The system of international law/human rights either needs to be changed or it will be overturned entirely.
The legal/activist class across Europe are like the monks and priests of the Catholic Church in northern and Western Europe circa 1500. Parasitic, doctrinaire, vain, myopic and greedy. And you can feel the resentment building and building. A Reformation is coming to sweep them away and it might be violent
That's a great analogy.
But it goes wider. Full on Pride shite at work today with some events stretching into August. A queer quiz. A gay tapestry. Marches all over the place. A fans for trans social.
Who wants this shit?
I am totally ungay, but your workplace sounds like fun.
Did you realise the company was this "right on" when you joined?
All companies are like this now. All of them.
The only acceptable response is to cheer and amplify it. To do anything else risks you being labelled as a homophobe, and we all know what that means.
So, this absurd foghorning goes on - despite most people not really caring and being somewhat fed up with it all.
That’s not my experience at double digit organisations across both engineering and law. You can delete DEI emails. You can refuse to put pronouns in email signatures. You don’t have to attend pride events. Nobody cares. It’s all in your head.
I do all of those things and nobody thinks I am a homophobe because, well, I’m not.
No, it's not all in my head - this is simple denialism by you.
It's on every call I go to, and I have to listen to it all.
You said upthread you loved this stuff, and now you say you don't do any of it.
Which one is it?
Where I've worked there's emails to 'Pride' events . . . and emails inviting to football games, basketball games, chess clubs, book clubs, craft clubs, and plenty of other things.
The general thing with social emails is to pick the ones you're interested in and ignore the rest.
So what if some people in your work want to do Pride activities? How is that affecting you whatsoever? If others are playing 5-a-side is that affecting you? Don't hear you moaning about that, but I imagine that's happening too?
If Pride is the only social stuff being organised, then it sounds like a pretty crappy place to work, but if its one amongst many, then why have a bee in your bonnet about what others choose to do?
You really don't get this, do you?
You have to be seen to champion, echo and be enthusiastic about this stuff, from a career perspective, or else you are suspect. It's a required belief. There is no choice.
This is the entire problem with Wokery. Which people like you and @Gallowgate cannot understand.
[PS. I don't have people talking to me about 5-a-side on every call for every day for a full month every year, and requiring me to applaud it or I'm seen as bigot. It's not remotely comparable.]
Why don't you resign? I've got friends who feel like this about Gaza and have turned down good jobs at arms companies as a result.
EVERY SINGLE COMPANY IS LIKE THIS. You can't escape.
The solution is political: either Woke is reined in, or it ends.
For example: Pride could go back to being a fun weekend and a march, fine, but no that wasn't enough. Now, its all of June and July and August at 110dB every single year and rainbow lanyards and flags all year round. It bores people at best and p1sses people off at worst.
Why? Because people don't like to be hectored but it's politically incorrect - and dangerous - to object so people feel even more frustrated because they can't say anything.
If you're not proportionate on anything and set rules around the right thing to say, or not say, you get a backlash.
The religious adherents can never see it, because they love it.
Companies are free to take on whatever policies they see fit; you're free to take on whatever job you fancy.
You're right that the solution is political - but I don't think you'll find much support for banning woke activity in private companies across wider society.
I'm not entirely unsympathetic. I feel this way about our lack of cycle infrastructure. Write to your MP, put up posters, make the argument here and elsewhere. Explain why it harms your business and/or society. Good luck, I guess.
Companies are not free to take on whatever policies they see fit. They have to comply with all sorts of regulations on diversity and equality.
Like what? They have to not discriminate on protected characteristics, but I can’t think of much they have to comply with in terms of “regulations on diversity and equality”. Cite some legislation if this is true.
Don't you find the whole concept of "protected characteristics" ridiculous?
When taken alone, yes, ridiculous. But it is a clunky means to a end without which we would be a more horrible place - where you could employ 10,000 people and stipulate that they are all white, or destroy careers because women have babies, or refuse to employ them at all.
Drafting law is hard. Sometimes what you want to achieve is simple and obvious, until you try to draft laws that actually cover it. Try drafting the 'Compelling Reluctant People to Behave In A Civilized Manner Act 2025'.
Please define civillized, I am sure for example most of isis think they are civillised
Thanks for making my point. 'Civilized' will be defined in section 47 of Schedule 9 and will be further refined in the transitional provisions in Schedule 10. Schedule 14 will allow the Secretary of State following consultation with 47 named bodies to issue guidance as to how to interpret the definition, which shall not be binding.
Welcome to ways of modern statutes.
And politicians wonder why we despise them
'Despise' is quite a strong word. Do you really despise them? I sometimes find myself disappointed, annoyed, exasperated, etc. But despise - no.
Jimmy Saville - yes. That schoolteacher I remember who locked a pupil in a cupboard, forgot about them, then when they remembered opened the door and shouted so loudly in their ear and clapped them with a wooden ruler that they literally burst the pupils ear-drum - yes.
(The schoolteacher in question went on to become a Tory MP - but that's not what I despise them for)
I said despise and meant it, politicians of the last 5 decades or so have flushed most of the country down the drain and turned us into slaves in practice if not in name. In theory we can change jobs, for many though its either not an option as they can't do without the wage or in fact the only other employment they could get would be equally shitty.
But its that or be homeless
I think that we get the politicians we want rather than the politicians we need. For decades people have wanted higher living standards, higher property prices, more leisure all with less taxes and and less state spending on things that don't benefit them. As soon as a politician sticks their head above the parapet to try and change things they get shot down. See Theresa May over care and Starmer over the Winter Fuel allowance. Perfectly understandable to despise politicians but ultimately it's the voters who put them there.
We won't get the politicians we need ever though because sadly too many are wedded to handouts must continue
People even here are always going on about x,y,z are underfunded. Its even more extreme if you go btl on the guardian.
Now simple question and I doubt anyone will answer it
If we fully funded everything the government currently does plus all the infrastructure repairs necessary what do you think that (~given we know from the truss debacle we can't massively expand borrowing)
a) the basic rate of income tax would have to be b) what do you think the higher rate would have to be c) what do you think the top rate would have to be
My estimates are
a) 60 b) 80 c) 90
Yet whenever I have suggested maybe we need to be looking at what the government actually does and cut some of it while fully funding what we actually still do its howls of protest
The value of the UK housing stock is £9 trillion. The value of UK equities is about £3 trillion.
A 1% wealth tax would raise £120 billion or about 4% of GDP. That should cover it.
No it wouldnt because reality shows us every country that has tried wealth taxes has failed to raise anywhere near that
I don't get this leftie arsehole obsession with wealth taxes, its failed everywhere its been tried. It seems to have replaced the obession with socialism which also failed everywhere it was tried. Lefties doomed to failure
Isn’t Barnesian an LD so a centrist not a lefty ?
Wealth taxes seem to be the latest fad. People support the concept, by and large, as they don’t think they’d have to pay.
They’ve never worked before but that won’t stop people from advocating it.
It's all very well being opposed to wealth taxes though I think land value taxation is an idea whose time has come (and it's not as though you can hide land very easily to evade).
The truth is we need to reduce both the debt and borrowing by around £100 billion to get the public finances back into some shape and at a time when we are looking for more spending on defence for example, simply suggesting spending cuts can do all the heavy lifting is just foolish.
What would you propose?
Well I just think parroting ‘wealth taxes’ when they’re easy for the wealthy to avoid is pointless. It just tells people,there is an easy solution and they won’t have to pay. People favour taxes others pay. I’m only opposed as I think they won’t work.
Land value tax, fine, I wouldn’t consider that a wealth tax no more than I’d consider council tax a wealth tax.
I’d probably combine NI and income tax for one.
I’d stay the course of WFA and PIP and reform the triple lock too.
I’d scrap stamp duty on shares and homes. Homes to get people, like myself, trading down. Shares to encourage investing.
I’d reduce the amount you could put in a cash ISA too.
Look at people funding their own care costs.
We have major problems but I doubt this govt has the will to do,what is needed.
This sadly is where you get stupidity, we get people going on about the reduction of ni by hunt, despite the fact that freezing the allowance more than offset it and bought in more tax overall. They should have welcomed it because it meant more of those rich pensioners were paying more. Regular reductions of ni while freezing the personal allowance are probably the most pain free way of folding ni into income tax
The freezing of the allowances was done before the NI reductions it wasn’t a quid pro quo.
And as I’ve said since before the election (and especially after the WFA screw up) the best approach was to solve the lost tax revenue by putting income tax up by 3p.
That would have left the poorest pensioners better off while collecting tax from richer pensioners and avoided any stupid means testing
Outrageous Apple outrage - my 9 months old iPad Pro won't turn on. Have tried the various reboot guides including plugging it into a working device and entering DFU mode - which cannot complete.
Apple hardware? Not working? Outrageous. A trip to see the Geniuses beckons...
Official guidance from NHS England. All shortlisting and interview panels must include a BME candidate. And if the BME candidate isn't appointed, the panel must write to the chairman of the organisation explaining itself.
The system of international law/human rights either needs to be changed or it will be overturned entirely.
The legal/activist class across Europe are like the monks and priests of the Catholic Church in northern and Western Europe circa 1500. Parasitic, doctrinaire, vain, myopic and greedy. And you can feel the resentment building and building. A Reformation is coming to sweep them away and it might be violent
That's a great analogy.
But it goes wider. Full on Pride shite at work today with some events stretching into August. A queer quiz. A gay tapestry. Marches all over the place. A fans for trans social.
Who wants this shit?
I am totally ungay, but your workplace sounds like fun.
Did you realise the company was this "right on" when you joined?
All companies are like this now. All of them.
The only acceptable response is to cheer and amplify it. To do anything else risks you being labelled as a homophobe, and we all know what that means.
So, this absurd foghorning goes on - despite most people not really caring and being somewhat fed up with it all.
That’s not my experience at double digit organisations across both engineering and law. You can delete DEI emails. You can refuse to put pronouns in email signatures. You don’t have to attend pride events. Nobody cares. It’s all in your head.
I do all of those things and nobody thinks I am a homophobe because, well, I’m not.
No, it's not all in my head - this is simple denialism by you.
It's on every call I go to, and I have to listen to it all.
You said upthread you loved this stuff, and now you say you don't do any of it.
Which one is it?
Where I've worked there's emails to 'Pride' events . . . and emails inviting to football games, basketball games, chess clubs, book clubs, craft clubs, and plenty of other things.
The general thing with social emails is to pick the ones you're interested in and ignore the rest.
So what if some people in your work want to do Pride activities? How is that affecting you whatsoever? If others are playing 5-a-side is that affecting you? Don't hear you moaning about that, but I imagine that's happening too?
If Pride is the only social stuff being organised, then it sounds like a pretty crappy place to work, but if its one amongst many, then why have a bee in your bonnet about what others choose to do?
You really don't get this, do you?
You have to be seen to champion, echo and be enthusiastic about this stuff, from a career perspective, or else you are suspect. It's a required belief. There is no choice.
This is the entire problem with Wokery. Which people like you and @Gallowgate cannot understand.
[PS. I don't have people talking to me about 5-a-side on every call for every day for a full month every year, and requiring me to applaud it or I'm seen as bigot. It's not remotely comparable.]
Why don't you resign? I've got friends who feel like this about Gaza and have turned down good jobs at arms companies as a result.
EVERY SINGLE COMPANY IS LIKE THIS. You can't escape.
The solution is political: either Woke is reined in, or it ends.
For example: Pride could go back to being a fun weekend and a march, fine, but no that wasn't enough. Now, its all of June and July and August at 110dB every single year and rainbow lanyards and flags all year round. It bores people at best and p1sses people off at worst.
Why? Because people don't like to be hectored but it's politically incorrect - and dangerous - to object so people feel even more frustrated because they can't say anything.
If you're not proportionate on anything and set rules around the right thing to say, or not say, you get a backlash.
The religious adherents can never see it, because they love it.
Companies are free to take on whatever policies they see fit; you're free to take on whatever job you fancy.
You're right that the solution is political - but I don't think you'll find much support for banning woke activity in private companies across wider society.
I'm not entirely unsympathetic. I feel this way about our lack of cycle infrastructure. Write to your MP, put up posters, make the argument here and elsewhere. Explain why it harms your business and/or society. Good luck, I guess.
Companies are not free to take on whatever policies they see fit. They have to comply with all sorts of regulations on diversity and equality.
Like what? They have to not discriminate on protected characteristics, but I can’t think of much they have to comply with in terms of “regulations on diversity and equality”. Cite some legislation if this is true.
Don't you find the whole concept of "protected characteristics" ridiculous?
When taken alone, yes, ridiculous. But it is a clunky means to a end without which we would be a more horrible place - where you could employ 10,000 people and stipulate that they are all white, or destroy careers because women have babies, or refuse to employ them at all.
Drafting law is hard. Sometimes what you want to achieve is simple and obvious, until you try to draft laws that actually cover it. Try drafting the 'Compelling Reluctant People to Behave In A Civilized Manner Act 2025'.
Please define civillized, I am sure for example most of isis think they are civillised
Thanks for making my point. 'Civilized' will be defined in section 47 of Schedule 9 and will be further refined in the transitional provisions in Schedule 10. Schedule 14 will allow the Secretary of State following consultation with 47 named bodies to issue guidance as to how to interpret the definition, which shall not be binding.
Welcome to ways of modern statutes.
And politicians wonder why we despise them
'Despise' is quite a strong word. Do you really despise them? I sometimes find myself disappointed, annoyed, exasperated, etc. But despise - no.
Jimmy Saville - yes. That schoolteacher I remember who locked a pupil in a cupboard, forgot about them, then when they remembered opened the door and shouted so loudly in their ear and clapped them with a wooden ruler that they literally burst the pupils ear-drum - yes.
(The schoolteacher in question went on to become a Tory MP - but that's not what I despise them for)
I said despise and meant it, politicians of the last 5 decades or so have flushed most of the country down the drain and turned us into slaves in practice if not in name. In theory we can change jobs, for many though its either not an option as they can't do without the wage or in fact the only other employment they could get would be equally shitty.
But its that or be homeless
I think that we get the politicians we want rather than the politicians we need. For decades people have wanted higher living standards, higher property prices, more leisure all with less taxes and and less state spending on things that don't benefit them. As soon as a politician sticks their head above the parapet to try and change things they get shot down. See Theresa May over care and Starmer over the Winter Fuel allowance. Perfectly understandable to despise politicians but ultimately it's the voters who put them there.
We won't get the politicians we need ever though because sadly too many are wedded to handouts must continue
People even here are always going on about x,y,z are underfunded. Its even more extreme if you go btl on the guardian.
Now simple question and I doubt anyone will answer it
If we fully funded everything the government currently does plus all the infrastructure repairs necessary what do you think that (~given we know from the truss debacle we can't massively expand borrowing)
a) the basic rate of income tax would have to be b) what do you think the higher rate would have to be c) what do you think the top rate would have to be
My estimates are
a) 60 b) 80 c) 90
Yet whenever I have suggested maybe we need to be looking at what the government actually does and cut some of it while fully funding what we actually still do its howls of protest
The value of the UK housing stock is £9 trillion. The value of UK equities is about £3 trillion.
A 1% wealth tax would raise £120 billion or about 4% of GDP. That should cover it.
No it wouldnt because reality shows us every country that has tried wealth taxes has failed to raise anywhere near that
I don't get this leftie arsehole obsession with wealth taxes, its failed everywhere its been tried. It seems to have replaced the obession with socialism which also failed everywhere it was tried. Lefties doomed to failure
Isn’t Barnesian an LD so a centrist not a lefty ?
Wealth taxes seem to be the latest fad. People support the concept, by and large, as they don’t think they’d have to pay.
They’ve never worked before but that won’t stop people from advocating it.
It's all very well being opposed to wealth taxes though I think land value taxation is an idea whose time has come (and it's not as though you can hide land very easily to evade).
The truth is we need to reduce both the debt and borrowing by around £100 billion to get the public finances back into some shape and at a time when we are looking for more spending on defence for example, simply suggesting spending cuts can do all the heavy lifting is just foolish.
What would you propose?
Tax and spend and regulate is exactly what got us where we are. If we keep on doing it, we will continue our slow decline.
Instead, we should be generating economic growth through deregulation, in particular, but not only, planning reform together with a tight rein on spending.
It is almost tautological, but evidently beyond our current political class, that a stronger economy is the way to generate more money, both for the public and the private sectors. But at the end of the day it's only the private sector that can generate more money, and it won't if you tax it to death. And increasing public spending reduces productivity in the economy as a whole (because the public sector is generally so much worse at generating productivity improvements than the private sector).
Is there really any correlation between deregulation and economic growth, though?
The US is massively more regulated than Europe in most things, and yet has grown far quicker. That said, the area the US is more deregulated is the labour market - so maybe that's the biggest factor.
Yes, it’s never as simple as regulation good / regulation bad. Most regulations are there for a reason but some are pointless or nearly pointless. The key is to remove or update the pointless ones without accidentally taking away important protections.
Product regulation stops us having lead in our paint or babies choking on toys Health and safety regulation stops cranes collapsing on building sites and takeaways from having dead rats on the kitchen worktops. Environmental regulation stops factories pouring untreated waste into the river or belching out carcinogens from low slung chimneys Financial regulation averts banking crises and prevents investment scams Medicine regulations prevent a repeat of Thalidomide And as for employment regulation, the question is again what bits are good and what bits are pointless or overdone. I don’t think many of us would want to work in an economy with child labour, no maternity leave or no redundancy protections. But on the other hand our relatively flexible labour law makes us a more attractive country to hire in than most of our European neighbours and probably contributes to lower unemployment (it also contributes to our attractiveness to migrants of course).
Got a feeling I'm going to enjoy this week's issue:
Why exactly? Is it really that difficult to leave the gays to celebrate their own thing and get on with your own life. If it's because of all of the corporate posturing on social media i agree with that but I can tell you that I and no other gay person I know asked for that.
I've not been to a Pride event for at least 40 years. I've nothing against them but I know of no gay friends who'd dream of going . I don't believe they reflect the reality of life for most gay people.
I think I said this yesterday but of my gay friends the ones who are most attached to Pride are the slightly older ones for whom it is still intensely liberating to be out and proud amongst crowds who celebrate that fact. It means more if you've spent a lot of your adult life having to downplay your sexuality for fear of abuse.
I get that: I think those of us born the right side of (around) 1970 have a very different attitude to those born in 1950. (Of course that bunch won the property lottery, so I'm not that sympathetic.)
Gay people are like the population at large. The vast majority don't go on marches. They never have done. They don't have special attitudes. They get on with life just like everyone else.
Gay people are not like the population at large....they have better dress sense mostly
The system of international law/human rights either needs to be changed or it will be overturned entirely.
The legal/activist class across Europe are like the monks and priests of the Catholic Church in northern and Western Europe circa 1500. Parasitic, doctrinaire, vain, myopic and greedy. And you can feel the resentment building and building. A Reformation is coming to sweep them away and it might be violent
That's a great analogy.
But it goes wider. Full on Pride shite at work today with some events stretching into August. A queer quiz. A gay tapestry. Marches all over the place. A fans for trans social.
Who wants this shit?
I am totally ungay, but your workplace sounds like fun.
Did you realise the company was this "right on" when you joined?
All companies are like this now. All of them.
The only acceptable response is to cheer and amplify it. To do anything else risks you being labelled as a homophobe, and we all know what that means.
So, this absurd foghorning goes on - despite most people not really caring and being somewhat fed up with it all.
That’s not my experience at double digit organisations across both engineering and law. You can delete DEI emails. You can refuse to put pronouns in email signatures. You don’t have to attend pride events. Nobody cares. It’s all in your head.
I do all of those things and nobody thinks I am a homophobe because, well, I’m not.
No, it's not all in my head - this is simple denialism by you.
It's on every call I go to, and I have to listen to it all.
You said upthread you loved this stuff, and now you say you don't do any of it.
Which one is it?
Where I've worked there's emails to 'Pride' events . . . and emails inviting to football games, basketball games, chess clubs, book clubs, craft clubs, and plenty of other things.
The general thing with social emails is to pick the ones you're interested in and ignore the rest.
So what if some people in your work want to do Pride activities? How is that affecting you whatsoever? If others are playing 5-a-side is that affecting you? Don't hear you moaning about that, but I imagine that's happening too?
If Pride is the only social stuff being organised, then it sounds like a pretty crappy place to work, but if its one amongst many, then why have a bee in your bonnet about what others choose to do?
You really don't get this, do you?
You have to be seen to champion, echo and be enthusiastic about this stuff, from a career perspective, or else you are suspect. It's a required belief. There is no choice.
This is the entire problem with Wokery. Which people like you and @Gallowgate cannot understand.
[PS. I don't have people talking to me about 5-a-side on every call for every day for a full month every year, and requiring me to applaud it or I'm seen as bigot. It's not remotely comparable.]
Why don't you resign? I've got friends who feel like this about Gaza and have turned down good jobs at arms companies as a result.
EVERY SINGLE COMPANY IS LIKE THIS. You can't escape.
The solution is political: either Woke is reined in, or it ends.
For example: Pride could go back to being a fun weekend and a march, fine, but no that wasn't enough. Now, its all of June and July and August at 110dB every single year and rainbow lanyards and flags all year round. It bores people at best and p1sses people off at worst.
Why? Because people don't like to be hectored but it's politically incorrect - and dangerous - to object so people feel even more frustrated because they can't say anything.
If you're not proportionate on anything and set rules around the right thing to say, or not say, you get a backlash.
The religious adherents can never see it, because they love it.
Companies are free to take on whatever policies they see fit; you're free to take on whatever job you fancy.
You're right that the solution is political - but I don't think you'll find much support for banning woke activity in private companies across wider society.
I'm not entirely unsympathetic. I feel this way about our lack of cycle infrastructure. Write to your MP, put up posters, make the argument here and elsewhere. Explain why it harms your business and/or society. Good luck, I guess.
Companies are not free to take on whatever policies they see fit. They have to comply with all sorts of regulations on diversity and equality.
Like what? They have to not discriminate on protected characteristics, but I can’t think of much they have to comply with in terms of “regulations on diversity and equality”. Cite some legislation if this is true.
Don't you find the whole concept of "protected characteristics" ridiculous?
When taken alone, yes, ridiculous. But it is a clunky means to a end without which we would be a more horrible place - where you could employ 10,000 people and stipulate that they are all white, or destroy careers because women have babies, or refuse to employ them at all.
Drafting law is hard. Sometimes what you want to achieve is simple and obvious, until you try to draft laws that actually cover it. Try drafting the 'Compelling Reluctant People to Behave In A Civilized Manner Act 2025'.
Please define civillized, I am sure for example most of isis think they are civillised
Thanks for making my point. 'Civilized' will be defined in section 47 of Schedule 9 and will be further refined in the transitional provisions in Schedule 10. Schedule 14 will allow the Secretary of State following consultation with 47 named bodies to issue guidance as to how to interpret the definition, which shall not be binding.
Welcome to ways of modern statutes.
And politicians wonder why we despise them
'Despise' is quite a strong word. Do you really despise them? I sometimes find myself disappointed, annoyed, exasperated, etc. But despise - no.
Jimmy Saville - yes. That schoolteacher I remember who locked a pupil in a cupboard, forgot about them, then when they remembered opened the door and shouted so loudly in their ear and clapped them with a wooden ruler that they literally burst the pupils ear-drum - yes.
(The schoolteacher in question went on to become a Tory MP - but that's not what I despise them for)
I said despise and meant it, politicians of the last 5 decades or so have flushed most of the country down the drain and turned us into slaves in practice if not in name. In theory we can change jobs, for many though its either not an option as they can't do without the wage or in fact the only other employment they could get would be equally shitty.
But its that or be homeless
I think that we get the politicians we want rather than the politicians we need. For decades people have wanted higher living standards, higher property prices, more leisure all with less taxes and and less state spending on things that don't benefit them. As soon as a politician sticks their head above the parapet to try and change things they get shot down. See Theresa May over care and Starmer over the Winter Fuel allowance. Perfectly understandable to despise politicians but ultimately it's the voters who put them there.
We won't get the politicians we need ever though because sadly too many are wedded to handouts must continue
People even here are always going on about x,y,z are underfunded. Its even more extreme if you go btl on the guardian.
Now simple question and I doubt anyone will answer it
If we fully funded everything the government currently does plus all the infrastructure repairs necessary what do you think that (~given we know from the truss debacle we can't massively expand borrowing)
a) the basic rate of income tax would have to be b) what do you think the higher rate would have to be c) what do you think the top rate would have to be
My estimates are
a) 60 b) 80 c) 90
Yet whenever I have suggested maybe we need to be looking at what the government actually does and cut some of it while fully funding what we actually still do its howls of protest
The value of the UK housing stock is £9 trillion. The value of UK equities is about £3 trillion.
A 1% wealth tax would raise £120 billion or about 4% of GDP. That should cover it.
No it wouldnt because reality shows us every country that has tried wealth taxes has failed to raise anywhere near that
I don't get this leftie arsehole obsession with wealth taxes, its failed everywhere its been tried. It seems to have replaced the obession with socialism which also failed everywhere it was tried. Lefties doomed to failure
Isn’t Barnesian an LD so a centrist not a lefty ?
Wealth taxes seem to be the latest fad. People support the concept, by and large, as they don’t think they’d have to pay.
They’ve never worked before but that won’t stop people from advocating it.
The system of international law/human rights either needs to be changed or it will be overturned entirely.
The legal/activist class across Europe are like the monks and priests of the Catholic Church in northern and Western Europe circa 1500. Parasitic, doctrinaire, vain, myopic and greedy. And you can feel the resentment building and building. A Reformation is coming to sweep them away and it might be violent
That's a great analogy.
But it goes wider. Full on Pride shite at work today with some events stretching into August. A queer quiz. A gay tapestry. Marches all over the place. A fans for trans social.
Who wants this shit?
I am totally ungay, but your workplace sounds like fun.
Did you realise the company was this "right on" when you joined?
All companies are like this now. All of them.
The only acceptable response is to cheer and amplify it. To do anything else risks you being labelled as a homophobe, and we all know what that means.
So, this absurd foghorning goes on - despite most people not really caring and being somewhat fed up with it all.
That’s not my experience at double digit organisations across both engineering and law. You can delete DEI emails. You can refuse to put pronouns in email signatures. You don’t have to attend pride events. Nobody cares. It’s all in your head.
I do all of those things and nobody thinks I am a homophobe because, well, I’m not.
No, it's not all in my head - this is simple denialism by you.
It's on every call I go to, and I have to listen to it all.
You said upthread you loved this stuff, and now you say you don't do any of it.
Which one is it?
Where I've worked there's emails to 'Pride' events . . . and emails inviting to football games, basketball games, chess clubs, book clubs, craft clubs, and plenty of other things.
The general thing with social emails is to pick the ones you're interested in and ignore the rest.
So what if some people in your work want to do Pride activities? How is that affecting you whatsoever? If others are playing 5-a-side is that affecting you? Don't hear you moaning about that, but I imagine that's happening too?
If Pride is the only social stuff being organised, then it sounds like a pretty crappy place to work, but if its one amongst many, then why have a bee in your bonnet about what others choose to do?
You really don't get this, do you?
You have to be seen to champion, echo and be enthusiastic about this stuff, from a career perspective, or else you are suspect. It's a required belief. There is no choice.
This is the entire problem with Wokery. Which people like you and @Gallowgate cannot understand.
[PS. I don't have people talking to me about 5-a-side on every call for every day for a full month every year, and requiring me to applaud it or I'm seen as bigot. It's not remotely comparable.]
Why don't you resign? I've got friends who feel like this about Gaza and have turned down good jobs at arms companies as a result.
EVERY SINGLE COMPANY IS LIKE THIS. You can't escape.
The solution is political: either Woke is reined in, or it ends.
For example: Pride could go back to being a fun weekend and a march, fine, but no that wasn't enough. Now, its all of June and July and August at 110dB every single year and rainbow lanyards and flags all year round. It bores people at best and p1sses people off at worst.
Why? Because people don't like to be hectored but it's politically incorrect - and dangerous - to object so people feel even more frustrated because they can't say anything.
If you're not proportionate on anything and set rules around the right thing to say, or not say, you get a backlash.
The religious adherents can never see it, because they love it.
Companies are free to take on whatever policies they see fit; you're free to take on whatever job you fancy.
You're right that the solution is political - but I don't think you'll find much support for banning woke activity in private companies across wider society.
I'm not entirely unsympathetic. I feel this way about our lack of cycle infrastructure. Write to your MP, put up posters, make the argument here and elsewhere. Explain why it harms your business and/or society. Good luck, I guess.
Companies are not free to take on whatever policies they see fit. They have to comply with all sorts of regulations on diversity and equality.
Like what? They have to not discriminate on protected characteristics, but I can’t think of much they have to comply with in terms of “regulations on diversity and equality”. Cite some legislation if this is true.
Don't you find the whole concept of "protected characteristics" ridiculous?
When taken alone, yes, ridiculous. But it is a clunky means to a end without which we would be a more horrible place - where you could employ 10,000 people and stipulate that they are all white, or destroy careers because women have babies, or refuse to employ them at all.
Drafting law is hard. Sometimes what you want to achieve is simple and obvious, until you try to draft laws that actually cover it. Try drafting the 'Compelling Reluctant People to Behave In A Civilized Manner Act 2025'.
Please define civillized, I am sure for example most of isis think they are civillised
Thanks for making my point. 'Civilized' will be defined in section 47 of Schedule 9 and will be further refined in the transitional provisions in Schedule 10. Schedule 14 will allow the Secretary of State following consultation with 47 named bodies to issue guidance as to how to interpret the definition, which shall not be binding.
Welcome to ways of modern statutes.
And politicians wonder why we despise them
'Despise' is quite a strong word. Do you really despise them? I sometimes find myself disappointed, annoyed, exasperated, etc. But despise - no.
Jimmy Saville - yes. That schoolteacher I remember who locked a pupil in a cupboard, forgot about them, then when they remembered opened the door and shouted so loudly in their ear and clapped them with a wooden ruler that they literally burst the pupils ear-drum - yes.
(The schoolteacher in question went on to become a Tory MP - but that's not what I despise them for)
I said despise and meant it, politicians of the last 5 decades or so have flushed most of the country down the drain and turned us into slaves in practice if not in name. In theory we can change jobs, for many though its either not an option as they can't do without the wage or in fact the only other employment they could get would be equally shitty.
But its that or be homeless
I think that we get the politicians we want rather than the politicians we need. For decades people have wanted higher living standards, higher property prices, more leisure all with less taxes and and less state spending on things that don't benefit them. As soon as a politician sticks their head above the parapet to try and change things they get shot down. See Theresa May over care and Starmer over the Winter Fuel allowance. Perfectly understandable to despise politicians but ultimately it's the voters who put them there.
We won't get the politicians we need ever though because sadly too many are wedded to handouts must continue
People even here are always going on about x,y,z are underfunded. Its even more extreme if you go btl on the guardian.
Now simple question and I doubt anyone will answer it
If we fully funded everything the government currently does plus all the infrastructure repairs necessary what do you think that (~given we know from the truss debacle we can't massively expand borrowing)
a) the basic rate of income tax would have to be b) what do you think the higher rate would have to be c) what do you think the top rate would have to be
My estimates are
a) 60 b) 80 c) 90
Yet whenever I have suggested maybe we need to be looking at what the government actually does and cut some of it while fully funding what we actually still do its howls of protest
The value of the UK housing stock is £9 trillion. The value of UK equities is about £3 trillion.
A 1% wealth tax would raise £120 billion or about 4% of GDP. That should cover it.
No it wouldnt because reality shows us every country that has tried wealth taxes has failed to raise anywhere near that
Although the various Swiss cantons have successfully used them.
They work because the swiss don't have inheritance tax, plus their taxes dont raise anywhere near 120 billion even if you adjust for population
I don't think that's true. While there's no Federal inheritance tax, there are inheritance taxes at the Canton level (just like wealth taxes are at the Canton level).
Of courser, the Swiss government is able to levy lower taxes overall, not least because healthcare is essentially privatized.
That said, on OECD numbers, the Swiss pay an average of $23,500 in tax (CHF 21,500) per person. While in the UK, it's $18,000 on average. So, I don't think the second part of your assertion holds up either.
How much does swiss wealth tax raise
answer 7.329 million Swiss francs = 6.6 million pounds
divide by 8.9 million pop = 0.74157 multiply by 68 million = 50.426 million
now I may not be a maths genius but I suspect thats a little short of the 130 billion someone was claiming it would raise
Two things:
Firstly, (as I mentioned before) the wealth tax is principally levied at the canton level. So, for example, the Canton of Geneva raises about CHF1.8bn from theirs. So, I'm not sure why you are bring up a national wealth tax (that I wasn't previously aware of).
Secondly, you're fighting a strawman here. I'm not suggesting that a wealth tax could be any more than one of a variety of taxes levied by the government. Life (and government finances) are not about silver bullet solutions.
The system of international law/human rights either needs to be changed or it will be overturned entirely.
The legal/activist class across Europe are like the monks and priests of the Catholic Church in northern and Western Europe circa 1500. Parasitic, doctrinaire, vain, myopic and greedy. And you can feel the resentment building and building. A Reformation is coming to sweep them away and it might be violent
That's a great analogy.
But it goes wider. Full on Pride shite at work today with some events stretching into August. A queer quiz. A gay tapestry. Marches all over the place. A fans for trans social.
Who wants this shit?
I am totally ungay, but your workplace sounds like fun.
Did you realise the company was this "right on" when you joined?
All companies are like this now. All of them.
The only acceptable response is to cheer and amplify it. To do anything else risks you being labelled as a homophobe, and we all know what that means.
So, this absurd foghorning goes on - despite most people not really caring and being somewhat fed up with it all.
That’s not my experience at double digit organisations across both engineering and law. You can delete DEI emails. You can refuse to put pronouns in email signatures. You don’t have to attend pride events. Nobody cares. It’s all in your head.
I do all of those things and nobody thinks I am a homophobe because, well, I’m not.
No, it's not all in my head - this is simple denialism by you.
It's on every call I go to, and I have to listen to it all.
You said upthread you loved this stuff, and now you say you don't do any of it.
Which one is it?
Where I've worked there's emails to 'Pride' events . . . and emails inviting to football games, basketball games, chess clubs, book clubs, craft clubs, and plenty of other things.
The general thing with social emails is to pick the ones you're interested in and ignore the rest.
So what if some people in your work want to do Pride activities? How is that affecting you whatsoever? If others are playing 5-a-side is that affecting you? Don't hear you moaning about that, but I imagine that's happening too?
If Pride is the only social stuff being organised, then it sounds like a pretty crappy place to work, but if its one amongst many, then why have a bee in your bonnet about what others choose to do?
You really don't get this, do you?
You have to be seen to champion, echo and be enthusiastic about this stuff, from a career perspective, or else you are suspect. It's a required belief. There is no choice.
This is the entire problem with Wokery. Which people like you and @Gallowgate cannot understand.
[PS. I don't have people talking to me about 5-a-side on every call for every day for a full month every year, and requiring me to applaud it or I'm seen as bigot. It's not remotely comparable.]
Why don't you resign? I've got friends who feel like this about Gaza and have turned down good jobs at arms companies as a result.
EVERY SINGLE COMPANY IS LIKE THIS. You can't escape.
The solution is political: either Woke is reined in, or it ends.
For example: Pride could go back to being a fun weekend and a march, fine, but no that wasn't enough. Now, its all of June and July and August at 110dB every single year and rainbow lanyards and flags all year round. It bores people at best and p1sses people off at worst.
Why? Because people don't like to be hectored but it's politically incorrect - and dangerous - to object so people feel even more frustrated because they can't say anything.
If you're not proportionate on anything and set rules around the right thing to say, or not say, you get a backlash.
The religious adherents can never see it, because they love it.
Companies are free to take on whatever policies they see fit; you're free to take on whatever job you fancy.
You're right that the solution is political - but I don't think you'll find much support for banning woke activity in private companies across wider society.
I'm not entirely unsympathetic. I feel this way about our lack of cycle infrastructure. Write to your MP, put up posters, make the argument here and elsewhere. Explain why it harms your business and/or society. Good luck, I guess.
Companies are not free to take on whatever policies they see fit. They have to comply with all sorts of regulations on diversity and equality.
Like what? They have to not discriminate on protected characteristics, but I can’t think of much they have to comply with in terms of “regulations on diversity and equality”. Cite some legislation if this is true.
Don't you find the whole concept of "protected characteristics" ridiculous?
When taken alone, yes, ridiculous. But it is a clunky means to a end without which we would be a more horrible place - where you could employ 10,000 people and stipulate that they are all white, or destroy careers because women have babies, or refuse to employ them at all.
Drafting law is hard. Sometimes what you want to achieve is simple and obvious, until you try to draft laws that actually cover it. Try drafting the 'Compelling Reluctant People to Behave In A Civilized Manner Act 2025'.
Please define civillized, I am sure for example most of isis think they are civillised
Thanks for making my point. 'Civilized' will be defined in section 47 of Schedule 9 and will be further refined in the transitional provisions in Schedule 10. Schedule 14 will allow the Secretary of State following consultation with 47 named bodies to issue guidance as to how to interpret the definition, which shall not be binding.
Welcome to ways of modern statutes.
And politicians wonder why we despise them
'Despise' is quite a strong word. Do you really despise them? I sometimes find myself disappointed, annoyed, exasperated, etc. But despise - no.
Jimmy Saville - yes. That schoolteacher I remember who locked a pupil in a cupboard, forgot about them, then when they remembered opened the door and shouted so loudly in their ear and clapped them with a wooden ruler that they literally burst the pupils ear-drum - yes.
(The schoolteacher in question went on to become a Tory MP - but that's not what I despise them for)
I said despise and meant it, politicians of the last 5 decades or so have flushed most of the country down the drain and turned us into slaves in practice if not in name. In theory we can change jobs, for many though its either not an option as they can't do without the wage or in fact the only other employment they could get would be equally shitty.
But its that or be homeless
I think that we get the politicians we want rather than the politicians we need. For decades people have wanted higher living standards, higher property prices, more leisure all with less taxes and and less state spending on things that don't benefit them. As soon as a politician sticks their head above the parapet to try and change things they get shot down. See Theresa May over care and Starmer over the Winter Fuel allowance. Perfectly understandable to despise politicians but ultimately it's the voters who put them there.
We won't get the politicians we need ever though because sadly too many are wedded to handouts must continue
People even here are always going on about x,y,z are underfunded. Its even more extreme if you go btl on the guardian.
Now simple question and I doubt anyone will answer it
If we fully funded everything the government currently does plus all the infrastructure repairs necessary what do you think that (~given we know from the truss debacle we can't massively expand borrowing)
a) the basic rate of income tax would have to be b) what do you think the higher rate would have to be c) what do you think the top rate would have to be
My estimates are
a) 60 b) 80 c) 90
Yet whenever I have suggested maybe we need to be looking at what the government actually does and cut some of it while fully funding what we actually still do its howls of protest
The value of the UK housing stock is £9 trillion. The value of UK equities is about £3 trillion.
