Dire economic background at the moment. Looking at the stock market we've had three retailers (Greggs, M&S, and Tesco) announce pretty reasonable updates this morning - all down (9%, 5%, 2%). These aren't normal times.
(I don't blame Reeves for this - she's just doing her best to deliver on Labour policy. And of course their policy is hardly a mad rush left, so although wrong-headed it's only moderately so. It's much more the state the country has drifted into over many years - since 1997 really)
The country is broke, people are broke. It’s not really a surprise. And instead of focusing on how we can turn the economy around we’re focused on lies about things that have already happened and absurdity about wanting to be dictated to by a foreigner.
The country is not broke. The people are not broke. I live near Glasgow Airport and every day thousands of people are flying on foreign holidays and business trips. The A380 double decker jumbo flies daily to Dubai. The Guardian's food critic recommends £50 lunches and £100 dinners. The average house is worth £300K. This a wealthy country, but the wealth is not being shared around.
It struck me while indulging in one of my guilty pleasures, Salvage Hunters Classic Cars, that there's a whole tranche of older people who are feeling no pain at all. They'd set up an event to flog off one of their restored classics, a Fiat or a Lancia I think, in a flashy all-white upper story car park. The car made an entrance from the lift to a bunch of drooling middle agers, none under 50, a few quite a bit older; it resembled some sort of porn event. I can't recall but presumably one of them shelled out to purchase the shiny trinket afterwards.
There are a lot of older people with second or even third homes, foreign holidays several times a year, expensive hobbies, collections of toys with which they've rewarded themselves, oodles of time to post intemperately on the internet on why fings aint what they used to be. There are also loads of young people who work low pay jobs and can barely afford to rent a room, let alone even think about owning their own home. Something's gotta give.
And yet, consider the average age of this board. If we're saying things are crap - and our demographic is fairly cushioned - imagine the tone on here were there some young people.
Hahahaha.
Sorry. Just remembering I'm not in the fairly cushioned category.
But I do have a plan. With my income as is, I can cunningly avoid any tax increases. And it's 100% legal.
Lots of talk on TwiX now about the millionaires and non Doms fleeing the UK. At a time of great impoverishment the Labour government has contrived to frighten away the most important part of our tax base, and told them btw private schools will be slowly abolished via taxes
It’s all adding up. All these allegedly small things are adding up to a looming and desperate collision with reality. Even as we allow in millions of migrants who will be a net drain on the treasury, house thousands of asylum seekers in the savoy at billions a year, and pay Tanzania forty trillion quid to take control of Cornwall
It’s coming. A crash
Brace
As always 'More or Less' is your friend. When you were spouting this awhile ago More or Less debunked it. Who to believe, some nutters on twitter or people who analyse the data properly. It appears the definition of millionaire and sample selection were, how can we put it, bollocks.
Are you seriously disputing that rich people are leaving the UK? Every metric shows they are and in number
COUTTS LONDON PRIME PROPERTY INDEX Q3 2024: PRICES DROP AND BUYERS GET BIGGER DISCOUNTS
Our latest research on luxury London property shows prices falling, average discounts close to 9% and almost 80% of sales coming in below asking price.
Nope I'm not. Just pointing out that last time you did this by quoting a survey you saw somewhere it turned out to be complete bollocks. I know you think you are always right, but you seem to have a very short memory and a very poor source of your data.
If it helps I can give you personal experience instead of surveys - over the pre Christmas drinks party rounds I met (and I noted the number for work reasons) 22 couples who have already or are in the process of moving here from the UK as an absolute direct result of Labour winning the election last year.
All of these people, all 22 couples were people who had set up successful businesses - not inherited money. They are selling or have sold their UK properties, stopped paying staff, stopped buying luxury goods and cars in the UK. Will not be setting up new business or employing people in the UK for the foreseeable future, not paying any more taxes to the UK.
This is one small place - just think how many are going to larger places such as Switzerland, Dubai etc.
I’m sure there will be people who say “good riddance” but remember the new car they bought each year covered an essential salary from the VAT. The shops they shopped in need fewer staff with fewer customers. Their gardeners and housekeepers will find fewer hours to work.
I’ve said it before - I do not rejoice in this, it’s not necessarily good for where I live but it’s worse for the UK which I love.
So ideologically sticking it to the rich will prove to be a stupid act of self harm.
It is a shame they're going. But I also fear there's very little we can do to help people who are so utterly selfish.
You are accusing people you have never met and know nothing about of being selfish. I’m not surprised. These people are not selfish, they are all people who donate to arts, charities, help out. They worked hard to build companies but reached a point where they felt that they weren’t appreciated and would be the scapegoats and cash cows for a society that has been told that they are a problem.
They have children, will have grandchildren and don’t want to be constantly abused on one hand then expected to shell out more and more by the abusers.
Much easier however to throw mud at them than actually think about how the situation has come to be.
Envy is probably the worst British vice and the country always suffers for it.
I'm not envious. I have a good life, and am lucky. And they are appreciated. As I hope Mrs J is for her hard work.
But yes, it is selfish. If this country is in a mess, then it needs more money (i.e. tax) to get it out of that mess.
And if they are as rich as you say, the situation may well have come about because the decisions made by people like them, and not the poorer.
Easy spending cut for Labour is £9bn to Mauritius.
But it's virtue spending as a luxury belief for them to show how wonderful they are. So I imagine it'll be sacred.
There have been more consultations/murmurings about Leeds getting a tram system. I expect this to be cancelled. Yet again (not party political, it's happened under them all, repeatedly).
To be fair, trams are just expensive and inflexible buses, that disrupt the city for many years while the streets are dug up to put the rails in. A metro system is the way to go, particularly for the centre - it can run above ground elsewhere.
Getting it built would require changes to processes though. The majority of the cost is in regulation.
Electric buses in dedicated bus lanes can deliver much of the benefits of trams.
But "Trams are more efficient" - I hear the cry.
If trams cost a zillion a mile, require years of planning, then sorry. You can't have lots of trams. Choices.
Much like the explosion (ha) of battery storage for power. Why? Because *stopping* people parking some shipping containers on some land is very difficult. So it may not be the best storage system. But it's the one that will happen.
I can tell you the least effective process: 1) Spend money hold a consultation/review of trams being added to Leeds' transport infrastructure. 2) Cancel the proposal. 3) Repeat step 1 again and again.
There's been millions spent over the years and it's just waste.
If we built as cheaply as do some of the European cities, Leeds might already have a tram system for the money already spent.
Lots of talk on TwiX now about the millionaires and non Doms fleeing the UK. At a time of great impoverishment the Labour government has contrived to frighten away the most important part of our tax base, and told them btw private schools will be slowly abolished via taxes
It’s all adding up. All these allegedly small things are adding up to a looming and desperate collision with reality. Even as we allow in millions of migrants who will be a net drain on the treasury, house thousands of asylum seekers in the savoy at billions a year, and pay Tanzania forty trillion quid to take control of Cornwall
It’s coming. A crash
Brace
As always 'More or Less' is your friend. When you were spouting this awhile ago More or Less debunked it. Who to believe, some nutters on twitter or people who analyse the data properly. It appears the definition of millionaire and sample selection were, how can we put it, bollocks.
Are you seriously disputing that rich people are leaving the UK? Every metric shows they are and in number
COUTTS LONDON PRIME PROPERTY INDEX Q3 2024: PRICES DROP AND BUYERS GET BIGGER DISCOUNTS
Our latest research on luxury London property shows prices falling, average discounts close to 9% and almost 80% of sales coming in below asking price.
Nope I'm not. Just pointing out that last time you did this by quoting a survey you saw somewhere it turned out to be complete bollocks. I know you think you are always right, but you seem to have a very short memory and a very poor source of your data.
If it helps I can give you personal experience instead of surveys - over the pre Christmas drinks party rounds I met (and I noted the number for work reasons) 22 couples who have already or are in the process of moving here from the UK as an absolute direct result of Labour winning the election last year.
All of these people, all 22 couples were people who had set up successful businesses - not inherited money. They are selling or have sold their UK properties, stopped paying staff, stopped buying luxury goods and cars in the UK. Will not be setting up new business or employing people in the UK for the foreseeable future, not paying any more taxes to the UK.
This is one small place - just think how many are going to larger places such as Switzerland, Dubai etc.
I’m sure there will be people who say “good riddance” but remember the new car they bought each year covered an essential salary from the VAT. The shops they shopped in need fewer staff with fewer customers. Their gardeners and housekeepers will find fewer hours to work.
I’ve said it before - I do not rejoice in this, it’s not necessarily good for where I live but it’s worse for the UK which I love.
So ideologically sticking it to the rich will prove to be a stupid act of self harm.
It is a shame they're going. But I also fear there's very little we can do to help people who are so utterly selfish.
That’s the most extreme ultranationalist comment I’ve ever seen on here.
Firstly I've lived through Labour governments before, secondly I have some knowledge of economics, and thirdly I have some knowledge of government and acquaintance with a few of the personalities.
From the first I got knew that Labour would shovel money and favours to their favoured interest groups while screwing over the enterprising and productive who make this country just about work (obviously having criticised the Conservatives for doing the same to a much lesser extent), from the second I knew that their policies were the exact opposite of what the country needs, and from the third I knew just how pisspoor they are at their jobs. I didn't agree with much of what Jeremy Hunt did, but compared to Reeves he is an intellectual colossus.
Though I won't claim to have anticipated that they'd become this unpopular this quickly - I thought dislike of the Conservatives would act as more of a prop to the government's favourability ratings than it has, and I also thought that voters would be more convinced by Starmer's lying gaslighting about being pro-growth etc. than they have been. Also I didn't realise that Starmer and Reeves would go around spreading gloom about the country's situation in such an utterly self-defeating and counter-productive way.
For the first time in my life I have taken to advising the few young people who have asked me to find another country for the next few years at least.
Lots of talk on TwiX now about the millionaires and non Doms fleeing the UK. At a time of great impoverishment the Labour government has contrived to frighten away the most important part of our tax base, and told them btw private schools will be slowly abolished via taxes
It’s all adding up. All these allegedly small things are adding up to a looming and desperate collision with reality. Even as we allow in millions of migrants who will be a net drain on the treasury, house thousands of asylum seekers in the savoy at billions a year, and pay Tanzania forty trillion quid to take control of Cornwall
It’s coming. A crash
Brace
As always 'More or Less' is your friend. When you were spouting this awhile ago More or Less debunked it. Who to believe, some nutters on twitter or people who analyse the data properly. It appears the definition of millionaire and sample selection were, how can we put it, bollocks.
Are you seriously disputing that rich people are leaving the UK? Every metric shows they are and in number
COUTTS LONDON PRIME PROPERTY INDEX Q3 2024: PRICES DROP AND BUYERS GET BIGGER DISCOUNTS
Our latest research on luxury London property shows prices falling, average discounts close to 9% and almost 80% of sales coming in below asking price.
Nope I'm not. Just pointing out that last time you did this by quoting a survey you saw somewhere it turned out to be complete bollocks. I know you think you are always right, but you seem to have a very short memory and a very poor source of your data.
If it helps I can give you personal experience instead of surveys - over the pre Christmas drinks party rounds I met (and I noted the number for work reasons) 22 couples who have already or are in the process of moving here from the UK as an absolute direct result of Labour winning the election last year.
All of these people, all 22 couples were people who had set up successful businesses - not inherited money. They are selling or have sold their UK properties, stopped paying staff, stopped buying luxury goods and cars in the UK. Will not be setting up new business or employing people in the UK for the foreseeable future, not paying any more taxes to the UK.
This is one small place - just think how many are going to larger places such as Switzerland, Dubai etc.
I’m sure there will be people who say “good riddance” but remember the new car they bought each year covered an essential salary from the VAT. The shops they shopped in need fewer staff with fewer customers. Their gardeners and housekeepers will find fewer hours to work.
I’ve said it before - I do not rejoice in this, it’s not necessarily good for where I live but it’s worse for the UK which I love.
So ideologically sticking it to the rich will prove to be a stupid act of self harm.
It is a shame they're going. But I also fear there's very little we can do to help people who are so utterly selfish.
Sorry. What? People who decide to live somewhere else with lower taxes are “utterly selfish”? Perhaps they feel countries with lower taxes will also be more welcoming to free enterprise and innovation? And - more importantly - it’s their money and they can do what they like
You often make painfully moronic remarks but this one is pretty up there
Pot. Kettle. Black.
Plastic patriots help ruin the country, bitch about it, then leave for others to clear up the mess.
I agree they can do what they like. But that does not mean they can not, and should not, be criticised.
Up until the end of the Second World War, anybody who fell outside of the cultural norm — white, British and Christian — was a novelty and would have lived in the full knowledge that they did not represent the municipal mainstream. The experience of London before the Second World War resembled modern monocultural Tokyo far more than it resembled modern multicultural New York...
For the first time in history, London’s permanent population is culturally, ethnically and religiously diverse, sharing little in common with the country it governs. This change was recent, rapid and remarkable. It is strange that we acknowledge it so rarely, and it would be ludicrous to assume that it has had no bearing on life in the city. Most Londoners know, regardless of whether they admit it, that crime has risen steeply. Certain areas of the city are effectively off-limits after dark...
The sticking-plaster solution is to engineer a new founding myth through brute-force messaging: London is, always has been and always will be multicultural. Londoners have always prided themselves on their pluralism and tolerance. This was inevitable. It cannot — must not — be questioned.
This seems to be a 28-year old or early thirtysomehing Toryboy chap who writes for the Telrgraph.
I doubt he even has any memory of London before about about 2005.
But I’m sure he’s heard tales at the feet of eg Douglas Murray. ‘Yer could walk miles without encountering a kebab shop and it weren’t illegal to call yerself English!’
Lots of talk on TwiX now about the millionaires and non Doms fleeing the UK. At a time of great impoverishment the Labour government has contrived to frighten away the most important part of our tax base, and told them btw private schools will be slowly abolished via taxes
It’s all adding up. All these allegedly small things are adding up to a looming and desperate collision with reality. Even as we allow in millions of migrants who will be a net drain on the treasury, house thousands of asylum seekers in the savoy at billions a year, and pay Tanzania forty trillion quid to take control of Cornwall
It’s coming. A crash
Brace
As always 'More or Less' is your friend. When you were spouting this awhile ago More or Less debunked it. Who to believe, some nutters on twitter or people who analyse the data properly. It appears the definition of millionaire and sample selection were, how can we put it, bollocks.
Are you seriously disputing that rich people are leaving the UK? Every metric shows they are and in number
COUTTS LONDON PRIME PROPERTY INDEX Q3 2024: PRICES DROP AND BUYERS GET BIGGER DISCOUNTS
Our latest research on luxury London property shows prices falling, average discounts close to 9% and almost 80% of sales coming in below asking price.
Nope I'm not. Just pointing out that last time you did this by quoting a survey you saw somewhere it turned out to be complete bollocks. I know you think you are always right, but you seem to have a very short memory and a very poor source of your data.
If it helps I can give you personal experience instead of surveys - over the pre Christmas drinks party rounds I met (and I noted the number for work reasons) 22 couples who have already or are in the process of moving here from the UK as an absolute direct result of Labour winning the election last year.
All of these people, all 22 couples were people who had set up successful businesses - not inherited money. They are selling or have sold their UK properties, stopped paying staff, stopped buying luxury goods and cars in the UK. Will not be setting up new business or employing people in the UK for the foreseeable future, not paying any more taxes to the UK.
This is one small place - just think how many are going to larger places such as Switzerland, Dubai etc.
I’m sure there will be people who say “good riddance” but remember the new car they bought each year covered an essential salary from the VAT. The shops they shopped in need fewer staff with fewer customers. Their gardeners and housekeepers will find fewer hours to work.
I’ve said it before - I do not rejoice in this, it’s not necessarily good for where I live but it’s worse for the UK which I love.
So ideologically sticking it to the rich will prove to be a stupid act of self harm.
It is a shame they're going. But I also fear there's very little we can do to help people who are so utterly selfish.
Sorry. What? People who decide to live somewhere else with lower taxes are “utterly selfish”? Perhaps they feel countries with lower taxes will also be more welcoming to free enterprise and innovation? And - more importantly - it’s their money and they can do what they like
You often make painfully moronic remarks but this one is pretty up there
Well it is literally a selfish, as opposed to altruistic decision. The "utterly" is a bit OTT, certainly.
How many people voluntarily pay lots more taxes if they can easily move and pay a lot less in taxes?! It's a nonsensical view of human nature
Ensuring one is prosperous is not selfishness, its enlightened self interest, looking after your self your family your kids your future. If you make money you will also, probably be less demanding of the state, you are also likely to employ people, start more companies, spend cash in restaurants, etc etc. All the positive things @boulay said. Also if these people move it's a good lesson to countries that stupidly impose high taxes so as to punish the enterprising - the lesson being: don't do it. Sadly it seems the UK is gonna have to learn this all over again as we did in 1960s and 70s, until we eventualy went bust
And I speak as someone who has voluntairly paid a LOT of tax to HMRC and the UK
Up until the end of the Second World War, anybody who fell outside of the cultural norm — white, British and Christian — was a novelty and would have lived in the full knowledge that they did not represent the municipal mainstream. The experience of London before the Second World War resembled modern monocultural Tokyo far more than it resembled modern multicultural New York...
For the first time in history, London’s permanent population is culturally, ethnically and religiously diverse, sharing little in common with the country it governs. This change was recent, rapid and remarkable. It is strange that we acknowledge it so rarely, and it would be ludicrous to assume that it has had no bearing on life in the city. Most Londoners know, regardless of whether they admit it, that crime has risen steeply. Certain areas of the city are effectively off-limits after dark...
The sticking-plaster solution is to engineer a new founding myth through brute-force messaging: London is, always has been and always will be multicultural. Londoners have always prided themselves on their pluralism and tolerance. This was inevitable. It cannot — must not — be questioned.
London has gone from massively majority white British to actually minority white British in about 40 years, an astonishing change. Why do people lie about this? The stats are there, and they are indisputable
London is also a far less violent city than it used to be. The stats are there and they are indisputable. The murder rate has halved in the last 20 years. It feels far safer walking the streets now than it did when I was growing up there in the late 1970s and early 1980s. There are fewer fights in pub, in the streets, at football matches. IRA bombs are a thing of the past. And so on.
We need a People's vote on whether people want to continue with Labour.
We have much more information now.
Exactly. And Brexit as well. Oh wait we only want to rerun elections in hindsight sometimes?
Brexit was revalidated by two extra general elections.
Not in the same time period it wasn't.
Yes it was. Over the lifespan of a typical parliament the 2015-2020 one (as projected) had a referendum and two extra general elections to validate it.
Lots of talk on TwiX now about the millionaires and non Doms fleeing the UK. At a time of great impoverishment the Labour government has contrived to frighten away the most important part of our tax base, and told them btw private schools will be slowly abolished via taxes
It’s all adding up. All these allegedly small things are adding up to a looming and desperate collision with reality. Even as we allow in millions of migrants who will be a net drain on the treasury, house thousands of asylum seekers in the savoy at billions a year, and pay Tanzania forty trillion quid to take control of Cornwall
It’s coming. A crash
Brace
As always 'More or Less' is your friend. When you were spouting this awhile ago More or Less debunked it. Who to believe, some nutters on twitter or people who analyse the data properly. It appears the definition of millionaire and sample selection were, how can we put it, bollocks.
Are you seriously disputing that rich people are leaving the UK? Every metric shows they are and in number
COUTTS LONDON PRIME PROPERTY INDEX Q3 2024: PRICES DROP AND BUYERS GET BIGGER DISCOUNTS
Our latest research on luxury London property shows prices falling, average discounts close to 9% and almost 80% of sales coming in below asking price.
