I see Badenoch's pledge to abolish stamp duty has made quite a splash, both in the press and on here. But I'm left somewhat baffled. If this is such a brilliant panacea that will boost economic growth and free up the housing market, why on earth hasn't it been proposed before by any government, of both stripes, in recent decades? I mean, it's a pretty easy policy to implement. I can't help thinking there's a catch somewhere.
One catch would seem to be the Stamp Duty charged on Stock Exchange transactions. In effect it's a cheap and easy way of raising a lot of money for HM Treasury, but it's still a tax on the transfer of property. I am not sure if or how the various classes of property can be distinguished from each other. "Buy my semi in Penge for £20m and get the curtains, carpets and a portfolio of free shares" might be a worthwhile ransaction for some hedge funds.
Erm, what ? Distinguishing shares from land from other things is not the hardest task HMRC has ever faced.
SD/SDRT on shares is definitely a bad tax and should be abolished, but it doesn't have to be done in coordination with abolishing SDLT on land.
It does however, have the (apparently, but mathematically to be expected) major advantage of slowing down the frequency of shares transactions (as nobody bothers for merely small profits less than the SD). This, in principle, has a huge effect in dampening the sensitivity of the system to perturbations, leading to crashes ... but IANAE as to the stock market.
I think that's outweighed by the deterrent effect it has on companies deciding where to have their [primary] listing. And you could have a more targeted anti-day trading tax if you wanted.
Re stamp duty, perhaps I'm being thick but if the supply of houses doesn't increase and buyers now have more money with which to buy, won't this just lead to an increase in house prices which will make things even harder for those trying to get on the property ladder?
House prices will increase to absorb any stamp duty cut, absolutely. But the point of eliminating stamp duty is not to cut house prices, it’s to reduce the friction imposed on the economy that stamp duty imposes. Stamp duty massively increases the transactional costs of moving house: That means that people are less likely to move to get a better job, or downsize to a smaller property as they get older.
Taxes always have a negative effect on your economy because they alter the prices of goods away from their natural level. But stamp duty has more pernicious effects than any other tax - it is by far the worst tax economically. If you ask economists which tax they would most like to get rid of then stamp duty is at the top of the list. We would be far better off if we eliminated stamp duty & replaced it with almost any other tax.
I think there's a case that it will means prices fall because there will be an effective increase in supply. There are 26 million spare bedrooms in the UK - the change could mean we use our housing stock more efficiently.
The reality for Kemi is that her announcement yesterday won't stop the Tories getting smashed next May and then she's a gonner.
I am not changing my betting strategy.
Understanding is the trigger for the 1922 committee is around 19 MPs? That's a fairly low bar given current polling. She may be saved* if Jenrick ushers colleagues to hold back on letters if he doesn't want to take the flack for the May 2026 results
Edit *temporary respite
As I posted yesterday
Potentially.
Somebody has messaged me this scenario given Jenrick doesn't want Badenoch ousted until after next year's elections.
1) Allies of James Cleverly get Badenoch ousted in November
2) They stand aside and let Jenrick become leader in November
3) The Tories are mullered in May 2026
4) Jenrick takes the blame and is ousted
5) Clearing the way for Cleverly to be coronated in late 2026.
Cleverly might be setting up the greatest ambush since Midway.
That certainly has many features of the complex plan Yamamoto drew up for Midway.
1) it depends on opponents just sitting there and letting it happen. And walking into the trap(s) 2) it depends on everything going right.
This reminds me of how we got Corbyn as Labour Party leader.
Spencer Hakimian @SpencerHakimian · 8h BREAKING: The Senate rejects a measure to stop Trump from unilaterally striking Venezuelan boats, 48-51.
Fetterman voted No.
Rand Paul and Lisa Murkowski voted Yes.
Fetterman is turning into quite the independent Democrat, just as Paul and Mukowski are quite the independent Republicans, all three of them voting their mind on the actual issue rather than toeing the party line.
Isn’t the theory that wars are supposed to be authorised by Congress, but that it’s not actually happened that way since WWII?
It's fake news, specifically Congress hasn't declared war since WWII but Congress has, inter alia, authorised the use of force on many occasions since WWII.
Often forgotten the Senate came very close to not authorising the first Gulf War, it only passed 52/47.
According to the wiki on the subject, that 1990 war was the last major military action that Congress was involved in declaring, and that there’s been plenty of critisism of presidents since then for ‘going solo’.
Presumably future presidents didn’t like the idea of the Senate voting the other way, the World would look quite different now if Saddam had prevailed against Kuwait three decades ago.
I'd be curious to know why the 47 Senators voted as they did. It was a pretty clear-cut case of naked aggression against an ally.
Some thought they’d end up staying in Iraq for years and lose thousands of Americans.
Some thought the peace overtures hadn’t been fully explored (IIRC Iraq had just offered to withdraw from Kuwait within six weeks, the Allies thought it was a ruse.)
Some feared another Vietnam.
At the time Bush hadn’t publicly ruled out the use of nukes if Iraq used chemical weapons against Allied troops. Privately he had ruled it out but wanted Saddam to think about the consequences.
Bush Snr had said he didn’t need consent of Congress so that put up the backs of some (one of the GOPers who voted against it cited that reason.)
O/T but for some of us - the British Library and its commercial partner have made the whole run of Jackie available online, in their enormously useful collection of UK newspapers and periodicals. Rather gruesomely fascinating seeing some of the content, even as samples here.
The reality for Kemi is that her announcement yesterday won't stop the Tories getting smashed next May and then she's a gonner.
I am not changing my betting strategy.
Understanding is the trigger for the 1922 committee is around 19 MPs? That's a fairly low bar given current polling. She may be saved* if Jenrick ushers colleagues to hold back on letters if he doesn't want to take the flack for the May 2026 results
Edit *temporary respite
As I posted yesterday
Potentially.
Somebody has messaged me this scenario given Jenrick doesn't want Badenoch ousted until after next year's elections.
1) Allies of James Cleverly get Badenoch ousted in November
2) They stand aside and let Jenrick become leader in November
3) The Tories are mullered in May 2026
4) Jenrick takes the blame and is ousted
5) Clearing the way for Cleverly to be coronated in late 2026.
Cleverly might be setting up the greatest ambush since Midway.
That certainly has many features of the complex plan Yamamoto drew up for Midway.
1) it depends on opponents just sitting there and letting it happen. And walking into the trap(s) 2) it depends on everything going right.
This reminds me of how we got Corbyn as Labour Party leader.
These "strategists" think there'll be two leadership elections in the space of a year?
The reality for Kemi is that her announcement yesterday won't stop the Tories getting smashed next May and then she's a gonner.
I am not changing my betting strategy.
Understanding is the trigger for the 1922 committee is around 19 MPs? That's a fairly low bar given current polling. She may be saved* if Jenrick ushers colleagues to hold back on letters if he doesn't want to take the flack for the May 2026 results
Edit *temporary respite
As I posted yesterday
Potentially.
Somebody has messaged me this scenario given Jenrick doesn't want Badenoch ousted until after next year's elections.
1) Allies of James Cleverly get Badenoch ousted in November
2) They stand aside and let Jenrick become leader in November
3) The Tories are mullered in May 2026
4) Jenrick takes the blame and is ousted
5) Clearing the way for Cleverly to be coronated in late 2026.
Cleverly might be setting up the greatest ambush since Midway.
That certainly has many features of the complex plan Yamamoto drew up for Midway.
1) it depends on opponents just sitting there and letting it happen. And walking into the trap(s) 2) it depends on everything going right.
This reminds me of how we got Corbyn as Labour Party leader.
Yamomoto’s flaw was that he didn’t know the Americans had broken the Japanese code.
He expected the carriers to be at Pearl Harbour not at Midway (or Midway to be full of fighters.)
Re stamp duty, perhaps I'm being thick but if the supply of houses doesn't increase and buyers now have more money with which to buy, won't this just lead to an increase in house prices which will make things even harder for those trying to get on the property ladder?
House prices will increase to absorb any stamp duty cut, absolutely. But the point of eliminating stamp duty is not to cut house prices, it’s to reduce the friction imposed on the economy that stamp duty imposes. Stamp duty massively increases the transactional costs of moving house: That means that people are less likely to move to get a better job, or downsize to a smaller property as they get older.
Taxes always have a negative effect on your economy because they alter the prices of goods away from their natural level. But stamp duty has more pernicious effects than any other tax - it is by far the worst tax economically. If you ask economists which tax they would most like to get rid of then stamp duty is at the top of the list. We would be far better off if we eliminated stamp duty & replaced it with almost any other tax.
I think there's a case that it will means prices fall because there will be an effective increase in supply. There are 26 million spare bedrooms in the UK - the change could mean we use our housing stock more efficiently.
Prices won't fall. Sellers know buyers have an extra few thousand (or more) available. A few thousand can be leveraged into tens of thousands bigger mortgages. Prices go up significantly.
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.
The government has been under sort of a magnifying glass for decades. And so I think, generally, I personally was pretty surprised, actually, at how efficient the government was. This isn't to say that it can't be made more efficient — elimination of paper, elimination of faxing — but these aren't necessarily fraud, waste and abuse. These are just rooms to modernize and improve the U.S. federal government into the 21st century.
Stamp Duty is a tax on housing mobility and needs abolishing but replacing with a fixed tax on owning property, which is the bit missing from the proposal.
Meanwhile in latest dog in Italy news:
Although right now we are on the beach looking at the French Riviera and Monaco, across the bay
I want to visit Menton, which you can probably see. It's home to an annual lemon festival
William Webb Ellis and William Butler Yeats both died there
Yes, Menton looks heavily developed down by the sea but doesn't go as far up the hill as Monaco. This whole coast is heavily developed and crowded, even this late in the season. Being up in the mountains is preferable, but I came to look at Bordighera's weekly market, which turned out to be mostly old clothes and shoes, with a few stalls selling cheese.
Ventimigila has one each Friday, even larger. A lot of tat, and some food as you say. Common destination for the french, which was handy since the stallholders mostly had no English but did speak basic French.
This is genuinely funny from Reform in West Northamptonshire. Their Deputy Council Leader has decided to be Churchillian, in that Churchill is known for doing his politics in the bath.
So he attended a Council Training Council from his bathtub via his Ipad.
Churchill, however, did not have the problem that he had a tablet that could broadcast to the Treasury Management training course a live feed of his willy descending into the soap suds .
Chap obviously needs to be on Only Fans not TikTok.
Do many Councillors do this? We had claims in Ashfield during Covid of our Deputy Council Leader Tom Hollis, the one with a long list of criminal offences, holding Council meetings in his hot tub.
Spencer Hakimian @SpencerHakimian · 8h BREAKING: The Senate rejects a measure to stop Trump from unilaterally striking Venezuelan boats, 48-51.
Fetterman voted No.
Rand Paul and Lisa Murkowski voted Yes.
Fetterman is turning into quite the independent Democrat, just as Paul and Mukowski are quite the independent Republicans, all three of them voting their mind on the actual issue rather than toeing the party line.
Isn’t the theory that wars are supposed to be authorised by Congress, but that it’s not actually happened that way since WWII?
It's fake news, specifically Congress hasn't declared war since WWII but Congress has, inter alia, authorised the use of force on many occasions since WWII.
Often forgotten the Senate came very close to not authorising the first Gulf War, it only passed 52/47.
According to the wiki on the subject, that 1990 war was the last major military action that Congress was involved in declaring, and that there’s been plenty of critisism of presidents since then for ‘going solo’.
Presumably future presidents didn’t like the idea of the Senate voting the other way, the World would look quite different now if Saddam had prevailed against Kuwait three decades ago.
I'd be curious to know why the 47 Senators voted as they did. It was a pretty clear-cut case of naked aggression against an ally.
Some thought they’d end up staying in Iraq for years and lose thousands of Americans.
Some thought the peace overtures hadn’t been fully explored (IIRC Iraq had just offered to withdraw from Kuwait within six weeks, the Allies thought it was a ruse.)
Some feared another Vietnam.
At the time Bush hadn’t publicly ruled out the use of nukes if Iraq used chemical weapons against Allied troops. Privately he had ruled it out but wanted Saddam to think about the consequences.
Bush Snr had said he didn’t need consent of Congress so that put up the backs of some (one of the GOPers who voted against it cited that reason.)
Thanks.
To me, it seems like a no-brainer, like supporting Ukraine.
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.
The government has been under sort of a magnifying glass for decades. And so I think, generally, I personally was pretty surprised, actually, at how efficient the government was. This isn't to say that it can't be made more efficient — elimination of paper, elimination of faxing — but these aren't necessarily fraud, waste and abuse. These are just rooms to modernize and improve the U.S. federal government into the 21st century.
There is a reason out of dozens of efficiency drives, across dozens of different countries, led by parties of left, centre and right or technocrats, very few if any actually deliver what they promise.
The reality for Kemi is that her announcement yesterday won't stop the Tories getting smashed next May and then she's a gonner.
I am not changing my betting strategy.
Understanding is the trigger for the 1922 committee is around 19 MPs? That's a fairly low bar given current polling. She may be saved* if Jenrick ushers colleagues to hold back on letters if he doesn't want to take the flack for the May 2026 results
Edit *temporary respite
As I posted yesterday
Potentially.
Somebody has messaged me this scenario given Jenrick doesn't want Badenoch ousted until after next year's elections.
1) Allies of James Cleverly get Badenoch ousted in November
2) They stand aside and let Jenrick become leader in November
3) The Tories are mullered in May 2026
4) Jenrick takes the blame and is ousted
5) Clearing the way for Cleverly to be coronated in late 2026.
Cleverly might be setting up the greatest ambush since Midway.
That certainly has many features of the complex plan Yamamoto drew up for Midway.
1) it depends on opponents just sitting there and letting it happen. And walking into the trap(s) 2) it depends on everything going right.
This reminds me of how we got Corbyn as Labour Party leader.
Yamomoto’s flaw was that he didn’t know the Americans had broken the Japanese code.
He expected the carriers to be at Pearl Harbour not at Midway (or Midway to be full of fighters.)
The plan was also insane.
1) It required the whole active Japanese Navy to do multiple things at once. And everything to work perfectly.
