is also part of the vernacular up there, perhaps?
Planning authorities have fairly fixed ideas about the external appearance. Scottish self-building friends tell me that some particularly rural places up there have an attachment to 1.5 stories with dormers.
There are quite a lot I have seen in England which have demanded fake chimneys made of either brick (which is a pain because you have to build something underneath for it to stand on), or grp, because in the village / area / region that is 'traditional'.
I have seen some people argue back using words such as 'fake' or ' pastiche' or "oh no it bloody isn't".
It is indeed a Scots word. No idea if it also occurs in Gallowgateland - which it may well do.
JCVI has refused to give the go-ahead to give jabs to over-12s purely on health grounds in a move that is likely to go down very badly with ministers. Each of the 4 CMOs will now consider the advice to look at wider benefits of giving the jab
This idea that now is not the time to raise taxes on those who work is odd. For the last 18 months or so working people have been supported by furlough. Others who worked from home in secure jobs have built up savings.
Now the bills have to be paid. Not just for Covid but for social care and everything else.
So everyone will have to pay: workers - and I include those past pensionable age who are still working - and those with savings and assets. And all generations will have to pay because (a) all generations benefited from the support for the economy; (b) all benefit one way or another from public services; and (c) all benefit from social care - either now (directly) or by not having to pay for parents or by not losing a possible inheritance or directly in the future.
It won't be nice. But no group should be immune from paying the bills. Far too much special pleading going on.
NI is an odd choice because it is in effect a tax but only on some. So it should be extended to all who are working if it is going to be raised.
It is not the workers pleading! The solution being proposed, as you point out in the final paragraph, is that only workers under 65 pay.
There is no additional tax being proposed for workers over 65. There are no new wealth taxes being proposed. Pensioners are also getting 8% increase on state pension vs wage freezes for most workers.
Saying that is unfair on workers under 65 is not special pleading, divisive or odd, just standing up for basic fairness.
Rubbish, people retiring now do not get the state pension till 67 and rising and so many over 65's will pay the NI.
This idea that now is not the time to raise taxes on those who work is odd. For the last 18 months or so working people have been supported by furlough. Others who worked from home in secure jobs have built up savings.
Now the bills have to be paid. Not just for Covid but for social care and everything else.
So everyone will have to pay: workers - and I include those past pensionable age who are still working - and those with savings and assets. And all generations will have to pay because (a) all generations benefited from the support for the economy; (b) all benefit one way or another from public services; and (c) all benefit from social care - either now (directly) or by not having to pay for parents or by not losing a possible inheritance or directly in the future.
It won't be nice. But no group should be immune from paying the bills. Far too much special pleading going on.
NI is an odd choice because it is in effect a tax but only on some. So it should be extended to all who are working if it is going to be raised.
It is not the workers pleading! The solution being proposed, as you point out in the final paragraph, is that only workers under 65 pay.
There is no additional tax being proposed for workers over 65. There are no new wealth taxes being proposed. Pensioners are also getting 8% increase on state pension vs wage freezes for most workers.
Saying that is unfair on workers under 65 is not special pleading, divisive or odd, just standing up for basic fairness.
Rubbish, people retiring now do not get the state pension till 67 and rising and so many over 65's will pay the NI.
People retiring now get the state pension at 66
OK, but will be 67 in a few years and in any case still valid point that people 65 and over will get caught with the NI in an increasing amount.
I have just bought and android phone for my business - the first one I have owned in years, after many years of iphones. It is driving me mad. Firstly, it was impossible to turn off google assistant, despite blocking it in the settings. Secondly, it buzzes about every 10 minutes. I have spent an hour going through it, turning off every possible notification, and it still inexplicably buzzes. I only want a phone to make calls and for tethering, google maps, and occasional internet use, and a few business related apps.
I am not a technophone, but it seems to me like the phone is essentially programmed to make you submit to and become reliant on its features, rather than you being in control of them. (Thus nicely proving the argument set out by Shoshana Zuboff in the book 'the age of surveillance capitalism')
I have spent hours on this already. Can anyone recommend some way of getting some independent technical support with this problem?
Still got the receipt? Get another iPhone, you know it makes sense.
I nearly did - my personal phone is an iphone.
However, I had one for my last job, and the battery only lasted a year before it seriously starts failing, ie switching itself off and saying 0% battery when using maps and taking photos and tethering when on the train. I use the phone for work and can't take the risk of this happening, hence the decision to switch.
Couldn't you just have got yourself an external battery ? They are fairly light, quite cheap, and hold at least 5x the charge of the average phone.
So whoever gave Scotland control over income tax, created a bigger mess by accidently making Income Tax unchangeable.
Oops, I bet Osbourne didn't think about that when he did it.
When Scot Nats pointed out the partial devolving of income tax powers was filled with nonsensical procedural issues that would cause problems in the future they were denigrated as being "too scared" to accept the powers rather than being lauded as clear sighted visionaries.
The problem is the Barnett formula.
If the Barnett formula was abolished and the Scots simply kept rather taxes they raised, without HMRC getting involved, that would be a much better solution.
That would mean exposing that they are stiffing us and no chance they will hand over any real powers to Scotland any time. The income one was meant to be a ball and chain that hampered Scotland not helped. As ever the Fcukwits made a real arse of it.
It's weird, because I've been using the phrase "stiffing us" for decades and have clearly been getting its meaning completely wrong. Thanks Malc.
The UK's vaccine advisory body has refused to give the green light to vaccinating healthy children aged 12-15 years old on health grounds alone.
But the JCVI said the government should consider wider issues including disruption to schools.
Ministers across the UK have asked chief medical officers to look at whether that tips the balance.
Meanwhile, an extra 200,000 teens with underlying conditions will now be eligible for two doses.
Doctors identified that children with chronic heart, lung and liver conditions were at much higher risk of Covid than healthy children.
The decision on healthy children was based on concern over an extremely rare side effect of the Pfizer vaccine which causes heart inflammation.
But as children are at such low risk from the virus, they decided that vaccination would offer on "marginal gain" and therefore there was "insufficient" evidence to offer a mass offer.
That the English language did not have the verb ESCALATE until the 1920s. Absolutely amazing. It was only after the escalator was invented that it appeared in the language.
I've doubled checked with the Oxford English Dictionary and indeed they have no usage of the word prior to the 1920s.
I am blown away.
Well, you can be blown away again.
Globe 1911
A “new joy,” we read, has been added to the attraction:-, of London the shape of the new escalator at Earl’s Court. Look out for a new pantomime-hit, entitled “ M ill \ou Escalate With Mel”
Liverpool Echop 1914:
"HOW TO ESCALATE OX THE MOVING STAIRWAY AT OXFORD CIRCUS. '"Do you escalate?" is a suggested opening conversation which 15 equally suitable all grades of society in London."
Took me 1 minute on britishnewspaperarchive - though the search function is annoying and won't stop looking for escalator as well as misprints never mind what I do, so there may be earlier ones.
Your 1910s usage is specifically about taking an escalator, the 1920s and later usage is Escalate as we currently use it. Either way it is still the crux of my amazement. That the verb "To Escalate" comes from the noun Escalator and not the other way round.
I bet there is a metric tonne of historical fiction that has characters anachronistically worrying about the situation escalating.
The idea that given all the expenses of Covid, the NHS and social care, let alone anything else, we can avoid raising taxes on working people, as @MaxPB seems to want, is for the birds.
Taxes will have to rise and all will have to pay. That's all there is to it. All these demands for special exclusions is just self-interested nonsense.
Should we be raising taxes only on working age people?
"1% on NI" is a 2% tax rise on the employed, and a 0% tax rise on pensioners.
1%, 2% or whatever on income tax is a tax paid by all.
I did put forward the typically centre moderate view of 2% on income tax on here last night (I think). So workers and pensioners both contribute.
2% hike in income tax isn't moderate. It's almost Corbynite.
I'm absolutely disgusted with the Tory leadership. I campaigned hard in 2019 and believed the no tax rise manifesto promise. Fiscal drag is the order of the day.
In fairness it was not contemplated in 2019 that the government would spend more than £400bn on helping the economy cope with an 18 month pandemic which has devastated tax revenues as well. Politicians are all too keen to argue that circumstances have changed when breaking a promise but I struggle to think of a government that has a better base for such an argument than this one.
Tories should stand for sound money, careful management of the country's accounts and limitations on the role of the state. In some circumstances that requires more spending and thus, responsibly, more taxes, than others. This is such a time. I am more worried about having stable and sustainable public finances than current tax rates.
Now is not the time to put taxes up on working people. I don't care about my personal situation, an extra £1.6k per year in tax between myself and my wife is unfortunate but it doesn't really make a big difference to us. There will be millions of middle income people across the country that will find that kind of income cut very, very difficult to take.
Using my dad as an example again, his net income in retirement is about £60.5k. A working age person with an equivalent gross has a net income of £55k. In what world does it make sense that my dad, with no responsibilities, no kids, no mortgage and no real costs pays £5.5k less in tax than a working age person who will have a mortgage/rent, kids, possible nursery fees, school expenses, commuting costs etc...
The whole system is needs rethinking. Why is anyone in the higher rate tax bracket getting 100% of the state pension? In what world does that make sense?!
With respect a net pensioner income of 60K plus is a million miles from most pensioners income
It is not the average, but it is not particularly unusual either, especially for those from the public sector final salary schemes.
Poor pensioners are still better off than poor workers. Rich pensioners are better off than rich workers. They are also richer than the workers are forecast to get to when they are retired.
Yet new taxes go on workers, most public (and private) sector workers get a pay freeze. The retired get no new taxes and 8% increase in state pension.
This will only make the generational conflict deeper and wider.
I'm not sure about your first paragraph; it is often mentioned on here, but I'm yet to see the evidence.
I'm on a 'gold-plated' public sector (Civil Service) final pension salary scheme. I was well-paid, retiring on a salary of c. £82K after 38 years service, a couple of years ago. But my pension, generous though it is, is nowhere near £60K - much nearer £20K. I'm not complaining at all, quite happy with it, but I do wonder whether non-public sector workers have an exaggerated view of the value of public sector pensions. You would have to be retiring on a salary well over £120k to get anywhere near £60k in pension; there's not many in that category.
I've just had a pension review, actually. I knew my public sector pension was better than my previous private sector pension, but I'm slightly shocked just how much better. Most private sector workers do not have final salary pensions. The IFA I talked to told me that the average private sector workers amassed a pension pot of around £50k by retirement. Whereas if you work as, say, a hospital admin worker - or some other not desperately well paid public sector job - for 40 years you can amass a pension with a trade in value in excess of three quarters of a million pounds.
Yep. I tried to calculate the benefit once and I reckoned add 40% on the salary and you're getting close. We see many public sector retirees who have lump sum and income entitlements (always index-linked and with death benefits) that you would need over £1m to purchase in the real world. But, hey, let's pay the public sector more.
PS pensions are good but generally the pay rates certainly used to be less than in the private sector. Also remember the monthly contributions were compulsory if you didn't opt out after the first couple of years or so. I'm very content with my arrangements but the idea that we have lived lives of idleness and luxury since the mid-70s is frankly rubbish. Like most generations we had our fair share of hardship. I well recall my first London flat - £15k - with strict borrowing rules and high interest rates. I lived hand to mouth for a good few years just to cope. I had bare floorboards for the first 3 years - not the varnished/sealed jobs of these days - I could not afford carpet. All of my furniture was begged, borrowed or second-hand. And I was by no means alone.
I'm reading Dominic Sandbrook's "Seasons in the Sun: the Battle for Britain 1974-1979" at the moment and my goodness does it sound shit.
I pity anyone who has to live through that.
The 70's were brilliant, pay rise every month , cheap beer , great music , will admit looking back the fashion was dodgy. We had the times of our lives and far superior to the shithole the country is just now..
I have just done a long tour of far north Scotland - Ullapool, Assynt, Cape Wrath, Caithness and the Orkneys. Much of it looked magnificent in generally fine weather,; tho I will confess John o Groats (where we mostly stayed) is a toilet (albeit with majestic views of the Orkneys)
Why do the Scots in that corner of Scotland INSIST on building houses in a dung-brown or birdshit-grey colour? Like they want them to be ugly. The far, flat north east of Scotland is never gonna be a beauty - unlike the Highlands and Islands - but it would be much improved if everyone just painted their houses white, like the crofts of old. Or even pink. Tartan?
