Just had a conversation with relatives. Starmer is a monster trying to start WW3, our children shouldnt fight wars, Trump was controlling Putin quite well before but not now, and some Russian mystic has very accurate predictions of the future its spookily accurate.
They seem to be talking their way into Trump support 'he's awful and unstable but he doesnt start wars and is for peace'.
Used to be (maybe still are) Corbynite.
No offence, but your relatives sound weird
Getting into mysticism seems to be a new development. Leaning towards Trump surprised me though i shouldn't be surprised given the Corbynite take on foreign policy.
Just had a conversation with relatives. Starmer is a monster trying to start WW3, our children shouldnt fight wars, Trump was controlling Putin quite well before but not now, and some Russian mystic has very accurate predictions of the future its spookily accurate.
They seem to be talking their way into Trump support 'he's awful and unstable but he doesnt start wars and is for peace'.
Used to be (maybe still are) Corbynite.
No offence, but your relatives sound weird
Getting into mysticism seems to be a new development. Leaning towards Trump surprised me though i shouldn't be surprised given the Corbynite take on foreign policy.
Canada is actively looking at potential alternatives to the U.S.-built F-35 stealth fighter and will hold conversations with rival aircraft makers, Defence Minister Bill Blair said late Friday.
There has been a groundswell of support among Canadians to kill the $19-billion purchase and find aircraft other than those manufactured and maintained in the United States. https://cbc.ca/amp/1.7484477
Just had a conversation with relatives. Starmer is a monster trying to start WW3, our children shouldnt fight wars, Trump was controlling Putin quite well before but not now, and some Russian mystic has very accurate predictions of the future its spookily accurate.
They seem to be talking their way into Trump support 'he's awful and unstable but he doesnt start wars and is for peace'.
Used to be (maybe still are) Corbynite.
Sounds a bit more old fashioned Tankie, with added New Age Woo.
Yes, seems to be the direction of travel. Danger of living near Glastonbury.
I have conducted a quick review of Facebook and the narrative developing is that we should not be cutting incapacity benefits while we spend billions on asylum seeker hotels. I would guess that a very large proportion of the "middle-aged man on disability benefits" cohort are Reform voters (or soon to be so).
Also links being made to the assisted suicide bill, and waiting lists for operations. Former scaffolders with long-term injuries etc. This is going to be toxic.
Watch the numbers on asylum seeker hotels, which are due out this month.
They are about 40% down from peak, but tbf they also came down under the Conservatives.
But the riposte will be "why are the ANY hotels".
That they are not 4 star hotels as claimed does not matter, because the narrative is about emotion not truth.
So why are there any hotels?
Because we are insisting that they can't work until they are processed, and we're not processing them fast enough.
The interests of the local population seem to come last in either case. Either we put them up in hotels at great expense or let them compete against locals in the job and housing markets.
What a bizarre view. You seem to think that more people is inherently a problem. Yet the most economically active parts of the country are those with the highest population density.
You're not thinking about the interests of the individuals affected. Whether it's better for GDP overall or better for the Treasury isn't the point.
People living in London, like me, are affected by London’s population density, and we benefit from it. Elon Musk, who you seem to like, goes on about the importance of a growing population. More people can be a boon for everyone, not a cost.
How about if we round up all the gammons from the north of England and house them in your district of London instead. Would you see it as a boon?
My flatmate is from the north of England. London is full of northerners who came here and are part of the city’s rich tapestry. There are no controls on internal migration and that’s fine. Why are you so against the idea of people moving around?
That said, I don’t know whether “gammons” in particular would want to come here, as they might be distributed by what they encounter.
Just had a conversation with relatives. Starmer is a monster trying to start WW3, our children shouldnt fight wars, Trump was controlling Putin quite well before but not now, and some Russian mystic has very accurate predictions of the future its spookily accurate.
They seem to be talking their way into Trump support 'he's awful and unstable but he doesnt start wars and is for peace'.
Used to be (maybe still are) Corbynite.
There's a strong thread of "I need someone to offer a magical solution to insurmountable problems or I won't be able to keep going" in a lot of people. It transcends traditional left/right politics. Because it isn't politics. It's something else.
I'm pleased to announce to HYUFD that Saddam Hussein won an extraordinary 100% of voters, in the 2002 Presidential Referendum.
This was in line with the Iraq being a "sovereign democratic republic", as announced in the 1970 Baath Party constitution, and it really was a joy , to see the machinery of government, succeding in that ideal so.well. Sometimes one can feel emotional, when things work as well as then.
Proposing that Canada "Join the EU". Well, Australia joined Eurovision so why not...
In practice the only one that has any obvious value is "Sign mutual defence treaties with the UK and France". Indeed - both countries have obvious historical centuries-old ties to Canada. Hi America, please don't mess with our friend, our SSBNs don't have to target Russia, they can target you...
We called there from a cruise ship a few years ago. It’s properly French. We booked a proper lunch in a proper French brasserie. We were surrounded by shopkeepers, businessmen and tradespeople enjoying their two hour lunch. We paid for everything in Euros. Highly recommended.
Inviting his dad to be KIng of Scotland. After all, it worked with the Stuart dynasty. He'd want a new Glorious Revolution and MSGA.
Trump is quite similar to Idi Amin, so makes sense
He made a speech at the Department of Justice yesterday in front of an audience of prosecutors where he listed a whole series of people by name who he wants to target - people like Mark Elias (Democracy Docket) and Norm Eisen (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)).
He's moving towards Idi Amin's attack on the Judiciary (see the ex-Archbishop of York, who he locked up when he was around the Supreme Court of Uganda, and had beaten to a pulp.) It's the big one - will the checks and balances of USA democracy hold.
It's better if Trump pops his clogs sooner rather than later - Vance may as bad or worse, but he won't be able to keep all the Republican party or half the US public with him like Trump can
Vance is far more intelligent than Trump though and doesn’t need to face the voters for 3 and a half years
I can't say I've seen much evidence of Vance's intelligence myself. Are we sure that this isn't one of those things that everyone says without stopping to think why mit's the case?
He got a good law degree from Yale and his book is well written and thoughtful.
That makes him well educated and intelligent although not necessarily an original thinker
Just had a conversation with relatives. Starmer is a monster trying to start WW3, our children shouldnt fight wars, Trump was controlling Putin quite well before but not now, and some Russian mystic has very accurate predictions of the future its spookily accurate.
They seem to be talking their way into Trump support 'he's awful and unstable but he doesnt start wars and is for peace'.
Used to be (maybe still are) Corbynite.
There's a strong thread of "I need someone to offer a magical solution to insurmountable problems or I won't be able to keep going" in a lot of people. It transcends traditional left/right politics. Because it isn't politics. It's something else.
It's a similar thread to "let's blame people worse off than ourselves for our problems without getting our fingers out and doing something more productive, as our local refuk millionaire told us".
Just had a conversation with relatives. Starmer is a monster trying to start WW3, our children shouldnt fight wars, Trump was controlling Putin quite well before but not now, and some Russian mystic has very accurate predictions of the future its spookily accurate.
They seem to be talking their way into Trump support 'he's awful and unstable but he doesnt start wars and is for peace'.
Used to be (maybe still are) Corbynite.
That oddly reminds me of Churchill's quote about the strongest argument against democracy being a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
Perhaps the next strongest is a five-minute speech by President Trump?
Inviting his dad to be KIng of Scotland. After all, it worked with the Stuart dynasty. He'd want a new Glorious Revolution and MSGA.
Trump is quite similar to Idi Amin, so makes sense
He made a speech at the Department of Justice yesterday in front of an audience of prosecutors where he listed a whole series of people by name who he wants to target - people like Mark Elias (Democracy Docket) and Norm Eisen (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)).
He's moving towards Idi Amin's attack on the Judiciary (see the ex-Archbishop of York, who he locked up when he was around the Supreme Court of Uganda, and had beaten to a pulp.) It's the big one - will the checks and balances of USA democracy hold.
It's better if Trump pops his clogs sooner rather than later - Vance may as bad or worse, but he won't be able to keep all the Republican party or half the US public with him like Trump can
Vance is far more intelligent than Trump though and doesn’t need to face the voters for 3 and a half years
My point is that Trump still needs the votes of, for example, Republican senators - for now. He has them because he is popular enough and Republican elected officials are afraid to oppose him. In a year or two there might be a quasi-dictatorship in the US, and the president may no longer need Congress. I think it's better that Vance replaces Trump before we reach that point, because I think Vance will face more opposition if he tries to claim, as Trump is doing, "l'etat c'est moi."
US has a constitution with a Congress and the Supreme Court, judges for whom Congress also appoints, to remove them and become a dictator Trump would need the military but they take an oath to the constitution and president
Most countries have constitutions. Here's the first line of Russia's:
Russia is a democratic federal law-bound state with a republican form of government.
Well Russia does still have multi party elections, judges and a President
Exactly. And Russian is not a democracy.
It is, it has multi party parliamentary and presidential elections even if not a perfect one.
For most of the 20th century Russia and indeed Ukraine too were one party communist dictatorships under the USSR and before that under the absolute monarchy of the Tsars
The Economist Democracy Index rates Russia as an Authoritarian Regime. Out of a choice of Full Democracy, Flawed Democracy, Hybrid Regime and Authoritarian Regime.
Democracy Matrix has Russia as 'Moderate Autocracy'. Out of Working Democracy Deficient Democracy Hybrid Regime Moderate Autocracy Hard Autocracy
Just had a conversation with relatives. Starmer is a monster trying to start WW3, our children shouldnt fight wars, Trump was controlling Putin quite well before but not now, and some Russian mystic has very accurate predictions of the future its spookily accurate.
They seem to be talking their way into Trump support 'he's awful and unstable but he doesnt start wars and is for peace'.
Used to be (maybe still are) Corbynite.
That oddly reminds me of Churchill's quote about the strongest argument against democracy being a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
Perhaps the next strongest is a five-minute speech by President Trump?
Canada is actively looking at potential alternatives to the U.S.-built F-35 stealth fighter and will hold conversations with rival aircraft makers, Defence Minister Bill Blair said late Friday.
There has been a groundswell of support among Canadians to kill the $19-billion purchase and find aircraft other than those manufactured and maintained in the United States. https://cbc.ca/amp/1.7484477
This possibly means leaving NORAD which would be a bigger deal than leaving NATO for Canada. The supply chain for NORAD aircraft has to be in North America as well as various other onerous requirements. Dassault and Airbus pulled Rafale and Eurofighter out of the previous procurement competition to due inability or unwillingness to meet those strictures.
It'll be fucking amazing if Canada pull the pin on F-35 again. They have now been trying and failing to replace their legacy Hornets for 28 years.
@TSE is making the error of assuming that anything about Scottish independence is rational or responsive to reason. It's not. Its driven by emotion and a sense of identity and resentment. The current unpopularity of the Labour government in Scotland is a concern. Labour are, of course, finding out that the Tories didn't make cuts (just) because they were nasty but because they had no choice. We have already had the WFA and now Labour are going after the allegedly sick. Personally, I am expecting support for independence to rise somewhat.
Osborne chose austerity because he was heartless, why the LDs went along with it is another question.
Without increased taxation Labour are lumbered with austerity. Now that is a choice, a foolhardy one in my opinion. Good luck at the next election when deaf, dumb and blind kids are begging on the streets because Labour removed their PIP.
This Labour Government don't think on their feet. They could sell increased taxation (and borrowing) as a necessity post Russia-USA alignment .
Oh for pity's sake. Does the plight of the feckless Reeves show you nothing? Osborne chose austerity because the country was bankrupt with unpayable contingent liabilities for an overgrown banking sector and a complete collapse in revenues from that source. The Lib Dems went along because there was no choice. Just like Reeves is doing now.
Austerity was an ideological choice. Many commentators, and not necessarily from the left, are opining that austerity was a grave error. There were other options. There are now. One of Reeves and Starmer's biggest millstones is the spectre of the Truss-Kwarteng budget. The Germans are going balls deep into borrowing for defence investment. We could do the same.
Germany has an almost balanced and a lot of room to borrow. Osborne inherited a 10% deficit, 70% of which was structural. We are and never were in any way comparable to Germany, their financial foundations are far, far stronger than ours. If the government (Tory or Labour) tried to go on a gigantic unfunded borrowing binge the markets would enforce discipline just as they did to Truss. That you think we could do what Germany is doing wrt borrowing for defence and infrastructure just shows how little you understand how bad our financial position is and has been since 2008.
The financial state of the economy must have been pretty good in 2023. How else could the Chancellor have significantly cut NI (twice).*
* My tongue is firmly in my cheek.
If NI cuts were affordable then but they are not now, taxes need to rise. This Government's greatest folly was suggesting the status quo could continue without tax rises. Your Party/ Government's manifesto pledge was that taxes could continue to fall whilst services would continue to rise. Either they were lying or their economic understanding was as deficient as you claim mine to be.
One of my key concerns over austerity both
now and fifteen years ago has been the consistent misunderstanding between cost of a service and value added from that service.. Binning HS2 was a case in pointReeves/ Starmer are making this error.
I understand the difference between the structural and cyclical deficit, but I see no other way to pay for the nice things we want like military aircraft, nuclear warheads, boots on the ground and adequate housing without borrowing. Borrowing for defence and infrastructure is the last resort way to generate growth. How have the growth stats been since 2008 austerity kicked in? And growth whilst outside the largest single friction free trading block available to use is even more daunting. Remind me which side of that fence you were on over that event. As an economist help me understand why leaving the EU was optimal to domestic growth and the balance of payments deficit of the UK.
Labour have put taxes up, just on farmers and business owners
Employer NI wouldn't have been a route I would have followed, but I have no problem with 20% inheritance tax for properties over £3m. The Government need to be looking at wealth taxes too. Why are Labour so timid?
Because either a wealth tax includes housing and it's politically disastrous or it doesn't and raises pennies at the cost of huge damage to the economy as the wealthy move their business, shares, etc out of the country.
The primary domestic dwelling could easily be exempted.
I sometimes wonder if people are deliberately looking for ways to stoke the housing market.....
If you want to include primary property within a wealth taxation programme, fill your boots.😁
Probably the only thing that would start a revolution in this country.
But it's also the reason why housing is so expensive. It has massive tax advantages that other assets don't enjoy, including allowances for CGT, IHT and a regressive council tax band system. We even tax people when they downsize their property via stamp duty.
A much fairer system would be to abolish CGT, IHT, stamp duty and council tax altogether and introduce a flat wealth tax that applies to all non-pension assets. It would be about 1% per year to make up the difference.
Inviting his dad to be KIng of Scotland. After all, it worked with the Stuart dynasty. He'd want a new Glorious Revolution and MSGA.
Trump is quite similar to Idi Amin, so makes sense
He made a speech at the Department of Justice yesterday in front of an audience of prosecutors where he listed a whole series of people by name who he wants to target - people like Mark Elias (Democracy Docket) and Norm Eisen (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)).
He's moving towards Idi Amin's attack on the Judiciary (see the ex-Archbishop of York, who he locked up when he was around the Supreme Court of Uganda, and had beaten to a pulp.) It's the big one - will the checks and balances of USA democracy hold.
It's better if Trump pops his clogs sooner rather than later - Vance may as bad or worse, but he won't be able to keep all the Republican party or half the US public with him like Trump can
Vance is far more intelligent than Trump though and doesn’t need to face the voters for 3 and a half years
My point is that Trump still needs the votes of, for example, Republican senators - for now. He has them because he is popular enough and Republican elected officials are afraid to oppose him. In a year or two there might be a quasi-dictatorship in the US, and the president may no longer need Congress. I think it's better that Vance replaces Trump before we reach that point, because I think Vance will face more opposition if he tries to claim, as Trump is doing, "l'etat c'est moi."
US has a constitution with a Congress and the Supreme Court, judges for whom Congress also appoints, to remove them and become a dictator Trump would need the military but they take an oath to the constitution and president
Most countries have constitutions. Here's the first line of Russia's:
Russia is a democratic federal law-bound state with a republican form of government.
Well Russia does still have multi party elections, judges and a President
Exactly. And Russian is not a democracy.
It is, it has multi party parliamentary and presidential elections even if not a perfect one.
For most of the 20th century Russia and indeed Ukraine too were one party communist dictatorships under the USSR and before that under the absolute monarchy of the Tsars
The Economist Democracy Index rates Russia as an Authoritarian Regime. Out of a choice of Full Democracy, Flawed Democracy, Hybrid Regime and Authoritarian Regime.
Democracy Matrix has Russia as 'Moderate Autocracy'. Out of Working Democracy Deficient Democracy Hybrid Regime Moderate Autocracy Hard Autocracy
My best recommendation for listening today, a Foreign Affairs interview with Fiona Hill (not Theresa May's Fiona Hill -the other one),
She's a Bishop Auckland lass (from a mining family) who was a senior adviser to the first Trump Administration as Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for European and Russian Affairs. She is now working as a key adviser to the British Government, and has been Chancellor of Durham Uni.
Very candid, and a lovely accent. @Taz will enjoy.
"Fiona Hill: What Does Trump See in Putin? | Foreign Affairs Interview"
She’s brilliant. Andrew Neil did an interview with her on The Tortoise. Very good. Bout a year ago.
She’s also not forgot her roots and funds scholarships in Durham.
If this is new from her certainly worth a listen.
This week. I'd put it as probable that she was working alongside Jonathan Powell (I think it was he) and Lord Mandelbrot in giving guidance to UK politicians and Zelenskyy in how to Trump-whisper.
Appointed a Defence Advisor to HMG upon Labour's election to Government in July 2024.
Her background sounds quite reminiscent of Lee Anderson.
Powell in particular seems to have had a very big role. He's got very long experience in negotiations, dating all the way back to Blair and Northern Ireland. Mandelson is also a similarly experienced fixer.
All much more experienced and adept, than Sunak, or Johnson's team.
His brother, Charles, played the same role for Thatcher - so Jonathan has been leveraging a direct experience of the subject spans 50+ years.
I don't really know why Mandelson has a reputation as a skilled and subtle negotiator. Apparently everyone in the world knew when they were on Mandelson's shitlist in New Labour. Case of wish being father to the thought I think.
Slightly surprised to see in recent weeks people stressing the need for the UK to build up an independent nuclear armoury who previously campaigned to get nuclear weapons out of Faslane
Circumstances alter cases.
One of the more interesting ones was the pivot by previous Peace Pledge Union people in the run up to WW2.
We are living in the middle of one, as some groups understand what Trump is really doing, in addition to the threat posed by Russia.
It will be very interesting to find who is left. There are all sorts of reasons, of course - some of them quite good reasons in the previous set of circumstances. And some of us (I hope my view, for one) will be too pessimistic on the other side - for all we know the legal system in the USA may get Musk and Trump under control.
Perhaps the USA will allow their weapons to be putchased for Ukraine on commercial terms for Ukraine, rather than go all out to neuter the possibility of any European help getting to Ukraine by refusing to sell us Himars, which is not even made in Europe.
We built the Florence Nightingale hospitals (I think that was the name) during Covid and did not need them. Was that an unnecessary insurance policy or a wise contingency we did not need?
The Nightingale hospitals were really hospices - very little in the way of facilities. Staff would have been whoever they could scrounge up with a little bit of medical knowledge. Even airline staff.
Their purpose was to prevent people dying in the street if hospitals got overrun (see Greece and Spain). Pretty much an indoor bed with an oxygen supply.
What was interesting was the ravening resistance to them being built, from within the permanent system of government - I knew someone whose career was destroyed because she pushed through completion of the one she was working on.
They were pointless without a plan for staffing them.
One of the lessons of Covid should be more resilience in the NHS, and that should include not operating at 100% occupation at all times. Planned surgery is cancelled every day at my Trust for lack of beds/ITU beds. Apart from the individual misery, it is very inefficient of surgical productivity.
As to the staffing for the Nightingales - there was a plan. Whoever they could find to hold the hands of the sick. And dying…
For the NHS - What about creating more staff? We’ve tried this one round the world - the NHS knows it’s future size and it’s demented that we don’t train staff to match.
I thought the idea of the Nightingales was to move the non serious and routine cases out of the hospitals into the Nightingales and then use the reglar hospitals for the serious covid cases?
There were several plans, actually. One was to move non-critical COVID cases there. Another was to (as you say) empty the hospitals of those who didn’t need complex medical care.
The whole thing was pretty stupid really.
They should have used the money to re-open old hospitals, nursing homes etc., and made them into respiratory hospitals, taking Covid out of the existing NHS. Care there would have been at a more specialised but lower expertise (in other areas) level. It would also have fufilled Boris's manifesto pledge to open new hospitals and most could have been retained as additional nursing homes (the absence of which is a huge bed blocker for the NHS), or indeed hospitals.
At the very very beginning of Covid (the post is on PB) I did a bit of historical research and found that during the Spanish flu epidemic, the best outcomes were for those in 'fresh air hospitals' - where they were kept warm under blankets but windows were wide open - they were even outside sometimes. Nobody learns from the past - it was only at the end of Covid that ventilation became a buzzword.
It was a relatively small amount of money.
There aren’t huge numbers of empty hospitals waiting to be returned to service. A few are derelict buildings awaiting demolition, but they would take epic amounts of money and time to do anything with - that’s why they are being developed.
On ventilation - you are flat wrong. It was clear, right from the start that capacity to provide breathing assistance was critical. The changes from emphasis on full ventilation to breathing assistance. And that was fairly early on - which was why plans to mass produce ventilators were discarded in favour of less invasive techniques.
A actual example. In April 2022, NHS Ayrshire and Arran purchased Carrick Glen private hospital in Ayr, for conversion to a National Treatment Centre for Orthopaedics. In February 2024, the upgrade was halted indefinitely.
In February 2024 Fairliered asked his GP to add his name to the waiting list for a hip replacement. In July 2024, he saw the consultant, who told him that the waiting list was 18 months, but was reducing, and to expect an operation around July or August 2025. In March 2025, Fairliered again saw the consultant, who told him that waiting lists hadn’t come down, and he may be operated on by the end of the year. Fairliered is now considering a private operation, except that it won’t be in Carrick Glen as it is mothballed.
@TSE is making the error of assuming that anything about Scottish independence is rational or responsive to reason. It's not. Its driven by emotion and a sense of identity and resentment. The current unpopularity of the Labour government in Scotland is a concern. Labour are, of course, finding out that the Tories didn't make cuts (just) because they were nasty but because they had no choice. We have already had the WFA and now Labour are going after the allegedly sick. Personally, I am expecting support for independence to rise somewhat.
Osborne chose austerity because he was heartless, why the LDs went along with it is another question.
Without increased taxation Labour are lumbered with austerity. Now that is a choice, a foolhardy one in my opinion. Good luck at the next election when deaf, dumb and blind kids are begging on the streets because Labour removed their PIP.
This Labour Government don't think on their feet. They could sell increased taxation (and borrowing) as a necessity post Russia-USA alignment .
Oh for pity's sake. Does the plight of the feckless Reeves show you nothing? Osborne chose austerity because the country was bankrupt with unpayable contingent liabilities for an overgrown banking sector and a complete collapse in revenues from that source. The Lib Dems went along because there was no choice. Just like Reeves is doing now.
Austerity was an ideological choice. Many commentators, and not necessarily from the left, are opining that austerity was a grave error. There were other options. There are now. One of Reeves and Starmer's biggest millstones is the spectre of the Truss-Kwarteng budget. The Germans are going balls deep into borrowing for defence investment. We could do the same.
Germany has an almost balanced and a lot of room to borrow. Osborne inherited a 10% deficit, 70% of which was structural. We are and never were in any way comparable to Germany, their financial foundations are far, far stronger than ours. If the government (Tory or Labour) tried to go on a gigantic unfunded borrowing binge the markets would enforce discipline just as they did to Truss. That you think we could do what Germany is doing wrt borrowing for defence and infrastructure just shows how little you understand how bad our financial position is and has been since 2008.
The financial state of the economy must have been pretty good in 2023. How else could the Chancellor have significantly cut NI (twice).*
* My tongue is firmly in my cheek.
If NI cuts were affordable then but they are not now, taxes need to rise. This Government's greatest folly was suggesting the status quo could continue without tax rises. Your Party/ Government's manifesto pledge was that taxes could continue to fall whilst services would continue to rise. Either they were lying or their economic understanding was as deficient as you claim mine to be.
One of my key concerns over austerity both
now and fifteen years ago has been the consistent misunderstanding between cost of a service and value added from that service.. Binning HS2 was a case in pointReeves/ Starmer are making this error.
I understand the difference between the structural and cyclical deficit, but I see no other way to pay for the nice things we want like military aircraft, nuclear warheads, boots on the ground and adequate housing without borrowing. Borrowing for defence and infrastructure is the last resort way to generate growth. How have the growth stats been since 2008 austerity kicked in? And growth whilst outside the largest single friction free trading block available to use is even more daunting. Remind me which side of that fence you were on over that event. As an economist help me understand why leaving the EU was optimal to domestic growth and the balance of payments deficit of the UK.
Labour have put taxes up, just on farmers and business owners
Employer NI wouldn't have been a route I would have followed, but I have no problem with 20% inheritance tax for properties over £3m. The Government need to be looking at wealth taxes too. Why are Labour so timid?
Because either a wealth tax includes housing and it's politically disastrous or it doesn't and raises pennies at the cost of huge damage to the economy as the wealthy move their business, shares, etc out of the country.
The primary domestic dwelling could easily be exempted.
Then it wouldn't raise much but would destroy the already damaged private rental market, hitting the young and poor the most.
There's no easy way to raise the already record tax burden - if there were, the rapacious Labour Party or the only slightly less greedy Conservatives would have tried it to exhaustion and beyond.
Why would a 'private rental market' be damaged. If landlords sold up, a family requiring a home would move in. One less in the queue. The PRS is simply an investment vehicle for a particular group who could put their money into more productive areas of the economy. It the similar argument for those who under occupy a property as 'it's their pension' but never use it as a pension.
In other military industrial complex news, I note that Trump's new Secretary of the Navy has designated Virginia hulls 814 and 815 (the first Block IV boats which were going to the the Australian Navy's new build Virginias) as the USS Pontiac and the USS Norfolk (obviously a Partridge fan).
Hard luck, Aussies. Best of luck getting your money back.
I have conducted a quick review of Facebook and the narrative developing is that we should not be cutting incapacity benefits while we spend billions on asylum seeker hotels. I would guess that a very large proportion of the "middle-aged man on disability benefits" cohort are Reform voters (or soon to be so).
Also links being made to the assisted suicide bill, and waiting lists for operations. Former scaffolders with long-term injuries etc. This is going to be toxic.
Watch the numbers on asylum seeker hotels, which are due out this month.
They are about 40% down from peak, but tbf they also came down under the Conservatives.
But the riposte will be "why are the ANY hotels".
