Since the government is changing strategy, accepting that herd immunity is unachievable and accepting that everyone is now going to get the virus sooner or later (see Dr Campbell’s latest few videos), mass testing is going to be abandoned soon, and measures such as masks no longer make any sense unless the NHS starts to approach ICU bed capacity again, which looks most unlikely.
I am surprised that they haven't abandoned both mass testing and mandatory self-isolation already, especially given population antibody prevalence approaching 95%. There's arguably little remaining use in throwing lateral flow tests around like confetti, especially when they'll be used primarily to generate panic about tidal waves of cases sweeping through near-invulnerable schoolchildren.
I have really noticed over the last week how mask wearing in supermarkets is falling away big time.
Last visit was 20% masked 80% not
I was in Sainsbury today here in Godalming - literally only one person not wearing a mask, out of maybe 100 that I saw. But I'm sure the comments are right that it will fall away quickly if it starts to fall.
I was in Sainsbury’s at the Arnison in North Durham today, early morning mainly older people, and pretty much everyone was masked up there. I wonder if people still wear masks up here as in the last spike the north east went into it very quickly.
My impression is that it is locally very lumpy. So all anecdotes can be true at once.
Not disputing that at all. I did wonder if it was age or regional.
still compulsory up here and most people wearing them in shops.
I was in a 2 metre queue at the fish and chip shop just now, and a woman charged up behind me without her mask and virtually swore and said we are not still doing this nonsense, at a time when cases are rising quite quickly in this part of Wales
That kind of thing is inevitable once the regulations forcing people to comply with Covid measures are removed. When it comes to masks and distancing, some of us think they're useless or even counter-productive, others are simply relieved to be shot of them, some are still feeling cautious and yet more are scared witless. FWIW, I'd say in the local supermarkets around here social distancing is over and mask use is down to about 50:50 amongst both customers and staff (and probably less than that when you take account of the twits who wear them as earrings and necklaces.)
It'll be interesting to see how many of the remaining users are still going around in their masks in ten years' time. I suspect that Covid has caused lasting psychological injury to some people, and they'll always be frightened of disease in a way they weren't before.
Do you think that the fish and chip queue moves faster if the customers line up a foot rather than 6 feet apart?
As an aside, looking at the French Presidential polling, the choice of the centre-right between Barnier, Pecresse and Bertrans doesn't seem to make a lot of difference. All poll mid to high teens but it's still a Macron-Le Pen run off in Round two.
The best chance to break this might be for Eric Zemmour to run - he takes a big chunk out of Marine Le Pen's vote and might just do enough to enable one of the centre-right candidates to nick second in round one.
We'll see.
Historically, whoever gets into the final round vs Le Pen wins. I wonder if that will continue. If one of the centre-right candidates manages to edge out Le Pen, it would look like curtains for Macron.
Zemmour was polling at 8% if he ran as an independent candidate but in that scenario, Le Pen's vote drops below 20% which puts her in reach of a viable centre-right candidate.
As an aside, looking at the French Presidential polling, the choice of the centre-right between Barnier, Pecresse and Bertrans doesn't seem to make a lot of difference. All poll mid to high teens but it's still a Macron-Le Pen run off in Round two.
The best chance to break this might be for Eric Zemmour to run - he takes a big chunk out of Marine Le Pen's vote and might just do enough to enable one of the centre-right candidates to nick second in round one.
We'll see.
Historically, whoever gets into the final round vs Le Pen wins. I wonder if that will continue. If one of the centre-right candidates manages to edge out Le Pen, it would look like curtains for Macron.
Zemmour was polling at 8% if he ran as an independent candidate but in that scenario, Le Pen's vote drops below 20% which puts her in reach of a viable centre-right candidate.
Is it too early to take a stab at what Macron's first round percentage might be? Do we need a better idea on the size of the field?
Since the government is changing strategy, accepting that herd immunity is unachievable and accepting that everyone is now going to get the virus sooner or later (see Dr Campbell’s latest few videos), mass testing is going to be abandoned soon, and measures such as masks no longer make any sense unless the NHS starts to approach ICU bed capacity again, which looks most unlikely.
Depends what you mean by herd immunity.
The idea that some people wouldn’t get it, sheltered by the immunity of the herd once it reaches a critical level. The increasing transmissibility of each successive variant has shot this theory through. We’re all going to get it, now it’s just a question of timing. Testing the symptomless is now a waste of time, as are many of the precautions.
I wouldn't quite go so far, but yes, immunisations clearly do not prevent spread of Delta, so that hope of Herd Immunity is gone.
It doesn't necessarily justify abandoning all precautions though. At times of high prevalence (1 in 70 in England, likely higher in the socially active groups), it is still worth being cautious. Procrastination in these things is a good thing.
The trouble is, to my mind, the definition of "catching" or "getting" it is so woollen. Maybe it is true that in the long run everyone will "get" the virus, but many, thanks to the immune system, bolstered by vax, will get it in a very low key way. Yes they might test +, especially if a PCR test is thrown at them with god knows how many cycles, but really - have they "got it"?
On NI I expect it to be a package to include all workng pensioners to pay full NI and the triple lock suspended for 2022
Taken by itself it would be very brave and extremely unwise
And I have been saying for weeks that a Labour poll lead this year is very possible
Working pensioners are likely to be the poorer ones, with the wealthy sitting at home enjoying their pension and investment income.
Yes; many of the working pensioners I know are topping up their State pensions. I gave up working when I realised that continuing professional insurance, plus necessary registration plus income tax meant I was working until around May for for no reward to me. Just about halved the money I got.
As an aside, looking at the French Presidential polling, the choice of the centre-right between Barnier, Pecresse and Bertrans doesn't seem to make a lot of difference. All poll mid to high teens but it's still a Macron-Le Pen run off in Round two.
The best chance to break this might be for Eric Zemmour to run - he takes a big chunk out of Marine Le Pen's vote and might just do enough to enable one of the centre-right candidates to nick second in round one.
We'll see.
Historically, whoever gets into the final round vs Le Pen wins. I wonder if that will continue. If one of the centre-right candidates manages to edge out Le Pen, it would look like curtains for Macron.
Zemmour was polling at 8% if he ran as an independent candidate but in that scenario, Le Pen's vote drops below 20% which puts her in reach of a viable centre-right candidate.
If Bertrand got into the run off with Macron as the main centre right candidate polls show it would be neck and neck
I saw that Chris Witty was trending on twitter and wondered what he has said.
Turns out he hasn't said anything, all the anti-vaxxers, anti-lockdown, anti-government basically saying if he says we should vaccinate 12-15 years olds, it won't be following the science, going against JCVI, and much worse.
Its why JCVI fence sitting is so dangerous, it is already been widely misreported by the MSM and now being twisted further by the interwebs.
Is this a case of the govt frontloading the medicine so as to be able to give a spoonful of sugar at GE campaign time?
I think you misunderstand how fked the public finances are.
I think Tory mps do, too.
If they’re genuinely interested in balancing the books, we’ll need stronger medicine.
Boris doesn’t care about balancing the books though, so we get this token effort.
Hang on.
There are two key elements to the UK public finances:
(1) The amount of debt there is. This is actually fine, despite the Global Financial Crisis, Brexit and Covid. Once you eliminate debt owed to the Bank of of England, debt-to-GDP is probably around 65%. This is, in the general scheme of things, fine.
(2) The long term consequences of an ageing population and a birth rate below replacement. This, on the other hand, is not fine. Every year the number of people of non-working age - almost all of whom require expensive healthcare and pensions - grows, while the number of people of working age (absent immigration) does not.
This means that the proportion of the output of workers that is going to be diverted to pay for non-workers increases. Hopefully this can be offset by having more people working (as has happened in Japan), but this causes it's own problems - specifically that if both two people in a relationship are working, the chances of them having kids drops dramatically.
We do need to find a solution to (2) - in the longer term, having a taxation system that encourages people to have kids (see France) would be good; but in the short-term, we need to increase the age of retirement and avoid the state pension taking up too great a share of spending.
I just want to dwell on this last point for a second. There's been a lot of comment about wanting to to close the gap between the value of the state pension and average earnings.
So, let's say that there 1,000 pensioners, and 2,000 people of working age. If two thirds of people of working age work, and earn £30,000 on average. That means that you have £20,000,000 of wages out there to tax.
If your 1,000 pensioners all recieve one-third the average income (i.e. £10,000), that means you need to pay them £10,000,000 a year.
Before we talk about a single penny of other things that taxes need to be used for, we have to extract half the income of the workers to pay for pensions.
I have really noticed over the last week how mask wearing in supermarkets is falling away big time.
Last visit was 20% masked 80% not
I was in Sainsbury today here in Godalming - literally only one person not wearing a mask, out of maybe 100 that I saw. But I'm sure the comments are right that it will fall away quickly if it starts to fall.
SW Surrey is one of the most middle-class seats in the country if I remember correctly.
Yes, it is. Archetypal Blue Wall, voted strongly Remain, few houses costing under £300K, and I see my rental of £1000/month as an amazing bargain. I was surprised the LibDems didn't come closer in 2019, but Jeremy Hunt is a good MP who projects a moderate image.
Weren’t they close years ago and thigh tho they had a chance of getting Virginia Bottomley out as part of their decapitation plan for top Tories.
Though the 'Decapitation Strategy' flopped abysmally. The only one they got in the end was Tim Collins (remember him?).
He appeared in an extra on a Dr Who dvd. He was a fan of the show.
Tim Collins works as a lobbyist now but lives in Epping where he grew up, he comes from an old family from rural Essex in the area and his mother used to be leader of the council.
He often helps us in local election campaigns and I have chatted to him in the supermarket from time to time
So there you go. Train more lorry drivers and give pensioners their raise.
I have yet to see any shop with meaningful gaps on shelves - March 2020 on other hand....
I'm not quite sure what that sentence means.
One could argue the inevitable "splurge" of spending and other economic activity as the pandemic restrictions were eased was always going to cause capacity issues and these have manifested themselves in different ways.
Labour (as in the workforce, not the political party) is one of those manifestations (inflation is another). The "we want it all and we want it now" economic phase of conspicuous consumption and the release of a lot of pent-up demand has had inevitable consequences.
This evening, there are severe delays on the Circle and minor delays on a couple of other lines due to "train cancellations". Why are trains being cancelled? Two possibilities, either no one to drive them or no one to maintain them - either way, there aren't enough staff at the weekends (and sometimes during the week) to run the railway.
It's a complex and multi-layered issue and perhaps of short-term activity as levels of economic activity return to "normal" - we'll see.
Is this a case of the govt frontloading the medicine so as to be able to give a spoonful of sugar at GE campaign time?
I think you misunderstand how fked the public finances are.
I think Tory mps do, too.
If they’re genuinely interested in balancing the books, we’ll need stronger medicine.
Boris doesn’t care about balancing the books though, so we get this token effort.
Hang on.