Nope I'm not. Just pointing out that last time you did this by quoting a survey you saw somewhere it turned out to be complete bollocks. I know you think you are always right, but you seem to have a very short memory and a very poor source of your data.
If it helps I can give you personal experience instead of surveys - over the pre Christmas drinks party rounds I met (and I noted the number for work reasons) 22 couples who have already or are in the process of moving here from the UK as an absolute direct result of Labour winning the election last year.
All of these people, all 22 couples were people who had set up successful businesses - not inherited money. They are selling or have sold their UK properties, stopped paying staff, stopped buying luxury goods and cars in the UK. Will not be setting up new business or employing people in the UK for the foreseeable future, not paying any more taxes to the UK.
This is one small place - just think how many are going to larger places such as Switzerland, Dubai etc.
I’m sure there will be people who say “good riddance” but remember the new car they bought each year covered an essential salary from the VAT. The shops they shopped in need fewer staff with fewer customers. Their gardeners and housekeepers will find fewer hours to work.
I’ve said it before - I do not rejoice in this, it’s not necessarily good for where I live but it’s worse for the UK which I love.
So ideologically sticking it to the rich will prove to be a stupid act of self harm.
It is a shame they're going. But I also fear there's very little we can do to help people who are so utterly selfish.
It's interesting that some people like the half the idea of Global Britain - easy to come here and work. But the corollary to that is that people find it easier to leave.
Take one bloke in my team. Indian, first generation immigrant. Got wife and baby, no school as yet. Been in the country about 6 years. Why shouldn't he move to Berlin, or wherever?
He looks at what he is paying in taxes and what he gets for it. And is not impressed. Transactional, maybe. But why should he think differently?
I agree. Mrs J is in that situation. She could be earning more in Turkey - or the USA - than here. But we don't move. Why? Partly the reasons she moved to this country in the first place, and partly because the UK is still a good place to live on a moderate income.
Others disagree. But the country needs more money to fix problems it has. Austerity - which I was in favour of - has been tried, and probably went too far. So how else do we get the money? There is no magic money tree.
Dire economic background at the moment. Looking at the stock market we've had three retailers (Greggs, M&S, and Tesco) announce pretty reasonable updates this morning - all down (9%, 5%, 2%). These aren't normal times.
(I don't blame Reeves for this - she's just doing her best to deliver on Labour policy. And of course their policy is hardly a mad rush left, so although wrong-headed it's only moderately so. It's much more the state the country has drifted into over many years - since 1997 really)
The country is broke, people are broke. It’s not really a surprise. And instead of focusing on how we can turn the economy around we’re focused on lies about things that have already happened and absurdity about wanting to be dictated to by a foreigner.
That being true, why they fuck are we giving Mauritius £9bn?
Because we're run by fucking muppets who have starry-eyed idealistic views about the purety of "international law" and put it on a pedestal, and want to virtue-signal they've done real Decolonisation to their base.
What I noticed in one of the naughty drone shots was that the trees weren't actually burned - it was purely the ground vegetation and the housing. The tree tops still appeared to be green.
Perhaps building mostly wooden houses close together in a fire zone isn't a good idea.
Fingers crossed they can get it under control now the wind is dropping.
California building code is pretty strict, because it’s an earthquake zone, but there’s still too many houses of wooden construction. The brick or concrete houses tend to be the larger ones, but they all have big gardens filled with trees so the fire is coming through anyway.
The correct thing to do is a lot of preventative maintenance, such as clearing scrub off the floor in the forests, clearing areas for fire breaks in the forests, controlled burns before fire season, keeping street trees smaller and not overhanging property, making sure the reservoir for the fire hydrants is full etc etc.
It doesn’t look like this has happened, to the point where insurance companies have given up on insuring fire risk in many places because they’re increasingly uncontrollable. There’s going to be quite the political fallout if it turns out a bunch of Hollywood types have had uninsured mansions burn down. It won’t be forgotten like the fires in Maui were last year.
Yes, that's true re: earthquake codes. Wooden framed buildings fare much better than brick in an earthquake, so building them isn't totally insane.
Given the windspeed, I wonder what width you'd need for a firebreak?
When we get fires on the moors the bracken can roll up and blow half a mile away whilst still alight. I don't imagine their scrub is any different.
Dire economic background at the moment. Looking at the stock market we've had three retailers (Greggs, M&S, and Tesco) announce pretty reasonable updates this morning - all down (9%, 5%, 2%). These aren't normal times.
(I don't blame Reeves for this - she's just doing her best to deliver on Labour policy. And of course their policy is hardly a mad rush left, so although wrong-headed it's only moderately so. It's much more the state the country has drifted into over many years - since 1997 really)
The country is broke, people are broke. It’s not really a surprise. And instead of focusing on how we can turn the economy around we’re focused on lies about things that have already happened and absurdity about wanting to be dictated to by a foreigner.
That being true, why they fuck are we giving Mauritius £9bn?
Because we're run by fucking muppets who have starry-eyed idealistic views about the purety of "international law" and put it on a pedestal, and want to virtue-signal they've done real Decolonisation to their base.
I can't see any alternative Labour Chancellor doing much different so I expect her to stay. Given the need to cut borrowing that means either further higher taxes or spending cuts and the Labour Party base and unions would revolt unless it was the former
They can revolt as much as they want, but this is the reality and drastic cuts in spending and increase taxes is her only path, otherwise the IMF are waiting in the wings
More taxes are going to throttle economic growth, the reality is she needs to cut spending.
But the reality is that healthcare demand is fixed, criminal justice has to be fixed, and we need to strengthen our defences.
It’s an impossible puzzle to fix.
I think there's scope for big efficiency savings in some areas whilst others truly are down to the bone. The problem is those areas with plenty of fat still to cut aren't going to admit to it; so the only way it's ever going to get done is with something like the Musk/Ramaswamy/Millei approach of a vigorous external actor(s) coming in an saying we don't need this, this, this and this.
Our national budget is basically healthcare, welfare, police, schools, transport and defence. The rest is noise. And, frankly, it’s telly just health and welfare. Hard to find deep and meaningful cuts.
So, we have to cut health and welfare.
Or, in reality, further qualify what the NHS will pay for and what it will not.
One of the most damaging mistakes Labour made was bad-mouthing the UK economy after the election.
A combination of complacency at the state of the economy combined with an assumption that any damage caused be blamed on the previous government.
They are a bunch of managers, not leaders. That is the problem in my opinion. Maybe with the exception of Wes Streeting from what I have seen.
I don’t buy the right-wing crying about the economy though as our borrowing costs would be going through the roof regardless of who had won the election. Let’s not pretend that the Tories or Reform have any interest in actually balancing the budget.
Balancing the budget will require major cuts in spending. Somebody is going to have to do it and Labour are in the chair for the next 4 years.
We don't need to balance the budget. That's the naive Thatcher housewife fallacy.
The debt can continue to grow as long as it roughly keeps pace with economic growth.
There is no growth
Reeves is trying to tax her way to growth. Hardly a winning strategy.
It will be "one off wealth tax on millionaires" next.
I'm wondering if I've chosen the right time to retire (early)...
Same here, but I am committed now. Cannot go back. I think if I said "please have me back" they would but I don't want to do that.
I am glad I have a good buffer of cash as well as other investments and a DB which I am now looking to access early.
They are interviewing replacements for me, including some today.
Lots of talk on TwiX now about the millionaires and non Doms fleeing the UK. At a time of great impoverishment the Labour government has contrived to frighten away the most important part of our tax base, and told them btw private schools will be slowly abolished via taxes
It’s all adding up. All these allegedly small things are adding up to a looming and desperate collision with reality. Even as we allow in millions of migrants who will be a net drain on the treasury, house thousands of asylum seekers in the savoy at billions a year, and pay Tanzania forty trillion quid to take control of Cornwall
It’s coming. A crash
Brace
As always 'More or Less' is your friend. When you were spouting this awhile ago More or Less debunked it. Who to believe, some nutters on twitter or people who analyse the data properly. It appears the definition of millionaire and sample selection were, how can we put it, bollocks.
Are you seriously disputing that rich people are leaving the UK? Every metric shows they are and in number
COUTTS LONDON PRIME PROPERTY INDEX Q3 2024: PRICES DROP AND BUYERS GET BIGGER DISCOUNTS
Our latest research on luxury London property shows prices falling, average discounts close to 9% and almost 80% of sales coming in below asking price.
Nope I'm not. Just pointing out that last time you did this by quoting a survey you saw somewhere it turned out to be complete bollocks. I know you think you are always right, but you seem to have a very short memory and a very poor source of your data.
If it helps I can give you personal experience instead of surveys - over the pre Christmas drinks party rounds I met (and I noted the number for work reasons) 22 couples who have already or are in the process of moving here from the UK as an absolute direct result of Labour winning the election last year.
All of these people, all 22 couples were people who had set up successful businesses - not inherited money. They are selling or have sold their UK properties, stopped paying staff, stopped buying luxury goods and cars in the UK. Will not be setting up new business or employing people in the UK for the foreseeable future, not paying any more taxes to the UK.
This is one small place - just think how many are going to larger places such as Switzerland, Dubai etc.
I’m sure there will be people who say “good riddance” but remember the new car they bought each year covered an essential salary from the VAT. The shops they shopped in need fewer staff with fewer customers. Their gardeners and housekeepers will find fewer hours to work.
I’ve said it before - I do not rejoice in this, it’s not necessarily good for where I live but it’s worse for the UK which I love.
So ideologically sticking it to the rich will prove to be a stupid act of self harm.
It is a shame they're going. But I also fear there's very little we can do to help people who are so utterly selfish.
Sorry. What? People who decide to live somewhere else with lower taxes are “utterly selfish”? Perhaps they feel countries with lower taxes will also be more welcoming to free enterprise and innovation? And - more importantly - it’s their money and they can do what they like
You often make painfully moronic remarks but this one is pretty up there
If only all millionaires were not selfish wretches who want to keep their own money and were more like this lot.
I can't see any alternative Labour Chancellor doing much different so I expect her to stay. Given the need to cut borrowing that means either further higher taxes or spending cuts and the Labour Party base and unions would revolt unless it was the former
They can revolt as much as they want, but this is the reality and drastic cuts in spending and increase taxes is her only path, otherwise the IMF are waiting in the wings
More taxes are going to throttle economic growth, the reality is she needs to cut spending.
But the reality is that healthcare demand is fixed, criminal justice has to be fixed, and we need to strengthen our defences.
It’s an impossible puzzle to fix.
It can be with leadership, strong and loud objections and some political cost.
One think I'd go after is PIPs: Joe Lifestough shouldn't be paid £1.5k a month by the State to rent her own 1-bed flat in Brighton because she finds working at the civil service mentally straining. I'd also time-limit incapacity benefits, just as employers do, unless they are permanently disabled.
She can live with friends, family or others in a flatshare. Sure, she will still have issues and won't be as "independent" but we can't afford to keep everyone in clover as if they were all working full-time - a permanent furlough.
We need a People's vote on whether people want to continue with Labour.
We have much more information now.
Exactly. And Brexit as well. Oh wait we only want to rerun elections in hindsight sometimes?
Brexit was revalidated by two extra general elections.
Not in the same time period it wasn't.
Yes it was. Over the lifespan of a typical parliament the 2015-2020 one (as projected) had a referendum and two extra general elections to validate it.
Next.
No it isn't. You are calling for a people's vote to get rid of Labour literally months after the election. That isn't a life span of a typical parliament. I'm no fan of labour, but that is not how a democracy works.
You can't keep asking for a GE when you don't like what the Govt does, particularly if it has a large majority.
We've covered the misleading stats, about London now being minority White British several times on PB before.
There are a substantial number of white and British people on London of Continental European origin not putting White British on the census, because they think that means only anglo-saxon/celtic. It shouldn't mean that, as British is a civic not ethnic category, and that's English or Celtic. The government needs to change the categories.
Dire economic background at the moment. Looking at the stock market we've had three retailers (Greggs, M&S, and Tesco) announce pretty reasonable updates this morning - all down (9%, 5%, 2%). These aren't normal times.
(I don't blame Reeves for this - she's just doing her best to deliver on Labour policy. And of course their policy is hardly a mad rush left, so although wrong-headed it's only moderately so. It's much more the state the country has drifted into over many years - since 1997 really)
The country is broke, people are broke. It’s not really a surprise. And instead of focusing on how we can turn the economy around we’re focused on lies about things that have already happened and absurdity about wanting to be dictated to by a foreigner.
The country is not broke. The people are not broke. I live near Glasgow Airport and every day thousands of people are flying on foreign holidays and business trips. The A380 double decker jumbo flies daily to Dubai. The Guardian's food critic recommends £50 lunches and £100 dinners. The average house is worth £300K. This a wealthy country, but the wealth is not being shared around.
It struck me while indulging in one of my guilty pleasures, Salvage Hunters Classic Cars, that there's a whole tranche of older people who are feeling no pain at all. They'd set up an event to flog off one of their restored classics, a Fiat or a Lancia I think, in a flashy all-white upper story car park. The car made an entrance from the lift to a bunch of drooling middle agers, none under 50, a few quite a bit older; it resembled some sort of porn event. I can't recall but presumably one of them shelled out to purchase the shiny trinket afterwards.
There are a lot of older people with second or even third homes, foreign holidays several times a year, expensive hobbies, collections of toys with which they've rewarded themselves, oodles of time to post intemperately on the internet on why fings aint what they used to be. There are also loads of young people who work low pay jobs and can barely afford to rent a room, let alone even think about owning their own home. Something's gotta give.
And yet, consider the average age of this board. If we're saying things are crap - and our demographic is fairly cushioned - imagine the tone on here were there some young people.
Cost of housing, innit?
If you have a paid-off mortgage, life is probably still pretty peachy. If you are paying 2025-level market rents, you are stuffed no matter how much you earn.
Until that gets fixed, not much else matters. Increased prosperity just feeds into higher house prices so why bother?
This government, imperfect as it is, does seem to get that better than the alternatives. Whether it gets it well enough remains to be seen.
(And how much of the moaning here is people doing badly themselves, as opposed to people hearing that it's going badly and resenting being out of power themselves?)
One of the most damaging mistakes Labour made was bad-mouthing the UK economy after the election.
A combination of complacency at the state of the economy combined with an assumption that any damage caused be blamed on the previous government.
They are a bunch of managers, not leaders. That is the problem in my opinion. Maybe with the exception of Wes Streeting from what I have seen.
I don’t buy the right-wing crying about the economy though as our borrowing costs would be going through the roof regardless of who had won the election. Let’s not pretend that the Tories or Reform have any interest in actually balancing the budget.
Balancing the budget will require major cuts in spending. Somebody is going to have to do it and Labour are in the chair for the next 4 years.
We don't need to balance the budget. That's the naive Thatcher housewife fallacy.
The debt can continue to grow as long as it roughly keeps pace with economic growth.
It can, but given that about £100bn of government spending is already debt interest, it's not really in our economic interest to do so.
If we didn't have the existing debt, and therefore weren't paying the interest payments on it, the governments books would about balance now, instead of being miles out of wack.
Outside of wartime and national emergencies, wise governments should not borrow.
Up until the end of the Second World War, anybody who fell outside of the cultural norm — white, British and Christian — was a novelty and would have lived in the full knowledge that they did not represent the municipal mainstream. The experience of London before the Second World War resembled modern monocultural Tokyo far more than it resembled modern multicultural New York...
For the first time in history, London’s permanent population is culturally, ethnically and religiously diverse, sharing little in common with the country it governs. This change was recent, rapid and remarkable. It is strange that we acknowledge it so rarely, and it would be ludicrous to assume that it has had no bearing on life in the city. Most Londoners know, regardless of whether they admit it, that crime has risen steeply. Certain areas of the city are effectively off-limits after dark...
The sticking-plaster solution is to engineer a new founding myth through brute-force messaging: London is, always has been and always will be multicultural. Londoners have always prided themselves on their pluralism and tolerance. This was inevitable. It cannot — must not — be questioned.
They never name these no-go areas of course. It should be noted that whilst the author is a Cambridge-educated law graduate , they are also a Director of an Adam Smith institute thinktank so have a strong political agenda. As someone who'd lived in London for some time, I've suffered from crime (bike theft and burglary) but less frequently than when I was a student in Newcastle and the only times I've been threatened with violence is as a cyclist by white British male drivers (note: people who have stopped and exited their vehicle to threaten violence, not just poor or deliberately dangerous driving.).
What Leon is obviously hoping for is an economic event sufficient to force the U.K. back into the EEA.
Getting rid of the Brexit bureaucracy has got to be worth a few percent on gdp.
Except it wouldn't. It would probably only be worth 0.2-0.4% of GDP pa, and you can look at pre-Brexit figures if you don't believe me.
On the other side of the ledger you'd have a debit for where we can't take advantage of new technologies, like AI, and flexibility in trade and foreign policy.
One of the most damaging mistakes Labour made was bad-mouthing the UK economy after the election.
A combination of complacency at the state of the economy combined with an assumption that any damage caused be blamed on the previous government.
They are a bunch of managers, not leaders. That is the problem in my opinion. Maybe with the exception of Wes Streeting from what I have seen.
I don’t buy the right-wing crying about the economy though as our borrowing costs would be going through the roof regardless of who had won the election. Let’s not pretend that the Tories or Reform have any interest in actually balancing the budget.
Balancing the budget will require major cuts in spending. Somebody is going to have to do it and Labour are in the chair for the next 4 years.
We don't need to balance the budget. That's the naive Thatcher housewife fallacy.
The debt can continue to grow as long as it roughly keeps pace with economic growth.
There is no growth
Reeves is trying to tax her way to growth. Hardly a winning strategy.
It will be "one off wealth tax on millionaires" next.
I'm wondering if I've chosen the right time to retire (early)...
Same here, but I am committed now. Cannot go back. I think if I said "please have me back" they would but I don't want to do that.
I am glad I have a good buffer of cash as well as other investments and a DB which I am now looking to access early.
They are interviewing replacements for me, including some today.
Yes, pretty much identical situation here although no DB. I'm 99.9% sure it will be fine, but it is nonetheless quite a big step.
None of you would be saying this had he backed Harris and the Dems.
Don't deny it, we won't believe you.
Musk proved himself to be an utter berk even before he started going political, remember when he got the hump with divers rejecting his submarine for that cave rescue in Thailand?
Even if Musk never said a single political thing he's made a ridiculous number of stupid comments and made claims he hasn't kept.
Yeah sure, and he was criticised for that, including by me, but he wasn't called a loser and a fascist and the biggest threat to the world and all that sort of hyperbolic nonsense we now see on here on a daily basis.
Easy spending cut for Labour is £9bn to Mauritius.
But it's virtue spending as a luxury belief for them to show how wonderful they are. So I imagine it'll be sacred.
There have been more consultations/murmurings about Leeds getting a tram system. I expect this to be cancelled. Yet again (not party political, it's happened under them all, repeatedly).
To be fair, trams are just expensive and inflexible buses, that disrupt the city for many years while the streets are dug up to put the rails in. A metro system is the way to go, particularly for the centre - it can run above ground elsewhere.
Getting it built would require changes to processes though. The majority of the cost is in regulation.
Electric buses in dedicated bus lanes can deliver much of the benefits of trams.
But "Trams are more efficient" - I hear the cry.
If trams cost a zillion a mile, require years of planning, then sorry. You can't have lots of trams. Choices.
Much like the explosion (ha) of battery storage for power. Why? Because *stopping* people parking some shipping containers on some land is very difficult. So it may not be the best storage system. But it's the one that will happen.
Indeed. The thinking on public transport solutions is incredibly sticky and beliefs last for decades longer than the evidence justifies but are simply repeated as rote taken on faith.
Metros are more expensive than trams, inevitably, but can move many times more people so the cost per passenger mile should be lower, if planned properly. Otherwise, yes, buses.
One of the most damaging mistakes Labour made was bad-mouthing the UK economy after the election.
