This was the one that Boris f**ked up right at the beginning, with that rambling incoherent television address so memorably lampooned by Matt Lucas, which included announcing the supposedly clear new five-stage national alert system, and then saying we were currently at level three-and-a-half.
It never got off the runway.
The new system is: watch what Scotland is doing; wait a week during which ministers can build the suspense by denying or trashing the Scottish approach; do the same.
Yes, Johnson copies Sturgeons homework then hands it in late.
The SNP would not be anywhere near as popular without the Tories as a foil. It has been the cover for a lot of other failures.
It is Johnson's malevolent incompetence, as outlined in the header, that will end the United Kingdom.
The end of Transition is set to be a trainwreck too. What else can we expect?
Yesterday’s Briefing Room on R4 is well worth a listen. It included the suggestion that a thin last minute deal might be accompanied by an “implementation period” - during which everything would stay the same as currently. As a way to extend without actually extending.
Yes, there was some discussion on the new border controls the other day, with the new arrangements to start in July 2021. It wasn't clear what happens in the interim.
Briefing Room suggested that the UK's intention was to implement controls and checks after six months, but suggested that in the absence of a deal the EU is likely to start sooner, if not right away.
It seems that the French understand that Brexit means Brexit, but that our government does not...
Brexit means Brexit was a dumb phrase which meant nothing when Brexiteers were using it and it is still dumb and means nothing when people try to turn it around in an attempt to be amusing.
It wasnt a devastating argument ender when used to push Brexit, and isnt a devastating argument ender when used to criticise Brexit.
The notable point here is that the continent seems better prepared than we are.
Back to Corona :-) This is something I have been cogitating for the last couple of weeks, and would like the opinion of NigelB or Foxy or anyone else with a better biology background than me.
In the last couple of months we have seen big increases in the number of cases of SARS-COV2 in some countries, but the level of severe illness is much lower than expected, as measured by hospitalisations and deaths. There was speculation in the spring that the virus would not spread as quickly in summer as colds and flu are strongly seasonal. But it seems that the spread of the SARS-COV2 virus has little to do with the season.
Is it at all plausible though, that these seasonal illness viruses still spread at a similar rate but less frequently appears as an illness? It is possible that the human body is under less stress in summer and more stress in winter, due to lots of reasons: not moving from cold to warm environments several times a day, not inhailing air under 10 degrees, generally getting more exercise, sunlight and fresh air etc. If the body or in particular the immune system is under more stress then an onslaught from a virus is more likely to develop into illness.
Is it plausible that catching the virus is just as easy in summer, but this developing into a serious disease is much lower in summer and higher in winter? For most other Rhino/Corona/Flu viruses there is as good as no testing of the prevelance of the virus in the general population, so we do not really appreciate how widley cold viruses are spread in summer, and only if the immune system is under some other kind of stress does this develop into a "summer cold" which are ususally not as heavy as a winter cold.
The southern hemisphere has summer and winter the other way round from us. God made it that way so we can test these season-related hypotheses.
There was a suggestion a while back that Vitamin D, Vitamin C and Zinc could play a part in reducing the severity of Covid. Vit.D is higher in the summer.
I think the age profile of those infected is just as much a factor as anything else, but I expect all the mentioned ideas will turn out to have some effect.
The elderly often do not get out much (Sunshine / VitD)
Back to Corona :-) This is something I have been cogitating for the last couple of weeks, and would like the opinion of NigelB or Foxy or anyone else with a better biology background than me.
In the last couple of months we have seen big increases in the number of cases of SARS-COV2 in some countries, but the level of severe illness is much lower than expected, as measured by hospitalisations and deaths. There was speculation in the spring that the virus would not spread as quickly in summer as colds and flu are strongly seasonal. But it seems that the spread of the SARS-COV2 virus has little to do with the season.
Is it at all plausible though, that these seasonal illness viruses still spread at a similar rate but less frequently appears as an illness? It is possible that the human body is under less stress in summer and more stress in winter, due to lots of reasons: not moving from cold to warm environments several times a day, not inhailing air under 10 degrees, generally getting more exercise, sunlight and fresh air etc. If the body or in particular the immune system is under more stress then an onslaught from a virus is more likely to develop into illness.
Is it plausible that catching the virus is just as easy in summer, but this developing into a serious disease is much lower in summer and higher in winter? For most other Rhino/Corona/Flu viruses there is as good as no testing of the prevelance of the virus in the general population, so we do not really appreciate how widley cold viruses are spread in summer, and only if the immune system is under some other kind of stress does this develop into a "summer cold" which are ususally not as heavy as a winter cold.
The southern hemisphere has summer and winter the other way round from us. God made it that way so we can test these season-related hypotheses.
There was a suggestion a while back that Vitamin D, Vitamin C and Zinc could play a part in reducing the severity of Covid. Vit.D is higher in the summer.
The vitamin D thing has cropped up repeatedly, and has also been offered as a partial explanation for why non-white people are suffering disproportionately from serious illness when they contract Covid.
As a consequence, we started taking multivitamins in our household some months ago - they don't cost too much, shouldn't do any harm and might actually help, so it seemed like a good idea.
You put your right leg in, your right leg out, in, out, in, out, you shake it all about...
A Government drive to encourage millions of people working at home to go back to the office has been put on ice over concerns of a spike in coronavirus cases, the Telegraph can disclose.
Amid signs of confusion at the heart of Cabinet, ministers are understood to have rowed back on plans to launch a major campaign to urge office workers to return to their desks and start commuting again.
They fear any mass return could send infections soaring, and threaten the planned return of thousands of children to school over the next few weeks.
Trying to get people back to offices in a hurry was always going to be a silly idea, especially before the schools went back - and when MPs and thousands of civil servants are still working from home. The bigger issue is safety on overcrowded public transport, which no-one is trying to address first.
We are about to witness some fun* when it comes to schools transport. To maintain spacing the capacity of a bus is far less than the number of seats. Which means instead of 1 bus in a morning 2 or 3 will be needed. These buses don't sit idly by in a yard awaiting call up for Covid school shuttling duties...
We didn't have a school bus in my day, we used a regular service....and we ran about a lot on the top deck. Conductors..... it was that long ago ......... used to shout at us sometimes but it didn't make a long term difference.
Back to Corona :-) This is something I have been cogitating for the last couple of weeks, and would like the opinion of NigelB or Foxy or anyone else with a better biology background than me.
In the last couple of months we have seen big increases in the number of cases of SARS-COV2 in some countries, but the level of severe illness is much lower than expected, as measured by hospitalisations and deaths. There was speculation in the spring that the virus would not spread as quickly in summer as colds and flu are strongly seasonal. But it seems that the spread of the SARS-COV2 virus has little to do with the season.
Is it at all plausible though, that these seasonal illness viruses still spread at a similar rate but less frequently appears as an illness? It is possible that the human body is under less stress in summer and more stress in winter, due to lots of reasons: not moving from cold to warm environments several times a day, not inhailing air under 10 degrees, generally getting more exercise, sunlight and fresh air etc. If the body or in particular the immune system is under more stress then an onslaught from a virus is more likely to develop into illness.
Is it plausible that catching the virus is just as easy in summer, but this developing into a serious disease is much lower in summer and higher in winter? For most other Rhino/Corona/Flu viruses there is as good as no testing of the prevelance of the virus in the general population, so we do not really appreciate how widley cold viruses are spread in summer, and only if the immune system is under some other kind of stress does this develop into a "summer cold" which are ususally not as heavy as a winter cold.
The southern hemisphere has summer and winter the other way round from us. God made it that way so we can test these season-related hypotheses.
There was a suggestion a while back that Vitamin D, Vitamin C and Zinc could play a part in reducing the severity of Covid. Vit.D is higher in the summer.
I think the age profile of those infected is just as much a factor as anything else, but I expect all the mentioned ideas will turn out to have some effect.
The biggest impact is lifestyle. We've seen how quickly the virus can spread in enclosed spaces like airplanes, cruise ships and night clubs. In the winter we are mostly indoors.
You may have noticed certain events between those dates.
More likely the Telegraph story is kite-flying on steroids. On the one hand is a long list of possible measures, with no real indication any is imminent; on the other hand we see Number 10 denials and blaming departmental civil servants.
Interesting thread Alastair, and then the B-word has also been raised. So: 1. The 5 point scale was a joke from the start. Shagger announced we were at 3.5 on a 5 point scale. No wonder they have rarely mentioned it again 2. The government since admitted they are making the decisions based on science as opposed to following the science. Hence no need for a science based scale 3. This government wouldn't know how to properly manage such a scale anyway. So they abandoned it. 4. As for Brexit, whilst I know the government are indifferent towards the impact of no deal in public, in private they would have to be masochistic on an epic scale. So as with the Irish Sea border I expect Shagger will simply capitulate and announce it as a success. Its not as if Brexiteers know what Brexit is or even read the legislation as IDS revealed. So do a deal to for the *right* to have babies even if we haven't procured the box for the foetus to gestate in. And simply lie about it. The cabinet are good at lying.
On your first point, I’m not sure why so many people have a problem with fractions. Any scale like this has a fairly wide range of conditions which apply to each band, so saying 3.5 as shorthand for mid way between the two bands on each side makes sense to me. As to not mentioning it again, we are still at level 3. I would expect to hear if we go up or down, like we do with the security levels, but otherwise assume that we are were we were before.
The trouble with 3.5 was not fractions but that this was the scale's first use. It could easily have been a 10-point scale, or a 6-point scale. It invites ridicule, or at least bemusement, to unveil a new 5-point scale and simultaneously announce it does not work.
“Announc[ing] it does not work” is not the message I got from 3.5. Perhaps I am just more used to dealing with different scales and types of measurement.
Installing Windows 10 on a Chromebook. Which as a Chrome OS aficionado and Windows hater is a heresy far greater than pineapple on last night's pizza
We had Windows 10 installed on our computers at school over the summer holidays. I went in last week to get some work done. I’m now hoping that by the time term starts I will have access to all the files and programs I did before the upgrade, but I’m known as a bit of an optimist.
What feels like a bazillion years ago I did casual work for Sheffield University the summer after graduating. At one point I was installing Windows on 25 machines in one go - walking up and down the lab clicking away through the various stages on each machine.
Genuinely despise Windows these days. But still have use for a Windows based machine even if only to extend the life of a legacy printer. This Chromebook is decrepit but can still have a use - EDIT it appears to have stalled half way through install. Can see Windows Boot manager. Take 2...
You put your right leg in, your right leg out, in, out, in, out, you shake it all about...
A Government drive to encourage millions of people working at home to go back to the office has been put on ice over concerns of a spike in coronavirus cases, the Telegraph can disclose.
Amid signs of confusion at the heart of Cabinet, ministers are understood to have rowed back on plans to launch a major campaign to urge office workers to return to their desks and start commuting again.
They fear any mass return could send infections soaring, and threaten the planned return of thousands of children to school over the next few weeks.
Trying to get people back to offices in a hurry was always going to be a silly idea, especially before the schools went back - and when MPs and thousands of civil servants are still working from home. The bigger issue is safety on overcrowded public transport, which no-one is trying to address first.
We are about to witness some fun* when it comes to schools transport. To maintain spacing the capacity of a bus is far less than the number of seats. Which means instead of 1 bus in a morning 2 or 3 will be needed. These buses don't sit idly by in a yard awaiting call up for Covid school shuttling duties...
It's hard to tell how things will go, isn't it? Depending on individual circumstances, a lot of the heavy lifting will end up being done by kids walking or cycling longer distances than they are used to, or parents ferrying them back and forth in cars, when buses would previously have been the preferred option.
Thus, if sufficient numbers of kids can be removed from buses, no problem. Will that be practical everywhere? I've no idea, but we ought to know by the end of the week, of course.
Don't forget in London i think children have lost their right to travel on Public transport for free...
It is going to be a horrible, horrible, horrible Autumn for Johnson, and every second of it is deserved.
can he survive? Maybe the party will let him steer brexit through. Beyond that, I think its doubtful.
And suddenly Sunak's hopes look a bit dented too. Soak this rich taxes? Lol, he won;t get to be leader on the back of those.
Graham Brady is going to reap a whirlwind this week.
TBF when you read the Sunday Times article it is hugely overstated. Few are going to see harmonising capital gains tax with income tax as a massive tax hike. The way the article is written you'd think he was planning to add 5% to the rate of income tax.
This was the one that Boris f**ked up right at the beginning, with that rambling incoherent television address so memorably lampooned by Matt Lucas, which included announcing the supposedly clear new five-stage national alert system, and then saying we were currently at level three-and-a-half.
It never got off the runway.
The new system is: watch what Scotland is doing; wait a week during which ministers can build the suspense by denying or trashing the Scottish approach; do the same.
Yes, Johnson copies Sturgeons homework then hands it in late.
The SNP would not be anywhere near as popular without the Tories as a foil. It has been the cover for a lot of other failures.
It is Johnson's malevolent incompetence, as outlined in the header, that will end the United Kingdom.
The end of Transition is set to be a trainwreck too. What else can we expect?
Yesterday’s Briefing Room on R4 is well worth a listen. It included the suggestion that a thin last minute deal might be accompanied by an “implementation period” - during which everything would stay the same as currently. As a way to extend without actually extending.
He’ll be out of the door as quickly as Theresa May was, if he tries that one.
But who would they replace him with?
Rishi (= Disraeli)?????? Traditionally the Tories love a winner. And that goes above anything else.
Looks like Rishi plans to copy Corbyns 2019 manifesto on tax. The cycle of copying Labours manifesto is accelerating.
If they ramp up IHT or lower the thresholds then I'll be surprised - in a good way. But I doubt that they will. Going after estates enrages both stickbangers and their heirs in a way almost nothing else will, and is political nuclear death (as Theresa May discovered with the dementia tax.)
The Government won't want to go after income tax, NI and VAT - too controversial, too obvious - with the caveat that they might scrap the preferential NI rate currently enjoyed by the self-employed, which is something that Sunak has hinted at in the past. They daren't touch the stickbangers, of course, so we are stuck with the wretched triple lock for the foreseeable. Hiking corporation tax at the same time as trying to get us through Brexit might be considered brave, in the Sir Humphrey sense.
Thus, the most obvious targets are tax reliefs enjoyed by the working age population. The prime candidate is a big Brown-style raid on pensions, this time normalising reliefs at the basic rate for all contributions. The FT was suggesting earlier in the year that CGT might be rounded up to a flat rate of 28% for all assets, and my husband was also speculating just yesterday that the annual contribution limit for ISAs might be cut in half.
Of course, the most radical measure would be to go all out with a wealth tax and pocket a one-off levy on all assets - savings, pensions, shares, property, the lot - which could potentially recoup the cost of all the extra borrowing taken out during the Plague. But I think it really would take a Corbyn Government to dare to try something like that!
The Sunday Times is reporting this differently - with all pensions relief given at 30% thus higher than the basic rate but lower than the higher rate thus avoiding the obvious headlines of either.
I think something like that is likely.
Some interesting ideas.
But they need to stop ignoring the elephant in the room, which is the £25bn+ spent on the main residence relief CGT loophole.
That is worth more than all the rest put together.
It is going to be a horrible, horrible, horrible Autumn for Johnson, and every second of it is deserved.
can he survive? Maybe the party will let him steer brexit through. Beyond that, I think its doubtful.
And suddenly Sunak's hopes look a bit dented too. Soak this rich taxes? Lol, he won;t get to be leader on the back of those.
Graham Brady is going to reap a whirlwind this week.
We cannot get through this crisis without immense pain. The public and therefore to some degree Tory members and mps will accept that and therefore some level if unpalatable options may turn out to be palatable after all.
Nevertheless it is pain and yes that means the public will turn on Boris and the party, but government makes that inevitable sometimes. Incompetence will accelerate that but a reckoning was coming as a consequence of events even without it. Acting stunned that they will become unpopular or pretending it could be avoided forever in a crisis like this is just silly.
Interesting thread Alastair, and then the B-word has also been raised. So: 1. The 5 point scale was a joke from the start. Shagger announced we were at 3.5 on a 5 point scale. No wonder they have rarely mentioned it again 2. The government since admitted they are making the decisions based on science as opposed to following the science. Hence no need for a science based scale 3. This government wouldn't know how to properly manage such a scale anyway. So they abandoned it. 4. As for Brexit, whilst I know the government are indifferent towards the impact of no deal in public, in private they would have to be masochistic on an epic scale. So as with the Irish Sea border I expect Shagger will simply capitulate and announce it as a success. Its not as if Brexiteers know what Brexit is or even read the legislation as IDS revealed. So do a deal to for the *right* to have babies even if we haven't procured the box for the foetus to gestate in. And simply lie about it. The cabinet are good at lying.
On your first point, I’m not sure why so many people have a problem with fractions. Any scale like this has a fairly wide range of conditions which apply to each band, so saying 3.5 as shorthand for mid way between the two bands on each side makes sense to me. As to not mentioning it again, we are still at level 3. I would expect to hear if we go up or down, like we do with the security levels, but otherwise assume that we are were we were before.
