It is pretty clear that the world is not going to act on climate change. I am increasingly defeatist, and think we might as well enjoy ourselves before the inevitable mass extinction of civilisation.
I'm feeling increasingly undefeatist. The key is that the next steps are becoming less and less reliant on politics. Solar just gets cheaper all the time, the deployment everywhere just gets faster and faster. Offshore wind is finally becoming economical and it'll scale out crazy fast all over the place. Electric cars are better than gasoline cars: If they're not already faster, cheaper, quieter and easier to maintain, they soon will be.
This is a way more optimistic situation to be in than one where we were just relying on politics, because the world has lots of different countries and it was always going to be hard to get them all to do the right thing at the same time when they could instead get a competitive advantage by doing the wrong thing.
Agreed 100%.
The biggest positive will come, as has always happened in the past, by changes in the state of technology.
I mean TBF a lot of what got us to where we are was politics, for example Obama and Xi both subsidized solar to the point where it because economically to do it without subsidies and it got on this incredible deployment/cost-cutting curve. But with politics you never know whether the next step is going to happen, whereas with rational self-interest you know it's almost definitely going to happen.
I almost sympathise with Casino. His choice is to vote for himself first - the Conservatives are better financially for him and his family. I can't object to that - we all do what we see as best for our own.
The problem now is that the Tories are fucking mental. With the deliberate use of the expletive because their position now is akin to piracy.
Casino will vote for more money for himself and his family. Fine. I suspect the reason for his increasing rants is that he finds it increasingly difficult to ignore the taste of bile as his conscience wrestles with just where that money is coming from.
Like pirates, the Conservative Party are out to line their own pockets with as much of our money as they can before the get caught and hung. I would have more respect for them if they just admitted it - its not as if they can disguise it.
I joked that they should run Lee Anderson with a "Vote Conservative or Fuck Off" campaign. I think Sunak has done the abridged version and the slogan is simply "Fuck Off".
Many of us have different life experiences, different perspectives, different political leanings. But we're all citizens of this country and human beings. Morality is a thing. Right and Wrong. The reason why the remaining Tories lash out is that they are voting for wrong. And they know it.
Johnson, Truss and Sunak are all fairly recognisable aspects of Conservative id. They're not bad as parts of a mix, but since 2019 they have been unrestrained by anything else.
(May and Cameron are also Conservative archetypes, but they were a more forced to engage with external reality.)
And each of them has been, or is being, blown up by getting what they wanted, including the consequences they didn't.
It's as if Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was re-written with politicians instead of children.
I expect dumping HS2 to be quite popular. A lot of people never wanted it, though seem strange to build the Acton to Aston bit. Scrap that too.
A lot of very noisy people living near the route never wanted it. And hired a number of well-known shall we say politely economical with the actualite consultants and lawyers e.g. Rukin and Streeten to put forward their case (which seldom bore any resemblance to the facts).
A rather greater number who wanted the extra capacity and quicker journey times on their local lines do, but tend not to shout about it so much.
People who live nowhere near it but are expected to pay for it are often not keen either.
You mean, like in Aberystwyth where they would get an improved service to Birmingham as a result of extra capacity at New Street?
I think the point is, you're not keen on the idea (partly because you don't fully understand the implications of the extra capacity it would bring, including for Leicestershire) and are projecting your views as a result.
I have always pointed out that HS2 is a white elephant, and so it has proven to be.
HS2 would not be a white elephant. Nor would HS3 (NPR, call it what you will). Just as Crossrail and the CTRL/HS1 are not.
What Sunak is proposing (building on the lunatic IRP) would be the a herd of the whitest of white elephants. But it is not HS2.
The question is not whether these schemes are white elephants.
The question is why, even if they are white elephants, we no longer seem to be able to build them having committed to do so.
Yesterday you were rather rude about the King parental style. From today’s mail:
At the time, he [Harry] was offered the chance to stay in Balmoral with his father Charles on the anniversary of the Queen's death on September 7 but said his busy itinerary made it impossible.
I guess Harry doesn’t rank seeing his father that high in his list of priorities
No doubt there’s some fault on both sides - but good parents welcome their kids unconditionally.
The issue is that the King is quite busy - time has to be scheduled. Additionally Harry is not trusted - the fear is that private conversations will be leaked (may be not by Harry, but he will - reasonably - tell his wife and she is definitely not trusted) - while any photographs will be monetised.
The King’s duty comes above what he might want as a person
LOL the King is busy, what kind of idiot believes that , the arsehole swands about stuffing his fat face and pocketing as much of the public's money he can get his hands on. A day's work would unhinge him.
Malc, think you need to discuss upping the chill pill dose with your doctor, you wouldn´t want anyone to think you had become unhinged again.
Why do you need to be an ignorant arsehole. Stop the drinking early morning and GFY.
The plan to abolish inheritance tax reminds me of Corbyn’s pledge to abolish tuition fees. With that and the dicking about with net zero, he’s recognisably as reckless and irresponsible as Corbyn. He deserves the same fate.
If they did get rid of inheritance tax it would make its replacement fair game. Time to move it on to the recipient, I suggest something like a lifetime allowance of £100k tax free, next £200k @ 15%, anything more @ 40%.
And the in principle point remains: these are assets accumulated from taxed income. Why should it be taxed a second time just because it has been transferred with no economic activity?
Yes, but double taxation is perfectly normal. I paid beer tax, petrol tax and VAT in the last week, all from after tax income.
Unless you think the only tax should be income tax?
Those are all taxes on economic activity
Inheritance tax is not.
Right, and we should favour taxes on lack of economic activity over taxes on economic activity, because that encourages people to spend money and keep the economy moving, rather than just sitting on it. So that makes inheritance tax the worst one to consider scrapping IMO. Plus taxing large inheritances rather than peoples' everyday spending is more progressive taxation.
No it’s a fundamental question of how you view the world.
I believe that people own their assets. When they increase value to themselves (through income, capital gains or purchase of goods that add value) then they should pay tax on that increase (let’s call it “sharing the proceeds of growth”)
The state doesn’t just have the right to confiscate assets because it wants them.
If you need more then you should replace the principal residence relief with a rollover relief.
It is pretty clear that the world is not going to act on climate change. I am increasingly defeatist, and think we might as well enjoy ourselves before the inevitable mass extinction of civilisation.
I'm feeling increasingly undefeatist. The key is that the next steps are becoming less and less reliant on politics. Solar just gets cheaper all the time, the deployment everywhere just gets faster and faster. Offshore wind is finally becoming economical and it'll scale out crazy fast all over the place. Electric cars are better than gasoline cars: If they're not already faster, cheaper, quieter and easier to maintain, they soon will be.
This is a way more optimistic situation to be in than one where we were just relying on politics, because the world has lots of different countries and it was always going to be hard to get them all to do the right thing at the same time when they could instead get a competitive advantage by doing the wrong thing.
I reckon the net positive externalities from Net Zero are larger than the costs of it, before you even get to climate change.
The plan to abolish inheritance tax reminds me of Corbyn’s pledge to abolish tuition fees. With that and the dicking about with net zero, he’s recognisably as reckless and irresponsible as Corbyn. He deserves the same fate.
If they did get rid of inheritance tax it would make its replacement fair game. Time to move it on to the recipient, I suggest something like a lifetime allowance of £100k tax free, next £200k @ 15%, anything more @ 40%.
And the in principle point remains: these are assets accumulated from taxed income. Why should it be taxed a second time just because it has been transferred with no economic activity?
Yes, but double taxation is perfectly normal. I paid beer tax, petrol tax and VAT in the last week, all from after tax income.
Unless you think the only tax should be income tax?
Those are all taxes on economic activity
Inheritance tax is not.
But isn't economic activity- changing and exchanging stuff so it is valued more- a good thing, to be encouraged?
As opposed to waiting for an ancestor to pop their clogs.
I've just had to deal with an IHT bill. Annoying, sure, but I'd also just had a windfall to pay for it.
People should be entitled to do what they want. Work to live, not live to work.
The plan to abolish inheritance tax reminds me of Corbyn’s pledge to abolish tuition fees. With that and the dicking about with net zero, he’s recognisably as reckless and irresponsible as Corbyn. He deserves the same fate.
If they did get rid of inheritance tax it would make its replacement fair game. Time to move it on to the recipient, I suggest something like a lifetime allowance of £100k tax free, next £200k @ 15%, anything more @ 40%.
And the in principle point remains: these are assets accumulated from taxed income. Why should it be taxed a second time just because it has been transferred with no economic activity?
Yes, but double taxation is perfectly normal. I paid beer tax, petrol tax and VAT in the last week, all from after tax income.
Unless you think the only tax should be income tax?
Those are all taxes on economic activity
Inheritance tax is not.
Right, and we should favour taxes on lack of economic activity over taxes on economic activity, because that encourages people to spend money and keep the economy moving, rather than just sitting on it. So that makes inheritance tax the worst one to consider scrapping IMO. Plus taxing large inheritances rather than peoples' everyday spending is more progressive taxation.
No it’s a fundamental question of how you view the world.
I believe that people own their assets. When they increase value to themselves (through income, capital gains or purchase of goods that add value) then they should pay tax on that increase (let’s call it “sharing the proceeds of growth”)
The state doesn’t just have the right to confiscate assets because it wants them.
If you need more then you should replace the principal residence relief with a rollover relief.
Your beliefs don't have any more magical permanent truth than others. If inheritance tax is removed I suspect it is odds on that it will be replaced by something you like even less within a decade.
Even then, his answer to a question about the North: "London".
There was a rail college set up in Doncaster as part of a tiny bung to the 'North' at the time which was supposed to have trained apprentices for the construction of HS2.
Naturally it has never actually been used fully and is now empty:
The whole HS2 debacle is infuriating. What an utter bunch of idiots in charge. Absolutely no idea what Sunak or Hunt are thinking
The optics are shockingly poor. At least Sunak has his helicopter I guess
There's a lot of disruption in my area from HS2, and it would be ridiculous to stop building it now because it would mean all of that inconvenience has been for nothing.
Sunk cost fallacy. As someone pointed out a few weeks ago, could be an incredible London - Birmingham cycle track
Have it a dual motorway and separated cycle path and it'd absolutely be far better value for money than rail. 👍
Can't cycle on a motorway of course, but I see no reason you couldn't have separate cycle paths that go next to motorway routes.
We did have segregated cycle lanes on A roads built in the 70s, but these have largely been built on now.
Let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s (8x what it is today) and then we can talk about new roads 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
OK let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s before talking about new roads.
But of course we'll also need to restore the population back to what we had in the 50s. So who are the 17 million people you'd like to deport?
And of course we'll also need to restore the GDP per capita back closer to what we had in the 50s, since transportation infrastructure is critical in growing the economy. GDP per capita by PPP was about 30% of what it is today in the 50s.
Or we can live in the real world where growing population and growing the economy means we need infrastructure. In which case lets have roads and cycle paths built.
They had flaws, but they at least were trying to support aspiration and make things better. Sunak isn't even trying.
This week may have been government policy by Daily Mail headline "thumbs up", and as someone who was giving him the benefit of the doubt, I am disappointed. But no, he is not (yet) worse than Johnson or Truss. Promoting capital punishment for nonces and traitors is the moment he crosses that line. That is coming soon.
The plan to abolish inheritance tax reminds me of Corbyn’s pledge to abolish tuition fees. With that and the dicking about with net zero, he’s recognisably as reckless and irresponsible as Corbyn. He deserves the same fate.
If they did get rid of inheritance tax it would make its replacement fair game. Time to move it on to the recipient, I suggest something like a lifetime allowance of £100k tax free, next £200k @ 15%, anything more @ 40%.
And the in principle point remains: these are assets accumulated from taxed income. Why should it be taxed a second time just because it has been transferred with no economic activity?
for the same reason that investment income from deposit accounts etc is taxed even though the original money was usually from taxed income I would also say that the value of assets like houses and property rises in value due to prosperity of the country rather than any extra work from the owner occupier. I bought my house in 2001 for £50000. It is now worth at least £150000. I bought it from cash without a mortgage. I would call that fair game for taxation when (and if..) I die.
Investment income from deposit accounts is income from economic activity. You have lent money to the bank.
Increases in property value should be taxed as a capital gain (with a rollover relief for the principal residence) - because that is what they are.
The plan to abolish inheritance tax reminds me of Corbyn’s pledge to abolish tuition fees. With that and the dicking about with net zero, he’s recognisably as reckless and irresponsible as Corbyn. He deserves the same fate.
If they did get rid of inheritance tax it would make its replacement fair game. Time to move it on to the recipient, I suggest something like a lifetime allowance of £100k tax free, next £200k @ 15%, anything more @ 40%.
And the in principle point remains: these are assets accumulated from taxed income. Why should it be taxed a second time just because it has been transferred with no economic activity?
Yes, but double taxation is perfectly normal. I paid beer tax, petrol tax and VAT in the last week, all from after tax income.
Unless you think the only tax should be income tax?
Those are all taxes on economic activity
Inheritance tax is not.
Right, and we should favour taxes on lack of economic activity over taxes on economic activity, because that encourages people to spend money and keep the economy moving, rather than just sitting on it. So that makes inheritance tax the worst one to consider scrapping IMO. Plus taxing large inheritances rather than peoples' everyday spending is more progressive taxation.
No it’s a fundamental question of how you view the world.
I believe that people own their assets. When they increase value to themselves (through income, capital gains or purchase of goods that add value) then they should pay tax on that increase (let’s call it “sharing the proceeds of growth”)
The state doesn’t just have the right to confiscate assets because it wants them.
If you need more then you should replace the principal residence relief with a rollover relief.
Sure, and I'm giving you my view of the world; that's inherent in any comment I make :-)
People only "own their assets" because the state has set up a legal and social framework that makes that possible. The state should generally not be able to just confiscate assets arbitrarily, but we do get to collectively as a society make decisions about how we want to fund what the state does, giving consideration to the net effects of how we choose to do that and whether the financial burdens are reasonably spread. I think both inheritance taxes and a modestly set wealth tax are well within the envelope of reasonably arguable for options.
Gutting HS2 so there's money to spare for an inheritance tax cut, uniting the Green Party and the Ford Motor Company in opposition to his backsliding on Net Zero... Sunak really is the absolute worst. It's like the Tories actually wish us harm now, squatting in power, bereft of any ambition other than power for the sake of it, dragging us down further every day.
It’s a scorched earth strategy, isn’t it?
Yep everything they burn down will still need to be implemented just at a higher cost.
But with inheritance tax gone, capital gains tax could easily be applied to inheritances (after all if you receive an inheritance you gain capital) and I suspect the Tories haven’t thought through the consequences. And by the looks of it we will need the money
Never bin a tax as the replacement will likely be worse..l
Capital gains is a tax on profits not a tax on asset transfers
It is whatever parliament define it as.
It’s pointless to debate if you are going to take that approach
Purple is the new black. Because parliament can define it as such
The whole HS2 debacle is infuriating. What an utter bunch of idiots in charge. Absolutely no idea what Sunak or Hunt are thinking
The optics are shockingly poor. At least Sunak has his helicopter I guess
There's a lot of disruption in my area from HS2, and it would be ridiculous to stop building it now because it would mean all of that inconvenience has been for nothing.
Sunk cost fallacy. As someone pointed out a few weeks ago, could be an incredible London - Birmingham cycle track
Have it a dual motorway and separated cycle path and it'd absolutely be far better value for money than rail. 👍
Can't cycle on a motorway of course, but I see no reason you couldn't have separate cycle paths that go next to motorway routes.
We did have segregated cycle lanes on A roads built in the 70s, but these have largely been built on now.
Let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s (8x what it is today) and then we can talk about new roads 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
OK let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s before talking about new roads.
But of course we'll also need to restore the population back to what we had in the 50s. So who are the 17 million people you'd like to deport?
And of course we'll also need to restore the GDP per capita back closer to what we had in the 50s, since transportation infrastructure is critical in growing the economy. GDP per capita by PPP was about 30% of what it is today in the 50s.
Or we can live in the real world where growing population and growing the economy means we need infrastructure. In which case lets have roads and cycle paths built.
Aye, Dutch GDP per capita is a disaster.
(The 8x was adjusted for population. On deportation - don't give Mr Sunak ideas)
They had flaws, but they at least were trying to support aspiration and make things better. Sunak isn't even trying.
I'm still not sure about worse than Truss, she was horrendous. But any thoughts I had previously about Sunak's competence and ambition for the country have been revised. Boris isn't fit to be PM, but I have no doubt that he would be a better PM than Sunak right now. Not that it matters, the Tory part is a good as dead come the next general election.
I almost sympathise with Casino. His choice is to vote for himself first - the Conservatives are better financially for him and his family. I can't object to that - we all do what we see as best for our own.
The problem now is that the Tories are fucking mental. With the deliberate use of the expletive because their position now is akin to piracy.
Casino will vote for more money for himself and his family. Fine. I suspect the reason for his increasing rants is that he finds it increasingly difficult to ignore the taste of bile as his conscience wrestles with just where that money is coming from.
Like pirates, the Conservative Party are out to line their own pockets with as much of our money as they can before the get caught and hung. I would have more respect for them if they just admitted it - its not as if they can disguise it.
I joked that they should run Lee Anderson with a "Vote Conservative or Fuck Off" campaign. I think Sunak has done the abridged version and the slogan is simply "Fuck Off".
Many of us have different life experiences, different perspectives, different political leanings. But we're all citizens of this country and human beings. Morality is a thing. Right and Wrong. The reason why the remaining Tories lash out is that they are voting for wrong. And they know it.
Johnson, Truss and Sunak are all fairly recognisable aspects of Conservative id. They're not bad as parts of a mix, but since 2019 they have been unrestrained by anything else.
(May and Cameron are also Conservative archetypes, but they were a more forced to engage with external reality.)
And each of them has been, or is being, blown up by getting what they wanted, including the consequences they didn't.
It's as if Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was re-written with politicians instead of children.
The tragedy is that the Tories were - after 3 failed attempts - finally given a chonking majority in 2019. Unrestrained as you say. It has been the most disastrous period of government and you cannot write off the idea that Sunak also gets the boot and they put in another tragic figure.
All parties are coalitions. The Tory problem is that they are a coalition of "closet racists and loonies" (Cameron) and "the dispossed and the never-possessed" (Major). What they want isn't something that works in the real world.
An 80 seat majority means the governments could do what they like. I do mean governments plural - one party, one election, but such massive uturns on basic direction of travel. The Hodges piece reveals that the lunatic policies Sunak announced he was saving us from with his green crap uturn were policies proposed by Sunak in March 2023.
Boris blew in the wind looking for applause. Truss went down the nuclear option and had to do a 180 when the markets said no. Sunak is doing unprompted 180s against himself now. Not because he believes either in the policies proposed by him in March or in denying them now in September. Simply because the closet racists, loonies, dispossessed and never-possessed which are the remaining Tory voters demand it.
As you say, like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The Tory party is Augustus Gloop. Fattened by slurping on Other People's Chocolate they now block the pipe bringing the whole operation (the UK) to a grinding halt, all the while blaming everyone else for their largesse.
Even then, his answer to a question about the North: "London".
If you want the economy in the North then the answer is to improve infrastructure in the North.
A major road building program building multiple motorways to connect each Northern town and city to each other (rather than redirecting everything into the bottleneck that is the M6 or M62) would unleash economic growth far more than aiding some commuters travelling into London.
They had flaws, but they at least were trying to support aspiration and make things better. Sunak isn't even trying.
From my point of view those two were still worse. But vs a low bar.
Johnson was too lazy actually to get anything meaningfully done. That probably puts him on a par with Sunak but for different reasons. But on top of that he was corrosive to trust and due process in politics.
Truss was just bonkers. From the pork markets speech to her recent attempts to claim she was the victim of an establishment coup, she just doesn’t live in the same world as the rest of us. She lives in this weird slightly psychedelic Truss-land.
Sunak is just weak, ideologically incapable of thinking and acting long term, and politically out of his depth.
All three have been pretty solid on standing up to Russia, but Truss felt a little dangerous in that role. Johnson really meant it, I’ll give him that.
The plan to abolish inheritance tax reminds me of Corbyn’s pledge to abolish tuition fees. With that and the dicking about with net zero, he’s recognisably as reckless and irresponsible as Corbyn. He deserves the same fate.
If they did get rid of inheritance tax it would make its replacement fair game. Time to move it on to the recipient, I suggest something like a lifetime allowance of £100k tax free, next £200k @ 15%, anything more @ 40%.
And the in principle point remains: these are assets accumulated from taxed income. Why should it be taxed a second time just because it has been transferred with no economic activity?
Yes, but double taxation is perfectly normal. I paid beer tax, petrol tax and VAT in the last week, all from after tax income.
Unless you think the only tax should be income tax?
Those are all taxes on economic activity
Inheritance tax is not.
Right, and we should favour taxes on lack of economic activity over taxes on economic activity, because that encourages people to spend money and keep the economy moving, rather than just sitting on it. So that makes inheritance tax the worst one to consider scrapping IMO. Plus taxing large inheritances rather than peoples' everyday spending is more progressive taxation.
No it’s a fundamental question of how you view the world.
I believe that people own their assets. When they increase value to themselves (through income, capital gains or purchase of goods that add value) then they should pay tax on that increase (let’s call it “sharing the proceeds of growth”)
The state doesn’t just have the right to confiscate assets because it wants them.
If you need more then you should replace the principal residence relief with a rollover relief.
Your beliefs don't have any more magical permanent truth than others. If inheritance tax is removed I suspect it is odds on that it will be replaced by something you like even less within a decade.