A combination of complacency at the state of the economy combined with an assumption that any damage caused be blamed on the previous government.
They are a bunch of managers, not leaders. That is the problem in my opinion. Maybe with the exception of Wes Streeting from what I have seen.
I don’t buy the right-wing crying about the economy though as our borrowing costs would be going through the roof regardless of who had won the election. Let’s not pretend that the Tories or Reform have any interest in actually balancing the budget.
Balancing the budget will require major cuts in spending. Somebody is going to have to do it and Labour are in the chair for the next 4 years.
I agree on the whole but I stand by my point that it is laughable to pretend either the Tories or Reform have any interest in doing so.
I will go further and argue that the electorate as a whole has no interest in doing so either. It will take a talented politician to be able to take the country with them on this.
Except for the next 4 years that is Labour's problem
I am not sure what your point is. You can validly criticise Labour for this but if the party you support wouldn’t do anything differently it just comes across as ridiculous.
The conservatives would not have talked down the economy for months nor would they have produced a jobs and growth destroying budget
This crisis is Labour's and they own it
They have squandered the golden legacy?
More that having inherited a modest hole, they've jumped in and started shoveling with enthusiasm "next stop Australia".
The Telegraph helpfully includes a graph showing gilt yields did spike under Truss but then returned to that level after Labour's July 2023 election win.
Hold on, July 2023...?
I think that was actually under Sunak
They priced in the assumption, correctly, of an incoming Labour administration once it was clear Sunak couldn't recover it.
Lots of talk on TwiX now about the millionaires and non Doms fleeing the UK. At a time of great impoverishment the Labour government has contrived to frighten away the most important part of our tax base, and told them btw private schools will be slowly abolished via taxes
It’s all adding up. All these allegedly small things are adding up to a looming and desperate collision with reality. Even as we allow in millions of migrants who will be a net drain on the treasury, house thousands of asylum seekers in the savoy at billions a year, and pay Tanzania forty trillion quid to take control of Cornwall
It’s coming. A crash
Brace
As always 'More or Less' is your friend. When you were spouting this awhile ago More or Less debunked it. Who to believe, some nutters on twitter or people who analyse the data properly. It appears the definition of millionaire and sample selection were, how can we put it, bollocks.
Are you seriously disputing that rich people are leaving the UK? Every metric shows they are and in number
COUTTS LONDON PRIME PROPERTY INDEX Q3 2024: PRICES DROP AND BUYERS GET BIGGER DISCOUNTS
Our latest research on luxury London property shows prices falling, average discounts close to 9% and almost 80% of sales coming in below asking price.
Nope I'm not. Just pointing out that last time you did this by quoting a survey you saw somewhere it turned out to be complete bollocks. I know you think you are always right, but you seem to have a very short memory and a very poor source of your data.
If it helps I can give you personal experience instead of surveys - over the pre Christmas drinks party rounds I met (and I noted the number for work reasons) 22 couples who have already or are in the process of moving here from the UK as an absolute direct result of Labour winning the election last year.
All of these people, all 22 couples were people who had set up successful businesses - not inherited money. They are selling or have sold their UK properties, stopped paying staff, stopped buying luxury goods and cars in the UK. Will not be setting up new business or employing people in the UK for the foreseeable future, not paying any more taxes to the UK.
This is one small place - just think how many are going to larger places such as Switzerland, Dubai etc.
I’m sure there will be people who say “good riddance” but remember the new car they bought each year covered an essential salary from the VAT. The shops they shopped in need fewer staff with fewer customers. Their gardeners and housekeepers will find fewer hours to work.
I’ve said it before - I do not rejoice in this, it’s not necessarily good for where I live but it’s worse for the UK which I love.
So ideologically sticking it to the rich will prove to be a stupid act of self harm.
It is a shame they're going. But I also fear there's very little we can do to help people who are so utterly selfish.
Sorry. What? People who decide to live somewhere else with lower taxes are “utterly selfish”? Perhaps they feel countries with lower taxes will also be more welcoming to free enterprise and innovation? And - more importantly - it’s their money and they can do what they like
You often make painfully moronic remarks but this one is pretty up there
Well it is literally a selfish, as opposed to altruistic decision. The "utterly" is a bit OTT, certainly.
How many people voluntarily pay lots more taxes if they can easily move and pay a lot less in taxes?! It's a nonsensical view of human nature
Ensuring one is prosperous is not selfishness, its enlightened self interest, looking after your self your family your kids your future. If you make money you will also, probably be less demanding of the state, you are also likely to employ people, start more companies, spend cash in restaurants, etc etc. All the positive things @boulay said. Also if these people move it's a good lesson to countries that stupidly impose high taxes so as to punish the enterprising - the lesson being: don't do it. Sadly it seems the UK is gonna have to learn this all over again as we did in 1960s and 70s, until we eventualy went bust
And I speak as someone who has voluntairly paid a LOT of tax to HMRC and the UK
Most wealthy people stay put. Those that leave to pay less tax elsewhere clearly value their wealth above other things. We all "voluntarily" pay our taxes because the alternative is pretty expensive!
One of the most damaging mistakes Labour made was bad-mouthing the UK economy after the election.
A combination of complacency at the state of the economy combined with an assumption that any damage caused be blamed on the previous government.
They are a bunch of managers, not leaders. That is the problem in my opinion. Maybe with the exception of Wes Streeting from what I have seen.
I don’t buy the right-wing crying about the economy though as our borrowing costs would be going through the roof regardless of who had won the election. Let’s not pretend that the Tories or Reform have any interest in actually balancing the budget.
Balancing the budget will require major cuts in spending. Somebody is going to have to do it and Labour are in the chair for the next 4 years.
We don't need to balance the budget. That's the naive Thatcher housewife fallacy.
The debt can continue to grow as long as it roughly keeps pace with economic growth.
It can, but given that about £100bn of government spending is already debt interest, it's not really in our economic interest to do so.
If we didn't have the existing debt, and therefore weren't paying the interest payments on it, the governments books would about balance now, instead of being miles out of wack.
Outside of wartime and national emergencies, wise governments should not borrow.
Outside of wartime and national emergencies, wise governments do not borrow.
Easy spending cut for Labour is £9bn to Mauritius.
But it's virtue spending as a luxury belief for them to show how wonderful they are. So I imagine it'll be sacred.
There have been more consultations/murmurings about Leeds getting a tram system. I expect this to be cancelled. Yet again (not party political, it's happened under them all, repeatedly).
To be fair, trams are just expensive and inflexible buses, that disrupt the city for many years while the streets are dug up to put the rails in. A metro system is the way to go, particularly for the centre - it can run above ground elsewhere.
Getting it built would require changes to processes though. The majority of the cost is in regulation.
Electric buses in dedicated bus lanes can deliver much of the benefits of trams.
But "Trams are more efficient" - I hear the cry.
If trams cost a zillion a mile, require years of planning, then sorry. You can't have lots of trams. Choices.
Much like the explosion (ha) of battery storage for power. Why? Because *stopping* people parking some shipping containers on some land is very difficult. So it may not be the best storage system. But it's the one that will happen.
I'm not convinced by "Trams take forever to build" type comment.
Nottingham has two tramlines - a total of 20 miles and 50 station, done one line, then the other added. In each case starting work on site to the tram starting operating took 4 years.
Getting everything in place, around permissions and funding, took about twice as long, and more for the first one.
Trams are more efficient. As a like for like, put a double decker bus on a tramway with tram wheels and it uses about 85-90% less energy at 30mph. Plus they are more efficient in staff per passenger, and go at higher speed.
A zillion per mile is much to do with planning process, like everything else, and how the numbers are added up - I blame the Treasury. The way we cost our roads are also completely screwed-up, though I think that may be being changed around now; I think it was on Louise Haigh's agenda.
The Telegraph helpfully includes a graph showing gilt yields did spike under Truss but then returned to that level after Labour's July 2023 election win.
Hold on, July 2023...?
I think that was actually under Sunak
They priced in the assumption, correctly, of an incoming Labour administration once it was clear Sunak couldn't recover it.
Well that's bollocks. With a year and a half to go before the election, what about the swingback you were all expecting at that moment.
Dire economic background at the moment. Looking at the stock market we've had three retailers (Greggs, M&S, and Tesco) announce pretty reasonable updates this morning - all down (9%, 5%, 2%). These aren't normal times.
(I don't blame Reeves for this - she's just doing her best to deliver on Labour policy. And of course their policy is hardly a mad rush left, so although wrong-headed it's only moderately so. It's much more the state the country has drifted into over many years - since 1997 really)
The country is broke, people are broke. It’s not really a surprise. And instead of focusing on how we can turn the economy around we’re focused on lies about things that have already happened and absurdity about wanting to be dictated to by a foreigner.
That being true, why they fuck are we giving Mauritius £9bn?
Because we're run by fucking muppets who have starry-eyed idealistic views about the purety of "international law" and put it on a pedestal, and want to virtue-signal they've done real Decolonisation to their base.
This is not an ideological point, though - it's simply a massive and unnecessary waste of money.
A competent opposition would be raising this weekly at PMQs - without going down the rabbithole of "decolonialisation", which is a distraction of no interest to the majority of the electorate. Likely including the majority of Labour's "base", as opposed to their activists.
That £9bn, and the £15bn you'd free up by cutting three quarters of the CCS commitment (leaving the balance to fund genuine research), would replace a large slug of the headroom Reeves just lost.
Lots of talk on TwiX now about the millionaires and non Doms fleeing the UK. At a time of great impoverishment the Labour government has contrived to frighten away the most important part of our tax base, and told them btw private schools will be slowly abolished via taxes
It’s all adding up. All these allegedly small things are adding up to a looming and desperate collision with reality. Even as we allow in millions of migrants who will be a net drain on the treasury, house thousands of asylum seekers in the savoy at billions a year, and pay Tanzania forty trillion quid to take control of Cornwall
It’s coming. A crash
Brace
To which the answer seems to be a mix of "so your patriotism only runs skin-deep?" or "well, fuck off then".
The consistent belief is that businesses and professionals are only there to be milked to death and should bloody well accept it.
By the way, mentioning Truss, she has gone completely full Trump with her cease-and-desist letter the Starmer about 'crashing the economy'.
Leave aside the issue about free speech, and it being necessary to a functioning democracy; leave aside the hypocrisy of her fellow travellers doing far worse *to* Starmer over the child rape gangs. Unlike Trump, she's not in a position to do any censorship, either soft or hard so it's just moronic politics. Raising the issue again just reminds people that she did spike interest rates and nearly brought down a load of pension funds - ironically, just at the time that Labour should be facing heat on the issue.
Up until the end of the Second World War, anybody who fell outside of the cultural norm — white, British and Christian — was a novelty and would have lived in the full knowledge that they did not represent the municipal mainstream. The experience of London before the Second World War resembled modern monocultural Tokyo far more than it resembled modern multicultural New York...
For the first time in history, London’s permanent population is culturally, ethnically and religiously diverse, sharing little in common with the country it governs. This change was recent, rapid and remarkable. It is strange that we acknowledge it so rarely, and it would be ludicrous to assume that it has had no bearing on life in the city. Most Londoners know, regardless of whether they admit it, that crime has risen steeply. Certain areas of the city are effectively off-limits after dark...
The sticking-plaster solution is to engineer a new founding myth through brute-force messaging: London is, always has been and always will be multicultural. Londoners have always prided themselves on their pluralism and tolerance. This was inevitable. It cannot — must not — be questioned.
London has gone from massively majority white British to actually minority white British in about 40 years, an astonishing change. Why do people lie about this? The stats are there, and they are indisputable
London is also a far less violent city than it used to be. The stats are there and they are indisputable. The murder rate has halved in the last 20 years. It feels far safer walking the streets now than it did when I was growing up there in the late 1970s and early 1980s. There are fewer fights in pub, in the streets, at football matches. IRA bombs are a thing of the past. And so on.
Yes I remember people simply walking into supermarkets and stealing what they wanted with impunity, in the 90s. And all those machete fights. And the thing. And the endless phone thefts of the noughties
Fact is you can switch it multiple ways, by some stats London is safer, in others- knife crime is an example - it really isn't
What I CAN say for sure is that London used to "feel" a lot safer than most big developed cities around the world. That is no longer the case. eg Phone theft is almost unheard of in East Asia, likewise mugging. I am right now in the most vivid raucous nightlifey area of Bangkok. It feels safer than Soho because it is. I can leave my phone on a table and it won't get nicked
Lots of talk on TwiX now about the millionaires and non Doms fleeing the UK. At a time of great impoverishment the Labour government has contrived to frighten away the most important part of our tax base, and told them btw private schools will be slowly abolished via taxes
It’s all adding up. All these allegedly small things are adding up to a looming and desperate collision with reality. Even as we allow in millions of migrants who will be a net drain on the treasury, house thousands of asylum seekers in the savoy at billions a year, and pay Tanzania forty trillion quid to take control of Cornwall
It’s coming. A crash
Brace
As always 'More or Less' is your friend. When you were spouting this awhile ago More or Less debunked it. Who to believe, some nutters on twitter or people who analyse the data properly. It appears the definition of millionaire and sample selection were, how can we put it, bollocks.
Are you seriously disputing that rich people are leaving the UK? Every metric shows they are and in number
COUTTS LONDON PRIME PROPERTY INDEX Q3 2024: PRICES DROP AND BUYERS GET BIGGER DISCOUNTS
Our latest research on luxury London property shows prices falling, average discounts close to 9% and almost 80% of sales coming in below asking price.
Nope I'm not. Just pointing out that last time you did this by quoting a survey you saw somewhere it turned out to be complete bollocks. I know you think you are always right, but you seem to have a very short memory and a very poor source of your data.
If it helps I can give you personal experience instead of surveys - over the pre Christmas drinks party rounds I met (and I noted the number for work reasons) 22 couples who have already or are in the process of moving here from the UK as an absolute direct result of Labour winning the election last year.
All of these people, all 22 couples were people who had set up successful businesses - not inherited money. They are selling or have sold their UK properties, stopped paying staff, stopped buying luxury goods and cars in the UK. Will not be setting up new business or employing people in the UK for the foreseeable future, not paying any more taxes to the UK.
This is one small place - just think how many are going to larger places such as Switzerland, Dubai etc.
I’m sure there will be people who say “good riddance” but remember the new car they bought each year covered an essential salary from the VAT. The shops they shopped in need fewer staff with fewer customers. Their gardeners and housekeepers will find fewer hours to work.
I’ve said it before - I do not rejoice in this, it’s not necessarily good for where I live but it’s worse for the UK which I love.
So ideologically sticking it to the rich will prove to be a stupid act of self harm.
It is a shame they're going. But I also fear there's very little we can do to help people who are so utterly selfish.
Or perhaps you/we are?
I'd certainly think so if someone demanded all my money whilst I took all the risk and did all the work.
Up until the end of the Second World War, anybody who fell outside of the cultural norm — white, British and Christian — was a novelty and would have lived in the full knowledge that they did not represent the municipal mainstream. The experience of London before the Second World War resembled modern monocultural Tokyo far more than it resembled modern multicultural New York...
For the first time in history, London’s permanent population is culturally, ethnically and religiously diverse, sharing little in common with the country it governs. This change was recent, rapid and remarkable. It is strange that we acknowledge it so rarely, and it would be ludicrous to assume that it has had no bearing on life in the city. Most Londoners know, regardless of whether they admit it, that crime has risen steeply. Certain areas of the city are effectively off-limits after dark...
The sticking-plaster solution is to engineer a new founding myth through brute-force messaging: London is, always has been and always will be multicultural. Londoners have always prided themselves on their pluralism and tolerance. This was inevitable. It cannot — must not — be questioned.
They never name these no-go areas of course. It should be noted that whilst the author is a Cambridge-educated law graduate , they are also a Director of an Adam Smith institute thinktank so have a strong political agenda. As someone who'd lived in London for some time, I've suffered from crime (bike theft and burglary) but less frequently than when I was a student in Newcastle and the only times I've been threatened with violence is as a cyclist by white British male drivers (note: people who have stopped and exited their vehicle to threaten violence, not just poor or deliberately dangerous driving.).
I wonder if the issue in London is that the type of crime is different to how it was in the past, and today’s crime is more visible. Previously crime was mostly contained in certain areas avoided by commuters, tourists, and wealthy residents, think gangland crime on housing estates, whereas now crime is shoplifting, phone theft, bike theft etc which is much more noticable.
One of the most damaging mistakes Labour made was bad-mouthing the UK economy after the election.
A combination of complacency at the state of the economy combined with an assumption that any damage caused be blamed on the previous government.
They are a bunch of managers, not leaders. That is the problem in my opinion. Maybe with the exception of Wes Streeting from what I have seen.
I don’t buy the right-wing crying about the economy though as our borrowing costs would be going through the roof regardless of who had won the election. Let’s not pretend that the Tories or Reform have any interest in actually balancing the budget.
Balancing the budget will require major cuts in spending. Somebody is going to have to do it and Labour are in the chair for the next 4 years.
We don't need to balance the budget. That's the naive Thatcher housewife fallacy.
The debt can continue to grow as long as it roughly keeps pace with economic growth.
It can, but given that about £100bn of government spending is already debt interest, it's not really in our economic interest to do so.
If we didn't have the existing debt, and therefore weren't paying the interest payments on it, the governments books would about balance now, instead of being miles out of wack.
Outside of wartime and national emergencies, wise governments should not borrow.
The US government has repeatedly shown that running huge deficits is possible and can lead to greater growth so long as the markets support it. Their approach post the financial crisis turned out to be much more successful than Britain’s attempts at austerity.
That said, they have a reserve currency and massive oil and gas reserves which we don’t.
None of you would be saying this had he backed Harris and the Dems.
Don't deny it, we won't believe you.
Musk proved himself to be an utter berk even before he started going political, remember when he got the hump with divers rejecting his submarine for that cave rescue in Thailand?
Even if Musk never said a single political thing he's made a ridiculous number of stupid comments and made claims he hasn't kept.
Yeah sure, and he was criticised for that, including by me, but he wasn't called a loser and a fascist and the biggest threat to the world and all that sort of hyperbolic nonsense we now see on here on a daily basis.
I've not called him a loser or a fascist (I believe the only person I've called that is Putin), but I do think Musk is a threat. His recent outpourings back my view up.
I've just listened to the latest "The rest is history", which is about the Munich agreement, and I found the parallels both shocking and worrying.
In a world where we need more Churchills, we've got Musk as a Henry Ford-like character and a US president appeasing. It's easy to imagine Trump coming back from Moscow and waving a worthless piece of paper in his hand.
Now, the parallels are limited; But like Hitler, Putin has made his world view very clear, and Musk and many in this incoming administration seem to not care.
That is the quickest way to war. And Musk's words are helping damage alliances that have lasted many decades.
One of the most damaging mistakes Labour made was bad-mouthing the UK economy after the election.
A combination of complacency at the state of the economy combined with an assumption that any damage caused be blamed on the previous government.
They are a bunch of managers, not leaders. That is the problem in my opinion. Maybe with the exception of Wes Streeting from what I have seen.
I don’t buy the right-wing crying about the economy though as our borrowing costs would be going through the roof regardless of who had won the election. Let’s not pretend that the Tories or Reform have any interest in actually balancing the budget.
Balancing the budget will require major cuts in spending. Somebody is going to have to do it and Labour are in the chair for the next 4 years.
I agree on the whole but I stand by my point that it is laughable to pretend either the Tories or Reform have any interest in doing so.
I will go further and argue that the electorate as a whole has no interest in doing so either. It will take a talented politician to be able to take the country with them on this.
Except for the next 4 years that is Labour's problem
I am not sure what your point is. You can validly criticise Labour for this but if the party you support wouldn’t do anything differently it just comes across as ridiculous.
