It didn't START in America - economic optimism has been crashing since Labour started talking down the economy and then kicked the private sector in the balls with their disastrous budget and employment regulations and various other socialist stupidities. And the lower energy prices that Trump's incompetence has caused may actually help us more than the reduction in trade hurts. It's not clear how that will play out yet.
Unlike Labour's incompetence, which is plain for everybody to see.
Trump probably hasn't helped much, but this is almost entirely home-grown.
The turmoil in the markets started with Trump.
Ah, it’s all Trumps fault and labour are blameless 👍
That's really your take ? Certainly wasn't bondegezou's.
Fishing was right about economic optimism. It was falling well before the market correction and a lot of it is very much homegrown.
Reeves's budget was three months too late and the NI rises most likely an error alongside retaining the canning of major infrastructure projects like HS2, but Hunt's NI giveaway was dereliction of duty and should have been reversed on July 5th. However compared to how Trump has subsequently crashed the World all those calamities are but mere trifles.
You are engaging in class A delusion if you think Labour is going to be able to palm its disastrous economic mismanagement off on Trump.
Fuck me, the level of analysis this morning is poor. The employment rate in the UK is nearly the highest it's ever been, is very high in international comparison, and most of those not in the labour supply are minted early retirees and students. The extreme level of whining about workshy claimants is wildly out of proportion to their impact on the public finances.
I'm not even going to touch the bollocks around CGT. My only observation is a country set up to retain the rich entrenches inequality and is ultimately unsustainable. There will be a crunch sooner or later, as you run out of middle income people to tax and end up with an untouchable highly mobile elite and an underclass of people in poverty who cannot contribute any tax.
The employment rate is well below the pre-COVID rate.
A catastrophic fall from 76.5 to 75.1.
~650k additional people inactive or unemployed most of whom will be on some kind of income support/benefit, from generating ~£4bn worth of income tax and NI that group will be in receipt of close to £10bn in benefits and other income support, a net of -£14bn for the state.
In addition, if we compare the trend rate pre-COVID to now we'd be at close to 78% employment which is the delta we should be comparing, not to the actual peak. The loss of income and additional spending from sickness benefits and lax assessments is costing the nation £25bn in lost revenue and additional spending. I don't know about you but I've got better places to spend £25bn than having working age people sitting at home doing the square root of fuck all pretending to be sad.
On topic, April bill rises have kicked in, as have higher price/tax/wage costs/tarrifs all round but with no commensurate increase in real-terms pay. People (rightly) see more of the same coming down the line and no real plan to tackle it. And they're not sure it can be.
So, the squeeze of the last three years is continuing. They are not exactly full of the joys of May, and rightly so.
Tariffs is the odd one out there. They don’t contribute to UK cost of living. In fact they have probably had a deflationary effect so far, both through dumping and the oil price. It’s the American consumer they screw, not us.
The damage from Trump’s shenanigans has been the market turmoil, including the rise in UK gilt yields which badly need to uncouple from the US.
Real terms pay is doing OK at the moment. The fundamentals for the worker aren’t bad, certainly much better than in 2022/3 at the height of the Ukraine inflation spike, but they’re still shit for government finances.
Imagine heading into this with a government that decided to cut borrowing rather than add to it, gilts would have uncoupled from treasuries very early on. Instead the call centre manager decided to add £60bn per year for public sector pay rises and lower growth and markets are pricing in much higher gilt supply. Absolutely self inflicted. The government should have cut spending by £30-40bn per year and reduced borrowing to build up much more fiscal headroom. Cutting headcount is still the only way to do it, eventually the government is going to have to do it, but the closer we get to an election the more resentment there will be among the people who are let go and their families. Such a completely stupid decision not to do it on day one.
"Cutting headcount" would not save "£30-40bn per year". What would you actually cut to save that amount ?
I'm not saying it's impossible - look for example at the Greek retrenchment - but you need to be honest about the process.
Public sector headcount, benefits, state and public sector pensions. All three need to be cut.
I don't disagree that reform is needed - I think we need to remake the state at a wholesale level. What I would challenge is the detail of how you think we should do it:
Public Sector Headcount - many layers of management could be cut and I'm sure there will be a few agencies we could merge / remove without issue. But in there we have stuff like the Passport Office, DVLA etc - and service from these is already dire. If you cut heads without reform you'll find the service collapses and that makes for unhappy voters.
Benefits - we already pay poverty-level numbers for practically everything. Compare our unemployment pay, our maternity pay, our sick pay - we get so little compared to our neighbours. If you cut these further you cut cash which directly recirculates through the local economy which means less businesses and less jobs. And we pay a ludicrous amount of in-work support to people where their wages are insufficient to pay their bills. I'm happy to plan to abolish these subsidies to big business but you can't just cut them without a dire effect on the economy
Pensions? I take the point. Gold plated seems like an understatement for many of them. At the same time our state pension is very low compared to competitor economies close-by. I would look to rebalance as much as cut.
My challenge on all of this is that you can't cut provision and assume the demand goes away. Its not a zero sum game where you cut one side of the equation with zero cost added to the other side. Make a lot of people much poorer and you tank the economy - which creates many other problems.
Which is why wholesale reform is needed. Cutting our way to growth has been tried and it always fails. The system we have doesn't work, so we need to change the system.
While you say benefits are very low - and for say a single healthy person out of a job they are - they are also cumulative, so if you can persuade the state you are ill, and/or disabled, and/or have a family, there are plenty of people getting benefits they would have to earn £30k+ a year to match, and who find themselves so comfortably off they can't be arsed to work. Similarly with pensions, where as you point out the state pension is comparatively small and many pensioners have to depend on benefits to pay the rent, or have small personal pensions and would suffer if you tunkered with say NI
Sure - the welfare state has completely lost sight of its purpose - a generous safety net when needed. Its no longer generous, and it captures people.
Here's my basic problem. The small numbers who "can't be arsed to work" get weaponised to beat into submission the genuinely sick / poor / uninformed.
Welfare is a better option than work because work doesn't pay the bills. I keep referring back to Iain Duncan Smith's reforming zeal. He was up in the valleys (I think Merthyr Tydfil) talking to people who were out of work, pointing at all the jobs and prosperity in Cardiff.
Yes, but these are shift jobs. Where public transport stops too early, and is too expensive when it does run, and we have kids.
This is the issue. "Just cut the benefit" (and I despise that word) isn't the solution. Make work viable is the solution, but the right have zero interest in doing so and the left have zero interest in reforming the welfare state.
Or revive the high street so it is not just mainly warehouse and delivery work on offer. Even Trump to be fair to him is trying to revive mass manufacturing work with his tariffs and build more factories in the US, even if his tariffs use a sledgehammer to crack a nut
How do you "revive the high street" when more and more people prefer to shop online? More and more the high street is made up of "service" business and alleged fronts for money laundering and illegal immigration such as nail bars and barbers. (And a new one - corner shops - which in one way is welcome but we have had three open in one one-mile stretch of high street, where there are 2 supermarkets, in recent months)
Add to that: bubble tea outlets, and weird artisanal cake shops
I think the miscreants have realised Turkish barbers, vape shops and American candy stores have been rumbled
Two of my daughters are mad for bubble tea. Chosen outlet is a weird-smelling Chinese shop in the back streets. I don’t think this one is a front – it largely caters to the HK immigrants, of whom we have a huge number. We also have weird artisanal cake shops – and also ‘dessert bars’. My take is that he former are set up by hopelessly optimistic amateur bakers looking to monetise their (impressive, but uncommercial) hobby; the latter are set up by hopelessly optimistic Muslims in the expectation that a business model which works in teetotal countries will transfer to the UK. Neither tend to last long.
My main objection to the vape shops, American candy stores, and Turkish barbers is that they are so ugly. If I was operating a front organisation, I wouldn’t plaster it in flashing lights and bright pinks.
Yes exactly. I find them much easier to tolerate if they make a tiny bit of effort to be attractive. The bubble tea outlets and dessert bars (we have them as well) generally do, the hideous candy stores and vape shops, never
AI posts are banned from one particular user yet they now seem to be able to post them if they were from a "friend". I do not want to see this site bogged down with nonsensical gibberish from AI every day (and I work in software engineering where it's unfortunately becoming commonplace). I like coming here to read actual expert opinions on certain topics. Please can we keep it that way?
Can somebody correlate Labour's terrible record with the fact they are - with I think one exception - virtually neck and neck with Reform? Why aren't Reform running away with it?
Could it be explained by the figures of the leaders, who are all as unpopular as each other.
Badenoch scored her first "win" in my view with the response to the trans issue, which to be fair to her she seems to have backed for a long time.
But what else would she do? Does she want to change the planning system? Does she want to bring back the WFA changes, what will she cut instead?
As for Reform, how exactly will they stop the boats? Has anyone actually asked them?
The Green Party have got themselves into an absolute mess over trans rights, they've managed to make Labour look sensible. Their voteshare will collapse before any election.
Govts get the blame. Suspect numbers are so low in part because Lab supporters also feel gloomy thanks to Trump. The saving grace for Labour might be recent memories of Tory incompetence...
The latter simply means unhappy voters will go to Reform, or LibDem/Green, instead of turning to Kemi's lot.
What I find notable about the rise of the Fukkers is how unarsed the pb.com tories are about it as Mrs Badenough drives the tory charabanc off Beach Head and sends their polling to Trussian levels. Even HYUFD seems to be chill with it because apparently KB might get a job as Welsh Secretary in Farage's cabinet.
I suspect they are comfortable with Aunty Nige because Nige promises those gifts they desire but dare not ask for, like sending Johnny Foreigner home, selling off the NHS for tax cuts, reintroducing selective education at aged 11 and (although Nigel isn't on board yet) hanging Lucy Letby.
Albeit many Reform voters think Letby is innocent
How do we know that? I suspect quite a lot of people across the spectrum believe there is doubt in the case, at the least (I am one). But I don't recall a specific survey of voting intentions plus Letby beliefs...
There seems to be a desire to turn the Letby case into a culture war symbol. I come from the point of view that
1) There are questions. 2) Asking and answering such questions is a fundamental part of the justice system 3) There have been many miscarriages of justice in the past. 4) Anyone who tries the "But it will damage the system" argument for not asking questions is an idiot.
Although most miscarriages of justice are guilty people getting off.
The successful mathematical reasoning of AI (from Google summary):
National Trust annual membership for seniors (age 60 or over) is £72 for individual membership and £120.60 for joint membership. If you've been a member for at least the last three consecutive years, you can also apply for a 25% discount, bringing the price down to £72 for individual senior membership and £120.60 for joint senior membership.
When you go to a NT property, it never changes. All that old stuff all the time.
Although, the slavery stuff is new...
I have no issue with the NT revising what it presents at its properties. I think context is crucial. I do wonder at how accurate and unbiased some of the approach is though. If you invested in certain ventures in the 18th century you were almost certainly gaining wealth on the backs of slaves. But were the investors consciously choosing to invest in slavery? What was there world view? And are they any different from people in 2025 with diverse porfolios that include companies with questionable practices?
We are increasingly judgemental about people raised and living in different times, with different social norms. We often seem to lack the awareness to realise that we, too, are products of our times. My father, born in 1939, comes out with extremely racist comments. Not because of any inherent nasty racist streak but because he was born into an overwhelmingly white society, and was not born and raised in modern multicultural Britain.
AI posts are banned from one particular user yet they now seem to be able to post them if they were from a "friend". I do not want to see this site bogged down with nonsensical gibberish from AI every day (and I work in software engineering where it's unfortunately becoming commonplace). I like coming here to read actual expert opinions on certain topics. Please can we keep it that way?
Can somebody correlate Labour's terrible record with the fact they are - with I think one exception - virtually neck and neck with Reform? Why aren't Reform running away with it?
Could it be explained by the figures of the leaders, who are all as unpopular as each other.
Badenoch scored her first "win" in my view with the response to the trans issue, which to be fair to her she seems to have backed for a long time.
But what else would she do? Does she want to change the planning system? Does she want to bring back the WFA changes, what will she cut instead?
As for Reform, how exactly will they stop the boats? Has anyone actually asked them?
There was a difference from the AI spamming that our friend on his travels posted ad infinitum and the odd post purporting to be from a 'friend'. I have no issue with it and frankly, those posts are so often wrong that they rather make a point about how useless AI can be.
Robert Jenrick is the latest politician to have an ‘action man’ makeover. But does it work? Dramatic weight loss and a new haircut normally means one thing in politics: a leadership bid is on the way
Boris Johnson said it best. “If an otherwise healthy middle-aged man displays sudden weight loss, I reasoned, there are only two possible explanations,” he wrote in a newspaper column in 2023. “Either he has fallen hopelessly in love, or else he is about to mount a Tory leadership bid.” https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/04/28/politicians-action-man-makeover-jenrick-cameron-vance/ (£££)
Fuck me, the level of analysis this morning is poor. The employment rate in the UK is nearly the highest it's ever been, is very high in international comparison, and most of those not in the labour supply are minted early retirees and students. The extreme level of whining about workshy claimants is wildly out of proportion to their impact on the public finances.
I'm not even going to touch the bollocks around CGT. My only observation is a country set up to retain the rich entrenches inequality and is ultimately unsustainable. There will be a crunch sooner or later, as you run out of middle income people to tax and end up with an untouchable highly mobile elite and an underclass of people in poverty who cannot contribute any tax.
The employment rate is well below the pre-COVID rate.
A catastrophic fall from 76.5 to 75.1. it was about 70% in 2011, for a reference point.
Let me guess, your figures exclude economically inactive?
The economically inactive rate is 21.8%, compared with 20.8% pre-pandemic. Again, in 2010 it was 23.5%. In the 80s it was over 25%.
I think Max makes a good point about trends, but what's so concerning about inactivity is that even before the pandemic, ill health as a reason for it was increasing as a steady long term trend. And it wasn't just mental health - physical health issues continue to grow (particularly older men), and remain the biggest reason for it, by some distance.
AI posts are banned from one particular user yet they now seem to be able to post them if they were from a "friend". I do not want to see this site bogged down with nonsensical gibberish from AI every day (and I work in software engineering where it's unfortunately becoming commonplace). I like coming here to read actual expert opinions on certain topics. Please can we keep it that way?
Can somebody correlate Labour's terrible record with the fact they are - with I think one exception - virtually neck and neck with Reform? Why aren't Reform running away with it?
Could it be explained by the figures of the leaders, who are all as unpopular as each other.
Badenoch scored her first "win" in my view with the response to the trans issue, which to be fair to her she seems to have backed for a long time.
But what else would she do? Does she want to change the planning system? Does she want to bring back the WFA changes, what will she cut instead?
As for Reform, how exactly will they stop the boats? Has anyone actually asked them?
There was a difference from the AI spamming that our friend on his travels posted ad infinitum and the odd post purporting to be from a 'friend'. I have no issue with it and frankly, those posts are so often wrong that they rather make a point about how useless AI can be.
And yet a good proportion of you are now clearly using that technology to enhance your comments - or sometimes make them whole, from broad cloth - and 98% of you don’t notice
I have noticed. I’ve also noticed that these comments often get MORE likes than others
Look for commenters whose prose style abruptly improves, or has done so, recently
On topic, April bill rises have kicked in, as have higher price/tax/wage costs/tarrifs all round but with no commensurate increase in real-terms pay. People (rightly) see more of the same coming down the line and no real plan to tackle it. And they're not sure it can be.
So, the squeeze of the last three years is continuing. They are not exactly full of the joys of May, and rightly so.
Tariffs is the odd one out there. They don’t contribute to UK cost of living. In fact they have probably had a deflationary effect so far, both through dumping and the oil price. It’s the American consumer they screw, not us.
The damage from Trump’s shenanigans has been the market turmoil, including the rise in UK gilt yields which badly need to uncouple from the US.
Real terms pay is doing OK at the moment. The fundamentals for the worker aren’t bad, certainly much better than in 2022/3 at the height of the Ukraine inflation spike, but they’re still shit for government finances.
Imagine heading into this with a government that decided to cut borrowing rather than add to it, gilts would have uncoupled from treasuries very early on. Instead the call centre manager decided to add £60bn per year for public sector pay rises and lower growth and markets are pricing in much higher gilt supply. Absolutely self inflicted. The government should have cut spending by £30-40bn per year and reduced borrowing to build up much more fiscal headroom. Cutting headcount is still the only way to do it, eventually the government is going to have to do it, but the closer we get to an election the more resentment there will be among the people who are let go and their families. Such a completely stupid decision not to do it on day one.
"Cutting headcount" would not save "£30-40bn per year". What would you actually cut to save that amount ?
I'm not saying it's impossible - look for example at the Greek retrenchment - but you need to be honest about the process.
Public sector headcount, benefits, state and public sector pensions. All three need to be cut.
I don't disagree that reform is needed - I think we need to remake the state at a wholesale level. What I would challenge is the detail of how you think we should do it:
Public Sector Headcount - many layers of management could be cut and I'm sure there will be a few agencies we could merge / remove without issue. But in there we have stuff like the Passport Office, DVLA etc - and service from these is already dire. If you cut heads without reform you'll find the service collapses and that makes for unhappy voters.
Benefits - we already pay poverty-level numbers for practically everything. Compare our unemployment pay, our maternity pay, our sick pay - we get so little compared to our neighbours. If you cut these further you cut cash which directly recirculates through the local economy which means less businesses and less jobs. And we pay a ludicrous amount of in-work support to people where their wages are insufficient to pay their bills. I'm happy to plan to abolish these subsidies to big business but you can't just cut them without a dire effect on the economy
Pensions? I take the point. Gold plated seems like an understatement for many of them. At the same time our state pension is very low compared to competitor economies close-by. I would look to rebalance as much as cut.
My challenge on all of this is that you can't cut provision and assume the demand goes away. Its not a zero sum game where you cut one side of the equation with zero cost added to the other side. Make a lot of people much poorer and you tank the economy - which creates many other problems.
Which is why wholesale reform is needed. Cutting our way to growth has been tried and it always fails. The system we have doesn't work, so we need to change the system.
While you say benefits are very low - and for say a single healthy person out of a job they are - they are also cumulative, so if you can persuade the state you are ill, and/or disabled, and/or have a family, there are plenty of people getting benefits they would have to earn £30k+ a year to match, and who find themselves so comfortably off they can't be arsed to work. Similarly with pensions, where as you point out the state pension is comparatively small and many pensioners have to depend on benefits to pay the rent, or have small personal pensions and would suffer if you tunkered with say NI
Sure - the welfare state has completely lost sight of its purpose - a generous safety net when needed. Its no longer generous, and it captures people.
Here's my basic problem. The small numbers who "can't be arsed to work" get weaponised to beat into submission the genuinely sick / poor / uninformed.
Welfare is a better option than work because work doesn't pay the bills. I keep referring back to Iain Duncan Smith's reforming zeal. He was up in the valleys (I think Merthyr Tydfil) talking to people who were out of work, pointing at all the jobs and prosperity in Cardiff.
Yes, but these are shift jobs. Where public transport stops too early, and is too expensive when it does run, and we have kids.
This is the issue. "Just cut the benefit" (and I despise that word) isn't the solution. Make work viable is the solution, but the right have zero interest in doing so and the left have zero interest in reforming the welfare state.
Or revive the high street so it is not just mainly warehouse and delivery work on offer. Even Trump to be fair to him is trying to revive mass manufacturing work with his tariffs and build more factories in the US, even if his tariffs use a sledgehammer to crack a nut
How do you "revive the high street" when more and more people prefer to shop online? More and more the high street is made up of "service" business and alleged fronts for money laundering and illegal immigration such as nail bars and barbers. (And a new one - corner shops - which in one way is welcome but we have had three open in one one-mile stretch of high street, where there are 2 supermarkets, in recent months)
Add to that: bubble tea outlets, and weird artisanal cake shops
I think the miscreants have realised Turkish barbers, vape shops and American candy stores have been rumbled
Given the frequency my colleagues found an excuse to buy cakes for the office, you might think the cake shops have a market, however it was almost always supermarket cakes and Costco. Having had a couple of recent opportunities to buy cake myself, I realised how cheap it is, even from Waitrose, and on perpetual discount. So maybe the artisanal cake makers are just as dodgy. One of my colleagues had a side hustle in cupcakes, and they were very nice (when I allowed myself some carbs) but she has never spoken of trying to make a living out of it.
Govts get the blame. Suspect numbers are so low in part because Lab supporters also feel gloomy thanks to Trump. The saving grace for Labour might be recent memories of Tory incompetence...
The latter simply means unhappy voters will go to Reform, or LibDem/Green, instead of turning to Kemi's lot.
What I find notable about the rise of the Fukkers is how unarsed the pb.com tories are about it as Mrs Badenough drives the tory charabanc off Beach Head and sends their polling to Trussian levels. Even HYUFD seems to be chill with it because apparently KB might get a job as Welsh Secretary in Farage's cabinet.
I suspect they are comfortable with Aunty Nige because Nige promises those gifts they desire but dare not ask for, like sending Johnny Foreigner home, selling off the NHS for tax cuts, reintroducing selective education at aged 11 and (although Nigel isn't on board yet) hanging Lucy Letby.
Albeit many Reform voters think Letby is innocent
How do we know that? I suspect quite a lot of people across the spectrum believe there is doubt in the case, at the least (I am one). But I don't recall a specific survey of voting intentions plus Letby beliefs...
There seems to be a desire to turn the Letby case into a culture war symbol. I come from the point of view that
1) There are questions. 2) Asking and answering such questions is a fundamental part of the justice system 3) There have been many miscarriages of justice in the past. 4) Anyone who tries the "But it will damage the system" argument for not asking questions is an idiot.
Although most miscarriages of justice are guilty people getting off.
Guilty people getting off is just a natural result of the standard of proof in criminal trials. And if the process has gone badly wrong, even the conviction of a guilty person can be a miscarriage of justice.
Violent crime suspects may lose right to jury to clear court backlog Minister says the establishment of an intermediate court is ‘an idea whose time has probably come’ to tackle the 80,000 cases waiting to be heard
Defendants accused of violent crimes and drug dealing will be among those to lose their automatic right to a jury trial under plans backed by ministers to clear the court backlog.
Violent crime suspects may lose right to jury to clear court backlog Minister says the establishment of an intermediate court is ‘an idea whose time has probably come’ to tackle the 80,000 cases waiting to be heard
Defendants accused of violent crimes and drug dealing will be among those to lose their automatic right to a jury trial under plans backed by ministers to clear the court backlog.
{narrator : The intermediate courts proposed (again), will require a panel of 3 judges, each. Which means a huge increase in job opportunities for barristers. They aren't much cheaper, as courts, than a judge and jury }
On topic, April bill rises have kicked in, as have higher price/tax/wage costs/tarrifs all round but with no commensurate increase in real-terms pay. People (rightly) see more of the same coming down the line and no real plan to tackle it. And they're not sure it can be.
So, the squeeze of the last three years is continuing. They are not exactly full of the joys of May, and rightly so.
Tariffs is the odd one out there. They don’t contribute to UK cost of living. In fact they have probably had a deflationary effect so far, both through dumping and the oil price. It’s the American consumer they screw, not us.
The damage from Trump’s shenanigans has been the market turmoil, including the rise in UK gilt yields which badly need to uncouple from the US.
Real terms pay is doing OK at the moment. The fundamentals for the worker aren’t bad, certainly much better than in 2022/3 at the height of the Ukraine inflation spike, but they’re still shit for government finances.
Imagine heading into this with a government that decided to cut borrowing rather than add to it, gilts would have uncoupled from treasuries very early on. Instead the call centre manager decided to add £60bn per year for public sector pay rises and lower growth and markets are pricing in much higher gilt supply. Absolutely self inflicted. The government should have cut spending by £30-40bn per year and reduced borrowing to build up much more fiscal headroom. Cutting headcount is still the only way to do it, eventually the government is going to have to do it, but the closer we get to an election the more resentment there will be among the people who are let go and their families. Such a completely stupid decision not to do it on day one.
"Cutting headcount" would not save "£30-40bn per year". What would you actually cut to save that amount ?
I'm not saying it's impossible - look for example at the Greek retrenchment - but you need to be honest about the process.
Public sector headcount, benefits, state and public sector pensions. All three need to be cut.
I don't disagree that reform is needed - I think we need to remake the state at a wholesale level. What I would challenge is the detail of how you think we should do it:
Public Sector Headcount - many layers of management could be cut and I'm sure there will be a few agencies we could merge / remove without issue. But in there we have stuff like the Passport Office, DVLA etc - and service from these is already dire. If you cut heads without reform you'll find the service collapses and that makes for unhappy voters.
Benefits - we already pay poverty-level numbers for practically everything. Compare our unemployment pay, our maternity pay, our sick pay - we get so little compared to our neighbours. If you cut these further you cut cash which directly recirculates through the local economy which means less businesses and less jobs. And we pay a ludicrous amount of in-work support to people where their wages are insufficient to pay their bills. I'm happy to plan to abolish these subsidies to big business but you can't just cut them without a dire effect on the economy
Pensions? I take the point. Gold plated seems like an understatement for many of them. At the same time our state pension is very low compared to competitor economies close-by. I would look to rebalance as much as cut.
My challenge on all of this is that you can't cut provision and assume the demand goes away. Its not a zero sum game where you cut one side of the equation with zero cost added to the other side. Make a lot of people much poorer and you tank the economy - which creates many other problems.
Which is why wholesale reform is needed. Cutting our way to growth has been tried and it always fails. The system we have doesn't work, so we need to change the system.
While you say benefits are very low - and for say a single healthy person out of a job they are - they are also cumulative, so if you can persuade the state you are ill, and/or disabled, and/or have a family, there are plenty of people getting benefits they would have to earn £30k+ a year to match, and who find themselves so comfortably off they can't be arsed to work. Similarly with pensions, where as you point out the state pension is comparatively small and many pensioners have to depend on benefits to pay the rent, or have small personal pensions and would suffer if you tunkered with say NI
Sure - the welfare state has completely lost sight of its purpose - a generous safety net when needed. Its no longer generous, and it captures people.
Here's my basic problem. The small numbers who "can't be arsed to work" get weaponised to beat into submission the genuinely sick / poor / uninformed.
Welfare is a better option than work because work doesn't pay the bills. I keep referring back to Iain Duncan Smith's reforming zeal. He was up in the valleys (I think Merthyr Tydfil) talking to people who were out of work, pointing at all the jobs and prosperity in Cardiff.
Yes, but these are shift jobs. Where public transport stops too early, and is too expensive when it does run, and we have kids.
This is the issue. "Just cut the benefit" (and I despise that word) isn't the solution. Make work viable is the solution, but the right have zero interest in doing so and the left have zero interest in reforming the welfare state.
Or revive the high street so it is not just mainly warehouse and delivery work on offer. Even Trump to be fair to him is trying to revive mass manufacturing work with his tariffs and build more factories in the US, even if his tariffs use a sledgehammer to crack a nut
How do you "revive the high street" when more and more people prefer to shop online? More and more the high street is made up of "service" business and alleged fronts for money laundering and illegal immigration such as nail bars and barbers. (And a new one - corner shops - which in one way is welcome but we have had three open in one one-mile stretch of high street, where there are 2 supermarkets, in recent months)
Add to that: bubble tea outlets, and weird artisanal cake shops
I think the miscreants have realised Turkish barbers, vape shops and American candy stores have been rumbled
Given the frequency my colleagues found an excuse to buy cakes for the office, you might think the cake shops have a market, however it was almost always supermarket cakes and Costco. Having had a couple of recent opportunities to buy cake myself, I realised how cheap it is, even from Waitrose, and on perpetual discount. So maybe the artisanal cake makers are just as dodgy. One of my colleagues had a side hustle in cupcakes, and they were very nice (when I allowed myself some carbs) but she has never spoken of trying to make a living out of it.
Wife (and I to an extent) are keen on craft markets etc. But its really sad wandering round looking at often beautiful objects that people do not want to pay the prices for. Its incredibly tough to hand make craft and get someone to pay you enough to do it as a job, rather than a hobby.
I knit for a hobby and people will often ask about whether I sell stuff. The brutal truth is that it takes too long to make and would be too expensive to buy. A handmake, pure wool jumper with be 60-80 pounds for the wool alone, plus 30-50 hours of handwork, so realistically you need to charge in the several hundreds to get anything out of it at all. As a hobby its fine, but not a career.
Violent crime suspects may lose right to jury to clear court backlog Minister says the establishment of an intermediate court is ‘an idea whose time has probably come’ to tackle the 80,000 cases waiting to be heard
Defendants accused of violent crimes and drug dealing will be among those to lose their automatic right to a jury trial under plans backed by ministers to clear the court backlog.
Violent crime suspects may lose right to jury to clear court backlog Minister says the establishment of an intermediate court is ‘an idea whose time has probably come’ to tackle the 80,000 cases waiting to be heard
Defendants accused of violent crimes and drug dealing will be among those to lose their automatic right to a jury trial under plans backed by ministers to clear the court backlog.
{narrator : The intermediate courts proposed (again), will require a panel of 3 judges, each. Which means a huge increase in job opportunities for barristers. They aren't much cheaper, as courts than a judge and jury }
Would the court cases be shorter though? As if you can handle 3 cases in x days rather than 2 that’s got to be an improvement
AI posts are banned from one particular user yet they now seem to be able to post them if they were from a "friend". I do not want to see this site bogged down with nonsensical gibberish from AI every day (and I work in software engineering where it's unfortunately becoming commonplace). I like coming here to read actual expert opinions on certain topics. Please can we keep it that way?
Can somebody correlate Labour's terrible record with the fact they are - with I think one exception - virtually neck and neck with Reform? Why aren't Reform running away with it?
Could it be explained by the figures of the leaders, who are all as unpopular as each other.
Badenoch scored her first "win" in my view with the response to the trans issue, which to be fair to her she seems to have backed for a long time.
But what else would she do? Does she want to change the planning system? Does she want to bring back the WFA changes, what will she cut instead?
As for Reform, how exactly will they stop the boats? Has anyone actually asked them?
There was a difference from the AI spamming that our friend on his travels posted ad infinitum and the odd post purporting to be from a 'friend'. I have no issue with it and frankly, those posts are so often wrong that they rather make a point about how useless AI can be.
I would have thought that by now most people would have sussed that LLM-based AIs are great for fuzzy stuff like adjusting style, summarizing text and making general suggestions but absolutely useless at providing factual information. Like all tools, they can be both used and misused.
Violent crime suspects may lose right to jury to clear court backlog Minister says the establishment of an intermediate court is ‘an idea whose time has probably come’ to tackle the 80,000 cases waiting to be heard
Defendants accused of violent crimes and drug dealing will be among those to lose their automatic right to a jury trial under plans backed by ministers to clear the court backlog.
