CON: 59% support / 35% oppose (+24) LAB: 33% support / 55% oppose (-22) LD: 50% support / 46% oppose (+4) TOTAL: 44% support / 43% oppose (+1)
Maybe some decent Boomers have thought that snatching even more money from their grandchildren without being asked to contribute themselves isn't a good idea?
If only I had linked the crosstabs so you could check for yourself how age and partisan alignment measure up.
Net change in support, July to September: 65+, -24 LAB, -57 LD, -42
Perhaps the funniest finding might be the 18-24s realising they don't like socialism as much as they thought they did.
January 2017: 44% support / 23% oppose (+21) July 2021: 42% support / 28% oppose (+14) September 2021: 26% support / 47% oppose (-21)
Socialism?
Taxing the hard working poor in society to give the money to the wealthiest in society is Sheriff of Nottingham not Robin Hood.
For the last four years, as the figures on this very question show, they were fully behind taxing the hard working poor in society to give the money to the wealthiest (to which no doubt you'll say "They didn't understand the question," and to which the obvious response is "that's what the 'don't know' option is for"). Indeed, for the last decade or so the 18-24s have had no problem whatsoever arguing for taxing the hard working poor to allow rich 18-24s to go to university for free. Turns out if you want to vote yourself largesse from the public purse, you need to turn out at rates closer to 80% than 50%.
Given that this will have fuck all effect on social care, may I suggest it will leave it in exactly the same place as if they vote for it?
Very stupid policy. To take one obvious example, how many schools operating on savagely tightened budgets are now going to be tipped into deficit? This is roughly the equivalent of giving all staff a 3% pay rise without even buying goodwill in return.
Similarly, local authorities are under horrendous pressure and unless council tax is raised dramatically this could send several more the way of Northants.
It would be nice - just for once - to have a government where somebody with two brain cells to rub together was in charge of planning ahead.
OK, it's not unique to this government, but anyone with foresight wouldn't have touched this government with a bargepole.
Here's the funny thing, though. Until a few hours ago, there was lots of genuine Conservative criticism of this plan as it emerged. And that has melted away like snow on a day like this. I'd want to see tomorrow's Mail, Telegraph and Sun before saying the government are totally out of the woods, but it's amazing really.
And whilst the key principle of the government is that Comrade Johnson is always right, it's striking to see. I can't help thinking of David Low's "They salute with both hands now"...
The government are going to get mauled in tomorrow’s papers.
Here's a purely personal example of why it's a stupid policy.
I have a job, a business and a rental property. The job accounts for about 60% of my income, the business around 25% (somewhat less this year!) and the rental property the remainder.
The rental property, because it's in the hands of a very reliable tenant, isn't a lot of work. I make 3-4 inspection visits a year, arrange for maintenance and repairs (and pay for them, obvs) and do odd bits and pieces of work on it myself.
The business, because I am very proficient in music, I don't need to spend lots of time preparing for it. So, I had a professional engagement in Bristol last Sunday, I spent a grand total of an hour practicing then a couple of hours there - with the drive, six hours work in all. Tutoring, on the rare occasions I do it, does require some more prep and marking but there's lots of crossover with what I teach. For every hour's tutoring, maybe a total of 75 minutes' work.
Teaching - well, that's pretty full on. Maybe 50 hours a week in normal times, 60 when it's busy, perhaps 40 in the summer term when my exam classes are finished, plus holidays.
So here's the bizarre nature of the tax. I'm being taxed still more heavily for the thing I work hardest on. The others will miss all or most of it, even though that's what I put least effort into.
In order to theoretically inherit a few more quid from my dad when he snuffs it - which given how ill he's been recently is not likely to involve a long stay in a care home anyway.
If you punish work in this way, you discourage work. In fact, Johnson is now making a strong financial case for me to give up working or at least substantially reduce my hours to work on other things just as the DfE are making a strong practical one.
It is madness, and while I realise most people are not in my fortunate situation with plenty of other financial irons in the fire or everybody is in the rather less fortunate position of having a sick parent to monitor* is this really the message a sane government would be pushing?
*Most of us go through it at some point of course or tragically, the other way round. But not all of us at the same time.
The nature of National Insurance is such that it was ever thus. It is essentially a tax on productive work.
Which is why it's a stupid tax.
It had some reason in the first 40 years of its existence, when it was genuinely used to fund sick pay and health care in a government backed scheme. But when PAYE and then the NHS was brought in in the 1940s it shoudl have been scrapped then.
Yep. They should have used the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to abolish NI and roll it into income tax, at least on the employee side. Instead, they’ve made payroll taxes more complicated - great for accountants and tax lawyers, not so for small businesses.
This Tory government is about to preside over the highest tax take ever. So of course there have to be complexities added so that their owners can find gaps to wiggle through.
Yet in Bavaria the CSU are still on nearly 30%, so Soder's party winning Bavaria could mean Bavaria is the only state in Germany the Union wins. This would be very much the CDU and Laschet's defeat as it deserves to be
You appear to be missing that in Bavaria they got 39% last time
A fairer way would be a percentage of the home rather than a cap . The way the new policy is designed means those in more expensive homes lose far less of the property value than someone in a cheaper home .
Yet in Bavaria the CSU are still on nearly 30%, so Soder's party winning Bavaria could mean Bavaria is the only state in Germany the Union wins. This would be very much the CDU and Laschet's defeat as it deserves to be
Although 30% in Bavaria would also be a post war low for the CSU - so better... but hardly a cause to crack open the bottles of champagne.
There was also a poll last week with CDU/CSU on 19.5. Also, if we are really talking about the CDU, there were a couple of polls in early November 2019 that had CDU on 19.5% as well as a couple of polls in late 2018 which had them on 19%.
In fact the latest Bavarian poll has the CSU doing 10% worse than in 2017, so not much better than the fall in CDU vote share in the rest of Germany.
Yes, I am sitting in DomPlatz enjoying a post sausage coffee, and there is some politics tonight, as there's a woman chalking slogans opposing child vaccination onto the stone paving. Meanwhile everyone else is enjoying another warm evening and taking the collapse of their conservatives in their stride.
That's a surprisingly sensible attitude from them. Not that its necessarily a great plan, but it shows they recognise its enough of a real problem that if they vote against they need to come up with more than just opposing tax increases.
Or its the power of a big majority making widescale rebellion pointless. Few PMs have had that advantage.
Unpopular measures, if it is, can be handled. People were against reopening but when it went ok they forgot about it.
A fairer way would be a percentage of the home rather than a cap . The way the new policy is designed means those in more expensive homes lose far less of the property value than someone in a cheaper home .
Would that be a bit unfair on those with assets but without a home?
Looking at the coverage - and reactions - to the latest wave of desperate people crossing the channel, it won't be long before "sink the boats" becomes mainstream.
I did love the "drag them back to France and send the French the bill" comment from Tory MP Lee Ashfield. Its "we're going to build the wall and Mexico are going to pay for it" dog whistle racism for stupid voters.
Looking at the coverage - and reactions - to the latest wave of desperate people crossing the channel, it won't be long before "sink the boats" becomes mainstream.
I did love the "drag them back to France and send the French the bill" comment from Tory MP Lee Ashfield. Its "we're going to build the wall and Mexico are going to pay for it" dog whistle racism for stupid voters.
Without going into hysterical 'sink the boats', there's a problem here. What is your solution?
I've only dipped in and out today having suffered in the sweat box that is Aberdeen city centre.
My personal highlight was BJO fucking off to join the Tories.
I am unconvinced that he was 100% serious.
But if he was, then be careful: you might be next ...
We're all PB Tories now, comrade!
(Except Max, CR, et al...)
There is a foaming-dog-fever desperation in the Trots on Twitter. The Jeremy still hasn't been reinstated as a Labour MP never mind as leader, and the party seems to be ignoring their stupid whining.
The Lisa Nandy thing was hilarious. She rightly points out that if The Jeremy isn't reinstated then the party will chose someone else as candidate and she would knock on doors for that new candidate. Cue trots pledging to flood in from all over the country to defend the Labour Party by campaigning against it. So no wonder voting Tory is coming out as a concept.
The true enemy of true socialism is the Labour Party. Which is why so many of them have spent so long campaigning against it. A Labour government betrays socialism by having to make the real world sacrifices that are part and parcel of government. As they refuse to compromise the only solution is eternal Tory government.
Yet in Bavaria the CSU are still on nearly 30%, so Soder's party winning Bavaria could mean Bavaria is the only state in Germany the Union wins. This would be very much the CDU and Laschet's defeat as it deserves to be
Although 30% in Bavaria would also be a post war low for the CSU - so better... but hardly a cause to crack open the bottles of champagne.
There was also a poll last week with CDU/CSU on 19.5. Also, if we are really talking about the CDU, there were a couple of polls in early November 2019 that had CDU on 19.5% as well as a couple of polls in late 2018 which had them on 19%.
In fact the latest Bavarian poll has the CSU doing 10% worse than in 2017, so not much better than the fall in CDU vote share in the rest of Germany.
While if Soder, the CSU leader, was Union chancellor candidate polls showed the Union would be on 30%+ Germany wide.
Just despite Laschet the Union will see least damage in Bavaria because of Soder and Bavaria will remain maybe the only state in Germany conservatives still win
Yet in Bavaria the CSU are still on nearly 30%, so Soder's party winning Bavaria could mean Bavaria is the only state in Germany the Union wins. This would be very much the CDU and Laschet's defeat as it deserves to be
You appear to be missing that in Bavaria they got 39% last time
Front page on the regional newspaper this morning was their worry about falling below 30%, seen as something of a catastrophic watershed. HY bigging the round number up as some sort of achievement has clearly passed them by - although it is somewhat of a relief to see HY's "rounding up" finally succeed in making a number bigger ....
Worth noting these polls are far more divided than those last week suggesting strong support for a NI increase amongst all age groups.
Conservative voters are very divided on it.
If Conservative voters are divided on it, as evidenced here and elsewhere, then how must Conservative MPs - many of whom campaigned against taxes on jobs - be feeling tonight?
I’m still expecting resignations, even if only from the junior ministerial ranks.
I think they'll grumble but mainly go along with it.
Until they start getting feedback from their constituents...
Boris will have made enemies today in his party that will sit quiet for now but will have the last laugh when it comes to him being deposed. Might be some way off yet but it's coming.
Given that this will have fuck all effect on social care, may I suggest it will leave it in exactly the same place as if they vote for it?
Very stupid policy. To take one obvious example, how many schools operating on savagely tightened budgets are now going to be tipped into deficit? This is roughly the equivalent of giving all staff a 3% pay rise without even buying goodwill in return.
Similarly, local authorities are under horrendous pressure and unless council tax is raised dramatically this could send several more the way of Northants.
It would be nice - just for once - to have a government where somebody with two brain cells to rub together was in charge of planning ahead.
OK, it's not unique to this government, but anyone with foresight wouldn't have touched this government with a bargepole.
Here's the funny thing, though. Until a few hours ago, there was lots of genuine Conservative criticism of this plan as it emerged. And that has melted away like snow on a day like this. I'd want to see tomorrow's Mail, Telegraph and Sun before saying the government are totally out of the woods, but it's amazing really.
And whilst the key principle of the government is that Comrade Johnson is always right, it's striking to see. I can't help thinking of David Low's "They salute with both hands now"...
Course they are out of the woods, it is a huge bung to the upper middle classes, paid for by the worker bees.
I take back my criticisms of these proposals and Boris Johnson.
The NS have started with the shape of the graph they wanted, then gone well out of their way to find second-order data that they can make fit.
Agreed. I'm all up for attacking the policy on principles but that's just absurd.
While looking into the data behind the plot I noticed that there was a lower NI rate for earnings above £967 of 2%. Surely raising that threshold or rate would have been another good way to raise revenue.
The whole parallel system of NI is ridiculous. One of the LD policies I support is unifying the two.
That's a surprisingly sensible attitude from them. Not that its necessarily a great plan, but it shows they recognise its enough of a real problem that if they vote against they need to come up with more than just opposing tax increases.
Or its the power of a big majority making widescale rebellion pointless. Few PMs have had that advantage.
Unpopular measures, if it is, can be handled. People were against reopening but when it went ok they forgot about it.
Is it really a plan though? At first glance it looks like a tax increase of disputed merit, justified alternately by the NHS response to the pandemic, and social care (unrelated to the pandemic). Boris's genius is to sell it as a plan and challenge opponents to produce an alternative, but social care looks very much an afterthought. Let's see if it has unravelled by the weekend, in the way budgets sometimes do.
Looking at the reactions quoted above, I'm seeing a lot of carefully targeted barrel-scraping in what the different groups are attacking, and some very carefully tuned uses of % vs financial amounts.
What we need now is the start of some form of wealth tax in November, which I would expect to include a rapid change to CGT, and perhaps some reform to Council Tax. It is a good time to begin some major changes.