2( Even if the Americans had obediently sunk their own carriers, the force for the invasion for Midway was insufficient to achieve success (probably).
3) The IJN was completely unable to supply potential garrison on Midway. So even if they captured it, they would have to leave.
4) the rate of building for the US navy meant that they would replace any lost ships in months - by 1944 they were slowing down ship building, because they couldn’t find stuff for the existing ships to do!
The polling in the header is very interesting. Perhaps the other parties should focus on where Reform UK are polling well. For example, they look less divided than other parties, but in fact have plenty of internal tensions. (Arguably, the Parliamentary group elected last year has split harder than any other party's.) Is it worth their opponents pointing that out?
TL:DR They know that the Ukranians will otherwise start making their own with local and European tech, the Pentagon / MIC really don’t want to lose control of the whole situation. Pentagon attitude survived change of administration.
Over a third of the boomer retired generation say no party represents them says new YouGov poll.
As Stephen Bush points out - these are the guys that "takes up most government spending".
Frankly, they are being handed ever increasing state largesse on a massive silver plate!
One can make an argument that the group most undeserving of state largesse are people in their late 60s who are still fit and healthy, but getting pensions and other benefits. Should the pension age be further raised?
Re stamp duty, perhaps I'm being thick but if the supply of houses doesn't increase and buyers now have more money with which to buy, won't this just lead to an increase in house prices which will make things even harder for those trying to get on the property ladder?
House prices will increase to absorb any stamp duty cut, absolutely. But the point of eliminating stamp duty is not to cut house prices, it’s to reduce the friction imposed on the economy that stamp duty imposes. Stamp duty massively increases the transactional costs of moving house: That means that people are less likely to move to get a better job, or downsize to a smaller property as they get older.
Taxes always have a negative effect on your economy because they alter the prices of goods away from their natural level. But stamp duty has more pernicious effects than any other tax - it is by far the worst tax economically. If you ask economists which tax they would most like to get rid of then stamp duty is at the top of the list. We would be far better off if we eliminated stamp duty & replaced it with almost any other tax.
I think there's a case that it will means prices fall because there will be an effective increase in supply. There are 26 million spare bedrooms in the UK - the change could mean we use our housing stock more efficiently.
Prices won't fall. Sellers know buyers have an extra few thousand (or more) available. A few thousand can be leveraged into tens of thousands bigger mortgages. Prices go up significantly.
Prices are governed by demand and supply. Overall demand for housing won't increase - this is distinct from the demand for moving house. You might get a short term effect as everyone rushes to move when the reform is applied but long term I think it makes no difference - we'll all still want to live in a mansion in Edinburgh.
Supply could increase if reduced transaction costs improve the efficiency of matching appropriate sized houses to households (downsizing from pensioners).
= Price drop. I'm not 100% sure about this so open to counter-arguments.
Obviously this effect would be magnified if property taxes meant that holding property wealth was unattractive. The only people who'd want a 5-bed in that scenario are people with loads of kids, prices would drop and suddenly raising kids is more affordable.
Over a third of the boomer retired generation say no party represents them says new YouGov poll.
As Stephen Bush points out - these are the guys that "takes up most government spending".
Frankly, they are being handed ever increasing state largesse on a massive silver plate!
One can make an argument that the group most undeserving of state largesse are people in their late 60s who are still fit and healthy, but getting pensions and other benefits. Should the pension age be further raised?
I don't see we have a choice than to do otherwise in a phased approach.
Re stamp duty, perhaps I'm being thick but if the supply of houses doesn't increase and buyers now have more money with which to buy, won't this just lead to an increase in house prices which will make things even harder for those trying to get on the property ladder?
House prices will increase to absorb any stamp duty cut, absolutely. But the point of eliminating stamp duty is not to cut house prices, it’s to reduce the friction imposed on the economy that stamp duty imposes. Stamp duty massively increases the transactional costs of moving house: That means that people are less likely to move to get a better job, or downsize to a smaller property as they get older.
Taxes always have a negative effect on your economy because they alter the prices of goods away from their natural level. But stamp duty has more pernicious effects than any other tax - it is by far the worst tax economically. If you ask economists which tax they would most like to get rid of then stamp duty is at the top of the list. We would be far better off if we eliminated stamp duty & replaced it with almost any other tax.
I think there's a case that it will means prices fall because there will be an effective increase in supply. There are 26 million spare bedrooms in the UK - the change could mean we use our housing stock more efficiently.
Prices won't fall. Sellers know buyers have an extra few thousand (or more) available. A few thousand can be leveraged into tens of thousands bigger mortgages. Prices go up significantly.
Prices are governed by demand and supply. Overall demand for housing won't increase - this is distinct from the demand for moving house. You might get a short term effect as everyone rushes to move when the reform is applied but long term I think it makes no difference - we'll all still want to live in a mansion in Edinburgh.
Supply could increase if reduced transaction costs improve the efficiency of matching appropriate sized houses to households (downsizing from pensioners).
= Price drop.
I'm not 100% sure about this so open to counter-arguments. Obviously this effect would be magnified if property taxes meant that holding property wealth was unattractive.
Of course demand changes when buyers have extra cash.
I wasn't aware that the 20 point (Blair?) deal on the table was offered to Netanyahu 18 months ago by Sleepy Joe.
Anyway hats off to Trump for dragging it over the line. I am not sure the Hamas grandees in Doha ( previously funded by Qatar on Bibi's instruction) being allowed to go about their business with immunity from a trip to the Hague is optimal.
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.
You had fourteen years in Government. Fourteen years to identify and implement swingeing service cuts to pay for massive tax cuts. You failed. During that 14 years, service provision levels crashed at the same time the tax burden increased.
Posters have quoted Reform fantasy savings in Kent, savings so magnificent that Council tax increases could be suspended, until they found out there were few savings to be made and Council taxes were raised by 5%.
A nice speech offering the Moon on a stick is one thing, shoehorning the contents of that speech into reality is quite another.
Your party and the cheerleaders on here are profoundly unserious.
Good morning
And giveover
Badenoch gave a totally unexpected and successful speech that galvanised her audience and has given her party lots of policies, and of scrapping stamp duty has been well received from think tanks and Paul Johnson formally of the IFS who said yesterday it is the worst of many bad taxes
Your mixture of cynicism and satire is par for the course but at least this conservative is pleased to see conservative policies and Jenrick put back in his box
I think it was a good speech and I quite like her personally. The central role of the abolition of stamp duty should be more controversial than it is, since it only benefits people who own homes worth more than £300K (which excludes 35% of households who don't own their home, plus whatever proportion own homes worth less than £300K - I can't find this info but it will be higher in the north). As such, it addresses a genuine problem (reluctance to move home) but overwhelmingly benefits the well-off. By contrast, the abolition of aid for people with limited mental problems probably affects non-voters disproportionately. Overall, it's a right-wing policy which ignores poorer people, while having benefits in encouraging mobility. As a Conservative policy it makes sense, although it doesn't tempt me as I prefer economic policies to favour people on lower incomes.
Just to correct you on stamp duty
It is triggered on all property sales in England from £150,001
Wales has LTT which is different and has different rates
Over a third of the boomer retired generation say no party represents them says new YouGov poll.
As Stephen Bush points out - these are the guys that "takes up most government spending".
Frankly, they are being handed ever increasing state largesse on a massive silver plate!
One can make an argument that the group most undeserving of state largesse are people in their late 60s who are still fit and healthy, but getting pensions and other benefits. Should the pension age be further raised?
Pension age should be graduated. Starting at a lower age than current, 63?,at maybe £2k or £3k per year then increasing til maybe 73 to the current rate.
Over a third of the boomer retired generation say no party represents them says new YouGov poll.
As Stephen Bush points out - these are the guys that "takes up most government spending".
Frankly, they are being handed ever increasing state largesse on a massive silver plate!
One can make an argument that the group most undeserving of state largesse are people in their late 60s who are still fit and healthy, but getting pensions and other benefits. Should the pension age be further raised?
Pension age should be graduated. Starting at a lower age than current, 63?,at maybe £2k or £3k per year then increasing til maybe 73 to the current rate.
What's the rationale here? That people are expected to be moving to part-time working?
The reality for Kemi is that her announcement yesterday won't stop the Tories getting smashed next May and then she's a gonner.
I am not changing my betting strategy.
Understanding is the trigger for the 1922 committee is around 19 MPs? That's a fairly low bar given current polling. She may be saved* if Jenrick ushers colleagues to hold back on letters if he doesn't want to take the flack for the May 2026 results
Edit *temporary respite
As I posted yesterday
Potentially.
Somebody has messaged me this scenario given Jenrick doesn't want Badenoch ousted until after next year's elections.
1) Allies of James Cleverly get Badenoch ousted in November
2) They stand aside and let Jenrick become leader in November
3) The Tories are mullered in May 2026
4) Jenrick takes the blame and is ousted
5) Clearing the way for Cleverly to be coronated in late 2026.
Cleverly might be setting up the greatest ambush since Midway.
That certainly has many features of the complex plan Yamamoto drew up for Midway.
1) it depends on opponents just sitting there and letting it happen. And walking into the trap(s) 2) it depends on everything going right.
This reminds me of how we got Corbyn as Labour Party leader.
These "strategists" think there'll be two leadership elections in the space of a year?
Nuts.
From a betting perspective, the money is now probably that Kemi survives 2026, faut de mieux.
Over a third of the boomer retired generation say no party represents them says new YouGov poll.
As Stephen Bush points out - these are the guys that "takes up most government spending".
Frankly, they are being handed ever increasing state largesse on a massive silver plate!
One can make an argument that the group most undeserving of state largesse are people in their late 60s who are still fit and healthy, but getting pensions and other benefits. Should the pension age be further raised?
Pension age should be graduated. Starting at a lower age than current, 63?,at maybe £2k or £3k per year then increasing til maybe 73 to the current rate.
What's the rationale here? That people are expected to be moving to part-time working?
People do move to work part time. And some people retire at 55, others at 80. The days of a single retirement age for everyone are long gone.
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.
You had fourteen years in Government. Fourteen years to identify and implement swingeing service cuts to pay for massive tax cuts. You failed. During that 14 years, service provision levels crashed at the same time the tax burden increased.
Posters have quoted Reform fantasy savings in Kent, savings so magnificent that Council tax increases could be suspended, until they found out there were few savings to be made and Council taxes were raised by 5%.
A nice speech offering the Moon on a stick is one thing, shoehorning the contents of that speech into reality is quite another.
Your party and the cheerleaders on here are profoundly unserious.
Good morning
And giveover
Badenoch gave a totally unexpected and successful speech that galvanised her audience and has given her party lots of policies, and of scrapping stamp duty has been well received from think tanks and Paul Johnson formally of the IFS who said yesterday it is the worst of many bad taxes
Your mixture of cynicism and satire is par for the course but at least this conservative is pleased to see conservative policies and Jenrick put back in his box
I think it was a good speech and I quite like her personally. The central role of the abolition of stamp duty should be more controversial than it is, since it only benefits people who own homes worth more than £300K (which excludes 35% of households who don't own their home, plus whatever proportion own homes worth less than £300K - I can't find this info but it will be higher in the north). As such, it addresses a genuine problem (reluctance to move home) but overwhelmingly benefits the well-off. By contrast, the abolition of aid for people with limited mental problems probably affects non-voters disproportionately. Overall, it's a right-wing policy which ignores poorer people, while having benefits in encouraging mobility. As a Conservative policy it makes sense, although it doesn't tempt me as I prefer economic policies to favour people on lower incomes.
Just to correct you on stamp duty
It is triggered on all property sales in England from £150,001
Wales has LTT which is different and has different rates
First-time buyers get £300K free.
In November Kemi will be able to reply to Reeves after the budget that the Government has stolen her big idea. Hopefully the Government will have thought through a plan B to pay for it.
Over a third of the boomer retired generation say no party represents them says new YouGov poll.
As Stephen Bush points out - these are the guys that "takes up most government spending".
Frankly, they are being handed ever increasing state largesse on a massive silver plate!
One can make an argument that the group most undeserving of state largesse are people in their late 60s who are still fit and healthy, but getting pensions and other benefits. Should the pension age be further raised?
Pension age should be graduated. Starting at a lower age than current, 63?,at maybe £2k or £3k per year then increasing til maybe 73 to the current rate.
Liz Kendall floated phasing it in over 4 years rising by 25% chunks.
On the face of it the principle seems sound. Would it cost an arm and a leg in admin though.
TL:DR They know that the Ukranians will otherwise start making their own with local and European tech, the Pentagon / MIC really don’t want to lose control of the whole situation. Pentagon attitude survived change of administration.
Over a third of the boomer retired generation say no party represents them says new YouGov poll.
As Stephen Bush points out - these are the guys that "takes up most government spending".
Frankly, they are being handed ever increasing state largesse on a massive silver plate!
One can make an argument that the group most undeserving of state largesse are people in their late 60s who are still fit and healthy, but getting pensions and other benefits. Should the pension age be further raised?
Pension age should be graduated. Starting at a lower age than current, 63?,at maybe £2k or £3k per year then increasing til maybe 73 to the current rate.
What's the rationale here? That people are expected to be moving to part-time working?
People do move to work part time. And some people retire at 55, others at 80. The days of a single retirement age for everyone are long gone.
People who retire at 55 tend to be very rich people who can afford to, but others need to retire early for health reasons. People who retire at 80 tend to have better paying white collar jobs. So, how does the system handle all these differences? Putting everyone on a graduated system going from 63 to 73 is still a one size fits all solution.
Do we instead need more means testing and/or health status testing?
Over a third of the boomer retired generation say no party represents them says new YouGov poll.
As Stephen Bush points out - these are the guys that "takes up most government spending".
Frankly, they are being handed ever increasing state largesse on a massive silver plate!
One can make an argument that the group most undeserving of state largesse are people in their late 60s who are still fit and healthy, but getting pensions and other benefits. Should the pension age be further raised?
Pension age should be graduated. Starting at a lower age than current, 63?,at maybe £2k or £3k per year then increasing til maybe 73 to the current rate.
