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Trump derangement syndrome is real – politicalbetting.com

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  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 54,879
    On topic:

    "TSE doesn't know what the fuck he's doing! Thank you for your attention to this matter!!"
  • theProletheProle Posts: 1,405

    Leon said:

    ...

    "Allies of Reeves say Labour rebels will have to ‘own’ the tax rises after they killed off welfare reforms”

    Labour are so monumentally fucked. There is no coming back from this. Unfortunately, Britain is somewhat fucked, as well

    One of the reasons that governments tend to fall apart and collapse over time is that its members see fighting the internal party battle as more important than the wider political contest with the opposition.

    You can see that in spades here with the emphasis on laying the blame for tax rises on Labour rebels, rather than working out how to sell them to the public.
    Surely that's because selling the public "here's loads of tax rises to fund benefits for scroungers" is pretty much impossible.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 54,879
    eek said:

    Foxy said:

    eek said:

    Foxy said:

    viewcode said:

    Um, @Leon, @Malmesbury et al, the "Universe 25"/"Mouse Utopia"/"Calhoun Experiments", whilst not that well known, were known enough for me to discuss it in one of the works Xmas dinners last Christmas, where I fascinated/repelled various luminaries with the story[1], especially when I threw in the phrase "mouse incel" . The alt-right and frankly insane commentator "WhatIfAltHist" - you'd like him - did a YouTube on them

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink
    https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-old-experiment-with-mice-led-to-bleak-predictions-for-humanitys-future-180954423/
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTDTVbourzU

    [1] I spend a lot of time in trains and taxis, and two of my jobs mean I have a fund of grotesque stories to entertain them. They can be repurposed for a more genteel audience.

    I am not sure that I buy it though. Population Fertility rates for humans are dropping everywhere (albeit from a higher base in Africa etc) whether the country is densely or thinly populated.

    Zambia has 20 million people in a country twice the size of France for example, yet the fertility rate is dropping there too. (Incidentally there is some belief amongst demographers that many estimates of current populations are overestimated in Africa).

    The drop in fertility rates is pretty universal, in both rich and poor countries, the densely and thinly populated, in ones with welfare states and without, in countries with expensive and those with cheap housing, religious and irreligious alike, from different starting points

    I think we have to look at other societal changes, and these would have to be worldwide, and particularly taken up by young women. Smartphones and Internet access spring to mind.
    Education, opportunities, birth control and reduced child mortality rates have all played a part in reduced fertility rates.

    Hardly surprising as most women don't want to be a baby factory and want to do other things with their lives..
    Sure, but these have been around for decades, but with Smartphones that information is much more widely available, including on the life opportunities as alternatives to serial maternity.
    If you were born in an African village - I suspect opportunities beyond the village only arrived in the past 10-15 years as mobiles arrived..
    I remember an advert for something that had an African lad say:

    "What do you expect? This is the 1980s you know!"
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 54,879
    HYUFD said:

    eek said:

    Foxy said:

    viewcode said:

    Um, @Leon, @Malmesbury et al, the "Universe 25"/"Mouse Utopia"/"Calhoun Experiments", whilst not that well known, were known enough for me to discuss it in one of the works Xmas dinners last Christmas, where I fascinated/repelled various luminaries with the story[1], especially when I threw in the phrase "mouse incel" . The alt-right and frankly insane commentator "WhatIfAltHist" - you'd like him - did a YouTube on them

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink
    https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-old-experiment-with-mice-led-to-bleak-predictions-for-humanitys-future-180954423/
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTDTVbourzU

    [1] I spend a lot of time in trains and taxis, and two of my jobs mean I have a fund of grotesque stories to entertain them. They can be repurposed for a more genteel audience.

    I am not sure that I buy it though. Population Fertility rates for humans are dropping everywhere (albeit from a higher base in Africa etc) whether the country is densely or thinly populated.

    Zambia has 20 million people in a country twice the size of France for example, yet the fertility rate is dropping there too. (Incidentally there is some belief amongst demographers that many estimates of current populations are overestimated in Africa).

    The drop in fertility rates is pretty universal, in both rich and poor countries, the densely and thinly populated, in ones with welfare states and without, in countries with expensive and those with cheap housing, religious and irreligious alike, from different starting points

    I think we have to look at other societal changes, and these would have to be worldwide, and particularly taken up by young women. Smartphones and Internet access spring to mind.
    Education, opportunities, birth control and reduced child mortality rates have all played a part in reduced fertility rates.

    Hardly surprising as most women don't want to be a baby factory and want to do other things with their lives..
    Yes but the later you leave it the harder it is to have children, peak fertility for women is in their twenties and early thirties.

    Plus as the population ages the working age population will have to pay more and more tax to pay for the healthcare etc to support them
    Fewer babies born now means fewer oldies in 60 years' time.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 32,725

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    FPT on the baby bust (and it’s not so irrelevant - Trump is in some ways a reaction to it)

    The irony is that the world needs far fewer people. Unless and until we can go to other planets we need to put less pressure on Planet Earth, we need to get our present 9 billion down to 1-2 billion

    The problem is how do you get there without societal collapse. Gaia may, in her own way, be doing it for us

    Africa needs fewer people, the western world needs a few more babies
    African birth rates are declining from a very high base and will continue to do so based on forecast.

    Fertility rate has fallen from 6.1 to 4.8 in just over a decade

    So Africa is sorting itself out, especially as it is exporting plenty of young men to Europe.

    https://www.mercatornet.com/to_the_surprise_of_demographers_african_fertility_is_falling
    So Africa more than double replacement fertility rate still, thanks for the confirmation.

    Meanwhile most western nations well below replacement fertility rate meaning ever higher taxes on the working population to fund an ever ageing population.

    While most western voters want their navies to send back the migrant boats where they came from
    Africa, with its declining birth rate and exporting its young men, is going the same way as the west, just more slowly. The more it exports fertile young men to the west the more their birth rates will fall. Now forecast to peak in 2060.

    ‘The UN now projects that Nigeria will have 342 million people by 2060, 200 million less than they forecasted ten years ago. Will even these estimates hold up?’

    What voters want is irrelevant. It’s what the political class wants and they want more. Hell, your party happily hoovered up tens of thousands, with their economically inactive fiscal liability relatives, to wipe old peoples arses.
    On current polls Nigel Farage will be next UK PM and undergo a purge of the political class and a war on immigrants and the migrant boats.

    Immigration fell on the latest figures thanks to the tighter immigration restrictions Sunak brought in
    4 years to go, and some important negative polling on Farage here, so let's see. In a forced choice and despite Starmer's uselessness:



    https://bsky.app/profile/jwsidders.bsky.social/post/3lt676ebrts2i
    Good morning

    How can anyone think Farage would be a better PM than Starmer, but there lies the deep problem as Starmer joins a long list of poor PMs

    I expect Reform to glide down in the polls but who benefits I have no idea
    If the media and social media are telling us all how terrible Starmer (and to an extent Badenoch) is, whilst at the same time tacitly (by giving him a superior platform to either the PM or LOTO) telling us he is a man with answers. Is there a day when that gurning tw** isn't called on by the BBC or similar to criticise this and the previous Government?
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 52,023

    HYUFD said:

    eek said:

    Foxy said:

    viewcode said:

    Um, @Leon, @Malmesbury et al, the "Universe 25"/"Mouse Utopia"/"Calhoun Experiments", whilst not that well known, were known enough for me to discuss it in one of the works Xmas dinners last Christmas, where I fascinated/repelled various luminaries with the story[1], especially when I threw in the phrase "mouse incel" . The alt-right and frankly insane commentator "WhatIfAltHist" - you'd like him - did a YouTube on them

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink
    https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-old-experiment-with-mice-led-to-bleak-predictions-for-humanitys-future-180954423/
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTDTVbourzU

    [1] I spend a lot of time in trains and taxis, and two of my jobs mean I have a fund of grotesque stories to entertain them. They can be repurposed for a more genteel audience.

    I am not sure that I buy it though. Population Fertility rates for humans are dropping everywhere (albeit from a higher base in Africa etc) whether the country is densely or thinly populated.

    Zambia has 20 million people in a country twice the size of France for example, yet the fertility rate is dropping there too. (Incidentally there is some belief amongst demographers that many estimates of current populations are overestimated in Africa).

    The drop in fertility rates is pretty universal, in both rich and poor countries, the densely and thinly populated, in ones with welfare states and without, in countries with expensive and those with cheap housing, religious and irreligious alike, from different starting points

    I think we have to look at other societal changes, and these would have to be worldwide, and particularly taken up by young women. Smartphones and Internet access spring to mind.
    Education, opportunities, birth control and reduced child mortality rates have all played a part in reduced fertility rates.

    Hardly surprising as most women don't want to be a baby factory and want to do other things with their lives..
    Yes but the later you leave it the harder it is to have children, peak fertility for women is in their twenties and early thirties.

    Plus as the population ages the working age population will have to pay more and more tax to pay for the healthcare etc to support them
    Fewer babies born now means fewer oldies in 60 years' time.
    We are headed to the 421 families seen in China. 4 grandparents, 2 parents, 1 child.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 60,632
    edited July 5
    theProle said:

    Leon said:

    ...

    "Allies of Reeves say Labour rebels will have to ‘own’ the tax rises after they killed off welfare reforms”

    Labour are so monumentally fucked. There is no coming back from this. Unfortunately, Britain is somewhat fucked, as well

    One of the reasons that governments tend to fall apart and collapse over time is that its members see fighting the internal party battle as more important than the wider political contest with the opposition.

    You can see that in spades here with the emphasis on laying the blame for tax rises on Labour rebels, rather than working out how to sell them to the public.
    Surely that's because selling the public "here's loads of tax rises to fund benefits for scroungers" is pretty much impossible.
    And this is why you'll never be a politician.

    The correct framing is: "we'll be taxing some rich, tax avoiding bastards more, so you can get your fair share".
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 31,975
    Reeves could tax overseas remittances. Up to date information seems difficult to come by, but a Guardian blog from 2016 estimates the following:

    According to the estimates, remittances from the UK, including unrecorded transfers through formal and informal channels, could be worth up to $23bn – including $3.9bn to India, $3.8bn to Nigeria, and more than $1.2bn to Poland. This would make the UK the third-largest source of remittances, after the US and Canada.

    https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/datablog/2013/aug/09/remittances-britain-data

    Ten percent would seem reasonable.
  • BartholomewRobertsBartholomewRoberts Posts: 25,127

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    Leon said:

    Sean_F said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Sean_F said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Sean_F said:

    HYUFD said:

    Sean_F said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    FPT on the baby bust (and it’s not so irrelevant - Trump is in some ways a reaction to it)

    The irony is that the world needs far fewer people. Unless and until we can go to other planets we need to put less pressure on Planet Earth, we need to get our present 9 billion down to 1-2 billion

    The problem is how do you get there without societal collapse. Gaia may, in her own way, be doing it for us

    Africa needs fewer people, the western world needs a few more babies
    African birth rates are declining from a very high base and will continue to do so based on forecast.

    Fertility rate has fallen from 6.1 to 4.8 in just over a decade

    So Africa is sorting itself out, especially as it is exporting plenty of young men to Europe.

    https://www.mercatornet.com/to_the_surprise_of_demographers_african_fertility_is_falling
    So Africa more than double replacement fertility rate still, thanks for the confirmation.

    Meanwhile most western nations well below replacement fertility rate meaning ever higher taxes on the working population to fund an ever ageing population.

    While most western voters want their navies to send back the migrant boats where they came from
    Africa, with its declining birth rate and exporting its young men, is going the same way as the west, just more slowly. The more it exports fertile young men to the west the more their birth rates will fall. Now forecast to peak in 2060.

    ‘The UN now projects that Nigeria will have 342 million people by 2060, 200 million less than they forecasted ten years ago. Will even these estimates hold up?’

    What voters want is irrelevant. It’s what the political class wants and they want more. Hell, your party happily hoovered up tens of thousands, with their economically inactive fiscal liability relatives, to wipe old peoples arses.
    Africa’s birth rate will likely be down to replacement level, within a generation.
    I highly doubt it, Africa has fewer women graduates in the workplace than most of the world and is much more religious
    Twenty years ago, that was true of the Middle East.
    Most of the Middle East still has above replacement level fertility.

    West Bank and Gaza being two of the highest.
    They're both trying to outbreed each other.

    Russia: despite traditional values and massive incentives has a birth rate comfortably below UK levels.
    On top of a high death rate, made worse by the Ukraine war.

    Until recently, a lot of people thought of Putin as a 3-D chess player (and the MAGA's and tankies still admire him), but what could be more stupid than launching a war of choice that leaves you weaker than when you started?

    Russia's vast oil revenues could have been used to transform the lives of its population, *and* to build up its armed forces.
    Demographic pressures were one of the reasons for the SMO. About a million Ukrainian (mostly younger people who are more mobile) moved to Russia as soon as it kicked off. There's about 3 million people living in the fascistly occupied/heroically denazified territory who will be eventually added to the population of the Russian Federation. A big motivation for staying put under Russian occupation is that you can just stop paying your mortgage/car payment to Ukrainian banks with no adverse consequences.
    OTOH, plenty of young Russians have got out of Dodge.
    And up to a million young Russian men have been killed or injured, if we are to believe the more alarming statistics

    This was all cleverly analysed in the Spectator

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-global-populations-need-to-fall/
    This year, Russia has conquered about 150 square miles of territory, at a cost of about 200,000 casualties. That's an insane ratio of reward to cost.
    The Soviets lost more than 25 million people in The Great Patriotic War. The odd 200,000 in the SMO is a rounding error.
    The differences are that:

    (a) back in 1941, the typical Soviet woman had 6 children in her lifetime, rather than 1.4. Their leaders are still acting as if they can lose millions in war, and the population will rapidly bounce back.

    (b) the Nazis wished to exterminate or enslave the population. They had no choice but to take whatever casualties were necessary in order to win. This war is a war of choice.
    So what? My thesis explains the continuation of the SMO. Yours suggests any rational Kremlin would not have launched it. Mine more closely matches the facts on the ground.
    There are quite a few provisos you need to add. Like, a very significant proportion of those 25 million weren't Russians but ummm... people like Ukrainians.

    You did see that I used the word Soviets rather than Russians?
    I did: but it means that the "pool" of available 18 to 25 year old men is much, much smaller than it was.

    Let me put this in context for a second. The Soviet Union had about 6 million in each annual cohort in 1939. By contrast, it's 1.25 million now.
    I'm explaining apparently irrational Kremlin decisions.
    And I'm pointing out that "they lost 25 million in the Great Patriotic War so this is barely a scratch" isn't entirely accurate.
    Then point it out to Putin and his Kremlin hawks who are, and this is my point, trapped in the Soviet mindset.
    The Soviet Union failed for a reason.

    That Putin not only hasn't learned from the errors of the Soviets but is doubling down on them when he's got a much worse hand than they had, is his mistake.

    One reason we should transition from burning oil to EVs ASAP (and continue to extract North Sea oil for other hydrocarbon uses) is to cut off the funds that the Russians and Middle Eastern nations get from oil.

    Russia could be a wealthy developed nation. Thanks to Putin and his Mafia, its instead becoming a rapidly impoverished failed state with some wealthy individuals on top.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 55,348
    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    eek said:

    Foxy said:

    viewcode said:

    Um, @Leon, @Malmesbury et al, the "Universe 25"/"Mouse Utopia"/"Calhoun Experiments", whilst not that well known, were known enough for me to discuss it in one of the works Xmas dinners last Christmas, where I fascinated/repelled various luminaries with the story[1], especially when I threw in the phrase "mouse incel" . The alt-right and frankly insane commentator "WhatIfAltHist" - you'd like him - did a YouTube on them

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink
    https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-old-experiment-with-mice-led-to-bleak-predictions-for-humanitys-future-180954423/
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTDTVbourzU

    [1] I spend a lot of time in trains and taxis, and two of my jobs mean I have a fund of grotesque stories to entertain them. They can be repurposed for a more genteel audience.

    I am not sure that I buy it though. Population Fertility rates for humans are dropping everywhere (albeit from a higher base in Africa etc) whether the country is densely or thinly populated.

    Zambia has 20 million people in a country twice the size of France for example, yet the fertility rate is dropping there too. (Incidentally there is some belief amongst demographers that many estimates of current populations are overestimated in Africa).

    The drop in fertility rates is pretty universal, in both rich and poor countries, the densely and thinly populated, in ones with welfare states and without, in countries with expensive and those with cheap housing, religious and irreligious alike, from different starting points

    I think we have to look at other societal changes, and these would have to be worldwide, and particularly taken up by young women. Smartphones and Internet access spring to mind.
    Education, opportunities, birth control and reduced child mortality rates have all played a part in reduced fertility rates.

    Hardly surprising as most women don't want to be a baby factory and want to do other things with their lives..
    Yes but the later you leave it the harder it is to have children, peak fertility for women is in their twenties and early thirties.

