Spot the almost subliminal flash of Rachel Reeves towards the end of Clarkson's Farm S4 E8!
I clocked that. They had better hope the next series doesn't come out before the elections next year. It'll probably be 8 episodes of farmers ending it all following the inheritance tax change.
Spot the almost subliminal flash of Rachel Reeves towards the end of Clarkson's Farm S4 E8!
I like Clarkson's Farm but that stuff really winds me up. Whatever you think of the IHT change, the motivation for it was to prevent people like Clarkson inflating land prices by using it as a tax dodge. Part of the reason someone like Kaleb struggles to buy a farm is because the agricultural returns are so small, so the breakeven point is sometimes centuries in the future.
I'd forgive him if at the end of the next season he sells the land to Kaleb for a fair price for use as a farm (e.g. something like £0).
All true. That Clarkson emerged as the public face of the farm IHT campaign is ironic.
True but misleading. As Clarkson said, there are other tax shelters available.
The financial reality of the show is that Amazon more than subsidises any losses Clarkson makes on farming. So far as I can make out, everyone watches it, except for me.
The LOTO was on R4 Today this morning about 7.35. She was terrible; fractious, negative, defensive, nothing to affirm about the greatness of Tory policy, deliberately and openly not answering questions, no gravitas or seriousness.
I voted for them for 50 years, and I am not going back on this form.
Doesn't look good.
Whilst she wasn't great, I thought she came out of that better than the interviewer.
Emma Barnett loves the sound of her own voice a little too much.
Either I'm getting old or Today really has gone downhill.
Both can be true..
Today has reduced to a Gush or Gotcha format of which Barnett is a chief exponent (the Barnett formula!). Interestingly she was on with Nick Robinson with whom she is supposed to have a fractious relationship to the point of refusing to appear with him. They've obviously been to the headmaster's office and been told to shake hands and get on with it.
The difference between the style and content of Today and PM, particularly when Evan Davis is doing it, is almost painful. One is hectoring, rude and disrespectful, the other tries to get behind the headlines and explain why. The latter has multiple times more useful content than the former.
For the one with executive power as long as you ignore the rule of law, you start with all the cards and 10 nil up. You are quick, law is slow. By the time it announces, you have moved several stages.
A current stage is getting people used to internal military intervention.
Can it be stopped? I think we shall know fairly soon. Certainly by the end of 2026. At the moment I think it can't.
Of course it can be stopped
Unfortunately the precedent for how to stop it is bloody civil war
The second amendment nutters are about to find out whether arming every citizen is in fact a good idea
Even that is a lagging indicator. The real economy is in a hell of a mess.
Who could have ever thought that raising taxes on employment while leaving unearned incomes untaxed might not be the best way to manage an economy?
Savings are taxed. Dividends are taxed. The tax on dividends has been increased. Pensions are taxed. Assets when sold are taxed. Other than houses you live in. Are you suggesting CGT on the sale of houses?
Sooner or later, any decision made by Starmer’s Labour government turns out to be damaging for the UK
This is now being applied to the Gibraltar deal. Falling apart under scrutiny
What's the problem with the Gibraltar deal? They have fixed the border FUBAR so that people are able to cross it freely again as they need to. Gibraltar remains a BOT, the military facility remains untouched, and the people who voted in almost unanimity to not fuck their lives up get the fix they voted for.
Right-wing faragist nutters like restrictions. That's what they voted for
There’s a lot of noise and revisions to monthly data which is one of the reasons why we used to focus on quarterly data but that is not a good number, offsetting most of the unexpected growth in Q1.
The thing that gets me is that only yesterday Reeves was boasting about GDP, but surely she would have had some idea where the latest update would end up?
She looks like a prize idiot now, and is having to defend her previous actions rather than talk about the longer term stuff, which is what actually matters the most.
On-topic – back in the 1980s Alex Salmond contrasted the economic rationale of the SNP with the cultural base of Plaid Cymru. To the extent that remains true, is independence the real prize or simply more support for Welsh language poetry, drama and television?
The LOTO was on R4 Today this morning about 7.35. She was terrible; fractious, negative, defensive, nothing to affirm about the greatness of Tory policy, deliberately and openly not answering questions, no gravitas or seriousness.
I voted for them for 50 years, and I am not going back on this form.
Doesn't look good.
Whilst she wasn't great, I thought she came out of that better than the interviewer.
Emma Barnett loves the sound of her own voice a little too much.
Either I'm getting old or Today really has gone downhill.
Both can be true..
Today has reduced to a Gush or Gotcha format of which Barnett is a chief exponent (the Barnett formula!). Interestingly she was on with Nick Robinson with whom she is supposed to have a fractious relationship to the point of refusing to appear with him. They've obviously been to the headmaster's office and been told to shake hands and get on with it.
The difference between the style and content of Today and PM, particularly when Evan Davis is doing it, is almost painful. One is hectoring, rude and disrespectful, the other tries to get behind the headlines and explain why. The latter has multiple times more useful content than the former.
Yes. Evan Davis's style of 'I am going to politely and patiently make sense of this torrent of lies and distortion if I possibly can' is very good. One technique is to draw out the unspoken implication of an incomplete answer and allow the interviewee not to deny it, or deny it if he dare.
There’s a lot of noise and revisions to monthly data which is one of the reasons why we used to focus on quarterly data but that is not a good number, offsetting most of the unexpected growth in Q1.
The thing that gets me is that only yesterday Reeves was boasting about GDP, but surely she would have had some idea where the latest update would end up?
She looks like a prize idiot now, and is having to defend her previous actions rather than talk about the longer term stuff, which is what actually matters the most.
You might be giving them too much credit. If she knew where the latest update would end up then yesterday would have been her last chance to boast about GDP, so all the more reason to do it.
Hmmm. Budget yesterday - commentary verdicts seem to be somewhere around "Still on the road Speed Bumps Ahead".
I listened to the main speeches yesterday, and I thought Reeves to be quite flat, and perhaps not political enough.
Stride's response was imo not on planet earth - his reliance on comparisons with the fantasy numbers the Cons put forward at Election ("we would have ..."), and by which they lost 2/3 of their MPs, was embarrassing and risible, and his party is nowhere near a position to try and occupy the high ground.
Reeves' reply was better, but still imo not enough of a stake through the heart on the Cons.
On the budget, £39bn to help social housing over 10 years looks like something like 400-800k houses, or 40-80k per year average at 50-100k per unit assuming a partial contribution. Enough in quantity, and is it deloverable?
It may help, and one hopes that social housing providers have the systems in place to enforce standards better - usually the houses have higher spec than equivalent developer houses for sale.
I can't see too many landmines yet, except perhaps impact of police costs on Council Tax, but perhaps there is an upside to reminding communities that we pay for our own police. Usually in England about 2/3 of police funding is national, so there is room to shift that a little.
My first political thought is that the Govt need to make sure they follow through on Council Tax reform alongside the Local Govt reorganisation, including making Council Tax properly proportional to house value, and abolishing Stamp Duty as the biscuit.
Yet Freedman's conclusion is "...the decision to keep health spending lower than the historical average is the single biggest political risk the government is taking".
We need radical measures to make people take more responsibility for their own health. Give people fitbits and tax credits for exercise. Massive public health campaigns around diet. We also need to think about end of life care. We are spending increasing chunks of GDP rectifying people's poor lifestyle choices and keeping people alive for a few extra months of low quality life, and starving areas like infrastructure and education where spending could make a far greater difference to our wealth and wellbeing. It's madness.
Having the state monitor and reward/penalise people for exercise is very 1984. Or social credit China.
I exercise every day except Sunday (mostly not for long, although the exercise bike is an hour). The idea I should receive taxpayer funds for it is not something that sits well at all. I also don't eat very much. I shouldn't get paid for that either.
It may be more economical, but normalising state intrusion into personal habits and seeking to dictate these according to the whim of a government is not a sensible measure. Better an obese nation than one brute-forced into social obedience to the political agenda.
