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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » If Osborne gets this right today could be the game-changer
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » If Osborne gets this right today could be the game-changer that gives the Tories hope again
We all remember that speech by Osborne at the October 2007 Tory conference that arguably changed the whole narrative and stopped Gordon Brown from going ahead with an autumn general election.
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Nothing to do with a Tory conference speech.
You don't have to work until you are 70 - that is just the age you will get a state handout.
"That is pure fantasy"
I think the IHT pledge as decisive is myth as well. If you read McBride's book or other sources, the polls was moving away from Brown even before Osborne's speech & IIRC there was a terrible marginals poll mid week. All Osborne did was put a very public final nail in the coffin.
There is also a great difference between them. You can argue about priorities and whatever, but the IHT pledge was simple and executable. Miliban's energy pledge is opportunistic nonsense. It's clearly captured the zeitgeist and identified a real concern for people (although I think it's more the irritation of being taken for a ride by faceless giants - image for you Morris Dancer - than really about the cost of living per se). But I don't think the price freeze part of it is practicably implementable; the energy market review makes sense (and frankly I don't understand why the government hasn't asked the Competition Commission to review vertical integration in the market as a barrier to entry. It's dry and technical but it would allow the government to be shown as acting on the fundamentals as well as playing around with gimmicks)
We are now only 17 months off the election and the Tories have failed to dent Labour’s majority winning vote share.
Every month that goes by and LAB is close to 40 is a month of failure for your party
Ally Carmichael for PM!
I could have minced my words but I would be doing readers a disservice.
If you have any working years whatsoever you should be making provision for your retirement. Otherwise you should not be planning to retire. Ever.
England need a serious breakthrough with the new ball here. They are behind. Again.
But, as always, I am more interested in what is in the national interest, not who is the temporary custodian of a rather pokey central London pied-a-terre.
Governments are two faced over pensions though, with raids on pension funds happening at the same time as claiming to want people to fund pensions. I am thinking not only about Gordon Browns pension raid, which has not been reversed, but also changes to lifetime limits and tax relief. Proposed lifetime limits on ISAs are much the same.
Today is an opportunity for the good news to dominate the news headlines and hopefully give the tories a lift. They need to break through to the point that that 40% for Labour starts to fade. Winning back some of the Kippers just won't cut it.
A bit like Panesar bowling to Michael Clark. The ball may be well pitched and turning but spectators will only remember it being dispatched over the ropes by a master batsman.
Telegraph tries to start a new nickname...
Tory rampers, especially PB Tory rampers, are the worst rampers in the world.
The sane and sensible will reject such seasonal folly.
Rising standards of living are the consequences of hard earned economic growth and skillfully aquired competitive advantage, all built on the foundations of sound fiscal management. This is what Osborne is delivering.
It is the only way to deliver real increases in living standards.
265-5 was definitely not what I wanted to see with my
Ans + 70
Eng +153
Draw -130 position
Yet remarkably it was green. Just what were draw backers expecting - the score indicates to me the pitch is a very SLOW road, like that one in India where England easily got the draw they needed.
Aus bat a long way down, these 5 wickets may well take quite a bit of time - All three results possible to my mind.
Anyway I've swapped it for
Aus +3.99
Eng +20.90
Draw +15.20
http://bellacaledonia.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/johann-lamont-007.jpg
http://wingsoverscotland.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/jackiebaillie7.jpg
http://images.icnetwork.co.uk/upl/birmpost/jul2010/2/2/tom-watson-725129957.jpg
Le jour de gloire est arrivé !
Miliband's price freeze, flawed as it is, sent a very clear message: Labour knows what you're going through; Labour's focus is on making things easier for you. The polls show most voters are sceptical that the specific policy can be delivered. It's the message that resonates.
Of course the North Sea surge may wash out any and all political headlines today. I wonder how many offshore windmills will be sunk today?
Anyway I am sure the public will say 'hoorah' to the green shit being cut from their energy bills, but I doubt it will change any VI. And the 70 pension thing is going to be bad politically if it happens which is why it has not till now.
As I said earlier in the week, the next couple of weeks will be a good test of how solid that 6-point Labour lead is.
Second paragraph: a very interesting question. If some do collapse, or there is damage to them or the surrounding infrastructure (cables, substations etc) then they will have to compare the expected damage from such a storm against the observed. This may have long-term consequences for off-shore generation.