    Plus as the population ages the working age population will have to pay more and more tax to pay for the healthcare etc to support them
    Fewer babies born now means fewer oldies in 60 years' time.
    We are headed to the 421 families seen in China. 4 grandparents, 2 parents, 1 child.
    For which planet Earth says "Thank fuck..."
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 31,975
    edited July 5

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    FPT on the baby bust (and it’s not so irrelevant - Trump is in some ways a reaction to it)

    The irony is that the world needs far fewer people. Unless and until we can go to other planets we need to put less pressure on Planet Earth, we need to get our present 9 billion down to 1-2 billion

    The problem is how do you get there without societal collapse. Gaia may, in her own way, be doing it for us

    Africa needs fewer people, the western world needs a few more babies
    African birth rates are declining from a very high base and will continue to do so based on forecast.

    Fertility rate has fallen from 6.1 to 4.8 in just over a decade

    So Africa is sorting itself out, especially as it is exporting plenty of young men to Europe.

    https://www.mercatornet.com/to_the_surprise_of_demographers_african_fertility_is_falling
    So Africa more than double replacement fertility rate still, thanks for the confirmation.

    Meanwhile most western nations well below replacement fertility rate meaning ever higher taxes on the working population to fund an ever ageing population.

    While most western voters want their navies to send back the migrant boats where they came from
    Africa, with its declining birth rate and exporting its young men, is going the same way as the west, just more slowly. The more it exports fertile young men to the west the more their birth rates will fall. Now forecast to peak in 2060.

    ‘The UN now projects that Nigeria will have 342 million people by 2060, 200 million less than they forecasted ten years ago. Will even these estimates hold up?’

    What voters want is irrelevant. It’s what the political class wants and they want more. Hell, your party happily hoovered up tens of thousands, with their economically inactive fiscal liability relatives, to wipe old peoples arses.
    On current polls Nigel Farage will be next UK PM and undergo a purge of the political class and a war on immigrants and the migrant boats.

    Immigration fell on the latest figures thanks to the tighter immigration restrictions Sunak brought in
    4 years to go, and some important negative polling on Farage here, so let's see. In a forced choice and despite Starmer's uselessness:



    https://bsky.app/profile/jwsidders.bsky.social/post/3lt676ebrts2i
    Good morning

    How can anyone think Farage would be a better PM than Starmer, but there lies the deep problem as Starmer joins a long list of poor PMs

    I expect Reform to glide down in the polls but who benefits I have no idea
    If the media and social media are telling us all how terrible Starmer (and to an extent Badenoch) is, whilst at the same time tacitly (by giving him a superior platform to either the PM or LOTO) telling us he is a man with answers. Is there a day when that gurning tw** isn't called on by the BBC or similar to criticise this and the previous Government?
    You still persist in this ludicrous self-deception that the Government's problems are purely presentational. 'If only the media didn't film the boat people'...'If only Farage wasn't on question time'...'If only Starmer was a better communicator'...'If only the Government did a better job of talking about its successes.'

    The Government is SHIT. There were already profound problems when they came into power, and they have made all the most salient ones WORSE. If they want to beat Farage, they need to get GOOD - and fast.
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 20,652

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    eek said:

    Foxy said:

    viewcode said:

    Um, @Leon, @Malmesbury et al, the "Universe 25"/"Mouse Utopia"/"Calhoun Experiments", whilst not that well known, were known enough for me to discuss it in one of the works Xmas dinners last Christmas, where I fascinated/repelled various luminaries with the story[1], especially when I threw in the phrase "mouse incel" . The alt-right and frankly insane commentator "WhatIfAltHist" - you'd like him - did a YouTube on them

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink
    https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-old-experiment-with-mice-led-to-bleak-predictions-for-humanitys-future-180954423/
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTDTVbourzU

    [1] I spend a lot of time in trains and taxis, and two of my jobs mean I have a fund of grotesque stories to entertain them. They can be repurposed for a more genteel audience.

    I am not sure that I buy it though. Population Fertility rates for humans are dropping everywhere (albeit from a higher base in Africa etc) whether the country is densely or thinly populated.

    Zambia has 20 million people in a country twice the size of France for example, yet the fertility rate is dropping there too. (Incidentally there is some belief amongst demographers that many estimates of current populations are overestimated in Africa).

    The drop in fertility rates is pretty universal, in both rich and poor countries, the densely and thinly populated, in ones with welfare states and without, in countries with expensive and those with cheap housing, religious and irreligious alike, from different starting points

    I think we have to look at other societal changes, and these would have to be worldwide, and particularly taken up by young women. Smartphones and Internet access spring to mind.
    Education, opportunities, birth control and reduced child mortality rates have all played a part in reduced fertility rates.

    Hardly surprising as most women don't want to be a baby factory and want to do other things with their lives..
    Yes but the later you leave it the harder it is to have children, peak fertility for women is in their twenties and early thirties.

    Plus as the population ages the working age population will have to pay more and more tax to pay for the healthcare etc to support them
    Fewer babies born now means fewer oldies in 60 years' time.
    We are headed to the 421 families seen in China. 4 grandparents, 2 parents, 1 child.
    For which planet Earth says "Thank fuck..."
    The question is whether capitalism works without perpetual growth
  • TazTaz Posts: 19,509

    carnforth said:

    Leon said:

    Times (££)

    Exclusive:

    Rachel Reeves has warned cabinet ­ministers that tax rises in the autumn budget are likely to prove even more challenging than the £40 billion ­package she imposed in November

    The chancellor told cabinet on Tuesday that the decision to abandon welfare reforms meant taxes would have to rise to cover the cost

    She said the rises in her first budget, which included a £24 billion increase in employers’ national insurance contributions, were ‘painful’ but were the ‘low-hanging fruit’

    Tax rises in the autumn are likely to be smaller than last year’s but she is still expected to have to raise tens of billions of pound. Reeves told ministers that would be a ‘big challenge’ given that she has limited options

    Ministers have been told that the spending review will not be reopened, meaning the bulk of any shortfall will have to come from tax rises

    Economists have warned that the scale of the hole in the public finances means that she may have to break ­Labour’s manifesto pledge not to ­increase income tax, national insurance or VAT. There are also suggestions that she could raid pension savings, which was rejected before the last budget

    Allies of Reeves say Labour rebels will have to ‘own’ the tax rises after they killed off welfare reforms”

    Labour are so monumentally fucked. There is no coming back from this. Unfortunately, Britain is somewhat fucked, as well

    For comparison, 1p on income tax (all bands) is about £10bn.

    Total council tax take is £40bn.

    1p on VAT is about £5bn.
    Pensions will be plundered in a way Gordon Brown could only dream about...
    Private sector ones. The public sector will remain unscathed.
  • theProletheProle Posts: 1,405

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    FPT on the baby bust (and it’s not so irrelevant - Trump is in some ways a reaction to it)

    The irony is that the world needs far fewer people. Unless and until we can go to other planets we need to put less pressure on Planet Earth, we need to get our present 9 billion down to 1-2 billion

    The problem is how do you get there without societal collapse. Gaia may, in her own way, be doing it for us

    Africa needs fewer people, the western world needs a few more babies
    African birth rates are declining from a very high base and will continue to do so based on forecast.

    Fertility rate has fallen from 6.1 to 4.8 in just over a decade

    So Africa is sorting itself out, especially as it is exporting plenty of young men to Europe.

    https://www.mercatornet.com/to_the_surprise_of_demographers_african_fertility_is_falling
    So Africa more than double replacement fertility rate still, thanks for the confirmation.

    Meanwhile most western nations well below replacement fertility rate meaning ever higher taxes on the working population to fund an ever ageing population.

    While most western voters want their navies to send back the migrant boats where they came from
    Africa, with its declining birth rate and exporting its young men, is going the same way as the west, just more slowly. The more it exports fertile young men to the west the more their birth rates will fall. Now forecast to peak in 2060.

    ‘The UN now projects that Nigeria will have 342 million people by 2060, 200 million less than they forecasted ten years ago. Will even these estimates hold up?’

    What voters want is irrelevant. It’s what the political class wants and they want more. Hell, your party happily hoovered up tens of thousands, with their economically inactive fiscal liability relatives, to wipe old peoples arses.
    On current polls Nigel Farage will be next UK PM and undergo a purge of the political class and a war on immigrants and the migrant boats.

    Immigration fell on the latest figures thanks to the tighter immigration restrictions Sunak brought in
    4 years to go, and some important negative polling on Farage here, so let's see. In a forced choice and despite Starmer's uselessness:



    https://bsky.app/profile/jwsidders.bsky.social/post/3lt676ebrts2i
    Good morning

    How can anyone think Farage would be a better PM than Starmer, but there lies the deep problem as Starmer joins a long list of poor PMs

    I expect Reform to glide down in the polls but who benefits I have no idea
    I can very easily think Farage will be a better PM than Starmer. I'm not sure that Farage will be any good, but I'm apsolutely certain that Starmer is a terrible Prime Minister, and actively making everything he touches worse. I'd cheerfully put Trumpton fire brigade in office over the current cabinet, at least they're not going to actively malevolent.
  • stodgestodge Posts: 14,838
    Foxy said:

    eek said:

    Foxy said:

    eek said:

    Foxy said:

    viewcode said:

    Um, @Leon, @Malmesbury et al, the "Universe 25"/"Mouse Utopia"/"Calhoun Experiments", whilst not that well known, were known enough for me to discuss it in one of the works Xmas dinners last Christmas, where I fascinated/repelled various luminaries with the story[1], especially when I threw in the phrase "mouse incel" . The alt-right and frankly insane commentator "WhatIfAltHist" - you'd like him - did a YouTube on them

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink
    https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-old-experiment-with-mice-led-to-bleak-predictions-for-humanitys-future-180954423/
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTDTVbourzU

    [1] I spend a lot of time in trains and taxis, and two of my jobs mean I have a fund of grotesque stories to entertain them. They can be repurposed for a more genteel audience.

    I am not sure that I buy it though. Population Fertility rates for humans are dropping everywhere (albeit from a higher base in Africa etc) whether the country is densely or thinly populated.

    Zambia has 20 million people in a country twice the size of France for example, yet the fertility rate is dropping there too. (Incidentally there is some belief amongst demographers that many estimates of current populations are overestimated in Africa).

    The drop in fertility rates is pretty universal, in both rich and poor countries, the densely and thinly populated, in ones with welfare states and without, in countries with expensive and those with cheap housing, religious and irreligious alike, from different starting points

    I think we have to look at other societal changes, and these would have to be worldwide, and particularly taken up by young women. Smartphones and Internet access spring to mind.
    Education, opportunities, birth control and reduced child mortality rates have all played a part in reduced fertility rates.

    Hardly surprising as most women don't want to be a baby factory and want to do other things with their lives..
    Sure, but these have been around for decades, but with Smartphones that information is much more widely available, including on the life opportunities as alternatives to serial maternity.
    If you were born in an African village - I suspect opportunities beyond the village only arrived in the past 10-15 years as mobiles arrived..
    I first went to Malawi in 2005, and it was very difficult to arrange with my local contact, essentially mail, fax and landlines didn't work. I arranged it all months in advance when he was in the UK, and he just met me off the plane on the designated day.

    By 2010 I could text him from my bed in Leics, and all his staff had phones. Airtel have effectively created electronic money there and even in remote villages there is an Airtel shack to buy phone credit, and you can transfer to others and pay bills more easily than I can in Britain. Even vegetable stalls at the roadside can be paid electronically. Its been a remarkably quick transition.
    When Mrs Stodge first came to the UK from New Zealand in 1991, her only contact with her parents back home was either via a weekly phone call (calls being very expensive) or a letter which took a week to ten days to arrive.

    Now, she can talk to her mother via FaceTime or What's App at any time and it's as though she's in the room with usand it's all free. The postal service has, if anything, deteriorated.
  • eekeek Posts: 30,568

    Reeves could tax overseas remittances. Up to date information seems difficult to come by, but a Guardian blog from 2016 estimates the following:

    According to the estimates, remittances from the UK, including unrecorded transfers through formal and informal channels, could be worth up to $23bn – including $3.9bn to India, $3.8bn to Nigeria, and more than $1.2bn to Poland. This would make the UK the third-largest source of remittances, after the US and Canada.

    https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/datablog/2013/aug/09/remittances-britain-data

    Ten percent would seem reasonable.
    what exactly are you taxing there? They have already been taxed on the money they earnt to send home...
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 55,348

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    eek said:

    Foxy said:

    viewcode said:

    Um, @Leon, @Malmesbury et al, the "Universe 25"/"Mouse Utopia"/"Calhoun Experiments", whilst not that well known, were known enough for me to discuss it in one of the works Xmas dinners last Christmas, where I fascinated/repelled various luminaries with the story[1], especially when I threw in the phrase "mouse incel" . The alt-right and frankly insane commentator "WhatIfAltHist" - you'd like him - did a YouTube on them

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink
    https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-old-experiment-with-mice-led-to-bleak-predictions-for-humanitys-future-180954423/
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTDTVbourzU

    [1] I spend a lot of time in trains and taxis, and two of my jobs mean I have a fund of grotesque stories to entertain them. They can be repurposed for a more genteel audience.

    I am not sure that I buy it though. Population Fertility rates for humans are dropping everywhere (albeit from a higher base in Africa etc) whether the country is densely or thinly populated.

    Zambia has 20 million people in a country twice the size of France for example, yet the fertility rate is dropping there too. (Incidentally there is some belief amongst demographers that many estimates of current populations are overestimated in Africa).

    The drop in fertility rates is pretty universal, in both rich and poor countries, the densely and thinly populated, in ones with welfare states and without, in countries with expensive and those with cheap housing, religious and irreligious alike, from different starting points

    I think we have to look at other societal changes, and these would have to be worldwide, and particularly taken up by young women. Smartphones and Internet access spring to mind.
    Education, opportunities, birth control and reduced child mortality rates have all played a part in reduced fertility rates.

    Hardly surprising as most women don't want to be a baby factory and want to do other things with their lives..
    Yes but the later you leave it the harder it is to have children, peak fertility for women is in their twenties and early thirties.

    Plus as the population ages the working age population will have to pay more and more tax to pay for the healthcare etc to support them
    Fewer babies born now means fewer oldies in 60 years' time.
    We are headed to the 421 families seen in China. 4 grandparents, 2 parents, 1 child.
    For which planet Earth says "Thank fuck..."
    The question is whether capitalism works without perpetual growth
    A more pressing question is how health care provision works with 421 families.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 31,975
    eek said:

    Reeves could tax overseas remittances. Up to date information seems difficult to come by, but a Guardian blog from 2016 estimates the following:

    According to the estimates, remittances from the UK, including unrecorded transfers through formal and informal channels, could be worth up to $23bn – including $3.9bn to India, $3.8bn to Nigeria, and more than $1.2bn to Poland. This would make the UK the third-largest source of remittances, after the US and Canada.

    https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/datablog/2013/aug/09/remittances-britain-data

    Ten percent would seem reasonable.
    what exactly are you taxing there? They have already been taxed on the money they earnt to send home...
    So has inheritance tax, but I must have missed your objections to that.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 54,879

    eek said:

    Reeves could tax overseas remittances. Up to date information seems difficult to come by, but a Guardian blog from 2016 estimates the following:

    According to the estimates, remittances from the UK, including unrecorded transfers through formal and informal channels, could be worth up to $23bn – including $3.9bn to India, $3.8bn to Nigeria, and more than $1.2bn to Poland. This would make the UK the third-largest source of remittances, after the US and Canada.

    https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/datablog/2013/aug/09/remittances-britain-data

    Ten percent would seem reasonable.
    what exactly are you taxing there? They have already been taxed on the money they earnt to send home...
    So has inheritance tax, but I must have missed your objections to that.
    IHT = Theft.
  • CatManCatMan Posts: 3,311
    edited July 5
    MattW said:

    Do we have any mapping nerds here?

    As far as I can see Ordnance Survey maps (especially Landranger 1:50,000) have vanished from Bing.com, which is a key source for me.

    Does anyone know what is happening?

