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The cartoon just about sums it up. Time is running out under the Brexit extraction process and it is hard to say with any certainty who will be the senior members of government at Christmas.
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3241904/We-won-t-stand-Army-brass-warn-MUTINY-Jeremy-Corbyn-Prime-Minister.html
Politics moves fast, dunnit?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/10/15/philip-hammond-mulling-new-age-tax-raid-older-workers-budget/
Maybe 'Wrinkle Tax'?
I mean, taxing dementia?
Callous f*ckers. Who could vote for that?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4972802/Tory-minister-reignites-dementia-tax-row.html
"May slaps down minister in dementia tax row by saying the elderly CAN pass their homes on to their children"
TM is Dacres puppet and doesn't he know it. He's spinning for her like crazy.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/10/15/britains-missing-billions-revised-figures-reveal-uk-490bn-poorer/
If more people had understood the idea and voted for it, there would have been much more fairness.
Instead, people decided to vote for, la la land, unicorns and kittens from Labour.
both lied
France once again has a deficit outside Eurozone rules, today it presents its budget to Brussels. According to the rules it should be fined.
What are the chances ?
http://www.lefigaro.fr/conjoncture/2017/10/16/20002-20171016ARTFIG00028-edouard-philippe-a-bruxelles-pour-defendre-son-budget.php
If you saw the film La La Land things turned out well for the girl but not so good for the boy!
We could have a tax on thingy. Thingy? Yes, you know.... Thingy! Bound to be popular with puritanical Daily mail types who think sex is something that poor people do top often.
And of course the real classic. Put a tax on all foreigners living abroad.
Taxing sex and the hun. Better ideas than a pasty tax or dementia.
"That's partly linked to the Brexit vote and it's partly linked to changes in the car market across Europe," he said.
Brexit had increased the price of imported car components, with 70% of parts used at the plant coming from overseas, he said. At the same time, Vauxhall had been "particularly badly placed" to cope with the trend towards SUVs and away from traditional saloon cars.
Vauxhall's move was aimed at "getting costs down so that they can better compete," he said. However, the axe was more likely to fall in the UK than in other plants owned by Vauxhall's parent PSA Group, because workers were easier to sack in the UK than in France, he added."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/business-41612603
Similar on Brexit: the public wanted immigration brought down for years - and nothing was done - and nor were they allowed a vote on the EU constitution/Lisbon Treaty, so the nuclear option was taken.
In both cases the ballot box held the power and in both cases doing it through the ballot box is better than the alternatives.
A rather sad political situation we have. And the alternative is worse.
Yes, they hate the Tories and Brexit but I wonder if the exit process isn't too bad, and Corbyn overplays his hand, the Tories could win in GE2022 despite being despised for fear of the alternative.
That would probably mean a very heavy defeat to a moderate Labour leader in GE26/27 but hey ho.
Like Ruth Davidson said the Tories need to generally get a grip and man up a bit.
Not sure the alternative is worse, just not a lot better. Another bit of Cameron’s dreadful legacy; smashing the third party alternative.
'The stark lesson of the last thirty years is that while the record of Fianna Fáil is decidedly mixed, that of the various Fine Gael coalitions is uniformly dismal.'
In Australia they go round and round in circles.
In India they had Modi or one of the Ghandhis who have held power for what feels like forever.
In Russia they have Putin or err....
What have we come to as a planet?
But when the alternative is a self-declared friend of Hamas and Hezbollah, a unilateralist, a chap who isn't quite sure if bombing terrorists in Raqqa is something he'd do even if they were plotting acts here, well...
And intellectually he is more out of his depth than an ant in the Mindanao Deep.
They could knit left and rright together by promising all to both. Until they actually got power.
Both decent ideas though.
By way of balance, I don't think Davis is that bad. I don't know his work ethic, but he's reasonably coherent on TV and despite the tricky situation has avoided the obvious mantraps (such as describing the other negotiators as enemies).
Let’s just take one aspect of this. There are 300,000 people in residential care. The typical cost of care home fees is 30,000 pa, though cost of dementia treatment is substantially more.
Unless you have assets more than 23,200, you will pay the fees yourself. Most people pay the fees.
Multiply the two numbers together, and see if you can get an answer less than 3 billion.
This is just one small part of the care budget, yet it already exceeds by a huge margin the cost assigned to the creation of an entire National Care Service in the Labour Manifesto.
I did work out the figures at the time, but I reckoned the actual cost of creating a National Care Service providing what Labour said it would was about 18 billion pounds a year.
By contrast while the Labour leadership backs leaving the single market probably at least half its MPs and voters and members do not while the other half of its MPs do back leaving the single market to end free movement as they represent Leave seats. Yestererday Starmer was talking of not leaving without a deal while keeping exit payments as low as possible, logically impossible.