It’s called a discussion. Im staying my opinion. I guess your response means that you don’t have any good philosophical answers.
(For what it’s worth I don’t favour eliminating inheritance tax - it exists and that’s life. Or not as the case may be. And I suspect it would be replaced by something even more philosophically unsound.)
The whole HS2 debacle is infuriating. What an utter bunch of idiots in charge. Absolutely no idea what Sunak or Hunt are thinking
The optics are shockingly poor. At least Sunak has his helicopter I guess
There's a lot of disruption in my area from HS2, and it would be ridiculous to stop building it now because it would mean all of that inconvenience has been for nothing.
Sunk cost fallacy. As someone pointed out a few weeks ago, could be an incredible London - Birmingham cycle track
Have it a dual motorway and separated cycle path and it'd absolutely be far better value for money than rail. 👍
Can't cycle on a motorway of course, but I see no reason you couldn't have separate cycle paths that go next to motorway routes.
We did have segregated cycle lanes on A roads built in the 70s, but these have largely been built on now.
Let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s (8x what it is today) and then we can talk about new roads 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
OK let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s before talking about new roads.
But of course we'll also need to restore the population back to what we had in the 50s. So who are the 17 million people you'd like to deport?
And of course we'll also need to restore the GDP per capita back closer to what we had in the 50s, since transportation infrastructure is critical in growing the economy. GDP per capita by PPP was about 30% of what it is today in the 50s.
Or we can live in the real world where growing population and growing the economy means we need infrastructure. In which case lets have roads and cycle paths built.
Aye, Dutch GDP per capita is a disaster.
(The 8x was adjusted for population. On deportation - don't give Mr Sunak ideas)
The Dutch have been building roads. 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
The Dutch have massively more roads than we have per capita and per square mile. 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
I support a Dutch policy of building roads and cycle paths. For some perverted reason you don't.
He's not worse than Truss or Johnson. Both of them struggled with basic day to day administration and he runs a steady ship. He's also got several important deals done.
Rishi's problem is that he's perceived to be detached and disinterested coupled with poor political salesmanship. When you add this in to his approach to risk which, in its delivery, goes from extremely cautious to cautious to desperate panic it conveys a lack of confidence that others pick up on and irritates them because they don't really know or trust his motives.
It's not actually the policy. The guy has never crystallised what he's about, where his heart is and why you should trust him, or communicated his vision and prospectus for Britain.
It’s also about the policy. The desperate flailing around on climate change is actively damaging.
Liked by a bunch of Lefties, all the usual suspects I see.
Look at the YouGov polling on the issue.
I'd describe those who liked Nigelb's comment as PB's Centrist Dads rather than PB's Lefties.
Which is exactly Sunak's problem. Because Centrist Dads voted for Cameron, and if you look at the YouGov polling - the very same polling highlighted by OGH in his previous header - they were initially prepared to give Sunak the benefit of the doubt. Now they're not.
Er, no. The Woodpecker, Heathener, IanB2, El Capitano, Foxy...
All the usual suspects. None of them are centrists in the slightest.
And then on DuraAce's characteristic unpleasantness you also have MexicanPete, NorthernMonkey and Carnyx. They may support Labour, LDs or the SNP but they are all of a type.
This site has become a haven for Lefties. It's what it is now.
Christ, you really do have a little list! Several in fact.
I imagine a big wall chart cross referencing estimated penis size..
They had flaws, but they at least were trying to support aspiration and make things better. Sunak isn't even trying.
I think Johnson talked the talk better. I remain to be convinced that he actually really believed in anything though other than wanting to be World King. I think he formulated policy based on the whims of those around him rather than on his own points of principle.
Truss did have an agenda and a philosophy sat behind what she was doing, but I don’t think she had the political maturity of thought to realise that nine tenths of governing is being pragmatic and choosing your battles.
The plan to abolish inheritance tax reminds me of Corbyn’s pledge to abolish tuition fees. With that and the dicking about with net zero, he’s recognisably as reckless and irresponsible as Corbyn. He deserves the same fate.
If they did get rid of inheritance tax it would make its replacement fair game. Time to move it on to the recipient, I suggest something like a lifetime allowance of £100k tax free, next £200k @ 15%, anything more @ 40%.
And the in principle point remains: these are assets accumulated from taxed income. Why should it be taxed a second time just because it has been transferred with no economic activity?
for the same reason that investment income from deposit accounts etc is taxed even though the original money was usually from taxed income I would also say that the value of assets like houses and property rises in value due to prosperity of the country rather than any extra work from the owner occupier. I bought my house in 2001 for £50000. It is now worth at least £150000. I bought it from cash without a mortgage. I would call that fair game for taxation when (and if..) I die.
Investment income from deposit accounts is income from economic activity. You have lent money to the bank.
Increases in property value should be taxed as a capital gain (with a rollover relief for the principal residence) - because that is what they are.
I don't mind what the name of the tax is, as long as it isn't used for grifting, ie lower tax rates so rich people get paid that way.
Even then, his answer to a question about the North: "London".
If you want the economy in the North then the answer is to improve infrastructure in the North.
A major road building program building multiple motorways to connect each Northern town and city to each other (rather than redirecting everything into the bottleneck that is the M6 or M62) would unleash economic growth far more than aiding some commuters travelling into London.
Sadly there are a few barriers: The Treasury won't fund such schemes The private sector would rob us The public sector are grossly incompetent
We should do as so much of the developing world does, and ask China to build our new roads. Cheaper, quicker, less corrupt.
He's not worse than Truss or Johnson. Both of them struggled with basic day to day administration and he runs a steady ship. He's also got several important deals done.
Rishi's problem is that he's perceived to be detached and disinterested coupled with poor political salesmanship. When you add this in to his approach to risk which, in its delivery, goes from extremely cautious to cautious to desperate panic it conveys a lack of confidence that others pick up on and irritates them because they don't really know or trust his motives.
It's not actually the policy. The guy has never crystallised what he's about, where his heart is and why you should trust him, or communicated his vision and prospectus for Britain.
It’s also about the policy. The desperate flailing around on climate change is actively damaging.
Liked by a bunch of Lefties, all the usual suspects I see.
Look at the YouGov polling on the issue.
I'd describe those who liked Nigelb's comment as PB's Centrist Dads rather than PB's Lefties.
Which is exactly Sunak's problem. Because Centrist Dads voted for Cameron, and if you look at the YouGov polling - the very same polling highlighted by OGH in his previous header - they were initially prepared to give Sunak the benefit of the doubt. Now they're not.
Er, no. The Woodpecker, Heathener, IanB2, El Capitano, Foxy...
All the usual suspects. None of them are centrists in the slightest.
And then on DuraAce's characteristic unpleasantness you also have MexicanPete, NorthernMonkey and Carnyx. They may support Labour, LDs or the SNP but they are all of a type.
This site has become a haven for Lefties. It's what it is now.
Christ, you really do have a little list! Several in fact.
I imagine a big wall chart cross referencing estimated penis size..
Even then, his answer to a question about the North: "London".
If you want the economy in the North then the answer is to improve infrastructure in the North.
A major road building program building multiple motorways to connect each Northern town and city to each other (rather than redirecting everything into the bottleneck that is the M6 or M62) would unleash economic growth far more than aiding some commuters travelling into London.
Part of why we’re a little kingdom of asset sweaters is the zero sum attitude that says we should do this instead of that. Rather than this plus that.
I think generally you’re non zero sum, so let’s apply this to rail and road infrastructure too.
The whole HS2 debacle is infuriating. What an utter bunch of idiots in charge. Absolutely no idea what Sunak or Hunt are thinking
The optics are shockingly poor. At least Sunak has his helicopter I guess
There's a lot of disruption in my area from HS2, and it would be ridiculous to stop building it now because it would mean all of that inconvenience has been for nothing.
Sunk cost fallacy. As someone pointed out a few weeks ago, could be an incredible London - Birmingham cycle track
Have it a dual motorway and separated cycle path and it'd absolutely be far better value for money than rail. 👍
Can't cycle on a motorway of course, but I see no reason you couldn't have separate cycle paths that go next to motorway routes.
We did have segregated cycle lanes on A roads built in the 70s, but these have largely been built on now.
Let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s (8x what it is today) and then we can talk about new roads 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
OK let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s before talking about new roads.
But of course we'll also need to restore the population back to what we had in the 50s. So who are the 17 million people you'd like to deport?
And of course we'll also need to restore the GDP per capita back closer to what we had in the 50s, since transportation infrastructure is critical in growing the economy. GDP per capita by PPP was about 30% of what it is today in the 50s.
Or we can live in the real world where growing population and growing the economy means we need infrastructure. In which case lets have roads and cycle paths built.
Aye, Dutch GDP per capita is a disaster.
(The 8x was adjusted for population. On deportation - don't give Mr Sunak ideas)
The Dutch have been building roads. 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
The Dutch have massively more roads than we have per capita and per square mile. 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
I support a Dutch policy of building roads and cycle paths. For some perverted reason you don't.
It's a lot easier to build roads and cycle paths when your entire country is flat as a pancake. What makes you think the Dutch could do to improve the road between Manchester and Sheffield?
The plan to abolish inheritance tax reminds me of Corbyn’s pledge to abolish tuition fees. With that and the dicking about with net zero, he’s recognisably as reckless and irresponsible as Corbyn. He deserves the same fate.
If they did get rid of inheritance tax it would make its replacement fair game. Time to move it on to the recipient, I suggest something like a lifetime allowance of £100k tax free, next £200k @ 15%, anything more @ 40%.
And the in principle point remains: these are assets accumulated from taxed income. Why should it be taxed a second time just because it has been transferred with no economic activity?
Yes, but double taxation is perfectly normal. I paid beer tax, petrol tax and VAT in the last week, all from after tax income.
Unless you think the only tax should be income tax?
Those are all taxes on economic activity
Inheritance tax is not.
Right, and we should favour taxes on lack of economic activity over taxes on economic activity, because that encourages people to spend money and keep the economy moving, rather than just sitting on it. So that makes inheritance tax the worst one to consider scrapping IMO. Plus taxing large inheritances rather than peoples' everyday spending is more progressive taxation.
No it’s a fundamental question of how you view the world.
I believe that people own their assets. When they increase value to themselves (through income, capital gains or purchase of goods that add value) then they should pay tax on that increase (let’s call it “sharing the proceeds of growth”)
The state doesn’t just have the right to confiscate assets because it wants them.
If you need more then you should replace the principal residence relief with a rollover relief.
Your beliefs don't have any more magical permanent truth than others. If inheritance tax is removed I suspect it is odds on that it will be replaced by something you like even less within a decade.
It’s called a discussion. Im staying my opinion. I guess your response means that you don’t have any good philosophical answers.
(For what it’s worth I don’t favour eliminating inheritance tax - it exists and that’s life. Or not as the case may be. And I suspect it would be replaced by something even more philosophically unsound.)
Im a pragmatist not a philosopher. I have given three clear pragmatic reasons why it should be taxed. And it will be taxed somehow because governments are already short of revenue and will continue to be so given our demographics.
The plan to abolish inheritance tax reminds me of Corbyn’s pledge to abolish tuition fees. With that and the dicking about with net zero, he’s recognisably as reckless and irresponsible as Corbyn. He deserves the same fate.
If they did get rid of inheritance tax it would make its replacement fair game. Time to move it on to the recipient, I suggest something like a lifetime allowance of £100k tax free, next £200k @ 15%, anything more @ 40%.
And the in principle point remains: these are assets accumulated from taxed income. Why should it be taxed a second time just because it has been transferred with no economic activity?
for the same reason that investment income from deposit accounts etc is taxed even though the original money was usually from taxed income I would also say that the value of assets like houses and property rises in value due to prosperity of the country rather than any extra work from the owner occupier. I bought my house in 2001 for £50000. It is now worth at least £150000. I bought it from cash without a mortgage. I would call that fair game for taxation when (and if..) I die.
Actually I think the current price of houses reflects the fact the population is x% bigger than it used to be yet the number of properties has only increased y% where y is significantly smaller than x…
Even then, his answer to a question about the North: "London".
If you want the economy in the North then the answer is to improve infrastructure in the North.
A major road building program building multiple motorways to connect each Northern town and city to each other (rather than redirecting everything into the bottleneck that is the M6 or M62) would unleash economic growth far more than aiding some commuters travelling into London.
Sadly there are a few barriers: The Treasury won't fund such schemes The private sector would rob us The public sector are grossly incompetent
We should do as so much of the developing world does, and ask China to build our new roads. Cheaper, quicker, less corrupt.
The Treasury isn't fit for purpose.
The only way to make it so might be to move Parliament and the Civil Service out of London.
Radical idea but many countries have capital cities that are not remotely linked to finance or anything else. Canberra rather than Sydney or Melbourne. Washington DC rather than NYC or San Francisco etc
Parliament is crumbling anyway. Build a new capital city in the North as an entirely new city - not Manchester, complete new build. Build a new Parliament, refurbish the old crumbling fire risk one and turn it into a museum. Move the Civil Service, in full, out of London - sell that land to the private sector or housing.
Could possibly make this quite cost-effective, by purchasing land that's not worth much in an uninhabited area of the North and selling all the land in London that will repay a considerable part of the costs.
He's not worse than Truss or Johnson. Both of them struggled with basic day to day administration and he runs a steady ship. He's also got several important deals done.
Rishi's problem is that he's perceived to be detached and disinterested coupled with poor political salesmanship. When you add this in to his approach to risk which, in its delivery, goes from extremely cautious to cautious to desperate panic it conveys a lack of confidence that others pick up on and irritates them because they don't really know or trust his motives.
It's not actually the policy. The guy has never crystallised what he's about, where his heart is and why you should trust him, or communicated his vision and prospectus for Britain.
It’s also about the policy. The desperate flailing around on climate change is actively damaging.
Liked by a bunch of Lefties, all the usual suspects I see.
Look at the YouGov polling on the issue.
I'd describe those who liked Nigelb's comment as PB's Centrist Dads rather than PB's Lefties.
Which is exactly Sunak's problem. Because Centrist Dads voted for Cameron, and if you look at the YouGov polling - the very same polling highlighted by OGH in his previous header - they were initially prepared to give Sunak the benefit of the doubt. Now they're not.
Er, no. The Woodpecker, Heathener, IanB2, El Capitano, Foxy...
All the usual suspects. None of them are centrists in the slightest.
And then on DuraAce's characteristic unpleasantness you also have MexicanPete, NorthernMonkey and Carnyx. They may support Labour, LDs or the SNP but they are all of a type.
This site has become a haven for Lefties. It's what it is now.
Christ, you really do have a little list! Several in fact.
I imagine a big wall chart cross referencing estimated penis size..
possessing a database listing the perceived peccadillos of all regular users of a niche politics site is definitely big dick energy
If you love this country, as apparently certain types of insane Tory believe only they do, then you have a patriotic duty to vote for anyone but the current Conservative party. The current Tory party have no interest in making this country a better place and have actually made it far, far worse than it's ever been- and they're knowingly doing this- through incompetence and malevolence. They're destroying it. If you vote for the current Tory party, you can't be a patriot.
Even then, his answer to a question about the North: "London".
If you want the economy in the North then the answer is to improve infrastructure in the North.
A major road building program building multiple motorways to connect each Northern town and city to each other (rather than redirecting everything into the bottleneck that is the M6 or M62) would unleash economic growth far more than aiding some commuters travelling into London.
There is a crucible of untapped economic growth sat in the belt that starts in Liverpool and ends in Hull. It is absolutely held back by poor and insufficient infrastructure. This is why if there was a choice between HS2 and NPR they should have gone with the latter.
He's not worse than Truss or Johnson. Both of them struggled with basic day to day administration and he runs a steady ship. He's also got several important deals done.
Rishi's problem is that he's perceived to be detached and disinterested coupled with poor political salesmanship. When you add this in to his approach to risk which, in its delivery, goes from extremely cautious to cautious to desperate panic it conveys a lack of confidence that others pick up on and irritates them because they don't really know or trust his motives.
It's not actually the policy. The guy has never crystallised what he's about, where his heart is and why you should trust him, or communicated his vision and prospectus for Britain.
It’s also about the policy. The desperate flailing around on climate change is actively damaging.
Liked by a bunch of Lefties, all the usual suspects I see.
Look at the YouGov polling on the issue.
I'd describe those who liked Nigelb's comment as PB's Centrist Dads rather than PB's Lefties.
Which is exactly Sunak's problem. Because Centrist Dads voted for Cameron, and if you look at the YouGov polling - the very same polling highlighted by OGH in his previous header - they were initially prepared to give Sunak the benefit of the doubt. Now they're not.
Er, no. The Woodpecker, Heathener, IanB2, El Capitano, Foxy...
All the usual suspects. None of them are centrists in the slightest.
And then on DuraAce's characteristic unpleasantness you also have MexicanPete, NorthernMonkey and Carnyx. They may support Labour, LDs or the SNP but they are all of a type.
This site has become a haven for Lefties. It's what it is now.
Christ, you really do have a little list! Several in fact.
I imagine a big wall chart cross referencing estimated penis size..
No matter your views on HS2, the way it has been ‘delivered’ is a national scandal and that alone should be enough to doom the Tory government.
The fact we have gone from a high speed link to the two biggest conurbations in the north, to only one, to none at all, to maybe even making journey times from Birmingham to central London longer (if it terminates at Old Oak Common) is pathetic. All that money spent for a defective railway line.
It is symptomatic of the rot at the heart of the British government.
I think the real scandal is that it is projected to cost £350 million/mile, when similar lines are delivered by the French and Spanish for a tenth of that. Either the NIMBYs should be overridden and the planning process massively curtailed or we should scrap it and also give up on building anything in this country.
Part of it is population density, so more people are affected in the UK than in France or Spain. The whole planning and environmental rigmarole is I’m sure a bigger factor.
It must surely be easier for Parliament to pass a Bill agreeing to pay everyone a 50% uplift on their property on the route, than to have to sit through a decade of public enquiries with vocal opposition groups on the route?
The cost of compulsory purchase is large, but it is "only" about £3 billion. The largest single cost item is the design of the run-in to Euston, which has still not been properly costed. The problem is the way this is being built- by consultants and PR Bullshitters, not by people who know what they are doing.
I think Sunak underestimates how angry people are about this. If we can not match the rest of Europe for decent infrastructure at comparable cost, then UK PLC is over. The control of major infrastructure projects should be brought in-house to the government and not done project by project with the expertise being lost once each project team is dispersed. Neither should there be a revolving door between the contractors and the delivery Quangos.
This is only a mere hundred miles London to Birmingham and it is coming in at c25x the cost of TGV Nord which is more than twice the length and in not that dissimilar population density.
PR and Bullshit do not beat engineers, and if Sunak is too incompetent to get this done, then the Tories must be put out of our misery.
The whole HS2 debacle is infuriating. What an utter bunch of idiots in charge. Absolutely no idea what Sunak or Hunt are thinking
The optics are shockingly poor. At least Sunak has his helicopter I guess
There's a lot of disruption in my area from HS2, and it would be ridiculous to stop building it now because it would mean all of that inconvenience has been for nothing.
Sunk cost fallacy. As someone pointed out a few weeks ago, could be an incredible London - Birmingham cycle track
Have it a dual motorway and separated cycle path and it'd absolutely be far better value for money than rail. 👍
Can't cycle on a motorway of course, but I see no reason you couldn't have separate cycle paths that go next to motorway routes.
We did have segregated cycle lanes on A roads built in the 70s, but these have largely been built on now.
Let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s (8x what it is today) and then we can talk about new roads 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
OK let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s before talking about new roads.
But of course we'll also need to restore the population back to what we had in the 50s. So who are the 17 million people you'd like to deport?
And of course we'll also need to restore the GDP per capita back closer to what we had in the 50s, since transportation infrastructure is critical in growing the economy. GDP per capita by PPP was about 30% of what it is today in the 50s.
Or we can live in the real world where growing population and growing the economy means we need infrastructure. In which case lets have roads and cycle paths built.
Aye, Dutch GDP per capita is a disaster.
(The 8x was adjusted for population. On deportation - don't give Mr Sunak ideas)
The Dutch have been building roads. 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
The Dutch have massively more roads than we have per capita and per square mile. 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
I support a Dutch policy of building roads and cycle paths. For some perverted reason you don't.
Find the quote where I was against cycle paths on new roads (third time I've asked).
The plan to abolish inheritance tax reminds me of Corbyn’s pledge to abolish tuition fees. With that and the dicking about with net zero, he’s recognisably as reckless and irresponsible as Corbyn. He deserves the same fate.
If they did get rid of inheritance tax it would make its replacement fair game. Time to move it on to the recipient, I suggest something like a lifetime allowance of £100k tax free, next £200k @ 15%, anything more @ 40%.
And the in principle point remains: these are assets accumulated from taxed income. Why should it be taxed a second time just because it has been transferred with no economic activity?
for the same reason that investment income from deposit accounts etc is taxed even though the original money was usually from taxed income I would also say that the value of assets like houses and property rises in value due to prosperity of the country rather than any extra work from the owner occupier. I bought my house in 2001 for £50000. It is now worth at least £150000. I bought it from cash without a mortgage. I would call that fair game for taxation when (and if..) I die.