The conservatives would not have talked down the economy for months nor would they have produced a jobs and growth destroying budget
This crisis is Labour's and they own it
They have squandered the golden legacy?
More that having inherited a modest hole, they've jumped in and started shoveling with enthusiasm "next stop Australia".
It's hardly a modest hole.
There are very significant amounts of investment missed over the previous 13-14 years that have to be made good. You don't for example starve local authorities of resources (real terms reduction of 25-30% since 2010 iirc) without having to spend the extra money later to make good the year of neglect.
By the way, mentioning Truss, she has gone completely full Trump with her cease-and-desist letter the Starmer about 'crashing the economy'.
Leave aside the issue about free speech, and it being necessary to a functioning democracy; leave aside the hypocrisy of her fellow travellers doing far worse *to* Starmer over the child rape gangs. Unlike Trump, she's not in a position to do any censorship, either soft or hard so it's just moronic politics. Raising the issue again just reminds people that she did spike interest rates and nearly brought down a load of pension funds - ironically, just at the time that Labour should be facing heat on the issue.
I think Starmer and co complaining about unfair attacks need to be a little bit careful in case people pick up what Marina Hyde just wrote in her latest Guardian column:
“I find it difficult to forget now, and wrote about it at the time, but less than two years ago Keir Starmer approved and stood by an attack ad, disseminated on all the social media platforms, which used a picture of Rishi Sunak, next to the words “Do you think adults convicted of sexually assaulting children should go to prison? Rishi Sunak doesn’t.” Sunak’s famous signature was added for good measure. Joining in the race to the bottom benefits no one, as the prime minister is now finding out. The sense that people like him have played politics rather than done politics is well entrenched.”
One of the most damaging mistakes Labour made was bad-mouthing the UK economy after the election.
A combination of complacency at the state of the economy combined with an assumption that any damage caused be blamed on the previous government.
They are a bunch of managers, not leaders. That is the problem in my opinion. Maybe with the exception of Wes Streeting from what I have seen.
I don’t buy the right-wing crying about the economy though as our borrowing costs would be going through the roof regardless of who had won the election. Let’s not pretend that the Tories or Reform have any interest in actually balancing the budget.
Balancing the budget will require major cuts in spending. Somebody is going to have to do it and Labour are in the chair for the next 4 years.
We don't need to balance the budget. That's the naive Thatcher housewife fallacy.
The debt can continue to grow as long as it roughly keeps pace with economic growth.
There is no growth
Reeves is trying to tax her way to growth. Hardly a winning strategy.
It will be "one off wealth tax on millionaires" next.
I'm wondering if I've chosen the right time to retire (early)...
Same here, but I am committed now. Cannot go back. I think if I said "please have me back" they would but I don't want to do that.
I am glad I have a good buffer of cash as well as other investments and a DB which I am now looking to access early.
They are interviewing replacements for me, including some today.
Yes, pretty much identical situation here although no DB. I'm 99.9% sure it will be fine, but it is nonetheless quite a big step.
It is, and it is hard to finally make the decision too. I watched loads of Youtube videos about it and ran my numbers so many time. I am not minted but it kept telling me I have enough to live the current lifestyle I live. I applied for voluntary severance this year, was rejected as I was "needed" something I would have been flattered by 10 years ago. Now IDGAF. But you have to decide and bite the bullet and not just keep talking about it, as I was doing.
What I did do once I was rejected the first time was to start saving every spare penny I could to give me a buffer to allow me to go without eating into my SIPP's, DC's or ISA's and I did pretty well at that. It is enough to pay my part of the bills for 15 months and also go out and about.
My only concern is the DB pension I have and the impact of the Reeves budget on it. This is why I am looking to take it 3 years early from Mid March. Or to see what I would get with abatements if I did.
I can't see any alternative Labour Chancellor doing much different so I expect her to stay. Given the need to cut borrowing that means either further higher taxes or spending cuts and the Labour Party base and unions would revolt unless it was the former
They can revolt as much as they want, but this is the reality and drastic cuts in spending and increase taxes is her only path, otherwise the IMF are waiting in the wings
More taxes are going to throttle economic growth, the reality is she needs to cut spending.
Cutting spending is also bad for growth.
Depends what you cut spending on - not all of it has a multipler effect.
Cutting welfare to force people into the jobs market would work well, for example.
None of you would be saying this had he backed Harris and the Dems.
Don't deny it, we won't believe you.
Musk proved himself to be an utter berk even before he started going political, remember when he got the hump with divers rejecting his submarine for that cave rescue in Thailand?
Even if Musk never said a single political thing he's made a ridiculous number of stupid comments and made claims he hasn't kept.
Yeah sure, and he was criticised for that, including by me, but he wasn't called a loser and a fascist and the biggest threat to the world and all that sort of hyperbolic nonsense we now see on here on a daily basis.
You don’t think the ‘high status male’ guff and supporting AfD has a whiff of the master race about it?
Dire economic background at the moment. Looking at the stock market we've had three retailers (Greggs, M&S, and Tesco) announce pretty reasonable updates this morning - all down (9%, 5%, 2%). These aren't normal times.
(I don't blame Reeves for this - she's just doing her best to deliver on Labour policy. And of course their policy is hardly a mad rush left, so although wrong-headed it's only moderately so. It's much more the state the country has drifted into over many years - since 1997 really)
The country is broke, people are broke. It’s not really a surprise. And instead of focusing on how we can turn the economy around we’re focused on lies about things that have already happened and absurdity about wanting to be dictated to by a foreigner.
That being true, why they fuck are we giving Mauritius £9bn?
Because we're run by fucking muppets who have starry-eyed idealistic views about the purety of "international law" and put it on a pedestal, and want to virtue-signal they've done real Decolonisation to their base.
Jim Henson, Frank Oz, Kermit, and Miss Piggy, all think that comment is disgustingly offensive and threatens them with violence.
Lots of talk on TwiX now about the millionaires and non Doms fleeing the UK. At a time of great impoverishment the Labour government has contrived to frighten away the most important part of our tax base, and told them btw private schools will be slowly abolished via taxes
It’s all adding up. All these allegedly small things are adding up to a looming and desperate collision with reality. Even as we allow in millions of migrants who will be a net drain on the treasury, house thousands of asylum seekers in the savoy at billions a year, and pay Tanzania forty trillion quid to take control of Cornwall
It’s coming. A crash
Brace
As always 'More or Less' is your friend. When you were spouting this awhile ago More or Less debunked it. Who to believe, some nutters on twitter or people who analyse the data properly. It appears the definition of millionaire and sample selection were, how can we put it, bollocks.
Are you seriously disputing that rich people are leaving the UK? Every metric shows they are and in number
COUTTS LONDON PRIME PROPERTY INDEX Q3 2024: PRICES DROP AND BUYERS GET BIGGER DISCOUNTS
Our latest research on luxury London property shows prices falling, average discounts close to 9% and almost 80% of sales coming in below asking price.
Nope I'm not. Just pointing out that last time you did this by quoting a survey you saw somewhere it turned out to be complete bollocks. I know you think you are always right, but you seem to have a very short memory and a very poor source of your data.
If it helps I can give you personal experience instead of surveys - over the pre Christmas drinks party rounds I met (and I noted the number for work reasons) 22 couples who have already or are in the process of moving here from the UK as an absolute direct result of Labour winning the election last year.
All of these people, all 22 couples were people who had set up successful businesses - not inherited money. They are selling or have sold their UK properties, stopped paying staff, stopped buying luxury goods and cars in the UK. Will not be setting up new business or employing people in the UK for the foreseeable future, not paying any more taxes to the UK.
This is one small place - just think how many are going to larger places such as Switzerland, Dubai etc.
I’m sure there will be people who say “good riddance” but remember the new car they bought each year covered an essential salary from the VAT. The shops they shopped in need fewer staff with fewer customers. Their gardeners and housekeepers will find fewer hours to work.
I’ve said it before - I do not rejoice in this, it’s not necessarily good for where I live but it’s worse for the UK which I love.
So ideologically sticking it to the rich will prove to be a stupid act of self harm.
It is a shame they're going. But I also fear there's very little we can do to help people who are so utterly selfish.
Sorry. What? People who decide to live somewhere else with lower taxes are “utterly selfish”? Perhaps they feel countries with lower taxes will also be more welcoming to free enterprise and innovation? And - more importantly - it’s their money and they can do what they like
You often make painfully moronic remarks but this one is pretty up there
Well it is literally a selfish, as opposed to altruistic decision. The "utterly" is a bit OTT, certainly.
How many people voluntarily pay lots more taxes if they can easily move and pay a lot less in taxes?! It's a nonsensical view of human nature
Ensuring one is prosperous is not selfishness, its enlightened self interest, looking after your self your family your kids your future. If you make money you will also, probably be less demanding of the state, you are also likely to employ people, start more companies, spend cash in restaurants, etc etc. All the positive things @boulay said. Also if these people move it's a good lesson to countries that stupidly impose high taxes so as to punish the enterprising - the lesson being: don't do it. Sadly it seems the UK is gonna have to learn this all over again as we did in 1960s and 70s, until we eventualy went bust
And I speak as someone who has voluntairly paid a LOT of tax to HMRC and the UK
Most wealthy people stay put. Those that leave to pay less tax elsewhere clearly value their wealth above other things. We all "voluntarily" pay our taxes because the alternative is pretty expensive!
What I mean is I haven't even taken "legal" measures to minimise my taxes. eg many years ago - when it was advantageous - my accountant said Why not become a Limited Company (the famous loophole)
I couldn't be arsed
I don't mind paying taxes to the UK state, if I feel they are being sensibly spent, on defending the nation, helping the indigent, nurturing the sick
I do get quie fucked off when I think those taxes are now going to pay for "asylum seekers" completely taking the piss as they cross from France to go live in a hotel on my shilling, or when we are paying Mauritius sixty billion quid to take valuable British foreign posessions because it makes Starmer "feel good"
There comes a point when even a fair minded tax payer says Fuck this
God knows what young people think. Or rather, I do know how they think and they increasingly believe they get a very raw deal and they are swinging hard right, or they will do so, as elsewhere
By the way, mentioning Truss, she has gone completely full Trump with her cease-and-desist letter the Starmer about 'crashing the economy'.
Leave aside the issue about free speech, and it being necessary to a functioning democracy; leave aside the hypocrisy of her fellow travellers doing far worse *to* Starmer over the child rape gangs. Unlike Trump, she's not in a position to do any censorship, either soft or hard so it's just moronic politics. Raising the issue again just reminds people that she did spike interest rates and nearly brought down a load of pension funds - ironically, just at the time that Labour should be facing heat on the issue.
Darren Jones repeatedly confirms at the dispatch box there will be no further borrowing or tax rises
Just like Labour before the election, ruling out increases in taxes and borrowing, he has now confirmd, though he won't admit it, austerity is coming back in a big way
By the way, mentioning Truss, she has gone completely full Trump with her cease-and-desist letter the Starmer about 'crashing the economy'.
Leave aside the issue about free speech, and it being necessary to a functioning democracy; leave aside the hypocrisy of her fellow travellers doing far worse *to* Starmer over the child rape gangs. Unlike Trump, she's not in a position to do any censorship, either soft or hard so it's just moronic politics. Raising the issue again just reminds people that she did spike interest rates and nearly brought down a load of pension funds - ironically, just at the time that Labour should be facing heat on the issue.
I think Starmer and co complaining about unfair attacks need to be a little bit careful in case people pick up what Marina Hyde just wrote in her latest Guardian column:
“I find it difficult to forget now, and wrote about it at the time, but less than two years ago Keir Starmer approved and stood by an attack ad, disseminated on all the social media platforms, which used a picture of Rishi Sunak, next to the words “Do you think adults convicted of sexually assaulting children should go to prison? Rishi Sunak doesn’t.” Sunak’s famous signature was added for good measure. Joining in the race to the bottom benefits no one, as the prime minister is now finding out. The sense that people like him have played politics rather than done politics is well entrenched.”
It is hard to argue with Marina Hyde from my side of the fence, and that was indeed a particularly despicable lie.
Spanish client and UK customer. Having to do some last minute paperwork for new logistics company. Terms are DAP so need customer info as the legal importer. Customer: we’re not the importer, we’re on DAP terms Me: yeah that’s what DAP means Customer: we don’t share that information as we’re not the importer Client: why are these people not understanding how your customs work?
Yep. None of this was a problem until last February when BTOM finally collapsed into operation
Up until the end of the Second World War, anybody who fell outside of the cultural norm — white, British and Christian — was a novelty and would have lived in the full knowledge that they did not represent the municipal mainstream. The experience of London before the Second World War resembled modern monocultural Tokyo far more than it resembled modern multicultural New York...
For the first time in history, London’s permanent population is culturally, ethnically and religiously diverse, sharing little in common with the country it governs. This change was recent, rapid and remarkable. It is strange that we acknowledge it so rarely, and it would be ludicrous to assume that it has had no bearing on life in the city. Most Londoners know, regardless of whether they admit it, that crime has risen steeply. Certain areas of the city are effectively off-limits after dark...
The sticking-plaster solution is to engineer a new founding myth through brute-force messaging: London is, always has been and always will be multicultural. Londoners have always prided themselves on their pluralism and tolerance. This was inevitable. It cannot — must not — be questioned.
They never name these no-go areas of course. It should be noted that whilst the author is a Cambridge-educated law graduate , they are also a Director of an Adam Smith institute thinktank so have a strong political agenda. As someone who'd lived in London for some time, I've suffered from crime (bike theft and burglary) but less frequently than when I was a student in Newcastle and the only times I've been threatened with violence is as a cyclist by white British male drivers (note: people who have stopped and exited their vehicle to threaten violence, not just poor or deliberately dangerous driving.).
I wonder if the issue in London is that the type of crime is different to how it was in the past, and today’s crime is more visible. Previously crime was mostly contained in certain areas avoided by commuters, tourists, and wealthy residents, think gangland crime on housing estates, whereas now crime is shoplifting, phone theft, bike theft etc which is much more noticable.
I feel pretty safe almost everywhere, in the UK or abroad. It’s probably a dangerous psychological feature - a naïveté about other people and their intentions. Even after being a victim of crime - I’ve been burgled twice in the last 3 decades and had my car nicked twice - my natural reflex is to trust strangers. But I do think it’s preferable to the opposite mentality of being suspicious of everyone. I’ve at least started to get a bit more watchful on cyber crime.
My memory of the 80s and 90s was a lot more burglary and definitely more of a geographical edge to personal crime like mugging - there were no go areas.
Easy spending cut for Labour is £9bn to Mauritius.
But it's virtue spending as a luxury belief for them to show how wonderful they are. So I imagine it'll be sacred.
There have been more consultations/murmurings about Leeds getting a tram system. I expect this to be cancelled. Yet again (not party political, it's happened under them all, repeatedly).
To be fair, trams are just expensive and inflexible buses, that disrupt the city for many years while the streets are dug up to put the rails in. A metro system is the way to go, particularly for the centre - it can run above ground elsewhere.
Getting it built would require changes to processes though. The majority of the cost is in regulation.
Metros are even more expensive.
Trams can run on lower energy, due to reduced coefficient of friction, and be electrified and pull longer/heavier loads; they are also more reliable than buses.
Easy spending cut for Labour is £9bn to Mauritius.
But it's virtue spending as a luxury belief for them to show how wonderful they are. So I imagine it'll be sacred.
There have been more consultations/murmurings about Leeds getting a tram system. I expect this to be cancelled. Yet again (not party political, it's happened under them all, repeatedly).
To be fair, trams are just expensive and inflexible buses, that disrupt the city for many years while the streets are dug up to put the rails in. A metro system is the way to go, particularly for the centre - it can run above ground elsewhere.
Getting it built would require changes to processes though. The majority of the cost is in regulation.
Electric buses in dedicated bus lanes can deliver much of the benefits of trams.
But "Trams are more efficient" - I hear the cry.
If trams cost a zillion a mile, require years of planning, then sorry. You can't have lots of trams. Choices.
Much like the explosion (ha) of battery storage for power. Why? Because *stopping* people parking some shipping containers on some land is very difficult. So it may not be the best storage system. But it's the one that will happen.
I'm not convinced by "Trams take forever to build" type comment.
Nottingham has two tramlines - a total of 20 miles and 50 station, done one line, then the other added. In each case starting work on site to the tram starting operating took 4 years.
Getting everything in place, around permissions and funding, took about twice as long, and more for the first one.
Trams are more efficient. As a like for like, put a double decker bus on a tramway with tram wheels and it uses about 85-90% less energy at 30mph. Plus they are more efficient in staff per passenger, and go at higher speed.
A zillion per mile is much to do with planning process, like everything else, and how the numbers are added up - I blame the Treasury. The way we cost our roads are also completely screwed-up, though I think that may be being changed around now; I think it was on Louise Haigh's agenda.
There are plenty of European case studies to show how quickly the planning can be done, too. Here it's an extended, and expensive game of ping pong between national and local government.
Reeves is as inept at communications as Starmer, but the fundamental problem remains. The national finances have been running on empty for years. It's either tax rises or massive austerity.
It shows how useless Badenoch is that she didn't go with this as PMQs, rather than her self defeating bandwagon six questions.
The thing that is most likely to save Labour's bacon at the next GE is how useless the alternatives are. Rupert Lowe's comments in Parliament yesterday were even more disgraceful.
They need to cut spending , benefits , MP's freebies, subsidised everything etc. They should be able to save 10% at the drop of a hat and no-one would even notice. Cut giving money away to grifting foreign countries , for them to buy guns etc and supposedly cut fossil fuels. We are a joke. Ban agency nurses and doctors for example, when they had no work they would have to either emigrate or go back to NHS. Fortune saved either way that the clowns could use to train lots more staff.
Lots of talk on TwiX now about the millionaires and non Doms fleeing the UK. At a time of great impoverishment the Labour government has contrived to frighten away the most important part of our tax base, and told them btw private schools will be slowly abolished via taxes
It’s all adding up. All these allegedly small things are adding up to a looming and desperate collision with reality. Even as we allow in millions of migrants who will be a net drain on the treasury, house thousands of asylum seekers in the savoy at billions a year, and pay Tanzania forty trillion quid to take control of Cornwall
It’s coming. A crash
Brace
As always 'More or Less' is your friend. When you were spouting this awhile ago More or Less debunked it. Who to believe, some nutters on twitter or people who analyse the data properly. It appears the definition of millionaire and sample selection were, how can we put it, bollocks.
Are you seriously disputing that rich people are leaving the UK? Every metric shows they are and in number
COUTTS LONDON PRIME PROPERTY INDEX Q3 2024: PRICES DROP AND BUYERS GET BIGGER DISCOUNTS
Our latest research on luxury London property shows prices falling, average discounts close to 9% and almost 80% of sales coming in below asking price.
Nope I'm not. Just pointing out that last time you did this by quoting a survey you saw somewhere it turned out to be complete bollocks. I know you think you are always right, but you seem to have a very short memory and a very poor source of your data.
If it helps I can give you personal experience instead of surveys - over the pre Christmas drinks party rounds I met (and I noted the number for work reasons) 22 couples who have already or are in the process of moving here from the UK as an absolute direct result of Labour winning the election last year.
All of these people, all 22 couples were people who had set up successful businesses - not inherited money. They are selling or have sold their UK properties, stopped paying staff, stopped buying luxury goods and cars in the UK. Will not be setting up new business or employing people in the UK for the foreseeable future, not paying any more taxes to the UK.
This is one small place - just think how many are going to larger places such as Switzerland, Dubai etc.
I’m sure there will be people who say “good riddance” but remember the new car they bought each year covered an essential salary from the VAT. The shops they shopped in need fewer staff with fewer customers. Their gardeners and housekeepers will find fewer hours to work.
I’ve said it before - I do not rejoice in this, it’s not necessarily good for where I live but it’s worse for the UK which I love.
