That is not what is being said, she also can cut spending too.
Especially the burgeoning welfare bill although that will be hard politically especially with charities and NGO's complaining the current levels of UC are not enough and the demands to life the 2 child cap.
Then you have to say what you are going to cut.
To save a billion pounds, you need twenty pounds a week from a million households. I'm not saying it can't be done, but it does mean identifying those people as individuals, not as part of a multiplication.
Pretty much any spending cuts from here have to be ones that Osborne, Hammond, Sunak and Hunt weren't prepared to make.
(And yes, the same thing applies to tax rises.)
If that’s what needs to be done then so be it. Nothing Max suggested should be seen as controversial.
However it won’t happen.
The welfare ‘cuts’ proposed weren’t even numeric cuts it was just slowing the rate of growth.
We live in a society where people want to take from the state and expect others to pay. Hence the crap about wealth taxes which just won’t work although I saw something in the press about them considering a ‘windfall levy’ on banks.
Still we can carry on as we are. Not taking the decisions we need to take and then face the consequences. We need to get more people into work but job openings are falling, not helped by Reeves, consistently and have been prior to the election too. We will simply see measures to reduce future spending commitments. Extending pension age, freezing personal allowances etc etc. The core issues won’t be tackled.
If Reeves simply returned to the legislated tax position of the previous government under Boris Johnson, reversing the 2 pre election cuts Hunt made to NI and bringing back the health and social care levy, they’d have a healthy budget surplus.
This is going to be a disaster. They just need to get real and cut spending. Freeze public sector salaries, cut the triple lock and cut public sector pensions. Private sector salary growth is stalling already and the number of vacancies is falling drastically so they can't even cry about a recruitment problem like they moaned about when the last government did it.
Taxes can't go up now without taking money out of the productive base of the economy. There's no more left to give.
This is actually targeted at the unearned wealth of the boomer generation. So I'd have thought you would approve.
It's simply not going to raise enough money and will send wealthy people fleeing overseas. The non-dom changes have already caused a huge hole in the public finances, hitting long term investment two tax rises is going to cause an even bigger loss for the government.
For every billion pounds in tax they raise they are going to take a billion out of the economy, if not more given that they will have to target the productive part meaning money that would otherwise be better used and result in a pretty good 1.5x economic multiplier now goes to the state which consumes. I wouldn't be surprised for every £1bn the government intends to raise by the maths it will only get around £0.5-0.6bn in additional revenue due to slower growth.
Cutting spending is the only answer, it isn't beyond the wit of man to cut 2.5% out of the government budget.
5% should be a dawdle and 10% possible
Ah, you're another of these people (like Elon) who doesn't realize what the government spends its money on.
That is not what is being said, she also can cut spending too.
Especially the burgeoning welfare bill although that will be hard politically especially with charities and NGO's complaining the current levels of UC are not enough and the demands to life the 2 child cap.
Then you have to say what you are going to cut.
To save a billion pounds, you need twenty pounds a week from a million households. I'm not saying it can't be done, but it does mean identifying those people as individuals, not as part of a multiplication.
Pretty much any spending cuts from here have to be ones that Osborne, Hammond, Sunak and Hunt weren't prepared to make.
(And yes, the same thing applies to tax rises.)
If that’s what needs to be done then so be it. Nothing Max suggested should be seen as controversial.
However it won’t happen.
The welfare ‘cuts’ proposed weren’t even numeric cuts it was just slowing the rate of growth.
We live in a society where people want to take from the state and expect others to pay. Hence the crap about wealth taxes which just won’t work although I saw something in the press about them considering a ‘windfall levy’ on banks.
Still we can carry on as we are. Not taking the decisions we need to take and then face the consequences. We need to get more people into work but job openings are falling, not helped by Reeves, consistently and have been prior to the election too. We will simply see measures to reduce future spending commitments. Extending pension age, freezing personal allowances etc etc. The core issues won’t be tackled.
If Reeves simply returned to the legislated tax position of the previous government under Boris Johnson, reversing the 2 pre election cuts Hunt made to NI and bringing back the health and social care levy, they’d have a healthy budget surplus.
And another £30bn out of the economy. Taxes aren't free money for the state.
This is going to be a disaster. They just need to get real and cut spending. Freeze public sector salaries, cut the triple lock and cut public sector pensions. Private sector salary growth is stalling already and the number of vacancies is falling drastically so they can't even cry about a recruitment problem like they moaned about when the last government did it.
Taxes can't go up now without taking money out of the productive base of the economy. There's no more left to give.
This is actually targeted at the unearned wealth of the boomer generation. So I'd have thought you would approve.
It's simply not going to raise enough money and will send wealthy people fleeing overseas. The non-dom changes have already caused a huge hole in the public finances, hitting long term investment two tax rises is going to cause an even bigger loss for the government.
For every billion pounds in tax they raise they are going to take a billion out of the economy, if not more given that they will have to target the productive part meaning money that would otherwise be better used and result in a pretty good 1.5x economic multiplier now goes to the state which consumes. I wouldn't be surprised for every £1bn the government intends to raise by the maths it will only get around £0.5-0.6bn in additional revenue due to slower growth.
Cutting spending is the only answer, it isn't beyond the wit of man to cut 2.5% out of the government budget.
5% should be a dawdle and 10% possible
Ah, you're another of these people (like Elon) who doesn't realize what the government spends its money on.
The British public position on tax and spend is as follows:
1. They should raise taxes on other people who are not me 2. They should cut spending on other people who are not me
This is going to be a disaster. They just need to get real and cut spending. Freeze public sector salaries, cut the triple lock and cut public sector pensions. Private sector salary growth is stalling already and the number of vacancies is falling drastically so they can't even cry about a recruitment problem like they moaned about when the last government did it.
Taxes can't go up now without taking money out of the productive base of the economy. There's no more left to give.
This is actually targeted at the unearned wealth of the boomer generation. So I'd have thought you would approve.
It's simply not going to raise enough money and will send wealthy people fleeing overseas. The non-dom changes have already caused a huge hole in the public finances, hitting long term investment two tax rises is going to cause an even bigger loss for the government.
For every billion pounds in tax they raise they are going to take a billion out of the economy, if not more given that they will have to target the productive part meaning money that would otherwise be better used and result in a pretty good 1.5x economic multiplier now goes to the state which consumes. I wouldn't be surprised for every £1bn the government intends to raise by the maths it will only get around £0.5-0.6bn in additional revenue due to slower growth.
Cutting spending is the only answer, it isn't beyond the wit of man to cut 2.5% out of the government budget.
This stands at about £1.3 tn at the moment. 2.5% is about £32 billion. That's a cut of £1000 pa in expenditure for 32 million people, or £10,000 for 3.2 million people.
Even when you have identified these cuts (answers on a postcard to 11 Downing Street) you have only cut about a third of our annual debt interest payments, or about a fifth of the additional amount we are borrowing each year for our grandchildren to pay back.
Or cutting about 600k jobs from state employment. I'd do over a million job cuts out of middle management and admin within two years.
You're also ignoring the fact that if the government signalled it was prepared to make substantial spending cuts with job losses in the public sector the debt interest bill would fall from two factors - lower inflation and a lower risk premium. A £32bn cut in spending will be coupled with a £10-15bn cut in debt interest yielding between about £40bn in savings even after unemployment benefits are factored in, maybe £20bn in years one and two due to the cost of paying people off.
I'd also cut benefits substantially, cut public sector pensions by at least 25% plus introduce a defined benefit tax on that specific class of income taxed at source just like PAYE and legislate to shift the index to CPI, kill the triple lock and for another £15-20bn in annual savings.
I'd also cancel the 2m+ low income and dependent visas that arrived from 2020 and I'd make all of the "skilled" workers from before the income increase reapply for their visas and invalidate those who don't meet the new threshold within 6 months. Companies either pay more for the foreign workers or they find a British person who is capable of doing the £27-38k per year job they can't have migrants for.
I'd also cut the whole asylum budget, set up camps with very high fences, tents and no right to leave the camp until they have had their claim processed, no rights to any benefits even for people who receive status for a minimum period of 10 years and no citizenship for a minimum period of 20 years. People who are declined have no right of appeal and are removed either to their home country or to a third country like Rwanda, they get to choose which they'd prefer. If that breaks their human rights then so be it, they can choose some other country to go and leech from.
The state is simply too generous, the UK is a middle income country with expenditure on welfare of a rich country. Welfare needs to be cut.
Katie Lam here is absolutely right.
ILR for the Boriswave simply is not sustainable for the many hundreds of thousands low wage migrants with economically inactive dependents. It will make the problems we have now worse.
Tell them tanks, give them a picture of a spitfire or a carriage clock, and send them on their way
That is not what is being said, she also can cut spending too.
Especially the burgeoning welfare bill although that will be hard politically especially with charities and NGO's complaining the current levels of UC are not enough and the demands to life the 2 child cap.
Then you have to say what you are going to cut.
To save a billion pounds, you need twenty pounds a week from a million households. I'm not saying it can't be done, but it does mean identifying those people as individuals, not as part of a multiplication.
Pretty much any spending cuts from here have to be ones that Osborne, Hammond, Sunak and Hunt weren't prepared to make.
(And yes, the same thing applies to tax rises.)
If that’s what needs to be done then so be it. Nothing Max suggested should be seen as controversial.
However it won’t happen.
The welfare ‘cuts’ proposed weren’t even numeric cuts it was just slowing the rate of growth.
We live in a society where people want to take from the state and expect others to pay. Hence the crap about wealth taxes which just won’t work although I saw something in the press about them considering a ‘windfall levy’ on banks.
Still we can carry on as we are. Not taking the decisions we need to take and then face the consequences. We need to get more people into work but job openings are falling, not helped by Reeves, consistently and have been prior to the election too. We will simply see measures to reduce future spending commitments. Extending pension age, freezing personal allowances etc etc. The core issues won’t be tackled.
If Reeves simply returned to the legislated tax position of the previous government under Boris Johnson, reversing the 2 pre election cuts Hunt made to NI and bringing back the health and social care levy, they’d have a healthy budget surplus.
And another £30bn out of the economy. Taxes aren't free money for the state.
Just the maths. I trust you were equally excoriating of comrade Boris and his arch socialist chancellor Sunak at the time.
What do you think slashing welfare spending would do to the economy?
In terms of testing older drivers, I think that the real problem is reaction time rather than vision. In some US States the vision rules are so lax that people who are registered partially sighted can drive, but there is little evidence those states have more accidents. Reaction time is more critical, and requires not just vision, but also acting on hazards, particularly so where there is cognitive impairment developing, though physical frailty too.
Vision is at least fairly easy to test, with objective measures, but reaction time etc is more difficult. At the very least it requires a good simulator, but more realistically an on the road test, and we have very limited capacity for those.
I remember arcade machines where you had to press a button to see how quickly you reacted. They can’t be expensive, and could be located in opticians, GP surgeries, etc.
That is not what is being said, she also can cut spending too.
Especially the burgeoning welfare bill although that will be hard politically especially with charities and NGO's complaining the current levels of UC are not enough and the demands to life the 2 child cap.
Then you have to say what you are going to cut.
To save a billion pounds, you need twenty pounds a week from a million households. I'm not saying it can't be done, but it does mean identifying those people as individuals, not as part of a multiplication.
Pretty much any spending cuts from here have to be ones that Osborne, Hammond, Sunak and Hunt weren't prepared to make.
(And yes, the same thing applies to tax rises.)
If that’s what needs to be done then so be it. Nothing Max suggested should be seen as controversial.
However it won’t happen.
The welfare ‘cuts’ proposed weren’t even numeric cuts it was just slowing the rate of growth.
We live in a society where people want to take from the state and expect others to pay. Hence the crap about wealth taxes which just won’t work although I saw something in the press about them considering a ‘windfall levy’ on banks.
Still we can carry on as we are. Not taking the decisions we need to take and then face the consequences. We need to get more people into work but job openings are falling, not helped by Reeves, consistently and have been prior to the election too. We will simply see measures to reduce future spending commitments. Extending pension age, freezing personal allowances etc etc. The core issues won’t be tackled.
If Reeves simply returned to the legislated tax position of the previous government under Boris Johnson, reversing the 2 pre election cuts Hunt made to NI and bringing back the health and social care levy, they’d have a healthy budget surplus.
And another £30bn out of the economy. Taxes aren't free money for the state.
Yes, but there will be screaming over every cut.
It's why the Tories relied so much on public sector pay freezes and fiscal drag.
Coming a bit late to the debate but a few observations.
1. Agree with tightening up the laws on drink driving. I know from my own experience that there is really no level of alcohol I can consume without it affecting my driving. This has always been the way with me even when I was able to drink heavily in my student days. So my rule for my whole driving career has been that I won't drive after drinking any alcohol at all. I think the 0.5 g/l level seems reasonable for legal purposes but think the 0.2 g/l level used in Norway and other Eureopan countries is probably a bit excessive as it does catch out a lot of people with the 'morning after' effect.
2. Whilst I agree with the eye tests, I don't see why they should start at 70. Deterioration in eye function can and does start much earlier for many people. AT 60 my eyesight is no where near as good as it was at 50. Perhaps we should consider an eye test as necessary for veryone renewing their licence every 10 years. As someone pointed out yesterday, setting the starting age at 70 but expecting people with driving jobs to continue until they are 67 (and sure to rise in the future) seems a bit daft to me.
3. What does seem to be missing from these proposals is the need to do far more than just test eyesight for the elderly. I would be interstd to know how many accdents are caused by poor eyesight and how many by other infirmaties. Currently it is pretty much impossible for a concerned relative to get someones driving licence revoked even when it is obvious to family members they are no longer fit to drive. It can be a cause of great animosity within families and as a result often it is just ignored. A test for mental and physical ability to drive safely should become a standard part of a more regular licence renewal for the elderly.
Fair enough but I disagree with pretty much all of this, as I do the suggestion of "no passenger" rules for young new drivers over on the BBC.
The last thing we need is more restrictions, process, and regulations regarding how we move around.
We are obsessed with trying to legislate to remove all risk in this country, regardless of the economic or social impact.
These are basic safety ideas to stop people getting killed. As you know two 18 year old lads from my sons class got killed in June as passengers in cars driven by new drivers. Both the young and the old need some controls placed on their driving where they are a danger to others.
It is not a question of legislating to emove 'All' risk, simply to deal with the bleeding obvious risks posed by those who are unfit to drive, either due to age or being under the influence.
I didn't know that and I'm sorry to hear that.
The trouble is if you legislate for a tragedy that hits and restricts the options for all 18 year old drivers, and there are over 150k of them.
In general, one should always be cautious in responding to a tragedy with knee-jerk legislation. And I don't agree with it.
Instead I'd put the risk and judgement onto the 18 year olds themselves. Most of whom will get it absolutely right.
Except it is not just them who are at risk of being killed or injured.
Overall, in 2023, around a fifth of all killed or seriously injured (KSI) casualties from collisions involving cars were in collisions which involved a young car driver.
Young male car drivers aged 17 to 24 are 4 times as likely to be killed or seriously injured compared with all car drivers aged 25 or over.
In 2023 there were 4959 people killed or seriously injured in accidents involving a young driver. In 2023 there were 1860 people killed or seriously injured in accidents involving a drunk driver.
So more than twice as many people were killed or seriously injured in accidents involving young drivers as were killed or seriously injured in accidents involving drunk drivers.
There is an argument for preventing young men from driving until they are age 25 and the risk assessing part of their brain is fully developed. Young women are more mature at 16 than young men at 24 IMHO.
And it's a silly argument, if you ask me.
You'd put a major obstacle in the mobility of young people in getting a job and living active social lives. Cars get safer all the time, and more automated. Those figures show the casualties from a collision involving at least one younger car driver decreased from 12,257 to 4,959, a fall of 60% since 2004.
I don't favour any change.
Isn't that at least in part to the numbers?
There are fewer youngsters as a percentage of the population, fewer youngsters have driving licences, fewer youngsters drink alcohol, and fewer go out at night, therefore fewer fatal accidents involving youngsters.
Better car safety obviously helps too.
It could be, without analysis that's just speculation though.
Fewer youngsters may well be part of it but I'd be surprised if demographic drove anything close to a 60% drop over the 2004-2023 period.
Only a third of 17-25 year olds have a licence and are driving. This is quite a big sociological change
That is not what is being said, she also can cut spending too.
