If you remove £X stamp duty from a house purchase, the vendor will expect to receive an extra £X on the sale price, as that is the going rate for their property (all-in). More money in the pockets of vendors, buyers no better off. The Tory Chancellor £10 billion a year worse off.
You could not be more completely wrong. The money received depends upon the scarcity of the asset. Shortage of the asset cost goes up, sufficient of the asset cost goes down. Removing Stamp Duty affects the relationship between price and cost it does not affect value or worth self-evidently.
No. If we imagine a more extreme example - a stamp duty Y of £100 million per property at price X, say - it becomes obvious that the stamp duty reduces demand, and people will invest their money in something else. At the actual level it depresses demand a bit, starting with the people who could just afford the X and moving on to the people who can afford up to X+Y-£1. Removing it creates a space equal to Y which could be given entirely to the buyer (by leaving the price at X) or shared with the seller (who will probably reset the price at, say, X+Y/2). The primary effect of removing stamp duty is therefore to transfer more money from other investments into property, thus benefiting people in the housing market. Whether these are buyers or sellers depends on individual decisions, but realistically it will help them both a bit, at the expense of everyone else (who might have benefited from the tax revenue going elsewhere - e.g. people with moderate mental difficulties, who see their support removed to help pay for it). That's why the measure is of most interest to people who can afford relatively expensive property.
It's a tax on people moving home, particularly if people want to downsize or go to a bungalow from a bigger property. You can continue to tweak the tax system after it is removed, either by reforming Council tax (long overdue) or increasing second home tax. From my experience I don't think stamp duty could be covered by the mortgage so that should help younger/first time buyers
Indeed.
If you move home for work, selling a home of one value and buying another home of the exact same value, then instead of merely having to pay moving costs (already disruptive enough), you have a huge lump sum tax burden liable too, when you are no better off.
It discourages mobility. It is the worst possible tax, other than NI.
I see that Nottingham, London and Birmingham are taking, or planning to take, unofficial flags down.
Does anyone have a wider knowledge?
They have to take them down. Otherwise they are inviting everyone and anyone to hijack the public realm with their own pet causes. If people want to plaster their own property with England flags that's their prerogative, but they can't do it on public property.
The local council took down the Welsh flags over the Little Orme for them to be replaced with larger Welsh and Union Jacks flags higher up and social media telling the council 'You take them down, we will put them back up' !!!!
Shame people are willing to waste council taxpayers money on these silly displays of nationalism (often organised by far right activists, who know exactly what they are doing).
Hardly far right with the Welsh Flag being flown
It depends on why it has been put up on a day other than match day. If it is used like some people use the flag of St George as a symbol that "foreigners" aren't welcome it could be.
Union Jacks as well though
I do not know who is responsible but lots of support on local social media
A non-working single parent with kids receives way, way more than £12k in benefits.
We're even paying child benefit to people earning up to £80k.
Would there be a kids UBI? Or just a top-up for low(ish) income people with kids (and bear in mind that at the moment MOST people with kids are getting a top-up).
The fundamental problem is that bringing-up kids is obviously very expensive. Yet jobs pay the same whether or not you have kids. So either massive intervention is needed, or else only wealthy people can have kids.
But this intervention will negate most of the supposed benefits of UBI - because it will bring back incentives not to work - ie higher kids top-up if low income.
Or if you have a kids UBI - ie everyone with kids gets it - then that income tax rate won't be 50%, it'll be miles higher, probably about 70%.
I see that Nottingham, London and Birmingham are taking, or planning to take, unofficial flags down.
Does anyone have a wider knowledge?
They have to take them down. Otherwise they are inviting everyone and anyone to hijack the public realm with their own pet causes. If people want to plaster their own property with England flags that's their prerogative, but they can't do it on public property.
The local council took down the Welsh flags over the Little Orme for them to be replaced with larger Welsh and Union Jacks flags higher up and social media telling the council 'You take them down, we will put them back up' !!!!
Shame people are willing to waste council taxpayers money on these silly displays of nationalism (often organised by far right activists, who know exactly what they are doing).
Hardly far right with the Welsh Flag being flown
It depends on why it has been put up on a day other than match day. If it is used like some people use the flag of St George as a symbol that "foreigners" aren't welcome it could be.
Union Jacks as well though
I do not know who is responsible but lots of support on local social media
Indeed so. Reform (and Yaxley-Lennon) seem very popular these days.
Over the next few days it will become painfully clear that the government deliberately shut down the Westminster spy case to avoid disrupting UK/China relations - an allegation so incendiary that I almost can’t believe I’m writing it. Watch this space for more.
Over the next few days it will become painfully clear that the government deliberately shut down the Westminster spy case to avoid disrupting UK/China relations - an allegation so incendiary that I almost can’t believe I’m writing it. Watch this space for more.
I see that Nottingham, London and Birmingham are taking, or planning to take, unofficial flags down.
Does anyone have a wider knowledge?
They have to take them down. Otherwise they are inviting everyone and anyone to hijack the public realm with their own pet causes. If people want to plaster their own property with England flags that's their prerogative, but they can't do it on public property.
The local council took down the Welsh flags over the Little Orme for them to be replaced with larger Welsh and Union Jacks flags higher up and social media telling the council 'You take them down, we will put them back up' !!!!
Shame people are willing to waste council taxpayers money on these silly displays of nationalism (often organised by far right activists, who know exactly what they are doing).
Hardly far right with the Welsh Flag being flown
It depends on why it has been put up on a day other than match day. If it is used like some people use the flag of St George as a symbol that "foreigners" aren't welcome it could be.
Personally, I quite like the England and UK flags. It just feels nice to have my flag flown. This must be what gay people feel like in June and August. Hurray, some people don't despise me. Only in the UK do we get hot and bothered about people flying national flags. Go to Greece, for example: the Greek flag is everywhere.
There is nothing wrong with a flag. The problem arises when the flag is displayed as a threat rather than a celebration.
I see that Nottingham, London and Birmingham are taking, or planning to take, unofficial flags down.
Does anyone have a wider knowledge?
They have to take them down. Otherwise they are inviting everyone and anyone to hijack the public realm with their own pet causes. If people want to plaster their own property with England flags that's their prerogative, but they can't do it on public property.
The local council took down the Welsh flags over the Little Orme for them to be replaced with larger Welsh and Union Jacks flags higher up and social media telling the council 'You take them down, we will put them back up' !!!!
Shame people are willing to waste council taxpayers money on these silly displays of nationalism (often organised by far right activists, who know exactly what they are doing).
Hardly far right with the Welsh Flag being flown
It depends on why it has been put up on a day other than match day. If it is used like some people use the flag of St George as a symbol that "foreigners" aren't welcome it could be.
Personally, I quite like the England and UK flags. It just feels nice to have my flag flown. This must be what gay people feel like in June and August. Hurray, some people don't despise me. Only in the UK do we get hot and bothered about people flying national flags. Go to Greece, for example: the Greek flag is everywhere.
There is nothing wrong with a flag. The problem arises when the flag is displayed as a threat rather than a celebration.
And how do you discern that when looking at said flag?
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.
