Bloke who lost on correct-score football betting wants his money back. He lost in the High Court but was at the Court of Appeal yesterday (and today?).
Various comments tonight about how 1% annual tax on house values would let you abolish council tax, SDLT, and IHT at a stroke.
At the same time it's a policy where the average home owner will pay the same or less in tax as the current council tax bill, with almost all the incidence falling on rich people in the SE.
Tax simplification. Two fairly unpopular taxes gone, a third one effectively restructured to be considerably more progressive. No loss of tax revenue.
So - why hasn't one of the parties picked it up and run with it? OK it will make a small number of rich voters very angry, but for Reform and these days the Tories, it probably doesn't matter all that much electorally - a policy with 10 winners to every loser and with the losers geographically concentrated in places you don't win anyway, why care? They will all be ABCs in the SE who vote Lib-Dem anyway.
I don’t think the political class is in it to make money. However, I don’t see any of them implementing a policy that would adversely affect them in such a big way. There may be votes in it but it would cost them personally.
Actually, I don't think that's it.
Losers complain more than winners cheer. The losers would blame the government. The winners wouldn't thank them.
And there would be a lot of losers - either wealthy homeoweners in the South East (LibDem or Conservative voters) or people in Central London (Labour voters).
Wealthy homeowners are already not paying enough in council tax
As you may know, AI slop and YouTube algorithms are killing YouTube channels, to the extent it's become it's own genre. Here is Kurzgesagt pointing this out
Dove instead of dived. AI or decades of America television?
ETA and 10-year anniversary rather than 10th anniversary.
Well yes, but it is a thing. There used to be four or five really good YouTubers I could go to for things like tanks, but now it's all computer-generated voices and stock footage saying things that I'm not sure are true. And that's across the board on every subject. That, and the rise of podcasts and vids where somebody talks into a mic with a neon sign in the background, makes YouTube an increasingly frustrating experience where my favourite creators are cut off by the knees and slop just keeps rising.
Ukraine war Youtube is a lot like that, there’s so many videos that are just a computer voice reading a bad translation of a Telegram or Reddit thread, with stock footage in the background that roughly matches the words. These seem to regularly get hundreds of thousand of views in a few hours, despite the fact that it’s unwatchable and repetitive.
Meanwhile, independent journalists and OSINT guys, many of whom are actually in Ukraine, who do their research and use mapping tools, clearly putting half a day’s work into a 10m video, are getting only tens of thousands of views for it and are obviously not making any money. I’m sure many of them aren’t doing it for the money, rather to draw international attention to the plight of their country, but it does seem that the rewards are not going the right way.
As you may know, AI slop and YouTube algorithms are killing YouTube channels, to the extent it's become it's own genre. Here is Kurzgesagt pointing this out
Dove instead of dived. AI or decades of America television?
ETA and 10-year anniversary rather than 10th anniversary.
Well yes, but it is a thing. There used to be four or five really good YouTubers I could go to for things like tanks, but now it's all computer-generated voices and stock footage saying things that I'm not sure are true. And that's across the board on every subject. That, and the rise of podcasts and vids where somebody talks into a mic with a neon sign in the background, makes YouTube an increasingly frustrating experience where my favourite creators are cut off by the knees and slop just keeps rising.
Ukraine war Youtube is a lot like that, there’s so many videos that are just a computer voice reading a bad translation of a Telegram or Reddit thread, with stock footage in the background that roughly matches the words. These seem to regularly get hundreds of thousand of views in a few hours, despite the fact that it’s unwatchable and repetitive.
Meanwhile, independent journalists and OSINT guys, many of whom are actually in Ukraine, who do their research and use mapping tools, clearly putting half a day’s work into a 10m video, are getting only tens of thousands of views for it and are obviously not making any money. I’m sure many of them aren’t doing it for the money, rather to draw international attention to the plight of their country, but it does seem that the rewards are not going the right way.
Times Radio and Daily Telegraph also have regular podcasts which are worth a listen.
The trouble with the Ukraine coverage is that even the genuine ones have to rely heavily on stock footage or homemade graphics, as they’re reporting on recent stuff for which video obviously isn’t available. As I recall the RFU one is mostly graphics and the Military Show is just head and shoulders or stock footage? Understandable, but it makes the AI ones less distinctive. In Health & Fitness there seem to be tons of AI generated ones, read out in a monotone voice with strange mid-sentence pauses that are clearly AI; is being AI generated a reportable offence on YouTube?
One big issue with Youtube specifically is that it takes a very censorious approach to actual war footage, so even the human channels need use a lot of stock footage.
Twitter is better for actual footage, but requires caution to avoid seeing things you don’t want to see. The Twitter links I post here are all from generally PG-rated accounts that don’t show all of the horrors of war.
Youtube say that they’re trying to get rid of the AI slop, but the problem is it’s so easy to generate that one person can make hours of it per day, and keep popping up with new accounts as they get banned. A little knowledge of how the AI prompting and Youtube algorithm works and you can earn $300-$500 a day for a couple of hours’ work. Each video doesn’t need to have millions of views, because they’re making loads of them.
As you may know, AI slop and YouTube algorithms are killing YouTube channels, to the extent it's become it's own genre. Here is Kurzgesagt pointing this out
Dove instead of dived. AI or decades of America television?
ETA and 10-year anniversary rather than 10th anniversary.
Well yes, but it is a thing. There used to be four or five really good YouTubers I could go to for things like tanks, but now it's all computer-generated voices and stock footage saying things that I'm not sure are true. And that's across the board on every subject. That, and the rise of podcasts and vids where somebody talks into a mic with a neon sign in the background, makes YouTube an increasingly frustrating experience where my favourite creators are cut off by the knees and slop just keeps rising.
Ukraine war Youtube is a lot like that, there’s so many videos that are just a computer voice reading a bad translation of a Telegram or Reddit thread, with stock footage in the background that roughly matches the words. These seem to regularly get hundreds of thousand of views in a few hours, despite the fact that it’s unwatchable and repetitive.
Meanwhile, independent journalists and OSINT guys, many of whom are actually in Ukraine, who do their research and use mapping tools, clearly putting half a day’s work into a 10m video, are getting only tens of thousands of views for it and are obviously not making any money. I’m sure many of them aren’t doing it for the money, rather to draw international attention to the plight of their country, but it does seem that the rewards are not going the right way.
Times Radio and Daily Telegraph also have regular podcasts which are worth a listen.
Do you know if the viewing figures for the good channels has decreased?
Most of my YouTube watching is of channels I've subscribed to, so I'm not really affected by AI slop. The change would be that I'd need to rely on other people recommending new channels to me, rather than finding things through YouTube's algorithm, so that might be a good change if the AI slop breaks the algorithm.
Various comments tonight about how 1% annual tax on house values would let you abolish council tax, SDLT, and IHT at a stroke.
At the same time it's a policy where the average home owner will pay the same or less in tax as the current council tax bill, with almost all the incidence falling on rich people in the SE.
Tax simplification. Two fairly unpopular taxes gone, a third one effectively restructured to be considerably more progressive. No loss of tax revenue.
So - why hasn't one of the parties picked it up and run with it? OK it will make a small number of rich voters very angry, but for Reform and these days the Tories, it probably doesn't matter all that much electorally - a policy with 10 winners to every loser and with the losers geographically concentrated in places you don't win anyway, why care? They will all be ABCs in the SE who vote Lib-Dem anyway.
I don’t think the political class is in it to make money. However, I don’t see any of them implementing a policy that would adversely affect them in such a big way. There may be votes in it but it would cost them personally.
Actually, I don't think that's it.
Losers complain more than winners cheer. The losers would blame the government. The winners wouldn't thank them.
And there would be a lot of losers - either wealthy homeoweners in the South East (LibDem or Conservative voters) or people in Central London (Labour voters).
Wealthy homeowners are already not paying enough in council tax
Council taxes being based on 1991 property values is absurd.
The number of Liberal Democrat party members has almost halved in the last five years, according to BBC analysis of available figures. The figure has fallen from just under 118,000 in 2020, when Sir Ed Davey became leader, to 60,000.
As you may know, AI slop and YouTube algorithms are killing YouTube channels, to the extent it's become it's own genre. Here is Kurzgesagt pointing this out
Dove instead of dived. AI or decades of America television?
ETA and 10-year anniversary rather than 10th anniversary.
Well yes, but it is a thing. There used to be four or five really good YouTubers I could go to for things like tanks, but now it's all computer-generated voices and stock footage saying things that I'm not sure are true. And that's across the board on every subject. That, and the rise of podcasts and vids where somebody talks into a mic with a neon sign in the background, makes YouTube an increasingly frustrating experience where my favourite creators are cut off by the knees and slop just keeps rising.
Ukraine war Youtube is a lot like that, there’s so many videos that are just a computer voice reading a bad translation of a Telegram or Reddit thread, with stock footage in the background that roughly matches the words. These seem to regularly get hundreds of thousand of views in a few hours, despite the fact that it’s unwatchable and repetitive.
Meanwhile, independent journalists and OSINT guys, many of whom are actually in Ukraine, who do their research and use mapping tools, clearly putting half a day’s work into a 10m video, are getting only tens of thousands of views for it and are obviously not making any money. I’m sure many of them aren’t doing it for the money, rather to draw international attention to the plight of their country, but it does seem that the rewards are not going the right way.
Times Radio and Daily Telegraph also have regular podcasts which are worth a listen.
I probably ought to watch more, but I'm an old fart who likes to read stuff rather than watch vids
I quite like YouTube channels that are not visual-heavy - such as Drachinfel or Perun - that can be listened to whilst I am out on a walk or run, or just doing housework. Either that or Podcasts, which I am still fond of.
Various comments tonight about how 1% annual tax on house values would let you abolish council tax, SDLT, and IHT at a stroke.
At the same time it's a policy where the average home owner will pay the same or less in tax as the current council tax bill, with almost all the incidence falling on rich people in the SE.
Tax simplification. Two fairly unpopular taxes gone, a third one effectively restructured to be considerably more progressive. No loss of tax revenue.
So - why hasn't one of the parties picked it up and run with it? OK it will make a small number of rich voters very angry, but for Reform and these days the Tories, it probably doesn't matter all that much electorally - a policy with 10 winners to every loser and with the losers geographically concentrated in places you don't win anyway, why care? They will all be ABCs in the SE who vote Lib-Dem anyway.
I don’t think the political class is in it to make money. However, I don’t see any of them implementing a policy that would adversely affect them in such a big way. There may be votes in it but it would cost them personally.
Actually, I don't think that's it.
Losers complain more than winners cheer. The losers would blame the government. The winners wouldn't thank them.
And there would be a lot of losers - either wealthy homeoweners in the South East (LibDem or Conservative voters) or people in Central London (Labour voters).
Indeed, as well as the electorate wanting low taxes and high spending, we also want radical changes without anyone becoming worse off. And then wonder why politicians struggle to deliver.
Oh, and another channel I watch, "not a pound for air to ground" (an aviation channel) was threatened for removal by YouTube this week for being AI content.
I really doubt it is.
Good grief, really? I wouldn't have pegged it for such.
Apologies; it was not an accusation of being AI, but reused content.
From a post on his YouTube channel a couple of days ago: "Some news for you all. YouTube has decided that Not A Pound For Air To Ground is "reused content" and have informed me that they intend to suspend me and the channel. I have the opportunity for appeal and will do so, but as it stands I'll go dark on October 13th. Since I'm unclear how they've come to this conclusion, I will side with Marko Ramius and give myself one chance in three."
As you may know, AI slop and YouTube algorithms are killing YouTube channels, to the extent it's become it's own genre. Here is Kurzgesagt pointing this out
Dove instead of dived. AI or decades of America television?
ETA and 10-year anniversary rather than 10th anniversary.
Well yes, but it is a thing. There used to be four or five really good YouTubers I could go to for things like tanks, but now it's all computer-generated voices and stock footage saying things that I'm not sure are true. And that's across the board on every subject. That, and the rise of podcasts and vids where somebody talks into a mic with a neon sign in the background, makes YouTube an increasingly frustrating experience where my favourite creators are cut off by the knees and slop just keeps rising.
Ukraine war Youtube is a lot like that, there’s so many videos that are just a computer voice reading a bad translation of a Telegram or Reddit thread, with stock footage in the background that roughly matches the words. These seem to regularly get hundreds of thousand of views in a few hours, despite the fact that it’s unwatchable and repetitive.
Meanwhile, independent journalists and OSINT guys, many of whom are actually in Ukraine, who do their research and use mapping tools, clearly putting half a day’s work into a 10m video, are getting only tens of thousands of views for it and are obviously not making any money. I’m sure many of them aren’t doing it for the money, rather to draw international attention to the plight of their country, but it does seem that the rewards are not going the right way.