They won't address the huge CGT exemption on main dwellings loophole; not bold enough.
I have heard rumours that CGT is going to get hit badly. Its fair game. If you take out the main dwellings exemption, it would only really hit those with large amounts of wealth, a political minority. They have no counter arguments, no effective mainstream media to fight their PR wars, limited political influence and politically they have nowhere to turn. It feels inevitable.
I've only dipped in and out today having suffered in the sweat box that is Aberdeen city centre.
My personal highlight was BJO fucking off to join the Tories.
I am unconvinced that he was 100% serious.
But if he was, then be careful: you might be next ...
We're all PB Tories now, comrade!
(Except Max, CR, et al...)
Desperate for a proper alternative.
Lab have had years to come up with a more progressive alternative but its beyond Starmer to formulate a policy.
I have currently fucked off to the anyone but Starmer party.
BTW I have never told anyone or even used the phrase Fuck off to the Tories despite what RP and Sunil will have you believe
Although God knows how long it will take to process my resignation that i sent online over a week ago. Guess there might be an even bigger backlog after todays pathetic performance.
I take back my criticisms of these proposals and Boris Johnson.
The NS have started with the shape of the graph they wanted, then gone well out of their way to find second-order data that they can make fit.
Agreed. I'm all up for attacking the policy on principles but that's just absurd.
While looking into the data behind the plot I noticed that there was a lower NI rate for earnings above £967 of 2%. Surely raising that threshold or rate would have been another good way to raise revenue.
The whole parallel system of NI is ridiculous. One of the LD policies I support is unifying the two.
No, NI should be for unemployment insurance, state pensions and health treatment as established for.
You need NI credits for JSA and state pension and now it goes to the NHS and social care too, ideal
I take back my criticisms of these proposals and Boris Johnson.
The NS have started with the shape of the graph they wanted, then gone well out of their way to find second-order data that they can make fit.
Agreed. I'm all up for attacking the policy on principles but that's just absurd.
While looking into the data behind the plot I noticed that there was a lower NI rate for earnings above £967 of 2%. Surely raising that threshold or rate would have been another good way to raise revenue.
The whole parallel system of NI is ridiculous. One of the LD policies I support is unifying the two.
No, NI should be for unemployment insurance, state pensions and health treatment as established for.
You need NI credits for JSA and state pension and now it goes to the NHS and social care too, ideal
Couldn't you just change that to "income tax credits" (not actual tax credits)? The principle of having paid in first still applies.
I've only dipped in and out today having suffered in the sweat box that is Aberdeen city centre.
My personal highlight was BJO fucking off to join the Tories.
I am unconvinced that he was 100% serious.
But if he was, then be careful: you might be next ...
We're all PB Tories now, comrade!
(Except Max, CR, et al...)
There is a foaming-dog-fever desperation in the Trots on Twitter. The Jeremy still hasn't been reinstated as a Labour MP never mind as leader, and the party seems to be ignoring their stupid whining.
The Lisa Nandy thing was hilarious. She rightly points out that if The Jeremy isn't reinstated then the party will chose someone else as candidate and she would knock on doors for that new candidate. Cue trots pledging to flood in from all over the country to defend the Labour Party by campaigning against it. So no wonder voting Tory is coming out as a concept.
The true enemy of true socialism is the Labour Party. Which is why so many of them have spent so long campaigning against it. A Labour government betrays socialism by having to make the real world sacrifices that are part and parcel of government. As they refuse to compromise the only solution is eternal Tory government.
And your problem with that is... ?
In all seriousness, I do wonder if the problem with this was Blair. In 1997, he convinced the hard leftists to bend their principles and vote for a more centrist policy platform. They did, and so did millions of others. And when he gained power and an almost unprecedented majority, he was nowhere near as progressive as he could be. In fact, he was timid. Then came the Iraq invasion, and many on the hard left saw centrism as totally against their values.
The hard left within Labour just don't trust anyone who could get them elected.
I've only dipped in and out today having suffered in the sweat box that is Aberdeen city centre.
My personal highlight was BJO fucking off to join the Tories.
I am unconvinced that he was 100% serious.
But if he was, then be careful: you might be next ...
We're all PB Tories now, comrade!
(Except Max, CR, et al...)
Desperate for a proper alternative.
Lab have had years to come up with a more progressive alternative but its beyond Starmer to formulate a policy.
I have currently fucked off to the anyone but Starmer party.
BTW I have never told anyone or even used the phrase Fuck off to the Tories despite what RP and Sunil will have you believe
Although God knows how long it will take to process my resignation that i sent online over a week ago. Guess there might be an even bigger backlog after todays pathetic performance.
You did say you'd vote for them though. Best way to resign from the party is to email the trot secretary and have him use your resignation as a hunting trophy. My resignation went through in about 10 minutes.
Incidentally you were a Nandy ramper. Can I ask your perspective on the hooey about her "campaign for the Labour candidate" comments. Trot meltdown on twitter as all your mates piled in pledging to campaign against Labour if The Jeremy wasn't the candidate.
Now that you've quit the red Tories you are free to deliver true socialism by joining National Health Action, Trade Union Socialist Collective, Socialist Unity and a pile of irrelevant trot splinter groups. Any taken your fancy yet.
Chise @sailorrooscout R in Denmark has now fallen to 0.7 despite the start of a new school season last month indicating a declining epidemic. Denmark has vaccinated OVER 80% of its population and will drop all remaining COVID restrictions as of September 10th.
I take back my criticisms of these proposals and Boris Johnson.
The NS have started with the shape of the graph they wanted, then gone well out of their way to find second-order data that they can make fit.
Agreed. I'm all up for attacking the policy on principles but that's just absurd.
While looking into the data behind the plot I noticed that there was a lower NI rate for earnings above £967 of 2%. Surely raising that threshold or rate would have been another good way to raise revenue.
The whole parallel system of NI is ridiculous. One of the LD policies I support is unifying the two.
No, NI should be for unemployment insurance, state pensions and health treatment as established for.
You need NI credits for JSA and state pension and now it goes to the NHS and social care too, ideal
Well, goes to the NHS. Social care comes later when Javid or his successor gets to cut the NHS budget to divert the cash to social care. Which we all know will never happen.
There's probably some reason that governments have avoided abolishing NI and rolling it into income tax, I just don't know enough about it to speculate what that might be. Any thoughts?
I've only dipped in and out today having suffered in the sweat box that is Aberdeen city centre.
My personal highlight was BJO fucking off to join the Tories.
I am unconvinced that he was 100% serious.
But if he was, then be careful: you might be next ...
We're all PB Tories now, comrade!
(Except Max, CR, et al...)
There is a foaming-dog-fever desperation in the Trots on Twitter. The Jeremy still hasn't been reinstated as a Labour MP never mind as leader, and the party seems to be ignoring their stupid whining.
The Lisa Nandy thing was hilarious. She rightly points out that if The Jeremy isn't reinstated then the party will chose someone else as candidate and she would knock on doors for that new candidate. Cue trots pledging to flood in from all over the country to defend the Labour Party by campaigning against it. So no wonder voting Tory is coming out as a concept.
The true enemy of true socialism is the Labour Party. Which is why so many of them have spent so long campaigning against it. A Labour government betrays socialism by having to make the real world sacrifices that are part and parcel of government. As they refuse to compromise the only solution is eternal Tory government.
And your problem with that is... ?
In all seriousness, I do wonder if the problem with this was Blair. In 1997, he convinced the hard leftists to bend their principles and vote for a more centrist policy platform. They did, and so did millions of others. And when he gained power and an almost unprecedented majority, he was nowhere near as progressive as he could be. In fact, he was timid. Then came the Iraq invasion, and many on the hard left saw centrism as totally against their values.
The hard left within Labour just don't trust anyone who could get them elected.
The political extremes are unelectable. The centre ground is always the winning ground, with the left and right boundaries shifting on the political tide. The problem with the Trots is that they are always personally right, and anyone disagreeing with the rigid dogma is the enemy.
When so-called Labour activists are out knocking doors marked LLLLLLL across the contact sheet and are arguing with the wavering voter and jabbing their finger and telling them they are being brainwashed its the kind of support the party didn't need and will take years to recover from.
There's probably some reason that governments have avoided abolishing NI and rolling it into income tax, I just don't know enough about it to speculate what that might be. Any thoughts?
Mostly the over-65s exemption, and that it is an effective disguise for the actual income tax rate on employees under £50k salary.
Minor issues are the different rates on the self-employed, the relationship of number of years’ contribution to pension entitlement and carve-outs for non-employment income.
That’s just employee NI. Employer NI is really great, because most people aren’t employers and don’t see it. Government can also announce a 1.25% rise that’s actually a 2.5% rise without most people noticing.
Then of course there’s the whole IR35 mess, which only exists because of NI and could be scrapped if NI was scrapped.
I've only dipped in and out today having suffered in the sweat box that is Aberdeen city centre.
My personal highlight was BJO fucking off to join the Tories.
I am unconvinced that he was 100% serious.
But if he was, then be careful: you might be next ...
We're all PB Tories now, comrade!
(Except Max, CR, et al...)
There is a foaming-dog-fever desperation in the Trots on Twitter. The Jeremy still hasn't been reinstated as a Labour MP never mind as leader, and the party seems to be ignoring their stupid whining.
The Lisa Nandy thing was hilarious. She rightly points out that if The Jeremy isn't reinstated then the party will chose someone else as candidate and she would knock on doors for that new candidate. Cue trots pledging to flood in from all over the country to defend the Labour Party by campaigning against it. So no wonder voting Tory is coming out as a concept.
The true enemy of true socialism is the Labour Party. Which is why so many of them have spent so long campaigning against it. A Labour government betrays socialism by having to make the real world sacrifices that are part and parcel of government. As they refuse to compromise the only solution is eternal Tory government.
You have a point. There are a few on the left of Labour who when it comes to the election will be rooting for a big Con win and humiliation for Starmer. It's pathetic imo. But a point back, and this has to be said, when Jez was leader there weren't just a few Labour centrists rooting for the Conservatives at the election, there were many. And some of that 'many' weren't just rooting for it they were actively working to achieve it.
Looking at the reactions quoted above, I'm seeing a lot of carefully targeted barrel-scraping in what the different groups are attacking, and some very carefully tuned uses of % vs financial amounts.
What we need now is the start of some form of wealth tax in November, which I would expect to include a rapid change to CGT, and perhaps some reform to Council Tax. It is a good time to begin some major changes.
They won't address the huge CGT exemption on main dwellings loophole; not bold enough.
I have heard rumours that CGT is going to get hit badly. Its fair game. If you take out the main dwellings exemption, it would only really hit those with large amounts of wealth, a political minority. They have no counter arguments, no effective mainstream media to fight their PR wars, limited political influence and politically they have nowhere to turn. It feels inevitable.
Sods law says the rate will go up, as we currently have 2 CGT liable properties for sale to resolve mum's estate - one of which was ironically held onto to make sure she had income to cover Care Home fees if required.
Hoping to get them away and completed by Nov 24th.
We may gain on the roundabouts if IHT changes to be tighter, however.
There's probably some reason that governments have avoided abolishing NI and rolling it into income tax, I just don't know enough about it to speculate what that might be. Any thoughts?
Mostly the over-65s exemption, and that it is an effective disguise for the actual income tax rate on employees under £50k salary.
Minor issues are the different rates on the self-employed, the relationship of number of years’ contribution to pension entitlement and carve-outs for non-employment income.
Announcing that the income tax rate has gone and added an extra 12p in the pound or whatever it will be if you merge with NI is definitely one of the things that puts off chancellors. I expect there are also some horrendous IT and implementation details which civil servants scare ministers with.
A bigger issue in my mind if we looking at glaring issues is the relief on pension contributions for higher earners.
That's a surprisingly sensible attitude from them. Not that its necessarily a great plan, but it shows they recognise its enough of a real problem that if they vote against they need to come up with more than just opposing tax increases.
Or its the power of a big majority making widescale rebellion pointless. Few PMs have had that advantage.
Unpopular measures, if it is, can be handled. People were against reopening but when it went ok they forgot about it.
Is it really a plan though? At first glance it looks like a tax increase of disputed merit, justified alternately by the NHS response to the pandemic, and social care (unrelated to the pandemic). Boris's genius is to sell it as a plan and challenge opponents to produce an alternative, but social care looks very much an afterthought. Let's see if it has unravelled by the weekend, in the way budgets sometimes do.
Oh, it seems to be lacking in many respects, and it may still unravel. But he's called it a plan, and whether people agree or disagree on that they don't disagree that there is a big problem, which puts pressure on anyone opposing him because random platitudes won't have as much punch.
I've only dipped in and out today having suffered in the sweat box that is Aberdeen city centre.
My personal highlight was BJO fucking off to join the Tories.
I am unconvinced that he was 100% serious.
