'We have to be seen to be doing something performative about trans kids..'
'I know, let's check them for autism and ADHD. Some kids have already been waiting for over a year for an assessment so we can lose the issue in the long grass.'
Thanks, a good summation. After sleeping on it for a night I think the point where the settler godmother Weiss shoves Theroux hard in the chest is pivotal, representing so much of what's happening in Israel (which includes Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon according to some of the ultras). She said at the end 'I wish you'd pushed me back', an unlikely event which would have no doubt inspired disproportionate retribution. Sound familiar?
Try this. An extraordinary distortion of what we all saw with our own eyes. It was all cooked up by the BBC says the Daily Mail.
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.
Anecdata: my friends with an old Alvis report a sharp drop-off in interest from other drivers (waving etc) as they drive between car shows.
Aside from nostalgia for what people grew up with dad driving (probably mark 2 Cortinas for 70-year-olds and mark 3 Cortinas for 60-year-olds) what's the point? Old cars are rubbish – uncomfortable, uneconomic and unsafe.
'We have to be seen to be doing something performative about trans kids..'
'I know, let's check them for autism and ADHD. Some kids have already been waiting for over a year for an assessment so we can lose the issue in the long grass.'
Thanks, a good summation. After sleeping on it for a night I think the point where the settler godmother Weiss shoves Theroux hard in the chest is pivotal, representing so much of what's happening in Israel (which includes Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon according to some of the ultras). She said at the end 'I wish you'd pushed me back', an unlikely event which would have no doubt inspired disproportionate retribution. Sound familiar?
Try this. An extraordinary distortion of what we all saw with our own eyes. It was all cooked up by the BBC says the Daily Mail.
I've never seen the attraction of Louis Theroux. He seems to be popular owing to the nation's false memory that Theroux exposed Savile's debauchery. He did not even suspect anything, let alone challenge it. All he exposed was Savile boasting about his cabin. Mind you, I could never see why the BBC kept employing Savile.
'We have to be seen to be doing something performative about trans kids..'
'I know, let's check them for autism and ADHD. Some kids have already been waiting for over a year for an assessment so we can lose the issue in the long grass.'
Thanks, a good summation. After sleeping on it for a night I think the point where the settler godmother Weiss shoves Theroux hard in the chest is pivotal, representing so much of what's happening in Israel (which includes Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon according to some of the ultras). She said at the end 'I wish you'd pushed me back', an unlikely event which would have no doubt inspired disproportionate retribution. Sound familiar?
You can add Syria to the list of what Israel includes according to some of the ultras.
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."
Quite.
What they ALWAYS do better in France is presentation. It is commonly excellent and quite often exquisite. A national trait
The goods themselves are varied - on a recent trip to France I saw a boulangerie advertising that “our baguettes are not frozen!!”
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.
Anecdata: my friends with an old Alvis report a sharp drop-off in interest from other drivers (waving etc) as they drive between car shows.
Aside from nostalgia for what people grew up with dad driving (probably mark 2 Cortinas for 70-year-olds and mark 3 Cortinas for 60-year-olds) what's the point? Old cars are rubbish – uncomfortable, uneconomic and unsafe.
The classic/vintage motorbike market is similar. I've got 5 bikes all built before 1946 to sell. No one really wants them. The people buying classic bikes are my age and they want the bikes and peds we grew up on- Yamaha Fizz, RD350LC, old Kwak Ars, Bandits, Katanas....even a Honda C90. They don't want a Francis Barnet or a New Imperial.
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.
A Caterham only makes sense on a track because they are terrible road cars (worse than 911 GT3s and that's saying something!) and an EV makes zero sense on a track. In conclusion, the worst possible combination of car and powertrain since the 2.5 VM diesel in the Rover 800.
If you are into that sort of shit then the move is the LDU from a wrecked Tesla with an aftermarket controller like the AEM VC300. You can use that combo to EV convert just about anything.
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."
Quite.
Cake nationalism is always entertaining. Who can forget the great Tunnock's Teacake stushie of 2016?
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.
The only developer my parents saw that offered a buyback are extracare who buy it back automatically at the purchase price on forfeiture (i.e. death).
My parent’s only regret is that they didn’t move there earlier (and yes they did purchase an extracare managed apartment).
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.
That's because you're an idiot.
Bizarrely offensive response. I agree with Feeresum, and even if I didn't I'd find your response unacceptable.
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.
A Caterham only makes sense on a track because they are terrible road cars (worse than 911 GT3s and that's saying something!) and an EV makes zero sense on a track. In conclusion, the worst possible combination of car and powertrain since the 2.5 VM diesel in the Rover 800.
If you are into that sort of shit then the move is the LDU from a wrecked Tesla with an aftermarket controller like the AEM VC300. You can use that combo to EV convert just about anything.
I was watching a bangers and cash rebuild show last week where they converted a morris van into an EV, it seems DVLA have made it a £30k+ project with plenty of box ticking at which point I may as well get a Carice CT2 https://www.caricecars.com/ if I want a stupid electric car
Reality is I will probably get a Renault 4 when I next switch cars
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.
That's because you're an idiot.
The bread and cakes, in quite a few places, in Germany is excellent. Hamburg for example.
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."
Quite.
Cake nationalism is always entertaining. Who can forget the great Tunnock's Teacake stushie of 2016?
There was a line in one of the Churchill films when he invites a contact to dine because when there are visitors, we have Dundee cake.
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.
There are exploitative aspects to their model imo.
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.
That's because you're an idiot.
There's not much point hanging around here if that's the level of debate. Cheerio.
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."
Quite.
Cake nationalism is always entertaining. Who can forget the great Tunnock's Teacake stushie of 2016?
:-) or indeed the Lees Snowball stramash or the Caramel wafer caper... which certainly took the biscuit.
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.
That's because you're an idiot.
The bread and cakes, in quite a few places, in Germany is excellent. Hamburg for example.
The Black Forest has a nice cake too although its name escapes me.
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.
Anecdata: my friends with an old Alvis report a sharp drop-off in interest from other drivers (waving etc) as they drive between car shows.
Aside from nostalgia for what people grew up with dad driving (probably mark 2 Cortinas for 70-year-olds and mark 3 Cortinas for 60-year-olds) what's the point? Old cars are rubbish – uncomfortable, uneconomic and unsafe.