I share your concerns, but if we want a taxpayer funded heath system free at the point of delivery (as I do) then we have to do something to prevent it swallowing up an ever greater share of our income. I'd rather have some gentle behavioural nudges than start rationing healthcare. Nobody should be forced to do anything, obviously. In a world of big data I think it's pointless to invoke 1984, we are living in that world aleady.
The Vitality program made money for Prudential. Well, saved them lots on private health care claims.
You got the usual discounts on gym memberships, trainers and sports watches. The key was freebies triggered by doing x amount of exercise. At one point, I was getting 4 free cinema tickets per week (on for every family member registered on the private health plan).
It was especially noticeable that people who were of the “I never exercise mindset” suddenly got interested in walking everywhere.
Sean Thomas has not one but two articles in the Speccie this week. One on otter's pockets and lads mags and another on Luxembourg.
He is stealing all his ideas from someone on PB. This young man will go far. (He's right about the golden age of lads mags).
Didn't ST write about otters' pockets years ago? Is Michael Gove reduced to recycling old copy? And there was something in the Gazette about Luxembourg recently too. Which reminds me...
The LOTO was on R4 Today this morning about 7.35. She was terrible; fractious, negative, defensive, nothing to affirm about the greatness of Tory policy, deliberately and openly not answering questions, no gravitas or seriousness.
I voted for them for 50 years, and I am not going back on this form.
Doesn't look good.
Whilst she wasn't great, I thought she came out of that better than the interviewer.
Emma Barnett loves the sound of her own voice a little too much.
Either I'm getting old or Today really has gone downhill.
Both can be true..
Today has reduced to a Gush or Gotcha format of which Barnett is a chief exponent (the Barnett formula!). Interestingly she was on with Nick Robinson with whom she is supposed to have a fractious relationship to the point of refusing to appear with him. They've obviously been to the headmaster's office and been told to shake hands and get on with it.
The difference between the style and content of Today and PM, particularly when Evan Davis is doing it, is almost painful. One is hectoring, rude and disrespectful, the other tries to get behind the headlines and explain why. The latter has multiple times more useful content than the former.
Barnett doesn't really hide her prejudices under a bushel. She is very pro Israel (which is fair enough, but even under current circumstances when some circumspection is required?). She is also very hostile to this Government (which again is fair enough, but this notion of scrupulous BBC balance is out of the window).
How does Robbie Gibb and Tim Davie's recently reported embrace of "Reform voters" fulfil the "every report must be balanced" criteria?
Sooner or later, any decision made by Starmer’s Labour government turns out to be damaging for the UK
This is now being applied to the Gibraltar deal. Falling apart under scrutiny
What's the problem with the Gibraltar deal? They have fixed the border FUBAR so that people are able to cross it freely again as they need to. Gibraltar remains a BOT, the military facility remains untouched, and the people who voted in almost unanimity to not fuck their lives up get the fix they voted for.
The golden rule is that Leon will find problems in anything the government does. Occasionally, accurately.
Yesterday's spending review commits the government to increasing current spending by £190bn a year more over the term of the Parliament. Public spending is committed to growing 2.3% in real terms.
These plans, in my view, condemn the UK to higher taxes and lower growth as well as spiralling ever nearer the plug hole of unsustainable debt. It is indicative of the complacency that is shared across the media and elsewhere, despite the lesson of Truss, that this disastrous course of action seems to engender so little comment with the focus being on the individual elements.
We are in serious trouble and yesterday made it worse.
The alternative is another decade of worsening austerity. Even yesterday's plans are significant cuts for many departments. We can't have both growth and the featherbedding of the Granny State.
I take no particular view on what the percentage of GDP spent by the government should be, just want a balanced budget and for the politicians to be honest about the trade offs. I am not expecting either any time soon.
We can't, so we need to choose growth and not the granny state.
Long past time to cut the NHS, Triple Lock etc and prioritise things other than the grey vote.
Even if you cut spending per old person, the numbers are going up a lot. 11m to 13m over 65s in 10 years. A 20% cut (unthinkable) in pensions would still leave the pension budget increasing.
In real terms it's absolutely not unthinkable, just unpopular...
That's the point, though isn't it ?
Your comparison with tuition fees - which sank a political party for a decade -just reinforces that.
Unless and until there's a politician who can persuade us over 60s to make sacrifices for the generations below them, the demographics make it politically unviable.
They need to cut benefits for the slackers generations , not the pensioners who hav etoiled for 50 years to get a paltry pension. Absolutely NO benefits or accomodation for any immigrant as well, they can pay their own way as well.
There's the spirit of sacrifice I was trying to tell Barty about.
Deserted yesterday. What we may be seeing is families without children taking their holidays early before the schools break up and prices skyrocket. And in light of recent years, also before August heatwaves make France and points south unbearable. (Or, who knows, they might just be following the Gazette's travel writer.)
All of which means less spending in Blighty and more invisible imports wrecking our balance of trade.
There’s a lot of noise and revisions to monthly data which is one of the reasons why we used to focus on quarterly data but that is not a good number, offsetting most of the unexpected growth in Q1.
The thing that gets me is that only yesterday Reeves was boasting about GDP, but surely she would have had some idea where the latest update would end up?
She looks like a prize idiot now, and is having to defend her previous actions rather than talk about the longer term stuff, which is what actually matters the most.
Yes she must have known when she was chuntering out that vainglorious nonsense yesterday. I won’t apologise for something absolutely no one is criticising etc. I am not sure she has fully understood what carpe diem actually means.
Even that is a lagging indicator. The real economy is in a hell of a mess.
Who could have ever thought that raising taxes on employment while leaving unearned incomes untaxed might not be the best way to manage an economy?
Savings are taxed. Dividends are taxed. The tax on dividends has been increased. Pensions are taxed. Assets when sold are taxed. Other than houses you live in. Are you suggesting CGT on the sale of houses?
True. but it's bad politics for workers to be taxed more heavily than the retired (like me). And the low tax/untaxed nature of residential property is a disaster distorting the market and giving all the wrong incentives.
Also distorting the market is the ludicrous IHT rules whereby the rate is far too high (40%) and the exemptions capricious (extra if you own a home etc) and the ways of avoiding it a series of open goals, keeping Lincoln's Inn in business.
Low rate (5-10%), no exemptions, CTT at the same rate on inter vivos transactions is the way forward.
Yesterday's spending review commits the government to increasing current spending by £190bn a year more over the term of the Parliament. Public spending is committed to growing 2.3% in real terms.
These plans, in my view, condemn the UK to higher taxes and lower growth as well as spiralling ever nearer the plug hole of unsustainable debt. It is indicative of the complacency that is shared across the media and elsewhere, despite the lesson of Truss, that this disastrous course of action seems to engender so little comment with the focus being on the individual elements.
We are in serious trouble and yesterday made it worse.
The alternative is another decade of worsening austerity. Even yesterday's plans are significant cuts for many departments. We can't have both growth and the featherbedding of the Granny State.
I take no particular view on what the percentage of GDP spent by the government should be, just want a balanced budget and for the politicians to be honest about the trade offs. I am not expecting either any time soon.
We can't, so we need to choose growth and not the granny state.
Long past time to cut the NHS, Triple Lock etc and prioritise things other than the grey vote.
Even if you cut spending per old person, the numbers are going up a lot. 11m to 13m over 65s in 10 years. A 20% cut (unthinkable) in pensions would still leave the pension budget increasing.
In real terms its absolutely not unthinkable, just unpopular.
We need to have the same attitude to grey benefits that the older generation had to free tuition ... numbers have gone up so its just not viable
I don’t think any politician would ever stand up and propose a 20% cut in basic State pension. It might be logical or even desirable but it’s not going to happen.