That they are not 4 star hotels as claimed does not matter, because the narrative is about emotion not truth.
So why are there any hotels?
Because we are insisting that they can't work until they are processed, and we're not processing them fast enough.
The interests of the local population seem to come last in either case. Either we put them up in hotels at great expense or let them compete against locals in the job and housing markets.
The best and cheapest and most humane solution is immediate processing. About 30% will be returned and 70% will be accepted as genuine asylum seekers.
These will enter the jobs and housing markets, paying taxes and doing useful work, including, in some cases, helping to build houses.
What do you suggest?
I strongly doubt whether 70% are asylum seekers, and if they are, then the bar is set far too low. Finger in the air: about 2% should genuinely be offered asylum.
Based on what? Three of the top 5 countries for asylum seekers are Syria, Iran and Afghanistan. Do you doubt that people have good reasons to flee those countries?
But why should we take them? Most of them will be coming through half a dozen other safe countries. I'd suggest people we should be taking are those from HK or Ukraine, where we have specific reasons for taking them. Granted some Afghanistani asylum seekers would fall into that category. In general, we should probably be trying to avoid people from medeival shitholes like Syria.
You had said only 2% are genuine asylum seekers. Now you are saying that they are asylum seekers, but we shouldn’t take them? Is that it?
Let’s be clear, most Syrian, Afghan and Iranian refugees *are* in other safe (and indeed unsafe) countries between us and them. There are far, far more Syrians seeking asylum in Turkey and Jordan, for example. There are about 20,000 Syrian refugees in the UK. There are 3,000,000 in Turkey, 800k in Lebanon, 650k in Jordan, 630k in Germany, 50k in the Netherlands, 45k in Greece, 30k in France and so on. I think it’s a good thing that the burden of helping those fleeing Syria has been shared around, and I note we’ve taken very few as a proportion. (Hopefully, the situation in Syria is now improving.)
Calling Syria a mediaeval shithole is ahistorical, at best, but if you think Syria is such a terrible place, I would hope you would have more empathy for those who have fled.
I have conducted a quick review of Facebook and the narrative developing is that we should not be cutting incapacity benefits while we spend billions on asylum seeker hotels. I would guess that a very large proportion of the "middle-aged man on disability benefits" cohort are Reform voters (or soon to be so).
Also links being made to the assisted suicide bill, and waiting lists for operations. Former scaffolders with long-term injuries etc. This is going to be toxic.
Watch the numbers on asylum seeker hotels, which are due out this month.
They are about 40% down from peak, but tbf they also came down under the Conservatives.
But the riposte will be "why are the ANY hotels".
That they are not 4 star hotels as claimed does not matter, because the narrative is about emotion not truth.
So why are there any hotels?
Because we are insisting that they can't work until they are processed, and we're not processing them fast enough.
The interests of the local population seem to come last in either case. Either we put them up in hotels at great expense or let them compete against locals in the job and housing markets.
The best and cheapest and most humane solution is immediate processing. About 30% will be returned and 70% will be accepted as genuine asylum seekers.
These will enter the jobs and housing markets, paying taxes and doing useful work, including, in some cases, helping to build houses.
What do you suggest?
I strongly doubt whether 70% are asylum seekers, and if they are, then the bar is set far too low. Finger in the air: about 2% should genuinely be offered asylum.
Based on what? Three of the top 5 countries for asylum seekers are Syria, Iran and Afghanistan. Do you doubt that people have good reasons to flee those countries?
But why should we take them? Most of them will be coming through half a dozen other safe countries. I'd suggest people we should be taking are those from HK or Ukraine, where we have specific reasons for taking them. Granted some Afghanistani asylum seekers would fall into that category. In general, we should probably be trying to avoid people from medeival shitholes like Syria.
You had said only 2% are genuine asylum seekers. Now you are saying that they are asylum seekers, but we shouldn’t take them? Is that it?
Let’s be clear, most Syrian, Afghan and Iranian refugees *are* in other safe (and indeed unsafe) countries between us and them. There are far, far more Syrians seeking asylum in Turkey and Jordan, for example. There are about 20,000 Syrian refugees in the UK. There are 3,000,000 in Turkey, 800k in Lebanon, 650k in Jordan, 630k in Germany, 50k in the Netherlands, 45k in Greece, 30k in France and so on. I think it’s a good thing that the burden of helping those fleeing Syria has been shared around, and I note we’ve taken very few as a proportion. (Hopefully, the situation in Syria is now improving.)
Calling Syria a mediaeval shithole is ahistorical, at best, but if you think Syria is such a terrible place, I would hope you would have more empathy for those who have fled.
The ones who have fled are mainly the ones who wanted to make Syria a mediaeval shithole. The change of regime should mean that those now fleeing are the non-mediaeval shithole contingent, but sadly I haven't read any evidence of the first group returning to enjoy the fruits of their labours.
I hope the Cons do a little better, and Labour much worse. Over 100 losses for them please.
This result makes the Tory decline the main story, and puts Kemi in danger.
At such low turnout elections with unknown candidates yet im skeptical of predictions, but that would be at worst end for Tories i think. They need clearer water beyween them and Reform to avoid trouble. I dont think they can avoid Reform being a story unless they get under 100, but a bigger gap steadies their nerves.
I have conducted a quick review of Facebook and the narrative developing is that we should not be cutting incapacity benefits while we spend billions on asylum seeker hotels. I would guess that a very large proportion of the "middle-aged man on disability benefits" cohort are Reform voters (or soon to be so).
Also links being made to the assisted suicide bill, and waiting lists for operations. Former scaffolders with long-term injuries etc. This is going to be toxic.
Watch the numbers on asylum seeker hotels, which are due out this month.
They are about 40% down from peak, but tbf they also came down under the Conservatives.
But the riposte will be "why are the ANY hotels".
That they are not 4 star hotels as claimed does not matter, because the narrative is about emotion not truth.
So why are there any hotels?
Because we are insisting that they can't work until they are processed, and we're not processing them fast enough.
The interests of the local population seem to come last in either case. Either we put them up in hotels at great expense or let them compete against locals in the job and housing markets.
The best and cheapest and most humane solution is immediate processing. About 30% will be returned and 70% will be accepted as genuine asylum seekers.
These will enter the jobs and housing markets, paying taxes and doing useful work, including, in some cases, helping to build houses.
What do you suggest?
I strongly doubt whether 70% are asylum seekers, and if they are, then the bar is set far too low. Finger in the air: about 2% should genuinely be offered asylum.
Based on what? Three of the top 5 countries for asylum seekers are Syria, Iran and Afghanistan. Do you doubt that people have good reasons to flee those countries?
But why should we take them? Most of them will be coming through half a dozen other safe countries. I'd suggest people we should be taking are those from HK or Ukraine, where we have specific reasons for taking them. Granted some Afghanistani asylum seekers would fall into that category. In general, we should probably be trying to avoid people from medeival shitholes like Syria.
You had said only 2% are genuine asylum seekers. Now you are saying that they are asylum seekers, but we shouldn’t take them? Is that it?
Let’s be clear, most Syrian, Afghan and Iranian refugees *are* in other safe (and indeed unsafe) countries between us and them. There are far, far more Syrians seeking asylum in Turkey and Jordan, for example. There are about 20,000 Syrian refugees in the UK. There are 3,000,000 in Turkey, 800k in Lebanon, 650k in Jordan, 630k in Germany, 50k in the Netherlands, 45k in Greece, 30k in France and so on. I think it’s a good thing that the burden of helping those fleeing Syria has been shared around, and I note we’ve taken very few as a proportion. (Hopefully, the situation in Syria is now improving.)
Calling Syria a mediaeval shithole is ahistorical, at best, but if you think Syria is such a terrible place, I would hope you would have more empathy for those who have fled.
The ones who have fled are mainly the ones who wanted to make Syria a mediaeval shithole. The change of regime should mean that those now fleeing are the non-mediaeval shithole contingent, but sadly I haven't read any evidence of the first group returning to enjoy the fruits of their labours.
What nonsense is this? Why on Earth do you think that the ones who fled wanted to make Syria a mediaeval shithole?
@TSE is making the error of assuming that anything about Scottish independence is rational or responsive to reason. It's not. Its driven by emotion and a sense of identity and resentment. The current unpopularity of the Labour government in Scotland is a concern. Labour are, of course, finding out that the Tories didn't make cuts (just) because they were nasty but because they had no choice. We have already had the WFA and now Labour are going after the allegedly sick. Personally, I am expecting support for independence to rise somewhat.
Osborne chose austerity because he was heartless, why the LDs went along with it is another question.
Without increased taxation Labour are lumbered with austerity. Now that is a choice, a foolhardy one in my opinion. Good luck at the next election when deaf, dumb and blind kids are begging on the streets because Labour removed their PIP.
This Labour Government don't think on their feet. They could sell increased taxation (and borrowing) as a necessity post Russia-USA alignment .
Oh for pity's sake. Does the plight of the feckless Reeves show you nothing? Osborne chose austerity because the country was bankrupt with unpayable contingent liabilities for an overgrown banking sector and a complete collapse in revenues from that source. The Lib Dems went along because there was no choice. Just like Reeves is doing now.
Austerity was an ideological choice. Many commentators, and not necessarily from the left, are opining that austerity was a grave error. There were other options. There are now. One of Reeves and Starmer's biggest millstones is the spectre of the Truss-Kwarteng budget. The Germans are going balls deep into borrowing for defence investment. We could do the same.
Germany has an almost balanced and a lot of room to borrow. Osborne inherited a 10% deficit, 70% of which was structural. We are and never were in any way comparable to Germany, their financial foundations are far, far stronger than ours. If the government (Tory or Labour) tried to go on a gigantic unfunded borrowing binge the markets would enforce discipline just as they did to Truss. That you think we could do what Germany is doing wrt borrowing for defence and infrastructure just shows how little you understand how bad our financial position is and has been since 2008.
The financial state of the economy must have been pretty good in 2023. How else could the Chancellor have significantly cut NI (twice).*
* My tongue is firmly in my cheek.
If NI cuts were affordable then but they are not now, taxes need to rise. This Government's greatest folly was suggesting the status quo could continue without tax rises. Your Party/ Government's manifesto pledge was that taxes could continue to fall whilst services would continue to rise. Either they were lying or their economic understanding was as deficient as you claim mine to be.
One of my key concerns over austerity both
now and fifteen years ago has been the consistent misunderstanding between cost of a service and value added from that service.. Binning HS2 was a case in pointReeves/ Starmer are making this error.
I understand the difference between the structural and cyclical deficit, but I see no other way to pay for the nice things we want like military aircraft, nuclear warheads, boots on the ground and adequate housing without borrowing. Borrowing for defence and infrastructure is the last resort way to generate growth. How have the growth stats been since 2008 austerity kicked in? And growth whilst outside the largest single friction free trading block available to use is even more daunting. Remind me which side of that fence you were on over that event. As an economist help me understand why leaving the EU was optimal to domestic growth and the balance of payments deficit of the UK.
Labour have put taxes up, just on farmers and business owners
Employer NI wouldn't have been a route I would have followed, but I have no problem with 20% inheritance tax for properties over £3m. The Government need to be looking at wealth taxes too. Why are Labour so timid?
Because either a wealth tax includes housing and it's politically disastrous or it doesn't and raises pennies at the cost of huge damage to the economy as the wealthy move their business, shares, etc out of the country.
The primary domestic dwelling could easily be exempted.
Then it wouldn't raise much but would destroy the already damaged private rental market, hitting the young and poor the most.
There's no easy way to raise the already record tax burden - if there were, the rapacious Labour Party or the only slightly less greedy Conservatives would have tried it to exhaustion and beyond.
Why would a 'private rental market' be damaged. If landlords sold up, a family requiring a home would move in. One less in the queue. The PRS is simply an investment vehicle for a particular group who could put their money into more productive areas of the economy. It the similar argument for those who under occupy a property as 'it's their pension' but never use it as a pension.
This is bizarre attitude that you get from private landlords everywhere. Sure, there is a minority of highly mobile workers who need rental properties to move around the country/globe to exploit job opportunities, but for everyone else owning a property is far more desirable because of the massive financial advantages of doing so.
It's not like the flat disappears off the face of the earth when the landlord sells up. The size of the private rental market now is a function of gross wealth inequality, not demand for renting relative to ownership.
I have conducted a quick review of Facebook and the narrative developing is that we should not be cutting incapacity benefits while we spend billions on asylum seeker hotels. I would guess that a very large proportion of the "middle-aged man on disability benefits" cohort are Reform voters (or soon to be so).
Also links being made to the assisted suicide bill, and waiting lists for operations. Former scaffolders with long-term injuries etc. This is going to be toxic.
Watch the numbers on asylum seeker hotels, which are due out this month.
They are about 40% down from peak, but tbf they also came down under the Conservatives.
But the riposte will be "why are the ANY hotels".
That they are not 4 star hotels as claimed does not matter, because the narrative is about emotion not truth.
So why are there any hotels?
Because we are insisting that they can't work until they are processed, and we're not processing them fast enough.
The interests of the local population seem to come last in either case. Either we put them up in hotels at great expense or let them compete against locals in the job and housing markets.
The best and cheapest and most humane solution is immediate processing. About 30% will be returned and 70% will be accepted as genuine asylum seekers.
These will enter the jobs and housing markets, paying taxes and doing useful work, including, in some cases, helping to build houses.
What do you suggest?
I strongly doubt whether 70% are asylum seekers, and if they are, then the bar is set far too low. Finger in the air: about 2% should genuinely be offered asylum.
Based on what? Three of the top 5 countries for asylum seekers are Syria, Iran and Afghanistan. Do you doubt that people have good reasons to flee those countries?
But why should we take them? Most of them will be coming through half a dozen other safe countries. I'd suggest people we should be taking are those from HK or Ukraine, where we have specific reasons for taking them. Granted some Afghanistani asylum seekers would fall into that category. In general, we should probably be trying to avoid people from medeival shitholes like Syria.
You had said only 2% are genuine asylum seekers. Now you are saying that they are asylum seekers, but we shouldn’t take them? Is that it?
Let’s be clear, most Syrian, Afghan and Iranian refugees *are* in other safe (and indeed unsafe) countries between us and them. There are far, far more Syrians seeking asylum in Turkey and Jordan, for example. There are about 20,000 Syrian refugees in the UK. There are 3,000,000 in Turkey, 800k in Lebanon, 650k in Jordan, 630k in Germany, 50k in the Netherlands, 45k in Greece, 30k in France and so on. I think it’s a good thing that the burden of helping those fleeing Syria has been shared around, and I note we’ve taken very few as a proportion. (Hopefully, the situation in Syria is now improving.)
Calling Syria a mediaeval shithole is ahistorical, at best, but if you think Syria is such a terrible place, I would hope you would have more empathy for those who have fled.
The ones who have fled are mainly the ones who wanted to make Syria a mediaeval shithole. The change of regime should mean that those now fleeing are the non-mediaeval shithole contingent, but sadly I haven't read any evidence of the first group returning to enjoy the fruits of their labours.
What nonsense is this? Why on Earth do you think that the ones who fled wanted to make Syria a mediaeval shithole?
The logic is fairly simple. Those fleeing before were cheifly those who opposed the dictatorship and wanted to install an islamist theocracy. Now that that goal has been achieved, that regime is perpetrating atrocities, or trying to so so, on their opponents - the Druze, the Christians, the Alawites. These people are now more likely to flee, and are by definition not Islamists.
I have conducted a quick review of Facebook and the narrative developing is that we should not be cutting incapacity benefits while we spend billions on asylum seeker hotels. I would guess that a very large proportion of the "middle-aged man on disability benefits" cohort are Reform voters (or soon to be so).
Also links being made to the assisted suicide bill, and waiting lists for operations. Former scaffolders with long-term injuries etc. This is going to be toxic.
Watch the numbers on asylum seeker hotels, which are due out this month.
They are about 40% down from peak, but tbf they also came down under the Conservatives.
But the riposte will be "why are the ANY hotels".
That they are not 4 star hotels as claimed does not matter, because the narrative is about emotion not truth.
So why are there any hotels?
Because we are insisting that they can't work until they are processed, and we're not processing them fast enough.
The interests of the local population seem to come last in either case. Either we put them up in hotels at great expense or let them compete against locals in the job and housing markets.
The best and cheapest and most humane solution is immediate processing. About 30% will be returned and 70% will be accepted as genuine asylum seekers.
These will enter the jobs and housing markets, paying taxes and doing useful work, including, in some cases, helping to build houses.
What do you suggest?
I strongly doubt whether 70% are asylum seekers, and if they are, then the bar is set far too low. Finger in the air: about 2% should genuinely be offered asylum.
Based on what? Three of the top 5 countries for asylum seekers are Syria, Iran and Afghanistan. Do you doubt that people have good reasons to flee those countries?
But why should we take them? Most of them will be coming through half a dozen other safe countries. I'd suggest people we should be taking are those from HK or Ukraine, where we have specific reasons for taking them. Granted some Afghanistani asylum seekers would fall into that category. In general, we should probably be trying to avoid people from medeival shitholes like Syria.
You had said only 2% are genuine asylum seekers. Now you are saying that they are asylum seekers, but we shouldn’t take them? Is that it?
Let’s be clear, most Syrian, Afghan and Iranian refugees *are* in other safe (and indeed unsafe) countries between us and them. There are far, far more Syrians seeking asylum in Turkey and Jordan, for example. There are about 20,000 Syrian refugees in the UK. There are 3,000,000 in Turkey, 800k in Lebanon, 650k in Jordan, 630k in Germany, 50k in the Netherlands, 45k in Greece, 30k in France and so on. I think it’s a good thing that the burden of helping those fleeing Syria has been shared around, and I note we’ve taken very few as a proportion. (Hopefully, the situation in Syria is now improving.)
Calling Syria a mediaeval shithole is ahistorical, at best, but if you think Syria is such a terrible place, I would hope you would have more empathy for those who have fled.
The ones who have fled are mainly the ones who wanted to make Syria a mediaeval shithole. The change of regime should mean that those now fleeing are the non-mediaeval shithole contingent, but sadly I haven't read any evidence of the first group returning to enjoy the fruits of their labours.
What nonsense is this? Why on Earth do you think that the ones who fled wanted to make Syria a mediaeval shithole?
The logic is fairly simple. Those fleeing before were cheifly those who opposed the dictatorship and wanted to install an islamist theocracy. Now that that goal has been achieved, that regime is perpetrating atrocities, or trying to so so, on their opponents - the Druze, the Christians, the Alawites. These people are now more likely to flee, and are by definition not Islamists.
The logic is balderdash. It sounds like your usual Putinist propaganda. People fleeing Syria were rarely in favour of an Islamist theocracy. They were, rather, in favour of not dying. There was widespread opposition to Assad’s rule from across the political spectrum, and from multiple different ethnic and ethnoreligous groups. Druze and Christians fled in significant numbers from Assad’s regime (e.g., see this policy brief: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/geography/sites/geography_redesign/files/ucl_migration_research_unit_policy_brief_-_k_eghdamian.pdf ).
However, friends of Assad, like Putin, tried to portray him as an ally in a fight against Sunni extremism. That’s presumably the bullshit you’ve been listening to.
Starmer doing well at the moment WRT Trump/Ukraine. Ignoring, sadly, the issue of men, widows and orphans, there are four corners: USA, Russia, Ukraine, Europe. Starmer pretends that Europe and USA interests elide because he's the good cop.
The current rules are: the ball has to be in the USA or Russia court, and secondly, USA and Russia must not be in visible agreement against the other two.
Currently: the ball is not in Europe or Ukraine's court because they have agreed to a ceasefire. Russia is making it tricky for USA to side with them.
Starmer doing well at the moment WRT Trump/Ukraine. Ignoring, sadly, the issue of men, widows and orphans, there are four corners: USA, Russia, Ukraine, Europe. Starmer pretends that Europe and USA interests elide because he's the good cop.
The current rules are: the ball has to be in the USA or Russia court, and secondly, USA and Russia must not be in visible agreement against the other two.
Currently: the ball is not in Europe or Ukraine's court because they have agreed to a ceasefire. Russia is making it tricky for USA to side with them.
Well done so far. A long way to go.
It'll be interesting to see how the British Right pivots if Russia pulls the plug. Will they side with Putin or Trump?
I have conducted a quick review of Facebook and the narrative developing is that we should not be cutting incapacity benefits while we spend billions on asylum seeker hotels. I would guess that a very large proportion of the "middle-aged man on disability benefits" cohort are Reform voters (or soon to be so).
Also links being made to the assisted suicide bill, and waiting lists for operations. Former scaffolders with long-term injuries etc. This is going to be toxic.
Watch the numbers on asylum seeker hotels, which are due out this month.
They are about 40% down from peak, but tbf they also came down under the Conservatives.
But the riposte will be "why are the ANY hotels".
That they are not 4 star hotels as claimed does not matter, because the narrative is about emotion not truth.
So why are there any hotels?
Because we are insisting that they can't work until they are processed, and we're not processing them fast enough.
The interests of the local population seem to come last in either case. Either we put them up in hotels at great expense or let them compete against locals in the job and housing markets.
What a bizarre view. You seem to think that more people is inherently a problem. Yet the most economically active parts of the country are those with the highest population density.
You're not thinking about the interests of the individuals affected. Whether it's better for GDP overall or better for the Treasury isn't the point.
People living in London, like me, are affected by London’s population density, and we benefit from it. Elon Musk, who you seem to like, goes on about the importance of a growing population. More people can be a boon for everyone, not a cost.
You benefit from it because the infrastructure is in place to support the levels of density. The issue is with rapidly densifying places without the requisite levels of capital investment
Starmer doing well at the moment WRT Trump/Ukraine. Ignoring, sadly, the issue of men, widows and orphans, there are four corners: USA, Russia, Ukraine, Europe. Starmer pretends that Europe and USA interests elide because he's the good cop.
The current rules are: the ball has to be in the USA or Russia court, and secondly, USA and Russia must not be in visible agreement against the other two.
Currently: the ball is not in Europe or Ukraine's court because they have agreed to a ceasefire. Russia is making it tricky for USA to side with them.
Well done so far. A long way to go.
It'll be interesting to see how the British Right pivots if Russia pulls the plug. Will they side with Putin or Trump?
Less attention has been paid to whether Putin admires Trump than vice versa.
I have conducted a quick review of Facebook and the narrative developing is that we should not be cutting incapacity benefits while we spend billions on asylum seeker hotels. I would guess that a very large proportion of the "middle-aged man on disability benefits" cohort are Reform voters (or soon to be so).
Also links being made to the assisted suicide bill, and waiting lists for operations. Former scaffolders with long-term injuries etc. This is going to be toxic.
Watch the numbers on asylum seeker hotels, which are due out this month.
They are about 40% down from peak, but tbf they also came down under the Conservatives.
But the riposte will be "why are the ANY hotels".
That they are not 4 star hotels as claimed does not matter, because the narrative is about emotion not truth.
So why are there any hotels?
Because we are insisting that they can't work until they are processed, and we're not processing them fast enough.
The interests of the local population seem to come last in either case. Either we put them up in hotels at great expense or let them compete against locals in the job and housing markets.
What a bizarre view. You seem to think that more people is inherently a problem. Yet the most economically active parts of the country are those with the highest population density.
You're not thinking about the interests of the individuals affected. Whether it's better for GDP overall or better for the Treasury isn't the point.
People living in London, like me, are affected by London’s population density, and we benefit from it. Elon Musk, who you seem to like, goes on about the importance of a growing population. More people can be a boon for everyone, not a cost.
You benefit from it because the infrastructure is in place to support the levels of density. The issue is with rapidly densifying places without the requisite levels of capital investment
I am all for requisite levels of capital investment. If the problem is about requisite levels of capital investment, let’s talk more about requisite levels of capital investment and stop demonising refugees.
@TSE is making the error of assuming that anything about Scottish independence is rational or responsive to reason. It's not. Its driven by emotion and a sense of identity and resentment. The current unpopularity of the Labour government in Scotland is a concern. Labour are, of course, finding out that the Tories didn't make cuts (just) because they were nasty but because they had no choice. We have already had the WFA and now Labour are going after the allegedly sick. Personally, I am expecting support for independence to rise somewhat.
Osborne chose austerity because he was heartless, why the LDs went along with it is another question.
Without increased taxation Labour are lumbered with austerity. Now that is a choice, a foolhardy one in my opinion. Good luck at the next election when deaf, dumb and blind kids are begging on the streets because Labour removed their PIP.
This Labour Government don't think on their feet. They could sell increased taxation (and borrowing) as a necessity post Russia-USA alignment .
Oh for pity's sake. Does the plight of the feckless Reeves show you nothing? Osborne chose austerity because the country was bankrupt with unpayable contingent liabilities for an overgrown banking sector and a complete collapse in revenues from that source. The Lib Dems went along because there was no choice. Just like Reeves is doing now.
Austerity was an ideological choice. Many commentators, and not necessarily from the left, are opining that austerity was a grave error. There were other options. There are now. One of Reeves and Starmer's biggest millstones is the spectre of the Truss-Kwarteng budget. The Germans are going balls deep into borrowing for defence investment. We could do the same.
Germany has an almost balanced and a lot of room to borrow. Osborne inherited a 10% deficit, 70% of which was structural. We are and never were in any way comparable to Germany, their financial foundations are far, far stronger than ours. If the government (Tory or Labour) tried to go on a gigantic unfunded borrowing binge the markets would enforce discipline just as they did to Truss. That you think we could do what Germany is doing wrt borrowing for defence and infrastructure just shows how little you understand how bad our financial position is and has been since 2008.
The financial state of the economy must have been pretty good in 2023. How else could the Chancellor have significantly cut NI (twice).*
* My tongue is firmly in my cheek.
If NI cuts were affordable then but they are not now, taxes need to rise. This Government's greatest folly was suggesting the status quo could continue without tax rises. Your Party/ Government's manifesto pledge was that taxes could continue to fall whilst services would continue to rise. Either they were lying or their economic understanding was as deficient as you claim mine to be.
One of my key concerns over austerity both
now and fifteen years ago has been the consistent misunderstanding between cost of a service and value added from that service.. Binning HS2 was a case in pointReeves/ Starmer are making this error.
I understand the difference between the structural and cyclical deficit, but I see no other way to pay for the nice things we want like military aircraft, nuclear warheads, boots on the ground and adequate housing without borrowing. Borrowing for defence and infrastructure is the last resort way to generate growth. How have the growth stats been since 2008 austerity kicked in? And growth whilst outside the largest single friction free trading block available to use is even more daunting. Remind me which side of that fence you were on over that event. As an economist help me understand why leaving the EU was optimal to domestic growth and the balance of payments deficit of the UK.
Labour have put taxes up, just on farmers and business owners
Employer NI wouldn't have been a route I would have followed, but I have no problem with 20% inheritance tax for properties over £3m. The Government need to be looking at wealth taxes too. Why are Labour so timid?