Times Radio and Daily Telegraph also have regular podcasts which are worth a listen.
I probably ought to watch more, but I'm an old fart who likes to read stuff rather than watch vids
I quite like YouTube channels that are not visual-heavy - such as Drachinfel or Perun - that can be listened to whilst I am out on a walk or run, or just doing housework. Either that or Podcasts, which I am still fond of.
I'm currently listening to more podcasts, but as winter draws in I may end up watching more YouTube as my rate of knitting increases.
Ukraine have reported, and shown video (though I can't identify artillery pieces) of the destruction of a Russian ML-20 howitzer. These artillery pieces were produced in the USSR before WWII.
Although drones are taking over to an extent, earlier in the war a majority of Ukrainian casualties were caused by Russian artillery, so Ukrainian counter-battery operations succeeding in forcing Russia to put pre-WWII relics back into service indicates Ukraine coming close to winning the artillery war, which could make a big difference to the future of the war.
They may well have exhausted their tank stocks too:
‼️According to calculations made by OSINT researchers, the amount of Russian tanks in decent condition remaining in storage is ZERO.
◾️1656 are in "poor" condition (about 60% of them probably cannot be restored). ◾️1231 Russian tanks are in "worse" condition, according to the researchers.
Bloke who lost on correct-score football betting wants his money back. He lost in the High Court but was at the Court of Appeal yesterday (and today?).
Society should not be here to bail out the feckless and the lazy. The Incas would have executed this guy.
British benefits for British people may run foul of the ECHR but there is already a version of it in the NRPF legislation. But it most likely will run into a problem with the Withdrawal agreement. But to give it its due, someone like Danny Kruger has been sifting through the legislation to check on this. Would be amusing if this was a Danny Kruger idea that has been rushed out before he could use his new Reform platform.
Even as someone who has researched these things more than most for personal reasons, I was shocked and surprised to learn a couple of weeks ago that non-citizens were entitled to claim benefits at all.
Would be really interesting to see some polling on this.
The Motobility cars has been a real eye-opener, 20% of new car sales in the country being covered at least in part by the scheme.
Non citizens claiming benefits need to have ILR, which means living here 5 years or more, and often for decades.
Various comments tonight about how 1% annual tax on house values would let you abolish council tax, SDLT, and IHT at a stroke.
At the same time it's a policy where the average home owner will pay the same or less in tax as the current council tax bill, with almost all the incidence falling on rich people in the SE.
Tax simplification. Two fairly unpopular taxes gone, a third one effectively restructured to be considerably more progressive. No loss of tax revenue.
So - why hasn't one of the parties picked it up and run with it? OK it will make a small number of rich voters very angry, but for Reform and these days the Tories, it probably doesn't matter all that much electorally - a policy with 10 winners to every loser and with the losers geographically concentrated in places you don't win anyway, why care? They will all be ABCs in the SE who vote Lib-Dem anyway.
I don’t think the political class is in it to make money. However, I don’t see any of them implementing a policy that would adversely affect them in such a big way. There may be votes in it but it would cost them personally.
Actually, I don't think that's it.
Losers complain more than winners cheer. The losers would blame the government. The winners wouldn't thank them.
And there would be a lot of losers - either wealthy homeoweners in the South East (LibDem or Conservative voters) or people in Central London (Labour voters).
Wealthy homeowners are already not paying enough in council tax
Council taxes being based on 1991 property values is absurd.
That's just the banding, as long as extensions and new builds are correctly rebanded/banded then it doesn't matter when the valuations were done. The move from rates to poll tax then to banding is where the really expensive properties got their tax break.
As you may know, AI slop and YouTube algorithms are killing YouTube channels, to the extent it's become it's own genre. Here is Kurzgesagt pointing this out
Dove instead of dived. AI or decades of America television?
ETA and 10-year anniversary rather than 10th anniversary.
Well yes, but it is a thing. There used to be four or five really good YouTubers I could go to for things like tanks, but now it's all computer-generated voices and stock footage saying things that I'm not sure are true. And that's across the board on every subject. That, and the rise of podcasts and vids where somebody talks into a mic with a neon sign in the background, makes YouTube an increasingly frustrating experience where my favourite creators are cut off by the knees and slop just keeps rising.
Ukraine war Youtube is a lot like that, there’s so many videos that are just a computer voice reading a bad translation of a Telegram or Reddit thread, with stock footage in the background that roughly matches the words. These seem to regularly get hundreds of thousand of views in a few hours, despite the fact that it’s unwatchable and repetitive.
Meanwhile, independent journalists and OSINT guys, many of whom are actually in Ukraine, who do their research and use mapping tools, clearly putting half a day’s work into a 10m video, are getting only tens of thousands of views for it and are obviously not making any money. I’m sure many of them aren’t doing it for the money, rather to draw international attention to the plight of their country, but it does seem that the rewards are not going the right way.
Times Radio and Daily Telegraph also have regular podcasts which are worth a listen.
Do you know if the viewing figures for the good channels has decreased?
Most of my YouTube watching is of channels I've subscribed to, so I'm not really affected by AI slop. The change would be that I'd need to rely on other people recommending new channels to me, rather than finding things through YouTube's algorithm, so that might be a good change if the AI slop breaks the algorithm.
Scott Manley's recently complained that the viewership of his channel has decreased - Around the time he chucked in his job to become a full-time YouTuber.
Putin’s big bet on gold pays off as price tops $4,000 As the Kremlin’s war with Ukraine wages on, a stockpile of bullion has helped keep Russia afloat ... Russia’s central bank switched from being a net seller of gold to a net buyer in 2006 and has amassed one of the largest stockpiles in the world. The gold reserves are part of Putin’s plan to construct a “fortress Russia” economy impervious to sanctions.
British benefits for British people may run foul of the ECHR but there is already a version of it in the NRPF legislation. But it most likely will run into a problem with the Withdrawal agreement. But to give it its due, someone like Danny Kruger has been sifting through the legislation to check on this. Would be amusing if this was a Danny Kruger idea that has been rushed out before he could use his new Reform platform.
The Motability thing is already bullshit, you need higher rate mobility on your PIP to get it, it is not for people with Adhd. I have never seen anyone whose mobility is affected by a neurodivergency getting more than lower rate mobility
So why has spending on the programme increased so much (genuine question - not looked into it)
Various comments tonight about how 1% annual tax on house values would let you abolish council tax, SDLT, and IHT at a stroke.
At the same time it's a policy where the average home owner will pay the same or less in tax as the current council tax bill, with almost all the incidence falling on rich people in the SE.
Tax simplification. Two fairly unpopular taxes gone, a third one effectively restructured to be considerably more progressive. No loss of tax revenue.
So - why hasn't one of the parties picked it up and run with it? OK it will make a small number of rich voters very angry, but for Reform and these days the Tories, it probably doesn't matter all that much electorally - a policy with 10 winners to every loser and with the losers geographically concentrated in places you don't win anyway, why care? They will all be ABCs in the SE who vote Lib-Dem anyway.
I don’t think the political class is in it to make money. However, I don’t see any of them implementing a policy that would adversely affect them in such a big way. There may be votes in it but it would cost them personally.
Actually, I don't think that's it.
Losers complain more than winners cheer. The losers would blame the government. The winners wouldn't thank them.
And there would be a lot of losers - either wealthy homeoweners in the South East (LibDem or Conservative voters) or people in Central London (Labour voters).
It’s another example of why tax reform needs to be a big package, not one or two niche changes that can be picked off by the losers.
Land value taxation makes economic sense across the board, pretty much. Rather than, say, abolishing SDLT and replacing with a small land tax, it makes more sense to abolish SDLT, overhaul both council tax and business rates, and cut income tax or NI in exchange for a much larger land value tax.
Take that Lib Dem / Tory marginal voter in the SE with land worth say 500k (out of an overall property value of 800k) and household income of 100k. A 2% land tax would be £10k a year. Council tax might currently be 3-4k. An NI or IT cut of 2% would be another 2k. Increase the tax cuts to more like 3-4% and you’re almost neutral even for that SE voter, so long as they are working not retired. So you can see how the maths might start to add up.
All of this encourages work and productive investment and discourages unproductive land banking.
Ukraine have reported, and shown video (though I can't identify artillery pieces) of the destruction of a Russian ML-20 howitzer. These artillery pieces were produced in the USSR before WWII.
Although drones are taking over to an extent, earlier in the war a majority of Ukrainian casualties were caused by Russian artillery, so Ukrainian counter-battery operations succeeding in forcing Russia to put pre-WWII relics back into service indicates Ukraine coming close to winning the artillery war, which could make a big difference to the future of the war.
LOL at the 1930s artillery piece, did they drag that out of a museum?
Russian tank production has also ground to a halt, as recent pictures of the famous old Soviet tank storage yards show them now pretty much empty of everything but scrap metal.
Production of new tanks, rather than refurbishment of old ones, is only around a dozen per month, and tanks are said to have pretty much disappeared from the front lines of the war.
It’s taken only three years for the entire Soviet arsenal of land weapons to have been almost totally exhausted. There’s a lot of NorK kit now spotted in the field, and suggestions that Iran has been shipping old weapons to Russia as well. One ship from Iran on its way to Russia was blown up a couple of weeks ago, thought to contain both old heavy kit and new drones.
Bloke who lost on correct-score football betting wants his money back. He lost in the High Court but was at the Court of Appeal yesterday (and today?).
Society should not be here to bail out the feckless and the lazy. The Incas would have executed this guy.
That was a bit of a leap there! Aside from not knowing whether gambling was a problem the Incas had to deal with, since when was pre-Colombian America our benchmark?
British benefits for British people may run foul of the ECHR but there is already a version of it in the NRPF legislation. But it most likely will run into a problem with the Withdrawal agreement. But to give it its due, someone like Danny Kruger has been sifting through the legislation to check on this. Would be amusing if this was a Danny Kruger idea that has been rushed out before he could use his new Reform platform.
Even as someone who has researched these things more than most for personal reasons, I was shocked and surprised to learn a couple of weeks ago that non-citizens were entitled to claim benefits at all.
Would be really interesting to see some polling on this.
The Motobility cars has been a real eye-opener, 20% of new car sales in the country being covered at least in part by the scheme.
Non citizens claiming benefits need to have ILR, which means living here 5 years or more, and often for decades.
Bloke who lost on correct-score football betting wants his money back. He lost in the High Court but was at the Court of Appeal yesterday (and today?).
Bloke who lost on correct-score football betting wants his money back. He lost in the High Court but was at the Court of Appeal yesterday (and today?).
Society should not be here to bail out the feckless and the lazy. The Incas would have executed this guy.
In the UK as an alternative, he just has to sit in court for days. To alleviate the boredom, they invented PB.
As you may know, AI slop and YouTube algorithms are killing YouTube channels, to the extent it's become it's own genre. Here is Kurzgesagt pointing this out
Dove instead of dived. AI or decades of America television?
ETA and 10-year anniversary rather than 10th anniversary.
Well yes, but it is a thing. There used to be four or five really good YouTubers I could go to for things like tanks, but now it's all computer-generated voices and stock footage saying things that I'm not sure are true. And that's across the board on every subject. That, and the rise of podcasts and vids where somebody talks into a mic with a neon sign in the background, makes YouTube an increasingly frustrating experience where my favourite creators are cut off by the knees and slop just keeps rising.
Ukraine war Youtube is a lot like that, there’s so many videos that are just a computer voice reading a bad translation of a Telegram or Reddit thread, with stock footage in the background that roughly matches the words. These seem to regularly get hundreds of thousand of views in a few hours, despite the fact that it’s unwatchable and repetitive.
Meanwhile, independent journalists and OSINT guys, many of whom are actually in Ukraine, who do their research and use mapping tools, clearly putting half a day’s work into a 10m video, are getting only tens of thousands of views for it and are obviously not making any money. I’m sure many of them aren’t doing it for the money, rather to draw international attention to the plight of their country, but it does seem that the rewards are not going the right way.
Times Radio and Daily Telegraph also have regular podcasts which are worth a listen.
I probably ought to watch more, but I'm an old fart who likes to read stuff rather than watch vids
I quite like YouTube channels that are not visual-heavy - such as Drachinfel or Perun - that can be listened to whilst I am out on a walk or run, or just doing housework. Either that or Podcasts, which I am still fond of.
You might like The Histories (JustAnotherHistoryChannel) which tends to have longish (around an hour) videos exploring the backgrounds of lesser known ancient peoples, like the Etruscans or Phoenicians. Doesn't update often but I like the content rather a lot.