So ideologically sticking it to the rich will prove to be a stupid act of self harm.
It is a shame they're going. But I also fear there's very little we can do to help people who are so utterly selfish.
Or perhaps you/we are?
I'd certainly think so if someone demanded all my money whilst I took all the risk and did all the work.
Nah. I've not demanded all your money. Far from. But from what I see, you live a good life. Others, who work harder than you, and take many more risks, are much less rewarded.
I want to reward those who work hard, and also those who take risks (e.g. in starting up businesses). But that has to be tempered by the fact you also live in society. If you take risks and fail - as can happen if it is a genuine risk - then you should not be left destitute.
And an awful lot of people earn money with very little risk - in both the private and public sector.
If, heaven forfend, you are taken ill, then you would want the doctors and nurses who look after you not to be overworked and to have access to all the equipment you need? Why should the binmen who are out collecting our bins this morning not get paid well for work I wouldn't want to do? How about a careworker I know who just told me he got threatened by an elderly patient, and the police had to be called?
We live in a society, and that society needs to work as a whole. We are not islands.
We've covered the misleading stats, about London now being minority White British several times on PB before.
There are a substantial number of white and British people on London of Continental European origin not putting White British on the census, because they think that means only anglo-saxon/celtic. It shouldn't mean that, as British is a civic not ethnic category, and that's English or Celtic. The government needs to change the categories.
Being white, let alone White British, has always been a moveable feast, anyway.
The issue that matters, as always, is integration, and whether people from dysfunctional societies wish to recreate them over here.
Easy spending cut for Labour is £9bn to Mauritius.
But it's virtue spending as a luxury belief for them to show how wonderful they are. So I imagine it'll be sacred.
There have been more consultations/murmurings about Leeds getting a tram system. I expect this to be cancelled. Yet again (not party political, it's happened under them all, repeatedly).
To be fair, trams are just expensive and inflexible buses, that disrupt the city for many years while the streets are dug up to put the rails in. A metro system is the way to go, particularly for the centre - it can run above ground elsewhere.
Getting it built would require changes to processes though. The majority of the cost is in regulation.
Electric buses in dedicated bus lanes can deliver much of the benefits of trams.
But "Trams are more efficient" - I hear the cry.
If trams cost a zillion a mile, require years of planning, then sorry. You can't have lots of trams. Choices.
Much like the explosion (ha) of battery storage for power. Why? Because *stopping* people parking some shipping containers on some land is very difficult. So it may not be the best storage system. But it's the one that will happen.
I'm not convinced by "Trams take forever to build" type comment.
Nottingham has two tramlines - a total of 20 miles and 50 station, done one line, then the other added. In each case starting work on site to the tram starting operating took 4 years.
Getting everything in place, around permissions and funding, took about twice as long, and more for the first one.
Trams are more efficient. As a like for like, put a double decker bus on a tramway with tram wheels and it uses about 85-90% less energy at 30mph. Plus they are more efficient in staff per passenger, and go at higher speed.
A zillion per mile is much to do with planning process, like everything else, and how the numbers are added up - I blame the Treasury. The way we cost our roads are also completely screwed-up, though I think that may be being changed around now; I think it was on Louise Haigh's agenda.
" put a double decker bus on a tramway with tram wheels "
I'd just like to point out that the Misguided Bus here in Cambridge has been an absolute disaster. It was late, massively over budget, and the legal repercussions are still, I believe, ongoing over a decade later. Naturally enough, they want to build more of them, including to my neck of the woods.
It’s hardly sunshine and roses over here with the country in recession and unemployment rising. The National-led coalition was elected in October 2023 and has its own Rachel Reeves in the form of Nicola Willis.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, who makes Starmer look charismatic, has offered the tired old schtick of tax cuts for the wealthy and big public spending cuts including getting rid of civil servants - not on the 50-90% levels much beloved of @MaxPB and @Leon but still considerable.
As per most “centre right” Governments, however, Luxon is bogged down by ephemeral issues such as the Treaty Principles Bill which is an attempt by the junior partner in the Government, ACT, to redefine the Waitangi Treaty of 1840 by which the indigenous Māori accepted the sovereignty of Queen Victoria in exchange for guarantees. It’s as big and contentious an issue here as EU membership was in the UK and as divisive.
As @DavidL rightly says, the party is over. The fundamental question facing stagnating economies is how can growth be restarted and prosperity return? With the uncertainties of the Ukraine conflict and the return of Donald Trump, it’s understandable the mood music isn’t good. No one on any part of the political spectrum has so far come back with anything remotely plausible or coherent. The Trump team may think tariffs are the answer - perhaps in the short term for some parts of America but the rest of the world may not agree.
The notion there is a pot of gold at the end of the spending cut rainbow has always been one for the fantasists. Indeed, at a time of ageing populations and calls for increases in health and defense spending, the only option to this observer is to raise taxes substantially - personal rates to 25p basic rate and 50p higher rate but restore the link between thresholds and inflation (perhaps a little above inflation). These rates would still be well below tax rates in the 70s but would enable some order to be restored to the public finances.
Other taxes would also have to rise - the meal has been enjoyed, the bill has been presented and we all have to pay for what we’ve “enjoyed”.
Mp's , Toffs and their chums will not pay for it , you can be sure on that. They will just double their expenses and take bigger pay rises. The great unwashed will need to pay for it.
By the way, mentioning Truss, she has gone completely full Trump with her cease-and-desist letter the Starmer about 'crashing the economy'.
Leave aside the issue about free speech, and it being necessary to a functioning democracy; leave aside the hypocrisy of her fellow travellers doing far worse *to* Starmer over the child rape gangs. Unlike Trump, she's not in a position to do any censorship, either soft or hard so it's just moronic politics. Raising the issue again just reminds people that she did spike interest rates and nearly brought down a load of pension funds - ironically, just at the time that Labour should be facing heat on the issue.
Truss is a fool of the highest order. The voters of Norfolk SW did the Conservatives a huge favour on July 4th.
By the way, mentioning Truss, she has gone completely full Trump with her cease-and-desist letter the Starmer about 'crashing the economy'.
Leave aside the issue about free speech, and it being necessary to a functioning democracy; leave aside the hypocrisy of her fellow travellers doing far worse *to* Starmer over the child rape gangs. Unlike Trump, she's not in a position to do any censorship, either soft or hard so it's just moronic politics. Raising the issue again just reminds people that she did spike interest rates and nearly brought down a load of pension funds - ironically, just at the time that Labour should be facing heat on the issue.
Like most self-proclaimed champions of free speech, Liz Truss means hers, not ours.
I can't see any alternative Labour Chancellor doing much different so I expect her to stay. Given the need to cut borrowing that means either further higher taxes or spending cuts and the Labour Party base and unions would revolt unless it was the former
They can revolt as much as they want, but this is the reality and drastic cuts in spending and increase taxes is her only path, otherwise the IMF are waiting in the wings
More taxes are going to throttle economic growth, the reality is she needs to cut spending.
But the reality is that healthcare demand is fixed, criminal justice has to be fixed, and we need to strengthen our defences.
It’s an impossible puzzle to fix.
I think there's scope for big efficiency savings in some areas whilst others truly are down to the bone. The problem is those areas with plenty of fat still to cut aren't going to admit to it; so the only way it's ever going to get done is with something like the Musk/Ramaswamy/Millei approach of a vigorous external actor(s) coming in an saying we don't need this, this, this and this.
Our national budget is basically healthcare, welfare, police, schools, transport and defence. The rest is noise. And, frankly, it’s telly just health and welfare. Hard to find deep and meaningful cuts.
foreign aid , the 22Bn to be wasted by Milliband , costs of MP's/HOL etc could all be cut and save lots of money as a first stroke.
What gets me about these planning fandangos is that they assume that doing something is cost and not doing something is saving.
Dirty Leeds. No metro despite repeated studies and reports. No decent roads north of the LeedsBradford area. Horrible traffic congestion, horrible conditions, something obviously needed to have been built.
What has been the cost of Leeds getting gummed up by traffic for all these years? Not building anything means slower economic growth and a city that is economically smaller than it could have been.
And yet with the post-Thatcher settlement where it’s always cost and not benefit, the view is that we’ve somehow saved money. We haven’t.
Lots of talk on TwiX now about the millionaires and non Doms fleeing the UK. At a time of great impoverishment the Labour government has contrived to frighten away the most important part of our tax base, and told them btw private schools will be slowly abolished via taxes
It’s all adding up. All these allegedly small things are adding up to a looming and desperate collision with reality. Even as we allow in millions of migrants who will be a net drain on the treasury, house thousands of asylum seekers in the savoy at billions a year, and pay Tanzania forty trillion quid to take control of Cornwall
It’s coming. A crash
Brace
As always 'More or Less' is your friend. When you were spouting this awhile ago More or Less debunked it. Who to believe, some nutters on twitter or people who analyse the data properly. It appears the definition of millionaire and sample selection were, how can we put it, bollocks.
Are you seriously disputing that rich people are leaving the UK? Every metric shows they are and in number
COUTTS LONDON PRIME PROPERTY INDEX Q3 2024: PRICES DROP AND BUYERS GET BIGGER DISCOUNTS
Our latest research on luxury London property shows prices falling, average discounts close to 9% and almost 80% of sales coming in below asking price.
Nope I'm not. Just pointing out that last time you did this by quoting a survey you saw somewhere it turned out to be complete bollocks. I know you think you are always right, but you seem to have a very short memory and a very poor source of your data.
If it helps I can give you personal experience instead of surveys - over the pre Christmas drinks party rounds I met (and I noted the number for work reasons) 22 couples who have already or are in the process of moving here from the UK as an absolute direct result of Labour winning the election last year.
All of these people, all 22 couples were people who had set up successful businesses - not inherited money. They are selling or have sold their UK properties, stopped paying staff, stopped buying luxury goods and cars in the UK. Will not be setting up new business or employing people in the UK for the foreseeable future, not paying any more taxes to the UK.
This is one small place - just think how many are going to larger places such as Switzerland, Dubai etc.
I’m sure there will be people who say “good riddance” but remember the new car they bought each year covered an essential salary from the VAT. The shops they shopped in need fewer staff with fewer customers. Their gardeners and housekeepers will find fewer hours to work.
I’ve said it before - I do not rejoice in this, it’s not necessarily good for where I live but it’s worse for the UK which I love.
So ideologically sticking it to the rich will prove to be a stupid act of self harm.
It is a shame they're going. But I also fear there's very little we can do to help people who are so utterly selfish.
Sorry. What? People who decide to live somewhere else with lower taxes are “utterly selfish”? Perhaps they feel countries with lower taxes will also be more welcoming to free enterprise and innovation? And - more importantly - it’s their money and they can do what they like
You often make painfully moronic remarks but this one is pretty up there
A question and a serious one and not being bitchy: You are almost certainly the most mobile person on here. You are hardly in the UK and appear to have no ties to a local community and few family ties and one small, but probably desirable flat in London. Why are you still here?
I have seriously considered moving to France (and nearly done it) and have/had seriously more ties than you and only haven't because of those ties and also for being much more conservative in my risk taking than you.
Why haven't you? You wouldn't even have to give up PB.
It's a fair question, and one I often ask!
However you possibly under-estimate my ties. I have one older daughter who - until recently - lived near me in London. I love her to bits and like her company. However she turned 18 last year and is now at Uni in Scotland so that's one major tie gone (or at least much weaker). My other daughter is in Australia but it is still a slight tie, she is also turning 18 and when she starts traveling London will be right up there on her list
On top of that I have quite a big extended family, mainly in Cornwall, and - maybe more importantly - a good number of friends in London, or - if they are not in London - when they go travelling they will nearly always pass through London - from LA, NYC, Europe, Bangkok etc. London is a good place to catch people on the go
It's a combo of all these things that have kept me from making a permanent move, plus two more things. First work and in-person meetings. They do happen and they happen in London and they are valuable. Second, one other huge thing. I travel all the time for free, it's my second job. And London is a brilliant base from which to travel. Paradoxically
However as time passes (dwindles?) I do think about slipping anchor entirely. One option on my list is to rent out my flat, or Airbnb it, and be a genuine nomad, I have friends around the world, I love moving, I can still organise travel wherever I am. I did 4 months permanent nomadism a couple of years back and loved it - I could do 3 months here, then move on, then move on again, I like the idea of being entirely untethered (others would hate it)
So, who knows
Speaking as somebody who travels a lot and spends over 50% of my time away from home (although I appreciate commuting to Craptown, Bumshire doesn't have the same ring as flying to Whickerville Oligarchia), you will always need a physical place as a base, even if it's just a small flat.
Yes that's maybe true - but I just don't know. I am not like normal people
However the possibility that it is true is why I would airbnb my flat, or rent it, short term, rather than selling it
Get a lodger in: I assume you have more than one bedroom. You can charge them a rent up to £7,500 tax-free and not fill out any paperwork. When you are on your travels they can keep an eye out for burst pipes and other stuff. When you are at home they can provide conversation. It's like having a large budgie that feeds itself.
Take care to choose the right person: male contractors from out-of-town with young children elsewhere are the best, as all they want to do is come home, Zoom/Team with their kid and wife about whether they had a good day, watch telly/internet and go to bed. Women want a more social experience which doesn't work for me but might for you. Don't have young people: they will inevitably have friends/boyfriends/girlfriends around and that's an accident waiting to happen.
Dire economic background at the moment. Looking at the stock market we've had three retailers (Greggs, M&S, and Tesco) announce pretty reasonable updates this morning - all down (9%, 5%, 2%). These aren't normal times.
(I don't blame Reeves for this - she's just doing her best to deliver on Labour policy. And of course their policy is hardly a mad rush left, so although wrong-headed it's only moderately so. It's much more the state the country has drifted into over many years - since 1997 really)
The country is broke, people are broke. It’s not really a surprise. And instead of focusing on how we can turn the economy around we’re focused on lies about things that have already happened and absurdity about wanting to be dictated to by a foreigner.
The country is not broke. The people are not broke. I live near Glasgow Airport and every day thousands of people are flying on foreign holidays and business trips. The A380 double decker jumbo flies daily to Dubai. The Guardian's food critic recommends £50 lunches and £100 dinners. The average house is worth £300K. This a wealthy country, but the wealth is not being shared around.
It struck me while indulging in one of my guilty pleasures, Salvage Hunters Classic Cars, that there's a whole tranche of older people who are feeling no pain at all. They'd set up an event to flog off one of their restored classics, a Fiat or a Lancia I think, in a flashy all-white upper story car park. The car made an entrance from the lift to a bunch of drooling middle agers, none under 50, a few quite a bit older; it resembled some sort of porn event. I can't recall but presumably one of them shelled out to purchase the shiny trinket afterwards.
There are a lot of older people with second or even third homes, foreign holidays several times a year, expensive hobbies, collections of toys with which they've rewarded themselves, oodles of time to post intemperately on the internet on why fings aint what they used to be. There are also loads of young people who work low pay jobs and can barely afford to rent a room, let alone even think about owning their own home. Something's gotta give.
And yet, consider the average age of this board. If we're saying things are crap - and our demographic is fairly cushioned - imagine the tone on here were there some young people.
Cost of housing, innit?
If you have a paid-off mortgage, life is probably still pretty peachy. If you are paying 2025-level market rents, you are stuffed no matter how much you earn.
Until that gets fixed, not much else matters. Increased prosperity just feeds into higher house prices so why bother?
This government, imperfect as it is, does seem to get that better than the alternatives. Whether it gets it well enough remains to be seen.
(And how much of the moaning here is people doing badly themselves, as opposed to people hearing that it's going badly and resenting being out of power themselves?)
Yup - if you are spending more than half your post tax income on housing....
Lots of talk on TwiX now about the millionaires and non Doms fleeing the UK. At a time of great impoverishment the Labour government has contrived to frighten away the most important part of our tax base, and told them btw private schools will be slowly abolished via taxes
It’s all adding up. All these allegedly small things are adding up to a looming and desperate collision with reality. Even as we allow in millions of migrants who will be a net drain on the treasury, house thousands of asylum seekers in the savoy at billions a year, and pay Tanzania forty trillion quid to take control of Cornwall
It’s coming. A crash
Brace
Incentive matter. 20,000 millionaires have left since COVID.
Some people say if they want to go let them. But then who pays the taxes they pay ?
That's the issue.
This is not new either. You cannot blame Reeves for this although arguably she has made it worse.
Labour started the avalance of immigration, pretty obvious flooding the country with economic migrants is going to cause huge damage. It does not affect the rish or MP's so they don't give a toss.
WRT the rich, no one should complain about paying 35% or so of their income to live in a first world, low crime, country. The kind of rich person, like David Wasserman, who resents any form of taxation, then begs for help when his home is in danger of being burned, is an arse.
But, they have every right to expect their taxes to be spent wisely, and stuff like the Chagos deal, or paying people to claim asylum here, is not spending wisely.
One of the most damaging mistakes Labour made was bad-mouthing the UK economy after the election.
A combination of complacency at the state of the economy combined with an assumption that any damage caused be blamed on the previous government.
They are a bunch of managers, not leaders. That is the problem in my opinion. Maybe with the exception of Wes Streeting from what I have seen.
I don’t buy the right-wing crying about the economy though as our borrowing costs would be going through the roof regardless of who had won the election. Let’s not pretend that the Tories or Reform have any interest in actually balancing the budget.
Balancing the budget will require major cuts in spending. Somebody is going to have to do it and Labour are in the chair for the next 4 years.
We don't need to balance the budget. That's the naive Thatcher housewife fallacy.
The debt can continue to grow as long as it roughly keeps pace with economic growth.
There is no growth
Reeves is trying to tax her way to growth. Hardly a winning strategy.
It will be "one off wealth tax on millionaires" next.
We need a People's vote on whether people want to continue with Labour.
We have much more information now.
Exactly. And Brexit as well. Oh wait we only want to rerun elections in hindsight sometimes?
Brexit was revalidated by two extra general elections.
Not in the same time period it wasn't.
Yes it was. Over the lifespan of a typical parliament the 2015-2020 one (as projected) had a referendum and two extra general elections to validate it.
Next.
No it isn't. You are calling for a people's vote to get rid of Labour literally months after the election. That isn't a life span of a typical parliament. I'm no fan of labour, but that is not how a democracy works.
You can't keep asking for a GE when you don't like what the Govt does, particularly if it has a large majority.
I recall lots of people asking for General Elections when Thatcher was in power. And other governments since.
You can keep asking for a GE when you don't like what the Govt does.
"Los Angeles mayor silent when asked if she owes citizens apology over handling of wildfires Karen Bass remained silent as Sky News asked the mayor if she regrets cutting the fire service's budget."
What gets me about these planning fandangos is that they assume that doing something is cost and not doing something is saving.
Dirty Leeds. No metro despite repeated studies and reports. No decent roads north of the LeedsBradford area. Horrible traffic congestion, horrible conditions, something obviously needed to have been built.
What has been the cost of Leeds getting gummed up by traffic for all these years? Not building anything means slower economic growth and a city that is economically smaller than it could have been.
And yet with the post-Thatcher settlement where it’s always cost and not benefit, the view is that we’ve somehow saved money. We haven’t.
There is at least one small glimmer of planning improvement in the government's proposals for streamlining environmental assessments. Though it will require further legislation, which they are now consulting on.
a) Moving responsibility for identifying actions to address environmental impacts away from multiple project-specific assessments in an area to a single strategic assessment and delivery plan. This will allow action to address environmental impacts from development to be taken strategically, at an appropriate geographic scale, rather than at the level of an individual project – while recognising the importance of protecting local communities’ access to nature and green space.
b) Moving more responsibility for planning and implementing these strategic actions onto the state, delivered through organisations with the right expertise and with the necessary flexibility to take actions that most effectively deliver positive outcomes for nature.
c) In turn, allowing impacts to be dealt with strategically in exchange for a financial payment that helps fund strategic actions, so development can proceed more quickly. Project-level environmental assessments are then limited only to those harms not dealt with strategically...
