Road pricing ‘will catch out cheating spouses’ Earl of Erroll suggested that the scheme could cause a ‘rise in divorce rates’ if they charge motorists for going about their daily lives ... Responding, Labour minister Lord Livermore said: “That is an interesting question, but it is one that I have no view on since we have no plans to introduce road pricing.” https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/09/18/road-pricing-will-catch-out-cheating-spouses/ (£££)
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.
The OBR has said that the increased borrowing is down to lower than expected tax receipts overall, specifically naming VAT. The government may have raised £40bn from increasing NI, but it's clear that there's been a real terms loss in revenue from taxes on production, probably corporation tax and VAT making up the bulk.
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.
On topic, if Miliband were PM, he might restart the green growth plan, which could potentially transform both the growth outlook, and Labour's own fortunes.
Some PB"ers confuse his diligent effectiveness when he sticks with a dubious policy - such as carbon capture- with lack of aptitude. Quite the opposite, he's very bright, and has been pretty effective in achieving what he wants in ptetty much all the Ministerial portfolios that he's had.
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.
The brownshirts were a party militia that had murdered hundreds in fighting over the previous few years. ICE are an department of the US government. I don't recall them brawling with Democrats at political rallies. Concentration camps were for political opponents, and in the early stages were often set up up by the local SA, often in collusion with local police.
America has become a very litigious society. The home of suing a food seller for selling you a hot drink. There is free speech there. Its fun to make comparisions with the Nazis but its ludicrous too.
Comprehensively humiliated by Donald Trump is not a good look for Starmer.
It gets even worse in the Mail. Littlejohn pointed out that eighteen months ago PM Starmer allowed a convicted Egyptian rapist and bomb maker into the country.
Road pricing ‘will catch out cheating spouses’ Earl of Erroll suggested that the scheme could cause a ‘rise in divorce rates’ if they charge motorists for going about their daily lives ... Responding, Labour minister Lord Livermore said: “That is an interesting question, but it is one that I have no view on since we have no plans to introduce road pricing.” https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/09/18/road-pricing-will-catch-out-cheating-spouses/ (£££)
Nice to be on a 25/1 shot at 100/1, but if Ed Miliband leads Labour at the next GE they won’t make second place.
Picture the campaign! Think of the tv debates! I can’t even imagine them without cringeing. He needs to be saved from himself
The more I think about it the more the narrative beauty of it seems to make it inevitable, particularly if Miliband is interested - I'd assumed he'd made his peace with not being PM.
Imagine a party choosing a PM who was rejected by the electorate at a general election?
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.
Ideally, we will get a government that is able to pursue meaningful reform in the coming years.
My fear is that we won’t, and as a result we will be forced into it by the markets. That won’t be pretty and things will have to be much more unpleasant the longer they are left.
In either case, there will be severe societal difficulties. But it will be far worse if it’s the latter option.
There is a place for government spending. Unfortunately, it’s not in the places people want it. It needs to be used to fix acute problems (skills shortages, defence, investment in energy infrastructure etc). It can’t be used to subsidise pensions, healthcare and welfare in the way that people expect.
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.
If David Miliband had won the Tories wouldn’t have got a majority in 2015 . What he could have done differently was not to be a backstabbing Judas .
The winner was down to the members, not the candidates.
"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 wife and I stayed in one (I think it was Britannia, maybe I'm wrong) at a motorway services near Glasgow when heading up to Achiltibuie. Pre-kids, maybe 2017. Assumed that all the budget hotels were the same, expecting something Travel Lodge-like if not Premier Inn or similar. Was only overnight, late arrival, off again after breakfast so didn't really fuss about it when booking. Bloody hell it was grim. Haven't made the same mistake again!
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.
Also, notably out of sync with the electoral cycle, albeit a lot of the extra money is going into the NHS, and that requires extra lead time to reduce waiting lists.
Did you see Larry Elliott suggesting capital controls as a means to taming the bond market?
Comprehensively humiliated by Donald Trump is not a good look for Starmer.
It gets even worse in the Mail. Littlejohn pointed out that eighteen months ago PM Starmer allowed a convicted Egyptian rapist and bomb maker into the country.
I find it very hard to believe he’ll fight the next GE. Indeed, I’m not entirely sure he wants to.
Then it comes down to timing for the switcheroo. Go early, and the potential new leader bounce has more time to recede (particularly as it doesn’t look like there’ll be tremendous measurable improvement in the national finances etc).
I think he’ll go in 2027. If there is a measurable Labour recovery, it gives the successor the chance to roll the dice on a 2028 GE. If not, it gives them 2 years with which something might turn up.
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.
Absolutely. We need to get started. We need to create the training schemes - capacity in FE colleges. We need to have a Call to Arms - people are supposedly patriots at the moment, many look like they needa job so lets Build for Britain. And we need brickworks. Go HARD at the problem and get it started,
The other side of the equation takes more lateral thinking. There is No Point in building more executive style homes. We need to build houses people can afford which cuts the percentage of their earnings spent on rent. So empower the LHAs to build and legislate to allow them to borrow at government rates. And have them build on sites owned by councils with fast track planning granted by default. Building never for sale homes which can be offered at viable rents.
That would crash the rentier market of private sector spivs because why pay their crazy rents when cheaper is flooding the market. Which both floods these properties back onto the market and lowers the price.
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.
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.
Road pricing ‘will catch out cheating spouses’ Earl of Erroll suggested that the scheme could cause a ‘rise in divorce rates’ if they charge motorists for going about their daily lives ... Responding, Labour minister Lord Livermore said: “That is an interesting question, but it is one that I have no view on since we have no plans to introduce road pricing.” https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/09/18/road-pricing-will-catch-out-cheating-spouses/ (£££)
Why is the Earl of Erroll worried?
Perhaps he'd prefer to be caught cheating at a Coldplay concert?
This business about his brother really is nonsense, cooked up by the tabloids at the time.
Why on earth should he have automatically deferred to his older brother? Many other people in all walks of life, wouldn't have done so. The older brother also wasn't the electoral gold dust that some imagine, as an avowedly Blairite politicisn in an era that had got tired of Blairisn, and tainted by association with various New Labour mistakes, such as the war in Iraq
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.
The brownshirts were a party militia that had murdered hundreds in fighting over the previous few years. ICE are an department of the US government. I don't recall them brawling with Democrats at political rallies. Concentration camps were for political opponents, and in the early stages were often set up up by the local SA, often in collusion with local police.
America has become a very litigious society. The home of suing a food seller for selling you a hot drink. There is free speech there. Its fun to make comparisions with the Nazis but its ludicrous too.
Sorry if you dislike the comparions. In no way is anyone saying that history is repeating itself - America today is not Germany 1933. But the pattern of behaviour is there. Doing the same shit in a different way. Its absurd to claim that America is the land of free speech when the President is suing a major media outlet for their crime of not backing him. They are actively trying to silence and subjugate it just as they are bending the constitution to suit their will.
At which point will you accept this is authoritarianism? They are going to lose power in the midterms. Which is why they are engineering a way around that.
I can't see how. Starmer, for all his faults, has a huge majority. And time. If he goes, what does Milliband bring to the table? He is comprehensively stupid on energy, and consistently wrong. Part of the reasons for high energy costs is that we tie to gas, part is the net zero pricing added in by government.
OT I tried Burger King's waygu burger. After its mixed reviews, to put it kindly, I nixed the rocket and mayo and added a slice of cheese. Verdict: good; better than their ordinary burgers; £11 is a lot though.
And the burger comes in a posh-looking cardboard box.
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.
You think you're being serious when you're proposing funding ongoing maintenance expenditure in a country of nearly 70 million by cutting a one-off capital project in a region of just over 5 million. Get real.
If you want to spend more then you have to tax more. And then you need a political leader who can sell those tax rises to the public.
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.
The brownshirts were a party militia that had murdered hundreds in fighting over the previous few years. ICE are an department of the US government. I don't recall them brawling with Democrats at political rallies. Concentration camps were for political opponents, and in the early stages were often set up up by the local SA, often in collusion with local police.
America has become a very litigious society. The home of suing a food seller for selling you a hot drink. There is free speech there. Its fun to make comparisions with the Nazis but its ludicrous too.
The Brownshirts are the people who marched on the White House on 6 January 2021. I don't know enough about American politics to know whether such people are prominent in politics at the moment - my view is that 6 Jan wasn't a serious attempt at a coup, but a trial run to see what could be done, and the mob was effectively stood down to be used on some other occasion when needed.
One of Hitler's first moves was to consolidate power over the police, in his first coalition government as Chancellor, two of the three Nazi cabinet ministers were the interior ministers of Prussia and Germany. ICE is of course one of the Federal police forces that Trump can exert control over.