The classic/vintage motorbike market is similar. I've got 5 bikes all built before 1946 to sell. No one really wants them. The people buying classic bikes are my age and they want the bikes and peds we grew up on- Yamaha Fizz, RD350LC, old Kwak Ars, Bandits, Katanas....even a Honda C90. They don't want a Francis Barnet or a New Imperial.
Kwak ars bandits intrigues me.
Quite a lot of the manufacturers do modernised versions of the classics so folk get that vintage vibe with great brakes, tires, suspension etc. I was shocked to see a Ducati Paul Smart replica (which is a bit of a pastiche tbh) being put up for $30k dollars online, very much doubt they'll get it mind.
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.
That's because you're an idiot.
The bread and cakes, in quite a few places, in Germany is excellent. Hamburg for example.
I lived in Vienna for a bit. Coffee/cake was a religion there.
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.
Have you tried telling that to Lewis Hamilton cos he just goes around in circles?
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.
Anecdata: my friends with an old Alvis report a sharp drop-off in interest from other drivers (waving etc) as they drive between car shows.
Aside from nostalgia for what people grew up with dad driving (probably mark 2 Cortinas for 70-year-olds and mark 3 Cortinas for 60-year-olds) what's the point? Old cars are rubbish – uncomfortable, uneconomic and unsafe.
The classic/vintage motorbike market is similar. I've got 5 bikes all built before 1946 to sell. No one really wants them. The people buying classic bikes are my age and they want the bikes and peds we grew up on- Yamaha Fizz, RD350LC, old Kwak Ars, Bandits, Katanas....even a Honda C90. They don't want a Francis Barnet or a New Imperial.
Kwak ars bandits intrigues me.
Quite a lot of the manufacturers do modernised versions of the classics so folk get that vintage vibe with great brakes, tires, suspension etc. I was shocked to see a Ducati Paul Smart replica (which is a bit of a pastiche tbh) being put up for $30k dollars online, very much doubt they'll get it mind.
Yeah, a bit of thought into that might have helped there! 🤪
Talking of weird artisanal cake shops, there is a business near me that specialises in cakes made from raw vegetables. The idea of it doesn't exactly make my mouth water.
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!
I am afraid I switched off two lines in - probably a lot further than any wavering voters would get.
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.
That's because you're an idiot.
The bread and cakes, in quite a few places, in Germany is excellent. Hamburg for example.
The Black Forest has a nice cake too although its name escapes me.
There a quite a few bake-on-the-premises places in Hamburg. The good ones can do a better croissant than many, many French places.
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.
That's because you're an idiot.
Bizarrely offensive response. I agree with Feeresum, and even if I didn't I'd find your response unacceptable.
In the annals of PB abuse “you’re an idiot” doesn’t even make the top 100,000 examples. Unclutch your pearls
@malcolmg hurls out worse abuse every day before breakfast. And that’s just when he’s talking to his mother
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.
That's because you're an idiot.
The bread and cakes, in quite a few places, in Germany is excellent. Hamburg for example.
German bread, like German humour, can be a distinctly acquired taste.
(Unlike German humour, though, at least German bread incontestably exists)
I lived in Hamburg for a while as a teenager and I remember hating the taste of the rye-based, almost-indigestible Schwarzbrot that my host family served me for breakfast every day when I got there, but by the time I left, I actually preferred it to supermarket white bread here.
Unfortunately it was almost impossible to find a good, reasonably priced Schwarzbrot in England though, so I got out of the habit of eating 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
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."
Quite.
Cake nationalism is always entertaining. Who can forget the great Tunnock's Teacake stushie of 2016?
French food is like French wine - there's lots of good stuff. But there's also a vast amount of crap pumped out on the basis of "It's France, so it must be awesome".
The attitude is changing - on wine, they've realised that you can't raise the price of Premier and Grand Cru much more, and that all those acres of regular stuff needs to compete against the New World. So the lower end wines have improved in leaps and bounds. Even a few years back, Cremant was often barely drinkable. Again, they've realised that prosecco and cava were taking all the money....
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."
Quite.
Cake nationalism is always entertaining. Who can forget the great Tunnock's Teacake stushie of 2016?
French food is like French wine - there's lots of good stuff. But there's also a vast amount of crap pumped out on the basis of "It's France, so it must be awesome".
The attitude is changing - on wine, they've realised that you can't raise the price of Premier and Grand Cru much more, and that all those acres of regular stuff needs to compete against the New World. So the lower end wines have improved in leaps and bounds. Even a few years back, Cremant was often barely drinkable. Again, they've realised that prosecco and cava were taking all the money....
Also wine drinking is falling off a cliff. Even in France
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.
That's because you're an idiot.
The bread and cakes, in quite a few places, in Germany is excellent. Hamburg for example.
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.
That's because you're an idiot.
There's not much point hanging around here if that's the level of debate. Cheerio.
Quite, but don't quit - see my multiply-liked response.
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.
That's because you're an idiot.
There's not much point hanging around here if that's the level of debate. Cheerio.
Quite, but don't quit - see my multiply-liked response.
Good grief. The man got called an idiot, he hasn't lost a close relative.
FPT: The Southern Baptists are the largest evangelical group in the US: "The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), alternatively the Great Commission Baptists (GCB), is a Christian denomination based in the United States. It is the world's largest Baptist organization, the largest Protestant, and the second-largest Christian body in the United States.[1][2] The SBC is a cooperation of fully autonomous, independent churches with commonly held essential beliefs that pool some resources for missions." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Baptist_Convention
As of 2023, it had about 13 million members, down from its 2006 peak of 16 million.
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."
Quite.
Cake nationalism is always entertaining. Who can forget the great Tunnock's Teacake stushie of 2016?
French food is like French wine - there's lots of good stuff. But there's also a vast amount of crap pumped out on the basis of "It's France, so it must be awesome".
The attitude is changing - on wine, they've realised that you can't raise the price of Premier and Grand Cru much more, and that all those acres of regular stuff needs to compete against the New World. So the lower end wines have improved in leaps and bounds. Even a few years back, Cremant was often barely drinkable. Again, they've realised that prosecco and cava were taking all the money....
Very true on both counts. In Paris the other day my mantra of any bog standard bistro is going to be amazing was blown out of the water. Very meh. Meanwhile you can get an amazing straight AOC Bordeaux for a few euros and something very decent indeed for €20-odd.
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.
