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Is the British public the new Édith Piaf? – politicalbetting.com

SystemSystem Posts: 11,002
edited July 2022 in General
Is the British public the new Édith Piaf? – politicalbetting.com

To Boris Johnson, Non, je ne regrette rien. https://t.co/siPP7p2Go7

Read the full story here

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Comments

  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 113,957
    First?
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,766
    FPT...

    Re Dover:

    Demand for passport control is highly variable. During certain time of the year there is enormous demand for it - because there are tens of thousands of people going on (or coming back from) holidays. There are lots of cars, and each car has many occupants.

    At other times, there are just a few tens of lorries (each with just a driver) requiring minimal time and effort.

    And this is a much greater issue at Dover than at Heathrow or Luton. People travelling by car to the Continent are much more likely to have kids with them, than those flying.

    Governments don't deal well with highly variable things. It would be expensive to have 50 passport control officers there 365 days a year... but getting trained staff there during just the busiest times is far from easy. (Especially as those busiest times are the times when passport officers probably want to go on holiday with their own families.)

    HM Government should propose a plan like Nexus/Sentri in the US, which handles land crossings to Mexico and Canada. Basically, you pay a fee, do a background check and register your vehicle. When you are due to cross the border, you tell them who will be in your vehicle, and then you pretty much drive straight through.

    Of course, they have a man looking into the vehicle as you go through, and they pull out vehicles where they think there might be a mismatch between who is registered and who is actually travelling. And - of course - there's jail time for all involved if it turned out you lied.

    In general, this works very well. People with families do the work ahead of time, and cross quickly. Those who have criminal records or have not, will sit in queues for a couple of hours.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835
    edited July 2022
    Second.
    Don't see quite how still having the support of Tory voters buggers owt?
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 47,786
    dixiedean said:

    Second.

    Your post was obviously delayed in a verification queue.
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 14,911
    More like La Vie en Rose at the next election.🌹
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,629
    FPT

    eek said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    DavidL said:

    pm215 said:

    It *is* possible for government policy to grow the economy, despite naysayers on left and right.

    True, but it's also highly non-obvious how to go about it. Otherwise every government would do it...
    The UK is now some way off the frontier of the productivity / GDP, so there are actually lots of things we could do.

    They all involve confronting various vested interests, though.
    French style, permanent tax breaks on investment in plant and machinery. At say, 100% tax relief.
    Yes. Full relief. For starters.

    UK is actually at the bottom end of tax
    competitiveness for business, despite common belief, and has essentially disincentivised capex until very recently.


    We have focused on the low rate of CT rather than the effective rate. Rather than cancel the increase in the base rate we should increase the allowances. I don't see why 100% relief should be the cap either on capital spending or on training. We need incentives to invest in this country and the actual rate of CT is not particularly relevant to that.
    After thinking about this for a week, and digging into a bit, we should probably do all of the above AND keep corporation tax lowish.
    I would make high quality investment in machinery and high quality training very very tax advantageous.

    Pay for it by putting up CT.

    Fuck Business.
    I don’t get the “fuck business” bit.
    eek said:

    pm215 said:

    It *is* possible for government policy to grow the economy, despite naysayers on left and right.

    True, but it's also highly non-obvious how to go about it. Otherwise every government would do it...
    The UK is now some way off the frontier of the productivity / GDP, so there are actually lots of things we could do.

    They all involve confronting various vested interests, though.
    @Sam_Dumitriu
    Why I'm a Booster and not a Doomster:

    In almost every area of policy I've looked into depth, there are massive low-hanging fruit capable of increasing GDP by at least 3-5% each.


    https://twitter.com/Sam_Dumitriu/status/1551283707767656465
    That's all complete and utter codswallop

    Take

    The average Brit spends 115 hours in traffic each year. Swapping Fuel Duty for Road Pricing would boost GDP for 2 reasons.

    1. You can't work if you're stuck in traffic.
    2. Your effective labour market is smaller reducing the benefits of agglomeration.

    How does reducing your effective labour market solve anything?

    or

    This study suggest constraints on housing supply have a 13.5% GDP cost in the US. And there are good reasons to believe supply is even more constrained in the UK

    Firstly does he know that NIMBYISM is worth a lot of votes. Secondly has he seen how hard it is to do anything in San Francisco (yes I know it's an extreme example but there are plenty of others)..

    I don’t think it’s codswallop.
    It might be politically unrealistic, but it’s pretty obvious that Britain’s productivity is significantly impaired by housing/planning/transport issues.
    But look at his solution to a problem - he wishes to price people off commuting to increase the effective labour market size.

    How does that work because all you do with road pricing is move the tax from being paid at the pump to being paid per mile on the road - you haven't changed anything beyond when and how it's collected. You haven't done anything to make the commute time shorter.
    Actually, he does not.

    He suggests that road pricing will smooth traffic flow as people respond to paying full cost of congestion during peak hours.

    He references Singapore where, as he notes, average urban traffic speeds have *sped up* in recent years as congestion as decreased.
    is he? - he references road pricing rather than dynamic road pricing - if he had referenced dynamic or time based road pricing I would just ask the simple question - where and how are you going to build the infrastructure to do it?
    Followed by have you seen the cost of doing it for even a small fixed point like the Dartford or Tyne Tunnels...

    Now Dynamic Road pricing is possible in a small rich country when you limit it to particular routes - it's a lot harder to do in somewhere like the UK....

    Easy enough if you GPS track all cars...

    I'm sure the Home Office would never suggest such a thing.
    You can't GPS all cars - because the car isn't under the Government's control so the GPS can be removed or disabled.
    Isn't GPS going to be required for speed controls? I thought they were going to be mandatory. If it is done on visual sign recognition then there will be plenty fun to be had.

    Of course, anything can be disabled, just like you can drive around without insurance.

    Presumably you could check each car "exists" when it passes an existing camera.
    As an aside I worked at WS Atkins in Blairs first term and got a sight of a DfT discussion document on road pricing which included some proposed figures per mile. Most in our document calculated how much our costs would be to commute and I was second closest to the office at 22 miles.....my costs would have been £150 a week to goto work. Petrol at the time for the commute was costing me £30 a week to compare. Most of us were of the view if it ever came in then we would have to quit and find a job closer to home.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    dixiedean said:

    Second.
    Don't see quite how still having the support of Tory voters buggers owt?

    It is a curious question.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835
    Second.

    dixiedean said:

    Second.

    Your post was obviously delayed in a verification queue.
    Indeed. While they fumbled about for a page to stamp, a foreign resident just waltzed straight past me.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    I thought you didn't put accents on capitals...
  • Why am I not allowed to comment anymore
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392
    Regret is obvious when they don't know how well a successor would do. If they do ok they'll think it was the right thing to do very quickly. If they do poorly, the members will invent a scenario where firefighting constant Boris scandals was going to be a positive with the electorate for some reason. The recalcitrant MPs will mythologise it - see the blaming of ousting Thatcher leading to a decade out of office, even though the Tories won the next election.
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 55,008
    rcs1000 said:

    Regarding our GDP and productivity we have comparative advantage in very-high end manufacturing, creative industries, pharmaceuticals, telecoms, and financial professional services.

    Therefore, we'd want policies and trade deals to leverage those globally as best we could, and that includes the EU.

    However, in and of itself I don't think that's sufficient because a good mass of our population will never get high paying jobs in any of those sectors and we have to be able to offer them something other than low-wage, low-security, low-value work that is migrant heavy and convenient for those in the thriving sectors but drags down our GDP and income per head and our productivity measures.

    Switzerland and Germany have both largely solved that issue though.

    And they have done so by (a) having lots of vocational training for 16 to 21 year olds who aren't going to University, and (b) having largely contributory benefits schemes, so that young people essentially have to choose between working and training. There is no "don't work, and still recieve money" option.
    Very interesting - thanks.

    And what sort of work do they do? Particularly in Germany?

    How do we employ the "bulk" of our population if not in warehouses, fast food, low-end construction, retail and distribution?
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,608
    eek said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    DavidL said:

    pm215 said:

    It *is* possible for government policy to grow the economy, despite naysayers on left and right.

    True, but it's also highly non-obvious how to go about it. Otherwise every government would do it...
    The UK is now some way off the frontier of the productivity / GDP, so there are actually lots of things we could do.

    They all involve confronting various vested interests, though.
    French style, permanent tax breaks on investment in plant and machinery. At say, 100% tax relief.
    Yes. Full relief. For starters.

    UK is actually at the bottom end of tax
    competitiveness for business, despite common belief, and has essentially disincentivised capex until very recently.


    We have focused on the low rate of CT rather than the effective rate. Rather than cancel the increase in the base rate we should increase the allowances. I don't see why 100% relief should be the cap either on capital spending or on training. We need incentives to invest in this country and the actual rate of CT is not particularly relevant to that.
    After thinking about this for a week, and digging into a bit, we should probably do all of the above AND keep corporation tax lowish.
    I would make high quality investment in machinery and high quality training very very tax advantageous.

    Pay for it by putting up CT.

    Fuck Business.
    I don’t get the “fuck business” bit.
    eek said:

    pm215 said:

    It *is* possible for government policy to grow the economy, despite naysayers on left and right.

    True, but it's also highly non-obvious how to go about it. Otherwise every government would do it...
    The UK is now some way off the frontier of the productivity / GDP, so there are actually lots of things we could do.

    They all involve confronting various vested interests, though.
    @Sam_Dumitriu
    Why I'm a Booster and not a Doomster:

    In almost every area of policy I've looked into depth, there are massive low-hanging fruit capable of increasing GDP by at least 3-5% each.


    https://twitter.com/Sam_Dumitriu/status/1551283707767656465
    That's all complete and utter codswallop

    Take

    The average Brit spends 115 hours in traffic each year. Swapping Fuel Duty for Road Pricing would boost GDP for 2 reasons.

    1. You can't work if you're stuck in traffic.
    2. Your effective labour market is smaller reducing the benefits of agglomeration.

    How does reducing your effective labour market solve anything?

    or

    This study suggest constraints on housing supply have a 13.5% GDP cost in the US. And there are good reasons to believe supply is even more constrained in the UK

    Firstly does he know that NIMBYISM is worth a lot of votes. Secondly has he seen how hard it is to do anything in San Francisco (yes I know it's an extreme example but there are plenty of others)..

    I don’t think it’s codswallop.
    It might be politically unrealistic, but it’s pretty obvious that Britain’s productivity is significantly impaired by housing/planning/transport issues.
    But look at his solution to a problem - he wishes to price people off commuting to increase the effective labour market size.

    How does that work because all you do with road pricing is move the tax from being paid at the pump to being paid per mile on the road - you haven't changed anything beyond when and how it's collected. You haven't done anything to make the commute time shorter.
    Actually, he does not.

    He suggests that road pricing will smooth traffic flow as people respond to paying full cost of congestion during peak hours.

    He references Singapore where, as he notes, average urban traffic speeds have *sped up* in recent years as congestion as decreased.
    is he? - he references road pricing rather than dynamic road pricing - if he had referenced dynamic or time based road pricing I would just ask the simple question - where and how are you going to build the infrastructure to do it?
    Followed by have you seen the cost of doing it for even a small fixed point like the Dartford or Tyne Tunnels...

    Now Dynamic Road pricing is possible in a small rich country when you limit it to particular routes - it's a lot harder to do in somewhere like the UK....

    Easy enough if you GPS track all cars...

    I'm sure the Home Office would never suggest such a thing.
    You can't GPS all cars - because the car isn't under the Government's control so the GPS can be removed or disabled.
    License plate reading cameras are practically archaic - cheap and reliable.

  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,824
    edited July 2022
    LD mega surge lolz. Keir leads by 10 over Rishi, 5 over Liz but the VI gap is still narrowing
    Labour leads by 6%.

    Westminster Voting Intention (24 July):

    Labour 40% (-4)
    Conservative 34% (-1)
    Liberal Democrat 12% (+3)
    Green 5% (–)
    Scottish National Party 4% (+1)
    Reform UK 3% (–)
    Other 2% (+1)

    Changes +/- 20-21 July

    https://t.co/Ew1SV6Acy4 https://t.co/RRyVSxWqab
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,608
    Pagan2 said:

    FPT

    eek said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    DavidL said:

    pm215 said:

    It *is* possible for government policy to grow the economy, despite naysayers on left and right.

    True, but it's also highly non-obvious how to go about it. Otherwise every government would do it...
    The UK is now some way off the frontier of the productivity / GDP, so there are actually lots of things we could do.

    They all involve confronting various vested interests, though.
    French style, permanent tax breaks on investment in plant and machinery. At say, 100% tax relief.
    Yes. Full relief. For starters.

    UK is actually at the bottom end of tax
    competitiveness for business, despite common belief, and has essentially disincentivised capex until very recently.


    We have focused on the low rate of CT rather than the effective rate. Rather than cancel the increase in the base rate we should increase the allowances. I don't see why 100% relief should be the cap either on capital spending or on training. We need incentives to invest in this country and the actual rate of CT is not particularly relevant to that.
    After thinking about this for a week, and digging into a bit, we should probably do all of the above AND keep corporation tax lowish.
    I would make high quality investment in machinery and high quality training very very tax advantageous.

    Pay for it by putting up CT.

    Fuck Business.
    I don’t get the “fuck business” bit.
    eek said:

    pm215 said:

    It *is* possible for government policy to grow the economy, despite naysayers on left and right.

    True, but it's also highly non-obvious how to go about it. Otherwise every government would do it...
    The UK is now some way off the frontier of the productivity / GDP, so there are actually lots of things we could do.

    They all involve confronting various vested interests, though.
    @Sam_Dumitriu
    Why I'm a Booster and not a Doomster:

    In almost every area of policy I've looked into depth, there are massive low-hanging fruit capable of increasing GDP by at least 3-5% each.


    https://twitter.com/Sam_Dumitriu/status/1551283707767656465
    That's all complete and utter codswallop

    Take

    The average Brit spends 115 hours in traffic each year. Swapping Fuel Duty for Road Pricing would boost GDP for 2 reasons.

    1. You can't work if you're stuck in traffic.
    2. Your effective labour market is smaller reducing the benefits of agglomeration.

    How does reducing your effective labour market solve anything?

    or

    This study suggest constraints on housing supply have a 13.5% GDP cost in the US. And there are good reasons to believe supply is even more constrained in the UK

    Firstly does he know that NIMBYISM is worth a lot of votes. Secondly has he seen how hard it is to do anything in San Francisco (yes I know it's an extreme example but there are plenty of others)..

    I don’t think it’s codswallop.
    It might be politically unrealistic, but it’s pretty obvious that Britain’s productivity is significantly impaired by housing/planning/transport issues.
    But look at his solution to a problem - he wishes to price people off commuting to increase the effective labour market size.

    How does that work because all you do with road pricing is move the tax from being paid at the pump to being paid per mile on the road - you haven't changed anything beyond when and how it's collected. You haven't done anything to make the commute time shorter.
    Actually, he does not.

    He suggests that road pricing will smooth traffic flow as people respond to paying full cost of congestion during peak hours.

    He references Singapore where, as he notes, average urban traffic speeds have *sped up* in recent years as congestion as decreased.
    is he? - he references road pricing rather than dynamic road pricing - if he had referenced dynamic or time based road pricing I would just ask the simple question - where and how are you going to build the infrastructure to do it?
    Followed by have you seen the cost of doing it for even a small fixed point like the Dartford or Tyne Tunnels...

    Now Dynamic Road pricing is possible in a small rich country when you limit it to particular routes - it's a lot harder to do in somewhere like the UK....

    Easy enough if you GPS track all cars...

    I'm sure the Home Office would never suggest such a thing.
    You can't GPS all cars - because the car isn't under the Government's control so the GPS can be removed or disabled.
    Isn't GPS going to be required for speed controls? I thought they were going to be mandatory. If it is done on visual sign recognition then there will be plenty fun to be had.

    Of course, anything can be disabled, just like you can drive around without insurance.

    Presumably you could check each car "exists" when it passes an existing camera.
    As an aside I worked at WS Atkins in Blairs first term and got a sight of a DfT discussion document on road pricing which included some proposed figures per mile. Most in our document calculated how much our costs would be to commute and I was second closest to the office at 22 miles.....my costs would have been £150 a week to goto work. Petrol at the time for the commute was costing me £30 a week to compare. Most of us were of the view if it ever came in then we would have to quit and find a job closer to home.
    The opposition to whichever government bought that in would get a 200 seat majority at the next election.
  • FF43FF43 Posts: 15,543
    edited July 2022
    FF43 said:

    DavidL said:

    PJH said:

    PJH said:

    GIN1138 said:

    I've just received my new (blue) passport - The Brexit dividend is complete! :heart:

    Congratulations. You are hereby now entitled to join a long, long queue to get across the Channel (once it's been stamped by a surly French customs agent). Brexit - the joy!
    And potential deportation if you get an incompetent border agent who forgets to stamp your passport correctly on the way out.
    I have read several times on this very forum that it still only takes seconds to stamp a passport.

    This is simply not true. Said surly and incompetent border guard has to leaf through your passport to find the most recent entry and exit stamps to ensure you are compliant with the visa-free 90/180 rule. That takes longer than a few seconds.
    But checks were always required, so nothing is new.

    If checks take twice as long then if you have twice as many staff on, then nothing has changed. Just staff appropriately based upon today's circumstances.
    Sorry, you keep repeating this, but the checks are new. Even if they were required previously, they weren't done. Those of us who hopped across the Channel can testify that most of the time you were just waved through, with the occasional random check.
    Indeed - that was my experience too. Normally the only checks outbound were done by the UK Border force, the French normally just checked you were waving the same number of passports at them as there were passengers in the car. They might stop Eastern European vehicles occasionally.

    Also @BartholomewRoberts doesn't consider that Dover and Folkestone both have major constraints on capacity due to geography. Given the extra time taken to process, it may be that it isn't possible simply to keep increasing the number of border posts - there needs to be somewhere to put them, and the waiting cars. A more realistic option may be to limit the number of vehicle crossings.

    Incidentally I notice that my shiny new blue passport has, in 4 months, already received the same number of stamps (5) as my previous one had in its lifetime.
    In the event it takes 24 booths instead of 12 then would the responsible thing to do be:

    A: Get 24 booths. Use compulsory purchase orders if necessary.

    B: Stick with 12. Blame voters for a choice they may six years ago.

    They've had six years to prepare for this. It isn't voters responsibility to deal with this, it's government's responsibility to accept voters choices and adapt.
    Have you actually been to Dover? Have you seen where the port actually is? Folkestone isn't much better. Are you planning to requisition the Castle, or the White Cliffs?
    Yes I have and yes there's space for 12 extra booths if they're needed. Where there's a will, there's a way.

    As @RochdalePioneers has repeatedly said the Port of Dover requested ~£30 million to build new facilities. Oddly enough they didn't seem bothered that they'd need to requisition the White Cliffs to do so.

    Considering that EU membership cost us £350mn a week gross, less net, and considering that this is supposedly your big problem with Brexit - spending half of one working day's gross EU membership fees to construct 12 extra booths and eliminate the problem seems like a bit of a bargain does it not?

    Extending Article 50 and then the transition period cost us about €20 billion, so €20,000,000,000, so if £30,000,000 is the cost of fixing this and then we're out of the EU and the problem is dealt with, then voting Brexit seems eminently logical does it not?

    If after six years this problem is real and hasn't been fixed, that's a failure of one or more of the respective government's not a failure of voting for Brexit.
    What we saw on Saturday is that half the booths were manned and a huge backlog built up. What we saw on Sunday was that all the booths were manned and the backlog melted away. This was always going to be one of the busiest weekends of the year. I am not sure that not increasing the number of booths is the problem. The absolute bottleneck is of course the number of ferries that can get in and out of the port. Spending more money on passport control is not going to change that.
    I believe the ferries were leaving somewhat empty because passport control couldn't keep up. Brexit requires more checking of passports. If you don't have more checkers you will get delays. Whose fault it is, is up for debate. Either it's Brexit, Dover Port/UKG, geography or the French border control. If it's the latter two they are not things we can control so we will have to live with the delay in that case.
    Personally, I think it's mainly a combination of Brexit and Geography. One of those two on its own would be OK, but there is a very large number of vehicles and people passing through a largely unavoidable pinch point, which doesn't afford any additional barriers.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812
    Pagan2 said:

    FPT

    eek said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    DavidL said:

    pm215 said:

    It *is* possible for government policy to grow the economy, despite naysayers on left and right.

    True, but it's also highly non-obvious how to go about it. Otherwise every government would do it...
    The UK is now some way off the frontier of the productivity / GDP, so there are actually lots of things we could do.

    They all involve confronting various vested interests, though.
    French style, permanent tax breaks on investment in plant and machinery. At say, 100% tax relief.
    Yes. Full relief. For starters.

    UK is actually at the bottom end of tax
    competitiveness for business, despite common belief, and has essentially disincentivised capex until very recently.


    We have focused on the low rate of CT rather than the effective rate. Rather than cancel the increase in the base rate we should increase the allowances. I don't see why 100% relief should be the cap either on capital spending or on training. We need incentives to invest in this country and the actual rate of CT is not particularly relevant to that.
    After thinking about this for a week, and digging into a bit, we should probably do all of the above AND keep corporation tax lowish.
    I would make high quality investment in machinery and high quality training very very tax advantageous.

    Pay for it by putting up CT.

    Fuck Business.
    I don’t get the “fuck business” bit.
    eek said:

    pm215 said:

    It *is* possible for government policy to grow the economy, despite naysayers on left and right.

    True, but it's also highly non-obvious how to go about it. Otherwise every government would do it...
    The UK is now some way off the frontier of the productivity / GDP, so there are actually lots of things we could do.

    They all involve confronting various vested interests, though.
    @Sam_Dumitriu
    Why I'm a Booster and not a Doomster:

    In almost every area of policy I've looked into depth, there are massive low-hanging fruit capable of increasing GDP by at least 3-5% each.


    https://twitter.com/Sam_Dumitriu/status/1551283707767656465
    That's all complete and utter codswallop

    Take

    The average Brit spends 115 hours in traffic each year. Swapping Fuel Duty for Road Pricing would boost GDP for 2 reasons.

    1. You can't work if you're stuck in traffic.
    2. Your effective labour market is smaller reducing the benefits of agglomeration.

    How does reducing your effective labour market solve anything?

    or

    This study suggest constraints on housing supply have a 13.5% GDP cost in the US. And there are good reasons to believe supply is even more constrained in the UK

    Firstly does he know that NIMBYISM is worth a lot of votes. Secondly has he seen how hard it is to do anything in San Francisco (yes I know it's an extreme example but there are plenty of others)..

    I don’t think it’s codswallop.
    It might be politically unrealistic, but it’s pretty obvious that Britain’s productivity is significantly impaired by housing/planning/transport issues.
    But look at his solution to a problem - he wishes to price people off commuting to increase the effective labour market size.

    How does that work because all you do with road pricing is move the tax from being paid at the pump to being paid per mile on the road - you haven't changed anything beyond when and how it's collected. You haven't done anything to make the commute time shorter.
    Actually, he does not.

    He suggests that road pricing will smooth traffic flow as people respond to paying full cost of congestion during peak hours.

    He references Singapore where, as he notes, average urban traffic speeds have *sped up* in recent years as congestion as decreased.
    is he? - he references road pricing rather than dynamic road pricing - if he had referenced dynamic or time based road pricing I would just ask the simple question - where and how are you going to build the infrastructure to do it?
    Followed by have you seen the cost of doing it for even a small fixed point like the Dartford or Tyne Tunnels...

