In other news, my son starting secondary school has been a little bit of an eye-opener on the way education has changed in the near-35 years since I left school.
The school gives every child an iPad (*). But as parents, we get web access to his due homework, and the grades for completed homework. His attendance, twice a day. His full timetable and teachers for each class, his behaviour, and any detentions. Even what he chose for dinner.
This seems massively more information, and much more immediate, than my parents got from my schools.
Whether it improves grades or not is a different matter...
(*) Which we pay for, obvs.
Interesting to know this.
Why? Are you planning to mug schoolchildren for their ipads? If not, someone else will.
Or are you thinking long term and going into the optician business as future generations ruin their eyesight staring at screens all day?
My sibling who teaches says that these are a total disaster, the difficult kids hack the security controls and policing what they're doing on them takes up what should be teaching time.
What's interesting is that different schools are completely different with this.
My daughter also started high school this year and her school has no electronics with her during the school day. No iPads, phones banned etc - Laptops available within the school for lessons that require it which are issued by the teacher and collected at the end of the lesson, but otherwise pen and paper.
Homework is mostly online etc, but its up to us to provide a device at home for her to do it on at home, or kids without electronics/internet at home can use the school's equipment at school during break/lunch/before/after school.
"The number of hotels has more than halved since its peak under the last Conservative government. " "Britannia hotels around the country have been fined repeatedly on public protection grounds, from food hygiene to asbestos breaches" "Which? reported Britannia’s Docklands hotel for “horrendous” fire-safety breaches. Two months later the magazine’s representatives returned and found some aspects were worse"
If Leon really wants them closed down, he should be pursuing them on health and safety grounds.
Funny how you weren't concerned about the hotel when it was being used to house ordinary guests for many years.
Why would you be ? Building and fire regulations have tightened in recent years, and hotels obsolete if they're not renovated. There's plenty of old stock which it's only marginally economic, or not economic at all (for example if building work means dealing with removing asbestos) to upgrade. I suspect quite a lot of the asylum housing hotels fall into that category ?
Having spent a huge amount of time in the US. White, religious, guns, is a huge proportion of the US. Its alien to us in Europe, but it is just a fact in many states in the US. That is normal life. People going to the supermarket with their guns is bonkers to me, but that is not abnormal to many Americans.
I know. I lived there. And the people I know who have guns are Trump fans.
Interestingly the Morons aren't all super fans of Trump, despite still voting Republican. They are quite different in accepted customs e.g. the 10% given to charity every month, which Trumps "loaddddddss of money" sch-tick doesn't really align.
From the earliest days of his campaign, it was clear Donald Trump had a Mormon problem. During the campaign, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) had ambivalent feelings about him and his influence in the GOP. Now, Trump’s standing among Latter-day Saints—a once loyal Republican constituency—is deteriorating.
More than half (51 percent) of Latter-day Saints express negative views of the former president. They are also twice as likely to have a very unfavorable than a very favorable opinion of him.
Yes, I was in Utah earlier this year for a research meeting. I quite liked SLC, a very walkable and safe city compared to most in the USA. The Temple is having major work done, so lots of scaffolding, but fascinating to chat to the LDS greeters wandering around their quarter. Mormonism is very hierarchical and in terms of organisational structure is much more like orthodox denominations such as Episcopelians, Lutheran or Catholicism, rather than the freer Evangelical Pentacostalist style more common in the USA. So less enamoured of MAGAism and Trump, but still very conservative.
Curiously one thing I found out from one of the young LDS missionaries explaining things is that Tonga is the most Mormon country, about 70% apparently.
To me the essence of religion is not in theology or structure, but rather in how the religion influences how you live your life. Mormons seems to do that very well on the whole, they are simply nice people. A tree is known by its fruit.
Though the structure of the organisation surely drives the effectiveness of a church or community group as a machine for making good people.
So it's not so much that Christianity, Islam or secularism are good or bad, but that there are ways of doing each that tend better or worse. I'm wondering what the commonalities are.
Longish comment.
That 70% number for Tonga seems a bit high. Wiki says just under 20% in 2016.
Many social aspects of Mormonism are like a preserved Victorian pattern - leadership is male, and personal morality is traditional and temperance and 'family values'. But with core doctrines rewritten by Joseph Smoth. They evangelise their own members by sending them out on mission for a year or so, so they defend the church's views and absorb them. The international organisation is hierarchical.
You even see it in the architecture - USA style stripped down neo-classicism, like civic architecture across the USA, with a spire. Amongst CofE buildings, think Guildford Cathedral for the simplicity.
That's very clear even on Mormon Temples in the UK - you drive past and say "There's a church, but it looks different. Why?". Churches are smaller, and local ones may have a humanistic style (think 1960s/70s crematorium). There's a prominent larger one in the Midlands somewhere just off a dual carriageway traffic island which was the first one I visited back in the 1980s - it had a white New England vibe to it.
They have two full blown temples - London, and Preston where the LDS first rooted in 1837. Access may be restricted to non-members.
The most distinctive doctrine, beyond strange bits like the Angel Moroni giving Joseph Smith a pair of miraculous spectacles to receive the revelation, is Baptism for the Dead, where there is a dogma of "saving" ancestors by finding out who they are and having a Baptism ceremony. And there are strange ritual bits like the "temple garments" (special ritual underwear *). I don't regard them as orthodox because they do not embrace the historic creeds of the Church.
My husk-off view is that the founder was a bit of a con-man, and the multiple wives thing (dozens) conveniently provided him with unlimited sex from a consenting harem, but the organisation has survived and created something better over time - which works and provides a social environment which works for many.
Would I compare Josephus Smith to Chris Brain? That's an interesting one.
* This is not unusual - rituals often embrace clothing and body position, from priestly cassocks (to give a focus on God not the person) to Masons rolling up a trouser leg, to the loving cup ceremony in Livery Companies.
(I'm disagreeing with @Foxy on the necessarily non-hierarchical nature of Evangelical Pentecostalistism. There exists the full range, and social control can be intense in individual churches, in a way that could be called abusive in mainline denominations - as it can be tied in to a specific hierarchy based on a particular New Testament interpretation. In those cases it is usually called "Shepherding".)
Does anyone remember Gordon Brown's fabled 'war chest': a huge stash of billions upon billions of pounds that Gordon could draw upon to ameliorate any political difficulty? I don't recall it ever being used, so does it still exist, if so where is it, and can someone give it to Rachel?
Gordon Brown's "war chest" was no more than a contingency for the unexpected and allowed the government not to be disrupted by minor bumps in the road. Reeves had a contingency of roughly £10bn on a budget of over £800bn. Weirdly and completely unpredictably this turned out not to be enough.
In other news, my son starting secondary school has been a little bit of an eye-opener on the way education has changed in the near-35 years since I left school.
The school gives every child an iPad (*). But as parents, we get web access to his due homework, and the grades for completed homework. His attendance, twice a day. His full timetable and teachers for each class, his behaviour, and any detentions. Even what he chose for dinner.
This seems massively more information, and much more immediate, than my parents got from my schools.
Whether it improves grades or not is a different matter...
(*) Which we pay for, obvs.
I appreciate that this is how the world is now, and Medical Students wander round with iPads much the same.
Surely an essential part of parenting is letting go, and letting kids have some private life, make their own mistakes, learn the consequences of not doing homework on time etc. It all looks open to way too much over parenting to me.
I think it might enable more over-parenting, if parents are so inclined. I doubt I'll be going onto the portals every morning and afternoon to see if he's in school, for instance, but some may. And for the first few weeks I may check each weekend to see what homework needs doing. But if he manages to do it without me, I'll probably stop doing that. He needs to learn more independence and self-dependence as he grows older.
Yes, there may be negatives. But only if you use it in such a way. Otherwise, it may be useful information.
There is a growing body of evidence that "over-parenting" is part of the youth mental health crisis.
I am sure that parental neglect is an even bigger problem too. Getting the balance right of letting go, but being a safe loving haven is quite a challenge.
Yes, it reminds a bit of the somewhat romanticised view of past childhood where kids might be out for hours at 8 years old with parents no idea where they were, vs parents terrified of a teenager going alone to the local shop or something and helicopter parenting. Has to be a balance surely.
Independence was not much of a choice for many parents previously, of course. My poor mum certainly couldn't keep an eye on 4 kids by herself whilst working full time. Had some upsides and some downsides.
I think the best option is what I grew up with - a phenomenal degree of freedom, but granted progressively as I got older, and very consciously by my parents who took something of a "better drowned than duffers, if not duffers will not drown" philosophy.
For example I travelled - Penrhyndeudraeth (home) to Bexleyheath (grandparents) by train aged around 13, with my 11 year old sister in tow. My parents had worked up to that - initially they took us to Wolverhampton, put us on a Euston train, and our grandparents met us at Euston. Then we started doing the cross platform change at Wolverhampton on our own, before finally being allowed to go solo on the cross London part of the journey. We had memorised our parents address and phone number, and it was drummed into us to stick together at all costs, and if anything went wrong we were to find railway staff (or failing that a policeman) and make getting us where we belonged their problem (I can remember negotiating with the ticket office staff at Wolverhampton over them getting us a taxi home when a late running London train had made us miss the last Cambrian train).
I also had free range (again, extended progressively as I got older) over most of Snowdonia - I would cycle up to Croesor or Ffestiniog and walk up into mountains most afternoons. Sometimes I went further, I recall having a puncture near Caernarfon and walking 17 miles home, pushing the bike (I was 14 at the time). My parents were a little bit concerned as I was late back for tea and all they really knew was I'd headed north(ish) away from the house, which left them with around 500sq miles to search had I gone missing.
I climbed mountains, poked about in abandoned slate mines, as I got a bit older bought and sold old Landrovers from farmers. I had an eBay account in the glory days of eBay when it was all auctions despite being under age - you could buy a 1970s landrover off a farmer for £100, take the overdrive off and sell it on ebay for £300, then list the Landrover and get your £100 back and the new purchaser would collect it from the farmer from whom you'd bought it.
I've a 1 year old now, and another child due in just under a month - I'm already trying to work out how to replicate some of that freedom for them as they grow older - but it's going to be much harder where we are now, mainly because the road network is so much busier, and I'm not sure I fancy letting a 10 year old cycle on A roads where 10% of the traffic is moving at 70-100mph.
For all the excitement about Burnham, it’s worth laying out the obstacles to him as next PM.
1) the right seat becoming available 2) outmanoeuvring Starmer and becoming the candidate 3) gambling your current cushy position on beating Reform in the by-election in a highly volatile period 4) Starmer then resigning 5) Nomination by MPs 6) selection by the members, who have already roundly rejected him twice.
Borrowing – the difference between total public sector spending and income – was £18.0 billion in August 2025; this was £3.5 billion more than in August 2024 and the highest August borrowing for five years.
Borrowing in the financial year to August 2025 was £83.8 billion; this was £16.2 billion more than in the same five-month period of 2024 and the second-highest April to August borrowing since monthly records began in 1993, after that of 2020.
It isn't and neither is it Labour's. There's too much blaming of politicians for our ills. The idea that we'd have strong growth and debt falling if only it weren't for this or that set of wankers in government is a harmful delusion.
My daughter is selling her home with her now ex and the process started in April in a short chain and completion dates have been suggested for weeks now without an exchange and date agreed
Everyone in the chain has been affected by delays in the conveyancing process creating huge amounts of frustration
This article in the Law Society Gazette affirms the problems in conveyancing and this sorry tale will be having an effect on the housing market and building 1.5 million homes
Does anyone remember Gordon Brown's fabled 'war chest': a huge stash of billions upon billions of pounds that Gordon could draw upon to ameliorate any political difficulty? I don't recall it ever being used, so does it still exist, if so where is it, and can someone give it to Rachel?
Gordon Brown's "war chest" was no more than a contingency for the unexpected and allowed the government not to be disrupted by minor bumps in the road. Reeves had a contingency of roughly £10bn on a budget of over £800bn. Weirdly and completely unpredictably this turned out not to be enough.