In 2009-10 the uk government spent £739 billion. In 2025-6 they are budgeted to spend £1,335 billion.
According to the Bank of England, £739 billion in 2009/10 is equivalent to £1,077 billion today.
So in real terms the government is spending £258 billion more than the Brown government (which was not known for fiscal rectitude).
The only “profoundly unserious” people on here are those who claim that every penny of that is wisely spent and absolutely no savings are possible
Where did I say Government money is wisely spent? Central and local government are profligate. I can give you one of manifold examples of each. From central government we have the PPE scandal and from local government we have the £63m invisible Garden Bridge over the Thames.
Those savings Badenoch has claimed to have in mind I would question; why was the saving not implemented up to July 2024?
One area ripe for reform across government is procurement. That doesn't necessarily mean siding less, but rather getting value for what we do spend.
Government is way too gullible compared with the private sector.
I buy 16 x paracetamol for 37 pence a pack in Lidl. The NHS spends several pounds for 16 x paracetamol.
Answer? Tell people paracetamol is no longer available on prescription and delist.
Prescription wastage is also a national scandal. Once a medicine has been prescribed and becomes unwanted,even if it is unused and in date there is a cost to dispose.
A non-working single parent with kids receives way, way more than £12k in benefits.
We're even paying child benefit to people earning up to £80k.
Would there be a kids UBI? Or just a top-up for low(ish) income people with kids (and bear in mind that at the moment MOST people with kids are getting a top-up).
The fundamental problem is that bringing-up kids is obviously very expensive. Yet jobs pay the same whether or not you have kids. So either massive intervention is needed, or else only wealthy people can have kids.
But this intervention will negate most of the supposed benefits of UBI - because it will bring back incentives not to work - ie higher kids top-up if low income.
Or if you have a kids UBI - ie everyone with kids gets it - then that income tax rate won't be 50%, it'll be miles higher, probably about 70%.
Disability too! Unless you lean on charity to top up the UBI those with significant impediments will really suffer.
I see that Nottingham, London and Birmingham are taking, or planning to take, unofficial flags down.
Does anyone have a wider knowledge?
They have to take them down. Otherwise they are inviting everyone and anyone to hijack the public realm with their own pet causes. If people want to plaster their own property with England flags that's their prerogative, but they can't do it on public property.
The local council took down the Welsh flags over the Little Orme for them to be replaced with larger Welsh and Union Jacks flags higher up and social media telling the council 'You take them down, we will put them back up' !!!!
Shame people are willing to waste council taxpayers money on these silly displays of nationalism (often organised by far right activists, who know exactly what they are doing).
Hardly far right with the Welsh Flag being flown
It depends on why it has been put up on a day other than match day. If it is used like some people use the flag of St George as a symbol that "foreigners" aren't welcome it could be.
Personally, I quite like the England and UK flags. It just feels nice to have my flag flown. This must be what gay people feel like in June and August. Hurray, some people don't despise me. Only in the UK do we get hot and bothered about people flying national flags. Go to Greece, for example: the Greek flag is everywhere.
There is nothing wrong with a flag. The problem arises when the flag is displayed as a threat rather than a celebration.
And how do you discern that when looking at said flag?
If you know that the people organising it are far right activists with convictions for racist violence and it is occuring amid a moral panic over immigration and talk of millions of deportations you can draw your own conclusions.
I see that Nottingham, London and Birmingham are taking, or planning to take, unofficial flags down.
Does anyone have a wider knowledge?
They have to take them down. Otherwise they are inviting everyone and anyone to hijack the public realm with their own pet causes. If people want to plaster their own property with England flags that's their prerogative, but they can't do it on public property.
The local council took down the Welsh flags over the Little Orme for them to be replaced with larger Welsh and Union Jacks flags higher up and social media telling the council 'You take them down, we will put them back up' !!!!
Shame people are willing to waste council taxpayers money on these silly displays of nationalism (often organised by far right activists, who know exactly what they are doing).
Hardly far right with the Welsh Flag being flown
It depends on why it has been put up on a day other than match day. If it is used like some people use the flag of St George as a symbol that "foreigners" aren't welcome it could be.
Personally, I quite like the England and UK flags. It just feels nice to have my flag flown. This must be what gay people feel like in June and August. Hurray, some people don't despise me. Only in the UK do we get hot and bothered about people flying national flags. Go to Greece, for example: the Greek flag is everywhere.
I see that Nottingham, London and Birmingham are taking, or planning to take, unofficial flags down.
Does anyone have a wider knowledge?
They have to take them down. Otherwise they are inviting everyone and anyone to hijack the public realm with their own pet causes. If people want to plaster their own property with England flags that's their prerogative, but they can't do it on public property.
The local council took down the Welsh flags over the Little Orme for them to be replaced with larger Welsh and Union Jacks flags higher up and social media telling the council 'You take them down, we will put them back up' !!!!
Shame people are willing to waste council taxpayers money on these silly displays of nationalism (often organised by far right activists, who know exactly what they are doing).
Hardly far right with the Welsh Flag being flown
It depends on why it has been put up on a day other than match day. If it is used like some people use the flag of St George as a symbol that "foreigners" aren't welcome it could be.
Personally, I quite like the England and UK flags. It just feels nice to have my flag flown. This must be what gay people feel like in June and August. Hurray, some people don't despise me. Only in the UK do we get hot and bothered about people flying national flags. Go to Greece, for example: the Greek flag is everywhere.
There is nothing wrong with a flag. The problem arises when the flag is displayed as a threat rather than a celebration.
And how do you discern that when looking at said flag?
If you know that the people organising it are far right activists with convictions for racist violence and it is occuring amid a moral panic over immigration and talk of millions of deportations you can draw your own conclusions.
I see that Nottingham, London and Birmingham are taking, or planning to take, unofficial flags down.
Does anyone have a wider knowledge?
They have to take them down. Otherwise they are inviting everyone and anyone to hijack the public realm with their own pet causes. If people want to plaster their own property with England flags that's their prerogative, but they can't do it on public property.
The local council took down the Welsh flags over the Little Orme for them to be replaced with larger Welsh and Union Jacks flags higher up and social media telling the council 'You take them down, we will put them back up' !!!!
Shame people are willing to waste council taxpayers money on these silly displays of nationalism (often organised by far right activists, who know exactly what they are doing).
Hardly far right with the Welsh Flag being flown
It depends on why it has been put up on a day other than match day. If it is used like some people use the flag of St George as a symbol that "foreigners" aren't welcome it could be.
Personally, I quite like the England and UK flags. It just feels nice to have my flag flown. This must be what gay people feel like in June and August. Hurray, some people don't despise me. Only in the UK do we get hot and bothered about people flying national flags. Go to Greece, for example: the Greek flag is everywhere.
I always presumed this was your flag:
Well of course I would feel even more validated seeing that flag up and down the A56.
I see that Nottingham, London and Birmingham are taking, or planning to take, unofficial flags down.
Does anyone have a wider knowledge?
They have to take them down. Otherwise they are inviting everyone and anyone to hijack the public realm with their own pet causes. If people want to plaster their own property with England flags that's their prerogative, but they can't do it on public property.