We don’t do that kind of pay cut though I know as some of the post-Communist countries reverted to capitalist systems in the early 90s, they did cut wages and benefits for those in the State sector and even Greece and Spain cut public sector wages during the Eurozone crisis.
The British approach is to freeze wages which translates to a real term cut as you know.
Raising the age at which the State pension can be taken is one option and that will no doubt happen. To be fair, frozen thresholds mean many people are seeing their workplace pensions increasingly taxed (the State pension itself isn’t) so perhaps we need to rethink that to encourage more people to fund their own retirement from workplace schemes which means the private sector stepping up to offer the kind of pensions to their workers other sectors achieve.
Some form of sovereign pension fund into which all private companies would have to pay and increased contributions from workers, he says, thinking aloud.
The logical endpoint becomes the end of the State pension with everyone self financing their retirement (hopefully not via the American style 401 with everyone playing the stock market). Can’t see that happening anytime soon.
The current system is in trouble but the irony is a lot of older people are currently doing very well so it works - to a point.
That was the point, a real terms cut is viable.
Do to pensions the same as was done to many state employees over the past decade and a half "increases will be at 1% per year until the finances are sorted".
That's a nominal increase, but a real terms cut.
In real terms many people's salaries have been cut by over 20%, and that's people working for a living. Those who aren't working for their living deserve no more than those who are.
The only answer to pensions is mean testing the high earners and the asset rich plus increase to 70
Similarly with the NHS
Of course this is blasphemy to many, but reality can at times be difficult to accept and new hard thinking is required
But then you have to pay benefits to all those aged 67 to 70 who can't find work (or those younger who can't take the jobs they leave) we don't have the jobs to support work till 70
Im all for means testing the NHS though
I would just say any increase in the retirement age takes years to implement, otherwise we have WASPI's again
Deserted yesterday. What we may be seeing is families without children taking their holidays early before the schools break up and prices skyrocket. And in light of recent years, also before August heatwaves make France and points south unbearable. (Or, who knows, they might just be following the Gazette's travel writer.)
All of which means less spending in Blighty and more invisible imports wrecking our balance of trade.
They should come to the Faroes. Rhubarb juice with Faroese smoked salmon and scrambled free range Faroes eggs is a terrific breakfast. Who knew?
Also last night the Danish king and queen stayed in my hotel. True story. Much jollity was had. Whole thing surrounded by police. I think they were hoping to grab some beer time with me but I was off eating pilot whale blubber
Yesterday's spending review commits the government to increasing current spending by £190bn a year more over the term of the Parliament. Public spending is committed to growing 2.3% in real terms.
These plans, in my view, condemn the UK to higher taxes and lower growth as well as spiralling ever nearer the plug hole of unsustainable debt. It is indicative of the complacency that is shared across the media and elsewhere, despite the lesson of Truss, that this disastrous course of action seems to engender so little comment with the focus being on the individual elements.
We are in serious trouble and yesterday made it worse.
The alternative is another decade of worsening austerity. Even yesterday's plans are significant cuts for many departments. We can't have both growth and the featherbedding of the Granny State.
I take no particular view on what the percentage of GDP spent by the government should be, just want a balanced budget and for the politicians to be honest about the trade offs. I am not expecting either any time soon.
We can't, so we need to choose growth and not the granny state.
Long past time to cut the NHS, Triple Lock etc and prioritise things other than the grey vote.
Even if you cut spending per old person, the numbers are going up a lot. 11m to 13m over 65s in 10 years. A 20% cut (unthinkable) in pensions would still leave the pension budget increasing.
In real terms its absolutely not unthinkable, just unpopular.
We need to have the same attitude to grey benefits that the older generation had to free tuition ... numbers have gone up so its just not viable
I don’t think any politician would ever stand up and propose a 20% cut in basic State pension. It might be logical or even desirable but it’s not going to happen.
We don’t do that kind of pay cut though I know as some of the post-Communist countries reverted to capitalist systems in the early 90s, they did cut wages and benefits for those in the State sector and even Greece and Spain cut public sector wages during the Eurozone crisis.
The British approach is to freeze wages which translates to a real term cut as you know.
Raising the age at which the State pension can be taken is one option and that will no doubt happen. To be fair, frozen thresholds mean many people are seeing their workplace pensions increasingly taxed (the State pension itself isn’t) so perhaps we need to rethink that to encourage more people to fund their own retirement from workplace schemes which means the private sector stepping up to offer the kind of pensions to their workers other sectors achieve.
Some form of sovereign pension fund into which all private companies would have to pay and increased contributions from workers, he says, thinking aloud.
The logical endpoint becomes the end of the State pension with everyone self financing their retirement (hopefully not via the American style 401 with everyone playing the stock market). Can’t see that happening anytime soon.
The current system is in trouble but the irony is a lot of older people are currently doing very well so it works - to a point.
That was the point, a real terms cut is viable.
Do to pensions the same as was done to many state employees over the past decade and a half "increases will be at 1% per year until the finances are sorted".
That's a nominal increase, but a real terms cut.
In real terms many people's salaries have been cut by over 20%, and that's people working for a living. Those who aren't working for their living deserve no more than those who are.
The only answer to pensions is mean testing the high earners and the asset rich plus increase to 70
Similarly with the NHS
Of course this is blasphemy to many, but reality can at times be difficult to accept and new hard thinking is required
But then you have to pay benefits to all those aged 67 to 70 who can't find work (or those younger who can't take the jobs they leave) we don't have the jobs to support work till 70
Im all for means testing the NHS though
I would just say any increase in the retirement age takes years to implement, otherwise we have WASPI's again
The LOTO was on R4 Today this morning about 7.35. She was terrible; fractious, negative, defensive, nothing to affirm about the greatness of Tory policy, deliberately and openly not answering questions, no gravitas or seriousness.
I voted for them for 50 years, and I am not going back on this form.
Doesn't look good.
Whilst she wasn't great, I thought she came out of that better than the interviewer.
Emma Barnett loves the sound of her own voice a little too much.
Either I'm getting old or Today really has gone downhill.
Both can be true..
Today has reduced to a Gush or Gotcha format of which Barnett is a chief exponent (the Barnett formula!). Interestingly she was on with Nick Robinson with whom she is supposed to have a fractious relationship to the point of refusing to appear with him. They've obviously been to the headmaster's office and been told to shake hands and get on with it.
The difference between the style and content of Today and PM, particularly when Evan Davis is doing it, is almost painful. One is hectoring, rude and disrespectful, the other tries to get behind the headlines and explain why. The latter has multiple times more useful content than the former.
His annoying habit of asking the next question without giving time for the first to be answered was so maddening this morning I switched off
There’s a lot of noise and revisions to monthly data which is one of the reasons why we used to focus on quarterly data but that is not a good number, offsetting most of the unexpected growth in Q1.
The thing that gets me is that only yesterday Reeves was boasting about GDP, but surely she would have had some idea where the latest update would end up?
She looks like a prize idiot now, and is having to defend her previous actions rather than talk about the longer term stuff, which is what actually matters the most.
She doesnt just look like a prize idiot she actually is one
Hmmm. Budget yesterday - commentary verdicts seem to be somewhere around "Still on the road Speed Bumps Ahead".
I listened to the main speeches yesterday, and I thought Reeves to be quite flat, and perhaps not political enough.
Stride's response was imo not on planet earth - his reliance on comparisons with the fantasy numbers the Cons put forward at Election ("we would have ..."), and by which they lost 2/3 of their MPs, was embarrassing and risible, and his party is nowhere near a position to try and occupy the high ground.
Reeves' reply was better, but still imo not enough of a stake through the heart on the Cons.
On the budget, £39bn to help social housing over 10 years looks like something like 400-800k houses, or 40-80k per year average at 50-100k per unit assuming a partial contribution. Enough in quantity, and is it deloverable?
It may help, and one hopes that social housing providers have the systems in place to enforce standards better - usually the houses have higher spec than equivalent developer houses for sale.