It is absurd the way governments talk about a contingency of £10bn when the the deficit is well over a hundred billion pounds and nearly 5% of GDP.
In the absence of Burnham being back as an MP, then Ed Miliband will certainly be a contender.
In 2015 although he narrowly lost, he did unite the left behind him. If Labour wanted a leader who could squeeze back the LD and Green vote in Labour held seats to tactically vote Labour to keep out Reform then Ed Miliband could be that candidate
Ed Miliband, just about the only minister with ideas, the problem being that every one of them makes the country worse off.
The growth and planning agenda seems haphazardly applied (at best), with Ed portrayed as the chief blocker.
There’s so much they could be doing that doesn’t cost money or that generates more income over time, such as getting housebuilding moving with planning and building regulation reform.
Nope. Labour have been corrupted by developer money. Planning reform may allow more executive five bed culdesacs in fields across the country but it’s not going to make housing cheaper. Or more profitable. It’s just gonna splatter the countryside with shite.
Ed Miliband, just about the only minister with ideas, the problem being that every one of them makes the country worse off.
The growth and planning agenda seems haphazardly applied (at best), with Ed portrayed as the chief blocker.
There’s so much they could be doing that doesn’t cost money or that generates more income over time, such as getting housebuilding moving with planning and building regulation reform.
Nope. Labour have been corrupted by developer money. Planning reform may allow more executive five bed culdesacs in fields across the country but it’s not going to make housing cheaper. Or more profitable. It’s just gonna splatter the countryside with shite.
Adding £55K to the cost of every house will help. Not.
Having spent a huge amount of time in the US. White, religious, guns, is a huge proportion of the US. Its alien to us in Europe, but it is just a fact in many states in the US. That is normal life. People going to the supermarket with their guns is bonkers to me, but that is not abnormal to many Americans.
I know. I lived there. And the people I know who have guns are Trump fans.
Interestingly the Morons aren't all super fans of Trump, despite still voting Republican. They are quite different in accepted customs e.g. the 10% given to charity every month, which Trumps "loaddddddss of money" sch-tick doesn't really align.
From the earliest days of his campaign, it was clear Donald Trump had a Mormon problem. During the campaign, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) had ambivalent feelings about him and his influence in the GOP. Now, Trump’s standing among Latter-day Saints—a once loyal Republican constituency—is deteriorating.
More than half (51 percent) of Latter-day Saints express negative views of the former president. They are also twice as likely to have a very unfavorable than a very favorable opinion of him.
Yes, I was in Utah earlier this year for a research meeting. I quite liked SLC, a very walkable and safe city compared to most in the USA. The Temple is having major work done, so lots of scaffolding, but fascinating to chat to the LDS greeters wandering around their quarter. Mormonism is very hierarchical and in terms of organisational structure is much more like orthodox denominations such as Episcopelians, Lutheran or Catholicism, rather than the freer Evangelical Pentacostalist style more common in the USA. So less enamoured of MAGAism and Trump, but still very conservative.
Curiously one thing I found out from one of the young LDS missionaries explaining things is that Tonga is the most Mormon country, about 70% apparently.
To me the essence of religion is not in theology or structure, but rather in how the religion influences how you live your life. Mormons seems to do that very well on the whole, they are simply nice people. A tree is known by its fruit.
Though the structure of the organisation surely drives the effectiveness of a church or community group as a machine for making good people.
So it's not so much that Christianity, Islam or secularism are good or bad, but that there are ways of doing each that tend better or worse. I'm wondering what the commonalities are.
Longish comment.
That 70% number for Tonga seems a bit high. Wiki says just under 20% in 2016.
Many social aspects of Mormonism are like a preserved Victorian pattern - leadership is male, and personal morality is traditional and temperance and 'family values'. But with core doctrines rewritten by Joseph Smoth. They evangelise their own members by sending them out on mission for a year or so, so they defend the church's views and absorb them. The international organisation is hierarchical.
You even see it in the architecture - USA style stripped down neo-classicism, like civic architecture across the USA, with a spire. Amongst CofE buildings, think Guildford Cathedral for the simplicity.
That's very clear even on Mormon Temples in the UK - you drive past and say "There's a church, but it looks different. Why?". Churches are smaller, and local ones may have a humanistic style (think 1960s/70s crematorium). There's a prominent larger one in the Midlands somewhere just off a dual carriageway traffic island which was the first one I visited back in the 1980s - it had a white New England vibe to it.
They have two full blown temples - London, and Preston where the LDS first rooted in 1837. Access may be restricted to non-members.
The most distinctive doctrine, beyond strange bits like the Angel Moroni giving Joseph Smith a pair of miraculous spectacles to receive the revelation, is Baptism for the Dead, where there is a dogma of "saving" ancestors by finding out who they are and having a Baptism ceremony. And there are strange ritual bits like the "temple garments" (special ritual underwear *). I don't regard them as orthodox because they do not embrace the historic creeds of the Church.
My husk-off view is that the founder was a bit of a con-man, and the multiple wives thing (dozens) conveniently provided him with unlimited sex from a consenting harem, but the organisation has survived and created something better over time - which works and provides a social environment which works for many.
Would I compare Josephus Smith to Chris Brain? That's an interesting one.
* This is not unusual - rituals often embrace clothing and body position, from priestly cassocks (to give a focus on God not the person) to Masons rolling up a trouser leg, to the loving cup ceremony in Livery Companies.
(I'm disagreeing with @Foxy on the necessarily non-hierarchical nature of Evangelical Pentecostalistism. There exists the full range, and social control can be intense in individual churches, in a way that could be called abusive in mainline denominations - as it can be tied in to a specific hierarchy based on a particular New Testament interpretation. In those cases it is usually called "Shepherding".)
Some Pentecostal churches even have bishops, albeit not bishops of apostolic succession like Roman Catholics, Orthodox, Lutheran and Anglican and with no cathedrals either
Does anyone remember Gordon Brown's fabled 'war chest': a huge stash of billions upon billions of pounds that Gordon could draw upon to ameliorate any political difficulty? I don't recall it ever being used, so does it still exist, if so where is it, and can someone give it to Rachel?
Gordon Brown's "war chest" was no more than a contingency for the unexpected and allowed the government not to be disrupted by minor bumps in the road. Reeves had a contingency of roughly £10bn on a budget of over £800bn. Weirdly and completely unpredictably this turned out not to be enough.
Having spent a huge amount of time in the US. White, religious, guns, is a huge proportion of the US. Its alien to us in Europe, but it is just a fact in many states in the US. That is normal life. People going to the supermarket with their guns is bonkers to me, but that is not abnormal to many Americans.
I know. I lived there. And the people I know who have guns are Trump fans.
Interestingly the Morons aren't all super fans of Trump, despite still voting Republican. They are quite different in accepted customs e.g. the 10% given to charity every month, which Trumps "loaddddddss of money" sch-tick doesn't really align.
From the earliest days of his campaign, it was clear Donald Trump had a Mormon problem. During the campaign, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) had ambivalent feelings about him and his influence in the GOP. Now, Trump’s standing among Latter-day Saints—a once loyal Republican constituency—is deteriorating.
More than half (51 percent) of Latter-day Saints express negative views of the former president. They are also twice as likely to have a very unfavorable than a very favorable opinion of him.
Yes, I was in Utah earlier this year for a research meeting. I quite liked SLC, a very walkable and safe city compared to most in the USA. The Temple is having major work done, so lots of scaffolding, but fascinating to chat to the LDS greeters wandering around their quarter. Mormonism is very hierarchical and in terms of organisational structure is much more like orthodox denominations such as Episcopelians, Lutheran or Catholicism, rather than the freer Evangelical Pentacostalist style more common in the USA. So less enamoured of MAGAism and Trump, but still very conservative.
Curiously one thing I found out from one of the young LDS missionaries explaining things is that Tonga is the most Mormon country, about 70% apparently.
To me the essence of religion is not in theology or structure, but rather in how the religion influences how you live your life. Mormons seems to do that very well on the whole, they are simply nice people. A tree is known by its fruit.
Though the structure of the organisation surely drives the effectiveness of a church or community group as a machine for making good people.
So it's not so much that Christianity, Islam or secularism are good or bad, but that there are ways of doing each that tend better or worse. I'm wondering what the commonalities are.
Longish comment.
That 70% number for Tonga seems a bit high. Wiki says just under 20% in 2016.
Many social aspects of Mormonism are like a preserved Victorian pattern - leadership is male, and personal morality is traditional and temperance and 'family values'. But with core doctrines rewritten by Joseph Smoth. They evangelise their own members by sending them out on mission for a year or so, so they defend the church's views and absorb them. The international organisation is hierarchical.
You even see it in the architecture - USA style stripped down neo-classicism, like civic architecture across the USA, with a spire. Amongst CofE buildings, think Guildford Cathedral for the simplicity.
That's very clear even on Mormon Temples in the UK - you drive past and say "There's a church, but it looks different. Why?". Churches are smaller, and local ones may have a humanistic style (think 1960s/70s crematorium). There's a prominent larger one in the Midlands somewhere just off a dual carriageway traffic island which was the first one I visited back in the 1980s - it had a white New England vibe to it.
They have two full blown temples - London, and Preston where the LDS first rooted in 1837. Access may be restricted to non-members.
The most distinctive doctrine, beyond strange bits like the Angel Moroni giving Joseph Smith a pair of miraculous spectacles to receive the revelation, is Baptism for the Dead, where there is a dogma of "saving" ancestors by finding out who they are and having a Baptism ceremony. And there are strange ritual bits like the "temple garments" (special ritual underwear *). I don't regard them as orthodox because they do not embrace the historic creeds of the Church.
My husk-off view is that the founder was a bit of a con-man, and the multiple wives thing (dozens) conveniently provided him with unlimited sex from a consenting harem, but the organisation has survived and created something better over time - which works and provides a social environment which works for many.
Would I compare Josephus Smith to Chris Brain? That's an interesting one.
* This is not unusual - rituals often embrace clothing and body position, from priestly cassocks (to give a focus on God not the person) to Masons rolling up a trouser leg, to the loving cup ceremony in Livery Companies.
(I'm disagreeing with @Foxy on the necessarily non-hierarchical nature of Evangelical Pentecostalistism. There exists the full range, and social control can be intense in individual churches, in a way that could be called abusive in mainline denominations - as it can be tied in to a specific hierarchy based on a particular New Testament interpretation. In those cases it is usually called "Shepherding".)
I don't think it is just you that fails to see them as orthodox, they are not a Christian denomination any more than Christianity is a form of Judaism. They do not believe in the Trinity and are effectively polytheists. As well as all the other weird bits bolted on.
In the absence of Burnham being back as an MP, then Ed Miliband will certainly be a contender.
In 2015 although he narrowly lost, he did unite the left behind him. If Labour wanted a leader who could squeeze back the LD and Green vote in Labour held seats to tactically vote Labour to keep out Reform then Ed Miliband could be that candidate
I don't see Burnham becoming PM but I do see him as a thorn in the side of Starmer and his backing with Miliband's for Lucy Powell must make her favourite to win DL
Ed Miliband, just about the only minister with ideas, the problem being that every one of them makes the country worse off.
The growth and planning agenda seems haphazardly applied (at best), with Ed portrayed as the chief blocker.
There’s so much they could be doing that doesn’t cost money or that generates more income over time, such as getting housebuilding moving with planning and building regulation reform.
Nope. Labour have been corrupted by developer money. Planning reform may allow more executive five bed culdesacs in fields across the country but it’s not going to make housing cheaper. Or more profitable. It’s just gonna splatter the countryside with shite.
Nope, but you can believe we need to tackle climate change while recognising the preposterous absurdity of Ed's policies.
Climate change is not happening because of the extraction of hydrocarbons, which will be required even post-net zero. It is happening due to the burning of them.
We should be doing as much as we can to eliminate the burning of hydrocarbons, while extracting as much as we economically can to be self-sufficient rather than importing them, and a net exporter to boost our balance of trade if possible.
Instead Ed is doing the opposite, he is choking our economy while doing bugger all to tackle the import and burning of hydrocarbons.