A 1% wealth tax would raise £120 billion or about 4% of GDP. That should cover it.
No it wouldnt because reality shows us every country that has tried wealth taxes has failed to raise anywhere near that
Although the various Swiss cantons have successfully used them.
They work because the swiss don't have inheritance tax, plus their taxes dont raise anywhere near 120 billion even if you adjust for population
I don't think that's true. While there's no Federal inheritance tax, there are inheritance taxes at the Canton level (just like wealth taxes are at the Canton level).
Of courser, the Swiss government is able to levy lower taxes overall, not least because healthcare is essentially privatized.
That said, on OECD numbers, the Swiss pay an average of $23,500 in tax (CHF 21,500) per person. While in the UK, it's $18,000 on average. So, I don't think the second part of your assertion holds up either.
How much does swiss wealth tax raise
answer 7.329 million Swiss francs = 6.6 million pounds
divide by 8.9 million pop = 0.74157 multiply by 68 million = 50.426 million
now I may not be a maths genius but I suspect thats a little short of the 130 billion someone was claiming it would raise
Two things:
Firstly, (as I mentioned before) the wealth tax is principally levied at the canton level. So, for example, the Canton of Geneva raises about CHF1.8bn from theirs. So, I'm not sure why you are bring up a national wealth tax (that I wasn't previously aware of).
Secondly, you're fighting a strawman here. I'm not suggesting that a wealth tax could be any more than one of a variety of taxes levied by the government. Life (and government finances) are not about silver bullet solutions.
I am not fighting you so much as Barnesians idiocy thinking he can raise 130 billion a year from one despite no country even the swiss who are most successful at it not getting anywhere near it without consequences
The system of international law/human rights either needs to be changed or it will be overturned entirely.
The legal/activist class across Europe are like the monks and priests of the Catholic Church in northern and Western Europe circa 1500. Parasitic, doctrinaire, vain, myopic and greedy. And you can feel the resentment building and building. A Reformation is coming to sweep them away and it might be violent
That's a great analogy.
But it goes wider. Full on Pride shite at work today with some events stretching into August. A queer quiz. A gay tapestry. Marches all over the place. A fans for trans social.
Who wants this shit?
I am totally ungay, but your workplace sounds like fun.
Did you realise the company was this "right on" when you joined?
All companies are like this now. All of them.
The only acceptable response is to cheer and amplify it. To do anything else risks you being labelled as a homophobe, and we all know what that means.
So, this absurd foghorning goes on - despite most people not really caring and being somewhat fed up with it all.
That’s not my experience at double digit organisations across both engineering and law. You can delete DEI emails. You can refuse to put pronouns in email signatures. You don’t have to attend pride events. Nobody cares. It’s all in your head.
I do all of those things and nobody thinks I am a homophobe because, well, I’m not.
No, it's not all in my head - this is simple denialism by you.
It's on every call I go to, and I have to listen to it all.
You said upthread you loved this stuff, and now you say you don't do any of it.
Which one is it?
Where I've worked there's emails to 'Pride' events . . . and emails inviting to football games, basketball games, chess clubs, book clubs, craft clubs, and plenty of other things.
The general thing with social emails is to pick the ones you're interested in and ignore the rest.
So what if some people in your work want to do Pride activities? How is that affecting you whatsoever? If others are playing 5-a-side is that affecting you? Don't hear you moaning about that, but I imagine that's happening too?
If Pride is the only social stuff being organised, then it sounds like a pretty crappy place to work, but if its one amongst many, then why have a bee in your bonnet about what others choose to do?
You really don't get this, do you?
You have to be seen to champion, echo and be enthusiastic about this stuff, from a career perspective, or else you are suspect. It's a required belief. There is no choice.
This is the entire problem with Wokery. Which people like you and @Gallowgate cannot understand.
[PS. I don't have people talking to me about 5-a-side on every call for every day for a full month every year, and requiring me to applaud it or I'm seen as bigot. It's not remotely comparable.]
Why don't you resign? I've got friends who feel like this about Gaza and have turned down good jobs at arms companies as a result.
EVERY SINGLE COMPANY IS LIKE THIS. You can't escape.
The solution is political: either Woke is reined in, or it ends.
For example: Pride could go back to being a fun weekend and a march, fine, but no that wasn't enough. Now, its all of June and July and August at 110dB every single year and rainbow lanyards and flags all year round. It bores people at best and p1sses people off at worst.
Why? Because people don't like to be hectored but it's politically incorrect - and dangerous - to object so people feel even more frustrated because they can't say anything.
If you're not proportionate on anything and set rules around the right thing to say, or not say, you get a backlash.
The religious adherents can never see it, because they love it.
Companies are free to take on whatever policies they see fit; you're free to take on whatever job you fancy.
You're right that the solution is political - but I don't think you'll find much support for banning woke activity in private companies across wider society.
I'm not entirely unsympathetic. I feel this way about our lack of cycle infrastructure. Write to your MP, put up posters, make the argument here and elsewhere. Explain why it harms your business and/or society. Good luck, I guess.
Companies are not free to take on whatever policies they see fit. They have to comply with all sorts of regulations on diversity and equality.
Like what? They have to not discriminate on protected characteristics, but I can’t think of much they have to comply with in terms of “regulations on diversity and equality”. Cite some legislation if this is true.
Don't you find the whole concept of "protected characteristics" ridiculous?
When taken alone, yes, ridiculous. But it is a clunky means to a end without which we would be a more horrible place - where you could employ 10,000 people and stipulate that they are all white, or destroy careers because women have babies, or refuse to employ them at all.
Drafting law is hard. Sometimes what you want to achieve is simple and obvious, until you try to draft laws that actually cover it. Try drafting the 'Compelling Reluctant People to Behave In A Civilized Manner Act 2025'.
Please define civillized, I am sure for example most of isis think they are civillised
Thanks for making my point. 'Civilized' will be defined in section 47 of Schedule 9 and will be further refined in the transitional provisions in Schedule 10. Schedule 14 will allow the Secretary of State following consultation with 47 named bodies to issue guidance as to how to interpret the definition, which shall not be binding.
Welcome to ways of modern statutes.
And politicians wonder why we despise them
'Despise' is quite a strong word. Do you really despise them? I sometimes find myself disappointed, annoyed, exasperated, etc. But despise - no.
Jimmy Saville - yes. That schoolteacher I remember who locked a pupil in a cupboard, forgot about them, then when they remembered opened the door and shouted so loudly in their ear and clapped them with a wooden ruler that they literally burst the pupils ear-drum - yes.
(The schoolteacher in question went on to become a Tory MP - but that's not what I despise them for)
I said despise and meant it, politicians of the last 5 decades or so have flushed most of the country down the drain and turned us into slaves in practice if not in name. In theory we can change jobs, for many though its either not an option as they can't do without the wage or in fact the only other employment they could get would be equally shitty.
But its that or be homeless
I think that we get the politicians we want rather than the politicians we need. For decades people have wanted higher living standards, higher property prices, more leisure all with less taxes and and less state spending on things that don't benefit them. As soon as a politician sticks their head above the parapet to try and change things they get shot down. See Theresa May over care and Starmer over the Winter Fuel allowance. Perfectly understandable to despise politicians but ultimately it's the voters who put them there.
We won't get the politicians we need ever though because sadly too many are wedded to handouts must continue
People even here are always going on about x,y,z are underfunded. Its even more extreme if you go btl on the guardian.
Now simple question and I doubt anyone will answer it
If we fully funded everything the government currently does plus all the infrastructure repairs necessary what do you think that (~given we know from the truss debacle we can't massively expand borrowing)
a) the basic rate of income tax would have to be b) what do you think the higher rate would have to be c) what do you think the top rate would have to be
My estimates are
a) 60 b) 80 c) 90
Yet whenever I have suggested maybe we need to be looking at what the government actually does and cut some of it while fully funding what we actually still do its howls of protest
The value of the UK housing stock is £9 trillion. The value of UK equities is about £3 trillion.
A 1% wealth tax would raise £120 billion or about 4% of GDP. That should cover it.
No it wouldnt because reality shows us every country that has tried wealth taxes has failed to raise anywhere near that
I don't get this leftie arsehole obsession with wealth taxes, its failed everywhere its been tried. It seems to have replaced the obession with socialism which also failed everywhere it was tried. Lefties doomed to failure
Isn’t Barnesian an LD so a centrist not a lefty ?
Wealth taxes seem to be the latest fad. People support the concept, by and large, as they don’t think they’d have to pay.
They’ve never worked before but that won’t stop people from advocating it.
Yes I'm an LD, and I'm willing to pay.
You can probably afford to, how many renters can afford paying it because the house they are renting is valued at 300k so they now owe another 3k on top of rent and bills
The system of international law/human rights either needs to be changed or it will be overturned entirely.
The legal/activist class across Europe are like the monks and priests of the Catholic Church in northern and Western Europe circa 1500. Parasitic, doctrinaire, vain, myopic and greedy. And you can feel the resentment building and building. A Reformation is coming to sweep them away and it might be violent
That's a great analogy.
But it goes wider. Full on Pride shite at work today with some events stretching into August. A queer quiz. A gay tapestry. Marches all over the place. A fans for trans social.
Who wants this shit?
I am totally ungay, but your workplace sounds like fun.
Did you realise the company was this "right on" when you joined?
All companies are like this now. All of them.
The only acceptable response is to cheer and amplify it. To do anything else risks you being labelled as a homophobe, and we all know what that means.
So, this absurd foghorning goes on - despite most people not really caring and being somewhat fed up with it all.
That’s not my experience at double digit organisations across both engineering and law. You can delete DEI emails. You can refuse to put pronouns in email signatures. You don’t have to attend pride events. Nobody cares. It’s all in your head.
I do all of those things and nobody thinks I am a homophobe because, well, I’m not.
No, it's not all in my head - this is simple denialism by you.
It's on every call I go to, and I have to listen to it all.
You said upthread you loved this stuff, and now you say you don't do any of it.
Which one is it?
Where I've worked there's emails to 'Pride' events . . . and emails inviting to football games, basketball games, chess clubs, book clubs, craft clubs, and plenty of other things.
The general thing with social emails is to pick the ones you're interested in and ignore the rest.
So what if some people in your work want to do Pride activities? How is that affecting you whatsoever? If others are playing 5-a-side is that affecting you? Don't hear you moaning about that, but I imagine that's happening too?
If Pride is the only social stuff being organised, then it sounds like a pretty crappy place to work, but if its one amongst many, then why have a bee in your bonnet about what others choose to do?
You really don't get this, do you?
You have to be seen to champion, echo and be enthusiastic about this stuff, from a career perspective, or else you are suspect. It's a required belief. There is no choice.
This is the entire problem with Wokery. Which people like you and @Gallowgate cannot understand.
[PS. I don't have people talking to me about 5-a-side on every call for every day for a full month every year, and requiring me to applaud it or I'm seen as bigot. It's not remotely comparable.]
Why don't you resign? I've got friends who feel like this about Gaza and have turned down good jobs at arms companies as a result.
EVERY SINGLE COMPANY IS LIKE THIS. You can't escape.
The solution is political: either Woke is reined in, or it ends.
For example: Pride could go back to being a fun weekend and a march, fine, but no that wasn't enough. Now, its all of June and July and August at 110dB every single year and rainbow lanyards and flags all year round. It bores people at best and p1sses people off at worst.
Why? Because people don't like to be hectored but it's politically incorrect - and dangerous - to object so people feel even more frustrated because they can't say anything.
If you're not proportionate on anything and set rules around the right thing to say, or not say, you get a backlash.
The religious adherents can never see it, because they love it.
Companies are free to take on whatever policies they see fit; you're free to take on whatever job you fancy.
You're right that the solution is political - but I don't think you'll find much support for banning woke activity in private companies across wider society.
I'm not entirely unsympathetic. I feel this way about our lack of cycle infrastructure. Write to your MP, put up posters, make the argument here and elsewhere. Explain why it harms your business and/or society. Good luck, I guess.
Companies are not free to take on whatever policies they see fit. They have to comply with all sorts of regulations on diversity and equality.
Like what? They have to not discriminate on protected characteristics, but I can’t think of much they have to comply with in terms of “regulations on diversity and equality”. Cite some legislation if this is true.
Don't you find the whole concept of "protected characteristics" ridiculous?
When taken alone, yes, ridiculous. But it is a clunky means to a end without which we would be a more horrible place - where you could employ 10,000 people and stipulate that they are all white, or destroy careers because women have babies, or refuse to employ them at all.
Drafting law is hard. Sometimes what you want to achieve is simple and obvious, until you try to draft laws that actually cover it. Try drafting the 'Compelling Reluctant People to Behave In A Civilized Manner Act 2025'.
Please define civillized, I am sure for example most of isis think they are civillised
Thanks for making my point. 'Civilized' will be defined in section 47 of Schedule 9 and will be further refined in the transitional provisions in Schedule 10. Schedule 14 will allow the Secretary of State following consultation with 47 named bodies to issue guidance as to how to interpret the definition, which shall not be binding.
Welcome to ways of modern statutes.
And politicians wonder why we despise them
'Despise' is quite a strong word. Do you really despise them? I sometimes find myself disappointed, annoyed, exasperated, etc. But despise - no.
Jimmy Saville - yes. That schoolteacher I remember who locked a pupil in a cupboard, forgot about them, then when they remembered opened the door and shouted so loudly in their ear and clapped them with a wooden ruler that they literally burst the pupils ear-drum - yes.
(The schoolteacher in question went on to become a Tory MP - but that's not what I despise them for)
I said despise and meant it, politicians of the last 5 decades or so have flushed most of the country down the drain and turned us into slaves in practice if not in name. In theory we can change jobs, for many though its either not an option as they can't do without the wage or in fact the only other employment they could get would be equally shitty.
But its that or be homeless
I think that we get the politicians we want rather than the politicians we need. For decades people have wanted higher living standards, higher property prices, more leisure all with less taxes and and less state spending on things that don't benefit them. As soon as a politician sticks their head above the parapet to try and change things they get shot down. See Theresa May over care and Starmer over the Winter Fuel allowance. Perfectly understandable to despise politicians but ultimately it's the voters who put them there.
We won't get the politicians we need ever though because sadly too many are wedded to handouts must continue
People even here are always going on about x,y,z are underfunded. Its even more extreme if you go btl on the guardian.
Now simple question and I doubt anyone will answer it
If we fully funded everything the government currently does plus all the infrastructure repairs necessary what do you think that (~given we know from the truss debacle we can't massively expand borrowing)
a) the basic rate of income tax would have to be b) what do you think the higher rate would have to be c) what do you think the top rate would have to be
My estimates are
a) 60 b) 80 c) 90
Yet whenever I have suggested maybe we need to be looking at what the government actually does and cut some of it while fully funding what we actually still do its howls of protest
The value of the UK housing stock is £9 trillion. The value of UK equities is about £3 trillion.
A 1% wealth tax would raise £120 billion or about 4% of GDP. That should cover it.
No it wouldnt because reality shows us every country that has tried wealth taxes has failed to raise anywhere near that
Although the various Swiss cantons have successfully used them.
They work because the swiss don't have inheritance tax, plus their taxes dont raise anywhere near 120 billion even if you adjust for population
I don't think that's true. While there's no Federal inheritance tax, there are inheritance taxes at the Canton level (just like wealth taxes are at the Canton level).
Of courser, the Swiss government is able to levy lower taxes overall, not least because healthcare is essentially privatized.
That said, on OECD numbers, the Swiss pay an average of $23,500 in tax (CHF 21,500) per person. While in the UK, it's $18,000 on average. So, I don't think the second part of your assertion holds up either.
How much does swiss wealth tax raise
answer 7.329 million Swiss francs = 6.6 million pounds
divide by 8.9 million pop = 0.74157 multiply by 68 million = 50.426 million
now I may not be a maths genius but I suspect thats a little short of the 130 billion someone was claiming it would raise
Two things:
Firstly, (as I mentioned before) the wealth tax is principally levied at the canton level. So, for example, the Canton of Geneva raises about CHF1.8bn from theirs. So, I'm not sure why you are bring up a national wealth tax (that I wasn't previously aware of).
Secondly, you're fighting a strawman here. I'm not suggesting that a wealth tax could be any more than one of a variety of taxes levied by the government. Life (and government finances) are not about silver bullet solutions.
I am not fighting you so much as Barnesians idiocy thinking he can raise 130 billion a year from one despite no country even the swiss who are most successful at it not getting anywhere near it without consequences
Official guidance from NHS England. All shortlisting and interview panels must include a BME candidate. And if the BME candidate isn't appointed, the panel must write to the chairman of the organisation explaining itself.
Is there a lack of BME personnel in the NHS? Maybe at management level? But not generally, surely.
The system of international law/human rights either needs to be changed or it will be overturned entirely.
The legal/activist class across Europe are like the monks and priests of the Catholic Church in northern and Western Europe circa 1500. Parasitic, doctrinaire, vain, myopic and greedy. And you can feel the resentment building and building. A Reformation is coming to sweep them away and it might be violent
That's a great analogy.
But it goes wider. Full on Pride shite at work today with some events stretching into August. A queer quiz. A gay tapestry. Marches all over the place. A fans for trans social.
Who wants this shit?
I am totally ungay, but your workplace sounds like fun.
Did you realise the company was this "right on" when you joined?
All companies are like this now. All of them.
The only acceptable response is to cheer and amplify it. To do anything else risks you being labelled as a homophobe, and we all know what that means.
So, this absurd foghorning goes on - despite most people not really caring and being somewhat fed up with it all.
That’s not my experience at double digit organisations across both engineering and law. You can delete DEI emails. You can refuse to put pronouns in email signatures. You don’t have to attend pride events. Nobody cares. It’s all in your head.
I do all of those things and nobody thinks I am a homophobe because, well, I’m not.
No, it's not all in my head - this is simple denialism by you.
It's on every call I go to, and I have to listen to it all.
You said upthread you loved this stuff, and now you say you don't do any of it.
Which one is it?
Where I've worked there's emails to 'Pride' events . . . and emails inviting to football games, basketball games, chess clubs, book clubs, craft clubs, and plenty of other things.
The general thing with social emails is to pick the ones you're interested in and ignore the rest.
So what if some people in your work want to do Pride activities? How is that affecting you whatsoever? If others are playing 5-a-side is that affecting you? Don't hear you moaning about that, but I imagine that's happening too?
If Pride is the only social stuff being organised, then it sounds like a pretty crappy place to work, but if its one amongst many, then why have a bee in your bonnet about what others choose to do?
You really don't get this, do you?
You have to be seen to champion, echo and be enthusiastic about this stuff, from a career perspective, or else you are suspect. It's a required belief. There is no choice.
This is the entire problem with Wokery. Which people like you and @Gallowgate cannot understand.
[PS. I don't have people talking to me about 5-a-side on every call for every day for a full month every year, and requiring me to applaud it or I'm seen as bigot. It's not remotely comparable.]
Why don't you resign? I've got friends who feel like this about Gaza and have turned down good jobs at arms companies as a result.
EVERY SINGLE COMPANY IS LIKE THIS. You can't escape.
The solution is political: either Woke is reined in, or it ends.
For example: Pride could go back to being a fun weekend and a march, fine, but no that wasn't enough. Now, its all of June and July and August at 110dB every single year and rainbow lanyards and flags all year round. It bores people at best and p1sses people off at worst.
Why? Because people don't like to be hectored but it's politically incorrect - and dangerous - to object so people feel even more frustrated because they can't say anything.
If you're not proportionate on anything and set rules around the right thing to say, or not say, you get a backlash.
The religious adherents can never see it, because they love it.
Companies are free to take on whatever policies they see fit; you're free to take on whatever job you fancy.
You're right that the solution is political - but I don't think you'll find much support for banning woke activity in private companies across wider society.
I'm not entirely unsympathetic. I feel this way about our lack of cycle infrastructure. Write to your MP, put up posters, make the argument here and elsewhere. Explain why it harms your business and/or society. Good luck, I guess.
Companies are not free to take on whatever policies they see fit. They have to comply with all sorts of regulations on diversity and equality.
Like what? They have to not discriminate on protected characteristics, but I can’t think of much they have to comply with in terms of “regulations on diversity and equality”. Cite some legislation if this is true.
Don't you find the whole concept of "protected characteristics" ridiculous?
When taken alone, yes, ridiculous. But it is a clunky means to a end without which we would be a more horrible place - where you could employ 10,000 people and stipulate that they are all white, or destroy careers because women have babies, or refuse to employ them at all.
Drafting law is hard. Sometimes what you want to achieve is simple and obvious, until you try to draft laws that actually cover it. Try drafting the 'Compelling Reluctant People to Behave In A Civilized Manner Act 2025'.
Please define civillized, I am sure for example most of isis think they are civillised
Thanks for making my point. 'Civilized' will be defined in section 47 of Schedule 9 and will be further refined in the transitional provisions in Schedule 10. Schedule 14 will allow the Secretary of State following consultation with 47 named bodies to issue guidance as to how to interpret the definition, which shall not be binding.
Welcome to ways of modern statutes.
And politicians wonder why we despise them
'Despise' is quite a strong word. Do you really despise them? I sometimes find myself disappointed, annoyed, exasperated, etc. But despise - no.
Jimmy Saville - yes. That schoolteacher I remember who locked a pupil in a cupboard, forgot about them, then when they remembered opened the door and shouted so loudly in their ear and clapped them with a wooden ruler that they literally burst the pupils ear-drum - yes.
(The schoolteacher in question went on to become a Tory MP - but that's not what I despise them for)
I said despise and meant it, politicians of the last 5 decades or so have flushed most of the country down the drain and turned us into slaves in practice if not in name. In theory we can change jobs, for many though its either not an option as they can't do without the wage or in fact the only other employment they could get would be equally shitty.
But its that or be homeless
I think that we get the politicians we want rather than the politicians we need. For decades people have wanted higher living standards, higher property prices, more leisure all with less taxes and and less state spending on things that don't benefit them. As soon as a politician sticks their head above the parapet to try and change things they get shot down. See Theresa May over care and Starmer over the Winter Fuel allowance. Perfectly understandable to despise politicians but ultimately it's the voters who put them there.
We won't get the politicians we need ever though because sadly too many are wedded to handouts must continue
People even here are always going on about x,y,z are underfunded. Its even more extreme if you go btl on the guardian.
Now simple question and I doubt anyone will answer it
If we fully funded everything the government currently does plus all the infrastructure repairs necessary what do you think that (~given we know from the truss debacle we can't massively expand borrowing)
a) the basic rate of income tax would have to be b) what do you think the higher rate would have to be c) what do you think the top rate would have to be
My estimates are
a) 60 b) 80 c) 90
Yet whenever I have suggested maybe we need to be looking at what the government actually does and cut some of it while fully funding what we actually still do its howls of protest
The value of the UK housing stock is £9 trillion. The value of UK equities is about £3 trillion.
A 1% wealth tax would raise £120 billion or about 4% of GDP. That should cover it.
No it wouldnt because reality shows us every country that has tried wealth taxes has failed to raise anywhere near that
I don't get this leftie arsehole obsession with wealth taxes, its failed everywhere its been tried. It seems to have replaced the obession with socialism which also failed everywhere it was tried. Lefties doomed to failure
Isn’t Barnesian an LD so a centrist not a lefty ?
Wealth taxes seem to be the latest fad. People support the concept, by and large, as they don’t think they’d have to pay.
They’ve never worked before but that won’t stop people from advocating it.
Yes I'm an LD, and I'm willing to pay.
You can probably afford to, how many renters can afford paying it because the house they are renting is valued at 300k so they now owe another 3k on top of rent and bills
If they are renting, they don't own the house so it's not part of their wealth. Yes?
The system of international law/human rights either needs to be changed or it will be overturned entirely.
The legal/activist class across Europe are like the monks and priests of the Catholic Church in northern and Western Europe circa 1500. Parasitic, doctrinaire, vain, myopic and greedy. And you can feel the resentment building and building. A Reformation is coming to sweep them away and it might be violent
That's a great analogy.
But it goes wider. Full on Pride shite at work today with some events stretching into August. A queer quiz. A gay tapestry. Marches all over the place. A fans for trans social.
Who wants this shit?
I am totally ungay, but your workplace sounds like fun.
Did you realise the company was this "right on" when you joined?
All companies are like this now. All of them.
The only acceptable response is to cheer and amplify it. To do anything else risks you being labelled as a homophobe, and we all know what that means.
So, this absurd foghorning goes on - despite most people not really caring and being somewhat fed up with it all.
That’s not my experience at double digit organisations across both engineering and law. You can delete DEI emails. You can refuse to put pronouns in email signatures. You don’t have to attend pride events. Nobody cares. It’s all in your head.
I do all of those things and nobody thinks I am a homophobe because, well, I’m not.
No, it's not all in my head - this is simple denialism by you.
It's on every call I go to, and I have to listen to it all.
You said upthread you loved this stuff, and now you say you don't do any of it.
Which one is it?
Where I've worked there's emails to 'Pride' events . . . and emails inviting to football games, basketball games, chess clubs, book clubs, craft clubs, and plenty of other things.
The general thing with social emails is to pick the ones you're interested in and ignore the rest.
So what if some people in your work want to do Pride activities? How is that affecting you whatsoever? If others are playing 5-a-side is that affecting you? Don't hear you moaning about that, but I imagine that's happening too?
If Pride is the only social stuff being organised, then it sounds like a pretty crappy place to work, but if its one amongst many, then why have a bee in your bonnet about what others choose to do?
You really don't get this, do you?
You have to be seen to champion, echo and be enthusiastic about this stuff, from a career perspective, or else you are suspect. It's a required belief. There is no choice.
This is the entire problem with Wokery. Which people like you and @Gallowgate cannot understand.
[PS. I don't have people talking to me about 5-a-side on every call for every day for a full month every year, and requiring me to applaud it or I'm seen as bigot. It's not remotely comparable.]
Why don't you resign? I've got friends who feel like this about Gaza and have turned down good jobs at arms companies as a result.
EVERY SINGLE COMPANY IS LIKE THIS. You can't escape.
The solution is political: either Woke is reined in, or it ends.
For example: Pride could go back to being a fun weekend and a march, fine, but no that wasn't enough. Now, its all of June and July and August at 110dB every single year and rainbow lanyards and flags all year round. It bores people at best and p1sses people off at worst.
Why? Because people don't like to be hectored but it's politically incorrect - and dangerous - to object so people feel even more frustrated because they can't say anything.
If you're not proportionate on anything and set rules around the right thing to say, or not say, you get a backlash.
The religious adherents can never see it, because they love it.
Companies are free to take on whatever policies they see fit; you're free to take on whatever job you fancy.
You're right that the solution is political - but I don't think you'll find much support for banning woke activity in private companies across wider society.
I'm not entirely unsympathetic. I feel this way about our lack of cycle infrastructure. Write to your MP, put up posters, make the argument here and elsewhere. Explain why it harms your business and/or society. Good luck, I guess.
Companies are not free to take on whatever policies they see fit. They have to comply with all sorts of regulations on diversity and equality.
Like what? They have to not discriminate on protected characteristics, but I can’t think of much they have to comply with in terms of “regulations on diversity and equality”. Cite some legislation if this is true.
Don't you find the whole concept of "protected characteristics" ridiculous?
When taken alone, yes, ridiculous. But it is a clunky means to a end without which we would be a more horrible place - where you could employ 10,000 people and stipulate that they are all white, or destroy careers because women have babies, or refuse to employ them at all.
Drafting law is hard. Sometimes what you want to achieve is simple and obvious, until you try to draft laws that actually cover it. Try drafting the 'Compelling Reluctant People to Behave In A Civilized Manner Act 2025'.
Please define civillized, I am sure for example most of isis think they are civillised
Thanks for making my point. 'Civilized' will be defined in section 47 of Schedule 9 and will be further refined in the transitional provisions in Schedule 10. Schedule 14 will allow the Secretary of State following consultation with 47 named bodies to issue guidance as to how to interpret the definition, which shall not be binding.
Welcome to ways of modern statutes.
And politicians wonder why we despise them
'Despise' is quite a strong word. Do you really despise them? I sometimes find myself disappointed, annoyed, exasperated, etc. But despise - no.
Jimmy Saville - yes. That schoolteacher I remember who locked a pupil in a cupboard, forgot about them, then when they remembered opened the door and shouted so loudly in their ear and clapped them with a wooden ruler that they literally burst the pupils ear-drum - yes.
(The schoolteacher in question went on to become a Tory MP - but that's not what I despise them for)
I said despise and meant it, politicians of the last 5 decades or so have flushed most of the country down the drain and turned us into slaves in practice if not in name. In theory we can change jobs, for many though its either not an option as they can't do without the wage or in fact the only other employment they could get would be equally shitty.
But its that or be homeless
I think that we get the politicians we want rather than the politicians we need. For decades people have wanted higher living standards, higher property prices, more leisure all with less taxes and and less state spending on things that don't benefit them. As soon as a politician sticks their head above the parapet to try and change things they get shot down. See Theresa May over care and Starmer over the Winter Fuel allowance. Perfectly understandable to despise politicians but ultimately it's the voters who put them there.
We won't get the politicians we need ever though because sadly too many are wedded to handouts must continue
People even here are always going on about x,y,z are underfunded. Its even more extreme if you go btl on the guardian.
Now simple question and I doubt anyone will answer it
If we fully funded everything the government currently does plus all the infrastructure repairs necessary what do you think that (~given we know from the truss debacle we can't massively expand borrowing)
a) the basic rate of income tax would have to be b) what do you think the higher rate would have to be c) what do you think the top rate would have to be
My estimates are
a) 60 b) 80 c) 90
Yet whenever I have suggested maybe we need to be looking at what the government actually does and cut some of it while fully funding what we actually still do its howls of protest
The value of the UK housing stock is £9 trillion. The value of UK equities is about £3 trillion.
A 1% wealth tax would raise £120 billion or about 4% of GDP. That should cover it.
No it wouldnt because reality shows us every country that has tried wealth taxes has failed to raise anywhere near that
I don't get this leftie arsehole obsession with wealth taxes, its failed everywhere its been tried. It seems to have replaced the obession with socialism which also failed everywhere it was tried. Lefties doomed to failure
Isn’t Barnesian an LD so a centrist not a lefty ?
Wealth taxes seem to be the latest fad. People support the concept, by and large, as they don’t think they’d have to pay.
They’ve never worked before but that won’t stop people from advocating it.
Yes I'm an LD, and I'm willing to pay.
You can probably afford to, how many renters can afford paying it because the house they are renting is valued at 300k so they now owe another 3k on top of rent and bills
If they are renting, they don't own the house so it's not part of their wealth. Yes?
Gosh you are naive, you dont think landlords will be passing it straight on. I rent pretty much all my friends rent. Mortgage rate goes up we know our rent is going up. Wealth tax goes through we know its being added to the rent. No one becomes a landlord to make a loss on their property generally they are looking for about 5 to 10% over costs on the whole......a wealth tax on the house is just another cost so rent will go up. They will all do it and rentals its generally multiple people applying because they need a rood so a sellers market.
Congratulations your wealth tax just hit some of the poorest with the added benefit that more will be spent on housing benefit because lha is set at 30% of average rent
The system of international law/human rights either needs to be changed or it will be overturned entirely.
The legal/activist class across Europe are like the monks and priests of the Catholic Church in northern and Western Europe circa 1500. Parasitic, doctrinaire, vain, myopic and greedy. And you can feel the resentment building and building. A Reformation is coming to sweep them away and it might be violent
That's a great analogy.
But it goes wider. Full on Pride shite at work today with some events stretching into August. A queer quiz. A gay tapestry. Marches all over the place. A fans for trans social.
Who wants this shit?
I am totally ungay, but your workplace sounds like fun.
Did you realise the company was this "right on" when you joined?
All companies are like this now. All of them.
The only acceptable response is to cheer and amplify it. To do anything else risks you being labelled as a homophobe, and we all know what that means.
So, this absurd foghorning goes on - despite most people not really caring and being somewhat fed up with it all.
That’s not my experience at double digit organisations across both engineering and law. You can delete DEI emails. You can refuse to put pronouns in email signatures. You don’t have to attend pride events. Nobody cares. It’s all in your head.
I do all of those things and nobody thinks I am a homophobe because, well, I’m not.
No, it's not all in my head - this is simple denialism by you.
It's on every call I go to, and I have to listen to it all.
You said upthread you loved this stuff, and now you say you don't do any of it.
Which one is it?
Where I've worked there's emails to 'Pride' events . . . and emails inviting to football games, basketball games, chess clubs, book clubs, craft clubs, and plenty of other things.
The general thing with social emails is to pick the ones you're interested in and ignore the rest.
So what if some people in your work want to do Pride activities? How is that affecting you whatsoever? If others are playing 5-a-side is that affecting you? Don't hear you moaning about that, but I imagine that's happening too?
If Pride is the only social stuff being organised, then it sounds like a pretty crappy place to work, but if its one amongst many, then why have a bee in your bonnet about what others choose to do?
You really don't get this, do you?
You have to be seen to champion, echo and be enthusiastic about this stuff, from a career perspective, or else you are suspect. It's a required belief. There is no choice.
This is the entire problem with Wokery. Which people like you and @Gallowgate cannot understand.
[PS. I don't have people talking to me about 5-a-side on every call for every day for a full month every year, and requiring me to applaud it or I'm seen as bigot. It's not remotely comparable.]
Why don't you resign? I've got friends who feel like this about Gaza and have turned down good jobs at arms companies as a result.
EVERY SINGLE COMPANY IS LIKE THIS. You can't escape.
The solution is political: either Woke is reined in, or it ends.
For example: Pride could go back to being a fun weekend and a march, fine, but no that wasn't enough. Now, its all of June and July and August at 110dB every single year and rainbow lanyards and flags all year round. It bores people at best and p1sses people off at worst.
Why? Because people don't like to be hectored but it's politically incorrect - and dangerous - to object so people feel even more frustrated because they can't say anything.
If you're not proportionate on anything and set rules around the right thing to say, or not say, you get a backlash.
The religious adherents can never see it, because they love it.
Companies are free to take on whatever policies they see fit; you're free to take on whatever job you fancy.
You're right that the solution is political - but I don't think you'll find much support for banning woke activity in private companies across wider society.
I'm not entirely unsympathetic. I feel this way about our lack of cycle infrastructure. Write to your MP, put up posters, make the argument here and elsewhere. Explain why it harms your business and/or society. Good luck, I guess.
Companies are not free to take on whatever policies they see fit. They have to comply with all sorts of regulations on diversity and equality.
Like what? They have to not discriminate on protected characteristics, but I can’t think of much they have to comply with in terms of “regulations on diversity and equality”. Cite some legislation if this is true.
Don't you find the whole concept of "protected characteristics" ridiculous?
When taken alone, yes, ridiculous. But it is a clunky means to a end without which we would be a more horrible place - where you could employ 10,000 people and stipulate that they are all white, or destroy careers because women have babies, or refuse to employ them at all.
Drafting law is hard. Sometimes what you want to achieve is simple and obvious, until you try to draft laws that actually cover it. Try drafting the 'Compelling Reluctant People to Behave In A Civilized Manner Act 2025'.
Please define civillized, I am sure for example most of isis think they are civillised
Thanks for making my point. 'Civilized' will be defined in section 47 of Schedule 9 and will be further refined in the transitional provisions in Schedule 10. Schedule 14 will allow the Secretary of State following consultation with 47 named bodies to issue guidance as to how to interpret the definition, which shall not be binding.
Welcome to ways of modern statutes.
And politicians wonder why we despise them
'Despise' is quite a strong word. Do you really despise them? I sometimes find myself disappointed, annoyed, exasperated, etc. But despise - no.
Jimmy Saville - yes. That schoolteacher I remember who locked a pupil in a cupboard, forgot about them, then when they remembered opened the door and shouted so loudly in their ear and clapped them with a wooden ruler that they literally burst the pupils ear-drum - yes.
(The schoolteacher in question went on to become a Tory MP - but that's not what I despise them for)
I said despise and meant it, politicians of the last 5 decades or so have flushed most of the country down the drain and turned us into slaves in practice if not in name. In theory we can change jobs, for many though its either not an option as they can't do without the wage or in fact the only other employment they could get would be equally shitty.
But its that or be homeless
I think that we get the politicians we want rather than the politicians we need. For decades people have wanted higher living standards, higher property prices, more leisure all with less taxes and and less state spending on things that don't benefit them. As soon as a politician sticks their head above the parapet to try and change things they get shot down. See Theresa May over care and Starmer over the Winter Fuel allowance. Perfectly understandable to despise politicians but ultimately it's the voters who put them there.
We won't get the politicians we need ever though because sadly too many are wedded to handouts must continue
People even here are always going on about x,y,z are underfunded. Its even more extreme if you go btl on the guardian.
Now simple question and I doubt anyone will answer it
If we fully funded everything the government currently does plus all the infrastructure repairs necessary what do you think that (~given we know from the truss debacle we can't massively expand borrowing)
a) the basic rate of income tax would have to be b) what do you think the higher rate would have to be c) what do you think the top rate would have to be
My estimates are
a) 60 b) 80 c) 90
Yet whenever I have suggested maybe we need to be looking at what the government actually does and cut some of it while fully funding what we actually still do its howls of protest
The value of the UK housing stock is £9 trillion. The value of UK equities is about £3 trillion.
A 1% wealth tax would raise £120 billion or about 4% of GDP. That should cover it.
Wealth taxes on equity don't work as stocks are mobile.
Land taxes on the other hand do work as land is not mobile. Land taxes are successfully levied in most countries, including America.
Official guidance from NHS England. All shortlisting and interview panels must include a BME candidate. And if the BME candidate isn't appointed, the panel must write to the chairman of the organisation explaining itself.
The tweet mentions "DEI is out of control" which, as an ordinary person, made me think 'nutter'. But I had a very quick skim of the NHS England recruitment documents and couldn't find a match.
Which surprised me. Almost by 0%.
Maybe William you can dig out the referring material from the official docs seeing as the tweet doesn't link to them?
The system of international law/human rights either needs to be changed or it will be overturned entirely.
The legal/activist class across Europe are like the monks and priests of the Catholic Church in northern and Western Europe circa 1500. Parasitic, doctrinaire, vain, myopic and greedy. And you can feel the resentment building and building. A Reformation is coming to sweep them away and it might be violent
That's a great analogy.
But it goes wider. Full on Pride shite at work today with some events stretching into August. A queer quiz. A gay tapestry. Marches all over the place. A fans for trans social.
Who wants this shit?
I am totally ungay, but your workplace sounds like fun.
Did you realise the company was this "right on" when you joined?
All companies are like this now. All of them.
The only acceptable response is to cheer and amplify it. To do anything else risks you being labelled as a homophobe, and we all know what that means.
So, this absurd foghorning goes on - despite most people not really caring and being somewhat fed up with it all.
That’s not my experience at double digit organisations across both engineering and law. You can delete DEI emails. You can refuse to put pronouns in email signatures. You don’t have to attend pride events. Nobody cares. It’s all in your head.