The local council took down the Welsh flags over the Little Orme for them to be replaced with larger Welsh and Union Jacks flags higher up and social media telling the council 'You take them down, we will put them back up' !!!!
Shame people are willing to waste council taxpayers money on these silly displays of nationalism (often organised by far right activists, who know exactly what they are doing).
Hardly far right with the Welsh Flag being flown
It depends on why it has been put up on a day other than match day. If it is used like some people use the flag of St George as a symbol that "foreigners" aren't welcome it could be.
Personally, I quite like the England and UK flags. It just feels nice to have my flag flown. This must be what gay people feel like in June and August. Hurray, some people don't despise me. Only in the UK do we get hot and bothered about people flying national flags. Go to Greece, for example: the Greek flag is everywhere.
There is nothing wrong with a flag. The problem arises when the flag is displayed as a threat rather than a celebration.
And how do you discern that when looking at said flag?
If a flag of St George is taped to a lamp post in Sparkhill I am guessing it is a threat. If it is hanging outside Buck House it is probably a celebration.
That said I am making a subjective analysis so in both cases I may be wrong.
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.
In 2009-10 the uk government spent £739 billion. In 2025-6 they are budgeted to spend £1,335 billion.
According to the Bank of England, £739 billion in 2009/10 is equivalent to £1,077 billion today.
So in real terms the government is spending £258 billion more than the Brown government (which was not known for fiscal rectitude).
The only “profoundly unserious” people on here are those who claim that every penny of that is wisely spent and absolutely no savings are possible
Where did I say Government money is wisely spent? Central and local government are profligate. I can give you one of manifold examples of each. From central government we have the PPE scandal and from local government we have the £63m invisible Garden Bridge over the Thames.
Those savings Badenoch has claimed to have in mind I would question; why was the saving not implemented up to July 2024?
One area ripe for reform across government is procurement. That doesn't necessarily mean siding less, but rather getting value for what we do spend.
Government is way too gullible compared with the private sector.
I buy 16 x paracetamol for 37 pence a pack in Lidl. The NHS spends several pounds for 16 x paracetamol.
Answer? Tell people paracetamol is no longer available on prescription and delist.
Prescription wastage is also a national scandal. Once a medicine has been prescribed and becomes unwanted,even if it is unused and in date there is a cost to dispose.
I think I'd look seriously at who is exempt from prescription charges. For instance, wealthy pensioners really could be paying. I generally seem to be the only person actually paying for prescriptions at the pharmacy.
Getting your prescriptions free means that a patient has no penalty for not using them. De-prescribing is something we should do a lot more of.
Changes from 1st October [Find Out Now, 8th October, N=2,668]
Highest ever Green VI in a poll
Zackly what the Greens were hoping for when they elected an articulate populist as leader.
What's happened to the Your party, by the way? Have they given up? Green appear to have largely hoovered up the left wing extremist vote.
Founding conference at the end of November. Name should be decided by online vote this month
The Green +4 is all left types who will switch to Corbyn imho.
Agreed. Any score YP posts will come primarily from Green and WNV followed by Labour followed by NOTA/Reform followed by a few young LibDems followed by about 1 very confused Tory
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.
In 2009-10 the uk government spent £739 billion. In 2025-6 they are budgeted to spend £1,335 billion.
According to the Bank of England, £739 billion in 2009/10 is equivalent to £1,077 billion today.
So in real terms the government is spending £258 billion more than the Brown government (which was not known for fiscal rectitude).
The only “profoundly unserious” people on here are those who claim that every penny of that is wisely spent and absolutely no savings are possible
Where did I say Government money is wisely spent? Central and local government are profligate. I can give you one of manifold examples of each. From central government we have the PPE scandal and from local government we have the £63m invisible Garden Bridge over the Thames.
Those savings Badenoch has claimed to have in mind I would question; why was the saving not implemented up to July 2024?
One area ripe for reform across government is procurement. That doesn't necessarily mean siding less, but rather getting value for what we do spend.
Government is way too gullible compared with the private sector.
I buy 16 x paracetamol for 37 pence a pack in Lidl. The NHS spends several pounds for 16 x paracetamol.
Answer? Tell people paracetamol is no longer available on prescription and delist.
Prescription wastage is also a national scandal. Once a medicine has been prescribed and becomes unwanted,even if it is unused and in date there is a cost to dispose.
Looking into this briefly - I don't think the NHS pays that for the medication - rather its the admin involved which is making the cost what it is.
Say what you like about Trump he does seem to have pulled off this Gaza peace deal with reports he is flying to Israel on Sunday
I don't think Trump has pulled off this peace deal. I think the people who wrote it + US diplomats + changing circumstances have made it become possible. Trump has helped in that process.
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.
In 2009-10 the uk government spent £739 billion. In 2025-6 they are budgeted to spend £1,335 billion.
According to the Bank of England, £739 billion in 2009/10 is equivalent to £1,077 billion today.
So in real terms the government is spending £258 billion more than the Brown government (which was not known for fiscal rectitude).
The only “profoundly unserious” people on here are those who claim that every penny of that is wisely spent and absolutely no savings are possible
Where did I say Government money is wisely spent? Central and local government are profligate. I can give you one of manifold examples of each. From central government we have the PPE scandal and from local government we have the £63m invisible Garden Bridge over the Thames.
Those savings Badenoch has claimed to have in mind I would question; why was the saving not implemented up to July 2024?
One area ripe for reform across government is procurement. That doesn't necessarily mean siding less, but rather getting value for what we do spend.
Government is way too gullible compared with the private sector.
The public sector model for procurement should be the NHS drugs bill.
We are only picking one or two of you, and we demand an appropriate price for your right to be included.
I see that Nottingham, London and Birmingham are taking, or planning to take, unofficial flags down.
Does anyone have a wider knowledge?
They have to take them down. Otherwise they are inviting everyone and anyone to hijack the public realm with their own pet causes. If people want to plaster their own property with England flags that's their prerogative, but they can't do it on public property.
The local council took down the Welsh flags over the Little Orme for them to be replaced with larger Welsh and Union Jacks flags higher up and social media telling the council 'You take them down, we will put them back up' !!!!
Shame people are willing to waste council taxpayers money on these silly displays of nationalism (often organised by far right activists, who know exactly what they are doing).
Hardly far right with the Welsh Flag being flown
It depends on why it has been put up on a day other than match day. If it is used like some people use the flag of St George as a symbol that "foreigners" aren't welcome it could be.
Personally, I quite like the England and UK flags. It just feels nice to have my flag flown. This must be what gay people feel like in June and August. Hurray, some people don't despise me. Only in the UK do we get hot and bothered about people flying national flags. Go to Greece, for example: the Greek flag is everywhere.
There is nothing wrong with a flag. The problem arises when the flag is displayed as a threat rather than a celebration.
And how do you discern that when looking at said flag?
If a flag of St George is taped to a lamp post in Sparkhill I am guessing it is a threat. If it is hanging outside Buck House it is probably a celebration.
That said I am making a subjective analysis so in both cases I may be wrong.
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.
In 2009-10 the uk government spent £739 billion. In 2025-6 they are budgeted to spend £1,335 billion.
