As CGT is up with immediate effect, the amount I would now save by leaving the UK for 5 years stands at £59638 per annum over 5 years. Which is equivalent to a salary of 85k a year. Previous two jobs were 70k and 90k respectively, so split the difference and I can approximately afford to leave the UK, do nothing for five years, and end up in the same place as if I stayed here and worked.
The main reason for staying is that I'm still young-ish in my 40s and quite like work.
The main reason for leaving is the country is on its uppers and things are hardly likely to get better from here. Better to cash out now and enjoy one's retirement from warmer climes.
I'm less concerned about paying an extra 4% a year, more worried that the country is going to continue to get worse and my quality of life here will continue to decline.
As I said in the previous thread, if I do remain in the UK i will significantly alter my behaviour, making fewer capital disposals so as to incur less tax. If I leave I retire.
Decisions, decisions.
My feeling is that the UK is in terminal decline and this budget is another notch on the death spiral. The Tories screwed the pooch, but squeezing the life out of the private sector to give to the inefficient public sector is a one way ticket back to the 70s. So why not buy a one way ticket out...
Most of the 0% places are gonna seriously screw you over (far more than here) if you have certain recreational hobbies. Or accidentally annoy the local tyrants (far more than here). Just be aware of that.
If I were moving out of the country I'd be going somewhere in Africa, indeed it's my medium term plan atm to be 50% in Zambia. This makes no sense on a tax level but as a final frontier, it's very exciting.
Lovely country. A bit dry at the moment, but rain seems to be on its way.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
There's plenty to cut, its just the shibboleths of the other side that haven't been touched yet.
Reeves has binned the plan to reduce the civil service back to pre-COVID levels.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
Strangely only a month ago Starmer was saying we can't just keep throwing money at the NHS, we need to reform it first because doing so. Then they front loaded all of this massive increase in spending to first couple of years of the government.
On the other hand, Starmer is staking a lot on massive technological changes in the NHS.
Streeting seems to be planning these j be in tandem with organisational changes.
Which is why I think I would have spread the money. Yes NHS waiting lists need addressing, but I fear when you frontload too much money you run the risk of just buy shit, otherwise we lose the money next year, attitude. Particularly if as Reeves claims this is a budget for setting the foundations for 10+ years, no need to get it all spent in 2 years.
Trump today: “The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times and all these papers. They're not endorsing anybody. You know what they're really saying? Because they only endorse Democrats. They're saying this Democrat’s no good. They're no good. And they think I'm doing a great job."
Of course this was inevitable. But it rather brings out the lies in Bezos' bullshit about it being about trust and impartiality rather than fretting about Trump's possible revenge.
The timing of the decision and his business contacts proved the lie in his defence, despite his protests.
People are stupid but we're not that stupid to believe him.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
Its simply not true. Public spending went past £1trn for the first time in 2020/1. In 2024/5, before today, it was forecast to be £1.2trn. That is a 20% increase in 4 years. It was at record levels as a share of our GDP since WW2 and is now going higher. Whilst it is true that many front line services have been starved the cost of our administration has continued to rise. We simply cannot go on this way without massive increases in our productivity. I have seen nothing in today's budget that is likely to boost that.
How much would a pint cost in a pub if the alcohol duty was reduced to zero?
You can't charge people to drink at home what it costs to run a pub
Unless you're a fucking fool
Lots of people still go to the pub, even though it's a lot more expensive than drinking at home, so it isn't necessary to reverse that position. Just closing the gap would have an impact, and I believe that impact would be a beneficial one.
Number of regular pubgoers is down to about 38% if you count once a fortnight looking at once a week its 9%
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
Its simply not true. Public spending went past £1trn for the first time in 2020/1. In 2024/5, before today, it was forecast to be £1.2trn. That is a 20% increase in 4 years. It was at record levels as a share of our GDP since WW2 and is now going higher. Whilst it is true that many front line services have been starved the cost of our administration has continued to rise. We simply cannot go on this way without massive increases in our productivity. I have seen nothing in today's budget that is likely to boost that.
This is the gapping hole in the government platform. New Labour came in and had very clear ideas of the reforms they wanted to tackle such problems. We had build, build, build (but not so much on things like roads) and Wes Streeting some vision of more use of private hospitals.
If I had kids, I would rather take the 20k * 13 years per child (260,000 per child) and invest that in three ways - 1, money so they receive a cash sum at 18 they can use to get on the property ladder, 2 - private tutors pre-GCSE and a level and 3 - buying a house in a better state school catchment area.
The latter option, for people that can afford, it is probably the best way of getting a better education. Get a home in the catchment area of a state school that compares well against even private schools, and instead of "losing" loads of money you have an asset that will likely appreciate because of its location. This seems to be an increasingly common choice is some parts of London. It makes a mockery of the desire to punish private schools and grammar schools, the wealthy are playing the system and gaining a real advantage in the state system and there is very little that can be done to stop them.
As CGT is up with immediate effect, the amount I would now save by leaving the UK for 5 years stands at £59638 per annum over 5 years. Which is equivalent to a salary of 85k a year. Previous two jobs were 70k and 90k respectively, so split the difference and I can approximately afford to leave the UK, do nothing for five years, and end up in the same place as if I stayed here and worked.
The main reason for staying is that I'm still young-ish in my 40s and quite like work.
The main reason for leaving is the country is on its uppers and things are hardly likely to get better from here. Better to cash out now and enjoy one's retirement from warmer climes.
I'm less concerned about paying an extra 4% a year, more worried that the country is going to continue to get worse and my quality of life here will continue to decline.
As I said in the previous thread, if I do remain in the UK i will significantly alter my behaviour, making fewer capital disposals so as to incur less tax. If I leave I retire.
Decisions, decisions.
My feeling is that the UK is in terminal decline and this budget is another notch on the death spiral. The Tories screwed the pooch, but squeezing the life out of the private sector to give to the inefficient public sector is a one way ticket back to the 70s. So why not buy a one way ticket out...
Most of the 0% places are gonna seriously screw you over (far more than here) if you have certain recreational hobbies. Or accidentally annoy the local tyrants (far more than here). Just be aware of that.
If I were moving out of the country I'd be going somewhere in Africa, indeed it's my medium term plan atm to be 50% in Zambia. This makes no sense on a tax level but as a final frontier, it's very exciting.
I do indeed have *all* the recreational hobbies you imagine wouldn't go down well in Dubai.
The difference is, of course, I don't need to spend five years there. Or anywhere, for that matter.
If I decide to leave the UK the worst I'm out is a single year in the Crown Dependencies (I know Jersey and Guernsey well through work, so know what I'm in for - IoM less so) then I can rebase myself somewhere civilized like Portugal on the D7 visa for the remaining four years. The key is to be in a 0% CGT regime for the year of the disposal then anywhere else for a chuckle for the next 4 years. Not living in a gilded cage with no drugs or bum sex for the next 5 years...
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
Its simply not true. Public spending went past £1trn for the first time in 2020/1. In 2024/5, before today, it was forecast to be £1.2trn. That is a 20% increase in 4 years. It was at record levels as a share of our GDP since WW2 and is now going higher. Whilst it is true that many front line services have been starved the cost of our administration has continued to rise. We simply cannot go on this way without massive increases in our productivity. I have seen nothing in today's budget that is likely to boost that.
How would you improve productivity within the Scottish legal system?
This is the gapping hole in the government platform. New Labour came in and had very clear ideas of the reforms they wanted to tackle such problems. We had build, build, build (but not so much on things like roads) and Wes Streeting some vision of more use of private hospitals.
For people who have been banging on about growth for years and years, they sure as hell don't have anything persuasive to say on the topic.
I'm all ears, it is a big problem, I'd love to hear their solutions, see them work, and be proved wrong. So far it just seems like a load of guff, as though growth will simply magically appear and fix all our problems.
Zelensky has given the White House both barrels today. Which is rather interesting.
Well, if his claim is true, then it is deserved.
(It seems that the story that Ukraine wanted long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles was a secret part of Big Z's peace plan, told to the USA in confidence, and it soon leaked to the media. Note: Ukraine did not tell the USA about the Kursk offensive, and it worked. Someone in the US is leaking badly.)
Biden has been a disaster for Ukraine from the beginning.
Your love for Trump is so strong you've forgotten to blame Germany?
Zelensky has given the White House both barrels today. Which is rather interesting.
Well, if his claim is true, then it is deserved.
(It seems that the story that Ukraine wanted long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles was a secret part of Big Z's peace plan, told to the USA in confidence, and it soon leaked to the media. Note: Ukraine did not tell the USA about the Kursk offensive, and it worked. Someone in the US is leaking badly.)
Biden has been a disaster for Ukraine from the beginning.
No, he has not been a 'disaster'. He could have done better; but much of what he can do is stifled by.... the GOP.
Your mate Trump will be a disaster for Ukraine. You shill for Trump whilst having a reference to the Ukraine flag as your avatar. You should replace it with the Russian flag, as they're who you want to win in Ukraine.
Milley told lawmakers during closed-door briefings on Feb. 2 and 3 that a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine could result in the fall of Kyiv within 72-hours, and could come at a cost of 15,000 Ukrainian troop deaths and 4,000 Russian troop deaths.
Several lawmakers expressed concern that the Biden administration did not respond quickly to provide Ukraine with significant military aid, such as anti-aircraft and rocket launcher systems that would defend against an invasion from Russia.
Biden administration officials at the meetings responded to these concerns by saying that a significant supply of military aid to Ukraine could be used as a reason to invade Ukraine.
And what did Trump do to stop Russia between 2016 and 2020, when they were occupying Crimea and vast areas of the Donbass? Answer: weaken Ukraine by obsessing over a fucking laptop.
Replace your avatar with the Russian flag, you sick shill.
If I may, I think the position is more nuanced than you’d care to admit. Ukraine and Russia are locked in a war of attrition, their side looks like it might have more staying power than ours. And its partners are now providing not just shells but infantry.
Even with a 5-1 attrition ratio, it is not guaranteed that Russia collapses prior to Ukraine. Especially given the Washington consensus (and Berlin) seems to be to place extreme restrictions on Ukraine’s use of arms, for fear of escalation.
We must be realistic about what is politically and operational possible at this point. The democrats could win all three elections and it’s not clear that things next year would be very different to today. What is their plan to end the war? It’s clear they’ve thrown Zelenskys plan back in his face.
That's all very debateable, and is what some people have been saying from the start, from "Kyiv should just give in to Russia", back in February 2022 to "Congress will never allow Ukraine to get more weapons!" earlier in the year. Just to be proved wrong every time.
And if Russia is warning us against 'escalation', then they shouldn't fucking well constantly escalate themselves, whether it's long range weapons from Iran or troops and weapons from North Korea.
But this is irrelevant to Trump, whose only plan for 'peace' is an abject Ukrainian surrender.
If it had been left to Biden, Putin would have taken Kyiv within days. His approach was entirely reactive, and showed much less resolve than Boris Johnson.
We're talking about Trump. What do *you* think Trump will do to help Ukraine?
Hypothetically, if there is an armistice that freezes the current front line, that's not "abject surrender" and it would help Ukraine very much to have time to regroup without dealing with the burden of fighting a war and facing constant missile attacks.
Yes; that's an abject surrender as Russia will just regroup and try again. What's more Ukraine gets f'all out of it, and Russia gets loads. And dangling NATO membership in front of Ukraine does not deter Putin, as he knows your best bud Trump isn't NATO's biggest fan. Ukraine cannot rely on NATO with Trump in charge of the USA.
So I ask again: what do you think Trump will do to help Ukraine?
You're being irrational and driven by emotion. If you think that peace is nothing then you need a reality check.
The point is that what you said above is not a 'peace'; it is a defeat for Ukraine. You want Ukraine defeated - which is why your avatar is so egregious.
So I ask again: what do you think Trump will do to help Ukraine?
It's immoral to expect other people to die to satisfy your need for moral purity.
So you cannot answer the question.
My position is f-all to do with 'moral purity'; just as yours is nothing to do with helping Ukraine.
My position is this: a Russian victory in Ukraine is bad for the world, for a whole host of reasons that have been discussed before. That means for as long as Ukraine wants to fight, we need to support them in that fight, to the best of our abilities.
There we have it. You don't care about the lives of Ukrainians, only 'the world', which is just an abstraction.
What the actual fuck? How does your support for Trump help the lives of Ukrainians; many of whom will suddenly find themselves Russian. Have you seen what Russia's done to the population of the territories they have invaded? It ain't good.
But again, you fail to answer the question. So I ask again: what do you think Trump will do to help Ukraine?
The fact that you can't see how peace benefits Ukraine says it all. You are completely detached from the reality of the war. If you were somebody who would otherwise have been killed by a missile but instead got to live thanks to a peace deal, I think you'd see the benefit.
But on that basis why not force agreement on a peace deal in the first week of the war? Lots of people have been killed since then on both sides after all.
Given that Biden has consistently slow-walked military aid, that's a good question. Did he ever have any serious intention of helping Ukraine defend the borders it had at the beginning of his presidency?
Biden has not slow walked military aid, the GOP in Congress at the urging of Trump has.
You have zero integrity.
Sorry but that view is utterly counter to reality. Listen to the words of Zelensky, only today.
I actually think without Boris Johnson, there’s a high chance Kyev would indeed have fallen in those early weeks, so calamitous has Biden’s policy stance been. But it’s not trendy to given Boris Johnson credit for anything.
Wait a minute - according to Glennite logic all Johnson deserves credit for is loads of pointless deaths.
And who's to say that history might not look at that way, and regard Johnson's most disastrous contribution as his Ukrainian intervention leading to the accelerated destruction of Western prestige, unity, and wealth?
This is the gapping hole in the government platform. New Labour came in and had very clear ideas of the reforms they wanted to tackle such problems. We had build, build, build (but not so much on things like roads) and Wes Streeting some vision of more use of private hospitals.
For people who have been banging on about growth for years and years, they sure as hell don't have anything persuasive to say on the topic.
I'm all ears, it is a big problem, I'd love to hear their solutions, see them work, and be proved wrong. So far it just seems like a load of guff, as though growth will simply magically appear and fix all our problems.
Not having anybody who has ever run a business in the cabinet I think is a big weakness.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
There's plenty to cut, its just the shibboleths of the other side that haven't been touched yet.
Reeves has binned the plan to reduce the civil service back to pre-COVID levels.
Hardly surprising - where exactly where the people who could be cut?
This is a pretty big story from the world of finance.
Car dealerships in chaos as shock ruling leaves market at risk of collapse
Lenders pause vehicle loans as forecourts face dramatic rethink of sales practices
Britain’s biggest banks and lenders are scrambling to avoid a collapse in the car sales market after a shock court judgement prompted chaos at forecourts across the country.