    Try streetmap.co.uk. If you change the zoom they have OS maps.
  • BartholomewRobertsBartholomewRoberts Posts: 25,127
    eek said:

    Reeves could tax overseas remittances. Up to date information seems difficult to come by, but a Guardian blog from 2016 estimates the following:

    According to the estimates, remittances from the UK, including unrecorded transfers through formal and informal channels, could be worth up to $23bn – including $3.9bn to India, $3.8bn to Nigeria, and more than $1.2bn to Poland. This would make the UK the third-largest source of remittances, after the US and Canada.

    https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/datablog/2013/aug/09/remittances-britain-data

    Ten percent would seem reasonable.
    what exactly are you taxing there? They have already been taxed on the money they earnt to send home...
    If we didn't tax any money that's already been taxed, there'd be no taxes whatsoever. All money is taxed repeatedly.
  • stodgestodge Posts: 14,838
    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    eek said:

    Foxy said:

    viewcode said:

    Um, @Leon, @Malmesbury et al, the "Universe 25"/"Mouse Utopia"/"Calhoun Experiments", whilst not that well known, were known enough for me to discuss it in one of the works Xmas dinners last Christmas, where I fascinated/repelled various luminaries with the story[1], especially when I threw in the phrase "mouse incel" . The alt-right and frankly insane commentator "WhatIfAltHist" - you'd like him - did a YouTube on them

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink
    https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-old-experiment-with-mice-led-to-bleak-predictions-for-humanitys-future-180954423/
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTDTVbourzU

    [1] I spend a lot of time in trains and taxis, and two of my jobs mean I have a fund of grotesque stories to entertain them. They can be repurposed for a more genteel audience.

    I am not sure that I buy it though. Population Fertility rates for humans are dropping everywhere (albeit from a higher base in Africa etc) whether the country is densely or thinly populated.

    Zambia has 20 million people in a country twice the size of France for example, yet the fertility rate is dropping there too. (Incidentally there is some belief amongst demographers that many estimates of current populations are overestimated in Africa).

    The drop in fertility rates is pretty universal, in both rich and poor countries, the densely and thinly populated, in ones with welfare states and without, in countries with expensive and those with cheap housing, religious and irreligious alike, from different starting points

    I think we have to look at other societal changes, and these would have to be worldwide, and particularly taken up by young women. Smartphones and Internet access spring to mind.
    Education, opportunities, birth control and reduced child mortality rates have all played a part in reduced fertility rates.

    Hardly surprising as most women don't want to be a baby factory and want to do other things with their lives..
    Yes but the later you leave it the harder it is to have children, peak fertility for women is in their twenties and early thirties.

    Plus as the population ages the working age population will have to pay more and more tax to pay for the healthcare etc to support them
    Fewer babies born now means fewer oldies in 60 years' time.
    We are headed to the 421 families seen in China. 4 grandparents, 2 parents, 1 child.
    The demographic transition is going to be fascinating.

    Immediate thoughts - fewer schools, freeing up land and buildings for potential redevelopment but also fewer teachers and teaching assistants (we're already seeing this).

    Over a 20 year period this will work through the school system from nurseries and pre-schools to Universities. Fewer nurseries, fewer pre-school places required. In time, school costs reduced including SEN.

    The age profile and imbalance will increase over time - more older people and fewer younger people. The single children will likely be treated as princes and princesses by their large extended older family. If technological changes (AI) impact on work, so will demographic and cultural shifts.

    With the retirement age probably 75 or later in 20-25 years time, will we see new University education specifically aimed at the "mid-lifers" (50s or early 60s) who could take time out of work to study?
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 32,725

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    FPT on the baby bust (and it’s not so irrelevant - Trump is in some ways a reaction to it)

    The irony is that the world needs far fewer people. Unless and until we can go to other planets we need to put less pressure on Planet Earth, we need to get our present 9 billion down to 1-2 billion

    The problem is how do you get there without societal collapse. Gaia may, in her own way, be doing it for us

    Africa needs fewer people, the western world needs a few more babies
    African birth rates are declining from a very high base and will continue to do so based on forecast.

    Fertility rate has fallen from 6.1 to 4.8 in just over a decade

    So Africa is sorting itself out, especially as it is exporting plenty of young men to Europe.

    https://www.mercatornet.com/to_the_surprise_of_demographers_african_fertility_is_falling
    So Africa more than double replacement fertility rate still, thanks for the confirmation.

    Meanwhile most western nations well below replacement fertility rate meaning ever higher taxes on the working population to fund an ever ageing population.

    While most western voters want their navies to send back the migrant boats where they came from
    Africa, with its declining birth rate and exporting its young men, is going the same way as the west, just more slowly. The more it exports fertile young men to the west the more their birth rates will fall. Now forecast to peak in 2060.

    ‘The UN now projects that Nigeria will have 342 million people by 2060, 200 million less than they forecasted ten years ago. Will even these estimates hold up?’

    What voters want is irrelevant. It’s what the political class wants and they want more. Hell, your party happily hoovered up tens of thousands, with their economically inactive fiscal liability relatives, to wipe old peoples arses.
    On current polls Nigel Farage will be next UK PM and undergo a purge of the political class and a war on immigrants and the migrant boats.

    Immigration fell on the latest figures thanks to the tighter immigration restrictions Sunak brought in
    4 years to go, and some important negative polling on Farage here, so let's see. In a forced choice and despite Starmer's uselessness:



    https://bsky.app/profile/jwsidders.bsky.social/post/3lt676ebrts2i
    Good morning

    How can anyone think Farage would be a better PM than Starmer, but there lies the deep problem as Starmer joins a long list of poor PMs

    I expect Reform to glide down in the polls but who benefits I have no idea
    If the media and social media are telling us all how terrible Starmer (and to an extent Badenoch) is, whilst at the same time tacitly (by giving him a superior platform to either the PM or LOTO) telling us he is a man with answers. Is there a day when that gurning tw** isn't called on by the BBC or similar to criticise this and the previous Government?
    You still persist in this ludicrous self-deception that the Government's problems are purely presentational. 'If only the media didn't film the boat people'...'If only Farage wasn't on question time'...'If only Starmer was a better communicator'...'If only the Government did a better job of talking about its successes.'

    The Government is SHIT. There were already profound problems when they came into power, and they have made all the most salient ones WORSE. If they want to beat Farage, they need to get GOOD - and fast.
    Where have I not criticised this Government? I have condemned the performatively cruel Welfare cuts, and I have cried the presentation of the WFA reduction programme which although required was poorly thought thought and the proposal presented as badly as any Government programme I can think of since the pasty tax.

    I don't dispute that Starmer-Labpur are finished, probably forever if they don't get their act together The Welfare Bill could of itself preclude any meaningful revival, so chaotic was it's initial promotion and subsequent late U turn.

    Nonetheless, for a party leader with a handful of seats he gets far more ( and certainly more positive) airtime than either the PM or the LOTO..
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 31,542

    eek said:

    Reeves could tax overseas remittances. Up to date information seems difficult to come by, but a Guardian blog from 2016 estimates the following:

    According to the estimates, remittances from the UK, including unrecorded transfers through formal and informal channels, could be worth up to $23bn – including $3.9bn to India, $3.8bn to Nigeria, and more than $1.2bn to Poland. This would make the UK the third-largest source of remittances, after the US and Canada.

    https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/datablog/2013/aug/09/remittances-britain-data

    Ten percent would seem reasonable.
    what exactly are you taxing there? They have already been taxed on the money they earnt to send home...
    So has inheritance tax, but I must have missed your objections to that.
    HMG might even tax overseas remittances painlessly by undertaking currency conversions and transfers at lower rates itself, cutting out those middlemen.
  • stodgestodge Posts: 14,838
    Taz said:

    carnforth said:

    Leon said:

    Times (££)

    Exclusive:

    Rachel Reeves has warned cabinet ­ministers that tax rises in the autumn budget are likely to prove even more challenging than the £40 billion ­package she imposed in November

    The chancellor told cabinet on Tuesday that the decision to abandon welfare reforms meant taxes would have to rise to cover the cost

    She said the rises in her first budget, which included a £24 billion increase in employers’ national insurance contributions, were ‘painful’ but were the ‘low-hanging fruit’

    Tax rises in the autumn are likely to be smaller than last year’s but she is still expected to have to raise tens of billions of pound. Reeves told ministers that would be a ‘big challenge’ given that she has limited options

    Ministers have been told that the spending review will not be reopened, meaning the bulk of any shortfall will have to come from tax rises

    Economists have warned that the scale of the hole in the public finances means that she may have to break ­Labour’s manifesto pledge not to ­increase income tax, national insurance or VAT. There are also suggestions that she could raid pension savings, which was rejected before the last budget

    Allies of Reeves say Labour rebels will have to ‘own’ the tax rises after they killed off welfare reforms”

    Labour are so monumentally fucked. There is no coming back from this. Unfortunately, Britain is somewhat fucked, as well

    For comparison, 1p on income tax (all bands) is about £10bn.

    Total council tax take is £40bn.

    1p on VAT is about £5bn.
    Pensions will be plundered in a way Gordon Brown could only dream about...
    Private sector ones. The public sector will remain unscathed.
    Changes to Council Tax so we see more bands for those properties of higher value are long overdue as is land value taxation in some form.

    Public sector pensioners (and those three words cover a multitude of sins) will pay more in tax as the thresholds remain frozen (as will everyone else).
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 63,683
    Leon said:

    To continue the theme and bring it back to the thread


    Strikes me there are TWO existential processes at work in the world, right now. As in: unprecedented challenges for humankind

    One I cannot mention, so I won’t

    The other is the collapse in fertility. This is having enormous second order effects all around the world, often going unnoticed

    eg it can be argued that Trump is a consequence of the baby bust. American demographics are bad. Not as bad as east Asia, but bad. Below replacement and ageing fast

    The answer then is immigration - but that means white people very quickly becoming a minority in the USA, and of all the white populations in the world it is Americans who are most likely to fight back against this (violently, if needs be). So we have Trump - a more-or-less openly white supremacist
    president

    Different versions of this dynamic are playing out around the planet

    You could fine people for not having children, or tax them more.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 122,637
    edited July 5
    Ooopsie.



    https://x.com/LeeAndersonMP_/status/1941469191124681019

    STAY TUNED: The Sunday Times will be publishing its investigation shortly

    https://x.com/Gabriel_Pogrund/status/1941476534180774253
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 63,683
    Leon said:

    Times (££)

    Exclusive:

    Rachel Reeves has warned cabinet ­ministers that tax rises in the autumn budget are likely to prove even more challenging than the £40 billion ­package she imposed in November

    The chancellor told cabinet on Tuesday that the decision to abandon welfare reforms meant taxes would have to rise to cover the cost

    She said the rises in her first budget, which included a £24 billion increase in employers’ national insurance contributions, were ‘painful’ but were the ‘low-hanging fruit’

    Tax rises in the autumn are likely to be smaller than last year’s but she is still expected to have to raise tens of billions of pound. Reeves told ministers that would be a ‘big challenge’ given that she has limited options

    Ministers have been told that the spending review will not be reopened, meaning the bulk of any shortfall will have to come from tax rises

    Economists have warned that the scale of the hole in the public finances means that she may have to break ­Labour’s manifesto pledge not to ­increase income tax, national insurance or VAT. There are also suggestions that she could raid pension savings, which was rejected before the last budget

    Allies of Reeves say Labour rebels will have to ‘own’ the tax rises after they killed off welfare reforms”

    Labour are so monumentally fucked. There is no coming back from this. Unfortunately, Britain is somewhat fucked, as well

    She will come after our pensions.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 31,975

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    FPT on the baby bust (and it’s not so irrelevant - Trump is in some ways a reaction to it)

    The irony is that the world needs far fewer people. Unless and until we can go to other planets we need to put less pressure on Planet Earth, we need to get our present 9 billion down to 1-2 billion

    The problem is how do you get there without societal collapse. Gaia may, in her own way, be doing it for us

    Africa needs fewer people, the western world needs a few more babies
    African birth rates are declining from a very high base and will continue to do so based on forecast.

    Fertility rate has fallen from 6.1 to 4.8 in just over a decade

    So Africa is sorting itself out, especially as it is exporting plenty of young men to Europe.

    https://www.mercatornet.com/to_the_surprise_of_demographers_african_fertility_is_falling
    So Africa more than double replacement fertility rate still, thanks for the confirmation.

    Meanwhile most western nations well below replacement fertility rate meaning ever higher taxes on the working population to fund an ever ageing population.

    While most western voters want their navies to send back the migrant boats where they came from
    Africa, with its declining birth rate and exporting its young men, is going the same way as the west, just more slowly. The more it exports fertile young men to the west the more their birth rates will fall. Now forecast to peak in 2060.

    ‘The UN now projects that Nigeria will have 342 million people by 2060, 200 million less than they forecasted ten years ago. Will even these estimates hold up?’

    What voters want is irrelevant. It’s what the political class wants and they want more. Hell, your party happily hoovered up tens of thousands, with their economically inactive fiscal liability relatives, to wipe old peoples arses.
    On current polls Nigel Farage will be next UK PM and undergo a purge of the political class and a war on immigrants and the migrant boats.

    Immigration fell on the latest figures thanks to the tighter immigration restrictions Sunak brought in
    4 years to go, and some important negative polling on Farage here, so let's see. In a forced choice and despite Starmer's uselessness:



    https://bsky.app/profile/jwsidders.bsky.social/post/3lt676ebrts2i
    Good morning

    How can anyone think Farage would be a better PM than Starmer, but there lies the deep problem as Starmer joins a long list of poor PMs

    I expect Reform to glide down in the polls but who benefits I have no idea
    If the media and social media are telling us all how terrible Starmer (and to an extent Badenoch) is, whilst at the same time tacitly (by giving him a superior platform to either the PM or LOTO) telling us he is a man with answers. Is there a day when that gurning tw** isn't called on by the BBC or similar to criticise this and the previous Government?
    You still persist in this ludicrous self-deception that the Government's problems are purely presentational. 'If only the media didn't film the boat people'...'If only Farage wasn't on question time'...'If only Starmer was a better communicator'...'If only the Government did a better job of talking about its successes.'

    The Government is SHIT. There were already profound problems when they came into power, and they have made all the most salient ones WORSE. If they want to beat Farage, they need to get GOOD - and fast.
    Where have I not criticised this Government? I have condemned the performatively cruel Welfare cuts, and I have cried the presentation of the WFA reduction programme which although required was poorly thought thought and the proposal presented as badly as any Government programme I can think of since the pasty tax.

    I don't dispute that Starmer-Labpur are finished, probably forever if they don't get their act together The Welfare Bill could of itself preclude any meaningful revival, so chaotic was it's initial promotion and subsequent late U turn.

    Nonetheless, for a party leader with a handful of seats he gets far more ( and certainly more positive) airtime than either the PM or the LOTO..
    But once again, your gripes are presentational. You think we need someone with charisma and cut-through to do a better job of selling the 'new normal' of the COL crisis, the burgeoning yet incapable state, and the flatlining economy. We don't. We need someone to pull their finger out and change those realities, not present them better. Actually, Keir Starmer and his anti-charisma would be fine if he was doing something good. He isn't - that's why Labour are polling poorly, and (I believe) set to fall further.
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 63,683
    Leon said:

    Sean_F said:

    Leon said:

    ...

    "Allies of Reeves say Labour rebels will have to ‘own’ the tax rises after they killed off welfare reforms”

    Labour are so monumentally fucked. There is no coming back from this. Unfortunately, Britain is somewhat fucked, as well

    One of the reasons that governments tend to fall apart and collapse over time is that its members see fighting the internal party battle as more important than the wider political contest with the opposition.

    You can see that in spades here with the emphasis on laying the blame for tax rises on Labour rebels, rather than working out how to sell them to the public.
    The weird thing is, you'd expect to see this after several years in office, not several months.
    Labour now expect to lose the next election. This is a one term parliament. So they are blaming and infighting even as individual groups try to push through favoured causes (because they won’t get a
    second chance). Meanwhile backbenchers rebel because why not? - they will probably lose their seats and they will never be promoted before 2028
    I got laughed at for saying this would be a one term government before the election.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 22,415
    So Reform have now lost 2 MPs since the election.
    Absolute shit-show.
  • boulayboulay Posts: 6,440

    Leon said:

    To continue the theme and bring it back to the thread


    Strikes me there are TWO existential processes at work in the world, right now. As in: unprecedented challenges for humankind

    One I cannot mention, so I won’t

    The other is the collapse in fertility. This is having enormous second order effects all around the world, often going unnoticed

    eg it can be argued that Trump is a consequence of the baby bust. American demographics are bad. Not as bad as east Asia, but bad. Below replacement and ageing fast

    The answer then is immigration - but that means white people very quickly becoming a minority in the USA, and of all the white populations in the world it is Americans who are most likely to fight back against this (violently, if needs be). So we have Trump - a more-or-less openly white supremacist
    president

    Different versions of this dynamic are playing out around the planet

    You could fine people for not having children, or tax them more.
    So when the Wayne and Waynetta Slobs of the world have children and their children get hurt, killed, live in squalor and everyone shouts about needing an exam to drive a car but not to have kids and it’s a disgrace these feckless fuckers are breeding, do we revisit this penalisation for not having kids?

    Are the same people who defend women’s rights to their own body going to force men and women to procreate?

    Think it’s probably best to let people decide what’s best for themselves.

    By not having children I have offset, with my current and past tax payments , the cost of other children without dipping into the pot myself (and even better, my parents never dipped into the pot for me as they paid for my whole education and healthcare) I also will leave a lower carbon footprint on the world for those who care about such things.

