I gave a brief description how parties operated in the Soviet Union (under the "One Party State" subheading) in my "Parties" article. Happy to explicate further if required.
@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.
I'm sure none of our descendants will want our property when we've passed on. The grandchildren will be happy with the money, though!
I (I am not @HYUFD ) was predicting a Conservative majority and was trying to work out how to shift thousands of pounds to bet on that outcome. COVID and common sense stayed my hand, but it was a valuable lesson : don't bet years before an election, it's pointless.
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
I (I am not @HYUFD ) was predicting a Conservative majority and was trying to work out how to shift thousands of pounds to bet on that outcome. COVID and common sense stayed my hand, but it was a valuable lesson : don't bet years before an election, it's pointless.
@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.
I'd argue that many of us who do own property, and/or do have relatives to pass it on to, may feel rather differently.
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%
I (I am not @HYUFD ) was predicting a Conservative majority and was trying to work out how to shift thousands of pounds to bet on that outcome. COVID and common sense stayed my hand, but it was a valuable lesson : don't bet years before an election, it's pointless.
I’ve put a few Pounds on Labour most seats
I've put on quite a few pounds but none in bets, sadly.
@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?
I actualy agree with your end aim. The problem is that if you forced 50% of landlords to sell up, whilst it might reduce the cost of housing a small amount, it would not reduce the cost of buying a house sufficiently for all those people who are currently renting a house to be able to afford one. So the cost of renting goes up and they are even worse off.
Also worth remembering that, for all I think the dream of owning a house is a noble one and one we should try to make reality for all who want it, mass house wonership is only a relatively recent, post war, phenomena.
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
@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.
In theory that is fine. But with the nature of their work and the fact they are just starting off and are willing to move to find their ideal jobs, they could easily end up 300 miles away from their property in very short order. It is just an added layer of hassle they don't need.
Also, perhaps sadly, I have indoctrinated my daughter with my own ideology about a house being a home not an investment.
I can't stress the point enough - nobody out there in the real world gives a toss about the Westminster bubble story which is Rupert Lowe.
70 Fukers to take a large majority on Durham Council. As a multiple-times losing candidate at borough council, county council and general election levels I salute anyone who puts themself forward for any party. But I do wonder who these 70 would be, and if any of them are able to actually run a county council.
In any election you get what you vote for (and usually that isn't me...). And so often in council elections you are voting for low information low skills people to be dictated to by the council officers. Reform rightly point out that things are broken, but they need to have a policy agenda which is legal and viable and deliverable by the 70 people they have rounded up off the street to win these seats...
If the party is defined by a certain pugnacious attitude then personality breakdown is highly likely.
The most Trumpy and Refomy of my acquaintances was aware of the Lowe business and on Farages side as better able to have mass appeal.
But in general i think the impact of the fallout may be more on candidates standing than voteshare. Could have an effect, but if they get nominations in should still do ok.
Sure! People are aware. But unless Reform fracture into pieces the party will still be there, still fielding candidates, and will still attract votes.
The Farage/Lowe spat may not be very nice. But go find me someone who thinks the country is broken, likes Farage, wants someone to fix their lives and then decides "well the Farage/Lowe spat wasn't very nice, so instead of voting for my own interests I'll vote Tory or Labour again even though they've done nothing."
Nobody cares. When push comes to shove if Reform are there they will hoover up the votes. We can't combat them by trying to turn a spat into a Westminster bubble crisis. We need to listen to people like Reform do, empathise with them like Reform do, and then offer them simple policies like Reform do - but actually make them effective.
Yes but the policies offered need to be realistic, and Reforms clearly are not, and do not have to be. It's the Brexit issue all over again.
Voters no longer are interested in reality, they are now all postmodernists denying the existence of objective truths. They want to belive the fantasy.
The old right wasn't big on postmodernism IIRC, so I wonder who's fault it is that people think like this.
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
I’ve been to Point Roberts. My mother’s cousin moved to Washington state to teach history (think it was Bellingham). We were living in South Carolina at the time. Spent a rather wonderful summer in the area and ended up visiting Point Roberts. A rather beautiful place - very charming with a sedate way of life (at the time).
My low bound for a cricket score is the 60 for which Australia got out in the Ashes at Trent Bridge in 2015. That’s a cricket score from England tonight in Cardiff.
@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?
I actualy agree with your end aim. The problem is that if you forced 50% of landlords to sell up, whilst it might reduce the cost of housing a small amount, it would not reduce the cost of buying a house sufficiently for all those people who are currently renting a house to be able to afford one. So the cost of renting goes up and they are even worse off.
Also worth remembering that, for all I think the dream of owning a house is a noble one and one we should try to make reality for all who want it, mass house wonership is only a relatively recent, post war, phenomena.
Why would the cost of renting go up? We've just removed 50% of demand too, with half of renting households moving into their own properties. At the very least, I think we should try to stop the trend of increasing renting rates - we're moving rather rapidly towards a new type of feudalism.
But yes - I actually agree with Nick's point, which is that the only reason this is become such a big issue is because the model in the UK makes owning property almost essential. A large majority in Germany rent, but housing costs are much lower. That wouldn't be a necessarily bad outcome.
Bloody hell, wish I was still uni tonight, Cardiff will be very messy. I'm sure the uni will be sending out their warning to students not to go out in the city centre and stick to the union...
Bloody hell, wish I was still uni tonight, Cardiff will be very messy. I'm sure the uni will be sending out their warning to students not to go out in the city centre and stick to the union...
My low bound for a cricket score is the 60 for which Australia got out in the Ashes at Trent Bridge in 2015. That’s a cricket score from England tonight in Cardiff.
Here is another example of why we are where are. Here's our friend Peter,on why capitalism should always rememember it's about monopoly, not competition.
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
When I last heard Point Roberts was under discussion for sale to Canada for several billion.
There are a few more of these.
The Usonians are utterly obsessed with territory, and self-obsessed with themselves - always have been. That's perhaps one reason why so many have followed Mr Chump down the ultra-nationalist rabbit hole.
The EU is a really good precedent for this, in that borders become lightly drawn enough that enclaves and exclaves matter much less eventiually.
