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Latest general election betting – politicalbetting.com
Latest general election betting – politicalbetting.com
On Saturday when the story about James McMurdock broke punters took a dim view about the scandal but Reform have retaken their place as favourites for the most seats. Given his conviction for assaulting his girlfriend I don’t think Nigel Farage will be too upset by this scandal although it is another failure for Reform’s vetting process.
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Before it starts on the rest of us.
Reporter: Do the tariff rates change at all on July 9th or do they change on August 1st?
Trump: What are you talking about?
Reporter: Tariff rates. Do they change on July 9th or August 1st?
Trump: They're going to be tariffs. The tariffs are going to be the tariffs. I think we'll have most countries done by July 9th. Yeah. Either a letter or a deal.
Lutnick: But they go into effect August 1st
https://x.com/Acyn/status/1941976912945193107
The Laotian soldiers are supposed to demine the area and help free up Russian soldiers who will then go to fight in Ukraine itself. Laos has been a communist state since 1975.
https://x.com/visegrad24/status/1941539171321118969
I'm afraid lots of people will vote Reform. ISTM that in the US, people who voted Republican may not like a lot of what Mr Trump is doing, but they strongly approve of what he's doing about their particular hobby horse. It may be the same here.
To get to Murmansk from here would be 17 hours on the road, so on a par with Brits going by coach to the Med.
President Trump's Justice Department and FBI have concluded they have no evidence that Jeffrey Epstein blackmailed powerful figures, kept a "client list” or was murdered, according to a memo detailing the findings obtained by Axios.
https://x.com/axios/status/1942023706328420837
Pam Bondi in February: The Epstein client list is sitting on my desk right now to review.
Pam Bondi today: There is no Epstein client list and no "further disclosure" of Epstein-related material "would be appropriate or warranted."
https://x.com/MeidasTouch/status/1942037456741863792
They are going to hoover up a lot of NOTA votes, protest votes in locals etc and will dominate the 'immigration top concern' market. But we dont yet know how the 'vote, but arent nerds like that pb lot and switch off from active consideration between GEs' people will break, nor if the vote strike ConLab voters will return or how they will break. My working assumption is a slight recovery in both Lab and Con numbers from wherever they are a year or so out (say after LE, London and other Mayorals 28 if we go full term)
Where on earth do we dig these lunatics up, and why do we give them any airtime at all? Why are they not doing something on their own intellectual level like cleaning out a stables?
If they are serious, I would remind them that Balfour had a majority comparable to Starmer's, but proposed taxes on food - much more modest ones - destroyed his government and very nearly his entire political movement.
The Telegraph is concerned by the rising threat posed by Islamist prisoners, and so is everyone's favourite social media star:-
Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, said: “Extremists and career criminals now operate with near impunity inside some of this country’s highest-security prisons.
“That is a complete failure of leadership – and a dangerous abdication of one of the state’s core duties: maintaining order behind bars.
“When Islamist terrorists and organised crime figures are left to forge alliances, we aren’t just witnessing a security lapse – we’re watching a national threat incubate in plain sight. This cannot be allowed to continue.”
There is also a helpful graph to demonstrate this rising threat but can anyone spot an anomaly the Telegraph and Rob J have both missed?
Non-paywalled gift link
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/469148674f565da0
It's a bit like raising fuel duty being a green and progressive thing to do (with the exception of rural communities), and advocated for by pretty much all think tanks, but we all know it will be a political disaster 10x worse than WFP.
For example, you could set a level of a price of car and then add on a luxury vat on purchase of cars over that amount, say £50k. Now there is absolutely no “need” to spend more than £50k on a car and is purely a choice made for reasons.
If you cannot afford to pay the extra rate of luxury vat on your over 50k car then you should probably be questioning whether you should be in the market for a £50k car in the first place as a proportion of your wealth/disposable.
Again this could be rolled out on multiple goods - watches over £200, handbags over £200, clothing over £200 (apart from specialist workwear/sports kit).
There are huge sums spent on “unnecessary” goods in the UK, often that people are buying on the never-never where either the extra tax is rolled into their repayments or it makes people think a bit first.
I can’t think of anyone who is going to be buying a Mercedes G65 who is going to not buy it because there is an extra £20k in tax on it, if you have to squeeze every penny you have to buy it under current VAT then just don’t buy it.
I’m sure someone will point out why this won’t work though.
Every smile you fake,
I'll be taxing you.
Oh can't you see, you belong to me...
Not sure most people in the tax policy world would go the whole hog to standard rating all food though.
Savings rates are through the roof and private debt is the lowest for decades.
We need those OAPs buying as much tat as possible (so long as it’s eco friendly tat). And that includes foreign made goods and foreign holidays, because a large chunk of the associated economic activity and profit arises here.
Which made the rest of the article rather a nonsense.
If my maths is right (it may not be) VAT on food and non alcoholic drink at a low rate - eg 5%- would raise only about £8 billion annually, a sum which is dwarfed by the demands on the state. At 20% it would raise about £32 billion, which begins to look like serious money.
So the critics need to suggest solutions instead of being like Labour MPs who are being the problem rather than the solution.
If there was a recall petition and by election in his Basildon and South Thurrock seat I suspect Reform would hold it even if McMurdock was the candidate
Why, can you imagine such an idiot in the cabinet? It would be like watching the Titanic sink after meeting an Iceberg.