That's because you're an idiot.
Bizarrely offensive response. I agree with Feeresum, and even if I didn't I'd find your response unacceptable.
In the annals of PB abuse “you’re an idiot” doesn’t even make the top 100,000 examples. Unclutch your pearls
@malcolmg hurls out worse abuse every day before breakfast. And that’s just when he’s talking to his mother
'You fetid globule of scrounging scouse pus' had a nice ring to 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
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.
That's because you're an idiot.
The bread and cakes, in quite a few places, in Germany is excellent. Hamburg for example.
German bread, like German humour, can be a distinctly acquired taste.
(Unlike German humour, though, at least German bread incontestably exists)
I lived in Hamburg for a while as a teenager and I remember hating the taste of the rye-based, almost-indigestible Schwarzbrot that my host family served me for breakfast every day when I got there, but by the time I left, I actually preferred it to supermarket white bread here.
Unfortunately it was almost impossible to find a good, reasonably priced Schwarzbrot in England though, so I got out of the habit of eating it.
Lidl do a pre-packed dark rye which is ok but a bit wet for my taste. Aldi do a sliced dark try sourdough which is the best option unless you go expensively artisanal.
This is my strictly monitored photo quota (SMPQ) for the day.
This anti-wheelchair barrier is within about half a mile of the centre of Mansfield, and is at the far end of a 1km walk down the River Maun near the Mansfield Football Ground (for lower league football nerds),with no easy escape routes. It is fairly high on the target list, because of the possibility of people being trapped and the only escape being 1km uphill.
That route has been a public walkway since the 1930s, signed as a cycling / walking route since (I think) the 1980s, and the barrier has been illegal since at least 1995. The path is part of a longer signposted route. Yet the thing is still there. Interestingly Google Streetview cameras got past it last August.
Beyond the barrier is a road crossing, then a beautiful park called Titchfield Park (like several around here), which even has a several Petanque Squares, made from former bowling greens, for the many Francophiles of Mansfield.
It has to go. It's time to upset the Captain Mainwarings of Mansfield Council.
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.
That's because you're an idiot.
The bread and cakes, in quite a few places, in Germany is excellent. Hamburg for example.
German bread, like German humour, can be a distinctly acquired taste.
(Unlike German humour, though, at least German bread incontestably exists)
I lived in Hamburg for a while as a teenager and I remember hating the taste of the rye-based, almost-indigestible Schwarzbrot that my host family served me for breakfast every day when I got there, but by the time I left, I actually preferred it to supermarket white bread here.
Unfortunately it was almost impossible to find a good, reasonably priced Schwarzbrot in England though, so I got out of the habit of eating it.
Lidl do a pre-packed dark rye which is ok but a bit wet for my taste. Aldi do a sliced dark try sourdough which is the best option unless you go expensively artisanal.
Mine when I have it, like most salami, comes from the local Polish mini-supermarket. Very good with poached heggs.
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.
That's because you're an idiot.
The bread and cakes, in quite a few places, in Germany is excellent. Hamburg for example.
I lived in Vienna for a bit. Coffee/cake was a religion there.
On the subject of bread: you guys have no idea how lucky you are. Whether it's Germany, France or the UK, your bread is lightyears better than the crap that is sold in every supermarket in the US.
Now, sure, can you get decent bread in the US? Of course. But it's not widely available. Most supermarkets don't have their own bakery in the way Tesco's and Sainsbury's do in the UK.
Only spoke to 80 people, perhaps, so totally unscientific, but I met more people planning to vote Green than Tory.
Essentially zero of the discontent with Labour (of which there is a lot!) is being channeled towards the Tory party….
You can get 125/1 on the Tories winning, which is consistent with Bastani's observation.
I suggest the Tories need to attack Reform UK relentlessly if they want to beat them anywhere.
The starting point for a Tory recovery is them deciding what they are for, not what they are against. Then they need to start explaining how Joe and Jane Average benefit from it.
Incessant moaning about modernity is not policy, and anyway that is Reforms bag now.
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.
That's because you're an idiot.
The bread and cakes, in quite a few places, in Germany is excellent. Hamburg for example.
German bread, like German humour, can be a distinctly acquired taste.
(Unlike German humour, though, at least German bread incontestably exists)
I lived in Hamburg for a while as a teenager and I remember hating the taste of the rye-based, almost-indigestible Schwarzbrot that my host family served me for breakfast every day when I got there, but by the time I left, I actually preferred it to supermarket white bread here.
Unfortunately it was almost impossible to find a good, reasonably priced Schwarzbrot in England though, so I got out of the habit of eating it.
Lidl do a pre-packed dark rye which is ok but a bit wet for my taste. Aldi do a sliced dark try sourdough which is the best option unless you go expensively artisanal.
Mine when I have it, like most salami, comes from the local Polish mini-supermarket. Very good with poached heggs.
I'll try my local one, never occurred to me to look for bread there.
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.
A Caterham only makes sense on a track because they are terrible road cars (worse than 911 GT3s and that's saying something!)...
It was an absolute hoot to drive for one glorious summer back in the 80s. Utterly impractical of course, and would be a nightmare today.
Pro tip - warn your passenger not to rest their hand on the exhaust cover, or they're likely to lose most of the dermis on their hand.
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.
I think not all slave owners/investors were evil, (but many were - men who raped and tormented slaves), but the system they participated in was evil. And, that evil was recognised by quite a lot of people - not just Quakers, but also people like John and Charles Wesley, Adam Smith, Samuel Johnson, most Irish Presbyterian and Catholic merchants who refused to participate in the trade.
And regardless of how much slack you cut the owners, slaves always had the right to resist enslavement, and to escape.
On the subject of bread: you guys have no idea how lucky you are. Whether it's Germany, France or the UK, your bread is lightyears better than the crap that is sold in every supermarket in the US.
Now, sure, can you get decent bread in the US? Of course. But it's not widely available. Most supermarkets don't have their own bakery in the way Tesco's and Sainsbury's do in the UK.
They sell bread in US supermarkets? I've seen some rejected cotton waste sold in sliced form - is that what you mean?
On the subject of bread: you guys have no idea how lucky you are. Whether it's Germany, France or the UK, your bread is lightyears better than the crap that is sold in every supermarket in the US.
Now, sure, can you get decent bread in the US? Of course. But it's not widely available. Most supermarkets don't have their own bakery in the way Tesco's and Sainsbury's do in the UK.
