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Something for Labour to ponder – politicalbetting.com
Something for Labour to ponder – politicalbetting.com
When it comes to Labour's fiscal rules, more Britons see the priority as improving public services, even if it means abandoning their promises on taxation and government borrowingImprove public services: 37%Keep promises on fiscal rules: 22%yougov.co.uk/topics/polit…
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https://x.com/paulhutcheon/status/1927843227287093529?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
In this case, Dale Benkenstein.
Couldn't understand why they appointed him, although I was very pleased when they did.
1) Would you like a pony?
2) Would you like someone else to pay for your pony?
They don't believe taxes will increase on their incomes, so they support more spending.
The downside of that is so obvious that only a complete shyster would promise the electorate that.
(And once you learn about the Baumol effect, the idea that growing the private sector is a complete solution becomes less convincing- it gives the nation more income, sure, but also pushes up the cost of state services.)
All the way to Supreme Court and a finally a ruling over whether one man is above the law in US?
It depends on the type of public service. I'm sure a lot of people would be happy to pay higher taxes if it meant more policemen on the street, or more frequent rubbish collection.
At last a fully funded plan.*
* Possibly not the plan the voter is expecting.
WRT borrowing, I think polling is a waste of time.
What we need is the Vision Thing. How they are going to remake public services so that they are fit for purpose. And the starting place is not where we are now - a blank sheet of paper is needed.
https://obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/brief-guides-and-explainers/public-finances/#:~:text=In 2024-25, we expect public spending to amount to,many different types of spending.
"In 2024-25, we expect public spending to amount to £1,278.6 billion, which is equivalent to around £45,000 per household or 44.4 per cent of national income."
The White House did not answer questions about who reports to or outranks whom.
https://www.wired.com/story/katie-stephen-miller-elon-musk-takeover/
The same article details the (now out of date) professional relationship between his wife and Musk
The Victorains may have been wrong is distinguishing between the deserving and the undeserving poor, but most of the public make that distinction all the time in their minds.
The golf club boors of Kent, the former right wing Conservatives, probably are rich enough that they want minimal state services. Apart from social care for themselves and the return of their Winter HolidayFuel Payment.
The ex-Labour red wallers (who are still a smaller slice of the Reform total, for all the hype about them) might be less interested in slashing the state.
Farage's latest speech (the one emphasising the Socialist part of his Socialist Nationalism) has got a fair bit of pushback from the right wing press, thanks to that contradiction.
Would you be happy to receive less pay / pension / benefits from the government so as to allow more money to improve public services ?
Are any of the US UK 'trade deal' tarriffs better than before Trump? And if so, did they just get vacated?
What was the point in spending hundreds of thousands of pounds saving my father's life for an extra six months of total immobility? Multiply that half a million to a million pounds across all the hopeless cases they have saved for no quality of life each year and a not inconsequential sum of money is saved for more appropriate patients.
Take George Best, provided with a liver transplant only to waste that opportunity on his predeliction for scotch and vodka. Not spending money on people with basket case lifestyle choices has to be considered too
Repeat prescriptions free to the user resulting in millions of pounds wasted on unused drugs has to stop.
Brutality is needed, otherwise Farage and his US style insurance scheme is the unfortunate answer.
At least 95% of voters are in reality strong supporters of big state social democracy. Ask the voters of Clacton. Whenever they are asked they want a lot more of it.
Farewell Singapore on Humber. Welcome the new incarnation of post WWII social democracy.
This will add interest and clarity to the election run up, which is the whole of the next four years.
To me it reads like another one from the previous UK Govt where hands were waved, a law was passed, and then the Govt and the next X PMs sat resolutely on their arses (in my assumption because they wanted to pretend they could do tax cuts after the election).
The Govt had a duty to act from 2020, but nothing happened.
AFAICS Mr Starmer has addressed a couple of these, such as the contaminated blood scandal.
I'm baffled as to why compensation is being considered for the people who bought the vehicles, and not a relatively greater emphasis on the people who were impacted or sent to early deaths by the emissions - whether an individual of eg research emphasis.
I'm also interested that this is progressing because of litigation by one of those derided non-profits who bring legal action against the Government.
Along the way checking this to catch up I found a photo of Rory practising his Instagram pout, so .. my photo for today
And how much your entire life could have been improved if some of that had been received when you were much younger.
Those who are paying more than 45k have benefited from all the good things living in a developed country with economic opportunities brings, so can hardly whinge. That probably includes most of us.
Something like £250k per year per child.
And that was the end result of 14 years of Evul Tory government.
The more we make the state efficient, by withdrawing services from those who are comfortable enough to not need them, the worse the cost: benefit analysis looks for most voters. This is starkest for local councils, most of which provide expensive social care for a small number of people, a shrinking bin collection service and not much else. It's not a good value proposition.
But, unless we are prepared to kick such people out of the tent and hope that the huskies will pull us to safety, there's not a lot to be done. People are people, no matter how expensive.