I learnt - probably from the Map Men - Baarle in Holland/Belgium contains enclaves inside enclaves.
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.
We were talking about mystery earlier. Creating a reputation is part of it - who knows what's underneath .
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
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
When I last heard Point Roberts was under discussion for sale to Canada for several billion.
There are a few more of these.
The Usonians are utterly obsessed with territory, and self-obsessed with themselves - always have been. That's perhaps one reason why so many have followed Mr Chump down the ultra-nationalist rabbit hole.
The EU is a really good precedent for this, in that borders become lightly drawn enough that enclaves and exclaves matter much less eventiually.
I learnt - probably from the Map Men - Baarle in Holland/Belgium contains enclaves inside enclaves.
@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?
I actualy agree with your end aim. The problem is that if you forced 50% of landlords to sell up, whilst it might reduce the cost of housing a small amount, it would not reduce the cost of buying a house sufficiently for all those people who are currently renting a house to be able to afford one. So the cost of renting goes up and they are even worse off.
Also worth remembering that, for all I think the dream of owning a house is a noble one and one we should try to make reality for all who want it, mass house wonership is only a relatively recent, post war, phenomena.
Why would the cost of renting go up? We've just removed 50% of demand too, with half of renting households moving into their own properties. At the very least, I think we should try to stop the trend of increasing renting rates - we're moving rather rapidly towards a new type of feudalism.
But yes - I actually agree with Nick's point, which is that the only reason this is become such a big issue is because the model in the UK makes owning property almost essential. A large majority in Germany rent, but housing costs are much lower. That wouldn't be a necessarily bad outcome.
Er no you havene't. That is based on the assumption that the cost of housing drops sufficiently for those who are renting to be able to buy the house they are living in or a similar property. That is almost certainly not going to happen. So those families living in rented property suddenly find that the property is no longer available and they can't afford to buy anywhere else.
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.
It does look like Australia would be best served by abandoning the AUKUS submarines and going back to a French one, on grounds of availability, cost and suitability and possibly also shared national interest in the Pacific region given Trump's antics.
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.)
Quite a few states behind the Iron Curtain had subsidiary parties to the Communist Party.
Trump's one achievement so far has been to Make Canada Great Again.
I bet most of us haven't given Canada a second thought in years.
Now it is part of the Wall of Democracy and on the frontline against the new US-Russian axis we are thinking about it a lot.
I proposed an Anglo-Canadian “agreement” a few years ago on here, precisely as a way of beefing up British (and Canadian) security against an unpredictable US.
@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?
I actualy agree with your end aim. The problem is that if you forced 50% of landlords to sell up, whilst it might reduce the cost of housing a small amount, it would not reduce the cost of buying a house sufficiently for all those people who are currently renting a house to be able to afford one. So the cost of renting goes up and they are even worse off.
Also worth remembering that, for all I think the dream of owning a house is a noble one and one we should try to make reality for all who want it, mass house wonership is only a relatively recent, post war, phenomena.
Why would the cost of renting go up? We've just removed 50% of demand too, with half of renting households moving into their own properties. At the very least, I think we should try to stop the trend of increasing renting rates - we're moving rather rapidly towards a new type of feudalism.
But yes - I actually agree with Nick's point, which is that the only reason this is become such a big issue is because the model in the UK makes owning property almost essential. A large majority in Germany rent, but housing costs are much lower. That wouldn't be a necessarily bad outcome.
Er no you havene't. That is based on the assumption that the cost of housing drops sufficiently for those who are renting to be able to buy the house they are living in or a similar property. That is almost certainly not going to happen. So those families living in rented property suddenly find that the property is no longer available and they can't afford to buy anywhere else.
What about the rented houses that have been vacated to buy the freed up ones?
@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?
I actualy agree with your end aim. The problem is that if you forced 50% of landlords to sell up, whilst it might reduce the cost of housing a small amount, it would not reduce the cost of buying a house sufficiently for all those people who are currently renting a house to be able to afford one. So the cost of renting goes up and they are even worse off.
Also worth remembering that, for all I think the dream of owning a house is a noble one and one we should try to make reality for all who want it, mass house wonership is only a relatively recent, post war, phenomena.
Why would the cost of renting go up? We've just removed 50% of demand too, with half of renting households moving into their own properties. At the very least, I think we should try to stop the trend of increasing renting rates - we're moving rather rapidly towards a new type of feudalism.
But yes - I actually agree with Nick's point, which is that the only reason this is become such a big issue is because the model in the UK makes owning property almost essential. A large majority in Germany rent, but housing costs are much lower. That wouldn't be a necessarily bad outcome.
Er no you havene't. That is based on the assumption that the cost of housing drops sufficiently for those who are renting to be able to buy the house they are living in or a similar property. That is almost certainly not going to happen. So those families living in rented property suddenly find that the property is no longer available and they can't afford to buy anywhere else.
I don't see why that couldn't happen. You're suggesting that swathes of housing in Edinburgh would lie empty if it wasn't for the private rental market.
A further significant point from that Fiona Hill interview I posted about the meeting where Zelensky was mugged in the Oval Office.
He has in a language - English - that he has only learnt recently, and in which he is not fluent, never mind idiomatic.
She said he should have had a top notch interpreter, and his best starting strategy would have been to just sloooowwwww it doowwwwnnnnn to take time to think. I'm sure some of our experienced negotiators here have done thre same thing.
Also some commentary about how Putin & Co, who all know what they are doing and have been in post for ever (eg Lavrov - Foreign Minister since 2004), used translators to manipulate Trump and laugh at him in Russian whilst he is laughing.
One strategy is private meetings; Trump is such a rank amateur that he does no proper record or analysis. Another is sexy lady interpreters to distract his peabrain, and so on. So chump Trump is wrapped around Putin's little finger.
I gave a brief description how parties operated in the Soviet Union (under the "One Party State" subheading) in my "Parties" article. Happy to explicate further if required.
That's how they operated in "people's democracies" such as East Germany and Czechoslovakia, but I think that in the Soviet Union proper, there was only one legal political party until 1988. Good article though.
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.