Conference season ends and I believe the unexpected happened
Kemi Badenoch delivered the best speech, rolled out an array of policies, and stamp duty the 'rabbit out of the hat'
She energised her supporters and have given them something to sell on the doorstep
And she did what I prayed she would, sent out a positive [conservative] message and barely mentioned Starmer or Farage
Labour and Farage fell into the trap of hurling insults at each other to the detriment of both
The added bonus is Jenrick is the biggest loser
I do not know how the polls will react, but today was a start on the long road to relevance
Rabbit out of a hat, or bollocks out of her arse?
Pound shop Liz Truss.
No Kemi identified welfare and spending cuts to fund her tax cut
It wasn't just welfare but cuts in climate change subsidies and increasing north sea production with associated tax income, as well as welcoming back millionaires, entrepreneurs, and wealth creators
She also will scrap IHT on farmers and abolish vat on private school fees
Add in banning doctor strikes
This is conservative policies and is a direct challenge to Labour and Reform
This is pennies BigG. No spending cuts plan is credible without some sort of control on pensioner benefits and health spending. They are are growing so quickly - from a very high base - that any other cut or even steady economic growth is completely overwhelmed by them. Literally by design in the case of the triple lock.
Labour haven't set out a plan either but let's not pretend the Conservative plan is fiscally prudent. DavidL's take on this is correct.
Google tells me that the number of UK civil servants has increased since 2016 by 132,000 and that the median salary is £34k.
That would imply a saving of £4.5bn under the Tory plan.
Not commenting on whether it is feasible or not but it’s not “pennies”
Bloke who lost on correct-score football betting wants his money back. He lost in the High Court but was at the Court of Appeal yesterday (and today?).
Putin’s big bet on gold pays off as price tops $4,000 As the Kremlin’s war with Ukraine wages on, a stockpile of bullion has helped keep Russia afloat ... Russia’s central bank switched from being a net seller of gold to a net buyer in 2006 and has amassed one of the largest stockpiles in the world. The gold reserves are part of Putin’s plan to construct a “fortress Russia” economy impervious to sanctions.
Putin’s big bet on gold pays off as price tops $4,000 As the Kremlin’s war with Ukraine wages on, a stockpile of bullion has helped keep Russia afloat ... Russia’s central bank switched from being a net seller of gold to a net buyer in 2006 and has amassed one of the largest stockpiles in the world. The gold reserves are part of Putin’s plan to construct a “fortress Russia” economy impervious to sanctions.
Because I guess those nice Chinese folks will pay full market price for it
Gold seems a market ripe for disruption. Time for someone to start manufacturing vast quantities of synthetic gold. They just need a few vast nuclear reactors and infinite amounts of energy to do so.
Various comments tonight about how 1% annual tax on house values would let you abolish council tax, SDLT, and IHT at a stroke.
At the same time it's a policy where the average home owner will pay the same or less in tax as the current council tax bill, with almost all the incidence falling on rich people in the SE.
Tax simplification. Two fairly unpopular taxes gone, a third one effectively restructured to be considerably more progressive. No loss of tax revenue.
So - why hasn't one of the parties picked it up and run with it? OK it will make a small number of rich voters very angry, but for Reform and these days the Tories, it probably doesn't matter all that much electorally - a policy with 10 winners to every loser and with the losers geographically concentrated in places you don't win anyway, why care? They will all be ABCs in the SE who vote Lib-Dem anyway.
I don’t think the political class is in it to make money. However, I don’t see any of them implementing a policy that would adversely affect them in such a big way. There may be votes in it but it would cost them personally.
Actually, I don't think that's it.
Losers complain more than winners cheer. The losers would blame the government. The winners wouldn't thank them.
And there would be a lot of losers - either wealthy homeoweners in the South East (LibDem or Conservative voters) or people in Central London (Labour voters).
Wealthy homeowners are already not paying enough in council tax
Council taxes being based on 1991 property values is absurd.
That’s not the issue. That’s just about who pays in a small geographic area.
The issue is that central government mandates spending while also capping the ability of local government to raise taxes.
So they don’t have any money to provide the little things that improve a community (beautification, libraries, etc) and barely enough to manage core services.
Redistribution is something that should be pursued by central government if desired
Conference season ends and I believe the unexpected happened
Kemi Badenoch delivered the best speech, rolled out an array of policies, and stamp duty the 'rabbit out of the hat'
She energised her supporters and have given them something to sell on the doorstep
And she did what I prayed she would, sent out a positive [conservative] message and barely mentioned Starmer or Farage
Labour and Farage fell into the trap of hurling insults at each other to the detriment of both
The added bonus is Jenrick is the biggest loser
I do not know how the polls will react, but today was a start on the long road to relevance
Rabbit out of a hat, or bollocks out of her arse?
Pound shop Liz Truss.
No Kemi identified welfare and spending cuts to fund her tax cut
It wasn't just welfare but cuts in climate change subsidies and increasing north sea production with associated tax income, as well as welcoming back millionaires, entrepreneurs, and wealth creators
She also will scrap IHT on farmers and abolish vat on private school fees
Add in banning doctor strikes
This is conservative policies and is a direct challenge to Labour and Reform
This is pennies BigG. No spending cuts plan is credible without some sort of control on pensioner benefits and health spending. They are are growing so quickly - from a very high base - that any other cut or even steady economic growth is completely overwhelmed by them. Literally by design in the case of the triple lock.
Labour haven't set out a plan either but let's not pretend the Conservative plan is fiscally prudent. DavidL's take on this is correct.
Google tells me that the number of UK civil servants has increased since 2016 by 132,000 and that the median salary is £34k.
That would imply a saving of £4.5bn under the Tory plan.
Not commenting on whether it is feasible or not but it’s not “pennies”
True - but I think the fact the median salary is so low suggests what kinds of roles those civil servants are doing - particularly when you consider how London dominated the civil service is.
If you could cut 130,000 people out of Whitehall or it's equivalent in Scotland, Wales then fair enough. But I think the stats show that increase is primarily agencies like HMRC and DWP. Basically call centres, which would mean a reduced service. AI might be the answer to that but it's not a magic button you can press.
Ukraine have reported, and shown video (though I can't identify artillery pieces) of the destruction of a Russian ML-20 howitzer. These artillery pieces were produced in the USSR before WWII.
Although drones are taking over to an extent, earlier in the war a majority of Ukrainian casualties were caused by Russian artillery, so Ukrainian counter-battery operations succeeding in forcing Russia to put pre-WWII relics back into service indicates Ukraine coming close to winning the artillery war, which could make a big difference to the future of the war.
They may well have exhausted their tank stocks too:
‼️According to calculations made by OSINT researchers, the amount of Russian tanks in decent condition remaining in storage is ZERO.
◾️1656 are in "poor" condition (about 60% of them probably cannot be restored). ◾️1231 Russian tanks are in "worse" condition, according to the researchers.
Bloke who lost on correct-score football betting wants his money back. He lost in the High Court but was at the Court of Appeal yesterday (and today?).
It’s always someone else’s fault.
If he’s lost all that cash how’s he funding it ?
He’s described in the article as “a multimillionaire property investor”.
The £1.5m was over 10 years, so about twelve grand a month on average, and he was on Betfair’s VIP list with his own relationship manager.
He’s probably gambled a few hundred grand more on bringing the case to court!
Any chance of a positive post about Kemi Badenoch after she delivered that really positive and well received policy filled speech at the Conservative Conference? Interesting to note that some of the journalists there who had already written her off have changed their minds after that speech, but none of you seem to remember how tough it was for David Cameron when he was elected and how unpopular George Osborne was within the Conservative party until they unveiled their inheritance tax policy at conference....
Like Cameron and Osborne back in the day when Blair resigned and Brown took over as the new face of Labour and initially dominated the polling, Kemi pulled a blinder which ignored Farage and Reform and delivered some really solid Conservative policies that Farage didn't during the Reform conference. Watch this space...
I just watched it. Was certainly well-delivered and she seemed entirely at ease: a good sign as temperament is incredibly important in a role like that.
I keep going backwards and forwards with Kemi. She has become leader too early, perhaps fatally so, like Hague. And yet, the talent is there, and maybe a sprinkling of stardust. But the ogre of May 2026 lies in wait. I wish her luck as she could well be a good thing.
I thought the speech utterly incoherent. Actually worse than Liz Truss. The difference of course was that Truss was Prime Minister and important, while Badenoch fortunately is irrelevant.
You OK hun?
Not really politically speaking but Badenoch's dismal Conference speech has nothing to do with that. Half her speech was platitudes and insults against the other parties - mainly Labour even though Labour isn't at all the driver for the Conservatives' 16% standing in the polls. But fair enough, if a party leader can't serve platitudes and insult the other parties in a conference speech, when can they?
The other half is the problem. So she says:
[Young people] feel they are living somewhere where things never get any better. Britain is stagnating, while the world around us moves on. We are competing with restless and ambitious countries around the world. We are competing with a billion people in India striving to become middle class. We are competing with economic success stories like Poland. 15 years ago, Polish workers came here to find opportunity. Now, Poland is growing twice as fast as we are. While Britain was redefining what a woman is, China was building five nuclear reactors.
On whose watch did this happen and why? Does she think that happened entirely in the last 14 months? Actually from the rest of the speech it appears she does. But not the slightest hint of the "bold ideas", "positive vision for this country" and "plan to deliver it" in her speech.
A public sector which already every year, demands more and more and more of our money, yet services don’t get better, they get worse.
Why does she think this is? (I have a good idea and interestingly I don't think it's mainly the previous government's fault). Her solution for collapsing public services is to spend less money on them.
Her "fully costed savings" that offset mostly uncosted tax cuts
Starmer and Reeves have done far more damage to our economy with their job destroying budgets and enormous new black hole entirely made in nos 10 and 11
I blame Starmer and Reeves for not focusing on growth as they said they were going to do and have got far too much caught up in Reform's culture wars. Nevertheless economic growth so far is marginally higher than it was in the last couple of years when Badenoch was in government.
Their big driver of growth was supposed to be house building. So far they've utterly failed on that. Planning reform has been delayed and watered down to near insignificance, and housing starts in some areas (London for example) have flatlined.
Good intentions, and very few achievements.
As an aside, the long overdue of licensing laws is very welcome, so one cheer for that. But while it provides some relief for that sector, its economic significance is relatively minor.
Putin’s big bet on gold pays off as price tops $4,000 As the Kremlin’s war with Ukraine wages on, a stockpile of bullion has helped keep Russia afloat ... Russia’s central bank switched from being a net seller of gold to a net buyer in 2006 and has amassed one of the largest stockpiles in the world. The gold reserves are part of Putin’s plan to construct a “fortress Russia” economy impervious to sanctions.
Because I guess those nice Chinese folks will pay full market price for it
Gold seems a market ripe for disruption. Time for someone to start manufacturing vast quantities of synthetic gold. They just need a few vast nuclear reactors and infinite amounts of energy to do so.
Gold ETFs have already done that to some extent. I should probably convert the stuff I have buried in the garden but I’m too lazy to dig it up
Conference season ends and I believe the unexpected happened
Kemi Badenoch delivered the best speech, rolled out an array of policies, and stamp duty the 'rabbit out of the hat'
She energised her supporters and have given them something to sell on the doorstep
And she did what I prayed she would, sent out a positive [conservative] message and barely mentioned Starmer or Farage
Labour and Farage fell into the trap of hurling insults at each other to the detriment of both
The added bonus is Jenrick is the biggest loser
I do not know how the polls will react, but today was a start on the long road to relevance
Rabbit out of a hat, or bollocks out of her arse?
Pound shop Liz Truss.
No Kemi identified welfare and spending cuts to fund her tax cut
It wasn't just welfare but cuts in climate change subsidies and increasing north sea production with associated tax income, as well as welcoming back millionaires, entrepreneurs, and wealth creators
She also will scrap IHT on farmers and abolish vat on private school fees
Add in banning doctor strikes
This is conservative policies and is a direct challenge to Labour and Reform
This is pennies BigG. No spending cuts plan is credible without some sort of control on pensioner benefits and health spending. They are are growing so quickly - from a very high base - that any other cut or even steady economic growth is completely overwhelmed by them. Literally by design in the case of the triple lock.
Labour haven't set out a plan either but let's not pretend the Conservative plan is fiscally prudent. DavidL's take on this is correct.
Google tells me that the number of UK civil servants has increased since 2016 by 132,000 and that the median salary is £34k.
That would imply a saving of £4.5bn under the Tory plan.
Not commenting on whether it is feasible or not but it’s not “pennies”
It is worth remembering that a number of competences were repatriated from Brussels, and which require civil servants.
Bloke who lost on correct-score football betting wants his money back. He lost in the High Court but was at the Court of Appeal yesterday (and today?).
It’s always someone else’s fault.
If he’s lost all that cash how’s he funding it ?