It's difficult to see a way back for the Conservatives with this level of cognitive dissonance. The sober, sensible fiscal approach holds no support any more, and their natural constituency of people in work on decent salaries aren't interested.
Instead of penalising these people we allow them frequent flyer status at A and E and pay for a Motability vehicle to get them there.
I'm not clear that the Govt will have a comms programme capable of holding them responsible, or whether national media will report it.
There will be a difference perhaps because Kent is more likely to make the news than Notts or County Durham, but in the absence of media suddenly turning into news media I think it will take another cycle for any problems to come to the fore.
A further complexity is that so much of the country will be moving to Regional Mayors, which I think will improve local government through more subsidiarity. That is if Westminster can stop interfering for once, and local government can develop the appropriate skills / capacity without being gutted to save pin money.
It's All Over Now
(the Tory party)
And crime. The police have efficiently allocated their resources to violent crime, but that primarily effects people living in areas with high deprivation. Meanwhile my bicycle or phone gets nicked and nothing is done about it.
The one area this isn't true is transport, with massive cuts to bus services while motoring gets cheaper and trains get heavily subsidised.
Not sure if anyone has mentioned this but the final four deputies in the new Portuguese National Assembly have been chosen following the counting of overseas votes. Two went to the AD and two to Chega which has made Chega the official opposition with 60 deputies ahead of the Socialists on 58.
In terms of actual votes, however, Chega were 4,300 votes behind the Socialists but that makes little odds.
It's likely AD leader Montenegro will lead a new Government but for a majority he will need some form of deal with the Socialists as Liberal Initiative, whose overall result wasn't brilliant, have refused to go into Government with AD.
Our office front doors are revolving, but manual. Chap stepped into one ahead of me, and then just stood there. I then went in and pushed, and he got a sort of free concierge service enabling him to stroll on into the foyer.
Almost admirable.
"Mick, Speak English!"
So when you become a pensioner or unfortunately chronic sick how would you address the problem ?
I can still see a way back for the Tories, but it involves vision and contrition. Vision is a return to a low tax smaller state but one where things are efficiently managed and run. Contrition is a mea culpa for presiding over gross mismanagement, waste, inefficiency and corruption.
The roads, for example, are used by businesses and other organisations. And individuals using the road are doing so for others' benefit as well as their own eg driving to work.
I think the larger problem is trying philosophically to make it a reductionist sum for each household; that's not how society can work.
This line of argument rapidly gets extremely thorny & demands that the state poke into every aspect of our lives to judge whether or not our choices are “worthy” enough to get healthcare. Is that really where we want to be going as a country?
(Incidentally, my understanding of the research is that heavy smokers tend to die earlier & cheaper: The most expensive are the healthy people who get dementia & require 24/7 care for years on end because they’re too physically healthy to drop dead earlier on.)
I think it's already happened, tbh.
Ah but, the NHS is in crisis and we're short of money. So we need to cut and only spend on the things we have to. Yes, and that cut isn't a cut, it costs more than the saving realised.
https://youtu.be/jPjk2nYiY0Q?si=Wi8xApdTHV3rb-1Z
I think you'd struggle to find a doctor who discouraged people playing football on health grounds.
*One of the bigger health costs was ventilating pollution coming from motor vehicles, funnily enough.
And as far as winging about WFA, it needed amending but it seems winging is very much a minority position not least with Labour mps who are paying the price of a stupid implementation of a reasonable policy
early years lifestyle intervention and education (diet, nutrition, education about the importance of healthy lifestyle choices, mental wellness) and better sports, fitness and recreational spaces and opportunities.
Spend a bit early doors, save loads later on.
Note that state pension is the equivalent of a £250k pot of money.
I keep saying it -
1) merge NI and income tax
2) pensioners get special lower rate that equals just income tax. But the full wack of the new tax bands at the higher rate. So pensioners on £50k+ pensions pay more tax.
3) pensioner benefits are not means tested - but taxable.
4) lock the pension to the personal tax allowance.
5) get rid of the silly cliff, withdrawals etc.
The result will be cheaper to run, massively reduce the opportunities for fraud and raise more money.
Vigilante Jenrick the latest iteration of the many Jenricks!
The divisions are also far greyer, and not so divided. For example, hospitals do all sorts of non-acute services, used by the entire population, and that applies to all age groups.
If you want an example, look at the increase in childhood Type II diabetes, or in adult onset of Type I diabetes.
Ultimately, a politics of division won't work, even though some of our politicians may try to leverage it.
The key is that a universal system *does* work, and it works better than alternatives.
30ish, chequered working history - never held down a job for more than about 6 months. Did a year of uni and dropped out, then back into a cycle of short term minimum wage jobs interspersed with periods on benefits.
The job centre sent him to college for a welding and fabrication course. That was a complete waste of tax payers money, he couldn't weld when he turned up with us - he improved dramatically after a 5 minute lesson from me, and I'm not really a welder (I'd not pass a proper coded weld test, although I'm capable of snotting jigs and fixtures together).