The feeling of being in a country with a median age of 25 (Kyrgyzstan) is quite remarkable (and the capital Bishkek is probably lower than even that). It affects every single moment of the waking day
As you look up there are young people (very often beautiful young women but I’ll stop perving to make this point). Around the corner: more young people. Across the road, loads of young people. Young people laugh a lot. They chatter excitedly. They gather in parks and coffee shops and talk optimistically about the future
And then there are kids. Billions of kids. Schools overflowing. Anyone over 30 has about nine kids
They are also apparently free and the sexes are decidedly equal
It has a downside. An old git like me can feel like Gandalf in the shire. The screaming babies irritate
But overall it’s a wonderful feeling - of hope and youth and beauty and ambition and drive and good spirits
I wonder how much of the malaise of the west is simply down to the fact we’re getting old. When did Britain last have a median age of 25?
I think this is absolutely right. There is an optimism and dynamism that comes with having a younger population - I have three children aged 12-18 and I love their energy and the sense of the world opening up for them. But at the same time there is no iron rule that says we have to become grumpy and insular as we get older. Especially as our society ages, I think it behoves us all to try to stay young in our attitudes - keep learning, keep engaging, keep taking risks.
A rare moment of total agreement. This is one reason I travel so much. I love travel of course - and I’m very lucky to do it for free half the time and get paid as well - but it is a chore also. The early rising (5am tomorrow ugh). The airports. The faff. The sheer physical stress of lugging luggage, perpetually
But I am pretty sure it keeps me younger. Going to a new country is like a workout for the brain and the mind. The exertion is like doing weights, dealing with a new language and new situations is like doing exams
Plus it keeps you curious about the world - incuriosity is terribly ageing. Complacency. I know what I like. Etc
I am typing this in the main square of Bishkek Kyrgyzstan, which is to the point
And on that note I am off to buy a souvenir. I’m not sure if Kyrgyzstan does souvenirs. All the guidebooks say is “buy a felt hat”. lol. When I am ever going to wear a felt hat?
Later!
I have been following your travels round ex-Soviet Central Asia with interest. I have long had Uzbekistan in my bucket list, but now I am able to travel for longer I am thinking I should do a longer trip and see more of the 'Stans. I believe visas are no longer much of an issue. What is your assessment of the costs, nothing in detail maybe as compared with other well-known destinations. Nothing fancy, budget 3* hotels, public transport, locals' restaurants
On topic, April bill rises have kicked in, as have higher price/tax/wage costs/tarrifs all round but with no commensurate increase in real-terms pay. People (rightly) see more of the same coming down the line and no real plan to tackle it. And they're not sure it can be.
So, the squeeze of the last three years is continuing. They are not exactly full of the joys of May, and rightly so.
Tariffs is the odd one out there. They don’t contribute to UK cost of living. In fact they have probably had a deflationary effect so far, both through dumping and the oil price. It’s the American consumer they screw, not us.
The damage from Trump’s shenanigans has been the market turmoil, including the rise in UK gilt yields which badly need to uncouple from the US.
Real terms pay is doing OK at the moment. The fundamentals for the worker aren’t bad, certainly much better than in 2022/3 at the height of the Ukraine inflation spike, but they’re still shit for government finances.
Imagine heading into this with a government that decided to cut borrowing rather than add to it, gilts would have uncoupled from treasuries very early on. Instead the call centre manager decided to add £60bn per year for public sector pay rises and lower growth and markets are pricing in much higher gilt supply. Absolutely self inflicted. The government should have cut spending by £30-40bn per year and reduced borrowing to build up much more fiscal headroom. Cutting headcount is still the only way to do it, eventually the government is going to have to do it, but the closer we get to an election the more resentment there will be among the people who are let go and their families. Such a completely stupid decision not to do it on day one.
"Cutting headcount" would not save "£30-40bn per year". What would you actually cut to save that amount ?
I'm not saying it's impossible - look for example at the Greek retrenchment - but you need to be honest about the process.
Public sector headcount, benefits, state and public sector pensions. All three need to be cut.
I don't disagree that reform is needed - I think we need to remake the state at a wholesale level. What I would challenge is the detail of how you think we should do it:
Public Sector Headcount - many layers of management could be cut and I'm sure there will be a few agencies we could merge / remove without issue. But in there we have stuff like the Passport Office, DVLA etc - and service from these is already dire. If you cut heads without reform you'll find the service collapses and that makes for unhappy voters.
Benefits - we already pay poverty-level numbers for practically everything. Compare our unemployment pay, our maternity pay, our sick pay - we get so little compared to our neighbours. If you cut these further you cut cash which directly recirculates through the local economy which means less businesses and less jobs. And we pay a ludicrous amount of in-work support to people where their wages are insufficient to pay their bills. I'm happy to plan to abolish these subsidies to big business but you can't just cut them without a dire effect on the economy
Pensions? I take the point. Gold plated seems like an understatement for many of them. At the same time our state pension is very low compared to competitor economies close-by. I would look to rebalance as much as cut.
My challenge on all of this is that you can't cut provision and assume the demand goes away. Its not a zero sum game where you cut one side of the equation with zero cost added to the other side. Make a lot of people much poorer and you tank the economy - which creates many other problems.
Which is why wholesale reform is needed. Cutting our way to growth has been tried and it always fails. The system we have doesn't work, so we need to change the system.
While you say benefits are very low - and for say a single healthy person out of a job they are - they are also cumulative, so if you can persuade the state you are ill, and/or disabled, and/or have a family, there are plenty of people getting benefits they would have to earn £30k+ a year to match, and who find themselves so comfortably off they can't be arsed to work. Similarly with pensions, where as you point out the state pension is comparatively small and many pensioners have to depend on benefits to pay the rent, or have small personal pensions and would suffer if you tunkered with say NI
Sure - the welfare state has completely lost sight of its purpose - a generous safety net when needed. Its no longer generous, and it captures people.
Here's my basic problem. The small numbers who "can't be arsed to work" get weaponised to beat into submission the genuinely sick / poor / uninformed.
Welfare is a better option than work because work doesn't pay the bills. I keep referring back to Iain Duncan Smith's reforming zeal. He was up in the valleys (I think Merthyr Tydfil) talking to people who were out of work, pointing at all the jobs and prosperity in Cardiff.
Yes, but these are shift jobs. Where public transport stops too early, and is too expensive when it does run, and we have kids.
This is the issue. "Just cut the benefit" (and I despise that word) isn't the solution. Make work viable is the solution, but the right have zero interest in doing so and the left have zero interest in reforming the welfare state.
Or revive the high street so it is not just mainly warehouse and delivery work on offer. Even Trump to be fair to him is trying to revive mass manufacturing work with his tariffs and build more factories in the US, even if his tariffs use a sledgehammer to crack a nut
How do you "revive the high street" when more and more people prefer to shop online? More and more the high street is made up of "service" business and alleged fronts for money laundering and illegal immigration such as nail bars and barbers. (And a new one - corner shops - which in one way is welcome but we have had three open in one one-mile stretch of high street, where there are 2 supermarkets, in recent months)
Add to that: bubble tea outlets, and weird artisanal cake shops
I think the miscreants have realised Turkish barbers, vape shops and American candy stores have been rumbled
Given the frequency my colleagues found an excuse to buy cakes for the office, you might think the cake shops have a market, however it was almost always supermarket cakes and Costco. Having had a couple of recent opportunities to buy cake myself, I realised how cheap it is, even from Waitrose, and on perpetual discount. So maybe the artisanal cake makers are just as dodgy. One of my colleagues had a side hustle in cupcakes, and they were very nice (when I allowed myself some carbs) but she has never spoken of trying to make a living out of it.
Britain does lack a culture of great cakes readily available on the high street, which is odd given our penchant for baking (eg Bake Off) and a noble tradition of brilliant cakes and puds
Here in bishkek I just had an excellent flat white with a nice fresh home made fruit tartlet. So maybe there is room for 1000 dessert bars in the UK! - as long as they have pretty shopfronts
It didn't START in America - economic optimism has been crashing since Labour started talking down the economy and then kicked the private sector in the balls with their disastrous budget and employment regulations and various other socialist stupidities. And the lower energy prices that Trump's incompetence has caused may actually help us more than the reduction in trade hurts. It's not clear how that will play out yet.
Unlike Labour's incompetence, which is plain for everybody to see.
Trump probably hasn't helped much, but this is almost entirely home-grown.
The turmoil in the markets started with Trump.
Ah, it’s all Trumps fault and labour are blameless 👍
That's really your take ? Certainly wasn't bondegezou's.
Fishing was right about economic optimism. It was falling well before the market correction and a lot of it is very much homegrown.
Reeves's budget was three months too late and the NI rises most likely an error alongside retaining the canning of major infrastructure projects like HS2, but Hunt's NI giveaway was dereliction of duty and should have been reversed on July 5th. However compared to how Trump has subsequently crashed the World all those calamities are but mere trifles.
You are engaging in class A delusion if you think Labour is going to be able to palm its disastrous economic mismanagement off on Trump.
Well they could have done but the time to have started pointing it out was in March and they haven’t.
The one thing this Government has been particularly crap at is setting the scene
Violent crime suspects may lose right to jury to clear court backlog Minister says the establishment of an intermediate court is ‘an idea whose time has probably come’ to tackle the 80,000 cases waiting to be heard
Defendants accused of violent crimes and drug dealing will be among those to lose their automatic right to a jury trial under plans backed by ministers to clear the court backlog.
MPs need to vote down this silly idea immediately. Trial by jury is a necessity.
Agreed. Otherwise we will see creep and the eventual end to juries for all crime.
Yes it will become a simple "efficiency saving" and slowly more types of crime will be pushed into this category until jury trial is no longer available to all but the most high profile cases.
Govts get the blame. Suspect numbers are so low in part because Lab supporters also feel gloomy thanks to Trump. The saving grace for Labour might be recent memories of Tory incompetence...
The latter simply means unhappy voters will go to Reform, or LibDem/Green, instead of turning to Kemi's lot.
What I find notable about the rise of the Fukkers is how unarsed the pb.com tories are about it as Mrs Badenough drives the tory charabanc off Beach Head and sends their polling to Trussian levels. Even HYUFD seems to be chill with it because apparently KB might get a job as Welsh Secretary in Farage's cabinet.
I suspect they are comfortable with Aunty Nige because Nige promises those gifts they desire but dare not ask for, like sending Johnny Foreigner home, selling off the NHS for tax cuts, reintroducing selective education at aged 11 and (although Nigel isn't on board yet) hanging Lucy Letby.
Albeit many Reform voters think Letby is innocent
How do we know that? I suspect quite a lot of people across the spectrum believe there is doubt in the case, at the least (I am one). But I don't recall a specific survey of voting intentions plus Letby beliefs...
There seems to be a desire to turn the Letby case into a culture war symbol. I come from the point of view that
1) There are questions. 2) Asking and answering such questions is a fundamental part of the justice system 3) There have been many miscarriages of justice in the past. 4) Anyone who tries the "But it will damage the system" argument for not asking questions is an idiot.
Although most miscarriages of justice are guilty people getting off.
Guilty people getting off is just a natural result of the standard of proof in criminal trials. And if the process has gone badly wrong, even the conviction of a guilty person can be a miscarriage of justice.
That's true. But you also get some pretty clear mistakes in favour of the defendant for one reason or another. It's not a one way street.
Violent crime suspects may lose right to jury to clear court backlog Minister says the establishment of an intermediate court is ‘an idea whose time has probably come’ to tackle the 80,000 cases waiting to be heard
Defendants accused of violent crimes and drug dealing will be among those to lose their automatic right to a jury trial under plans backed by ministers to clear the court backlog.
{narrator : The intermediate courts proposed (again), will require a panel of 3 judges, each. Which means a huge increase in job opportunities for barristers. They aren't much cheaper, as courts than a judge and jury }
Would the court cases be shorter though? As if you can handle 3 cases in x days rather than 2 that’s got to be an improvement
The Diplock courts in Northern Ireland didn't sit for less time. In fact, IIRC, the judges spent more time asking questions of witnesses and about evidence.
Violent crime suspects may lose right to jury to clear court backlog Minister says the establishment of an intermediate court is ‘an idea whose time has probably come’ to tackle the 80,000 cases waiting to be heard
Defendants accused of violent crimes and drug dealing will be among those to lose their automatic right to a jury trial under plans backed by ministers to clear the court backlog.
MPs need to vote down this silly idea immediately. Trial by jury is a necessity.
Agreed. Otherwise we will see creep and the eventual end to juries for all crime.
Yes it will become a simple "efficiency saving" and slowly more types of crime will be pushed into this category until jury trial is no longer available to all but the most high profile cases.
It will be like the proposed ID card system - non-jury trials for us, and jury trials for Important People. NU10K all the way...
Violent crime suspects may lose right to jury to clear court backlog Minister says the establishment of an intermediate court is ‘an idea whose time has probably come’ to tackle the 80,000 cases waiting to be heard
Defendants accused of violent crimes and drug dealing will be among those to lose their automatic right to a jury trial under plans backed by ministers to clear the court backlog.
On topic, April bill rises have kicked in, as have higher price/tax/wage costs/tarrifs all round but with no commensurate increase in real-terms pay. People (rightly) see more of the same coming down the line and no real plan to tackle it. And they're not sure it can be.
So, the squeeze of the last three years is continuing. They are not exactly full of the joys of May, and rightly so.
Tariffs is the odd one out there. They don’t contribute to UK cost of living. In fact they have probably had a deflationary effect so far, both through dumping and the oil price. It’s the American consumer they screw, not us.
The damage from Trump’s shenanigans has been the market turmoil, including the rise in UK gilt yields which badly need to uncouple from the US.
Real terms pay is doing OK at the moment. The fundamentals for the worker aren’t bad, certainly much better than in 2022/3 at the height of the Ukraine inflation spike, but they’re still shit for government finances.
Imagine heading into this with a government that decided to cut borrowing rather than add to it, gilts would have uncoupled from treasuries very early on. Instead the call centre manager decided to add £60bn per year for public sector pay rises and lower growth and markets are pricing in much higher gilt supply. Absolutely self inflicted. The government should have cut spending by £30-40bn per year and reduced borrowing to build up much more fiscal headroom. Cutting headcount is still the only way to do it, eventually the government is going to have to do it, but the closer we get to an election the more resentment there will be among the people who are let go and their families. Such a completely stupid decision not to do it on day one.
"Cutting headcount" would not save "£30-40bn per year". What would you actually cut to save that amount ?
I'm not saying it's impossible - look for example at the Greek retrenchment - but you need to be honest about the process.
Public sector headcount, benefits, state and public sector pensions. All three need to be cut.
I don't disagree that reform is needed - I think we need to remake the state at a wholesale level. What I would challenge is the detail of how you think we should do it:
Public Sector Headcount - many layers of management could be cut and I'm sure there will be a few agencies we could merge / remove without issue. But in there we have stuff like the Passport Office, DVLA etc - and service from these is already dire. If you cut heads without reform you'll find the service collapses and that makes for unhappy voters.
Benefits - we already pay poverty-level numbers for practically everything. Compare our unemployment pay, our maternity pay, our sick pay - we get so little compared to our neighbours. If you cut these further you cut cash which directly recirculates through the local economy which means less businesses and less jobs. And we pay a ludicrous amount of in-work support to people where their wages are insufficient to pay their bills. I'm happy to plan to abolish these subsidies to big business but you can't just cut them without a dire effect on the economy
Pensions? I take the point. Gold plated seems like an understatement for many of them. At the same time our state pension is very low compared to competitor economies close-by. I would look to rebalance as much as cut.
My challenge on all of this is that you can't cut provision and assume the demand goes away. Its not a zero sum game where you cut one side of the equation with zero cost added to the other side. Make a lot of people much poorer and you tank the economy - which creates many other problems.
Which is why wholesale reform is needed. Cutting our way to growth has been tried and it always fails. The system we have doesn't work, so we need to change the system.
While you say benefits are very low - and for say a single healthy person out of a job they are - they are also cumulative, so if you can persuade the state you are ill, and/or disabled, and/or have a family, there are plenty of people getting benefits they would have to earn £30k+ a year to match, and who find themselves so comfortably off they can't be arsed to work. Similarly with pensions, where as you point out the state pension is comparatively small and many pensioners have to depend on benefits to pay the rent, or have small personal pensions and would suffer if you tunkered with say NI
Sure - the welfare state has completely lost sight of its purpose - a generous safety net when needed. Its no longer generous, and it captures people.
Here's my basic problem. The small numbers who "can't be arsed to work" get weaponised to beat into submission the genuinely sick / poor / uninformed.
Welfare is a better option than work because work doesn't pay the bills. I keep referring back to Iain Duncan Smith's reforming zeal. He was up in the valleys (I think Merthyr Tydfil) talking to people who were out of work, pointing at all the jobs and prosperity in Cardiff.
Yes, but these are shift jobs. Where public transport stops too early, and is too expensive when it does run, and we have kids.
This is the issue. "Just cut the benefit" (and I despise that word) isn't the solution. Make work viable is the solution, but the right have zero interest in doing so and the left have zero interest in reforming the welfare state.
Or revive the high street so it is not just mainly warehouse and delivery work on offer. Even Trump to be fair to him is trying to revive mass manufacturing work with his tariffs and build more factories in the US, even if his tariffs use a sledgehammer to crack a nut
How do you "revive the high street" when more and more people prefer to shop online? More and more the high street is made up of "service" business and alleged fronts for money laundering and illegal immigration such as nail bars and barbers. (And a new one - corner shops - which in one way is welcome but we have had three open in one one-mile stretch of high street, where there are 2 supermarkets, in recent months)
Add to that: bubble tea outlets, and weird artisanal cake shops
I think the miscreants have realised Turkish barbers, vape shops and American candy stores have been rumbled
Given the frequency my colleagues found an excuse to buy cakes for the office, you might think the cake shops have a market, however it was almost always supermarket cakes and Costco. Having had a couple of recent opportunities to buy cake myself, I realised how cheap it is, even from Waitrose, and on perpetual discount. So maybe the artisanal cake makers are just as dodgy. One of my colleagues had a side hustle in cupcakes, and they were very nice (when I allowed myself some carbs) but she has never spoken of trying to make a living out of it.
Britain does lack a culture of great cakes readily available on the high street, which is odd given our penchant for baking (eg Bake Off) and a noble tradition of brilliant cakes and puds
Here in bishkek I just had an excellent flat white with a nice fresh home made fruit tartlet. So maybe there is room for 1000 dessert bars in the UK! - as long as they have pretty shopfronts
Er... nearly every coffee shop tries to do coffee and cake. Even the grottiest chains have plastic wrapped blueberry muffins.
The feeling of being in a country with a median age of 25 (Kyrgyzstan) is quite remarkable (and the capital Bishkek is probably lower than even that). It affects every single moment of the waking day
As you look up there are young people (very often beautiful young women but I’ll stop perving to make this point). Around the corner: more young people. Across the road, loads of young people. Young people laugh a lot. They chatter excitedly. They gather in parks and coffee shops and talk optimistically about the future
And then there are kids. Billions of kids. Schools overflowing. Anyone over 30 has about nine kids
They are also apparently free and the sexes are decidedly equal
It has a downside. An old git like me can feel like Gandalf in the shire. The screaming babies irritate
But overall it’s a wonderful feeling - of hope and youth and beauty and ambition and drive and good spirits
I wonder how much of the malaise of the west is simply down to the fact we’re getting old. When did Britain last have a median age of 25?
I think this is absolutely right. There is an optimism and dynamism that comes with having a younger population - I have three children aged 12-18 and I love their energy and the sense of the world opening up for them. But at the same time there is no iron rule that says we have to become grumpy and insular as we get older. Especially as our society ages, I think it behoves us all to try to stay young in our attitudes - keep learning, keep engaging, keep taking risks.
A rare moment of total agreement. This is one reason I travel so much. I love travel of course - and I’m very lucky to do it for free half the time and get paid as well - but it is a chore also. The early rising (5am tomorrow ugh). The airports. The faff. The sheer physical stress of lugging luggage, perpetually
But I am pretty sure it keeps me younger. Going to a new country is like a workout for the brain and the mind. The exertion is like doing weights, dealing with a new language and new situations is like doing exams
Plus it keeps you curious about the world - incuriosity is terribly ageing. Complacency. I know what I like. Etc
I am typing this in the main square of Bishkek Kyrgyzstan, which is to the point
And on that note I am off to buy a souvenir. I’m not sure if Kyrgyzstan does souvenirs. All the guidebooks say is “buy a felt hat”. lol. When I am ever going to wear a felt hat?
Later!
I have been following your travels round ex-Soviet Central Asia with interest. I have long had Uzbekistan in my bucket list, but now I am able to travel for longer I am thinking I should do a longer trip and see more of the 'Stans. I believe visas are no longer much of an issue. What is your assessment of the costs, nothing in detail maybe as compared with other well-known destinations. Nothing fancy, budget 3* hotels, public transport, locals' restaurants
I’m on a souvenir hunt so can’t be detailed - maybe later. But all I can say is do it. Fly direct into Tashkent - the local hub - from london - and that’s your major costs sorted. Everything else is either cheap or absurdly cheap (except 5 star hotels and European wine - go Georgian)
The visa faff is minimal. They’re all keen on tourists. Brits just walk in, you don’t even fill in a form - you get a stamp. 30 days or more free to travel
Uzbekistan has very cheap high speed trains everywhere. Kazakhstan has good local airlines. Kyrgyzstan has buses. Hiring cars is not hard
Food is a bit boring - plov! - but in bigger cities you can get good Georgian Indian Chinese. People are great. Towns and cities are clean and safe - better than Western Europe. Beer is good. History is wild in Uzbekistan, kakazkhstan is compellingly weird (Astana?!), Almaty is seductive
Kyrgyzstan has phenomenal landscapes and Bishkek is a good base
In short: do it. Central Asia is a world class destination. Go before it is overrun with tourists
Violent crime suspects may lose right to jury to clear court backlog Minister says the establishment of an intermediate court is ‘an idea whose time has probably come’ to tackle the 80,000 cases waiting to be heard
Defendants accused of violent crimes and drug dealing will be among those to lose their automatic right to a jury trial under plans backed by ministers to clear the court backlog.
Average I think close to 55 or 60. Where the money in our society is concentrated.
I've been flipping 911s for well over 10 years. In that time, In that time, I've done 56 (according to my spreadsheet and not including part-outs) and the average age of my buyers has gone from 40s to 60s. They are the ones with the money.
I particularly like selling these types GT3s. They like the idea but are wholly unprepared for the white knuckle driving experience and extreme discomfort. I am occasionally able to buy them back in a few months at a steep discount.
Is it just the money. Anecdotally, but from several sources, I hear that the young really aren't into classic cars, even cheap ones, even at around £10,000. They aren't from that era.
On topic, April bill rises have kicked in, as have higher price/tax/wage costs/tarrifs all round but with no commensurate increase in real-terms pay. People (rightly) see more of the same coming down the line and no real plan to tackle it. And they're not sure it can be.
So, the squeeze of the last three years is continuing. They are not exactly full of the joys of May, and rightly so.
Tariffs is the odd one out there. They don’t contribute to UK cost of living. In fact they have probably had a deflationary effect so far, both through dumping and the oil price. It’s the American consumer they screw, not us.
The damage from Trump’s shenanigans has been the market turmoil, including the rise in UK gilt yields which badly need to uncouple from the US.
Real terms pay is doing OK at the moment. The fundamentals for the worker aren’t bad, certainly much better than in 2022/3 at the height of the Ukraine inflation spike, but they’re still shit for government finances.
Imagine heading into this with a government that decided to cut borrowing rather than add to it, gilts would have uncoupled from treasuries very early on. Instead the call centre manager decided to add £60bn per year for public sector pay rises and lower growth and markets are pricing in much higher gilt supply. Absolutely self inflicted. The government should have cut spending by £30-40bn per year and reduced borrowing to build up much more fiscal headroom. Cutting headcount is still the only way to do it, eventually the government is going to have to do it, but the closer we get to an election the more resentment there will be among the people who are let go and their families. Such a completely stupid decision not to do it on day one.
"Cutting headcount" would not save "£30-40bn per year". What would you actually cut to save that amount ?
I'm not saying it's impossible - look for example at the Greek retrenchment - but you need to be honest about the process.
Public sector headcount, benefits, state and public sector pensions. All three need to be cut.
I don't disagree that reform is needed - I think we need to remake the state at a wholesale level. What I would challenge is the detail of how you think we should do it:
Public Sector Headcount - many layers of management could be cut and I'm sure there will be a few agencies we could merge / remove without issue. But in there we have stuff like the Passport Office, DVLA etc - and service from these is already dire. If you cut heads without reform you'll find the service collapses and that makes for unhappy voters.
Benefits - we already pay poverty-level numbers for practically everything. Compare our unemployment pay, our maternity pay, our sick pay - we get so little compared to our neighbours. If you cut these further you cut cash which directly recirculates through the local economy which means less businesses and less jobs. And we pay a ludicrous amount of in-work support to people where their wages are insufficient to pay their bills. I'm happy to plan to abolish these subsidies to big business but you can't just cut them without a dire effect on the economy
Pensions? I take the point. Gold plated seems like an understatement for many of them. At the same time our state pension is very low compared to competitor economies close-by. I would look to rebalance as much as cut.
My challenge on all of this is that you can't cut provision and assume the demand goes away. Its not a zero sum game where you cut one side of the equation with zero cost added to the other side. Make a lot of people much poorer and you tank the economy - which creates many other problems.
Which is why wholesale reform is needed. Cutting our way to growth has been tried and it always fails. The system we have doesn't work, so we need to change the system.
While you say benefits are very low - and for say a single healthy person out of a job they are - they are also cumulative, so if you can persuade the state you are ill, and/or disabled, and/or have a family, there are plenty of people getting benefits they would have to earn £30k+ a year to match, and who find themselves so comfortably off they can't be arsed to work. Similarly with pensions, where as you point out the state pension is comparatively small and many pensioners have to depend on benefits to pay the rent, or have small personal pensions and would suffer if you tunkered with say NI
Sure - the welfare state has completely lost sight of its purpose - a generous safety net when needed. Its no longer generous, and it captures people.
Here's my basic problem. The small numbers who "can't be arsed to work" get weaponised to beat into submission the genuinely sick / poor / uninformed.
Welfare is a better option than work because work doesn't pay the bills. I keep referring back to Iain Duncan Smith's reforming zeal. He was up in the valleys (I think Merthyr Tydfil) talking to people who were out of work, pointing at all the jobs and prosperity in Cardiff.
Yes, but these are shift jobs. Where public transport stops too early, and is too expensive when it does run, and we have kids.
This is the issue. "Just cut the benefit" (and I despise that word) isn't the solution. Make work viable is the solution, but the right have zero interest in doing so and the left have zero interest in reforming the welfare state.
Or revive the high street so it is not just mainly warehouse and delivery work on offer. Even Trump to be fair to him is trying to revive mass manufacturing work with his tariffs and build more factories in the US, even if his tariffs use a sledgehammer to crack a nut
How do you "revive the high street" when more and more people prefer to shop online? More and more the high street is made up of "service" business and alleged fronts for money laundering and illegal immigration such as nail bars and barbers. (And a new one - corner shops - which in one way is welcome but we have had three open in one one-mile stretch of high street, where there are 2 supermarkets, in recent months)
Add to that: bubble tea outlets, and weird artisanal cake shops
I think the miscreants have realised Turkish barbers, vape shops and American candy stores have been rumbled
Given the frequency my colleagues found an excuse to buy cakes for the office, you might think the cake shops have a market, however it was almost always supermarket cakes and Costco. Having had a couple of recent opportunities to buy cake myself, I realised how cheap it is, even from Waitrose, and on perpetual discount. So maybe the artisanal cake makers are just as dodgy. One of my colleagues had a side hustle in cupcakes, and they were very nice (when I allowed myself some carbs) but she has never spoken of trying to make a living out of it.
Britain does lack a culture of great cakes readily available on the high street, which is odd given our penchant for baking (eg Bake Off) and a noble tradition of brilliant cakes and puds
Here in bishkek I just had an excellent flat white with a nice fresh home made fruit tartlet. So maybe there is room for 1000 dessert bars in the UK! - as long as they have pretty shopfronts
Er... nearly every coffee shop tries to do coffee and cake. Even the grottiest chains have plastic wrapped blueberry muffins.
I said GREAT cakes. Yeah every Costa and Starbucks has lumps of carb, but they’re often not very nice and definitely not very interesting
One thing I noticed in Yangon was the local tradition of really superb home made cakes, with innovative tropical fruits. Delish
On topic, April bill rises have kicked in, as have higher price/tax/wage costs/tarrifs all round but with no commensurate increase in real-terms pay. People (rightly) see more of the same coming down the line and no real plan to tackle it. And they're not sure it can be.
So, the squeeze of the last three years is continuing. They are not exactly full of the joys of May, and rightly so.
Tariffs is the odd one out there. They don’t contribute to UK cost of living. In fact they have probably had a deflationary effect so far, both through dumping and the oil price. It’s the American consumer they screw, not us.
The damage from Trump’s shenanigans has been the market turmoil, including the rise in UK gilt yields which badly need to uncouple from the US.
Real terms pay is doing OK at the moment. The fundamentals for the worker aren’t bad, certainly much better than in 2022/3 at the height of the Ukraine inflation spike, but they’re still shit for government finances.
Imagine heading into this with a government that decided to cut borrowing rather than add to it, gilts would have uncoupled from treasuries very early on. Instead the call centre manager decided to add £60bn per year for public sector pay rises and lower growth and markets are pricing in much higher gilt supply. Absolutely self inflicted. The government should have cut spending by £30-40bn per year and reduced borrowing to build up much more fiscal headroom. Cutting headcount is still the only way to do it, eventually the government is going to have to do it, but the closer we get to an election the more resentment there will be among the people who are let go and their families. Such a completely stupid decision not to do it on day one.
"Cutting headcount" would not save "£30-40bn per year". What would you actually cut to save that amount ?
I'm not saying it's impossible - look for example at the Greek retrenchment - but you need to be honest about the process.
Public sector headcount, benefits, state and public sector pensions. All three need to be cut.
I don't disagree that reform is needed - I think we need to remake the state at a wholesale level. What I would challenge is the detail of how you think we should do it:
Public Sector Headcount - many layers of management could be cut and I'm sure there will be a few agencies we could merge / remove without issue. But in there we have stuff like the Passport Office, DVLA etc - and service from these is already dire. If you cut heads without reform you'll find the service collapses and that makes for unhappy voters.
Benefits - we already pay poverty-level numbers for practically everything. Compare our unemployment pay, our maternity pay, our sick pay - we get so little compared to our neighbours. If you cut these further you cut cash which directly recirculates through the local economy which means less businesses and less jobs. And we pay a ludicrous amount of in-work support to people where their wages are insufficient to pay their bills. I'm happy to plan to abolish these subsidies to big business but you can't just cut them without a dire effect on the economy
Pensions? I take the point. Gold plated seems like an understatement for many of them. At the same time our state pension is very low compared to competitor economies close-by. I would look to rebalance as much as cut.
My challenge on all of this is that you can't cut provision and assume the demand goes away. Its not a zero sum game where you cut one side of the equation with zero cost added to the other side. Make a lot of people much poorer and you tank the economy - which creates many other problems.