Anything would be better than the colour of untreated sewage you get now. It is most perplexing
They really don't like people calling Orkney "the Orkneys" or "the Orkney Isles", or calling Shetland "the Shetlands" or "the Shetland Isles". So much so that some Orcadians and Shetlanders will even (wrongly) call the Faroes "Faroe".
Agreed about the paint. Stornoway, Kirkwall, and Lerwick would all look much nicer if the houses and shops in the centre were painted in pastel colours. They could use that street on the waterside in Portree as a model. They wouldn't have to go full-on Portmeirion to lighten the atmosphere.
Portree has some colourful houses on the waterfront but Tobermory is the more striking example (it famously doubles for the fictional and equally colourful Ballymory). I was lucky enough to spend a week in each town last month, both very charming places (and Skye was much less over-run than some had warned us).
This idea that now is not the time to raise taxes on those who work is odd. For the last 18 months or so working people have been supported by furlough. Others who worked from home in secure jobs have built up savings.
Now the bills have to be paid. Not just for Covid but for social care and everything else.
So everyone will have to pay: workers - and I include those past pensionable age who are still working - and those with savings and assets. And all generations will have to pay because (a) all generations benefited from the support for the economy; (b) all benefit one way or another from public services; and (c) all benefit from social care - either now (directly) or by not having to pay for parents or by not losing a possible inheritance or directly in the future.
It won't be nice. But no group should be immune from paying the bills. Far too much special pleading going on.
NI is an odd choice because it is in effect a tax but only on some. So it should be extended to all who are working if it is going to be raised.
What a load of rubbish. The economy was shut down to primarily benefit older people who are most at risk and to protect the NHS which is another service that is used mostly by older people.
Businesses like your daughter's was sacrificed to protect older people and now it's time for older people to bear the cost of that shutdown. A stat posted here showed that 16% of pensioners have earnings in the higher rate tax bracket, that's a huge number of people to target for more tax before we even think about putting up taxes on working age people.
The country is currently being fleeced by the generation above who have decided they want an easy life and the best way to get that is to claim a larger share of the economic pie for themselves and if they have to impoverish working age people then that's a bonus.
You ducked out of paying for your parents care, you're ducking out of paying for your own care, you've piled on cost after cost on young people, you bought all the property then accused young people of being incapable of saving all while charging us ridiculous rents on crap flats that aren't fit for animals to live in.
Your generation has a lot to answer for, you've ruined the legacy of what your parents left behind and now you're trying to take away any chance my generation has of leaving behind a better world for our kids. You destroyed the climate, made the rich much richer, the poor much poorer and now won't pay for the bill that was accumulated to protect your generation from dying. It wasn't 20-50 year olds dying of this.
Solidarity, comrade. Welcome to the barricades.
(I joke, I have a lot of sympathy with your anger and the points you make.)
Honestly, is the kind of stuff that makes me want to vote for Labour just to fuck with the old wankers but then I remember Labour are also part of the gerontocracy and will do exactly the same as the Tories because they want the votes.
Let the pensioners eat cake
No thanks, Malc. Think I'd allow you all bread and water, maybe the odd bit of scotch every so often.
Very generous , surely an odd Domino's would not be out of order.
That the English language did not have the verb ESCALATE until the 1920s. Absolutely amazing. It was only after the escalator was invented that it appeared in the language.
I've doubled checked with the Oxford English Dictionary and indeed they have no usage of the word prior to the 1920s.
I am blown away.
Have you checked old American dictionaries?
American dictionaries concur. Mirriam-Webster actually puts it later, in the 1940s.
I have just bought and android phone for my business - the first one I have owned in years, after many years of iphones. It is driving me mad. Firstly, it was impossible to turn off google assistant, despite blocking it in the settings. Secondly, it buzzes about every 10 minutes. I have spent an hour going through it, turning off every possible notification, and it still inexplicably buzzes. I only want a phone to make calls and for tethering, google maps, and occasional internet use, and a few business related apps.
I am not a technophone, but it seems to me like the phone is essentially programmed to make you submit to and become reliant on its features, rather than you being in control of them. (Thus nicely proving the argument set out by Shoshana Zuboff in the book 'the age of surveillance capitalism')
I have spent hours on this already. Can anyone recommend some way of getting some independent technical support with this problem?
Still got the receipt? Get another iPhone, you know it makes sense.
I nearly did - my personal phone is an iphone.
However, I had one for my last job, and the battery only lasted a year before it seriously starts failing, ie switching itself off and saying 0% battery when using maps and taking photos and tethering when on the train. I use the phone for work and can't take the risk of this happening, hence the decision to switch.
Couldn't you just have got yourself an external battery ? They are fairly light, quite cheap, and hold at least 5x the charge of the average phone.
Wife and I bought new iPhone 7’s at the same time. Usage is similar. The battery on Hersey becoming temperamental, but mine is fine.
I have just bought and android phone for my business - the first one I have owned in years, after many years of iphones. It is driving me mad. Firstly, it was impossible to turn off google assistant, despite blocking it in the settings. Secondly, it buzzes about every 10 minutes. I have spent an hour going through it, turning off every possible notification, and it still inexplicably buzzes. I only want a phone to make calls and for tethering, google maps, and occasional internet use, and a few business related apps.
I am not a technophone, but it seems to me like the phone is essentially programmed to make you submit to and become reliant on its features, rather than you being in control of them. (Thus nicely proving the argument set out by Shoshana Zuboff in the book 'the age of surveillance capitalism')
I have spent hours on this already. Can anyone recommend some way of getting some independent technical support with this problem?
Interestingly, I went from Android to iPhone earlier this year, and (of course) a dozen little things really annoyed me.
After about three months, I got into "the iPhone way" and really enjoyed it, with two major caveats:
1. The iPhone keyboard is rubbish at swiping. You are much better off doing "hunt and peck" with it.
2. Android still has better notifications, with much more control over what is seen and what makes noises.
The JCVI’s decision notes that it is not within its remit to consider wider issues such as disruption to education and wider community transmission, and has agreed that ministers can seek advice on this elsewhere.
The chief medical officers of the four UK nations will be asked for their views, with the hope of a UK-wide policy being formed.
It is understood the JCVI made the decision by a majority vote on Thursday, following lengthy discussions and debate.
The organisation will next week consider the separate issue of third, “booster” jabs, and whether these should be universal or aimed only at older or more clinically vulnerable people.
JCVI has refused to give the go-ahead to give jabs to over-12s purely on health grounds in a move that is likely to go down very badly with ministers. Each of the 4 CMOs will now consider the advice to look at wider benefits of giving the jab
Time to sack them and give the role back to the regulator. We no longer have a vaccine shortage so why do we need the JCVI to have a say? It made sense when vaccines were a scarce resource and we needed to use them for widest coverage but now we have got enough to send 4m to Australia and still have 40m or so left over.
I have just bought and android phone for my business - the first one I have owned in years, after many years of iphones. It is driving me mad. Firstly, it was impossible to turn off google assistant, despite blocking it in the settings. Secondly, it buzzes about every 10 minutes. I have spent an hour going through it, turning off every possible notification, and it still inexplicably buzzes. I only want a phone to make calls and for tethering, google maps, and occasional internet use, and a few business related apps.
I am not a technophone, but it seems to me like the phone is essentially programmed to make you submit to and become reliant on its features, rather than you being in control of them. (Thus nicely proving the argument set out by Shoshana Zuboff in the book 'the age of surveillance capitalism')
I have spent hours on this already. Can anyone recommend some way of getting some independent technical support with this problem?
Still got the receipt? Get another iPhone, you know it makes sense.
I nearly did - my personal phone is an iphone.
However, I had one for my last job, and the battery only lasted a year before it seriously starts failing, ie switching itself off and saying 0% battery when using maps and taking photos and tethering when on the train. I use the phone for work and can't take the risk of this happening, hence the decision to switch.
Couldn't you just have got yourself an external battery ? They are fairly light, quite cheap, and hold at least 5x the charge of the average phone.
Wife and I bought new iPhone 7’s at the same time. Usage is similar. The battery on Hersey becoming temperamental, but mine is fine.
Battery life depends on what you're using it for, though. Maps seems to be an energy hog.
Enough frivolity , I must away and do some productive stuff. Have to say I had a super haircut and shave at Turkish barber's today, some pleasant chit chat here , with wife playing ABBA in background. Time for a refreshment.
Only for substandard housing. Plenty of decent stuff, and it is irrelevant to stone building areas and crofts.
My parents' house is harled.
And while it is true to say that when it was built, the owners in the neighbouring street complained about all the "cheap bungalows" being constructed.
JCVI has refused to give the go-ahead to give jabs to over-12s purely on health grounds in a move that is likely to go down very badly with ministers. Each of the 4 CMOs will now consider the advice to look at wider benefits of giving the jab
Time to sack them and give the role back to the regulator. We no longer have a vaccine shortage so why do we need the JCVI to have a say? It made sense when vaccines were a scarce resource and we needed to use them for widest coverage but now we have got enough to send 4m to Australia and still have 40m or so left over.
Why? They have a specific and rather narrow mandate, and ultimately they don't make the final decision.
I have just bought and android phone for my business - the first one I have owned in years, after many years of iphones. It is driving me mad. Firstly, it was impossible to turn off google assistant, despite blocking it in the settings. Secondly, it buzzes about every 10 minutes. I have spent an hour going through it, turning off every possible notification, and it still inexplicably buzzes. I only want a phone to make calls and for tethering, google maps, and occasional internet use, and a few business related apps.
I am not a technophone, but it seems to me like the phone is essentially programmed to make you submit to and become reliant on its features, rather than you being in control of them. (Thus nicely proving the argument set out by Shoshana Zuboff in the book 'the age of surveillance capitalism')
I have spent hours on this already. Can anyone recommend some way of getting some independent technical support with this problem?
Still got the receipt? Get another iPhone, you know it makes sense.
I nearly did - my personal phone is an iphone.
However, I had one for my last job, and the battery only lasted a year before it seriously starts failing, ie switching itself off and saying 0% battery when using maps and taking photos and tethering when on the train. I use the phone for work and can't take the risk of this happening, hence the decision to switch.
Couldn't you just have got yourself an external battery ? They are fairly light, quite cheap, and hold at least 5x the charge of the average phone.
If you have a modern iPhone and more money than sense, you can get the Apple MagSafe battery which attaches with magnets, and is therefore really cool.
The idea that given all the expenses of Covid, the NHS and social care, let alone anything else, we can avoid raising taxes on working people, as @MaxPB seems to want, is for the birds.
Taxes will have to rise and all will have to pay. That's all there is to it. All these demands for special exclusions is just self-interested nonsense.
Should we be raising taxes only on working age people?
"1% on NI" is a 2% tax rise on the employed, and a 0% tax rise on pensioners.
1%, 2% or whatever on income tax is a tax paid by all.
I did put forward the typically centre moderate view of 2% on income tax on here last night (I think). So workers and pensioners both contribute.
2% hike in income tax isn't moderate. It's almost Corbynite.
I'm absolutely disgusted with the Tory leadership. I campaigned hard in 2019 and believed the no tax rise manifesto promise. Fiscal drag is the order of the day.
(...)
(...)
With respect a net pensioner income of 60K plus is a million miles from most pensioners income
It is not the average, but it is not particularly unusual either, especially for those from the public sector final salary schemes.
Poor pensioners are still better off than poor workers. Rich pensioners are better off than rich workers. They are also richer than the workers are forecast to get to when they are retired.
Yet new taxes go on workers, most public (and private) sector workers get a pay freeze. The retired get no new taxes and 8% increase in state pension.
This will only make the generational conflict deeper and wider.
I'm not sure about your first paragraph; it is often mentioned on here, but I'm yet to see the evidence.
I'm on a 'gold-plated' public sector (Civil Service) final pension salary scheme. I was well-paid, retiring on a salary of c. £82K after 38 years service, a couple of years ago. But my pension, generous though it is, is nowhere near £60K - much nearer £20K. I'm not complaining at all, quite happy with it, but I do wonder whether non-public sector workers have an exaggerated view of the value of public sector pensions. You would have to be retiring on a salary well over £120k to get anywhere near £60k in pension; there's not many in that category.