Actually I think the current price of houses reflects the fact the population is x% bigger than it used to be yet the number of properties has only increased y% where y is significantly smaller than x…
The whole HS2 debacle is infuriating. What an utter bunch of idiots in charge. Absolutely no idea what Sunak or Hunt are thinking
The optics are shockingly poor. At least Sunak has his helicopter I guess
There's a lot of disruption in my area from HS2, and it would be ridiculous to stop building it now because it would mean all of that inconvenience has been for nothing.
Sunk cost fallacy. As someone pointed out a few weeks ago, could be an incredible London - Birmingham cycle track
Have it a dual motorway and separated cycle path and it'd absolutely be far better value for money than rail. 👍
Can't cycle on a motorway of course, but I see no reason you couldn't have separate cycle paths that go next to motorway routes.
We did have segregated cycle lanes on A roads built in the 70s, but these have largely been built on now.
Let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s (8x what it is today) and then we can talk about new roads 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
OK let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s before talking about new roads.
But of course we'll also need to restore the population back to what we had in the 50s. So who are the 17 million people you'd like to deport?
And of course we'll also need to restore the GDP per capita back closer to what we had in the 50s, since transportation infrastructure is critical in growing the economy. GDP per capita by PPP was about 30% of what it is today in the 50s.
Or we can live in the real world where growing population and growing the economy means we need infrastructure. In which case lets have roads and cycle paths built.
Aye, Dutch GDP per capita is a disaster.
(The 8x was adjusted for population. On deportation - don't give Mr Sunak ideas)
The Dutch have been building roads. 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
The Dutch have massively more roads than we have per capita and per square mile. 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
I support a Dutch policy of building roads and cycle paths. For some perverted reason you don't.
It's a lot easier to build roads and cycle paths when your entire country is flat as a pancake. What makes you think the Dutch could do to improve the road between Manchester and Sheffield?
The Dutch do have an advantage but they've also invested in reclaiming land rather than just using the land they have, they think outside the box.
Crossing the Pennines is a challenge, sure, but there should be some good routes to do so. But taking the Pennines out of the equation, the towns and cities in the North West should be connected to each other, and same with Yorkshire and the North East too.
I almost sympathise with Casino. His choice is to vote for himself first - the Conservatives are better financially for him and his family. I can't object to that - we all do what we see as best for our own.
The problem now is that the Tories are fucking mental. With the deliberate use of the expletive because their position now is akin to piracy.
Casino will vote for more money for himself and his family. Fine. I suspect the reason for his increasing rants is that he finds it increasingly difficult to ignore the taste of bile as his conscience wrestles with just where that money is coming from.
Like pirates, the Conservative Party are out to line their own pockets with as much of our money as they can before the get caught and hung. I would have more respect for them if they just admitted it - its not as if they can disguise it.
I joked that they should run Lee Anderson with a "Vote Conservative or Fuck Off" campaign. I think Sunak has done the abridged version and the slogan is simply "Fuck Off".
Many of us have different life experiences, different perspectives, different political leanings. But we're all citizens of this country and human beings. Morality is a thing. Right and Wrong. The reason why the remaining Tories lash out is that they are voting for wrong. And they know it.
Johnson, Truss and Sunak are all fairly recognisable aspects of Conservative id. They're not bad as parts of a mix, but since 2019 they have been unrestrained by anything else.
(May and Cameron are also Conservative archetypes, but they were a more forced to engage with external reality.)
And each of them has been, or is being, blown up by getting what they wanted, including the consequences they didn't.
It's as if Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was re-written with politicians instead of children.
The tragedy is that the Tories were - after 3 failed attempts - finally given a chonking majority in 2019. Unrestrained as you say. It has been the most disastrous period of government and you cannot write off the idea that Sunak also gets the boot and they put in another tragic figure.
All parties are coalitions. The Tory problem is that they are a coalition of "closet racists and loonies" (Cameron) and "the dispossed and the never-possessed" (Major). What they want isn't something that works in the real world.
An 80 seat majority means the governments could do what they like. I do mean governments plural - one party, one election, but such massive uturns on basic direction of travel. The Hodges piece reveals that the lunatic policies Sunak announced he was saving us from with his green crap uturn were policies proposed by Sunak in March 2023.
Boris blew in the wind looking for applause. Truss went down the nuclear option and had to do a 180 when the markets said no. Sunak is doing unprompted 180s against himself now. Not because he believes either in the policies proposed by him in March or in denying them now in September. Simply because the closet racists, loonies, dispossessed and never-possessed which are the remaining Tory voters demand it.
As you say, like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The Tory party is Augustus Gloop. Fattened by slurping on Other People's Chocolate they now block the pipe bringing the whole operation (the UK) to a grinding halt, all the while blaming everyone else for their largesse.
Heretical to say but, while Truss is bonkers, she was also very unfortunate in her timing.
If Truss had proposed her financial plans 12 months earlier, then the financial markets would have been fine with it. Remember that was the time when interest rates were close to zero and QE was still the thinking du jour. After all, her plans cost less than the furlough scheme.
What caught out Truss was that, with the rapid rise in US interest rates which fed across the world and, more importantly, the adoption of the line by the Fed that it was government deficits that was fuelling the rise in inflation (which was only partially true and concentrated in the housing / stock market areas NOT prices of everyday goods) switched the markets' mantra overnight from being au fait with deficits to seeing them as the harbinger of doom.
What she did get wrong was not recognising sentiment had changed.
The whole HS2 debacle is infuriating. What an utter bunch of idiots in charge. Absolutely no idea what Sunak or Hunt are thinking
The optics are shockingly poor. At least Sunak has his helicopter I guess
There's a lot of disruption in my area from HS2, and it would be ridiculous to stop building it now because it would mean all of that inconvenience has been for nothing.
Sunk cost fallacy. As someone pointed out a few weeks ago, could be an incredible London - Birmingham cycle track
Have it a dual motorway and separated cycle path and it'd absolutely be far better value for money than rail. 👍
Can't cycle on a motorway of course, but I see no reason you couldn't have separate cycle paths that go next to motorway routes.
We did have segregated cycle lanes on A roads built in the 70s, but these have largely been built on now.
Let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s (8x what it is today) and then we can talk about new roads 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
OK let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s before talking about new roads.
But of course we'll also need to restore the population back to what we had in the 50s. So who are the 17 million people you'd like to deport?
And of course we'll also need to restore the GDP per capita back closer to what we had in the 50s, since transportation infrastructure is critical in growing the economy. GDP per capita by PPP was about 30% of what it is today in the 50s.
Or we can live in the real world where growing population and growing the economy means we need infrastructure. In which case lets have roads and cycle paths built.
Aye, Dutch GDP per capita is a disaster.
(The 8x was adjusted for population. On deportation - don't give Mr Sunak ideas)
The Dutch have been building roads. 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
The Dutch have massively more roads than we have per capita and per square mile. 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
I support a Dutch policy of building roads and cycle paths. For some perverted reason you don't.
Find the quote where I was against cycle paths on new roads (third time I've asked).
The whole HS2 debacle is infuriating. What an utter bunch of idiots in charge. Absolutely no idea what Sunak or Hunt are thinking
The optics are shockingly poor. At least Sunak has his helicopter I guess
There's a lot of disruption in my area from HS2, and it would be ridiculous to stop building it now because it would mean all of that inconvenience has been for nothing.
Sunk cost fallacy. As someone pointed out a few weeks ago, could be an incredible London - Birmingham cycle track
Have it a dual motorway and separated cycle path and it'd absolutely be far better value for money than rail. 👍
Can't cycle on a motorway of course, but I see no reason you couldn't have separate cycle paths that go next to motorway routes.
We did have segregated cycle lanes on A roads built in the 70s, but these have largely been built on now.
Let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s (8x what it is today) and then we can talk about new roads 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
No new roads = no new cycle paths to go with those roads.
Its not either/or, its not zero sum, we need both. We need investment in our infrastructure, we need roads and cycle paths. Its not feasible given our population growth to do one without the other, we need to stop dicking about and invest in our infrastructure and do both.
The whole HS2 debacle is infuriating. What an utter bunch of idiots in charge. Absolutely no idea what Sunak or Hunt are thinking
The optics are shockingly poor. At least Sunak has his helicopter I guess
There's a lot of disruption in my area from HS2, and it would be ridiculous to stop building it now because it would mean all of that inconvenience has been for nothing.
Sunk cost fallacy. As someone pointed out a few weeks ago, could be an incredible London - Birmingham cycle track
Have it a dual motorway and separated cycle path and it'd absolutely be far better value for money than rail. 👍
Can't cycle on a motorway of course, but I see no reason you couldn't have separate cycle paths that go next to motorway routes.
We did have segregated cycle lanes on A roads built in the 70s, but these have largely been built on now.
Let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s (8x what it is today) and then we can talk about new roads 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
OK let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s before talking about new roads.
But of course we'll also need to restore the population back to what we had in the 50s. So who are the 17 million people you'd like to deport?
And of course we'll also need to restore the GDP per capita back closer to what we had in the 50s, since transportation infrastructure is critical in growing the economy. GDP per capita by PPP was about 30% of what it is today in the 50s.
Or we can live in the real world where growing population and growing the economy means we need infrastructure. In which case lets have roads and cycle paths built.
Aye, Dutch GDP per capita is a disaster.
(The 8x was adjusted for population. On deportation - don't give Mr Sunak ideas)
The Dutch have been building roads. 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
The Dutch have massively more roads than we have per capita and per square mile. 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
I support a Dutch policy of building roads and cycle paths. For some perverted reason you don't.
Find the quote where I was against cycle paths on new roads (third time I've asked).
The whole HS2 debacle is infuriating. What an utter bunch of idiots in charge. Absolutely no idea what Sunak or Hunt are thinking
The optics are shockingly poor. At least Sunak has his helicopter I guess
There's a lot of disruption in my area from HS2, and it would be ridiculous to stop building it now because it would mean all of that inconvenience has been for nothing.
Sunk cost fallacy. As someone pointed out a few weeks ago, could be an incredible London - Birmingham cycle track
Have it a dual motorway and separated cycle path and it'd absolutely be far better value for money than rail. 👍
Can't cycle on a motorway of course, but I see no reason you couldn't have separate cycle paths that go next to motorway routes.
We did have segregated cycle lanes on A roads built in the 70s, but these have largely been built on now.
Let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s (8x what it is today) and then we can talk about new roads 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
No new roads = no new cycle paths to go with those roads.
Its not either/or, its not zero sum, we need both. We need investment in our infrastructure, we need roads and cycle paths. Its not feasible given our population growth to do one without the other, we need to stop dicking about and invest in our infrastructure and do both.
Why did you make up a thing about me not wanting cycle paths on new roads?
The whole HS2 debacle is infuriating. What an utter bunch of idiots in charge. Absolutely no idea what Sunak or Hunt are thinking
The optics are shockingly poor. At least Sunak has his helicopter I guess
There's a lot of disruption in my area from HS2, and it would be ridiculous to stop building it now because it would mean all of that inconvenience has been for nothing.
Sunk cost fallacy. As someone pointed out a few weeks ago, could be an incredible London - Birmingham cycle track
Have it a dual motorway and separated cycle path and it'd absolutely be far better value for money than rail. 👍
Can't cycle on a motorway of course, but I see no reason you couldn't have separate cycle paths that go next to motorway routes.
We did have segregated cycle lanes on A roads built in the 70s, but these have largely been built on now.
Let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s (8x what it is today) and then we can talk about new roads 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
OK let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s before talking about new roads.
But of course we'll also need to restore the population back to what we had in the 50s. So who are the 17 million people you'd like to deport?
And of course we'll also need to restore the GDP per capita back closer to what we had in the 50s, since transportation infrastructure is critical in growing the economy. GDP per capita by PPP was about 30% of what it is today in the 50s.
Or we can live in the real world where growing population and growing the economy means we need infrastructure. In which case lets have roads and cycle paths built.
Aye, Dutch GDP per capita is a disaster.
(The 8x was adjusted for population. On deportation - don't give Mr Sunak ideas)
The Dutch have been building roads. 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
The Dutch have massively more roads than we have per capita and per square mile. 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
I support a Dutch policy of building roads and cycle paths. For some perverted reason you don't.
Find the quote where I was against cycle paths on new roads (third time I've asked).
The whole HS2 debacle is infuriating. What an utter bunch of idiots in charge. Absolutely no idea what Sunak or Hunt are thinking
The optics are shockingly poor. At least Sunak has his helicopter I guess
There's a lot of disruption in my area from HS2, and it would be ridiculous to stop building it now because it would mean all of that inconvenience has been for nothing.
Sunk cost fallacy. As someone pointed out a few weeks ago, could be an incredible London - Birmingham cycle track
Have it a dual motorway and separated cycle path and it'd absolutely be far better value for money than rail. 👍
Can't cycle on a motorway of course, but I see no reason you couldn't have separate cycle paths that go next to motorway routes.
We did have segregated cycle lanes on A roads built in the 70s, but these have largely been built on now.
Let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s (8x what it is today) and then we can talk about new roads 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
No new roads = no new cycle paths to go with those roads.
Its not either/or, its not zero sum, we need both. We need investment in our infrastructure, we need roads and cycle paths. Its not feasible given our population growth to do one without the other, we need to stop dicking about and invest in our infrastructure and do both.
Why did you make up a thing about me not wanting cycle paths on new roads?
I didn't.
You have said time and again you are opposed to new roads. If there's no new roads built, there's no cycle paths built with new roads.
To get cycle paths built with new roads, you need to agree to the new roads, can't have one without the other.
So are you in favour of new roads and new cycle paths? If so, great, we can stop arguing, because that's what I've been advocating all along!
I almost sympathise with Casino. His choice is to vote for himself first - the Conservatives are better financially for him and his family. I can't object to that - we all do what we see as best for our own.
The problem now is that the Tories are fucking mental. With the deliberate use of the expletive because their position now is akin to piracy.
Casino will vote for more money for himself and his family. Fine. I suspect the reason for his increasing rants is that he finds it increasingly difficult to ignore the taste of bile as his conscience wrestles with just where that money is coming from.
Like pirates, the Conservative Party are out to line their own pockets with as much of our money as they can before the get caught and hung. I would have more respect for them if they just admitted it - its not as if they can disguise it.
I joked that they should run Lee Anderson with a "Vote Conservative or Fuck Off" campaign. I think Sunak has done the abridged version and the slogan is simply "Fuck Off".
Many of us have different life experiences, different perspectives, different political leanings. But we're all citizens of this country and human beings. Morality is a thing. Right and Wrong. The reason why the remaining Tories lash out is that they are voting for wrong. And they know it.
Johnson, Truss and Sunak are all fairly recognisable aspects of Conservative id. They're not bad as parts of a mix, but since 2019 they have been unrestrained by anything else.
(May and Cameron are also Conservative archetypes, but they were a more forced to engage with external reality.)
And each of them has been, or is being, blown up by getting what they wanted, including the consequences they didn't.
It's as if Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was re-written with politicians instead of children.
The tragedy is that the Tories were - after 3 failed attempts - finally given a chonking majority in 2019. Unrestrained as you say. It has been the most disastrous period of government and you cannot write off the idea that Sunak also gets the boot and they put in another tragic figure.
All parties are coalitions. The Tory problem is that they are a coalition of "closet racists and loonies" (Cameron) and "the dispossed and the never-possessed" (Major). What they want isn't something that works in the real world.
An 80 seat majority means the governments could do what they like. I do mean governments plural - one party, one election, but such massive uturns on basic direction of travel. The Hodges piece reveals that the lunatic policies Sunak announced he was saving us from with his green crap uturn were policies proposed by Sunak in March 2023.
Boris blew in the wind looking for applause. Truss went down the nuclear option and had to do a 180 when the markets said no. Sunak is doing unprompted 180s against himself now. Not because he believes either in the policies proposed by him in March or in denying them now in September. Simply because the closet racists, loonies, dispossessed and never-possessed which are the remaining Tory voters demand it.
As you say, like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The Tory party is Augustus Gloop. Fattened by slurping on Other People's Chocolate they now block the pipe bringing the whole operation (the UK) to a grinding halt, all the while blaming everyone else for their largesse.
Heretical to say but, while Truss is bonkers, she was also very unfortunate in her timing.
If Truss had proposed her financial plans 12 months earlier, then the financial markets would have been fine with it. Remember that was the time when interest rates were close to zero and QE was still the thinking du jour. After all, her plans cost less than the furlough scheme.
What caught out Truss was that, with the rapid rise in US interest rates which fed across the world and, more importantly, the adoption of the line by the Fed that it was government deficits that was fuelling the rise in inflation (which was only partially true and concentrated in the housing / stock market areas NOT prices of everyday goods) switched the markets' mantra overnight from being au fait with deficits to seeing them as the harbinger of doom.
What she did get wrong was not recognising sentiment had changed.
I think the markets would have reacted the exact same way 12 months earlier if Johnson/Sunak had released a budget after sacking the head of the treasury and without running it past the OBR. It just made everyone start to look for what was being hid.
Sunak's problem (there are others) is that he's full of crap. He spouts on about making hard choices in the long-term interest of the country, whereas in fact he's making easy choices for short-term electoral gain. He's a follower, not a leader. And I'm not convinced that the advice he's following is particularly sound.
Even then, his answer to a question about the North: "London".
If you want the economy in the North then the answer is to improve infrastructure in the North.
A major road building program building multiple motorways to connect each Northern town and city to each other (rather than redirecting everything into the bottleneck that is the M6 or M62) would unleash economic growth far more than aiding some commuters travelling into London.
Sadly there are a few barriers: The Treasury won't fund such schemes The private sector would rob us The public sector are grossly incompetent
We should do as so much of the developing world does, and ask China to build our new roads. Cheaper, quicker, less corrupt.
The Treasury isn't fit for purpose.
The only way to make it so might be to move Parliament and the Civil Service out of London.
Radical idea but many countries have capital cities that are not remotely linked to finance or anything else. Canberra rather than Sydney or Melbourne. Washington DC rather than NYC or San Francisco etc
Parliament is crumbling anyway. Build a new capital city in the North as an entirely new city - not Manchester, complete new build. Build a new Parliament, refurbish the old crumbling fire risk one and turn it into a museum. Move the Civil Service, in full, out of London - sell that land to the private sector or housing.
Could possibly make this quite cost-effective, by purchasing land that's not worth much in an uninhabited area of the North and selling all the land in London that will repay a considerable part of the costs.
I keep saying that we need to build new cities, so yes I agree. Despite the "we're full" lie there is an awful lot of empty space in the country. Build a new city in East Yorkshire, put the mechanism of government in there as the first phase, and watch as new roads and railways link it back into the rest of the country.
The eastern end of the M62. Big open spaces. East west motorway and railway already there. Humber Bridge gets connected north south - a new spine motorway to develop eastern England. A choice of big ports. An ocean of development money spent outside of London...
He's not worse than Truss or Johnson. Both of them struggled with basic day to day administration and he runs a steady ship. He's also got several important deals done.
Rishi's problem is that he's perceived to be detached and disinterested coupled with poor political salesmanship. When you add this in to his approach to risk which, in its delivery, goes from extremely cautious to cautious to desperate panic it conveys a lack of confidence that others pick up on and irritates them because they don't really know or trust his motives.
It's not actually the policy. The guy has never crystallised what he's about, where his heart is and why you should trust him, or communicated his vision and prospectus for Britain.
It’s also about the policy. The desperate flailing around on climate change is actively damaging.
Liked by a bunch of Lefties, all the usual suspects I see.
Look at the YouGov polling on the issue.
I'd describe those who liked Nigelb's comment as PB's Centrist Dads rather than PB's Lefties.
Which is exactly Sunak's problem. Because Centrist Dads voted for Cameron, and if you look at the YouGov polling - the very same polling highlighted by OGH in his previous header - they were initially prepared to give Sunak the benefit of the doubt. Now they're not.
Er, no. The Woodpecker, Heathener, IanB2, El Capitano, Foxy...
All the usual suspects. None of them are centrists in the slightest.
And then on DuraAce's characteristic unpleasantness you also have MexicanPete, NorthernMonkey and Carnyx. They may support Labour, LDs or the SNP but they are all of a type.
This site has become a haven for Lefties. It's what it is now.
Christ, you really do have a little list! Several in fact.
I imagine a big wall chart cross referencing estimated penis size..
I’m not included on either. I feel a little insulted. Especially because if one is omitted it might be because the compiler thinks one is a Tory!
I almost sympathise with Casino. His choice is to vote for himself first - the Conservatives are better financially for him and his family. I can't object to that - we all do what we see as best for our own.
The problem now is that the Tories are fucking mental. With the deliberate use of the expletive because their position now is akin to piracy.
Casino will vote for more money for himself and his family. Fine. I suspect the reason for his increasing rants is that he finds it increasingly difficult to ignore the taste of bile as his conscience wrestles with just where that money is coming from.
Like pirates, the Conservative Party are out to line their own pockets with as much of our money as they can before the get caught and hung. I would have more respect for them if they just admitted it - its not as if they can disguise it.
I joked that they should run Lee Anderson with a "Vote Conservative or Fuck Off" campaign. I think Sunak has done the abridged version and the slogan is simply "Fuck Off".
Many of us have different life experiences, different perspectives, different political leanings. But we're all citizens of this country and human beings. Morality is a thing. Right and Wrong. The reason why the remaining Tories lash out is that they are voting for wrong. And they know it.
Johnson, Truss and Sunak are all fairly recognisable aspects of Conservative id. They're not bad as parts of a mix, but since 2019 they have been unrestrained by anything else.
(May and Cameron are also Conservative archetypes, but they were a more forced to engage with external reality.)
And each of them has been, or is being, blown up by getting what they wanted, including the consequences they didn't.