Concentration camps were initially for political opponents - Communists and Social Democrats - but most of the initial detainees were released. Later from 1936 or so they were used for various "undesirables" including habitual criminals. After 1933 the Party apparat was of course funded by the state. "Illegals" is certainly an out-group that MAGA has selected for persecution and yes their detention camps sound pretty much like concentration camps.
The lauding of a young warrior killed by political opponents is another echo of 30s' Germany.
So no it's not ludicrous to make comparisons with the Nazi rise to power. We may or may not be seeing a serious attempt to establish a quasi-fascist autocracy, but it makes sense to view the actions of the MAGA state on the assumption that this might be happening
I think LAB would do less bad in 2029 under EICIPM than under SKS.
The position is already guaranteed to be horrendous for them, in 2029 so I wouldn't touch the leadership with a barge pole if I were Ed.
As for energy I disagree investment in more renewable is the way to reduce prices not the cause of the high prices which is being too reliant on imported fossil fuels which is not compatible with the war parties.
I don’t think a different running mate would have made any difference to the outcome in 2024.
Walz was a perfectly average choice. He was fine, and he would have been fine as VP if Harris had won. Yes he had some gaffes, but then so did Vance. So did running mates like Biden and Quayle. They were all still parts of winning tickets.
There were bigger factors at play in 2024 than the choice of running mate.
On topic, I'm fairly positive on EdM - I even voted for chaos with Ed Miliband in 2015! - and I don't think he'd be a terrible PM, but I don't see him winning an election. He's just a bit too nerdy for that and doesn't think on his feet fast enough in debates etc.
On Starmer, he may well go before the GE, but I don't think it will be very soon, barring a big scandal. He'll think there's scope for policies to start bearing fruit and/or for other events to ease things economically etc. If he wants to leave before the GE, better to leave on his own terms with some successes to point to. A later departure also suits some potential challengers better - more time to build profile and a power base in the party; for the King over the Water time to leave the mayoralty gracefully after a full term. There's still some shit sandwiches to be eaten to fix fundamentals in the country and it makes more sense to have Starmer do that if at all possible.
I can't see how. Starmer, for all his faults, has a huge majority. And time. If he goes, what does Milliband bring to the table? He is comprehensively stupid on energy, and consistently wrong. Part of the reasons for high energy costs is that we tie to gas, part is the net zero pricing added in by government.
His current policies for energy only look stupid because the whole growth part of his plans are missing, foollishly cut by Starmer and Reeves after he'd spent years consulting with businesses about them.
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.
The brownshirts were a party militia that had murdered hundreds in fighting over the previous few years. ICE are an department of the US government. I don't recall them brawling with Democrats at political rallies. Concentration camps were for political opponents, and in the early stages were often set up up by the local SA, often in collusion with local police.
America has become a very litigious society. The home of suing a food seller for selling you a hot drink. There is free speech there. Its fun to make comparisions with the Nazis but its ludicrous too.
Sorry if you dislike the comparions. In no way is anyone saying that history is repeating itself - America today is not Germany 1933. But the pattern of behaviour is there. Doing the same shit in a different way. Its absurd to claim that America is the land of free speech when the President is suing a major media outlet for their crime of not backing him. They are actively trying to silence and subjugate it just as they are bending the constitution to suit their will.
At which point will you accept this is authoritarianism? They are going to lose power in the midterms. Which is why they are engineering a way around that.
Doesn't suing mean going to court of law? Who makes the judgement? Where Trump may lose?
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.
As most OECD nations fund their healthcare and social welfare with insurance ie largely contributory, unlike the dependency tax funded welfare you want
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.
As most OECD nations fund their healthcare and social welfare with insurance ie largely contributory, unlike the dependency tax funded welfare you want
We would have to put NI up very substantially if we were to entirely fund healthcare, unemployment benefits and pensions that way.
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.
OT I tried Burger King's waygu burger. After its mixed reviews, to put it kindly, I nixed the rocket and mayo and added a slice of cheese. Verdict: good; better than their ordinary burgers; £11 is a lot though.
And the burger comes in a posh-looking cardboard box.
I had some wagyu sausages, as they were on offer. Quite nice beef sausages but I wouldn't pay the normal premium.
(Whatever happened to beef sausages? When I was a kid, they were almost as prominent as pork. Now you rarely see them. I suspect burgers are much more popular so all the beef offcuts go into them. Waitrose do beef & black pepper chipolatas, which I used to like, but I think they have gone skinless and in general I think they have lowered the quality of their "standard" range of sausages rather than put the price up)
This business about his brother really is nonsense, cooked up by the tabloids at the time.
Why on earth should he have automatically deferred to his older brother? Many other people in all walks of life, wouldn't have done so. The older brother also wasn't the electoral gold dust that some imagine, as an avowedly Blairite politicisn in an era that had got tired of Blairisn, and tainted by association with various New Labour mistakes, such as the war in Iraq
David Miliband was so obviously the better choice of the two brothers in 2010, so Labour could be guaranteed to choose the wrong one.
I feel like anyone who thought SKS & Austerity Reeves were competent enough to run a country should definitely be engaging in some self reflection today and for the last 400 days
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.
The brownshirts were a party militia that had murdered hundreds in fighting over the previous few years. ICE are an department of the US government. I don't recall them brawling with Democrats at political rallies. Concentration camps were for political opponents, and in the early stages were often set up up by the local SA, often in collusion with local police.
America has become a very litigious society. The home of suing a food seller for selling you a hot drink. There is free speech there. Its fun to make comparisions with the Nazis but its ludicrous too.
The Brownshirts are the people who marched on the White House on 6 January 2021. I don't know enough about American politics to know whether such people are prominent in politics at the moment - my view is that 6 Jan wasn't a serious attempt at a coup, but a trial run to see what could be done, and the mob was effectively stood down to be used on some other occasion when needed.
One of Hitler's first moves was to consolidate power over the police, in his first coalition government as Chancellor, two of the three Nazi cabinet ministers were the interior ministers of Prussia and Germany. ICE is of course one of the Federal police forces that Trump can exert control over.
Concentration camps were initially for political opponents - Communists and Social Democrats - but most of the initial detainees were released. Later from 1936 or so they were used for various "undesirables" including habitual criminals. After 1933 the Party apparat was of course funded by the state. "Illegals" is certainly an out-group that MAGA has selected for persecution and yes their detention camps sound pretty much like concentration camps.
The lauding of a young warrior killed by political opponents is another echo of 30s' Germany.
So no it's not ludicrous to make comparisons with the Nazi rise to power. We may or may not be seeing a serious attempt to establish a quasi-fascist autocracy, but it makes sense to view the actions of the MAGA state on the assumption that this might be happening
So who is composing the 'Horst Kirk' song now? I think its weak to say on one hand that the people who marched on the White House in 2021 are the Brownshirts and then admit that you don't know enough about american politics... The SA were a party of the Nazi party - party members, wore uniforms, engaged in political violence against opponents. I don't recall Democrat conferences and meetings being stormed by Republicans in some sort of MAGA uniform.
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.
The brownshirts were a party militia that had murdered hundreds in fighting over the previous few years. ICE are an department of the US government. I don't recall them brawling with Democrats at political rallies. Concentration camps were for political opponents, and in the early stages were often set up up by the local SA, often in collusion with local police.
America has become a very litigious society. The home of suing a food seller for selling you a hot drink. There is free speech there. Its fun to make comparisions with the Nazis but its ludicrous too.
Sorry if you dislike the comparions. In no way is anyone saying that history is repeating itself - America today is not Germany 1933. But the pattern of behaviour is there. Doing the same shit in a different way. Its absurd to claim that America is the land of free speech when the President is suing a major media outlet for their crime of not backing him. They are actively trying to silence and subjugate it just as they are bending the constitution to suit their will.
At which point will you accept this is authoritarianism? They are going to lose power in the midterms. Which is why they are engineering a way around that.
Doesn't suing mean going to court of law? Who makes the judgement? Where Trump may lose?
Well he now seems to be threatening broadcasters' FCC licences, which I would have thought would be within Trump's executive field of competence
OT I tried Burger King's waygu burger. After its mixed reviews, to put it kindly, I nixed the rocket and mayo and added a slice of cheese. Verdict: good; better than their ordinary burgers; £11 is a lot though.
And the burger comes in a posh-looking cardboard box.
I had some wagyu sausages, as they were on offer. Quite nice beef sausages but I wouldn't pay the normal premium.
(Whatever happened to beef sausages? When I was a kid, they were almost as prominent as pork. Now you rarely see them. I suspect burgers are much more popular so all the beef offcuts go into them. Waitrose do beef & black pepper chipolatas, which I used to like, but I think they have gone skinless and in general I think they have lowered the quality of their "standard" range of sausages rather than put the price up)
Beef sausages are all over the place and in many takeaways the only option (halal, you see).