So it is actually the LDs who we most united in opposition to Brexit and leaving the single market, the Tories are becoming increasingly United on backing Brexit and leaving the single market while Labour is split.
The Grandma Tax
Boris has screwed the country for his own ambitions
What dropped off my original post is that I wrote I saw no indication that Corbyn is corrupt. I really don't think he is.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-41631697
Basically, they (Starmer included) claim that the negotiations are being mishandled because the EU negotiators are gagging to give us a trade deal - if only we asked.
The fact that the EU refuse to even discuss trade until we pay an enormous ransom for leaving is quietly forgotten. A question for Starmer? How much will you pay to discuss trade? 100 billion? 200 billion?
We've had a lucky escape. We could be locked into a rapidly developing European Super-state, whose idea of democracy is to impose their ideas. I understand Labour's enthusiasm. It might be the only way they can ever see their brand of state control in the UK with the ungrateful voters they currently have.
Had May been earlier, and they'd picked anyone but a Trot puppet to replace Ed, they would have been in government and the referendum a distant dream.
The Bolshevicks are coming!!
https://twitter.com/ChukaUmunna/status/919693897525350400
I suspect a Corbyn government will blame a big recession on Brexit. Farmer Jones must be getting a bit old by now.
place a maximum limit on lifetime personal contributions to care costs,
raise the asset threshold below which people are entitled to state
support, and provide free end of life care.
Without knowing what those maximum limits are, or what the asset threshold would be raised to - I don't understand how you can make a costing. But 18bn/year sounds far too high.
The Dilnot Report estimated their proposal of capping personal costs and raising asset threshold would cost 1.7bn/year, rising to 3.6bn/year by 2025/26.
So Labour setting aside 3bn/year and leaving themselves flexibility on how high the cap would be and what the asset threshold is seems reasonable.
https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/sites/default/files/field/field_publication_file/briefing-dilnot-commission-social-care-jul11.pdf
The Conservatives own these negotiations until they give up. Live with it.
https://twitter.com/DavidDavisMP/status/735770073822961664
That is such a tiny, tiny amount. No-one would notice it.
Does it even sound plausible that the problems in our care service could be solved by such a tiny amount ?
If so, why didn’t Blair do it? Or Brown do it? Or Cameron do it? Or the Coalition do it?
The roots of the Dementia Tax go back a long way -- as I pointed out, the phrase was coined by the Alzheimer’s society in 2007. All these politicians didn’t realise the problem could be fixed by spending a tiny amount of money?
It is a fairy story to think problems as substantial, severe and growing as our ageing population can be solved in an easy way without pain. I am afraid there were a lot of fairy stories in the costings of the Labour Party manifesto.
I speak as someone whose mother passed away from dementia, and I can tell you the presence system (which goes back to Blair) is unbearably wicked & cruel. I’d like to see a National Care Service.
But, we sure as hell won’t get one if you think it will only cost 0.5 p on everyone’s income tax.
"Robots in the workplace should be owned and controlled by workers rather than bosses, Jeremy Corbyn will suggest.
The Labour leader, who has previously warned of the risk to jobs of automation, will say new technology has led to "a more rapacious and exploitative form of capitalism".
He will also suggest "gig economy" firms like Uber could be replaced by co-operatives.
Drivers would collectively agree their own pay and conditions, he will say."
I imagine he has in mind a "Robot Wars" set up where for every robot there are two human beings controlling it via radio.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-41614820
The swing away from FDI was post referendum.
who'd a thunk it ?
When George Osborne walks on water, you'll be criticising him for not being able to swim.
They've put us in a far weaker position than we should have been in, and are now bleating about how hard it is to leave. It wouldn't've been the case if they hadn't been so complicit.
Anyway, I agree no deal is a bad outcome, but it is not the worst possible result.
We also need to bear in mind that regardless of what happens (all the way from no deal to actually remaining) is only the end of Act One. The play will go on for some time afterwards.
Surely you must have heard those billions of pounds not being invested in the UK these past fifteen months or so?
Starmer's position is to accept what the EU offer as long as we're in the single market. I nearly wrote 'common market' because that's what I voted for in 1975, and what many others did. The people who deny that tend to be those yet to be born then.
With Labour's encouragement, the EU may propose a deal where we stay in the single market as long as we accept the status quo of 2016. To soften the blow they'll call it 'associate membership' but it will mean no change. I suspect the Europhiles will be overjoyed and ask for a referendum on the' deal'.
Transparent, and it will fool no one, but politicians have a jaundiced view of the voters' intelligence.
https://twitter.com/wallaceme/status/919655495505530881
https://twitter.com/wallaceme/status/919656961628688386
Oh dear ...
What they got wrong was the money actually invested in H2 2016 most of it had been committed in advance of the referendum
https://flipchartfairytales.wordpress.com/2017/10/13/no-deal-brexit-its-already-too-late/amp/