As for your second part it shows a shocking ignorance of economics. Every house built adds to supply which helps tackle the imbalance of supply and demand. If we built 20 million 5 bed houses across the country then not only would housing be affordable, but everybody could afford a 5 bed house not a shitty 1 or 2 bed flat or a 3 bed terrace.
Does anyone remember Gordon Brown's fabled 'war chest': a huge stash of billions upon billions of pounds that Gordon could draw upon to ameliorate any political difficulty? I don't recall it ever being used, so does it still exist, if so where is it, and can someone give it to Rachel?
Gordon Brown's "war chest" was no more than a contingency for the unexpected and allowed the government not to be disrupted by minor bumps in the road. Reeves had a contingency of roughly £10bn on a budget of over £800bn. Weirdly and completely unpredictably this turned out not to be enough.
I reckon Ed Miliband might be a good choice. He's had quite a while to reflect on what he could have done differently, he's been discreet and supportive since he stepped down, and I always believed he only entered that leadership election to make it clear he had a claim to a shadow post in his own right if his brother won.
As a very longstanding Labour member I remain open to alternatives, but EdM would be interesting. There's a limit to how many centrists the membership will take, and arguably that's also true of the bulk of the electorate - hence the appeal on the right of facile but contradctory choices like Reform. I think Labour needs to be identifiably left of centre, or sooner or later a credible alternative will appear if the party just shrugs.
Ed Miliband, just about the only minister with ideas, the problem being that every one of them makes the country worse off.
The growth and planning agenda seems haphazardly applied (at best), with Ed portrayed as the chief blocker.
There’s so much they could be doing that doesn’t cost money or that generates more income over time, such as getting housebuilding moving with planning and building regulation reform.
Nope. Labour have been corrupted by developer money. Planning reform may allow more executive five bed culdesacs in fields across the country but it’s not going to make housing cheaper. Or more profitable. It’s just gonna splatter the countryside with shite.
Do you think the net impact on global atmospheric co2 would be made better or worse if the uk North Sea is fully exploited? Consider that its platforms can be fully powered by renewables and its output piped to market. What if the alternative to maintaining the global balance, is further exploitation in Latin America, the Middle East and West Africa, with high incidences of flaring or energy intensive conversion of gas to LNG?
Borrowing – the difference between total public sector spending and income – was £18.0 billion in August 2025; this was £3.5 billion more than in August 2024 and the highest August borrowing for five years.
Borrowing in the financial year to August 2025 was £83.8 billion; this was £16.2 billion more than in the same five-month period of 2024 and the second-highest April to August borrowing since monthly records began in 1993, after that of 2020.
Maybe they should have actually raised taxes last Budget, rather than tinkering around the edges with stuff like farmers’ inheritances and private school VAT?
They did raise taxes last year, dramatically.
Problem is they raised the very worst possible tax to increase.
National Insurance is only payable by those actually working, or those actually creating jobs. Something we want to encourage, not discourage.
We heavily penalise paid employment by taxing it far, far more than unearned incomes, which is the polar opposite of what we should be doing - and Labour made that differential worse, with inevitable consequences.
By increasing taxes on productive employment, we've seen a slowdown in the economy, shock horror, which worsens the Budget.
We should be lowering and seeking to abolish National Insurance and equalising taxes between earned and unearned incomes, which would be Budget-friendly without trashing the economy.
No we should be ringfencing National Insurance for JSA and some health and social care and the state pension as it was set up to do
A very good video from Mallen Baker on the Jimmy Kimmel cancellation. Very sane and thoughtful - but brief and clear.
I only found him recently. For anyone not familiar, he was a co-chair of the Greens in the Sara Parkin / Jonathon Porritt era (ie early 1990s), then a Lib Dem for a few years, then non-partisan).
Ed Miliband, just about the only minister with ideas, the problem being that every one of them makes the country worse off.
The growth and planning agenda seems haphazardly applied (at best), with Ed portrayed as the chief blocker.
There’s so much they could be doing that doesn’t cost money or that generates more income over time, such as getting housebuilding moving with planning and building regulation reform.
Nope. Labour have been corrupted by developer money. Planning reform may allow more executive five bed culdesacs in fields across the country but it’s not going to make housing cheaper. Or more profitable. It’s just gonna splatter the countryside with shite.
Adding £55K to the cost of every house will help. Not.
Fuel poverty drives educational failure as children don’t get the support they need from their parents. An investment up front in quality pays off over the generations that a house stands.
Our problem are mired in inequality and short term thinking. EG We need to think about AMOC faltering and 17m of sea level driven by a warming world. 200 years should be the scale that governments work to. Not 200 days.
Borrowing – the difference between total public sector spending and income – was £18.0 billion in August 2025; this was £3.5 billion more than in August 2024 and the highest August borrowing for five years.
Borrowing in the financial year to August 2025 was £83.8 billion; this was £16.2 billion more than in the same five-month period of 2024 and the second-highest April to August borrowing since monthly records began in 1993, after that of 2020.
Maybe they should have actually raised taxes last Budget, rather than tinkering around the edges with stuff like farmers’ inheritances and private school VAT?
They did raise taxes last year, dramatically.
Problem is they raised the very worst possible tax to increase.
National Insurance is only payable by those actually working, or those actually creating jobs. Something we want to encourage, not discourage.
We heavily penalise paid employment by taxing it far, far more than unearned incomes, which is the polar opposite of what we should be doing - and Labour made that differential worse, with inevitable consequences.
By increasing taxes on productive employment, we've seen a slowdown in the economy, shock horror, which worsens the Budget.
We should be lowering and seeking to abolish National Insurance and equalising taxes between earned and unearned incomes, which would be Budget-friendly without trashing the economy.
No we should be ringfencing National Insurance for JSA and some health and social care and the state pension as it was set up to do
Not going to happen
Increases in retirement age and ultimately means testing is inevitable
For all the excitement about Burnham, it’s worth laying out the obstacles to him as next PM.
1) the right seat becoming available 2) outmanoeuvring Starmer and becoming the candidate 3) gambling your current cushy position on beating Reform in the by-election in a highly volatile period 4) Starmer then resigning 5) Nomination by MPs 6) selection by the members, who have already roundly rejected him twice.
Doesn’t seem likely to me.
I've laid SKS going in 2026 at 2.2. He's struggling, no question, neither the public nor the party are behind him, and the economy is weak, but about even money to be ousted next year? That looks crazy short to me.
My daughter is selling her home with her now ex and the process started in April in a short chain and completion dates have been suggested for weeks now without an exchange and date agreed
Everyone in the chain has been affected by delays in the conveyancing process creating huge amounts of frustration
This article in the Law Society Gazette affirms the problems in conveyancing and this sorry tale will be having an effect on the housing market and building 1.5 million homes
Does anyone remember Gordon Brown's fabled 'war chest': a huge stash of billions upon billions of pounds that Gordon could draw upon to ameliorate any political difficulty? I don't recall it ever being used, so does it still exist, if so where is it, and can someone give it to Rachel?
Gordon Brown's "war chest" was no more than a contingency for the unexpected and allowed the government not to be disrupted by minor bumps in the road. Reeves had a contingency of roughly £10bn on a budget of over £800bn. Weirdly and completely unpredictably this turned out not to be enough.
Borrowing – the difference between total public sector spending and income – was £18.0 billion in August 2025; this was £3.5 billion more than in August 2024 and the highest August borrowing for five years.
Borrowing in the financial year to August 2025 was £83.8 billion; this was £16.2 billion more than in the same five-month period of 2024 and the second-highest April to August borrowing since monthly records began in 1993, after that of 2020.
Maybe they should have actually raised taxes last Budget, rather than tinkering around the edges with stuff like farmers’ inheritances and private school VAT?
They did raise taxes last year, dramatically.
Problem is they raised the very worst possible tax to increase.
National Insurance is only payable by those actually working, or those actually creating jobs. Something we want to encourage, not discourage.
We heavily penalise paid employment by taxing it far, far more than unearned incomes, which is the polar opposite of what we should be doing - and Labour made that differential worse, with inevitable consequences.
By increasing taxes on productive employment, we've seen a slowdown in the economy, shock horror, which worsens the Budget.
We should be lowering and seeking to abolish National Insurance and equalising taxes between earned and unearned incomes, which would be Budget-friendly without trashing the economy.
I agree with all that.
The taxes to raise that are least harmful to long-run economic growth are VAT and excise taxes. Payroll and corporate profits taxes devastate it.
But weirdly those who tout the Scandanavian countries as economic models rarely mention their much higher rates of VAT (Sweden, Denmark, Norway, 25%, Finland 25.5%, Iceland 24%) (like they strangely omit Denmark's lack of a minimum wage or Sweden's of an inheritance tax).
A government that really wanted to raise long-run economic growth, would, like Margaret Thatcher's in her first term, raise consumption taxes and remove some of the exemptions and cut income and profit taxes.
Such a move would also be highly progressive, penalising the workshy and lazy much more than the productive and enterprising.
But obviously our incompetent and very short-term political class would never do that.
Farrukh @implausibleblog Man with orange face and Oompa-Loompa outfit, "There's no racial overtone in saying we want to preserve and protect our borders, our women and children, our history and our heritage"
For all the excitement about Burnham, it’s worth laying out the obstacles to him as next PM.
1) the right seat becoming available 2) outmanoeuvring Starmer and becoming the candidate 3) gambling your current cushy position on beating Reform in the by-election in a highly volatile period 4) Starmer then resigning 5) Nomination by MPs 6) selection by the members, who have already roundly rejected him twice.
Doesn’t seem likely to me.
I've laid SKS going in 2026 at 2.2. He's struggling, no question, neither the public nor the party are behind him and the economy is weak, but almost even money to be ousted next year? That looks crazy short to me.
I think you’re possibly right that the difficulty in forcing out an entrenched Labour leader and moving to a new government that is stable and aligned with the parliamentary party, does mean he is sticky in his role. Where I think you might be misjudging, is that I don’t think he’s enjoying it much. Is 2026 the year he decides to pick up his ball and take it home? Or 2027? Just under 50-50 for next year feels about right to me. But I am not a bettor…
Does anyone remember Gordon Brown's fabled 'war chest': a huge stash of billions upon billions of pounds that Gordon could draw upon to ameliorate any political difficulty? I don't recall it ever being used, so does it still exist, if so where is it, and can someone give it to Rachel?
Gordon Brown's "war chest" was no more than a contingency for the unexpected and allowed the government not to be disrupted by minor bumps in the road. Reeves had a contingency of roughly £10bn on a budget of over £800bn. Weirdly and completely unpredictably this turned out not to be enough.
Osborne generally kept the fiscal headroom, or warchest, at around £40bn over a budgetary cycle. Hammond lowered that to £30bn, Rishi kept it about there too, Truss pushed it all the way down to £5bn and then Hunt pushed it back up to about £20bn. Now it stands at £9bn, but the government is already £11.4bn over budget so it's -£2bn.
The only way out of this is spending cuts. Across the board, clear the decks for mass redundancies in the public sector, a minimum 5 year freeze on pay for people over £40k, cutting public sector pensions and a big cut to welfare spending. The government needs to cut £50bn from the budget over 5 years and raise £25bn in taxes and hope that falling gilt yields will make up the rest of the gap.
Has the edit function been disabled? Maybe the time limit is shorter than it used to be.
For me, on one of my laptops, pressing 'edit' occasionally fills the window with a grey box, with an 'edit' box about halfway down the long grey box, so I have to scroll down to reach it. Only happens occasionally.
e.g., it hasn't happened with this edit, on the laptop that exhibits the issue.
My daughter is selling her home with her now ex and the process started in April in a short chain and completion dates have been suggested for weeks now without an exchange and date agreed
Everyone in the chain has been affected by delays in the conveyancing process creating huge amounts of frustration
This article in the Law Society Gazette affirms the problems in conveyancing and this sorry tale will be having an effect on the housing market and building 1.5 million homes
Does anyone remember Gordon Brown's fabled 'war chest': a huge stash of billions upon billions of pounds that Gordon could draw upon to ameliorate any political difficulty? I don't recall it ever being used, so does it still exist, if so where is it, and can someone give it to Rachel?