Especially the burgeoning welfare bill although that will be hard politically especially with charities and NGO's complaining the current levels of UC are not enough and the demands to life the 2 child cap.
Then you have to say what you are going to cut.
To save a billion pounds, you need twenty pounds a week from a million households. I'm not saying it can't be done, but it does mean identifying those people as individuals, not as part of a multiplication.
Pretty much any spending cuts from here have to be ones that Osborne, Hammond, Sunak and Hunt weren't prepared to make.
(And yes, the same thing applies to tax rises.)
If that’s what needs to be done then so be it. Nothing Max suggested should be seen as controversial.
However it won’t happen.
The welfare ‘cuts’ proposed weren’t even numeric cuts it was just slowing the rate of growth.
We live in a society where people want to take from the state and expect others to pay. Hence the crap about wealth taxes which just won’t work although I saw something in the press about them considering a ‘windfall levy’ on banks.
Still we can carry on as we are. Not taking the decisions we need to take and then face the consequences. We need to get more people into work but job openings are falling, not helped by Reeves, consistently and have been prior to the election too. We will simply see measures to reduce future spending commitments. Extending pension age, freezing personal allowances etc etc. The core issues won’t be tackled.
If Reeves simply returned to the legislated tax position of the previous government under Boris Johnson, reversing the 2 pre election cuts Hunt made to NI and bringing back the health and social care levy, they’d have a healthy budget surplus.
And another £30bn out of the economy. Taxes aren't free money for the state.
Yes, but there will be screaming over every cut.
It's why the Tories relied so much on public sector pay freezes and fiscal drag.
Cut planning regulations and save local authority money on planners, consultants and lawyers.
In terms of testing older drivers, I think that the real problem is reaction time rather than vision. In some US States the vision rules are so lax that people who are registered partially sighted can drive, but there is little evidence those states have more accidents. Reaction time is more critical, and requires not just vision, but also acting on hazards, particularly so where there is cognitive impairment developing, though physical frailty too.
Vision is at least fairly easy to test, with objective measures, but reaction time etc is more difficult. At the very least it requires a good simulator, but more realistically an on the road test, and we have very limited capacity for those.
I remember arcade machines where you had to press a button to see how quickly you reacted. They can’t be expensive, and could be located in opticians, GP surgeries, etc.
If you want an easy test try Fruit Ninja on an iPad.
Then have a pint and try again. Even if barely noticing the alcohol the level of performance drops very quickly.
A budget is either a fiscal tightening one, in which case it “takes money out oh the economy” (but may reduce the cost of money and debt) or it’s a fiscal loosening one which puts money into the economy.
The economic impact of different measures varies depending on whether they suppress or encourage spending, but there is no fundamental difference to the immediate stimulus or retrenchment between spending cut and tax changes.
If it were up to me (which it isn’t) I’d do whatever it takes to stimulate consumer and business demand. We have to get out of this ridiculous Japanese style situation where government debt subsidises individual saving.
In terms of testing older drivers, I think that the real problem is reaction time rather than vision. In some US States the vision rules are so lax that people who are registered partially sighted can drive, but there is little evidence those states have more accidents. Reaction time is more critical, and requires not just vision, but also acting on hazards, particularly so where there is cognitive impairment developing, though physical frailty too.
Vision is at least fairly easy to test, with objective measures, but reaction time etc is more difficult. At the very least it requires a good simulator, but more realistically an on the road test, and we have very limited capacity for those.
I remember arcade machines where you had to press a button to see how quickly you reacted. They can’t be expensive, and could be located in opticians, GP surgeries, etc.
There's already a machine. Opticians use them to measure peripheral vision perception. It is like a computer game. You stare at the screen - eyes fixed on centre point - and then flashes of coloured pixels appear for a second or less in the periphery and you have to v quickly press a switch.
This machine could be attempted to also measure the reaction time pretty easily I reckon.
That is not so much "on manoeuvres" as parking his tanks on Kemi's and Starmer's lawns. Nigel might be missing the boat too, n'est pas? Boris lives close by, I hope he's been invited perhaps as the potential titular PM after the US coup.
Either way, Jenrick is smashing this out of the park.
A budget is either a fiscal tightening one, in which case it “takes money out oh the economy” (but may reduce the cost of money and debt) or it’s a fiscal loosening one which puts money into the economy.
The economic impact of different measures varies depending on whether they suppress or encourage spending, but there is no fundamental difference to the immediate stimulus or retrenchment between spending cut and tax changes.
If it were up to me (which it isn’t) I’d do whatever it takes to stimulate consumer and business demand. We have to get out of this ridiculous Japanese style situation where government debt subsidises individual saving.
Yes, so cut spending by £70bn, cut taxes by £20bn and bank £50bn. Close the border to new immigrants except very highly paid/skilled workers.
So more than twice as many people were killed or seriously injured in accidents involving young drivers as were killed or seriously injured in accidents involving drunk drivers.
I find it frustrating we have graduated licences for motorcycles, but not cars. If someone under 24 cannot be trusted to ride a fast motorcycle, on which they may die if they make a mistake, they should not be permitted to drive a car that can kill multiple people if driven badly.
There's been a notable lack of political will around fixing the problems with young drivers.
I find the problem with further legislation is its is impossible back dated to when those in pushing the reforms would be afflicted, Its easy to apply restrictions to others and knowing that it is for their own good makes it easier but these rules will restrict the lives of future drivers much like the C1 vehicle unfairness is right now.
The complete hash made of the towing rules in the late 90s is a good example of what not to do.
IIRC they managed to design a system for drivers who took a test after 1997 with a 3500kg hard cap on total train weight where the only other requirement was for the towing vehicle to be at least the same weight as the trailer. This was insane, as it meant you could tow more with a empty 109“ series landrover (1750kg unladen) than almost anything else, despite an empty 109“ being a pretty deadly thing to tow with (not enough weight on the back axle - if you used one as a tow motor you needed to load ~300kg of scrap iron in the back to make it behave).
Most of us who towed plant trailers regularly ignored it all on the basis that virtually no-one (including the plod) understood the rules anyway.
One of the better brexit dividends was binning it all off (it was a EU imposition designed to align national driving licenses) and giving everyone with a car licence the entitlement to tow trailers up to 3500kg (7000kg train weight).
The last thing we want or need is to think up more stupidity like this...
In terms of testing older drivers, I think that the real problem is reaction time rather than vision. In some US States the vision rules are so lax that people who are registered partially sighted can drive, but there is little evidence those states have more accidents. Reaction time is more critical, and requires not just vision, but also acting on hazards, particularly so where there is cognitive impairment developing, though physical frailty too.
Vision is at least fairly easy to test, with objective measures, but reaction time etc is more difficult. At the very least it requires a good simulator, but more realistically an on the road test, and we have very limited capacity for those.
I remember arcade machines where you had to press a button to see how quickly you reacted. They can’t be expensive, and could be located in opticians, GP surgeries, etc.
There's already a machine. Opticians use them to measure peripheral vision perception. It is like a computer game. You stare at the screen - eyes fixed on centre point - and then flashes of coloured pixels appear for a second or less in the periphery and you have to v quickly press a switch.
This machine could be attempted to also measure the reaction time pretty easily I reckon.
No, visual field tests are designed to test peripheral vision, not reaction time.
Coming a bit late to the debate but a few observations.
1. Agree with tightening up the laws on drink driving. I know from my own experience that there is really no level of alcohol I can consume without it affecting my driving. This has always been the way with me even when I was able to drink heavily in my student days. So my rule for my whole driving career has been that I won't drive after drinking any alcohol at all. I think the 0.5 g/l level seems reasonable for legal purposes but think the 0.2 g/l level used in Norway and other Eureopan countries is probably a bit excessive as it does catch out a lot of people with the 'morning after' effect.
2. Whilst I agree with the eye tests, I don't see why they should start at 70. Deterioration in eye function can and does start much earlier for many people. AT 60 my eyesight is no where near as good as it was at 50. Perhaps we should consider an eye test as necessary for veryone renewing their licence every 10 years. As someone pointed out yesterday, setting the starting age at 70 but expecting people with driving jobs to continue until they are 67 (and sure to rise in the future) seems a bit daft to me.
3. What does seem to be missing from these proposals is the need to do far more than just test eyesight for the elderly. I would be interstd to know how many accdents are caused by poor eyesight and how many by other infirmaties. Currently it is pretty much impossible for a concerned relative to get someones driving licence revoked even when it is obvious to family members they are no longer fit to drive. It can be a cause of great animosity within families and as a result often it is just ignored. A test for mental and physical ability to drive safely should become a standard part of a more regular licence renewal for the elderly.
Fair enough but I disagree with pretty much all of this, as I do the suggestion of "no passenger" rules for young new drivers over on the BBC.
The last thing we need is more restrictions, process, and regulations regarding how we move around.
We are obsessed with trying to legislate to remove all risk in this country, regardless of the economic or social impact.
These are basic safety ideas to stop people getting killed. As you know two 18 year old lads from my sons class got killed in June as passengers in cars driven by new drivers. Both the young and the old need some controls placed on their driving where they are a danger to others.
It is not a question of legislating to emove 'All' risk, simply to deal with the bleeding obvious risks posed by those who are unfit to drive, either due to age or being under the influence.
I didn't know that and I'm sorry to hear that.
The trouble is if you legislate for a tragedy that hits and restricts the options for all 18 year old drivers, and there are over 150k of them.
In general, one should always be cautious in responding to a tragedy with knee-jerk legislation. And I don't agree with it.
Instead I'd put the risk and judgement onto the 18 year olds themselves. Most of whom will get it absolutely right.
Except it is not just them who are at risk of being killed or injured.
Overall, in 2023, around a fifth of all killed or seriously injured (KSI) casualties from collisions involving cars were in collisions which involved a young car driver.
Young male car drivers aged 17 to 24 are 4 times as likely to be killed or seriously injured compared with all car drivers aged 25 or over.
In 2023 there were 4959 people killed or seriously injured in accidents involving a young driver. In 2023 there were 1860 people killed or seriously injured in accidents involving a drunk driver.
So more than twice as many people were killed or seriously injured in accidents involving young drivers as were killed or seriously injured in accidents involving drunk drivers.
Not doubting you, but where do you get those figures from?
As somebody who in about 18 months will have a kid ready to take his driving test I find this terrifying.
Coming a bit late to the debate but a few observations.
1. Agree with tightening up the laws on drink driving. I know from my own experience that there is really no level of alcohol I can consume without it affecting my driving. This has always been the way with me even when I was able to drink heavily in my student days. So my rule for my whole driving career has been that I won't drive after drinking any alcohol at all. I think the 0.5 g/l level seems reasonable for legal purposes but think the 0.2 g/l level used in Norway and other Eureopan countries is probably a bit excessive as it does catch out a lot of people with the 'morning after' effect.
2. Whilst I agree with the eye tests, I don't see why they should start at 70. Deterioration in eye function can and does start much earlier for many people. AT 60 my eyesight is no where near as good as it was at 50. Perhaps we should consider an eye test as necessary for veryone renewing their licence every 10 years. As someone pointed out yesterday, setting the starting age at 70 but expecting people with driving jobs to continue until they are 67 (and sure to rise in the future) seems a bit daft to me.
3. What does seem to be missing from these proposals is the need to do far more than just test eyesight for the elderly. I would be interstd to know how many accdents are caused by poor eyesight and how many by other infirmaties. Currently it is pretty much impossible for a concerned relative to get someones driving licence revoked even when it is obvious to family members they are no longer fit to drive. It can be a cause of great animosity within families and as a result often it is just ignored. A test for mental and physical ability to drive safely should become a standard part of a more regular licence renewal for the elderly.
Fair enough but I disagree with pretty much all of this, as I do the suggestion of "no passenger" rules for young new drivers over on the BBC.
The last thing we need is more restrictions, process, and regulations regarding how we move around.
We are obsessed with trying to legislate to remove all risk in this country, regardless of the economic or social impact.
These are basic safety ideas to stop people getting killed. As you know two 18 year old lads from my sons class got killed in June as passengers in cars driven by new drivers. Both the young and the old need some controls placed on their driving where they are a danger to others.
It is not a question of legislating to emove 'All' risk, simply to deal with the bleeding obvious risks posed by those who are unfit to drive, either due to age or being under the influence.
I didn't know that and I'm sorry to hear that.
The trouble is if you legislate for a tragedy that hits and restricts the options for all 18 year old drivers, and there are over 150k of them.
In general, one should always be cautious in responding to a tragedy with knee-jerk legislation. And I don't agree with it.
Instead I'd put the risk and judgement onto the 18 year olds themselves. Most of whom will get it absolutely right.
Except it is not just them who are at risk of being killed or injured.
Overall, in 2023, around a fifth of all killed or seriously injured (KSI) casualties from collisions involving cars were in collisions which involved a young car driver.
Young male car drivers aged 17 to 24 are 4 times as likely to be killed or seriously injured compared with all car drivers aged 25 or over.
In 2023 there were 4959 people killed or seriously injured in accidents involving a young driver. In 2023 there were 1860 people killed or seriously injured in accidents involving a drunk driver.
So more than twice as many people were killed or seriously injured in accidents involving young drivers as were killed or seriously injured in accidents involving drunk drivers.
Not doubting you, but where do you get those figures from?
As somebody who in about 18 months will have a kid ready to take his driving test I find this terrifying.
Hopefully useful suggestions.
- Make sure his training is about road safety principles, not just about "learning to drive", and try to make sure he keeps learning. I think there's a lot about psychology of young men in particular needing to "perform" to convince themselves of their own value. How that turns out depends on the individual, but in white working class it can easily be BMWs with loud exhausts and fast driving to impress a girl, which can morph into risks like drink driving. That should not apply to your sprogs, perhaps .
- Consider taking him to a ROSPA or other course before he reaches 17 - one that is fun but also teaches about careful and considerate driving. 16th birthday? Depending on your relationship, go along yourself for a refresher yourself or frame yourself as regretting not doing it. I span my dads family car off a roundabout at 17 years 8 months at 1am - not drunk, just inexperienced with frost. In retrospect I passed by test too soon.
- I am told there is value in learning to ride a motorcycle first, in terms of developing a cautious and defensive style. I think he can do that at 16 on a moped. That may help nobble any reckless tendencies, which we all have in there somewhere.
- Encourage him to continue learning by funding him straight through to do advanced driving - ROSPA or IAM, and perhaps with the same instructor for some lessons ... motorways etc. Insurance savings may be helpful for him, even though dad is as rich as Croesus.
I can buy index linked senior Gilts that yield 5.03% (22/03/29) and on the same day I am advertised similar fixed term mortgages for 3.8%
I could borrow £500k against a property, pay the bank £19,000 pa interest and sink the cash into inflation proof Gilts that pay me £25,150 pa.
Obviously I have skipped taxes for the sake of simplicity (everyone’s taxes are different), but you shouldn’t be able to carry trade the risk free rate of return INSIDE a currency?
Why are UK banks seemingly offering this arbitrage? Are they just trying to prop up their residential property books?
It feels one of those things you notice that screams “something is going to break soon”.
The problem with the 2012 opening ceremony (and I suppose it's not one that Truss can point out given her present political views) is that it 'celebrated' the NHS even though the vast amounts of money the ceremony cost could have been better spent, particularly at that time, on the NHS.
Disagree.
The money spent on the opening ceremony and the games themselves go lots of people into sport. Thats far better than spaffing it on the ever growing behemoth of the NHS.
What’s funny about the 2012 ceremony fetishising the NHS is the idea that it is the envy of the world. It’s really not. It performs pretty well on a per unit money basis but on a whole lot of other measures it’s ways behind lots of countries that were competing at 2012. The NHS is brilliant is a national myth of the British, just as we have the myth of being alone in 1940 facing Hitler (accurate apart from all our allies in the Empire and Commonweatlth, plus lots of US help). We really ought to be looking at what the best options are around the world for evolving our provision.
Coming a bit late to the debate but a few observations.
1. Agree with tightening up the laws on drink driving. I know from my own experience that there is really no level of alcohol I can consume without it affecting my driving. This has always been the way with me even when I was able to drink heavily in my student days. So my rule for my whole driving career has been that I won't drive after drinking any alcohol at all. I think the 0.5 g/l level seems reasonable for legal purposes but think the 0.2 g/l level used in Norway and other Eureopan countries is probably a bit excessive as it does catch out a lot of people with the 'morning after' effect.