I've just had a pension review, actually. I knew my public sector pension was better than my previous private sector pension, but I'm slightly shocked just how much better. Most private sector workers do not have final salary pensions. The IFA I talked to told me that the average private sector workers amassed a pension pot of around £50k by retirement. Whereas if you work as, say, a hospital admin worker - or some other not desperately well paid public sector job - for 40 years you can amass a pension with a trade in value in excess of three quarters of a million pounds.
Yep. I tried to calculate the benefit once and I reckoned add 40% on the salary and you're getting close. We see many public sector retirees who have lump sum and income entitlements (always index-linked and with death benefits) that you would need over £1m to purchase in the real world. But, hey, let's pay the public sector more.
PS pensions are good but generally the pay rates certainly used to be less than in the private sector. Also remember the monthly contributions were compulsory if you didn't opt out after the first couple of years or so. I'm very content with my arrangements but the idea that we have lived lives of idleness and luxury since the mid-70s is frankly rubbish. Like most generations we had our fair share of hardship. I well recall my first London flat - £15k - with strict borrowing rules and high interest rates. I lived hand to mouth for a good few years just to cope. I had bare floorboards for the first 3 years - not the varnished/sealed jobs of these days - I could not afford carpet. All of my furniture was begged, borrowed or second-hand. And I was by no means alone.
I'm reading Dominic Sandbrook's "Seasons in the Sun: the Battle for Britain 1974-1979" at the moment and my goodness does it sound shit.
I pity anyone who has to live through that.
The 70's were brilliant, pay rise every month , cheap beer , great music , will admit looking back the fashion was dodgy. We had the times of our lives and far superior to the shithole the country is just now..
I have just done a long tour of far north Scotland - Ullapool, Assynt, Cape Wrath, Caithness and the Orkneys. Much of it looked magnificent in generally fine weather,; tho I will confess John o Groats (where we mostly stayed) is a toilet (albeit with majestic views of the Orkneys)
Why do the Scots in that corner of Scotland INSIST on building houses in a dung-brown or birdshit-grey colour? Like they want them to be ugly. The far, flat north east of Scotland is never gonna be a beauty - unlike the Highlands and Islands - but it would be much improved if everyone just painted their houses white, like the crofts of old. Or even pink. Tartan?
Anything would be better than the colour of untreated sewage you get now. It is most perplexing
I've often thought the same. And it's not just the North East. You can tell when you cross the border with the sudden arrival of houses covered in tiny stones (must be a word for this?). I'm sure they resist the weather, but good grief they're ugly. OTOH, the heavy stone fronted villas and tenements of the older parts of Scottish towns - I'm thinking in particular of Glasgow and Edinburgh, but you find them everywhere - are heartbreakingly lovely.
It is called "Harl" I believe and was mainly social housing from the 50's. It lasts for a long time and protects the fabric of the building from weather big time.
Indeed. Effectively a sacrificial coating which has to be replaced every few decades - but protecting the underlying masonry.
It's locally known as roughcasting and it can be painted but usually isn't.
The JCVI’s decision notes that it is not within its remit to consider wider issues such as disruption to education and wider community transmission, and has agreed that ministers can seek advice on this elsewhere.
The chief medical officers of the four UK nations will be asked for their views, with the hope of a UK-wide policy being formed.
It is understood the JCVI made the decision by a majority vote on Thursday, following lengthy discussions and debate.
The organisation will next week consider the separate issue of third, “booster” jabs, and whether these should be universal or aimed only at older or more clinically vulnerable people.
And this is the problem with how the whole decision making process is set up, every group is siloed. SAGE only care about keeping the death rate down, fuck the economy. The JCVI only cares about not wasting vaccines and some small potential side-effects, fuck the kids who will get severe symptoms and the other kids who are facing another year of disrupted education. Now we have to just hope that the booster programme will be approved but it's looking increasingly likely that their decision will be taken in isolation and not take into account the massive downside risk of having another lockdown if VE fades in December even if we are all hoping it won't.
From the very beginning there has been a complete and utter lack of joined up thinking on every decision taken. Once again we see it with this idiotic decision and unfortunately I fear we will see it when they recommend no significant booster programme.
It's time for the politicians to step up, disband the JCVI and make the tough decisions for themselves. No more rule by scientist.
That the English language did not have the verb ESCALATE until the 1920s. Absolutely amazing. It was only after the escalator was invented that it appeared in the language.
I've doubled checked with the Oxford English Dictionary and indeed they have no usage of the word prior to the 1920s.
I am blown away.
Well, you can be blown away again.
Globe 1911
A “new joy,” we read, has been added to the attraction:-, of London the shape of the new escalator at Earl’s Court. Look out for a new pantomime-hit, entitled “ M ill \ou Escalate With Mel”
Liverpool Echop 1914:
"HOW TO ESCALATE OX THE MOVING STAIRWAY AT OXFORD CIRCUS. '"Do you escalate?" is a suggested opening conversation which 15 equally suitable all grades of society in London."
Took me 1 minute on britishnewspaperarchive - though the search function is annoying and won't stop looking for escalator as well as misprints never mind what I do, so there may be earlier ones.
Your 1910s usage is specifically about taking an escalator, the 1920s and later usage is Escalate as we currently use it. Either way it is still the crux of my amazement. That the verb "To Escalate" comes from the noun Escalator and not the other way round.
I bet there is a metric tonne of historical fiction that has characters anachronistically worrying about the situation escalating.
I think quantity of Historical Fiction is actually measured in proper imperial tons. Science Fiction is measures in metric tonnes.
JCVI has considered commentary from stakeholders on the benefits of vaccination on the operation of schools and the educational impact of the pandemic on children and young people. JCVI is constituted with expertise to allow consideration of the health benefits and risks of vaccination and it is not within its remit to incorporate in-depth considerations on wider societal impacts, including educational benefits. The government may wish to seek further views on the wider societal and educational impacts from the chief medical officers of the 4 nations, with representation from JCVI in these subsequent discussions. There is considerable uncertainty regarding the impact of vaccination in children and young people on peer-to-peer transmission and transmission in the wider (highly vaccinated) population. Estimates from modelling vary substantially, and the committee is of the view that any impact on transmission may be relatively small, given the lower effectiveness of the vaccine against infection with the Delta variant.
Delivery of a COVID-19 vaccine programme for children and young people is likely to be disruptive to education in the short term, particularly if school premises are used for vaccination and there is potential for a COVID-19 vaccine programme to impact on the efficiency of roll-out of the influenza programme. Adverse reactions to vaccination (such as fevers) may also lead to time away from education for some individuals.
I have just bought and android phone for my business - the first one I have owned in years, after many years of iphones. It is driving me mad. Firstly, it was impossible to turn off google assistant, despite blocking it in the settings. Secondly, it buzzes about every 10 minutes. I have spent an hour going through it, turning off every possible notification, and it still inexplicably buzzes. I only want a phone to make calls and for tethering, google maps, and occasional internet use, and a few business related apps.
I am not a technophone, but it seems to me like the phone is essentially programmed to make you submit to and become reliant on its features, rather than you being in control of them. (Thus nicely proving the argument set out by Shoshana Zuboff in the book 'the age of surveillance capitalism')
I have spent hours on this already. Can anyone recommend some way of getting some independent technical support with this problem?
Still got the receipt? Get another iPhone, you know it makes sense.
I nearly did - my personal phone is an iphone.
However, I had one for my last job, and the battery only lasted a year before it seriously starts failing, ie switching itself off and saying 0% battery when using maps and taking photos and tethering when on the train. I use the phone for work and can't take the risk of this happening, hence the decision to switch.
Couldn't you just have got yourself an external battery ? They are fairly light, quite cheap, and hold at least 5x the charge of the average phone.
Wife and I bought new iPhone 7’s at the same time. Usage is similar. The battery on Hersey becoming temperamental, but mine is fine.
Battery life depends on what you're using it for, though. Maps seems to be an energy hog.
yes i always found using navigation really drained mine. not sure what extra it's having to do.
JCVI has refused to give the go-ahead to give jabs to over-12s purely on health grounds in a move that is likely to go down very badly with ministers. Each of the 4 CMOs will now consider the advice to look at wider benefits of giving the jab
Time to sack them and give the role back to the regulator. We no longer have a vaccine shortage so why do we need the JCVI to have a say? It made sense when vaccines were a scarce resource and we needed to use them for widest coverage but now we have got enough to send 4m to Australia and still have 40m or so left over.
I’m rather surprised, to be honest. Would have thought reducing the pool of those more likely to pass it on would have been a good thing.
We’ll be there for our boosters though. Flu shots in a couple of weeks.
Enough frivolity , I must away and do some productive stuff. Have to say I had a super haircut and shave at Turkish barber's today, some pleasant chit chat here , with wife playing ABBA in background. Time for a refreshment.
Absolutely correct. I am going to the pub now. Not one of those designer cocktail bars like @MaxPB goes to! Keeping it working class 👍
The idea that given all the expenses of Covid, the NHS and social care, let alone anything else, we can avoid raising taxes on working people, as @MaxPB seems to want, is for the birds.
Taxes will have to rise and all will have to pay. That's all there is to it. All these demands for special exclusions is just self-interested nonsense.
Should we be raising taxes only on working age people?
"1% on NI" is a 2% tax rise on the employed, and a 0% tax rise on pensioners.
1%, 2% or whatever on income tax is a tax paid by all.
I did put forward the typically centre moderate view of 2% on income tax on here last night (I think). So workers and pensioners both contribute.
2% hike in income tax isn't moderate. It's almost Corbynite.
I'm absolutely disgusted with the Tory leadership. I campaigned hard in 2019 and believed the no tax rise manifesto promise. Fiscal drag is the order of the day.
(...)
(...)
With respect a net pensioner income of 60K plus is a million miles from most pensioners income
It is not the average, but it is not particularly unusual either, especially for those from the public sector final salary schemes.
Poor pensioners are still better off than poor workers. Rich pensioners are better off than rich workers. They are also richer than the workers are forecast to get to when they are retired.
Yet new taxes go on workers, most public (and private) sector workers get a pay freeze. The retired get no new taxes and 8% increase in state pension.
This will only make the generational conflict deeper and wider.
I'm not sure about your first paragraph; it is often mentioned on here, but I'm yet to see the evidence.
I'm on a 'gold-plated' public sector (Civil Service) final pension salary scheme. I was well-paid, retiring on a salary of c. £82K after 38 years service, a couple of years ago. But my pension, generous though it is, is nowhere near £60K - much nearer £20K. I'm not complaining at all, quite happy with it, but I do wonder whether non-public sector workers have an exaggerated view of the value of public sector pensions. You would have to be retiring on a salary well over £120k to get anywhere near £60k in pension; there's not many in that category.
I've just had a pension review, actually. I knew my public sector pension was better than my previous private sector pension, but I'm slightly shocked just how much better. Most private sector workers do not have final salary pensions. The IFA I talked to told me that the average private sector workers amassed a pension pot of around £50k by retirement. Whereas if you work as, say, a hospital admin worker - or some other not desperately well paid public sector job - for 40 years you can amass a pension with a trade in value in excess of three quarters of a million pounds.
Yep. I tried to calculate the benefit once and I reckoned add 40% on the salary and you're getting close. We see many public sector retirees who have lump sum and income entitlements (always index-linked and with death benefits) that you would need over £1m to purchase in the real world. But, hey, let's pay the public sector more.
PS pensions are good but generally the pay rates certainly used to be less than in the private sector. Also remember the monthly contributions were compulsory if you didn't opt out after the first couple of years or so. I'm very content with my arrangements but the idea that we have lived lives of idleness and luxury since the mid-70s is frankly rubbish. Like most generations we had our fair share of hardship. I well recall my first London flat - £15k - with strict borrowing rules and high interest rates. I lived hand to mouth for a good few years just to cope. I had bare floorboards for the first 3 years - not the varnished/sealed jobs of these days - I could not afford carpet. All of my furniture was begged, borrowed or second-hand. And I was by no means alone.
I'm reading Dominic Sandbrook's "Seasons in the Sun: the Battle for Britain 1974-1979" at the moment and my goodness does it sound shit.
I pity anyone who has to live through that.
The 70's were brilliant, pay rise every month , cheap beer , great music , will admit looking back the fashion was dodgy. We had the times of our lives and far superior to the shithole the country is just now..
