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.
If tax cuts led to growth , why is the National Debt so big?
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)
Historical evidence suggests otherwise. There was lots of industrial action last winter.
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.
And there's quite a lot in that on terms of being more expensive to build and run. It can be billions on the first and tens of millions on the second. Economics depends on the density of the population to drive revenue and the difficultly of construction to serve it, and hence why you run a business case.
In medium sized cities trams make more sense. Large cities metros. Small places, buses.
Not to go the full Liam Neeson, but I do this for a living.
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.
Or, it's selfish for my parents to stay in their big house now and not sell up, downsize, and give me my inheritance now so it's not taxable when they pass on.
Or, is it?
The trouble is that selfishness is when someone decides not to prioritise your interests.
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)
The one good thing (little bit) Labour have done is stop the firesale of land for HS2 Phase 2a and commit to the Euston extension.
But, it's pretty thin gruel. And they've done very little on other strategic infrastructure.
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.
Or, it's selfish for my parents to stay in their big house now and not sell up, downsize, and give me my inheritance now so it's not taxable when they pass on.
Or, is it?
The trouble is that selfishness is when someone decides not to prioritise your interests.
Of the OP's 22 couples, I would bet the majority *aren't* Gammon Flag Shagger British.
Which opens an interesting conversation on what loyalties are owed and to whom.
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.
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.
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.
Are you a born and bred Londoner or an newcomer?
Yes, are you able to post without asking a question?
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.
And there's quite a lot in that on terms of being more expensive to build and run. It can be billions on the first and tens of millions on the second. Economics depends on the density of the population to drive revenue and the difficultly of construction to serve it, and hence why you run a business case.
In medium sized cities trams make more sense. Large cities metros. Small places, buses.
Not to go the full Liam Neeson, but I do this for a living.
Indeed. And Leeds is a large enough city.
You could also add smart buses to even smaller places / more rural / less dense / low-demand times. The broad concept of public transport of 'we run where we say, when we say' is out of the stagecoach era. Technology allows a much more user-focused approach now, if providers and regulators can get together to develop and introduce the software.
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
Anyone paid benefits, either in-work or out-of-work/long term ill, have a legal entitlement based on laws passed by our sovereign government. Anyone on PB knows or should know, if they want to change this, get elected, pass laws, and enact those laws. It's what we all voted for.
However too many people spend too little time looking at how the government spends it's non-discretionary tax income; how this has arisen; why it has arisen; and what changes should be enacted. Don't complain about tax unless you understand the non-discretionary spend. As Musk/DOGE is finding out.
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)
Historical evidence suggests otherwise. There was lots of industrial action last winter.
That's true. Perhaps instead governments have to increase health spending as protection from accusations that they killed granny in a hospital corridor, whether that goes on wages or not.
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.
You will have no recourse to criticise them.
Exactly , whilst plenty are happy for tax to go up to give them free house, free cash, free motor , etc , etc for doing nothing or pretending they have a bad back , children have any one of a thousand afflictions , etc. The pity party about doctors and nurses overworked deserves a small violin. Never in my life ever heard of a poor doctor and if they work over their alloted hours they get very well recompensed at higher rates for it , on top of being very very well paid. The ones who whinge about people being too well paid need to go out and get the same job and see how easy it is. Issue nowadays is peopl ewant everything on a plate and not have to work for it, previous generations had to graft to get anything , toffs apart.
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.
And there's quite a lot in that on terms of being more expensive to build and run. It can be billions on the first and tens of millions on the second. Economics depends on the density of the population to drive revenue and the difficultly of construction to serve it, and hence why you run a business case.
In medium sized cities trams make more sense. Large cities metros. Small places, buses.
Not to go the full Liam Neeson, but I do this for a living.
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.
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.
... I do this for a living.
Posting on PB?
Travelling today so I'm bored and you've got me to look forward to.
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.
... I do this for a living.
Posting on PB?
Travelling today so I'm bored and you've got me to look forward to.
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.
There are so many Welsh and Irish names in London, Welsh particularly.
I've always got the feeling that so many people arriving from Wales must have been one of the biggest changes for people since the Normans. I don't see that much written about this, though.
Some of them at the egdes look an ickle bit demanding. eg Portsmouth, some London Boroughs.
As I thought judging by the housing estates popping up like billio near me my area is pulling it's weight:
New homes in Bassetlaw 613 new homes a year are required by government targets set in 2024 931 homes were added per year on average in Bassetlaw since 2021, which is more than the new target 981 new homes were added in the year to March 2024 65 fewer than the year before
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.
Are you a born and bred Londoner or an newcomer?
Yes, are you able to post without asking a question?
One way in which it probably does change the dynamic significantly is that when the proportion of people coming into London from the rest of this country falls, it increases the disconnect between the capital and the rest of the population. It ceases to be a capital city and becomes a city state.
Would David Lammy have advocated independence for London if his parents had come from Lincolnshire?
Bloody gorgeous day in Devon, now that the sheet ice has melted. That made the dog walk look like my poor impression of Ski Sunday. The bit where they have lost their skis and are windmilling over the ice towards the inevitable contact with the barriers...
Bloody gorgeous day in Devon, now that the sheet ice has melted. That made the dog walk look like my poor impression of Ski Sunday. The bit where they have lost their skis and are windmilling over the ice towards the inevitable contact with the barriers...
Yaktrax or Microspikes will keep you out of A&E.
In 2010 I had to go to A&E to visit an ice victim and was reduced to walking the streets with full crampons. It might have looked like overkill but I was the only one not skating everywhere.
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.
And there's quite a lot in that on terms of being more expensive to build and run. It can be billions on the first and tens of millions on the second. Economics depends on the density of the population to drive revenue and the difficultly of construction to serve it, and hence why you run a business case.
In medium sized cities trams make more sense. Large cities metros. Small places, buses.