    So you need more people like me instead of penalising us.
  • Daveyboy1961Daveyboy1961 Posts: 4,700

    eek said:

    Reeves could tax overseas remittances. Up to date information seems difficult to come by, but a Guardian blog from 2016 estimates the following:

    According to the estimates, remittances from the UK, including unrecorded transfers through formal and informal channels, could be worth up to $23bn – including $3.9bn to India, $3.8bn to Nigeria, and more than $1.2bn to Poland. This would make the UK the third-largest source of remittances, after the US and Canada.

    https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/datablog/2013/aug/09/remittances-britain-data

    Ten percent would seem reasonable.
    what exactly are you taxing there? They have already been taxed on the money they earnt to send home...
    So has inheritance tax, but I must have missed your objections to that.
    IHT = Theft.
    Rubbish
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 31,975

    So Reform have now lost 2 MPs since the election.
    Absolute shit-show.

    It's not a promising start.
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 63,683
    You could also ban contraception and abortion. Romania managed to grow its population this way, albeit with orphanages.

    You probably have to row back a fair way on women's rights and heavily reward it socially and in the tax system to boost population.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 122,637

    So Reform have now lost 2 MPs since the election.
    Absolute shit-show.

    This is a net benefit for Reform long term.

    James McMurdock has spent time in prison for assaulting an ex girlfriend.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 128,653

    HYUFD said:

    eek said:

    Foxy said:

    viewcode said:

    Um, @Leon, @Malmesbury et al, the "Universe 25"/"Mouse Utopia"/"Calhoun Experiments", whilst not that well known, were known enough for me to discuss it in one of the works Xmas dinners last Christmas, where I fascinated/repelled various luminaries with the story[1], especially when I threw in the phrase "mouse incel" . The alt-right and frankly insane commentator "WhatIfAltHist" - you'd like him - did a YouTube on them

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink
    https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-old-experiment-with-mice-led-to-bleak-predictions-for-humanitys-future-180954423/
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTDTVbourzU

    [1] I spend a lot of time in trains and taxis, and two of my jobs mean I have a fund of grotesque stories to entertain them. They can be repurposed for a more genteel audience.

    I am not sure that I buy it though. Population Fertility rates for humans are dropping everywhere (albeit from a higher base in Africa etc) whether the country is densely or thinly populated.

    Zambia has 20 million people in a country twice the size of France for example, yet the fertility rate is dropping there too. (Incidentally there is some belief amongst demographers that many estimates of current populations are overestimated in Africa).

    The drop in fertility rates is pretty universal, in both rich and poor countries, the densely and thinly populated, in ones with welfare states and without, in countries with expensive and those with cheap housing, religious and irreligious alike, from different starting points

    I think we have to look at other societal changes, and these would have to be worldwide, and particularly taken up by young women. Smartphones and Internet access spring to mind.
    Education, opportunities, birth control and reduced child mortality rates have all played a part in reduced fertility rates.

    Hardly surprising as most women don't want to be a baby factory and want to do other things with their lives..
    Yes but the later you leave it the harder it is to have children, peak fertility for women is in their twenties and early thirties.

    Plus as the population ages the working age population will have to pay more and more tax to pay for the healthcare etc to support them
    Fewer babies born now means fewer oldies in 60 years' time.
    Even then the population would still be older on average than it is even now if fertility rates decline further each generation
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 46,056

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    FPT on the baby bust (and it’s not so irrelevant - Trump is in some ways a reaction to it)

    The irony is that the world needs far fewer people. Unless and until we can go to other planets we need to put less pressure on Planet Earth, we need to get our present 9 billion down to 1-2 billion

    The problem is how do you get there without societal collapse. Gaia may, in her own way, be doing it for us

    Africa needs fewer people, the western world needs a few more babies
    African birth rates are declining from a very high base and will continue to do so based on forecast.

    Fertility rate has fallen from 6.1 to 4.8 in just over a decade

    So Africa is sorting itself out, especially as it is exporting plenty of young men to Europe.

    https://www.mercatornet.com/to_the_surprise_of_demographers_african_fertility_is_falling
    So Africa more than double replacement fertility rate still, thanks for the confirmation.

    Meanwhile most western nations well below replacement fertility rate meaning ever higher taxes on the working population to fund an ever ageing population.

    While most western voters want their navies to send back the migrant boats where they came from
    Africa, with its declining birth rate and exporting its young men, is going the same way as the west, just more slowly. The more it exports fertile young men to the west the more their birth rates will fall. Now forecast to peak in 2060.

    ‘The UN now projects that Nigeria will have 342 million people by 2060, 200 million less than they forecasted ten years ago. Will even these estimates hold up?’

    What voters want is irrelevant. It’s what the political class wants and they want more. Hell, your party happily hoovered up tens of thousands, with their economically inactive fiscal liability relatives, to wipe old peoples arses.
    On current polls Nigel Farage will be next UK PM and undergo a purge of the political class and a war on immigrants and the migrant boats.

    Immigration fell on the latest figures thanks to the tighter immigration restrictions Sunak brought in
    4 years to go, and some important negative polling on Farage here, so let's see. In a forced choice and despite Starmer's uselessness:



    https://bsky.app/profile/jwsidders.bsky.social/post/3lt676ebrts2i
    Good morning

    How can anyone think Farage would be a better PM than Starmer, but there lies the deep problem as Starmer joins a long list of poor PMs

    I expect Reform to glide down in the polls but who benefits I have no idea
    If the media and social media are telling us all how terrible Starmer (and to an extent Badenoch) is, whilst at the same time tacitly (by giving him a superior platform to either the PM or LOTO) telling us he is a man with answers. Is there a day when that gurning tw** isn't called on by the BBC or similar to criticise this and the previous Government?
    You still persist in this ludicrous self-deception that the Government's problems are purely presentational. 'If only the media didn't film the boat people'...'If only Farage wasn't on question time'...'If only Starmer was a better communicator'...'If only the Government did a better job of talking about its successes.'

    The Government is SHIT. There were already profound problems when they came into power, and they have made all the most salient ones WORSE. If they want to beat Farage, they need to get GOOD - and fast.
    How will we know when they have transitioned from shit to good?

    Will you tell us?
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 128,653

    Ooopsie.



    https://x.com/LeeAndersonMP_/status/1941469191124681019

    STAY TUNED: The Sunday Times will be publishing its investigation shortly

    https://x.com/Gabriel_Pogrund/status/1941476534180774253

    If he kept the whip after being jailed for hitting his partner as a young man I highly doubt some business dealing story will permanently remove it from him.

    On present polling Reform will romp home in Basildon anyway
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 60,632

    Ooopsie.



    https://x.com/LeeAndersonMP_/status/1941469191124681019

    STAY TUNED: The Sunday Times will be publishing its investigation shortly

    https://x.com/Gabriel_Pogrund/status/1941476534180774253

    And that demonstrates why Reform will not be the next government.

    The correct response is to deny the story. It's lies. It's fake news. The lamestream media is just making up shit. Everybody stick together and deny everything.

    Now, sure, democracy is damaged by such a stunt. But the future is post-truth
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 19,063

    So Reform have now lost 2 MPs since the election.
    Absolute shit-show.

    This is a net benefit for Reform long term.

    James McMurdock has spent time in prison for assaulting an ex girlfriend.
    Is the Lowe-Farage ding-dong still pending?
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 63,683
    Modern economics, worldwide, probably doesn't lend itself to it either. Both parents need to work, full-time, in most places, and childcare is thus either absent or expensive. And children, in turn, are time and cash hungry to raise.

    By the same token, if the world regressed to a more primitive economic state then I'd expect birth rates to rise again.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 122,637
    Reform MP James McMurdock suspended after Sunday Times investigation

    He is alleged to have borrowed tens of thousands of pounds under the government’s Bounce Back loans scheme during the Covid pandemic in 2020


    A Reform MP has suspended himself from the party after a Sunday Times investigation into £70,000 of loans he took out during the pandemic.

    James McMurdock, the MP for South Basildon and East Thurrock, took the decision after this newspaper approached him with allegations he borrowed tens of thousands of pounds under the government Bounce Back loans scheme in 2020.

    He did so through two companies he owned. One was JAM Financial Limited, which had no employees and negligible assets until the pandemic. In 2020 it took out a loan of £50,000, the maximum sum available under the loans scheme available for medium-sized businesses during the pandemic. For a firm to have received such a loan, they would have needed to report turnover of at least £200,000.

    In 2021 he transferred his shares in the company to his mother and resigned as director.

    The other was Gym Live Health and Fitness Limited, which was dormant until January 31, 2020. Over the following year, it borrowed £20,000, which would have required turnover of £100,000 under the Bounce Back scheme.

    Neither company filed accounts or annual corporate filings after the loans — a violation of the Companies Act.

    As a result of the failure to submit the information required, both companies were due to be struck off the register, meaning they would have ceased to exist and any remaining assets seized by the Crown.

    However, in February 2023, on the same day, the process of suspending both companies was halted after the company regulator received an objection from a third party. It is understood this related to the loans in some way. Both remain active on Companies House.

    Separately, Murdock appears to have breached parliamentary rules by failing to list his directorship of Gym Live Health and Fitness Limited on his register of interests. Parliamentary rules state MPs must register “significant, formal unpaid roles such as an unpaid directorship, a directorship of a company not currently trading, or a trusteeship”.

    Approached for comment, McMurdock warned “be very, very careful” and said “a technical expert” would be needed for anybody to understand the matters. He repeatedly refused to say why he took out the loans.


    https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/reform-mp-james-mcmurdock-suspended-after-sunday-times-investigation-ljh7rtprd
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 20,652

    Reform MP James McMurdock suspended after Sunday Times investigation

    He is alleged to have borrowed tens of thousands of pounds under the government’s Bounce Back loans scheme during the Covid pandemic in 2020


    A Reform MP has suspended himself from the party after a Sunday Times investigation into £70,000 of loans he took out during the pandemic.

    James McMurdock, the MP for South Basildon and East Thurrock, took the decision after this newspaper approached him with allegations he borrowed tens of thousands of pounds under the government Bounce Back loans scheme in 2020.

    Snip

    Drain the swamp

  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 63,683
    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    To continue the theme and bring it back to the thread


    Strikes me there are TWO existential processes at work in the world, right now. As in: unprecedented challenges for humankind

    One I cannot mention, so I won’t

    The other is the collapse in fertility. This is having enormous second order effects all around the world, often going unnoticed

    eg it can be argued that Trump is a consequence of the baby bust. American demographics are bad. Not as bad as east Asia, but bad. Below replacement and ageing fast

    The answer then is immigration - but that means white people very quickly becoming a minority in the USA, and of all the white populations in the world it is Americans who are most likely to fight back against this (violently, if needs be). So we have Trump - a more-or-less openly white supremacist
    president

    Different versions of this dynamic are playing out around the planet

    You could fine people for not having children, or tax them more.
    So when the Wayne and Waynetta Slobs of the world have children and their children get hurt, killed, live in squalor and everyone shouts about needing an exam to drive a car but not to have kids and it’s a disgrace these feckless fuckers are breeding, do we revisit this penalisation for not having kids?

    Are the same people who defend women’s rights to their own body going to force men and women to procreate?

    Think it’s probably best to let people decide what’s best for themselves.

    By not having children I have offset, with my current and past tax payments , the cost of other children without dipping into the pot myself (and even better, my parents never dipped into the pot for me as they paid for my whole education and healthcare) I also will leave a lower carbon footprint on the world for those who care about such things.

    So you need more people like me instead of penalising us.
    My children will be working and paying the taxes that will fund your pension.

    If there were no kids, you'd have no NHS and no State Pension in your final years.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 122,637

    So Reform have now lost 2 MPs since the election.
    Absolute shit-show.

    This is a net benefit for Reform long term.

    James McMurdock has spent time in prison for assaulting an ex girlfriend.
    Is the Lowe-Farage ding-dong still pending?
    Yes, Rupert Lowe is going to take down three Reform MPs, that's his plan.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 52,023
    edited July 5
    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    To continue the theme and bring it back to the thread


    Strikes me there are TWO existential processes at work in the world, right now. As in: unprecedented challenges for humankind

    One I cannot mention, so I won’t

    The other is the collapse in fertility. This is having enormous second order effects all around the world, often going unnoticed

    eg it can be argued that Trump is a consequence of the baby bust. American demographics are bad. Not as bad as east Asia, but bad. Below replacement and ageing fast

    The answer then is immigration - but that means white people very quickly becoming a minority in the USA, and of all the white populations in the world it is Americans who are most likely to fight back against this (violently, if needs be). So we have Trump - a more-or-less openly white supremacist
    president

    Different versions of this dynamic are playing out around the planet

    You could fine people for not having children, or tax them more.
    So when the Wayne and Waynetta Slobs of the world have children and their children get hurt, killed, live in squalor and everyone shouts about needing an exam to drive a car but not to have kids and it’s a disgrace these feckless fuckers are breeding, do we revisit this penalisation for not having kids?

    Are the same people who defend women’s rights to their own body going to force men and women to procreate?

    Think it’s probably best to let people decide what’s best for themselves.

    By not having children I have offset, with my current and past tax payments , the cost of other children without dipping into the pot myself (and even better, my parents never dipped into the pot for me as they paid for my whole education and healthcare) I also will leave a lower carbon footprint on the world for those who care about such things.

    So you need more people like me instead of penalising us.
    It's great for the planet, and in time will bring down housing costs etc, but the abrupt transition from a pyramidal age structure to a column to an inverted pyramid has huge consequences for government and society.

    It takes a while to impact, as we see in South Korea etc. The economy can grow quite well for a couple of decades even with rock bottom fertility, indeed may even benefit from a larger adult workforce due to no parental leave. When it eventually hits, it hits massively though.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 128,653
    edited July 5

    Reform MP James McMurdock suspended after Sunday Times investigation

    He is alleged to have borrowed tens of thousands of pounds under the government’s Bounce Back loans scheme during the Covid pandemic in 2020


    A Reform MP has suspended himself from the party after a Sunday Times investigation into £70,000 of loans he took out during the pandemic.

    James McMurdock, the MP for South Basildon and East Thurrock, took the decision after this newspaper approached him with allegations he borrowed tens of thousands of pounds under the government Bounce Back loans scheme in 2020.

    He did so through two companies he owned. One was JAM Financial Limited, which had no employees and negligible assets until the pandemic. In 2020 it took out a loan of £50,000, the maximum sum available under the loans scheme available for medium-sized businesses during the pandemic. For a firm to have received such a loan, they would have needed to report turnover of at least £200,000.

    In 2021 he transferred his shares in the company to his mother and resigned as director.

    The other was Gym Live Health and Fitness Limited, which was dormant until January 31, 2020. Over the following year, it borrowed £20,000, which would have required turnover of £100,000 under the Bounce Back scheme.

    Neither company filed accounts or annual corporate filings after the loans — a violation of the Companies Act.

    As a result of the failure to submit the information required, both companies were due to be struck off the register, meaning they would have ceased to exist and any remaining assets seized by the Crown.

    However, in February 2023, on the same day, the process of suspending both companies was halted after the company regulator received an objection from a third party. It is understood this related to the loans in some way. Both remain active on Companies House.

    Separately, Murdock appears to have breached parliamentary rules by failing to list his directorship of Gym Live Health and Fitness Limited on his register of interests. Parliamentary rules state MPs must register “significant, formal unpaid roles such as an unpaid directorship, a directorship of a company not currently trading, or a trusteeship”.

    Approached for comment, McMurdock warned “be very, very careful” and said “a technical expert” would be needed for anybody to understand the matters. He repeatedly refused to say why he took out the loans.


    https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/reform-mp-james-mcmurdock-suspended-after-sunday-times-investigation-ljh7rtprd

    Probably a bit of entrepreneurial activity for the average Basildon voter to keep his businesses going in lockdown, if you can find a Times reader in the town.

    Won’t stop Reform romping home there
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 31,975
    kinabalu said:

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    FPT on the baby bust (and it’s not so irrelevant - Trump is in some ways a reaction to it)

    The irony is that the world needs far fewer people. Unless and until we can go to other planets we need to put less pressure on Planet Earth, we need to get our present 9 billion down to 1-2 billion

    The problem is how do you get there without societal collapse. Gaia may, in her own way, be doing it for us

    Africa needs fewer people, the western world needs a few more babies
    African birth rates are declining from a very high base and will continue to do so based on forecast.

    Fertility rate has fallen from 6.1 to 4.8 in just over a decade

    So Africa is sorting itself out, especially as it is exporting plenty of young men to Europe.

    https://www.mercatornet.com/to_the_surprise_of_demographers_african_fertility_is_falling
    So Africa more than double replacement fertility rate still, thanks for the confirmation.

    Meanwhile most western nations well below replacement fertility rate meaning ever higher taxes on the working population to fund an ever ageing population.