Dire economic background at the moment. Looking at the stock market we've had three retailers (Greggs, M&S, and Tesco) announce pretty reasonable updates this morning - all down (9%, 5%, 2%). These aren't normal times.
(I don't blame Reeves for this - she's just doing her best to deliver on Labour policy. And of course their policy is hardly a mad rush left, so although wrong-headed it's only moderately so. It's much more the state the country has drifted into over many years - since 1997 really)
The country is broke, people are broke. It’s not really a surprise. And instead of focusing on how we can turn the economy around we’re focused on lies about things that have already happened and absurdity about wanting to be dictated to by a foreigner.
That being true, why they fuck are we giving Mauritius £9bn?
Because we're run by fucking muppets who have starry-eyed idealistic views about the purety of "international law" and put it on a pedestal, and want to virtue-signal they've done real Decolonisation to their base.
This is not an ideological point, though - it's simply a massive and unnecessary waste of money.
A competent opposition would be raising this weekly at PMQs - without going down the rabbithole of "decolonialisation", which is a distraction of no interest to the majority of the electorate. Likely including the majority of Labour's "base", as opposed to their activists.
That £9bn, and the £15bn you'd free up by cutting three quarters of the CCS commitment (leaving the balance to fund genuine research), would replace a large slug of the headroom Reeves just lost.
Yes, and this is why her "black hole" shtick didn't land, because people didn't think Labour were forced to raise taxes but did so through choice.
Lots of talk on TwiX now about the millionaires and non Doms fleeing the UK. At a time of great impoverishment the Labour government has contrived to frighten away the most important part of our tax base, and told them btw private schools will be slowly abolished via taxes
It’s all adding up. All these allegedly small things are adding up to a looming and desperate collision with reality. Even as we allow in millions of migrants who will be a net drain on the treasury, house thousands of asylum seekers in the savoy at billions a year, and pay Tanzania forty trillion quid to take control of Cornwall
It’s coming. A crash
Brace
As always 'More or Less' is your friend. When you were spouting this awhile ago More or Less debunked it. Who to believe, some nutters on twitter or people who analyse the data properly. It appears the definition of millionaire and sample selection were, how can we put it, bollocks.
Are you seriously disputing that rich people are leaving the UK? Every metric shows they are and in number
COUTTS LONDON PRIME PROPERTY INDEX Q3 2024: PRICES DROP AND BUYERS GET BIGGER DISCOUNTS
Our latest research on luxury London property shows prices falling, average discounts close to 9% and almost 80% of sales coming in below asking price.
Nope I'm not. Just pointing out that last time you did this by quoting a survey you saw somewhere it turned out to be complete bollocks. I know you think you are always right, but you seem to have a very short memory and a very poor source of your data.
If it helps I can give you personal experience instead of surveys - over the pre Christmas drinks party rounds I met (and I noted the number for work reasons) 22 couples who have already or are in the process of moving here from the UK as an absolute direct result of Labour winning the election last year.
All of these people, all 22 couples were people who had set up successful businesses - not inherited money. They are selling or have sold their UK properties, stopped paying staff, stopped buying luxury goods and cars in the UK. Will not be setting up new business or employing people in the UK for the foreseeable future, not paying any more taxes to the UK.
This is one small place - just think how many are going to larger places such as Switzerland, Dubai etc.
I’m sure there will be people who say “good riddance” but remember the new car they bought each year covered an essential salary from the VAT. The shops they shopped in need fewer staff with fewer customers. Their gardeners and housekeepers will find fewer hours to work.
I’ve said it before - I do not rejoice in this, it’s not necessarily good for where I live but it’s worse for the UK which I love.
So ideologically sticking it to the rich will prove to be a stupid act of self harm.
It is a shame they're going. But I also fear there's very little we can do to help people who are so utterly selfish.
Sorry. What? People who decide to live somewhere else with lower taxes are “utterly selfish”? Perhaps they feel countries with lower taxes will also be more welcoming to free enterprise and innovation? And - more importantly - it’s their money and they can do what they like
You often make painfully moronic remarks but this one is pretty up there
A question and a serious one and not being bitchy: You are almost certainly the most mobile person on here. You are hardly in the UK and appear to have no ties to a local community and few family ties and one small, but probably desirable flat in London. Why are you still here?
I have seriously considered moving to France (and nearly done it) and have/had seriously more ties than you and only haven't because of those ties and also for being much more conservative in my risk taking than you.
Why haven't you? You wouldn't even have to give up PB.
It's a fair question, and one I often ask!
However you possibly under-estimate my ties. I have one older daughter who - until recently - lived near me in London. I love her to bits and like her company. However she turned 18 last year and is now at Uni in Scotland so that's one major tie gone (or at least much weaker). My other daughter is in Australia but it is still a slight tie, she is also turning 18 and when she starts traveling London will be right up there on her list
On top of that I have quite a big extended family, mainly in Cornwall, and - maybe more importantly - a good number of friends in London, or - if they are not in London - when they go travelling they will nearly always pass through London - from LA, NYC, Europe, Bangkok etc. London is a good place to catch people on the go
It's a combo of all these things that have kept me from making a permanent move, plus two more things. First work and in-person meetings. They do happen and they happen in London and they are valuable. Second, one other huge thing. I travel all the time for free, it's my second job. And London is a brilliant base from which to travel. Paradoxically
However as time passes (dwindles?) I do think about slipping anchor entirely. One option on my list is to rent out my flat, or Airbnb it, and be a genuine nomad, I have friends around the world, I love moving, I can still organise travel wherever I am. I did 4 months permanent nomadism a couple of years back and loved it - I could do 3 months here, then move on, then move on again, I like the idea of being entirely untethered (others would hate it)
So, who knows
Speaking as somebody who travels a lot and spends over 50% of my time away from home (although I appreciate commuting to Craptown, Bumshire doesn't have the same ring as flying to Whickerville Oligarchia), you will always need a physical place as a base, even if it's just a small flat.
Yes that's maybe true - but I just don't know. I am not like normal people
However the possibility that it is true is why I would airbnb my flat, or rent it, short term, rather than selling it
Get a lodger in: I assume you have more than one bedroom. You can charge them a rent up to £7,500 tax-free and not fill out any paperwork. When you are on your travels they can keep an eye out for burst pipes and other stuff. When you are at home they can provide conversation. It's like having a large budgie that feeds itself.
Take care to choose the right person: male contractors from out-of-town with young children elsewhere are the best, as all they want to do is come home, Zoom/Team with their kid and wife about whether they had a good day, watch telly/internet and go to bed. Women want a more social experience which doesn't work for me but might for you. Don't have young people: they will inevitably have friends/boyfriends/girlfriends around and that's an accident waiting to happen.
Many decades ago, when I was living in London, I flat-sat for a colleague (boss, actually) whilst he went on a long holiday. He paid me well, and his flat was massive, and a very pleasant part of Greenwich. Much better than the poky flat I was living in near Chelsea. It was also nice to be living in the heart of Greenwich, as opposed to the north end of the Isle of Dogs, as I had a year or so earlier.
I was actually slightly flattered that he asked me, as I was only in my early twenties at the time, and he had lots of expensive stuff that could be damaged. I've since heard that some insurance companies put up their insurance if a house is left unoccupied for more than a month?
Lots of talk on TwiX now about the millionaires and non Doms fleeing the UK. At a time of great impoverishment the Labour government has contrived to frighten away the most important part of our tax base, and told them btw private schools will be slowly abolished via taxes
It’s all adding up. All these allegedly small things are adding up to a looming and desperate collision with reality. Even as we allow in millions of migrants who will be a net drain on the treasury, house thousands of asylum seekers in the savoy at billions a year, and pay Tanzania forty trillion quid to take control of Cornwall
It’s coming. A crash
Brace
Incentive matter. 20,000 millionaires have left since COVID.
Some people say if they want to go let them. But then who pays the taxes they pay ?
That's the issue.
This is not new either. You cannot blame Reeves for this although arguably she has made it worse.
Labour started the avalance of immigration, pretty obvious flooding the country with economic migrants is going to cause huge damage. It does not affect the rish or MP's so they don't give a toss.
Especially unskilled migrants who, effectively, become a net drain on the taxpayer.
But then Boris was New Labour on Steroids when it came to that.
No, it does not affect those in power and they care little for us and our communities and the impact their policies have, across the board, on us. Except when they want our vote.
They care about our money though, and are very happy to take more and more of it for less and less delivery.
The Telegraph helpfully includes a graph showing gilt yields did spike under Truss but then returned to that level after Labour's July 2023 election win.
Hold on, July 2023...?
I think that was actually under Sunak
They priced in the assumption, correctly, of an incoming Labour administration once it was clear Sunak couldn't recover it.
Well that's bollocks. With a year and a half to go before the election, what about the swingback you were all expecting at that moment.
No, it was fully priced in by then.
No-one was expecting a recovery. After the Windsor Agreement, that led to virtually no bounce, it was all downhill for Sunak.
"Los Angeles mayor silent when asked if she owes citizens apology over handling of wildfires Karen Bass remained silent as Sky News asked the mayor if she regrets cutting the fire service's budget."
Lots of talk on TwiX now about the millionaires and non Doms fleeing the UK. At a time of great impoverishment the Labour government has contrived to frighten away the most important part of our tax base, and told them btw private schools will be slowly abolished via taxes
It’s all adding up. All these allegedly small things are adding up to a looming and desperate collision with reality. Even as we allow in millions of migrants who will be a net drain on the treasury, house thousands of asylum seekers in the savoy at billions a year, and pay Tanzania forty trillion quid to take control of Cornwall
It’s coming. A crash
Brace
Incentive matter. 20,000 millionaires have left since COVID.
Some people say if they want to go let them. But then who pays the taxes they pay ?
That's the issue.
This is not new either. You cannot blame Reeves for this although arguably she has made it worse.
She has made it a WHOLE lot worse
Here’s the deal on Britain and why we’re fucked. We really really rely on London to attract rich people and innovation and energy and talent. Without London we are basically screwed. I know people don’t like hearing that but it is the case
Now London has been in decline for a while. Its peak was probably about 2010? Many things have contributed to this (yes Brexit was one of them) but sadly it is true whatever the cause. This is why property prices are stagnant or, in places, falling quite fast
The stock market is in a bad place. Nightlife has cratered. It’s just not as appealing a city as it was. Mass migration has transformed huge swathes and not in ways that rich people find particularly pleasing
People don’t move to london so they can live in a rainier more expensive version of Karachi or nairobi
So the whole great machine that has been driving the British economy for decades - london - is on the blink. I can actually see this likely getting worse not better under Labour and the execrable khan which means at least another half decade of immiseration
I wish this wasn’t true. I love my country and my home city. But I can see its problems with my own eyes. And I can compare, as I travel so much
On the other hand I see similar problems all over the world. Paris is often shabby and dangerous - worse than London. American cities can be awful. Half the world is in turmoil, Covid has taken a weird sad toll everywhere, especially on urban life and main streets
However the UK is uniquely dependent on london in a way that is not true of the USA vis a vis NYC or LA or Germany Berlin or even France Paris
This leaves us in a bad spot. We desperately need a British bukele to make the uk capital safe clean optimistic and dynamic again. Or we accept london is toast and concentrate on turnip farming around Wick
That si why the country is f**ked as all the money is squandered in London, vanity projects and rent for benefits. Is it any wonder people risk everything to get to Uk so they can get free house in London. They must think they have won the lottery , from a tent in the arsehole of nowhere to free house, services and money in London.
Up until the end of the Second World War, anybody who fell outside of the cultural norm — white, British and Christian — was a novelty and would have lived in the full knowledge that they did not represent the municipal mainstream. The experience of London before the Second World War resembled modern monocultural Tokyo far more than it resembled modern multicultural New York...
For the first time in history, London’s permanent population is culturally, ethnically and religiously diverse, sharing little in common with the country it governs. This change was recent, rapid and remarkable. It is strange that we acknowledge it so rarely, and it would be ludicrous to assume that it has had no bearing on life in the city. Most Londoners know, regardless of whether they admit it, that crime has risen steeply. Certain areas of the city are effectively off-limits after dark...
The sticking-plaster solution is to engineer a new founding myth through brute-force messaging: London is, always has been and always will be multicultural. Londoners have always prided themselves on their pluralism and tolerance. This was inevitable. It cannot — must not — be questioned.
"In 1851, over 38 percent were born somewhere else." "by 1901 the proportion of Londoners born elsewhere had declined to just 33 percent of the total" "The 1901 census recorded 33,000 Londoners as having been born in British colonies or dependencies."
Does it make a difference if the "somewhere else" is Lincolnshire or Lagos?
"Los Angeles mayor silent when asked if she owes citizens apology over handling of wildfires Karen Bass remained silent as Sky News asked the mayor if she regrets cutting the fire service's budget."
The fire budget could have been 10x as large and they still would have happened.
Yes, but allegedly there isn't enough water to fight the fires. That is highly non-optimal, and *is* funding related. And you can do a heck of a lot to mitigate the fires, and their effects.
Lots of talk on TwiX now about the millionaires and non Doms fleeing the UK. At a time of great impoverishment the Labour government has contrived to frighten away the most important part of our tax base, and told them btw private schools will be slowly abolished via taxes
It’s all adding up. All these allegedly small things are adding up to a looming and desperate collision with reality. Even as we allow in millions of migrants who will be a net drain on the treasury, house thousands of asylum seekers in the savoy at billions a year, and pay Tanzania forty trillion quid to take control of Cornwall
It’s coming. A crash
Brace
As always 'More or Less' is your friend. When you were spouting this awhile ago More or Less debunked it. Who to believe, some nutters on twitter or people who analyse the data properly. It appears the definition of millionaire and sample selection were, how can we put it, bollocks.
Are you seriously disputing that rich people are leaving the UK? Every metric shows they are and in number
COUTTS LONDON PRIME PROPERTY INDEX Q3 2024: PRICES DROP AND BUYERS GET BIGGER DISCOUNTS
Our latest research on luxury London property shows prices falling, average discounts close to 9% and almost 80% of sales coming in below asking price.
Nope I'm not. Just pointing out that last time you did this by quoting a survey you saw somewhere it turned out to be complete bollocks. I know you think you are always right, but you seem to have a very short memory and a very poor source of your data.
If it helps I can give you personal experience instead of surveys - over the pre Christmas drinks party rounds I met (and I noted the number for work reasons) 22 couples who have already or are in the process of moving here from the UK as an absolute direct result of Labour winning the election last year.
All of these people, all 22 couples were people who had set up successful businesses - not inherited money. They are selling or have sold their UK properties, stopped paying staff, stopped buying luxury goods and cars in the UK. Will not be setting up new business or employing people in the UK for the foreseeable future, not paying any more taxes to the UK.
This is one small place - just think how many are going to larger places such as Switzerland, Dubai etc.
I’m sure there will be people who say “good riddance” but remember the new car they bought each year covered an essential salary from the VAT. The shops they shopped in need fewer staff with fewer customers. Their gardeners and housekeepers will find fewer hours to work.
I’ve said it before - I do not rejoice in this, it’s not necessarily good for where I live but it’s worse for the UK which I love.
So ideologically sticking it to the rich will prove to be a stupid act of self harm.
It is a shame they're going. But I also fear there's very little we can do to help people who are so utterly selfish.
Sorry. What? People who decide to live somewhere else with lower taxes are “utterly selfish”? Perhaps they feel countries with lower taxes will also be more welcoming to free enterprise and innovation? And - more importantly - it’s their money and they can do what they like
You often make painfully moronic remarks but this one is pretty up there
A question and a serious one and not being bitchy: You are almost certainly the most mobile person on here. You are hardly in the UK and appear to have no ties to a local community and few family ties and one small, but probably desirable flat in London. Why are you still here?
I have seriously considered moving to France (and nearly done it) and have/had seriously more ties than you and only haven't because of those ties and also for being much more conservative in my risk taking than you.
Why haven't you? You wouldn't even have to give up PB.
It's a fair question, and one I often ask!
However you possibly under-estimate my ties. I have one older daughter who - until recently - lived near me in London. I love her to bits and like her company. However she turned 18 last year and is now at Uni in Scotland so that's one major tie gone (or at least much weaker). My other daughter is in Australia but it is still a slight tie, she is also turning 18 and when she starts traveling London will be right up there on her list
On top of that I have quite a big extended family, mainly in Cornwall, and - maybe more importantly - a good number of friends in London, or - if they are not in London - when they go travelling they will nearly always pass through London - from LA, NYC, Europe, Bangkok etc. London is a good place to catch people on the go
It's a combo of all these things that have kept me from making a permanent move, plus two more things. First work and in-person meetings. They do happen and they happen in London and they are valuable. Second, one other huge thing. I travel all the time for free, it's my second job. And London is a brilliant base from which to travel. Paradoxically
However as time passes (dwindles?) I do think about slipping anchor entirely. One option on my list is to rent out my flat, or Airbnb it, and be a genuine nomad, I have friends around the world, I love moving, I can still organise travel wherever I am. I did 4 months permanent nomadism a couple of years back and loved it - I could do 3 months here, then move on, then move on again, I like the idea of being entirely untethered (others would hate it)
So, who knows
Speaking as somebody who travels a lot and spends over 50% of my time away from home (although I appreciate commuting to Craptown, Bumshire doesn't have the same ring as flying to Whickerville Oligarchia), you will always need a physical place as a base, even if it's just a small flat.
Yes that's maybe true - but I just don't know. I am not like normal people
However the possibility that it is true is why I would airbnb my flat, or rent it, short term, rather than selling it
Get a lodger in: I assume you have more than one bedroom. You can charge them a rent up to £7,500 tax-free and not fill out any paperwork. When you are on your travels they can keep an eye out for burst pipes and other stuff. When you are at home they can provide conversation. It's like having a large budgie that feeds itself.
Take care to choose the right person: male contractors from out-of-town with young children elsewhere are the best, as all they want to do is come home, Zoom/Team with their kid and wife about whether they had a good day, watch telly/internet and go to bed. Women want a more social experience which doesn't work for me but might for you. Don't have young people: they will inevitably have friends/boyfriends/girlfriends around and that's an accident waiting to happen.
Many decades ago, when I was living in London, I flat-sat for a colleague (boss, actually) whilst he went on a long holiday. He paid me well, and his flat was massive, and a very pleasant part of Greenwich. Much better than the poky flat I was living in near Chelsea. It was also nice to be living in the heart of Greenwich, as opposed to the north end of the Isle of Dogs, as I had a year or so earlier.
I was actually slightly flattered that he asked me, as I was only in my early twenties at the time, and he had lots of expensive stuff that could be damaged. I've since heard that some insurance companies put up their insurance if a house is left unoccupied for more than a month?
I think it's more that the insurance companies say piss off after a month or two and special arrangements/rates then have to be made. Definitely something to check, including whether building and contents insurances differ on this.
Even in the circs of an empty house after a death it can be tricky, though easier (albeit removing valuables etc.)
Dire economic background at the moment. Looking at the stock market we've had three retailers (Greggs, M&S, and Tesco) announce pretty reasonable updates this morning - all down (9%, 5%, 2%). These aren't normal times.
(I don't blame Reeves for this - she's just doing her best to deliver on Labour policy. And of course their policy is hardly a mad rush left, so although wrong-headed it's only moderately so. It's much more the state the country has drifted into over many years - since 1997 really)
The country is broke, people are broke. It’s not really a surprise. And instead of focusing on how we can turn the economy around we’re focused on lies about things that have already happened and absurdity about wanting to be dictated to by a foreigner.
That being true, why they fuck are we giving Mauritius £9bn?