Which is why wholesale reform is needed. Cutting our way to growth has been tried and it always fails. The system we have doesn't work, so we need to change the system.
While you say benefits are very low - and for say a single healthy person out of a job they are - they are also cumulative, so if you can persuade the state you are ill, and/or disabled, and/or have a family, there are plenty of people getting benefits they would have to earn £30k+ a year to match, and who find themselves so comfortably off they can't be arsed to work. Similarly with pensions, where as you point out the state pension is comparatively small and many pensioners have to depend on benefits to pay the rent, or have small personal pensions and would suffer if you tunkered with say NI
Sure - the welfare state has completely lost sight of its purpose - a generous safety net when needed. Its no longer generous, and it captures people.
Here's my basic problem. The small numbers who "can't be arsed to work" get weaponised to beat into submission the genuinely sick / poor / uninformed.
Welfare is a better option than work because work doesn't pay the bills. I keep referring back to Iain Duncan Smith's reforming zeal. He was up in the valleys (I think Merthyr Tydfil) talking to people who were out of work, pointing at all the jobs and prosperity in Cardiff.
Yes, but these are shift jobs. Where public transport stops too early, and is too expensive when it does run, and we have kids.
This is the issue. "Just cut the benefit" (and I despise that word) isn't the solution. Make work viable is the solution, but the right have zero interest in doing so and the left have zero interest in reforming the welfare state.
If people want to work they find a way to get in to work, the bigger problem is that people don't want to work - and once someone isn't working, or not working much, it becomes habitual and their kids grow up in a home not seeing their parents working regularly so why should they when they grow up either?
And if someone does the right thing and tries to come off benefits by working more, then the state takes away their benefits with an effective marginal tax rate of 80-100% . . . so why bother working?
Eliminate the UC taper, merge UC, NI and Income Tax into a single tax and benefit band, and ensure anyone who goes to work is better off than those who don't. Then we'll have people who want to work and find a way to do so.
The effective marginal tax rate won't be that high, means tested benefits and PIP are not taxable. So you have the tax free allowance to play with, and the NI equivalent. And if you have kids or are deemed to have Limited Capability for Work you can earn £400 before the taper kicks in, more if you are not claiming housing costs
The effective marginal tax rate is that high.
If you are earning above the threshold from a part time job, which is not many hours even on minimum wage, then you face both taxes and taper simultaneously which makes the effective marginal tax rate literally that high.
Without even considering the fact that going to work costs money as well as time and effort. People need to pay for transport, and quite possibly childcare etc. So if you feel you're not taking any more money home by working, and it's hard, and it's going to costs you, then people being rational beings decide not to bother.
The system is broken.
Problem is I don’t think the system is fixable and I’ve spent a bit of time thinking about it.
The sane fix would be to reduce the percentage of the taper but that drags more people into it so would significantly increase costs.
Its fixable, just not easy to fix with a slight tinker.
Abolish the taper altogether, by merging with income tax and NI and making the benefit universal.
Yes that would significantly increase the 'costs' by giving people who are working an amount, but treat that as equivalent to the tax-free allowance today, its simply their allowance and it would net off the taxes they pay.
Adjust the tax rates accordingly so that the increase in allowance, and the tax changes are net neutral so the costs are net neutral.
But you'll have fixed the cliff-edge which will deal with the Laffer effect where the cliff-edge kicks in.
Do the same with all other cliff-edge tapers, such as the withdrawal of the allowance. Abolish that too.
Average I think close to 55 or 60. Where the money in our society is concentrated.
I've been flipping 911s for well over 10 years. In that time, In that time, I've done 56 (according to my spreadsheet and not including part-outs) and the average age of my buyers has gone from 40s to 60s. They are the ones with the money.
I particularly like selling these types GT3s. They like the idea but are wholly unprepared for the white knuckle driving experience and extreme discomfort. I am occasionally able to buy them back in a few months at a steep discount.
Is it just the money. Anecdotally, but from several sources, I hear that the young really aren't into classic cars, even cheap ones, even at around £10,000. They aren't from that era.
From Hackspace kind of places - I think there would be one hell of a market for electric Caterham 7 style kit cars. Those guys love moding and working on electric bikes. A build it yourself car, where you can understand and change the innards... it could also be cheap enough for them to afford it.
Violent crime suspects may lose right to jury to clear court backlog Minister says the establishment of an intermediate court is ‘an idea whose time has probably come’ to tackle the 80,000 cases waiting to be heard
Defendants accused of violent crimes and drug dealing will be among those to lose their automatic right to a jury trial under plans backed by ministers to clear the court backlog.
On topic, April bill rises have kicked in, as have higher price/tax/wage costs/tarrifs all round but with no commensurate increase in real-terms pay. People (rightly) see more of the same coming down the line and no real plan to tackle it. And they're not sure it can be.
So, the squeeze of the last three years is continuing. They are not exactly full of the joys of May, and rightly so.
Tariffs is the odd one out there. They don’t contribute to UK cost of living. In fact they have probably had a deflationary effect so far, both through dumping and the oil price. It’s the American consumer they screw, not us.
The damage from Trump’s shenanigans has been the market turmoil, including the rise in UK gilt yields which badly need to uncouple from the US.
Real terms pay is doing OK at the moment. The fundamentals for the worker aren’t bad, certainly much better than in 2022/3 at the height of the Ukraine inflation spike, but they’re still shit for government finances.
Imagine heading into this with a government that decided to cut borrowing rather than add to it, gilts would have uncoupled from treasuries very early on. Instead the call centre manager decided to add £60bn per year for public sector pay rises and lower growth and markets are pricing in much higher gilt supply. Absolutely self inflicted. The government should have cut spending by £30-40bn per year and reduced borrowing to build up much more fiscal headroom. Cutting headcount is still the only way to do it, eventually the government is going to have to do it, but the closer we get to an election the more resentment there will be among the people who are let go and their families. Such a completely stupid decision not to do it on day one.
"Cutting headcount" would not save "£30-40bn per year". What would you actually cut to save that amount ?
I'm not saying it's impossible - look for example at the Greek retrenchment - but you need to be honest about the process.
Public sector headcount, benefits, state and public sector pensions. All three need to be cut.
I don't disagree that reform is needed - I think we need to remake the state at a wholesale level. What I would challenge is the detail of how you think we should do it:
Public Sector Headcount - many layers of management could be cut and I'm sure there will be a few agencies we could merge / remove without issue. But in there we have stuff like the Passport Office, DVLA etc - and service from these is already dire. If you cut heads without reform you'll find the service collapses and that makes for unhappy voters.
Benefits - we already pay poverty-level numbers for practically everything. Compare our unemployment pay, our maternity pay, our sick pay - we get so little compared to our neighbours. If you cut these further you cut cash which directly recirculates through the local economy which means less businesses and less jobs. And we pay a ludicrous amount of in-work support to people where their wages are insufficient to pay their bills. I'm happy to plan to abolish these subsidies to big business but you can't just cut them without a dire effect on the economy
Pensions? I take the point. Gold plated seems like an understatement for many of them. At the same time our state pension is very low compared to competitor economies close-by. I would look to rebalance as much as cut.
My challenge on all of this is that you can't cut provision and assume the demand goes away. Its not a zero sum game where you cut one side of the equation with zero cost added to the other side. Make a lot of people much poorer and you tank the economy - which creates many other problems.
Which is why wholesale reform is needed. Cutting our way to growth has been tried and it always fails. The system we have doesn't work, so we need to change the system.
While you say benefits are very low - and for say a single healthy person out of a job they are - they are also cumulative, so if you can persuade the state you are ill, and/or disabled, and/or have a family, there are plenty of people getting benefits they would have to earn £30k+ a year to match, and who find themselves so comfortably off they can't be arsed to work. Similarly with pensions, where as you point out the state pension is comparatively small and many pensioners have to depend on benefits to pay the rent, or have small personal pensions and would suffer if you tunkered with say NI
Sure - the welfare state has completely lost sight of its purpose - a generous safety net when needed. Its no longer generous, and it captures people.
Here's my basic problem. The small numbers who "can't be arsed to work" get weaponised to beat into submission the genuinely sick / poor / uninformed.
Welfare is a better option than work because work doesn't pay the bills. I keep referring back to Iain Duncan Smith's reforming zeal. He was up in the valleys (I think Merthyr Tydfil) talking to people who were out of work, pointing at all the jobs and prosperity in Cardiff.
Yes, but these are shift jobs. Where public transport stops too early, and is too expensive when it does run, and we have kids.
This is the issue. "Just cut the benefit" (and I despise that word) isn't the solution. Make work viable is the solution, but the right have zero interest in doing so and the left have zero interest in reforming the welfare state.
Or revive the high street so it is not just mainly warehouse and delivery work on offer. Even Trump to be fair to him is trying to revive mass manufacturing work with his tariffs and build more factories in the US, even if his tariffs use a sledgehammer to crack a nut
How do you "revive the high street" when more and more people prefer to shop online? More and more the high street is made up of "service" business and alleged fronts for money laundering and illegal immigration such as nail bars and barbers. (And a new one - corner shops - which in one way is welcome but we have had three open in one one-mile stretch of high street, where there are 2 supermarkets, in recent months)
Add to that: bubble tea outlets, and weird artisanal cake shops
I think the miscreants have realised Turkish barbers, vape shops and American candy stores have been rumbled
Given the frequency my colleagues found an excuse to buy cakes for the office, you might think the cake shops have a market, however it was almost always supermarket cakes and Costco. Having had a couple of recent opportunities to buy cake myself, I realised how cheap it is, even from Waitrose, and on perpetual discount. So maybe the artisanal cake makers are just as dodgy. One of my colleagues had a side hustle in cupcakes, and they were very nice (when I allowed myself some carbs) but she has never spoken of trying to make a living out of it.
Britain does lack a culture of great cakes readily available on the high street, which is odd given our penchant for baking (eg Bake Off) and a noble tradition of brilliant cakes and puds
Here in bishkek I just had an excellent flat white with a nice fresh home made fruit tartlet. So maybe there is room for 1000 dessert bars in the UK! - as long as they have pretty shopfronts
Er... nearly every coffee shop tries to do coffee and cake. Even the grottiest chains have plastic wrapped blueberry muffins.
I said GREAT cakes. Yeah every Costa and Starbucks has lumps of carb, but they’re often not very nice and definitely not very interesting
One thing I noticed in Yangon was the local tradition of really superb home made cakes, with innovative tropical fruits. Delish
And there are plenty going for that market - Gail's among the chains, tons of independents. Generally, improving the quality of the extras (environment, cakes) is the sell for the independents. Those that aren't the ultra coffee snob places, that is.
It didn't START in America - economic optimism has been crashing since Labour started talking down the economy and then kicked the private sector in the balls with their disastrous budget and employment regulations and various other socialist stupidities. And the lower energy prices that Trump's incompetence has caused may actually help us more than the reduction in trade hurts. It's not clear how that will play out yet.
Unlike Labour's incompetence, which is plain for everybody to see.
Trump probably hasn't helped much, but this is almost entirely home-grown.
The turmoil in the markets started with Trump.
Ah, it’s all Trumps fault and labour are blameless 👍
That's really your take ? Certainly wasn't bondegezou's.
Fishing was right about economic optimism. It was falling well before the market correction and a lot of it is very much homegrown.
Reeves's budget was three months too late and the NI rises most likely an error alongside retaining the canning of major infrastructure projects like HS2, but Hunt's NI giveaway was dereliction of duty and should have been reversed on July 5th. However compared to how Trump has subsequently crashed the World all those calamities are but mere trifles.
You are engaging in class A delusion if you think Labour is going to be able to palm its disastrous economic mismanagement off on Trump.
You think Truss had a good economic plan and that Trump's second term may be "benign", so let's not get into a discussion of who is delusional.
Clearly, Trump is having a negative effect on the US economy and on the global economy. Exactly how much, only time will tell. It is generally difficult to determine to what extent a country's economic outcome was caused by multiple different factors. In the case of the UK economy going forwards, there are multiple possible factors, including Trump, the Labour government's actions, effects of the previous Conservative government's actions, continued repercussions from the war in Ukraine, continued repercussions from Brexit, etc.
The question for those betting on politics is, to rephrase you somewhat, whether Labour will "be able to palm" negative economic outcomes "off on Trump". There is an argument that the government of the day gets the blame, whatever caused poor economic conditions. Sunak and Harris both got punished electorally for inflation that was largely the result of Putin's invasion of Ukraine and the after-effects of COVID-19, not their own policies. What Labour need to do, perhaps, is to push the message hard that any pain is the fault of Trump, whether that is true or not!
Violent crime suspects may lose right to jury to clear court backlog Minister says the establishment of an intermediate court is ‘an idea whose time has probably come’ to tackle the 80,000 cases waiting to be heard
Defendants accused of violent crimes and drug dealing will be among those to lose their automatic right to a jury trial under plans backed by ministers to clear the court backlog.
MPs need to vote down this silly idea immediately. Trial by jury is a necessity.
It clearly isn't a necessity, given that we don't use it for all cases, and plenty of stable and fair democracies use it less than we do. What is a grave injustice for both victims and defendants is the ridiculously long wait for justice that many currently have to endure. Reducing the use of trial by jury seems to me a reasonable way of addressing this injustice if other options aren't available.
Violent crime suspects may lose right to jury to clear court backlog Minister says the establishment of an intermediate court is ‘an idea whose time has probably come’ to tackle the 80,000 cases waiting to be heard
Defendants accused of violent crimes and drug dealing will be among those to lose their automatic right to a jury trial under plans backed by ministers to clear the court backlog.
{narrator : The intermediate courts proposed (again), will require a panel of 3 judges, each. Which means a huge increase in job opportunities for barristers. They aren't much cheaper, as courts than a judge and jury }
Would the court cases be shorter though? As if you can handle 3 cases in x days rather than 2 that’s got to be an improvement
The Diplock courts in Northern Ireland didn't sit for less time. In fact, IIRC, the judges spent more time asking questions of witnesses and about evidence.
So given no security requirements (which was the justification for Diplock) literally no benefit from doing so
Average I think close to 55 or 60. Where the money in our society is concentrated.
I've been flipping 911s for well over 10 years. In that time, In that time, I've done 56 (according to my spreadsheet and not including part-outs) and the average age of my buyers has gone from 40s to 60s. They are the ones with the money.
I particularly like selling these types GT3s. They like the idea but are wholly unprepared for the white knuckle driving experience and extreme discomfort. I am occasionally able to buy them back in a few months at a steep discount.
Is it just the money. Anecdotally, but from several sources, I hear that the young really aren't into classic cars, even cheap ones, even at around £10,000. They aren't from that era.
Given modern cars are a lot more reliable, more comfortable, better to drive, safer and cheaper to run, why would you be into classic cars?
Perhaps it hasn’t occurred to many, maybe even most, Americans, that the Chief Justice of the United States commands no army, can summon no police force. Nor, for that matter, does Congress. They, and all of us, are dependent on Donald Trump and the police and military under his control to honor the Constitution and the rule of law.
Violent crime suspects may lose right to jury to clear court backlog Minister says the establishment of an intermediate court is ‘an idea whose time has probably come’ to tackle the 80,000 cases waiting to be heard
Defendants accused of violent crimes and drug dealing will be among those to lose their automatic right to a jury trial under plans backed by ministers to clear the court backlog.
Why is it taking so long to get jury trials under way? Delaying justice for so long is also a bad thing.
Spending on Justice was cut to the bone by the Tories add on Covid and we have a backlog that will never be reduced and is still getting worse.
Worse pay is so bad that a lot of junior Barristers would be better off working at Tescos stacking shelves - which means many have left to do other things
On topic, April bill rises have kicked in, as have higher price/tax/wage costs/tarrifs all round but with no commensurate increase in real-terms pay. People (rightly) see more of the same coming down the line and no real plan to tackle it. And they're not sure it can be.
So, the squeeze of the last three years is continuing. They are not exactly full of the joys of May, and rightly so.
Tariffs is the odd one out there. They don’t contribute to UK cost of living. In fact they have probably had a deflationary effect so far, both through dumping and the oil price. It’s the American consumer they screw, not us.
The damage from Trump’s shenanigans has been the market turmoil, including the rise in UK gilt yields which badly need to uncouple from the US.
Real terms pay is doing OK at the moment. The fundamentals for the worker aren’t bad, certainly much better than in 2022/3 at the height of the Ukraine inflation spike, but they’re still shit for government finances.
Imagine heading into this with a government that decided to cut borrowing rather than add to it, gilts would have uncoupled from treasuries very early on. Instead the call centre manager decided to add £60bn per year for public sector pay rises and lower growth and markets are pricing in much higher gilt supply. Absolutely self inflicted. The government should have cut spending by £30-40bn per year and reduced borrowing to build up much more fiscal headroom. Cutting headcount is still the only way to do it, eventually the government is going to have to do it, but the closer we get to an election the more resentment there will be among the people who are let go and their families. Such a completely stupid decision not to do it on day one.
"Cutting headcount" would not save "£30-40bn per year". What would you actually cut to save that amount ?
I'm not saying it's impossible - look for example at the Greek retrenchment - but you need to be honest about the process.
Public sector headcount, benefits, state and public sector pensions. All three need to be cut.
I don't disagree that reform is needed - I think we need to remake the state at a wholesale level. What I would challenge is the detail of how you think we should do it:
Public Sector Headcount - many layers of management could be cut and I'm sure there will be a few agencies we could merge / remove without issue. But in there we have stuff like the Passport Office, DVLA etc - and service from these is already dire. If you cut heads without reform you'll find the service collapses and that makes for unhappy voters.
Benefits - we already pay poverty-level numbers for practically everything. Compare our unemployment pay, our maternity pay, our sick pay - we get so little compared to our neighbours. If you cut these further you cut cash which directly recirculates through the local economy which means less businesses and less jobs. And we pay a ludicrous amount of in-work support to people where their wages are insufficient to pay their bills. I'm happy to plan to abolish these subsidies to big business but you can't just cut them without a dire effect on the economy
Pensions? I take the point. Gold plated seems like an understatement for many of them. At the same time our state pension is very low compared to competitor economies close-by. I would look to rebalance as much as cut.
My challenge on all of this is that you can't cut provision and assume the demand goes away. Its not a zero sum game where you cut one side of the equation with zero cost added to the other side. Make a lot of people much poorer and you tank the economy - which creates many other problems.
Which is why wholesale reform is needed. Cutting our way to growth has been tried and it always fails. The system we have doesn't work, so we need to change the system.
While you say benefits are very low - and for say a single healthy person out of a job they are - they are also cumulative, so if you can persuade the state you are ill, and/or disabled, and/or have a family, there are plenty of people getting benefits they would have to earn £30k+ a year to match, and who find themselves so comfortably off they can't be arsed to work. Similarly with pensions, where as you point out the state pension is comparatively small and many pensioners have to depend on benefits to pay the rent, or have small personal pensions and would suffer if you tunkered with say NI
Sure - the welfare state has completely lost sight of its purpose - a generous safety net when needed. Its no longer generous, and it captures people.
Here's my basic problem. The small numbers who "can't be arsed to work" get weaponised to beat into submission the genuinely sick / poor / uninformed.
Welfare is a better option than work because work doesn't pay the bills. I keep referring back to Iain Duncan Smith's reforming zeal. He was up in the valleys (I think Merthyr Tydfil) talking to people who were out of work, pointing at all the jobs and prosperity in Cardiff.
Yes, but these are shift jobs. Where public transport stops too early, and is too expensive when it does run, and we have kids.
This is the issue. "Just cut the benefit" (and I despise that word) isn't the solution. Make work viable is the solution, but the right have zero interest in doing so and the left have zero interest in reforming the welfare state.
Or revive the high street so it is not just mainly warehouse and delivery work on offer. Even Trump to be fair to him is trying to revive mass manufacturing work with his tariffs and build more factories in the US, even if his tariffs use a sledgehammer to crack a nut
How do you "revive the high street" when more and more people prefer to shop online? More and more the high street is made up of "service" business and alleged fronts for money laundering and illegal immigration such as nail bars and barbers. (And a new one - corner shops - which in one way is welcome but we have had three open in one one-mile stretch of high street, where there are 2 supermarkets, in recent months)
Add to that: bubble tea outlets, and weird artisanal cake shops
I think the miscreants have realised Turkish barbers, vape shops and American candy stores have been rumbled
Given the frequency my colleagues found an excuse to buy cakes for the office, you might think the cake shops have a market, however it was almost always supermarket cakes and Costco. Having had a couple of recent opportunities to buy cake myself, I realised how cheap it is, even from Waitrose, and on perpetual discount. So maybe the artisanal cake makers are just as dodgy. One of my colleagues had a side hustle in cupcakes, and they were very nice (when I allowed myself some carbs) but she has never spoken of trying to make a living out of it.
Britain does lack a culture of great cakes readily available on the high street, which is odd given our penchant for baking (eg Bake Off) and a noble tradition of brilliant cakes and puds
Here in bishkek I just had an excellent flat white with a nice fresh home made fruit tartlet. So maybe there is room for 1000 dessert bars in the UK! - as long as they have pretty shopfronts
Er... nearly every coffee shop tries to do coffee and cake. Even the grottiest chains have plastic wrapped blueberry muffins.
I said GREAT cakes. Yeah every Costa and Starbucks has lumps of carb, but they’re often not very nice and definitely not very interesting
One thing I noticed in Yangon was the local tradition of really superb home made cakes, with innovative tropical fruits. Delish
And there are plenty going for that market - Gail's among the chains, tons of independents. Generally, improving the quality of the extras (environment, cakes) is the sell for the independents. Those that aren't the ultra coffee snob places, that is.
I find Gail’s oddly disappointing in this regard (we have one in Camden, in a lovely airy space). The cakes AND savouries kinda disappoint
Average I think close to 55 or 60. Where the money in our society is concentrated.
I've been flipping 911s for well over 10 years. In that time, In that time, I've done 56 (according to my spreadsheet and not including part-outs) and the average age of my buyers has gone from 40s to 60s. They are the ones with the money.
I particularly like selling these types GT3s. They like the idea but are wholly unprepared for the white knuckle driving experience and extreme discomfort. I am occasionally able to buy them back in a few months at a steep discount.
Is it just the money. Anecdotally, but from several sources, I hear that the young really aren't into classic cars, even cheap ones, even at around £10,000. They aren't from that era.
From Hackspace kind of places - I think there would be one hell of a market for electric Caterham 7 style kit cars. Those guys love moding and working on electric bikes. A build it yourself car, where you can understand and change the innards... it could also be cheap enough for them to afford it.
The Top Gear boys built a Caterham at one point. James May remarked how much nicer it was using new parts than trying to fix old rusty components
On topic, April bill rises have kicked in, as have higher price/tax/wage costs/tarrifs all round but with no commensurate increase in real-terms pay. People (rightly) see more of the same coming down the line and no real plan to tackle it. And they're not sure it can be.
So, the squeeze of the last three years is continuing. They are not exactly full of the joys of May, and rightly so.
Tariffs is the odd one out there. They don’t contribute to UK cost of living. In fact they have probably had a deflationary effect so far, both through dumping and the oil price. It’s the American consumer they screw, not us.
The damage from Trump’s shenanigans has been the market turmoil, including the rise in UK gilt yields which badly need to uncouple from the US.
Real terms pay is doing OK at the moment. The fundamentals for the worker aren’t bad, certainly much better than in 2022/3 at the height of the Ukraine inflation spike, but they’re still shit for government finances.
Imagine heading into this with a government that decided to cut borrowing rather than add to it, gilts would have uncoupled from treasuries very early on. Instead the call centre manager decided to add £60bn per year for public sector pay rises and lower growth and markets are pricing in much higher gilt supply. Absolutely self inflicted. The government should have cut spending by £30-40bn per year and reduced borrowing to build up much more fiscal headroom. Cutting headcount is still the only way to do it, eventually the government is going to have to do it, but the closer we get to an election the more resentment there will be among the people who are let go and their families. Such a completely stupid decision not to do it on day one.
"Cutting headcount" would not save "£30-40bn per year". What would you actually cut to save that amount ?
I'm not saying it's impossible - look for example at the Greek retrenchment - but you need to be honest about the process.
Public sector headcount, benefits, state and public sector pensions. All three need to be cut.
I don't disagree that reform is needed - I think we need to remake the state at a wholesale level. What I would challenge is the detail of how you think we should do it:
Public Sector Headcount - many layers of management could be cut and I'm sure there will be a few agencies we could merge / remove without issue. But in there we have stuff like the Passport Office, DVLA etc - and service from these is already dire. If you cut heads without reform you'll find the service collapses and that makes for unhappy voters.
Benefits - we already pay poverty-level numbers for practically everything. Compare our unemployment pay, our maternity pay, our sick pay - we get so little compared to our neighbours. If you cut these further you cut cash which directly recirculates through the local economy which means less businesses and less jobs. And we pay a ludicrous amount of in-work support to people where their wages are insufficient to pay their bills. I'm happy to plan to abolish these subsidies to big business but you can't just cut them without a dire effect on the economy
Pensions? I take the point. Gold plated seems like an understatement for many of them. At the same time our state pension is very low compared to competitor economies close-by. I would look to rebalance as much as cut.
My challenge on all of this is that you can't cut provision and assume the demand goes away. Its not a zero sum game where you cut one side of the equation with zero cost added to the other side. Make a lot of people much poorer and you tank the economy - which creates many other problems.
Which is why wholesale reform is needed. Cutting our way to growth has been tried and it always fails. The system we have doesn't work, so we need to change the system.
While you say benefits are very low - and for say a single healthy person out of a job they are - they are also cumulative, so if you can persuade the state you are ill, and/or disabled, and/or have a family, there are plenty of people getting benefits they would have to earn £30k+ a year to match, and who find themselves so comfortably off they can't be arsed to work. Similarly with pensions, where as you point out the state pension is comparatively small and many pensioners have to depend on benefits to pay the rent, or have small personal pensions and would suffer if you tunkered with say NI
Sure - the welfare state has completely lost sight of its purpose - a generous safety net when needed. Its no longer generous, and it captures people.
Here's my basic problem. The small numbers who "can't be arsed to work" get weaponised to beat into submission the genuinely sick / poor / uninformed.
Welfare is a better option than work because work doesn't pay the bills. I keep referring back to Iain Duncan Smith's reforming zeal. He was up in the valleys (I think Merthyr Tydfil) talking to people who were out of work, pointing at all the jobs and prosperity in Cardiff.
Yes, but these are shift jobs. Where public transport stops too early, and is too expensive when it does run, and we have kids.
This is the issue. "Just cut the benefit" (and I despise that word) isn't the solution. Make work viable is the solution, but the right have zero interest in doing so and the left have zero interest in reforming the welfare state.
Or revive the high street so it is not just mainly warehouse and delivery work on offer. Even Trump to be fair to him is trying to revive mass manufacturing work with his tariffs and build more factories in the US, even if his tariffs use a sledgehammer to crack a nut
How do you "revive the high street" when more and more people prefer to shop online? More and more the high street is made up of "service" business and alleged fronts for money laundering and illegal immigration such as nail bars and barbers. (And a new one - corner shops - which in one way is welcome but we have had three open in one one-mile stretch of high street, where there are 2 supermarkets, in recent months)
Add to that: bubble tea outlets, and weird artisanal cake shops
I think the miscreants have realised Turkish barbers, vape shops and American candy stores have been rumbled
Given the frequency my colleagues found an excuse to buy cakes for the office, you might think the cake shops have a market, however it was almost always supermarket cakes and Costco. Having had a couple of recent opportunities to buy cake myself, I realised how cheap it is, even from Waitrose, and on perpetual discount. So maybe the artisanal cake makers are just as dodgy. One of my colleagues had a side hustle in cupcakes, and they were very nice (when I allowed myself some carbs) but she has never spoken of trying to make a living out of it.
Britain does lack a culture of great cakes readily available on the high street, which is odd given our penchant for baking (eg Bake Off) and a noble tradition of brilliant cakes and puds
Here in bishkek I just had an excellent flat white with a nice fresh home made fruit tartlet. So maybe there is room for 1000 dessert bars in the UK! - as long as they have pretty shopfronts
Er... nearly every coffee shop tries to do coffee and cake. Even the grottiest chains have plastic wrapped blueberry muffins.
I said GREAT cakes. Yeah every Costa and Starbucks has lumps of carb, but they’re often not very nice and definitely not very interesting
One thing I noticed in Yangon was the local tradition of really superb home made cakes, with innovative tropical fruits. Delish
Good coffee shops have good cakes - and bread. Still plenty of artisanal stuff in the UK; just not ubiquitous.
Violent crime suspects may lose right to jury to clear court backlog Minister says the establishment of an intermediate court is ‘an idea whose time has probably come’ to tackle the 80,000 cases waiting to be heard
Defendants accused of violent crimes and drug dealing will be among those to lose their automatic right to a jury trial under plans backed by ministers to clear the court backlog.
{narrator : The intermediate courts proposed (again), will require a panel of 3 judges, each. Which means a huge increase in job opportunities for barristers. They aren't much cheaper, as courts than a judge and jury }
Would the court cases be shorter though? As if you can handle 3 cases in x days rather than 2 that’s got to be an improvement
The Diplock courts in Northern Ireland didn't sit for less time. In fact, IIRC, the judges spent more time asking questions of witnesses and about evidence.
So given no security requirements (which was the justification for Diplock) literally no benefit from doing so
You don't think that creating 10s of thousands of well paid, jobs-for-life for barristers isn't a benefit?
See the regular proposals to abolish magistrates and replace them with "proper judges".
The feeling of being in a country with a median age of 25 (Kyrgyzstan) is quite remarkable (and the capital Bishkek is probably lower than even that). It affects every single moment of the waking day
As you look up there are young people (very often beautiful young women but I’ll stop perving to make this point). Around the corner: more young people. Across the road, loads of young people. Young people laugh a lot. They chatter excitedly. They gather in parks and coffee shops and talk optimistically about the future
And then there are kids. Billions of kids. Schools overflowing. Anyone over 30 has about nine kids
They are also apparently free and the sexes are decidedly equal
It has a downside. An old git like me can feel like Gandalf in the shire. The screaming babies irritate
But overall it’s a wonderful feeling - of hope and youth and beauty and ambition and drive and good spirits
I wonder how much of the malaise of the west is simply down to the fact we’re getting old. When did Britain last have a median age of 25?
I think this is absolutely right. There is an optimism and dynamism that comes with having a younger population - I have three children aged 12-18 and I love their energy and the sense of the world opening up for them. But at the same time there is no iron rule that says we have to become grumpy and insular as we get older. Especially as our society ages, I think it behoves us all to try to stay young in our attitudes - keep learning, keep engaging, keep taking risks.
