Danny Kruger, my goodness. Blanche has a Reform MP.
Pity, though Kruger is very socially conservative and an evangelical Christian, anti abortion, anti euthanasia and anti same sex marriage and hostile to much of Islam and economically very small state so no great surprise
I've no idea and not much more interest but it is entirely possible that she was making her own way when they met in low paid employment but that her parents are loaded and helped her out buying this property. The 2 versions are not necessarily inconsistent.
My concern is despite all this gotcha nonsense for Farage and Rayner the focus is never on how ridiculous our rules and indeed taxes are on the buying of property. Why on earth should buying a house be a taxable event? How does this help job mobility, younger buyers wanting to have families, investment in the housing stock etc etc? Are we not acting directly against several important public policies? They are stupid taxes and have become ever more so as we try to penalise those with more than one property.
CGT on the vendor? Both taxes try to claw back some of the capital gain in the housing market boosted by successive, mainly Tory, governments.
CGT on the vendor makes a lot more sense than what we do right now but it also discourages downsizing, job mobility etc. Almost all taxes have some negative effects but property taxes seem to me to be much more pernicious than most.
The only tax on real property that makes sense is a land value tax because it encourages efficient use of land. The rest is fiddling.
I agree in principle and like the effect, but it fails the easy-to-implement test. Last sale price + local HPI is the way IMO.
We bought our house in 1976 for £15,000
It's current market value is circa £500,000 whereas applying inflation only it would be just over £100,000
Under the Welsh HPI (more granular data is not available), my tax would value your property at £410,000. A flat 0.5% charge across the UK would be enough to replace Council Tax.
So your tax would be £2,050 per year. Interested to know if that's a tax cut for you?
How are things going with the Starmer-Mandelson scandal? Is the noose tightening?
I think it depends on how much it rumbles on over the next week and then into the Labour conference.
No matter whether this proves fatal or not, the fact that more Labour MPs (if still the usual suspects) are openly going over the top and questioning the leadership means something has changed. Before Mandelson you got the impression that they were all just feeling a sense of quiet despair, now it feels like there’s some anger bubbling up.
Thanks. My sense is that Sir Keir is safe for now - the whole thing is getting bogged down in 'what email was sent to what official when, and when did that official contact that official' stuff. Boring. And none of it is particularly incriminating for Sir Keir anyway. Sir Keir's enemies need to start working on another plan.
What is Starmer's problem is that he thought appointing Mandelson was a risk worth taking, and as was seen on the media yesterday when Peter Kyle made the same argument it was very badly received by Epstein's victims' relatives, his own back benchers, and the media generally
'He should not have been appointed in the first place' seems to be the attitude of the public
Trevor Phillips on Times Radio this morning said the three main themes of the march were 1) immigration; 2) pride in our country; and 3) christianity.
Which last I didn't see coming as England is quite some way along its post-reformation journey to complete atheism. Stig Abell countered that when people said "christianity" it was shorthand for times gone past (old maids..holy communion...etc).
To which he, Phillips, then went on to say that the/a main driving force of this christian resurgence was from immigrants.
Very interesting. There appears to be a contradiction between a crowd of - let's say xenophobic - people being nevertheless motivated by a faith largely driven by immigrants.
Hmmmm. The parent drift away from the faith, keeping it nominally. Then the children, searching for identity and certainty, rediscover The Faith.
No, that's never happened before.
Yes, it seems to me that people who have been told they have no culture are seeking their roots, and the prevalence of Islam emphasises that those roots are Christian.
I was referring to previous religious revivals. See Islam in the UK.
Two or three generations ago our equivalents would perhaps have gone to the pub every evening to see the same dozen people - its still the world shown at the Queen Vic, Woolpack and Rovers Return - now we come here and talk to people from around the country.
Yes and I'm certainly not in the camp of those who believe all "change" is inherently bad. It can be unsettling, certainly, but it's often positive in time.
The technological changes outpace the cultural adaptations - we know that. There have also been huge societal changes over the past couple of hundred years, some of which happened very quickly and again adaptation is outpaced by the speed of that change.
When Mrs Stodge came to England from NZ in 1991, her communication with her family back in Kiwiland was either by letter or a short and expensive weekly phone call. 30+ years on, she can FaceTime her mother for free and it's like being in the room with her. In that sense, as you rightly say, technology has improved the quality of life for so many people who aren't in physical proximity - my parents and my maternal grandparents lived in neighbouring streets on the same estate in south east London in the 1960s.
The converse of that it has encouraged or driven what Gove calls "atomisation" (amongst other factors). We can be anywhere, we can be everywhere and we can be nowhere all at the same time.
I'm probably an extreme example - I grew up in cities in 3 different countries, worked in two others, and I've retired to a happy marriage in an Oxfordshire village. I don't feel particularly rooted anywhere, but I'm aware of multiple influences. People who say proudly that they've never lived anywhere but their home town sound increasingly unusual, and I can't see that ever being reversed. An effect of that is that lifelong friendships tend to be occasional encounters without losing all their essential quaity - I have a friend in California who I met last week for the first time in 60 years, and we rapidly tuned into each other.
Nonetheless, the trend increases the importance of electronic interaction, and in a way I know people on this forum better than I know my Calfornian friend. Couple that to the natural tendency to find idelogically and philosophically ttuned online groups, and you can see how the world becomes atomised and people come to think that nearly everyone agrees with their ideas, however odd. I used to know a Danish Supreme Court judge who deliberately read a hostile daily paper to counter that tendency, but few of us have the time or inclination for tht - I never look at the Mail, and shouldn't think that Marquee Mark spends much time studying the Guardian.
That does make forums with varying opinions like this quite important and refreshing. We may not agree with each other, but at least we become more aware that we exist!
Interesting. Just to qualify one point. In Cumberland (non lake district part) it is completely normal for people of all ages never to have lived anywhere else but their home town/village and immediate locality. I suspect this is true of a number of not much noticed parts of the country.
There is a also a substantial younger group of people for who this is true except for the years 18-21 approx away at HE of some sort.
Another feather in Clarkson's Farm's cap is that it introduced Caleb, and the fact that there are many, many Calebs, to the sneering metropolitan elite. Notwithstanding he is now a celeb with a book deal, speaking tour, and whatnot, at the time he was clear that he had likely not travelled further than Chipping Norton his whole life.
When I lived in Barbados (which is twenty one miles long and fourteen miles across) I was told that there were people living in the interior of the country who had never been to the coast. This may have been hyperbole I suppose, although some of the rural communities in parishes like St George and St John were pretty isolated. The Bajan whites (descendents from indentured servants, often Scots and Irish political prisoners, almost on a par with slaves) were often the most isolated, it seemed. Some people really don't like leaving the place they feel comfortable.
They'd never been to the Lone Star - can't believe it...
I lived in Barbados for three years and never went there either. I preferred the nightlife on the south coast, the Boatyard, Harbour Lights and the bars and restaurants on St Lawrence Gap. The west coast was a bit up itself.
'Labour’s benefits rebels have backed Andy Burnham in his challenge to Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership of the party.
MPs who defeated the Prime Minister’s attempts at welfare reform told The Telegraph it was clear “this administration is coming to an end” and that Labour voters on the doorstep were calling for a new party leader.
Joining Mainstream is not the same as wanting Burnham to replace Starmer by Thursday week.
Its not going to hapen by Thursday week and nobody expects it to
It is a slow burning fuse, and as I have mentioned before if the May 26 elections are as bad as currently predicted for labour than who knows, though it is not easy to change labour PMs
"Starmer will be ousted after May elections, Labour MP predicts Richard Burgon says it is ‘inevitable’ that PM will have to go if party performs as badly in 2026 local elections as polling suggests"
I've no idea and not much more interest but it is entirely possible that she was making her own way when they met in low paid employment but that her parents are loaded and helped her out buying this property. The 2 versions are not necessarily inconsistent.
My concern is despite all this gotcha nonsense for Farage and Rayner the focus is never on how ridiculous our rules and indeed taxes are on the buying of property. Why on earth should buying a house be a taxable event? How does this help job mobility, younger buyers wanting to have families, investment in the housing stock etc etc? Are we not acting directly against several important public policies? They are stupid taxes and have become ever more so as we try to penalise those with more than one property.
CGT on the vendor? Both taxes try to claw back some of the capital gain in the housing market boosted by successive, mainly Tory, governments.
CGT on the vendor makes a lot more sense than what we do right now but it also discourages downsizing, job mobility etc. Almost all taxes have some negative effects but property taxes seem to me to be much more pernicious than most.
The only tax on real property that makes sense is a land value tax because it encourages efficient use of land. The rest is fiddling.
I agree in principle and like the effect, but it fails the easy-to-implement test. Last sale price + local HPI is the way IMO.
We bought our house in 1976 for £15,000
It's current market value is circa £500,000 whereas applying inflation only it would be just over £100,000
Under the Welsh HPI (more granular data is not available), my tax would value your property at £410,000. A flat 0.5% charge across the UK would be enough to replace Council Tax.
So your tax would be £2,050 per year. Interested to know if that's a tax cut for you?
If you are talking about my council tax it would be halved which in itself seems weird
The pb Tories who did not bark in the night time. Is it just me who noticed that of all our party leaders, it is only Kemi who had a good week?
Keir Starmer – under attack from his own side over his lack of political judgement or even plain common sense when appointing and then backing up to the last moment Lord Mandelson who has now had to resign three times for what was, at least to a first approximation, the same pattern of behaviour, being entranced by men considerably richer than him: Geoffrey Robinson, the Hindujas, Jeffrey Epstein. (On second thoughts, who better to inveigle himself into the inner circle of a billionaire property developer and cryptocurrency grifter?)
Ed Davey – the honourable member for falling in the water is being criticised by his own side for irrelevant stunts.
Nigel Farage – stamp duty obviously but also risks being outflanked by Tommy Robinson who attracted somewhere north of 100,000 largely peaceful protestors to London, along with squillionaire cheque-writer Elon Musk.
Kemi Badenoch – widely praised for an excellent PMQs and now can lay claim to two top Labour scalps.
And where were pb's Conservatives? Arguing about crowd sizes and frantically trawling the interwebs for a culture war about the assassination of a man who this time last week they could not have picked out of a police line-up even if he wore his MAGA hat. Poor old Kemi.
One swallow doesn’t make a summer and all that. Her performance at PMQs was noted but she had an open goal that even Diana Ross couldn’t miss. When she starts doing it week in week out and finds a strong coherent positioning for the party then she will get more support and confidence but she hasn’t been that inspiring so far, perhaps this will be the rocket boost she needs but one big PMQ win is just on PMQ win, and I don’t think anyone but the biggest Kemi supporter would try and claim the scalps as “hers”, the media took those scalps.
What was interesting about PMQs was that for the first time, Kemi did what we (and to be fair, some other outlets) have been urging for some time which is to ask direct questions about current issues, rather than her customary mini-speeches meandering through last week's news and thus inviting the Prime Minister to answer whichever insignificant subclause is easiest to bat away. Sadly, by the end she reverted to form.
Nonetheless, the girl done good and has a legitimate (if not uncontested) claim to both scalps. There is every reason to believe that immediately after PMQs, Starmer determined to find out what he should already have known about Lord Mandelson.
But again, where are her supporters? Liverpool fans are not questioning whether it should have been a penalty, they celebrate Salah's goal.
"Starmer will be ousted after May elections, Labour MP predicts Richard Burgon says it is ‘inevitable’ that PM will have to go if party performs as badly in 2026 local elections as polling suggests"
On the other hand, if the polling crystallises into results, Labour will be treated like a maritime interface social entertainer. And this will very probably put pressure on Sir Keir.
Kruger is exactly the sort of MP the Tories have to fear losing - not the Bravermans of this world but the ones who could help with rebuilding/future direction.
Wow. Looks like Nigel has played a blinder with the Kruger defection. It has completely bludgeoned Kemi after her one good week in politics and has turned the attention back to Nigel after the Robinson/Musk NF march over the weekend. Can this man do no wrong?
Danny Kruger, my goodness. Blanche has a Reform MP.
Pity, though Kruger is very socially conservative and an evangelical Christian, anti abortion, anti euthanasia and anti same sex marriage and hostile to much of Islam and economically very small state so no great surprise
Perfect fit for the narrow minded far right attracted to Farage
I am very pleased he has gone as that is not my conservative party, though it could be yours
I've no idea and not much more interest but it is entirely possible that she was making her own way when they met in low paid employment but that her parents are loaded and helped her out buying this property. The 2 versions are not necessarily inconsistent.