I keep getting pushed adverts for subscription services for (allegedly) high quality food in the USA, alongside the ones for the vitamin supplements, miracle bread sheets based on siver NASA technology, subscription toilet rolls, an electric thing that turns kitchen waste into soil using a crazy amount of electricity, and the rest.
The meat one is called Moinkbox, which is a meat box subscription service where the current promo is free chicken wings for life. Moink is presumably the last words of the cows and the pigs who contributed. The price looks eyewtering.
On the subject of bread: you guys have no idea how lucky you are. Whether it's Germany, France or the UK, your bread is lightyears better than the crap that is sold in every supermarket in the US.
Now, sure, can you get decent bread in the US? Of course. But it's not widely available. Most supermarkets don't have their own bakery in the way Tesco's and Sainsbury's do in the UK.
The disjunct between the affluence of the USA and the shiteness of its food is quite astonishing
I’ve never seen a really good explanation for it
If the USA was a desolate tundra or mainly desert it might make some sense, but it contains much of the most fertile land in the world, and has every possible climate. It is surrounded by magnificent seas, it ranges from frozen Alaska to tropical Florida….
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.
That's because you're an idiot.
The bread and cakes, in quite a few places, in Germany is excellent. Hamburg for example.
German bread, like German humour, can be a distinctly acquired taste.
(Unlike German humour, though, at least German bread incontestably exists)
I lived in Hamburg for a while as a teenager and I remember hating the taste of the rye-based, almost-indigestible Schwarzbrot that my host family served me for breakfast every day when I got there, but by the time I left, I actually preferred it to supermarket white bread here.
Unfortunately it was almost impossible to find a good, reasonably priced Schwarzbrot in England though, so I got out of the habit of eating it.
Lidl do a pre-packed dark rye which is ok but a bit wet for my taste. Aldi do a sliced dark try sourdough which is the best option unless you go expensively artisanal.
Mine when I have it, like most salami, comes from the local Polish mini-supermarket. Very good with poached heggs.
Why do Polish supermarkets always (seem to always) have a blocked out front window with huge pictures of some kind of wurst or other.
Only spoke to 80 people, perhaps, so totally unscientific, but I met more people planning to vote Green than Tory.
Essentially zero of the discontent with Labour (of which there is a lot!) is being channeled towards the Tory party….
You can get 125/1 on the Tories winning, which is consistent with Bastani's observation.
I suggest the Tories need to attack Reform UK relentlessly if they want to beat them anywhere.
The starting point for a Tory recovery is them deciding what they are for, not what they are against. Then they need to start explaining how Joe and Jane Average benefit from it.
Incessant moaning about modernity is not policy, and anyway that is Reforms bag now.
The contemporary iteration of the tory part is just being AliExpress Fukkers. I have no idea where they go next nor, I suspect, do they. Some brexit contrition and re-engagement on environmental matters might be a start. Or it might make things even worse. Lol.
Good luck to the Great people of Canada. Elect the man who has the strength and wisdom to cut your taxes in half, increase your military power, for free, to the highest level in the World, have your Car, Steel, Aluminum, Lumber, Energy, and all other businesses, QUADRUPLE in size, WITH ZERO TARIFFS OR TAXES, if Canada becomes the cherished 51st. State of the United States of America. No more artificially drawn line from many years ago. Look how beautiful this land mass would be. Free access with NO BORDER. ALL POSITIVES WITH NO NEGATIVES. IT WAS MEANT TO BE! America can no longer subsidize Canada with the Hundreds of Billions of Dollars a year that we have been spending in the past. It makes no sense unless Canada is a State!
On the subject of bread: you guys have no idea how lucky you are. Whether it's Germany, France or the UK, your bread is lightyears better than the crap that is sold in every supermarket in the US.
Now, sure, can you get decent bread in the US? Of course. But it's not widely available. Most supermarkets don't have their own bakery in the way Tesco's and Sainsbury's do in the UK.
And our packaged bread doesn't have terrible additives in it for the most part. Bakery bread usually doesn't at all. I'm really shocked as to how bad it has become in the US, uninformed consumers just buy whatever has the most sugar and last time when we were in the US I tried sliced bread and it's sweeter than brioche. Grim.
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.
That's because you're an idiot.
The bread and cakes, in quite a few places, in Germany is excellent. Hamburg for example.
German bread, like German humour, can be a distinctly acquired taste.
(Unlike German humour, though, at least German bread incontestably exists)
I lived in Hamburg for a while as a teenager and I remember hating the taste of the rye-based, almost-indigestible Schwarzbrot that my host family served me for breakfast every day when I got there, but by the time I left, I actually preferred it to supermarket white bread here.
Unfortunately it was almost impossible to find a good, reasonably priced Schwarzbrot in England though, so I got out of the habit of eating it.
Lidl do a pre-packed dark rye which is ok but a bit wet for my taste. Aldi do a sliced dark try sourdough which is the best option unless you go expensively artisanal.
Mine when I have it, like most salami, comes from the local Polish mini-supermarket. Very good with poached heggs.
I'll try my local one, never occurred to me to look for bread there.
I think mine are £2.50, and imported from Poland. The one thing I note is that the non-fat-heavy salamis grow mould surprisingly quickly, so may need to be frozen if kept for more than a few days in the fridge.
My local Co-op minimarket also do some notably tasty breads in their range.
I have a 500g seeded sourdough in the freezer which was reduced from £2.40 to 72p due to their fairly aggressive "progressive reductions to shift it" policy, before it is sent to the food bank.
On the subject of bread: you guys have no idea how lucky you are. Whether it's Germany, France or the UK, your bread is lightyears better than the crap that is sold in every supermarket in the US.
Now, sure, can you get decent bread in the US? Of course. But it's not widely available. Most supermarkets don't have their own bakery in the way Tesco's and Sainsbury's do in the UK.
The disjunct between the affluence of the USA and the shiteness of its food is quite astonishing
I’ve never seen a really good explanation for it
If the USA was a desolate tundra or mainly desert it might make some sense, but it contains much of the most fertile land in the world, and has every possible climate. It is surrounded by magnificent seas, it ranges from frozen Alaska to tropical Florida….
WEIRD
Lack of food regulation means companies will choose whatever is cheapest and most addictive which leads to terrible food standards and therefore terrible produce and food quality. Food regulation is the one area in which I'm happy to be aligned to Europe rather than America.