There are two key elements to the UK public finances:
(1) The amount of debt there is. This is actually fine, despite the Global Financial Crisis, Brexit and Covid. Once you eliminate debt owed to the Bank of of England, debt-to-GDP is probably around 65%. This is, in the general scheme of things, fine.
(2) The long term consequences of an ageing population and a birth rate below replacement. This, on the other hand, is not fine. Every year the number of people of non-working age - almost all of whom require expensive healthcare and pensions - grows, while the number of people of working age (absent immigration) does not.
This means that the proportion of the output of workers that is going to be diverted to pay for non-workers increases. Hopefully this can be offset by having more people working (as has happened in Japan), but this causes it's own problems - specifically that if both two people in a relationship are working, the chances of them having kids drops dramatically.
We do need to find a solution to (2) - in the longer term, having a taxation system that encourages people to have kids (see France) would be good; but in the short-term, we need to increase the age of retirement and avoid the state pension taking up too great a share of spending.
I just want to dwell on this last point for a second. There's been a lot of comment about wanting to to close the gap between the value of the state pension and average earnings.
So, let's say that there 1,000 pensioners, and 2,000 people of working age. If two thirds of people of working age work, and earn £30,000 on average. That means that you have £20,000,000 of wages out there to tax.
If your 1,000 pensioners all recieve one-third the average income (i.e. £10,000), that means you need to pay them £10,000,000 a year.
Before we talk about a single penny of other things that taxes need to be used for, we have to extract half the income of the workers to pay for pensions.
One reason that penalising saving and tax raids on pensions are not wise...
Saving is not really worthwhile at present, and easy credit is keeping too many zombie businesses standing.
Is this a case of the govt frontloading the medicine so as to be able to give a spoonful of sugar at GE campaign time?
I think you misunderstand how fked the public finances are.
I think Tory mps do, too.
If they’re genuinely interested in balancing the books, we’ll need stronger medicine.
Boris doesn’t care about balancing the books though, so we get this token effort.
Hang on.
There are two key elements to the UK public finances:
(1) The amount of debt there is. This is actually fine, despite the Global Financial Crisis, Brexit and Covid. Once you eliminate debt owed to the Bank of of England, debt-to-GDP is probably around 65%. This is, in the general scheme of things, fine.
(2) The long term consequences of an ageing population and a birth rate below replacement. This, on the other hand, is not fine. Every year the number of people of non-working age - almost all of whom require expensive healthcare and pensions - grows, while the number of people of working age (absent immigration) does not.
This means that the proportion of the output of workers that is going to be diverted to pay for non-workers increases. Hopefully this can be offset by having more people working (as has happened in Japan), but this causes it's own problems - specifically that if both two people in a relationship are working, the chances of them having kids drops dramatically.
We do need to find a solution to (2) - in the longer term, having a taxation system that encourages people to have kids (see France) would be good; but in the short-term, we need to increase the age of retirement and avoid the state pension taking up too great a share of spending.
I just want to dwell on this last point for a second. There's been a lot of comment about wanting to to close the gap between the value of the state pension and average earnings.
So, let's say that there 1,000 pensioners, and 2,000 people of working age. If two thirds of people of working age work, and earn £30,000 on average. That means that you have £20,000,000 of wages out there to tax.
If your 1,000 pensioners all recieve one-third the average income (i.e. £10,000), that means you need to pay them £10,000,000 a year.
Before we talk about a single penny of other things that taxes need to be used for, we have to extract half the income of the workers to pay for pensions.
Debt, outflow, income.
Debt is only relevant when income minus outflow is near zero. Unhappily that's always been the case in the UK, and really in the West generally.
I have really noticed over the last week how mask wearing in supermarkets is falling away big time.
Last visit was 20% masked 80% not
I was in Sainsbury today here in Godalming - literally only one person not wearing a mask, out of maybe 100 that I saw. But I'm sure the comments are right that it will fall away quickly if it starts to fall.
I was in Sainsbury’s at the Arnison in North Durham today, early morning mainly older people, and pretty much everyone was masked up there. I wonder if people still wear masks up here as in the last spike the north east went into it very quickly.
My impression is that it is locally very lumpy. So all anecdotes can be true at once.
Not disputing that at all. I did wonder if it was age or regional.
still compulsory up here and most people wearing them in shops.
I was in a 2 metre queue at the fish and chip shop just now, and a woman charged up behind me without her mask and virtually swore and said we are not still doing this nonsense, at a time when cases are rising quite quickly in this part of Wales
That kind of thing is inevitable once the regulations forcing people to comply with Covid measures are removed. When it comes to masks and distancing, some of us think they're useless or even counter-productive, others are simply relieved to be shot of them, some are still feeling cautious and yet more are scared witless. FWIW, I'd say in the local supermarkets around here social distancing is over and mask use is down to about 50:50 amongst both customers and staff (and probably less than that when you take account of the twits who wear them as earrings and necklaces.)
It'll be interesting to see how many of the remaining users are still going around in their masks in ten years' time. I suspect that Covid has caused lasting psychological injury to some people, and they'll always be frightened of disease in a way they weren't before.
Do you think that the fish and chip queue moves faster if the customers line up a foot rather than 6 feet apart?
I have really noticed over the last week how mask wearing in supermarkets is falling away big time.
Last visit was 20% masked 80% not
I was in Sainsbury today here in Godalming - literally only one person not wearing a mask, out of maybe 100 that I saw. But I'm sure the comments are right that it will fall away quickly if it starts to fall.
I was in Sainsbury’s at the Arnison in North Durham today, early morning mainly older people, and pretty much everyone was masked up there. I wonder if people still wear masks up here as in the last spike the north east went into it very quickly.
My impression is that it is locally very lumpy. So all anecdotes can be true at once.
Not disputing that at all. I did wonder if it was age or regional.
still compulsory up here and most people wearing them in shops.
I was in a 2 metre queue at the fish and chip shop just now, and a woman charged up behind me without her mask and virtually swore and said we are not still doing this nonsense, at a time when cases are rising quite quickly in this part of Wales
That kind of thing is inevitable once the regulations forcing people to comply with Covid measures are removed. When it comes to masks and distancing, some of us think they're useless or even counter-productive, others are simply relieved to be shot of them, some are still feeling cautious and yet more are scared witless. FWIW, I'd say in the local supermarkets around here social distancing is over and mask use is down to about 50:50 amongst both customers and staff (and probably less than that when you take account of the twits who wear them as earrings and necklaces.)
It'll be interesting to see how many of the remaining users are still going around in their masks in ten years' time. I suspect that Covid has caused lasting psychological injury to some people, and they'll always be frightened of disease in a way they weren't before.
Do you think that the fish and chip queue moves faster if the customers line up a foot rather than 6 feet apart?
No. I was, of course, making a general point about people's tolerance or otherwise for the continuance of Covid measures after the Government, based on advice received, has concluded that rules aren't important enough to be kept in force.
So there you go. Train more lorry drivers and give pensioners their raise.
I have yet to see any shop with meaningful gaps on shelves - March 2020 on other hand....
I see gaps on supermarket shelves every week. Whether they are meaningful is left as an exercise for the reader. There is an economic cost though.
Yes, my mum couldn't get chicken at the supermarket yesterday when I called by for dinner, so we were fed on duck in orange sauce instead. Good old M and S...
Not too much hardship. I didn't ask about flaked parmesan.
Is this a case of the govt frontloading the medicine so as to be able to give a spoonful of sugar at GE campaign time?
I think you misunderstand how fked the public finances are.
I think Tory mps do, too.
If they’re genuinely interested in balancing the books, we’ll need stronger medicine.
Boris doesn’t care about balancing the books though, so we get this token effort.
Hang on.
There are two key elements to the UK public finances:
(1) The amount of debt there is. This is actually fine, despite the Global Financial Crisis, Brexit and Covid. Once you eliminate debt owed to the Bank of of England, debt-to-GDP is probably around 65%. This is, in the general scheme of things, fine.
(2) The long term consequences of an ageing population and a birth rate below replacement. This, on the other hand, is not fine. Every year the number of people of non-working age - almost all of whom require expensive healthcare and pensions - grows, while the number of people of working age (absent immigration) does not.
This means that the proportion of the output of workers that is going to be diverted to pay for non-workers increases. Hopefully this can be offset by having more people working (as has happened in Japan), but this causes it's own problems - specifically that if both two people in a relationship are working, the chances of them having kids drops dramatically.
We do need to find a solution to (2) - in the longer term, having a taxation system that encourages people to have kids (see France) would be good; but in the short-term, we need to increase the age of retirement and avoid the state pension taking up too great a share of spending.
I just want to dwell on this last point for a second. There's been a lot of comment about wanting to to close the gap between the value of the state pension and average earnings.
So, let's say that there 1,000 pensioners, and 2,000 people of working age. If two thirds of people of working age work, and earn £30,000 on average. That means that you have £20,000,000 of wages out there to tax.
If your 1,000 pensioners all recieve one-third the average income (i.e. £10,000), that means you need to pay them £10,000,000 a year.
Before we talk about a single penny of other things that taxes need to be used for, we have to extract half the income of the workers to pay for pensions.
I suppose you did go to the same university as Diane Abbott…
As an aside, looking at the French Presidential polling, the choice of the centre-right between Barnier, Pecresse and Bertrans doesn't seem to make a lot of difference. All poll mid to high teens but it's still a Macron-Le Pen run off in Round two.
The best chance to break this might be for Eric Zemmour to run - he takes a big chunk out of Marine Le Pen's vote and might just do enough to enable one of the centre-right candidates to nick second in round one.
We'll see.
Historically, whoever gets into the final round vs Le Pen wins. I wonder if that will continue. If one of the centre-right candidates manages to edge out Le Pen, it would look like curtains for Macron.
Zemmour was polling at 8% if he ran as an independent candidate but in that scenario, Le Pen's vote drops below 20% which puts her in reach of a viable centre-right candidate.
If Bertrand got into the run off with Macron as the main centre right candidate polls show it would be neck and neck
The evidence is Pecresse and Bertrand would both do respectably well without breaking into the first two, Barnier perhaps not quite so well.
I don't disagree with your central point - were an LR candidate to be in the final run-off with Macron, I'd expect them to win. However, they have to get there and that's the problem. Macron and Le Pen are both polling in the mid-20s with the LR candidate in the mid to high teens. The only hope for LR is for an alternative far-right candidate like Zemmour to draw enough support from Le Pen to enable their candidate to sneak into second.
In all the current match-up polls between Macron and Le Pen, the President is re-elected 56-44 or similar.
I remember you backing Fillon last time - he certainly polled well with older voters winning 45% among over-70s in the first round but among those below 60, he was nowhere near as popular and his 20% in the first round meant he missed the cut.
Monster death numbers out of florida. Hard to rell with how various sites report the figures but it looks like they have sailed passed the UK equivalent of 1k a day.
A friend of mine from New Orleans is over in London at the moment. Good timing in multiple ways
And it's not just the hurricane.
He says the atmosphere there - in the Deep South, Florida, etc - is one of increasing dread. Delta has got them by the cullions and everyone is back to fearful quivering. He could not believe the difference in mood between the UK and his part of the USA.