Because either a wealth tax includes housing and it's politically disastrous or it doesn't and raises pennies at the cost of huge damage to the economy as the wealthy move their business, shares, etc out of the country.
The primary domestic dwelling could easily be exempted.
Then it wouldn't raise much but would destroy the already damaged private rental market, hitting the young and poor the most.
There's no easy way to raise the already record tax burden - if there were, the rapacious Labour Party or the only slightly less greedy Conservatives would have tried it to exhaustion and beyond.
Why would a 'private rental market' be damaged. If landlords sold up, a family requiring a home would move in. One less in the queue. The PRS is simply an investment vehicle for a particular group who could put their money into more productive areas of the economy. It the similar argument for those who under occupy a property as 'it's their pension' but never use it as a pension.
This is bizarre attitude that you get from private landlords everywhere. Sure, there is a minority of highly mobile workers who need rental properties to move around the country/globe to exploit job opportunities, but for everyone else owning a property is far more desirable because of the massive financial advantages of doing so.
It's not like the flat disappears off the face of the earth when the landlord sells up. The size of the private rental market now is a function of gross wealth inequality, not demand for renting relative to ownership.
There speaks someone completely out of touch , well seen you have your own house and plenty cash and no idea what would happen to the the poor sods who cannot afford to buy and have the rental houses pulled from under their feet.
Another person who seems to be able to obtain some of the most impressive election victories in a democratic political environment, is the excellently named , Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedoff, of Turkmenistan, and whose name has cheered me up, for this weekend.
He's managed to obtain support of 96.7%, neatly demonstrating the country's maxim, that "Turkmenistan shall be a democratic, secular and legal republic". As before, I get quite emotional about this, and for seeing someone obtain such love abd consent, and within a democratic system.
@TSE is making the error of assuming that anything about Scottish independence is rational or responsive to reason. It's not. Its driven by emotion and a sense of identity and resentment. The current unpopularity of the Labour government in Scotland is a concern. Labour are, of course, finding out that the Tories didn't make cuts (just) because they were nasty but because they had no choice. We have already had the WFA and now Labour are going after the allegedly sick. Personally, I am expecting support for independence to rise somewhat.
Osborne chose austerity because he was heartless, why the LDs went along with it is another question.
Without increased taxation Labour are lumbered with austerity. Now that is a choice, a foolhardy one in my opinion. Good luck at the next election when deaf, dumb and blind kids are begging on the streets because Labour removed their PIP.
This Labour Government don't think on their feet. They could sell increased taxation (and borrowing) as a necessity post Russia-USA alignment .
Oh for pity's sake. Does the plight of the feckless Reeves show you nothing? Osborne chose austerity because the country was bankrupt with unpayable contingent liabilities for an overgrown banking sector and a complete collapse in revenues from that source. The Lib Dems went along because there was no choice. Just like Reeves is doing now.
Austerity was an ideological choice. Many commentators, and not necessarily from the left, are opining that austerity was a grave error. There were other options. There are now. One of Reeves and Starmer's biggest millstones is the spectre of the Truss-Kwarteng budget. The Germans are going balls deep into borrowing for defence investment. We could do the same.
Germany has an almost balanced and a lot of room to borrow. Osborne inherited a 10% deficit, 70% of which was structural. We are and never were in any way comparable to Germany, their financial foundations are far, far stronger than ours. If the government (Tory or Labour) tried to go on a gigantic unfunded borrowing binge the markets would enforce discipline just as they did to Truss. That you think we could do what Germany is doing wrt borrowing for defence and infrastructure just shows how little you understand how bad our financial position is and has been since 2008.
The financial state of the economy must have been pretty good in 2023. How else could the Chancellor have significantly cut NI (twice).*
* My tongue is firmly in my cheek.
If NI cuts were affordable then but they are not now, taxes need to rise. This Government's greatest folly was suggesting the status quo could continue without tax rises. Your Party/ Government's manifesto pledge was that taxes could continue to fall whilst services would continue to rise. Either they were lying or their economic understanding was as deficient as you claim mine to be.
One of my key concerns over austerity both
now and fifteen years ago has been the consistent misunderstanding between cost of a service and value added from that service.. Binning HS2 was a case in pointReeves/ Starmer are making this error.
I understand the difference between the structural and cyclical deficit, but I see no other way to pay for the nice things we want like military aircraft, nuclear warheads, boots on the ground and adequate housing without borrowing. Borrowing for defence and infrastructure is the last resort way to generate growth. How have the growth stats been since 2008 austerity kicked in? And growth whilst outside the largest single friction free trading block available to use is even more daunting. Remind me which side of that fence you were on over that event. As an economist help me understand why leaving the EU was optimal to domestic growth and the balance of payments deficit of the UK.
Labour have put taxes up, just on farmers and business owners
Employer NI wouldn't have been a route I would have followed, but I have no problem with 20% inheritance tax for properties over £3m. The Government need to be looking at wealth taxes too. Why are Labour so timid?
Because either a wealth tax includes housing and it's politically disastrous or it doesn't and raises pennies at the cost of huge damage to the economy as the wealthy move their business, shares, etc out of the country.
The primary domestic dwelling could easily be exempted.
Then it wouldn't raise much but would destroy the already damaged private rental market, hitting the young and poor the most.
There's no easy way to raise the already record tax burden - if there were, the rapacious Labour Party or the only slightly less greedy Conservatives would have tried it to exhaustion and beyond.
Why would a 'private rental market' be damaged. If landlords sold up, a family requiring a home would move in. One less in the queue. The PRS is simply an investment vehicle for a particular group who could put their money into more productive areas of the economy. It the similar argument for those who under occupy a property as 'it's their pension' but never use it as a pension.
This is bizarre attitude that you get from private landlords everywhere. Sure, there is a minority of highly mobile workers who need rental properties to move around the country/globe to exploit job opportunities, but for everyone else owning a property is far more desirable because of the massive financial advantages of doing so.
It's not like the flat disappears off the face of the earth when the landlord sells up. The size of the private rental market now is a function of gross wealth inequality, not demand for renting relative to ownership.
There speaks someone completely out of touch , well seen you have your own house and plenty cash and no idea what would happen to the the poor sods who cannot afford to buy and have the rental houses pulled from under their feet.
^ exactly the kind of person I was talking about. People who cannot comprehend that the reason so many people are renting is because more and more of the housing stock is being bought up by wealthy landlords, restricting the supply for first time buyers.
@TSE is making the error of assuming that anything about Scottish independence is rational or responsive to reason. It's not. Its driven by emotion and a sense of identity and resentment. The current unpopularity of the Labour government in Scotland is a concern. Labour are, of course, finding out that the Tories didn't make cuts (just) because they were nasty but because they had no choice. We have already had the WFA and now Labour are going after the allegedly sick. Personally, I am expecting support for independence to rise somewhat.
Osborne chose austerity because he was heartless, why the LDs went along with it is another question.
Without increased taxation Labour are lumbered with austerity. Now that is a choice, a foolhardy one in my opinion. Good luck at the next election when deaf, dumb and blind kids are begging on the streets because Labour removed their PIP.
This Labour Government don't think on their feet. They could sell increased taxation (and borrowing) as a necessity post Russia-USA alignment .
Oh for pity's sake. Does the plight of the feckless Reeves show you nothing? Osborne chose austerity because the country was bankrupt with unpayable contingent liabilities for an overgrown banking sector and a complete collapse in revenues from that source. The Lib Dems went along because there was no choice. Just like Reeves is doing now.
Austerity was an ideological choice. Many commentators, and not necessarily from the left, are opining that austerity was a grave error. There were other options. There are now. One of Reeves and Starmer's biggest millstones is the spectre of the Truss-Kwarteng budget. The Germans are going balls deep into borrowing for defence investment. We could do the same.
Germany has an almost balanced and a lot of room to borrow. Osborne inherited a 10% deficit, 70% of which was structural. We are and never were in any way comparable to Germany, their financial foundations are far, far stronger than ours. If the government (Tory or Labour) tried to go on a gigantic unfunded borrowing binge the markets would enforce discipline just as they did to Truss. That you think we could do what Germany is doing wrt borrowing for defence and infrastructure just shows how little you understand how bad our financial position is and has been since 2008.
The financial state of the economy must have been pretty good in 2023. How else could the Chancellor have significantly cut NI (twice).*
* My tongue is firmly in my cheek.
If NI cuts were affordable then but they are not now, taxes need to rise. This Government's greatest folly was suggesting the status quo could continue without tax rises. Your Party/ Government's manifesto pledge was that taxes could continue to fall whilst services would continue to rise. Either they were lying or their economic understanding was as deficient as you claim mine to be.
One of my key concerns over austerity both
now and fifteen years ago has been the consistent misunderstanding between cost of a service and value added from that service.. Binning HS2 was a case in pointReeves/ Starmer are making this error.
I understand the difference between the structural and cyclical deficit, but I see no other way to pay for the nice things we want like military aircraft, nuclear warheads, boots on the ground and adequate housing without borrowing. Borrowing for defence and infrastructure is the last resort way to generate growth. How have the growth stats been since 2008 austerity kicked in? And growth whilst outside the largest single friction free trading block available to use is even more daunting. Remind me which side of that fence you were on over that event. As an economist help me understand why leaving the EU was optimal to domestic growth and the balance of payments deficit of the UK.
Labour have put taxes up, just on farmers and business owners
Employer NI wouldn't have been a route I would have followed, but I have no problem with 20% inheritance tax for properties over £3m. The Government need to be looking at wealth taxes too. Why are Labour so timid?
Because either a wealth tax includes housing and it's politically disastrous or it doesn't and raises pennies at the cost of huge damage to the economy as the wealthy move their business, shares, etc out of the country.
The primary domestic dwelling could easily be exempted.
Then it wouldn't raise much but would destroy the already damaged private rental market, hitting the young and poor the most.
There's no easy way to raise the already record tax burden - if there were, the rapacious Labour Party or the only slightly less greedy Conservatives would have tried it to exhaustion and beyond.
Why would a 'private rental market' be damaged. If landlords sold up, a family requiring a home would move in. One less in the queue. The PRS is simply an investment vehicle for a particular group who could put their money into more productive areas of the economy. It the similar argument for those who under occupy a property as 'it's their pension' but never use it as a pension.
This is bizarre attitude that you get from private landlords everywhere. Sure, there is a minority of highly mobile workers who need rental properties to move around the country/globe to exploit job opportunities, but for everyone else owning a property is far more desirable because of the massive financial advantages of doing so.
It's not like the flat disappears off the face of the earth when the landlord sells up. The size of the private rental market now is a function of gross wealth inequality, not demand for renting relative to ownership.
There speaks someone completely out of touch , well seen you have your own house and plenty cash and no idea what would happen to the the poor sods who cannot afford to buy and have the rental houses pulled from under their feet.
^ exactly the kind of person I was talking about. People who cannot comprehend that the reason so many people are renting is because more and more of the housing stock is being bought up by wealthy landlords, restricting the supply for first time buyers.
Speaking from experience, many young people have to move around in the first five or ten years of their careers - this is the nature of the job market these days. As such, they ussually end up either in rented flats or HMOs. My daughter is a good example of this having just moved out and across to the other side of the country for work. She actually could afford to buy (for reasons I explained a few days ago on here) but she and her partner don't want to yet until they know where they are going to finally settle.
Long term buying is far better (IMO). But the idea we don't need a private rental sector at all for all sorts of reasons is just wrong.
@TSE is making the error of assuming that anything about Scottish independence is rational or responsive to reason. It's not. Its driven by emotion and a sense of identity and resentment. The current unpopularity of the Labour government in Scotland is a concern. Labour are, of course, finding out that the Tories didn't make cuts (just) because they were nasty but because they had no choice. We have already had the WFA and now Labour are going after the allegedly sick. Personally, I am expecting support for independence to rise somewhat.
Osborne chose austerity because he was heartless, why the LDs went along with it is another question.
Without increased taxation Labour are lumbered with austerity. Now that is a choice, a foolhardy one in my opinion. Good luck at the next election when deaf, dumb and blind kids are begging on the streets because Labour removed their PIP.
This Labour Government don't think on their feet. They could sell increased taxation (and borrowing) as a necessity post Russia-USA alignment .
Oh for pity's sake. Does the plight of the feckless Reeves show you nothing? Osborne chose austerity because the country was bankrupt with unpayable contingent liabilities for an overgrown banking sector and a complete collapse in revenues from that source. The Lib Dems went along because there was no choice. Just like Reeves is doing now.
Austerity was an ideological choice. Many commentators, and not necessarily from the left, are opining that austerity was a grave error. There were other options. There are now. One of Reeves and Starmer's biggest millstones is the spectre of the Truss-Kwarteng budget. The Germans are going balls deep into borrowing for defence investment. We could do the same.
Germany has an almost balanced and a lot of room to borrow. Osborne inherited a 10% deficit, 70% of which was structural. We are and never were in any way comparable to Germany, their financial foundations are far, far stronger than ours. If the government (Tory or Labour) tried to go on a gigantic unfunded borrowing binge the markets would enforce discipline just as they did to Truss. That you think we could do what Germany is doing wrt borrowing for defence and infrastructure just shows how little you understand how bad our financial position is and has been since 2008.
The financial state of the economy must have been pretty good in 2023. How else could the Chancellor have significantly cut NI (twice).*
* My tongue is firmly in my cheek.
If NI cuts were affordable then but they are not now, taxes need to rise. This Government's greatest folly was suggesting the status quo could continue without tax rises. Your Party/ Government's manifesto pledge was that taxes could continue to fall whilst services would continue to rise. Either they were lying or their economic understanding was as deficient as you claim mine to be.
One of my key concerns over austerity both
now and fifteen years ago has been the consistent misunderstanding between cost of a service and value added from that service.. Binning HS2 was a case in pointReeves/ Starmer are making this error.
I understand the difference between the structural and cyclical deficit, but I see no other way to pay for the nice things we want like military aircraft, nuclear warheads, boots on the ground and adequate housing without borrowing. Borrowing for defence and infrastructure is the last resort way to generate growth. How have the growth stats been since 2008 austerity kicked in? And growth whilst outside the largest single friction free trading block available to use is even more daunting. Remind me which side of that fence you were on over that event. As an economist help me understand why leaving the EU was optimal to domestic growth and the balance of payments deficit of the UK.
Labour have put taxes up, just on farmers and business owners
Employer NI wouldn't have been a route I would have followed, but I have no problem with 20% inheritance tax for properties over £3m. The Government need to be looking at wealth taxes too. Why are Labour so timid?
Because either a wealth tax includes housing and it's politically disastrous or it doesn't and raises pennies at the cost of huge damage to the economy as the wealthy move their business, shares, etc out of the country.
The primary domestic dwelling could easily be exempted.
Then it wouldn't raise much but would destroy the already damaged private rental market, hitting the young and poor the most.
There's no easy way to raise the already record tax burden - if there were, the rapacious Labour Party or the only slightly less greedy Conservatives would have tried it to exhaustion and beyond.
Why would a 'private rental market' be damaged. If landlords sold up, a family requiring a home would move in. One less in the queue. The PRS is simply an investment vehicle for a particular group who could put their money into more productive areas of the economy. It the similar argument for those who under occupy a property as 'it's their pension' but never use it as a pension.
This is bizarre attitude that you get from private landlords everywhere. Sure, there is a minority of highly mobile workers who need rental properties to move around the country/globe to exploit job opportunities, but for everyone else owning a property is far more desirable because of the massive financial advantages of doing so.
It's not like the flat disappears off the face of the earth when the landlord sells up. The size of the private rental market now is a function of gross wealth inequality, not demand for renting relative to ownership.
There speaks someone completely out of touch , well seen you have your own house and plenty cash and no idea what would happen to the the poor sods who cannot afford to buy and have the rental houses pulled from under their feet.
^ exactly the kind of person I was talking about. People who cannot comprehend that the reason so many people are renting is because more and more of the housing stock is being bought up by wealthy landlords, restricting the supply for first time buyers.
Rightmove is choc a bloc with houses every day , looked toda yand 1 bed flats from 14K. You are talking absolute bollox. Not everybody can afford fancy places in Edinburgh.
I'm pleased to announce to HYUFD that Saddam Hussein won an extraordinary 100% of voters, in the 2002 Presidential Referendum.
This was in line with the Iraq being a "sovereign democratic republic", as announced in the 1970 Baath Party constitution, and it really was a joy , to see the machinery of government, succeding in that ideal so.well. Sometimes one can feel emotional, when things work as well as then.
@TSE is making the error of assuming that anything about Scottish independence is rational or responsive to reason. It's not. Its driven by emotion and a sense of identity and resentment. The current unpopularity of the Labour government in Scotland is a concern. Labour are, of course, finding out that the Tories didn't make cuts (just) because they were nasty but because they had no choice. We have already had the WFA and now Labour are going after the allegedly sick. Personally, I am expecting support for independence to rise somewhat.
Osborne chose austerity because he was heartless, why the LDs went along with it is another question.
Without increased taxation Labour are lumbered with austerity. Now that is a choice, a foolhardy one in my opinion. Good luck at the next election when deaf, dumb and blind kids are begging on the streets because Labour removed their PIP.
This Labour Government don't think on their feet. They could sell increased taxation (and borrowing) as a necessity post Russia-USA alignment .
Oh for pity's sake. Does the plight of the feckless Reeves show you nothing? Osborne chose austerity because the country was bankrupt with unpayable contingent liabilities for an overgrown banking sector and a complete collapse in revenues from that source. The Lib Dems went along because there was no choice. Just like Reeves is doing now.
Austerity was an ideological choice. Many commentators, and not necessarily from the left, are opining that austerity was a grave error. There were other options. There are now. One of Reeves and Starmer's biggest millstones is the spectre of the Truss-Kwarteng budget. The Germans are going balls deep into borrowing for defence investment. We could do the same.
Germany has an almost balanced and a lot of room to borrow. Osborne inherited a 10% deficit, 70% of which was structural. We are and never were in any way comparable to Germany, their financial foundations are far, far stronger than ours. If the government (Tory or Labour) tried to go on a gigantic unfunded borrowing binge the markets would enforce discipline just as they did to Truss. That you think we could do what Germany is doing wrt borrowing for defence and infrastructure just shows how little you understand how bad our financial position is and has been since 2008.
The financial state of the economy must have been pretty good in 2023. How else could the Chancellor have significantly cut NI (twice).*
* My tongue is firmly in my cheek.
If NI cuts were affordable then but they are not now, taxes need to rise. This Government's greatest folly was suggesting the status quo could continue without tax rises. Your Party/ Government's manifesto pledge was that taxes could continue to fall whilst services would continue to rise. Either they were lying or their economic understanding was as deficient as you claim mine to be.
One of my key concerns over austerity both
now and fifteen years ago has been the consistent misunderstanding between cost of a service and value added from that service.. Binning HS2 was a case in pointReeves/ Starmer are making this error.
I understand the difference between the structural and cyclical deficit, but I see no other way to pay for the nice things we want like military aircraft, nuclear warheads, boots on the ground and adequate housing without borrowing. Borrowing for defence and infrastructure is the last resort way to generate growth. How have the growth stats been since 2008 austerity kicked in? And growth whilst outside the largest single friction free trading block available to use is even more daunting. Remind me which side of that fence you were on over that event. As an economist help me understand why leaving the EU was optimal to domestic growth and the balance of payments deficit of the UK.
Labour have put taxes up, just on farmers and business owners
Employer NI wouldn't have been a route I would have followed, but I have no problem with 20% inheritance tax for properties over £3m. The Government need to be looking at wealth taxes too. Why are Labour so timid?
Because either a wealth tax includes housing and it's politically disastrous or it doesn't and raises pennies at the cost of huge damage to the economy as the wealthy move their business, shares, etc out of the country.
The primary domestic dwelling could easily be exempted.
Then it wouldn't raise much but would destroy the already damaged private rental market, hitting the young and poor the most.
There's no easy way to raise the already record tax burden - if there were, the rapacious Labour Party or the only slightly less greedy Conservatives would have tried it to exhaustion and beyond.
Why would a 'private rental market' be damaged. If landlords sold up, a family requiring a home would move in. One less in the queue. The PRS is simply an investment vehicle for a particular group who could put their money into more productive areas of the economy. It the similar argument for those who under occupy a property as 'it's their pension' but never use it as a pension.
This is bizarre attitude that you get from private landlords everywhere. Sure, there is a minority of highly mobile workers who need rental properties to move around the country/globe to exploit job opportunities, but for everyone else owning a property is far more desirable because of the massive financial advantages of doing so.
It's not like the flat disappears off the face of the earth when the landlord sells up. The size of the private rental market now is a function of gross wealth inequality, not demand for renting relative to ownership.
There speaks someone completely out of touch , well seen you have your own house and plenty cash and no idea what would happen to the the poor sods who cannot afford to buy and have the rental houses pulled from under their feet.
^ exactly the kind of person I was talking about. People who cannot comprehend that the reason so many people are renting is because more and more of the housing stock is being bought up by wealthy landlords, restricting the supply for first time buyers.
Speaking from experience, many young people have to move around in the first five or ten years of their careers - this is the nature of the job market these days. As such, they ussually end up either in rented flats or HMOs. My daughter is a good example of this having just moved out and across to the other side of the country for work. She actually could afford to buy (for reasons I explained a few days ago on here) but she and her partner don't want to yet until they know where they are going to finally settle.
Long term buying is far better (IMO). But the idea we don't need a private rental sector at all for all sorts of reasons is just wrong.
Back in the early 60's my wife and I did exactly the same. When we married we couldn't immediately afford a house and anyway I didn't know where I'd be working for a few years. Not only were we 250 miles from my parents business, and I wasn't sure I'd go back to it, but the firm I was working for were quite capable of 'offering' me a long-term position 150 miles away. Happened to a couple of friends. So renting made sense.
Inviting his dad to be KIng of Scotland. After all, it worked with the Stuart dynasty. He'd want a new Glorious Revolution and MSGA.
Trump is quite similar to Idi Amin, so makes sense
He made a speech at the Department of Justice yesterday in front of an audience of prosecutors where he listed a whole series of people by name who he wants to target - people like Mark Elias (Democracy Docket) and Norm Eisen (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)).
He's moving towards Idi Amin's attack on the Judiciary (see the ex-Archbishop of York, who he locked up when he was around the Supreme Court of Uganda, and had beaten to a pulp.) It's the big one - will the checks and balances of USA democracy hold.
It's better if Trump pops his clogs sooner rather than later - Vance may as bad or worse, but he won't be able to keep all the Republican party or half the US public with him like Trump can
Vance is far more intelligent than Trump though and doesn’t need to face the voters for 3 and a half years
My point is that Trump still needs the votes of, for example, Republican senators - for now. He has them because he is popular enough and Republican elected officials are afraid to oppose him. In a year or two there might be a quasi-dictatorship in the US, and the president may no longer need Congress. I think it's better that Vance replaces Trump before we reach that point, because I think Vance will face more opposition if he tries to claim, as Trump is doing, "l'etat c'est moi."
US has a constitution with a Congress and the Supreme Court, judges for whom Congress also appoints, to remove them and become a dictator Trump would need the military but they take an oath to the constitution and president
Most countries have constitutions. Here's the first line of Russia's:
Russia is a democratic federal law-bound state with a republican form of government.
Well Russia does still have multi party elections, judges and a President
Exactly. And Russian is not a democracy.
It is, it has multi party parliamentary and presidential elections even if not a perfect one.
For most of the 20th century Russia and indeed Ukraine too were one party communist dictatorships under the USSR and before that under the absolute monarchy of the Tsars
The Economist Democracy Index rates Russia as an Authoritarian Regime. Out of a choice of Full Democracy, Flawed Democracy, Hybrid Regime and Authoritarian Regime.
Democracy Matrix has Russia as 'Moderate Autocracy'. Out of Working Democracy Deficient Democracy Hybrid Regime Moderate Autocracy Hard Autocracy
If Russia was a dictatorship Putin would have got 100% of the vote in the last Russian presidential election, he got 88% and the Communists and New People 4% for their candidates and Liberal Democrats 3%
@TSE is making the error of assuming that anything about Scottish independence is rational or responsive to reason. It's not. Its driven by emotion and a sense of identity and resentment. The current unpopularity of the Labour government in Scotland is a concern. Labour are, of course, finding out that the Tories didn't make cuts (just) because they were nasty but because they had no choice. We have already had the WFA and now Labour are going after the allegedly sick. Personally, I am expecting support for independence to rise somewhat.
Osborne chose austerity because he was heartless, why the LDs went along with it is another question.
Without increased taxation Labour are lumbered with austerity. Now that is a choice, a foolhardy one in my opinion. Good luck at the next election when deaf, dumb and blind kids are begging on the streets because Labour removed their PIP.
This Labour Government don't think on their feet. They could sell increased taxation (and borrowing) as a necessity post Russia-USA alignment .
Oh for pity's sake. Does the plight of the feckless Reeves show you nothing? Osborne chose austerity because the country was bankrupt with unpayable contingent liabilities for an overgrown banking sector and a complete collapse in revenues from that source. The Lib Dems went along because there was no choice. Just like Reeves is doing now.
Austerity was an ideological choice. Many commentators, and not necessarily from the left, are opining that austerity was a grave error. There were other options. There are now. One of Reeves and Starmer's biggest millstones is the spectre of the Truss-Kwarteng budget. The Germans are going balls deep into borrowing for defence investment. We could do the same.
Germany has an almost balanced and a lot of room to borrow. Osborne inherited a 10% deficit, 70% of which was structural. We are and never were in any way comparable to Germany, their financial foundations are far, far stronger than ours. If the government (Tory or Labour) tried to go on a gigantic unfunded borrowing binge the markets would enforce discipline just as they did to Truss. That you think we could do what Germany is doing wrt borrowing for defence and infrastructure just shows how little you understand how bad our financial position is and has been since 2008.
The financial state of the economy must have been pretty good in 2023. How else could the Chancellor have significantly cut NI (twice).*
* My tongue is firmly in my cheek.
If NI cuts were affordable then but they are not now, taxes need to rise. This Government's greatest folly was suggesting the status quo could continue without tax rises. Your Party/ Government's manifesto pledge was that taxes could continue to fall whilst services would continue to rise. Either they were lying or their economic understanding was as deficient as you claim mine to be.
One of my key concerns over austerity both
now and fifteen years ago has been the consistent misunderstanding between cost of a service and value added from that service.. Binning HS2 was a case in pointReeves/ Starmer are making this error.
I understand the difference between the structural and cyclical deficit, but I see no other way to pay for the nice things we want like military aircraft, nuclear warheads, boots on the ground and adequate housing without borrowing. Borrowing for defence and infrastructure is the last resort way to generate growth. How have the growth stats been since 2008 austerity kicked in? And growth whilst outside the largest single friction free trading block available to use is even more daunting. Remind me which side of that fence you were on over that event. As an economist help me understand why leaving the EU was optimal to domestic growth and the balance of payments deficit of the UK.