I can't see too many landmines yet, except perhaps impact of police costs on Council Tax, but perhaps there is an upside to reminding communities that we pay for our own police. Usually in England about 2/3 of police funding is national, so there is room to shift that a little.
My first political thought is that the Govt need to make sure they follow through on Council Tax reform alongside the Local Govt reorganisation, including making Council Tax properly proportional to house value, and abolishing Stamp Duty as the biscuit.
Yet Freedman's conclusion is "...the decision to keep health spending lower than the historical average is the single biggest political risk the government is taking".
We need radical measures to make people take more responsibility for their own health. Give people fitbits and tax credits for exercise. Massive public health campaigns around diet. We also need to think about end of life care. We are spending increasing chunks of GDP rectifying people's poor lifestyle choices and keeping people alive for a few extra months of low quality life, and starving areas like infrastructure and education where spending could make a far greater difference to our wealth and wellbeing. It's madness.
Well thats a new job created.....one person wandering the streets with 10 fitbits on
There’s a lot of noise and revisions to monthly data which is one of the reasons why we used to focus on quarterly data but that is not a good number, offsetting most of the unexpected growth in Q1.
The thing that gets me is that only yesterday Reeves was boasting about GDP, but surely she would have had some idea where the latest update would end up?
She looks like a prize idiot now, and is having to defend her previous actions rather than talk about the longer term stuff, which is what actually matters the most.
Yes she must have known when she was chuntering out that vainglorious nonsense yesterday. I won’t apologise for something absolutely no one is criticising etc. I am not sure she has fully understood what carpe diem actually means.
She only sees the data when they are released, same as the rest of us. Pre-release access to ONS data was ended in 2017 (except for exceptional circumstances, in which case the access details are published at the time). She might have reasonably expected a 0.1% decline in April (market consensus forecast) but not the -0.3%.
Sean Thomas has not one but two articles in the Speccie this week. One on otter's pockets and lads mags and another on Luxembourg.
He is stealing all his ideas from someone on PB. This young man will go far. (He's right about the golden age of lads mags).
Didn't ST write about otters' pockets years ago? Is Michael Gove reduced to recycling old copy? And there was something in the Gazette about Luxembourg recently too. Which reminds me...
Yes, Plaid's problem is that while they are the main protest vote against Labour in Welsh speaking Wales in white working class areas of south Wales that protest vote is increasingly Reform.
Plaid may well win most seats next year in the Senedd via PR but they would almost certainly still have to govern with Labour which would reduce the changes they could make and leave Reform as the main opposition to them in Wales to capitalise
There’s a lot of noise and revisions to monthly data which is one of the reasons why we used to focus on quarterly data but that is not a good number, offsetting most of the unexpected growth in Q1.
The thing that gets me is that only yesterday Reeves was boasting about GDP, but surely she would have had some idea where the latest update would end up?
She looks like a prize idiot now, and is having to defend her previous actions rather than talk about the longer term stuff, which is what actually matters the most.
Yes she must have known when she was chuntering out that vainglorious nonsense yesterday. I won’t apologise for something absolutely no one is criticising etc. I am not sure she has fully understood what carpe diem actually means.
She only sees the data when they are released, same as the rest of us. Pre-release access to ONS data was ended in 2017 (except for exceptional circumstances, in which case the access details are published at the time). She might have reasonably expected a 0.1% decline in April (market consensus forecast) but not the -0.3%.
Thanks. I didn’t know that they had changed that. You’d think that they would at least get a first draft.
On-topic – back in the 1980s Alex Salmond contrasted the economic rationale of the SNP with the cultural base of Plaid Cymru. To the extent that remains true, is independence the real prize or simply more support for Welsh language poetry, drama and television?
Ironically though while Plaid may advance next year, the SNP are likely to lose seats at Holyrood with a Unionist majority of MSPs probable
Yes, Plaid's problem is that while they are the main protest vote against Labour in Welsh speaking Wales in white working class areas of south Wales that protest vote is increasingly Reform.
Plaid may well win most seats next year in the Senedd via PR but they would almost certainly still have to govern with Labour which would reduce the changes they could make and leave Reform as the main opposition to them in Wales to capitalise
I suspect Plaid plus Lab will be very close to Reform plus Con, possibly requiring the handful of LD or Green (if they get any) to hold balance. If Reform plus Con gets to 50% seats (possible if Con overachieve expectations in SE, Mid and Clwyd) then Reform running a minority seems likely
Deserted yesterday. What we may be seeing is families without children taking their holidays early before the schools break up and prices skyrocket. And in light of recent years, also before August heatwaves make France and points south unbearable. (Or, who knows, they might just be following the Gazette's travel writer.)
All of which means less spending in Blighty and more invisible imports wrecking our balance of trade.
Alternative economic insight - Bakewell on Monday. Market Day. Town very busy, every coffee shop and eatery full with tables scarce. Market traders closing up early as all stock sold.
Coachloads coming in from as far as Manchester, Liverpool and Melton Mowbray full of Britain’s new grey monied elite. The healthy 50 and 60 something’s with time and money to burn keeping the economy moving.
The three most powerful men in the world, Putin, Xi and Trump, all had extraordinarily traumatic childhoods. Trump, though wealthy, had a sociopathic father who sent him to military school and for whom nothing was ever good enough. Xi endured some of the worst of the Cultural Revolution. Putin grew up with street gangs in the worst parts of Leningrad.
And we wonder why the world is becoming more turbulent.
I wonder if there is a way to stop damaged, destructive psychopaths from rising to the top of political systems? Certainly Presidential systems, which favour deluded, lying narcissists, are almost designed for them.
It's an important issue which I don't think gets nearly enough attention.
Well constitutional monarchies at least avoid deluded lying narcissists as head of state and reduce the chances of them staying too long as head of government as well as Parliament can remove them by simple majority
There’s a lot of noise and revisions to monthly data which is one of the reasons why we used to focus on quarterly data but that is not a good number, offsetting most of the unexpected growth in Q1.
The thing that gets me is that only yesterday Reeves was boasting about GDP, but surely she would have had some idea where the latest update would end up?
She looks like a prize idiot now, and is having to defend her previous actions rather than talk about the longer term stuff, which is what actually matters the most.
She doesnt just look like a prize idiot she actually is one
Good news! I thought she'd get you back. Not much dry humour here anymore. You've been replaced by some dull and noisy shouters.
Spot the almost subliminal flash of Rachel Reeves towards the end of Clarkson's Farm S4 E8!
I like Clarkson's Farm but that stuff really winds me up. Whatever you think of the IHT change, the motivation for it was to prevent people like Clarkson inflating land prices by using it as a tax dodge. Part of the reason someone like Kaleb struggles to buy a farm is because the agricultural returns are so small, so the breakeven point is sometimes centuries in the future.
I'd forgive him if at the end of the next season he sells the land to Kaleb for a fair price for use as a farm (e.g. something like £0).
Labour should have just exempted family farms and small businesses held for 2 generations or more from the IHT tax changes, that way tax dodgers would still have been hit and not been competing with the likes of Kaleb to buy farmland but traditional farming families wouldn't
Deserted yesterday. What we may be seeing is families without children taking their holidays early before the schools break up and prices skyrocket. And in light of recent years, also before August heatwaves make France and points south unbearable. (Or, who knows, they might just be following the Gazette's travel writer.)
All of which means less spending in Blighty and more invisible imports wrecking our balance of trade.
We were out in Newcastle a Couple of Fridays ago. The bars were quiet. The restaurant packed. A sunny Friday in May. Before Covid the bars we went to would have been busy.
Hmmm. Budget yesterday - commentary verdicts seem to be somewhere around "Still on the road Speed Bumps Ahead".
I listened to the main speeches yesterday, and I thought Reeves to be quite flat, and perhaps not political enough.