Gordon Brown's "war chest" was no more than a contingency for the unexpected and allowed the government not to be disrupted by minor bumps in the road. Reeves had a contingency of roughly £10bn on a budget of over £800bn. Weirdly and completely unpredictably this turned out not to be enough.
My daughter is selling her home with her now ex and the process started in April in a short chain and completion dates have been suggested for weeks now without an exchange and date agreed
Everyone in the chain has been affected by delays in the conveyancing process creating huge amounts of frustration
This article in the Law Society Gazette affirms the problems in conveyancing and this sorry tale will be having an effect on the housing market and building 1.5 million homes
So in summary, the problem is delays at the Land Registry. It took them 2 years from submission of the forms to register my parents property, so I can see that this might be the problem. I'd suggest the same team that sorted out the DVLA are asked to sort out the Land Registry.
Easy for a mortgage lender to suggest property isn't registered when they rely on the conveyancer for due diligence and PI insurance if they lend on a fictional / fraudulent property.
Has the edit function been disabled? Maybe the time limit is shorter than it used to be.
For me, on one of my laptops, pressing 'edit' occasionally fills the window with a grey box, with an 'edit' box about halfway down the long grey box, so I have to scroll down to reach it. Only happens occasionally.
e.g., it hasn't happened with this edit, on the laptop that exhibits the issue.
if you are zoomed in more than 100% on Chrome, it exhibits this behaviour.
Has the edit function been disabled? Maybe the time limit is shorter than it used to be.
For me, on one of my laptops, pressing 'edit' occasionally fills the window with a grey box, with an 'edit' box about halfway down the long grey box, so I have to scroll down to reach it. Only happens occasionally.
e.g., it hasn't happened with this edit, on the laptop that exhibits the issue.
if you are zoomed in more than 100% on Chrome, it exhibits this behaviour.
Chrome and zoom currently 110%, and it didn't happen. But I can imagine it might be something to do with that, thanks.
Edit: yet hilariously, without changing any settings, it *has* happened with this edit...
Does anyone remember Gordon Brown's fabled 'war chest': a huge stash of billions upon billions of pounds that Gordon could draw upon to ameliorate any political difficulty? I don't recall it ever being used, so does it still exist, if so where is it, and can someone give it to Rachel?
Gordon Brown's "war chest" was no more than a contingency for the unexpected and allowed the government not to be disrupted by minor bumps in the road. Reeves had a contingency of roughly £10bn on a budget of over £800bn. Weirdly and completely unpredictably this turned out not to be enough.
Osborne generally kept the fiscal headroom, or warchest, at around £40bn over a budgetary cycle. Hammond lowered that to £30bn, Rishi kept it about there too, Truss pushed it all the way down to £5bn and then Hunt pushed it back up to about £20bn. Now it stands at £9bn, but the government is already £11.4bn over budget so it's -£2bn.
The only way out of this is spending cuts. Across the board, clear the decks for mass redundancies in the public sector, a minimum 5 year freeze on pay for people over £40k, cutting public sector pensions and a big cut to welfare spending. The government needs to cut £50bn from the budget over 5 years and raise £25bn in taxes and hope that falling gilt yields will make up the rest of the gap.
Has the edit function been disabled? Maybe the time limit is shorter than it used to be.
For me, on one of my laptops, pressing 'edit' occasionally fills the window with a grey box, with an 'edit' box about halfway down the long grey box, so I have to scroll down to reach it. Only happens occasionally.
e.g., it hasn't happened with this edit, on the laptop that exhibits the issue.
Interesting. I can edit on my laptop, but not my phone unless I get in very quickly. I also get the grey box on my phone. I must try scrolling down to see if I get the edit box.
Having spent a huge amount of time in the US. White, religious, guns, is a huge proportion of the US. Its alien to us in Europe, but it is just a fact in many states in the US. That is normal life. People going to the supermarket with their guns is bonkers to me, but that is not abnormal to many Americans.
I know. I lived there. And the people I know who have guns are Trump fans.
Interestingly the Morons aren't all super fans of Trump, despite still voting Republican. They are quite different in accepted customs e.g. the 10% given to charity every month, which Trumps "loaddddddss of money" sch-tick doesn't really align.
From the earliest days of his campaign, it was clear Donald Trump had a Mormon problem. During the campaign, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) had ambivalent feelings about him and his influence in the GOP. Now, Trump’s standing among Latter-day Saints—a once loyal Republican constituency—is deteriorating.
More than half (51 percent) of Latter-day Saints express negative views of the former president. They are also twice as likely to have a very unfavorable than a very favorable opinion of him.
Yes, I was in Utah earlier this year for a research meeting. I quite liked SLC, a very walkable and safe city compared to most in the USA. The Temple is having major work done, so lots of scaffolding, but fascinating to chat to the LDS greeters wandering around their quarter. Mormonism is very hierarchical and in terms of organisational structure is much more like orthodox denominations such as Episcopelians, Lutheran or Catholicism, rather than the freer Evangelical Pentacostalist style more common in the USA. So less enamoured of MAGAism and Trump, but still very conservative.
Curiously one thing I found out from one of the young LDS missionaries explaining things is that Tonga is the most Mormon country, about 70% apparently.
To me the essence of religion is not in theology or structure, but rather in how the religion influences how you live your life. Mormons seems to do that very well on the whole, they are simply nice people. A tree is known by its fruit.
Though the structure of the organisation surely drives the effectiveness of a church or community group as a machine for making good people.
So it's not so much that Christianity, Islam or secularism are good or bad, but that there are ways of doing each that tend better or worse. I'm wondering what the commonalities are.
Longish comment.
That 70% number for Tonga seems a bit high. Wiki says just under 20% in 2016.
Many social aspects of Mormonism are like a preserved Victorian pattern - leadership is male, and personal morality is traditional and temperance and 'family values'. But with core doctrines rewritten by Joseph Smoth. They evangelise their own members by sending them out on mission for a year or so, so they defend the church's views and absorb them. The international organisation is hierarchical.
You even see it in the architecture - USA style stripped down neo-classicism, like civic architecture across the USA, with a spire. Amongst CofE buildings, think Guildford Cathedral for the simplicity.
That's very clear even on Mormon Temples in the UK - you drive past and say "There's a church, but it looks different. Why?". Churches are smaller, and local ones may have a humanistic style (think 1960s/70s crematorium). There's a prominent larger one in the Midlands somewhere just off a dual carriageway traffic island which was the first one I visited back in the 1980s - it had a white New England vibe to it.
They have two full blown temples - London, and Preston where the LDS first rooted in 1837. Access may be restricted to non-members.
The most distinctive doctrine, beyond strange bits like the Angel Moroni giving Joseph Smith a pair of miraculous spectacles to receive the revelation, is Baptism for the Dead, where there is a dogma of "saving" ancestors by finding out who they are and having a Baptism ceremony. And there are strange ritual bits like the "temple garments" (special ritual underwear *). I don't regard them as orthodox because they do not embrace the historic creeds of the Church.
My husk-off view is that the founder was a bit of a con-man, and the multiple wives thing (dozens) conveniently provided him with unlimited sex from a consenting harem, but the organisation has survived and created something better over time - which works and provides a social environment which works for many.
Would I compare Josephus Smith to Chris Brain? That's an interesting one.
* This is not unusual - rituals often embrace clothing and body position, from priestly cassocks (to give a focus on God not the person) to Masons rolling up a trouser leg, to the loving cup ceremony in Livery Companies.
(I'm disagreeing with @Foxy on the necessarily non-hierarchical nature of Evangelical Pentecostalistism. There exists the full range, and social control can be intense in individual churches, in a way that could be called abusive in mainline denominations - as it can be tied in to a specific hierarchy based on a particular New Testament interpretation. In those cases it is usually called "Shepherding".)
Some Pentecostal churches even have bishops, albeit not bishops of apostolic succession like Roman Catholics, Orthodox, Lutheran and Anglican and with no cathedrals either
I think we did this the other day? Some call their pastors, bishops (NT meaning: overseer), and others have a hierarchy (eg Church of God in Christ - COGIC).
It's an interesting history for COGIC - their "Bishops" are quite analogous to "Apostles" in the Restorationist movement in the UK, that is people who plant numbers of new churches.
(Apologies to onlookers who find this to be gibberish.)
My daughter is selling her home with her now ex and the process started in April in a short chain and completion dates have been suggested for weeks now without an exchange and date agreed
Everyone in the chain has been affected by delays in the conveyancing process creating huge amounts of frustration
This article in the Law Society Gazette affirms the problems in conveyancing and this sorry tale will be having an effect on the housing market and building 1.5 million homes
Does anyone remember Gordon Brown's fabled 'war chest': a huge stash of billions upon billions of pounds that Gordon could draw upon to ameliorate any political difficulty? I don't recall it ever being used, so does it still exist, if so where is it, and can someone give it to Rachel?
Gordon Brown's "war chest" was no more than a contingency for the unexpected and allowed the government not to be disrupted by minor bumps in the road. Reeves had a contingency of roughly £10bn on a budget of over £800bn. Weirdly and completely unpredictably this turned out not to be enough.
Amazing to think that Rachel's £10bn vanished into a puff of smoke as a sort of rounding error.
How big was Brown's budget? That 15.5bn will have been much more than 1.25%
Brown actually had a budget surplus at the time, so it was an actual war chest. Not a deficit of 5% of GDP.
Unfortunately Brown 2 years later started spending like a drunken sailor on shore leave and the rest is history.
While it is true Gordon Brown did test his own ‘golden rule’ this was limited and in any case made irrelevant by the scale of the global financial crisis.
What's the most alarming thing to me is that 2025 looks like it will have higher borrowing than 2021 which was a full pandemic year where tax receipts were down and we had huge subsidy schemes running. Labour have, in just one year, complete blown the budget to the extent that we're going to borrow more than when the government was paying millions furlough money.
It's a complete shit show, Liz Truss in slow motion.
For all the excitement about Burnham, it’s worth laying out the obstacles to him as next PM.
1) the right seat becoming available 2) outmanoeuvring Starmer and becoming the candidate 3) gambling your current cushy position on beating Reform in the by-election in a highly volatile period 4) Starmer then resigning 5) Nomination by MPs 6) selection by the members, who have already roundly rejected him twice.
Doesn’t seem likely to me.
For all the talk about Burnham taking over from Starmer does anyone have any idea how exactly he would improve the country? Does he have some vision on taxation or growth or defence or benefits that is wildly different from Starmer?
Is there absolutely any point for the country in Burnham being PM apart from maybe some slightly better politics or party management (we of course don’t know if this would even happen - Mike Tyson/plan/punched in the face applies).
So ultimately we get a load of instability for potentially no upside, much like what the Tories were roasted for, for internal party politics.
What's the most alarming thing to me is that 2025 looks like it will have higher borrowing than 2021 which was a full pandemic year where tax receipts were down and we had huge subsidy schemes running. Labour have, in just one year, complete blown the budget to the extent that we're going to borrow more than when the government was paying millions furlough money.
It's a complete shit show, Liz Truss in slow motion.
Where is all the extra borrowing going? NHS, debt interest, ?
Borrowing – the difference between total public sector spending and income – was £18.0 billion in August 2025; this was £3.5 billion more than in August 2024 and the highest August borrowing for five years.
Borrowing in the financial year to August 2025 was £83.8 billion; this was £16.2 billion more than in the same five-month period of 2024 and the second-highest April to August borrowing since monthly records began in 1993, after that of 2020.
Maybe they should have actually raised taxes last Budget, rather than tinkering around the edges with stuff like farmers’ inheritances and private school VAT?
They did raise taxes last year, dramatically.
Problem is they raised the very worst possible tax to increase.
National Insurance is only payable by those actually working, or those actually creating jobs. Something we want to encourage, not discourage.
We heavily penalise paid employment by taxing it far, far more than unearned incomes, which is the polar opposite of what we should be doing - and Labour made that differential worse, with inevitable consequences.