Labour have put taxes up, just on farmers and business owners
Employer NI wouldn't have been a route I would have followed, but I have no problem with 20% inheritance tax for properties over £3m. The Government need to be looking at wealth taxes too. Why are Labour so timid?
Because either a wealth tax includes housing and it's politically disastrous or it doesn't and raises pennies at the cost of huge damage to the economy as the wealthy move their business, shares, etc out of the country.
The primary domestic dwelling could easily be exempted.
Then it wouldn't raise much but would destroy the already damaged private rental market, hitting the young and poor the most.
There's no easy way to raise the already record tax burden - if there were, the rapacious Labour Party or the only slightly less greedy Conservatives would have tried it to exhaustion and beyond.
Why would a 'private rental market' be damaged. If landlords sold up, a family requiring a home would move in. One less in the queue. The PRS is simply an investment vehicle for a particular group who could put their money into more productive areas of the economy. It the similar argument for those who under occupy a property as 'it's their pension' but never use it as a pension.
This is bizarre attitude that you get from private landlords everywhere. Sure, there is a minority of highly mobile workers who need rental properties to move around the country/globe to exploit job opportunities, but for everyone else owning a property is far more desirable because of the massive financial advantages of doing so.
It's not like the flat disappears off the face of the earth when the landlord sells up. The size of the private rental market now is a function of gross wealth inequality, not demand for renting relative to ownership.
There speaks someone completely out of touch , well seen you have your own house and plenty cash and no idea what would happen to the the poor sods who cannot afford to buy and have the rental houses pulled from under their feet.
^ exactly the kind of person I was talking about. People who cannot comprehend that the reason so many people are renting is because more and more of the housing stock is being bought up by wealthy landlords, restricting the supply for first time buyers.
Speaking from experience, many young people have to move around in the first five or ten years of their careers - this is the nature of the job market these days. As such, they ussually end up either in rented flats or HMOs. My daughter is a good example of this having just moved out and across to the other side of the country for work. She actually could afford to buy (for reasons I explained a few days ago on here) but she and her partner don't want to yet until they know where they are going to finally settle.
Long term buying is far better (IMO). But the idea we don't need a private rental sector at all for all sorts of reasons is just wrong.
That's exactly the point I made above. But the idea that everyone renting now is doing so because they want to is plainly wrong - I rented for about four years longer than I wanted to, and it still required a gift worth £10,000s to get me on the ladder. There are other people in the same situation for decades because they don't have the intergenerational wealth to escape.
Let's say half of private landlords were forced to sell up in the next 5 years. What would that do to house prices in our cities? Would that make it easier for first time buyers? Would there be thousands of empty flats?
Inviting his dad to be KIng of Scotland. After all, it worked with the Stuart dynasty. He'd want a new Glorious Revolution and MSGA.
Trump is quite similar to Idi Amin, so makes sense
He made a speech at the Department of Justice yesterday in front of an audience of prosecutors where he listed a whole series of people by name who he wants to target - people like Mark Elias (Democracy Docket) and Norm Eisen (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)).
He's moving towards Idi Amin's attack on the Judiciary (see the ex-Archbishop of York, who he locked up when he was around the Supreme Court of Uganda, and had beaten to a pulp.) It's the big one - will the checks and balances of USA democracy hold.
It's better if Trump pops his clogs sooner rather than later - Vance may as bad or worse, but he won't be able to keep all the Republican party or half the US public with him like Trump can
Vance is far more intelligent than Trump though and doesn’t need to face the voters for 3 and a half years
My point is that Trump still needs the votes of, for example, Republican senators - for now. He has them because he is popular enough and Republican elected officials are afraid to oppose him. In a year or two there might be a quasi-dictatorship in the US, and the president may no longer need Congress. I think it's better that Vance replaces Trump before we reach that point, because I think Vance will face more opposition if he tries to claim, as Trump is doing, "l'etat c'est moi."
US has a constitution with a Congress and the Supreme Court, judges for whom Congress also appoints, to remove them and become a dictator Trump would need the military but they take an oath to the constitution and president
Most countries have constitutions. Here's the first line of Russia's:
Russia is a democratic federal law-bound state with a republican form of government.
Well Russia does still have multi party elections, judges and a President
Exactly. And Russian is not a democracy.
It is, it has multi party parliamentary and presidential elections even if not a perfect one.
For most of the 20th century Russia and indeed Ukraine too were one party communist dictatorships under the USSR and before that under the absolute monarchy of the Tsars
Presumably you think Iran and North Korea are also democracies.
Iran arguably a flawed democracy, it has multi party elections too but not North Korea
@TSE is making the error of assuming that anything about Scottish independence is rational or responsive to reason. It's not. Its driven by emotion and a sense of identity and resentment. The current unpopularity of the Labour government in Scotland is a concern. Labour are, of course, finding out that the Tories didn't make cuts (just) because they were nasty but because they had no choice. We have already had the WFA and now Labour are going after the allegedly sick. Personally, I am expecting support for independence to rise somewhat.
Osborne chose austerity because he was heartless, why the LDs went along with it is another question.
Without increased taxation Labour are lumbered with austerity. Now that is a choice, a foolhardy one in my opinion. Good luck at the next election when deaf, dumb and blind kids are begging on the streets because Labour removed their PIP.
This Labour Government don't think on their feet. They could sell increased taxation (and borrowing) as a necessity post Russia-USA alignment .
Oh for pity's sake. Does the plight of the feckless Reeves show you nothing? Osborne chose austerity because the country was bankrupt with unpayable contingent liabilities for an overgrown banking sector and a complete collapse in revenues from that source. The Lib Dems went along because there was no choice. Just like Reeves is doing now.
Austerity was an ideological choice. Many commentators, and not necessarily from the left, are opining that austerity was a grave error. There were other options. There are now. One of Reeves and Starmer's biggest millstones is the spectre of the Truss-Kwarteng budget. The Germans are going balls deep into borrowing for defence investment. We could do the same.
Germany has an almost balanced and a lot of room to borrow. Osborne inherited a 10% deficit, 70% of which was structural. We are and never were in any way comparable to Germany, their financial foundations are far, far stronger than ours. If the government (Tory or Labour) tried to go on a gigantic unfunded borrowing binge the markets would enforce discipline just as they did to Truss. That you think we could do what Germany is doing wrt borrowing for defence and infrastructure just shows how little you understand how bad our financial position is and has been since 2008.
The financial state of the economy must have been pretty good in 2023. How else could the Chancellor have significantly cut NI (twice).*
* My tongue is firmly in my cheek.
If NI cuts were affordable then but they are not now, taxes need to rise. This Government's greatest folly was suggesting the status quo could continue without tax rises. Your Party/ Government's manifesto pledge was that taxes could continue to fall whilst services would continue to rise. Either they were lying or their economic understanding was as deficient as you claim mine to be.
One of my key concerns over austerity both
now and fifteen years ago has been the consistent misunderstanding between cost of a service and value added from that service.. Binning HS2 was a case in pointReeves/ Starmer are making this error.
I understand the difference between the structural and cyclical deficit, but I see no other way to pay for the nice things we want like military aircraft, nuclear warheads, boots on the ground and adequate housing without borrowing. Borrowing for defence and infrastructure is the last resort way to generate growth. How have the growth stats been since 2008 austerity kicked in? And growth whilst outside the largest single friction free trading block available to use is even more daunting. Remind me which side of that fence you were on over that event. As an economist help me understand why leaving the EU was optimal to domestic growth and the balance of payments deficit of the UK.
Labour have put taxes up, just on farmers and business owners
Employer NI wouldn't have been a route I would have followed, but I have no problem with 20% inheritance tax for properties over £3m. The Government need to be looking at wealth taxes too. Why are Labour so timid?
Because either a wealth tax includes housing and it's politically disastrous or it doesn't and raises pennies at the cost of huge damage to the economy as the wealthy move their business, shares, etc out of the country.
The primary domestic dwelling could easily be exempted.
Then it wouldn't raise much but would destroy the already damaged private rental market, hitting the young and poor the most.
There's no easy way to raise the already record tax burden - if there were, the rapacious Labour Party or the only slightly less greedy Conservatives would have tried it to exhaustion and beyond.
Why would a 'private rental market' be damaged. If landlords sold up, a family requiring a home would move in. One less in the queue. The PRS is simply an investment vehicle for a particular group who could put their money into more productive areas of the economy. It the similar argument for those who under occupy a property as 'it's their pension' but never use it as a pension.
This is bizarre attitude that you get from private landlords everywhere. Sure, there is a minority of highly mobile workers who need rental properties to move around the country/globe to exploit job opportunities, but for everyone else owning a property is far more desirable because of the massive financial advantages of doing so.
It's not like the flat disappears off the face of the earth when the landlord sells up. The size of the private rental market now is a function of gross wealth inequality, not demand for renting relative to ownership.
There speaks someone completely out of touch , well seen you have your own house and plenty cash and no idea what would happen to the the poor sods who cannot afford to buy and have the rental houses pulled from under their feet.
^ exactly the kind of person I was talking about. People who cannot comprehend that the reason so many people are renting is because more and more of the housing stock is being bought up by wealthy landlords, restricting the supply for first time buyers.
Rightmove is choc a bloc with houses every day , looked toda yand 1 bed flats from 14K. You are talking absolute bollox. Not everybody can afford fancy places in Edinburgh.
Was that £14k flat in a location which made getting to Edinburgh to work possible or are you comparing apples with Faberge eggs again
I have conducted a quick review of Facebook and the narrative developing is that we should not be cutting incapacity benefits while we spend billions on asylum seeker hotels. I would guess that a very large proportion of the "middle-aged man on disability benefits" cohort are Reform voters (or soon to be so).
Also links being made to the assisted suicide bill, and waiting lists for operations. Former scaffolders with long-term injuries etc. This is going to be toxic.
Watch the numbers on asylum seeker hotels, which are due out this month.
They are about 40% down from peak, but tbf they also came down under the Conservatives.
But the riposte will be "why are the ANY hotels".
That they are not 4 star hotels as claimed does not matter, because the narrative is about emotion not truth.
So why are there any hotels?
Because we are insisting that they can't work until they are processed, and we're not processing them fast enough.
The interests of the local population seem to come last in either case. Either we put them up in hotels at great expense or let them compete against locals in the job and housing markets.
The best and cheapest and most humane solution is immediate processing. About 30% will be returned and 70% will be accepted as genuine asylum seekers.
These will enter the jobs and housing markets, paying taxes and doing useful work, including, in some cases, helping to build houses.
What do you suggest?
I strongly doubt whether 70% are asylum seekers, and if they are, then the bar is set far too low. Finger in the air: about 2% should genuinely be offered asylum.
Based on what? Three of the top 5 countries for asylum seekers are Syria, Iran and Afghanistan. Do you doubt that people have good reasons to flee those countries?
But why should we take them? Most of them will be coming through half a dozen other safe countries. I'd suggest people we should be taking are those from HK or Ukraine, where we have specific reasons for taking them. Granted some Afghanistani asylum seekers would fall into that category. In general, we should probably be trying to avoid people from medeival shitholes like Syria.
You had said only 2% are genuine asylum seekers. Now you are saying that they are asylum seekers, but we shouldn’t take them? Is that it?
Let’s be clear, most Syrian, Afghan and Iranian refugees *are* in other safe (and indeed unsafe) countries between us and them. There are far, far more Syrians seeking asylum in Turkey and Jordan, for example. There are about 20,000 Syrian refugees in the UK. There are 3,000,000 in Turkey, 800k in Lebanon, 650k in Jordan, 630k in Germany, 50k in the Netherlands, 45k in Greece, 30k in France and so on. I think it’s a good thing that the burden of helping those fleeing Syria has been shared around, and I note we’ve taken very few as a proportion. (Hopefully, the situation in Syria is now improving.)
Calling Syria a mediaeval shithole is ahistorical, at best, but if you think Syria is such a terrible place, I would hope you would have more empathy for those who have fled.
The ones who have fled are mainly the ones who wanted to make Syria a mediaeval shithole. The change of regime should mean that those now fleeing are the non-mediaeval shithole contingent, but sadly I haven't read any evidence of the first group returning to enjoy the fruits of their labours.
What nonsense is this? Why on Earth do you think that the ones who fled wanted to make Syria a mediaeval shithole?
The logic is fairly simple. Those fleeing before were cheifly those who opposed the dictatorship and wanted to install an islamist theocracy. Now that that goal has been achieved, that regime is perpetrating atrocities, or trying to so so, on their opponents - the Druze, the Christians, the Alawites. These people are now more likely to flee, and are by definition not Islamists.
The logic is balderdash. It sounds like your usual Putinist propaganda. People fleeing Syria were rarely in favour of an Islamist theocracy. They were, rather, in favour of not dying. There was widespread opposition to Assad’s rule from across the political spectrum, and from multiple different ethnic and ethnoreligous groups. Druze and Christians fled in significant numbers from Assad’s regime (e.g., see this policy brief: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/geography/sites/geography_redesign/files/ucl_migration_research_unit_policy_brief_-_k_eghdamian.pdf ).
However, friends of Assad, like Putin, tried to portray him as an ally in a fight against Sunni extremism. That’s presumably the bullshit you’ve been listening to.
I suspect Kemi would be pleased with that, despite losses from the 2021 Tory high for the Conservatives to still win most seats in May would be a big boost to her leadership.
Farage and Davey will be pleased with their gains too, would be a humiliating night for Starmer and Labour though, loses even more seats from its 2021 low point and comes in a disastrous 4th place behind even the LDs and Reform.
If no delays though in counties like Essex and Norfolk and Suffolk (where Reform were projected to be largest party or take full control) Reform would have come top the forecast shows, with 697 seats to 688 council seats for the Tories
Inviting his dad to be KIng of Scotland. After all, it worked with the Stuart dynasty. He'd want a new Glorious Revolution and MSGA.
Trump is quite similar to Idi Amin, so makes sense
He made a speech at the Department of Justice yesterday in front of an audience of prosecutors where he listed a whole series of people by name who he wants to target - people like Mark Elias (Democracy Docket) and Norm Eisen (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)).
He's moving towards Idi Amin's attack on the Judiciary (see the ex-Archbishop of York, who he locked up when he was around the Supreme Court of Uganda, and had beaten to a pulp.) It's the big one - will the checks and balances of USA democracy hold.
It's better if Trump pops his clogs sooner rather than later - Vance may as bad or worse, but he won't be able to keep all the Republican party or half the US public with him like Trump can
Vance is far more intelligent than Trump though and doesn’t need to face the voters for 3 and a half years
My point is that Trump still needs the votes of, for example, Republican senators - for now. He has them because he is popular enough and Republican elected officials are afraid to oppose him. In a year or two there might be a quasi-dictatorship in the US, and the president may no longer need Congress. I think it's better that Vance replaces Trump before we reach that point, because I think Vance will face more opposition if he tries to claim, as Trump is doing, "l'etat c'est moi."
US has a constitution with a Congress and the Supreme Court, judges for whom Congress also appoints, to remove them and become a dictator Trump would need the military but they take an oath to the constitution and president
Most countries have constitutions. Here's the first line of Russia's:
Russia is a democratic federal law-bound state with a republican form of government.
Well Russia does still have multi party elections, judges and a President
Exactly. And Russian is not a democracy.
It is, it has multi party parliamentary and presidential elections even if not a perfect one.
For most of the 20th century Russia and indeed Ukraine too were one party communist dictatorships under the USSR and before that under the absolute monarchy of the Tsars
Presumably you think Iran and North Korea are also democracies.
Iran arguably a flawed democracy, it has multi party elections too but not North Korea
@TSE is making the error of assuming that anything about Scottish independence is rational or responsive to reason. It's not. Its driven by emotion and a sense of identity and resentment. The current unpopularity of the Labour government in Scotland is a concern. Labour are, of course, finding out that the Tories didn't make cuts (just) because they were nasty but because they had no choice. We have already had the WFA and now Labour are going after the allegedly sick. Personally, I am expecting support for independence to rise somewhat.
Osborne chose austerity because he was heartless, why the LDs went along with it is another question.
Without increased taxation Labour are lumbered with austerity. Now that is a choice, a foolhardy one in my opinion. Good luck at the next election when deaf, dumb and blind kids are begging on the streets because Labour removed their PIP.
This Labour Government don't think on their feet. They could sell increased taxation (and borrowing) as a necessity post Russia-USA alignment .
Oh for pity's sake. Does the plight of the feckless Reeves show you nothing? Osborne chose austerity because the country was bankrupt with unpayable contingent liabilities for an overgrown banking sector and a complete collapse in revenues from that source. The Lib Dems went along because there was no choice. Just like Reeves is doing now.
Austerity was an ideological choice. Many commentators, and not necessarily from the left, are opining that austerity was a grave error. There were other options. There are now. One of Reeves and Starmer's biggest millstones is the spectre of the Truss-Kwarteng budget. The Germans are going balls deep into borrowing for defence investment. We could do the same.
Germany has an almost balanced and a lot of room to borrow. Osborne inherited a 10% deficit, 70% of which was structural. We are and never were in any way comparable to Germany, their financial foundations are far, far stronger than ours. If the government (Tory or Labour) tried to go on a gigantic unfunded borrowing binge the markets would enforce discipline just as they did to Truss. That you think we could do what Germany is doing wrt borrowing for defence and infrastructure just shows how little you understand how bad our financial position is and has been since 2008.
The financial state of the economy must have been pretty good in 2023. How else could the Chancellor have significantly cut NI (twice).*
* My tongue is firmly in my cheek.
If NI cuts were affordable then but they are not now, taxes need to rise. This Government's greatest folly was suggesting the status quo could continue without tax rises. Your Party/ Government's manifesto pledge was that taxes could continue to fall whilst services would continue to rise. Either they were lying or their economic understanding was as deficient as you claim mine to be.
One of my key concerns over austerity both
now and fifteen years ago has been the consistent misunderstanding between cost of a service and value added from that service.. Binning HS2 was a case in pointReeves/ Starmer are making this error.
I understand the difference between the structural and cyclical deficit, but I see no other way to pay for the nice things we want like military aircraft, nuclear warheads, boots on the ground and adequate housing without borrowing. Borrowing for defence and infrastructure is the last resort way to generate growth. How have the growth stats been since 2008 austerity kicked in? And growth whilst outside the largest single friction free trading block available to use is even more daunting. Remind me which side of that fence you were on over that event. As an economist help me understand why leaving the EU was optimal to domestic growth and the balance of payments deficit of the UK.
Labour have put taxes up, just on farmers and business owners
Employer NI wouldn't have been a route I would have followed, but I have no problem with 20% inheritance tax for properties over £3m. The Government need to be looking at wealth taxes too. Why are Labour so timid?
Because either a wealth tax includes housing and it's politically disastrous or it doesn't and raises pennies at the cost of huge damage to the economy as the wealthy move their business, shares, etc out of the country.
The primary domestic dwelling could easily be exempted.
Then it wouldn't raise much but would destroy the already damaged private rental market, hitting the young and poor the most.
There's no easy way to raise the already record tax burden - if there were, the rapacious Labour Party or the only slightly less greedy Conservatives would have tried it to exhaustion and beyond.
Why would a 'private rental market' be damaged. If landlords sold up, a family requiring a home would move in. One less in the queue. The PRS is simply an investment vehicle for a particular group who could put their money into more productive areas of the economy. It the similar argument for those who under occupy a property as 'it's their pension' but never use it as a pension.
This is bizarre attitude that you get from private landlords everywhere. Sure, there is a minority of highly mobile workers who need rental properties to move around the country/globe to exploit job opportunities, but for everyone else owning a property is far more desirable because of the massive financial advantages of doing so.
It's not like the flat disappears off the face of the earth when the landlord sells up. The size of the private rental market now is a function of gross wealth inequality, not demand for renting relative to ownership.
There speaks someone completely out of touch , well seen you have your own house and plenty cash and no idea what would happen to the the poor sods who cannot afford to buy and have the rental houses pulled from under their feet.
^ exactly the kind of person I was talking about. People who cannot comprehend that the reason so many people are renting is because more and more of the housing stock is being bought up by wealthy landlords, restricting the supply for first time buyers.
Speaking from experience, many young people have to move around in the first five or ten years of their careers - this is the nature of the job market these days. As such, they ussually end up either in rented flats or HMOs. My daughter is a good example of this having just moved out and across to the other side of the country for work. She actually could afford to buy (for reasons I explained a few days ago on here) but she and her partner don't want to yet until they know where they are going to finally settle.
Long term buying is far better (IMO). But the idea we don't need a private rental sector at all for all sorts of reasons is just wrong.
In all seriousness, if you can get her and her partner to buy a house somewhere, anywhere they can. If it is not in the place where they intend to settle (and as you point out they don't know where that is yet), then they can rent it out or get lodgers in whilst they "live" elsewhere. When they find out where they want to settle thy can sell up later.
People look at houses as a place to live, but in truth (and sadly) it's an investment, and if you get it wrong it means poverty in their old age. Failing to buy in your twenties incurs later costs of tens of thousands of pounds in terms of house price rises and unpaid mortgage payments. Unless you are rich and can afford to sub them tens or hundreds of pounds (you may be: don't feel obliged to say, it's not necessary for the point), it's a choice they can ill afford to ignore.
@TSE is making the error of assuming that anything about Scottish independence is rational or responsive to reason. It's not. Its driven by emotion and a sense of identity and resentment. The current unpopularity of the Labour government in Scotland is a concern. Labour are, of course, finding out that the Tories didn't make cuts (just) because they were nasty but because they had no choice. We have already had the WFA and now Labour are going after the allegedly sick. Personally, I am expecting support for independence to rise somewhat.
Osborne chose austerity because he was heartless, why the LDs went along with it is another question.
Without increased taxation Labour are lumbered with austerity. Now that is a choice, a foolhardy one in my opinion. Good luck at the next election when deaf, dumb and blind kids are begging on the streets because Labour removed their PIP.
This Labour Government don't think on their feet. They could sell increased taxation (and borrowing) as a necessity post Russia-USA alignment .
Oh for pity's sake. Does the plight of the feckless Reeves show you nothing? Osborne chose austerity because the country was bankrupt with unpayable contingent liabilities for an overgrown banking sector and a complete collapse in revenues from that source. The Lib Dems went along because there was no choice. Just like Reeves is doing now.
Austerity was an ideological choice. Many commentators, and not necessarily from the left, are opining that austerity was a grave error. There were other options. There are now. One of Reeves and Starmer's biggest millstones is the spectre of the Truss-Kwarteng budget. The Germans are going balls deep into borrowing for defence investment. We could do the same.
Germany has an almost balanced and a lot of room to borrow. Osborne inherited a 10% deficit, 70% of which was structural. We are and never were in any way comparable to Germany, their financial foundations are far, far stronger than ours. If the government (Tory or Labour) tried to go on a gigantic unfunded borrowing binge the markets would enforce discipline just as they did to Truss. That you think we could do what Germany is doing wrt borrowing for defence and infrastructure just shows how little you understand how bad our financial position is and has been since 2008.
The financial state of the economy must have been pretty good in 2023. How else could the Chancellor have significantly cut NI (twice).*
* My tongue is firmly in my cheek.
If NI cuts were affordable then but they are not now, taxes need to rise. This Government's greatest folly was suggesting the status quo could continue without tax rises. Your Party/ Government's manifesto pledge was that taxes could continue to fall whilst services would continue to rise. Either they were lying or their economic understanding was as deficient as you claim mine to be.
One of my key concerns over austerity both
now and fifteen years ago has been the consistent misunderstanding between cost of a service and value added from that service.. Binning HS2 was a case in pointReeves/ Starmer are making this error.
I understand the difference between the structural and cyclical deficit, but I see no other way to pay for the nice things we want like military aircraft, nuclear warheads, boots on the ground and adequate housing without borrowing. Borrowing for defence and infrastructure is the last resort way to generate growth. How have the growth stats been since 2008 austerity kicked in? And growth whilst outside the largest single friction free trading block available to use is even more daunting. Remind me which side of that fence you were on over that event. As an economist help me understand why leaving the EU was optimal to domestic growth and the balance of payments deficit of the UK.
Labour have put taxes up, just on farmers and business owners
Employer NI wouldn't have been a route I would have followed, but I have no problem with 20% inheritance tax for properties over £3m. The Government need to be looking at wealth taxes too. Why are Labour so timid?
Because either a wealth tax includes housing and it's politically disastrous or it doesn't and raises pennies at the cost of huge damage to the economy as the wealthy move their business, shares, etc out of the country.
The primary domestic dwelling could easily be exempted.
Then it wouldn't raise much but would destroy the already damaged private rental market, hitting the young and poor the most.
There's no easy way to raise the already record tax burden - if there were, the rapacious Labour Party or the only slightly less greedy Conservatives would have tried it to exhaustion and beyond.
Why would a 'private rental market' be damaged. If landlords sold up, a family requiring a home would move in. One less in the queue. The PRS is simply an investment vehicle for a particular group who could put their money into more productive areas of the economy. It the similar argument for those who under occupy a property as 'it's their pension' but never use it as a pension.
This is bizarre attitude that you get from private landlords everywhere. Sure, there is a minority of highly mobile workers who need rental properties to move around the country/globe to exploit job opportunities, but for everyone else owning a property is far more desirable because of the massive financial advantages of doing so.
It's not like the flat disappears off the face of the earth when the landlord sells up. The size of the private rental market now is a function of gross wealth inequality, not demand for renting relative to ownership.
There speaks someone completely out of touch , well seen you have your own house and plenty cash and no idea what would happen to the the poor sods who cannot afford to buy and have the rental houses pulled from under their feet.
^ exactly the kind of person I was talking about. People who cannot comprehend that the reason so many people are renting is because more and more of the housing stock is being bought up by wealthy landlords, restricting the supply for first time buyers.
Speaking from experience, many young people have to move around in the first five or ten years of their careers - this is the nature of the job market these days. As such, they ussually end up either in rented flats or HMOs. My daughter is a good example of this having just moved out and across to the other side of the country for work. She actually could afford to buy (for reasons I explained a few days ago on here) but she and her partner don't want to yet until they know where they are going to finally settle.
Long term buying is far better (IMO). But the idea we don't need a private rental sector at all for all sorts of reasons is just wrong.
In all seriousness, if you can get her and her partner to buy a house somewhere, anywhere they can. If it is not in the place where they intend to settle (and as you point out they don't know where that is yet), then they can rent it out or get lodgers in whilst they "live" elsewhere. When they find out where they want to settle thy can sell up later.