A ruling from the Court of Appeal on commissions paid to car salesmen has forced several lenders to pause loans, and dealerships to urgently revise their sales practices to avoid a paralysis in the market.
Lloyds Bank, one of the UK’s largest motor financiers through its Black Horse arm, became the latest lender to revamp its practices by abolishing bonuses paid to car dealers.
The bank has introduced a “no commission” contract, meaning no fees will be paid to dealerships.
William Chalmers, Lloyds’s chief of finance, held an urgent call with investors last night to explain the situation, saying it wanted to stand by its customers and the UK economy to carry on lending.
Car finance is the biggest source of funding used by drivers to buy new vehicles, with nine in every 10 cars bought by motorists relying on a loan, according to Autotrader.
There are fears a loan famine would effectively freeze up the market – damaging the already under-fire sector.
The Lloyds position seems eminently sensible. Continue to lend but don't pay commission.
The dealerships can adjust their sales pricing strategy with an explicit fee paid up front by the buyer. Or spread over time separate to the lease if they so wish.
Frankly I'm amazed so many people buy new cars on lease. You pay for the most expensive part of the depreciation of a car, plus a very significant interest rate.
Not just a shock today with new cars. Pick-Up trucks are being reclassified as cars for tax purposes. Which will have a pretty brutal impact on rural communities who use them to haul farm and construction stuff and their kids to and from school.
IMO that's actually good to see, and was one thing I listed this morning on my expectations and hopes.
What it means is that huge pickup trucks will no longer have tax preference over smaller pickup trucks (I think the load capacity of 1 tonne is the dividing line), and only applies to crew cab pickups. In my view this just puts these in their proper place in the tax system, and is a moderately significant positive for road safety.
It should also have an impact on the intended plans of some Usonian car companies to start mass imports of "Light Trucks" using the Individual Vehicle Approval process as a loophole.
It was a Court Decision the HMRC won in early 2024 I think, and the Conservatives overruled as one of their Save Out Backside election gimmicks.
The benefit is that there will not be a large, artificial tax break encouraging the bigger, less safe for anyone who's not actually inside it, trucks on our roads - over the smaller ones. The smaller ones are also problematic, but it's a step forward.
This is the gapping hole in the government platform. New Labour came in and had very clear ideas of the reforms they wanted to tackle such problems. We had build, build, build (but not so much on things like roads) and Wes Streeting some vision of more use of private hospitals.
For people who have been banging on about growth for years and years, they sure as hell don't have anything persuasive to say on the topic.
I'm all ears, it is a big problem, I'd love to hear their solutions, see them work, and be proved wrong. So far it just seems like a load of guff, as though growth will simply magically appear and fix all our problems.
Not having anybody who has ever run a business in the cabinet I think is a big weakness.
I don't actually blame labour for that tbh....I don't think any of our politicians have a clue how to get growth
As CGT is up with immediate effect, the amount I would now save by leaving the UK for 5 years stands at £59638 per annum over 5 years. Which is equivalent to a salary of 85k a year. Previous two jobs were 70k and 90k respectively, so split the difference and I can approximately afford to leave the UK, do nothing for five years, and end up in the same place as if I stayed here and worked.
The main reason for staying is that I'm still young-ish in my 40s and quite like work.
The main reason for leaving is the country is on its uppers and things are hardly likely to get better from here. Better to cash out now and enjoy one's retirement from warmer climes.
I'm less concerned about paying an extra 4% a year, more worried that the country is going to continue to get worse and my quality of life here will continue to decline.
As I said in the previous thread, if I do remain in the UK i will significantly alter my behaviour, making fewer capital disposals so as to incur less tax. If I leave I retire.
Decisions, decisions.
My feeling is that the UK is in terminal decline and this budget is another notch on the death spiral. The Tories screwed the pooch, but squeezing the life out of the private sector to give to the inefficient public sector is a one way ticket back to the 70s. So why not buy a one way ticket out...
I've suggested a few times on here that we should have a UK FATCA. Would you renounce your British citizenship to avoid paying UK taxes? Genuinely interested.
Yes.
I qualify for residency/path to citizenship in Australia and Israel via family ties if push comes to shove. Both of which are approximately as bad on CGT but feel less in terminal decline than the UK.
I'm less greedy than you think, my earning power has diminished substantially in the last couple of years. 90k was a given pre-pandemic, now I'd be lucky to scrape half that. So I am a working person in the sense that I want to work, but my actual ability to maintain my lifestyle is mostly dependent on investments I made years ago.
I'm a classic example of homo economicus, I'll make decisions based on whatever maximises my income.
Just like any business looking at employer's NI rise and going, I could create a new job in London, or I could create it in New York. The cost of creating the new job in the UK just rose significantly. In a knowledge economy, making brains more expensive to hire is ultimately self-defeating.
Savanta snap poll 41 27 good vs bad for the budget Big support for Minimum wage, NHS funding Neutral on NI Firmly against bus fare cap increase
Initial verdict a relief for no 10 but no narrative changer yet
This is what they will have been banking on.
The NHS is a more tangible public priority than growth, but they can't l leave it too long.
Getting waiting lists down to what they were in 2010 was a key promise and cannot be done overnight. If they fail to do that by the next election then they will lose tons of seats. Its a deal-breaker for their voters.
Pagan2 and others will tell you that the NHS is a sponge and the extra money being spent on it will not alter the numbers treated or reduce waiting lists. But the experience from 1997 to 2010 says otherwise:
Sadly your graph doesn't show what you think it does. It just shows Labour are better at fiddling the figures. Try finding a similar graph to show waiting lists vs spending.
If it was as easy as fiddling the figures, the Tories would've done the same. No, there has been a very real change in NHS performance since the Tories entered Downing Street. Most of us have had our own direct experience of the deterioration in the health service. I am very much looking forward to an improvement in the NHS now the Conservatives have gone, particularly as I am currently nursing a gluteal tendinopathy.
Hahaha. You will be sorely disappointed in that case. Unless of course you expect Labour to do what is necessary and completely restructure the whole edifice from the ground up.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
There's plenty to cut, its just the shibboleths of the other side that haven't been touched yet.
Reeves has binned the plan to reduce the civil service back to pre-COVID levels.
Hardly surprising - where exactly where the people who could be cut?
Same place as before COVID. The increase since 2016 is enormous, its now higher than 2009.
The Department for media and sport now has double the number it did in 2010 !!!!
So the tax take is set to rise to 38.2% GDP. Still lower than most of our Western European neighbours.
Personally, I think once a society can feed, clothe, house, and keep itself warm, everything else should be spent on health, education and defence. Letting the populace spend their money on whatsoever they choose is a recipe for disaster. Much of it will be frittered away on tat from China that goes into landfill within 5 years.
That might be a minority view.
Er, yeah. It is.
The money people earn is theirs, not yours. Or the government's.
That’s to assume we owe society nothing for providing an environment in which we can earn. Which is nonsense.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
There's plenty to cut, its just the shibboleths of the other side that haven't been touched yet.
Reeves has binned the plan to reduce the civil service back to pre-COVID levels.
Hardly surprising - where exactly where the people who could be cut?
I'd probably start with abolishing all the HR departments. But the real target should be the managerial levels which need to be radically cut freeing cash to the front line.
So the tax take is set to rise to 38.2% GDP. Still lower than most of our Western European neighbours.
Personally, I think once a society can feed, clothe, house, and keep itself warm, everything else should be spent on health, education and defence. Letting the populace spend their money on whatsoever they choose is a recipe for disaster. Much of it will be frittered away on tat from China that goes into landfill within 5 years.
That might be a minority view.
Er, yeah. It is.
The money people earn is theirs, not yours. Or the government's.
That’s to assume we owe society nothing for providing an environment in which we can earn. Which is nonsense.
For which the payment is the tax we pay....not all our earnings but they will let us keep enough for a house, food and clothes and the rest is theirs
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
There's plenty to cut, its just the shibboleths of the other side that haven't been touched yet.
Reeves has binned the plan to reduce the civil service back to pre-COVID levels.
Hardly surprising - where exactly where the people who could be cut?
Same place as before COVID. The increase since 2016 is enormous, its now higher than 2009.
2016, you say? What changed about the governance of the UK in 2016?
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
There's plenty to cut, its just the shibboleths of the other side that haven't been touched yet.
Reeves has binned the plan to reduce the civil service back to pre-COVID levels.
Hardly surprising - where exactly where the people who could be cut?
Same place as before COVID. The increase since 2016 is enormous, its now higher than 2009.
2016, you say? What changed about the governance of the UK in 2016?
I'm completely stumped.
Even since 2020, its up 20% and still rising. I fail to believe there is no savings at all anywhere.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
There's plenty to cut, its just the shibboleths of the other side that haven't been touched yet.
Reeves has binned the plan to reduce the civil service back to pre-COVID levels.
Hardly surprising - where exactly where the people who could be cut?
I'd probably start with abolishing all the HR departments. But the real target should be the managerial levels which need to be radically cut freeing cash to the front line.
I would say pretty much the opposite for the NHS. We have denuded administration to the point that the major reason for gaps in my clinics is because patients cannot get through on the phone or online to change or cancel appointments, nor do we have the staff to find other suitable patients to fill the slots.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
There's plenty to cut, its just the shibboleths of the other side that haven't been touched yet.
Reeves has binned the plan to reduce the civil service back to pre-COVID levels.
Hardly surprising - where exactly where the people who could be cut?
Same place as before COVID. The increase since 2016 is enormous, its now higher than 2009.
The Department for media and sport now has double the number it did in 2010 !!!!
What I don’t understand is why the Tories weren’t able to get a grip on this.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
There's plenty to cut, its just the shibboleths of the other side that haven't been touched yet.
Reeves has binned the plan to reduce the civil service back to pre-COVID levels.
Hardly surprising - where exactly where the people who could be cut?
Same place as before COVID. The increase since 2016 is enormous, its now higher than 2009.
The Department for media and sport now has double the number it did in 2010 !!!!
What I don’t understand is why the Tories weren’t able to get a grip on this.
Because they were utterly shit. Bar a few exceptions all the talent had gone.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
There's plenty to cut, its just the shibboleths of the other side that haven't been touched yet.
Reeves has binned the plan to reduce the civil service back to pre-COVID levels.
Hardly surprising - where exactly where the people who could be cut?
Same place as before COVID. The increase since 2016 is enormous, its now higher than 2009.
The Department for media and sport now has double the number it did in 2010 !!!!
Brexit was one of the main drivers of growth. The Tories recruited 100,000 extra civil servants to secure us a trade deal only slightly worse than the one we previously had.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
There's plenty to cut, its just the shibboleths of the other side that haven't been touched yet.
Reeves has binned the plan to reduce the civil service back to pre-COVID levels.
Hardly surprising - where exactly where the people who could be cut?
Same place as before COVID. The increase since 2016 is enormous, its now higher than 2009.
The Department for media and sport now has double the number it did in 2010 !!!!
What I don’t understand is why the Tories weren’t able to get a grip on this.
Because they were utterly shit. Bar a few exceptions all the talent had gone.
So the tax take is set to rise to 38.2% GDP. Still lower than most of our Western European neighbours.
Personally, I think once a society can feed, clothe, house, and keep itself warm, everything else should be spent on health, education and defence. Letting the populace spend their money on whatsoever they choose is a recipe for disaster. Much of it will be frittered away on tat from China that goes into landfill within 5 years.
That might be a minority view.
Er, yeah. It is.
The money people earn is theirs, not yours. Or the government's.
That’s to assume we owe society nothing for providing an environment in which we can earn. Which is nonsense.
For which the payment is the tax we pay....not all our earnings but they will let us keep enough for a house, food and clothes and the rest is theirs
Well indeed. We can argue about appropriate levels of tax, but Casino is being a ridiculous absolutist.
This is a pretty big story from the world of finance.
Car dealerships in chaos as shock ruling leaves market at risk of collapse
Lenders pause vehicle loans as forecourts face dramatic rethink of sales practices
Britain’s biggest banks and lenders are scrambling to avoid a collapse in the car sales market after a shock court judgement prompted chaos at forecourts across the country.
A ruling from the Court of Appeal on commissions paid to car salesmen has forced several lenders to pause loans, and dealerships to urgently revise their sales practices to avoid a paralysis in the market.
Lloyds Bank, one of the UK’s largest motor financiers through its Black Horse arm, became the latest lender to revamp its practices by abolishing bonuses paid to car dealers.
The bank has introduced a “no commission” contract, meaning no fees will be paid to dealerships.
William Chalmers, Lloyds’s chief of finance, held an urgent call with investors last night to explain the situation, saying it wanted to stand by its customers and the UK economy to carry on lending.
Car finance is the biggest source of funding used by drivers to buy new vehicles, with nine in every 10 cars bought by motorists relying on a loan, according to Autotrader.
There are fears a loan famine would effectively freeze up the market – damaging the already under-fire sector.
The Lloyds position seems eminently sensible. Continue to lend but don't pay commission.
The dealerships can adjust their sales pricing strategy with an explicit fee paid up front by the buyer. Or spread over time separate to the lease if they so wish.
Frankly I'm amazed so many people buy new cars on lease. You pay for the most expensive part of the depreciation of a car, plus a very significant interest rate.
Not just a shock today with new cars. Pick-Up trucks are being reclassified as cars for tax purposes. Which will have a pretty brutal impact on rural communities who use them to haul farm and construction stuff and their kids to and from school.
IMO that's actually good to see, and was one thing I listed this morning on my expectations and hopes.
What it means is that huge pickup trucks will no longer have tax preference over smaller pickup trucks (I think the load capacity of 1 tonne is the dividing line), and only applies to crew cab pickups. In my view this just puts these in their proper place in the tax system, and is a moderately significant positive for road safety.
It should also have an impact on the intended plans of some Usonian car companies to start mass imports of "Light Trucks" using the Individual Vehicle Approval process as a loophole.
It was a Court Decision the HMRC won in early 2024 I think, and the Conservatives overruled as one of their Save Out Backside election gimmicks.
The benefit is that there will not be a large, artificial tax break encouraging the bigger, less safe for anyone who's not actually inside it, trucks on our roads - over the smaller ones. The smaller ones are also problematic, but it's a step forward.
One penny off a pint of beer was really taking the piss
I'm glad it didn't go up, even though I don't often drink in pubs, but one penny off?
What's the fucking point?
while it is a token decrease, the interesting bit is that duty went up for non-draught beer, so there will be an increasing tax diferrential in favour of draught, and hence pubs over supermarkets.
Oh I missed that. How fabulous. That's exactly the policy direction I've been calling for over many years.
it needs to go a lot further. I would prefer higher tax on offsales, with corresponding cuts to on-sales, so people find pubs and bars better places to drink. More sociable too.
You want to tax me hard, don't you?