Yesterday the gridwatch website was linked to a few times. Currently, with strong winds, wind generation is down to 6%:
http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
In any case, don't the police use online systems for this, where they can check insurance and MOT too?
Life expectancy is currently 80 and even less than that for men.So work till you die seems the policy.
Osborne trying to balance his books by raising the pension age as the tax receipts have failed to materialise.
Bloody windy today.
Mr. SMukesh, life expectancy is over 70, so that statement is generally wrong. However, the initial pension age was set, I think, on the basis that most people would be dead by then.
The problem is that certain work (typically manual labour or otherwise physical jobs) can't be done by the vast majority past a certain age, which is a distance below the standard retirement age. Hence the problem with firemen's pensions.
Also, I think it's about 5 clicks from the supposed latest story on the front page to the most recent article.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-25226088
It's 'stadia', you morons! Not 'stadiums'! You can argue the case many ways with referendum, as it's a gerundive rather than a noun, but stadium is simply a noun.
The chap on ITV News at Ten last night got it right.
On a less important note, I wonder how Brazil will cope with the Olympics.
Energy prices need to rise at above the rate of inflation to dampen demand, promote efficiency and ensure that investment needs are met, as far as is possible, out of user revenues.
When this long term policy results in excessive short term price rises, the proper course of action for the government is to relieve the pricing burden by unbundling tax impositions on retail prices and to ensure that the proportion of the value chain accounted for by energy suppliers is subject to adequate competition. A relatively simple problem with a relatively simple solution. Job done today by Osborne.
Miliband can bleat about the hardships of living and emote his empathy with those suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, but how feasible and real are his problem solving plans?.
It is remedial surgery not palliative care that the UK economy needs.
If it's just the disc and not the VED I don't see the point at all - downside and almost no upside except a tiny hassle reduction. But we may as well wait and see later today.
There's not going to be a working solution to this.
In Kenya, the car is insured, not the driver (this was useful when I was there, as I was able to employ a driver), so there is an insurance sticker for the car, and I think an MOT certificate (or equivalent) sticker.
The competition issue is weird. In consoles there are only two major players (since Nintendo cocked up the Wii-U) but Sony still decided to stamp on Microsoft's knackers over deranged DRM and verboten second hand sales. One would've thought a market with six large companies involved would be more, not less, competitive.
A few years back, it was possible to be insured but not on the electronic MID database. This meant police could stop someone for not having insurance, whilst they had it. ISTR this loophole was filled, and all insurance companies are now in the database.
You can check whether your vehicle is on the db using askmid:
http://ownvehicle.askmid.com/askmid.aspx
As ever with such a change, it would be good to see the rationale behind it. Years ago I saw a couple of police officers walking down a street in Swindon, and they seemed to be checking all the tax discs on the parked cars.
So what use are tax discs any more? Have the automated ANR systems made the old manualk checks redundant?
You can seem to get away with not having an MOT for a fairly long period of time (if you forget). I know a lot of people who end up getting their MOT done only when the system says that the car doesn't qualify for road tax. My guess is that by moving road tax being payable by monthly direct debit people will need to be more careful.
I also note that with the monthly direct debit option being mentioned VED is definitely not scrapped...
I do agree reform's needed.
Here's a shocker, when the pension was introduced in 1925, the life expectancy was actually lower than the state pensions age. It's only got to the state it is in now because nothing was done to increase the pension age in line with the dramatic increase in life expectancy in the previous ~50 years.
Administrative price rises - e.g. railway fare and energy costs - are more stealth 'taxation' in so far as they reflect the transfer of investment obligations out of central government onto the service user. They are part of the rebalancing of the economy away from state dependency towards self-sufficient private sector provision.
£50 a year may be like a fart in a hurricane to a man with a large fuel tank to fill but it will be welcome to those who would otherwise be seeing the winter through by warming their hands in mittens.
And have you noticed how motor fuel prices have fallen? Against the trend and as potent as a fart in a beemer, Malcolm.
However, there may well be more facts the newspapers haven't reported.
SO,
I agree with most of what you say but not .... "Labour knows what you're going through; Labour's focus is on making things easier for you." No way, we think "Labour is making a political gesture to sway a few votes.
I mentioned Michael Foot yesterday (of blessed memory) and I still remember him trying to get down and dirty with the working classes. He mentioned "on the never-never" and it was about fifteen years since anyone had ever used the term. I thought .. what's next?, he'll be talking about taking a "diabolical liberty"?