Because we're run by fucking muppets who have starry-eyed idealistic views about the purety of "international law" and put it on a pedestal, and want to virtue-signal they've done real Decolonisation to their base.
This is not an ideological point, though - it's simply a massive and unnecessary waste of money.
A competent opposition would be raising this weekly at PMQs - without going down the rabbithole of "decolonialisation", which is a distraction of no interest to the majority of the electorate. Likely including the majority of Labour's "base", as opposed to their activists.
That £9bn, and the £15bn you'd free up by cutting three quarters of the CCS commitment (leaving the balance to fund genuine research), would replace a large slug of the headroom Reeves just lost.
Yes, and this is why her "black hole" shtick didn't land, because people didn't think Labour were forced to raise taxes but did so through choice.
I think they likely were forced to raise taxes - as would a Conservative government have been - unless they were going to cut a whole load of stuff.
But while it would be fair to claim that the last government made a raft of essentially unfunded spending commitments for the post election period, the "black hole of £Xbn" thing was always nonsense, since government funding is always a moving target.
"Los Angeles mayor silent when asked if she owes citizens apology over handling of wildfires Karen Bass remained silent as Sky News asked the mayor if she regrets cutting the fire service's budget."
The fire budget could have been 10x as large and they still would have happened.
Yes, but allegedly there isn't enough water to fight the fires. That is highly non-optimal, and *is* funding related. And you can do a heck of a lot to mitigate the fires, and their effects.
But yes, they will still happen.
I doubt a realistic increase in how much water was available would have made that much of a difference given the scale of the fires, and how quickly they spread.
"Los Angeles mayor silent when asked if she owes citizens apology over handling of wildfires Karen Bass remained silent as Sky News asked the mayor if she regrets cutting the fire service's budget."
The fire budget could have been 10x as large and they still would have happened.
Yes, but allegedly there isn't enough water to fight the fires. That is highly non-optimal, and *is* funding related. And you can do a heck of a lot to mitigate the fires, and their effects.
But yes, they will still happen.
Serious drought ...
Still not clear to me who owns the wood and scrubland.
One of the most damaging mistakes Labour made was bad-mouthing the UK economy after the election.
A combination of complacency at the state of the economy combined with an assumption that any damage caused be blamed on the previous government.
They are a bunch of managers, not leaders. That is the problem in my opinion. Maybe with the exception of Wes Streeting from what I have seen.
I don’t buy the right-wing crying about the economy though as our borrowing costs would be going through the roof regardless of who had won the election. Let’s not pretend that the Tories or Reform have any interest in actually balancing the budget.
Balancing the budget will require major cuts in spending. Somebody is going to have to do it and Labour are in the chair for the next 4 years.
I agree on the whole but I stand by my point that it is laughable to pretend either the Tories or Reform have any interest in doing so.
I will go further and argue that the electorate as a whole has no interest in doing so either. It will take a talented politician to be able to take the country with them on this.
I shall just repeat a comment I have made before - You won't get people to call for a smaller state until they (via taxes), and not our grandchildren (via borrowing), are paying for it. Taxes are too low.
For a very long time I've believed that everybody should pay income tax - even people on benefits should know that they'd be getting £X more without paying the tax. So a zero personal allowance. But no idea how one would resolve the step-change from now to then since for the very low paid it would mean employers paying more to cover the loss due to tax.
Good morning, everybody.
Some on benefits get huge amounts of money , free housing , cars , etc and pay not a penny in tax. Yet people working and getting a fraction of their benefits are paying tax , have to pay their own house , council tax , etc
"Los Angeles mayor silent when asked if she owes citizens apology over handling of wildfires Karen Bass remained silent as Sky News asked the mayor if she regrets cutting the fire service's budget."
The fire budget could have been 10x as large and they still would have happened.
Yes, but allegedly there isn't enough water to fight the fires. That is highly non-optimal, and *is* funding related. And you can do a heck of a lot to mitigate the fires, and their effects.
But yes, they will still happen.
Serious drought ...
Still not clear to me who owns the wood and scrubland.
Just because they own the scrub it doesn't necessarily follow that they're allowed to clear it.
Lots of talk on TwiX now about the millionaires and non Doms fleeing the UK. At a time of great impoverishment the Labour government has contrived to frighten away the most important part of our tax base, and told them btw private schools will be slowly abolished via taxes
It’s all adding up. All these allegedly small things are adding up to a looming and desperate collision with reality. Even as we allow in millions of migrants who will be a net drain on the treasury, house thousands of asylum seekers in the savoy at billions a year, and pay Tanzania forty trillion quid to take control of Cornwall
It’s coming. A crash
Brace
As always 'More or Less' is your friend. When you were spouting this awhile ago More or Less debunked it. Who to believe, some nutters on twitter or people who analyse the data properly. It appears the definition of millionaire and sample selection were, how can we put it, bollocks.
Are you seriously disputing that rich people are leaving the UK? Every metric shows they are and in number
COUTTS LONDON PRIME PROPERTY INDEX Q3 2024: PRICES DROP AND BUYERS GET BIGGER DISCOUNTS
Our latest research on luxury London property shows prices falling, average discounts close to 9% and almost 80% of sales coming in below asking price.
Nope I'm not. Just pointing out that last time you did this by quoting a survey you saw somewhere it turned out to be complete bollocks. I know you think you are always right, but you seem to have a very short memory and a very poor source of your data.
If it helps I can give you personal experience instead of surveys - over the pre Christmas drinks party rounds I met (and I noted the number for work reasons) 22 couples who have already or are in the process of moving here from the UK as an absolute direct result of Labour winning the election last year.
All of these people, all 22 couples were people who had set up successful businesses - not inherited money. They are selling or have sold their UK properties, stopped paying staff, stopped buying luxury goods and cars in the UK. Will not be setting up new business or employing people in the UK for the foreseeable future, not paying any more taxes to the UK.
This is one small place - just think how many are going to larger places such as Switzerland, Dubai etc.
I’m sure there will be people who say “good riddance” but remember the new car they bought each year covered an essential salary from the VAT. The shops they shopped in need fewer staff with fewer customers. Their gardeners and housekeepers will find fewer hours to work.
I’ve said it before - I do not rejoice in this, it’s not necessarily good for where I live but it’s worse for the UK which I love.
So ideologically sticking it to the rich will prove to be a stupid act of self harm.
It is a shame they're going. But I also fear there's very little we can do to help people who are so utterly selfish.
Or perhaps you/we are?
I'd certainly think so if someone demanded all my money whilst I took all the risk and did all the work.
Nah. I've not demanded all your money. Far from. But from what I see, you live a good life. Others, who work harder than you, and take many more risks, are much less rewarded.
I want to reward those who work hard, and also those who take risks (e.g. in starting up businesses). But that has to be tempered by the fact you also live in society. If you take risks and fail - as can happen if it is a genuine risk - then you should not be left destitute.
And an awful lot of people earn money with very little risk - in both the private and public sector.
If, heaven forfend, you are taken ill, then you would want the doctors and nurses who look after you not to be overworked and to have access to all the equipment you need? Why should the binmen who are out collecting our bins this morning not get paid well for work I wouldn't want to do? How about a careworker I know who just told me he got threatened by an elderly patient, and the police had to be called?
We live in a society, and that society needs to work as a whole. We are not islands.
Yeah, but this is motherhood and apple pie stuff and you could use it to defend any level of tax. In fact, you just have. Because you're using it as an argument to pay tax - period - and not acknowledging there's a limit. What it comes down to is resentment that some people earn more than you, and you want some of it.
When you tax people at 60%+ for stressful jobs, that involve a lot of stress, professional and personal risk (no-one gets paid a good salary for a simple job just about anyone can do) then at some point they will say, fuck it.
Easy spending cut for Labour is £9bn to Mauritius.
But it's virtue spending as a luxury belief for them to show how wonderful they are. So I imagine it'll be sacred.
There have been more consultations/murmurings about Leeds getting a tram system. I expect this to be cancelled. Yet again (not party political, it's happened under them all, repeatedly).
To be fair, trams are just expensive and inflexible buses, that disrupt the city for many years while the streets are dug up to put the rails in. A metro system is the way to go, particularly for the centre - it can run above ground elsewhere.
Getting it built would require changes to processes though. The majority of the cost is in regulation.
Electric buses in dedicated bus lanes can deliver much of the benefits of trams.
But "Trams are more efficient" - I hear the cry.
If trams cost a zillion a mile, require years of planning, then sorry. You can't have lots of trams. Choices.
Much like the explosion (ha) of battery storage for power. Why? Because *stopping* people parking some shipping containers on some land is very difficult. So it may not be the best storage system. But it's the one that will happen.
I'm not convinced by "Trams take forever to build" type comment.
Nottingham has two tramlines - a total of 20 miles and 50 station, done one line, then the other added. In each case starting work on site to the tram starting operating took 4 years.
Getting everything in place, around permissions and funding, took about twice as long, and more for the first one.
Trams are more efficient. As a like for like, put a double decker bus on a tramway with tram wheels and it uses about 85-90% less energy at 30mph. Plus they are more efficient in staff per passenger, and go at higher speed.
A zillion per mile is much to do with planning process, like everything else, and how the numbers are added up - I blame the Treasury. The way we cost our roads are also completely screwed-up, though I think that may be being changed around now; I think it was on Louise Haigh's agenda.
There are plenty of European case studies to show how quickly the planning can be done, too. Here it's an extended, and expensive game of ping pong between national and local government.
The obvious and massive benefit of trams is they run on roads. You don't need to kill any newts or knock any cathedrals down to put them in. The planning process should be much, much quicker than a new road or something.
+ prioritised signals + load 100 people in 30 seconds + quiet + no road wear
Up until the end of the Second World War, anybody who fell outside of the cultural norm — white, British and Christian — was a novelty and would have lived in the full knowledge that they did not represent the municipal mainstream. The experience of London before the Second World War resembled modern monocultural Tokyo far more than it resembled modern multicultural New York...
For the first time in history, London’s permanent population is culturally, ethnically and religiously diverse, sharing little in common with the country it governs. This change was recent, rapid and remarkable. It is strange that we acknowledge it so rarely, and it would be ludicrous to assume that it has had no bearing on life in the city. Most Londoners know, regardless of whether they admit it, that crime has risen steeply. Certain areas of the city are effectively off-limits after dark...
The sticking-plaster solution is to engineer a new founding myth through brute-force messaging: London is, always has been and always will be multicultural. Londoners have always prided themselves on their pluralism and tolerance. This was inevitable. It cannot — must not — be questioned.
"In 1851, over 38 percent were born somewhere else." "by 1901 the proportion of Londoners born elsewhere had declined to just 33 percent of the total" "The 1901 census recorded 33,000 Londoners as having been born in British colonies or dependencies."
Does it make a difference if the "somewhere else" is Lincolnshire or Lagos?
The cultural gap between 1851 rural Lincolnshire and London would have been quite big. Throughout the last two hundred years there have been tensions between newcomers and born and bred Londoners, whether huguenots, Irish, Jewish, Caribbean, Eastern European, Asian or African. Mostly low level with occasional times where it ramps up. Over time the newcomers become the born and bred, then a different set of new people arrive. Is it different, sure, does it alter that dynamic significantly, probably not.
Dire economic background at the moment. Looking at the stock market we've had three retailers (Greggs, M&S, and Tesco) announce pretty reasonable updates this morning - all down (9%, 5%, 2%). These aren't normal times.
(I don't blame Reeves for this - she's just doing her best to deliver on Labour policy. And of course their policy is hardly a mad rush left, so although wrong-headed it's only moderately so. It's much more the state the country has drifted into over many years - since 1997 really)
The country is broke, people are broke. It’s not really a surprise. And instead of focusing on how we can turn the economy around we’re focused on lies about things that have already happened and absurdity about wanting to be dictated to by a foreigner.
That being true, why they fuck are we giving Mauritius £9bn?
Because we're run by fucking muppets who have starry-eyed idealistic views about the purety of "international law" and put it on a pedestal, and want to virtue-signal they've done real Decolonisation to their base.
This is not an ideological point, though - it's simply a massive and unnecessary waste of money.
A competent opposition would be raising this weekly at PMQs - without going down the rabbithole of "decolonialisation", which is a distraction of no interest to the majority of the electorate. Likely including the majority of Labour's "base", as opposed to their activists.
That £9bn, and the £15bn you'd free up by cutting three quarters of the CCS commitment (leaving the balance to fund genuine research), would replace a large slug of the headroom Reeves just lost.
Yes, and this is why her "black hole" shtick didn't land, because people didn't think Labour were forced to raise taxes but did so through choice.
I think they likely were forced to raise taxes - as would a Conservative government have been - unless they were going to cut a whole load of stuff.
But while it would be fair to claim that the last government made a raft of essentially unfunded spending commitments for the post election period, the "black hole of £Xbn" thing was always nonsense, since government funding is always a moving target.
There was £9-10bn of commitments that had yet to be treated, and Hunt hadn't settled all the pay deals not the next CSR for departments.
But there's no doubt in my mind he'd have settled those at lower levels with more conditions than the existing administration, and made more productivity demands.
Sure, we might have seen a bit more/longer industrial action as the counterfoil for a time - but we're getting a lot of that now anyway.
Dire economic background at the moment. Looking at the stock market we've had three retailers (Greggs, M&S, and Tesco) announce pretty reasonable updates this morning - all down (9%, 5%, 2%). These aren't normal times.
(I don't blame Reeves for this - she's just doing her best to deliver on Labour policy. And of course their policy is hardly a mad rush left, so although wrong-headed it's only moderately so. It's much more the state the country has drifted into over many years - since 1997 really)
The country is broke, people are broke. It’s not really a surprise. And instead of focusing on how we can turn the economy around we’re focused on lies about things that have already happened and absurdity about wanting to be dictated to by a foreigner.
That being true, why they fuck are we giving Mauritius £9bn?
Because we're run by fucking muppets who have starry-eyed idealistic views about the purety of "international law" and put it on a pedestal, and want to virtue-signal they've done real Decolonisation to their base.
This is not an ideological point, though - it's simply a massive and unnecessary waste of money.
A competent opposition would be raising this weekly at PMQs - without going down the rabbithole of "decolonialisation", which is a distraction of no interest to the majority of the electorate. Likely including the majority of Labour's "base", as opposed to their activists.
That £9bn, and the £15bn you'd free up by cutting three quarters of the CCS commitment (leaving the balance to fund genuine research), would replace a large slug of the headroom Reeves just lost.
Yes, and this is why her "black hole" shtick didn't land, because people didn't think Labour were forced to raise taxes but did so through choice.
I think they likely were forced to raise taxes - as would a Conservative government have been - unless they were going to cut a whole load of stuff.
But while it would be fair to claim that the last government made a raft of essentially unfunded spending commitments for the post election period, the "black hole of £Xbn" thing was always nonsense, since government funding is always a moving target.
There was £9-10bn of commitments that had yet to be treated, and Hunt hadn't settled all the pay deals not the next CSR for departments.
But there's no doubt in my mind he'd have settled those at lower levels with more conditions than the existing administration, and made more productivity demands.
Sure, we might have seen a bit more/longer industrial action as the counterfoil for a time - but we're getting a lot of that now anyway.
He also massively cut capital spending, which Labour have had to reinstate to it's admittedly pathetic pre-Hunt-budget levels.
(There's absolutely no way Hunt would've taken on the NHS unions, strikes during a winter flu crisis lol. The gerontocracy would've gone berserk)
WRT the rich, no one should complain about paying 35% or so of their income to live in a first world, low crime, country. The kind of rich person, like David Wasserman, who resents any form of taxation, then begs for help when his home is in danger of being burned, is an arse.
But, they have every right to expect their taxes to be spent wisely, and stuff like the Chagos deal, or paying people to claim asylum here, is not spending wisely.
I can't see any point in anyone in Britain now doing a job with a salary between 100k and 180k, because of tax. [you have to be earning really big bucks before it no longer matters, and even then 47% evaporates before you get out the door]
In fact, I know a lot of people (my wife being one) who keep their earnings beneath 100k deliberately, which is equivalent of only about 65k a few years ago - and not "rich".
Lots of talk on TwiX now about the millionaires and non Doms fleeing the UK. At a time of great impoverishment the Labour government has contrived to frighten away the most important part of our tax base, and told them btw private schools will be slowly abolished via taxes
It’s all adding up. All these allegedly small things are adding up to a looming and desperate collision with reality. Even as we allow in millions of migrants who will be a net drain on the treasury, house thousands of asylum seekers in the savoy at billions a year, and pay Tanzania forty trillion quid to take control of Cornwall
It’s coming. A crash
Brace
As always 'More or Less' is your friend. When you were spouting this awhile ago More or Less debunked it. Who to believe, some nutters on twitter or people who analyse the data properly. It appears the definition of millionaire and sample selection were, how can we put it, bollocks.
Are you seriously disputing that rich people are leaving the UK? Every metric shows they are and in number
COUTTS LONDON PRIME PROPERTY INDEX Q3 2024: PRICES DROP AND BUYERS GET BIGGER DISCOUNTS
Our latest research on luxury London property shows prices falling, average discounts close to 9% and almost 80% of sales coming in below asking price.
Nope I'm not. Just pointing out that last time you did this by quoting a survey you saw somewhere it turned out to be complete bollocks. I know you think you are always right, but you seem to have a very short memory and a very poor source of your data.
If it helps I can give you personal experience instead of surveys - over the pre Christmas drinks party rounds I met (and I noted the number for work reasons) 22 couples who have already or are in the process of moving here from the UK as an absolute direct result of Labour winning the election last year.
All of these people, all 22 couples were people who had set up successful businesses - not inherited money. They are selling or have sold their UK properties, stopped paying staff, stopped buying luxury goods and cars in the UK. Will not be setting up new business or employing people in the UK for the foreseeable future, not paying any more taxes to the UK.
This is one small place - just think how many are going to larger places such as Switzerland, Dubai etc.
I’m sure there will be people who say “good riddance” but remember the new car they bought each year covered an essential salary from the VAT. The shops they shopped in need fewer staff with fewer customers. Their gardeners and housekeepers will find fewer hours to work.
I’ve said it before - I do not rejoice in this, it’s not necessarily good for where I live but it’s worse for the UK which I love.
So ideologically sticking it to the rich will prove to be a stupid act of self harm.
It is a shame they're going. But I also fear there's very little we can do to help people who are so utterly selfish.
It's interesting that some people like the half the idea of Global Britain - easy to come here and work. But the corollary to that is that people find it easier to leave.
Take one bloke in my team. Indian, first generation immigrant. Got wife and baby, no school as yet. Been in the country about 6 years. Why shouldn't he move to Berlin, or wherever?
He looks at what he is paying in taxes and what he gets for it. And is not impressed. Transactional, maybe. But why should he think differently?
I agree. Mrs J is in that situation. She could be earning more in Turkey - or the USA - than here. But we don't move. Why? Partly the reasons she moved to this country in the first place, and partly because the UK is still a good place to live on a moderate income.
Others disagree. But the country needs more money to fix problems it has. Austerity - which I was in favour of - has been tried, and probably went too far. So how else do we get the money? There is no magic money tree.
Isn’t this attitude from you and Mrs J selfish? Mrs J could earn more and contribute more in taxes to the country that nurtured her but instead she has upped sticks to another country for reasons she has decided are better for her rather than society in general?
And frankly if you worked a bit harder you could contribute more in taxes to the UK but instead you rather selfishly have decided to balance your work and life to suit the needs of your family?
I think it’s perfectly fair and correct that you and Mrs J have chosen your residence to suit your priorities over the needs of a country as a whole.
Easy spending cut for Labour is £9bn to Mauritius.
But it's virtue spending as a luxury belief for them to show how wonderful they are. So I imagine it'll be sacred.
There have been more consultations/murmurings about Leeds getting a tram system. I expect this to be cancelled. Yet again (not party political, it's happened under them all, repeatedly).