Should I just bend over while you get a huge payrise?
No he obviously has a preference for his local pub to stay open so we must all be forced to drink his way I suspect
Most 'local pub champions' use it once a year for an hour Christmas Day lunchtime and expect to be greeted like conquering heroes on entering.
Frankly I would be happy to never enter a bar again...they are generally full of boring people with body odour that want to talk about nothing but football or cricket, assuming you can even talk over the volume of the music. Then at some point in the evening someone will turn into an arsehole and cause a scene....yeah no thanks
I really dislike pubs. I can just about take a beer garden providing they're not too busy. Somewhere in my imagination there is an idyllic pub, where people speak softly to a friend and mind their own business. Possibly even a warm fire and some decent scran if needed.
I have an especial dislike for the newer blokey "gastro-pub but we're not really a gastro-pub because that sounds non-blokey" places. Craving their Michelin Star so they can really ramp the prices up and keep the riff-raff out.
They don’t call themselves gastropubs because that’s what chain pubs that serve Cajun chicken do. Along with the “duck or grouse” sign.
And best avoid anywhere whose menu has an item prefaced with “our famous”. They’re not famous.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
There's plenty to cut, its just the shibboleths of the other side that haven't been touched yet.
Reeves has binned the plan to reduce the civil service back to pre-COVID levels.
Hardly surprising - where exactly where the people who could be cut?
Same place as before COVID. The increase since 2016 is enormous, its now higher than 2009.
The Department for media and sport now has double the number it did in 2010 !!!!
Brexit was one of the main drivers of growth. The Tories recruited 100,000 extra civil servants to secure us a trade deal only slightly worse than the one we previously had.
I think ministers had rings run around them. But it wasn't just Brexit, 2020 with COVID they hired loads of people and ever since just keep going up and up. As I say the department for media and sport doubled its head count.
As CGT is up with immediate effect, the amount I would now save by leaving the UK for 5 years stands at £59638 per annum over 5 years. Which is equivalent to a salary of 85k a year. Previous two jobs were 70k and 90k respectively, so split the difference and I can approximately afford to leave the UK, do nothing for five years, and end up in the same place as if I stayed here and worked.
The main reason for staying is that I'm still young-ish in my 40s and quite like work.
The main reason for leaving is the country is on its uppers and things are hardly likely to get better from here. Better to cash out now and enjoy one's retirement from warmer climes.
I'm less concerned about paying an extra 4% a year, more worried that the country is going to continue to get worse and my quality of life here will continue to decline.
As I said in the previous thread, if I do remain in the UK i will significantly alter my behaviour, making fewer capital disposals so as to incur less tax. If I leave I retire.
Decisions, decisions.
My feeling is that the UK is in terminal decline and this budget is another notch on the death spiral. The Tories screwed the pooch, but squeezing the life out of the private sector to give to the inefficient public sector is a one way ticket back to the 70s. So why not buy a one way ticket out...
Most of the 0% places are gonna seriously screw you over (far more than here) if you have certain recreational hobbies. Or accidentally annoy the local tyrants (far more than here). Just be aware of that.
If I were moving out of the country I'd be going somewhere in Africa, indeed it's my medium term plan atm to be 50% in Zambia. This makes no sense on a tax level but as a final frontier, it's very exciting.
I do indeed have *all* the recreational hobbies you imagine wouldn't go down well in Dubai.
The difference is, of course, I don't need to spend five years there. Or anywhere, for that matter.
If I decide to leave the UK the worst I'm out is a single year in the Crown Dependencies (I know Jersey and Guernsey well through work, so know what I'm in for - IoM less so) then I can rebase myself somewhere civilized like Portugal on the D7 visa for the remaining four years. The key is to be in a 0% CGT regime for the year of the disposal then anywhere else for a chuckle for the next 4 years. Not living in a gilded cage with no drugs or bum sex for the next 5 years...
The lack of drugs or bum sex ain't an issue for me. Don't do them, so won't miss them.
(Would miss the English seasons. And that BBC i-player doesn't work in a gilded cage. They're my sex and drugs these days. Can I still have rock'n'roll?)
But the UK Government would deffo miss the tax on what I'm planning though.
Trumpeting an end to non-dom status gets a cheer from the Labour MPs.
Closing hospital wards because those who were non-doms take their money elsewhere - will that get a cheer, Labour?
Labour is about to learn - rich people pay for the NHS. Oh, and also that rich people are the most mobile on the planet. Fuck them off - and off they fuck.
The people who end up making up the difference are those who just already got clobbered today. The ones left cutting the jobs or not buying that discretionary item with its lovely VAT take for the government.
Though you'll probably end up closing a hospital ward too, Labour.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
There's plenty to cut, its just the shibboleths of the other side that haven't been touched yet.
Reeves has binned the plan to reduce the civil service back to pre-COVID levels.
Hardly surprising - where exactly where the people who could be cut?
Same place as before COVID. The increase since 2016 is enormous, its now higher than 2009.
The Department for media and sport now has double the number it did in 2010 !!!!
Brexit was one of the main drivers of growth. The Tories recruited 100,000 extra civil servants to secure us a trade deal only slightly worse than the one we previously had.
Just mammoth stupidity.
Relations with Europe will also need concrete improvements by 2029.
As CGT is up with immediate effect, the amount I would now save by leaving the UK for 5 years stands at £59638 per annum over 5 years. Which is equivalent to a salary of 85k a year. Previous two jobs were 70k and 90k respectively, so split the difference and I can approximately afford to leave the UK, do nothing for five years, and end up in the same place as if I stayed here and worked.
The main reason for staying is that I'm still young-ish in my 40s and quite like work.
The main reason for leaving is the country is on its uppers and things are hardly likely to get better from here. Better to cash out now and enjoy one's retirement from warmer climes.
I'm less concerned about paying an extra 4% a year, more worried that the country is going to continue to get worse and my quality of life here will continue to decline.
As I said in the previous thread, if I do remain in the UK i will significantly alter my behaviour, making fewer capital disposals so as to incur less tax. If I leave I retire.
Decisions, decisions.
My feeling is that the UK is in terminal decline and this budget is another notch on the death spiral. The Tories screwed the pooch, but squeezing the life out of the private sector to give to the inefficient public sector is a one way ticket back to the 70s. So why not buy a one way ticket out...
Most of the 0% places are gonna seriously screw you over (far more than here) if you have certain recreational hobbies. Or accidentally annoy the local tyrants (far more than here). Just be aware of that.
If I were moving out of the country I'd be going somewhere in Africa, indeed it's my medium term plan atm to be 50% in Zambia. This makes no sense on a tax level but as a final frontier, it's very exciting.
I do indeed have *all* the recreational hobbies you imagine wouldn't go down well in Dubai.
The difference is, of course, I don't need to spend five years there. Or anywhere, for that matter.
If I decide to leave the UK the worst I'm out is a single year in the Crown Dependencies (I know Jersey and Guernsey well through work, so know what I'm in for - IoM less so) then I can rebase myself somewhere civilized like Portugal on the D7 visa for the remaining four years. The key is to be in a 0% CGT regime for the year of the disposal then anywhere else for a chuckle for the next 4 years. Not living in a gilded cage with no drugs or bum sex for the next 5 years...
The lack of drugs or bum sex ain't an issue for me. Don't do them, so won't miss them.
(Would miss the English seasons. And that BBC i-player doesn't work in a gilded cage. They're my sex and drugs these days. Can I still have rock'n'roll?)
But the UK Government would deffo miss the tax on what I'm planning though.
Trumpeting an end to non-dom status gets a cheer from the Labour MPs.
Closing hospital wards because those who were non-doms take their money elsewhere - will that get a cheer, Labour?
Labour is about to learn - rich people pay for the NHS. Oh, and also that rich people are the most mobile on the planet. Fuck them off - and off they fuck.
The people who end up making up the difference are those who just already got clobbered today. The ones left cutting the jobs or not buying that discretionary item with its lovely VAT take for the government.
Though you'll probably end up closing a hospital ward too, Labour.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
Its simply not true. Public spending went past £1trn for the first time in 2020/1. In 2024/5, before today, it was forecast to be £1.2trn. That is a 20% increase in 4 years. It was at record levels as a share of our GDP since WW2 and is now going higher. Whilst it is true that many front line services have been starved the cost of our administration has continued to rise. We simply cannot go on this way without massive increases in our productivity. I have seen nothing in today's budget that is likely to boost that.
How would you improve productivity within the Scottish legal system?
I would imagine there's scope for AI specific to legal proceedings and argumentation to substitute for several layers of bureaucracy, speed things up and improve output
A tax on farming. More tax on whisky. More tax on energy. And even the pick up truck tax change for added injusry - not a great budget for the north east.
A tax on farming. More tax on whisky. More tax on energy. And even the pick up truck tax change for added injusry - not a great budget for the north east.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
There's plenty to cut, its just the shibboleths of the other side that haven't been touched yet.
Reeves has binned the plan to reduce the civil service back to pre-COVID levels.
Hardly surprising - where exactly where the people who could be cut?
I'd probably start with abolishing all the HR departments. But the real target should be the managerial levels which need to be radically cut freeing cash to the front line.
I would say pretty much the opposite for the NHS. We have denuded administration to the point that the major reason for gaps in my clinics is because patients cannot get trough on the phone or online to change or cancel appointments, nor find other suitable patients to fill the slots.
Having worked for a company that created software for the nhs mainly in the administration sphere I can assure you a lot of the problems are created by the individual trusts, a lot of trusts were using our software, they all were constantly wanting it to work differently for each of them.
Having a set of standards for data across the nhs would have made life easier both for our company and rivals to provide software and for individual trusts to swap between providers for a starter as we would have common data layer to which our software would be the middle layer so each could access it in the best way for them.
Indeed when I left the company they had just won a contract from a large trust to provide our software but wanted changes to it....not because we didn't already have the functionality built in but they wanted a different workflow....so that was several million down the drain to reimplement what we already did in a slightly different flow
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
Yes. Two buts. It isn't really possible to identify the areas where there is any real consensus about the state spending less on current account. On the contrary, I can't identify an area where there isn't enormous pressure to spend more.
As to borrowing, again there seems to be universal agreement about the need for infrastructure investment.
The dead giveaway is this: the Tories can make political and polemical points about Labour, betrayals, etc, but they are not, SFAICS, able to give an alternative account (non-unicorn) of the better fiscal way in respect of tax, borrow and spend. If they could, they would.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
Its simply not true. Public spending went past £1trn for the first time in 2020/1. In 2024/5, before today, it was forecast to be £1.2trn. That is a 20% increase in 4 years. It was at record levels as a share of our GDP since WW2 and is now going higher. Whilst it is true that many front line services have been starved the cost of our administration has continued to rise. We simply cannot go on this way without massive increases in our productivity. I have seen nothing in today's budget that is likely to boost that.
How would you improve productivity within the Scottish legal system?
I would imagine there's scope for AI specific to legal proceedings and argumentation to substitute for several layers of bureaucracy, speed things up and improve output
I can't think of any recent examples where software led to a widespread miscarriage of justice.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
There's plenty to cut, its just the shibboleths of the other side that haven't been touched yet.
Reeves has binned the plan to reduce the civil service back to pre-COVID levels.
Hardly surprising - where exactly where the people who could be cut?
I'd probably start with abolishing all the HR departments. But the real target should be the managerial levels which need to be radically cut freeing cash to the front line.
I would say pretty much the opposite for the NHS. We have denuded administration to the point that the major reason for gaps in my clinics is because patients cannot get trough on the phone or online to change or cancel appointments, nor find other suitable patients to fill the slots.
Having worked for a company that created software for the nhs mainly in the administration sphere I can assure you a lot of the problems are created by the individual trusts, a lot of trusts were using our software, they all were constantly wanting it to work differently for each of them.
Having a set of standards for data across the nhs would have made life easier both for our company and rivals to provide software and for individual trusts to swap between providers for a starter as we would have common data layer to which our software would be the middle layer so each could access it in the best way for them.
Indeed when I left the company they had just won a contract from a large trust to provide our software but wanted changes to it....not because we didn't already have the functionality built in but they wanted a different workflow....so that was several million down the drain to reimplement what we already did in a slightly different flow
One of grand visions of Patrick Vallance is to address data standards across the public sector. Since he was announced he has been invisible, hopefully he has been hard at work.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
Its simply not true. Public spending went past £1trn for the first time in 2020/1. In 2024/5, before today, it was forecast to be £1.2trn. That is a 20% increase in 4 years. It was at record levels as a share of our GDP since WW2 and is now going higher. Whilst it is true that many front line services have been starved the cost of our administration has continued to rise. We simply cannot go on this way without massive increases in our productivity. I have seen nothing in today's budget that is likely to boost that.
How would you improve productivity within the Scottish legal system?
I'd kick them in the butt to get their road crime video reporting portal up and running, that they have been sloping shoulders on for several years. And is even now not happening until 2025.
These do fantastic things for efficiency, and save a lot of police officer time.
In Scotland at present it has to be reported, then a copper comes out to take a statement, rather than just uploading one with the video evidence. It is medieval.
This is a pretty big story from the world of finance.
Car dealerships in chaos as shock ruling leaves market at risk of collapse
Lenders pause vehicle loans as forecourts face dramatic rethink of sales practices
Britain’s biggest banks and lenders are scrambling to avoid a collapse in the car sales market after a shock court judgement prompted chaos at forecourts across the country.
A ruling from the Court of Appeal on commissions paid to car salesmen has forced several lenders to pause loans, and dealerships to urgently revise their sales practices to avoid a paralysis in the market.
Lloyds Bank, one of the UK’s largest motor financiers through its Black Horse arm, became the latest lender to revamp its practices by abolishing bonuses paid to car dealers.
The bank has introduced a “no commission” contract, meaning no fees will be paid to dealerships.
William Chalmers, Lloyds’s chief of finance, held an urgent call with investors last night to explain the situation, saying it wanted to stand by its customers and the UK economy to carry on lending.
Car finance is the biggest source of funding used by drivers to buy new vehicles, with nine in every 10 cars bought by motorists relying on a loan, according to Autotrader.
There are fears a loan famine would effectively freeze up the market – damaging the already under-fire sector.
The Lloyds position seems eminently sensible. Continue to lend but don't pay commission.
The dealerships can adjust their sales pricing strategy with an explicit fee paid up front by the buyer. Or spread over time separate to the lease if they so wish.
Frankly I'm amazed so many people buy new cars on lease. You pay for the most expensive part of the depreciation of a car, plus a very significant interest rate.
Not just a shock today with new cars. Pick-Up trucks are being reclassified as cars for tax purposes. Which will have a pretty brutal impact on rural communities who use them to haul farm and construction stuff and their kids to and from school.
IMO that's actually good to see, and was one thing I listed this morning on my expectations and hopes.