I'd agree about the drop in quality to keep the price down. I've stopped buying meat pies for that very reason.
This business about his brother really is nonsense, cooked up by the tabloids at the time.
Why on earth should he have automatically deferred to his older brother? Many other people in all walks of life, wouldn't have done so. The older brother also wasn't the electoral gold dust that some imagine, as an avowedly Blairite politicisn in an era that had got tired of Blairisn, and tainted by association with various New Labour mistakes, such as the war in Iraq
David Miliband was so obviously the better choice of the two brothers in 2010, so Labour could be guaranteed to choose the wrong one.
I am afraid that was entirely my fault.
I have not been a party member for almost fifteen years so it won't be my fault this time.
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
I feel like anyone who thought SKS & Austerity Reeves were competent enough to run a country should definitely be engaging in some self reflection today and for the last 400 days
Go back and look at the actual options in 2024 - which was SKS or Rishi and see why we ended up with the result we did
OT I tried Burger King's waygu burger. After its mixed reviews, to put it kindly, I nixed the rocket and mayo and added a slice of cheese. Verdict: good; better than their ordinary burgers; £11 is a lot though.
And the burger comes in a posh-looking cardboard box.
I had some wagyu sausages, as they were on offer. Quite nice beef sausages but I wouldn't pay the normal premium.
(Whatever happened to beef sausages? When I was a kid, they were almost as prominent as pork. Now you rarely see them. I suspect burgers are much more popular so all the beef offcuts go into them. Waitrose do beef & black pepper chipolatas, which I used to like, but I think they have gone skinless and in general I think they have lowered the quality of their "standard" range of sausages rather than put the price up)
It's an odd one: supermarkets now have (bad) chicken sausages for religious pork-refusers, but not beef ones.
I can't see how. Starmer, for all his faults, has a huge majority. And time. If he goes, what does Milliband bring to the table? He is comprehensively stupid on energy, and consistently wrong. Part of the reasons for high energy costs is that we tie to gas, part is the net zero pricing added in by government.
As I understand it, gas prices set the price of electricity in the UK (as the most expensive type of generation needed to meet demand) because of the marginal pricing system used in the energy market. So my question would be: Is there a viable alternative to a marginal pricing system? If so, why aren't we using it?
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.
The brownshirts were a party militia that had murdered hundreds in fighting over the previous few years. ICE are an department of the US government. I don't recall them brawling with Democrats at political rallies. Concentration camps were for political opponents, and in the early stages were often set up up by the local SA, often in collusion with local police.
America has become a very litigious society. The home of suing a food seller for selling you a hot drink. There is free speech there. Its fun to make comparisions with the Nazis but its ludicrous too.
The famous Gestapo was the repurposing of an existing police organisation - a police organisation for monitoring political activity. It was rather effective at prosecuting Nazis - on taking it over, the rank and file immediately became very effective at persecuting anti-Nazis.
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.
The OBR's projections for debt are absolutely catastrophic, and have been for some time (since about 2017 when they reflected how slow growth had been in the 2010s). Ultimately Labour's taxes and spending plans are immaterial compared with the overall picture - we're still miles off French/Scandi levels of tax for example.
What's curious is that, given just how bad this is and for how long we have known it, why our borrowing costs are so low (relatively). If Max and the OBR are right, it should be nigh on impossible for the government to borrow over the long term.
OT I tried Burger King's waygu burger. After its mixed reviews, to put it kindly, I nixed the rocket and mayo and added a slice of cheese. Verdict: good; better than their ordinary burgers; £11 is a lot though.
And the burger comes in a posh-looking cardboard box.
I had some wagyu sausages, as they were on offer. Quite nice beef sausages but I wouldn't pay the normal premium.
(Whatever happened to beef sausages? When I was a kid, they were almost as prominent as pork. Now you rarely see them. I suspect burgers are much more popular so all the beef offcuts go into them. Waitrose do beef & black pepper chipolatas, which I used to like, but I think they have gone skinless and in general I think they have lowered the quality of their "standard" range of sausages rather than put the price up)
Beef sausages are all over the place and in many takeaways the only option (halal, you see).
I'd agree about the drop in quality to keep the price down. I've stopped buying meat pies for that very reason.
Maybe I don't live in an ethnically diverse enough area, but I don't often see beef sausages - Waitrose for example only used to have the one item, and that was only available in chipolata. They have now added the wagyu sausages which I will get if I see them on offer. Whereas loads of different pork sausages. I am going to pop into Sainsburys today so I will have a look. I do need to start buying butchers' sausages but my local butcher's sausages are expensive but not that good. We do have a couple of specialist sausage butchers, but they are a few miles away and, as ever, I can't be arsed.
OT I tried Burger King's waygu burger. After its mixed reviews, to put it kindly, I nixed the rocket and mayo and added a slice of cheese. Verdict: good; better than their ordinary burgers; £11 is a lot though.
And the burger comes in a posh-looking cardboard box.
I had some wagyu sausages, as they were on offer. Quite nice beef sausages but I wouldn't pay the normal premium.
(Whatever happened to beef sausages? When I was a kid, they were almost as prominent as pork. Now you rarely see them. I suspect burgers are much more popular so all the beef offcuts go into them. Waitrose do beef & black pepper chipolatas, which I used to like, but I think they have gone skinless and in general I think they have lowered the quality of their "standard" range of sausages rather than put the price up)
Beef sausages are all over the place and in many takeaways the only option (halal, you see).
I'd agree about the drop in quality to keep the price down. I've stopped buying meat pies for that very reason.
Maybe I don't live in an ethnically diverse enough area, but I don't often see beef sausages - Waitrose for example only used to have the one item, and that was only available in chipolata. They have now added the wagyu sausages which I will get if I see them on offer. Whereas loads of different pork sausages. I am going to pop into Sainsburys today so I will have a look. I do need to start buying butchers' sausages but my local butcher's sausages are expensive but not that good. We do have a couple of specialist sausage butchers, but they are a few miles away and, as ever, I can't be arsed.
Tesco and Sainsburys used to do fantastic premium own brand sausages. They both changed their recipes (specifically, I think, of the skin) for reasons I can't remember, about 2 or 3 years ago, and are now much worse.
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
It was a Cavalier replacing another one which broke the sequence. It usually goes Cavalier, Roundhead, Cavalier...etc. That was the Settlement which preserved order.
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
He wasn't. Nor was Thatcher. And I wasn't rolling around giggling when Blair invaded Iraq. As for Johnson, he had fun himself as PM (lots of it) but it was at our expense. So that's another no.
I think 'fun' is being used as cypher for 'possessed of charisma' here. And 'boring' for not.
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.
A budget deficit is 100% politicians’ fault.
They can increase tax or reduce spending or chose to run a deficit. But they should be accountable for their choices.
Productivity is partially impacted by their decisions
Growth is a second order result of their activities
OT I tried Burger King's waygu burger. After its mixed reviews, to put it kindly, I nixed the rocket and mayo and added a slice of cheese. Verdict: good; better than their ordinary burgers; £11 is a lot though.
And the burger comes in a posh-looking cardboard box.
I had some wagyu sausages, as they were on offer. Quite nice beef sausages but I wouldn't pay the normal premium.
(Whatever happened to beef sausages? When I was a kid, they were almost as prominent as pork. Now you rarely see them. I suspect burgers are much more popular so all the beef offcuts go into them. Waitrose do beef & black pepper chipolatas, which I used to like, but I think they have gone skinless and in general I think they have lowered the quality of their "standard" range of sausages rather than put the price up)
Beef sausages are all over the place and in many takeaways the only option (halal, you see).
I'd agree about the drop in quality to keep the price down. I've stopped buying meat pies for that very reason.
Maybe I don't live in an ethnically diverse enough area, but I don't often see beef sausages - Waitrose for example only used to have the one item, and that was only available in chipolata. They have now added the wagyu sausages which I will get if I see them on offer. Whereas loads of different pork sausages. I am going to pop into Sainsburys today so I will have a look. I do need to start buying butchers' sausages but my local butcher's sausages are expensive but not that good. We do have a couple of specialist sausage butchers, but they are a few miles away and, as ever, I can't be arsed.
Tesco and Sainsburys used to do fantastic premium own brand sausages. They both changed their recipes (specifically, I think, of the skin) for reasons I can't remember, about 2 or 3 years ago, and are now much worse.
OT I tried Burger King's waygu burger. After its mixed reviews, to put it kindly, I nixed the rocket and mayo and added a slice of cheese. Verdict: good; better than their ordinary burgers; £11 is a lot though.
And the burger comes in a posh-looking cardboard box.
