Harris is rebuilding the Dem coalition. @daniella_raz and I wrote about her dramatic polling turnaround: https://t.co/ITtBTFtmCbHarris outperforms Biden in net favourability among those who are under 30 (+24), black (+24), liberal (+21), hispanic (+19) pic.twitter.com/oWzJmqdtMv
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Interestingly my own council tax would be identical, almost to the pound.
All tbose in the blue wall who voted Libdem and Labour will be foaming with outrage though.
Original source appears to be Birmingham Mail article dated 1st August.
https://x.com/DrHoenderkamp/status/1819119306271039679.
As Clinton surprised on the downside maybe she'll surprise on the upside.
It's probably a market I'll come back to after the summer.
“Global stock markets have plunged amid fears that the US Federal Reserve has left it too late to begin cutting interest rates and risks damaging the world’s largest economy.
“Shares tumbled in Asia, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 index closing down 2,216.63 points - its second-largest points drop in history - after weaker than expected US factory data showed output dropped to an eight-month low in July amid a slump in new orders.
“Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell indicated on Wednesday that a first interest rate cut could come in September as policymakers held interest rates at 23-year highs of 5.25pc to 5.5pc.
“However, markets in Hong Kong, South Korea, China and Australia all dropped sharply as traders priced in that the Fed will be forced to cut interest rates at all three of its remaining meetings this year.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/08/02/ftse-100-markets-latest-news-stock-sell-off-interest-rates/
The biggest flaw though seems to be that it would be national, so councils would get what they are given from a government pot with few fund raising powers of their own.
This very considerable Harris surge has wiped out that advantage so it is currently too close to call. The question is, what happens next? Can Harris keep this momentum up? She has not been a great campaigner in the past but her messaging has been well honed so far. A good VP choice compared to Vance (anything smarter than my daughter's cat) and a strong Convention speech are the next steps.
https://x.com/nationaldebt/status/1819117710493589649
Anything based on a national scale of property prices is going to be completely unworkable, and make it pretty much impossible for millions of key workers to live anywhere near London and the home counties.
If share prices depend on artificially low interest rates then they are not sustainable.
The BoE I suspect will regret this cut before too long (which only went through on a 5-4 vote).
It prints many things.
Approximately 1% come true, but I've always thought that was by happy accident.
CHIP GIANT INTEL HAS JUST SUSPENDED ITS DIVIDEND AND PLANS TO LAYOFF ANOTHER 19,000 EMPLOYEES IN ORDER TO SAVE MONEY
https://x.com/gurgavin/status/1819106499899412646.
(ps - not fake news, other sources reporting the same).
That would be simple, quick, fairly cheap to administer and although there would inevitably be grumbling it's difficult to imagine many people would get seriously worked up over it.
Trying to do it on market value when there are so many variables and indeed variations is a bad idea.
Haley was quite right when she identified that as the key problem with this race and the major turnoff for voters. If only the Republicans had had the sense to listen to her.
Delhi Capitals owners agree £120m deal to buy majority share in Hampshire
Exclusive: Hampshire will become first county owned by an overseas franchise should the purchase be ratified by the ECB
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cricket/2024/08/01/delhi-capitals-owners-agree-deal-buy-shares-hampshire-ipl/
One thing less widely remarked on is that she's abandoned the traditional Democratic cringe; the stay out of the fray, "when they go low, we go high" nonsense.
The big non-secret of Trump's political success is his use of humour. Harris is beating him at his own game. And Vance is another target of that, who hasn't a clue how to respond.
If, as widely predicted, the Fed cuts rates soon, Japan's decision is irrelevant to us.
Once she has gone with the obvious veep pick and named Shapiro she will have another political flamethrower on the ticket. Plus the lineup of surrogates like Kelly, Big Gretch and others probably play into a more vigorous campaign better than a Biden effort.
For sure the GOP are likely to refine their attacks, but the effect has been to make the contest a more even fight and Trump always has a tendency to think he’s entitled. Hence his pisspoor performance at the NABJ, so I’d expect more whining of the “if I lose they will have cheated” variety.