Cameron may be a posh fop but he's better being honest. The reduction in the top rate of tax undercuts everything. Ed hardly had a deprived childhood so his protestations seem false too. He can speak for the upper-middle class political elite as can many MPs nowadays. It doesn't mean you have to have had it "rough" , just keep it sincere.
Peter Oborne @OborneTweets 54s
Why Ed Balls now has zero economic credibility - my column in today's @Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/georgeosborne/10494654/George-Osborne-has-given-the-Tories-a-working-plan-for-victory.html …
Not everybody is rich enough to be able not to work.
My point was that "retiring" in the sense of doing nothing would be tedious as hell. My father, for instance, works harder than ever at the age of 73. Part paid work, part charity, part official duties and part "projects". That's his choice. Others may prefer or need to do more paid work.
Reduction of top rate of tax ...
The tax take may well have risen. If so, you can make that argument, a financial argument. But you're competing against an emotional argument. Unfair, but that's politics. And for what it's worth, I'm happy to be convinced and agree, but few people heard the financial argument.
You can blame the media, but that's life
Good finance, bad politics.
- Number 10 'frustrated' by attacks on winning Better Together campaign http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10495809/Downing-Street-hunt-over-Alistair-Darling-whispering-campaign.html
Yes 26% (+1)
No 42% (-1)
Don’t Knows 32% (n/c)
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/another-indyref-poll-yes-26-no-42-dont-know-32.1386224711?utm_source=headlines&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=email+alert
Darling's problem is not so much that his Bitter Together outfit is crap (which it is), but that the entire Conservative & Unionist Party are acting like a huge anchor holding back support for the No side. He needs to sever the chain, or at least give the impression that it is severed.
The state pension age should be coming down. Where I disagree with 'the left' on this is that retirement age for most of the public sector should be going up to equalise with the state pension age. I would put two questions to two different types of people about this:-
To the likes of Charles - why should people not be able to have a bit of state support at the end of their lives after toiling for many years at boring ,hard labour jobs?
To the likes of Unison etc -why should people who work in low paid ,manual jobs in the private sector pay more taxes and work longer so that people who work in more cushy sedate public sector jobs can retire far earlier than them?
As a lawyer I'm always wary of relying on newspaper reports of legal cases because in my experience the reports are rarely accurate or complete.
Cost of living and inflation this time.
Shop prices in the UK fell by 0.3 per cent year-on-year in November, according to the latest survey data from the British Retail Consortium (BRC).
Nevertheless, that was "better" than the 0.5% decline seen in October.
Said drop was driven mainly by promotions on non-food items. Non-food prices decreased 2%.
Food prices rose 2.3%, the second lowest rise since June 2010, benefitting from better global harvests this year.
"The seventh consecutive month of deflation is great news for hard-pressed households as Christmas gets closer and confirms that retailers are reading current conditions well," Helen Dickinson, the BRC's director general, remarked.
I do not believe we will ever again see a generation as absurdly mollycoddled as those in the public sector in their 50s over the last 10 years. The amount of public money spent encouraging these people to go into well paid retirement is bankrupting the country. It really needs to stop.
Those who have careers such as fireman or police that have substantial physical requirements simply have to accept that such jobs are only the first part of their career and that they will need a second one to get to retirement age (67 and counting). My father did 22 years in the army and then another 20 in education. For military personnel there has always been a second career. How and why do people think they can retire at the cost of the rest of us in this way?
My neighbour retired from Local Government on a full pension of nearly £50K a year at 59. I see him pottering around his garden and wandering down to the bowls club. It really makes me angry. When I am still working (health permitting) 10 years after I reach that age paying taxes to fund that largesse I will be even angrier.
I'll agree with you on the public sector pension stuff though - up those as well.
ComRes/ITV News Index: public trust in Osborne's econ competence hits 2.5-year high #autumnstatement http://ht.ly/rtd15
Bad news for the PB Kinnocks..
Seriously though ridiculous isn't it ? Pure economic mismanagement and incompetence that has lead us to this situation.
The point I was making (which perhaps could have been better expressed) was that it is foolish to think about a fixed retirement date, but that full-time, part-time, voluntary work etc should all be part of the mix. The state pension can play an important in ensuring that people have a few more options as they get older than most do before that date.
'Certain/very likely to vote' shows 25% DK, Yes 29%, No 46%.