To be fair, trams are just expensive and inflexible buses, that disrupt the city for many years while the streets are dug up to put the rails in. A metro system is the way to go, particularly for the centre - it can run above ground elsewhere.
Getting it built would require changes to processes though. The majority of the cost is in regulation.
Metros are even more expensive.
Trams can run on lower energy, due to reduced coefficient of friction, and be electrified and pull longer/heavier loads; they are also more reliable than buses.
Metros are only more expensive in terms of the costs to build and run. But they move a lot more people (and cause less disruption) so in terms of passenger usage they're better value.
Dire economic background at the moment. Looking at the stock market we've had three retailers (Greggs, M&S, and Tesco) announce pretty reasonable updates this morning - all down (9%, 5%, 2%). These aren't normal times.
(I don't blame Reeves for this - she's just doing her best to deliver on Labour policy. And of course their policy is hardly a mad rush left, so although wrong-headed it's only moderately so. It's much more the state the country has drifted into over many years - since 1997 really)
The country is broke, people are broke. It’s not really a surprise. And instead of focusing on how we can turn the economy around we’re focused on lies about things that have already happened and absurdity about wanting to be dictated to by a foreigner.
That being true, why they fuck are we giving Mauritius £9bn?
Because we're run by fucking muppets who have starry-eyed idealistic views about the purety of "international law" and put it on a pedestal, and want to virtue-signal they've done real Decolonisation to their base.
Yes and given they are loaded and don't need any services, all paid for by us , they don't a toss about squandering public funds for their ideological f**kwittery.
By the way, mentioning Truss, she has gone completely full Trump with her cease-and-desist letter the Starmer about 'crashing the economy'.
Leave aside the issue about free speech, and it being necessary to a functioning democracy; leave aside the hypocrisy of her fellow travellers doing far worse *to* Starmer over the child rape gangs. Unlike Trump, she's not in a position to do any censorship, either soft or hard so it's just moronic politics. Raising the issue again just reminds people that she did spike interest rates and nearly brought down a load of pension funds - ironically, just at the time that Labour should be facing heat on the issue.
I think Starmer and co complaining about unfair attacks need to be a little bit careful in case people pick up what Marina Hyde just wrote in her latest Guardian column:
“I find it difficult to forget now, and wrote about it at the time, but less than two years ago Keir Starmer approved and stood by an attack ad, disseminated on all the social media platforms, which used a picture of Rishi Sunak, next to the words “Do you think adults convicted of sexually assaulting children should go to prison? Rishi Sunak doesn’t.” Sunak’s famous signature was added for good measure. Joining in the race to the bottom benefits no one, as the prime minister is now finding out. The sense that people like him have played politics rather than done politics is well entrenched.”
Dire economic background at the moment. Looking at the stock market we've had three retailers (Greggs, M&S, and Tesco) announce pretty reasonable updates this morning - all down (9%, 5%, 2%). These aren't normal times.
(I don't blame Reeves for this - she's just doing her best to deliver on Labour policy. And of course their policy is hardly a mad rush left, so although wrong-headed it's only moderately so. It's much more the state the country has drifted into over many years - since 1997 really)
The country is broke, people are broke. It’s not really a surprise. And instead of focusing on how we can turn the economy around we’re focused on lies about things that have already happened and absurdity about wanting to be dictated to by a foreigner.
That being true, why they fuck are we giving Mauritius £9bn?
Because we're run by fucking muppets who have starry-eyed idealistic views about the purety of "international law" and put it on a pedestal, and want to virtue-signal they've done real Decolonisation to their base.
This is not an ideological point, though - it's simply a massive and unnecessary waste of money.
A competent opposition would be raising this weekly at PMQs - without going down the rabbithole of "decolonialisation", which is a distraction of no interest to the majority of the electorate. Likely including the majority of Labour's "base", as opposed to their activists.
That £9bn, and the £15bn you'd free up by cutting three quarters of the CCS commitment (leaving the balance to fund genuine research), would replace a large slug of the headroom Reeves just lost.
Yes, and this is why her "black hole" shtick didn't land, because people didn't think Labour were forced to raise taxes but did so through choice.
I think they likely were forced to raise taxes - as would a Conservative government have been - unless they were going to cut a whole load of stuff.
But while it would be fair to claim that the last government made a raft of essentially unfunded spending commitments for the post election period, the "black hole of £Xbn" thing was always nonsense, since government funding is always a moving target.
they could have filled teh hole with Miliband's 22 Billion waste of money, tying train drivers and doctors to productivity, etc
Comments
Sorry. Just remembering I'm not in the fairly cushioned category.
But I do have a plan. With my income as is, I can cunningly avoid any tax increases. And it's 100% legal.
But yes, it is selfish. If this country is in a mess, then it needs more money (i.e. tax) to get it out of that mess.
And if they are as rich as you say, the situation may well have come about because the decisions made by people like them, and not the poorer.
For two reasons.
Firstly I've lived through Labour governments before, secondly I have some knowledge of economics, and thirdly I have some knowledge of government and acquaintance with a few of the personalities.
From the first I got knew that Labour would shovel money and favours to their favoured interest groups while screwing over the enterprising and productive who make this country just about work (obviously having criticised the Conservatives for doing the same to a much lesser extent), from the second I knew that their policies were the exact opposite of what the country needs, and from the third I knew just how pisspoor they are at their jobs. I didn't agree with much of what Jeremy Hunt did, but compared to Reeves he is an intellectual colossus.
Though I won't claim to have anticipated that they'd become this unpopular this quickly - I thought dislike of the Conservatives would act as more of a prop to the government's favourability ratings than it has, and I also thought that voters would be more convinced by Starmer's lying gaslighting about being pro-growth etc. than they have been. Also I didn't realise that Starmer and Reeves would go around spreading gloom about the country's situation in such an utterly self-defeating and counter-productive way.
For the first time in my life I have taken to advising the few young people who have asked me to find another country for the next few years at least.
Plastic patriots help ruin the country, bitch about it, then leave for others to clear up the mess.
I agree they can do what they like. But that does not mean they can not, and should not, be criticised.
‘Yer could walk miles without encountering a kebab shop and it weren’t illegal to call yerself English!’
Ensuring one is prosperous is not selfishness, its enlightened self interest, looking after your self your family your kids your future. If you make money you will also, probably be less demanding of the state, you are also likely to employ people, start more companies, spend cash in restaurants, etc etc. All the positive things @boulay said. Also if these people move it's a good lesson to countries that stupidly impose high taxes so as to punish the enterprising - the lesson being: don't do it. Sadly it seems the UK is gonna have to learn this all over again as we did in 1960s and 70s, until we eventualy went bust
And I speak as someone who has voluntairly paid a LOT of tax to HMRC and the UK
Next.
Others disagree. But the country needs more money to fix problems it has. Austerity - which I was in favour of - has been tried, and probably went too far. So how else do we get the money? There is no magic money tree.
Given the windspeed, I wonder what width you'd need for a firebreak?
When we get fires on the moors the bracken can roll up and blow half a mile away whilst still alight. I don't imagine their scrub is any different.
Or, in reality, further qualify what the NHS will pay for and what it will not.
I am glad I have a good buffer of cash as well as other investments and a DB which I am now looking to access early.
They are interviewing replacements for me, including some today.
https://patrioticmillionaires.uk/the-problem
One think I'd go after is PIPs: Joe Lifestough shouldn't be paid £1.5k a month by the State to rent her own 1-bed flat in Brighton because she finds working at the civil service mentally straining. I'd also time-limit incapacity benefits, just as employers do, unless they are permanently disabled.
She can live with friends, family or others in a flatshare. Sure, she will still have issues and won't be as "independent" but we can't afford to keep everyone in clover as if they were all working full-time - a permanent furlough.
You can't keep asking for a GE when you don't like what the Govt does, particularly if it has a large majority.
There are a substantial number of white and British people on London of Continental European origin not putting White British on the census, because they think that means only anglo-saxon/celtic. It shouldn't mean that, as British is a civic not ethnic category, and that's English or Celtic. The government needs to change the categories.
If you have a paid-off mortgage, life is probably still pretty peachy. If you are paying 2025-level market rents, you are stuffed no matter how much you earn.
Until that gets fixed, not much else matters. Increased prosperity just feeds into higher house prices so why bother?
This government, imperfect as it is, does seem to get that better than the alternatives. Whether it gets it well enough remains to be seen.
(And how much of the moaning here is people doing badly themselves, as opposed to people hearing that it's going badly and resenting being out of power themselves?)
If we didn't have the existing debt, and therefore weren't paying the interest payments on it, the governments books would about balance now, instead of being miles out of wack.
Outside of wartime and national emergencies, wise governments should not borrow.
As someone who'd lived in London for some time, I've suffered from crime (bike theft and burglary) but less frequently than when I was a student in Newcastle and the only times I've been threatened with violence is as a cyclist by white British male drivers (note: people who have stopped and exited their vehicle to threaten violence, not just poor or deliberately dangerous driving.).
On the other side of the ledger you'd have a debit for where we can't take advantage of new technologies, like AI, and flexibility in trade and foreign policy.
Metros are more expensive than trams, inevitably, but can move many times more people so the cost per passenger mile should be lower, if planned properly. Otherwise, yes, buses.
Nottingham has two tramlines - a total of 20 miles and 50 station, done one line, then the other added. In each case starting work on site to the tram starting operating took 4 years.
Getting everything in place, around permissions and funding, took about twice as long, and more for the first one.
Trams are more efficient. As a like for like, put a double decker bus on a tramway with tram wheels and it uses about 85-90% less energy at 30mph. Plus they are more efficient in staff per passenger, and go at higher speed.
A zillion per mile is much to do with planning process, like everything else, and how the numbers are added up - I blame the Treasury. The way we cost our roads are also completely screwed-up, though I think that may be being changed around now; I think it was on Louise Haigh's agenda.
A competent opposition would be raising this weekly at PMQs - without going down the rabbithole of "decolonialisation", which is a distraction of no interest to the majority of the electorate. Likely including the majority of Labour's "base", as opposed to their activists.
That £9bn, and the £15bn you'd free up by cutting three quarters of the CCS commitment (leaving the balance to fund genuine research), would replace a large slug of the headroom Reeves just lost.
The consistent belief is that businesses and professionals are only there to be milked to death and should bloody well accept it.
Leave aside the issue about free speech, and it being necessary to a functioning democracy; leave aside the hypocrisy of her fellow travellers doing far worse *to* Starmer over the child rape gangs. Unlike Trump, she's not in a position to do any censorship, either soft or hard so it's just moronic politics. Raising the issue again just reminds people that she did spike interest rates and nearly brought down a load of pension funds - ironically, just at the time that Labour should be facing heat on the issue.
Fact is you can switch it multiple ways, by some stats London is safer, in others- knife crime is an example - it really isn't
What I CAN say for sure is that London used to "feel" a lot safer than most big developed cities around the world. That is no longer the case. eg Phone theft is almost unheard of in East Asia, likewise mugging. I am right now in the most vivid raucous nightlifey area of Bangkok. It feels safer than Soho because it is. I can leave my phone on a table and it won't get nicked
I'd certainly think so if someone demanded all my money whilst I took all the risk and did all the work.
https://maps.nls.uk/cairt/cairt46.pdf
In particular, they've uploaded the OS Original Series 1" to the mile maps for E&W:
https://maps.nls.uk/additions/
https://maps.nls.uk/os/one-inch-old-series/
That said, they have a reserve currency and massive oil and gas reserves which we don’t.
I've just listened to the latest "The rest is history", which is about the Munich agreement, and I found the parallels both shocking and worrying.
In a world where we need more Churchills, we've got Musk as a Henry Ford-like character and a US president appeasing. It's easy to imagine Trump coming back from Moscow and waving a worthless piece of paper in his hand.
Now, the parallels are limited; But like Hitler, Putin has made his world view very clear, and Musk and many in this incoming administration seem to not care.
That is the quickest way to war. And Musk's words are helping damage alliances that have lasted many decades.
There are very significant amounts of investment missed over the previous 13-14 years that have to be made good. You don't for example starve local authorities of resources (real terms reduction of 25-30% since 2010 iirc) without having to spend the extra money later to make good the year of neglect.
See also defence?
And then there is all the rest ...
“I find it difficult to forget now, and wrote about it at the time, but less than two years ago Keir Starmer approved and stood by an attack ad, disseminated on all the social media platforms, which used a picture of Rishi Sunak, next to the words “Do you think adults convicted of sexually assaulting children should go to prison? Rishi Sunak doesn’t.” Sunak’s famous signature was added for good measure. Joining in the race to the bottom benefits no one, as the prime minister is now finding out. The sense that people like him have played politics rather than done politics is well entrenched.”
What I did do once I was rejected the first time was to start saving every spare penny I could to give me a buffer to allow me to go without eating into my SIPP's, DC's or ISA's and I did pretty well at that. It is enough to pay my part of the bills for 15 months and also go out and about.
My only concern is the DB pension I have and the impact of the Reeves budget on it. This is why I am looking to take it 3 years early from Mid March. Or to see what I would get with abatements if I did.
Cutting welfare to force people into the jobs market would work well, for example.
I couldn't be arsed
I don't mind paying taxes to the UK state, if I feel they are being sensibly spent, on defending the nation, helping the indigent, nurturing the sick
I do get quie fucked off when I think those taxes are now going to pay for "asylum seekers" completely taking the piss as they cross from France to go live in a hotel on my shilling, or when we are paying Mauritius sixty billion quid to take valuable British foreign posessions because it makes Starmer "feel good"
There comes a point when even a fair minded tax payer says Fuck this
God knows what young people think. Or rather, I do know how they think and they increasingly believe they get a very raw deal and they are swinging hard right, or they will do so, as elsewhere
Right, to the gym! Then gin
Just like Labour before the election, ruling out increases in taxes and borrowing, he has now confirmd, though he won't admit it, austerity is coming back in a big way
Customer: we’re not the importer, we’re on DAP terms
Me: yeah that’s what DAP means
Customer: we don’t share that information as we’re not the importer
Client: why are these people not understanding how your customs work?
Yep. None of this was a problem until last February when BTOM finally collapsed into operation
My memory of the 80s and 90s was a lot more burglary and definitely more of a geographical edge to personal crime like mugging - there were no go areas.
Trams can run on lower energy, due to reduced coefficient of friction, and be electrified and pull longer/heavier loads; they are also more reliable than buses.
Here it's an extended, and expensive game of ping pong between national and local government.
Ban agency nurses and doctors for example, when they had no work they would have to either emigrate or go back to NHS. Fortune saved either way that the clowns could use to train lots more staff.
I want to reward those who work hard, and also those who take risks (e.g. in starting up businesses). But that has to be tempered by the fact you also live in society. If you take risks and fail - as can happen if it is a genuine risk - then you should not be left destitute.
And an awful lot of people earn money with very little risk - in both the private and public sector.
If, heaven forfend, you are taken ill, then you would want the doctors and nurses who look after you not to be overworked and to have access to all the equipment you need? Why should the binmen who are out collecting our bins this morning not get paid well for work I wouldn't want to do? How about a careworker I know who just told me he got threatened by an elderly patient, and the police had to be called?
We live in a society, and that society needs to work as a whole. We are not islands.
The issue that matters, as always, is integration, and whether people from dysfunctional societies wish to recreate them over here.
I'd just like to point out that the Misguided Bus here in Cambridge has been an absolute disaster. It was late, massively over budget, and the legal repercussions are still, I believe, ongoing over a decade later. Naturally enough, they want to build more of them, including to my neck of the woods.
He became a Voodoo Pole!
(I thank you)
Dirty Leeds. No metro despite repeated studies and reports. No decent roads north of the LeedsBradford area. Horrible traffic congestion, horrible conditions, something obviously needed to have been built.
What has been the cost of Leeds getting gummed up by traffic for all these years? Not building anything means slower economic growth and a city that is economically smaller than it could have been.
And yet with the post-Thatcher settlement where it’s always cost and not benefit, the view is that we’ve somehow saved money. We haven’t.
Take care to choose the right person: male contractors from out-of-town with young children elsewhere are the best, as all they want to do is come home, Zoom/Team with their kid and wife about whether they had a good day, watch telly/internet and go to bed. Women want a more social experience which doesn't work for me but might for you. Don't have young people: they will inevitably have friends/boyfriends/girlfriends around and that's an accident waiting to happen.
But, they have every right to expect their taxes to be spent wisely, and stuff like the Chagos deal, or paying people to claim asylum here, is not spending wisely.
You can keep asking for a GE when you don't like what the Govt does.
You are unlikely to get it, but thems the breaks.
Karen Bass remained silent as Sky News asked the mayor if she regrets cutting the fire service's budget."
https://news.sky.com/video/los-angeles-mayor-silent-when-asked-if-she-owes-citizens-apology-over-handling-of-wildfires-13285826
Though it will require further legislation, which they are now consulting on.
This, published in December, seems sensible.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/planning-reform-working-paper-development-and-nature-recovery/planning-reform-working-paper-development-and-nature-recovery
Our proposals
13. We want to meet these objectives by taking 3 steps for which the Planning and Infrastructure Bill will provide the necessary legislative underpinning.
a) Moving responsibility for identifying actions to address environmental impacts away from multiple project-specific assessments in an area to a single strategic assessment and delivery plan. This will allow action to address environmental impacts from development to be taken strategically, at an appropriate geographic scale, rather than at the level of an individual project – while recognising the importance of protecting local communities’ access to nature and green space.
b) Moving more responsibility for planning and implementing these strategic actions onto the state, delivered through organisations with the right expertise and with the necessary flexibility to take actions that most effectively deliver positive outcomes for nature.
c) In turn, allowing impacts to be dealt with strategically in exchange for a financial payment that helps fund strategic actions, so development can proceed more quickly. Project-level environmental assessments are then limited only to those harms not dealt with strategically...
I was actually slightly flattered that he asked me, as I was only in my early twenties at the time, and he had lots of expensive stuff that could be damaged. I've since heard that some insurance companies put up their insurance if a house is left unoccupied for more than a month?
But then Boris was New Labour on Steroids when it came to that.
No, it does not affect those in power and they care little for us and our communities and the impact their policies have, across the board, on us. Except when they want our vote.
They care about our money though, and are very happy to take more and more of it for less and less delivery.
No-one was expecting a recovery. After the Windsor Agreement, that led to virtually no bounce, it was all downhill for Sunak.
But yes, they will still happen.
Even in the circs of an empty house after a death it can be tricky, though easier (albeit removing valuables etc.)
But while it would be fair to claim that the last government made a raft of essentially unfunded spending commitments for the post election period, the "black hole of £Xbn" thing was always nonsense, since government funding is always a moving target.
Still not clear to me who owns the wood and scrubland.
When you tax people at 60%+ for stressful jobs, that involve a lot of stress, professional and personal risk (no-one gets paid a good salary for a simple job just about anyone can do) then at some point they will say, fuck it.
You will have no recourse to criticise them.
+ prioritised signals + load 100 people in 30 seconds + quiet + no road wear
But there's no doubt in my mind he'd have settled those at lower levels with more conditions than the existing administration, and made more productivity demands.
Sure, we might have seen a bit more/longer industrial action as the counterfoil for a time - but we're getting a lot of that now anyway.
(There's absolutely no way Hunt would've taken on the NHS unions, strikes during a winter flu crisis lol. The gerontocracy would've gone berserk)
In fact, I know a lot of people (my wife being one) who keep their earnings beneath 100k deliberately, which is equivalent of only about 65k a few years ago - and not "rich".
And frankly if you worked a bit harder you could contribute more in taxes to the UK but instead you rather selfishly have decided to balance your work and life to suit the needs of your family?
I think it’s perfectly fair and correct that you and Mrs J have chosen your residence to suit your priorities over the needs of a country as a whole.