I just packed for a long awaited trip to Uruguay. Nailed everything down. Shut the flat. Got the Uber to Paddington. Got Heathrow express to LHR. Trundled to terminal 3. Went suavely to the check in desk, congratulating myself on being prompt and efficient - almost 3 hours before departure, time for a drink. At the check in desk they got confused by my ticket and then they pointed out that, in fact, I was two days early and I fly out to Uruguay on Monday
@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?
I actualy agree with your end aim. The problem is that if you forced 50% of landlords to sell up, whilst it might reduce the cost of housing a small amount, it would not reduce the cost of buying a house sufficiently for all those people who are currently renting a house to be able to afford one. So the cost of renting goes up and they are even worse off.
Also worth remembering that, for all I think the dream of owning a house is a noble one and one we should try to make reality for all who want it, mass house wonership is only a relatively recent, post war, phenomena.
Why would the cost of renting go up? We've just removed 50% of demand too, with half of renting households moving into their own properties. At the very least, I think we should try to stop the trend of increasing renting rates - we're moving rather rapidly towards a new type of feudalism.
But yes - I actually agree with Nick's point, which is that the only reason this is become such a big issue is because the model in the UK makes owning property almost essential. A large majority in Germany rent, but housing costs are much lower. That wouldn't be a necessarily bad outcome.
Bollocks if you think 50% of renters could afforf to buy
I just packed for a long awaited trip to Uruguay. Nailed everything down. Shut the flat. Got the Uber to Paddington. Got Heathrow express to LHR. Trundled to terminal 3. Went suavely to the check in desk, congratulating myself on being prompt and efficient - almost 3 hours before departure, time for a drink. At the check in desk they got confused by my ticket and then they pointed out that, in fact, I was two days early and I fly out to Uruguay on Monday
Canada is a wonderful country and I’d love to visit again. I certainly will be following their election closely and really hope the Libs can win . Canada is becoming a proxy for us more progressives in the fight against the growing axis of evil.
I just packed for a long awaited trip to Uruguay. Nailed everything down. Shut the flat. Got the Uber to Paddington. Got Heathrow express to LHR. Trundled to terminal 3. Went suavely to the check in desk, congratulating myself on being prompt and efficient - almost 3 hours before departure, time for a drink. At the check in desk they got confused by my ticket and then they pointed out that, in fact, I was two days early and I fly out to Uruguay on Monday
Use it as an opportunity. Don't go back to the flat. Book yourself into a London hotel and pretend you are a Uruguayan version of yourself. Write an article from that perspective.
Canada is a wonderful country and I’d love to visit again. I certainly will be following their election closely and really hope the Libs can win . Canada is becoming a proxy for us more progressives in the fight against the growing axis of evil.
Do give over canada is an axis of evil when being a cheese smuggler is a viable occuptation
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
You really are a cretin. Lukashenka presides over a murderous violence which is truly horrible to behold, and yes I have been there and yes I have friends who have been forced to flee. There is literally nothing to mitigate the vile regime.
I just packed for a long awaited trip to Uruguay. Nailed everything down. Shut the flat. Got the Uber to Paddington. Got Heathrow express to LHR. Trundled to terminal 3. Went suavely to the check in desk, congratulating myself on being prompt and efficient - almost 3 hours before departure, time for a drink. At the check in desk they got confused by my ticket and then they pointed out that, in fact, I was two days early and I fly out to Uruguay on Monday
@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?
I actualy agree with your end aim. The problem is that if you forced 50% of landlords to sell up, whilst it might reduce the cost of housing a small amount, it would not reduce the cost of buying a house sufficiently for all those people who are currently renting a house to be able to afford one. So the cost of renting goes up and they are even worse off.
Also worth remembering that, for all I think the dream of owning a house is a noble one and one we should try to make reality for all who want it, mass house wonership is only a relatively recent, post war, phenomena.
Why would the cost of renting go up? We've just removed 50% of demand too, with half of renting households moving into their own properties. At the very least, I think we should try to stop the trend of increasing renting rates - we're moving rather rapidly towards a new type of feudalism.
But yes - I actually agree with Nick's point, which is that the only reason this is become such a big issue is because the model in the UK makes owning property almost essential. A large majority in Germany rent, but housing costs are much lower. That wouldn't be a necessarily bad outcome.
Er no you havene't. That is based on the assumption that the cost of housing drops sufficiently for those who are renting to be able to buy the house they are living in or a similar property. That is almost certainly not going to happen. So those families living in rented property suddenly find that the property is no longer available and they can't afford to buy anywhere else.
I don't see why that couldn't happen. You're suggesting that swathes of housing in Edinburgh would lie empty if it wasn't for the private rental market.
No, I am suggesting that the people who would buy it wuld not be the sorts of people who were having to rent it in the first place. How do they raise a deposit? You do realise that according to the FT and the Halifax it is now cheaper to rent than buy in the short to medium term?
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.
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
You really are a cretin. Lukashenka presides over a murderous violence which is truly horrible to behold, and yes I have been there and yes I have friends who have been forced to flee. There is literally nothing to mitigate the vile regime.
Dictatorship has many forms. It is ridiculous of @HYUFD to say it is not a "pure" system of dictatorship.
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.
A further significant point from that Fiona Hill interview I posted about the meeting where Zelensky was mugged in the Oval Office.
He has in a language - English - that he has only learnt recently, and in which he is not fluent, never mind idiomatic.
She said he should have had a top notch interpreter, and his best starting strategy would have been to just sloooowwwww it doowwwwnnnnn to take time to think. I'm sure some of our experienced negotiators here have done thre same thing.
Also some commentary about how Putin & Co, who all know what they are doing and have been in post for ever (eg Lavrov - Foreign Minister since 2004), used translators to manipulate Trump and laugh at him in Russian whilst he is laughing.
One strategy is private meetings; Trump is such a rank amateur that he does no proper record or analysis. Another is sexy lady interpreters to distract his peabrain, and so on. So chump Trump is wrapped around Putin's little finger.
Thanks for this. I listened to it this afternoon. It's an hour but well worth it. Fiona Hill is a coal miner's daughter, born in Durham, and now an American citizen who has worked for G W Bush, Obama and Trump. as an expert on Russia (she is a fluent Russin speaker). She is very knowledgeable and inciteful.