The trouble with 3.5 was not fractions but that this was the scale's first use. It could easily have been a 10-point scale, or a 6-point scale. It invites ridicule, or at least bemusement, to unveil a new 5-point scale and simultaneously announce it does not work.
“Announc[ing] it does not work” is not the message I got from 3.5. Perhaps I am just more used to dealing with different scales and types of measurement.
If it is a sliding scale - as reality suggests - then you aren't gaining anything by introducing the five point scale in the first place. Its only purpose was in simplifying the messaging and communications, and Bozo completely undermined that from the get go. That's why it has never been seen again.
Installing Windows 10 on a Chromebook. Which as a Chrome OS aficionado and Windows hater is a heresy far greater than pineapple on last night's pizza
We had Windows 10 installed on our computers at school over the summer holidays. I went in last week to get some work done. I’m now hoping that by the time term starts I will have access to all the files and programs I did before the upgrade, but I’m known as a bit of an optimist.
What feels like a bazillion years ago I did casual work for Sheffield University the summer after graduating. At one point I was installing Windows on 25 machines in one go - walking up and down the lab clicking away through the various stages on each machine.
Genuinely despise Windows these days. But still have use for a Windows based machine even if only to extend the life of a legacy printer. This Chromebook is decrepit but can still have a use - EDIT it appears to have stalled half way through install. Can see Windows Boot manager. Take 2...
EDIT EDIT Lets try deleting all the partitions off the drive this time. Potential brick coming up. But as its a development only machine that just adds to the entertainment
Mr Meeks raises an interesting question - why isn't the government doing worse in the polls. But the more I think about it, the more the weakness of the Opposition is the most important factor. Starmer is more appealing personally than Corbyn, but he has failed to oppose most of the decisions the government has made during the pandemic, has flip-flopped throughout, and has a pitifully weak team. He is also tainted by his seat at Corbyn's table and his failed attempted fudge over Brexit at the last election. It was a transparent attempt to straddle two stools, but ended up falling between them. And, finally, he is appealing to middle-class professionals, but has virtually nothing to say to the North or Scotland.
OK, maybe he'll surprise me once he's got the Labour Party under control by emerging as a decisive Blair-like political genius, but I have to say the omens so far aren't very good.
(We can all come up with excuses for why the Labour Party hasn't made hay, like the difficulty of getting media coverage during a pandemic, or the need to deal with the Corbynites in the Party, or whatever, but making excuses can become a way of life).
It is going to be a horrible, horrible, horrible Autumn for Johnson, and every second of it is deserved.
can he survive? Maybe the party will let him steer brexit through. Beyond that, I think its doubtful.
And suddenly Sunak's hopes look a bit dented too. Soak this rich taxes? Lol, he won;t get to be leader on the back of those.
Graham Brady is going to reap a whirlwind this week.
TBF when you read the Sunday Times article it is hugely overstated. Few are going to see harmonising capital gains tax with income tax as a massive tax hike. The way the article is written you'd think he was planning to add 5% to the rate of income tax.
Great points, as usual, but politics is partly about mood music too. And the mood right now??
This was the one that Boris f**ked up right at the beginning, with that rambling incoherent television address so memorably lampooned by Matt Lucas, which included announcing the supposedly clear new five-stage national alert system, and then saying we were currently at level three-and-a-half.
It never got off the runway.
The new system is: watch what Scotland is doing; wait a week during which ministers can build the suspense by denying or trashing the Scottish approach; do the same.
Yes, Johnson copies Sturgeons homework then hands it in late.
The SNP would not be anywhere near as popular without the Tories as a foil. It has been the cover for a lot of other failures.
It is Johnson's malevolent incompetence, as outlined in the header, that will end the United Kingdom.
The end of Transition is set to be a trainwreck too. What else can we expect?
Yesterday’s Briefing Room on R4 is well worth a listen. It included the suggestion that a thin last minute deal might be accompanied by an “implementation period” - during which everything would stay the same as currently. As a way to extend without actually extending.
He’ll be out of the door as quickly as Theresa May was, if he tries that one.
But who would they replace him with?
Rishi (= Disraeli)?????? Traditionally the Tories love a winner. And that goes above anything else.
Looks like Rishi plans to copy Corbyns 2019 manifesto on tax. The cycle of copying Labours manifesto is accelerating.
If Sunak can sell the tax hikes as the satanic work of John McDonnell he could still remain in pole position to replace Johnson. It's a tall order.
If he can't, I am moving towards Hunt or Raab.
If it all amounts to soaking the monied upper middle classes - who are either Champagne socialists and would've voted for Corbyn, or are not and therefore have nowhere else politically to go - and the Government's polling numbers hold up as a result, then Sunak might well get away with it.
But what happens when Sunak taxes the rich until their pips squeak? They all leave the country. I know this because I have been reading it on PB for years. Then he'll have to work his way down the food chain.
And don't forget the Laffer curve, which apparently proves, counter-intuitively, that if you tax the rich more then the tax take goes down. Apparently.
Installing Windows 10 on a Chromebook. Which as a Chrome OS aficionado and Windows hater is a heresy far greater than pineapple on last night's pizza
We had Windows 10 installed on our computers at school over the summer holidays. I went in last week to get some work done. I’m now hoping that by the time term starts I will have access to all the files and programs I did before the upgrade, but I’m known as a bit of an optimist.
What feels like a bazillion years ago I did casual work for Sheffield University the summer after graduating. At one point I was installing Windows on 25 machines in one go - walking up and down the lab clicking away through the various stages on each machine.
Genuinely despise Windows these days. But still have use for a Windows based machine even if only to extend the life of a legacy printer. This Chromebook is decrepit but can still have a use - EDIT it appears to have stalled half way through install. Can see Windows Boot manager. Take 2...
The real irritation is that Windows 7 was working perfectly well, but talking to our IT manager they said that we had to switch (I’m not going to call it “upgrade”) as Microsoft is no longer providing security updates and we are under constant online attack. Windows 10 might not be great, but it’s probably better than trying to deal with a ransomware attack.
You may have noticed certain events between those dates.
That's what Gordon Brown said between 2008 and 2010. None of us believed him.
Well he was right. That doesnt mean the conclusions need to change necessarily, then and now, but it does mean analysis needs to take account of the changing situation and thus the different messaging on austerity which is clearly meant to be found oh so amusing is anything but since even if the change is wrong there is clearly a reason for it which is understandable.
The point of that tweet (Scott has been very clear he posts such things to endorse criticism) was clearly 'look how dumb they are for changing their tune' but even if changing tune is wrong theres good reason why they might think of doing so, so at worst its mistaken not dumb or silly.
Has the divergence of opinion on PB vs the voting public ever been greater?
Despite Labour’s new leader bounce/end of Corbynism, a record breaking fall in GDP, a pandemic response that has (to put it politely) failed to prevent tens of thousands of deaths and an apparent impending No Deal Brexit, 40% still say they’d vote for Johnson’s Conservatives. In a no consequence polling survey years from an election.
Yet on here it’s hard to find anyone (HYFUD aside) with a good word to say about the PM/govt. I suspect there’s going to be a lot of disappointed PBers in 2024 if this is any indication of a floor in support.
It's the internet. Just as if Twitter determined elections, we would have the literal corpse of Marx in power, so PB as a collective would always elect a soggy mélange of wet Remainer Tories in combination with Labour and LD centrists to run the country in permanent coalition. The offline reality is, of course, slightly different.
Installing Windows 10 on a Chromebook. Which as a Chrome OS aficionado and Windows hater is a heresy far greater than pineapple on last night's pizza
We had Windows 10 installed on our computers at school over the summer holidays. I went in last week to get some work done. I’m now hoping that by the time term starts I will have access to all the files and programs I did before the upgrade, but I’m known as a bit of an optimist.
What feels like a bazillion years ago I did casual work for Sheffield University the summer after graduating. At one point I was installing Windows on 25 machines in one go - walking up and down the lab clicking away through the various stages on each machine.
Genuinely despise Windows these days. But still have use for a Windows based machine even if only to extend the life of a legacy printer. This Chromebook is decrepit but can still have a use - EDIT it appears to have stalled half way through install. Can see Windows Boot manager. Take 2...
The real irritation is that Windows 7 was working perfectly well, but talking to our IT manager they said that we had to switch (I’m not going to call it “upgrade”) as Microsoft is no longer providing security updates and we are under constant online attack. Windows 10 might not be great, but it’s probably better than trying to deal with a ransomware attack.
Windows 7 was ok. 8 an apocalypse. 10 is just bloatware.
On topic a scale of 1-5 for something as complex as this was never going to be much use. What the government has done instead is seek a more granular analysis focusing on "hot spots" and the tracking and tracing of people affected by particular outbreaks such as the chicken factory up the road from me at Coupar Angus (which has given us our first ICU patient in over a month).
By any sensible measure we are now edging down towards 2 with approximately 1000 new cases a day in a country of 65m despite a much more proactive testing regime than we had in the early months where it was reasonable to assume that the true number of cases was a significant multiple of the number found. This, however, would send the wrong message, which is just another illustration of the inadequacy of the scale.
Alastair is right to query the competence of those who ever thought this was a good idea. Similarly, the algorithm for education was just so stupid that the only remarkable thing is not the odd resignation but that so many remain in post.
Our Ministers have not shone in either example but those who retain a delusion that we have a world beating or even competent civil service really need to give themselves a shake. People moan about the number of senior civil servants who are being squeezed out and blame Dom because most things do seem to come back to him eventually but I would rather focus on whether we can change the ethos of the Civil Service to something actual that produces actual results, the quantitative measurement of those results and consequences for failure. Those used to being promoted despite repeated incompetence and finish with a gong and spectacular pension may not like this very much. Welcome to the real world.
Back to Corona :-) This is something I have been cogitating for the last couple of weeks, and would like the opinion of NigelB or Foxy or anyone else with a better biology background than me.
In the last couple of months we have seen big increases in the number of cases of SARS-COV2 in some countries, but the level of severe illness is much lower than expected, as measured by hospitalisations and deaths. There was speculation in the spring that the virus would not spread as quickly in summer as colds and flu are strongly seasonal. But it seems that the spread of the SARS-COV2 virus has little to do with the season.
Is it at all plausible though, that these seasonal illness viruses still spread at a similar rate but less frequently appears as an illness? It is possible that the human body is under less stress in summer and more stress in winter, due to lots of reasons: not moving from cold to warm environments several times a day, not inhailing air under 10 degrees, generally getting more exercise, sunlight and fresh air etc. If the body or in particular the immune system is under more stress then an onslaught from a virus is more likely to develop into illness.
Is it plausible that catching the virus is just as easy in summer, but this developing into a serious disease is much lower in summer and higher in winter? For most other Rhino/Corona/Flu viruses there is as good as no testing of the prevelance of the virus in the general population, so we do not really appreciate how widley cold viruses are spread in summer, and only if the immune system is under some other kind of stress does this develop into a "summer cold" which are ususally not as heavy as a winter cold.
There are a fair few expert articles analysing this out there, if you care to look. It is some combination of the young being the current spreaders (leaving older folk to catch it later), better response and treatment options (including the possibility that people are catching 'less' virus through better behaviour), and an unverified possibility that the virus may have become less harmful. The trouble is that no-one yet knows the balance between these three.
Good morning ladies and gentlemen. And a miserable grey one it is at the moment. Here anyway. I must admit though that locally there are some 'green shoots of revival' on the Covid-19 front in that halls where social groups can meet are slowly and cautiously re-opening. And people in general seem to be getting about a bit more.
Morning OKC, sun shining in Ayrshire, 2nd day in a row , will enjoy it while we can.
This was the one that Boris f**ked up right at the beginning, with that rambling incoherent television address so memorably lampooned by Matt Lucas, which included announcing the supposedly clear new five-stage national alert system, and then saying we were currently at level three-and-a-half.
It never got off the runway.
The new system is: watch what Scotland is doing; wait a week during which ministers can build the suspense by denying or trashing the Scottish approach; do the same.
Yes, Johnson copies Sturgeons homework then hands it in late.
The SNP would not be anywhere near as popular without the Tories as a foil. It has been the cover for a lot of other failures.
It is Johnson's malevolent incompetence, as outlined in the header, that will end the United Kingdom.
The end of Transition is set to be a trainwreck too. What else can we expect?
Yesterday’s Briefing Room on R4 is well worth a listen. It included the suggestion that a thin last minute deal might be accompanied by an “implementation period” - during which everything would stay the same as currently. As a way to extend without actually extending.
He’ll be out of the door as quickly as Theresa May was, if he tries that one.
But who would they replace him with?
Rishi (= Disraeli)?????? Traditionally the Tories love a winner. And that goes above anything else.
Looks like Rishi plans to copy Corbyns 2019 manifesto on tax. The cycle of copying Labours manifesto is accelerating.
If they ramp up IHT or lower the thresholds then I'll be surprised - in a good way. But I doubt that they will. Going after estates enrages both stickbangers and their heirs in a way almost nothing else will, and is political nuclear death (as Theresa May discovered with the dementia tax.)
The Government won't want to go after income tax, NI and VAT - too controversial, too obvious - with the caveat that they might scrap the preferential NI rate currently enjoyed by the self-employed, which is something that Sunak has hinted at in the past. They daren't touch the stickbangers, of course, so we are stuck with the wretched triple lock for the foreseeable. Hiking corporation tax at the same time as trying to get us through Brexit might be considered brave, in the Sir Humphrey sense.
Thus, the most obvious targets are tax reliefs enjoyed by the working age population. The prime candidate is a big Brown-style raid on pensions, this time normalising reliefs at the basic rate for all contributions. The FT was suggesting earlier in the year that CGT might be rounded up to a flat rate of 28% for all assets, and my husband was also speculating just yesterday that the annual contribution limit for ISAs might be cut in half.
Of course, the most radical measure would be to go all out with a wealth tax and pocket a one-off levy on all assets - savings, pensions, shares, property, the lot - which could potentially recoup the cost of all the extra borrowing taken out during the Plague. But I think it really would take a Corbyn Government to dare to try something like that!
The Sunday Times is reporting this differently - with all pensions relief given at 30% thus higher than the basic rate but lower than the higher rate thus avoiding the obvious headlines of either.
I think something like that is likely.
Some interesting ideas.
But they need to stop ignoring the elephant in the room, which is the £25bn+ spent on the main residence relief CGT loophole.
That is worth more than all the rest put together.
Not happening - there won't be raids on property, it's too emotive and also cricket batting anybody who sells a house will gum up the market. Oh, and don't forget, it'll crucify any stickbangers looking to downsize - that alone is sufficient to kill the idea stone dead. Taxing the elderly is taboo.
On pensions relief, surely a flat rate wouldn't be created at 30%? When you're trying desperately to raise funds then why on Earth would you devise a huge new tax break - a 50% increase for all basic rate taxpayers - where it doesn't presently exist?
Yet on here it’s hard to find anyone (HYFUD aside) with a good word to say about the PM/govt. I suspect there’s going to be a lot of disappointed PBers in 2024 if this is any indication of a floor in support.
Thommo would crawl over broken glass just to drink Johnson's bath water.
Disagree. Can be critical.
Sensible on BLM, but normally still part of the Johnson love-in.
Anyway - on other "difficult to explain" decisions that are quite possibly imminent - reversing the quarantine status of Portugal could be, er, interesting.
It's absolutely farcical that the quarantine situation seems to be based, as far as anyone can ascertain, to be based on country's reaching a self reported case level of 20 per 100,000 people. Quite how this level was determined, or how it takes account of the fact that it is hugely dependent on levels and targeting of testing, remains a bit of a mystery. Not to mention the still ignored issue of reported numbers often not aligning with people (eg. 4 positive tests for one person equals, er 4 reported cases). In the UK anyway - who knows about elsewhere.
On topic a scale of 1-5 for something as complex as this was never going to be much use. What the government has done instead is seek a more granular analysis focusing on "hot spots" and the tracking and tracing of people affected by particular outbreaks such as the chicken factory up the road from me at Coupar Angus (which has given us our first ICU patient in over a month).
By any sensible measure we are now edging down towards 2 with approximately 1000 new cases a day in a country of 65m despite a much more proactive testing regime than we had in the early months where it was reasonable to assume that the true number of cases was a significant multiple of the number found. This, however, would send the wrong message, which is just another illustration of the inadequacy of the scale.
Alastair is right to query the competence of those who ever thought this was a good idea. Similarly, the algorithm for education was just so stupid that the only remarkable thing is not the odd resignation but that so many remain in post.
Our Ministers have not shone in either example but those who retain a delusion that we have a world beating or even competent civil service really need to give themselves a shake. People moan about the number of senior civil servants who are being squeezed out and blame Dom because most things do seem to come back to him eventually but I would rather focus on whether we can change the ethos of the Civil Service to something actual that produces actual results, the quantitative measurement of those results and consequences for failure. Those used to being promoted despite repeated incompetence and finish with a gong and spectacular pension may not like this very much. Welcome to the real world.