A rare moment of total agreement. This is one reason I travel so much. I love travel of course - and I’m very lucky to do it for free half the time and get paid as well - but it is a chore also. The early rising (5am tomorrow ugh). The airports. The faff. The sheer physical stress of lugging luggage, perpetually
But I am pretty sure it keeps me younger. Going to a new country is like a workout for the brain and the mind. The exertion is like doing weights, dealing with a new language and new situations is like doing exams
Plus it keeps you curious about the world - incuriosity is terribly ageing. Complacency. I know what I like. Etc
I am typing this in the main square of Bishkek Kyrgyzstan, which is to the point
And on that note I am off to buy a souvenir. I’m not sure if Kyrgyzstan does souvenirs. All the guidebooks say is “buy a felt hat”. lol. When I am ever going to wear a felt hat?
Later!
I have been following your travels round ex-Soviet Central Asia with interest. I have long had Uzbekistan in my bucket list, but now I am able to travel for longer I am thinking I should do a longer trip and see more of the 'Stans. I believe visas are no longer much of an issue. What is your assessment of the costs, nothing in detail maybe as compared with other well-known destinations. Nothing fancy, budget 3* hotels, public transport, locals' restaurants
I’m on a souvenir hunt so can’t be detailed - maybe later. But all I can say is do it. Fly direct into Tashkent - the local hub - from london - and that’s your major costs sorted. Everything else is either cheap or absurdly cheap (except 5 star hotels and European wine - go Georgian)
The visa faff is minimal. They’re all keen on tourists. Brits just walk in, you don’t even fill in a form - you get a stamp. 30 days or more free to travel
Uzbekistan has very cheap high speed trains everywhere. Kazakhstan has good local airlines. Kyrgyzstan has buses. Hiring cars is not hard
Food is a bit boring - plov! - but in bigger cities you can get good Georgian Indian Chinese. People are great. Towns and cities are clean and safe - better than Western Europe. Beer is good. History is wild in Uzbekistan, kakazkhstan is compellingly weird (Astana?!), Almaty is seductive
Kyrgyzstan has phenomenal landscapes and Bishkek is a good base
In short: do it. Central Asia is a world class destination. Go before it is overrun with tourists
Thank you, that's great information. Yes I always eat Georgian every time I find a Georgian restaurant. Although I introduced friends to Georgian food in Riga and had the embarrassment of them eating khinkali with knife and fork.
Flights seem to be coming back, although I do fear Turkish has a bit of a monopoly. The Ukraine war has not only scuppered routes via Moscow (not that I will set foot in the place) but I remember being at Kyiv Boryspil, looking at the departure board... and you could get cheap flights to anywhere in the former Soviet Union.
Violent crime suspects may lose right to jury to clear court backlog Minister says the establishment of an intermediate court is ‘an idea whose time has probably come’ to tackle the 80,000 cases waiting to be heard
Defendants accused of violent crimes and drug dealing will be among those to lose their automatic right to a jury trial under plans backed by ministers to clear the court backlog.
MPs need to vote down this silly idea immediately. Trial by jury is a necessity.
It clearly isn't a necessity, given that we don't use it for all cases, and plenty of stable and fair democracies use it less than we do. What is a grave injustice for both victims and defendants is the ridiculously long wait for justice that many currently have to endure. Reducing the use of trial by jury seems to me a reasonable way of addressing this injustice if other options aren't available.
Johnny Depp vs Amber Heard. The US had a jury trial, we had didn't. One of those got the right answer and the other one didn't. That trial still shames us as a nation and that judge was an old fool hoodwinked by a pretty face. How many more miscarriages of justice do you think we will get by removing jury trials? How many are acceptable?
Violent crime suspects may lose right to jury to clear court backlog Minister says the establishment of an intermediate court is ‘an idea whose time has probably come’ to tackle the 80,000 cases waiting to be heard
Defendants accused of violent crimes and drug dealing will be among those to lose their automatic right to a jury trial under plans backed by ministers to clear the court backlog.
MPs need to vote down this silly idea immediately. Trial by jury is a necessity.
It clearly isn't a necessity, given that we don't use it for all cases, and plenty of stable and fair democracies use it less than we do. What is a grave injustice for both victims and defendants is the ridiculously long wait for justice that many currently have to endure. Reducing the use of trial by jury seems to me a reasonable way of addressing this injustice if other options aren't available.
Johnny Depp vs Amber Heard. The US had a jury trial, we had didn't. One of those got the right answer and the other one didn't. That trial still shames us as a nation and that judge was an old fool hoodwinked by a pretty face. How many more miscarriages of justice do you think we will get by removing jury trials? How many are acceptable?
My attitude towards Depp v Heard was "Sir, there is no settling the point of precedency between a louse and a flea."
Violent crime suspects may lose right to jury to clear court backlog Minister says the establishment of an intermediate court is ‘an idea whose time has probably come’ to tackle the 80,000 cases waiting to be heard
Defendants accused of violent crimes and drug dealing will be among those to lose their automatic right to a jury trial under plans backed by ministers to clear the court backlog.
Why is it taking so long to get jury trials under way? Delaying justice for so long is also a bad thing.
Spending on Justice was cut to the bone by the Tories add on Covid and we have a backlog that will never be reduced and is still getting worse.
Worse pay is so bad that a lot of junior Barristers would be better off working at Tescos stacking shelves - which means many have left to do other things
On one trial I attended as a juror, it was the first case the prosecution barrister had ever taken. He probably would have been better suited to shelfstacking. The judge more or less said as much.
On topic, April bill rises have kicked in, as have higher price/tax/wage costs/tarrifs all round but with no commensurate increase in real-terms pay. People (rightly) see more of the same coming down the line and no real plan to tackle it. And they're not sure it can be.
So, the squeeze of the last three years is continuing. They are not exactly full of the joys of May, and rightly so.
Tariffs is the odd one out there. They don’t contribute to UK cost of living. In fact they have probably had a deflationary effect so far, both through dumping and the oil price. It’s the American consumer they screw, not us.
The damage from Trump’s shenanigans has been the market turmoil, including the rise in UK gilt yields which badly need to uncouple from the US.
Real terms pay is doing OK at the moment. The fundamentals for the worker aren’t bad, certainly much better than in 2022/3 at the height of the Ukraine inflation spike, but they’re still shit for government finances.
Imagine heading into this with a government that decided to cut borrowing rather than add to it, gilts would have uncoupled from treasuries very early on. Instead the call centre manager decided to add £60bn per year for public sector pay rises and lower growth and markets are pricing in much higher gilt supply. Absolutely self inflicted. The government should have cut spending by £30-40bn per year and reduced borrowing to build up much more fiscal headroom. Cutting headcount is still the only way to do it, eventually the government is going to have to do it, but the closer we get to an election the more resentment there will be among the people who are let go and their families. Such a completely stupid decision not to do it on day one.
"Cutting headcount" would not save "£30-40bn per year". What would you actually cut to save that amount ?
I'm not saying it's impossible - look for example at the Greek retrenchment - but you need to be honest about the process.
Public sector headcount, benefits, state and public sector pensions. All three need to be cut.
I don't disagree that reform is needed - I think we need to remake the state at a wholesale level. What I would challenge is the detail of how you think we should do it:
Public Sector Headcount - many layers of management could be cut and I'm sure there will be a few agencies we could merge / remove without issue. But in there we have stuff like the Passport Office, DVLA etc - and service from these is already dire. If you cut heads without reform you'll find the service collapses and that makes for unhappy voters.
Benefits - we already pay poverty-level numbers for practically everything. Compare our unemployment pay, our maternity pay, our sick pay - we get so little compared to our neighbours. If you cut these further you cut cash which directly recirculates through the local economy which means less businesses and less jobs. And we pay a ludicrous amount of in-work support to people where their wages are insufficient to pay their bills. I'm happy to plan to abolish these subsidies to big business but you can't just cut them without a dire effect on the economy
Pensions? I take the point. Gold plated seems like an understatement for many of them. At the same time our state pension is very low compared to competitor economies close-by. I would look to rebalance as much as cut.
My challenge on all of this is that you can't cut provision and assume the demand goes away. Its not a zero sum game where you cut one side of the equation with zero cost added to the other side. Make a lot of people much poorer and you tank the economy - which creates many other problems.
Which is why wholesale reform is needed. Cutting our way to growth has been tried and it always fails. The system we have doesn't work, so we need to change the system.
While you say benefits are very low - and for say a single healthy person out of a job they are - they are also cumulative, so if you can persuade the state you are ill, and/or disabled, and/or have a family, there are plenty of people getting benefits they would have to earn £30k+ a year to match, and who find themselves so comfortably off they can't be arsed to work. Similarly with pensions, where as you point out the state pension is comparatively small and many pensioners have to depend on benefits to pay the rent, or have small personal pensions and would suffer if you tunkered with say NI
Sure - the welfare state has completely lost sight of its purpose - a generous safety net when needed. Its no longer generous, and it captures people.
Here's my basic problem. The small numbers who "can't be arsed to work" get weaponised to beat into submission the genuinely sick / poor / uninformed.
Welfare is a better option than work because work doesn't pay the bills. I keep referring back to Iain Duncan Smith's reforming zeal. He was up in the valleys (I think Merthyr Tydfil) talking to people who were out of work, pointing at all the jobs and prosperity in Cardiff.
Yes, but these are shift jobs. Where public transport stops too early, and is too expensive when it does run, and we have kids.
This is the issue. "Just cut the benefit" (and I despise that word) isn't the solution. Make work viable is the solution, but the right have zero interest in doing so and the left have zero interest in reforming the welfare state.
Or revive the high street so it is not just mainly warehouse and delivery work on offer. Even Trump to be fair to him is trying to revive mass manufacturing work with his tariffs and build more factories in the US, even if his tariffs use a sledgehammer to crack a nut
How do you "revive the high street" when more and more people prefer to shop online? More and more the high street is made up of "service" business and alleged fronts for money laundering and illegal immigration such as nail bars and barbers. (And a new one - corner shops - which in one way is welcome but we have had three open in one one-mile stretch of high street, where there are 2 supermarkets, in recent months)
Add to that: bubble tea outlets, and weird artisanal cake shops
I think the miscreants have realised Turkish barbers, vape shops and American candy stores have been rumbled
Given the frequency my colleagues found an excuse to buy cakes for the office, you might think the cake shops have a market, however it was almost always supermarket cakes and Costco. Having had a couple of recent opportunities to buy cake myself, I realised how cheap it is, even from Waitrose, and on perpetual discount. So maybe the artisanal cake makers are just as dodgy. One of my colleagues had a side hustle in cupcakes, and they were very nice (when I allowed myself some carbs) but she has never spoken of trying to make a living out of it.
Britain does lack a culture of great cakes readily available on the high street, which is odd given our penchant for baking (eg Bake Off) and a noble tradition of brilliant cakes and puds
Here in bishkek I just had an excellent flat white with a nice fresh home made fruit tartlet. So maybe there is room for 1000 dessert bars in the UK! - as long as they have pretty shopfronts
Er... nearly every coffee shop tries to do coffee and cake. Even the grottiest chains have plastic wrapped blueberry muffins.
I said GREAT cakes. Yeah every Costa and Starbucks has lumps of carb, but they’re often not very nice and definitely not very interesting
One thing I noticed in Yangon was the local tradition of really superb home made cakes, with innovative tropical fruits. Delish
And there are plenty going for that market - Gail's among the chains, tons of independents. Generally, improving the quality of the extras (environment, cakes) is the sell for the independents. Those that aren't the ultra coffee snob places, that is.
I find Gail’s oddly disappointing in this regard (we have one in Camden, in a lovely airy space). The cakes AND savouries kinda disappoint
I do like the bread, however
Agree, Gail's is good for bread. Not for much else though. The best pastries and cakes are usually from independent coffee shops and countryside tea shops.
Govts get the blame. Suspect numbers are so low in part because Lab supporters also feel gloomy thanks to Trump. The saving grace for Labour might be recent memories of Tory incompetence...
The latter simply means unhappy voters will go to Reform, or LibDem/Green, instead of turning to Kemi's lot.
What I find notable about the rise of the Fukkers is how unarsed the pb.com tories are about it as Mrs Badenough drives the tory charabanc off Beach Head and sends their polling to Trussian levels. Even HYUFD seems to be chill with it because apparently KB might get a job as Welsh Secretary in Farage's cabinet.
I suspect they are comfortable with Aunty Nige because Nige promises those gifts they desire but dare not ask for, like sending Johnny Foreigner home, selling off the NHS for tax cuts, reintroducing selective education at aged 11 and (although Nigel isn't on board yet) hanging Lucy Letby.
Albeit many Reform voters think Letby is innocent
How do we know that? I suspect quite a lot of people across the spectrum believe there is doubt in the case, at the least (I am one). But I don't recall a specific survey of voting intentions plus Letby beliefs...
Most of her support seems to be in the Daily Mail comments or on X so take a guess how most of them vote!
It is also a proxy for a wider debate on the NHS. If you believe Letby is innocent, you believe that an NHS ward is more than capable of dispatching large quantities of babies without malicious intent, and then seeking to cover it up. That is pretty much a right wing view by default.
Govts get the blame. Suspect numbers are so low in part because Lab supporters also feel gloomy thanks to Trump. The saving grace for Labour might be recent memories of Tory incompetence...
The latter simply means unhappy voters will go to Reform, or LibDem/Green, instead of turning to Kemi's lot.
What I find notable about the rise of the Fukkers is how unarsed the pb.com tories are about it as Mrs Badenough drives the tory charabanc off Beach Head and sends their polling to Trussian levels. Even HYUFD seems to be chill with it because apparently KB might get a job as Welsh Secretary in Farage's cabinet.
I suspect they are comfortable with Aunty Nige because Nige promises those gifts they desire but dare not ask for, like sending Johnny Foreigner home, selling off the NHS for tax cuts, reintroducing selective education at aged 11 and (although Nigel isn't on board yet) hanging Lucy Letby.
Albeit many Reform voters think Letby is innocent
How do we know that? I suspect quite a lot of people across the spectrum believe there is doubt in the case, at the least (I am one). But I don't recall a specific survey of voting intentions plus Letby beliefs...
There seems to be a desire to turn the Letby case into a culture war symbol. I come from the point of view that
1) There are questions. 2) Asking and answering such questions is a fundamental part of the justice system 3) There have been many miscarriages of justice in the past. 4) Anyone who tries the "But it will damage the system" argument for not asking questions is an idiot.
What does "Asking and answering such questions" entail? The main case took nearly a year, so plenty of asking and answering questions took place. There was then the second case. Both cases have since gone to multiple appeals. Letby's lawyers have now gone to the Criminal Cases Review Commission and we await the Commission's response. That's how the justice system works. (There's also been the Thirlwall Inquiry, asking further questions, but outside of the justice system.)
It is very hard to look at all that and claim that questions have not been asked. More questions have been asked in the Letby case than in most cases. I'm struggling to see a deficit in question asking?
Miscarriages of justice do occur. That's why we allow multiple appeals and why the Criminal Cases Review Commission was created. But Letby has been able to make multiple appeals and has now gone to the Criminal Cases Review Commission. Do you think something more should be done to avoid miscarriages of justice?
The feeling of being in a country with a median age of 25 (Kyrgyzstan) is quite remarkable (and the capital Bishkek is probably lower than even that). It affects every single moment of the waking day
As you look up there are young people (very often beautiful young women but I’ll stop perving to make this point). Around the corner: more young people. Across the road, loads of young people. Young people laugh a lot. They chatter excitedly. They gather in parks and coffee shops and talk optimistically about the future
And then there are kids. Billions of kids. Schools overflowing. Anyone over 30 has about nine kids
They are also apparently free and the sexes are decidedly equal
It has a downside. An old git like me can feel like Gandalf in the shire. The screaming babies irritate
But overall it’s a wonderful feeling - of hope and youth and beauty and ambition and drive and good spirits
I wonder how much of the malaise of the west is simply down to the fact we’re getting old. When did Britain last have a median age of 25?
I think this is absolutely right. There is an optimism and dynamism that comes with having a younger population - I have three children aged 12-18 and I love their energy and the sense of the world opening up for them. But at the same time there is no iron rule that says we have to become grumpy and insular as we get older. Especially as our society ages, I think it behoves us all to try to stay young in our attitudes - keep learning, keep engaging, keep taking risks.
A rare moment of total agreement. This is one reason I travel so much. I love travel of course - and I’m very lucky to do it for free half the time and get paid as well - but it is a chore also. The early rising (5am tomorrow ugh). The airports. The faff. The sheer physical stress of lugging luggage, perpetually
But I am pretty sure it keeps me younger. Going to a new country is like a workout for the brain and the mind. The exertion is like doing weights, dealing with a new language and new situations is like doing exams
Plus it keeps you curious about the world - incuriosity is terribly ageing. Complacency. I know what I like. Etc
I am typing this in the main square of Bishkek Kyrgyzstan, which is to the point
And on that note I am off to buy a souvenir. I’m not sure if Kyrgyzstan does souvenirs. All the guidebooks say is “buy a felt hat”. lol. When I am ever going to wear a felt hat?
Later!
I have been following your travels round ex-Soviet Central Asia with interest. I have long had Uzbekistan in my bucket list, but now I am able to travel for longer I am thinking I should do a longer trip and see more of the 'Stans. I believe visas are no longer much of an issue. What is your assessment of the costs, nothing in detail maybe as compared with other well-known destinations. Nothing fancy, budget 3* hotels, public transport, locals' restaurants
I’m on a souvenir hunt so can’t be detailed - maybe later. But all I can say is do it. Fly direct into Tashkent - the local hub - from london - and that’s your major costs sorted. Everything else is either cheap or absurdly cheap (except 5 star hotels and European wine - go Georgian)
The visa faff is minimal. They’re all keen on tourists. Brits just walk in, you don’t even fill in a form - you get a stamp. 30 days or more free to travel
Uzbekistan has very cheap high speed trains everywhere. Kazakhstan has good local airlines. Kyrgyzstan has buses. Hiring cars is not hard
Food is a bit boring - plov! - but in bigger cities you can get good Georgian Indian Chinese. People are great. Towns and cities are clean and safe - better than Western Europe. Beer is good. History is wild in Uzbekistan, kakazkhstan is compellingly weird (Astana?!), Almaty is seductive
Kyrgyzstan has phenomenal landscapes and Bishkek is a good base
In short: do it. Central Asia is a world class destination. Go before it is overrun with tourists
Violent crime suspects may lose right to jury to clear court backlog Minister says the establishment of an intermediate court is ‘an idea whose time has probably come’ to tackle the 80,000 cases waiting to be heard
Defendants accused of violent crimes and drug dealing will be among those to lose their automatic right to a jury trial under plans backed by ministers to clear the court backlog.
MPs need to vote down this silly idea immediately. Trial by jury is a necessity.
It clearly isn't a necessity, given that we don't use it for all cases, and plenty of stable and fair democracies use it less than we do. What is a grave injustice for both victims and defendants is the ridiculously long wait for justice that many currently have to endure. Reducing the use of trial by jury seems to me a reasonable way of addressing this injustice if other options aren't available.
Johnny Depp vs Amber Heard. The US had a jury trial, we had didn't. One of those got the right answer and the other one didn't. That trial still shames us as a nation and that judge was an old fool hoodwinked by a pretty face. How many more miscarriages of justice do you think we will get by removing jury trials? How many are acceptable?
My attitude towards Depp v Heard was "Sir, there is no settling the point of precedency between a louse and a flea."
Come, come.. one must always choose the lesser of two weevils.
Violent crime suspects may lose right to jury to clear court backlog Minister says the establishment of an intermediate court is ‘an idea whose time has probably come’ to tackle the 80,000 cases waiting to be heard
Defendants accused of violent crimes and drug dealing will be among those to lose their automatic right to a jury trial under plans backed by ministers to clear the court backlog.
MPs need to vote down this silly idea immediately. Trial by jury is a necessity.
It clearly isn't a necessity, given that we don't use it for all cases, and plenty of stable and fair democracies use it less than we do. What is a grave injustice for both victims and defendants is the ridiculously long wait for justice that many currently have to endure. Reducing the use of trial by jury seems to me a reasonable way of addressing this injustice if other options aren't available.
Johnny Depp vs Amber Heard. The US had a jury trial, we had didn't. One of those got the right answer and the other one didn't. That trial still shames us as a nation and that judge was an old fool hoodwinked by a pretty face. How many more miscarriages of justice do you think we will get by removing jury trials? How many are acceptable?
Whether trial by jury leads to more or fewer miscarriages of justice is a matter of opinion (until someone provides some evidence), but the current long waits for justice of any kind really do shame us as a nation. We need to deal with that as a matter of urgency.
Average I think close to 55 or 60. Where the money in our society is concentrated.
I've been flipping 911s for well over 10 years. In that time, In that time, I've done 56 (according to my spreadsheet and not including part-outs) and the average age of my buyers has gone from 40s to 60s. They are the ones with the money.
I particularly like selling these types GT3s. They like the idea but are wholly unprepared for the white knuckle driving experience and extreme discomfort. I am occasionally able to buy them back in a few months at a steep discount.
Is it just the money. Anecdotally, but from several sources, I hear that the young really aren't into classic cars, even cheap ones, even at around £10,000. They aren't from that era.
Given modern cars are a lot more reliable, more comfortable, better to drive, safer and cheaper to run, why would you be into classic cars?
For fun. All what you say is true and I have a modern car for going from a to b. You don't drive a classic car for getting to places. Definitely not.
On topic, April bill rises have kicked in, as have higher price/tax/wage costs/tarrifs all round but with no commensurate increase in real-terms pay. People (rightly) see more of the same coming down the line and no real plan to tackle it. And they're not sure it can be.
So, the squeeze of the last three years is continuing. They are not exactly full of the joys of May, and rightly so.
Tariffs is the odd one out there. They don’t contribute to UK cost of living. In fact they have probably had a deflationary effect so far, both through dumping and the oil price. It’s the American consumer they screw, not us.
The damage from Trump’s shenanigans has been the market turmoil, including the rise in UK gilt yields which badly need to uncouple from the US.
Real terms pay is doing OK at the moment. The fundamentals for the worker aren’t bad, certainly much better than in 2022/3 at the height of the Ukraine inflation spike, but they’re still shit for government finances.
Imagine heading into this with a government that decided to cut borrowing rather than add to it, gilts would have uncoupled from treasuries very early on. Instead the call centre manager decided to add £60bn per year for public sector pay rises and lower growth and markets are pricing in much higher gilt supply. Absolutely self inflicted. The government should have cut spending by £30-40bn per year and reduced borrowing to build up much more fiscal headroom. Cutting headcount is still the only way to do it, eventually the government is going to have to do it, but the closer we get to an election the more resentment there will be among the people who are let go and their families. Such a completely stupid decision not to do it on day one.
"Cutting headcount" would not save "£30-40bn per year". What would you actually cut to save that amount ?
I'm not saying it's impossible - look for example at the Greek retrenchment - but you need to be honest about the process.
Public sector headcount, benefits, state and public sector pensions. All three need to be cut.
I don't disagree that reform is needed - I think we need to remake the state at a wholesale level. What I would challenge is the detail of how you think we should do it:
Public Sector Headcount - many layers of management could be cut and I'm sure there will be a few agencies we could merge / remove without issue. But in there we have stuff like the Passport Office, DVLA etc - and service from these is already dire. If you cut heads without reform you'll find the service collapses and that makes for unhappy voters.
Benefits - we already pay poverty-level numbers for practically everything. Compare our unemployment pay, our maternity pay, our sick pay - we get so little compared to our neighbours. If you cut these further you cut cash which directly recirculates through the local economy which means less businesses and less jobs. And we pay a ludicrous amount of in-work support to people where their wages are insufficient to pay their bills. I'm happy to plan to abolish these subsidies to big business but you can't just cut them without a dire effect on the economy
Pensions? I take the point. Gold plated seems like an understatement for many of them. At the same time our state pension is very low compared to competitor economies close-by. I would look to rebalance as much as cut.
My challenge on all of this is that you can't cut provision and assume the demand goes away. Its not a zero sum game where you cut one side of the equation with zero cost added to the other side. Make a lot of people much poorer and you tank the economy - which creates many other problems.
Which is why wholesale reform is needed. Cutting our way to growth has been tried and it always fails. The system we have doesn't work, so we need to change the system.
While you say benefits are very low - and for say a single healthy person out of a job they are - they are also cumulative, so if you can persuade the state you are ill, and/or disabled, and/or have a family, there are plenty of people getting benefits they would have to earn £30k+ a year to match, and who find themselves so comfortably off they can't be arsed to work. Similarly with pensions, where as you point out the state pension is comparatively small and many pensioners have to depend on benefits to pay the rent, or have small personal pensions and would suffer if you tunkered with say NI
Sure - the welfare state has completely lost sight of its purpose - a generous safety net when needed. Its no longer generous, and it captures people.
Here's my basic problem. The small numbers who "can't be arsed to work" get weaponised to beat into submission the genuinely sick / poor / uninformed.
Welfare is a better option than work because work doesn't pay the bills. I keep referring back to Iain Duncan Smith's reforming zeal. He was up in the valleys (I think Merthyr Tydfil) talking to people who were out of work, pointing at all the jobs and prosperity in Cardiff.
Yes, but these are shift jobs. Where public transport stops too early, and is too expensive when it does run, and we have kids.
This is the issue. "Just cut the benefit" (and I despise that word) isn't the solution. Make work viable is the solution, but the right have zero interest in doing so and the left have zero interest in reforming the welfare state.
Or revive the high street so it is not just mainly warehouse and delivery work on offer. Even Trump to be fair to him is trying to revive mass manufacturing work with his tariffs and build more factories in the US, even if his tariffs use a sledgehammer to crack a nut
How do you "revive the high street" when more and more people prefer to shop online? More and more the high street is made up of "service" business and alleged fronts for money laundering and illegal immigration such as nail bars and barbers. (And a new one - corner shops - which in one way is welcome but we have had three open in one one-mile stretch of high street, where there are 2 supermarkets, in recent months)
Add to that: bubble tea outlets, and weird artisanal cake shops
I think the miscreants have realised Turkish barbers, vape shops and American candy stores have been rumbled
Given the frequency my colleagues found an excuse to buy cakes for the office, you might think the cake shops have a market, however it was almost always supermarket cakes and Costco. Having had a couple of recent opportunities to buy cake myself, I realised how cheap it is, even from Waitrose, and on perpetual discount. So maybe the artisanal cake makers are just as dodgy. One of my colleagues had a side hustle in cupcakes, and they were very nice (when I allowed myself some carbs) but she has never spoken of trying to make a living out of it.
Britain does lack a culture of great cakes readily available on the high street, which is odd given our penchant for baking (eg Bake Off) and a noble tradition of brilliant cakes and puds
Here in bishkek I just had an excellent flat white with a nice fresh home made fruit tartlet. So maybe there is room for 1000 dessert bars in the UK! - as long as they have pretty shopfronts
Er... nearly every coffee shop tries to do coffee and cake. Even the grottiest chains have plastic wrapped blueberry muffins.
I said GREAT cakes. Yeah every Costa and Starbucks has lumps of carb, but they’re often not very nice and definitely not very interesting
One thing I noticed in Yangon was the local tradition of really superb home made cakes, with innovative tropical fruits. Delish
And there are plenty going for that market - Gail's among the chains, tons of independents. Generally, improving the quality of the extras (environment, cakes) is the sell for the independents. Those that aren't the ultra coffee snob places, that is.
I find Gail’s oddly disappointing in this regard (we have one in Camden, in a lovely airy space). The cakes AND savouries kinda disappoint
I do like the bread, however
Agree, Gail's is good for bread. Not for much else though. The best pastries and cakes are usually from independent coffee shops and countryside tea shops.
Gails tries and fails - too expensive for the result.
On topic, April bill rises have kicked in, as have higher price/tax/wage costs/tarrifs all round but with no commensurate increase in real-terms pay. People (rightly) see more of the same coming down the line and no real plan to tackle it. And they're not sure it can be.
So, the squeeze of the last three years is continuing. They are not exactly full of the joys of May, and rightly so.
Tariffs is the odd one out there. They don’t contribute to UK cost of living. In fact they have probably had a deflationary effect so far, both through dumping and the oil price. It’s the American consumer they screw, not us.
The damage from Trump’s shenanigans has been the market turmoil, including the rise in UK gilt yields which badly need to uncouple from the US.
Real terms pay is doing OK at the moment. The fundamentals for the worker aren’t bad, certainly much better than in 2022/3 at the height of the Ukraine inflation spike, but they’re still shit for government finances.
Imagine heading into this with a government that decided to cut borrowing rather than add to it, gilts would have uncoupled from treasuries very early on. Instead the call centre manager decided to add £60bn per year for public sector pay rises and lower growth and markets are pricing in much higher gilt supply. Absolutely self inflicted. The government should have cut spending by £30-40bn per year and reduced borrowing to build up much more fiscal headroom. Cutting headcount is still the only way to do it, eventually the government is going to have to do it, but the closer we get to an election the more resentment there will be among the people who are let go and their families. Such a completely stupid decision not to do it on day one.
"Cutting headcount" would not save "£30-40bn per year". What would you actually cut to save that amount ?
I'm not saying it's impossible - look for example at the Greek retrenchment - but you need to be honest about the process.
Public sector headcount, benefits, state and public sector pensions. All three need to be cut.
I don't disagree that reform is needed - I think we need to remake the state at a wholesale level. What I would challenge is the detail of how you think we should do it:
Public Sector Headcount - many layers of management could be cut and I'm sure there will be a few agencies we could merge / remove without issue. But in there we have stuff like the Passport Office, DVLA etc - and service from these is already dire. If you cut heads without reform you'll find the service collapses and that makes for unhappy voters.
Benefits - we already pay poverty-level numbers for practically everything. Compare our unemployment pay, our maternity pay, our sick pay - we get so little compared to our neighbours. If you cut these further you cut cash which directly recirculates through the local economy which means less businesses and less jobs. And we pay a ludicrous amount of in-work support to people where their wages are insufficient to pay their bills. I'm happy to plan to abolish these subsidies to big business but you can't just cut them without a dire effect on the economy
Pensions? I take the point. Gold plated seems like an understatement for many of them. At the same time our state pension is very low compared to competitor economies close-by. I would look to rebalance as much as cut.
My challenge on all of this is that you can't cut provision and assume the demand goes away. Its not a zero sum game where you cut one side of the equation with zero cost added to the other side. Make a lot of people much poorer and you tank the economy - which creates many other problems.
Which is why wholesale reform is needed. Cutting our way to growth has been tried and it always fails. The system we have doesn't work, so we need to change the system.
While you say benefits are very low - and for say a single healthy person out of a job they are - they are also cumulative, so if you can persuade the state you are ill, and/or disabled, and/or have a family, there are plenty of people getting benefits they would have to earn £30k+ a year to match, and who find themselves so comfortably off they can't be arsed to work. Similarly with pensions, where as you point out the state pension is comparatively small and many pensioners have to depend on benefits to pay the rent, or have small personal pensions and would suffer if you tunkered with say NI
Sure - the welfare state has completely lost sight of its purpose - a generous safety net when needed. Its no longer generous, and it captures people.
Here's my basic problem. The small numbers who "can't be arsed to work" get weaponised to beat into submission the genuinely sick / poor / uninformed.