My concern is despite all this gotcha nonsense for Farage and Rayner the focus is never on how ridiculous our rules and indeed taxes are on the buying of property. Why on earth should buying a house be a taxable event? How does this help job mobility, younger buyers wanting to have families, investment in the housing stock etc etc? Are we not acting directly against several important public policies? They are stupid taxes and have become ever more so as we try to penalise those with more than one property.
CGT on the vendor? Both taxes try to claw back some of the capital gain in the housing market boosted by successive, mainly Tory, governments.
CGT on the vendor makes a lot more sense than what we do right now but it also discourages downsizing, job mobility etc. Almost all taxes have some negative effects but property taxes seem to me to be much more pernicious than most.
The only tax on real property that makes sense is a land value tax because it encourages efficient use of land. The rest is fiddling.
I agree in principle and like the effect, but it fails the easy-to-implement test. Last sale price + local HPI is the way IMO.
We bought our house in 1976 for £15,000
It's current market value is circa £500,000 whereas applying inflation only it would be just over £100,000
Under the Welsh HPI (more granular data is not available), my tax would value your property at £410,000. A flat 0.5% charge across the UK would be enough to replace Council Tax.
So your tax would be £2,050 per year. Interested to know if that's a tax cut for you?
It's bound to be. My house in pembs is worth about 150000, and yet I pay 1750 in poll tax.
I've no idea and not much more interest but it is entirely possible that she was making her own way when they met in low paid employment but that her parents are loaded and helped her out buying this property. The 2 versions are not necessarily inconsistent.
My concern is despite all this gotcha nonsense for Farage and Rayner the focus is never on how ridiculous our rules and indeed taxes are on the buying of property. Why on earth should buying a house be a taxable event? How does this help job mobility, younger buyers wanting to have families, investment in the housing stock etc etc? Are we not acting directly against several important public policies? They are stupid taxes and have become ever more so as we try to penalise those with more than one property.
CGT on the vendor? Both taxes try to claw back some of the capital gain in the housing market boosted by successive, mainly Tory, governments.
CGT on the vendor makes a lot more sense than what we do right now but it also discourages downsizing, job mobility etc. Almost all taxes have some negative effects but property taxes seem to me to be much more pernicious than most.
The only tax on real property that makes sense is a land value tax because it encourages efficient use of land. The rest is fiddling.
I agree in principle and like the effect, but it fails the easy-to-implement test. Last sale price + local HPI is the way IMO.
We bought our house in 1976 for £15,000
It's current market value is circa £500,000 whereas applying inflation only it would be just over £100,000
1976 was the only year since 1945 when there were more deaths than births.
How are things going with the Starmer-Mandelson scandal? Is the noose tightening?
I think it depends on how much it rumbles on over the next week and then into the Labour conference.
No matter whether this proves fatal or not, the fact that more Labour MPs (if still the usual suspects) are openly going over the top and questioning the leadership means something has changed. Before Mandelson you got the impression that they were all just feeling a sense of quiet despair, now it feels like there’s some anger bubbling up.
Thanks. My sense is that Sir Keir is safe for now - the whole thing is getting bogged down in 'what email was sent to what official when, and when did that official contact that official' stuff. Boring. And none of it is particularly incriminating for Sir Keir anyway. Sir Keir's enemies need to start working on another plan.
What is Starmer's problem is that he thought appointing Mandelson was a risk worth taking, and as was seen on the media yesterday when Peter Kyle made the same argument it was very badly received by Epstein's victims' relatives, his own back benchers, and the media generally
'He should not have been appointed in the first place' seems to be the attitude of the public
Wise after the event, methinks.
I think it was influenced by Blair and Starmer simply has not the political wisdom to see how this could go so spectacurlarly wrong
Ross Kempsell @RossKempsell · 21m The first really credible defection from the Conservatives to Reform is serving MP @danny__kruger who has been a central voice in policy development on topics from immigration to national security - this is big news on the right
I the bit in bold is partly your bubble talking. The 50 % of the population who go to Uni, move about for work etc will be like you, but there will be many, many others who grow up, live, work and retire in the same area. I know loads of them.
Interesting responses which made me look for more evidence. According to this, 8% have never been abroad and 41% have never tried foreign food.
As you say, it's a bubble thing - living in one place and going abroad occasionally for the weather but not eating foreign food seems common, and not apparently in decline.
How do we define 'foreign' food there?
Curry, pasta, pizza, noodles were all 'foreign food' to my parents - and I had none of them (apart from Macaroni cheese) in my first ten years of life or so. But I doubt they'd qualify as foreign for most people nowadays.
Kentucky Fried Chicken?
At Beavers we'd sing the fast food song: A Pizza Hut, a Pizza Hut Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut A Pizza Hut, a Pizza Hut Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut McDonald's, McDonald's Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut McDonald's, McDonald's Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut
And we wonder where the childhood obesity crisis came from At the time, I'd sampled none of these delicacies
(My dad, back late from a work trip brought KFC home once when I was under 10 - I tried a tiny bit and it blew me away as it had flavour unlike the very well cooked meat and two veg I was used to!)
I've no idea and not much more interest but it is entirely possible that she was making her own way when they met in low paid employment but that her parents are loaded and helped her out buying this property. The 2 versions are not necessarily inconsistent.
My concern is despite all this gotcha nonsense for Farage and Rayner the focus is never on how ridiculous our rules and indeed taxes are on the buying of property. Why on earth should buying a house be a taxable event? How does this help job mobility, younger buyers wanting to have families, investment in the housing stock etc etc? Are we not acting directly against several important public policies? They are stupid taxes and have become ever more so as we try to penalise those with more than one property.
CGT on the vendor? Both taxes try to claw back some of the capital gain in the housing market boosted by successive, mainly Tory, governments.
CGT on the vendor makes a lot more sense than what we do right now but it also discourages downsizing, job mobility etc. Almost all taxes have some negative effects but property taxes seem to me to be much more pernicious than most.
The only tax on real property that makes sense is a land value tax because it encourages efficient use of land. The rest is fiddling.
I agree in principle and like the effect, but it fails the easy-to-implement test. Last sale price + local HPI is the way IMO.
We bought our house in 1976 for £15,000
It's current market value is circa £500,000 whereas applying inflation only it would be just over £100,000
Under the Welsh HPI (more granular data is not available), my tax would value your property at £410,000. A flat 0.5% charge across the UK would be enough to replace Council Tax.
So your tax would be £2,050 per year. Interested to know if that's a tax cut for you?
If you are talking about my council tax it would be halved which in itself seems weird
Because council tax is grotesquely unfair. Imagine how it feels if you are paying £1,400 in a one bed flat on Teesside! That's why myself and others are so keen to reform it.
If go further and pop it up to 0.7% and abolish Stamp Duty with the proceeds.
Danny Kruger, my goodness. Blanche has a Reform MP.
Pity, though Kruger is very socially conservative and an evangelical Christian, anti abortion, anti euthanasia and anti same sex marriage and hostile to much of Islam and economically very small state so no great surprise
Perfect fit for the narrow minded far right attracted to Farage
I am very pleased he has gone as that is not my conservative party, though it could be yours
That just rude G.
If it was only the 'narrow minded far right' attracted to Reform they wouldn't be polling around the mid 30s.
If I remember correctly, you only ended up voting for "my/your" Conservative Party because Mrs G filled in an returned your ballot paper?
It's a huge moment that he is leaving but one part of that it is that it is precisely not *clear* that it involves more compromises with his principles than remaining in the present Conservative party.
Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 8m Ultimately, if you are a) an ultra social conservative b) not a racist and c) by all accounts quite a good MP who enjoys being so, all of which apply to Danny Kruger, it is...not obvious that you are better off in Reform nowadays.
Very good quote from my current favourite book (because I've only just finished it), Kill all Normies, by Angela Nagle:
"Liberals don't believe in actual politics any more, just bearing witness to suffering. The cult of suffering, weakness and vulnerability has become central to contemporary liberal identity politics."
I thought it was conservatives who are always whining about how hard done they are.
Yes, but the suffering righties endure from facist lefties calling them fascists is REAL.
Trusting the factory tools for development is critical, and this is a positive statement, backed up by solid development in this season. Alonso for the title each way is something I'll be looking at.
I've no idea and not much more interest but it is entirely possible that she was making her own way when they met in low paid employment but that her parents are loaded and helped her out buying this property. The 2 versions are not necessarily inconsistent.
My concern is despite all this gotcha nonsense for Farage and Rayner the focus is never on how ridiculous our rules and indeed taxes are on the buying of property. Why on earth should buying a house be a taxable event? How does this help job mobility, younger buyers wanting to have families, investment in the housing stock etc etc? Are we not acting directly against several important public policies? They are stupid taxes and have become ever more so as we try to penalise those with more than one property.
CGT on the vendor? Both taxes try to claw back some of the capital gain in the housing market boosted by successive, mainly Tory, governments.
CGT on the vendor makes a lot more sense than what we do right now but it also discourages downsizing, job mobility etc. Almost all taxes have some negative effects but property taxes seem to me to be much more pernicious than most.
The only tax on real property that makes sense is a land value tax because it encourages efficient use of land. The rest is fiddling.
I agree in principle and like the effect, but it fails the easy-to-implement test. Last sale price + local HPI is the way IMO.
We bought our house in 1976 for £15,000
It's current market value is circa £500,000 whereas applying inflation only it would be just over £100,000
You apply it to land value, on a district (not individual property) level.
HPI is either house price inflation or house price index, I think (both meaning the same). So you uprate the assessed value of a house based on sale prices of neighbouring properties (which is largely what the online house price estimators do at present - and a fair bit of what local estate agents do*). Doesn't pick up extensions etc so would need to decide how (and whether) to account for that, depending on whether we want to encourage extension building - council tax also doesn't automatically adjust for extensions, to my personal advantage, until revaluation on sale, I believe. It could be done though, through planning applications and/or building control (latter as planning applications not needed for permitted development).
You could do similar on land value - do the same price tracking but take out the RICS rebuild cost or similar.
I support all of these approaches in principle. I am however interested in my particular case, where my land would nowadays support probably three or even four houses. It's a 1920s semi with a long garden - now rather than a row of semis along the road, there would be a cul-de-sac or another parallel road put in. Does that mean my land is high value? On the market it wouldn't be as you couldn't build the extra houses without purchasing neighbouring ones and knocking them down too - there's not enough space on the side for an access road. If you did a simple value per sqm calculation based on local averages then it would be assessed as high value nonetheless.
I wouldn't make any kind of adjustments for improvements to the house - we want to encourage that kind of investment, so a shell you buy In Greenock that you turn into a £500k house would still be charged as if it's worth £50k.
Yes, that was what I was thinking with the "(and whether)". I'm not quite sure of the implications, but encouraging value add and extensions seems like a logical thing to do - better that someone adds capacity to a house on existing land than moving to a bigger house?
We've gone from a 3 to 5 bed semi through extending and also added a room and built in garage downstairs, so I may be biased on this!
Trevor Phillips on Times Radio this morning said the three main themes of the march were 1) immigration; 2) pride in our country; and 3) christianity.
Which last I didn't see coming as England is quite some way along its post-reformation journey to complete atheism. Stig Abell countered that when people said "christianity" it was shorthand for times gone past (old maids..holy communion...etc).
To which he, Phillips, then went on to say that the/a main driving force of this christian resurgence was from immigrants.
Would be interested to know (though probably unknowable) how many of the marchers on Saturday attend religious events of any kind. In my own part of the world sectarian marchers tend to identify along religious lines but I hae ma doots about how much genuine religious observance is attached. The Christian nationalism (in the UK at least) seems emptily performative, though I'm willing to be surprused by news that Tommy Robinson cuts up his coke with a communion wafer.
Pro-Christian is an alternative way of saying anti-Muslim.
'I'm no of fan of Christ our saviour and lord, but at least he never said anything positive about Muslims.'
Phillips sounds a bit confused, it seems very unlikely that many immigrants, christian or otherwise, were on the TR march.
It's an attempt by the terminally online to import American style political Christianity, the Charlie Kirk tendency.
For a bunch of "patriots" they seem very keen on us copying America.