Para's #172 - #174 seem to sum up the issue. Apparently he was a landlord.
172. Had I found a breach of duty I would have concluded that Mr Gibson would in any event have gone on to lose at least the same sums elsewhere.
173. Mr Gibson was determined to gamble. If Betfair had stopped him gambling in 2015 or at any time I am quite satisfied that he would have gambled elsewhere and to the same extent. He would have remained a moderate problem gambler with large sums of money at his disposal and he would have continued to hide his problems. The best evidence of that is what he actually did when Betfair would no longer deal with him.
174. I do not accept the argument that other gambling providers would have recognised him as a problem gambler and ceased to deal with him. The evidence shows, and I have found, that he kept his problem under wraps, was able to afford to bet at the level he did (he passed all AML investigations), would not tell the truth when asked if he was comfortable about his losses, and would not use tools to limit his gambling.
Conference season ends and I believe the unexpected happened
Kemi Badenoch delivered the best speech, rolled out an array of policies, and stamp duty the 'rabbit out of the hat'
She energised her supporters and have given them something to sell on the doorstep
And she did what I prayed she would, sent out a positive [conservative] message and barely mentioned Starmer or Farage
Labour and Farage fell into the trap of hurling insults at each other to the detriment of both
The added bonus is Jenrick is the biggest loser
I do not know how the polls will react, but today was a start on the long road to relevance
Rabbit out of a hat, or bollocks out of her arse?
Pound shop Liz Truss.
No Kemi identified welfare and spending cuts to fund her tax cut
It wasn't just welfare but cuts in climate change subsidies and increasing north sea production with associated tax income, as well as welcoming back millionaires, entrepreneurs, and wealth creators
She also will scrap IHT on farmers and abolish vat on private school fees
Add in banning doctor strikes
This is conservative policies and is a direct challenge to Labour and Reform
This is pennies BigG. No spending cuts plan is credible without some sort of control on pensioner benefits and health spending. They are are growing so quickly - from a very high base - that any other cut or even steady economic growth is completely overwhelmed by them. Literally by design in the case of the triple lock.
Labour haven't set out a plan either but let's not pretend the Conservative plan is fiscally prudent. DavidL's take on this is correct.
Google tells me that the number of UK civil servants has increased since 2016 by 132,000 and that the median salary is £34k.
That would imply a saving of £4.5bn under the Tory plan.
Not commenting on whether it is feasible or not but it’s not “pennies”
True - but I think the fact the median salary is so low suggests what kinds of roles those civil servants are doing - particularly when you consider how London dominated the civil service is.
If you could cut 130,000 people out of Whitehall or it's equivalent in Scotland, Wales then fair enough. But I think the stats show that increase is primarily agencies like HMRC and DWP. Basically call centres, which would mean a reduced service. AI might be the answer to that but it's not a magic button you can press.
A better way of explaining this is that the health budget is going up by £23 billion in this parliament alone. So you'll have to make cuts 5x bigger than that to cover that increase - and keep on cutting by another £6 billion each year just to keep spending flat.
Various comments tonight about how 1% annual tax on house values would let you abolish council tax, SDLT, and IHT at a stroke.
At the same time it's a policy where the average home owner will pay the same or less in tax as the current council tax bill, with almost all the incidence falling on rich people in the SE.
Tax simplification. Two fairly unpopular taxes gone, a third one effectively restructured to be considerably more progressive. No loss of tax revenue.
So - why hasn't one of the parties picked it up and run with it? OK it will make a small number of rich voters very angry, but for Reform and these days the Tories, it probably doesn't matter all that much electorally - a policy with 10 winners to every loser and with the losers geographically concentrated in places you don't win anyway, why care? They will all be ABCs in the SE who vote Lib-Dem anyway.
I don’t think the political class is in it to make money. However, I don’t see any of them implementing a policy that would adversely affect them in such a big way. There may be votes in it but it would cost them personally.
Actually, I don't think that's it.
Losers complain more than winners cheer. The losers would blame the government. The winners wouldn't thank them.
And there would be a lot of losers - either wealthy homeoweners in the South East (LibDem or Conservative voters) or people in Central London (Labour voters).
Wealthy homeowners are already not paying enough in council tax
Council taxes being based on 1991 property values is absurd.
That's just the banding, as long as extensions and new builds are correctly rebanded/banded then it doesn't matter when the valuations were done. The move from rates to poll tax then to banding is where the really expensive properties got their tax break.
A deliberate design feature, to retain something of the poll tax element.
Conference season ends and I believe the unexpected happened
Kemi Badenoch delivered the best speech, rolled out an array of policies, and stamp duty the 'rabbit out of the hat'
She energised her supporters and have given them something to sell on the doorstep
And she did what I prayed she would, sent out a positive [conservative] message and barely mentioned Starmer or Farage
Labour and Farage fell into the trap of hurling insults at each other to the detriment of both
The added bonus is Jenrick is the biggest loser
I do not know how the polls will react, but today was a start on the long road to relevance
Rabbit out of a hat, or bollocks out of her arse?
Pound shop Liz Truss.
No Kemi identified welfare and spending cuts to fund her tax cut
It wasn't just welfare but cuts in climate change subsidies and increasing north sea production with associated tax income, as well as welcoming back millionaires, entrepreneurs, and wealth creators
She also will scrap IHT on farmers and abolish vat on private school fees
Add in banning doctor strikes
This is conservative policies and is a direct challenge to Labour and Reform
This is pennies BigG. No spending cuts plan is credible without some sort of control on pensioner benefits and health spending. They are are growing so quickly - from a very high base - that any other cut or even steady economic growth is completely overwhelmed by them. Literally by design in the case of the triple lock.
Labour haven't set out a plan either but let's not pretend the Conservative plan is fiscally prudent. DavidL's take on this is correct.
Google tells me that the number of UK civil servants has increased since 2016 by 132,000 and that the median salary is £34k.
That would imply a saving of £4.5bn under the Tory plan.
Not commenting on whether it is feasible or not but it’s not “pennies”
True - but I think the fact the median salary is so low suggests what kinds of roles those civil servants are doing - particularly when you consider how London dominated the civil service is.
If you could cut 130,000 people out of Whitehall or it's equivalent in Scotland, Wales then fair enough. But I think the stats show that increase is primarily agencies like HMRC and DWP. Basically call centres, which would mean a reduced service. AI might be the answer to that but it's not a magic button you can press.
It said that the range was £24 - 84k (from memory - haven’t checked).
The only way to plausibly cuts costs is to stop doing stuff. Governments need to cut verticals rather than horizontally. (Equally I am sure that there are the sort of grinding efficiencies - 1, 2, 3 percent a year - that the private sector makes which government agencies never seem to be able to find)
Conference season ends and I believe the unexpected happened
Kemi Badenoch delivered the best speech, rolled out an array of policies, and stamp duty the 'rabbit out of the hat'
She energised her supporters and have given them something to sell on the doorstep
And she did what I prayed she would, sent out a positive [conservative] message and barely mentioned Starmer or Farage
Labour and Farage fell into the trap of hurling insults at each other to the detriment of both
The added bonus is Jenrick is the biggest loser
I do not know how the polls will react, but today was a start on the long road to relevance
Rabbit out of a hat, or bollocks out of her arse?
Pound shop Liz Truss.
No Kemi identified welfare and spending cuts to fund her tax cut
It wasn't just welfare but cuts in climate change subsidies and increasing north sea production with associated tax income, as well as welcoming back millionaires, entrepreneurs, and wealth creators
She also will scrap IHT on farmers and abolish vat on private school fees
Add in banning doctor strikes
This is conservative policies and is a direct challenge to Labour and Reform
This is pennies BigG. No spending cuts plan is credible without some sort of control on pensioner benefits and health spending. They are are growing so quickly - from a very high base - that any other cut or even steady economic growth is completely overwhelmed by them. Literally by design in the case of the triple lock.
Labour haven't set out a plan either but let's not pretend the Conservative plan is fiscally prudent. DavidL's take on this is correct.
Google tells me that the number of UK civil servants has increased since 2016 by 132,000 and that the median salary is £34k.
That would imply a saving of £4.5bn under the Tory plan.
Not commenting on whether it is feasible or not but it’s not “pennies”
True - but I think the fact the median salary is so low suggests what kinds of roles those civil servants are doing - particularly when you consider how London dominated the civil service is.
If you could cut 130,000 people out of Whitehall or it's equivalent in Scotland, Wales then fair enough. But I think the stats show that increase is primarily agencies like HMRC and DWP. Basically call centres, which would mean a reduced service. AI might be the answer to that but it's not a magic button you can press.
It said that the range was £24 - 84k (from memory - haven’t checked).
The only way to plausibly cuts costs is to stop doing stuff. Governments need to cut verticals rather than horizontally. (Equally I am sure that there are the sort of grinding efficiencies - 1, 2, 3 percent a year - that the private sector makes which government agencies never seem to be able to find)
The restriction on ILR benefits are vertical in that one group is bounced out into another category. The additional point is that ILR don't have votes but pensioners do.
Ukraine have reported, and shown video (though I can't identify artillery pieces) of the destruction of a Russian ML-20 howitzer. These artillery pieces were produced in the USSR before WWII.
Although drones are taking over to an extent, earlier in the war a majority of Ukrainian casualties were caused by Russian artillery, so Ukrainian counter-battery operations succeeding in forcing Russia to put pre-WWII relics back into service indicates Ukraine coming close to winning the artillery war, which could make a big difference to the future of the war.
They may well have exhausted their tank stocks too:
‼️According to calculations made by OSINT researchers, the amount of Russian tanks in decent condition remaining in storage is ZERO.
◾️1656 are in "poor" condition (about 60% of them probably cannot be restored). ◾️1231 Russian tanks are in "worse" condition, according to the researchers.
Conference season ends and I believe the unexpected happened
Kemi Badenoch delivered the best speech, rolled out an array of policies, and stamp duty the 'rabbit out of the hat'
She energised her supporters and have given them something to sell on the doorstep
And she did what I prayed she would, sent out a positive [conservative] message and barely mentioned Starmer or Farage
Labour and Farage fell into the trap of hurling insults at each other to the detriment of both
The added bonus is Jenrick is the biggest loser
I do not know how the polls will react, but today was a start on the long road to relevance
Rabbit out of a hat, or bollocks out of her arse?
Pound shop Liz Truss.
No Kemi identified welfare and spending cuts to fund her tax cut
It wasn't just welfare but cuts in climate change subsidies and increasing north sea production with associated tax income, as well as welcoming back millionaires, entrepreneurs, and wealth creators
She also will scrap IHT on farmers and abolish vat on private school fees
Add in banning doctor strikes
This is conservative policies and is a direct challenge to Labour and Reform
This is pennies BigG. No spending cuts plan is credible without some sort of control on pensioner benefits and health spending. They are are growing so quickly - from a very high base - that any other cut or even steady economic growth is completely overwhelmed by them. Literally by design in the case of the triple lock.
Labour haven't set out a plan either but let's not pretend the Conservative plan is fiscally prudent. DavidL's take on this is correct.
Google tells me that the number of UK civil servants has increased since 2016 by 132,000 and that the median salary is £34k.
That would imply a saving of £4.5bn under the Tory plan.
Not commenting on whether it is feasible or not but it’s not “pennies”
True - but I think the fact the median salary is so low suggests what kinds of roles those civil servants are doing - particularly when you consider how London dominated the civil service is.
If you could cut 130,000 people out of Whitehall or it's equivalent in Scotland, Wales then fair enough. But I think the stats show that increase is primarily agencies like HMRC and DWP. Basically call centres, which would mean a reduced service. AI might be the answer to that but it's not a magic button you can press.
It said that the range was £24 - 84k (from memory - haven’t checked).
The only way to plausibly cuts costs is to stop doing stuff. Governments need to cut verticals rather than horizontally. (Equally I am sure that there are the sort of grinding efficiencies - 1, 2, 3 percent a year - that the private sector makes which government agencies never seem to be able to find)
And that's why, at the moment, this is Potemkin Policy. Tell us which Civil Servants are going to be axed, and what's going to happen to the work they were doing, and it gets interesting. "It won't be done by the state" is a legitimate answer.
Otherwise, Kemi is doing the fun bit without doing the hard work first. Maggie wouldn't have approved.
Various comments tonight about how 1% annual tax on house values would let you abolish council tax, SDLT, and IHT at a stroke.
At the same time it's a policy where the average home owner will pay the same or less in tax as the current council tax bill, with almost all the incidence falling on rich people in the SE.
Tax simplification. Two fairly unpopular taxes gone, a third one effectively restructured to be considerably more progressive. No loss of tax revenue.