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?
Well a bullet works as most countries do
Been interesting watching people circle the drain. We've had WilliamGlenn claim the Ukraine war was started by Biden, HYUFD suggest Russia is a functioning democracy and now this.
I'm rather against bans because frankly it's fascinating watching this kind of deterioration. Strongly suggest Netflix's Adolescence for something similar.
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
You really are a cretin. Lukashenka presides over a murderous violence which is truly horrible to behold, and yes I have been there and yes I have friends who have been forced to flee. There is literally nothing to mitigate the vile regime.
Dictatorship has many forms. It is ridiculous of @HYUFD to say it is not a "pure" system of dictatorship.
Even the Nazi allowed "guests" on their lists.
Since no system of government has been tried in its “pure” form, I suggest we try them all again.
First up is Absolute Monarchy. And I am the monarch.
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
You really are a cretin. Lukashenka presides over a murderous violence which is truly horrible to behold, and yes I have been there and yes I have friends who have been forced to flee. There is literally nothing to mitigate the vile regime.
Killing and imprisoning to prevent opposition is just a democratic flaw. You have to take these dictators, sorry, democrats, at their word.
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.
It does look like Australia would be best served by abandoning the AUKUS submarines and going back to a French one, on grounds of availability, cost and suitability and possibly also shared national interest in the Pacific region given Trump's antics.
I can't call that. The Virginia Classes are not due for delivery until the early 2030s, which is very post-Trump.
Nor is it clear that the diesel boats they would get from France would do the job now, or if the French would now be ready to supply nuclear boats. IIRC that was one reason they stopped it, others being horrific cost escalation and feeling that they were being bent over and shafted with a very crusty bagette.
Would a new French programme be any better, and when would it deliver?
OTOH I'm not sure what the status of Oz is in the new USA Alone world; they are on the receiving end of the planned pivot, whilst we are on the losing end.
They have options - I'm not a "submarine knowlegeable" person but our build rate is I think one submarine per 3 years (ish), and they take 8-10 years to build, so that may be able to be accelerated over a number of years to create two or three extras in current conditions.
(Nor am I sure how "sovereign" our nuclear-tech is. I think we had to have new laws passed in the USA around sharing of nuclear - not missile - technology that we have under our 1958 agreement with the USA.)
I'm not sure on any of that. They certainly need to have a think and take a view.
@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?
I actualy agree with your end aim. The problem is that if you forced 50% of landlords to sell up, whilst it might reduce the cost of housing a small amount, it would not reduce the cost of buying a house sufficiently for all those people who are currently renting a house to be able to afford one. So the cost of renting goes up and they are even worse off.
Also worth remembering that, for all I think the dream of owning a house is a noble one and one we should try to make reality for all who want it, mass house wonership is only a relatively recent, post war, phenomena.
Why would the cost of renting go up? We've just removed 50% of demand too, with half of renting households moving into their own properties. At the very least, I think we should try to stop the trend of increasing renting rates - we're moving rather rapidly towards a new type of feudalism.
But yes - I actually agree with Nick's point, which is that the only reason this is become such a big issue is because the model in the UK makes owning property almost essential. A large majority in Germany rent, but housing costs are much lower. That wouldn't be a necessarily bad outcome.
Er no you havene't. That is based on the assumption that the cost of housing drops sufficiently for those who are renting to be able to buy the house they are living in or a similar property. That is almost certainly not going to happen. So those families living in rented property suddenly find that the property is no longer available and they can't afford to buy anywhere else.
I don't see why that couldn't happen. You're suggesting that swathes of housing in Edinburgh would lie empty if it wasn't for the private rental market.
No, I am suggesting that the people who would buy it wuld not be the sorts of people who were having to rent it in the first place. How do they raise a deposit? You do realise that according to the FT and the Halifax it is now cheaper to rent than buy in the short to medium term?
This is getting a bit silly. All I'm suggesting is that the idea that private landlords provide some sort of service is nonsense. Whatever the form of tenure, housing demand is so high in our cities that homes will be occupied. It's just that the tax system + gross inequality will lead to the landlord class enjoying all the capital gains from housing, while those at the bottom suffer more and more.
I just packed for a long awaited trip to Uruguay. Nailed everything down. Shut the flat. Got the Uber to Paddington. Got Heathrow express to LHR. Trundled to terminal 3. Went suavely to the check in desk, congratulating myself on being prompt and efficient - almost 3 hours before departure, time for a drink. At the check in desk they got confused by my ticket and then they pointed out that, in fact, I was two days early and I fly out to Uruguay on Monday
I think see it as a gift. It might have been the other way round.
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
You really are a cretin. Lukashenka presides over a murderous violence which is truly horrible to behold, and yes I have been there and yes I have friends who have been forced to flee. There is literally nothing to mitigate the vile regime.
Dictatorship has many forms. It is ridiculous of @HYUFD to say it is not a "pure" system of dictatorship.
Even the Nazi allowed "guests" on their lists.
Since no system of government has been tried in its “pure” form, I suggest we try them all again.
First up is Absolute Monarchy. And I am the monarch.
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
You really are a cretin. Lukashenka presides over a murderous violence which is truly horrible to behold, and yes I have been there and yes I have friends who have been forced to flee. There is literally nothing to mitigate the vile regime.
Dictatorship has many forms. It is ridiculous of @HYUFD to say it is not a "pure" system of dictatorship.
Even the Nazi allowed "guests" on their lists.
Since no system of government has been tried in its “pure” form, I suggest we try them all again.
First up is Absolute Monarchy. And I am the monarch.
Happy to be a lackey, your majesty. Im very placid, no rebellion here.
I just packed for a long awaited trip to Uruguay. Nailed everything down. Shut the flat. Got the Uber to Paddington. Got Heathrow express to LHR. Trundled to terminal 3. Went suavely to the check in desk, congratulating myself on being prompt and efficient - almost 3 hours before departure, time for a drink. At the check in desk they got confused by my ticket and then they pointed out that, in fact, I was two days early and I fly out to Uruguay on Monday
Have you been to Uruguay before?