It is partly that but perhaps also that many marchers feel the loss not of Christianity per se but of what we might call cultural Christianity. They do not go to church but want to know it is there, and has not been turned into a mosque or posh flats.
ETA and replacing HMQ with HMK probably has not helped in this regard. Another mistake by Liz Truss.
Danny Kruger, my goodness. Blanche has a Reform MP.
Pity, though Kruger is very socially conservative and an evangelical Christian, anti abortion, anti euthanasia and anti same sex marriage and hostile to much of Islam and economically very small state so no great surprise
Perfect fit for the narrow minded far right attracted to Farage
I am very pleased he has gone as that is not my conservative party, though it could be yours
That just rude G.
If it was only the 'narrow minded far right' attracted to Reform they wouldn't be polling around the mid 30s.
If I remember correctly, you only ended up voting for "my/your" Conservative Party because Mrs G filled in an returned your ballot paper?
It is not rude just an opinion
And as far as my wife is concerned, when you have been happily married for 62 years you discuss matters and agree, but your suggestion would be illegal, and I would ask you to withdraw it
This is interesting from Kruger's defection speech:
Yes, we are still a great country, and there are good reasons that so many migrants want to come here, but there are also reasons so many entrepreneurs and young people want to leave. Britain is not broken, but it is badly damaged. And so, in this crisis, something has got to give.
I wonder if Nigel has been informed that the 'Britain is every inch an absolute irredeemable shit-hole' pronouncements of the British Right are not going down well in focus groups, and some pride in Britain wouldn't go amiss. This could be a significant moment.
I've no idea and not much more interest but it is entirely possible that she was making her own way when they met in low paid employment but that her parents are loaded and helped her out buying this property. The 2 versions are not necessarily inconsistent.
My concern is despite all this gotcha nonsense for Farage and Rayner the focus is never on how ridiculous our rules and indeed taxes are on the buying of property. Why on earth should buying a house be a taxable event? How does this help job mobility, younger buyers wanting to have families, investment in the housing stock etc etc? Are we not acting directly against several important public policies? They are stupid taxes and have become ever more so as we try to penalise those with more than one property.
CGT on the vendor? Both taxes try to claw back some of the capital gain in the housing market boosted by successive, mainly Tory, governments.
CGT on the vendor makes a lot more sense than what we do right now but it also discourages downsizing, job mobility etc. Almost all taxes have some negative effects but property taxes seem to me to be much more pernicious than most.
The only tax on real property that makes sense is a land value tax because it encourages efficient use of land. The rest is fiddling.
I agree in principle and like the effect, but it fails the easy-to-implement test. Last sale price + local HPI is the way IMO.
We bought our house in 1976 for £15,000
It's current market value is circa £500,000 whereas applying inflation only it would be just over £100,000
Under the Welsh HPI (more granular data is not available), my tax would value your property at £410,000. A flat 0.5% charge across the UK would be enough to replace Council Tax.
So your tax would be £2,050 per year. Interested to know if that's a tax cut for you?
If you are talking about my council tax it would be halved which in itself seems weird
Because council tax is grotesquely unfair. Imagine how it feels if you are paying £1,400 in a one bed flat on Teesside! That's why myself and others are so keen to reform it.
If go further and pop it up to 0.7% and abolish Stamp Duty with the proceeds.
I absolutely agree with you on the unfairness of the tax and far more bands are needed
Indeed, I have no problem with your replacement but maybe as you say 0.7% would be justifiable
This is interesting from Kruger's defection speech:
Yes, we are still a great country, and there are good reasons that so many migrants want to come here, but there are also reasons so many entrepreneurs and young people want to leave. Britain is not broken, but it is badly damaged. And so, in this crisis, something has got to give.
I wonder if Nigel has been informed that the 'Britain is every inch an absolute irredeemable shit-hole' pronouncements of the British Right are not going down well in focus groups, and some pride in Britain wouldn't go amiss. This could be a significant moment.
Kruger always speaks his mind iirc.
Farage may find that today's exciting very early xmas present becomes more of a problem later in the year.
Lee Anderson and Kruger sharing debating points should be interesting...
Danny Kruger, my goodness. Blanche has a Reform MP.
Pity, though Kruger is very socially conservative and an evangelical Christian, anti abortion, anti euthanasia and anti same sex marriage and hostile to much of Islam and economically very small state so no great surprise
Perfect fit for the narrow minded far right attracted to Farage
I am very pleased he has gone as that is not my conservative party, though it could be yours
That just rude G.
If it was only the 'narrow minded far right' attracted to Reform they wouldn't be polling around the mid 30s.
If I remember correctly, you only ended up voting for "my/your" Conservative Party because Mrs G filled in an returned your ballot paper?
It is not rude just an opinion
And as far as my wife is concerned, when you have been happily married for 62 years you discuss matters and agree, but your suggestion would be illegal, and I would ask you to withdraw it
Certainly withdrawn, I just remembered you saying something along those lines to explain how you ended up voting Conservative.
I've no idea and not much more interest but it is entirely possible that she was making her own way when they met in low paid employment but that her parents are loaded and helped her out buying this property. The 2 versions are not necessarily inconsistent.
My concern is despite all this gotcha nonsense for Farage and Rayner the focus is never on how ridiculous our rules and indeed taxes are on the buying of property. Why on earth should buying a house be a taxable event? How does this help job mobility, younger buyers wanting to have families, investment in the housing stock etc etc? Are we not acting directly against several important public policies? They are stupid taxes and have become ever more so as we try to penalise those with more than one property.
CGT on the vendor? Both taxes try to claw back some of the capital gain in the housing market boosted by successive, mainly Tory, governments.
CGT on the vendor makes a lot more sense than what we do right now but it also discourages downsizing, job mobility etc. Almost all taxes have some negative effects but property taxes seem to me to be much more pernicious than most.
The only tax on real property that makes sense is a land value tax because it encourages efficient use of land. The rest is fiddling.
I agree in principle and like the effect, but it fails the easy-to-implement test. Last sale price + local HPI is the way IMO.
We bought our house in 1976 for £15,000
It's current market value is circa £500,000 whereas applying inflation only it would be just over £100,000
Under the Welsh HPI (more granular data is not available), my tax would value your property at £410,000. A flat 0.5% charge across the UK would be enough to replace Council Tax.
So your tax would be £2,050 per year. Interested to know if that's a tax cut for you?
If you are talking about my council tax it would be halved which in itself seems weird
Because council tax is grotesquely unfair. Imagine how it feels if you are paying £1,400 in a one bed flat on Teesside! That's why myself and others are so keen to reform it.
If go further and pop it up to 0.7% and abolish Stamp Duty with the proceeds.
I absolutely agree with you on the unfairness of the tax and far more bands are needed
Indeed, I have no problem with your replacement but maybe as you say 0.7% would be justifiable
If we make it 1 percent we could fill the odd black hole...
Danny Kruger, my goodness. Blanche has a Reform MP.
Pity, though Kruger is very socially conservative and an evangelical Christian, anti abortion, anti euthanasia and anti same sex marriage and hostile to much of Islam and economically very small state so no great surprise
Perfect fit for the narrow minded far right attracted to Farage
I am very pleased he has gone as that is not my conservative party, though it could be yours
That just rude G.
If it was only the 'narrow minded far right' attracted to Reform they wouldn't be polling around the mid 30s.
If I remember correctly, you only ended up voting for "my/your" Conservative Party because Mrs G filled in an returned your ballot paper?
It is not rude just an opinion
And as far as my wife is concerned, when you have been happily married for 62 years you discuss matters and agree, but your suggestion would be illegal, and I would ask you to withdraw it
Certainly withdrawn, I just remembered you saying something along those lines to explain how you ended up voting Conservative.
It is important you do not accuse your fellow posters of an illegal act
Trevor Phillips on Times Radio this morning said the three main themes of the march were 1) immigration; 2) pride in our country; and 3) christianity.
Which last I didn't see coming as England is quite some way along its post-reformation journey to complete atheism. Stig Abell countered that when people said "christianity" it was shorthand for times gone past (old maids..holy communion...etc).
To which he, Phillips, then went on to say that the/a main driving force of this christian resurgence was from immigrants.
Would be interested to know (though probably unknowable) how many of the marchers on Saturday attend religious events of any kind. In my own part of the world sectarian marchers tend to identify along religious lines but I hae ma doots about how much genuine religious observance is attached. The Christian nationalism (in the UK at least) seems emptily performative, though I'm willing to be surprused by news that Tommy Robinson cuts up his coke with a communion wafer.
Pro-Christian is an alternative way of saying anti-Muslim.
'I'm no of fan of Christ our saviour and lord, but at least he never said anything positive about Muslims.'
Phillips sounds a bit confused, it seems very unlikely that many immigrants, christian or otherwise, were on the TR march.
It's an attempt by the terminally online to import American style political Christianity, the Charlie Kirk tendency.
For a bunch of "patriots" they seem very keen on us copying America.
It is partly that but perhaps also that many marchers feel the loss not of Christianity per se but of what we might call cultural Christianity. They do not go to church but want to know it is there, and has not been turned into a mosque or posh flats.
ETA and replacing HMQ with HMK probably has not helped in this regard. Another mistake by Liz Truss.
If you watch the rally though, the Christianity they're pushing is not cultural Christianity that anyone in Britain would recognise. It wasn't a rousing rendition of Abide with Me, it was hyper evangelical Christianity that is being imported from America. When I was watching it some of the speakers were trying to get the audience to chant "Christ is King" and most of them just looked baffled
Trevor Phillips on Times Radio this morning said the three main themes of the march were 1) immigration; 2) pride in our country; and 3) christianity.
Which last I didn't see coming as England is quite some way along its post-reformation journey to complete atheism. Stig Abell countered that when people said "christianity" it was shorthand for times gone past (old maids..holy communion...etc).
To which he, Phillips, then went on to say that the/a main driving force of this christian resurgence was from immigrants.
Would be interested to know (though probably unknowable) how many of the marchers on Saturday attend religious events of any kind. In my own part of the world sectarian marchers tend to identify along religious lines but I hae ma doots about how much genuine religious observance is attached. The Christian nationalism (in the UK at least) seems emptily performative, though I'm willing to be surprused by news that Tommy Robinson cuts up his coke with a communion wafer.
Pro-Christian is an alternative way of saying anti-Muslim.
'I'm no of fan of Christ our saviour and lord, but at least he never said anything positive about Muslims.'
Phillips sounds a bit confused, it seems very unlikely that many immigrants, christian or otherwise, were on the TR march.
It's an attempt by the terminally online to import American style political Christianity, the Charlie Kirk tendency.
For a bunch of "patriots" they seem very keen on us copying America.
It is partly that but perhaps also that many marchers feel the loss not of Christianity per se but of what we might call cultural Christianity. They do not go to church but want to know it is there, and has not been turned into a mosque or posh flats.
ETA and replacing HMQ with HMK probably has not helped in this regard. Another mistake by Liz Truss.
Somewhat akin to bemoaning the loss of the High Street shops they remember from their youth. And mourn as they notice their absence on their way to Ikea and Asda?
Trevor Phillips on Times Radio this morning said the three main themes of the march were 1) immigration; 2) pride in our country; and 3) christianity.
Which last I didn't see coming as England is quite some way along its post-reformation journey to complete atheism. Stig Abell countered that when people said "christianity" it was shorthand for times gone past (old maids..holy communion...etc).
To which he, Phillips, then went on to say that the/a main driving force of this christian resurgence was from immigrants.
Would be interested to know (though probably unknowable) how many of the marchers on Saturday attend religious events of any kind. In my own part of the world sectarian marchers tend to identify along religious lines but I hae ma doots about how much genuine religious observance is attached. The Christian nationalism (in the UK at least) seems emptily performative, though I'm willing to be surprused by news that Tommy Robinson cuts up his coke with a communion wafer.
Pro-Christian is an alternative way of saying anti-Muslim.
'I'm no of fan of Christ our saviour and lord, but at least he never said anything positive about Muslims.'
Phillips sounds a bit confused, it seems very unlikely that many immigrants, christian or otherwise, were on the TR march.
It's an attempt by the terminally online to import American style political Christianity, the Charlie Kirk tendency.
For a bunch of "patriots" they seem very keen on us copying America.
It is partly that but perhaps also that many marchers feel the loss not of Christianity per se but of what we might call cultural Christianity. They do not go to church but want to know it is there, and has not been turned into a mosque or posh flats.