What it means is that huge pickup trucks will no longer have tax preference over smaller pickup trucks (I think the load capacity of 1 tonne is the dividing line), and only applies to crew cab pickups. In my view this just puts these in their proper place in the tax system, and is a moderately significant positive for road safety.
It should also have an impact on the intended plans of some Usonian car companies to start mass imports of "Light Trucks" using the Individual Vehicle Approval process as a loophole.
It was a Court Decision the HMRC won in early 2024 I think, and the Conservatives overruled as one of their Save Out Backside election gimmicks.
The benefit is that there will not be a large, artificial tax break encouraging the bigger, less safe for anyone who's not actually inside it, trucks on our roads - over the smaller ones. The smaller ones are also problematic, but it's a step forward.
(This is a thread from when the HRMC legal action was determined.)
I'm on that thread. In summary: TOWNIES: Great news, I dislike hairdressers / angry men driving these as a tax dodge down my urban streets BUMPKINS: This absolutely shags the rural economy TOWNIES: Just use your own car for non-business use BUMPKINS: But everything is miles and miles and miles away. And when you need to take engineers plural out to site you'd need multiple vehicles TOWNIES: Yebbut I don't like these other people driving pick-ups in town where they all get driven
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
Its simply not true. Public spending went past £1trn for the first time in 2020/1. In 2024/5, before today, it was forecast to be £1.2trn. That is a 20% increase in 4 years. It was at record levels as a share of our GDP since WW2 and is now going higher. Whilst it is true that many front line services have been starved the cost of our administration has continued to rise. We simply cannot go on this way without massive increases in our productivity. I have seen nothing in today's budget that is likely to boost that.
How would you improve productivity within the Scottish legal system?
I would imagine there's scope for AI specific to legal proceedings and argumentation to substitute for several layers of bureaucracy, speed things up and improve output
I can't think of any recent examples where software led to a widespread miscarriage of justice.
Huh? The horizon scandal doesn’t mean we should completely abandon using software. Rather, we should not blindly accept its output in a court of law.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
Cuts? Government expenditure is the highest it has been since the 70s.
There's been plenty of cuts to lots of things outside protected areas. Local government has been forced to make major ones, spending on schools per pupil is below 2010. Most departments have faced major cuts since 2010, while pretty much all the New Labour targeted schemes and initiatives like Sure Start have gone.
The problem is we have an ageing population, who thankfully live longer, but therefore cost the state more. Who also expect a certain level of comfort and services in their old age, and previously have been very keen not be taxed beyond the level they expected when younger.
In part due to demographics, but also a decade and a half of low growth, the sums don't add up. So governments have race to stand still by cutting everything else or putting up other taxes - which in the case of the former, now can't be done much further without those parts of the state keeling over.
As to why, we saw the howls over the means testing of the Winter Fuel Allowance and how the 'Death Tax' partly did for Theresa May. Politically it's very difficult to be honest with people and say it's the case, because people think they've 'paid in' to take out (you did for your parents, your kids do for you - but there's not enough of them and their wages have got stuck).
Plus there are huge misconceptions about quite how much the government spends on certain things, usually the ones the public don't like the sound of, rahter than the bulk and growing portion of it going on things they'd be very upset about if they got cut.
One penny off a pint of beer was really taking the piss
I'm glad it didn't go up, even though I don't often drink in pubs, but one penny off?
What's the fucking point?
while it is a token decrease, the interesting bit is that duty went up for non-draught beer, so there will be an increasing tax diferrential in favour of draught, and hence pubs over supermarkets.
Oh I missed that. How fabulous. That's exactly the policy direction I've been calling for over many years.
it needs to go a lot further. I would prefer higher tax on offsales, with corresponding cuts to on-sales, so people find pubs and bars better places to drink. More sociable too.
You want to tax me hard, don't you?
Should I just bend over while you get a huge payrise?
No he obviously has a preference for his local pub to stay open so we must all be forced to drink his way I suspect
Most 'local pub champions' use it once a year for an hour Christmas Day lunchtime and expect to be greeted like conquering heroes on entering.
Frankly I would be happy to never enter a bar again...they are generally full of boring people with body odour that want to talk about nothing but football or cricket, assuming you can even talk over the volume of the music. Then at some point in the evening someone will turn into an arsehole and cause a scene....yeah no thanks
I really dislike pubs. I can just about take a beer garden providing they're not too busy. Somewhere in my imagination there is an idyllic pub, where people speak softly to a friend and mind their own business. Possibly even a warm fire and some decent scran if needed.
I have an especial dislike for the newer blokey "gastro-pub but we're not really a gastro-pub because that sounds non-blokey" places. Craving their Michelin Star so they can really ramp the prices up and keep the riff-raff out.
Pubs differ massively. Our local (nicknamed the 'Asbo Arms') is cr@p. But there are so many different types and ambiances that I can't imagine someone not liking any of them.
I find gastropubs (there are a couple of good ones around here) great for food, but not for general drinking. A small pub in a nearby village is great for snuggling in the corner with a pint and a paper or a magazine, and just reading. Another makes you feel welcome the moment you enter the door.
I have so many fond memories of pubs. When I was walking Glyndwr's Way in mid-Wales, I stopped off mid-afternoon at a pub in a tiny village called Llangunllo, just wanting my water bottle filled before I camped out on the tops. The landlord was an ancient man in his nineties being visited by a nurse, and he told me just I could pull my own pint if I wanted.
The next day I descended from my camping spot into the next valley into a village, and I again wanted my water bottle filled. I nipped into the post office, whose owner turned out to be a relative of the pub landlord from the previous day, and she gave me a cup of tea and some cake! People would walk into the post office and take goods, the owner writing the purchases down in a little book for later settlement.
I have so many pleasant stories about pubs... and a handful of not-nice ones as well. But generally a small country pub can be a heavenly place.
I find pubs are as pleasant as you let them be.
On a break from painting a flat for charity, went into one of those estate pubs built into the fabric of a very Brutalist block. The kind of place they depict in crappy gangster films on Netflix.
The pint of Oliver’s Island was perfectly poured and in a clean glass.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
There's plenty to cut, its just the shibboleths of the other side that haven't been touched yet.
Reeves has binned the plan to reduce the civil service back to pre-COVID levels.
Hardly surprising - where exactly where the people who could be cut?
Same place as before COVID. The increase since 2016 is enormous, its now higher than 2009.
2016, you say? What changed about the governance of the UK in 2016?
I'm completely stumped.
Even since 2020, its up 20% and still rising. I fail to believe there is no savings at all anywhere.
Probably, though the governance changes since 2020 as a result of the decisions in 2016 can't have helped.
But, to return to a thing I've banged on about before...
In schools and colleges, what we're seeing is the result of years of patch and mend. It goes back decades, really, but it's got incredibly obvious since 2010. When a part of the system springs a leak, the quickest thing to do is to add another body to stop the immediate problem. Repeat and repeat until you get the setup we're seeing.
So yes, there are savings on year-by-year spending that can be made. But they require two things. One is enough capital money to do proper fixes. (Example: Havering council are opening another SEND school, which will be cheaper than bussing children out of area to access the services they need. The right thing to do, but it costs upfront, and getting the money and land has taken ages.) The other is to get state services in off the window ledge, with enough time and headspace to think about improving efficiency and not just managing crises.
Reeves's announcements today aren't a sufficient answer to the state's problems. But they are probably what's necessary now.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
There's plenty to cut, its just the shibboleths of the other side that haven't been touched yet.
Reeves has binned the plan to reduce the civil service back to pre-COVID levels.
Hardly surprising - where exactly where the people who could be cut?
I'd probably start with abolishing all the HR departments. But the real target should be the managerial levels which need to be radically cut freeing cash to the front line.
I would say pretty much the opposite for the NHS. We have denuded administration to the point that the major reason for gaps in my clinics is because patients cannot get trough on the phone or online to change or cancel appointments, nor find other suitable patients to fill the slots.
Having worked for a company that created software for the nhs mainly in the administration sphere I can assure you a lot of the problems are created by the individual trusts, a lot of trusts were using our software, they all were constantly wanting it to work differently for each of them.
Having a set of standards for data across the nhs would have made life easier both for our company and rivals to provide software and for individual trusts to swap between providers for a starter as we would have common data layer to which our software would be the middle layer so each could access it in the best way for them.
Indeed when I left the company they had just won a contract from a large trust to provide our software but wanted changes to it....not because we didn't already have the functionality built in but they wanted a different workflow....so that was several million down the drain to reimplement what we already did in a slightly different flow
One of grand visions of Patrick Vallance is to address data standards across the public sector. Since he was announced he has been invisible, hopefully he has been hard at work.
As CGT is up with immediate effect, the amount I would now save by leaving the UK for 5 years stands at £59638 per annum over 5 years. Which is equivalent to a salary of 85k a year. Previous two jobs were 70k and 90k respectively, so split the difference and I can approximately afford to leave the UK, do nothing for five years, and end up in the same place as if I stayed here and worked.
The main reason for staying is that I'm still young-ish in my 40s and quite like work.
The main reason for leaving is the country is on its uppers and things are hardly likely to get better from here. Better to cash out now and enjoy one's retirement from warmer climes.
I'm less concerned about paying an extra 4% a year, more worried that the country is going to continue to get worse and my quality of life here will continue to decline.
As I said in the previous thread, if I do remain in the UK i will significantly alter my behaviour, making fewer capital disposals so as to incur less tax. If I leave I retire.
Decisions, decisions.
My feeling is that the UK is in terminal decline and this budget is another notch on the death spiral. The Tories screwed the pooch, but squeezing the life out of the private sector to give to the inefficient public sector is a one way ticket back to the 70s. So why not buy a one way ticket out...
Most of the 0% places are gonna seriously screw you over (far more than here) if you have certain recreational hobbies. Or accidentally annoy the local tyrants (far more than here). Just be aware of that.
If I were moving out of the country I'd be going somewhere in Africa, indeed it's my medium term plan atm to be 50% in Zambia. This makes no sense on a tax level but as a final frontier, it's very exciting.
I do indeed have *all* the recreational hobbies you imagine wouldn't go down well in Dubai.
The difference is, of course, I don't need to spend five years there. Or anywhere, for that matter.
If I decide to leave the UK the worst I'm out is a single year in the Crown Dependencies (I know Jersey and Guernsey well through work, so know what I'm in for - IoM less so) then I can rebase myself somewhere civilized like Portugal on the D7 visa for the remaining four years. The key is to be in a 0% CGT regime for the year of the disposal then anywhere else for a chuckle for the next 4 years. Not living in a gilded cage with no drugs or bum sex for the next 5 years...
The lack of drugs or bum sex ain't an issue for me. Don't do them, so won't miss them.
(Would miss the English seasons. And that BBC i-player doesn't work in a gilded cage. They're my sex and drugs these days. Can I still have rock'n'roll?)
But the UK Government would deffo miss the tax on what I'm planning though.
Trumpeting an end to non-dom status gets a cheer from the Labour MPs.
Closing hospital wards because those who were non-doms take their money elsewhere - will that get a cheer, Labour?
Labour is about to learn - rich people pay for the NHS. Oh, and also that rich people are the most mobile on the planet. Fuck them off - and off they fuck.
The people who end up making up the difference are those who just already got clobbered today. The ones left cutting the jobs or not buying that discretionary item with its lovely VAT take for the government.
Though you'll probably end up closing a hospital ward too, Labour.
I can do without both, tbh, I prefer women, though am open to other options. And prefer pints to other substances, but, again, I keep a broad mind. I would have fewer options in the middle east, rather than none
I do have an issue with countries who want to persecute people simply because of their sexual preferences, but I'm an old fashioned liberal. So it wouldn't be my first choice.
I agreee entirely with the substance of your post. Be it non doms or just rich people deciding to bugger off - I suppose I'm one of the latter - rich people largely fund all the services everyone else takes for granted.
Labour keep on saying the widest shoulders should bear the highest burden, while ignoring the fact that the richest in the UK already shoulder a huge amount of the tax burden. And are globally mobile. And use very few services.
As I say, I'm less concerned about the 4% CGT hike and how it affects me, and more concerned that the UK is in a doom loop of low growth and poorer living standards. If you're rich and you can leave, why not?
One more bit of data on the US campaigns: "It’s all a reminder of the timeless maxim: Campaigns matter. Many Harris supporters are biting their nails as polls show a dead heat just a week from Election Day. But one thing the polls can’t reflect is that the Harris campaign has a field operation that is beyond anything seen before in presidential elections, while the Trump effort is subpar. This is no guarantee of victory, but in a close election, it can make the difference." source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/10/30/harris-campaign-north-carolina-october-surprise/
Dana Milbank is a partisan Democrat, but more of an old-fashioned liberal than a modern leftist, so he is probably telling the truth.
(In the past, better organizations would be able to make a 1 or 2 percent difference. Hard to say how much difference they will make in this campaign -- but it wouldn't surprise me if they tipped North Carolina to Harris, as Milbank is arguing.)
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
There's plenty to cut, its just the shibboleths of the other side that haven't been touched yet.
Reeves has binned the plan to reduce the civil service back to pre-COVID levels.
Hardly surprising - where exactly where the people who could be cut?
I'd probably start with abolishing all the HR departments. But the real target should be the managerial levels which need to be radically cut freeing cash to the front line.
I would say pretty much the opposite for the NHS. We have denuded administration to the point that the major reason for gaps in my clinics is because patients cannot get trough on the phone or online to change or cancel appointments, nor find other suitable patients to fill the slots.
Having worked for a company that created software for the nhs mainly in the administration sphere I can assure you a lot of the problems are created by the individual trusts, a lot of trusts were using our software, they all were constantly wanting it to work differently for each of them.
Having a set of standards for data across the nhs would have made life easier both for our company and rivals to provide software and for individual trusts to swap between providers for a starter as we would have common data layer to which our software would be the middle layer so each could access it in the best way for them.
Indeed when I left the company they had just won a contract from a large trust to provide our software but wanted changes to it....not because we didn't already have the functionality built in but they wanted a different workflow....so that was several million down the drain to reimplement what we already did in a slightly different flow
One of grand visions of Patrick Vallance is to address data standards across the public sector. Since he was announced he has been invisible, hopefully he has been hard at work.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
There's plenty to cut, its just the shibboleths of the other side that haven't been touched yet.
Reeves has binned the plan to reduce the civil service back to pre-COVID levels.
Hardly surprising - where exactly where the people who could be cut?
I'd probably start with abolishing all the HR departments. But the real target should be the managerial levels which need to be radically cut freeing cash to the front line.
I would say pretty much the opposite for the NHS. We have denuded administration to the point that the major reason for gaps in my clinics is because patients cannot get trough on the phone or online to change or cancel appointments, nor find other suitable patients to fill the slots.