People look at houses as a place to live, but in truth (and sadly) it's an investment, and if you get it wrong it means poverty in their old age. Failing to buy in your twenties incurs later costs of tens of thousands of pounds in terms of house price rises and unpaid mortgage payments. Unless you are rich and can afford to sub them tens or hundreds of pounds (you may be: don't feel obliged to say, it's not necessary for the point), it's a choice they can ill afford to ignore.
I never intended to stay in Cannock for more than three years.
When I finally move out, hopefully in the next few weeks, I will have been here eleven years, and the house I bought in 2014 has increased in value by 84% making the move feasible.
@TSE is making the error of assuming that anything about Scottish independence is rational or responsive to reason. It's not. Its driven by emotion and a sense of identity and resentment. The current unpopularity of the Labour government in Scotland is a concern. Labour are, of course, finding out that the Tories didn't make cuts (just) because they were nasty but because they had no choice. We have already had the WFA and now Labour are going after the allegedly sick. Personally, I am expecting support for independence to rise somewhat.
Osborne chose austerity because he was heartless, why the LDs went along with it is another question.
Without increased taxation Labour are lumbered with austerity. Now that is a choice, a foolhardy one in my opinion. Good luck at the next election when deaf, dumb and blind kids are begging on the streets because Labour removed their PIP.
This Labour Government don't think on their feet. They could sell increased taxation (and borrowing) as a necessity post Russia-USA alignment .
Oh for pity's sake. Does the plight of the feckless Reeves show you nothing? Osborne chose austerity because the country was bankrupt with unpayable contingent liabilities for an overgrown banking sector and a complete collapse in revenues from that source. The Lib Dems went along because there was no choice. Just like Reeves is doing now.
Austerity was an ideological choice. Many commentators, and not necessarily from the left, are opining that austerity was a grave error. There were other options. There are now. One of Reeves and Starmer's biggest millstones is the spectre of the Truss-Kwarteng budget. The Germans are going balls deep into borrowing for defence investment. We could do the same.
Germany has an almost balanced and a lot of room to borrow. Osborne inherited a 10% deficit, 70% of which was structural. We are and never were in any way comparable to Germany, their financial foundations are far, far stronger than ours. If the government (Tory or Labour) tried to go on a gigantic unfunded borrowing binge the markets would enforce discipline just as they did to Truss. That you think we could do what Germany is doing wrt borrowing for defence and infrastructure just shows how little you understand how bad our financial position is and has been since 2008.
The financial state of the economy must have been pretty good in 2023. How else could the Chancellor have significantly cut NI (twice).*
* My tongue is firmly in my cheek.
If NI cuts were affordable then but they are not now, taxes need to rise. This Government's greatest folly was suggesting the status quo could continue without tax rises. Your Party/ Government's manifesto pledge was that taxes could continue to fall whilst services would continue to rise. Either they were lying or their economic understanding was as deficient as you claim mine to be.
One of my key concerns over austerity both
now and fifteen years ago has been the consistent misunderstanding between cost of a service and value added from that service.. Binning HS2 was a case in pointReeves/ Starmer are making this error.
I understand the difference between the structural and cyclical deficit, but I see no other way to pay for the nice things we want like military aircraft, nuclear warheads, boots on the ground and adequate housing without borrowing. Borrowing for defence and infrastructure is the last resort way to generate growth. How have the growth stats been since 2008 austerity kicked in? And growth whilst outside the largest single friction free trading block available to use is even more daunting. Remind me which side of that fence you were on over that event. As an economist help me understand why leaving the EU was optimal to domestic growth and the balance of payments deficit of the UK.
Labour have put taxes up, just on farmers and business owners
Employer NI wouldn't have been a route I would have followed, but I have no problem with 20% inheritance tax for properties over £3m. The Government need to be looking at wealth taxes too. Why are Labour so timid?
Because either a wealth tax includes housing and it's politically disastrous or it doesn't and raises pennies at the cost of huge damage to the economy as the wealthy move their business, shares, etc out of the country.
The primary domestic dwelling could easily be exempted.
Then it wouldn't raise much but would destroy the already damaged private rental market, hitting the young and poor the most.
There's no easy way to raise the already record tax burden - if there were, the rapacious Labour Party or the only slightly less greedy Conservatives would have tried it to exhaustion and beyond.
Why would a 'private rental market' be damaged. If landlords sold up, a family requiring a home would move in. One less in the queue. The PRS is simply an investment vehicle for a particular group who could put their money into more productive areas of the economy. It the similar argument for those who under occupy a property as 'it's their pension' but never use it as a pension.
This is bizarre attitude that you get from private landlords everywhere. Sure, there is a minority of highly mobile workers who need rental properties to move around the country/globe to exploit job opportunities, but for everyone else owning a property is far more desirable because of the massive financial advantages of doing so.
It's not like the flat disappears off the face of the earth when the landlord sells up. The size of the private rental market now is a function of gross wealth inequality, not demand for renting relative to ownership.
There speaks someone completely out of touch , well seen you have your own house and plenty cash and no idea what would happen to the the poor sods who cannot afford to buy and have the rental houses pulled from under their feet.
^ exactly the kind of person I was talking about. People who cannot comprehend that the reason so many people are renting is because more and more of the housing stock is being bought up by wealthy landlords, restricting the supply for first time buyers.
Speaking from experience, many young people have to move around in the first five or ten years of their careers - this is the nature of the job market these days. As such, they ussually end up either in rented flats or HMOs. My daughter is a good example of this having just moved out and across to the other side of the country for work. She actually could afford to buy (for reasons I explained a few days ago on here) but she and her partner don't want to yet until they know where they are going to finally settle.
Long term buying is far better (IMO). But the idea we don't need a private rental sector at all for all sorts of reasons is just wrong.
In all seriousness, if you can get her and her partner to buy a house somewhere, anywhere they can. If it is not in the place where they intend to settle (and as you point out they don't know where that is yet), then they can rent it out or get lodgers in whilst they "live" elsewhere. When they find out where they want to settle thy can sell up later.
People look at houses as a place to live, but in truth (and sadly) it's an investment, and if you get it wrong it means poverty in their old age. Failing to buy in your twenties incurs later costs of tens of thousands of pounds in terms of house price rises and unpaid mortgage payments. Unless you are rich and can afford to sub them tens or hundreds of pounds (you may be: don't feel obliged to say, it's not necessary for the point), it's a choice they can ill afford to ignore.
True but the average age most people buy their first home now is nearly 40 in the UK and in London most now rent their entire lives
Inviting his dad to be KIng of Scotland. After all, it worked with the Stuart dynasty. He'd want a new Glorious Revolution and MSGA.
Trump is quite similar to Idi Amin, so makes sense
He made a speech at the Department of Justice yesterday in front of an audience of prosecutors where he listed a whole series of people by name who he wants to target - people like Mark Elias (Democracy Docket) and Norm Eisen (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)).
He's moving towards Idi Amin's attack on the Judiciary (see the ex-Archbishop of York, who he locked up when he was around the Supreme Court of Uganda, and had beaten to a pulp.) It's the big one - will the checks and balances of USA democracy hold.
It's better if Trump pops his clogs sooner rather than later - Vance may as bad or worse, but he won't be able to keep all the Republican party or half the US public with him like Trump can
Vance is far more intelligent than Trump though and doesn’t need to face the voters for 3 and a half years
My point is that Trump still needs the votes of, for example, Republican senators - for now. He has them because he is popular enough and Republican elected officials are afraid to oppose him. In a year or two there might be a quasi-dictatorship in the US, and the president may no longer need Congress. I think it's better that Vance replaces Trump before we reach that point, because I think Vance will face more opposition if he tries to claim, as Trump is doing, "l'etat c'est moi."
US has a constitution with a Congress and the Supreme Court, judges for whom Congress also appoints, to remove them and become a dictator Trump would need the military but they take an oath to the constitution and president
Most countries have constitutions. Here's the first line of Russia's:
Russia is a democratic federal law-bound state with a republican form of government.
Well Russia does still have multi party elections, judges and a President
Exactly. And Russian is not a democracy.
It is, it has multi party parliamentary and presidential elections even if not a perfect one.
For most of the 20th century Russia and indeed Ukraine too were one party communist dictatorships under the USSR and before that under the absolute monarchy of the Tsars
The Economist Democracy Index rates Russia as an Authoritarian Regime. Out of a choice of Full Democracy, Flawed Democracy, Hybrid Regime and Authoritarian Regime.
Democracy Matrix has Russia as 'Moderate Autocracy'. Out of Working Democracy Deficient Democracy Hybrid Regime Moderate Autocracy Hard Autocracy
If Russia was a dictatorship Putin would have got 100% of the vote in the last Russian presidential election, he got 88% and the Communists and New People 4% for their candidates and Liberal Democrats 3%
Inviting his dad to be KIng of Scotland. After all, it worked with the Stuart dynasty. He'd want a new Glorious Revolution and MSGA.
Trump is quite similar to Idi Amin, so makes sense
He made a speech at the Department of Justice yesterday in front of an audience of prosecutors where he listed a whole series of people by name who he wants to target - people like Mark Elias (Democracy Docket) and Norm Eisen (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)).
He's moving towards Idi Amin's attack on the Judiciary (see the ex-Archbishop of York, who he locked up when he was around the Supreme Court of Uganda, and had beaten to a pulp.) It's the big one - will the checks and balances of USA democracy hold.
It's better if Trump pops his clogs sooner rather than later - Vance may as bad or worse, but he won't be able to keep all the Republican party or half the US public with him like Trump can
Vance is far more intelligent than Trump though and doesn’t need to face the voters for 3 and a half years
My point is that Trump still needs the votes of, for example, Republican senators - for now. He has them because he is popular enough and Republican elected officials are afraid to oppose him. In a year or two there might be a quasi-dictatorship in the US, and the president may no longer need Congress. I think it's better that Vance replaces Trump before we reach that point, because I think Vance will face more opposition if he tries to claim, as Trump is doing, "l'etat c'est moi."
US has a constitution with a Congress and the Supreme Court, judges for whom Congress also appoints, to remove them and become a dictator Trump would need the military but they take an oath to the constitution and president
Most countries have constitutions. Here's the first line of Russia's:
Russia is a democratic federal law-bound state with a republican form of government.
Well Russia does still have multi party elections, judges and a President
Exactly. And Russian is not a democracy.
It is, it has multi party parliamentary and presidential elections even if not a perfect one.
For most of the 20th century Russia and indeed Ukraine too were one party communist dictatorships under the USSR and before that under the absolute monarchy of the Tsars
The Economist Democracy Index rates Russia as an Authoritarian Regime. Out of a choice of Full Democracy, Flawed Democracy, Hybrid Regime and Authoritarian Regime.
Democracy Matrix has Russia as 'Moderate Autocracy'. Out of Working Democracy Deficient Democracy Hybrid Regime Moderate Autocracy Hard Autocracy
If Russia was a dictatorship Putin would have got 100% of the vote in the last Russian presidential election, he got 88% and the Communists and New People 4% for their candidates and Liberal Democrats 3%
A good read about the irregularities in the most recent Russian election. It's fascinating how the turnout vs. ruling party scatter plots have changed in the last 20 years.
Inviting his dad to be KIng of Scotland. After all, it worked with the Stuart dynasty. He'd want a new Glorious Revolution and MSGA.
Trump is quite similar to Idi Amin, so makes sense
He made a speech at the Department of Justice yesterday in front of an audience of prosecutors where he listed a whole series of people by name who he wants to target - people like Mark Elias (Democracy Docket) and Norm Eisen (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)).
He's moving towards Idi Amin's attack on the Judiciary (see the ex-Archbishop of York, who he locked up when he was around the Supreme Court of Uganda, and had beaten to a pulp.) It's the big one - will the checks and balances of USA democracy hold.
It's better if Trump pops his clogs sooner rather than later - Vance may as bad or worse, but he won't be able to keep all the Republican party or half the US public with him like Trump can
Vance is far more intelligent than Trump though and doesn’t need to face the voters for 3 and a half years
My point is that Trump still needs the votes of, for example, Republican senators - for now. He has them because he is popular enough and Republican elected officials are afraid to oppose him. In a year or two there might be a quasi-dictatorship in the US, and the president may no longer need Congress. I think it's better that Vance replaces Trump before we reach that point, because I think Vance will face more opposition if he tries to claim, as Trump is doing, "l'etat c'est moi."
US has a constitution with a Congress and the Supreme Court, judges for whom Congress also appoints, to remove them and become a dictator Trump would need the military but they take an oath to the constitution and president
Most countries have constitutions. Here's the first line of Russia's:
Russia is a democratic federal law-bound state with a republican form of government.
Well Russia does still have multi party elections, judges and a President
Exactly. And Russian is not a democracy.
It is, it has multi party parliamentary and presidential elections even if not a perfect one.
For most of the 20th century Russia and indeed Ukraine too were one party communist dictatorships under the USSR and before that under the absolute monarchy of the Tsars
The Economist Democracy Index rates Russia as an Authoritarian Regime. Out of a choice of Full Democracy, Flawed Democracy, Hybrid Regime and Authoritarian Regime.
Democracy Matrix has Russia as 'Moderate Autocracy'. Out of Working Democracy Deficient Democracy Hybrid Regime Moderate Autocracy Hard Autocracy
If Russia was a dictatorship Putin would have got 100% of the vote in the last Russian presidential election, he got 88% and the Communists and New People 4% for their candidates and Liberal Democrats 3%
The idea its democracy if the leader gets less than 100% of the vote is so stupid id love to assume it was trolling but cannot. Its literally argued Russia is not a dictator as a result.
Inviting his dad to be KIng of Scotland. After all, it worked with the Stuart dynasty. He'd want a new Glorious Revolution and MSGA.
Trump is quite similar to Idi Amin, so makes sense
He made a speech at the Department of Justice yesterday in front of an audience of prosecutors where he listed a whole series of people by name who he wants to target - people like Mark Elias (Democracy Docket) and Norm Eisen (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)).
He's moving towards Idi Amin's attack on the Judiciary (see the ex-Archbishop of York, who he locked up when he was around the Supreme Court of Uganda, and had beaten to a pulp.) It's the big one - will the checks and balances of USA democracy hold.
It's better if Trump pops his clogs sooner rather than later - Vance may as bad or worse, but he won't be able to keep all the Republican party or half the US public with him like Trump can
Vance is far more intelligent than Trump though and doesn’t need to face the voters for 3 and a half years
My point is that Trump still needs the votes of, for example, Republican senators - for now. He has them because he is popular enough and Republican elected officials are afraid to oppose him. In a year or two there might be a quasi-dictatorship in the US, and the president may no longer need Congress. I think it's better that Vance replaces Trump before we reach that point, because I think Vance will face more opposition if he tries to claim, as Trump is doing, "l'etat c'est moi."
US has a constitution with a Congress and the Supreme Court, judges for whom Congress also appoints, to remove them and become a dictator Trump would need the military but they take an oath to the constitution and president
Most countries have constitutions. Here's the first line of Russia's:
Russia is a democratic federal law-bound state with a republican form of government.
Well Russia does still have multi party elections, judges and a President
Exactly. And Russian is not a democracy.
It is, it has multi party parliamentary and presidential elections even if not a perfect one.
For most of the 20th century Russia and indeed Ukraine too were one party communist dictatorships under the USSR and before that under the absolute monarchy of the Tsars
The Economist Democracy Index rates Russia as an Authoritarian Regime. Out of a choice of Full Democracy, Flawed Democracy, Hybrid Regime and Authoritarian Regime.
Democracy Matrix has Russia as 'Moderate Autocracy'. Out of Working Democracy Deficient Democracy Hybrid Regime Moderate Autocracy Hard Autocracy
If Russia was a dictatorship Putin would have got 100% of the vote in the last Russian presidential election, he got 88% and the Communists and New People 4% for their candidates and Liberal Democrats 3%
(The answer is probably "of course not". There's plenty of space where elections can happen without them being meaningful. Most dictators prefer to operate in that space, it's less embarrassing for them.)
@TSE is making the error of assuming that anything about Scottish independence is rational or responsive to reason. It's not. Its driven by emotion and a sense of identity and resentment. The current unpopularity of the Labour government in Scotland is a concern. Labour are, of course, finding out that the Tories didn't make cuts (just) because they were nasty but because they had no choice. We have already had the WFA and now Labour are going after the allegedly sick. Personally, I am expecting support for independence to rise somewhat.
Osborne chose austerity because he was heartless, why the LDs went along with it is another question.
Without increased taxation Labour are lumbered with austerity. Now that is a choice, a foolhardy one in my opinion. Good luck at the next election when deaf, dumb and blind kids are begging on the streets because Labour removed their PIP.
This Labour Government don't think on their feet. They could sell increased taxation (and borrowing) as a necessity post Russia-USA alignment .
Oh for pity's sake. Does the plight of the feckless Reeves show you nothing? Osborne chose austerity because the country was bankrupt with unpayable contingent liabilities for an overgrown banking sector and a complete collapse in revenues from that source. The Lib Dems went along because there was no choice. Just like Reeves is doing now.
Austerity was an ideological choice. Many commentators, and not necessarily from the left, are opining that austerity was a grave error. There were other options. There are now. One of Reeves and Starmer's biggest millstones is the spectre of the Truss-Kwarteng budget. The Germans are going balls deep into borrowing for defence investment. We could do the same.
Germany has an almost balanced and a lot of room to borrow. Osborne inherited a 10% deficit, 70% of which was structural. We are and never were in any way comparable to Germany, their financial foundations are far, far stronger than ours. If the government (Tory or Labour) tried to go on a gigantic unfunded borrowing binge the markets would enforce discipline just as they did to Truss. That you think we could do what Germany is doing wrt borrowing for defence and infrastructure just shows how little you understand how bad our financial position is and has been since 2008.
The financial state of the economy must have been pretty good in 2023. How else could the Chancellor have significantly cut NI (twice).*
* My tongue is firmly in my cheek.
If NI cuts were affordable then but they are not now, taxes need to rise. This Government's greatest folly was suggesting the status quo could continue without tax rises. Your Party/ Government's manifesto pledge was that taxes could continue to fall whilst services would continue to rise. Either they were lying or their economic understanding was as deficient as you claim mine to be.
One of my key concerns over austerity both
now and fifteen years ago has been the consistent misunderstanding between cost of a service and value added from that service.. Binning HS2 was a case in pointReeves/ Starmer are making this error.
I understand the difference between the structural and cyclical deficit, but I see no other way to pay for the nice things we want like military aircraft, nuclear warheads, boots on the ground and adequate housing without borrowing. Borrowing for defence and infrastructure is the last resort way to generate growth. How have the growth stats been since 2008 austerity kicked in? And growth whilst outside the largest single friction free trading block available to use is even more daunting. Remind me which side of that fence you were on over that event. As an economist help me understand why leaving the EU was optimal to domestic growth and the balance of payments deficit of the UK.
Labour have put taxes up, just on farmers and business owners
Employer NI wouldn't have been a route I would have followed, but I have no problem with 20% inheritance tax for properties over £3m. The Government need to be looking at wealth taxes too. Why are Labour so timid?
Because either a wealth tax includes housing and it's politically disastrous or it doesn't and raises pennies at the cost of huge damage to the economy as the wealthy move their business, shares, etc out of the country.
The primary domestic dwelling could easily be exempted.
Then it wouldn't raise much but would destroy the already damaged private rental market, hitting the young and poor the most.
There's no easy way to raise the already record tax burden - if there were, the rapacious Labour Party or the only slightly less greedy Conservatives would have tried it to exhaustion and beyond.
Why would a 'private rental market' be damaged. If landlords sold up, a family requiring a home would move in. One less in the queue. The PRS is simply an investment vehicle for a particular group who could put their money into more productive areas of the economy. It the similar argument for those who under occupy a property as 'it's their pension' but never use it as a pension.
This is bizarre attitude that you get from private landlords everywhere. Sure, there is a minority of highly mobile workers who need rental properties to move around the country/globe to exploit job opportunities, but for everyone else owning a property is far more desirable because of the massive financial advantages of doing so.
It's not like the flat disappears off the face of the earth when the landlord sells up. The size of the private rental market now is a function of gross wealth inequality, not demand for renting relative to ownership.
There speaks someone completely out of touch , well seen you have your own house and plenty cash and no idea what would happen to the the poor sods who cannot afford to buy and have the rental houses pulled from under their feet.
^ exactly the kind of person I was talking about. People who cannot comprehend that the reason so many people are renting is because more and more of the housing stock is being bought up by wealthy landlords, restricting the supply for first time buyers.
Speaking from experience, many young people have to move around in the first five or ten years of their careers - this is the nature of the job market these days. As such, they ussually end up either in rented flats or HMOs. My daughter is a good example of this having just moved out and across to the other side of the country for work. She actually could afford to buy (for reasons I explained a few days ago on here) but she and her partner don't want to yet until they know where they are going to finally settle.
Long term buying is far better (IMO). But the idea we don't need a private rental sector at all for all sorts of reasons is just wrong.
In all seriousness, if you can get her and her partner to buy a house somewhere, anywhere they can. If it is not in the place where they intend to settle (and as you point out they don't know where that is yet), then they can rent it out or get lodgers in whilst they "live" elsewhere. When they find out where they want to settle thy can sell up later.
People look at houses as a place to live, but in truth (and sadly) it's an investment, and if you get it wrong it means poverty in their old age. Failing to buy in your twenties incurs later costs of tens of thousands of pounds in terms of house price rises and unpaid mortgage payments. Unless you are rich and can afford to sub them tens or hundreds of pounds (you may be: don't feel obliged to say, it's not necessary for the point), it's a choice they can ill afford to ignore.
Certainly bricks and mortar has been a great investment over most of my adult life, but it doesn't have to always be so.
At the moment house prices are artificially elevated way beyond historical multiples of incomes. This isn't purely a supply issue, as it is noticeable in many countries across the globe, but rather due to very low interest rates since the GFC. If we have a return to historical norms of positive real interest rates combined with low inflation then buyers have the prospect of actually repaying their mortgages rather than seeing them inflated away.
Canada is actively looking at potential alternatives to the U.S.-built F-35 stealth fighter and will hold conversations with rival aircraft makers, Defence Minister Bill Blair said late Friday.
There has been a groundswell of support among Canadians to kill the $19-billion purchase and find aircraft other than those manufactured and maintained in the United States. https://cbc.ca/amp/1.7484477
In other military industrial complex news, I note that Trump's new Secretary of the Navy has designated Virginia hulls 814 and 815 (the first Block IV boats which were going to the the Australian Navy's new build Virginias) as the USS Pontiac and the USS Norfolk (obviously a Partridge fan).
Hard luck, Aussies. Best of luck getting your money back.
Did the new SecNav change back the names declared by the last one, e.g. USS William J. Clinton?
I do wonder if a garbage scow* with just a number will suddenly find itself labelled USS President Joseph R. Biden.
Just had a conversation with relatives. Starmer is a monster trying to start WW3, our children shouldnt fight wars, Trump was controlling Putin quite well before but not now, and some Russian mystic has very accurate predictions of the future its spookily accurate.
WTF is wrong with tealeaves? Mrs Slocombe would know.
Inviting his dad to be KIng of Scotland. After all, it worked with the Stuart dynasty. He'd want a new Glorious Revolution and MSGA.
Trump is quite similar to Idi Amin, so makes sense
He made a speech at the Department of Justice yesterday in front of an audience of prosecutors where he listed a whole series of people by name who he wants to target - people like Mark Elias (Democracy Docket) and Norm Eisen (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)).
He's moving towards Idi Amin's attack on the Judiciary (see the ex-Archbishop of York, who he locked up when he was around the Supreme Court of Uganda, and had beaten to a pulp.) It's the big one - will the checks and balances of USA democracy hold.
It's better if Trump pops his clogs sooner rather than later - Vance may as bad or worse, but he won't be able to keep all the Republican party or half the US public with him like Trump can
Vance is far more intelligent than Trump though and doesn’t need to face the voters for 3 and a half years
My point is that Trump still needs the votes of, for example, Republican senators - for now. He has them because he is popular enough and Republican elected officials are afraid to oppose him. In a year or two there might be a quasi-dictatorship in the US, and the president may no longer need Congress. I think it's better that Vance replaces Trump before we reach that point, because I think Vance will face more opposition if he tries to claim, as Trump is doing, "l'etat c'est moi."
US has a constitution with a Congress and the Supreme Court, judges for whom Congress also appoints, to remove them and become a dictator Trump would need the military but they take an oath to the constitution and president
Most countries have constitutions. Here's the first line of Russia's:
Russia is a democratic federal law-bound state with a republican form of government.
Well Russia does still have multi party elections, judges and a President
Exactly. And Russian is not a democracy.
It is, it has multi party parliamentary and presidential elections even if not a perfect one.
For most of the 20th century Russia and indeed Ukraine too were one party communist dictatorships under the USSR and before that under the absolute monarchy of the Tsars
Presumably you think Iran and North Korea are also democracies.
Iran arguably a flawed democracy, it has multi party elections too but not North Korea
Inviting his dad to be KIng of Scotland. After all, it worked with the Stuart dynasty. He'd want a new Glorious Revolution and MSGA.
Trump is quite similar to Idi Amin, so makes sense
He made a speech at the Department of Justice yesterday in front of an audience of prosecutors where he listed a whole series of people by name who he wants to target - people like Mark Elias (Democracy Docket) and Norm Eisen (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)).
He's moving towards Idi Amin's attack on the Judiciary (see the ex-Archbishop of York, who he locked up when he was around the Supreme Court of Uganda, and had beaten to a pulp.) It's the big one - will the checks and balances of USA democracy hold.
It's better if Trump pops his clogs sooner rather than later - Vance may as bad or worse, but he won't be able to keep all the Republican party or half the US public with him like Trump can
Vance is far more intelligent than Trump though and doesn’t need to face the voters for 3 and a half years
My point is that Trump still needs the votes of, for example, Republican senators - for now. He has them because he is popular enough and Republican elected officials are afraid to oppose him. In a year or two there might be a quasi-dictatorship in the US, and the president may no longer need Congress. I think it's better that Vance replaces Trump before we reach that point, because I think Vance will face more opposition if he tries to claim, as Trump is doing, "l'etat c'est moi."
US has a constitution with a Congress and the Supreme Court, judges for whom Congress also appoints, to remove them and become a dictator Trump would need the military but they take an oath to the constitution and president
Most countries have constitutions. Here's the first line of Russia's:
Russia is a democratic federal law-bound state with a republican form of government.
Well Russia does still have multi party elections, judges and a President
Exactly. And Russian is not a democracy.
It is, it has multi party parliamentary and presidential elections even if not a perfect one.
For most of the 20th century Russia and indeed Ukraine too were one party communist dictatorships under the USSR and before that under the absolute monarchy of the Tsars
Presumably you think Iran and North Korea are also democracies.