Not to go the full Liam Neeson, but I do this for a living.
Indeed. And Leeds is a large enough city.
You could also add smart buses to even smaller places / more rural / less dense / low-demand times. The broad concept of public transport of 'we run where we say, when we say' is out of the stagecoach era. Technology allows a much more user-focused approach now, if providers and regulators can get together to develop and introduce the software.
You don't like trams, and would prefer a metro - I get that - but that does not a business case make. Public transport works well where there is a latent demand for travel along the route - it isn't done in a vacuum - and if you can get below 10 minute gaps in service and operate 18 hours a day (big ifs, of course) you don't need a timetable.
Also, people tend not to like buses for all of reliability, service quality, and privacy/ safety/ social reasons. Uber is far closer to the user-focuses transport you crave these days, but has scattered coverage outside 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?
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.
Are you a born and bred Londoner or an newcomer?
Yes, are you able to post without asking a question?
One way in which it probably does change the dynamic significantly is that when the proportion of people coming into London from the rest of this country falls, it increases the disconnect between the capital and the rest of the population. It ceases to be a capital city and becomes a city state.
Would David Lammy have advocated independence for London if his parents had come from Lincolnshire?
Bloody gorgeous day in Devon, now that the sheet ice has melted. That made the dog walk look like my poor impression of Ski Sunday. The bit where they have lost their skis and are windmilling over the ice towards the inevitable contact with the barriers...
Every winter, I complain about the lack of proper wintriness in suburban South Manchester. I feel luck to live here in most respects, but I lament my home city's aversion to snow. However let me go on record and say I am having an absolutely brilliant January for weather. GM appears to have the best of the snow. It's properly thick and pretty, and the last snowfall rather than vanishing to slush and grey hardened to ice, which sparkled. I love proper winters.
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.
Are you a born and bred Londoner or an newcomer?
Yes, are you able to post without asking a question?
One way in which it probably does change the dynamic significantly is that when the proportion of people coming into London from the rest of this country falls, it increases the disconnect between the capital and the rest of the population. It ceases to be a capital city and becomes a city state.
Would David Lammy have advocated independence for London if his parents had come from Lincolnshire?
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.
... I do this for a living.
Posting on PB?
Travelling today so I'm bored and you've got me to look forward to.
I find that I get noticeably more right wing about 20 minutes after I’ve been to the gym; the effect lasts about 90 minutes
You do a lot of gym then, clearly.
Me, I find the way I'm feeling impacts the way I walk. I have 2 main modes, sometimes I feel quite fey and imaginative, sometimes the opposite, very prosaic and solid and grounded. When it's the former arty farty mood in charge I walk lightly and with a wiggle, feet turned inwards, almost catwalk style, but then with the latter it's totally different, how I move then is much slower, feet splayed out like a platypus, each step heavy and considered. This isn't something I try and do, it happens automatically.
Today? ... well I'm not sure. I haven't been out yet.
I find that I get noticeably more right wing about 20 minutes after I’ve been to the gym; the effect lasts about 90 minutes
They say one becomes more right wing as one gets older.
So all your gym experience tells you, is you are old.
That doesn't make sense. If right wingness was purely corroborated with age, you would expect to get imperceptibly more right wing after you have been to the gym (because you were older) but you wouldn't expect the effect to wear off 20 minutes later (because you are even older).
More likely the effect is corroborated with testosterone.
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.
... I do this for a living.
Posting on PB?
Travelling today so I'm bored and you've got me to look forward to.
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.
... I do this for a living.
Posting on PB?
Travelling today so I'm bored and you've got me to look forward to.
Don't post and drive!
Trains.
We are not allowed to discuss Trains.
Someone will start saying that Deltics are rubbish and kick off. Then the OSA will be invoked.
The Right need to be careful and not pin all their hopes on an economic Armageddon under Rachel. Economies are fickle beasts and can bounce back when you least expect it. If that happens the criticisms will melt away in a jiffy, with the erstwhile gloomsters claiming they had faith all along. Kemi could look horribly exposed in such circumstances. Exactly this happened in the early Blair years with Hague and his 'recession made in Downing Street':
Who last year at this time called our growth forecasts fantasy? Who called them "fairy-tale figures"? Who called them "Peter Pan economics"? Who called them "wonderland politics"? Who called them "complacent nonsense"? And who said there would be a recession, a downturn, they said, made in Downing Street? Who talked Britain down every time they spoke? You know who it was - Hague, Widdecombe, Redwood and Maude. Who will now hear their false prophecies of doom repeated back to them day- in, day-out up to and during the next General Election that Labour will win. I say that these people - Hague, Widdecombe, Redwood and Maude - are not just unfit to be the Government. They are proving unfit even to be the Opposition. And I think the country agrees with us.
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)
The one good thing (little bit) Labour have done is stop the firesale of land for HS2 Phase 2a and commit to the Euston extension.
But, it's pretty thin gruel. And they've done very little on other strategic infrastructure.
They are going to struggle with any infrastructure investment as they have fucked the economy because they do not understand business.
Bloody gorgeous day in Devon, now that the sheet ice has melted. That made the dog walk look like my poor impression of Ski Sunday. The bit where they have lost their skis and are windmilling over the ice towards the inevitable contact with the barriers...
Yaktrax or Microspikes will keep you out of A&E.
In 2010 I had to go to A&E to visit an ice victim and was reduced to walking the streets with full crampons. It might have looked like overkill but I was the only one not skating everywhere.
Thanks. Yaktrax Pro look great.
Although, vagaries of our weather being what they are, they will probably be stuck on e-bay in ten years time. "Unopened box..."