It's as if Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was re-written with politicians instead of children.
The tragedy is that the Tories were - after 3 failed attempts - finally given a chonking majority in 2019. Unrestrained as you say. It has been the most disastrous period of government and you cannot write off the idea that Sunak also gets the boot and they put in another tragic figure.
All parties are coalitions. The Tory problem is that they are a coalition of "closet racists and loonies" (Cameron) and "the dispossed and the never-possessed" (Major). What they want isn't something that works in the real world.
An 80 seat majority means the governments could do what they like. I do mean governments plural - one party, one election, but such massive uturns on basic direction of travel. The Hodges piece reveals that the lunatic policies Sunak announced he was saving us from with his green crap uturn were policies proposed by Sunak in March 2023.
Boris blew in the wind looking for applause. Truss went down the nuclear option and had to do a 180 when the markets said no. Sunak is doing unprompted 180s against himself now. Not because he believes either in the policies proposed by him in March or in denying them now in September. Simply because the closet racists, loonies, dispossessed and never-possessed which are the remaining Tory voters demand it.
As you say, like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The Tory party is Augustus Gloop. Fattened by slurping on Other People's Chocolate they now block the pipe bringing the whole operation (the UK) to a grinding halt, all the while blaming everyone else for their largesse.
Heretical to say but, while Truss is bonkers, she was also very unfortunate in her timing.
If Truss had proposed her financial plans 12 months earlier, then the financial markets would have been fine with it. Remember that was the time when interest rates were close to zero and QE was still the thinking du jour. After all, her plans cost less than the furlough scheme.
What caught out Truss was that, with the rapid rise in US interest rates which fed across the world and, more importantly, the adoption of the line by the Fed that it was government deficits that was fuelling the rise in inflation (which was only partially true and concentrated in the housing / stock market areas NOT prices of everyday goods) switched the markets' mantra overnight from being au fait with deficits to seeing them as the harbinger of doom.
What she did get wrong was not recognising sentiment had changed.
An unexpected chance to say I agree with you !
It wouldn't have been good policy - but it wouldn't have been disastrous at the time.
Even then, his answer to a question about the North: "London".
If you want the economy in the North then the answer is to improve infrastructure in the North.
A major road building program building multiple motorways to connect each Northern town and city to each other (rather than redirecting everything into the bottleneck that is the M6 or M62) would unleash economic growth far more than aiding some commuters travelling into London.
Sadly there are a few barriers: The Treasury won't fund such schemes The private sector would rob us The public sector are grossly incompetent
We should do as so much of the developing world does, and ask China to build our new roads. Cheaper, quicker, less corrupt.
The Treasury isn't fit for purpose.
The only way to make it so might be to move Parliament and the Civil Service out of London.
Radical idea but many countries have capital cities that are not remotely linked to finance or anything else. Canberra rather than Sydney or Melbourne. Washington DC rather than NYC or San Francisco etc
Parliament is crumbling anyway. Build a new capital city in the North as an entirely new city - not Manchester, complete new build. Build a new Parliament, refurbish the old crumbling fire risk one and turn it into a museum. Move the Civil Service, in full, out of London - sell that land to the private sector or housing.
Could possibly make this quite cost-effective, by purchasing land that's not worth much in an uninhabited area of the North and selling all the land in London that will repay a considerable part of the costs.
I keep saying that we need to build new cities, so yes I agree. Despite the "we're full" lie there is an awful lot of empty space in the country. Build a new city in East Yorkshire, put the mechanism of government in there as the first phase, and watch as new roads and railways link it back into the rest of the country.
The eastern end of the M62. Big open spaces. East west motorway and railway already there. Humber Bridge gets connected north south - a new spine motorway to develop eastern England. A choice of big ports. An ocean of development money spent outside of London...
Yes, makes perfect sense. Despite my bias to the North West, that's a very good location for it. 👍
I almost sympathise with Casino. His choice is to vote for himself first - the Conservatives are better financially for him and his family. I can't object to that - we all do what we see as best for our own.
The problem now is that the Tories are fucking mental. With the deliberate use of the expletive because their position now is akin to piracy.
Casino will vote for more money for himself and his family. Fine. I suspect the reason for his increasing rants is that he finds it increasingly difficult to ignore the taste of bile as his conscience wrestles with just where that money is coming from.
Like pirates, the Conservative Party are out to line their own pockets with as much of our money as they can before the get caught and hung. I would have more respect for them if they just admitted it - its not as if they can disguise it.
I joked that they should run Lee Anderson with a "Vote Conservative or Fuck Off" campaign. I think Sunak has done the abridged version and the slogan is simply "Fuck Off".
Many of us have different life experiences, different perspectives, different political leanings. But we're all citizens of this country and human beings. Morality is a thing. Right and Wrong. The reason why the remaining Tories lash out is that they are voting for wrong. And they know it.
Johnson, Truss and Sunak are all fairly recognisable aspects of Conservative id. They're not bad as parts of a mix, but since 2019 they have been unrestrained by anything else.
(May and Cameron are also Conservative archetypes, but they were a more forced to engage with external reality.)
And each of them has been, or is being, blown up by getting what they wanted, including the consequences they didn't.
It's as if Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was re-written with politicians instead of children.
The tragedy is that the Tories were - after 3 failed attempts - finally given a chonking majority in 2019. Unrestrained as you say. It has been the most disastrous period of government and you cannot write off the idea that Sunak also gets the boot and they put in another tragic figure.
All parties are coalitions. The Tory problem is that they are a coalition of "closet racists and loonies" (Cameron) and "the dispossed and the never-possessed" (Major). What they want isn't something that works in the real world.
An 80 seat majority means the governments could do what they like. I do mean governments plural - one party, one election, but such massive uturns on basic direction of travel. The Hodges piece reveals that the lunatic policies Sunak announced he was saving us from with his green crap uturn were policies proposed by Sunak in March 2023.
Boris blew in the wind looking for applause. Truss went down the nuclear option and had to do a 180 when the markets said no. Sunak is doing unprompted 180s against himself now. Not because he believes either in the policies proposed by him in March or in denying them now in September. Simply because the closet racists, loonies, dispossessed and never-possessed which are the remaining Tory voters demand it.
As you say, like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The Tory party is Augustus Gloop. Fattened by slurping on Other People's Chocolate they now block the pipe bringing the whole operation (the UK) to a grinding halt, all the while blaming everyone else for their largesse.
Heretical to say but, while Truss is bonkers, she was also very unfortunate in her timing.
If Truss had proposed her financial plans 12 months earlier, then the financial markets would have been fine with it. Remember that was the time when interest rates were close to zero and QE was still the thinking du jour. After all, her plans cost less than the furlough scheme.
What caught out Truss was that, with the rapid rise in US interest rates which fed across the world and, more importantly, the adoption of the line by the Fed that it was government deficits that was fuelling the rise in inflation (which was only partially true and concentrated in the housing / stock market areas NOT prices of everyday goods) switched the markets' mantra overnight from being au fait with deficits to seeing them as the harbinger of doom.
What she did get wrong was not recognising sentiment had changed.
Timing did have a part to play in it but that also does her far too much credit. She was naive and incompetent, with a basic lack of understanding how politics at that level worked. She believed she could rip up the rule book on day one. She thought that occupying the PMs office gave her untrammelled power to do whatever she liked and to turn the British ship of state on a sixpence.
There are a lot of could-haves and should-haves with Liz Truss. In many ways yes she was right to identify measures to boost growth and yes she was right to question accepted orthodoxies. She just thought she could clap her hands and deliver instant results. And those telling her she couldn’t were just bad faith actors belonging to The Blob. Fundamentally, she wasn’t up to the job of PM and that is why her premiership was so disastrous.
It is pretty clear that the world is not going to act on climate change. I am increasingly defeatist, and think we might as well enjoy ourselves before the inevitable mass extinction of civilisation.
I'm feeling increasingly undefeatist. The key is that the next steps are becoming less and less reliant on politics. Solar just gets cheaper all the time, the deployment everywhere just gets faster and faster. Offshore wind is finally becoming economical and it'll scale out crazy fast all over the place. Electric cars are better than gasoline cars: If they're not already faster, cheaper, quieter and easier to maintain, they soon will be.
This is a way more optimistic situation to be in than one where we were just relying on politics, because the world has lots of different countries and it was always going to be hard to get them all to do the right thing at the same time when they could instead get a competitive advantage by doing the wrong thing.
I reckon the net positive externalities from Net Zero are larger than the costs of it, before you even get to climate change.
Net zero is something we have to do sooner or later in any case given the finite nature of fossil fuels. And sooner has the additional benefit of not destroying the environment or making us completely reliant on Saudi Arabia and Russia for hydrocarbons as our own meagre reserves are depleted.
The Tories care about personal enrichment. They care about being in power.
Which explains why they would abolish inheritance tax? Almost certainly the second. The reality is that IHT is not popular. However the inevitable highlighting of Sunak's own wealth could make it backfire.
Yesterday you were rather rude about the King parental style. From today’s mail:
At the time, he [Harry] was offered the chance to stay in Balmoral with his father Charles on the anniversary of the Queen's death on September 7 but said his busy itinerary made it impossible.
I guess Harry doesn’t rank seeing his father that high in his list of priorities
No doubt there’s some fault on both sides - but good parents welcome their kids unconditionally.
The issue is that the King is quite busy - time has to be scheduled. Additionally Harry is not trusted - the fear is that private conversations will be leaked (may be not by Harry, but he will - reasonably - tell his wife and she is definitely not trusted) - while any photographs will be monetised.
The King’s duty comes above what he might want as a person
LOL the King is busy, what kind of idiot believes that , the arsehole swands about stuffing his fat face and pocketing as much of the public's money he can get his hands on. A day's work would unhinge him.
Malc, think you need to discuss upping the chill pill dose with your doctor, you wouldn´t want anyone to think you had become unhinged again.
Why do you need to be an ignorant arsehole. Stop the drinking early morning and GFY.
1/10
You can do much, much better with insults than this.
Pull yourself to together and return to the form your are capable of.
No matter your views on HS2, the way it has been ‘delivered’ is a national scandal and that alone should be enough to doom the Tory government.
The fact we have gone from a high speed link to the two biggest conurbations in the north, to only one, to none at all, to maybe even making journey times from Birmingham to central London longer (if it terminates at Old Oak Common) is pathetic. All that money spent for a defective railway line.
It is symptomatic of the rot at the heart of the British government.
I think the real scandal is that it is projected to cost £350 million/mile, when similar lines are delivered by the French and Spanish for a tenth of that. Either the NIMBYs should be overridden and the planning process massively curtailed or we should scrap it and also give up on building anything in this country.
Part of it is population density, so more people are affected in the UK than in France or Spain. The whole planning and environmental rigmarole is I’m sure a bigger factor.
It must surely be easier for Parliament to pass a Bill agreeing to pay everyone a 50% uplift on their property on the route, than to have to sit through a decade of public enquiries with vocal opposition groups on the route?
The cost of compulsory purchase is large, but it is "only" about £3 billion. The largest single cost item is the design of the run-in to Euston, which has still not been properly costed. The problem is the way this is being built- by consultants and PR Bullshitters, not by people who know what they are doing.
I think Sunak underestimates how angry people are about this. If we can not match the rest of Europe for decent infrastructure at comparable cost, then UK PLC is over. The control of major infrastructure projects should be brought in-house to the government and not done project by project with the expertise being lost once each project team is dispersed. Neither should there be a revolving door between the contractors and the delivery Quangos.
This is only a mere hundred miles London to Birmingham and it is coming in at c25x the cost of TGV Nord which is more than twice the length and in not that dissimilar population density.
PR and Bullshit do not beat engineers, and if Sunak is too incompetent to get this done, then the Tories must be put out of our misery.
What a way to build a railway.
"If we can not match the rest of Europe for decent infrastructure at comparable cost, then UK PLC is over."
A line so powerful that it is worth repeating. All of our competitor nations have all these things already - more motorways, high speed rail, a hub airport. We do not.
The solution - as you rightly point out - is a StateCo. Far enough from the reach of ministers and mandarins to operate without meddling, but not private sector giving fortunes to spivs.
In the past we used to have road construction units - a team of engineers who would build project after project after project. We had railway electrification units who did the same. And we could have it again if we recognised that (a) we need these things and (b) not spending the money is not zero-cost.
With regards to HS2 we get argument about speed vs capacity, and about whether we now need the thing. A basic question. France has High Speed Rail. Germany. Italy. Spain. Belgium. Are we worse than these countries?
The argument for modernising the rail network is clear and unambiguous - the challenge is cost. It appears to be a peculiarity of Britain that we inflate the cost of any project many times over - absurd specifications and abused supply relationships.
Ultimately it doesn't matter whether Sunak cancels the rest of HS2 or not - it will be built. This just adds more delay. And cost.
Yes - the impact is the same as Gordon Brown on the aircraft carriers. Squeeze it to help the short term numbers, which results in timescales being stupidly stretched, and the thing being much more expensive for a smaller benefit.
I had dinner with a couple who live in a hamlet in Derbyshire called Old Blackwell this week to show them the deeds from our old hall, and they are just outside the compensation corridor for the Sheffield Spur of the HS2 route. They say that Mr Starmer's commitment to HS2 means that they will not be voting Labour, whilst for me the HS2 / Northern Powerhouse Rail policy is one of the key things that may *cause* me to vote Labour for only perhaps the 2nd time in my life.
An example of the issue with delays caused by the Conservative Govt spending all the money down South and then saying "Ooops there's nothing left. You lot up there go f*ck yourselves." is that 1250 properties have been bought by HS2, and many have been sitting empty for years. That at a time of declared housing crisis when the Government have also decided to pause requirements to build any new ones.
In this hamlet of perhaps 15-20 dwellings, several were purchased and have now been empty for some years.
No matter your views on HS2, the way it has been ‘delivered’ is a national scandal and that alone should be enough to doom the Tory government.
The fact we have gone from a high speed link to the two biggest conurbations in the north, to only one, to none at all, to maybe even making journey times from Birmingham to central London longer (if it terminates at Old Oak Common) is pathetic. All that money spent for a defective railway line.
It is symptomatic of the rot at the heart of the British government.
I think the real scandal is that it is projected to cost £350 million/mile, when similar lines are delivered by the French and Spanish for a tenth of that. Either the NIMBYs should be overridden and the planning process massively curtailed or we should scrap it and also give up on building anything in this country.
Part of it is population density, so more people are affected in the UK than in France or Spain. The whole planning and environmental rigmarole is I’m sure a bigger factor.
It must surely be easier for Parliament to pass a Bill agreeing to pay everyone a 50% uplift on their property on the route, than to have to sit through a decade of public enquiries with vocal opposition groups on the route?
The cost of compulsory purchase is large, but it is "only" about £3 billion. The largest single cost item is the design of the run-in to Euston, which has still not been properly costed. The problem is the way this is being built- by consultants and PR Bullshitters, not by people who know what they are doing.
I think Sunak underestimates how angry people are about this. If we can not match the rest of Europe for decent infrastructure at comparable cost, then UK PLC is over. The control of major infrastructure projects should be brought in-house to the government and not done project by project with the expertise being lost once each project team is dispersed. Neither should there be a revolving door between the contractors and the delivery Quangos.
This is only a mere hundred miles London to Birmingham and it is coming in at c25x the cost of TGV Nord which is more than twice the length and in not that dissimilar population density.
PR and Bullshit do not beat engineers, and if Sunak is too incompetent to get this done, then the Tories must be put out of our misery.
What a way to build a railway.
"If we can not match the rest of Europe for decent infrastructure at comparable cost, then UK PLC is over."
A line so powerful that it is worth repeating. All of our competitor nations have all these things already - more motorways, high speed rail, a hub airport. We do not.
The solution - as you rightly point out - is a StateCo. Far enough from the reach of ministers and mandarins to operate without meddling, but not private sector giving fortunes to spivs.
In the past we used to have road construction units - a team of engineers who would build project after project after project. We had railway electrification units who did the same. And we could have it again if we recognised that (a) we need these things and (b) not spending the money is not zero-cost.
The bigger issue than StateCo or PrivateCo is the lack of sense or stability in the way it is done.
Have a pipeline of projects to be done, and once they're in the pipeline then do not change the specifications.
The problem is picking one project, just one, then chopping and changing that one projects specifications all the time and never building it.
Number 10 insiders fear beloved Downing Street mouser Larry the Cat may be seriously ill At 16 years old, Downing Street's resident mouser Larry is an elderly cat and may be reaching the end of his nine lives, with staff set to break the eventual news of his passing on social media https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/number-10-insiders-fear-beloved-31013660
He's definitely worse than Truss - the leadership election showed that. It seems to have been rapidly forgotten how bad he was in that contest.
Plus Truss at least recognises the problem (lack of growth), even if she wasn't hugely competent at fixing it - although she faced resistance from people who should have been neutral.
Sunak is just flailing around mis-managing decline, and will take his party to a well deserved annihilation. There is no alternative to that now
He isn't, under Truss the Tories were heading for 1993 Canadian Tory style annihilation and being overtaken on seats by the LDs and SNP while Labour won a landslide.
Now under Sunak Labour are still heading for a 1997 style landslide at present but the Conservatives are still projected to come a clear second on seats and still be the main opposition
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Truss would have done better electorally, but she at least had the right aims, even if no hope of achieving the.
Gutting HS2 so there's money to spare for an inheritance tax cut, uniting the Green Party and the Ford Motor Company in opposition to his backsliding on Net Zero... Sunak really is the absolute worst. It's like the Tories actually wish us harm now, squatting in power, bereft of any ambition other than power for the sake of it, dragging us down further every day.
This, this, and this again.
It’s the cynicism that gets me. It’s one thing to scrap HS2 and announce the money will be spent on other infrastructure.
But we’re into naked, shameless bungs for the small proportion of the country that might still vote conservative out of habit, using our future prosperity as the bargaining chip.
I have never much liked the Conservative party, but I have always respected the ethics behind a conservative approach to life. ‘Standing on your own two feet’ etc.
This is not that. It’s not even coherent. @ThomasNashe likened Sunak to Corbyn. The big difference is that Corbyn wasn’t in power. Sunak is flailing about with our futures in both hands.
PS OLB great header the other day.
They’ve not been a serious party for some time. Driven by collective delusion, focusing on tactical culture war nonsense and bereft of any vision or strategy for Britain and its place in the world.
They are quite literally in the middle of a political psychosis, one they’ve caught by following the Republican Party, and as far as I can see there is no prospectus at the moment for bringing them back to the real world.
The whole HS2 debacle is infuriating. What an utter bunch of idiots in charge. Absolutely no idea what Sunak or Hunt are thinking
The optics are shockingly poor. At least Sunak has his helicopter I guess
There's a lot of disruption in my area from HS2, and it would be ridiculous to stop building it now because it would mean all of that inconvenience has been for nothing.
Sunk cost fallacy. As someone pointed out a few weeks ago, could be an incredible London - Birmingham cycle track
Have it a dual motorway and separated cycle path and it'd absolutely be far better value for money than rail. 👍
Can't cycle on a motorway of course, but I see no reason you couldn't have separate cycle paths that go next to motorway routes.
We did have segregated cycle lanes on A roads built in the 70s, but these have largely been built on now.
Let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s (8x what it is today) and then we can talk about new roads 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
OK let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s before talking about new roads.
But of course we'll also need to restore the population back to what we had in the 50s. So who are the 17 million people you'd like to deport?
And of course we'll also need to restore the GDP per capita back closer to what we had in the 50s, since transportation infrastructure is critical in growing the economy. GDP per capita by PPP was about 30% of what it is today in the 50s.
Or we can live in the real world where growing population and growing the economy means we need infrastructure. In which case lets have roads and cycle paths built.
Aye, Dutch GDP per capita is a disaster.
(The 8x was adjusted for population. On deportation - don't give Mr Sunak ideas)
The Dutch have been building roads. 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
The Dutch have massively more roads than we have per capita and per square mile. 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
I support a Dutch policy of building roads and cycle paths. For some perverted reason you don't.
Find the quote where I was against cycle paths on new roads (third time I've asked).
The whole HS2 debacle is infuriating. What an utter bunch of idiots in charge. Absolutely no idea what Sunak or Hunt are thinking
The optics are shockingly poor. At least Sunak has his helicopter I guess
There's a lot of disruption in my area from HS2, and it would be ridiculous to stop building it now because it would mean all of that inconvenience has been for nothing.
Sunk cost fallacy. As someone pointed out a few weeks ago, could be an incredible London - Birmingham cycle track
Have it a dual motorway and separated cycle path and it'd absolutely be far better value for money than rail. 👍
Can't cycle on a motorway of course, but I see no reason you couldn't have separate cycle paths that go next to motorway routes.
We did have segregated cycle lanes on A roads built in the 70s, but these have largely been built on now.
Let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s (8x what it is today) and then we can talk about new roads 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
No new roads = no new cycle paths to go with those roads.
Its not either/or, its not zero sum, we need both. We need investment in our infrastructure, we need roads and cycle paths. Its not feasible given our population growth to do one without the other, we need to stop dicking about and invest in our infrastructure and do both.
Why did you make up a thing about me not wanting cycle paths on new roads?
I didn't.
You have said time and again you are opposed to new roads. If there's no new roads built, there's no cycle paths built with new roads.
To get cycle paths built with new roads, you need to agree to the new roads, can't have one without the other.
So are you in favour of new roads and new cycle paths? If so, great, we can stop arguing, because that's what I've been advocating all along!