    Now Dynamic Road pricing is possible in a small rich country when you limit it to particular routes - it's a lot harder to do in somewhere like the UK....

    Easy enough if you GPS track all cars...

    I'm sure the Home Office would never suggest such a thing.
    You can't GPS all cars - because the car isn't under the Government's control so the GPS can be removed or disabled.
    Isn't GPS going to be required for speed controls? I thought they were going to be mandatory. If it is done on visual sign recognition then there will be plenty fun to be had.

    Of course, anything can be disabled, just like you can drive around without insurance.

    Presumably you could check each car "exists" when it passes an existing camera.
    As an aside I worked at WS Atkins in Blairs first term and got a sight of a DfT discussion document on road pricing which included some proposed figures per mile. Most in our document calculated how much our costs would be to commute and I was second closest to the office at 22 miles.....my costs would have been £150 a week to goto work. Petrol at the time for the commute was costing me £30 a week to compare. Most of us were of the view if it ever came in then we would have to quit and find a job closer to home.
    Suspect the data could do with a “re-run” after 25 years.
  • DriverDriver Posts: 4,522

    LD mega surge lolz. Statmer leads by 10 over Rishi, 5 over Liz but the VI gap is still narrowing
    Labour leads by 6%.

    Westminster Voting Intention (24 July):

    Labour 40% (-4)
    Conservative 34% (-1)
    Liberal Democrat 12% (+3)
    Green 5% (–)
    Scottish National Party 4% (+1)
    Reform UK 3% (–)
    Other 2% (+1)

    Changes +/- 20-21 July

    https://t.co/Ew1SV6Acy4 https://t.co/RRyVSxWqab

    Boris still ahead of Sir Keir on approval, 31 to 27 (and 9 to 6 on "strongly approve")...
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797

    Pagan2 said:

    FPT

    eek said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    DavidL said:

    pm215 said:

    It *is* possible for government policy to grow the economy, despite naysayers on left and right.

    True, but it's also highly non-obvious how to go about it. Otherwise every government would do it...
    The UK is now some way off the frontier of the productivity / GDP, so there are actually lots of things we could do.

    They all involve confronting various vested interests, though.
    French style, permanent tax breaks on investment in plant and machinery. At say, 100% tax relief.
    Yes. Full relief. For starters.

    UK is actually at the bottom end of tax
    competitiveness for business, despite common belief, and has essentially disincentivised capex until very recently.


    We have focused on the low rate of CT rather than the effective rate. Rather than cancel the increase in the base rate we should increase the allowances. I don't see why 100% relief should be the cap either on capital spending or on training. We need incentives to invest in this country and the actual rate of CT is not particularly relevant to that.
    After thinking about this for a week, and digging into a bit, we should probably do all of the above AND keep corporation tax lowish.
    I would make high quality investment in machinery and high quality training very very tax advantageous.

    Pay for it by putting up CT.

    Fuck Business.
    I don’t get the “fuck business” bit.
    eek said:

    pm215 said:

    It *is* possible for government policy to grow the economy, despite naysayers on left and right.

    True, but it's also highly non-obvious how to go about it. Otherwise every government would do it...
    The UK is now some way off the frontier of the productivity / GDP, so there are actually lots of things we could do.

    They all involve confronting various vested interests, though.
    @Sam_Dumitriu
    Why I'm a Booster and not a Doomster:

    In almost every area of policy I've looked into depth, there are massive low-hanging fruit capable of increasing GDP by at least 3-5% each.


    https://twitter.com/Sam_Dumitriu/status/1551283707767656465
    That's all complete and utter codswallop

    Take

    The average Brit spends 115 hours in traffic each year. Swapping Fuel Duty for Road Pricing would boost GDP for 2 reasons.

    1. You can't work if you're stuck in traffic.
    2. Your effective labour market is smaller reducing the benefits of agglomeration.

    How does reducing your effective labour market solve anything?

    or

    This study suggest constraints on housing supply have a 13.5% GDP cost in the US. And there are good reasons to believe supply is even more constrained in the UK

    Firstly does he know that NIMBYISM is worth a lot of votes. Secondly has he seen how hard it is to do anything in San Francisco (yes I know it's an extreme example but there are plenty of others)..

    I don’t think it’s codswallop.
    It might be politically unrealistic, but it’s pretty obvious that Britain’s productivity is significantly impaired by housing/planning/transport issues.
    But look at his solution to a problem - he wishes to price people off commuting to increase the effective labour market size.

    How does that work because all you do with road pricing is move the tax from being paid at the pump to being paid per mile on the road - you haven't changed anything beyond when and how it's collected. You haven't done anything to make the commute time shorter.
    Actually, he does not.

    He suggests that road pricing will smooth traffic flow as people respond to paying full cost of congestion during peak hours.

    He references Singapore where, as he notes, average urban traffic speeds have *sped up* in recent years as congestion as decreased.
    is he? - he references road pricing rather than dynamic road pricing - if he had referenced dynamic or time based road pricing I would just ask the simple question - where and how are you going to build the infrastructure to do it?
    Followed by have you seen the cost of doing it for even a small fixed point like the Dartford or Tyne Tunnels...

    Now Dynamic Road pricing is possible in a small rich country when you limit it to particular routes - it's a lot harder to do in somewhere like the UK....

    Easy enough if you GPS track all cars...

    I'm sure the Home Office would never suggest such a thing.
    You can't GPS all cars - because the car isn't under the Government's control so the GPS can be removed or disabled.
    Isn't GPS going to be required for speed controls? I thought they were going to be mandatory. If it is done on visual sign recognition then there will be plenty fun to be had.

    Of course, anything can be disabled, just like you can drive around without insurance.

    Presumably you could check each car "exists" when it passes an existing camera.
    As an aside I worked at WS Atkins in Blairs first term and got a sight of a DfT discussion document on road pricing which included some proposed figures per mile. Most in our document calculated how much our costs would be to commute and I was second closest to the office at 22 miles.....my costs would have been £150 a week to goto work. Petrol at the time for the commute was costing me £30 a week to compare. Most of us were of the view if it ever came in then we would have to quit and find a job closer to home.
    Suspect the data could do with a “re-run” after 25 years.
    The issue comes down to the lack of price elasticity for commuting AND the sheer amount of tax revenue the Government would want.

    Put it this way Road pricing won't be designed to be cheaper than petrol duty...
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,629

    Pagan2 said:

    FPT

    eek said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    DavidL said:

    pm215 said:

    It *is* possible for government policy to grow the economy, despite naysayers on left and right.

    True, but it's also highly non-obvious how to go about it. Otherwise every government would do it...
    The UK is now some way off the frontier of the productivity / GDP, so there are actually lots of things we could do.

    They all involve confronting various vested interests, though.
    French style, permanent tax breaks on investment in plant and machinery. At say, 100% tax relief.
    Yes. Full relief. For starters.

    UK is actually at the bottom end of tax
    competitiveness for business, despite common belief, and has essentially disincentivised capex until very recently.


    We have focused on the low rate of CT rather than the effective rate. Rather than cancel the increase in the base rate we should increase the allowances. I don't see why 100% relief should be the cap either on capital spending or on training. We need incentives to invest in this country and the actual rate of CT is not particularly relevant to that.
    After thinking about this for a week, and digging into a bit, we should probably do all of the above AND keep corporation tax lowish.
    I would make high quality investment in machinery and high quality training very very tax advantageous.

    Pay for it by putting up CT.

    Fuck Business.
    I don’t get the “fuck business” bit.
    eek said:

    pm215 said:

    It *is* possible for government policy to grow the economy, despite naysayers on left and right.

    True, but it's also highly non-obvious how to go about it. Otherwise every government would do it...
    The UK is now some way off the frontier of the productivity / GDP, so there are actually lots of things we could do.

    They all involve confronting various vested interests, though.
    @Sam_Dumitriu
    Why I'm a Booster and not a Doomster:

    In almost every area of policy I've looked into depth, there are massive low-hanging fruit capable of increasing GDP by at least 3-5% each.


    https://twitter.com/Sam_Dumitriu/status/1551283707767656465
    That's all complete and utter codswallop

    Take

    The average Brit spends 115 hours in traffic each year. Swapping Fuel Duty for Road Pricing would boost GDP for 2 reasons.

    1. You can't work if you're stuck in traffic.
    2. Your effective labour market is smaller reducing the benefits of agglomeration.

    How does reducing your effective labour market solve anything?

    or

    This study suggest constraints on housing supply have a 13.5% GDP cost in the US. And there are good reasons to believe supply is even more constrained in the UK

    Firstly does he know that NIMBYISM is worth a lot of votes. Secondly has he seen how hard it is to do anything in San Francisco (yes I know it's an extreme example but there are plenty of others)..

    I don’t think it’s codswallop.
    It might be politically unrealistic, but it’s pretty obvious that Britain’s productivity is significantly impaired by housing/planning/transport issues.
    But look at his solution to a problem - he wishes to price people off commuting to increase the effective labour market size.

    How does that work because all you do with road pricing is move the tax from being paid at the pump to being paid per mile on the road - you haven't changed anything beyond when and how it's collected. You haven't done anything to make the commute time shorter.
    Actually, he does not.

    He suggests that road pricing will smooth traffic flow as people respond to paying full cost of congestion during peak hours.

    He references Singapore where, as he notes, average urban traffic speeds have *sped up* in recent years as congestion as decreased.
    is he? - he references road pricing rather than dynamic road pricing - if he had referenced dynamic or time based road pricing I would just ask the simple question - where and how are you going to build the infrastructure to do it?
    Followed by have you seen the cost of doing it for even a small fixed point like the Dartford or Tyne Tunnels...

    Now Dynamic Road pricing is possible in a small rich country when you limit it to particular routes - it's a lot harder to do in somewhere like the UK....

    Easy enough if you GPS track all cars...

    I'm sure the Home Office would never suggest such a thing.
    You can't GPS all cars - because the car isn't under the Government's control so the GPS can be removed or disabled.
    Isn't GPS going to be required for speed controls? I thought they were going to be mandatory. If it is done on visual sign recognition then there will be plenty fun to be had.

    Of course, anything can be disabled, just like you can drive around without insurance.

    Presumably you could check each car "exists" when it passes an existing camera.
    As an aside I worked at WS Atkins in Blairs first term and got a sight of a DfT discussion document on road pricing which included some proposed figures per mile. Most in our document calculated how much our costs would be to commute and I was second closest to the office at 22 miles.....my costs would have been £150 a week to goto work. Petrol at the time for the commute was costing me £30 a week to compare. Most of us were of the view if it ever came in then we would have to quit and find a job closer to home.
    Suspect the data could do with a “re-run” after 25 years.
    It was 2002 and I should stress the prices proposed came from civil servants not the governement as I understood it. I suspect Blair took one look at the figures and nixed it.
  • ComRes looking like an outlier, I think Tories get a bounce but not enough to outdo Labour
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812
    eek said:

    Pagan2 said:

    FPT

    eek said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    DavidL said:

    pm215 said:

    It *is* possible for government policy to grow the economy, despite naysayers on left and right.

    True, but it's also highly non-obvious how to go about it. Otherwise every government would do it...
    The UK is now some way off the frontier of the productivity / GDP, so there are actually lots of things we could do.

    They all involve confronting various vested interests, though.
    French style, permanent tax breaks on investment in plant and machinery. At say, 100% tax relief.
    Yes. Full relief. For starters.

    UK is actually at the bottom end of tax
    competitiveness for business, despite common belief, and has essentially disincentivised capex until very recently.


    We have focused on the low rate of CT rather than the effective rate. Rather than cancel the increase in the base rate we should increase the allowances. I don't see why 100% relief should be the cap either on capital spending or on training. We need incentives to invest in this country and the actual rate of CT is not particularly relevant to that.
    After thinking about this for a week, and digging into a bit, we should probably do all of the above AND keep corporation tax lowish.
    I would make high quality investment in machinery and high quality training very very tax advantageous.

    Pay for it by putting up CT.

    Fuck Business.
    I don’t get the “fuck business” bit.
    eek said:

    pm215 said:

    It *is* possible for government policy to grow the economy, despite naysayers on left and right.

    True, but it's also highly non-obvious how to go about it. Otherwise every government would do it...
    The UK is now some way off the frontier of the productivity / GDP, so there are actually lots of things we could do.

    They all involve confronting various vested interests, though.
    @Sam_Dumitriu
    Why I'm a Booster and not a Doomster:

    In almost every area of policy I've looked into depth, there are massive low-hanging fruit capable of increasing GDP by at least 3-5% each.


    https://twitter.com/Sam_Dumitriu/status/1551283707767656465
    That's all complete and utter codswallop

    Take

    The average Brit spends 115 hours in traffic each year. Swapping Fuel Duty for Road Pricing would boost GDP for 2 reasons.

    1. You can't work if you're stuck in traffic.
    2. Your effective labour market is smaller reducing the benefits of agglomeration.

    How does reducing your effective labour market solve anything?

    or

    This study suggest constraints on housing supply have a 13.5% GDP cost in the US. And there are good reasons to believe supply is even more constrained in the UK

    Firstly does he know that NIMBYISM is worth a lot of votes. Secondly has he seen how hard it is to do anything in San Francisco (yes I know it's an extreme example but there are plenty of others)..

    I don’t think it’s codswallop.
    It might be politically unrealistic, but it’s pretty obvious that Britain’s productivity is significantly impaired by housing/planning/transport issues.
    But look at his solution to a problem - he wishes to price people off commuting to increase the effective labour market size.

    How does that work because all you do with road pricing is move the tax from being paid at the pump to being paid per mile on the road - you haven't changed anything beyond when and how it's collected. You haven't done anything to make the commute time shorter.
    Actually, he does not.

    He suggests that road pricing will smooth traffic flow as people respond to paying full cost of congestion during peak hours.

    He references Singapore where, as he notes, average urban traffic speeds have *sped up* in recent years as congestion as decreased.
    is he? - he references road pricing rather than dynamic road pricing - if he had referenced dynamic or time based road pricing I would just ask the simple question - where and how are you going to build the infrastructure to do it?
    Followed by have you seen the cost of doing it for even a small fixed point like the Dartford or Tyne Tunnels...

    Now Dynamic Road pricing is possible in a small rich country when you limit it to particular routes - it's a lot harder to do in somewhere like the UK....

    Easy enough if you GPS track all cars...

    I'm sure the Home Office would never suggest such a thing.
    You can't GPS all cars - because the car isn't under the Government's control so the GPS can be removed or disabled.
    Isn't GPS going to be required for speed controls? I thought they were going to be mandatory. If it is done on visual sign recognition then there will be plenty fun to be had.

    Of course, anything can be disabled, just like you can drive around without insurance.

    Presumably you could check each car "exists" when it passes an existing camera.
    As an aside I worked at WS Atkins in Blairs first term and got a sight of a DfT discussion document on road pricing which included some proposed figures per mile. Most in our document calculated how much our costs would be to commute and I was second closest to the office at 22 miles.....my costs would have been £150 a week to goto work. Petrol at the time for the commute was costing me £30 a week to compare. Most of us were of the view if it ever came in then we would have to quit and find a job closer to home.
    Suspect the data could do with a “re-run” after 25 years.
    The issue comes down to the lack of price elasticity for commuting AND the sheer amount of tax revenue the Government would want.

    Put it this way Road pricing won't be designed to be cheaper than petrol duty...
    I suspect the price elasticity of commuting has changed a bit post-Covid.

    As for the amount of tax revenue, if it replacing fuel duty, then it’s no extra burden overall, albeit there will be winners and losers.

    Amazon delivery drivers, for example, would likely be losers. But rural drivers, winners.
  • FF43FF43 Posts: 15,543
    edited July 2022
    carnforth said:

    FF43 said:

    Cookie said:

    FF43 said:

    DavidL said:

    PJH said:

    PJH said:

    GIN1138 said:

    I've just received my new (blue) passport - The Brexit dividend is complete! :heart:

    Congratulations. You are hereby now entitled to join a long, long queue to get across the Channel (once it's been stamped by a surly French customs agent). Brexit - the joy!
    And potential deportation if you get an incompetent border agent who forgets to stamp your passport correctly on the way out.
    I have read several times on this very forum that it still only takes seconds to stamp a passport.

    This is simply not true. Said surly and incompetent border guard has to leaf through your passport to find the most recent entry and exit stamps to ensure you are compliant with the visa-free 90/180 rule. That takes longer than a few seconds.
    But checks were always required, so nothing is new.

    If checks take twice as long then if you have twice as many staff on, then nothing has changed. Just staff appropriately based upon today's circumstances.
    Sorry, you keep repeating this, but the checks are new. Even if they were required previously, they weren't done. Those of us who hopped across the Channel can testify that most of the time you were just waved through, with the occasional random check.
    Indeed - that was my experience too. Normally the only checks outbound were done by the UK Border force, the French normally just checked you were waving the same number of passports at them as there were passengers in the car. They might stop Eastern European vehicles occasionally.

    Also @BartholomewRoberts doesn't consider that Dover and Folkestone both have major constraints on capacity due to geography. Given the extra time taken to process, it may be that it isn't possible simply to keep increasing the number of border posts - there needs to be somewhere to put them, and the waiting cars. A more realistic option may be to limit the number of vehicle crossings.

    Incidentally I notice that my shiny new blue passport has, in 4 months, already received the same number of stamps (5) as my previous one had in its lifetime.
    In the event it takes 24 booths instead of 12 then would the responsible thing to do be:

    A: Get 24 booths. Use compulsory purchase orders if necessary.

    B: Stick with 12. Blame voters for a choice they may six years ago.

    They've had six years to prepare for this. It isn't voters responsibility to deal with this, it's government's responsibility to accept voters choices and adapt.
    Have you actually been to Dover? Have you seen where the port actually is? Folkestone isn't much better. Are you planning to requisition the Castle, or the White Cliffs?
    Yes I have and yes there's space for 12 extra booths if they're needed. Where there's a will, there's a way.

    As @RochdalePioneers has repeatedly said the Port of Dover requested ~£30 million to build new facilities. Oddly enough they didn't seem bothered that they'd need to requisition the White Cliffs to do so.

    Considering that EU membership cost us £350mn a week gross, less net, and considering that this is supposedly your big problem with Brexit - spending half of one working day's gross EU membership fees to construct 12 extra booths and eliminate the problem seems like a bit of a bargain does it not?

    Extending Article 50 and then the transition period cost us about €20 billion, so €20,000,000,000, so if £30,000,000 is the cost of fixing this and then we're out of the EU and the problem is dealt with, then voting Brexit seems eminently logical does it not?

    If after six years this problem is real and hasn't been fixed, that's a failure of one or more of the respective government's not a failure of voting for Brexit.
    What we saw on Saturday is that half the booths were manned and a huge backlog built up. What we saw on Sunday was that all the booths were manned and the backlog melted away. This was always going to be one of the busiest weekends of the year. I am not sure that not increasing the number of booths is the problem. The absolute bottleneck is of course the number of ferries that can get in and out of the port. Spending more money on passport control is not going to change that.
    I believe the ferries were leaving somewhat empty because passport control couldn't keep up. Brexit requires more checking of passports. If you don't have more checkers you will get delays. Whose fault it is, is up for debate. Either it's Brexit, Dover Port/UKG, geography or the French border control. If it's the latter two they are not things we can control so we will have to live with the delay in that case.
    Obviously France is the biggie, but it's not the only place in the EU you can sail to from the UK. Are we seeing the same sorts of queues at ports in other EU countries?
    I would argue it's irrelevant whether other countries passport checking is subject to the same delay if France is the place you want to go to. In any case French passport checking at Dover was at the request of UKG so that UK could do its checking in France and avoid asylum seekers turn up on the English coast. That agreement doesn't apply to other countries.
    So why aren’t the Spain to UK and Netherlands to UK ferries full of asylum seekers?
    Don't know - you would need to ask UKG that question - they set it up. But only France has Le Touquet Agreement, or similar, with the UK, where passport control is in each other's countries
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812
    rcs1000 said:

    Regarding our GDP and productivity we have comparative advantage in very-high end manufacturing, creative industries, pharmaceuticals, telecoms, and financial professional services.

    Therefore, we'd want policies and trade deals to leverage those globally as best we could, and that includes the EU.

    However, in and of itself I don't think that's sufficient because a good mass of our population will never get high paying jobs in any of those sectors and we have to be able to offer them something other than low-wage, low-security, low-value work that is migrant heavy and convenient for those in the thriving sectors but drags down our GDP and income per head and our productivity measures.

    Switzerland and Germany have both largely solved that issue though.

    And they have done so by (a) having lots of vocational training for 16 to 21 year olds who aren't going to University, and (b) having largely contributory benefits schemes, so that young people essentially have to choose between working and training. There is no "don't work, and still recieve money" option.
    UK has - or had - pretty high employment participation so your last sentence is misplaced I think, or better directed to a country like the US.

    @MaxPB is closer to the issue.
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 10,341
    One of the slightly interesting features of this dull piece of speculative opinion finding is this.

    The question asked relates in no sense to one's personal politics. It is asking what the facts will be about the Tory MPs at an unspecified future time.

    A rational and balanced approach to the answer, despite the silliness of the question, should, if all things were rational and equal, see different groups give broadly similar answers.

    It doesn't. All groups slant the answers to their personal preferences.

    And stands as good example of the worthlessness of the exercise of trying to ask the public questions which test their objectivity.
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,824
    edited July 2022

    ComRes looking like an outlier, I think Tories get a bounce but not enough to outdo Labour

    ComRes looking like an outlier, I think Tories get a bounce but not enough to outdo Labour

    There might be another ComRes in the next day or so, they tend to show a slightly higher labour % and therefore lead, i wouldnt say outlier though. Last weeks YouGov hasnt appeared yet, they were the last showing Tories sub 30. The Tory score seems to have recovered to pre July levels, they will want to see 36 plus if they are to see a genuine bounce. For now the movement is to them but from that basement level they slipped to early in the month

    Red wall tracker tomorrow might be interesting
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709
    edited July 2022
    Starmer now has a 10% lead over Sunak as best PM and a 5% lead over Truss.

    32% prefer Sunak to Starmer, 33% Truss to Starmer so seems for now Sunak puts more undecideds behind Starmer

    https://twitter.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1551600768679018496?s=20&t=bWdCKVG0WIiNNwzijUShzA
  • TimSTimS Posts: 9,150

    LD mega surge lolz. Keir leads by 10 over Rishi, 5 over Liz but the VI gap is still narrowing
    Labour leads by 6%.

    Westminster Voting Intention (24 July):

    Labour 40% (-4)
    Conservative 34% (-1)
    Liberal Democrat 12% (+3)
    Green 5% (–)
    Scottish National Party 4% (+1)
    Reform UK 3% (–)
    Other 2% (+1)

    Changes +/- 20-21 July

    https://t.co/Ew1SV6Acy4 https://t.co/RRyVSxWqab

    LLG 57%, steady as she goes. Gap to Tories identical to last time (57 vs 34 rather than 58 vs 35).
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    algarkirk said:

    One of the slightly interesting features of this dull piece of speculative opinion finding is this.

    The question asked relates in no sense to one's personal politics. It is asking what the facts will be about the Tory MPs at an unspecified future time.

    A rational and balanced approach to the answer, despite the silliness of the question, should, if all things were rational and equal, see different groups give broadly similar answers.

    It doesn't. All groups slant the answers to their personal preferences.