Having worked for a company that created software for the nhs mainly in the administration sphere I can assure you a lot of the problems are created by the individual trusts, a lot of trusts were using our software, they all were constantly wanting it to work differently for each of them.
Having a set of standards for data across the nhs would have made life easier both for our company and rivals to provide software and for individual trusts to swap between providers for a starter as we would have common data layer to which our software would be the middle layer so each could access it in the best way for them.
Indeed when I left the company they had just won a contract from a large trust to provide our software but wanted changes to it....not because we didn't already have the functionality built in but they wanted a different workflow....so that was several million down the drain to reimplement what we already did in a slightly different flow
One of grand visions of Patrick Vallance is to address data standards across the public sector. Since he was announced he has been invisible, hopefully he has been hard at work.
In our case we our software was still collecting all the same data...they just wanted done in a different order on the input forms and displayed in a different order on the displays when consulting the data. A complete waste of time and money when they could have just amended their process to do it in the way we had already implemented for the trust that had originally asked for the functionality had done it.
This also has a knock on effect....a medical person swapping from one trust to another both of which used our software would have to learn again how it worked for their new trust because things would be in a different place
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
There's plenty to cut, its just the shibboleths of the other side that haven't been touched yet.
Reeves has binned the plan to reduce the civil service back to pre-COVID levels.
Hardly surprising - where exactly where the people who could be cut?
I'd probably start with abolishing all the HR departments. But the real target should be the managerial levels which need to be radically cut freeing cash to the front line.
I would say pretty much the opposite for the NHS. We have denuded administration to the point that the major reason for gaps in my clinics is because patients cannot get trough on the phone or online to change or cancel appointments, nor find other suitable patients to fill the slots.
Having worked for a company that created software for the nhs mainly in the administration sphere I can assure you a lot of the problems are created by the individual trusts, a lot of trusts were using our software, they all were constantly wanting it to work differently for each of them.
Having a set of standards for data across the nhs would have made life easier both for our company and rivals to provide software and for individual trusts to swap between providers for a starter as we would have common data layer to which our software would be the middle layer so each could access it in the best way for them.
Indeed when I left the company they had just won a contract from a large trust to provide our software but wanted changes to it....not because we didn't already have the functionality built in but they wanted a different workflow....so that was several million down the drain to reimplement what we already did in a slightly different flow
One of grand visions of Patrick Vallance is to address data standards across the public sector. Since he was announced he has been invisible, hopefully he has been hard at work.
Mike Johnson says one of Trump’s top priorities will be to repeal the Affordable Care Act and rip away health care from tens of millions of Americans: “No Obamacare” https://x.com/KamalaHQ/status/1851604970992263224
…along with Donald’s concepts of a plan* to replace it.
* Slightly smarter than Baldrick, if only with regard to messaging.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
Its simply not true. Public spending went past £1trn for the first time in 2020/1. In 2024/5, before today, it was forecast to be £1.2trn. That is a 20% increase in 4 years. It was at record levels as a share of our GDP since WW2 and is now going higher. Whilst it is true that many front line services have been starved the cost of our administration has continued to rise. We simply cannot go on this way without massive increases in our productivity. I have seen nothing in today's budget that is likely to boost that.
How would you improve productivity within the Scottish legal system?
I would imagine there's scope for AI specific to legal proceedings and argumentation to substitute for several layers of bureaucracy, speed things up and improve output
I can't think of any recent examples where software led to a widespread miscarriage of justice.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
Its simply not true. Public spending went past £1trn for the first time in 2020/1. In 2024/5, before today, it was forecast to be £1.2trn. That is a 20% increase in 4 years. It was at record levels as a share of our GDP since WW2 and is now going higher. Whilst it is true that many front line services have been starved the cost of our administration has continued to rise. We simply cannot go on this way without massive increases in our productivity. I have seen nothing in today's budget that is likely to boost that.
How would you improve productivity within the Scottish legal system?
I'd kick them in the butt to get their road crime video reporting portal up and running, that they have been sloping shoulders on for several years. And is even now not happening until 2025.
These do fantastic things for efficiency, and save a lot of police officer time.
In Scotland at present it has to be reported, then a copper comes out to take a statement, rather than just uploading one with the video evidence. It is medieval.
True. A portal will lead to many more prosecutions at low cost - but it's still an additional cost compared with *doing nothing at all*.
The same for the NHS. They keep finding amazing ways to keep unhealthy people alive who would have previously died from heart disease or something. That's also a productivity gain, yet also leads to more costs.
This is the conundrum across the whole of the public sector.
As CGT is up with immediate effect, the amount I would now save by leaving the UK for 5 years stands at £59638 per annum over 5 years. Which is equivalent to a salary of 85k a year. Previous two jobs were 70k and 90k respectively, so split the difference and I can approximately afford to leave the UK, do nothing for five years, and end up in the same place as if I stayed here and worked.
The main reason for staying is that I'm still young-ish in my 40s and quite like work.
The main reason for leaving is the country is on its uppers and things are hardly likely to get better from here. Better to cash out now and enjoy one's retirement from warmer climes.
I'm less concerned about paying an extra 4% a year, more worried that the country is going to continue to get worse and my quality of life here will continue to decline.
As I said in the previous thread, if I do remain in the UK i will significantly alter my behaviour, making fewer capital disposals so as to incur less tax. If I leave I retire.
Decisions, decisions.
My feeling is that the UK is in terminal decline and this budget is another notch on the death spiral. The Tories screwed the pooch, but squeezing the life out of the private sector to give to the inefficient public sector is a one way ticket back to the 70s. So why not buy a one way ticket out...
Most of the 0% places are gonna seriously screw you over (far more than here) if you have certain recreational hobbies. Or accidentally annoy the local tyrants (far more than here). Just be aware of that.
If I were moving out of the country I'd be going somewhere in Africa, indeed it's my medium term plan atm to be 50% in Zambia. This makes no sense on a tax level but as a final frontier, it's very exciting.
I do indeed have *all* the recreational hobbies you imagine wouldn't go down well in Dubai.
The difference is, of course, I don't need to spend five years there. Or anywhere, for that matter.
If I decide to leave the UK the worst I'm out is a single year in the Crown Dependencies (I know Jersey and Guernsey well through work, so know what I'm in for - IoM less so) then I can rebase myself somewhere civilized like Portugal on the D7 visa for the remaining four years. The key is to be in a 0% CGT regime for the year of the disposal then anywhere else for a chuckle for the next 4 years. Not living in a gilded cage with no drugs or bum sex for the next 5 years...
The lack of drugs or bum sex ain't an issue for me. Don't do them, so won't miss them.
(Would miss the English seasons. And that BBC i-player doesn't work in a gilded cage. They're my sex and drugs these days. Can I still have rock'n'roll?)
But the UK Government would deffo miss the tax on what I'm planning though.
Trumpeting an end to non-dom status gets a cheer from the Labour MPs.
Closing hospital wards because those who were non-doms take their money elsewhere - will that get a cheer, Labour?
Labour is about to learn - rich people pay for the NHS. Oh, and also that rich people are the most mobile on the planet. Fuck them off - and off they fuck.
The people who end up making up the difference are those who just already got clobbered today. The ones left cutting the jobs or not buying that discretionary item with its lovely VAT take for the government.
Though you'll probably end up closing a hospital ward too, Labour.
I can do without both, tbh, I prefer women, though am open to other options. And prefer pints to other substances, but, again, I keep a broad mind. I would have fewer options in the middle east, rather than none
I do have an issue with countries who want to persecute people simply because of their sexual preferences, but I'm an old fashioned liberal. So it wouldn't be my first choice.
I agreee entirely with the substance of your post. Be it non doms or just rich people deciding to bugger off - I suppose I'm one of the latter - rich people largely fund all the services everyone else takes for granted.
Labour keep on saying the widest shoulders should bear the highest burden, while ignoring the fact that the richest in the UK already shoulder a huge amount of the tax burden. And are globally mobile. And use very few services.
As I say, I'm less concerned about the 4% CGT hike and how it affects me, and more concerned that the UK is in a doom loop of low growth and poorer living standards. If you're rich and you can leave, why not?
We’ll have to work out the consequences of that in due course.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
Cuts? Government expenditure is the highest it has been since the 70s.
The problem is - as always - that there are some parts of the government budget that grow irrespective: simply, irrespective of what is going on in the world, the amount of money we pay out in pensions will rise, because there aree more retirees and the triple lock.
This means that the rest of the government budget is under perpetual pressure.
How much would a pint cost in a pub if the alcohol duty was reduced to zero?
You can't charge people to drink at home what it costs to run a pub
Unless you're a fucking fool
Lots of people still go to the pub, even though it's a lot more expensive than drinking at home, so it isn't necessary to reverse that position. Just closing the gap would have an impact, and I believe that impact would be a beneficial one.
Number of regular pubgoers is down to about 38% if you count once a fortnight looking at once a week its 9%
"£60.1 billion is due to the direct effect of policy changes in this Budget, the largest sustained increase in spending in at least the past 15 years."
OBR report.
The BBC put it this way:
"Budget policies will increase UK borrowing by £19.6bn this year and by an average of £32.3bn over the next five years, according to the OBR"
This is the part of the budget that I am appalled at. We needed more taxes. We absolutely did not need to increase spending like this. We cannot afford it.
It's a bigger increase in borrowing by far than what Liz Truss proposed and despite the additional borrowing the growth forecast has decreased. It must be the only fiscal stimulus of this size to lower the trend rate of growth. How badly they have fucked this up.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
There's plenty to cut, its just the shibboleths of the other side that haven't been touched yet.
Reeves has binned the plan to reduce the civil service back to pre-COVID levels.
Hardly surprising - where exactly where the people who could be cut?
Same place as before COVID. The increase since 2016 is enormous, its now higher than 2009.
The Department for media and sport now has double the number it did in 2010 !!!!
Brexit (which I supported and still support) does imply a larger civil service because more must be done here. Perhaps not this much larger, but larger than 2016.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
Cuts? Government expenditure is the highest it has been since the 70s.
The problem is - as always - that there are some parts of the government budget that grow irrespective: simply, irrespective of what is going on in the world, the amount of money we pay out in pensions will rise, because there aree more retirees and the triple lock.
This means that the rest of the government budget is under perpetual pressure.
The State Pension is going to cost an additional £31 billion per year by the end of the parliament.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
Cuts? Government expenditure is the highest it has been since the 70s.
The problem is - as always - that there are some parts of the government budget that grow irrespective: simply, irrespective of what is going on in the world, the amount of money we pay out in pensions will rise, because there aree more retirees and the triple lock.
This means that the rest of the government budget is under perpetual pressure.
But remember, under Labour "the rest of the government budget is under perpetual pressure" =/= austerity...
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
Cuts? Government expenditure is the highest it has been since the 70s.
The problem is - as always - that there are some parts of the government budget that grow irrespective: simply, irrespective of what is going on in the world, the amount of money we pay out in pensions will rise, because there aree more retirees and the triple lock.
This means that the rest of the government budget is under perpetual pressure.
But surely that's why the government needs to look at retirement income overall and include private pension income in the state pension benefit liability. Right now everyone gets it, including people like my parents who have significant income in retirement well above the higher rate tax threshold. My dad has literally said the state pension is holiday money for him, my parents are spending this year's from their state pension on taking us all to Egypt for my dad's 70th birthday. There's 10 of us going and he's booked us into 3 premium suites at the Rixos for a week. Nice for us but all really at the expense of the taxpayer.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
There's plenty to cut, its just the shibboleths of the other side that haven't been touched yet.
Reeves has binned the plan to reduce the civil service back to pre-COVID levels.
Hardly surprising - where exactly where the people who could be cut?
Same place as before COVID. The increase since 2016 is enormous, its now higher than 2009.
The Department for media and sport now has double the number it did in 2010 !!!!
Brexit (which I supported and still support) does imply a larger civil service because more must be done here. Perhaps not this much larger, but larger than 2016.
Two parts:
1) more staff permanently; and 2) more staff temporarily due to change being hard.
As remainers never cease to remind us, the Brussels civil service is actually quite small, so the permanent effect shouldn't be too great.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
Cuts? Government expenditure is the highest it has been since the 70s.
The problem is - as always - that there are some parts of the government budget that grow irrespective: simply, irrespective of what is going on in the world, the amount of money we pay out in pensions will rise, because there aree more retirees and the triple lock.
This means that the rest of the government budget is under perpetual pressure.
The State Pension is going to cost an additional £31 billion per year by the end of the parliament.
(or the cost of HS2 to Manchester)
The state pension is a drop in the bucket compared to the public sector pension issue
One penny off a pint of beer was really taking the piss
I'm glad it didn't go up, even though I don't often drink in pubs, but one penny off?
What's the fucking point?
while it is a token decrease, the interesting bit is that duty went up for non-draught beer, so there will be an increasing tax diferrential in favour of draught, and hence pubs over supermarkets.
Oh I missed that. How fabulous. That's exactly the policy direction I've been calling for over many years.
it needs to go a lot further. I would prefer higher tax on offsales, with corresponding cuts to on-sales, so people find pubs and bars better places to drink. More sociable too.
You want to tax me hard, don't you?
Should I just bend over while you get a huge payrise?
No he obviously has a preference for his local pub to stay open so we must all be forced to drink his way I suspect
Most 'local pub champions' use it once a year for an hour Christmas Day lunchtime and expect to be greeted like conquering heroes on entering.
Frankly I would be happy to never enter a bar again...they are generally full of boring people with body odour that want to talk about nothing but football or cricket, assuming you can even talk over the volume of the music. Then at some point in the evening someone will turn into an arsehole and cause a scene....yeah no thanks
I really dislike pubs. I can just about take a beer garden providing they're not too busy. Somewhere in my imagination there is an idyllic pub, where people speak softly to a friend and mind their own business. Possibly even a warm fire and some decent scran if needed.
I have an especial dislike for the newer blokey "gastro-pub but we're not really a gastro-pub because that sounds non-blokey" places. Craving their Michelin Star so they can really ramp the prices up and keep the riff-raff out.
Pubs differ massively. Our local (nicknamed the 'Asbo Arms') is cr@p. But there are so many different types and ambiances that I can't imagine someone not liking any of them.
I find gastropubs (there are a couple of good ones around here) great for food, but not for general drinking. A small pub in a nearby village is great for snuggling in the corner with a pint and a paper or a magazine, and just reading. Another makes you feel welcome the moment you enter the door.
I have so many fond memories of pubs. When I was walking Glyndwr's Way in mid-Wales, I stopped off mid-afternoon at a pub in a tiny village called Llangunllo, just wanting my water bottle filled before I camped out on the tops. The landlord was an ancient man in his nineties being visited by a nurse, and he told me just I could pull my own pint if I wanted.