On the subject of bread: you guys have no idea how lucky you are. Whether it's Germany, France or the UK, your bread is lightyears better than the crap that is sold in every supermarket in the US.
Now, sure, can you get decent bread in the US? Of course. But it's not widely available. Most supermarkets don't have their own bakery in the way Tesco's and Sainsbury's do in the UK.
I keep getting pushed adverts for subscription services for (allegedly) high quality food in the USA, alongside the ones for the vitamin supplements, miracle bread sheets based on siver NASA technology, subscription toilet rolls, an electric thing that turns kitchen waste into soil using a crazy amount of electricity, and the rest.
The meat one is called Moinkbox, which is a meat box subscription service where the current promo is free chicken wings for life. Moink is presumably the last words of the cows and the pigs who contributed. The price looks eyewtering.
I'm sure I've seen a croissant one, somewhere.
Before I get laughed to scorn, that should be "bed sheets" not "bread sheets" !
On the subject of bread: you guys have no idea how lucky you are. Whether it's Germany, France or the UK, your bread is lightyears better than the crap that is sold in every supermarket in the US.
Now, sure, can you get decent bread in the US? Of course. But it's not widely available. Most supermarkets don't have their own bakery in the way Tesco's and Sainsbury's do in the UK.
The disjunct between the affluence of the USA and the shiteness of its food is quite astonishing
I’ve never seen a really good explanation for it
If the USA was a desolate tundra or mainly desert it might make some sense, but it contains much of the most fertile land in the world, and has every possible climate. It is surrounded by magnificent seas, it ranges from frozen Alaska to tropical Florida….
WEIRD
That would mainly be that they don't believe in regulation for the benefit of the public, perhaps?
If I were in the USA I'd have a bread machine, and buy flour once a year when I passed an independent mill.
Matthew "Monk" Gregory, who wrote the 18 th century schlocky horror novel " The Monk", owned slaves in the West Indies. He felt it was morally wrong to own slaves but feared that if he freed the slaves they might be at greater risk of exploitation than they were under his benevolent ownership. He published a journal about this.
Good luck to the Great people of Canada. Elect the man who has the strength and wisdom to cut your taxes in half, increase your military power, for free, to the highest level in the World, have your Car, Steel, Aluminum, Lumber, Energy, and all other businesses, QUADRUPLE in size, WITH ZERO TARIFFS OR TAXES, if Canada becomes the cherished 51st. State of the United States of America. No more artificially drawn line from many years ago. Look how beautiful this land mass would be. Free access with NO BORDER. ALL POSITIVES WITH NO NEGATIVES. IT WAS MEANT TO BE! America can no longer subsidize Canada with the Hundreds of Billions of Dollars a year that we have been spending in the past. It makes no sense unless Canada is a State!
Trump neatly boiling the Canadian election down to a simple matter of patriotism or treachery.
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.
Did you read my post or just make an assumption on what I most likely said? I am a big believer in incumbency benefit and incumbency blame regardless of responsibility. Although, remind me about 2022's greatest Conservative budget since 1970.
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.
That's because you're an idiot.
The bread and cakes, in quite a few places, in Germany is excellent. Hamburg for example.
German bread, like German humour, can be a distinctly acquired taste.
(Unlike German humour, though, at least German bread incontestably exists)
I lived in Hamburg for a while as a teenager and I remember hating the taste of the rye-based, almost-indigestible Schwarzbrot that my host family served me for breakfast every day when I got there, but by the time I left, I actually preferred it to supermarket white bread here.
Unfortunately it was almost impossible to find a good, reasonably priced Schwarzbrot in England though, so I got out of the habit of eating it.
Lidl do a pre-packed dark rye which is ok but a bit wet for my taste. Aldi do a sliced dark try sourdough which is the best option unless you go expensively artisanal.
Mine when I have it, like most salami, comes from the local Polish mini-supermarket. Very good with poached heggs.
Why do Polish supermarkets always (seem to always) have a blocked out front window with huge pictures of some kind of wurst or other.
Show their wurst upfront, to avoid disappointment ?
On the subject of bread: you guys have no idea how lucky you are. Whether it's Germany, France or the UK, your bread is lightyears better than the crap that is sold in every supermarket in the US.
Now, sure, can you get decent bread in the US? Of course. But it's not widely available. Most supermarkets don't have their own bakery in the way Tesco's and Sainsbury's do in the UK.
Yes we do. That's why we keep telling you about it !
Good luck to the Great people of Canada. Elect the man who has the strength and wisdom to cut your taxes in half, increase your military power, for free, to the highest level in the World, have your Car, Steel, Aluminum, Lumber, Energy, and all other businesses, QUADRUPLE in size, WITH ZERO TARIFFS OR TAXES, if Canada becomes the cherished 51st. State of the United States of America. No more artificially drawn line from many years ago. Look how beautiful this land mass would be. Free access with NO BORDER. ALL POSITIVES WITH NO NEGATIVES. IT WAS MEANT TO BE! America can no longer subsidize Canada with the Hundreds of Billions of Dollars a year that we have been spending in the past. It makes no sense unless Canada is a State!
Trump neatly boiling the Canadian election down to a simple matter of patriotism or treachery.
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.
That's because you're an idiot.
The bread and cakes, in quite a few places, in Germany is excellent. Hamburg for example.
I lived in Vienna for a bit. Coffee/cake was a religion there.
Good luck to the Great people of Canada. Elect the man who has the strength and wisdom to cut your taxes in half, increase your military power, for free, to the highest level in the World, have your Car, Steel, Aluminum, Lumber, Energy, and all other businesses, QUADRUPLE in size, WITH ZERO TARIFFS OR TAXES, if Canada becomes the cherished 51st. State of the United States of America. No more artificially drawn line from many years ago. Look how beautiful this land mass would be. Free access with NO BORDER. ALL POSITIVES WITH NO NEGATIVES. IT WAS MEANT TO BE! America can no longer subsidize Canada with the Hundreds of Billions of Dollars a year that we have been spending in the past. It makes no sense unless Canada is a State!
Trump neatly boiling the Canadian election down to a simple matter of patriotism or treachery.
Expect backup battery provision to become very popular over the next couple of years. One deal we absolutely should do with China is the encourage CATL to build a battery plant or two in the UK.