2. Whilst I agree with the eye tests, I don't see why they should start at 70. Deterioration in eye function can and does start much earlier for many people. AT 60 my eyesight is no where near as good as it was at 50. Perhaps we should consider an eye test as necessary for veryone renewing their licence every 10 years. As someone pointed out yesterday, setting the starting age at 70 but expecting people with driving jobs to continue until they are 67 (and sure to rise in the future) seems a bit daft to me.
3. What does seem to be missing from these proposals is the need to do far more than just test eyesight for the elderly. I would be interstd to know how many accdents are caused by poor eyesight and how many by other infirmaties. Currently it is pretty much impossible for a concerned relative to get someones driving licence revoked even when it is obvious to family members they are no longer fit to drive. It can be a cause of great animosity within families and as a result often it is just ignored. A test for mental and physical ability to drive safely should become a standard part of a more regular licence renewal for the elderly.
Fair enough but I disagree with pretty much all of this, as I do the suggestion of "no passenger" rules for young new drivers over on the BBC.
The last thing we need is more restrictions, process, and regulations regarding how we move around.
We are obsessed with trying to legislate to remove all risk in this country, regardless of the economic or social impact.
These are basic safety ideas to stop people getting killed. As you know two 18 year old lads from my sons class got killed in June as passengers in cars driven by new drivers. Both the young and the old need some controls placed on their driving where they are a danger to others.
It is not a question of legislating to emove 'All' risk, simply to deal with the bleeding obvious risks posed by those who are unfit to drive, either due to age or being under the influence.
I didn't know that and I'm sorry to hear that.
The trouble is if you legislate for a tragedy that hits and restricts the options for all 18 year old drivers, and there are over 150k of them.
In general, one should always be cautious in responding to a tragedy with knee-jerk legislation. And I don't agree with it.
Instead I'd put the risk and judgement onto the 18 year olds themselves. Most of whom will get it absolutely right.
Except it is not just them who are at risk of being killed or injured.
Overall, in 2023, around a fifth of all killed or seriously injured (KSI) casualties from collisions involving cars were in collisions which involved a young car driver.
Young male car drivers aged 17 to 24 are 4 times as likely to be killed or seriously injured compared with all car drivers aged 25 or over.
In 2023 there were 4959 people killed or seriously injured in accidents involving a young driver. In 2023 there were 1860 people killed or seriously injured in accidents involving a drunk driver.
So more than twice as many people were killed or seriously injured in accidents involving young drivers as were killed or seriously injured in accidents involving drunk drivers.
Not doubting you, but where do you get those figures from?
As somebody who in about 18 months will have a kid ready to take his driving test I find this terrifying.
The contributory factors breakdown for 2023 has speeding top, but there may be multiple factors and it's imperfect as it relies on the investigating officer and what they tick. Certainly youth and male are overrepresented in drivers involved in ksi. As are rural roads which probably strongly correlates with risky speeding/loss of control.
Given my last 2 cars have been capable of telling me I'm driving poorly. I don't see why they can't be used more effectively and that driver tailgating you or on the limit of control on a winding country road find that the car has gone onto limp mode or at least vastly reduced performance.
I can buy index linked senior Gilts that yield 5.03% (22/03/29) and on the same day I am advertised similar fixed term mortgages for 3.8%
I could borrow £500k against a property, pay the bank £19,000 pa interest and sink the cash into inflation proof Gilts that pay me £25,150 pa.
Obviously I have skipped taxes for the sake of simplicity (everyone’s taxes are different), but you shouldn’t be able to carry trade the risk free rate of return INSIDE a currency?
Why are UK banks seemingly offering this arbitrage? Are they just trying to prop up their residential property books?
It feels one of those things you notice that screams “something is going to break soon”.
That is not what is being said, she also can cut spending too.
Especially the burgeoning welfare bill although that will be hard politically especially with charities and NGO's complaining the current levels of UC are not enough and the demands to life the 2 child cap.
Then you have to say what you are going to cut.
To save a billion pounds, you need twenty pounds a week from a million households. I'm not saying it can't be done, but it does mean identifying those people as individuals, not as part of a multiplication.
Pretty much any spending cuts from here have to be ones that Osborne, Hammond, Sunak and Hunt weren't prepared to make.
(And yes, the same thing applies to tax rises.)
If that’s what needs to be done then so be it. Nothing Max suggested should be seen as controversial.
However it won’t happen.
The welfare ‘cuts’ proposed weren’t even numeric cuts it was just slowing the rate of growth.
We live in a society where people want to take from the state and expect others to pay. Hence the crap about wealth taxes which just won’t work although I saw something in the press about them considering a ‘windfall levy’ on banks.
Still we can carry on as we are. Not taking the decisions we need to take and then face the consequences. We need to get more people into work but job openings are falling, not helped by Reeves, consistently and have been prior to the election too. We will simply see measures to reduce future spending commitments. Extending pension age, freezing personal allowances etc etc. The core issues won’t be tackled.
Especially given they get more money on the dole, free house and council tax and no NI or income tax. It is mental.
IHT was a fairly quiet subject until the recent changes on farms and family businesses, which will adversely affect those without time to replan their financial arrangements. This made it a noisy subject.
The reason it was quiet is because it was avoidable. The rich, both old money and new money, can plan around it. Lincoln's Inn and countless solicitors and accountants do nicely out of it.
A reform which truly sought to make it unavoidable would stir a hornet's nest. But this is because of the ludicrous rate applied. at the moment the choice is either pay 40% or avoid. It's a no brainer. An IHT/inter vivos gift tax at 5% or 10% and unavoidable would make far better sense.
Yes a 10% inheritance tax with no exemptions would almost certainly raise more money than the current system.
The lawyers and accountants would squeal very loudly at the prospect though.
The problem with the 2012 opening ceremony (and I suppose it's not one that Truss can point out given her present political views) is that it 'celebrated' the NHS even though the vast amounts of money the ceremony cost could have been better spent, particularly at that time, on the NHS.
Disagree.
The money spent on the opening ceremony and the games themselves go lots of people into sport. Thats far better than spaffing it on the ever growing behemoth of the NHS.
What’s funny about the 2012 ceremony fetishising the NHS is the idea that it is the envy of the world. It’s really not. It performs pretty well on a per unit money basis but on a whole lot of other measures it’s ways behind lots of countries that were competing at 2012. The NHS is brilliant is a national myth of the British, just as we have the myth of being alone in 1940 facing Hitler (accurate apart from all our allies in the Empire and Commonweatlth, plus lots of US help). We really ought to be looking at what the best options are around the world for evolving our provision.
Yes, but wasn't the whole opening ceremony about national foundation myths, starting with a rural arcadia, then victorian mills erupting out of the ground, Brunel, the wars, the NHS, swinging London etc.
It wasn't a hymn to the NHS so much as a milestone in our history, and also why the old fashioned beds and nurses.
It's almost as if people don't understand the concept of telling the national story (and a heavily romanticised one of course).
The main lesson we need to learn from Mr Trump is not to vote for people like him .
TBF I wasn't *that* keen on all of the Olympic Opening Ceremony. I was particularly uncomfortable with the 1950s nurses dancing.
I felt that Danny Boyle ( .. the hills, the hills are ca-alling ..) did what Farage does, he glorified an imagined perfect age that never happened. 1950s were imprisonment in mental hospitals for life and iron lungs. He should have looked it in the eye.
I think an Olympic opening ceremony by Charlie Brooker would reflect our history and future quite well.
Whilst true, that was the last thing we wanted to do. Olympics are for mythologising a sanitised past and a bloody good tune, not "and here is the bit where we killed lots of civilians"
In a way, that would be glorious though. People in iron lungs having to keep watching adverts for Olympics-branded merch to keep the power on. The occasional cut-away to some sad starving children in far-away lands who you could donate to through DIAL-HELP-FOR-REFORMUK. Civilians died and are going to die in any case - might as well make a few quid on the branded t-shirts. We could double-up and film poor children making the branded t-shirts then show those as adverts. The opportunities are endless.
Coming a bit late to the debate but a few observations.
1. Agree with tightening up the laws on drink driving. I know from my own experience that there is really no level of alcohol I can consume without it affecting my driving. This has always been the way with me even when I was able to drink heavily in my student days. So my rule for my whole driving career has been that I won't drive after drinking any alcohol at all. I think the 0.5 g/l level seems reasonable for legal purposes but think the 0.2 g/l level used in Norway and other Eureopan countries is probably a bit excessive as it does catch out a lot of people with the 'morning after' effect.
2. Whilst I agree with the eye tests, I don't see why they should start at 70. Deterioration in eye function can and does start much earlier for many people. AT 60 my eyesight is no where near as good as it was at 50. Perhaps we should consider an eye test as necessary for veryone renewing their licence every 10 years. As someone pointed out yesterday, setting the starting age at 70 but expecting people with driving jobs to continue until they are 67 (and sure to rise in the future) seems a bit daft to me.
3. What does seem to be missing from these proposals is the need to do far more than just test eyesight for the elderly. I would be interstd to know how many accdents are caused by poor eyesight and how many by other infirmaties. Currently it is pretty much impossible for a concerned relative to get someones driving licence revoked even when it is obvious to family members they are no longer fit to drive. It can be a cause of great animosity within families and as a result often it is just ignored. A test for mental and physical ability to drive safely should become a standard part of a more regular licence renewal for the elderly.
Fair enough but I disagree with pretty much all of this, as I do the suggestion of "no passenger" rules for young new drivers over on the BBC.
The last thing we need is more restrictions, process, and regulations regarding how we move around.
We are obsessed with trying to legislate to remove all risk in this country, regardless of the economic or social impact.
These are basic safety ideas to stop people getting killed. As you know two 18 year old lads from my sons class got killed in June as passengers in cars driven by new drivers. Both the young and the old need some controls placed on their driving where they are a danger to others.
It is not a question of legislating to emove 'All' risk, simply to deal with the bleeding obvious risks posed by those who are unfit to drive, either due to age or being under the influence.
I didn't know that and I'm sorry to hear that.
The trouble is if you legislate for a tragedy that hits and restricts the options for all 18 year old drivers, and there are over 150k of them.
In general, one should always be cautious in responding to a tragedy with knee-jerk legislation. And I don't agree with it.
Instead I'd put the risk and judgement onto the 18 year olds themselves. Most of whom will get it absolutely right.
Except it is not just them who are at risk of being killed or injured.
Overall, in 2023, around a fifth of all killed or seriously injured (KSI) casualties from collisions involving cars were in collisions which involved a young car driver.
Young male car drivers aged 17 to 24 are 4 times as likely to be killed or seriously injured compared with all car drivers aged 25 or over.
In 2023 there were 4959 people killed or seriously injured in accidents involving a young driver. In 2023 there were 1860 people killed or seriously injured in accidents involving a drunk driver.
So more than twice as many people were killed or seriously injured in accidents involving young drivers as were killed or seriously injured in accidents involving drunk drivers.
Not doubting you, but where do you get those figures from?
As somebody who in about 18 months will have a kid ready to take his driving test I find this terrifying.
Hopefully useful suggestions.
- Make sure his training is about road safety principles, not just about "learning to drive", and try to make sure he keeps learning. I think there's a lot about psychology of young men in particular needing to "perform" to convince themselves of their own value. How that turns out depends on the individual, but in white working class it can easily be BMWs with loud exhausts and fast driving to impress a girl, which can morph into risks like drink driving. That should not apply to your sprogs, perhaps .
- Consider taking him to a ROSPA or other course before he reaches 17 - one that is fun but also teaches about careful and considerate driving. 16th birthday? Depending on your relationship, go along yourself for a refresher yourself or frame yourself as regretting not doing it. I span my dads family car off a roundabout at 17 years 8 months at 1am - not drunk, just inexperienced with frost. In retrospect I passed by test too soon.
- I am told there is value in learning to ride a motorcycle first, in terms of developing a cautious and defensive style. I think he can do that at 16 on a moped. That may help nobble any reckless tendencies, which we all have in there somewhere.
- Encourage him to continue learning by funding him straight through to do advanced driving - ROSPA or IAM, and perhaps with the same instructor for some lessons ... motorways etc. Insurance savings may be helpful for him, even though dad is as rich as Croesus.
PS If you do incentivise, do it on the basis of ability to drive well, not "pass your test by X date, and I'll buy you a car". A ROSPA or IAM assessment could do that, or from his existing instructor.
Slightly contentiously, get an instructor who learned to drive here. I've seen instructors who miss things like driving to the conditions not the limit. Here it is like our legal system - much of our road safety rests on subtly communicated habits not rules and regulations.
But it all needs to be supportive dad, not terrified dad. I'll shut up now.
The problem with the 2012 opening ceremony (and I suppose it's not one that Truss can point out given her present political views) is that it 'celebrated' the NHS even though the vast amounts of money the ceremony cost could have been better spent, particularly at that time, on the NHS.
Disagree.
The money spent on the opening ceremony and the games themselves go lots of people into sport. Thats far better than spaffing it on the ever growing behemoth of the NHS.
What’s funny about the 2012 ceremony fetishising the NHS is the idea that it is the envy of the world. It’s really not. It performs pretty well on a per unit money basis but on a whole lot of other measures it’s ways behind lots of countries that were competing at 2012. The NHS is brilliant is a national myth of the British, just as we have the myth of being alone in 1940 facing Hitler (accurate apart from all our allies in the Empire and Commonweatlth, plus lots of US help). We really ought to be looking at what the best options are around the world for evolving our provision.
Yes, but wasn't the whole opening ceremony about national foundation myths, starting with a rural arcadia, then victorian mills erupting out of the ground, Brunel, the wars, the NHS, swinging London etc.
It wasn't a hymn to the NHS so much as a milestone in our history, and also why the old fashioned beds and nurses.
It's almost as if people don't understand the concept of telling the national story (and a heavily romanticised one of course).
Probably didn’t sink in with this observer as he was half cut in the boozer watching it…
In terms of testing older drivers, I think that the real problem is reaction time rather than vision. In some US States the vision rules are so lax that people who are registered partially sighted can drive, but there is little evidence those states have more accidents. Reaction time is more critical, and requires not just vision, but also acting on hazards, particularly so where there is cognitive impairment developing, though physical frailty too.
Vision is at least fairly easy to test, with objective measures, but reaction time etc is more difficult. At the very least it requires a good simulator, but more realistically an on the road test, and we have very limited capacity for those.
I remember arcade machines where you had to press a button to see how quickly you reacted. They can’t be expensive, and could be located in opticians, GP surgeries, etc.
If you want an easy test try Fruit Ninja on an iPad.
Then have a pint and try again. Even if barely noticing the alcohol the level of performance drops very quickly.
Quite a good test for elderly parents too.
There was ca. 1967 a (then very expensive and primitive) arcade machine which was a driving simulator which threw in such things as a parked car's door opening in front of you. No idea how long that lasted.
But what we do have is Microsoft Flight Simulator - especially a version which shows one's path in space in plan and elevation afterwards. I was startled at the effect of first one, then two, then three not particularly big glasses of wine - and I'm not a small person.
Made me realise decades ago that the 50 limit is, if anything, perhaps a bit generous.
Coming a bit late to the debate but a few observations.
1. Agree with tightening up the laws on drink driving. I know from my own experience that there is really no level of alcohol I can consume without it affecting my driving. This has always been the way with me even when I was able to drink heavily in my student days. So my rule for my whole driving career has been that I won't drive after drinking any alcohol at all. I think the 0.5 g/l level seems reasonable for legal purposes but think the 0.2 g/l level used in Norway and other Eureopan countries is probably a bit excessive as it does catch out a lot of people with the 'morning after' effect.
2. Whilst I agree with the eye tests, I don't see why they should start at 70. Deterioration in eye function can and does start much earlier for many people. AT 60 my eyesight is no where near as good as it was at 50. Perhaps we should consider an eye test as necessary for veryone renewing their licence every 10 years. As someone pointed out yesterday, setting the starting age at 70 but expecting people with driving jobs to continue until they are 67 (and sure to rise in the future) seems a bit daft to me.