I have just done a long tour of far north Scotland - Ullapool, Assynt, Cape Wrath, Caithness and the Orkneys. Much of it looked magnificent in generally fine weather,; tho I will confess John o Groats (where we mostly stayed) is a toilet (albeit with majestic views of the Orkneys)
Why do the Scots in that corner of Scotland INSIST on building houses in a dung-brown or birdshit-grey colour? Like they want them to be ugly. The far, flat north east of Scotland is never gonna be a beauty - unlike the Highlands and Islands - but it would be much improved if everyone just painted their houses white, like the crofts of old. Or even pink. Tartan?
Anything would be better than the colour of untreated sewage you get now. It is most perplexing
I've often thought the same. And it's not just the North East. You can tell when you cross the border with the sudden arrival of houses covered in tiny stones (must be a word for this?). I'm sure they resist the weather, but good grief they're ugly. OTOH, the heavy stone fronted villas and tenements of the older parts of Scottish towns - I'm thinking in particular of Glasgow and Edinburgh, but you find them everywhere - are heartbreakingly lovely.
It is called "Harl" I believe and was mainly social housing from the 50's. It lasts for a long time and protects the fabric of the building from weather big time.
Indeed. Effectively a sacrificial coating which has to be replaced every few decades - but protecting the underlying masonry.
It's locally known as roughcasting and it can be painted but usually isn't.
That the English language did not have the verb ESCALATE until the 1920s. Absolutely amazing. It was only after the escalator was invented that it appeared in the language.
I've doubled checked with the Oxford English Dictionary and indeed they have no usage of the word prior to the 1920s.
I am blown away.
Well, you can be blown away again.
Globe 1911
A “new joy,” we read, has been added to the attraction:-, of London the shape of the new escalator at Earl’s Court. Look out for a new pantomime-hit, entitled “ M ill \ou Escalate With Mel”
Liverpool Echop 1914:
"HOW TO ESCALATE OX THE MOVING STAIRWAY AT OXFORD CIRCUS. '"Do you escalate?" is a suggested opening conversation which 15 equally suitable all grades of society in London."
Took me 1 minute on britishnewspaperarchive - though the search function is annoying and won't stop looking for escalator as well as misprints never mind what I do, so there may be earlier ones.
Your 1910s usage is specifically about taking an escalator, the 1920s and later usage is Escalate as we currently use it. Either way it is still the crux of my amazement. That the verb "To Escalate" comes from the noun Escalator and not the other way round.
I bet there is a metric tonne of historical fiction that has characters anachronistically worrying about the situation escalating.
I think quantity of Historical Fiction is actually measured in proper imperial tons. Science Fiction is measures in metric tonnes.
JCVI has refused to give the go-ahead to give jabs to over-12s purely on health grounds in a move that is likely to go down very badly with ministers. Each of the 4 CMOs will now consider the advice to look at wider benefits of giving the jab
Time to sack them and give the role back to the regulator. We no longer have a vaccine shortage so why do we need the JCVI to have a say? It made sense when vaccines were a scarce resource and we needed to use them for widest coverage but now we have got enough to send 4m to Australia and still have 40m or so left over.
Why? They have a specific and rather narrow mandate, and ultimately they don't make the final decision.
Because they have the effective final say on who does and doesn't get the vaccine. It's completely ridiculous that the MHRA, FDA, EMA have all approved both Pfizer and Moderna for 12-15 year olds but another group of scientists say it shouldn't be administered and they've been given that final say on who does and doesn't get it.
We're going to be having this same discussion in a couple of weeks as Europe ramps up a booster programme and the JCVI weasels out of it by recommending it to just groups 1 and 2 rather than 1-10 as it should be. Why take the risk?
The JCVI’s decision notes that it is not within its remit to consider wider issues such as disruption to education and wider community transmission, and has agreed that ministers can seek advice on this elsewhere.
The chief medical officers of the four UK nations will be asked for their views, with the hope of a UK-wide policy being formed.
It is understood the JCVI made the decision by a majority vote on Thursday, following lengthy discussions and debate.
The organisation will next week consider the separate issue of third, “booster” jabs, and whether these should be universal or aimed only at older or more clinically vulnerable people.
It's time for the politicians to step up, disband the JCVI and make the tough decisions for themselves. No more rule by scientist.
It's not "rule by scientist" - they explicitly say "on scientific grounds only" its not justified, but there may be other grounds on which it is - such as wider societal or educational concerns - and that's not their jobs. Now it's down to the CMO's, and ultimately politicians.
The JCVI’s decision notes that it is not within its remit to consider wider issues such as disruption to education and wider community transmission, and has agreed that ministers can seek advice on this elsewhere.
The chief medical officers of the four UK nations will be asked for their views, with the hope of a UK-wide policy being formed.
It is understood the JCVI made the decision by a majority vote on Thursday, following lengthy discussions and debate.
The organisation will next week consider the separate issue of third, “booster” jabs, and whether these should be universal or aimed only at older or more clinically vulnerable people.
And this is the problem with how the whole decision making process is set up, every group is siloed. SAGE only care about keeping the death rate down, fuck the economy. The JCVI only cares about not wasting vaccines and some small potential side-effects, fuck the kids who will get severe symptoms and the other kids who are facing another year of disrupted education. Now we have to just hope that the booster programme will be approved but it's looking increasingly likely that their decision will be taken in isolation and not take into account the massive downside risk of having another lockdown if VE fades in December even if we are all hoping it won't.
From the very beginning there has been a complete and utter lack of joined up thinking on every decision taken. Once again we see it with this idiotic decision and unfortunately I fear we will see it when they recommend no significant booster programme.
It's time for the politicians to step up, disband the JCVI and make the tough decisions for themselves. No more rule by scientist.
I’m wondering if the jcvi are solely thinking about the risk to the individual, and not about wider effects. Surely increasing the number of people total with some degree of immunity is good for all? I would like a full, detailed explanation of their reasoning. I’m not saying that they are wrong, just that it feels wrong, and it would be good to have the full information behind the decision. It cannot any longer be based on limited supply.
That the English language did not have the verb ESCALATE until the 1920s. Absolutely amazing. It was only after the escalator was invented that it appeared in the language.
I've doubled checked with the Oxford English Dictionary and indeed they have no usage of the word prior to the 1920s.
I am blown away.
Well, you can be blown away again.
Globe 1911
A “new joy,” we read, has been added to the attraction:-, of London the shape of the new escalator at Earl’s Court. Look out for a new pantomime-hit, entitled “ M ill \ou Escalate With Mel”
Liverpool Echop 1914:
"HOW TO ESCALATE OX THE MOVING STAIRWAY AT OXFORD CIRCUS. '"Do you escalate?" is a suggested opening conversation which 15 equally suitable all grades of society in London."
Took me 1 minute on britishnewspaperarchive - though the search function is annoying and won't stop looking for escalator as well as misprints never mind what I do, so there may be earlier ones.
Your 1910s usage is specifically about taking an escalator, the 1920s and later usage is Escalate as we currently use it. Either way it is still the crux of my amazement. That the verb "To Escalate" comes from the noun Escalator and not the other way round.
I bet there is a metric tonne of historical fiction that has characters anachronistically worrying about the situation escalating.
I think quantity of Historical Fiction is actually measured in proper imperial tons. Science Fiction is measures in metric tonnes.
The idea that given all the expenses of Covid, the NHS and social care, let alone anything else, we can avoid raising taxes on working people, as @MaxPB seems to want, is for the birds.
Taxes will have to rise and all will have to pay. That's all there is to it. All these demands for special exclusions is just self-interested nonsense.
Should we be raising taxes only on working age people?
"1% on NI" is a 2% tax rise on the employed, and a 0% tax rise on pensioners.
1%, 2% or whatever on income tax is a tax paid by all.
I did put forward the typically centre moderate view of 2% on income tax on here last night (I think). So workers and pensioners both contribute.
2% hike in income tax isn't moderate. It's almost Corbynite.
I'm absolutely disgusted with the Tory leadership. I campaigned hard in 2019 and believed the no tax rise manifesto promise. Fiscal drag is the order of the day.
(...)
(...)
With respect a net pensioner income of 60K plus is a million miles from most pensioners income
It is not the average, but it is not particularly unusual either, especially for those from the public sector final salary schemes.
Poor pensioners are still better off than poor workers. Rich pensioners are better off than rich workers. They are also richer than the workers are forecast to get to when they are retired.
Yet new taxes go on workers, most public (and private) sector workers get a pay freeze. The retired get no new taxes and 8% increase in state pension.
This will only make the generational conflict deeper and wider.
I'm not sure about your first paragraph; it is often mentioned on here, but I'm yet to see the evidence.
I'm on a 'gold-plated' public sector (Civil Service) final pension salary scheme. I was well-paid, retiring on a salary of c. £82K after 38 years service, a couple of years ago. But my pension, generous though it is, is nowhere near £60K - much nearer £20K. I'm not complaining at all, quite happy with it, but I do wonder whether non-public sector workers have an exaggerated view of the value of public sector pensions. You would have to be retiring on a salary well over £120k to get anywhere near £60k in pension; there's not many in that category.
I've just had a pension review, actually. I knew my public sector pension was better than my previous private sector pension, but I'm slightly shocked just how much better. Most private sector workers do not have final salary pensions. The IFA I talked to told me that the average private sector workers amassed a pension pot of around £50k by retirement. Whereas if you work as, say, a hospital admin worker - or some other not desperately well paid public sector job - for 40 years you can amass a pension with a trade in value in excess of three quarters of a million pounds.
Yep. I tried to calculate the benefit once and I reckoned add 40% on the salary and you're getting close. We see many public sector retirees who have lump sum and income entitlements (always index-linked and with death benefits) that you would need over £1m to purchase in the real world. But, hey, let's pay the public sector more.
PS pensions are good but generally the pay rates certainly used to be less than in the private sector. Also remember the monthly contributions were compulsory if you didn't opt out after the first couple of years or so. I'm very content with my arrangements but the idea that we have lived lives of idleness and luxury since the mid-70s is frankly rubbish. Like most generations we had our fair share of hardship. I well recall my first London flat - £15k - with strict borrowing rules and high interest rates. I lived hand to mouth for a good few years just to cope. I had bare floorboards for the first 3 years - not the varnished/sealed jobs of these days - I could not afford carpet. All of my furniture was begged, borrowed or second-hand. And I was by no means alone.
I'm reading Dominic Sandbrook's "Seasons in the Sun: the Battle for Britain 1974-1979" at the moment and my goodness does it sound shit.
I pity anyone who has to live through that.
The 70's were brilliant, pay rise every month , cheap beer , great music , will admit looking back the fashion was dodgy. We had the times of our lives and far superior to the shithole the country is just now..
I have just done a long tour of far north Scotland - Ullapool, Assynt, Cape Wrath, Caithness and the Orkneys. Much of it looked magnificent in generally fine weather,; tho I will confess John o Groats (where we mostly stayed) is a toilet (albeit with majestic views of the Orkneys)
Why do the Scots in that corner of Scotland INSIST on building houses in a dung-brown or birdshit-grey colour? Like they want them to be ugly. The far, flat north east of Scotland is never gonna be a beauty - unlike the Highlands and Islands - but it would be much improved if everyone just painted their houses white, like the crofts of old. Or even pink. Tartan?
Anything would be better than the colour of untreated sewage you get now. It is most perplexing
I've often thought the same. And it's not just the North East. You can tell when you cross the border with the sudden arrival of houses covered in tiny stones (must be a word for this?). I'm sure they resist the weather, but good grief they're ugly. OTOH, the heavy stone fronted villas and tenements of the older parts of Scottish towns - I'm thinking in particular of Glasgow and Edinburgh, but you find them everywhere - are heartbreakingly lovely.
It is called "Harl" I believe and was mainly social housing from the 50's. It lasts for a long time and protects the fabric of the building from weather big time.
Indeed. Effectively a sacrificial coating which has to be replaced every few decades - but protecting the underlying masonry.
It's locally known as roughcasting and it can be painted but usually isn't.
JCVI has refused to give the go-ahead to give jabs to over-12s purely on health grounds in a move that is likely to go down very badly with ministers. Each of the 4 CMOs will now consider the advice to look at wider benefits of giving the jab
Time to sack them and give the role back to the regulator. We no longer have a vaccine shortage so why do we need the JCVI to have a say? It made sense when vaccines were a scarce resource and we needed to use them for widest coverage but now we have got enough to send 4m to Australia and still have 40m or so left over.