I'm in favour of cycle lanes on new roads.
Most British cities and towns already have the "new road". You can tell because they smashed them up in the 70s. We didn't bother to transform the centres at the same time like the Dutch did. Glasgow is a good example (Buchanan Street aside). Let's catch up!
Some towns don't have a bypass. Nairn is an example. The A96 should be bypassed and the centre should be pedestrianised, with the surrounding roads fitted with cycle lanes.
He's definitely worse than Truss - the leadership election showed that. It seems to have been rapidly forgotten how bad he was in that contest.
Plus Truss at least recognises the problem (lack of growth), even if she wasn't hugely competent at fixing it - although she faced resistance from people who should have been neutral.
Sunak is just flailing around mis-managing decline, and will take his party to a well deserved annihilation. There is no alternative to that now
He isn't, under Truss the Tories were heading for 1993 Canadian Tory style annihilation and being overtaken on seats by the LDs and SNP while Labour won a landslide.
Now under Sunak Labour are still heading for a 1997 style landslide at present but the Conservatives are still projected to come a clear second on seats and still be the main opposition
With regards to HS2 we get argument about speed vs capacity, and about whether we now need the thing. A basic question. France has High Speed Rail. Germany. Italy. Spain. Belgium. Are we worse than these countries?
The argument for modernising the rail network is clear and unambiguous - the challenge is cost. It appears to be a peculiarity of Britain that we inflate the cost of any project many times over - absurd specifications and abused supply relationships.
Ultimately it doesn't matter whether Sunak cancels the rest of HS2 or not - it will be built. This just adds more delay. And cost.
Yes - the impact is the same as Gordon Brown on the aircraft carriers. Squeeze it to help the short term numbers, which results in timescales being stupidly stretched, and the thing being much more expensive for a smaller benefit.
I had dinner with a couple who live in a hamlet in Derbyshire called Old Blackwell this week to show them the deeds from our old hall, and they are just outside the compensation corridor for the Sheffield Spur of the HS2 route. They say that Mr Starmer's commitment to HS2 means that they will not be voting Labour, whilst for me the HS2 / Northern Powerhouse Rail policy is one of the key things that may *cause* me to vote Labour for only perhaps the 2nd time in my life.
An example of the issue with delays caused by the Conservative Govt spending all the money down South and then saying "Ooops there's nothing left. You lot up there go f*ck yourselves." is that 1250 properties have been bought by HS2, and many have been sitting empty for years. That at a time of declared housing crisis when the Government have also decided to pause requirements to build any new ones.
In this hamlet of perhaps 15-20 dwellings, several were purchased and have now been empty for some years.
HS2 will do to help the North or develop the Northern Powerhouse. There are many ways the money could have been better spent that would have made a real difference but they weren't as prestigious as a high speed rail link to London so the North will continue to be ignored in favour of pointless vanity projects.
The HS2 issue was being discussed in the Gym this morning. Concern that the Handsacre link from HS2 to the West Coast Main line might be scrapped, although the work has been charging ahead, it is only about 6 kilometers and would enable high speed trains to reach the North West, Liverpool even Glasgow, whilst completing the last 130 miles to London on the high speed line. This has been a marginal seat, but last election 15,000 majority, has vacillated between the two parties, I reckon the latest stupid move by Sunak will ensure the end of the current Tory MP whom I have a lot of respect for. Everything was brought up, his wealth, swimming pool, arrogance etc etc
The plan to abolish inheritance tax reminds me of Corbyn’s pledge to abolish tuition fees. With that and the dicking about with net zero, he’s recognisably as reckless and irresponsible as Corbyn. He deserves the same fate.
If they did get rid of inheritance tax it would make its replacement fair game. Time to move it on to the recipient, I suggest something like a lifetime allowance of £100k tax free, next £200k @ 15%, anything more @ 40%.
And the in principle point remains: these are assets accumulated from taxed income. Why should it be taxed a second time just because it has been transferred with no economic activity?
Yes, but double taxation is perfectly normal. I paid beer tax, petrol tax and VAT in the last week, all from after tax income.
Unless you think the only tax should be income tax?
Those are all taxes on economic activity
Inheritance tax is not.
Right, and we should favour taxes on lack of economic activity over taxes on economic activity, because that encourages people to spend money and keep the economy moving, rather than just sitting on it. So that makes inheritance tax the worst one to consider scrapping IMO. Plus taxing large inheritances rather than peoples' everyday spending is more progressive taxation.
No it’s a fundamental question of how you view the world.
I believe that people own their assets. When they increase value to themselves (through income, capital gains or purchase of goods that add value) then they should pay tax on that increase (let’s call it “sharing the proceeds of growth”)
The state doesn’t just have the right to confiscate assets because it wants them.
If you need more then you should replace the principal residence relief with a rollover relief.
Point one is that taxation is not "confiscating assets". Growth in housing values is unearned wealth being accumulated and I would say it is reasonable to tax it.
I think the "taking XYZ out of the tax system" is years past its sell-by date, and we need a broadening of the tax base, and a depending at the higher end - especially targeting gaps and loopholes such as the "tax free gift out of normal income" loophole, which gives tax free income / wealth transfer from wealthier people to their children. Also Trusts.
I'd radically broaden Inheritance Tax to a majority of estates, starting at very modest rates, and make it payable by the receiving party not the Estate. There's perhaps a case to make it payable at the marginal rate of income tax for that party, to encourage wider distribution.
He's definitely worse than Truss - the leadership election showed that. It seems to have been rapidly forgotten how bad he was in that contest.
Plus Truss at least recognises the problem (lack of growth), even if she wasn't hugely competent at fixing it - although she faced resistance from people who should have been neutral.
Sunak is just flailing around mis-managing decline, and will take his party to a well deserved annihilation. There is no alternative to that now
I love the way the Truss-ites think she is the only one who has understood we have had low growth for a long time, and it would be preferable to have higher growth. Quite remarkable.
If Sunak realises that we need more growth then that's even worse, because it means (according at least to his actions) he thinks he can tax and regulate us into growth - that makes Truss look like an absolute genius in comparison.
For the avoidance of doubt, nothing I have written should be taken as meaning I think she was competent, or would have been successful as a leader. Just that she at least recognised the problem and wanted to try to fix it, which is more than the alternatives have done, are doing, or would do.
They had flaws, but they at least were trying to support aspiration and make things better. Sunak isn't even trying.
Partly politics, not just personality. Politicians are all focused only on what they can achieve before we voters get a say. There's neither time nor inclination to start on longer term stuff, now
Number 10 insiders fear beloved Downing Street mouser Larry the Cat may be seriously ill At 16 years old, Downing Street's resident mouser Larry is an elderly cat and may be reaching the end of his nine lives, with staff set to break the eventual news of his passing on social media https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/number-10-insiders-fear-beloved-31013660
State funeral lined up. Opportunity for Boris to get back in the news saying what an affectionate beast he was. Etc.
Yesterday you were rather rude about the King parental style. From today’s mail:
At the time, he [Harry] was offered the chance to stay in Balmoral with his father Charles on the anniversary of the Queen's death on September 7 but said his busy itinerary made it impossible.
I guess Harry doesn’t rank seeing his father that high in his list of priorities
No doubt there’s some fault on both sides - but good parents welcome their kids unconditionally.
The issue is that the King is quite busy - time has to be scheduled. Additionally Harry is not trusted - the fear is that private conversations will be leaked (may be not by Harry, but he will - reasonably - tell his wife and she is definitely not trusted) - while any photographs will be monetised.
The King’s duty comes above what he might want as a person
LOL the King is busy, what kind of idiot believes that , the arsehole swands about stuffing his fat face and pocketing as much of the public's money he can get his hands on. A day's work would unhinge him.
5000 Royal Engagements in 10 years. Sounds quite productive. On top of supervising programmes such as the Prince's Trust, and all the other things he does.
The whole HS2 debacle is infuriating. What an utter bunch of idiots in charge. Absolutely no idea what Sunak or Hunt are thinking
The optics are shockingly poor. At least Sunak has his helicopter I guess
There's a lot of disruption in my area from HS2, and it would be ridiculous to stop building it now because it would mean all of that inconvenience has been for nothing.
Sunk cost fallacy. As someone pointed out a few weeks ago, could be an incredible London - Birmingham cycle track
Have it a dual motorway and separated cycle path and it'd absolutely be far better value for money than rail. 👍
Can't cycle on a motorway of course, but I see no reason you couldn't have separate cycle paths that go next to motorway routes.
We did have segregated cycle lanes on A roads built in the 70s, but these have largely been built on now.
Let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s (8x what it is today) and then we can talk about new roads 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
OK let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s before talking about new roads.
But of course we'll also need to restore the population back to what we had in the 50s. So who are the 17 million people you'd like to deport?
And of course we'll also need to restore the GDP per capita back closer to what we had in the 50s, since transportation infrastructure is critical in growing the economy. GDP per capita by PPP was about 30% of what it is today in the 50s.
Or we can live in the real world where growing population and growing the economy means we need infrastructure. In which case lets have roads and cycle paths built.
Aye, Dutch GDP per capita is a disaster.
(The 8x was adjusted for population. On deportation - don't give Mr Sunak ideas)
The Dutch have been building roads. 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
The Dutch have massively more roads than we have per capita and per square mile. 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
I support a Dutch policy of building roads and cycle paths. For some perverted reason you don't.
It's a lot easier to build roads and cycle paths when your entire country is flat as a pancake. What makes you think the Dutch could do to improve the road between Manchester and Sheffield?
Dutch towns are nevertheless almost always well designed, with a real effort made to create good places to live
Even then, his answer to a question about the North: "London".
If you want the economy in the North then the answer is to improve infrastructure in the North.
A major road building program building multiple motorways to connect each Northern town and city to each other (rather than redirecting everything into the bottleneck that is the M6 or M62) would unleash economic growth far more than aiding some commuters travelling into London.
Sadly there are a few barriers: The Treasury won't fund such schemes The private sector would rob us The public sector are grossly incompetent
We should do as so much of the developing world does, and ask China to build our new roads. Cheaper, quicker, less corrupt.
The Treasury isn't fit for purpose.
The only way to make it so might be to move Parliament and the Civil Service out of London.
Radical idea but many countries have capital cities that are not remotely linked to finance or anything else. Canberra rather than Sydney or Melbourne. Washington DC rather than NYC or San Francisco etc
Parliament is crumbling anyway. Build a new capital city in the North as an entirely new city - not Manchester, complete new build. Build a new Parliament, refurbish the old crumbling fire risk one and turn it into a museum. Move the Civil Service, in full, out of London - sell that land to the private sector or housing.
Could possibly make this quite cost-effective, by purchasing land that's not worth much in an uninhabited area of the North and selling all the land in London that will repay a considerable part of the costs.
I keep saying that we need to build new cities, so yes I agree. Despite the "we're full" lie there is an awful lot of empty space in the country. Build a new city in East Yorkshire, put the mechanism of government in there as the first phase, and watch as new roads and railways link it back into the rest of the country.
The eastern end of the M62. Big open spaces. East west motorway and railway already there. Humber Bridge gets connected north south - a new spine motorway to develop eastern England. A choice of big ports. An ocean of development money spent outside of London...
Not sure you need to go that far. Build a new city in NE Lincolnshire around the Grimsby area. It has good port links and you can build/improve road links to the Midlands and the North. Some big desalination plants to deal with water supply and there are already huge windfarms off the coast there.
No matter your views on HS2, the way it has been ‘delivered’ is a national scandal and that alone should be enough to doom the Tory government.
The fact we have gone from a high speed link to the two biggest conurbations in the north, to only one, to none at all, to maybe even making journey times from Birmingham to central London longer (if it terminates at Old Oak Common) is pathetic. All that money spent for a defective railway line.
It is symptomatic of the rot at the heart of the British government.
I think the real scandal is that it is projected to cost £350 million/mile, when similar lines are delivered by the French and Spanish for a tenth of that. Either the NIMBYs should be overridden and the planning process massively curtailed or we should scrap it and also give up on building anything in this country.
Part of it is population density, so more people are affected in the UK than in France or Spain. The whole planning and environmental rigmarole is I’m sure a bigger factor.
It must surely be easier for Parliament to pass a Bill agreeing to pay everyone a 50% uplift on their property on the route, than to have to sit through a decade of public enquiries with vocal opposition groups on the route?
The cost of compulsory purchase is large, but it is "only" about £3 billion. The largest single cost item is the design of the run-in to Euston, which has still not been properly costed. The problem is the way this is being built- by consultants and PR Bullshitters, not by people who know what they are doing.
I think Sunak underestimates how angry people are about this. If we can not match the rest of Europe for decent infrastructure at comparable cost, then UK PLC is over. The control of major infrastructure projects should be brought in-house to the government and not done project by project with the expertise being lost once each project team is dispersed. Neither should there be a revolving door between the contractors and the delivery Quangos.
This is only a mere hundred miles London to Birmingham and it is coming in at c25x the cost of TGV Nord which is more than twice the length and in not that dissimilar population density.
PR and Bullshit do not beat engineers, and if Sunak is too incompetent to get this done, then the Tories must be put out of our misery.
What a way to build a railway.
"If we can not match the rest of Europe for decent infrastructure at comparable cost, then UK PLC is over."
A line so powerful that it is worth repeating. All of our competitor nations have all these things already - more motorways, high speed rail, a hub airport. We do not.
The solution - as you rightly point out - is a StateCo. Far enough from the reach of ministers and mandarins to operate without meddling, but not private sector giving fortunes to spivs.
In the past we used to have road construction units - a team of engineers who would build project after project after project. We had railway electrification units who did the same. And we could have it again if we recognised that (a) we need these things and (b) not spending the money is not zero-cost.
It is because the UK no longer to builds things or does things. The UK's current export is money. We send all our money to overseas investors.
With regards to HS2 we get argument about speed vs capacity, and about whether we now need the thing. A basic question. France has High Speed Rail. Germany. Italy. Spain. Belgium. Are we worse than these countries?
The argument for modernising the rail network is clear and unambiguous - the challenge is cost. It appears to be a peculiarity of Britain that we inflate the cost of any project many times over - absurd specifications and abused supply relationships.
Ultimately it doesn't matter whether Sunak cancels the rest of HS2 or not - it will be built. This just adds more delay. And cost.
Yes - the impact is the same as Gordon Brown on the aircraft carriers. Squeeze it to help the short term numbers, which results in timescales being stupidly stretched, and the thing being much more expensive for a smaller benefit.
I had dinner with a couple who live in a hamlet in Derbyshire called Old Blackwell this week to show them the deeds from our old hall, and they are just outside the compensation corridor for the Sheffield Spur of the HS2 route. They say that Mr Starmer's commitment to HS2 means that they will not be voting Labour, whilst for me the HS2 / Northern Powerhouse Rail policy is one of the key things that may *cause* me to vote Labour for only perhaps the 2nd time in my life.
An example of the issue with delays caused by the Conservative Govt spending all the money down South and then saying "Ooops there's nothing left. You lot up there go f*ck yourselves." is that 1250 properties have been bought by HS2, and many have been sitting empty for years. That at a time of declared housing crisis when the Government have also decided to pause requirements to build any new ones.
In this hamlet of perhaps 15-20 dwellings, several were purchased and have now been empty for some years.
HS2 will do to help the North or develop the Northern Powerhouse. There are many ways the money could have been better spent that would have made a real difference but they weren't as prestigious as a high speed rail link to London so the North will continue to be ignored in favour of pointless vanity projects.
Separating high speed passenger trains from freight and local services is the most basic rule of modern railways.
He's definitely worse than Truss - the leadership election showed that. It seems to have been rapidly forgotten how bad he was in that contest.
Plus Truss at least recognises the problem (lack of growth), even if she wasn't hugely competent at fixing it - although she faced resistance from people who should have been neutral.
Sunak is just flailing around mis-managing decline, and will take his party to a well deserved annihilation. There is no alternative to that now
I love the way the Truss-ites think she is the only one who has understood we have had low growth for a long time, and it would be preferable to have higher growth. Quite remarkable.
If Sunak realises that we need more growth then that's even worse, because it means (according at least to his actions) he thinks he can tax and regulate us into growth - that makes Truss look like an absolute genius in comparison.
For the avoidance of doubt, nothing I have written should be taken as meaning I think she was competent, or would have been successful as a leader. Just that she at least recognised the problem and wanted to try to fix it, which is more than the alternatives have done, are doing, or would do.
Everyone from Corbyn through Starmer, Miliband, Blair, Cameron, May, Sunak, Johnson understands that we have low growth and wants higher growth. They just have different views on how to deliver it.
Anyone with the slightest interest in politics or the economy knows we have low growth. Everyone bar the few % of green luddites and perhaps some of the bring back the 1950s brigade want higher growth.
Truss was just a good salesperson for a fantasy way of achieving it to the Tory selectorate. The story didn't work with the people she wanted to sell the debt too though.
The plan to abolish inheritance tax reminds me of Corbyn’s pledge to abolish tuition fees. With that and the dicking about with net zero, he’s recognisably as reckless and irresponsible as Corbyn. He deserves the same fate.
If they did get rid of inheritance tax it would make its replacement fair game. Time to move it on to the recipient, I suggest something like a lifetime allowance of £100k tax free, next £200k @ 15%, anything more @ 40%.
And the in principle point remains: these are assets accumulated from taxed income. Why should it be taxed a second time just because it has been transferred with no economic activity?
Yes, but double taxation is perfectly normal. I paid beer tax, petrol tax and VAT in the last week, all from after tax income.
Unless you think the only tax should be income tax?
Those are all taxes on economic activity
Inheritance tax is not.
Right, and we should favour taxes on lack of economic activity over taxes on economic activity, because that encourages people to spend money and keep the economy moving, rather than just sitting on it. So that makes inheritance tax the worst one to consider scrapping IMO. Plus taxing large inheritances rather than peoples' everyday spending is more progressive taxation.
No it’s a fundamental question of how you view the world.
I believe that people own their assets. When they increase value to themselves (through income, capital gains or purchase of goods that add value) then they should pay tax on that increase (let’s call it “sharing the proceeds of growth”)
The state doesn’t just have the right to confiscate assets because it wants them.
If you need more then you should replace the principal residence relief with a rollover relief.
Point one is that taxation is not "confiscating assets". Growth in housing values is unearned wealth being accumulated and I would say it is reasonable to tax it.
I think the "taking XYZ out of the tax system" is years past its sell-by date, and we need a broadening of the tax base, and a depending at the higher end - especially targeting gaps and loopholes such as the "tax free gift out of normal income" loophole, which gives tax free income / wealth transfer from wealthier people to their children. Also Trusts.
I'd radically broaden Inheritance Tax to a majority of estates, starting at very modest rates, and make it payable by the receiving party not the Estate. There's perhaps a case to make it payable at the marginal rate of income tax for that party, to encourage wider distribution.
It’s probably heresy to say, but I think there’s a case for increasing the pensioner’s tax burden. As an OAP with several pensions, plus a wife with the same, I’m probably better of than I’ve ever been, although the fact that I now need carer support eats into things a bit, although I do, of course, get assistance with that.
No matter your views on HS2, the way it has been ‘delivered’ is a national scandal and that alone should be enough to doom the Tory government.
The fact we have gone from a high speed link to the two biggest conurbations in the north, to only one, to none at all, to maybe even making journey times from Birmingham to central London longer (if it terminates at Old Oak Common) is pathetic. All that money spent for a defective railway line.
It is symptomatic of the rot at the heart of the British government.
I think the real scandal is that it is projected to cost £350 million/mile, when similar lines are delivered by the French and Spanish for a tenth of that. Either the NIMBYs should be overridden and the planning process massively curtailed or we should scrap it and also give up on building anything in this country.
Part of it is population density, so more people are affected in the UK than in France or Spain. The whole planning and environmental rigmarole is I’m sure a bigger factor.
It must surely be easier for Parliament to pass a Bill agreeing to pay everyone a 50% uplift on their property on the route, than to have to sit through a decade of public enquiries with vocal opposition groups on the route?
The cost of compulsory purchase is large, but it is "only" about £3 billion. The largest single cost item is the design of the run-in to Euston, which has still not been properly costed. The problem is the way this is being built- by consultants and PR Bullshitters, not by people who know what they are doing.
I think Sunak underestimates how angry people are about this. If we can not match the rest of Europe for decent infrastructure at comparable cost, then UK PLC is over. The control of major infrastructure projects should be brought in-house to the government and not done project by project with the expertise being lost once each project team is dispersed. Neither should there be a revolving door between the contractors and the delivery Quangos.
This is only a mere hundred miles London to Birmingham and it is coming in at c25x the cost of TGV Nord which is more than twice the length and in not that dissimilar population density.
PR and Bullshit do not beat engineers, and if Sunak is too incompetent to get this done, then the Tories must be put out of our misery.
What a way to build a railway.
"If we can not match the rest of Europe for decent infrastructure at comparable cost, then UK PLC is over."
A line so powerful that it is worth repeating. All of our competitor nations have all these things already - more motorways, high speed rail, a hub airport. We do not.
The solution - as you rightly point out - is a StateCo. Far enough from the reach of ministers and mandarins to operate without meddling, but not private sector giving fortunes to spivs.
In the past we used to have road construction units - a team of engineers who would build project after project after project. We had railway electrification units who did the same. And we could have it again if we recognised that (a) we need these things and (b) not spending the money is not zero-cost.
It is because the UK no longer to builds things or does things. The UK's current export is money. We send all our money to overseas investors.
That is just a myth. The UK just overtook France to become the 8th largest manufacturing nation in the world.