"Here it feels like it's all over" were his precise words. I hope he doesn't have to eat them
Is this a case of the govt frontloading the medicine so as to be able to give a spoonful of sugar at GE campaign time?
I think you misunderstand how fked the public finances are.
I think Tory mps do, too.
If they’re genuinely interested in balancing the books, we’ll need stronger medicine.
Boris doesn’t care about balancing the books though, so we get this token effort.
Hang on.
There are two key elements to the UK public finances:
(1) The amount of debt there is. This is actually fine, despite the Global Financial Crisis, Brexit and Covid. Once you eliminate debt owed to the Bank of of England, debt-to-GDP is probably around 65%. This is, in the general scheme of things, fine.
(2) The long term consequences of an ageing population and a birth rate below replacement. This, on the other hand, is not fine. Every year the number of people of non-working age - almost all of whom require expensive healthcare and pensions - grows, while the number of people of working age (absent immigration) does not.
This means that the proportion of the output of workers that is going to be diverted to pay for non-workers increases. Hopefully this can be offset by having more people working (as has happened in Japan), but this causes it's own problems - specifically that if both two people in a relationship are working, the chances of them having kids drops dramatically.
We do need to find a solution to (2) - in the longer term, having a taxation system that encourages people to have kids (see France) would be good; but in the short-term, we need to increase the age of retirement and avoid the state pension taking up too great a share of spending.
I just want to dwell on this last point for a second. There's been a lot of comment about wanting to to close the gap between the value of the state pension and average earnings.
So, let's say that there 1,000 pensioners, and 2,000 people of working age. If two thirds of people of working age work, and earn £30,000 on average. That means that you have £20,000,000 of wages out there to tax.
If your 1,000 pensioners all recieve one-third the average income (i.e. £10,000), that means you need to pay them £10,000,000 a year.
Before we talk about a single penny of other things that taxes need to be used for, we have to extract half the income of the workers to pay for pensions.
One reason that penalising saving and tax raids on pensions are not wise...
Saving is not really worthwhile at present, and easy credit is keeping too many zombie businesses standing.
Saving is very worthwhile, you just have to invest in slightly riskier asset classes than cash in the bank. Long-term rock-bottom interest rates plus cheap credit = asset price inflation. Works for equities just as it does for bricks and mortar. I'm not exactly a high roller, but I do have enough spare at the end of each month to chuck a bit of cash into some managed funds in a share ISA. You just dump it in there and it grows at a pretty healthy rate with no effort required at all. Ain't capitalism grand?
On NI I expect it to be a package to include all workng pensioners to pay full NI and the triple lock suspended for 2022
Taken by itself it would be very brave and extremely unwise
And I have been saying for weeks that a Labour poll lead this year is very possible
Working pensioners are likely to be the poorer ones, with the wealthy sitting at home enjoying their pension and investment income.
I am not sure that is so. My experience of working pensioners is more mixed, even perhaps the opposite. A lot of professional people, including a number of my colleagues, take their pension then return on reduced hours. My solicitor and accountant have done the same. Working pensioners are a mix of those that have to work, and those that enjoy their work.
It was Ed Davey who abolished compulsory retirement, in one of his many astute policy decisions of what with time (and the notable exception over tuition fees) was in retrospect a golden period of good government under the Coalition.
The problem with abolishing compulsory retirement is that employers can no longer get rid of dead wood on high earnings.
I know that not all in their 60s are like that but some are.
This is also annoying for those of a younger generation who are doing the actual work but for less money.
Is age relevant for employment tribunals? Say you have a 90-year-old who used to be good but is well past it, but the employer hasn't had the heart to tell him his performance is declining. Suddenly a new boss takes over and sacks him for poor performance. He goes to a tribunal, pointing out that nobody mentioned this before. Can the employer use his age as supporting evidence? My understanding is no.
Which means that if someone digs in, you have to start telling them they're declining (if they are), instead of saying "we'd love to keep you but our retirement age is X".
I have really noticed over the last week how mask wearing in supermarkets is falling away big time.
Last visit was 20% masked 80% not
I was in Sainsbury today here in Godalming - literally only one person not wearing a mask, out of maybe 100 that I saw. But I'm sure the comments are right that it will fall away quickly if it starts to fall.
I was in Sainsbury’s at the Arnison in North Durham today, early morning mainly older people, and pretty much everyone was masked up there. I wonder if people still wear masks up here as in the last spike the north east went into it very quickly.
My impression is that it is locally very lumpy. So all anecdotes can be true at once.
Not disputing that at all. I did wonder if it was age or regional.
still compulsory up here and most people wearing them in shops.
Yeah, we were at a wedding in Scotland last week and observance was total.
Having just been to Scotland I can confirm that their attitude to mask wearing and distancing is much more anal and oppressive than England. Masks bloody everywhere, gaiters not good enough, shopkeepers only allowing 1 person in every 6 hours
I love the Scots and the people I met generally were super friendly. but there is still a Puritan and officious streak in the Scottish character, that likes bossing people around and saying No, ye'll naw be havin any o yer pleasures
On NI I expect it to be a package to include all workng pensioners to pay full NI and the triple lock suspended for 2022
Taken by itself it would be very brave and extremely unwise
And I have been saying for weeks that a Labour poll lead this year is very possible
Working pensioners are likely to be the poorer ones, with the wealthy sitting at home enjoying their pension and investment income.
I am not sure that is so. My experience of working pensioners is more mixed, even perhaps the opposite. A lot of professional people, including a number of my colleagues, take their pension then return on reduced hours. My solicitor and accountant have done the same. Working pensioners are a mix of those that have to work, and those that enjoy their work.
It was Ed Davey who abolished compulsory retirement, in one of his many astute policy decisions of what with time (and the notable exception over tuition fees) was in retrospect a golden period of good government under the Coalition.
The problem with abolishing compulsory retirement is that employers can no longer get rid of dead wood on high earnings.
I know that not all in their 60s are like that but some are.
This is also annoying for those of a younger generation who are doing the actual work but for less money.
Is age relevant for employment tribunals? Say you have a 90-year-old who used to be good but is well past it, but the employer hasn't had the heart to tell him his performance is declining. Suddenly a new boss takes over and sacks him for poor performance. He goes to a tribunal, pointing out that nobody mentioned this before. Can the employer use his age as supporting evidence? My understanding is no.
Which means that if someone digs in, you have to start telling them they're declining (if they are), instead of saying "we'd love to keep you but our retirement age is X".
What do you think about the issue NP?
It's sort of trivial for me in that employers should be able to divest themselves of employees with little notice.
Do you think that the fish and chip queue moves faster if the customers line up a foot rather than 6 feet apart?
Certainly moves quicker than the queue at Terminal 5 arrivals it would seem.
We arrived at T5 on Sunday and it took 45mins (we were in the slowest queue)
The Daily Mail stories about airport chaos used to be based on T3 - there was a point where about 8 flights from India arrive at the same time which backs up immigration. I’m sure they have identified the equivalent pressure point with the new schedule
On NI I expect it to be a package to include all workng pensioners to pay full NI and the triple lock suspended for 2022
Taken by itself it would be very brave and extremely unwise
And I have been saying for weeks that a Labour poll lead this year is very possible
Working pensioners are likely to be the poorer ones, with the wealthy sitting at home enjoying their pension and investment income.
I am not sure that is so. My experience of working pensioners is more mixed, even perhaps the opposite. A lot of professional people, including a number of my colleagues, take their pension then return on reduced hours. My solicitor and accountant have done the same. Working pensioners are a mix of those that have to work, and those that enjoy their work.
It was Ed Davey who abolished compulsory retirement, in one of his many astute policy decisions of what with time (and the notable exception over tuition fees) was in retrospect a golden period of good government under the Coalition.
The problem with abolishing compulsory retirement is that employers can no longer get rid of dead wood on high earnings.
I know that not all in their 60s are like that but some are.
This is also annoying for those of a younger generation who are doing the actual work but for less money.
Is age relevant for employment tribunals? Say you have a 90-year-old who used to be good but is well past it, but the employer hasn't had the heart to tell him his performance is declining. Suddenly a new boss takes over and sacks him for poor performance. He goes to a tribunal, pointing out that nobody mentioned this before. Can the employer use his age as supporting evidence? My understanding is no.
Which means that if someone digs in, you have to start telling them they're declining (if they are), instead of saying "we'd love to keep you but our retirement age is X".
What do you think about the issue NP?
It's sort of trivial for me in that employers should be able to divest themselves of employees with little notice.
No, I agree with the current law as I understand it. You need to either (a) show that the job is no longer required (=redundancy) or (b) that the incumbent is no longer good at it. If (b), you need to give reasonable warning that you're not satisfied, so they can attempt to improve. Isn't that the legal position?
Otherwise, you will get some temperamental employers routinely firing people (a la Alan Sugar) without any real justification, and all employees are in a constant state of fear. I was just curious whether great age changes anything in the legal position - but I don't think it does. (Edit: perhaps it affects the amount of compensation for unfair dismissal, though? The 95-year-old is unlikely to get another job, but does have a pension. Does he get more or less compensation?)
I have really noticed over the last week how mask wearing in supermarkets is falling away big time.
Last visit was 20% masked 80% not
I was in Sainsbury today here in Godalming - literally only one person not wearing a mask, out of maybe 100 that I saw. But I'm sure the comments are right that it will fall away quickly if it starts to fall.
I was in Sainsbury’s at the Arnison in North Durham today, early morning mainly older people, and pretty much everyone was masked up there. I wonder if people still wear masks up here as in the last spike the north east went into it very quickly.
My impression is that it is locally very lumpy. So all anecdotes can be true at once.
Not disputing that at all. I did wonder if it was age or regional.
still compulsory up here and most people wearing them in shops.
Yeah, we were at a wedding in Scotland last week and observance was total.
Having just been to Scotland I can confirm that their attitude to mask wearing and distancing is much more anal and oppressive than England. Masks bloody everywhere, gaiters not good enough, shopkeepers only allowing 1 person in every 6 hours
I love the Scots and the people I met generally were super friendly. but there is still a Puritan and officious streak in the Scottish character, that likes bossing people around and saying No, ye'll naw be havin any o yer pleasures
Yes I was in Dumfries and Galloway last week and the Covid ambiance in the pubs and restaurants was completely different to England. But of course the rules are different there and Sturgeon knows best!
Is this a case of the govt frontloading the medicine so as to be able to give a spoonful of sugar at GE campaign time?
I think you misunderstand how fked the public finances are.
I think Tory mps do, too.
If they’re genuinely interested in balancing the books, we’ll need stronger medicine.
Boris doesn’t care about balancing the books though, so we get this token effort.
Hang on.
There are two key elements to the UK public finances:
(1) The amount of debt there is. This is actually fine, despite the Global Financial Crisis, Brexit and Covid. Once you eliminate debt owed to the Bank of of England, debt-to-GDP is probably around 65%. This is, in the general scheme of things, fine.