Glad Leon is back. I enjoy the travelogues.
Different times of year I feel like going to different places. Where is best in the early Boreal spring? I’d suggest Northern Spain and Basque, or North West Morocco. Sadly no work trips there coming up, just LA and Mexico.
@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?
I actualy agree with your end aim. The problem is that if you forced 50% of landlords to sell up, whilst it might reduce the cost of housing a small amount, it would not reduce the cost of buying a house sufficiently for all those people who are currently renting a house to be able to afford one. So the cost of renting goes up and they are even worse off.
Also worth remembering that, for all I think the dream of owning a house is a noble one and one we should try to make reality for all who want it, mass house wonership is only a relatively recent, post war, phenomena.
Why would the cost of renting go up? We've just removed 50% of demand too, with half of renting households moving into their own properties. At the very least, I think we should try to stop the trend of increasing renting rates - we're moving rather rapidly towards a new type of feudalism.
But yes - I actually agree with Nick's point, which is that the only reason this is become such a big issue is because the model in the UK makes owning property almost essential. A large majority in Germany rent, but housing costs are much lower. That wouldn't be a necessarily bad outcome.
Er no you havene't. That is based on the assumption that the cost of housing drops sufficiently for those who are renting to be able to buy the house they are living in or a similar property. That is almost certainly not going to happen. So those families living in rented property suddenly find that the property is no longer available and they can't afford to buy anywhere else.
I don't see why that couldn't happen. You're suggesting that swathes of housing in Edinburgh would lie empty if it wasn't for the private rental market.
No, I am suggesting that the people who would buy it wuld not be the sorts of people who were having to rent it in the first place. How do they raise a deposit? You do realise that according to the FT and the Halifax it is now cheaper to rent than buy in the short to medium term?
This is getting a bit silly. All I'm suggesting is that the idea that private landlords provide some sort of service is nonsense. Whatever the form of tenure, housing demand is so high in our cities that homes will be occupied. It's just that the tax system + gross inequality will lead to the landlord class enjoying all the capital gains from housing, while those at the bottom suffer more and more.
But the point is that they do provide a very necessary service. There might be a lot wrong with theway it is done - much of which is being addressed by successive governments - but the fact is we need private landlords. There are large numbers of people who cannot afford to buy houses. Getting rid of private landlords won't change that even if a few who are now renting are able to buy. All you will do is put further restrictions on the rental market by reducing availability and drive up rents.
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
I just packed for a long awaited trip to Uruguay. Nailed everything down. Shut the flat. Got the Uber to Paddington. Got Heathrow express to LHR. Trundled to terminal 3. Went suavely to the check in desk, congratulating myself on being prompt and efficient - almost 3 hours before departure, time for a drink. At the check in desk they got confused by my ticket and then they pointed out that, in fact, I was two days early and I fly out to Uruguay on Monday
I think see it as a gift. It might have been the other way round.
Yes. And I have in fact done that in the past - turned up a day late for a flight, thereby missing it entirely
This is also better than the time I spent all my money on heroin in Tenerife then went penniless to the airport, with at least an air ticket home (where I could get some money) - only to realise I was THREE days early and I had to spend THREE DAYS sleeping in Tenerife airport, drinking water from water foundains and scavenging leftover sandwiches
I just packed for a long awaited trip to Uruguay. Nailed everything down. Shut the flat. Got the Uber to Paddington. Got Heathrow express to LHR. Trundled to terminal 3. Went suavely to the check in desk, congratulating myself on being prompt and efficient - almost 3 hours before departure, time for a drink. At the check in desk they got confused by my ticket and then they pointed out that, in fact, I was two days early and I fly out to Uruguay on Monday
Isn't there a black comedy film where a guy gets stuck in an airport for days/months?
I just packed for a long awaited trip to Uruguay. Nailed everything down. Shut the flat. Got the Uber to Paddington. Got Heathrow express to LHR. Trundled to terminal 3. Went suavely to the check in desk, congratulating myself on being prompt and efficient - almost 3 hours before departure, time for a drink. At the check in desk they got confused by my ticket and then they pointed out that, in fact, I was two days early and I fly out to Uruguay on Monday
Isn't there a black comedy film where a guy gets stuck in an airport for days/months?
"Terminal", which was made, in part, by a friend of mine!
Vance on TV tonight in interviews talking about Europe committing civilisational suicide.
Maybe he has no idea what this means, but he is becoming very Houellebecq.
TBF, after a couple of centuries of absurd French intellectuals, it's only fair the US gets a shout. But unfortunate that their absurd intellectuals now more or less control the government.
Russia has kidnapped tens of thousands of Ukrainian children. Putin was indicted for this crime. Yale has a unit searching for them. Musk eliminated the funding.
@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?
I actualy agree with your end aim. The problem is that if you forced 50% of landlords to sell up, whilst it might reduce the cost of housing a small amount, it would not reduce the cost of buying a house sufficiently for all those people who are currently renting a house to be able to afford one. So the cost of renting goes up and they are even worse off.
Also worth remembering that, for all I think the dream of owning a house is a noble one and one we should try to make reality for all who want it, mass house wonership is only a relatively recent, post war, phenomena.
Why would the cost of renting go up? We've just removed 50% of demand too, with half of renting households moving into their own properties. At the very least, I think we should try to stop the trend of increasing renting rates - we're moving rather rapidly towards a new type of feudalism.
But yes - I actually agree with Nick's point, which is that the only reason this is become such a big issue is because the model in the UK makes owning property almost essential. A large majority in Germany rent, but housing costs are much lower. That wouldn't be a necessarily bad outcome.
Er no you havene't. That is based on the assumption that the cost of housing drops sufficiently for those who are renting to be able to buy the house they are living in or a similar property. That is almost certainly not going to happen. So those families living in rented property suddenly find that the property is no longer available and they can't afford to buy anywhere else.
I don't see why that couldn't happen. You're suggesting that swathes of housing in Edinburgh would lie empty if it wasn't for the private rental market.
No, I am suggesting that the people who would buy it wuld not be the sorts of people who were having to rent it in the first place. How do they raise a deposit? You do realise that according to the FT and the Halifax it is now cheaper to rent than buy in the short to medium term?