According to the Bank of England, £739 billion in 2009/10 is equivalent to £1,077 billion today.
So in real terms the government is spending £258 billion more than the Brown government (which was not known for fiscal rectitude).
The only “profoundly unserious” people on here are those who claim that every penny of that is wisely spent and absolutely no savings are possible
Where did I say Government money is wisely spent? Central and local government are profligate. I can give you one of manifold examples of each. From central government we have the PPE scandal and from local government we have the £63m invisible Garden Bridge over the Thames.
Those savings Badenoch has claimed to have in mind I would question; why was the saving not implemented up to July 2024?
One area ripe for reform across government is procurement. That doesn't necessarily mean siding less, but rather getting value for what we do spend.
Government is way too gullible compared with the private sector.
I buy 16 x paracetamol for 37 pence a pack in Lidl. The NHS spends several pounds for 16 x paracetamol.
Answer? Tell people paracetamol is no longer available on prescription and delist.
Prescription wastage is also a national scandal. Once a medicine has been prescribed and becomes unwanted,even if it is unused and in date there is a cost to dispose.
I think I'd look seriously at who is exempt from prescription charges. For instance, wealthy pensioners really could be paying. I generally seem to be the only person actually paying for prescriptions at the pharmacy.
Getting your prescriptions free means that a patient has no penalty for not using them. De-prescribing is something we should do a lot more of.
About 10% of prescriptions in England are paid for.
I see that Nottingham, London and Birmingham are taking, or planning to take, unofficial flags down.
Does anyone have a wider knowledge?
They have to take them down. Otherwise they are inviting everyone and anyone to hijack the public realm with their own pet causes. If people want to plaster their own property with England flags that's their prerogative, but they can't do it on public property.
The local council took down the Welsh flags over the Little Orme for them to be replaced with larger Welsh and Union Jacks flags higher up and social media telling the council 'You take them down, we will put them back up' !!!!
Shame people are willing to waste council taxpayers money on these silly displays of nationalism (often organised by far right activists, who know exactly what they are doing).
Hardly far right with the Welsh Flag being flown
It depends on why it has been put up on a day other than match day. If it is used like some people use the flag of St George as a symbol that "foreigners" aren't welcome it could be.
Personally, I quite like the England and UK flags. It just feels nice to have my flag flown. This must be what gay people feel like in June and August. Hurray, some people don't despise me. Only in the UK do we get hot and bothered about people flying national flags. Go to Greece, for example: the Greek flag is everywhere.
But that's the point. We don't really do flags. So when a load of St Georges suddenly go up ad-hoc in a neighbourhood it's to send a message. The same message the big Tommy Robinson march was sending. Feels nice? I bet you won't think that if the sentiment underlying it gets into power.
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.
In 2009-10 the uk government spent £739 billion. In 2025-6 they are budgeted to spend £1,335 billion.
According to the Bank of England, £739 billion in 2009/10 is equivalent to £1,077 billion today.
So in real terms the government is spending £258 billion more than the Brown government (which was not known for fiscal rectitude).
The only “profoundly unserious” people on here are those who claim that every penny of that is wisely spent and absolutely no savings are possible
Where did I say Government money is wisely spent? Central and local government are profligate. I can give you one of manifold examples of each. From central government we have the PPE scandal and from local government we have the £63m invisible Garden Bridge over the Thames.
Those savings Badenoch has claimed to have in mind I would question; why was the saving not implemented up to July 2024?
One area ripe for reform across government is procurement. That doesn't necessarily mean siding less, but rather getting value for what we do spend.
Government is way too gullible compared with the private sector.
I buy 16 x paracetamol for 37 pence a pack in Lidl. The NHS spends several pounds for 16 x paracetamol.
Answer? Tell people paracetamol is no longer available on prescription and delist.
Prescription wastage is also a national scandal. Once a medicine has been prescribed and becomes unwanted,even if it is unused and in date there is a cost to dispose.
Paracetamol is the only pain killer I am permitted to take and like you buy them on my weekly Asda order [max 2 packets]
I could get them prescribed but just do not think it is right to do so, especially at that cost
I see that Nottingham, London and Birmingham are taking, or planning to take, unofficial flags down.
Does anyone have a wider knowledge?
They have to take them down. Otherwise they are inviting everyone and anyone to hijack the public realm with their own pet causes. If people want to plaster their own property with England flags that's their prerogative, but they can't do it on public property.
The local council took down the Welsh flags over the Little Orme for them to be replaced with larger Welsh and Union Jacks flags higher up and social media telling the council 'You take them down, we will put them back up' !!!!
Shame people are willing to waste council taxpayers money on these silly displays of nationalism (often organised by far right activists, who know exactly what they are doing).
Hardly far right with the Welsh Flag being flown
It depends on why it has been put up on a day other than match day. If it is used like some people use the flag of St George as a symbol that "foreigners" aren't welcome it could be.
Personally, I quite like the England and UK flags. It just feels nice to have my flag flown. This must be what gay people feel like in June and August. Hurray, some people don't despise me. Only in the UK do we get hot and bothered about people flying national flags. Go to Greece, for example: the Greek flag is everywhere.
There is nothing wrong with a flag. The problem arises when the flag is displayed as a threat rather than a celebration.
And how do you discern that when looking at said flag?
If a flag of St George is taped to a lamp post in Sparkhill I am guessing it is a threat. If it is hanging outside Buck House it is probably a celebration.
That said I am making a subjective analysis so in both cases I may be wrong.
BIB - maybe, but maybe some are just reacting a want a bit of patriotism back too. Not everyone is racist.
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.
In 2009-10 the uk government spent £739 billion. In 2025-6 they are budgeted to spend £1,335 billion.
According to the Bank of England, £739 billion in 2009/10 is equivalent to £1,077 billion today.
So in real terms the government is spending £258 billion more than the Brown government (which was not known for fiscal rectitude).
The only “profoundly unserious” people on here are those who claim that every penny of that is wisely spent and absolutely no savings are possible
Where did I say Government money is wisely spent? Central and local government are profligate. I can give you one of manifold examples of each. From central government we have the PPE scandal and from local government we have the £63m invisible Garden Bridge over the Thames.
Those savings Badenoch has claimed to have in mind I would question; why was the saving not implemented up to July 2024?
One area ripe for reform across government is procurement. That doesn't necessarily mean siding less, but rather getting value for what we do spend.
Government is way too gullible compared with the private sector.
I buy 16 x paracetamol for 37 pence a pack in Lidl. The NHS spends several pounds for 16 x paracetamol.
Answer? Tell people paracetamol is no longer available on prescription and delist.
Prescription wastage is also a national scandal. Once a medicine has been prescribed and becomes unwanted,even if it is unused and in date there is a cost to dispose.
I think I'd look seriously at who is exempt from prescription charges. For instance, wealthy pensioners really could be paying. I generally seem to be the only person actually paying for prescriptions at the pharmacy.
Getting your prescriptions free means that a patient has no penalty for not using them. De-prescribing is something we should do a lot more of.
About 10% of prescriptions in England are paid for.
In a culturally competitive market (which, effectively, is what multiculturalism is) then all cultures are going to have to advertise and are going to have to give the impression that there's value in remaining in or joining a group.