Was speaking with a colleague the other day who is not on JCVI, but whom has been invited to discuss with them and advise on some aspects of data analysis. His viewpoint was that the UK data are just not there yet to make a firm conclusion and - although personally in favour of extending the jab - he has some sympathy with their position. Very few UK youngsters have been vaccinated and most of those are non-typical, so you can get estimates of the vaccine risk (myocarditis e.g.) that cover easily 2 orders of magnitude (topping out not too far off 0.1%, although it's probably much lower), depending on data and definitions. The risk from Covid is also, although not so much, uncertain. So the JCVI have been asked whether vaccinating the youngsters is a good thing for the youngsters and they don't yet have a compelling answer.
What doesn't seem to be coming into play yet - and the person I spoke to was a little perplexed as to why - was data from other countries that have done more youngster vaccination.
I think this might be a situation in which the government have asked the wrong question (should we vaccinate young people, is it in their interests?) when it should have been instead what's a best guess estimate for risks from vaccine and from Covid and then the government take responsibility for weighing those up. If you wait for certainty, you might wait too long (as we appear to have done).
The idea that given all the expenses of Covid, the NHS and social care, let alone anything else, we can avoid raising taxes on working people, as @MaxPB seems to want, is for the birds.
Taxes will have to rise and all will have to pay. That's all there is to it. All these demands for special exclusions is just self-interested nonsense.
Should we be raising taxes only on working age people?
"1% on NI" is a 2% tax rise on the employed, and a 0% tax rise on pensioners.
1%, 2% or whatever on income tax is a tax paid by all.
I did put forward the typically centre moderate view of 2% on income tax on here last night (I think). So workers and pensioners both contribute.
2% hike in income tax isn't moderate. It's almost Corbynite.
I'm absolutely disgusted with the Tory leadership. I campaigned hard in 2019 and believed the no tax rise manifesto promise. Fiscal drag is the order of the day.
In fairness it was not contemplated in 2019 that the government would spend more than £400bn on helping the economy cope with an 18 month pandemic which has devastated tax revenues as well. Politicians are all too keen to argue that circumstances have changed when breaking a promise but I struggle to think of a government that has a better base for such an argument than this one.
Tories should stand for sound money, careful management of the country's accounts and limitations on the role of the state. In some circumstances that requires more spending and thus, responsibly, more taxes, than others. This is such a time. I am more worried about having stable and sustainable public finances than current tax rates.
Now is not the time to put taxes up on working people. I don't care about my personal situation, an extra £1.6k per year in tax between myself and my wife is unfortunate but it doesn't really make a big difference to us. There will be millions of middle income people across the country that will find that kind of income cut very, very difficult to take.
Using my dad as an example again, his net income in retirement is about £60.5k. A working age person with an equivalent gross has a net income of £55k. In what world does it make sense that my dad, with no responsibilities, no kids, no mortgage and no real costs pays £5.5k less in tax than a working age person who will have a mortgage/rent, kids, possible nursery fees, school expenses, commuting costs etc...
The whole system is needs rethinking. Why is anyone in the higher rate tax bracket getting 100% of the state pension? In what world does that make sense?!
With respect a net pensioner income of 60K plus is a million miles from most pensioners income
It is not the average, but it is not particularly unusual either, especially for those from the public sector final salary schemes.
Poor pensioners are still better off than poor workers. Rich pensioners are better off than rich workers. They are also richer than the workers are forecast to get to when they are retired.
Yet new taxes go on workers, most public (and private) sector workers get a pay freeze. The retired get no new taxes and 8% increase in state pension.
This will only make the generational conflict deeper and wider.
I'm not sure about your first paragraph; it is often mentioned on here, but I'm yet to see the evidence.
I'm on a 'gold-plated' public sector (Civil Service) final pension salary scheme. I was well-paid, retiring on a salary of c. £82K after 38 years service, a couple of years ago. But my pension, generous though it is, is nowhere near £60K - much nearer £20K. I'm not complaining at all, quite happy with it, but I do wonder whether non-public sector workers have an exaggerated view of the value of public sector pensions. You would have to be retiring on a salary well over £120k to get anywhere near £60k in pension; there's not many in that category.
I've just had a pension review, actually. I knew my public sector pension was better than my previous private sector pension, but I'm slightly shocked just how much better. Most private sector workers do not have final salary pensions. The IFA I talked to told me that the average private sector workers amassed a pension pot of around £50k by retirement. Whereas if you work as, say, a hospital admin worker - or some other not desperately well paid public sector job - for 40 years you can amass a pension with a trade in value in excess of three quarters of a million pounds.
Yep. I tried to calculate the benefit once and I reckoned add 40% on the salary and you're getting close. We see many public sector retirees who have lump sum and income entitlements (always index-linked and with death benefits) that you would need over £1m to purchase in the real world. But, hey, let's pay the public sector more.
PS pensions are good but generally the pay rates certainly used to be less than in the private sector. Also remember the monthly contributions were compulsory if you didn't opt out after the first couple of years or so. I'm very content with my arrangements but the idea that we have lived lives of idleness and luxury since the mid-70s is frankly rubbish. Like most generations we had our fair share of hardship. I well recall my first London flat - £15k - with strict borrowing rules and high interest rates. I lived hand to mouth for a good few years just to cope. I had bare floorboards for the first 3 years - not the varnished/sealed jobs of these days - I could not afford carpet. All of my furniture was begged, borrowed or second-hand. And I was by no means alone.
I'm reading Dominic Sandbrook's "Seasons in the Sun: the Battle for Britain 1974-1979" at the moment and my goodness does it sound shit.
I pity anyone who has to live through that.
The 70's were brilliant, pay rise every month , cheap beer , great music , will admit looking back the fashion was dodgy. We had the times of our lives and far superior to the shithole the country is just now..
I have just done a long tour of far north Scotland - Ullapool, Assynt, Cape Wrath, Caithness and the Orkneys. Much of it looked magnificent in generally fine weather,; tho I will confess John o Groats (where we mostly stayed) is a toilet (albeit with majestic views of the Orkneys)
Why do the Scots in that corner of Scotland INSIST on building houses in a dung-brown or birdshit-grey colour? Like they want them to be ugly. The far, flat north east of Scotland is never gonna be a beauty - unlike the Highlands and Islands - but it would be much improved if everyone just painted their houses white, like the crofts of old. Or even pink. Tartan?
Anything would be better than the colour of untreated sewage you get now. It is most perplexing
Ahhh... A tour of LibDem constituencies. Are St Albans, Richmond and Oxford next?
Is there something you need to share with us?
North East Fife might make a rather nice holiday. St Andrews (with the ruins, shops and restaurants of a mediaeval university town), fishertowns, breezy walks, the odd palace, and so on. Even golf, a nuclear rather than sand bunker, and, at Leuchars, planes; in the old days one could sit on the sea wall at St A with an ice cream and watch the last of the Lancaster family, the Shackleton, crawl up into the sky while the Phantoms zoomed around. Happy days. And the Tay Bridges to contemplate upon mortality and the ephemerality of glory, and Yes City Dundee just over the bridges with the Unicorn, Discovery and sthe new gallery on the seafront.
Well done for singing the praises of St Andrews, a town very close to my heart, without mentioning g**f.
The JCVI’s decision notes that it is not within its remit to consider wider issues such as disruption to education and wider community transmission, and has agreed that ministers can seek advice on this elsewhere.
The chief medical officers of the four UK nations will be asked for their views, with the hope of a UK-wide policy being formed.
It is understood the JCVI made the decision by a majority vote on Thursday, following lengthy discussions and debate.
The organisation will next week consider the separate issue of third, “booster” jabs, and whether these should be universal or aimed only at older or more clinically vulnerable people.
It's time for the politicians to step up, disband the JCVI and make the tough decisions for themselves. No more rule by scientist.
It's not "rule by scientist" - they explicitly say "on scientific grounds only" its not justified, but there may be other grounds on which it is - such as wider societal or educational concerns - and that's not their jobs. Now it's down to the CMO's, and ultimately politicians.
The regulator has said it is safe. The US regulator has said it is safe. The EU regulator has said it is safe. Specifically what are the JCVI saying all three of these highly respected bodies staffed by some of the top scientists have got wrong? It almost feels like they are accusing the world's regulators of putting children at risk when we know that not to be the case given the mitigation available for anyone at risk of side effects from Pfizer/Moderna (lie in bed for 72h after the first dose and again after the second dose).
Why do we even have a second scientific body looking at this? If they don't have any wider context than safety what's the point of them, it's replication of what the MHRA is there to do. The whole point of having a second body is to look at the wider context, not the narrow science - as I said, we have the MHRA to do that already.
The idea that given all the expenses of Covid, the NHS and social care, let alone anything else, we can avoid raising taxes on working people, as @MaxPB seems to want, is for the birds.
Taxes will have to rise and all will have to pay. That's all there is to it. All these demands for special exclusions is just self-interested nonsense.
Should we be raising taxes only on working age people?
"1% on NI" is a 2% tax rise on the employed, and a 0% tax rise on pensioners.
1%, 2% or whatever on income tax is a tax paid by all.
I did put forward the typically centre moderate view of 2% on income tax on here last night (I think). So workers and pensioners both contribute.
2% hike in income tax isn't moderate. It's almost Corbynite.
I'm absolutely disgusted with the Tory leadership. I campaigned hard in 2019 and believed the no tax rise manifesto promise. Fiscal drag is the order of the day.
In fairness it was not contemplated in 2019 that the government would spend more than £400bn on helping the economy cope with an 18 month pandemic which has devastated tax revenues as well. Politicians are all too keen to argue that circumstances have changed when breaking a promise but I struggle to think of a government that has a better base for such an argument than this one.
Tories should stand for sound money, careful management of the country's accounts and limitations on the role of the state. In some circumstances that requires more spending and thus, responsibly, more taxes, than others. This is such a time. I am more worried about having stable and sustainable public finances than current tax rates.
Now is not the time to put taxes up on working people. I don't care about my personal situation, an extra £1.6k per year in tax between myself and my wife is unfortunate but it doesn't really make a big difference to us. There will be millions of middle income people across the country that will find that kind of income cut very, very difficult to take.
Using my dad as an example again, his net income in retirement is about £60.5k. A working age person with an equivalent gross has a net income of £55k. In what world does it make sense that my dad, with no responsibilities, no kids, no mortgage and no real costs pays £5.5k less in tax than a working age person who will have a mortgage/rent, kids, possible nursery fees, school expenses, commuting costs etc...
The whole system is needs rethinking. Why is anyone in the higher rate tax bracket getting 100% of the state pension? In what world does that make sense?!
With respect a net pensioner income of 60K plus is a million miles from most pensioners income
It is not the average, but it is not particularly unusual either, especially for those from the public sector final salary schemes.
Poor pensioners are still better off than poor workers. Rich pensioners are better off than rich workers. They are also richer than the workers are forecast to get to when they are retired.
Yet new taxes go on workers, most public (and private) sector workers get a pay freeze. The retired get no new taxes and 8% increase in state pension.
This will only make the generational conflict deeper and wider.
I'm not sure about your first paragraph; it is often mentioned on here, but I'm yet to see the evidence.
I'm on a 'gold-plated' public sector (Civil Service) final pension salary scheme. I was well-paid, retiring on a salary of c. £82K after 38 years service, a couple of years ago. But my pension, generous though it is, is nowhere near £60K - much nearer £20K. I'm not complaining at all, quite happy with it, but I do wonder whether non-public sector workers have an exaggerated view of the value of public sector pensions. You would have to be retiring on a salary well over £120k to get anywhere near £60k in pension; there's not many in that category.
I've just had a pension review, actually. I knew my public sector pension was better than my previous private sector pension, but I'm slightly shocked just how much better. Most private sector workers do not have final salary pensions. The IFA I talked to told me that the average private sector workers amassed a pension pot of around £50k by retirement. Whereas if you work as, say, a hospital admin worker - or some other not desperately well paid public sector job - for 40 years you can amass a pension with a trade in value in excess of three quarters of a million pounds.
Yep. I tried to calculate the benefit once and I reckoned add 40% on the salary and you're getting close. We see many public sector retirees who have lump sum and income entitlements (always index-linked and with death benefits) that you would need over £1m to purchase in the real world. But, hey, let's pay the public sector more.