Stride's response was imo not on planet earth - his reliance on comparisons with the fantasy numbers the Cons put forward at Election ("we would have ..."), and by which they lost 2/3 of their MPs, was embarrassing and risible, and his party is nowhere near a position to try and occupy the high ground.
Reeves' reply was better, but still imo not enough of a stake through the heart on the Cons.
On the budget, £39bn to help social housing over 10 years looks like something like 400-800k houses, or 40-80k per year average at 50-100k per unit assuming a partial contribution. Enough in quantity, and is it deloverable?
It may help, and one hopes that social housing providers have the systems in place to enforce standards better - usually the houses have higher spec than equivalent developer houses for sale.
I can't see too many landmines yet, except perhaps impact of police costs on Council Tax, but perhaps there is an upside to reminding communities that we pay for our own police. Usually in England about 2/3 of police funding is national, so there is room to shift that a little.
My first political thought is that the Govt need to make sure they follow through on Council Tax reform alongside the Local Govt reorganisation, including making Council Tax properly proportional to house value, and abolishing Stamp Duty as the biscuit.
Yet Freedman's conclusion is "...the decision to keep health spending lower than the historical average is the single biggest political risk the government is taking".
We need radical measures to make people take more responsibility for their own health. Give people fitbits and tax credits for exercise. Massive public health campaigns around diet. We also need to think about end of life care. We are spending increasing chunks of GDP rectifying people's poor lifestyle choices and keeping people alive for a few extra months of low quality life, and starving areas like infrastructure and education where spending could make a far greater difference to our wealth and wellbeing. It's madness.
Well thats a new job created.....one person wandering the streets with 10 fitbits on
Yesterday's spending review commits the government to increasing current spending by £190bn a year more over the term of the Parliament. Public spending is committed to growing 2.3% in real terms.
These plans, in my view, condemn the UK to higher taxes and lower growth as well as spiralling ever nearer the plug hole of unsustainable debt. It is indicative of the complacency that is shared across the media and elsewhere, despite the lesson of Truss, that this disastrous course of action seems to engender so little comment with the focus being on the individual elements.
We are in serious trouble and yesterday made it worse.
The alternative is another decade of worsening austerity. Even yesterday's plans are significant cuts for many departments. We can't have both growth and the featherbedding of the Granny State.
I take no particular view on what the percentage of GDP spent by the government should be, just want a balanced budget and for the politicians to be honest about the trade offs. I am not expecting either any time soon.
We can't, so we need to choose growth and not the granny state.
Long past time to cut the NHS, Triple Lock etc and prioritise things other than the grey vote.
Even if you cut spending per old person, the numbers are going up a lot. 11m to 13m over 65s in 10 years. A 20% cut (unthinkable) in pensions would still leave the pension budget increasing.
In real terms its absolutely not unthinkable, just unpopular.
We need to have the same attitude to grey benefits that the older generation had to free tuition ... numbers have gone up so its just not viable
I don’t think any politician would ever stand up and propose a 20% cut in basic State pension. It might be logical or even desirable but it’s not going to happen.
We don’t do that kind of pay cut though I know as some of the post-Communist countries reverted to capitalist systems in the early 90s, they did cut wages and benefits for those in the State sector and even Greece and Spain cut public sector wages during the Eurozone crisis.
The British approach is to freeze wages which translates to a real term cut as you know.
Raising the age at which the State pension can be taken is one option and that will no doubt happen. To be fair, frozen thresholds mean many people are seeing their workplace pensions increasingly taxed (the State pension itself isn’t) so perhaps we need to rethink that to encourage more people to fund their own retirement from workplace schemes which means the private sector stepping up to offer the kind of pensions to their workers other sectors achieve.
Some form of sovereign pension fund into which all private companies would have to pay and increased contributions from workers, he says, thinking aloud.
The logical endpoint becomes the end of the State pension with everyone self financing their retirement (hopefully not via the American style 401 with everyone playing the stock market). Can’t see that happening anytime soon.
The current system is in trouble but the irony is a lot of older people are currently doing very well so it works - to a point.
That was the point, a real terms cut is viable.
Do to pensions the same as was done to many state employees over the past decade and a half "increases will be at 1% per year until the finances are sorted".
That's a nominal increase, but a real terms cut.
In real terms many people's salaries have been cut by over 20%, and that's people working for a living. Those who aren't working for their living deserve no more than those who are.
Wrong. Many pensioners don't have the option of working again to make up the difference. You're comparing apples and oranges.
I wish the media would report rolling 12-month GRP rather than the incredibly noisy monthly series. A bit like we do on inflation.
On that basis annual GDP growth has fallen from 1.1% to 0.9% over the last month. It has been between 0.4% and 1.7% since the year ending January 2024, averaging 1.1% pa, and trend has not changed materially since the election. The preceding period it was even lower (between -0.5% and 1.3%, averaging 0.5% pa).
Everyone getting excited over monthly figures (positive or negative) and putting their favourite interpretation of the reason behind it is a waste of everyone's time.
I wish the media would report rolling 12-month GRP rather than the incredibly noisy monthly series. A bit like we do on inflation.
On that basis annual GDP growth has fallen from 1.1% to 0.9% over the last month. It has been between 0.4% and 1.7% since the year ending January 2024, averaging 1.1% pa, and trend has not changed materially since the election. The preceding period it was even lower (between -0.5% and 1.3%, averaging 0.5% pa).
Everyone getting excited over monthly figures (positive or negative) and putting their favourite interpretation of the reason behind it is a waste of everyone's time.
On-topic – back in the 1980s Alex Salmond contrasted the economic rationale of the SNP with the cultural base of Plaid Cymru. To the extent that remains true, is independence the real prize or simply more support for Welsh language poetry, drama and television?
There's a another thought. CymruWales was almost never united in the early Middle Ages, before the Norman/English conquest. England 'sort of' was, similarly Scotland.
@Ydoether has made the point in the past that there's a tension between the people of what we call South Wales, which was, just about, two and a bit princedoms and North Wales, including language differences.
She only sees the data when they are released, same as the rest of us. Pre-release access to ONS data was ended in 2017 (except for exceptional circumstances, in which case the access details are published at the time). She might have reasonably expected a 0.1% decline in April (market consensus forecast) but not the -0.3%.
ONS data isn't the only source. Surely the Treasury are up to their eyeballs in economic data and forecasts? She must have known, or at least should have known, that her boasting was going to look stupid the next day.
Spot the almost subliminal flash of Rachel Reeves towards the end of Clarkson's Farm S4 E8!
I like Clarkson's Farm but that stuff really winds me up. Whatever you think of the IHT change, the motivation for it was to prevent people like Clarkson inflating land prices by using it as a tax dodge. Part of the reason someone like Kaleb struggles to buy a farm is because the agricultural returns are so small, so the breakeven point is sometimes centuries in the future.
I'd forgive him if at the end of the next season he sells the land to Kaleb for a fair price for use as a farm (e.g. something like £0).
Labour should have just exempted family farms and small businesses held for 2 generations or more from the IHT tax changes, that way tax dodgers would still have been hit and not been competing with the likes of Kaleb to buy farmland but traditional farming families wouldn't
Simpler - the IHT would be due when the land is sold. If the land is inherited again, then the IHT is replaced with the latest value, not doubled up.
So if you keep the family farm in the family - no tax. If you make money from selling it, you pay the IHT out of that.
The SNP are of course delusional fantasists who believe our own politicians would do better despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary but they are surely cold eyed pragmatists compared with Plaid.
I mean, what on earth are they for? Do they really want independence or is it just a Welsh speaking pressure group? I honestly don’t get why they exist.
Even that is a lagging indicator. The real economy is in a hell of a mess.
Who could have ever thought that raising taxes on employment while leaving unearned incomes untaxed might not be the best way to manage an economy?
Savings are taxed. Dividends are taxed. The tax on dividends has been increased. Pensions are taxed. Assets when sold are taxed. Other than houses you live in. Are you suggesting CGT on the sale of houses?