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.
In 2009-10 the uk government spent £739 billion. In 2025-6 they are budgeted to spend £1,335 billion.
According to the Bank of England, £739 billion in 2009/10 is equivalent to £1,077 billion today.
So in real terms the government is spending £258 billion more than the Brown government (which was not known for fiscal rectitude).
The only “profoundly unserious” people on here are those who claim that every penny of that is wisely spent and absolutely no savings are possible
Where did I say Government money is wisely spent? Central and local government are profligate. I can give you one of manifold examples of each. From central government we have the PPE scandal and from local government we have the £63m invisible Garden Bridge over the Thames.
Those savings Badenoch has claimed to have in mind I would question; why was the saving not implemented up to July 2024?
One area ripe for reform across government is procurement. That doesn't necessarily mean siding less, but rather getting value for what we do spend.
Government is way too gullible compared with the private sector.
Yes, when the government transacts with the private sector it's the latter that tends to get the value. There are lots of examples of this.
Indeed so.
Government needs to hire a bunch of sh!t-hot procurement people, who can negotiate contacts on behalf of the State.
They need £250k basic, plus exceptional and unlimited commission.
Because that’s what’s on the other side of the fence, and government keeps being walked over for hundreds of millions in every contract they sign.
Say what you like about Trump he does seem to have pulled off this Gaza peace deal with reports he is flying to Israel on Sunday
Maybe a bit of credit to Alfred Nobel too.
The vast majority of people killed in or around Gaza (of all nationalities, religions etc) were killed with either the direct products of Nobel’s work or derivations thereof.
Say what you like about Trump he does seem to have pulled off this Gaza peace deal with reports he is flying to Israel on Sunday
Maybe a bit of credit to Alfred Nobel too.
The vast majority of people killed in or around Gaza (of all nationalities, religions etc) were killed with either the direct products of Nobel’s work or derivations thereof.
And most of them were killed with weapons supplied by the US government.
Say what you like about Trump he does seem to have pulled off this Gaza peace deal with reports he is flying to Israel on Sunday
I don't think Trump has pulled off this peace deal. I think the people who wrote it + US diplomats + changing circumstances have made it become possible. Trump has helped in that process.
It could and should have happened a long time ago. The ceasefire and hostage release, I mean. A genuine lasting peace deal is something else. If that is in due course achieved, fantastic, and Trump will for once merit praise and plaudits.
Say what you like about Trump he does seem to have pulled off this Gaza peace deal with reports he is flying to Israel on Sunday
Sort of by default. Don't forget this is the Blair deal Biden offered to Netanyahu eighteen months ago. Netanyahu rejected it out of hand.
In a nutshell Qatar donated Trump ( not the Administration- but Mr Donald J. Trump) a few hundred million dollar aircraft. Doha was the bombed by Israel. The Emir of Qatar was furious. Emir Al Thani expressed his outrage to Trump (keep up, Al Thani has just gifted Trump an new airliner) so Trump became angry too. To cut a long story short Netanyahu became Trump's bitch and has to jump to his every command. Peace in the Middle East is the outcome. Who says bribing a president with expensive gifts is a waste of time and money?
Say what you like about Trump he does seem to have pulled off this Gaza peace deal with reports he is flying to Israel on Sunday
Maybe a bit of credit to Alfred Nobel too.
The vast majority of people killed in or around Gaza (of all nationalities, religions etc) were killed with either the direct products of Nobel’s work or derivations thereof.
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.
In 2009-10 the uk government spent £739 billion. In 2025-6 they are budgeted to spend £1,335 billion.
According to the Bank of England, £739 billion in 2009/10 is equivalent to £1,077 billion today.
So in real terms the government is spending £258 billion more than the Brown government (which was not known for fiscal rectitude).
The only “profoundly unserious” people on here are those who claim that every penny of that is wisely spent and absolutely no savings are possible
Where did I say Government money is wisely spent? Central and local government are profligate. I can give you one of manifold examples of each. From central government we have the PPE scandal and from local government we have the £63m invisible Garden Bridge over the Thames.
Those savings Badenoch has claimed to have in mind I would question; why was the saving not implemented up to July 2024?
One area ripe for reform across government is procurement. That doesn't necessarily mean siding less, but rather getting value for what we do spend.
Government is way too gullible compared with the private sector.
I buy 16 x paracetamol for 37 pence a pack in Lidl. The NHS spends several pounds for 16 x paracetamol.
Answer? Tell people paracetamol is no longer available on prescription and delist.
Prescription wastage is also a national scandal. Once a medicine has been prescribed and becomes unwanted,even if it is unused and in date there is a cost to dispose.
I think I'd look seriously at who is exempt from prescription charges. For instance, wealthy pensioners really could be paying. I generally seem to be the only person actually paying for prescriptions at the pharmacy.
Getting your prescriptions free means that a patient has no penalty for not using them. De-prescribing is something we should do a lot more of.
About 10% of prescriptions in England are paid for.
When Scotland abolished prescription charges the admin savings were greater than the loss of prescription income.
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.
In 2009-10 the uk government spent £739 billion. In 2025-6 they are budgeted to spend £1,335 billion.
According to the Bank of England, £739 billion in 2009/10 is equivalent to £1,077 billion today.
So in real terms the government is spending £258 billion more than the Brown government (which was not known for fiscal rectitude).
The only “profoundly unserious” people on here are those who claim that every penny of that is wisely spent and absolutely no savings are possible
Where did I say Government money is wisely spent? Central and local government are profligate. I can give you one of manifold examples of each. From central government we have the PPE scandal and from local government we have the £63m invisible Garden Bridge over the Thames.
Those savings Badenoch has claimed to have in mind I would question; why was the saving not implemented up to July 2024?
One area ripe for reform across government is procurement. That doesn't necessarily mean siding less, but rather getting value for what we do spend.
Government is way too gullible compared with the private sector.
I buy 16 x paracetamol for 37 pence a pack in Lidl. The NHS spends several pounds for 16 x paracetamol.
Answer? Tell people paracetamol is no longer available on prescription and delist.
Prescription wastage is also a national scandal. Once a medicine has been prescribed and becomes unwanted,even if it is unused and in date there is a cost to dispose.
I think I'd look seriously at who is exempt from prescription charges. For instance, wealthy pensioners really could be paying. I generally seem to be the only person actually paying for prescriptions at the pharmacy.
Getting your prescriptions free means that a patient has no penalty for not using them. De-prescribing is something we should do a lot more of.
During the last few years of my working life it was something on which I spent a lot of time. Sometimes felt like that chap who had to push a big stone up a hill!
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.
In 2009-10 the uk government spent £739 billion. In 2025-6 they are budgeted to spend £1,335 billion.
According to the Bank of England, £739 billion in 2009/10 is equivalent to £1,077 billion today.
So in real terms the government is spending £258 billion more than the Brown government (which was not known for fiscal rectitude).
The only “profoundly unserious” people on here are those who claim that every penny of that is wisely spent and absolutely no savings are possible
Where did I say Government money is wisely spent? Central and local government are profligate. I can give you one of manifold examples of each. From central government we have the PPE scandal and from local government we have the £63m invisible Garden Bridge over the Thames.