The Right need to be careful and not pin all their hopes on an economic Armageddon under Rachel. Economies are fickle beasts and can bounce back when you least expect it. If that happens the criticisms will melt away in a jiffy, with the erstwhile gloomsters claiming they had faith all along. Kemi could look horribly exposed in such circumstances. Exactly this happened in the early Blair years with Hague and his 'recession made in Downing Street':
Who last year at this time called our growth forecasts fantasy? Who called them "fairy-tale figures"? Who called them "Peter Pan economics"? Who called them "wonderland politics"? Who called them "complacent nonsense"? And who said there would be a recession, a downturn, they said, made in Downing Street? Who talked Britain down every time they spoke? You know who it was - Hague, Widdecombe, Redwood and Maude. Who will now hear their false prophecies of doom repeated back to them day- in, day-out up to and during the next General Election that Labour will win. I say that these people - Hague, Widdecombe, Redwood and Maude - are not just unfit to be the Government. They are proving unfit even to be the Opposition. And I think the country agrees with us.
Slight problem with your analogy is a) Starmer is no Blair, b) Reeves is no Brown and c) the current bunch of Labour muppets do not understand wealth creation.
I find that I get noticeably more right wing about 20 minutes after I’ve been to the gym; the effect lasts about 90 minutes
I’m tempted to say how would one tell.
What’s the ceiling, work camps and rubber truncheons or full Herrenvolk?
I peak at full Remigration after about an hour? Interestingly if I just do weights I only reach “national service and tow the boats to fucking Belgium” - but it lasts longer
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.
... I do this for a living.
Posting on PB?
Travelling today so I'm bored and you've got me to look forward to.
Don't post and drive!
Trains.
We are not allowed to discuss Trains.
Someone will start saying that Deltics are rubbish and kick off. Then the OSA will be invoked.
We shall now contemplate the Holy Trinity
Awww. Just been sorting again through my dad's papers. Including his handout book 'Deltic Diesel Engine E. in C. 149' and RN course notes for the Deltic as used in Ton class minesweepers.
I find that I get noticeably more right wing about 20 minutes after I’ve been to the gym; the effect lasts about 90 minutes
They say one becomes more right wing as one gets older.
So all your gym experience tells you, is you are old.
That doesn't make sense. If right wingness was purely corroborated with age, you would expect to get imperceptibly more right wing after you have been to the gym (because you were older) but you wouldn't expect the effect to wear off 20 minutes later (because you are even older).
More likely the effect is corroborated with testosterone.
Bloody gorgeous day in Devon, now that the sheet ice has melted. That made the dog walk look like my poor impression of Ski Sunday. The bit where they have lost their skis and are windmilling over the ice towards the inevitable contact with the barriers...
Yaktrax or Microspikes will keep you out of A&E.
In 2010 I had to go to A&E to visit an ice victim and was reduced to walking the streets with full crampons. It might have looked like overkill but I was the only one not skating everywhere.
Thanks. Yaktrax Pro look great.
Although, vagaries of our weather being what they are, they will probably be stuck on e-bay in ten years time. "Unopened box..."
Storage boxful of those and others in the porch here. Mrs C is wearing them to visit her mum.
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.
... I do this for a living.
Posting on PB?
Travelling today so I'm bored and you've got me to look forward to.
Don't post and drive!
Trains.
We are not allowed to discuss Trains.
Someone will start saying that Deltics are rubbish and kick off. Then the OSA will be invoked.
We shall now contemplate the Holy Trinity
I think you'll find we can't discuss trans.
The chance of anybody saying Deltics are rubbish is as close to zero as to be indescernible.
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.
There are so many Welsh and Irish names in London, Welsh particularly.
I've always got the feeling that so many people arriving from Wales must have been one of the biggest changes for people since the Normans. I don't see that much written about this, though.
I find that I get noticeably more right wing about 20 minutes after I’ve been to the gym; the effect lasts about 90 minutes
I’m tempted to say how would one tell.
What’s the ceiling, work camps and rubber truncheons or full Herrenvolk?
I peak at full Remigration after about an hour? Interestingly if I just do weights I only reach “national service and tow the boats to fucking Belgium” - but it lasts longer
It might explain why "peak reactionary" is probably around your age (early 60s?). As people get into their 70s they stop going to the gym so much and their testosterone declines and they are less angry with the world.
From the Beeb: "Some timely research just published, external from researchers at the University of California strengthens the connection between the Los Angeles fires and climate change.
While the powerful Santa Ana winds are the key component in driving the fires, the extremely dry conditions have made the local vegetation very vulnerable to ignition.
The new paper finds that these dry conditions around Los Angeles are linked to increasing bouts of what’s termed "hydroclimate whiplash" where there’s a rapid swing between extremely wet and extremely dry conditions."
Timely, as the University of California has now burnt down... Maybe.
I find that I get noticeably more right wing about 20 minutes after I’ve been to the gym; the effect lasts about 90 minutes
I’m tempted to say how would one tell.
What’s the ceiling, work camps and rubber truncheons or full Herrenvolk?
I peak at full Remigration after about an hour? Interestingly if I just do weights I only reach “national service and tow the boats to fucking Belgium” - but it lasts longer
It might explain why "peak reactionary" is probably around your age (early 60s?). As people get into their 70s they stop going to the gym so much and their testosterone declines and they are less angry with the world.
That’s actually an interesting point. Old people should get more mellow and centrist as testosterone diminishes with age. But maybe that process is countered by increasing bitterness at being old?
Personally I have no intention of ageing and intend to get even more Nazi AND happier into my 90s. Doing quite well so far
The Right need to be careful and not pin all their hopes on an economic Armageddon under Rachel. Economies are fickle beasts and can bounce back when you least expect it. If that happens the criticisms will melt away in a jiffy, with the erstwhile gloomsters claiming they had faith all along. Kemi could look horribly exposed in such circumstances. Exactly this happened in the early Blair years with Hague and his 'recession made in Downing Street':
Who last year at this time called our growth forecasts fantasy? Who called them "fairy-tale figures"? Who called them "Peter Pan economics"? Who called them "wonderland politics"? Who called them "complacent nonsense"? And who said there would be a recession, a downturn, they said, made in Downing Street? Who talked Britain down every time they spoke? You know who it was - Hague, Widdecombe, Redwood and Maude. Who will now hear their false prophecies of doom repeated back to them day- in, day-out up to and during the next General Election that Labour will win. I say that these people - Hague, Widdecombe, Redwood and Maude - are not just unfit to be the Government. They are proving unfit even to be the Opposition. And I think the country agrees with us.