But if he was, then be careful: you might be next ...
We're all PB Tories now, comrade!
(Except Max, CR, et al...)
There is a foaming-dog-fever desperation in the Trots on Twitter. The Jeremy still hasn't been reinstated as a Labour MP never mind as leader, and the party seems to be ignoring their stupid whining.
The Lisa Nandy thing was hilarious. She rightly points out that if The Jeremy isn't reinstated then the party will chose someone else as candidate and she would knock on doors for that new candidate. Cue trots pledging to flood in from all over the country to defend the Labour Party by campaigning against it. So no wonder voting Tory is coming out as a concept.
The true enemy of true socialism is the Labour Party. Which is why so many of them have spent so long campaigning against it. A Labour government betrays socialism by having to make the real world sacrifices that are part and parcel of government. As they refuse to compromise the only solution is eternal Tory government.
And your problem with that is... ?
In all seriousness, I do wonder if the problem with this was Blair. In 1997, he convinced the hard leftists to bend their principles and vote for a more centrist policy platform. They did, and so did millions of others. And when he gained power and an almost unprecedented majority, he was nowhere near as progressive as he could be. In fact, he was timid. Then came the Iraq invasion, and many on the hard left saw centrism as totally against their values.
The hard left within Labour just don't trust anyone who could get them elected.
The political extremes are unelectable. The centre ground is always the winning ground, with the left and right boundaries shifting on the political tide. The problem with the Trots is that they are always personally right, and anyone disagreeing with the rigid dogma is the enemy.
When so-called Labour activists are out knocking doors marked LLLLLLL across the contact sheet and are arguing with the wavering voter and jabbing their finger and telling them they are being brainwashed its the kind of support the party didn't need and will take years to recover from.
My only skin in the game now is entertainment.
"The problem with the Trots is that they are always personally right, and anyone disagreeing with the rigid dogma is the enemy."
That's not always right. One of my dearest friends was so left that he made Thatcher look like Skinner. Yet we would chew the cud on politics and leave - the worse for drink - as friends. We both realised we wanted the same thing: we only differed on how to get there. He had good points to make; I'd like to think I made good points. For instance: as much as he would argue to tax the 'rich' to oblivion, he could see that people like my dad - who took out a mortgage (i.e. risk) to start a business and employ dozens of people, should perhaps keep some of the profits made from that risk. I understood that the area of NE Derbyshire he was from had suffered massively from the decline of industries, and needed massive investment it didn't get.
I think one of the problem with such groups is that they never meet the 'enemy'. They walk around in a closed group who think the same. Something that might be made worse by t'Internet...
There's probably some reason that governments have avoided abolishing NI and rolling it into income tax, I just don't know enough about it to speculate what that might be. Any thoughts?
IIRC according to George Osborne's team it would cause all sorts of administrative problems, you'd need to phase it in for example regarding the LEL and UEL of NI so you'd need to adjust personal allowances.
Then if income tax rates increase from say 20% to 33% when the merger takes place there will be behavioural changes which need to be modelled as well as other taxes like dividends.
It is possible that you spend an entire parliament pissing off the voters whilst you get rid of the edge cases.
I've only dipped in and out today having suffered in the sweat box that is Aberdeen city centre.
My personal highlight was BJO fucking off to join the Tories.
I am unconvinced that he was 100% serious.
But if he was, then be careful: you might be next ...
We're all PB Tories now, comrade!
(Except Max, CR, et al...)
There is a foaming-dog-fever desperation in the Trots on Twitter. The Jeremy still hasn't been reinstated as a Labour MP never mind as leader, and the party seems to be ignoring their stupid whining.
The Lisa Nandy thing was hilarious. She rightly points out that if The Jeremy isn't reinstated then the party will chose someone else as candidate and she would knock on doors for that new candidate. Cue trots pledging to flood in from all over the country to defend the Labour Party by campaigning against it. So no wonder voting Tory is coming out as a concept.
The true enemy of true socialism is the Labour Party. Which is why so many of them have spent so long campaigning against it. A Labour government betrays socialism by having to make the real world sacrifices that are part and parcel of government. As they refuse to compromise the only solution is eternal Tory government.
You have a point. There are a few on the left of Labour who when it comes to the election will be rooting for a big Con win and humiliation for Starmer. It's pathetic imo. But a point back, and this has to be said, when Jez was leader there weren't just a few Labour centrists rooting for the Conservatives at the election, there were many. And some of that 'many' weren't just rooting for it they were actively working to achieve it.
There sure were - and now they point and sneer at the Corbynites for doing exactly as they did themselves 2-3 years ago
There's probably some reason that governments have avoided abolishing NI and rolling it into income tax, I just don't know enough about it to speculate what that might be. Any thoughts?
IIRC according to George Osborne's team it would cause all sorts of administrative problems, you'd need to phase it in for example regarding the LEL and UEL of NI so you'd need to adjust personal allowances.
Then if income tax rates increase from say 20% to 33% when the merger takes place there will be behavioural changes which need to be modelled as well as other taxes like dividends.
It is possible that you spend an entire parliament pissing off the voters whilst you get rid of the edge cases.
I've only dipped in and out today having suffered in the sweat box that is Aberdeen city centre.
My personal highlight was BJO fucking off to join the Tories.
I am unconvinced that he was 100% serious.
But if he was, then be careful: you might be next ...
We're all PB Tories now, comrade!
(Except Max, CR, et al...)
There is a foaming-dog-fever desperation in the Trots on Twitter. The Jeremy still hasn't been reinstated as a Labour MP never mind as leader, and the party seems to be ignoring their stupid whining.
The Lisa Nandy thing was hilarious. She rightly points out that if The Jeremy isn't reinstated then the party will chose someone else as candidate and she would knock on doors for that new candidate. Cue trots pledging to flood in from all over the country to defend the Labour Party by campaigning against it. So no wonder voting Tory is coming out as a concept.
The true enemy of true socialism is the Labour Party. Which is why so many of them have spent so long campaigning against it. A Labour government betrays socialism by having to make the real world sacrifices that are part and parcel of government. As they refuse to compromise the only solution is eternal Tory government.
You have a point. There are a few on the left of Labour who when it comes to the election will be rooting for a big Con win and humiliation for Starmer. It's pathetic imo. But a point back, and this has to be said, when Jez was leader there weren't just a few Labour centrists rooting for the Conservatives at the election, there were many. And some of that 'many' weren't just rooting for it they were actively working to achieve it.
I heard that accusation - LOOK AT KINNOCK'S FACE" etc. None of the MPs wanted to lose. The so-called plot to wreck The Jeremy's guaranteed election win as that some MPs planned to throw the election and make themselves redundant.
The only people working for a Tory win were The Jeremy's inner circle. The ones who still scream about plots to spread false accusations of anti-semitism whilst having palestinian flags on their twitter profile.
The polls @Chelyabinsk linked to are beautiful - as close to proof as we can get that Boris haters will argue what he is doing is wrong, but would support it if someone on their side had suggested it.
There's probably some reason that governments have avoided abolishing NI and rolling it into income tax, I just don't know enough about it to speculate what that might be. Any thoughts?
Chise @sailorrooscout R in Denmark has now fallen to 0.7 despite the start of a new school season last month indicating a declining epidemic. Denmark has vaccinated OVER 80% of its population and will drop all remaining COVID restrictions as of September 10th.
One of the very, very curious things is how much less badly hit Europe has been than the UK by Delta.
We (and I include myself in this) assumed that France, Germany, Italy, Spain, etc., would have a very similar fourth wave to the UK. Simply: they were six weeks behind us, but were going to see the same hit.
But that hasn't really happened. While German cases continue to rise, French and Spanish cases have come down sharply from relatively low peaks, while Italy doesn't seem to have had a third wave at all.
There's probably some reason that governments have avoided abolishing NI and rolling it into income tax, I just don't know enough about it to speculate what that might be. Any thoughts?
IIRC according to George Osborne's team it would cause all sorts of administrative problems, you'd need to phase it in for example regarding the LEL and UEL of NI so you'd need to adjust personal allowances.
Then if income tax rates increase from say 20% to 33% when the merger takes place there will be behavioural changes which need to be modelled as well as other taxes like dividends.
It is possible that you spend an entire parliament pissing off the voters whilst you get rid of the edge cases.
A bit like Universal Credit.
Doesn't make it the wrong thing to do.
There's a lot more taxpayers than there are universal credit recipients.
You screw this up and government revenues could get messy because of the behavioural changes.
I've only dipped in and out today having suffered in the sweat box that is Aberdeen city centre.
My personal highlight was BJO fucking off to join the Tories.
I am unconvinced that he was 100% serious.
But if he was, then be careful: you might be next ...
We're all PB Tories now, comrade!
(Except Max, CR, et al...)
There is a foaming-dog-fever desperation in the Trots on Twitter. The Jeremy still hasn't been reinstated as a Labour MP never mind as leader, and the party seems to be ignoring their stupid whining.
The Lisa Nandy thing was hilarious. She rightly points out that if The Jeremy isn't reinstated then the party will chose someone else as candidate and she would knock on doors for that new candidate. Cue trots pledging to flood in from all over the country to defend the Labour Party by campaigning against it. So no wonder voting Tory is coming out as a concept.
The true enemy of true socialism is the Labour Party. Which is why so many of them have spent so long campaigning against it. A Labour government betrays socialism by having to make the real world sacrifices that are part and parcel of government. As they refuse to compromise the only solution is eternal Tory government.
And your problem with that is... ?
In all seriousness, I do wonder if the problem with this was Blair. In 1997, he convinced the hard leftists to bend their principles and vote for a more centrist policy platform. They did, and so did millions of others. And when he gained power and an almost unprecedented majority, he was nowhere near as progressive as he could be. In fact, he was timid. Then came the Iraq invasion, and many on the hard left saw centrism as totally against their values.
The hard left within Labour just don't trust anyone who could get them elected.
The political extremes are unelectable. The centre ground is always the winning ground, with the left and right boundaries shifting on the political tide. The problem with the Trots is that they are always personally right, and anyone disagreeing with the rigid dogma is the enemy.
When so-called Labour activists are out knocking doors marked LLLLLLL across the contact sheet and are arguing with the wavering voter and jabbing their finger and telling them they are being brainwashed its the kind of support the party didn't need and will take years to recover from.
My only skin in the game now is entertainment.
"The problem with the Trots is that they are always personally right, and anyone disagreeing with the rigid dogma is the enemy."
That's not always right. One of my dearest friends was so left that he made Thatcher look like Skinner. Yet we would chew the cud on politics and leave - the worse for drink - as friends. We both realised we wanted the same thing: we only differed on how to get there. He had good points to make; I'd like to think I made good points. For instance: as much as he would argue to tax the 'rich' to oblivion, he could see that people like my dad - who took out a mortgage (i.e. risk) to start a business and employ dozens of people, should perhaps keep some of the profits made from that risk. I understood that the area of NE Derbyshire he was from had suffered massively from the decline of industries, and needed massive investment it didn't get.
I think one of the problem with such groups is that they never meet the 'enemy'. They walk around in a closed group who think the same. Something that might be made worse by t'Internet...
OK so my trot antipathy goes all the way back to university. Socialist Worker Students were the biggest load of wazzocks. You'd start a conversation with one. Another would answer your point with rhetoric. Then there's three of them prattling on about the Paris student collective. Soon its like a scene in the Matrix where I'm Neo surrounded by trot wazzocks.
They met the enemy when they joined the Labour party. They despised anyone who had been in the party before The Jeremy was anointed.
Chise @sailorrooscout R in Denmark has now fallen to 0.7 despite the start of a new school season last month indicating a declining epidemic. Denmark has vaccinated OVER 80% of its population and will drop all remaining COVID restrictions as of September 10th.
One of the very, very curious things is how much less badly hit Europe has been than the UK by Delta.
We (and I include myself in this) assumed that France, Germany, Italy, Spain, etc., would have a very similar fourth wave to the UK. Simply: they were six weeks behind us, but were going to see the same hit.
But that hasn't really happened. While German cases continue to rise, French and Spanish cases have come down sharply from relatively low peaks, while Italy doesn't seem to have had a third wave at all.
Weather-related? UK was socialising indoors, while mainland Europe was socialising outdoors a few weeks later?
There's probably some reason that governments have avoided abolishing NI and rolling it into income tax, I just don't know enough about it to speculate what that might be. Any thoughts?
IIRC according to George Osborne's team it would cause all sorts of administrative problems, you'd need to phase it in for example regarding the LEL and UEL of NI so you'd need to adjust personal allowances.
Then if income tax rates increase from say 20% to 33% when the merger takes place there will be behavioural changes which need to be modelled as well as other taxes like dividends.
It is possible that you spend an entire parliament pissing off the voters whilst you get rid of the edge cases.
A bit like Universal Credit.
Doesn't make it the wrong thing to do.