I do all of those things and nobody thinks I am a homophobe because, well, I’m not.
No, it's not all in my head - this is simple denialism by you.
It's on every call I go to, and I have to listen to it all.
You said upthread you loved this stuff, and now you say you don't do any of it.
Which one is it?
Where I've worked there's emails to 'Pride' events . . . and emails inviting to football games, basketball games, chess clubs, book clubs, craft clubs, and plenty of other things.
The general thing with social emails is to pick the ones you're interested in and ignore the rest.
So what if some people in your work want to do Pride activities? How is that affecting you whatsoever? If others are playing 5-a-side is that affecting you? Don't hear you moaning about that, but I imagine that's happening too?
If Pride is the only social stuff being organised, then it sounds like a pretty crappy place to work, but if its one amongst many, then why have a bee in your bonnet about what others choose to do?
You really don't get this, do you?
You have to be seen to champion, echo and be enthusiastic about this stuff, from a career perspective, or else you are suspect. It's a required belief. There is no choice.
This is the entire problem with Wokery. Which people like you and @Gallowgate cannot understand.
[PS. I don't have people talking to me about 5-a-side on every call for every day for a full month every year, and requiring me to applaud it or I'm seen as bigot. It's not remotely comparable.]
Why don't you resign? I've got friends who feel like this about Gaza and have turned down good jobs at arms companies as a result.
EVERY SINGLE COMPANY IS LIKE THIS. You can't escape.
The solution is political: either Woke is reined in, or it ends.
For example: Pride could go back to being a fun weekend and a march, fine, but no that wasn't enough. Now, its all of June and July and August at 110dB every single year and rainbow lanyards and flags all year round. It bores people at best and p1sses people off at worst.
Why? Because people don't like to be hectored but it's politically incorrect - and dangerous - to object so people feel even more frustrated because they can't say anything.
If you're not proportionate on anything and set rules around the right thing to say, or not say, you get a backlash.
The religious adherents can never see it, because they love it.
Companies are free to take on whatever policies they see fit; you're free to take on whatever job you fancy.
You're right that the solution is political - but I don't think you'll find much support for banning woke activity in private companies across wider society.
I'm not entirely unsympathetic. I feel this way about our lack of cycle infrastructure. Write to your MP, put up posters, make the argument here and elsewhere. Explain why it harms your business and/or society. Good luck, I guess.
Companies are not free to take on whatever policies they see fit. They have to comply with all sorts of regulations on diversity and equality.
Like what? They have to not discriminate on protected characteristics, but I can’t think of much they have to comply with in terms of “regulations on diversity and equality”. Cite some legislation if this is true.
Don't you find the whole concept of "protected characteristics" ridiculous?
When taken alone, yes, ridiculous. But it is a clunky means to a end without which we would be a more horrible place - where you could employ 10,000 people and stipulate that they are all white, or destroy careers because women have babies, or refuse to employ them at all.
Drafting law is hard. Sometimes what you want to achieve is simple and obvious, until you try to draft laws that actually cover it. Try drafting the 'Compelling Reluctant People to Behave In A Civilized Manner Act 2025'.
Please define civillized, I am sure for example most of isis think they are civillised
Thanks for making my point. 'Civilized' will be defined in section 47 of Schedule 9 and will be further refined in the transitional provisions in Schedule 10. Schedule 14 will allow the Secretary of State following consultation with 47 named bodies to issue guidance as to how to interpret the definition, which shall not be binding.
Welcome to ways of modern statutes.
And politicians wonder why we despise them
'Despise' is quite a strong word. Do you really despise them? I sometimes find myself disappointed, annoyed, exasperated, etc. But despise - no.
Jimmy Saville - yes. That schoolteacher I remember who locked a pupil in a cupboard, forgot about them, then when they remembered opened the door and shouted so loudly in their ear and clapped them with a wooden ruler that they literally burst the pupils ear-drum - yes.
(The schoolteacher in question went on to become a Tory MP - but that's not what I despise them for)
I said despise and meant it, politicians of the last 5 decades or so have flushed most of the country down the drain and turned us into slaves in practice if not in name. In theory we can change jobs, for many though its either not an option as they can't do without the wage or in fact the only other employment they could get would be equally shitty.
But its that or be homeless
I think that we get the politicians we want rather than the politicians we need. For decades people have wanted higher living standards, higher property prices, more leisure all with less taxes and and less state spending on things that don't benefit them. As soon as a politician sticks their head above the parapet to try and change things they get shot down. See Theresa May over care and Starmer over the Winter Fuel allowance. Perfectly understandable to despise politicians but ultimately it's the voters who put them there.
We won't get the politicians we need ever though because sadly too many are wedded to handouts must continue
People even here are always going on about x,y,z are underfunded. Its even more extreme if you go btl on the guardian.
Now simple question and I doubt anyone will answer it
If we fully funded everything the government currently does plus all the infrastructure repairs necessary what do you think that (~given we know from the truss debacle we can't massively expand borrowing)
a) the basic rate of income tax would have to be b) what do you think the higher rate would have to be c) what do you think the top rate would have to be
My estimates are
a) 60 b) 80 c) 90
Yet whenever I have suggested maybe we need to be looking at what the government actually does and cut some of it while fully funding what we actually still do its howls of protest
The value of the UK housing stock is £9 trillion. The value of UK equities is about £3 trillion.
A 1% wealth tax would raise £120 billion or about 4% of GDP. That should cover it.
Wealth taxes on equity don't work as stocks are mobile.
Land taxes on the other hand do work as land is not mobile. Land taxes are successfully levied in most countries, including America.
They do if levied on FTSE stocks.
Not everyone who owns land is income rich either
And how long will these stocks remain listed on the FTSE and not NYSE?
Official guidance from NHS England. All shortlisting and interview panels must include a BME candidate. And if the BME candidate isn't appointed, the panel must write to the chairman of the organisation explaining itself.
The tweet mentions "DEI is out of control" which, as an ordinary person, made me think 'nutter'. But I had a very quick skim of the NHS England recruitment documents and couldn't find a match.
Which surprised me. Almost by 0%.
Maybe William you can dig out the referring material from the official docs seeing as the tweet doesn't link to them?
Does anyone have any gen on how our Reform Councils are doing?
When I least heard hit-the-ground-running Kent and Notts have cancelled/postponed all of the first month's committee meetings, except perhaps one in Kent.
They all seem to be deprioritising supervision of flood defences, rolling the committees into "Environment". Is it too woke (whatever woke means today?) Good luck with that one in Lincs when it floods.
Reform councils will end up getting sued for several times more than they manage to save in all likelihood
But when that happens (and it probably will), there will be lots of Reformy snowflakery, and claims that suing Reform will just plays into their hands. And at some level "Reform could have saved you so much if it weren't for EVUL LEFTY LAWYERS" is a useful story for Nige.
why do we have to copy america like this? British DOGE. It's pathetic. It's clear US DOGE is a disaster and allegedly unlawful in various actions.
It is clear to us on PB that DOGE has been a disaster. That is at odds with what DOGE claims - which is that it has saved $180bn dollars.
We are asked to believe that DOGE has utterly failed to save a penny, EXCEPT in the cutting off of US Aid to the starving kiddies, where it has quickly and efficiently set about killing the innocents of the Third World. That dichotomy of outcomes is in itself somewhat suspicious.
As always, the truth is probably somewhere in between.
Compared to the massive increases in the budget that Elon is now complaining about - the savings are miniscule..
That may be true, but I wasn't defending the budget bill, just offering an alternative perspective on the success or otherwise of the DOGE project.
Oh I wasn't comment on DOGE because I don't know enough to say if it's a success or a failure.
I suspect it's a complete failure when it came to saving money but it's probably been great in collecting data that could be weaponised later.
If Musk is even 1/10th as clever as he thinks, he'll have spent a considerable amount of the DOGE budget gather info on Trump's tax and finances.
Outrageous Apple outrage - my 9 months old iPad Pro won't turn on. Have tried the various reboot guides including plugging it into a working device and entering DFU mode - which cannot complete.
Apple hardware? Not working? Outrageous. A trip to see the Geniuses beckons...
Computer products tend to start going wrong after this period of time.
The system of international law/human rights either needs to be changed or it will be overturned entirely.
The legal/activist class across Europe are like the monks and priests of the Catholic Church in northern and Western Europe circa 1500. Parasitic, doctrinaire, vain, myopic and greedy. And you can feel the resentment building and building. A Reformation is coming to sweep them away and it might be violent
That's a great analogy.
But it goes wider. Full on Pride shite at work today with some events stretching into August. A queer quiz. A gay tapestry. Marches all over the place. A fans for trans social.
Who wants this shit?
I am totally ungay, but your workplace sounds like fun.
Did you realise the company was this "right on" when you joined?
All companies are like this now. All of them.
The only acceptable response is to cheer and amplify it. To do anything else risks you being labelled as a homophobe, and we all know what that means.
So, this absurd foghorning goes on - despite most people not really caring and being somewhat fed up with it all.
That’s not my experience at double digit organisations across both engineering and law. You can delete DEI emails. You can refuse to put pronouns in email signatures. You don’t have to attend pride events. Nobody cares. It’s all in your head.
I do all of those things and nobody thinks I am a homophobe because, well, I’m not.
No, it's not all in my head - this is simple denialism by you.
It's on every call I go to, and I have to listen to it all.
You said upthread you loved this stuff, and now you say you don't do any of it.
Which one is it?
Where I've worked there's emails to 'Pride' events . . . and emails inviting to football games, basketball games, chess clubs, book clubs, craft clubs, and plenty of other things.
The general thing with social emails is to pick the ones you're interested in and ignore the rest.
So what if some people in your work want to do Pride activities? How is that affecting you whatsoever? If others are playing 5-a-side is that affecting you? Don't hear you moaning about that, but I imagine that's happening too?
If Pride is the only social stuff being organised, then it sounds like a pretty crappy place to work, but if its one amongst many, then why have a bee in your bonnet about what others choose to do?
You really don't get this, do you?
You have to be seen to champion, echo and be enthusiastic about this stuff, from a career perspective, or else you are suspect. It's a required belief. There is no choice.
This is the entire problem with Wokery. Which people like you and @Gallowgate cannot understand.
[PS. I don't have people talking to me about 5-a-side on every call for every day for a full month every year, and requiring me to applaud it or I'm seen as bigot. It's not remotely comparable.]
Why don't you resign? I've got friends who feel like this about Gaza and have turned down good jobs at arms companies as a result.
EVERY SINGLE COMPANY IS LIKE THIS. You can't escape.
The solution is political: either Woke is reined in, or it ends.
For example: Pride could go back to being a fun weekend and a march, fine, but no that wasn't enough. Now, its all of June and July and August at 110dB every single year and rainbow lanyards and flags all year round. It bores people at best and p1sses people off at worst.
Why? Because people don't like to be hectored but it's politically incorrect - and dangerous - to object so people feel even more frustrated because they can't say anything.
If you're not proportionate on anything and set rules around the right thing to say, or not say, you get a backlash.
The religious adherents can never see it, because they love it.
Companies are free to take on whatever policies they see fit; you're free to take on whatever job you fancy.
You're right that the solution is political - but I don't think you'll find much support for banning woke activity in private companies across wider society.
I'm not entirely unsympathetic. I feel this way about our lack of cycle infrastructure. Write to your MP, put up posters, make the argument here and elsewhere. Explain why it harms your business and/or society. Good luck, I guess.
Companies are not free to take on whatever policies they see fit. They have to comply with all sorts of regulations on diversity and equality.
Like what? They have to not discriminate on protected characteristics, but I can’t think of much they have to comply with in terms of “regulations on diversity and equality”. Cite some legislation if this is true.
Don't you find the whole concept of "protected characteristics" ridiculous?
When taken alone, yes, ridiculous. But it is a clunky means to a end without which we would be a more horrible place - where you could employ 10,000 people and stipulate that they are all white, or destroy careers because women have babies, or refuse to employ them at all.
Drafting law is hard. Sometimes what you want to achieve is simple and obvious, until you try to draft laws that actually cover it. Try drafting the 'Compelling Reluctant People to Behave In A Civilized Manner Act 2025'.
Please define civillized, I am sure for example most of isis think they are civillised
Thanks for making my point. 'Civilized' will be defined in section 47 of Schedule 9 and will be further refined in the transitional provisions in Schedule 10. Schedule 14 will allow the Secretary of State following consultation with 47 named bodies to issue guidance as to how to interpret the definition, which shall not be binding.
Welcome to ways of modern statutes.
And politicians wonder why we despise them
'Despise' is quite a strong word. Do you really despise them? I sometimes find myself disappointed, annoyed, exasperated, etc. But despise - no.
Jimmy Saville - yes. That schoolteacher I remember who locked a pupil in a cupboard, forgot about them, then when they remembered opened the door and shouted so loudly in their ear and clapped them with a wooden ruler that they literally burst the pupils ear-drum - yes.
(The schoolteacher in question went on to become a Tory MP - but that's not what I despise them for)
I said despise and meant it, politicians of the last 5 decades or so have flushed most of the country down the drain and turned us into slaves in practice if not in name. In theory we can change jobs, for many though its either not an option as they can't do without the wage or in fact the only other employment they could get would be equally shitty.
But its that or be homeless
I think that we get the politicians we want rather than the politicians we need. For decades people have wanted higher living standards, higher property prices, more leisure all with less taxes and and less state spending on things that don't benefit them. As soon as a politician sticks their head above the parapet to try and change things they get shot down. See Theresa May over care and Starmer over the Winter Fuel allowance. Perfectly understandable to despise politicians but ultimately it's the voters who put them there.
We won't get the politicians we need ever though because sadly too many are wedded to handouts must continue
People even here are always going on about x,y,z are underfunded. Its even more extreme if you go btl on the guardian.
Now simple question and I doubt anyone will answer it
If we fully funded everything the government currently does plus all the infrastructure repairs necessary what do you think that (~given we know from the truss debacle we can't massively expand borrowing)
a) the basic rate of income tax would have to be b) what do you think the higher rate would have to be c) what do you think the top rate would have to be
My estimates are
a) 60 b) 80 c) 90
Yet whenever I have suggested maybe we need to be looking at what the government actually does and cut some of it while fully funding what we actually still do its howls of protest
The value of the UK housing stock is £9 trillion. The value of UK equities is about £3 trillion.
A 1% wealth tax would raise £120 billion or about 4% of GDP. That should cover it.
No it wouldnt because reality shows us every country that has tried wealth taxes has failed to raise anywhere near that
I don't get this leftie arsehole obsession with wealth taxes, its failed everywhere its been tried. It seems to have replaced the obession with socialism which also failed everywhere it was tried. Lefties doomed to failure
Isn’t Barnesian an LD so a centrist not a lefty ?
Wealth taxes seem to be the latest fad. People support the concept, by and large, as they don’t think they’d have to pay.
They’ve never worked before but that won’t stop people from advocating it.
Yes I'm an LD, and I'm willing to pay.
You can probably afford to, how many renters can afford paying it because the house they are renting is valued at 300k so they now owe another 3k on top of rent and bills
If they are renting, they don't own the house so it's not part of their wealth. Yes?
Gosh you are naive, you dont think landlords will be passing it straight on. I rent pretty much all my friends rent. Mortgage rate goes up we know our rent is going up. Wealth tax goes through we know its being added to the rent. No one becomes a landlord to make a loss on their property generally they are looking for about 5 to 10% over costs on the whole......a wealth tax on the house is just another cost so rent will go up. They will all do it and rentals its generally multiple people applying because they need a rood so a sellers market.
Congratulations your wealth tax just hit some of the poorest with the added benefit that more will be spent on housing benefit because lha is set at 30% of average rent
At the margin, a wealth tax (which would probably end up being levied principally on property) - while giving @HYUFD an aneurism - would almost certainly be mildly positive.
If government must raise taxes - and all the evidence is that they will do so - then it makes sense for taxes to encourage the efficient allocation of resources.
So, a (say) 1% wealth tax discourages people from owning unproductive assets. If it's not generating a return to pay its tax, then why own it? The impact would be small, I suspect, but it makes more sense to tax something we want less of (i.e. unproductive allocation of capital), than something we want more of (i.e. work).
Got a feeling I'm going to enjoy this week's issue:
Why exactly? Is it really that difficult to leave the gays to celebrate their own thing and get on with your own life. If it's because of all of the corporate posturing on social media i agree with that but I can tell you that I and no other gay person I know asked for that.
I've not been to a Pride event for at least 40 years. I've nothing against them but I know of no gay friends who'd dream of going . I don't believe they reflect the reality of life for most gay people.
I think I said this yesterday but of my gay friends the ones who are most attached to Pride are the slightly older ones for whom it is still intensely liberating to be out and proud amongst crowds who celebrate that fact. It means more if you've spent a lot of your adult life having to downplay your sexuality for fear of abuse.
I get that: I think those of us born the right side of (around) 1970 have a very different attitude to those born in 1950. (Of course that bunch won the property lottery, so I'm not that sympathetic.)
Gay people are like the population at large. The vast majority don't go on marches. They never have done. They don't have special attitudes. They get on with life just like everyone else.
Gay people are not like the population at large....they have better dress sense mostly
Official guidance from NHS England. All shortlisting and interview panels must include a BME candidate. And if the BME candidate isn't appointed, the panel must write to the chairman of the organisation explaining itself.
The tweet mentions "DEI is out of control" which, as an ordinary person, made me think 'nutter'. But I had a very quick skim of the NHS England recruitment documents and couldn't find a match.
Which surprised me. Almost by 0%.
Maybe William you can dig out the referring material from the official docs seeing as the tweet doesn't link to them?
Ah! I didn't think to go back to a previous decade! Silly me. I was looking at their current documents.
So the foreword from yesteryear says :
"The NHS workforce as a whole is now more diverse than at any time in its 70 year history, yet at the most senior levels, the leadership of organisations do not reflect the workforce.
...
We encourage all NHS staff to read this strategy and reflect on what they will do to help deliver on its ambitious objectives, and look forward to seeing continuous improvements on this important agenda over the coming period."
Is that 'DEI' gone mad? "Vaguely consider if your leadership team should reflect the people on the ground, at some point".
Maybe it is. I'm losing touch with what 'DEI gone mad' means. "Our employees are 30% white working class, but only 0.1% of our C-level suite is white working class - FAIL"? Or gender? Or.... is there .... some other criteria you are het up about?
'Finally, if Keir Starmer were a fictional character from a book, film or TV show, which fictional character would he be? “Mr Ben. Every time he comes out, he’s a different person and says different things;” “The one in Bridget Jones’s Diary that isn’t Mr Darcy. The one Hugh Grant plays, Daniel. He’s always saying slimy stuff and doing the complete opposite;” “Captain Underpants. He looks the part, he’s like the big bravado superhero, but he’s not doing a lot about anything;” “Billy Mitchell from Eastenders. Sort of an outside character but in a big family. He’s easily influenced and quite easy to manipulate;” “The guy from The 40Year-Old Virgin at the start – sort of nondescript, goes about his life, doesn’t really do anything;” “Pinocchio;” “Mr Tumble;” “Dobby the House Elf from Harry Potter;” “Gollum from Lord of the Rings. All he cares about is the ring – money and power.”
What about Kemi Badenoch? “She’s quite mysterious. We don’t know enough about her. Mystique from X-Men;” “Aunt Sally from Worzel Gummidge, complaining about everything;” “She’s sort of invisible. Harry Potter under a cloak. Or Casper.”
And Nigel Farage? “He’s like a sketch from Little Britain;” “Dr Evil from Austin Powers;” “Lord Voldemort;” “Slugworth from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The guy who comes up and whispers in people’s ears and generally turns up when things go bad;” “Neville Longbottom from Harry Potter. The underdog that’s coming up to try and fix everything;” “The Wizard of Oz. The illusion. He does that fearmongering, but when they actually meet him there’s nothing to him;” “The Cybermen from Doctor Who. They want everyone to be like them, don’t they?”'
The system of international law/human rights either needs to be changed or it will be overturned entirely.
The legal/activist class across Europe are like the monks and priests of the Catholic Church in northern and Western Europe circa 1500. Parasitic, doctrinaire, vain, myopic and greedy. And you can feel the resentment building and building. A Reformation is coming to sweep them away and it might be violent
That's a great analogy.
But it goes wider. Full on Pride shite at work today with some events stretching into August. A queer quiz. A gay tapestry. Marches all over the place. A fans for trans social.
Who wants this shit?
I am totally ungay, but your workplace sounds like fun.
Did you realise the company was this "right on" when you joined?
All companies are like this now. All of them.
The only acceptable response is to cheer and amplify it. To do anything else risks you being labelled as a homophobe, and we all know what that means.
So, this absurd foghorning goes on - despite most people not really caring and being somewhat fed up with it all.
That’s not my experience at double digit organisations across both engineering and law. You can delete DEI emails. You can refuse to put pronouns in email signatures. You don’t have to attend pride events. Nobody cares. It’s all in your head.
I do all of those things and nobody thinks I am a homophobe because, well, I’m not.
No, it's not all in my head - this is simple denialism by you.
It's on every call I go to, and I have to listen to it all.
You said upthread you loved this stuff, and now you say you don't do any of it.
Which one is it?
Where I've worked there's emails to 'Pride' events . . . and emails inviting to football games, basketball games, chess clubs, book clubs, craft clubs, and plenty of other things.
The general thing with social emails is to pick the ones you're interested in and ignore the rest.
So what if some people in your work want to do Pride activities? How is that affecting you whatsoever? If others are playing 5-a-side is that affecting you? Don't hear you moaning about that, but I imagine that's happening too?
If Pride is the only social stuff being organised, then it sounds like a pretty crappy place to work, but if its one amongst many, then why have a bee in your bonnet about what others choose to do?
You really don't get this, do you?
You have to be seen to champion, echo and be enthusiastic about this stuff, from a career perspective, or else you are suspect. It's a required belief. There is no choice.
This is the entire problem with Wokery. Which people like you and @Gallowgate cannot understand.
[PS. I don't have people talking to me about 5-a-side on every call for every day for a full month every year, and requiring me to applaud it or I'm seen as bigot. It's not remotely comparable.]
Why don't you resign? I've got friends who feel like this about Gaza and have turned down good jobs at arms companies as a result.
EVERY SINGLE COMPANY IS LIKE THIS. You can't escape.
The solution is political: either Woke is reined in, or it ends.
For example: Pride could go back to being a fun weekend and a march, fine, but no that wasn't enough. Now, its all of June and July and August at 110dB every single year and rainbow lanyards and flags all year round. It bores people at best and p1sses people off at worst.
Why? Because people don't like to be hectored but it's politically incorrect - and dangerous - to object so people feel even more frustrated because they can't say anything.
If you're not proportionate on anything and set rules around the right thing to say, or not say, you get a backlash.
The religious adherents can never see it, because they love it.
Companies are free to take on whatever policies they see fit; you're free to take on whatever job you fancy.
You're right that the solution is political - but I don't think you'll find much support for banning woke activity in private companies across wider society.
I'm not entirely unsympathetic. I feel this way about our lack of cycle infrastructure. Write to your MP, put up posters, make the argument here and elsewhere. Explain why it harms your business and/or society. Good luck, I guess.
Companies are not free to take on whatever policies they see fit. They have to comply with all sorts of regulations on diversity and equality.
Like what? They have to not discriminate on protected characteristics, but I can’t think of much they have to comply with in terms of “regulations on diversity and equality”. Cite some legislation if this is true.
Don't you find the whole concept of "protected characteristics" ridiculous?
When taken alone, yes, ridiculous. But it is a clunky means to a end without which we would be a more horrible place - where you could employ 10,000 people and stipulate that they are all white, or destroy careers because women have babies, or refuse to employ them at all.
Drafting law is hard. Sometimes what you want to achieve is simple and obvious, until you try to draft laws that actually cover it. Try drafting the 'Compelling Reluctant People to Behave In A Civilized Manner Act 2025'.
Please define civillized, I am sure for example most of isis think they are civillised
Thanks for making my point. 'Civilized' will be defined in section 47 of Schedule 9 and will be further refined in the transitional provisions in Schedule 10. Schedule 14 will allow the Secretary of State following consultation with 47 named bodies to issue guidance as to how to interpret the definition, which shall not be binding.
Welcome to ways of modern statutes.
And politicians wonder why we despise them
'Despise' is quite a strong word. Do you really despise them? I sometimes find myself disappointed, annoyed, exasperated, etc. But despise - no.
Jimmy Saville - yes. That schoolteacher I remember who locked a pupil in a cupboard, forgot about them, then when they remembered opened the door and shouted so loudly in their ear and clapped them with a wooden ruler that they literally burst the pupils ear-drum - yes.
(The schoolteacher in question went on to become a Tory MP - but that's not what I despise them for)
I said despise and meant it, politicians of the last 5 decades or so have flushed most of the country down the drain and turned us into slaves in practice if not in name. In theory we can change jobs, for many though its either not an option as they can't do without the wage or in fact the only other employment they could get would be equally shitty.
But its that or be homeless
I think that we get the politicians we want rather than the politicians we need. For decades people have wanted higher living standards, higher property prices, more leisure all with less taxes and and less state spending on things that don't benefit them. As soon as a politician sticks their head above the parapet to try and change things they get shot down. See Theresa May over care and Starmer over the Winter Fuel allowance. Perfectly understandable to despise politicians but ultimately it's the voters who put them there.
We won't get the politicians we need ever though because sadly too many are wedded to handouts must continue
People even here are always going on about x,y,z are underfunded. Its even more extreme if you go btl on the guardian.
Now simple question and I doubt anyone will answer it
If we fully funded everything the government currently does plus all the infrastructure repairs necessary what do you think that (~given we know from the truss debacle we can't massively expand borrowing)
a) the basic rate of income tax would have to be b) what do you think the higher rate would have to be c) what do you think the top rate would have to be
My estimates are
a) 60 b) 80 c) 90
Yet whenever I have suggested maybe we need to be looking at what the government actually does and cut some of it while fully funding what we actually still do its howls of protest
The value of the UK housing stock is £9 trillion. The value of UK equities is about £3 trillion.
A 1% wealth tax would raise £120 billion or about 4% of GDP. That should cover it.
No it wouldnt because reality shows us every country that has tried wealth taxes has failed to raise anywhere near that
I don't get this leftie arsehole obsession with wealth taxes, its failed everywhere its been tried. It seems to have replaced the obession with socialism which also failed everywhere it was tried. Lefties doomed to failure
Isn’t Barnesian an LD so a centrist not a lefty ?
Wealth taxes seem to be the latest fad. People support the concept, by and large, as they don’t think they’d have to pay.
They’ve never worked before but that won’t stop people from advocating it.
Yes I'm an LD, and I'm willing to pay.
You can probably afford to, how many renters can afford paying it because the house they are renting is valued at 300k so they now owe another 3k on top of rent and bills
If they are renting, they don't own the house so it's not part of their wealth. Yes?
Gosh you are naive, you dont think landlords will be passing it straight on. I rent pretty much all my friends rent. Mortgage rate goes up we know our rent is going up. Wealth tax goes through we know its being added to the rent. No one becomes a landlord to make a loss on their property generally they are looking for about 5 to 10% over costs on the whole......a wealth tax on the house is just another cost so rent will go up. They will all do it and rentals its generally multiple people applying because they need a rood so a sellers market.
Congratulations your wealth tax just hit some of the poorest with the added benefit that more will be spent on housing benefit because lha is set at 30% of average rent
At the margin, a wealth tax levied principally on property - while giving @HYUFD an aneurism - would almost certainly be mildly positive.
If government must raise taxes - and all the evidence is that they will do so - then it makes sense for taxes to encourage the efficient allocation of resources.
So, a (say) 1% wealth tax discourages people from owning unproductive assets. If it's not generating a return to pay its tax, then why own it? The impact would be small, I suspect, but it makes more sense to tax something we want less of (i.e. unproductive allocation of capital), than something we want more of (i.e. work).
While I understand your point and would agree if it was an unproductive asset that wasn't putting a roof over people and thats the issue. People need a roof even if you think of it as an unproductive asset.
So lets examine a couple of things here
a 300k house so 3k a year tax on it, you can get 1000 per month rent on it and the mortgage is say 900 a month
So the landlord is getting 12k a year...the mortgage is 10800 profit 1200 a year
You add 3k costs on it is unlikely he is going to accept instead losing 1800 a year so he will raise the rent or he will divest his unproductive asset
If he divests who is going to buy it to rent at a loss
end result is the renter is going to pay more whether their original landlord keeps it or sells it
Same house however home owners bought it 5years ago suddenly their monthly payments have gone basically from 850 to 1200 due to a wealth tax. They were just about managing the 850 because they bought when interest rates when they bought were 1 to 2% and now a lot higher than they expected
They can sell their "unproductive asset" but then they need to rent somewhere and will likely be paying as much anyway
Houses I agree are not productive assets, however they are also not purely assets. Shelter is a necessity of life as well.
Official guidance from NHS England. All shortlisting and interview panels must include a BME candidate. And if the BME candidate isn't appointed, the panel must write to the chairman of the organisation explaining itself.
The tweet mentions "DEI is out of control" which, as an ordinary person, made me think 'nutter'. But I had a very quick skim of the NHS England recruitment documents and couldn't find a match.
Which surprised me. Almost by 0%.
Maybe William you can dig out the referring material from the official docs seeing as the tweet doesn't link to them?
Ah! I didn't think to go back to a previous decade! Silly me. I was looking at their current documents.
So the foreword from yesteryear says :
"The NHS workforce as a whole is now more diverse than at any time in its 70 year history, yet at the most senior levels, the leadership of organisations do not reflect the workforce.
...
We encourage all NHS staff to read this strategy and reflect on what they will do to help deliver on its ambitious objectives, and look forward to seeing continuous improvements on this important agenda over the coming period."
Is that 'DEI' gone mad? "Vaguely consider if your leadership team should reflect the people on the ground, at some point".
Maybe it is. I'm losing touch with what 'DEI gone mad' means. "Our employees are 30% white working class, but only 0.1% of our C-level suite is white working class - FAIL"? Or gender? Or.... is there .... some other criteria you are het up about?
Worrying about representation in any way shape or form is DEI gone mad.
"White British people will be a minority in 40 years, report claims Shifting ethnic dynamic of the UK driven by immigration predicted to cause dramatic changes
The system of international law/human rights either needs to be changed or it will be overturned entirely.
The legal/activist class across Europe are like the monks and priests of the Catholic Church in northern and Western Europe circa 1500. Parasitic, doctrinaire, vain, myopic and greedy. And you can feel the resentment building and building. A Reformation is coming to sweep them away and it might be violent
That's a great analogy.
But it goes wider. Full on Pride shite at work today with some events stretching into August. A queer quiz. A gay tapestry. Marches all over the place. A fans for trans social.
Who wants this shit?
I am totally ungay, but your workplace sounds like fun.
Did you realise the company was this "right on" when you joined?
All companies are like this now. All of them.
The only acceptable response is to cheer and amplify it. To do anything else risks you being labelled as a homophobe, and we all know what that means.
So, this absurd foghorning goes on - despite most people not really caring and being somewhat fed up with it all.
That’s not my experience at double digit organisations across both engineering and law. You can delete DEI emails. You can refuse to put pronouns in email signatures. You don’t have to attend pride events. Nobody cares. It’s all in your head.
I do all of those things and nobody thinks I am a homophobe because, well, I’m not.
No, it's not all in my head - this is simple denialism by you.
It's on every call I go to, and I have to listen to it all.
You said upthread you loved this stuff, and now you say you don't do any of it.
Which one is it?
Where I've worked there's emails to 'Pride' events . . . and emails inviting to football games, basketball games, chess clubs, book clubs, craft clubs, and plenty of other things.
The general thing with social emails is to pick the ones you're interested in and ignore the rest.
So what if some people in your work want to do Pride activities? How is that affecting you whatsoever? If others are playing 5-a-side is that affecting you? Don't hear you moaning about that, but I imagine that's happening too?
If Pride is the only social stuff being organised, then it sounds like a pretty crappy place to work, but if its one amongst many, then why have a bee in your bonnet about what others choose to do?
You really don't get this, do you?
You have to be seen to champion, echo and be enthusiastic about this stuff, from a career perspective, or else you are suspect. It's a required belief. There is no choice.
This is the entire problem with Wokery. Which people like you and @Gallowgate cannot understand.
[PS. I don't have people talking to me about 5-a-side on every call for every day for a full month every year, and requiring me to applaud it or I'm seen as bigot. It's not remotely comparable.]
Why don't you resign? I've got friends who feel like this about Gaza and have turned down good jobs at arms companies as a result.
EVERY SINGLE COMPANY IS LIKE THIS. You can't escape.
The solution is political: either Woke is reined in, or it ends.
For example: Pride could go back to being a fun weekend and a march, fine, but no that wasn't enough. Now, its all of June and July and August at 110dB every single year and rainbow lanyards and flags all year round. It bores people at best and p1sses people off at worst.
Why? Because people don't like to be hectored but it's politically incorrect - and dangerous - to object so people feel even more frustrated because they can't say anything.
If you're not proportionate on anything and set rules around the right thing to say, or not say, you get a backlash.
The religious adherents can never see it, because they love it.
Companies are free to take on whatever policies they see fit; you're free to take on whatever job you fancy.
You're right that the solution is political - but I don't think you'll find much support for banning woke activity in private companies across wider society.
I'm not entirely unsympathetic. I feel this way about our lack of cycle infrastructure. Write to your MP, put up posters, make the argument here and elsewhere. Explain why it harms your business and/or society. Good luck, I guess.
Companies are not free to take on whatever policies they see fit. They have to comply with all sorts of regulations on diversity and equality.
Like what? They have to not discriminate on protected characteristics, but I can’t think of much they have to comply with in terms of “regulations on diversity and equality”. Cite some legislation if this is true.
Don't you find the whole concept of "protected characteristics" ridiculous?
When taken alone, yes, ridiculous. But it is a clunky means to a end without which we would be a more horrible place - where you could employ 10,000 people and stipulate that they are all white, or destroy careers because women have babies, or refuse to employ them at all.
Drafting law is hard. Sometimes what you want to achieve is simple and obvious, until you try to draft laws that actually cover it. Try drafting the 'Compelling Reluctant People to Behave In A Civilized Manner Act 2025'.
Please define civillized, I am sure for example most of isis think they are civillised
Thanks for making my point. 'Civilized' will be defined in section 47 of Schedule 9 and will be further refined in the transitional provisions in Schedule 10. Schedule 14 will allow the Secretary of State following consultation with 47 named bodies to issue guidance as to how to interpret the definition, which shall not be binding.
Welcome to ways of modern statutes.
And politicians wonder why we despise them
'Despise' is quite a strong word. Do you really despise them? I sometimes find myself disappointed, annoyed, exasperated, etc. But despise - no.
Jimmy Saville - yes. That schoolteacher I remember who locked a pupil in a cupboard, forgot about them, then when they remembered opened the door and shouted so loudly in their ear and clapped them with a wooden ruler that they literally burst the pupils ear-drum - yes.
(The schoolteacher in question went on to become a Tory MP - but that's not what I despise them for)
I said despise and meant it, politicians of the last 5 decades or so have flushed most of the country down the drain and turned us into slaves in practice if not in name. In theory we can change jobs, for many though its either not an option as they can't do without the wage or in fact the only other employment they could get would be equally shitty.
But its that or be homeless
I think that we get the politicians we want rather than the politicians we need. For decades people have wanted higher living standards, higher property prices, more leisure all with less taxes and and less state spending on things that don't benefit them. As soon as a politician sticks their head above the parapet to try and change things they get shot down. See Theresa May over care and Starmer over the Winter Fuel allowance. Perfectly understandable to despise politicians but ultimately it's the voters who put them there.
We won't get the politicians we need ever though because sadly too many are wedded to handouts must continue
People even here are always going on about x,y,z are underfunded. Its even more extreme if you go btl on the guardian.
Now simple question and I doubt anyone will answer it
If we fully funded everything the government currently does plus all the infrastructure repairs necessary what do you think that (~given we know from the truss debacle we can't massively expand borrowing)
a) the basic rate of income tax would have to be b) what do you think the higher rate would have to be c) what do you think the top rate would have to be
My estimates are
a) 60 b) 80 c) 90
Yet whenever I have suggested maybe we need to be looking at what the government actually does and cut some of it while fully funding what we actually still do its howls of protest
The value of the UK housing stock is £9 trillion. The value of UK equities is about £3 trillion.
A 1% wealth tax would raise £120 billion or about 4% of GDP. That should cover it.
No it wouldnt because reality shows us every country that has tried wealth taxes has failed to raise anywhere near that
I don't get this leftie arsehole obsession with wealth taxes, its failed everywhere its been tried. It seems to have replaced the obession with socialism which also failed everywhere it was tried. Lefties doomed to failure
Isn’t Barnesian an LD so a centrist not a lefty ?
Wealth taxes seem to be the latest fad. People support the concept, by and large, as they don’t think they’d have to pay.
They’ve never worked before but that won’t stop people from advocating it.
Yes I'm an LD, and I'm willing to pay.
You can probably afford to, how many renters can afford paying it because the house they are renting is valued at 300k so they now owe another 3k on top of rent and bills
If they are renting, they don't own the house so it's not part of their wealth. Yes?
Gosh you are naive, you dont think landlords will be passing it straight on. I rent pretty much all my friends rent. Mortgage rate goes up we know our rent is going up. Wealth tax goes through we know its being added to the rent. No one becomes a landlord to make a loss on their property generally they are looking for about 5 to 10% over costs on the whole......a wealth tax on the house is just another cost so rent will go up. They will all do it and rentals its generally multiple people applying because they need a rood so a sellers market.
Congratulations your wealth tax just hit some of the poorest with the added benefit that more will be spent on housing benefit because lha is set at 30% of average rent
At the margin, a wealth tax levied principally on property - while giving @HYUFD an aneurism - would almost certainly be mildly positive.
If government must raise taxes - and all the evidence is that they will do so - then it makes sense for taxes to encourage the efficient allocation of resources.
So, a (say) 1% wealth tax discourages people from owning unproductive assets. If it's not generating a return to pay its tax, then why own it? The impact would be small, I suspect, but it makes more sense to tax something we want less of (i.e. unproductive allocation of capital), than something we want more of (i.e. work).
While I understand your point and would agree if it was an unproductive asset that wasn't putting a roof over people and thats the issue. People need a roof even if you think of it as an unproductive asset.
So lets examine a couple of things here
a 300k house so 3k a year tax on it, you can get 1000 per month rent on it and the mortgage is say 900 a month
So the landlord is getting 12k a year...the mortgage is 10800 profit 1200 a year
You add 3k costs on it is unlikely he is going to accept instead losing 1800 a year so he will raise the rent or he will divest his unproductive asset
If he divests who is going to buy it to rent at a loss
end result is the renter is going to pay more whether their original landlord keeps it or sells it
Same house however home owners bought it 5years ago suddenly their monthly payments have gone basically from 850 to 1200 due to a wealth tax. They were just about managing the 850 because they bought when interest rates when they bought were 1 to 2% and now a lot higher than they expected
They can sell their "unproductive asset" but then they need to rent somewhere and will likely be paying as much anyway
Houses I agree are not productive assets, however they are also not purely assets. Shelter is a necessity of life as well.