I had some wagyu sausages, as they were on offer. Quite nice beef sausages but I wouldn't pay the normal premium.
(Whatever happened to beef sausages? When I was a kid, they were almost as prominent as pork. Now you rarely see them. I suspect burgers are much more popular so all the beef offcuts go into them. Waitrose do beef & black pepper chipolatas, which I used to like, but I think they have gone skinless and in general I think they have lowered the quality of their "standard" range of sausages rather than put the price up)
Beef sausages are all over the place and in many takeaways the only option (halal, you see).
I'd agree about the drop in quality to keep the price down. I've stopped buying meat pies for that very reason.
Maybe I don't live in an ethnically diverse enough area, but I don't often see beef sausages - Waitrose for example only used to have the one item, and that was only available in chipolata. They have now added the wagyu sausages which I will get if I see them on offer. Whereas loads of different pork sausages. I am going to pop into Sainsburys today so I will have a look. I do need to start buying butchers' sausages but my local butcher's sausages are expensive but not that good. We do have a couple of specialist sausage butchers, but they are a few miles away and, as ever, I can't be arsed.
I used to like the Wall's microwaveable sausages as a fast and convenient snack but they seem to have disappeared, and the Richmond pre-baked ones are not much good. This probably is due to the price/quality problem as well.
I feel like anyone who thought SKS & Austerity Reeves were competent enough to run a country should definitely be engaging in some self reflection today and for the last 400 days
I did and got accused of being a closet Tory for my trouble
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.
A budget deficit is 100% politicians’ fault.
They can increase tax or reduce spending or chose to run a deficit. But they should be accountable for their choices.
Productivity is partially impacted by their decisions
Growth is a second order result of their activities
I blame politicians and the voters. You only need to look at what happened to May when she proposed a workable idea for social care during the election. The voters almost exclusively want higher taxes on other people.
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.
The OBR's projections for debt are absolutely catastrophic, and have been for some time (since about 2017 when they reflected how slow growth had been in the 2010s). Ultimately Labour's taxes and spending plans are immaterial compared with the overall picture - we're still miles off French/Scandi levels of tax for example.
What's curious is that, given just how bad this is and for how long we have known it, why our borrowing costs are so low (relatively). If Max and the OBR are right, it should be nigh on impossible for the government to borrow over the long term.
Defined benefit pension schemes needed a place to park their money for a long time which helped keep 30 year yields down. That upwards pressure on gilt prices has unwound substantially which is what has caused yields to rise here much faster than elsewhere. The holders of the UK's long term debt now has a much higher risk profile because it's bond investment funds and hedge funds rather than pension funds. The money is much more flighty than it used to be which is why I keep saying the same thing - this country is one adverse fiscal event away from a sovereign debt crisis.
I don't relish the thought, we just have to hope there is enough competency in the government to keep the plates spinning for long enough that we get a new one that will come in and cut spending like the Tories did in 2010.
So was Nazism. Hitler made a very nice fortune on the royalties from all those (forced) sales of Mein Kampf.
I don't think anyone is saying MAGA is *actual* Nazism, just a possible quasi-fash authoritarian project, it's just instructive to compare it with how another movement came to power. Of course 2020s America is a very different place to 1920s Germany
I feel like anyone who thought SKS & Austerity Reeves were competent enough to run a country should definitely be engaging in some self reflection today and for the last 400 days
Agreed.
Any anyone who believed Corbyn was fit to run a bath, should perhaps do the same.
OT I tried Burger King's waygu burger. After its mixed reviews, to put it kindly, I nixed the rocket and mayo and added a slice of cheese. Verdict: good; better than their ordinary burgers; £11 is a lot though.
And the burger comes in a posh-looking cardboard box.
I had some wagyu sausages, as they were on offer. Quite nice beef sausages but I wouldn't pay the normal premium.
(Whatever happened to beef sausages? When I was a kid, they were almost as prominent as pork. Now you rarely see them. I suspect burgers are much more popular so all the beef offcuts go into them. Waitrose do beef & black pepper chipolatas, which I used to like, but I think they have gone skinless and in general I think they have lowered the quality of their "standard" range of sausages rather than put the price up)
Beef sausages are all over the place and in many takeaways the only option (halal, you see).
I'd agree about the drop in quality to keep the price down. I've stopped buying meat pies for that very reason.
Maybe I don't live in an ethnically diverse enough area, but I don't often see beef sausages - Waitrose for example only used to have the one item, and that was only available in chipolata. They have now added the wagyu sausages which I will get if I see them on offer. Whereas loads of different pork sausages. I am going to pop into Sainsburys today so I will have a look. I do need to start buying butchers' sausages but my local butcher's sausages are expensive but not that good. We do have a couple of specialist sausage butchers, but they are a few miles away and, as ever, I can't be arsed.
Tesco and Sainsburys used to do fantastic premium own brand sausages. They both changed their recipes (specifically, I think, of the skin) for reasons I can't remember, about 2 or 3 years ago, and are now much worse.
OT I tried Burger King's waygu burger. After its mixed reviews, to put it kindly, I nixed the rocket and mayo and added a slice of cheese. Verdict: good; better than their ordinary burgers; £11 is a lot though.
And the burger comes in a posh-looking cardboard box.
I had some wagyu sausages, as they were on offer. Quite nice beef sausages but I wouldn't pay the normal premium.
(Whatever happened to beef sausages? When I was a kid, they were almost as prominent as pork. Now you rarely see them. I suspect burgers are much more popular so all the beef offcuts go into them. Waitrose do beef & black pepper chipolatas, which I used to like, but I think they have gone skinless and in general I think they have lowered the quality of their "standard" range of sausages rather than put the price up)
Beef sausages are all over the place and in many takeaways the only option (halal, you see).
I'd agree about the drop in quality to keep the price down. I've stopped buying meat pies for that very reason.
Maybe I don't live in an ethnically diverse enough area, but I don't often see beef sausages - Waitrose for example only used to have the one item, and that was only available in chipolata. They have now added the wagyu sausages which I will get if I see them on offer. Whereas loads of different pork sausages. I am going to pop into Sainsburys today so I will have a look. I do need to start buying butchers' sausages but my local butcher's sausages are expensive but not that good. We do have a couple of specialist sausage butchers, but they are a few miles away and, as ever, I can't be arsed.
Tesco and Sainsburys used to do fantastic premium own brand sausages. They both changed their recipes (specifically, I think, of the skin) for reasons I can't remember, about 2 or 3 years ago, and are now much worse.
Heck sausages are the only decent ones. And even they have too much salt in them.
OT I tried Burger King's waygu burger. After its mixed reviews, to put it kindly, I nixed the rocket and mayo and added a slice of cheese. Verdict: good; better than their ordinary burgers; £11 is a lot though.
And the burger comes in a posh-looking cardboard box.
I had some wagyu sausages, as they were on offer. Quite nice beef sausages but I wouldn't pay the normal premium.
(Whatever happened to beef sausages? When I was a kid, they were almost as prominent as pork. Now you rarely see them. I suspect burgers are much more popular so all the beef offcuts go into them. Waitrose do beef & black pepper chipolatas, which I used to like, but I think they have gone skinless and in general I think they have lowered the quality of their "standard" range of sausages rather than put the price up)
Beef sausages are all over the place and in many takeaways the only option (halal, you see).
I'd agree about the drop in quality to keep the price down. I've stopped buying meat pies for that very reason.
Maybe I don't live in an ethnically diverse enough area, but I don't often see beef sausages - Waitrose for example only used to have the one item, and that was only available in chipolata. They have now added the wagyu sausages which I will get if I see them on offer. Whereas loads of different pork sausages. I am going to pop into Sainsburys today so I will have a look. I do need to start buying butchers' sausages but my local butcher's sausages are expensive but not that good. We do have a couple of specialist sausage butchers, but they are a few miles away and, as ever, I can't be arsed.
Tesco and Sainsburys used to do fantastic premium own brand sausages. They both changed their recipes (specifically, I think, of the skin) for reasons I can't remember, about 2 or 3 years ago, and are now much worse.
Heck sausages are the only decent ones. And even they have too much salt in them.
Jolly Hog are good for supermarket brands. Nothing beats the butcher though.
I can't see how. Starmer, for all his faults, has a huge majority. And time. If he goes, what does Milliband bring to the table? He is comprehensively stupid on energy, and consistently wrong. Part of the reasons for high energy costs is that we tie to gas, part is the net zero pricing added in by government.
As I understand it, gas prices set the price of electricity in the UK (as the most expensive type of generation needed to meet demand) because of the marginal pricing system used in the energy market. So my question would be: Is there a viable alternative to a marginal pricing system? If so, why aren't we using it?