What's the rationale here? That people are expected to be moving to part-time working?
People do move to work part time. And some people retire at 55, others at 80. The days of a single retirement age for everyone are long gone.
I retired at 59. I may look at temp work or volunteering. My neighbours retired at different ages to me. Long gone are the days of one retirement age for all. You are right.
Re stamp duty, perhaps I'm being thick but if the supply of houses doesn't increase and buyers now have more money with which to buy, won't this just lead to an increase in house prices which will make things even harder for those trying to get on the property ladder?
House prices will increase to absorb any stamp duty cut, absolutely. But the point of eliminating stamp duty is not to cut house prices, it’s to reduce the friction imposed on the economy that stamp duty imposes. Stamp duty massively increases the transactional costs of moving house: That means that people are less likely to move to get a better job, or downsize to a smaller property as they get older.
Taxes always have a negative effect on your economy because they alter the prices of goods away from their natural level. But stamp duty has more pernicious effects than any other tax - it is by far the worst tax economically. If you ask economists which tax they would most like to get rid of then stamp duty is at the top of the list. We would be far better off if we eliminated stamp duty & replaced it with almost any other tax.
I think there's a case that it will means prices fall because there will be an effective increase in supply. There are 26 million spare bedrooms in the UK - the change could mean we use our housing stock more efficiently.
Prices won't fall. Sellers know buyers have an extra few thousand (or more) available. A few thousand can be leveraged into tens of thousands bigger mortgages. Prices go up significantly.
Prices are governed by demand and supply. Overall demand for housing won't increase - this is distinct from the demand for moving house. You might get a short term effect as everyone rushes to move when the reform is applied but long term I think it makes no difference - we'll all still want to live in a mansion in Edinburgh.
Supply could increase if reduced transaction costs improve the efficiency of matching appropriate sized houses to households (downsizing from pensioners).
= Price drop. I'm not 100% sure about this so open to counter-arguments.
Obviously this effect would be magnified if property taxes meant that holding property wealth was unattractive. The only people who'd want a 5-bed in that scenario are people with loads of kids, prices would drop and suddenly raising kids is more affordable.
I agree with you.
There’s a lot of moving parts in the housing market, including the supply and demand for mortgages and the willingness of banks to lend accordingly. The single largest factor in recent (10-20y) inflation has been that banks might now (well, until a couple of years ago) lend 4x joint salary at 1% interest rates.
Abolishing stamp duty makes downsizing much easier, especially in expensive places, which will act as an increase in supply in those areas at the top end of the market. If moving from an £800k house to a £600k house costs £60k in tax, no-one is ever doing it.
The bigger benefits from the abolition are on labour markets. People have always been reluctant to move away from what I’ll call the “London catchment area”, because of the cost of moving, and even more so the cost of moving back. If you left London for say Newcastle for five years for a job, you would find that you couldn’t afford to move back to the same house near London after that time, because of London property inflation and stamp duty. Abolishion makes it easier to attract workers to Newcastle, which in the round might increase house prices there over time at the expense of lower greater London house prices, and more businesses basing themselves in Newcastle.
Over a third of the boomer retired generation say no party represents them says new YouGov poll.
As Stephen Bush points out - these are the guys that "takes up most government spending".
Frankly, they are being handed ever increasing state largesse on a massive silver plate!
One can make an argument that the group most undeserving of state largesse are people in their late 60s who are still fit and healthy, but getting pensions and other benefits. Should the pension age be further raised?
Pension age should be graduated. Starting at a lower age than current, 63?,at maybe £2k or £3k per year then increasing til maybe 73 to the current rate.
Liz Kendall floated phasing it in over 4 years rising by 25% chunks.
On the face of it the principle seems sound. Would it cost an arm and a leg in admin though.
If over 4 years agree it is not worth it for the admin. Think it should be done over 10-12 years to have the right impact. Most people 65-70 could work part time even where full time work might be a struggle.
Over a third of the boomer retired generation say no party represents them says new YouGov poll.
As Stephen Bush points out - these are the guys that "takes up most government spending".
Frankly, they are being handed ever increasing state largesse on a massive silver plate!
One can make an argument that the group most undeserving of state largesse are people in their late 60s who are still fit and healthy, but getting pensions and other benefits. Should the pension age be further raised?
Pension age should be graduated. Starting at a lower age than current, 63?,at maybe £2k or £3k per year then increasing til maybe 73 to the current rate.
Current full state pension is £11975.60 pa. Starting at £2K is a hell of a drop.
Over a third of the boomer retired generation say no party represents them says new YouGov poll.
As Stephen Bush points out - these are the guys that "takes up most government spending".
Frankly, they are being handed ever increasing state largesse on a massive silver plate!
One can make an argument that the group most undeserving of state largesse are people in their late 60s who are still fit and healthy, but getting pensions and other benefits. Should the pension age be further raised?
Pension age should be graduated. Starting at a lower age than current, 63?,at maybe £2k or £3k per year then increasing til maybe 73 to the current rate.
Current full state pension is £11975.60 pa. Starting at £2K is a hell of a drop.
Current full state pension at age 63 is £0. I think that makes £2k a hell of a rise.
Over a third of the boomer retired generation say no party represents them says new YouGov poll.
As Stephen Bush points out - these are the guys that "takes up most government spending".
Frankly, they are being handed ever increasing state largesse on a massive silver plate!
One can make an argument that the group most undeserving of state largesse are people in their late 60s who are still fit and healthy, but getting pensions and other benefits. Should the pension age be further raised?
Pension age should be graduated. Starting at a lower age than current, 63?,at maybe £2k or £3k per year then increasing til maybe 73 to the current rate.
I don't think there's much chance of giving pensions to younger people than at present. A more likely change would be to phase the state pension in over five years, starting from the current pension age.
I don't know how you'd make a phased state pension work with unemployment benefits, though.
Yougov: Would you support or oppose it being made compulsory for all newly-retired people to serve on a community service placement for a period of one year?” For those 65+, 20% of those support vs 50% of them wanting a similar mandatory national service scheme for young people
Re stamp duty, perhaps I'm being thick but if the supply of houses doesn't increase and buyers now have more money with which to buy, won't this just lead to an increase in house prices which will make things even harder for those trying to get on the property ladder?
House prices will increase to absorb any stamp duty cut, absolutely. But the point of eliminating stamp duty is not to cut house prices, it’s to reduce the friction imposed on the economy that stamp duty imposes. Stamp duty massively increases the transactional costs of moving house: That means that people are less likely to move to get a better job, or downsize to a smaller property as they get older.
Taxes always have a negative effect on your economy because they alter the prices of goods away from their natural level. But stamp duty has more pernicious effects than any other tax - it is by far the worst tax economically. If you ask economists which tax they would most like to get rid of then stamp duty is at the top of the list. We would be far better off if we eliminated stamp duty & replaced it with almost any other tax.
I think there's a case that it will means prices fall because there will be an effective increase in supply. There are 26 million spare bedrooms in the UK - the change could mean we use our housing stock more efficiently.
Prices won't fall. Sellers know buyers have an extra few thousand (or more) available. A few thousand can be leveraged into tens of thousands bigger mortgages. Prices go up significantly.
Prices are governed by demand and supply. Overall demand for housing won't increase - this is distinct from the demand for moving house. You might get a short term effect as everyone rushes to move when the reform is applied but long term I think it makes no difference - we'll all still want to live in a mansion in Edinburgh.
Supply could increase if reduced transaction costs improve the efficiency of matching appropriate sized houses to households (downsizing from pensioners).
= Price drop.
I'm not 100% sure about this so open to counter-arguments. Obviously this effect would be magnified if property taxes meant that holding property wealth was unattractive.
Of course demand changes when buyers have extra cash.
The demand for buying will certainly increase - but given the cost of properties this effects, this will be matched in an equal increase in the supply of houses available to buy.
(That's why keeping SDLT for second homes is sensible)
TL:DR They know that the Ukranians will otherwise start making their own with local and European tech, the Pentagon / MIC really don’t want to lose control of the whole situation. Pentagon attitude survived change of administration.
Are the US sending tomahawks?
There’s been a lot of nudge-nudge wink-wink in the last couple of weeks. It’s happening.
We’ll probably know it’s happened when the Shahed drone factory gets bombed by a dozen of them (it’s a big site).
Over a third of the boomer retired generation say no party represents them says new YouGov poll.
As Stephen Bush points out - these are the guys that "takes up most government spending".
Frankly, they are being handed ever increasing state largesse on a massive silver plate!
One can make an argument that the group most undeserving of state largesse are people in their late 60s who are still fit and healthy, but getting pensions and other benefits. Should the pension age be further raised?
Pension age should be graduated. Starting at a lower age than current, 63?,at maybe £2k or £3k per year then increasing til maybe 73 to the current rate.
What's the rationale here? That people are expected to be moving to part-time working?
People do move to work part time. And some people retire at 55, others at 80. The days of a single retirement age for everyone are long gone.
People who retire at 55 tend to be very rich people who can afford to, but others need to retire early for health reasons. People who retire at 80 tend to have better paying white collar jobs. So, how does the system handle all these differences? Putting everyone on a graduated system going from 63 to 73 is still a one size fits all solution.
Do we instead need more means testing and/or health status testing?
Be useful and don't abuse your body and you'll have to work longer will be a hard sell.
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.
You had fourteen years in Government. Fourteen years to identify and implement swingeing service cuts to pay for massive tax cuts. You failed. During that 14 years, service provision levels crashed at the same time the tax burden increased.
Posters have quoted Reform fantasy savings in Kent, savings so magnificent that Council tax increases could be suspended, until they found out there were few savings to be made and Council taxes were raised by 5%.
A nice speech offering the Moon on a stick is one thing, shoehorning the contents of that speech into reality is quite another.
Your party and the cheerleaders on here are profoundly unserious.
Good morning
And giveover
Badenoch gave a totally unexpected and successful speech that galvanised her audience and has given her party lots of policies, and of scrapping stamp duty has been well received from think tanks and Paul Johnson formally of the IFS who said yesterday it is the worst of many bad taxes
Your mixture of cynicism and satire is par for the course but at least this conservative is pleased to see conservative policies and Jenrick put back in his box
she got as much hope of delivering those policies as DCam had in getting immigration below 6 figures. Absolutely no connection to reality.
TL:DR They know that the Ukranians will otherwise start making their own with local and European tech, the Pentagon / MIC really don’t want to lose control of the whole situation. Pentagon attitude survived change of administration.
Are the US sending tomahawks?
There’s been a lot of nudge-nudge wink-wink in the last couple of weeks. It’s happening.
We’ll probably know it’s happened when the Shahed drone factory gets bombed by a dozen of them (it’s a big site).
I certainly hope so, but I'm not counting my destroyed Russian oil refineries and armaments factories until they're burning.
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.
You had fourteen years in Government. Fourteen years to identify and implement swingeing service cuts to pay for massive tax cuts. You failed. During that 14 years, service provision levels crashed at the same time the tax burden increased.
Posters have quoted Reform fantasy savings in Kent, savings so magnificent that Council tax increases could be suspended, until they found out there were few savings to be made and Council taxes were raised by 5%.
A nice speech offering the Moon on a stick is one thing, shoehorning the contents of that speech into reality is quite another.
Your party and the cheerleaders on here are profoundly unserious.
Good morning
And giveover
Badenoch gave a totally unexpected and successful speech that galvanised her audience and has given her party lots of policies, and of scrapping stamp duty has been well received from think tanks and Paul Johnson formally of the IFS who said yesterday it is the worst of many bad taxes
Your mixture of cynicism and satire is par for the cop* but at least this conservative is pleased to see conservative policies and Jenrick put back in his box
I don't believe I was being remotely cynical or satirical. If you want satire I can write all day about letter boxes and an offensive description of a smile.
You would be the first to criticise ( and justifiably so) an unfunded Reeves pledge. And make no mistake there is nothing in the credit column to match the tax cut in the debit column, except for a nebulous notion of cutting wastage.
If she has done enough to put Jenrick back in his box and take some points from Reform I'll drink to that, but my point stands, her welcome tax cut debit does not demonstrate a corresponding credit.
*If you don't like me posting on here you could always ask TSE politely to transfer me from "member" to " applicant" status, that way I can still access and read your posts but no longer post myself. There, that seems like a neat compromise.
At times you really are very silly as demonstrated by your last paragraph
4.5 billion cost as quoted by the IFS is eminently doable
I do apologise for my figures, I misinterpreted what you were writing. You were claiming that stamp duty only generated the Government £4.5b, I misinterpreted that, not least because I was under the misapprehension that the £11.6b figure was cast iron.
The widely accepted figure for stamp duty credit yesterday was £11.6b down from a little over £12b on the previous measurement timescale. I thought even Kemi accepted the stamp duty saving as £9b, although if you say it is only £4.5b I would be surprised, but £4.5b it is.
Nonetheless, how are you paying for that £4.5b shortfall? Nebulous growth wishcasting and bogus service cost savings don't count.
Over a third of the boomer retired generation say no party represents them says new YouGov poll.
As Stephen Bush points out - these are the guys that "takes up most government spending".
Frankly, they are being handed ever increasing state largesse on a massive silver plate!
One can make an argument that the group most undeserving of state largesse are people in their late 60s who are still fit and healthy, but getting pensions and other benefits. Should the pension age be further raised?
Pension age should be graduated. Starting at a lower age than current, 63?,at maybe £2k or £3k per year then increasing til maybe 73 to the current rate.
I don't think there's much chance of giving pensions to younger people than at present. A more likely change would be to phase the state pension in over five years, starting from the current pension age.
I don't know how you'd make a phased state pension work with unemployment benefits, though.
Starting around 63 does a couple of things:
Some electoral support as there are winners, including much younger voters, as well as losers Matches the economic reality of how people retire in the 2020s.
Yougov: Would you support or oppose it being made compulsory for all newly-retired people to serve on a community service placement for a period of one year?” For those 65+, 20% of those support vs 50% of them wanting a similar mandatory national service scheme for young people
Every survey exposes the hypocrisy and entitlement of that generation (refuse to call them baby boomers, thet’s really 50-64 in the uk)
The west has a huge pensioner problem imo.