But as you’ve also implied house prices may be lower given the tax so it may make house ownership an option for more people.
And you will note that I was very clear that schemes should be available for those who are currently asset rich but cash poor.
Either way assuming a 60% mortgage and currently council tax rates I suspect a 1% charge wouldn’t look much different from an extra 0.4% on the interest rate after council tax that is no longer being charged
The system of international law/human rights either needs to be changed or it will be overturned entirely.
The legal/activist class across Europe are like the monks and priests of the Catholic Church in northern and Western Europe circa 1500. Parasitic, doctrinaire, vain, myopic and greedy. And you can feel the resentment building and building. A Reformation is coming to sweep them away and it might be violent
That's a great analogy.
But it goes wider. Full on Pride shite at work today with some events stretching into August. A queer quiz. A gay tapestry. Marches all over the place. A fans for trans social.
Who wants this shit?
I am totally ungay, but your workplace sounds like fun.
Did you realise the company was this "right on" when you joined?
All companies are like this now. All of them.
The only acceptable response is to cheer and amplify it. To do anything else risks you being labelled as a homophobe, and we all know what that means.
So, this absurd foghorning goes on - despite most people not really caring and being somewhat fed up with it all.
That’s not my experience at double digit organisations across both engineering and law. You can delete DEI emails. You can refuse to put pronouns in email signatures. You don’t have to attend pride events. Nobody cares. It’s all in your head.
I do all of those things and nobody thinks I am a homophobe because, well, I’m not.
No, it's not all in my head - this is simple denialism by you.
It's on every call I go to, and I have to listen to it all.
You said upthread you loved this stuff, and now you say you don't do any of it.
Which one is it?
Where I've worked there's emails to 'Pride' events . . . and emails inviting to football games, basketball games, chess clubs, book clubs, craft clubs, and plenty of other things.
The general thing with social emails is to pick the ones you're interested in and ignore the rest.
So what if some people in your work want to do Pride activities? How is that affecting you whatsoever? If others are playing 5-a-side is that affecting you? Don't hear you moaning about that, but I imagine that's happening too?
If Pride is the only social stuff being organised, then it sounds like a pretty crappy place to work, but if its one amongst many, then why have a bee in your bonnet about what others choose to do?
You really don't get this, do you?
You have to be seen to champion, echo and be enthusiastic about this stuff, from a career perspective, or else you are suspect. It's a required belief. There is no choice.
This is the entire problem with Wokery. Which people like you and @Gallowgate cannot understand.
[PS. I don't have people talking to me about 5-a-side on every call for every day for a full month every year, and requiring me to applaud it or I'm seen as bigot. It's not remotely comparable.]
Why don't you resign? I've got friends who feel like this about Gaza and have turned down good jobs at arms companies as a result.
EVERY SINGLE COMPANY IS LIKE THIS. You can't escape.
The solution is political: either Woke is reined in, or it ends.
For example: Pride could go back to being a fun weekend and a march, fine, but no that wasn't enough. Now, its all of June and July and August at 110dB every single year and rainbow lanyards and flags all year round. It bores people at best and p1sses people off at worst.
Why? Because people don't like to be hectored but it's politically incorrect - and dangerous - to object so people feel even more frustrated because they can't say anything.
If you're not proportionate on anything and set rules around the right thing to say, or not say, you get a backlash.
The religious adherents can never see it, because they love it.
Companies are free to take on whatever policies they see fit; you're free to take on whatever job you fancy.
You're right that the solution is political - but I don't think you'll find much support for banning woke activity in private companies across wider society.
I'm not entirely unsympathetic. I feel this way about our lack of cycle infrastructure. Write to your MP, put up posters, make the argument here and elsewhere. Explain why it harms your business and/or society. Good luck, I guess.
Companies are not free to take on whatever policies they see fit. They have to comply with all sorts of regulations on diversity and equality.
Like what? They have to not discriminate on protected characteristics, but I can’t think of much they have to comply with in terms of “regulations on diversity and equality”. Cite some legislation if this is true.
Don't you find the whole concept of "protected characteristics" ridiculous?
When taken alone, yes, ridiculous. But it is a clunky means to a end without which we would be a more horrible place - where you could employ 10,000 people and stipulate that they are all white, or destroy careers because women have babies, or refuse to employ them at all.
Drafting law is hard. Sometimes what you want to achieve is simple and obvious, until you try to draft laws that actually cover it. Try drafting the 'Compelling Reluctant People to Behave In A Civilized Manner Act 2025'.
Please define civillized, I am sure for example most of isis think they are civillised
Thanks for making my point. 'Civilized' will be defined in section 47 of Schedule 9 and will be further refined in the transitional provisions in Schedule 10. Schedule 14 will allow the Secretary of State following consultation with 47 named bodies to issue guidance as to how to interpret the definition, which shall not be binding.
Welcome to ways of modern statutes.
And politicians wonder why we despise them
'Despise' is quite a strong word. Do you really despise them? I sometimes find myself disappointed, annoyed, exasperated, etc. But despise - no.
Jimmy Saville - yes. That schoolteacher I remember who locked a pupil in a cupboard, forgot about them, then when they remembered opened the door and shouted so loudly in their ear and clapped them with a wooden ruler that they literally burst the pupils ear-drum - yes.
(The schoolteacher in question went on to become a Tory MP - but that's not what I despise them for)
I said despise and meant it, politicians of the last 5 decades or so have flushed most of the country down the drain and turned us into slaves in practice if not in name. In theory we can change jobs, for many though its either not an option as they can't do without the wage or in fact the only other employment they could get would be equally shitty.
But its that or be homeless
I think that we get the politicians we want rather than the politicians we need. For decades people have wanted higher living standards, higher property prices, more leisure all with less taxes and and less state spending on things that don't benefit them. As soon as a politician sticks their head above the parapet to try and change things they get shot down. See Theresa May over care and Starmer over the Winter Fuel allowance. Perfectly understandable to despise politicians but ultimately it's the voters who put them there.
We won't get the politicians we need ever though because sadly too many are wedded to handouts must continue
People even here are always going on about x,y,z are underfunded. Its even more extreme if you go btl on the guardian.
Now simple question and I doubt anyone will answer it
If we fully funded everything the government currently does plus all the infrastructure repairs necessary what do you think that (~given we know from the truss debacle we can't massively expand borrowing)
a) the basic rate of income tax would have to be b) what do you think the higher rate would have to be c) what do you think the top rate would have to be
My estimates are
a) 60 b) 80 c) 90
Yet whenever I have suggested maybe we need to be looking at what the government actually does and cut some of it while fully funding what we actually still do its howls of protest
The value of the UK housing stock is £9 trillion. The value of UK equities is about £3 trillion.
A 1% wealth tax would raise £120 billion or about 4% of GDP. That should cover it.
No it wouldnt because reality shows us every country that has tried wealth taxes has failed to raise anywhere near that
I don't get this leftie arsehole obsession with wealth taxes, its failed everywhere its been tried. It seems to have replaced the obession with socialism which also failed everywhere it was tried. Lefties doomed to failure
Isn’t Barnesian an LD so a centrist not a lefty ?
Wealth taxes seem to be the latest fad. People support the concept, by and large, as they don’t think they’d have to pay.
They’ve never worked before but that won’t stop people from advocating it.
Yes I'm an LD, and I'm willing to pay.
You can probably afford to, how many renters can afford paying it because the house they are renting is valued at 300k so they now owe another 3k on top of rent and bills
If they are renting, they don't own the house so it's not part of their wealth. Yes?
Gosh you are naive, you dont think landlords will be passing it straight on. I rent pretty much all my friends rent. Mortgage rate goes up we know our rent is going up. Wealth tax goes through we know its being added to the rent. No one becomes a landlord to make a loss on their property generally they are looking for about 5 to 10% over costs on the whole......a wealth tax on the house is just another cost so rent will go up. They will all do it and rentals its generally multiple people applying because they need a rood so a sellers market.
Congratulations your wealth tax just hit some of the poorest with the added benefit that more will be spent on housing benefit because lha is set at 30% of average rent
At the margin, a wealth tax levied principally on property - while giving @HYUFD an aneurism - would almost certainly be mildly positive.
If government must raise taxes - and all the evidence is that they will do so - then it makes sense for taxes to encourage the efficient allocation of resources.
So, a (say) 1% wealth tax discourages people from owning unproductive assets. If it's not generating a return to pay its tax, then why own it? The impact would be small, I suspect, but it makes more sense to tax something we want less of (i.e. unproductive allocation of capital), than something we want more of (i.e. work).
While I understand your point and would agree if it was an unproductive asset that wasn't putting a roof over people and thats the issue. People need a roof even if you think of it as an unproductive asset.
So lets examine a couple of things here
a 300k house so 3k a year tax on it, you can get 1000 per month rent on it and the mortgage is say 900 a month
So the landlord is getting 12k a year...the mortgage is 10800 profit 1200 a year
You add 3k costs on it is unlikely he is going to accept instead losing 1800 a year so he will raise the rent or he will divest his unproductive asset
If he divests who is going to buy it to rent at a loss
end result is the renter is going to pay more whether their original landlord keeps it or sells it
Same house however home owners bought it 5years ago suddenly their monthly payments have gone basically from 850 to 1200 due to a wealth tax. They were just about managing the 850 because they bought when interest rates when they bought were 1 to 2% and now a lot higher than they expected
They can sell their "unproductive asset" but then they need to rent somewhere and will likely be paying as much anyway
Houses I agree are not productive assets, however they are also not purely assets. Shelter is a necessity of life as well.
Reading your example again you also missed out how council tax would shift from renter to owner.
So currently the renter is paying £1000 a month in Rent and £200 in council tax total £14,400 a year.
Now the landlord is paying the equivalent of council tax so the rent could be £1200 and the renter would be no worse off.
£14,400 less £3000 tax is £11400 a mere £600 (or £50 a month) less than the landlord used to get.
And given current rent increases I'm sure he could get an extra £50 / £100 on the rent come the next renewal date.
rcs1000 - So, what do you think of the reactor Bill Gates is building in Wyoming? https://www.terrapower.com/ (The US Energy Department is paying part of the costs.)
The design combines generation with storage.
Wyoming has a lot of wind power, which may be why that state was chosen for the project. (If you haven't encountered the anvil joke, you may want to search for it.)
Got a feeling I'm going to enjoy this week's issue:
Why exactly? Is it really that difficult to leave the gays to celebrate their own thing and get on with your own life. If it's because of all of the corporate posturing on social media i agree with that but I can tell you that I and no other gay person I know asked for that.
I've not been to a Pride event for at least 40 years. I've nothing against them but I know of no gay friends who'd dream of going . I don't believe they reflect the reality of life for most gay people.
I think I said this yesterday but of my gay friends the ones who are most attached to Pride are the slightly older ones for whom it is still intensely liberating to be out and proud amongst crowds who celebrate that fact. It means more if you've spent a lot of your adult life having to downplay your sexuality for fear of abuse.
I get that: I think those of us born the right side of (around) 1970 have a very different attitude to those born in 1950. (Of course that bunch won the property lottery, so I'm not that sympathetic.)
Gay people are like the population at large. The vast majority don't go on marches. They never have done. They don't have special attitudes. They get on with life just like everyone else.
Agreed. Which is why we should treat their parades like any other group having fun and not some aspect of a culture war.
The system of international law/human rights either needs to be changed or it will be overturned entirely.
The legal/activist class across Europe are like the monks and priests of the Catholic Church in northern and Western Europe circa 1500. Parasitic, doctrinaire, vain, myopic and greedy. And you can feel the resentment building and building. A Reformation is coming to sweep them away and it might be violent
That's a great analogy.
But it goes wider. Full on Pride shite at work today with some events stretching into August. A queer quiz. A gay tapestry. Marches all over the place. A fans for trans social.
Who wants this shit?
I am totally ungay, but your workplace sounds like fun.
Did you realise the company was this "right on" when you joined?
All companies are like this now. All of them.
The only acceptable response is to cheer and amplify it. To do anything else risks you being labelled as a homophobe, and we all know what that means.
So, this absurd foghorning goes on - despite most people not really caring and being somewhat fed up with it all.
That’s not my experience at double digit organisations across both engineering and law. You can delete DEI emails. You can refuse to put pronouns in email signatures. You don’t have to attend pride events. Nobody cares. It’s all in your head.
I do all of those things and nobody thinks I am a homophobe because, well, I’m not.
No, it's not all in my head - this is simple denialism by you.
It's on every call I go to, and I have to listen to it all.
You said upthread you loved this stuff, and now you say you don't do any of it.
Which one is it?
Where I've worked there's emails to 'Pride' events . . . and emails inviting to football games, basketball games, chess clubs, book clubs, craft clubs, and plenty of other things.
The general thing with social emails is to pick the ones you're interested in and ignore the rest.
So what if some people in your work want to do Pride activities? How is that affecting you whatsoever? If others are playing 5-a-side is that affecting you? Don't hear you moaning about that, but I imagine that's happening too?
If Pride is the only social stuff being organised, then it sounds like a pretty crappy place to work, but if its one amongst many, then why have a bee in your bonnet about what others choose to do?
You really don't get this, do you?
You have to be seen to champion, echo and be enthusiastic about this stuff, from a career perspective, or else you are suspect. It's a required belief. There is no choice.
This is the entire problem with Wokery. Which people like you and @Gallowgate cannot understand.
[PS. I don't have people talking to me about 5-a-side on every call for every day for a full month every year, and requiring me to applaud it or I'm seen as bigot. It's not remotely comparable.]
Why don't you resign? I've got friends who feel like this about Gaza and have turned down good jobs at arms companies as a result.
EVERY SINGLE COMPANY IS LIKE THIS. You can't escape.
The solution is political: either Woke is reined in, or it ends.
For example: Pride could go back to being a fun weekend and a march, fine, but no that wasn't enough. Now, its all of June and July and August at 110dB every single year and rainbow lanyards and flags all year round. It bores people at best and p1sses people off at worst.
Why? Because people don't like to be hectored but it's politically incorrect - and dangerous - to object so people feel even more frustrated because they can't say anything.
If you're not proportionate on anything and set rules around the right thing to say, or not say, you get a backlash.
The religious adherents can never see it, because they love it.
Companies are free to take on whatever policies they see fit; you're free to take on whatever job you fancy.
You're right that the solution is political - but I don't think you'll find much support for banning woke activity in private companies across wider society.
I'm not entirely unsympathetic. I feel this way about our lack of cycle infrastructure. Write to your MP, put up posters, make the argument here and elsewhere. Explain why it harms your business and/or society. Good luck, I guess.
Companies are not free to take on whatever policies they see fit. They have to comply with all sorts of regulations on diversity and equality.
Like what? They have to not discriminate on protected characteristics, but I can’t think of much they have to comply with in terms of “regulations on diversity and equality”. Cite some legislation if this is true.
Don't you find the whole concept of "protected characteristics" ridiculous?
When taken alone, yes, ridiculous. But it is a clunky means to a end without which we would be a more horrible place - where you could employ 10,000 people and stipulate that they are all white, or destroy careers because women have babies, or refuse to employ them at all.
Drafting law is hard. Sometimes what you want to achieve is simple and obvious, until you try to draft laws that actually cover it. Try drafting the 'Compelling Reluctant People to Behave In A Civilized Manner Act 2025'.
Please define civillized, I am sure for example most of isis think they are civillised
Thanks for making my point. 'Civilized' will be defined in section 47 of Schedule 9 and will be further refined in the transitional provisions in Schedule 10. Schedule 14 will allow the Secretary of State following consultation with 47 named bodies to issue guidance as to how to interpret the definition, which shall not be binding.
Welcome to ways of modern statutes.
And politicians wonder why we despise them
'Despise' is quite a strong word. Do you really despise them? I sometimes find myself disappointed, annoyed, exasperated, etc. But despise - no.
Jimmy Saville - yes. That schoolteacher I remember who locked a pupil in a cupboard, forgot about them, then when they remembered opened the door and shouted so loudly in their ear and clapped them with a wooden ruler that they literally burst the pupils ear-drum - yes.
(The schoolteacher in question went on to become a Tory MP - but that's not what I despise them for)
I said despise and meant it, politicians of the last 5 decades or so have flushed most of the country down the drain and turned us into slaves in practice if not in name. In theory we can change jobs, for many though its either not an option as they can't do without the wage or in fact the only other employment they could get would be equally shitty.
But its that or be homeless
I think that we get the politicians we want rather than the politicians we need. For decades people have wanted higher living standards, higher property prices, more leisure all with less taxes and and less state spending on things that don't benefit them. As soon as a politician sticks their head above the parapet to try and change things they get shot down. See Theresa May over care and Starmer over the Winter Fuel allowance. Perfectly understandable to despise politicians but ultimately it's the voters who put them there.
We won't get the politicians we need ever though because sadly too many are wedded to handouts must continue
People even here are always going on about x,y,z are underfunded. Its even more extreme if you go btl on the guardian.
Now simple question and I doubt anyone will answer it
If we fully funded everything the government currently does plus all the infrastructure repairs necessary what do you think that (~given we know from the truss debacle we can't massively expand borrowing)
a) the basic rate of income tax would have to be b) what do you think the higher rate would have to be c) what do you think the top rate would have to be
My estimates are
a) 60 b) 80 c) 90
Yet whenever I have suggested maybe we need to be looking at what the government actually does and cut some of it while fully funding what we actually still do its howls of protest
The value of the UK housing stock is £9 trillion. The value of UK equities is about £3 trillion.
A 1% wealth tax would raise £120 billion or about 4% of GDP. That should cover it.
No it wouldnt because reality shows us every country that has tried wealth taxes has failed to raise anywhere near that
I don't get this leftie arsehole obsession with wealth taxes, its failed everywhere its been tried. It seems to have replaced the obession with socialism which also failed everywhere it was tried. Lefties doomed to failure
Isn’t Barnesian an LD so a centrist not a lefty ?
Wealth taxes seem to be the latest fad. People support the concept, by and large, as they don’t think they’d have to pay.
They’ve never worked before but that won’t stop people from advocating it.
Yes I'm an LD, and I'm willing to pay.
You can probably afford to, how many renters can afford paying it because the house they are renting is valued at 300k so they now owe another 3k on top of rent and bills
If they are renting, they don't own the house so it's not part of their wealth. Yes?
Gosh you are naive, you dont think landlords will be passing it straight on. I rent pretty much all my friends rent. Mortgage rate goes up we know our rent is going up. Wealth tax goes through we know its being added to the rent. No one becomes a landlord to make a loss on their property generally they are looking for about 5 to 10% over costs on the whole......a wealth tax on the house is just another cost so rent will go up. They will all do it and rentals its generally multiple people applying because they need a rood so a sellers market.
Congratulations your wealth tax just hit some of the poorest with the added benefit that more will be spent on housing benefit because lha is set at 30% of average rent
The rent charged on a property is not based on the costs to the landlord, but rather the supply and demand of such housing in each area. Otherwise, why aren't outright owners charging a pittance to let their properties out?
If a wealth tax means I can't make a profit on the flat I'm renting out, I'll sell it. The flat doesn't disappear. It gets bought by someone else - hopefully a first time buyer. Indeed, my suspicion is a considerable proportion of the demand for housing is as store of wealth. Neutralising that element will lower prices, not increase them.
"White British people will be a minority in 40 years, report claims Shifting ethnic dynamic of the UK driven by immigration predicted to cause dramatic changes
Similar trends expected across the western world, hence the white working class particular voting for nationalist right anti immigration populists like Trump, Le Pen, Meloni, the AfD and Reform here.
Proposals to boost birthrates too from Farage and Meloni. Otherwise by 2100 the only white majority nations left on this plant will likely be in Eastern Europe, though of course many will welcome a more cosmopolitan UK too.
Though the research is from Matt Goodwin who we know has a firmly anti immigration stance. Goodwin also says 19% of the UK population will be Muslim by 2100
The system of international law/human rights either needs to be changed or it will be overturned entirely.
The legal/activist class across Europe are like the monks and priests of the Catholic Church in northern and Western Europe circa 1500. Parasitic, doctrinaire, vain, myopic and greedy. And you can feel the resentment building and building. A Reformation is coming to sweep them away and it might be violent
That's a great analogy.
But it goes wider. Full on Pride shite at work today with some events stretching into August. A queer quiz. A gay tapestry. Marches all over the place. A fans for trans social.
Who wants this shit?
I am totally ungay, but your workplace sounds like fun.
Did you realise the company was this "right on" when you joined?
All companies are like this now. All of them.
The only acceptable response is to cheer and amplify it. To do anything else risks you being labelled as a homophobe, and we all know what that means.
So, this absurd foghorning goes on - despite most people not really caring and being somewhat fed up with it all.
That’s not my experience at double digit organisations across both engineering and law. You can delete DEI emails. You can refuse to put pronouns in email signatures. You don’t have to attend pride events. Nobody cares. It’s all in your head.
I do all of those things and nobody thinks I am a homophobe because, well, I’m not.
No, it's not all in my head - this is simple denialism by you.
It's on every call I go to, and I have to listen to it all.
You said upthread you loved this stuff, and now you say you don't do any of it.
Which one is it?
Where I've worked there's emails to 'Pride' events . . . and emails inviting to football games, basketball games, chess clubs, book clubs, craft clubs, and plenty of other things.
The general thing with social emails is to pick the ones you're interested in and ignore the rest.
So what if some people in your work want to do Pride activities? How is that affecting you whatsoever? If others are playing 5-a-side is that affecting you? Don't hear you moaning about that, but I imagine that's happening too?
If Pride is the only social stuff being organised, then it sounds like a pretty crappy place to work, but if its one amongst many, then why have a bee in your bonnet about what others choose to do?
You really don't get this, do you?
You have to be seen to champion, echo and be enthusiastic about this stuff, from a career perspective, or else you are suspect. It's a required belief. There is no choice.
This is the entire problem with Wokery. Which people like you and @Gallowgate cannot understand.
[PS. I don't have people talking to me about 5-a-side on every call for every day for a full month every year, and requiring me to applaud it or I'm seen as bigot. It's not remotely comparable.]
Why don't you resign? I've got friends who feel like this about Gaza and have turned down good jobs at arms companies as a result.
EVERY SINGLE COMPANY IS LIKE THIS. You can't escape.
The solution is political: either Woke is reined in, or it ends.
For example: Pride could go back to being a fun weekend and a march, fine, but no that wasn't enough. Now, its all of June and July and August at 110dB every single year and rainbow lanyards and flags all year round. It bores people at best and p1sses people off at worst.
Why? Because people don't like to be hectored but it's politically incorrect - and dangerous - to object so people feel even more frustrated because they can't say anything.
If you're not proportionate on anything and set rules around the right thing to say, or not say, you get a backlash.
The religious adherents can never see it, because they love it.
Companies are free to take on whatever policies they see fit; you're free to take on whatever job you fancy.
You're right that the solution is political - but I don't think you'll find much support for banning woke activity in private companies across wider society.
I'm not entirely unsympathetic. I feel this way about our lack of cycle infrastructure. Write to your MP, put up posters, make the argument here and elsewhere. Explain why it harms your business and/or society. Good luck, I guess.
Companies are not free to take on whatever policies they see fit. They have to comply with all sorts of regulations on diversity and equality.
Like what? They have to not discriminate on protected characteristics, but I can’t think of much they have to comply with in terms of “regulations on diversity and equality”. Cite some legislation if this is true.
Don't you find the whole concept of "protected characteristics" ridiculous?
When taken alone, yes, ridiculous. But it is a clunky means to a end without which we would be a more horrible place - where you could employ 10,000 people and stipulate that they are all white, or destroy careers because women have babies, or refuse to employ them at all.
Drafting law is hard. Sometimes what you want to achieve is simple and obvious, until you try to draft laws that actually cover it. Try drafting the 'Compelling Reluctant People to Behave In A Civilized Manner Act 2025'.
Please define civillized, I am sure for example most of isis think they are civillised
Thanks for making my point. 'Civilized' will be defined in section 47 of Schedule 9 and will be further refined in the transitional provisions in Schedule 10. Schedule 14 will allow the Secretary of State following consultation with 47 named bodies to issue guidance as to how to interpret the definition, which shall not be binding.
Welcome to ways of modern statutes.
And politicians wonder why we despise them
'Despise' is quite a strong word. Do you really despise them? I sometimes find myself disappointed, annoyed, exasperated, etc. But despise - no.
Jimmy Saville - yes. That schoolteacher I remember who locked a pupil in a cupboard, forgot about them, then when they remembered opened the door and shouted so loudly in their ear and clapped them with a wooden ruler that they literally burst the pupils ear-drum - yes.
(The schoolteacher in question went on to become a Tory MP - but that's not what I despise them for)
I said despise and meant it, politicians of the last 5 decades or so have flushed most of the country down the drain and turned us into slaves in practice if not in name. In theory we can change jobs, for many though its either not an option as they can't do without the wage or in fact the only other employment they could get would be equally shitty.
But its that or be homeless
I think that we get the politicians we want rather than the politicians we need. For decades people have wanted higher living standards, higher property prices, more leisure all with less taxes and and less state spending on things that don't benefit them. As soon as a politician sticks their head above the parapet to try and change things they get shot down. See Theresa May over care and Starmer over the Winter Fuel allowance. Perfectly understandable to despise politicians but ultimately it's the voters who put them there.
We won't get the politicians we need ever though because sadly too many are wedded to handouts must continue
People even here are always going on about x,y,z are underfunded. Its even more extreme if you go btl on the guardian.
Now simple question and I doubt anyone will answer it
If we fully funded everything the government currently does plus all the infrastructure repairs necessary what do you think that (~given we know from the truss debacle we can't massively expand borrowing)
a) the basic rate of income tax would have to be b) what do you think the higher rate would have to be c) what do you think the top rate would have to be
My estimates are
a) 60 b) 80 c) 90
Yet whenever I have suggested maybe we need to be looking at what the government actually does and cut some of it while fully funding what we actually still do its howls of protest
The value of the UK housing stock is £9 trillion. The value of UK equities is about £3 trillion.
A 1% wealth tax would raise £120 billion or about 4% of GDP. That should cover it.
No it wouldnt because reality shows us every country that has tried wealth taxes has failed to raise anywhere near that
I don't get this leftie arsehole obsession with wealth taxes, its failed everywhere its been tried. It seems to have replaced the obession with socialism which also failed everywhere it was tried. Lefties doomed to failure
Isn’t Barnesian an LD so a centrist not a lefty ?
Wealth taxes seem to be the latest fad. People support the concept, by and large, as they don’t think they’d have to pay.
They’ve never worked before but that won’t stop people from advocating it.
Yes I'm an LD, and I'm willing to pay.
You can probably afford to, how many renters can afford paying it because the house they are renting is valued at 300k so they now owe another 3k on top of rent and bills
If they are renting, they don't own the house so it's not part of their wealth. Yes?
Gosh you are naive, you dont think landlords will be passing it straight on. I rent pretty much all my friends rent. Mortgage rate goes up we know our rent is going up. Wealth tax goes through we know its being added to the rent. No one becomes a landlord to make a loss on their property generally they are looking for about 5 to 10% over costs on the whole......a wealth tax on the house is just another cost so rent will go up. They will all do it and rentals its generally multiple people applying because they need a rood so a sellers market.
Congratulations your wealth tax just hit some of the poorest with the added benefit that more will be spent on housing benefit because lha is set at 30% of average rent
At the margin, a wealth tax (which would probably end up being levied principally on property) - while giving @HYUFD an aneurism - would almost certainly be mildly positive.
If government must raise taxes - and all the evidence is that they will do so - then it makes sense for taxes to encourage the efficient allocation of resources.
So, a (say) 1% wealth tax discourages people from owning unproductive assets. If it's not generating a return to pay its tax, then why own it? The impact would be small, I suspect, but it makes more sense to tax something we want less of (i.e. unproductive allocation of capital), than something we want more of (i.e. work).
And farmers who own lots of land and work but don't get a large annual income? Or widows who may have been left a large house but aren't bringing in a large income each year either?
Of course neither the Tories nor Reform would support a wealth tax, Labour and the LDs might and the Greens do though probably at a high threshold of say £5 million plus
The system of international law/human rights either needs to be changed or it will be overturned entirely.
The legal/activist class across Europe are like the monks and priests of the Catholic Church in northern and Western Europe circa 1500. Parasitic, doctrinaire, vain, myopic and greedy. And you can feel the resentment building and building. A Reformation is coming to sweep them away and it might be violent
That's a great analogy.
But it goes wider. Full on Pride shite at work today with some events stretching into August. A queer quiz. A gay tapestry. Marches all over the place. A fans for trans social.
Who wants this shit?
I am totally ungay, but your workplace sounds like fun.
Did you realise the company was this "right on" when you joined?
All companies are like this now. All of them.
The only acceptable response is to cheer and amplify it. To do anything else risks you being labelled as a homophobe, and we all know what that means.
So, this absurd foghorning goes on - despite most people not really caring and being somewhat fed up with it all.
That’s not my experience at double digit organisations across both engineering and law. You can delete DEI emails. You can refuse to put pronouns in email signatures. You don’t have to attend pride events. Nobody cares. It’s all in your head.
I do all of those things and nobody thinks I am a homophobe because, well, I’m not.
No, it's not all in my head - this is simple denialism by you.
It's on every call I go to, and I have to listen to it all.
You said upthread you loved this stuff, and now you say you don't do any of it.
Which one is it?
Where I've worked there's emails to 'Pride' events . . . and emails inviting to football games, basketball games, chess clubs, book clubs, craft clubs, and plenty of other things.
The general thing with social emails is to pick the ones you're interested in and ignore the rest.
So what if some people in your work want to do Pride activities? How is that affecting you whatsoever? If others are playing 5-a-side is that affecting you? Don't hear you moaning about that, but I imagine that's happening too?
If Pride is the only social stuff being organised, then it sounds like a pretty crappy place to work, but if its one amongst many, then why have a bee in your bonnet about what others choose to do?
You really don't get this, do you?
You have to be seen to champion, echo and be enthusiastic about this stuff, from a career perspective, or else you are suspect. It's a required belief. There is no choice.
This is the entire problem with Wokery. Which people like you and @Gallowgate cannot understand.
[PS. I don't have people talking to me about 5-a-side on every call for every day for a full month every year, and requiring me to applaud it or I'm seen as bigot. It's not remotely comparable.]
Why don't you resign? I've got friends who feel like this about Gaza and have turned down good jobs at arms companies as a result.
EVERY SINGLE COMPANY IS LIKE THIS. You can't escape.
The solution is political: either Woke is reined in, or it ends.
For example: Pride could go back to being a fun weekend and a march, fine, but no that wasn't enough. Now, its all of June and July and August at 110dB every single year and rainbow lanyards and flags all year round. It bores people at best and p1sses people off at worst.
Why? Because people don't like to be hectored but it's politically incorrect - and dangerous - to object so people feel even more frustrated because they can't say anything.
If you're not proportionate on anything and set rules around the right thing to say, or not say, you get a backlash.
The religious adherents can never see it, because they love it.
Companies are free to take on whatever policies they see fit; you're free to take on whatever job you fancy.
You're right that the solution is political - but I don't think you'll find much support for banning woke activity in private companies across wider society.
I'm not entirely unsympathetic. I feel this way about our lack of cycle infrastructure. Write to your MP, put up posters, make the argument here and elsewhere. Explain why it harms your business and/or society. Good luck, I guess.
Companies are not free to take on whatever policies they see fit. They have to comply with all sorts of regulations on diversity and equality.
Like what? They have to not discriminate on protected characteristics, but I can’t think of much they have to comply with in terms of “regulations on diversity and equality”. Cite some legislation if this is true.
Don't you find the whole concept of "protected characteristics" ridiculous?
When taken alone, yes, ridiculous. But it is a clunky means to a end without which we would be a more horrible place - where you could employ 10,000 people and stipulate that they are all white, or destroy careers because women have babies, or refuse to employ them at all.
Drafting law is hard. Sometimes what you want to achieve is simple and obvious, until you try to draft laws that actually cover it. Try drafting the 'Compelling Reluctant People to Behave In A Civilized Manner Act 2025'.
Please define civillized, I am sure for example most of isis think they are civillised
Thanks for making my point. 'Civilized' will be defined in section 47 of Schedule 9 and will be further refined in the transitional provisions in Schedule 10. Schedule 14 will allow the Secretary of State following consultation with 47 named bodies to issue guidance as to how to interpret the definition, which shall not be binding.
Welcome to ways of modern statutes.
And politicians wonder why we despise them
'Despise' is quite a strong word. Do you really despise them? I sometimes find myself disappointed, annoyed, exasperated, etc. But despise - no.
Jimmy Saville - yes. That schoolteacher I remember who locked a pupil in a cupboard, forgot about them, then when they remembered opened the door and shouted so loudly in their ear and clapped them with a wooden ruler that they literally burst the pupils ear-drum - yes.
(The schoolteacher in question went on to become a Tory MP - but that's not what I despise them for)
I said despise and meant it, politicians of the last 5 decades or so have flushed most of the country down the drain and turned us into slaves in practice if not in name. In theory we can change jobs, for many though its either not an option as they can't do without the wage or in fact the only other employment they could get would be equally shitty.
But its that or be homeless
I think that we get the politicians we want rather than the politicians we need. For decades people have wanted higher living standards, higher property prices, more leisure all with less taxes and and less state spending on things that don't benefit them. As soon as a politician sticks their head above the parapet to try and change things they get shot down. See Theresa May over care and Starmer over the Winter Fuel allowance. Perfectly understandable to despise politicians but ultimately it's the voters who put them there.
We won't get the politicians we need ever though because sadly too many are wedded to handouts must continue
People even here are always going on about x,y,z are underfunded. Its even more extreme if you go btl on the guardian.
Now simple question and I doubt anyone will answer it
If we fully funded everything the government currently does plus all the infrastructure repairs necessary what do you think that (~given we know from the truss debacle we can't massively expand borrowing)
a) the basic rate of income tax would have to be b) what do you think the higher rate would have to be c) what do you think the top rate would have to be
My estimates are
a) 60 b) 80 c) 90
Yet whenever I have suggested maybe we need to be looking at what the government actually does and cut some of it while fully funding what we actually still do its howls of protest
The value of the UK housing stock is £9 trillion. The value of UK equities is about £3 trillion.
A 1% wealth tax would raise £120 billion or about 4% of GDP. That should cover it.
No it wouldnt because reality shows us every country that has tried wealth taxes has failed to raise anywhere near that
I don't get this leftie arsehole obsession with wealth taxes, its failed everywhere its been tried. It seems to have replaced the obession with socialism which also failed everywhere it was tried. Lefties doomed to failure
Isn’t Barnesian an LD so a centrist not a lefty ?
Wealth taxes seem to be the latest fad. People support the concept, by and large, as they don’t think they’d have to pay.
They’ve never worked before but that won’t stop people from advocating it.
Yes I'm an LD, and I'm willing to pay.
You can probably afford to, how many renters can afford paying it because the house they are renting is valued at 300k so they now owe another 3k on top of rent and bills
If they are renting, they don't own the house so it's not part of their wealth. Yes?
Gosh you are naive, you dont think landlords will be passing it straight on. I rent pretty much all my friends rent. Mortgage rate goes up we know our rent is going up. Wealth tax goes through we know its being added to the rent. No one becomes a landlord to make a loss on their property generally they are looking for about 5 to 10% over costs on the whole......a wealth tax on the house is just another cost so rent will go up. They will all do it and rentals its generally multiple people applying because they need a rood so a sellers market.
Congratulations your wealth tax just hit some of the poorest with the added benefit that more will be spent on housing benefit because lha is set at 30% of average rent
At the margin, a wealth tax (which would probably end up being levied principally on property) - while giving @HYUFD an aneurism - would almost certainly be mildly positive.
If government must raise taxes - and all the evidence is that they will do so - then it makes sense for taxes to encourage the efficient allocation of resources.
So, a (say) 1% wealth tax discourages people from owning unproductive assets. If it's not generating a return to pay its tax, then why own it? The impact would be small, I suspect, but it makes more sense to tax something we want less of (i.e. unproductive allocation of capital), than something we want more of (i.e. work).
And farmers who own lots of land and work but don't get a large annual income? Or widows who may have been left a large house but aren't bringing in a large income each year either?
Of course neither the Tories nor Reform would support a wealth tax, Labour and the LDs might and the Greens do though probably at a high threshold of say £5 million plus
You will note that the price of houses / land is likely to drop as it wouldn't be the store of wealth it currently is.
The system of international law/human rights either needs to be changed or it will be overturned entirely.
The legal/activist class across Europe are like the monks and priests of the Catholic Church in northern and Western Europe circa 1500. Parasitic, doctrinaire, vain, myopic and greedy. And you can feel the resentment building and building. A Reformation is coming to sweep them away and it might be violent
That's a great analogy.
But it goes wider. Full on Pride shite at work today with some events stretching into August. A queer quiz. A gay tapestry. Marches all over the place. A fans for trans social.
Who wants this shit?
I am totally ungay, but your workplace sounds like fun.
Did you realise the company was this "right on" when you joined?
All companies are like this now. All of them.
The only acceptable response is to cheer and amplify it. To do anything else risks you being labelled as a homophobe, and we all know what that means.
So, this absurd foghorning goes on - despite most people not really caring and being somewhat fed up with it all.
That’s not my experience at double digit organisations across both engineering and law. You can delete DEI emails. You can refuse to put pronouns in email signatures. You don’t have to attend pride events. Nobody cares. It’s all in your head.
I do all of those things and nobody thinks I am a homophobe because, well, I’m not.
No, it's not all in my head - this is simple denialism by you.
It's on every call I go to, and I have to listen to it all.
You said upthread you loved this stuff, and now you say you don't do any of it.
Which one is it?
Where I've worked there's emails to 'Pride' events . . . and emails inviting to football games, basketball games, chess clubs, book clubs, craft clubs, and plenty of other things.
The general thing with social emails is to pick the ones you're interested in and ignore the rest.
So what if some people in your work want to do Pride activities? How is that affecting you whatsoever? If others are playing 5-a-side is that affecting you? Don't hear you moaning about that, but I imagine that's happening too?
If Pride is the only social stuff being organised, then it sounds like a pretty crappy place to work, but if its one amongst many, then why have a bee in your bonnet about what others choose to do?
You really don't get this, do you?
You have to be seen to champion, echo and be enthusiastic about this stuff, from a career perspective, or else you are suspect. It's a required belief. There is no choice.
This is the entire problem with Wokery. Which people like you and @Gallowgate cannot understand.
[PS. I don't have people talking to me about 5-a-side on every call for every day for a full month every year, and requiring me to applaud it or I'm seen as bigot. It's not remotely comparable.]
Why don't you resign? I've got friends who feel like this about Gaza and have turned down good jobs at arms companies as a result.
EVERY SINGLE COMPANY IS LIKE THIS. You can't escape.