PS pensions are good but generally the pay rates certainly used to be less than in the private sector. Also remember the monthly contributions were compulsory if you didn't opt out after the first couple of years or so. I'm very content with my arrangements but the idea that we have lived lives of idleness and luxury since the mid-70s is frankly rubbish. Like most generations we had our fair share of hardship. I well recall my first London flat - £15k - with strict borrowing rules and high interest rates. I lived hand to mouth for a good few years just to cope. I had bare floorboards for the first 3 years - not the varnished/sealed jobs of these days - I could not afford carpet. All of my furniture was begged, borrowed or second-hand. And I was by no means alone.
I'm reading Dominic Sandbrook's "Seasons in the Sun: the Battle for Britain 1974-1979" at the moment and my goodness does it sound shit.
I pity anyone who has to live through that.
The 70's were brilliant, pay rise every month , cheap beer , great music , will admit looking back the fashion was dodgy. We had the times of our lives and far superior to the shithole the country is just now..
I have just done a long tour of far north Scotland - Ullapool, Assynt, Cape Wrath, Caithness and the Orkneys. Much of it looked magnificent in generally fine weather,; tho I will confess John o Groats (where we mostly stayed) is a toilet (albeit with majestic views of the Orkneys)
Why do the Scots in that corner of Scotland INSIST on building houses in a dung-brown or birdshit-grey colour? Like they want them to be ugly. The far, flat north east of Scotland is never gonna be a beauty - unlike the Highlands and Islands - but it would be much improved if everyone just painted their houses white, like the crofts of old. Or even pink. Tartan?
Anything would be better than the colour of untreated sewage you get now. It is most perplexing
Ahhh... A tour of LibDem constituencies. Are St Albans, Richmond and Oxford next?
Is there something you need to share with us?
North East Fife might make a rather nice holiday. St Andrews (with the ruins, shops and restaurants of a mediaeval university town), fishertowns, breezy walks, the odd palace, and so on. Even golf, a nuclear rather than sand bunker, and, at Leuchars, planes; in the old days one could sit on the sea wall at St A with an ice cream and watch the last of the Lancaster family, the Shackleton, crawl up into the sky while the Phantoms zoomed around. Happy days. And the Tay Bridges to contemplate upon mortality and the ephemerality of glory, and Yes City Dundee just over the bridges with the Unicorn, Discovery and sthe new gallery on the seafront.
Well done for singing the praises of St Andrews, a town very close to my heart, without mentioning g**f.
You obviously hate it - you managed to miss the mention. (Sorry.) But at least it was a different kind of bunker.
JCVI has refused to give the go-ahead to give jabs to over-12s purely on health grounds in a move that is likely to go down very badly with ministers. Each of the 4 CMOs will now consider the advice to look at wider benefits of giving the jab
Time to sack them and give the role back to the regulator. We no longer have a vaccine shortage so why do we need the JCVI to have a say? It made sense when vaccines were a scarce resource and we needed to use them for widest coverage but now we have got enough to send 4m to Australia and still have 40m or so left over.
Why? They have a specific and rather narrow mandate, and ultimately they don't make the final decision.
Because they have the effective final say on who does and doesn't get the vaccine. It's completely ridiculous that the MHRA, FDA, EMA have all approved both Pfizer and Moderna for 12-15 year olds but another group of scientists say it shouldn't be administered and they've been given that final say on who does and doesn't get it.
We're going to be having this same discussion in a couple of weeks as Europe ramps up a booster programme and the JCVI weasels out of it by recommending it to just groups 1 and 2 rather than 1-10 as it should be. Why take the risk?
They don't though, and have themselves said that they are not the final arbiter. They provide advice, but the decision does not rest with them. And I don't think sacking experts until you get the "right" decision is the way forward.
The JCVI’s decision notes that it is not within its remit to consider wider issues such as disruption to education and wider community transmission, and has agreed that ministers can seek advice on this elsewhere.
The chief medical officers of the four UK nations will be asked for their views, with the hope of a UK-wide policy being formed.
It is understood the JCVI made the decision by a majority vote on Thursday, following lengthy discussions and debate.
The organisation will next week consider the separate issue of third, “booster” jabs, and whether these should be universal or aimed only at older or more clinically vulnerable people.
It's time for the politicians to step up, disband the JCVI and make the tough decisions for themselves. No more rule by scientist.
It's not "rule by scientist" - they explicitly say "on scientific grounds only" its not justified, but there may be other grounds on which it is - such as wider societal or educational concerns - and that's not their jobs. Now it's down to the CMO's, and ultimately politicians.
The regulator has said it is safe. The US regulator has said it is safe. The EU regulator has said it is safe. Specifically what are the JCVI saying all three of these highly respected bodies staffed by some of the top scientists have got wrong? It almost feels like they are accusing the world's regulators of putting children at risk when we know that not to be the case given the mitigation available for anyone at risk of side effects from Pfizer/Moderna (lie in bed for 72h after the first dose and again after the second dose).
Why do we even have a second scientific body looking at this? If they don't have any wider context than safety what's the point of them, it's replication of what the MHRA is there to do. The whole point of having a second body is to look at the wider context, not the narrow science - as I said, we have the MHRA to do that already.
There's a difference between it being safe and it being useful/necessary. I don't think the JCVI have said the vaccine is not safe for 12-15 year olds.
That the English language did not have the verb ESCALATE until the 1920s. Absolutely amazing. It was only after the escalator was invented that it appeared in the language.
I've doubled checked with the Oxford English Dictionary and indeed they have no usage of the word prior to the 1920s.
"If you are making labor costs estimates, it is customary to escalate them. You have some basis for determining what a reasonable, fair percentage escalation might be."
The idea that given all the expenses of Covid, the NHS and social care, let alone anything else, we can avoid raising taxes on working people, as @MaxPB seems to want, is for the birds.
Taxes will have to rise and all will have to pay. That's all there is to it. All these demands for special exclusions is just self-interested nonsense.
Should we be raising taxes only on working age people?
"1% on NI" is a 2% tax rise on the employed, and a 0% tax rise on pensioners.
1%, 2% or whatever on income tax is a tax paid by all.
I did put forward the typically centre moderate view of 2% on income tax on here last night (I think). So workers and pensioners both contribute.
2% hike in income tax isn't moderate. It's almost Corbynite.
I'm absolutely disgusted with the Tory leadership. I campaigned hard in 2019 and believed the no tax rise manifesto promise. Fiscal drag is the order of the day.
In fairness it was not contemplated in 2019 that the government would spend more than £400bn on helping the economy cope with an 18 month pandemic which has devastated tax revenues as well. Politicians are all too keen to argue that circumstances have changed when breaking a promise but I struggle to think of a government that has a better base for such an argument than this one.
Tories should stand for sound money, careful management of the country's accounts and limitations on the role of the state. In some circumstances that requires more spending and thus, responsibly, more taxes, than others. This is such a time. I am more worried about having stable and sustainable public finances than current tax rates.
Now is not the time to put taxes up on working people. I don't care about my personal situation, an extra £1.6k per year in tax between myself and my wife is unfortunate but it doesn't really make a big difference to us. There will be millions of middle income people across the country that will find that kind of income cut very, very difficult to take.
Using my dad as an example again, his net income in retirement is about £60.5k. A working age person with an equivalent gross has a net income of £55k. In what world does it make sense that my dad, with no responsibilities, no kids, no mortgage and no real costs pays £5.5k less in tax than a working age person who will have a mortgage/rent, kids, possible nursery fees, school expenses, commuting costs etc...
The whole system is needs rethinking. Why is anyone in the higher rate tax bracket getting 100% of the state pension? In what world does that make sense?!
With respect a net pensioner income of 60K plus is a million miles from most pensioners income
It is not the average, but it is not particularly unusual either, especially for those from the public sector final salary schemes.
Poor pensioners are still better off than poor workers. Rich pensioners are better off than rich workers. They are also richer than the workers are forecast to get to when they are retired.
Yet new taxes go on workers, most public (and private) sector workers get a pay freeze. The retired get no new taxes and 8% increase in state pension.
This will only make the generational conflict deeper and wider.
I'm not sure about your first paragraph; it is often mentioned on here, but I'm yet to see the evidence.
I'm on a 'gold-plated' public sector (Civil Service) final pension salary scheme. I was well-paid, retiring on a salary of c. £82K after 38 years service, a couple of years ago. But my pension, generous though it is, is nowhere near £60K - much nearer £20K. I'm not complaining at all, quite happy with it, but I do wonder whether non-public sector workers have an exaggerated view of the value of public sector pensions. You would have to be retiring on a salary well over £120k to get anywhere near £60k in pension; there's not many in that category.
I've just had a pension review, actually. I knew my public sector pension was better than my previous private sector pension, but I'm slightly shocked just how much better. Most private sector workers do not have final salary pensions. The IFA I talked to told me that the average private sector workers amassed a pension pot of around £50k by retirement. Whereas if you work as, say, a hospital admin worker - or some other not desperately well paid public sector job - for 40 years you can amass a pension with a trade in value in excess of three quarters of a million pounds.
Yep. I tried to calculate the benefit once and I reckoned add 40% on the salary and you're getting close. We see many public sector retirees who have lump sum and income entitlements (always index-linked and with death benefits) that you would need over £1m to purchase in the real world. But, hey, let's pay the public sector more.
PS pensions are good but generally the pay rates certainly used to be less than in the private sector. Also remember the monthly contributions were compulsory if you didn't opt out after the first couple of years or so. I'm very content with my arrangements but the idea that we have lived lives of idleness and luxury since the mid-70s is frankly rubbish. Like most generations we had our fair share of hardship. I well recall my first London flat - £15k - with strict borrowing rules and high interest rates. I lived hand to mouth for a good few years just to cope. I had bare floorboards for the first 3 years - not the varnished/sealed jobs of these days - I could not afford carpet. All of my furniture was begged, borrowed or second-hand. And I was by no means alone.
I'm reading Dominic Sandbrook's "Seasons in the Sun: the Battle for Britain 1974-1979" at the moment and my goodness does it sound shit.
I pity anyone who has to live through that.
The 70's were brilliant, pay rise every month , cheap beer , great music , will admit looking back the fashion was dodgy. We had the times of our lives and far superior to the shithole the country is just now..
I have just done a long tour of far north Scotland - Ullapool, Assynt, Cape Wrath, Caithness and the Orkneys. Much of it looked magnificent in generally fine weather,; tho I will confess John o Groats (where we mostly stayed) is a toilet (albeit with majestic views of the Orkneys)
Why do the Scots in that corner of Scotland INSIST on building houses in a dung-brown or birdshit-grey colour? Like they want them to be ugly. The far, flat north east of Scotland is never gonna be a beauty - unlike the Highlands and Islands - but it would be much improved if everyone just painted their houses white, like the crofts of old. Or even pink. Tartan?
Anything would be better than the colour of untreated sewage you get now. It is most perplexing
Ahhh... A tour of LibDem constituencies. Are St Albans, Richmond and Oxford next?
Is there something you need to share with us?
North East Fife might make a rather nice holiday. St Andrews (with the ruins, shops and restaurants of a mediaeval university town), fishertowns, breezy walks, the odd palace, and so on. Even golf, a nuclear rather than sand bunker, and, at Leuchars, planes; in the old days one could sit on the sea wall at St A with an ice cream and watch the last of the Lancaster family, the Shackleton, crawl up into the sky while the Phantoms zoomed around. Happy days. And the Tay Bridges to contemplate upon mortality and the ephemerality of glory, and Yes City Dundee just over the bridges with the Unicorn, Discovery and sthe new gallery on the seafront.
Well done for singing the praises of St Andrews, a town very close to my heart, without mentioning g**f.
You obviously hate it - you managed to miss the mention. (Sorry.) But at least it was a different kind of bunker.
Ha ha yes. I obviously learned to ignore it all too effectively. I actually have nothing against the game itself, just the people who came to St Andrews to play it, although live and let live and it paid a fair few people's wages in the town.
This idea that now is not the time to raise taxes on those who work is odd. For the last 18 months or so working people have been supported by furlough. Others who worked from home in secure jobs have built up savings.
Now the bills have to be paid. Not just for Covid but for social care and everything else.