By increasing taxes on productive employment, we've seen a slowdown in the economy, shock horror, which worsens the Budget.
We should be lowering and seeking to abolish National Insurance and equalising taxes between earned and unearned incomes, which would be Budget-friendly without trashing the economy.
No we should be ringfencing National Insurance for JSA and some health and social care and the state pension as it was set up to do
Why do we have to stick to what things were set up to do? Shall we only use Income Tax to fight the French? Actually that's an idea.
What's the most alarming thing to me is that 2025 looks like it will have higher borrowing than 2021 which was a full pandemic year where tax receipts were down and we had huge subsidy schemes running. Labour have, in just one year, complete blown the budget to the extent that we're going to borrow more than when the government was paying millions furlough money.
It's a complete shit show, Liz Truss in slow motion.
Where is all the extra borrowing going? NHS, debt interest, ?
Some of it is debt interest, but mostly it's just payroll, welfare and pensions.
For all the excitement about Burnham, it’s worth laying out the obstacles to him as next PM.
1) the right seat becoming available 2) outmanoeuvring Starmer and becoming the candidate 3) gambling your current cushy position on beating Reform in the by-election in a highly volatile period 4) Starmer then resigning 5) Nomination by MPs 6) selection by the members, who have already roundly rejected him twice.
Doesn’t seem likely to me.
I've laid SKS going in 2026 at 2.2. He's struggling, no question, neither the public nor the party are behind him and the economy is weak, but almost even money to be ousted next year? That looks crazy short to me.
I think you’re possibly right that the difficulty in forcing out an entrenched Labour leader and moving to a new government that is stable and aligned with the parliamentary party, does mean he is sticky in his role. Where I think you might be misjudging, is that I don’t think he’s enjoying it much. Is 2026 the year he decides to pick up his ball and take it home? Or 2027? Just under 50-50 for next year feels about right to me. But I am not a bettor…
We will see. Laying into (IMO) overheated mood based sentiment is one of my favourite betting strategies. I did the same on Badenoch going this year. That went 2.notmuch at one point also.
For all the excitement about Burnham, it’s worth laying out the obstacles to him as next PM.
1) the right seat becoming available 2) outmanoeuvring Starmer and becoming the candidate 3) gambling your current cushy position on beating Reform in the by-election in a highly volatile period 4) Starmer then resigning 5) Nomination by MPs 6) selection by the members, who have already roundly rejected him twice.
Doesn’t seem likely to me.
For all the talk about Burnham taking over from Starmer does anyone have any idea how exactly he would improve the country? Does he have some vision on taxation or growth or defence or benefits that is wildly different from Starmer?
Is there absolutely any point for the country in Burnham being PM apart from maybe some slightly better politics or party management (we of course don’t know if this would even happen - Mike Tyson/plan/punched in the face applies).
So ultimately we get a load of instability for potentially no upside, much like what the Tories were roasted for, for internal party politics.
I know politics is kinda short of the vision thing in general but seems a bit unfair to castigate Burnham for not providing it before he's even declared himself a runner. The main thing going for him afaics is that not everyone thinks he's an absolute rsole, a not overly common quality nowadays.
In other news, my son starting secondary school has been a little bit of an eye-opener on the way education has changed in the near-35 years since I left school.
The school gives every child an iPad (*). But as parents, we get web access to his due homework, and the grades for completed homework. His attendance, twice a day. His full timetable and teachers for each class, his behaviour, and any detentions. Even what he chose for dinner.
This seems massively more information, and much more immediate, than my parents got from my schools.
Whether it improves grades or not is a different matter...
(*) Which we pay for, obvs.
Interesting to know this.
Why? Are you planning to mug schoolchildren for their ipads? If not, someone else will.
Or are you thinking long term and going into the optician business as future generations ruin their eyesight staring at screens all day?
My sibling who teaches says that these are a total disaster, the difficult kids hack the security controls and policing what they're doing on them takes up what should be teaching time.
What's interesting is that different schools are completely different with this.
My daughter also started high school this year and her school has no electronics with her during the school day. No iPads, phones banned etc - Laptops available within the school for lessons that require it which are issued by the teacher and collected at the end of the lesson, but otherwise pen and paper.
Homework is mostly online etc, but its up to us to provide a device at home for her to do it on at home, or kids without electronics/internet at home can use the school's equipment at school during break/lunch/before/after school.
Insisting on pen and paper sounds like an evolutionary dead end. I was allowed to use a typewriter for school 60 years ago (because my handwriting was illegible), and the real issue is keeping kids' attention by interesting lectures, rather than attacking a particular way that kids avoid listening to boring talks.
In other news, my son starting secondary school has been a little bit of an eye-opener on the way education has changed in the near-35 years since I left school.
The school gives every child an iPad (*). But as parents, we get web access to his due homework, and the grades for completed homework. His attendance, twice a day. His full timetable and teachers for each class, his behaviour, and any detentions. Even what he chose for dinner.
This seems massively more information, and much more immediate, than my parents got from my schools.
Whether it improves grades or not is a different matter...
(*) Which we pay for, obvs.
Interesting to know this.
Why? Are you planning to mug schoolchildren for their ipads? If not, someone else will.
Or are you thinking long term and going into the optician business as future generations ruin their eyesight staring at screens all day?
My sibling who teaches says that these are a total disaster, the difficult kids hack the security controls and policing what they're doing on them takes up what should be teaching time.
What's interesting is that different schools are completely different with this.
My daughter also started high school this year and her school has no electronics with her during the school day. No iPads, phones banned etc - Laptops available within the school for lessons that require it which are issued by the teacher and collected at the end of the lesson, but otherwise pen and paper.
Homework is mostly online etc, but its up to us to provide a device at home for her to do it on at home, or kids without electronics/internet at home can use the school's equipment at school during break/lunch/before/after school.
Insisting on pen and paper sounds like an evolutionary dead end. I was allowed to use a typewriter for school 60 years ago (because my handwriting was illegible), and the real issue is keeping kids' attention by interesting lectures, rather than attacking a particular way that kids avoid listening to boring talks.
Jein.
Writing stuff by hand is a lot slower, and for large (or some people, including me, relatively small) amounts of text can be uncomfortable. But it also helps embed ideas in your mind better than typing.
For all the excitement about Burnham, it’s worth laying out the obstacles to him as next PM.
1) the right seat becoming available 2) outmanoeuvring Starmer and becoming the candidate 3) gambling your current cushy position on beating Reform in the by-election in a highly volatile period 4) Starmer then resigning 5) Nomination by MPs 6) selection by the members, who have already roundly rejected him twice.
Doesn’t seem likely to me.
I've laid SKS going in 2026 at 2.2. He's struggling, no question, neither the public nor the party are behind him, and the economy is weak, but about even money to be ousted next year? That looks crazy short to me.
As a fellow Labour loyalist, until today I thought Starmer would survive and may even lead Labour to a narrow victory. I'm now having severe doubts, and suspect he won't lead Labour into the GE.
It's the Trump visit that's changed my mind. Reading this morning's headlines, he's been given no credit whatsoever for the success of the visit - they're all about Trump showing Starmer who's boss, Trump telling Starmer to use the military to protect our borders, and so on.
I think Starmer handled Trump superbly, and dealt with the press conference with considerable aplomb. On Gaza, energy and migration Starmer just listened to Trump's schtick, but didn't agree with him. It was a masterclass in how to deal with Trump. But the zeitgeist is so down on Starmer now that whatever he says and however well he performs, he's slated. So I suspect he's finished, in the medium term rather than imminently.
What's the most alarming thing to me is that 2025 looks like it will have higher borrowing than 2021 which was a full pandemic year where tax receipts were down and we had huge subsidy schemes running. Labour have, in just one year, complete blown the budget to the extent that we're going to borrow more than when the government was paying millions furlough money.
It's a complete shit show, Liz Truss in slow motion.
Where is all the extra borrowing going? NHS, debt interest, ?
Some of it is debt interest, but mostly it's just payroll, welfare and pensions.
We're in a proper bloody mess. I'm sticking with the fundamentals being broken: Cost of living crisis means less cash circulating which kills growth Public services are simultaneously vastly expensive and delivering crap service Society is fraying at the edges
Lets start with the cost of living - two massive drivers are energy and housing. We can't immediately fix housing - we lack both the workforce and the bricks to build sufficient housing even if people could afford to buy them. But we could declare war on the problem to at least get started. We can do something about energy. Our leccy bills are absurdly high because we almost entirely set the price on gas, and as we have minimal storage its the spot price. Despite only using gas a quarter of the time for actual generation, it sets the price all the time. So do as Spain did and decouple. Easier to do outside the EU. Set the price based on what we are actually using for power generation and bills drop instantly. Which makes *everything* cheaper.
Starmer and the team are rabbits in the headlights.
For all the excitement about Burnham, it’s worth laying out the obstacles to him as next PM.
1) the right seat becoming available 2) outmanoeuvring Starmer and becoming the candidate 3) gambling your current cushy position on beating Reform in the by-election in a highly volatile period 4) Starmer then resigning 5) Nomination by MPs 6) selection by the members, who have already roundly rejected him twice.
Doesn’t seem likely to me.
I've laid SKS going in 2026 at 2.2. He's struggling, no question, neither the public nor the party are behind him, and the economy is weak, but about even money to be ousted next year? That looks crazy short to me.
As a fellow Labour loyalist, until today I thought Starmer would survive and may even lead Labour to a narrow victory. I'm now having severe doubts, and suspect he won't lead Labour into the GE.
It's the Trump visit that's changed my mind. Reading this morning's headlines, he's been given no credit whatsoever for the success of the visit - they're all about Trump showing Starmer who's boss, Trump telling Starmer to use the military to protect our borders, and so on.
I think Starmer handled Trump superbly, and dealt with the press conference with considerable aplomb. On Gaza, energy and migration Starmer just listened to Trump's schtick, but didn't agree with him. It was a masterclass in how to deal with Trump. But the zeitgeist is so down on Starmer now that whatever he says and however well he performs, he's slated. So I suspect he's finished, in the medium term rather than imminently.
Blimey, what on earth is going on in North Britain?
Douglas Ross accuses SNP minister of assaulting him at parliament
Conservative MSP Douglas Ross has accused a Scottish government minister of physically assaulting him in parliament.
The former Tory leader claimed Parliamentary Business Minister Jamie Hepburn attacked him as he left the chamber on Wednesday, after the pair had clashed over the scheduling of a summit to discuss "out of control" seagulls.
Hepburn said he put his hand on Ross's shoulder and that he "used a few choice words I shouldn't have", adding: "That's it."
Police said they had advised Ross over the confrontation, though he had not made an official complaint.
Hepburn told reporters: "I will freely fess up to things I've done, but I will not apologise for things I've not done.
"I am clearly sorry I conducted myself in the fashion that I did and I recognise that I let myself down but that is the extent of it.
"Some of what has been suggested does not tally with the reality."
Hepburn declined to answer questions on whether he had breached the ministerial code or whether the first minister continued to have confidence in him.
It’s comparatively rare in life that someone who looks and sounds like a clypey, whining, little bitch turns out to be a clypey whining, little bitch.
Hepburn apologised for using ‘industrious’ language. I assume he meant industrial, but I too would be industrious in calling Ross a ****** ********** little *****.
Although I don’t condone violence, I can’t think of any politician more deserving of it than DRoss. Not forhis political views, but for his sneakiness. The way he treated David Duguid was terrible.
I think Miliband would do a better political job than Starmer. He has some communication skills (unlike Starmer...), experience, seemingly some backing within the party, and at least some ideas, again unlike Starmer. Even if I think many of those ideas are wrong-headed, at least he has ideas.
I very much doubt he's be able to win a GE though. He's a steady-the-ship candidate. If the ship hasn't already sunk by the time he gets the job.
As I have said on my Emergency Podcast show (on YouTube/X/TT) I think Labour have already lost the next election. So steady the ship to stymie the losses makes sense once Starmer inevitably resigns.