Good luck to the Great people of Canada. Elect the man who has the strength and wisdom to cut your taxes in half, increase your military power, for free, to the highest level in the World, have your Car, Steel, Aluminum, Lumber, Energy, and all other businesses, QUADRUPLE in size, WITH ZERO TARIFFS OR TAXES, if Canada becomes the cherished 51st. State of the United States of America. No more artificially drawn line from many years ago. Look how beautiful this land mass would be. Free access with NO BORDER. ALL POSITIVES WITH NO NEGATIVES. IT WAS MEANT TO BE! America can no longer subsidize Canada with the Hundreds of Billions of Dollars a year that we have been spending in the past. It makes no sense unless Canada is a State!
As Tim (formerly of this parish) points out on X - either Trump is completely unaware of his foreign reputation or he wants Carney to win
On the subject of bread: you guys have no idea how lucky you are. Whether it's Germany, France or the UK, your bread is lightyears better than the crap that is sold in every supermarket in the US.
Now, sure, can you get decent bread in the US? Of course. But it's not widely available. Most supermarkets don't have their own bakery in the way Tesco's and Sainsbury's do in the UK.
The disjunct between the affluence of the USA and the shiteness of its food is quite astonishing
I’ve never seen a really good explanation for it
If the USA was a desolate tundra or mainly desert it might make some sense, but it contains much of the most fertile land in the world, and has every possible climate. It is surrounded by magnificent seas, it ranges from frozen Alaska to tropical Florida….
WEIRD
That would mainly be that they don't believe in regulation for the benefit of the public, perhaps?
If I were in the USA I'd have a bread machine, and buy flour once a year when I passed an independent mill.
Lack of regulation is a partial explanation but not enough. There are other things at work: psychosocial, cultural and more
Eg beer. For decades American beer was laughable despite them inheriting an epic beer making tradition from, especially, millions of English and German immigrants. Plus Czechs etc
Then suddenly about 40 years ago something changed, Samuel Adams was a thing, America had a beer revolution, and now they have some of the best beer in the world, marvellous variety, and you can get it everywhere. Even the local gas station will have a very decent craft ipa or lager in the fridge
That was nothing to do with regulation. That was a change in culture and taste
On the subject of bread: you guys have no idea how lucky you are. Whether it's Germany, France or the UK, your bread is lightyears better than the crap that is sold in every supermarket in the US.
Now, sure, can you get decent bread in the US? Of course. But it's not widely available. Most supermarkets don't have their own bakery in the way Tesco's and Sainsbury's do in the UK.
The big supermarkets don't really have bakeries. They have ovens that they cook frozen dough in to give the illusion it's fresh and healthy. The dough can be months old.
Good luck to the Great people of Canada. Elect the man who has the strength and wisdom to cut your taxes in half, increase your military power, for free, to the highest level in the World, have your Car, Steel, Aluminum, Lumber, Energy, and all other businesses, QUADRUPLE in size, WITH ZERO TARIFFS OR TAXES, if Canada becomes the cherished 51st. State of the United States of America. No more artificially drawn line from many years ago. Look how beautiful this land mass would be. Free access with NO BORDER. ALL POSITIVES WITH NO NEGATIVES. IT WAS MEANT TO BE! America can no longer subsidize Canada with the Hundreds of Billions of Dollars a year that we have been spending in the past. It makes no sense unless Canada is a State!
As Tim (formerly of this parish) points out on X - either Trump is completely unaware of his foreign reputation or he wants Carney to win
It's neither. He doesn't care about Canada. This is simply another opportunity to put himself at the centre of the story and to feed the grievances of his supporters.
On the subject of bread: you guys have no idea how lucky you are. Whether it's Germany, France or the UK, your bread is lightyears better than the crap that is sold in every supermarket in the US.
Now, sure, can you get decent bread in the US? Of course. But it's not widely available. Most supermarkets don't have their own bakery in the way Tesco's and Sainsbury's do in the UK.
The disjunct between the affluence of the USA and the shiteness of its food is quite astonishing
I’ve never seen a really good explanation for it
If the USA was a desolate tundra or mainly desert it might make some sense, but it contains much of the most fertile land in the world, and has every possible climate. It is surrounded by magnificent seas, it ranges from frozen Alaska to tropical Florida….
WEIRD
That would mainly be that they don't believe in regulation for the benefit of the public, perhaps?
If I were in the USA I'd have a bread machine, and buy flour once a year when I passed an independent mill.
Lack of regulation is a partial explanation but not enough. There are other things at work: psychosocial, cultural and more
Eg beer. For decades American beer was laughable despite them inheriting an epic beer making tradition from, especially, millions of English and German immigrants. Plus Czechs etc
Then suddenly about 40 years ago something changed, Samuel Adams was a thing, America had a beer revolution, and now they have some of the best beer in the world, marvellous variety, and you can get it everywhere. Even the local gas station will have a very decent craft ipa or lager in the fridge
That was nothing to do with regulation. That was a change in culture and taste
'We have to be seen to be doing something performative about trans kids..'
'I know, let's check them for autism and ADHD. Some kids have already been waiting for over a year for an assessment so we can lose the issue in the long grass.'
Thanks, a good summation. After sleeping on it for a night I think the point where the settler godmother Weiss shoves Theroux hard in the chest is pivotal, representing so much of what's happening in Israel (which includes Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon according to some of the ultras). She said at the end 'I wish you'd pushed me back', an unlikely event which would have no doubt inspired disproportionate retribution. Sound familiar?
Try this. An extraordinary distortion of what we all saw with our own eyes. It was all cooked up by the BBC says the Daily Mail.
I've never seen the attraction of Louis Theroux. He seems to be popular owing to the nation's false memory that Theroux exposed Savile's debauchery. He did not even suspect anything, let alone challenge it. All he exposed was Savile boasting about his cabin. Mind you, I could never see why the BBC kept employing Savile.
He has a personality that people find unthreatening yet what he gets people to expose about themselves is uniqely illuninating I'd stronly recommend last nights BBC2 program on the Settlers in the West Bank.
'We have to be seen to be doing something performative about trans kids..'
'I know, let's check them for autism and ADHD. Some kids have already been waiting for over a year for an assessment so we can lose the issue in the long grass.'