So everyone will have to pay: workers - and I include those past pensionable age who are still working - and those with savings and assets. And all generations will have to pay because (a) all generations benefited from the support for the economy; (b) all benefit one way or another from public services; and (c) all benefit from social care - either now (directly) or by not having to pay for parents or by not losing a possible inheritance or directly in the future.
It won't be nice. But no group should be immune from paying the bills. Far too much special pleading going on.
NI is an odd choice because it is in effect a tax but only on some. So it should be extended to all who are working if it is going to be raised.
What a load of rubbish. The economy was shut down to primarily benefit older people who are most at risk and to protect the NHS which is another service that is used mostly by older people.
Businesses like your daughter's was sacrificed to protect older people and now it's time for older people to bear the cost of that shutdown. A stat posted here showed that 16% of pensioners have earnings in the higher rate tax bracket, that's a huge number of people to target for more tax before we even think about putting up taxes on working age people.
The country is currently being fleeced by the generation above who have decided they want an easy life and the best way to get that is to claim a larger share of the economic pie for themselves and if they have to impoverish working age people then that's a bonus.
You ducked out of paying for your parents care, you're ducking out of paying for your own care, you've piled on cost after cost on young people, you bought all the property then accused young people of being incapable of saving all while charging us ridiculous rents on crap flats that aren't fit for animals to live in.
Your generation has a lot to answer for, you've ruined the legacy of what your parents left behind and now you're trying to take away any chance my generation has of leaving behind a better world for our kids. You destroyed the climate, made the rich much richer, the poor much poorer and now won't pay for the bill that was accumulated to protect your generation from dying. It wasn't 20-50 year olds dying of this.
Solidarity, comrade. Welcome to the barricades.
(I joke, I have a lot of sympathy with your anger and the points you make.)
Honestly, is the kind of stuff that makes me want to vote for Labour just to fuck with the old wankers but then I remember Labour are also part of the gerontocracy and will do exactly the same as the Tories because they want the votes.
Let the pensioners eat cake
How about letting them have what they paid for?
New welfare like what is being proposed here was never paid for, so why should they be exempt from paying for it today?
What are you wittering about , what great new benefit are pensioners getting???????????
JCVI has refused to give the go-ahead to give jabs to over-12s purely on health grounds in a move that is likely to go down very badly with ministers. Each of the 4 CMOs will now consider the advice to look at wider benefits of giving the jab
Time to sack them and give the role back to the regulator. We no longer have a vaccine shortage so why do we need the JCVI to have a say? It made sense when vaccines were a scarce resource and we needed to use them for widest coverage but now we have got enough to send 4m to Australia and still have 40m or so left over.
Was speaking with a colleague the other day who is not on JCVI, but whom has been invited to discuss with them and advise on some aspects of data analysis. His viewpoint was that the UK data are just not there yet to make a firm conclusion and - although personally in favour of extending the jab - he has some sympathy with their position. Very few UK youngsters have been vaccinated and most of those are non-typical, so you can get estimates of the vaccine risk (myocarditis e.g.) that cover easily 2 orders of magnitude (topping out not too far off 0.1%, although it's probably much lower), depending on data and definitions. The risk from Covid is also, although not so much, uncertain. So the JCVI have been asked whether vaccinating the youngsters is a good thing for the youngsters and they don't yet have a compelling answer.
What doesn't seem to be coming into play yet - and the person I spoke to was a little perplexed as to why - was data from other countries that have done more youngster vaccination.
I think this might be a situation in which the government have asked the wrong question (should we vaccinate young people, is it in their interests?) when it should have been instead what's a best guess estimate for risks from vaccine and from Covid and then the government take responsibility for weighing those up. If you wait for certainty, you might wait too long (as we appear to have done).
The MHRA has deemed it safe, I don't understand why we have the JCVI saying otherwise. It's a really weird bit of UK exceptionalism. Vaccinating youngsters will mean and end to the disruption of school, that alone makes it worth doing.
That the English language did not have the verb ESCALATE until the 1920s. Absolutely amazing. It was only after the escalator was invented that it appeared in the language.
I've doubled checked with the Oxford English Dictionary and indeed they have no usage of the word prior to the 1920s.
"If you are making labor costs estimates, it is customary to escalate them. You have some basis for determining what a reasonable, fair percentage escalation might be."
More instances of 19th century usage follow.
Is that the same word, so to speak, or an independent coinage? That usage is transitive, but 'escalate' today is usually intransitive (but not always).
JCVI has refused to give the go-ahead to give jabs to over-12s purely on health grounds in a move that is likely to go down very badly with ministers. Each of the 4 CMOs will now consider the advice to look at wider benefits of giving the jab
Time to sack them and give the role back to the regulator. We no longer have a vaccine shortage so why do we need the JCVI to have a say? It made sense when vaccines were a scarce resource and we needed to use them for widest coverage but now we have got enough to send 4m to Australia and still have 40m or so left over.
Was speaking with a colleague the other day who is not on JCVI, but whom has been invited to discuss with them and advise on some aspects of data analysis. His viewpoint was that the UK data are just not there yet to make a firm conclusion and - although personally in favour of extending the jab - he has some sympathy with their position. Very few UK youngsters have been vaccinated and most of those are non-typical, so you can get estimates of the vaccine risk (myocarditis e.g.) that cover easily 2 orders of magnitude (topping out not too far off 0.1%, although it's probably much lower), depending on data and definitions. The risk from Covid is also, although not so much, uncertain. So the JCVI have been asked whether vaccinating the youngsters is a good thing for the youngsters and they don't yet have a compelling answer.
What doesn't seem to be coming into play yet - and the person I spoke to was a little perplexed as to why - was data from other countries that have done more youngster vaccination.
I think this might be a situation in which the government have asked the wrong question (should we vaccinate young people, is it in their interests?) when it should have been instead what's a best guess estimate for risks from vaccine and from Covid and then the government take responsibility for weighing those up. If you wait for certainty, you might wait too long (as we appear to have done).
Why are we relying on data from the UK? Across the US and Europe, there must have been at least ten million 12 to 15 year olds jabbed with Pfizer and Moderna.
JCVI has refused to give the go-ahead to give jabs to over-12s purely on health grounds in a move that is likely to go down very badly with ministers. Each of the 4 CMOs will now consider the advice to look at wider benefits of giving the jab
Time to sack them and give the role back to the regulator. We no longer have a vaccine shortage so why do we need the JCVI to have a say? It made sense when vaccines were a scarce resource and we needed to use them for widest coverage but now we have got enough to send 4m to Australia and still have 40m or so left over.
Why? They have a specific and rather narrow mandate, and ultimately they don't make the final decision.
Because they have the effective final say on who does and doesn't get the vaccine. It's completely ridiculous that the MHRA, FDA, EMA have all approved both Pfizer and Moderna for 12-15 year olds but another group of scientists say it shouldn't be administered and they've been given that final say on who does and doesn't get it.
We're going to be having this same discussion in a couple of weeks as Europe ramps up a booster programme and the JCVI weasels out of it by recommending it to just groups 1 and 2 rather than 1-10 as it should be. Why take the risk?
They don't though, and have themselves said that they are not the final arbiter. They provide advice, but the decision does not rest with them. And I don't think sacking experts until you get the "right" decision is the way forward.
I may have misunderstood, but isn't the problem that members of the JCVI keep briefing in the media that they want to deprioritise further UK vaccinations so that the doses can be sent to other countries further behind in the process? In which case, sacking is too good for them - they have exceeded their remit and aren't doing their jobs properly.
The idea that given all the expenses of Covid, the NHS and social care, let alone anything else, we can avoid raising taxes on working people, as @MaxPB seems to want, is for the birds.
Taxes will have to rise and all will have to pay. That's all there is to it. All these demands for special exclusions is just self-interested nonsense.
Should we be raising taxes only on working age people?
"1% on NI" is a 2% tax rise on the employed, and a 0% tax rise on pensioners.
1%, 2% or whatever on income tax is a tax paid by all.
I did put forward the typically centre moderate view of 2% on income tax on here last night (I think). So workers and pensioners both contribute.
2% hike in income tax isn't moderate. It's almost Corbynite.
I'm absolutely disgusted with the Tory leadership. I campaigned hard in 2019 and believed the no tax rise manifesto promise. Fiscal drag is the order of the day.
In fairness it was not contemplated in 2019 that the government would spend more than £400bn on helping the economy cope with an 18 month pandemic which has devastated tax revenues as well. Politicians are all too keen to argue that circumstances have changed when breaking a promise but I struggle to think of a government that has a better base for such an argument than this one.
Tories should stand for sound money, careful management of the country's accounts and limitations on the role of the state. In some circumstances that requires more spending and thus, responsibly, more taxes, than others. This is such a time. I am more worried about having stable and sustainable public finances than current tax rates.
Now is not the time to put taxes up on working people. I don't care about my personal situation, an extra £1.6k per year in tax between myself and my wife is unfortunate but it doesn't really make a big difference to us. There will be millions of middle income people across the country that will find that kind of income cut very, very difficult to take.
Using my dad as an example again, his net income in retirement is about £60.5k. A working age person with an equivalent gross has a net income of £55k. In what world does it make sense that my dad, with no responsibilities, no kids, no mortgage and no real costs pays £5.5k less in tax than a working age person who will have a mortgage/rent, kids, possible nursery fees, school expenses, commuting costs etc...
The whole system is needs rethinking. Why is anyone in the higher rate tax bracket getting 100% of the state pension? In what world does that make sense?!
With respect a net pensioner income of 60K plus is a million miles from most pensioners income
It is not the average, but it is not particularly unusual either, especially for those from the public sector final salary schemes.
Poor pensioners are still better off than poor workers. Rich pensioners are better off than rich workers. They are also richer than the workers are forecast to get to when they are retired.
Yet new taxes go on workers, most public (and private) sector workers get a pay freeze. The retired get no new taxes and 8% increase in state pension.
This will only make the generational conflict deeper and wider.
I'm not sure about your first paragraph; it is often mentioned on here, but I'm yet to see the evidence.
I'm on a 'gold-plated' public sector (Civil Service) final pension salary scheme. I was well-paid, retiring on a salary of c. £82K after 38 years service, a couple of years ago. But my pension, generous though it is, is nowhere near £60K - much nearer £20K. I'm not complaining at all, quite happy with it, but I do wonder whether non-public sector workers have an exaggerated view of the value of public sector pensions. You would have to be retiring on a salary well over £120k to get anywhere near £60k in pension; there's not many in that category.
I've just had a pension review, actually. I knew my public sector pension was better than my previous private sector pension, but I'm slightly shocked just how much better. Most private sector workers do not have final salary pensions. The IFA I talked to told me that the average private sector workers amassed a pension pot of around £50k by retirement. Whereas if you work as, say, a hospital admin worker - or some other not desperately well paid public sector job - for 40 years you can amass a pension with a trade in value in excess of three quarters of a million pounds.
Yep. I tried to calculate the benefit once and I reckoned add 40% on the salary and you're getting close. We see many public sector retirees who have lump sum and income entitlements (always index-linked and with death benefits) that you would need over £1m to purchase in the real world. But, hey, let's pay the public sector more.
PS pensions are good but generally the pay rates certainly used to be less than in the private sector. Also remember the monthly contributions were compulsory if you didn't opt out after the first couple of years or so. I'm very content with my arrangements but the idea that we have lived lives of idleness and luxury since the mid-70s is frankly rubbish. Like most generations we had our fair share of hardship. I well recall my first London flat - £15k - with strict borrowing rules and high interest rates. I lived hand to mouth for a good few years just to cope. I had bare floorboards for the first 3 years - not the varnished/sealed jobs of these days - I could not afford carpet. All of my furniture was begged, borrowed or second-hand. And I was by no means alone.
I'm reading Dominic Sandbrook's "Seasons in the Sun: the Battle for Britain 1974-1979" at the moment and my goodness does it sound shit.
I pity anyone who has to live through that.
The 70's were brilliant, pay rise every month , cheap beer , great music , will admit looking back the fashion was dodgy. We had the times of our lives and far superior to the shithole the country is just now..
I have just done a long tour of far north Scotland - Ullapool, Assynt, Cape Wrath, Caithness and the Orkneys. Much of it looked magnificent in generally fine weather,; tho I will confess John o Groats (where we mostly stayed) is a toilet (albeit with majestic views of the Orkneys)
Why do the Scots in that corner of Scotland INSIST on building houses in a dung-brown or birdshit-grey colour? Like they want them to be ugly. The far, flat north east of Scotland is never gonna be a beauty - unlike the Highlands and Islands - but it would be much improved if everyone just painted their houses white, like the crofts of old. Or even pink. Tartan?