Labour need to do one very simple thing: throw a load of money into communities. Like tomorrow. Get councils pulling up weeds and filling potholes and opening pop-up shops to get trading back onto high streets and restoring all of the stuff that is crumbling to nothing. And pose people a very simple question - do you really want Reform to take all of this away?
Local authority revisions and lower-than-expected receipts push borrowing above forecast
This morning’s ONS release estimates that borrowing in the first five months of 2025-26 totalled £83.8 billion. This is £16.2 billion above the same period last year and £11.4 billion above the monthly profile consistent with our March forecast. The overshoot in this month’s estimates compared to our March forecast profile is primarily due to revisions which have increased estimated borrowing by local authorities so far this year. In addition, VAT and other receipts were lower-than-expected in the month of August.
Local authority revisions and lower-than-expected receipts push borrowing above forecast
This morning’s ONS release estimates that borrowing in the first five months of 2025-26 totalled £83.8 billion. This is £16.2 billion above the same period last year and £11.4 billion above the monthly profile consistent with our March forecast. The overshoot in this month’s estimates compared to our March forecast profile is primarily due to revisions which have increased estimated borrowing by local authorities so far this year. In addition, VAT and other receipts were lower-than-expected in the month of August.
Tax rises are eating into economic activity at a higher than expected rate. No fucking shit. Sometimes I wonder whether the people writing the models ever actually go outside and talk to people, experience real life a bit. I assume not.
No, its entering a new era of Goebbelsism. The parallels between the US and 1933 Germany are clear.
Thats over the top. If anyone takes the time to actually study Nazi Germany then they would see that. An easy one is this - Trump, whatever one may think of him, actually won the position in a vote. Hitler didn't.
Which political parties have the US government proscribed? Where are the concentration camps? Where are the brown shirts - the Republican party militia?
There is a free press in the States. Jimmy Kimmel notwithstanding. As far as I was aware its the UK that arrests people for posts on X, not the US.
Local authority revisions and lower-than-expected receipts push borrowing above forecast
This morning’s ONS release estimates that borrowing in the first five months of 2025-26 totalled £83.8 billion. This is £16.2 billion above the same period last year and £11.4 billion above the monthly profile consistent with our March forecast. The overshoot in this month’s estimates compared to our March forecast profile is primarily due to revisions which have increased estimated borrowing by local authorities so far this year. In addition, VAT and other receipts were lower-than-expected in the month of August.
Tax rises are eating into economic activity at a higher than expected rate. No fucking shit. Sometimes I wonder whether the people writing the models ever actually go outside and talk to people, experience real life a bit. I assume not.
The OBR is not fit for purpose. As if they would ever forecast in good faith the reality of Labour's shit show.
I think Miliband would do a better political job than Starmer. He has some communication skills (unlike Starmer...), experience, seemingly some backing within the party, and at least some ideas, again unlike Starmer. Even if I think many of those ideas are wrong-headed, at least he has ideas.
I very much doubt he's be able to win a GE though. He's a steady-the-ship candidate. If the ship hasn't already sunk by the time he gets the job.
As I have said on my Emergency Podcast show (on YouTube/X/TT) I think Labour have already lost the next election. So steady the ship to stymie the losses makes sense once Starmer inevitably resigns.
Labour need to do one very simple thing: throw a load of money into communities. Like tomorrow. Get councils pulling up weeds and filling potholes and opening pop-up shops to get trading back onto high streets and restoring all of the stuff that is crumbling to nothing. And pose people a very simple question - do you really want Reform to take all of this away?
With what money?
Are you saying that *we can't afford* to fill in potholes? Pull up weeds? To bring business back into our high streets? We're starting to look like Romania - we can't afford not to.
I gave one example. Cut some bullshit scheme - 20mph up here - and direct the councils to sort their streets out. Make towns actually nice to walk around and people start going there again which drives economic output and thus tax revenues.
Next you will be responding to "build more prisons" with "with what money". Because crime is free apparently.
Local authority revisions and lower-than-expected receipts push borrowing above forecast
This morning’s ONS release estimates that borrowing in the first five months of 2025-26 totalled £83.8 billion. This is £16.2 billion above the same period last year and £11.4 billion above the monthly profile consistent with our March forecast. The overshoot in this month’s estimates compared to our March forecast profile is primarily due to revisions which have increased estimated borrowing by local authorities so far this year. In addition, VAT and other receipts were lower-than-expected in the month of August.
And look at this very thread for pearl-clutching and knicker-wetting induced by yet more guesses based on revisions to guesswork that will no doubt be revised again in a few weeks. Without OBR and ONS we might be flying blind but with them, we are driving the economy like we stole it.
For all the excitement about Burnham, it’s worth laying out the obstacles to him as next PM.
1) the right seat becoming available 2) outmanoeuvring Starmer and becoming the candidate 3) gambling your current cushy position on beating Reform in the by-election in a highly volatile period 4) Starmer then resigning 5) Nomination by MPs 6) selection by the members, who have already roundly rejected him twice.
Doesn’t seem likely to me.
I've laid SKS going in 2026 at 2.2. He's struggling, no question, neither the public nor the party are behind him, and the economy is weak, but about even money to be ousted next year? That looks crazy short to me.
As a fellow Labour loyalist, until today I thought Starmer would survive and may even lead Labour to a narrow victory. I'm now having severe doubts, and suspect he won't lead Labour into the GE.
It's the Trump visit that's changed my mind. Reading this morning's headlines, he's been given no credit whatsoever for the success of the visit - they're all about Trump showing Starmer who's boss, Trump telling Starmer to use the military to protect our borders, and so on.
I think Starmer handled Trump superbly, and dealt with the press conference with considerable aplomb. On Gaza, energy and migration Starmer just listened to Trump's schtick, but didn't agree with him. It was a masterclass in how to deal with Trump. But the zeitgeist is so down on Starmer now that whatever he says and however well he performs, he's slated. So I suspect he's finished, in the medium term rather than imminently.
That is a good and fair assessment of Starmer
He has fallen so far I am not sure anything will see him recover and next May looks appalling for him
However, we are back to replacing a sitting PM and with whom
I firmly believe that Liz Truss, by introducing a new category of Prime Minister, disturbs the natural pattern of things and so got us into this mess. Let me explain:
Thatcher: fun Major: boring Blair: fun Brown: boring Cameron: fun May: boring Johnson: fun Truss: WEIRD Sunak: boring Starmer: boring
What's the most alarming thing to me is that 2025 looks like it will have higher borrowing than 2021 which was a full pandemic year where tax receipts were down and we had huge subsidy schemes running. Labour have, in just one year, complete blown the budget to the extent that we're going to borrow more than when the government was paying millions furlough money.
It's a complete shit show, Liz Truss in slow motion.
Where is all the extra borrowing going? NHS, debt interest, ?
Some of it is debt interest, but mostly it's just payroll, welfare and pensions.
We're in a proper bloody mess. I'm sticking with the fundamentals being broken: Cost of living crisis means less cash circulating which kills growth Public services are simultaneously vastly expensive and delivering crap service Society is fraying at the edges
Lets start with the cost of living - two massive drivers are energy and housing. We can't immediately fix housing - we lack both the workforce and the bricks to build sufficient housing even if people could afford to buy them. But we could declare war on the problem to at least get started. We can do something about energy. Our leccy bills are absurdly high because we almost entirely set the price on gas, and as we have minimal storage its the spot price. Despite only using gas a quarter of the time for actual generation, it sets the price all the time. So do as Spain did and decouple. Easier to do outside the EU. Set the price based on what we are actually using for power generation and bills drop instantly. Which makes *everything* cheaper.
Starmer and the team are rabbits in the headlights.
Yet you want to hand billions we don’t have to the undeserving WASPI women who are not victims
"The number of hotels has more than halved since its peak under the last Conservative government. " "Britannia hotels around the country have been fined repeatedly on public protection grounds, from food hygiene to asbestos breaches" "Which? reported Britannia’s Docklands hotel for “horrendous” fire-safety breaches. Two months later the magazine’s representatives returned and found some aspects were worse"
If Leon really wants them closed down, he should be pursuing them on health and safety grounds.
The residents might have been better off in the accommodation barges, poor sods.
The irony is that this accommodation is being provided free to the current 'guests'. Before some people actually paid to stay there.
Amazing what the Brits will put up with [Please insert your favourite issue here]
My daughter is selling her home with her now ex and the process started in April in a short chain and completion dates have been suggested for weeks now without an exchange and date agreed
Everyone in the chain has been affected by delays in the conveyancing process creating huge amounts of frustration
This article in the Law Society Gazette affirms the problems in conveyancing and this sorry tale will be having an effect on the housing market and building 1.5 million homes
Local authority revisions and lower-than-expected receipts push borrowing above forecast
This morning’s ONS release estimates that borrowing in the first five months of 2025-26 totalled £83.8 billion. This is £16.2 billion above the same period last year and £11.4 billion above the monthly profile consistent with our March forecast. The overshoot in this month’s estimates compared to our March forecast profile is primarily due to revisions which have increased estimated borrowing by local authorities so far this year. In addition, VAT and other receipts were lower-than-expected in the month of August.
Tax rises are eating into economic activity at a higher than expected rate. No fucking shit. Sometimes I wonder whether the people writing the models ever actually go outside and talk to people, experience real life a bit. I assume not.
We are taxing stuff we want to encourage. Employment. Increasing employment costs is daft and we have Rayners employment bill, dictated by the unions, to come
Local authority revisions and lower-than-expected receipts push borrowing above forecast
This morning’s ONS release estimates that borrowing in the first five months of 2025-26 totalled £83.8 billion. This is £16.2 billion above the same period last year and £11.4 billion above the monthly profile consistent with our March forecast. The overshoot in this month’s estimates compared to our March forecast profile is primarily due to revisions which have increased estimated borrowing by local authorities so far this year. In addition, VAT and other receipts were lower-than-expected in the month of August.
And look at this very thread for pearl-clutching and knicker-wetting induced by yet more guesses based on revisions to guesswork that will no doubt be revised again in a few weeks. Without OBR and ONS we might be flying blind but with them, we are driving the economy like we stole it.
This is actual stuff that happens so it comes out in the wash eventually. The average revision in the numbers below is up (yes, up) £56bn, so not that much. The more recent numbers change the most, unsurprisingly, but generally any future changes will not be in the OBR's favour:
What's the most alarming thing to me is that 2025 looks like it will have higher borrowing than 2021 which was a full pandemic year where tax receipts were down and we had huge subsidy schemes running. Labour have, in just one year, complete blown the budget to the extent that we're going to borrow more than when the government was paying millions furlough money.
It's a complete shit show, Liz Truss in slow motion.
Where is all the extra borrowing going? NHS, debt interest, ?
Some of it is debt interest, but mostly it's just payroll, welfare and pensions.
We're in a proper bloody mess. I'm sticking with the fundamentals being broken: Cost of living crisis means less cash circulating which kills growth Public services are simultaneously vastly expensive and delivering crap service Society is fraying at the edges
Lets start with the cost of living - two massive drivers are energy and housing. We can't immediately fix housing - we lack both the workforce and the bricks to build sufficient housing even if people could afford to buy them. But we could declare war on the problem to at least get started. We can do something about energy. Our leccy bills are absurdly high because we almost entirely set the price on gas, and as we have minimal storage its the spot price. Despite only using gas a quarter of the time for actual generation, it sets the price all the time. So do as Spain did and decouple. Easier to do outside the EU. Set the price based on what we are actually using for power generation and bills drop instantly. Which makes *everything* cheaper.
Starmer and the team are rabbits in the headlights.
Brickworks are extremely simple to build. It's just that under the current panning regime it would take a decade to actual start building.
Brickies can be trained in a few months to competent journeyman standard - doing the easy bits of laying the straight wall.
Other trades are more complex, but again, we are not talking multiple years to train. Gas engineer can be done in 18 weeks.