3. What does seem to be missing from these proposals is the need to do far more than just test eyesight for the elderly. I would be interstd to know how many accdents are caused by poor eyesight and how many by other infirmaties. Currently it is pretty much impossible for a concerned relative to get someones driving licence revoked even when it is obvious to family members they are no longer fit to drive. It can be a cause of great animosity within families and as a result often it is just ignored. A test for mental and physical ability to drive safely should become a standard part of a more regular licence renewal for the elderly.
Fair enough but I disagree with pretty much all of this, as I do the suggestion of "no passenger" rules for young new drivers over on the BBC.
The last thing we need is more restrictions, process, and regulations regarding how we move around.
We are obsessed with trying to legislate to remove all risk in this country, regardless of the economic or social impact.
These are basic safety ideas to stop people getting killed. As you know two 18 year old lads from my sons class got killed in June as passengers in cars driven by new drivers. Both the young and the old need some controls placed on their driving where they are a danger to others.
It is not a question of legislating to emove 'All' risk, simply to deal with the bleeding obvious risks posed by those who are unfit to drive, either due to age or being under the influence.
I didn't know that and I'm sorry to hear that.
The trouble is if you legislate for a tragedy that hits and restricts the options for all 18 year old drivers, and there are over 150k of them.
In general, one should always be cautious in responding to a tragedy with knee-jerk legislation. And I don't agree with it.
Instead I'd put the risk and judgement onto the 18 year olds themselves. Most of whom will get it absolutely right.
Except it is not just them who are at risk of being killed or injured.
Overall, in 2023, around a fifth of all killed or seriously injured (KSI) casualties from collisions involving cars were in collisions which involved a young car driver.
Young male car drivers aged 17 to 24 are 4 times as likely to be killed or seriously injured compared with all car drivers aged 25 or over.
In 2023 there were 4959 people killed or seriously injured in accidents involving a young driver. In 2023 there were 1860 people killed or seriously injured in accidents involving a drunk driver.
So more than twice as many people were killed or seriously injured in accidents involving young drivers as were killed or seriously injured in accidents involving drunk drivers.
To be brutal about it, it's also 18 years of public spending on someone who then dies horribly and expensively without contributing any tax. There's a fiscal and economic case too. "Serious injury" can cover lifelong disability and trauma.
We were all shipped off to a cinema to watch videos of paraplegics and people burning to death when we were 16 - a rare bit of early intervention from the council. Still didn't stop a classmate wrapping a Clio round a tree.
Preventative action does sometimes backfire. One young girl known to me told me about the lifelike 'baby' she & her friends took home from school to look after for a weekend. It's supposed to show them how demanding a baby is and put them off getting pregnant.
Trouble was, she loved the whole experience.
Good. There is hope for us yet. It is entirely normal that they should find the experience demanding and wonderful.
Yes. The lady was and is one of nature's mothers. Happily she waited until she was 16 to take the plunge.
This is going to be a disaster. They just need to get real and cut spending. Freeze public sector salaries, cut the triple lock and cut public sector pensions. Private sector salary growth is stalling already and the number of vacancies is falling drastically so they can't even cry about a recruitment problem like they moaned about when the last government did it.
Taxes can't go up now without taking money out of the productive base of the economy. There's no more left to give.
This is actually targeted at the unearned wealth of the boomer generation. So I'd have thought you would approve.
It's simply not going to raise enough money and will send wealthy people fleeing overseas. The non-dom changes have already caused a huge hole in the public finances, hitting long term investment two tax rises is going to cause an even bigger loss for the government.
For every billion pounds in tax they raise they are going to take a billion out of the economy, if not more given that they will have to target the productive part meaning money that would otherwise be better used and result in a pretty good 1.5x economic multiplier now goes to the state which consumes. I wouldn't be surprised for every £1bn the government intends to raise by the maths it will only get around £0.5-0.6bn in additional revenue due to slower growth.
Cutting spending is the only answer, it isn't beyond the wit of man to cut 2.5% out of the government budget.
5% should be a dawdle and 10% possible
Ah, you're another of these people (like Elon) who doesn't realize what the government spends its money on.
They squander shedloads. private business does not have the luxury of milking the public, if not efficient they die. We have a bloated state paying far too much on benefits and borrowing/wasting far too much money on crap. Nobody can be stupid enough to think that paying more on teh dole than workers earn is sensible in any way.
In terms of testing older drivers, I think that the real problem is reaction time rather than vision. In some US States the vision rules are so lax that people who are registered partially sighted can drive, but there is little evidence those states have more accidents. Reaction time is more critical, and requires not just vision, but also acting on hazards, particularly so where there is cognitive impairment developing, though physical frailty too.
Vision is at least fairly easy to test, with objective measures, but reaction time etc is more difficult. At the very least it requires a good simulator, but more realistically an on the road test, and we have very limited capacity for those.
I remember arcade machines where you had to press a button to see how quickly you reacted. They can’t be expensive, and could be located in opticians, GP surgeries, etc.
If you want an easy test try Fruit Ninja on an iPad.
Then have a pint and try again. Even if barely noticing the alcohol the level of performance drops very quickly.
Quite a good test for elderly parents too.
There was ca. 1967 a (then very expensive and primitive) arcade machine which was a driving simulator which threw in such things as a parked car's door opening in front of you. No idea how long that lasted.
But what we do have is Microsoft Flight Simulator - especially a version which shows one's path in space in plan and elevation afterwards. I was startled at the effect of first one, then two, then three not particularly big glasses of wine - and I'm not a small person.
Made me realise decades ago that the 50 limit is, if anything, perhaps a bit generous.
Are the data for KSI with drivers with alcohol in their system under the legal level? AIUI there has been no great reduction in road deaths since Scotland went down this road. Shouldn’t we expect one?
IHT was a fairly quiet subject until the recent changes on farms and family businesses, which will adversely affect those without time to replan their financial arrangements. This made it a noisy subject.
The reason it was quiet is because it was avoidable. The rich, both old money and new money, can plan around it. Lincoln's Inn and countless solicitors and accountants do nicely out of it.
A reform which truly sought to make it unavoidable would stir a hornet's nest. But this is because of the ludicrous rate applied. at the moment the choice is either pay 40% or avoid. It's a no brainer. An IHT/inter vivos gift tax at 5% or 10% and unavoidable would make far better sense.
Yes a 10% inheritance tax with no exemptions would almost certainly raise more money than the current system.
The lawyers and accountants would squeal very loudly at the prospect though.
Add valuers to that. Real estate and moveables.
Depends on the allowances, though; one reason the Tories brought in the allowances was that ordinary folk could sort of get the rich bastard treatment.
However, you still need to get the IHT paperwork done even with allowances, so - if the allowances don't change - then no skin off these professions' noses surely.
In terms of testing older drivers, I think that the real problem is reaction time rather than vision. In some US States the vision rules are so lax that people who are registered partially sighted can drive, but there is little evidence those states have more accidents. Reaction time is more critical, and requires not just vision, but also acting on hazards, particularly so where there is cognitive impairment developing, though physical frailty too.
Vision is at least fairly easy to test, with objective measures, but reaction time etc is more difficult. At the very least it requires a good simulator, but more realistically an on the road test, and we have very limited capacity for those.
I remember arcade machines where you had to press a button to see how quickly you reacted. They can’t be expensive, and could be located in opticians, GP surgeries, etc.
If you want an easy test try Fruit Ninja on an iPad.
Then have a pint and try again. Even if barely noticing the alcohol the level of performance drops very quickly.
Quite a good test for elderly parents too.
There was ca. 1967 a (then very expensive and primitive) arcade machine which was a driving simulator which threw in such things as a parked car's door opening in front of you. No idea how long that lasted.
But what we do have is Microsoft Flight Simulator - especially a version which shows one's path in space in plan and elevation afterwards. I was startled at the effect of first one, then two, then three not particularly big glasses of wine - and I'm not a small person.
Made me realise decades ago that the 50 limit is, if anything, perhaps a bit generous.
Are the data for KSI with drivers with alcohol in their system under the legal level? AIUI there has been no great reduction in road deaths since Scotland went down this road. Shouldn’t we expect one?
I refer you, with apologies, to @MattW who (ISTR) discussed that in the last thread. He's much better clued up.
That is not what is being said, she also can cut spending too.
Especially the burgeoning welfare bill although that will be hard politically especially with charities and NGO's complaining the current levels of UC are not enough and the demands to life the 2 child cap.
Then you have to say what you are going to cut.
To save a billion pounds, you need twenty pounds a week from a million households. I'm not saying it can't be done, but it does mean identifying those people as individuals, not as part of a multiplication.
Pretty much any spending cuts from here have to be ones that Osborne, Hammond, Sunak and Hunt weren't prepared to make.
(And yes, the same thing applies to tax rises.)
If that’s what needs to be done then so be it. Nothing Max suggested should be seen as controversial.
However it won’t happen.
The welfare ‘cuts’ proposed weren’t even numeric cuts it was just slowing the rate of growth.
We live in a society where people want to take from the state and expect others to pay. Hence the crap about wealth taxes which just won’t work although I saw something in the press about them considering a ‘windfall levy’ on banks.
Still we can carry on as we are. Not taking the decisions we need to take and then face the consequences. We need to get more people into work but job openings are falling, not helped by Reeves, consistently and have been prior to the election too. We will simply see measures to reduce future spending commitments. Extending pension age, freezing personal allowances etc etc. The core issues won’t be tackled.
Especially given they get more money on the dole, free house and council tax and no NI or income tax. It is mental.
Indeed and 46% of UC claimants, according to reports this week, do not have to look for work. I get that some would not need to but 46% seems an awful lot.
This is going to be a disaster. They just need to get real and cut spending. Freeze public sector salaries, cut the triple lock and cut public sector pensions. Private sector salary growth is stalling already and the number of vacancies is falling drastically so they can't even cry about a recruitment problem like they moaned about when the last government did it.
Taxes can't go up now without taking money out of the productive base of the economy. There's no more left to give.
This is actually targeted at the unearned wealth of the boomer generation. So I'd have thought you would approve.
It's simply not going to raise enough money and will send wealthy people fleeing overseas. The non-dom changes have already caused a huge hole in the public finances, hitting long term investment two tax rises is going to cause an even bigger loss for the government.
For every billion pounds in tax they raise they are going to take a billion out of the economy, if not more given that they will have to target the productive part meaning money that would otherwise be better used and result in a pretty good 1.5x economic multiplier now goes to the state which consumes. I wouldn't be surprised for every £1bn the government intends to raise by the maths it will only get around £0.5-0.6bn in additional revenue due to slower growth.
Cutting spending is the only answer, it isn't beyond the wit of man to cut 2.5% out of the government budget.
5% should be a dawdle and 10% possible
Ah, you're another of these people (like Elon) who doesn't realize what the government spends its money on.
They squander shedloads. private business does not have the luxury of milking the public, if not efficient they die. We have a bloated state paying far too much on benefits and borrowing/wasting far too much money on crap. Nobody can be stupid enough to think that paying more on teh dole than workers earn is sensible in any way.
Really?
My experience is that loads of private businesses milk their customers massively.
In terms of testing older drivers, I think that the real problem is reaction time rather than vision. In some US States the vision rules are so lax that people who are registered partially sighted can drive, but there is little evidence those states have more accidents. Reaction time is more critical, and requires not just vision, but also acting on hazards, particularly so where there is cognitive impairment developing, though physical frailty too.
Vision is at least fairly easy to test, with objective measures, but reaction time etc is more difficult. At the very least it requires a good simulator, but more realistically an on the road test, and we have very limited capacity for those.
I remember arcade machines where you had to press a button to see how quickly you reacted. They can’t be expensive, and could be located in opticians, GP surgeries, etc.
If you want an easy test try Fruit Ninja on an iPad.
Then have a pint and try again. Even if barely noticing the alcohol the level of performance drops very quickly.
Quite a good test for elderly parents too.
There was ca. 1967 a (then very expensive and primitive) arcade machine which was a driving simulator which threw in such things as a parked car's door opening in front of you. No idea how long that lasted.
But what we do have is Microsoft Flight Simulator - especially a version which shows one's path in space in plan and elevation afterwards. I was startled at the effect of first one, then two, then three not particularly big glasses of wine - and I'm not a small person.
Made me realise decades ago that the 50 limit is, if anything, perhaps a bit generous.
Are the data for KSI with drivers with alcohol in their system under the legal level? AIUI there has been no great reduction in road deaths since Scotland went down this road. Shouldn’t we expect one?
The AA guy whose piece I can't find now suggested the lower limit will not do much because drink-drivers in collisions are generally two or three times over the limit, rather than borderline.
That is not what is being said, she also can cut spending too.
Especially the burgeoning welfare bill although that will be hard politically especially with charities and NGO's complaining the current levels of UC are not enough and the demands to life the 2 child cap.
Then you have to say what you are going to cut.
To save a billion pounds, you need twenty pounds a week from a million households. I'm not saying it can't be done, but it does mean identifying those people as individuals, not as part of a multiplication.
Pretty much any spending cuts from here have to be ones that Osborne, Hammond, Sunak and Hunt weren't prepared to make.
(And yes, the same thing applies to tax rises.)
If that’s what needs to be done then so be it. Nothing Max suggested should be seen as controversial.
However it won’t happen.
The welfare ‘cuts’ proposed weren’t even numeric cuts it was just slowing the rate of growth.
We live in a society where people want to take from the state and expect others to pay. Hence the crap about wealth taxes which just won’t work although I saw something in the press about them considering a ‘windfall levy’ on banks.
Still we can carry on as we are. Not taking the decisions we need to take and then face the consequences. We need to get more people into work but job openings are falling, not helped by Reeves, consistently and have been prior to the election too. We will simply see measures to reduce future spending commitments. Extending pension age, freezing personal allowances etc etc. The core issues won’t be tackled.
Especially given they get more money on the dole, free house and council tax and no NI or income tax. It is mental.
Indeed and 46% of UC claimants, according to reports this week, do not have to look for work. I get that some would not need to but 46% seems an awful lot.
Given the tripe already having been put out on this sort of thing today, as discussed passim on PB, I'd want to check whether that doesn't simply reflect the fact that a lot of UC claimants may not need to look for work, because, er, they are already working.
This is going to be a disaster. They just need to get real and cut spending. Freeze public sector salaries, cut the triple lock and cut public sector pensions. Private sector salary growth is stalling already and the number of vacancies is falling drastically so they can't even cry about a recruitment problem like they moaned about when the last government did it.
Taxes can't go up now without taking money out of the productive base of the economy. There's no more left to give.
This is actually targeted at the unearned wealth of the boomer generation. So I'd have thought you would approve.
It's simply not going to raise enough money and will send wealthy people fleeing overseas. The non-dom changes have already caused a huge hole in the public finances, hitting long term investment two tax rises is going to cause an even bigger loss for the government.
For every billion pounds in tax they raise they are going to take a billion out of the economy, if not more given that they will have to target the productive part meaning money that would otherwise be better used and result in a pretty good 1.5x economic multiplier now goes to the state which consumes. I wouldn't be surprised for every £1bn the government intends to raise by the maths it will only get around £0.5-0.6bn in additional revenue due to slower growth.
Cutting spending is the only answer, it isn't beyond the wit of man to cut 2.5% out of the government budget.
5% should be a dawdle and 10% possible
Ah, you're another of these people (like Elon) who doesn't realize what the government spends its money on.
They squander shedloads. private business does not have the luxury of milking the public, if not efficient they die. We have a bloated state paying far too much on benefits and borrowing/wasting far too much money on crap. Nobody can be stupid enough to think that paying more on teh dole than workers earn is sensible in any way.
Really?
My experience is that loads of private businesses milk their customers massively.
If they are not making money then they cut costs or go bust, no magic money tree there.
I can buy index linked senior Gilts that yield 5.03% (22/03/29) and on the same day I am advertised similar fixed term mortgages for 3.8%
I could borrow £500k against a property, pay the bank £19,000 pa interest and sink the cash into inflation proof Gilts that pay me £25,150 pa.
Obviously I have skipped taxes for the sake of simplicity (everyone’s taxes are different), but you shouldn’t be able to carry trade the risk free rate of return INSIDE a currency?
Why are UK banks seemingly offering this arbitrage? Are they just trying to prop up their residential property books?
It feels one of those things you notice that screams “something is going to break soon”.
The main mortgage lenders are in the business of borrowing from their depositors at 1-2%, leaving them very well able to compete downwards to below 4% lending rates.
That is not what is being said, she also can cut spending too.