    And stands as good example of the worthlessness of the exercise of trying to ask the public questions which test their objectivity.

    Yes. It tends to suggest the respondents lack a theory of mind, which children are meant to develop by, what, 3?
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,629

    eek said:

    Pagan2 said:

    FPT

    eek said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    DavidL said:

    pm215 said:

    It *is* possible for government policy to grow the economy, despite naysayers on left and right.

    True, but it's also highly non-obvious how to go about it. Otherwise every government would do it...
    The UK is now some way off the frontier of the productivity / GDP, so there are actually lots of things we could do.

    They all involve confronting various vested interests, though.
    French style, permanent tax breaks on investment in plant and machinery. At say, 100% tax relief.
    Yes. Full relief. For starters.

    UK is actually at the bottom end of tax
    competitiveness for business, despite common belief, and has essentially disincentivised capex until very recently.


    We have focused on the low rate of CT rather than the effective rate. Rather than cancel the increase in the base rate we should increase the allowances. I don't see why 100% relief should be the cap either on capital spending or on training. We need incentives to invest in this country and the actual rate of CT is not particularly relevant to that.
    After thinking about this for a week, and digging into a bit, we should probably do all of the above AND keep corporation tax lowish.
    I would make high quality investment in machinery and high quality training very very tax advantageous.

    Pay for it by putting up CT.

    Fuck Business.
    I don’t get the “fuck business” bit.
    eek said:

    pm215 said:

    It *is* possible for government policy to grow the economy, despite naysayers on left and right.

    True, but it's also highly non-obvious how to go about it. Otherwise every government would do it...
    The UK is now some way off the frontier of the productivity / GDP, so there are actually lots of things we could do.

    They all involve confronting various vested interests, though.
    @Sam_Dumitriu
    Why I'm a Booster and not a Doomster:

    In almost every area of policy I've looked into depth, there are massive low-hanging fruit capable of increasing GDP by at least 3-5% each.


    https://twitter.com/Sam_Dumitriu/status/1551283707767656465
    That's all complete and utter codswallop

    Take

    The average Brit spends 115 hours in traffic each year. Swapping Fuel Duty for Road Pricing would boost GDP for 2 reasons.

    1. You can't work if you're stuck in traffic.
    2. Your effective labour market is smaller reducing the benefits of agglomeration.

    How does reducing your effective labour market solve anything?

    or

    This study suggest constraints on housing supply have a 13.5% GDP cost in the US. And there are good reasons to believe supply is even more constrained in the UK

    Firstly does he know that NIMBYISM is worth a lot of votes. Secondly has he seen how hard it is to do anything in San Francisco (yes I know it's an extreme example but there are plenty of others)..

    I don’t think it’s codswallop.
    It might be politically unrealistic, but it’s pretty obvious that Britain’s productivity is significantly impaired by housing/planning/transport issues.
    But look at his solution to a problem - he wishes to price people off commuting to increase the effective labour market size.

    How does that work because all you do with road pricing is move the tax from being paid at the pump to being paid per mile on the road - you haven't changed anything beyond when and how it's collected. You haven't done anything to make the commute time shorter.
    Actually, he does not.

    He suggests that road pricing will smooth traffic flow as people respond to paying full cost of congestion during peak hours.

    He references Singapore where, as he notes, average urban traffic speeds have *sped up* in recent years as congestion as decreased.
    is he? - he references road pricing rather than dynamic road pricing - if he had referenced dynamic or time based road pricing I would just ask the simple question - where and how are you going to build the infrastructure to do it?
    Followed by have you seen the cost of doing it for even a small fixed point like the Dartford or Tyne Tunnels...

    Now Dynamic Road pricing is possible in a small rich country when you limit it to particular routes - it's a lot harder to do in somewhere like the UK....

    Easy enough if you GPS track all cars...

    I'm sure the Home Office would never suggest such a thing.
    You can't GPS all cars - because the car isn't under the Government's control so the GPS can be removed or disabled.
    Isn't GPS going to be required for speed controls? I thought they were going to be mandatory. If it is done on visual sign recognition then there will be plenty fun to be had.

    Of course, anything can be disabled, just like you can drive around without insurance.

    Presumably you could check each car "exists" when it passes an existing camera.
    As an aside I worked at WS Atkins in Blairs first term and got a sight of a DfT discussion document on road pricing which included some proposed figures per mile. Most in our document calculated how much our costs would be to commute and I was second closest to the office at 22 miles.....my costs would have been £150 a week to goto work. Petrol at the time for the commute was costing me £30 a week to compare. Most of us were of the view if it ever came in then we would have to quit and find a job closer to home.
    Suspect the data could do with a “re-run” after 25 years.
    The issue comes down to the lack of price elasticity for commuting AND the sheer amount of tax revenue the Government would want.

    Put it this way Road pricing won't be designed to be cheaper than petrol duty...
    I suspect the price elasticity of commuting has changed a bit post-Covid.

    As for the amount of tax revenue, if it replacing fuel duty, then it’s no extra burden overall, albeit there will be winners and losers.

    Amazon delivery drivers, for example, would likely be losers. But rural drivers, winners.
    The trouble with road pricing is that its suggested as a way of reducing congestion. The premise being you pay less if you drive at less congested times of the day. The part DfT people seemed to miss was for most people getting to work the time they drive is pretty much down to the whim of the firm they work for.

    Not much use saying to Joe Bloggs well just goto work later if his job requires him to be there for 9am and won't budge. In my case the reason it cost so much is I would have been on the m25 in morning rush hour so it attracted the maximum price which from memory was around £1 a mile. Nor did I have any sensible option but to drive as a train would turn it into a 2 hour commute
  • HYUFD said:

    Starmer now has a 10% lead over Sunak as best PM and a 5% lead over Truss

    https://twitter.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1551600768679018496?s=20&t=bWdCKVG0WIiNNwzijUShzA

    That’s probably those 10% of Tory racists swapping to whitey Starmer
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 23,926
    Betfair next prime minister
    1.53 Liz Truss 65%
    2.98 Rishi Sunak 34%

    Next Conservative leader
    1.51 Liz Truss 66%
    2.94 Rishi Sunak 34%
  • nico679nico679 Posts: 4,530
    Driver said:

    LD mega surge lolz. Statmer leads by 10 over Rishi, 5 over Liz but the VI gap is still narrowing
    Labour leads by 6%.

    Westminster Voting Intention (24 July):

    Labour 40% (-4)
    Conservative 34% (-1)
    Liberal Democrat 12% (+3)
    Green 5% (–)
    Scottish National Party 4% (+1)
    Reform UK 3% (–)
    Other 2% (+1)

    Changes +/- 20-21 July

    https://t.co/Ew1SV6Acy4 https://t.co/RRyVSxWqab

    Boris still ahead of Sir Keir on approval, 31 to 27 (and 9 to 6 on "strongly approve")...
    More people disapprove of Johnson 50% v Starmer 34% . Still though it says something for the country when that many still approve of Johnson . Clearly the Bozo cult are still drinking the kool aid !
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,847
    Aint no sunshine now he's gone
    It's no fun now he's away
    Aint no sunshine now he's gone
    So let's hope it's not too long
    Before he comes back out to play

    NOT :smile:
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812
    Pagan2 said:

    eek said:

    Pagan2 said:

    FPT

    eek said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    DavidL said:

    pm215 said:

    It *is* possible for government policy to grow the economy, despite naysayers on left and right.

    True, but it's also highly non-obvious how to go about it. Otherwise every government would do it...
    The UK is now some way off the frontier of the productivity / GDP, so there are actually lots of things we could do.

    They all involve confronting various vested interests, though.
    French style, permanent tax breaks on investment in plant and machinery. At say, 100% tax relief.
    Yes. Full relief. For starters.

    UK is actually at the bottom end of tax
    competitiveness for business, despite common belief, and has essentially disincentivised capex until very recently.


    We have focused on the low rate of CT rather than the effective rate. Rather than cancel the increase in the base rate we should increase the allowances. I don't see why 100% relief should be the cap either on capital spending or on training. We need incentives to invest in this country and the actual rate of CT is not particularly relevant to that.
    After thinking about this for a week, and digging into a bit, we should probably do all of the above AND keep corporation tax lowish.
    I would make high quality investment in machinery and high quality training very very tax advantageous.

    Pay for it by putting up CT.

    Fuck Business.
    I don’t get the “fuck business” bit.
    eek said:

    pm215 said:

    It *is* possible for government policy to grow the economy, despite naysayers on left and right.

    True, but it's also highly non-obvious how to go about it. Otherwise every government would do it...
    The UK is now some way off the frontier of the productivity / GDP, so there are actually lots of things we could do.

    They all involve confronting various vested interests, though.
    @Sam_Dumitriu
    Why I'm a Booster and not a Doomster:

    In almost every area of policy I've looked into depth, there are massive low-hanging fruit capable of increasing GDP by at least 3-5% each.


    https://twitter.com/Sam_Dumitriu/status/1551283707767656465
    That's all complete and utter codswallop

    Take

    The average Brit spends 115 hours in traffic each year. Swapping Fuel Duty for Road Pricing would boost GDP for 2 reasons.

    1. You can't work if you're stuck in traffic.
    2. Your effective labour market is smaller reducing the benefits of agglomeration.

    How does reducing your effective labour market solve anything?

    or

    This study suggest constraints on housing supply have a 13.5% GDP cost in the US. And there are good reasons to believe supply is even more constrained in the UK

    Firstly does he know that NIMBYISM is worth a lot of votes. Secondly has he seen how hard it is to do anything in San Francisco (yes I know it's an extreme example but there are plenty of others)..

    I don’t think it’s codswallop.
    It might be politically unrealistic, but it’s pretty obvious that Britain’s productivity is significantly impaired by housing/planning/transport issues.
    But look at his solution to a problem - he wishes to price people off commuting to increase the effective labour market size.

    How does that work because all you do with road pricing is move the tax from being paid at the pump to being paid per mile on the road - you haven't changed anything beyond when and how it's collected. You haven't done anything to make the commute time shorter.
    Actually, he does not.

    He suggests that road pricing will smooth traffic flow as people respond to paying full cost of congestion during peak hours.

    He references Singapore where, as he notes, average urban traffic speeds have *sped up* in recent years as congestion as decreased.
    is he? - he references road pricing rather than dynamic road pricing - if he had referenced dynamic or time based road pricing I would just ask the simple question - where and how are you going to build the infrastructure to do it?
    Followed by have you seen the cost of doing it for even a small fixed point like the Dartford or Tyne Tunnels...

    Now Dynamic Road pricing is possible in a small rich country when you limit it to particular routes - it's a lot harder to do in somewhere like the UK....

    Easy enough if you GPS track all cars...

    I'm sure the Home Office would never suggest such a thing.
    You can't GPS all cars - because the car isn't under the Government's control so the GPS can be removed or disabled.
    Isn't GPS going to be required for speed controls? I thought they were going to be mandatory. If it is done on visual sign recognition then there will be plenty fun to be had.

    Of course, anything can be disabled, just like you can drive around without insurance.

    Presumably you could check each car "exists" when it passes an existing camera.
    As an aside I worked at WS Atkins in Blairs first term and got a sight of a DfT discussion document on road pricing which included some proposed figures per mile. Most in our document calculated how much our costs would be to commute and I was second closest to the office at 22 miles.....my costs would have been £150 a week to goto work. Petrol at the time for the commute was costing me £30 a week to compare. Most of us were of the view if it ever came in then we would have to quit and find a job closer to home.
    Suspect the data could do with a “re-run” after 25 years.
    The issue comes down to the lack of price elasticity for commuting AND the sheer amount of tax revenue the Government would want.

    Put it this way Road pricing won't be designed to be cheaper than petrol duty...
    I suspect the price elasticity of commuting has changed a bit post-Covid.

    As for the amount of tax revenue, if it replacing fuel duty, then it’s no extra burden overall, albeit there will be winners and losers.

    Amazon delivery drivers, for example, would likely be losers. But rural drivers, winners.
    The trouble with road pricing is that its suggested as a way of reducing congestion. The premise being you pay less if you drive at less congested times of the day. The part DfT people seemed to miss was for most people getting to work the time they drive is pretty much down to the whim of the firm they work for.

    Not much use saying to Joe Bloggs well just goto work later if his job requires him to be there for 9am and won't budge. In my case the reason it cost so much is I would have been on the m25 in morning rush hour so it attracted the maximum price which from memory was around £1 a mile. Nor did I have any sensible option but to drive as a train would turn it into a 2 hour commute
    As I said to start with, there are lots of things we could do but we are up against vested interests.

    Employers would need to allow commuters to change their patterns, or pay the real cost of the congestion they are imposing.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,766
    Pagan2 said:

    eek said:

    Pagan2 said:

    FPT

    eek said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    DavidL said:

    pm215 said:

    It *is* possible for government policy to grow the economy, despite naysayers on left and right.

    True, but it's also highly non-obvious how to go about it. Otherwise every government would do it...
    The UK is now some way off the frontier of the productivity / GDP, so there are actually lots of things we could do.

    They all involve confronting various vested interests, though.
    French style, permanent tax breaks on investment in plant and machinery. At say, 100% tax relief.
    Yes. Full relief. For starters.

    UK is actually at the bottom end of tax
    competitiveness for business, despite common belief, and has essentially disincentivised capex until very recently.


    We have focused on the low rate of CT rather than the effective rate. Rather than cancel the increase in the base rate we should increase the allowances. I don't see why 100% relief should be the cap either on capital spending or on training. We need incentives to invest in this country and the actual rate of CT is not particularly relevant to that.
    After thinking about this for a week, and digging into a bit, we should probably do all of the above AND keep corporation tax lowish.
    I would make high quality investment in machinery and high quality training very very tax advantageous.

    Pay for it by putting up CT.

    Fuck Business.
    I don’t get the “fuck business” bit.
    eek said:

    pm215 said:

    It *is* possible for government policy to grow the economy, despite naysayers on left and right.

    True, but it's also highly non-obvious how to go about it. Otherwise every government would do it...
    The UK is now some way off the frontier of the productivity / GDP, so there are actually lots of things we could do.

    They all involve confronting various vested interests, though.
    @Sam_Dumitriu
    Why I'm a Booster and not a Doomster:

    In almost every area of policy I've looked into depth, there are massive low-hanging fruit capable of increasing GDP by at least 3-5% each.


    https://twitter.com/Sam_Dumitriu/status/1551283707767656465
    That's all complete and utter codswallop

    Take

    The average Brit spends 115 hours in traffic each year. Swapping Fuel Duty for Road Pricing would boost GDP for 2 reasons.

    1. You can't work if you're stuck in traffic.
    2. Your effective labour market is smaller reducing the benefits of agglomeration.

    How does reducing your effective labour market solve anything?

    or

    This study suggest constraints on housing supply have a 13.5% GDP cost in the US. And there are good reasons to believe supply is even more constrained in the UK

    Firstly does he know that NIMBYISM is worth a lot of votes. Secondly has he seen how hard it is to do anything in San Francisco (yes I know it's an extreme example but there are plenty of others)..

    I don’t think it’s codswallop.
    It might be politically unrealistic, but it’s pretty obvious that Britain’s productivity is significantly impaired by housing/planning/transport issues.
    But look at his solution to a problem - he wishes to price people off commuting to increase the effective labour market size.

    How does that work because all you do with road pricing is move the tax from being paid at the pump to being paid per mile on the road - you haven't changed anything beyond when and how it's collected. You haven't done anything to make the commute time shorter.
    Actually, he does not.

    He suggests that road pricing will smooth traffic flow as people respond to paying full cost of congestion during peak hours.

    He references Singapore where, as he notes, average urban traffic speeds have *sped up* in recent years as congestion as decreased.
    is he? - he references road pricing rather than dynamic road pricing - if he had referenced dynamic or time based road pricing I would just ask the simple question - where and how are you going to build the infrastructure to do it?
    Followed by have you seen the cost of doing it for even a small fixed point like the Dartford or Tyne Tunnels...

    Now Dynamic Road pricing is possible in a small rich country when you limit it to particular routes - it's a lot harder to do in somewhere like the UK....

    Easy enough if you GPS track all cars...

    I'm sure the Home Office would never suggest such a thing.
    You can't GPS all cars - because the car isn't under the Government's control so the GPS can be removed or disabled.
    Isn't GPS going to be required for speed controls? I thought they were going to be mandatory. If it is done on visual sign recognition then there will be plenty fun to be had.

    Of course, anything can be disabled, just like you can drive around without insurance.

    Presumably you could check each car "exists" when it passes an existing camera.
    As an aside I worked at WS Atkins in Blairs first term and got a sight of a DfT discussion document on road pricing which included some proposed figures per mile. Most in our document calculated how much our costs would be to commute and I was second closest to the office at 22 miles.....my costs would have been £150 a week to goto work. Petrol at the time for the commute was costing me £30 a week to compare. Most of us were of the view if it ever came in then we would have to quit and find a job closer to home.
    Suspect the data could do with a “re-run” after 25 years.
    The issue comes down to the lack of price elasticity for commuting AND the sheer amount of tax revenue the Government would want.

    Put it this way Road pricing won't be designed to be cheaper than petrol duty...
    I suspect the price elasticity of commuting has changed a bit post-Covid.

    As for the amount of tax revenue, if it replacing fuel duty, then it’s no extra burden overall, albeit there will be winners and losers.

    Amazon delivery drivers, for example, would likely be losers. But rural drivers, winners.
    The trouble with road pricing is that its suggested as a way of reducing congestion. The premise being you pay less if you drive at less congested times of the day. The part DfT people seemed to miss was for most people getting to work the time they drive is pretty much down to the whim of the firm they work for.

    Not much use saying to Joe Bloggs well just goto work later if his job requires him to be there for 9am and won't budge. In my case the reason it cost so much is I would have been on the m25 in morning rush hour so it attracted the maximum price which from memory was around £1 a mile. Nor did I have any sensible option but to drive as a train would turn it into a 2 hour commute
    But that's the market 'innit.

    It means Joe Bloggs Widget Co Ltd. will realise that he can pay his workers 5% less if he runs the plant from 6:30am to 2:30pm, and therefore no-one will need to pay road pricing.
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 23,926
    Tomorrow's Sun/Talk TV debate between Liz and Rishi will be downstreamed on Youtube at 6pm
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPamKOPabFc
  • carnforthcarnforth Posts: 3,054
    Westminster voting intention:

    LAB: 40% (-4)
    CON: 34% (-1)
    LDEM: 12% (+3)
    GRN: 5% (-)

    via @RedfieldWilton, 24 Jul
    Chgs. w/ 21 Jul
  • DriverDriver Posts: 4,522
    nico679 said:

    Driver said:

    LD mega surge lolz. Statmer leads by 10 over Rishi, 5 over Liz but the VI gap is still narrowing
    Labour leads by 6%.

    Westminster Voting Intention (24 July):

    Labour 40% (-4)
    Conservative 34% (-1)
    Liberal Democrat 12% (+3)
    Green 5% (–)
    Scottish National Party 4% (+1)
    Reform UK 3% (–)
    Other 2% (+1)

    Changes +/- 20-21 July

    https://t.co/Ew1SV6Acy4 https://t.co/RRyVSxWqab

    Boris still ahead of Sir Keir on approval, 31 to 27 (and 9 to 6 on "strongly approve")...
    More people disapprove of Johnson 50% v Starmer 34% . Still though it says something for the country when that many still approve of Johnson . Clearly the Bozo cult are still drinking the kool aid !
    Yeah. but you expect the person who's been in government making decisions to have a much higher "disapprove" than the one who hasn't.
  • nico679nico679 Posts: 4,530
    Driver said:

    nico679 said:

    Driver said:

    LD mega surge lolz. Statmer leads by 10 over Rishi, 5 over Liz but the VI gap is still narrowing
    Labour leads by 6%.

    Westminster Voting Intention (24 July):

    Labour 40% (-4)
    Conservative 34% (-1)
    Liberal Democrat 12% (+3)
    Green 5% (–)
    Scottish National Party 4% (+1)
    Reform UK 3% (–)
    Other 2% (+1)

    Changes +/- 20-21 July

    https://t.co/Ew1SV6Acy4 https://t.co/RRyVSxWqab

    Boris still ahead of Sir Keir on approval, 31 to 27 (and 9 to 6 on "strongly approve")...
    More people disapprove of Johnson 50% v Starmer 34% . Still though it says something for the country when that many still approve of Johnson . Clearly the Bozo cult are still drinking the kool aid !
    Yeah. but you expect the person who's been in government making decisions to have a much higher "disapprove" than the one who hasn't.
    That’s a fair point . Still it’s troubling that his approval is that high !
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    Exciting thoughts from Steven Pinker, noted friend of Jeffery Epstein

    https://twitter.com/sapinker/status/1551546737428500481

    Unilateral European Nuclear Disarmament is a bold direction.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,629
    rcs1000 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    eek said:

    Pagan2 said:

    FPT

    eek said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    DavidL said:

    pm215 said:

    It *is* possible for government policy to grow the economy, despite naysayers on left and right.

    True, but it's also highly non-obvious how to go about it. Otherwise every government would do it...
    The UK is now some way off the frontier of the productivity / GDP, so there are actually lots of things we could do.

    They all involve confronting various vested interests, though.
    French style, permanent tax breaks on investment in plant and machinery. At say, 100% tax relief.
    Yes. Full relief. For starters.

    UK is actually at the bottom end of tax
    competitiveness for business, despite common belief, and has essentially disincentivised capex until very recently.


    We have focused on the low rate of CT rather than the effective rate. Rather than cancel the increase in the base rate we should increase the allowances. I don't see why 100% relief should be the cap either on capital spending or on training. We need incentives to invest in this country and the actual rate of CT is not particularly relevant to that.
    After thinking about this for a week, and digging into a bit, we should probably do all of the above AND keep corporation tax lowish.
    I would make high quality investment in machinery and high quality training very very tax advantageous.

    Pay for it by putting up CT.

    Fuck Business.
    I don’t get the “fuck business” bit.
    eek said:

    pm215 said:

    It *is* possible for government policy to grow the economy, despite naysayers on left and right.

    True, but it's also highly non-obvious how to go about it. Otherwise every government would do it...
    The UK is now some way off the frontier of the productivity / GDP, so there are actually lots of things we could do.

    They all involve confronting various vested interests, though.
    @Sam_Dumitriu
    Why I'm a Booster and not a Doomster:

    In almost every area of policy I've looked into depth, there are massive low-hanging fruit capable of increasing GDP by at least 3-5% each.


    https://twitter.com/Sam_Dumitriu/status/1551283707767656465
    That's all complete and utter codswallop

    Take

    The average Brit spends 115 hours in traffic each year. Swapping Fuel Duty for Road Pricing would boost GDP for 2 reasons.

    1. You can't work if you're stuck in traffic.
    2. Your effective labour market is smaller reducing the benefits of agglomeration.

    How does reducing your effective labour market solve anything?

    or

    This study suggest constraints on housing supply have a 13.5% GDP cost in the US. And there are good reasons to believe supply is even more constrained in the UK

    Firstly does he know that NIMBYISM is worth a lot of votes. Secondly has he seen how hard it is to do anything in San Francisco (yes I know it's an extreme example but there are plenty of others)..

    I don’t think it’s codswallop.
    It might be politically unrealistic, but it’s pretty obvious that Britain’s productivity is significantly impaired by housing/planning/transport issues.
    But look at his solution to a problem - he wishes to price people off commuting to increase the effective labour market size.