Lots of interesting polling there. I do note that 65+ are more supportive of the idea than younger groups, and there is lots of support for a voluntary scheme.
Over a third of the boomer retired generation say no party represents them says new YouGov poll.
As Stephen Bush points out - these are the guys that "takes up most government spending".
Frankly, they are being handed ever increasing state largesse on a massive silver plate!
One can make an argument that the group most undeserving of state largesse are people in their late 60s who are still fit and healthy, but getting pensions and other benefits. Should the pension age be further raised?
Pension age should be graduated. Starting at a lower age than current, 63?,at maybe £2k or £3k per year then increasing til maybe 73 to the current rate.
What's the rationale here? That people are expected to be moving to part-time working?
People do move to work part time. And some people retire at 55, others at 80. The days of a single retirement age for everyone are long gone.
People who retire at 55 tend to be very rich people who can afford to, but others need to retire early for health reasons. People who retire at 80 tend to have better paying white collar jobs. So, how does the system handle all these differences? Putting everyone on a graduated system going from 63 to 73 is still a one size fits all solution.
Do we instead need more means testing and/or health status testing?
I expect means testing to be in place when I am due for retirement sometime in the 2040s.
TL:DR They know that the Ukranians will otherwise start making their own with local and European tech, the Pentagon / MIC really don’t want to lose control of the whole situation. Pentagon attitude survived change of administration.
Are the US sending tomahawks?
There’s been a lot of nudge-nudge wink-wink in the last couple of weeks. It’s happening.
We’ll probably know it’s happened when the Shahed drone factory gets bombed by a dozen of them (it’s a big site).
I certainly hope so, but I'm not counting my destroyed Russian oil refineries and armaments factories until they're burning.
Yougov: Would you support or oppose it being made compulsory for all newly-retired people to serve on a community service placement for a period of one year?” For those 65+, 20% of those support vs 50% of them wanting a similar mandatory national service scheme for young people
Every survey exposes the hypocrisy and entitlement of that generation (refuse to call them baby boomers, thet’s really 50-64 in the uk)
The west has a huge pensioner problem imo.
Lots of interesting polling there. I do note that 65+ are more supportive of the idea than younger groups, and there is lots of support for a voluntary scheme.
A voluntary scheme to volunteer? Confused, why not just volunteer without the scheme? There are loads of volunteering opportunities already.
Over a third of the boomer retired generation say no party represents them says new YouGov poll.
As Stephen Bush points out - these are the guys that "takes up most government spending".
Frankly, they are being handed ever increasing state largesse on a massive silver plate!
One can make an argument that the group most undeserving of state largesse are people in their late 60s who are still fit and healthy, but getting pensions and other benefits. Should the pension age be further raised?
Pension age should be graduated. Starting at a lower age than current, 63?,at maybe £2k or £3k per year then increasing til maybe 73 to the current rate.
What's the rationale here? That people are expected to be moving to part-time working?
People do move to work part time. And some people retire at 55, others at 80. The days of a single retirement age for everyone are long gone.
People who retire at 55 tend to be very rich people who can afford to, but others need to retire early for health reasons. People who retire at 80 tend to have better paying white collar jobs. So, how does the system handle all these differences? Putting everyone on a graduated system going from 63 to 73 is still a one size fits all solution.
Do we instead need more means testing and/or health status testing?
Be useful and don't abuse your body and you'll have to work longer will be a hard sell.
All testing for benefits runs an equivalent risk. I don't believe many people are going to abuse their bodies just to get a pension sooner!
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.
You had fourteen years in Government. Fourteen years to identify and implement swingeing service cuts to pay for massive tax cuts. You failed. During that 14 years, service provision levels crashed at the same time the tax burden increased.
Posters have quoted Reform fantasy savings in Kent, savings so magnificent that Council tax increases could be suspended, until they found out there were few savings to be made and Council taxes were raised by 5%.
A nice speech offering the Moon on a stick is one thing, shoehorning the contents of that speech into reality is quite another.
Your party and the cheerleaders on here are profoundly unserious.
Good morning
And giveover
Badenoch gave a totally unexpected and successful speech that galvanised her audience and has given her party lots of policies, and of scrapping stamp duty has been well received from think tanks and Paul Johnson formally of the IFS who said yesterday it is the worst of many bad taxes
Your mixture of cynicism and satire is par for the cop* but at least this conservative is pleased to see conservative policies and Jenrick put back in his box
I don't believe I was being remotely cynical or satirical. If you want satire I can write all day about letter boxes and an offensive description of a smile.
You would be the first to criticise ( and justifiably so) an unfunded Reeves pledge. And make no mistake there is nothing in the credit column to match the tax cut in the debit column, except for a nebulous notion of cutting wastage.
If she has done enough to put Jenrick back in his box and take some points from Reform I'll drink to that, but my point stands, her welcome tax cut debit does not demonstrate a corresponding credit.
*If you don't like me posting on here you could always ask TSE politely to transfer me from "member" to " applicant" status, that way I can still access and read your posts but no longer post myself. There, that seems like a neat compromise.
At times you really are very silly as demonstrated by your last paragraph
4.5 billion cost as quoted by the IFS is eminently doable
I do apologise for my figures, I misinterpreted what you were writing. You were claiming that stamp duty only generated the Government £4.5b, I misinterpreted that, not least because I was under the misapprehension that the £11.6b figure was cast iron.
The widely accepted figure for stamp duty credit yesterday was £11.6b down from a little over £12b on the previous measurement timescale. I thought even Kemi accepted the stamp duty saving as £9b, although if you say it is only £4.5b I would be surprised, but £4.5b it is.
Nonetheless, how are you paying for that £4.5b shortfall? Nebulous growth wishcasting and bogus service cost savings don't count.
Thank you for your comments and in the scheme of things 4.5 billion is small beer
Over a third of the boomer retired generation say no party represents them says new YouGov poll.
As Stephen Bush points out - these are the guys that "takes up most government spending".
Frankly, they are being handed ever increasing state largesse on a massive silver plate!
One can make an argument that the group most undeserving of state largesse are people in their late 60s who are still fit and healthy, but getting pensions and other benefits. Should the pension age be further raised?
Pension age should be graduated. Starting at a lower age than current, 63?,at maybe £2k or £3k per year then increasing til maybe 73 to the current rate.
I don't think there's much chance of giving pensions to younger people than at present. A more likely change would be to phase the state pension in over five years, starting from the current pension age.
I don't know how you'd make a phased state pension work with unemployment benefits, though.
Starting around 63 does a couple of things:
Some electoral support as there are winners, including much younger voters, as well as losers Matches the economic reality of how people retire in the 2020s.
That may be true, but I see phasing the state pension over a few years (between 68-72, say) as a better way of saving money than simply increasing the future state pension age from 68 to 70.
I guess you could combine a 10-year transition and moving the midpoint up, so that you phase the pension in between the ages of 65-75.
Yougov: Would you support or oppose it being made compulsory for all newly-retired people to serve on a community service placement for a period of one year?” For those 65+, 20% of those support vs 50% of them wanting a similar mandatory national service scheme for young people
Every survey exposes the hypocrisy and entitlement of that generation (refuse to call them baby boomers, thet’s really 50-64 in the uk)
The west has a huge pensioner problem imo.
Lots of interesting polling there. I do note that 65+ are more supportive of the idea than younger groups, and there is lots of support for a voluntary scheme.
A voluntary scheme to volunteer? Confused, why not just volunteer without the scheme? There are loads of volunteering opportunities already.
There can be advantages in having a single, high-profile, govt-supported way into volunteering, that helps people into volunteering and finding a useful role.
Yougov: Would you support or oppose it being made compulsory for all newly-retired people to serve on a community service placement for a period of one year?” For those 65+, 20% of those support vs 50% of them wanting a similar mandatory national service scheme for young people
Every survey exposes the hypocrisy and entitlement of that generation (refuse to call them baby boomers, thet’s really 50-64 in the uk)
The west has a huge pensioner problem imo.
Lots of interesting polling there. I do note that 65+ are more supportive of the idea than younger groups, and there is lots of support for a voluntary scheme.
A voluntary scheme to volunteer? Confused, why not just volunteer without the scheme? There are loads of volunteering opportunities already.
There can be advantages in having a single, high-profile, govt-supported way into volunteering, that helps people into volunteering and finding a useful role.
Yougov: Would you support or oppose it being made compulsory for all newly-retired people to serve on a community service placement for a period of one year?” For those 65+, 20% of those support vs 50% of them wanting a similar mandatory national service scheme for young people
Every survey exposes the hypocrisy and entitlement of that generation (refuse to call them baby boomers, thet’s really 50-64 in the uk)
The west has a huge pensioner problem imo.
Lots of interesting polling there. I do note that 65+ are more supportive of the idea than younger groups, and there is lots of support for a voluntary scheme.
What’s stopping them volunteering it if they feel so strongly ?
TL:DR They know that the Ukranians will otherwise start making their own with local and European tech, the Pentagon / MIC really don’t want to lose control of the whole situation. Pentagon attitude survived change of administration.
Are the US sending tomahawks?
There’s been a lot of nudge-nudge wink-wink in the last couple of weeks. It’s happening.
We’ll probably know it’s happened when the Shahed drone factory gets bombed by a dozen of them (it’s a big site).
I certainly hope so, but I'm not counting my destroyed Russian oil refineries and armaments factories until they're burning.
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.
You had fourteen years in Government. Fourteen years to identify and implement swingeing service cuts to pay for massive tax cuts. You failed. During that 14 years, service provision levels crashed at the same time the tax burden increased.
Posters have quoted Reform fantasy savings in Kent, savings so magnificent that Council tax increases could be suspended, until they found out there were few savings to be made and Council taxes were raised by 5%.
A nice speech offering the Moon on a stick is one thing, shoehorning the contents of that speech into reality is quite another.
Your party and the cheerleaders on here are profoundly unserious.
Good morning
And giveover
Badenoch gave a totally unexpected and successful speech that galvanised her audience and has given her party lots of policies, and of scrapping stamp duty has been well received from think tanks and Paul Johnson formally of the IFS who said yesterday it is the worst of many bad taxes
Your mixture of cynicism and satire is par for the cop* but at least this conservative is pleased to see conservative policies and Jenrick put back in his box
I don't believe I was being remotely cynical or satirical. If you want satire I can write all day about letter boxes and an offensive description of a smile.
You would be the first to criticise ( and justifiably so) an unfunded Reeves pledge. And make no mistake there is nothing in the credit column to match the tax cut in the debit column, except for a nebulous notion of cutting wastage.
If she has done enough to put Jenrick back in his box and take some points from Reform I'll drink to that, but my point stands, her welcome tax cut debit does not demonstrate a corresponding credit.
*If you don't like me posting on here you could always ask TSE politely to transfer me from "member" to " applicant" status, that way I can still access and read your posts but no longer post myself. There, that seems like a neat compromise.
At times you really are very silly as demonstrated by your last paragraph
4.5 billion cost as quoted by the IFS is eminently doable
I do apologise for my figures, I misinterpreted what you were writing. You were claiming that stamp duty only generated the Government £4.5b, I misinterpreted that, not least because I was under the misapprehension that the £11.6b figure was cast iron.
The widely accepted figure for stamp duty credit yesterday was £11.6b down from a little over £12b on the previous measurement timescale. I thought even Kemi accepted the stamp duty saving as £9b, although if you say it is only £4.5b I would be surprised, but £4.5b it is.
Nonetheless, how are you paying for that £4.5b shortfall? Nebulous growth wishcasting and bogus service cost savings don't count.
Thank you for your comments and in the scheme of things 4.5 billion is small beer
LOL! I won't be offering to buy you a pint!
You haven't answered my question. How are you paying for that £4.5b shortfall? Nebulous growth wishcasting and bogus service cost savings don't count.
Yougov: Would you support or oppose it being made compulsory for all newly-retired people to serve on a community service placement for a period of one year?” For those 65+, 20% of those support vs 50% of them wanting mandatory national service for young people
Every survey exposes the hypocrisy and entitlement of that generation (refuse to call them baby boomers, thet’s really 50-64 in the uk)
The west has a huge pensioner problem imo.
Hmm. I'm not quite so sure. Consider: - need for young people to be trained, socialised etc., given experience of life away from home - need for many oldies to help with grandchild care - health in general: oldies poorer than youngsters - quite a lot of oldies do volunbtary work already, effectively
Also, national service is paid, sort of, even if it's just board and lodging and pocket money, plus family allowance where needed. Voluntary service isn't.
Ofg course, this result stems also in part from the nonsense one reads in some newspapers and speeches. National service's main role isn't to bully youngsters and make them into good little youths, but to contribute to national defence. There are major problems with national service in terms of current UK armed forces structure and organization. Those are not at all made clear in the sort of send-them-to-the-depot rhetoric one sees. But including such things as hospital work and so on would help there. And most living pensioners missed national service completely, so never had an insight into the reality. You'd need to be about 85 or over to have had even a chance of being selected, and many never were, especially at the tail end.
Over a third of the boomer retired generation say no party represents them says new YouGov poll.
As Stephen Bush points out - these are the guys that "takes up most government spending".
Frankly, they are being handed ever increasing state largesse on a massive silver plate!
One can make an argument that the group most undeserving of state largesse are people in their late 60s who are still fit and healthy, but getting pensions and other benefits. Should the pension age be further raised?
Pension age should be graduated. Starting at a lower age than current, 63?,at maybe £2k or £3k per year then increasing til maybe 73 to the current rate.
What's the rationale here? That people are expected to be moving to part-time working?
People do move to work part time. And some people retire at 55, others at 80. The days of a single retirement age for everyone are long gone.
People who retire at 55 tend to be very rich people who can afford to, but others need to retire early for health reasons. People who retire at 80 tend to have better paying white collar jobs. So, how does the system handle all these differences? Putting everyone on a graduated system going from 63 to 73 is still a one size fits all solution.
Do we instead need more means testing and/or health status testing?
Be useful and don't abuse your body and you'll have to work longer will be a hard sell.
All testing for benefits runs an equivalent risk. I don't believe many people are going to abuse their bodies just to get a pension sooner!