Those savings Badenoch has claimed to have in mind I would question; why was the saving not implemented up to July 2024?
One area ripe for reform across government is procurement. That doesn't necessarily mean siding less, but rather getting value for what we do spend.
Government is way too gullible compared with the private sector.
I buy 16 x paracetamol for 37 pence a pack in Lidl. The NHS spends several pounds for 16 x paracetamol.
Answer? Tell people paracetamol is no longer available on prescription and delist.
Prescription wastage is also a national scandal. Once a medicine has been prescribed and becomes unwanted,even if it is unused and in date there is a cost to dispose.
Paracetamol is the only pain killer I am permitted to take and like you buy them on my weekly Asda order [max 2 packets]
I could get them prescribed but just do not think it is right to do so, especially at that cost
My late father was having them in 500s from the pharmacy. I put a stop to that. The dispensary cost alone would have been astronomical.
He had deliveries each week from Lloyds Pharmacy. If he needed an item once they would restock it weekly. I disposed of probably several hundred pounds worth of weapons grade Deoralite.
When he passed I kept the unspent Nitromin for my own self-diagnosed angina. Waste not want not.
Say what you like about Trump he does seem to have pulled off this Gaza peace deal with reports he is flying to Israel on Sunday
I don't think Trump has pulled off this peace deal. I think the people who wrote it + US diplomats + changing circumstances have made it become possible. Trump has helped in that process.
It could and should have happened a long time ago. The ceasefire and hostage release, I mean. A genuine lasting peace deal is something else. If that is in due course achieved, fantastic, and Trump will for once merit praise and plaudits.
Indeed, I've been saying for years this war should end with the surrender of Hamas, their disarmament and removal from office and the release of all hostages.
Many people here have been opposing demanding the surrender of Hamas, calling demanding that "unrealistic" or "genocide" and other such bullshit.
Much bloodshed could have been avoided if Hamas had surrendered and released the hostages sooner, but kudos to Israel for not accepting a ceasefire before they did. Good job.
Say what you like about Trump he does seem to have pulled off this Gaza peace deal with reports he is flying to Israel on Sunday
Sort of by default. Don't forget this is the Blair deal Biden offered to Netanyahu eighteen months ago. Netanyahu rejected it out of hand.
In a nutshell Qatar donated Trump ( not the Administration- but Mr Donald J. Trump) a few hundred million dollar aircraft. Doha was the bombed by Israel. The Emir of Qatar was furious. Emir Al Thani expressed his outrage to Trump (keep up, Al Thani has just gifted Trump an new airliner) so Trump became angry too. To cut a long story short Netanyahu became Trump's bitch and has to jump to his every command. Peace in the Middle East is the outcome. Who says bribing a president with expensive gifts is a waste of time and money?
Everybody is cheering but the Israelis haven't accepted it yet!
I see that Nottingham, London and Birmingham are taking, or planning to take, unofficial flags down.
Does anyone have a wider knowledge?
They have to take them down. Otherwise they are inviting everyone and anyone to hijack the public realm with their own pet causes. If people want to plaster their own property with England flags that's their prerogative, but they can't do it on public property.
The local council took down the Welsh flags over the Little Orme for them to be replaced with larger Welsh and Union Jacks flags higher up and social media telling the council 'You take them down, we will put them back up' !!!!
Shame people are willing to waste council taxpayers money on these silly displays of nationalism (often organised by far right activists, who know exactly what they are doing).
Hardly far right with the Welsh Flag being flown
It depends on why it has been put up on a day other than match day. If it is used like some people use the flag of St George as a symbol that "foreigners" aren't welcome it could be.
Personally, I quite like the England and UK flags. It just feels nice to have my flag flown. This must be what gay people feel like in June and August. Hurray, some people don't despise me. Only in the UK do we get hot and bothered about people flying national flags. Go to Greece, for example: the Greek flag is everywhere.
There is nothing wrong with a flag. The problem arises when the flag is displayed as a threat rather than a celebration.
And how do you discern that when looking at said flag?
If a flag of St George is taped to a lamp post in Sparkhill I am guessing it is a threat. If it is hanging outside Buck House it is probably a celebration.
That said I am making a subjective analysis so in both cases I may be wrong.
Why is the flag of England a threat to England?
It is sometimes flown as a warning to me. Keep off our turf Taffy!
I see that Nottingham, London and Birmingham are taking, or planning to take, unofficial flags down.
Does anyone have a wider knowledge?
They have to take them down. Otherwise they are inviting everyone and anyone to hijack the public realm with their own pet causes. If people want to plaster their own property with England flags that's their prerogative, but they can't do it on public property.
The local council took down the Welsh flags over the Little Orme for them to be replaced with larger Welsh and Union Jacks flags higher up and social media telling the council 'You take them down, we will put them back up' !!!!
Shame people are willing to waste council taxpayers money on these silly displays of nationalism (often organised by far right activists, who know exactly what they are doing).
Hardly far right with the Welsh Flag being flown
It depends on why it has been put up on a day other than match day. If it is used like some people use the flag of St George as a symbol that "foreigners" aren't welcome it could be.
Personally, I quite like the England and UK flags. It just feels nice to have my flag flown. This must be what gay people feel like in June and August. Hurray, some people don't despise me. Only in the UK do we get hot and bothered about people flying national flags. Go to Greece, for example: the Greek flag is everywhere.
But that's the point. We don't really do flags. So when a load of St Georges suddenly go up ad-hoc in a neighbourhood it's to send a message. The same message the big Tommy Robinson march was sending. Feels nice? I bet you won't think that if the sentiment underlying it gets into power.
That;s exactly the wider point.
England appears to be the only place in the world that doesn’t celebrate its own national flag.
I see that Nottingham, London and Birmingham are taking, or planning to take, unofficial flags down.
Does anyone have a wider knowledge?
They have to take them down. Otherwise they are inviting everyone and anyone to hijack the public realm with their own pet causes. If people want to plaster their own property with England flags that's their prerogative, but they can't do it on public property.
The local council took down the Welsh flags over the Little Orme for them to be replaced with larger Welsh and Union Jacks flags higher up and social media telling the council 'You take them down, we will put them back up' !!!!
Shame people are willing to waste council taxpayers money on these silly displays of nationalism (often organised by far right activists, who know exactly what they are doing).
Hardly far right with the Welsh Flag being flown
It depends on why it has been put up on a day other than match day. If it is used like some people use the flag of St George as a symbol that "foreigners" aren't welcome it could be.
Personally, I quite like the England and UK flags. It just feels nice to have my flag flown. This must be what gay people feel like in June and August. Hurray, some people don't despise me. Only in the UK do we get hot and bothered about people flying national flags. Go to Greece, for example: the Greek flag is everywhere.
There is nothing wrong with a flag. The problem arises when the flag is displayed as a threat rather than a celebration.
And how do you discern that when looking at said flag?
If a flag of St George is taped to a lamp post in Sparkhill I am guessing it is a threat. If it is hanging outside Buck House it is probably a celebration.
That said I am making a subjective analysis so in both cases I may be wrong.