More focus on outcomes and greater accountability among civil servants are good things. The trouble is that it is being accompanied by a complete abandonment of personal accountability for ministers.
Mr Meeks raises an interesting question - why isn't the government doing worse in the polls. But the more I think about it, the more the weakness of the Opposition is the most important factor. Starmer is more appealing personally than Corbyn, but he has failed to oppose most of the decisions the government has made during the pandemic, has flip-flopped throughout, and has a pitifully weak team. He is also tainted by his seat at Corbyn's table and his failed attempted fudge over Brexit at the last election. It was a transparent attempt to straddle two stools, but ended up falling between them. And, finally, he is appealing to middle-class professionals, but has virtually nothing to say to the North or Scotland.
OK, maybe he'll surprise me once he's got the Labour Party under control by emerging as a decisive Blair-like political genius, but I have to say the omens so far aren't very good.
(We can all come up with excuses for why the Labour Party hasn't made hay, like the difficulty of getting media coverage during a pandemic, or the need to deal with the Corbynites in the Party, or whatever, but making excuses can become a way of life).
A 26 point Tory lead with Opinium in March has become level pegging at the end of August. This has happened before most people have engaged with what is about to happen with the economy. If Starmer is as bad as you say he is, the Tories have to be a whole lot worse, don't they?
It is going to be a horrible, horrible, horrible Autumn for Johnson, and every second of it is deserved.
can he survive? Maybe the party will let him steer brexit through. Beyond that, I think its doubtful.
And suddenly Sunak's hopes look a bit dented too. Soak this rich taxes? Lol, he won;t get to be leader on the back of those.
Graham Brady is going to reap a whirlwind this week.
We cannot get through this crisis without immense pain. The public and therefore to some degree Tory members and mps will accept that and therefore some level if unpalatable options may turn out to be palatable after all.
Nevertheless it is pain and yes that means the public will turn on Boris and the party, but government makes that inevitable sometimes. Incompetence will accelerate that but a reckoning was coming as a consequence of events even without it. Acting stunned that they will become unpopular or pretending it could be avoided forever in a crisis like this is just silly.
Johnsonism - if it exists - is based on the denial that pain exists. It is cakeism. It will be interesting to see how things develop.
This was the one that Boris f**ked up right at the beginning, with that rambling incoherent television address so memorably lampooned by Matt Lucas, which included announcing the supposedly clear new five-stage national alert system, and then saying we were currently at level three-and-a-half.
It never got off the runway.
The new system is: watch what Scotland is doing; wait a week during which ministers can build the suspense by denying or trashing the Scottish approach; do the same.
Yes, Johnson copies Sturgeons homework then hands it in late.
The SNP would not be anywhere near as popular without the Tories as a foil. It has been the cover for a lot of other failures.
It is Johnson's malevolent incompetence, as outlined in the header, that will end the United Kingdom.
The end of Transition is set to be a trainwreck too. What else can we expect?
Yesterday’s Briefing Room on R4 is well worth a listen. It included the suggestion that a thin last minute deal might be accompanied by an “implementation period” - during which everything would stay the same as currently. As a way to extend without actually extending.
He’ll be out of the door as quickly as Theresa May was, if he tries that one.
But who would they replace him with?
Rishi (= Disraeli)?????? Traditionally the Tories love a winner. And that goes above anything else.
Looks like Rishi plans to copy Corbyns 2019 manifesto on tax. The cycle of copying Labours manifesto is accelerating.
If they ramp up IHT or lower the thresholds then I'll be surprised - in a good way. But I doubt that they will. Going after estates enrages both stickbangers and their heirs in a way almost nothing else will, and is political nuclear death (as Theresa May discovered with the dementia tax.)
The Government won't want to go after income tax, NI and VAT - too controversial, too obvious - with the caveat that they might scrap the preferential NI rate currently enjoyed by the self-employed, which is something that Sunak has hinted at in the past. They daren't touch the stickbangers, of course, so we are stuck with the wretched triple lock for the foreseeable. Hiking corporation tax at the same time as trying to get us through Brexit might be considered brave, in the Sir Humphrey sense.
Thus, the most obvious targets are tax reliefs enjoyed by the working age population. The prime candidate is a big Brown-style raid on pensions, this time normalising reliefs at the basic rate for all contributions. The FT was suggesting earlier in the year that CGT might be rounded up to a flat rate of 28% for all assets, and my husband was also speculating just yesterday that the annual contribution limit for ISAs might be cut in half.
Of course, the most radical measure would be to go all out with a wealth tax and pocket a one-off levy on all assets - savings, pensions, shares, property, the lot - which could potentially recoup the cost of all the extra borrowing taken out during the Plague. But I think it really would take a Corbyn Government to dare to try something like that!
The Sunday Times is reporting this differently - with all pensions relief given at 30% thus higher than the basic rate but lower than the higher rate thus avoiding the obvious headlines of either.
I think something like that is likely.
Some interesting ideas.
But they need to stop ignoring the elephant in the room, which is the £25bn+ spent on the main residence relief CGT loophole.
That is worth more than all the rest put together.
Not happening - there won't be raids on property, it's too emotive and also cricket batting anybody who sells a house will gum up the market. Oh, and don't forget, it'll crucify any stickbangers looking to downsize - that alone is sufficient to kill the idea stone dead. Taxing the elderly is taboo.
On pensions relief, surely a flat rate wouldn't be created at 30%? When you're trying desperately to raise funds then why on Earth would you devise a huge new tax break - a 50% increase for all basic rate taxpayers - where it doesn't presently exist?
I think it'd be the % relief cap, and not a level of relief given to all.
Good morning ladies and gentlemen. And a miserable grey one it is at the moment. Here anyway. I must admit though that locally there are some 'green shoots of revival' on the Covid-19 front in that halls where social groups can meet are slowly and cautiously re-opening. And people in general seem to be getting about a bit more.
Morning OKC, sun shining in Ayrshire, 2nd day in a row , will enjoy it while we can.
Very sensible Malc. Good lady progressing, I hope.
This was the one that Boris f**ked up right at the beginning, with that rambling incoherent television address so memorably lampooned by Matt Lucas, which included announcing the supposedly clear new five-stage national alert system, and then saying we were currently at level three-and-a-half.
It never got off the runway.
The new system is: watch what Scotland is doing; wait a week during which ministers can build the suspense by denying or trashing the Scottish approach; do the same.
Yes, Johnson copies Sturgeons homework then hands it in late.
The SNP would not be anywhere near as popular without the Tories as a foil. It has been the cover for a lot of other failures.
It is Johnson's malevolent incompetence, as outlined in the header, that will end the United Kingdom.
The end of Transition is set to be a trainwreck too. What else can we expect?
Yesterday’s Briefing Room on R4 is well worth a listen. It included the suggestion that a thin last minute deal might be accompanied by an “implementation period” - during which everything would stay the same as currently. As a way to extend without actually extending.
He’ll be out of the door as quickly as Theresa May was, if he tries that one.
But who would they replace him with?
Rishi (= Disraeli)?????? Traditionally the Tories love a winner. And that goes above anything else.
Looks like Rishi plans to copy Corbyns 2019 manifesto on tax. The cycle of copying Labours manifesto is accelerating.
If they ramp up IHT or lower the thresholds then I'll be surprised - in a good way. But I doubt that they will. Going after estates enrages both stickbangers and their heirs in a way almost nothing else will, and is political nuclear death (as Theresa May discovered with the dementia tax.)
The Government won't want to go after income tax, NI and VAT - too controversial, too obvious - with the caveat that they might scrap the preferential NI rate currently enjoyed by the self-employed, which is something that Sunak has hinted at in the past. They daren't touch the stickbangers, of course, so we are stuck with the wretched triple lock for the foreseeable. Hiking corporation tax at the same time as trying to get us through Brexit might be considered brave, in the Sir Humphrey sense.
Thus, the most obvious targets are tax reliefs enjoyed by the working age population. The prime candidate is a big Brown-style raid on pensions, this time normalising reliefs at the basic rate for all contributions. The FT was suggesting earlier in the year that CGT might be rounded up to a flat rate of 28% for all assets, and my husband was also speculating just yesterday that the annual contribution limit for ISAs might be cut in half.
Of course, the most radical measure would be to go all out with a wealth tax and pocket a one-off levy on all assets - savings, pensions, shares, property, the lot - which could potentially recoup the cost of all the extra borrowing taken out during the Plague. But I think it really would take a Corbyn Government to dare to try something like that!
The Sunday Times is reporting this differently - with all pensions relief given at 30% thus higher than the basic rate but lower than the higher rate thus avoiding the obvious headlines of either.
I think something like that is likely.
Some interesting ideas.
But they need to stop ignoring the elephant in the room, which is the £25bn+ spent on the main residence relief CGT loophole.
That is worth more than all the rest put together.
This was the one that Boris f**ked up right at the beginning, with that rambling incoherent television address so memorably lampooned by Matt Lucas, which included announcing the supposedly clear new five-stage national alert system, and then saying we were currently at level three-and-a-half.
It never got off the runway.
The new system is: watch what Scotland is doing; wait a week during which ministers can build the suspense by denying or trashing the Scottish approach; do the same.
Yes, Johnson copies Sturgeons homework then hands it in late.
The SNP would not be anywhere near as popular without the Tories as a foil. It has been the cover for a lot of other failures.
It is Johnson's malevolent incompetence, as outlined in the header, that will end the United Kingdom.
The end of Transition is set to be a trainwreck too. What else can we expect?
Yesterday’s Briefing Room on R4 is well worth a listen. It included the suggestion that a thin last minute deal might be accompanied by an “implementation period” - during which everything would stay the same as currently. As a way to extend without actually extending.
He’ll be out of the door as quickly as Theresa May was, if he tries that one.
But who would they replace him with?
Rishi (= Disraeli)?????? Traditionally the Tories love a winner. And that goes above anything else.
Looks like Rishi plans to copy Corbyns 2019 manifesto on tax. The cycle of copying Labours manifesto is accelerating.
If they ramp up IHT or lower the thresholds then I'll be surprised - in a good way. But I doubt that they will. Going after estates enrages both stickbangers and their heirs in a way almost nothing else will, and is political nuclear death (as Theresa May discovered with the dementia tax.)
The Government won't want to go after income tax, NI and VAT - too controversial, too obvious - with the caveat that they might scrap the preferential NI rate currently enjoyed by the self-employed, which is something that Sunak has hinted at in the past. They daren't touch the stickbangers, of course, so we are stuck with the wretched triple lock for the foreseeable. Hiking corporation tax at the same time as trying to get us through Brexit might be considered brave, in the Sir Humphrey sense.
Thus, the most obvious targets are tax reliefs enjoyed by the working age population. The prime candidate is a big Brown-style raid on pensions, this time normalising reliefs at the basic rate for all contributions. The FT was suggesting earlier in the year that CGT might be rounded up to a flat rate of 28% for all assets, and my husband was also speculating just yesterday that the annual contribution limit for ISAs might be cut in half.
Of course, the most radical measure would be to go all out with a wealth tax and pocket a one-off levy on all assets - savings, pensions, shares, property, the lot - which could potentially recoup the cost of all the extra borrowing taken out during the Plague. But I think it really would take a Corbyn Government to dare to try something like that!
The Sunday Times is reporting this differently - with all pensions relief given at 30% thus higher than the basic rate but lower than the higher rate thus avoiding the obvious headlines of either.
I think something like that is likely.
Some interesting ideas.
But they need to stop ignoring the elephant in the room, which is the £25bn+ spent on the main residence relief CGT loophole.
That is worth more than all the rest put together.
Remove that "loophole" and how does anyone ever move up the property ladder? Because most people usually replace one main residence with another.
Maybe if you remove the possibility of flipping when owning multiple residences, but other than that...
Anyway - on other "difficult to explain" decisions that are quite possibly imminent - reversing the quarantine status of Portugal could be, er, interesting.
It's absolutely farcical that the quarantine situation seems to be based, as far as anyone can ascertain, to be based on country's reaching a self reported case level of 20 per 100,000 people. Quite how this level was determined, or how it takes account of the fact that it is hugely dependent on levels and targeting of testing, remains a bit of a mystery. Not to mention the still ignored issue of reported numbers often not aligning with people (eg. 4 positive tests for one person equals, er 4 reported cases). In the UK anyway - who knows about elsewhere.
Indeed. Portugal has already been put into quarantine twice and taken out twice. I've been flagging the Austrian situation, where the country was put into quarantine the same day as Portugal was released, for reasons that were flaky at the time, and have been followed by a series of relatively good statistics.
I see today's Austrian new case number is out already, at +181. Recent performance suggests Portugal's is likely to be worse.
You may have noticed certain events between those dates.
More likely the Telegraph story is kite-flying on steroids. On the one hand is a long list of possible measures, with no real indication any is imminent; on the other hand we see Number 10 denials and blaming departmental civil servants.
Indeed. I wondered yesterday which floated measures would be disavowed first.
Installing Windows 10 on a Chromebook. Which as a Chrome OS aficionado and Windows hater is a heresy far greater than pineapple on last night's pizza
We had Windows 10 installed on our computers at school over the summer holidays. I went in last week to get some work done. I’m now hoping that by the time term starts I will have access to all the files and programs I did before the upgrade, but I’m known as a bit of an optimist.
What feels like a bazillion years ago I did casual work for Sheffield University the summer after graduating. At one point I was installing Windows on 25 machines in one go - walking up and down the lab clicking away through the various stages on each machine.
Genuinely despise Windows these days. But still have use for a Windows based machine even if only to extend the life of a legacy printer. This Chromebook is decrepit but can still have a use - EDIT it appears to have stalled half way through install. Can see Windows Boot manager. Take 2...
EDIT EDIT Lets try deleting all the partitions off the drive this time. Potential brick coming up. But as its a development only machine that just adds to the entertainment
W10 creates a couple of system partitions as part of the install process, and that’s usually what screws it up. Better to format the whole drive, get Windows running then repartition if you have a second o/s to install. Every new version of Windows seems to be more difficult to get running than previous versions - and don’t start me on the lack of logging and debugging tools during the installation.
Oh Dear God. I just cheered and clapped for Windows 10 install proceeding through reboot. Excitement and adventure waits! This really is going to be Frankestein's Monster's computer. Did I say how much I hate Windows 10?
This was the one that Boris f**ked up right at the beginning, with that rambling incoherent television address so memorably lampooned by Matt Lucas, which included announcing the supposedly clear new five-stage national alert system, and then saying we were currently at level three-and-a-half.
It never got off the runway.
The new system is: watch what Scotland is doing; wait a week during which ministers can build the suspense by denying or trashing the Scottish approach; do the same.
Yes, Johnson copies Sturgeons homework then hands it in late.
The SNP would not be anywhere near as popular without the Tories as a foil. It has been the cover for a lot of other failures.
It is Johnson's malevolent incompetence, as outlined in the header, that will end the United Kingdom.
The end of Transition is set to be a trainwreck too. What else can we expect?
Yesterday’s Briefing Room on R4 is well worth a listen. It included the suggestion that a thin last minute deal might be accompanied by an “implementation period” - during which everything would stay the same as currently. As a way to extend without actually extending.
He’ll be out of the door as quickly as Theresa May was, if he tries that one.
But who would they replace him with?
Rishi (= Disraeli)?????? Traditionally the Tories love a winner. And that goes above anything else.
Looks like Rishi plans to copy Corbyns 2019 manifesto on tax. The cycle of copying Labours manifesto is accelerating.
If they ramp up IHT or lower the thresholds then I'll be surprised - in a good way. But I doubt that they will. Going after estates enrages both stickbangers and their heirs in a way almost nothing else will, and is political nuclear death (as Theresa May discovered with the dementia tax.)
The Government won't want to go after income tax, NI and VAT - too controversial, too obvious - with the caveat that they might scrap the preferential NI rate currently enjoyed by the self-employed, which is something that Sunak has hinted at in the past. They daren't touch the stickbangers, of course, so we are stuck with the wretched triple lock for the foreseeable. Hiking corporation tax at the same time as trying to get us through Brexit might be considered brave, in the Sir Humphrey sense.
Thus, the most obvious targets are tax reliefs enjoyed by the working age population. The prime candidate is a big Brown-style raid on pensions, this time normalising reliefs at the basic rate for all contributions. The FT was suggesting earlier in the year that CGT might be rounded up to a flat rate of 28% for all assets, and my husband was also speculating just yesterday that the annual contribution limit for ISAs might be cut in half.
Of course, the most radical measure would be to go all out with a wealth tax and pocket a one-off levy on all assets - savings, pensions, shares, property, the lot - which could potentially recoup the cost of all the extra borrowing taken out during the Plague. But I think it really would take a Corbyn Government to dare to try something like that!