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.
You had fourteen years in Government. Fourteen years to identify and implement swingeing service cuts to pay for massive tax cuts. You failed. During that 14 years, service provision levels crashed at the same time the tax burden increased.
Posters have quoted Reform fantasy savings in Kent, savings so magnificent that Council tax increases could be suspended, until they found out there were few savings to be made and Council taxes were raised by 5%.
A nice speech offering the Moon on a stick is one thing, shoehorning the contents of that speech into reality is quite another.
Your party and the cheerleaders on here are profoundly unserious.
Good morning
And giveover
Badenoch gave a totally unexpected and successful speech that galvanised her audience and has given her party lots of policies, and of scrapping stamp duty has been well received from think tanks and Paul Johnson formally of the IFS who said yesterday it is the worst of many bad taxes
Your mixture of cynicism and satire is par for the cop* but at least this conservative is pleased to see conservative policies and Jenrick put back in his box
I don't believe I was being remotely cynical or satirical. If you want satire I can write all day about letter boxes and an offensive description of a smile.
You would be the first to criticise ( and justifiably so) an unfunded Reeves pledge. And make no mistake there is nothing in the credit column to match the tax cut in the debit column, except for a nebulous notion of cutting wastage.
If she has done enough to put Jenrick back in his box and take some points from Reform I'll drink to that, but my point stands, her welcome tax cut debit does not demonstrate a corresponding credit.
*If you don't like me posting on here you could always ask TSE politely to transfer me from "member" to " applicant" status, that way I can still access and read your posts but no longer post myself. There, that seems like a neat compromise.
At times you really are very silly as demonstrated by your last paragraph
4.5 billion cost as quoted by the IFS is eminently doable
I do apologise for my figures, I misinterpreted what you were writing. You were claiming that stamp duty only generated the Government £4.5b, I misinterpreted that, not least because I was under the misapprehension that the £11.6b figure was cast iron.
The widely accepted figure for stamp duty credit yesterday was £11.6b down from a little over £12b on the previous measurement timescale. I thought even Kemi accepted the stamp duty saving as £9b, although if you say it is only £4.5b I would be surprised, but £4.5b it is.
Nonetheless, how are you paying for that £4.5b shortfall? Nebulous growth wishcasting and bogus service cost savings don't count.
And as I pointed out £4.5bn is less than the cost of 1p of the 4p employee NI tax cuts.
So if it really was £4.5bn then Hunt would have done it, because, as has been pointed out a number of times on here, there is a lot of benefits from removing transactional costs on primary properties..
Yougov: Would you support or oppose it being made compulsory for all newly-retired people to serve on a community service placement for a period of one year?” For those 65+, 20% of those support vs 50% of them wanting a similar mandatory national service scheme for young people
Every survey exposes the hypocrisy and entitlement of that generation (refuse to call them baby boomers, thet’s really 50-64 in the uk)
The west has a huge pensioner problem imo.
Lots of interesting polling there. I do note that 65+ are more supportive of the idea than younger groups, and there is lots of support for a voluntary scheme.
A voluntary scheme to volunteer? Confused, why not just volunteer without the scheme? There are loads of volunteering opportunities already.
There can be advantages in having a single, high-profile, govt-supported way into volunteering, that helps people into volunteering and finding a useful role.
Mr Cameron's something something society, redux, no? (Not that it is a bad idea in itself, oh no.)
Over a third of the boomer retired generation say no party represents them says new YouGov poll.
As Stephen Bush points out - these are the guys that "takes up most government spending".
Frankly, they are being handed ever increasing state largesse on a massive silver plate!
One can make an argument that the group most undeserving of state largesse are people in their late 60s who are still fit and healthy, but getting pensions and other benefits. Should the pension age be further raised?
Pension age should be graduated. Starting at a lower age than current, 63?,at maybe £2k or £3k per year then increasing til maybe 73 to the current rate.
What's the rationale here? That people are expected to be moving to part-time working?
People do move to work part time. And some people retire at 55, others at 80. The days of a single retirement age for everyone are long gone.
People who retire at 55 tend to be very rich people who can afford to, but others need to retire early for health reasons. People who retire at 80 tend to have better paying white collar jobs. So, how does the system handle all these differences? Putting everyone on a graduated system going from 63 to 73 is still a one size fits all solution.
Do we instead need more means testing and/or health status testing?
Be useful and don't abuse your body and you'll have to work longer will be a hard sell.
All testing for benefits runs an equivalent risk. I don't believe many people are going to abuse their bodies just to get a pension sooner!
Maybe UBI solves all this?
Where does the money come from for it ?
Tax. You give everyone a basic income, but you then take it back out as tax from those with other incomes. I mean, that's the theory.
Yougov: Would you support or oppose it being made compulsory for all newly-retired people to serve on a community service placement for a period of one year?” For those 65+, 20% of those support vs 50% of them wanting a similar mandatory national service scheme for young people
Every survey exposes the hypocrisy and entitlement of that generation (refuse to call them baby boomers, thet’s really 50-64 in the uk)
The west has a huge pensioner problem imo.
Lots of interesting polling there. I do note that 65+ are more supportive of the idea than younger groups, and there is lots of support for a voluntary scheme.
A voluntary scheme to volunteer? Confused, why not just volunteer without the scheme? There are loads of volunteering opportunities already.
There can be advantages in having a single, high-profile, govt-supported way into volunteering, that helps people into volunteering and finding a useful role.
Mr Cameron's something something society, redux, no? (Not that it is a bad idea in itself, oh no.)
I have long thought that Cameron's Big Society was a better idea than the sarcasm it received at the time suggested.
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.
You had fourteen years in Government. Fourteen years to identify and implement swingeing service cuts to pay for massive tax cuts. You failed. During that 14 years, service provision levels crashed at the same time the tax burden increased.
Posters have quoted Reform fantasy savings in Kent, savings so magnificent that Council tax increases could be suspended, until they found out there were few savings to be made and Council taxes were raised by 5%.
A nice speech offering the Moon on a stick is one thing, shoehorning the contents of that speech into reality is quite another.
Your party and the cheerleaders on here are profoundly unserious.
Good morning
And giveover
Badenoch gave a totally unexpected and successful speech that galvanised her audience and has given her party lots of policies, and of scrapping stamp duty has been well received from think tanks and Paul Johnson formally of the IFS who said yesterday it is the worst of many bad taxes
Your mixture of cynicism and satire is par for the cop* but at least this conservative is pleased to see conservative policies and Jenrick put back in his box
I don't believe I was being remotely cynical or satirical. If you want satire I can write all day about letter boxes and an offensive description of a smile.
You would be the first to criticise ( and justifiably so) an unfunded Reeves pledge. And make no mistake there is nothing in the credit column to match the tax cut in the debit column, except for a nebulous notion of cutting wastage.
If she has done enough to put Jenrick back in his box and take some points from Reform I'll drink to that, but my point stands, her welcome tax cut debit does not demonstrate a corresponding credit.
*If you don't like me posting on here you could always ask TSE politely to transfer me from "member" to " applicant" status, that way I can still access and read your posts but no longer post myself. There, that seems like a neat compromise.
At times you really are very silly as demonstrated by your last paragraph
4.5 billion cost as quoted by the IFS is eminently doable
I do apologise for my figures, I misinterpreted what you were writing. You were claiming that stamp duty only generated the Government £4.5b, I misinterpreted that, not least because I was under the misapprehension that the £11.6b figure was cast iron.
The widely accepted figure for stamp duty credit yesterday was £11.6b down from a little over £12b on the previous measurement timescale. I thought even Kemi accepted the stamp duty saving as £9b, although if you say it is only £4.5b I would be surprised, but £4.5b it is.
Nonetheless, how are you paying for that £4.5b shortfall? Nebulous growth wishcasting and bogus service cost savings don't count.
Thank you for your comments and in the scheme of things 4.5 billion is small beer
LOL! I won't be offering to buy you a pint!
You haven't answered my question. How are you paying for that £4.5b shortfall? Nebulous growth wishcasting and bogus service cost savings don't count.
Badenoch announced the end of ev and heat pump subsidies - that accounts for 2.5 billion alone
Over a third of the boomer retired generation say no party represents them says new YouGov poll.
As Stephen Bush points out - these are the guys that "takes up most government spending".
Frankly, they are being handed ever increasing state largesse on a massive silver plate!
One can make an argument that the group most undeserving of state largesse are people in their late 60s who are still fit and healthy, but getting pensions and other benefits. Should the pension age be further raised?
Pension age should be graduated. Starting at a lower age than current, 63?,at maybe £2k or £3k per year then increasing til maybe 73 to the current rate.
What's the rationale here? That people are expected to be moving to part-time working?
People do move to work part time. And some people retire at 55, others at 80. The days of a single retirement age for everyone are long gone.
People who retire at 55 tend to be very rich people who can afford to, but others need to retire early for health reasons. People who retire at 80 tend to have better paying white collar jobs. So, how does the system handle all these differences? Putting everyone on a graduated system going from 63 to 73 is still a one size fits all solution.
Do we instead need more means testing and/or health status testing?
Be useful and don't abuse your body and you'll have to work longer will be a hard sell.
All testing for benefits runs an equivalent risk. I don't believe many people are going to abuse their bodies just to get a pension sooner!
Maybe UBI solves all this?
Where does the money come from for it ?
Tax. You give everyone a basic income, but you then take it back out as tax from those with other incomes. I mean, that's the theory.
Yougov: Would you support or oppose it being made compulsory for all newly-retired people to serve on a community service placement for a period of one year?” For those 65+, 20% of those support vs 50% of them wanting a similar mandatory national service scheme for young people
Every survey exposes the hypocrisy and entitlement of that generation (refuse to call them baby boomers, thet’s really 50-64 in the uk)
The west has a huge pensioner problem imo.
Lots of interesting polling there. I do note that 65+ are more supportive of the idea than younger groups, and there is lots of support for a voluntary scheme.
A voluntary scheme to volunteer? Confused, why not just volunteer without the scheme? There are loads of volunteering opportunities already.
There can be advantages in having a single, high-profile, govt-supported way into volunteering, that helps people into volunteering and finding a useful role.
Mr Cameron's something something society, redux, no? (Not that it is a bad idea in itself, oh no.)
I have long thought that Cameron's Big Society was a better idea than the sarcasm it received at the time suggested.
If Miliband had been a better politician he would have had Labour pick up the idea and run with it. Encouraging people to go out and work with others to improve their communities is exactly the sort of thing that builds the community cohesion and trust that leads to greater support for tax increases and public spending.
The Big Society could have made Britain a more left-wing country like the Scandinavian countries.
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.
You had fourteen years in Government. Fourteen years to identify and implement swingeing service cuts to pay for massive tax cuts. You failed. During that 14 years, service provision levels crashed at the same time the tax burden increased.
Posters have quoted Reform fantasy savings in Kent, savings so magnificent that Council tax increases could be suspended, until they found out there were few savings to be made and Council taxes were raised by 5%.
A nice speech offering the Moon on a stick is one thing, shoehorning the contents of that speech into reality is quite another.
Your party and the cheerleaders on here are profoundly unserious.
Good morning
And giveover
Badenoch gave a totally unexpected and successful speech that galvanised her audience and has given her party lots of policies, and of scrapping stamp duty has been well received from think tanks and Paul Johnson formally of the IFS who said yesterday it is the worst of many bad taxes
Your mixture of cynicism and satire is par for the cop* but at least this conservative is pleased to see conservative policies and Jenrick put back in his box
I don't believe I was being remotely cynical or satirical. If you want satire I can write all day about letter boxes and an offensive description of a smile.
You would be the first to criticise ( and justifiably so) an unfunded Reeves pledge. And make no mistake there is nothing in the credit column to match the tax cut in the debit column, except for a nebulous notion of cutting wastage.
If she has done enough to put Jenrick back in his box and take some points from Reform I'll drink to that, but my point stands, her welcome tax cut debit does not demonstrate a corresponding credit.
*If you don't like me posting on here you could always ask TSE politely to transfer me from "member" to " applicant" status, that way I can still access and read your posts but no longer post myself. There, that seems like a neat compromise.
At times you really are very silly as demonstrated by your last paragraph
4.5 billion cost as quoted by the IFS is eminently doable
I do apologise for my figures, I misinterpreted what you were writing. You were claiming that stamp duty only generated the Government £4.5b, I misinterpreted that, not least because I was under the misapprehension that the £11.6b figure was cast iron.
The widely accepted figure for stamp duty credit yesterday was £11.6b down from a little over £12b on the previous measurement timescale. I thought even Kemi accepted the stamp duty saving as £9b, although if you say it is only £4.5b I would be surprised, but £4.5b it is.
Nonetheless, how are you paying for that £4.5b shortfall? Nebulous growth wishcasting and bogus service cost savings don't count.
Thank you for your comments and in the scheme of things 4.5 billion is small beer
LOL! I won't be offering to buy you a pint!
You haven't answered my question. How are you paying for that £4.5b shortfall? Nebulous growth wishcasting and bogus service cost savings don't count.
Badenoch announced the end of ev and heat pump subsidies - that accounts for 2.5 billion alone
So the other £2b comes from additional fossil fuel duty? Nice one!
Yougov: Would you support or oppose it being made compulsory for all newly-retired people to serve on a community service placement for a period of one year?” For those 65+, 20% of those support vs 50% of them wanting a similar mandatory national service scheme for young people
Every survey exposes the hypocrisy and entitlement of that generation (refuse to call them baby boomers, thet’s really 50-64 in the uk)
The west has a huge pensioner problem imo.
Lots of interesting polling there. I do note that 65+ are more supportive of the idea than younger groups, and there is lots of support for a voluntary scheme.
A voluntary scheme to volunteer? Confused, why not just volunteer without the scheme? There are loads of volunteering opportunities already.
There can be advantages in having a single, high-profile, govt-supported way into volunteering, that helps people into volunteering and finding a useful role.
Mr Cameron's something something society, redux, no? (Not that it is a bad idea in itself, oh no.)
I have long thought that Cameron's Big Society was a better idea than the sarcasm it received at the time suggested.