Iran arguably a flawed democracy, it has multi party elections too but not North Korea
@TSE is making the error of assuming that anything about Scottish independence is rational or responsive to reason. It's not. Its driven by emotion and a sense of identity and resentment. The current unpopularity of the Labour government in Scotland is a concern. Labour are, of course, finding out that the Tories didn't make cuts (just) because they were nasty but because they had no choice. We have already had the WFA and now Labour are going after the allegedly sick. Personally, I am expecting support for independence to rise somewhat.
Osborne chose austerity because he was heartless, why the LDs went along with it is another question.
Without increased taxation Labour are lumbered with austerity. Now that is a choice, a foolhardy one in my opinion. Good luck at the next election when deaf, dumb and blind kids are begging on the streets because Labour removed their PIP.
This Labour Government don't think on their feet. They could sell increased taxation (and borrowing) as a necessity post Russia-USA alignment .
Oh for pity's sake. Does the plight of the feckless Reeves show you nothing? Osborne chose austerity because the country was bankrupt with unpayable contingent liabilities for an overgrown banking sector and a complete collapse in revenues from that source. The Lib Dems went along because there was no choice. Just like Reeves is doing now.
Austerity was an ideological choice. Many commentators, and not necessarily from the left, are opining that austerity was a grave error. There were other options. There are now. One of Reeves and Starmer's biggest millstones is the spectre of the Truss-Kwarteng budget. The Germans are going balls deep into borrowing for defence investment. We could do the same.
Germany has an almost balanced and a lot of room to borrow. Osborne inherited a 10% deficit, 70% of which was structural. We are and never were in any way comparable to Germany, their financial foundations are far, far stronger than ours. If the government (Tory or Labour) tried to go on a gigantic unfunded borrowing binge the markets would enforce discipline just as they did to Truss. That you think we could do what Germany is doing wrt borrowing for defence and infrastructure just shows how little you understand how bad our financial position is and has been since 2008.
The financial state of the economy must have been pretty good in 2023. How else could the Chancellor have significantly cut NI (twice).*
* My tongue is firmly in my cheek.
If NI cuts were affordable then but they are not now, taxes need to rise. This Government's greatest folly was suggesting the status quo could continue without tax rises. Your Party/ Government's manifesto pledge was that taxes could continue to fall whilst services would continue to rise. Either they were lying or their economic understanding was as deficient as you claim mine to be.
One of my key concerns over austerity both
now and fifteen years ago has been the consistent misunderstanding between cost of a service and value added from that service.. Binning HS2 was a case in pointReeves/ Starmer are making this error.
I understand the difference between the structural and cyclical deficit, but I see no other way to pay for the nice things we want like military aircraft, nuclear warheads, boots on the ground and adequate housing without borrowing. Borrowing for defence and infrastructure is the last resort way to generate growth. How have the growth stats been since 2008 austerity kicked in? And growth whilst outside the largest single friction free trading block available to use is even more daunting. Remind me which side of that fence you were on over that event. As an economist help me understand why leaving the EU was optimal to domestic growth and the balance of payments deficit of the UK.
Labour have put taxes up, just on farmers and business owners
Employer NI wouldn't have been a route I would have followed, but I have no problem with 20% inheritance tax for properties over £3m. The Government need to be looking at wealth taxes too. Why are Labour so timid?
Because either a wealth tax includes housing and it's politically disastrous or it doesn't and raises pennies at the cost of huge damage to the economy as the wealthy move their business, shares, etc out of the country.
The primary domestic dwelling could easily be exempted.
Then it wouldn't raise much but would destroy the already damaged private rental market, hitting the young and poor the most.
There's no easy way to raise the already record tax burden - if there were, the rapacious Labour Party or the only slightly less greedy Conservatives would have tried it to exhaustion and beyond.
Why would a 'private rental market' be damaged. If landlords sold up, a family requiring a home would move in. One less in the queue. The PRS is simply an investment vehicle for a particular group who could put their money into more productive areas of the economy. It the similar argument for those who under occupy a property as 'it's their pension' but never use it as a pension.
This is bizarre attitude that you get from private landlords everywhere. Sure, there is a minority of highly mobile workers who need rental properties to move around the country/globe to exploit job opportunities, but for everyone else owning a property is far more desirable because of the massive financial advantages of doing so.
It's not like the flat disappears off the face of the earth when the landlord sells up. The size of the private rental market now is a function of gross wealth inequality, not demand for renting relative to ownership.
There speaks someone completely out of touch , well seen you have your own house and plenty cash and no idea what would happen to the the poor sods who cannot afford to buy and have the rental houses pulled from under their feet.
^ exactly the kind of person I was talking about. People who cannot comprehend that the reason so many people are renting is because more and more of the housing stock is being bought up by wealthy landlords, restricting the supply for first time buyers.
Speaking from experience, many young people have to move around in the first five or ten years of their careers - this is the nature of the job market these days. As such, they ussually end up either in rented flats or HMOs. My daughter is a good example of this having just moved out and across to the other side of the country for work. She actually could afford to buy (for reasons I explained a few days ago on here) but she and her partner don't want to yet until they know where they are going to finally settle.
Long term buying is far better (IMO). But the idea we don't need a private rental sector at all for all sorts of reasons is just wrong.
In all seriousness, if you can get her and her partner to buy a house somewhere, anywhere they can. If it is not in the place where they intend to settle (and as you point out they don't know where that is yet), then they can rent it out or get lodgers in whilst they "live" elsewhere. When they find out where they want to settle thy can sell up later.
People look at houses as a place to live, but in truth (and sadly) it's an investment, and if you get it wrong it means poverty in their old age. Failing to buy in your twenties incurs later costs of tens of thousands of pounds in terms of house price rises and unpaid mortgage payments. Unless you are rich and can afford to sub them tens or hundreds of pounds (you may be: don't feel obliged to say, it's not necessary for the point), it's a choice they can ill afford to ignore.
Certainly bricks and mortar has been a great investment over most of my adult life, but it doesn't have to always be so.
At the moment house prices are artificially elevated way beyond historical multiples of incomes. This isn't purely a supply issue, as it is noticeable in many countries across the globe, but rather due to very low interest rates since the GFC. If we have a return to historical norms of positive real interest rates combined with low inflation then buyers have the prospect of actually repaying their mortgages rather than seeing them inflated away.
Perhaps I am being dumb, but I thought higher inflation was better as it reduced the real value of the mortgage making it easier to repay?
Inviting his dad to be KIng of Scotland. After all, it worked with the Stuart dynasty. He'd want a new Glorious Revolution and MSGA.
Trump is quite similar to Idi Amin, so makes sense
He made a speech at the Department of Justice yesterday in front of an audience of prosecutors where he listed a whole series of people by name who he wants to target - people like Mark Elias (Democracy Docket) and Norm Eisen (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)).
He's moving towards Idi Amin's attack on the Judiciary (see the ex-Archbishop of York, who he locked up when he was around the Supreme Court of Uganda, and had beaten to a pulp.) It's the big one - will the checks and balances of USA democracy hold.
It's better if Trump pops his clogs sooner rather than later - Vance may as bad or worse, but he won't be able to keep all the Republican party or half the US public with him like Trump can
Vance is far more intelligent than Trump though and doesn’t need to face the voters for 3 and a half years
My point is that Trump still needs the votes of, for example, Republican senators - for now. He has them because he is popular enough and Republican elected officials are afraid to oppose him. In a year or two there might be a quasi-dictatorship in the US, and the president may no longer need Congress. I think it's better that Vance replaces Trump before we reach that point, because I think Vance will face more opposition if he tries to claim, as Trump is doing, "l'etat c'est moi."
US has a constitution with a Congress and the Supreme Court, judges for whom Congress also appoints, to remove them and become a dictator Trump would need the military but they take an oath to the constitution and president
Most countries have constitutions. Here's the first line of Russia's:
Russia is a democratic federal law-bound state with a republican form of government.
Well Russia does still have multi party elections, judges and a President
Exactly. And Russian is not a democracy.
It is, it has multi party parliamentary and presidential elections even if not a perfect one.
For most of the 20th century Russia and indeed Ukraine too were one party communist dictatorships under the USSR and before that under the absolute monarchy of the Tsars
The Economist Democracy Index rates Russia as an Authoritarian Regime. Out of a choice of Full Democracy, Flawed Democracy, Hybrid Regime and Authoritarian Regime.
Democracy Matrix has Russia as 'Moderate Autocracy'. Out of Working Democracy Deficient Democracy Hybrid Regime Moderate Autocracy Hard Autocracy
If Russia was a dictatorship Putin would have got 100% of the vote in the last Russian presidential election, he got 88% and the Communists and New People 4% for their candidates and Liberal Democrats 3%
Political Rights score: 4 points out of 40 (compare UK 39 points out of 40) Civil Liberties score: 8 points out of 60 (compare UK 53 points out of 60)
TOTAL score: 12 points out of 100 (compare UK 92 points out of 100)
"Power in Russia’s authoritarian political system is concentrated in the hands of President Vladimir Putin. With loyalist security forces, a subservient judiciary, a controlled media environment, and a legislature consisting of a ruling party and pliable opposition factions, the Kremlin manipulates elections and suppresses genuine dissent."
@TSE is making the error of assuming that anything about Scottish independence is rational or responsive to reason. It's not. Its driven by emotion and a sense of identity and resentment. The current unpopularity of the Labour government in Scotland is a concern. Labour are, of course, finding out that the Tories didn't make cuts (just) because they were nasty but because they had no choice. We have already had the WFA and now Labour are going after the allegedly sick. Personally, I am expecting support for independence to rise somewhat.
Osborne chose austerity because he was heartless, why the LDs went along with it is another question.
Without increased taxation Labour are lumbered with austerity. Now that is a choice, a foolhardy one in my opinion. Good luck at the next election when deaf, dumb and blind kids are begging on the streets because Labour removed their PIP.
This Labour Government don't think on their feet. They could sell increased taxation (and borrowing) as a necessity post Russia-USA alignment .
Oh for pity's sake. Does the plight of the feckless Reeves show you nothing? Osborne chose austerity because the country was bankrupt with unpayable contingent liabilities for an overgrown banking sector and a complete collapse in revenues from that source. The Lib Dems went along because there was no choice. Just like Reeves is doing now.
Austerity was an ideological choice. Many commentators, and not necessarily from the left, are opining that austerity was a grave error. There were other options. There are now. One of Reeves and Starmer's biggest millstones is the spectre of the Truss-Kwarteng budget. The Germans are going balls deep into borrowing for defence investment. We could do the same.
Germany has an almost balanced and a lot of room to borrow. Osborne inherited a 10% deficit, 70% of which was structural. We are and never were in any way comparable to Germany, their financial foundations are far, far stronger than ours. If the government (Tory or Labour) tried to go on a gigantic unfunded borrowing binge the markets would enforce discipline just as they did to Truss. That you think we could do what Germany is doing wrt borrowing for defence and infrastructure just shows how little you understand how bad our financial position is and has been since 2008.
The financial state of the economy must have been pretty good in 2023. How else could the Chancellor have significantly cut NI (twice).*
* My tongue is firmly in my cheek.
If NI cuts were affordable then but they are not now, taxes need to rise. This Government's greatest folly was suggesting the status quo could continue without tax rises. Your Party/ Government's manifesto pledge was that taxes could continue to fall whilst services would continue to rise. Either they were lying or their economic understanding was as deficient as you claim mine to be.
One of my key concerns over austerity both
now and fifteen years ago has been the consistent misunderstanding between cost of a service and value added from that service.. Binning HS2 was a case in pointReeves/ Starmer are making this error.
I understand the difference between the structural and cyclical deficit, but I see no other way to pay for the nice things we want like military aircraft, nuclear warheads, boots on the ground and adequate housing without borrowing. Borrowing for defence and infrastructure is the last resort way to generate growth. How have the growth stats been since 2008 austerity kicked in? And growth whilst outside the largest single friction free trading block available to use is even more daunting. Remind me which side of that fence you were on over that event. As an economist help me understand why leaving the EU was optimal to domestic growth and the balance of payments deficit of the UK.
Labour have put taxes up, just on farmers and business owners
Employer NI wouldn't have been a route I would have followed, but I have no problem with 20% inheritance tax for properties over £3m. The Government need to be looking at wealth taxes too. Why are Labour so timid?
Because either a wealth tax includes housing and it's politically disastrous or it doesn't and raises pennies at the cost of huge damage to the economy as the wealthy move their business, shares, etc out of the country.
The primary domestic dwelling could easily be exempted.
Then it wouldn't raise much but would destroy the already damaged private rental market, hitting the young and poor the most.
There's no easy way to raise the already record tax burden - if there were, the rapacious Labour Party or the only slightly less greedy Conservatives would have tried it to exhaustion and beyond.
Why would a 'private rental market' be damaged. If landlords sold up, a family requiring a home would move in. One less in the queue. The PRS is simply an investment vehicle for a particular group who could put their money into more productive areas of the economy. It the similar argument for those who under occupy a property as 'it's their pension' but never use it as a pension.
This is bizarre attitude that you get from private landlords everywhere. Sure, there is a minority of highly mobile workers who need rental properties to move around the country/globe to exploit job opportunities, but for everyone else owning a property is far more desirable because of the massive financial advantages of doing so.
It's not like the flat disappears off the face of the earth when the landlord sells up. The size of the private rental market now is a function of gross wealth inequality, not demand for renting relative to ownership.
There speaks someone completely out of touch , well seen you have your own house and plenty cash and no idea what would happen to the the poor sods who cannot afford to buy and have the rental houses pulled from under their feet.
^ exactly the kind of person I was talking about. People who cannot comprehend that the reason so many people are renting is because more and more of the housing stock is being bought up by wealthy landlords, restricting the supply for first time buyers.
Speaking from experience, many young people have to move around in the first five or ten years of their careers - this is the nature of the job market these days. As such, they ussually end up either in rented flats or HMOs. My daughter is a good example of this having just moved out and across to the other side of the country for work. She actually could afford to buy (for reasons I explained a few days ago on here) but she and her partner don't want to yet until they know where they are going to finally settle.
Long term buying is far better (IMO). But the idea we don't need a private rental sector at all for all sorts of reasons is just wrong.
In all seriousness, if you can get her and her partner to buy a house somewhere, anywhere they can. If it is not in the place where they intend to settle (and as you point out they don't know where that is yet), then they can rent it out or get lodgers in whilst they "live" elsewhere. When they find out where they want to settle thy can sell up later.
People look at houses as a place to live, but in truth (and sadly) it's an investment, and if you get it wrong it means poverty in their old age. Failing to buy in your twenties incurs later costs of tens of thousands of pounds in terms of house price rises and unpaid mortgage payments. Unless you are rich and can afford to sub them tens or hundreds of pounds (you may be: don't feel obliged to say, it's not necessary for the point), it's a choice they can ill afford to ignore.
Certainly bricks and mortar has been a great investment over most of my adult life, but it doesn't have to always be so.
At the moment house prices are artificially elevated way beyond historical multiples of incomes. This isn't purely a supply issue, as it is noticeable in many countries across the globe, but rather due to very low interest rates since the GFC. If we have a return to historical norms of positive real interest rates combined with low inflation then buyers have the prospect of actually repaying their mortgages rather than seeing them inflated away.
Perhaps I am being dumb, but I thought higher inflation was better as it reduced the real value of the mortgage making it easier to repay?
That was the historical position when we had inflation of 5% of more, but it looks like we are re-entering a period of low inflation coupled with real positive interest rates.
Significant implications for governments wanting to inflate away their debts too.
In other military industrial complex news, I note that Trump's new Secretary of the Navy has designated Virginia hulls 814 and 815 (the first Block IV boats which were going to the the Australian Navy's new build Virginias) as the USS Pontiac and the USS Norfolk (obviously a Partridge fan).
Hard luck, Aussies. Best of luck getting your money back.
Did the new SecNav change back the names declared by the last one, e.g. USS William J. Clinton?
I do wonder if a garbage scow* with just a number will suddenly find itself labelled USS President Joseph R. Biden.
*gashbarge to you and me
There was a laundry ship called the USS Walter Mondale. Saw service in Australia
@TSE is making the error of assuming that anything about Scottish independence is rational or responsive to reason. It's not. Its driven by emotion and a sense of identity and resentment. The current unpopularity of the Labour government in Scotland is a concern. Labour are, of course, finding out that the Tories didn't make cuts (just) because they were nasty but because they had no choice. We have already had the WFA and now Labour are going after the allegedly sick. Personally, I am expecting support for independence to rise somewhat.
Osborne chose austerity because he was heartless, why the LDs went along with it is another question.
Without increased taxation Labour are lumbered with austerity. Now that is a choice, a foolhardy one in my opinion. Good luck at the next election when deaf, dumb and blind kids are begging on the streets because Labour removed their PIP.
This Labour Government don't think on their feet. They could sell increased taxation (and borrowing) as a necessity post Russia-USA alignment .
Oh for pity's sake. Does the plight of the feckless Reeves show you nothing? Osborne chose austerity because the country was bankrupt with unpayable contingent liabilities for an overgrown banking sector and a complete collapse in revenues from that source. The Lib Dems went along because there was no choice. Just like Reeves is doing now.
Austerity was an ideological choice. Many commentators, and not necessarily from the left, are opining that austerity was a grave error. There were other options. There are now. One of Reeves and Starmer's biggest millstones is the spectre of the Truss-Kwarteng budget. The Germans are going balls deep into borrowing for defence investment. We could do the same.
Germany has an almost balanced and a lot of room to borrow. Osborne inherited a 10% deficit, 70% of which was structural. We are and never were in any way comparable to Germany, their financial foundations are far, far stronger than ours. If the government (Tory or Labour) tried to go on a gigantic unfunded borrowing binge the markets would enforce discipline just as they did to Truss. That you think we could do what Germany is doing wrt borrowing for defence and infrastructure just shows how little you understand how bad our financial position is and has been since 2008.
The financial state of the economy must have been pretty good in 2023. How else could the Chancellor have significantly cut NI (twice).*
* My tongue is firmly in my cheek.
If NI cuts were affordable then but they are not now, taxes need to rise. This Government's greatest folly was suggesting the status quo could continue without tax rises. Your Party/ Government's manifesto pledge was that taxes could continue to fall whilst services would continue to rise. Either they were lying or their economic understanding was as deficient as you claim mine to be.
One of my key concerns over austerity both
now and fifteen years ago has been the consistent misunderstanding between cost of a service and value added from that service.. Binning HS2 was a case in pointReeves/ Starmer are making this error.
I understand the difference between the structural and cyclical deficit, but I see no other way to pay for the nice things we want like military aircraft, nuclear warheads, boots on the ground and adequate housing without borrowing. Borrowing for defence and infrastructure is the last resort way to generate growth. How have the growth stats been since 2008 austerity kicked in? And growth whilst outside the largest single friction free trading block available to use is even more daunting. Remind me which side of that fence you were on over that event. As an economist help me understand why leaving the EU was optimal to domestic growth and the balance of payments deficit of the UK.
Labour have put taxes up, just on farmers and business owners
Employer NI wouldn't have been a route I would have followed, but I have no problem with 20% inheritance tax for properties over £3m. The Government need to be looking at wealth taxes too. Why are Labour so timid?
Because either a wealth tax includes housing and it's politically disastrous or it doesn't and raises pennies at the cost of huge damage to the economy as the wealthy move their business, shares, etc out of the country.
The primary domestic dwelling could easily be exempted.
Then it wouldn't raise much but would destroy the already damaged private rental market, hitting the young and poor the most.
There's no easy way to raise the already record tax burden - if there were, the rapacious Labour Party or the only slightly less greedy Conservatives would have tried it to exhaustion and beyond.
Why would a 'private rental market' be damaged. If landlords sold up, a family requiring a home would move in. One less in the queue. The PRS is simply an investment vehicle for a particular group who could put their money into more productive areas of the economy. It the similar argument for those who under occupy a property as 'it's their pension' but never use it as a pension.
This is bizarre attitude that you get from private landlords everywhere. Sure, there is a minority of highly mobile workers who need rental properties to move around the country/globe to exploit job opportunities, but for everyone else owning a property is far more desirable because of the massive financial advantages of doing so.
It's not like the flat disappears off the face of the earth when the landlord sells up. The size of the private rental market now is a function of gross wealth inequality, not demand for renting relative to ownership.
There speaks someone completely out of touch , well seen you have your own house and plenty cash and no idea what would happen to the the poor sods who cannot afford to buy and have the rental houses pulled from under their feet.
^ exactly the kind of person I was talking about. People who cannot comprehend that the reason so many people are renting is because more and more of the housing stock is being bought up by wealthy landlords, restricting the supply for first time buyers.
Rightmove is choc a bloc with houses every day , looked toda yand 1 bed flats from 14K. You are talking absolute bollox. Not everybody can afford fancy places in Edinburgh.
Was that £14k flat in a location which made getting to Edinburgh to work possible or are you comparing apples with Faberge eggs again
Malky's entirely correct. I've had a look at Lothian places within easy commuting distance by bus and there are a number at or below that price, and we're not talking wrecks. One-bedroom flats or old miners' cottages, one or two in fact near where I live so known to be highly civilised.
Inviting his dad to be KIng of Scotland. After all, it worked with the Stuart dynasty. He'd want a new Glorious Revolution and MSGA.
Trump is quite similar to Idi Amin, so makes sense
He made a speech at the Department of Justice yesterday in front of an audience of prosecutors where he listed a whole series of people by name who he wants to target - people like Mark Elias (Democracy Docket) and Norm Eisen (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)).
He's moving towards Idi Amin's attack on the Judiciary (see the ex-Archbishop of York, who he locked up when he was around the Supreme Court of Uganda, and had beaten to a pulp.) It's the big one - will the checks and balances of USA democracy hold.
It's better if Trump pops his clogs sooner rather than later - Vance may as bad or worse, but he won't be able to keep all the Republican party or half the US public with him like Trump can
Vance is far more intelligent than Trump though and doesn’t need to face the voters for 3 and a half years
My point is that Trump still needs the votes of, for example, Republican senators - for now. He has them because he is popular enough and Republican elected officials are afraid to oppose him. In a year or two there might be a quasi-dictatorship in the US, and the president may no longer need Congress. I think it's better that Vance replaces Trump before we reach that point, because I think Vance will face more opposition if he tries to claim, as Trump is doing, "l'etat c'est moi."
US has a constitution with a Congress and the Supreme Court, judges for whom Congress also appoints, to remove them and become a dictator Trump would need the military but they take an oath to the constitution and president
Most countries have constitutions. Here's the first line of Russia's:
Russia is a democratic federal law-bound state with a republican form of government.
Well Russia does still have multi party elections, judges and a President
Exactly. And Russian is not a democracy.
It is, it has multi party parliamentary and presidential elections even if not a perfect one.
For most of the 20th century Russia and indeed Ukraine too were one party communist dictatorships under the USSR and before that under the absolute monarchy of the Tsars
Presumably you think Iran and North Korea are also democracies.
Iran arguably a flawed democracy, it has multi party elections too but not North Korea
I have conducted a quick review of Facebook and the narrative developing is that we should not be cutting incapacity benefits while we spend billions on asylum seeker hotels. I would guess that a very large proportion of the "middle-aged man on disability benefits" cohort are Reform voters (or soon to be so).
Also links being made to the assisted suicide bill, and waiting lists for operations. Former scaffolders with long-term injuries etc. This is going to be toxic.
Watch the numbers on asylum seeker hotels, which are due out this month.
They are about 40% down from peak, but tbf they also came down under the Conservatives.
But the riposte will be "why are the ANY hotels".
That they are not 4 star hotels as claimed does not matter, because the narrative is about emotion not truth.
So why are there any hotels?
Because we are insisting that they can't work until they are processed, and we're not processing them fast enough.
The interests of the local population seem to come last in either case. Either we put them up in hotels at great expense or let them compete against locals in the job and housing markets.
What a bizarre view. You seem to think that more people is inherently a problem. Yet the most economically active parts of the country are those with the highest population density.
You're not thinking about the interests of the individuals affected. Whether it's better for GDP overall or better for the Treasury isn't the point.
People living in London, like me, are affected by London’s population density, and we benefit from it. Elon Musk, who you seem to like, goes on about the importance of a growing population. More people can be a boon for everyone, not a cost.
How about if we round up all the gammons from the north of England and house them in your district of London instead. Would you see it as a boon?
My flatmate is from the north of England. London is full of northerners who came here and are part of the city’s rich tapestry. There are no controls on internal migration and that’s fine. Why are you so against the idea of people moving around?
That said, I don’t know whether “gammons” in particular would want to come here, as they might be distributed by what they encounter.
I think gammons are essentially southern.
(Apart from bits of the South embedded in the North.)
Inviting his dad to be KIng of Scotland. After all, it worked with the Stuart dynasty. He'd want a new Glorious Revolution and MSGA.
Trump is quite similar to Idi Amin, so makes sense
He made a speech at the Department of Justice yesterday in front of an audience of prosecutors where he listed a whole series of people by name who he wants to target - people like Mark Elias (Democracy Docket) and Norm Eisen (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)).
He's moving towards Idi Amin's attack on the Judiciary (see the ex-Archbishop of York, who he locked up when he was around the Supreme Court of Uganda, and had beaten to a pulp.) It's the big one - will the checks and balances of USA democracy hold.
It's better if Trump pops his clogs sooner rather than later - Vance may as bad or worse, but he won't be able to keep all the Republican party or half the US public with him like Trump can
Vance is far more intelligent than Trump though and doesn’t need to face the voters for 3 and a half years
My point is that Trump still needs the votes of, for example, Republican senators - for now. He has them because he is popular enough and Republican elected officials are afraid to oppose him. In a year or two there might be a quasi-dictatorship in the US, and the president may no longer need Congress. I think it's better that Vance replaces Trump before we reach that point, because I think Vance will face more opposition if he tries to claim, as Trump is doing, "l'etat c'est moi."
US has a constitution with a Congress and the Supreme Court, judges for whom Congress also appoints, to remove them and become a dictator Trump would need the military but they take an oath to the constitution and president
Most countries have constitutions. Here's the first line of Russia's:
Russia is a democratic federal law-bound state with a republican form of government.
Well Russia does still have multi party elections, judges and a President
Exactly. And Russian is not a democracy.
It is, it has multi party parliamentary and presidential elections even if not a perfect one.
For most of the 20th century Russia and indeed Ukraine too were one party communist dictatorships under the USSR and before that under the absolute monarchy of the Tsars
Presumably you think Iran and North Korea are also democracies.
Iran arguably a flawed democracy, it has multi party elections too but not North Korea
Don't blame it. Who would want North Korea?
A "Korea" Politician?
Such a Korea would swiftly go south.