(2) The long term consequences of an ageing population and a birth rate below replacement. This, on the other hand, is not fine. Every year the number of people of non-working age - almost all of whom require expensive healthcare and pensions - grows, while the number of people of working age (absent immigration) does not.
This means that the proportion of the output of workers that is going to be diverted to pay for non-workers increases. Hopefully this can be offset by having more people working (as has happened in Japan), but this causes it's own problems - specifically that if both two people in a relationship are working, the chances of them having kids drops dramatically.
We do need to find a solution to (2) - in the longer term, having a taxation system that encourages people to have kids (see France) would be good; but in the short-term, we need to increase the age of retirement and avoid the state pension taking up too great a share of spending.
I just want to dwell on this last point for a second. There's been a lot of comment about wanting to to close the gap between the value of the state pension and average earnings.
So, let's say that there 1,000 pensioners, and 2,000 people of working age. If two thirds of people of working age work, and earn £30,000 on average. That means that you have £20,000,000 of wages out there to tax.
If your 1,000 pensioners all recieve one-third the average income (i.e. £10,000), that means you need to pay them £10,000,000 a year.
Before we talk about a single penny of other things that taxes need to be used for, we have to extract half the income of the workers to pay for pensions.
One reason that penalising saving and tax raids on pensions are not wise...
Saving is not really worthwhile at present, and easy credit is keeping too many zombie businesses standing.
Saving is very worthwhile, you just have to invest in slightly riskier asset classes than cash in the bank. Long-term rock-bottom interest rates plus cheap credit = asset price inflation. Works for equities just as it does for bricks and mortar. I'm not exactly a high roller, but I do have enough spare at the end of each month to chuck a bit of cash into some managed funds in a share ISA. You just dump it in there and it grows at a pretty healthy rate with no effort required at all. Ain't capitalism grand?
Sure, my equities have done very well over the last decade, my initial investment in 2010 is up 150%.
Whether encouraging investing in riskier assets, or in housing is good for the economy in the longer run, we will see. The reason Britons are so hung up on property prices is that those properties, and their aging parents ones are their major savings.
Is there a way of buying a footboard for a bed without having to buy the rest of it?
Yes. And you can also buy things that go in rather than at the end of the bed. Whether any of these are of use depends on how tall you are, relative to bed length. Come to think of it, you could just shove the bed against the wall.
I have really noticed over the last week how mask wearing in supermarkets is falling away big time.
Last visit was 20% masked 80% not
I was in Sainsbury today here in Godalming - literally only one person not wearing a mask, out of maybe 100 that I saw. But I'm sure the comments are right that it will fall away quickly if it starts to fall.
I was in Sainsbury’s at the Arnison in North Durham today, early morning mainly older people, and pretty much everyone was masked up there. I wonder if people still wear masks up here as in the last spike the north east went into it very quickly.
My impression is that it is locally very lumpy. So all anecdotes can be true at once.
Not disputing that at all. I did wonder if it was age or regional.
still compulsory up here and most people wearing them in shops.
Yeah, we were at a wedding in Scotland last week and observance was total.
Having just been to Scotland I can confirm that their attitude to mask wearing and distancing is much more anal and oppressive than England. Masks bloody everywhere, gaiters not good enough, shopkeepers only allowing 1 person in every 6 hours
I love the Scots and the people I met generally were super friendly. but there is still a Puritan and officious streak in the Scottish character, that likes bossing people around and saying No, ye'll naw be havin any o yer pleasures
Yes I was in Dumfries and Galloway last week and the Covid ambiance in the pubs and restaurants was completely different to England. But of course the rules are different there and Sturgeon knows best!
I was in Edinburgh and then near Gleneagles about a week ago. Mask wearing in shops was fairly standard. Didn't seem to be many limits on how many people came in places. One restaurant had a restricted numbers of tables - but that seemed to be more related to a staff shortage than COVID - everywhere else seemed to be back to as many tables as they could fit in.
On NI I expect it to be a package to include all workng pensioners to pay full NI and the triple lock suspended for 2022
Taken by itself it would be very brave and extremely unwise
And I have been saying for weeks that a Labour poll lead this year is very possible
Working pensioners are likely to be the poorer ones, with the wealthy sitting at home enjoying their pension and investment income.
I am not sure that is so. My experience of working pensioners is more mixed, even perhaps the opposite. A lot of professional people, including a number of my colleagues, take their pension then return on reduced hours. My solicitor and accountant have done the same. Working pensioners are a mix of those that have to work, and those that enjoy their work.
It was Ed Davey who abolished compulsory retirement, in one of his many astute policy decisions of what with time (and the notable exception over tuition fees) was in retrospect a golden period of good government under the Coalition.
The problem with abolishing compulsory retirement is that employers can no longer get rid of dead wood on high earnings.
I know that not all in their 60s are like that but some are.
This is also annoying for those of a younger generation who are doing the actual work but for less money.
Is age relevant for employment tribunals? Say you have a 90-year-old who used to be good but is well past it, but the employer hasn't had the heart to tell him his performance is declining. Suddenly a new boss takes over and sacks him for poor performance. He goes to a tribunal, pointing out that nobody mentioned this before. Can the employer use his age as supporting evidence? My understanding is no.
Which means that if someone digs in, you have to start telling them they're declining (if they are), instead of saying "we'd love to keep you but our retirement age is X".
What do you think about the issue NP?
It's sort of trivial for me in that employers should be able to divest themselves of employees with little notice.
No, I agree with the current law as I understand it. You need to either (a) show that the job is no longer required (=redundancy) or (b) that the incumbent is no longer good at it. If (b), you need to give reasonable warning that you're not satisfied, so they can attempt to improve. Isn't that the legal position?
Otherwise, you will get some temperamental employers routinely firing people (a la Alan Sugar) without any real justification, and all employees are in a constant state of fear. I was just curious whether great age changes anything in the legal position - but I don't think it does. (Edit: perhaps it affects the amount of compensation for unfair dismissal, though? The 95-year-old is unlikely to get another job, but does have a pension. Does he get more or less compensation?)
Although on the Apprentice, Alan Sugar fired people more-or-less arbitrarily every week, it is interesting to note that his senior management team (also as seen on the Apprentice) stayed the same for decades.
On NI I expect it to be a package to include all workng pensioners to pay full NI and the triple lock suspended for 2022
Taken by itself it would be very brave and extremely unwise
And I have been saying for weeks that a Labour poll lead this year is very possible
Working pensioners are likely to be the poorer ones, with the wealthy sitting at home enjoying their pension and investment income.
I am not sure that is so. My experience of working pensioners is more mixed, even perhaps the opposite. A lot of professional people, including a number of my colleagues, take their pension then return on reduced hours. My solicitor and accountant have done the same. Working pensioners are a mix of those that have to work, and those that enjoy their work.
It was Ed Davey who abolished compulsory retirement, in one of his many astute policy decisions of what with time (and the notable exception over tuition fees) was in retrospect a golden period of good government under the Coalition.
The problem with abolishing compulsory retirement is that employers can no longer get rid of dead wood on high earnings.
I know that not all in their 60s are like that but some are.
This is also annoying for those of a younger generation who are doing the actual work but for less money.
Is age relevant for employment tribunals? Say you have a 90-year-old who used to be good but is well past it, but the employer hasn't had the heart to tell him his performance is declining. Suddenly a new boss takes over and sacks him for poor performance. He goes to a tribunal, pointing out that nobody mentioned this before. Can the employer use his age as supporting evidence? My understanding is no.
Which means that if someone digs in, you have to start telling them they're declining (if they are), instead of saying "we'd love to keep you but our retirement age is X".
What do you think about the issue NP?
It's sort of trivial for me in that employers should be able to divest themselves of employees with little notice.
No, I agree with the current law as I understand it. You need to either (a) show that the job is no longer required (=redundancy) or (b) that the incumbent is no longer good at it. If (b), you need to give reasonable warning that you're not satisfied, so they can attempt to improve. Isn't that the legal position?
Otherwise, you will get some temperamental employers routinely firing people (a la Alan Sugar) without any real justification, and all employees are in a constant state of fear. I was just curious whether great age changes anything in the legal position - but I don't think it does.
Although FWIW if an employer is really determined to get rid of someone, especially in a larger organisation, then they can often get around the problem with a round of restructuring. Deciding, for example, that you need three departmental managers, or two managers and two deputy managers, instead of the four managers you have in an existing structure. Opportunities to generate redundancy directly and/or to do so through re-interview for reduced numbers of roles. It would potentially be very difficult for the intended victim to prove that it was done to dispose of them, rather than being a consequence of a process of necessary reform.
I see NFT land has gone even more insane now, people are paying $1000s for short sequences of random words and numbers....
When the merry go round stops, there are going to be some people out of pocket massively....
Do you think there'd be a market for PB posts?
If the right influencer pumped it....
I am fairly sure a lot of what is going on is market manipulation.
I have made a pretty penny over the past week in buying short term into all the crypto that these NFTs are being sold in....the tulip mania is so mad, one of them had gone up 5x in past couple of weeks.
On NI I expect it to be a package to include all workng pensioners to pay full NI and the triple lock suspended for 2022
Taken by itself it would be very brave and extremely unwise
And I have been saying for weeks that a Labour poll lead this year is very possible
Working pensioners are likely to be the poorer ones, with the wealthy sitting at home enjoying their pension and investment income.
I am not sure that is so. My experience of working pensioners is more mixed, even perhaps the opposite. A lot of professional people, including a number of my colleagues, take their pension then return on reduced hours. My solicitor and accountant have done the same. Working pensioners are a mix of those that have to work, and those that enjoy their work.
It was Ed Davey who abolished compulsory retirement, in one of his many astute policy decisions of what with time (and the notable exception over tuition fees) was in retrospect a golden period of good government under the Coalition.
The problem with abolishing compulsory retirement is that employers can no longer get rid of dead wood on high earnings.
I know that not all in their 60s are like that but some are.
This is also annoying for those of a younger generation who are doing the actual work but for less money.
Is age relevant for employment tribunals? Say you have a 90-year-old who used to be good but is well past it, but the employer hasn't had the heart to tell him his performance is declining. Suddenly a new boss takes over and sacks him for poor performance. He goes to a tribunal, pointing out that nobody mentioned this before. Can the employer use his age as supporting evidence? My understanding is no.
Which means that if someone digs in, you have to start telling them they're declining (if they are), instead of saying "we'd love to keep you but our retirement age is X".
What do you think about the issue NP?
It's sort of trivial for me in that employers should be able to divest themselves of employees with little notice.
No, I agree with the current law as I understand it. You need to either (a) show that the job is no longer required (=redundancy) or (b) that the incumbent is no longer good at it. If (b), you need to give reasonable warning that you're not satisfied, so they can attempt to improve. Isn't that the legal position?
Otherwise, you will get some temperamental employers routinely firing people (a la Alan Sugar) without any real justification, and all employees are in a constant state of fear. I was just curious whether great age changes anything in the legal position - but I don't think it does. (Edit: perhaps it affects the amount of compensation for unfair dismissal, though? The 95-year-old is unlikely to get another job, but does have a pension. Does he get more or less compensation?)