Slight problem with your analogy is a) Starmer is no Blair, b) Reeves is no Brown and c) the current bunch of Labour muppets do not understand wealth creation.
The labour business team are all former NGO Officials or Quangocrats or Charity workers. No business experience at all. Useless.
From the Beeb: "Some timely research just published, external from researchers at the University of California strengthens the connection between the Los Angeles fires and climate change.
While the powerful Santa Ana winds are the key component in driving the fires, the extremely dry conditions have made the local vegetation very vulnerable to ignition.
The new paper finds that these dry conditions around Los Angeles are linked to increasing bouts of what’s termed "hydroclimate whiplash" where there’s a rapid swing between extremely wet and extremely dry conditions."
Timely, as the University of California has now burnt down... Maybe.
It will be interesting how they respond from a planning perspective after the fire. Will they use different materials so houses are less combustible? Will they incorporate fire breaks into the planning grid?
All pretty tragic though, particularly for the poor sods with no fire insurance!
I went to Maui last year and we drove past Lahaina, which had a horrific fire in 2023. There were some signs of rebuilding but you could still see empty plots with nothing but porches left.
The scale of the LA fires is much greater than that and they aren't anywhere near being under control. They say only 5 people have died but I suspect that will go up massively, especially if people try to stay and defend. At least there is a better road network in LA than Maui
The Right need to be careful and not pin all their hopes on an economic Armageddon under Rachel. Economies are fickle beasts and can bounce back when you least expect it. If that happens the criticisms will melt away in a jiffy, with the erstwhile gloomsters claiming they had faith all along. Kemi could look horribly exposed in such circumstances. Exactly this happened in the early Blair years with Hague and his 'recession made in Downing Street':
Who last year at this time called our growth forecasts fantasy? Who called them "fairy-tale figures"? Who called them "Peter Pan economics"? Who called them "wonderland politics"? Who called them "complacent nonsense"? And who said there would be a recession, a downturn, they said, made in Downing Street? Who talked Britain down every time they spoke? You know who it was - Hague, Widdecombe, Redwood and Maude. Who will now hear their false prophecies of doom repeated back to them day- in, day-out up to and during the next General Election that Labour will win. I say that these people - Hague, Widdecombe, Redwood and Maude - are not just unfit to be the Government. They are proving unfit even to be the Opposition. And I think the country agrees with us.
Slight problem with your analogy is a) Starmer is no Blair, b) Reeves is no Brown and c) the current bunch of Labour muppets do not understand wealth creation.
The labour business team are all former NGO Officials or Quangocrats or Charity workers. No business experience at all. Useless.
The classic indicator was when Starmer thought that the appropriate people to get advice on growth from were regulators FFS!
The Right need to be careful and not pin all their hopes on an economic Armageddon under Rachel. Economies are fickle beasts and can bounce back when you least expect it. If that happens the criticisms will melt away in a jiffy, with the erstwhile gloomsters claiming they had faith all along. Kemi could look horribly exposed in such circumstances. Exactly this happened in the early Blair years with Hague and his 'recession made in Downing Street':
Who last year at this time called our growth forecasts fantasy? Who called them "fairy-tale figures"? Who called them "Peter Pan economics"? Who called them "wonderland politics"? Who called them "complacent nonsense"? And who said there would be a recession, a downturn, they said, made in Downing Street? Who talked Britain down every time they spoke? You know who it was - Hague, Widdecombe, Redwood and Maude. Who will now hear their false prophecies of doom repeated back to them day- in, day-out up to and during the next General Election that Labour will win. I say that these people - Hague, Widdecombe, Redwood and Maude - are not just unfit to be the Government. They are proving unfit even to be the Opposition. And I think the country agrees with us.
Slight problem with your analogy is a) Starmer is no Blair, b) Reeves is no Brown and c) the current bunch of Labour muppets do not understand wealth creation.
The labour business team are all former NGO Officials or Quangocrats or Charity workers. No business experience at all. Useless.
They've got the call centre manager in charge though so no need to worry.
I went to Maui last year and we drove past Lahaina, which had a horrific fire in 2023. There were some signs of rebuilding but you could still see empty plots with nothing but porches left.
The scale of the LA fires is much greater than that and they aren't anywhere near being under control. They say only 5 people have died but I suspect that will go up massively, especially if people try to stay and defend. At least there is a better road network in LA than Maui
Nearly died on Maui - Japanese driver on the wrong side of the road...
The pound is at a "14-month low". So why wasn't PB and the media in general in uproar 15 months ago, when obviously the pound was even lower?
There was too much other bonkers shit going on for people to really notice. Getting concerned about the value of the Pound is surely a sign of strong and stable government
The pound is at a "14-month low". So why wasn't PB and the media in general in uproar 15 months ago, when obviously the pound was even lower?
There was too much other bonkers shit going on for people to really notice. Getting concerned about the value of the Pound is surely a sign of strong and stable government
And it was only six or so months previously we had the pound fall steeply after the mini budget. It was still higher than after the mini budget.
It is all context. You cannot look at the value of the pound back then in todays terms.
As the Liz Truss letter purports that defamation is the reason she lost her seat, it’s clear that her next step should be to sue her former constituents. And sue Sir Graham Brady. And sue the markets. And sue the lenders who jacked up mortgages. And sue pension funds who nearly went bust. And sue Rishi Sunak.