I'm suggesting, as I always have, merging NIC and ICT.
Currently a plethora of income, such as for example pensions, or income from lettings, or other incomes are not liable to NICs but are liable to ICT.
All incomes, no matter how they are earned, should face the same tax rate.
I wish the media would report rolling 12-month GRP rather than the incredibly noisy monthly series. A bit like we do on inflation.
On that basis annual GDP growth has fallen from 1.1% to 0.9% over the last month. It has been between 0.4% and 1.7% since the year ending January 2024, averaging 1.1% pa, and trend has not changed materially since the election. The preceding period it was even lower (between -0.5% and 1.3%, averaging 0.5% pa).
Everyone getting excited over monthly figures (positive or negative) and putting their favourite interpretation of the reason behind it is a waste of everyone's time.
On Habib/Lowe watch, Ben Habib put out an impassioned post yesterday about how you have to be involved, media appearances etc don't count for anything and it's votes that count. If he's not about to launch his party that would be the most ridiculous post ever from a man who is purely media appearances
There’s a lot of noise and revisions to monthly data which is one of the reasons why we used to focus on quarterly data but that is not a good number, offsetting most of the unexpected growth in Q1.
The thing that gets me is that only yesterday Reeves was boasting about GDP, but surely she would have had some idea where the latest update would end up?
She looks like a prize idiot now, and is having to defend her previous actions rather than talk about the longer term stuff, which is what actually matters the most.
She doesnt just look like a prize idiot she actually is one
Good news! I thought she'd get you back. Not much dry humour here anymore. You've been replaced by some dull and noisy shouters.
Deserted yesterday. What we may be seeing is families without children taking their holidays early before the schools break up and prices skyrocket. And in light of recent years, also before August heatwaves make France and points south unbearable. (Or, who knows, they might just be following the Gazette's travel writer.)
All of which means less spending in Blighty and more invisible imports wrecking our balance of trade.
We were out in Newcastle a Couple of Fridays ago. The bars were quiet. The restaurant packed. A sunny Friday in May. Before Covid the bars we went to would have been busy.
I really do not know how anyone can afford to eat and drink out
I cooked haddock, chips and peas for my beloved last night and it cost just over £4
The local chippy is advertising the same on a special offer of £27.50 !!!
The striking thing is just how little alcohol our family drinks and our 22 year old granddaughter is TT
Deserted yesterday. What we may be seeing is families without children taking their holidays early before the schools break up and prices skyrocket. And in light of recent years, also before August heatwaves make France and points south unbearable. (Or, who knows, they might just be following the Gazette's travel writer.)
All of which means less spending in Blighty and more invisible imports wrecking our balance of trade.
We were out in Newcastle a Couple of Fridays ago. The bars were quiet. The restaurant packed. A sunny Friday in May. Before Covid the bars we went to would have been busy.
I really do not know how anyone can afford to eat and drink out
I cooked haddock, chips and peas for my beloved last night and it cost just over £4
The local chippy is advertising the same on a special offer of £27.50 !!!
The striking thing is just how little alcohol our family drinks and our 22 year old granddaughter is TT
Even that is a lagging indicator. The real economy is in a hell of a mess.
Who could have ever thought that raising taxes on employment while leaving unearned incomes untaxed might not be the best way to manage an economy?
Savings are taxed. Dividends are taxed. The tax on dividends has been increased. Pensions are taxed. Assets when sold are taxed. Other than houses you live in. Are you suggesting CGT on the sale of houses?
I'm suggesting, as I always have, merging NIC and ICT.
Currently a plethora of income, such as for example pensions, or income from lettings, or other incomes are not liable to NICs but are liable to ICT.
All incomes, no matter how they are earned, should face the same tax rate.
I’d like to know the objections to this ? I cannot see any reasonable objection.
I wish the media would report rolling 12-month GRP rather than the incredibly noisy monthly series. A bit like we do on inflation.
On that basis annual GDP growth has fallen from 1.1% to 0.9% over the last month. It has been between 0.4% and 1.7% since the year ending January 2024, averaging 1.1% pa, and trend has not changed materially since the election. The preceding period it was even lower (between -0.5% and 1.3%, averaging 0.5% pa).
Everyone getting excited over monthly figures (positive or negative) and putting their favourite interpretation of the reason behind it is a waste of everyone's time.
Focusing in very short term numbers benefits the media though and financial analysts who make their money off very short term fluctuations and are very poor at analysing medium term trends.
But most of all, it benefits the useless government we have (and its pretty poor predecessor) to focus on short-term numbers though which as you say are noisy when the real damage their policies are doing is medium-term stagnation and long-term decline, which some other politicians will hopefully have to deal with.
For the one with executive power as long as you ignore the rule of law, you start with all the cards and 10 nil up. You are quick, law is slow. By the time it announces, you have moved several stages.
A current stage is getting people used to internal military intervention.
Can it be stopped? I think we shall know fairly soon. Certainly by the end of 2026. At the moment I think it can't.
Of course it can be stopped
Unfortunately the precedent for how to stop it is bloody civil war
The second amendment nutters are about to find out whether arming every citizen is in fact a good idea
My impression is that Democrats are far less likely to go in for arming themselves than Republicans. Maybe they are becoming/will soon become aware of the reason behind the Second Amendment.
Exactly and at going tax rate so 43% in Scotland. People on here live in dreamland thinking pensioners earn gazillions and pay no taxes. FFS they pay the same taxes as any other person once above the paltry 12K allowance.
I mean they objectively don’t. They don’t pay National Insurance for one
There’s a lot of noise and revisions to monthly data which is one of the reasons why we used to focus on quarterly data but that is not a good number, offsetting most of the unexpected growth in Q1.
The thing that gets me is that only yesterday Reeves was boasting about GDP, but surely she would have had some idea where the latest update would end up?
She looks like a prize idiot now, and is having to defend her previous actions rather than talk about the longer term stuff, which is what actually matters the most.
Yes she must have known when she was chuntering out that vainglorious nonsense yesterday. I won’t apologise for something absolutely no one is criticising etc. I am not sure she has fully understood what carpe diem actually means.
She only sees the data when they are released, same as the rest of us. Pre-release access to ONS data was ended in 2017 (except for exceptional circumstances, in which case the access details are published at the time). She might have reasonably expected a 0.1% decline in April (market consensus forecast) but not the -0.3%.
Thanks. I didn’t know that they had changed that. You’d think that they would at least get a first draft.
AIUI there was a suspicion that the data were leaking into the markets, and that the pre-release to eg SPADs in the Treasury might be the source. Don't quote me on that, but it's what I recall from the time.
Sooner or later, any decision made by Starmer’s Labour government turns out to be damaging for the UK
This is now being applied to the Gibraltar deal. Falling apart under scrutiny
What's the problem with the Gibraltar deal? They have fixed the border FUBAR so that people are able to cross it freely again as they need to. Gibraltar remains a BOT, the military facility remains untouched, and the people who voted in almost unanimity to not fuck their lives up get the fix they voted for.
Loads of details about the passport arrangements now being revealed. Allegations on X such as: every British citizen entering Gibraltar will now have their passports checked by Spain and a stay in Gibraltar will count as a stay in Schenghen. As visiting the EU. The Spanish will control how and when the British visit British territory abroad
Likewise some are claiming this will apply to British troops or sailors in the Navy
The same will apply to the Cyprus BOTs when Cyprus joins Schengen.
Even that is a lagging indicator. The real economy is in a hell of a mess.
Who could have ever thought that raising taxes on employment while leaving unearned incomes untaxed might not be the best way to manage an economy?
Savings are taxed. Dividends are taxed. The tax on dividends has been increased. Pensions are taxed. Assets when sold are taxed. Other than houses you live in. Are you suggesting CGT on the sale of houses?