The Sunday Times is reporting this differently - with all pensions relief given at 30% thus higher than the basic rate but lower than the higher rate thus avoiding the obvious headlines of either.
I think something like that is likely.
Some interesting ideas.
But they need to stop ignoring the elephant in the room, which is the £25bn+ spent on the main residence relief CGT loophole.
That is worth more than all the rest put together.
That might work IF there were an allowance for using the money to buy a new main residence; if not the the housing market would grind to a halt until house prices had dropped to the point that few if any would be making a capital gain, thus wiping out the tax gain.
If a tax looks like it would gain vast sums of money then you have to think about: - what are the effects on the economy of taking that amount of money out of circulation all at once; - how will people get round it. On the second I can see people setting up a company to buy their house so that when they sell it to buy a new one the capital gain is offset by the new purchase.
Installing Windows 10 on a Chromebook. Which as a Chrome OS aficionado and Windows hater is a heresy far greater than pineapple on last night's pizza
We had Windows 10 installed on our computers at school over the summer holidays. I went in last week to get some work done. I’m now hoping that by the time term starts I will have access to all the files and programs I did before the upgrade, but I’m known as a bit of an optimist.
What feels like a bazillion years ago I did casual work for Sheffield University the summer after graduating. At one point I was installing Windows on 25 machines in one go - walking up and down the lab clicking away through the various stages on each machine.
Genuinely despise Windows these days. But still have use for a Windows based machine even if only to extend the life of a legacy printer. This Chromebook is decrepit but can still have a use - EDIT it appears to have stalled half way through install. Can see Windows Boot manager. Take 2...
The real irritation is that Windows 7 was working perfectly well, but talking to our IT manager they said that we had to switch (I’m not going to call it “upgrade”) as Microsoft is no longer providing security updates and we are under constant online attack. Windows 10 might not be great, but it’s probably better than trying to deal with a ransomware attack.
Windows 7 was ok. 8 an apocalypse. 10 is just bloatware.
This was the one that Boris f**ked up right at the beginning, with that rambling incoherent television address so memorably lampooned by Matt Lucas, which included announcing the supposedly clear new five-stage national alert system, and then saying we were currently at level three-and-a-half.
It never got off the runway.
The new system is: watch what Scotland is doing; wait a week during which ministers can build the suspense by denying or trashing the Scottish approach; do the same.
Yes, Johnson copies Sturgeons homework then hands it in late.
The SNP would not be anywhere near as popular without the Tories as a foil. It has been the cover for a lot of other failures.
It is Johnson's malevolent incompetence, as outlined in the header, that will end the United Kingdom.
The end of Transition is set to be a trainwreck too. What else can we expect?
Yesterday’s Briefing Room on R4 is well worth a listen. It included the suggestion that a thin last minute deal might be accompanied by an “implementation period” - during which everything would stay the same as currently. As a way to extend without actually extending.
He’ll be out of the door as quickly as Theresa May was, if he tries that one.
But who would they replace him with?
Rishi (= Disraeli)?????? Traditionally the Tories love a winner. And that goes above anything else.
Looks like Rishi plans to copy Corbyns 2019 manifesto on tax. The cycle of copying Labours manifesto is accelerating.
If they ramp up IHT or lower the thresholds then I'll be surprised - in a good way. But I doubt that they will. Going after estates enrages both stickbangers and their heirs in a way almost nothing else will, and is political nuclear death (as Theresa May discovered with the dementia tax.)
The Government won't want to go after income tax, NI and VAT - too controversial, too obvious - with the caveat that they might scrap the preferential NI rate currently enjoyed by the self-employed, which is something that Sunak has hinted at in the past. They daren't touch the stickbangers, of course, so we are stuck with the wretched triple lock for the foreseeable. Hiking corporation tax at the same time as trying to get us through Brexit might be considered brave, in the Sir Humphrey sense.
Thus, the most obvious targets are tax reliefs enjoyed by the working age population. The prime candidate is a big Brown-style raid on pensions, this time normalising reliefs at the basic rate for all contributions. The FT was suggesting earlier in the year that CGT might be rounded up to a flat rate of 28% for all assets, and my husband was also speculating just yesterday that the annual contribution limit for ISAs might be cut in half.
Of course, the most radical measure would be to go all out with a wealth tax and pocket a one-off levy on all assets - savings, pensions, shares, property, the lot - which could potentially recoup the cost of all the extra borrowing taken out during the Plague. But I think it really would take a Corbyn Government to dare to try something like that!
The Sunday Times is reporting this differently - with all pensions relief given at 30% thus higher than the basic rate but lower than the higher rate thus avoiding the obvious headlines of either.
I think something like that is likely.
Some interesting ideas.
But they need to stop ignoring the elephant in the room, which is the £25bn+ spent on the main residence relief CGT loophole.
That is worth more than all the rest put together.
That won't be touched.
No Government could touch it.
The surest and best way to lose an election without really trying.
It is going to be a horrible, horrible, horrible Autumn for Johnson, and every second of it is deserved.
can he survive? Maybe the party will let him steer brexit through. Beyond that, I think its doubtful.
And suddenly Sunak's hopes look a bit dented too. Soak this rich taxes? Lol, he won;t get to be leader on the back of those.
Graham Brady is going to reap a whirlwind this week.
We cannot get through this crisis without immense pain. The public and therefore to some degree Tory members and mps will accept that and therefore some level if unpalatable options may turn out to be palatable after all.
Nevertheless it is pain and yes that means the public will turn on Boris and the party, but government makes that inevitable sometimes. Incompetence will accelerate that but a reckoning was coming as a consequence of events even without it. Acting stunned that they will become unpopular or pretending it could be avoided forever in a crisis like this is just silly.
Johnsonism - if it exists - is based on the denial that pain exists. It is cakeism. It will be interesting to see how things develop.
I'm sure, as per HYUFD, that Boris will seek to avoid any difficult decision on taxes or spending as long as humanly possible. I dont know how long it can be, but probably longer than we think.
Dealing with the aftermath, financially at least, will presumably take decades. I assume Boris will seek to push as much of it as possible on to the future. PMs usually last 3-5 years, he can probably defer the hard choices that long.
Back to Corona :-) This is something I have been cogitating for the last couple of weeks, and would like the opinion of NigelB or Foxy or anyone else with a better biology background than me.
In the last couple of months we have seen big increases in the number of cases of SARS-COV2 in some countries, but the level of severe illness is much lower than expected, as measured by hospitalisations and deaths. There was speculation in the spring that the virus would not spread as quickly in summer as colds and flu are strongly seasonal. But it seems that the spread of the SARS-COV2 virus has little to do with the season.
Is it at all plausible though, that these seasonal illness viruses still spread at a similar rate but less frequently appears as an illness? It is possible that the human body is under less stress in summer and more stress in winter, due to lots of reasons: not moving from cold to warm environments several times a day, not inhailing air under 10 degrees, generally getting more exercise, sunlight and fresh air etc. If the body or in particular the immune system is under more stress then an onslaught from a virus is more likely to develop into illness.
Is it plausible that catching the virus is just as easy in summer, but this developing into a serious disease is much lower in summer and higher in winter? For most other Rhino/Corona/Flu viruses there is as good as no testing of the prevelance of the virus in the general population, so we do not really appreciate how widley cold viruses are spread in summer, and only if the immune system is under some other kind of stress does this develop into a "summer cold" which are ususally not as heavy as a winter cold.
The southern hemisphere has summer and winter the other way round from us. God made it that way so we can test these season-related hypotheses.
There was a suggestion a while back that Vitamin D, Vitamin C and Zinc could play a part in reducing the severity of Covid. Vit.D is higher in the summer.
I think the age profile of those infected is just as much a factor as anything else, but I expect all the mentioned ideas will turn out to have some effect.
More of a factor than anything else - there has been a marked change in age profile of those infected, and the difference in fatality rates between the young and the old is orders of magnitude. Of course the large change in age distribution will also be to some extent an artefact of greatly increased testing numbers picking up more very mild or asymptomatic cases.
Installing Windows 10 on a Chromebook. Which as a Chrome OS aficionado and Windows hater is a heresy far greater than pineapple on last night's pizza
We had Windows 10 installed on our computers at school over the summer holidays. I went in last week to get some work done. I’m now hoping that by the time term starts I will have access to all the files and programs I did before the upgrade, but I’m known as a bit of an optimist.
What feels like a bazillion years ago I did casual work for Sheffield University the summer after graduating. At one point I was installing Windows on 25 machines in one go - walking up and down the lab clicking away through the various stages on each machine.
Genuinely despise Windows these days. But still have use for a Windows based machine even if only to extend the life of a legacy printer. This Chromebook is decrepit but can still have a use - EDIT it appears to have stalled half way through install. Can see Windows Boot manager. Take 2...
EDIT EDIT Lets try deleting all the partitions off the drive this time. Potential brick coming up. But as its a development only machine that just adds to the entertainment
W10 creates a couple of system partitions as part of the install process, and that’s usually what screws it up. Better to format the whole drive, get Windows running then repartition if you have a second o/s to install. Every new version of Windows seems to be more difficult to get running than previous versions - and don’t start me on the lack of logging and debugging tools during the installation.
Indeed! The problem being that there is no onboard BIOS other than the one I had flashed. On take 1 I think the Windows boot manager clashed with the UEFI bios. So deleting UEFI on take 2 was a brave step but has worked.
Installing Windows 10 on a Chromebook. Which as a Chrome OS aficionado and Windows hater is a heresy far greater than pineapple on last night's pizza
We had Windows 10 installed on our computers at school over the summer holidays. I went in last week to get some work done. I’m now hoping that by the time term starts I will have access to all the files and programs I did before the upgrade, but I’m known as a bit of an optimist.
What feels like a bazillion years ago I did casual work for Sheffield University the summer after graduating. At one point I was installing Windows on 25 machines in one go - walking up and down the lab clicking away through the various stages on each machine.
Genuinely despise Windows these days. But still have use for a Windows based machine even if only to extend the life of a legacy printer. This Chromebook is decrepit but can still have a use - EDIT it appears to have stalled half way through install. Can see Windows Boot manager. Take 2...
The real irritation is that Windows 7 was working perfectly well, but talking to our IT manager they said that we had to switch (I’m not going to call it “upgrade”) as Microsoft is no longer providing security updates and we are under constant online attack. Windows 10 might not be great, but it’s probably better than trying to deal with a ransomware attack.
Yep. W7 was great, but it’s now obsolete unless you pay MS £€$ for extended support. Upgrading W7 to W10 is also a nightmare. Officially it’s supposed to upgrade in-place, but in practice you inevitably end up with a hard drive format - which is fine in a corporate environment but a nightmare for standalone domestic computers.
Good morning ladies and gentlemen. And a miserable grey one it is at the moment. Here anyway. I must admit though that locally there are some 'green shoots of revival' on the Covid-19 front in that halls where social groups can meet are slowly and cautiously re-opening. And people in general seem to be getting about a bit more.
Morning OKC, sun shining in Ayrshire, 2nd day in a row , will enjoy it while we can.
Oh Dear God. I just cheered and clapped for Windows 10 install proceeding through reboot. Excitement and adventure waits! This really is going to be Frankestein's Monster's computer. Did I say how much I hate Windows 10?
It is going to be a horrible, horrible, horrible Autumn for Johnson, and every second of it is deserved.
can he survive? Maybe the party will let him steer brexit through. Beyond that, I think its doubtful.
And suddenly Sunak's hopes look a bit dented too. Soak this rich taxes? Lol, he won;t get to be leader on the back of those.
Graham Brady is going to reap a whirlwind this week.
We cannot get through this crisis without immense pain. The public and therefore to some degree Tory members and mps will accept that and therefore some level if unpalatable options may turn out to be palatable after all.
Nevertheless it is pain and yes that means the public will turn on Boris and the party, but government makes that inevitable sometimes. Incompetence will accelerate that but a reckoning was coming as a consequence of events even without it. Acting stunned that they will become unpopular or pretending it could be avoided forever in a crisis like this is just silly.
Johnsonism - if it exists - is based on the denial that pain exists. It is cakeism. It will be interesting to see how things develop.
I'm sure, as per HYUFD, that Boris will seek to avoid any difficult decision on taxes or spending as long as humanly possible. I dont know how long it can be, but probably longer than we think.
Dealing with the aftermath, financially at least, will presumably take decades. I assume Boris will seek to push as much of it as possible on to the future. PMs usually last 3-5 years, he can probably defer the hard choices that long.
Maybe. Thing is, long term interest rates are starting to move up a bit. Higher debt servicing costs could be on the way. And the BoE is not going to bankroll Johnson any more.
The government's huge policy mistakes are coming home to roost.
Johnson and Cummings are undoubtedly great campaigners. But in government? sheeesh.
Mr Meeks raises an interesting question - why isn't the government doing worse in the polls. But the more I think about it, the more the weakness of the Opposition is the most important factor. Starmer is more appealing personally than Corbyn, but he has failed to oppose most of the decisions the government has made during the pandemic, has flip-flopped throughout, and has a pitifully weak team. He is also tainted by his seat at Corbyn's table and his failed attempted fudge over Brexit at the last election. It was a transparent attempt to straddle two stools, but ended up falling between them. And, finally, he is appealing to middle-class professionals, but has virtually nothing to say to the North or Scotland.
OK, maybe he'll surprise me once he's got the Labour Party under control by emerging as a decisive Blair-like political genius, but I have to say the omens so far aren't very good.
(We can all come up with excuses for why the Labour Party hasn't made hay, like the difficulty of getting media coverage during a pandemic, or the need to deal with the Corbynites in the Party, or whatever, but making excuses can become a way of life).
A 26 point Tory lead with Opinium in March has become level pegging at the end of August. This has happened before most people have engaged with what is about to happen with the economy. If Starmer is as bad as you say he is, the Tories have to be a whole lot worse, don't they?
Clearly the 26-point lead never would have lasted. A much better comparison is with the government's position in the polls in February, or with the average lead at this stage in the electoral cycle.
But yes, the point of the thread was that the Conservatives, or at least the Johnson government, is indeed bad, though it doesn't explicitly say that it is worse than the Opposition. And that the Conservatives should be doing worse than they are. And I'm saying that a reason why they're not is the weakness of the Opposition. And you haven't disagreed with any of the points I made, that I can see.
This was the one that Boris f**ked up right at the beginning, with that rambling incoherent television address so memorably lampooned by Matt Lucas, which included announcing the supposedly clear new five-stage national alert system, and then saying we were currently at level three-and-a-half.
It never got off the runway.
The new system is: watch what Scotland is doing; wait a week during which ministers can build the suspense by denying or trashing the Scottish approach; do the same.
Yes, Johnson copies Sturgeons homework then hands it in late.
The SNP would not be anywhere near as popular without the Tories as a foil. It has been the cover for a lot of other failures.
It is Johnson's malevolent incompetence, as outlined in the header, that will end the United Kingdom.
The end of Transition is set to be a trainwreck too. What else can we expect?
Yesterday’s Briefing Room on R4 is well worth a listen. It included the suggestion that a thin last minute deal might be accompanied by an “implementation period” - during which everything would stay the same as currently. As a way to extend without actually extending.
He’ll be out of the door as quickly as Theresa May was, if he tries that one.
But who would they replace him with?
Rishi (= Disraeli)?????? Traditionally the Tories love a winner. And that goes above anything else.
Looks like Rishi plans to copy Corbyns 2019 manifesto on tax. The cycle of copying Labours manifesto is accelerating.
If they ramp up IHT or lower the thresholds then I'll be surprised - in a good way. But I doubt that they will. Going after estates enrages both stickbangers and their heirs in a way almost nothing else will, and is political nuclear death (as Theresa May discovered with the dementia tax.)
The Government won't want to go after income tax, NI and VAT - too controversial, too obvious - with the caveat that they might scrap the preferential NI rate currently enjoyed by the self-employed, which is something that Sunak has hinted at in the past. They daren't touch the stickbangers, of course, so we are stuck with the wretched triple lock for the foreseeable. Hiking corporation tax at the same time as trying to get us through Brexit might be considered brave, in the Sir Humphrey sense.
Thus, the most obvious targets are tax reliefs enjoyed by the working age population. The prime candidate is a big Brown-style raid on pensions, this time normalising reliefs at the basic rate for all contributions. The FT was suggesting earlier in the year that CGT might be rounded up to a flat rate of 28% for all assets, and my husband was also speculating just yesterday that the annual contribution limit for ISAs might be cut in half.
Of course, the most radical measure would be to go all out with a wealth tax and pocket a one-off levy on all assets - savings, pensions, shares, property, the lot - which could potentially recoup the cost of all the extra borrowing taken out during the Plague. But I think it really would take a Corbyn Government to dare to try something like that!
The Sunday Times is reporting this differently - with all pensions relief given at 30% thus higher than the basic rate but lower than the higher rate thus avoiding the obvious headlines of either.
I think something like that is likely.
Some interesting ideas.