ETA and replacing HMQ with HMK probably has not helped in this regard. Another mistake by Liz Truss.
If they want the church to be there they should attend it. It's like people doing all their shopping on Amazon and then complaining how there are no shops on the high street. I am on first name terms with our local vicar and spend many hours in the church. And I'm not even a Christian!
Very good quote from my current favourite book (because I've only just finished it), Kill all Normies, by Angela Nagle:
"Liberals don't believe in actual politics any more, just bearing witness to suffering. The cult of suffering, weakness and vulnerability has become central to contemporary liberal identity politics."
It's an aspect of modern Chritianity in this country that intrigues me. The one with the highest victim credentials is top dog. I'd really like to understand the theology behind it.
It's mostly in the Sermon on the Mount.
That's a really interesting perspective (both Topping's, Anne's and Foxy's) - and kind of relates to the 'woke as religion' discussion which we touched on a couple of years back.
Danny Kruger, my goodness. Blanche has a Reform MP.
Pity, though Kruger is very socially conservative and an evangelical Christian, anti abortion, anti euthanasia and anti same sex marriage and hostile to much of Islam and economically very small state so no great surprise
Perfect fit for the narrow minded far right attracted to Farage
I am very pleased he has gone as that is not my conservative party, though it could be yours
The Tory Party can’t keep affording to lose people. If the response is “good riddance” every time someone defects then bit by bit it loses that broad church status and starts to serve a dwindling number of interests.
Krugers defection is old news by tomorrow though. Defections are a one day wonder
Tomorrow the only news will be Trump landing in UK and whatever the fuck happens in the 48 hours he's here.
I gather they are attempting to keep him distracted by having endless fly-pasts and military parades.
Indeed. Danny who? Defections do not move the dial like frothing commentators think they do. It might lose them East Wiltshire. It might not looking at local election results
I've no idea and not much more interest but it is entirely possible that she was making her own way when they met in low paid employment but that her parents are loaded and helped her out buying this property. The 2 versions are not necessarily inconsistent.
My concern is despite all this gotcha nonsense for Farage and Rayner the focus is never on how ridiculous our rules and indeed taxes are on the buying of property. Why on earth should buying a house be a taxable event? How does this help job mobility, younger buyers wanting to have families, investment in the housing stock etc etc? Are we not acting directly against several important public policies? They are stupid taxes and have become ever more so as we try to penalise those with more than one property.
CGT on the vendor? Both taxes try to claw back some of the capital gain in the housing market boosted by successive, mainly Tory, governments.
CGT on the vendor makes a lot more sense than what we do right now but it also discourages downsizing, job mobility etc. Almost all taxes have some negative effects but property taxes seem to me to be much more pernicious than most.
The only tax on real property that makes sense is a land value tax because it encourages efficient use of land. The rest is fiddling.
I agree in principle and like the effect, but it fails the easy-to-implement test. Last sale price + local HPI is the way IMO.
We bought our house in 1976 for £15,000
It's current market value is circa £500,000 whereas applying inflation only it would be just over £100,000
You apply it to land value, on a district (not individual property) level.
HPI is either house price inflation or house price index, I think (both meaning the same). So you uprate the assessed value of a house based on sale prices of neighbouring properties (which is largely what the online house price estimators do at present - and a fair bit of what local estate agents do*). Doesn't pick up extensions etc so would need to decide how (and whether) to account for that, depending on whether we want to encourage extension building - council tax also doesn't automatically adjust for extensions, to my personal advantage, until revaluation on sale, I believe. It could be done though, through planning applications and/or building control (latter as planning applications not needed for permitted development).
You could do similar on land value - do the same price tracking but take out the RICS rebuild cost or similar.
I support all of these approaches in principle. I am however interested in my particular case, where my land would nowadays support probably three or even four houses. It's a 1920s semi with a long garden - now rather than a row of semis along the road, there would be a cul-de-sac or another parallel road put in. Does that mean my land is high value? On the market it wouldn't be as you couldn't build the extra houses without purchasing neighbouring ones and knocking them down too - there's not enough space on the side for an access road. If you did a simple value per sqm calculation based on local averages then it would be assessed as high value nonetheless.
I wouldn't make any kind of adjustments for improvements to the house - we want to encourage that kind of investment, so a shell you buy In Greenock that you turn into a £500k house would still be charged as if it's worth £50k.
Yes, that was what I was thinking with the "(and whether)". I'm not quite sure of the implications, but encouraging value add and extensions seems like a logical thing to do - better that someone adds capacity to a house on existing land than moving to a bigger house?
We've gone from a 3 to 5 bed semi through extending and also added a room and built in garage downstairs, so I may be biased on this!
Would have thoguht that an extension was a true capital investment. Stuff like new windows or kitchens is life limited on the timescales involved, relatively speaking: no different from replacing the toilet paper. Hence the distinction between the two for CGT at present [edit] for e.g. second houses, houses one buys for aged parents, etc. etc.
I demur. That scenario is how we get another Tory government. Under the name Reform.
I am making this point with increasing venom. The fukers are Turquoise Tories. People voting refuk to change the mess the Tories left will be in for a shock when they find Jacob Rees-Mogg is Shadow Chancellor...
I the bit in bold is partly your bubble talking. The 50 % of the population who go to Uni, move about for work etc will be like you, but there will be many, many others who grow up, live, work and retire in the same area. I know loads of them.
Interesting responses which made me look for more evidence. According to this, 8% have never been abroad and 41% have never tried foreign food.
As you say, it's a bubble thing - living in one place and going abroad occasionally for the weather but not eating foreign food seems common, and not apparently in decline.
How do we define 'foreign' food there?
Curry, pasta, pizza, noodles were all 'foreign food' to my parents - and I had none of them (apart from Macaroni cheese) in my first ten years of life or so. But I doubt they'd qualify as foreign for most people nowadays.
Kentucky Fried Chicken?
At Beavers we'd sing the fast food song: A Pizza Hut, a Pizza Hut Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut A Pizza Hut, a Pizza Hut Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut McDonald's, McDonald's Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut McDonald's, McDonald's Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut
And we wonder where the childhood obesity crisis came from At the time, I'd sampled none of these delicacies
(My dad, back late from a work trip brought KFC home once when I was under 10 - I tried a tiny bit and it blew me away as it had flavour unlike the very well cooked meat and two veg I was used to!)
The fast food song should be sung in every primary school in the land, not for its commercial or dubious nutritional messages but because of the brain-stimulating actions. Every old folks home too.
Trevor Phillips on Times Radio this morning said the three main themes of the march were 1) immigration; 2) pride in our country; and 3) christianity.
Which last I didn't see coming as England is quite some way along its post-reformation journey to complete atheism. Stig Abell countered that when people said "christianity" it was shorthand for times gone past (old maids..holy communion...etc).
To which he, Phillips, then went on to say that the/a main driving force of this christian resurgence was from immigrants.
Would be interested to know (though probably unknowable) how many of the marchers on Saturday attend religious events of any kind. In my own part of the world sectarian marchers tend to identify along religious lines but I hae ma doots about how much genuine religious observance is attached. The Christian nationalism (in the UK at least) seems emptily performative, though I'm willing to be surprused by news that Tommy Robinson cuts up his coke with a communion wafer.
Pro-Christian is an alternative way of saying anti-Muslim.
'I'm no of fan of Christ our saviour and lord, but at least he never said anything positive about Muslims.'
Phillips sounds a bit confused, it seems very unlikely that many immigrants, christian or otherwise, were on the TR march.
It's an attempt by the terminally online to import American style political Christianity, the Charlie Kirk tendency.
For a bunch of "patriots" they seem very keen on us copying America.
It is partly that but perhaps also that many marchers feel the loss not of Christianity per se but of what we might call cultural Christianity. They do not go to church but want to know it is there, and has not been turned into a mosque or posh flats.
ETA and replacing HMQ with HMK probably has not helped in this regard. Another mistake by Liz Truss.
This could get complicated. Wanting to know 'the church is there' in the sense of spires, ministers, availability etc involves millions of people nationwide bothering to turn up and pay to keep the roof on. At the moment there are maybe a couple of million of those across the denominations, mostly middle class, and increasingly elderly (I am one of them) and politically centrist; alongside them are a huge number of migrants and children/grandchildren of migrants.
I suspect few of the flag hangers and demo people are among their number.
It's like voting, it can't exist unless there are voters, and it can't be delegated.
Krugers defection is old news by tomorrow though. Defections are a one day wonder
True but in conference season it will unsettle Conservative backbenchers, ease the pressure on Starmer and take the shine of Kemi's week. In the longer term, Kruger will either professionalise Reform or become the 917th big hitter to fall out with Nigel Farage.
Danny Kruger, my goodness. Blanche has a Reform MP.
Pity, though Kruger is very socially conservative and an evangelical Christian, anti abortion, anti euthanasia and anti same sex marriage and hostile to much of Islam and economically very small state so no great surprise
Perfect fit for the narrow minded far right attracted to Farage
I am very pleased he has gone as that is not my conservative party, though it could be yours
That just rude G.
If it was only the 'narrow minded far right' attracted to Reform they wouldn't be polling around the mid 30s.
If I remember correctly, you only ended up voting for "my/your" Conservative Party because Mrs G filled in an returned your ballot paper?
It is not rude just an opinion
And as far as my wife is concerned, when you have been happily married for 62 years you discuss matters and agree, but your suggestion would be illegal, and I would ask you to withdraw it
Do you always vote the same, BigG? My wife and I certainly discuss, but we've often ended up voting for different parties. I enjoy the discussions, which are always civil - we're not trying to persuade each other - and in which we both generally learn things we haven't considered and we're not far apart politically, but I'd say we vote differently probably half of the time. The last two Westminster votes (one of which was a by election) we've voted the same though.
ETA: Thinking about it, the last two are the ones where votes have maybe mattered - in previous elections we've both indulged our consciences by voting for different no-hope (in the seat) parties. The only time we would likely have voted differently when it mattered, had we been in a competitive seat, would likely have been 2015 maybe (her Con, me Lab, but close decision for both of us).
Trevor Phillips on Times Radio this morning said the three main themes of the march were 1) immigration; 2) pride in our country; and 3) christianity.
Which last I didn't see coming as England is quite some way along its post-reformation journey to complete atheism. Stig Abell countered that when people said "christianity" it was shorthand for times gone past (old maids..holy communion...etc).
To which he, Phillips, then went on to say that the/a main driving force of this christian resurgence was from immigrants.
Would be interested to know (though probably unknowable) how many of the marchers on Saturday attend religious events of any kind. In my own part of the world sectarian marchers tend to identify along religious lines but I hae ma doots about how much genuine religious observance is attached. The Christian nationalism (in the UK at least) seems emptily performative, though I'm willing to be surprused by news that Tommy Robinson cuts up his coke with a communion wafer.
Pro-Christian is an alternative way of saying anti-Muslim.
'I'm no of fan of Christ our saviour and lord, but at least he never said anything positive about Muslims.'
Phillips sounds a bit confused, it seems very unlikely that many immigrants, christian or otherwise, were on the TR march.
It's an attempt by the terminally online to import American style political Christianity, the Charlie Kirk tendency.
For a bunch of "patriots" they seem very keen on us copying America.
It is partly that but perhaps also that many marchers feel the loss not of Christianity per se but of what we might call cultural Christianity. They do not go to church but want to know it is there, and has not been turned into a mosque or posh flats.
ETA and replacing HMQ with HMK probably has not helped in this regard. Another mistake by Liz Truss.
If you watch the rally though, the Christianity they're pushing is not cultural Christianity that anyone in Britain would recognise. It wasn't a rousing rendition of Abide with Me, it was hyper evangelical Christianity that is being imported from America. When I was watching it some of the speakers were trying to get the audience to chant "Christ is King" and most of them just looked baffled
I was confirmed into the C of E by the Bishop of Durham and was a server for a few years attending many communion sevices, and at one time was able to recite the whole communion service without reference to the prayer book
My wife was a member of the Brethren, but found them too extreme not least when they would not allow a piano at our wedding, notwithstanding my wife had played regularly at the Deep Sea Fisherman's Mission
It resulted in us being married in the Church of Scotland
We both have Christian upbringings and outlooks, but simply reject narrow minded prejudiced opinions largely taken out of contact from the Bible
I do wonder if these so called Christians really stop and ask
Krugers defection is old news by tomorrow though. Defections are a one day wonder
True but in conference season it will unsettle Conservative backbenchers, ease the pressure on Starmer and take the shine of Kemi's week. In the longer term, Kruger will either professionalise Reform or become the 917th big hitter to fall out with Nigel Farage.