OT I tried Burger King's waygu burger. After its mixed reviews, to put it kindly, I nixed the rocket and mayo and added a slice of cheese. Verdict: good; better than their ordinary burgers; £11 is a lot though.
And the burger comes in a posh-looking cardboard box.
I had some wagyu sausages, as they were on offer. Quite nice beef sausages but I wouldn't pay the normal premium.
(Whatever happened to beef sausages? When I was a kid, they were almost as prominent as pork. Now you rarely see them. I suspect burgers are much more popular so all the beef offcuts go into them. Waitrose do beef & black pepper chipolatas, which I used to like, but I think they have gone skinless and in general I think they have lowered the quality of their "standard" range of sausages rather than put the price up)
Beef sausages are all over the place and in many takeaways the only option (halal, you see).
I'd agree about the drop in quality to keep the price down. I've stopped buying meat pies for that very reason.
Maybe I don't live in an ethnically diverse enough area, but I don't often see beef sausages - Waitrose for example only used to have the one item, and that was only available in chipolata. They have now added the wagyu sausages which I will get if I see them on offer. Whereas loads of different pork sausages. I am going to pop into Sainsburys today so I will have a look. I do need to start buying butchers' sausages but my local butcher's sausages are expensive but not that good. We do have a couple of specialist sausage butchers, but they are a few miles away and, as ever, I can't be arsed.
Tesco and Sainsburys used to do fantastic premium own brand sausages. They both changed their recipes (specifically, I think, of the skin) for reasons I can't remember, about 2 or 3 years ago, and are now much worse.
Heck sausages are the only decent ones. And even they have too much salt in them.
Local butcher for me, but that's no good if you lot can't be arsed to get to Warminster...
OT I tried Burger King's waygu burger. After its mixed reviews, to put it kindly, I nixed the rocket and mayo and added a slice of cheese. Verdict: good; better than their ordinary burgers; £11 is a lot though.
And the burger comes in a posh-looking cardboard box.
I had some wagyu sausages, as they were on offer. Quite nice beef sausages but I wouldn't pay the normal premium.
(Whatever happened to beef sausages? When I was a kid, they were almost as prominent as pork. Now you rarely see them. I suspect burgers are much more popular so all the beef offcuts go into them. Waitrose do beef & black pepper chipolatas, which I used to like, but I think they have gone skinless and in general I think they have lowered the quality of their "standard" range of sausages rather than put the price up)
Beef sausages are all over the place and in many takeaways the only option (halal, you see).
I'd agree about the drop in quality to keep the price down. I've stopped buying meat pies for that very reason.
Maybe I don't live in an ethnically diverse enough area, but I don't often see beef sausages - Waitrose for example only used to have the one item, and that was only available in chipolata. They have now added the wagyu sausages which I will get if I see them on offer. Whereas loads of different pork sausages. I am going to pop into Sainsburys today so I will have a look. I do need to start buying butchers' sausages but my local butcher's sausages are expensive but not that good. We do have a couple of specialist sausage butchers, but they are a few miles away and, as ever, I can't be arsed.
Tesco and Sainsburys used to do fantastic premium own brand sausages. They both changed their recipes (specifically, I think, of the skin) for reasons I can't remember, about 2 or 3 years ago, and are now much worse.
Morrisons are pretty good. GF too...
Nah, get yourself down to Dawson's butchers in Brayton near Selby and weep when you try any other sausage after that (our kids are spoiled and quite disappointed when they get other sausages elsewhere). Some of their other stuff, pies etc, is not so special, but the sausages...
This business about his brother really is nonsense, cooked up by the tabloids at the time.
Why on earth should he have automatically deferred to his older brother? Many other people in all walks of life, wouldn't have done so. The older brother also wasn't the electoral gold dust that some imagine, as an avowedly Blairite politicisn in an era that had got tired of Blairisn, and tainted by association with various New Labour mistakes, such as the war in Iraq
David Miliband was so obviously the better choice of the two brothers in 2010, so Labour could be guaranteed to choose the wrong one.
Is David Miliband like one of those sportsmen who get better the longer they are out injured as they develop some mythical super abilities to blame the team’s malaise on?
I can’t think of anything off the top of my head he has ever proposed that show some great insight or vision for how to run the country. He has sat in charge of a charity on a huge wage for years but how much has he achieved in this role, has he looked for roles where he could really make a huge difference or change politics?
I think his legend is because he wasn’t scary looking to Centre left voters, Lib Dems, soft Tories etc. other than that, in my humble opinion, there is nothing really to say he would be any better than Rishi, Starmer, Burnham, May, or a multitude of other politicians we have or have had.
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.
The brownshirts were a party militia that had murdered hundreds in fighting over the previous few years. ICE are an department of the US government. I don't recall them brawling with Democrats at political rallies. Concentration camps were for political opponents, and in the early stages were often set up up by the local SA, often in collusion with local police.
America has become a very litigious society. The home of suing a food seller for selling you a hot drink. There is free speech there. Its fun to make comparisions with the Nazis but its ludicrous too.
Sorry if you dislike the comparions. In no way is anyone saying that history is repeating itself - America today is not Germany 1933. But the pattern of behaviour is there. Doing the same shit in a different way. Its absurd to claim that America is the land of free speech when the President is suing a major media outlet for their crime of not backing him. They are actively trying to silence and subjugate it just as they are bending the constitution to suit their will.
At which point will you accept this is authoritarianism? They are going to lose power in the midterms. Which is why they are engineering a way around that.
Doesn't suing mean going to court of law? Who makes the judgement? Where Trump may lose?
Well he now seems to be threatening broadcasters' FCC licences, which I would have thought would be within Trump's executive field of competence
I can't see how. Starmer, for all his faults, has a huge majority. And time. If he goes, what does Milliband bring to the table? He is comprehensively stupid on energy, and consistently wrong. Part of the reasons for high energy costs is that we tie to gas, part is the net zero pricing added in by government.
As I understand it, gas prices set the price of electricity in the UK (as the most expensive type of generation needed to meet demand) because of the marginal pricing system used in the energy market. So my question would be: Is there a viable alternative to a marginal pricing system? If so, why aren't we using it?
Govt has plans to reform the marginal pricing system with the aim of decoupling cheaper renewables from the gas price. So Miliband is doing it, it just takes longer to implement than thinking "I want to change it".
So was Nazism. Hitler made a very nice fortune on the royalties from all those (forced) sales of Mein Kampf.
I don't think anyone is saying MAGA is *actual* Nazism, just a possible quasi-fash authoritarian project, it's just instructive to compare it with how another movement came to power. Of course 2020s America is a very different place to 1920s Germany
I guess the issue I take with the comparison is that I think some expect a Reichstag fire and the end of democracy in the states. While it is fun to make some rather loose comparisons, the idea that folk in the states will tolerate a permanent Republican state is for the birds.
I would love to comment on the Charlie Kirk and free speech debate, but I have to fly to the US next week, so I can't.
You need to get some pro Trump comments on the record and in the bank.
I'd like to assist. His behaviour during the state visit - not too bad at all, was it?
Agreed?
Letching over the Princess of Wales?
I'm massively out of date, mentally, on the Royals. Read that as letching over Diana. The other day, when it was announced that the Queen was missing some Trump engagement due to not being well enough, I thought, "well, she is dead!".
I would love to comment on the Charlie Kirk and free speech debate, but I have to fly to the US next week, so I can't.
You need to get some pro Trump comments on the record and in the bank.
I'd like to assist. His behaviour during the state visit - not too bad at all, was it?
Agreed?
Letching over the Princess of Wales?
I'm massively out of date, mentally, on the Royals. Read that as letching over Diana. The other day, when it was announced that the Queen was missing some Trump engagement due to not being well enough, I thought, "well, she is dead!".
I think that you, like me, simply had the Queen as an integral part of our lives for so long that we will NEVER get passed this.
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.
The brownshirts were a party militia that had murdered hundreds in fighting over the previous few years. ICE are an department of the US government. I don't recall them brawling with Democrats at political rallies. Concentration camps were for political opponents, and in the early stages were often set up up by the local SA, often in collusion with local police.
America has become a very litigious society. The home of suing a food seller for selling you a hot drink. There is free speech there. Its fun to make comparisions with the Nazis but its ludicrous too.
The Brownshirts are the people who marched on the White House on 6 January 2021. I don't know enough about American politics to know whether such people are prominent in politics at the moment - my view is that 6 Jan wasn't a serious attempt at a coup, but a trial run to see what could be done, and the mob was effectively stood down to be used on some other occasion when needed.
One of Hitler's first moves was to consolidate power over the police, in his first coalition government as Chancellor, two of the three Nazi cabinet ministers were the interior ministers of Prussia and Germany. ICE is of course one of the Federal police forces that Trump can exert control over.