But they need to stop ignoring the elephant in the room, which is the £25bn+ spent on the main residence relief CGT loophole.
That is worth more than all the rest put together.
That won't be touched.
No Government could touch it.
It could only, possibly, work if you scrapped stamp duty at the same time.
SD is a terrible tax that raises a fortune, it’s a major dampener on workforce mobility.
*sigh* I wasn't kidding about Windows 10 being bloatware. How much "can Microsoft do x" stuff do I have to click No to? Just sod off already. I don't want sodding Cortana etc etc
It is going to be a horrible, horrible, horrible Autumn for Johnson, and every second of it is deserved.
can he survive? Maybe the party will let him steer brexit through. Beyond that, I think its doubtful.
And suddenly Sunak's hopes look a bit dented too. Soak this rich taxes? Lol, he won;t get to be leader on the back of those.
Graham Brady is going to reap a whirlwind this week.
We cannot get through this crisis without immense pain. The public and therefore to some degree Tory members and mps will accept that and therefore some level if unpalatable options may turn out to be palatable after all.
Nevertheless it is pain and yes that means the public will turn on Boris and the party, but government makes that inevitable sometimes. Incompetence will accelerate that but a reckoning was coming as a consequence of events even without it. Acting stunned that they will become unpopular or pretending it could be avoided forever in a crisis like this is just silly.
Johnsonism - if it exists - is based on the denial that pain exists. It is cakeism. It will be interesting to see how things develop.
I'm sure, as per HYUFD, that Boris will seek to avoid any difficult decision on taxes or spending as long as humanly possible. I dont know how long it can be, but probably longer than we think.
Dealing with the aftermath, financially at least, will presumably take decades. I assume Boris will seek to push as much of it as possible on to the future. PMs usually last 3-5 years, he can probably defer the hard choices that long.
Maybe. Thing is, long term interest rates are starting to move up a bit. Higher debt servicing costs could be on the way. And the BoE is not going to bankroll Johnson any more.
The government's huge policy mistakes are coming home to roost.
Johnson and Cummings are undoubtedly great campaigners. But in government? sheeesh.
If the BoE refuses to continue to bankroll the Government's spending, expect noises about "nationalisation"...
Anyway - on other "difficult to explain" decisions that are quite possibly imminent - reversing the quarantine status of Portugal could be, er, interesting.
It's absolutely farcical that the quarantine situation seems to be based, as far as anyone can ascertain, to be based on country's reaching a self reported case level of 20 per 100,000 people. Quite how this level was determined, or how it takes account of the fact that it is hugely dependent on levels and targeting of testing, remains a bit of a mystery. Not to mention the still ignored issue of reported numbers often not aligning with people (eg. 4 positive tests for one person equals, er 4 reported cases). In the UK anyway - who knows about elsewhere.
Indeed. Portugal has already been put into quarantine twice and taken out twice. I've been flagging the Austrian situation, where the country was put into quarantine the same day as Portugal was released, for reasons that were flaky at the time, and have been followed by a series of relatively good statistics.
I see today's Austrian new case number is out already, at +181. Recent performance suggests Portugal's is likely to be worse.
This all stems from the inexplicable refusal simply to tell people to do without their sunshine holidays this year. If the Foreign Office advice to avoid all non-essential journeys outside of the Common Travel Area had remained in place then all of these problems would've been avoided.
Incidentally, has anybody seen Dominic Raab recently? I'm thinking perhaps he dissented from the change in travel advice, and has been spending the last couple of months tied to a chair in the basement of No.10?
This was the one that Boris f**ked up right at the beginning, with that rambling incoherent television address so memorably lampooned by Matt Lucas, which included announcing the supposedly clear new five-stage national alert system, and then saying we were currently at level three-and-a-half.
It never got off the runway.
The new system is: watch what Scotland is doing; wait a week during which ministers can build the suspense by denying or trashing the Scottish approach; do the same.
Yes, Johnson copies Sturgeons homework then hands it in late.
The SNP would not be anywhere near as popular without the Tories as a foil. It has been the cover for a lot of other failures.
It is Johnson's malevolent incompetence, as outlined in the header, that will end the United Kingdom.
The end of Transition is set to be a trainwreck too. What else can we expect?
Yesterday’s Briefing Room on R4 is well worth a listen. It included the suggestion that a thin last minute deal might be accompanied by an “implementation period” - during which everything would stay the same as currently. As a way to extend without actually extending.
He’ll be out of the door as quickly as Theresa May was, if he tries that one.
But who would they replace him with?
Rishi (= Disraeli)?????? Traditionally the Tories love a winner. And that goes above anything else.
Looks like Rishi plans to copy Corbyns 2019 manifesto on tax. The cycle of copying Labours manifesto is accelerating.
If they ramp up IHT or lower the thresholds then I'll be surprised - in a good way. But I doubt that they will. Going after estates enrages both stickbangers and their heirs in a way almost nothing else will, and is political nuclear death (as Theresa May discovered with the dementia tax.)
The Government won't want to go after income tax, NI and VAT - too controversial, too obvious - with the caveat that they might scrap the preferential NI rate currently enjoyed by the self-employed, which is something that Sunak has hinted at in the past. They daren't touch the stickbangers, of course, so we are stuck with the wretched triple lock for the foreseeable. Hiking corporation tax at the same time as trying to get us through Brexit might be considered brave, in the Sir Humphrey sense.
Thus, the most obvious targets are tax reliefs enjoyed by the working age population. The prime candidate is a big Brown-style raid on pensions, this time normalising reliefs at the basic rate for all contributions. The FT was suggesting earlier in the year that CGT might be rounded up to a flat rate of 28% for all assets, and my husband was also speculating just yesterday that the annual contribution limit for ISAs might be cut in half.
Of course, the most radical measure would be to go all out with a wealth tax and pocket a one-off levy on all assets - savings, pensions, shares, property, the lot - which could potentially recoup the cost of all the extra borrowing taken out during the Plague. But I think it really would take a Corbyn Government to dare to try something like that!
The Sunday Times is reporting this differently - with all pensions relief given at 30% thus higher than the basic rate but lower than the higher rate thus avoiding the obvious headlines of either.
I think something like that is likely.
Some interesting ideas.
But they need to stop ignoring the elephant in the room, which is the £25bn+ spent on the main residence relief CGT loophole.
That is worth more than all the rest put together.
That won't be touched.
No Government could touch it.
It could only, possibly, work if you scrapped stamp duty at the same time.
SD is a terrible tax that raises a fortune, it’s a major dampener on workforce mobility.
An inflated housing market isn't great for mobility either
Stamp Duty could be replaced by an annual property tax that raises the same money (i.e. people move on average every seven years so you'd pay an annual amount of about a seventh of the stamp duty on your home). But I reckon people wouldnt like it!
*sigh* I wasn't kidding about Windows 10 being bloatware. How much "can Microsoft do x" stuff do I have to click No to? Just sod off already. I don't want sodding Cortana etc etc
Make sure that you also review your One Drive privacy settings. If you try to ignore them then you will be asked the question every time you boot up.
Anyway - on other "difficult to explain" decisions that are quite possibly imminent - reversing the quarantine status of Portugal could be, er, interesting.
It's absolutely farcical that the quarantine situation seems to be based, as far as anyone can ascertain, to be based on country's reaching a self reported case level of 20 per 100,000 people. Quite how this level was determined, or how it takes account of the fact that it is hugely dependent on levels and targeting of testing, remains a bit of a mystery. Not to mention the still ignored issue of reported numbers often not aligning with people (eg. 4 positive tests for one person equals, er 4 reported cases). In the UK anyway - who knows about elsewhere.
Indeed. Portugal has already been put into quarantine twice and taken out twice. I've been flagging the Austrian situation, where the country was put into quarantine the same day as Portugal was released, for reasons that were flaky at the time, and have been followed by a series of relatively good statistics.
I see today's Austrian new case number is out already, at +181. Recent performance suggests Portugal's is likely to be worse.
This all stems from the inexplicable refusal simply to tell people to do without their sunshine holidays this year. If the Foreign Office advice to avoid all non-essential journeys outside of the Common Travel Area had remained in place then all of these problems would've been avoided.
Incidentally, has anybody seen Dominic Raab recently? I'm thinking perhaps he dissented from the change in travel advice, and has been spending the last couple of months tied to a chair in the basement of No.10?
Yep, the two biggest mistakes of the last six months have been the initial confusion with hospitals and care homes, and the refusal to compulsorily quarantine all arrivals - in hotels if necessary, and with mandatory testing.
All I can think is government giving in to a determined lobbying effort by the airlines, tour operators and newspapers - the travel industry is one of the few remaining large advertisers in physical newspapers, all those glossy weekend supplements don’t pay for themselves.
It was always going to be the case that, in such a fast moving situation, things would play out exactly as they have.
This was the one that Boris f**ked up right at the beginning, with that rambling incoherent television address so memorably lampooned by Matt Lucas, which included announcing the supposedly clear new five-stage national alert system, and then saying we were currently at level three-and-a-half.
It never got off the runway.
The new system is: watch what Scotland is doing; wait a week during which ministers can build the suspense by denying or trashing the Scottish approach; do the same.
Yes, Johnson copies Sturgeons homework then hands it in late.
The SNP would not be anywhere near as popular without the Tories as a foil. It has been the cover for a lot of other failures.
It is Johnson's malevolent incompetence, as outlined in the header, that will end the United Kingdom.
The end of Transition is set to be a trainwreck too. What else can we expect?
Yesterday’s Briefing Room on R4 is well worth a listen. It included the suggestion that a thin last minute deal might be accompanied by an “implementation period” - during which everything would stay the same as currently. As a way to extend without actually extending.
Yes, there was some discussion on the new border controls the other day, with the new arrangements to start in July 2021. It wasn't clear what happens in the interim.
Briefing Room suggested that the UK's intention was to implement controls and checks after six months, but suggested that in the absence of a deal the EU is likely to start sooner, if not right away.
It seems that the French understand that Brexit means Brexit, but that our government does not...
Brexit means Brexit was a dumb phrase which meant nothing when Brexiteers were using it and it is still dumb and means nothing when people try to turn it around in an attempt to be amusing.
It wasnt a devastating argument ender when used to push Brexit, and isnt a devastating argument ender when used to criticise Brexit.
The notable point here is that the continent seems better prepared than we are.
I'm sure that is true, but people really think they are being clever when they turn around the Brexit means Brexit line, and I find it incredibly infuritating as it was rightly attacked for meaning nothing, and now pretty much the same people try to use it themselves as a critique. I'm sure it is usually meant to be used ironically, but a dumb thing doesn't get less dumb depending on who uses it.
This was the one that Boris f**ked up right at the beginning, with that rambling incoherent television address so memorably lampooned by Matt Lucas, which included announcing the supposedly clear new five-stage national alert system, and then saying we were currently at level three-and-a-half.
It never got off the runway.
The new system is: watch what Scotland is doing; wait a week during which ministers can build the suspense by denying or trashing the Scottish approach; do the same.
Yes, Johnson copies Sturgeons homework then hands it in late.
The SNP would not be anywhere near as popular without the Tories as a foil. It has been the cover for a lot of other failures.
It is Johnson's malevolent incompetence, as outlined in the header, that will end the United Kingdom.
The end of Transition is set to be a trainwreck too. What else can we expect?
Yesterday’s Briefing Room on R4 is well worth a listen. It included the suggestion that a thin last minute deal might be accompanied by an “implementation period” - during which everything would stay the same as currently. As a way to extend without actually extending.
He’ll be out of the door as quickly as Theresa May was, if he tries that one.
But who would they replace him with?
Rishi (= Disraeli)?????? Traditionally the Tories love a winner. And that goes above anything else.
Looks like Rishi plans to copy Corbyns 2019 manifesto on tax. The cycle of copying Labours manifesto is accelerating.
If they ramp up IHT or lower the thresholds then I'll be surprised - in a good way. But I doubt that they will. Going after estates enrages both stickbangers and their heirs in a way almost nothing else will, and is political nuclear death (as Theresa May discovered with the dementia tax.)
The Government won't want to go after income tax, NI and VAT - too controversial, too obvious - with the caveat that they might scrap the preferential NI rate currently enjoyed by the self-employed, which is something that Sunak has hinted at in the past. They daren't touch the stickbangers, of course, so we are stuck with the wretched triple lock for the foreseeable. Hiking corporation tax at the same time as trying to get us through Brexit might be considered brave, in the Sir Humphrey sense.
Thus, the most obvious targets are tax reliefs enjoyed by the working age population. The prime candidate is a big Brown-style raid on pensions, this time normalising reliefs at the basic rate for all contributions. The FT was suggesting earlier in the year that CGT might be rounded up to a flat rate of 28% for all assets, and my husband was also speculating just yesterday that the annual contribution limit for ISAs might be cut in half.
Of course, the most radical measure would be to go all out with a wealth tax and pocket a one-off levy on all assets - savings, pensions, shares, property, the lot - which could potentially recoup the cost of all the extra borrowing taken out during the Plague. But I think it really would take a Corbyn Government to dare to try something like that!
The Sunday Times is reporting this differently - with all pensions relief given at 30% thus higher than the basic rate but lower than the higher rate thus avoiding the obvious headlines of either.
I think something like that is likely.
Some interesting ideas.
But they need to stop ignoring the elephant in the room, which is the £25bn+ spent on the main residence relief CGT loophole.
That is worth more than all the rest put together.
That won't be touched.
No Government could touch it.
It could only, possibly, work if you scrapped stamp duty at the same time.
SD is a terrible tax that raises a fortune, it’s a major dampener on workforce mobility.
An inflated housing market isn't great for mobility either
Stamp Duty could be replaced by an annual property tax that raises the same money (i.e. people move on average every seven years so you'd pay an annual amount of about a seventh of the stamp duty on your home). But I reckon people wouldnt like it!
A non-starter. Would be punishing for property-rich but cash-poor households, i.e. mostly pensioners. Same reason why Council Tax revaluation has never, ever happened, and we're still using a system based on prices in 1991.
First rule of politics: you don't soak the elderly. Ever.
This was the one that Boris f**ked up right at the beginning, with that rambling incoherent television address so memorably lampooned by Matt Lucas, which included announcing the supposedly clear new five-stage national alert system, and then saying we were currently at level three-and-a-half.
It never got off the runway.
The new system is: watch what Scotland is doing; wait a week during which ministers can build the suspense by denying or trashing the Scottish approach; do the same.
Yes, Johnson copies Sturgeons homework then hands it in late.
The SNP would not be anywhere near as popular without the Tories as a foil. It has been the cover for a lot of other failures.
It is Johnson's malevolent incompetence, as outlined in the header, that will end the United Kingdom.
The end of Transition is set to be a trainwreck too. What else can we expect?
Yesterday’s Briefing Room on R4 is well worth a listen. It included the suggestion that a thin last minute deal might be accompanied by an “implementation period” - during which everything would stay the same as currently. As a way to extend without actually extending.
He’ll be out of the door as quickly as Theresa May was, if he tries that one.
But who would they replace him with?
Rishi (= Disraeli)?????? Traditionally the Tories love a winner. And that goes above anything else.
Looks like Rishi plans to copy Corbyns 2019 manifesto on tax. The cycle of copying Labours manifesto is accelerating.
If they ramp up IHT or lower the thresholds then I'll be surprised - in a good way. But I doubt that they will. Going after estates enrages both stickbangers and their heirs in a way almost nothing else will, and is political nuclear death (as Theresa May discovered with the dementia tax.)
The Government won't want to go after income tax, NI and VAT - too controversial, too obvious - with the caveat that they might scrap the preferential NI rate currently enjoyed by the self-employed, which is something that Sunak has hinted at in the past. They daren't touch the stickbangers, of course, so we are stuck with the wretched triple lock for the foreseeable. Hiking corporation tax at the same time as trying to get us through Brexit might be considered brave, in the Sir Humphrey sense.
Thus, the most obvious targets are tax reliefs enjoyed by the working age population. The prime candidate is a big Brown-style raid on pensions, this time normalising reliefs at the basic rate for all contributions. The FT was suggesting earlier in the year that CGT might be rounded up to a flat rate of 28% for all assets, and my husband was also speculating just yesterday that the annual contribution limit for ISAs might be cut in half.
Of course, the most radical measure would be to go all out with a wealth tax and pocket a one-off levy on all assets - savings, pensions, shares, property, the lot - which could potentially recoup the cost of all the extra borrowing taken out during the Plague. But I think it really would take a Corbyn Government to dare to try something like that!
The Sunday Times is reporting this differently - with all pensions relief given at 30% thus higher than the basic rate but lower than the higher rate thus avoiding the obvious headlines of either.
I think something like that is likely.
Some interesting ideas.
But they need to stop ignoring the elephant in the room, which is the £25bn+ spent on the main residence relief CGT loophole.
That is worth more than all the rest put together.
That won't be touched.
No Government could touch it.