Welfare is a better option than work because work doesn't pay the bills. I keep referring back to Iain Duncan Smith's reforming zeal. He was up in the valleys (I think Merthyr Tydfil) talking to people who were out of work, pointing at all the jobs and prosperity in Cardiff.
Yes, but these are shift jobs. Where public transport stops too early, and is too expensive when it does run, and we have kids.
This is the issue. "Just cut the benefit" (and I despise that word) isn't the solution. Make work viable is the solution, but the right have zero interest in doing so and the left have zero interest in reforming the welfare state.
Or revive the high street so it is not just mainly warehouse and delivery work on offer. Even Trump to be fair to him is trying to revive mass manufacturing work with his tariffs and build more factories in the US, even if his tariffs use a sledgehammer to crack a nut
How do you "revive the high street" when more and more people prefer to shop online? More and more the high street is made up of "service" business and alleged fronts for money laundering and illegal immigration such as nail bars and barbers. (And a new one - corner shops - which in one way is welcome but we have had three open in one one-mile stretch of high street, where there are 2 supermarkets, in recent months)
Add to that: bubble tea outlets, and weird artisanal cake shops
I think the miscreants have realised Turkish barbers, vape shops and American candy stores have been rumbled
Given the frequency my colleagues found an excuse to buy cakes for the office, you might think the cake shops have a market, however it was almost always supermarket cakes and Costco. Having had a couple of recent opportunities to buy cake myself, I realised how cheap it is, even from Waitrose, and on perpetual discount. So maybe the artisanal cake makers are just as dodgy. One of my colleagues had a side hustle in cupcakes, and they were very nice (when I allowed myself some carbs) but she has never spoken of trying to make a living out of it.
Britain does lack a culture of great cakes readily available on the high street, which is odd given our penchant for baking (eg Bake Off) and a noble tradition of brilliant cakes and puds
Here in bishkek I just had an excellent flat white with a nice fresh home made fruit tartlet. So maybe there is room for 1000 dessert bars in the UK! - as long as they have pretty shopfronts
Er... nearly every coffee shop tries to do coffee and cake. Even the grottiest chains have plastic wrapped blueberry muffins.
I said GREAT cakes. Yeah every Costa and Starbucks has lumps of carb, but they’re often not very nice and definitely not very interesting
One thing I noticed in Yangon was the local tradition of really superb home made cakes, with innovative tropical fruits. Delish
And there are plenty going for that market - Gail's among the chains, tons of independents. Generally, improving the quality of the extras (environment, cakes) is the sell for the independents. Those that aren't the ultra coffee snob places, that is.
I find Gail’s oddly disappointing in this regard (we have one in Camden, in a lovely airy space). The cakes AND savouries kinda disappoint
I do like the bread, however
Agree, Gail's is good for bread. Not for much else though. The best pastries and cakes are usually from independent coffee shops and countryside tea shops.
Yep. Had an astoundingly good almond croissant this weekend, in just such.
Violent crime suspects may lose right to jury to clear court backlog Minister says the establishment of an intermediate court is ‘an idea whose time has probably come’ to tackle the 80,000 cases waiting to be heard
Defendants accused of violent crimes and drug dealing will be among those to lose their automatic right to a jury trial under plans backed by ministers to clear the court backlog.
MPs need to vote down this silly idea immediately. Trial by jury is a necessity.
It clearly isn't a necessity, given that we don't use it for all cases, and plenty of stable and fair democracies use it less than we do. What is a grave injustice for both victims and defendants is the ridiculously long wait for justice that many currently have to endure. Reducing the use of trial by jury seems to me a reasonable way of addressing this injustice if other options aren't available.
Johnny Depp vs Amber Heard. The US had a jury trial, we had didn't. One of those got the right answer and the other one didn't. That trial still shames us as a nation and that judge was an old fool hoodwinked by a pretty face. How many more miscarriages of justice do you think we will get by removing jury trials? How many are acceptable?
My attitude towards Depp v Heard was "Sir, there is no settling the point of precedency between a louse and a flea."
No, I'm sorry watch the evidence in the US trial, all of the testimony, all of the recordings and it's clear that Heard was an abuser and Depp was the abused. It is indeed what the jury came back with as a verdict. Depp was pretty much a blameless party having been beaten up by his then wife for 3 years and the defence team could product no single picture, video or audio recording of any violence by Depp or injuries that Heard claimed to have got from his violence.
It was clear cut that she made it all up because he wanted a divorce and to get away from her.
Our trial process was an absolute disgrace and we allowed the press to incorrectly malign an innocent man who was the victim of years of spousal abuse.
On topic, April bill rises have kicked in, as have higher price/tax/wage costs/tarrifs all round but with no commensurate increase in real-terms pay. People (rightly) see more of the same coming down the line and no real plan to tackle it. And they're not sure it can be.
So, the squeeze of the last three years is continuing. They are not exactly full of the joys of May, and rightly so.
Tariffs is the odd one out there. They don’t contribute to UK cost of living. In fact they have probably had a deflationary effect so far, both through dumping and the oil price. It’s the American consumer they screw, not us.
The damage from Trump’s shenanigans has been the market turmoil, including the rise in UK gilt yields which badly need to uncouple from the US.
Real terms pay is doing OK at the moment. The fundamentals for the worker aren’t bad, certainly much better than in 2022/3 at the height of the Ukraine inflation spike, but they’re still shit for government finances.
Imagine heading into this with a government that decided to cut borrowing rather than add to it, gilts would have uncoupled from treasuries very early on. Instead the call centre manager decided to add £60bn per year for public sector pay rises and lower growth and markets are pricing in much higher gilt supply. Absolutely self inflicted. The government should have cut spending by £30-40bn per year and reduced borrowing to build up much more fiscal headroom. Cutting headcount is still the only way to do it, eventually the government is going to have to do it, but the closer we get to an election the more resentment there will be among the people who are let go and their families. Such a completely stupid decision not to do it on day one.
"Cutting headcount" would not save "£30-40bn per year". What would you actually cut to save that amount ?
I'm not saying it's impossible - look for example at the Greek retrenchment - but you need to be honest about the process.
Public sector headcount, benefits, state and public sector pensions. All three need to be cut.
I don't disagree that reform is needed - I think we need to remake the state at a wholesale level. What I would challenge is the detail of how you think we should do it:
Public Sector Headcount - many layers of management could be cut and I'm sure there will be a few agencies we could merge / remove without issue. But in there we have stuff like the Passport Office, DVLA etc - and service from these is already dire. If you cut heads without reform you'll find the service collapses and that makes for unhappy voters.
Benefits - we already pay poverty-level numbers for practically everything. Compare our unemployment pay, our maternity pay, our sick pay - we get so little compared to our neighbours. If you cut these further you cut cash which directly recirculates through the local economy which means less businesses and less jobs. And we pay a ludicrous amount of in-work support to people where their wages are insufficient to pay their bills. I'm happy to plan to abolish these subsidies to big business but you can't just cut them without a dire effect on the economy
Pensions? I take the point. Gold plated seems like an understatement for many of them. At the same time our state pension is very low compared to competitor economies close-by. I would look to rebalance as much as cut.
My challenge on all of this is that you can't cut provision and assume the demand goes away. Its not a zero sum game where you cut one side of the equation with zero cost added to the other side. Make a lot of people much poorer and you tank the economy - which creates many other problems.
Which is why wholesale reform is needed. Cutting our way to growth has been tried and it always fails. The system we have doesn't work, so we need to change the system.
While you say benefits are very low - and for say a single healthy person out of a job they are - they are also cumulative, so if you can persuade the state you are ill, and/or disabled, and/or have a family, there are plenty of people getting benefits they would have to earn £30k+ a year to match, and who find themselves so comfortably off they can't be arsed to work. Similarly with pensions, where as you point out the state pension is comparatively small and many pensioners have to depend on benefits to pay the rent, or have small personal pensions and would suffer if you tunkered with say NI
Sure - the welfare state has completely lost sight of its purpose - a generous safety net when needed. Its no longer generous, and it captures people.
Here's my basic problem. The small numbers who "can't be arsed to work" get weaponised to beat into submission the genuinely sick / poor / uninformed.
Welfare is a better option than work because work doesn't pay the bills. I keep referring back to Iain Duncan Smith's reforming zeal. He was up in the valleys (I think Merthyr Tydfil) talking to people who were out of work, pointing at all the jobs and prosperity in Cardiff.
Yes, but these are shift jobs. Where public transport stops too early, and is too expensive when it does run, and we have kids.
This is the issue. "Just cut the benefit" (and I despise that word) isn't the solution. Make work viable is the solution, but the right have zero interest in doing so and the left have zero interest in reforming the welfare state.
Or revive the high street so it is not just mainly warehouse and delivery work on offer. Even Trump to be fair to him is trying to revive mass manufacturing work with his tariffs and build more factories in the US, even if his tariffs use a sledgehammer to crack a nut
How do you "revive the high street" when more and more people prefer to shop online? More and more the high street is made up of "service" business and alleged fronts for money laundering and illegal immigration such as nail bars and barbers. (And a new one - corner shops - which in one way is welcome but we have had three open in one one-mile stretch of high street, where there are 2 supermarkets, in recent months)
Add to that: bubble tea outlets, and weird artisanal cake shops
I think the miscreants have realised Turkish barbers, vape shops and American candy stores have been rumbled
Given the frequency my colleagues found an excuse to buy cakes for the office, you might think the cake shops have a market, however it was almost always supermarket cakes and Costco. Having had a couple of recent opportunities to buy cake myself, I realised how cheap it is, even from Waitrose, and on perpetual discount. So maybe the artisanal cake makers are just as dodgy. One of my colleagues had a side hustle in cupcakes, and they were very nice (when I allowed myself some carbs) but she has never spoken of trying to make a living out of it.
Britain does lack a culture of great cakes readily available on the high street, which is odd given our penchant for baking (eg Bake Off) and a noble tradition of brilliant cakes and puds
Here in bishkek I just had an excellent flat white with a nice fresh home made fruit tartlet. So maybe there is room for 1000 dessert bars in the UK! - as long as they have pretty shopfronts
Er... nearly every coffee shop tries to do coffee and cake. Even the grottiest chains have plastic wrapped blueberry muffins.
I said GREAT cakes. Yeah every Costa and Starbucks has lumps of carb, but they’re often not very nice and definitely not very interesting
One thing I noticed in Yangon was the local tradition of really superb home made cakes, with innovative tropical fruits. Delish
Good coffee shops have good cakes - and bread. Still plenty of artisanal stuff in the UK; just not ubiquitous.
It's slightly depressing to go into a Costa in Eastern Europe and see that they have a range of pastries that actually look nice. Why can they not manage it in the UK?
On topic, April bill rises have kicked in, as have higher price/tax/wage costs/tarrifs all round but with no commensurate increase in real-terms pay. People (rightly) see more of the same coming down the line and no real plan to tackle it. And they're not sure it can be.
So, the squeeze of the last three years is continuing. They are not exactly full of the joys of May, and rightly so.
Tariffs is the odd one out there. They don’t contribute to UK cost of living. In fact they have probably had a deflationary effect so far, both through dumping and the oil price. It’s the American consumer they screw, not us.
The damage from Trump’s shenanigans has been the market turmoil, including the rise in UK gilt yields which badly need to uncouple from the US.
Real terms pay is doing OK at the moment. The fundamentals for the worker aren’t bad, certainly much better than in 2022/3 at the height of the Ukraine inflation spike, but they’re still shit for government finances.
Imagine heading into this with a government that decided to cut borrowing rather than add to it, gilts would have uncoupled from treasuries very early on. Instead the call centre manager decided to add £60bn per year for public sector pay rises and lower growth and markets are pricing in much higher gilt supply. Absolutely self inflicted. The government should have cut spending by £30-40bn per year and reduced borrowing to build up much more fiscal headroom. Cutting headcount is still the only way to do it, eventually the government is going to have to do it, but the closer we get to an election the more resentment there will be among the people who are let go and their families. Such a completely stupid decision not to do it on day one.
"Cutting headcount" would not save "£30-40bn per year". What would you actually cut to save that amount ?
I'm not saying it's impossible - look for example at the Greek retrenchment - but you need to be honest about the process.
Public sector headcount, benefits, state and public sector pensions. All three need to be cut.
I don't disagree that reform is needed - I think we need to remake the state at a wholesale level. What I would challenge is the detail of how you think we should do it:
Public Sector Headcount - many layers of management could be cut and I'm sure there will be a few agencies we could merge / remove without issue. But in there we have stuff like the Passport Office, DVLA etc - and service from these is already dire. If you cut heads without reform you'll find the service collapses and that makes for unhappy voters.
Benefits - we already pay poverty-level numbers for practically everything. Compare our unemployment pay, our maternity pay, our sick pay - we get so little compared to our neighbours. If you cut these further you cut cash which directly recirculates through the local economy which means less businesses and less jobs. And we pay a ludicrous amount of in-work support to people where their wages are insufficient to pay their bills. I'm happy to plan to abolish these subsidies to big business but you can't just cut them without a dire effect on the economy
Pensions? I take the point. Gold plated seems like an understatement for many of them. At the same time our state pension is very low compared to competitor economies close-by. I would look to rebalance as much as cut.
My challenge on all of this is that you can't cut provision and assume the demand goes away. Its not a zero sum game where you cut one side of the equation with zero cost added to the other side. Make a lot of people much poorer and you tank the economy - which creates many other problems.
Which is why wholesale reform is needed. Cutting our way to growth has been tried and it always fails. The system we have doesn't work, so we need to change the system.
While you say benefits are very low - and for say a single healthy person out of a job they are - they are also cumulative, so if you can persuade the state you are ill, and/or disabled, and/or have a family, there are plenty of people getting benefits they would have to earn £30k+ a year to match, and who find themselves so comfortably off they can't be arsed to work. Similarly with pensions, where as you point out the state pension is comparatively small and many pensioners have to depend on benefits to pay the rent, or have small personal pensions and would suffer if you tunkered with say NI
Sure - the welfare state has completely lost sight of its purpose - a generous safety net when needed. Its no longer generous, and it captures people.
Here's my basic problem. The small numbers who "can't be arsed to work" get weaponised to beat into submission the genuinely sick / poor / uninformed.
Welfare is a better option than work because work doesn't pay the bills. I keep referring back to Iain Duncan Smith's reforming zeal. He was up in the valleys (I think Merthyr Tydfil) talking to people who were out of work, pointing at all the jobs and prosperity in Cardiff.
Yes, but these are shift jobs. Where public transport stops too early, and is too expensive when it does run, and we have kids.
This is the issue. "Just cut the benefit" (and I despise that word) isn't the solution. Make work viable is the solution, but the right have zero interest in doing so and the left have zero interest in reforming the welfare state.
Or revive the high street so it is not just mainly warehouse and delivery work on offer. Even Trump to be fair to him is trying to revive mass manufacturing work with his tariffs and build more factories in the US, even if his tariffs use a sledgehammer to crack a nut
How do you "revive the high street" when more and more people prefer to shop online? More and more the high street is made up of "service" business and alleged fronts for money laundering and illegal immigration such as nail bars and barbers. (And a new one - corner shops - which in one way is welcome but we have had three open in one one-mile stretch of high street, where there are 2 supermarkets, in recent months)
Add to that: bubble tea outlets, and weird artisanal cake shops
I think the miscreants have realised Turkish barbers, vape shops and American candy stores have been rumbled
Given the frequency my colleagues found an excuse to buy cakes for the office, you might think the cake shops have a market, however it was almost always supermarket cakes and Costco. Having had a couple of recent opportunities to buy cake myself, I realised how cheap it is, even from Waitrose, and on perpetual discount. So maybe the artisanal cake makers are just as dodgy. One of my colleagues had a side hustle in cupcakes, and they were very nice (when I allowed myself some carbs) but she has never spoken of trying to make a living out of it.
Britain does lack a culture of great cakes readily available on the high street, which is odd given our penchant for baking (eg Bake Off) and a noble tradition of brilliant cakes and puds
Here in bishkek I just had an excellent flat white with a nice fresh home made fruit tartlet. So maybe there is room for 1000 dessert bars in the UK! - as long as they have pretty shopfronts
Er... nearly every coffee shop tries to do coffee and cake. Even the grottiest chains have plastic wrapped blueberry muffins.
I said GREAT cakes. Yeah every Costa and Starbucks has lumps of carb, but they’re often not very nice and definitely not very interesting
One thing I noticed in Yangon was the local tradition of really superb home made cakes, with innovative tropical fruits. Delish
Good coffee shops have good cakes - and bread. Still plenty of artisanal stuff in the UK; just not ubiquitous.
It's slightly depressing to go into a Costa in Eastern Europe and see that they have a range of pastries that actually look nice. Why can they not manage it in the UK?
Govts get the blame. Suspect numbers are so low in part because Lab supporters also feel gloomy thanks to Trump. The saving grace for Labour might be recent memories of Tory incompetence...
The latter simply means unhappy voters will go to Reform, or LibDem/Green, instead of turning to Kemi's lot.
What I find notable about the rise of the Fukkers is how unarsed the pb.com tories are about it as Mrs Badenough drives the tory charabanc off Beach Head and sends their polling to Trussian levels. Even HYUFD seems to be chill with it because apparently KB might get a job as Welsh Secretary in Farage's cabinet.
I suspect they are comfortable with Aunty Nige because Nige promises those gifts they desire but dare not ask for, like sending Johnny Foreigner home, selling off the NHS for tax cuts, reintroducing selective education at aged 11 and (although Nigel isn't on board yet) hanging Lucy Letby.
Albeit many Reform voters think Letby is innocent
How do we know that? I suspect quite a lot of people across the spectrum believe there is doubt in the case, at the least (I am one). But I don't recall a specific survey of voting intentions plus Letby beliefs...
There seems to be a desire to turn the Letby case into a culture war symbol. I come from the point of view that
1) There are questions. 2) Asking and answering such questions is a fundamental part of the justice system 3) There have been many miscarriages of justice in the past. 4) Anyone who tries the "But it will damage the system" argument for not asking questions is an idiot.
What does "Asking and answering such questions" entail? The main case took nearly a year, so plenty of asking and answering questions took place. There was then the second case. Both cases have since gone to multiple appeals. Letby's lawyers have now gone to the Criminal Cases Review Commission and we await the Commission's response. That's how the justice system works. (There's also been the Thirlwall Inquiry, asking further questions, but outside of the justice system.)
It is very hard to look at all that and claim that questions have not been asked. More questions have been asked in the Letby case than in most cases. I'm struggling to see a deficit in question asking?
Miscarriages of justice do occur. That's why we allow multiple appeals and why the Criminal Cases Review Commission was created. But Letby has been able to make multiple appeals and has now gone to the Criminal Cases Review Commission. Do you think something more should be done to avoid miscarriages of justice?
I'm talking about the people who have been going "Found guilty, should be the end of. Questioning the courts bad."
The legal proceedings and appeals are what should happen. We should celebrate them.
@SeanT in his cell in El Salvador would applaud that (All suspects are guilty. Period. Otherwise they wouldn't be suspect!)
It was apparently the WFA changes that were going to kill millions of pensioners but it all seems to have gone out with a whimper. Just as the private school fee changes were apparently going to destroy the school system.
What is true is that whatever Labour's failings are (and there are many), there are a great number of people here and elsewhere who want them to fail and will oppose anything they do.
This posting regime of yours isn't really working for me, because I can't respond and expect you to engage with my response. So I tend skin over without a huge amount of attention to what you're posting. Whilst they are your own thoughts, they have a similar effect to Scott's reposted Tweets in that no conversation is sought.
I underatand that PB can take up an unacceptable amount of time, but another way of rationing it might be to only post on one day a week, but post normally (not to extremes) on that day. That gives you an opportunity to get stuck in to the debate, but keep the rest of your diary free.
On topic, April bill rises have kicked in, as have higher price/tax/wage costs/tarrifs all round but with no commensurate increase in real-terms pay. People (rightly) see more of the same coming down the line and no real plan to tackle it. And they're not sure it can be.
So, the squeeze of the last three years is continuing. They are not exactly full of the joys of May, and rightly so.
Tariffs is the odd one out there. They don’t contribute to UK cost of living. In fact they have probably had a deflationary effect so far, both through dumping and the oil price. It’s the American consumer they screw, not us.
The damage from Trump’s shenanigans has been the market turmoil, including the rise in UK gilt yields which badly need to uncouple from the US.
Real terms pay is doing OK at the moment. The fundamentals for the worker aren’t bad, certainly much better than in 2022/3 at the height of the Ukraine inflation spike, but they’re still shit for government finances.
Imagine heading into this with a government that decided to cut borrowing rather than add to it, gilts would have uncoupled from treasuries very early on. Instead the call centre manager decided to add £60bn per year for public sector pay rises and lower growth and markets are pricing in much higher gilt supply. Absolutely self inflicted. The government should have cut spending by £30-40bn per year and reduced borrowing to build up much more fiscal headroom. Cutting headcount is still the only way to do it, eventually the government is going to have to do it, but the closer we get to an election the more resentment there will be among the people who are let go and their families. Such a completely stupid decision not to do it on day one.
"Cutting headcount" would not save "£30-40bn per year". What would you actually cut to save that amount ?
I'm not saying it's impossible - look for example at the Greek retrenchment - but you need to be honest about the process.
Public sector headcount, benefits, state and public sector pensions. All three need to be cut.
I don't disagree that reform is needed - I think we need to remake the state at a wholesale level. What I would challenge is the detail of how you think we should do it:
Public Sector Headcount - many layers of management could be cut and I'm sure there will be a few agencies we could merge / remove without issue. But in there we have stuff like the Passport Office, DVLA etc - and service from these is already dire. If you cut heads without reform you'll find the service collapses and that makes for unhappy voters.
Benefits - we already pay poverty-level numbers for practically everything. Compare our unemployment pay, our maternity pay, our sick pay - we get so little compared to our neighbours. If you cut these further you cut cash which directly recirculates through the local economy which means less businesses and less jobs. And we pay a ludicrous amount of in-work support to people where their wages are insufficient to pay their bills. I'm happy to plan to abolish these subsidies to big business but you can't just cut them without a dire effect on the economy
Pensions? I take the point. Gold plated seems like an understatement for many of them. At the same time our state pension is very low compared to competitor economies close-by. I would look to rebalance as much as cut.
My challenge on all of this is that you can't cut provision and assume the demand goes away. Its not a zero sum game where you cut one side of the equation with zero cost added to the other side. Make a lot of people much poorer and you tank the economy - which creates many other problems.
Which is why wholesale reform is needed. Cutting our way to growth has been tried and it always fails. The system we have doesn't work, so we need to change the system.
While you say benefits are very low - and for say a single healthy person out of a job they are - they are also cumulative, so if you can persuade the state you are ill, and/or disabled, and/or have a family, there are plenty of people getting benefits they would have to earn £30k+ a year to match, and who find themselves so comfortably off they can't be arsed to work. Similarly with pensions, where as you point out the state pension is comparatively small and many pensioners have to depend on benefits to pay the rent, or have small personal pensions and would suffer if you tunkered with say NI
Sure - the welfare state has completely lost sight of its purpose - a generous safety net when needed. Its no longer generous, and it captures people.
Here's my basic problem. The small numbers who "can't be arsed to work" get weaponised to beat into submission the genuinely sick / poor / uninformed.
Welfare is a better option than work because work doesn't pay the bills. I keep referring back to Iain Duncan Smith's reforming zeal. He was up in the valleys (I think Merthyr Tydfil) talking to people who were out of work, pointing at all the jobs and prosperity in Cardiff.
Yes, but these are shift jobs. Where public transport stops too early, and is too expensive when it does run, and we have kids.
This is the issue. "Just cut the benefit" (and I despise that word) isn't the solution. Make work viable is the solution, but the right have zero interest in doing so and the left have zero interest in reforming the welfare state.
Or revive the high street so it is not just mainly warehouse and delivery work on offer. Even Trump to be fair to him is trying to revive mass manufacturing work with his tariffs and build more factories in the US, even if his tariffs use a sledgehammer to crack a nut
How do you "revive the high street" when more and more people prefer to shop online? More and more the high street is made up of "service" business and alleged fronts for money laundering and illegal immigration such as nail bars and barbers. (And a new one - corner shops - which in one way is welcome but we have had three open in one one-mile stretch of high street, where there are 2 supermarkets, in recent months)
Add to that: bubble tea outlets, and weird artisanal cake shops
I think the miscreants have realised Turkish barbers, vape shops and American candy stores have been rumbled
Given the frequency my colleagues found an excuse to buy cakes for the office, you might think the cake shops have a market, however it was almost always supermarket cakes and Costco. Having had a couple of recent opportunities to buy cake myself, I realised how cheap it is, even from Waitrose, and on perpetual discount. So maybe the artisanal cake makers are just as dodgy. One of my colleagues had a side hustle in cupcakes, and they were very nice (when I allowed myself some carbs) but she has never spoken of trying to make a living out of it.
Britain does lack a culture of great cakes readily available on the high street, which is odd given our penchant for baking (eg Bake Off) and a noble tradition of brilliant cakes and puds
Here in bishkek I just had an excellent flat white with a nice fresh home made fruit tartlet. So maybe there is room for 1000 dessert bars in the UK! - as long as they have pretty shopfronts
Er... nearly every coffee shop tries to do coffee and cake. Even the grottiest chains have plastic wrapped blueberry muffins.
I said GREAT cakes. Yeah every Costa and Starbucks has lumps of carb, but they’re often not very nice and definitely not very interesting
One thing I noticed in Yangon was the local tradition of really superb home made cakes, with innovative tropical fruits. Delish
And there are plenty going for that market - Gail's among the chains, tons of independents. Generally, improving the quality of the extras (environment, cakes) is the sell for the independents. Those that aren't the ultra coffee snob places, that is.
I find Gail’s oddly disappointing in this regard (we have one in Camden, in a lovely airy space). The cakes AND savouries kinda disappoint
I do like the bread, however
Agree, Gail's is good for bread. Not for much else though. The best pastries and cakes are usually from independent coffee shops and countryside tea shops.
Gails tries and fails - too expensive for the result.
Ole & Steen are slightly better.
Blank street are the best of the chains, but it's still middling to poor compared to the independents.
On topic, April bill rises have kicked in, as have higher price/tax/wage costs/tarrifs all round but with no commensurate increase in real-terms pay. People (rightly) see more of the same coming down the line and no real plan to tackle it. And they're not sure it can be.
So, the squeeze of the last three years is continuing. They are not exactly full of the joys of May, and rightly so.
Tariffs is the odd one out there. They don’t contribute to UK cost of living. In fact they have probably had a deflationary effect so far, both through dumping and the oil price. It’s the American consumer they screw, not us.
The damage from Trump’s shenanigans has been the market turmoil, including the rise in UK gilt yields which badly need to uncouple from the US.
Real terms pay is doing OK at the moment. The fundamentals for the worker aren’t bad, certainly much better than in 2022/3 at the height of the Ukraine inflation spike, but they’re still shit for government finances.
Imagine heading into this with a government that decided to cut borrowing rather than add to it, gilts would have uncoupled from treasuries very early on. Instead the call centre manager decided to add £60bn per year for public sector pay rises and lower growth and markets are pricing in much higher gilt supply. Absolutely self inflicted. The government should have cut spending by £30-40bn per year and reduced borrowing to build up much more fiscal headroom. Cutting headcount is still the only way to do it, eventually the government is going to have to do it, but the closer we get to an election the more resentment there will be among the people who are let go and their families. Such a completely stupid decision not to do it on day one.
"Cutting headcount" would not save "£30-40bn per year". What would you actually cut to save that amount ?
I'm not saying it's impossible - look for example at the Greek retrenchment - but you need to be honest about the process.
Public sector headcount, benefits, state and public sector pensions. All three need to be cut.
I don't disagree that reform is needed - I think we need to remake the state at a wholesale level. What I would challenge is the detail of how you think we should do it:
Public Sector Headcount - many layers of management could be cut and I'm sure there will be a few agencies we could merge / remove without issue. But in there we have stuff like the Passport Office, DVLA etc - and service from these is already dire. If you cut heads without reform you'll find the service collapses and that makes for unhappy voters.
Benefits - we already pay poverty-level numbers for practically everything. Compare our unemployment pay, our maternity pay, our sick pay - we get so little compared to our neighbours. If you cut these further you cut cash which directly recirculates through the local economy which means less businesses and less jobs. And we pay a ludicrous amount of in-work support to people where their wages are insufficient to pay their bills. I'm happy to plan to abolish these subsidies to big business but you can't just cut them without a dire effect on the economy
Pensions? I take the point. Gold plated seems like an understatement for many of them. At the same time our state pension is very low compared to competitor economies close-by. I would look to rebalance as much as cut.
My challenge on all of this is that you can't cut provision and assume the demand goes away. Its not a zero sum game where you cut one side of the equation with zero cost added to the other side. Make a lot of people much poorer and you tank the economy - which creates many other problems.
Which is why wholesale reform is needed. Cutting our way to growth has been tried and it always fails. The system we have doesn't work, so we need to change the system.
While you say benefits are very low - and for say a single healthy person out of a job they are - they are also cumulative, so if you can persuade the state you are ill, and/or disabled, and/or have a family, there are plenty of people getting benefits they would have to earn £30k+ a year to match, and who find themselves so comfortably off they can't be arsed to work. Similarly with pensions, where as you point out the state pension is comparatively small and many pensioners have to depend on benefits to pay the rent, or have small personal pensions and would suffer if you tunkered with say NI
Sure - the welfare state has completely lost sight of its purpose - a generous safety net when needed. Its no longer generous, and it captures people.
Here's my basic problem. The small numbers who "can't be arsed to work" get weaponised to beat into submission the genuinely sick / poor / uninformed.
Welfare is a better option than work because work doesn't pay the bills. I keep referring back to Iain Duncan Smith's reforming zeal. He was up in the valleys (I think Merthyr Tydfil) talking to people who were out of work, pointing at all the jobs and prosperity in Cardiff.
Yes, but these are shift jobs. Where public transport stops too early, and is too expensive when it does run, and we have kids.
This is the issue. "Just cut the benefit" (and I despise that word) isn't the solution. Make work viable is the solution, but the right have zero interest in doing so and the left have zero interest in reforming the welfare state.
Or revive the high street so it is not just mainly warehouse and delivery work on offer. Even Trump to be fair to him is trying to revive mass manufacturing work with his tariffs and build more factories in the US, even if his tariffs use a sledgehammer to crack a nut
How do you "revive the high street" when more and more people prefer to shop online? More and more the high street is made up of "service" business and alleged fronts for money laundering and illegal immigration such as nail bars and barbers. (And a new one - corner shops - which in one way is welcome but we have had three open in one one-mile stretch of high street, where there are 2 supermarkets, in recent months)
Add to that: bubble tea outlets, and weird artisanal cake shops
I think the miscreants have realised Turkish barbers, vape shops and American candy stores have been rumbled
Given the frequency my colleagues found an excuse to buy cakes for the office, you might think the cake shops have a market, however it was almost always supermarket cakes and Costco. Having had a couple of recent opportunities to buy cake myself, I realised how cheap it is, even from Waitrose, and on perpetual discount. So maybe the artisanal cake makers are just as dodgy. One of my colleagues had a side hustle in cupcakes, and they were very nice (when I allowed myself some carbs) but she has never spoken of trying to make a living out of it.