As you describe is the legal position. Baggy though, isn't it?
Dismissal for any random reason is better. A better unfairness.
On NI I expect it to be a package to include all workng pensioners to pay full NI and the triple lock suspended for 2022
Taken by itself it would be very brave and extremely unwise
And I have been saying for weeks that a Labour poll lead this year is very possible
Working pensioners are likely to be the poorer ones, with the wealthy sitting at home enjoying their pension and investment income.
I am not sure that is so. My experience of working pensioners is more mixed, even perhaps the opposite. A lot of professional people, including a number of my colleagues, take their pension then return on reduced hours. My solicitor and accountant have done the same. Working pensioners are a mix of those that have to work, and those that enjoy their work.
It was Ed Davey who abolished compulsory retirement, in one of his many astute policy decisions of what with time (and the notable exception over tuition fees) was in retrospect a golden period of good government under the Coalition.
The problem with abolishing compulsory retirement is that employers can no longer get rid of dead wood on high earnings.
I know that not all in their 60s are like that but some are.
This is also annoying for those of a younger generation who are doing the actual work but for less money.
Is age relevant for employment tribunals? Say you have a 90-year-old who used to be good but is well past it, but the employer hasn't had the heart to tell him his performance is declining. Suddenly a new boss takes over and sacks him for poor performance. He goes to a tribunal, pointing out that nobody mentioned this before. Can the employer use his age as supporting evidence? My understanding is no.
Which means that if someone digs in, you have to start telling them they're declining (if they are), instead of saying "we'd love to keep you but our retirement age is X".
What do you think about the issue NP?
It's sort of trivial for me in that employers should be able to divest themselves of employees with little notice.
No, I agree with the current law as I understand it. You need to either (a) show that the job is no longer required (=redundancy) or (b) that the incumbent is no longer good at it. If (b), you need to give reasonable warning that you're not satisfied, so they can attempt to improve. Isn't that the legal position?
Otherwise, you will get some temperamental employers routinely firing people (a la Alan Sugar) without any real justification, and all employees are in a constant state of fear. I was just curious whether great age changes anything in the legal position - but I don't think it does.
Although FWIW if an employer is really determined to get rid of someone, especially in a larger organisation, then they can often get around the problem with a round of restructuring. Deciding, for example, that you need three departmental managers, or two managers and two deputy managers, instead of the four managers you have in an existing structure. Opportunities to generate redundancy directly and/or to do so through re-interview for reduced numbers of roles. It would potentially be very difficult for the intended victim to prove that it was done to dispose of them, rather than being a consequence of a process of necessary reform.
I am sure a lot of pointless reorganisation is merely a charade in order to get rid of someone. In reality though they often get rid of the wrong person's.
Don't you just love being told how to do your job by a wet behind the ears twenty something management consultant who has never even run a school tuck shop?
Is this a case of the govt frontloading the medicine so as to be able to give a spoonful of sugar at GE campaign time?
I think you misunderstand how fked the public finances are.
I think Tory mps do, too.
If they’re genuinely interested in balancing the books, we’ll need stronger medicine.
Boris doesn’t care about balancing the books though, so we get this token effort.
Hang on.
There are two key elements to the UK public finances:
(1) The amount of debt there is. This is actually fine, despite the Global Financial Crisis, Brexit and Covid. Once you eliminate debt owed to the Bank of of England, debt-to-GDP is probably around 65%. This is, in the general scheme of things, fine.
(2) The long term consequences of an ageing population and a birth rate below replacement. This, on the other hand, is not fine. Every year the number of people of non-working age - almost all of whom require expensive healthcare and pensions - grows, while the number of people of working age (absent immigration) does not.
This means that the proportion of the output of workers that is going to be diverted to pay for non-workers increases. Hopefully this can be offset by having more people working (as has happened in Japan), but this causes it's own problems - specifically that if both two people in a relationship are working, the chances of them having kids drops dramatically.
We do need to find a solution to (2) - in the longer term, having a taxation system that encourages people to have kids (see France) would be good; but in the short-term, we need to increase the age of retirement and avoid the state pension taking up too great a share of spending.
I just want to dwell on this last point for a second. There's been a lot of comment about wanting to to close the gap between the value of the state pension and average earnings.
So, let's say that there 1,000 pensioners, and 2,000 people of working age. If two thirds of people of working age work, and earn £30,000 on average. That means that you have £20,000,000 of wages out there to tax.
If your 1,000 pensioners all recieve one-third the average income (i.e. £10,000), that means you need to pay them £10,000,000 a year.
Before we talk about a single penny of other things that taxes need to be used for, we have to extract half the income of the workers to pay for pensions.
One reason that penalising saving and tax raids on pensions are not wise...
Saving is not really worthwhile at present, and easy credit is keeping too many zombie businesses standing.
Saving is very worthwhile, you just have to invest in slightly riskier asset classes than cash in the bank. Long-term rock-bottom interest rates plus cheap credit = asset price inflation. Works for equities just as it does for bricks and mortar. I'm not exactly a high roller, but I do have enough spare at the end of each month to chuck a bit of cash into some managed funds in a share ISA. You just dump it in there and it grows at a pretty healthy rate with no effort required at all. Ain't capitalism grand?
Sure, my equities have done very well over the last decade, my initial investment in 2010 is up 150%.
Whether encouraging investing in riskier assets, or in housing is good for the economy in the longer run, we will see. The reason Britons are so hung up on property prices is that those properties, and their aging parents ones are their major savings.
In the long run it's evidently unhelpful to society to have earned incomes hammered (higher taxes on wages, no return on cash in the bank) whilst assets and investments continue to inflate, but it's where we are and it's liable to continue for a very long time. A natural consequence of the poison cocktail of state indebtedness, gerontocracy, wage suppression and the rise of the rentier class, the various facets of which we've been talking about today.
On NI I expect it to be a package to include all workng pensioners to pay full NI and the triple lock suspended for 2022
Taken by itself it would be very brave and extremely unwise
And I have been saying for weeks that a Labour poll lead this year is very possible
Working pensioners are likely to be the poorer ones, with the wealthy sitting at home enjoying their pension and investment income.
I am not sure that is so. My experience of working pensioners is more mixed, even perhaps the opposite. A lot of professional people, including a number of my colleagues, take their pension then return on reduced hours. My solicitor and accountant have done the same. Working pensioners are a mix of those that have to work, and those that enjoy their work.
It was Ed Davey who abolished compulsory retirement, in one of his many astute policy decisions of what with time (and the notable exception over tuition fees) was in retrospect a golden period of good government under the Coalition.
The problem with abolishing compulsory retirement is that employers can no longer get rid of dead wood on high earnings.
I know that not all in their 60s are like that but some are.
This is also annoying for those of a younger generation who are doing the actual work but for less money.
Is age relevant for employment tribunals? Say you have a 90-year-old who used to be good but is well past it, but the employer hasn't had the heart to tell him his performance is declining. Suddenly a new boss takes over and sacks him for poor performance. He goes to a tribunal, pointing out that nobody mentioned this before. Can the employer use his age as supporting evidence? My understanding is no.
Which means that if someone digs in, you have to start telling them they're declining (if they are), instead of saying "we'd love to keep you but our retirement age is X".
What do you think about the issue NP?
It's sort of trivial for me in that employers should be able to divest themselves of employees with little notice.
No, I agree with the current law as I understand it. You need to either (a) show that the job is no longer required (=redundancy) or (b) that the incumbent is no longer good at it. If (b), you need to give reasonable warning that you're not satisfied, so they can attempt to improve. Isn't that the legal position?
Otherwise, you will get some temperamental employers routinely firing people (a la Alan Sugar) without any real justification, and all employees are in a constant state of fear. I was just curious whether great age changes anything in the legal position - but I don't think it does. (Edit: perhaps it affects the amount of compensation for unfair dismissal, though? The 95-year-old is unlikely to get another job, but does have a pension. Does he get more or less compensation?)
Although on the Apprentice, Alan Sugar fired people more-or-less arbitrarily every week, it is interesting to note that his senior management team (also as seen on the Apprentice) stayed the same for decades.
Although Trump didn't. He carried straight on firing.
The Conservative lead has risen to 5 points after their lead collapsed in the wake of the the Afghanistan crisis. The Conservatives are now on 40% (+1), with Labour on 35% (-1), the Lib Dems on 7% (-1) and the Greens on 6% (no change).
The Conservative lead fall has risen to 5 points after their lead collapsed in the wake of the the Afghanistan crisis. The Conservatives are now on 40% (+1), with Labour on 35% (-1), the Lib Dems on 7% (-1) and the Greens on 6% (no change).
The Conservative lead fall has risen to 5 points after their lead collapsed in the wake of the the Afghanistan crisis. The Conservatives are now on 40% (+1), with Labour on 35% (-1), the Lib Dems on 7% (-1) and the Greens on 6% (no change).
The Conservative lead fall has risen to 5 points after their lead collapsed in the wake of the the Afghanistan crisis. The Conservatives are now on 40% (+1), with Labour on 35% (-1), the Lib Dems on 7% (-1) and the Greens on 6% (no change).
Just seen the most remarkable comeback finish to an RL game, in fact any game, ever. First versus second in the table too. 4 minutes to go Saints 30 Catalans 12. 3 tries and 3 goals in double quick time to tie, followed by a drop goal in overtime. Les Dracs now need to win one of the last 2 to win the league.. Worth catching on YouTube for any half sports fan.
One of Prince Charles’s closest aides quit last night after claims that he had fixed an honour for a Saudi tycoon who donated more than £1.5 million to royal charities.
Michael Fawcett, the prince’s former valet, stepped down temporarily as chief executive of the Prince’s Foundation after The Sunday Times provided evidence of Charles’s dealings with the businessman.
Mahfouz Marei Mubarak bin Mahfouz paid tens of thousands of pounds to fixers with links to the prince who had told him they could secure the honour.
Charles, 72, personally awarded Mahfouz, 51, his CBE at a private ceremony at Buckingham Palace in November 2016. The event was not announced in the Court Circular, the official list of royal engagements.
Aides close to the prince and senior staff in his charities had helped the paid fixers to secure the CBE after Mahfouz donated large sums to restoration projects of particular interest to Charles, including Dumfries House and the Castle of Mey.
In leaked correspondence, they were explicit about the transactional nature of the arrangement: in exchange for giving large sums of money to Charles’s charities, his team would secure the honour. Mahfouz and his fixers soon attended a meeting with Charles and Fawcett at Clarence House.
In one email dated September 1, 2014, William Bortrick, the owner of Burke’s Peerage and a paid adviser to Mahfouz, told colleagues that once he has “Hon OBE ... then more money will flow”.
The OBE, he said, was “promised to MBM [Mahfouz Bin Mahfouz] to get the £1.5 million he paid for Dumfries [House] and [The Castle of] Mey”.