Concentration camps were initially for political opponents - Communists and Social Democrats - but most of the initial detainees were released. Later from 1936 or so they were used for various "undesirables" including habitual criminals. After 1933 the Party apparat was of course funded by the state. "Illegals" is certainly an out-group that MAGA has selected for persecution and yes their detention camps sound pretty much like concentration camps.
The lauding of a young warrior killed by political opponents is another echo of 30s' Germany.
So no it's not ludicrous to make comparisons with the Nazi rise to power. We may or may not be seeing a serious attempt to establish a quasi-fascist autocracy, but it makes sense to view the actions of the MAGA state on the assumption that this might be happening
So who is composing the 'Horst Kirk' song now? I think its weak to say on one hand that the people who marched on the White House in 2021 are the Brownshirts and then admit that you don't know enough about american politics... The SA were a party of the Nazi party - party members, wore uniforms, engaged in political violence against opponents. I don't recall Democrat conferences and meetings being stormed by Republicans in some sort of MAGA uniform.
I think you're being a bit naif here, Turbo. The Third Reich comparison does not fit exactly - Trump has not gone that far, yet - if he does. But his politicisation and weaponisation of state institutions IS in place, and being used. That comparison fits.
Project 2025 included a huge expansion of "political positions" - in the gift of the President - by recategorisation of civil service positions. Trump's servants have been combing through formerly neutral departments to purge anyone who even touched investigations into Trump then weaponising those departments (DOJ, FBI etc) in his personal interest. Reportedly at the FBI they are applying lie detector tests to prove loyalty:
In interviews and polygraph tests, the F.B.I. has asked senior employees whether they have said anything negative about Mr. Patel, according to two people with knowledge of the questions and others familiar with similar accounts. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/10/us/politics/fbi-polygraph-kash-patel.html
As for Brownshirts, look at the attack on the Capitol:
Around 12:30, a crowd of about 300 assembled east of the Capitol. Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO), a leader of the group of lawmakers who vowed to challenge the Electoral College vote, greeted these protesters with a raised fist as he passed by on his way to Congress's joint session in the early afternoon. At 12:52, a group of Oath Keepers, wearing black hoodies with prominent logos, left the rally at the Ellipse and changed into Army Combat Uniforms, with helmets, on their way to the Capitol. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_6_United_States_Capitol_attack
Together they injured 100+ police officers, and Trump pardoned or commuted 1600 offenders as one of his first acts.
The US Constitution could be neutered, or heavily redefined to remove all separation of powers.
I can't see how. Starmer, for all his faults, has a huge majority. And time. If he goes, what does Milliband bring to the table? He is comprehensively stupid on energy, and consistently wrong. Part of the reasons for high energy costs is that we tie to gas, part is the net zero pricing added in by government.
As I understand it, gas prices set the price of electricity in the UK (as the most expensive type of generation needed to meet demand) because of the marginal pricing system used in the energy market. So my question would be: Is there a viable alternative to a marginal pricing system? If so, why aren't we using it?
Ask Ed.
Ed seems to be religiously committed to "high prices to drive down consumption". You see similar stuff for water.
What happens when solar plus enough battery to create 24 hour power gets significantly cheaper than other methods (on the verge of happening) doesn't seem to have been considered.
I would love to comment on the Charlie Kirk and free speech debate, but I have to fly to the US next week, so I can't.
You need to get some pro Trump comments on the record and in the bank.
I'd like to assist. His behaviour during the state visit - not too bad at all, was it?
Agreed?
Letching over the Princess of Wales?
I'm massively out of date, mentally, on the Royals. Read that as letching over Diana. The other day, when it was announced that the Queen was missing some Trump engagement due to not being well enough, I thought, "well, she is dead!".
I think that you, like me, simply had the Queen as an integral part of our lives for so long that we will NEVER get passed this.
The Queen versus a Queen.
They need to retire the term after someone becomes synonymous with it, like shirt numbers in football. Why not just make Camilla the King Consort or similar. Or even Empress or something.
I would love to comment on the Charlie Kirk and free speech debate, but I have to fly to the US next week, so I can't.
You need to get some pro Trump comments on the record and in the bank.
I'd like to assist. His behaviour during the state visit - not too bad at all, was it?
Agreed?
Letching over the Princess of Wales?
I'm massively out of date, mentally, on the Royals. Read that as letching over Diana. The other day, when it was announced that the Queen was missing some Trump engagement due to not being well enough, I thought, "well, she is dead!".
"The" Queen to me will always be Queen Elizabeth II. Any other queens need some sort of specification e.g. Queen Camilla. So yes, I think the queen's illness is probably serious enough that she can be excused any of the more unpleasant monarchical duties.
This business about his brother really is nonsense, cooked up by the tabloids at the time.
Why on earth should he have automatically deferred to his older brother? Many other people in all walks of life, wouldn't have done so. The older brother also wasn't the electoral gold dust that some imagine, as an avowedly Blairite politicisn in an era that had got tired of Blairisn, and tainted by association with various New Labour mistakes, such as the war in Iraq
Merlin used to run a mobile discotheque with my mother! Peregrine Moncreiffe of that ilk (his little brother) was also great fun 😂
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.
A budget deficit is 100% politicians’ fault.
They can increase tax or reduce spending or chose to run a deficit. But they should be accountable for their choices.
Productivity is partially impacted by their decisions
Growth is a second order result of their activities
A deficit is sometimes an unavoidable response to a situation otherwise, yes, it's a choice. But we elect our politicians and reward them for reality-dodging and wild promises. It's time the public grew up and stopped thinking and behaving like toddlers. I love the public, I'm part of it and proud to be so, but they really do need to up their game. Not much sign of it, sadly, with all this 'rolling the dice with Reform' balloney. I mean, c'mon.
Growth? Governments can impact this, of course they can, although factors outside their control are more influential, but most of the policies needed don't pay off in the short term and it's only the here and now (or perceptions of it) that shifts votes. The only speedy transformation of our economy and living standards that a government can do is a negative one. They could trash the place. They have big downside power. On the upside it can only be about incremental improvements and a sense of direction.
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.
The brownshirts were a party militia that had murdered hundreds in fighting over the previous few years. ICE are an department of the US government. I don't recall them brawling with Democrats at political rallies. Concentration camps were for political opponents, and in the early stages were often set up up by the local SA, often in collusion with local police.
America has become a very litigious society. The home of suing a food seller for selling you a hot drink. There is free speech there. Its fun to make comparisions with the Nazis but its ludicrous too.
Sorry if you dislike the comparions. In no way is anyone saying that history is repeating itself - America today is not Germany 1933. But the pattern of behaviour is there. Doing the same shit in a different way. Its absurd to claim that America is the land of free speech when the President is suing a major media outlet for their crime of not backing him. They are actively trying to silence and subjugate it just as they are bending the constitution to suit their will.
At which point will you accept this is authoritarianism? They are going to lose power in the midterms. Which is why they are engineering a way around that.
Doesn't suing mean going to court of law? Who makes the judgement? Where Trump may lose?
Well he now seems to be threatening broadcasters' FCC licences, which I would have thought would be within Trump's executive field of competence
The Democrats have been asleep at the wheel for the last decade, Trump's current term is built on the preparation he did in 2016-20 to undermine the "checks and balances" that the US thought they had. They needed to restore, rebalance and reinforce those checks during Biden's term and they did nothing.
Interesting. I thought that the rag-tag bunch who turn up at CLP meetings would be more Powellite than that. Could point to a closer contest than the betting is suggesting.
I've been backing Lucy Powell for next PM with bf at prices between 60 and 100.
The price is now 42 with bf (20 with Ladbrokes).
42 still way too high IMO. Will fall soon when she beats Phillipson.
If Starmer went before the election and she stood who would beat her? Not Streeting (man, too centrist), Not Burnham (man, can't run). Rayner maybe but a risk. I don't think Ed Miliband would run if Powell did plus I don't think he'd win anyway (man).
I would love to comment on the Charlie Kirk and free speech debate, but I have to fly to the US next week, so I can't.
You need to get some pro Trump comments on the record and in the bank.
I'd like to assist. His behaviour during the state visit - not too bad at all, was it?
Agreed?
Letching over the Princess of Wales?
I'm massively out of date, mentally, on the Royals. Read that as letching over Diana. The other day, when it was announced that the Queen was missing some Trump engagement due to not being well enough, I thought, "well, she is dead!".
I think that you, like me, simply had the Queen as an integral part of our lives for so long that we will NEVER get passed this.
The Queen versus a Queen.
They need to retire the term after someone becomes synonymous with it, like shirt numbers in football. Why not just make Camilla the King Consort or similar. Or even Empress or something.