Britain does lack a culture of great cakes readily available on the high street, which is odd given our penchant for baking (eg Bake Off) and a noble tradition of brilliant cakes and puds
Here in bishkek I just had an excellent flat white with a nice fresh home made fruit tartlet. So maybe there is room for 1000 dessert bars in the UK! - as long as they have pretty shopfronts
Er... nearly every coffee shop tries to do coffee and cake. Even the grottiest chains have plastic wrapped blueberry muffins.
I said GREAT cakes. Yeah every Costa and Starbucks has lumps of carb, but they’re often not very nice and definitely not very interesting
One thing I noticed in Yangon was the local tradition of really superb home made cakes, with innovative tropical fruits. Delish
And there are plenty going for that market - Gail's among the chains, tons of independents. Generally, improving the quality of the extras (environment, cakes) is the sell for the independents. Those that aren't the ultra coffee snob places, that is.
I find Gail’s oddly disappointing in this regard (we have one in Camden, in a lovely airy space). The cakes AND savouries kinda disappoint
I do like the bread, however
Agree, Gail's is good for bread. Not for much else though. The best pastries and cakes are usually from independent coffee shops and countryside tea shops.
Shop bought cakes are almost always disappointing, albeit less so in independent places. If you want good cake you need to bake it yourself. It's an interesting contrast with savoury food, which is often better in a restaurant than at home. Perhaps because the usual restaurant trick of adding more salt and fat than you would ever use at home doesn't work with cakes.
Average I think close to 55 or 60. Where the money in our society is concentrated.
I've been flipping 911s for well over 10 years. In that time, In that time, I've done 56 (according to my spreadsheet and not including part-outs) and the average age of my buyers has gone from 40s to 60s. They are the ones with the money.
I particularly like selling these types GT3s. They like the idea but are wholly unprepared for the white knuckle driving experience and extreme discomfort. I am occasionally able to buy them back in a few months at a steep discount.
Is it just the money. Anecdotally, but from several sources, I hear that the young really aren't into classic cars, even cheap ones, even at around £10,000. They aren't from that era.
Given modern cars are a lot more reliable, more comfortable, better to drive, safer and cheaper to run, why would you be into classic cars?
For fun. All what you say is true and I have a modern car for going from a to b. You don't drive a classic car for getting to places. Definitely not.
Nostalgia. Same reason guys buy old cameras.
As they become antiques (the items, and the owners) only the true rarities will hold their value, I suspect.
On topic, April bill rises have kicked in, as have higher price/tax/wage costs/tarrifs all round but with no commensurate increase in real-terms pay. People (rightly) see more of the same coming down the line and no real plan to tackle it. And they're not sure it can be.
So, the squeeze of the last three years is continuing. They are not exactly full of the joys of May, and rightly so.
Tariffs is the odd one out there. They don’t contribute to UK cost of living. In fact they have probably had a deflationary effect so far, both through dumping and the oil price. It’s the American consumer they screw, not us.
The damage from Trump’s shenanigans has been the market turmoil, including the rise in UK gilt yields which badly need to uncouple from the US.
Real terms pay is doing OK at the moment. The fundamentals for the worker aren’t bad, certainly much better than in 2022/3 at the height of the Ukraine inflation spike, but they’re still shit for government finances.
Imagine heading into this with a government that decided to cut borrowing rather than add to it, gilts would have uncoupled from treasuries very early on. Instead the call centre manager decided to add £60bn per year for public sector pay rises and lower growth and markets are pricing in much higher gilt supply. Absolutely self inflicted. The government should have cut spending by £30-40bn per year and reduced borrowing to build up much more fiscal headroom. Cutting headcount is still the only way to do it, eventually the government is going to have to do it, but the closer we get to an election the more resentment there will be among the people who are let go and their families. Such a completely stupid decision not to do it on day one.
"Cutting headcount" would not save "£30-40bn per year". What would you actually cut to save that amount ?
I'm not saying it's impossible - look for example at the Greek retrenchment - but you need to be honest about the process.
Public sector headcount, benefits, state and public sector pensions. All three need to be cut.
I don't disagree that reform is needed - I think we need to remake the state at a wholesale level. What I would challenge is the detail of how you think we should do it:
Public Sector Headcount - many layers of management could be cut and I'm sure there will be a few agencies we could merge / remove without issue. But in there we have stuff like the Passport Office, DVLA etc - and service from these is already dire. If you cut heads without reform you'll find the service collapses and that makes for unhappy voters.
Benefits - we already pay poverty-level numbers for practically everything. Compare our unemployment pay, our maternity pay, our sick pay - we get so little compared to our neighbours. If you cut these further you cut cash which directly recirculates through the local economy which means less businesses and less jobs. And we pay a ludicrous amount of in-work support to people where their wages are insufficient to pay their bills. I'm happy to plan to abolish these subsidies to big business but you can't just cut them without a dire effect on the economy
Pensions? I take the point. Gold plated seems like an understatement for many of them. At the same time our state pension is very low compared to competitor economies close-by. I would look to rebalance as much as cut.
My challenge on all of this is that you can't cut provision and assume the demand goes away. Its not a zero sum game where you cut one side of the equation with zero cost added to the other side. Make a lot of people much poorer and you tank the economy - which creates many other problems.
Which is why wholesale reform is needed. Cutting our way to growth has been tried and it always fails. The system we have doesn't work, so we need to change the system.
While you say benefits are very low - and for say a single healthy person out of a job they are - they are also cumulative, so if you can persuade the state you are ill, and/or disabled, and/or have a family, there are plenty of people getting benefits they would have to earn £30k+ a year to match, and who find themselves so comfortably off they can't be arsed to work. Similarly with pensions, where as you point out the state pension is comparatively small and many pensioners have to depend on benefits to pay the rent, or have small personal pensions and would suffer if you tunkered with say NI
Sure - the welfare state has completely lost sight of its purpose - a generous safety net when needed. Its no longer generous, and it captures people.
Here's my basic problem. The small numbers who "can't be arsed to work" get weaponised to beat into submission the genuinely sick / poor / uninformed.
Welfare is a better option than work because work doesn't pay the bills. I keep referring back to Iain Duncan Smith's reforming zeal. He was up in the valleys (I think Merthyr Tydfil) talking to people who were out of work, pointing at all the jobs and prosperity in Cardiff.
Yes, but these are shift jobs. Where public transport stops too early, and is too expensive when it does run, and we have kids.
This is the issue. "Just cut the benefit" (and I despise that word) isn't the solution. Make work viable is the solution, but the right have zero interest in doing so and the left have zero interest in reforming the welfare state.
Or revive the high street so it is not just mainly warehouse and delivery work on offer. Even Trump to be fair to him is trying to revive mass manufacturing work with his tariffs and build more factories in the US, even if his tariffs use a sledgehammer to crack a nut
How do you "revive the high street" when more and more people prefer to shop online? More and more the high street is made up of "service" business and alleged fronts for money laundering and illegal immigration such as nail bars and barbers. (And a new one - corner shops - which in one way is welcome but we have had three open in one one-mile stretch of high street, where there are 2 supermarkets, in recent months)
Add to that: bubble tea outlets, and weird artisanal cake shops
I think the miscreants have realised Turkish barbers, vape shops and American candy stores have been rumbled
Given the frequency my colleagues found an excuse to buy cakes for the office, you might think the cake shops have a market, however it was almost always supermarket cakes and Costco. Having had a couple of recent opportunities to buy cake myself, I realised how cheap it is, even from Waitrose, and on perpetual discount. So maybe the artisanal cake makers are just as dodgy. One of my colleagues had a side hustle in cupcakes, and they were very nice (when I allowed myself some carbs) but she has never spoken of trying to make a living out of it.
Britain does lack a culture of great cakes readily available on the high street, which is odd given our penchant for baking (eg Bake Off) and a noble tradition of brilliant cakes and puds
Here in bishkek I just had an excellent flat white with a nice fresh home made fruit tartlet. So maybe there is room for 1000 dessert bars in the UK! - as long as they have pretty shopfronts
Er... nearly every coffee shop tries to do coffee and cake. Even the grottiest chains have plastic wrapped blueberry muffins.
I said GREAT cakes. Yeah every Costa and Starbucks has lumps of carb, but they’re often not very nice and definitely not very interesting
One thing I noticed in Yangon was the local tradition of really superb home made cakes, with innovative tropical fruits. Delish
And there are plenty going for that market - Gail's among the chains, tons of independents. Generally, improving the quality of the extras (environment, cakes) is the sell for the independents. Those that aren't the ultra coffee snob places, that is.
I find Gail’s oddly disappointing in this regard (we have one in Camden, in a lovely airy space). The cakes AND savouries kinda disappoint
I do like the bread, however
Agree, Gail's is good for bread. Not for much else though. The best pastries and cakes are usually from independent coffee shops and countryside tea shops.
Shop bought cakes are almost always disappointing, albeit less so in independent places. If you want good cake you need to bake it yourself. It's an interesting contrast with savoury food, which is often better in a restaurant than at home. Perhaps because the usual restaurant trick of adding more salt and fat than you would ever use at home doesn't work with cakes.
Though for things like muffins, moderate scale production (multiple, big baking trays) does work. One good baker can turn out a days worth in a single bake.
On topic, April bill rises have kicked in, as have higher price/tax/wage costs/tarrifs all round but with no commensurate increase in real-terms pay. People (rightly) see more of the same coming down the line and no real plan to tackle it. And they're not sure it can be.
So, the squeeze of the last three years is continuing. They are not exactly full of the joys of May, and rightly so.
Tariffs is the odd one out there. They don’t contribute to UK cost of living. In fact they have probably had a deflationary effect so far, both through dumping and the oil price. It’s the American consumer they screw, not us.
The damage from Trump’s shenanigans has been the market turmoil, including the rise in UK gilt yields which badly need to uncouple from the US.
Real terms pay is doing OK at the moment. The fundamentals for the worker aren’t bad, certainly much better than in 2022/3 at the height of the Ukraine inflation spike, but they’re still shit for government finances.
Imagine heading into this with a government that decided to cut borrowing rather than add to it, gilts would have uncoupled from treasuries very early on. Instead the call centre manager decided to add £60bn per year for public sector pay rises and lower growth and markets are pricing in much higher gilt supply. Absolutely self inflicted. The government should have cut spending by £30-40bn per year and reduced borrowing to build up much more fiscal headroom. Cutting headcount is still the only way to do it, eventually the government is going to have to do it, but the closer we get to an election the more resentment there will be among the people who are let go and their families. Such a completely stupid decision not to do it on day one.
"Cutting headcount" would not save "£30-40bn per year". What would you actually cut to save that amount ?
I'm not saying it's impossible - look for example at the Greek retrenchment - but you need to be honest about the process.
Public sector headcount, benefits, state and public sector pensions. All three need to be cut.
I don't disagree that reform is needed - I think we need to remake the state at a wholesale level. What I would challenge is the detail of how you think we should do it:
Public Sector Headcount - many layers of management could be cut and I'm sure there will be a few agencies we could merge / remove without issue. But in there we have stuff like the Passport Office, DVLA etc - and service from these is already dire. If you cut heads without reform you'll find the service collapses and that makes for unhappy voters.
Benefits - we already pay poverty-level numbers for practically everything. Compare our unemployment pay, our maternity pay, our sick pay - we get so little compared to our neighbours. If you cut these further you cut cash which directly recirculates through the local economy which means less businesses and less jobs. And we pay a ludicrous amount of in-work support to people where their wages are insufficient to pay their bills. I'm happy to plan to abolish these subsidies to big business but you can't just cut them without a dire effect on the economy
Pensions? I take the point. Gold plated seems like an understatement for many of them. At the same time our state pension is very low compared to competitor economies close-by. I would look to rebalance as much as cut.
My challenge on all of this is that you can't cut provision and assume the demand goes away. Its not a zero sum game where you cut one side of the equation with zero cost added to the other side. Make a lot of people much poorer and you tank the economy - which creates many other problems.
Which is why wholesale reform is needed. Cutting our way to growth has been tried and it always fails. The system we have doesn't work, so we need to change the system.
While you say benefits are very low - and for say a single healthy person out of a job they are - they are also cumulative, so if you can persuade the state you are ill, and/or disabled, and/or have a family, there are plenty of people getting benefits they would have to earn £30k+ a year to match, and who find themselves so comfortably off they can't be arsed to work. Similarly with pensions, where as you point out the state pension is comparatively small and many pensioners have to depend on benefits to pay the rent, or have small personal pensions and would suffer if you tunkered with say NI
Sure - the welfare state has completely lost sight of its purpose - a generous safety net when needed. Its no longer generous, and it captures people.
Here's my basic problem. The small numbers who "can't be arsed to work" get weaponised to beat into submission the genuinely sick / poor / uninformed.
Welfare is a better option than work because work doesn't pay the bills. I keep referring back to Iain Duncan Smith's reforming zeal. He was up in the valleys (I think Merthyr Tydfil) talking to people who were out of work, pointing at all the jobs and prosperity in Cardiff.
Yes, but these are shift jobs. Where public transport stops too early, and is too expensive when it does run, and we have kids.
This is the issue. "Just cut the benefit" (and I despise that word) isn't the solution. Make work viable is the solution, but the right have zero interest in doing so and the left have zero interest in reforming the welfare state.
Or revive the high street so it is not just mainly warehouse and delivery work on offer. Even Trump to be fair to him is trying to revive mass manufacturing work with his tariffs and build more factories in the US, even if his tariffs use a sledgehammer to crack a nut
How do you "revive the high street" when more and more people prefer to shop online? More and more the high street is made up of "service" business and alleged fronts for money laundering and illegal immigration such as nail bars and barbers. (And a new one - corner shops - which in one way is welcome but we have had three open in one one-mile stretch of high street, where there are 2 supermarkets, in recent months)
Add to that: bubble tea outlets, and weird artisanal cake shops
I think the miscreants have realised Turkish barbers, vape shops and American candy stores have been rumbled
Given the frequency my colleagues found an excuse to buy cakes for the office, you might think the cake shops have a market, however it was almost always supermarket cakes and Costco. Having had a couple of recent opportunities to buy cake myself, I realised how cheap it is, even from Waitrose, and on perpetual discount. So maybe the artisanal cake makers are just as dodgy. One of my colleagues had a side hustle in cupcakes, and they were very nice (when I allowed myself some carbs) but she has never spoken of trying to make a living out of it.
Britain does lack a culture of great cakes readily available on the high street, which is odd given our penchant for baking (eg Bake Off) and a noble tradition of brilliant cakes and puds
Here in bishkek I just had an excellent flat white with a nice fresh home made fruit tartlet. So maybe there is room for 1000 dessert bars in the UK! - as long as they have pretty shopfronts
Er... nearly every coffee shop tries to do coffee and cake. Even the grottiest chains have plastic wrapped blueberry muffins.
I said GREAT cakes. Yeah every Costa and Starbucks has lumps of carb, but they’re often not very nice and definitely not very interesting
One thing I noticed in Yangon was the local tradition of really superb home made cakes, with innovative tropical fruits. Delish
We lead the world in baking. Flour is usually of a far higher quality than on the continent, and British creations are classics of their type, with a thriving sourdough/artisan sector too. I am glad you're enjoying your fruit tart but really now.
Average I think close to 55 or 60. Where the money in our society is concentrated.
I've been flipping 911s for well over 10 years. In that time, In that time, I've done 56 (according to my spreadsheet and not including part-outs) and the average age of my buyers has gone from 40s to 60s. They are the ones with the money.
I particularly like selling these types GT3s. They like the idea but are wholly unprepared for the white knuckle driving experience and extreme discomfort. I am occasionally able to buy them back in a few months at a steep discount.
Is it just the money. Anecdotally, but from several sources, I hear that the young really aren't into classic cars, even cheap ones, even at around £10,000. They aren't from that era.
From Hackspace kind of places - I think there would be one hell of a market for electric Caterham 7 style kit cars. Those guys love moding and working on electric bikes. A build it yourself car, where you can understand and change the innards... it could also be cheap enough for them to afford it.
On topic, April bill rises have kicked in, as have higher price/tax/wage costs/tarrifs all round but with no commensurate increase in real-terms pay. People (rightly) see more of the same coming down the line and no real plan to tackle it. And they're not sure it can be.
So, the squeeze of the last three years is continuing. They are not exactly full of the joys of May, and rightly so.
Tariffs is the odd one out there. They don’t contribute to UK cost of living. In fact they have probably had a deflationary effect so far, both through dumping and the oil price. It’s the American consumer they screw, not us.
The damage from Trump’s shenanigans has been the market turmoil, including the rise in UK gilt yields which badly need to uncouple from the US.
Real terms pay is doing OK at the moment. The fundamentals for the worker aren’t bad, certainly much better than in 2022/3 at the height of the Ukraine inflation spike, but they’re still shit for government finances.
Imagine heading into this with a government that decided to cut borrowing rather than add to it, gilts would have uncoupled from treasuries very early on. Instead the call centre manager decided to add £60bn per year for public sector pay rises and lower growth and markets are pricing in much higher gilt supply. Absolutely self inflicted. The government should have cut spending by £30-40bn per year and reduced borrowing to build up much more fiscal headroom. Cutting headcount is still the only way to do it, eventually the government is going to have to do it, but the closer we get to an election the more resentment there will be among the people who are let go and their families. Such a completely stupid decision not to do it on day one.
"Cutting headcount" would not save "£30-40bn per year". What would you actually cut to save that amount ?
I'm not saying it's impossible - look for example at the Greek retrenchment - but you need to be honest about the process.
Public sector headcount, benefits, state and public sector pensions. All three need to be cut.
I don't disagree that reform is needed - I think we need to remake the state at a wholesale level. What I would challenge is the detail of how you think we should do it:
Public Sector Headcount - many layers of management could be cut and I'm sure there will be a few agencies we could merge / remove without issue. But in there we have stuff like the Passport Office, DVLA etc - and service from these is already dire. If you cut heads without reform you'll find the service collapses and that makes for unhappy voters.
Benefits - we already pay poverty-level numbers for practically everything. Compare our unemployment pay, our maternity pay, our sick pay - we get so little compared to our neighbours. If you cut these further you cut cash which directly recirculates through the local economy which means less businesses and less jobs. And we pay a ludicrous amount of in-work support to people where their wages are insufficient to pay their bills. I'm happy to plan to abolish these subsidies to big business but you can't just cut them without a dire effect on the economy
Pensions? I take the point. Gold plated seems like an understatement for many of them. At the same time our state pension is very low compared to competitor economies close-by. I would look to rebalance as much as cut.
My challenge on all of this is that you can't cut provision and assume the demand goes away. Its not a zero sum game where you cut one side of the equation with zero cost added to the other side. Make a lot of people much poorer and you tank the economy - which creates many other problems.
Which is why wholesale reform is needed. Cutting our way to growth has been tried and it always fails. The system we have doesn't work, so we need to change the system.
While you say benefits are very low - and for say a single healthy person out of a job they are - they are also cumulative, so if you can persuade the state you are ill, and/or disabled, and/or have a family, there are plenty of people getting benefits they would have to earn £30k+ a year to match, and who find themselves so comfortably off they can't be arsed to work. Similarly with pensions, where as you point out the state pension is comparatively small and many pensioners have to depend on benefits to pay the rent, or have small personal pensions and would suffer if you tunkered with say NI
Sure - the welfare state has completely lost sight of its purpose - a generous safety net when needed. Its no longer generous, and it captures people.
Here's my basic problem. The small numbers who "can't be arsed to work" get weaponised to beat into submission the genuinely sick / poor / uninformed.
Welfare is a better option than work because work doesn't pay the bills. I keep referring back to Iain Duncan Smith's reforming zeal. He was up in the valleys (I think Merthyr Tydfil) talking to people who were out of work, pointing at all the jobs and prosperity in Cardiff.
Yes, but these are shift jobs. Where public transport stops too early, and is too expensive when it does run, and we have kids.
This is the issue. "Just cut the benefit" (and I despise that word) isn't the solution. Make work viable is the solution, but the right have zero interest in doing so and the left have zero interest in reforming the welfare state.
Or revive the high street so it is not just mainly warehouse and delivery work on offer. Even Trump to be fair to him is trying to revive mass manufacturing work with his tariffs and build more factories in the US, even if his tariffs use a sledgehammer to crack a nut
How do you "revive the high street" when more and more people prefer to shop online? More and more the high street is made up of "service" business and alleged fronts for money laundering and illegal immigration such as nail bars and barbers. (And a new one - corner shops - which in one way is welcome but we have had three open in one one-mile stretch of high street, where there are 2 supermarkets, in recent months)
Add to that: bubble tea outlets, and weird artisanal cake shops
I think the miscreants have realised Turkish barbers, vape shops and American candy stores have been rumbled
Given the frequency my colleagues found an excuse to buy cakes for the office, you might think the cake shops have a market, however it was almost always supermarket cakes and Costco. Having had a couple of recent opportunities to buy cake myself, I realised how cheap it is, even from Waitrose, and on perpetual discount. So maybe the artisanal cake makers are just as dodgy. One of my colleagues had a side hustle in cupcakes, and they were very nice (when I allowed myself some carbs) but she has never spoken of trying to make a living out of it.
Britain does lack a culture of great cakes readily available on the high street, which is odd given our penchant for baking (eg Bake Off) and a noble tradition of brilliant cakes and puds
Here in bishkek I just had an excellent flat white with a nice fresh home made fruit tartlet. So maybe there is room for 1000 dessert bars in the UK! - as long as they have pretty shopfronts
Er... nearly every coffee shop tries to do coffee and cake. Even the grottiest chains have plastic wrapped blueberry muffins.
I said GREAT cakes. Yeah every Costa and Starbucks has lumps of carb, but they’re often not very nice and definitely not very interesting
One thing I noticed in Yangon was the local tradition of really superb home made cakes, with innovative tropical fruits. Delish
And there are plenty going for that market - Gail's among the chains, tons of independents. Generally, improving the quality of the extras (environment, cakes) is the sell for the independents. Those that aren't the ultra coffee snob places, that is.
I find Gail’s oddly disappointing in this regard (we have one in Camden, in a lovely airy space). The cakes AND savouries kinda disappoint
I do like the bread, however
Agree, Gail's is good for bread. Not for much else though. The best pastries and cakes are usually from independent coffee shops and countryside tea shops.
Shop bought cakes are almost always disappointing, albeit less so in independent places. If you want good cake you need to bake it yourself. It's an interesting contrast with savoury food, which is often better in a restaurant than at home. Perhaps because the usual restaurant trick of adding more salt and fat than you would ever use at home doesn't work with cakes.
Yes agreed on both points and especially the salt and fat. I made pork pad kra pao this weekend based on a recipe from a Thai friend of my wife's and it's crazy how much more msg and soy they use compared to what I would. Absolutely delicious though.
I think between my wife and I we've got it covered, she's great at baking cakes and pastry, I've got bread and savoury food down pretty well. Feels like a solid team effort...
Hint if £155,000 is too expensive, reducing the price by less than £4,000 is not going to solve the issue.
Now sheltered accommodation is a mess of a business and ideally you don’t want to touch one but after 3 years of trying to see I would have given up and price it to sell at £50,000 screw the other residents and the company doing the management
Average I think close to 55 or 60. Where the money in our society is concentrated.
I've been flipping 911s for well over 10 years. In that time, In that time, I've done 56 (according to my spreadsheet and not including part-outs) and the average age of my buyers has gone from 40s to 60s. They are the ones with the money.
I particularly like selling these types GT3s. They like the idea but are wholly unprepared for the white knuckle driving experience and extreme discomfort. I am occasionally able to buy them back in a few months at a steep discount.
Is it just the money. Anecdotally, but from several sources, I hear that the young really aren't into classic cars, even cheap ones, even at around £10,000. They aren't from that era.
Given modern cars are a lot more reliable, more comfortable, better to drive, safer and cheaper to run, why would you be into classic cars?
For fun. All what you say is true and I have a modern car for going from a to b. You don't drive a classic car for getting to places. Definitely not.
Nostalgia. Same reason guys buy old cameras.
As they become antiques (the items, and the owners) only the true rarities will hold their value, I suspect.
Actually, the recent film camera revival was about cost as much as anything.
For a while you could get the a Hasselblad body, the same model they left on the moon, for a few hundred quid. Manual lenses similar.
Average I think close to 55 or 60. Where the money in our society is concentrated.
I've been flipping 911s for well over 10 years. In that time, In that time, I've done 56 (according to my spreadsheet and not including part-outs) and the average age of my buyers has gone from 40s to 60s. They are the ones with the money.
I particularly like selling these types GT3s. They like the idea but are wholly unprepared for the white knuckle driving experience and extreme discomfort. I am occasionally able to buy them back in a few months at a steep discount.
Is it just the money. Anecdotally, but from several sources, I hear that the young really aren't into classic cars, even cheap ones, even at around £10,000. They aren't from that era.
Given modern cars are a lot more reliable, more comfortable, better to drive, safer and cheaper to run, why would you be into classic cars?
For fun. All what you say is true and I have a modern car for going from a to b. You don't drive a classic car for getting to places. Definitely not.
Nostalgia. Same reason guys buy old cameras.
As they become antiques (the items, and the owners) only the true rarities will hold their value, I suspect.
at one stage in my life I used to sell cameras and I'm surprised to see the prices paid on Bargain Hunt and the like for old ones, particularly the Russian Zeniths.
On topic, April bill rises have kicked in, as have higher price/tax/wage costs/tarrifs all round but with no commensurate increase in real-terms pay. People (rightly) see more of the same coming down the line and no real plan to tackle it. And they're not sure it can be.
So, the squeeze of the last three years is continuing. They are not exactly full of the joys of May, and rightly so.
Tariffs is the odd one out there. They don’t contribute to UK cost of living. In fact they have probably had a deflationary effect so far, both through dumping and the oil price. It’s the American consumer they screw, not us.
The damage from Trump’s shenanigans has been the market turmoil, including the rise in UK gilt yields which badly need to uncouple from the US.
Real terms pay is doing OK at the moment. The fundamentals for the worker aren’t bad, certainly much better than in 2022/3 at the height of the Ukraine inflation spike, but they’re still shit for government finances.
Imagine heading into this with a government that decided to cut borrowing rather than add to it, gilts would have uncoupled from treasuries very early on. Instead the call centre manager decided to add £60bn per year for public sector pay rises and lower growth and markets are pricing in much higher gilt supply. Absolutely self inflicted. The government should have cut spending by £30-40bn per year and reduced borrowing to build up much more fiscal headroom. Cutting headcount is still the only way to do it, eventually the government is going to have to do it, but the closer we get to an election the more resentment there will be among the people who are let go and their families. Such a completely stupid decision not to do it on day one.
"Cutting headcount" would not save "£30-40bn per year". What would you actually cut to save that amount ?
I'm not saying it's impossible - look for example at the Greek retrenchment - but you need to be honest about the process.
Public sector headcount, benefits, state and public sector pensions. All three need to be cut.
I don't disagree that reform is needed - I think we need to remake the state at a wholesale level. What I would challenge is the detail of how you think we should do it:
Public Sector Headcount - many layers of management could be cut and I'm sure there will be a few agencies we could merge / remove without issue. But in there we have stuff like the Passport Office, DVLA etc - and service from these is already dire. If you cut heads without reform you'll find the service collapses and that makes for unhappy voters.
Benefits - we already pay poverty-level numbers for practically everything. Compare our unemployment pay, our maternity pay, our sick pay - we get so little compared to our neighbours. If you cut these further you cut cash which directly recirculates through the local economy which means less businesses and less jobs. And we pay a ludicrous amount of in-work support to people where their wages are insufficient to pay their bills. I'm happy to plan to abolish these subsidies to big business but you can't just cut them without a dire effect on the economy
Pensions? I take the point. Gold plated seems like an understatement for many of them. At the same time our state pension is very low compared to competitor economies close-by. I would look to rebalance as much as cut.
My challenge on all of this is that you can't cut provision and assume the demand goes away. Its not a zero sum game where you cut one side of the equation with zero cost added to the other side. Make a lot of people much poorer and you tank the economy - which creates many other problems.
Which is why wholesale reform is needed. Cutting our way to growth has been tried and it always fails. The system we have doesn't work, so we need to change the system.
While you say benefits are very low - and for say a single healthy person out of a job they are - they are also cumulative, so if you can persuade the state you are ill, and/or disabled, and/or have a family, there are plenty of people getting benefits they would have to earn £30k+ a year to match, and who find themselves so comfortably off they can't be arsed to work. Similarly with pensions, where as you point out the state pension is comparatively small and many pensioners have to depend on benefits to pay the rent, or have small personal pensions and would suffer if you tunkered with say NI
Sure - the welfare state has completely lost sight of its purpose - a generous safety net when needed. Its no longer generous, and it captures people.
Here's my basic problem. The small numbers who "can't be arsed to work" get weaponised to beat into submission the genuinely sick / poor / uninformed.
Welfare is a better option than work because work doesn't pay the bills. I keep referring back to Iain Duncan Smith's reforming zeal. He was up in the valleys (I think Merthyr Tydfil) talking to people who were out of work, pointing at all the jobs and prosperity in Cardiff.
Yes, but these are shift jobs. Where public transport stops too early, and is too expensive when it does run, and we have kids.
This is the issue. "Just cut the benefit" (and I despise that word) isn't the solution. Make work viable is the solution, but the right have zero interest in doing so and the left have zero interest in reforming the welfare state.
Or revive the high street so it is not just mainly warehouse and delivery work on offer. Even Trump to be fair to him is trying to revive mass manufacturing work with his tariffs and build more factories in the US, even if his tariffs use a sledgehammer to crack a nut
How do you "revive the high street" when more and more people prefer to shop online? More and more the high street is made up of "service" business and alleged fronts for money laundering and illegal immigration such as nail bars and barbers. (And a new one - corner shops - which in one way is welcome but we have had three open in one one-mile stretch of high street, where there are 2 supermarkets, in recent months)
Add to that: bubble tea outlets, and weird artisanal cake shops
I think the miscreants have realised Turkish barbers, vape shops and American candy stores have been rumbled
Given the frequency my colleagues found an excuse to buy cakes for the office, you might think the cake shops have a market, however it was almost always supermarket cakes and Costco. Having had a couple of recent opportunities to buy cake myself, I realised how cheap it is, even from Waitrose, and on perpetual discount. So maybe the artisanal cake makers are just as dodgy. One of my colleagues had a side hustle in cupcakes, and they were very nice (when I allowed myself some carbs) but she has never spoken of trying to make a living out of it.
Britain does lack a culture of great cakes readily available on the high street, which is odd given our penchant for baking (eg Bake Off) and a noble tradition of brilliant cakes and puds
Here in bishkek I just had an excellent flat white with a nice fresh home made fruit tartlet. So maybe there is room for 1000 dessert bars in the UK! - as long as they have pretty shopfronts
Er... nearly every coffee shop tries to do coffee and cake. Even the grottiest chains have plastic wrapped blueberry muffins.