It was indeed a good idea, but was written for the time of plenty that was 2007, not the economic situation that prevailed in 2010 when the election was called.
It was a policy for the election that never was, the one that Sion Simon predicted.
Over a third of the boomer retired generation say no party represents them says new YouGov poll.
As Stephen Bush points out - these are the guys that "takes up most government spending".
Frankly, they are being handed ever increasing state largesse on a massive silver plate!
One can make an argument that the group most undeserving of state largesse are people in their late 60s who are still fit and healthy, but getting pensions and other benefits. Should the pension age be further raised?
Pension age should be graduated. Starting at a lower age than current, 63?,at maybe £2k or £3k per year then increasing til maybe 73 to the current rate.
What's the rationale here? That people are expected to be moving to part-time working?
People do move to work part time. And some people retire at 55, others at 80. The days of a single retirement age for everyone are long gone.
People who retire at 55 tend to be very rich people who can afford to, but others need to retire early for health reasons. People who retire at 80 tend to have better paying white collar jobs. So, how does the system handle all these differences? Putting everyone on a graduated system going from 63 to 73 is still a one size fits all solution.
Do we instead need more means testing and/or health status testing?
Be useful and don't abuse your body and you'll have to work longer will be a hard sell.
All testing for benefits runs an equivalent risk. I don't believe many people are going to abuse their bodies just to get a pension sooner!
Maybe UBI solves all this?
Where does the money come from for it ?
Tax. You give everyone a basic income, but you then take it back out as tax from those with other incomes. I mean, that's the theory.
To a certain extent you end up taxing immigrant workers in order to pay a basic income to those born in Britain.
I'm surprised that Reform haven't picked it up as a policy.
Yougov: Would you support or oppose it being made compulsory for all newly-retired people to serve on a community service placement for a period of one year?” For those 65+, 20% of those support vs 50% of them wanting a similar mandatory national service scheme for young people
Every survey exposes the hypocrisy and entitlement of that generation (refuse to call them baby boomers, thet’s really 50-64 in the uk)
The west has a huge pensioner problem imo.
Lots of interesting polling there. I do note that 65+ are more supportive of the idea than younger groups, and there is lots of support for a voluntary scheme.
A voluntary scheme to volunteer? Confused, why not just volunteer without the scheme? There are loads of volunteering opportunities already.
There can be advantages in having a single, high-profile, govt-supported way into volunteering, that helps people into volunteering and finding a useful role.
Mr Cameron's something something society, redux, no? (Not that it is a bad idea in itself, oh no.)
I have long thought that Cameron's Big Society was a better idea than the sarcasm it received at the time suggested.
I think it was more that the idea that someone from a background of wealth and privilege (and who it appears has made out like a bandit financially since then) had any real interest in rejigging the system. Too many tweeted policy sound bites make a twat etc.
Over a third of the boomer retired generation say no party represents them says new YouGov poll.
As Stephen Bush points out - these are the guys that "takes up most government spending".
Frankly, they are being handed ever increasing state largesse on a massive silver plate!
One can make an argument that the group most undeserving of state largesse are people in their late 60s who are still fit and healthy, but getting pensions and other benefits. Should the pension age be further raised?
Pension age should be graduated. Starting at a lower age than current, 63?,at maybe £2k or £3k per year then increasing til maybe 73 to the current rate.
What's the rationale here? That people are expected to be moving to part-time working?
People do move to work part time. And some people retire at 55, others at 80. The days of a single retirement age for everyone are long gone.
People who retire at 55 tend to be very rich people who can afford to, but others need to retire early for health reasons. People who retire at 80 tend to have better paying white collar jobs. So, how does the system handle all these differences? Putting everyone on a graduated system going from 63 to 73 is still a one size fits all solution.
Do we instead need more means testing and/or health status testing?
Be useful and don't abuse your body and you'll have to work longer will be a hard sell.
All testing for benefits runs an equivalent risk. I don't believe many people are going to abuse their bodies just to get a pension sooner!
Maybe UBI solves all this?
Where does the money come from for it ?
Tax. You give everyone a basic income, but you then take it back out as tax from those with other incomes. I mean, that's the theory.
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.
You had fourteen years in Government. Fourteen years to identify and implement swingeing service cuts to pay for massive tax cuts. You failed. During that 14 years, service provision levels crashed at the same time the tax burden increased.
Posters have quoted Reform fantasy savings in Kent, savings so magnificent that Council tax increases could be suspended, until they found out there were few savings to be made and Council taxes were raised by 5%.
A nice speech offering the Moon on a stick is one thing, shoehorning the contents of that speech into reality is quite another.
Your party and the cheerleaders on here are profoundly unserious.
Good morning
And giveover
Badenoch gave a totally unexpected and successful speech that galvanised her audience and has given her party lots of policies, and of scrapping stamp duty has been well received from think tanks and Paul Johnson formally of the IFS who said yesterday it is the worst of many bad taxes
Your mixture of cynicism and satire is par for the cop* but at least this conservative is pleased to see conservative policies and Jenrick put back in his box
I don't believe I was being remotely cynical or satirical. If you want satire I can write all day about letter boxes and an offensive description of a smile.
You would be the first to criticise ( and justifiably so) an unfunded Reeves pledge. And make no mistake there is nothing in the credit column to match the tax cut in the debit column, except for a nebulous notion of cutting wastage.
If she has done enough to put Jenrick back in his box and take some points from Reform I'll drink to that, but my point stands, her welcome tax cut debit does not demonstrate a corresponding credit.
*If you don't like me posting on here you could always ask TSE politely to transfer me from "member" to " applicant" status, that way I can still access and read your posts but no longer post myself. There, that seems like a neat compromise.
At times you really are very silly as demonstrated by your last paragraph
4.5 billion cost as quoted by the IFS is eminently doable
I do apologise for my figures, I misinterpreted what you were writing. You were claiming that stamp duty only generated the Government £4.5b, I misinterpreted that, not least because I was under the misapprehension that the £11.6b figure was cast iron.
The widely accepted figure for stamp duty credit yesterday was £11.6b down from a little over £12b on the previous measurement timescale. I thought even Kemi accepted the stamp duty saving as £9b, although if you say it is only £4.5b I would be surprised, but £4.5b it is.
Nonetheless, how are you paying for that £4.5b shortfall? Nebulous growth wishcasting and bogus service cost savings don't count.
Thank you for your comments and in the scheme of things 4.5 billion is small beer
LOL! I won't be offering to buy you a pint!
You haven't answered my question. How are you paying for that £4.5b shortfall? Nebulous growth wishcasting and bogus service cost savings don't count.
Badenoch announced the end of ev and heat pump subsidies - that accounts for 2.5 billion alone
Yet another example of Badenoch inventing wild numbers. The EV subsidy is capped at £650 million over three years and the heat pump subsidy at £295 million for just one year, nowhere near £2.5 billion per year. It's so illiterate and so lazy. The Conservatives could spend just five minutes on Google if they wanted to "fully cost" their proposals
Over a third of the boomer retired generation say no party represents them says new YouGov poll.
As Stephen Bush points out - these are the guys that "takes up most government spending".
Frankly, they are being handed ever increasing state largesse on a massive silver plate!
Lol. Every party represents these people!
As a comfortably off boomer retired, the big reasons no party really represents me are:
No party has a platform of running what the state takes to itself to run really brilliantly well but no stunts. All parties tend to appeal to a sectional interest. No party has spokespeople who answer questions. You get too old for the waffle. Boomers like me have children and grandchildren and know all sorts and conditions of people, rich and poor, only 'one nation' approaches are any use. All parties go in for short termism.
Over a third of the boomer retired generation say no party represents them says new YouGov poll.
As Stephen Bush points out - these are the guys that "takes up most government spending".
Frankly, they are being handed ever increasing state largesse on a massive silver plate!
One can make an argument that the group most undeserving of state largesse are people in their late 60s who are still fit and healthy, but getting pensions and other benefits. Should the pension age be further raised?
Pension age should be graduated. Starting at a lower age than current, 63?,at maybe £2k or £3k per year then increasing til maybe 73 to the current rate.
What's the rationale here? That people are expected to be moving to part-time working?
People do move to work part time. And some people retire at 55, others at 80. The days of a single retirement age for everyone are long gone.
People who retire at 55 tend to be very rich people who can afford to, but others need to retire early for health reasons. People who retire at 80 tend to have better paying white collar jobs. So, how does the system handle all these differences? Putting everyone on a graduated system going from 63 to 73 is still a one size fits all solution.
Do we instead need more means testing and/or health status testing?
Be useful and don't abuse your body and you'll have to work longer will be a hard sell.
All testing for benefits runs an equivalent risk. I don't believe many people are going to abuse their bodies just to get a pension sooner!
Maybe UBI solves all this?
Where does the money come from for it ?
@Taz, @bondegezou gave the most concise answer. UBI should be tax neutral. It is not a magic money tree. You get a basic payment and you hopefully earn on top of that. There is no longer a personal allowance and tax rates are adjusted so the net effect is neutral. So what are the benefits:
a) You eliminate the need for 99% of state benefits including the state pension b) Those that deserve benefits and don't claim them or fall through the cracks no longer will c) Those that abuse the system really can't anymore. Yep they get the basic amount, but that is it. They probably abuse it by far more currently d) It encourage people to take a risk starting a business because they at least get a minimum amount to tide them over during the set up time when they have no income e) You can scrap 90+% of the DWP and a bit of HMRC
Yougov: Would you support or oppose it being made compulsory for all newly-retired people to serve on a community service placement for a period of one year?” For those 65+, 20% of those support vs 50% of them wanting a similar mandatory national service scheme for young people
Every survey exposes the hypocrisy and entitlement of that generation (refuse to call them baby boomers, thet’s really 50-64 in the uk)
The west has a huge pensioner problem imo.
Lots of interesting polling there. I do note that 65+ are more supportive of the idea than younger groups, and there is lots of support for a voluntary scheme.
What’s stopping them volunteering it if they feel so strongly ?
Plenty of opportunities out there.
There are.
I was invited to a local radio event recently - I think it was started in Covid times - which was some kind of annual awards ceremony for local volunteer organisations. I never listen to local radio and was not terribly keen on attending but in the end it was interesting to see what kind of things people get up to.
Everything that I saw was independent of government - very much the 'big society' of Cameroon dreams. Much of it was happening because there was a hole that the government itself wasn't filling, and it all worked better with enthusiastic actors doing their own thing rather then being directed by some kind of guiding bureaucracy. Maybe some groups weren't doing the most efficient or beneficial tasks you could think of but it clearly gave them a purpose and improved lives.
This was obviously an attempt to talk about something positive rather than the usual doom and gloom, and although I found it a bit cringe at times, we could definitely do with more of it.
For the record, we did not win our category, which was a bit of a relief. We've had about 30 volunteers helping our very esoteric Green project but the judges preferred something a bit more straightforward (litter picking).
Yougov: Would you support or oppose it being made compulsory for all newly-retired people to serve on a community service placement for a period of one year?” For those 65+, 20% of those support vs 50% of them wanting a similar mandatory national service scheme for young people
Every survey exposes the hypocrisy and entitlement of that generation (refuse to call them baby boomers, thet’s really 50-64 in the uk)
The west has a huge pensioner problem imo.
Lots of interesting polling there. I do note that 65+ are more supportive of the idea than younger groups, and there is lots of support for a voluntary scheme.
A voluntary scheme to volunteer? Confused, why not just volunteer without the scheme? There are loads of volunteering opportunities already.
There can be advantages in having a single, high-profile, govt-supported way into volunteering, that helps people into volunteering and finding a useful role.
Mr Cameron's something something society, redux, no? (Not that it is a bad idea in itself, oh no.)
I have long thought that Cameron's Big Society was a better idea than the sarcasm it received at the time suggested.
It was indeed a good idea, but was written for the time of plenty that was 2007, not the economic situation that prevailed in 2010 when the election was called.
It was a policy for the election that never was, the one that Sion Simon predicted.
I also think that Cameron never really defined it in any great detail and after ten years of Tony Blair people were cynical about meaningless buzz words that didn't have much substance behind them. Of course as a former PR man that was Cameron's MO.
But as you say in the much harsher world of the 2010s and 2020s it was all irrelevant to the main challenge of getting economic growth going again, so, like so much from the Heir to Blair era, it faded away.
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.
You had fourteen years in Government. Fourteen years to identify and implement swingeing service cuts to pay for massive tax cuts. You failed. During that 14 years, service provision levels crashed at the same time the tax burden increased.
Posters have quoted Reform fantasy savings in Kent, savings so magnificent that Council tax increases could be suspended, until they found out there were few savings to be made and Council taxes were raised by 5%.
A nice speech offering the Moon on a stick is one thing, shoehorning the contents of that speech into reality is quite another.
Your party and the cheerleaders on here are profoundly unserious.
Good morning
And giveover
Badenoch gave a totally unexpected and successful speech that galvanised her audience and has given her party lots of policies, and of scrapping stamp duty has been well received from think tanks and Paul Johnson formally of the IFS who said yesterday it is the worst of many bad taxes
Your mixture of cynicism and satire is par for the cop* but at least this conservative is pleased to see conservative policies and Jenrick put back in his box
I don't believe I was being remotely cynical or satirical. If you want satire I can write all day about letter boxes and an offensive description of a smile.
You would be the first to criticise ( and justifiably so) an unfunded Reeves pledge. And make no mistake there is nothing in the credit column to match the tax cut in the debit column, except for a nebulous notion of cutting wastage.
If she has done enough to put Jenrick back in his box and take some points from Reform I'll drink to that, but my point stands, her welcome tax cut debit does not demonstrate a corresponding credit.
*If you don't like me posting on here you could always ask TSE politely to transfer me from "member" to " applicant" status, that way I can still access and read your posts but no longer post myself. There, that seems like a neat compromise.
At times you really are very silly as demonstrated by your last paragraph
4.5 billion cost as quoted by the IFS is eminently doable
I do apologise for my figures, I misinterpreted what you were writing. You were claiming that stamp duty only generated the Government £4.5b, I misinterpreted that, not least because I was under the misapprehension that the £11.6b figure was cast iron.
