The Tories are now in fifth place (with younger voters) – politicalbetting.com
The Tories are now in fifth place (with younger voters) – politicalbetting.com
@TomTugendhat setting out some hard truths for the Conservatives. Young people have been let down since the late ‘90s as people with assets / equity have gained while people without a home / shares / secure work have lost out. Says the triple lock is unsustainable. pic.twitter.com/zuY1csNJrK
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Apparently the Lib Dems are minor party status as well !!!
England only?
Someone needs to do some serious thinking that goes a bit deeper than that.
They are all as bad as each other
You have had a great day today! No news is bad news, and he has stolen the news cycle.
The basic pension, at approx the IT threshold, isnt a lot.
The issue is, people on 50k pensions sticking that on top.
So
1) merge employee NI and IT.
2) Pensioners on the basic rate of tax continue with the old rate of tax.
3) Pensioners on the higher rate pay the new rate of tax (old IT + NI)
4) Quadruple lock - the state pension sets the tax free allowance for everyone.
This means that everyone pays NI (in effect) on all income. Except poorer pensioners.
And you can boast of improving the triple lock to a quadruple lock.
“Government should cut taxes and redistribute less income” (48%), in comparison with a minority who instead agree that the “Government should increase taxes and redistribute more income” (28%)."
...really goes against popular narrative.
Let's break down government spending - education, healthcare, defence, pensions etc - and look at how much they were as a percentage of GDP in both 2007 and 2024: As a percentage of GDP, the amount we spend on justice (police, prisons and courts) has fallen by a tenth, defence has dropped more. While education spending has sharply contracted.
By contrast what we spend on oldies has risen shaply. Spending on health has risen by as much as we spend in total on defence! Spending on state pensions has increased by the equivalent of 40% of the education budget.
There is genuine austerity in government. We just don't see it, because we're spending ever more on oldies. (And bear in mind, this excludes all the local government spending on oldies.)
Home ownership not so much.
Student debt even less. 6 figures is not uncommon now.
1. Jenrick has screwed his chances of ever leading a group of boy scouts let alone a political Party
or
2. Has the leadership of the Tory Party nailed on?
Whether they will amount to much more than a group of boy scouts after the next election is doubtful.
It is good to realise everything is not about politics
2007/8 is a seriously bad baseline, right at the top of a boom when government was somehow running a deficit.
Spending as a percentage of GDP is also a terrible measure to use, as it goes up (good, yay!) as the productive economy shrinks.
The focus should be on the scope of the State, and the size of the debt interest bill which now makes monetary policy more significant than fiscal policy.
I would rather be here in Wales and the UK despite its problems
We on PB are the weird ones.
I'd be astonished if the final election totals look anything like the current polling. Kemi will be gone, Reform will subside (as the Alliance did too) and even Labour may well get some mojo if a bit of growth comes back.
Next thing you know, he’s on the front line in Ukraine and ends up as a PoW.
https://x.com/bohuslavskakate/status/1975588186026815852
He/she will be forced to end the Quadruple lock. Or be Truss’d by the bond markets.
PlusNet (BT, essentially) need to sort out their processes.
Call to inform them my father is deceased and no longer requires their services
Email sent to his email address confirming account is cancelled and that his details have been deleted, confirmed by phone
--crickets--
Letter to him from debt collection agency demanding £x
Now £x is only a trivial amount but I don't think you can pass on debts when you didn't sent a bill in the first place - because you removed the email address to which you would have sent it and didn't try paper.
If I was in a bad mood (I have Covid, so yes, I am) I might find the need to complain to someone. The debt collection company don't want to pursue it so that's obviously fewer pennies in the pound next time they want to sell their "debts"...
Does anyone do their job properly these days?
(What am I saying? I'm sure it's possible. Rephrase that as "has anyone published that breakdown, because I'm both curious and lazy.)
The point Ian was making is that unless the Tory party can bring in younger voters, it will be in trouble over the coming years. And there are few signs that they are managing to do so.
And there's nothing we can do about it, without grasping the nettle and either (a) moving the retirement age, and/or (b) eliminating the triple lock. Both of which are electoral poison.