    While most western voters want their navies to send back the migrant boats where they came from
    Africa, with its declining birth rate and exporting its young men, is going the same way as the west, just more slowly. The more it exports fertile young men to the west the more their birth rates will fall. Now forecast to peak in 2060.

    ‘The UN now projects that Nigeria will have 342 million people by 2060, 200 million less than they forecasted ten years ago. Will even these estimates hold up?’

    What voters want is irrelevant. It’s what the political class wants and they want more. Hell, your party happily hoovered up tens of thousands, with their economically inactive fiscal liability relatives, to wipe old peoples arses.
    On current polls Nigel Farage will be next UK PM and undergo a purge of the political class and a war on immigrants and the migrant boats.

    Immigration fell on the latest figures thanks to the tighter immigration restrictions Sunak brought in
    4 years to go, and some important negative polling on Farage here, so let's see. In a forced choice and despite Starmer's uselessness:



    https://bsky.app/profile/jwsidders.bsky.social/post/3lt676ebrts2i
    Good morning

    How can anyone think Farage would be a better PM than Starmer, but there lies the deep problem as Starmer joins a long list of poor PMs

    I expect Reform to glide down in the polls but who benefits I have no idea
    If the media and social media are telling us all how terrible Starmer (and to an extent Badenoch) is, whilst at the same time tacitly (by giving him a superior platform to either the PM or LOTO) telling us he is a man with answers. Is there a day when that gurning tw** isn't called on by the BBC or similar to criticise this and the previous Government?
    You still persist in this ludicrous self-deception that the Government's problems are purely presentational. 'If only the media didn't film the boat people'...'If only Farage wasn't on question time'...'If only Starmer was a better communicator'...'If only the Government did a better job of talking about its successes.'

    The Government is SHIT. There were already profound problems when they came into power, and they have made all the most salient ones WORSE. If they want to beat Farage, they need to get GOOD - and fast.
    How will we know when they have transitioned from shit to good?

    Will you tell us?
    Yes.

    I'm not tribally biased against Labour - in recent days I've welcomed their planned NHS reforms. In the past, I've also expressed a positive opinion of their changes to CGT (against the settled PB-rightie view), and praised Starmer’s handing of Trump.

    I really don't care who does the right things, but I know what the right things are. So yes, I will tell you when they transition from shit to good - and take pleasure in doing so.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 32,725

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    FPT on the baby bust (and it’s not so irrelevant - Trump is in some ways a reaction to it)

    The irony is that the world needs far fewer people. Unless and until we can go to other planets we need to put less pressure on Planet Earth, we need to get our present 9 billion down to 1-2 billion

    The problem is how do you get there without societal collapse. Gaia may, in her own way, be doing it for us

    Africa needs fewer people, the western world needs a few more babies
    African birth rates are declining from a very high base and will continue to do so based on forecast.

    Fertility rate has fallen from 6.1 to 4.8 in just over a decade

    So Africa is sorting itself out, especially as it is exporting plenty of young men to Europe.

    https://www.mercatornet.com/to_the_surprise_of_demographers_african_fertility_is_falling
    So Africa more than double replacement fertility rate still, thanks for the confirmation.

    Meanwhile most western nations well below replacement fertility rate meaning ever higher taxes on the working population to fund an ever ageing population.

    While most western voters want their navies to send back the migrant boats where they came from
    Africa, with its declining birth rate and exporting its young men, is going the same way as the west, just more slowly. The more it exports fertile young men to the west the more their birth rates will fall. Now forecast to peak in 2060.

    ‘The UN now projects that Nigeria will have 342 million people by 2060, 200 million less than they forecasted ten years ago. Will even these estimates hold up?’

    What voters want is irrelevant. It’s what the political class wants and they want more. Hell, your party happily hoovered up tens of thousands, with their economically inactive fiscal liability relatives, to wipe old peoples arses.
    On current polls Nigel Farage will be next UK PM and undergo a purge of the political class and a war on immigrants and the migrant boats.

    Immigration fell on the latest figures thanks to the tighter immigration restrictions Sunak brought in
    4 years to go, and some important negative polling on Farage here, so let's see. In a forced choice and despite Starmer's uselessness:



    https://bsky.app/profile/jwsidders.bsky.social/post/3lt676ebrts2i
    Good morning

    How can anyone think Farage would be a better PM than Starmer, but there lies the deep problem as Starmer joins a long list of poor PMs

    I expect Reform to glide down in the polls but who benefits I have no idea
    If the media and social media are telling us all how terrible Starmer (and to an extent Badenoch) is, whilst at the same time tacitly (by giving him a superior platform to either the PM or LOTO) telling us he is a man with answers. Is there a day when that gurning tw** isn't called on by the BBC or similar to criticise this and the previous Government?
    You still persist in this ludicrous self-deception that the Government's problems are purely presentational. 'If only the media didn't film the boat people'...'If only Farage wasn't on question time'...'If only Starmer was a better communicator'...'If only the Government did a better job of talking about its successes.'

    The Government is SHIT. There were already profound problems when they came into power, and they have made all the most salient ones WORSE. If they want to beat Farage, they need to get GOOD - and fast.
    Where have I not criticised this Government? I have condemned the performatively cruel Welfare cuts, and I have cried the presentation of the WFA reduction programme which although required was poorly thought thought and the proposal presented as badly as any Government programme I can think of since the pasty tax.

    I don't dispute that Starmer-Labpur are finished, probably forever if they don't get their act together The Welfare Bill could of itself preclude any meaningful revival, so chaotic was it's initial promotion and subsequent late U turn.

    Nonetheless, for a party leader with a handful of seats he gets far more ( and certainly more positive) airtime than either the PM or the LOTO..
    But once again, your gripes are presentational. You think we need someone with charisma and cut-through to do a better job of selling the 'new normal' of the COL crisis, the burgeoning yet incapable state, and the flatlining economy. We don't. We need someone to pull their finger out and change those realities, not present them better. Actually, Keir Starmer and his anti-charisma would be fine if he was doing something good. He isn't - that's why Labour are polling poorly, and (I believe) set to fall further.
    I think presentation is dire but I also agree policy has been poor. The pre-election undertaking for no new taxes was and remains absurd.

    I also observe that your "set to fall further" may come to pass alternatively it may simply be wish casting.

    Critiquing other poster's opinions is a bit ripe from someone who claimed Liz Truss was the answer and she only failed because she was perhaps a misunderstood political genius, who was ahead of her time.
  • Stark_DawningStark_Dawning Posts: 10,180

    Reform MP James McMurdock suspended after Sunday Times investigation

    He is alleged to have borrowed tens of thousands of pounds under the government’s Bounce Back loans scheme during the Covid pandemic in 2020


    A Reform MP has suspended himself from the party after a Sunday Times investigation into £70,000 of loans he took out during the pandemic.

    James McMurdock, the MP for South Basildon and East Thurrock, took the decision after this newspaper approached him with allegations he borrowed tens of thousands of pounds under the government Bounce Back loans scheme in 2020.

    He did so through two companies he owned. One was JAM Financial Limited, which had no employees and negligible assets until the pandemic. In 2020 it took out a loan of £50,000, the maximum sum available under the loans scheme available for medium-sized businesses during the pandemic. For a firm to have received such a loan, they would have needed to report turnover of at least £200,000.

    In 2021 he transferred his shares in the company to his mother and resigned as director.

    The other was Gym Live Health and Fitness Limited, which was dormant until January 31, 2020. Over the following year, it borrowed £20,000, which would have required turnover of £100,000 under the Bounce Back scheme.

    Neither company filed accounts or annual corporate filings after the loans — a violation of the Companies Act.

    As a result of the failure to submit the information required, both companies were due to be struck off the register, meaning they would have ceased to exist and any remaining assets seized by the Crown.

    However, in February 2023, on the same day, the process of suspending both companies was halted after the company regulator received an objection from a third party. It is understood this related to the loans in some way. Both remain active on Companies House.

    Separately, Murdock appears to have breached parliamentary rules by failing to list his directorship of Gym Live Health and Fitness Limited on his register of interests. Parliamentary rules state MPs must register “significant, formal unpaid roles such as an unpaid directorship, a directorship of a company not currently trading, or a trusteeship”.

    Approached for comment, McMurdock warned “be very, very careful” and said “a technical expert” would be needed for anybody to understand the matters. He repeatedly refused to say why he took out the loans.


    https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/reform-mp-james-mcmurdock-suspended-after-sunday-times-investigation-ljh7rtprd

    If true his career is surely over. Not so much the corruption but the hypocrisy. The Farage brigade were very much of the mantra that government intervention during Covid was communism by the back door.
  • carnforthcarnforth Posts: 6,542
    HYUFD said:

    Reform MP James McMurdock suspended after Sunday Times investigation

    He is alleged to have borrowed tens of thousands of pounds under the government’s Bounce Back loans scheme during the Covid pandemic in 2020


    A Reform MP has suspended himself from the party after a Sunday Times investigation into £70,000 of loans he took out during the pandemic.

    James McMurdock, the MP for South Basildon and East Thurrock, took the decision after this newspaper approached him with allegations he borrowed tens of thousands of pounds under the government Bounce Back loans scheme in 2020.

    He did so through two companies he owned. One was JAM Financial Limited, which had no employees and negligible assets until the pandemic. In 2020 it took out a loan of £50,000, the maximum sum available under the loans scheme available for medium-sized businesses during the pandemic. For a firm to have received such a loan, they would have needed to report turnover of at least £200,000.

    In 2021 he transferred his shares in the company to his mother and resigned as director.

    The other was Gym Live Health and Fitness Limited, which was dormant until January 31, 2020. Over the following year, it borrowed £20,000, which would have required turnover of £100,000 under the Bounce Back scheme.

    Neither company filed accounts or annual corporate filings after the loans — a violation of the Companies Act.

    As a result of the failure to submit the information required, both companies were due to be struck off the register, meaning they would have ceased to exist and any remaining assets seized by the Crown.

    However, in February 2023, on the same day, the process of suspending both companies was halted after the company regulator received an objection from a third party. It is understood this related to the loans in some way. Both remain active on Companies House.

    Separately, Murdock appears to have breached parliamentary rules by failing to list his directorship of Gym Live Health and Fitness Limited on his register of interests. Parliamentary rules state MPs must register “significant, formal unpaid roles such as an unpaid directorship, a directorship of a company not currently trading, or a trusteeship”.

    Approached for comment, McMurdock warned “be very, very careful” and said “a technical expert” would be needed for anybody to understand the matters. He repeatedly refused to say why he took out the loans.


    https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/reform-mp-james-mcmurdock-suspended-after-sunday-times-investigation-ljh7rtprd

    Probably a bit of entrepreneurial activity for the average Basildon voter to keep his businesses going in lockdown, if you can find a Times reader in the town.

    Won’t stop Reform romping home there
    Bounceback loan fraud was rife. Plus self employed furloughing.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 128,653
    edited July 5
    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    To continue the theme and bring it back to the thread


    Strikes me there are TWO existential processes at work in the world, right now. As in: unprecedented challenges for humankind

    One I cannot mention, so I won’t

    The other is the collapse in fertility. This is having enormous second order effects all around the world, often going unnoticed

    eg it can be argued that Trump is a consequence of the baby bust. American demographics are bad. Not as bad as east Asia, but bad. Below replacement and ageing fast

    The answer then is immigration - but that means white people very quickly becoming a minority in the USA, and of all the white populations in the world it is Americans who are most likely to fight back against this (violently, if needs be). So we have Trump - a more-or-less openly white supremacist
    president

    Different versions of this dynamic are playing out around the planet

    You could fine people for not having children, or tax them more.
    So when the Wayne and Waynetta Slobs of the world have children and their children get hurt, killed, live in squalor and everyone shouts about needing an exam to drive a car but not to have kids and it’s a disgrace these feckless fuckers are breeding, do we revisit this penalisation for not having kids?

    Are the same people who defend women’s rights to their own body going to force men and women to procreate?

    Think it’s probably best to let people decide what’s best for themselves.

    By not having children I have offset, with my current and past tax payments , the cost of other children without dipping into the pot myself (and even better, my parents never dipped into the pot for me as they paid for my whole education and healthcare) I also will leave a lower carbon footprint on the world for those who care about such things.

    So you need more people like me instead of penalising us.
    No we don’t as you don’t reproduce and cost the taxpayer lots as you age with no workers produced for the next generation.

    Of course evangelicals and the Vatican and many Muslims are as anti abortion as they are pro reproduction
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 122,637
    It's another great victory for Farage's vetting programme.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 36,150
    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    To continue the theme and bring it back to the thread


    Strikes me there are TWO existential processes at work in the world, right now. As in: unprecedented challenges for humankind

    One I cannot mention, so I won’t

    The other is the collapse in fertility. This is having enormous second order effects all around the world, often going unnoticed

    eg it can be argued that Trump is a consequence of the baby bust. American demographics are bad. Not as bad as east Asia, but bad. Below replacement and ageing fast

    The answer then is immigration - but that means white people very quickly becoming a minority in the USA, and of all the white populations in the world it is Americans who are most likely to fight back against this (violently, if needs be). So we have Trump - a more-or-less openly white supremacist
    president

    Different versions of this dynamic are playing out around the planet

    You could fine people for not having children, or tax them more.
    So when the Wayne and Waynetta Slobs of the world have children and their children get hurt, killed, live in squalor and everyone shouts about needing an exam to drive a car but not to have kids and it’s a disgrace these feckless fuckers are breeding, do we revisit this penalisation for not having kids?

    Are the same people who defend women’s rights to their own body going to force men and women to procreate?

    Think it’s probably best to let people decide what’s best for themselves.

    By not having children I have offset, with my current and past tax payments , the cost of other children without dipping into the pot myself (and even better, my parents never dipped into the pot for me as they paid for my whole education and healthcare) I also will leave a lower carbon footprint on the world for those who care about such things.

    So you need more people like me instead of penalising us.
    Wayne and Waynetta Slob?
  • TazTaz Posts: 19,509
    stodge said:

    Taz said:

    carnforth said:

    Leon said:

    Times (££)

    Exclusive:

    Rachel Reeves has warned cabinet ­ministers that tax rises in the autumn budget are likely to prove even more challenging than the £40 billion ­package she imposed in November

    The chancellor told cabinet on Tuesday that the decision to abandon welfare reforms meant taxes would have to rise to cover the cost

    She said the rises in her first budget, which included a £24 billion increase in employers’ national insurance contributions, were ‘painful’ but were the ‘low-hanging fruit’

    Tax rises in the autumn are likely to be smaller than last year’s but she is still expected to have to raise tens of billions of pound. Reeves told ministers that would be a ‘big challenge’ given that she has limited options

    Ministers have been told that the spending review will not be reopened, meaning the bulk of any shortfall will have to come from tax rises

    Economists have warned that the scale of the hole in the public finances means that she may have to break ­Labour’s manifesto pledge not to ­increase income tax, national insurance or VAT. There are also suggestions that she could raid pension savings, which was rejected before the last budget

    Allies of Reeves say Labour rebels will have to ‘own’ the tax rises after they killed off welfare reforms”

    Labour are so monumentally fucked. There is no coming back from this. Unfortunately, Britain is somewhat fucked, as well

    For comparison, 1p on income tax (all bands) is about £10bn.

    Total council tax take is £40bn.

    1p on VAT is about £5bn.
    Pensions will be plundered in a way Gordon Brown could only dream about...
    Private sector ones. The public sector will remain unscathed.
    Changes to Council Tax so we see more bands for those properties of higher value are long overdue as is land value taxation in some form.

    Public sector pensioners (and those three words cover a multitude of sins) will pay more in tax as the thresholds remain frozen (as will everyone else).
    Council tax and LVT could be rolled up into one.

    I suspect, from the mansion house speech and previous discussions, she is looking at the vast lots of money in private pensions and DB funds and wants to dip into them. To use to ‘grow Britain’ investing in illiquid assets. It was something Hunt started.

    I expect any changes to the tax free lump sum and lifetime allowance that come will be DC only.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 52,023
    HYUFD said:

    Reform MP James McMurdock suspended after Sunday Times investigation

    He is alleged to have borrowed tens of thousands of pounds under the government’s Bounce Back loans scheme during the Covid pandemic in 2020


    A Reform MP has suspended himself from the party after a Sunday Times investigation into £70,000 of loans he took out during the pandemic.

    James McMurdock, the MP for South Basildon and East Thurrock, took the decision after this newspaper approached him with allegations he borrowed tens of thousands of pounds under the government Bounce Back loans scheme in 2020.

    He did so through two companies he owned. One was JAM Financial Limited, which had no employees and negligible assets until the pandemic. In 2020 it took out a loan of £50,000, the maximum sum available under the loans scheme available for medium-sized businesses during the pandemic. For a firm to have received such a loan, they would have needed to report turnover of at least £200,000.