The widely accepted figure for stamp duty credit yesterday was £11.6b down from a little over £12b on the previous measurement timescale. I thought even Kemi accepted the stamp duty saving as £9b, although if you say it is only £4.5b I would be surprised, but £4.5b it is.
Nonetheless, how are you paying for that £4.5b shortfall? Nebulous growth wishcasting and bogus service cost savings don't count.
Thank you for your comments and in the scheme of things 4.5 billion is small beer
LOL! I won't be offering to buy you a pint!
You haven't answered my question. How are you paying for that £4.5b shortfall? Nebulous growth wishcasting and bogus service cost savings don't count.
Badenoch announced the end of ev and heat pump subsidies - that accounts for 2.5 billion alone
Yet another example of Badenoch inventing wild numbers. The EV subsidy is capped at £650 million over three years and the heat pump subsidy at £295 million for just one year, nowhere near £2.5 billion per year. It's so illiterate and lazy. If the Conservatives could spend just five minutes on Google if they wanted to "fully cost" their proposals
If so, I accept your revised figures to circa 1 billion pa, but the abolition of stamp duty is now a top priority for the conservatives endorsed by think tanks and many others
It is a bad tax, but more widely Badenoch has put forward a platform of policies that were previously missing and has energised the party
I doubt it will make a big difference in the immediate polling, but this is a four year trek to the next GE and certainly reducing Jenrick's hopes are an even more positive
Over a third of the boomer retired generation say no party represents them says new YouGov poll.
As Stephen Bush points out - these are the guys that "takes up most government spending".
Frankly, they are being handed ever increasing state largesse on a massive silver plate!
Lol. Every party represents these people!
As a comfortably off boomer retired, the big reasons no party really represents me are:
No party has a platform of running what the state takes to itself to run really brilliantly well but no stunts. All parties tend to appeal to a sectional interest. No party has spokespeople who answer questions. You get too old for the waffle. Boomers like me have children and grandchildren and know all sorts and conditions of people, rich and poor, only 'one nation' approaches are any use. All parties go in for short termism.
We either get the comfortably off boomer retired to recognise that allowing things they don’t like is a necessary prerequisite to growing GDP which they ultimately rely on for their own welfare or this country is pretty much doomed to a no GDP growth future with ever increasing strife driven by inter-generational conflict over resource allocation.
Yougov: Would you support or oppose it being made compulsory for all newly-retired people to serve on a community service placement for a period of one year?” For those 65+, 20% of those support vs 50% of them wanting a similar mandatory national service scheme for young people
Every survey exposes the hypocrisy and entitlement of that generation (refuse to call them baby boomers, thet’s really 50-64 in the uk)
The west has a huge pensioner problem imo.
Lots of interesting polling there. I do note that 65+ are more supportive of the idea than younger groups, and there is lots of support for a voluntary scheme.
A voluntary scheme to volunteer? Confused, why not just volunteer without the scheme? There are loads of volunteering opportunities already.
There can be advantages in having a single, high-profile, govt-supported way into volunteering, that helps people into volunteering and finding a useful role.
Mr Cameron's something something society, redux, no? (Not that it is a bad idea in itself, oh no.)
I have long thought that Cameron's Big Society was a better idea than the sarcasm it received at the time suggested.
I think it was more that the idea that someone from a background of wealth and privilege (and who it appears has made out like a bandit financially since then) had any real interest in rejigging the system. Too many tweeted policy sound bites make a twat etc.
Also a strong suspicion that saving tax on high earners was part of it all. Schizophenia, you say, the doctor diagnosed? Away out to a nice cardboard box by way of a cup of tea with the nice lady volunteer in the church hall.
It was a long time ago, though. I can't remember: did Mr Cameron have any - at least publicly known - record of voluntary service? That would make it more convincing - as if say Bear Grylls was Prime Minister after being Chief Scout, or even just the Akela for his local cubs pack.
And of course many on here don't like big charities. On that point, one also wonders about the opportunities it would have offered to provide free staff for think-tanks.
Yougov: Would you support or oppose it being made compulsory for all newly-retired people to serve on a community service placement for a period of one year?” For those 65+, 20% of those support vs 50% of them wanting a similar mandatory national service scheme for young people
Every survey exposes the hypocrisy and entitlement of that generation (refuse to call them baby boomers, thet’s really 50-64 in the uk)
The west has a huge pensioner problem imo.
Lots of interesting polling there. I do note that 65+ are more supportive of the idea than younger groups, and there is lots of support for a voluntary scheme.
A voluntary scheme to volunteer? Confused, why not just volunteer without the scheme? There are loads of volunteering opportunities already.
There can be advantages in having a single, high-profile, govt-supported way into volunteering, that helps people into volunteering and finding a useful role.
Mr Cameron's something something society, redux, no? (Not that it is a bad idea in itself, oh no.)
I have long thought that Cameron's Big Society was a better idea than the sarcasm it received at the time suggested.
It was indeed a good idea, but was written for the time of plenty that was 2007, not the economic situation that prevailed in 2010 when the election was called.
It was a policy for the election that never was, the one that Sion Simon predicted.
I also think that Cameron never really defined it in any great detail and after ten years of Tony Blair people were cynical about meaningless buzz words that didn't have much substance behind them. Of course as a former PR man that was Cameron's MO.
But as you say in the much harsher world of the 2010s and 2020s it was all irrelevant to the main challenge of getting economic growth going again, so, like so much from the Heir to Blair era, it faded away.
It’s worth considering the effect of Lottery money on many, many small community projects.
One sad thing is the tendency, as time goes by, for Lottery money to be spent on bigger projects. Building a small changing room for the schools to use the local park as a sports field may not be sexy. But it’s a real, sensible thing.
Over a third of the boomer retired generation say no party represents them says new YouGov poll.
As Stephen Bush points out - these are the guys that "takes up most government spending".
Frankly, they are being handed ever increasing state largesse on a massive silver plate!
One can make an argument that the group most undeserving of state largesse are people in their late 60s who are still fit and healthy, but getting pensions and other benefits. Should the pension age be further raised?
Pension age should be graduated. Starting at a lower age than current, 63?,at maybe £2k or £3k per year then increasing til maybe 73 to the current rate.
What's the rationale here? That people are expected to be moving to part-time working?
People do move to work part time. And some people retire at 55, others at 80. The days of a single retirement age for everyone are long gone.
People who retire at 55 tend to be very rich people who can afford to, but others need to retire early for health reasons. People who retire at 80 tend to have better paying white collar jobs. So, how does the system handle all these differences? Putting everyone on a graduated system going from 63 to 73 is still a one size fits all solution.
Do we instead need more means testing and/or health status testing?
Be useful and don't abuse your body and you'll have to work longer will be a hard sell.
All testing for benefits runs an equivalent risk. I don't believe many people are going to abuse their bodies just to get a pension sooner!
Maybe UBI solves all this?
Where does the money come from for it ?
@Taz, @bondegezou gave the most concise answer. UBI should be tax neutral. It is not a magic money tree. You get a basic payment and you hopefully earn on top of that. There is no longer a personal allowance and tax rates are adjusted so the net effect is neutral. So what are the benefits:
a) You eliminate the need for 99% of state benefits including the state pension b) Those that deserve benefits and don't claim them or fall through the cracks no longer will c) Those that abuse the system really can't anymore. Yep they get the basic amount, but that is it. They probably abuse it by far more currently d) It encourage people to take a risk starting a business because they at least get a minimum amount to tide them over during the set up time when they have no income e) You can scrap 90+% of the DWP and a bit of HMRC
All good and makes sense. What level would it be set at ?
Has there been a study on it in detail to see what the savings would be so the money could be repurposed.
With the growth of A.I. and the impact on jobs, delivery drivers and cabbies for instance, there is a risk to employment and the tax take.
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.
You had fourteen years in Government. Fourteen years to identify and implement swingeing service cuts to pay for massive tax cuts. You failed. During that 14 years, service provision levels crashed at the same time the tax burden increased.
Posters have quoted Reform fantasy savings in Kent, savings so magnificent that Council tax increases could be suspended, until they found out there were few savings to be made and Council taxes were raised by 5%.
A nice speech offering the Moon on a stick is one thing, shoehorning the contents of that speech into reality is quite another.
Your party and the cheerleaders on here are profoundly unserious.
Good morning
And giveover
Badenoch gave a totally unexpected and successful speech that galvanised her audience and has given her party lots of policies, and of scrapping stamp duty has been well received from think tanks and Paul Johnson formally of the IFS who said yesterday it is the worst of many bad taxes
Your mixture of cynicism and satire is par for the cop* but at least this conservative is pleased to see conservative policies and Jenrick put back in his box
I don't believe I was being remotely cynical or satirical. If you want satire I can write all day about letter boxes and an offensive description of a smile.
You would be the first to criticise ( and justifiably so) an unfunded Reeves pledge. And make no mistake there is nothing in the credit column to match the tax cut in the debit column, except for a nebulous notion of cutting wastage.
If she has done enough to put Jenrick back in his box and take some points from Reform I'll drink to that, but my point stands, her welcome tax cut debit does not demonstrate a corresponding credit.
*If you don't like me posting on here you could always ask TSE politely to transfer me from "member" to " applicant" status, that way I can still access and read your posts but no longer post myself. There, that seems like a neat compromise.
At times you really are very silly as demonstrated by your last paragraph
4.5 billion cost as quoted by the IFS is eminently doable
I do apologise for my figures, I misinterpreted what you were writing. You were claiming that stamp duty only generated the Government £4.5b, I misinterpreted that, not least because I was under the misapprehension that the £11.6b figure was cast iron.
The widely accepted figure for stamp duty credit yesterday was £11.6b down from a little over £12b on the previous measurement timescale. I thought even Kemi accepted the stamp duty saving as £9b, although if you say it is only £4.5b I would be surprised, but £4.5b it is.
Nonetheless, how are you paying for that £4.5b shortfall? Nebulous growth wishcasting and bogus service cost savings don't count.
Thank you for your comments and in the scheme of things 4.5 billion is small beer
LOL! I won't be offering to buy you a pint!
You haven't answered my question. How are you paying for that £4.5b shortfall? Nebulous growth wishcasting and bogus service cost savings don't count.
Badenoch announced the end of ev and heat pump subsidies - that accounts for 2.5 billion alone
Yet another example of Badenoch inventing wild numbers. The EV subsidy is capped at £650 million over three years and the heat pump subsidy at £295 million for just one year, nowhere near £2.5 billion per year. It's so illiterate and lazy. If the Conservatives could spend just five minutes on Google if they wanted to "fully cost" their proposals
If so, I accept your revised figures to circa 1 billion pa, but the abolition of stamp duty is now a top priority for the conservatives endorsed by think tanks and many others
It is a bad tax, but more widely Badenoch has put forward a platform of policies that were previously missing and has energised the party
I doubt it will make a big difference in the immediate polling, but this is a four year trek to the next GE and certainly reducing Jenrick's hopes are an even more positive
I think everyone is on board with dumping stamp duty, but some of us are keen to see how it is being paid for.
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.
You had fourteen years in Government. Fourteen years to identify and implement swingeing service cuts to pay for massive tax cuts. You failed. During that 14 years, service provision levels crashed at the same time the tax burden increased.
Posters have quoted Reform fantasy savings in Kent, savings so magnificent that Council tax increases could be suspended, until they found out there were few savings to be made and Council taxes were raised by 5%.
A nice speech offering the Moon on a stick is one thing, shoehorning the contents of that speech into reality is quite another.
Your party and the cheerleaders on here are profoundly unserious.
Good morning
And giveover
Badenoch gave a totally unexpected and successful speech that galvanised her audience and has given her party lots of policies, and of scrapping stamp duty has been well received from think tanks and Paul Johnson formally of the IFS who said yesterday it is the worst of many bad taxes
Your mixture of cynicism and satire is par for the cop* but at least this conservative is pleased to see conservative policies and Jenrick put back in his box
I don't believe I was being remotely cynical or satirical. If you want satire I can write all day about letter boxes and an offensive description of a smile.
You would be the first to criticise ( and justifiably so) an unfunded Reeves pledge. And make no mistake there is nothing in the credit column to match the tax cut in the debit column, except for a nebulous notion of cutting wastage.
If she has done enough to put Jenrick back in his box and take some points from Reform I'll drink to that, but my point stands, her welcome tax cut debit does not demonstrate a corresponding credit.
*If you don't like me posting on here you could always ask TSE politely to transfer me from "member" to " applicant" status, that way I can still access and read your posts but no longer post myself. There, that seems like a neat compromise.
At times you really are very silly as demonstrated by your last paragraph
4.5 billion cost as quoted by the IFS is eminently doable
I do apologise for my figures, I misinterpreted what you were writing. You were claiming that stamp duty only generated the Government £4.5b, I misinterpreted that, not least because I was under the misapprehension that the £11.6b figure was cast iron.
The widely accepted figure for stamp duty credit yesterday was £11.6b down from a little over £12b on the previous measurement timescale. I thought even Kemi accepted the stamp duty saving as £9b, although if you say it is only £4.5b I would be surprised, but £4.5b it is.
Nonetheless, how are you paying for that £4.5b shortfall? Nebulous growth wishcasting and bogus service cost savings don't count.
Thank you for your comments and in the scheme of things 4.5 billion is small beer
LOL! I won't be offering to buy you a pint!
You haven't answered my question. How are you paying for that £4.5b shortfall? Nebulous growth wishcasting and bogus service cost savings don't count.
Badenoch announced the end of ev and heat pump subsidies - that accounts for 2.5 billion alone
Yet another example of Badenoch inventing wild numbers. The EV subsidy is capped at £650 million over three years and the heat pump subsidy at £295 million for just one year, nowhere near £2.5 billion per year. It's so illiterate and lazy. If the Conservatives could spend just five minutes on Google if they wanted to "fully cost" their proposals
If so, I accept your revised figures to circa 1 billion pa, but the abolition of stamp duty is now a top priority for the conservatives endorsed by think tanks and many others
It is a bad tax, but more widely Badenoch has put forward a platform of policies that were previously missing and has energised the party
I doubt it will make a big difference in the immediate polling, but this is a four year trek to the next GE and certainly reducing Jenrick's hopes are an even more positive
I think everyone is on board with dumping stamp duty, but some of us are keen to see how it is being paid for.