There's a lot more taxpayers than there are universal credit recipients.
You screw this up and government revenues could get messy because of the behavioural changes.
Still doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing.
Did the Office of Tax Simplification produce anything workable?
I've only dipped in and out today having suffered in the sweat box that is Aberdeen city centre.
My personal highlight was BJO fucking off to join the Tories.
I am unconvinced that he was 100% serious.
But if he was, then be careful: you might be next ...
We're all PB Tories now, comrade!
(Except Max, CR, et al...)
There is a foaming-dog-fever desperation in the Trots on Twitter. The Jeremy still hasn't been reinstated as a Labour MP never mind as leader, and the party seems to be ignoring their stupid whining.
The Lisa Nandy thing was hilarious. She rightly points out that if The Jeremy isn't reinstated then the party will chose someone else as candidate and she would knock on doors for that new candidate. Cue trots pledging to flood in from all over the country to defend the Labour Party by campaigning against it. So no wonder voting Tory is coming out as a concept.
The true enemy of true socialism is the Labour Party. Which is why so many of them have spent so long campaigning against it. A Labour government betrays socialism by having to make the real world sacrifices that are part and parcel of government. As they refuse to compromise the only solution is eternal Tory government.
And your problem with that is... ?
In all seriousness, I do wonder if the problem with this was Blair. In 1997, he convinced the hard leftists to bend their principles and vote for a more centrist policy platform. They did, and so did millions of others. And when he gained power and an almost unprecedented majority, he was nowhere near as progressive as he could be. In fact, he was timid. Then came the Iraq invasion, and many on the hard left saw centrism as totally against their values.
The hard left within Labour just don't trust anyone who could get them elected.
Yes, I think this is right.
Blair persuaded an entire party to support things that were alien to its nature.
He took a socialist movement, and made the members into fervent supporters of low taxes, private finance initiatives, military invasions and people getting filthy rich.
It was a remarkable, yet spooky, thing. I would not have believed it, if I had not lived through it.
We now forget, but genial old Corbynite Nick Palmer was completely under Blair's thrall, regularly posting encomia about the Iraq War on pb.com.
(I prefered the Corbynite Nick Palmer, but I suspect he may be metamorphosing again).
So, it is completely understandable why anyone on the left of the Labour Party distrusts anyone who could get them elected from the centre.
Chise @sailorrooscout R in Denmark has now fallen to 0.7 despite the start of a new school season last month indicating a declining epidemic. Denmark has vaccinated OVER 80% of its population and will drop all remaining COVID restrictions as of September 10th.
One of the very, very curious things is how much less badly hit Europe has been than the UK by Delta.
We (and I include myself in this) assumed that France, Germany, Italy, Spain, etc., would have a very similar fourth wave to the UK. Simply: they were six weeks behind us, but were going to see the same hit.
But that hasn't really happened. While German cases continue to rise, French and Spanish cases have come down sharply from relatively low peaks, while Italy doesn't seem to have had a third wave at all.
It was the same last year - when I was in Europe during September, cases were rising at home, yet stable in France, Germany and Italy, where they began to rise a month or so later. I felt last year that climate was driving it, and that it is happening again this year reinforces that likelihood. People are still very much living outdoors here.
I've only dipped in and out today having suffered in the sweat box that is Aberdeen city centre.
My personal highlight was BJO fucking off to join the Tories.
I am unconvinced that he was 100% serious.
But if he was, then be careful: you might be next ...
We're all PB Tories now, comrade!
(Except Max, CR, et al...)
There is a foaming-dog-fever desperation in the Trots on Twitter. The Jeremy still hasn't been reinstated as a Labour MP never mind as leader, and the party seems to be ignoring their stupid whining.
The Lisa Nandy thing was hilarious. She rightly points out that if The Jeremy isn't reinstated then the party will chose someone else as candidate and she would knock on doors for that new candidate. Cue trots pledging to flood in from all over the country to defend the Labour Party by campaigning against it. So no wonder voting Tory is coming out as a concept.
The true enemy of true socialism is the Labour Party. Which is why so many of them have spent so long campaigning against it. A Labour government betrays socialism by having to make the real world sacrifices that are part and parcel of government. As they refuse to compromise the only solution is eternal Tory government.
You have a point. There are a few on the left of Labour who when it comes to the election will be rooting for a big Con win and humiliation for Starmer. It's pathetic imo. But a point back, and this has to be said, when Jez was leader there weren't just a few Labour centrists rooting for the Conservatives at the election, there were many. And some of that 'many' weren't just rooting for it they were actively working to achieve it.
That is fair comment - though I have to say that Starmer's performance - indeed general invisibility - over recent weeks has reinforced my view that he lacks a good political brain.The necessary antennae are simply not there! He lost my confidence by agreeing to the two unnecessary by elections at Hartlepool and Batley & Spen a few months back, and nothing I have seen since has really changed my view. There is something missing in terms of what is required of a political leader.
I've only dipped in and out today having suffered in the sweat box that is Aberdeen city centre.
My personal highlight was BJO fucking off to join the Tories.
I am unconvinced that he was 100% serious.
But if he was, then be careful: you might be next ...
We're all PB Tories now, comrade!
(Except Max, CR, et al...)
There is a foaming-dog-fever desperation in the Trots on Twitter. The Jeremy still hasn't been reinstated as a Labour MP never mind as leader, and the party seems to be ignoring their stupid whining.
The Lisa Nandy thing was hilarious. She rightly points out that if The Jeremy isn't reinstated then the party will chose someone else as candidate and she would knock on doors for that new candidate. Cue trots pledging to flood in from all over the country to defend the Labour Party by campaigning against it. So no wonder voting Tory is coming out as a concept.
The true enemy of true socialism is the Labour Party. Which is why so many of them have spent so long campaigning against it. A Labour government betrays socialism by having to make the real world sacrifices that are part and parcel of government. As they refuse to compromise the only solution is eternal Tory government.
And your problem with that is... ?
In all seriousness, I do wonder if the problem with this was Blair. In 1997, he convinced the hard leftists to bend their principles and vote for a more centrist policy platform. They did, and so did millions of others. And when he gained power and an almost unprecedented majority, he was nowhere near as progressive as he could be. In fact, he was timid. Then came the Iraq invasion, and many on the hard left saw centrism as totally against their values.
The hard left within Labour just don't trust anyone who could get them elected.
If you think about it the hard Left aren't really interested in elections.
At the core of their philosophy is achieving seismic change through revolution, and that's rarely voted for.
I take back my criticisms of these proposals and Boris Johnson.
The NS have started with the shape of the graph they wanted, then gone well out of their way to find second-order data that they can make fit.
Agreed. I'm all up for attacking the policy on principles but that's just absurd.
While looking into the data behind the plot I noticed that there was a lower NI rate for earnings above £967 of 2%. Surely raising that threshold or rate would have been another good way to raise revenue.
The whole parallel system of NI is ridiculous. One of the LD policies I support is unifying the two.
No, NI should be for unemployment insurance, state pensions and health treatment as established for.
You need NI credits for JSA and state pension and now it goes to the NHS and social care too, ideal
As so often, you make my case for me.
Because NI is (sort of) used to pay for those things, and because we don't want people dropping dead on the streets, we end up with ever more complicated systems of benefits for those who don't get NI tested benefits.
There's probably some reason that governments have avoided abolishing NI and rolling it into income tax, I just don't know enough about it to speculate what that might be. Any thoughts?
IIRC according to George Osborne's team it would cause all sorts of administrative problems, you'd need to phase it in for example regarding the LEL and UEL of NI so you'd need to adjust personal allowances.
Then if income tax rates increase from say 20% to 33% when the merger takes place there will be behavioural changes which need to be modelled as well as other taxes like dividends.
It is possible that you spend an entire parliament pissing off the voters whilst you get rid of the edge cases.
A bit like Universal Credit.
Doesn't make it the wrong thing to do.
There's a lot more taxpayers than there are universal credit recipients.
You screw this up and government revenues could get messy because of the behavioural changes.
Best time to do it would be early in a Parliament at a time a deficit can absorb the impact of any changes. Possibly when you've just taken over and the revenues are already messy so it would be wrapped up in other people's pre-existing mess without having edge cases lose.
Looking at the reactions quoted above, I'm seeing a lot of carefully targeted barrel-scraping in what the different groups are attacking, and some very carefully tuned uses of % vs financial amounts.
What we need now is the start of some form of wealth tax in November, which I would expect to include a rapid change to CGT, and perhaps some reform to Council Tax. It is a good time to begin some major changes.
They won't address the huge CGT exemption on main dwellings loophole; not bold enough.
I have heard rumours that CGT is going to get hit badly. Its fair game. If you take out the main dwellings exemption, it would only really hit those with large amounts of wealth, a political minority. They have no counter arguments, no effective mainstream media to fight their PR wars, limited political influence and politically they have nowhere to turn. It feels inevitable.
Sods law says the rate will go up, as we currently have 2 CGT liable properties for sale to resolve mum's estate - one of which was ironically held onto to make sure she had income to cover Care Home fees if required.
Hoping to get them away and completed by Nov 24th.
We may gain on the roundabouts if IHT changes to be tighter, however.
All good fun.
Both of these properties have been empty for most of a year, as the COVID regulations would have made it impossible to remove a tenant in a reasonable timescale to sell when probate arrived. The regs have been many months of notice, plus a court process that has been taking many more months should T choose to refuse to leave.
So 2 families that could have been in a home if it wasn't for badly considered / badly run rental regulation. One of the hidden reasons why rents are soaring - Ts staying put and being impossible to remove stopping the market moving. Thank goodness we are moving out of that.
In terms of the two blocs, the ruling centre-right Blue bloc (Conservative, Progress, Liberal and Christian People's Party) are on 37.9% and the centre-left Red bloc (Labour, Centre, Socialist Left and Red) are on 54% so that's a huge margin with days to go.
This is a terrible poll for the ruling Conservatives and the swing against the Government is approaching 9%.
It’s obviously humiliating for the cllr, but has he actually crossed a line? What do PB’ers think? Just a bit scummy - or - totally way over the line creepy, get the pitchforks out?
Tricky one to comment on. My thoughts.
1 - AIUI a formal complaint has not been made via either the Council procedures or the police. Instead we have an internal party complaint, followed by allegation-by-twitter. 2 - If the alleged behaviour is true then imo it is well over the line. 3 - It's not a good look for the self-identify-without-any-medical-input transgenderist lobby. 4 - One question - are drunk men viewed as not having capacity to consent to sex, or is that just drunk women, under the (?) 2003 Sexual Offences Act?
I've only dipped in and out today having suffered in the sweat box that is Aberdeen city centre.
My personal highlight was BJO fucking off to join the Tories.
I am unconvinced that he was 100% serious.
But if he was, then be careful: you might be next ...
We're all PB Tories now, comrade!
(Except Max, CR, et al...)
There is a foaming-dog-fever desperation in the Trots on Twitter. The Jeremy still hasn't been reinstated as a Labour MP never mind as leader, and the party seems to be ignoring their stupid whining.
The Lisa Nandy thing was hilarious. She rightly points out that if The Jeremy isn't reinstated then the party will chose someone else as candidate and she would knock on doors for that new candidate. Cue trots pledging to flood in from all over the country to defend the Labour Party by campaigning against it. So no wonder voting Tory is coming out as a concept.
The true enemy of true socialism is the Labour Party. Which is why so many of them have spent so long campaigning against it. A Labour government betrays socialism by having to make the real world sacrifices that are part and parcel of government. As they refuse to compromise the only solution is eternal Tory government.
You have a point. There are a few on the left of Labour who when it comes to the election will be rooting for a big Con win and humiliation for Starmer. It's pathetic imo. But a point back, and this has to be said, when Jez was leader there weren't just a few Labour centrists rooting for the Conservatives at the election, there were many. And some of that 'many' weren't just rooting for it they were actively working to achieve it.
I heard that accusation - LOOK AT KINNOCK'S FACE" etc. None of the MPs wanted to lose. The so-called plot to wreck The Jeremy's guaranteed election win as that some MPs planned to throw the election and make themselves redundant.
The only people working for a Tory win were The Jeremy's inner circle. The ones who still scream about plots to spread false accusations of anti-semitism whilst having palestinian flags on their twitter profile.
The only people working for a Tory win were The Jeremy's inner circle
Forde Report wouldnt be delayed if its findings aligned with your views
Chise @sailorrooscout R in Denmark has now fallen to 0.7 despite the start of a new school season last month indicating a declining epidemic. Denmark has vaccinated OVER 80% of its population and will drop all remaining COVID restrictions as of September 10th.
One of the very, very curious things is how much less badly hit Europe has been than the UK by Delta.
We (and I include myself in this) assumed that France, Germany, Italy, Spain, etc., would have a very similar fourth wave to the UK. Simply: they were six weeks behind us, but were going to see the same hit.