    In 2021 he transferred his shares in the company to his mother and resigned as director.

    The other was Gym Live Health and Fitness Limited, which was dormant until January 31, 2020. Over the following year, it borrowed £20,000, which would have required turnover of £100,000 under the Bounce Back scheme.

    Neither company filed accounts or annual corporate filings after the loans — a violation of the Companies Act.

    As a result of the failure to submit the information required, both companies were due to be struck off the register, meaning they would have ceased to exist and any remaining assets seized by the Crown.

    However, in February 2023, on the same day, the process of suspending both companies was halted after the company regulator received an objection from a third party. It is understood this related to the loans in some way. Both remain active on Companies House.

    Separately, Murdock appears to have breached parliamentary rules by failing to list his directorship of Gym Live Health and Fitness Limited on his register of interests. Parliamentary rules state MPs must register “significant, formal unpaid roles such as an unpaid directorship, a directorship of a company not currently trading, or a trusteeship”.

    Approached for comment, McMurdock warned “be very, very careful” and said “a technical expert” would be needed for anybody to understand the matters. He repeatedly refused to say why he took out the loans.


    https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/reform-mp-james-mcmurdock-suspended-after-sunday-times-investigation-ljh7rtprd

    Probably a bit of entrepreneurial activity for the average Basildon voter to keep his businesses going in lockdown, if you can find a Times reader in the town.

    Won’t stop Reform romping home there
    If it was bounce-back loan fraud, and he is convicted, then we may well have a very interesting by election to test your hypothesis.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 128,653

    Reform MP James McMurdock suspended after Sunday Times investigation

    He is alleged to have borrowed tens of thousands of pounds under the government’s Bounce Back loans scheme during the Covid pandemic in 2020


    A Reform MP has suspended himself from the party after a Sunday Times investigation into £70,000 of loans he took out during the pandemic.

    James McMurdock, the MP for South Basildon and East Thurrock, took the decision after this newspaper approached him with allegations he borrowed tens of thousands of pounds under the government Bounce Back loans scheme in 2020.

    He did so through two companies he owned. One was JAM Financial Limited, which had no employees and negligible assets until the pandemic. In 2020 it took out a loan of £50,000, the maximum sum available under the loans scheme available for medium-sized businesses during the pandemic. For a firm to have received such a loan, they would have needed to report turnover of at least £200,000.

    In 2021 he transferred his shares in the company to his mother and resigned as director.

    The other was Gym Live Health and Fitness Limited, which was dormant until January 31, 2020. Over the following year, it borrowed £20,000, which would have required turnover of £100,000 under the Bounce Back scheme.

    Neither company filed accounts or annual corporate filings after the loans — a violation of the Companies Act.

    As a result of the failure to submit the information required, both companies were due to be struck off the register, meaning they would have ceased to exist and any remaining assets seized by the Crown.

    However, in February 2023, on the same day, the process of suspending both companies was halted after the company regulator received an objection from a third party. It is understood this related to the loans in some way. Both remain active on Companies House.

    Separately, Murdock appears to have breached parliamentary rules by failing to list his directorship of Gym Live Health and Fitness Limited on his register of interests. Parliamentary rules state MPs must register “significant, formal unpaid roles such as an unpaid directorship, a directorship of a company not currently trading, or a trusteeship”.

    Approached for comment, McMurdock warned “be very, very careful” and said “a technical expert” would be needed for anybody to understand the matters. He repeatedly refused to say why he took out the loans.


    https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/reform-mp-james-mcmurdock-suspended-after-sunday-times-investigation-ljh7rtprd

    If true his career is surely over. Not so much the corruption but the hypocrisy. The Farage brigade were very much of the mantra that government intervention during Covid was communism by the back door.
    They were anti lockdown not anti loans to small businesses. The average Basildon voter won’t give a toss about this story
  • kjhkjh Posts: 12,840

    Reeves could tax overseas remittances. Up to date information seems difficult to come by, but a Guardian blog from 2016 estimates the following:

    According to the estimates, remittances from the UK, including unrecorded transfers through formal and informal channels, could be worth up to $23bn – including $3.9bn to India, $3.8bn to Nigeria, and more than $1.2bn to Poland. This would make the UK the third-largest source of remittances, after the US and Canada.

    https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/datablog/2013/aug/09/remittances-britain-data

    Ten percent would seem reasonable.
    Interesting suggestion. I'm struggling to see any issue with it. Only thing I can come up with is distinguishing between paying business creditor and personal remittances, the former of which I wouldn't want to see as it becomes a tariff.

    Your idea or did you read it somewhere @Luckyguy1983 and if so what were the pros and cons.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 60,632

    Reform MP James McMurdock suspended after Sunday Times investigation

    He is alleged to have borrowed tens of thousands of pounds under the government’s Bounce Back loans scheme during the Covid pandemic in 2020


    A Reform MP has suspended himself from the party after a Sunday Times investigation into £70,000 of loans he took out during the pandemic.

    James McMurdock, the MP for South Basildon and East Thurrock, took the decision after this newspaper approached him with allegations he borrowed tens of thousands of pounds under the government Bounce Back loans scheme in 2020.

    He did so through two companies he owned. One was JAM Financial Limited, which had no employees and negligible assets until the pandemic. In 2020 it took out a loan of £50,000, the maximum sum available under the loans scheme available for medium-sized businesses during the pandemic. For a firm to have received such a loan, they would have needed to report turnover of at least £200,000.

    In 2021 he transferred his shares in the company to his mother and resigned as director.

    The other was Gym Live Health and Fitness Limited, which was dormant until January 31, 2020. Over the following year, it borrowed £20,000, which would have required turnover of £100,000 under the Bounce Back scheme.

    Neither company filed accounts or annual corporate filings after the loans — a violation of the Companies Act.

    As a result of the failure to submit the information required, both companies were due to be struck off the register, meaning they would have ceased to exist and any remaining assets seized by the Crown.

    However, in February 2023, on the same day, the process of suspending both companies was halted after the company regulator received an objection from a third party. It is understood this related to the loans in some way. Both remain active on Companies House.

    Separately, Murdock appears to have breached parliamentary rules by failing to list his directorship of Gym Live Health and Fitness Limited on his register of interests. Parliamentary rules state MPs must register “significant, formal unpaid roles such as an unpaid directorship, a directorship of a company not currently trading, or a trusteeship”.

    Approached for comment, McMurdock warned “be very, very careful” and said “a technical expert” would be needed for anybody to understand the matters. He repeatedly refused to say why he took out the loans.


    https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/reform-mp-james-mcmurdock-suspended-after-sunday-times-investigation-ljh7rtprd

    If true, those are very serious allegations: basically claiming he stole £70,000.
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 10,412

    It's another great victory for Farage's vetting programme.

    "We've had thousands of ex-Bnpers and nf trying to join. I've personally blocked them myself." That seems to have been his main focus.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 36,150

    So Reform have now lost 2 MPs since the election.
    Absolute shit-show.

    It probably won't make any difference to their popularity.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 60,632

    Reform MP James McMurdock suspended after Sunday Times investigation

    He is alleged to have borrowed tens of thousands of pounds under the government’s Bounce Back loans scheme during the Covid pandemic in 2020


    A Reform MP has suspended himself from the party after a Sunday Times investigation into £70,000 of loans he took out during the pandemic.

    James McMurdock, the MP for South Basildon and East Thurrock, took the decision after this newspaper approached him with allegations he borrowed tens of thousands of pounds under the government Bounce Back loans scheme in 2020.

    He did so through two companies he owned. One was JAM Financial Limited, which had no employees and negligible assets until the pandemic. In 2020 it took out a loan of £50,000, the maximum sum available under the loans scheme available for medium-sized businesses during the pandemic. For a firm to have received such a loan, they would have needed to report turnover of at least £200,000.

    In 2021 he transferred his shares in the company to his mother and resigned as director.

    The other was Gym Live Health and Fitness Limited, which was dormant until January 31, 2020. Over the following year, it borrowed £20,000, which would have required turnover of £100,000 under the Bounce Back scheme.

    Neither company filed accounts or annual corporate filings after the loans — a violation of the Companies Act.

    As a result of the failure to submit the information required, both companies were due to be struck off the register, meaning they would have ceased to exist and any remaining assets seized by the Crown.

    However, in February 2023, on the same day, the process of suspending both companies was halted after the company regulator received an objection from a third party. It is understood this related to the loans in some way. Both remain active on Companies House.

    Separately, Murdock appears to have breached parliamentary rules by failing to list his directorship of Gym Live Health and Fitness Limited on his register of interests. Parliamentary rules state MPs must register “significant, formal unpaid roles such as an unpaid directorship, a directorship of a company not currently trading, or a trusteeship”.

    Approached for comment, McMurdock warned “be very, very careful” and said “a technical expert” would be needed for anybody to understand the matters. He repeatedly refused to say why he took out the loans.


    https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/reform-mp-james-mcmurdock-suspended-after-sunday-times-investigation-ljh7rtprd

    If true his career is surely over. Not so much the corruption but the hypocrisy. The Farage brigade were very much of the mantra that government intervention during Covid was communism by the back door.
    He only took the loans to expose the corruption at the heart of government.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 122,637
    rcs1000 said:

    Reform MP James McMurdock suspended after Sunday Times investigation

    He is alleged to have borrowed tens of thousands of pounds under the government’s Bounce Back loans scheme during the Covid pandemic in 2020


    A Reform MP has suspended himself from the party after a Sunday Times investigation into £70,000 of loans he took out during the pandemic.

    James McMurdock, the MP for South Basildon and East Thurrock, took the decision after this newspaper approached him with allegations he borrowed tens of thousands of pounds under the government Bounce Back loans scheme in 2020.

    He did so through two companies he owned. One was JAM Financial Limited, which had no employees and negligible assets until the pandemic. In 2020 it took out a loan of £50,000, the maximum sum available under the loans scheme available for medium-sized businesses during the pandemic. For a firm to have received such a loan, they would have needed to report turnover of at least £200,000.

    In 2021 he transferred his shares in the company to his mother and resigned as director.

    The other was Gym Live Health and Fitness Limited, which was dormant until January 31, 2020. Over the following year, it borrowed £20,000, which would have required turnover of £100,000 under the Bounce Back scheme.

    Neither company filed accounts or annual corporate filings after the loans — a violation of the Companies Act.

    As a result of the failure to submit the information required, both companies were due to be struck off the register, meaning they would have ceased to exist and any remaining assets seized by the Crown.

    However, in February 2023, on the same day, the process of suspending both companies was halted after the company regulator received an objection from a third party. It is understood this related to the loans in some way. Both remain active on Companies House.

    Separately, Murdock appears to have breached parliamentary rules by failing to list his directorship of Gym Live Health and Fitness Limited on his register of interests. Parliamentary rules state MPs must register “significant, formal unpaid roles such as an unpaid directorship, a directorship of a company not currently trading, or a trusteeship”.

    Approached for comment, McMurdock warned “be very, very careful” and said “a technical expert” would be needed for anybody to understand the matters. He repeatedly refused to say why he took out the loans.


    https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/reform-mp-james-mcmurdock-suspended-after-sunday-times-investigation-ljh7rtprd

    If true, those are very serious allegations: basically claiming he stole £70,000.
    McMurdock was approached on Thursday but has refused to provide any account publicly or internally

    He won't address the following:
    - did he take govt loans and do so without legitimate purpose/requisite turnover?

    - why did dormant company spring back into action in 2020? 5/

    - why did other company abruptly borrow £50k after Covid struck?

    Instead, he has withdrawn from Reform parliamentary party ahead of investigation by the party.
    6/
    ENDS


    https://x.com/Gabriel_Pogrund/status/1941481184841851256
  • boulayboulay Posts: 6,440

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    To continue the theme and bring it back to the thread


    Strikes me there are TWO existential processes at work in the world, right now. As in: unprecedented challenges for humankind

    One I cannot mention, so I won’t

    The other is the collapse in fertility. This is having enormous second order effects all around the world, often going unnoticed

    eg it can be argued that Trump is a consequence of the baby bust. American demographics are bad. Not as bad as east Asia, but bad. Below replacement and ageing fast

    The answer then is immigration - but that means white people very quickly becoming a minority in the USA, and of all the white populations in the world it is Americans who are most likely to fight back against this (violently, if needs be). So we have Trump - a more-or-less openly white supremacist
    president

    Different versions of this dynamic are playing out around the planet

    You could fine people for not having children, or tax them more.
    So when the Wayne and Waynetta Slobs of the world have children and their children get hurt, killed, live in squalor and everyone shouts about needing an exam to drive a car but not to have kids and it’s a disgrace these feckless fuckers are breeding, do we revisit this penalisation for not having kids?

    Are the same people who defend women’s rights to their own body going to force men and women to procreate?

    Think it’s probably best to let people decide what’s best for themselves.

    By not having children I have offset, with my current and past tax payments , the cost of other children without dipping into the pot myself (and even better, my parents never dipped into the pot for me as they paid for my whole education and healthcare) I also will leave a lower carbon footprint on the world for those who care about such things.

    So you need more people like me instead of penalising us.
    My children will be working and paying the taxes that will fund your pension.

    If there were no kids, you'd have no NHS and no State Pension in your final years.
    I promise you, they won’t be.

    And I have paid into my tax system vast sums - much more than could cover my government pension if I lived to 150 and needed daily medical care on the state (oh, fully private cover anyway).

    And I didn’t say people should stop having kids, I made the point that it’s not bad to have some people who don’t have kids whilst it’s also not right to force people under threat of penalty to have them.
  • TazTaz Posts: 19,509

    Leon said:

    Times (££)

    Exclusive:

    Rachel Reeves has warned cabinet ­ministers that tax rises in the autumn budget are likely to prove even more challenging than the £40 billion ­package she imposed in November

    The chancellor told cabinet on Tuesday that the decision to abandon welfare reforms meant taxes would have to rise to cover the cost

    She said the rises in her first budget, which included a £24 billion increase in employers’ national insurance contributions, were ‘painful’ but were the ‘low-hanging fruit’

    Tax rises in the autumn are likely to be smaller than last year’s but she is still expected to have to raise tens of billions of pound. Reeves told ministers that would be a ‘big challenge’ given that she has limited options

    Ministers have been told that the spending review will not be reopened, meaning the bulk of any shortfall will have to come from tax rises

    Economists have warned that the scale of the hole in the public finances means that she may have to break ­Labour’s manifesto pledge not to ­increase income tax, national insurance or VAT. There are also suggestions that she could raid pension savings, which was rejected before the last budget

    Allies of Reeves say Labour rebels will have to ‘own’ the tax rises after they killed off welfare reforms”

    Labour are so monumentally fucked. There is no coming back from this. Unfortunately, Britain is somewhat fucked, as well

    She will come after our pensions.
    DC and DB in the private sector.

    It’s where the money is.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 31,975
    kjh said:

    Reeves could tax overseas remittances. Up to date information seems difficult to come by, but a Guardian blog from 2016 estimates the following:

    According to the estimates, remittances from the UK, including unrecorded transfers through formal and informal channels, could be worth up to $23bn – including $3.9bn to India, $3.8bn to Nigeria, and more than $1.2bn to Poland. This would make the UK the third-largest source of remittances, after the US and Canada.

    https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/datablog/2013/aug/09/remittances-britain-data

    Ten percent would seem reasonable.
    Interesting suggestion. I'm struggling to see any issue with it. Only thing I can come up with is distinguishing between paying business creditor and personal remittances, the former of which I wouldn't want to see as it becomes a tariff.

    Your idea or did you read it somewhere @Luckyguy1983 and if so what were the pros and cons.
    Trump's idea. :lol:

    (He's done it with some success apparently in the US - and we are apparently the third biggest nation in remittances behind the US and Canada)
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 10,412
    Keir Starmer is actually Ray Winstone. The calmer exterior is just a front.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 128,653
    edited July 5
    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Reform MP James McMurdock suspended after Sunday Times investigation

    He is alleged to have borrowed tens of thousands of pounds under the government’s Bounce Back loans scheme during the Covid pandemic in 2020


    A Reform MP has suspended himself from the party after a Sunday Times investigation into £70,000 of loans he took out during the pandemic.

    James McMurdock, the MP for South Basildon and East Thurrock, took the decision after this newspaper approached him with allegations he borrowed tens of thousands of pounds under the government Bounce Back loans scheme in 2020.

    He did so through two companies he owned. One was JAM Financial Limited, which had no employees and negligible assets until the pandemic. In 2020 it took out a loan of £50,000, the maximum sum available under the loans scheme available for medium-sized businesses during the pandemic. For a firm to have received such a loan, they would have needed to report turnover of at least £200,000.

    In 2021 he transferred his shares in the company to his mother and resigned as director.

    The other was Gym Live Health and Fitness Limited, which was dormant until January 31, 2020. Over the following year, it borrowed £20,000, which would have required turnover of £100,000 under the Bounce Back scheme.