I don’t know a lot of OAPs but the ones I do know seem to be very keen on savings “just in case”. They want a cushion and to leave money to family and so not overly interested in big spending - and these are wealthy people anyway.
So basically a proposal to risk sufficient political capital to sink a government in order to increase the state's share of the economy.
I'd understand if today were April 1st.
If better off OAPs save, perhaps it is because they want maximum protection from the horrors of the social care disaster in their last years.
F1: while I enjoyed watching F1 on Channel 4 live for once, it did, ironically, mean I couldn't watch the Channel 4 highlights (which I do occasionally, for especially good races).
It would also increase the cliff edge problem for those trying to get off benefit and into work.
And if he legitimately borrowed Covid funds for his businesses he won't be facing recall anyway, its if he didn't there's a problem.
Reform have not backed him at all, so the chance of him being the Reform candidate in such circumstances are low
Merge National Insurance and Income Tax should be top of the list so that everyone pays the same rate of tax regardless of how they earn their money, rather than people who work for a living being on a higher rate of tax.
Hence why we can’t rely on the individual to choose what’s best for the country. We need behavioural nudges.
Having a properly structured social care offering would actually probably encourage those rainy day savers to splash the cash more. They’re perfectly capable of doing so when they put their mind to it.
You'd also expect to see an increase in luxury car dealerships in Dublin, and other luxury goods retail pushed overseas, creating a compliance overhead.
Whole-home lithium power used to be a rich man’s game.
Now it’s “high-end graphics card” territory.
This is a $2500, lithium polymer battery that would power an entire US residential house for >24hr.
China is *crushing* it on kilowatt hours per dollar.
https://x.com/lauriewired/status/1941555541152870887
Order of magnitude cheaper than a Tesla powerwall.
Smite the Amalekites, and the screws.
So far PB critics of the IFS have not made a popular and workable counter suggestion. Nor have the welfarist Labour MPs. Without a few good ones a sovereign debt crisis looms.
Mine, FWIW: VAT at low rate on food, tax/NI treatment of non working/pensioner income to be the same as that of workers by merging IT and NI, fuel duty to rise, IT to rise, higher rate VAT on luxuries, IHT at much lower rate but no exemptions, reform property taxes so that Buckingham Palace pays a lot more than semis in Scunthorpe.
Take Neil Kinnock’s idea yesterday for a wealth tax on people with £10m - why £10m and not £9m or £11m?
And there would be no point buying the luxury car in Dublin and bringing it to the Uk as you are still going to have to pay the import duty and VAT etc. That’s why there isn’t a huge market where I live for people to buy luxury cars cheaper than the UK because by the time they have imported it the saving is gone.
If local government had more power to raise and retain income from local development, then there would tend to be more local support for it.
Nimbyism is, partly at least, another legacy of government centralisation.
Austria
Belgium
Croatia
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Finland
France
Germany
Greece
Hungary
Ireland
Italy
Latvia
Luxembourg
Netherlands
Portugal
Romania
Slovakia
Slovenia
Spain
Sweden
The U.K. has one of the widest category of zero rated exemptions.
You can already get close in the Uk - 30kwh for £3500 or under £100 per kWh if you can reclaim the VAT
There's no rule that says they have to recite them all over again when they point out that the IFS is being silly.
1. Merge income tax and national insurance (thereby increasing tax on pensioner income).
2. Restrict tax relief on pension contributions to the basic rate (given how wealthy some pensioners are it's arguable that higher rate taxpayers are saving too much for their retirement).
3. Replace council tax and stamp duty with a proportional property tax, land value tax, or similar tax on property wealth.
I'm sure all of these would provoke howls of outrage to make the kerfuffle over WFA look like the newest political ripple, but fixing the situation isn't going to be done without, as the politicians like to say, hard choices. And on spending, too.
Bear in mind there is no by election if he is innocent so the scenario of Basildon voters not minding only applies if he isn't.
Also there would be years where I wouldn’t be putting anything into my pension because it would be better left in my limited company as retained profits
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1942132189229162960
This one is fairly straight forward - what we have now is utterly absurd. Valuations decades into the past with no band that covers the actual values of so many houses? Madness.
Arguing that we must keep the status quo is cowardice. People don't like or understand council tax anyway, so replacing it shouldn't be that controversial.
Two principles: we need to fund local government effectively, and property is far harder to move out of tax than cash or other assets. So a Land Value Tax to replace Council Tax. Based on actual land value today, not eons ago. Some places are quite expensive, others less so. Won't be as popular in Godalming as is will be in Grimsby.
Essex is likely Ref vs Con right now in the main
The same way that sky high service charges mean 2 blocks of flat next to each other have very different upfront costs with the extra service charges reflected by the overall monthly cost of service charge + mortgage usually even out
Helps that the challenger has previously been in both party's orbits and accidentally has a bazillion dollars to spend and a major social media platform to use.
Is it in any way close to the amount of tax currently forgiven?
Being an Evil Saving Rich Horrible OAP, she has money in various investments she can use for this, instead of decently expecting the state to cough up all the money.
Had his votes gone to his former political home (i know i know but this is for illustration) then the result would have been
30.8 Ref
30.6 Con
30.3 Lab
Point being this is a very very tight seat
So your mean flat in central London would see only a small change. It absolutely hammers high value houses though, while the council tax charge in Hartlepool for a flat would drop to £400, which is at least 75% off.
“I told you I didn’t like Windows”?
West Yorkshire police - please follow this example.