Ultimately I'm probably his ideal employer - I'll tolerate a degree of haphazard unreliablility, so long as he works hard when he turns up. If he applies himself and doesn't completely blot his copybook, he'll probably be on £30-40k in a year or two. Or he'll be back at the dole office, and I'll be wondering why I bothered.
In terms of sane NI policy, giving employers a year off employers NI for new full-time employees who were on Universal Credit would probably be a fairly cheap incentive to take on more "risky" employees.
Meanwhile, if Big Ange pushes through workers rights from day one, I'll never take a risk on an hire again - it's only the fact that I can dump this chap without going through an elaborate legal process that makes the risk worth taking.
Despite occasional left wing whines about BigCo not paying taxes, it isn't practical to expect employers to increase wages by 20% - we need to go after the cost of living and reduce it.
And the two biggies are Housing and Energy.
1) Decouple rent from market prices. We can smash the landlord scam by offering social housing at viable rents. Private sector landlords will be put out of business which floods their properties back onto the market which knocks the wind out of prices. Empower LHAs to build more social housing never for market sale thus rents not needing to be market priced.
2) Decouple energy costs from the market. A quick glance at Gridwatch shows 61% of today's demand is from wind and solar, yet we're priced based on gas imports (gas is 5% today and some of that will be domestic). Price our own energy based on much of it being renewable and thus free to generate*
Thats a big start on the journey.
*Yes, free. There are maintenance costs. But that is also true of power generation which burns something you have to pay for such as gas - with far fewer parts to maintain
Go skiing and your holiday insurance is jacked up.
I don't want any of this, but if the alternative is Farage's US style health insurance whereby when you reach your threshold you are sent home on the bus, something has to give.
Council housing for everyone isn’t really part of their vision it turns out.
A really fascinating nugget from my colleagues Oscar Bentley and Peter Barnes — the Conservatives have kept losing councillors since the locals.
In fact since we wrote this (yesterday) they’ve lost three more
https://x.com/hzeffman/status/1928006375876997494
No flexibility, no job.
Tell the poor pensioners to eat fewer avocados, that’s what they’ve been telling working people for a decade.
Short of having British Transport Police on constant duty at every station (and those determined to evade will travel to quieter stations because that's what they do - example, there's a strong revenue protection and security presence at Barking so those wanting to evade get off a stop earlier at Woodgrange Park where there's no one) and who pays for that, the answer is much harder than it might appear.
He thinks 4% of journeys are fraudulent - I suspect in some places it's a fair bit higher. TfL will know the problem stations.
As for all the other things he whinges on about, well, his lot had 14 years in charge - what did they do about any of it? Nothing - instead, they wasted time, effort and money on the European Union.
This is the sort of thing that gets people to conclude the country is broken.
The chap “carrying the knife” was holding a Costa! Hardly a lower class scumbag, he just can’t be bothered because there are no repercussions.
It’s like littering, nothing never happens.
Musing on the header, which I'd skimmed through before starting on my morning exercises (designed by an NHS physio to give me a little more mobility, possibly even unaided) two memories popped into my mind. One was an aphorism I read my tears ago, but which over the years served me well: Rules are for the observance of fools and the guidance of wise men'. The other was a dim memory from A level physics 70 years ago, Hookes Law, about springs which I recall works very well under normal circumstances but which falls down when the spring is tested to destruction.
There was also a comment about waste of money on repeat prescriptions. Many years ago a colleague of mine checked the actual use of medicines he supplied to a care home and discovered he could make significant savings by careful monitoring. He went to the then relevant NHS body and pointed out that he could make quite substantial savings if he did this regularly with both care homes and individuals, and asked the NHS body how much they would pay him if he did. The reply was 'nothing'!
Some years later I was actually doing similar work for a group of Care Homes. and had quite an argument with a branch of a major pharmacy multiple because they were over-supplying a Home, and making no representations to the prescribing GP's.
From my own, more recent, experience as a consume the situation has not changed today.
It probably will garner some support. But, of course, it does not address the problem as you say.
It's a common problem with modern politics. Another version of set piece speeches that offer heat but no light or sloganeering like 'smash the gangs'. Or my personal bugbear 'fully costed' - saying it does not make it so
Sorry, that's just a list of things that irritate me in politics..... oh well
I am only too pleased to be retired from business, having run 2 successful businesses with happy and content staff who to this day are considered friends, without the absurd red tape and over burdensome control by government
There is a place for legislation especially in work place safety but Reeves's budget and Rayner's bill are as anti business as you can get
Seen plenty of ‘Reform vote against workers rights bill, they are not on your side’ takes from Labour sorts.
Good luck. The country needs more people like you.
None of which makes it of any use.
Full credit Robert.
Great work.
The way you minimise it is you track people down and you punish them. Singapore has none of these problems, because everybody knows the state will find you and they will punish you. No ifs, no buts.
Presumably if Jenrick is installed
Edit- note also yesterday Lowe launched an attack on...... 'Labour, Reform and the Lib Dems'
Can you cite those studies ?