But that hasn't really happened. While German cases continue to rise, French and Spanish cases have come down sharply from relatively low peaks, while Italy doesn't seem to have had a third wave at all.
Weather-related? UK was socialising indoors, while mainland Europe was socialising outdoors a few weeks later?
Indoors, Europeans seem to be much keener on mask-wearing, still? Here in Switzerland everyone is still wearing a mask - inside.
But the difference in deaths is much less striking. The UK is now mid-table in its European death rate
There may well be a good argument for a step increase NHS spending to tackle the backlog in treatment that the Covid pandemic has generated - but of this money is to that end, that's the case which should have been made.
Given that (1) most of the money raised in the next 3 years is going to be spent on the NHS and not social care & (2) it'll be really hard to switch this short term increase in NHS spending to social care, I'm not sure that today's announcements have 'got social care done'.
I remember when David Herdson and I quit the Tory Party in the summer of 2019 we did warn you all that Boris Johnson would do profoundly unConservative things.
I've only dipped in and out today having suffered in the sweat box that is Aberdeen city centre.
My personal highlight was BJO fucking off to join the Tories.
I am unconvinced that he was 100% serious.
But if he was, then be careful: you might be next ...
We're all PB Tories now, comrade!
(Except Max, CR, et al...)
There is a foaming-dog-fever desperation in the Trots on Twitter. The Jeremy still hasn't been reinstated as a Labour MP never mind as leader, and the party seems to be ignoring their stupid whining.
The Lisa Nandy thing was hilarious. She rightly points out that if The Jeremy isn't reinstated then the party will chose someone else as candidate and she would knock on doors for that new candidate. Cue trots pledging to flood in from all over the country to defend the Labour Party by campaigning against it. So no wonder voting Tory is coming out as a concept.
The true enemy of true socialism is the Labour Party. Which is why so many of them have spent so long campaigning against it. A Labour government betrays socialism by having to make the real world sacrifices that are part and parcel of government. As they refuse to compromise the only solution is eternal Tory government.
You have a point. There are a few on the left of Labour who when it comes to the election will be rooting for a big Con win and humiliation for Starmer. It's pathetic imo. But a point back, and this has to be said, when Jez was leader there weren't just a few Labour centrists rooting for the Conservatives at the election, there were many. And some of that 'many' weren't just rooting for it they were actively working to achieve it.
I heard that accusation - LOOK AT KINNOCK'S FACE" etc. None of the MPs wanted to lose. The so-called plot to wreck The Jeremy's guaranteed election win as that some MPs planned to throw the election and make themselves redundant.
The only people working for a Tory win were The Jeremy's inner circle. The ones who still scream about plots to spread false accusations of anti-semitism whilst having palestinian flags on their twitter profile.
It's based on far more than Kinnock's mug when he heard the terrible news of the Tories unexpectedly losing their majority. Post the Corbyn 2015 shock change, many "legacy" people in Labour didn't want him to succeed at the polls and some of them made efforts in that direction. It wasn't some sinister organized "plot", I don't believe in that sort of crap, neither was it too surprising, it was just an example of what happens organically when people really don't want a particular outcome in their life (they do stuff, say stuff, write stuff, try and do their bit to prevent it) and in this case it happened to be in internal Labour politics.
Chise @sailorrooscout R in Denmark has now fallen to 0.7 despite the start of a new school season last month indicating a declining epidemic. Denmark has vaccinated OVER 80% of its population and will drop all remaining COVID restrictions as of September 10th.
One of the very, very curious things is how much less badly hit Europe has been than the UK by Delta.
We (and I include myself in this) assumed that France, Germany, Italy, Spain, etc., would have a very similar fourth wave to the UK. Simply: they were six weeks behind us, but were going to see the same hit.
But that hasn't really happened. While German cases continue to rise, French and Spanish cases have come down sharply from relatively low peaks, while Italy doesn't seem to have had a third wave at all.
It was the same last year - when I was in Europe during September, cases were rising at home, yet stable in France, Germany and Italy, where they began to rise a month or so later. I felt last year that climate was driving it, and that it is happening again this year reinforces that likelihood. People are still very much living outdoors here.
Wait.
That's not what happened last year at all.
Spain's Covid cases rose in a (pretty much) straight line from mid June to end October. They then halved between then and the beginning of December, before shooting up to new heights in late January.
This time cases rose very srongly from mid June to mid July, before coming very sharply down.
Chise @sailorrooscout R in Denmark has now fallen to 0.7 despite the start of a new school season last month indicating a declining epidemic. Denmark has vaccinated OVER 80% of its population and will drop all remaining COVID restrictions as of September 10th.
One of the very, very curious things is how much less badly hit Europe has been than the UK by Delta.
We (and I include myself in this) assumed that France, Germany, Italy, Spain, etc., would have a very similar fourth wave to the UK. Simply: they were six weeks behind us, but were going to see the same hit.
But that hasn't really happened. While German cases continue to rise, French and Spanish cases have come down sharply from relatively low peaks, while Italy doesn't seem to have had a third wave at all.
Weather-related? UK was socialising indoors, while mainland Europe was socialising outdoors a few weeks later?
School timings will have played a role. Also, I suspect, the fact that second vaccinations are "fresher" in Europe than in the UK.
Fascinating to look at the Canadian election polling.
Among the rolling pollsters, EKOS has a steady 6-point Conservative lead but Mainstreet has seen some big Conservative leads trimmed back in recent days to a 2.4% lead yesterday. Nanos had a 2 point Liberal lead.
Abacus Data polls a bigger sample - 2,875 - and the current figures are Liberals and Conservatives tied on 32 and NDP on 21. Since last week, the only change has been a one point drop for the Conservatives so big changes in the rolling polls aren't being matched in more conventional polling.
In the provinces, NDP lead by six in British Columbia, the Conservatives have huge leads in Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan but in Ontario the Liberals still lead by three and have a one point advantage over BQ in Quebec.
The line seems to be the Liberals will still end up as the largest party on these numbers but short of a majority with the NDP making gains on both Liberals and Conservatives.
I remember when David Herdson and I quit the Tory Party in the summer of 2019 we did warn you all that Boris Johnson would do profoundly unConservative things.
How is raising taxes on workers to protect property rights of the wealthy unConservative? What you mean is unThatcherite. But Thatcherism was ailing in a care home for years. Boris in 2019 finished it off.
Just had drinks with the manager of an insanely posh 5 star hotel here in Ascona. In insanely rich Ticino. In insanely wealthy Switzerland
He told me that in the early 20th century Ticino in particular was so impoverished it was notorious. In a nearby valley there is a rustic bar called the ‘grotto americano’ (grotto means a rural cafe/bistro). It was named thus because it is where the locals would gather for a last drink of rough wine before they dispersed to the ports, and emigrated to America. And a better life
What sane Swiss person would now escape Switzerland for a better life? Especially to the USA!
Chise @sailorrooscout R in Denmark has now fallen to 0.7 despite the start of a new school season last month indicating a declining epidemic. Denmark has vaccinated OVER 80% of its population and will drop all remaining COVID restrictions as of September 10th.
One of the very, very curious things is how much less badly hit Europe has been than the UK by Delta.
We (and I include myself in this) assumed that France, Germany, Italy, Spain, etc., would have a very similar fourth wave to the UK. Simply: they were six weeks behind us, but were going to see the same hit.
But that hasn't really happened. While German cases continue to rise, French and Spanish cases have come down sharply from relatively low peaks, while Italy doesn't seem to have had a third wave at all.
Weather-related? UK was socialising indoors, while mainland Europe was socialising outdoors a few weeks later?
Indoors, Europeans seem to be much keener on mask-wearing, still? Here in Switzerland everyone is still wearing a mask - inside.
But the difference in deaths is much less striking. The UK is now mid-table in its European death rate
Hungary has lost almost 0.5% of their population to Covid. That's like one-in-ten 2017 LibDem voters kicking the bucket.
Chise @sailorrooscout R in Denmark has now fallen to 0.7 despite the start of a new school season last month indicating a declining epidemic. Denmark has vaccinated OVER 80% of its population and will drop all remaining COVID restrictions as of September 10th.
One of the very, very curious things is how much less badly hit Europe has been than the UK by Delta.
We (and I include myself in this) assumed that France, Germany, Italy, Spain, etc., would have a very similar fourth wave to the UK. Simply: they were six weeks behind us, but were going to see the same hit.
But that hasn't really happened. While German cases continue to rise, French and Spanish cases have come down sharply from relatively low peaks, while Italy doesn't seem to have had a third wave at all.
Weather-related? UK was socialising indoors, while mainland Europe was socialising outdoors a few weeks later?
Indoors, Europeans seem to be much keener on mask-wearing, still? Here in Switzerland everyone is still wearing a mask - inside.
But the difference in deaths is much less striking. The UK is now mid-table in its European death rate
Hungary has lost almost 0.5% of their population to Covid. That's like one-in-ten 2017 LibDem voters kicking the bucket.
Is that true? Jesus
I mean the Hungary stat. I presume any stat about lib dem voters is some kind of joke
Just had drinks with the manager of an insanely posh 5 star hotel here in Ascona. In insanely rich Ticino. In insanely wealthy Switzerland
He told me that in the early 20th century Ticino in particular was so impoverished it was notorious. In a nearby valley there is a rustic bar called the ‘grotto americano’ (grotto means a rural cafe/bistro). It was named thus because it is where the locals would gather for a last drink of rough wine before they dispersed to the ports, and emigrated to America. And a better life
What sane Swiss person would now escape Switzerland for a better life? Especially to the USA!
Switzerland was poor for a very long time. It had a rural economy, with little industry, that needed to export mercenaries to pay the bills.
The rest of Europe going to war (and destroying everything and running up huge debts) twice in a century helped turn things around.
Chise @sailorrooscout R in Denmark has now fallen to 0.7 despite the start of a new school season last month indicating a declining epidemic. Denmark has vaccinated OVER 80% of its population and will drop all remaining COVID restrictions as of September 10th.
One of the very, very curious things is how much less badly hit Europe has been than the UK by Delta.
We (and I include myself in this) assumed that France, Germany, Italy, Spain, etc., would have a very similar fourth wave to the UK. Simply: they were six weeks behind us, but were going to see the same hit.
But that hasn't really happened. While German cases continue to rise, French and Spanish cases have come down sharply from relatively low peaks, while Italy doesn't seem to have had a third wave at all.
Weather-related? UK was socialising indoors, while mainland Europe was socialising outdoors a few weeks later?
Indoors, Europeans seem to be much keener on mask-wearing, still? Here in Switzerland everyone is still wearing a mask - inside.
But the difference in deaths is much less striking. The UK is now mid-table in its European death rate
Hungary has lost almost 0.5% of their population to Covid. That's like one-in-ten 2017 LibDem voters kicking the bucket.
Is that true? Jesus
I mean the Hungary stat. I presume any stat about lib dem voters is some kind of joke
The LibDem stat is proportionately correct. And yes, the Hungary number is also right.
Eastern Europe has been absolutely massacred by Covid: elderly populations and vaccine hesitancy are a horrible combination.
I've been pondering on the unfairness of today's stuff while out walking. Here's a brief personal take just on the NI bit (I won't tackle the whole package, which I think is deeply flawed):
My daughter (30) earns a bit less than the average wage - around £25,000 p.a. Her housing costs are £1,000 a month, excluding council tax; doesn't leave her much spending money, especially once bills are paid. My occupational pension is roughly the same amount; I have no other income. My housing costs are zero, excluding council tax; we've paid off the mortgage.
So my income is completely untouched. Hers goes down a bit. How on earth can this be right?
I've said on here before that I think too many people think the interests of the retired and the young are different or in conflict. They're not to many of us who have kids. The fact that I contribute nothing but my hard-up-daughter does is a f***ing disgrace.
Just had drinks with the manager of an insanely posh 5 star hotel here in Ascona. In insanely rich Ticino. In insanely wealthy Switzerland
He told me that in the early 20th century Ticino in particular was so impoverished it was notorious. In a nearby valley there is a rustic bar called the ‘grotto americano’ (grotto means a rural cafe/bistro). It was named thus because it is where the locals would gather for a last drink of rough wine before they dispersed to the ports, and emigrated to America. And a better life
What sane Swiss person would now escape Switzerland for a better life? Especially to the USA!
Switzerland was poor for a very long time. It had a rural economy, with little industry, that needed to export mercenaries to pay the bills.
The rest of Europe going to war (and destroying everything and running up huge debts) twice in a century helped turn things around.
Yes. It’s like the Singapore of Europe. Rising quietly in a few decades from dire poverty to great affluence
He’s a dude. The manager here. Managed famous hotels all over the world. Very eminent. Very suspicious of China. Thinks it came from the lab. Like any sane person
Chise @sailorrooscout R in Denmark has now fallen to 0.7 despite the start of a new school season last month indicating a declining epidemic. Denmark has vaccinated OVER 80% of its population and will drop all remaining COVID restrictions as of September 10th.