The solution is political: either Woke is reined in, or it ends.
For example: Pride could go back to being a fun weekend and a march, fine, but no that wasn't enough. Now, its all of June and July and August at 110dB every single year and rainbow lanyards and flags all year round. It bores people at best and p1sses people off at worst.
Why? Because people don't like to be hectored but it's politically incorrect - and dangerous - to object so people feel even more frustrated because they can't say anything.
If you're not proportionate on anything and set rules around the right thing to say, or not say, you get a backlash.
The religious adherents can never see it, because they love it.
Companies are free to take on whatever policies they see fit; you're free to take on whatever job you fancy.
You're right that the solution is political - but I don't think you'll find much support for banning woke activity in private companies across wider society.
I'm not entirely unsympathetic. I feel this way about our lack of cycle infrastructure. Write to your MP, put up posters, make the argument here and elsewhere. Explain why it harms your business and/or society. Good luck, I guess.
Companies are not free to take on whatever policies they see fit. They have to comply with all sorts of regulations on diversity and equality.
Like what? They have to not discriminate on protected characteristics, but I can’t think of much they have to comply with in terms of “regulations on diversity and equality”. Cite some legislation if this is true.
Don't you find the whole concept of "protected characteristics" ridiculous?
When taken alone, yes, ridiculous. But it is a clunky means to a end without which we would be a more horrible place - where you could employ 10,000 people and stipulate that they are all white, or destroy careers because women have babies, or refuse to employ them at all.
Drafting law is hard. Sometimes what you want to achieve is simple and obvious, until you try to draft laws that actually cover it. Try drafting the 'Compelling Reluctant People to Behave In A Civilized Manner Act 2025'.
Please define civillized, I am sure for example most of isis think they are civillised
Thanks for making my point. 'Civilized' will be defined in section 47 of Schedule 9 and will be further refined in the transitional provisions in Schedule 10. Schedule 14 will allow the Secretary of State following consultation with 47 named bodies to issue guidance as to how to interpret the definition, which shall not be binding.
Welcome to ways of modern statutes.
And politicians wonder why we despise them
'Despise' is quite a strong word. Do you really despise them? I sometimes find myself disappointed, annoyed, exasperated, etc. But despise - no.
Jimmy Saville - yes. That schoolteacher I remember who locked a pupil in a cupboard, forgot about them, then when they remembered opened the door and shouted so loudly in their ear and clapped them with a wooden ruler that they literally burst the pupils ear-drum - yes.
(The schoolteacher in question went on to become a Tory MP - but that's not what I despise them for)
I said despise and meant it, politicians of the last 5 decades or so have flushed most of the country down the drain and turned us into slaves in practice if not in name. In theory we can change jobs, for many though its either not an option as they can't do without the wage or in fact the only other employment they could get would be equally shitty.
But its that or be homeless
I think that we get the politicians we want rather than the politicians we need. For decades people have wanted higher living standards, higher property prices, more leisure all with less taxes and and less state spending on things that don't benefit them. As soon as a politician sticks their head above the parapet to try and change things they get shot down. See Theresa May over care and Starmer over the Winter Fuel allowance. Perfectly understandable to despise politicians but ultimately it's the voters who put them there.
We won't get the politicians we need ever though because sadly too many are wedded to handouts must continue
People even here are always going on about x,y,z are underfunded. Its even more extreme if you go btl on the guardian.
Now simple question and I doubt anyone will answer it
If we fully funded everything the government currently does plus all the infrastructure repairs necessary what do you think that (~given we know from the truss debacle we can't massively expand borrowing)
a) the basic rate of income tax would have to be b) what do you think the higher rate would have to be c) what do you think the top rate would have to be
My estimates are
a) 60 b) 80 c) 90
Yet whenever I have suggested maybe we need to be looking at what the government actually does and cut some of it while fully funding what we actually still do its howls of protest
The value of the UK housing stock is £9 trillion. The value of UK equities is about £3 trillion.
A 1% wealth tax would raise £120 billion or about 4% of GDP. That should cover it.
No it wouldnt because reality shows us every country that has tried wealth taxes has failed to raise anywhere near that
I don't get this leftie arsehole obsession with wealth taxes, its failed everywhere its been tried. It seems to have replaced the obession with socialism which also failed everywhere it was tried. Lefties doomed to failure
Isn’t Barnesian an LD so a centrist not a lefty ?
Wealth taxes seem to be the latest fad. People support the concept, by and large, as they don’t think they’d have to pay.
They’ve never worked before but that won’t stop people from advocating it.
Yes I'm an LD, and I'm willing to pay.
You can probably afford to, how many renters can afford paying it because the house they are renting is valued at 300k so they now owe another 3k on top of rent and bills
If they are renting, they don't own the house so it's not part of their wealth. Yes?
Gosh you are naive, you dont think landlords will be passing it straight on. I rent pretty much all my friends rent. Mortgage rate goes up we know our rent is going up. Wealth tax goes through we know its being added to the rent. No one becomes a landlord to make a loss on their property generally they are looking for about 5 to 10% over costs on the whole......a wealth tax on the house is just another cost so rent will go up. They will all do it and rentals its generally multiple people applying because they need a rood so a sellers market.
Congratulations your wealth tax just hit some of the poorest with the added benefit that more will be spent on housing benefit because lha is set at 30% of average rent
At the margin, a wealth tax (which would probably end up being levied principally on property) - while giving @HYUFD an aneurism - would almost certainly be mildly positive.
If government must raise taxes - and all the evidence is that they will do so - then it makes sense for taxes to encourage the efficient allocation of resources.
So, a (say) 1% wealth tax discourages people from owning unproductive assets. If it's not generating a return to pay its tax, then why own it? The impact would be small, I suspect, but it makes more sense to tax something we want less of (i.e. unproductive allocation of capital), than something we want more of (i.e. work).
And farmers who own lots of land and work but don't get a large annual income? Or widows who may have been left a large house but aren't bringing in a large income each year either?
Of course neither the Tories nor Reform would support a wealth tax, Labour and the LDs might and the Greens do though probably at a high threshold of say £5 million plus
Ummm: that's precisely my point.
That widow is using a large house that a family could be using. We'd be (gently) incentivizing her to switch via the tax system.
How about we do a deal: no inheritance tax (which you would like), but a small annual levy on gross assets.
rcs1000 - So, what do you think of the reactor Bill Gates is building in Wyoming? https://www.terrapower.com/ (The US Energy Department is paying part of the costs.)
The design combines generation with storage.
Wyoming has a lot of wind power, which may be why that state was chosen for the project. (If you haven't encountered the anvil joke, you may want to search for it.)
In the old days, I would know everything about it , because I would probably have been asked to provide some of the capital for it.
These days, I think it's interesting, but don't know enough about it to have a definitive answer.
The system of international law/human rights either needs to be changed or it will be overturned entirely.
The legal/activist class across Europe are like the monks and priests of the Catholic Church in northern and Western Europe circa 1500. Parasitic, doctrinaire, vain, myopic and greedy. And you can feel the resentment building and building. A Reformation is coming to sweep them away and it might be violent
That's a great analogy.
But it goes wider. Full on Pride shite at work today with some events stretching into August. A queer quiz. A gay tapestry. Marches all over the place. A fans for trans social.
Who wants this shit?
I am totally ungay, but your workplace sounds like fun.
Did you realise the company was this "right on" when you joined?
All companies are like this now. All of them.
The only acceptable response is to cheer and amplify it. To do anything else risks you being labelled as a homophobe, and we all know what that means.
So, this absurd foghorning goes on - despite most people not really caring and being somewhat fed up with it all.
That’s not my experience at double digit organisations across both engineering and law. You can delete DEI emails. You can refuse to put pronouns in email signatures. You don’t have to attend pride events. Nobody cares. It’s all in your head.
I do all of those things and nobody thinks I am a homophobe because, well, I’m not.
No, it's not all in my head - this is simple denialism by you.
It's on every call I go to, and I have to listen to it all.
You said upthread you loved this stuff, and now you say you don't do any of it.
Which one is it?
Where I've worked there's emails to 'Pride' events . . . and emails inviting to football games, basketball games, chess clubs, book clubs, craft clubs, and plenty of other things.
The general thing with social emails is to pick the ones you're interested in and ignore the rest.
So what if some people in your work want to do Pride activities? How is that affecting you whatsoever? If others are playing 5-a-side is that affecting you? Don't hear you moaning about that, but I imagine that's happening too?
If Pride is the only social stuff being organised, then it sounds like a pretty crappy place to work, but if its one amongst many, then why have a bee in your bonnet about what others choose to do?
You really don't get this, do you?
You have to be seen to champion, echo and be enthusiastic about this stuff, from a career perspective, or else you are suspect. It's a required belief. There is no choice.
This is the entire problem with Wokery. Which people like you and @Gallowgate cannot understand.
[PS. I don't have people talking to me about 5-a-side on every call for every day for a full month every year, and requiring me to applaud it or I'm seen as bigot. It's not remotely comparable.]
Why don't you resign? I've got friends who feel like this about Gaza and have turned down good jobs at arms companies as a result.
EVERY SINGLE COMPANY IS LIKE THIS. You can't escape.
The solution is political: either Woke is reined in, or it ends.
For example: Pride could go back to being a fun weekend and a march, fine, but no that wasn't enough. Now, its all of June and July and August at 110dB every single year and rainbow lanyards and flags all year round. It bores people at best and p1sses people off at worst.
Why? Because people don't like to be hectored but it's politically incorrect - and dangerous - to object so people feel even more frustrated because they can't say anything.
If you're not proportionate on anything and set rules around the right thing to say, or not say, you get a backlash.
The religious adherents can never see it, because they love it.
Companies are free to take on whatever policies they see fit; you're free to take on whatever job you fancy.
You're right that the solution is political - but I don't think you'll find much support for banning woke activity in private companies across wider society.
I'm not entirely unsympathetic. I feel this way about our lack of cycle infrastructure. Write to your MP, put up posters, make the argument here and elsewhere. Explain why it harms your business and/or society. Good luck, I guess.
Companies are not free to take on whatever policies they see fit. They have to comply with all sorts of regulations on diversity and equality.
Like what? They have to not discriminate on protected characteristics, but I can’t think of much they have to comply with in terms of “regulations on diversity and equality”. Cite some legislation if this is true.
Don't you find the whole concept of "protected characteristics" ridiculous?
When taken alone, yes, ridiculous. But it is a clunky means to a end without which we would be a more horrible place - where you could employ 10,000 people and stipulate that they are all white, or destroy careers because women have babies, or refuse to employ them at all.
Drafting law is hard. Sometimes what you want to achieve is simple and obvious, until you try to draft laws that actually cover it. Try drafting the 'Compelling Reluctant People to Behave In A Civilized Manner Act 2025'.
Please define civillized, I am sure for example most of isis think they are civillised
Thanks for making my point. 'Civilized' will be defined in section 47 of Schedule 9 and will be further refined in the transitional provisions in Schedule 10. Schedule 14 will allow the Secretary of State following consultation with 47 named bodies to issue guidance as to how to interpret the definition, which shall not be binding.
Welcome to ways of modern statutes.
And politicians wonder why we despise them
'Despise' is quite a strong word. Do you really despise them? I sometimes find myself disappointed, annoyed, exasperated, etc. But despise - no.
Jimmy Saville - yes. That schoolteacher I remember who locked a pupil in a cupboard, forgot about them, then when they remembered opened the door and shouted so loudly in their ear and clapped them with a wooden ruler that they literally burst the pupils ear-drum - yes.
(The schoolteacher in question went on to become a Tory MP - but that's not what I despise them for)
I said despise and meant it, politicians of the last 5 decades or so have flushed most of the country down the drain and turned us into slaves in practice if not in name. In theory we can change jobs, for many though its either not an option as they can't do without the wage or in fact the only other employment they could get would be equally shitty.
But its that or be homeless
I think that we get the politicians we want rather than the politicians we need. For decades people have wanted higher living standards, higher property prices, more leisure all with less taxes and and less state spending on things that don't benefit them. As soon as a politician sticks their head above the parapet to try and change things they get shot down. See Theresa May over care and Starmer over the Winter Fuel allowance. Perfectly understandable to despise politicians but ultimately it's the voters who put them there.
We won't get the politicians we need ever though because sadly too many are wedded to handouts must continue
People even here are always going on about x,y,z are underfunded. Its even more extreme if you go btl on the guardian.
Now simple question and I doubt anyone will answer it
If we fully funded everything the government currently does plus all the infrastructure repairs necessary what do you think that (~given we know from the truss debacle we can't massively expand borrowing)
a) the basic rate of income tax would have to be b) what do you think the higher rate would have to be c) what do you think the top rate would have to be
My estimates are
a) 60 b) 80 c) 90
Yet whenever I have suggested maybe we need to be looking at what the government actually does and cut some of it while fully funding what we actually still do its howls of protest
The value of the UK housing stock is £9 trillion. The value of UK equities is about £3 trillion.
A 1% wealth tax would raise £120 billion or about 4% of GDP. That should cover it.
No it wouldnt because reality shows us every country that has tried wealth taxes has failed to raise anywhere near that
I don't get this leftie arsehole obsession with wealth taxes, its failed everywhere its been tried. It seems to have replaced the obession with socialism which also failed everywhere it was tried. Lefties doomed to failure
Isn’t Barnesian an LD so a centrist not a lefty ?
Wealth taxes seem to be the latest fad. People support the concept, by and large, as they don’t think they’d have to pay.
They’ve never worked before but that won’t stop people from advocating it.
Yes I'm an LD, and I'm willing to pay.
You can probably afford to, how many renters can afford paying it because the house they are renting is valued at 300k so they now owe another 3k on top of rent and bills
If they are renting, they don't own the house so it's not part of their wealth. Yes?
Gosh you are naive, you dont think landlords will be passing it straight on. I rent pretty much all my friends rent. Mortgage rate goes up we know our rent is going up. Wealth tax goes through we know its being added to the rent. No one becomes a landlord to make a loss on their property generally they are looking for about 5 to 10% over costs on the whole......a wealth tax on the house is just another cost so rent will go up. They will all do it and rentals its generally multiple people applying because they need a rood so a sellers market.
Congratulations your wealth tax just hit some of the poorest with the added benefit that more will be spent on housing benefit because lha is set at 30% of average rent
At the margin, a wealth tax (which would probably end up being levied principally on property) - while giving @HYUFD an aneurism - would almost certainly be mildly positive.
If government must raise taxes - and all the evidence is that they will do so - then it makes sense for taxes to encourage the efficient allocation of resources.
So, a (say) 1% wealth tax discourages people from owning unproductive assets. If it's not generating a return to pay its tax, then why own it? The impact would be small, I suspect, but it makes more sense to tax something we want less of (i.e. unproductive allocation of capital), than something we want more of (i.e. work).
And farmers who own lots of land and work but don't get a large annual income? Or widows who may have been left a large house but aren't bringing in a large income each year either?
Of course neither the Tories nor Reform would support a wealth tax, Labour and the LDs might and the Greens do though probably at a high threshold of say £5 million plus
Ummm: that's precisely my point.
That widow is using a large house that a family could be using. We'd be (gently) incentivizing her to switch via the tax system.
How about we do a deal: no inheritance tax (which you would like), but a small annual levy on gross assets.
You really think the average family is going to be able to buy a house a widow left in worth millions her wealthy deceased husband left her?
No inheritance tax, Farage has already pledged to abolish inheritance tax completely maybe or at least keep the £1 million threshold Osborne set but no wealth tax either. Certainly a Reform and/or Tory government would oppose both
The system of international law/human rights either needs to be changed or it will be overturned entirely.
The legal/activist class across Europe are like the monks and priests of the Catholic Church in northern and Western Europe circa 1500. Parasitic, doctrinaire, vain, myopic and greedy. And you can feel the resentment building and building. A Reformation is coming to sweep them away and it might be violent
That's a great analogy.
But it goes wider. Full on Pride shite at work today with some events stretching into August. A queer quiz. A gay tapestry. Marches all over the place. A fans for trans social.
Who wants this shit?
I am totally ungay, but your workplace sounds like fun.
Did you realise the company was this "right on" when you joined?
All companies are like this now. All of them.
The only acceptable response is to cheer and amplify it. To do anything else risks you being labelled as a homophobe, and we all know what that means.
So, this absurd foghorning goes on - despite most people not really caring and being somewhat fed up with it all.
That’s not my experience at double digit organisations across both engineering and law. You can delete DEI emails. You can refuse to put pronouns in email signatures. You don’t have to attend pride events. Nobody cares. It’s all in your head.
I do all of those things and nobody thinks I am a homophobe because, well, I’m not.
No, it's not all in my head - this is simple denialism by you.
It's on every call I go to, and I have to listen to it all.
You said upthread you loved this stuff, and now you say you don't do any of it.
Which one is it?
Where I've worked there's emails to 'Pride' events . . . and emails inviting to football games, basketball games, chess clubs, book clubs, craft clubs, and plenty of other things.
The general thing with social emails is to pick the ones you're interested in and ignore the rest.
So what if some people in your work want to do Pride activities? How is that affecting you whatsoever? If others are playing 5-a-side is that affecting you? Don't hear you moaning about that, but I imagine that's happening too?
If Pride is the only social stuff being organised, then it sounds like a pretty crappy place to work, but if its one amongst many, then why have a bee in your bonnet about what others choose to do?
You really don't get this, do you?
You have to be seen to champion, echo and be enthusiastic about this stuff, from a career perspective, or else you are suspect. It's a required belief. There is no choice.
This is the entire problem with Wokery. Which people like you and @Gallowgate cannot understand.
[PS. I don't have people talking to me about 5-a-side on every call for every day for a full month every year, and requiring me to applaud it or I'm seen as bigot. It's not remotely comparable.]
Why don't you resign? I've got friends who feel like this about Gaza and have turned down good jobs at arms companies as a result.
EVERY SINGLE COMPANY IS LIKE THIS. You can't escape.
The solution is political: either Woke is reined in, or it ends.
For example: Pride could go back to being a fun weekend and a march, fine, but no that wasn't enough. Now, its all of June and July and August at 110dB every single year and rainbow lanyards and flags all year round. It bores people at best and p1sses people off at worst.
Why? Because people don't like to be hectored but it's politically incorrect - and dangerous - to object so people feel even more frustrated because they can't say anything.
If you're not proportionate on anything and set rules around the right thing to say, or not say, you get a backlash.
The religious adherents can never see it, because they love it.
Companies are free to take on whatever policies they see fit; you're free to take on whatever job you fancy.
You're right that the solution is political - but I don't think you'll find much support for banning woke activity in private companies across wider society.
I'm not entirely unsympathetic. I feel this way about our lack of cycle infrastructure. Write to your MP, put up posters, make the argument here and elsewhere. Explain why it harms your business and/or society. Good luck, I guess.
Companies are not free to take on whatever policies they see fit. They have to comply with all sorts of regulations on diversity and equality.
Like what? They have to not discriminate on protected characteristics, but I can’t think of much they have to comply with in terms of “regulations on diversity and equality”. Cite some legislation if this is true.
Don't you find the whole concept of "protected characteristics" ridiculous?
When taken alone, yes, ridiculous. But it is a clunky means to a end without which we would be a more horrible place - where you could employ 10,000 people and stipulate that they are all white, or destroy careers because women have babies, or refuse to employ them at all.
Drafting law is hard. Sometimes what you want to achieve is simple and obvious, until you try to draft laws that actually cover it. Try drafting the 'Compelling Reluctant People to Behave In A Civilized Manner Act 2025'.
Please define civillized, I am sure for example most of isis think they are civillised
Thanks for making my point. 'Civilized' will be defined in section 47 of Schedule 9 and will be further refined in the transitional provisions in Schedule 10. Schedule 14 will allow the Secretary of State following consultation with 47 named bodies to issue guidance as to how to interpret the definition, which shall not be binding.
Welcome to ways of modern statutes.
And politicians wonder why we despise them
'Despise' is quite a strong word. Do you really despise them? I sometimes find myself disappointed, annoyed, exasperated, etc. But despise - no.
Jimmy Saville - yes. That schoolteacher I remember who locked a pupil in a cupboard, forgot about them, then when they remembered opened the door and shouted so loudly in their ear and clapped them with a wooden ruler that they literally burst the pupils ear-drum - yes.
(The schoolteacher in question went on to become a Tory MP - but that's not what I despise them for)
I said despise and meant it, politicians of the last 5 decades or so have flushed most of the country down the drain and turned us into slaves in practice if not in name. In theory we can change jobs, for many though its either not an option as they can't do without the wage or in fact the only other employment they could get would be equally shitty.
But its that or be homeless
I think that we get the politicians we want rather than the politicians we need. For decades people have wanted higher living standards, higher property prices, more leisure all with less taxes and and less state spending on things that don't benefit them. As soon as a politician sticks their head above the parapet to try and change things they get shot down. See Theresa May over care and Starmer over the Winter Fuel allowance. Perfectly understandable to despise politicians but ultimately it's the voters who put them there.
We won't get the politicians we need ever though because sadly too many are wedded to handouts must continue
People even here are always going on about x,y,z are underfunded. Its even more extreme if you go btl on the guardian.
Now simple question and I doubt anyone will answer it
If we fully funded everything the government currently does plus all the infrastructure repairs necessary what do you think that (~given we know from the truss debacle we can't massively expand borrowing)
a) the basic rate of income tax would have to be b) what do you think the higher rate would have to be c) what do you think the top rate would have to be
My estimates are
a) 60 b) 80 c) 90
Yet whenever I have suggested maybe we need to be looking at what the government actually does and cut some of it while fully funding what we actually still do its howls of protest
The value of the UK housing stock is £9 trillion. The value of UK equities is about £3 trillion.
A 1% wealth tax would raise £120 billion or about 4% of GDP. That should cover it.
No it wouldnt because reality shows us every country that has tried wealth taxes has failed to raise anywhere near that
I don't get this leftie arsehole obsession with wealth taxes, its failed everywhere its been tried. It seems to have replaced the obession with socialism which also failed everywhere it was tried. Lefties doomed to failure
Isn’t Barnesian an LD so a centrist not a lefty ?
Wealth taxes seem to be the latest fad. People support the concept, by and large, as they don’t think they’d have to pay.
They’ve never worked before but that won’t stop people from advocating it.
Yes I'm an LD, and I'm willing to pay.
You can probably afford to, how many renters can afford paying it because the house they are renting is valued at 300k so they now owe another 3k on top of rent and bills
If they are renting, they don't own the house so it's not part of their wealth. Yes?
Gosh you are naive, you dont think landlords will be passing it straight on. I rent pretty much all my friends rent. Mortgage rate goes up we know our rent is going up. Wealth tax goes through we know its being added to the rent. No one becomes a landlord to make a loss on their property generally they are looking for about 5 to 10% over costs on the whole......a wealth tax on the house is just another cost so rent will go up. They will all do it and rentals its generally multiple people applying because they need a rood so a sellers market.
Congratulations your wealth tax just hit some of the poorest with the added benefit that more will be spent on housing benefit because lha is set at 30% of average rent
At the margin, a wealth tax (which would probably end up being levied principally on property) - while giving @HYUFD an aneurism - would almost certainly be mildly positive.
If government must raise taxes - and all the evidence is that they will do so - then it makes sense for taxes to encourage the efficient allocation of resources.
So, a (say) 1% wealth tax discourages people from owning unproductive assets. If it's not generating a return to pay its tax, then why own it? The impact would be small, I suspect, but it makes more sense to tax something we want less of (i.e. unproductive allocation of capital), than something we want more of (i.e. work).
And farmers who own lots of land and work but don't get a large annual income? Or widows who may have been left a large house but aren't bringing in a large income each year either?
Of course neither the Tories nor Reform would support a wealth tax, Labour and the LDs might and the Greens do though probably at a high threshold of say £5 million plus
Ummm: that's precisely my point.
That widow is using a large house that a family could be using. We'd be (gently) incentivizing her to switch via the tax system.
How about we do a deal: no inheritance tax (which you would like), but a small annual levy on gross assets.
You really think the average family is going to be able to buy a house a widow left in worth millions her wealthy deceased husband left her?
No inheritance tax, Farage has already pledged to abolish inheritance tax completely maybe or at least keep the £1 million threshold Osborne set but no wealth tax either. Certainly a Reform and/or Tory government would oppose both
It doesn't matter if the average family buys it or not, because it means a well off family buys it, which means that they don't buy a home that a slightly less well off family would buy, etc.
Imagine if there are three cars (a Porsche, a Mercedes and a Skoda) and four people (one earning £1m/year, one £500,000/year, one £100,000/year and one £50,000/per year).
Right now, the millionaire gets the Porsche, the 500k guy the Merc, and the 100k the Skoda. The 50k/year guy... well he can't afford a car, and he's going to be taking public transport.
Now imagine there's a fourth car! And it's a Trabant. Well, now the £50k person gets the Trabant!
Ok. Imagine that instead of the fourth car being a Trabant... it's a Ferrari.
Well, now the millionaire gets the Ferrari, the 500k guy gets the Porsche, the 100k guy the Mercedes, and the 50k guy gets the Skoda.
Was it better to have added the "affordable car" to the mix, or the Ferrari?
Got a feeling I'm going to enjoy this week's issue:
Why exactly? Is it really that difficult to leave the gays to celebrate their own thing and get on with your own life. If it's because of all of the corporate posturing on social media i agree with that but I can tell you that I and no other gay person I know asked for that.
I've not been to a Pride event for at least 40 years. I've nothing against them but I know of no gay friends who'd dream of going . I don't believe they reflect the reality of life for most gay people.
I think I said this yesterday but of my gay friends the ones who are most attached to Pride are the slightly older ones for whom it is still intensely liberating to be out and proud amongst crowds who celebrate that fact. It means more if you've spent a lot of your adult life having to downplay your sexuality for fear of abuse.
I get that: I think those of us born the right side of (around) 1970 have a very different attitude to those born in 1950. (Of course that bunch won the property lottery, so I'm not that sympathetic.)
Gay people are like the population at large. The vast majority don't go on marches. They never have done. They don't have special attitudes. They get on with life just like everyone else.
Agreed. Which is why we should treat their parades like any other group having fun and not some aspect of a culture war.
But don't pretend that these parades represent the gay community - they really don't. They're a tiny subset of a much richer and varied culture. I suspect you have no clue if you think pride marches reflect gay society in any meaningful way .
The system of international law/human rights either needs to be changed or it will be overturned entirely.
The legal/activist class across Europe are like the monks and priests of the Catholic Church in northern and Western Europe circa 1500. Parasitic, doctrinaire, vain, myopic and greedy. And you can feel the resentment building and building. A Reformation is coming to sweep them away and it might be violent
That's a great analogy.
But it goes wider. Full on Pride shite at work today with some events stretching into August. A queer quiz. A gay tapestry. Marches all over the place. A fans for trans social.
Who wants this shit?
I am totally ungay, but your workplace sounds like fun.
Did you realise the company was this "right on" when you joined?
All companies are like this now. All of them.
The only acceptable response is to cheer and amplify it. To do anything else risks you being labelled as a homophobe, and we all know what that means.
So, this absurd foghorning goes on - despite most people not really caring and being somewhat fed up with it all.
That’s not my experience at double digit organisations across both engineering and law. You can delete DEI emails. You can refuse to put pronouns in email signatures. You don’t have to attend pride events. Nobody cares. It’s all in your head.
I do all of those things and nobody thinks I am a homophobe because, well, I’m not.
No, it's not all in my head - this is simple denialism by you.
It's on every call I go to, and I have to listen to it all.
You said upthread you loved this stuff, and now you say you don't do any of it.
Which one is it?
Where I've worked there's emails to 'Pride' events . . . and emails inviting to football games, basketball games, chess clubs, book clubs, craft clubs, and plenty of other things.
The general thing with social emails is to pick the ones you're interested in and ignore the rest.
So what if some people in your work want to do Pride activities? How is that affecting you whatsoever? If others are playing 5-a-side is that affecting you? Don't hear you moaning about that, but I imagine that's happening too?
If Pride is the only social stuff being organised, then it sounds like a pretty crappy place to work, but if its one amongst many, then why have a bee in your bonnet about what others choose to do?
You really don't get this, do you?
You have to be seen to champion, echo and be enthusiastic about this stuff, from a career perspective, or else you are suspect. It's a required belief. There is no choice.
This is the entire problem with Wokery. Which people like you and @Gallowgate cannot understand.
[PS. I don't have people talking to me about 5-a-side on every call for every day for a full month every year, and requiring me to applaud it or I'm seen as bigot. It's not remotely comparable.]
Why don't you resign? I've got friends who feel like this about Gaza and have turned down good jobs at arms companies as a result.
EVERY SINGLE COMPANY IS LIKE THIS. You can't escape.
The solution is political: either Woke is reined in, or it ends.
For example: Pride could go back to being a fun weekend and a march, fine, but no that wasn't enough. Now, its all of June and July and August at 110dB every single year and rainbow lanyards and flags all year round. It bores people at best and p1sses people off at worst.
Why? Because people don't like to be hectored but it's politically incorrect - and dangerous - to object so people feel even more frustrated because they can't say anything.
If you're not proportionate on anything and set rules around the right thing to say, or not say, you get a backlash.
The religious adherents can never see it, because they love it.
Companies are free to take on whatever policies they see fit; you're free to take on whatever job you fancy.
You're right that the solution is political - but I don't think you'll find much support for banning woke activity in private companies across wider society.
I'm not entirely unsympathetic. I feel this way about our lack of cycle infrastructure. Write to your MP, put up posters, make the argument here and elsewhere. Explain why it harms your business and/or society. Good luck, I guess.
Companies are not free to take on whatever policies they see fit. They have to comply with all sorts of regulations on diversity and equality.
Like what? They have to not discriminate on protected characteristics, but I can’t think of much they have to comply with in terms of “regulations on diversity and equality”. Cite some legislation if this is true.
Don't you find the whole concept of "protected characteristics" ridiculous?
When taken alone, yes, ridiculous. But it is a clunky means to a end without which we would be a more horrible place - where you could employ 10,000 people and stipulate that they are all white, or destroy careers because women have babies, or refuse to employ them at all.
Drafting law is hard. Sometimes what you want to achieve is simple and obvious, until you try to draft laws that actually cover it. Try drafting the 'Compelling Reluctant People to Behave In A Civilized Manner Act 2025'.
Please define civillized, I am sure for example most of isis think they are civillised
Thanks for making my point. 'Civilized' will be defined in section 47 of Schedule 9 and will be further refined in the transitional provisions in Schedule 10. Schedule 14 will allow the Secretary of State following consultation with 47 named bodies to issue guidance as to how to interpret the definition, which shall not be binding.
Welcome to ways of modern statutes.
And politicians wonder why we despise them
'Despise' is quite a strong word. Do you really despise them? I sometimes find myself disappointed, annoyed, exasperated, etc. But despise - no.
Jimmy Saville - yes. That schoolteacher I remember who locked a pupil in a cupboard, forgot about them, then when they remembered opened the door and shouted so loudly in their ear and clapped them with a wooden ruler that they literally burst the pupils ear-drum - yes.
(The schoolteacher in question went on to become a Tory MP - but that's not what I despise them for)
I said despise and meant it, politicians of the last 5 decades or so have flushed most of the country down the drain and turned us into slaves in practice if not in name. In theory we can change jobs, for many though its either not an option as they can't do without the wage or in fact the only other employment they could get would be equally shitty.
But its that or be homeless
I think that we get the politicians we want rather than the politicians we need. For decades people have wanted higher living standards, higher property prices, more leisure all with less taxes and and less state spending on things that don't benefit them. As soon as a politician sticks their head above the parapet to try and change things they get shot down. See Theresa May over care and Starmer over the Winter Fuel allowance. Perfectly understandable to despise politicians but ultimately it's the voters who put them there.
We won't get the politicians we need ever though because sadly too many are wedded to handouts must continue
People even here are always going on about x,y,z are underfunded. Its even more extreme if you go btl on the guardian.
Now simple question and I doubt anyone will answer it
If we fully funded everything the government currently does plus all the infrastructure repairs necessary what do you think that (~given we know from the truss debacle we can't massively expand borrowing)
a) the basic rate of income tax would have to be b) what do you think the higher rate would have to be c) what do you think the top rate would have to be
My estimates are
a) 60 b) 80 c) 90
Yet whenever I have suggested maybe we need to be looking at what the government actually does and cut some of it while fully funding what we actually still do its howls of protest
The value of the UK housing stock is £9 trillion. The value of UK equities is about £3 trillion.
A 1% wealth tax would raise £120 billion or about 4% of GDP. That should cover it.
No it wouldnt because reality shows us every country that has tried wealth taxes has failed to raise anywhere near that
I don't get this leftie arsehole obsession with wealth taxes, its failed everywhere its been tried. It seems to have replaced the obession with socialism which also failed everywhere it was tried. Lefties doomed to failure
Isn’t Barnesian an LD so a centrist not a lefty ?
Wealth taxes seem to be the latest fad. People support the concept, by and large, as they don’t think they’d have to pay.
They’ve never worked before but that won’t stop people from advocating it.
It's all very well being opposed to wealth taxes though I think land value taxation is an idea whose time has come (and it's not as though you can hide land very easily to evade).
The truth is we need to reduce both the debt and borrowing by around £100 billion to get the public finances back into some shape and at a time when we are looking for more spending on defence for example, simply suggesting spending cuts can do all the heavy lifting is just foolish.
What would you propose?
Well I just think parroting ‘wealth taxes’ when they’re easy for the wealthy to avoid is pointless. It just tells people,there is an easy solution and they won’t have to pay. People favour taxes others pay. I’m only opposed as I think they won’t work.
Land value tax, fine, I wouldn’t consider that a wealth tax no more than I’d consider council tax a wealth tax.
I’d probably combine NI and income tax for one.
I’d stay the course of WFA and PIP and reform the triple lock too.
I’d scrap stamp duty on shares and homes. Homes to get people, like myself, trading down. Shares to encourage investing.
I’d reduce the amount you could put in a cash ISA too.
Look at people funding their own care costs.
We have major problems but I doubt this govt has the will to do,what is needed.
This sadly is where you get stupidity, we get people going on about the reduction of ni by hunt, despite the fact that freezing the allowance more than offset it and bought in more tax overall. They should have welcomed it because it meant more of those rich pensioners were paying more. Regular reductions of ni while freezing the personal allowance are probably the most pain free way of folding ni into income tax
The freezing of the allowances was done before the NI reductions it wasn’t a quid pro quo.
And as I’ve said since before the election (and especially after the WFA screw up) the best approach was to solve the lost tax revenue by putting income tax up by 3p.
That would have left the poorest pensioners better off while collecting tax from richer pensioners and avoided any stupid means testing
You're wrong there, the freeze was due to expire but was explicitly extended linked to the NI changes, so it absolutely was a quid pro quo.
The system of international law/human rights either needs to be changed or it will be overturned entirely.
The legal/activist class across Europe are like the monks and priests of the Catholic Church in northern and Western Europe circa 1500. Parasitic, doctrinaire, vain, myopic and greedy. And you can feel the resentment building and building. A Reformation is coming to sweep them away and it might be violent
That's a great analogy.
But it goes wider. Full on Pride shite at work today with some events stretching into August. A queer quiz. A gay tapestry. Marches all over the place. A fans for trans social.
Who wants this shit?
I am totally ungay, but your workplace sounds like fun.
Did you realise the company was this "right on" when you joined?
All companies are like this now. All of them.
The only acceptable response is to cheer and amplify it. To do anything else risks you being labelled as a homophobe, and we all know what that means.
So, this absurd foghorning goes on - despite most people not really caring and being somewhat fed up with it all.
That’s not my experience at double digit organisations across both engineering and law. You can delete DEI emails. You can refuse to put pronouns in email signatures. You don’t have to attend pride events. Nobody cares. It’s all in your head.
I do all of those things and nobody thinks I am a homophobe because, well, I’m not.
No, it's not all in my head - this is simple denialism by you.
It's on every call I go to, and I have to listen to it all.
You said upthread you loved this stuff, and now you say you don't do any of it.
Which one is it?
Where I've worked there's emails to 'Pride' events . . . and emails inviting to football games, basketball games, chess clubs, book clubs, craft clubs, and plenty of other things.
The general thing with social emails is to pick the ones you're interested in and ignore the rest.
So what if some people in your work want to do Pride activities? How is that affecting you whatsoever? If others are playing 5-a-side is that affecting you? Don't hear you moaning about that, but I imagine that's happening too?
If Pride is the only social stuff being organised, then it sounds like a pretty crappy place to work, but if its one amongst many, then why have a bee in your bonnet about what others choose to do?
You really don't get this, do you?
You have to be seen to champion, echo and be enthusiastic about this stuff, from a career perspective, or else you are suspect. It's a required belief. There is no choice.
This is the entire problem with Wokery. Which people like you and @Gallowgate cannot understand.
[PS. I don't have people talking to me about 5-a-side on every call for every day for a full month every year, and requiring me to applaud it or I'm seen as bigot. It's not remotely comparable.]
Why don't you resign? I've got friends who feel like this about Gaza and have turned down good jobs at arms companies as a result.
EVERY SINGLE COMPANY IS LIKE THIS. You can't escape.
The solution is political: either Woke is reined in, or it ends.
For example: Pride could go back to being a fun weekend and a march, fine, but no that wasn't enough. Now, its all of June and July and August at 110dB every single year and rainbow lanyards and flags all year round. It bores people at best and p1sses people off at worst.
Why? Because people don't like to be hectored but it's politically incorrect - and dangerous - to object so people feel even more frustrated because they can't say anything.
If you're not proportionate on anything and set rules around the right thing to say, or not say, you get a backlash.
The religious adherents can never see it, because they love it.
Companies are free to take on whatever policies they see fit; you're free to take on whatever job you fancy.
You're right that the solution is political - but I don't think you'll find much support for banning woke activity in private companies across wider society.
I'm not entirely unsympathetic. I feel this way about our lack of cycle infrastructure. Write to your MP, put up posters, make the argument here and elsewhere. Explain why it harms your business and/or society. Good luck, I guess.
Companies are not free to take on whatever policies they see fit. They have to comply with all sorts of regulations on diversity and equality.
Like what? They have to not discriminate on protected characteristics, but I can’t think of much they have to comply with in terms of “regulations on diversity and equality”. Cite some legislation if this is true.
Don't you find the whole concept of "protected characteristics" ridiculous?
When taken alone, yes, ridiculous. But it is a clunky means to a end without which we would be a more horrible place - where you could employ 10,000 people and stipulate that they are all white, or destroy careers because women have babies, or refuse to employ them at all.
Drafting law is hard. Sometimes what you want to achieve is simple and obvious, until you try to draft laws that actually cover it. Try drafting the 'Compelling Reluctant People to Behave In A Civilized Manner Act 2025'.
Please define civillized, I am sure for example most of isis think they are civillised
Thanks for making my point. 'Civilized' will be defined in section 47 of Schedule 9 and will be further refined in the transitional provisions in Schedule 10. Schedule 14 will allow the Secretary of State following consultation with 47 named bodies to issue guidance as to how to interpret the definition, which shall not be binding.