So - why hasn't one of the parties picked it up and run with it? OK it will make a small number of rich voters very angry, but for Reform and these days the Tories, it probably doesn't matter all that much electorally - a policy with 10 winners to every loser and with the losers geographically concentrated in places you don't win anyway, why care? They will all be ABCs in the SE who vote Lib-Dem anyway.
I don’t think the political class is in it to make money. However, I don’t see any of them implementing a policy that would adversely affect them in such a big way. There may be votes in it but it would cost them personally.
Actually, I don't think that's it.
Losers complain more than winners cheer. The losers would blame the government. The winners wouldn't thank them.
And there would be a lot of losers - either wealthy homeoweners in the South East (LibDem or Conservative voters) or people in Central London (Labour voters).
Wealthy homeowners are already not paying enough in council tax
Council taxes being based on 1991 property values is absurd.
That’s not the issue. That’s just about who pays in a small geographic area.
The issue is that central government mandates spending while also capping the ability of local government to raise taxes.
So they don’t have any money to provide the little things that improve a community (beautification, libraries, etc) and barely enough to manage core services.
Redistribution is something that should be pursued by central government if desired
Central government should take over the funding for social care. The local funding model is completely broken, and it is central government which sets the criteria for provision.
Without that, recreating local government's ability to manage their local economies, and to foster economic growth at a local level (something that was a big driver of growth in the last couple of centuries) is almost impossible.
Conference season ends and I believe the unexpected happened
Kemi Badenoch delivered the best speech, rolled out an array of policies, and stamp duty the 'rabbit out of the hat'
She energised her supporters and have given them something to sell on the doorstep
And she did what I prayed she would, sent out a positive [conservative] message and barely mentioned Starmer or Farage
Labour and Farage fell into the trap of hurling insults at each other to the detriment of both
The added bonus is Jenrick is the biggest loser
I do not know how the polls will react, but today was a start on the long road to relevance
Rabbit out of a hat, or bollocks out of her arse?
Pound shop Liz Truss.
No Kemi identified welfare and spending cuts to fund her tax cut
It wasn't just welfare but cuts in climate change subsidies and increasing north sea production with associated tax income, as well as welcoming back millionaires, entrepreneurs, and wealth creators
She also will scrap IHT on farmers and abolish vat on private school fees
Add in banning doctor strikes
This is conservative policies and is a direct challenge to Labour and Reform
This is pennies BigG. No spending cuts plan is credible without some sort of control on pensioner benefits and health spending. They are are growing so quickly - from a very high base - that any other cut or even steady economic growth is completely overwhelmed by them. Literally by design in the case of the triple lock.
Labour haven't set out a plan either but let's not pretend the Conservative plan is fiscally prudent. DavidL's take on this is correct.
Google tells me that the number of UK civil servants has increased since 2016 by 132,000 and that the median salary is £34k.
That would imply a saving of £4.5bn under the Tory plan.
Not commenting on whether it is feasible or not but it’s not “pennies”
True - but I think the fact the median salary is so low suggests what kinds of roles those civil servants are doing - particularly when you consider how London dominated the civil service is.
If you could cut 130,000 people out of Whitehall or it's equivalent in Scotland, Wales then fair enough. But I think the stats show that increase is primarily agencies like HMRC and DWP. Basically call centres, which would mean a reduced service. AI might be the answer to that but it's not a magic button you can press.
It said that the range was £24 - 84k (from memory - haven’t checked).
The only way to plausibly cuts costs is to stop doing stuff. Governments need to cut verticals rather than horizontally. (Equally I am sure that there are the sort of grinding efficiencies - 1, 2, 3 percent a year - that the private sector makes which government agencies never seem to be able to find)
Productivity is definitely an issue, and there’s loads of things that could be moved from in-person or on-phone to online services for a majority of interactions. What they have done is awfully half-hearted, for example the DVLA website only works during office hours.
There’s probably a layer or two that could be sliced out of the management structure when compared to the private sector, and way too many people who spend their days shuffling papers or writing reports that no-one will ever read.
But yes, the big savings are in eliminating whole departments and functions of government.
Ukraine have reported, and shown video (though I can't identify artillery pieces) of the destruction of a Russian ML-20 howitzer. These artillery pieces were produced in the USSR before WWII.
Although drones are taking over to an extent, earlier in the war a majority of Ukrainian casualties were caused by Russian artillery, so Ukrainian counter-battery operations succeeding in forcing Russia to put pre-WWII relics back into service indicates Ukraine coming close to winning the artillery war, which could make a big difference to the future of the war.
They may well have exhausted their tank stocks too:
‼️According to calculations made by OSINT researchers, the amount of Russian tanks in decent condition remaining in storage is ZERO.
◾️1656 are in "poor" condition (about 60% of them probably cannot be restored). ◾️1231 Russian tanks are in "worse" condition, according to the researchers.
You are forgetting their strategic reserve in .. N Korea.
North Korean has well over 3,000 tanks; however most are old and unlikely to be of very quality; and they'll want to keep a lot for their own purposes. South Korea has around the same number, and they're generally more modern than the T-62-based tanks that comprises much of NK's fleet.
I can imagine a deal where NK 'loans' a few semi-knackered tanks to Russia, with the agreement they'll get shiny new ones (or the machines to build new ones) later in return.
Bloke who lost on correct-score football betting wants his money back. He lost in the High Court but was at the Court of Appeal yesterday (and today?).
It’s always someone else’s fault.
If he’s lost all that cash how’s he funding it ?
Clearly hasn't broken his gambling addiction. Next step is an action against his current legal advisers...
Various comments tonight about how 1% annual tax on house values would let you abolish council tax, SDLT, and IHT at a stroke.
At the same time it's a policy where the average home owner will pay the same or less in tax as the current council tax bill, with almost all the incidence falling on rich people in the SE.
Tax simplification. Two fairly unpopular taxes gone, a third one effectively restructured to be considerably more progressive. No loss of tax revenue.
So - why hasn't one of the parties picked it up and run with it? OK it will make a small number of rich voters very angry, but for Reform and these days the Tories, it probably doesn't matter all that much electorally - a policy with 10 winners to every loser and with the losers geographically concentrated in places you don't win anyway, why care? They will all be ABCs in the SE who vote Lib-Dem anyway.
I don’t think the political class is in it to make money. However, I don’t see any of them implementing a policy that would adversely affect them in such a big way. There may be votes in it but it would cost them personally.
Actually, I don't think that's it.
Losers complain more than winners cheer. The losers would blame the government. The winners wouldn't thank them.
And there would be a lot of losers - either wealthy homeoweners in the South East (LibDem or Conservative voters) or people in Central London (Labour voters).
Wealthy homeowners are already not paying enough in council tax
Council taxes being based on 1991 property values is absurd.
That's just the banding, as long as extensions and new builds are correctly rebanded/banded then it doesn't matter when the valuations were done. The move from rates to poll tax then to banding is where the really expensive properties got their tax break.
A deliberate design feature, to retain something of the poll tax element.
Yes. The policy was to stop taxing property ownership and let the wealthiest off an enormous amount of tax.
Conference season ends and I believe the unexpected happened
Kemi Badenoch delivered the best speech, rolled out an array of policies, and stamp duty the 'rabbit out of the hat'
She energised her supporters and have given them something to sell on the doorstep
And she did what I prayed she would, sent out a positive [conservative] message and barely mentioned Starmer or Farage
Labour and Farage fell into the trap of hurling insults at each other to the detriment of both
The added bonus is Jenrick is the biggest loser
I do not know how the polls will react, but today was a start on the long road to relevance
Rabbit out of a hat, or bollocks out of her arse?
Pound shop Liz Truss.
No Kemi identified welfare and spending cuts to fund her tax cut
It wasn't just welfare but cuts in climate change subsidies and increasing north sea production with associated tax income, as well as welcoming back millionaires, entrepreneurs, and wealth creators
She also will scrap IHT on farmers and abolish vat on private school fees
Add in banning doctor strikes
This is conservative policies and is a direct challenge to Labour and Reform
This is pennies BigG. No spending cuts plan is credible without some sort of control on pensioner benefits and health spending. They are are growing so quickly - from a very high base - that any other cut or even steady economic growth is completely overwhelmed by them. Literally by design in the case of the triple lock.
Labour haven't set out a plan either but let's not pretend the Conservative plan is fiscally prudent. DavidL's take on this is correct.
Google tells me that the number of UK civil servants has increased since 2016 by 132,000 and that the median salary is £34k.
That would imply a saving of £4.5bn under the Tory plan.
Not commenting on whether it is feasible or not but it’s not “pennies”
It is worth remembering that a number of competences were repatriated from Brussels, and which require civil servants.
Which competences (if that’s a word you can use for recent governments) would require that many staff?
Conference season ends and I believe the unexpected happened
Kemi Badenoch delivered the best speech, rolled out an array of policies, and stamp duty the 'rabbit out of the hat'
She energised her supporters and have given them something to sell on the doorstep
And she did what I prayed she would, sent out a positive [conservative] message and barely mentioned Starmer or Farage
Labour and Farage fell into the trap of hurling insults at each other to the detriment of both
The added bonus is Jenrick is the biggest loser
I do not know how the polls will react, but today was a start on the long road to relevance
Rabbit out of a hat, or bollocks out of her arse?
Pound shop Liz Truss.
No Kemi identified welfare and spending cuts to fund her tax cut
It wasn't just welfare but cuts in climate change subsidies and increasing north sea production with associated tax income, as well as welcoming back millionaires, entrepreneurs, and wealth creators
She also will scrap IHT on farmers and abolish vat on private school fees
Add in banning doctor strikes
This is conservative policies and is a direct challenge to Labour and Reform
This is pennies BigG. No spending cuts plan is credible without some sort of control on pensioner benefits and health spending. They are are growing so quickly - from a very high base - that any other cut or even steady economic growth is completely overwhelmed by them. Literally by design in the case of the triple lock.
Labour haven't set out a plan either but let's not pretend the Conservative plan is fiscally prudent. DavidL's take on this is correct.
Google tells me that the number of UK civil servants has increased since 2016 by 132,000 and that the median salary is £34k.
That would imply a saving of £4.5bn under the Tory plan.
Not commenting on whether it is feasible or not but it’s not “pennies”
True - but I think the fact the median salary is so low suggests what kinds of roles those civil servants are doing - particularly when you consider how London dominated the civil service is.
If you could cut 130,000 people out of Whitehall or it's equivalent in Scotland, Wales then fair enough. But I think the stats show that increase is primarily agencies like HMRC and DWP. Basically call centres, which would mean a reduced service. AI might be the answer to that but it's not a magic button you can press.
It said that the range was £24 - 84k (from memory - haven’t checked).
The only way to plausibly cuts costs is to stop doing stuff. Governments need to cut verticals rather than horizontally. (Equally I am sure that there are the sort of grinding efficiencies - 1, 2, 3 percent a year - that the private sector makes which government agencies never seem to be able to find)
The restriction on ILR benefits are vertical in that one group is bounced out into another category. The additional point is that ILR don't have votes but pensioners do.
That’s a good example. It’s not prima facie unreasonable to say that if you want benefits you need to apply for citizenship.
That said, this debate always surprises me. When my wife got ILR (may be 2012/13?) it was marked “to eligible for public benefits” or similar - so I’m surprised to find out that this isn’t standard practice!
Conference season ends and I believe the unexpected happened
Kemi Badenoch delivered the best speech, rolled out an array of policies, and stamp duty the 'rabbit out of the hat'
She energised her supporters and have given them something to sell on the doorstep
And she did what I prayed she would, sent out a positive [conservative] message and barely mentioned Starmer or Farage
Labour and Farage fell into the trap of hurling insults at each other to the detriment of both
The added bonus is Jenrick is the biggest loser
I do not know how the polls will react, but today was a start on the long road to relevance
Rabbit out of a hat, or bollocks out of her arse?
Pound shop Liz Truss.
No Kemi identified welfare and spending cuts to fund her tax cut
It wasn't just welfare but cuts in climate change subsidies and increasing north sea production with associated tax income, as well as welcoming back millionaires, entrepreneurs, and wealth creators
She also will scrap IHT on farmers and abolish vat on private school fees
Add in banning doctor strikes
This is conservative policies and is a direct challenge to Labour and Reform
This is pennies BigG. No spending cuts plan is credible without some sort of control on pensioner benefits and health spending. They are are growing so quickly - from a very high base - that any other cut or even steady economic growth is completely overwhelmed by them. Literally by design in the case of the triple lock.
Labour haven't set out a plan either but let's not pretend the Conservative plan is fiscally prudent. DavidL's take on this is correct.
Google tells me that the number of UK civil servants has increased since 2016 by 132,000 and that the median salary is £34k.
That would imply a saving of £4.5bn under the Tory plan.