One of the very, very curious things is how much less badly hit Europe has been than the UK by Delta.
We (and I include myself in this) assumed that France, Germany, Italy, Spain, etc., would have a very similar fourth wave to the UK. Simply: they were six weeks behind us, but were going to see the same hit.
But that hasn't really happened. While German cases continue to rise, French and Spanish cases have come down sharply from relatively low peaks, while Italy doesn't seem to have had a third wave at all.
Weather-related? UK was socialising indoors, while mainland Europe was socialising outdoors a few weeks later?
Indoors, Europeans seem to be much keener on mask-wearing, still? Here in Switzerland everyone is still wearing a mask - inside.
But the difference in deaths is much less striking. The UK is now mid-table in its European death rate
Hungary has lost almost 0.5% of their population to Covid. That's like one-in-ten 2017 LibDem voters kicking the bucket.
Is that true? Jesus
I mean the Hungary stat. I presume any stat about lib dem voters is some kind of joke
The LibDem stat is proportionately correct. And yes, the Hungary number is also right.
Eastern Europe has been absolutely massacred by Covid: elderly populations and vaccine hesitancy are a horrible combination.
Given that this will have fuck all effect on social care, may I suggest it will leave it in exactly the same place as if they vote for it?
Very stupid policy. To take one obvious example, how many schools operating on savagely tightened budgets are now going to be tipped into deficit? This is roughly the equivalent of giving all staff a 3% pay rise without even buying goodwill in return.
Similarly, local authorities are under horrendous pressure and unless council tax is raised dramatically this could send several more the way of Northants.
It would be nice - just for once - to have a government where somebody with two brain cells to rub together was in charge of planning ahead.
OK, it's not unique to this government, but anyone with foresight wouldn't have touched this government with a bargepole.
Here's the funny thing, though. Until a few hours ago, there was lots of genuine Conservative criticism of this plan as it emerged. And that has melted away like snow on a day like this. I'd want to see tomorrow's Mail, Telegraph and Sun before saying the government are totally out of the woods, but it's amazing really.
And whilst the key principle of the government is that Comrade Johnson is always right, it's striking to see. I can't help thinking of David Low's "They salute with both hands now"...
I think it may be because of four things: 1) the 1.25% is to be applied to highest earners, who will end up paying more of the cost, 2) It is to be set up as a new hypothecated levy rather than a straight NI increase, 3) the triple lock has been paused thus avoiding the absurd increase to the oldies and 4) the erstwhile critics twigged that this was going to land reasonably well with the sheeples.
I think 4) probably puts the other three in the shade.
I've only dipped in and out today having suffered in the sweat box that is Aberdeen city centre.
My personal highlight was BJO fucking off to join the Tories.
I am unconvinced that he was 100% serious.
But if he was, then be careful: you might be next ...
We're all PB Tories now, comrade!
(Except Max, CR, et al...)
There is a foaming-dog-fever desperation in the Trots on Twitter. The Jeremy still hasn't been reinstated as a Labour MP never mind as leader, and the party seems to be ignoring their stupid whining.
The Lisa Nandy thing was hilarious. She rightly points out that if The Jeremy isn't reinstated then the party will chose someone else as candidate and she would knock on doors for that new candidate. Cue trots pledging to flood in from all over the country to defend the Labour Party by campaigning against it. So no wonder voting Tory is coming out as a concept.
The true enemy of true socialism is the Labour Party. Which is why so many of them have spent so long campaigning against it. A Labour government betrays socialism by having to make the real world sacrifices that are part and parcel of government. As they refuse to compromise the only solution is eternal Tory government.
You have a point. There are a few on the left of Labour who when it comes to the election will be rooting for a big Con win and humiliation for Starmer. It's pathetic imo. But a point back, and this has to be said, when Jez was leader there weren't just a few Labour centrists rooting for the Conservatives at the election, there were many. And some of that 'many' weren't just rooting for it they were actively working to achieve it.
I heard that accusation - LOOK AT KINNOCK'S FACE" etc. None of the MPs wanted to lose. The so-called plot to wreck The Jeremy's guaranteed election win as that some MPs planned to throw the election and make themselves redundant.
The only people working for a Tory win were The Jeremy's inner circle. The ones who still scream about plots to spread false accusations of anti-semitism whilst having palestinian flags on their twitter profile.
It's based on far more than Kinnock's mug when he heard the terrible news of the Tories unexpectedly losing their majority. Post the Corbyn 2015 shock change, many "legacy" people in Labour didn't want him to succeed at the polls and some of them made efforts in that direction. It wasn't some sinister organized "plot", I don't believe in that sort of crap, neither was it too surprising, it was just an example of what happens organically when people really don't want a particular outcome in their life (they do stuff, say stuff, write stuff, try and do their bit to prevent it) and in this case it happened to be in internal Labour politics.
And yet what we got on the doors wasn't a reaction to a few less than complimentary articles by Alan Johnson. It was Jeremy. In Stockton the Tories took a council byelection in a previously safe seat and on door after door after door of LLLLLLL voters the message was "I can't vote for Corbyn.
If the leader and the policies had been popular then a small number of malcontents on the fringes would have made no difference. As they didn't in the Blair era.
Chise @sailorrooscout R in Denmark has now fallen to 0.7 despite the start of a new school season last month indicating a declining epidemic. Denmark has vaccinated OVER 80% of its population and will drop all remaining COVID restrictions as of September 10th.
One of the very, very curious things is how much less badly hit Europe has been than the UK by Delta.
We (and I include myself in this) assumed that France, Germany, Italy, Spain, etc., would have a very similar fourth wave to the UK. Simply: they were six weeks behind us, but were going to see the same hit.
But that hasn't really happened. While German cases continue to rise, French and Spanish cases have come down sharply from relatively low peaks, while Italy doesn't seem to have had a third wave at all.
Weather-related? UK was socialising indoors, while mainland Europe was socialising outdoors a few weeks later?
Indoors, Europeans seem to be much keener on mask-wearing, still? Here in Switzerland everyone is still wearing a mask - inside.
But the difference in deaths is much less striking. The UK is now mid-table in its European death rate
Hungary has lost almost 0.5% of their population to Covid. That's like one-in-ten 2017 LibDem voters kicking the bucket.
Is that true? Jesus
I mean the Hungary stat. I presume any stat about lib dem voters is some kind of joke
The LibDem stat is proportionately correct. And yes, the Hungary number is also right.
Eastern Europe has been absolutely massacred by Covid: elderly populations and vaccine hesitancy are a horrible combination.
That’s like a pretty bad wartime death toll. Bloody hell
Every adult is acquainted with about 200 people aren’t they? Something like that. That means every Hungarian will know ‘someone’ who died
Chise @sailorrooscout R in Denmark has now fallen to 0.7 despite the start of a new school season last month indicating a declining epidemic. Denmark has vaccinated OVER 80% of its population and will drop all remaining COVID restrictions as of September 10th.
One of the very, very curious things is how much less badly hit Europe has been than the UK by Delta.
We (and I include myself in this) assumed that France, Germany, Italy, Spain, etc., would have a very similar fourth wave to the UK. Simply: they were six weeks behind us, but were going to see the same hit.
But that hasn't really happened. While German cases continue to rise, French and Spanish cases have come down sharply from relatively low peaks, while Italy doesn't seem to have had a third wave at all.
It was the same last year - when I was in Europe during September, cases were rising at home, yet stable in France, Germany and Italy, where they began to rise a month or so later. I felt last year that climate was driving it, and that it is happening again this year reinforces that likelihood. People are still very much living outdoors here.
Wait.
That's not what happened last year at all.
Spain's Covid cases rose in a (pretty much) straight line from mid June to end October. They then halved between then and the beginning of December, before shooting up to new heights in late January.
This time cases rose very srongly from mid June to mid July, before coming very sharply down.
Yes, in broad terms it is. Through Sept 2020 the seven-day rolling new case rate rose sharply for the UK, such that it overtook the rate for the EU in the second part of the month and by early October 2020 was twice as high. During October the EU new case rate rose more sharply and by late October had caught and risen above our own.
I remember when David Herdson and I quit the Tory Party in the summer of 2019 we did warn you all that Boris Johnson would do profoundly unConservative things.
How is raising taxes on workers to protect property rights of the wealthy unConservative? What you mean is unThatcherite. But Thatcherism was ailing in a care home for years. Boris in 2019 finished it off.
Its a good point. Screwing the working plebs for the monied is what the Tory Party is traditionally all about.
Completely off topic my daughter just asked as I was putting her to bed if she could get a Rocky (Paw Patrol) toy for Christmas, so I said if she was good I'm sure she could be on the nice list and he'd bring it to her. She then replied that if she wasn't on the nice list, she could get it for her birthday instead.
Always good to have a Plan B!
(I thought I'd share this story as it was cute and made me smile - and there's been enough frayed tempers on this site today)
I'm trying to get my head round today's Government announcement - well trailed though it was.
It seems to this observer to be a tax meant to support inheritance as much as anything to provide improved care and let's not forget "Adult Social Care" is not just about residential homes. It's a far bigger subject covering the money spent by local authorities on supported living for those with mental or physical disabilities.
What does today's announcement mean for carers and for those families who choose to care for elderly relatives rather than putting them through the means testing assessment process for placement in a care home?
Someone described it as a "sticking plaster" - it isn't even that in all honesty. The Government has fluffed the chance to introduce some radical new thinking about personal provision for later life as well as understanding the responsibility we all have to ensure the elderly can enjoy a dignified and comfortable life (irrespective of their financial situation) in their latter years including end-of-life and palliative care.
While it's long overdue that pensioners continuing to work contribute the truth is many older people have to work - the assumption older people are all sitting on huge property assets misses the point 40% of adults own no property at all. In addition, it's my anecdotal experiences changes in middle to later life (divorce, death of a partner) can leave older women in particular struggling financially.
This is no solution - it doesn't really even define the problem. We've yet to have that national debate because, when we do, we see the anti-tax people throw their toys out the pram closely followed by the pro-inheritance lobby.
The issue with caring for adults is that it doesn't just involve pensioners - it involves younger people who live with conditions and disabilities which would likely have been terminal not so long ago. They need long-term expensive levels of support and care and that's often very expensive whether in terms of resources, equipment, technology or medicine.
Fascinating to look at the Canadian election polling.
Among the rolling pollsters, EKOS has a steady 6-point Conservative lead but Mainstreet has seen some big Conservative leads trimmed back in recent days to a 2.4% lead yesterday. Nanos had a 2 point Liberal lead.
Abacus Data polls a bigger sample - 2,875 - and the current figures are Liberals and Conservatives tied on 32 and NDP on 21. Since last week, the only change has been a one point drop for the Conservatives so big changes in the rolling polls aren't being matched in more conventional polling.
In the provinces, NDP lead by six in British Columbia, the Conservatives have huge leads in Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan but in Ontario the Liberals still lead by three and have a one point advantage over BQ in Quebec.
The line seems to be the Liberals will still end up as the largest party on these numbers but short of a majority with the NDP making gains on both Liberals and Conservatives.
Glad another finds it fascinating! By contrast, 338 is showing a 3%+ Tory lead and a plurality of 12 seats for the Conservatives.
It all comes down to whether you weight EKOS, with its consistently outsize Tory leads, and daily polls, as equally as all the others. One thing seems to be true. The Liberal wound has been cauterised. They are no longer bleeding votes, and possibly clawing them back. The NDP, usually squeezed, aren't being.
Three things Trudeau has always done well. Come on strong late in the campaign. He is formidable in the debates, two more to come. Run much better from behind as an underdog. And, crucially, if repeated, poll much better than expected from polling.
I remember when David Herdson and I quit the Tory Party in the summer of 2019 we did warn you all that Boris Johnson would do profoundly unConservative things.
How is raising taxes on workers to protect property rights of the wealthy unConservative? What you mean is unThatcherite. But Thatcherism was ailing in a care home for years. Boris in 2019 finished it off.
Its a good point. Screwing the working plebs for the monied is what the Tory Party is traditionally all about.
And until Blair opened the door to unlimited cheap EU labour, we had someone to vote for who opposed it
Chise @sailorrooscout R in Denmark has now fallen to 0.7 despite the start of a new school season last month indicating a declining epidemic. Denmark has vaccinated OVER 80% of its population and will drop all remaining COVID restrictions as of September 10th.
One of the very, very curious things is how much less badly hit Europe has been than the UK by Delta.
We (and I include myself in this) assumed that France, Germany, Italy, Spain, etc., would have a very similar fourth wave to the UK. Simply: they were six weeks behind us, but were going to see the same hit.
But that hasn't really happened. While German cases continue to rise, French and Spanish cases have come down sharply from relatively low peaks, while Italy doesn't seem to have had a third wave at all.