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.
You had fourteen years in Government. Fourteen years to identify and implement swingeing service cuts to pay for massive tax cuts. You failed. During that 14 years, service provision levels crashed at the same time the tax burden increased.
Posters have quoted Reform fantasy savings in Kent, savings so magnificent that Council tax increases could be suspended, until they found out there were few savings to be made and Council taxes were raised by 5%.
A nice speech offering the Moon on a stick is one thing, shoehorning the contents of that speech into reality is quite another.
Your party and the cheerleaders on here are profoundly unserious.
Good morning
And giveover
Badenoch gave a totally unexpected and successful speech that galvanised her audience and has given her party lots of policies, and of scrapping stamp duty has been well received from think tanks and Paul Johnson formally of the IFS who said yesterday it is the worst of many bad taxes
Your mixture of cynicism and satire is par for the cop* but at least this conservative is pleased to see conservative policies and Jenrick put back in his box
I don't believe I was being remotely cynical or satirical. If you want satire I can write all day about letter boxes and an offensive description of a smile.
You would be the first to criticise ( and justifiably so) an unfunded Reeves pledge. And make no mistake there is nothing in the credit column to match the tax cut in the debit column, except for a nebulous notion of cutting wastage.
If she has done enough to put Jenrick back in his box and take some points from Reform I'll drink to that, but my point stands, her welcome tax cut debit does not demonstrate a corresponding credit.
*If you don't like me posting on here you could always ask TSE politely to transfer me from "member" to " applicant" status, that way I can still access and read your posts but no longer post myself. There, that seems like a neat compromise.
At times you really are very silly as demonstrated by your last paragraph
4.5 billion cost as quoted by the IFS is eminently doable
I do apologise for my figures, I misinterpreted what you were writing. You were claiming that stamp duty only generated the Government £4.5b, I misinterpreted that, not least because I was under the misapprehension that the £11.6b figure was cast iron.
The widely accepted figure for stamp duty credit yesterday was £11.6b down from a little over £12b on the previous measurement timescale. I thought even Kemi accepted the stamp duty saving as £9b, although if you say it is only £4.5b I would be surprised, but £4.5b it is.
Nonetheless, how are you paying for that £4.5b shortfall? Nebulous growth wishcasting and bogus service cost savings don't count.
Thank you for your comments and in the scheme of things 4.5 billion is small beer
LOL! I won't be offering to buy you a pint!
You haven't answered my question. How are you paying for that £4.5b shortfall? Nebulous growth wishcasting and bogus service cost savings don't count.
Badenoch announced the end of ev and heat pump subsidies - that accounts for 2.5 billion alone
Yet another example of Badenoch inventing wild numbers. The EV subsidy is capped at £650 million over three years and the heat pump subsidy at £295 million for just one year, nowhere near £2.5 billion per year. It's so illiterate and lazy. If the Conservatives could spend just five minutes on Google if they wanted to "fully cost" their proposals
If so, I accept your revised figures to circa 1 billion pa, but the abolition of stamp duty is now a top priority for the conservatives endorsed by think tanks and many others
It is a bad tax, but more widely Badenoch has put forward a platform of policies that were previously missing and has energised the party
I doubt it will make a big difference in the immediate polling, but this is a four year trek to the next GE and certainly reducing Jenrick's hopes are an even more positive
I think everyone is on board with dumping stamp duty, but some of us are keen to see how it is being paid for.
Maybe Reeves steals Tory clothes.
After disinfecting them, presumably.
One side effect - or intentional effect - to watch out for would be on the fiscal autonomy of the devolved administrations. The tax is devolved; its replacement might not be.
Comments
1) it depends on opponents just sitting there and letting it happen. And walking into the trap(s)
2) it depends on everything going right.
This reminds me of how we got Corbyn as Labour Party leader.
https://x.com/heroiam_slava/status/1975887023480483862
(Another note for those who think there’s going to be big problems with all this new tech once the war is over)
Some thought the peace overtures hadn’t been fully explored (IIRC Iraq had just offered to withdraw from Kuwait within six weeks, the Allies thought it was a ruse.)
Some feared another Vietnam.
At the time Bush hadn’t publicly ruled out the use of nukes if Iraq used chemical weapons against Allied troops. Privately he had ruled it out but wanted Saddam to think about the consequences.
Bush Snr had said he didn’t need consent of Congress so that put up the backs of some (one of the GOPers who voted against it cited that reason.)
https://blog.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/2025/10/06/jackie-joins-the-archive/?utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=campaign_15223461
Nuts.
He expected the carriers to be at Pearl Harbour not at Midway (or Midway to be full of fighters.)
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.
The government has been under sort of a magnifying glass for decades. And so I think, generally, I personally was pretty surprised, actually, at how efficient the government was. This isn't to say that it can't be made more efficient — elimination of paper, elimination of faxing — but these aren't necessarily fraud, waste and abuse. These are just rooms to modernize and improve the U.S. federal government into the 21st century.
As Stephen Bush points out - these are the guys that "takes up most government spending".
Frankly, they are being handed ever increasing state largesse on a massive silver plate!
We should be told.
To me, it seems like a no-brainer, like supporting Ukraine.
1) It required the whole active Japanese Navy to do multiple things at once. And everything to work perfectly.
2( Even if the Americans had obediently sunk their own carriers, the force for the invasion for Midway was insufficient to achieve success (probably).
3) The IJN was completely unable to supply potential garrison on Midway. So even if they captured it, they would have to leave.
4) the rate of building for the US navy meant that they would replace any lost ships in months - by 1944 they were slowing down ship building, because they couldn’t find stuff for the existing ships to do!
5) etc
https://x.com/natalkakyiv/status/1976132857207636369
TL:DR They know that the Ukranians will otherwise start making their own with local and European tech, the Pentagon / MIC really don’t want to lose control of the whole situation. Pentagon attitude survived change of administration.
Supply could increase if reduced transaction costs improve the efficiency of matching appropriate sized houses to households (downsizing from pensioners).
= Price drop. I'm not 100% sure about this so open to counter-arguments.
Obviously this effect would be magnified if property taxes meant that holding property wealth was unattractive. The only people who'd want a 5-bed in that scenario are people with loads of kids, prices would drop and suddenly raising kids is more affordable.
Anyway hats off to Trump for dragging it over the line. I am not sure the Hamas grandees in Doha ( previously funded by Qatar on Bibi's instruction) being allowed to go about their business with immunity from a trip to the Hague is optimal.
Is the Good Friday Agreement the blueprint?
(Think I'm allowed to do that this time)
On the face of it the principle seems sound. Would it cost an arm and a leg in admin though.
Do we instead need more means testing and/or health status testing?
There’s a lot of moving parts in the housing market, including the supply and demand for mortgages and the willingness of banks to lend accordingly. The single largest factor in recent (10-20y) inflation has been that banks might now (well, until a couple of years ago) lend 4x joint salary at 1% interest rates.
Abolishing stamp duty makes downsizing much easier, especially in expensive places, which will act as an increase in supply in those areas at the top end of the market. If moving from an £800k house to a £600k house costs £60k in tax, no-one is ever doing it.
The bigger benefits from the abolition are on labour markets. People have always been reluctant to move away from what I’ll call the “London catchment area”, because of the cost of moving, and even more so the cost of moving back. If you left London for say Newcastle for five years for a job, you would find that you couldn’t afford to move back to the same house near London after that time, because of London property inflation and stamp duty. Abolishion makes it easier to attract workers to Newcastle, which in the round might increase house prices there over time at the expense of lower greater London house prices, and more businesses basing themselves in Newcastle.
I don't know how you'd make a phased state pension work with unemployment benefits, though.
For those 65+, 20% of those support vs 50% of them wanting a similar mandatory national service scheme for young people
https://yougov.co.uk/society/articles/53124-should-there-be-national-service-for-boomers
Every survey exposes the hypocrisy and entitlement of that generation (refuse to call them baby boomers, thet’s really 50-64 in the uk)
The west has a huge pensioner problem imo.
(That's why keeping SDLT for second homes is sensible)
We’ll probably know it’s happened when the Shahed drone factory gets bombed by a dozen of them (it’s a big site).
The widely accepted figure for stamp duty credit yesterday was £11.6b down from a little over £12b on the previous measurement timescale. I thought even Kemi accepted the stamp duty saving as £9b, although if you say it is only £4.5b I would be surprised, but £4.5b it is.
Nonetheless, how are you paying for that £4.5b shortfall? Nebulous growth wishcasting and bogus service cost savings don't count.
Some electoral support as there are winners, including much younger voters, as well as losers
Matches the economic reality of how people retire in the 2020s.
By the way, last night’s gas factory in Volgograd was well and truly destroyed. No gas coming out of there for a while.
https://x.com/bohuslavskakate/status/1976229177603793150
Maybe UBI solves all this?
I guess you could combine a 10-year transition and moving the midpoint up, so that you phase the pension in between the ages of 65-75.
Plenty of opportunities out there.
https://x.com/KHoholenko/status/1975557528743518677/photo/1
Sadly not updated for a couple of days.
You haven't answered my question. How are you paying for that £4.5b shortfall? Nebulous growth wishcasting and bogus service cost savings don't count.
- need for young people to be trained, socialised etc., given experience of life away from home
- need for many oldies to help with grandchild care
- health in general: oldies poorer than youngsters
- quite a lot of oldies do volunbtary work already, effectively
Also, national service is paid, sort of, even if it's just board and lodging and pocket money, plus family allowance where needed. Voluntary service isn't.
Ofg course, this result stems also in part from the nonsense one reads in some newspapers and speeches. National service's main role isn't to bully youngsters and make them into good little youths, but to contribute to national defence. There are major problems with national service in terms of current UK armed forces structure and organization. Those are not at all made clear in the sort of send-them-to-the-depot rhetoric one sees. But including such things as hospital work and so on would help there. And most living pensioners missed national service completely, so never had an insight into the reality. You'd need to be about 85 or over to have had even a chance of being selected, and many never were, especially at the tail end.
So if it really was £4.5bn then Hunt would have done it, because, as has been pointed out a number of times on here, there is a lot of benefits from removing transactional costs on primary properties..
The Big Society could have made Britain a more left-wing country like the Scandinavian countries.
Also see @eek 's posts.
It was a policy for the election that never was, the one that Sion Simon predicted.
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2007/09/labour-majority-increase
I'm surprised that Reform haven't picked it up as a policy.
https://x.com/gowildedinburgh/status/1975939493124571224?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
Oil depot railhead in Rostov appears to have a smoking problem, in the middle of the day as well.
https://x.com/bohuslavskakate/status/1976236363755422110
Also, russia is further discounting O&G sales to India.
https://x.com/maria_drutska/status/1976186618273988736
Isn’t Starmer in India at the moment? He really needs to tell Modi that buying russian oil is unacceptable and will result in consequences.
No party has a platform of running what the state takes to itself to run really brilliantly well but no stunts.
All parties tend to appeal to a sectional interest.
No party has spokespeople who answer questions. You get too old for the waffle.
Boomers like me have children and grandchildren and know all sorts and conditions of people, rich and poor, only 'one nation' approaches are any use.
All parties go in for short termism.
To be fair to these otters, it's a different species - actually genus - that is trans-specific paedophilic.
a) You eliminate the need for 99% of state benefits including the state pension
b) Those that deserve benefits and don't claim them or fall through the cracks no longer will
c) Those that abuse the system really can't anymore. Yep they get the basic amount, but that is it. They probably abuse it by far more currently
d) It encourage people to take a risk starting a business because they at least get a minimum amount to tide them over during the set up time when they have no income
e) You can scrap 90+% of the DWP and a bit of HMRC
I was invited to a local radio event recently - I think it was started in Covid times - which was some kind of annual awards ceremony for local volunteer organisations. I never listen to local radio and was not terribly keen on attending but in the end it was interesting to see what kind of things people get up to.
Everything that I saw was independent of government - very much the 'big society' of Cameroon dreams. Much of it was happening because there was a hole that the government itself wasn't filling, and it all worked better with enthusiastic actors doing their own thing rather then being directed by some kind of guiding bureaucracy. Maybe some groups weren't doing the most efficient or beneficial tasks you could think of but it clearly gave them a purpose and improved lives.
This was obviously an attempt to talk about something positive rather than the usual doom and gloom, and although I found it a bit cringe at times, we could definitely do with more of it.
For the record, we did not win our category, which was a bit of a relief. We've had about 30 volunteers helping our very esoteric Green project but the judges preferred something a bit more straightforward (litter picking).
I also think that Cameron never really defined it in any great detail and after ten years of Tony Blair people were cynical about meaningless buzz words that didn't have much substance behind them. Of course as a former PR man that was Cameron's MO.
But as you say in the much harsher world of the 2010s and 2020s it was all irrelevant to the main challenge of getting economic growth going again, so, like so much from the Heir to Blair era, it faded away.
It is a bad tax, but more widely Badenoch has put forward a platform of policies that were previously missing and has energised the party
I doubt it will make a big difference in the immediate polling, but this is a four year trek to the next GE and certainly reducing Jenrick's hopes are an even more positive
It was a long time ago, though. I can't remember: did Mr Cameron have any - at least publicly known - record of voluntary service? That would make it more convincing - as if say Bear Grylls was Prime Minister after being Chief Scout, or even just the Akela for his local cubs pack.
And of course many on here don't like big charities. On that point, one also wonders about the opportunities it would have offered to provide free staff for think-tanks.
One sad thing is the tendency, as time goes by, for Lottery money to be spent on bigger projects. Building a small changing room for the schools to use the local park as a sports field may not be sexy. But it’s a real, sensible thing.
Has there been a study on it in detail to see what the savings would be so the money could be repurposed.
With the growth of A.I. and the impact on jobs, delivery drivers and cabbies for instance, there is a risk to employment and the tax take.
Maybe Reeves steals Tory clothes.
One side effect - or intentional effect - to watch out for would be on the fiscal autonomy of the devolved administrations. The tax is devolved; its replacement might not be.