    How does that work because all you do with road pricing is move the tax from being paid at the pump to being paid per mile on the road - you haven't changed anything beyond when and how it's collected. You haven't done anything to make the commute time shorter.
    Actually, he does not.

    He suggests that road pricing will smooth traffic flow as people respond to paying full cost of congestion during peak hours.

    He references Singapore where, as he notes, average urban traffic speeds have *sped up* in recent years as congestion as decreased.
    is he? - he references road pricing rather than dynamic road pricing - if he had referenced dynamic or time based road pricing I would just ask the simple question - where and how are you going to build the infrastructure to do it?
    Followed by have you seen the cost of doing it for even a small fixed point like the Dartford or Tyne Tunnels...

    Now Dynamic Road pricing is possible in a small rich country when you limit it to particular routes - it's a lot harder to do in somewhere like the UK....

    Easy enough if you GPS track all cars...

    I'm sure the Home Office would never suggest such a thing.
    You can't GPS all cars - because the car isn't under the Government's control so the GPS can be removed or disabled.
    Isn't GPS going to be required for speed controls? I thought they were going to be mandatory. If it is done on visual sign recognition then there will be plenty fun to be had.

    Of course, anything can be disabled, just like you can drive around without insurance.

    Presumably you could check each car "exists" when it passes an existing camera.
    As an aside I worked at WS Atkins in Blairs first term and got a sight of a DfT discussion document on road pricing which included some proposed figures per mile. Most in our document calculated how much our costs would be to commute and I was second closest to the office at 22 miles.....my costs would have been £150 a week to goto work. Petrol at the time for the commute was costing me £30 a week to compare. Most of us were of the view if it ever came in then we would have to quit and find a job closer to home.
    Suspect the data could do with a “re-run” after 25 years.
    The issue comes down to the lack of price elasticity for commuting AND the sheer amount of tax revenue the Government would want.

    Put it this way Road pricing won't be designed to be cheaper than petrol duty...
    I suspect the price elasticity of commuting has changed a bit post-Covid.

    As for the amount of tax revenue, if it replacing fuel duty, then it’s no extra burden overall, albeit there will be winners and losers.

    Amazon delivery drivers, for example, would likely be losers. But rural drivers, winners.
    The trouble with road pricing is that its suggested as a way of reducing congestion. The premise being you pay less if you drive at less congested times of the day. The part DfT people seemed to miss was for most people getting to work the time they drive is pretty much down to the whim of the firm they work for.

    Not much use saying to Joe Bloggs well just goto work later if his job requires him to be there for 9am and won't budge. In my case the reason it cost so much is I would have been on the m25 in morning rush hour so it attracted the maximum price which from memory was around £1 a mile. Nor did I have any sensible option but to drive as a train would turn it into a 2 hour commute
    But that's the market 'innit.

    It means Joe Bloggs Widget Co Ltd. will realise that he can pay his workers 5% less if he runs the plant from 6:30am to 2:30pm, and therefore no-one will need to pay road pricing.
    Apart from there was no zero tariff rate in the proposal. Again from memory the lowest tariff for a mile of motorway was 50pence so best case my commute would have still cost 20£ a day vs the 30£ a week I was paying for petrol including fuel duty. Revenue neutral it was not
  • stodgestodge Posts: 12,741

    LD mega surge lolz. Keir leads by 10 over Rishi, 5 over Liz but the VI gap is still narrowing
    Labour leads by 6%.

    Westminster Voting Intention (24 July):

    Labour 40% (-4)
    Conservative 34% (-1)
    Liberal Democrat 12% (+3)
    Green 5% (–)
    Scottish National Party 4% (+1)
    Reform UK 3% (–)
    Other 2% (+1)

    Changes +/- 20-21 July

    https://t.co/Ew1SV6Acy4 https://t.co/RRyVSxWqab

    I don't know what your problem is with the LD polling numbers. Presumably you're still annoyed the party won Tiverton & Honiton despite all their whingeing and sneering.

    Last week's R&W number was clearly an outlier and if you want to spend your life micro analysing the detail of every poll, go for it. I've got better things to do.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,766
    MaxPB said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Regarding our GDP and productivity we have comparative advantage in very-high end manufacturing, creative industries, pharmaceuticals, telecoms, and financial professional services.

    Therefore, we'd want policies and trade deals to leverage those globally as best we could, and that includes the EU.

    However, in and of itself I don't think that's sufficient because a good mass of our population will never get high paying jobs in any of those sectors and we have to be able to offer them something other than low-wage, low-security, low-value work that is migrant heavy and convenient for those in the thriving sectors but drags down our GDP and income per head and our productivity measures.

    Switzerland and Germany have both largely solved that issue though.

    And they have done so by (a) having lots of vocational training for 16 to 21 year olds who aren't going to University, and (b) having largely contributory benefits schemes, so that young people essentially have to choose between working and training. There is no "don't work, and still recieve money" option.
    It's also led to a very high effective minimum wage in Switzerland which means there's no corporate subsidisation of low wages.

    Fundamentally our education system isn't fit for the 21st century. It's very good for people who can and people who will, but not very good for those who can't and especially bad for people who won't. The UK is one of very few mug countries that has universal benefits without significant contributions required to qualify and a very large and complex system of in working benefits to lower the marginal cost of labour to get the can'ts and won'ts into low productivity jobs.

    So on the one hand they don't get paid enough and need to be subsidised with in working benefits and on the other side we've incentivised companies to hire these low productivity people over investing in capital by lowering the marginal cost of labour.

    It's a pincer movement that has wrecked the UK economy for 20+ years.
    Yep: our education (particularly vocational education) and benefits systems are massive problem.

    I'd add one other: German banking is a mess in many ways, but it's a hell of a lot easier for small and medium sized companies to access bank funding than in the UK. It's next to impossible for £2m year revenue companies to get bank funding in the UK, because banks would much rather lend to Joe Schmoo for him to spend on his credit card.

    In Germany and Switzerland, by contrast getting bank funding for smaller companies is - if not easy - a hell of a lot easier. This means that smaller companies find it a lot easier to invest in capital equipment than they do in the UK.

    Now... remind me, have either of Sunak or Truss actually mentioned any of these issues?
  • FF43FF43 Posts: 15,543
    edited July 2022
    Driver said:

    nico679 said:

    Driver said:

    LD mega surge lolz. Statmer leads by 10 over Rishi, 5 over Liz but the VI gap is still narrowing
    Labour leads by 6%.

    Westminster Voting Intention (24 July):

    Labour 40% (-4)
    Conservative 34% (-1)
    Liberal Democrat 12% (+3)
    Green 5% (–)
    Scottish National Party 4% (+1)
    Reform UK 3% (–)
    Other 2% (+1)

    Changes +/- 20-21 July

    https://t.co/Ew1SV6Acy4 https://t.co/RRyVSxWqab

    Boris still ahead of Sir Keir on approval, 31 to 27 (and 9 to 6 on "strongly approve")...
    More people disapprove of Johnson 50% v Starmer 34% . Still though it says something for the country when that many still approve of Johnson . Clearly the Bozo cult are still drinking the kool aid !
    Yeah. but you expect the person who's been in government making decisions to have a much higher "disapprove" than the one who hasn't.
    People prefer the charlatan. Others of us might regret this, but I don't see any merit in pretending Johnson is something he isn't, or that Starmer is deficient in some way, simply because the former has a level of support he doesn't deserve.
  • stodgestodge Posts: 12,741
    Late afternoon all :)

    Simon Calder's brilliant demolition job of the "let's just blame the French for all the delays" line deserves to be repeated as nauseam and ad infinitum.

    There are some uncomfortable truths in that couple of minutes - yes, perhaps the French could have had more staff but ultimately it's our decision to leave the EU and he consequences of that decision in this aspect which is ultimately responsible for the scenes we saw at the weekend.

    The curiousity for this observer is cruise ship passengers, for example, don't seem to have any of these problems. Yes, we are asked to take some form of official ID with us if we go onshore but the longest wait is getting through security to check we aren't trying to smuggle any alcohol on board - the cruise lines would much prefer we paid their exorbitant prices.
  • ChrisChris Posts: 11,009
    Wasn't Norman Lamont the last British politician who invoked the spirit of Piaf? As I remember, it didn't go down too well.
  • BartholomewRobertsBartholomewRoberts Posts: 18,154
    edited July 2022
    stodge said:

    Late afternoon all :)

    Simon Calder's brilliant demolition job of the "let's just blame the French for all the delays" line deserves to be repeated as nauseam and ad infinitum.

    There are some uncomfortable truths in that couple of minutes - yes, perhaps the French could have had more staff but ultimately it's our decision to leave the EU and he consequences of that decision in this aspect which is ultimately responsible for the scenes we saw at the weekend.

    The curiousity for this observer is cruise ship passengers, for example, don't seem to have any of these problems. Yes, we are asked to take some form of official ID with us if we go onshore but the longest wait is getting through security to check we aren't trying to smuggle any alcohol on board - the cruise lines would much prefer we paid their exorbitant prices.

    Its been six years since we voted to Leave. The border should be prepared and staffed for that by now.

    "yes, perhaps the French could have had more staff" is the end of the conversation.

    Governments have to respond to hoe people vote, not the other way around.
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 55,008
    HYUFD said:

    Starmer now has a 10% lead over Sunak as best PM and a 5% lead over Truss.

    32% prefer Sunak to Starmer, 33% Truss to Starmer so seems for now Sunak puts more undecideds behind Starmer

    https://twitter.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1551600768679018496?s=20&t=bWdCKVG0WIiNNwzijUShzA

    Jury is out with Truss because people don't know her.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,715
    FF43 said:

    Driver said:

    nico679 said:

    Driver said:

    LD mega surge lolz. Statmer leads by 10 over Rishi, 5 over Liz but the VI gap is still narrowing
    Labour leads by 6%.

    Westminster Voting Intention (24 July):

    Labour 40% (-4)
    Conservative 34% (-1)
    Liberal Democrat 12% (+3)
    Green 5% (–)
    Scottish National Party 4% (+1)
    Reform UK 3% (–)
    Other 2% (+1)

    Changes +/- 20-21 July

    https://t.co/Ew1SV6Acy4 https://t.co/RRyVSxWqab

    Boris still ahead of Sir Keir on approval, 31 to 27 (and 9 to 6 on "strongly approve")...
    More people disapprove of Johnson 50% v Starmer 34% . Still though it says something for the country when that many still approve of Johnson . Clearly the Bozo cult are still drinking the kool aid !
    Yeah. but you expect the person who's been in government making decisions to have a much higher "disapprove" than the one who hasn't.
    People prefer the charlatan. Others of us might regret this, but I don't see any merit in pretending Johnson is something he isn't, or that Starmer is deficient in some way, simply because the former has a level of support he doesn't deserve.
    Say what y' like, e's a card that Boris, inn'e!
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,766

    rcs1000 said:

    Regarding our GDP and productivity we have comparative advantage in very-high end manufacturing, creative industries, pharmaceuticals, telecoms, and financial professional services.

    Therefore, we'd want policies and trade deals to leverage those globally as best we could, and that includes the EU.

    However, in and of itself I don't think that's sufficient because a good mass of our population will never get high paying jobs in any of those sectors and we have to be able to offer them something other than low-wage, low-security, low-value work that is migrant heavy and convenient for those in the thriving sectors but drags down our GDP and income per head and our productivity measures.

    Switzerland and Germany have both largely solved that issue though.

    And they have done so by (a) having lots of vocational training for 16 to 21 year olds who aren't going to University, and (b) having largely contributory benefits schemes, so that young people essentially have to choose between working and training. There is no "don't work, and still recieve money" option.
    Very interesting - thanks.

    And what sort of work do they do? Particularly in Germany?

    How do we employ the "bulk" of our population if not in warehouses, fast food, low-end construction, retail and distribution?
    Well, in both countries, they have lots of locally well trained plumbers, electricians, etc. So, rather than importing people from Poland who trained in those areas, they have locals available.

    And both countries have massive Mittelstand manufacturing industries: tens of thousands of family owned manufacturers that do specialized things. These firms take people with existing decent vocational training and bring people on as apprentices to train them.

    On World Bank numbers (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NV.IND.MANF.ZS?locations=DE-GB), German manufacturing is almost 2.5x the level of the UK - $10,000 vs $4,000 per person.

    Now, manufacturing isn't everything (of course). But it is far more likely to take people who aren't from university than investment banking.
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 23,926
    Driver said:

    nico679 said:

    Driver said:

    LD mega surge lolz. Statmer leads by 10 over Rishi, 5 over Liz but the VI gap is still narrowing
    Labour leads by 6%.

    Westminster Voting Intention (24 July):

    Labour 40% (-4)
    Conservative 34% (-1)
    Liberal Democrat 12% (+3)
    Green 5% (–)
    Scottish National Party 4% (+1)
    Reform UK 3% (–)
    Other 2% (+1)

    Changes +/- 20-21 July

    https://t.co/Ew1SV6Acy4 https://t.co/RRyVSxWqab

    Boris still ahead of Sir Keir on approval, 31 to 27 (and 9 to 6 on "strongly approve")...
    More people disapprove of Johnson 50% v Starmer 34% . Still though it says something for the country when that many still approve of Johnson . Clearly the Bozo cult are still drinking the kool aid !
    Yeah. but you expect the person who's been in government making decisions to have a much higher "disapprove" than the one who hasn't.
    Is that true? Especially when the decision maker has "got the big calls right" as Boris has?
  • eek said:

    PJH said:

    PJH said:

    GIN1138 said:

    I've just received my new (blue) passport - The Brexit dividend is complete! :heart:

    Congratulations. You are hereby now entitled to join a long, long queue to get across the Channel (once it's been stamped by a surly French customs agent). Brexit - the joy!
    And potential deportation if you get an incompetent border agent who forgets to stamp your passport correctly on the way out.
    I have read several times on this very forum that it still only takes seconds to stamp a passport.

    This is simply not true. Said surly and incompetent border guard has to leaf through your passport to find the most recent entry and exit stamps to ensure you are compliant with the visa-free 90/180 rule. That takes longer than a few seconds.
    But checks were always required, so nothing is new.

    If checks take twice as long then if you have twice as many staff on, then nothing has changed. Just staff appropriately based upon today's circumstances.
    Sorry, you keep repeating this, but the checks are new. Even if they were required previously, they weren't done. Those of us who hopped across the Channel can testify that most of the time you were just waved through, with the occasional random check.
    Indeed - that was my experience too. Normally the only checks outbound were done by the UK Border force, the French normally just checked you were waving the same number of passports at them as there were passengers in the car. They might stop Eastern European vehicles occasionally.

    Also @BartholomewRoberts doesn't consider that Dover and Folkestone both have major constraints on capacity due to geography. Given the extra time taken to process, it may be that it isn't possible simply to keep increasing the number of border posts - there needs to be somewhere to put them, and the waiting cars. A more realistic option may be to limit the number of vehicle crossings.

    Incidentally I notice that my shiny new blue passport has, in 4 months, already received the same number of stamps (5) as my previous one had in its lifetime.
    In the event it takes 24 booths instead of 12 then would the responsible thing to do be:

    A: Get 24 booths. Use compulsory purchase orders if necessary.

    B: Stick with 12. Blame voters for a choice they may six years ago.

    They've had six years to prepare for this. It isn't voters responsibility to deal with this, it's government's responsibility to accept voters choices and adapt.
    Have you actually been to Dover? Have you seen where the port actually is? Folkestone isn't much better. Are you planning to requisition the Castle, or the White Cliffs?
    Yes I have and yes there's space for 12 extra booths if they're needed. Where there's a will, there's a way.

    As @RochdalePioneers has repeatedly said the Port of Dover requested ~£30 million to build new facilities. Oddly enough they didn't seem bothered that they'd need to requisition the White Cliffs to do so.

    Considering that EU membership cost us £350mn a week gross, less net, and considering that this is supposedly your big problem with Brexit - spending half of one working day's gross EU membership fees to construct 12 extra booths and eliminate the problem seems like a bit of a bargain does it not?

    Extending Article 50 and then the transition period cost us about €20 billion, so €20,000,000,000, so if £30,000,000 is the cost of fixing this and then we're out of the EU and the problem is dealt with, then voting Brexit seems eminently logical does it not?

    If after six years this problem is real and hasn't been fixed, that's a failure of one or more of the respective government's not a failure of voting for Brexit.
    Once again you miss the fact Dover asked the UK Government for £30m to resolve the issues the UK Government created.

    And the UK Government offered them £30,000 or 0.1% of what was needed.

    And yes £30m is a lot of money - but adding space to a port by concreting over the open sea doesn't come cheap.
    I didn't miss that, I addressed it.

    £30m is less than half of one working day's gross EU membership fee. Its peanuts, but the existing booths weren't staffed.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,766
    eek said:

    Pagan2 said:

    FPT

    eek said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    DavidL said:

    pm215 said:

    It *is* possible for government policy to grow the economy, despite naysayers on left and right.

    True, but it's also highly non-obvious how to go about it. Otherwise every government would do it...
    The UK is now some way off the frontier of the productivity / GDP, so there are actually lots of things we could do.

    They all involve confronting various vested interests, though.
    French style, permanent tax breaks on investment in plant and machinery. At say, 100% tax relief.
    Yes. Full relief. For starters.

    UK is actually at the bottom end of tax
    competitiveness for business, despite common belief, and has essentially disincentivised capex until very recently.


    We have focused on the low rate of CT rather than the effective rate. Rather than cancel the increase in the base rate we should increase the allowances. I don't see why 100% relief should be the cap either on capital spending or on training. We need incentives to invest in this country and the actual rate of CT is not particularly relevant to that.
    After thinking about this for a week, and digging into a bit, we should probably do all of the above AND keep corporation tax lowish.
    I would make high quality investment in machinery and high quality training very very tax advantageous.

    Pay for it by putting up CT.

    Fuck Business.
    I don’t get the “fuck business” bit.
    eek said:

    pm215 said:

    It *is* possible for government policy to grow the economy, despite naysayers on left and right.

    True, but it's also highly non-obvious how to go about it. Otherwise every government would do it...
    The UK is now some way off the frontier of the productivity / GDP, so there are actually lots of things we could do.

    They all involve confronting various vested interests, though.
    @Sam_Dumitriu
    Why I'm a Booster and not a Doomster:

    In almost every area of policy I've looked into depth, there are massive low-hanging fruit capable of increasing GDP by at least 3-5% each.


    https://twitter.com/Sam_Dumitriu/status/1551283707767656465
    That's all complete and utter codswallop

    Take

    The average Brit spends 115 hours in traffic each year. Swapping Fuel Duty for Road Pricing would boost GDP for 2 reasons.

    1. You can't work if you're stuck in traffic.
    2. Your effective labour market is smaller reducing the benefits of agglomeration.

    How does reducing your effective labour market solve anything?

    or

    This study suggest constraints on housing supply have a 13.5% GDP cost in the US. And there are good reasons to believe supply is even more constrained in the UK

    Firstly does he know that NIMBYISM is worth a lot of votes. Secondly has he seen how hard it is to do anything in San Francisco (yes I know it's an extreme example but there are plenty of others)..

    I don’t think it’s codswallop.
    It might be politically unrealistic, but it’s pretty obvious that Britain’s productivity is significantly impaired by housing/planning/transport issues.
    But look at his solution to a problem - he wishes to price people off commuting to increase the effective labour market size.

    How does that work because all you do with road pricing is move the tax from being paid at the pump to being paid per mile on the road - you haven't changed anything beyond when and how it's collected. You haven't done anything to make the commute time shorter.
    Actually, he does not.

    He suggests that road pricing will smooth traffic flow as people respond to paying full cost of congestion during peak hours.

    He references Singapore where, as he notes, average urban traffic speeds have *sped up* in recent years as congestion as decreased.
    is he? - he references road pricing rather than dynamic road pricing - if he had referenced dynamic or time based road pricing I would just ask the simple question - where and how are you going to build the infrastructure to do it?
    Followed by have you seen the cost of doing it for even a small fixed point like the Dartford or Tyne Tunnels...

    Now Dynamic Road pricing is possible in a small rich country when you limit it to particular routes - it's a lot harder to do in somewhere like the UK....

    Easy enough if you GPS track all cars...

    I'm sure the Home Office would never suggest such a thing.
    You can't GPS all cars - because the car isn't under the Government's control so the GPS can be removed or disabled.
    Isn't GPS going to be required for speed controls? I thought they were going to be mandatory. If it is done on visual sign recognition then there will be plenty fun to be had.

    Of course, anything can be disabled, just like you can drive around without insurance.

    Presumably you could check each car "exists" when it passes an existing camera.
    As an aside I worked at WS Atkins in Blairs first term and got a sight of a DfT discussion document on road pricing which included some proposed figures per mile. Most in our document calculated how much our costs would be to commute and I was second closest to the office at 22 miles.....my costs would have been £150 a week to goto work. Petrol at the time for the commute was costing me £30 a week to compare. Most of us were of the view if it ever came in then we would have to quit and find a job closer to home.
    Suspect the data could do with a “re-run” after 25 years.
    The issue comes down to the lack of price elasticity for commuting AND the sheer amount of tax revenue the Government would want.

    Put it this way Road pricing won't be designed to be cheaper than petrol duty...
    It does have to make up for the growing electrification of the UK's vehicle fleet...
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812

    stodge said:

    Late afternoon all :)

    Simon Calder's brilliant demolition job of the "let's just blame the French for all the delays" line deserves to be repeated as nauseam and ad infinitum.

    There are some uncomfortable truths in that couple of minutes - yes, perhaps the French could have had more staff but ultimately it's our decision to leave the EU and he consequences of that decision in this aspect which is ultimately responsible for the scenes we saw at the weekend.

    The curiousity for this observer is cruise ship passengers, for example, don't seem to have any of these problems. Yes, we are asked to take some form of official ID with us if we go onshore but the longest wait is getting through security to check we aren't trying to smuggle any alcohol on board - the cruise lines would much prefer we paid their exorbitant prices.

    Its been six years since we voted to Leave. The border should be prepared and staffed for that by now.

    "yes, perhaps the French could have had more staff" is the end of the conversation.

    Governments have to respond to hoe people vote, not the other way around.
    I don’t know who or what is to blame, and I don’t care enough to look into it.

    But even assuming it is French under-resourcing, it was one of the benefits of the EU that it promoted and enforced rules-based collaboration - the EU wouldn’t exist without it.

    We now need to come to a bespoke - or more bespoke - agreement with France. Which will cost.
  • stodge said:

    Late afternoon all :)

    Simon Calder's brilliant demolition job of the "let's just blame the French for all the delays" line deserves to be repeated as nauseam and ad infinitum.

    There are some uncomfortable truths in that couple of minutes - yes, perhaps the French could have had more staff but ultimately it's our decision to leave the EU and he consequences of that decision in this aspect which is ultimately responsible for the scenes we saw at the weekend.

    The curiousity for this observer is cruise ship passengers, for example, don't seem to have any of these problems. Yes, we are asked to take some form of official ID with us if we go onshore but the longest wait is getting through security to check we aren't trying to smuggle any alcohol on board - the cruise lines would much prefer we paid their exorbitant prices.

    Its been six years since we voted to Leave. The border should be prepared and staffed for that by now.

    "yes, perhaps the French could have had more staff" is the end of the conversation.

    Governments have to respond to hoe people vote, not the other way around.
    I don’t know who or what is to blame, and I don’t care enough to look into it.

    But even assuming it is French under-resourcing, it was one of the benefits of the EU that it promoted and enforced rules-based collaboration - the EU wouldn’t exist without it.