Weather-related? UK was socialising indoors, while mainland Europe was socialising outdoors a few weeks later?
Indoors, Europeans seem to be much keener on mask-wearing, still? Here in Switzerland everyone is still wearing a mask - inside.
But the difference in deaths is much less striking. The UK is now mid-table in its European death rate
Hungary has lost almost 0.5% of their population to Covid. That's like one-in-ten 2017 LibDem voters kicking the bucket.
Is that true? Jesus
I mean the Hungary stat. I presume any stat about lib dem voters is some kind of joke
The LibDem stat is proportionately correct. And yes, the Hungary number is also right.
Eastern Europe has been absolutely massacred by Covid: elderly populations and vaccine hesitancy are a horrible combination.
Btw the food here in Ticino is excellent (contrary to both our expectations). I am eating generally in high end places but not universally. It’s very fine
Last night I had spaghetti con vongole. That’s all. Simple. Yet the best I’ve ever had
I guess they are now so rich they can simply hire the best chefs and get the best ingredients.
Seems a wasted effort when she's worked happily with them for years. Chancellor Angela Merkel has targeted the centre-left favourite in the race to succeed her, in what is likely to be her final appearance before MPs.
In a bid to bolster her own party's candidate ahead of Germany's 26 September elections, the outgoing leader was bitterly critical of Olaf Scholz, whose SPD is leading the polls.
Mrs Merkel warned that a vote for his party could let in the far left.
I'm trying to get my head round today's Government announcement - well trailed though it was.
It seems to this observer to be a tax meant to support inheritance as much as anything to provide improved care and let's not forget "Adult Social Care" is not just about residential homes. It's a far bigger subject covering the money spent by local authorities on supported living for those with mental or physical disabilities.
What does today's announcement mean for carers and for those families who choose to care for elderly relatives rather than putting them through the means testing assessment process for placement in a care home?
Someone described it as a "sticking plaster" - it isn't even that in all honesty. The Government has fluffed the chance to introduce some radical new thinking about personal provision for later life as well as understanding the responsibility we all have to ensure the elderly can enjoy a dignified and comfortable life (irrespective of their financial situation) in their latter years including end-of-life and palliative care.
While it's long overdue that pensioners continuing to work contribute the truth is many older people have to work - the assumption older people are all sitting on huge property assets misses the point 40% of adults own no property at all. In addition, it's my anecdotal experiences changes in middle to later life (divorce, death of a partner) can leave older women in particular struggling financially.
This is no solution - it doesn't really even define the problem. We've yet to have that national debate because, when we do, we see the anti-tax people throw their toys out the pram closely followed by the pro-inheritance lobby.
The issue with caring for adults is that it doesn't just involve pensioners - it involves younger people who live with conditions and disabilities which would likely have been terminal not so long ago. They need long-term expensive levels of support and care and that's often very expensive whether in terms of resources, equipment, technology or medicine.
The Dilnot Commission was very much of the view that a cap in care costs (albeit lower than £86k) would have a number of positive impacts beyond those saved from footing the bill, including levelling the nationwide playing field.
Sadly it has been 10 years since then and we really already need Dilnot II, but there you go.
Chise @sailorrooscout R in Denmark has now fallen to 0.7 despite the start of a new school season last month indicating a declining epidemic. Denmark has vaccinated OVER 80% of its population and will drop all remaining COVID restrictions as of September 10th.
One of the very, very curious things is how much less badly hit Europe has been than the UK by Delta.
We (and I include myself in this) assumed that France, Germany, Italy, Spain, etc., would have a very similar fourth wave to the UK. Simply: they were six weeks behind us, but were going to see the same hit.
But that hasn't really happened. While German cases continue to rise, French and Spanish cases have come down sharply from relatively low peaks, while Italy doesn't seem to have had a third wave at all.
France, Portugal and Spain have piled up the hospitalisations and deaths as has Italy to a lesser extent and the Balkans and Turkey are getting hammered.
What hasn't been much affected yet are the countries in the northern half of Europe.
What happens to them as the weather gets colder we will see.
Chise @sailorrooscout R in Denmark has now fallen to 0.7 despite the start of a new school season last month indicating a declining epidemic. Denmark has vaccinated OVER 80% of its population and will drop all remaining COVID restrictions as of September 10th.
One of the very, very curious things is how much less badly hit Europe has been than the UK by Delta.
We (and I include myself in this) assumed that France, Germany, Italy, Spain, etc., would have a very similar fourth wave to the UK. Simply: they were six weeks behind us, but were going to see the same hit.
But that hasn't really happened. While German cases continue to rise, French and Spanish cases have come down sharply from relatively low peaks, while Italy doesn't seem to have had a third wave at all.
It was the same last year - when I was in Europe during September, cases were rising at home, yet stable in France, Germany and Italy, where they began to rise a month or so later. I felt last year that climate was driving it, and that it is happening again this year reinforces that likelihood. People are still very much living outdoors here.
Wait.
That's not what happened last year at all.
Spain's Covid cases rose in a (pretty much) straight line from mid June to end October. They then halved between then and the beginning of December, before shooting up to new heights in late January.
This time cases rose very srongly from mid June to mid July, before coming very sharply down.
Yes, in broad terms it is. Through Sept 2020 the seven-day rolling new case rate rose sharply for the UK, such that it overtook the rate for the EU in the second part of the month and by early October 2020 was twice as high. During October the EU new case rate rose more sharply and by late October had caught and risen above our own.
A question: how do seasonal flu cases differ between countries (especially southern and northern Europe ones) per capita per year? Is there any indication that climate affects flu?
Chise @sailorrooscout R in Denmark has now fallen to 0.7 despite the start of a new school season last month indicating a declining epidemic. Denmark has vaccinated OVER 80% of its population and will drop all remaining COVID restrictions as of September 10th.
One of the very, very curious things is how much less badly hit Europe has been than the UK by Delta.
We (and I include myself in this) assumed that France, Germany, Italy, Spain, etc., would have a very similar fourth wave to the UK. Simply: they were six weeks behind us, but were going to see the same hit.
But that hasn't really happened. While German cases continue to rise, French and Spanish cases have come down sharply from relatively low peaks, while Italy doesn't seem to have had a third wave at all.
France, Portugal and Spain have piled up the hospitalisations and deaths as has Italy to a lesser extent and the Balkans and Turkey are getting hammered.
What hasn't been much affected yet are the countries in the northern half of Europe.
What happens to them as the weather gets colder we will see.
I also don’t believe some of the European stats. Spain had 140 deaths today, yet just 5,000 cases? Really?
That’s a CFR of ~3%. Like early Wuhan. Yet with mass vaccination? Bollocks
Completely off topic my daughter just asked as I was putting her to bed if she could get a Rocky (Paw Patrol) toy for Christmas, so I said if she was good I'm sure she could be on the nice list and he'd bring it to her. She then replied that if she wasn't on the nice list, she could get it for her birthday instead.
Always good to have a Plan B!
(I thought I'd share this story as it was cute and made me smile - and there's been enough frayed tempers on this site today)
Do check it is even available. There have been warnings of shortages,* esp. for Christmas, of popular toys. You might want to order it now and hide it.
So how many of the people complaining about a rise in NI to fund oldies complained when Cameron and Clegg tripled tuition fees so that pensions could be triple locked ?
OT. Im beginning to think BJO is correct. SKS hasn't a clue how to build a team. His Health Secretary who is the only visible shadow cabinet minister is COMPLETELY hopeless. There surely must be someone he can put in front of the cameras who isn't a simpering embarrassment? I didn't believe that Johnson would have such an easy ride. My optimism has just drained. As things stand Johnson will be there forever
There's probably some reason that governments have avoided abolishing NI and rolling it into income tax, I just don't know enough about it to speculate what that might be. Any thoughts?
Mostly the over-65s exemption, and that it is an effective disguise for the actual income tax rate on employees under £50k salary.
Minor issues are the different rates on the self-employed, the relationship of number of years’ contribution to pension entitlement and carve-outs for non-employment income.
That’s just employee NI. Employer NI is really great, because most people aren’t employers and don’t see it. Government can also announce a 1.25% rise that’s actually a 2.5% rise without most people noticing.
Then of course there’s the whole IR35 mess, which only exists because of NI and could be scrapped if NI was scrapped.
There’s also that a number of people view it as a ‘good tax’ simply because of the label (hence the new ‘Health & Social Care Levy’ tag).
OT. Im beginning to think BJO is correct. SKS hasn't a clue how to build a team. His Health Secretary who is the only visible shadow cabinet minister is COMPLETELY hopeless. There surely must be someone he can put in front of the cameras who isn't a simpering embarrassment? I didn't believe that Johnson would be been such an easy ride. My optimism has just drained. As things stand Johnson will be there forever
I think most sexually aware people guessed already that Boris Johnson is ‘an easy ride’
Chise @sailorrooscout R in Denmark has now fallen to 0.7 despite the start of a new school season last month indicating a declining epidemic. Denmark has vaccinated OVER 80% of its population and will drop all remaining COVID restrictions as of September 10th.
One of the very, very curious things is how much less badly hit Europe has been than the UK by Delta.
We (and I include myself in this) assumed that France, Germany, Italy, Spain, etc., would have a very similar fourth wave to the UK. Simply: they were six weeks behind us, but were going to see the same hit.
But that hasn't really happened. While German cases continue to rise, French and Spanish cases have come down sharply from relatively low peaks, while Italy doesn't seem to have had a third wave at all.
France, Portugal and Spain have piled up the hospitalisations and deaths as has Italy to a lesser extent and the Balkans and Turkey are getting hammered.
What hasn't been much affected yet are the countries in the northern half of Europe.
What happens to them as the weather gets colder we will see.
I also don’t believe some of the European stats. Spain had 140 deaths today, yet just 5,000 cases? Really?
That’s a CFR of ~3%. Like early Wuhan. Yet with mass vaccination? Bollocks
If you don't test much then you don't report the cases.
If you report too many cases then you lose the tourists.
OT. Im beginning to think BJO is correct. SKS hasn't a clue how to build a team. His Health Secretary who is the only visible shadow cabinet minister is COMPLETELY hopeless. There surely must be someone he can put in front of the cameras who isn't a simpering embarrassment? I didn't believe that Johnson would be been such an easy ride. My optimism has just drained. As things stand Johnson will be there forever
I think most sexually aware people guessed already that Boris Johnson is ‘an easy ride’
Chise @sailorrooscout R in Denmark has now fallen to 0.7 despite the start of a new school season last month indicating a declining epidemic. Denmark has vaccinated OVER 80% of its population and will drop all remaining COVID restrictions as of September 10th.
One of the very, very curious things is how much less badly hit Europe has been than the UK by Delta.
We (and I include myself in this) assumed that France, Germany, Italy, Spain, etc., would have a very similar fourth wave to the UK. Simply: they were six weeks behind us, but were going to see the same hit.
But that hasn't really happened. While German cases continue to rise, French and Spanish cases have come down sharply from relatively low peaks, while Italy doesn't seem to have had a third wave at all.
France, Portugal and Spain have piled up the hospitalisations and deaths as has Italy to a lesser extent and the Balkans and Turkey are getting hammered.
What hasn't been much affected yet are the countries in the northern half of Europe.
What happens to them as the weather gets colder we will see.
I also don’t believe some of the European stats. Spain had 140 deaths today, yet just 5,000 cases? Really?
That’s a CFR of ~3%. Like early Wuhan. Yet with mass vaccination? Bollocks
Economies based on tourism and truthful Covid stats - unlikely bed-fellows.....
Comments
Or its the power of a big majority making widescale rebellion pointless. Few PMs have had that advantage.
Unpopular measures, if it is, can be handled. People were against reopening but when it went ok they forgot about it.
But if he was, then be careful: you might be next ...
We're all PB Tories now, comrade!
(Except Max, CR, et al...)
I did love the "drag them back to France and send the French the bill" comment from Tory MP Lee Ashfield. Its "we're going to build the wall and Mexico are going to pay for it" dog whistle racism for stupid voters.
The Lisa Nandy thing was hilarious. She rightly points out that if The Jeremy isn't reinstated then the party will chose someone else as candidate and she would knock on doors for that new candidate. Cue trots pledging to flood in from all over the country to defend the Labour Party by campaigning against it. So no wonder voting Tory is coming out as a concept.
The true enemy of true socialism is the Labour Party. Which is why so many of them have spent so long campaigning against it. A Labour government betrays socialism by having to make the real world sacrifices that are part and parcel of government. As they refuse to compromise the only solution is eternal Tory government.
Just despite Laschet the Union will see least damage in Bavaria because of Soder and Bavaria will remain maybe the only state in Germany conservatives still win
Boris will have made enemies today in his party that will sit quiet for now but will have the last laugh when it comes to him being deposed. Might be some way off yet but it's coming.