The next day I descended from my camping spot into the next valley into a village, and I again wanted my water bottle filled. I nipped into the post office, whose owner turned out to be a relative of the pub landlord from the previous day, and she gave me a cup of tea and some cake! People would walk into the post office and take goods, the owner writing the purchases down in a little book for later settlement.
I have so many pleasant stories about pubs... and a handful of not-nice ones as well. But generally a small country pub can be a heavenly place.
I find pubs are as pleasant as you let them be.
On a break from painting a flat for charity, went into one of those estate pubs built into the fabric of a very Brutalist block. The kind of place they depict in crappy gangster films on Netflix.
The pint of Oliver’s Island was perfectly poured and in a clean glass.
I hope you used the opportunity to say the line "manners maketh the man".
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
Cuts? Government expenditure is the highest it has been since the 70s.
The problem is - as always - that there are some parts of the government budget that grow irrespective: simply, irrespective of what is going on in the world, the amount of money we pay out in pensions will rise, because there aree more retirees and the triple lock.
This means that the rest of the government budget is under perpetual pressure.
The State Pension is going to cost an additional £31 billion per year by the end of the parliament.
(or the cost of HS2 to Manchester)
The state pension is a drop in the bucket compared to the public sector pension issue
As CGT is up with immediate effect, the amount I would now save by leaving the UK for 5 years stands at £59638 per annum over 5 years. Which is equivalent to a salary of 85k a year. Previous two jobs were 70k and 90k respectively, so split the difference and I can approximately afford to leave the UK, do nothing for five years, and end up in the same place as if I stayed here and worked.
The main reason for staying is that I'm still young-ish in my 40s and quite like work.
The main reason for leaving is the country is on its uppers and things are hardly likely to get better from here. Better to cash out now and enjoy one's retirement from warmer climes.
I'm less concerned about paying an extra 4% a year, more worried that the country is going to continue to get worse and my quality of life here will continue to decline.
As I said in the previous thread, if I do remain in the UK i will significantly alter my behaviour, making fewer capital disposals so as to incur less tax. If I leave I retire.
Decisions, decisions.
My feeling is that the UK is in terminal decline and this budget is another notch on the death spiral. The Tories screwed the pooch, but squeezing the life out of the private sector to give to the inefficient public sector is a one way ticket back to the 70s. So why not buy a one way ticket out...
Most of the 0% places are gonna seriously screw you over (far more than here) if you have certain recreational hobbies. Or accidentally annoy the local tyrants (far more than here). Just be aware of that.
If I were moving out of the country I'd be going somewhere in Africa, indeed it's my medium term plan atm to be 50% in Zambia. This makes no sense on a tax level but as a final frontier, it's very exciting.
I do indeed have *all* the recreational hobbies you imagine wouldn't go down well in Dubai.
The difference is, of course, I don't need to spend five years there. Or anywhere, for that matter.
If I decide to leave the UK the worst I'm out is a single year in the Crown Dependencies (I know Jersey and Guernsey well through work, so know what I'm in for - IoM less so) then I can rebase myself somewhere civilized like Portugal on the D7 visa for the remaining four years. The key is to be in a 0% CGT regime for the year of the disposal then anywhere else for a chuckle for the next 4 years. Not living in a gilded cage with no drugs or bum sex for the next 5 years...
The lack of drugs or bum sex ain't an issue for me. Don't do them, so won't miss them.
(Would miss the English seasons. And that BBC i-player doesn't work in a gilded cage. They're my sex and drugs these days. Can I still have rock'n'roll?)
But the UK Government would deffo miss the tax on what I'm planning though.
Trumpeting an end to non-dom status gets a cheer from the Labour MPs.
Closing hospital wards because those who were non-doms take their money elsewhere - will that get a cheer, Labour?
Labour is about to learn - rich people pay for the NHS. Oh, and also that rich people are the most mobile on the planet. Fuck them off - and off they fuck.
The people who end up making up the difference are those who just already got clobbered today. The ones left cutting the jobs or not buying that discretionary item with its lovely VAT take for the government.
Though you'll probably end up closing a hospital ward too, Labour.
I can do without both, tbh, I prefer women, though am open to other options. And prefer pints to other substances, but, again, I keep a broad mind. I would have fewer options in the middle east, rather than none
I do have an issue with countries who want to persecute people simply because of their sexual preferences, but I'm an old fashioned liberal. So it wouldn't be my first choice.
I agreee entirely with the substance of your post. Be it non doms or just rich people deciding to bugger off - I suppose I'm one of the latter - rich people largely fund all the services everyone else takes for granted.
Labour keep on saying the widest shoulders should bear the highest burden, while ignoring the fact that the richest in the UK already shoulder a huge amount of the tax burden. And are globally mobile. And use very few services.
As I say, I'm less concerned about the 4% CGT hike and how it affects me, and more concerned that the UK is in a doom loop of low growth and poorer living standards. If you're rich and you can leave, why not?
We’ll have to work out the consequences of that in due course.
But we’re too big just to be a tax haven.
The other way round for me. I'd rather catch a hundred billionaires at 10% tax than 0 blliionaires at 40% tax.
It is an unpleasant fact of life that the richer you are the more globally mobile you are. In an ideal world we would tax the ultra wealthy at a rate equal to or greater than we tax the middle and working classes.
But when the ultra rich are globally mobile, it's a bidding war - which we are badly losing.
They are people who pay for our services while using very few of them, and Labour is driving them away.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
Cuts? Government expenditure is the highest it has been since the 70s.
The problem is - as always - that there are some parts of the government budget that grow irrespective: simply, irrespective of what is going on in the world, the amount of money we pay out in pensions will rise, because there aree more retirees and the triple lock.
This means that the rest of the government budget is under perpetual pressure.
The State Pension is going to cost an additional £31 billion per year by the end of the parliament.
(or the cost of HS2 to Manchester)
The state pension is a drop in the bucket compared to the public sector pension issue
Well quite. I think people on generous defined benefit pensions should get the State Pension tapered away, a la Universal Credit. The same goes for people on massive private sector pensions and for people with significant assets.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
Cuts? Government expenditure is the highest it has been since the 70s.
The problem is - as always - that there are some parts of the government budget that grow irrespective: simply, irrespective of what is going on in the world, the amount of money we pay out in pensions will rise, because there aree more retirees and the triple lock.
This means that the rest of the government budget is under perpetual pressure.
The State Pension is going to cost an additional £31 billion per year by the end of the parliament.
(or the cost of HS2 to Manchester)
The state pension is a drop in the bucket compared to the public sector pension issue
Well quite. I think people on generous defined benefit pensions should get the State Pension tapered away, a la Universal Credit. The same goes for people on massive private sector pensions and for people with significant assets.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
Cuts? Government expenditure is the highest it has been since the 70s.
The problem is - as always - that there are some parts of the government budget that grow irrespective: simply, irrespective of what is going on in the world, the amount of money we pay out in pensions will rise, because there aree more retirees and the triple lock.
This means that the rest of the government budget is under perpetual pressure.
The State Pension is going to cost an additional £31 billion per year by the end of the parliament.
(or the cost of HS2 to Manchester)
The state pension is a drop in the bucket compared to the public sector pension issue
As CGT is up with immediate effect, the amount I would now save by leaving the UK for 5 years stands at £59638 per annum over 5 years. Which is equivalent to a salary of 85k a year. Previous two jobs were 70k and 90k respectively, so split the difference and I can approximately afford to leave the UK, do nothing for five years, and end up in the same place as if I stayed here and worked.
The main reason for staying is that I'm still young-ish in my 40s and quite like work.
The main reason for leaving is the country is on its uppers and things are hardly likely to get better from here. Better to cash out now and enjoy one's retirement from warmer climes.
I'm less concerned about paying an extra 4% a year, more worried that the country is going to continue to get worse and my quality of life here will continue to decline.
As I said in the previous thread, if I do remain in the UK i will significantly alter my behaviour, making fewer capital disposals so as to incur less tax. If I leave I retire.
Decisions, decisions.
My feeling is that the UK is in terminal decline and this budget is another notch on the death spiral. The Tories screwed the pooch, but squeezing the life out of the private sector to give to the inefficient public sector is a one way ticket back to the 70s. So why not buy a one way ticket out...
Most of the 0% places are gonna seriously screw you over (far more than here) if you have certain recreational hobbies. Or accidentally annoy the local tyrants (far more than here). Just be aware of that.
If I were moving out of the country I'd be going somewhere in Africa, indeed it's my medium term plan atm to be 50% in Zambia. This makes no sense on a tax level but as a final frontier, it's very exciting.
I do indeed have *all* the recreational hobbies you imagine wouldn't go down well in Dubai.
The difference is, of course, I don't need to spend five years there. Or anywhere, for that matter.
If I decide to leave the UK the worst I'm out is a single year in the Crown Dependencies (I know Jersey and Guernsey well through work, so know what I'm in for - IoM less so) then I can rebase myself somewhere civilized like Portugal on the D7 visa for the remaining four years. The key is to be in a 0% CGT regime for the year of the disposal then anywhere else for a chuckle for the next 4 years. Not living in a gilded cage with no drugs or bum sex for the next 5 years...
The lack of drugs or bum sex ain't an issue for me. Don't do them, so won't miss them.
(Would miss the English seasons. And that BBC i-player doesn't work in a gilded cage. They're my sex and drugs these days. Can I still have rock'n'roll?)
But the UK Government would deffo miss the tax on what I'm planning though.
Trumpeting an end to non-dom status gets a cheer from the Labour MPs.
Closing hospital wards because those who were non-doms take their money elsewhere - will that get a cheer, Labour?
Labour is about to learn - rich people pay for the NHS. Oh, and also that rich people are the most mobile on the planet. Fuck them off - and off they fuck.
The people who end up making up the difference are those who just already got clobbered today. The ones left cutting the jobs or not buying that discretionary item with its lovely VAT take for the government.
Though you'll probably end up closing a hospital ward too, Labour.
I can do without both, tbh, I prefer women, though am open to other options. And prefer pints to other substances, but, again, I keep a broad mind. I would have fewer options in the middle east, rather than none
I do have an issue with countries who want to persecute people simply because of their sexual preferences, but I'm an old fashioned liberal. So it wouldn't be my first choice.
I agreee entirely with the substance of your post. Be it non doms or just rich people deciding to bugger off - I suppose I'm one of the latter - rich people largely fund all the services everyone else takes for granted.
Labour keep on saying the widest shoulders should bear the highest burden, while ignoring the fact that the richest in the UK already shoulder a huge amount of the tax burden. And are globally mobile. And use very few services.
As I say, I'm less concerned about the 4% CGT hike and how it affects me, and more concerned that the UK is in a doom loop of low growth and poorer living standards. If you're rich and you can leave, why not?
We’ll have to work out the consequences of that in due course.
But we’re too big just to be a tax haven.
The other way round for me. I'd rather catch a hundred billionaires at 10% tax than 0 blliionaires at 40% tax.
It is an unpleasant fact of life that the richer you are the more globally mobile you are. In an ideal world we would tax the ultra wealthy at a rate equal to or greater than we tax the middle and working classes.
But when the ultra rich are globally mobile, it's a bidding war - which we are badly losing.
They are people who pay for our services while using very few of them, and Labour is driving them away.
That's all true, but there's a very important point you're missing though.
Even if the billionaires pay 0% tax, they still enrich the country through buying goods and services here, investing money, creating wealth and businesses, supporting charities and cultural events, etc etc etc. So the country is vastly better off for having them.
We need to look at their contribution to society in the aggregate, not just as fat cows for the public sector to milk. That is the Socialist way of thinking, and one that has gone unchallenged for far too long.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
Cuts? Government expenditure is the highest it has been since the 70s.
The problem is - as always - that there are some parts of the government budget that grow irrespective: simply, irrespective of what is going on in the world, the amount of money we pay out in pensions will rise, because there aree more retirees and the triple lock.
This means that the rest of the government budget is under perpetual pressure.
The State Pension is going to cost an additional £31 billion per year by the end of the parliament.
(or the cost of HS2 to Manchester)
The state pension is a drop in the bucket compared to the public sector pension issue
Well quite. I think people on generous defined benefit pensions should get the State Pension tapered away, a la Universal Credit. The same goes for people on massive private sector pensions and for people with significant assets.
As CGT is up with immediate effect, the amount I would now save by leaving the UK for 5 years stands at £59638 per annum over 5 years. Which is equivalent to a salary of 85k a year. Previous two jobs were 70k and 90k respectively, so split the difference and I can approximately afford to leave the UK, do nothing for five years, and end up in the same place as if I stayed here and worked.
The main reason for staying is that I'm still young-ish in my 40s and quite like work.
The main reason for leaving is the country is on its uppers and things are hardly likely to get better from here. Better to cash out now and enjoy one's retirement from warmer climes.
I'm less concerned about paying an extra 4% a year, more worried that the country is going to continue to get worse and my quality of life here will continue to decline.
As I said in the previous thread, if I do remain in the UK i will significantly alter my behaviour, making fewer capital disposals so as to incur less tax. If I leave I retire.
Decisions, decisions.
My feeling is that the UK is in terminal decline and this budget is another notch on the death spiral. The Tories screwed the pooch, but squeezing the life out of the private sector to give to the inefficient public sector is a one way ticket back to the 70s. So why not buy a one way ticket out...
Most of the 0% places are gonna seriously screw you over (far more than here) if you have certain recreational hobbies. Or accidentally annoy the local tyrants (far more than here). Just be aware of that.
If I were moving out of the country I'd be going somewhere in Africa, indeed it's my medium term plan atm to be 50% in Zambia. This makes no sense on a tax level but as a final frontier, it's very exciting.
I do indeed have *all* the recreational hobbies you imagine wouldn't go down well in Dubai.
The difference is, of course, I don't need to spend five years there. Or anywhere, for that matter.
If I decide to leave the UK the worst I'm out is a single year in the Crown Dependencies (I know Jersey and Guernsey well through work, so know what I'm in for - IoM less so) then I can rebase myself somewhere civilized like Portugal on the D7 visa for the remaining four years. The key is to be in a 0% CGT regime for the year of the disposal then anywhere else for a chuckle for the next 4 years. Not living in a gilded cage with no drugs or bum sex for the next 5 years...
The lack of drugs or bum sex ain't an issue for me. Don't do them, so won't miss them.
(Would miss the English seasons. And that BBC i-player doesn't work in a gilded cage. They're my sex and drugs these days. Can I still have rock'n'roll?)
But the UK Government would deffo miss the tax on what I'm planning though.
Trumpeting an end to non-dom status gets a cheer from the Labour MPs.
Closing hospital wards because those who were non-doms take their money elsewhere - will that get a cheer, Labour?
Labour is about to learn - rich people pay for the NHS. Oh, and also that rich people are the most mobile on the planet. Fuck them off - and off they fuck.