The Right need to be careful and not pin all their hopes on an economic Armageddon under Rachel. Economies are fickle beasts and can bounce back when you least expect it. If that happens the criticisms will melt away in a jiffy, with the erstwhile gloomsters claiming they had faith all along. Kemi could look horribly exposed in such circumstances. Exactly this happened in the early Blair years with Hague and his 'recession made in Downing Street':
Who last year at this time called our growth forecasts fantasy? Who called them "fairy-tale figures"? Who called them "Peter Pan economics"? Who called them "wonderland politics"? Who called them "complacent nonsense"? And who said there would be a recession, a downturn, they said, made in Downing Street? Who talked Britain down every time they spoke? You know who it was - Hague, Widdecombe, Redwood and Maude. Who will now hear their false prophecies of doom repeated back to them day- in, day-out up to and during the next General Election that Labour will win. I say that these people - Hague, Widdecombe, Redwood and Maude - are not just unfit to be the Government. They are proving unfit even to be the Opposition. And I think the country agrees with us.
Slight problem with your analogy is a) Starmer is no Blair, b) Reeves is no Brown and c) the current bunch of Labour muppets do not understand wealth creation.
The labour business team are all former NGO Officials or Quangocrats or Charity workers. No business experience at all. Useless.
The classic indicator was when Starmer thought that the appropriate people to get advice on growth from were regulators FFS!
I know, what a fucking idiot. Why not ask entrepreneurs and innovators and people who have actually grown and developed businesses what their advice would be.
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.
And there's quite a lot in that on terms of being more expensive to build and run. It can be billions on the first and tens of millions on the second. Economics depends on the density of the population to drive revenue and the difficultly of construction to serve it, and hence why you run a business case.
In medium sized cities trams make more sense. Large cities metros. Small places, buses.
Not to go the full Liam Neeson, but I do this for a living.
Indeed. And Leeds is a large enough city.
You could also add smart buses to even smaller places / more rural / less dense / low-demand times. The broad concept of public transport of 'we run where we say, when we say' is out of the stagecoach era. Technology allows a much more user-focused approach now, if providers and regulators can get together to develop and introduce the software.
You don't like trams, and would prefer a metro - I get that - but that does not a business case make. Public transport works well where there is a latent demand for travel along the route - it isn't done in a vacuum - and if you can get below 10 minute gaps in service and operate 18 hours a day (big ifs, of course) you don't need a timetable.
Also, people tend not to like buses for all of reliability, service quality, and privacy/ safety/ social reasons. Uber is far closer to the user-focuses transport you crave these days, but has scattered coverage outside London.
Another thing on trams - they dominate the public realm. Great snakes slithering through the city - "ding ding". That's really important for generating patronage (+ herd behaviour), and those cities that tuck them away on disused railway lines or a 10 minute walk away from homes/offices aren't as successful.
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.
And there's quite a lot in that on terms of being more expensive to build and run. It can be billions on the first and tens of millions on the second. Economics depends on the density of the population to drive revenue and the difficultly of construction to serve it, and hence why you run a business case.
In medium sized cities trams make more sense. Large cities metros. Small places, buses.
Not to go the full Liam Neeson, but I do this for a living.
Indeed. And Leeds is a large enough city.
You could also add smart buses to even smaller places / more rural / less dense / low-demand times. The broad concept of public transport of 'we run where we say, when we say' is out of the stagecoach era. Technology allows a much more user-focused approach now, if providers and regulators can get together to develop and introduce the software.
You don't like trams, and would prefer a metro - I get that - but that does not a business case make. Public transport works well where there is a latent demand for travel along the route - it isn't done in a vacuum - and if you can get below 10 minute gaps in service and operate 18 hours a day (big ifs, of course) you don't need a timetable.
Also, people tend not to like buses for all of reliability, service quality, and privacy/ safety/ social reasons. Uber is far closer to the user-focuses transport you crave these days, but has scattered coverage outside London.
Correct. And one bus every 2-3 hours during the daytime is barely a service at all.
It should be perfectly possible to essentially order a bus in the same way as an Uber to take you from A to B, but potentially via C, D and E, as the bus picks up and drops off passengers via a smartphone app, with the driver given a real-time amended route as people order the service. You could run these both in rural areas and at low-demand times everywhere, linked to a smartcard for both the user's and the operator's security.
Obviously it would need a subsidy but then so do pretty much all services in those places and at that time.
New sexual fetish on Soi Nana: girls wearing full-on niqab burqa hijab Taliban-freaky-gloves don’t-allow-women-near windows patriarchal islamo-garb BUT THEY ARE HOOKERS
I went to Maui last year and we drove past Lahaina, which had a horrific fire in 2023. There were some signs of rebuilding but you could still see empty plots with nothing but porches left.
The scale of the LA fires is much greater than that and they aren't anywhere near being under control. They say only 5 people have died but I suspect that will go up massively, especially if people try to stay and defend. At least there is a better road network in LA than Maui
I think the larger death tolls in wildfires tend to stem from nowhere left to go rather than simply the size of the fires themselves. Both in the Maui and in the Greek wildfires the exit roads from coastal locations were cut off and I'm sure there are instances from Canada or Australia where an inland town has become surrounded too quickly for evacuation.
As the Liz Truss letter purports that defamation is the reason she lost her seat, it’s clear that her next step should be to sue her former constituents. And sue Sir Graham Brady. And sue the markets. And sue the lenders who jacked up mortgages. And sue pension funds who nearly went bust. And sue Rishi Sunak.
Everyone is wrong. With the exception of her.
Well pension funds who moved into LDI's do bear some responsibility for what happened to their schemes.
Mortgage rates were going up before Truss took charge and carried on after she left office.