This is getting a bit silly. All I'm suggesting is that the idea that private landlords provide some sort of service is nonsense. Whatever the form of tenure, housing demand is so high in our cities that homes will be occupied. It's just that the tax system + gross inequality will lead to the landlord class enjoying all the capital gains from housing, while those at the bottom suffer more and more.
That's a bizarre comment too imo.
Of course landlords provide a service - a housing service. It's governed by about 100 acts of Parliament including remaining clauses of the Magna Carta, and a ginormous volume of contract law and regulation. That's England, but Scotland is similar.
Whilst I'm at it, the idea that 'rich landlords are buying up an ever increasing proportion of housing stock' is untrue as well. In Scotland iirc the number (never mind the proportion) of rented stock peaked in about 2015. After that the proportion fell sharply.
In England the % of owner occupiers has increased in something like 6 out of the last 8 years, and has increased from 62.6% in 2017 to 64.8% in 2024. The history is that it was ~70% around 2000 through till 2007, fell for the next 10 years, and then the trend reversed.
This is one reason why I generally stay off these debates on PB now; facts and data don't apply - and it is usually in the main a swapping of faith-positions.
I just packed for a long awaited trip to Uruguay. Nailed everything down. Shut the flat. Got the Uber to Paddington. Got Heathrow express to LHR. Trundled to terminal 3. Went suavely to the check in desk, congratulating myself on being prompt and efficient - almost 3 hours before departure, time for a drink. At the check in desk they got confused by my ticket and then they pointed out that, in fact, I was two days early and I fly out to Uruguay on Monday
Isn't there a black comedy film where a guy gets stuck in an airport for days/months?
"Terminal", which was made, in part, by a friend of mine!
Based on a sad, true story
Think of the fun you could have over the next few days if you took a lot of medicine for goat
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.
It does look like Australia would be best served by abandoning the AUKUS submarines and going back to a French one, on grounds of availability, cost and suitability and possibly also shared national interest in the Pacific region given Trump's antics.
I can't call that. The Virginia Classes are not due for delivery until the early 2030s, which is very post-Trump.
Nor is it clear that the diesel boats they would get from France would do the job now, or if the French would now be ready to supply nuclear boats. IIRC that was one reason they stopped it, others being horrific cost escalation and feeling that they were being bent over and shafted with a very crusty bagette.
Would a new French programme be any better, and when would it deliver?
OTOH I'm not sure what the status of Oz is in the new USA Alone world; they are on the receiving end of the planned pivot, whilst we are on the losing end.
They have options - I'm not a "submarine knowlegeable" person but our build rate is I think one submarine per 3 years (ish), and they take 8-10 years to build, so that may be able to be accelerated over a number of years to create two or three extras in current conditions.
(Nor am I sure how "sovereign" our nuclear-tech is. I think we had to have new laws passed in the USA around sharing of nuclear - not missile - technology that we have under our 1958 agreement with the USA.)
I'm not sure on any of that. They certainly need to have a think and take a view.
OK - I'm not right on the technology sharing. It is more about exemptions from ITAR laws. There's a commentary here:
Genuine question. Are they not? American pollsters are so confusing
See the link I added to my post.
They so pro Trump in their polling.
538 dropped from their panel.
Somebody who was surveyed once posted a screen shot of the questions, it wasn't far off asking
'Who do you want running the economy, Donald Trump who has delivered record breaking growth/jobs or Joe Biden who when he was Obama's VP destroyed the economy.'
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.
It does look like Australia would be best served by abandoning the AUKUS submarines and going back to a French one, on grounds of availability, cost and suitability and possibly also shared national interest in the Pacific region given Trump's antics.
I can't call that. The Virginia Classes are not due for delivery until the early 2030s, which is very post-Trump.
Nor is it clear that the diesel boats they would get from France would do the job now, or if the French would now be ready to supply nuclear boats. IIRC that was one reason they stopped it, others being horrific cost escalation and feeling that they were being bent over and shafted with a very crusty bagette.
Would a new French programme be any better, and when would it deliver?
OTOH I'm not sure what the status of Oz is in the new USA Alone world; they are on the receiving end of the planned pivot, whilst we are on the losing end.
They have options - I'm not a "submarine knowlegeable" person but our build rate is I think one submarine per 3 years (ish), and they take 8-10 years to build, so that may be able to be accelerated over a number of years to create two or three extras in current conditions.
(Nor am I sure how "sovereign" our nuclear-tech is. I think we had to have new laws passed in the USA around sharing of nuclear - not missile - technology that we have under our 1958 agreement with the USA.)
I'm not sure on any of that. They certainly need to have a think and take a view.
The deal AIUI is three to five Virginia class submarines followed by five boats from the SSN-AUKUS joint venture that will act as a UK replacement to Astute.
The Australians are highly unlikely to get any Virginias and SSN-AUKUS must be doubtful given they haven't even finished Astute yet and will follow on with a very delayed Dreadnought programme before possibly initiating an Astute replacement. The Australians run a significant risk of not getting any submarines at all through AUKUS.
The French design is ready to build if the Australians go for the nuclear version rather than a diesel variant.
I just packed for a long awaited trip to Uruguay. Nailed everything down. Shut the flat. Got the Uber to Paddington. Got Heathrow express to LHR. Trundled to terminal 3. Went suavely to the check in desk, congratulating myself on being prompt and efficient - almost 3 hours before departure, time for a drink. At the check in desk they got confused by my ticket and then they pointed out that, in fact, I was two days early and I fly out to Uruguay on Monday
Have you been to Uruguay before?
No. I'm looking forward to it. Tho TBH I'd prefer to be going to Paraguay which seems a genuinely crazy country
Nonetheless, Uruguay!
My brother, who has a deeply juvenile sense of humour, has told me that when I am there I should pronounce it "You're a gay" but do it with a total straight face indicating that I really believe this is how to pronounce it
Then I can go into bars and say "I love it here, why not, it's great, I mean" - pointing at nearest local rugby player - "Who wouldn't love it. You're a gay!"