The people who end up making up the difference are those who just already got clobbered today. The ones left cutting the jobs or not buying that discretionary item with its lovely VAT take for the government.
Though you'll probably end up closing a hospital ward too, Labour.
I can do without both, tbh, I prefer women, though am open to other options. And prefer pints to other substances, but, again, I keep a broad mind. I would have fewer options in the middle east, rather than none
I do have an issue with countries who want to persecute people simply because of their sexual preferences, but I'm an old fashioned liberal. So it wouldn't be my first choice.
I agreee entirely with the substance of your post. Be it non doms or just rich people deciding to bugger off - I suppose I'm one of the latter - rich people largely fund all the services everyone else takes for granted.
Labour keep on saying the widest shoulders should bear the highest burden, while ignoring the fact that the richest in the UK already shoulder a huge amount of the tax burden. And are globally mobile. And use very few services.
As I say, I'm less concerned about the 4% CGT hike and how it affects me, and more concerned that the UK is in a doom loop of low growth and poorer living standards. If you're rich and you can leave, why not?
We’ll have to work out the consequences of that in due course.
But we’re too big just to be a tax haven.
The other way round for me. I'd rather catch a hundred billionaires at 10% tax than 0 blliionaires at 40% tax.
It is an unpleasant fact of life that the richer you are the more globally mobile you are. In an ideal world we would tax the ultra wealthy at a rate equal to or greater than we tax the middle and working classes.
But when the ultra rich are globally mobile, it's a bidding war - which we are badly losing.
They are people who pay for our services while using very few of them, and Labour is driving them away.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
Cuts? Government expenditure is the highest it has been since the 70s.
The problem is - as always - that there are some parts of the government budget that grow irrespective: simply, irrespective of what is going on in the world, the amount of money we pay out in pensions will rise, because there aree more retirees and the triple lock.
This means that the rest of the government budget is under perpetual pressure.
The State Pension is going to cost an additional £31 billion per year by the end of the parliament.
(or the cost of HS2 to Manchester)
The state pension is a drop in the bucket compared to the public sector pension issue
I think you’re confusing annual payments with total liabilities.
No I realise they are total liabilities but thge annual figure is also ever increasing and as the article nots tax payers are on the hook for the difference between the funding and total cost
Chips, green technology, plus the Trump bribes to the military-technology sector.
But that's not what Labour has proposed they've just spunked £22bn on "day to day spending for the NHS" so we're not going to get any kind of productivity gains are we? Where's our £20bn CHIPs act, where's our £10bn nuclear energy fund for 3rd and 4th gen reactor designs and a further £10bn for fusion energy commercialisation (an area we have a globally relevant industry in already), where's the £25bn fund for electrification of car manufacturing. No instead we're pissing £21bn on pie in the sky carbon capture and an unknown but massive amount on green (realistically blue) hydrogen.
If the US shows us what targeted investment can do, Labour have chosen to do the opposite.
"£60.1 billion is due to the direct effect of policy changes in this Budget, the largest sustained increase in spending in at least the past 15 years."
OBR report.
The BBC put it this way:
"Budget policies will increase UK borrowing by £19.6bn this year and by an average of £32.3bn over the next five years, according to the OBR"
This is the part of the budget that I am appalled at. We needed more taxes. We absolutely did not need to increase spending like this. We cannot afford it.
This is what I was worried about when the change to the fiscal rules was announced, to balance the budget for current spending. It must mean that there's a hefty increase in spending elsewhere, as well as spending on the NHS, but I haven't gone through the details yet. It didn't sound like there was a huge amount of infrastructure spending.
One other thing to bear in mind is that these increases in borrowing are still with the assumption that fuel duty will go up by a massive amount next year. But we can be almost certain that isn't going to happen. So there's also that additional money to find.
One crumb of comfort is that the OBR seem to have been quite cautious with their forecast. If Labour do manage to build as many houses as they promise, and the improvements to the NHS do have a positive effect on the economy, as argued, then economic performance could be better than the OBR forecast.
I think this budget has been a missed opportunity, but there are quite a few things in it that I think are good, and that make me glad we had this new government to deliver a budget, rather than the previous Conservative government.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
Cuts? Government expenditure is the highest it has been since the 70s.
The problem is - as always - that there are some parts of the government budget that grow irrespective: simply, irrespective of what is going on in the world, the amount of money we pay out in pensions will rise, because there aree more retirees and the triple lock.
This means that the rest of the government budget is under perpetual pressure.
The State Pension is going to cost an additional £31 billion per year by the end of the parliament.
(or the cost of HS2 to Manchester)
The state pension is a drop in the bucket compared to the public sector pension issue
Well quite. I think people on generous defined benefit pensions should get the State Pension tapered away, a la Universal Credit. The same goes for people on massive private sector pensions and for people with significant assets.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
Cuts? Government expenditure is the highest it has been since the 70s.
There's been plenty of cuts to lots of things outside protected areas. Local government has been forced to make major ones, spending on schools per pupil is below 2010. Most departments have faced major cuts since 2010, while pretty much all the New Labour targeted schemes and initiatives like Sure Start have gone.
The problem is we have an ageing population, who thankfully live longer, but therefore cost the state more. Who also expect a certain level of comfort and services in their old age, and previously have been very keen not be taxed beyond the level they expected when younger.
In part due to demographics, but also a decade and a half of low growth, the sums don't add up. So governments have race to stand still by cutting everything else or putting up other taxes - which in the case of the former, now can't be done much further without those parts of the state keeling over.
As to why, we saw the howls over the means testing of the Winter Fuel Allowance and how the 'Death Tax' partly did for Theresa May. Politically it's very difficult to be honest with people and say it's the case, because people think they've 'paid in' to take out (you did for your parents, your kids do for you - but there's not enough of them and their wages have got stuck).
Plus there are huge misconceptions about quite how much the government spends on certain things, usually the ones the public don't like the sound of, rahter than the bulk and growing portion of it going on things they'd be very upset about if they got cut.
That is the main issue, the baby-boom generation paid for the smaller shorter-lived generation before them and now expect the smaller generation after them to pay for them to have a higher standard of old age.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
Cuts? Government expenditure is the highest it has been since the 70s.
The problem is - as always - that there are some parts of the government budget that grow irrespective: simply, irrespective of what is going on in the world, the amount of money we pay out in pensions will rise, because there aree more retirees and the triple lock.
This means that the rest of the government budget is under perpetual pressure.
The State Pension is going to cost an additional £31 billion per year by the end of the parliament.
(or the cost of HS2 to Manchester)
The state pension is a drop in the bucket compared to the public sector pension issue
I think you’re confusing annual payments with total liabilities.
No I realise they are total liabilities but thge annual figure is also ever increasing and as the article nots tax payers are on the hook for the difference between the funding and total cost
Ok. So let’s compare apples with apples. What’s state pension liabilities vs public sector pension liabilities? Just interested in your ‘drop in the ocean’ comparison.
One penny off a pint of beer was really taking the piss
I'm glad it didn't go up, even though I don't often drink in pubs, but one penny off?
What's the fucking point?
while it is a token decrease, the interesting bit is that duty went up for non-draught beer, so there will be an increasing tax diferrential in favour of draught, and hence pubs over supermarkets.
Oh I missed that. How fabulous. That's exactly the policy direction I've been calling for over many years.
it needs to go a lot further. I would prefer higher tax on offsales, with corresponding cuts to on-sales, so people find pubs and bars better places to drink. More sociable too.
You want to tax me hard, don't you?
Should I just bend over while you get a huge payrise?
No he obviously has a preference for his local pub to stay open so we must all be forced to drink his way I suspect
Most 'local pub champions' use it once a year for an hour Christmas Day lunchtime and expect to be greeted like conquering heroes on entering.
Frankly I would be happy to never enter a bar again...they are generally full of boring people with body odour that want to talk about nothing but football or cricket, assuming you can even talk over the volume of the music. Then at some point in the evening someone will turn into an arsehole and cause a scene....yeah no thanks
I really dislike pubs. I can just about take a beer garden providing they're not too busy. Somewhere in my imagination there is an idyllic pub, where people speak softly to a friend and mind their own business. Possibly even a warm fire and some decent scran if needed.
I have an especial dislike for the newer blokey "gastro-pub but we're not really a gastro-pub because that sounds non-blokey" places. Craving their Michelin Star so they can really ramp the prices up and keep the riff-raff out.
Pubs differ massively. Our local (nicknamed the 'Asbo Arms') is cr@p. But there are so many different types and ambiances that I can't imagine someone not liking any of them.
I find gastropubs (there are a couple of good ones around here) great for food, but not for general drinking. A small pub in a nearby village is great for snuggling in the corner with a pint and a paper or a magazine, and just reading. Another makes you feel welcome the moment you enter the door.
I have so many fond memories of pubs. When I was walking Glyndwr's Way in mid-Wales, I stopped off mid-afternoon at a pub in a tiny village called Llangunllo, just wanting my water bottle filled before I camped out on the tops. The landlord was an ancient man in his nineties being visited by a nurse, and he told me just I could pull my own pint if I wanted.
The next day I descended from my camping spot into the next valley into a village, and I again wanted my water bottle filled. I nipped into the post office, whose owner turned out to be a relative of the pub landlord from the previous day, and she gave me a cup of tea and some cake! People would walk into the post office and take goods, the owner writing the purchases down in a little book for later settlement.
I have so many pleasant stories about pubs... and a handful of not-nice ones as well. But generally a small country pub can be a heavenly place.
I find pubs are as pleasant as you let them be.
On a break from painting a flat for charity, went into one of those estate pubs built into the fabric of a very Brutalist block. The kind of place they depict in crappy gangster films on Netflix.
The pint of Oliver’s Island was perfectly poured and in a clean glass.
I hope you used the opportunity to say the line "manners maketh the man".
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
Cuts? Government expenditure is the highest it has been since the 70s.
The problem is - as always - that there are some parts of the government budget that grow irrespective: simply, irrespective of what is going on in the world, the amount of money we pay out in pensions will rise, because there aree more retirees and the triple lock.
This means that the rest of the government budget is under perpetual pressure.
The State Pension is going to cost an additional £31 billion per year by the end of the parliament.
(or the cost of HS2 to Manchester)
The state pension is a drop in the bucket compared to the public sector pension issue
Well quite. I think people on generous defined benefit pensions should get the State Pension tapered away, a la Universal Credit. The same goes for people on massive private sector pensions and for people with significant assets.
1) Measuring public sector pensions as a liability as if there’s a fund is just silly, only the in year cost matters.
2) You can manage that by pushing out the retirement age (within the rules so easy to do), and upping the contributions.
3) Pensioner should pay NI (or ideally NI should be merged with IC).
To clarify, I'd taper the State Pension based on total income.
I have wondered about pensions and unemployment benefit being the same thing, taxable, and matched to the IC threshold at the same time as merging IC/NI. There’s a way to balance all that which sort of does what you are saying but automatically.
Chips, green technology, plus the Trump bribes to the military-technology sector.
But that's not what Labour has proposed they've just spunked £22bn on "day to day spending for the NHS" so we're not going to get any kind of productivity gains are we? Where's our £20bn CHIPs act, where's our £10bn nuclear energy fund for 3rd and 4th gen reactor designs and a further £10bn for fusion energy commercialisation (an area we have a globally relevant industry in already), where's the £25bn fund for electrification of car manufacturing. No instead we're pissing £21bn on pie in the sky carbon capture and an unknown but massive amount on green (realistically blue) hydrogen.
If the US shows us what targeted investment can do, Labour have chosen to do the opposite.
Reeves announced this today - but it has already been completed
One penny off a pint of beer was really taking the piss
I'm glad it didn't go up, even though I don't often drink in pubs, but one penny off?
What's the fucking point?
while it is a token decrease, the interesting bit is that duty went up for non-draught beer, so there will be an increasing tax diferrential in favour of draught, and hence pubs over supermarkets.
Oh I missed that. How fabulous. That's exactly the policy direction I've been calling for over many years.
it needs to go a lot further. I would prefer higher tax on offsales, with corresponding cuts to on-sales, so people find pubs and bars better places to drink. More sociable too.
You want to tax me hard, don't you?
Should I just bend over while you get a huge payrise?
No he obviously has a preference for his local pub to stay open so we must all be forced to drink his way I suspect
Most 'local pub champions' use it once a year for an hour Christmas Day lunchtime and expect to be greeted like conquering heroes on entering.
Frankly I would be happy to never enter a bar again...they are generally full of boring people with body odour that want to talk about nothing but football or cricket, assuming you can even talk over the volume of the music. Then at some point in the evening someone will turn into an arsehole and cause a scene....yeah no thanks
I really dislike pubs. I can just about take a beer garden providing they're not too busy. Somewhere in my imagination there is an idyllic pub, where people speak softly to a friend and mind their own business. Possibly even a warm fire and some decent scran if needed.
I have an especial dislike for the newer blokey "gastro-pub but we're not really a gastro-pub because that sounds non-blokey" places. Craving their Michelin Star so they can really ramp the prices up and keep the riff-raff out.
Pubs differ massively. Our local (nicknamed the 'Asbo Arms') is cr@p. But there are so many different types and ambiances that I can't imagine someone not liking any of them.
I find gastropubs (there are a couple of good ones around here) great for food, but not for general drinking. A small pub in a nearby village is great for snuggling in the corner with a pint and a paper or a magazine, and just reading. Another makes you feel welcome the moment you enter the door.
I have so many fond memories of pubs. When I was walking Glyndwr's Way in mid-Wales, I stopped off mid-afternoon at a pub in a tiny village called Llangunllo, just wanting my water bottle filled before I camped out on the tops. The landlord was an ancient man in his nineties being visited by a nurse, and he told me just I could pull my own pint if I wanted.
The next day I descended from my camping spot into the next valley into a village, and I again wanted my water bottle filled. I nipped into the post office, whose owner turned out to be a relative of the pub landlord from the previous day, and she gave me a cup of tea and some cake! People would walk into the post office and take goods, the owner writing the purchases down in a little book for later settlement.
I have so many pleasant stories about pubs... and a handful of not-nice ones as well. But generally a small country pub can be a heavenly place.
I find pubs are as pleasant as you let them be.
On a break from painting a flat for charity, went into one of those estate pubs built into the fabric of a very Brutalist block. The kind of place they depict in crappy gangster films on Netflix.
The pint of Oliver’s Island was perfectly poured and in a clean glass.
I hope you used the opportunity to say the line "manners maketh the man".
No. I didn’t have my umbrella.
Mostly prematurely ancient drinkers in there.
Should have bought them all a few drinks and some fags. We need to minimise the numbers who make it to old age for all the reasons discussed in this thread. May as well do it in a way they enjoy.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
Cuts? Government expenditure is the highest it has been since the 70s.