Lab have had years to come up with a more progressive alternative but its beyond Starmer to formulate a policy.
I have currently fucked off to the anyone but Starmer party.
BTW I have never told anyone or even used the phrase Fuck off to the Tories despite what RP and Sunil will have you believe
Although God knows how long it will take to process my resignation that i sent online over a week ago. Guess there might be an even bigger backlog after todays pathetic performance.
You need NI credits for JSA and state pension and now it goes to the NHS and social care too, ideal
In all seriousness, I do wonder if the problem with this was Blair. In 1997, he convinced the hard leftists to bend their principles and vote for a more centrist policy platform. They did, and so did millions of others. And when he gained power and an almost unprecedented majority, he was nowhere near as progressive as he could be. In fact, he was timid. Then came the Iraq invasion, and many on the hard left saw centrism as totally against their values.
The hard left within Labour just don't trust anyone who could get them elected.
Incidentally you were a Nandy ramper. Can I ask your perspective on the hooey about her "campaign for the Labour candidate" comments. Trot meltdown on twitter as all your mates piled in pledging to campaign against Labour if The Jeremy wasn't the candidate.
Now that you've quit the red Tories you are free to deliver true socialism by joining National Health Action, Trade Union Socialist Collective, Socialist Unity and a pile of irrelevant trot splinter groups. Any taken your fancy yet.
@sailorrooscout
R in Denmark has now fallen to 0.7 despite the start of a new school season last month indicating a declining epidemic. Denmark has vaccinated OVER 80% of its population and will drop all remaining COVID restrictions as of September 10th.
When so-called Labour activists are out knocking doors marked LLLLLLL across the contact sheet and are arguing with the wavering voter and jabbing their finger and telling them they are being brainwashed its the kind of support the party didn't need and will take years to recover from.
My only skin in the game now is entertainment.
Minor issues are the different rates on the self-employed, the relationship of number of years’ contribution to pension entitlement and carve-outs for non-employment income.
That’s just employee NI. Employer NI is really great, because most people aren’t employers and don’t see it. Government can also announce a 1.25% rise that’s actually a 2.5% rise without most people noticing.
Then of course there’s the whole IR35 mess, which only exists because of NI and could be scrapped if NI was scrapped.
Hoping to get them away and completed by Nov 24th.
We may gain on the roundabouts if IHT changes to be tighter, however.
All good fun.
A bigger issue in my mind if we looking at glaring issues is the relief on pension contributions for higher earners.
That's not always right. One of my dearest friends was so left that he made Thatcher look like Skinner. Yet we would chew the cud on politics and leave - the worse for drink - as friends. We both realised we wanted the same thing: we only differed on how to get there. He had good points to make; I'd like to think I made good points. For instance: as much as he would argue to tax the 'rich' to oblivion, he could see that people like my dad - who took out a mortgage (i.e. risk) to start a business and employ dozens of people, should perhaps keep some of the profits made from that risk. I understood that the area of NE Derbyshire he was from had suffered massively from the decline of industries, and needed massive investment it didn't get.
I think one of the problem with such groups is that they never meet the 'enemy'. They walk around in a closed group who think the same. Something that might be made worse by t'Internet...
Then if income tax rates increase from say 20% to 33% when the merger takes place there will be behavioural changes which need to be modelled as well as other taxes like dividends.
It is possible that you spend an entire parliament pissing off the voters whilst you get rid of the edge cases.
Doesn't make it the wrong thing to do.
The only people working for a Tory win were The Jeremy's inner circle. The ones who still scream about plots to spread false accusations of anti-semitism whilst having palestinian flags on their twitter profile.
We (and I include myself in this) assumed that France, Germany, Italy, Spain, etc., would have a very similar fourth wave to the UK. Simply: they were six weeks behind us, but were going to see the same hit.
But that hasn't really happened. While German cases continue to rise, French and Spanish cases have come down sharply from relatively low peaks, while Italy doesn't seem to have had a third wave at all.
You screw this up and government revenues could get messy because of the behavioural changes.
They met the enemy when they joined the Labour party. They despised anyone who had been in the party before The Jeremy was anointed.
Did the Office of Tax Simplification produce anything workable?
Blair persuaded an entire party to support things that were alien to its nature.
He took a socialist movement, and made the members into fervent supporters of low taxes, private finance initiatives, military invasions and people getting filthy rich.
It was a remarkable, yet spooky, thing. I would not have believed it, if I had not lived through it.
We now forget, but genial old Corbynite Nick Palmer was completely under Blair's thrall, regularly posting encomia about the Iraq War on pb.com.
(I prefered the Corbynite Nick Palmer, but I suspect he may be metamorphosing again).
So, it is completely understandable why anyone on the left of the Labour Party distrusts anyone who could get them elected from the centre.
At the core of their philosophy is achieving seismic change through revolution, and that's rarely voted for.
Because NI is (sort of) used to pay for those things, and because we don't want people dropping dead on the streets, we end up with ever more complicated systems of benefits for those who don't get NI tested benefits.
So 2 families that could have been in a home if it wasn't for badly considered / badly run rental regulation. One of the hidden reasons why rents are soaring - Ts staying put and being impossible to remove stopping the market moving. Thank goodness we are moving out of that.
Germany may be voting soon but Norway votes next Monday. The latest Norstat poll;
Changes on the 2017 Storting election.
Labour: 23.9% (-3.5)
Conservative: 18.5% (-6.5)
Centre Party: 14.3% (+4)
Progress Party: 12.4% (-2.8)
Socialist Left: 8.6% (+2.6)
Greens: 5.4% (+2.2)
Red Party: 5.2% (+2.8)
Liberal: 3.6% (-0.8)
Christian People's Party: 3.4% (-0.8)
In terms of the two blocs, the ruling centre-right Blue bloc (Conservative, Progress, Liberal and Christian People's Party) are on 37.9% and the centre-left Red bloc (Labour, Centre, Socialist Left and Red) are on 54% so that's a huge margin with days to go.
This is a terrible poll for the ruling Conservatives and the swing against the Government is approaching 9%.
1 - AIUI a formal complaint has not been made via either the Council procedures or the police. Instead we have an internal party complaint, followed by allegation-by-twitter.
2 - If the alleged behaviour is true then imo it is well over the line.
3 - It's not a good look for the self-identify-without-any-medical-input transgenderist lobby.
4 - One question - are drunk men viewed as not having capacity to consent to sex, or is that just drunk women, under the (?) 2003 Sexual Offences Act?
Forde Report wouldnt be delayed if its findings aligned with your views
But the difference in deaths is much less striking. The UK is now mid-table in its European death rate
There may well be a good argument for a step increase NHS spending to tackle the backlog in treatment that the Covid pandemic has generated - but of this money is to that end, that's the case which should have been made.
https://twitter.com/DavidHerdson/status/1435301018414329863
Given that (1) most of the money raised in the next 3 years is going to be spent on the NHS and not social care & (2) it'll be really hard to switch this short term increase in NHS spending to social care, I'm not sure that today's announcements have 'got social care done'.
https://twitter.com/DavidGauke/status/1435276127392739337
That's not what happened last year at all.
Spain's Covid cases rose in a (pretty much) straight line from mid June to end October. They then halved between then and the beginning of December, before shooting up to new heights in late January.
This time cases rose very srongly from mid June to mid July, before coming very sharply down.
France had a similar summer trajectory, albeit a different path after dropping in November/December.
Is this true?
Among the rolling pollsters, EKOS has a steady 6-point Conservative lead but Mainstreet has seen some big Conservative leads trimmed back in recent days to a 2.4% lead yesterday. Nanos had a 2 point Liberal lead.
Abacus Data polls a bigger sample - 2,875 - and the current figures are Liberals and Conservatives tied on 32 and NDP on 21. Since last week, the only change has been a one point drop for the Conservatives so big changes in the rolling polls aren't being matched in more conventional polling.
https://abacusdata.ca/election-2021-conservatives-liberals-tied/
In the provinces, NDP lead by six in British Columbia, the Conservatives have huge leads in Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan but in Ontario the Liberals still lead by three and have a one point advantage over BQ in Quebec.
The line seems to be the Liberals will still end up as the largest party on these numbers but short of a majority with the NDP making gains on both Liberals and Conservatives.
What you mean is unThatcherite.
But Thatcherism was ailing in a care home for years.
Boris in 2019 finished it off.
He told me that in the early 20th century Ticino in particular was so impoverished it was notorious. In a nearby valley there is a rustic bar called the ‘grotto americano’ (grotto means a rural cafe/bistro). It was named thus because it is where the locals would gather for a last drink of rough wine before they dispersed to the ports, and emigrated to America. And a better life
What sane Swiss person would now escape Switzerland for a better life? Especially to the USA!
I mean the Hungary stat. I presume any stat about lib dem voters is some kind of joke
The rest of Europe going to war (and destroying everything and running up huge debts) twice in a century helped turn things around.
Eastern Europe has been absolutely massacred by Covid: elderly populations and vaccine hesitancy are a horrible combination.
My daughter (30) earns a bit less than the average wage - around £25,000 p.a. Her housing costs are £1,000 a month, excluding council tax; doesn't leave her much spending money, especially once bills are paid.
My occupational pension is roughly the same amount; I have no other income. My housing costs are zero, excluding council tax; we've paid off the mortgage.
So my income is completely untouched. Hers goes down a bit. How on earth can this be right?
I've said on here before that I think too many people think the interests of the retired and the young are different or in conflict. They're not to many of us who have kids. The fact that I contribute nothing but my hard-up-daughter does is a f***ing disgrace.
He’s a dude. The manager here. Managed famous hotels all over the world. Very eminent. Very suspicious of China. Thinks it came from the lab. Like any sane person
If the leader and the policies had been popular then a small number of malcontents on the fringes would have made no difference. As they didn't in the Blair era.
Every adult is acquainted with about 200 people aren’t they? Something like that. That means every Hungarian will know ‘someone’ who died
Always good to have a Plan B!
(I thought I'd share this story as it was cute and made me smile - and there's been enough frayed tempers on this site today)
I'm trying to get my head round today's Government announcement - well trailed though it was.
It seems to this observer to be a tax meant to support inheritance as much as anything to provide improved care and let's not forget "Adult Social Care" is not just about residential homes. It's a far bigger subject covering the money spent by local authorities on supported living for those with mental or physical disabilities.
What does today's announcement mean for carers and for those families who choose to care for elderly relatives rather than putting them through the means testing assessment process for placement in a care home?
Someone described it as a "sticking plaster" - it isn't even that in all honesty. The Government has fluffed the chance to introduce some radical new thinking about personal provision for later life as well as understanding the responsibility we all have to ensure the elderly can enjoy a dignified and comfortable life (irrespective of their financial situation) in their latter years including end-of-life and palliative care.
While it's long overdue that pensioners continuing to work contribute the truth is many older people have to work - the assumption older people are all sitting on huge property assets misses the point 40% of adults own no property at all. In addition, it's my anecdotal experiences changes in middle to later life (divorce, death of a partner) can leave older women in particular struggling financially.
This is no solution - it doesn't really even define the problem. We've yet to have that national debate because, when we do, we see the anti-tax people throw their toys out the pram closely followed by the pro-inheritance lobby.
The issue with caring for adults is that it doesn't just involve pensioners - it involves younger people who live with conditions and disabilities which would likely have been terminal not so long ago. They need long-term expensive levels of support and care and that's often very expensive whether in terms of resources, equipment, technology or medicine.
https://338canada.com/
It all comes down to whether you weight EKOS, with its consistently outsize Tory leads, and daily polls, as equally as all the others.
One thing seems to be true. The Liberal wound has been cauterised. They are no longer bleeding votes, and possibly clawing them back. The NDP, usually squeezed, aren't being.
Three things Trudeau has always done well. Come on strong late in the campaign. He is formidable in the debates, two more to come. Run much better from behind as an underdog. And, crucially, if repeated, poll much better than expected from polling.
Last night I had spaghetti con vongole. That’s all. Simple. Yet the best I’ve ever had
I guess they are now so rich they can simply hire the best chefs and get the best ingredients.
Chancellor Angela Merkel has targeted the centre-left favourite in the race to succeed her, in what is likely to be her final appearance before MPs.
In a bid to bolster her own party's candidate ahead of Germany's 26 September elections, the outgoing leader was bitterly critical of Olaf Scholz, whose SPD is leading the polls.
Mrs Merkel warned that a vote for his party could let in the far left.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-58472507
Sadly it has been 10 years since then and we really already need Dilnot II, but there you go.
What hasn't been much affected yet are the countries in the northern half of Europe.
What happens to them as the weather gets colder we will see.
That’s a CFR of ~3%. Like early Wuhan. Yet with mass vaccination? Bollocks
* I won't even hint why - this is too important.
If you report too many cases then you lose the tourists.
About 15% of people to pay more than half of the new tax