    Neither company filed accounts or annual corporate filings after the loans — a violation of the Companies Act.

    As a result of the failure to submit the information required, both companies were due to be struck off the register, meaning they would have ceased to exist and any remaining assets seized by the Crown.

    However, in February 2023, on the same day, the process of suspending both companies was halted after the company regulator received an objection from a third party. It is understood this related to the loans in some way. Both remain active on Companies House.

    Separately, Murdock appears to have breached parliamentary rules by failing to list his directorship of Gym Live Health and Fitness Limited on his register of interests. Parliamentary rules state MPs must register “significant, formal unpaid roles such as an unpaid directorship, a directorship of a company not currently trading, or a trusteeship”.

    Approached for comment, McMurdock warned “be very, very careful” and said “a technical expert” would be needed for anybody to understand the matters. He repeatedly refused to say why he took out the loans.


    https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/reform-mp-james-mcmurdock-suspended-after-sunday-times-investigation-ljh7rtprd

    Probably a bit of entrepreneurial activity for the average Basildon voter to keep his businesses going in lockdown, if you can find a Times reader in the town.

    Won’t stop Reform romping home there
    If it was bounce-back loan fraud, and he is convicted, then we may well have a very interesting by election to test your hypothesis.
    Even if he was and even if he got a sentence of less than a year and a recall petition or a sentence of over a year and could no longer be an MP I would expect Reform to hold the seat given the national swing
  • TazTaz Posts: 19,509

    Ooopsie.



    https://x.com/LeeAndersonMP_/status/1941469191124681019

    STAY TUNED: The Sunday Times will be publishing its investigation shortly

    https://x.com/Gabriel_Pogrund/status/1941476534180774253

    Cue lots of confected anger irrespective of the allegations.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 122,637
    This person should be charged with treason/never be let back in the UK.

    Jay Fraser, who enlisted with the Kremlin’s forces in Ukraine, says he still has hopes for Scottish independence but not under the SNP

    https://www.thetimes.com/uk/scotland/article/scot-fighting-for-russia-as-bastion-of-faith-and-common-sense-tb0zljrp8?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1751712965-1
  • kjhkjh Posts: 12,840
    edited July 5

    kjh said:

    Reeves could tax overseas remittances. Up to date information seems difficult to come by, but a Guardian blog from 2016 estimates the following:

    According to the estimates, remittances from the UK, including unrecorded transfers through formal and informal channels, could be worth up to $23bn – including $3.9bn to India, $3.8bn to Nigeria, and more than $1.2bn to Poland. This would make the UK the third-largest source of remittances, after the US and Canada.

    https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/datablog/2013/aug/09/remittances-britain-data

    Ten percent would seem reasonable.
    Interesting suggestion. I'm struggling to see any issue with it. Only thing I can come up with is distinguishing between paying business creditor and personal remittances, the former of which I wouldn't want to see as it becomes a tariff.

    Your idea or did you read it somewhere @Luckyguy1983 and if so what were the pros and cons.
    Trump's idea. :lol:

    (He's done it with some success apparently in the US - and we are apparently the third biggest nation in remittances behind the US and Canada)
    I change my mind. It is obviously an awful idea 😮

    I think there would have to be a threshold so you can make small transfers tax free.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 122,637
    Pro tip for James McMurdock.

    Don't hire Lady Mone's lawyers and PR people.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 60,632

    kjh said:

    Reeves could tax overseas remittances. Up to date information seems difficult to come by, but a Guardian blog from 2016 estimates the following:

    According to the estimates, remittances from the UK, including unrecorded transfers through formal and informal channels, could be worth up to $23bn – including $3.9bn to India, $3.8bn to Nigeria, and more than $1.2bn to Poland. This would make the UK the third-largest source of remittances, after the US and Canada.

    https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/datablog/2013/aug/09/remittances-britain-data

    Ten percent would seem reasonable.
    Interesting suggestion. I'm struggling to see any issue with it. Only thing I can come up with is distinguishing between paying business creditor and personal remittances, the former of which I wouldn't want to see as it becomes a tariff.

    Your idea or did you read it somewhere @Luckyguy1983 and if so what were the pros and cons.
    Trump's idea. :lol:

    (He's done it with some success apparently in the US - and we are apparently the third biggest nation in remittances behind the US and Canada)
    It would be a massive boon for Bitcoin. Convert pounds to Bitcoin, send to recipient abroad. Avoid tax.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 122,637
    edited July 5
    boulay said:



    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    To continue the theme and bring it back to the thread


    Strikes me there are TWO existential processes at work in the world, right now. As in: unprecedented challenges for humankind

    One I cannot mention, so I won’t

    The other is the collapse in fertility. This is having enormous second order effects all around the world, often going unnoticed

    eg it can be argued that Trump is a consequence of the baby bust. American demographics are bad. Not as bad as east Asia, but bad. Below replacement and ageing fast

    The answer then is immigration - but that means white people very quickly becoming a minority in the USA, and of all the white populations in the world it is Americans who are most likely to fight back against this (violently, if needs be). So we have Trump - a more-or-less openly white supremacist
    president

    Different versions of this dynamic are playing out around the planet

    You could fine people for not having children, or tax them more.
    So when the Wayne and Waynetta Slobs of the world have children and their children get hurt, killed, live in squalor and everyone shouts about needing an exam to drive a car but not to have kids and it’s a disgrace these feckless fuckers are breeding, do we revisit this penalisation for not having kids?

    Are the same people who defend women’s rights to their own body going to force men and women to procreate?

    Think it’s probably best to let people decide what’s best for themselves.

    By not having children I have offset, with my current and past tax payments , the cost of other children without dipping into the pot myself (and even better, my parents never dipped into the pot for me as they paid for my whole education and healthcare) I also will leave a lower carbon footprint on the world for those who care about such things.

    So you need more people like me instead of penalising us.
    My children will be working and paying the taxes that will fund your pension.

    If there were no kids, you'd have no NHS and no State Pension in your final years.
    I promise you, they won’t be.

    And I have paid into my tax system vast sums - much more than could cover my government pension if I lived to 150 and needed daily medical care on the state (oh, fully private cover anyway).

    And I didn’t say people should stop having kids, I made the point that it’s not bad to have some people who don’t have kids whilst it’s also not right to force people under threat of penalty to have them.
    I have some friends who are quite honest that because of their own issues, they would be awful parents and that's why they never became parents.
  • TazTaz Posts: 19,509
    Oasis setlist missing ‘All Around the World’

    Glad I didn’t try to get a ticket.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 55,750

    Reform MP James McMurdock suspended after Sunday Times investigation

    He is alleged to have borrowed tens of thousands of pounds under the government’s Bounce Back loans scheme during the Covid pandemic in 2020


    A Reform MP has suspended himself from the party after a Sunday Times investigation into £70,000 of loans he took out during the pandemic.

    James McMurdock, the MP for South Basildon and East Thurrock, took the decision after this newspaper approached him with allegations he borrowed tens of thousands of pounds under the government Bounce Back loans scheme in 2020.

    He did so through two companies he owned. One was JAM Financial Limited, which had no employees and negligible assets until the pandemic. In 2020 it took out a loan of £50,000, the maximum sum available under the loans scheme available for medium-sized businesses during the pandemic. For a firm to have received such a loan, they would have needed to report turnover of at least £200,000.

    In 2021 he transferred his shares in the company to his mother and resigned as director.

    The other was Gym Live Health and Fitness Limited, which was dormant until January 31, 2020. Over the following year, it borrowed £20,000, which would have required turnover of £100,000 under the Bounce Back scheme.

    Neither company filed accounts or annual corporate filings after the loans — a violation of the Companies Act.

    As a result of the failure to submit the information required, both companies were due to be struck off the register, meaning they would have ceased to exist and any remaining assets seized by the Crown.

    However, in February 2023, on the same day, the process of suspending both companies was halted after the company regulator received an objection from a third party. It is understood this related to the loans in some way. Both remain active on Companies House.

    Separately, Murdock appears to have breached parliamentary rules by failing to list his directorship of Gym Live Health and Fitness Limited on his register of interests. Parliamentary rules state MPs must register “significant, formal unpaid roles such as an unpaid directorship, a directorship of a company not currently trading, or a trusteeship”.

    Approached for comment, McMurdock warned “be very, very careful” and said “a technical expert” would be needed for anybody to understand the matters. He repeatedly refused to say why he took out the loans.


    https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/reform-mp-james-mcmurdock-suspended-after-sunday-times-investigation-ljh7rtprd

    If true his career is surely over. Not so much the corruption but the hypocrisy. The Farage brigade were very much of the mantra that government intervention during Covid was communism by the back door.
    It does raise the issue of why it is the ST that is investigating this. These loans are payable through banks. There should be certification of the turnover figures. In the absence of accounts, which was often the case for new companies, directors had to certify the turnover as a condition of eligibility and in my understanding the banks are supposed to be a cross check for that although they too often were not.

    I have come across several of these in my civil days. The lack of inquiry and aggressive recovery by the relevant authorities is actually a disgrace. This one gets attention because it is someone in the public eye but all of those who did this should be pursued.
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 25,120
    edited July 5

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    eek said:

    Foxy said:

    viewcode said:

    Um, @Leon, @Malmesbury et al, the "Universe 25"/"Mouse Utopia"/"Calhoun Experiments", whilst not that well known, were known enough for me to discuss it in one of the works Xmas dinners last Christmas, where I fascinated/repelled various luminaries with the story[1], especially when I threw in the phrase "mouse incel" . The alt-right and frankly insane commentator "WhatIfAltHist" - you'd like him - did a YouTube on them

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink
    https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-old-experiment-with-mice-led-to-bleak-predictions-for-humanitys-future-180954423/
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTDTVbourzU

    [1] I spend a lot of time in trains and taxis, and two of my jobs mean I have a fund of grotesque stories to entertain them. They can be repurposed for a more genteel audience.

    I am not sure that I buy it though. Population Fertility rates for humans are dropping everywhere (albeit from a higher base in Africa etc) whether the country is densely or thinly populated.

    Zambia has 20 million people in a country twice the size of France for example, yet the fertility rate is dropping there too. (Incidentally there is some belief amongst demographers that many estimates of current populations are overestimated in Africa).

    The drop in fertility rates is pretty universal, in both rich and poor countries, the densely and thinly populated, in ones with welfare states and without, in countries with expensive and those with cheap housing, religious and irreligious alike, from different starting points

    I think we have to look at other societal changes, and these would have to be worldwide, and particularly taken up by young women. Smartphones and Internet access spring to mind.
    Education, opportunities, birth control and reduced child mortality rates have all played a part in reduced fertility rates.

    Hardly surprising as most women don't want to be a baby factory and want to do other things with their lives..
    Yes but the later you leave it the harder it is to have children, peak fertility for women is in their twenties and early thirties.

    Plus as the population ages the working age population will have to pay more and more tax to pay for the healthcare etc to support them
    Fewer babies born now means fewer oldies in 60 years' time.
    We are headed to the 421 families seen in China. 4 grandparents, 2 parents, 1 child.
    For which planet Earth says "Thank fuck..."
    The question is whether capitalism works without perpetual growth
    Um, yes. People conflate "capitalism" with the rather corrupt lobbyist transnational billionaires at one end and overworked peons at the other end version that we have at the moment. But at heart it's just use of fiat money to mediate transactions, allowing speculative investment to build things and companies, free and perfect markets to buy and sell things, bankruptcy to remove poor performers, courts to oversee contract law, and so on. There are problems with the way we do it and the bits we add on, but basically it works.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 122,637
    Taz said:

    Oasis setlist missing ‘All Around the World’

    Glad I didn’t try to get a ticket.

    I am seeing them start of August.

    So long as they play 'Whatever' I'll be happy.
  • Stark_DawningStark_Dawning Posts: 10,180

    Taz said:

    Oasis setlist missing ‘All Around the World’

    Glad I didn’t try to get a ticket.

    I am seeing them start of August.

    So long as they play 'Whatever' I'll be happy.
    Do they still play that after the ruling that the guy from the Ruttles gets half the proceeds?
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 54,879

    Taz said:

    Oasis setlist missing ‘All Around the World’

    Glad I didn’t try to get a ticket.

    I am seeing them start of August.

    So long as they play 'Whatever' I'll be happy.
    Oasis = over-rated.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 122,637
    DavidL said:

    Reform MP James McMurdock suspended after Sunday Times investigation

    He is alleged to have borrowed tens of thousands of pounds under the government’s Bounce Back loans scheme during the Covid pandemic in 2020


    A Reform MP has suspended himself from the party after a Sunday Times investigation into £70,000 of loans he took out during the pandemic.

    James McMurdock, the MP for South Basildon and East Thurrock, took the decision after this newspaper approached him with allegations he borrowed tens of thousands of pounds under the government Bounce Back loans scheme in 2020.

    He did so through two companies he owned. One was JAM Financial Limited, which had no employees and negligible assets until the pandemic. In 2020 it took out a loan of £50,000, the maximum sum available under the loans scheme available for medium-sized businesses during the pandemic. For a firm to have received such a loan, they would have needed to report turnover of at least £200,000.

    In 2021 he transferred his shares in the company to his mother and resigned as director.

    The other was Gym Live Health and Fitness Limited, which was dormant until January 31, 2020. Over the following year, it borrowed £20,000, which would have required turnover of £100,000 under the Bounce Back scheme.

    Neither company filed accounts or annual corporate filings after the loans — a violation of the Companies Act.

    As a result of the failure to submit the information required, both companies were due to be struck off the register, meaning they would have ceased to exist and any remaining assets seized by the Crown.

    However, in February 2023, on the same day, the process of suspending both companies was halted after the company regulator received an objection from a third party. It is understood this related to the loans in some way. Both remain active on Companies House.

    Separately, Murdock appears to have breached parliamentary rules by failing to list his directorship of Gym Live Health and Fitness Limited on his register of interests. Parliamentary rules state MPs must register “significant, formal unpaid roles such as an unpaid directorship, a directorship of a company not currently trading, or a trusteeship”.

    Approached for comment, McMurdock warned “be very, very careful” and said “a technical expert” would be needed for anybody to understand the matters. He repeatedly refused to say why he took out the loans.


    https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/reform-mp-james-mcmurdock-suspended-after-sunday-times-investigation-ljh7rtprd

    If true his career is surely over. Not so much the corruption but the hypocrisy. The Farage brigade were very much of the mantra that government intervention during Covid was communism by the back door.
    It does raise the issue of why it is the ST that is investigating this. These loans are payable through banks. There should be certification of the turnover figures. In the absence of accounts, which was often the case for new companies, directors had to certify the turnover as a condition of eligibility and in my understanding the banks are supposed to be a cross check for that although they too often were not.

    I have come across several of these in my civil days. The lack of inquiry and aggressive recovery by the relevant authorities is actually a disgrace. This one gets attention because it is someone in the public eye but all of those who did this should be pursued.
    Well he's a former banker (sic), worst of all he's worked for Goldman Sachs Lehman Brothers.
  • boulayboulay Posts: 6,440
    rcs1000 said:

    Ooopsie.



    https://x.com/LeeAndersonMP_/status/1941469191124681019

    STAY TUNED: The Sunday Times will be publishing its investigation shortly

    https://x.com/Gabriel_Pogrund/status/1941476534180774253

    And that demonstrates why Reform will not be the next government.

    The correct response is to deny the story. It's lies. It's fake news. The lamestream media is just making up shit. Everybody stick together and deny everything.

    Now, sure, democracy is damaged by such a stunt. But the future is post-truth
    I think this demonstrates it better:


  • TazTaz Posts: 19,509
    Off duty WPC beaten for challenging fare dodgers

    This is probably why TFL does nothing about far dodgers.

    https://www.lbc.co.uk/crime/female-police-officer-london-tube-assault/

    Our legal system lets these scum get away with it and yet if you make a minor transgression. Miss insuring or SORNing your car by a day, make an error on your TV license. Buy a train ticket and, accidentally, it’s the wrong one then via the SJP then the law will hammer you.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 55,750

    Taz said:

    Oasis setlist missing ‘All Around the World’

    Glad I didn’t try to get a ticket.

    I am seeing them start of August.

    So long as they play 'Whatever' I'll be happy.
    Don't look back in anger.

    This England bowling attack is so powderpuff. Its frightening to think what Australia are going to do to them.
  • TazTaz Posts: 19,509
    boulay said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Ooopsie.



    https://x.com/LeeAndersonMP_/status/1941469191124681019

    STAY TUNED: The Sunday Times will be publishing its investigation shortly

    https://x.com/Gabriel_Pogrund/status/1941476534180774253

    And that demonstrates why Reform will not be the next government.

    The correct response is to deny the story. It's lies. It's fake news. The lamestream media is just making up shit. Everybody stick together and deny everything.