On NI I expect it to be a package to include all workng pensioners to pay full NI and the triple lock suspended for 2022
Taken by itself it would be very brave and extremely unwise
And I have been saying for weeks that a Labour poll lead this year is very possible
Working pensioners are likely to be the poorer ones, with the wealthy sitting at home enjoying their pension and investment income.
I am not sure that is so. My experience of working pensioners is more mixed, even perhaps the opposite. A lot of professional people, including a number of my colleagues, take their pension then return on reduced hours. My solicitor and accountant have done the same. Working pensioners are a mix of those that have to work, and those that enjoy their work.
It was Ed Davey who abolished compulsory retirement, in one of his many astute policy decisions of what with time (and the notable exception over tuition fees) was in retrospect a golden period of good government under the Coalition.
The problem with abolishing compulsory retirement is that employers can no longer get rid of dead wood on high earnings.
I know that not all in their 60s are like that but some are.
This is also annoying for those of a younger generation who are doing the actual work but for less money.
Is age relevant for employment tribunals? Say you have a 90-year-old who used to be good but is well past it, but the employer hasn't had the heart to tell him his performance is declining. Suddenly a new boss takes over and sacks him for poor performance. He goes to a tribunal, pointing out that nobody mentioned this before. Can the employer use his age as supporting evidence? My understanding is no.
Which means that if someone digs in, you have to start telling them they're declining (if they are), instead of saying "we'd love to keep you but our retirement age is X".
What do you think about the issue NP?
It's sort of trivial for me in that employers should be able to divest themselves of employees with little notice.
No, I agree with the current law as I understand it. You need to either (a) show that the job is no longer required (=redundancy) or (b) that the incumbent is no longer good at it. If (b), you need to give reasonable warning that you're not satisfied, so they can attempt to improve. Isn't that the legal position?
Otherwise, you will get some temperamental employers routinely firing people (a la Alan Sugar) without any real justification, and all employees are in a constant state of fear. I was just curious whether great age changes anything in the legal position - but I don't think it does. (Edit: perhaps it affects the amount of compensation for unfair dismissal, though? The 95-year-old is unlikely to get another job, but does have a pension. Does he get more or less compensation?)
I have never met a single good employer or business that fires employees arbitrarily without any justification. Even in the 2 year period where unfair dismissal can't be claimed, so its not just a legal issue.
Staff turnover is bad for business. Staff recruitment, even in normal times, is an inconvenience.
Sacking people for no good reason is bad for business.
The Conservative lead fall has risen to 5 points after their lead collapsed in the wake of the the Afghanistan crisis. The Conservatives are now on 40% (+1), with Labour on 35% (-1), the Lib Dems on 7% (-1) and the Greens on 6% (no change).
Lead fall has risen?
Typo in their press release.
Tory lead has risen from 3% to 5%.
Gruardian?
Opinium.
I will have to have words with James, Chris, and Adam.
On NI I expect it to be a package to include all workng pensioners to pay full NI and the triple lock suspended for 2022
Taken by itself it would be very brave and extremely unwise
And I have been saying for weeks that a Labour poll lead this year is very possible
Working pensioners are likely to be the poorer ones, with the wealthy sitting at home enjoying their pension and investment income.
I am not sure that is so. My experience of working pensioners is more mixed, even perhaps the opposite. A lot of professional people, including a number of my colleagues, take their pension then return on reduced hours. My solicitor and accountant have done the same. Working pensioners are a mix of those that have to work, and those that enjoy their work.
It was Ed Davey who abolished compulsory retirement, in one of his many astute policy decisions of what with time (and the notable exception over tuition fees) was in retrospect a golden period of good government under the Coalition.
The problem with abolishing compulsory retirement is that employers can no longer get rid of dead wood on high earnings.
I know that not all in their 60s are like that but some are.
This is also annoying for those of a younger generation who are doing the actual work but for less money.
Is age relevant for employment tribunals? Say you have a 90-year-old who used to be good but is well past it, but the employer hasn't had the heart to tell him his performance is declining. Suddenly a new boss takes over and sacks him for poor performance. He goes to a tribunal, pointing out that nobody mentioned this before. Can the employer use his age as supporting evidence? My understanding is no.
Which means that if someone digs in, you have to start telling them they're declining (if they are), instead of saying "we'd love to keep you but our retirement age is X".
What do you think about the issue NP?
It's sort of trivial for me in that employers should be able to divest themselves of employees with little notice.
No, I agree with the current law as I understand it. You need to either (a) show that the job is no longer required (=redundancy) or (b) that the incumbent is no longer good at it. If (b), you need to give reasonable warning that you're not satisfied, so they can attempt to improve. Isn't that the legal position?
Otherwise, you will get some temperamental employers routinely firing people (a la Alan Sugar) without any real justification, and all employees are in a constant state of fear. I was just curious whether great age changes anything in the legal position - but I don't think it does.
Although FWIW if an employer is really determined to get rid of someone, especially in a larger organisation, then they can often get around the problem with a round of restructuring. Deciding, for example, that you need three departmental managers, or two managers and two deputy managers, instead of the four managers you have in an existing structure. Opportunities to generate redundancy directly and/or to do so through re-interview for reduced numbers of roles. It would potentially be very difficult for the intended victim to prove that it was done to dispose of them, rather than being a consequence of a process of necessary reform.
I am sure a lot of pointless reorganisation is merely a charade in order to get rid of someone. In reality though they often get rid of the wrong person's.
Don't you just love being told how to do your job by a wet behind the ears twenty something management consultant who has never even run a school tuck shop?
I've certainly witnessed an example of reorganisation being used - or so we all suspected at the time - to resolve a personality clash in management, by the expedient of restructuring the lower-ranking individual out of a job.
Fortunately we've never been lumbered with any real nincompoops that I can recall. I am sure that it happens elsewhere in the private sector, especially in circumstances where a firm has been acquired by out-and-out asset-strippers and so the owners aren't that concerned about it being run into the ground. But generally speaking, there are only limited instances of failure, and fewer still of failing upwards, in successful businesses.
Is this a case of the govt frontloading the medicine so as to be able to give a spoonful of sugar at GE campaign time?
I think you misunderstand how fked the public finances are.
I think Tory mps do, too.
If they’re genuinely interested in balancing the books, we’ll need stronger medicine.
Boris doesn’t care about balancing the books though, so we get this token effort.
Hang on.
There are two key elements to the UK public finances:
(1) The amount of debt there is. This is actually fine, despite the Global Financial Crisis, Brexit and Covid. Once you eliminate debt owed to the Bank of of England, debt-to-GDP is probably around 65%. This is, in the general scheme of things, fine.
(2) The long term consequences of an ageing population and a birth rate below replacement. This, on the other hand, is not fine. Every year the number of people of non-working age - almost all of whom require expensive healthcare and pensions - grows, while the number of people of working age (absent immigration) does not.
This means that the proportion of the output of workers that is going to be diverted to pay for non-workers increases. Hopefully this can be offset by having more people working (as has happened in Japan), but this causes it's own problems - specifically that if both two people in a relationship are working, the chances of them having kids drops dramatically.
We do need to find a solution to (2) - in the longer term, having a taxation system that encourages people to have kids (see France) would be good; but in the short-term, we need to increase the age of retirement and avoid the state pension taking up too great a share of spending.
I just want to dwell on this last point for a second. There's been a lot of comment about wanting to to close the gap between the value of the state pension and average earnings.
So, let's say that there 1,000 pensioners, and 2,000 people of working age. If two thirds of people of working age work, and earn £30,000 on average. That means that you have £20,000,000 of wages out there to tax.
If your 1,000 pensioners all recieve one-third the average income (i.e. £10,000), that means you need to pay them £10,000,000 a year.
Before we talk about a single penny of other things that taxes need to be used for, we have to extract half the income of the workers to pay for pensions.
I suppose you did go to the same university as Diane Abbott…
2000 x £30,000 x 0.67 is not equal to £20,000,000
Oops. $40,000,000.
A quarter of the income of everybody needs to be extracted to pay pensions.
The Conservative lead fall has risen to 5 points after their lead collapsed in the wake of the the Afghanistan crisis. The Conservatives are now on 40% (+1), with Labour on 35% (-1), the Lib Dems on 7% (-1) and the Greens on 6% (no change).
Lead fall has risen?
Typo in their press release.
Tory lead has risen from 3% to 5%.
Gruardian?
Opinium.
I will have to have words with James, Chris, and Adam.
They can probably mint it as an NFT and flip it for $10k.....
Is this a case of the govt frontloading the medicine so as to be able to give a spoonful of sugar at GE campaign time?
I think you misunderstand how fked the public finances are.
I think Tory mps do, too.
If they’re genuinely interested in balancing the books, we’ll need stronger medicine.
Boris doesn’t care about balancing the books though, so we get this token effort.
Hang on.
There are two key elements to the UK public finances:
(1) The amount of debt there is. This is actually fine, despite the Global Financial Crisis, Brexit and Covid. Once you eliminate debt owed to the Bank of of England, debt-to-GDP is probably around 65%. This is, in the general scheme of things, fine.
(2) The long term consequences of an ageing population and a birth rate below replacement. This, on the other hand, is not fine. Every year the number of people of non-working age - almost all of whom require expensive healthcare and pensions - grows, while the number of people of working age (absent immigration) does not.
This means that the proportion of the output of workers that is going to be diverted to pay for non-workers increases. Hopefully this can be offset by having more people working (as has happened in Japan), but this causes it's own problems - specifically that if both two people in a relationship are working, the chances of them having kids drops dramatically.
We do need to find a solution to (2) - in the longer term, having a taxation system that encourages people to have kids (see France) would be good; but in the short-term, we need to increase the age of retirement and avoid the state pension taking up too great a share of spending.
I just want to dwell on this last point for a second. There's been a lot of comment about wanting to to close the gap between the value of the state pension and average earnings.
So, let's say that there 1,000 pensioners, and 2,000 people of working age. If two thirds of people of working age work, and earn £30,000 on average. That means that you have £20,000,000 of wages out there to tax.
If your 1,000 pensioners all recieve one-third the average income (i.e. £10,000), that means you need to pay them £10,000,000 a year.
Before we talk about a single penny of other things that taxes need to be used for, we have to extract half the income of the workers to pay for pensions.
I suppose you did go to the same university as Diane Abbott…
2000 x £30,000 x 0.67 is not equal to £20,000,000
Oops. $40,000,000.
A quarter of the income of everybody needs to be extracted to pay pensions.
I see NFT land has gone even more insane now, people are paying $1000s for short sequences of random words and numbers....
When the merry go round stops, there are going to be some people out of pocket massively....
It's Tulip Mania all over again.
Absolutely.....so just like the gold rush, people selling the shovels made the money....i went and bought a load of the tokens they need for this silly game...
I see NFT land has gone even more insane now, people are paying $1000s for short sequences of random words and numbers....
When the merry go round stops, there are going to be some people out of pocket massively....
It's Tulip Mania all over again.