Thanks, a good summation. After sleeping on it for a night I think the point where the settler godmother Weiss shoves Theroux hard in the chest is pivotal, representing so much of what's happening in Israel (which includes Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon according to some of the ultras). She said at the end 'I wish you'd pushed me back', an unlikely event which would have no doubt inspired disproportionate retribution. Sound familiar?
Try this. An extraordinary distortion of what we all saw with our own eyes. It was all cooked up by the BBC says the Daily Mail.
I've never seen the attraction of Louis Theroux. He seems to be popular owing to the nation's false memory that Theroux exposed Savile's debauchery. He did not even suspect anything, let alone challenge it. All he exposed was Savile boasting about his cabin. Mind you, I could never see why the BBC kept employing Savile.
He has a personality that people find unthreatening yet what he gets people to expose about themselves is uniqely illuninating I'd stronly recommend last nights BBC2 program on the Settlers in the West Bank.
Nah. He's a supercilious, patronising, smug git.
Not to say that this new, "serious" side wouldn't be worth watching but his whole schtick is to try to humiliate people he believes to be less clever than him (which is everyone in his opinion) and expose them to ridicule.
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.
"missed the obvious thing they just thought of that proves that" - apart from the fact that the killer chart is not quite what it seems and that some of the evidence given in the trials is obviously suspect (witnesses telling a different story to what they said in emails much closer to the time of the event) are pretty strong reasons to think that all is NOT right with the conviction. People have a tendency to distort their memories. Years ago I became ill with leukemia (around sept 2012). After that people recollected seeing me at a BBQ in early summer 2012 when we had to go home because of illness and they said "yes, he was already ill in June 2012". Except it was my wife that was ill, not me. Historians prefer primary sources, ideally ones written at the time of events, as they are likely untainted by false memories. I loved Lyn Macdonalds Great War histories, which relied heavily on oral accounts as told to her by men and women in their 80's and 90's. Looking back its quite clear how suspect some of this testimony might be.
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.
"missed the obvious thing they just thought of that proves that" - apart from the fact that the killer chart is not quite what it seems and that some of the evidence given in the trials is obviously suspect (witnesses telling a different story to what they said in emails much closer to the time of the event) are pretty strong reasons to think that all is NOT right with the conviction. People have a tendency to distort their memories. Years ago I became ill with leukemia (around sept 2012). After that people recollected seeing me at a BBQ in early summer 2012 when we had to go home because of illness and they said "yes, he was already ill in June 2012". Except it was my wife that was ill, not me. Historians prefer primary sources, ideally ones written at the time of events, as they are likely untainted by false memories. I loved Lyn Macdonalds Great War histories, which relied heavily on oral accounts as told to her by men and women in their 80's and 90's. Looking back its quite clear how suspect some of this testimony might be.
Not to shoehorn my pet interests into every thread - I am of the opinion that it is entirely likely, possible, probable, even, that those involved institutionally in the Letby case are lying like cheap NAAFI watches and it is hugely in the interests of the NHS to blame a bad actor than admit its many, many institutional failings, but I digress - one of the reasons that "Warfare" is such a good film imo is that, by the filmmakers' own admission, it is based upon the memories of those involved which are imperfect and the subject of disagreement.
In such a way does the film achieve a transcendence of reality and is thereby able to deal with the subject at hand - warfare - in a uniquely insightful way.
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!
I am afraid I switched off two lines in - probably a lot further than any wavering voters would get.
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.
You are tending towards universal basic income. AKA massive rebalancing of the tax system. One where it always pays to work, and always pays more to work more.
Is the State Pension a form of UBI? If you haven't paid enough contributions you can apply for Pension Credit which brings it up to £227/week for a single person or £346 for a couple. Full SRP for those that have contributed all their lives is £230/week or £460/week for a couple.
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.
"missed the obvious thing they just thought of that proves that" - apart from the fact that the killer chart is not quite what it seems and that some of the evidence given in the trials is obviously suspect (witnesses telling a different story to what they said in emails much closer to the time of the event) are pretty strong reasons to think that all is NOT right with the conviction. People have a tendency to distort their memories. Years ago I became ill with leukemia (around sept 2012). After that people recollected seeing me at a BBQ in early summer 2012 when we had to go home because of illness and they said "yes, he was already ill in June 2012". Except it was my wife that was ill, not me. Historians prefer primary sources, ideally ones written at the time of events, as they are likely untainted by false memories. I loved Lyn Macdonalds Great War histories, which relied heavily on oral accounts as told to her by men and women in their 80's and 90's. Looking back its quite clear how suspect some of this testimony might be.
Not to shoehorn my pet interests into every thread - I am of the opinion that it is entirely likely, possible, probable, even, that those involved institutionally in the Letby case are lying like cheap NAAFI watches and it is hugely in the interests of the NHS to blame a bad actor than admit its many, many institutional failings, but I digress - one of the reasons that "Warfare" is such a good film imo is that, by the filmmakers' own admission, it is based upon the memories of those involved which are imperfect and the subject of disagreement.
In such a way does the film achieve a transcendence of reality and is thereby able to deal with the subject at hand - warfare - in a uniquely insightful way.
Letby is just like post office, the establishment will do anything to avoid admitting they were at fault and the poor scapegoat gets stiffed.
Comments
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tv/article-14653799/CHRISTOPHER-STEVENS-reviews-Louis-Theroux-Settlers-BBC2-bumbling-gaucheness-wearing-thin.html
Aside from nostalgia for what people grew up with dad driving (probably mark 2 Cortinas for 70-year-olds and mark 3 Cortinas for 60-year-olds) what's the point? Old cars are rubbish – uncomfortable, uneconomic and unsafe.
The goods themselves are varied - on a recent trip to France I saw a boulangerie advertising that “our baguettes are not frozen!!”
They don't want a Francis Barnet or a New Imperial.
If you are into that sort of shit then the move is the LDU from a wrecked Tesla with an aftermarket controller like the AEM VC300. You can use that combo to EV convert just about anything.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dmLOT5KBwo
My parent’s only regret is that they didn’t move there earlier (and yes they did purchase an extracare managed apartment).
Reality is I will probably get a Renault 4 when I next switch cars
Quite a lot of the manufacturers do modernised versions of the classics so folk get that vintage vibe with great brakes, tires, suspension etc. I was shocked to see a Ducati Paul Smart replica (which is a bit of a pastiche tbh) being put up for $30k dollars online, very much doubt they'll get it mind.