It could only, possibly, work if you scrapped stamp duty at the same time.
SD is a terrible tax that raises a fortune, it’s a major dampener on workforce mobility.
An inflated housing market isn't great for mobility either
Stamp Duty could be replaced by an annual property tax that raises the same money (i.e. people move on average every seven years so you'd pay an annual amount of about a seventh of the stamp duty on your home). But I reckon people wouldnt like it!
An ongoing charge would need to be paid for out of income, whereas a transactional cost can usually be absorbed into the financing arrangements for all but first time buyers.
It is going to be a horrible, horrible, horrible Autumn for Johnson, and every second of it is deserved.
can he survive? Maybe the party will let him steer brexit through. Beyond that, I think its doubtful.
And suddenly Sunak's hopes look a bit dented too. Soak this rich taxes? Lol, he won;t get to be leader on the back of those.
Graham Brady is going to reap a whirlwind this week.
We cannot get through this crisis without immense pain. The public and therefore to some degree Tory members and mps will accept that and therefore some level if unpalatable options may turn out to be palatable after all.
Nevertheless it is pain and yes that means the public will turn on Boris and the party, but government makes that inevitable sometimes. Incompetence will accelerate that but a reckoning was coming as a consequence of events even without it. Acting stunned that they will become unpopular or pretending it could be avoided forever in a crisis like this is just silly.
Johnsonism - if it exists - is based on the denial that pain exists. It is cakeism. It will be interesting to see how things develop.
I'm sure, as per HYUFD, that Boris will seek to avoid any difficult decision on taxes or spending as long as humanly possible. I dont know how long it can be, but probably longer than we think.
Dealing with the aftermath, financially at least, will presumably take decades. I assume Boris will seek to push as much of it as possible on to the future. PMs usually last 3-5 years, he can probably defer the hard choices that long.
Maybe. Thing is, long term interest rates are starting to move up a bit. Higher debt servicing costs could be on the way. And the BoE is not going to bankroll Johnson any more.
The government's huge policy mistakes are coming home to roost.
Johnson and Cummings are undoubtedly great campaigners. But in government? sheeesh.
It's almost as if newspaper editors were second home owners.
I still remember a BBC presenter being taken apart by an economist "But this will hit the typical second home owner" "There's nothing "typical" about a second home owner." Under 4% of the population have a second home - but they appear to be disproportionately represented in the commentariat
This was the one that Boris f**ked up right at the beginning, with that rambling incoherent television address so memorably lampooned by Matt Lucas, which included announcing the supposedly clear new five-stage national alert system, and then saying we were currently at level three-and-a-half.
It never got off the runway.
The new system is: watch what Scotland is doing; wait a week during which ministers can build the suspense by denying or trashing the Scottish approach; do the same.
Yes, Johnson copies Sturgeons homework then hands it in late.
The SNP would not be anywhere near as popular without the Tories as a foil. It has been the cover for a lot of other failures.
It is Johnson's malevolent incompetence, as outlined in the header, that will end the United Kingdom.
The end of Transition is set to be a trainwreck too. What else can we expect?
Yesterday’s Briefing Room on R4 is well worth a listen. It included the suggestion that a thin last minute deal might be accompanied by an “implementation period” - during which everything would stay the same as currently. As a way to extend without actually extending.
He’ll be out of the door as quickly as Theresa May was, if he tries that one.
But who would they replace him with?
Rishi (= Disraeli)?????? Traditionally the Tories love a winner. And that goes above anything else.
Looks like Rishi plans to copy Corbyns 2019 manifesto on tax. The cycle of copying Labours manifesto is accelerating.
If they ramp up IHT or lower the thresholds then I'll be surprised - in a good way. But I doubt that they will. Going after estates enrages both stickbangers and their heirs in a way almost nothing else will, and is political nuclear death (as Theresa May discovered with the dementia tax.)
The Government won't want to go after income tax, NI and VAT - too controversial, too obvious - with the caveat that they might scrap the preferential NI rate currently enjoyed by the self-employed, which is something that Sunak has hinted at in the past. They daren't touch the stickbangers, of course, so we are stuck with the wretched triple lock for the foreseeable. Hiking corporation tax at the same time as trying to get us through Brexit might be considered brave, in the Sir Humphrey sense.
Thus, the most obvious targets are tax reliefs enjoyed by the working age population. The prime candidate is a big Brown-style raid on pensions, this time normalising reliefs at the basic rate for all contributions. The FT was suggesting earlier in the year that CGT might be rounded up to a flat rate of 28% for all assets, and my husband was also speculating just yesterday that the annual contribution limit for ISAs might be cut in half.
Of course, the most radical measure would be to go all out with a wealth tax and pocket a one-off levy on all assets - savings, pensions, shares, property, the lot - which could potentially recoup the cost of all the extra borrowing taken out during the Plague. But I think it really would take a Corbyn Government to dare to try something like that!
The Sunday Times is reporting this differently - with all pensions relief given at 30% thus higher than the basic rate but lower than the higher rate thus avoiding the obvious headlines of either.
I think something like that is likely.
Some interesting ideas.
But they need to stop ignoring the elephant in the room, which is the £25bn+ spent on the main residence relief CGT loophole.
That is worth more than all the rest put together.
That won't be touched.
No Government could touch it.
It could only, possibly, work if you scrapped stamp duty at the same time.
SD is a terrible tax that raises a fortune, it’s a major dampener on workforce mobility.
An inflated housing market isn't great for mobility either
Stamp Duty could be replaced by an annual property tax that raises the same money (i.e. people move on average every seven years so you'd pay an annual amount of about a seventh of the stamp duty on your home). But I reckon people wouldnt like it!
An ongoing charge would need to be paid for out of income, whereas a transactional cost can usually be absorbed into the financing arrangements for all but first time buyers.
Nevertheless it would raise the same amount from property without hindering mobility or inflating the market still further.
And your objection could be overcome by allowing people to roll up the tax debt (with or without interest, according to policy) until the house is next sold - I.e. the same solution to the high capital low income problem often thrown at the mansion tax.
You put your right leg in, your right leg out, in, out, in, out, you shake it all about...
A Government drive to encourage millions of people working at home to go back to the office has been put on ice over concerns of a spike in coronavirus cases, the Telegraph can disclose.
Amid signs of confusion at the heart of Cabinet, ministers are understood to have rowed back on plans to launch a major campaign to urge office workers to return to their desks and start commuting again.
They fear any mass return could send infections soaring, and threaten the planned return of thousands of children to school over the next few weeks.
Trying to get people back to offices in a hurry was always going to be a silly idea, especially before the schools went back - and when MPs and thousands of civil servants are still working from home. The bigger issue is safety on overcrowded public transport, which no-one is trying to address first.
We are about to witness some fun* when it comes to schools transport. To maintain spacing the capacity of a bus is far less than the number of seats. Which means instead of 1 bus in a morning 2 or 3 will be needed. These buses don't sit idly by in a yard awaiting call up for Covid school shuttling duties...
Yes, school transport is going to be very difficult. I guess almost every spare bus in the country is going to be put to use, at a considerable cost, until there’s much more of an understanding around transmission vectors in children.
"Government guidance for England states that social distancing will not be required on dedicated school buses, which often carry the same group of children daily, although it should be in place wherever possible." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53894312
This was the one that Boris f**ked up right at the beginning, with that rambling incoherent television address so memorably lampooned by Matt Lucas, which included announcing the supposedly clear new five-stage national alert system, and then saying we were currently at level three-and-a-half.
It never got off the runway.
The new system is: watch what Scotland is doing; wait a week during which ministers can build the suspense by denying or trashing the Scottish approach; do the same.
Yes, Johnson copies Sturgeons homework then hands it in late.
The SNP would not be anywhere near as popular without the Tories as a foil. It has been the cover for a lot of other failures.
It is Johnson's malevolent incompetence, as outlined in the header, that will end the United Kingdom.
The end of Transition is set to be a trainwreck too. What else can we expect?
Yesterday’s Briefing Room on R4 is well worth a listen. It included the suggestion that a thin last minute deal might be accompanied by an “implementation period” - during which everything would stay the same as currently. As a way to extend without actually extending.
Yes, there was some discussion on the new border controls the other day, with the new arrangements to start in July 2021. It wasn't clear what happens in the interim.
Briefing Room suggested that the UK's intention was to implement controls and checks after six months, but suggested that in the absence of a deal the EU is likely to start sooner, if not right away.
It seems that the French understand that Brexit means Brexit, but that our government does not...
Brexit means Brexit was a dumb phrase which meant nothing when Brexiteers were using it and it is still dumb and means nothing when people try to turn it around in an attempt to be amusing.
It wasnt a devastating argument ender when used to push Brexit, and isnt a devastating argument ender when used to criticise Brexit.
The notable point here is that the continent seems better prepared than we are.
I'm sure that is true, but people really think they are being clever when they turn around the Brexit means Brexit line, and I find it incredibly infuritating as it was rightly attacked for meaning nothing, and now pretty much the same people try to use it themselves as a critique. I'm sure it is usually meant to be used ironically, but a dumb thing doesn't get less dumb depending on who uses it.
I always assumed that the meaning behind the original phrase from May of "Brexit means Brexit" was misinterpreted and tied her into a corner she never meant to go.
I thought it meant "Brexit means Brexit - no more, no less" - essentially it was intended to mean simply that the UK would leave the EU, but with no preconditions of the terms. ie. it could mean anything from a hard no deal Brexit to an extremely soft version. But very quickly it came to be interpreted as simply ruling out any sort of "BINO" deal.
You may have noticed certain events between those dates.
That's what Gordon Brown said between 2008 and 2010. None of us believed him.
Well he was right. That doesnt mean the conclusions need to change necessarily, then and now, but it does mean analysis needs to take account of the changing situation and thus the different messaging on austerity which is clearly meant to be found oh so amusing is anything but since even if the change is wrong there is clearly a reason for it which is understandable.
The point of that tweet (Scott has been very clear he posts such things to endorse criticism) was clearly 'look how dumb they are for changing their tune' but even if changing tune is wrong theres good reason why they might think of doing so, so at worst its mistaken not dumb or silly.
My point was incumbency during crises is not the place to be. The voter needs someone to blame
*sigh* I wasn't kidding about Windows 10 being bloatware. How much "can Microsoft do x" stuff do I have to click No to? Just sod off already. I don't want sodding Cortana etc etc
Oh, and don’t connect it to the internet until you’ve finished the initial setup, unless you like using a Microsoft Account to log in. In the pro version I think it takes three clicks on tiny buttons to find the “No I don’t want to use a bloody Microsoft Account” option, on the home version it’s pretty much impossible if you’ve put it online.
If Labour can be as divided, unpatriotic and offering only “hindsight” opposition and poll 40% that means some people obviously really want a change.
Whether it holds is another story but I do think this again brings up the question of how much of GE19 was Corbyn losing it.
I say that because in effect Labour is returning to its polling when Corbyn wasn’t hated, i.e. just after GE17. I think there Labour got as high as 45%?
One for the polling experts I suppose: when parties have been ahead before (say 5 points or more) has either party been at 40 as the lowest? I wonder if we’ll never see massive polling gaps in this parliament as the Tories stay at their base support and Labour stay at their ceiling
Anyway - on other "difficult to explain" decisions that are quite possibly imminent - reversing the quarantine status of Portugal could be, er, interesting.
It's absolutely farcical that the quarantine situation seems to be based, as far as anyone can ascertain, to be based on country's reaching a self reported case level of 20 per 100,000 people. Quite how this level was determined, or how it takes account of the fact that it is hugely dependent on levels and targeting of testing, remains a bit of a mystery. Not to mention the still ignored issue of reported numbers often not aligning with people (eg. 4 positive tests for one person equals, er 4 reported cases). In the UK anyway - who knows about elsewhere.
Indeed. Portugal has already been put into quarantine twice and taken out twice. I've been flagging the Austrian situation, where the country was put into quarantine the same day as Portugal was released, for reasons that were flaky at the time, and have been followed by a series of relatively good statistics.
I see today's Austrian new case number is out already, at +181. Recent performance suggests Portugal's is likely to be worse.
This all stems from the inexplicable refusal simply to tell people to do without their sunshine holidays this year. If the Foreign Office advice to avoid all non-essential journeys outside of the Common Travel Area had remained in place then all of these problems would've been avoided.
Incidentally, has anybody seen Dominic Raab recently? I'm thinking perhaps he dissented from the change in travel advice, and has been spending the last couple of months tied to a chair in the basement of No.10?
To be fair, he is having to oversee a massive departmental merger at the heart of Whitehall. Obviously what the Govt needed with so much else on its plate.
So what are people's views on this new TV channel announced by Robbie Gibb to challenge the BBC. Supposedly it will broadcast facts not opinions but the fact that it refers to the BCC as woke and wet and has approached Julia Hartley Brewer and I am guessing will be funded by advertising I suspect it isn't going to do anything to the BBC but will compete with ITV instead. Also mentioning JHB in the same breath as broadcasting facts not opinions seem an oxymoron.
Anyway - on other "difficult to explain" decisions that are quite possibly imminent - reversing the quarantine status of Portugal could be, er, interesting.
It's absolutely farcical that the quarantine situation seems to be based, as far as anyone can ascertain, to be based on country's reaching a self reported case level of 20 per 100,000 people. Quite how this level was determined, or how it takes account of the fact that it is hugely dependent on levels and targeting of testing, remains a bit of a mystery. Not to mention the still ignored issue of reported numbers often not aligning with people (eg. 4 positive tests for one person equals, er 4 reported cases). In the UK anyway - who knows about elsewhere.
Indeed. Portugal has already been put into quarantine twice and taken out twice. I've been flagging the Austrian situation, where the country was put into quarantine the same day as Portugal was released, for reasons that were flaky at the time, and have been followed by a series of relatively good statistics.
I see today's Austrian new case number is out already, at +181. Recent performance suggests Portugal's is likely to be worse.
This all stems from the inexplicable refusal simply to tell people to do without their sunshine holidays this year. If the Foreign Office advice to avoid all non-essential journeys outside of the Common Travel Area had remained in place then all of these problems would've been avoided.
Incidentally, has anybody seen Dominic Raab recently? I'm thinking perhaps he dissented from the change in travel advice, and has been spending the last couple of months tied to a chair in the basement of No.10?
Yep, the two biggest mistakes of the last six months have been the initial confusion with hospitals and care homes, and the refusal to compulsorily quarantine all arrivals - in hotels if necessary, and with mandatory testing.
All I can think is government giving in to a determined lobbying effort by the airlines, tour operators and newspapers - the travel industry is one of the few remaining large advertisers in physical newspapers, all those glossy weekend supplements don’t pay for themselves.
It was always going to be the case that, in such a fast moving situation, things would play out exactly as they have.
Indeed. And if anyone thinks the caterwauling over Portugal is going to be bad, wait until Greece and Turkey get the chop.
This isn't such a big deal if you're retired or can work from home 100% of the time, I suppose, but anybody who has a job to hold down that requires them to leave the house would have to be either desperate (i.e. flying to the bedside of a dying relative) or bloody mental to go abroad right now. Sadly, the latter description seems to extend to a significant fraction of the British population.
Interesting thread Alastair, and then the B-word has also been raised. So: 1. The 5 point scale was a joke from the start. Shagger announced we were at 3.5 on a 5 point scale. No wonder they have rarely mentioned it again 2. The government since admitted they are making the decisions based on science as opposed to following the science. Hence no need for a science based scale 3. This government wouldn't know how to properly manage such a scale anyway. So they abandoned it. 4. As for Brexit, whilst I know the government are indifferent towards the impact of no deal in public, in private they would have to be masochistic on an epic scale. So as with the Irish Sea border I expect Shagger will simply capitulate and announce it as a success. Its not as if Brexiteers know what Brexit is or even read the legislation as IDS revealed. So do a deal to for the *right* to have babies even if we haven't procured the box for the foetus to gestate in. And simply lie about it. The cabinet are good at lying.
On your first point, I’m not sure why so many people have a problem with fractions. Any scale like this has a fairly wide range of conditions which apply to each band, so saying 3.5 as shorthand for mid way between the two bands on each side makes sense to me. As to not mentioning it again, we are still at level 3. I would expect to hear if we go up or down, like we do with the security levels, but otherwise assume that we are were we were before.
The trouble with 3.5 was not fractions but that this was the scale's first use. It could easily have been a 10-point scale, or a 6-point scale. It invites ridicule, or at least bemusement, to unveil a new 5-point scale and simultaneously announce it does not work.
“Announc[ing] it does not work” is not the message I got from 3.5. Perhaps I am just more used to dealing with different scales and types of measurement.
No, in fact I'd say you are wrong and have been misled by your familiarity with physics measurements. Covid alert levels are on an *ordinal* scale so 3.5 does not mean halfway between 3 and 4 as it would in an *interval* scale like temperature in degrees celsius or fahrenheit or a *ratio* scale like temperature in kelvin; rather, it just means "somewhere" between 3 and 4. It is a distinction commonly made by social scientists and statisticians, if not by physicists.