True. but it's bad politics for workers to be taxed more heavily than the retired (like me). And the low tax/untaxed nature of residential property is a disaster distorting the market and giving all the wrong incentives.
Also distorting the market is the ludicrous IHT rules whereby the rate is far too high (40%) and the exemptions capricious (extra if you own a home etc) and the ways of avoiding it a series of open goals, keeping Lincoln's Inn in business.
Low rate (5-10%), no exemptions, CTT at the same rate on inter vivos transactions is the way forward.
What mince are you talking , the only tax (sic ) that can be different is NI for working pensioners. So unless you specifically mean that miniscule point then you are talking absolute bollox.
She only sees the data when they are released, same as the rest of us. Pre-release access to ONS data was ended in 2017 (except for exceptional circumstances, in which case the access details are published at the time). She might have reasonably expected a 0.1% decline in April (market consensus forecast) but not the -0.3%.
ONS data isn't the only source. Surely the Treasury are up to their eyeballs in economic data and forecasts? She must have known, or at least should have known, that her boasting was going to look stupid the next day.
At the level of granularity necessary to predict a 0.2pp miss in the highly volatile monthly GDP data? Absolutely not.
Sooner or later, any decision made by Starmer’s Labour government turns out to be damaging for the UK
This is now being applied to the Gibraltar deal. Falling apart under scrutiny
What's the problem with the Gibraltar deal? They have fixed the border FUBAR so that people are able to cross it freely again as they need to. Gibraltar remains a BOT, the military facility remains untouched, and the people who voted in almost unanimity to not fuck their lives up get the fix they voted for.
Able to cross more freely in fact. There were often long queues before brexit.
There will still be queues in the car line, I would think. It's a customs border, and Spain are not happy about the enormous amounts of cigarette smuggling.
Yesterday's spending review commits the government to increasing current spending by £190bn a year more over the term of the Parliament. Public spending is committed to growing 2.3% in real terms.
These plans, in my view, condemn the UK to higher taxes and lower growth as well as spiralling ever nearer the plug hole of unsustainable debt. It is indicative of the complacency that is shared across the media and elsewhere, despite the lesson of Truss, that this disastrous course of action seems to engender so little comment with the focus being on the individual elements.
We are in serious trouble and yesterday made it worse.
The alternative is another decade of worsening austerity. Even yesterday's plans are significant cuts for many departments. We can't have both growth and the featherbedding of the Granny State.
I take no particular view on what the percentage of GDP spent by the government should be, just want a balanced budget and for the politicians to be honest about the trade offs. I am not expecting either any time soon.
We can't, so we need to choose growth and not the granny state.
Long past time to cut the NHS, Triple Lock etc and prioritise things other than the grey vote.
Even if you cut spending per old person, the numbers are going up a lot. 11m to 13m over 65s in 10 years. A 20% cut (unthinkable) in pensions would still leave the pension budget increasing.
In real terms its absolutely not unthinkable, just unpopular.
We need to have the same attitude to grey benefits that the older generation had to free tuition ... numbers have gone up so its just not viable
I don’t think any politician would ever stand up and propose a 20% cut in basic State pension. It might be logical or even desirable but it’s not going to happen.
We don’t do that kind of pay cut though I know as some of the post-Communist countries reverted to capitalist systems in the early 90s, they did cut wages and benefits for those in the State sector and even Greece and Spain cut public sector wages during the Eurozone crisis.
The British approach is to freeze wages which translates to a real term cut as you know.
Raising the age at which the State pension can be taken is one option and that will no doubt happen. To be fair, frozen thresholds mean many people are seeing their workplace pensions increasingly taxed (the State pension itself isn’t) so perhaps we need to rethink that to encourage more people to fund their own retirement from workplace schemes which means the private sector stepping up to offer the kind of pensions to their workers other sectors achieve.
Some form of sovereign pension fund into which all private companies would have to pay and increased contributions from workers, he says, thinking aloud.
The logical endpoint becomes the end of the State pension with everyone self financing their retirement (hopefully not via the American style 401 with everyone playing the stock market). Can’t see that happening anytime soon.
The current system is in trouble but the irony is a lot of older people are currently doing very well so it works - to a point.
That was the point, a real terms cut is viable.
Do to pensions the same as was done to many state employees over the past decade and a half "increases will be at 1% per year until the finances are sorted".
That's a nominal increase, but a real terms cut.
In real terms many people's salaries have been cut by over 20%, and that's people working for a living. Those who aren't working for their living deserve no more than those who are.
Wrong. Many pensioners don't have the option of working again to make up the difference. You're comparing apples and oranges.
I'm not wrong and many can.
Many people could work if they wanted to and even if they can't or don't is not an excuse to demand unaffordable money from those who are working.
Indeed pension conditions were changed in the 1980s multiple times, when the current generation of pensioners were working. There's no reason the same can't happen today when they're retired.
Deserted yesterday. What we may be seeing is families without children taking their holidays early before the schools break up and prices skyrocket. And in light of recent years, also before August heatwaves make France and points south unbearable. (Or, who knows, they might just be following the Gazette's travel writer.)
All of which means less spending in Blighty and more invisible imports wrecking our balance of trade.
We were out in Newcastle a Couple of Fridays ago. The bars were quiet. The restaurant packed. A sunny Friday in May. Before Covid the bars we went to would have been busy.
I really do not know how anyone can afford to eat and drink out
I cooked haddock, chips and peas for my beloved last night and it cost just over £4
The local chippy is advertising the same on a special offer of £27.50 !!!
The striking thing is just how little alcohol our family drinks and our 22 year old granddaughter is TT
Haddock, chips and mushies for 2??
4 x Birds Eye breaded haddock at £4.28 (on offer) equates to £1 each
My wife is an expert on white fish and her highly successful Scottish skipper father maintained that frozen haddock is as good as fresh, and to be fair it tastes wonderful
Deserted yesterday. What we may be seeing is families without children taking their holidays early before the schools break up and prices skyrocket. And in light of recent years, also before August heatwaves make France and points south unbearable. (Or, who knows, they might just be following the Gazette's travel writer.)
All of which means less spending in Blighty and more invisible imports wrecking our balance of trade.
We were out in Newcastle a Couple of Fridays ago. The bars were quiet. The restaurant packed. A sunny Friday in May. Before Covid the bars we went to would have been busy.
I really do not know how anyone can afford to eat and drink out
I cooked haddock, chips and peas for my beloved last night and it cost just over £4
The local chippy is advertising the same on a special offer of £27.50 !!!
The striking thing is just how little alcohol our family drinks and our 22 year old granddaughter is TT
Haddock, chips and mushies for 2??
4 x Birds Eye breaded haddock at £4.28 (on offer) equates to £1 each
My wife is an expert on white fish and her highly successful Scottish skipper father maintained that frozen haddock is as good as fresh and to be fair it tastes wonderful
Deserted yesterday. What we may be seeing is families without children taking their holidays early before the schools break up and prices skyrocket. And in light of recent years, also before August heatwaves make France and points south unbearable. (Or, who knows, they might just be following the Gazette's travel writer.)
All of which means less spending in Blighty and more invisible imports wrecking our balance of trade.
We were out in Newcastle a Couple of Fridays ago. The bars were quiet. The restaurant packed. A sunny Friday in May. Before Covid the bars we went to would have been busy.
I really do not know how anyone can afford to eat and drink out
I cooked haddock, chips and peas for my beloved last night and it cost just over £4
The local chippy is advertising the same on a special offer of £27.50 !!!
The striking thing is just how little alcohol our family drinks and our 22 year old granddaughter is TT
For the one with executive power as long as you ignore the rule of law, you start with all the cards and 10 nil up. You are quick, law is slow. By the time it announces, you have moved several stages.
A current stage is getting people used to internal military intervention.
Can it be stopped? I think we shall know fairly soon. Certainly by the end of 2026. At the moment I think it can't.