Not commenting on whether it is feasible or not but it’s not “pennies”
True - but I think the fact the median salary is so low suggests what kinds of roles those civil servants are doing - particularly when you consider how London dominated the civil service is.
If you could cut 130,000 people out of Whitehall or it's equivalent in Scotland, Wales then fair enough. But I think the stats show that increase is primarily agencies like HMRC and DWP. Basically call centres, which would mean a reduced service. AI might be the answer to that but it's not a magic button you can press.
It said that the range was £24 - 84k (from memory - haven’t checked).
The only way to plausibly cuts costs is to stop doing stuff. Governments need to cut verticals rather than horizontally. (Equally I am sure that there are the sort of grinding efficiencies - 1, 2, 3 percent a year - that the private sector makes which government agencies never seem to be able to find)
And that's why, at the moment, this is Potemkin Policy. Tell us which Civil Servants are going to be axed, and what's going to happen to the work they were doing, and it gets interesting. "It won't be done by the state" is a legitimate answer.
Otherwise, Kemi is doing the fun bit without doing the hard work first. Maggie wouldn't have approved.
She needs to do the hard work, yes. But Maggie would have done the hard work and then announced the policy without giving the detail. Why create “losers” to shout before you need to?
Various comments tonight about how 1% annual tax on house values would let you abolish council tax, SDLT, and IHT at a stroke.
At the same time it's a policy where the average home owner will pay the same or less in tax as the current council tax bill, with almost all the incidence falling on rich people in the SE.
Tax simplification. Two fairly unpopular taxes gone, a third one effectively restructured to be considerably more progressive. No loss of tax revenue.
So - why hasn't one of the parties picked it up and run with it? OK it will make a small number of rich voters very angry, but for Reform and these days the Tories, it probably doesn't matter all that much electorally - a policy with 10 winners to every loser and with the losers geographically concentrated in places you don't win anyway, why care? They will all be ABCs in the SE who vote Lib-Dem anyway.
I don’t think the political class is in it to make money. However, I don’t see any of them implementing a policy that would adversely affect them in such a big way. There may be votes in it but it would cost them personally.
Actually, I don't think that's it.
Losers complain more than winners cheer. The losers would blame the government. The winners wouldn't thank them.
And there would be a lot of losers - either wealthy homeoweners in the South East (LibDem or Conservative voters) or people in Central London (Labour voters).
Wealthy homeowners are already not paying enough in council tax
Council taxes being based on 1991 property values is absurd.
That’s not the issue. That’s just about who pays in a small geographic area.
The issue is that central government mandates spending while also capping the ability of local government to raise taxes.
So they don’t have any money to provide the little things that improve a community (beautification, libraries, etc) and barely enough to manage core services.
Redistribution is something that should be pursued by central government if desired
Central government should take over the funding for social care. The local funding model is completely broken, and it is central government which sets the criteria for provision.
Without that, recreating local government's ability to manage their local economies, and to foster economic growth at a local level (something that was a big driver of growth in the last couple of centuries) is almost impossible.
Conference season ends and I believe the unexpected happened
Kemi Badenoch delivered the best speech, rolled out an array of policies, and stamp duty the 'rabbit out of the hat'
She energised her supporters and have given them something to sell on the doorstep
And she did what I prayed she would, sent out a positive [conservative] message and barely mentioned Starmer or Farage
Labour and Farage fell into the trap of hurling insults at each other to the detriment of both
The added bonus is Jenrick is the biggest loser
I do not know how the polls will react, but today was a start on the long road to relevance
Rabbit out of a hat, or bollocks out of her arse?
Pound shop Liz Truss.
No Kemi identified welfare and spending cuts to fund her tax cut
It wasn't just welfare but cuts in climate change subsidies and increasing north sea production with associated tax income, as well as welcoming back millionaires, entrepreneurs, and wealth creators
She also will scrap IHT on farmers and abolish vat on private school fees
Add in banning doctor strikes
This is conservative policies and is a direct challenge to Labour and Reform
This is pennies BigG. No spending cuts plan is credible without some sort of control on pensioner benefits and health spending. They are are growing so quickly - from a very high base - that any other cut or even steady economic growth is completely overwhelmed by them. Literally by design in the case of the triple lock.
Labour haven't set out a plan either but let's not pretend the Conservative plan is fiscally prudent. DavidL's take on this is correct.
Google tells me that the number of UK civil servants has increased since 2016 by 132,000 and that the median salary is £34k.
That would imply a saving of £4.5bn under the Tory plan.
Not commenting on whether it is feasible or not but it’s not “pennies”
True - but I think the fact the median salary is so low suggests what kinds of roles those civil servants are doing - particularly when you consider how London dominated the civil service is.
If you could cut 130,000 people out of Whitehall or it's equivalent in Scotland, Wales then fair enough. But I think the stats show that increase is primarily agencies like HMRC and DWP. Basically call centres, which would mean a reduced service. AI might be the answer to that but it's not a magic button you can press.
It said that the range was £24 - 84k (from memory - haven’t checked).
The only way to plausibly cuts costs is to stop doing stuff. Governments need to cut verticals rather than horizontally. (Equally I am sure that there are the sort of grinding efficiencies - 1, 2, 3 percent a year - that the private sector makes which government agencies never seem to be able to find)
And that's why, at the moment, this is Potemkin Policy. Tell us which Civil Servants are going to be axed, and what's going to happen to the work they were doing, and it gets interesting. "It won't be done by the state" is a legitimate answer.
Otherwise, Kemi is doing the fun bit without doing the hard work first. Maggie wouldn't have approved.
PB Tories are normally pragmatic people, questioning the symmetry of a Labour or Lib Dem tax cut or spending pledge. "The books don't balance" they will cry.
Yet a welcome Tory £12b tax cut paid by fantasy wastage savings get a free ride.
Fortunately the Tories are not in Government. I am sure if they were the gilt markets might baulk.
Conference season ends and I believe the unexpected happened
Kemi Badenoch delivered the best speech, rolled out an array of policies, and stamp duty the 'rabbit out of the hat'
She energised her supporters and have given them something to sell on the doorstep
And she did what I prayed she would, sent out a positive [conservative] message and barely mentioned Starmer or Farage
Labour and Farage fell into the trap of hurling insults at each other to the detriment of both
The added bonus is Jenrick is the biggest loser
I do not know how the polls will react, but today was a start on the long road to relevance
Rabbit out of a hat, or bollocks out of her arse?
Pound shop Liz Truss.
No Kemi identified welfare and spending cuts to fund her tax cut
It wasn't just welfare but cuts in climate change subsidies and increasing north sea production with associated tax income, as well as welcoming back millionaires, entrepreneurs, and wealth creators
She also will scrap IHT on farmers and abolish vat on private school fees
Add in banning doctor strikes
This is conservative policies and is a direct challenge to Labour and Reform
This is pennies BigG. No spending cuts plan is credible without some sort of control on pensioner benefits and health spending. They are are growing so quickly - from a very high base - that any other cut or even steady economic growth is completely overwhelmed by them. Literally by design in the case of the triple lock.
Labour haven't set out a plan either but let's not pretend the Conservative plan is fiscally prudent. DavidL's take on this is correct.
Google tells me that the number of UK civil servants has increased since 2016 by 132,000 and that the median salary is £34k.
That would imply a saving of £4.5bn under the Tory plan.
Not commenting on whether it is feasible or not but it’s not “pennies”
True - but I think the fact the median salary is so low suggests what kinds of roles those civil servants are doing - particularly when you consider how London dominated the civil service is.
If you could cut 130,000 people out of Whitehall or it's equivalent in Scotland, Wales then fair enough. But I think the stats show that increase is primarily agencies like HMRC and DWP. Basically call centres, which would mean a reduced service. AI might be the answer to that but it's not a magic button you can press.
It said that the range was £24 - 84k (from memory - haven’t checked).
The only way to plausibly cuts costs is to stop doing stuff. Governments need to cut verticals rather than horizontally. (Equally I am sure that there are the sort of grinding efficiencies - 1, 2, 3 percent a year - that the private sector makes which government agencies never seem to be able to find)
And that's why, at the moment, this is Potemkin Policy. Tell us which Civil Servants are going to be axed, and what's going to happen to the work they were doing, and it gets interesting. "It won't be done by the state" is a legitimate answer.
Otherwise, Kemi is doing the fun bit without doing the hard work first. Maggie wouldn't have approved.
PB Tories are normally pragmatic people, questioning the symmetry of a Labour or Lib Dem tax cut or spending pledge. "The books don't balance" they will cry.
Yet a welcome Tory £12b tax cut paid by fantasy wastage savings get a free ride.
Fortunately the Tories are not in Government. I am sure if they were the gilt markets might baulk.
They are not “fantasy wastage savings”.
They have said that they will reduce civil service numbers back to 2016 levels. That’s pretty specific - of course they haven’t identified “Me Mexican” or “Ms Pete” as being at risk of being made redundant - but it’s not just a number made up by some spreadsheet jockey.
Conference season ends and I believe the unexpected happened
Kemi Badenoch delivered the best speech, rolled out an array of policies, and stamp duty the 'rabbit out of the hat'
She energised her supporters and have given them something to sell on the doorstep
And she did what I prayed she would, sent out a positive [conservative] message and barely mentioned Starmer or Farage
Labour and Farage fell into the trap of hurling insults at each other to the detriment of both
The added bonus is Jenrick is the biggest loser
I do not know how the polls will react, but today was a start on the long road to relevance
Rabbit out of a hat, or bollocks out of her arse?
Pound shop Liz Truss.
No Kemi identified welfare and spending cuts to fund her tax cut
It wasn't just welfare but cuts in climate change subsidies and increasing north sea production with associated tax income, as well as welcoming back millionaires, entrepreneurs, and wealth creators
She also will scrap IHT on farmers and abolish vat on private school fees
Add in banning doctor strikes
This is conservative policies and is a direct challenge to Labour and Reform
This is pennies BigG. No spending cuts plan is credible without some sort of control on pensioner benefits and health spending. They are are growing so quickly - from a very high base - that any other cut or even steady economic growth is completely overwhelmed by them. Literally by design in the case of the triple lock.
Labour haven't set out a plan either but let's not pretend the Conservative plan is fiscally prudent. DavidL's take on this is correct.
Google tells me that the number of UK civil servants has increased since 2016 by 132,000 and that the median salary is £34k.
That would imply a saving of £4.5bn under the Tory plan.
Not commenting on whether it is feasible or not but it’s not “pennies”
True - but I think the fact the median salary is so low suggests what kinds of roles those civil servants are doing - particularly when you consider how London dominated the civil service is.
If you could cut 130,000 people out of Whitehall or it's equivalent in Scotland, Wales then fair enough. But I think the stats show that increase is primarily agencies like HMRC and DWP. Basically call centres, which would mean a reduced service. AI might be the answer to that but it's not a magic button you can press.
It said that the range was £24 - 84k (from memory - haven’t checked).
The only way to plausibly cuts costs is to stop doing stuff. Governments need to cut verticals rather than horizontally. (Equally I am sure that there are the sort of grinding efficiencies - 1, 2, 3 percent a year - that the private sector makes which government agencies never seem to be able to find)
The restriction on ILR benefits are vertical in that one group is bounced out into another category. The additional point is that ILR don't have votes but pensioners do.
A lot of those with ILR do have votes. Most are Commonwealth citizens.
Ukraine have reported, and shown video (though I can't identify artillery pieces) of the destruction of a Russian ML-20 howitzer. These artillery pieces were produced in the USSR before WWII.
Although drones are taking over to an extent, earlier in the war a majority of Ukrainian casualties were caused by Russian artillery, so Ukrainian counter-battery operations succeeding in forcing Russia to put pre-WWII relics back into service indicates Ukraine coming close to winning the artillery war, which could make a big difference to the future of the war.
LOL at the 1930s artillery piece, did they drag that out of a museum?
Russian tank production has also ground to a halt, as recent pictures of the famous old Soviet tank storage yards show them now pretty much empty of everything but scrap metal.
Production of new tanks, rather than refurbishment of old ones, is only around a dozen per month, and tanks are said to have pretty much disappeared from the front lines of the war.
It’s taken only three years for the entire Soviet arsenal of land weapons to have been almost totally exhausted. There’s a lot of NorK kit now spotted in the field, and suggestions that Iran has been shipping old weapons to Russia as well. One ship from Iran on its way to Russia was blown up a couple of weeks ago, thought to contain both old heavy kit and new drones.
Reportedly the Russians have diverted resources from new tank production to drone production. Revealed preference is marking the passing of tanks from the battlefield, though if a future Ukrainian offensive restores mobility to the war we may see tanks become important again.