I haven't seen the Truss letter so do not know what the alleged defamation is but I just find it bizarre she's still doing this instead of drawing a line under it, moving on, and trying to develop her ideas for a more receptive time given the current trajectory of the economy,
As the Liz Truss letter purports that defamation is the reason she lost her seat, it’s clear that her next step should be to sue her former constituents. And sue Sir Graham Brady. And sue the markets. And sue the lenders who jacked up mortgages. And sue pension funds who nearly went bust. And sue Rishi Sunak.
Everyone is wrong. With the exception of her.
How's she funding this legal action against Sir K? Royalties on sales from her book?
At what point do the Conservatives recognise that Reform are a threat, not an opportunity?
Expect that Labour polling to go down after recent events
Reform will come first in polls regularly, soon, and they are likely to win in 2028
It's quite fortunate for the Tories the re-organisation of local govt coming up means many councils vulnerable to the Reformista's will be allowed to postpone elections. Labour will allow it. It is in their interests to neuter Reform too.
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.
And there's quite a lot in that on terms of being more expensive to build and run. It can be billions on the first and tens of millions on the second. Economics depends on the density of the population to drive revenue and the difficultly of construction to serve it, and hence why you run a business case.
In medium sized cities trams make more sense. Large cities metros. Small places, buses.
Not to go the full Liam Neeson, but I do this for a living.
Indeed. And Leeds is a large enough city.
You could also add smart buses to even smaller places / more rural / less dense / low-demand times. The broad concept of public transport of 'we run where we say, when we say' is out of the stagecoach era. Technology allows a much more user-focused approach now, if providers and regulators can get together to develop and introduce the software.
You don't like trams, and would prefer a metro - I get that - but that does not a business case make. Public transport works well where there is a latent demand for travel along the route - it isn't done in a vacuum - and if you can get below 10 minute gaps in service and operate 18 hours a day (big ifs, of course) you don't need a timetable.
Also, people tend not to like buses for all of reliability, service quality, and privacy/ safety/ social reasons. Uber is far closer to the user-focuses transport you crave these days, but has scattered coverage outside London.
Correct. And one bus every 2-3 hours during the daytime is barely a service at all.
It should be perfectly possible to essentially order a bus in the same way as an Uber to take you from A to B, but potentially via C, D and E, as the bus picks up and drops off passengers via a smartphone app, with the driver given a real-time amended route as people order the service. You could run these both in rural areas and at low-demand times everywhere, linked to a smartcard for both the user's and the operator's security.
Obviously it would need a subsidy but then so do pretty much all services in those places and at that time.
Services such as you describe exist. But they don't, so far, do very well. They have neither the simplicity or an uber nor the, er, simplicity of a bus (which we could also call predictability, or ease of understanding). Users of public transport LOVE simplicity above anything else. Require them to think, and they will shift to the simpler alternative. One of the reasons fixed track does so well is simplicity. Users know where it's going - it follows the rails - they don't worry about where to get off. Introduce any sort of uncertainty into a bus journey at your peril.
I'm not going as far as saying you're wrong - as I say, such services exist, though tend to run at large losses - but they are not what the world is clamouring for, yet. It will take a bit of a shift in mindset, which is hard to do.
As the Liz Truss letter purports that defamation is the reason she lost her seat, it’s clear that her next step should be to sue her former constituents. And sue Sir Graham Brady. And sue the markets. And sue the lenders who jacked up mortgages. And sue pension funds who nearly went bust. And sue Rishi Sunak.
Everyone is wrong. With the exception of her.
How's she funding this legal action against Sir K? Royalties on sales from her book?
At what point do the Conservatives recognise that Reform are a threat, not an opportunity?
Expect that Labour polling to go down after recent events
Reform will come first in polls regularly, soon, and they are likely to win in 2028
It's quite fortunate for the Tories the re-organisation of local govt coming up means many councils vulnerable to the Reformista's will be allowed to postpone elections. Labour will allow it. It is in their interests to neuter Reform too.
It is the Tories in places like Gloucestershire and Surrey, shit scared of the Lib Dems, who are trying to postpone elections.
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.
And there's quite a lot in that on terms of being more expensive to build and run. It can be billions on the first and tens of millions on the second. Economics depends on the density of the population to drive revenue and the difficultly of construction to serve it, and hence why you run a business case.
In medium sized cities trams make more sense. Large cities metros. Small places, buses.
Not to go the full Liam Neeson, but I do this for a living.
Indeed. And Leeds is a large enough city.
You could also add smart buses to even smaller places / more rural / less dense / low-demand times. The broad concept of public transport of 'we run where we say, when we say' is out of the stagecoach era. Technology allows a much more user-focused approach now, if providers and regulators can get together to develop and introduce the software.
You don't like trams, and would prefer a metro - I get that - but that does not a business case make. Public transport works well where there is a latent demand for travel along the route - it isn't done in a vacuum - and if you can get below 10 minute gaps in service and operate 18 hours a day (big ifs, of course) you don't need a timetable.
Also, people tend not to like buses for all of reliability, service quality, and privacy/ safety/ social reasons. Uber is far closer to the user-focuses transport you crave these days, but has scattered coverage outside London.
Correct. And one bus every 2-3 hours during the daytime is barely a service at all.
It should be perfectly possible to essentially order a bus in the same way as an Uber to take you from A to B, but potentially via C, D and E, as the bus picks up and drops off passengers via a smartphone app, with the driver given a real-time amended route as people order the service. You could run these both in rural areas and at low-demand times everywhere, linked to a smartcard for both the user's and the operator's security.
Obviously it would need a subsidy but then so do pretty much all services in those places and at that time.
When I lived in Wiltshire a taxi firm proposed a scheme where they would use Priuses to provide more frequent “bus” service. Instead of one ancient bus every 2 hours, one Prius every 15 min or something like that. I think a call button at the stops might have been included.
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.
See also defence?
And then there is all the rest ...