The problem is - as always - that there are some parts of the government budget that grow irrespective: simply, irrespective of what is going on in the world, the amount of money we pay out in pensions will rise, because there aree more retirees and the triple lock.
This means that the rest of the government budget is under perpetual pressure.
The State Pension is going to cost an additional £31 billion per year by the end of the parliament.
(or the cost of HS2 to Manchester)
The state pension is a drop in the bucket compared to the public sector pension issue
Well quite. I think people on generous defined benefit pensions should get the State Pension tapered away, a la Universal Credit. The same goes for people on massive private sector pensions and for people with significant assets.
1) Measuring public sector pensions as a liability as if there’s a fund is just silly, only the in year cost matters.
2) You can manage that by pushing out the retirement age (within the rules so easy to do), and upping the contributions.
3) Pensioner should pay NI (or ideally NI should be merged with IC).
To clarify, I'd taper the State Pension based on total income.
I have wondered about pensions and unemployment benefit being the same thing, taxable, and matched to the IC threshold at the same time as merging IC/NI. There’s a way to balance all that which sort of does what you are saying but automatically.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
Cuts? Government expenditure is the highest it has been since the 70s.
There's been plenty of cuts to lots of things outside protected areas. Local government has been forced to make major ones, spending on schools per pupil is below 2010. Most departments have faced major cuts since 2010, while pretty much all the New Labour targeted schemes and initiatives like Sure Start have gone.
The problem is we have an ageing population, who thankfully live longer, but therefore cost the state more. Who also expect a certain level of comfort and services in their old age, and previously have been very keen not be taxed beyond the level they expected when younger.
In part due to demographics, but also a decade and a half of low growth, the sums don't add up. So governments have race to stand still by cutting everything else or putting up other taxes - which in the case of the former, now can't be done much further without those parts of the state keeling over.
As to why, we saw the howls over the means testing of the Winter Fuel Allowance and how the 'Death Tax' partly did for Theresa May. Politically it's very difficult to be honest with people and say it's the case, because people think they've 'paid in' to take out (you did for your parents, your kids do for you - but there's not enough of them and their wages have got stuck).
Plus there are huge misconceptions about quite how much the government spends on certain things, usually the ones the public don't like the sound of, rahter than the bulk and growing portion of it going on things they'd be very upset about if they got cut.
That is the main issue, the baby-boom generation paid for the smaller shorter-lived generation before them and now expect the smaller generation after them to pay for them to have a higher standard of old age.
The ridiculous thing is, I actually don't mind paying for their retirement. But they keep voting for a party that wants us to pay for their retirement and nothing else!
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
Cuts? Government expenditure is the highest it has been since the 70s.
The problem is - as always - that there are some parts of the government budget that grow irrespective: simply, irrespective of what is going on in the world, the amount of money we pay out in pensions will rise, because there aree more retirees and the triple lock.
This means that the rest of the government budget is under perpetual pressure.
The State Pension is going to cost an additional £31 billion per year by the end of the parliament.
(or the cost of HS2 to Manchester)
The state pension is a drop in the bucket compared to the public sector pension issue
Well quite. I think people on generous defined benefit pensions should get the State Pension tapered away, a la Universal Credit. The same goes for people on massive private sector pensions and for people with significant assets.
1) Measuring public sector pensions as a liability as if there’s a fund is just silly, only the in year cost matters.
2) You can manage that by pushing out the retirement age (within the rules so easy to do), and upping the contributions.
3) Pensioner should pay NI (or ideally NI should be merged with IC).
To clarify, I'd taper the State Pension based on total income.
I have wondered about pensions and unemployment benefit being the same thing, taxable, and matched to the IC threshold at the same time as merging IC/NI. There’s a way to balance all that which sort of does what you are saying but automatically.
UBI….
Not quite. Or at least in the off meant socialist utopia sense. I’d still try to push folk off the unemployment benefit and do things like bin employer’s NI to encourage it.
Tends also to demonstrate that immigration is not the economic problem for the US that the GOP has been arguing.
Of course the UK is stuck, for now, in the worst of both worlds.
Yes this is what bothers me, they talked and talked about investment for years and when they got the chance they chose to hugely increase the OpEx budget with no plans for reforms or how to better spend the money meaning all that happens is a huge increase in inefficiency and waste as managers get landed with huge budget increases with no idea what to do with the money.
Comments
People are stupid but we're not that stupid to believe him.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1101707/how-often-brits-eat-and-drink-in-pubs/
The difference is, of course, I don't need to spend five years there. Or anywhere, for that matter.
If I decide to leave the UK the worst I'm out is a single year in the Crown Dependencies (I know Jersey and Guernsey well through work, so know what I'm in for - IoM less so) then I can rebase myself somewhere civilized like Portugal on the D7 visa for the remaining four years. The key is to be in a 0% CGT regime for the year of the disposal then anywhere else for a chuckle for the next 4 years. Not living in a gilded cage with no drugs or bum sex for the next 5 years...
I'm all ears, it is a big problem, I'd love to hear their solutions, see them work, and be proved wrong. So far it just seems like a load of guff, as though growth will simply magically appear and fix all our problems.
And who's to say that history might not look at that way, and regard Johnson's most disastrous contribution as his Ukrainian intervention leading to the accelerated destruction of Western prestige, unity, and wealth?
What it means is that huge pickup trucks will no longer have tax preference over smaller pickup trucks (I think the load capacity of 1 tonne is the dividing line), and only applies to crew cab pickups. In my view this just puts these in their proper place in the tax system, and is a moderately significant positive for road safety.
It should also have an impact on the intended plans of some Usonian car companies to start mass imports of "Light Trucks" using the Individual Vehicle Approval process as a loophole.
It was a Court Decision the HMRC won in early 2024 I think, and the Conservatives overruled as one of their Save Out Backside election gimmicks.
The benefit is that there will not be a large, artificial tax break encouraging the bigger, less safe for anyone who's not actually inside it, trucks on our roads - over the smaller ones. The smaller ones are also problematic, but it's a step forward.
Auto Express have a decent commentary article on it:
https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/vans/95748/double-cab-pick-up-truck-tax-benefits-explained
But it may take a while.
The Department for media and sport now has double the number it did in 2010 !!!!
Which is nonsense.
I'm completely stumped.
We can argue about appropriate levels of tax, but Casino is being a ridiculous absolutist.
https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&f=&t=2064428
(This is a thread from when the HRMC legal action was determined.)
(Would miss the English seasons. And that BBC i-player doesn't work in a gilded cage. They're my sex and drugs these days. Can I still have rock'n'roll?)
But the UK Government would deffo miss the tax on what I'm planning though.
Trumpeting an end to non-dom status gets a cheer from the Labour MPs.
Closing hospital wards because those who were non-doms take their money elsewhere - will that get a cheer, Labour?
Labour is about to learn - rich people pay for the NHS. Oh, and also that rich people are the most mobile on the planet. Fuck them off - and off they fuck.
The people who end up making up the difference are those who just already got clobbered today. The ones left cutting the jobs or not buying that discretionary item with its lovely VAT take for the government.
Though you'll probably end up closing a hospital ward too, Labour.
Relations with Europe will also need concrete improvements by 2029.
Having a set of standards for data across the nhs would have made life easier both for our company and rivals to provide software and for individual trusts to swap between providers for a starter as we would have common data layer to which our software would be the middle layer so each could access it in the best way for them.
Indeed when I left the company they had just won a contract from a large trust to provide our software but wanted changes to it....not because we didn't already have the functionality built in but they wanted a different workflow....so that was several million down the drain to reimplement what we already did in a slightly different flow
Is it breaking out of a decade-long slump? If so, why?
https://x.com/erikbryn/status/1851657310038634609
As to borrowing, again there seems to be universal agreement about the need for infrastructure investment.
The dead giveaway is this: the Tories can make political and polemical points about Labour, betrayals, etc, but they are not, SFAICS, able to give an alternative account (non-unicorn) of the better fiscal way in respect of tax, borrow and spend. If they could, they would.
These do fantastic things for efficiency, and save a lot of police officer time.
In Scotland at present it has to be reported, then a copper comes out to take a statement, rather than just uploading one with the video evidence. It is medieval.
TOWNIES: Great news, I dislike hairdressers / angry men driving these as a tax dodge down my urban streets
BUMPKINS: This absolutely shags the rural economy
TOWNIES: Just use your own car for non-business use
BUMPKINS: But everything is miles and miles and miles away. And when you need to take engineers plural out to site you'd need multiple vehicles
TOWNIES: Yebbut I don't like these other people driving pick-ups in town where they all get driven
Just saying ...
The problem is we have an ageing population, who thankfully live longer, but therefore cost the state more. Who also expect a certain level of comfort and services in their old age, and previously have been very keen not be taxed beyond the level they expected when younger.
In part due to demographics, but also a decade and a half of low growth, the sums don't add up. So governments have race to stand still by cutting everything else or putting up other taxes - which in the case of the former, now can't be done much further without those parts of the state keeling over.
As to why, we saw the howls over the means testing of the Winter Fuel Allowance and how the 'Death Tax' partly did for Theresa May. Politically it's very difficult to be honest with people and say it's the case, because people think they've 'paid in' to take out (you did for your parents, your kids do for you - but there's not enough of them and their wages have got stuck).
Plus there are huge misconceptions about quite how much the government spends on certain things, usually the ones the public don't like the sound of, rahter than the bulk and growing portion of it going on things they'd be very upset about if they got cut.
On a break from painting a flat for charity, went into one of those estate pubs built into the fabric of a very Brutalist block. The kind of place they depict in crappy gangster films on Netflix.
The pint of Oliver’s Island was perfectly poured and in a clean glass.
But, to return to a thing I've banged on about before...
In schools and colleges, what we're seeing is the result of years of patch and mend. It goes back decades, really, but it's got incredibly obvious since 2010. When a part of the system springs a leak, the quickest thing to do is to add another body to stop the immediate problem. Repeat and repeat until you get the setup we're seeing.
So yes, there are savings on year-by-year spending that can be made. But they require two things. One is enough capital money to do proper fixes. (Example: Havering council are opening another SEND school, which will be cheaper than bussing children out of area to access the services they need. The right thing to do, but it costs upfront, and getting the money and land has taken ages.) The other is to get state services in off the window ledge, with enough time and headspace to think about improving efficiency and not just managing crises.
Reeves's announcements today aren't a sufficient answer to the state's problems. But they are probably what's necessary now.
I do have an issue with countries who want to persecute people simply because of their sexual preferences, but I'm an old fashioned liberal. So it wouldn't be my first choice.
I agreee entirely with the substance of your post. Be it non doms or just rich people deciding to bugger off - I suppose I'm one of the latter - rich people largely fund all the services everyone else takes for granted.
Labour keep on saying the widest shoulders should bear the highest burden, while ignoring the fact that the richest in the UK already shoulder a huge amount of the tax burden. And are globally mobile. And use very few services.
As I say, I'm less concerned about the 4% CGT hike and how it affects me, and more concerned that the UK is in a doom loop of low growth and poorer living standards. If you're rich and you can leave, why not?
source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/10/30/harris-campaign-north-carolina-october-surprise/
Dana Milbank is a partisan Democrat, but more of an old-fashioned liberal than a modern leftist, so he is probably telling the truth.
(In the past, better organizations would be able to make a 1 or 2 percent difference. Hard to say how much difference they will make in this campaign -- but it wouldn't surprise me if they tipped North Carolina to Harris, as Milbank is arguing.)
This also has a knock on effect....a medical person swapping from one trust to another both of which used our software would have to learn again how it worked for their new trust because things would be in a different place
Mike Johnson says one of Trump’s top priorities will be to repeal the Affordable Care Act and rip away health care from tens of millions of Americans: “No Obamacare”
https://x.com/KamalaHQ/status/1851604970992263224
…along with Donald’s concepts of a plan* to replace it.
* Slightly smarter than Baldrick, if only with regard to messaging.
The same for the NHS. They keep finding amazing ways to keep unhealthy people alive who would have previously died from heart disease or something. That's also a productivity gain, yet also leads to more costs.
This is the conundrum across the whole of the public sector.
But we’re too big just to be a tax haven.
This means that the rest of the government budget is under perpetual pressure.
Labour will know at some level that they will havd to do the same, whether
their NHS changes work first, or not.
(or the cost of HS2 to Manchester)
1) more staff permanently; and
2) more staff temporarily due to change being hard.
As remainers never cease to remind us, the Brussels civil service is actually quite small, so the permanent effect shouldn't be too great.
https://www.pensionsage.com/pa/Public-sector-pension-bill-passes-size-of-the-economy-for-the-first-time.php
Chips, green technology, plus the Trump bribes to the military-technology sector.
It is an unpleasant fact of life that the richer you are the more globally mobile you are. In an ideal world we would tax the ultra wealthy at a rate equal to or greater than we tax the middle and working classes.
But when the ultra rich are globally mobile, it's a bidding war - which we are badly losing.
They are people who pay for our services while using very few of them, and Labour is driving them away.
I'd simultaneously widen Pension Credit eligibility.
Even if the billionaires pay 0% tax, they still enrich the country through buying goods and services here, investing money, creating wealth and businesses, supporting charities and cultural events, etc etc etc. So the country is vastly better off for having them.
We need to look at their contribution to society in the aggregate, not just as fat cows for the public sector to milk. That is the Socialist way of thinking, and one that has gone unchallenged for far too long.
2) You can manage that by pushing out the retirement age (within the rules so easy to do), and upping the contributions.
3) Pensioner should pay NI (or ideally NI should be merged with IC).
If the US shows us what targeted investment can do, Labour have chosen to do the opposite.
One other thing to bear in mind is that these increases in borrowing are still with the assumption that fuel duty will go up by a massive amount next year. But we can be almost certain that isn't going to happen. So there's also that additional money to find.
One crumb of comfort is that the OBR seem to have been quite cautious with their forecast. If Labour do manage to build as many houses as they promise, and the improvements to the NHS do have a positive effect on the economy, as argued, then economic performance could be better than the OBR forecast.
I think this budget has been a missed opportunity, but there are quite a few things in it that I think are good, and that make me glad we had this new government to deliver a budget, rather than the previous Conservative government.
Mostly prematurely ancient drinkers in there.
https://x.com/ACinWY/status/1851621664297038020?t=upjCYqHi0qu4a4XBINFI4Q&s=19
Of course the UK is stuck, for now, in the worst of both worlds.
Hillary did not lose because of the deplorables comment. She lost because she arrogantly thought beating Trump would be easy.
“It’s the people that surround her, they’re scum and they want to take down our country. They are absolute garbage.”
- Donald Trump, 9/7/24
https://x.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1851704355440689523
On its own, seems unlikely.