Bloke who lost on correct-score football betting wants his money back. He lost in the High Court but was at the Court of Appeal yesterday (and today?).
It’s always someone else’s fault.
If he’s lost all that cash how’s he funding it ?
Para's #172 - #174 seem to sum up the issue. Apparently he was a landlord.
172. Had I found a breach of duty I would have concluded that Mr Gibson would in any event have gone on to lose at least the same sums elsewhere.
173. Mr Gibson was determined to gamble. If Betfair had stopped him gambling in 2015 or at any time I am quite satisfied that he would have gambled elsewhere and to the same extent. He would have remained a moderate problem gambler with large sums of money at his disposal and he would have continued to hide his problems. The best evidence of that is what he actually did when Betfair would no longer deal with him.
174. I do not accept the argument that other gambling providers would have recognised him as a problem gambler and ceased to deal with him. The evidence shows, and I have found, that he kept his problem under wraps, was able to afford to bet at the level he did (he passed all AML investigations), would not tell the truth when asked if he was comfortable about his losses, and would not use tools to limit his gambling.
I wonder whether Mr Gibson believes that he had a duty of care towards his own conduct?
Suppose, for example, he has a family. Would he cheerfully agree with an action against him by partner/children for wasting vast amounts of money which in equity were a shared asset?
(Most research indicates that deep down most addicts are well aware of their own responsibility).
“Opening with his take on the UK's economy, Dimon said he felt Rachel Reeves was doing a "terrific job", and he felt optimistic about some of the government's attempts to boost innovation and cut regulation.”
Conference season ends and I believe the unexpected happened
Kemi Badenoch delivered the best speech, rolled out an array of policies, and stamp duty the 'rabbit out of the hat'
She energised her supporters and have given them something to sell on the doorstep
And she did what I prayed she would, sent out a positive [conservative] message and barely mentioned Starmer or Farage
Labour and Farage fell into the trap of hurling insults at each other to the detriment of both
The added bonus is Jenrick is the biggest loser
I do not know how the polls will react, but today was a start on the long road to relevance
Rabbit out of a hat, or bollocks out of her arse?
Pound shop Liz Truss.
No Kemi identified welfare and spending cuts to fund her tax cut
It wasn't just welfare but cuts in climate change subsidies and increasing north sea production with associated tax income, as well as welcoming back millionaires, entrepreneurs, and wealth creators
She also will scrap IHT on farmers and abolish vat on private school fees
Add in banning doctor strikes
This is conservative policies and is a direct challenge to Labour and Reform
This is pennies BigG. No spending cuts plan is credible without some sort of control on pensioner benefits and health spending. They are are growing so quickly - from a very high base - that any other cut or even steady economic growth is completely overwhelmed by them. Literally by design in the case of the triple lock.
Labour haven't set out a plan either but let's not pretend the Conservative plan is fiscally prudent. DavidL's take on this is correct.
Google tells me that the number of UK civil servants has increased since 2016 by 132,000 and that the median salary is £34k.
That would imply a saving of £4.5bn under the Tory plan.
Not commenting on whether it is feasible or not but it’s not “pennies”
True - but I think the fact the median salary is so low suggests what kinds of roles those civil servants are doing - particularly when you consider how London dominated the civil service is.
If you could cut 130,000 people out of Whitehall or it's equivalent in Scotland, Wales then fair enough. But I think the stats show that increase is primarily agencies like HMRC and DWP. Basically call centres, which would mean a reduced service. AI might be the answer to that but it's not a magic button you can press.
It said that the range was £24 - 84k (from memory - haven’t checked).
The only way to plausibly cuts costs is to stop doing stuff. Governments need to cut verticals rather than horizontally. (Equally I am sure that there are the sort of grinding efficiencies - 1, 2, 3 percent a year - that the private sector makes which government agencies never seem to be able to find)
Productivity is definitely an issue, and there’s loads of things that could be moved from in-person or on-phone to online services for a majority of interactions. What they have done is awfully half-hearted, for example the DVLA website only works during office hours.
There’s probably a layer or two that could be sliced out of the management structure when compared to the private sector, and way too many people who spend their days shuffling papers or writing reports that no-one will ever read.
But yes, the big savings are in eliminating whole departments and functions of government.
And the public sector tends to be pretty frugal. Probably too frugal, to the point where it's less efficient. There is a taboo on spending upfront to save in years to come. There also aren't the cycles of feast and famine that all private businesses to develop fat that can then be cut.
See this from a US DOGE veteran;
I did not find the federal government to be rife with waste, fraud and abuse. I was expecting some more easy wins. I was hoping for opportunity to cut waste, fraud and abuse. And I do believe that there is a lot of waste. There's minimal amounts of fraud. And abuse, to me, feels relatively nonexistent. And the reason is — I think we have a bias as people coming from the tech industry where we worked at companies, you know, such as Google, Facebook, these companies that have plenty of money, are funded by investors and have lots of people kind of sitting around doing nothing.
Conference season ends and I believe the unexpected happened
Kemi Badenoch delivered the best speech, rolled out an array of policies, and stamp duty the 'rabbit out of the hat'
She energised her supporters and have given them something to sell on the doorstep
And she did what I prayed she would, sent out a positive [conservative] message and barely mentioned Starmer or Farage
Labour and Farage fell into the trap of hurling insults at each other to the detriment of both
The added bonus is Jenrick is the biggest loser
I do not know how the polls will react, but today was a start on the long road to relevance
Rabbit out of a hat, or bollocks out of her arse?
Pound shop Liz Truss.
No Kemi identified welfare and spending cuts to fund her tax cut
It wasn't just welfare but cuts in climate change subsidies and increasing north sea production with associated tax income, as well as welcoming back millionaires, entrepreneurs, and wealth creators
She also will scrap IHT on farmers and abolish vat on private school fees
Add in banning doctor strikes
This is conservative policies and is a direct challenge to Labour and Reform
This is pennies BigG. No spending cuts plan is credible without some sort of control on pensioner benefits and health spending. They are are growing so quickly - from a very high base - that any other cut or even steady economic growth is completely overwhelmed by them. Literally by design in the case of the triple lock.
Labour haven't set out a plan either but let's not pretend the Conservative plan is fiscally prudent. DavidL's take on this is correct.
Google tells me that the number of UK civil servants has increased since 2016 by 132,000 and that the median salary is £34k.
That would imply a saving of £4.5bn under the Tory plan.
Not commenting on whether it is feasible or not but it’s not “pennies”
It is worth remembering that a number of competences were repatriated from Brussels, and which require civil servants.
Which competences (if that’s a word you can use for recent governments) would require that many staff?
Negotiating trade deals.
Also all of the functions previously done by or shared with, the EU and its agencies, from customs, trademarks, statistics, food safety, Erasmus, aviation control, ESMA, Euratom (now only an associated state, not a member), medicines, maritime safety, Europol, and about 3 dozen other fields .
We saved a lot of money by being an EU member. If you were serious about improving the UK economy, you would be talking about far more alignment or even Brejoin.
Ukraine have reported, and shown video (though I can't identify artillery pieces) of the destruction of a Russian ML-20 howitzer. These artillery pieces were produced in the USSR before WWII.
Although drones are taking over to an extent, earlier in the war a majority of Ukrainian casualties were caused by Russian artillery, so Ukrainian counter-battery operations succeeding in forcing Russia to put pre-WWII relics back into service indicates Ukraine coming close to winning the artillery war, which could make a big difference to the future of the war.
They may well have exhausted their tank stocks too:
‼️According to calculations made by OSINT researchers, the amount of Russian tanks in decent condition remaining in storage is ZERO.
◾️1656 are in "poor" condition (about 60% of them probably cannot be restored). ◾️1231 Russian tanks are in "worse" condition, according to the researchers.
Big picture is that the richer side tends to win in wars.
Much in the same way that player wage bill is a pretty good predictor of who is going to win the league.
The other significant news recently might be the €6bn in direct finding from the EU for the Ukrainian Armed Forces - the first time the EU has allocated money directly to fund the Ukrainian military.
It also looks as though the EU will use seized Russian assets to find Ukraine as soon as they all agree to share the risk with Belgium of having to repay those assets in the future.
Ukraine have reported, and shown video (though I can't identify artillery pieces) of the destruction of a Russian ML-20 howitzer. These artillery pieces were produced in the USSR before WWII.
Although drones are taking over to an extent, earlier in the war a majority of Ukrainian casualties were caused by Russian artillery, so Ukrainian counter-battery operations succeeding in forcing Russia to put pre-WWII relics back into service indicates Ukraine coming close to winning the artillery war, which could make a big difference to the future of the war.
Russia lost lots of Self Propelled Guns along with its tanks, early on. The loss rate since then has handily exceeded the production rate.
In addition, they have serious problems producing new barrels. Artillery (and tank) guns wear out quite fast and need a new barrel regularly when used. The industrial capability for that had evaporated and it needs special steels, special machinery and skills. All of which are very hard to replace.
So Russia raided the huge parking lots of rusty, older SPGs - fixing them up and sending them out. A couple of YouTubers tracked this - the sites are visible from satellite images - and the Russians are basically out of old junk. And have been for a while.
They also tried using ancient tanks as SPGs - which worked, a bit. Until the guns wore out, or the ancient tanks were destroyed.
So what happens now is that the Russians assembled what they can of new production /reconditioned artillery for an attack - this takes time. Then they attack and the artillery is gradually work out or lost. Then a quiet period, while they build up again.
But it’s nothing like what they used to be able to do.
This really is cone hotlines stuff. We have already had loads of loosing around alcohol licensing and of course loads of clubs have gone bust because da yuff don't want to go to them, and pubs are already closing early / some nights of the week because of staff and energy costs combined with cost of living / people not drinking as much.
It isn't the lack of opportunity to go boozing that is the core problem.
Standard opening hours isn’t the problem, it’s too expensive to go out and the venues can’t afford the staff.
And those venues that can make it work and do want to stay open longer, get objections and campaigns against them from their neighbours.
I don't know if this is being repeated in the UK, but apparently in the US people are spending on average an hour a day more in their homes (not including work). COVID have changed how people live, they stay in their homes watching tv (rather than the cinema) and ordering Door Dash (rather than going to restaurants). I am sure cost of living is part of this but I see it with my friends they seem to go out far less (and they have the money to do so), they just got into this habit of staying in more.
I do think covid has led to changes in habits; people simply got used to living differently, and saw some savings from things they used to pay for but then didn’t. Before Covid, after taking the dog to the park I quite often used to drop in somewhere for a tea/coffee and cake before returning home, and one of the beachfront places I was probably in there twice a week with the dog, during its opening months. During Covid I stopped, because you couldn’t; I lost a bit of weight, saved a bit of money, and simply got out of the habit. Now I simply don’t, and this year I think I have only been in there once or twice. I haven’t consciously decided not to do it; it just happened.
I'm not struggling, but my subjective impression is that restaurants and takeaways (at least in the Soiuth) have increased their prices significantly, to the point that they are an occasional luxury rather than a sensible routine option. Is there data out there to confirm or disprove this impression?
Conference season ends and I believe the unexpected happened
Kemi Badenoch delivered the best speech, rolled out an array of policies, and stamp duty the 'rabbit out of the hat'
She energised her supporters and have given them something to sell on the doorstep
And she did what I prayed she would, sent out a positive [conservative] message and barely mentioned Starmer or Farage
Labour and Farage fell into the trap of hurling insults at each other to the detriment of both
The added bonus is Jenrick is the biggest loser
I do not know how the polls will react, but today was a start on the long road to relevance
Rabbit out of a hat, or bollocks out of her arse?
Pound shop Liz Truss.
No Kemi identified welfare and spending cuts to fund her tax cut
It wasn't just welfare but cuts in climate change subsidies and increasing north sea production with associated tax income, as well as welcoming back millionaires, entrepreneurs, and wealth creators
She also will scrap IHT on farmers and abolish vat on private school fees
Add in banning doctor strikes
This is conservative policies and is a direct challenge to Labour and Reform
This is pennies BigG. No spending cuts plan is credible without some sort of control on pensioner benefits and health spending. They are are growing so quickly - from a very high base - that any other cut or even steady economic growth is completely overwhelmed by them. Literally by design in the case of the triple lock.
Labour haven't set out a plan either but let's not pretend the Conservative plan is fiscally prudent. DavidL's take on this is correct.
Google tells me that the number of UK civil servants has increased since 2016 by 132,000 and that the median salary is £34k.
That would imply a saving of £4.5bn under the Tory plan.
Not commenting on whether it is feasible or not but it’s not “pennies”
True - but I think the fact the median salary is so low suggests what kinds of roles those civil servants are doing - particularly when you consider how London dominated the civil service is.