Number 10 insiders fear beloved Downing Street mouser Larry the Cat may be seriously ill At 16 years old, Downing Street's resident mouser Larry is an elderly cat and may be reaching the end of his nine lives, with staff set to break the eventual news of his passing on social media https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/number-10-insiders-fear-beloved-31013660
State funeral lined up. Opportunity for Boris to get back in the news saying what an affectionate beast he was. Etc.
With Boris's usual deft touch for detail and truth, Larry the Dog will be sadly missed....
The whole HS2 debacle is infuriating. What an utter bunch of idiots in charge. Absolutely no idea what Sunak or Hunt are thinking
The optics are shockingly poor. At least Sunak has his helicopter I guess
There's a lot of disruption in my area from HS2, and it would be ridiculous to stop building it now because it would mean all of that inconvenience has been for nothing.
Sunk cost fallacy. As someone pointed out a few weeks ago, could be an incredible London - Birmingham cycle track
Have it a dual motorway and separated cycle path and it'd absolutely be far better value for money than rail. 👍
Can't cycle on a motorway of course, but I see no reason you couldn't have separate cycle paths that go next to motorway routes.
We did have segregated cycle lanes on A roads built in the 70s, but these have largely been built on now.
Let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s (8x what it is today) and then we can talk about new roads 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
OK let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s before talking about new roads.
But of course we'll also need to restore the population back to what we had in the 50s. So who are the 17 million people you'd like to deport?
And of course we'll also need to restore the GDP per capita back closer to what we had in the 50s, since transportation infrastructure is critical in growing the economy. GDP per capita by PPP was about 30% of what it is today in the 50s.
Or we can live in the real world where growing population and growing the economy means we need infrastructure. In which case lets have roads and cycle paths built.
Aye, Dutch GDP per capita is a disaster.
(The 8x was adjusted for population. On deportation - don't give Mr Sunak ideas)
The Dutch have been building roads. 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
The Dutch have massively more roads than we have per capita and per square mile. 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
I support a Dutch policy of building roads and cycle paths. For some perverted reason you don't.
It's a lot easier to build roads and cycle paths when your entire country is flat as a pancake. What makes you think the Dutch could do to improve the road between Manchester and Sheffield?
Dutch towns are nevertheless almost always well designed, with a real effort made to create good places to live
Honestly, whilst I agree with you on the Dutch being better at the planning and building stuff, most Dutch towns are pretty soulless.
The whole HS2 debacle is infuriating. What an utter bunch of idiots in charge. Absolutely no idea what Sunak or Hunt are thinking
The optics are shockingly poor. At least Sunak has his helicopter I guess
There's a lot of disruption in my area from HS2, and it would be ridiculous to stop building it now because it would mean all of that inconvenience has been for nothing.
Sunk cost fallacy. As someone pointed out a few weeks ago, could be an incredible London - Birmingham cycle track
Have it a dual motorway and separated cycle path and it'd absolutely be far better value for money than rail. 👍
Can't cycle on a motorway of course, but I see no reason you couldn't have separate cycle paths that go next to motorway routes.
We did have segregated cycle lanes on A roads built in the 70s, but these have largely been built on now.
Let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s (8x what it is today) and then we can talk about new roads 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
OK let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s before talking about new roads.
But of course we'll also need to restore the population back to what we had in the 50s. So who are the 17 million people you'd like to deport?
And of course we'll also need to restore the GDP per capita back closer to what we had in the 50s, since transportation infrastructure is critical in growing the economy. GDP per capita by PPP was about 30% of what it is today in the 50s.
Or we can live in the real world where growing population and growing the economy means we need infrastructure. In which case lets have roads and cycle paths built.
Aye, Dutch GDP per capita is a disaster.
(The 8x was adjusted for population. On deportation - don't give Mr Sunak ideas)
The Dutch have been building roads. 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
The Dutch have massively more roads than we have per capita and per square mile. 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
I support a Dutch policy of building roads and cycle paths. For some perverted reason you don't.
Find the quote where I was against cycle paths on new roads (third time I've asked).
The whole HS2 debacle is infuriating. What an utter bunch of idiots in charge. Absolutely no idea what Sunak or Hunt are thinking
The optics are shockingly poor. At least Sunak has his helicopter I guess
There's a lot of disruption in my area from HS2, and it would be ridiculous to stop building it now because it would mean all of that inconvenience has been for nothing.
Sunk cost fallacy. As someone pointed out a few weeks ago, could be an incredible London - Birmingham cycle track
Have it a dual motorway and separated cycle path and it'd absolutely be far better value for money than rail. 👍
Can't cycle on a motorway of course, but I see no reason you couldn't have separate cycle paths that go next to motorway routes.
We did have segregated cycle lanes on A roads built in the 70s, but these have largely been built on now.
Let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s (8x what it is today) and then we can talk about new roads 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
No new roads = no new cycle paths to go with those roads.
Its not either/or, its not zero sum, we need both. We need investment in our infrastructure, we need roads and cycle paths. Its not feasible given our population growth to do one without the other, we need to stop dicking about and invest in our infrastructure and do both.
Why did you make up a thing about me not wanting cycle paths on new roads?
I didn't.
You have said time and again you are opposed to new roads. If there's no new roads built, there's no cycle paths built with new roads.
To get cycle paths built with new roads, you need to agree to the new roads, can't have one without the other.
So are you in favour of new roads and new cycle paths? If so, great, we can stop arguing, because that's what I've been advocating all along!
I'm in favour of cycle lanes on new roads.
Most British cities and towns already have the "new road". You can tell because they smashed them up in the 70s. We didn't bother to transform the centres at the same time like the Dutch did. Glasgow is a good example (Buchanan Street aside). Let's catch up!
Some towns don't have a bypass. Nairn is an example. The A96 should be bypassed and the centre should be pedestrianised, with the surrounding roads fitted with cycle lanes.
The 70s were before I was born and our population has grown by 13 million, roughly 25%, since the 70s.
If you're counting the 70s as "new" I think I can understand your fallacy.
He's definitely worse than Truss - the leadership election showed that. It seems to have been rapidly forgotten how bad he was in that contest.
Plus Truss at least recognises the problem (lack of growth), even if she wasn't hugely competent at fixing it - although she faced resistance from people who should have been neutral.
Sunak is just flailing around mis-managing decline, and will take his party to a well deserved annihilation. There is no alternative to that now
I love the way the Truss-ites think she is the only one who has understood we have had low growth for a long time, and it would be preferable to have higher growth. Quite remarkable.
If Sunak realises that we need more growth then that's even worse, because it means (according at least to his actions) he thinks he can tax and regulate us into growth - that makes Truss look like an absolute genius in comparison.
For the avoidance of doubt, nothing I have written should be taken as meaning I think she was competent, or would have been successful as a leader. Just that she at least recognised the problem and wanted to try to fix it, which is more than the alternatives have done, are doing, or would do.
Everyone from Corbyn through Starmer, Miliband, Blair, Cameron, May, Sunak, Johnson understands that we have low growth and wants higher growth. They just have different views on how to deliver it.
Anyone with the slightest interest in politics or the economy knows we have low growth. Everyone bar the few % of green luddites and perhaps some of the bring back the 1950s brigade want higher growth.
Truss was just a good salesperson for a fantasy way of achieving it to the Tory selectorate. The story didn't work with the people she wanted to sell the debt too though.
There are several who preferred austerity to growth.
Even then, his answer to a question about the North: "London".
If you want the economy in the North then the answer is to improve infrastructure in the North.
A major road building program building multiple motorways to connect each Northern town and city to each other (rather than redirecting everything into the bottleneck that is the M6 or M62) would unleash economic growth far more than aiding some commuters travelling into London.
Sadly there are a few barriers: The Treasury won't fund such schemes The private sector would rob us The public sector are grossly incompetent
We should do as so much of the developing world does, and ask China to build our new roads. Cheaper, quicker, less corrupt.
The Treasury isn't fit for purpose.
The only way to make it so might be to move Parliament and the Civil Service out of London.
Radical idea but many countries have capital cities that are not remotely linked to finance or anything else. Canberra rather than Sydney or Melbourne. Washington DC rather than NYC or San Francisco etc
Parliament is crumbling anyway. Build a new capital city in the North as an entirely new city - not Manchester, complete new build. Build a new Parliament, refurbish the old crumbling fire risk one and turn it into a museum. Move the Civil Service, in full, out of London - sell that land to the private sector or housing.
Could possibly make this quite cost-effective, by purchasing land that's not worth much in an uninhabited area of the North and selling all the land in London that will repay a considerable part of the costs.
I keep saying that we need to build new cities, so yes I agree. Despite the "we're full" lie there is an awful lot of empty space in the country. Build a new city in East Yorkshire, put the mechanism of government in there as the first phase, and watch as new roads and railways link it back into the rest of the country.
The eastern end of the M62. Big open spaces. East west motorway and railway already there. Humber Bridge gets connected north south - a new spine motorway to develop eastern England. A choice of big ports. An ocean of development money spent outside of London...
Not sure you need to go that far. Build a new city in NE Lincolnshire around the Grimsby area. It has good port links and you can build/improve road links to the Midlands and the North. Some big desalination plants to deal with water supply and there are already huge windfarms off the coast there.
Surely pipes to bring water from the Pennines would be cheaper then desalination plants?
The arrogance of this. We must not be subject to the same laws that apply to everyone else - even where there is evidence that one of us might have committed a crime.
And if we don't get our way we'll refuse to do something which may be necessary to keep safe the people we have pledged to serve.
It isn't arrogant. They aren't walking away from the Met, they are just saying they don't want to be firearms officers. You should only do this job if you accept the proposition that one error of judgement can lead you spending the rest of your life in prison. I would guess it will be difficult to find competent people to do this work after these events.
The test for murder is much higher than a simple error of judgment. This is the test the CPS applies before deciding to charge -
1. Is there sufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction? If the answer is yes, then the next question is:
2. Is a prosecution required in the public interest?
What these officers are in effect saying is that the CPS should not apply this test.
Now I have quite a lot of sympathy for armed police officers having to make a split second decision about whether to shoot someone. There have been quite a few such shootings in recent years - in some cases in terrorist incidents as well as in ordinary crimes. But if the evidence for a murder charge is there, the police officers' argument seems to be that it should not be in the public interest for them to be prosecuted. And that means that those charged with implementing and upholding the law should, ipso facto, be excused from following the same laws as the rest of us.
That is a pretty dangerous precedent to set.
Don't the CPS also have to consider the suspect to be guilty? My police officer friend is concerned that they are taking the easy option of letting a jury decide.
I have no idea if this is the protocol in such cases, but I think all serving armed police officers should have the right to review the evidence including any camera footage that has been used by the CPS to come to the decision to charge. That might be unusual, but they are in an unusual job and have the right to know what will get them charged with murder.
No, they have to consider that there’s a prima facile case against an individual with a reasonable change of conviction. It is absolutely not up to them to consider anyone guilty.
Of course the jury decides - that’s how our system of justice works. You police friend ought to understand that.
It's rather telling that this policeman thinks that letting a jury decide guilt is somehow wrong. The police have had form in the past in behaving as if they know that a suspect is guilty and manipulating the evidence to get the result they want. Now they seem to want the opposite - a presumption that because this particular aspect of their role is exceedingly difficult they should automatically be given the benefit of the doubt. And I am sorry but no group should be automatically given the benefit of the doubt and, frankly, the Met least of all. Really worth revisiting what Casey said about the Met's firearms unit in her recent report - it was not in the least bit flattering. Quite the opposite - a law unto themselves.
The CPS does not decide guilt. It decides whether there is sufficient evidence on which a jury properly advised on the law could reach a guilty verdict. The CPS's decision to charge can be challenged in court before trial. Police officers are - and should be - subject to the same laws as the rest of us. It is worrying that some of them seem to think otherwise.
The whole HS2 debacle is infuriating. What an utter bunch of idiots in charge. Absolutely no idea what Sunak or Hunt are thinking
The optics are shockingly poor. At least Sunak has his helicopter I guess
There's a lot of disruption in my area from HS2, and it would be ridiculous to stop building it now because it would mean all of that inconvenience has been for nothing.
Sunk cost fallacy. As someone pointed out a few weeks ago, could be an incredible London - Birmingham cycle track
Have it a dual motorway and separated cycle path and it'd absolutely be far better value for money than rail. 👍
Can't cycle on a motorway of course, but I see no reason you couldn't have separate cycle paths that go next to motorway routes.
We did have segregated cycle lanes on A roads built in the 70s, but these have largely been built on now.
Let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s (8x what it is today) and then we can talk about new roads 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
OK let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s before talking about new roads.
But of course we'll also need to restore the population back to what we had in the 50s. So who are the 17 million people you'd like to deport?
And of course we'll also need to restore the GDP per capita back closer to what we had in the 50s, since transportation infrastructure is critical in growing the economy. GDP per capita by PPP was about 30% of what it is today in the 50s.
Or we can live in the real world where growing population and growing the economy means we need infrastructure. In which case lets have roads and cycle paths built.
Aye, Dutch GDP per capita is a disaster.
(The 8x was adjusted for population. On deportation - don't give Mr Sunak ideas)
The Dutch have been building roads. 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
The Dutch have massively more roads than we have per capita and per square mile. 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
I support a Dutch policy of building roads and cycle paths. For some perverted reason you don't.
It's a lot easier to build roads and cycle paths when your entire country is flat as a pancake. What makes you think the Dutch could do to improve the road between Manchester and Sheffield?
Dutch towns are nevertheless almost always well designed, with a real effort made to create good places to live
Honestly, whilst I agree with you on the Dutch being better at the planning and building stuff, most Dutch towns are pretty soulless.
People bring soul, not towns or cities.
The Dutch, like the Japanese, do building and development and do it well. They both have a better standard of living as a result.
Keeping old Georgian buildings undisturbed may look like it has soul, but if behind the façade you have 16 people living in a building meant for 4, in squalor, with crappy living standards and no infrastructure then that's not soul - we've sold our soul if that's how we expect people to live.
Even then, his answer to a question about the North: "London".
If you want the economy in the North then the answer is to improve infrastructure in the North.
A major road building program building multiple motorways to connect each Northern town and city to each other (rather than redirecting everything into the bottleneck that is the M6 or M62) would unleash economic growth far more than aiding some commuters travelling into London.
Sadly there are a few barriers: The Treasury won't fund such schemes The private sector would rob us The public sector are grossly incompetent
We should do as so much of the developing world does, and ask China to build our new roads. Cheaper, quicker, less corrupt.
The Treasury isn't fit for purpose.
The only way to make it so might be to move Parliament and the Civil Service out of London.
Radical idea but many countries have capital cities that are not remotely linked to finance or anything else. Canberra rather than Sydney or Melbourne. Washington DC rather than NYC or San Francisco etc
Parliament is crumbling anyway. Build a new capital city in the North as an entirely new city - not Manchester, complete new build. Build a new Parliament, refurbish the old crumbling fire risk one and turn it into a museum. Move the Civil Service, in full, out of London - sell that land to the private sector or housing.
Could possibly make this quite cost-effective, by purchasing land that's not worth much in an uninhabited area of the North and selling all the land in London that will repay a considerable part of the costs.
I keep saying that we need to build new cities, so yes I agree. Despite the "we're full" lie there is an awful lot of empty space in the country. Build a new city in East Yorkshire, put the mechanism of government in there as the first phase, and watch as new roads and railways link it back into the rest of the country.
The eastern end of the M62. Big open spaces. East west motorway and railway already there. Humber Bridge gets connected north south - a new spine motorway to develop eastern England. A choice of big ports. An ocean of development money spent outside of London...
Not sure you need to go that far. Build a new city in NE Lincolnshire around the Grimsby area. It has good port links and you can build/improve road links to the Midlands and the North. Some big desalination plants to deal with water supply and there are already huge windfarms off the coast there.
Surely pipes to bring water from the Pennines would be cheaper then desalination plants?
Depends on whether they could supply sufficient water for another large city.
The whole HS2 debacle is infuriating. What an utter bunch of idiots in charge. Absolutely no idea what Sunak or Hunt are thinking
The optics are shockingly poor. At least Sunak has his helicopter I guess
There's a lot of disruption in my area from HS2, and it would be ridiculous to stop building it now because it would mean all of that inconvenience has been for nothing.
Sunk cost fallacy. As someone pointed out a few weeks ago, could be an incredible London - Birmingham cycle track
Have it a dual motorway and separated cycle path and it'd absolutely be far better value for money than rail. 👍
Can't cycle on a motorway of course, but I see no reason you couldn't have separate cycle paths that go next to motorway routes.
We did have segregated cycle lanes on A roads built in the 70s, but these have largely been built on now.
Let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s (8x what it is today) and then we can talk about new roads 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
OK let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s before talking about new roads.
But of course we'll also need to restore the population back to what we had in the 50s. So who are the 17 million people you'd like to deport?
And of course we'll also need to restore the GDP per capita back closer to what we had in the 50s, since transportation infrastructure is critical in growing the economy. GDP per capita by PPP was about 30% of what it is today in the 50s.
Or we can live in the real world where growing population and growing the economy means we need infrastructure. In which case lets have roads and cycle paths built.
Aye, Dutch GDP per capita is a disaster.
(The 8x was adjusted for population. On deportation - don't give Mr Sunak ideas)
The Dutch have been building roads. 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
The Dutch have massively more roads than we have per capita and per square mile. 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
I support a Dutch policy of building roads and cycle paths. For some perverted reason you don't.
Find the quote where I was against cycle paths on new roads (third time I've asked).
The whole HS2 debacle is infuriating. What an utter bunch of idiots in charge. Absolutely no idea what Sunak or Hunt are thinking
The optics are shockingly poor. At least Sunak has his helicopter I guess
There's a lot of disruption in my area from HS2, and it would be ridiculous to stop building it now because it would mean all of that inconvenience has been for nothing.
Sunk cost fallacy. As someone pointed out a few weeks ago, could be an incredible London - Birmingham cycle track
Have it a dual motorway and separated cycle path and it'd absolutely be far better value for money than rail. 👍
Can't cycle on a motorway of course, but I see no reason you couldn't have separate cycle paths that go next to motorway routes.
We did have segregated cycle lanes on A roads built in the 70s, but these have largely been built on now.
Let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s (8x what it is today) and then we can talk about new roads 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
No new roads = no new cycle paths to go with those roads.
Its not either/or, its not zero sum, we need both. We need investment in our infrastructure, we need roads and cycle paths. Its not feasible given our population growth to do one without the other, we need to stop dicking about and invest in our infrastructure and do both.
Why did you make up a thing about me not wanting cycle paths on new roads?
I didn't.
You have said time and again you are opposed to new roads. If there's no new roads built, there's no cycle paths built with new roads.
To get cycle paths built with new roads, you need to agree to the new roads, can't have one without the other.
So are you in favour of new roads and new cycle paths? If so, great, we can stop arguing, because that's what I've been advocating all along!
I'm in favour of cycle lanes on new roads.
Most British cities and towns already have the "new road". You can tell because they smashed them up in the 70s. We didn't bother to transform the centres at the same time like the Dutch did. Glasgow is a good example (Buchanan Street aside). Let's catch up!
Some towns don't have a bypass. Nairn is an example. The A96 should be bypassed and the centre should be pedestrianised, with the surrounding roads fitted with cycle lanes.
The 70s were before I was born and our population has grown by 13 million, roughly 25%, since the 70s.
If you're counting the 70s as "new" I think I can understand your fallacy.
I'm just pointing out that the Dutch started putting their cycle lanes in the 70s. We just didn't bother, even has we built more roads over the last 50 years.
It's you who seems to think no road building has happened since the 70s. Weird.
He's definitely worse than Truss - the leadership election showed that. It seems to have been rapidly forgotten how bad he was in that contest.
Plus Truss at least recognises the problem (lack of growth), even if she wasn't hugely competent at fixing it - although she faced resistance from people who should have been neutral.
Sunak is just flailing around mis-managing decline, and will take his party to a well deserved annihilation. There is no alternative to that now
I love the way the Truss-ites think she is the only one who has understood we have had low growth for a long time, and it would be preferable to have higher growth. Quite remarkable.
If Sunak realises that we need more growth then that's even worse, because it means (according at least to his actions) he thinks he can tax and regulate us into growth - that makes Truss look like an absolute genius in comparison.
For the avoidance of doubt, nothing I have written should be taken as meaning I think she was competent, or would have been successful as a leader. Just that she at least recognised the problem and wanted to try to fix it, which is more than the alternatives have done, are doing, or would do.
Everyone from Corbyn through Starmer, Miliband, Blair, Cameron, May, Sunak, Johnson understands that we have low growth and wants higher growth. They just have different views on how to deliver it.
Anyone with the slightest interest in politics or the economy knows we have low growth. Everyone bar the few % of green luddites and perhaps some of the bring back the 1950s brigade want higher growth.
Truss was just a good salesperson for a fantasy way of achieving it to the Tory selectorate. The story didn't work with the people she wanted to sell the debt too though.
There’s an even larger group who say they want growth. They just don’t want any new houses, reservoirs, factories.
Often, they want high immigration. Just no actual places for the immigrants to live or work.
Number 10 insiders fear beloved Downing Street mouser Larry the Cat may be seriously ill At 16 years old, Downing Street's resident mouser Larry is an elderly cat and may be reaching the end of his nine lives, with staff set to break the eventual news of his passing on social media https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/number-10-insiders-fear-beloved-31013660
State funeral lined up. Opportunity for Boris to get back in the news saying what an affectionate beast he was. Etc.