Absolutely.....so just like the gold rush, people selling the shovels made the money....i went and bought a load of the tokens they need for this silly game...
There are quite a lot of people who understand the technology behind NFTs who are going to make a killing out of this. There was a case on the news last week a think about a young boy who, aided with a bit of knowhow from his computer programmer Dad, had made something like £300,000 selling pictures of cartoon whales.
All the "investors" who are still holding these strings of code when the music finally stops may not do quite so well out of it.
https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1434201376247070723 Based on a large body of data, I lobbied the CDC this week to count confirmed prior Covid as equivalent to 1-dose of vaccine, which would reduce waste, unnecessary side-effects, and provide the same access to activities as 2-doses, no Covid. I got nowhere.
I see NFT land has gone even more insane now, people are paying $1000s for short sequences of random words and numbers....
When the merry go round stops, there are going to be some people out of pocket massively....
It's Tulip Mania all over again.
Absolutely.....so just like the gold rush, people selling the shovels made the money....i went and bought a load of the tokens they need for this silly game...
There are quite a lot of people who understand the technology behind NFTs who are going to make a killing out of this. There was a case on the news last week a think about a young boy who, aided with a bit of knowhow from his computer programmer Dad, had made something like £300,000 selling pictures of cartoon whales.
All the "investors" who are still holding these strings of code when the music finally stops may not do quite so well out of it.
Not all NFTs are a scam or worthless. And it demonstration of a technology use.
But now it is literally 10s of collections of nonsense near identical avatars coming out every day, each with 10k items....little value and far too much supply.
In terms of the kid, the tech to do what he did is trivial (not to do him down, good on him, its an awesome story), but anybody with some coding experience can clone the necessary code for a basic NFT from github.
What will be more valuable is when the NFT is more than a link to a small image stored on a server. Its when the contract is more involved e.g. royalties for use of the art, in the way shutterstock works.
On NI I expect it to be a package to include all workng pensioners to pay full NI and the triple lock suspended for 2022
Taken by itself it would be very brave and extremely unwise
And I have been saying for weeks that a Labour poll lead this year is very possible
Working pensioners are likely to be the poorer ones, with the wealthy sitting at home enjoying their pension and investment income.
I am not sure that is so. My experience of working pensioners is more mixed, even perhaps the opposite. A lot of professional people, including a number of my colleagues, take their pension then return on reduced hours. My solicitor and accountant have done the same. Working pensioners are a mix of those that have to work, and those that enjoy their work.
It was Ed Davey who abolished compulsory retirement, in one of his many astute policy decisions of what with time (and the notable exception over tuition fees) was in retrospect a golden period of good government under the Coalition.
The problem with abolishing compulsory retirement is that employers can no longer get rid of dead wood on high earnings.
I know that not all in their 60s are like that but some are.
This is also annoying for those of a younger generation who are doing the actual work but for less money.
Is age relevant for employment tribunals? Say you have a 90-year-old who used to be good but is well past it, but the employer hasn't had the heart to tell him his performance is declining. Suddenly a new boss takes over and sacks him for poor performance. He goes to a tribunal, pointing out that nobody mentioned this before. Can the employer use his age as supporting evidence? My understanding is no.
Which means that if someone digs in, you have to start telling them they're declining (if they are), instead of saying "we'd love to keep you but our retirement age is X".
What do you think about the issue NP?
It's sort of trivial for me in that employers should be able to divest themselves of employees with little notice.
No, I agree with the current law as I understand it. You need to either (a) show that the job is no longer required (=redundancy) or (b) that the incumbent is no longer good at it. If (b), you need to give reasonable warning that you're not satisfied, so they can attempt to improve. Isn't that the legal position?
Otherwise, you will get some temperamental employers routinely firing people (a la Alan Sugar) without any real justification, and all employees are in a constant state of fear. I was just curious whether great age changes anything in the legal position - but I don't think it does. (Edit: perhaps it affects the amount of compensation for unfair dismissal, though? The 95-year-old is unlikely to get another job, but does have a pension. Does he get more or less compensation?)
Although on the Apprentice, Alan Sugar fired people more-or-less arbitrarily every week, it is interesting to note that his senior management team (also as seen on the Apprentice) stayed the same for decades.
And on the Generation Game they got fired for not being any good at the tasks.
But neither of those two is any more relevant that the chlorine concentration in elephant poo.
On NI I expect it to be a package to include all workng pensioners to pay full NI and the triple lock suspended for 2022
Taken by itself it would be very brave and extremely unwise
And I have been saying for weeks that a Labour poll lead this year is very possible
Working pensioners are likely to be the poorer ones, with the wealthy sitting at home enjoying their pension and investment income.
I am not sure that is so. My experience of working pensioners is more mixed, even perhaps the opposite. A lot of professional people, including a number of my colleagues, take their pension then return on reduced hours. My solicitor and accountant have done the same. Working pensioners are a mix of those that have to work, and those that enjoy their work.
It was Ed Davey who abolished compulsory retirement, in one of his many astute policy decisions of what with time (and the notable exception over tuition fees) was in retrospect a golden period of good government under the Coalition.
The problem with abolishing compulsory retirement is that employers can no longer get rid of dead wood on high earnings.
I know that not all in their 60s are like that but some are.
This is also annoying for those of a younger generation who are doing the actual work but for less money.
Is age relevant for employment tribunals? Say you have a 90-year-old who used to be good but is well past it, but the employer hasn't had the heart to tell him his performance is declining. Suddenly a new boss takes over and sacks him for poor performance. He goes to a tribunal, pointing out that nobody mentioned this before. Can the employer use his age as supporting evidence? My understanding is no.
Which means that if someone digs in, you have to start telling them they're declining (if they are), instead of saying "we'd love to keep you but our retirement age is X".
What do you think about the issue NP?
It's sort of trivial for me in that employers should be able to divest themselves of employees with little notice.
No, I agree with the current law as I understand it. You need to either (a) show that the job is no longer required (=redundancy) or (b) that the incumbent is no longer good at it. If (b), you need to give reasonable warning that you're not satisfied, so they can attempt to improve. Isn't that the legal position?
Otherwise, you will get some temperamental employers routinely firing people (a la Alan Sugar) without any real justification, and all employees are in a constant state of fear. I was just curious whether great age changes anything in the legal position - but I don't think it does. (Edit: perhaps it affects the amount of compensation for unfair dismissal, though? The 95-year-old is unlikely to get another job, but does have a pension. Does he get more or less compensation?)
Although on the Apprentice, Alan Sugar fired people more-or-less arbitrarily every week, it is interesting to note that his senior management team (also as seen on the Apprentice) stayed the same for decades.
And on the Generation Game they got fired for not being any good at the tasks.
But neither of those two is any more relevant that the chlorine concentration in elephant poo.
Just doing my bit to stop the site being sued for libel.
On NI I expect it to be a package to include all workng pensioners to pay full NI and the triple lock suspended for 2022
Taken by itself it would be very brave and extremely unwise
And I have been saying for weeks that a Labour poll lead this year is very possible
Working pensioners are likely to be the poorer ones, with the wealthy sitting at home enjoying their pension and investment income.
I am not sure that is so. My experience of working pensioners is more mixed, even perhaps the opposite. A lot of professional people, including a number of my colleagues, take their pension then return on reduced hours. My solicitor and accountant have done the same. Working pensioners are a mix of those that have to work, and those that enjoy their work.
It was Ed Davey who abolished compulsory retirement, in one of his many astute policy decisions of what with time (and the notable exception over tuition fees) was in retrospect a golden period of good government under the Coalition.
The problem with abolishing compulsory retirement is that employers can no longer get rid of dead wood on high earnings.
I know that not all in their 60s are like that but some are.
This is also annoying for those of a younger generation who are doing the actual work but for less money.
Is age relevant for employment tribunals? Say you have a 90-year-old who used to be good but is well past it, but the employer hasn't had the heart to tell him his performance is declining. Suddenly a new boss takes over and sacks him for poor performance. He goes to a tribunal, pointing out that nobody mentioned this before. Can the employer use his age as supporting evidence? My understanding is no.
Which means that if someone digs in, you have to start telling them they're declining (if they are), instead of saying "we'd love to keep you but our retirement age is X".
What do you think about the issue NP?
It's sort of trivial for me in that employers should be able to divest themselves of employees with little notice.
No, I agree with the current law as I understand it. You need to either (a) show that the job is no longer required (=redundancy) or (b) that the incumbent is no longer good at it. If (b), you need to give reasonable warning that you're not satisfied, so they can attempt to improve. Isn't that the legal position?
Otherwise, you will get some temperamental employers routinely firing people (a la Alan Sugar) without any real justification, and all employees are in a constant state of fear. I was just curious whether great age changes anything in the legal position - but I don't think it does. (Edit: perhaps it affects the amount of compensation for unfair dismissal, though? The 95-year-old is unlikely to get another job, but does have a pension. Does he get more or less compensation?)
Although on the Apprentice, Alan Sugar fired people more-or-less arbitrarily every week, it is interesting to note that his senior management team (also as seen on the Apprentice) stayed the same for decades.
And on the Generation Game they got fired for not being any good at the tasks.
But neither of those two is any more relevant that the chlorine concentration in elephant poo.
The Americans are noe doing Chlorinated Elephant Poo? Interesting...
Is this a case of the govt frontloading the medicine so as to be able to give a spoonful of sugar at GE campaign time?
I think you misunderstand how fked the public finances are.
I think Tory mps do, too.
If they’re genuinely interested in balancing the books, we’ll need stronger medicine.
Boris doesn’t care about balancing the books though, so we get this token effort.
Hang on.
There are two key elements to the UK public finances:
(1) The amount of debt there is. This is actually fine, despite the Global Financial Crisis, Brexit and Covid. Once you eliminate debt owed to the Bank of of England, debt-to-GDP is probably around 65%. This is, in the general scheme of things, fine.
(2) The long term consequences of an ageing population and a birth rate below replacement. This, on the other hand, is not fine. Every year the number of people of non-working age - almost all of whom require expensive healthcare and pensions - grows, while the number of people of working age (absent immigration) does not.
This means that the proportion of the output of workers that is going to be diverted to pay for non-workers increases. Hopefully this can be offset by having more people working (as has happened in Japan), but this causes it's own problems - specifically that if both two people in a relationship are working, the chances of them having kids drops dramatically.
We do need to find a solution to (2) - in the longer term, having a taxation system that encourages people to have kids (see France) would be good; but in the short-term, we need to increase the age of retirement and avoid the state pension taking up too great a share of spending.
I just want to dwell on this last point for a second. There's been a lot of comment about wanting to to close the gap between the value of the state pension and average earnings.
So, let's say that there 1,000 pensioners, and 2,000 people of working age. If two thirds of people of working age work, and earn £30,000 on average. That means that you have £20,000,000 of wages out there to tax.
If your 1,000 pensioners all recieve one-third the average income (i.e. £10,000), that means you need to pay them £10,000,000 a year.
Before we talk about a single penny of other things that taxes need to be used for, we have to extract half the income of the workers to pay for pensions.