Especially the burgeoning welfare bill although that will be hard politically especially with charities and NGO's complaining the current levels of UC are not enough and the demands to life the 2 child cap.
Then you have to say what you are going to cut.
To save a billion pounds, you need twenty pounds a week from a million households. I'm not saying it can't be done, but it does mean identifying those people as individuals, not as part of a multiplication.
Pretty much any spending cuts from here have to be ones that Osborne, Hammond, Sunak and Hunt weren't prepared to make.
(And yes, the same thing applies to tax rises.)
If that’s what needs to be done then so be it. Nothing Max suggested should be seen as controversial.
However it won’t happen.
The welfare ‘cuts’ proposed weren’t even numeric cuts it was just slowing the rate of growth.
We live in a society where people want to take from the state and expect others to pay. Hence the crap about wealth taxes which just won’t work although I saw something in the press about them considering a ‘windfall levy’ on banks.
Still we can carry on as we are. Not taking the decisions we need to take and then face the consequences. We need to get more people into work but job openings are falling, not helped by Reeves, consistently and have been prior to the election too. We will simply see measures to reduce future spending commitments. Extending pension age, freezing personal allowances etc etc. The core issues won’t be tackled.
Especially given they get more money on the dole, free house and council tax and no NI or income tax. It is mental.
Indeed and 46% of UC claimants, according to reports this week, do not have to look for work. I get that some would not need to but 46% seems an awful lot.
Given the tripe already having been put out on this sort of thing today, as discussed passim on PB, I'd want to check whether that doesn't simply reflect the fact that a lot of UC claimants may not need to look for work, because, er, they are already working.
46% would not surprise me given people who are very disabled, caring for someone or already working obviously won't need to look for work.
In terms of testing older drivers, I think that the real problem is reaction time rather than vision. In some US States the vision rules are so lax that people who are registered partially sighted can drive, but there is little evidence those states have more accidents. Reaction time is more critical, and requires not just vision, but also acting on hazards, particularly so where there is cognitive impairment developing, though physical frailty too.
Vision is at least fairly easy to test, with objective measures, but reaction time etc is more difficult. At the very least it requires a good simulator, but more realistically an on the road test, and we have very limited capacity for those.
I remember arcade machines where you had to press a button to see how quickly you reacted. They can’t be expensive, and could be located in opticians, GP surgeries, etc.
If you want an easy test try Fruit Ninja on an iPad.
Then have a pint and try again. Even if barely noticing the alcohol the level of performance drops very quickly.
Quite a good test for elderly parents too.
There was ca. 1967 a (then very expensive and primitive) arcade machine which was a driving simulator which threw in such things as a parked car's door opening in front of you. No idea how long that lasted.
But what we do have is Microsoft Flight Simulator - especially a version which shows one's path in space in plan and elevation afterwards. I was startled at the effect of first one, then two, then three not particularly big glasses of wine - and I'm not a small person.
Made me realise decades ago that the 50 limit is, if anything, perhaps a bit generous.
Are the data for KSI with drivers with alcohol in their system under the legal level? AIUI there has been no great reduction in road deaths since Scotland went down this road. Shouldn’t we expect one?
The AA guy whose piece I can't find now suggested the lower limit will not do much because drink-drivers in collisions are generally two or three times over the limit, rather than borderline.
I am quite content with the current level which allows me a pint without problems. Top pints of shandy after cricket, say.
I am also a bit dubious on how accidents are accounted. Last year my wife had a car pull out in front of her at a junction. Young guy, made a mistake. Luckily the smash was minor, no one was hurt. Now say my wife had had a couple of glasses of wine, just over the limit and the same accident occurs. She would be done for causing the accident by drink driving. Yet it wasn’t her fault. In general we need to accept that cars are inherently dangerous and drive that way. Someone once suggested a kill spike on the steering wheel rather than air bags. If you crash it takes out your heart. Everyone would drive at three miles an hour…
Coming a bit late to the debate but a few observations.
1. Agree with tightening up the laws on drink driving. I know from my own experience that there is really no level of alcohol I can consume without it affecting my driving. This has always been the way with me even when I was able to drink heavily in my student days. So my rule for my whole driving career has been that I won't drive after drinking any alcohol at all. I think the 0.5 g/l level seems reasonable for legal purposes but think the 0.2 g/l level used in Norway and other Eureopan countries is probably a bit excessive as it does catch out a lot of people with the 'morning after' effect.
2. Whilst I agree with the eye tests, I don't see why they should start at 70. Deterioration in eye function can and does start much earlier for many people. AT 60 my eyesight is no where near as good as it was at 50. Perhaps we should consider an eye test as necessary for veryone renewing their licence every 10 years. As someone pointed out yesterday, setting the starting age at 70 but expecting people with driving jobs to continue until they are 67 (and sure to rise in the future) seems a bit daft to me.
3. What does seem to be missing from these proposals is the need to do far more than just test eyesight for the elderly. I would be interstd to know how many accdents are caused by poor eyesight and how many by other infirmaties. Currently it is pretty much impossible for a concerned relative to get someones driving licence revoked even when it is obvious to family members they are no longer fit to drive. It can be a cause of great animosity within families and as a result often it is just ignored. A test for mental and physical ability to drive safely should become a standard part of a more regular licence renewal for the elderly.
Fair enough but I disagree with pretty much all of this, as I do the suggestion of "no passenger" rules for young new drivers over on the BBC.
The last thing we need is more restrictions, process, and regulations regarding how we move around.
We are obsessed with trying to legislate to remove all risk in this country, regardless of the economic or social impact.
These are basic safety ideas to stop people getting killed. As you know two 18 year old lads from my sons class got killed in June as passengers in cars driven by new drivers. Both the young and the old need some controls placed on their driving where they are a danger to others.
It is not a question of legislating to emove 'All' risk, simply to deal with the bleeding obvious risks posed by those who are unfit to drive, either due to age or being under the influence.
I didn't know that and I'm sorry to hear that.
The trouble is if you legislate for a tragedy that hits and restricts the options for all 18 year old drivers, and there are over 150k of them.
In general, one should always be cautious in responding to a tragedy with knee-jerk legislation. And I don't agree with it.
Instead I'd put the risk and judgement onto the 18 year olds themselves. Most of whom will get it absolutely right.
Except it is not just them who are at risk of being killed or injured.
Overall, in 2023, around a fifth of all killed or seriously injured (KSI) casualties from collisions involving cars were in collisions which involved a young car driver.
Young male car drivers aged 17 to 24 are 4 times as likely to be killed or seriously injured compared with all car drivers aged 25 or over.
In 2023 there were 4959 people killed or seriously injured in accidents involving a young driver. In 2023 there were 1860 people killed or seriously injured in accidents involving a drunk driver.
So more than twice as many people were killed or seriously injured in accidents involving young drivers as were killed or seriously injured in accidents involving drunk drivers.
Not doubting you, but where do you get those figures from?
As somebody who in about 18 months will have a kid ready to take his driving test I find this terrifying.
Hopefully useful suggestions.
- Make sure his training is about road safety principles, not just about "learning to drive", and try to make sure he keeps learning. I think there's a lot about psychology of young men in particular needing to "perform" to convince themselves of their own value. How that turns out depends on the individual, but in white working class it can easily be BMWs with loud exhausts and fast driving to impress a girl, which can morph into risks like drink driving. That should not apply to your sprogs, perhaps .
- Consider taking him to a ROSPA or other course before he reaches 17 - one that is fun but also teaches about careful and considerate driving. 16th birthday? Depending on your relationship, go along yourself for a refresher yourself or frame yourself as regretting not doing it. I span my dads family car off a roundabout at 17 years 8 months at 1am - not drunk, just inexperienced with frost. In retrospect I passed by test too soon.
- I am told there is value in learning to ride a motorcycle first, in terms of developing a cautious and defensive style. I think he can do that at 16 on a moped. That may help nobble any reckless tendencies, which we all have in there somewhere.
- Encourage him to continue learning by funding him straight through to do advanced driving - ROSPA or IAM, and perhaps with the same instructor for some lessons ... motorways etc. Insurance savings may be helpful for him, even though dad is as rich as Croesus.
PS If you do incentivise, do it on the basis of ability to drive well, not "pass your test by X date, and I'll buy you a car". A ROSPA or IAM assessment could do that, or from his existing instructor.
Slightly contentiously, get an instructor who learned to drive here. I've seen instructors who miss things like driving to the conditions not the limit. Here it is like our legal system - much of our road safety rests on subtly communicated habits not rules and regulations.
But it all needs to be supportive dad, not terrified dad. I'll shut up now.
All rubbish imo. The key observation is that driving is a learned skill so after he passes, he needs to practise, practise, practise until driving becomes second nature. So buy him a car in return for driving mum to the beauty salon and dad to the supermarket every day or two. Take him to the garage first because he won't have been taught how to buy petrol, inflate the tires and so on.
That is not what is being said, she also can cut spending too.
Especially the burgeoning welfare bill although that will be hard politically especially with charities and NGO's complaining the current levels of UC are not enough and the demands to life the 2 child cap.
Then you have to say what you are going to cut.
To save a billion pounds, you need twenty pounds a week from a million households. I'm not saying it can't be done, but it does mean identifying those people as individuals, not as part of a multiplication.
Pretty much any spending cuts from here have to be ones that Osborne, Hammond, Sunak and Hunt weren't prepared to make.
(And yes, the same thing applies to tax rises.)
If that’s what needs to be done then so be it. Nothing Max suggested should be seen as controversial.
However it won’t happen.
The welfare ‘cuts’ proposed weren’t even numeric cuts it was just slowing the rate of growth.
We live in a society where people want to take from the state and expect others to pay. Hence the crap about wealth taxes which just won’t work although I saw something in the press about them considering a ‘windfall levy’ on banks.
Still we can carry on as we are. Not taking the decisions we need to take and then face the consequences. We need to get more people into work but job openings are falling, not helped by Reeves, consistently and have been prior to the election too. We will simply see measures to reduce future spending commitments. Extending pension age, freezing personal allowances etc etc. The core issues won’t be tackled.
Especially given they get more money on the dole, free house and council tax and no NI or income tax. It is mental.
Indeed and 46% of UC claimants, according to reports this week, do not have to look for work. I get that some would not need to but 46% seems an awful lot.
Given the tripe already having been put out on this sort of thing today, as discussed passim on PB, I'd want to check whether that doesn't simply reflect the fact that a lot of UC claimants may not need to look for work, because, er, they are already working.
46% would not surprise me given people who are very disabled, caring for someone or already working obviously won't need to look for work.
Even a small percentage of employed people getting credits would make up quite a chunk of UC recipients, too, so that also makes sort of sense. More reasons to probe. And it's Twitter so someone else will have to look (I'm not a subscriber).
We seem to be back in “why can’t we just” world this evening. Government is simple etc.
Maybe it's not simple but you can't pretend that the British government doesn't over complicate everything. Just look at £49bn being spent on a third runway or £78bn on a nuclear power plant. It's completely ridiculous.
Why isn't anyone suggesting a crackdown on speeding ?
Or is it some unalienable right to do 85mph on motorways ?
Personally I'd increase the limit to 80mph and enforce it.
Speeding is one thing we seem to be very effective at cracking down on, as my two penalties in the last 2 years for going at 26 and 24 in a new 20 zone attest.
Where are you?
There is a folk legend (I think) that the really enforced limit is the announced limit plus 10% plus 2, i.e. 24, 35, 46 etc. I don't know if that's still the practice, or if you can get fined for driving at 22 in a 20 zone?
AIUI it is policy set at Force level ie Chief Constable. In general they are +10% + 2 enforcement threshold, but there is no guarantee.
There was a famous Chief Constable in North Wales called Richard Brunstrom aka "Mad Mullah of the Traffic Taliban" who went Zero Tolerance, and was slightly unpopular with some but his force performed well.
That is not what is being said, she also can cut spending too.
Especially the burgeoning welfare bill although that will be hard politically especially with charities and NGO's complaining the current levels of UC are not enough and the demands to life the 2 child cap.
It the same when there is slightly improved government finances (versus the predictions), and it instantly then is framed as the government has free money, what new things will the government spend things on....despite the government running a big deficit for past 20+ years.
We seem to be back in “why can’t we just” world this evening. Government is simple etc.
Yes, well, there are always those who advocate simplistic solutions to complex problems.
As usual, it's our old mate "the public sector" who is the whipping boy (or girl given the large percentage of women and indeed part timers employed in councils and elsewhere) with pay to be frozen (in real terms, a pay cut), pensions cut etc, etc. Of course those who rely on the public sector for help will also be affected.
Just so those on £80k a year can continue with their horse riding lessons and outdoor jacuzzis (apparently).
Why isn't anyone suggesting a crackdown on speeding ?
Or is it some unalienable right to do 85mph on motorways ?
Personally I'd increase the limit to 80mph and enforce it.
Speeding is one thing we seem to be very effective at cracking down on, as my two penalties in the last 2 years for going at 26 and 24 in a new 20 zone attest.
Where are you?
There is a folk legend (I think) that the really enforced limit is the announced limit plus 10% plus 2, i.e. 24, 35, 46 etc. I don't know if that's still the practice, or if you can get fined for driving at 22 in a 20 zone?
AIUI it is policy set at Force level ie Chief Constable. In general they are +10% + 2 enforcement threshold, but there is no guarantee.
There was a famous Chief Constable in North Wales called Richard Brunstrom aka "Mad Mullah of the Traffic Taliban" who went Zero Tolerance, and was slightly unpopular with some but his force performed well.
One reason for a margin of forgiveness was that car speedometers could be inaccurate. The speed shown on your dashcam or satnav should be bang on as it will be GPS-based.
In preparation for my Blob:pt3 article, I'm relistening to Lord Sumption's Reith lectures of 2019. I note that Lord Sumption has written three books that might be relevant:
We seem to be back in “why can’t we just” world this evening. Government is simple etc.
Maybe it's not simple but you can't pretend that the British government doesn't over complicate everything. Just look at £49bn being spent on a third runway or £78bn on a nuclear power plant. It's completely ridiculous.
Third runway is private money isn't it ?
Public regulations though I am guessing push the price up considerably ..
In terms of testing older drivers, I think that the real problem is reaction time rather than vision. In some US States the vision rules are so lax that people who are registered partially sighted can drive, but there is little evidence those states have more accidents. Reaction time is more critical, and requires not just vision, but also acting on hazards, particularly so where there is cognitive impairment developing, though physical frailty too.
Vision is at least fairly easy to test, with objective measures, but reaction time etc is more difficult. At the very least it requires a good simulator, but more realistically an on the road test, and we have very limited capacity for those.
I remember arcade machines where you had to press a button to see how quickly you reacted. They can’t be expensive, and could be located in opticians, GP surgeries, etc.
If you want an easy test try Fruit Ninja on an iPad.
Then have a pint and try again. Even if barely noticing the alcohol the level of performance drops very quickly.
Quite a good test for elderly parents too.
There was ca. 1967 a (then very expensive and primitive) arcade machine which was a driving simulator which threw in such things as a parked car's door opening in front of you. No idea how long that lasted.
But what we do have is Microsoft Flight Simulator - especially a version which shows one's path in space in plan and elevation afterwards. I was startled at the effect of first one, then two, then three not particularly big glasses of wine - and I'm not a small person.
Made me realise decades ago that the 50 limit is, if anything, perhaps a bit generous.
Several video game style “hazard recognition” tests are part of the current theory test
That is not what is being said, she also can cut spending too.
Especially the burgeoning welfare bill although that will be hard politically especially with charities and NGO's complaining the current levels of UC are not enough and the demands to life the 2 child cap.
Then you have to say what you are going to cut.
To save a billion pounds, you need twenty pounds a week from a million households. I'm not saying it can't be done, but it does mean identifying those people as individuals, not as part of a multiplication.
Pretty much any spending cuts from here have to be ones that Osborne, Hammond, Sunak and Hunt weren't prepared to make.
(And yes, the same thing applies to tax rises.)
If that’s what needs to be done then so be it. Nothing Max suggested should be seen as controversial.
However it won’t happen.
The welfare ‘cuts’ proposed weren’t even numeric cuts it was just slowing the rate of growth.
We live in a society where people want to take from the state and expect others to pay. Hence the crap about wealth taxes which just won’t work although I saw something in the press about them considering a ‘windfall levy’ on banks.