BIB - maybe, but maybe some are just reacting a want a bit of patriotism back too. Not everyone is racist.
That would depend on how you define racist.
Which is part of the issue: someone may graffiti a cross of St George on a mini-roundabout because they feel a surge of patriotism; but they are aiding those who want to send people like my wife home.
Say what you like about Trump he does seem to have pulled off this Gaza peace deal with reports he is flying to Israel on Sunday
Sort of by default. Don't forget this is the Blair deal Biden offered to Netanyahu eighteen months ago. Netanyahu rejected it out of hand.
In a nutshell Qatar donated Trump ( not the Administration- but Mr Donald J. Trump) a few hundred million dollar aircraft. Doha was the bombed by Israel. The Emir of Qatar was furious. Emir Al Thani expressed his outrage to Trump (keep up, Al Thani has just gifted Trump an new airliner) so Trump became angry too. To cut a long story short Netanyahu became Trump's bitch and has to jump to his every command. Peace in the Middle East is the outcome. Who says bribing a president with expensive gifts is a waste of time and money?
Everybody is cheering but the Israelis haven't accepted it yet!
Hamas have made no commitment to lay down their arms either. All those nitwits with their WWII unconditional surrender bollox analogies must feel a bit silly.
Say what you like about Trump he does seem to have pulled off this Gaza peace deal with reports he is flying to Israel on Sunday
I don't think Trump has pulled off this peace deal. I think the people who wrote it + US diplomats + changing circumstances have made it become possible. Trump has helped in that process.
It could and should have happened a long time ago. The ceasefire and hostage release, I mean. A genuine lasting peace deal is something else. If that is in due course achieved, fantastic, and Trump will for once merit praise and plaudits.
Indeed, I've been saying for years this war should end with the surrender of Hamas, their disarmament and removal from office and the release of all hostages.
Many people here have been opposing demanding the surrender of Hamas, calling demanding that "unrealistic" or "genocide" and other such bullshit.
Much bloodshed could have been avoided if Hamas had surrendered and released the hostages sooner, but kudos to Israel for not accepting a ceasefire before they did. Good job.
And no mythical "genocide".
A lot of people here have egg on their face.
So everyone who’s been calling for “peace” should now be all over their social media loving the idea of peace.
I see that Nottingham, London and Birmingham are taking, or planning to take, unofficial flags down.
Does anyone have a wider knowledge?
They have to take them down. Otherwise they are inviting everyone and anyone to hijack the public realm with their own pet causes. If people want to plaster their own property with England flags that's their prerogative, but they can't do it on public property.
The local council took down the Welsh flags over the Little Orme for them to be replaced with larger Welsh and Union Jacks flags higher up and social media telling the council 'You take them down, we will put them back up' !!!!
Shame people are willing to waste council taxpayers money on these silly displays of nationalism (often organised by far right activists, who know exactly what they are doing).
Hardly far right with the Welsh Flag being flown
It depends on why it has been put up on a day other than match day. If it is used like some people use the flag of St George as a symbol that "foreigners" aren't welcome it could be.
Personally, I quite like the England and UK flags. It just feels nice to have my flag flown. This must be what gay people feel like in June and August. Hurray, some people don't despise me. Only in the UK do we get hot and bothered about people flying national flags. Go to Greece, for example: the Greek flag is everywhere.
There is nothing wrong with a flag. The problem arises when the flag is displayed as a threat rather than a celebration.
And how do you discern that when looking at said flag?
If a flag of St George is taped to a lamp post in Sparkhill I am guessing it is a threat. If it is hanging outside Buck House it is probably a celebration.
That said I am making a subjective analysis so in both cases I may be wrong.
BIB - maybe, but maybe some are just reacting a want a bit of patriotism back too. Not everyone is racist.
I see some of it as like the Chinese protests holding up blank pieces of paper. It's "we know you don't like us - yet we are still here". It's a bit of sullen and almost certainly pointless defiance. Like the closing monologue from the play 'Jerusalem'. It's a quiet moment of defiance by the Saxons against the Normans. By the masses against the Nu10k. It's a sullen refusal to change by people who are sick of being told their opposition to immigration is racist.
The point of something like this (like the Chinese blank-piece-of-paper protests) is that when all you use is an image rather than a specific set of demands, it's deliberately difficult to pin down what the protest is actually saying. It could be: 1) Despite what we feel we are constantly told, we still quite like being British (or given nation within that) 2) We are discontent with this government 3) Come on government, stop the boats 4) Come on government, stop all immigration or 5) We don't like brown people.
It's quite easy to get people to support (1), but quite hard to get them to support (5), with a sliding scale between them. The point of a deliberately vague and slogan-free protest like this is that it doesn't alienate those who might agree with 1, 2 or 3. Inconveniently, I rather suspect some to many of those more actively involved are at 4 or 5.
This sort of thing isn't the sole preserve of the right, of course. I'm sure lots of people who sympathised with the BLM protests would have strongly rejected a lot of the rather extreme stuff that many of those behind the protests actually proposed.
Say what you like about Trump he does seem to have pulled off this Gaza peace deal with reports he is flying to Israel on Sunday
I don't think Trump has pulled off this peace deal. I think the people who wrote it + US diplomats + changing circumstances have made it become possible. Trump has helped in that process.
It could and should have happened a long time ago. The ceasefire and hostage release, I mean. A genuine lasting peace deal is something else. If that is in due course achieved, fantastic, and Trump will for once merit praise and plaudits.
Indeed, I've been saying for years this war should end with the surrender of Hamas, their disarmament and removal from office and the release of all hostages.
Many people here have been opposing demanding the surrender of Hamas, calling demanding that "unrealistic" or "genocide" and other such bullshit.
Much bloodshed could have been avoided if Hamas had surrendered and released the hostages sooner, but kudos to Israel for not accepting a ceasefire before they did. Good job.
And no mythical "genocide".
A lot of people here have egg on their face.
People weren't calling the demand on Hamas to surrender "genocide". They are calling the stuff that looks like a genocide a genocide.
Say what you like about Trump he does seem to have pulled off this Gaza peace deal with reports he is flying to Israel on Sunday
Sort of by default. Don't forget this is the Blair deal Biden offered to Netanyahu eighteen months ago. Netanyahu rejected it out of hand.
In a nutshell Qatar donated Trump ( not the Administration- but Mr Donald J. Trump) a few hundred million dollar aircraft. Doha was the bombed by Israel. The Emir of Qatar was furious. Emir Al Thani expressed his outrage to Trump (keep up, Al Thani has just gifted Trump an new airliner) so Trump became angry too. To cut a long story short Netanyahu became Trump's bitch and has to jump to his every command. Peace in the Middle East is the outcome. Who says bribing a president with expensive gifts is a waste of time and money?
Everybody is cheering but the Israelis haven't accepted it yet!
Jeremy Bowen thinks it inevitable, although one of Smotrich's bunch want to pull out of the government.
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.
In 2009-10 the uk government spent £739 billion. In 2025-6 they are budgeted to spend £1,335 billion.
According to the Bank of England, £739 billion in 2009/10 is equivalent to £1,077 billion today.