My daughter is selling her home with her now ex and the process started in April in a short chain and completion dates have been suggested for weeks now without an exchange and date agreed
Everyone in the chain has been affected by delays in the conveyancing process creating huge amounts of frustration
This article in the Law Society Gazette affirms the problems in conveyancing and this sorry tale will be having an effect on the housing market and building 1.5 million homes
That scheme does rather look promising, at first glance, for those who like to make fraudulent claims of ownership on the Land Registry and steal houses that way.
Local authority revisions and lower-than-expected receipts push borrowing above forecast
This morning’s ONS release estimates that borrowing in the first five months of 2025-26 totalled £83.8 billion. This is £16.2 billion above the same period last year and £11.4 billion above the monthly profile consistent with our March forecast. The overshoot in this month’s estimates compared to our March forecast profile is primarily due to revisions which have increased estimated borrowing by local authorities so far this year. In addition, VAT and other receipts were lower-than-expected in the month of August.
Tax rises are eating into economic activity at a higher than expected rate. No fucking shit. Sometimes I wonder whether the people writing the models ever actually go outside and talk to people, experience real life a bit. I assume not.
We are taxing stuff we want to encourage. Employment. Increasing employment costs is daft and we have Rayners employment bill, dictated by the unions, to come
That bill is not as dictated by the unions - the Government are sensible checking what bits are practical and what bits are utterly impossible to implement (I've been on calls where literally everyone has said, we don't have the information to do what you are asking for).
Borrowing – the difference between total public sector spending and income – was £18.0 billion in August 2025; this was £3.5 billion more than in August 2024 and the highest August borrowing for five years.
Borrowing in the financial year to August 2025 was £83.8 billion; this was £16.2 billion more than in the same five-month period of 2024 and the second-highest April to August borrowing since monthly records began in 1993, after that of 2020.
Maybe they should have actually raised taxes last Budget, rather than tinkering around the edges with stuff like farmers’ inheritances and private school VAT?
They did raise taxes last year, dramatically.
Problem is they raised the very worst possible tax to increase.
National Insurance is only payable by those actually working, or those actually creating jobs. Something we want to encourage, not discourage.
We heavily penalise paid employment by taxing it far, far more than unearned incomes, which is the polar opposite of what we should be doing - and Labour made that differential worse, with inevitable consequences.
By increasing taxes on productive employment, we've seen a slowdown in the economy, shock horror, which worsens the Budget.
We should be lowering and seeking to abolish National Insurance and equalising taxes between earned and unearned incomes, which would be Budget-friendly without trashing the economy.
Government tax receipts seem to be up by more than 5%. Notably, income tax receipts are up, which is a sign that the economy isn't doing too badly, because people's incomes are still rising so that they pay more income tax.
Government borrowing is up because spending is up by more than 9%.
The ONS don't say how these percentage increases compare to the OBR forecasts, so I don't know whether the OBR were forecasting higher tax receipts, or lower government spending.
What's the most alarming thing to me is that 2025 looks like it will have higher borrowing than 2021 which was a full pandemic year where tax receipts were down and we had huge subsidy schemes running. Labour have, in just one year, complete blown the budget to the extent that we're going to borrow more than when the government was paying millions furlough money.
It's a complete shit show, Liz Truss in slow motion.
Where is all the extra borrowing going? NHS, debt interest, ?
Some of it is debt interest, but mostly it's just payroll, welfare and pensions.
We're in a proper bloody mess. I'm sticking with the fundamentals being broken: Cost of living crisis means less cash circulating which kills growth Public services are simultaneously vastly expensive and delivering crap service Society is fraying at the edges
Lets start with the cost of living - two massive drivers are energy and housing. We can't immediately fix housing - we lack both the workforce and the bricks to build sufficient housing even if people could afford to buy them. But we could declare war on the problem to at least get started. We can do something about energy. Our leccy bills are absurdly high because we almost entirely set the price on gas, and as we have minimal storage its the spot price. Despite only using gas a quarter of the time for actual generation, it sets the price all the time. So do as Spain did and decouple. Easier to do outside the EU. Set the price based on what we are actually using for power generation and bills drop instantly. Which makes *everything* cheaper.
Starmer and the team are rabbits in the headlights.
Yet you want to hand billions we don’t have to the undeserving WASPI women who are not victims
What's the most alarming thing to me is that 2025 looks like it will have higher borrowing than 2021 which was a full pandemic year where tax receipts were down and we had huge subsidy schemes running. Labour have, in just one year, complete blown the budget to the extent that we're going to borrow more than when the government was paying millions furlough money.
It's a complete shit show, Liz Truss in slow motion.
Where is all the extra borrowing going? NHS, debt interest, ?
Some of it is debt interest, but mostly it's just payroll, welfare and pensions.
We're in a proper bloody mess. I'm sticking with the fundamentals being broken: Cost of living crisis means less cash circulating which kills growth Public services are simultaneously vastly expensive and delivering crap service Society is fraying at the edges
Lets start with the cost of living - two massive drivers are energy and housing. We can't immediately fix housing - we lack both the workforce and the bricks to build sufficient housing even if people could afford to buy them. But we could declare war on the problem to at least get started. We can do something about energy. Our leccy bills are absurdly high because we almost entirely set the price on gas, and as we have minimal storage its the spot price. Despite only using gas a quarter of the time for actual generation, it sets the price all the time. So do as Spain did and decouple. Easier to do outside the EU. Set the price based on what we are actually using for power generation and bills drop instantly. Which makes *everything* cheaper.
Starmer and the team are rabbits in the headlights.
The big thing driving current inflation is actually shop/food/retail prices. It's why we're out of step with the rest of Europe on inflation now as the 2022-2024 high inflation period when basically the main measures of inflation were aligned across Europe and in the US.
No, we're in a mess of the government's making. They decided to put taxes up on businesses and lie to themselves and the public that those businesses wouldn't simply put prices up to recover the money.
Simply put, Labour fucked the economy. They came into power, they've maxed out the national credit card and now have no clue how to pay it off because the magic "growth" they kept banging on about before the election hasn't materialised. I mean with £40bn of tax rises any idiot could have told them that would be the case but apparently the chancellor worked for a bank.
They own this mess and we're all going to pay the price for their failure. Taxes will keep going up and will yield less and less while growth slows to a crawl. The only way out is spending cuts, payroll cuts, pension cuts, welfare cuts. Not only will that save money immediately for the state, it will also bring aggregate demand down helping to bring inflation down. We can no longer pay people to sit at home doing nothing, whether that's the "wfh" public sector workers, early retirees taking massive defined benefit pensions or the "mentally" ill who get coaching to say the right things to enable them to receive a lifetime of benefits without needing to look for work.
What you're talking about may magic up an extra 0.1% on GDP, even if it does double that it doesn't change the overall picture. The country is heading towards a completely unsustainable debt scenario, our debt is increasingly being held by hedge funds rather than pension funds, long dated gilt yields are already top high and they're rising. The government hasn't got a clue how to bring the deficit down and tax increases aren't yielding anywhere near what was predicted by the OBR because they're already too high.
No, its entering a new era of Goebbelsism. The parallels between the US and 1933 Germany are clear.
Thats over the top. If anyone takes the time to actually study Nazi Germany then they would see that. An easy one is this - Trump, whatever one may think of him, actually won the position in a vote. Hitler didn't.
Which political parties have the US government proscribed? Where are the concentration camps? Where are the brown shirts - the Republican party militia?
There is a free press in the States. Jimmy Kimmel notwithstanding. As far as I was aware its the UK that arrests people for posts on X, not the US.
It isn't over the top. Hitler won the election was duly appointed Chancellor leading a minority government.
I am equating this to the Reichstag fire. Your questions are about what happened after Hitler seized total power - a while after the fire. But there are plenty of signs. The brownshirts are ICE. The concentration camps were established after the fire, but in the US that they are already creating camps for illegals (alligator alcatraz etc).
As for free press, there is not. Trump sues any media outlet that speak against him. And they are arresting people at the border for memes.
Local authority revisions and lower-than-expected receipts push borrowing above forecast
This morning’s ONS release estimates that borrowing in the first five months of 2025-26 totalled £83.8 billion. This is £16.2 billion above the same period last year and £11.4 billion above the monthly profile consistent with our March forecast. The overshoot in this month’s estimates compared to our March forecast profile is primarily due to revisions which have increased estimated borrowing by local authorities so far this year. In addition, VAT and other receipts were lower-than-expected in the month of August.
Tax rises are eating into economic activity at a higher than expected rate. No fucking shit. Sometimes I wonder whether the people writing the models ever actually go outside and talk to people, experience real life a bit. I assume not.
We are taxing stuff we want to encourage. Employment. Increasing employment costs is daft and we have Rayners employment bill, dictated by the unions, to come
That bill is not as dictated by the unions - the Government are sensible checking what bits are practical and what bits are utterly impossible to implement (I've been on calls where literally everyone has said, we don't have the information to do what you are asking for).
Im sure the bill will be most benign in that case.
Comments
My daughter also started high school this year and her school has no electronics with her during the school day. No iPads, phones banned etc - Laptops available within the school for lessons that require it which are issued by the teacher and collected at the end of the lesson, but otherwise pen and paper.
Homework is mostly online etc, but its up to us to provide a device at home for her to do it on at home, or kids without electronics/internet at home can use the school's equipment at school during break/lunch/before/after school.
Building and fire regulations have tightened in recent years, and hotels obsolete if they're not renovated.
There's plenty of old stock which it's only marginally economic, or not economic at all (for example if building work means dealing with removing asbestos) to upgrade. I suspect quite a lot of the asylum housing hotels fall into that category ?
That 70% number for Tonga seems a bit high. Wiki says just under 20% in 2016.
Many social aspects of Mormonism are like a preserved Victorian pattern - leadership is male, and personal morality is traditional and temperance and 'family values'. But with core doctrines rewritten by Joseph Smoth. They evangelise their own members by sending them out on mission for a year or so, so they defend the church's views and absorb them. The international organisation is hierarchical.
You even see it in the architecture - USA style stripped down neo-classicism, like civic architecture across the USA, with a spire. Amongst CofE buildings, think Guildford Cathedral for the simplicity.
That's very clear even on Mormon Temples in the UK - you drive past and say "There's a church, but it looks different. Why?". Churches are smaller, and local ones may have a humanistic style (think 1960s/70s crematorium). There's a prominent larger one in the Midlands somewhere just off a dual carriageway traffic island which was the first one I visited back in the 1980s - it had a white New England vibe to it.
They have two full blown temples - London, and Preston where the LDS first rooted in 1837. Access may be restricted to non-members.
The most distinctive doctrine, beyond strange bits like the Angel Moroni giving Joseph Smith a pair of miraculous spectacles to receive the revelation, is Baptism for the Dead, where there is a dogma of "saving" ancestors by finding out who they are and having a Baptism ceremony. And there are strange ritual bits like the "temple garments" (special ritual underwear *). I don't regard them as orthodox because they do not embrace the historic creeds of the Church.
My husk-off view is that the founder was a bit of a con-man, and the multiple wives thing (dozens) conveniently provided him with unlimited sex from a consenting harem, but the organisation has survived and created something better over time - which works and provides a social environment which works for many.
Would I compare Josephus Smith to Chris Brain? That's an interesting one.
* This is not unusual - rituals often embrace clothing and body position, from priestly cassocks (to give a focus on God not the person) to Masons rolling up a trouser leg, to the loving cup ceremony in Livery Companies.
(I'm disagreeing with @Foxy on the necessarily non-hierarchical nature of Evangelical Pentecostalistism. There exists the full range, and social control can be intense in individual churches, in a way that could be called abusive in mainline denominations - as it can be tied in to a specific hierarchy based on a particular New Testament interpretation. In those cases it is usually called "Shepherding".)
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/P1mndB1D0os
For example I travelled - Penrhyndeudraeth (home) to Bexleyheath (grandparents) by train aged around 13, with my 11 year old sister in tow. My parents had worked up to that - initially they took us to Wolverhampton, put us on a Euston train, and our grandparents met us at Euston. Then we started doing the cross platform change at Wolverhampton on our own, before finally being allowed to go solo on the cross London part of the journey. We had memorised our parents address and phone number, and it was drummed into us to stick together at all costs, and if anything went wrong we were to find railway staff (or failing that a policeman) and make getting us where we belonged their problem (I can remember negotiating with the ticket office staff at Wolverhampton over them getting us a taxi home when a late running London train had made us miss the last Cambrian train).