Still we can carry on as we are. Not taking the decisions we need to take and then face the consequences. We need to get more people into work but job openings are falling, not helped by Reeves, consistently and have been prior to the election too. We will simply see measures to reduce future spending commitments. Extending pension age, freezing personal allowances etc etc. The core issues won’t be tackled.
Especially given they get more money on the dole, free house and council tax and no NI or income tax. It is mental.
Indeed and 46% of UC claimants, according to reports this week, do not have to look for work. I get that some would not need to but 46% seems an awful lot.
Given the tripe already having been put out on this sort of thing today, as discussed passim on PB, I'd want to check whether that doesn't simply reflect the fact that a lot of UC claimants may not need to look for work, because, er, they are already working.
46% would not surprise me given people who are very disabled, caring for someone or already working obviously won't need to look for work.
The thread I linked, makes some good points. Including this. Incentives matter as Bart often says, quite rightly.
‘There are of course shirkers, beyond doubt. But there are also people who recognise that taking a job means losing benefits, losing other freebies and discounts, all in exchange for a salary which gets whittled away by taxation and the other costs of working - commuting, etc.’
I suspect, proportionally, a great many are in the latter rather than the former camp.
The public has a duty to stand up to shoplifters rather than relying solely on police officers, a policing chief has said.
Matthew Barber, the Conservative Police and Crime Commissioner for Thames Valley, said it was wrong to think that tackling thieves was just a job for police.
He said: “If you’re not even going to challenge people, you’re not going to try and stop them, then people will get away with it. That’s not just about policing. That’s a bigger problem with society, people who [don’t do anything] – you’re part of the problem.”
We seem to be back in “why can’t we just” world this evening. Government is simple etc.
Maybe it's not simple but you can't pretend that the British government doesn't over complicate everything. Just look at £49bn being spent on a third runway or £78bn on a nuclear power plant. It's completely ridiculous.
Third runway is private money isn't it ?
Public regulations though I am guessing push the price up considerably ..
Heathrow's plan seemed to involve rebuilding half the M25 which won't come cheap.
This is going to be a disaster. They just need to get real and cut spending. Freeze public sector salaries, cut the triple lock and cut public sector pensions. Private sector salary growth is stalling already and the number of vacancies is falling drastically so they can't even cry about a recruitment problem like they moaned about when the last government did it.
Taxes can't go up now without taking money out of the productive base of the economy. There's no more left to give.
This is actually targeted at the unearned wealth of the boomer generation. So I'd have thought you would approve.
It's simply not going to raise enough money and will send wealthy people fleeing overseas. The non-dom changes have already caused a huge hole in the public finances, hitting long term investment two tax rises is going to cause an even bigger loss for the government.
For every billion pounds in tax they raise they are going to take a billion out of the economy, if not more given that they will have to target the productive part meaning money that would otherwise be better used and result in a pretty good 1.5x economic multiplier now goes to the state which consumes. I wouldn't be surprised for every £1bn the government intends to raise by the maths it will only get around £0.5-0.6bn in additional revenue due to slower growth.
Cutting spending is the only answer, it isn't beyond the wit of man to cut 2.5% out of the government budget.
This stands at about £1.3 tn at the moment. 2.5% is about £32 billion. That's a cut of £1000 pa in expenditure for 32 million people, or £10,000 for 3.2 million people.
Even when you have identified these cuts (answers on a postcard to 11 Downing Street) you have only cut about a third of our annual debt interest payments, or about a fifth of the additional amount we are borrowing each year for our grandchildren to pay back.
Or cutting about 600k jobs from state employment. I'd do over a million job cuts out of middle management and admin within two years.
You're also ignoring the fact that if the government signalled it was prepared to make substantial spending cuts with job losses in the public sector the debt interest bill would fall from two factors - lower inflation and a lower risk premium. A £32bn cut in spending will be coupled with a £10-15bn cut in debt interest yielding between about £40bn in savings even after unemployment benefits are factored in, maybe £20bn in years one and two due to the cost of paying people off.
I'd also cut benefits substantially, cut public sector pensions by at least 25% plus introduce a defined benefit tax on that specific class of income taxed at source just like PAYE and legislate to shift the index to CPI, kill the triple lock and for another £15-20bn in annual savings.
I'd also cancel the 2m+ low income and dependent visas that arrived from 2020 and I'd make all of the "skilled" workers from before the income increase reapply for their visas and invalidate those who don't meet the new threshold within 6 months. Companies either pay more for the foreign workers or they find a British person who is capable of doing the £27-38k per year job they can't have migrants for.
I'd also cut the whole asylum budget, set up camps with very high fences, tents and no right to leave the camp until they have had their claim processed, no rights to any benefits even for people who receive status for a minimum period of 10 years and no citizenship for a minimum period of 20 years. People who are declined have no right of appeal and are removed either to their home country or to a third country like Rwanda, they get to choose which they'd prefer. If that breaks their human rights then so be it, they can choose some other country to go and leech from.
The state is simply too generous, the UK is a middle income country with expenditure on welfare of a rich country. Welfare needs to be cut.
Are all the comfortably off people not in the public sector to make no contribution to the rescue plan then?
We seem to be back in “why can’t we just” world this evening. Government is simple etc.
Yes, well, there are always those who advocate simplistic solutions to complex problems.
As usual, it's our old mate "the public sector" who is the whipping boy (or girl given the large percentage of women and indeed part timers employed in councils and elsewhere) with pay to be frozen (in real terms, a pay cut), pensions cut etc, .
It’s actually pensioners who are the main target however it makes a change from the incessant demands for wealth taxes and other tax raises to fund the ever burgeoning state. Nice to see some balance.
Public Sector Employment is growing and it has to be paid from somewhere and there is nothing wrong with suggestion of reform to public sector pensions given the cost of them. As has had to happen in the private sector.
We seem to be back in “why can’t we just” world this evening. Government is simple etc.
Maybe it's not simple but you can't pretend that the British government doesn't over complicate everything. Just look at £49bn being spent on a third runway or £78bn on a nuclear power plant. It's completely ridiculous.
Third runway is private money isn't it ?
Public regulations though I am guessing push the price up considerably ..
Yes, but either way it's completely ridiculous that the cost of this has tripled in just 7 years.
We seem to be back in “why can’t we just” world this evening. Government is simple etc.
Yeah, let’s do nothing but bumble along as we are because decisions are ‘tough’ and we don’t have politicians to take tough decisions. 🤔
It's nothing to do with being "tough" - it's a recognition the state of the country defies easy or simplistic solutions.
Yes, let's debate solutions and ideas, nothing wrong with that but the default point for many seems "I'm not paying any more tax" while the tough solution might be to say "yes, I'm prepared to pay more in tax but I want Govenrment to be better, more efficient and more responsive".
The public has a duty to stand up to shoplifters rather than relying solely on police officers, a policing chief has said.
Matthew Barber, the Conservative Police and Crime Commissioner for Thames Valley, said it was wrong to think that tackling thieves was just a job for police.
He said: “If you’re not even going to challenge people, you’re not going to try and stop them, then people will get away with it. That’s not just about policing. That’s a bigger problem with society, people who [don’t do anything] – you’re part of the problem.”
If security guards in shops won’t why should the public and I wouldn’t blame security guards not risking being stabbed to protect a bottle of Bells whiskey
We seem to be back in “why can’t we just” world this evening. Government is simple etc.
Yeah, let’s do nothing but bumble along as we are because decisions are ‘tough’ and we don’t have politicians to take tough decisions. 🤔
It's nothing to do with being "tough" - it's a recognition the state of the country defies easy or simplistic solutions.
Yes, let's debate solutions and ideas, nothing wrong with that but the default point for many seems "I'm not paying any more tax" while the tough solution might be to say "yes, I'm prepared to pay more in tax but I want Govenrment to be better, more efficient and more responsive".
It’s nothing to do with being tough says someone who then says the solution may be tough. 🙄
We either carry on as we are or we grasp the nettle. Now it may be the tough decision is to spend more. I’d rather see spending and taxes cut, not that tax affects me a great deal as I am retired. However if the decision is more spending and raising taxes that yield it then so be it.
This is going to be a disaster. They just need to get real and cut spending. Freeze public sector salaries, cut the triple lock and cut public sector pensions. Private sector salary growth is stalling already and the number of vacancies is falling drastically so they can't even cry about a recruitment problem like they moaned about when the last government did it.
Taxes can't go up now without taking money out of the productive base of the economy. There's no more left to give.
This is actually targeted at the unearned wealth of the boomer generation. So I'd have thought you would approve.
It's simply not going to raise enough money and will send wealthy people fleeing overseas. The non-dom changes have already caused a huge hole in the public finances, hitting long term investment two tax rises is going to cause an even bigger loss for the government.
For every billion pounds in tax they raise they are going to take a billion out of the economy, if not more given that they will have to target the productive part meaning money that would otherwise be better used and result in a pretty good 1.5x economic multiplier now goes to the state which consumes. I wouldn't be surprised for every £1bn the government intends to raise by the maths it will only get around £0.5-0.6bn in additional revenue due to slower growth.
Cutting spending is the only answer, it isn't beyond the wit of man to cut 2.5% out of the government budget.
This stands at about £1.3 tn at the moment. 2.5% is about £32 billion. That's a cut of £1000 pa in expenditure for 32 million people, or £10,000 for 3.2 million people.
Even when you have identified these cuts (answers on a postcard to 11 Downing Street) you have only cut about a third of our annual debt interest payments, or about a fifth of the additional amount we are borrowing each year for our grandchildren to pay back.
Or cutting about 600k jobs from state employment. I'd do over a million job cuts out of middle management and admin within two years.
You're also ignoring the fact that if the government signalled it was prepared to make substantial spending cuts with job losses in the public sector the debt interest bill would fall from two factors - lower inflation and a lower risk premium. A £32bn cut in spending will be coupled with a £10-15bn cut in debt interest yielding between about £40bn in savings even after unemployment benefits are factored in, maybe £20bn in years one and two due to the cost of paying people off.
I'd also cut benefits substantially, cut public sector pensions by at least 25% plus introduce a defined benefit tax on that specific class of income taxed at source just like PAYE and legislate to shift the index to CPI, kill the triple lock and for another £15-20bn in annual savings.
I'd also cancel the 2m+ low income and dependent visas that arrived from 2020 and I'd make all of the "skilled" workers from before the income increase reapply for their visas and invalidate those who don't meet the new threshold within 6 months. Companies either pay more for the foreign workers or they find a British person who is capable of doing the £27-38k per year job they can't have migrants for.
I'd also cut the whole asylum budget, set up camps with very high fences, tents and no right to leave the camp until they have had their claim processed, no rights to any benefits even for people who receive status for a minimum period of 10 years and no citizenship for a minimum period of 20 years. People who are declined have no right of appeal and are removed either to their home country or to a third country like Rwanda, they get to choose which they'd prefer. If that breaks their human rights then so be it, they can choose some other country to go and leech from.
The state is simply too generous, the UK is a middle income country with expenditure on welfare of a rich country. Welfare needs to be cut.
Are all the comfortably off people not in the public sector to make no contribution to the rescue plan then?
I think they already do enough. It's time for the rest of the country to make their contribution.
The public has a duty to stand up to shoplifters rather than relying solely on police officers, a policing chief has said.
Matthew Barber, the Conservative Police and Crime Commissioner for Thames Valley, said it was wrong to think that tackling thieves was just a job for police.
He said: “If you’re not even going to challenge people, you’re not going to try and stop them, then people will get away with it. That’s not just about policing. That’s a bigger problem with society, people who [don’t do anything] – you’re part of the problem.”
If security guards in shops won’t why should the public and I wouldn’t blame security guards not risking being stabbed to protect a bottle of Bells whiskey
I would be interested to see when the public film individuals shoplifting how often are the police using that evidence to track down and convict them? I am going with not very often.
The public has a duty to stand up to shoplifters rather than relying solely on police officers, a policing chief has said.
Matthew Barber, the Conservative Police and Crime Commissioner for Thames Valley, said it was wrong to think that tackling thieves was just a job for police.
He said: “If you’re not even going to challenge people, you’re not going to try and stop them, then people will get away with it. That’s not just about policing. That’s a bigger problem with society, people who [don’t do anything] – you’re part of the problem.”
People don't do anything because there's a bigger problem with society. Possible outcomes of doing something are not good. You get injured; police will say you shouldn't have got involved. Shoplifter gets injured, you're under arrest.
Highly unlikely that the outcome will be, You're right, mate, sorry, won't happen again.
This is going to be a disaster. They just need to get real and cut spending. Freeze public sector salaries, cut the triple lock and cut public sector pensions. Private sector salary growth is stalling already and the number of vacancies is falling drastically so they can't even cry about a recruitment problem like they moaned about when the last government did it.
Taxes can't go up now without taking money out of the productive base of the economy. There's no more left to give.
This is actually targeted at the unearned wealth of the boomer generation. So I'd have thought you would approve.
It's simply not going to raise enough money and will send wealthy people fleeing overseas. The non-dom changes have already caused a huge hole in the public finances, hitting long term investment two tax rises is going to cause an even bigger loss for the government.
For every billion pounds in tax they raise they are going to take a billion out of the economy, if not more given that they will have to target the productive part meaning money that would otherwise be better used and result in a pretty good 1.5x economic multiplier now goes to the state which consumes. I wouldn't be surprised for every £1bn the government intends to raise by the maths it will only get around £0.5-0.6bn in additional revenue due to slower growth.
Cutting spending is the only answer, it isn't beyond the wit of man to cut 2.5% out of the government budget.
5% should be a dawdle and 10% possible
Ah, you're another of these people (like Elon) who doesn't realize what the government spends its money on.
They squander shedloads. private business does not have the luxury of milking the public, if not efficient they die. We have a bloated state paying far too much on benefits and borrowing/wasting far too much money on crap. Nobody can be stupid enough to think that paying more on teh dole than workers earn is sensible in any way.
Really?
My experience is that loads of private businesses milk their customers massively.
If they are not making money then they cut costs or go bust, no magic money tree there.
Or they put prices up.
Indeed, plenty of profitable business are happy to.put prices up when they don't need to, because they can.
The public has a duty to stand up to shoplifters rather than relying solely on police officers, a policing chief has said.
Matthew Barber, the Conservative Police and Crime Commissioner for Thames Valley, said it was wrong to think that tackling thieves was just a job for police.
He said: “If you’re not even going to challenge people, you’re not going to try and stop them, then people will get away with it. That’s not just about policing. That’s a bigger problem with society, people who [don’t do anything] – you’re part of the problem.”
If security guards in shops won’t why should the public and I wouldn’t blame security guards not risking being stabbed to protect a bottle of Bells whiskey
Let’s revive the law of Hot Trod.
You could hire mercenaries to carry it out, in the Goode Olde Days
“Customers at the till, form an orderly queue to sign up for today’s Hot Trods. First come first served. This week only - a 25% discount on all shampoos and hair care products, for the heads of reavers.”
The public has a duty to stand up to shoplifters rather than relying solely on police officers, a policing chief has said.
Matthew Barber, the Conservative Police and Crime Commissioner for Thames Valley, said it was wrong to think that tackling thieves was just a job for police.
He said: “If you’re not even going to challenge people, you’re not going to try and stop them, then people will get away with it. That’s not just about policing. That’s a bigger problem with society, people who [don’t do anything] – you’re part of the problem.”
If security guards in shops won’t why should the public and I wouldn’t blame security guards not risking being stabbed to protect a bottle of Bells whiskey
I would be interested to see when the public film individuals shoplifting how often are the police using that evidence to track down and convict them?
Probably a lot less than they use films from the likes of Cycling Mikey to get some cash off motorists
We seem to be back in “why can’t we just” world this evening. Government is simple etc.
Yeah, let’s do nothing but bumble along as we are because decisions are ‘tough’ and we don’t have politicians to take tough decisions. 🤔
It's nothing to do with being "tough" - it's a recognition the state of the country defies easy or simplistic solutions.
Yes, let's debate solutions and ideas, nothing wrong with that but the default point for many seems "I'm not paying any more tax" while the tough solution might be to say "yes, I'm prepared to pay more in tax but I want Govenrment to be better, more efficient and more responsive".