"The turning point of a Korea In career, being insincere Confidence, taken in By a suntan and a grin"
I have conducted a quick review of Facebook and the narrative developing is that we should not be cutting incapacity benefits while we spend billions on asylum seeker hotels. I would guess that a very large proportion of the "middle-aged man on disability benefits" cohort are Reform voters (or soon to be so).
Also links being made to the assisted suicide bill, and waiting lists for operations. Former scaffolders with long-term injuries etc. This is going to be toxic.
Watch the numbers on asylum seeker hotels, which are due out this month.
They are about 40% down from peak, but tbf they also came down under the Conservatives.
But the riposte will be "why are the ANY hotels".
That they are not 4 star hotels as claimed does not matter, because the narrative is about emotion not truth.
So why are there any hotels?
Because we are insisting that they can't work until they are processed, and we're not processing them fast enough.
The interests of the local population seem to come last in either case. Either we put them up in hotels at great expense or let them compete against locals in the job and housing markets.
What a bizarre view. You seem to think that more people is inherently a problem. Yet the most economically active parts of the country are those with the highest population density.
You're not thinking about the interests of the individuals affected. Whether it's better for GDP overall or better for the Treasury isn't the point.
People living in London, like me, are affected by London’s population density, and we benefit from it. Elon Musk, who you seem to like, goes on about the importance of a growing population. More people can be a boon for everyone, not a cost.
How about if we round up all the gammons from the north of England and house them in your district of London instead. Would you see it as a boon?
My flatmate is from the north of England. London is full of northerners who came here and are part of the city’s rich tapestry. There are no controls on internal migration and that’s fine. Why are you so against the idea of people moving around?
That said, I don’t know whether “gammons” in particular would want to come here, as they might be distributed by what they encounter.
I think gammons are essentially southern.
(Apart from bits of the South embedded in the North.)
For a moment I thought you were talking about Grants A&B Roll. But it does depend on one's location.
Inviting his dad to be KIng of Scotland. After all, it worked with the Stuart dynasty. He'd want a new Glorious Revolution and MSGA.
Trump is quite similar to Idi Amin, so makes sense
He made a speech at the Department of Justice yesterday in front of an audience of prosecutors where he listed a whole series of people by name who he wants to target - people like Mark Elias (Democracy Docket) and Norm Eisen (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)).
He's moving towards Idi Amin's attack on the Judiciary (see the ex-Archbishop of York, who he locked up when he was around the Supreme Court of Uganda, and had beaten to a pulp.) It's the big one - will the checks and balances of USA democracy hold.
It's better if Trump pops his clogs sooner rather than later - Vance may as bad or worse, but he won't be able to keep all the Republican party or half the US public with him like Trump can
Vance is far more intelligent than Trump though and doesn’t need to face the voters for 3 and a half years
My point is that Trump still needs the votes of, for example, Republican senators - for now. He has them because he is popular enough and Republican elected officials are afraid to oppose him. In a year or two there might be a quasi-dictatorship in the US, and the president may no longer need Congress. I think it's better that Vance replaces Trump before we reach that point, because I think Vance will face more opposition if he tries to claim, as Trump is doing, "l'etat c'est moi."
US has a constitution with a Congress and the Supreme Court, judges for whom Congress also appoints, to remove them and become a dictator Trump would need the military but they take an oath to the constitution and president
Most countries have constitutions. Here's the first line of Russia's:
Russia is a democratic federal law-bound state with a republican form of government.
Well Russia does still have multi party elections, judges and a President
Exactly. And Russian is not a democracy.
It is, it has multi party parliamentary and presidential elections even if not a perfect one.
For most of the 20th century Russia and indeed Ukraine too were one party communist dictatorships under the USSR and before that under the absolute monarchy of the Tsars
The Economist Democracy Index rates Russia as an Authoritarian Regime. Out of a choice of Full Democracy, Flawed Democracy, Hybrid Regime and Authoritarian Regime.
Democracy Matrix has Russia as 'Moderate Autocracy'. Out of Working Democracy Deficient Democracy Hybrid Regime Moderate Autocracy Hard Autocracy
If Russia was a dictatorship Putin would have got 100% of the vote in the last Russian presidential election, he got 88% and the Communists and New People 4% for their candidates and Liberal Democrats 3%
(The answer is probably "of course not". There's plenty of space where elections can happen without them being meaningful. Most dictators prefer to operate in that space, it's less embarrassing for them.)
No, as no party other than the Communist Party was allowed to contest its elections
@TSE is making the error of assuming that anything about Scottish independence is rational or responsive to reason. It's not. Its driven by emotion and a sense of identity and resentment. The current unpopularity of the Labour government in Scotland is a concern. Labour are, of course, finding out that the Tories didn't make cuts (just) because they were nasty but because they had no choice. We have already had the WFA and now Labour are going after the allegedly sick. Personally, I am expecting support for independence to rise somewhat.
Osborne chose austerity because he was heartless, why the LDs went along with it is another question.
Without increased taxation Labour are lumbered with austerity. Now that is a choice, a foolhardy one in my opinion. Good luck at the next election when deaf, dumb and blind kids are begging on the streets because Labour removed their PIP.
This Labour Government don't think on their feet. They could sell increased taxation (and borrowing) as a necessity post Russia-USA alignment .
Oh for pity's sake. Does the plight of the feckless Reeves show you nothing? Osborne chose austerity because the country was bankrupt with unpayable contingent liabilities for an overgrown banking sector and a complete collapse in revenues from that source. The Lib Dems went along because there was no choice. Just like Reeves is doing now.
Austerity was an ideological choice. Many commentators, and not necessarily from the left, are opining that austerity was a grave error. There were other options. There are now. One of Reeves and Starmer's biggest millstones is the spectre of the Truss-Kwarteng budget. The Germans are going balls deep into borrowing for defence investment. We could do the same.
Germany has an almost balanced and a lot of room to borrow. Osborne inherited a 10% deficit, 70% of which was structural. We are and never were in any way comparable to Germany, their financial foundations are far, far stronger than ours. If the government (Tory or Labour) tried to go on a gigantic unfunded borrowing binge the markets would enforce discipline just as they did to Truss. That you think we could do what Germany is doing wrt borrowing for defence and infrastructure just shows how little you understand how bad our financial position is and has been since 2008.
The financial state of the economy must have been pretty good in 2023. How else could the Chancellor have significantly cut NI (twice).*
* My tongue is firmly in my cheek.
If NI cuts were affordable then but they are not now, taxes need to rise. This Government's greatest folly was suggesting the status quo could continue without tax rises. Your Party/ Government's manifesto pledge was that taxes could continue to fall whilst services would continue to rise. Either they were lying or their economic understanding was as deficient as you claim mine to be.
One of my key concerns over austerity both
now and fifteen years ago has been the consistent misunderstanding between cost of a service and value added from that service.. Binning HS2 was a case in pointReeves/ Starmer are making this error.
I understand the difference between the structural and cyclical deficit, but I see no other way to pay for the nice things we want like military aircraft, nuclear warheads, boots on the ground and adequate housing without borrowing. Borrowing for defence and infrastructure is the last resort way to generate growth. How have the growth stats been since 2008 austerity kicked in? And growth whilst outside the largest single friction free trading block available to use is even more daunting. Remind me which side of that fence you were on over that event. As an economist help me understand why leaving the EU was optimal to domestic growth and the balance of payments deficit of the UK.
Labour have put taxes up, just on farmers and business owners
Employer NI wouldn't have been a route I would have followed, but I have no problem with 20% inheritance tax for properties over £3m. The Government need to be looking at wealth taxes too. Why are Labour so timid?
Because either a wealth tax includes housing and it's politically disastrous or it doesn't and raises pennies at the cost of huge damage to the economy as the wealthy move their business, shares, etc out of the country.
The primary domestic dwelling could easily be exempted.
Then it wouldn't raise much but would destroy the already damaged private rental market, hitting the young and poor the most.
There's no easy way to raise the already record tax burden - if there were, the rapacious Labour Party or the only slightly less greedy Conservatives would have tried it to exhaustion and beyond.
Why would a 'private rental market' be damaged. If landlords sold up, a family requiring a home would move in. One less in the queue. The PRS is simply an investment vehicle for a particular group who could put their money into more productive areas of the economy. It the similar argument for those who under occupy a property as 'it's their pension' but never use it as a pension.
This is bizarre attitude that you get from private landlords everywhere. Sure, there is a minority of highly mobile workers who need rental properties to move around the country/globe to exploit job opportunities, but for everyone else owning a property is far more desirable because of the massive financial advantages of doing so.
It's not like the flat disappears off the face of the earth when the landlord sells up. The size of the private rental market now is a function of gross wealth inequality, not demand for renting relative to ownership.
There speaks someone completely out of touch , well seen you have your own house and plenty cash and no idea what would happen to the the poor sods who cannot afford to buy and have the rental houses pulled from under their feet.
^ exactly the kind of person I was talking about. People who cannot comprehend that the reason so many people are renting is because more and more of the housing stock is being bought up by wealthy landlords, restricting the supply for first time buyers.
Rightmove is choc a bloc with houses every day , looked toda yand 1 bed flats from 14K. You are talking absolute bollox. Not everybody can afford fancy places in Edinburgh.
Was that £14k flat in a location which made getting to Edinburgh to work possible or are you comparing apples with Faberge eggs again
you know well what was meant , there are lot sof cheaper houses as well as expensive ones and Ayr has plenty of employment opportunites , commuting distance to Glasgow etc. His claim there are no low cost house was just bollox, comparing all people to him wanting a fancy pad in Edinburgh is hadly average.
Inviting his dad to be KIng of Scotland. After all, it worked with the Stuart dynasty. He'd want a new Glorious Revolution and MSGA.
Trump is quite similar to Idi Amin, so makes sense
He made a speech at the Department of Justice yesterday in front of an audience of prosecutors where he listed a whole series of people by name who he wants to target - people like Mark Elias (Democracy Docket) and Norm Eisen (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)).
He's moving towards Idi Amin's attack on the Judiciary (see the ex-Archbishop of York, who he locked up when he was around the Supreme Court of Uganda, and had beaten to a pulp.) It's the big one - will the checks and balances of USA democracy hold.
It's better if Trump pops his clogs sooner rather than later - Vance may as bad or worse, but he won't be able to keep all the Republican party or half the US public with him like Trump can
Vance is far more intelligent than Trump though and doesn’t need to face the voters for 3 and a half years
My point is that Trump still needs the votes of, for example, Republican senators - for now. He has them because he is popular enough and Republican elected officials are afraid to oppose him. In a year or two there might be a quasi-dictatorship in the US, and the president may no longer need Congress. I think it's better that Vance replaces Trump before we reach that point, because I think Vance will face more opposition if he tries to claim, as Trump is doing, "l'etat c'est moi."
US has a constitution with a Congress and the Supreme Court, judges for whom Congress also appoints, to remove them and become a dictator Trump would need the military but they take an oath to the constitution and president
Most countries have constitutions. Here's the first line of Russia's:
Russia is a democratic federal law-bound state with a republican form of government.
Well Russia does still have multi party elections, judges and a President
Exactly. And Russian is not a democracy.
It is, it has multi party parliamentary and presidential elections even if not a perfect one.
For most of the 20th century Russia and indeed Ukraine too were one party communist dictatorships under the USSR and before that under the absolute monarchy of the Tsars
The Economist Democracy Index rates Russia as an Authoritarian Regime. Out of a choice of Full Democracy, Flawed Democracy, Hybrid Regime and Authoritarian Regime.
Democracy Matrix has Russia as 'Moderate Autocracy'. Out of Working Democracy Deficient Democracy Hybrid Regime Moderate Autocracy Hard Autocracy
If Russia was a dictatorship Putin would have got 100% of the vote in the last Russian presidential election, he got 88% and the Communists and New People 4% for their candidates and Liberal Democrats 3%
(The answer is probably "of course not". There's plenty of space where elections can happen without them being meaningful. Most dictators prefer to operate in that space, it's less embarrassing for them.)
No, as no party other than the Communist Party was allowed to contest its elections
Belarus? It is not a democracy if you allow opponents but fix the result
Good thread on the history of the Canadian border.
A few days ago, I looked at how the international border through The Great Lakes was determined. But what about the border west of Lake Superior? It took decades to determine and wasn't just "drawn with a ruler by some guy". Let's learn more!.. https://x.com/CraigBaird/status/1900928149904650505
Inviting his dad to be KIng of Scotland. After all, it worked with the Stuart dynasty. He'd want a new Glorious Revolution and MSGA.
Trump is quite similar to Idi Amin, so makes sense
He made a speech at the Department of Justice yesterday in front of an audience of prosecutors where he listed a whole series of people by name who he wants to target - people like Mark Elias (Democracy Docket) and Norm Eisen (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)).
He's moving towards Idi Amin's attack on the Judiciary (see the ex-Archbishop of York, who he locked up when he was around the Supreme Court of Uganda, and had beaten to a pulp.) It's the big one - will the checks and balances of USA democracy hold.
It's better if Trump pops his clogs sooner rather than later - Vance may as bad or worse, but he won't be able to keep all the Republican party or half the US public with him like Trump can
Vance is far more intelligent than Trump though and doesn’t need to face the voters for 3 and a half years
My point is that Trump still needs the votes of, for example, Republican senators - for now. He has them because he is popular enough and Republican elected officials are afraid to oppose him. In a year or two there might be a quasi-dictatorship in the US, and the president may no longer need Congress. I think it's better that Vance replaces Trump before we reach that point, because I think Vance will face more opposition if he tries to claim, as Trump is doing, "l'etat c'est moi."
US has a constitution with a Congress and the Supreme Court, judges for whom Congress also appoints, to remove them and become a dictator Trump would need the military but they take an oath to the constitution and president
Most countries have constitutions. Here's the first line of Russia's:
Russia is a democratic federal law-bound state with a republican form of government.
Well Russia does still have multi party elections, judges and a President
Exactly. And Russian is not a democracy.
It is, it has multi party parliamentary and presidential elections even if not a perfect one.
For most of the 20th century Russia and indeed Ukraine too were one party communist dictatorships under the USSR and before that under the absolute monarchy of the Tsars
The Economist Democracy Index rates Russia as an Authoritarian Regime. Out of a choice of Full Democracy, Flawed Democracy, Hybrid Regime and Authoritarian Regime.
Democracy Matrix has Russia as 'Moderate Autocracy'. Out of Working Democracy Deficient Democracy Hybrid Regime Moderate Autocracy Hard Autocracy
If Russia was a dictatorship Putin would have got 100% of the vote in the last Russian presidential election, he got 88% and the Communists and New People 4% for their candidates and Liberal Democrats 3%
(The answer is probably "of course not". There's plenty of space where elections can happen without them being meaningful. Most dictators prefer to operate in that space, it's less embarrassing for them.)
No, as no party other than the Communist Party was allowed to contest its elections
IIRC Independents were allowed to and did. Didn't often get elected though, largely because the Party apparatus was against them.
Inviting his dad to be KIng of Scotland. After all, it worked with the Stuart dynasty. He'd want a new Glorious Revolution and MSGA.
Trump is quite similar to Idi Amin, so makes sense
He made a speech at the Department of Justice yesterday in front of an audience of prosecutors where he listed a whole series of people by name who he wants to target - people like Mark Elias (Democracy Docket) and Norm Eisen (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)).
He's moving towards Idi Amin's attack on the Judiciary (see the ex-Archbishop of York, who he locked up when he was around the Supreme Court of Uganda, and had beaten to a pulp.) It's the big one - will the checks and balances of USA democracy hold.
It's better if Trump pops his clogs sooner rather than later - Vance may as bad or worse, but he won't be able to keep all the Republican party or half the US public with him like Trump can
Vance is far more intelligent than Trump though and doesn’t need to face the voters for 3 and a half years
My point is that Trump still needs the votes of, for example, Republican senators - for now. He has them because he is popular enough and Republican elected officials are afraid to oppose him. In a year or two there might be a quasi-dictatorship in the US, and the president may no longer need Congress. I think it's better that Vance replaces Trump before we reach that point, because I think Vance will face more opposition if he tries to claim, as Trump is doing, "l'etat c'est moi."
US has a constitution with a Congress and the Supreme Court, judges for whom Congress also appoints, to remove them and become a dictator Trump would need the military but they take an oath to the constitution and president
Most countries have constitutions. Here's the first line of Russia's:
Russia is a democratic federal law-bound state with a republican form of government.
Well Russia does still have multi party elections, judges and a President
Exactly. And Russian is not a democracy.
It is, it has multi party parliamentary and presidential elections even if not a perfect one.
For most of the 20th century Russia and indeed Ukraine too were one party communist dictatorships under the USSR and before that under the absolute monarchy of the Tsars
The Economist Democracy Index rates Russia as an Authoritarian Regime. Out of a choice of Full Democracy, Flawed Democracy, Hybrid Regime and Authoritarian Regime.
Democracy Matrix has Russia as 'Moderate Autocracy'. Out of Working Democracy Deficient Democracy Hybrid Regime Moderate Autocracy Hard Autocracy
If Russia was a dictatorship Putin would have got 100% of the vote in the last Russian presidential election, he got 88% and the Communists and New People 4% for their candidates and Liberal Democrats 3%
(The answer is probably "of course not". There's plenty of space where elections can happen without them being meaningful. Most dictators prefer to operate in that space, it's less embarrassing for them.)
No, as no party other than the Communist Party was allowed to contest its elections
Belarus? It is not a democracy if you allow opponents but fix the result
It is a flawed democracy or at most a diluted dictatorship, a true pure dictatorship would ban any alternative party from contesting its elections if it has any elections at all for government executive and legislative posts as well as jail or execute most of its opponents of course
Inviting his dad to be KIng of Scotland. After all, it worked with the Stuart dynasty. He'd want a new Glorious Revolution and MSGA.
Trump is quite similar to Idi Amin, so makes sense
He made a speech at the Department of Justice yesterday in front of an audience of prosecutors where he listed a whole series of people by name who he wants to target - people like Mark Elias (Democracy Docket) and Norm Eisen (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)).
He's moving towards Idi Amin's attack on the Judiciary (see the ex-Archbishop of York, who he locked up when he was around the Supreme Court of Uganda, and had beaten to a pulp.) It's the big one - will the checks and balances of USA democracy hold.
It's better if Trump pops his clogs sooner rather than later - Vance may as bad or worse, but he won't be able to keep all the Republican party or half the US public with him like Trump can
Vance is far more intelligent than Trump though and doesn’t need to face the voters for 3 and a half years
My point is that Trump still needs the votes of, for example, Republican senators - for now. He has them because he is popular enough and Republican elected officials are afraid to oppose him. In a year or two there might be a quasi-dictatorship in the US, and the president may no longer need Congress. I think it's better that Vance replaces Trump before we reach that point, because I think Vance will face more opposition if he tries to claim, as Trump is doing, "l'etat c'est moi."
US has a constitution with a Congress and the Supreme Court, judges for whom Congress also appoints, to remove them and become a dictator Trump would need the military but they take an oath to the constitution and president
Most countries have constitutions. Here's the first line of Russia's:
Russia is a democratic federal law-bound state with a republican form of government.
Well Russia does still have multi party elections, judges and a President
Exactly. And Russian is not a democracy.
It is, it has multi party parliamentary and presidential elections even if not a perfect one.
For most of the 20th century Russia and indeed Ukraine too were one party communist dictatorships under the USSR and before that under the absolute monarchy of the Tsars
The Economist Democracy Index rates Russia as an Authoritarian Regime. Out of a choice of Full Democracy, Flawed Democracy, Hybrid Regime and Authoritarian Regime.
Democracy Matrix has Russia as 'Moderate Autocracy'. Out of Working Democracy Deficient Democracy Hybrid Regime Moderate Autocracy Hard Autocracy
If Russia was a dictatorship Putin would have got 100% of the vote in the last Russian presidential election, he got 88% and the Communists and New People 4% for their candidates and Liberal Democrats 3%
(The answer is probably "of course not". There's plenty of space where elections can happen without them being meaningful. Most dictators prefer to operate in that space, it's less embarrassing for them.)
No, as no party other than the Communist Party was allowed to contest its elections
Belarus? It is not a democracy if you allow opponents but fix the result
It is a flawed democracy, a true dictatorship would ban any alternative party from contesting its elections if it has any elections at all for government executive and legislative posts
Starmer doing well at the moment WRT Trump/Ukraine. Ignoring, sadly, the issue of men, widows and orphans, there are four corners: USA, Russia, Ukraine, Europe. Starmer pretends that Europe and USA interests elide because he's the good cop.
The current rules are: the ball has to be in the USA or Russia court, and secondly, USA and Russia must not be in visible agreement against the other two.
Currently: the ball is not in Europe or Ukraine's court because they have agreed to a ceasefire. Russia is making it tricky for USA to side with them.
Well done so far. A long way to go.
It'll be interesting to see how the British Right pivots if Russia pulls the plug. Will they side with Putin or Trump?
Less attention has been paid to whether Putin admires Trump than vice versa.
The one interesting takeaway from the Carson interview with Putin widely discussed here. Putin clearly despises Trump. I think he believes him a self-indulgent, but nevertheless useful, fool. He has a lot of time for Musk however.
Starmer doing well at the moment WRT Trump/Ukraine. Ignoring, sadly, the issue of men, widows and orphans, there are four corners: USA, Russia, Ukraine, Europe. Starmer pretends that Europe and USA interests elide because he's the good cop.
The current rules are: the ball has to be in the USA or Russia court, and secondly, USA and Russia must not be in visible agreement against the other two.
Currently: the ball is not in Europe or Ukraine's court because they have agreed to a ceasefire. Russia is making it tricky for USA to side with them.
Well done so far. A long way to go.
It'll be interesting to see how the British Right pivots if Russia pulls the plug. Will they side with Putin or Trump?
Less attention has been paid to whether Putin admires Trump than vice versa.
The one interesting takeaway from the Carson interview with Putin widely discussed here. Putin clearly despises Trump. I think he believes him a self-indulgent, but nevertheless useful, fool. He has a lot of time for Musk however.
Which would fit in with Trump being a Russian asset in practice.
Inviting his dad to be KIng of Scotland. After all, it worked with the Stuart dynasty. He'd want a new Glorious Revolution and MSGA.
Trump is quite similar to Idi Amin, so makes sense
He made a speech at the Department of Justice yesterday in front of an audience of prosecutors where he listed a whole series of people by name who he wants to target - people like Mark Elias (Democracy Docket) and Norm Eisen (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)).
He's moving towards Idi Amin's attack on the Judiciary (see the ex-Archbishop of York, who he locked up when he was around the Supreme Court of Uganda, and had beaten to a pulp.) It's the big one - will the checks and balances of USA democracy hold.
It's better if Trump pops his clogs sooner rather than later - Vance may as bad or worse, but he won't be able to keep all the Republican party or half the US public with him like Trump can
Vance is far more intelligent than Trump though and doesn’t need to face the voters for 3 and a half years
My point is that Trump still needs the votes of, for example, Republican senators - for now. He has them because he is popular enough and Republican elected officials are afraid to oppose him. In a year or two there might be a quasi-dictatorship in the US, and the president may no longer need Congress. I think it's better that Vance replaces Trump before we reach that point, because I think Vance will face more opposition if he tries to claim, as Trump is doing, "l'etat c'est moi."
US has a constitution with a Congress and the Supreme Court, judges for whom Congress also appoints, to remove them and become a dictator Trump would need the military but they take an oath to the constitution and president
Most countries have constitutions. Here's the first line of Russia's:
Russia is a democratic federal law-bound state with a republican form of government.
Well Russia does still have multi party elections, judges and a President
Exactly. And Russian is not a democracy.
It is, it has multi party parliamentary and presidential elections even if not a perfect one.
For most of the 20th century Russia and indeed Ukraine too were one party communist dictatorships under the USSR and before that under the absolute monarchy of the Tsars
The Economist Democracy Index rates Russia as an Authoritarian Regime. Out of a choice of Full Democracy, Flawed Democracy, Hybrid Regime and Authoritarian Regime.
Democracy Matrix has Russia as 'Moderate Autocracy'. Out of Working Democracy Deficient Democracy Hybrid Regime Moderate Autocracy Hard Autocracy
If Russia was a dictatorship Putin would have got 100% of the vote in the last Russian presidential election, he got 88% and the Communists and New People 4% for their candidates and Liberal Democrats 3%
Political Rights score: 4 points out of 40 (compare UK 39 points out of 40) Civil Liberties score: 8 points out of 60 (compare UK 53 points out of 60)
TOTAL score: 12 points out of 100 (compare UK 92 points out of 100)
"Power in Russia’s authoritarian political system is concentrated in the hands of President Vladimir Putin. With loyalist security forces, a subservient judiciary, a controlled media environment, and a legislature consisting of a ruling party and pliable opposition factions, the Kremlin manipulates elections and suppresses genuine dissent."
Mere detail, a manipulated election is basically fine.
I don't know where this particular HYUFD obsession comes from but its a bad look to buy into the arguments of dictators. Heck, to claim they are not even dictators even if they murder and oppress opposition, so long as someone is allowed in a sham election.
Inviting his dad to be KIng of Scotland. After all, it worked with the Stuart dynasty. He'd want a new Glorious Revolution and MSGA.
Trump is quite similar to Idi Amin, so makes sense
He made a speech at the Department of Justice yesterday in front of an audience of prosecutors where he listed a whole series of people by name who he wants to target - people like Mark Elias (Democracy Docket) and Norm Eisen (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)).
He's moving towards Idi Amin's attack on the Judiciary (see the ex-Archbishop of York, who he locked up when he was around the Supreme Court of Uganda, and had beaten to a pulp.) It's the big one - will the checks and balances of USA democracy hold.
It's better if Trump pops his clogs sooner rather than later - Vance may as bad or worse, but he won't be able to keep all the Republican party or half the US public with him like Trump can
Vance is far more intelligent than Trump though and doesn’t need to face the voters for 3 and a half years
My point is that Trump still needs the votes of, for example, Republican senators - for now. He has them because he is popular enough and Republican elected officials are afraid to oppose him. In a year or two there might be a quasi-dictatorship in the US, and the president may no longer need Congress. I think it's better that Vance replaces Trump before we reach that point, because I think Vance will face more opposition if he tries to claim, as Trump is doing, "l'etat c'est moi."
US has a constitution with a Congress and the Supreme Court, judges for whom Congress also appoints, to remove them and become a dictator Trump would need the military but they take an oath to the constitution and president
Most countries have constitutions. Here's the first line of Russia's:
Russia is a democratic federal law-bound state with a republican form of government.
Well Russia does still have multi party elections, judges and a President
Exactly. And Russian is not a democracy.
It is, it has multi party parliamentary and presidential elections even if not a perfect one.
For most of the 20th century Russia and indeed Ukraine too were one party communist dictatorships under the USSR and before that under the absolute monarchy of the Tsars
The Economist Democracy Index rates Russia as an Authoritarian Regime. Out of a choice of Full Democracy, Flawed Democracy, Hybrid Regime and Authoritarian Regime.