Welcome to ways of modern statutes.
And politicians wonder why we despise them
'Despise' is quite a strong word. Do you really despise them? I sometimes find myself disappointed, annoyed, exasperated, etc. But despise - no.
Jimmy Saville - yes. That schoolteacher I remember who locked a pupil in a cupboard, forgot about them, then when they remembered opened the door and shouted so loudly in their ear and clapped them with a wooden ruler that they literally burst the pupils ear-drum - yes.
(The schoolteacher in question went on to become a Tory MP - but that's not what I despise them for)
I said despise and meant it, politicians of the last 5 decades or so have flushed most of the country down the drain and turned us into slaves in practice if not in name. In theory we can change jobs, for many though its either not an option as they can't do without the wage or in fact the only other employment they could get would be equally shitty.
But its that or be homeless
I think that we get the politicians we want rather than the politicians we need. For decades people have wanted higher living standards, higher property prices, more leisure all with less taxes and and less state spending on things that don't benefit them. As soon as a politician sticks their head above the parapet to try and change things they get shot down. See Theresa May over care and Starmer over the Winter Fuel allowance. Perfectly understandable to despise politicians but ultimately it's the voters who put them there.
We won't get the politicians we need ever though because sadly too many are wedded to handouts must continue
People even here are always going on about x,y,z are underfunded. Its even more extreme if you go btl on the guardian.
Now simple question and I doubt anyone will answer it
If we fully funded everything the government currently does plus all the infrastructure repairs necessary what do you think that (~given we know from the truss debacle we can't massively expand borrowing)
a) the basic rate of income tax would have to be b) what do you think the higher rate would have to be c) what do you think the top rate would have to be
My estimates are
a) 60 b) 80 c) 90
Yet whenever I have suggested maybe we need to be looking at what the government actually does and cut some of it while fully funding what we actually still do its howls of protest
The value of the UK housing stock is £9 trillion. The value of UK equities is about £3 trillion.
A 1% wealth tax would raise £120 billion or about 4% of GDP. That should cover it.
No it wouldnt because reality shows us every country that has tried wealth taxes has failed to raise anywhere near that
I don't get this leftie arsehole obsession with wealth taxes, its failed everywhere its been tried. It seems to have replaced the obession with socialism which also failed everywhere it was tried. Lefties doomed to failure
Isn’t Barnesian an LD so a centrist not a lefty ?
Wealth taxes seem to be the latest fad. People support the concept, by and large, as they don’t think they’d have to pay.
They’ve never worked before but that won’t stop people from advocating it.
Yes I'm an LD, and I'm willing to pay.
You can probably afford to, how many renters can afford paying it because the house they are renting is valued at 300k so they now owe another 3k on top of rent and bills
If they are renting, they don't own the house so it's not part of their wealth. Yes?
Gosh you are naive, you dont think landlords will be passing it straight on. I rent pretty much all my friends rent. Mortgage rate goes up we know our rent is going up. Wealth tax goes through we know its being added to the rent. No one becomes a landlord to make a loss on their property generally they are looking for about 5 to 10% over costs on the whole......a wealth tax on the house is just another cost so rent will go up. They will all do it and rentals its generally multiple people applying because they need a rood so a sellers market.
Congratulations your wealth tax just hit some of the poorest with the added benefit that more will be spent on housing benefit because lha is set at 30% of average rent
At the margin, a wealth tax (which would probably end up being levied principally on property) - while giving @HYUFD an aneurism - would almost certainly be mildly positive.
If government must raise taxes - and all the evidence is that they will do so - then it makes sense for taxes to encourage the efficient allocation of resources.
So, a (say) 1% wealth tax discourages people from owning unproductive assets. If it's not generating a return to pay its tax, then why own it? The impact would be small, I suspect, but it makes more sense to tax something we want less of (i.e. unproductive allocation of capital), than something we want more of (i.e. work).
And farmers who own lots of land and work but don't get a large annual income? Or widows who may have been left a large house but aren't bringing in a large income each year either?
Of course neither the Tories nor Reform would support a wealth tax, Labour and the LDs might and the Greens do though probably at a high threshold of say £5 million plus
Ummm: that's precisely my point.
That widow is using a large house that a family could be using. We'd be (gently) incentivizing her to switch via the tax system.
How about we do a deal: no inheritance tax (which you would like), but a small annual levy on gross assets.
You really think the average family is going to be able to buy a house a widow left in worth millions her wealthy deceased husband left her?
No inheritance tax, Farage has already pledged to abolish inheritance tax completely maybe or at least keep the £1 million threshold Osborne set but no wealth tax either. Certainly a Reform and/or Tory government would oppose both
It doesn't matter if the average family buys it or not, because it means a well off family buys it, which means that they don't buy a home that a slightly less well off family would buy, etc.
Imagine if there are three cars (a Porsche, a Mercedes and a Skoda) and four people (one earning £1m/year, one £500,000/year, one £100,000/year and one £50,000/per year).
Right now, the millionaire gets the Porsche, the 500k guy the Merc, and the 100k the Skoda. The 50k/year guy... well he can't afford a car, and he's going to be taking public transport.
Now imagine there's a fourth car! And it's a Trabant. Well, now the £50k person gets the Trabant!
Ok. Imagine that instead of the fourth car being a Trabant... it's a Ferrari.
Well, now the millionaire gets the Ferrari, the 500k guy gets the Porsche, the 100k guy the Mercedes, and the 50k guy gets the Skoda.
Was it better to have added the "affordable car" to the mix, or the Ferrari?
The same is true of houses.
To
Why would a well off family buy a cheaper more affordable home anyway rather than a more expensive property?
Your scenario of 4 four fixed cars is also irrelevant when you can increase the supply of affordable homes which is what those on lower incomes actually need.
So no, that is clearly just an agenda for left liberalism, which is why Reform and Tory voters will continue to vote against inheritance tax and wealth taxes
The system of international law/human rights either needs to be changed or it will be overturned entirely.
The legal/activist class across Europe are like the monks and priests of the Catholic Church in northern and Western Europe circa 1500. Parasitic, doctrinaire, vain, myopic and greedy. And you can feel the resentment building and building. A Reformation is coming to sweep them away and it might be violent
That's a great analogy.
But it goes wider. Full on Pride shite at work today with some events stretching into August. A queer quiz. A gay tapestry. Marches all over the place. A fans for trans social.
Who wants this shit?
I am totally ungay, but your workplace sounds like fun.
Did you realise the company was this "right on" when you joined?
All companies are like this now. All of them.
The only acceptable response is to cheer and amplify it. To do anything else risks you being labelled as a homophobe, and we all know what that means.
So, this absurd foghorning goes on - despite most people not really caring and being somewhat fed up with it all.
That’s not my experience at double digit organisations across both engineering and law. You can delete DEI emails. You can refuse to put pronouns in email signatures. You don’t have to attend pride events. Nobody cares. It’s all in your head.
I do all of those things and nobody thinks I am a homophobe because, well, I’m not.
No, it's not all in my head - this is simple denialism by you.
It's on every call I go to, and I have to listen to it all.
You said upthread you loved this stuff, and now you say you don't do any of it.
Which one is it?
Where I've worked there's emails to 'Pride' events . . . and emails inviting to football games, basketball games, chess clubs, book clubs, craft clubs, and plenty of other things.
The general thing with social emails is to pick the ones you're interested in and ignore the rest.
So what if some people in your work want to do Pride activities? How is that affecting you whatsoever? If others are playing 5-a-side is that affecting you? Don't hear you moaning about that, but I imagine that's happening too?
If Pride is the only social stuff being organised, then it sounds like a pretty crappy place to work, but if its one amongst many, then why have a bee in your bonnet about what others choose to do?
You really don't get this, do you?
You have to be seen to champion, echo and be enthusiastic about this stuff, from a career perspective, or else you are suspect. It's a required belief. There is no choice.
This is the entire problem with Wokery. Which people like you and @Gallowgate cannot understand.
[PS. I don't have people talking to me about 5-a-side on every call for every day for a full month every year, and requiring me to applaud it or I'm seen as bigot. It's not remotely comparable.]
Why don't you resign? I've got friends who feel like this about Gaza and have turned down good jobs at arms companies as a result.
EVERY SINGLE COMPANY IS LIKE THIS. You can't escape.
The solution is political: either Woke is reined in, or it ends.
For example: Pride could go back to being a fun weekend and a march, fine, but no that wasn't enough. Now, its all of June and July and August at 110dB every single year and rainbow lanyards and flags all year round. It bores people at best and p1sses people off at worst.
Why? Because people don't like to be hectored but it's politically incorrect - and dangerous - to object so people feel even more frustrated because they can't say anything.
If you're not proportionate on anything and set rules around the right thing to say, or not say, you get a backlash.
The religious adherents can never see it, because they love it.
Companies are free to take on whatever policies they see fit; you're free to take on whatever job you fancy.
You're right that the solution is political - but I don't think you'll find much support for banning woke activity in private companies across wider society.
I'm not entirely unsympathetic. I feel this way about our lack of cycle infrastructure. Write to your MP, put up posters, make the argument here and elsewhere. Explain why it harms your business and/or society. Good luck, I guess.
Companies are not free to take on whatever policies they see fit. They have to comply with all sorts of regulations on diversity and equality.
Like what? They have to not discriminate on protected characteristics, but I can’t think of much they have to comply with in terms of “regulations on diversity and equality”. Cite some legislation if this is true.
Don't you find the whole concept of "protected characteristics" ridiculous?
When taken alone, yes, ridiculous. But it is a clunky means to a end without which we would be a more horrible place - where you could employ 10,000 people and stipulate that they are all white, or destroy careers because women have babies, or refuse to employ them at all.
Drafting law is hard. Sometimes what you want to achieve is simple and obvious, until you try to draft laws that actually cover it. Try drafting the 'Compelling Reluctant People to Behave In A Civilized Manner Act 2025'.
Please define civillized, I am sure for example most of isis think they are civillised
Thanks for making my point. 'Civilized' will be defined in section 47 of Schedule 9 and will be further refined in the transitional provisions in Schedule 10. Schedule 14 will allow the Secretary of State following consultation with 47 named bodies to issue guidance as to how to interpret the definition, which shall not be binding.
Welcome to ways of modern statutes.
And politicians wonder why we despise them
'Despise' is quite a strong word. Do you really despise them? I sometimes find myself disappointed, annoyed, exasperated, etc. But despise - no.
Jimmy Saville - yes. That schoolteacher I remember who locked a pupil in a cupboard, forgot about them, then when they remembered opened the door and shouted so loudly in their ear and clapped them with a wooden ruler that they literally burst the pupils ear-drum - yes.
(The schoolteacher in question went on to become a Tory MP - but that's not what I despise them for)
I said despise and meant it, politicians of the last 5 decades or so have flushed most of the country down the drain and turned us into slaves in practice if not in name. In theory we can change jobs, for many though its either not an option as they can't do without the wage or in fact the only other employment they could get would be equally shitty.
But its that or be homeless
I think that we get the politicians we want rather than the politicians we need. For decades people have wanted higher living standards, higher property prices, more leisure all with less taxes and and less state spending on things that don't benefit them. As soon as a politician sticks their head above the parapet to try and change things they get shot down. See Theresa May over care and Starmer over the Winter Fuel allowance. Perfectly understandable to despise politicians but ultimately it's the voters who put them there.
We won't get the politicians we need ever though because sadly too many are wedded to handouts must continue
People even here are always going on about x,y,z are underfunded. Its even more extreme if you go btl on the guardian.
Now simple question and I doubt anyone will answer it
If we fully funded everything the government currently does plus all the infrastructure repairs necessary what do you think that (~given we know from the truss debacle we can't massively expand borrowing)
a) the basic rate of income tax would have to be b) what do you think the higher rate would have to be c) what do you think the top rate would have to be
My estimates are
a) 60 b) 80 c) 90
Yet whenever I have suggested maybe we need to be looking at what the government actually does and cut some of it while fully funding what we actually still do its howls of protest
The value of the UK housing stock is £9 trillion. The value of UK equities is about £3 trillion.
A 1% wealth tax would raise £120 billion or about 4% of GDP. That should cover it.
No it wouldnt because reality shows us every country that has tried wealth taxes has failed to raise anywhere near that
I don't get this leftie arsehole obsession with wealth taxes, its failed everywhere its been tried. It seems to have replaced the obession with socialism which also failed everywhere it was tried. Lefties doomed to failure
Isn’t Barnesian an LD so a centrist not a lefty ?
Wealth taxes seem to be the latest fad. People support the concept, by and large, as they don’t think they’d have to pay.
They’ve never worked before but that won’t stop people from advocating it.
Yes I'm an LD, and I'm willing to pay.
You can probably afford to, how many renters can afford paying it because the house they are renting is valued at 300k so they now owe another 3k on top of rent and bills
If they are renting, they don't own the house so it's not part of their wealth. Yes?
Gosh you are naive, you dont think landlords will be passing it straight on. I rent pretty much all my friends rent. Mortgage rate goes up we know our rent is going up. Wealth tax goes through we know its being added to the rent. No one becomes a landlord to make a loss on their property generally they are looking for about 5 to 10% over costs on the whole......a wealth tax on the house is just another cost so rent will go up. They will all do it and rentals its generally multiple people applying because they need a rood so a sellers market.
Congratulations your wealth tax just hit some of the poorest with the added benefit that more will be spent on housing benefit because lha is set at 30% of average rent
At the margin, a wealth tax (which would probably end up being levied principally on property) - while giving @HYUFD an aneurism - would almost certainly be mildly positive.
If government must raise taxes - and all the evidence is that they will do so - then it makes sense for taxes to encourage the efficient allocation of resources.
So, a (say) 1% wealth tax discourages people from owning unproductive assets. If it's not generating a return to pay its tax, then why own it? The impact would be small, I suspect, but it makes more sense to tax something we want less of (i.e. unproductive allocation of capital), than something we want more of (i.e. work).
And farmers who own lots of land and work but don't get a large annual income? Or widows who may have been left a large house but aren't bringing in a large income each year either?
Of course neither the Tories nor Reform would support a wealth tax, Labour and the LDs might and the Greens do though probably at a high threshold of say £5 million plus
Ummm: that's precisely my point.
That widow is using a large house that a family could be using. We'd be (gently) incentivizing her to switch via the tax system.
How about we do a deal: no inheritance tax (which you would like), but a small annual levy on gross assets.
You really think the average family is going to be able to buy a house a widow left in worth millions her wealthy deceased husband left her?
No inheritance tax, Farage has already pledged to abolish inheritance tax completely maybe or at least keep the £1 million threshold Osborne set but no wealth tax either. Certainly a Reform and/or Tory government would oppose both
It doesn't matter if the average family buys it or not, because it means a well off family buys it, which means that they don't buy a home that a slightly less well off family would buy, etc.
Imagine if there are three cars (a Porsche, a Mercedes and a Skoda) and four people (one earning £1m/year, one £500,000/year, one £100,000/year and one £50,000/per year).
Right now, the millionaire gets the Porsche, the 500k guy the Merc, and the 100k the Skoda. The 50k/year guy... well he can't afford a car, and he's going to be taking public transport.
Now imagine there's a fourth car! And it's a Trabant. Well, now the £50k person gets the Trabant!
Ok. Imagine that instead of the fourth car being a Trabant... it's a Ferrari.
Well, now the millionaire gets the Ferrari, the 500k guy gets the Porsche, the 100k guy the Mercedes, and the 50k guy gets the Skoda.
Was it better to have added the "affordable car" to the mix, or the Ferrari?
The same is true of houses.
To
Why would a well off family buy a cheaper more affordable home anyway rather than a more expensive property?
Your scenario of 4 four fixed cars is also irrelevant when you can increase the supply of affordable homes which is what those on lower incomes actually need.
So no, that is clearly just an agenda for left liberalism, which is why Reform and Tory voters will continue to vote against inheritance tax and wealth taxes
Wait.
Me suggesting houses for millionaires is "just an agenda for left liberalism"?
If Hamilton was in England, then it would appear to be ideal territory for a large Reform vote share:
"The town centre is dying", says Linda Smith, who has lived there for 15 years. "We need to regenerate Hamilton - at the moment it's just a nowhere town."
The decline of shops in the area is noticeable, with to let signs adorning numerous premises throughout the town centre.
In the Regent shopping precinct some of the biggest units lie vacant, telling a story of long departed retail giants such as Marks & Spencer, Boots and WH Smith.
"Hamilton town centre is like a ghost town," says Sandra Panton, 65.
[For the Hamilton by-election campaign,] Reform is testing out something else too: its attacks on net zero. Farage’s speech on Monday was in Aberdeen, a three-hour drive on the opposite side of Scotland from where the by-election is taking place. Here, in the “oil capital of Europe”, the Reform leader dubbed net zero “the next Brexit”, calling out the “madness” of policies pursued both in Westminster and Holyrood. One of Reform’s main strategies for “evolving” from a protest party into a serious contender is to branch out from focusing primarily on immigration and Brexit. Farage, I was told by a Reform source, believes he has “banked” the immigration issue, and is looking for other policy areas where his party can differentiate itself from the Westminster consensus. Net zero is the next hot-button issue. And the Hamilton by-election is a chance to see how well this anti-deindustrialisation message plays in Scotland.
The system of international law/human rights either needs to be changed or it will be overturned entirely.
The legal/activist class across Europe are like the monks and priests of the Catholic Church in northern and Western Europe circa 1500. Parasitic, doctrinaire, vain, myopic and greedy. And you can feel the resentment building and building. A Reformation is coming to sweep them away and it might be violent
That's a great analogy.
But it goes wider. Full on Pride shite at work today with some events stretching into August. A queer quiz. A gay tapestry. Marches all over the place. A fans for trans social.
Who wants this shit?
I am totally ungay, but your workplace sounds like fun.
Did you realise the company was this "right on" when you joined?
All companies are like this now. All of them.
The only acceptable response is to cheer and amplify it. To do anything else risks you being labelled as a homophobe, and we all know what that means.
So, this absurd foghorning goes on - despite most people not really caring and being somewhat fed up with it all.
That’s not my experience at double digit organisations across both engineering and law. You can delete DEI emails. You can refuse to put pronouns in email signatures. You don’t have to attend pride events. Nobody cares. It’s all in your head.
I do all of those things and nobody thinks I am a homophobe because, well, I’m not.
No, it's not all in my head - this is simple denialism by you.
It's on every call I go to, and I have to listen to it all.
You said upthread you loved this stuff, and now you say you don't do any of it.
Which one is it?
Where I've worked there's emails to 'Pride' events . . . and emails inviting to football games, basketball games, chess clubs, book clubs, craft clubs, and plenty of other things.
The general thing with social emails is to pick the ones you're interested in and ignore the rest.
So what if some people in your work want to do Pride activities? How is that affecting you whatsoever? If others are playing 5-a-side is that affecting you? Don't hear you moaning about that, but I imagine that's happening too?
If Pride is the only social stuff being organised, then it sounds like a pretty crappy place to work, but if its one amongst many, then why have a bee in your bonnet about what others choose to do?
You really don't get this, do you?
You have to be seen to champion, echo and be enthusiastic about this stuff, from a career perspective, or else you are suspect. It's a required belief. There is no choice.
This is the entire problem with Wokery. Which people like you and @Gallowgate cannot understand.
[PS. I don't have people talking to me about 5-a-side on every call for every day for a full month every year, and requiring me to applaud it or I'm seen as bigot. It's not remotely comparable.]
Why don't you resign? I've got friends who feel like this about Gaza and have turned down good jobs at arms companies as a result.
EVERY SINGLE COMPANY IS LIKE THIS. You can't escape.
The solution is political: either Woke is reined in, or it ends.
For example: Pride could go back to being a fun weekend and a march, fine, but no that wasn't enough. Now, its all of June and July and August at 110dB every single year and rainbow lanyards and flags all year round. It bores people at best and p1sses people off at worst.
Why? Because people don't like to be hectored but it's politically incorrect - and dangerous - to object so people feel even more frustrated because they can't say anything.
If you're not proportionate on anything and set rules around the right thing to say, or not say, you get a backlash.
The religious adherents can never see it, because they love it.
Companies are free to take on whatever policies they see fit; you're free to take on whatever job you fancy.
You're right that the solution is political - but I don't think you'll find much support for banning woke activity in private companies across wider society.
I'm not entirely unsympathetic. I feel this way about our lack of cycle infrastructure. Write to your MP, put up posters, make the argument here and elsewhere. Explain why it harms your business and/or society. Good luck, I guess.
Companies are not free to take on whatever policies they see fit. They have to comply with all sorts of regulations on diversity and equality.
Like what? They have to not discriminate on protected characteristics, but I can’t think of much they have to comply with in terms of “regulations on diversity and equality”. Cite some legislation if this is true.
Don't you find the whole concept of "protected characteristics" ridiculous?
When taken alone, yes, ridiculous. But it is a clunky means to a end without which we would be a more horrible place - where you could employ 10,000 people and stipulate that they are all white, or destroy careers because women have babies, or refuse to employ them at all.
Drafting law is hard. Sometimes what you want to achieve is simple and obvious, until you try to draft laws that actually cover it. Try drafting the 'Compelling Reluctant People to Behave In A Civilized Manner Act 2025'.
Please define civillized, I am sure for example most of isis think they are civillised
Thanks for making my point. 'Civilized' will be defined in section 47 of Schedule 9 and will be further refined in the transitional provisions in Schedule 10. Schedule 14 will allow the Secretary of State following consultation with 47 named bodies to issue guidance as to how to interpret the definition, which shall not be binding.
Welcome to ways of modern statutes.
And politicians wonder why we despise them
'Despise' is quite a strong word. Do you really despise them? I sometimes find myself disappointed, annoyed, exasperated, etc. But despise - no.
Jimmy Saville - yes. That schoolteacher I remember who locked a pupil in a cupboard, forgot about them, then when they remembered opened the door and shouted so loudly in their ear and clapped them with a wooden ruler that they literally burst the pupils ear-drum - yes.
(The schoolteacher in question went on to become a Tory MP - but that's not what I despise them for)
I said despise and meant it, politicians of the last 5 decades or so have flushed most of the country down the drain and turned us into slaves in practice if not in name. In theory we can change jobs, for many though its either not an option as they can't do without the wage or in fact the only other employment they could get would be equally shitty.
But its that or be homeless
I think that we get the politicians we want rather than the politicians we need. For decades people have wanted higher living standards, higher property prices, more leisure all with less taxes and and less state spending on things that don't benefit them. As soon as a politician sticks their head above the parapet to try and change things they get shot down. See Theresa May over care and Starmer over the Winter Fuel allowance. Perfectly understandable to despise politicians but ultimately it's the voters who put them there.
We won't get the politicians we need ever though because sadly too many are wedded to handouts must continue
People even here are always going on about x,y,z are underfunded. Its even more extreme if you go btl on the guardian.
Now simple question and I doubt anyone will answer it
If we fully funded everything the government currently does plus all the infrastructure repairs necessary what do you think that (~given we know from the truss debacle we can't massively expand borrowing)
a) the basic rate of income tax would have to be b) what do you think the higher rate would have to be c) what do you think the top rate would have to be
My estimates are
a) 60 b) 80 c) 90
Yet whenever I have suggested maybe we need to be looking at what the government actually does and cut some of it while fully funding what we actually still do its howls of protest
The value of the UK housing stock is £9 trillion. The value of UK equities is about £3 trillion.
A 1% wealth tax would raise £120 billion or about 4% of GDP. That should cover it.
No it wouldnt because reality shows us every country that has tried wealth taxes has failed to raise anywhere near that
I don't get this leftie arsehole obsession with wealth taxes, its failed everywhere its been tried. It seems to have replaced the obession with socialism which also failed everywhere it was tried. Lefties doomed to failure
Isn’t Barnesian an LD so a centrist not a lefty ?
Wealth taxes seem to be the latest fad. People support the concept, by and large, as they don’t think they’d have to pay.
They’ve never worked before but that won’t stop people from advocating it.
Yes I'm an LD, and I'm willing to pay.
You can probably afford to, how many renters can afford paying it because the house they are renting is valued at 300k so they now owe another 3k on top of rent and bills
If they are renting, they don't own the house so it's not part of their wealth. Yes?
Gosh you are naive, you dont think landlords will be passing it straight on. I rent pretty much all my friends rent. Mortgage rate goes up we know our rent is going up. Wealth tax goes through we know its being added to the rent. No one becomes a landlord to make a loss on their property generally they are looking for about 5 to 10% over costs on the whole......a wealth tax on the house is just another cost so rent will go up. They will all do it and rentals its generally multiple people applying because they need a rood so a sellers market.
Congratulations your wealth tax just hit some of the poorest with the added benefit that more will be spent on housing benefit because lha is set at 30% of average rent
At the margin, a wealth tax (which would probably end up being levied principally on property) - while giving @HYUFD an aneurism - would almost certainly be mildly positive.
If government must raise taxes - and all the evidence is that they will do so - then it makes sense for taxes to encourage the efficient allocation of resources.
So, a (say) 1% wealth tax discourages people from owning unproductive assets. If it's not generating a return to pay its tax, then why own it? The impact would be small, I suspect, but it makes more sense to tax something we want less of (i.e. unproductive allocation of capital), than something we want more of (i.e. work).
And farmers who own lots of land and work but don't get a large annual income? Or widows who may have been left a large house but aren't bringing in a large income each year either?
Of course neither the Tories nor Reform would support a wealth tax, Labour and the LDs might and the Greens do though probably at a high threshold of say £5 million plus
Ummm: that's precisely my point.
That widow is using a large house that a family could be using. We'd be (gently) incentivizing her to switch via the tax system.
How about we do a deal: no inheritance tax (which you would like), but a small annual levy on gross assets.
You really think the average family is going to be able to buy a house a widow left in worth millions her wealthy deceased husband left her?
No inheritance tax, Farage has already pledged to abolish inheritance tax completely maybe or at least keep the £1 million threshold Osborne set but no wealth tax either. Certainly a Reform and/or Tory government would oppose both
It doesn't matter if the average family buys it or not, because it means a well off family buys it, which means that they don't buy a home that a slightly less well off family would buy, etc.
Imagine if there are three cars (a Porsche, a Mercedes and a Skoda) and four people (one earning £1m/year, one £500,000/year, one £100,000/year and one £50,000/per year).
Right now, the millionaire gets the Porsche, the 500k guy the Merc, and the 100k the Skoda. The 50k/year guy... well he can't afford a car, and he's going to be taking public transport.
Now imagine there's a fourth car! And it's a Trabant. Well, now the £50k person gets the Trabant!
Ok. Imagine that instead of the fourth car being a Trabant... it's a Ferrari.
Well, now the millionaire gets the Ferrari, the 500k guy gets the Porsche, the 100k guy the Mercedes, and the 50k guy gets the Skoda.
Was it better to have added the "affordable car" to the mix, or the Ferrari?
The same is true of houses.
To
Which car does the Chinese investor, wanting a nest egg for their kids, or the Russian criminal looking for a parking space for their dodgy money, get?
Official guidance from NHS England. All shortlisting and interview panels must include a BME candidate. And if the BME candidate isn't appointed, the panel must write to the chairman of the organisation explaining itself.
The tweet mentions "DEI is out of control" which, as an ordinary person, made me think 'nutter'. But I had a very quick skim of the NHS England recruitment documents and couldn't find a match.
Which surprised me. Almost by 0%.
Maybe William you can dig out the referring material from the official docs seeing as the tweet doesn't link to them?
rcs1000 - So, what do you think of the reactor Bill Gates is building in Wyoming? https://www.terrapower.com/ (The US Energy Department is paying part of the costs.)
The design combines generation with storage.
Wyoming has a lot of wind power, which may be why that state was chosen for the project. (If you haven't encountered the anvil joke, you may want to search for it.)
In the old days, I would know everything about it , because I would probably have been asked to provide some of the capital for it.
These days, I think it's interesting, but don't know enough about it to have a definitive answer.
Building on the site of an old coal fired plant.
..The site was selected after a significant search including four finalist communities in Wyoming. The Natrium project team evaluated a variety of factors when selecting the site of the future Natrium plant. These included local community support, the physical characteristics of the site, the ability to obtain a license from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for the site, access to existing infrastructure and the needs of the grid...
"White British people will be a minority in 40 years, report claims Shifting ethnic dynamic of the UK driven by immigration predicted to cause dramatic changes
Official guidance from NHS England. All shortlisting and interview panels must include a BME candidate. And if the BME candidate isn't appointed, the panel must write to the chairman of the organisation explaining itself.
The tweet mentions "DEI is out of control" which, as an ordinary person, made me think 'nutter'. But I had a very quick skim of the NHS England recruitment documents and couldn't find a match.
Which surprised me. Almost by 0%.
Maybe William you can dig out the referring material from the official docs seeing as the tweet doesn't link to them?
Hasn't NHS England just been abolished ?
Not yet.
NHS England is only one NHS organisation, there are 250 Trusts as well as the ICBs
It would be interesting to see the source referenced. It doesn't ring true to me and the style curious.
Official guidance from NHS England. All shortlisting and interview panels must include a BME candidate. And if the BME candidate isn't appointed, the panel must write to the chairman of the organisation explaining itself.
The tweet mentions "DEI is out of control" which, as an ordinary person, made me think 'nutter'. But I had a very quick skim of the NHS England recruitment documents and couldn't find a match.
Which surprised me. Almost by 0%.
Maybe William you can dig out the referring material from the official docs seeing as the tweet doesn't link to them?
Hasn't NHS England just been abolished ?
Not yet.
NHS England is only one NHS organisation, there are 250 Trusts as well as the ICBs
It would be interesting to see the source referenced. It doesn't ring true to me and the style curious.
WilliamGlenn linked to it below; it's an old document from 2019.
"White British people will be a minority in 40 years, report claims Shifting ethnic dynamic of the UK driven by immigration predicted to cause dramatic changes
"White British people will be a minority in 40 years, report claims Shifting ethnic dynamic of the UK driven by immigration predicted to cause dramatic changes
Is there really any correlation between deregulation and economic growth, though?
Yes, as first-year undergraduate economics teaches us.
The private sector left to itself seeks to grow, allocating resources efficiently to maximise output. This is known as the First Fundamental Theorem of Welfare Economics - the perfectly competitive outcome is Pareto optimal. Any government regulation is likely to move an economy away from this optimal outcome, reducing economic growth. This was described by Milton Friedman as the only result in the whole of economics that is neither trivial nor false. That won't always be the case in practice, though, in particular with regulation enforcing a competitive outcome (which is why every developed country has anti-monopoly legislation) or property rights. And there will always be non-economic reasons for regulation (safety, national security, etc.). But, overall, if economics teaches us anything, it's that, beyond relatively low levels, regulation reduces economic growth.
There's plenty of empirical evidence to back this up. For instance, here is a Stanford study showing that, between US states, a 10 percent increase in the number of regulatory restrictions causes GDP growth to fall by 0.37 percentage points.
The US is massively more regulated than Europe in most things, and yet has grown far quicker. That said, the area the US is more deregulated is the labour market - so maybe that's the biggest factor.
As usual with your economic posts, that's simply not true. The only reason the EU has grown slower than the US over the last three decades is America's population growth. The EU has, in fact, come closer to the US in terms of GDP per capita, from 67 percent in 1995 (the first year for which EU27 data is available) to 72 percent in 2022.
While the EU's performance has been sub-optimal, that's been driven by the disastrous decision to have a single currency amongst widely disparate countries, the rapidly ageing populations in many member states, the post-2022 energy crisis and social preferences for working fewer hours.
America's performance is also flattered by a staggering runup in debt.
"White British people will be a minority in 40 years, report claims Shifting ethnic dynamic of the UK driven by immigration predicted to cause dramatic changes
Official guidance from NHS England. All shortlisting and interview panels must include a BME candidate. And if the BME candidate isn't appointed, the panel must write to the chairman of the organisation explaining itself.
The tweet mentions "DEI is out of control" which, as an ordinary person, made me think 'nutter'. But I had a very quick skim of the NHS England recruitment documents and couldn't find a match.
Which surprised me. Almost by 0%.
Maybe William you can dig out the referring material from the official docs seeing as the tweet doesn't link to them?
Hasn't NHS England just been abolished ?
Not yet.
NHS England is only one NHS organisation, there are 250 Trusts as well as the ICBs
It would be interesting to see the source referenced. It doesn't ring true to me and the style curious.
WilliamGlenn linked to it below; it's an old document from 2019.
That looks like a strategy document for discussion, rather than a policy, and applicable only to the highest teirs of management (Band 8a and board level). I am not involved with interviews at that level, but have never seen anything like that applied at lower levels, though we do need to do notes for every interviewed candidate whether appointed or not, so not much different to all interviews.
Official guidance from NHS England. All shortlisting and interview panels must include a BME candidate. And if the BME candidate isn't appointed, the panel must write to the chairman of the organisation explaining itself.
The tweet mentions "DEI is out of control" which, as an ordinary person, made me think 'nutter'. But I had a very quick skim of the NHS England recruitment documents and couldn't find a match.
Which surprised me. Almost by 0%.
Maybe William you can dig out the referring material from the official docs seeing as the tweet doesn't link to them?
Is there really any correlation between deregulation and economic growth, though?
Yes, as first-year undergraduate economics teaches us.
The private sector left to itself seeks to grow, allocating resources efficiently to maximise output. This is known as the First Fundamental Theorem of Welfare Economics - the perfectly competitive outcome is Pareto optimal. Any government regulation is likely to move an economy away from this optimal outcome, reducing economic growth. This was described by Milton Friedman as the only result in the whole of economics that is neither trivial nor false. That won't always be the case in practice, though, in particular with regulation enforcing a competitive outcome (which is why every developed country has anti-monopoly legislation) or property rights. And there will always be non-economic reasons for regulation (safety, national security, etc.). But, overall, if economics teaches us anything, it's that, beyond relatively low levels, regulation reduces economic growth.
There's plenty of empirical evidence to back this up. For instance, here is a Stanford study showing that, between US states, a 10 percent increase in the number of regulatory restrictions causes GDP growth to fall by 0.37 percentage points.
The US is massively more regulated than Europe in most things, and yet has grown far quicker. That said, the area the US is more deregulated is the labour market - so maybe that's the biggest factor.
As usual with your economic posts, that's simply not true. The only reason the EU has grown slower than the US over the last three decades is America's population growth. The EU has, in fact, come closer to the US in terms of GDP per capita, from 67 percent in 1995 (the first year for which EU27 data is available) to 72 percent in 2022.
While the EU's performance has been sub-optimal, that's been driven by the disastrous decision to have a single currency amongst widely disparate countries, the rapidly ageing populations in many member states, the post-2022 energy crisis and social preferences for working fewer hours.
America's performance is also flattered by a staggering runup in debt.
Regulation increases the cost of doing business, a factor exacerbated by the modern trend of making sectors responsible for the costs of their regulator rather than meeting it out of general taxation. This discourages investment in that sector (since the return is less attractive). Attempts to offset this effect, by giving guaranteed returns as in the water industry have been little short of catastrophic, distorting spend into qualifying investment whether it is actually useful or not.
One of my favourite sayings by Ronald Reagan was that the most frightening sentence in the English language is, "I'm from the government and I am here to help." As usual, he succinctly summarised complicated arguments in a single sentence. Regulation is a tax on a service and our regulatory sector, in my view, is the most obvious place for the government to be looking for substantial savings in public spending. It will be win win if they do.
If Hamilton was in England, then it would appear to be ideal territory for a large Reform vote share:
"The town centre is dying", says Linda Smith, who has lived there for 15 years. "We need to regenerate Hamilton - at the moment it's just a nowhere town."
The decline of shops in the area is noticeable, with to let signs adorning numerous premises throughout the town centre.
In the Regent shopping precinct some of the biggest units lie vacant, telling a story of long departed retail giants such as Marks & Spencer, Boots and WH Smith.
"Hamilton town centre is like a ghost town," says Sandra Panton, 65.
So which of Reforms policies would restore such towns? Are they planning to abolish Amazon and Internet shopping? How would getting rid of Net Zero help, or stopping immigration regenerate their Marks and Spencer*?
They are such a negative party, all they do is stir up anger and discontent without any solutions. I hope the SNP soundly beat them in the by-election.
* a company where one of the founders was not White British by Goodwin's definition.
Is there really any correlation between deregulation and economic growth, though?
Yes, as first-year undergraduate economics teaches us.
The private sector left to itself seeks to grow, allocating resources efficiently to maximise output. This is known as the First Fundamental Theorem of Welfare Economics - the perfectly competitive outcome is Pareto optimal. Any government regulation is likely to move an economy away from this optimal outcome, reducing economic growth. This was described by Milton Friedman as the only result in the whole of economics that is neither trivial nor false. That won't always be the case in practice, though, in particular with regulation enforcing a competitive outcome (which is why every developed country has anti-monopoly legislation) or property rights. And there will always be non-economic reasons for regulation (safety, national security, etc.). But, overall, if economics teaches us anything, it's that, beyond relatively low levels, regulation reduces economic growth.
There's plenty of empirical evidence to back this up. For instance, here is a Stanford study showing that, between US states, a 10 percent increase in the number of regulatory restrictions causes GDP growth to fall by 0.37 percentage points.
The US is massively more regulated than Europe in most things, and yet has grown far quicker. That said, the area the US is more deregulated is the labour market - so maybe that's the biggest factor.
As usual with your economic posts, that's simply not true. The only reason the EU has grown slower than the US over the last three decades is America's population growth. The EU has, in fact, come closer to the US in terms of GDP per capita, from 67 percent in 1995 (the first year for which EU27 data is available) to 72 percent in 2022.
While the EU's performance has been sub-optimal, that's been driven by the disastrous decision to have a single currency amongst widely disparate countries, the rapidly ageing populations in many member states, the post-2022 energy crisis and social preferences for working fewer hours.
America's performance is also flattered by a staggering runup in debt.
Regulation increases the cost of doing business, a factor exacerbated by the modern trend of making sectors responsible for the costs of their regulator rather than meeting it out of general taxation. This discourages investment in that sector (since the return is less attractive). Attempts to offset this effect, by giving guaranteed returns as in the water industry have been little short of catastrophic, distorting spend into qualifying investment whether it is actually useful or not.
One of my favourite sayings by Ronald Reagan was that the most frightening sentence in the English language is, "I'm from the government and I am here to help." As usual, he succinctly summarised complicated arguments in a single sentence. Regulation is a tax on a service and our regulatory sector, in my view, is the most obvious place for the government to be looking for substantial savings in public spending. It will be win win if they do.
I watched the BBC documentary on Oceangate last night. Rich man decides he doesn’t need to worry about all those regulations and ignores them. His submarine implodes, killing everyone on board.
Official guidance from NHS England. All shortlisting and interview panels must include a BME candidate. And if the BME candidate isn't appointed, the panel must write to the chairman of the organisation explaining itself.
The tweet mentions "DEI is out of control" which, as an ordinary person, made me think 'nutter'. But I had a very quick skim of the NHS England recruitment documents and couldn't find a match.