    We now need to come to a bespoke - or more bespoke - agreement with France. Which will cost.
    So do what needs to be done. We were never in Schengen anyway.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,766

    rcs1000 said:

    Regarding our GDP and productivity we have comparative advantage in very-high end manufacturing, creative industries, pharmaceuticals, telecoms, and financial professional services.

    Therefore, we'd want policies and trade deals to leverage those globally as best we could, and that includes the EU.

    However, in and of itself I don't think that's sufficient because a good mass of our population will never get high paying jobs in any of those sectors and we have to be able to offer them something other than low-wage, low-security, low-value work that is migrant heavy and convenient for those in the thriving sectors but drags down our GDP and income per head and our productivity measures.

    Switzerland and Germany have both largely solved that issue though.

    And they have done so by (a) having lots of vocational training for 16 to 21 year olds who aren't going to University, and (b) having largely contributory benefits schemes, so that young people essentially have to choose between working and training. There is no "don't work, and still recieve money" option.
    UK has - or had - pretty high employment participation so your last sentence is misplaced I think, or better directed to a country like the US.

    @MaxPB is closer to the issue.
    That's a bit misleading, because UK labour force participation rates have been boosted by lots of people coming from Eastern Europe and working.
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,824
    stodge said:

    LD mega surge lolz. Keir leads by 10 over Rishi, 5 over Liz but the VI gap is still narrowing
    Labour leads by 6%.

    Westminster Voting Intention (24 July):

    Labour 40% (-4)
    Conservative 34% (-1)
    Liberal Democrat 12% (+3)
    Green 5% (–)
    Scottish National Party 4% (+1)
    Reform UK 3% (–)
    Other 2% (+1)

    Changes +/- 20-21 July

    https://t.co/Ew1SV6Acy4 https://t.co/RRyVSxWqab

    I don't know what your problem is with the LD polling numbers. Presumably you're still annoyed the party won Tiverton & Honiton despite all their whingeing and sneering.

    Last week's R&W number was clearly an outlier and if you want to spend your life micro analysing the detail of every poll, go for it. I've got better things to do.
    Lol, its just a bit of fun, i dont have any 'problem' with the LDs polling numbers, any more than i have a 'problem' pointing out the progress they are making in local by elections where they are crucifying the Tories in the South especially.
  • FF43FF43 Posts: 15,543

    eek said:

    PJH said:

    PJH said:

    GIN1138 said:

    I've just received my new (blue) passport - The Brexit dividend is complete! :heart:

    Congratulations. You are hereby now entitled to join a long, long queue to get across the Channel (once it's been stamped by a surly French customs agent). Brexit - the joy!
    And potential deportation if you get an incompetent border agent who forgets to stamp your passport correctly on the way out.
    I have read several times on this very forum that it still only takes seconds to stamp a passport.

    This is simply not true. Said surly and incompetent border guard has to leaf through your passport to find the most recent entry and exit stamps to ensure you are compliant with the visa-free 90/180 rule. That takes longer than a few seconds.
    But checks were always required, so nothing is new.

    If checks take twice as long then if you have twice as many staff on, then nothing has changed. Just staff appropriately based upon today's circumstances.
    Sorry, you keep repeating this, but the checks are new. Even if they were required previously, they weren't done. Those of us who hopped across the Channel can testify that most of the time you were just waved through, with the occasional random check.
    Indeed - that was my experience too. Normally the only checks outbound were done by the UK Border force, the French normally just checked you were waving the same number of passports at them as there were passengers in the car. They might stop Eastern European vehicles occasionally.

    Also @BartholomewRoberts doesn't consider that Dover and Folkestone both have major constraints on capacity due to geography. Given the extra time taken to process, it may be that it isn't possible simply to keep increasing the number of border posts - there needs to be somewhere to put them, and the waiting cars. A more realistic option may be to limit the number of vehicle crossings.

    Incidentally I notice that my shiny new blue passport has, in 4 months, already received the same number of stamps (5) as my previous one had in its lifetime.
    In the event it takes 24 booths instead of 12 then would the responsible thing to do be:

    A: Get 24 booths. Use compulsory purchase orders if necessary.

    B: Stick with 12. Blame voters for a choice they may six years ago.

    They've had six years to prepare for this. It isn't voters responsibility to deal with this, it's government's responsibility to accept voters choices and adapt.
    Have you actually been to Dover? Have you seen where the port actually is? Folkestone isn't much better. Are you planning to requisition the Castle, or the White Cliffs?
    Yes I have and yes there's space for 12 extra booths if they're needed. Where there's a will, there's a way.

    As @RochdalePioneers has repeatedly said the Port of Dover requested ~£30 million to build new facilities. Oddly enough they didn't seem bothered that they'd need to requisition the White Cliffs to do so.

    Considering that EU membership cost us £350mn a week gross, less net, and considering that this is supposedly your big problem with Brexit - spending half of one working day's gross EU membership fees to construct 12 extra booths and eliminate the problem seems like a bit of a bargain does it not?

    Extending Article 50 and then the transition period cost us about €20 billion, so €20,000,000,000, so if £30,000,000 is the cost of fixing this and then we're out of the EU and the problem is dealt with, then voting Brexit seems eminently logical does it not?

    If after six years this problem is real and hasn't been fixed, that's a failure of one or more of the respective government's not a failure of voting for Brexit.
    Once again you miss the fact Dover asked the UK Government for £30m to resolve the issues the UK Government created.

    And the UK Government offered them £30,000 or 0.1% of what was needed.

    And yes £30m is a lot of money - but adding space to a port by concreting over the open sea doesn't come cheap.
    I didn't miss that, I addressed it.

    £30m is less than half of one working day's gross EU membership fee. Its peanuts, but the existing booths weren't staffed.
    For an hour or so then they were manned. The delays didn't stop but they did manage to move the queues out of Dover Port to the M20 thanks to Brock.
  • eristdooferistdoof Posts: 4,861

    Why am I not allowed to comment anymore

    Your Horsebattery had run out, and I'm guessing you replaced it with the incorrect one. As you can now comment you presumably found the correct one.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812
    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Regarding our GDP and productivity we have comparative advantage in very-high end manufacturing, creative industries, pharmaceuticals, telecoms, and financial professional services.

    Therefore, we'd want policies and trade deals to leverage those globally as best we could, and that includes the EU.

    However, in and of itself I don't think that's sufficient because a good mass of our population will never get high paying jobs in any of those sectors and we have to be able to offer them something other than low-wage, low-security, low-value work that is migrant heavy and convenient for those in the thriving sectors but drags down our GDP and income per head and our productivity measures.

    Switzerland and Germany have both largely solved that issue though.

    And they have done so by (a) having lots of vocational training for 16 to 21 year olds who aren't going to University, and (b) having largely contributory benefits schemes, so that young people essentially have to choose between working and training. There is no "don't work, and still recieve money" option.
    UK has - or had - pretty high employment participation so your last sentence is misplaced I think, or better directed to a country like the US.

    @MaxPB is closer to the issue.
    That's a bit misleading, because UK labour force participation rates have been boosted by lots of people coming from Eastern Europe and working.
    a) that was a feature, not a bug
    b) the phenom stretched well into “retirement” ages.
  • CiceroCicero Posts: 2,179
    edited July 2022
    MaxPB said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Regarding our GDP and productivity we have comparative advantage in very-high end manufacturing, creative industries, pharmaceuticals, telecoms, and financial professional services.

    Therefore, we'd want policies and trade deals to leverage those globally as best we could, and that includes the EU.

    However, in and of itself I don't think that's sufficient because a good mass of our population will never get high paying jobs in any of those sectors and we have to be able to offer them something other than low-wage, low-security, low-value work that is migrant heavy and convenient for those in the thriving sectors but drags down our GDP and income per head and our productivity measures.

    Switzerland and Germany have both largely solved that issue though.

    And they have done so by (a) having lots of vocational training for 16 to 21 year olds who aren't going to University, and (b) having largely contributory benefits schemes, so that young people essentially have to choose between working and training. There is no "don't work, and still recieve money" option.
    It's also led to a very high effective minimum wage in Switzerland which means there's no corporate subsidisation of low wages.

    Fundamentally our education system isn't fit for the 21st century. It's very good for people who can and people who will, but not very good for those who can't and especially bad for people who won't. The UK is one of very few mug countries that has universal benefits without significant contributions required to qualify and a very large and complex system of in working benefits to lower the marginal cost of labour to get the can'ts and won'ts into low productivity jobs.

    So on the one hand they don't get paid enough and need to be subsidised with in working benefits and on the other side we've incentivised companies to hire these low productivity people over investing in capital by lowering the marginal cost of labour.

    It's a pincer movement that has wrecked the UK economy for 20+ years.
    It certainly is. The poverty of expectations leads to an uninterested and alienated semi-working class. The contrast with Estonia, which is consistently top of the PISA education rankings is something I find increasingly depressing. I do a certain amount of business outreach with schools here and the bright, motivated kids are a joy. The UK has great Universities and some very good high schools, but whereas no kid in Estonia is left behind at high school level, across Britain, and even in Scotland now, the average quality of high schools is just mediocre. I think too much back seat driving from politicians doesn´t help this.

    Once Education was a county level responsibility, now it is controlled from Whitehall or Holyrood and this centralisation has become another source of sclerosis. There is some good work being done by some think-tanks, but few politicians seem interested, let alone committed to building a consensus for positive change. Largely irrelevent old battles on school ratings or even 11+ selection are still being fought on both right and left while the real questions: teacher autonomy, breadth of curriculum, starting languages at infant or junior level, early stage STEM and all the rest of it are simply put in the "too difficult" box.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,766
    Pagan2 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    eek said:

    Pagan2 said:

    FPT

    eek said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    DavidL said:

    pm215 said:

    It *is* possible for government policy to grow the economy, despite naysayers on left and right.

    True, but it's also highly non-obvious how to go about it. Otherwise every government would do it...
    The UK is now some way off the frontier of the productivity / GDP, so there are actually lots of things we could do.

    They all involve confronting various vested interests, though.
    French style, permanent tax breaks on investment in plant and machinery. At say, 100% tax relief.
    Yes. Full relief. For starters.

    UK is actually at the bottom end of tax
    competitiveness for business, despite common belief, and has essentially disincentivised capex until very recently.


    We have focused on the low rate of CT rather than the effective rate. Rather than cancel the increase in the base rate we should increase the allowances. I don't see why 100% relief should be the cap either on capital spending or on training. We need incentives to invest in this country and the actual rate of CT is not particularly relevant to that.
    After thinking about this for a week, and digging into a bit, we should probably do all of the above AND keep corporation tax lowish.
    I would make high quality investment in machinery and high quality training very very tax advantageous.

    Pay for it by putting up CT.

    Fuck Business.
    I don’t get the “fuck business” bit.
    eek said:

    pm215 said:

    It *is* possible for government policy to grow the economy, despite naysayers on left and right.

    True, but it's also highly non-obvious how to go about it. Otherwise every government would do it...
    The UK is now some way off the frontier of the productivity / GDP, so there are actually lots of things we could do.

    They all involve confronting various vested interests, though.
    @Sam_Dumitriu
    Why I'm a Booster and not a Doomster:

    In almost every area of policy I've looked into depth, there are massive low-hanging fruit capable of increasing GDP by at least 3-5% each.


    https://twitter.com/Sam_Dumitriu/status/1551283707767656465
    That's all complete and utter codswallop

    Take

    The average Brit spends 115 hours in traffic each year. Swapping Fuel Duty for Road Pricing would boost GDP for 2 reasons.

    1. You can't work if you're stuck in traffic.
    2. Your effective labour market is smaller reducing the benefits of agglomeration.

    How does reducing your effective labour market solve anything?

    or

    This study suggest constraints on housing supply have a 13.5% GDP cost in the US. And there are good reasons to believe supply is even more constrained in the UK

    Firstly does he know that NIMBYISM is worth a lot of votes. Secondly has he seen how hard it is to do anything in San Francisco (yes I know it's an extreme example but there are plenty of others)..

    I don’t think it’s codswallop.
    It might be politically unrealistic, but it’s pretty obvious that Britain’s productivity is significantly impaired by housing/planning/transport issues.
    But look at his solution to a problem - he wishes to price people off commuting to increase the effective labour market size.

    How does that work because all you do with road pricing is move the tax from being paid at the pump to being paid per mile on the road - you haven't changed anything beyond when and how it's collected. You haven't done anything to make the commute time shorter.
    Actually, he does not.

    He suggests that road pricing will smooth traffic flow as people respond to paying full cost of congestion during peak hours.

    He references Singapore where, as he notes, average urban traffic speeds have *sped up* in recent years as congestion as decreased.
    is he? - he references road pricing rather than dynamic road pricing - if he had referenced dynamic or time based road pricing I would just ask the simple question - where and how are you going to build the infrastructure to do it?
    Followed by have you seen the cost of doing it for even a small fixed point like the Dartford or Tyne Tunnels...

    Now Dynamic Road pricing is possible in a small rich country when you limit it to particular routes - it's a lot harder to do in somewhere like the UK....

    Easy enough if you GPS track all cars...

    I'm sure the Home Office would never suggest such a thing.
    You can't GPS all cars - because the car isn't under the Government's control so the GPS can be removed or disabled.
    Isn't GPS going to be required for speed controls? I thought they were going to be mandatory. If it is done on visual sign recognition then there will be plenty fun to be had.

    Of course, anything can be disabled, just like you can drive around without insurance.

    Presumably you could check each car "exists" when it passes an existing camera.
    As an aside I worked at WS Atkins in Blairs first term and got a sight of a DfT discussion document on road pricing which included some proposed figures per mile. Most in our document calculated how much our costs would be to commute and I was second closest to the office at 22 miles.....my costs would have been £150 a week to goto work. Petrol at the time for the commute was costing me £30 a week to compare. Most of us were of the view if it ever came in then we would have to quit and find a job closer to home.
    Suspect the data could do with a “re-run” after 25 years.
    The issue comes down to the lack of price elasticity for commuting AND the sheer amount of tax revenue the Government would want.

    Put it this way Road pricing won't be designed to be cheaper than petrol duty...
    I suspect the price elasticity of commuting has changed a bit post-Covid.

    As for the amount of tax revenue, if it replacing fuel duty, then it’s no extra burden overall, albeit there will be winners and losers.

    Amazon delivery drivers, for example, would likely be losers. But rural drivers, winners.
    The trouble with road pricing is that its suggested as a way of reducing congestion. The premise being you pay less if you drive at less congested times of the day. The part DfT people seemed to miss was for most people getting to work the time they drive is pretty much down to the whim of the firm they work for.

    Not much use saying to Joe Bloggs well just goto work later if his job requires him to be there for 9am and won't budge. In my case the reason it cost so much is I would have been on the m25 in morning rush hour so it attracted the maximum price which from memory was around £1 a mile. Nor did I have any sensible option but to drive as a train would turn it into a 2 hour commute
    But that's the market 'innit.

    It means Joe Bloggs Widget Co Ltd. will realise that he can pay his workers 5% less if he runs the plant from 6:30am to 2:30pm, and therefore no-one will need to pay road pricing.
    Apart from there was no zero tariff rate in the proposal. Again from memory the lowest tariff for a mile of motorway was 50pence so best case my commute would have still cost 20£ a day vs the 30£ a week I was paying for petrol including fuel duty. Revenue neutral it was not
    If the UK government implemented a 50p/mile charge on motorways, it would raise £26bn/year, which (intriguingly) is almost exactly the same as fuel duty.

    Not that they were planning on getting rid of fuel duties.

    But you do know that there are non-motorway routes, right? See France with the autoroutes vs the regular highways.
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 55,008
    Pagan2 said:

    eek said:

    Pagan2 said:

    FPT

    eek said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    DavidL said:

    pm215 said:

    It *is* possible for government policy to grow the economy, despite naysayers on left and right.

    True, but it's also highly non-obvious how to go about it. Otherwise every government would do it...
    The UK is now some way off the frontier of the productivity / GDP, so there are actually lots of things we could do.

    They all involve confronting various vested interests, though.
    French style, permanent tax breaks on investment in plant and machinery. At say, 100% tax relief.
    Yes. Full relief. For starters.

    UK is actually at the bottom end of tax
    competitiveness for business, despite common belief, and has essentially disincentivised capex until very recently.


    We have focused on the low rate of CT rather than the effective rate. Rather than cancel the increase in the base rate we should increase the allowances. I don't see why 100% relief should be the cap either on capital spending or on training. We need incentives to invest in this country and the actual rate of CT is not particularly relevant to that.
    After thinking about this for a week, and digging into a bit, we should probably do all of the above AND keep corporation tax lowish.
    I would make high quality investment in machinery and high quality training very very tax advantageous.

    Pay for it by putting up CT.

    Fuck Business.
    I don’t get the “fuck business” bit.
    eek said:

    pm215 said:

    It *is* possible for government policy to grow the economy, despite naysayers on left and right.

    True, but it's also highly non-obvious how to go about it. Otherwise every government would do it...
    The UK is now some way off the frontier of the productivity / GDP, so there are actually lots of things we could do.

    They all involve confronting various vested interests, though.
    @Sam_Dumitriu
    Why I'm a Booster and not a Doomster:

    In almost every area of policy I've looked into depth, there are massive low-hanging fruit capable of increasing GDP by at least 3-5% each.


    https://twitter.com/Sam_Dumitriu/status/1551283707767656465
    That's all complete and utter codswallop

    Take

    The average Brit spends 115 hours in traffic each year. Swapping Fuel Duty for Road Pricing would boost GDP for 2 reasons.

    1. You can't work if you're stuck in traffic.
    2. Your effective labour market is smaller reducing the benefits of agglomeration.

    How does reducing your effective labour market solve anything?

    or

    This study suggest constraints on housing supply have a 13.5% GDP cost in the US. And there are good reasons to believe supply is even more constrained in the UK

    Firstly does he know that NIMBYISM is worth a lot of votes. Secondly has he seen how hard it is to do anything in San Francisco (yes I know it's an extreme example but there are plenty of others)..

    I don’t think it’s codswallop.
    It might be politically unrealistic, but it’s pretty obvious that Britain’s productivity is significantly impaired by housing/planning/transport issues.
    But look at his solution to a problem - he wishes to price people off commuting to increase the effective labour market size.

    How does that work because all you do with road pricing is move the tax from being paid at the pump to being paid per mile on the road - you haven't changed anything beyond when and how it's collected. You haven't done anything to make the commute time shorter.
    Actually, he does not.

    He suggests that road pricing will smooth traffic flow as people respond to paying full cost of congestion during peak hours.

    He references Singapore where, as he notes, average urban traffic speeds have *sped up* in recent years as congestion as decreased.
    is he? - he references road pricing rather than dynamic road pricing - if he had referenced dynamic or time based road pricing I would just ask the simple question - where and how are you going to build the infrastructure to do it?
    Followed by have you seen the cost of doing it for even a small fixed point like the Dartford or Tyne Tunnels...

    Now Dynamic Road pricing is possible in a small rich country when you limit it to particular routes - it's a lot harder to do in somewhere like the UK....

    Easy enough if you GPS track all cars...

    I'm sure the Home Office would never suggest such a thing.
    You can't GPS all cars - because the car isn't under the Government's control so the GPS can be removed or disabled.
    Isn't GPS going to be required for speed controls? I thought they were going to be mandatory. If it is done on visual sign recognition then there will be plenty fun to be had.

    Of course, anything can be disabled, just like you can drive around without insurance.

    Presumably you could check each car "exists" when it passes an existing camera.
    As an aside I worked at WS Atkins in Blairs first term and got a sight of a DfT discussion document on road pricing which included some proposed figures per mile. Most in our document calculated how much our costs would be to commute and I was second closest to the office at 22 miles.....my costs would have been £150 a week to goto work. Petrol at the time for the commute was costing me £30 a week to compare. Most of us were of the view if it ever came in then we would have to quit and find a job closer to home.
    Suspect the data could do with a “re-run” after 25 years.
    The issue comes down to the lack of price elasticity for commuting AND the sheer amount of tax revenue the Government would want.

    Put it this way Road pricing won't be designed to be cheaper than petrol duty...
    I suspect the price elasticity of commuting has changed a bit post-Covid.

    As for the amount of tax revenue, if it replacing fuel duty, then it’s no extra burden overall, albeit there will be winners and losers.

    Amazon delivery drivers, for example, would likely be losers. But rural drivers, winners.
    The trouble with road pricing is that its suggested as a way of reducing congestion. The premise being you pay less if you drive at less congested times of the day. The part DfT people seemed to miss was for most people getting to work the time they drive is pretty much down to the whim of the firm they work for.

    Not much use saying to Joe Bloggs well just goto work later if his job requires him to be there for 9am and won't budge. In my case the reason it cost so much is I would have been on the m25 in morning rush hour so it attracted the maximum price which from memory was around £1 a mile. Nor did I have any sensible option but to drive as a train would turn it into a 2 hour commute
    I think road pricing would be about as popular as syphillis. It would offend civil libertarians and ordinary people who like the freedom to hit the roads and go where they want whenever they want without making complex variable financial calculations and being charged for the privilege.

    This is something that works for a regulated asset base model, like Heathrow, or Network Rail in charging train paths to TOCs and FOCs, but not your average Joe.

    It's far more likely that we'll get a tax surcharge on electricity charging points or an enhanced annual road tax based upon total mileage in the same way you read a gas meter or do a self-assessment tax return to HMRC.
  • Daveyboy1961Daveyboy1961 Posts: 3,334
    FF43 said:

    eek said:

    PJH said:

    PJH said:

    GIN1138 said:

    I've just received my new (blue) passport - The Brexit dividend is complete! :heart:

    Congratulations. You are hereby now entitled to join a long, long queue to get across the Channel (once it's been stamped by a surly French customs agent). Brexit - the joy!
    And potential deportation if you get an incompetent border agent who forgets to stamp your passport correctly on the way out.
    I have read several times on this very forum that it still only takes seconds to stamp a passport.

    This is simply not true. Said surly and incompetent border guard has to leaf through your passport to find the most recent entry and exit stamps to ensure you are compliant with the visa-free 90/180 rule. That takes longer than a few seconds.
    But checks were always required, so nothing is new.

    If checks take twice as long then if you have twice as many staff on, then nothing has changed. Just staff appropriately based upon today's circumstances.
    Sorry, you keep repeating this, but the checks are new. Even if they were required previously, they weren't done. Those of us who hopped across the Channel can testify that most of the time you were just waved through, with the occasional random check.
    Indeed - that was my experience too. Normally the only checks outbound were done by the UK Border force, the French normally just checked you were waving the same number of passports at them as there were passengers in the car. They might stop Eastern European vehicles occasionally.

    Also @BartholomewRoberts doesn't consider that Dover and Folkestone both have major constraints on capacity due to geography. Given the extra time taken to process, it may be that it isn't possible simply to keep increasing the number of border posts - there needs to be somewhere to put them, and the waiting cars. A more realistic option may be to limit the number of vehicle crossings.

    Incidentally I notice that my shiny new blue passport has, in 4 months, already received the same number of stamps (5) as my previous one had in its lifetime.
    In the event it takes 24 booths instead of 12 then would the responsible thing to do be:

    A: Get 24 booths. Use compulsory purchase orders if necessary.

    B: Stick with 12. Blame voters for a choice they may six years ago.