And again, remember that since this was the first outing of the new scale, it could easily have had a sixth point added to represent our then-current situation.
Anyway - on other "difficult to explain" decisions that are quite possibly imminent - reversing the quarantine status of Portugal could be, er, interesting.
It's absolutely farcical that the quarantine situation seems to be based, as far as anyone can ascertain, to be based on country's reaching a self reported case level of 20 per 100,000 people. Quite how this level was determined, or how it takes account of the fact that it is hugely dependent on levels and targeting of testing, remains a bit of a mystery. Not to mention the still ignored issue of reported numbers often not aligning with people (eg. 4 positive tests for one person equals, er 4 reported cases). In the UK anyway - who knows about elsewhere.
Indeed. Portugal has already been put into quarantine twice and taken out twice. I've been flagging the Austrian situation, where the country was put into quarantine the same day as Portugal was released, for reasons that were flaky at the time, and have been followed by a series of relatively good statistics.
I see today's Austrian new case number is out already, at +181. Recent performance suggests Portugal's is likely to be worse.
This all stems from the inexplicable refusal simply to tell people to do without their sunshine holidays this year. If the Foreign Office advice to avoid all non-essential journeys outside of the Common Travel Area had remained in place then all of these problems would've been avoided.
Incidentally, has anybody seen Dominic Raab recently? I'm thinking perhaps he dissented from the change in travel advice, and has been spending the last couple of months tied to a chair in the basement of No.10?
To be fair, he is having to oversee a massive departmental merger at the heart of Whitehall. Obviously what the Govt needed with so much else on its plate.
Oh grief, I'd forgotten about the whole DFID thing in amongst the rest of the excitement.
This was the one that Boris f**ked up right at the beginning, with that rambling incoherent television address so memorably lampooned by Matt Lucas, which included announcing the supposedly clear new five-stage national alert system, and then saying we were currently at level three-and-a-half.
It never got off the runway.
The new system is: watch what Scotland is doing; wait a week during which ministers can build the suspense by denying or trashing the Scottish approach; do the same.
Yes, Johnson copies Sturgeons homework then hands it in late.
The SNP would not be anywhere near as popular without the Tories as a foil. It has been the cover for a lot of other failures.
It is Johnson's malevolent incompetence, as outlined in the header, that will end the United Kingdom.
The end of Transition is set to be a trainwreck too. What else can we expect?
Yesterday’s Briefing Room on R4 is well worth a listen. It included the suggestion that a thin last minute deal might be accompanied by an “implementation period” - during which everything would stay the same as currently. As a way to extend without actually extending.
He’ll be out of the door as quickly as Theresa May was, if he tries that one.
But who would they replace him with?
Rishi (= Disraeli)?????? Traditionally the Tories love a winner. And that goes above anything else.
Looks like Rishi plans to copy Corbyns 2019 manifesto on tax. The cycle of copying Labours manifesto is accelerating.
If they ramp up IHT or lower the thresholds then I'll be surprised - in a good way. But I doubt that they will. Going after estates enrages both stickbangers and their heirs in a way almost nothing else will, and is political nuclear death (as Theresa May discovered with the dementia tax.)
The Government won't want to go after income tax, NI and VAT - too controversial, too obvious - with the caveat that they might scrap the preferential NI rate currently enjoyed by the self-employed, which is something that Sunak has hinted at in the past. They daren't touch the stickbangers, of course, so we are stuck with the wretched triple lock for the foreseeable. Hiking corporation tax at the same time as trying to get us through Brexit might be considered brave, in the Sir Humphrey sense.
Thus, the most obvious targets are tax reliefs enjoyed by the working age population. The prime candidate is a big Brown-style raid on pensions, this time normalising reliefs at the basic rate for all contributions. The FT was suggesting earlier in the year that CGT might be rounded up to a flat rate of 28% for all assets, and my husband was also speculating just yesterday that the annual contribution limit for ISAs might be cut in half.
Of course, the most radical measure would be to go all out with a wealth tax and pocket a one-off levy on all assets - savings, pensions, shares, property, the lot - which could potentially recoup the cost of all the extra borrowing taken out during the Plague. But I think it really would take a Corbyn Government to dare to try something like that!
The Sunday Times is reporting this differently - with all pensions relief given at 30% thus higher than the basic rate but lower than the higher rate thus avoiding the obvious headlines of either.
I think something like that is likely.
Some interesting ideas.
But they need to stop ignoring the elephant in the room, which is the £25bn+ spent on the main residence relief CGT loophole.
That is worth more than all the rest put together.
Careful Matt, I brought this up a few weeks ago and got absolutely minced.
This was the one that Boris f**ked up right at the beginning, with that rambling incoherent television address so memorably lampooned by Matt Lucas, which included announcing the supposedly clear new five-stage national alert system, and then saying we were currently at level three-and-a-half.
It never got off the runway.
The new system is: watch what Scotland is doing; wait a week during which ministers can build the suspense by denying or trashing the Scottish approach; do the same.
Yes, Johnson copies Sturgeons homework then hands it in late.
The SNP would not be anywhere near as popular without the Tories as a foil. It has been the cover for a lot of other failures.
It is Johnson's malevolent incompetence, as outlined in the header, that will end the United Kingdom.
The end of Transition is set to be a trainwreck too. What else can we expect?
Yesterday’s Briefing Room on R4 is well worth a listen. It included the suggestion that a thin last minute deal might be accompanied by an “implementation period” - during which everything would stay the same as currently. As a way to extend without actually extending.
He’ll be out of the door as quickly as Theresa May was, if he tries that one.
But who would they replace him with?
Rishi (= Disraeli)?????? Traditionally the Tories love a winner. And that goes above anything else.
Looks like Rishi plans to copy Corbyns 2019 manifesto on tax. The cycle of copying Labours manifesto is accelerating.
If they ramp up IHT or lower the thresholds then I'll be surprised - in a good way. But I doubt that they will. Going after estates enrages both stickbangers and their heirs in a way almost nothing else will, and is political nuclear death (as Theresa May discovered with the dementia tax.)
The Government won't want to go after income tax, NI and VAT - too controversial, too obvious - with the caveat that they might scrap the preferential NI rate currently enjoyed by the self-employed, which is something that Sunak has hinted at in the past. They daren't touch the stickbangers, of course, so we are stuck with the wretched triple lock for the foreseeable. Hiking corporation tax at the same time as trying to get us through Brexit might be considered brave, in the Sir Humphrey sense.
Thus, the most obvious targets are tax reliefs enjoyed by the working age population. The prime candidate is a big Brown-style raid on pensions, this time normalising reliefs at the basic rate for all contributions. The FT was suggesting earlier in the year that CGT might be rounded up to a flat rate of 28% for all assets, and my husband was also speculating just yesterday that the annual contribution limit for ISAs might be cut in half.
Of course, the most radical measure would be to go all out with a wealth tax and pocket a one-off levy on all assets - savings, pensions, shares, property, the lot - which could potentially recoup the cost of all the extra borrowing taken out during the Plague. But I think it really would take a Corbyn Government to dare to try something like that!
The Sunday Times is reporting this differently - with all pensions relief given at 30% thus higher than the basic rate but lower than the higher rate thus avoiding the obvious headlines of either.
I think something like that is likely.
Some interesting ideas.
But they need to stop ignoring the elephant in the room, which is the £25bn+ spent on the main residence relief CGT loophole.
That is worth more than all the rest put together.
Careful Matt, I brought this up a few weeks ago and got absolutely minced.
If Labour can be as divided, unpatriotic and offering only “hindsight” opposition and poll 40% that means some people obviously really want a change.
Hard to tell. The Opposition is almost invisible and Starmer is a blank slate onto whom Johnson's many detractors can project their hopes and wishes.
When the Opposition is eventually obliged to announce a policy platform - i.e. to please some people and anger others - then we may better appreciate its chances. And there's probably a very long way to go indeed before the relative appeal of the parties is decided at a General Election, and we may have a different Prime Minister by that point.
Hence my insistence that these polling numbers are essentially meaningless. It's not to big Johnson up or do Starmer down. They simply are meaningless.
This crisis is an interesting test of Dominic Cummings' nirvana versus the civil service. So far, neither comes out well.
Remember Cummings told us Whitehall is not fit for purpose and should be replaced by central control from a Number 10 "war room" receiving real time data updates from, well, everywhere. All this to be augmented by superforecasters and weirdos with physics degrees running unspecified algorithms.
Cummings seems to have been right about Whitehall and wrong about central control.
This was the one that Boris f**ked up right at the beginning, with that rambling incoherent television address so memorably lampooned by Matt Lucas, which included announcing the supposedly clear new five-stage national alert system, and then saying we were currently at level three-and-a-half.
It never got off the runway.
The new system is: watch what Scotland is doing; wait a week during which ministers can build the suspense by denying or trashing the Scottish approach; do the same.
Yes, Johnson copies Sturgeons homework then hands it in late.
The SNP would not be anywhere near as popular without the Tories as a foil. It has been the cover for a lot of other failures.
It is Johnson's malevolent incompetence, as outlined in the header, that will end the United Kingdom.
The end of Transition is set to be a trainwreck too. What else can we expect?
Yesterday’s Briefing Room on R4 is well worth a listen. It included the suggestion that a thin last minute deal might be accompanied by an “implementation period” - during which everything would stay the same as currently. As a way to extend without actually extending.
He’ll be out of the door as quickly as Theresa May was, if he tries that one.
But who would they replace him with?
Rishi (= Disraeli)?????? Traditionally the Tories love a winner. And that goes above anything else.
Looks like Rishi plans to copy Corbyns 2019 manifesto on tax. The cycle of copying Labours manifesto is accelerating.
If they ramp up IHT or lower the thresholds then I'll be surprised - in a good way. But I doubt that they will. Going after estates enrages both stickbangers and their heirs in a way almost nothing else will, and is political nuclear death (as Theresa May discovered with the dementia tax.)
The Government won't want to go after income tax, NI and VAT - too controversial, too obvious - with the caveat that they might scrap the preferential NI rate currently enjoyed by the self-employed, which is something that Sunak has hinted at in the past. They daren't touch the stickbangers, of course, so we are stuck with the wretched triple lock for the foreseeable. Hiking corporation tax at the same time as trying to get us through Brexit might be considered brave, in the Sir Humphrey sense.
Thus, the most obvious targets are tax reliefs enjoyed by the working age population. The prime candidate is a big Brown-style raid on pensions, this time normalising reliefs at the basic rate for all contributions. The FT was suggesting earlier in the year that CGT might be rounded up to a flat rate of 28% for all assets, and my husband was also speculating just yesterday that the annual contribution limit for ISAs might be cut in half.
Of course, the most radical measure would be to go all out with a wealth tax and pocket a one-off levy on all assets - savings, pensions, shares, property, the lot - which could potentially recoup the cost of all the extra borrowing taken out during the Plague. But I think it really would take a Corbyn Government to dare to try something like that!
The Sunday Times is reporting this differently - with all pensions relief given at 30% thus higher than the basic rate but lower than the higher rate thus avoiding the obvious headlines of either.
I think something like that is likely.
Some interesting ideas.
But they need to stop ignoring the elephant in the room, which is the £25bn+ spent on the main residence relief CGT loophole.
That is worth more than all the rest put together.
Careful Matt, I brought this up a few weeks ago and got absolutely minced.
CGT on primary residence would end Sunak's chances of being elected Tory leader within about five seconds.
You put your right leg in, your right leg out, in, out, in, out, you shake it all about...
A Government drive to encourage millions of people working at home to go back to the office has been put on ice over concerns of a spike in coronavirus cases, the Telegraph can disclose.
Amid signs of confusion at the heart of Cabinet, ministers are understood to have rowed back on plans to launch a major campaign to urge office workers to return to their desks and start commuting again.
They fear any mass return could send infections soaring, and threaten the planned return of thousands of children to school over the next few weeks.
Trying to get people back to offices in a hurry was always going to be a silly idea, especially before the schools went back - and when MPs and thousands of civil servants are still working from home. The bigger issue is safety on overcrowded public transport, which no-one is trying to address first.
We are about to witness some fun* when it comes to schools transport. To maintain spacing the capacity of a bus is far less than the number of seats. Which means instead of 1 bus in a morning 2 or 3 will be needed. These buses don't sit idly by in a yard awaiting call up for Covid school shuttling duties...
Yes, school transport is going to be very difficult. I guess almost every spare bus in the country is going to be put to use, at a considerable cost, until there’s much more of an understanding around transmission vectors in children.
"Government guidance for England states that social distancing will not be required on dedicated school buses, which often carry the same group of children daily, although it should be in place wherever possible." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53894312
There will be chaos outside schools, as the proportion of parents choosing to chauffeur their little darlings to school rises exponentially. There has always been gridlock in the morning outside many schools as parents insist on parking at the school gates regardless of restrictions; this will get much worse. A minor feature, I know, but may get some (adverse) publicity.
Installing Windows 10 on a Chromebook. Which as a Chrome OS aficionado and Windows hater is a heresy far greater than pineapple on last night's pizza
We had Windows 10 installed on our computers at school over the summer holidays. I went in last week to get some work done. I’m now hoping that by the time term starts I will have access to all the files and programs I did before the upgrade, but I’m known as a bit of an optimist.
What feels like a bazillion years ago I did casual work for Sheffield University the summer after graduating. At one point I was installing Windows on 25 machines in one go - walking up and down the lab clicking away through the various stages on each machine.
Genuinely despise Windows these days. But still have use for a Windows based machine even if only to extend the life of a legacy printer. This Chromebook is decrepit but can still have a use - EDIT it appears to have stalled half way through install. Can see Windows Boot manager. Take 2...
The real irritation is that Windows 7 was working perfectly well, but talking to our IT manager they said that we had to switch (I’m not going to call it “upgrade”) as Microsoft is no longer providing security updates and we are under constant online attack. Windows 10 might not be great, but it’s probably better than trying to deal with a ransomware attack.
Best of luck... just hope that your school has treated the upgrade as a project and not had IT do it over the summer as business-as-usual. For example, they thoroughly catalogued departmental spreadsheets doing anything even half-critical and had the users test that they run OK in the new environment. I’m very familiar with one school that was only beginning to recover after several months of unforeseen disruption.
It is going to be a horrible, horrible, horrible Autumn for Johnson, and every second of it is deserved.
can he survive? Maybe the party will let him steer brexit through. Beyond that, I think its doubtful.
And suddenly Sunak's hopes look a bit dented too. Soak this rich taxes? Lol, he won;t get to be leader on the back of those.
Graham Brady is going to reap a whirlwind this week.
We cannot get through this crisis without immense pain. The public and therefore to some degree Tory members and mps will accept that and therefore some level if unpalatable options may turn out to be palatable after all.
Nevertheless it is pain and yes that means the public will turn on Boris and the party, but government makes that inevitable sometimes. Incompetence will accelerate that but a reckoning was coming as a consequence of events even without it. Acting stunned that they will become unpopular or pretending it could be avoided forever in a crisis like this is just silly.
Johnsonism - if it exists - is based on the denial that pain exists. It is cakeism. It will be interesting to see how things develop.
I'm sure, as per HYUFD, that Boris will seek to avoid any difficult decision on taxes or spending as long as humanly possible. I dont know how long it can be, but probably longer than we think.
Dealing with the aftermath, financially at least, will presumably take decades. I assume Boris will seek to push as much of it as possible on to the future. PMs usually last 3-5 years, he can probably defer the hard choices that long.
He might resign at the end of the year on the grounds of ill health leaving a hospital pass for his successor. Labour get a 10% lead. Then he rides to the rescue of the Tory party in early 2024 to take on the leadership again to do what he can do best - a successful GE campaign.
So what are people's views on this new TV channel announced by Robbie Gibb to challenge the BBC. Supposedly it will broadcast facts not opinions but the fact that it refers to the BCC as woke and wet and has approached Julia Hartley Brewer and I am guessing will be funded by advertising I suspect it isn't going to do anything to the BBC but will compete with ITV instead. Also mentioning JHB in the same breath as broadcasting facts not opinions seem an oxymoron.
I've not seen this. Or are you referring to the plans for a new TV news channel? I thought the plan was to take on Sky with that?
This crisis is an interesting test of Dominic Cummings' nirvana versus the civil service. So far, neither comes out well.
Remember Cummings told us Whitehall is not fit for purpose and should be replaced by central control from a Number 10 "war room" receiving real time data updates from, well, everywhere. All this to be augmented by superforecasters and weirdos with physics degrees running unspecified algorithms.
Cummings seems to have been right about Whitehall and wrong about central control.
An effective Civil Service is almost impossible when the Government makes short terminst decisions by media and opinion poll, and with little long term strategy at all times. If a Government at least aspires to good governance first, and trusts that good governance will lead to good electoral outcomes, then everything works a lot more smoothly.