I don’t follow women’s cricket, but if the Banglas were 1.01 I’d be pleased not to have bet on them.
We have no idea where the political climate will be in 10 years and even next year
Today's politics is a torment, but as a Tory do you think your conference will bring in members or drive them away? Bring in voters or drive them away?
My point is this:
Let's say you want government spending as a percentage of GDP to be flat to down. Let's say you want us to be below 40%. Well, if some elements are hardwired to grow faster than the economy as a whole, then that means that the other elements have to fall as a percentage of GDP. And that's what's happened.
One of @UKLabour’s better attack messages
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2644955.stm
[Yes, I know that's not actually Tuscany, but still]
Meanwhile the dog for scale wishes to make it known that the apparent black eye is a photographic peculiarity, and doesn’t arise from any misjudged pursuit of his ball, an encounter with an Italian cat, or any interaction with his owner.
Everyone but the English.......
What a screw up your selfish rotten Party have made of the UK
But for those watching,
1 there's hardly anyone there from the party
2 there are very few operatives, which is why you get fails like the misspelt attack confectionery
3 the professional schmoozers are largely absent, because there's no point schmoozing a party with a one-way ticket to Obscurityville.
Something happened in the mid-2010s to turn the age-voting graph much steeper than before. It is showing no signs of flipping back, and the Conservatives are failing to convert people as they enter middle age. Unless that changes, the party has a problem.
Age never comes alone but my wife and I have so much to be grateful for
Secondly, returning to a question within the nest, why no real small state, low spend, low tax parties? The answer is this: we are the products of a developmental non revolutionary history.
This has two major impacts: firstly all actual (ignore the rhetoric) politics is a continuation of the moment at which any particular government takes office . (As Reform may be going to discover). So as Small State party takes over it finds the state payment systems already up and running to spend 44% or so of all GDP.
To alter this bigly is massively disruptive. Eg to shave £10 billion, a tiny sum in the scheme of things and less than 1% of state expenditure, off the welfare bill means removing £5000 per year and continuing from two million people. This is disruptive in the sense of riots, fires, protests, media storms, votes, MP support and so on.
That doesn't even begin on the realities of an actual small state - one in which say only 25-30% of GDP is TME.
Which is why (a) whenever Reform are asked about their fiscal plans they lie; and (b) why a Reform government will be social democrat, high spend and therefore high tax. As we shall discover.
A real small state low tax low spend government would arise only out of an actual, real revolution.
Walk along the Promenade with flags of many different nations flying high
And as for Brexit you can moan as much as you like, but remain lost a winnable referendum and the argument
And my granddaughter spent one year at Turin University last year with lots of students from the UK
And we have our difficulties but at least we haven't had 5 PMs in as many minutes and a lame duck President
Departmental spending as a ratio of all government spending would be a better measure - and also demonstrate how much the Department of Debt Interest has taken over government in recent years.
Maybe not in the short term, but come 2029?
Well someone needs to give these Tories at conference a whole load of free gaffer tape and tell them to button up while they've still got a party to save
The episode in question is "Silence in the Library" and the villains are the Vashta Nerada, a race of tiny predators who hunt in packs and hide in shadows. They attach themselves to their victims and this attachment is visible as a second shadow. Since @IanB2 's pleasant dog has two shadows, I was suggesting he (the dog) would be predated by the Vashta Nerada and reduced to a skeleton
Which would be ruff
😎
Shut anyone up with a different view is your preferred mantra ?
So if you announce a £15k state pension and £12.5k personal allowance, then plug in a £14.5k payment into the computer in terms of what actually gets paid.
Hardly fair on those coming up who are a decade or so away from retirement. They have to wait longer to protect others already getting money.
youve spent years wishing death on the Conservative Party and now they are on their last legs youre calling in the medics
BBC R4 PM interview Conservative Peer Lord Tony Sewell as an impartial foil to Jenrick's commentary. Instead he agreed and doubled down on Jenrick's analysis.
The BBC has lost the plot. Jenrick has unfortunately had the greatest day of his career. He has put the Tories in the forefront of public opinion.
That is an unanswered question