🤪
@malcolmg hurls out worse abuse every day before breakfast. And that’s just when he’s talking to his mother
(Unlike German humour, though, at least German bread incontestably exists)
I lived in Hamburg for a while as a teenager and I remember hating the taste of the rye-based, almost-indigestible Schwarzbrot that my host family served me for breakfast every day when I got there, but by the time I left, I actually preferred it to supermarket white bread here.
Unfortunately it was almost impossible to find a good, reasonably priced Schwarzbrot in England though, so I got out of the habit of eating it.
"Massive power cut in Spain and Portugal causes traffic light outages and train cancellations"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c9wpq8xrvd9t
The attitude is changing - on wine, they've realised that you can't raise the price of Premier and Grand Cru much more, and that all those acres of regular stuff needs to compete against the New World. So the lower end wines have improved in leaps and bounds. Even a few years back, Cremant was often barely drinkable. Again, they've realised that prosecco and cava were taking all the money....
A lot of wine makers are about to go bust
https://x.com/aaronbastani/status/1916816439593340952
Only spoke to 80 people, perhaps, so totally unscientific, but I met more people planning to vote Green than Tory.
Essentially zero of the discontent with Labour (of which there is a lot!) is being channeled towards the Tory party….
Quite, but don't quit - see my multiply-liked response.
Good grief. The man got called an idiot, he hasn't lost a close relative.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Baptist_Convention
As of 2023, it had about 13 million members, down from its 2006 peak of 16 million.
The change of the church's views on race in my life time has been remarkable -- and admirable. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Luter
Also from the BBC report, payment systems are down. Back to cash, lads.
Have Spain and Portugal upset Russia lately?
This anti-wheelchair barrier is within about half a mile of the centre of Mansfield, and is at the far end of a 1km walk down the River Maun near the Mansfield Football Ground (for lower league football nerds),with no easy escape routes. It is fairly high on the target list, because of the possibility of people being trapped and the only escape being 1km uphill.
That route has been a public walkway since the 1930s, signed as a cycling / walking route since (I think) the 1980s, and the barrier has been illegal since at least 1995. The path is part of a longer signposted route. Yet the thing is still there. Interestingly Google Streetview cameras got past it last August.
Location: https://maps.app.goo.gl/pHFdUgiSpWZ9nhFP7
Beyond the barrier is a road crossing, then a beautiful park called Titchfield Park (like several around here), which even has a several Petanque Squares, made from former bowling greens, for the many Francophiles of Mansfield.
It has to go. It's time to upset the Captain Mainwarings of Mansfield Council.
Not overlong, either, which makes a nice change.
I suggest the Tories need to attack Reform UK relentlessly if they want to beat them anywhere.
Now, sure, can you get decent bread in the US? Of course. But it's not widely available. Most supermarkets don't have their own bakery in the way Tesco's and Sainsbury's do in the UK.
Incessant moaning about modernity is not policy, and anyway that is Reforms bag now.
Utterly impractical of course, and would be a nightmare today.
Pro tip - warn your passenger not to rest their hand on the exhaust cover, or they're likely to lose most of the dermis on their hand.
And regardless of how much slack you cut the owners, slaves always had the right to resist enslavement, and to escape.
The meat one is called Moinkbox, which is a meat box subscription service where the current promo is free chicken wings for life. Moink is presumably the last words of the cows and the pigs who contributed. The price looks eyewtering.
I'm sure I've seen a croissant one, somewhere.
I’ve never seen a really good explanation for it
If the USA was a desolate tundra or mainly desert it might make some sense, but it contains much of the most fertile land in the world, and has every possible climate. It is surrounded by magnificent seas, it ranges from frozen Alaska to tropical Florida….
WEIRD
Good luck to the Great people of Canada. Elect the man who has the strength and wisdom to cut your taxes in half, increase your military power, for free, to the highest level in the World, have your Car, Steel, Aluminum, Lumber, Energy, and all other businesses, QUADRUPLE in size, WITH ZERO TARIFFS OR TAXES, if Canada becomes the cherished 51st. State of the United States of America. No more artificially drawn line from many years ago. Look how beautiful this land mass would be. Free access with NO BORDER. ALL POSITIVES WITH NO NEGATIVES. IT WAS MEANT TO BE! America can no longer subsidize Canada with the Hundreds of Billions of Dollars a year that we have been spending in the past. It makes no sense unless Canada is a State!
My local Co-op minimarket also do some notably tasty breads in their range.
I have a 500g seeded sourdough in the freezer which was reduced from £2.40 to 72p due to their fairly aggressive "progressive reductions to shift it" policy, before it is sent to the food bank.
If I were in the USA I'd have a bread machine, and buy flour once a year when I passed an independent mill.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c9wpq8xrvd9t
Expect backup battery provision to become very popular over the next couple of years.
One deal we absolutely should do with China is the encourage CATL to build a battery plant or two in the UK.
Eg beer. For decades American beer was laughable despite them inheriting an epic beer making tradition from, especially, millions of English and German immigrants. Plus Czechs etc
Then suddenly about 40 years ago something changed, Samuel Adams was a thing, America had a beer revolution, and now they have some of the best beer in the world, marvellous variety, and you can get it everywhere. Even the local gas station will have a very decent craft ipa or lager in the fridge
That was nothing to do with regulation. That was a change in culture and taste
NEW THREAD
https://open.substack.com/pub/robertsmithson1/p/a-radical-plan-to-end-income-tax
https://www.parallelparliament.co.uk/mp/bridget-phillipson/debate/2025-04-22/commons/written-statements/oxford-business-college-franchised-provision
Short version - fake “private college” used to do fraudulent student loan applications on an epic scale.
The links to various real universities are interesting.
Not to say that this new, "serious" side wouldn't be worth watching but his whole schtick is to try to humiliate people he believes to be less clever than him (which is everyone in his opinion) and expose them to ridicule.
He is unwatchable usually as a result.
Historians prefer primary sources, ideally ones written at the time of events, as they are likely untainted by false memories. I loved Lyn Macdonalds Great War histories, which relied heavily on oral accounts as told to her by men and women in their 80's and 90's. Looking back its quite clear how suspect some of this testimony might be.
In such a way does the film achieve a transcendence of reality and is thereby able to deal with the subject at hand - warfare - in a uniquely insightful way.
So UBI in all but name.