I'd get killed but it would be funny (or so he thinks)
I just packed for a long awaited trip to Uruguay. Nailed everything down. Shut the flat. Got the Uber to Paddington. Got Heathrow express to LHR. Trundled to terminal 3. Went suavely to the check in desk, congratulating myself on being prompt and efficient - almost 3 hours before departure, time for a drink. At the check in desk they got confused by my ticket and then they pointed out that, in fact, I was two days early and I fly out to Uruguay on Monday
Have you been to Uruguay before?
No. I'm looking forward to it. Tho TBH I'd prefer to be going to Paraguay which seems a genuinely crazy country
Nonetheless, Uruguay!
My brother, who has a deeply juvenile sense of humour, has told me that when I am there I should pronounce it "You're a gay" but do it with a total straight face indicating that I really believe this is how to pronounce it
Then I can go into bars and say "I love it here, why not, it's great, I mean" - pointing at nearest local rugby player - "Who wouldn't love it. You're a gay!"
I'd get killed but it would be funny (or so he thinks)
Genuine question. Are they not? American pollsters are so confusing
See the link I added to my post.
They so pro Trump in their polling.
538 dropped from their panel.
Somebody who was surveyed once posted a screen shot of the questions, it wasn't far off asking
'Who do you want running the economy, Donald Trump who has delivered record breaking growth/jobs or Joe Biden who when he was Obama's VP destroyed the economy.'
Fair enough
Do the Americans not have a version of the BPC that vets all these pollsters so you can spot the duds?
Not going to lie, loving England smashing Wales here.
It's like Jack Rowell is back with this score.
Back in 1998 I was at a football match rather than watching the rugby. Half heard the England Wales score as 16-26 and that we’d lost. Couldn’t imagine it was 60-26…
Genuine question. Are they not? American pollsters are so confusing
See the link I added to my post.
They so pro Trump in their polling.
538 dropped from their panel.
Somebody who was surveyed once posted a screen shot of the questions, it wasn't far off asking
'Who do you want running the economy, Donald Trump who has delivered record breaking growth/jobs or Joe Biden who when he was Obama's VP destroyed the economy.'
Sounds like they've actually been colluding with Trump.
@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?
I actualy agree with your end aim. The problem is that if you forced 50% of landlords to sell up, whilst it might reduce the cost of housing a small amount, it would not reduce the cost of buying a house sufficiently for all those people who are currently renting a house to be able to afford one. So the cost of renting goes up and they are even worse off.
Also worth remembering that, for all I think the dream of owning a house is a noble one and one we should try to make reality for all who want it, mass house wonership is only a relatively recent, post war, phenomena.
Why would the cost of renting go up? We've just removed 50% of demand too, with half of renting households moving into their own properties. At the very least, I think we should try to stop the trend of increasing renting rates - we're moving rather rapidly towards a new type of feudalism.
But yes - I actually agree with Nick's point, which is that the only reason this is become such a big issue is because the model in the UK makes owning property almost essential. A large majority in Germany rent, but housing costs are much lower. That wouldn't be a necessarily bad outcome.
Er no you havene't. That is based on the assumption that the cost of housing drops sufficiently for those who are renting to be able to buy the house they are living in or a similar property. That is almost certainly not going to happen. So those families living in rented property suddenly find that the property is no longer available and they can't afford to buy anywhere else.
I don't see why that couldn't happen. You're suggesting that swathes of housing in Edinburgh would lie empty if it wasn't for the private rental market.
No, I am suggesting that the people who would buy it wuld not be the sorts of people who were having to rent it in the first place. How do they raise a deposit? You do realise that according to the FT and the Halifax it is now cheaper to rent than buy in the short to medium term?
This is getting a bit silly. All I'm suggesting is that the idea that private landlords provide some sort of service is nonsense. Whatever the form of tenure, housing demand is so high in our cities that homes will be occupied. It's just that the tax system + gross inequality will lead to the landlord class enjoying all the capital gains from housing, while those at the bottom suffer more and more.
But the point is that they do provide a very necessary service. There might be a lot wrong with theway it is done - much of which is being addressed by successive governments - but the fact is we need private landlords. There are large numbers of people who cannot afford to buy houses. Getting rid of private landlords won't change that even if a few who are now renting are able to buy. All you will do is put further restrictions on the rental market by reducing availability and drive up rents.
At what point do they stop providing a necessary service? 40% renting tenure? 80%? The full feudal?
Comments
I gave a brief description how parties operated in the Soviet Union (under the "One Party State" subheading) in my "Parties" article. Happy to explicate further if required.
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2024/06/05/parties/
In fact, I'd strongly argue it is human nature.
Also worth remembering that, for all I think the dream of owning a house is a noble one and one we should try to make reality for all who want it, mass house wonership is only a relatively recent, post war, phenomena.
It's like Jack Rowell is back with this score.
Also, perhaps sadly, I have indoctrinated my daughter with my own ideology about a house being a home not an investment.
This is nearly as good as sex.
But yes - I actually agree with Nick's point, which is that the only reason this is become such a big issue is because the model in the UK makes owning property almost essential. A large majority in Germany rent, but housing costs are much lower. That wouldn't be a necessarily bad outcome.
International relations too.
https://youtu.be/UUzvo4HwojU?si=VjWjYmMmXZi4imes
There are a few more of these.
The Usonians are utterly obsessed with territory, and self-obsessed with themselves - always have been. That's perhaps one reason why so many have followed Mr Chump down the ultra-nationalist rabbit hole.
The EU is a really good precedent for this, in that borders become lightly drawn enough that enclaves and exclaves matter much less eventiually.
I learnt - probably from the Map Men - Baarle in Holland/Belgium contains enclaves inside enclaves.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baarle-Nassau
It's like the island in a lochan on an island in a loch at Slattadale.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/aLvBhxbHsEnfh49E7
Although Freedom House reckon the USA is lagging behind the other Anglosphere nations:
Freedom scores:
NZ 99
Can 97
Ire 97
Aus 95
UK 92
USA 84
Trump's one achievement so far has been to Make Canada Great Again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India–Bangladesh_enclaves
Keep woke foreign
Now it is part of the Wall of Democracy and on the frontline against the new US-Russian axis we are thinking about it a lot.