I said GREAT cakes. Yeah every Costa and Starbucks has lumps of carb, but they’re often not very nice and definitely not very interesting
One thing I noticed in Yangon was the local tradition of really superb home made cakes, with innovative tropical fruits. Delish
We lead the world in baking. Flour is usually of a far higher quality than on the continent, and British creations are classics of their type, with a thriving sourdough/artisan sector too. I am glad you're enjoying your fruit tart but really now.
Having spent 10 years living in Germany and happily enjoying the amazing variety of breads and cakes sold at the numerous bakeries and patisseries, I find that very hard to believe.
I've an M&G American investment and I note they are suggesting I convert to an ISA.
All my equities are in my ISA. I enjoy hand picking them and managing them myself. It's a bit like my political betting though the sums are much larger.
I'm well ahead in my equities and my political betting - though Kamala made a big dent in my political betting winnings.
Average I think close to 55 or 60. Where the money in our society is concentrated.
I've been flipping 911s for well over 10 years. In that time, In that time, I've done 56 (according to my spreadsheet and not including part-outs) and the average age of my buyers has gone from 40s to 60s. They are the ones with the money.
I particularly like selling these types GT3s. They like the idea but are wholly unprepared for the white knuckle driving experience and extreme discomfort. I am occasionally able to buy them back in a few months at a steep discount.
Is it just the money. Anecdotally, but from several sources, I hear that the young really aren't into classic cars, even cheap ones, even at around £10,000. They aren't from that era.
Given modern cars are a lot more reliable, more comfortable, better to drive, safer and cheaper to run, why would you be into classic cars?
For fun. All what you say is true and I have a modern car for going from a to b. You don't drive a classic car for getting to places. Definitely not.
Going from A to B is the fundamental purpose of any vehicle from a Stone Age dugout to the Voyager space rocket. Everything else is negotiable.
On topic, April bill rises have kicked in, as have higher price/tax/wage costs/tarrifs all round but with no commensurate increase in real-terms pay. People (rightly) see more of the same coming down the line and no real plan to tackle it. And they're not sure it can be.
So, the squeeze of the last three years is continuing. They are not exactly full of the joys of May, and rightly so.
Tariffs is the odd one out there. They don’t contribute to UK cost of living. In fact they have probably had a deflationary effect so far, both through dumping and the oil price. It’s the American consumer they screw, not us.
The damage from Trump’s shenanigans has been the market turmoil, including the rise in UK gilt yields which badly need to uncouple from the US.
Real terms pay is doing OK at the moment. The fundamentals for the worker aren’t bad, certainly much better than in 2022/3 at the height of the Ukraine inflation spike, but they’re still shit for government finances.
Imagine heading into this with a government that decided to cut borrowing rather than add to it, gilts would have uncoupled from treasuries very early on. Instead the call centre manager decided to add £60bn per year for public sector pay rises and lower growth and markets are pricing in much higher gilt supply. Absolutely self inflicted. The government should have cut spending by £30-40bn per year and reduced borrowing to build up much more fiscal headroom. Cutting headcount is still the only way to do it, eventually the government is going to have to do it, but the closer we get to an election the more resentment there will be among the people who are let go and their families. Such a completely stupid decision not to do it on day one.
"Cutting headcount" would not save "£30-40bn per year". What would you actually cut to save that amount ?
I'm not saying it's impossible - look for example at the Greek retrenchment - but you need to be honest about the process.
Public sector headcount, benefits, state and public sector pensions. All three need to be cut.
I don't disagree that reform is needed - I think we need to remake the state at a wholesale level. What I would challenge is the detail of how you think we should do it:
Public Sector Headcount - many layers of management could be cut and I'm sure there will be a few agencies we could merge / remove without issue. But in there we have stuff like the Passport Office, DVLA etc - and service from these is already dire. If you cut heads without reform you'll find the service collapses and that makes for unhappy voters.
Benefits - we already pay poverty-level numbers for practically everything. Compare our unemployment pay, our maternity pay, our sick pay - we get so little compared to our neighbours. If you cut these further you cut cash which directly recirculates through the local economy which means less businesses and less jobs. And we pay a ludicrous amount of in-work support to people where their wages are insufficient to pay their bills. I'm happy to plan to abolish these subsidies to big business but you can't just cut them without a dire effect on the economy
Pensions? I take the point. Gold plated seems like an understatement for many of them. At the same time our state pension is very low compared to competitor economies close-by. I would look to rebalance as much as cut.
My challenge on all of this is that you can't cut provision and assume the demand goes away. Its not a zero sum game where you cut one side of the equation with zero cost added to the other side. Make a lot of people much poorer and you tank the economy - which creates many other problems.
Which is why wholesale reform is needed. Cutting our way to growth has been tried and it always fails. The system we have doesn't work, so we need to change the system.
While you say benefits are very low - and for say a single healthy person out of a job they are - they are also cumulative, so if you can persuade the state you are ill, and/or disabled, and/or have a family, there are plenty of people getting benefits they would have to earn £30k+ a year to match, and who find themselves so comfortably off they can't be arsed to work. Similarly with pensions, where as you point out the state pension is comparatively small and many pensioners have to depend on benefits to pay the rent, or have small personal pensions and would suffer if you tunkered with say NI
Sure - the welfare state has completely lost sight of its purpose - a generous safety net when needed. Its no longer generous, and it captures people.
Here's my basic problem. The small numbers who "can't be arsed to work" get weaponised to beat into submission the genuinely sick / poor / uninformed.
Welfare is a better option than work because work doesn't pay the bills. I keep referring back to Iain Duncan Smith's reforming zeal. He was up in the valleys (I think Merthyr Tydfil) talking to people who were out of work, pointing at all the jobs and prosperity in Cardiff.
Yes, but these are shift jobs. Where public transport stops too early, and is too expensive when it does run, and we have kids.
This is the issue. "Just cut the benefit" (and I despise that word) isn't the solution. Make work viable is the solution, but the right have zero interest in doing so and the left have zero interest in reforming the welfare state.
Or revive the high street so it is not just mainly warehouse and delivery work on offer. Even Trump to be fair to him is trying to revive mass manufacturing work with his tariffs and build more factories in the US, even if his tariffs use a sledgehammer to crack a nut
How do you "revive the high street" when more and more people prefer to shop online? More and more the high street is made up of "service" business and alleged fronts for money laundering and illegal immigration such as nail bars and barbers. (And a new one - corner shops - which in one way is welcome but we have had three open in one one-mile stretch of high street, where there are 2 supermarkets, in recent months)
Add to that: bubble tea outlets, and weird artisanal cake shops
I think the miscreants have realised Turkish barbers, vape shops and American candy stores have been rumbled
Given the frequency my colleagues found an excuse to buy cakes for the office, you might think the cake shops have a market, however it was almost always supermarket cakes and Costco. Having had a couple of recent opportunities to buy cake myself, I realised how cheap it is, even from Waitrose, and on perpetual discount. So maybe the artisanal cake makers are just as dodgy. One of my colleagues had a side hustle in cupcakes, and they were very nice (when I allowed myself some carbs) but she has never spoken of trying to make a living out of it.
Britain does lack a culture of great cakes readily available on the high street, which is odd given our penchant for baking (eg Bake Off) and a noble tradition of brilliant cakes and puds
Here in bishkek I just had an excellent flat white with a nice fresh home made fruit tartlet. So maybe there is room for 1000 dessert bars in the UK! - as long as they have pretty shopfronts
Er... nearly every coffee shop tries to do coffee and cake. Even the grottiest chains have plastic wrapped blueberry muffins.
I said GREAT cakes. Yeah every Costa and Starbucks has lumps of carb, but they’re often not very nice and definitely not very interesting
One thing I noticed in Yangon was the local tradition of really superb home made cakes, with innovative tropical fruits. Delish
We lead the world in baking. Flour is usually of a far higher quality than on the continent, and British creations are classics of their type, with a thriving sourdough/artisan sector too. I am glad you're enjoying your fruit tart but really now.
Having spent 10 years living in Germany and happily enjoying the amazing variety of breads and cakes sold at the numerous bakeries and patisseries, I find that very hard to believe.
Also France, I think they have a pretty good claim to leading the world of baked goods. I think the UK does an ok job of it, probably similar to Germany but definitely behind France and Austria. Our flour is good for cakes though compared to a lot of European wheat which is heavier in protein which is why we import from Canada for bread.
Hint if £155,000 is too expensive, reducing the price by less than £4,000 is not going to solve the issue.
Now sheltered accommodation is a mess of a business and ideally you don’t want to touch one but after 3 years of trying to see I would have given up and price it to sell at £50,000 screw the other residents and the company doing the management
Wife's aunt had a real problem selling her McCarthy & Stone flat for anything near what it ought to have been worth. In the end she, or at least her nephew did what you suggest; give up and take what they could get.
The successful mathematical reasoning of AI (from Google summary):
National Trust annual membership for seniors (age 60 or over) is £72 for individual membership and £120.60 for joint membership. If you've been a member for at least the last three consecutive years, you can also apply for a 25% discount, bringing the price down to £72 for individual senior membership and £120.60 for joint senior membership.
When you go to a NT property, it never changes. All that old stuff all the time.
Although, the slavery stuff is new...
I have no issue with the NT revising what it presents at its properties. I think context is crucial. I do wonder at how accurate and unbiased some of the approach is though. If you invested in certain ventures in the 18th century you were almost certainly gaining wealth on the backs of slaves. But were the investors consciously choosing to invest in slavery? What was there world view? And are they any different from people in 2025 with diverse porfolios that include companies with questionable practices?
We are increasingly judgemental about people raised and living in different times, with different social norms. We often seem to lack the awareness to realise that we, too, are products of our times. My father, born in 1939, comes out with extremely racist comments. Not because of any inherent nasty racist streak but because he was born into an overwhelmingly white society, and was not born and raised in modern multicultural Britain.
We should seek to understand the views of people in history. One might, depending on the circumstances, conclude that a person in history was not acting malevolently, but just naively or in line with their social norms or whatever. However, that wouldn't be a reason to not acknowledge the wrongs of slavery. We, today, should still recognise where wealth was built on slavery and how that was wrong. We do history in the present. We think about how events shape our current world within our modern moral framework.
Parents saying racist stuff is a problem that I suspect many of us have had. We should understand where those comments come from, but we should also be aware of the harm that they can have today. The non-white healthcare professional at the receiving end of such comments might well understand that old people's views reflect the different era they grew up in, and still be hurt by those comments.
That all said, if we want to get into the details of how people perceived slavery in the 18th century in the UK, some people who don't like NT signs about slavery have a tendency to put forth this idea that everyone was fine with slavery back then and we can't blame anyone, they didn't know better, etc. That is an ahistorical position. There was an abolitionist movement in the 18th century. The Somerset case in 1772 clearly decided that slavery could not exist in England and Wales. Indeed, slavery had been abolished, on the grounds of it being morally wrong, in the 11th century in England. The social norm was not "slavery is OK". Slavery was regularly questioned and constrained through the period.
On topic, April bill rises have kicked in, as have higher price/tax/wage costs/tarrifs all round but with no commensurate increase in real-terms pay. People (rightly) see more of the same coming down the line and no real plan to tackle it. And they're not sure it can be.
So, the squeeze of the last three years is continuing. They are not exactly full of the joys of May, and rightly so.
Tariffs is the odd one out there. They don’t contribute to UK cost of living. In fact they have probably had a deflationary effect so far, both through dumping and the oil price. It’s the American consumer they screw, not us.
The damage from Trump’s shenanigans has been the market turmoil, including the rise in UK gilt yields which badly need to uncouple from the US.
Real terms pay is doing OK at the moment. The fundamentals for the worker aren’t bad, certainly much better than in 2022/3 at the height of the Ukraine inflation spike, but they’re still shit for government finances.
Imagine heading into this with a government that decided to cut borrowing rather than add to it, gilts would have uncoupled from treasuries very early on. Instead the call centre manager decided to add £60bn per year for public sector pay rises and lower growth and markets are pricing in much higher gilt supply. Absolutely self inflicted. The government should have cut spending by £30-40bn per year and reduced borrowing to build up much more fiscal headroom. Cutting headcount is still the only way to do it, eventually the government is going to have to do it, but the closer we get to an election the more resentment there will be among the people who are let go and their families. Such a completely stupid decision not to do it on day one.
"Cutting headcount" would not save "£30-40bn per year". What would you actually cut to save that amount ?
I'm not saying it's impossible - look for example at the Greek retrenchment - but you need to be honest about the process.
Public sector headcount, benefits, state and public sector pensions. All three need to be cut.
I don't disagree that reform is needed - I think we need to remake the state at a wholesale level. What I would challenge is the detail of how you think we should do it:
Public Sector Headcount - many layers of management could be cut and I'm sure there will be a few agencies we could merge / remove without issue. But in there we have stuff like the Passport Office, DVLA etc - and service from these is already dire. If you cut heads without reform you'll find the service collapses and that makes for unhappy voters.
Benefits - we already pay poverty-level numbers for practically everything. Compare our unemployment pay, our maternity pay, our sick pay - we get so little compared to our neighbours. If you cut these further you cut cash which directly recirculates through the local economy which means less businesses and less jobs. And we pay a ludicrous amount of in-work support to people where their wages are insufficient to pay their bills. I'm happy to plan to abolish these subsidies to big business but you can't just cut them without a dire effect on the economy
Pensions? I take the point. Gold plated seems like an understatement for many of them. At the same time our state pension is very low compared to competitor economies close-by. I would look to rebalance as much as cut.
My challenge on all of this is that you can't cut provision and assume the demand goes away. Its not a zero sum game where you cut one side of the equation with zero cost added to the other side. Make a lot of people much poorer and you tank the economy - which creates many other problems.
Which is why wholesale reform is needed. Cutting our way to growth has been tried and it always fails. The system we have doesn't work, so we need to change the system.
While you say benefits are very low - and for say a single healthy person out of a job they are - they are also cumulative, so if you can persuade the state you are ill, and/or disabled, and/or have a family, there are plenty of people getting benefits they would have to earn £30k+ a year to match, and who find themselves so comfortably off they can't be arsed to work. Similarly with pensions, where as you point out the state pension is comparatively small and many pensioners have to depend on benefits to pay the rent, or have small personal pensions and would suffer if you tunkered with say NI
Sure - the welfare state has completely lost sight of its purpose - a generous safety net when needed. Its no longer generous, and it captures people.
Here's my basic problem. The small numbers who "can't be arsed to work" get weaponised to beat into submission the genuinely sick / poor / uninformed.
Welfare is a better option than work because work doesn't pay the bills. I keep referring back to Iain Duncan Smith's reforming zeal. He was up in the valleys (I think Merthyr Tydfil) talking to people who were out of work, pointing at all the jobs and prosperity in Cardiff.
Yes, but these are shift jobs. Where public transport stops too early, and is too expensive when it does run, and we have kids.
This is the issue. "Just cut the benefit" (and I despise that word) isn't the solution. Make work viable is the solution, but the right have zero interest in doing so and the left have zero interest in reforming the welfare state.
Or revive the high street so it is not just mainly warehouse and delivery work on offer. Even Trump to be fair to him is trying to revive mass manufacturing work with his tariffs and build more factories in the US, even if his tariffs use a sledgehammer to crack a nut
How do you "revive the high street" when more and more people prefer to shop online? More and more the high street is made up of "service" business and alleged fronts for money laundering and illegal immigration such as nail bars and barbers. (And a new one - corner shops - which in one way is welcome but we have had three open in one one-mile stretch of high street, where there are 2 supermarkets, in recent months)
Add to that: bubble tea outlets, and weird artisanal cake shops
I think the miscreants have realised Turkish barbers, vape shops and American candy stores have been rumbled
Given the frequency my colleagues found an excuse to buy cakes for the office, you might think the cake shops have a market, however it was almost always supermarket cakes and Costco. Having had a couple of recent opportunities to buy cake myself, I realised how cheap it is, even from Waitrose, and on perpetual discount. So maybe the artisanal cake makers are just as dodgy. One of my colleagues had a side hustle in cupcakes, and they were very nice (when I allowed myself some carbs) but she has never spoken of trying to make a living out of it.
Britain does lack a culture of great cakes readily available on the high street, which is odd given our penchant for baking (eg Bake Off) and a noble tradition of brilliant cakes and puds
Here in bishkek I just had an excellent flat white with a nice fresh home made fruit tartlet. So maybe there is room for 1000 dessert bars in the UK! - as long as they have pretty shopfronts
Er... nearly every coffee shop tries to do coffee and cake. Even the grottiest chains have plastic wrapped blueberry muffins.
I said GREAT cakes. Yeah every Costa and Starbucks has lumps of carb, but they’re often not very nice and definitely not very interesting
One thing I noticed in Yangon was the local tradition of really superb home made cakes, with innovative tropical fruits. Delish
We lead the world in baking. Flour is usually of a far higher quality than on the continent, and British creations are classics of their type, with a thriving sourdough/artisan sector too. I am glad you're enjoying your fruit tart but really now.
Having spent 10 years living in Germany and happily enjoying the amazing variety of breads and cakes sold at the numerous bakeries and patisseries, I find that very hard to believe.
Also France, I think they have a pretty good claim to leading the world of baked goods. I think the UK does an ok job of it, probably similar to Germany but definitely behind France and Austria. Our flour is good for cakes though compared to a lot of European wheat which is heavier in protein which is why we import from Canada for bread.
On topic, April bill rises have kicked in, as have higher price/tax/wage costs/tarrifs all round but with no commensurate increase in real-terms pay. People (rightly) see more of the same coming down the line and no real plan to tackle it. And they're not sure it can be.
So, the squeeze of the last three years is continuing. They are not exactly full of the joys of May, and rightly so.
Tariffs is the odd one out there. They don’t contribute to UK cost of living. In fact they have probably had a deflationary effect so far, both through dumping and the oil price. It’s the American consumer they screw, not us.
The damage from Trump’s shenanigans has been the market turmoil, including the rise in UK gilt yields which badly need to uncouple from the US.
Real terms pay is doing OK at the moment. The fundamentals for the worker aren’t bad, certainly much better than in 2022/3 at the height of the Ukraine inflation spike, but they’re still shit for government finances.
Imagine heading into this with a government that decided to cut borrowing rather than add to it, gilts would have uncoupled from treasuries very early on. Instead the call centre manager decided to add £60bn per year for public sector pay rises and lower growth and markets are pricing in much higher gilt supply. Absolutely self inflicted. The government should have cut spending by £30-40bn per year and reduced borrowing to build up much more fiscal headroom. Cutting headcount is still the only way to do it, eventually the government is going to have to do it, but the closer we get to an election the more resentment there will be among the people who are let go and their families. Such a completely stupid decision not to do it on day one.
"Cutting headcount" would not save "£30-40bn per year". What would you actually cut to save that amount ?
I'm not saying it's impossible - look for example at the Greek retrenchment - but you need to be honest about the process.
Public sector headcount, benefits, state and public sector pensions. All three need to be cut.
I don't disagree that reform is needed - I think we need to remake the state at a wholesale level. What I would challenge is the detail of how you think we should do it:
Public Sector Headcount - many layers of management could be cut and I'm sure there will be a few agencies we could merge / remove without issue. But in there we have stuff like the Passport Office, DVLA etc - and service from these is already dire. If you cut heads without reform you'll find the service collapses and that makes for unhappy voters.
Benefits - we already pay poverty-level numbers for practically everything. Compare our unemployment pay, our maternity pay, our sick pay - we get so little compared to our neighbours. If you cut these further you cut cash which directly recirculates through the local economy which means less businesses and less jobs. And we pay a ludicrous amount of in-work support to people where their wages are insufficient to pay their bills. I'm happy to plan to abolish these subsidies to big business but you can't just cut them without a dire effect on the economy
Pensions? I take the point. Gold plated seems like an understatement for many of them. At the same time our state pension is very low compared to competitor economies close-by. I would look to rebalance as much as cut.
My challenge on all of this is that you can't cut provision and assume the demand goes away. Its not a zero sum game where you cut one side of the equation with zero cost added to the other side. Make a lot of people much poorer and you tank the economy - which creates many other problems.
Which is why wholesale reform is needed. Cutting our way to growth has been tried and it always fails. The system we have doesn't work, so we need to change the system.
While you say benefits are very low - and for say a single healthy person out of a job they are - they are also cumulative, so if you can persuade the state you are ill, and/or disabled, and/or have a family, there are plenty of people getting benefits they would have to earn £30k+ a year to match, and who find themselves so comfortably off they can't be arsed to work. Similarly with pensions, where as you point out the state pension is comparatively small and many pensioners have to depend on benefits to pay the rent, or have small personal pensions and would suffer if you tunkered with say NI
Sure - the welfare state has completely lost sight of its purpose - a generous safety net when needed. Its no longer generous, and it captures people.
Here's my basic problem. The small numbers who "can't be arsed to work" get weaponised to beat into submission the genuinely sick / poor / uninformed.
Welfare is a better option than work because work doesn't pay the bills. I keep referring back to Iain Duncan Smith's reforming zeal. He was up in the valleys (I think Merthyr Tydfil) talking to people who were out of work, pointing at all the jobs and prosperity in Cardiff.
Yes, but these are shift jobs. Where public transport stops too early, and is too expensive when it does run, and we have kids.
This is the issue. "Just cut the benefit" (and I despise that word) isn't the solution. Make work viable is the solution, but the right have zero interest in doing so and the left have zero interest in reforming the welfare state.
Or revive the high street so it is not just mainly warehouse and delivery work on offer. Even Trump to be fair to him is trying to revive mass manufacturing work with his tariffs and build more factories in the US, even if his tariffs use a sledgehammer to crack a nut
How do you "revive the high street" when more and more people prefer to shop online? More and more the high street is made up of "service" business and alleged fronts for money laundering and illegal immigration such as nail bars and barbers. (And a new one - corner shops - which in one way is welcome but we have had three open in one one-mile stretch of high street, where there are 2 supermarkets, in recent months)
Add to that: bubble tea outlets, and weird artisanal cake shops
I think the miscreants have realised Turkish barbers, vape shops and American candy stores have been rumbled
Given the frequency my colleagues found an excuse to buy cakes for the office, you might think the cake shops have a market, however it was almost always supermarket cakes and Costco. Having had a couple of recent opportunities to buy cake myself, I realised how cheap it is, even from Waitrose, and on perpetual discount. So maybe the artisanal cake makers are just as dodgy. One of my colleagues had a side hustle in cupcakes, and they were very nice (when I allowed myself some carbs) but she has never spoken of trying to make a living out of it.
Britain does lack a culture of great cakes readily available on the high street, which is odd given our penchant for baking (eg Bake Off) and a noble tradition of brilliant cakes and puds
Here in bishkek I just had an excellent flat white with a nice fresh home made fruit tartlet. So maybe there is room for 1000 dessert bars in the UK! - as long as they have pretty shopfronts
Er... nearly every coffee shop tries to do coffee and cake. Even the grottiest chains have plastic wrapped blueberry muffins.
I said GREAT cakes. Yeah every Costa and Starbucks has lumps of carb, but they’re often not very nice and definitely not very interesting
One thing I noticed in Yangon was the local tradition of really superb home made cakes, with innovative tropical fruits. Delish
We lead the world in baking. Flour is usually of a far higher quality than on the continent, and British creations are classics of their type, with a thriving sourdough/artisan sector too. I am glad you're enjoying your fruit tart but really now.
Having spent 10 years living in Germany and happily enjoying the amazing variety of breads and cakes sold at the numerous bakeries and patisseries, I find that very hard to believe.
Also France, I think they have a pretty good claim to leading the world of baked goods. I think the UK does an ok job of it, probably similar to Germany but definitely behind France and Austria. Our flour is good for cakes though compared to a lot of European wheat which is heavier in protein which is why we import from Canada for bread.
A lot of what is sold in France is quite poor - "We are a boulangarie in France and therefore must be awesome."
The successful mathematical reasoning of AI (from Google summary):
National Trust annual membership for seniors (age 60 or over) is £72 for individual membership and £120.60 for joint membership. If you've been a member for at least the last three consecutive years, you can also apply for a 25% discount, bringing the price down to £72 for individual senior membership and £120.60 for joint senior membership.
When you go to a NT property, it never changes. All that old stuff all the time.
Although, the slavery stuff is new...
I have no issue with the NT revising what it presents at its properties. I think context is crucial. I do wonder at how accurate and unbiased some of the approach is though. If you invested in certain ventures in the 18th century you were almost certainly gaining wealth on the backs of slaves. But were the investors consciously choosing to invest in slavery? What was there world view? And are they any different from people in 2025 with diverse porfolios that include companies with questionable practices?
We are increasingly judgemental about people raised and living in different times, with different social norms. We often seem to lack the awareness to realise that we, too, are products of our times. My father, born in 1939, comes out with extremely racist comments. Not because of any inherent nasty racist streak but because he was born into an overwhelmingly white society, and was not born and raised in modern multicultural Britain.
We should seek to understand the views of people in history. One might, depending on the circumstances, conclude that a person in history was not acting malevolently, but just naively or in line with their social norms or whatever. However, that wouldn't be a reason to not acknowledge the wrongs of slavery. We, today, should still recognise where wealth was built on slavery and how that was wrong. We do history in the present. We think about how events shape our current world within our modern moral framework.
Parents saying racist stuff is a problem that I suspect many of us have had. We should understand where those comments come from, but we should also be aware of the harm that they can have today. The non-white healthcare professional at the receiving end of such comments might well understand that old people's views reflect the different era they grew up in, and still be hurt by those comments.
That all said, if we want to get into the details of how people perceived slavery in the 18th century in the UK, some people who don't like NT signs about slavery have a tendency to put forth this idea that everyone was fine with slavery back then and we can't blame anyone, they didn't know better, etc. That is an ahistorical position. There was an abolitionist movement in the 18th century. The Somerset case in 1772 clearly decided that slavery could not exist in England and Wales. Indeed, slavery had been abolished, on the grounds of it being morally wrong, in the 11th century in England. The social norm was not "slavery is OK". Slavery was regularly questioned and constrained through the period.
Surely 'the thing' about 18th & 19th Century slavery, as far as Europeans were concerned is that it was racist; pale-skinned people enslaving darker skinned ones. Ironic of course in that darker-skinned people were likely to be 'pure' H. sapiens while the paler ones had traces of H. neanderthaliis.
Hint if £155,000 is too expensive, reducing the price by less than £4,000 is not going to solve the issue.
Now sheltered accommodation is a mess of a business and ideally you don’t want to touch one but after 3 years of trying to see I would have given up and price it to sell at £50,000 screw the other residents and the company doing the management
Impossible to sell my arse. They just don't want to sell it for less.
On topic, April bill rises have kicked in, as have higher price/tax/wage costs/tarrifs all round but with no commensurate increase in real-terms pay. People (rightly) see more of the same coming down the line and no real plan to tackle it. And they're not sure it can be.
So, the squeeze of the last three years is continuing. They are not exactly full of the joys of May, and rightly so.
Tariffs is the odd one out there. They don’t contribute to UK cost of living. In fact they have probably had a deflationary effect so far, both through dumping and the oil price. It’s the American consumer they screw, not us.
The damage from Trump’s shenanigans has been the market turmoil, including the rise in UK gilt yields which badly need to uncouple from the US.
Real terms pay is doing OK at the moment. The fundamentals for the worker aren’t bad, certainly much better than in 2022/3 at the height of the Ukraine inflation spike, but they’re still shit for government finances.
Imagine heading into this with a government that decided to cut borrowing rather than add to it, gilts would have uncoupled from treasuries very early on. Instead the call centre manager decided to add £60bn per year for public sector pay rises and lower growth and markets are pricing in much higher gilt supply. Absolutely self inflicted. The government should have cut spending by £30-40bn per year and reduced borrowing to build up much more fiscal headroom. Cutting headcount is still the only way to do it, eventually the government is going to have to do it, but the closer we get to an election the more resentment there will be among the people who are let go and their families. Such a completely stupid decision not to do it on day one.
"Cutting headcount" would not save "£30-40bn per year". What would you actually cut to save that amount ?
I'm not saying it's impossible - look for example at the Greek retrenchment - but you need to be honest about the process.
Public sector headcount, benefits, state and public sector pensions. All three need to be cut.
I don't disagree that reform is needed - I think we need to remake the state at a wholesale level. What I would challenge is the detail of how you think we should do it:
Public Sector Headcount - many layers of management could be cut and I'm sure there will be a few agencies we could merge / remove without issue. But in there we have stuff like the Passport Office, DVLA etc - and service from these is already dire. If you cut heads without reform you'll find the service collapses and that makes for unhappy voters.
Benefits - we already pay poverty-level numbers for practically everything. Compare our unemployment pay, our maternity pay, our sick pay - we get so little compared to our neighbours. If you cut these further you cut cash which directly recirculates through the local economy which means less businesses and less jobs. And we pay a ludicrous amount of in-work support to people where their wages are insufficient to pay their bills. I'm happy to plan to abolish these subsidies to big business but you can't just cut them without a dire effect on the economy
Pensions? I take the point. Gold plated seems like an understatement for many of them. At the same time our state pension is very low compared to competitor economies close-by. I would look to rebalance as much as cut.
My challenge on all of this is that you can't cut provision and assume the demand goes away. Its not a zero sum game where you cut one side of the equation with zero cost added to the other side. Make a lot of people much poorer and you tank the economy - which creates many other problems.
Which is why wholesale reform is needed. Cutting our way to growth has been tried and it always fails. The system we have doesn't work, so we need to change the system.
While you say benefits are very low - and for say a single healthy person out of a job they are - they are also cumulative, so if you can persuade the state you are ill, and/or disabled, and/or have a family, there are plenty of people getting benefits they would have to earn £30k+ a year to match, and who find themselves so comfortably off they can't be arsed to work. Similarly with pensions, where as you point out the state pension is comparatively small and many pensioners have to depend on benefits to pay the rent, or have small personal pensions and would suffer if you tunkered with say NI
Sure - the welfare state has completely lost sight of its purpose - a generous safety net when needed. Its no longer generous, and it captures people.
Here's my basic problem. The small numbers who "can't be arsed to work" get weaponised to beat into submission the genuinely sick / poor / uninformed.
Welfare is a better option than work because work doesn't pay the bills. I keep referring back to Iain Duncan Smith's reforming zeal. He was up in the valleys (I think Merthyr Tydfil) talking to people who were out of work, pointing at all the jobs and prosperity in Cardiff.
Yes, but these are shift jobs. Where public transport stops too early, and is too expensive when it does run, and we have kids.
This is the issue. "Just cut the benefit" (and I despise that word) isn't the solution. Make work viable is the solution, but the right have zero interest in doing so and the left have zero interest in reforming the welfare state.