He's definitely worse than Truss - the leadership election showed that. It seems to have been rapidly forgotten how bad he was in that contest.
Plus Truss at least recognises the problem (lack of growth), even if she wasn't hugely competent at fixing it - although she faced resistance from people who should have been neutral.
Sunak is just flailing around mis-managing decline, and will take his party to a well deserved annihilation. There is no alternative to that now
I love the way the Truss-ites think she is the only one who has understood we have had low growth for a long time, and it would be preferable to have higher growth. Quite remarkable.
If Sunak realises that we need more growth then that's even worse, because it means (according at least to his actions) he thinks he can tax and regulate us into growth - that makes Truss look like an absolute genius in comparison.
For the avoidance of doubt, nothing I have written should be taken as meaning I think she was competent, or would have been successful as a leader. Just that she at least recognised the problem and wanted to try to fix it, which is more than the alternatives have done, are doing, or would do.
Everyone from Corbyn through Starmer, Miliband, Blair, Cameron, May, Sunak, Johnson understands that we have low growth and wants higher growth. They just have different views on how to deliver it.
Anyone with the slightest interest in politics or the economy knows we have low growth. Everyone bar the few % of green luddites and perhaps some of the bring back the 1950s brigade want higher growth.
Truss was just a good salesperson for a fantasy way of achieving it to the Tory selectorate. The story didn't work with the people she wanted to sell the debt too though.
There are several who preferred austerity to growth.
Austerity to put us in place to deliver future growth......(their belief and rationale whether correct or not)
The whole HS2 debacle is infuriating. What an utter bunch of idiots in charge. Absolutely no idea what Sunak or Hunt are thinking
The optics are shockingly poor. At least Sunak has his helicopter I guess
There's a lot of disruption in my area from HS2, and it would be ridiculous to stop building it now because it would mean all of that inconvenience has been for nothing.
Sunk cost fallacy. As someone pointed out a few weeks ago, could be an incredible London - Birmingham cycle track
Have it a dual motorway and separated cycle path and it'd absolutely be far better value for money than rail. 👍
Can't cycle on a motorway of course, but I see no reason you couldn't have separate cycle paths that go next to motorway routes.
We did have segregated cycle lanes on A roads built in the 70s, but these have largely been built on now.
Let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s (8x what it is today) and then we can talk about new roads 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
OK let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s before talking about new roads.
But of course we'll also need to restore the population back to what we had in the 50s. So who are the 17 million people you'd like to deport?
And of course we'll also need to restore the GDP per capita back closer to what we had in the 50s, since transportation infrastructure is critical in growing the economy. GDP per capita by PPP was about 30% of what it is today in the 50s.
Or we can live in the real world where growing population and growing the economy means we need infrastructure. In which case lets have roads and cycle paths built.
Aye, Dutch GDP per capita is a disaster.
(The 8x was adjusted for population. On deportation - don't give Mr Sunak ideas)
The Dutch have been building roads. 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
The Dutch have massively more roads than we have per capita and per square mile. 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
I support a Dutch policy of building roads and cycle paths. For some perverted reason you don't.
It's a lot easier to build roads and cycle paths when your entire country is flat as a pancake. What makes you think the Dutch could do to improve the road between Manchester and Sheffield?
Dutch towns are nevertheless almost always well designed, with a real effort made to create good places to live
Honestly, whilst I agree with you on the Dutch being better at the planning and building stuff, most Dutch towns are pretty soulless.
People bring soul, not towns or cities.
The Dutch, like the Japanese, do building and development and do it well. They both have a better standard of living as a result.
Keeping old Georgian buildings undisturbed may look like it has soul, but if behind the façade you have 16 people living in a building meant for 4, in squalor, with crappy living standards and no infrastructure then that's not soul - we've sold our soul if that's how we expect people to live.
That looks like yet another of your pronouncements based on absolutely no experience whatsoever.
The whole HS2 debacle is infuriating. What an utter bunch of idiots in charge. Absolutely no idea what Sunak or Hunt are thinking
The optics are shockingly poor. At least Sunak has his helicopter I guess
There's a lot of disruption in my area from HS2, and it would be ridiculous to stop building it now because it would mean all of that inconvenience has been for nothing.
Sunk cost fallacy. As someone pointed out a few weeks ago, could be an incredible London - Birmingham cycle track
Have it a dual motorway and separated cycle path and it'd absolutely be far better value for money than rail. 👍
Can't cycle on a motorway of course, but I see no reason you couldn't have separate cycle paths that go next to motorway routes.
We did have segregated cycle lanes on A roads built in the 70s, but these have largely been built on now.
Let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s (8x what it is today) and then we can talk about new roads 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
OK let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s before talking about new roads.
But of course we'll also need to restore the population back to what we had in the 50s. So who are the 17 million people you'd like to deport?
And of course we'll also need to restore the GDP per capita back closer to what we had in the 50s, since transportation infrastructure is critical in growing the economy. GDP per capita by PPP was about 30% of what it is today in the 50s.
Or we can live in the real world where growing population and growing the economy means we need infrastructure. In which case lets have roads and cycle paths built.
Aye, Dutch GDP per capita is a disaster.
(The 8x was adjusted for population. On deportation - don't give Mr Sunak ideas)
The Dutch have been building roads. 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
The Dutch have massively more roads than we have per capita and per square mile. 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
I support a Dutch policy of building roads and cycle paths. For some perverted reason you don't.
Find the quote where I was against cycle paths on new roads (third time I've asked).
The whole HS2 debacle is infuriating. What an utter bunch of idiots in charge. Absolutely no idea what Sunak or Hunt are thinking
The optics are shockingly poor. At least Sunak has his helicopter I guess
There's a lot of disruption in my area from HS2, and it would be ridiculous to stop building it now because it would mean all of that inconvenience has been for nothing.
Sunk cost fallacy. As someone pointed out a few weeks ago, could be an incredible London - Birmingham cycle track
Have it a dual motorway and separated cycle path and it'd absolutely be far better value for money than rail. 👍
Can't cycle on a motorway of course, but I see no reason you couldn't have separate cycle paths that go next to motorway routes.
We did have segregated cycle lanes on A roads built in the 70s, but these have largely been built on now.
Let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s (8x what it is today) and then we can talk about new roads 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
No new roads = no new cycle paths to go with those roads.
Its not either/or, its not zero sum, we need both. We need investment in our infrastructure, we need roads and cycle paths. Its not feasible given our population growth to do one without the other, we need to stop dicking about and invest in our infrastructure and do both.
Why did you make up a thing about me not wanting cycle paths on new roads?
I didn't.
You have said time and again you are opposed to new roads. If there's no new roads built, there's no cycle paths built with new roads.
To get cycle paths built with new roads, you need to agree to the new roads, can't have one without the other.
So are you in favour of new roads and new cycle paths? If so, great, we can stop arguing, because that's what I've been advocating all along!
I'm in favour of cycle lanes on new roads.
Most British cities and towns already have the "new road". You can tell because they smashed them up in the 70s. We didn't bother to transform the centres at the same time like the Dutch did. Glasgow is a good example (Buchanan Street aside). Let's catch up!
Some towns don't have a bypass. Nairn is an example. The A96 should be bypassed and the centre should be pedestrianised, with the surrounding roads fitted with cycle lanes.
The 70s were before I was born and our population has grown by 13 million, roughly 25%, since the 70s.
If you're counting the 70s as "new" I think I can understand your fallacy.
I'm just pointing out that the Dutch started putting their cycle lanes in the 70s. We just didn't bother, even has we built more roads over the last 50 years.
It's you who seems to think no road building has happened since the 70s. Weird.
We could almost double the size of our motorway network by teaching people not to drive in the third lane of four when the first two are empty...
He's definitely worse than Truss - the leadership election showed that. It seems to have been rapidly forgotten how bad he was in that contest.
Plus Truss at least recognises the problem (lack of growth), even if she wasn't hugely competent at fixing it - although she faced resistance from people who should have been neutral.
Sunak is just flailing around mis-managing decline, and will take his party to a well deserved annihilation. There is no alternative to that now
I love the way the Truss-ites think she is the only one who has understood we have had low growth for a long time, and it would be preferable to have higher growth. Quite remarkable.
If Sunak realises that we need more growth then that's even worse, because it means (according at least to his actions) he thinks he can tax and regulate us into growth - that makes Truss look like an absolute genius in comparison.
For the avoidance of doubt, nothing I have written should be taken as meaning I think she was competent, or would have been successful as a leader. Just that she at least recognised the problem and wanted to try to fix it, which is more than the alternatives have done, are doing, or would do.
Everyone from Corbyn through Starmer, Miliband, Blair, Cameron, May, Sunak, Johnson understands that we have low growth and wants higher growth. They just have different views on how to deliver it.
Anyone with the slightest interest in politics or the economy knows we have low growth. Everyone bar the few % of green luddites and perhaps some of the bring back the 1950s brigade want higher growth.
Truss was just a good salesperson for a fantasy way of achieving it to the Tory selectorate. The story didn't work with the people she wanted to sell the debt too though.
Question: are you sure growth is that popular a concept?
I know that most political leaders agree, but in the wider public? Are we sure about that? My hunch is that there's a lot of people who, if asked, would shrug.
Growth is like NHS spending - everyone is in favour of more. Until it hits something they care about.
The whole HS2 debacle is infuriating. What an utter bunch of idiots in charge. Absolutely no idea what Sunak or Hunt are thinking
The optics are shockingly poor. At least Sunak has his helicopter I guess
There's a lot of disruption in my area from HS2, and it would be ridiculous to stop building it now because it would mean all of that inconvenience has been for nothing.
Sunk cost fallacy. As someone pointed out a few weeks ago, could be an incredible London - Birmingham cycle track
Have it a dual motorway and separated cycle path and it'd absolutely be far better value for money than rail. 👍
Can't cycle on a motorway of course, but I see no reason you couldn't have separate cycle paths that go next to motorway routes.
We did have segregated cycle lanes on A roads built in the 70s, but these have largely been built on now.
Let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s (8x what it is today) and then we can talk about new roads 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
OK let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s before talking about new roads.
But of course we'll also need to restore the population back to what we had in the 50s. So who are the 17 million people you'd like to deport?
And of course we'll also need to restore the GDP per capita back closer to what we had in the 50s, since transportation infrastructure is critical in growing the economy. GDP per capita by PPP was about 30% of what it is today in the 50s.
Or we can live in the real world where growing population and growing the economy means we need infrastructure. In which case lets have roads and cycle paths built.
Aye, Dutch GDP per capita is a disaster.
(The 8x was adjusted for population. On deportation - don't give Mr Sunak ideas)
The Dutch have been building roads. 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
The Dutch have massively more roads than we have per capita and per square mile. 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
I support a Dutch policy of building roads and cycle paths. For some perverted reason you don't.
Find the quote where I was against cycle paths on new roads (third time I've asked).
The whole HS2 debacle is infuriating. What an utter bunch of idiots in charge. Absolutely no idea what Sunak or Hunt are thinking
The optics are shockingly poor. At least Sunak has his helicopter I guess
There's a lot of disruption in my area from HS2, and it would be ridiculous to stop building it now because it would mean all of that inconvenience has been for nothing.
Sunk cost fallacy. As someone pointed out a few weeks ago, could be an incredible London - Birmingham cycle track
Have it a dual motorway and separated cycle path and it'd absolutely be far better value for money than rail. 👍
Can't cycle on a motorway of course, but I see no reason you couldn't have separate cycle paths that go next to motorway routes.
We did have segregated cycle lanes on A roads built in the 70s, but these have largely been built on now.
Let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s (8x what it is today) and then we can talk about new roads 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
No new roads = no new cycle paths to go with those roads.
Its not either/or, its not zero sum, we need both. We need investment in our infrastructure, we need roads and cycle paths. Its not feasible given our population growth to do one without the other, we need to stop dicking about and invest in our infrastructure and do both.
Why did you make up a thing about me not wanting cycle paths on new roads?
I didn't.
You have said time and again you are opposed to new roads. If there's no new roads built, there's no cycle paths built with new roads.
To get cycle paths built with new roads, you need to agree to the new roads, can't have one without the other.
So are you in favour of new roads and new cycle paths? If so, great, we can stop arguing, because that's what I've been advocating all along!
I'm in favour of cycle lanes on new roads.
Most British cities and towns already have the "new road". You can tell because they smashed them up in the 70s. We didn't bother to transform the centres at the same time like the Dutch did. Glasgow is a good example (Buchanan Street aside). Let's catch up!
Some towns don't have a bypass. Nairn is an example. The A96 should be bypassed and the centre should be pedestrianised, with the surrounding roads fitted with cycle lanes.
The 70s were before I was born and our population has grown by 13 million, roughly 25%, since the 70s.
If you're counting the 70s as "new" I think I can understand your fallacy.
I'm just pointing out that the Dutch started putting their cycle lanes in the 70s. We just didn't bother, even has we built more roads over the last 50 years.
It's you who seems to think no road building has happened since the 70s. Weird.
Absolutely insignificant road building has happened since the 70s, compared to our population growth.
Richard_Tyndall put a list of "major" new roads over the past decade on here the other day and it was pathetic tinkering at the edges. Incomparable to the fact our population has grown almost 10% since 2010, or 25% since the 1970s. Actually its over 20% nearly that 25% since 1997.
Our population has grown considerably, our infrastructure has not kept pace.
We haven't got enough roads, or cycle paths, houses or most other infrastructure compared to our population growth that's occurred.
There's no way to reverse that without committing to spending. There is no free lunch here.
The whole HS2 debacle is infuriating. What an utter bunch of idiots in charge. Absolutely no idea what Sunak or Hunt are thinking
The optics are shockingly poor. At least Sunak has his helicopter I guess
There's a lot of disruption in my area from HS2, and it would be ridiculous to stop building it now because it would mean all of that inconvenience has been for nothing.
Sunk cost fallacy. As someone pointed out a few weeks ago, could be an incredible London - Birmingham cycle track
Have it a dual motorway and separated cycle path and it'd absolutely be far better value for money than rail. 👍
Can't cycle on a motorway of course, but I see no reason you couldn't have separate cycle paths that go next to motorway routes.
We did have segregated cycle lanes on A roads built in the 70s, but these have largely been built on now.
Let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s (8x what it is today) and then we can talk about new roads 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
OK let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s before talking about new roads.
But of course we'll also need to restore the population back to what we had in the 50s. So who are the 17 million people you'd like to deport?
And of course we'll also need to restore the GDP per capita back closer to what we had in the 50s, since transportation infrastructure is critical in growing the economy. GDP per capita by PPP was about 30% of what it is today in the 50s.
Or we can live in the real world where growing population and growing the economy means we need infrastructure. In which case lets have roads and cycle paths built.
Aye, Dutch GDP per capita is a disaster.
(The 8x was adjusted for population. On deportation - don't give Mr Sunak ideas)
The Dutch have been building roads. 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
The Dutch have massively more roads than we have per capita and per square mile. 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
I support a Dutch policy of building roads and cycle paths. For some perverted reason you don't.
Find the quote where I was against cycle paths on new roads (third time I've asked).
The whole HS2 debacle is infuriating. What an utter bunch of idiots in charge. Absolutely no idea what Sunak or Hunt are thinking
The optics are shockingly poor. At least Sunak has his helicopter I guess
There's a lot of disruption in my area from HS2, and it would be ridiculous to stop building it now because it would mean all of that inconvenience has been for nothing.
Sunk cost fallacy. As someone pointed out a few weeks ago, could be an incredible London - Birmingham cycle track
Have it a dual motorway and separated cycle path and it'd absolutely be far better value for money than rail. 👍
Can't cycle on a motorway of course, but I see no reason you couldn't have separate cycle paths that go next to motorway routes.
We did have segregated cycle lanes on A roads built in the 70s, but these have largely been built on now.
Let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s (8x what it is today) and then we can talk about new roads 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
No new roads = no new cycle paths to go with those roads.
Its not either/or, its not zero sum, we need both. We need investment in our infrastructure, we need roads and cycle paths. Its not feasible given our population growth to do one without the other, we need to stop dicking about and invest in our infrastructure and do both.
Why did you make up a thing about me not wanting cycle paths on new roads?
I didn't.
You have said time and again you are opposed to new roads. If there's no new roads built, there's no cycle paths built with new roads.
To get cycle paths built with new roads, you need to agree to the new roads, can't have one without the other.
So are you in favour of new roads and new cycle paths? If so, great, we can stop arguing, because that's what I've been advocating all along!
I'm in favour of cycle lanes on new roads.
Most British cities and towns already have the "new road". You can tell because they smashed them up in the 70s. We didn't bother to transform the centres at the same time like the Dutch did. Glasgow is a good example (Buchanan Street aside). Let's catch up!
Some towns don't have a bypass. Nairn is an example. The A96 should be bypassed and the centre should be pedestrianised, with the surrounding roads fitted with cycle lanes.
The 70s were before I was born and our population has grown by 13 million, roughly 25%, since the 70s.
If you're counting the 70s as "new" I think I can understand your fallacy.
I'm just pointing out that the Dutch started putting their cycle lanes in the 70s. We just didn't bother, even has we built more roads over the last 50 years.
It's you who seems to think no road building has happened since the 70s. Weird.
Absolutely insignificant road building has happened since the 70s, compared to our population growth.
Richard_Tyndall put a list of "major" new roads over the past decade on here the other day and it was pathetic tinkering at the edges. Incomparable to the fact our population has grown almost 10% since 2010, or 25% since the 1970s. Actually its over 20% nearly that 25% since 1997.
Our population has grown considerably, our infrastructure has not kept pace.
We haven't got enough roads, or cycle paths, houses or most other infrastructure compared to our population growth that's occurred.
There's no way to reverse that without committing to spending. There is no free lunch here.
The whole HS2 debacle is infuriating. What an utter bunch of idiots in charge. Absolutely no idea what Sunak or Hunt are thinking
The optics are shockingly poor. At least Sunak has his helicopter I guess
There's a lot of disruption in my area from HS2, and it would be ridiculous to stop building it now because it would mean all of that inconvenience has been for nothing.
Sunk cost fallacy. As someone pointed out a few weeks ago, could be an incredible London - Birmingham cycle track
Have it a dual motorway and separated cycle path and it'd absolutely be far better value for money than rail. 👍
Can't cycle on a motorway of course, but I see no reason you couldn't have separate cycle paths that go next to motorway routes.
We did have segregated cycle lanes on A roads built in the 70s, but these have largely been built on now.
Let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s (8x what it is today) and then we can talk about new roads 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
OK let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s before talking about new roads.
But of course we'll also need to restore the population back to what we had in the 50s. So who are the 17 million people you'd like to deport?
And of course we'll also need to restore the GDP per capita back closer to what we had in the 50s, since transportation infrastructure is critical in growing the economy. GDP per capita by PPP was about 30% of what it is today in the 50s.
Or we can live in the real world where growing population and growing the economy means we need infrastructure. In which case lets have roads and cycle paths built.
Aye, Dutch GDP per capita is a disaster.
(The 8x was adjusted for population. On deportation - don't give Mr Sunak ideas)
The Dutch have been building roads. 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
The Dutch have massively more roads than we have per capita and per square mile. 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
I support a Dutch policy of building roads and cycle paths. For some perverted reason you don't.
Find the quote where I was against cycle paths on new roads (third time I've asked).
The whole HS2 debacle is infuriating. What an utter bunch of idiots in charge. Absolutely no idea what Sunak or Hunt are thinking
The optics are shockingly poor. At least Sunak has his helicopter I guess
There's a lot of disruption in my area from HS2, and it would be ridiculous to stop building it now because it would mean all of that inconvenience has been for nothing.
Sunk cost fallacy. As someone pointed out a few weeks ago, could be an incredible London - Birmingham cycle track
Have it a dual motorway and separated cycle path and it'd absolutely be far better value for money than rail. 👍
Can't cycle on a motorway of course, but I see no reason you couldn't have separate cycle paths that go next to motorway routes.
We did have segregated cycle lanes on A roads built in the 70s, but these have largely been built on now.
Let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s (8x what it is today) and then we can talk about new roads 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
No new roads = no new cycle paths to go with those roads.
Its not either/or, its not zero sum, we need both. We need investment in our infrastructure, we need roads and cycle paths. Its not feasible given our population growth to do one without the other, we need to stop dicking about and invest in our infrastructure and do both.
Why did you make up a thing about me not wanting cycle paths on new roads?
I didn't.
You have said time and again you are opposed to new roads. If there's no new roads built, there's no cycle paths built with new roads.
To get cycle paths built with new roads, you need to agree to the new roads, can't have one without the other.
So are you in favour of new roads and new cycle paths? If so, great, we can stop arguing, because that's what I've been advocating all along!
I'm in favour of cycle lanes on new roads.
Most British cities and towns already have the "new road". You can tell because they smashed them up in the 70s. We didn't bother to transform the centres at the same time like the Dutch did. Glasgow is a good example (Buchanan Street aside). Let's catch up!
Some towns don't have a bypass. Nairn is an example. The A96 should be bypassed and the centre should be pedestrianised, with the surrounding roads fitted with cycle lanes.
The 70s were before I was born and our population has grown by 13 million, roughly 25%, since the 70s.
If you're counting the 70s as "new" I think I can understand your fallacy.
I'm just pointing out that the Dutch started putting their cycle lanes in the 70s. We just didn't bother, even has we built more roads over the last 50 years.
It's you who seems to think no road building has happened since the 70s. Weird.