Which surprised me. Almost by 0%.
Maybe William you can dig out the referring material from the official docs seeing as the tweet doesn't link to them?
Published 2019: if there’s a problem here, complain to the party in government at the time.
Thank you for pointing this out.
The lies & hypocricy & lack of shame are absolutely amazing. They are blaming the left-wing party currently in power, for things that their own right-wing party did when it was last in power.
Is there really any correlation between deregulation and economic growth, though?
Yes, as first-year undergraduate economics teaches us.
The private sector left to itself seeks to grow, allocating resources efficiently to maximise output. This is known as the First Fundamental Theorem of Welfare Economics - the perfectly competitive outcome is Pareto optimal. Any government regulation is likely to move an economy away from this optimal outcome, reducing economic growth. This was described by Milton Friedman as the only result in the whole of economics that is neither trivial nor false. That won't always be the case in practice, though, in particular with regulation enforcing a competitive outcome (which is why every developed country has anti-monopoly legislation) or property rights. And there will always be non-economic reasons for regulation (safety, national security, etc.). But, overall, if economics teaches us anything, it's that, beyond relatively low levels, regulation reduces economic growth.
There's plenty of empirical evidence to back this up. For instance, here is a Stanford study showing that, between US states, a 10 percent increase in the number of regulatory restrictions causes GDP growth to fall by 0.37 percentage points.
The US is massively more regulated than Europe in most things, and yet has grown far quicker. That said, the area the US is more deregulated is the labour market - so maybe that's the biggest factor.
As usual with your economic posts, that's simply not true. The only reason the EU has grown slower than the US over the last three decades is America's population growth. The EU has, in fact, come closer to the US in terms of GDP per capita, from 67 percent in 1995 (the first year for which EU27 data is available) to 72 percent in 2022.
While the EU's performance has been sub-optimal, that's been driven by the disastrous decision to have a single currency amongst widely disparate countries, the rapidly ageing populations in many member states, the post-2022 energy crisis and social preferences for working fewer hours.
America's performance is also flattered by a staggering runup in debt.
Regulation increases the cost of doing business, a factor exacerbated by the modern trend of making sectors responsible for the costs of their regulator rather than meeting it out of general taxation. This discourages investment in that sector (since the return is less attractive). Attempts to offset this effect, by giving guaranteed returns as in the water industry have been little short of catastrophic, distorting spend into qualifying investment whether it is actually useful or not.
One of my favourite sayings by Ronald Reagan was that the most frightening sentence in the English language is, "I'm from the government and I am here to help." As usual, he succinctly summarised complicated arguments in a single sentence. Regulation is a tax on a service and our regulatory sector, in my view, is the most obvious place for the government to be looking for substantial savings in public spending. It will be win win if they do.
Sure, there is a regulatory cost, but we do regulate for very often valid reasons. Banking regulation to reduce the impact of speculation, environmental regulation to prevent pollution, building regulation to ensure fire safety etc, legal regulation to prevent discrimination.
We could easily deregulate the country into hell. It's a matter of regulating well to balance benefit against cost.
Official guidance from NHS England. All shortlisting and interview panels must include a BME candidate. And if the BME candidate isn't appointed, the panel must write to the chairman of the organisation explaining itself.
The tweet mentions "DEI is out of control" which, as an ordinary person, made me think 'nutter'. But I had a very quick skim of the NHS England recruitment documents and couldn't find a match.
Which surprised me. Almost by 0%.
Maybe William you can dig out the referring material from the official docs seeing as the tweet doesn't link to them?
Official guidance from NHS England. All shortlisting and interview panels must include a BME candidate. And if the BME candidate isn't appointed, the panel must write to the chairman of the organisation explaining itself.
The tweet mentions "DEI is out of control" which, as an ordinary person, made me think 'nutter'. But I had a very quick skim of the NHS England recruitment documents and couldn't find a match.
Which surprised me. Almost by 0%.
Maybe William you can dig out the referring material from the official docs seeing as the tweet doesn't link to them?
Published 2019: if there’s a problem here, complain to the party in government at the time.
Thank you for pointing this out.
The lies & hypocricy & lack of shame are absolutely amazing. They are blaming the left-wing party currently in power, for things that their own right-wing party did when it was last in power.
Speaking of hypocrisy and lack of shame, it's interesting how our Sir supporting cohort switch between reminding us all that Quangos are not under the PMs control when something goes wrong under Keir's watch, but convinced that the spread of woke in the UKs quangocracy was orchestrated personally by Boris Johnson.
Is there really any correlation between deregulation and economic growth, though?
Yes, as first-year undergraduate economics teaches us.
The private sector left to itself seeks to grow, allocating resources efficiently to maximise output. This is known as the First Fundamental Theorem of Welfare Economics - the perfectly competitive outcome is Pareto optimal. Any government regulation is likely to move an economy away from this optimal outcome, reducing economic growth. This was described by Milton Friedman as the only result in the whole of economics that is neither trivial nor false. That won't always be the case in practice, though, in particular with regulation enforcing a competitive outcome (which is why every developed country has anti-monopoly legislation) or property rights. And there will always be non-economic reasons for regulation (safety, national security, etc.). But, overall, if economics teaches us anything, it's that, beyond relatively low levels, regulation reduces economic growth.
There's plenty of empirical evidence to back this up. For instance, here is a Stanford study showing that, between US states, a 10 percent increase in the number of regulatory restrictions causes GDP growth to fall by 0.37 percentage points.
The US is massively more regulated than Europe in most things, and yet has grown far quicker. That said, the area the US is more deregulated is the labour market - so maybe that's the biggest factor.
As usual with your economic posts, that's simply not true. The only reason the EU has grown slower than the US over the last three decades is America's population growth. The EU has, in fact, come closer to the US in terms of GDP per capita, from 67 percent in 1995 (the first year for which EU27 data is available) to 72 percent in 2022.
While the EU's performance has been sub-optimal, that's been driven by the disastrous decision to have a single currency amongst widely disparate countries, the rapidly ageing populations in many member states, the post-2022 energy crisis and social preferences for working fewer hours.
America's performance is also flattered by a staggering runup in debt.
Regulation increases the cost of doing business, a factor exacerbated by the modern trend of making sectors responsible for the costs of their regulator rather than meeting it out of general taxation. This discourages investment in that sector (since the return is less attractive). Attempts to offset this effect, by giving guaranteed returns as in the water industry have been little short of catastrophic, distorting spend into qualifying investment whether it is actually useful or not.
One of my favourite sayings by Ronald Reagan was that the most frightening sentence in the English language is, "I'm from the government and I am here to help." As usual, he succinctly summarised complicated arguments in a single sentence. Regulation is a tax on a service and our regulatory sector, in my view, is the most obvious place for the government to be looking for substantial savings in public spending. It will be win win if they do.
Sure, there is a regulatory cost, but we do regulate for very often valid reasons. Banking regulation to reduce the impact of speculation, environmental regulation to prevent pollution, building regulation to ensure fire safety etc, legal regulation to prevent discrimination.
We could easily deregulate the country into hell. It's a matter of regulating well to balance benefit against cost.
And recently, we've all been getting exasperated at the lack of regulation over water suppliers.
Official guidance from NHS England. All shortlisting and interview panels must include a BME candidate. And if the BME candidate isn't appointed, the panel must write to the chairman of the organisation explaining itself.
The tweet mentions "DEI is out of control" which, as an ordinary person, made me think 'nutter'. But I had a very quick skim of the NHS England recruitment documents and couldn't find a match.
Which surprised me. Almost by 0%.
Maybe William you can dig out the referring material from the official docs seeing as the tweet doesn't link to them?
Published 2019: if there’s a problem here, complain to the party in government at the time.
More proof of the insidious evil of the Labour Party. Look at this policy they implemented whilst in government in 2019! Had the Conservatives been in government this anti-white racism wouldn’t have happened.
You can listen to honest Bob Jenrick. He’s your man. Had he been a government minister in 2019 you can guarantee this would not have happened. Vote Conservative to stop dei says William.
The system of international law/human rights either needs to be changed or it will be overturned entirely.
The legal/activist class across Europe are like the monks and priests of the Catholic Church in northern and Western Europe circa 1500. Parasitic, doctrinaire, vain, myopic and greedy. And you can feel the resentment building and building. A Reformation is coming to sweep them away and it might be violent
That's a great analogy.
But it goes wider. Full on Pride shite at work today with some events stretching into August. A queer quiz. A gay tapestry. Marches all over the place. A fans for trans social.
Who wants this shit?
I am totally ungay, but your workplace sounds like fun.
Did you realise the company was this "right on" when you joined?
All companies are like this now. All of them.
The only acceptable response is to cheer and amplify it. To do anything else risks you being labelled as a homophobe, and we all know what that means.
So, this absurd foghorning goes on - despite most people not really caring and being somewhat fed up with it all.
That’s not my experience at double digit organisations across both engineering and law. You can delete DEI emails. You can refuse to put pronouns in email signatures. You don’t have to attend pride events. Nobody cares. It’s all in your head.
I do all of those things and nobody thinks I am a homophobe because, well, I’m not.
No, it's not all in my head - this is simple denialism by you.
It's on every call I go to, and I have to listen to it all.
You said upthread you loved this stuff, and now you say you don't do any of it.
Which one is it?
Where I've worked there's emails to 'Pride' events . . . and emails inviting to football games, basketball games, chess clubs, book clubs, craft clubs, and plenty of other things.
The general thing with social emails is to pick the ones you're interested in and ignore the rest.
So what if some people in your work want to do Pride activities? How is that affecting you whatsoever? If others are playing 5-a-side is that affecting you? Don't hear you moaning about that, but I imagine that's happening too?
If Pride is the only social stuff being organised, then it sounds like a pretty crappy place to work, but if its one amongst many, then why have a bee in your bonnet about what others choose to do?
You really don't get this, do you?
You have to be seen to champion, echo and be enthusiastic about this stuff, from a career perspective, or else you are suspect. It's a required belief. There is no choice.
This is the entire problem with Wokery. Which people like you and @Gallowgate cannot understand.
[PS. I don't have people talking to me about 5-a-side on every call for every day for a full month every year, and requiring me to applaud it or I'm seen as bigot. It's not remotely comparable.]
Why don't you resign? I've got friends who feel like this about Gaza and have turned down good jobs at arms companies as a result.
EVERY SINGLE COMPANY IS LIKE THIS. You can't escape.
The solution is political: either Woke is reined in, or it ends.
For example: Pride could go back to being a fun weekend and a march, fine, but no that wasn't enough. Now, its all of June and July and August at 110dB every single year and rainbow lanyards and flags all year round. It bores people at best and p1sses people off at worst.
Why? Because people don't like to be hectored but it's politically incorrect - and dangerous - to object so people feel even more frustrated because they can't say anything.
If you're not proportionate on anything and set rules around the right thing to say, or not say, you get a backlash.
The religious adherents can never see it, because they love it.
Companies are free to take on whatever policies they see fit; you're free to take on whatever job you fancy.
You're right that the solution is political - but I don't think you'll find much support for banning woke activity in private companies across wider society.
I'm not entirely unsympathetic. I feel this way about our lack of cycle infrastructure. Write to your MP, put up posters, make the argument here and elsewhere. Explain why it harms your business and/or society. Good luck, I guess.
Companies are not free to take on whatever policies they see fit. They have to comply with all sorts of regulations on diversity and equality.
Like what? They have to not discriminate on protected characteristics, but I can’t think of much they have to comply with in terms of “regulations on diversity and equality”. Cite some legislation if this is true.
Don't you find the whole concept of "protected characteristics" ridiculous?
When taken alone, yes, ridiculous. But it is a clunky means to a end without which we would be a more horrible place - where you could employ 10,000 people and stipulate that they are all white, or destroy careers because women have babies, or refuse to employ them at all.
Drafting law is hard. Sometimes what you want to achieve is simple and obvious, until you try to draft laws that actually cover it. Try drafting the 'Compelling Reluctant People to Behave In A Civilized Manner Act 2025'.
Please define civillized, I am sure for example most of isis think they are civillised
Thanks for making my point. 'Civilized' will be defined in section 47 of Schedule 9 and will be further refined in the transitional provisions in Schedule 10. Schedule 14 will allow the Secretary of State following consultation with 47 named bodies to issue guidance as to how to interpret the definition, which shall not be binding.
Welcome to ways of modern statutes.
And politicians wonder why we despise them
'Despise' is quite a strong word. Do you really despise them? I sometimes find myself disappointed, annoyed, exasperated, etc. But despise - no.
Jimmy Saville - yes. That schoolteacher I remember who locked a pupil in a cupboard, forgot about them, then when they remembered opened the door and shouted so loudly in their ear and clapped them with a wooden ruler that they literally burst the pupils ear-drum - yes.
(The schoolteacher in question went on to become a Tory MP - but that's not what I despise them for)
I said despise and meant it, politicians of the last 5 decades or so have flushed most of the country down the drain and turned us into slaves in practice if not in name. In theory we can change jobs, for many though its either not an option as they can't do without the wage or in fact the only other employment they could get would be equally shitty.
But its that or be homeless
I think that we get the politicians we want rather than the politicians we need. For decades people have wanted higher living standards, higher property prices, more leisure all with less taxes and and less state spending on things that don't benefit them. As soon as a politician sticks their head above the parapet to try and change things they get shot down. See Theresa May over care and Starmer over the Winter Fuel allowance. Perfectly understandable to despise politicians but ultimately it's the voters who put them there.
We won't get the politicians we need ever though because sadly too many are wedded to handouts must continue
People even here are always going on about x,y,z are underfunded. Its even more extreme if you go btl on the guardian.
Now simple question and I doubt anyone will answer it
If we fully funded everything the government currently does plus all the infrastructure repairs necessary what do you think that (~given we know from the truss debacle we can't massively expand borrowing)
a) the basic rate of income tax would have to be b) what do you think the higher rate would have to be c) what do you think the top rate would have to be
My estimates are
a) 60 b) 80 c) 90
Yet whenever I have suggested maybe we need to be looking at what the government actually does and cut some of it while fully funding what we actually still do its howls of protest
The value of the UK housing stock is £9 trillion. The value of UK equities is about £3 trillion.
A 1% wealth tax would raise £120 billion or about 4% of GDP. That should cover it.
No it wouldnt because reality shows us every country that has tried wealth taxes has failed to raise anywhere near that
I don't get this leftie arsehole obsession with wealth taxes, its failed everywhere its been tried. It seems to have replaced the obession with socialism which also failed everywhere it was tried. Lefties doomed to failure
If the money has to come from somewhere, do you tax accumulated wealth or wealth accumulation? One has no benefit to the populace whereas the other encourages more activity.
If Hamilton was in England, then it would appear to be ideal territory for a large Reform vote share:
"The town centre is dying", says Linda Smith, who has lived there for 15 years. "We need to regenerate Hamilton - at the moment it's just a nowhere town."
The decline of shops in the area is noticeable, with to let signs adorning numerous premises throughout the town centre.
In the Regent shopping precinct some of the biggest units lie vacant, telling a story of long departed retail giants such as Marks & Spencer, Boots and WH Smith.
"Hamilton town centre is like a ghost town," says Sandra Panton, 65.
So which of Reforms policies would restore such towns? Are they planning to abolish Amazon and Internet shopping? How would getting rid of Net Zero help, or stopping immigration regenerate their Marks and Spencer*?
They are such a negative party, all they do is stir up anger and discontent without any solutions. I hope the SNP soundly beat them in the by-election.
* a company where one of the founders was not White British by Goodwin's definition.
Is Nigel suggesting reopening Ravenscraig? A radical policy, particularly as it would involve repudiating the wisdom of St Margaret.
Official guidance from NHS England. All shortlisting and interview panels must include a BME candidate. And if the BME candidate isn't appointed, the panel must write to the chairman of the organisation explaining itself.
The tweet mentions "DEI is out of control" which, as an ordinary person, made me think 'nutter'. But I had a very quick skim of the NHS England recruitment documents and couldn't find a match.
Which surprised me. Almost by 0%.
Maybe William you can dig out the referring material from the official docs seeing as the tweet doesn't link to them?
Published 2019: if there’s a problem here, complain to the party in government at the time.
Thank you for pointing this out.
The lies & hypocricy & lack of shame are absolutely amazing. They are blaming the left-wing party currently in power, for things that their own right-wing party did when it was last in power.
Which is the right wing and which the left wing party that you are referring to.
The system of international law/human rights either needs to be changed or it will be overturned entirely.
The legal/activist class across Europe are like the monks and priests of the Catholic Church in northern and Western Europe circa 1500. Parasitic, doctrinaire, vain, myopic and greedy. And you can feel the resentment building and building. A Reformation is coming to sweep them away and it might be violent
That's a great analogy.
But it goes wider. Full on Pride shite at work today with some events stretching into August. A queer quiz. A gay tapestry. Marches all over the place. A fans for trans social.
Who wants this shit?
I am totally ungay, but your workplace sounds like fun.
Did you realise the company was this "right on" when you joined?
All companies are like this now. All of them.
The only acceptable response is to cheer and amplify it. To do anything else risks you being labelled as a homophobe, and we all know what that means.
So, this absurd foghorning goes on - despite most people not really caring and being somewhat fed up with it all.
That’s not my experience at double digit organisations across both engineering and law. You can delete DEI emails. You can refuse to put pronouns in email signatures. You don’t have to attend pride events. Nobody cares. It’s all in your head.
I do all of those things and nobody thinks I am a homophobe because, well, I’m not.
No, it's not all in my head - this is simple denialism by you.
It's on every call I go to, and I have to listen to it all.
You said upthread you loved this stuff, and now you say you don't do any of it.
Which one is it?
Where I've worked there's emails to 'Pride' events . . . and emails inviting to football games, basketball games, chess clubs, book clubs, craft clubs, and plenty of other things.
The general thing with social emails is to pick the ones you're interested in and ignore the rest.
So what if some people in your work want to do Pride activities? How is that affecting you whatsoever? If others are playing 5-a-side is that affecting you? Don't hear you moaning about that, but I imagine that's happening too?
If Pride is the only social stuff being organised, then it sounds like a pretty crappy place to work, but if its one amongst many, then why have a bee in your bonnet about what others choose to do?
You really don't get this, do you?
You have to be seen to champion, echo and be enthusiastic about this stuff, from a career perspective, or else you are suspect. It's a required belief. There is no choice.
This is the entire problem with Wokery. Which people like you and @Gallowgate cannot understand.
[PS. I don't have people talking to me about 5-a-side on every call for every day for a full month every year, and requiring me to applaud it or I'm seen as bigot. It's not remotely comparable.]
Why don't you resign? I've got friends who feel like this about Gaza and have turned down good jobs at arms companies as a result.
EVERY SINGLE COMPANY IS LIKE THIS. You can't escape.
The solution is political: either Woke is reined in, or it ends.
For example: Pride could go back to being a fun weekend and a march, fine, but no that wasn't enough. Now, its all of June and July and August at 110dB every single year and rainbow lanyards and flags all year round. It bores people at best and p1sses people off at worst.
Why? Because people don't like to be hectored but it's politically incorrect - and dangerous - to object so people feel even more frustrated because they can't say anything.
If you're not proportionate on anything and set rules around the right thing to say, or not say, you get a backlash.
The religious adherents can never see it, because they love it.
Companies are free to take on whatever policies they see fit; you're free to take on whatever job you fancy.
You're right that the solution is political - but I don't think you'll find much support for banning woke activity in private companies across wider society.
I'm not entirely unsympathetic. I feel this way about our lack of cycle infrastructure. Write to your MP, put up posters, make the argument here and elsewhere. Explain why it harms your business and/or society. Good luck, I guess.
Companies are not free to take on whatever policies they see fit. They have to comply with all sorts of regulations on diversity and equality.
Like what? They have to not discriminate on protected characteristics, but I can’t think of much they have to comply with in terms of “regulations on diversity and equality”. Cite some legislation if this is true.
Don't you find the whole concept of "protected characteristics" ridiculous?
When taken alone, yes, ridiculous. But it is a clunky means to a end without which we would be a more horrible place - where you could employ 10,000 people and stipulate that they are all white, or destroy careers because women have babies, or refuse to employ them at all.
Drafting law is hard. Sometimes what you want to achieve is simple and obvious, until you try to draft laws that actually cover it. Try drafting the 'Compelling Reluctant People to Behave In A Civilized Manner Act 2025'.
Please define civillized, I am sure for example most of isis think they are civillised
Thanks for making my point. 'Civilized' will be defined in section 47 of Schedule 9 and will be further refined in the transitional provisions in Schedule 10. Schedule 14 will allow the Secretary of State following consultation with 47 named bodies to issue guidance as to how to interpret the definition, which shall not be binding.
Welcome to ways of modern statutes.
And politicians wonder why we despise them
'Despise' is quite a strong word. Do you really despise them? I sometimes find myself disappointed, annoyed, exasperated, etc. But despise - no.
Jimmy Saville - yes. That schoolteacher I remember who locked a pupil in a cupboard, forgot about them, then when they remembered opened the door and shouted so loudly in their ear and clapped them with a wooden ruler that they literally burst the pupils ear-drum - yes.
(The schoolteacher in question went on to become a Tory MP - but that's not what I despise them for)
I said despise and meant it, politicians of the last 5 decades or so have flushed most of the country down the drain and turned us into slaves in practice if not in name. In theory we can change jobs, for many though its either not an option as they can't do without the wage or in fact the only other employment they could get would be equally shitty.
But its that or be homeless
I think that we get the politicians we want rather than the politicians we need. For decades people have wanted higher living standards, higher property prices, more leisure all with less taxes and and less state spending on things that don't benefit them. As soon as a politician sticks their head above the parapet to try and change things they get shot down. See Theresa May over care and Starmer over the Winter Fuel allowance. Perfectly understandable to despise politicians but ultimately it's the voters who put them there.
We won't get the politicians we need ever though because sadly too many are wedded to handouts must continue
People even here are always going on about x,y,z are underfunded. Its even more extreme if you go btl on the guardian.
Now simple question and I doubt anyone will answer it
If we fully funded everything the government currently does plus all the infrastructure repairs necessary what do you think that (~given we know from the truss debacle we can't massively expand borrowing)
a) the basic rate of income tax would have to be b) what do you think the higher rate would have to be c) what do you think the top rate would have to be
My estimates are
a) 60 b) 80 c) 90
Yet whenever I have suggested maybe we need to be looking at what the government actually does and cut some of it while fully funding what we actually still do its howls of protest
The value of the UK housing stock is £9 trillion. The value of UK equities is about £3 trillion.
A 1% wealth tax would raise £120 billion or about 4% of GDP. That should cover it.
No it wouldnt because reality shows us every country that has tried wealth taxes has failed to raise anywhere near that
I don't get this leftie arsehole obsession with wealth taxes, its failed everywhere its been tried. It seems to have replaced the obession with socialism which also failed everywhere it was tried. Lefties doomed to failure
If the money has to come from somewhere, do you tax accumulated wealth or wealth accumulation? One has no benefit to the populace whereas the other encourages more activity.
It depends if the accumulated wealth is mobile or immobile.
Mobile wealth will just be moved so won't be taxed and will just harm the economy by its going.
Immobile wealth can be.
Taxing wealth of stocks and shares has never worked. Taxing land on the other hand ...
Farage in Footdee the other day giving his speech. We’re going to drill oil and gas. Yes Nigel, that’s already the law, to extract was is economical to extract. And we’re going to tax farmers who have solar farms! Wait, what?
Is there really any correlation between deregulation and economic growth, though?
Yes, as first-year undergraduate economics teaches us.
The private sector left to itself seeks to grow, allocating resources efficiently to maximise output. This is known as the First Fundamental Theorem of Welfare Economics - the perfectly competitive outcome is Pareto optimal. Any government regulation is likely to move an economy away from this optimal outcome, reducing economic growth. This was described by Milton Friedman as the only result in the whole of economics that is neither trivial nor false. That won't always be the case in practice, though, in particular with regulation enforcing a competitive outcome (which is why every developed country has anti-monopoly legislation) or property rights. And there will always be non-economic reasons for regulation (safety, national security, etc.). But, overall, if economics teaches us anything, it's that, beyond relatively low levels, regulation reduces economic growth.
There's plenty of empirical evidence to back this up. For instance, here is a Stanford study showing that, between US states, a 10 percent increase in the number of regulatory restrictions causes GDP growth to fall by 0.37 percentage points.
The US is massively more regulated than Europe in most things, and yet has grown far quicker. That said, the area the US is more deregulated is the labour market - so maybe that's the biggest factor.
As usual with your economic posts, that's simply not true. The only reason the EU has grown slower than the US over the last three decades is America's population growth. The EU has, in fact, come closer to the US in terms of GDP per capita, from 67 percent in 1995 (the first year for which EU27 data is available) to 72 percent in 2022.
While the EU's performance has been sub-optimal, that's been driven by the disastrous decision to have a single currency amongst widely disparate countries, the rapidly ageing populations in many member states, the post-2022 energy crisis and social preferences for working fewer hours.
America's performance is also flattered by a staggering runup in debt.
Regulation increases the cost of doing business, a factor exacerbated by the modern trend of making sectors responsible for the costs of their regulator rather than meeting it out of general taxation. This discourages investment in that sector (since the return is less attractive). Attempts to offset this effect, by giving guaranteed returns as in the water industry have been little short of catastrophic, distorting spend into qualifying investment whether it is actually useful or not.
One of my favourite sayings by Ronald Reagan was that the most frightening sentence in the English language is, "I'm from the government and I am here to help." As usual, he succinctly summarised complicated arguments in a single sentence. Regulation is a tax on a service and our regulatory sector, in my view, is the most obvious place for the government to be looking for substantial savings in public spending. It will be win win if they do.
Even if we accept the basic premise that "regulation increases business costs", that sort of misses the point. Basic regulation is essential in commerce as in any other aspect of social endevour- we choose which side of the road and stick to it, we insist that cars are roadworthy and insured and that drivers are trained.
Unless you are an anarchist, the issue is not whether we should have basic regulation or not, it is to what degree should we regulate. The problem is that well designed regulations are difficult, for precisely the reasons outlined. The result is that repealing bad regulations does indeed tend to free up business, and therefore improves profitability of firms.
Nevertheless there are costs- relaxing building regulations allows smaller houses than the previously minimum standards but it means we all live in smaller houses- the cost for greater profits in the house building sector is a social cost - but other costs- renting a yellow box to store extra stuff etc is an added financial cost too.
It is therefore perfectly legitimate for governments to seek the greatest benefit for the greatest number, and forcing general society to pay social and financial costs to maximise company profits is not the open-and-shut case that you seem to think.
The UK has a complicated and expensive regulatory regime which is often contradictory in intent and outcome. Simplification is long overdue (especially since we have the longest tax code in the world and it delivers remarkable inequality for a so-called progressive tax system). However in order to create a better regulatory and taxation regime we need to have a serious national discussion about what our national goals are. The last election was farcical in that regard, and the cowardly "Ming Vase" strategy is arguably why Labour has become so unpopular so quickly.
Leadership is not just to point out problems, it is to offer honest and coherent solutions, and for any political solution there are winners and losers. By failing to be honest about this we have brought our democracy into disrepute.
Farage is a charlatan and his party is almost entirely a fake media monster, but he does understand that a new political direction is needed. So far only Ed Davey is answering the challenge- which is why the Lib Dems are also rising in popularity.
Got a feeling I'm going to enjoy this week's issue:
Why exactly? Is it really that difficult to leave the gays to celebrate their own thing and get on with your own life. If it's because of all of the corporate posturing on social media i agree with that but I can tell you that I and no other gay person I know asked for that.
I've not been to a Pride event for at least 40 years. I've nothing against them but I know of no gay friends who'd dream of going . I don't believe they reflect the reality of life for most gay people.
I think I said this yesterday but of my gay friends the ones who are most attached to Pride are the slightly older ones for whom it is still intensely liberating to be out and proud amongst crowds who celebrate that fact. It means more if you've spent a lot of your adult life having to downplay your sexuality for fear of abuse.
Of mine the oldies, like me just aren't interested
Got a feeling I'm going to enjoy this week's issue:
Why exactly? Is it really that difficult to leave the gays to celebrate their own thing and get on with your own life. If it's because of all of the corporate posturing on social media i agree with that but I can tell you that I and no other gay person I know asked for that.
I've not been to a Pride event for at least 40 years. I've nothing against them but I know of no gay friends who'd dream of going . I don't believe they reflect the reality of life for most gay people.
I think I said this yesterday but of my gay friends the ones who are most attached to Pride are the slightly older ones for whom it is still intensely liberating to be out and proud amongst crowds who celebrate that fact. It means more if you've spent a lot of your adult life having to downplay your sexuality for fear of abuse.
Of mine the oldies, like me just aren't interested
I guess everyone's different. I sometimes march in the London one with colleagues but I can take it or leave it. I'm beginning to get slightly annoyed at it being lined up as the next culture war battlefield though. Both on here and amongst newly minted Reform councils. No-one complains about all of the other parades and celebrations that cost the public purse a small amount of money to police.
We don't bang on about those all Summer though in every meeting though.
What part of people don't like being hectored or lectured to don't you get?
Farage in Footdee the other day giving his speech. We’re going to drill oil and gas. Yes Nigel, that’s already the law, to extract was is economical to extract. And we’re going to tax farmers who have solar farms! Wait, what?
No, that's not the law already. Listen to our resident expert @Richard_Tyndall
The Government have stopped new licences even if its economical.
Got a feeling I'm going to enjoy this week's issue:
Why exactly? Is it really that difficult to leave the gays to celebrate their own thing and get on with your own life. If it's because of all of the corporate posturing on social media i agree with that but I can tell you that I and no other gay person I know asked for that.
I've not been to a Pride event for at least 40 years. I've nothing against them but I know of no gay friends who'd dream of going . I don't believe they reflect the reality of life for most gay people.
I think I said this yesterday but of my gay friends the ones who are most attached to Pride are the slightly older ones for whom it is still intensely liberating to be out and proud amongst crowds who celebrate that fact. It means more if you've spent a lot of your adult life having to downplay your sexuality for fear of abuse.
So, it's massively out of date then and of diminishing appeal then?
Funny it's foghorned to us all at 120dB out of ideology and then all Summer. Sometimes, all year round. You don't get that your ideology and religious fervour on this will drive a backlash.
Want to avoid it? Tone it down and rein it in, so it's proportionate again, or.. lose it all.
Got a feeling I'm going to enjoy this week's issue:
Why exactly? Is it really that difficult to leave the gays to celebrate their own thing and get on with your own life. If it's because of all of the corporate posturing on social media i agree with that but I can tell you that I and no other gay person I know asked for that.
I've not been to a Pride event for at least 40 years. I've nothing against them but I know of no gay friends who'd dream of going . I don't believe they reflect the reality of life for most gay people.
I think I said this yesterday but of my gay friends the ones who are most attached to Pride are the slightly older ones for whom it is still intensely liberating to be out and proud amongst crowds who celebrate that fact. It means more if you've spent a lot of your adult life having to downplay your sexuality for fear of abuse.
Of mine the oldies, like me just aren't interested
Got a feeling I'm going to enjoy this week's issue:
Why exactly? Is it really that difficult to leave the gays to celebrate their own thing and get on with your own life. If it's because of all of the corporate posturing on social media i agree with that but I can tell you that I and no other gay person I know asked for that.
I've not been to a Pride event for at least 40 years. I've nothing against them but I know of no gay friends who'd dream of going . I don't believe they reflect the reality of life for most gay people.
I think I said this yesterday but of my gay friends the ones who are most attached to Pride are the slightly older ones for whom it is still intensely liberating to be out and proud amongst crowds who celebrate that fact. It means more if you've spent a lot of your adult life having to downplay your sexuality for fear of abuse.
Of mine the oldies, like me just aren't interested
I guess everyone's different. I sometimes march in the London one with colleagues but I can take it or leave it. I'm beginning to get slightly annoyed at it being lined up as the next culture war battlefield though. Both on here and amongst newly minted Reform councils. No-one complains about all of the other parades and celebrations that cost the public purse a small amount of money to police.
We don't bang on about those all Summer though in every meeting though.
What part of people don't like being hectored or lectured to don't you get?
The bit where you are the only one who feels hectored to and everyone else doesn’t have a problem?
@elonmusk · 2h In November next year, we fire all politicians who betrayed the American people
Too late Elon, you've already got the sack.
He's been tweeting against the budget bill. It's almost like he only heard the bits he liked about Trump's policies.
Isn't that how he's managed much of his career? Which hit the jackpot with Tesla but has otherwise been a series of embarrassing misfires.
Not true, he has no shame so there's no embarrassment.
Which hes used to great effect with SpaxeX, which has been a series of gloriously spectacular misfires leading to the jackpot.
There is nothing wrong with trying and failing, so long as your able and prepared to try again afterwards.
Too many people don't bother in the first place, as they're too embarrassed about potentially failing.
The "fail early, fail often" hardware-rich approach to development is brilliant in the early days of a project, if financing is available. It allows you to develop quickly.
This is what SpaceX did with (say) the Raptor engine. Build many, test many, destroy many, iterate. Each engine may cost a small but significant amount, but there are relatively few of them.
The approach works much less well later on in a project - which is where they now are with SH/SS. Each SH first stage has 33 engines, and each SS 6. That means (unless they get reuse working fully) they can throw away 39 engines with each test, as well as the cost of the tanks and everything else - including fuel, staffing, range costs - and importantly, reputation.
There comes a stage where the "fail early, fail often" approach becomes much more costly than just getting it right. The trick is to know when that changeover point is.
We won't have clean power by 2030, I can tell you that for free now.
There are 4.5 years left and many of the big national grid projects required to achieve it haven't even initiated or passed their business case stage yet, yet alone got funding, planning and started construction.
Does anyone have any gen on how our Reform Councils are doing?
When I least heard hit-the-ground-running Kent and Notts have cancelled/postponed all of the first month's committee meetings, except perhaps one in Kent.
They all seem to be deprioritising supervision of flood defences, rolling the committees into "Environment". Is it too woke (whatever woke means today?) Good luck with that one in Lincs when it floods.
Reform councils will end up getting sued for several times more than they manage to save in all likelihood
But when that happens (and it probably will), there will be lots of Reformy snowflakery, and claims that suing Reform will just plays into their hands. And at some level "Reform could have saved you so much if it weren't for EVUL LEFTY LAWYERS" is a useful story for Nige.
why do we have to copy america like this? British DOGE. It's pathetic. It's clear US DOGE is a disaster and allegedly unlawful in various actions.
On the cancelled meetings, bylinetimes suggested that it could be because large numbers of new (Reform) councillors have to go through DBS checks. Would have been the same with an influx of new councillors from any party.
What a fucking waste, what happens if they fail. If they are disbarred because of failing or otherwise unable to discharge their duties do a dbs check to stand as candidate else you pay for a by election
That's a bizarre attitude to take. Imagine the DBS checks were waived and something horrible happened. Those checks exist for a reason regardless of whether people are on your political wavelength or not.
It's not controlling a real risk - it's controlling the perception of a real risk. This is one of our biggest problems as a society.
Firstly, you can be barred (unfairly) from lots of jobs and voluntary roles if anything shows up at all - people have lost livelihoods due to a Caution - and, secondly, lots of people with "clean" records are still right wrong-uns. I've also been asked to do another DBS check every time I've applied for a new job or a new clearance at £21.50. Which is a waste of my time and money, and theirs.
The system of international law/human rights either needs to be changed or it will be overturned entirely.
The legal/activist class across Europe are like the monks and priests of the Catholic Church in northern and Western Europe circa 1500. Parasitic, doctrinaire, vain, myopic and greedy. And you can feel the resentment building and building. A Reformation is coming to sweep them away and it might be violent
That's a great analogy.
But it goes wider. Full on Pride shite at work today with some events stretching into August. A queer quiz. A gay tapestry. Marches all over the place. A fans for trans social.
Who wants this shit?
I am totally ungay, but your workplace sounds like fun.
Did you realise the company was this "right on" when you joined?
All companies are like this now. All of them.
The only acceptable response is to cheer and amplify it. To do anything else risks you being labelled as a homophobe, and we all know what that means.
So, this absurd foghorning goes on - despite most people not really caring and being somewhat fed up with it all.
That’s not my experience at double digit organisations across both engineering and law. You can delete DEI emails. You can refuse to put pronouns in email signatures. You don’t have to attend pride events. Nobody cares. It’s all in your head.
I do all of those things and nobody thinks I am a homophobe because, well, I’m not.
No, it's not all in my head - this is simple denialism by you.
It's on every call I go to, and I have to listen to it all.
You said upthread you loved this stuff, and now you say you don't do any of it.
Which one is it?
Where I've worked there's emails to 'Pride' events . . . and emails inviting to football games, basketball games, chess clubs, book clubs, craft clubs, and plenty of other things.
The general thing with social emails is to pick the ones you're interested in and ignore the rest.
So what if some people in your work want to do Pride activities? How is that affecting you whatsoever? If others are playing 5-a-side is that affecting you? Don't hear you moaning about that, but I imagine that's happening too?
If Pride is the only social stuff being organised, then it sounds like a pretty crappy place to work, but if its one amongst many, then why have a bee in your bonnet about what others choose to do?
You really don't get this, do you?
You have to be seen to champion, echo and be enthusiastic about this stuff, from a career perspective, or else you are suspect. It's a required belief. There is no choice.
This is the entire problem with Wokery. Which people like you and @Gallowgate cannot understand.
[PS. I don't have people talking to me about 5-a-side on every call for every day for a full month every year, and requiring me to applaud it or I'm seen as bigot. It's not remotely comparable.]
Why don't you resign? I've got friends who feel like this about Gaza and have turned down good jobs at arms companies as a result.
EVERY SINGLE COMPANY IS LIKE THIS. You can't escape.
The solution is political: either Woke is reined in, or it ends.
For example: Pride could go back to being a fun weekend and a march, fine, but no that wasn't enough. Now, its all of June and July and August at 110dB every single year and rainbow lanyards and flags all year round. It bores people at best and p1sses people off at worst.
Why? Because people don't like to be hectored but it's politically incorrect - and dangerous - to object so people feel even more frustrated because they can't say anything.
If you're not proportionate on anything and set rules around the right thing to say, or not say, you get a backlash.
The religious adherents can never see it, because they love it.
Companies are free to take on whatever policies they see fit; you're free to take on whatever job you fancy.
You're right that the solution is political - but I don't think you'll find much support for banning woke activity in private companies across wider society.
I'm not entirely unsympathetic. I feel this way about our lack of cycle infrastructure. Write to your MP, put up posters, make the argument here and elsewhere. Explain why it harms your business and/or society. Good luck, I guess.
Companies are not free to take on whatever policies they see fit. They have to comply with all sorts of regulations on diversity and equality.
Like what? They have to not discriminate on protected characteristics, but I can’t think of much they have to comply with in terms of “regulations on diversity and equality”. Cite some legislation if this is true.
Don't you find the whole concept of "protected characteristics" ridiculous?