Or revive the high street so it is not just mainly warehouse and delivery work on offer. Even Trump to be fair to him is trying to revive mass manufacturing work with his tariffs and build more factories in the US, even if his tariffs use a sledgehammer to crack a nut
How do you "revive the high street" when more and more people prefer to shop online? More and more the high street is made up of "service" business and alleged fronts for money laundering and illegal immigration such as nail bars and barbers. (And a new one - corner shops - which in one way is welcome but we have had three open in one one-mile stretch of high street, where there are 2 supermarkets, in recent months)
Add to that: bubble tea outlets, and weird artisanal cake shops
I think the miscreants have realised Turkish barbers, vape shops and American candy stores have been rumbled
Given the frequency my colleagues found an excuse to buy cakes for the office, you might think the cake shops have a market, however it was almost always supermarket cakes and Costco. Having had a couple of recent opportunities to buy cake myself, I realised how cheap it is, even from Waitrose, and on perpetual discount. So maybe the artisanal cake makers are just as dodgy. One of my colleagues had a side hustle in cupcakes, and they were very nice (when I allowed myself some carbs) but she has never spoken of trying to make a living out of it.
Britain does lack a culture of great cakes readily available on the high street, which is odd given our penchant for baking (eg Bake Off) and a noble tradition of brilliant cakes and puds
Here in bishkek I just had an excellent flat white with a nice fresh home made fruit tartlet. So maybe there is room for 1000 dessert bars in the UK! - as long as they have pretty shopfronts
Er... nearly every coffee shop tries to do coffee and cake. Even the grottiest chains have plastic wrapped blueberry muffins.
I said GREAT cakes. Yeah every Costa and Starbucks has lumps of carb, but they’re often not very nice and definitely not very interesting
One thing I noticed in Yangon was the local tradition of really superb home made cakes, with innovative tropical fruits. Delish
We lead the world in baking. Flour is usually of a far higher quality than on the continent, and British creations are classics of their type, with a thriving sourdough/artisan sector too. I am glad you're enjoying your fruit tart but really now.
Having spent 10 years living in Germany and happily enjoying the amazing variety of breads and cakes sold at the numerous bakeries and patisseries, I find that very hard to believe.
Also France, I think they have a pretty good claim to leading the world of baked goods. I think the UK does an ok job of it, probably similar to Germany but definitely behind France and Austria. Our flour is good for cakes though compared to a lot of European wheat which is heavier in protein which is why we import from Canada for bread.
A lot of what is sold in France is quite poor - "We are a boulangarie in France and therefore must be awesome."
True but a lot of it is also excellent, you just need to know where to go, I think that's true of all French cuisine in the country. The majority of restaurants are in the mediocre to cross category but there's a lot of truly great food to be found, you just need to know where to go.
Average I think close to 55 or 60. Where the money in our society is concentrated.
I've been flipping 911s for well over 10 years. In that time, In that time, I've done 56 (according to my spreadsheet and not including part-outs) and the average age of my buyers has gone from 40s to 60s. They are the ones with the money.
I particularly like selling these types GT3s. They like the idea but are wholly unprepared for the white knuckle driving experience and extreme discomfort. I am occasionally able to buy them back in a few months at a steep discount.
Is it just the money. Anecdotally, but from several sources, I hear that the young really aren't into classic cars, even cheap ones, even at around £10,000. They aren't from that era.
It's not just classic cars, they aren't into any cars at all. I recently gave one of my students a lift in my E63 Handschalter. I wound that V10 out to its 7,800rpm redline where it sounded like Umm Kulthumm in her prime. He didn't look up from reading about Satisfactory on Reddit on his phone.
Hint if £155,000 is too expensive, reducing the price by less than £4,000 is not going to solve the issue.
Now sheltered accommodation is a mess of a business and ideally you don’t want to touch one but after 3 years of trying to see I would have given up and price it to sell at £50,000 screw the other residents and the company doing the management
Retirement flats are great investments for those that build and run them. There is usually a buy-back rule where you can sell it to the developer at a substantial discount. Would guess this person has seen the developer#s offer and is trying the open market - without success.
If anyone IS coming to Central Asia then I can heartily recommend Bishkek for souvenirs. They have about zero tourists so you’re getting the real deal
I just bought three exquisite handmade leather felt and silk bags. They are ancient Kyrgyz designs made by Kyrgyz women in Bishkek Kyrgyzstan
Probably cost over £300 in a posh london shop? Indeed I seriously doubt you could find them. Handmade Kyrgyz bags using the “Tush Kyiz” technique - which is used mainly for wall hanging in yurts but can be adapted for bags and cushions. They take weeks or even months to make as wedding presents and the like
Here? £15-£30
Bought one for each daughter and one for myself
Even better - after talking me through the elaborate design and technique the lovely girl in the shop then hunted around for a bag to put them in and eventually found one. A see through placcy shopping bag from Morrisons
Govts get the blame. Suspect numbers are so low in part because Lab supporters also feel gloomy thanks to Trump. The saving grace for Labour might be recent memories of Tory incompetence...
The latter simply means unhappy voters will go to Reform, or LibDem/Green, instead of turning to Kemi's lot.
What I find notable about the rise of the Fukkers is how unarsed the pb.com tories are about it as Mrs Badenough drives the tory charabanc off Beach Head and sends their polling to Trussian levels. Even HYUFD seems to be chill with it because apparently KB might get a job as Welsh Secretary in Farage's cabinet.
I suspect they are comfortable with Aunty Nige because Nige promises those gifts they desire but dare not ask for, like sending Johnny Foreigner home, selling off the NHS for tax cuts, reintroducing selective education at aged 11 and (although Nigel isn't on board yet) hanging Lucy Letby.
Albeit many Reform voters think Letby is innocent
How do we know that? I suspect quite a lot of people across the spectrum believe there is doubt in the case, at the least (I am one). But I don't recall a specific survey of voting intentions plus Letby beliefs...
There seems to be a desire to turn the Letby case into a culture war symbol. I come from the point of view that
1) There are questions. 2) Asking and answering such questions is a fundamental part of the justice system 3) There have been many miscarriages of justice in the past. 4) Anyone who tries the "But it will damage the system" argument for not asking questions is an idiot.
What does "Asking and answering such questions" entail? The main case took nearly a year, so plenty of asking and answering questions took place. There was then the second case. Both cases have since gone to multiple appeals. Letby's lawyers have now gone to the Criminal Cases Review Commission and we await the Commission's response. That's how the justice system works. (There's also been the Thirlwall Inquiry, asking further questions, but outside of the justice system.)
It is very hard to look at all that and claim that questions have not been asked. More questions have been asked in the Letby case than in most cases. I'm struggling to see a deficit in question asking?
Miscarriages of justice do occur. That's why we allow multiple appeals and why the Criminal Cases Review Commission was created. But Letby has been able to make multiple appeals and has now gone to the Criminal Cases Review Commission. Do you think something more should be done to avoid miscarriages of justice?
I'm talking about the people who have been going "Found guilty, should be the end of. Questioning the courts bad."
The legal proceedings and appeals are what should happen. We should celebrate them.
@SeanT in his cell in El Salvador would applaud that (All suspects are guilty. Period. Otherwise they wouldn't be suspect!)
I don’t see many people saying Letby shouldn’t be allowed to appeal. I see far more convinced she’s innocent and who think a year long trial, a second trial and multiple appeals must have missed the obvious thing they just thought of that proves that.
I've an M&G American investment and I note they are suggesting I convert to an ISA.
Sounds like you have a stock market fund held outside of an ISA. It is, therefore, taxable.
You cannot move this seamlessly into an ISA. You would have to sell the holding then reinvest the proceeds into an ISA. The proceeds cannot be more than £20k as this is your ISA limit and the proceeds would be liable for CGT (though usual allowances apply). You will have leech fees of some sort on the sale and repurchase.
On repurchase you could, of course, select a different investment entirely or do Cash ISA instead of a stocks and shares ISA.
On topic, April bill rises have kicked in, as have higher price/tax/wage costs/tarrifs all round but with no commensurate increase in real-terms pay. People (rightly) see more of the same coming down the line and no real plan to tackle it. And they're not sure it can be.
So, the squeeze of the last three years is continuing. They are not exactly full of the joys of May, and rightly so.
Tariffs is the odd one out there. They don’t contribute to UK cost of living. In fact they have probably had a deflationary effect so far, both through dumping and the oil price. It’s the American consumer they screw, not us.
The damage from Trump’s shenanigans has been the market turmoil, including the rise in UK gilt yields which badly need to uncouple from the US.
Real terms pay is doing OK at the moment. The fundamentals for the worker aren’t bad, certainly much better than in 2022/3 at the height of the Ukraine inflation spike, but they’re still shit for government finances.
Imagine heading into this with a government that decided to cut borrowing rather than add to it, gilts would have uncoupled from treasuries very early on. Instead the call centre manager decided to add £60bn per year for public sector pay rises and lower growth and markets are pricing in much higher gilt supply. Absolutely self inflicted. The government should have cut spending by £30-40bn per year and reduced borrowing to build up much more fiscal headroom. Cutting headcount is still the only way to do it, eventually the government is going to have to do it, but the closer we get to an election the more resentment there will be among the people who are let go and their families. Such a completely stupid decision not to do it on day one.
"Cutting headcount" would not save "£30-40bn per year". What would you actually cut to save that amount ?
I'm not saying it's impossible - look for example at the Greek retrenchment - but you need to be honest about the process.
Public sector headcount, benefits, state and public sector pensions. All three need to be cut.
I don't disagree that reform is needed - I think we need to remake the state at a wholesale level. What I would challenge is the detail of how you think we should do it:
Public Sector Headcount - many layers of management could be cut and I'm sure there will be a few agencies we could merge / remove without issue. But in there we have stuff like the Passport Office, DVLA etc - and service from these is already dire. If you cut heads without reform you'll find the service collapses and that makes for unhappy voters.
Benefits - we already pay poverty-level numbers for practically everything. Compare our unemployment pay, our maternity pay, our sick pay - we get so little compared to our neighbours. If you cut these further you cut cash which directly recirculates through the local economy which means less businesses and less jobs. And we pay a ludicrous amount of in-work support to people where their wages are insufficient to pay their bills. I'm happy to plan to abolish these subsidies to big business but you can't just cut them without a dire effect on the economy
Pensions? I take the point. Gold plated seems like an understatement for many of them. At the same time our state pension is very low compared to competitor economies close-by. I would look to rebalance as much as cut.
My challenge on all of this is that you can't cut provision and assume the demand goes away. Its not a zero sum game where you cut one side of the equation with zero cost added to the other side. Make a lot of people much poorer and you tank the economy - which creates many other problems.
Which is why wholesale reform is needed. Cutting our way to growth has been tried and it always fails. The system we have doesn't work, so we need to change the system.
While you say benefits are very low - and for say a single healthy person out of a job they are - they are also cumulative, so if you can persuade the state you are ill, and/or disabled, and/or have a family, there are plenty of people getting benefits they would have to earn £30k+ a year to match, and who find themselves so comfortably off they can't be arsed to work. Similarly with pensions, where as you point out the state pension is comparatively small and many pensioners have to depend on benefits to pay the rent, or have small personal pensions and would suffer if you tunkered with say NI
Sure - the welfare state has completely lost sight of its purpose - a generous safety net when needed. Its no longer generous, and it captures people.
Here's my basic problem. The small numbers who "can't be arsed to work" get weaponised to beat into submission the genuinely sick / poor / uninformed.
Welfare is a better option than work because work doesn't pay the bills. I keep referring back to Iain Duncan Smith's reforming zeal. He was up in the valleys (I think Merthyr Tydfil) talking to people who were out of work, pointing at all the jobs and prosperity in Cardiff.
Yes, but these are shift jobs. Where public transport stops too early, and is too expensive when it does run, and we have kids.
This is the issue. "Just cut the benefit" (and I despise that word) isn't the solution. Make work viable is the solution, but the right have zero interest in doing so and the left have zero interest in reforming the welfare state.
Or revive the high street so it is not just mainly warehouse and delivery work on offer. Even Trump to be fair to him is trying to revive mass manufacturing work with his tariffs and build more factories in the US, even if his tariffs use a sledgehammer to crack a nut
How do you "revive the high street" when more and more people prefer to shop online? More and more the high street is made up of "service" business and alleged fronts for money laundering and illegal immigration such as nail bars and barbers. (And a new one - corner shops - which in one way is welcome but we have had three open in one one-mile stretch of high street, where there are 2 supermarkets, in recent months)
Add to that: bubble tea outlets, and weird artisanal cake shops
I think the miscreants have realised Turkish barbers, vape shops and American candy stores have been rumbled
Given the frequency my colleagues found an excuse to buy cakes for the office, you might think the cake shops have a market, however it was almost always supermarket cakes and Costco. Having had a couple of recent opportunities to buy cake myself, I realised how cheap it is, even from Waitrose, and on perpetual discount. So maybe the artisanal cake makers are just as dodgy. One of my colleagues had a side hustle in cupcakes, and they were very nice (when I allowed myself some carbs) but she has never spoken of trying to make a living out of it.
Britain does lack a culture of great cakes readily available on the high street, which is odd given our penchant for baking (eg Bake Off) and a noble tradition of brilliant cakes and puds
Here in bishkek I just had an excellent flat white with a nice fresh home made fruit tartlet. So maybe there is room for 1000 dessert bars in the UK! - as long as they have pretty shopfronts
Er... nearly every coffee shop tries to do coffee and cake. Even the grottiest chains have plastic wrapped blueberry muffins.
I said GREAT cakes. Yeah every Costa and Starbucks has lumps of carb, but they’re often not very nice and definitely not very interesting
One thing I noticed in Yangon was the local tradition of really superb home made cakes, with innovative tropical fruits. Delish
We lead the world in baking. Flour is usually of a far higher quality than on the continent, and British creations are classics of their type, with a thriving sourdough/artisan sector too. I am glad you're enjoying your fruit tart but really now.
Having spent 10 years living in Germany and happily enjoying the amazing variety of breads and cakes sold at the numerous bakeries and patisseries, I find that very hard to believe.
On topic, April bill rises have kicked in, as have higher price/tax/wage costs/tarrifs all round but with no commensurate increase in real-terms pay. People (rightly) see more of the same coming down the line and no real plan to tackle it. And they're not sure it can be.
So, the squeeze of the last three years is continuing. They are not exactly full of the joys of May, and rightly so.
Tariffs is the odd one out there. They don’t contribute to UK cost of living. In fact they have probably had a deflationary effect so far, both through dumping and the oil price. It’s the American consumer they screw, not us.
The damage from Trump’s shenanigans has been the market turmoil, including the rise in UK gilt yields which badly need to uncouple from the US.
Real terms pay is doing OK at the moment. The fundamentals for the worker aren’t bad, certainly much better than in 2022/3 at the height of the Ukraine inflation spike, but they’re still shit for government finances.
Imagine heading into this with a government that decided to cut borrowing rather than add to it, gilts would have uncoupled from treasuries very early on. Instead the call centre manager decided to add £60bn per year for public sector pay rises and lower growth and markets are pricing in much higher gilt supply. Absolutely self inflicted. The government should have cut spending by £30-40bn per year and reduced borrowing to build up much more fiscal headroom. Cutting headcount is still the only way to do it, eventually the government is going to have to do it, but the closer we get to an election the more resentment there will be among the people who are let go and their families. Such a completely stupid decision not to do it on day one.
"Cutting headcount" would not save "£30-40bn per year". What would you actually cut to save that amount ?
I'm not saying it's impossible - look for example at the Greek retrenchment - but you need to be honest about the process.
Public sector headcount, benefits, state and public sector pensions. All three need to be cut.
I don't disagree that reform is needed - I think we need to remake the state at a wholesale level. What I would challenge is the detail of how you think we should do it:
Public Sector Headcount - many layers of management could be cut and I'm sure there will be a few agencies we could merge / remove without issue. But in there we have stuff like the Passport Office, DVLA etc - and service from these is already dire. If you cut heads without reform you'll find the service collapses and that makes for unhappy voters.
Benefits - we already pay poverty-level numbers for practically everything. Compare our unemployment pay, our maternity pay, our sick pay - we get so little compared to our neighbours. If you cut these further you cut cash which directly recirculates through the local economy which means less businesses and less jobs. And we pay a ludicrous amount of in-work support to people where their wages are insufficient to pay their bills. I'm happy to plan to abolish these subsidies to big business but you can't just cut them without a dire effect on the economy
Pensions? I take the point. Gold plated seems like an understatement for many of them. At the same time our state pension is very low compared to competitor economies close-by. I would look to rebalance as much as cut.
My challenge on all of this is that you can't cut provision and assume the demand goes away. Its not a zero sum game where you cut one side of the equation with zero cost added to the other side. Make a lot of people much poorer and you tank the economy - which creates many other problems.
Which is why wholesale reform is needed. Cutting our way to growth has been tried and it always fails. The system we have doesn't work, so we need to change the system.
While you say benefits are very low - and for say a single healthy person out of a job they are - they are also cumulative, so if you can persuade the state you are ill, and/or disabled, and/or have a family, there are plenty of people getting benefits they would have to earn £30k+ a year to match, and who find themselves so comfortably off they can't be arsed to work. Similarly with pensions, where as you point out the state pension is comparatively small and many pensioners have to depend on benefits to pay the rent, or have small personal pensions and would suffer if you tunkered with say NI
Sure - the welfare state has completely lost sight of its purpose - a generous safety net when needed. Its no longer generous, and it captures people.
Here's my basic problem. The small numbers who "can't be arsed to work" get weaponised to beat into submission the genuinely sick / poor / uninformed.
Welfare is a better option than work because work doesn't pay the bills. I keep referring back to Iain Duncan Smith's reforming zeal. He was up in the valleys (I think Merthyr Tydfil) talking to people who were out of work, pointing at all the jobs and prosperity in Cardiff.
Yes, but these are shift jobs. Where public transport stops too early, and is too expensive when it does run, and we have kids.
This is the issue. "Just cut the benefit" (and I despise that word) isn't the solution. Make work viable is the solution, but the right have zero interest in doing so and the left have zero interest in reforming the welfare state.
Or revive the high street so it is not just mainly warehouse and delivery work on offer. Even Trump to be fair to him is trying to revive mass manufacturing work with his tariffs and build more factories in the US, even if his tariffs use a sledgehammer to crack a nut
How do you "revive the high street" when more and more people prefer to shop online? More and more the high street is made up of "service" business and alleged fronts for money laundering and illegal immigration such as nail bars and barbers. (And a new one - corner shops - which in one way is welcome but we have had three open in one one-mile stretch of high street, where there are 2 supermarkets, in recent months)
Add to that: bubble tea outlets, and weird artisanal cake shops
I think the miscreants have realised Turkish barbers, vape shops and American candy stores have been rumbled
Given the frequency my colleagues found an excuse to buy cakes for the office, you might think the cake shops have a market, however it was almost always supermarket cakes and Costco. Having had a couple of recent opportunities to buy cake myself, I realised how cheap it is, even from Waitrose, and on perpetual discount. So maybe the artisanal cake makers are just as dodgy. One of my colleagues had a side hustle in cupcakes, and they were very nice (when I allowed myself some carbs) but she has never spoken of trying to make a living out of it.
Britain does lack a culture of great cakes readily available on the high street, which is odd given our penchant for baking (eg Bake Off) and a noble tradition of brilliant cakes and puds
Here in bishkek I just had an excellent flat white with a nice fresh home made fruit tartlet. So maybe there is room for 1000 dessert bars in the UK! - as long as they have pretty shopfronts
Er... nearly every coffee shop tries to do coffee and cake. Even the grottiest chains have plastic wrapped blueberry muffins.
I said GREAT cakes. Yeah every Costa and Starbucks has lumps of carb, but they’re often not very nice and definitely not very interesting
One thing I noticed in Yangon was the local tradition of really superb home made cakes, with innovative tropical fruits. Delish
We lead the world in baking. Flour is usually of a far higher quality than on the continent, and British creations are classics of their type, with a thriving sourdough/artisan sector too. I am glad you're enjoying your fruit tart but really now.
Having spent 10 years living in Germany and happily enjoying the amazing variety of breads and cakes sold at the numerous bakeries and patisseries, I find that very hard to believe.
Also France, I think they have a pretty good claim to leading the world of baked goods. I think the UK does an ok job of it, probably similar to Germany but definitely behind France and Austria. Our flour is good for cakes though compared to a lot of European wheat which is heavier in protein which is why we import from Canada for bread.
A lot of what is sold in France is quite poor - "We are a boulangarie in France and therefore must be awesome."
Comments
In addition, if we compare the trend rate pre-COVID to now we'd be at close to 78% employment which is the delta we should be comparing, not to the actual peak. The loss of income and additional spending from sickness benefits and lax assessments is costing the nation £25bn in lost revenue and additional spending. I don't know about you but I've got better places to spend £25bn than having working age people sitting at home doing the square root of fuck all pretending to be sad.
AI posts are banned from one particular user yet they now seem to be able to post them if they were from a "friend". I do not want to see this site bogged down with nonsensical gibberish from AI every day (and I work in software engineering where it's unfortunately becoming commonplace). I like coming here to read actual expert opinions on certain topics. Please can we keep it that way?
Can somebody correlate Labour's terrible record with the fact they are - with I think one exception - virtually neck and neck with Reform? Why aren't Reform running away with it?
Could it be explained by the figures of the leaders, who are all as unpopular as each other.
Badenoch scored her first "win" in my view with the response to the trans issue, which to be fair to her she seems to have backed for a long time.
But what else would she do? Does she want to change the planning system? Does she want to bring back the WFA changes, what will she cut instead?
As for Reform, how exactly will they stop the boats? Has anyone actually asked them?
The Green Party have got themselves into an absolute mess over trans rights, they've managed to make Labour look sensible. Their voteshare will collapse before any election.
We are increasingly judgemental about people raised and living in different times, with different social norms. We often seem to lack the awareness to realise that we, too, are products of our times. My father, born in 1939, comes out with extremely racist comments. Not because of any inherent nasty racist streak but because he was born into an overwhelmingly white society, and was not born and raised in modern multicultural Britain.
Dramatic weight loss and a new haircut normally means one thing in politics: a leadership bid is on the way
Boris Johnson said it best. “If an otherwise healthy middle-aged man displays sudden weight loss, I reasoned, there are only two possible explanations,” he wrote in a newspaper column in 2023. “Either he has fallen hopelessly in love, or else he is about to mount a Tory leadership bid.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/04/28/politicians-action-man-makeover-jenrick-cameron-vance/ (£££)
I think Max makes a good point about trends, but what's so concerning about inactivity is that even before the pandemic, ill health as a reason for it was increasing as a steady long term trend. And it wasn't just mental health - physical health issues continue to grow (particularly older men), and remain the biggest reason for it, by some distance.
I have noticed. I’ve also noticed that these comments often get MORE likes than others
Look for commenters whose prose style abruptly improves, or has done so, recently
Minister says the establishment of an intermediate court is ‘an idea whose time has probably come’ to tackle the 80,000 cases waiting to be heard
Defendants accused of violent crimes and drug dealing will be among those to lose their automatic right to a jury trial under plans backed by ministers to clear the court backlog.
[Cambridge-educated lawyer] Sarah Sackman KC, the courts minister, said that the establishment of an intermediate court was “an idea whose time has probably come” and that it was expected to feature in measures introduced this year.
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/law/article/violent-crime-suspects-may-lose-right-to-jury-to-clear-court-backlog-50zlc0b0v (£££)
Did Magna Carta die in vain?
I knit for a hobby and people will often ask about whether I sell stuff. The brutal truth is that it takes too long to make and would be too expensive to buy. A handmake, pure wool jumper with be 60-80 pounds for the wool alone, plus 30-50 hours of handwork, so realistically you need to charge in the several hundreds to get anything out of it at all. As a hobby its fine, but not a career.
Here in bishkek I just had an excellent flat white with a nice fresh home made fruit tartlet. So maybe there is room for 1000 dessert bars in the UK! - as long as they have pretty shopfronts
The one thing this Government has been particularly crap at is setting the scene
The visa faff is minimal. They’re all keen on tourists. Brits just walk in, you don’t even fill in a form - you get a stamp. 30 days or more free to travel
Uzbekistan has very cheap high speed trains everywhere. Kazakhstan has good local airlines. Kyrgyzstan has buses. Hiring cars is not hard
Food is a bit boring - plov! - but in bigger cities you can get good Georgian Indian Chinese. People are great. Towns and cities are clean and safe - better than Western Europe. Beer is good. History is wild in Uzbekistan, kakazkhstan is compellingly weird (Astana?!), Almaty is seductive
Kyrgyzstan has phenomenal landscapes and Bishkek is a good base
In short: do it. Central Asia is a world class destination. Go before it is overrun with tourists
One thing I noticed in Yangon was the local tradition of really superb home made cakes, with innovative tropical fruits. Delish
Abolish the taper altogether, by merging with income tax and NI and making the benefit universal.
Yes that would significantly increase the 'costs' by giving people who are working an amount, but treat that as equivalent to the tax-free allowance today, its simply their allowance and it would net off the taxes they pay.
Adjust the tax rates accordingly so that the increase in allowance, and the tax changes are net neutral so the costs are net neutral.
But you'll have fixed the cliff-edge which will deal with the Laffer effect where the cliff-edge kicks in.
Do the same with all other cliff-edge tapers, such as the withdrawal of the allowance. Abolish that too.
Clearly, Trump is having a negative effect on the US economy and on the global economy. Exactly how much, only time will tell. It is generally difficult to determine to what extent a country's economic outcome was caused by multiple different factors. In the case of the UK economy going forwards, there are multiple possible factors, including Trump, the Labour government's actions, effects of the previous Conservative government's actions, continued repercussions from the war in Ukraine, continued repercussions from Brexit, etc.
The question for those betting on politics is, to rephrase you somewhat, whether Labour will "be able to palm" negative economic outcomes "off on Trump". There is an argument that the government of the day gets the blame, whatever caused poor economic conditions. Sunak and Harris both got punished electorally for inflation that was largely the result of Putin's invasion of Ukraine and the after-effects of COVID-19, not their own policies. What Labour need to do, perhaps, is to push the message hard that any pain is the fault of Trump, whether that is true or not!
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-autocrat-supreme-court_n_680ab464e4b031fa917d7610
Canada might be the second election Trump wins in six months
https://x.com/SkyNews/status/1916800393343885741
Worse pay is so bad that a lot of junior Barristers would be better off working at Tescos stacking shelves - which means many have left to do other things
I do like the bread, however
The Future of U.S. Forces in Europe: NATO, the pivot to Asia, & could Europe replace U.S. troops?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJEJahc0gr0
(TLDR: Pretty much yes.)
See the regular proposals to abolish magistrates and replace them with "proper judges".
Flights seem to be coming back, although I do fear Turkish has a bit of a monopoly. The Ukraine war has not only scuppered routes via Moscow (not that I will set foot in the place) but I remember being at Kyiv Boryspil, looking at the departure board... and you could get cheap flights to anywhere in the former Soviet Union.
It is very hard to look at all that and claim that questions have not been asked. More questions have been asked in the Letby case than in most cases. I'm struggling to see a deficit in question asking?
Miscarriages of justice do occur. That's why we allow multiple appeals and why the Criminal Cases Review Commission was created. But Letby has been able to make multiple appeals and has now gone to the Criminal Cases Review Commission. Do you think something more should be done to avoid miscarriages of justice?
Ole & Steen are slightly better.
Had an astoundingly good almond croissant this weekend, in just such.
It was clear cut that she made it all up because he wanted a divorce and to get away from her.
Our trial process was an absolute disgrace and we allowed the press to incorrectly malign an innocent man who was the victim of years of spousal abuse.
The legal proceedings and appeals are what should happen. We should celebrate them.
@SeanT in his cell in El Salvador would applaud that (All suspects are guilty. Period. Otherwise they wouldn't be suspect!)
I underatand that PB can take up an unacceptable amount of time, but another way of rationing it might be to only post on one day a week, but post normally (not to extremes) on that day. That gives you an opportunity to get stuck in to the debate, but keep the rest of your diary free.
Same reason guys buy old cameras.
As they become antiques (the items, and the owners) only the true rarities will hold their value, I suspect.
Very mod-able, and quite cheap (around $20k base price).
https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/24/bezos-backed-slate-auto-debuts-analog-ev-pickup-truck-that-is-decidedly-anti-tesla/
What the Cybertruck should have been.
I think between my wife and I we've got it covered, she's great at baking cakes and pastry, I've got bread and savoury food down pretty well. Feels like a solid team effort...
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/property/buying-selling/impossible-to-sell-retirement-flats-hit-double-council-tax/
Hint if £155,000 is too expensive, reducing the price by less than £4,000 is not going to solve the issue.
Now sheltered accommodation is a mess of a business and ideally you don’t want to touch one but after 3 years of trying to see I would have given up and price it to sell at £50,000 screw the other residents and the company doing the management
For a while you could get the a Hasselblad body, the same model they left on the moon, for a few hundred quid. Manual lenses similar.
I'm well ahead in my equities and my political betting - though Kamala made a big dent in my political betting winnings.
Parents saying racist stuff is a problem that I suspect many of us have had. We should understand where those comments come from, but we should also be aware of the harm that they can have today. The non-white healthcare professional at the receiving end of such comments might well understand that old people's views reflect the different era they grew up in, and still be hurt by those comments.
That all said, if we want to get into the details of how people perceived slavery in the 18th century in the UK, some people who don't like NT signs about slavery have a tendency to put forth this idea that everyone was fine with slavery back then and we can't blame anyone, they didn't know better, etc. That is an ahistorical position. There was an abolitionist movement in the 18th century. The Somerset case in 1772 clearly decided that slavery could not exist in England and Wales. Indeed, slavery had been abolished, on the grounds of it being morally wrong, in the 11th century in England. The social norm was not "slavery is OK". Slavery was regularly questioned and constrained through the period.
However. Polls can be wrong 'cos people lie.
Ironic of course in that darker-skinned people were likely to be 'pure' H. sapiens while the paler ones had traces of H. neanderthaliis.
I just bought three exquisite handmade leather felt and silk bags. They are ancient Kyrgyz designs made by Kyrgyz women in Bishkek Kyrgyzstan
Probably cost over £300 in a posh london shop? Indeed I seriously doubt you could
find them. Handmade Kyrgyz bags using the “Tush Kyiz” technique - which is used mainly for wall hanging in yurts but can be adapted for bags and cushions. They take weeks or even months to make as wedding presents and the like
Here? £15-£30
Bought one for each daughter and one for myself
Even better - after talking me through the elaborate design and technique the lovely girl in the shop then hunted around for a bag to put them in and eventually found one. A see through placcy shopping bag from Morrisons
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tush_kyiz
You cannot move this seamlessly into an ISA. You would have to sell the holding then reinvest the proceeds into an ISA. The proceeds cannot be more than £20k as this is your ISA limit and the proceeds would be liable for CGT (though usual allowances apply). You will have leech fees of some sort on the sale and repurchase.
On repurchase you could, of course, select a different investment entirely or do Cash ISA instead of a stocks and shares ISA.