Camilla is the Queen Consort. Prince Philip would have been the King Consort but they sidestepped that elephant trap.
OT I tried Burger King's waygu burger. After its mixed reviews, to put it kindly, I nixed the rocket and mayo and added a slice of cheese. Verdict: good; better than their ordinary burgers; £11 is a lot though.
And the burger comes in a posh-looking cardboard box.
I had some wagyu sausages, as they were on offer. Quite nice beef sausages but I wouldn't pay the normal premium.
(Whatever happened to beef sausages? When I was a kid, they were almost as prominent as pork. Now you rarely see them. I suspect burgers are much more popular so all the beef offcuts go into them. Waitrose do beef & black pepper chipolatas, which I used to like, but I think they have gone skinless and in general I think they have lowered the quality of their "standard" range of sausages rather than put the price up)
It's an odd one: supermarkets now have (bad) chicken sausages for religious pork-refusers, but not beef ones.
I can't see how. Starmer, for all his faults, has a huge majority. And time. If he goes, what does Milliband bring to the table? He is comprehensively stupid on energy, and consistently wrong. Part of the reasons for high energy costs is that we tie to gas, part is the net zero pricing added in by government.
As I understand it, gas prices set the price of electricity in the UK (as the most expensive type of generation needed to meet demand) because of the marginal pricing system used in the energy market. So my question would be: Is there a viable alternative to a marginal pricing system? If so, why aren't we using it?
Govt has plans to reform the marginal pricing system with the aim of decoupling cheaper renewables from the gas price. So Miliband is doing it, it just takes longer to implement than thinking "I want to change it".
What would an alternative to a marginal pricing system look like? Again, as I understand it (and that's not particularly well!), marginal pricing is the "natural" way that pricing works - left to the market, prices will naturally be set by the most expensive supplier whose product is needed in order to meet demand. Presumably, moving away from this would require government intervention of some sort to force suppliers to sell electricity at a price lower than they would otherwise achieve on the open market?
So was Nazism. Hitler made a very nice fortune on the royalties from all those (forced) sales of Mein Kampf.
I don't think anyone is saying MAGA is *actual* Nazism, just a possible quasi-fash authoritarian project, it's just instructive to compare it with how another movement came to power. Of course 2020s America is a very different place to 1920s Germany
Of course.
Then you see stuff like this.
Pentagon leaders are considering a new recruiting campaign that would encourage young people to honor the legacy of Charlie Kirk by joining the military, NBC News reports https://x.com/TheInsiderPaper/status/1968725575054319626
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.
The brownshirts were a party militia that had murdered hundreds in fighting over the previous few years. ICE are an department of the US government. I don't recall them brawling with Democrats at political rallies. Concentration camps were for political opponents, and in the early stages were often set up up by the local SA, often in collusion with local police.
America has become a very litigious society. The home of suing a food seller for selling you a hot drink. There is free speech there. Its fun to make comparisions with the Nazis but its ludicrous too.
Sorry if you dislike the comparions. In no way is anyone saying that history is repeating itself - America today is not Germany 1933. But the pattern of behaviour is there. Doing the same shit in a different way. Its absurd to claim that America is the land of free speech when the President is suing a major media outlet for their crime of not backing him. They are actively trying to silence and subjugate it just as they are bending the constitution to suit their will.
At which point will you accept this is authoritarianism? They are going to lose power in the midterms. Which is why they are engineering a way around that.
Doesn't suing mean going to court of law? Who makes the judgement? Where Trump may lose?
Well he now seems to be threatening broadcasters' FCC licences, which I would have thought would be within Trump's executive field of competence
The Democrats have been asleep at the wheel for the last decade, Trump's current term is built on the preparation he did in 2016-20 to undermine the "checks and balances" that the US thought they had. They needed to restore, rebalance and reinforce those checks during Biden's term and they did nothing.
I was wondering if the US would be in a better place today if Trump had beaten Biden in 2020.
If he had won there wouldn’t have been the Capitol attack, no stolen election crap etc etc. it’s possible that the level of power that MAGA have, the anger amongst Trump fans and so on would be less and the schism in the US less extreme.
Trump himself, without years inbetween presidencies, would not have time to build a team with whom they have created more extreme views on immigration, cutting govt spending and so on.
Musk didn’t buy twitter until 2022 and into the second year of second Trump term he might have been no fan of Trump either.
The democrats would also have had to go back to the drawing board and look for better candidates than Harris.
I know it’s just pointless alternative history but was just something that came to mind.
OT I tried Burger King's waygu burger. After its mixed reviews, to put it kindly, I nixed the rocket and mayo and added a slice of cheese. Verdict: good; better than their ordinary burgers; £11 is a lot though.
And the burger comes in a posh-looking cardboard box.
I had some wagyu sausages, as they were on offer. Quite nice beef sausages but I wouldn't pay the normal premium.
(Whatever happened to beef sausages? When I was a kid, they were almost as prominent as pork. Now you rarely see them. I suspect burgers are much more popular so all the beef offcuts go into them. Waitrose do beef & black pepper chipolatas, which I used to like, but I think they have gone skinless and in general I think they have lowered the quality of their "standard" range of sausages rather than put the price up)
Beef sausages are all over the place and in many takeaways the only option (halal, you see).
I'd agree about the drop in quality to keep the price down. I've stopped buying meat pies for that very reason.
Maybe I don't live in an ethnically diverse enough area, but I don't often see beef sausages - Waitrose for example only used to have the one item, and that was only available in chipolata. They have now added the wagyu sausages which I will get if I see them on offer. Whereas loads of different pork sausages. I am going to pop into Sainsburys today so I will have a look. I do need to start buying butchers' sausages but my local butcher's sausages are expensive but not that good. We do have a couple of specialist sausage butchers, but they are a few miles away and, as ever, I can't be arsed.
Tesco and Sainsburys used to do fantastic premium own brand sausages. They both changed their recipes (specifically, I think, of the skin) for reasons I can't remember, about 2 or 3 years ago, and are now much worse.
Morrisons are pretty good. GF too...
They sell girl friends?
For a few weeks I'm experimenting with Hello Fresh, and so far ... not bad, as one component of a mix. The obviously dodgy thing is tiny bits of lots of ingredients in sealed plastic packaging.
Comments
Earl of Erroll suggested that the scheme could cause a ‘rise in divorce rates’ if they charge motorists for going about their daily lives
...
Responding, Labour minister Lord Livermore said: “That is an interesting question, but it is one that I have no view on since we have no plans to introduce road pricing.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/09/18/road-pricing-will-catch-out-cheating-spouses/ (£££)
Some PB"ers confuse his diligent effectiveness when he sticks with a dubious policy - such as carbon capture- with lack of aptitude. Quite the opposite, he's very bright, and has been pretty effective in achieving what he wants in ptetty much all the Ministerial portfolios that he's had.
America has become a very litigious society. The home of suing a food seller for selling you a hot drink. There is free speech there. Its fun to make comparisions with the Nazis but its ludicrous too.
Comprehensively humiliated by Donald Trump is not a good look for Starmer.
It gets even worse in the Mail. Littlejohn pointed out that eighteen months ago PM Starmer allowed a convicted Egyptian rapist and bomb maker into the country.
Imagine a party choosing a PM who was rejected by the electorate at a general election?
My fear is that we won’t, and as a result we will be forced into it by the markets. That won’t be pretty and things will have to be much more unpleasant the longer they are left.
In either case, there will be severe societal difficulties. But it will be far worse if it’s the latter option.
There is a place for government spending. Unfortunately, it’s not in the places people want it. It needs to be used to fix acute problems (skills shortages, defence, investment in energy infrastructure etc). It can’t be used to subsidise pensions, healthcare and welfare in the way that people expect.
Did you see Larry Elliott suggesting capital controls as a means to taming the bond market?
Then it comes down to timing for the switcheroo. Go early, and the potential new leader bounce has more time to recede (particularly as it doesn’t look like there’ll be tremendous measurable improvement in the national finances etc).
I think he’ll go in 2027. If there is a measurable Labour recovery, it gives the successor the chance to roll the dice on a 2028 GE. If not, it gives them 2 years with which something might turn up.
The other side of the equation takes more lateral thinking. There is No Point in building more executive style homes. We need to build houses people can afford which cuts the percentage of their earnings spent on rent. So empower the LHAs to build and legislate to allow them to borrow at government rates. And have them build on sites owned by councils with fast track planning granted by default. Building never for sale homes which can be offered at viable rents.
That would crash the rentier market of private sector spivs because why pay their crazy rents when cheaper is flooding the market. Which both floods these properties back onto the market and lowers the price.