Yes, the effect on party morale is the key effect. Joan and Albert Krusty-Tory will just shrug over their morning egg
Danny Kruger, my goodness. Blanche has a Reform MP.
Pity, though Kruger is very socially conservative and an evangelical Christian, anti abortion, anti euthanasia and anti same sex marriage and hostile to much of Islam and economically very small state so no great surprise
Perfect fit for the narrow minded far right attracted to Farage
I am very pleased he has gone as that is not my conservative party, though it could be yours
The Tory Party can’t keep affording to lose people. If the response is “good riddance” every time someone defects then bit by bit it loses that broad church status and starts to serve a dwindling number of interests.
I simply do not want the conservative party to reflect Reform or Farage even if it means they are sidelined
Danny Kruger, my goodness. Blanche has a Reform MP.
Pity, though Kruger is very socially conservative and an evangelical Christian, anti abortion, anti euthanasia and anti same sex marriage and hostile to much of Islam and economically very small state so no great surprise
Perfect fit for the narrow minded far right attracted to Farage
I am very pleased he has gone as that is not my conservative party, though it could be yours
That just rude G.
If it was only the 'narrow minded far right' attracted to Reform they wouldn't be polling around the mid 30s.
If I remember correctly, you only ended up voting for "my/your" Conservative Party because Mrs G filled in an returned your ballot paper?
It is not rude just an opinion
And as far as my wife is concerned, when you have been happily married for 62 years you discuss matters and agree, but your suggestion would be illegal, and I would ask you to withdraw it
Do you always vote the same, BigG? My wife and I certainly discuss, but we've often ended up voting for different parties. I enjoy the discussions, which are always civil - we're not trying to persuade each other - and in which we both generally learn things we haven't considered and we're not far apart politically, but I'd say we vote differently probably half of the time. The last two Westminster votes (one of which was a by election) we've voted the same though.
I've no idea and not much more interest but it is entirely possible that she was making her own way when they met in low paid employment but that her parents are loaded and helped her out buying this property. The 2 versions are not necessarily inconsistent.
My concern is despite all this gotcha nonsense for Farage and Rayner the focus is never on how ridiculous our rules and indeed taxes are on the buying of property. Why on earth should buying a house be a taxable event? How does this help job mobility, younger buyers wanting to have families, investment in the housing stock etc etc? Are we not acting directly against several important public policies? They are stupid taxes and have become ever more so as we try to penalise those with more than one property.
CGT on the vendor? Both taxes try to claw back some of the capital gain in the housing market boosted by successive, mainly Tory, governments.
CGT on the vendor makes a lot more sense than what we do right now but it also discourages downsizing, job mobility etc. Almost all taxes have some negative effects but property taxes seem to me to be much more pernicious than most.
The only tax on real property that makes sense is a land value tax because it encourages efficient use of land. The rest is fiddling.
I agree in principle and like the effect, but it fails the easy-to-implement test. Last sale price + local HPI is the way IMO.
We bought our house in 1976 for £15,000
It's current market value is circa £500,000 whereas applying inflation only it would be just over £100,000
You apply it to land value, on a district (not individual property) level.
HPI is either house price inflation or house price index, I think (both meaning the same). So you uprate the assessed value of a house based on sale prices of neighbouring properties (which is largely what the online house price estimators do at present - and a fair bit of what local estate agents do*). Doesn't pick up extensions etc so would need to decide how (and whether) to account for that, depending on whether we want to encourage extension building - council tax also doesn't automatically adjust for extensions, to my personal advantage, until revaluation on sale, I believe. It could be done though, through planning applications and/or building control (latter as planning applications not needed for permitted development).
You could do similar on land value - do the same price tracking but take out the RICS rebuild cost or similar.
I support all of these approaches in principle. I am however interested in my particular case, where my land would nowadays support probably three or even four houses. It's a 1920s semi with a long garden - now rather than a row of semis along the road, there would be a cul-de-sac or another parallel road put in. Does that mean my land is high value? On the market it wouldn't be as you couldn't build the extra houses without purchasing neighbouring ones and knocking them down too - there's not enough space on the side for an access road. If you did a simple value per sqm calculation based on local averages then it would be assessed as high value nonetheless.
I wouldn't make any kind of adjustments for improvements to the house - we want to encourage that kind of investment, so a shell you buy In Greenock that you turn into a £500k house would still be charged as if it's worth £50k.
Yes, that was what I was thinking with the "(and whether)". I'm not quite sure of the implications, but encouraging value add and extensions seems like a logical thing to do - better that someone adds capacity to a house on existing land than moving to a bigger house?
We've gone from a 3 to 5 bed semi through extending and also added a room and built in garage downstairs, so I may be biased on this!
It is this sort of reasoning, that extensions add value, that increased the notional value of Angela Rayner's son's trust's house. Some on here (and elsewhere) argued the opposite was the case.
I demur. That scenario is how we get another Tory government. Under the name Reform.
It’s not inconceivable that Reform will become the Tories in due course. It happened in Canada.
Right now, I doubt it and expect them to fall short.
They cannot help themselves in trying to emulate MAGA - seemingly blind to how that doesn't translate over here - and that would drive voting against them in a GE campaign.
I demur. That scenario is how we get another Tory government. Under the name Reform.
I am making this point with increasing venom. The fukers are Turquoise Tories. People voting refuk to change the mess the Tories left will be in for a shock when they find Jacob Rees-Mogg is Shadow Chancellor...
The coalition that got Boris a big majority. I don’t think it ever dispersed to other parties, more that a chunk of it stayed at home last year. Now they are back and choosing Reform. Many people probably think that Boris’ govt might have been ok were it not for the pandemic, and Farage 2028/9 would be another go at it
I've no idea and not much more interest but it is entirely possible that she was making her own way when they met in low paid employment but that her parents are loaded and helped her out buying this property. The 2 versions are not necessarily inconsistent.
My concern is despite all this gotcha nonsense for Farage and Rayner the focus is never on how ridiculous our rules and indeed taxes are on the buying of property. Why on earth should buying a house be a taxable event? How does this help job mobility, younger buyers wanting to have families, investment in the housing stock etc etc? Are we not acting directly against several important public policies? They are stupid taxes and have become ever more so as we try to penalise those with more than one property.
CGT on the vendor? Both taxes try to claw back some of the capital gain in the housing market boosted by successive, mainly Tory, governments.
CGT on the vendor makes a lot more sense than what we do right now but it also discourages downsizing, job mobility etc. Almost all taxes have some negative effects but property taxes seem to me to be much more pernicious than most.
The only tax on real property that makes sense is a land value tax because it encourages efficient use of land. The rest is fiddling.
I agree in principle and like the effect, but it fails the easy-to-implement test. Last sale price + local HPI is the way IMO.
We bought our house in 1976 for £15,000
It's current market value is circa £500,000 whereas applying inflation only it would be just over £100,000
You apply it to land value, on a district (not individual property) level.
HPI is either house price inflation or house price index, I think (both meaning the same). So you uprate the assessed value of a house based on sale prices of neighbouring properties (which is largely what the online house price estimators do at present - and a fair bit of what local estate agents do*). Doesn't pick up extensions etc so would need to decide how (and whether) to account for that, depending on whether we want to encourage extension building - council tax also doesn't automatically adjust for extensions, to my personal advantage, until revaluation on sale, I believe. It could be done though, through planning applications and/or building control (latter as planning applications not needed for permitted development).
You could do similar on land value - do the same price tracking but take out the RICS rebuild cost or similar.
I support all of these approaches in principle. I am however interested in my particular case, where my land would nowadays support probably three or even four houses. It's a 1920s semi with a long garden - now rather than a row of semis along the road, there would be a cul-de-sac or another parallel road put in. Does that mean my land is high value? On the market it wouldn't be as you couldn't build the extra houses without purchasing neighbouring ones and knocking them down too - there's not enough space on the side for an access road. If you did a simple value per sqm calculation based on local averages then it would be assessed as high value nonetheless.
I wouldn't make any kind of adjustments for improvements to the house - we want to encourage that kind of investment, so a shell you buy In Greenock that you turn into a £500k house would still be charged as if it's worth £50k.
Yes, that was what I was thinking with the "(and whether)". I'm not quite sure of the implications, but encouraging value add and extensions seems like a logical thing to do - better that someone adds capacity to a house on existing land than moving to a bigger house?
We've gone from a 3 to 5 bed semi through extending and also added a room and built in garage downstairs, so I may be biased on this!
It is this sort of reasoning, that extensions add value, that increased the notional value of Angela Rayner's son's trust's house. Some on here (and elsewhere) argued the opposite was the case.
I bloody well hope they do!
Both times we extended, we also looked at moving. Each time the extension cost looked comparable to the extra cost of moving to a house with the capacity already added. Which would make sense in a well-functioning market.
Danny Kruger, my goodness. Blanche has a Reform MP.
Pity, though Kruger is very socially conservative and an evangelical Christian, anti abortion, anti euthanasia and anti same sex marriage and hostile to much of Islam and economically very small state so no great surprise
Perfect fit for the narrow minded far right attracted to Farage
I am very pleased he has gone as that is not my conservative party, though it could be yours
The Tory Party can’t keep affording to lose people. If the response is “good riddance” every time someone defects then bit by bit it loses that broad church status and starts to serve a dwindling number of interests.
With one half of the party feeling more affinity with the LibDems, and the other half more affinity with ReFuk, what is the point of the Conservatives?
Trevor Phillips on Times Radio this morning said the three main themes of the march were 1) immigration; 2) pride in our country; and 3) christianity.
Which last I didn't see coming as England is quite some way along its post-reformation journey to complete atheism. Stig Abell countered that when people said "christianity" it was shorthand for times gone past (old maids..holy communion...etc).
To which he, Phillips, then went on to say that the/a main driving force of this christian resurgence was from immigrants.
Would be interested to know (though probably unknowable) how many of the marchers on Saturday attend religious events of any kind. In my own part of the world sectarian marchers tend to identify along religious lines but I hae ma doots about how much genuine religious observance is attached. The Christian nationalism (in the UK at least) seems emptily performative, though I'm willing to be surprused by news that Tommy Robinson cuts up his coke with a communion wafer.
Pro-Christian is an alternative way of saying anti-Muslim.
'I'm no of fan of Christ our saviour and lord, but at least he never said anything positive about Muslims.'
Phillips sounds a bit confused, it seems very unlikely that many immigrants, christian or otherwise, were on the TR march.
It's an attempt by the terminally online to import American style political Christianity, the Charlie Kirk tendency.
For a bunch of "patriots" they seem very keen on us copying America.
It is partly that but perhaps also that many marchers feel the loss not of Christianity per se but of what we might call cultural Christianity. They do not go to church but want to know it is there, and has not been turned into a mosque or posh flats.
ETA and replacing HMQ with HMK probably has not helped in this regard. Another mistake by Liz Truss.
If you watch the rally though, the Christianity they're pushing is not cultural Christianity that anyone in Britain would recognise. It wasn't a rousing rendition of Abide with Me, it was hyper evangelical Christianity that is being imported from America. When I was watching it some of the speakers were trying to get the audience to chant "Christ is King" and most of them just looked baffled
I was confirmed into the C of E by the Bishop of Durham and was a server for a few years attending many communion sevices, and at one time was able to recite the whole communion service without reference to the prayer book
My wife was a member of the Brethren, but found them too extreme not least when they would not allow a piano at our wedding, notwithstanding my wife had played regularly at the Deep Sea Fisherman's Mission
It resulted in us being married in the Church of Scotland
We both have Christian upbringings and outlooks, but simply reject narrow minded prejudiced opinions largely taken out of contact from the Bible
I do wonder if these so called Christians really stop and ask
'What would Jesus do?'
Yes I'm a lay preacher and (non serving) Elder of my local United Reformed Church. The Christianity that is being pushed at these rallies is not one I recognise either. It's the kind of Evangelical political Christian Nationalism that we see in the States. It seems to me that the bigwigs in the alt right are swallowing it as part of the whole MAGA package.
Two or three generations ago our equivalents would perhaps have gone to the pub every evening to see the same dozen people - its still the world shown at the Queen Vic, Woolpack and Rovers Return - now we come here and talk to people from around the country.