When taken alone, yes, ridiculous. But it is a clunky means to a end without which we would be a more horrible place - where you could employ 10,000 people and stipulate that they are all white, or destroy careers because women have babies, or refuse to employ them at all.
Drafting law is hard. Sometimes what you want to achieve is simple and obvious, until you try to draft laws that actually cover it. Try drafting the 'Compelling Reluctant People to Behave In A Civilized Manner Act 2025'.
Please define civillized, I am sure for example most of isis think they are civillised
Thanks for making my point. 'Civilized' will be defined in section 47 of Schedule 9 and will be further refined in the transitional provisions in Schedule 10. Schedule 14 will allow the Secretary of State following consultation with 47 named bodies to issue guidance as to how to interpret the definition, which shall not be binding.
Welcome to ways of modern statutes.
And politicians wonder why we despise them
'Despise' is quite a strong word. Do you really despise them? I sometimes find myself disappointed, annoyed, exasperated, etc. But despise - no.
Jimmy Saville - yes. That schoolteacher I remember who locked a pupil in a cupboard, forgot about them, then when they remembered opened the door and shouted so loudly in their ear and clapped them with a wooden ruler that they literally burst the pupils ear-drum - yes.
(The schoolteacher in question went on to become a Tory MP - but that's not what I despise them for)
I said despise and meant it, politicians of the last 5 decades or so have flushed most of the country down the drain and turned us into slaves in practice if not in name. In theory we can change jobs, for many though its either not an option as they can't do without the wage or in fact the only other employment they could get would be equally shitty.
But its that or be homeless
I think that we get the politicians we want rather than the politicians we need. For decades people have wanted higher living standards, higher property prices, more leisure all with less taxes and and less state spending on things that don't benefit them. As soon as a politician sticks their head above the parapet to try and change things they get shot down. See Theresa May over care and Starmer over the Winter Fuel allowance. Perfectly understandable to despise politicians but ultimately it's the voters who put them there.
We won't get the politicians we need ever though because sadly too many are wedded to handouts must continue
People even here are always going on about x,y,z are underfunded. Its even more extreme if you go btl on the guardian.
Now simple question and I doubt anyone will answer it
If we fully funded everything the government currently does plus all the infrastructure repairs necessary what do you think that (~given we know from the truss debacle we can't massively expand borrowing)
a) the basic rate of income tax would have to be b) what do you think the higher rate would have to be c) what do you think the top rate would have to be
My estimates are
a) 60 b) 80 c) 90
Yet whenever I have suggested maybe we need to be looking at what the government actually does and cut some of it while fully funding what we actually still do its howls of protest
The value of the UK housing stock is £9 trillion. The value of UK equities is about £3 trillion.
A 1% wealth tax would raise £120 billion or about 4% of GDP. That should cover it.
No it wouldnt because reality shows us every country that has tried wealth taxes has failed to raise anywhere near that
I don't get this leftie arsehole obsession with wealth taxes, its failed everywhere its been tried. It seems to have replaced the obession with socialism which also failed everywhere it was tried. Lefties doomed to failure
Isn’t Barnesian an LD so a centrist not a lefty ?
Wealth taxes seem to be the latest fad. People support the concept, by and large, as they don’t think they’d have to pay.
They’ve never worked before but that won’t stop people from advocating it.
Yes I'm an LD, and I'm willing to pay.
You can probably afford to, how many renters can afford paying it because the house they are renting is valued at 300k so they now owe another 3k on top of rent and bills
If they are renting, they don't own the house so it's not part of their wealth. Yes?
Gosh you are naive, you dont think landlords will be passing it straight on. I rent pretty much all my friends rent. Mortgage rate goes up we know our rent is going up. Wealth tax goes through we know its being added to the rent. No one becomes a landlord to make a loss on their property generally they are looking for about 5 to 10% over costs on the whole......a wealth tax on the house is just another cost so rent will go up. They will all do it and rentals its generally multiple people applying because they need a rood so a sellers market.
Congratulations your wealth tax just hit some of the poorest with the added benefit that more will be spent on housing benefit because lha is set at 30% of average rent
At the margin, a wealth tax (which would probably end up being levied principally on property) - while giving @HYUFD an aneurism - would almost certainly be mildly positive.
If government must raise taxes - and all the evidence is that they will do so - then it makes sense for taxes to encourage the efficient allocation of resources.
So, a (say) 1% wealth tax discourages people from owning unproductive assets. If it's not generating a return to pay its tax, then why own it? The impact would be small, I suspect, but it makes more sense to tax something we want less of (i.e. unproductive allocation of capital), than something we want more of (i.e. work).
And farmers who own lots of land and work but don't get a large annual income? Or widows who may have been left a large house but aren't bringing in a large income each year either?
Of course neither the Tories nor Reform would support a wealth tax, Labour and the LDs might and the Greens do though probably at a high threshold of say £5 million plus
Ummm: that's precisely my point.
That widow is using a large house that a family could be using. We'd be (gently) incentivizing her to switch via the tax system.
How about we do a deal: no inheritance tax (which you would like), but a small annual levy on gross assets.
My parents recently refused a downsize, to live near us, because of this.
So they're now in one that's much too big for them.
“I like President XI of China, always have, and always will, but he is VERY TOUGH, AND EXTREMELY HARD TO MAKE A DEAL WITH!!!” Trump posted on Truth Social at around 2:17 a.m. Washington time.
The system of international law/human rights either needs to be changed or it will be overturned entirely.
The legal/activist class across Europe are like the monks and priests of the Catholic Church in northern and Western Europe circa 1500. Parasitic, doctrinaire, vain, myopic and greedy. And you can feel the resentment building and building. A Reformation is coming to sweep them away and it might be violent
That's a great analogy.
But it goes wider. Full on Pride shite at work today with some events stretching into August. A queer quiz. A gay tapestry. Marches all over the place. A fans for trans social.
Who wants this shit?
I am totally ungay, but your workplace sounds like fun.
Did you realise the company was this "right on" when you joined?
All companies are like this now. All of them.
The only acceptable response is to cheer and amplify it. To do anything else risks you being labelled as a homophobe, and we all know what that means.
So, this absurd foghorning goes on - despite most people not really caring and being somewhat fed up with it all.
That’s not my experience at double digit organisations across both engineering and law. You can delete DEI emails. You can refuse to put pronouns in email signatures. You don’t have to attend pride events. Nobody cares. It’s all in your head.
I do all of those things and nobody thinks I am a homophobe because, well, I’m not.
No, it's not all in my head - this is simple denialism by you.
It's on every call I go to, and I have to listen to it all.
You said upthread you loved this stuff, and now you say you don't do any of it.
Which one is it?
Where I've worked there's emails to 'Pride' events . . . and emails inviting to football games, basketball games, chess clubs, book clubs, craft clubs, and plenty of other things.
The general thing with social emails is to pick the ones you're interested in and ignore the rest.
So what if some people in your work want to do Pride activities? How is that affecting you whatsoever? If others are playing 5-a-side is that affecting you? Don't hear you moaning about that, but I imagine that's happening too?
If Pride is the only social stuff being organised, then it sounds like a pretty crappy place to work, but if its one amongst many, then why have a bee in your bonnet about what others choose to do?
You really don't get this, do you?
You have to be seen to champion, echo and be enthusiastic about this stuff, from a career perspective, or else you are suspect. It's a required belief. There is no choice.
This is the entire problem with Wokery. Which people like you and @Gallowgate cannot understand.
[PS. I don't have people talking to me about 5-a-side on every call for every day for a full month every year, and requiring me to applaud it or I'm seen as bigot. It's not remotely comparable.]
Why don't you resign? I've got friends who feel like this about Gaza and have turned down good jobs at arms companies as a result.
EVERY SINGLE COMPANY IS LIKE THIS. You can't escape.
The solution is political: either Woke is reined in, or it ends.
For example: Pride could go back to being a fun weekend and a march, fine, but no that wasn't enough. Now, its all of June and July and August at 110dB every single year and rainbow lanyards and flags all year round. It bores people at best and p1sses people off at worst.
Why? Because people don't like to be hectored but it's politically incorrect - and dangerous - to object so people feel even more frustrated because they can't say anything.
If you're not proportionate on anything and set rules around the right thing to say, or not say, you get a backlash.
The religious adherents can never see it, because they love it.
Companies are free to take on whatever policies they see fit; you're free to take on whatever job you fancy.
You're right that the solution is political - but I don't think you'll find much support for banning woke activity in private companies across wider society.
I'm not entirely unsympathetic. I feel this way about our lack of cycle infrastructure. Write to your MP, put up posters, make the argument here and elsewhere. Explain why it harms your business and/or society. Good luck, I guess.
Companies are not free to take on whatever policies they see fit. They have to comply with all sorts of regulations on diversity and equality.
Like what? They have to not discriminate on protected characteristics, but I can’t think of much they have to comply with in terms of “regulations on diversity and equality”. Cite some legislation if this is true.
Don't you find the whole concept of "protected characteristics" ridiculous?
When taken alone, yes, ridiculous. But it is a clunky means to a end without which we would be a more horrible place - where you could employ 10,000 people and stipulate that they are all white, or destroy careers because women have babies, or refuse to employ them at all.
Drafting law is hard. Sometimes what you want to achieve is simple and obvious, until you try to draft laws that actually cover it. Try drafting the 'Compelling Reluctant People to Behave In A Civilized Manner Act 2025'.
Please define civillized, I am sure for example most of isis think they are civillised
Thanks for making my point. 'Civilized' will be defined in section 47 of Schedule 9 and will be further refined in the transitional provisions in Schedule 10. Schedule 14 will allow the Secretary of State following consultation with 47 named bodies to issue guidance as to how to interpret the definition, which shall not be binding.
Welcome to ways of modern statutes.
And politicians wonder why we despise them
'Despise' is quite a strong word. Do you really despise them? I sometimes find myself disappointed, annoyed, exasperated, etc. But despise - no.
Jimmy Saville - yes. That schoolteacher I remember who locked a pupil in a cupboard, forgot about them, then when they remembered opened the door and shouted so loudly in their ear and clapped them with a wooden ruler that they literally burst the pupils ear-drum - yes.
(The schoolteacher in question went on to become a Tory MP - but that's not what I despise them for)
I said despise and meant it, politicians of the last 5 decades or so have flushed most of the country down the drain and turned us into slaves in practice if not in name. In theory we can change jobs, for many though its either not an option as they can't do without the wage or in fact the only other employment they could get would be equally shitty.
But its that or be homeless
I think that we get the politicians we want rather than the politicians we need. For decades people have wanted higher living standards, higher property prices, more leisure all with less taxes and and less state spending on things that don't benefit them. As soon as a politician sticks their head above the parapet to try and change things they get shot down. See Theresa May over care and Starmer over the Winter Fuel allowance. Perfectly understandable to despise politicians but ultimately it's the voters who put them there.
We won't get the politicians we need ever though because sadly too many are wedded to handouts must continue
People even here are always going on about x,y,z are underfunded. Its even more extreme if you go btl on the guardian.
Now simple question and I doubt anyone will answer it
If we fully funded everything the government currently does plus all the infrastructure repairs necessary what do you think that (~given we know from the truss debacle we can't massively expand borrowing)
a) the basic rate of income tax would have to be b) what do you think the higher rate would have to be c) what do you think the top rate would have to be
My estimates are
a) 60 b) 80 c) 90
Yet whenever I have suggested maybe we need to be looking at what the government actually does and cut some of it while fully funding what we actually still do its howls of protest
The value of the UK housing stock is £9 trillion. The value of UK equities is about £3 trillion.
A 1% wealth tax would raise £120 billion or about 4% of GDP. That should cover it.
No it wouldnt because reality shows us every country that has tried wealth taxes has failed to raise anywhere near that
I don't get this leftie arsehole obsession with wealth taxes, its failed everywhere its been tried. It seems to have replaced the obession with socialism which also failed everywhere it was tried. Lefties doomed to failure
If the money has to come from somewhere, do you tax accumulated wealth or wealth accumulation? One has no benefit to the populace whereas the other encourages more activity.
It depends if the accumulated wealth is mobile or immobile.
Mobile wealth will just be moved so won't be taxed and will just harm the economy by its going.
Immobile wealth can be.
Taxing wealth of stocks and shares has never worked. Taxing land on the other hand ...
There is nothing inherently left or right about any tax, nor is there necessarily anything better about one particular form of tax, whether it be income, wealth, capital, sales, purchase, customs or any other form of tax. You could have any as your base and tinker with them to make them progressive, regressive, or neutral, as required.
Some taxes has a tendency to lean one way rather than another. VAT tends to be better for the rich than the poor but only because it tends to be applied as a flat rate across the board, so it eats more into a poor man's resources. You could easily alter that though by having a range of rates with luxury goods at one end and 'essentials' at the other. Since you could do much the same with any tax base it is wrong to assume that the base itself is left or right, or better/worse.
The assumption that wealth taxes are necessarily 'leftish' reflects the failure to recognise this simple principle. I suspect that many on the left do tend to think of wealth taxes as being somehow more 'socialist' (and therefore 'better') but to the extent they do they are merely reflecting widespread misapprehensions about taxes and their relationship to wealth, class, and social mobility.
The system of international law/human rights either needs to be changed or it will be overturned entirely.
The legal/activist class across Europe are like the monks and priests of the Catholic Church in northern and Western Europe circa 1500. Parasitic, doctrinaire, vain, myopic and greedy. And you can feel the resentment building and building. A Reformation is coming to sweep them away and it might be violent
That's a great analogy.
But it goes wider. Full on Pride shite at work today with some events stretching into August. A queer quiz. A gay tapestry. Marches all over the place. A fans for trans social.
Who wants this shit?
I am totally ungay, but your workplace sounds like fun.
Did you realise the company was this "right on" when you joined?
All companies are like this now. All of them.
The only acceptable response is to cheer and amplify it. To do anything else risks you being labelled as a homophobe, and we all know what that means.
So, this absurd foghorning goes on - despite most people not really caring and being somewhat fed up with it all.
That’s not my experience at double digit organisations across both engineering and law. You can delete DEI emails. You can refuse to put pronouns in email signatures. You don’t have to attend pride events. Nobody cares. It’s all in your head.
I do all of those things and nobody thinks I am a homophobe because, well, I’m not.
No, it's not all in my head - this is simple denialism by you.
It's on every call I go to, and I have to listen to it all.
You said upthread you loved this stuff, and now you say you don't do any of it.
Which one is it?
Where I've worked there's emails to 'Pride' events . . . and emails inviting to football games, basketball games, chess clubs, book clubs, craft clubs, and plenty of other things.
The general thing with social emails is to pick the ones you're interested in and ignore the rest.
So what if some people in your work want to do Pride activities? How is that affecting you whatsoever? If others are playing 5-a-side is that affecting you? Don't hear you moaning about that, but I imagine that's happening too?
If Pride is the only social stuff being organised, then it sounds like a pretty crappy place to work, but if its one amongst many, then why have a bee in your bonnet about what others choose to do?
You really don't get this, do you?
You have to be seen to champion, echo and be enthusiastic about this stuff, from a career perspective, or else you are suspect. It's a required belief. There is no choice.
This is the entire problem with Wokery. Which people like you and @Gallowgate cannot understand.
[PS. I don't have people talking to me about 5-a-side on every call for every day for a full month every year, and requiring me to applaud it or I'm seen as bigot. It's not remotely comparable.]
Why don't you resign? I've got friends who feel like this about Gaza and have turned down good jobs at arms companies as a result.
EVERY SINGLE COMPANY IS LIKE THIS. You can't escape.
The solution is political: either Woke is reined in, or it ends.
For example: Pride could go back to being a fun weekend and a march, fine, but no that wasn't enough. Now, its all of June and July and August at 110dB every single year and rainbow lanyards and flags all year round. It bores people at best and p1sses people off at worst.
Why? Because people don't like to be hectored but it's politically incorrect - and dangerous - to object so people feel even more frustrated because they can't say anything.
If you're not proportionate on anything and set rules around the right thing to say, or not say, you get a backlash.
The religious adherents can never see it, because they love it.
Companies are free to take on whatever policies they see fit; you're free to take on whatever job you fancy.
You're right that the solution is political - but I don't think you'll find much support for banning woke activity in private companies across wider society.
I'm not entirely unsympathetic. I feel this way about our lack of cycle infrastructure. Write to your MP, put up posters, make the argument here and elsewhere. Explain why it harms your business and/or society. Good luck, I guess.
Companies are not free to take on whatever policies they see fit. They have to comply with all sorts of regulations on diversity and equality.
Like what? They have to not discriminate on protected characteristics, but I can’t think of much they have to comply with in terms of “regulations on diversity and equality”. Cite some legislation if this is true.
Don't you find the whole concept of "protected characteristics" ridiculous?
When taken alone, yes, ridiculous. But it is a clunky means to a end without which we would be a more horrible place - where you could employ 10,000 people and stipulate that they are all white, or destroy careers because women have babies, or refuse to employ them at all.
Drafting law is hard. Sometimes what you want to achieve is simple and obvious, until you try to draft laws that actually cover it. Try drafting the 'Compelling Reluctant People to Behave In A Civilized Manner Act 2025'.
Please define civillized, I am sure for example most of isis think they are civillised
Thanks for making my point. 'Civilized' will be defined in section 47 of Schedule 9 and will be further refined in the transitional provisions in Schedule 10. Schedule 14 will allow the Secretary of State following consultation with 47 named bodies to issue guidance as to how to interpret the definition, which shall not be binding.
Welcome to ways of modern statutes.
And politicians wonder why we despise them
'Despise' is quite a strong word. Do you really despise them? I sometimes find myself disappointed, annoyed, exasperated, etc. But despise - no.
Jimmy Saville - yes. That schoolteacher I remember who locked a pupil in a cupboard, forgot about them, then when they remembered opened the door and shouted so loudly in their ear and clapped them with a wooden ruler that they literally burst the pupils ear-drum - yes.
(The schoolteacher in question went on to become a Tory MP - but that's not what I despise them for)
I said despise and meant it, politicians of the last 5 decades or so have flushed most of the country down the drain and turned us into slaves in practice if not in name. In theory we can change jobs, for many though its either not an option as they can't do without the wage or in fact the only other employment they could get would be equally shitty.
But its that or be homeless
I think that we get the politicians we want rather than the politicians we need. For decades people have wanted higher living standards, higher property prices, more leisure all with less taxes and and less state spending on things that don't benefit them. As soon as a politician sticks their head above the parapet to try and change things they get shot down. See Theresa May over care and Starmer over the Winter Fuel allowance. Perfectly understandable to despise politicians but ultimately it's the voters who put them there.
We won't get the politicians we need ever though because sadly too many are wedded to handouts must continue
People even here are always going on about x,y,z are underfunded. Its even more extreme if you go btl on the guardian.
Now simple question and I doubt anyone will answer it
If we fully funded everything the government currently does plus all the infrastructure repairs necessary what do you think that (~given we know from the truss debacle we can't massively expand borrowing)
a) the basic rate of income tax would have to be b) what do you think the higher rate would have to be c) what do you think the top rate would have to be
My estimates are
a) 60 b) 80 c) 90
Yet whenever I have suggested maybe we need to be looking at what the government actually does and cut some of it while fully funding what we actually still do its howls of protest
The value of the UK housing stock is £9 trillion. The value of UK equities is about £3 trillion.
A 1% wealth tax would raise £120 billion or about 4% of GDP. That should cover it.
No it wouldnt because reality shows us every country that has tried wealth taxes has failed to raise anywhere near that
I don't get this leftie arsehole obsession with wealth taxes, its failed everywhere its been tried. It seems to have replaced the obession with socialism which also failed everywhere it was tried. Lefties doomed to failure
Isn’t Barnesian an LD so a centrist not a lefty ?
Wealth taxes seem to be the latest fad. People support the concept, by and large, as they don’t think they’d have to pay.
They’ve never worked before but that won’t stop people from advocating it.
Yes I'm an LD, and I'm willing to pay.
You can probably afford to, how many renters can afford paying it because the house they are renting is valued at 300k so they now owe another 3k on top of rent and bills
If they are renting, they don't own the house so it's not part of their wealth. Yes?
Gosh you are naive, you dont think landlords will be passing it straight on. I rent pretty much all my friends rent. Mortgage rate goes up we know our rent is going up. Wealth tax goes through we know its being added to the rent. No one becomes a landlord to make a loss on their property generally they are looking for about 5 to 10% over costs on the whole......a wealth tax on the house is just another cost so rent will go up. They will all do it and rentals its generally multiple people applying because they need a rood so a sellers market.
Congratulations your wealth tax just hit some of the poorest with the added benefit that more will be spent on housing benefit because lha is set at 30% of average rent
At the margin, a wealth tax (which would probably end up being levied principally on property) - while giving @HYUFD an aneurism - would almost certainly be mildly positive.
If government must raise taxes - and all the evidence is that they will do so - then it makes sense for taxes to encourage the efficient allocation of resources.
So, a (say) 1% wealth tax discourages people from owning unproductive assets. If it's not generating a return to pay its tax, then why own it? The impact would be small, I suspect, but it makes more sense to tax something we want less of (i.e. unproductive allocation of capital), than something we want more of (i.e. work).
And farmers who own lots of land and work but don't get a large annual income? Or widows who may have been left a large house but aren't bringing in a large income each year either?
Of course neither the Tories nor Reform would support a wealth tax, Labour and the LDs might and the Greens do though probably at a high threshold of say £5 million plus
Ummm: that's precisely my point.
That widow is using a large house that a family could be using. We'd be (gently) incentivizing her to switch via the tax system.
How about we do a deal: no inheritance tax (which you would like), but a small annual levy on gross assets.
My parents recently refused a downsize, to live near us, because of this.
So they're now in one that's much too big for them.
My parents downsized about ten years ago.
But because my dad's still in love with building, they've extended the house so it is now larger than their old one...
Comments
And as I’ve said since before the election (and especially after the WFA screw up) the best approach was to solve the lost tax revenue by putting income tax up by 3p.
That would have left the poorest pensioners better off while collecting tax from richer pensioners and avoided any stupid means testing
Apple hardware? Not working? Outrageous. A trip to see the Geniuses beckons...
Official guidance from NHS England. All shortlisting and interview panels must include a BME candidate. And if the BME candidate isn't appointed, the panel must write to the chairman of the organisation explaining itself.
I mean, if you had a serious, important job and you made a mistake like this, you'd probably get fired...
https://bsky.app/profile/joycewhitevance.bsky.social/post/3lqpymipx3k2a
Product regulation stops us having lead in our paint or babies choking on toys
Health and safety regulation stops cranes collapsing on building sites and takeaways from having dead rats on the kitchen worktops.
Environmental regulation stops factories pouring untreated waste into the river or belching out carcinogens from low slung chimneys
Financial regulation averts banking crises and prevents investment scams
Medicine regulations prevent a repeat of Thalidomide
And as for employment regulation, the question is again what bits are good and what bits are pointless or overdone. I don’t think many of us would want to work in an economy with child labour, no maternity leave or no redundancy protections. But on the other hand our relatively flexible labour law makes us a more attractive country to hire in than most of our European neighbours and probably contributes to lower unemployment (it also contributes to our attractiveness to migrants of course).
Firstly, (as I mentioned before) the wealth tax is principally levied at the canton level. So, for example, the Canton of Geneva raises about CHF1.8bn from theirs. So, I'm not sure why you are bring up a national wealth tax (that I wasn't previously aware of).
Secondly, you're fighting a strawman here. I'm not suggesting that a wealth tax could be any more than one of a variety of taxes levied by the government. Life (and government finances) are not about silver bullet solutions.
Congratulations your wealth tax just hit some of the poorest with the added benefit that more will be spent on housing benefit because lha is set at 30% of average rent
Not everyone who owns land is income rich either
Which surprised me. Almost by 0%.
Maybe William you can dig out the referring material from the official docs seeing as the tweet doesn't link to them?
1 week? 1 month?
https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/wres-leadership-strategy.pdf
If government must raise taxes - and all the evidence is that they will do so - then it makes sense for taxes to encourage the efficient allocation of resources.
So, a (say) 1% wealth tax discourages people from owning unproductive assets. If it's not generating a return to pay its tax, then why own it? The impact would be small, I suspect, but it makes more sense to tax something we want less of (i.e. unproductive allocation of capital), than something we want more of (i.e. work).
So the foreword from yesteryear says :
"The NHS workforce as a whole is now more diverse than at any time in its 70 year
history, yet at the most senior levels, the leadership of organisations do not reflect
the workforce.
...
We encourage all NHS staff to read this strategy and reflect on what they will do
to help deliver on its ambitious objectives, and look forward to seeing continuous
improvements on this important agenda over the coming period."
Is that 'DEI' gone mad? "Vaguely consider if your leadership team should reflect the people on the ground, at some point".
Maybe it is. I'm losing touch with what 'DEI gone mad' means. "Our employees are 30% white working class, but only 0.1% of our C-level suite is white working class - FAIL"? Or gender? Or.... is there .... some other criteria you are het up about?
What about Kemi Badenoch? “She’s quite mysterious. We don’t know enough about her. Mystique from X-Men;” “Aunt Sally from Worzel Gummidge, complaining about everything;” “She’s sort of invisible. Harry Potter under a cloak. Or Casper.”
And Nigel Farage? “He’s like a sketch from Little Britain;” “Dr Evil from Austin Powers;” “Lord Voldemort;” “Slugworth from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The guy who comes up and whispers in people’s ears and generally turns up when things go bad;” “Neville Longbottom from Harry Potter. The underdog that’s coming up to try and fix everything;” “The Wizard of Oz. The illusion. He does that fearmongering, but when they actually meet him there’s nothing to him;” “The Cybermen from Doctor Who. They want everyone to be like them, don’t they?”'
https://conservativehome.com/2025/06/03/lord-ashcroft-he-made-himself-look-bad-doing-it-but-hes-made-himself-look-even-worse-going-back-on-it-my-latest-focus-groups/
So lets examine a couple of things here
a 300k house so 3k a year tax on it, you can get 1000 per month rent on it and the mortgage is say 900 a month
So the landlord is getting 12k a year...the mortgage is 10800 profit 1200 a year
You add 3k costs on it is unlikely he is going to accept instead losing 1800 a year so he will raise the rent
or he will divest his unproductive asset
If he divests who is going to buy it to rent at a loss
end result is the renter is going to pay more whether their original landlord keeps it or sells it
Same house however home owners bought it 5years ago suddenly their monthly payments have gone basically from 850 to 1200 due to a wealth tax. They were just about managing the 850 because they bought when interest rates when they bought were 1 to 2% and now a lot higher than they expected
They can sell their "unproductive asset" but then they need to rent somewhere and will likely be paying as much anyway
Houses I agree are not productive assets, however they are also not purely assets. Shelter is a necessity of life as well.
Shifting ethnic dynamic of the UK driven by immigration predicted to cause dramatic changes
Sam Ashworth-Hayes.
Charles Hymas"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/06/03/white-british-minority-in-40-years-report-claims/
And you will note that I was very clear that schemes should be available for those who are currently asset rich but cash poor.
Either way assuming a 60% mortgage and currently council tax rates I suspect a 1% charge wouldn’t look much different from an extra 0.4% on the interest rate after council tax that is no longer being charged
So currently the renter is paying £1000 a month in Rent and £200 in council tax total £14,400 a year.
Now the landlord is paying the equivalent of council tax so the rent could be £1200 and the renter would be no worse off.
£14,400 less £3000 tax is £11400 a mere £600 (or £50 a month) less than the landlord used to get.
And given current rent increases I'm sure he could get an extra £50 / £100 on the rent come the next renewal date.
https://www.terrapower.com/ (The US Energy Department is paying part of the costs.)
The design combines generation with storage.
Wyoming has a lot of wind power, which may be why that state was chosen for the project. (If you haven't encountered the anvil joke, you may want to search for it.)
If a wealth tax means I can't make a profit on the flat I'm renting out, I'll sell it. The flat doesn't disappear. It gets bought by someone else - hopefully a first time buyer. Indeed, my suspicion is a considerable proportion of the demand for housing is as store of wealth. Neutralising that element will lower prices, not increase them.
Proposals to boost birthrates too from Farage and Meloni. Otherwise by 2100 the only white majority nations left on this plant will likely be in Eastern Europe, though of course many will welcome a more cosmopolitan UK too.
Though the research is from Matt Goodwin who we know has a firmly anti immigration stance. Goodwin also says 19% of the UK population will be Muslim by 2100
Of course neither the Tories nor Reform would support a wealth tax, Labour and the LDs might and the Greens do though probably at a high threshold of say £5 million plus
That widow is using a large house that a family could be using. We'd be (gently) incentivizing her to switch via the tax system.
How about we do a deal: no inheritance tax (which you would like), but a small annual levy on gross assets.
These days, I think it's interesting, but don't know enough about it to have a definitive answer.
No inheritance tax, Farage has already pledged to abolish inheritance tax completely maybe or at least keep the £1 million threshold Osborne set but no wealth tax either. Certainly a Reform and/or Tory government would oppose both
Imagine if there are three cars (a Porsche, a Mercedes and a Skoda) and four people (one earning £1m/year, one £500,000/year, one £100,000/year and one £50,000/per year).
Right now, the millionaire gets the Porsche, the 500k guy the Merc, and the 100k the Skoda. The 50k/year guy... well he can't afford a car, and he's going to be taking public transport.
Now imagine there's a fourth car! And it's a Trabant. Well, now the £50k person gets the Trabant!
Ok. Imagine that instead of the fourth car being a Trabant... it's a Ferrari.
Well, now the millionaire gets the Ferrari, the 500k guy gets the Porsche, the 100k guy the Mercedes, and the 50k guy gets the Skoda.
Was it better to have added the "affordable car" to the mix, or the Ferrari?
The same is true of houses.
To
Why won’t TfL staff stop fare dodgers?" (£)
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/what-wont-tfl-staff-stop-fare-dodgers/
Your scenario of 4 four fixed cars is also irrelevant when you can increase the supply of affordable homes which is what those on lower incomes actually need.
So no, that is clearly just an agenda for left liberalism, which is why Reform and Tory voters will continue to vote against inheritance tax and wealth taxes
Me suggesting houses for millionaires is "just an agenda for left liberalism"?
That's... interesting...
"The town centre is dying", says Linda Smith, who has lived there for 15 years. "We need to regenerate Hamilton - at the moment it's just a nowhere town."
The decline of shops in the area is noticeable, with to let signs adorning numerous premises throughout the town centre.
In the Regent shopping precinct some of the biggest units lie vacant, telling a story of long departed retail giants such as Marks & Spencer, Boots and WH Smith.
"Hamilton town centre is like a ghost town," says Sandra Panton, 65.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c20181e414lo
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/scotland/2025/06/all-eyes-on-scotland-and-nigel-farages-new-insurgency
..The site was selected after a significant search including four finalist communities in Wyoming. The Natrium project team evaluated a variety of factors when selecting the site of the future Natrium plant. These included local community support, the physical characteristics of the site, the ability to obtain a license from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for the site, access to existing infrastructure and the needs of the grid...
Jim's link answers his question.
Why does it matter?
NHS England is only one NHS organisation, there are 250 Trusts as well as the ICBs
It would be interesting to see the source referenced. It doesn't ring true to me and the style curious.
https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/wres-leadership-strategy.pdf
"defined as people who do not have an immigrant parent"
So not including the King.
(The article was paywalled for me)
The private sector left to itself seeks to grow, allocating resources efficiently to maximise output. This is known as the First Fundamental Theorem of Welfare Economics - the perfectly competitive outcome is Pareto optimal. Any government regulation is likely to move an economy away from this optimal outcome, reducing economic growth. This was described by Milton Friedman as the only result in the whole of economics that is neither trivial nor false. That won't always be the case in practice, though, in particular with regulation enforcing a competitive outcome (which is why every developed country has anti-monopoly legislation) or property rights. And there will always be non-economic reasons for regulation (safety, national security, etc.). But, overall, if economics teaches us anything, it's that, beyond relatively low levels, regulation reduces economic growth.
There's plenty of empirical evidence to back this up. For instance, here is a Stanford study showing that, between US states, a 10 percent increase in the number of regulatory restrictions causes GDP growth to fall by 0.37 percentage points.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5191651
Nicoletti and Scarpetta (2003) for the OECD found that product market regulation lowers multifactor productivity growth in OECD countries.
https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/reports/2003/01/regulation-productivity-and-growth_g17a1485/078677503357.pdf
Bassanini and Ernst (2002) at Oxford reported a negative effect of regulation on innovation.
https://academic.oup.com/icc/article-abstract/11/3/391/1044095
Alesina et al. (2002) found that product market regulations have a negative effect on innovation and growth
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/00028280260136255
Etc etc etc. As usual with your economic posts, that's simply not true. The only reason the EU has grown slower than the US over the last three decades is America's population growth. The EU has, in fact, come closer to the US in terms of GDP per capita, from 67 percent in 1995 (the first year for which EU27 data is available) to 72 percent in 2022.
https://www.bruegel.org/analysis/european-unions-remarkable-growth-performance-relative-united-states
While the EU's performance has been sub-optimal, that's been driven by the disastrous decision to have a single currency amongst widely disparate countries, the rapidly ageing populations in many member states, the post-2022 energy crisis and social preferences for working fewer hours.
America's performance is also flattered by a staggering runup in debt.
The way it is written it implies also further descendants too.
I don't think extrapolating population trends so far into the future reliable.
One of my favourite sayings by Ronald Reagan was that the most frightening sentence in the English language is, "I'm from the government and I am here to help." As usual, he succinctly summarised complicated arguments in a single sentence. Regulation is a tax on a service and our regulatory sector, in my view, is the most obvious place for the government to be looking for substantial savings in public spending. It will be win win if they do.
They are such a negative party, all they do is stir up anger and discontent without any solutions. I hope the SNP soundly beat them in the by-election.
* a company where one of the founders was not White British by Goodwin's definition.
The lies & hypocricy & lack of shame are absolutely amazing. They are blaming the left-wing party currently in power, for things that their own right-wing party did when it was last in power.
We could easily deregulate the country into hell. It's a matter of regulating well to balance benefit against cost.
Also, I seem to remember he employed quite a lot of women in - ahem - various capacities.
Plus he also employed somebody who might politely be described as excessively neurodivergent .
You can listen to honest Bob Jenrick. He’s your man. Had he been a government minister in 2019 you can guarantee this would not have happened. Vote Conservative to stop dei says William.
Trump is just interested in the short term. He won't be around to pick up the pieces after it all collapses. It's how he has run all his businesses.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg713y73plro
Which hes used to great effect with SpaxeX, which has been a series of gloriously spectacular misfires leading to the jackpot.
There is nothing wrong with trying and failing, so long as your able and prepared to try again afterwards.
Too many people don't bother in the first place, as they're too embarrassed about potentially failing.
TACO Tuesday or TACO Thursday is the other pattern.
The right wing one is… Labour??
Mobile wealth will just be moved so won't be taxed and will just harm the economy by its going.
Immobile wealth can be.
Taxing wealth of stocks and shares has never worked. Taxing land on the other hand ...
Unless you are an anarchist, the issue is not whether we should have basic regulation or not, it is to what degree should we regulate. The problem is that well designed regulations are difficult, for precisely the reasons outlined. The result is that repealing bad regulations does indeed tend to free up business, and therefore improves profitability of firms.
Nevertheless there are costs- relaxing building regulations allows smaller houses than the previously minimum standards but it means we all live in smaller houses- the cost for greater profits in the house building sector is a social cost - but other costs- renting a yellow box to store extra stuff etc is an added financial cost too.
It is therefore perfectly legitimate for governments to seek the greatest benefit for the greatest number, and forcing general society to pay social and financial costs to maximise company profits is not the open-and-shut case that you seem to think.
The UK has a complicated and expensive regulatory regime which is often contradictory in intent and outcome. Simplification is long overdue (especially since we have the longest tax code in the world and it delivers remarkable inequality for a so-called progressive tax system). However in order to create a better regulatory and taxation regime we need to have a serious national discussion about what our national goals are. The last election was farcical in that regard, and the cowardly "Ming Vase" strategy is arguably why Labour has become so unpopular so quickly.
Leadership is not just to point out problems, it is to offer honest and coherent solutions, and for any political solution there are winners and losers. By failing to be honest about this we have brought our democracy into disrepute.
Farage is a charlatan and his party is almost entirely a fake media monster, but he does understand that a new political direction is needed. So far only Ed Davey is answering the challenge- which is why the Lib Dems are also rising in popularity.
What part of people don't like being hectored or lectured to don't you get?
The Government have stopped new licences even if its economical.
Funny it's foghorned to us all at 120dB out of ideology and then all Summer. Sometimes, all year round. You don't get that your ideology and religious fervour on this will drive a backlash.
Want to avoid it? Tone it down and rein it in, so it's proportionate again, or.. lose it all.
Your choice.
* Delete as appropriate.
Nigel
Always
CHickens
Out
https://x.com/thelittlewaster/status/1929824333137883489?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
This is what SpaceX did with (say) the Raptor engine. Build many, test many, destroy many, iterate. Each engine may cost a small but significant amount, but there are relatively few of them.
The approach works much less well later on in a project - which is where they now are with SH/SS. Each SH first stage has 33 engines, and each SS 6. That means (unless they get reuse working fully) they can throw away 39 engines with each test, as well as the cost of the tanks and everything else - including fuel, staffing, range costs - and importantly, reputation.
There comes a stage where the "fail early, fail often" approach becomes much more costly than just getting it right. The trick is to know when that changeover point is.
We won't have clean power by 2030, I can tell you that for free now.
There are 4.5 years left and many of the big national grid projects required to achieve it haven't even initiated or passed their business case stage yet, yet alone got funding, planning and started construction.
Firstly, you can be barred (unfairly) from lots of jobs and voluntary roles if anything shows up at all - people have lost livelihoods due to a Caution - and, secondly, lots of people with "clean" records are still right wrong-uns. I've also been asked to do another DBS check every time I've applied for a new job or a new clearance at £21.50. Which is a waste of my time and money, and theirs.
It's all part of the bureaucratic process state.
So they're now in one that's much too big for them.
“I like President XI of China, always have, and always will, but he is VERY TOUGH, AND EXTREMELY HARD TO MAKE A DEAL WITH!!!” Trump posted on Truth Social at around 2:17 a.m. Washington time.
Some taxes has a tendency to lean one way rather than another. VAT tends to be better for the rich than the poor but only because it tends to be applied as a flat rate across the board, so it eats more into a poor man's resources. You could easily alter that though by having a range of rates with luxury goods at one end and 'essentials' at the other. Since you could do much the same with any tax base it is wrong to assume that the base itself is left or right, or better/worse.
The assumption that wealth taxes are necessarily 'leftish' reflects the failure to recognise this simple principle. I suspect that many on the left do tend to think of wealth taxes as being somehow more 'socialist' (and therefore 'better') but to the extent they do they are merely reflecting widespread misapprehensions about taxes and their relationship to wealth, class, and social mobility.
But because my dad's still in love with building, they've extended the house so it is now larger than their old one...