If you could cut 130,000 people out of Whitehall or it's equivalent in Scotland, Wales then fair enough. But I think the stats show that increase is primarily agencies like HMRC and DWP. Basically call centres, which would mean a reduced service. AI might be the answer to that but it's not a magic button you can press.
It said that the range was £24 - 84k (from memory - haven’t checked).
The only way to plausibly cuts costs is to stop doing stuff. Governments need to cut verticals rather than horizontally. (Equally I am sure that there are the sort of grinding efficiencies - 1, 2, 3 percent a year - that the private sector makes which government agencies never seem to be able to find)
The restriction on ILR benefits are vertical in that one group is bounced out into another category. The additional point is that ILR don't have votes but pensioners do.
A lot of those with ILR do have votes. Most are Commonwealth citizens.
Thanks for the correction. Complexities upon complexities which will be the undoing of any government.
Bloke who lost on correct-score football betting wants his money back. He lost in the High Court but was at the Court of Appeal yesterday (and today?).
Society should not be here to bail out the feckless and the lazy. The Incas would have executed this guy.
Bookies demand the right to cut off winners.
They actually have an obligation to cut off problem gamblers. But they are much, much slower at curing off winners than losers.
This really is cone hotlines stuff. We have already had loads of loosing around alcohol licensing and of course loads of clubs have gone bust because da yuff don't want to go to them, and pubs are already closing early / some nights of the week because of staff and energy costs combined with cost of living / people not drinking as much.
It isn't the lack of opportunity to go boozing that is the core problem.
Standard opening hours isn’t the problem, it’s too expensive to go out and the venues can’t afford the staff.
And those venues that can make it work and do want to stay open longer, get objections and campaigns against them from their neighbours.
I don't know if this is being repeated in the UK, but apparently in the US people are spending on average an hour a day more in their homes (not including work). COVID have changed how people live, they stay in their homes watching tv (rather than the cinema) and ordering Door Dash (rather than going to restaurants). I am sure cost of living is part of this but I see it with my friends they seem to go out far less (and they have the money to do so), they just got into this habit of staying in more.
I do think covid has led to changes in habits; people simply got used to living differently, and saw some savings from things they used to pay for but then didn’t. Before Covid, after taking the dog to the park I quite often used to drop in somewhere for a tea/coffee and cake before returning home, and one of the beachfront places I was probably in there twice a week with the dog, during its opening months. During Covid I stopped, because you couldn’t; I lost a bit of weight, saved a bit of money, and simply got out of the habit. Now I simply don’t, and this year I think I have only been in there once or twice. I haven’t consciously decided not to do it; it just happened.
I'm not struggling, but my subjective impression is that restaurants and takeaways (at least in the Soiuth) have increased their prices significantly, to the point that they are an occasional luxury rather than a sensible routine option. Is there data out there to confirm or disprove this impression?
Comments
Lee Gibson, 47, of Leeds, went on to sue Betfair, alleging that it should have known he was a ‘problem gambler’
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/lee-gibson-betfair-court-case-b2841460.html
Bloke who lost on correct-score football betting wants his money back. He lost in the High Court but was at the Court of Appeal yesterday (and today?).
Twitter is better for actual footage, but requires caution to avoid seeing things you don’t want to see. The Twitter links I post here are all from generally PG-rated accounts that don’t show all of the horrors of war.
Youtube say that they’re trying to get rid of the AI slop, but the problem is it’s so easy to generate that one person can make hours of it per day, and keep popping up with new accounts as they get banned. A little knowledge of how the AI prompting and Youtube algorithm works and you can earn $300-$500 a day for a couple of hours’ work. Each video doesn’t need to have millions of views, because they’re making loads of them.
Most of my YouTube watching is of channels I've subscribed to, so I'm not really affected by AI slop. The change would be that I'd need to rely on other people recommending new channels to me, rather than finding things through YouTube's algorithm, so that might be a good change if the AI slop breaks the algorithm.
From a post on his YouTube channel a couple of days ago:
"Some news for you all. YouTube has decided that Not A Pound For Air To Ground is "reused content" and have informed me that they intend to suspend me and the channel. I have the opportunity for appeal and will do so, but as it stands I'll go dark on October 13th. Since I'm unclear how they've come to this conclusion, I will side with Marko Ramius and give myself one chance in three."
‼️According to calculations made by OSINT researchers, the amount of Russian tanks in decent condition remaining in storage is ZERO.
◾️1656 are in "poor" condition (about 60% of them probably cannot be restored).
◾️1231 Russian tanks are in "worse" condition, according to the researchers.
https://bsky.app/profile/antongerashchenko.bsky.social/post/3m2mqmfgxnk2w
https://x.com/DJSnM/status/1974320572294418478
Land value taxation makes economic sense across the board, pretty much. Rather than, say, abolishing SDLT and replacing with a small land tax, it makes more sense to abolish SDLT, overhaul both council tax and business rates, and cut income tax or NI in exchange for a much larger land value tax.
Take that Lib Dem / Tory marginal voter in the SE with land worth say 500k (out of an overall property value of 800k) and household income of 100k. A 2% land tax would be £10k a year. Council tax might currently be 3-4k. An NI or IT cut of 2% would be another 2k. Increase the tax cuts to more like 3-4% and you’re almost neutral even for that SE voter, so long as they are working not retired. So you can see how the maths might start to add up.
All of this encourages work and productive investment and discourages unproductive land banking.
Russian tank production has also ground to a halt, as recent pictures of the famous old Soviet tank storage yards show them now pretty much empty of everything but scrap metal.
Production of new tanks, rather than refurbishment of old ones, is only around a dozen per month, and tanks are said to have pretty much disappeared from the front lines of the war.
It’s taken only three years for the entire Soviet arsenal of land weapons to have been almost totally exhausted. There’s a lot of NorK kit now spotted in the field, and suggestions that Iran has been shipping old weapons to Russia as well. One ship from Iran on its way to Russia was blown up a couple of weeks ago, thought to contain both old heavy kit and new drones.
Doesn't sound like he has much of a case.
https://3vb.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/LM-2021-000010-Lee-v.-TSE-Malta-LP-t.a-Betfair-FINAL.-docx.pdf
Assuming you want any history, of course.
That would imply a saving of £4.5bn under the Tory plan.
Not commenting on whether it is feasible or not but it’s not “pennies”
If he’s lost all that cash how’s he funding it ?
When Russia was first kicked off SWIFT at the start of the war, there were stories of rich Russians turning up in the sandpit with gold bars and bitcoin - old tech and new tech. At least one gold processor out here got sanctioned after being busted with a pile of Russian gold.
https://www.reuters.com/business/us-imposes-sanctions-several-hong-kong-uae-firms-dealing-with-russian-origin-2024-06-12/
The issue is that central government mandates spending while also capping the ability of local government to raise taxes.
So they don’t have any money to provide the little things that improve a community (beautification, libraries, etc) and barely enough to manage core services.
Redistribution is something that should be pursued by central government if desired
If you could cut 130,000 people out of Whitehall or it's equivalent in Scotland, Wales then fair enough. But I think the stats show that increase is primarily agencies like HMRC and DWP. Basically call centres, which would mean a reduced service. AI might be the answer to that but it's not a magic button you can press.
Much in the same way that player wage bill is a pretty good predictor of who is going to win the league.
The £1.5m was over 10 years, so about twelve grand a month on average, and he was on Betfair’s VIP list with his own relationship manager.
He’s probably gambled a few hundred grand more on bringing the case to court!
Like Cameron and Osborne back in the day when Blair resigned and Brown took over as the new face of Labour and initially dominated the polling, Kemi pulled a blinder which ignored Farage and Reform and delivered some really solid Conservative policies that Farage didn't during the Reform conference. Watch this space...
So far they've utterly failed on that. Planning reform has been delayed and watered down to near insignificance, and housing starts in some areas (London for example) have flatlined.
Good intentions, and very few achievements.
As an aside, the long overdue of licensing laws is very welcome, so one cheer for that. But while it provides some relief for that sector, its economic significance is relatively minor.
173. Mr Gibson was determined to gamble. If Betfair had stopped him gambling in 2015 or at any time I am quite satisfied that he would have gambled elsewhere and to the same extent. He would have remained a moderate problem gambler with large sums of money at his disposal and he would have continued to hide his problems. The best evidence of that is what he actually did when Betfair would no longer deal with him.
174. I do not accept the argument that other gambling providers would have recognised him as a problem gambler and ceased to deal with him. The evidence shows, and I have found, that he kept his problem under wraps, was able to afford to bet at the level he did (he passed all AML investigations), would not tell the truth when asked if he was comfortable about his losses, and would not use tools to limit his gambling.
No one wants to face this reality.
The only way to plausibly cuts costs is to stop doing stuff. Governments need to cut verticals rather than horizontally. (Equally I am sure that there are the sort of grinding efficiencies - 1, 2, 3 percent a year - that the private sector makes which government agencies never seem to be able to find)
Otherwise, Kemi is doing the fun bit without doing the hard work first. Maggie wouldn't have approved.
Without that, recreating local government's ability to manage their local economies, and to foster economic growth at a local level (something that was a big driver of growth in the last couple of centuries) is almost impossible.
Yes, you heard that right, the website only works during office hours, presumably as it’s just a data collection portal for a human interaction. https://x.com/simon_prickett/status/1781441033273790590
There’s probably a layer or two that could be sliced out of the management structure when compared to the private sector, and way too many people who spend their days shuffling papers or writing reports that no-one will ever read.
But yes, the big savings are in eliminating whole departments and functions of government.
I can imagine a deal where NK 'loans' a few semi-knackered tanks to Russia, with the agreement they'll get shiny new ones (or the machines to build new ones) later in return.
Next step is an action against his current legal advisers...
That said, this debate always surprises me. When my wife got ILR (may be 2012/13?) it was marked “to eligible for public benefits” or similar - so I’m surprised to find out that this isn’t standard practice!
Yet a welcome Tory £12b tax cut paid by fantasy wastage savings get a free ride.
Fortunately the Tories are not in Government. I am sure if they were the gilt markets might baulk.
They have said that they will reduce civil service numbers back to 2016 levels. That’s pretty specific - of course they haven’t identified “Me Mexican” or “Ms Pete” as being at risk of being made redundant - but it’s not just a number made up by some spreadsheet jockey.
Suppose, for example, he has a family. Would he cheerfully agree with an action against him by partner/children for wasting vast amounts of money which in equity were a shared asset?
(Most research indicates that deep down most addicts are well aware of their own responsibility).
That’s the head of JP Morgan at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cg5ej03p604o
See this from a US DOGE veteran;
I did not find the federal government to be rife with waste, fraud and abuse. I was expecting some more easy wins. I was hoping for opportunity to cut waste, fraud and abuse. And I do believe that there is a lot of waste. There's minimal amounts of fraud. And abuse, to me, feels relatively nonexistent. And the reason is — I think we have a bias as people coming from the tech industry where we worked at companies, you know, such as Google, Facebook, these companies that have plenty of money, are funded by investors and have lots of people kind of sitting around doing nothing.
https://www.npr.org/2025/06/02/nx-s1-5417994/former-doge-engineer-shares-his-experience-working-for-the-cost-cutting-unit
Also all of the functions previously done by or shared with, the EU and its agencies, from customs, trademarks, statistics, food safety, Erasmus, aviation control, ESMA, Euratom (now only an associated state, not a member), medicines, maritime safety, Europol, and about 3 dozen other fields .
We saved a lot of money by being an EU member. If you were serious about improving the UK economy, you would be talking about far more alignment or even Brejoin.
NEW THREAD
It also looks as though the EU will use seized Russian assets to find Ukraine as soon as they all agree to share the risk with Belgium of having to repay those assets in the future.
Russia lost lots of Self Propelled Guns along with its tanks, early on. The loss rate since then has handily exceeded the production rate.
In addition, they have serious problems producing new barrels. Artillery (and tank) guns wear out quite fast and need a new barrel regularly when used. The industrial capability for that had evaporated and it needs special steels, special machinery and skills. All of which are very hard to replace.
So Russia raided the huge parking lots of rusty, older SPGs - fixing them up and sending them out. A couple of YouTubers tracked this - the sites are visible from satellite images - and the Russians are basically out of old junk. And have been for a while.
They also tried using ancient tanks as SPGs - which worked, a bit. Until the guns wore out, or the ancient tanks were destroyed.
So what happens now is that the Russians assembled what they can of new production /reconditioned artillery for an attack - this takes time. Then they attack and the artillery is gradually work out or lost. Then a quiet period, while they build up again.
But it’s nothing like what they used to be able to do.
Broken Back War…
They actually have an obligation to cut off problem gamblers. But they are much, much slower at curing off winners than losers.
Any idea why?