More efficient necessarily requires job cuts. You can bang on about local government as much as you like but it's a basic fact that the state now employs more people than ever and output has barely moved. We need to cut the waste and get middle managers and wasters out of the way of people who deliver. You can't deliver efficiency without cutting jobs. 1m job cuts, a hiring freeze, wage freeze and 25% cut to pension contributions and equivalent cut to defined benefit schemes as well as closing them for good.
State employment has become another form of welfare, too many people sit around delivering nothing and get a salary. It's time to cut the cancer out.
This is going to be a disaster. They just need to get real and cut spending. Freeze public sector salaries, cut the triple lock and cut public sector pensions. Private sector salary growth is stalling already and the number of vacancies is falling drastically so they can't even cry about a recruitment problem like they moaned about when the last government did it.
Taxes can't go up now without taking money out of the productive base of the economy. There's no more left to give.
This is actually targeted at the unearned wealth of the boomer generation. So I'd have thought you would approve.
It's simply not going to raise enough money and will send wealthy people fleeing overseas. The non-dom changes have already caused a huge hole in the public finances, hitting long term investment two tax rises is going to cause an even bigger loss for the government.
For every billion pounds in tax they raise they are going to take a billion out of the economy, if not more given that they will have to target the productive part meaning money that would otherwise be better used and result in a pretty good 1.5x economic multiplier now goes to the state which consumes. I wouldn't be surprised for every £1bn the government intends to raise by the maths it will only get around £0.5-0.6bn in additional revenue due to slower growth.
Cutting spending is the only answer, it isn't beyond the wit of man to cut 2.5% out of the government budget.
This stands at about £1.3 tn at the moment. 2.5% is about £32 billion. That's a cut of £1000 pa in expenditure for 32 million people, or £10,000 for 3.2 million people.
Even when you have identified these cuts (answers on a postcard to 11 Downing Street) you have only cut about a third of our annual debt interest payments, or about a fifth of the additional amount we are borrowing each year for our grandchildren to pay back.
Or cutting about 600k jobs from state employment. I'd do over a million job cuts out of middle management and admin within two years.
You're also ignoring the fact that if the government signalled it was prepared to make substantial spending cuts with job losses in the public sector the debt interest bill would fall from two factors - lower inflation and a lower risk premium. A £32bn cut in spending will be coupled with a £10-15bn cut in debt interest yielding between about £40bn in savings even after unemployment benefits are factored in, maybe £20bn in years one and two due to the cost of paying people off.
I'd also cut benefits substantially, cut public sector pensions by at least 25% plus introduce a defined benefit tax on that specific class of income taxed at source just like PAYE and legislate to shift the index to CPI, kill the triple lock and for another £15-20bn in annual savings.
I'd also cancel the 2m+ low income and dependent visas that arrived from 2020 and I'd make all of the "skilled" workers from before the income increase reapply for their visas and invalidate those who don't meet the new threshold within 6 months. Companies either pay more for the foreign workers or they find a British person who is capable of doing the £27-38k per year job they can't have migrants for.
I'd also cut the whole asylum budget, set up camps with very high fences, tents and no right to leave the camp until they have had their claim processed, no rights to any benefits even for people who receive status for a minimum period of 10 years and no citizenship for a minimum period of 20 years. People who are declined have no right of appeal and are removed either to their home country or to a third country like Rwanda, they get to choose which they'd prefer. If that breaks their human rights then so be it, they can choose some other country to go and leech from.
The state is simply too generous, the UK is a middle income country with expenditure on welfare of a rich country. Welfare needs to be cut.
Are all the comfortably off people not in the public sector to make no contribution to the rescue plan then?
I think they already do enough. It's time for the rest of the country to make their contribution.
But then we're back to "do it to Julia". Public sector workers contributed by the pay stagnation after the credit crunch.
We seem to be back in “why can’t we just” world this evening. Government is simple etc.
Yeah, let’s do nothing but bumble along as we are because decisions are ‘tough’ and we don’t have politicians to take tough decisions. 🤔
It's nothing to do with being "tough" - it's a recognition the state of the country defies easy or simplistic solutions.
Yes, let's debate solutions and ideas, nothing wrong with that but the default point for many seems "I'm not paying any more tax" while the tough solution might be to say "yes, I'm prepared to pay more in tax but I want Govenrment to be better, more efficient and more responsive".
This would be fine to a lot of people however I imagine most people will then think of all the times there have been tax rises/high taxes and wondered if Govt was any better, more efficient, responsive. There is no evidence really that the will is there for politicians or the civil service to spend sensibly.
People see to much “wastage” on state infrastructure projects, asylum seekers, armoured vehicles that go over budget, PFI, compensation for messed up blood transfusions, post office horrors, paying another country to take Chagos to the point their population don’t have to pay income tax, and they think that politicians and civil servants will never spend wisely so best the individual keeps as much of their hard earned as possible rather than see it wasted.
Until more people see sensible spending then they won’t want to pay more to the state as it never gets used any better.
The public has a duty to stand up to shoplifters rather than relying solely on police officers, a policing chief has said.
Matthew Barber, the Conservative Police and Crime Commissioner for Thames Valley, said it was wrong to think that tackling thieves was just a job for police.
He said: “If you’re not even going to challenge people, you’re not going to try and stop them, then people will get away with it. That’s not just about policing. That’s a bigger problem with society, people who [don’t do anything] – you’re part of the problem.”
What the hecketty heck does he think the job of the police is? If I recall the Peel principles correctly (I may not), the police are at heart nothing more than members of the public with specialist tools who spend their days preserving order and arresting those who break law/order? He can't lie back, snack on cake, fart and say "Nothing to do with me guv"
We seem to be back in “why can’t we just” world this evening. Government is simple etc.
Yeah, let’s do nothing but bumble along as we are because decisions are ‘tough’ and we don’t have politicians to take tough decisions. 🤔
It's nothing to do with being "tough" - it's a recognition the state of the country defies easy or simplistic solutions.
Yes, let's debate solutions and ideas, nothing wrong with that but the default point for many seems "I'm not paying any more tax" while the tough solution might be to say "yes, I'm prepared to pay more in tax but I want Govenrment to be better, more efficient and more responsive".
More efficient necessarily requires job cuts. You can bang on about local government as much as you like but it's a basic fact that the state now employs more people than ever and output has barely moved. We need to cut the waste and get middle managers and wasters out of the way of people who deliver. You can't deliver efficiency without cutting jobs. 1m job cuts, a hiring freeze, wage freeze and 25% cut to pension contributions and equivalent cut to defined benefit schemes as well as closing them for good.
State employment has become another form of welfare, too many people sit around delivering nothing and get a salary. It's time to cut the cancer out.
Remember when a BritDoge unit went into Kent County Council?
Zia Yusuf had a bottom handed to him on a plate by misunderstanding how council contracts work, whereas the brains of the operation said this;
Fried said he found “genuinely ancient” IT systems that were “nearly as old as me” and costing the council in wasted staff hours. He said that officials worked incredibly hard but were blighted by antiquated processes and inefficient procurement practices.
There's a reason the public sector doesn't optimise long-term efficiency, and it's nothing to do with lazy staff and a lot to do with trying to keep the plates spinning with not enough spending on equipment and training.
And those procurement practices are often there for a reason, and that reason is often about a paranoia about spending public money.
In terms of testing older drivers, I think that the real problem is reaction time rather than vision. In some US States the vision rules are so lax that people who are registered partially sighted can drive, but there is little evidence those states have more accidents. Reaction time is more critical, and requires not just vision, but also acting on hazards, particularly so where there is cognitive impairment developing, though physical frailty too.
Vision is at least fairly easy to test, with objective measures, but reaction time etc is more difficult. At the very least it requires a good simulator, but more realistically an on the road test, and we have very limited capacity for those.
I remember arcade machines where you had to press a button to see how quickly you reacted. They can’t be expensive, and could be located in opticians, GP surgeries, etc.
If you want an easy test try Fruit Ninja on an iPad.
Then have a pint and try again. Even if barely noticing the alcohol the level of performance drops very quickly.
Quite a good test for elderly parents too.
There was ca. 1967 a (then very expensive and primitive) arcade machine which was a driving simulator which threw in such things as a parked car's door opening in front of you. No idea how long that lasted.
But what we do have is Microsoft Flight Simulator - especially a version which shows one's path in space in plan and elevation afterwards. I was startled at the effect of first one, then two, then three not particularly big glasses of wine - and I'm not a small person.
Made me realise decades ago that the 50 limit is, if anything, perhaps a bit generous.
Are the data for KSI with drivers with alcohol in their system under the legal level? AIUI there has been no great reduction in road deaths since Scotland went down this road. Shouldn’t we expect one?
I think this is a bit like my route to work, where about ten years ago they decided that as it was a national speed limit where the traffic actually moves at about 70mph, they decided to cut the speed limit to 50mph, and everyone still drives at 70mph. All the accidents are unrelated to speed anyway, it's dumb stuff like overtaking on blind brows and people pulling out of junctions with half mile sightlines in both directions without looking.
Based on the various practitioners of the art I know, to get booked for drink driving outside of the week before Christmas requires serious determination e.g. cashing your car into the front wall of the local nick. There is no point lowering the threshold when we are probably catching less than 1% of those who regularly drive over the limit now.
The public has a duty to stand up to shoplifters rather than relying solely on police officers, a policing chief has said.
Matthew Barber, the Conservative Police and Crime Commissioner for Thames Valley, said it was wrong to think that tackling thieves was just a job for police.
He said: “If you’re not even going to challenge people, you’re not going to try and stop them, then people will get away with it. That’s not just about policing. That’s a bigger problem with society, people who [don’t do anything] – you’re part of the problem.”
If security guards in shops won’t why should the public and I wouldn’t blame security guards not risking being stabbed to protect a bottle of Bells whiskey
What do Tesco pay the security guards in London shops? Are they even on Tesco’s payroll, or are they supplied by a security company?
It’ll be a fraction of what a police officer is paid, without a pension or a union if they get themselves injured, and with the CPS as likely to prosecute them for intervening as the scrotes stealing from the shop.
This is going to be a disaster. They just need to get real and cut spending. Freeze public sector salaries, cut the triple lock and cut public sector pensions. Private sector salary growth is stalling already and the number of vacancies is falling drastically so they can't even cry about a recruitment problem like they moaned about when the last government did it.
Taxes can't go up now without taking money out of the productive base of the economy. There's no more left to give.
This is actually targeted at the unearned wealth of the boomer generation. So I'd have thought you would approve.
It's simply not going to raise enough money and will send wealthy people fleeing overseas. The non-dom changes have already caused a huge hole in the public finances, hitting long term investment two tax rises is going to cause an even bigger loss for the government.
For every billion pounds in tax they raise they are going to take a billion out of the economy, if not more given that they will have to target the productive part meaning money that would otherwise be better used and result in a pretty good 1.5x economic multiplier now goes to the state which consumes. I wouldn't be surprised for every £1bn the government intends to raise by the maths it will only get around £0.5-0.6bn in additional revenue due to slower growth.
Cutting spending is the only answer, it isn't beyond the wit of man to cut 2.5% out of the government budget.
This stands at about £1.3 tn at the moment. 2.5% is about £32 billion. That's a cut of £1000 pa in expenditure for 32 million people, or £10,000 for 3.2 million people.
Even when you have identified these cuts (answers on a postcard to 11 Downing Street) you have only cut about a third of our annual debt interest payments, or about a fifth of the additional amount we are borrowing each year for our grandchildren to pay back.
Or cutting about 600k jobs from state employment. I'd do over a million job cuts out of middle management and admin within two years.
You're also ignoring the fact that if the government signalled it was prepared to make substantial spending cuts with job losses in the public sector the debt interest bill would fall from two factors - lower inflation and a lower risk premium. A £32bn cut in spending will be coupled with a £10-15bn cut in debt interest yielding between about £40bn in savings even after unemployment benefits are factored in, maybe £20bn in years one and two due to the cost of paying people off.
I'd also cut benefits substantially, cut public sector pensions by at least 25% plus introduce a defined benefit tax on that specific class of income taxed at source just like PAYE and legislate to shift the index to CPI, kill the triple lock and for another £15-20bn in annual savings.
I'd also cancel the 2m+ low income and dependent visas that arrived from 2020 and I'd make all of the "skilled" workers from before the income increase reapply for their visas and invalidate those who don't meet the new threshold within 6 months. Companies either pay more for the foreign workers or they find a British person who is capable of doing the £27-38k per year job they can't have migrants for.
I'd also cut the whole asylum budget, set up camps with very high fences, tents and no right to leave the camp until they have had their claim processed, no rights to any benefits even for people who receive status for a minimum period of 10 years and no citizenship for a minimum period of 20 years. People who are declined have no right of appeal and are removed either to their home country or to a third country like Rwanda, they get to choose which they'd prefer. If that breaks their human rights then so be it, they can choose some other country to go and leech from.
The state is simply too generous, the UK is a middle income country with expenditure on welfare of a rich country. Welfare needs to be cut.
Are all the comfortably off people not in the public sector to make no contribution to the rescue plan then?
Err - aren't most of them pensioners, who seem very much in Max's sights? Also, the comfortably off part of the working age population is already paying stonking amount of tax - it's not like they aren't making a contribution already.
We seem to be back in “why can’t we just” world this evening. Government is simple etc.
Yeah, let’s do nothing but bumble along as we are because decisions are ‘tough’ and we don’t have politicians to take tough decisions. 🤔
It's nothing to do with being "tough" - it's a recognition the state of the country defies easy or simplistic solutions.
Yes, let's debate solutions and ideas, nothing wrong with that but the default point for many seems "I'm not paying any more tax" while the tough solution might be to say "yes, I'm prepared to pay more in tax but I want Govenrment to be better, more efficient and more responsive".
More efficient necessarily requires job cuts. You can bang on about local government as much as you like but it's a basic fact that the state now employs more people than ever and output has barely moved. We need to cut the waste and get middle managers and wasters out of the way of people who deliver. You can't deliver efficiency without cutting jobs. 1m job cuts, a hiring freeze, wage freeze and 25% cut to pension contributions and equivalent cut to defined benefit schemes as well as closing them for good.
State employment has become another form of welfare, too many people sit around delivering nothing and get a salary. It's time to cut the cancer out.
Remember when a BritDoge unit went into Kent County Council?
Zia Yusuf had a bottom handed to him on a plate by misunderstanding how council contracts work, whereas the brains of the operation said this;
Fried said he found “genuinely ancient” IT systems that were “nearly as old as me” and costing the council in wasted staff hours. He said that officials worked incredibly hard but were blighted by antiquated processes and inefficient procurement practices.
There's a reason the public sector doesn't optimise long-term efficiency, and it's nothing to do with lazy staff and a lot to do with trying to keep the plates spinning with not enough spending on equipment and training.
And those procurement practices are often there for a reason, and that reason is often about a paranoia about spending public money.
I was told today that our local council has already overspent the 2025-6 social care budget.
We seem to be back in “why can’t we just” world this evening. Government is simple etc.
Yeah, let’s do nothing but bumble along as we are because decisions are ‘tough’ and we don’t have politicians to take tough decisions. 🤔
It's nothing to do with being "tough" - it's a recognition the state of the country defies easy or simplistic solutions.
Yes, let's debate solutions and ideas, nothing wrong with that but the default point for many seems "I'm not paying any more tax" while the tough solution might be to say "yes, I'm prepared to pay more in tax but I want Govenrment to be better, more efficient and more responsive".
More efficient necessarily requires job cuts. You can bang on about local government as much as you like but it's a basic fact that the state now employs more people than ever and output has barely moved. We need to cut the waste and get middle managers and wasters out of the way of people who deliver. You can't deliver efficiency without cutting jobs. 1m job cuts, a hiring freeze, wage freeze and 25% cut to pension contributions and equivalent cut to defined benefit schemes as well as closing them for good.
State employment has become another form of welfare, too many people sit around delivering nothing and get a salary. It's time to cut the cancer out.
Remember when a BritDoge unit went into Kent County Council?
Zia Yusuf had a bottom handed to him on a plate by misunderstanding how council contracts work, whereas the brains of the operation said this;
Fried said he found “genuinely ancient” IT systems that were “nearly as old as me” and costing the council in wasted staff hours. He said that officials worked incredibly hard but were blighted by antiquated processes and inefficient procurement practices.
There's a reason the public sector doesn't optimise long-term efficiency, and it's nothing to do with lazy staff and a lot to do with trying to keep the plates spinning with not enough spending on equipment and training.