Yes and I'm certainly not in the camp of those who believe all "change" is inherently bad. It can be unsettling, certainly, but it's often positive in time.
The technological changes outpace the cultural adaptations - we know that. There have also been huge societal changes over the past couple of hundred years, some of which happened very quickly and again adaptation is outpaced by the speed of that change.
When Mrs Stodge came to England from NZ in 1991, her communication with her family back in Kiwiland was either by letter or a short and expensive weekly phone call. 30+ years on, she can FaceTime her mother for free and it's like being in the room with her. In that sense, as you rightly say, technology has improved the quality of life for so many people who aren't in physical proximity - my parents and my maternal grandparents lived in neighbouring streets on the same estate in south east London in the 1960s.
The converse of that it has encouraged or driven what Gove calls "atomisation" (amongst other factors). We can be anywhere, we can be everywhere and we can be nowhere all at the same time.
I'm probably an extreme example - I grew up in cities in 3 different countries, worked in two others, and I've retired to a happy marriage in an Oxfordshire village. I don't feel particularly rooted anywhere, but I'm aware of multiple influences. People who say proudly that they've never lived anywhere but their home town sound increasingly unusual, and I can't see that ever being reversed. An effect of that is that lifelong friendships tend to be occasional encounters without losing all their essential quaity - I have a friend in California who I met last week for the first time in 60 years, and we rapidly tuned into each other.
Nonetheless, the trend increases the importance of electronic interaction, and in a way I know people on this forum better than I know my Calfornian friend. Couple that to the natural tendency to find idelogically and philosophically ttuned online groups, and you can see how the world becomes atomised and people come to think that nearly everyone agrees with their ideas, however odd. I used to know a Danish Supreme Court judge who deliberately read a hostile daily paper to counter that tendency, but few of us have the time or inclination for tht - I never look at the Mail, and shouldn't think that Marquee Mark spends much time studying the Guardian.
That does make forums with varying opinions like this quite important and refreshing. We may not agree with each other, but at least we become more aware that we exist!
Interesting. Just to qualify one point. In Cumberland (non lake district part) it is completely normal for people of all ages never to have lived anywhere else but their home town/village and immediate locality. I suspect this is true of a number of not much noticed parts of the country.
There is a also a substantial younger group of people for who this is true except for the years 18-21 approx away at HE of some sort.
Another feather in Clarkson's Farm's cap is that it introduced Caleb, and the fact that there are many, many Calebs, to the sneering metropolitan elite. Notwithstanding he is now a celeb with a book deal, speaking tour, and whatnot, at the time he was clear that he had likely not travelled further than Chipping Norton his whole life.
When I lived in Barbados (which is twenty one miles long and fourteen miles across) I was told that there were people living in the interior of the country who had never been to the coast. This may have been hyperbole I suppose, although some of the rural communities in parishes like St George and St John were pretty isolated. The Bajan whites (descendents from indentured servants, often Scots and Irish political prisoners, almost on a par with slaves) were often the most isolated, it seemed. Some people really don't like leaving the place they feel comfortable.
They'd never been to the Lone Star - can't believe it...
I lived in Barbados for three years and never went there either. I preferred the nightlife on the south coast, the Boatyard, Harbour Lights and the bars and restaurants on St Lawrence Gap. The west coast was a bit up itself.
Ugh.
Harbour Lights was about £10-15 entry then free drinks all night. Banging music, dancing on the sand. A great place to be in your mid twenties.
I've no idea and not much more interest but it is entirely possible that she was making her own way when they met in low paid employment but that her parents are loaded and helped her out buying this property. The 2 versions are not necessarily inconsistent.
My concern is despite all this gotcha nonsense for Farage and Rayner the focus is never on how ridiculous our rules and indeed taxes are on the buying of property. Why on earth should buying a house be a taxable event? How does this help job mobility, younger buyers wanting to have families, investment in the housing stock etc etc? Are we not acting directly against several important public policies? They are stupid taxes and have become ever more so as we try to penalise those with more than one property.
CGT on the vendor? Both taxes try to claw back some of the capital gain in the housing market boosted by successive, mainly Tory, governments.
CGT on the vendor makes a lot more sense than what we do right now but it also discourages downsizing, job mobility etc. Almost all taxes have some negative effects but property taxes seem to me to be much more pernicious than most.
The only tax on real property that makes sense is a land value tax because it encourages efficient use of land. The rest is fiddling.
I agree in principle and like the effect, but it fails the easy-to-implement test. Last sale price + local HPI is the way IMO.
We bought our house in 1976 for £15,000
It's current market value is circa £500,000 whereas applying inflation only it would be just over £100,000
You apply it to land value, on a district (not individual property) level.
HPI is either house price inflation or house price index, I think (both meaning the same). So you uprate the assessed value of a house based on sale prices of neighbouring properties (which is largely what the online house price estimators do at present - and a fair bit of what local estate agents do*). Doesn't pick up extensions etc so would need to decide how (and whether) to account for that, depending on whether we want to encourage extension building - council tax also doesn't automatically adjust for extensions, to my personal advantage, until revaluation on sale, I believe. It could be done though, through planning applications and/or building control (latter as planning applications not needed for permitted development).
You could do similar on land value - do the same price tracking but take out the RICS rebuild cost or similar.
I support all of these approaches in principle. I am however interested in my particular case, where my land would nowadays support probably three or even four houses. It's a 1920s semi with a long garden - now rather than a row of semis along the road, there would be a cul-de-sac or another parallel road put in. Does that mean my land is high value? On the market it wouldn't be as you couldn't build the extra houses without purchasing neighbouring ones and knocking them down too - there's not enough space on the side for an access road. If you did a simple value per sqm calculation based on local averages then it would be assessed as high value nonetheless.
I wouldn't make any kind of adjustments for improvements to the house - we want to encourage that kind of investment, so a shell you buy In Greenock that you turn into a £500k house would still be charged as if it's worth £50k.
Yes, that was what I was thinking with the "(and whether)". I'm not quite sure of the implications, but encouraging value add and extensions seems like a logical thing to do - better that someone adds capacity to a house on existing land than moving to a bigger house?
We've gone from a 3 to 5 bed semi through extending and also added a room and built in garage downstairs, so I may be biased on this!
It is this sort of reasoning, that extensions add value, that increased the notional value of Angela Rayner's son's trust's house. Some on here (and elsewhere) argued the opposite was the case.
I thought the argument was that Rayner’s house was modified specifically for her son’s condition rather than extended for a regular family life, so it wouldn’t fit many buyers requirements, and despite the money spent not necessarily make it worth that much more
Danny Kruger, my goodness. Blanche has a Reform MP.
Pity, though Kruger is very socially conservative and an evangelical Christian, anti abortion, anti euthanasia and anti same sex marriage and hostile to much of Islam and economically very small state so no great surprise
Perfect fit for the narrow minded far right attracted to Farage
I am very pleased he has gone as that is not my conservative party, though it could be yours
That just rude G.
If it was only the 'narrow minded far right' attracted to Reform they wouldn't be polling around the mid 30s.
If I remember correctly, you only ended up voting for "my/your" Conservative Party because Mrs G filled in an returned your ballot paper?
It is not rude just an opinion
And as far as my wife is concerned, when you have been happily married for 62 years you discuss matters and agree, but your suggestion would be illegal, and I would ask you to withdraw it
Do you always vote the same, BigG? My wife and I certainly discuss, but we've often ended up voting for different parties. I enjoy the discussions, which are always civil - we're not trying to persuade each other - and in which we both generally learn things we haven't considered and we're not far apart politically, but I'd say we vote differently probably half of the time. The last two Westminster votes (one of which was a by election) we've voted the same though.
ETA: Thinking about it, the last two are the ones where votes have maybe mattered - in previous elections we've both indulged our consciences by voting for different no-hope (in the seat) parties. The only time we would likely have voted differently when it mattered, had we been in a competitive seat, would likely have been 2015 maybe (her Con, me Lab, but close decision for both of us).
Yes - we even both voted for Blair twice, to be fair my wife is not that political though when I asked her about Burnham a couple of days ago she responded
In July, Mr Kruger used a speech in the Commons to warn that Reform would 'spend money like drunken sailors' if they went into Government.
Nigel will welcome being seen as a big spender (though obviously not a penny on immigrants). The British Right abandoned Thatcherite book balancing years ago.
Trevor Phillips on Times Radio this morning said the three main themes of the march were 1) immigration; 2) pride in our country; and 3) christianity.
Which last I didn't see coming as England is quite some way along its post-reformation journey to complete atheism. Stig Abell countered that when people said "christianity" it was shorthand for times gone past (old maids..holy communion...etc).
To which he, Phillips, then went on to say that the/a main driving force of this christian resurgence was from immigrants.
Would be interested to know (though probably unknowable) how many of the marchers on Saturday attend religious events of any kind. In my own part of the world sectarian marchers tend to identify along religious lines but I hae ma doots about how much genuine religious observance is attached. The Christian nationalism (in the UK at least) seems emptily performative, though I'm willing to be surprused by news that Tommy Robinson cuts up his coke with a communion wafer.
Pro-Christian is an alternative way of saying anti-Muslim.
'I'm no of fan of Christ our saviour and lord, but at least he never said anything positive about Muslims.'
Phillips sounds a bit confused, it seems very unlikely that many immigrants, christian or otherwise, were on the TR march.
It's an attempt by the terminally online to import American style political Christianity, the Charlie Kirk tendency.
For a bunch of "patriots" they seem very keen on us copying America.
It is partly that but perhaps also that many marchers feel the loss not of Christianity per se but of what we might call cultural Christianity. They do not go to church but want to know it is there, and has not been turned into a mosque or posh flats.
ETA and replacing HMQ with HMK probably has not helped in this regard. Another mistake by Liz Truss.
If you watch the rally though, the Christianity they're pushing is not cultural Christianity that anyone in Britain would recognise. It wasn't a rousing rendition of Abide with Me, it was hyper evangelical Christianity that is being imported from America. When I was watching it some of the speakers were trying to get the audience to chant "Christ is King" and most of them just looked baffled
I imagine this will die a death soon, but if it doesn't, a shift will occur. There are a number of hyper evangelical outlets especially in the cities, with Christ is Lord and King mixed with awful loud music and hyperbolic long talks. It has a long tail right down to the person who waves their arms in the air during trad hymns and hugs a lot in the peace and is the only charismatic in the village.
But politically far right?? No. Absolutely not. They tend to be LD, Labour, Tory, and to have a lot of ethnicities in the flock. Some are nearly all black. They tend to be opposed to all other faiths because their faith is exclusive, but only in the same sense that religions in the modern world usually are - they are opposed nicely and politely. Quite a few are pacifists.
I demur. That scenario is how we get another Tory government. Under the name Reform.
I am making this point with increasing venom. The fukers are Turquoise Tories. People voting refuk to change the mess the Tories left will be in for a shock when they find Jacob Rees-Mogg is Shadow Chancellor...
The coalition that got Boris a big majority. I don’t think it ever dispersed to other parties, more that a chunk of it stayed at home last year. Now they are back and choosing Reform. Many people probably think that Boris’ govt might have been ok were it not for the pandemic, and Farage 2028/9 would be another go at it
Actually, obviously a large percentage went Reform 24
Trevor Phillips on Times Radio this morning said the three main themes of the march were 1) immigration; 2) pride in our country; and 3) christianity.
Which last I didn't see coming as England is quite some way along its post-reformation journey to complete atheism. Stig Abell countered that when people said "christianity" it was shorthand for times gone past (old maids..holy communion...etc).
To which he, Phillips, then went on to say that the/a main driving force of this christian resurgence was from immigrants.
Would be interested to know (though probably unknowable) how many of the marchers on Saturday attend religious events of any kind. In my own part of the world sectarian marchers tend to identify along religious lines but I hae ma doots about how much genuine religious observance is attached. The Christian nationalism (in the UK at least) seems emptily performative, though I'm willing to be surprused by news that Tommy Robinson cuts up his coke with a communion wafer.
Pro-Christian is an alternative way of saying anti-Muslim.
'I'm no of fan of Christ our saviour and lord, but at least he never said anything positive about Muslims.'
Phillips sounds a bit confused, it seems very unlikely that many immigrants, christian or otherwise, were on the TR march.
It's an attempt by the terminally online to import American style political Christianity, the Charlie Kirk tendency.