Sadly I am a prophet without honour.
He has in a language - English - that he has only learnt recently, and in which he is not fluent, never mind idiomatic.
She said he should have had a top notch interpreter, and his best starting strategy would have been to just sloooowwwww it doowwwwnnnnn to take time to think. I'm sure some of our experienced negotiators here have done thre same thing.
Also some commentary about how Putin & Co, who all know what they are doing and have been in post for ever (eg Lavrov - Foreign Minister since 2004), used translators to manipulate Trump and laugh at him in Russian whilst he is laughing.
One strategy is private meetings; Trump is such a rank amateur that he does no proper record or analysis. Another is sexy lady interpreters to distract his peabrain, and so on. So chump Trump is wrapped around Putin's little finger.
Repost: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxfrJ5smAU8
Good article though.
Still on course for a retrial within 18 months I think..🧐
From Ibrox this week, so I presume it's a popular Scottish rallying cry?
Maybe he has no idea what this means, but he is becoming very Houellebecq.
https://www.ftadviser.com/mortgages/2024/03/28/renting-cheaper-than-buying-first-home-in-majority-of-uk/
They are complete fanat6cs.
Even the Nazi allowed "guests" on their lists.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crmj8ky3rvno
Fiona Hill is a coal miner's daughter, born in Durham, and now an American citizen who has worked for G W Bush, Obama and Trump. as an expert on Russia (she is a fluent Russin speaker).
She is very knowledgeable and inciteful.
I've recommended it to several friends.
I'm rather against bans because frankly it's fascinating watching this kind of deterioration. Strongly suggest Netflix's Adolescence for something similar.
First up is Absolute Monarchy. And I am the monarch.
Nor is it clear that the diesel boats they would get from France would do the job now, or if the French would now be ready to supply nuclear boats. IIRC that was one reason they stopped it, others being horrific cost escalation and feeling that they were being bent over and shafted with a very crusty bagette.
Would a new French programme be any better, and when would it deliver?
OTOH I'm not sure what the status of Oz is in the new USA Alone world; they are on the receiving end of the planned pivot, whilst we are on the losing end.
They have options - I'm not a "submarine knowlegeable" person but our build rate is I think one submarine per 3 years (ish), and they take 8-10 years to build, so that may be able to be accelerated over a number of years to create two or three extras in current conditions.
(Nor am I sure how "sovereign" our nuclear-tech is. I think we had to have new laws passed in the USA around sharing of nuclear - not missile - technology that we have under our 1958 agreement with the USA.)
I'm not sure on any of that. They certainly need to have a think and take a view.
twosome, again, I expect. They already got the white migration scheme.
Different times of year I feel like going to different places. Where is best in the early Boreal spring? I’d suggest Northern Spain and Basque, or North West Morocco. Sadly no work trips there coming up, just LA and Mexico.
This is also better than the time I spent all my money on heroin in Tenerife then went penniless to the airport, with at least an air ticket home (where I could get some money) - only to realise I was THREE days early and I had to spend THREE DAYS sleeping in Tenerife airport, drinking water from water foundains and scavenging leftover sandwiches
That was not fun. This is fun, in comparison
Based on a sad, true story
Rugby League Challenge Cup..
Wigan out of the Challenge Cup= LOL
But unfortunate that their absurd intellectuals now more or less control the government.
It's a fun bouncy energising tune - but it is too hard to sing to be a real belter
https://x.com/TimothyDSnyder/status/1900954995110924556
President Trump Job Approval
54% Approve
44% Disapprove
3,000 RV, March 6-13, 2025
https://napolitannews.org/posts/president-trump-job-approval-54-percent-approve-44-disapprove
Of course landlords provide a service - a housing service. It's governed by about 100 acts of Parliament including remaining clauses of the Magna Carta, and a ginormous volume of contract law and regulation. That's England, but Scotland is similar.
Whilst I'm at it, the idea that 'rich landlords are buying up an ever increasing proportion of housing stock' is untrue as well. In Scotland iirc the number (never mind the proportion) of rented stock peaked in about 2015. After that the proportion fell sharply.
In England the % of owner occupiers has increased in something like 6 out of the last 8 years, and has increased from 62.6% in 2017 to 64.8% in 2024. The history is that it was ~70% around 2000 through till 2007, fell for the next 10 years, and then the trend reversed.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/286503/england-propportion-of-owner-occupied-households/
This is one reason why I generally stay off these debates on PB now; facts and data don't apply - and it is usually in the main a swapping of faith-positions.
LOL.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/03/08/rasmussen-538-polling/
Genuine question. Are they not? American pollsters are so confusing
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/14/us-congress-passes-bill-allowing-sale-of-aukus-nuclear-submarines-to-australia
They so pro Trump in their polling.
538 dropped from their panel.
Somebody who was surveyed once posted a screen shot of the questions, it wasn't far off asking
'Who do you want running the economy, Donald Trump who has delivered record breaking growth/jobs or Joe Biden who when he was Obama's VP destroyed the economy.'
The Australians are highly unlikely to get any Virginias and SSN-AUKUS must be doubtful given they haven't even finished Astute yet and will follow on with a very delayed Dreadnought programme before possibly initiating an Astute replacement. The Australians run a significant risk of not getting any submarines at all through AUKUS.
The French design is ready to build if the Australians go for the nuclear version rather than a diesel variant.
https://warontherocks.com/2025/03/when-it-comes-to-submarines-australia-is-going-to-be-left-high-and-dry/
Nonetheless, Uruguay!
My brother, who has a deeply juvenile sense of humour, has told me that when I am there I should pronounce it "You're a gay" but do it with a total straight face indicating that I really believe this is how to pronounce it
Then I can go into bars and say "I love it here, why not, it's great, I mean" - pointing at nearest local rugby player -
"Who wouldn't love it. You're a gay!"
I'd get killed but it would be funny (or so he thinks)
Well, any Welshman for starters
Do the Americans not have a version of the BPC that vets all these pollsters so you can spot the duds?
Couldn’t imagine it was 60-26…
https://newrepublic.com/post/186444/conservative-poll-rasmussen-secretly-worked-trump-team