I also had free range (again, extended progressively as I got older) over most of Snowdonia - I would cycle up to Croesor or Ffestiniog and walk up into mountains most afternoons. Sometimes I went further, I recall having a puncture near Caernarfon and walking 17 miles home, pushing the bike (I was
14 at the time). My parents were a little bit concerned as I was late back for tea and all they really knew was I'd headed north(ish) away from the house, which left them with around 500sq miles to search had I gone missing.
I climbed mountains, poked about in abandoned slate mines, as I got a bit older bought and sold old Landrovers from farmers. I had an eBay account in the glory days of eBay when it was all auctions despite being under age - you could buy a 1970s landrover off a farmer for £100, take the overdrive off and sell it on ebay for £300, then list the Landrover and get your £100 back and the new purchaser would collect it from the farmer from whom you'd bought it.
I've a 1 year old now, and another child due in just under a month - I'm already trying to work out how to replicate some of that freedom for them as they grow older - but it's going to be much harder where we are now, mainly because the road network is so much busier, and I'm not sure I fancy letting a 10 year old cycle on A roads where 10% of the traffic is moving at 70-100mph.
https://www.inkl.com/news/i-ll-always-be-a-milifan-ed-was-the-best-prime-minister-we-never-had
1) the right seat becoming available
2) outmanoeuvring Starmer and becoming the candidate
3) gambling your current cushy position on beating Reform in the by-election in a highly volatile period
4) Starmer then resigning
5) Nomination by MPs
6) selection by the members, who have already roundly rejected him twice.
Doesn’t seem likely to me.
Everyone in the chain has been affected by delays in the conveyancing process creating huge amounts of frustration
This article in the Law Society Gazette affirms the problems in conveyancing and this sorry tale will be having an effect on the housing market and building 1.5 million homes
https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/sort-out-conveyancing-to-fix-broken-homebuying-process-says-top-mortgage-lender/5124490.article
There is no contingency unless we're in surplus.
Former presidential candidate admits Tim Walz was not her preferred choice
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/politics/2025/09/18/kamala-harris-gay-running-mate-too-risky/ (£££)
Mayor Pete was first choice.
In 2015 although he narrowly lost, he did unite the left behind him. If Labour wanted a leader who could squeeze back the LD and Green vote in Labour held seats to tactically vote Labour to keep out Reform then Ed Miliband could be that candidate
I'd like to assist. His behaviour during the state visit - not too bad at all, was it?
Agreed?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/the_economy/526193.stm
Amazing to think that Rachel's £10bn vanished into a puff of smoke as a sort of rounding error.
Ref 30 (-1)
Lab 20 (-1)
Con 19 (+1)
LD 15 (+1)
Grn 9 (-1)
SNP 3 (+1)
Others 4 (=)
17-18 September
https://www.techneuk.com/tracker/
Powell must make her favourite to win DL
Climate change is not happening because of the extraction of hydrocarbons, which will be required even post-net zero. It is happening due to the burning of them.
We should be doing as much as we can to eliminate the burning of hydrocarbons, while extracting as much as we economically can to be self-sufficient rather than importing them, and a net exporter to boost our balance of trade if possible.
Instead Ed is doing the opposite, he is choking our economy while doing bugger all to tackle the import and burning of hydrocarbons.
As for your second part it shows a shocking ignorance of economics. Every house built adds to supply which helps tackle the imbalance of supply and demand. If we built 20 million 5 bed houses across the country then not only would housing be affordable, but everybody could afford a 5 bed house not a shitty 1 or 2 bed flat or a 3 bed terrace.
I only found him recently. For anyone not familiar, he was a co-chair of the Greens in the Sara Parkin / Jonathon Porritt era (ie early 1990s), then a Lib Dem for a few years, then non-partisan).
Why The Jimmy Kimmel Firing Crosses A HUGE Red Line
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8981xj4pjQ
Our problem are mired in inequality and short term thinking. EG We need to think about AMOC faltering and 17m of sea level driven by a warming world. 200 years should be the scale that governments work to. Not 200 days.
Increases in retirement age and ultimately means testing is inevitable
Unfortunately Brown 2 years later started spending like a drunken sailor on shore leave and the rest is history.
The taxes to raise that are least harmful to long-run economic growth are VAT and excise taxes. Payroll and corporate profits taxes devastate it.
But weirdly those who tout the Scandanavian countries as economic models rarely mention their much higher rates of VAT (Sweden, Denmark, Norway, 25%, Finland 25.5%, Iceland 24%) (like they strangely omit Denmark's lack of a minimum wage or Sweden's of an inheritance tax).
A government that really wanted to raise long-run economic growth, would, like Margaret Thatcher's in her first term, raise consumption taxes and remove some of the exemptions and cut income and profit taxes.
Such a move would also be highly progressive, penalising the workshy and lazy much more than the productive and enterprising.
But obviously our incompetent and very short-term political class would never do that.
Farrukh
@implausibleblog
Man with orange face and Oompa-Loompa outfit, "There's no racial overtone in saying we want to preserve and protect our borders, our women and children, our history and our heritage"
https://x.com/implausibleblog/status/1968796532720754866
not a bettor…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GXNJ3V9lzg
The only way out of this is spending cuts. Across the board, clear the decks for mass redundancies in the public sector, a minimum 5 year freeze on pay for people over £40k, cutting public sector pensions and a big cut to welfare spending. The government needs to cut £50bn from the budget over 5 years and raise £25bn in taxes and hope that falling gilt yields will make up the rest of the gap.
Picture the campaign! Think of the tv debates! I can’t even imagine them without cringeing. He needs to be saved from himself
e.g., it hasn't happened with this edit, on the laptop that exhibits the issue.
And do not forget Cooper's forlorn HIPs proposal
Nobody has given it a priority and nobody still is !!!!
It took them 2 years from submission of the forms to register my parents property, so I can see that this might be the problem.
I'd suggest the same team that sorted out the DVLA are asked to sort out the Land Registry.
Easy for a mortgage lender to suggest property isn't registered when they rely on the conveyancer for due diligence and PI insurance if they lend on a fictional / fraudulent property.
Edit: yet hilariously, without changing any settings, it *has* happened with this edit...
Thanks for the tip.
It's an interesting history for COGIC - their "Bishops" are quite analogous to "Apostles" in the Restorationist movement in the UK, that is people who plant numbers of new churches.
(Apologies to onlookers who find this to be gibberish.)
It's a complete shit show, Liz Truss in slow motion.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgv80mxry1o
Is there absolutely any point for the country in Burnham being PM apart from maybe some slightly better politics or party management (we of course don’t know if this would even happen - Mike Tyson/plan/punched in the face applies).
So ultimately we get a load of instability for potentially no upside, much like what the Tories were roasted for, for internal party politics.
Writing stuff by hand is a lot slower, and for large (or some people, including me, relatively small) amounts of text can be uncomfortable. But it also helps embed ideas in your mind better than typing.
Good morning, everyone.
It's the Trump visit that's changed my mind. Reading this morning's headlines, he's been given no credit whatsoever for the success of the visit - they're all about Trump showing Starmer who's boss, Trump telling Starmer to use the military to protect our borders, and so on.
I think Starmer handled Trump superbly, and dealt with the press conference with considerable aplomb. On Gaza, energy and migration Starmer just listened to Trump's schtick, but didn't agree with him. It was a masterclass in how to deal with Trump. But the zeitgeist is so down on Starmer now that whatever he says and however well he performs, he's slated. So I suspect he's finished, in the medium term rather than imminently.
Cost of living crisis means less cash circulating which kills growth
Public services are simultaneously vastly expensive and delivering crap service
Society is fraying at the edges
Lets start with the cost of living - two massive drivers are energy and housing. We can't immediately fix housing - we lack both the workforce and the bricks to build sufficient housing even if people could afford to buy them. But we could declare war on the problem to at least get started.
We can do something about energy. Our leccy bills are absurdly high because we almost entirely set the price on gas, and as we have minimal storage its the spot price. Despite only using gas a quarter of the time for actual generation, it sets the price all the time. So do as Spain did and decouple. Easier to do outside the EU. Set the price based on what we are actually using for power generation and bills drop instantly. Which makes *everything* cheaper.
Starmer and the team are rabbits in the headlights.
https://obr.uk/docs/dlm_uploads/August-PSF-commentary.pdf
Local authority revisions and lower-than-expected receipts push borrowing above forecast
This morning’s ONS release estimates that borrowing in the first five months of 2025-26 totalled £83.8 billion. This is £16.2 billion above the same period last year and £11.4 billion above the monthly profile consistent with our March forecast. The overshoot in this month’s estimates compared to our March forecast profile is primarily due to revisions which have increased estimated borrowing by local authorities so far this year. In addition, VAT and other receipts were lower-than-expected in the month of August.
Which political parties have the US government proscribed? Where are the concentration camps? Where are the brown shirts - the Republican party militia?
There is a free press in the States. Jimmy Kimmel notwithstanding. As far as I was aware its the UK that arrests people for posts on X, not the US.
I gave one example. Cut some bullshit scheme - 20mph up here - and direct the councils to sort their streets out. Make towns actually nice to walk around and people start going there again which drives economic output and thus tax revenues.
Next you will be responding to "build more prisons" with "with what money". Because crime is free apparently.
He has fallen so far I am not sure anything will see him recover and next May looks appalling for him
However, we are back to replacing a sitting PM and with whom
Difficult months ahead for Labour
Thatcher: fun
Major: boring
Blair: fun
Brown: boring
Cameron: fun
May: boring
Johnson: fun
Truss: WEIRD
Sunak: boring
Starmer: boring
We’re owed another fun one.
https://x.com/philipmurraylaw/status/1968641990582497496?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
Amazing what the Brits will put up with [Please insert your favourite issue here]
Brickies can be trained in a few months to competent journeyman standard - doing the easy bits of laying the straight wall.
Other trades are more complex, but again, we are not talking multiple years to train. Gas engineer can be done in 18 weeks.
Government borrowing is up because spending is up by more than 9%.
The ONS don't say how these percentage increases compare to the OBR forecasts, so I don't know whether the OBR were forecasting higher tax receipts, or lower government spending.
No, we're in a mess of the government's making. They decided to put taxes up on businesses and lie to themselves and the public that those businesses wouldn't simply put prices up to recover the money.
Simply put, Labour fucked the economy. They came into power, they've maxed out the national credit card and now have no clue how to pay it off because the magic "growth" they kept banging on about before the election hasn't materialised. I mean with £40bn of tax rises any idiot could have told them that would be the case but apparently the chancellor worked for a bank.
They own this mess and we're all going to pay the price for their failure. Taxes will keep going up and will yield less and less while growth slows to a crawl. The only way out is spending cuts, payroll cuts, pension cuts, welfare cuts. Not only will that save money immediately for the state, it will also bring aggregate demand down helping to bring inflation down. We can no longer pay people to sit at home doing nothing, whether that's the "wfh" public sector workers, early retirees taking massive defined benefit pensions or the "mentally" ill who get coaching to say the right things to enable them to receive a lifetime of benefits without needing to look for work.
What you're talking about may magic up an extra 0.1% on GDP, even if it does double that it doesn't change the overall picture. The country is heading towards a completely unsustainable debt scenario, our debt is increasingly being held by hedge funds rather than pension funds, long dated gilt yields are already top high and they're rising. The government hasn't got a clue how to bring the deficit down and tax increases aren't yielding anywhere near what was predicted by the OBR because they're already too high.
I am equating this to the Reichstag fire. Your questions are about what happened after Hitler seized total power - a while after the fire. But there are plenty of signs. The brownshirts are ICE. The concentration camps were established after the fire, but in the US that they are already creating camps for illegals (alligator alcatraz etc).
As for free press, there is not. Trump sues any media outlet that speak against him. And they are arresting people at the border for memes.