Why on earth should he have automatically deferred to his older brother? Many other people in all walks of life, wouldn't have done so. The older brother also wasn't the electoral gold dust that some imagine, as an avowedly Blairite politicisn in an era that had got tired of Blairisn, and tainted by association with various New Labour mistakes, such as the war in Iraq
At which point will you accept this is authoritarianism? They are going to lose power in the midterms. Which is why they are engineering a way around that.
If you want to spend more then you have to tax more. And then you need a political leader who can sell those tax rises to the public.
But she wouldn’t dare say that out loud.
One of Hitler's first moves was to consolidate power over the police, in his first coalition government as Chancellor, two of the three Nazi cabinet ministers were the interior ministers of Prussia and Germany. ICE is of course one of the Federal police forces that Trump can exert control over.
Concentration camps were initially for political opponents - Communists and Social Democrats - but most of the initial detainees were released. Later from 1936 or so they were used for various "undesirables" including habitual criminals. After 1933 the Party apparat was of course funded by the state. "Illegals" is certainly an out-group that MAGA has selected for persecution and yes their detention camps sound pretty much like concentration camps.
The lauding of a young warrior killed by political opponents is another echo of 30s' Germany.
So no it's not ludicrous to make comparisons with the Nazi rise to power. We may or may not be seeing a serious attempt to establish a quasi-fascist autocracy, but it makes sense to view the actions of the MAGA state on the assumption that this might be happening
I feel like anyone who thought Corbyn was competent enough to run a country should perhaps be engaging in some self-reflection today.
https://x.com/RachelMoiselle/status/1968972480166383705
The position is already guaranteed to be horrendous for them, in 2029 so I wouldn't touch the leadership with a barge pole if I were Ed.
As for energy I disagree investment in more renewable is the way to reduce prices not the cause of the high prices which is being too reliant on imported fossil fuels which is not compatible with the war parties.
Walz was a perfectly average choice. He was fine, and he would have been fine as VP if Harris had won. Yes he had some gaffes, but then so did Vance. So did running mates like Biden and Quayle. They were all still parts of winning tickets.
There were bigger factors at play in 2024 than the choice of running mate.
On Starmer, he may well go before the GE, but I don't think it will be very soon, barring a big scandal. He'll think there's scope for policies to start bearing fruit and/or for other events to ease things economically etc. If he wants to leave before the GE, better to leave on his own terms with some successes to point to. A later departure also suits some potential challengers better - more time to build profile and a power base in the party; for the King over the Water time to leave the mayoralty gracefully after a full term. There's still some shit sandwiches to be eaten to fix fundamentals in the country and it makes more sense to have Starmer do that if at all possible.
His story is more complex than it appears.
(Whatever happened to beef sausages? When I was a kid, they were almost as prominent as pork. Now you rarely see them. I suspect burgers are much more popular so all the beef offcuts go into them. Waitrose do beef & black pepper chipolatas, which I used to like, but I think they have gone skinless and in general I think they have lowered the quality of their "standard" range of sausages rather than put the price up)
I think its weak to say on one hand that the people who marched on the White House in 2021 are the Brownshirts and then admit that you don't know enough about american politics... The SA were a party of the Nazi party - party members, wore uniforms, engaged in political violence against opponents. I don't recall Democrat conferences and meetings being stormed by Republicans in some sort of MAGA uniform.
I'd agree about the drop in quality to keep the price down. I've stopped buying meat pies for that very reason.
I have not been a party member for almost fifteen years so it won't be my fault this time.
Special Morning Update.
Powell reaches the CLP nominations required to be on the ballot for deputy leader.
The current standings are as follows:
Powell: 33
----------------- 33 Threshold
Phillipson: 26
Usual disclaimer applies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Müller_(Gestapo) etc....
What's curious is that, given just how bad this is and for how long we have known it, why our borrowing costs are so low (relatively). If Max and the OBR are right, it should be nigh on impossible for the government to borrow over the long term.
It usually goes Cavalier, Roundhead, Cavalier...etc.
That was the Settlement which preserved order.
I think 'fun' is being used as cypher for 'possessed of charisma' here. And 'boring' for not.
They can increase tax or reduce spending or chose to run a deficit. But they should be accountable for their choices.
Productivity is partially impacted by their decisions
Growth is a second order result of their activities
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Ceo4ElA7qSw
I don't relish the thought, we just have to hope there is enough competency in the government to keep the plates spinning for long enough that we get a new one that will come in and cut spending like the Tories did in 2010.
I don't think anyone is saying MAGA is *actual* Nazism, just a possible quasi-fash authoritarian project, it's just instructive to compare it with how another movement came to power. Of course 2020s America is a very different place to 1920s Germany
Any anyone who believed Corbyn was fit to run a bath, should perhaps do the same.
And even they have too much salt in them.
I can’t think of anything off the top of my head he has ever proposed that show some great insight or vision for how to run the country. He has sat in charge of a charity on a huge wage for years but how much has he achieved in this role, has he looked for roles where he could really make a huge difference or change politics?
I think his legend is because he wasn’t scary looking to Centre left voters, Lib Dems, soft Tories etc. other than that, in my humble opinion, there is nothing really to say he would be any better than Rishi, Starmer, Burnham, May, or a multitude of other politicians we have or have had.
https://x.com/GovPressOffice/status/1968743288292200509
So Miliband is doing it, it just takes longer to implement than thinking "I want to change it".
Assuming that the great joy is shared on other parts of the country, too. It's to be enjoyed while we can, I think.
Project 2025 included a huge expansion of "political positions" - in the gift of the President - by recategorisation of civil service positions. Trump's servants have been combing through formerly neutral departments to purge anyone who even touched investigations into Trump then weaponising those departments (DOJ, FBI etc) in his personal interest. Reportedly at the FBI they are applying lie detector tests to prove loyalty:
In interviews and polygraph tests, the F.B.I. has asked senior employees whether they have said anything negative about Mr. Patel, according to two people with knowledge of the questions and others familiar with similar accounts.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/10/us/politics/fbi-polygraph-kash-patel.html
As for Brownshirts, look at the attack on the Capitol:
Around 12:30, a crowd of about 300 assembled east of the Capitol. Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO), a leader of the group of lawmakers who vowed to challenge the Electoral College vote, greeted these protesters with a raised fist as he passed by on his way to Congress's joint session in the early afternoon. At 12:52, a group of Oath Keepers, wearing black hoodies with prominent logos, left the rally at the Ellipse and changed into Army Combat Uniforms, with helmets, on their way to the Capitol.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_6_United_States_Capitol_attack
Together they injured 100+ police officers, and Trump pardoned or commuted 1600 offenders as one of his first acts.
The US Constitution could be neutered, or heavily redefined to remove all separation of powers.
What happens when solar plus enough battery to create 24 hour power gets significantly cheaper than other methods (on the verge of happening) doesn't seem to have been considered.
Because it won't stop there. It will get cheaper.
They need to retire the term after someone becomes synonymous with it, like shirt numbers in football. Why not just make Camilla the King Consort or similar. Or even Empress or something.
So yes, I think the queen's illness is probably serious enough that she can be excused any of the more unpleasant monarchical duties.
Growth? Governments can impact this, of course they can, although factors outside their control are more influential, but most of the policies needed don't pay off in the short term and it's only the here and now (or perceptions of it) that shifts votes. The only speedy transformation of our economy and living standards that a government can do is a negative one. They could trash the place. They have big downside power. On the upside it can only be about incremental improvements and a sense of direction.
The price is now 42 with bf (20 with Ladbrokes).
42 still way too high IMO. Will fall soon when she beats Phillipson.
If Starmer went before the election and she stood who would beat her? Not Streeting (man, too centrist), Not Burnham (man, can't run). Rayner maybe but a risk. I don't think Ed Miliband would run if Powell did plus I don't think he'd win anyway (man).
Michael Gove compares Britain with the Weimar Republic (13 minutes of Spectator chat):-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yMtjPTutI4
Then you see stuff like this.
Pentagon leaders are considering a new recruiting campaign that would encourage young people to honor the legacy of Charlie Kirk by joining the military, NBC News reports
https://x.com/TheInsiderPaper/status/1968725575054319626
But we're trying to help bondgezou here - we don't want him getting arrested at JFK.
If he had won there wouldn’t have been the Capitol attack, no stolen election crap etc etc. it’s possible that the level of power that MAGA have, the anger amongst Trump fans and so on would be less and the schism in the US less extreme.
Trump himself, without years inbetween presidencies, would not have time to build a team with whom they have created more extreme views on immigration, cutting govt spending and so on.
Musk didn’t buy twitter until 2022 and into the second year of second Trump term he might have been no fan of Trump either.
The democrats would also have had to go back to the drawing board and look for better candidates than Harris.
I know it’s just pointless alternative history but was just something that came to mind.
They don't do girlfriends, either.