    They've had six years to prepare for this. It isn't voters responsibility to deal with this, it's government's responsibility to accept voters choices and adapt.
    Have you actually been to Dover? Have you seen where the port actually is? Folkestone isn't much better. Are you planning to requisition the Castle, or the White Cliffs?
    Yes I have and yes there's space for 12 extra booths if they're needed. Where there's a will, there's a way.

    As @RochdalePioneers has repeatedly said the Port of Dover requested ~£30 million to build new facilities. Oddly enough they didn't seem bothered that they'd need to requisition the White Cliffs to do so.

    Considering that EU membership cost us £350mn a week gross, less net, and considering that this is supposedly your big problem with Brexit - spending half of one working day's gross EU membership fees to construct 12 extra booths and eliminate the problem seems like a bit of a bargain does it not?

    Extending Article 50 and then the transition period cost us about €20 billion, so €20,000,000,000, so if £30,000,000 is the cost of fixing this and then we're out of the EU and the problem is dealt with, then voting Brexit seems eminently logical does it not?

    If after six years this problem is real and hasn't been fixed, that's a failure of one or more of the respective government's not a failure of voting for Brexit.
    Once again you miss the fact Dover asked the UK Government for £30m to resolve the issues the UK Government created.

    And the UK Government offered them £30,000 or 0.1% of what was needed.

    And yes £30m is a lot of money - but adding space to a port by concreting over the open sea doesn't come cheap.
    I didn't miss that, I addressed it.

    £30m is less than half of one working day's gross EU membership fee. Its peanuts, but the existing booths weren't staffed.
    For an hour or so then they were manned. The delays didn't stop but they did manage to move the queues out of Dover Port to the M20 thanks to Brock.
    I think Barty is overdosing on Daily Heil tripe.
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 23,926
    OT damn. Forgot that today is the day of the Racing Post's free 80-page football betting pullout for the new season. One of its many tips is Leicester to finish in the top half, some weeks after it was put up on here, presumably by Foxy.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,766
    Alistair said:

    Exciting thoughts from Steven Pinker, noted friend of Jeffery Epstein

    https://twitter.com/sapinker/status/1551546737428500481

    Unilateral European Nuclear Disarmament is a bold direction.

    It's good to see retards across the political spectrum are keen to give Putin "a win".

    As an aside, Mr Pinker has disabled replies.
  • FF43 said:

    eek said:

    PJH said:

    PJH said:

    GIN1138 said:

    I've just received my new (blue) passport - The Brexit dividend is complete! :heart:

    Congratulations. You are hereby now entitled to join a long, long queue to get across the Channel (once it's been stamped by a surly French customs agent). Brexit - the joy!
    And potential deportation if you get an incompetent border agent who forgets to stamp your passport correctly on the way out.
    I have read several times on this very forum that it still only takes seconds to stamp a passport.

    This is simply not true. Said surly and incompetent border guard has to leaf through your passport to find the most recent entry and exit stamps to ensure you are compliant with the visa-free 90/180 rule. That takes longer than a few seconds.
    But checks were always required, so nothing is new.

    If checks take twice as long then if you have twice as many staff on, then nothing has changed. Just staff appropriately based upon today's circumstances.
    Sorry, you keep repeating this, but the checks are new. Even if they were required previously, they weren't done. Those of us who hopped across the Channel can testify that most of the time you were just waved through, with the occasional random check.
    Indeed - that was my experience too. Normally the only checks outbound were done by the UK Border force, the French normally just checked you were waving the same number of passports at them as there were passengers in the car. They might stop Eastern European vehicles occasionally.

    Also @BartholomewRoberts doesn't consider that Dover and Folkestone both have major constraints on capacity due to geography. Given the extra time taken to process, it may be that it isn't possible simply to keep increasing the number of border posts - there needs to be somewhere to put them, and the waiting cars. A more realistic option may be to limit the number of vehicle crossings.

    Incidentally I notice that my shiny new blue passport has, in 4 months, already received the same number of stamps (5) as my previous one had in its lifetime.
    In the event it takes 24 booths instead of 12 then would the responsible thing to do be:

    A: Get 24 booths. Use compulsory purchase orders if necessary.

    B: Stick with 12. Blame voters for a choice they may six years ago.

    They've had six years to prepare for this. It isn't voters responsibility to deal with this, it's government's responsibility to accept voters choices and adapt.
    Have you actually been to Dover? Have you seen where the port actually is? Folkestone isn't much better. Are you planning to requisition the Castle, or the White Cliffs?
    Yes I have and yes there's space for 12 extra booths if they're needed. Where there's a will, there's a way.

    As @RochdalePioneers has repeatedly said the Port of Dover requested ~£30 million to build new facilities. Oddly enough they didn't seem bothered that they'd need to requisition the White Cliffs to do so.

    Considering that EU membership cost us £350mn a week gross, less net, and considering that this is supposedly your big problem with Brexit - spending half of one working day's gross EU membership fees to construct 12 extra booths and eliminate the problem seems like a bit of a bargain does it not?

    Extending Article 50 and then the transition period cost us about €20 billion, so €20,000,000,000, so if £30,000,000 is the cost of fixing this and then we're out of the EU and the problem is dealt with, then voting Brexit seems eminently logical does it not?

    If after six years this problem is real and hasn't been fixed, that's a failure of one or more of the respective government's not a failure of voting for Brexit.
    Once again you miss the fact Dover asked the UK Government for £30m to resolve the issues the UK Government created.

    And the UK Government offered them £30,000 or 0.1% of what was needed.

    And yes £30m is a lot of money - but adding space to a port by concreting over the open sea doesn't come cheap.
    I didn't miss that, I addressed it.

    £30m is less than half of one working day's gross EU membership fee. Its peanuts, but the existing booths weren't staffed.
    For an hour or so then they were manned. The delays didn't stop but they did manage to move the queues out of Dover Port to the M20 thanks to Brock.
    Reports on that seem disputed, many seem to be saying that the booths weren't manned.

    But either way it's moot. EU membership was costing us £350mn a week, gross, per week. About a billion per month net.

    Extending article 50 came with about a €9 billion fee attached.
    Transition game with about a €11 billion fee attached.

    If Brexit means investing £30mn as a one off to expand capacity and that's it, then just do it already, if it's actually needed. What a bargain compared to membership and transition fees.

    And if it's not been done that isn't the fault of Brexit voters.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 47,786
    Cicero said:

    MaxPB said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Regarding our GDP and productivity we have comparative advantage in very-high end manufacturing, creative industries, pharmaceuticals, telecoms, and financial professional services.

    Therefore, we'd want policies and trade deals to leverage those globally as best we could, and that includes the EU.

    However, in and of itself I don't think that's sufficient because a good mass of our population will never get high paying jobs in any of those sectors and we have to be able to offer them something other than low-wage, low-security, low-value work that is migrant heavy and convenient for those in the thriving sectors but drags down our GDP and income per head and our productivity measures.

    Switzerland and Germany have both largely solved that issue though.

    And they have done so by (a) having lots of vocational training for 16 to 21 year olds who aren't going to University, and (b) having largely contributory benefits schemes, so that young people essentially have to choose between working and training. There is no "don't work, and still recieve money" option.
    It's also led to a very high effective minimum wage in Switzerland which means there's no corporate subsidisation of low wages.

    Fundamentally our education system isn't fit for the 21st century. It's very good for people who can and people who will, but not very good for those who can't and especially bad for people who won't. The UK is one of very few mug countries that has universal benefits without significant contributions required to qualify and a very large and complex system of in working benefits to lower the marginal cost of labour to get the can'ts and won'ts into low productivity jobs.

    So on the one hand they don't get paid enough and need to be subsidised with in working benefits and on the other side we've incentivised companies to hire these low productivity people over investing in capital by lowering the marginal cost of labour.

    It's a pincer movement that has wrecked the UK economy for 20+ years.
    It certainly is. The poverty of expectations leads to an uninterested and alienated semi-working class. The contrast with Estonia, which is consistently top of the PISA education rankings is something I find increasingly depressing. I do a certain amount of business outreach with schools here and the bright, motivated kids are a joy. The UK has great Universities and some very good high schools, but whereas no kid in Estonia is left behind at high school level, across Britain, and even in Scotland now, the average quality of high schools is just mediocre. I think too much back seat driving from politicians doesn´t help this.

    Once Education was a county level responsibility, now it is controlled from Whitehall or Holyrood and this centralisation has become another source of sclerosis. There is some good work being done by some think-tanks, but few politicians seem interested, let alone committed to building a consensus for positive change. Largely irrelevent old battles on school ratings or even 11+ selection are still being fought on both right and left while the real questions: teacher autonomy, breadth of curriculum, starting languages at infant or junior level, early stage STEM and all the rest of it are simply put in the "too difficult" box.
    How does Estonia handle the so-called 'woke' issues in schools?
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 55,008
    rcs1000 said:

    eek said:

    Pagan2 said:

    FPT

    eek said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    DavidL said:

    pm215 said:

    It *is* possible for government policy to grow the economy, despite naysayers on left and right.

    True, but it's also highly non-obvious how to go about it. Otherwise every government would do it...
    The UK is now some way off the frontier of the productivity / GDP, so there are actually lots of things we could do.

    They all involve confronting various vested interests, though.
    French style, permanent tax breaks on investment in plant and machinery. At say, 100% tax relief.
    Yes. Full relief. For starters.

    UK is actually at the bottom end of tax
    competitiveness for business, despite common belief, and has essentially disincentivised capex until very recently.


    We have focused on the low rate of CT rather than the effective rate. Rather than cancel the increase in the base rate we should increase the allowances. I don't see why 100% relief should be the cap either on capital spending or on training. We need incentives to invest in this country and the actual rate of CT is not particularly relevant to that.
    After thinking about this for a week, and digging into a bit, we should probably do all of the above AND keep corporation tax lowish.
    I would make high quality investment in machinery and high quality training very very tax advantageous.

    Pay for it by putting up CT.

    Fuck Business.
    I don’t get the “fuck business” bit.
    eek said:

    pm215 said:

    It *is* possible for government policy to grow the economy, despite naysayers on left and right.

    True, but it's also highly non-obvious how to go about it. Otherwise every government would do it...
    The UK is now some way off the frontier of the productivity / GDP, so there are actually lots of things we could do.

    They all involve confronting various vested interests, though.
    @Sam_Dumitriu
    Why I'm a Booster and not a Doomster:

    In almost every area of policy I've looked into depth, there are massive low-hanging fruit capable of increasing GDP by at least 3-5% each.


    https://twitter.com/Sam_Dumitriu/status/1551283707767656465
    That's all complete and utter codswallop

    Take

    The average Brit spends 115 hours in traffic each year. Swapping Fuel Duty for Road Pricing would boost GDP for 2 reasons.

    1. You can't work if you're stuck in traffic.
    2. Your effective labour market is smaller reducing the benefits of agglomeration.

    How does reducing your effective labour market solve anything?

    or

    This study suggest constraints on housing supply have a 13.5% GDP cost in the US. And there are good reasons to believe supply is even more constrained in the UK

    Firstly does he know that NIMBYISM is worth a lot of votes. Secondly has he seen how hard it is to do anything in San Francisco (yes I know it's an extreme example but there are plenty of others)..

    I don’t think it’s codswallop.
    It might be politically unrealistic, but it’s pretty obvious that Britain’s productivity is significantly impaired by housing/planning/transport issues.
    But look at his solution to a problem - he wishes to price people off commuting to increase the effective labour market size.

    How does that work because all you do with road pricing is move the tax from being paid at the pump to being paid per mile on the road - you haven't changed anything beyond when and how it's collected. You haven't done anything to make the commute time shorter.
    Actually, he does not.

    He suggests that road pricing will smooth traffic flow as people respond to paying full cost of congestion during peak hours.

    He references Singapore where, as he notes, average urban traffic speeds have *sped up* in recent years as congestion as decreased.
    is he? - he references road pricing rather than dynamic road pricing - if he had referenced dynamic or time based road pricing I would just ask the simple question - where and how are you going to build the infrastructure to do it?
    Followed by have you seen the cost of doing it for even a small fixed point like the Dartford or Tyne Tunnels...

    Now Dynamic Road pricing is possible in a small rich country when you limit it to particular routes - it's a lot harder to do in somewhere like the UK....

    Easy enough if you GPS track all cars...

    I'm sure the Home Office would never suggest such a thing.
    You can't GPS all cars - because the car isn't under the Government's control so the GPS can be removed or disabled.
    Isn't GPS going to be required for speed controls? I thought they were going to be mandatory. If it is done on visual sign recognition then there will be plenty fun to be had.

    Of course, anything can be disabled, just like you can drive around without insurance.

    Presumably you could check each car "exists" when it passes an existing camera.
    As an aside I worked at WS Atkins in Blairs first term and got a sight of a DfT discussion document on road pricing which included some proposed figures per mile. Most in our document calculated how much our costs would be to commute and I was second closest to the office at 22 miles.....my costs would have been £150 a week to goto work. Petrol at the time for the commute was costing me £30 a week to compare. Most of us were of the view if it ever came in then we would have to quit and find a job closer to home.
    Suspect the data could do with a “re-run” after 25 years.
    The issue comes down to the lack of price elasticity for commuting AND the sheer amount of tax revenue the Government would want.

    Put it this way Road pricing won't be designed to be cheaper than petrol duty...
    It does have to make up for the growing electrification of the UK's vehicle fleet...
    Why not just bake in the tax cut?
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,766

    Pagan2 said:

    eek said:

    Pagan2 said:

    FPT

    eek said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    DavidL said:

    pm215 said:

    It *is* possible for government policy to grow the economy, despite naysayers on left and right.

    True, but it's also highly non-obvious how to go about it. Otherwise every government would do it...
    The UK is now some way off the frontier of the productivity / GDP, so there are actually lots of things we could do.

    They all involve confronting various vested interests, though.
    French style, permanent tax breaks on investment in plant and machinery. At say, 100% tax relief.
    Yes. Full relief. For starters.

    UK is actually at the bottom end of tax
    competitiveness for business, despite common belief, and has essentially disincentivised capex until very recently.


    We have focused on the low rate of CT rather than the effective rate. Rather than cancel the increase in the base rate we should increase the allowances. I don't see why 100% relief should be the cap either on capital spending or on training. We need incentives to invest in this country and the actual rate of CT is not particularly relevant to that.
    After thinking about this for a week, and digging into a bit, we should probably do all of the above AND keep corporation tax lowish.
    I would make high quality investment in machinery and high quality training very very tax advantageous.

    Pay for it by putting up CT.

    Fuck Business.
    I don’t get the “fuck business” bit.
    eek said:

    pm215 said:

    It *is* possible for government policy to grow the economy, despite naysayers on left and right.

    True, but it's also highly non-obvious how to go about it. Otherwise every government would do it...
    The UK is now some way off the frontier of the productivity / GDP, so there are actually lots of things we could do.

    They all involve confronting various vested interests, though.
    @Sam_Dumitriu
    Why I'm a Booster and not a Doomster:

    In almost every area of policy I've looked into depth, there are massive low-hanging fruit capable of increasing GDP by at least 3-5% each.


    https://twitter.com/Sam_Dumitriu/status/1551283707767656465
    That's all complete and utter codswallop

    Take

    The average Brit spends 115 hours in traffic each year. Swapping Fuel Duty for Road Pricing would boost GDP for 2 reasons.

    1. You can't work if you're stuck in traffic.
    2. Your effective labour market is smaller reducing the benefits of agglomeration.

    How does reducing your effective labour market solve anything?

    or

    This study suggest constraints on housing supply have a 13.5% GDP cost in the US. And there are good reasons to believe supply is even more constrained in the UK

    Firstly does he know that NIMBYISM is worth a lot of votes. Secondly has he seen how hard it is to do anything in San Francisco (yes I know it's an extreme example but there are plenty of others)..

    I don’t think it’s codswallop.
    It might be politically unrealistic, but it’s pretty obvious that Britain’s productivity is significantly impaired by housing/planning/transport issues.
    But look at his solution to a problem - he wishes to price people off commuting to increase the effective labour market size.

    How does that work because all you do with road pricing is move the tax from being paid at the pump to being paid per mile on the road - you haven't changed anything beyond when and how it's collected. You haven't done anything to make the commute time shorter.
    Actually, he does not.

    He suggests that road pricing will smooth traffic flow as people respond to paying full cost of congestion during peak hours.

    He references Singapore where, as he notes, average urban traffic speeds have *sped up* in recent years as congestion as decreased.
    is he? - he references road pricing rather than dynamic road pricing - if he had referenced dynamic or time based road pricing I would just ask the simple question - where and how are you going to build the infrastructure to do it?
    Followed by have you seen the cost of doing it for even a small fixed point like the Dartford or Tyne Tunnels...

    Now Dynamic Road pricing is possible in a small rich country when you limit it to particular routes - it's a lot harder to do in somewhere like the UK....

    Easy enough if you GPS track all cars...

    I'm sure the Home Office would never suggest such a thing.
    You can't GPS all cars - because the car isn't under the Government's control so the GPS can be removed or disabled.
    Isn't GPS going to be required for speed controls? I thought they were going to be mandatory. If it is done on visual sign recognition then there will be plenty fun to be had.

    Of course, anything can be disabled, just like you can drive around without insurance.

    Presumably you could check each car "exists" when it passes an existing camera.
    As an aside I worked at WS Atkins in Blairs first term and got a sight of a DfT discussion document on road pricing which included some proposed figures per mile. Most in our document calculated how much our costs would be to commute and I was second closest to the office at 22 miles.....my costs would have been £150 a week to goto work. Petrol at the time for the commute was costing me £30 a week to compare. Most of us were of the view if it ever came in then we would have to quit and find a job closer to home.
    Suspect the data could do with a “re-run” after 25 years.
    The issue comes down to the lack of price elasticity for commuting AND the sheer amount of tax revenue the Government would want.

    Put it this way Road pricing won't be designed to be cheaper than petrol duty...
    I suspect the price elasticity of commuting has changed a bit post-Covid.

    As for the amount of tax revenue, if it replacing fuel duty, then it’s no extra burden overall, albeit there will be winners and losers.

    Amazon delivery drivers, for example, would likely be losers. But rural drivers, winners.
    The trouble with road pricing is that its suggested as a way of reducing congestion. The premise being you pay less if you drive at less congested times of the day. The part DfT people seemed to miss was for most people getting to work the time they drive is pretty much down to the whim of the firm they work for.

    Not much use saying to Joe Bloggs well just goto work later if his job requires him to be there for 9am and won't budge. In my case the reason it cost so much is I would have been on the m25 in morning rush hour so it attracted the maximum price which from memory was around £1 a mile. Nor did I have any sensible option but to drive as a train would turn it into a 2 hour commute
    I think road pricing would be about as popular as syphillis. It would offend civil libertarians and ordinary people who like the freedom to hit the roads and go where they want whenever they want without making complex variable financial calculations and being charged for the privilege.

    This is something that works for a regulated asset base model, like Heathrow, or Network Rail in charging train paths to TOCs and FOCs, but not your average Joe.

    It's far more likely that we'll get a tax surcharge on electricity charging points or an enhanced annual road tax based upon total mileage in the same way you read a gas meter or do a self-assessment tax return to HMRC.
    Well, what do we mean by road pricing?

    The US has a great many toll roads. It also has "FastTrak" lanes on many freeways which you can pay to access. Basically, you have the choice between paying $5 for FastTrak and getting home 20 minutes earlier, or just lumping it and saving the money.

    France has motorways you pay for, and those you don't. Switzerland breaks down road tax between "with motorway access" (more expensive) and "without". (Which also cleverly raises revenue from tourists and foreign hauliers.)

    Germany has road pricing for commercial vehicles on many Autobahn.

    The UK has the Dartford Bridge and the M6 bypass (I think).

    Or do we mean some kind of sophisticated GPS based every road priced in real time?
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 113,957
    IshmaelZ said:

    I thought you didn't put accents on capitals...

    Édith was special.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812

    FF43 said:

    eek said:

    PJH said:

    PJH said:

    GIN1138 said:

    I've just received my new (blue) passport - The Brexit dividend is complete! :heart:

    Congratulations. You are hereby now entitled to join a long, long queue to get across the Channel (once it's been stamped by a surly French customs agent). Brexit - the joy!
    And potential deportation if you get an incompetent border agent who forgets to stamp your passport correctly on the way out.
    I have read several times on this very forum that it still only takes seconds to stamp a passport.

    This is simply not true. Said surly and incompetent border guard has to leaf through your passport to find the most recent entry and exit stamps to ensure you are compliant with the visa-free 90/180 rule. That takes longer than a few seconds.
    But checks were always required, so nothing is new.

    If checks take twice as long then if you have twice as many staff on, then nothing has changed. Just staff appropriately based upon today's circumstances.
    Sorry, you keep repeating this, but the checks are new. Even if they were required previously, they weren't done. Those of us who hopped across the Channel can testify that most of the time you were just waved through, with the occasional random check.
    Indeed - that was my experience too. Normally the only checks outbound were done by the UK Border force, the French normally just checked you were waving the same number of passports at them as there were passengers in the car. They might stop Eastern European vehicles occasionally.

    Also @BartholomewRoberts doesn't consider that Dover and Folkestone both have major constraints on capacity due to geography. Given the extra time taken to process, it may be that it isn't possible simply to keep increasing the number of border posts - there needs to be somewhere to put them, and the waiting cars. A more realistic option may be to limit the number of vehicle crossings.

    Incidentally I notice that my shiny new blue passport has, in 4 months, already received the same number of stamps (5) as my previous one had in its lifetime.
    In the event it takes 24 booths instead of 12 then would the responsible thing to do be:

    A: Get 24 booths. Use compulsory purchase orders if necessary.

    B: Stick with 12. Blame voters for a choice they may six years ago.

    They've had six years to prepare for this. It isn't voters responsibility to deal with this, it's government's responsibility to accept voters choices and adapt.
    Have you actually been to Dover? Have you seen where the port actually is? Folkestone isn't much better. Are you planning to requisition the Castle, or the White Cliffs?
    Yes I have and yes there's space for 12 extra booths if they're needed. Where there's a will, there's a way.

    As @RochdalePioneers has repeatedly said the Port of Dover requested ~£30 million to build new facilities. Oddly enough they didn't seem bothered that they'd need to requisition the White Cliffs to do so.

    Considering that EU membership cost us £350mn a week gross, less net, and considering that this is supposedly your big problem with Brexit - spending half of one working day's gross EU membership fees to construct 12 extra booths and eliminate the problem seems like a bit of a bargain does it not?

    Extending Article 50 and then the transition period cost us about €20 billion, so €20,000,000,000, so if £30,000,000 is the cost of fixing this and then we're out of the EU and the problem is dealt with, then voting Brexit seems eminently logical does it not?

    If after six years this problem is real and hasn't been fixed, that's a failure of one or more of the respective government's not a failure of voting for Brexit.
    Once again you miss the fact Dover asked the UK Government for £30m to resolve the issues the UK Government created.

    And the UK Government offered them £30,000 or 0.1% of what was needed.

    And yes £30m is a lot of money - but adding space to a port by concreting over the open sea doesn't come cheap.
    I didn't miss that, I addressed it.

    £30m is less than half of one working day's gross EU membership fee. Its peanuts, but the existing booths weren't staffed.
    For an hour or so then they were manned. The delays didn't stop but they did manage to move the queues out of Dover Port to the M20 thanks to Brock.
    Reports on that seem disputed, many seem to be saying that the booths weren't manned.

    But either way it's moot. EU membership was costing us £350mn a week, gross, per week. About a billion per month net.