My local authority is not starved of resources. It might claim it is, but it's right now spending £3 million quid on pointless arnco and average speed cameras on a road so dangerous it doesn't even qualify for yellow backings to the speed limit signs.
There are probably issues about ringfencing and central government dictat determining where the money is spent, but that's fixable if the government is willing.
Also, even if it was a massive hole, (and in some areas I agree - the last Tory government was pretty terrible and I said so at the time), that still doesn't make it OK for the current lot to have jumped in there and doubled up the workforce on the shovels.
It has to be Reform now, you know you want to. The Tories are done, finished, nixed. They cannot be forgiven for the Boriswave, and they can’t be trusted to do anything actually rightwing, most of them are actually Cameroon Lib Dems anyway. Fuck them and let them die
Reform it is. Let’s have a proper right wing government, no more ersatz shit. A government that will destroy Woke and sort immigration and act like it’s just got out of the gym and it’s had three gins and it’s ready to RUCK, and then have a nice Penang curry
At what point do the Conservatives recognise that Reform are a threat, not an opportunity?
Expect that Labour polling to go down after recent events
Reform will come first in polls regularly, soon, and they are likely to win in 2028
It's quite fortunate for the Tories the re-organisation of local govt coming up means many councils vulnerable to the Reformista's will be allowed to postpone elections. Labour will allow it. It is in their interests to neuter Reform too.
It is the Tories in places like Gloucestershire and Surrey, shit scared of the Lib Dems, who are trying to postpone elections.
Several areas where Reform were expected to perform particularly well, including Essex, Thurrock, Norfolk, Suffolk and Devon, have asked to have their elections postponed.
But, yes, it is just two councils where they are "shit scared" of the Lib Dems, a party they regularly trounce in council by elections that are affected.
We'll probably get polls this year with Reform first, the Tories second and Labour third. The next election could be an extinction level event for Labour.
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.
There are so many Welsh and Irish names in London, Welsh particularly.
I've always got the feeling that so many people arriving from Wales must have been one of the biggest changes for people since the Normans. I don't see that much written about this, though.
For a couple of years I sort-of commuted between a shift-work job in London and home in the west, so travelling at different times of day. One stand-out characteristic was that the trains coming from Wales were always full, whilst the trains going to Wales were never full. It always puzzled me - why wasn't Wales gradually getting emptier?
The boss of the CBI, on the Politico Power Play podcast has warned Elon Musk he will have to “come through me first” in an extraordinary defence of home office minister Jess Phillips.
What a doofus. I am sure she needs a bald, middle aged man in a suit acting as her saviour !!!!
He should be focusing on business and industry not this nonsense.
Comments
In medium sized cities trams make more sense. Large cities metros. Small places, buses.
Not to go the full Liam Neeson, but I do this for a living.
Or, is it?
The trouble is that selfishness is when someone decides not to prioritise your interests.
But, it's pretty thin gruel. And they've done very little on other strategic infrastructure.
Which opens an interesting conversation on what loyalties are owed and to whom.
You could also add smart buses to even smaller places / more rural / less dense / low-demand times. The broad concept of public transport of 'we run where we say, when we say' is out of the stagecoach era. Technology allows a much more user-focused approach now, if providers and regulators can get together to develop and introduce the software.
However too many people spend too little time looking at how the government spends it's non-discretionary tax income; how this has arisen; why it has arisen; and what changes should be enacted. Don't complain about tax unless you understand the non-discretionary spend. As Musk/DOGE is finding out.
The pity party about doctors and nurses overworked deserves a small violin. Never in my life ever heard of a poor doctor and if they work over their alloted hours they get very well recompensed at higher rates for it , on top of being very very well paid.
The ones who whinge about people being too well paid need to go out and get the same job and see how easy it is. Issue nowadays is peopl ewant everything on a plate and not have to work for it, previous generations had to graft to get anything , toffs apart.
So all your gym experience tells you, is you are old.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8j9j0j4l7mo
Some of them at the egdes look an ickle bit demanding. eg Portsmouth, some London Boroughs.
I've always got the feeling that so many people arriving from Wales must have been one of the biggest changes for people since the Normans. I don't see that much written about this, though.
New homes in Bassetlaw
613
new homes a year are required by government targets set in 2024
931
homes were added per year on average in Bassetlaw since 2021, which is more than the new target
981
new homes were added in the year to March 2024
65
fewer than the year before
[Edit: Target 1,198 - last year 1,388]
Would David Lammy have advocated independence for London if his parents had come from Lincolnshire?
https://www.standard.co.uk/comment/comment/david-lammy-london-must-look-to-be-a-citystate-if-hard-brexit-goes-ahead-a3494221.html
In 2010 I had to go to A&E to visit an ice victim and was reduced to walking the streets with full crampons. It might have looked like overkill but I was the only one not skating everywhere.
Also, people tend not to like buses for all of reliability, service quality, and privacy/ safety/ social reasons. Uber is far closer to the user-focuses transport you crave these days, but has scattered coverage outside London.
Cool!
Me, I find the way I'm feeling impacts the way I walk. I have 2 main modes, sometimes I feel quite fey and imaginative, sometimes the opposite, very prosaic and solid and grounded. When it's the former arty farty mood in charge I walk lightly and with a wiggle, feet turned inwards, almost catwalk style, but then with the latter it's totally different, how I move then is much slower, feet splayed out like a platypus, each step heavy and considered. This isn't something I try and do, it happens automatically.
Today? ... well I'm not sure. I haven't been out yet.
What’s the ceiling, work camps and rubber truncheons or full Herrenvolk?
More likely the effect is corroborated with testosterone.
Someone will start saying that Deltics are rubbish and kick off. Then the OSA will be invoked.
We shall now contemplate the Holy Trinity
Who last year at this time called our growth forecasts fantasy?
Who called them "fairy-tale figures"?
Who called them "Peter Pan economics"?