And those procurement practices are often there for a reason, and that reason is often about a paranoia about spending public money.
I was told today that our local council has already overspent the 2025-6 social care budget.
It is August.
Is that a Reform council ?
Sadly the legacy of the previous govt imposing legal liabilities on councils without either funding it or allowing them to raise funding
She’s a peripheral figure now. Not sure this is really noteworthy. There seems to be. A bit of an obsession with her in some quarters.
I doubt there’s any way back for her into mainstream politics and she will become a figure similar to Lembit Opik.
She’s spent a fair bit of time out in the US doing the conservative conference circuit, which is a big thing there even in non-election years. She’ll be making a fair few dollars in speaking fees, more than she ever earned as PM.
The question which we can't answer from this distance is what's driving Truss right now? Is it the fees (in which case, I'd be advising CCHQ to find a donor to pay her whatever it costs for her to not speak), or the attention? I'm uncomfortably reminded of the fate of Howard Davidson after his defrocking.
It’s likely all of the above.
She realises she has a small window of opportunity in which to make retirement money, the US conservative movement is on the up right now and they have loads of conferences. She has a good story to tell them.
There’s likely a feeling in the back of her mind, not totally unjustified, that she was set up to fail in the big job, especially by Sunak and his friends in the Treasury who ended up taking over.
This is going to be a disaster. They just need to get real and cut spending. Freeze public sector salaries, cut the triple lock and cut public sector pensions. Private sector salary growth is stalling already and the number of vacancies is falling drastically so they can't even cry about a recruitment problem like they moaned about when the last government did it.
Taxes can't go up now without taking money out of the productive base of the economy. There's no more left to give.
This is actually targeted at the unearned wealth of the boomer generation. So I'd have thought you would approve.
It's simply not going to raise enough money and will send wealthy people fleeing overseas. The non-dom changes have already caused a huge hole in the public finances, hitting long term investment two tax rises is going to cause an even bigger loss for the government.
For every billion pounds in tax they raise they are going to take a billion out of the economy, if not more given that they will have to target the productive part meaning money that would otherwise be better used and result in a pretty good 1.5x economic multiplier now goes to the state which consumes. I wouldn't be surprised for every £1bn the government intends to raise by the maths it will only get around £0.5-0.6bn in additional revenue due to slower growth.
Cutting spending is the only answer, it isn't beyond the wit of man to cut 2.5% out of the government budget.
This stands at about £1.3 tn at the moment. 2.5% is about £32 billion. That's a cut of £1000 pa in expenditure for 32 million people, or £10,000 for 3.2 million people.
Even when you have identified these cuts (answers on a postcard to 11 Downing Street) you have only cut about a third of our annual debt interest payments, or about a fifth of the additional amount we are borrowing each year for our grandchildren to pay back.
Headcount. The number of uk central government employees was just over 4m in q1 2025 vs 3.4m in q1 2020.
Let’s say 0.5m at the median wage of £30k = £15bn p.a. (Plus the social costs so let’s say another £5bn)
Local government employment has fallen about 30k in that period to a shade under 2m.
I’m not sure that the quality of government services has improved by that much over the last 5 years?
Over time - and it might take a year - this we’ll be absorbed by the productive economy so the income and social taxes will be replaced and hopefully output will be higher resulting in additional corporate taxes
Comments
1. They should raise taxes on other people who are not me
2. They should cut spending on other people who are not me
ILR for the Boriswave simply is not sustainable for the many hundreds of thousands low wage migrants with economically inactive dependents. It will make the problems we have now worse.
Tell them tanks, give them a picture of a spitfire or a carriage clock, and send them on their way
What do you think slashing welfare spending would do to the economy?
It's why the Tories relied so much on public sector pay freezes and fiscal drag.
https://www.gohenry.com/uk/blog/bread/why-gen-z-isnt-driving#:~:text=Learning to drive used to,even getting behind the wheel.
They are drinking less too:
https://www.bmj.com/content/390/bmj.r1247#:~:text=“It's likely to be multifactorial,disposable income than older generations.
And going out less too.
https://www.nssmag.com/en/lifestyle/40019/nightlife-crisis-gen-z-going-out-less
It's a major social change, and perhaps not a universal good, but for road safety it is.
Then have a pint and try again. Even if barely noticing the alcohol the level of performance drops very quickly.
Quite a good test for elderly parents too.
The economic impact of different measures varies depending on whether they suppress or encourage spending, but there is no fundamental difference to the immediate stimulus or retrenchment between spending cut and tax changes.
If it were up to me (which it isn’t) I’d do whatever it takes to stimulate consumer and business demand. We have to get out of this ridiculous Japanese style situation where government debt subsidises individual saving.
This machine could be attempted to also measure the reaction time pretty easily I reckon.
Either way, Jenrick is smashing this out of the park.
IIRC they managed to design a system for drivers who took a test after 1997 with a 3500kg hard cap on total train weight where the only other requirement was for the towing vehicle to be at least the same weight as the trailer.
This was insane, as it meant you could tow more with a empty 109“ series landrover (1750kg unladen) than almost anything else, despite an empty 109“ being a pretty deadly thing to tow with (not enough weight on the back axle - if you used one as a tow motor you needed to load ~300kg of scrap iron in the back to make it behave).
Most of us who towed plant trailers regularly ignored it all on the basis that virtually no-one (including the plod) understood the rules anyway.
One of the better brexit dividends was binning it all off (it was a EU imposition designed to align national driving licenses) and giving everyone with a car licence the entitlement to tow trailers up to 3500kg (7000kg train weight).
The last thing we want or need is to think up more stupidity like this...
- Make sure his training is about road safety principles, not just about "learning to drive", and try to make sure he keeps learning. I think there's a lot about psychology of young men in particular needing to "perform" to convince themselves of their own value. How that turns out depends on the individual, but in white working class it can easily be BMWs with loud exhausts and fast driving to impress a girl, which can morph into risks like drink driving. That should not apply to your sprogs, perhaps
- Consider taking him to a ROSPA or other course before he reaches 17 - one that is fun but also teaches about careful and considerate driving. 16th birthday? Depending on your relationship, go along yourself for a refresher yourself or frame yourself as regretting not doing it. I span my dads family car off a roundabout at 17 years 8 months at 1am - not drunk, just inexperienced with frost. In retrospect I passed by test too soon.
- I am told there is value in learning to ride a motorcycle first, in terms of developing a cautious and defensive style. I think he can do that at 16 on a moped. That may help nobble any reckless tendencies, which we all have in there somewhere.
- Encourage him to continue learning by funding him straight through to do advanced driving - ROSPA or IAM, and perhaps with the same instructor for some lessons ... motorways etc. Insurance savings may be helpful for him, even though dad is as rich as Croesus.
@Object_Zero_
In the UK,
I can buy index linked senior Gilts that yield 5.03% (22/03/29) and on the same day I am advertised similar fixed term mortgages for 3.8%
I could borrow £500k against a property, pay the bank £19,000 pa interest and sink the cash into inflation proof Gilts that pay me £25,150 pa.
Obviously I have skipped taxes for the sake of simplicity (everyone’s taxes are different), but you shouldn’t be able to carry trade the risk free rate of return INSIDE a currency?
Why are UK banks seemingly offering this arbitrage?
Are they just trying to prop up their residential property books?
It feels one of those things you notice that screams “something is going to break soon”.
https://x.com/Object_Zero_/status/1954821166029250751
It’s really not. It performs pretty well on a per unit money basis but on a whole lot of other measures it’s ways behind lots of countries that were competing at 2012. The NHS is brilliant is a national myth of the British, just as we have the myth of being alone in 1940 facing Hitler (accurate apart from all our allies in the Empire and Commonweatlth, plus lots of US help). We really ought to be looking at what the best options are around the world for evolving our provision.
Certainly youth and male are overrepresented in drivers involved in ksi. As are rural roads which probably strongly correlates with risky speeding/loss of control.
Given my last 2 cars have been capable of telling me I'm driving poorly. I don't see why they can't be used more effectively and that driver tailgating you or on the limit of control on a winding country road find that the car has gone onto limp mode or at least vastly reduced performance.
The lawyers and accountants would squeal very loudly at the prospect though.
It wasn't a hymn to the NHS so much as a milestone in our history, and also why the old fashioned beds and nurses.
It's almost as if people don't understand the concept of telling the national story (and a heavily romanticised one of course).
I should really be on the Olympic committee.
Slightly contentiously, get an instructor who learned to drive here. I've seen instructors who miss things like driving to the conditions not the limit. Here it is like our legal system - much of our road safety rests on subtly communicated habits not rules and regulations.
But it all needs to be supportive dad, not terrified dad. I'll shut up now.
But what we do have is Microsoft Flight Simulator - especially a version which shows one's path in space in plan and elevation afterwards. I was startled at the effect of first one, then two, then three not particularly big glasses of wine - and I'm not a small person.
Made me realise decades ago that the 50 limit is, if anything, perhaps a bit generous.
Depends on the allowances, though; one reason the Tories brought in the allowances was that ordinary folk could sort of get the rich bastard treatment.
However, you still need to get the IHT paperwork done even with allowances, so - if the allowances don't change - then no skin off these professions' noses surely.
https://x.com/elliotkeck/status/1955297285731963009?s=61
My experience is that loads of private businesses milk their customers massively.
https://youtu.be/0eL-jEV_RKM?si=qB0YGfK8kKnefSab
I am also a bit dubious on how accidents are accounted. Last year my wife had a car pull out in front of her at a junction. Young guy, made a mistake. Luckily the smash was minor, no one was hurt. Now say my wife had had a couple of glasses of wine, just over the limit and the same accident occurs. She would be done for causing the accident by drink driving. Yet it wasn’t her fault.
In general we need to accept that cars are inherently dangerous and drive that way. Someone once suggested a kill spike on the steering wheel rather than air bags. If you crash it takes out your heart. Everyone would drive at three miles an hour…
I got hit by a guy in his seventies. He says I walked straight out in front of him
I remember nothing, but that doesn't sound like me
There's no other useful evidence
I just have to wait until my ankle has healed, and start walking then working
There was a famous Chief Constable in North Wales called Richard Brunstrom aka "Mad Mullah of the Traffic Taliban" who went Zero Tolerance, and was slightly unpopular with some but his force performed well.
‘Nicola’s ITV interview was so candid, real, and raw.
Stripped of politics, it shows her as a human being with depth, vulnerability, and strength. An inspiration in every sense.’
https://x.com/nikitabassisnp/status/1954975277496541228?s=61
As usual, it's our old mate "the public sector" who is the whipping boy (or girl given the large percentage of women and indeed part timers employed in councils and elsewhere) with pay to be frozen (in real terms, a pay cut), pensions cut etc, etc. Of course those who rely on the public sector for help will also be affected.
Just so those on £80k a year can continue with their horse riding lessons and outdoor jacuzzis (apparently).
- https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-challenges-of-democracy/jonathan-sumption/9781805222521
- https://www.waterstones.com/book/trials-of-the-state/jonathan-sumption/9781788163736
- https://www.waterstones.com/book/law-in-a-time-of-crisis/jonathan-sumption/9781788167123
Has anybody read them?Public regulations though I am guessing push the price up considerably ..
You can try some in this app -
https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/official-dvsa-theory-test-kit/id463295925
‘There are of course shirkers, beyond doubt. But there are also people who recognise that taking a job means losing benefits, losing other freebies and discounts, all in exchange for a salary which gets whittled away by taxation and the other costs of working - commuting, etc.’
I suspect, proportionally, a great many are in the latter rather than the former camp.
Matthew Barber, the Conservative Police and Crime Commissioner for Thames Valley, said it was wrong to think that tackling thieves was just a job for police.
He said: “If you’re not even going to challenge people, you’re not going to try and stop them, then people will get away with it. That’s not just about policing. That’s a bigger problem with society, people who [don’t do anything] – you’re part of the problem.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/08/12/public-must-stand-up-to-shoplifters-says-policing-chief/
Public Sector Employment is growing and it has to be paid from somewhere and there is nothing wrong with suggestion of reform to public sector pensions given the cost of them. As has had to happen in the private sector.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/publicsectorpersonnel/timeseries/g6nq/pse
Yes, let's debate solutions and ideas, nothing wrong with that but the default point for many seems "I'm not paying any more tax" while the tough solution might be to say "yes, I'm prepared to pay more in tax but I want Govenrment to be better, more efficient and more responsive".
We either carry on as we are or we grasp the nettle. Now it may be the tough decision is to spend more. I’d rather see spending and taxes cut, not that tax affects me a great deal as I am retired. However if the decision is more spending and raising taxes that yield it then so be it.
Highly unlikely that the outcome will be, You're right, mate, sorry, won't happen again.
Indeed, plenty of profitable business are happy to.put prices up when they don't need to, because they can.
You could hire mercenaries to carry it out, in the Goode Olde Days
“Customers at the till, form an orderly queue to sign up for today’s Hot Trods. First come first served. This week only - a 25% discount on all shampoos and hair care products, for the heads of reavers.”
State employment has become another form of welfare, too many people sit around delivering nothing and get a salary. It's time to cut the cancer out.
People see to much “wastage” on state infrastructure projects, asylum seekers, armoured vehicles that go over budget, PFI, compensation for messed up blood transfusions, post office horrors, paying another country to take Chagos to the point their population don’t have to pay income tax, and they think that politicians and civil servants will never spend wisely so best the individual keeps as much of their hard earned as possible rather than see it wasted.
Until more people see sensible spending then they won’t want to pay more to the state as it never gets used any better.
The Politics of promising lots of money to various undeserving groups is idiocy.
Israel are a very sick society
https://www.channel4.com/news/the-palestinian-shot-defending-his-home-from-israeli-settlers
Zia Yusuf had a bottom handed to him on a plate by misunderstanding how council contracts work, whereas the brains of the operation said this;
Fried said he found “genuinely ancient” IT systems that were “nearly as old as me” and costing the council in wasted staff hours. He said that officials worked incredibly hard but were blighted by antiquated processes and inefficient procurement practices.
https://www.thetimes.com/article/cade944e-3902-4ffb-a547-23aac146bd6e?shareToken=ee7ee88e320c9cbfe8244786b4807347
There's a reason the public sector doesn't optimise long-term efficiency, and it's nothing to do with lazy staff and a lot to do with trying to keep the plates spinning with not enough spending on equipment and training.
And those procurement practices are often there for a reason, and that reason is often about a paranoia about spending public money.
ADHD, racial abuse when a child, not meant to be taken literally
May just work for him and put enough doubt in the juries mind.
I wonder if the people who pleaded guilty were badly advised.
https://x.com/courtnewsuk/status/1955282518212551063?s=6
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy40rmlerx2o
Based on the various practitioners of the art I know, to get booked for drink driving outside of the week before Christmas requires serious determination e.g. cashing your car into the front wall of the local nick. There is no point lowering the threshold when we are probably catching less than 1% of those who regularly drive over the limit now.
It’ll be a fraction of what a police officer is paid, without a pension or a union if they get themselves injured, and with the CPS as likely to prosecute them for intervening as the scrotes stealing from the shop.
Also, the comfortably off part of the working age population is already paying stonking amount of tax - it's not like they aren't making a contribution already.
It is August.
JENRICK has spent 48 hours in Northern France. Suffice to say he’s appalled.
Video to be released shortly.
https://x.com/robertjenrick/status/1955341058482552902?s=61
Sadly the legacy of the previous govt imposing legal liabilities on councils without either funding it or allowing them to raise funding
She realises she has a small window of opportunity in which to make retirement money, the US conservative movement is on the up right now and they have loads of conferences. She has a good story to tell them.
There’s likely a feeling in the back of her mind, not totally unjustified, that she was set up to fail in the big job, especially by Sunak and his friends in the Treasury who ended up taking over.
Gilt rates are higher now then when she was PM.
Let’s say 0.5m at the median wage of £30k = £15bn p.a. (Plus the social costs so let’s say another £5bn)
Local government employment has fallen about 30k in that period to a shade under 2m.
I’m not sure that the quality of government services has improved by that much over the last 5 years?
Over time - and it might take a year - this we’ll be absorbed by the productive economy so the income and social taxes will be replaced and hopefully output will be higher resulting in additional corporate taxes
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/publicsectorpersonnel/timeseries/g6nt/pse