    Extending article 50 came with about a €9 billion fee attached.
    Transition game with about a €11 billion fee attached.

    If Brexit means investing £30mn as a one off to expand capacity and that's it, then just do it already, if it's actually needed. What a bargain compared to membership and transition fees.

    And if it's not been done that isn't the fault of Brexit voters.
    No, but it’s another cost that Leave swore would not exist because of champagne exporters.
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 55,008
    rcs1000 said:

    MaxPB said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Regarding our GDP and productivity we have comparative advantage in very-high end manufacturing, creative industries, pharmaceuticals, telecoms, and financial professional services.

    Therefore, we'd want policies and trade deals to leverage those globally as best we could, and that includes the EU.

    However, in and of itself I don't think that's sufficient because a good mass of our population will never get high paying jobs in any of those sectors and we have to be able to offer them something other than low-wage, low-security, low-value work that is migrant heavy and convenient for those in the thriving sectors but drags down our GDP and income per head and our productivity measures.

    Switzerland and Germany have both largely solved that issue though.

    And they have done so by (a) having lots of vocational training for 16 to 21 year olds who aren't going to University, and (b) having largely contributory benefits schemes, so that young people essentially have to choose between working and training. There is no "don't work, and still recieve money" option.
    It's also led to a very high effective minimum wage in Switzerland which means there's no corporate subsidisation of low wages.

    Fundamentally our education system isn't fit for the 21st century. It's very good for people who can and people who will, but not very good for those who can't and especially bad for people who won't. The UK is one of very few mug countries that has universal benefits without significant contributions required to qualify and a very large and complex system of in working benefits to lower the marginal cost of labour to get the can'ts and won'ts into low productivity jobs.

    So on the one hand they don't get paid enough and need to be subsidised with in working benefits and on the other side we've incentivised companies to hire these low productivity people over investing in capital by lowering the marginal cost of labour.

    It's a pincer movement that has wrecked the UK economy for 20+ years.
    Yep: our education (particularly vocational education) and benefits systems are massive problem.

    I'd add one other: German banking is a mess in many ways, but it's a hell of a lot easier for small and medium sized companies to access bank funding than in the UK. It's next to impossible for £2m year revenue companies to get bank funding in the UK, because banks would much rather lend to Joe Schmoo for him to spend on his credit card.

    In Germany and Switzerland, by contrast getting bank funding for smaller companies is - if not easy - a hell of a lot easier. This means that smaller companies find it a lot easier to invest in capital equipment than they do in the UK.

    Now... remind me, have either of Sunak or Truss actually mentioned any of these issues?
    This board should run for office.

    Regardless of current affiliation we'd do a much better job than any of the lot on offer.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,272
    Was the poll posted here earlier today that showed Truss ahead of Starmer confirmed or was it a spoof?
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812

    rcs1000 said:

    eek said:

    Pagan2 said:

    FPT

    eek said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    DavidL said:

    pm215 said:

    It *is* possible for government policy to grow the economy, despite naysayers on left and right.

    True, but it's also highly non-obvious how to go about it. Otherwise every government would do it...
    The UK is now some way off the frontier of the productivity / GDP, so there are actually lots of things we could do.

    They all involve confronting various vested interests, though.
    French style, permanent tax breaks on investment in plant and machinery. At say, 100% tax relief.
    Yes. Full relief. For starters.

    UK is actually at the bottom end of tax
    competitiveness for business, despite common belief, and has essentially disincentivised capex until very recently.


    We have focused on the low rate of CT rather than the effective rate. Rather than cancel the increase in the base rate we should increase the allowances. I don't see why 100% relief should be the cap either on capital spending or on training. We need incentives to invest in this country and the actual rate of CT is not particularly relevant to that.
    After thinking about this for a week, and digging into a bit, we should probably do all of the above AND keep corporation tax lowish.
    I would make high quality investment in machinery and high quality training very very tax advantageous.

    Pay for it by putting up CT.

    Fuck Business.
    I don’t get the “fuck business” bit.
    eek said:

    pm215 said:

    It *is* possible for government policy to grow the economy, despite naysayers on left and right.

    True, but it's also highly non-obvious how to go about it. Otherwise every government would do it...
    The UK is now some way off the frontier of the productivity / GDP, so there are actually lots of things we could do.

    They all involve confronting various vested interests, though.
    @Sam_Dumitriu
    Why I'm a Booster and not a Doomster:

    In almost every area of policy I've looked into depth, there are massive low-hanging fruit capable of increasing GDP by at least 3-5% each.


    https://twitter.com/Sam_Dumitriu/status/1551283707767656465
    That's all complete and utter codswallop

    Take

    The average Brit spends 115 hours in traffic each year. Swapping Fuel Duty for Road Pricing would boost GDP for 2 reasons.

    1. You can't work if you're stuck in traffic.
    2. Your effective labour market is smaller reducing the benefits of agglomeration.

    How does reducing your effective labour market solve anything?

    or

    This study suggest constraints on housing supply have a 13.5% GDP cost in the US. And there are good reasons to believe supply is even more constrained in the UK

    Firstly does he know that NIMBYISM is worth a lot of votes. Secondly has he seen how hard it is to do anything in San Francisco (yes I know it's an extreme example but there are plenty of others)..

    I don’t think it’s codswallop.
    It might be politically unrealistic, but it’s pretty obvious that Britain’s productivity is significantly impaired by housing/planning/transport issues.
    But look at his solution to a problem - he wishes to price people off commuting to increase the effective labour market size.

    How does that work because all you do with road pricing is move the tax from being paid at the pump to being paid per mile on the road - you haven't changed anything beyond when and how it's collected. You haven't done anything to make the commute time shorter.
    Actually, he does not.

    He suggests that road pricing will smooth traffic flow as people respond to paying full cost of congestion during peak hours.

    He references Singapore where, as he notes, average urban traffic speeds have *sped up* in recent years as congestion as decreased.
    is he? - he references road pricing rather than dynamic road pricing - if he had referenced dynamic or time based road pricing I would just ask the simple question - where and how are you going to build the infrastructure to do it?
    Followed by have you seen the cost of doing it for even a small fixed point like the Dartford or Tyne Tunnels...

    Now Dynamic Road pricing is possible in a small rich country when you limit it to particular routes - it's a lot harder to do in somewhere like the UK....

    Easy enough if you GPS track all cars...

    I'm sure the Home Office would never suggest such a thing.
    You can't GPS all cars - because the car isn't under the Government's control so the GPS can be removed or disabled.
    Isn't GPS going to be required for speed controls? I thought they were going to be mandatory. If it is done on visual sign recognition then there will be plenty fun to be had.

    Of course, anything can be disabled, just like you can drive around without insurance.

    Presumably you could check each car "exists" when it passes an existing camera.
    As an aside I worked at WS Atkins in Blairs first term and got a sight of a DfT discussion document on road pricing which included some proposed figures per mile. Most in our document calculated how much our costs would be to commute and I was second closest to the office at 22 miles.....my costs would have been £150 a week to goto work. Petrol at the time for the commute was costing me £30 a week to compare. Most of us were of the view if it ever came in then we would have to quit and find a job closer to home.
    Suspect the data could do with a “re-run” after 25 years.
    The issue comes down to the lack of price elasticity for commuting AND the sheer amount of tax revenue the Government would want.

    Put it this way Road pricing won't be designed to be cheaper than petrol duty...
    It does have to make up for the growing electrification of the UK's vehicle fleet...
    Why not just bake in the tax cut?
    Because, ideally, we want to maintain roads.
  • moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,226
    @Leon
    Are you writing a fiction/faction about Gobekli Tepi or branching out into popular archeology?
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,124
    edited July 2022

    FF43 said:

    eek said:

    PJH said:

    PJH said:

    GIN1138 said:

    I've just received my new (blue) passport - The Brexit dividend is complete! :heart:

    Congratulations. You are hereby now entitled to join a long, long queue to get across the Channel (once it's been stamped by a surly French customs agent). Brexit - the joy!
    And potential deportation if you get an incompetent border agent who forgets to stamp your passport correctly on the way out.
    I have read several times on this very forum that it still only takes seconds to stamp a passport.

    This is simply not true. Said surly and incompetent border guard has to leaf through your passport to find the most recent entry and exit stamps to ensure you are compliant with the visa-free 90/180 rule. That takes longer than a few seconds.
    But checks were always required, so nothing is new.

    If checks take twice as long then if you have twice as many staff on, then nothing has changed. Just staff appropriately based upon today's circumstances.
    Sorry, you keep repeating this, but the checks are new. Even if they were required previously, they weren't done. Those of us who hopped across the Channel can testify that most of the time you were just waved through, with the occasional random check.
    Indeed - that was my experience too. Normally the only checks outbound were done by the UK Border force, the French normally just checked you were waving the same number of passports at them as there were passengers in the car. They might stop Eastern European vehicles occasionally.

    Also @BartholomewRoberts doesn't consider that Dover and Folkestone both have major constraints on capacity due to geography. Given the extra time taken to process, it may be that it isn't possible simply to keep increasing the number of border posts - there needs to be somewhere to put them, and the waiting cars. A more realistic option may be to limit the number of vehicle crossings.

    Incidentally I notice that my shiny new blue passport has, in 4 months, already received the same number of stamps (5) as my previous one had in its lifetime.
    In the event it takes 24 booths instead of 12 then would the responsible thing to do be:

    A: Get 24 booths. Use compulsory purchase orders if necessary.

    B: Stick with 12. Blame voters for a choice they may six years ago.

    They've had six years to prepare for this. It isn't voters responsibility to deal with this, it's government's responsibility to accept voters choices and adapt.
    Have you actually been to Dover? Have you seen where the port actually is? Folkestone isn't much better. Are you planning to requisition the Castle, or the White Cliffs?
    Yes I have and yes there's space for 12 extra booths if they're needed. Where there's a will, there's a way.

    As @RochdalePioneers has repeatedly said the Port of Dover requested ~£30 million to build new facilities. Oddly enough they didn't seem bothered that they'd need to requisition the White Cliffs to do so.

    Considering that EU membership cost us £350mn a week gross, less net, and considering that this is supposedly your big problem with Brexit - spending half of one working day's gross EU membership fees to construct 12 extra booths and eliminate the problem seems like a bit of a bargain does it not?

    Extending Article 50 and then the transition period cost us about €20 billion, so €20,000,000,000, so if £30,000,000 is the cost of fixing this and then we're out of the EU and the problem is dealt with, then voting Brexit seems eminently logical does it not?

    If after six years this problem is real and hasn't been fixed, that's a failure of one or more of the respective government's not a failure of voting for Brexit.
    Once again you miss the fact Dover asked the UK Government for £30m to resolve the issues the UK Government created.

    And the UK Government offered them £30,000 or 0.1% of what was needed.

    And yes £30m is a lot of money - but adding space to a port by concreting over the open sea doesn't come cheap.
    I didn't miss that, I addressed it.

    £30m is less than half of one working day's gross EU membership fee. Its peanuts, but the existing booths weren't staffed.
    For an hour or so then they were manned. The delays didn't stop but they did manage to move the queues out of Dover Port to the M20 thanks to Brock.
    Reports on that seem disputed, many seem to be saying that the booths weren't manned.

    But either way it's moot. EU membership was costing us £350mn a week, gross, per week. About a billion per month net.

    Extending article 50 came with about a €9 billion fee attached.
    Transition game with about a €11 billion fee attached.

    If Brexit means investing £30mn as a one off to expand capacity and that's it, then just do it already, if it's actually needed. What a bargain compared to membership and transition fees.

    And if it's not been done that isn't the fault of Brexit voters.
    Who were predominantly Conservative voters, who repeatedly voted in incompetent Conservative administrations who could not be arsed to do the work needed.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    Interesting on Rishi n race

    Next up from our debate panel is Vikas Hathim, a 46-year-old accounts assistant who's supporting Liz Truss. He used to be a Tory Party member but is now an undecided voter.

    On both candidates

    Vikas says his main reason for backing Truss - and not Rishi Sunak, whose family are of Indian descent - is he "doesn't think the UK is ready for an Indian prime minister".

    He's of Indian background himself and says he's worried about enduring racism in the country.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-62273292
  • FF43 said:

    eek said:

    PJH said:

    PJH said:

    GIN1138 said:

    I've just received my new (blue) passport - The Brexit dividend is complete! :heart:

    Congratulations. You are hereby now entitled to join a long, long queue to get across the Channel (once it's been stamped by a surly French customs agent). Brexit - the joy!
    And potential deportation if you get an incompetent border agent who forgets to stamp your passport correctly on the way out.
    I have read several times on this very forum that it still only takes seconds to stamp a passport.

    This is simply not true. Said surly and incompetent border guard has to leaf through your passport to find the most recent entry and exit stamps to ensure you are compliant with the visa-free 90/180 rule. That takes longer than a few seconds.
    But checks were always required, so nothing is new.

    If checks take twice as long then if you have twice as many staff on, then nothing has changed. Just staff appropriately based upon today's circumstances.
    Sorry, you keep repeating this, but the checks are new. Even if they were required previously, they weren't done. Those of us who hopped across the Channel can testify that most of the time you were just waved through, with the occasional random check.
    Indeed - that was my experience too. Normally the only checks outbound were done by the UK Border force, the French normally just checked you were waving the same number of passports at them as there were passengers in the car. They might stop Eastern European vehicles occasionally.

    Also @BartholomewRoberts doesn't consider that Dover and Folkestone both have major constraints on capacity due to geography. Given the extra time taken to process, it may be that it isn't possible simply to keep increasing the number of border posts - there needs to be somewhere to put them, and the waiting cars. A more realistic option may be to limit the number of vehicle crossings.

    Incidentally I notice that my shiny new blue passport has, in 4 months, already received the same number of stamps (5) as my previous one had in its lifetime.
    In the event it takes 24 booths instead of 12 then would the responsible thing to do be:

    A: Get 24 booths. Use compulsory purchase orders if necessary.

    B: Stick with 12. Blame voters for a choice they may six years ago.

    They've had six years to prepare for this. It isn't voters responsibility to deal with this, it's government's responsibility to accept voters choices and adapt.
    Have you actually been to Dover? Have you seen where the port actually is? Folkestone isn't much better. Are you planning to requisition the Castle, or the White Cliffs?
    Yes I have and yes there's space for 12 extra booths if they're needed. Where there's a will, there's a way.

    As @RochdalePioneers has repeatedly said the Port of Dover requested ~£30 million to build new facilities. Oddly enough they didn't seem bothered that they'd need to requisition the White Cliffs to do so.

    Considering that EU membership cost us £350mn a week gross, less net, and considering that this is supposedly your big problem with Brexit - spending half of one working day's gross EU membership fees to construct 12 extra booths and eliminate the problem seems like a bit of a bargain does it not?

    Extending Article 50 and then the transition period cost us about €20 billion, so €20,000,000,000, so if £30,000,000 is the cost of fixing this and then we're out of the EU and the problem is dealt with, then voting Brexit seems eminently logical does it not?

    If after six years this problem is real and hasn't been fixed, that's a failure of one or more of the respective government's not a failure of voting for Brexit.
    Once again you miss the fact Dover asked the UK Government for £30m to resolve the issues the UK Government created.

    And the UK Government offered them £30,000 or 0.1% of what was needed.

    And yes £30m is a lot of money - but adding space to a port by concreting over the open sea doesn't come cheap.
    I didn't miss that, I addressed it.

    £30m is less than half of one working day's gross EU membership fee. Its peanuts, but the existing booths weren't staffed.
    For an hour or so then they were manned. The delays didn't stop but they did manage to move the queues out of Dover Port to the M20 thanks to Brock.
    Reports on that seem disputed, many seem to be saying that the booths weren't manned.

    But either way it's moot. EU membership was costing us £350mn a week, gross, per week. About a billion per month net.

    Extending article 50 came with about a €9 billion fee attached.
    Transition game with about a €11 billion fee attached.

    If Brexit means investing £30mn as a one off to expand capacity and that's it, then just do it already, if it's actually needed. What a bargain compared to membership and transition fees.

    And if it's not been done that isn't the fault of Brexit voters.
    No, but it’s another cost that Leave swore would not exist because of champagne exporters.
    If less than half a working days membership fee deals with this and then its done why continue to be members instead?

    Just adapt to the fact we voted and get the infrastructure and staffing required.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 113,957
    Always said rugby league was full of tossers.

    Manly Sea Eagles, the Sydney-based rugby league team, are facing a revolt from players who are refusing to wear a rainbow-themed Pride jersey celebrating inclusivity for their game against Sydney Roosters on Thursday.

    The Daily Telegraph based in Sydney reported that seven players have said they will boycott the NRL game due to their religious beliefs about homosexuality, while Des Hasler, the coach, was said to have been supportive of their decision not to play.

    Ian Roberts, the club’s former forward, who became the first rugby league player to come out as gay in 1995, described his disappointment at the episode.


    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/seven-manly-sea-eagles-players-to-boycott-nrl-match-against-sydney-roosters-over-pride-jersey-vkh8mdzbz
  • RazedabodeRazedabode Posts: 2,973
    HYUFD said:

    Starmer now has a 10% lead over Sunak as best PM and a 5% lead over Truss.

    32% prefer Sunak to Starmer, 33% Truss to Starmer so seems for now Sunak puts more undecideds behind Starmer

    https://twitter.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1551600768679018496?s=20&t=bWdCKVG0WIiNNwzijUShzA

    Let’s see - the more people that see Truss…
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812

    rcs1000 said:

    MaxPB said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Regarding our GDP and productivity we have comparative advantage in very-high end manufacturing, creative industries, pharmaceuticals, telecoms, and financial professional services.

    Therefore, we'd want policies and trade deals to leverage those globally as best we could, and that includes the EU.

    However, in and of itself I don't think that's sufficient because a good mass of our population will never get high paying jobs in any of those sectors and we have to be able to offer them something other than low-wage, low-security, low-value work that is migrant heavy and convenient for those in the thriving sectors but drags down our GDP and income per head and our productivity measures.

    Switzerland and Germany have both largely solved that issue though.

    And they have done so by (a) having lots of vocational training for 16 to 21 year olds who aren't going to University, and (b) having largely contributory benefits schemes, so that young people essentially have to choose between working and training. There is no "don't work, and still recieve money" option.
    It's also led to a very high effective minimum wage in Switzerland which means there's no corporate subsidisation of low wages.

    Fundamentally our education system isn't fit for the 21st century. It's very good for people who can and people who will, but not very good for those who can't and especially bad for people who won't. The UK is one of very few mug countries that has universal benefits without significant contributions required to qualify and a very large and complex system of in working benefits to lower the marginal cost of labour to get the can'ts and won'ts into low productivity jobs.

    So on the one hand they don't get paid enough and need to be subsidised with in working benefits and on the other side we've incentivised companies to hire these low productivity people over investing in capital by lowering the marginal cost of labour.

    It's a pincer movement that has wrecked the UK economy for 20+ years.
    Yep: our education (particularly vocational education) and benefits systems are massive problem.

    I'd add one other: German banking is a mess in many ways, but it's a hell of a lot easier for small and medium sized companies to access bank funding than in the UK. It's next to impossible for £2m year revenue companies to get bank funding in the UK, because banks would much rather lend to Joe Schmoo for him to spend on his credit card.

    In Germany and Switzerland, by contrast getting bank funding for smaller companies is - if not easy - a hell of a lot easier. This means that smaller companies find it a lot easier to invest in capital equipment than they do in the UK.

    Now... remind me, have either of Sunak or Truss actually mentioned any of these issues?
    This board should run for office.

    Regardless of current affiliation we'd do a much better job than any of the lot on offer.
    1.
    Sunak seems very incurious really, for someone of his intellect.

    I think Truss is more of a policy wonk under the hood, albeit a batshit one.

    2.
    If the Board ran for office, we’d quickly split into two or three camps - call them political parties, if you like.

    I certainly would not want to be in the same “party” as @BartholomewRoberts.
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,824
    edited July 2022

    Was the poll posted here earlier today that showed Truss ahead of Starmer confirmed or was it a spoof?

    Wasnt here earlier but the Express had a ComRes Friday or Saturday which had Truss a point ahead of Starmer 40 to 39 from memory. Headline VI was 44 33 though
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,272

    rcs1000 said:

    MaxPB said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Regarding our GDP and productivity we have comparative advantage in very-high end manufacturing, creative industries, pharmaceuticals, telecoms, and financial professional services.

    Therefore, we'd want policies and trade deals to leverage those globally as best we could, and that includes the EU.

    However, in and of itself I don't think that's sufficient because a good mass of our population will never get high paying jobs in any of those sectors and we have to be able to offer them something other than low-wage, low-security, low-value work that is migrant heavy and convenient for those in the thriving sectors but drags down our GDP and income per head and our productivity measures.

    Switzerland and Germany have both largely solved that issue though.

    And they have done so by (a) having lots of vocational training for 16 to 21 year olds who aren't going to University, and (b) having largely contributory benefits schemes, so that young people essentially have to choose between working and training. There is no "don't work, and still recieve money" option.
    It's also led to a very high effective minimum wage in Switzerland which means there's no corporate subsidisation of low wages.

    Fundamentally our education system isn't fit for the 21st century. It's very good for people who can and people who will, but not very good for those who can't and especially bad for people who won't. The UK is one of very few mug countries that has universal benefits without significant contributions required to qualify and a very large and complex system of in working benefits to lower the marginal cost of labour to get the can'ts and won'ts into low productivity jobs.

    So on the one hand they don't get paid enough and need to be subsidised with in working benefits and on the other side we've incentivised companies to hire these low productivity people over investing in capital by lowering the marginal cost of labour.

    It's a pincer movement that has wrecked the UK economy for 20+ years.
    Yep: our education (particularly vocational education) and benefits systems are massive problem.

    I'd add one other: German banking is a mess in many ways, but it's a hell of a lot easier for small and medium sized companies to access bank funding than in the UK. It's next to impossible for £2m year revenue companies to get bank funding in the UK, because banks would much rather lend to Joe Schmoo for him to spend on his credit card.

    In Germany and Switzerland, by contrast getting bank funding for smaller companies is - if not easy - a hell of a lot easier. This means that smaller companies find it a lot easier to invest in capital equipment than they do in the UK.

    Now... remind me, have either of Sunak or Truss actually mentioned any of these issues?
    This board should run for office.

    Regardless of current affiliation we'd do a much better job than any of the lot on offer.
    You're not wrong - could be a bit of Cabinet in-fighting though!
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,124

    FF43 said:

    eek said:

    PJH said:

    PJH said:

    GIN1138 said:

    I've just received my new (blue) passport - The Brexit dividend is complete! :heart:

    Congratulations. You are hereby now entitled to join a long, long queue to get across the Channel (once it's been stamped by a surly French customs agent). Brexit - the joy!
    And potential deportation if you get an incompetent border agent who forgets to stamp your passport correctly on the way out.
    I have read several times on this very forum that it still only takes seconds to stamp a passport.

    This is simply not true. Said surly and incompetent border guard has to leaf through your passport to find the most recent entry and exit stamps to ensure you are compliant with the visa-free 90/180 rule. That takes longer than a few seconds.
    But checks were always required, so nothing is new.

    If checks take twice as long then if you have twice as many staff on, then nothing has changed. Just staff appropriately based upon today's circumstances.
    Sorry, you keep repeating this, but the checks are new. Even if they were required previously, they weren't done. Those of us who hopped across the Channel can testify that most of the time you were just waved through, with the occasional random check.
    Indeed - that was my experience too. Normally the only checks outbound were done by the UK Border force, the French normally just checked you were waving the same number of passports at them as there were passengers in the car. They might stop Eastern European vehicles occasionally.