For a bunch of "patriots" they seem very keen on us copying America.
It is partly that but perhaps also that many marchers feel the loss not of Christianity per se but of what we might call cultural Christianity. They do not go to church but want to know it is there, and has not been turned into a mosque or posh flats.
ETA and replacing HMQ with HMK probably has not helped in this regard. Another mistake by Liz Truss.
If you watch the rally though, the Christianity they're pushing is not cultural Christianity that anyone in Britain would recognise. It wasn't a rousing rendition of Abide with Me, it was hyper evangelical Christianity that is being imported from America. When I was watching it some of the speakers were trying to get the audience to chant "Christ is King" and most of them just looked baffled
I was confirmed into the C of E by the Bishop of Durham and was a server for a few years attending many communion sevices, and at one time was able to recite the whole communion service without reference to the prayer book
My wife was a member of the Brethren, but found them too extreme not least when they would not allow a piano at our wedding, notwithstanding my wife had played regularly at the Deep Sea Fisherman's Mission
It resulted in us being married in the Church of Scotland
We both have Christian upbringings and outlooks, but simply reject narrow minded prejudiced opinions largely taken out of contact from the Bible
I do wonder if these so called Christians really stop and ask
'What would Jesus do?'
Yes I'm a lay preacher and (non serving) Elder of my local United Reformed Church. The Christianity that is being pushed at these rallies is not one I recognise either. It's the kind of Evangelical political Christian Nationalism that we see in the States. It seems to me that the bigwigs in the alt right are swallowing it as part of the whole MAGA package.
I think Danny Kruger's defection to Reform is a coup for Farage and a serious blow to the Tories. Whatever one thinks of him (and he's not to my taste, obviously), he's quite a serious chap, and intellectually he's a far cry from other defectors (Nad Dorries, Lee Anderson, Sarah Pochin for example). Badenoch will be worried, I think.
Danny Kruger, my goodness. Blanche has a Reform MP.
Pity, though Kruger is very socially conservative and an evangelical Christian, anti abortion, anti euthanasia and anti same sex marriage and hostile to much of Islam and economically very small state so no great surprise
Perfect fit for the narrow minded far right attracted to Farage
I am very pleased he has gone as that is not my conservative party, though it could be yours
The Tory Party can’t keep affording to lose people. If the response is “good riddance” every time someone defects then bit by bit it loses that broad church status and starts to serve a dwindling number of interests.
With one half of the party feeling more affinity with the LibDems, and the other half more affinity with ReFuk, what is the point of the Conservatives?
I've no idea and not much more interest but it is entirely possible that she was making her own way when they met in low paid employment but that her parents are loaded and helped her out buying this property. The 2 versions are not necessarily inconsistent.
My concern is despite all this gotcha nonsense for Farage and Rayner the focus is never on how ridiculous our rules and indeed taxes are on the buying of property. Why on earth should buying a house be a taxable event? How does this help job mobility, younger buyers wanting to have families, investment in the housing stock etc etc? Are we not acting directly against several important public policies? They are stupid taxes and have become ever more so as we try to penalise those with more than one property.
CGT on the vendor? Both taxes try to claw back some of the capital gain in the housing market boosted by successive, mainly Tory, governments.
CGT on the vendor makes a lot more sense than what we do right now but it also discourages downsizing, job mobility etc. Almost all taxes have some negative effects but property taxes seem to me to be much more pernicious than most.
The only tax on real property that makes sense is a land value tax because it encourages efficient use of land. The rest is fiddling.
I agree in principle and like the effect, but it fails the easy-to-implement test. Last sale price + local HPI is the way IMO.
We bought our house in 1976 for £15,000
It's current market value is circa £500,000 whereas applying inflation only it would be just over £100,000
You apply it to land value, on a district (not individual property) level.
HPI is either house price inflation or house price index, I think (both meaning the same). So you uprate the assessed value of a house based on sale prices of neighbouring properties (which is largely what the online house price estimators do at present - and a fair bit of what local estate agents do*). Doesn't pick up extensions etc so would need to decide how (and whether) to account for that, depending on whether we want to encourage extension building - council tax also doesn't automatically adjust for extensions, to my personal advantage, until revaluation on sale, I believe. It could be done though, through planning applications and/or building control (latter as planning applications not needed for permitted development).
You could do similar on land value - do the same price tracking but take out the RICS rebuild cost or similar.
I support all of these approaches in principle. I am however interested in my particular case, where my land would nowadays support probably three or even four houses. It's a 1920s semi with a long garden - now rather than a row of semis along the road, there would be a cul-de-sac or another parallel road put in. Does that mean my land is high value? On the market it wouldn't be as you couldn't build the extra houses without purchasing neighbouring ones and knocking them down too - there's not enough space on the side for an access road. If you did a simple value per sqm calculation based on local averages then it would be assessed as high value nonetheless.
I wouldn't make any kind of adjustments for improvements to the house - we want to encourage that kind of investment, so a shell you buy In Greenock that you turn into a £500k house would still be charged as if it's worth £50k.
Yes, that was what I was thinking with the "(and whether)". I'm not quite sure of the implications, but encouraging value add and extensions seems like a logical thing to do - better that someone adds capacity to a house on existing land than moving to a bigger house?
We've gone from a 3 to 5 bed semi through extending and also added a room and built in garage downstairs, so I may be biased on this!
It is this sort of reasoning, that extensions add value, that increased the notional value of Angela Rayner's son's trust's house. Some on here (and elsewhere) argued the opposite was the case.
I thought the argument was that Rayner’s house was modified specifically for her son’s condition rather than extended for a regular family life, so it wouldn’t fit many buyers requirements, and despite the money spent not necessarily make it worth that much more
On the other hand, it was right up the street of the trust which bought it. By definition! The trust was for the child. IIRC the value was based on normal value plus specialist improvements, and was in any case professionally done.
Trevor Phillips on Times Radio this morning said the three main themes of the march were 1) immigration; 2) pride in our country; and 3) christianity.
Which last I didn't see coming as England is quite some way along its post-reformation journey to complete atheism. Stig Abell countered that when people said "christianity" it was shorthand for times gone past (old maids..holy communion...etc).
To which he, Phillips, then went on to say that the/a main driving force of this christian resurgence was from immigrants.
Would be interested to know (though probably unknowable) how many of the marchers on Saturday attend religious events of any kind. In my own part of the world sectarian marchers tend to identify along religious lines but I hae ma doots about how much genuine religious observance is attached. The Christian nationalism (in the UK at least) seems emptily performative, though I'm willing to be surprused by news that Tommy Robinson cuts up his coke with a communion wafer.
Pro-Christian is an alternative way of saying anti-Muslim.
'I'm no of fan of Christ our saviour and lord, but at least he never said anything positive about Muslims.'
Phillips sounds a bit confused, it seems very unlikely that many immigrants, christian or otherwise, were on the TR march.
It's an attempt by the terminally online to import American style political Christianity, the Charlie Kirk tendency.
For a bunch of "patriots" they seem very keen on us copying America.
It is partly that but perhaps also that many marchers feel the loss not of Christianity per se but of what we might call cultural Christianity. They do not go to church but want to know it is there, and has not been turned into a mosque or posh flats.
ETA and replacing HMQ with HMK probably has not helped in this regard. Another mistake by Liz Truss.
If you watch the rally though, the Christianity they're pushing is not cultural Christianity that anyone in Britain would recognise. It wasn't a rousing rendition of Abide with Me, it was hyper evangelical Christianity that is being imported from America. When I was watching it some of the speakers were trying to get the audience to chant "Christ is King" and most of them just looked baffled
I was confirmed into the C of E by the Bishop of Durham and was a server for a few years attending many communion sevices, and at one time was able to recite the whole communion service without reference to the prayer book
My wife was a member of the Brethren, but found them too extreme not least when they would not allow a piano at our wedding, notwithstanding my wife had played regularly at the Deep Sea Fisherman's Mission
It resulted in us being married in the Church of Scotland
We both have Christian upbringings and outlooks, but simply reject narrow minded prejudiced opinions largely taken out of contact from the Bible
I do wonder if these so called Christians really stop and ask
'What would Jesus do?'
He'd be deported. He's a trouble maker from the Middle East.
So what if he gave his girlfriend the money? Provided there is no written agreement that triggers General anti-Avoidance Provisions then she owns the property, paid the appropriate tax and the nature of their relationship is up to them.
In politics it is often not how it is but how it looks. At least we now know why Farage was uncharacteristically quiet during the Rayner stamp duty furore.
I've no idea and not much more interest but it is entirely possible that she was making her own way when they met in low paid employment but that her parents are loaded and helped her out buying this property. The 2 versions are not necessarily inconsistent.
My concern is despite all this gotcha nonsense for Farage and Rayner the focus is never on how ridiculous our rules and indeed taxes are on the buying of property. Why on earth should buying a house be a taxable event? How does this help job mobility, younger buyers wanting to have families, investment in the housing stock etc etc? Are we not acting directly against several important public policies? They are stupid taxes and have become ever more so as we try to penalise those with more than one property.
CGT on the vendor? Both taxes try to claw back some of the capital gain in the housing market boosted by successive, mainly Tory, governments.
CGT on the vendor makes a lot more sense than what we do right now but it also discourages downsizing, job mobility etc. Almost all taxes have some negative effects but property taxes seem to me to be much more pernicious than most.
The only tax on real property that makes sense is a land value tax because it encourages efficient use of land. The rest is fiddling.
I agree in principle and like the effect, but it fails the easy-to-implement test. Last sale price + local HPI is the way IMO.
We bought our house in 1976 for £15,000
It's current market value is circa £500,000 whereas applying inflation only it would be just over £100,000
You apply it to land value, on a district (not individual property) level.
HPI is either house price inflation or house price index, I think (both meaning the same). So you uprate the assessed value of a house based on sale prices of neighbouring properties (which is largely what the online house price estimators do at present - and a fair bit of what local estate agents do*). Doesn't pick up extensions etc so would need to decide how (and whether) to account for that, depending on whether we want to encourage extension building - council tax also doesn't automatically adjust for extensions, to my personal advantage, until revaluation on sale, I believe. It could be done though, through planning applications and/or building control (latter as planning applications not needed for permitted development).
You could do similar on land value - do the same price tracking but take out the RICS rebuild cost or similar.
I support all of these approaches in principle. I am however interested in my particular case, where my land would nowadays support probably three or even four houses. It's a 1920s semi with a long garden - now rather than a row of semis along the road, there would be a cul-de-sac or another parallel road put in. Does that mean my land is high value? On the market it wouldn't be as you couldn't build the extra houses without purchasing neighbouring ones and knocking them down too - there's not enough space on the side for an access road. If you did a simple value per sqm calculation based on local averages then it would be assessed as high value nonetheless.
I wouldn't make any kind of adjustments for improvements to the house - we want to encourage that kind of investment, so a shell you buy In Greenock that you turn into a £500k house would still be charged as if it's worth £50k.
Yes, that was what I was thinking with the "(and whether)". I'm not quite sure of the implications, but encouraging value add and extensions seems like a logical thing to do - better that someone adds capacity to a house on existing land than moving to a bigger house?
We've gone from a 3 to 5 bed semi through extending and also added a room and built in garage downstairs, so I may be biased on this!
It is this sort of reasoning, that extensions add value, that increased the notional value of Angela Rayner's son's trust's house. Some on here (and elsewhere) argued the opposite was the case.
I thought the argument was that Rayner’s house was modified specifically for her son’s condition rather than extended for a regular family life, so it wouldn’t fit many buyers requirements, and despite the money spent not necessarily make it worth that much more
Yes, you can argue it both ways, and many did, based mainly on their prior opinion of Angela Rayner. It's like swimming pools. But the point is, it is not unreasonable, unprecedented or even unusual.
I demur. That scenario is how we get another Tory government. Under the name Reform.
Many Reform politicians (and definitely including Farage) would have fit squarely into the ERG wing of the Tories. As for their voter coalition it's essentially the one that Johnson mobilised in 2019. Their strongest common identity is Leave.
Wow. Looks like Nigel has played a blinder with the Kruger defection. It has completely bludgeoned Kemi after her one good week in politics and has turned the attention back to Nigel after the Robinson/Musk NF march over the weekend. Can this man do no wrong?
Chicken Run for those Tories who fear the next election under Kemi. One good week doesn't make the next PM.