I suppose you did go to the same university as Diane Abbott…
2000 x £30,000 x 0.67 is not equal to £20,000,000
Oops. $40,000,000.
A quarter of the income of everybody needs to be extracted to pay pensions.
And then consider healthcare too (which disproportionately is spent on certain demographics) and its even higher.
Yep. Avoiding a situation where the remaining workers end up handing over most of their income to the state is going to require two things: a significant ramping of the state pension age, allied to determined moves to encourage folk to adopt healthier lifestyles. Otherwise there'll be too many people getting too sick to work, and just going onto disability benefits long before they're entitled to formally retire. As well as healthier living giving the average person more healthy, enjoyable years of life and fewer sick, decrepit, dependent years when they do get older, of course.
Making people work to 70 or even older will be deeply unpopular, but not nearly so hard actually to implement as the lifestyle changes. Sin taxes are the easy and obvious solution that the Government will try first, but all they'll achieve is to price the poor out of pleasure.
Comments
https://www.standard.co.uk/business/staff-supply-chain-shortages-uk-covid-recovery-pmi-ihs-markit-index-b953602.html
So there you go. Train more lorry drivers and give pensioners their raise.
Turns out he hasn't said anything, all the anti-vaxxers, anti-lockdown, anti-government basically saying if he says we should vaccinate 12-15 years olds, it won't be following the science, going against JCVI, and much worse.
Its why JCVI fence sitting is so dangerous, it is already been widely misreported by the MSM and now being twisted further by the interwebs.
There are two key elements to the UK public finances:
(1) The amount of debt there is. This is actually fine, despite the Global Financial Crisis, Brexit and Covid. Once you eliminate debt owed to the Bank of of England, debt-to-GDP is probably around 65%. This is, in the general scheme of things, fine.
(2) The long term consequences of an ageing population and a birth rate below replacement. This, on the other hand, is not fine. Every year the number of people of non-working age - almost all of whom require expensive healthcare and pensions - grows, while the number of people of working age (absent immigration) does not.
This means that the proportion of the output of workers that is going to be diverted to pay for non-workers increases. Hopefully this can be offset by having more people working (as has happened in Japan), but this causes it's own problems - specifically that if both two people in a relationship are working, the chances of them having kids drops dramatically.
We do need to find a solution to (2) - in the longer term, having a taxation system that encourages people to have kids (see France) would be good; but in the short-term, we need to increase the age of retirement and avoid the state pension taking up too great a share of spending.
I just want to dwell on this last point for a second. There's been a lot of comment about wanting to to close the gap between the value of the state pension and average earnings.
So, let's say that there 1,000 pensioners, and 2,000 people of working age. If two thirds of people of working age work, and earn £30,000 on average. That means that you have £20,000,000 of wages out there to tax.
If your 1,000 pensioners all recieve one-third the average income (i.e. £10,000), that means you need to pay them £10,000,000 a year.
Before we talk about a single penny of other things that taxes need to be used for, we have to extract half the income of the workers to pay for pensions.
He often helps us in local election campaigns and I have chatted to him in the supermarket from time to time
One could argue the inevitable "splurge" of spending and other economic activity as the pandemic restrictions were eased was always going to cause capacity issues and these have manifested themselves in different ways.
Labour (as in the workforce, not the political party) is one of those manifestations (inflation is another). The "we want it all and we want it now" economic phase of conspicuous consumption and the release of a lot of pent-up demand has had inevitable consequences.
This evening, there are severe delays on the Circle and minor delays on a couple of other lines due to "train cancellations". Why are trains being cancelled? Two possibilities, either no one to drive them or no one to maintain them - either way, there aren't enough staff at the weekends (and sometimes during the week) to run the railway.
It's a complex and multi-layered issue and perhaps of short-term activity as levels of economic activity return to "normal" - we'll see.
Saving is not really worthwhile at present, and easy credit is keeping too many zombie businesses standing.
Debt is only relevant when income minus outflow is near zero. Unhappily that's always been the case in the UK, and really in the West generally.
Not too much hardship. I didn't ask about flaked parmesan.
2000 x £30,000 x 0.67 is not equal to £20,000,000
I don't disagree with your central point - were an LR candidate to be in the final run-off with Macron, I'd expect them to win. However, they have to get there and that's the problem. Macron and Le Pen are both polling in the mid-20s with the LR candidate in the mid to high teens. The only hope for LR is for an alternative far-right candidate like Zemmour to draw enough support from Le Pen to enable their candidate to sneak into second.
In all the current match-up polls between Macron and Le Pen, the President is re-elected 56-44 or similar.
I remember you backing Fillon last time - he certainly polled well with older voters winning 45% among over-70s in the first round but among those below 60, he was nowhere near as popular and his 20% in the first round meant he missed the cut.
And it's not just the hurricane.
He says the atmosphere there - in the Deep South, Florida, etc - is one of increasing dread. Delta has got them by the cullions and everyone is back to fearful quivering. He could not believe the difference in mood between the UK and his part of the USA.
"Here it feels like it's all over" were his precise words. I hope he doesn't have to eat them
Which means that if someone digs in, you have to start telling them they're declining (if they are), instead of saying "we'd love to keep you but our retirement age is X".
I love the Scots and the people I met generally were super friendly. but there is still a Puritan and officious streak in the Scottish character, that likes bossing people around and saying No, ye'll naw be havin any o yer pleasures
It's sort of trivial for me in that employers should be able to divest themselves of employees with little notice.
The Daily Mail stories about airport chaos used to be based on T3 - there was a point where about 8 flights from India arrive at the same time which backs up immigration. I’m sure they have identified the equivalent pressure point with the new schedule
Otherwise, you will get some temperamental employers routinely firing people (a la Alan Sugar) without any real justification, and all employees are in a constant state of fear. I was just curious whether great age changes anything in the legal position - but I don't think it does. (Edit: perhaps it affects the amount of compensation for unfair dismissal, though? The 95-year-old is unlikely to get another job, but does have a pension. Does he get more or less compensation?)
When the merry go round stops, there are going to be some people out of pocket massively....
Whether encouraging investing in riskier assets, or in housing is good for the economy in the longer run, we will see. The reason Britons are so hung up on property prices is that those properties, and their aging parents ones are their major savings.
I am fairly sure a lot of what is going on is market manipulation.
I have made a pretty penny over the past week in buying short term into all the crypto that these NFTs are being sold in....the tulip mania is so mad, one of them had gone up 5x in past couple of weeks.
Dismissal for any random reason is better. A better unfairness.
Don't you just love being told how to do your job by a wet behind the ears twenty something management consultant who has never even run a school tuck shop?
At what point do we give this ridiculous policy up? Testing is just a shambolic cartel at the moment
The Conservative lead has risen to 5 points after their lead collapsed in the wake of the the Afghanistan crisis. The Conservatives are now on 40% (+1), with Labour on 35% (-1), the Lib Dems on 7% (-1) and the Greens on 6% (no change).
Tory lead has risen from 3% to 5%.
SUNDAY TIMES EXCLUSIVE
Prince Charles’s top aide, Michael Fawcett, has stepped down over evidence he "fixed" a CBE for Saudi tycoon who gave £1.5m to palace charity
Prince himself gave Saudi the honour in private ceremony after series of secret meetings
https://twitter.com/Gabriel_Pogrund/status/1434229479019327489
First versus second in the table too.
4 minutes to go Saints 30 Catalans 12. 3 tries and 3 goals in double quick time to tie, followed by a drop goal in overtime. Les Dracs now need to win one of the last 2 to win the league..
Worth catching on YouTube for any half sports fan.
Oh. And ha ha Stains.
Michael Fawcett, the prince’s former valet, stepped down temporarily as chief executive of the Prince’s Foundation after The Sunday Times provided evidence of Charles’s dealings with the businessman.
Mahfouz Marei Mubarak bin Mahfouz paid tens of thousands of pounds to fixers with links to the prince who had told him they could secure the honour.
Charles, 72, personally awarded Mahfouz, 51, his CBE at a private ceremony at Buckingham Palace in November 2016. The event was not announced in the Court Circular, the official list of royal engagements.
Aides close to the prince and senior staff in his charities had helped the paid fixers to secure the CBE after Mahfouz donated large sums to restoration projects of particular interest to Charles, including Dumfries House and the Castle of Mey.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/prince-charles-aides-fixed-cbe-for-saudi-tycoon-who-gave-1-5m-0b5cb7qf2
I think I will have to ask the police to investigate this.
In one email dated September 1, 2014, William Bortrick, the owner of Burke’s Peerage and a paid adviser to Mahfouz, told colleagues that once he has “Hon OBE ... then more money will flow”.
The OBE, he said, was “promised to MBM [Mahfouz Bin Mahfouz] to get the £1.5 million he paid for Dumfries [House] and [The Castle of] Mey”.
Staff turnover is bad for business. Staff recruitment, even in normal times, is an inconvenience.
Sacking people for no good reason is bad for business.
I will have to have words with James, Chris, and Adam.
Fortunately we've never been lumbered with any real nincompoops that I can recall. I am sure that it happens elsewhere in the private sector, especially in circumstances where a firm has been acquired by out-and-out asset-strippers and so the owners aren't that concerned about it being run into the ground. But generally speaking, there are only limited instances of failure, and fewer still of failing upwards, in successful businesses.
A quarter of the income of everybody needs to be extracted to pay pensions.
It's a good thing you're here @Charles
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6MEI_IZVk4
All the "investors" who are still holding these strings of code when the music finally stops may not do quite so well out of it.
They have found quite extraordinary footage - and stories to go with. Episode 1 was just a work of art
If it continues this good…..
https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1434201376247070723
Based on a large body of data, I lobbied the CDC this week to count confirmed prior Covid as equivalent to 1-dose of vaccine, which would reduce waste, unnecessary side-effects, and provide the same access to activities as 2-doses, no Covid.
I got nowhere.
But now it is literally 10s of collections of nonsense near identical avatars coming out every day, each with 10k items....little value and far too much supply.
In terms of the kid, the tech to do what he did is trivial (not to do him down, good on him, its an awesome story), but anybody with some coding experience can clone the necessary code for a basic NFT from github.
What will be more valuable is when the NFT is more than a link to a small image stored on a server. Its when the contract is more involved e.g. royalties for use of the art, in the way shutterstock works.
But neither of those two is any more relevant that the chlorine concentration in elephant poo.
I just love this stuff
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/42261/mystery-flying-wing-aircraft-photographed-over-the-philippines?xid=twittershare
Even I'm disgusted and I'm not normally squeamish.
TSE where should I send the bill to for my forthcoming psychiatric treatment
The only way I could describe what I saw/read would be in a therapist's office with dolls.
I work in the Aviation Insurance industry and we lost people that day
Will take a look
Making people work to 70 or even older will be deeply unpopular, but not nearly so hard actually to implement as the lifestyle changes. Sin taxes are the easy and obvious solution that the Government will try first, but all they'll achieve is to price the poor out of pleasure.