    Also @BartholomewRoberts doesn't consider that Dover and Folkestone both have major constraints on capacity due to geography. Given the extra time taken to process, it may be that it isn't possible simply to keep increasing the number of border posts - there needs to be somewhere to put them, and the waiting cars. A more realistic option may be to limit the number of vehicle crossings.

    Incidentally I notice that my shiny new blue passport has, in 4 months, already received the same number of stamps (5) as my previous one had in its lifetime.
    In the event it takes 24 booths instead of 12 then would the responsible thing to do be:

    A: Get 24 booths. Use compulsory purchase orders if necessary.

    B: Stick with 12. Blame voters for a choice they may six years ago.

    They've had six years to prepare for this. It isn't voters responsibility to deal with this, it's government's responsibility to accept voters choices and adapt.
    Have you actually been to Dover? Have you seen where the port actually is? Folkestone isn't much better. Are you planning to requisition the Castle, or the White Cliffs?
    Yes I have and yes there's space for 12 extra booths if they're needed. Where there's a will, there's a way.

    As @RochdalePioneers has repeatedly said the Port of Dover requested ~£30 million to build new facilities. Oddly enough they didn't seem bothered that they'd need to requisition the White Cliffs to do so.

    Considering that EU membership cost us £350mn a week gross, less net, and considering that this is supposedly your big problem with Brexit - spending half of one working day's gross EU membership fees to construct 12 extra booths and eliminate the problem seems like a bit of a bargain does it not?

    Extending Article 50 and then the transition period cost us about €20 billion, so €20,000,000,000, so if £30,000,000 is the cost of fixing this and then we're out of the EU and the problem is dealt with, then voting Brexit seems eminently logical does it not?

    If after six years this problem is real and hasn't been fixed, that's a failure of one or more of the respective government's not a failure of voting for Brexit.
    Once again you miss the fact Dover asked the UK Government for £30m to resolve the issues the UK Government created.

    And the UK Government offered them £30,000 or 0.1% of what was needed.

    And yes £30m is a lot of money - but adding space to a port by concreting over the open sea doesn't come cheap.
    I didn't miss that, I addressed it.

    £30m is less than half of one working day's gross EU membership fee. Its peanuts, but the existing booths weren't staffed.
    For an hour or so then they were manned. The delays didn't stop but they did manage to move the queues out of Dover Port to the M20 thanks to Brock.
    Reports on that seem disputed, many seem to be saying that the booths weren't manned.

    But either way it's moot. EU membership was costing us £350mn a week, gross, per week. About a billion per month net.

    Extending article 50 came with about a €9 billion fee attached.
    Transition game with about a €11 billion fee attached.

    If Brexit means investing £30mn as a one off to expand capacity and that's it, then just do it already, if it's actually needed. What a bargain compared to membership and transition fees.

    And if it's not been done that isn't the fault of Brexit voters.
    No, but it’s another cost that Leave swore would not exist because of champagne exporters.
    If less than half a working days membership fee deals with this and then its done why continue to be members instead?

    Just adapt to the fact we voted and get the infrastructure and staffing required.
    So why are Brexiter administrations so utterly incompetent, even by your analysis?
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 113,957

    Was the poll posted here earlier today that showed Truss ahead of Starmer confirmed or was it a spoof?

    I'm awaiting confirmation from ComRes.

    The original tweeter of those claims is somebody known for misrepresenting polls.
  • rcs1000 said:

    eek said:

    Pagan2 said:

    FPT

    eek said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    DavidL said:

    pm215 said:

    It *is* possible for government policy to grow the economy, despite naysayers on left and right.

    True, but it's also highly non-obvious how to go about it. Otherwise every government would do it...
    The UK is now some way off the frontier of the productivity / GDP, so there are actually lots of things we could do.

    They all involve confronting various vested interests, though.
    French style, permanent tax breaks on investment in plant and machinery. At say, 100% tax relief.
    Yes. Full relief. For starters.

    UK is actually at the bottom end of tax
    competitiveness for business, despite common belief, and has essentially disincentivised capex until very recently.


    We have focused on the low rate of CT rather than the effective rate. Rather than cancel the increase in the base rate we should increase the allowances. I don't see why 100% relief should be the cap either on capital spending or on training. We need incentives to invest in this country and the actual rate of CT is not particularly relevant to that.
    After thinking about this for a week, and digging into a bit, we should probably do all of the above AND keep corporation tax lowish.
    I would make high quality investment in machinery and high quality training very very tax advantageous.

    Pay for it by putting up CT.

    Fuck Business.
    I don’t get the “fuck business” bit.
    eek said:

    pm215 said:

    It *is* possible for government policy to grow the economy, despite naysayers on left and right.

    True, but it's also highly non-obvious how to go about it. Otherwise every government would do it...
    The UK is now some way off the frontier of the productivity / GDP, so there are actually lots of things we could do.

    They all involve confronting various vested interests, though.
    @Sam_Dumitriu
    Why I'm a Booster and not a Doomster:

    In almost every area of policy I've looked into depth, there are massive low-hanging fruit capable of increasing GDP by at least 3-5% each.


    https://twitter.com/Sam_Dumitriu/status/1551283707767656465
    That's all complete and utter codswallop

    Take

    The average Brit spends 115 hours in traffic each year. Swapping Fuel Duty for Road Pricing would boost GDP for 2 reasons.

    1. You can't work if you're stuck in traffic.
    2. Your effective labour market is smaller reducing the benefits of agglomeration.

    How does reducing your effective labour market solve anything?

    or

    This study suggest constraints on housing supply have a 13.5% GDP cost in the US. And there are good reasons to believe supply is even more constrained in the UK

    Firstly does he know that NIMBYISM is worth a lot of votes. Secondly has he seen how hard it is to do anything in San Francisco (yes I know it's an extreme example but there are plenty of others)..

    I don’t think it’s codswallop.
    It might be politically unrealistic, but it’s pretty obvious that Britain’s productivity is significantly impaired by housing/planning/transport issues.
    But look at his solution to a problem - he wishes to price people off commuting to increase the effective labour market size.

    How does that work because all you do with road pricing is move the tax from being paid at the pump to being paid per mile on the road - you haven't changed anything beyond when and how it's collected. You haven't done anything to make the commute time shorter.
    Actually, he does not.

    He suggests that road pricing will smooth traffic flow as people respond to paying full cost of congestion during peak hours.

    He references Singapore where, as he notes, average urban traffic speeds have *sped up* in recent years as congestion as decreased.
    is he? - he references road pricing rather than dynamic road pricing - if he had referenced dynamic or time based road pricing I would just ask the simple question - where and how are you going to build the infrastructure to do it?
    Followed by have you seen the cost of doing it for even a small fixed point like the Dartford or Tyne Tunnels...

    Now Dynamic Road pricing is possible in a small rich country when you limit it to particular routes - it's a lot harder to do in somewhere like the UK....

    Easy enough if you GPS track all cars...

    I'm sure the Home Office would never suggest such a thing.
    You can't GPS all cars - because the car isn't under the Government's control so the GPS can be removed or disabled.
    Isn't GPS going to be required for speed controls? I thought they were going to be mandatory. If it is done on visual sign recognition then there will be plenty fun to be had.

    Of course, anything can be disabled, just like you can drive around without insurance.

    Presumably you could check each car "exists" when it passes an existing camera.
    As an aside I worked at WS Atkins in Blairs first term and got a sight of a DfT discussion document on road pricing which included some proposed figures per mile. Most in our document calculated how much our costs would be to commute and I was second closest to the office at 22 miles.....my costs would have been £150 a week to goto work. Petrol at the time for the commute was costing me £30 a week to compare. Most of us were of the view if it ever came in then we would have to quit and find a job closer to home.
    Suspect the data could do with a “re-run” after 25 years.
    The issue comes down to the lack of price elasticity for commuting AND the sheer amount of tax revenue the Government would want.

    Put it this way Road pricing won't be designed to be cheaper than petrol duty...
    It does have to make up for the growing electrification of the UK's vehicle fleet...
    Why not just bake in the tax cut?
    Because, ideally, we want to maintain roads.
    So do that out of general taxation. We subsidise rails out of general taxation, why not roads?

    Of course fuel duty pays for mammothly more than roads. Oh well, cover it out of some other general taxation instead.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,272

    Was the poll posted here earlier today that showed Truss ahead of Starmer confirmed or was it a spoof?

    Wasnt here earlier but the Express had a ComRes Friday or Saturday which had Truss a point ahead of Starmer 40 to 39 from memory. Headline VI was 44 33 though
    Sounds like the one.

    Very odd imo but, hey, I thought it was odd that Trump got more than 5% in either POTUS election!
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 113,957

    rcs1000 said:

    MaxPB said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Regarding our GDP and productivity we have comparative advantage in very-high end manufacturing, creative industries, pharmaceuticals, telecoms, and financial professional services.

    Therefore, we'd want policies and trade deals to leverage those globally as best we could, and that includes the EU.

    However, in and of itself I don't think that's sufficient because a good mass of our population will never get high paying jobs in any of those sectors and we have to be able to offer them something other than low-wage, low-security, low-value work that is migrant heavy and convenient for those in the thriving sectors but drags down our GDP and income per head and our productivity measures.

    Switzerland and Germany have both largely solved that issue though.

    And they have done so by (a) having lots of vocational training for 16 to 21 year olds who aren't going to University, and (b) having largely contributory benefits schemes, so that young people essentially have to choose between working and training. There is no "don't work, and still recieve money" option.
    It's also led to a very high effective minimum wage in Switzerland which means there's no corporate subsidisation of low wages.

    Fundamentally our education system isn't fit for the 21st century. It's very good for people who can and people who will, but not very good for those who can't and especially bad for people who won't. The UK is one of very few mug countries that has universal benefits without significant contributions required to qualify and a very large and complex system of in working benefits to lower the marginal cost of labour to get the can'ts and won'ts into low productivity jobs.

    So on the one hand they don't get paid enough and need to be subsidised with in working benefits and on the other side we've incentivised companies to hire these low productivity people over investing in capital by lowering the marginal cost of labour.

    It's a pincer movement that has wrecked the UK economy for 20+ years.
    Yep: our education (particularly vocational education) and benefits systems are massive problem.

    I'd add one other: German banking is a mess in many ways, but it's a hell of a lot easier for small and medium sized companies to access bank funding than in the UK. It's next to impossible for £2m year revenue companies to get bank funding in the UK, because banks would much rather lend to Joe Schmoo for him to spend on his credit card.

    In Germany and Switzerland, by contrast getting bank funding for smaller companies is - if not easy - a hell of a lot easier. This means that smaller companies find it a lot easier to invest in capital equipment than they do in the UK.

    Now... remind me, have either of Sunak or Truss actually mentioned any of these issues?
    This board should run for office.

    Regardless of current affiliation we'd do a much better job than any of the lot on offer.
    Me as Prime Minister.

    You know it makes sense.
  • Daveyboy1961Daveyboy1961 Posts: 3,334

    FF43 said:

    eek said:

    PJH said:

    PJH said:

    GIN1138 said:

    I've just received my new (blue) passport - The Brexit dividend is complete! :heart:

    Congratulations. You are hereby now entitled to join a long, long queue to get across the Channel (once it's been stamped by a surly French customs agent). Brexit - the joy!
    And potential deportation if you get an incompetent border agent who forgets to stamp your passport correctly on the way out.
    I have read several times on this very forum that it still only takes seconds to stamp a passport.

    This is simply not true. Said surly and incompetent border guard has to leaf through your passport to find the most recent entry and exit stamps to ensure you are compliant with the visa-free 90/180 rule. That takes longer than a few seconds.
    But checks were always required, so nothing is new.

    If checks take twice as long then if you have twice as many staff on, then nothing has changed. Just staff appropriately based upon today's circumstances.
    Sorry, you keep repeating this, but the checks are new. Even if they were required previously, they weren't done. Those of us who hopped across the Channel can testify that most of the time you were just waved through, with the occasional random check.
    Indeed - that was my experience too. Normally the only checks outbound were done by the UK Border force, the French normally just checked you were waving the same number of passports at them as there were passengers in the car. They might stop Eastern European vehicles occasionally.

    Also @BartholomewRoberts doesn't consider that Dover and Folkestone both have major constraints on capacity due to geography. Given the extra time taken to process, it may be that it isn't possible simply to keep increasing the number of border posts - there needs to be somewhere to put them, and the waiting cars. A more realistic option may be to limit the number of vehicle crossings.

    Incidentally I notice that my shiny new blue passport has, in 4 months, already received the same number of stamps (5) as my previous one had in its lifetime.
    In the event it takes 24 booths instead of 12 then would the responsible thing to do be:

    A: Get 24 booths. Use compulsory purchase orders if necessary.

    B: Stick with 12. Blame voters for a choice they may six years ago.

    They've had six years to prepare for this. It isn't voters responsibility to deal with this, it's government's responsibility to accept voters choices and adapt.
    Have you actually been to Dover? Have you seen where the port actually is? Folkestone isn't much better. Are you planning to requisition the Castle, or the White Cliffs?
    Yes I have and yes there's space for 12 extra booths if they're needed. Where there's a will, there's a way.

    As @RochdalePioneers has repeatedly said the Port of Dover requested ~£30 million to build new facilities. Oddly enough they didn't seem bothered that they'd need to requisition the White Cliffs to do so.

    Considering that EU membership cost us £350mn a week gross, less net, and considering that this is supposedly your big problem with Brexit - spending half of one working day's gross EU membership fees to construct 12 extra booths and eliminate the problem seems like a bit of a bargain does it not?

    Extending Article 50 and then the transition period cost us about €20 billion, so €20,000,000,000, so if £30,000,000 is the cost of fixing this and then we're out of the EU and the problem is dealt with, then voting Brexit seems eminently logical does it not?

    If after six years this problem is real and hasn't been fixed, that's a failure of one or more of the respective government's not a failure of voting for Brexit.
    Once again you miss the fact Dover asked the UK Government for £30m to resolve the issues the UK Government created.

    And the UK Government offered them £30,000 or 0.1% of what was needed.

    And yes £30m is a lot of money - but adding space to a port by concreting over the open sea doesn't come cheap.
    I didn't miss that, I addressed it.

    £30m is less than half of one working day's gross EU membership fee. Its peanuts, but the existing booths weren't staffed.
    For an hour or so then they were manned. The delays didn't stop but they did manage to move the queues out of Dover Port to the M20 thanks to Brock.
    Reports on that seem disputed, many seem to be saying that the booths weren't manned.

    But either way it's moot. EU membership was costing us £350mn a week, gross, per week. About a billion per month net.

    Extending article 50 came with about a €9 billion fee attached.
    Transition game with about a €11 billion fee attached.

    If Brexit means investing £30mn as a one off to expand capacity and that's it, then just do it already, if it's actually needed. What a bargain compared to membership and transition fees.

    And if it's not been done that isn't the fault of Brexit voters.
    I don't blame brexit voters, I blame the liars and con merchants, who had virtually nothing to lose and everything to gain. Sadly they've buggered off with their dual passports to foreign climes or soon will. All that'll be left will be people arguing finer points on forums. My god, you'd argue black was white to be contrary.!

  • nico679nico679 Posts: 4,530
    The NHS could still employ EU doctors and nurses as they’re likely to meet the new visa rules, however the appeal of the UK to EU nationals to move here now isn’t what it was pre Brexit.

    So it looks like the UK will have to appeal to countries like India and the Philippines to help plug the gap .

    The NHS staffing crisis is very worrying given how much of a backlog has built up . No 10 would like to dupe people into thinking this was just due to covid but this isn’t the case . There were big problems before that and covid has just been the final straw.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,272

    rcs1000 said:

    MaxPB said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Regarding our GDP and productivity we have comparative advantage in very-high end manufacturing, creative industries, pharmaceuticals, telecoms, and financial professional services.

    Therefore, we'd want policies and trade deals to leverage those globally as best we could, and that includes the EU.

    However, in and of itself I don't think that's sufficient because a good mass of our population will never get high paying jobs in any of those sectors and we have to be able to offer them something other than low-wage, low-security, low-value work that is migrant heavy and convenient for those in the thriving sectors but drags down our GDP and income per head and our productivity measures.

    Switzerland and Germany have both largely solved that issue though.

    And they have done so by (a) having lots of vocational training for 16 to 21 year olds who aren't going to University, and (b) having largely contributory benefits schemes, so that young people essentially have to choose between working and training. There is no "don't work, and still recieve money" option.
    It's also led to a very high effective minimum wage in Switzerland which means there's no corporate subsidisation of low wages.

    Fundamentally our education system isn't fit for the 21st century. It's very good for people who can and people who will, but not very good for those who can't and especially bad for people who won't. The UK is one of very few mug countries that has universal benefits without significant contributions required to qualify and a very large and complex system of in working benefits to lower the marginal cost of labour to get the can'ts and won'ts into low productivity jobs.

    So on the one hand they don't get paid enough and need to be subsidised with in working benefits and on the other side we've incentivised companies to hire these low productivity people over investing in capital by lowering the marginal cost of labour.

    It's a pincer movement that has wrecked the UK economy for 20+ years.
    Yep: our education (particularly vocational education) and benefits systems are massive problem.

    I'd add one other: German banking is a mess in many ways, but it's a hell of a lot easier for small and medium sized companies to access bank funding than in the UK. It's next to impossible for £2m year revenue companies to get bank funding in the UK, because banks would much rather lend to Joe Schmoo for him to spend on his credit card.

    In Germany and Switzerland, by contrast getting bank funding for smaller companies is - if not easy - a hell of a lot easier. This means that smaller companies find it a lot easier to invest in capital equipment than they do in the UK.

    Now... remind me, have either of Sunak or Truss actually mentioned any of these issues?
    This board should run for office.

    Regardless of current affiliation we'd do a much better job than any of the lot on offer.
    1.
    Sunak seems very incurious really, for someone of his intellect.

    I think Truss is more of a policy wonk under the hood, albeit a batshit one.

    2.
    If the Board ran for office, we’d quickly split into two or three camps - call them political parties, if you like.

    I certainly would not want to be in the same “party” as @BartholomewRoberts.
    Don't worry - we could soon remove the whip from Barty!
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812
    edited July 2022

    rcs1000 said:

    eek said:

    Pagan2 said:

    FPT

    eek said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    DavidL said:

    pm215 said:

    It *is* possible for government policy to grow the economy, despite naysayers on left and right.

    True, but it's also highly non-obvious how to go about it. Otherwise every government would do it...
    The UK is now some way off the frontier of the productivity / GDP, so there are actually lots of things we could do.

    They all involve confronting various vested interests, though.
    French style, permanent tax breaks on investment in plant and machinery. At say, 100% tax relief.
    Yes. Full relief. For starters.

    UK is actually at the bottom end of tax
    competitiveness for business, despite common belief, and has essentially disincentivised capex until very recently.


    We have focused on the low rate of CT rather than the effective rate. Rather than cancel the increase in the base rate we should increase the allowances. I don't see why 100% relief should be the cap either on capital spending or on training. We need incentives to invest in this country and the actual rate of CT is not particularly relevant to that.
    After thinking about this for a week, and digging into a bit, we should probably do all of the above AND keep corporation tax lowish.
    I would make high quality investment in machinery and high quality training very very tax advantageous.

    Pay for it by putting up CT.

    Fuck Business.
    I don’t get the “fuck business” bit.
    eek said:

    pm215 said:

    It *is* possible for government policy to grow the economy, despite naysayers on left and right.

    True, but it's also highly non-obvious how to go about it. Otherwise every government would do it...
    The UK is now some way off the frontier of the productivity / GDP, so there are actually lots of things we could do.

    They all involve confronting various vested interests, though.
    @Sam_Dumitriu
    Why I'm a Booster and not a Doomster:

    In almost every area of policy I've looked into depth, there are massive low-hanging fruit capable of increasing GDP by at least 3-5% each.


    https://twitter.com/Sam_Dumitriu/status/1551283707767656465
    That's all complete and utter codswallop

    Take

    The average Brit spends 115 hours in traffic each year. Swapping Fuel Duty for Road Pricing would boost GDP for 2 reasons.

    1. You can't work if you're stuck in traffic.
    2. Your effective labour market is smaller reducing the benefits of agglomeration.

    How does reducing your effective labour market solve anything?

    or

    This study suggest constraints on housing supply have a 13.5% GDP cost in the US. And there are good reasons to believe supply is even more constrained in the UK

    Firstly does he know that NIMBYISM is worth a lot of votes. Secondly has he seen how hard it is to do anything in San Francisco (yes I know it's an extreme example but there are plenty of others)..

    I don’t think it’s codswallop.
    It might be politically unrealistic, but it’s pretty obvious that Britain’s productivity is significantly impaired by housing/planning/transport issues.
    But look at his solution to a problem - he wishes to price people off commuting to increase the effective labour market size.

    How does that work because all you do with road pricing is move the tax from being paid at the pump to being paid per mile on the road - you haven't changed anything beyond when and how it's collected. You haven't done anything to make the commute time shorter.
    Actually, he does not.

    He suggests that road pricing will smooth traffic flow as people respond to paying full cost of congestion during peak hours.

    He references Singapore where, as he notes, average urban traffic speeds have *sped up* in recent years as congestion as decreased.
    is he? - he references road pricing rather than dynamic road pricing - if he had referenced dynamic or time based road pricing I would just ask the simple question - where and how are you going to build the infrastructure to do it?
    Followed by have you seen the cost of doing it for even a small fixed point like the Dartford or Tyne Tunnels...

    Now Dynamic Road pricing is possible in a small rich country when you limit it to particular routes - it's a lot harder to do in somewhere like the UK....

    Easy enough if you GPS track all cars...

    I'm sure the Home Office would never suggest such a thing.
    You can't GPS all cars - because the car isn't under the Government's control so the GPS can be removed or disabled.
    Isn't GPS going to be required for speed controls? I thought they were going to be mandatory. If it is done on visual sign recognition then there will be plenty fun to be had.

    Of course, anything can be disabled, just like you can drive around without insurance.

    Presumably you could check each car "exists" when it passes an existing camera.
    As an aside I worked at WS Atkins in Blairs first term and got a sight of a DfT discussion document on road pricing which included some proposed figures per mile. Most in our document calculated how much our costs would be to commute and I was second closest to the office at 22 miles.....my costs would have been £150 a week to goto work. Petrol at the time for the commute was costing me £30 a week to compare. Most of us were of the view if it ever came in then we would have to quit and find a job closer to home.
    Suspect the data could do with a “re-run” after 25 years.
    The issue comes down to the lack of price elasticity for commuting AND the sheer amount of tax revenue the Government would want.

    Put it this way Road pricing won't be designed to be cheaper than petrol duty...
    It does have to make up for the growing electrification of the UK's vehicle fleet...
    Why not just bake in the tax cut?
    Because, ideally, we want to maintain roads.
    So do that out of general taxation. We subsidise rails out of general taxation, why not roads?

    Of course fuel duty pays for mammothly more than roads. Oh well, cover it out of some other general taxation instead.
    Why should I - a non car owner - pay for car infrastructure, or indeed, car congestion?

    I think there was a big argument on what fuel duty pays for on here, and the general consensus in the end was that it kind of did essentially cover the various costs of driving, INCLUDING congestion, road accidents, and pollution.

This discussion has been closed.