Absolutely insignificant road building has happened since the 70s, compared to our population growth.
Richard_Tyndall put a list of "major" new roads over the past decade on here the other day and it was pathetic tinkering at the edges. Incomparable to the fact our population has grown almost 10% since 2010, or 25% since the 1970s. Actually its over 20% nearly that 25% since 1997.
Our population has grown considerably, our infrastructure has not kept pace.
We haven't got enough roads, or cycle paths, houses or most other infrastructure compared to our population growth that's occurred.
There's no way to reverse that without committing to spending. There is no free lunch here.
What do you want - a road each?
No, I want investment to keep up with population growth. Its not rocket science, if our population grows, our infrastructure and housing stock etc needs to grow accordingly.
The whole HS2 debacle is infuriating. What an utter bunch of idiots in charge. Absolutely no idea what Sunak or Hunt are thinking
The optics are shockingly poor. At least Sunak has his helicopter I guess
There's a lot of disruption in my area from HS2, and it would be ridiculous to stop building it now because it would mean all of that inconvenience has been for nothing.
Sunk cost fallacy. As someone pointed out a few weeks ago, could be an incredible London - Birmingham cycle track
Have it a dual motorway and separated cycle path and it'd absolutely be far better value for money than rail. 👍
Can't cycle on a motorway of course, but I see no reason you couldn't have separate cycle paths that go next to motorway routes.
We did have segregated cycle lanes on A roads built in the 70s, but these have largely been built on now.
Let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s (8x what it is today) and then we can talk about new roads 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
OK let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s before talking about new roads.
But of course we'll also need to restore the population back to what we had in the 50s. So who are the 17 million people you'd like to deport?
And of course we'll also need to restore the GDP per capita back closer to what we had in the 50s, since transportation infrastructure is critical in growing the economy. GDP per capita by PPP was about 30% of what it is today in the 50s.
Or we can live in the real world where growing population and growing the economy means we need infrastructure. In which case lets have roads and cycle paths built.
Aye, Dutch GDP per capita is a disaster.
(The 8x was adjusted for population. On deportation - don't give Mr Sunak ideas)
The Dutch have been building roads. 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
The Dutch have massively more roads than we have per capita and per square mile. 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
I support a Dutch policy of building roads and cycle paths. For some perverted reason you don't.
It's a lot easier to build roads and cycle paths when your entire country is flat as a pancake. What makes you think the Dutch could do to improve the road between Manchester and Sheffield?
Dutch towns are nevertheless almost always well designed, with a real effort made to create good places to live
Honestly, whilst I agree with you on the Dutch being better at the planning and building stuff, most Dutch towns are pretty soulless.
I wouldnt really agree with that. From small thru medium to large, try Middleburg, Devanter and Utrecht.
He's definitely worse than Truss - the leadership election showed that. It seems to have been rapidly forgotten how bad he was in that contest.
Plus Truss at least recognises the problem (lack of growth), even if she wasn't hugely competent at fixing it - although she faced resistance from people who should have been neutral.
Sunak is just flailing around mis-managing decline, and will take his party to a well deserved annihilation. There is no alternative to that now
I love the way the Truss-ites think she is the only one who has understood we have had low growth for a long time, and it would be preferable to have higher growth. Quite remarkable.
If Sunak realises that we need more growth then that's even worse, because it means (according at least to his actions) he thinks he can tax and regulate us into growth - that makes Truss look like an absolute genius in comparison.
For the avoidance of doubt, nothing I have written should be taken as meaning I think she was competent, or would have been successful as a leader. Just that she at least recognised the problem and wanted to try to fix it, which is more than the alternatives have done, are doing, or would do.
Everyone from Corbyn through Starmer, Miliband, Blair, Cameron, May, Sunak, Johnson understands that we have low growth and wants higher growth. They just have different views on how to deliver it.
Anyone with the slightest interest in politics or the economy knows we have low growth. Everyone bar the few % of green luddites and perhaps some of the bring back the 1950s brigade want higher growth.
Truss was just a good salesperson for a fantasy way of achieving it to the Tory selectorate. The story didn't work with the people she wanted to sell the debt too though.
There’s an even larger group who say they want growth. They just don’t want any new houses, reservoirs, factories.
Often, they want high immigration. Just no actual places for the immigrants to live or work.
who?
Haven’t you heard the people, here on PB, arguing for these things?
Liberal Green NIMBYism is a big force. It comes from subscribing to several worthy causes - liberal immigration policies, save the green belt etc. - without dealing with the inherent contradictions where they meet.
The whole HS2 debacle is infuriating. What an utter bunch of idiots in charge. Absolutely no idea what Sunak or Hunt are thinking
The optics are shockingly poor. At least Sunak has his helicopter I guess
There's a lot of disruption in my area from HS2, and it would be ridiculous to stop building it now because it would mean all of that inconvenience has been for nothing.
Sunk cost fallacy. As someone pointed out a few weeks ago, could be an incredible London - Birmingham cycle track
Have it a dual motorway and separated cycle path and it'd absolutely be far better value for money than rail. 👍
Can't cycle on a motorway of course, but I see no reason you couldn't have separate cycle paths that go next to motorway routes.
We did have segregated cycle lanes on A roads built in the 70s, but these have largely been built on now.
Let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s (8x what it is today) and then we can talk about new roads 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
OK let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s before talking about new roads.
But of course we'll also need to restore the population back to what we had in the 50s. So who are the 17 million people you'd like to deport?
And of course we'll also need to restore the GDP per capita back closer to what we had in the 50s, since transportation infrastructure is critical in growing the economy. GDP per capita by PPP was about 30% of what it is today in the 50s.
Or we can live in the real world where growing population and growing the economy means we need infrastructure. In which case lets have roads and cycle paths built.
Aye, Dutch GDP per capita is a disaster.
(The 8x was adjusted for population. On deportation - don't give Mr Sunak ideas)
The Dutch have been building roads. 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
The Dutch have massively more roads than we have per capita and per square mile. 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
I support a Dutch policy of building roads and cycle paths. For some perverted reason you don't.
It's a lot easier to build roads and cycle paths when your entire country is flat as a pancake. What makes you think the Dutch could do to improve the road between Manchester and Sheffield?
Dutch towns are nevertheless almost always well designed, with a real effort made to create good places to live
Honestly, whilst I agree with you on the Dutch being better at the planning and building stuff, most Dutch towns are pretty soulless.
People bring soul, not towns or cities.
The Dutch, like the Japanese, do building and development and do it well. They both have a better standard of living as a result.
Keeping old Georgian buildings undisturbed may look like it has soul, but if behind the façade you have 16 people living in a building meant for 4, in squalor, with crappy living standards and no infrastructure then that's not soul - we've sold our soul if that's how we expect people to live.
That looks like yet another of your pronouncements based on absolutely no experience whatsoever.
Wrong.
I have lived in a subdivided house that was built for fewer people but was subdivided into multiple really shitty homes that were not really fit for purpose, but it was all that was available.
The whole HS2 debacle is infuriating. What an utter bunch of idiots in charge. Absolutely no idea what Sunak or Hunt are thinking
The optics are shockingly poor. At least Sunak has his helicopter I guess
There's a lot of disruption in my area from HS2, and it would be ridiculous to stop building it now because it would mean all of that inconvenience has been for nothing.
Sunk cost fallacy. As someone pointed out a few weeks ago, could be an incredible London - Birmingham cycle track
Have it a dual motorway and separated cycle path and it'd absolutely be far better value for money than rail. 👍
Can't cycle on a motorway of course, but I see no reason you couldn't have separate cycle paths that go next to motorway routes.
We did have segregated cycle lanes on A roads built in the 70s, but these have largely been built on now.
Let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s (8x what it is today) and then we can talk about new roads 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
OK let's restore the cycle mileage we had in the 50s before talking about new roads.
But of course we'll also need to restore the population back to what we had in the 50s. So who are the 17 million people you'd like to deport?
And of course we'll also need to restore the GDP per capita back closer to what we had in the 50s, since transportation infrastructure is critical in growing the economy. GDP per capita by PPP was about 30% of what it is today in the 50s.
Or we can live in the real world where growing population and growing the economy means we need infrastructure. In which case lets have roads and cycle paths built.
If you deport all those who voted Labour, Lib Dem, SNP, Plaid, Sinn Fein, Alliance or SDLP in 2019, than will account for most of the 17 million.
Comments
(May and Cameron are also Conservative archetypes, but they were a more forced to engage with external reality.)
And each of them has been, or is being, blown up by getting what they wanted, including the consequences they didn't.
It's as if Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was re-written with politicians instead of children.
The question is why, even if they are white elephants, we no longer seem to be able to build them having committed to do so.
No it’s a fundamental question of how you view the world.
I believe that people own their assets. When they increase value to themselves (through income, capital gains or purchase of goods that add value) then they should pay tax on that increase (let’s call it “sharing the proceeds of growth”)
The state doesn’t just have the right to confiscate assets because it wants them.
If you need more then you should replace the principal residence relief with a rollover relief.
Sunak absolutely is worse than Johnson and Truss.
They had flaws, but they at least were trying to support aspiration and make things better. Sunak isn't even trying.
Naturally it has never actually been used fully and is now empty:
https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/education/national-college-for-advanced-transport-and-infrastructure-high-speed-rail-college-which-opened-in-doncaster-in-2017-to-close-due-to-low-student-numbers-4162140
Ho hum.
But of course we'll also need to restore the population back to what we had in the 50s. So who are the 17 million people you'd like to deport?
And of course we'll also need to restore the GDP per capita back closer to what we had in the 50s, since transportation infrastructure is critical in growing the economy. GDP per capita by PPP was about 30% of what it is today in the 50s.
Or we can live in the real world where growing population and growing the economy means we need infrastructure. In which case lets have roads and cycle paths built.
Increases in property value should be taxed as a capital gain (with a rollover relief for the principal residence) - because that is what they are.
People only "own their assets" because the state has set up a legal and social framework that makes that possible. The state should generally not be able to just confiscate assets arbitrarily, but we do get to collectively as a society make decisions about how we want to fund what the state does, giving consideration to the net effects of how we choose to do that and whether the financial burdens are reasonably spread. I think both inheritance taxes and a modestly set wealth tax are well within the envelope of reasonably arguable for options.
Purple is the new black. Because parliament can define it as such
(The 8x was adjusted for population. On deportation - don't give Mr Sunak ideas)
All parties are coalitions. The Tory problem is that they are a coalition of "closet racists and loonies" (Cameron) and "the dispossed and the never-possessed" (Major). What they want isn't something that works in the real world.
An 80 seat majority means the governments could do what they like. I do mean governments plural - one party, one election, but such massive uturns on basic direction of travel. The Hodges piece reveals that the lunatic policies Sunak announced he was saving us from with his green crap uturn were policies proposed by Sunak in March 2023.
Boris blew in the wind looking for applause. Truss went down the nuclear option and had to do a 180 when the markets said no. Sunak is doing unprompted 180s against himself now. Not because he believes either in the policies proposed by him in March or in denying them now in September. Simply because the closet racists, loonies, dispossessed and never-possessed which are the remaining Tory voters demand it.
As you say, like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The Tory party is Augustus Gloop. Fattened by slurping on Other People's Chocolate they now block the pipe bringing the whole operation (the UK) to a grinding halt, all the while blaming everyone else for their largesse.
A major road building program building multiple motorways to connect each Northern town and city to each other (rather than redirecting everything into the bottleneck that is the M6 or M62) would unleash economic growth far more than aiding some commuters travelling into London.
Johnson was too lazy actually to get anything meaningfully done. That probably puts him on a par with Sunak but for different reasons. But on top of that he was corrosive to trust and due process in politics.
Truss was just bonkers. From the pork markets speech to her recent attempts to claim she was the victim of an establishment coup, she just doesn’t live in the same world as the rest of us. She lives in this weird slightly psychedelic Truss-land.
Sunak is just weak, ideologically incapable of thinking and acting long term, and politically out of his depth.
All three have been pretty solid on standing up to Russia, but Truss felt a little dangerous in that role. Johnson really meant it, I’ll give him that.
(For what it’s worth I don’t favour eliminating inheritance tax - it exists and that’s life. Or not as the case may be. And I suspect it would be replaced by something even more philosophically unsound.)
The Dutch have massively more roads than we have per capita and per square mile. 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
I support a Dutch policy of building roads and cycle paths. For some perverted reason you don't.
I imagine a big wall chart cross referencing estimated penis size..
Truss did have an agenda and a philosophy sat behind what she was doing, but I don’t think she had the political maturity of thought to realise that nine tenths of governing is being pragmatic and choosing your battles.
Sunak - I agree, complete void.
The Treasury won't fund such schemes
The private sector would rob us
The public sector are grossly incompetent
We should do as so much of the developing world does, and ask China to build our new roads. Cheaper, quicker, less corrupt.
I think generally you’re non zero sum, so let’s apply this to rail and road infrastructure too.
The only way to make it so might be to move Parliament and the Civil Service out of London.
Radical idea but many countries have capital cities that are not remotely linked to finance or anything else. Canberra rather than Sydney or Melbourne. Washington DC rather than NYC or San Francisco etc
Parliament is crumbling anyway. Build a new capital city in the North as an entirely new city - not Manchester, complete new build. Build a new Parliament, refurbish the old crumbling fire risk one and turn it into a museum. Move the Civil Service, in full, out of London - sell that land to the private sector or housing.
Could possibly make this quite cost-effective, by purchasing land that's not worth much in an uninhabited area of the North and selling all the land in London that will repay a considerable part of the costs.
If you vote for the current Tory party, you can't be a patriot.
I think Sunak underestimates how angry people are about this. If we can not match the rest of Europe for decent infrastructure at comparable cost, then UK PLC is over. The control of major infrastructure projects should be brought in-house to the government and not done project by project with the expertise being lost once each project team is dispersed. Neither should there be a revolving door between the contractors and the delivery Quangos.
This is only a mere hundred miles London to Birmingham and it is coming in at c25x the cost of TGV Nord which is more than twice the length and in not that dissimilar population density.
PR and Bullshit do not beat engineers, and if Sunak is too incompetent to get this done, then the Tories must be put out of our misery.
What a way to build a railway.
Crossing the Pennines is a challenge, sure, but there should be some good routes to do so. But taking the Pennines out of the equation, the towns and cities in the North West should be connected to each other, and same with Yorkshire and the North East too.
If Truss had proposed her financial plans 12 months earlier, then the financial markets would have been fine with it. Remember that was the time when interest rates were close to zero and QE was still the thinking du jour. After all, her plans cost less than the furlough scheme.
What caught out Truss was that, with the rapid rise in US interest rates which fed across the world and, more importantly, the adoption of the line by the Fed that it was government deficits that was fuelling the rise in inflation (which was only partially true and concentrated in the housing / stock market areas NOT prices of everyday goods) switched the markets' mantra overnight from being au fait with deficits to seeing them as the harbinger of doom.
What she did get wrong was not recognising sentiment had changed.
Its not either/or, its not zero sum, we need both. We need investment in our infrastructure, we need roads and cycle paths. Its not feasible given our population growth to do one without the other, we need to stop dicking about and invest in our infrastructure and do both.
You have said time and again you are opposed to new roads. If there's no new roads built, there's no cycle paths built with new roads.
To get cycle paths built with new roads, you need to agree to the new roads, can't have one without the other.
So are you in favour of new roads and new cycle paths? If so, great, we can stop arguing, because that's what I've been advocating all along!
He's a follower, not a leader.
And I'm not convinced that the advice he's following is particularly sound.
The eastern end of the M62. Big open spaces. East west motorway and railway already there. Humber Bridge gets connected north south - a new spine motorway to develop eastern England. A choice of big ports. An ocean of development money spent outside of London...
Especially because if one is omitted it might be because the compiler thinks one is a Tory!
It wouldn't have been good policy - but it wouldn't have been disastrous at the time.
Parliament is falling down anyway.
Makes absolute sense to do this.
There are a lot of could-haves and should-haves with Liz Truss. In many ways yes she was right to identify measures to boost growth and yes she was right to question accepted orthodoxies. She just thought she could clap her hands and deliver instant results. And those telling her she couldn’t were just bad faith actors belonging to The Blob. Fundamentally, she wasn’t up to the job of PM and that is why her premiership was so disastrous.
Which explains why they would abolish inheritance tax? Almost certainly the second. The reality is that IHT is not popular. However the inevitable highlighting of Sunak's own wealth could make it backfire.
You can do much, much better with insults than this.
Pull yourself to together and return to the form your are capable of.
Otherwise, no more turnip juice.
A line so powerful that it is worth repeating. All of our competitor nations have all these things already - more motorways, high speed rail, a hub airport. We do not.
The solution - as you rightly point out - is a StateCo. Far enough from the reach of ministers and mandarins to operate without meddling, but not private sector giving fortunes to spivs.
In the past we used to have road construction units - a team of engineers who would build project after project after project. We had railway electrification units who did the same. And we could have it again if we recognised that (a) we need these things and (b) not spending the money is not zero-cost.
I had dinner with a couple who live in a hamlet in Derbyshire called Old Blackwell this week to show them the deeds from our old hall, and they are just outside the compensation corridor for the Sheffield Spur of the HS2 route. They say that Mr Starmer's commitment to HS2 means that they will not be voting Labour, whilst for me the HS2 / Northern Powerhouse Rail policy is one of the key things that may *cause* me to vote Labour for only perhaps the 2nd time in my life.
An example of the issue with delays caused by the Conservative Govt spending all the money down South and then saying "Ooops there's nothing left. You lot up there go f*ck yourselves." is that 1250 properties have been bought by HS2, and many have been sitting empty for years. That at a time of declared housing crisis when the Government have also decided to pause requirements to build any new ones.
In this hamlet of perhaps 15-20 dwellings, several were purchased and have now been empty for some years.
Have a pipeline of projects to be done, and once they're in the pipeline then do not change the specifications.
The problem is picking one project, just one, then chopping and changing that one projects specifications all the time and never building it.
At 16 years old, Downing Street's resident mouser Larry is an elderly cat and may be reaching the end of his nine lives, with staff set to break the eventual news of his passing on social media
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/number-10-insiders-fear-beloved-31013660
They are quite literally in the middle of a political psychosis, one they’ve caught by following the Republican Party, and as far as I can see there is no prospectus at the moment for bringing them back to the real world.
Most British cities and towns already have the "new road". You can tell because they smashed them up in the 70s. We didn't bother to transform the centres at the same time like the Dutch did. Glasgow is a good example (Buchanan Street aside). Let's catch up!
Some towns don't have a bypass. Nairn is an example. The A96 should be bypassed and the centre should be pedestrianised, with the surrounding roads fitted with cycle lanes.
Therefore Sunak is worse than a lettuce.
Everything was brought up, his wealth, swimming pool, arrogance etc etc
I think the "taking XYZ out of the tax system" is years past its sell-by date, and we need a broadening of the tax base, and a depending at the higher end - especially targeting gaps and loopholes such as the "tax free gift out of normal income" loophole, which gives tax free income / wealth transfer from wealthier people to their children. Also Trusts.
I'd radically broaden Inheritance Tax to a majority of estates, starting at very modest rates, and make it payable by the receiving party not the Estate. There's perhaps a case to make it payable at the marginal rate of income tax for that party, to encourage wider distribution.
For the avoidance of doubt, nothing I have written should be taken as meaning I think she was competent, or would have been successful as a leader. Just that she at least recognised the problem and wanted to try to fix it, which is more than the alternatives have done, are doing, or would do.
Etc.
https://nypost.com/2023/05/11/who-rivals-hardest-working-royal-king-charles-by-the-numbers/
Anyone with the slightest interest in politics or the economy knows we have low growth.
Everyone bar the few % of green luddites and perhaps some of the bring back the 1950s brigade want higher growth.
Truss was just a good salesperson for a fantasy way of achieving it to the Tory selectorate. The story didn't work with the people she wanted to sell the debt too though.
If you're counting the 70s as "new" I think I can understand your fallacy.
The CPS does not decide guilt. It decides whether there is sufficient evidence on which a jury properly advised on the law could reach a guilty verdict. The CPS's decision to charge can be challenged in court before trial. Police officers are - and should be - subject to the same laws as the rest of us. It is worrying that some of them seem to think otherwise.
The Dutch, like the Japanese, do building and development and do it well. They both have a better standard of living as a result.
Keeping old Georgian buildings undisturbed may look like it has soul, but if behind the façade you have 16 people living in a building meant for 4, in squalor, with crappy living standards and no infrastructure then that's not soul - we've sold our soul if that's how we expect people to live.
It's you who seems to think no road building has happened since the 70s. Weird.
Often, they want high immigration. Just no actual places for the immigrants to live or work.
Richard_Tyndall put a list of "major" new roads over the past decade on here the other day and it was pathetic tinkering at the edges. Incomparable to the fact our population has grown almost 10% since 2010, or 25% since the 1970s. Actually its over 20% nearly that 25% since 1997.
Our population has grown considerably, our infrastructure has not kept pace.
We haven't got enough roads, or cycle paths, houses or most other infrastructure compared to our population growth that's occurred.
There's no way to reverse that without committing to spending. There is no free lunch here.
Liberal Green NIMBYism is a big force. It comes from subscribing to several worthy causes - liberal immigration policies, save the green belt etc. - without dealing with the inherent contradictions where they meet.
I have lived in a subdivided house that was built for fewer people but was subdivided into multiple really shitty homes that were not really fit for purpose, but it was all that was available.
As have many others in this country.
Have you?