As has been posted many times on here, Nikki Haley’s prediction of the winner being the one who realised this and jettisoned their presumptive candidate is looking prescient.
When you look at her choices for VP, Shapiro, Kelly, Walz, Buttigieg etc the Democrats have a lot more talent and capability available to them than a GOP where anyone not willing to bow down to Trump has been run out of town. In hindsight someone really should have had a word with Biden a year earlier. I am still not sure she would have come through an open primary and if she had it would have hardened her.
As I've pointed out before the only figure that is easily accessible is price sold - so we should be using that.
Site in Pembrokeshire suggests area was more militarised than previously thought, says expert who made discovery
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/aug/02/humongous-fort-found-in-wales-may-disprove-theory-of-celtic-roman-peace
This was always how a land/wealth/housing tax would be introduced - via council tax. Wonder how you'd redistribute all the Kensington revenues?
I am an inflation hawk and was severely critical of the slowness with which the BoE increased rates when facing an inflationary bubble but I think that they have got this one about right. Real interest rates are generally a good thing for a society encouraging savings and hence investment rather than consumption but its a good thing you can have too much of and 5.25% when inflation is back to 2% risks causing an unnecessary slow down.
It cuts the ground out beneath the accusations of covering up for a President no longer capable of discharging his office.
Again, Trump's responses to it are so ridiculous, it's clear he was neither expecting it, nor has the grace to acknowledge the good news.
As is done in many countries including America.
But 0.5% is a big tax increase. I believe 0.3% would suffice to replace Council Tax.
It should replace Stamp Duty too. Abolish SDLT and Council Tax and put both taxes into an annual tax.
It should also ideally be on land value and not property value - those who are sitting on land that could be built on but has not been should pay the same tax as those whose land has been built on. It would also mean taxes for eg apartments are miniscule, which is not a self-interested objective I hate apartments and live in a house, but those in apartments are taking a miniscule proportion of land so fair's fair.
One elements that is perhaps interesting is whether they will pick up other elements of the proposals, one of which is abolition of Stamp Duty. That would help sell it in the South.
It's a modest shift from tax on income to tax on capital, and should in some measure address untaxed, unearned gains in property value, so should help iron out a number of inefficient parts of the property market - for example making it a little more persuasive for people to leave a larger property they no longer need.
There may also be a modest check on over-inflation of property values caused by current tax system structure.
Interesting replies, capturing it well:
- So a house that was £500,000 20 years ago and is now £1.5m will cost £625 a month!!
- Sounds fair to me, own a expensive home then pay an equal amount to someone who hasn't been able access a time machine and got back to when a home in London was affordable and not 10 times average wages.
- So Mabel and Fred who live in their marital home that they bought for £4000 and it’s now worth £1m but they can barely afford to heat it it just cough up. You are kind..
- Mabel and Fred got lucky and have a £1 million asset. Mabel and Fred are in fact doing fine
But your last point shows the flaw in this. The distortions in values means that southern England would be paying multiples of more tax than the north or Scotland. Where is the equity in that?
Local fundraising should fund local choices, of which there seem to be very few nowadays anyway, so what difference does it make?
Across Arizona, Republican officials who defended election system lose primaries
GOP voters back candidates who questioned past voting results, instead of incumbents who resisted party pressure, initial results show.
https://www.votebeat.org/arizona/2024/07/31/republicans-defending-elections-lose-arizona-primary/
And purchase price can't be the right price to use because are you proposing that someone who moved into a property 40 years ago pays lower taxes than the person who moved in to the same style of house next door yesterday?
(Or perhaps "down" if you're a Tory)
And when Harris wins in November, it won't help Haley for 2028. She might have been right in suggesting Trump would be beaten. But nobody likes a smart arse. And MAGA hates one.
I'm not joking.
Still cool as fuck, tho'.
After all, Council tax bands are based on property values circa 1991.
He could call it "Turkey Shoot".
It was also why Tory levelling up was nonsense as they just randomly threw money all over the place at far too many seemingly nothing projects.