You put your right leg in, your right leg out, in, out, in, out, you shake it all about...
A Government drive to encourage millions of people working at home to go back to the office has been put on ice over concerns of a spike in coronavirus cases, the Telegraph can disclose.
Amid signs of confusion at the heart of Cabinet, ministers are understood to have rowed back on plans to launch a major campaign to urge office workers to return to their desks and start commuting again.
They fear any mass return could send infections soaring, and threaten the planned return of thousands of children to school over the next few weeks.
Trying to get people back to offices in a hurry was always going to be a silly idea, especially before the schools went back - and when MPs and thousands of civil servants are still working from home. The bigger issue is safety on overcrowded public transport, which no-one is trying to address first.
We are about to witness some fun* when it comes to schools transport. To maintain spacing the capacity of a bus is far less than the number of seats. Which means instead of 1 bus in a morning 2 or 3 will be needed. These buses don't sit idly by in a yard awaiting call up for Covid school shuttling duties...
Yes, school transport is going to be very difficult. I guess almost every spare bus in the country is going to be put to use, at a considerable cost, until there’s much more of an understanding around transmission vectors in children.
"Government guidance for England states that social distancing will not be required on dedicated school buses, which often carry the same group of children daily, although it should be in place wherever possible." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53894312
There will be chaos outside schools, as the proportion of parents choosing to chauffeur their little darlings to school rises exponentially. There has always been gridlock in the morning outside many schools as parents insist on parking at the school gates regardless of restrictions; this will get much worse. A minor feature, I know, but may get some (adverse) publicity.
That at least should be ameliorated by staggered start times for different year groups. Besides which, if congestion around schools is that bad then the idiot parents will eventually learn to dump older kids, at any rate, a couple of streets away.
This was the one that Boris f**ked up right at the beginning, with that rambling incoherent television address so memorably lampooned by Matt Lucas, which included announcing the supposedly clear new five-stage national alert system, and then saying we were currently at level three-and-a-half.
It never got off the runway.
The new system is: watch what Scotland is doing; wait a week during which ministers can build the suspense by denying or trashing the Scottish approach; do the same.
Yes, Johnson copies Sturgeons homework then hands it in late.
The SNP would not be anywhere near as popular without the Tories as a foil. It has been the cover for a lot of other failures.
It is Johnson's malevolent incompetence, as outlined in the header, that will end the United Kingdom.
The end of Transition is set to be a trainwreck too. What else can we expect?
Yesterday’s Briefing Room on R4 is well worth a listen. It included the suggestion that a thin last minute deal might be accompanied by an “implementation period” - during which everything would stay the same as currently. As a way to extend without actually extending.
He’ll be out of the door as quickly as Theresa May was, if he tries that one.
But who would they replace him with?
Rishi (= Disraeli)?????? Traditionally the Tories love a winner. And that goes above anything else.
Looks like Rishi plans to copy Corbyns 2019 manifesto on tax. The cycle of copying Labours manifesto is accelerating.
If they ramp up IHT or lower the thresholds then I'll be surprised - in a good way. But I doubt that they will. Going after estates enrages both stickbangers and their heirs in a way almost nothing else will, and is political nuclear death (as Theresa May discovered with the dementia tax.)
The Government won't want to go after income tax, NI and VAT - too controversial, too obvious - with the caveat that they might scrap the preferential NI rate currently enjoyed by the self-employed, which is something that Sunak has hinted at in the past. They daren't touch the stickbangers, of course, so we are stuck with the wretched triple lock for the foreseeable. Hiking corporation tax at the same time as trying to get us through Brexit might be considered brave, in the Sir Humphrey sense.
Thus, the most obvious targets are tax reliefs enjoyed by the working age population. The prime candidate is a big Brown-style raid on pensions, this time normalising reliefs at the basic rate for all contributions. The FT was suggesting earlier in the year that CGT might be rounded up to a flat rate of 28% for all assets, and my husband was also speculating just yesterday that the annual contribution limit for ISAs might be cut in half.
Of course, the most radical measure would be to go all out with a wealth tax and pocket a one-off levy on all assets - savings, pensions, shares, property, the lot - which could potentially recoup the cost of all the extra borrowing taken out during the Plague. But I think it really would take a Corbyn Government to dare to try something like that!
The Sunday Times is reporting this differently - with all pensions relief given at 30% thus higher than the basic rate but lower than the higher rate thus avoiding the obvious headlines of either.
I think something like that is likely.
Some interesting ideas.
But they need to stop ignoring the elephant in the room, which is the £25bn+ spent on the main residence relief CGT loophole.
That is worth more than all the rest put together.
Careful Matt, I brought this up a few weeks ago and got absolutely minced.
CGT on primary residence would end Sunak's chances of being elected Tory leader within about five seconds.
Also replying to @contrarian who basically posted the same.
You are probably right.
Can anyone remember the impact of removing Mortgage Tax Relief which I would have thought even more dramatic.
You put your right leg in, your right leg out, in, out, in, out, you shake it all about...
A Government drive to encourage millions of people working at home to go back to the office has been put on ice over concerns of a spike in coronavirus cases, the Telegraph can disclose.
Amid signs of confusion at the heart of Cabinet, ministers are understood to have rowed back on plans to launch a major campaign to urge office workers to return to their desks and start commuting again.
They fear any mass return could send infections soaring, and threaten the planned return of thousands of children to school over the next few weeks.
Trying to get people back to offices in a hurry was always going to be a silly idea, especially before the schools went back - and when MPs and thousands of civil servants are still working from home. The bigger issue is safety on overcrowded public transport, which no-one is trying to address first.
We are about to witness some fun* when it comes to schools transport. To maintain spacing the capacity of a bus is far less than the number of seats. Which means instead of 1 bus in a morning 2 or 3 will be needed. These buses don't sit idly by in a yard awaiting call up for Covid school shuttling duties...
Yes, school transport is going to be very difficult. I guess almost every spare bus in the country is going to be put to use, at a considerable cost, until there’s much more of an understanding around transmission vectors in children.
"Government guidance for England states that social distancing will not be required on dedicated school buses, which often carry the same group of children daily, although it should be in place wherever possible." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53894312
There will be chaos outside schools, as the proportion of parents choosing to chauffeur their little darlings to school rises exponentially. There has always been gridlock in the morning outside many schools as parents insist on parking at the school gates regardless of restrictions; this will get much worse. A minor feature, I know, but may get some (adverse) publicity.
That at least should be ameliorated by staggered start times for different year groups. Besides which, if congestion around schools is that bad then the idiot parents will eventually learn to dump older kids, at any rate, a couple of streets away.
Is "breaking social distancing behind the bike sheds" going to become the modern day equivalent of "smoking behind the bike sheds"?
What are actually the theoretical enforcement mechanisms for defying mask rules in schools? Presumably not fines?
If Labour can be as divided, unpatriotic and offering only “hindsight” opposition and poll 40% that means some people obviously really want a change.
Whether it holds is another story but I do think this again brings up the question of how much of GE19 was Corbyn losing it.
I say that because in effect Labour is returning to its polling when Corbyn wasn’t hated, i.e. just after GE17. I think there Labour got as high as 45%?
One for the polling experts I suppose: when parties have been ahead before (say 5 points or more) has either party been at 40 as the lowest? I wonder if we’ll never see massive polling gaps in this parliament as the Tories stay at their base support and Labour stay at their ceiling
Easy does it. Still early days.
Expect rise and fall before the middle of next year. By this time next year, Labour SHOULD be well ahead.
You put your right leg in, your right leg out, in, out, in, out, you shake it all about...
A Government drive to encourage millions of people working at home to go back to the office has been put on ice over concerns of a spike in coronavirus cases, the Telegraph can disclose.
Amid signs of confusion at the heart of Cabinet, ministers are understood to have rowed back on plans to launch a major campaign to urge office workers to return to their desks and start commuting again.
They fear any mass return could send infections soaring, and threaten the planned return of thousands of children to school over the next few weeks.
Trying to get people back to offices in a hurry was always going to be a silly idea, especially before the schools went back - and when MPs and thousands of civil servants are still working from home. The bigger issue is safety on overcrowded public transport, which no-one is trying to address first.
We are about to witness some fun* when it comes to schools transport. To maintain spacing the capacity of a bus is far less than the number of seats. Which means instead of 1 bus in a morning 2 or 3 will be needed. These buses don't sit idly by in a yard awaiting call up for Covid school shuttling duties...
Yes, school transport is going to be very difficult. I guess almost every spare bus in the country is going to be put to use, at a considerable cost, until there’s much more of an understanding around transmission vectors in children.
"Government guidance for England states that social distancing will not be required on dedicated school buses, which often carry the same group of children daily, although it should be in place wherever possible." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53894312
There will be chaos outside schools, as the proportion of parents choosing to chauffeur their little darlings to school rises exponentially. There has always been gridlock in the morning outside many schools as parents insist on parking at the school gates regardless of restrictions; this will get much worse. A minor feature, I know, but may get some (adverse) publicity.
That at least should be ameliorated by staggered start times for different year groups. Besides which, if congestion around schools is that bad then the idiot parents will eventually learn to dump older kids, at any rate, a couple of streets away.
I think you overestimate the ability of parents to learn...
The more I think about the higher and additional rate tax reliefs for pension contributions, the more I reckon they're first in line for the chop. Raises a substantial amount of revenue, doesn't impact economic activity as income tax or VAT rises would, and has zero effect on those already drawing their pensions, who are not to be soaked under any circumstances.
Comments
Starmer is now ahead of Johnson on best PM, and has drawn level with him on voting intention. Some Tory Remainers are starting to desert the ship.
This is astonishing stuff. It's only going to get worse.
As a consequence, we started taking multivitamins in our household some months ago - they don't cost too much, shouldn't do any harm and might actually help, so it seemed like a good idea.
Genuinely despise Windows these days. But still have use for a Windows based machine even if only to extend the life of a legacy printer. This Chromebook is decrepit but can still have a use - EDIT it appears to have stalled half way through install. Can see Windows Boot manager. Take 2...
But they need to stop ignoring the elephant in the room, which is the £25bn+ spent on the main residence relief CGT loophole.
That is worth more than all the rest put together.
Nevertheless it is pain and yes that means the public will turn on Boris and the party, but government makes that inevitable sometimes. Incompetence will accelerate that but a reckoning was coming as a consequence of events even without it. Acting stunned that they will become unpopular or pretending it could be avoided forever in a crisis like this is just silly.
OK, maybe he'll surprise me once he's got the Labour Party under control by emerging as a decisive Blair-like political genius, but I have to say the omens so far aren't very good.
(We can all come up with excuses for why the Labour Party hasn't made hay, like the difficulty of getting media coverage during a pandemic, or the need to deal with the Corbynites in the Party, or whatever, but making excuses can become a way of life).
The point of that tweet (Scott has been very clear he posts such things to endorse criticism) was clearly 'look how dumb they are for changing their tune' but even if changing tune is wrong theres good reason why they might think of doing so, so at worst its mistaken not dumb or silly.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/28/whitehall-mandarins-have-lost-sight-means-politically-neutral/
On pensions relief, surely a flat rate wouldn't be created at 30%? When you're trying desperately to raise funds then why on Earth would you devise a huge new tax break - a 50% increase for all basic rate taxpayers - where it doesn't presently exist?
It's absolutely farcical that the quarantine situation seems to be based, as far as anyone can ascertain, to be based on country's reaching a self reported case level of 20 per 100,000 people. Quite how this level was determined, or how it takes account of the fact that it is hugely dependent on levels and targeting of testing, remains a bit of a mystery. Not to mention the still ignored issue of reported numbers often not aligning with people (eg. 4 positive tests for one person equals, er 4 reported cases). In the UK anyway - who knows about elsewhere.
No Government could touch it.
Maybe if you remove the possibility of flipping when owning multiple residences, but other than that...
I see today's Austrian new case number is out already, at +181. Recent performance suggests Portugal's is likely to be worse.
If a tax looks like it would gain vast sums of money then you have to think about:
- what are the effects on the economy of taking that amount of money out of circulation all at once;
- how will people get round it.
On the second I can see people setting up a company to buy their house so that when they sell it to buy a new one the capital gain is offset by the new purchase.
I think Sunak can kiss that 30bn tax rise package goodbye.
Who the feck is running this country?
https://twitter.com/familyunequal/status/1299838208721776646
https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/windows_7.png
Dealing with the aftermath, financially at least, will presumably take decades. I assume Boris will seek to push as much of it as possible on to the future. PMs usually last 3-5 years, he can probably defer the hard choices that long.
Of course the large change in age distribution will also be to some extent an artefact of greatly increased testing numbers picking up more very mild or asymptomatic cases.
I now have Windows 10 Pro. On a Chromebook. Yay?
https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/success.png
The government's huge policy mistakes are coming home to roost.
Johnson and Cummings are undoubtedly great campaigners. But in government? sheeesh.
But yes, the point of the thread was that the Conservatives, or at least the Johnson government, is indeed bad, though it doesn't explicitly say that it is worse than the Opposition. And that the Conservatives should be doing worse than they are. And I'm saying that a reason why they're not is the weakness of the Opposition. And you haven't disagreed with any of the points I made, that I can see.
SD is a terrible tax that raises a fortune, it’s a major dampener on workforce mobility.
Incidentally, has anybody seen Dominic Raab recently? I'm thinking perhaps he dissented from the change in travel advice, and has been spending the last couple of months tied to a chair in the basement of No.10?
Stamp Duty could be replaced by an annual property tax that raises the same money (i.e. people move on average every seven years so you'd pay an annual amount of about a seventh of the stamp duty on your home). But I reckon people wouldnt like it!
Colville is right. Business, hammered by Johnson's policy edicts, is no position to weather these taxes.
Its quite possible that the tax rises could yield less, not the GBP12bn the treasury calculates.
All I can think is government giving in to a determined lobbying effort by the airlines, tour operators and newspapers - the travel industry is one of the few remaining large advertisers in physical newspapers, all those glossy weekend supplements don’t pay for themselves.
It was always going to be the case that, in such a fast moving situation, things would play out exactly as they have.
First rule of politics: you don't soak the elderly. Ever.
And your objection could be overcome by allowing people to roll up the tax debt (with or without interest, according to policy) until the house is next sold - I.e. the same solution to the high capital low income problem often thrown at the mansion tax.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53894312
I thought it meant "Brexit means Brexit - no more, no less" - essentially it was intended to mean simply that the UK would leave the EU, but with no preconditions of the terms. ie. it could mean anything from a hard no deal Brexit to an extremely soft version. But very quickly it came to be interpreted as simply ruling out any sort of "BINO" deal.
Whether it holds is another story but I do think this again brings up the question of how much of GE19 was Corbyn losing it.
I say that because in effect Labour is returning to its polling when Corbyn wasn’t hated, i.e. just after GE17. I think there Labour got as high as 45%?
One for the polling experts I suppose: when parties have been ahead before (say 5 points or more) has either party been at 40 as the lowest? I wonder if we’ll never see massive polling gaps in this parliament as the Tories stay at their base support and Labour stay at their ceiling
This isn't such a big deal if you're retired or can work from home 100% of the time, I suppose, but anybody who has a job to hold down that requires them to leave the house would have to be either desperate (i.e. flying to the bedside of a dying relative) or bloody mental to go abroad right now. Sadly, the latter description seems to extend to a significant fraction of the British population.
And again, remember that since this was the first outing of the new scale, it could easily have had a sixth point added to represent our then-current situation.
Oh dear, Mr Sunak,
This 'government' thing is a bit tougher it first appeared.
https://twitter.com/DuncanWeldon/status/1299980186797080576?s=20
https://twitter.com/DuncanWeldon/status/1299998568464478208?s=20
Its just that politically, it is suicide.
When the Opposition is eventually obliged to announce a policy platform - i.e. to please some people and anger others - then we may better appreciate its chances. And there's probably a very long way to go indeed before the relative appeal of the parties is decided at a General Election, and we may have a different Prime Minister by that point.
Hence my insistence that these polling numbers are essentially meaningless. It's not to big Johnson up or do Starmer down. They simply are meaningless.
Remember Cummings told us Whitehall is not fit for purpose and should be replaced by central control from a Number 10 "war room" receiving real time data updates from, well, everywhere. All this to be augmented by superforecasters and weirdos with physics degrees running unspecified algorithms.
Cummings seems to have been right about Whitehall and wrong about central control.
A century on, the UK government will start paying back the nation’s first world war debt, which amounts to £2bn.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/blog/2014/oct/31/paying-the-price-of-war-britain-makes-good-on-historic-debts
Inflation will do much of the heavy lifting.....
You are probably right.
Can anyone remember the impact of removing Mortgage Tax Relief which I would have thought even more dramatic.
What are actually the theoretical enforcement mechanisms for defying mask rules in schools? Presumably not fines?
Expect rise and fall before the middle of next year. By this time next year, Labour SHOULD be well ahead.
Probably gone in the next Budget.