In July, Mr Kruger used a speech in the Commons to warn that Reform would 'spend money like drunken sailors' if they went into Government.
Is there on the record any sensible lengthy discussion between a proper economics journalist and a Reform economics/finance spokesperson about their current policy on tax/spend/debt/deficit?
I noticed recently Tice being allowed to get away with saying that they couldn't say now what their 2029 policy would be on these matters. If they are a potential party of government the voter is entitled to be interested in how they would do the hard stuff differently now.
Krugers defection is old news by tomorrow though. Defections are a one day wonder
True but in conference season it will unsettle Conservative backbenchers, ease the pressure on Starmer and take the shine of Kemi's week. In the longer term, Kruger will either professionalise Reform or become the 917th big hitter to fall out with Nigel Farage.
This feels too early if Farage wants to be the focus of the tory party conference so I wonder if another one or 2 defecting MPs are lined up to defect before October 5th.
There is a big push for the rebirth of Puritanism of a New Model Army kind. The type who were "strongly encouraged" to emigrate many Centuries ago. I fear many of their fellow travellers for now wouldn't like it much.
Trevor Phillips on Times Radio this morning said the three main themes of the march were 1) immigration; 2) pride in our country; and 3) christianity.
Which last I didn't see coming as England is quite some way along its post-reformation journey to complete atheism. Stig Abell countered that when people said "christianity" it was shorthand for times gone past (old maids..holy communion...etc).
To which he, Phillips, then went on to say that the/a main driving force of this christian resurgence was from immigrants.
Would be interested to know (though probably unknowable) how many of the marchers on Saturday attend religious events of any kind. In my own part of the world sectarian marchers tend to identify along religious lines but I hae ma doots about how much genuine religious observance is attached. The Christian nationalism (in the UK at least) seems emptily performative, though I'm willing to be surprused by news that Tommy Robinson cuts up his coke with a communion wafer.
Pro-Christian is an alternative way of saying anti-Muslim.
'I'm no of fan of Christ our saviour and lord, but at least he never said anything positive about Muslims.'
Phillips sounds a bit confused, it seems very unlikely that many immigrants, christian or otherwise, were on the TR march.
It's an attempt by the terminally online to import American style political Christianity, the Charlie Kirk tendency.
For a bunch of "patriots" they seem very keen on us copying America.
It is partly that but perhaps also that many marchers feel the loss not of Christianity per se but of what we might call cultural Christianity. They do not go to church but want to know it is there, and has not been turned into a mosque or posh flats.
ETA and replacing HMQ with HMK probably has not helped in this regard. Another mistake by Liz Truss.
If you watch the rally though, the Christianity they're pushing is not cultural Christianity that anyone in Britain would recognise. It wasn't a rousing rendition of Abide with Me, it was hyper evangelical Christianity that is being imported from America. When I was watching it some of the speakers were trying to get the audience to chant "Christ is King" and most of them just looked baffled
I imagine this will die a death soon, but if it doesn't, a shift will occur. There are a number of hyper evangelical outlets especially in the cities, with Christ is Lord and King mixed with awful loud music and hyperbolic long talks. It has a long tail right down to the person who waves their arms in the air during trad hymns and hugs a lot in the peace and is the only charismatic in the village.
But politically far right?? No. Absolutely not. They tend to be LD, Labour, Tory, and to have a lot of ethnicities in the flock. Some are nearly all black. They tend to be opposed to all other faiths because their faith is exclusive, but only in the same sense that religions in the modern world usually are - they are opposed nicely and politely. Quite a few are pacifists.
I think there are different types of Evangelicals though. I noticed that at the Saturday Rally a lot of the personnel were wearing 'Brotherhood of Christ' hoodies.
Danny Kruger, my goodness. Blanche has a Reform MP.
Pity, though Kruger is very socially conservative and an evangelical Christian, anti abortion, anti euthanasia and anti same sex marriage and hostile to much of Islam and economically very small state so no great surprise
Perfect fit for the narrow minded far right attracted to Farage
I am very pleased he has gone as that is not my conservative party, though it could be yours
The Tory Party can’t keep affording to lose people. If the response is “good riddance” every time someone defects then bit by bit it loses that broad church status and starts to serve a dwindling number of interests.
I simply do not want the conservative party to reflect Reform or Farage even if it means they are sidelined
Does having social conservatives in the Conservative Party mean that it is reflective of Farage though? I don’t agree with everything that social conservatives think or say, but is there no place for them in a ‘Conservative’ Party anymore? I think they form an important part of the debate on the right. If the Tory Party cedes that debate to characters like Farage it continues to marginalise its support base.
The pb Tories who did not bark in the night time. Is it just me who noticed that of all our party leaders, it is only Kemi who had a good week?
Keir Starmer – under attack from his own side over his lack of political judgement or even plain common sense when appointing and then backing up to the last moment Lord Mandelson who has now had to resign three times for what was, at least to a first approximation, the same pattern of behaviour, being entranced by men considerably richer than him: Geoffrey Robinson, the Hindujas, Jeffrey Epstein. (On second thoughts, who better to inveigle himself into the inner circle of a billionaire property developer and cryptocurrency grifter?)
Ed Davey – the honourable member for falling in the water is being criticised by his own side for irrelevant stunts.
Nigel Farage – stamp duty obviously but also risks being outflanked by Tommy Robinson who attracted somewhere north of 100,000 largely peaceful protestors to London, along with squillionaire cheque-writer Elon Musk.
Kemi Badenoch – widely praised for an excellent PMQs and now can lay claim to two top Labour scalps.
And where were pb's Conservatives? Arguing about crowd sizes and frantically trawling the interwebs for a culture war about the assassination of a man who this time last week they could not have picked out of a police line-up even if he wore his MAGA hat. Poor old Kemi.
I've written to Keir Starmer, Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage, urging them to join me in condemning Elon Musk's dangerous remarks inciting violence yesterday.
Comments
So your tax would be £2,050 per year. Interested to know if that's a tax cut for you?
Your point is an interesting one, though.
It is a slow burning fuse, and as I have mentioned before if the May 26 elections are as bad as currently predicted for labour than who knows, though it is not easy to change labour PMs
That’s Starmer safe until 2029 then.
Nonetheless, the girl done good and has a legitimate (if not uncontested) claim to both scalps. There is every reason to believe that immediately after PMQs, Starmer determined to find out what he should already have known about Lord Mandelson.
But again, where are her supporters? Liverpool fans are not questioning whether it should have been a penalty, they celebrate Salah's goal.
On the other hand, if the polling crystallises into results, Labour will be treated like a maritime interface social entertainer. And this will very probably put pressure on Sir Keir.
I foresee another relaunch. Maybe two.
I am very pleased he has gone as that is not my conservative party, though it could be yours
What a journey for Danny Krueger.
@RossKempsell
·
21m
The first really credible defection from the Conservatives to Reform is serving MP @danny__kruger
who has been a central voice in policy development on topics from immigration to national security - this is big news on the right
https://x.com/RossKempsell/status/1967532284304937344
Danny Kruger, Eton and Oxford. Just what we need more of in politics.
A Pizza Hut, a Pizza Hut
Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut
A Pizza Hut, a Pizza Hut
Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut
McDonald's, McDonald's
Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut
McDonald's, McDonald's
Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut
And we wonder where the childhood obesity crisis came from
At the time, I'd sampled none of these delicacies
(My dad, back late from a work trip brought KFC home once when I was under 10 - I tried a tiny bit and it blew me away as it had flavour unlike the very well cooked meat and two veg I was used to!)
If go further and pop it up to 0.7% and abolish Stamp Duty with the proceeds.
If it was only the 'narrow minded far right' attracted to Reform they wouldn't be polling around the mid 30s.
If I remember correctly, you only ended up voting for "my/your" Conservative Party because Mrs G filled in an returned your ballot paper?
@stephenkb.bsky.social
· 6m
It's a huge moment that he is leaving but one part of that it is that it is precisely not *clear* that it involves more compromises with his principles than remaining in the present Conservative party.
https://bsky.app/profile/stephenkb.bsky.social/post/3lyum4dsbwc2c
Stephen Bush
@stephenkb.bsky.social
· 8m
Ultimately, if you are a) an ultra social conservative b) not a racist and c) by all accounts quite a good MP who enjoys being so, all of which apply to Danny Kruger, it is...not obvious that you are better off in Reform nowadays.
https://x.com/SocDoneLeft/status/1966984485309645096
Trusting the factory tools for development is critical, and this is a positive statement, backed up by solid development in this season. Alonso for the title each way is something I'll be looking at.
We've gone from a 3 to 5 bed semi through extending and also added a room and built in garage downstairs, so I may be biased on this!
Has the genie come out again?
ETA and replacing HMQ with HMK probably has not helped in this regard. Another mistake by Liz Truss.
And as far as my wife is concerned, when you have been happily married for 62 years you discuss matters and agree, but your suggestion would be illegal, and I would ask you to withdraw it
Yes, we are still a great country, and there are good reasons that so many migrants want to come here, but there are also reasons so many entrepreneurs and young people want to leave. Britain is not broken, but it is badly damaged. And so, in this crisis, something has got to give.
I wonder if Nigel has been informed that the 'Britain is every inch an absolute irredeemable shit-hole' pronouncements of the British Right are not going down well in focus groups, and some pride in Britain wouldn't go amiss. This could be a significant moment.
Sam Freedman
@samfr.bsky.social
· 14m
Unfortunately the Tories not completely collapsing in quite important to avoiding a Reform government.
And a wave of high profile defections is how they collapse.
https://bsky.app/profile/samfr.bsky.social/post/3lyultlts3q2g
Indeed, I have no problem with your replacement but maybe as you say 0.7% would be justifiable
Farage may find that today's exciting very early xmas present becomes more of a problem later in the year.
Lee Anderson and Kruger sharing debating points should be interesting...
Thank you
I gather they are attempting to keep him distracted by having endless fly-pasts and military parades.
That scenario is how we get another Tory government. Under the name Reform.
Defections do not move the dial like frothing commentators think they do.
It might lose them East Wiltshire. It might not looking at local election results
https://x.com/RepFine/status/1967376993852498214#m
......Well I'm anmazed.
Here is a version from somewhere tropical showing the mimes for Pizza Hut, KFC and McDonald's.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dR7pggNrtY&t=25s
I suspect few of the flag hangers and demo people are among their number.
It's like voting, it can't exist unless there are voters, and it can't be delegated.
ETA: Thinking about it, the last two are the ones where votes have maybe mattered - in previous elections we've both indulged our consciences by voting for different no-hope (in the seat) parties. The only time we would likely have voted differently when it mattered, had we been in a competitive seat, would likely have been 2015 maybe (her Con, me Lab, but close decision for both of us).
In July, Mr Kruger used a speech in the Commons to warn that Reform would 'spend money like drunken sailors' if they went into Government.
My wife was a member of the Brethren, but found them too extreme not least when they would not allow a piano at our wedding, notwithstanding my wife had played regularly at the Deep Sea Fisherman's Mission
It resulted in us being married in the Church of Scotland
We both have Christian upbringings and outlooks, but simply reject narrow minded prejudiced opinions largely taken out of contact from the Bible
I do wonder if these so called Christians really stop and ask
'What would Jesus do?'
As for atomisation, allotments are the answer, quality food, the language of the soil dominates, biodiversity is king and it’s all under open skies.
We should have more allotments. Every household should have one. That would end this March to the right.
Joan and Albert Krusty-Tory will just shrug over their morning egg
They cannot help themselves in trying to emulate MAGA - seemingly blind to how that doesn't translate over here - and that would drive voting against them in a GE campaign.
Both times we extended, we also looked at moving. Each time the extension cost looked comparable to the extra cost of moving to a house with the capacity already added. Which would make sense in a well-functioning market.
' I like Andy'
But politically far right?? No. Absolutely not. They tend to be LD, Labour, Tory, and to have a lot of ethnicities in the flock. Some are nearly all black. They tend to be opposed to all other faiths because their faith is exclusive, but only in the same sense that religions in the modern world usually are - they are opposed nicely and politely. Quite a few are pacifists.
Badenoch will be worried, I think.
He's a trouble maker from the Middle East.
I noticed recently Tice being allowed to get away with saying that they couldn't say now what their 2029 policy would be on these matters. If they are a potential party of government the voter is entitled to be interested in how they would do the hard stuff differently now.
I fear many of their fellow travellers for now wouldn't like it much.