Of course it can be stopped
Unfortunately the precedent for how to stop it is bloody civil war
The second amendment nutters are about to find out whether arming every citizen is in fact a good idea
My impression is that Democrats are far less likely to go in for arming themselves than Republicans. Maybe they are becoming/will soon become aware of the reason behind the Second Amendment.
"- Party: 45% of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents say they personally own a gun, compared with 20% of Democrats and Democratic leaners. - Gender: 40% of men say they own a gun, versus 25% of women. - Community type: 47% of adults living in rural areas report owning a firearm, as do smaller shares of those who live in suburbs (30%) or urban areas (20%). - Race and ethnicity: 38% of White Americans own a gun, compared with smaller shares of Black (24%), Hispanic (20%) and Asian (10%) Americans." https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/07/24/key-facts-about-americans-and-guns/
Even that is a lagging indicator. The real economy is in a hell of a mess.
Who could have ever thought that raising taxes on employment while leaving unearned incomes untaxed might not be the best way to manage an economy?
Savings are taxed. Dividends are taxed. The tax on dividends has been increased. Pensions are taxed. Assets when sold are taxed. Other than houses you live in. Are you suggesting CGT on the sale of houses?
True. but it's bad politics for workers to be taxed more heavily than the retired (like me). And the low tax/untaxed nature of residential property is a disaster distorting the market and giving all the wrong incentives.
Also distorting the market is the ludicrous IHT rules whereby the rate is far too high (40%) and the exemptions capricious (extra if you own a home etc) and the ways of avoiding it a series of open goals, keeping Lincoln's Inn in business.
Low rate (5-10%), no exemptions, CTT at the same rate on inter vivos transactions is the way forward.
What mince are you talking , the only tax (sic ) that can be different is NI for working pensioners. So unless you specifically mean that miniscule point then you are talking absolute bollox.
NI should apply to all pension income itself not just working.
Taxes should be no higher on working for a living than not working.
I wish the media would report rolling 12-month GRP rather than the incredibly noisy monthly series. A bit like we do on inflation.
On that basis annual GDP growth has fallen from 1.1% to 0.9% over the last month. It has been between 0.4% and 1.7% since the year ending January 2024, averaging 1.1% pa, and trend has not changed materially since the election. The preceding period it was even lower (between -0.5% and 1.3%, averaging 0.5% pa).
Everyone getting excited over monthly figures (positive or negative) and putting their favourite interpretation of the reason behind it is a waste of everyone's time.
Comments
'Mainstream media have been a disgrace'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tndHRtdVQqo
The financial reality of the show is that Amazon more than subsidises any losses Clarkson makes on farming. So far as I can make out, everyone watches it, except for me.
Unfortunately the precedent for how to stop it is bloody civil war
The second amendment nutters are about to find out whether arming every citizen is in fact a good idea
He is stealing all his ideas from someone on PB. This young man will go far. (He's right about the golden age of lads mags).
She looks like a prize idiot now, and is having to defend her previous actions rather than talk about the longer term stuff, which is what actually matters the most.
Not Brian Walden but not bad.
You got the usual discounts on gym memberships, trainers and sports watches. The key was freebies triggered by doing x amount of exercise. At one point, I was getting 4 free cinema tickets per week (on for every family member registered on the private health plan).
It was especially noticeable that people who were of the “I never exercise mindset” suddenly got interested in walking everywhere.
How does Robbie Gibb and Tim Davie's recently reported embrace of "Reform voters" fulfil the "every report must be balanced" criteria?
Reeves takes gamble on patience in an era of impatience
I'm not so sure about his article
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj09lz0q5pno
Occasionally, accurately.
Deserted yesterday. What we may be seeing is families without children taking their holidays early before the schools break up and prices skyrocket. And in light of recent years, also before August heatwaves make France and points south unbearable. (Or, who knows, they might just be following the Gazette's travel writer.)
All of which means less spending in Blighty and more invisible imports wrecking our balance of trade.
I am not sure she has fully understood what carpe diem actually means.
Also distorting the market is the ludicrous IHT rules whereby the rate is far too high (40%) and the exemptions capricious (extra if you own a home etc) and the ways of avoiding it a series of open goals, keeping Lincoln's Inn in business.
Low rate (5-10%), no exemptions, CTT at the same rate on inter vivos transactions is the way forward.
Its 70s to early 80s again
Also last night the Danish king and queen stayed in my hotel. True story. Much jollity was had. Whole thing surrounded by police. I think they were hoping to grab some beer time with me but I was off eating pilot whale blubber
Watch the skies over Persia tonight
We’ve even got riots in Ulster, Cold War menace, and alleged traitors high in the government
Glorious musical time
Plaid may well win most seats next year in the Senedd via PR but they would almost certainly still have to govern with Labour which would reduce the changes they could make and leave Reform as the main opposition to them in Wales to capitalise
Coachloads coming in from as far as Manchester, Liverpool and Melton Mowbray full of Britain’s new grey monied elite. The healthy 50 and 60 something’s with time and money to burn keeping the economy moving.
Reeves takes gamble on patience in an era of impatience
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj09lz0q5pno
His article? Hmmm.
A hospital pass from the prior govt to a new govt that is not up to the job.
Nothing I’ve seen tells me I’m wrong.
On that basis annual GDP growth has fallen from 1.1% to 0.9% over the last month. It has been between 0.4% and 1.7% since the year ending January 2024, averaging 1.1% pa, and trend has not changed materially since the election. The preceding period it was even lower (between -0.5% and 1.3%, averaging 0.5% pa).
Everyone getting excited over monthly figures (positive or negative) and putting their favourite interpretation of the reason behind it is a waste of everyone's time.
@Ydoether has made the point in the past that there's a tension between the people of what we call South Wales, which was, just about, two and a bit princedoms and North Wales, including language differences.
So if you keep the family farm in the family - no tax. If you make money from selling it, you pay the IHT out of that.
I mean, what on earth are they for? Do they really want independence or is it just a Welsh speaking pressure group? I honestly don’t get why they exist.
Currently a plethora of income, such as for example pensions, or income from lettings, or other incomes are not liable to NICs but are liable to ICT.
All incomes, no matter how they are earned, should face the same tax rate.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c8d1r3m8z92t
If he's not about to launch his party that would be the most ridiculous post ever from a man who is purely media appearances
They should have been bombed years ago, by the time anyone gets the balls to do it, it will be too late.
Shame on Bibi and Trump and Biden and everyone else who have failed here.
I cooked haddock, chips and peas for my beloved last night and it cost just over £4
The local chippy is advertising the same on a special offer of £27.50 !!!
The striking thing is just how little alcohol our family drinks and our 22 year old granddaughter is TT
I hope people are OK.
Taxing work is something we need to do less of.
But most of all, it benefits the useless government we have (and its pretty poor predecessor) to focus on short-term numbers though which as you say are noisy when the real damage their policies are doing is medium-term stagnation and long-term decline, which some other politicians will hopefully have to deal with.
There will still be queues in the car line, I would think. It's a customs border, and Spain are not happy about the enormous amounts of cigarette smuggling.
Many people could work if they wanted to and even if they can't or don't is not an excuse to demand unaffordable money from those who are working.
Indeed pension conditions were changed in the 1980s multiple times, when the current generation of pensioners were working. There's no reason the same can't happen today when they're retired.
My wife is an expert on white fish and her highly successful Scottish skipper father maintained that frozen haddock is as good as fresh, and to be fair it tastes wonderful
- Gender: 40% of men say they own a gun, versus 25% of women.
- Community type: 47% of adults living in rural areas report owning a firearm, as do smaller shares of those who live in suburbs (30%) or urban areas (20%).
- Race and ethnicity: 38% of White Americans own a gun, compared with smaller shares of Black (24%), Hispanic (20%) and Asian (10%) Americans."
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/07/24/key-facts-about-americans-and-guns/
Taxes should be no higher on working for a living than not working.
Don't like it? Get a job.