But the signals from government aren't we think a few of these projects are a bit daft e.g. Stone Henge tunnel, we have identified different priorities, it seems just ban everything.
And PCs are going ARM too. I have a new Surface Pro with the Qualcomm Snapdragon and it's amazing. Great battery life and decent performance, even when emulating.
When native ARM64 binaries become commonplace, Intel is going to be in big trouble.
Is is (rhyming slang) Councils are "ducked" or Councils are "punts"?
Your suggestion was a key worker renting (not owning) a million pound property would be forced into a HMO instead. There is no possible way for a key worker to rent a million pound property and not be in a HMO already today! Because of the property prices being so high.
If a tax like this means that people are no longer incentivised to object to construction in order to inflate their property prices - because if they do, they're inflating their own taxes so that's counterproductive - then that will make it easier not harder to get places for those key workers to live.
As for ARM, I was never a Apple / Mac fanboi, but I have an M2 laptop now and the battery level is game changing. A whole day out and about and never worry once about needing to charge and its super lightweight to carry around, so much so I sometimes worry I have lost it as can't feel it in my bag.
....
I fucking hate mobile telephones.
In London the average house now costs in excess of £630k. You probably wouldn't need more than 0.1% with such values.
Finally got it. As well as no + they also needed no spaces, despite indicating that was needed, and no brackets, despite asking for them. Awesome descriptive work. All I had to do was ignore everything they asked for.
Jesus. *sighs*
I actually can't remember what the current deal is with Hundred franchises. Currently the ECB subsidise the whole thing to quite a significant extent e.g. in terms of paying wages. I know the ECB proposal is that the counties get 50% stake in whatever they (hope to) sell to outside investors.
I think Harris is a middle ranking candidate. Could easily see her as President etc.
Just that she doesn't have the Reagan/Bill Clinton/Obama "head and shoulders above the rest" thing.
Central government collects the money, then central government distributes the money based on what it has obliged councils to do such as care/SEN etc
"I predicted when Harris became the nominee they would go to racism and misogyny, but I didn't think they would fully embrace and revel in it this much this quickly. The lesson is to never underestimate their capacity to reach maximum terrible at warp speed."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEJW4XgCjWQ
Fred and Mabel in their smallish house or flat in London, who have had their Council tax suppressed for 20 or 40 years, suddenly see it going up. The other side of that is that they can be seen as having had an unwarranted tax break of £250-£1500 per annum for those years.
That at least is like question we discussed the other day - if X extends their property, why should the revenue related to that be denied to the local Council until the house is sold. That's just illogical.
I think a key to implementation would be a benefit on the other side and a modest transition period. I would also hope for house prices somewhat "lower than they would have been under the old ie current system"; if Council Tax is more each year, then that needs to be allowed for in the purchase price. If it's a lower notional value gain since living there, then imo that's no cause for complaint.
I think addressing Council funding reductions of ~20% in real terms since 2010 is a crucial element, since they are so starved that they have neither the capacity or quality of staff competently to do what we need.
But I would invert capital allocations by the same amount. Newcastle gets 6x as much.
Intel needs to swerve their client and enterprise product lines onto the E-cores, and at the same time introduce AVX10 (the sensible AVX-512 rebasing), APX (more registers and three operand instructions), and x86S (cleaning up of legacy x86 system architecture). Pulling off all that will be akin to switching the ISA.
It's a tall order, and when your fabs are also in a mess, potentially terminal.
Of course if you will insist on Apple, you're locked out of that ecosystem. 😎
https://microdream.co.uk/
I've run an Oracle database in VirtualBox, multiple other applications and was developing on IntelliJ on a MacAir *Intel*, a while back.
I've done development (GPU) where I deliberately used 95% of the resources of a machine, in the past. But these days, you mostly hire an Amazon instance for that.
Plus whilst I also upload to the cloud I also like to have a physical copy.
This is quite a good article about how she has developed: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-fight-of-trumps-political-life-strengths-of-kamala-harris-have-become-clearer-cd8622cc?mod=opinion_lead_pos9
She just might turn into another Truman.