Anything would be better than the colour of untreated sewage you get now. It is most perplexing
Ahhh... A tour of LibDem constituencies. Are St Albans, Richmond and Oxford next?
Is there something you need to share with us?
North East Fife might make a rather nice holiday. St Andrews (with the ruins, shops and restaurants of a mediaeval university town), fishertowns, breezy walks, the odd palace, and so on. Even golf, a nuclear rather than sand bunker, and, at Leuchars, planes; in the old days one could sit on the sea wall at St A with an ice cream and watch the last of the Lancaster family, the Shackleton, crawl up into the sky while the Phantoms zoomed around. Happy days. And the Tay Bridges to contemplate upon mortality and the ephemerality of glory, and Yes City Dundee just over the bridges with the Unicorn, Discovery and sthe new gallery on the seafront.
Well done for singing the praises of St Andrews, a town very close to my heart, without mentioning g**f.
You obviously hate it - you managed to miss the mention. (Sorry.) But at least it was a different kind of bunker.
Ha ha yes. I obviously learned to ignore it all too effectively. I actually have nothing against the game itself, just the people who came to St Andrews to play it, although live and let live and it paid a fair few people's wages in the town.
Though there is a certain Schadenfreude when certain visitors complain about the vicious cross-breeze from the sea, as if that wasn't an integral part of the game from the beginning!
JCVI has refused to give the go-ahead to give jabs to over-12s purely on health grounds in a move that is likely to go down very badly with ministers. Each of the 4 CMOs will now consider the advice to look at wider benefits of giving the jab
Time to sack them and give the role back to the regulator. We no longer have a vaccine shortage so why do we need the JCVI to have a say? It made sense when vaccines were a scarce resource and we needed to use them for widest coverage but now we have got enough to send 4m to Australia and still have 40m or so left over.
Why? They have a specific and rather narrow mandate, and ultimately they don't make the final decision.
Because they have the effective final say on who does and doesn't get the vaccine. It's completely ridiculous that the MHRA, FDA, EMA have all approved both Pfizer and Moderna for 12-15 year olds but another group of scientists say it shouldn't be administered and they've been given that final say on who does and doesn't get it.
We're going to be having this same discussion in a couple of weeks as Europe ramps up a booster programme and the JCVI weasels out of it by recommending it to just groups 1 and 2 rather than 1-10 as it should be. Why take the risk?
They don't though, and have themselves said that they are not the final arbiter. They provide advice, but the decision does not rest with them. And I don't think sacking experts until you get the "right" decision is the way forward.
I may have misunderstood, but isn't the problem that members of the JCVI keep briefing in the media that they want to deprioritise further UK vaccinations so that the doses can be sent to other countries further behind in the process? In which case, sacking is too good for them - they have exceeded their remit and aren't doing their jobs properly.
I agree that would not be a valid reason to consider given their remit.
Enough frivolity , I must away and do some productive stuff. Have to say I had a super haircut and shave at Turkish barber's today, some pleasant chit chat here , with wife playing ABBA in background. Time for a refreshment.
The JCVI’s decision notes that it is not within its remit to consider wider issues such as disruption to education and wider community transmission, and has agreed that ministers can seek advice on this elsewhere.
The chief medical officers of the four UK nations will be asked for their views, with the hope of a UK-wide policy being formed.
It is understood the JCVI made the decision by a majority vote on Thursday, following lengthy discussions and debate.
The organisation will next week consider the separate issue of third, “booster” jabs, and whether these should be universal or aimed only at older or more clinically vulnerable people.
It's time for the politicians to step up, disband the JCVI and make the tough decisions for themselves. No more rule by scientist.
It's not "rule by scientist" - they explicitly say "on scientific grounds only" its not justified, but there may be other grounds on which it is - such as wider societal or educational concerns - and that's not their jobs. Now it's down to the CMO's, and ultimately politicians.
The regulator has said it is safe. The US regulator has said it is safe. The EU regulator has said it is safe. Specifically what are the JCVI saying all three of these highly respected bodies staffed by some of the top scientists have got wrong? It almost feels like they are accusing the world's regulators of putting children at risk when we know that not to be the case given the mitigation available for anyone at risk of side effects from Pfizer/Moderna (lie in bed for 72h after the first dose and again after the second dose).
Why do we even have a second scientific body looking at this? If they don't have any wider context than safety what's the point of them, it's replication of what the MHRA is there to do. The whole point of having a second body is to look at the wider context, not the narrow science - as I said, we have the MHRA to do that already.
I have no issue with the early part of this process, when there was limited supply. Decisions were taken which were attacked by some (12 weeks vs 3, sequencing of who gets it first) but have largely been correct. But now we have ample supply there is less of an issue. And to ‘avoid disruption at schools’? Really? Have they missed the disruption due to positive tests and close contacts? And how disruptive is it really? Give them the sports hall and do a class at a time. I’m coming to conclude that there are some ideological people on the committee making decisions with an agenda.
Comments
Finally, some good news on other variants.
Of the 8️⃣ VUI we monitor, 6️⃣appear to be nearly extinct in UK with ZERO cases in 2m since 1st June 2021:
• Eta (B.1.525)
• Theta (P.3)
• VUI-21APR-03 (B.1.617.3)
• VUI-21MAY-01 (AV.1)
• VUI-21MAY-02 (C.36.3)
• Lambda (C.37)
https://twitter.com/kallmemeg/status/1433790145640153089?s=20
This is an intervention.
We're still in the City of London: demanding an end to all new fossil fuel funding.
Join us outside the Lloyds building now (clothes are optional).
https://twitter.com/XRebellionUK/status/1433792985687285762?s=20
Complete with photo (SFW)
@HYUFD was put in time out for libelling Bill Gates. I shan't repeat the claim.
Please don't libel people on the site, as it results in OGH getting nasty letters from Carter Ruck, and could have severe financial consequences for people.
I haven't been back for over a decade. I should change that...
*innocent face*
In London and other urban settings render is sometimes more likely to be related to poor quality building by Georgian/Victorian speculative developers.
Also frost damage.
I am not a technophone, but it seems to me like the phone is essentially programmed to make you submit to and become reliant on its features, rather than you being in control of them. (Thus nicely proving the argument set out by Shoshana Zuboff in the book 'the age of surveillance capitalism')
I have spent hours on this already. Can anyone recommend some way of getting some independent technical support with this problem?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2021_Canadian_federal_election#Campaign_period
New welfare like what is being proposed here was never paid for, so why should they be exempt from paying for it today?
That the English language did not have the verb ESCALATE until the 1920s. Absolutely amazing. It was only after the escalator was invented that it appeared in the language.
I've doubled checked with the Oxford English Dictionary and indeed they have no usage of the word prior to the 1920s.
I am blown away.
PS: If being really exotic, Vesta curries
Planning authorities have fairly fixed ideas about the external appearance. Scottish self-building friends tell me that some particularly rural places up there have an attachment to 1.5 stories with dormers.
There are quite a lot I have seen in England which have demanded fake chimneys made of either brick (which is a pain because you have to build something underneath for it to stand on), or grp, because in the village / area / region that is 'traditional'.
I have seen some people argue back using words such as 'fake' or ' pastiche' or "oh no it bloody isn't".
However, I had one for my last job, and the battery only lasted a year before it seriously starts failing, ie switching itself off and saying 0% battery when using maps and taking photos and tethering when on the train. I use the phone for work and can't take the risk of this happening, hence the decision to switch.
Globe 1911
A “new joy,” we read, has been added to the attraction:-, of London the shape of the new escalator at Earl’s Court. Look out for a new pantomime-hit, entitled “ M ill \ou Escalate With Mel”
Liverpool Echop 1914:
"HOW TO ESCALATE OX THE MOVING STAIRWAY AT OXFORD CIRCUS. '"Do you escalate?" is a suggested opening conversation which 15 equally suitable all grades of society in London."
Took me 1 minute on britishnewspaperarchive - though the search function is annoying and won't stop looking for escalator as well as misprints never mind what I do, so there may be earlier ones.
https://www.scotslanguage.com/articles/view/id/5253/type
https://twitter.com/RichardVaughan1/status/1433800041735524359?s=20
They are fairly light, quite cheap, and hold at least 5x the charge of the average phone.
The UK's vaccine advisory body has refused to give the green light to vaccinating healthy children aged 12-15 years old on health grounds alone.
But the JCVI said the government should consider wider issues including disruption to schools.
Ministers across the UK have asked chief medical officers to look at whether that tips the balance.
Meanwhile, an extra 200,000 teens with underlying conditions will now be eligible for two doses.
Doctors identified that children with chronic heart, lung and liver conditions were at much higher risk of Covid than healthy children.
The decision on healthy children was based on concern over an extremely rare side effect of the Pfizer vaccine which causes heart inflammation.
But as children are at such low risk from the virus, they decided that vaccination would offer on "marginal gain" and therefore there was "insufficient" evidence to offer a mass offer.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-58438669
I bet there is a metric tonne of historical fiction that has characters anachronistically worrying about the situation escalating.
'Inbetweeners producer to make 'surfing, sex and hellfire' film in Outer Hebrides'
https://tinyurl.com/8ttt46tn
No fishing, filming or clunge jokes on a Sunday.
After about three months, I got into "the iPhone way" and really enjoyed it, with two major caveats:
1. The iPhone keyboard is rubbish at swiping. You are much better off doing "hunt and peck" with it.
2. Android still has better notifications, with much more control over what is seen and what makes noises.
The chief medical officers of the four UK nations will be asked for their views, with the hope of a UK-wide policy being formed.
It is understood the JCVI made the decision by a majority vote on Thursday, following lengthy discussions and debate.
The organisation will next week consider the separate issue of third, “booster” jabs, and whether these should be universal or aimed only at older or more clinically vulnerable people.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/sep/03/uk-rules-out-covid-vaccinations-for-children
Maps seems to be an energy hog.
My parents' house is harled.
And while it is true to say that when it was built, the owners in the neighbouring street complained about all the "cheap bungalows" being constructed.
but that was in the 1930's
and they now sell for half a million each
Now I'm wondering whether the cost benefit of going commando - less expenditure on underwear - has any relevance to kilts.
From the very beginning there has been a complete and utter lack of joined up thinking on every decision taken. Once again we see it with this idiotic decision and unfortunately I fear we will see it when they recommend no significant booster programme.
It's time for the politicians to step up, disband the JCVI and make the tough decisions for themselves. No more rule by scientist.
Delivery of a COVID-19 vaccine programme for children and young people is likely to be disruptive to education in the short term, particularly if school premises are used for vaccination and there is potential for a COVID-19 vaccine programme to impact on the efficiency of roll-out of the influenza programme. Adverse reactions to vaccination (such as fevers) may also lead to time away from education for some individuals.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/jcvi-statement-september-2021-covid-19-vaccination-of-children-aged-12-to-15-years/jcvi-statement-on-covid-19-vaccination-of-children-aged-12-to-15-years-3-september-2021
We’ll be there for our boosters though. Flu shots in a couple of weeks.
We're going to be having this same discussion in a couple of weeks as Europe ramps up a booster programme and the JCVI weasels out of it by recommending it to just groups 1 and 2 rather than 1-10 as it should be. Why take the risk?
Norway looks much nicer, houses are all either mustard yellow or rusty red colour.
What doesn't seem to be coming into play yet - and the person I spoke to was a little perplexed as to why - was data from other countries that have done more youngster vaccination.
I think this might be a situation in which the government have asked the wrong question (should we vaccinate young people, is it in their interests?) when it should have been instead what's a best guess estimate for risks from vaccine and from Covid and then the government take responsibility for weighing those up. If you wait for certainty, you might wait too long (as we appear to have done).
Why do we even have a second scientific body looking at this? If they don't have any wider context than safety what's the point of them, it's replication of what the MHRA is there to do. The whole point of having a second body is to look at the wider context, not the narrow science - as I said, we have the MHRA to do that already.
"If you are making labor costs estimates, it is customary to escalate them. You have some basis for determining what a reasonable, fair percentage escalation might be."
More instances of 19th century usage follow.
Someone needs sacking.