    Now, sure, democracy is damaged by such a stunt. But the future is post-truth
    I think this demonstrates it better:


    Yet labour and the Lib Dem’s want to extend the vote to 16 year olds. So what’s your problem here ? Or is it okay for young people to have the vote if they vote for the right people ?
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 46,133
    HYUFD said:

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    To continue the theme and bring it back to the thread


    Strikes me there are TWO existential processes at work in the world, right now. As in: unprecedented challenges for humankind

    One I cannot mention, so I won’t

    The other is the collapse in fertility. This is having enormous second order effects all around the world, often going unnoticed

    eg it can be argued that Trump is a consequence of the baby bust. American demographics are bad. Not as bad as east Asia, but bad. Below replacement and ageing fast

    The answer then is immigration - but that means white people very quickly becoming a minority in the USA, and of all the white populations in the world it is Americans who are most likely to fight back against this (violently, if needs be). So we have Trump - a more-or-less openly white supremacist
    president

    Different versions of this dynamic are playing out around the planet

    You could fine people for not having children, or tax them more.
    So when the Wayne and Waynetta Slobs of the world have children and their children get hurt, killed, live in squalor and everyone shouts about needing an exam to drive a car but not to have kids and it’s a disgrace these feckless fuckers are breeding, do we revisit this penalisation for not having kids?

    Are the same people who defend women’s rights to their own body going to force men and women to procreate?

    Think it’s probably best to let people decide what’s best for themselves.

    By not having children I have offset, with my current and past tax payments , the cost of other children without dipping into the pot myself (and even better, my parents never dipped into the pot for me as they paid for my whole education and healthcare) I also will leave a lower carbon footprint on the world for those who care about such things.

    So you need more people like me instead of penalising us.
    No we don’t as you don’t reproduce and cost the taxpayer lots as you age with no workers produced for the next generation.

    Of course evangelicals and the Vatican and many Muslims are as anti abortion as they are pro reproduction
    No.

    They are anti-women.
  • carnforthcarnforth Posts: 6,542
    boulay said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Ooopsie.



    https://x.com/LeeAndersonMP_/status/1941469191124681019

    STAY TUNED: The Sunday Times will be publishing its investigation shortly

    https://x.com/Gabriel_Pogrund/status/1941476534180774253

    And that demonstrates why Reform will not be the next government.

    The correct response is to deny the story. It's lies. It's fake news. The lamestream media is just making up shit. Everybody stick together and deny everything.

    Now, sure, democracy is damaged by such a stunt. But the future is post-truth
    I think this demonstrates it better:


    If they were lib dem or green the Guardian would be running simpering profiles of them.
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 63,683
    boulay said:



    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    To continue the theme and bring it back to the thread


    Strikes me there are TWO existential processes at work in the world, right now. As in: unprecedented challenges for humankind

    One I cannot mention, so I won’t

    The other is the collapse in fertility. This is having enormous second order effects all around the world, often going unnoticed

    eg it can be argued that Trump is a consequence of the baby bust. American demographics are bad. Not as bad as east Asia, but bad. Below replacement and ageing fast

    The answer then is immigration - but that means white people very quickly becoming a minority in the USA, and of all the white populations in the world it is Americans who are most likely to fight back against this (violently, if needs be). So we have Trump - a more-or-less openly white supremacist
    president

    Different versions of this dynamic are playing out around the planet

    You could fine people for not having children, or tax them more.
    So when the Wayne and Waynetta Slobs of the world have children and their children get hurt, killed, live in squalor and everyone shouts about needing an exam to drive a car but not to have kids and it’s a disgrace these feckless fuckers are breeding, do we revisit this penalisation for not having kids?

    Are the same people who defend women’s rights to their own body going to force men and women to procreate?

    Think it’s probably best to let people decide what’s best for themselves.

    By not having children I have offset, with my current and past tax payments , the cost of other children without dipping into the pot myself (and even better, my parents never dipped into the pot for me as they paid for my whole education and healthcare) I also will leave a lower carbon footprint on the world for those who care about such things.

    So you need more people like me instead of penalising us.
    My children will be working and paying the taxes that will fund your pension.

    If there were no kids, you'd have no NHS and no State Pension in your final years.
    I promise you, they won’t be.

    And I have paid into my tax system vast sums - much more than could cover my government pension if I lived to 150 and needed daily medical care on the state (oh, fully private cover anyway).

    And I didn’t say people should stop having kids, I made the point that it’s not bad to have some people who don’t have kids whilst it’s also not right to force people under threat of penalty to have them.
    I'm not judging you; I am just making a broader argument.
  • Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 66,018
    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Reform MP James McMurdock suspended after Sunday Times investigation

    He is alleged to have borrowed tens of thousands of pounds under the government’s Bounce Back loans scheme during the Covid pandemic in 2020


    A Reform MP has suspended himself from the party after a Sunday Times investigation into £70,000 of loans he took out during the pandemic.

    James McMurdock, the MP for South Basildon and East Thurrock, took the decision after this newspaper approached him with allegations he borrowed tens of thousands of pounds under the government Bounce Back loans scheme in 2020.

    He did so through two companies he owned. One was JAM Financial Limited, which had no employees and negligible assets until the pandemic. In 2020 it took out a loan of £50,000, the maximum sum available under the loans scheme available for medium-sized businesses during the pandemic. For a firm to have received such a loan, they would have needed to report turnover of at least £200,000.

    In 2021 he transferred his shares in the company to his mother and resigned as director.

    The other was Gym Live Health and Fitness Limited, which was dormant until January 31, 2020. Over the following year, it borrowed £20,000, which would have required turnover of £100,000 under the Bounce Back scheme.

    Neither company filed accounts or annual corporate filings after the loans — a violation of the Companies Act.

    As a result of the failure to submit the information required, both companies were due to be struck off the register, meaning they would have ceased to exist and any remaining assets seized by the Crown.

    However, in February 2023, on the same day, the process of suspending both companies was halted after the company regulator received an objection from a third party. It is understood this related to the loans in some way. Both remain active on Companies House.

    Separately, Murdock appears to have breached parliamentary rules by failing to list his directorship of Gym Live Health and Fitness Limited on his register of interests. Parliamentary rules state MPs must register “significant, formal unpaid roles such as an unpaid directorship, a directorship of a company not currently trading, or a trusteeship”.

    Approached for comment, McMurdock warned “be very, very careful” and said “a technical expert” would be needed for anybody to understand the matters. He repeatedly refused to say why he took out the loans.


    https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/reform-mp-james-mcmurdock-suspended-after-sunday-times-investigation-ljh7rtprd

    Probably a bit of entrepreneurial activity for the average Basildon voter to keep his businesses going in lockdown, if you can find a Times reader in the town.

    Won’t stop Reform romping home there
    If it was bounce-back loan fraud, and he is convicted, then we may well have a very interesting by election to test your hypothesis.
    Even if he was and even if he got a sentence of less than a year and a recall petition or a sentence of over a year and could no longer be an MP I would expect Reform to hold the seat given the national swing
    Good afternoon

    Reform have peaked and I expect a gradual decline as they are found out for who they are

    Who benefits I have no idea but Farage and his diminishing band will not be the next GE winners
  • TazTaz Posts: 19,509

    Taz said:

    Oasis setlist missing ‘All Around the World’

    Glad I didn’t try to get a ticket.

    I am seeing them start of August.

    So long as they play 'Whatever' I'll be happy.
    That’s a great track.
  • TimSTimS Posts: 15,674
    I have a Le Carre style question for @OnlyLivingBoy: do you like Kim Wilde?
  • DopermeanDopermean Posts: 1,224

    rcs1000 said:

    Reform MP James McMurdock suspended after Sunday Times investigation

    He is alleged to have borrowed tens of thousands of pounds under the government’s Bounce Back loans scheme during the Covid pandemic in 2020


    A Reform MP has suspended himself from the party after a Sunday Times investigation into £70,000 of loans he took out during the pandemic.

    James McMurdock, the MP for South Basildon and East Thurrock, took the decision after this newspaper approached him with allegations he borrowed tens of thousands of pounds under the government Bounce Back loans scheme in 2020.

    He did so through two companies he owned. One was JAM Financial Limited, which had no employees and negligible assets until the pandemic. In 2020 it took out a loan of £50,000, the maximum sum available under the loans scheme available for medium-sized businesses during the pandemic. For a firm to have received such a loan, they would have needed to report turnover of at least £200,000.

    In 2021 he transferred his shares in the company to his mother and resigned as director.

    The other was Gym Live Health and Fitness Limited, which was dormant until January 31, 2020. Over the following year, it borrowed £20,000, which would have required turnover of £100,000 under the Bounce Back scheme.

    Neither company filed accounts or annual corporate filings after the loans — a violation of the Companies Act.

    As a result of the failure to submit the information required, both companies were due to be struck off the register, meaning they would have ceased to exist and any remaining assets seized by the Crown.

    However, in February 2023, on the same day, the process of suspending both companies was halted after the company regulator received an objection from a third party. It is understood this related to the loans in some way. Both remain active on Companies House.

    Separately, Murdock appears to have breached parliamentary rules by failing to list his directorship of Gym Live Health and Fitness Limited on his register of interests. Parliamentary rules state MPs must register “significant, formal unpaid roles such as an unpaid directorship, a directorship of a company not currently trading, or a trusteeship”.

    Approached for comment, McMurdock warned “be very, very careful” and said “a technical expert” would be needed for anybody to understand the matters. He repeatedly refused to say why he took out the loans.


    https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/reform-mp-james-mcmurdock-suspended-after-sunday-times-investigation-ljh7rtprd

    If true, those are very serious allegations: basically claiming he stole £70,000.
    McMurdock was approached on Thursday but has refused to provide any account publicly or internally

    He won't address the following:
    - did he take govt loans and do so without legitimate purpose/requisite turnover?

    - why did dormant company spring back into action in 2020? 5/

    - why did other company abruptly borrow £50k after Covid struck?

    Instead, he has withdrawn from Reform parliamentary party ahead of investigation by the party.
    6/
    ENDS


    https://x.com/Gabriel_Pogrund/status/1941481184841851256
    Micro accounts are publicly available of course, doesn't seem to be much evidence of activity apart from the loan.

    I'd suggest he's overstating the requirement for a "technical expert", probably 30 second scan for an expert, couple of minutes for an interested amateur.

    Hopefully this has come out because large numbers of BBLs are being questioned/recovered, not just McMurdock's.
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 19,586

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    eek said:

    Foxy said:

    viewcode said:

    Um, @Leon, @Malmesbury et al, the "Universe 25"/"Mouse Utopia"/"Calhoun Experiments", whilst not that well known, were known enough for me to discuss it in one of the works Xmas dinners last Christmas, where I fascinated/repelled various luminaries with the story[1], especially when I threw in the phrase "mouse incel" . The alt-right and frankly insane commentator "WhatIfAltHist" - you'd like him - did a YouTube on them

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink
    https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-old-experiment-with-mice-led-to-bleak-predictions-for-humanitys-future-180954423/
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTDTVbourzU

    [1] I spend a lot of time in trains and taxis, and two of my jobs mean I have a fund of grotesque stories to entertain them. They can be repurposed for a more genteel audience.

    I am not sure that I buy it though. Population Fertility rates for humans are dropping everywhere (albeit from a higher base in Africa etc) whether the country is densely or thinly populated.

    Zambia has 20 million people in a country twice the size of France for example, yet the fertility rate is dropping there too. (Incidentally there is some belief amongst demographers that many estimates of current populations are overestimated in Africa).

    The drop in fertility rates is pretty universal, in both rich and poor countries, the densely and thinly populated, in ones with welfare states and without, in countries with expensive and those with cheap housing, religious and irreligious alike, from different starting points

    I think we have to look at other societal changes, and these would have to be worldwide, and particularly taken up by young women. Smartphones and Internet access spring to mind.
    Education, opportunities, birth control and reduced child mortality rates have all played a part in reduced fertility rates.

    Hardly surprising as most women don't want to be a baby factory and want to do other things with their lives..
    Yes but the later you leave it the harder it is to have children, peak fertility for women is in their twenties and early thirties.

    Plus as the population ages the working age population will have to pay more and more tax to pay for the healthcare etc to support them
    Fewer babies born now means fewer oldies in 60 years' time.
    We are headed to the 421 families seen in China. 4 grandparents, 2 parents, 1 child.
    For which planet Earth says "Thank fuck..."
    The question is whether capitalism works without perpetual growth
    That's a question, but there's also a wider one for human culture more generally when it is dominated by the elderly, and if there's an awareness of an irreversibly shrinking population. I think that would be incredibly dystopian.
  • boulayboulay Posts: 6,440
    Taz said:

    boulay said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Ooopsie.



    https://x.com/LeeAndersonMP_/status/1941469191124681019

    STAY TUNED: The Sunday Times will be publishing its investigation shortly

    https://x.com/Gabriel_Pogrund/status/1941476534180774253

    And that demonstrates why Reform will not be the next government.

    The correct response is to deny the story. It's lies. It's fake news. The lamestream media is just making up shit. Everybody stick together and deny everything.

    Now, sure, democracy is damaged by such a stunt. But the future is post-truth
    I think this demonstrates it better:


    Yet labour and the Lib Dem’s want to extend the vote to 16 year olds. So what’s your problem here ? Or is it okay for young people to have the vote if they vote for the right people ?
    Um, I don’t agree with lowering the voting age. I think it’s worrying, whichever party they are representing, to give such responsibilities to people who have frankly zero experience in life yet alone running anything.

    Would you want an 18 year old managing your pension fund?
  • carnforthcarnforth Posts: 6,542
    In scum news today:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2390x51zqo

    "How fake-will fraudsters stole millions from the dead"
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 46,056

    kinabalu said:

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    FPT on the baby bust (and it’s not so irrelevant - Trump is in some ways a reaction to it)

    The irony is that the world needs far fewer people. Unless and until we can go to other planets we need to put less pressure on Planet Earth, we need to get our present 9 billion down to 1-2 billion

    The problem is how do you get there without societal collapse. Gaia may, in her own way, be doing it for us

    Africa needs fewer people, the western world needs a few more babies
    African birth rates are declining from a very high base and will continue to do so based on forecast.

    Fertility rate has fallen from 6.1 to 4.8 in just over a decade

    So Africa is sorting itself out, especially as it is exporting plenty of young men to Europe.

    https://www.mercatornet.com/to_the_surprise_of_demographers_african_fertility_is_falling
    So Africa more than double replacement fertility rate still, thanks for the confirmation.

    Meanwhile most western nations well below replacement fertility rate meaning ever higher taxes on the working population to fund an ever ageing population.

    While most western voters want their navies to send back the migrant boats where they came from
    Africa, with its declining birth rate and exporting its young men, is going the same way as the west, just more slowly. The more it exports fertile young men to the west the more their birth rates will fall. Now forecast to peak in 2060.

    ‘The UN now projects that Nigeria will have 342 million people by 2060, 200 million less than they forecasted ten years ago. Will even these estimates hold up?’

    What voters want is irrelevant. It’s what the political class wants and they want more. Hell, your party happily hoovered up tens of thousands, with their economically inactive fiscal liability relatives, to wipe old peoples arses.
    On current polls Nigel Farage will be next UK PM and undergo a purge of the political class and a war on immigrants and the migrant boats.

    Immigration fell on the latest figures thanks to the tighter immigration restrictions Sunak brought in
    4 years to go, and some important negative polling on Farage here, so let's see. In a forced choice and despite Starmer's uselessness:



    https://bsky.app/profile/jwsidders.bsky.social/post/3lt676ebrts2i
    Good morning

    How can anyone think Farage would be a better PM than Starmer, but there lies the deep problem as Starmer joins a long list of poor PMs

    I expect Reform to glide down in the polls but who benefits I have no idea
    If the media and social media are telling us all how terrible Starmer (and to an extent Badenoch) is, whilst at the same time tacitly (by giving him a superior platform to either the PM or LOTO) telling us he is a man with answers. Is there a day when that gurning tw** isn't called on by the BBC or similar to criticise this and the previous Government?
    You still persist in this ludicrous self-deception that the Government's problems are purely presentational. 'If only the media didn't film the boat people'...'If only Farage wasn't on question time'...'If only Starmer was a better communicator'...'If only the Government did a better job of talking about its successes.'

    The Government is SHIT. There were already profound problems when they came into power, and they have made all the most salient ones WORSE. If they want to beat Farage, they need to get GOOD - and fast.
    How will we know when they have transitioned from shit to good?

    Will you tell us?
    Yes.

    I'm not tribally biased against Labour - in recent days I've welcomed their planned NHS reforms. In the past, I've also expressed a positive opinion of their changes to CGT (against the settled PB-rightie view), and praised Starmer’s handing of Trump.

    I really don't care who does the right things, but I know what the right things are. So yes, I will tell you when they transition from shit to good - and take pleasure in doing so.
    That's good to know. I'll watch that space.
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