Who called them "wonderland politics"?
Who called them "complacent nonsense"?
And who said there would be a recession, a downturn, they said, made in Downing Street?
Who talked Britain down every time they spoke?
You know who it was - Hague, Widdecombe, Redwood and Maude.
Who will now hear their false prophecies of doom repeated back to them day- in, day-out up to and during the next General Election that Labour will win.
I say that these people - Hague, Widdecombe, Redwood and Maude - are not just unfit to be the Government. They are proving unfit even to be the Opposition.
And I think the country agrees with us.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/458871.stm
Although, vagaries of our weather being what they are, they will probably be stuck on e-bay in ten years time. "Unopened box..."
And not a train in sight (Forth Bridge excepted).
DERRRR
The chance of anybody saying Deltics are rubbish is as close to zero as to be indescernible.
From the Beeb: "Some timely research just published, external from researchers at the University of California strengthens the connection between the Los Angeles fires and climate change.
While the powerful Santa Ana winds are the key component in driving the fires, the extremely dry conditions have made the local vegetation very vulnerable to ignition.
The new paper finds that these dry conditions around Los Angeles are linked to increasing bouts of what’s termed "hydroclimate whiplash" where there’s a rapid swing between extremely wet and extremely dry conditions."
Timely, as the University of California has now burnt down... Maybe.
So why wasn't PB and the media in general in uproar 15 months ago, when obviously the pound was even lower?
Personally I have no intention of ageing and intend to get even more Nazi AND happier into my 90s. Doing quite well so far
All pretty tragic though, particularly for the poor sods with no fire insurance!
Yep, still feeling the burn from the gym
https://edition.cnn.com/weather/live-news/los-angeles-wildfires-palisades-eaton-california-01-09-25-hnk/index.html
I went to Maui last year and we drove past Lahaina, which had a horrific fire in 2023. There were some signs of rebuilding but you could still see empty plots with nothing but porches left.
The scale of the LA fires is much greater than that and they aren't anywhere near being under control. They say only 5 people have died but I suspect that will go up massively, especially if people try to stay and defend. At least there is a better road network in LA than Maui
Humping perhaps ? Or maybe Karaoke.
It is all context. You cannot look at the value of the pound back then in todays terms.
Everyone is wrong. With the exception of her.
It should be perfectly possible to essentially order a bus in the same way as an Uber to take you from A to B, but potentially via C, D and E, as the bus picks up and drops off passengers via a smartphone app, with the driver given a real-time amended route as people order the service. You could run these both in rural areas and at low-demand times everywhere, linked to a smartcard for both the user's and the operator's security.
Obviously it would need a subsidy but then so do pretty much all services in those places and at that time.
Doesn’t work for everyone obvs.
Westminster Voting Intention:
LAB: 25% (-1)
RFM: 25% (=)
CON: 20% (-3)
GRN: 11% (+2)
LDM: 11% (=)
Via @findoutnow.bsky.social, 8 Jan.
Changes w/ 11 Dec.
https://bsky.app/profile/electionmaps.uk/post/3lfcoh27em222
At what point do the Conservatives recognise that Reform are a threat, not an opportunity?
LAB: 25% (-1)
RFM: 25% (=)
CON: 20% (-3)
GRN: 11% (+2)
LDM: 11% (=)
Changes w/ 11 Dec.
By my reckoning, this is the equal-furthest the Tories have polled behind second place since Feb 1986.
New sexual fetish on Soi Nana: girls wearing full-on niqab burqa hijab Taliban-freaky-gloves don’t-allow-women-near windows patriarchal islamo-garb BUT THEY ARE HOOKERS
wtf?
How can you not love Bangkok
Mortgage rates were going up before Truss took charge and carried on after she left office.
I haven't seen the Truss letter so do not know what the alleged defamation is but I just find it bizarre she's still doing this instead of drawing a line under it, moving on, and trying to develop her ideas for a more receptive time given the current trajectory of the economy,
Reform will come first in polls regularly, soon, and they are likely to win in 2028
https://x.com/leftiestats/status/1877335577642590398
Users of public transport LOVE simplicity above anything else. Require them to think, and they will shift to the simpler alternative. One of the reasons fixed track does so well is simplicity. Users know where it's going - it follows the rails - they don't worry about where to get off. Introduce any sort of uncertainty into a bus journey at your peril.
I'm not going as far as saying you're wrong - as I say, such services exist, though tend to run at large losses - but they are not what the world is clamouring for, yet. It will take a bit of a shift in mindset, which is hard to do.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
Idea binned because it “Wasn’t a bus”
There are probably issues about ringfencing and central government dictat determining where the money is spent, but that's fixable if the government is willing.
Also, even if it was a massive hole, (and in some areas I agree - the last Tory government was pretty terrible and I said so at the time), that still doesn't make it OK for the current lot to have jumped in there and doubled up the workforce on the shovels.
It has to be Reform now, you know you want to. The Tories are done, finished, nixed. They cannot be forgiven for the Boriswave, and they can’t be trusted to do anything actually rightwing, most of them are actually Cameroon Lib Dems anyway. Fuck them and let them die
Reform it is. Let’s have a proper right wing government, no more ersatz shit. A government that will destroy Woke and sort immigration and act like it’s just got out of the gym and it’s had three gins and it’s ready to RUCK, and then have a nice Penang curry
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hgdKFcOssnA
But, yes, it is just two councils where they are "shit scared" of the Lib Dems, a party they regularly trounce in council by elections that are affected.
What a doofus. I am sure she needs a bald, middle aged man in a suit acting as her saviour !!!!
He should be focusing on business and industry not this nonsense.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/winston-churchill-s-grandson-warns-elon-musk-to-come-through-me-first-in-staunch-defence-of-jess-phillips/ar-BB1r9v4L?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531&cvid=2b7b5a1aedcb4973b305326643b44064&ei=12