Democracy Matrix has Russia as 'Moderate Autocracy'. Out of Working Democracy Deficient Democracy Hybrid Regime Moderate Autocracy Hard Autocracy
If Russia was a dictatorship Putin would have got 100% of the vote in the last Russian presidential election, he got 88% and the Communists and New People 4% for their candidates and Liberal Democrats 3%
@TSE is making the error of assuming that anything about Scottish independence is rational or responsive to reason. It's not. Its driven by emotion and a sense of identity and resentment. The current unpopularity of the Labour government in Scotland is a concern. Labour are, of course, finding out that the Tories didn't make cuts (just) because they were nasty but because they had no choice. We have already had the WFA and now Labour are going after the allegedly sick. Personally, I am expecting support for independence to rise somewhat.
Osborne chose austerity because he was heartless, why the LDs went along with it is another question.
Without increased taxation Labour are lumbered with austerity. Now that is a choice, a foolhardy one in my opinion. Good luck at the next election when deaf, dumb and blind kids are begging on the streets because Labour removed their PIP.
This Labour Government don't think on their feet. They could sell increased taxation (and borrowing) as a necessity post Russia-USA alignment .
Oh for pity's sake. Does the plight of the feckless Reeves show you nothing? Osborne chose austerity because the country was bankrupt with unpayable contingent liabilities for an overgrown banking sector and a complete collapse in revenues from that source. The Lib Dems went along because there was no choice. Just like Reeves is doing now.
Austerity was an ideological choice. Many commentators, and not necessarily from the left, are opining that austerity was a grave error. There were other options. There are now. One of Reeves and Starmer's biggest millstones is the spectre of the Truss-Kwarteng budget. The Germans are going balls deep into borrowing for defence investment. We could do the same.
Germany has an almost balanced and a lot of room to borrow. Osborne inherited a 10% deficit, 70% of which was structural. We are and never were in any way comparable to Germany, their financial foundations are far, far stronger than ours. If the government (Tory or Labour) tried to go on a gigantic unfunded borrowing binge the markets would enforce discipline just as they did to Truss. That you think we could do what Germany is doing wrt borrowing for defence and infrastructure just shows how little you understand how bad our financial position is and has been since 2008.
The financial state of the economy must have been pretty good in 2023. How else could the Chancellor have significantly cut NI (twice).*
* My tongue is firmly in my cheek.
If NI cuts were affordable then but they are not now, taxes need to rise. This Government's greatest folly was suggesting the status quo could continue without tax rises. Your Party/ Government's manifesto pledge was that taxes could continue to fall whilst services would continue to rise. Either they were lying or their economic understanding was as deficient as you claim mine to be.
One of my key concerns over austerity both
now and fifteen years ago has been the consistent misunderstanding between cost of a service and value added from that service.. Binning HS2 was a case in pointReeves/ Starmer are making this error.
I understand the difference between the structural and cyclical deficit, but I see no other way to pay for the nice things we want like military aircraft, nuclear warheads, boots on the ground and adequate housing without borrowing. Borrowing for defence and infrastructure is the last resort way to generate growth. How have the growth stats been since 2008 austerity kicked in? And growth whilst outside the largest single friction free trading block available to use is even more daunting. Remind me which side of that fence you were on over that event. As an economist help me understand why leaving the EU was optimal to domestic growth and the balance of payments deficit of the UK.
Labour have put taxes up, just on farmers and business owners
Employer NI wouldn't have been a route I would have followed, but I have no problem with 20% inheritance tax for properties over £3m. The Government need to be looking at wealth taxes too. Why are Labour so timid?
Because either a wealth tax includes housing and it's politically disastrous or it doesn't and raises pennies at the cost of huge damage to the economy as the wealthy move their business, shares, etc out of the country.
The primary domestic dwelling could easily be exempted.
Then it wouldn't raise much but would destroy the already damaged private rental market, hitting the young and poor the most.
There's no easy way to raise the already record tax burden - if there were, the rapacious Labour Party or the only slightly less greedy Conservatives would have tried it to exhaustion and beyond.
Why would a 'private rental market' be damaged. If landlords sold up, a family requiring a home would move in. One less in the queue. The PRS is simply an investment vehicle for a particular group who could put their money into more productive areas of the economy. It the similar argument for those who under occupy a property as 'it's their pension' but never use it as a pension.
This is bizarre attitude that you get from private landlords everywhere. Sure, there is a minority of highly mobile workers who need rental properties to move around the country/globe to exploit job opportunities, but for everyone else owning a property is far more desirable because of the massive financial advantages of doing so.
It's not like the flat disappears off the face of the earth when the landlord sells up. The size of the private rental market now is a function of gross wealth inequality, not demand for renting relative to ownership.
There speaks someone completely out of touch , well seen you have your own house and plenty cash and no idea what would happen to the the poor sods who cannot afford to buy and have the rental houses pulled from under their feet.
^ exactly the kind of person I was talking about. People who cannot comprehend that the reason so many people are renting is because more and more of the housing stock is being bought up by wealthy landlords, restricting the supply for first time buyers.
Rightmove is choc a bloc with houses every day , looked toda yand 1 bed flats from 14K. You are talking absolute bollox. Not everybody can afford fancy places in Edinburgh.
Was that £14k flat in a location which made getting to Edinburgh to work possible or are you comparing apples with Faberge eggs again
you know well what was meant , there are lot sof cheaper houses as well as expensive ones and Ayr has plenty of employment opportunites , commuting distance to Glasgow etc. His claim there are no low cost house was just bollox, comparing all people to him wanting a fancy pad in Edinburgh is hadly average.
Ayr is an hour away from Glasgow (so you lose 10 hours a week) and the season ticket is £2,400. Assuming average salary, you'd need the housing costs to be about £10,000 less per year in Ayr for that to be worth it. That explains why you can get cheap housing outside of the cities, and why so few people commute to Glasgow from Ayr.
Inviting his dad to be KIng of Scotland. After all, it worked with the Stuart dynasty. He'd want a new Glorious Revolution and MSGA.
Trump is quite similar to Idi Amin, so makes sense
He made a speech at the Department of Justice yesterday in front of an audience of prosecutors where he listed a whole series of people by name who he wants to target - people like Mark Elias (Democracy Docket) and Norm Eisen (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)).
He's moving towards Idi Amin's attack on the Judiciary (see the ex-Archbishop of York, who he locked up when he was around the Supreme Court of Uganda, and had beaten to a pulp.) It's the big one - will the checks and balances of USA democracy hold.
It's better if Trump pops his clogs sooner rather than later - Vance may as bad or worse, but he won't be able to keep all the Republican party or half the US public with him like Trump can
Vance is far more intelligent than Trump though and doesn’t need to face the voters for 3 and a half years
My point is that Trump still needs the votes of, for example, Republican senators - for now. He has them because he is popular enough and Republican elected officials are afraid to oppose him. In a year or two there might be a quasi-dictatorship in the US, and the president may no longer need Congress. I think it's better that Vance replaces Trump before we reach that point, because I think Vance will face more opposition if he tries to claim, as Trump is doing, "l'etat c'est moi."
US has a constitution with a Congress and the Supreme Court, judges for whom Congress also appoints, to remove them and become a dictator Trump would need the military but they take an oath to the constitution and president
Most countries have constitutions. Here's the first line of Russia's:
Russia is a democratic federal law-bound state with a republican form of government.
Well Russia does still have multi party elections, judges and a President
Exactly. And Russian is not a democracy.
It is, it has multi party parliamentary and presidential elections even if not a perfect one.
For most of the 20th century Russia and indeed Ukraine too were one party communist dictatorships under the USSR and before that under the absolute monarchy of the Tsars
The Economist Democracy Index rates Russia as an Authoritarian Regime. Out of a choice of Full Democracy, Flawed Democracy, Hybrid Regime and Authoritarian Regime.
Democracy Matrix has Russia as 'Moderate Autocracy'. Out of Working Democracy Deficient Democracy Hybrid Regime Moderate Autocracy Hard Autocracy
If Russia was a dictatorship Putin would have got 100% of the vote in the last Russian presidential election, he got 88% and the Communists and New People 4% for their candidates and Liberal Democrats 3%
(The answer is probably "of course not". There's plenty of space where elections can happen without them being meaningful. Most dictators prefer to operate in that space, it's less embarrassing for them.)
No, as no party other than the Communist Party was allowed to contest its elections
Belarus? It is not a democracy if you allow opponents but fix the result
It is a flawed democracy, a true dictatorship would ban any alternative party from contesting its elections if it has any elections at all for government executive and legislative posts
Inviting his dad to be KIng of Scotland. After all, it worked with the Stuart dynasty. He'd want a new Glorious Revolution and MSGA.
Trump is quite similar to Idi Amin, so makes sense
He made a speech at the Department of Justice yesterday in front of an audience of prosecutors where he listed a whole series of people by name who he wants to target - people like Mark Elias (Democracy Docket) and Norm Eisen (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)).
He's moving towards Idi Amin's attack on the Judiciary (see the ex-Archbishop of York, who he locked up when he was around the Supreme Court of Uganda, and had beaten to a pulp.) It's the big one - will the checks and balances of USA democracy hold.
It's better if Trump pops his clogs sooner rather than later - Vance may as bad or worse, but he won't be able to keep all the Republican party or half the US public with him like Trump can
Vance is far more intelligent than Trump though and doesn’t need to face the voters for 3 and a half years
My point is that Trump still needs the votes of, for example, Republican senators - for now. He has them because he is popular enough and Republican elected officials are afraid to oppose him. In a year or two there might be a quasi-dictatorship in the US, and the president may no longer need Congress. I think it's better that Vance replaces Trump before we reach that point, because I think Vance will face more opposition if he tries to claim, as Trump is doing, "l'etat c'est moi."
US has a constitution with a Congress and the Supreme Court, judges for whom Congress also appoints, to remove them and become a dictator Trump would need the military but they take an oath to the constitution and president
Most countries have constitutions. Here's the first line of Russia's:
Russia is a democratic federal law-bound state with a republican form of government.
Well Russia does still have multi party elections, judges and a President
Exactly. And Russian is not a democracy.
It is, it has multi party parliamentary and presidential elections even if not a perfect one.
For most of the 20th century Russia and indeed Ukraine too were one party communist dictatorships under the USSR and before that under the absolute monarchy of the Tsars
The Economist Democracy Index rates Russia as an Authoritarian Regime. Out of a choice of Full Democracy, Flawed Democracy, Hybrid Regime and Authoritarian Regime.
Democracy Matrix has Russia as 'Moderate Autocracy'. Out of Working Democracy Deficient Democracy Hybrid Regime Moderate Autocracy Hard Autocracy
If Russia was a dictatorship Putin would have got 100% of the vote in the last Russian presidential election, he got 88% and the Communists and New People 4% for their candidates and Liberal Democrats 3%
@TSE is making the error of assuming that anything about Scottish independence is rational or responsive to reason. It's not. Its driven by emotion and a sense of identity and resentment. The current unpopularity of the Labour government in Scotland is a concern. Labour are, of course, finding out that the Tories didn't make cuts (just) because they were nasty but because they had no choice. We have already had the WFA and now Labour are going after the allegedly sick. Personally, I am expecting support for independence to rise somewhat.
Osborne chose austerity because he was heartless, why the LDs went along with it is another question.
Without increased taxation Labour are lumbered with austerity. Now that is a choice, a foolhardy one in my opinion. Good luck at the next election when deaf, dumb and blind kids are begging on the streets because Labour removed their PIP.
This Labour Government don't think on their feet. They could sell increased taxation (and borrowing) as a necessity post Russia-USA alignment .
Oh for pity's sake. Does the plight of the feckless Reeves show you nothing? Osborne chose austerity because the country was bankrupt with unpayable contingent liabilities for an overgrown banking sector and a complete collapse in revenues from that source. The Lib Dems went along because there was no choice. Just like Reeves is doing now.
Austerity was an ideological choice. Many commentators, and not necessarily from the left, are opining that austerity was a grave error. There were other options. There are now. One of Reeves and Starmer's biggest millstones is the spectre of the Truss-Kwarteng budget. The Germans are going balls deep into borrowing for defence investment. We could do the same.
Germany has an almost balanced and a lot of room to borrow. Osborne inherited a 10% deficit, 70% of which was structural. We are and never were in any way comparable to Germany, their financial foundations are far, far stronger than ours. If the government (Tory or Labour) tried to go on a gigantic unfunded borrowing binge the markets would enforce discipline just as they did to Truss. That you think we could do what Germany is doing wrt borrowing for defence and infrastructure just shows how little you understand how bad our financial position is and has been since 2008.
The financial state of the economy must have been pretty good in 2023. How else could the Chancellor have significantly cut NI (twice).*
* My tongue is firmly in my cheek.
If NI cuts were affordable then but they are not now, taxes need to rise. This Government's greatest folly was suggesting the status quo could continue without tax rises. Your Party/ Government's manifesto pledge was that taxes could continue to fall whilst services would continue to rise. Either they were lying or their economic understanding was as deficient as you claim mine to be.
One of my key concerns over austerity both
now and fifteen years ago has been the consistent misunderstanding between cost of a service and value added from that service.. Binning HS2 was a case in pointReeves/ Starmer are making this error.
I understand the difference between the structural and cyclical deficit, but I see no other way to pay for the nice things we want like military aircraft, nuclear warheads, boots on the ground and adequate housing without borrowing. Borrowing for defence and infrastructure is the last resort way to generate growth. How have the growth stats been since 2008 austerity kicked in? And growth whilst outside the largest single friction free trading block available to use is even more daunting. Remind me which side of that fence you were on over that event. As an economist help me understand why leaving the EU was optimal to domestic growth and the balance of payments deficit of the UK.
Labour have put taxes up, just on farmers and business owners
Employer NI wouldn't have been a route I would have followed, but I have no problem with 20% inheritance tax for properties over £3m. The Government need to be looking at wealth taxes too. Why are Labour so timid?
Because either a wealth tax includes housing and it's politically disastrous or it doesn't and raises pennies at the cost of huge damage to the economy as the wealthy move their business, shares, etc out of the country.
The primary domestic dwelling could easily be exempted.
Then it wouldn't raise much but would destroy the already damaged private rental market, hitting the young and poor the most.
There's no easy way to raise the already record tax burden - if there were, the rapacious Labour Party or the only slightly less greedy Conservatives would have tried it to exhaustion and beyond.
Why would a 'private rental market' be damaged. If landlords sold up, a family requiring a home would move in. One less in the queue. The PRS is simply an investment vehicle for a particular group who could put their money into more productive areas of the economy. It the similar argument for those who under occupy a property as 'it's their pension' but never use it as a pension.
This is bizarre attitude that you get from private landlords everywhere. Sure, there is a minority of highly mobile workers who need rental properties to move around the country/globe to exploit job opportunities, but for everyone else owning a property is far more desirable because of the massive financial advantages of doing so.
It's not like the flat disappears off the face of the earth when the landlord sells up. The size of the private rental market now is a function of gross wealth inequality, not demand for renting relative to ownership.
There speaks someone completely out of touch , well seen you have your own house and plenty cash and no idea what would happen to the the poor sods who cannot afford to buy and have the rental houses pulled from under their feet.
^ exactly the kind of person I was talking about. People who cannot comprehend that the reason so many people are renting is because more and more of the housing stock is being bought up by wealthy landlords, restricting the supply for first time buyers.
Speaking from experience, many young people have to move around in the first five or ten years of their careers - this is the nature of the job market these days. As such, they ussually end up either in rented flats or HMOs. My daughter is a good example of this having just moved out and across to the other side of the country for work. She actually could afford to buy (for reasons I explained a few days ago on here) but she and her partner don't want to yet until they know where they are going to finally settle.
Long term buying is far better (IMO). But the idea we don't need a private rental sector at all for all sorts of reasons is just wrong.
That's exactly the point I made above. But the idea that everyone renting now is doing so because they want to is plainly wrong - I rented for about four years longer than I wanted to, and it still required a gift worth £10,000s to get me on the ladder. There are other people in the same situation for decades because they don't have the intergenerational wealth to escape.
Let's say half of private landlords were forced to sell up in the next 5 years. What would that do to house prices in our cities? Would that make it easier for first time buyers? Would there be thousands of empty flats?
Personally I never wanted to own property - I don't have the skills to maintain it or relatives to pass it on to. Growing up in Denmark it didn't occur to my family - renting flats in attractive tower blocks was what most people did. I've reluctantly accepted that it's different in the UK, with vast numbers of low-rise property privately owned, and constant grumbles about urban sprawl - as you say, it's seen as a key investment. But it's not the only workable model.
Inviting his dad to be KIng of Scotland. After all, it worked with the Stuart dynasty. He'd want a new Glorious Revolution and MSGA.
Trump is quite similar to Idi Amin, so makes sense
He made a speech at the Department of Justice yesterday in front of an audience of prosecutors where he listed a whole series of people by name who he wants to target - people like Mark Elias (Democracy Docket) and Norm Eisen (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)).
He's moving towards Idi Amin's attack on the Judiciary (see the ex-Archbishop of York, who he locked up when he was around the Supreme Court of Uganda, and had beaten to a pulp.) It's the big one - will the checks and balances of USA democracy hold.
It's better if Trump pops his clogs sooner rather than later - Vance may as bad or worse, but he won't be able to keep all the Republican party or half the US public with him like Trump can
Vance is far more intelligent than Trump though and doesn’t need to face the voters for 3 and a half years
My point is that Trump still needs the votes of, for example, Republican senators - for now. He has them because he is popular enough and Republican elected officials are afraid to oppose him. In a year or two there might be a quasi-dictatorship in the US, and the president may no longer need Congress. I think it's better that Vance replaces Trump before we reach that point, because I think Vance will face more opposition if he tries to claim, as Trump is doing, "l'etat c'est moi."
US has a constitution with a Congress and the Supreme Court, judges for whom Congress also appoints, to remove them and become a dictator Trump would need the military but they take an oath to the constitution and president
Most countries have constitutions. Here's the first line of Russia's:
Russia is a democratic federal law-bound state with a republican form of government.
Well Russia does still have multi party elections, judges and a President
Exactly. And Russian is not a democracy.
It is, it has multi party parliamentary and presidential elections even if not a perfect one.
For most of the 20th century Russia and indeed Ukraine too were one party communist dictatorships under the USSR and before that under the absolute monarchy of the Tsars
The Economist Democracy Index rates Russia as an Authoritarian Regime. Out of a choice of Full Democracy, Flawed Democracy, Hybrid Regime and Authoritarian Regime.
Democracy Matrix has Russia as 'Moderate Autocracy'. Out of Working Democracy Deficient Democracy Hybrid Regime Moderate Autocracy Hard Autocracy
If Russia was a dictatorship Putin would have got 100% of the vote in the last Russian presidential election, he got 88% and the Communists and New People 4% for their candidates and Liberal Democrats 3%
(The answer is probably "of course not". There's plenty of space where elections can happen without them being meaningful. Most dictators prefer to operate in that space, it's less embarrassing for them.)
No, as no party other than the Communist Party was allowed to contest its elections
Belarus? It is not a democracy if you allow opponents but fix the result
It is a flawed democracy, a true dictatorship would ban any alternative party from contesting its elections if it has any elections at all for government executive and legislative posts
Comments
Let's watch them actually trying to run something before we get to a GE. They have 4 or 5 MPs and within a year they are fighting like rats in a sack.
Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦
@bayraktar_1love
Canada is actively looking at potential alternatives to the U.S.-built F-35 stealth fighter and will hold conversations with rival aircraft makers, Defence Minister Bill Blair said late Friday.
There has been a groundswell of support among Canadians to kill the $19-billion purchase and find aircraft other than those manufactured and maintained in the United States. https://cbc.ca/amp/1.7484477
https://x.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1900892029971779919
That said, I don’t know whether “gammons” in particular would want to come here, as they might be distributed by what they encounter.
This was in line with the Iraq being a "sovereign democratic republic", as announced in the 1970 Baath Party constitution, and it really was a joy , to see the machinery of government, succeding in that ideal so.well. Sometimes one can feel emotional, when things work as well as then.
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/blogs/ec_lepoll_20250314.html
Reform majorities in Derbyshire, Doncaster, Durham and Kent. Though not Linconshire, interestingly.
It's an MRP, so it won't get any local tactical sloosh at ward level. Suspect that means it's going to undercook the number of Lib Dem seats.
That makes him well educated and intelligent although not necessarily an original thinker
Perhaps the next strongest is a five-minute speech by President Trump?
(It's never 12 minutes. More like 6.)
It'll be fucking amazing if Canada pull the pin on F-35 again. They have now been trying and failing to replace their legacy Hornets for 28 years.
A much fairer system would be to abolish CGT, IHT, stamp duty and council tax altogether and introduce a flat wealth tax that applies to all non-pension assets. It would be about 1% per year to make up the difference.
In February 2024 Fairliered asked his GP to add his name to the waiting list for a hip replacement. In July 2024, he saw the consultant, who told him that the waiting list was 18 months, but was reducing, and to expect an operation around July or August 2025. In March 2025, Fairliered again saw the consultant, who told him that waiting lists hadn’t come down, and he may be operated on by the end of the year. Fairliered is now considering a private operation, except that it won’t be in Carrick Glen as it is mothballed.
Hard luck, Aussies. Best of luck getting your money back.
Let’s be clear, most Syrian, Afghan and Iranian refugees *are* in other safe (and indeed unsafe) countries between us and them. There are far, far more Syrians seeking asylum in Turkey and Jordan, for example. There are about 20,000 Syrian refugees in the UK. There are 3,000,000 in Turkey, 800k in Lebanon, 650k in Jordan, 630k in Germany, 50k in the Netherlands, 45k in Greece, 30k in France and so on. I think it’s a good thing that the burden of helping those fleeing Syria has been shared around, and I note we’ve taken very few as a proportion. (Hopefully, the situation in Syria is now improving.)
Calling Syria a mediaeval shithole is ahistorical, at best, but if you think Syria is such a terrible place, I would hope you would have more empathy for those who have fled.
This result makes the Tory decline the main story, and puts Kemi in danger.
It's not like the flat disappears off the face of the earth when the landlord sells up. The size of the private rental market now is a function of gross wealth inequality, not demand for renting relative to ownership.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-west-must-not-look-away-from-whats-happening-in-syria/
However, friends of Assad, like Putin, tried to portray him as an ally in a fight against Sunni extremism. That’s presumably the bullshit you’ve been listening to.
The current rules are: the ball has to be in the USA or Russia court, and secondly, USA and Russia must not be in visible agreement against the other two.
Currently: the ball is not in Europe or Ukraine's court because they have agreed to a ceasefire. Russia is making it tricky for USA to side with them.
Well done so far. A long way to go.
and whose name has cheered me up,
for this weekend.
He's managed to obtain support of 96.7%, neatly demonstrating the country's maxim, that "Turkmenistan shall be a democratic, secular and legal republic". As before, I get quite emotional about this, and for seeing someone obtain such love abd consent, and within a democratic
system.
Long term buying is far better (IMO). But the idea we don't need a private rental sector at all for all sorts of reasons is just wrong.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crmj8ky3rvno
So renting made sense.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Russian_presidential_election
Let's say half of private landlords were forced to sell up in the next 5 years. What would that do to house prices in our cities? Would that make it easier for first time buyers? Would there be thousands of empty flats?
Farage and Davey will be pleased with their gains too, would be a humiliating night for Starmer and Labour though, loses even more seats from its 2021 low point and comes in a disastrous 4th place behind even the LDs and Reform.
If no delays though in counties like Essex and Norfolk and Suffolk (where Reform were projected to be largest party or take full control) Reform would have come top the forecast shows, with 697 seats to 688 council seats for the Tories
People look at houses as a place to live, but in truth (and sadly) it's an investment, and if you get it wrong it means poverty in their old age. Failing to buy in your twenties incurs later costs of tens of thousands of pounds in terms of house price rises and unpaid mortgage payments. Unless you are rich and can afford to sub them tens or hundreds of pounds (you may be: don't feel obliged to say, it's not necessary for the point), it's a choice they can ill afford to ignore.
When I finally move out, hopefully in the next few weeks, I will have been here eleven years, and the house I bought in 2014 has increased in value by 84% making the move feasible.
https://meduza.io/en/feature/2024/03/21/putin-2024
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1979_Soviet_Union_legislative_election
(The answer is probably "of course not". There's plenty of space where elections can happen without them being meaningful. Most dictators prefer to operate in that space, it's less embarrassing for them.)
At the moment house prices are artificially elevated way beyond historical multiples of incomes. This isn't purely a supply issue, as it is noticeable in many countries across the globe, but rather due to very low interest rates since the GFC. If we have a return to historical norms of positive real interest rates combined with low inflation then buyers have the prospect of actually repaying their mortgages rather than seeing them inflated away.
I do wonder if a garbage scow* with just a number will suddenly find itself labelled USS President Joseph R. Biden.
*gashbarge to you and me
Why make a dictator's justification easier by using that low bar? Its why groups who judge these things dont.
https://freedomhouse.org/country/russia
Political Rights score: 4 points out of 40 (compare UK 39 points out of 40)
Civil Liberties score: 8 points out of 60 (compare UK 53 points out of 60)
TOTAL score: 12 points out of 100 (compare UK 92 points out of 100)
"Power in Russia’s authoritarian political system is concentrated in the hands of President Vladimir Putin. With loyalist security forces, a subservient judiciary, a controlled media environment, and a legislature consisting of a ruling party and pliable opposition factions, the Kremlin manipulates elections and suppresses genuine dissent."
Significant implications for governments wanting to inflate away their debts too.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=mpzj1IvEhTA&feature=shared
(Apart from bits of the South embedded in the North.)
In career, being insincere
Confidence, taken in
By a suntan and a grin"
https://thetincannoisseur.blogspot.com/2014/10/roll-with-it-scotland.html
A few days ago, I looked at how the international border through The Great Lakes was determined.
But what about the border west of Lake Superior?
It took decades to determine and wasn't just "drawn with a ruler by some guy".
Let's learn more!..
https://x.com/CraigBaird/status/1900928149904650505
Have any PBers visited Point Roberts ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_Roberts,_Washington
https://freedomhouse.org/country/belarus
Belarus 7 points out of 100
Russia 12 points out of 100
Compare:
USA 84 points out of 100
UK 92 points out of 100
I don't know where this particular HYUFD obsession comes from but its a bad look to buy into the arguments of dictators. Heck, to claim they are not even dictators even if they murder and oppress opposition, so long as someone is allowed in a sham election.
Oh dear, how sad, nevermind.
For our Welsh posters.
Not all elections are equally democratic.
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/prediction_main.html
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/blogs/ec_lepoll_20250314.html