So in real terms the government is spending £258 billion more than the Brown government (which was not known for fiscal rectitude).
The only “profoundly unserious” people on here are those who claim that every penny of that is wisely spent and absolutely no savings are possible
Where did I say Government money is wisely spent? Central and local government are profligate. I can give you one of manifold examples of each. From central government we have the PPE scandal and from local government we have the £63m invisible Garden Bridge over the Thames.
Those savings Badenoch has claimed to have in mind I would question; why was the saving not implemented up to July 2024?
One area ripe for reform across government is procurement. That doesn't necessarily mean siding less, but rather getting value for what we do spend.
Government is way too gullible compared with the private sector.
I buy 16 x paracetamol for 37 pence a pack in Lidl. The NHS spends several pounds for 16 x paracetamol.
Answer? Tell people paracetamol is no longer available on prescription and delist.
Prescription wastage is also a national scandal. Once a medicine has been prescribed and becomes unwanted,even if it is unused and in date there is a cost to dispose.
Paracetamol is the only pain killer I am permitted to take and like you buy them on my weekly Asda order [max 2 packets]
I could get them prescribed but just do not think it is right to do so, especially at that cost
My late father was having them in 500s from the pharmacy. I put a stop to that. The dispensary cost alone would have been astronomical.
He had deliveries each week from Lloyds Pharmacy. If he needed an item once they would restock it weekly. I disposed of probably several hundred pounds worth of weapons grade Deoralite.
When he passed I kept the unspent Nitromin for my own self-diagnosed angina. Waste not want not.
The basic problem, IMHO, is that pharmacists are paid on a piece work basis. There is absolutely no incentive to the dispensing pharmacist to reduce prescribing. A pharmacist I know worked out that he could save the local PCT (in those days) quite a considerable sum by careful monitoring of the prescriptions for a local Care Home. He asked the PCT if he did a) what would they do, and b) what percentage of the savings could he have for doing all the work? The answer was a) say thank you and b) none.
Say what you like about Trump he does seem to have pulled off this Gaza peace deal with reports he is flying to Israel on Sunday
I don't think Trump has pulled off this peace deal. I think the people who wrote it + US diplomats + changing circumstances have made it become possible. Trump has helped in that process.
It could and should have happened a long time ago. The ceasefire and hostage release, I mean. A genuine lasting peace deal is something else. If that is in due course achieved, fantastic, and Trump will for once merit praise and plaudits.
Indeed, I've been saying for years this war should end with the surrender of Hamas, their disarmament and removal from office and the release of all hostages.
Many people here have been opposing demanding the surrender of Hamas, calling demanding that "unrealistic" or "genocide" and other such bullshit.
Much bloodshed could have been avoided if Hamas had surrendered and released the hostages sooner, but kudos to Israel for not accepting a ceasefire before they did. Good job.
And no mythical "genocide".
A lot of people here have egg on their face.
People weren't calling the demand on Hamas to surrender "genocide". They are calling the stuff that looks like a genocide a genocide.
I see that Nottingham, London and Birmingham are taking, or planning to take, unofficial flags down.
Does anyone have a wider knowledge?
They have to take them down. Otherwise they are inviting everyone and anyone to hijack the public realm with their own pet causes. If people want to plaster their own property with England flags that's their prerogative, but they can't do it on public property.
The local council took down the Welsh flags over the Little Orme for them to be replaced with larger Welsh and Union Jacks flags higher up and social media telling the council 'You take them down, we will put them back up' !!!!
Shame people are willing to waste council taxpayers money on these silly displays of nationalism (often organised by far right activists, who know exactly what they are doing).
Hardly far right with the Welsh Flag being flown
It depends on why it has been put up on a day other than match day. If it is used like some people use the flag of St George as a symbol that "foreigners" aren't welcome it could be.
Personally, I quite like the England and UK flags. It just feels nice to have my flag flown. This must be what gay people feel like in June and August. Hurray, some people don't despise me. Only in the UK do we get hot and bothered about people flying national flags. Go to Greece, for example: the Greek flag is everywhere.
But that's the point. We don't really do flags. So when a load of St Georges suddenly go up ad-hoc in a neighbourhood it's to send a message. The same message the big Tommy Robinson march was sending. Feels nice? I bet you won't think that if the sentiment underlying it gets into power.
That;s exactly the wider point.
England appears to be the only place in the world that doesn’t celebrate its own national flag.
I mentioned it before I was a big buy British advocate and had a discreet union flag below my car bumper.
I wouldn't now. It would give wrong impression. I also drive a German car these days.
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.
In 2009-10 the uk government spent £739 billion. In 2025-6 they are budgeted to spend £1,335 billion.
According to the Bank of England, £739 billion in 2009/10 is equivalent to £1,077 billion today.
So in real terms the government is spending £258 billion more than the Brown government (which was not known for fiscal rectitude).
The only “profoundly unserious” people on here are those who claim that every penny of that is wisely spent and absolutely no savings are possible
Where did I say Government money is wisely spent? Central and local government are profligate. I can give you one of manifold examples of each. From central government we have the PPE scandal and from local government we have the £63m invisible Garden Bridge over the Thames.
Those savings Badenoch has claimed to have in mind I would question; why was the saving not implemented up to July 2024?
One area ripe for reform across government is procurement. That doesn't necessarily mean siding less, but rather getting value for what we do spend.
Government is way too gullible compared with the private sector.
I buy 16 x paracetamol for 37 pence a pack in Lidl. The NHS spends several pounds for 16 x paracetamol.
Answer? Tell people paracetamol is no longer available on prescription and delist.
Prescription wastage is also a national scandal. Once a medicine has been prescribed and becomes unwanted,even if it is unused and in date there is a cost to dispose.
Paracetamol is the only pain killer I am permitted to take and like you buy them on my weekly Asda order [max 2 packets]
I could get them prescribed but just do not think it is right to do so, especially at that cost
My late father was having them in 500s from the pharmacy. I put a stop to that. The dispensary cost alone would have been astronomical.
He had deliveries each week from Lloyds Pharmacy. If he needed an item once they would restock it weekly. I disposed of probably several hundred pounds worth of weapons grade Deoralite.
When he passed I kept the unspent Nitromin for my own self-diagnosed angina. Waste not want not.
My sister much the same but ultimately her cancer required tramadol
The amount of paracetamol I returned to the chemist was extraordinary
Say what you like about Trump he does seem to have pulled off this Gaza peace deal with reports he is flying to Israel on Sunday
Sort of by default. Don't forget this is the Blair deal Biden offered to Netanyahu eighteen months ago. Netanyahu rejected it out of hand.
In a nutshell Qatar donated Trump ( not the Administration- but Mr Donald J. Trump) a few hundred million dollar aircraft. Doha was the bombed by Israel. The Emir of Qatar was furious. Emir Al Thani expressed his outrage to Trump (keep up, Al Thani has just gifted Trump an new airliner) so Trump became angry too. To cut a long story short Netanyahu became Trump's bitch and has to jump to his every command. Peace in the Middle East is the outcome. Who says bribing a president with expensive gifts is a waste of time and money?
Everybody is cheering but the Israelis haven't accepted it yet!
The Israelis have signed the final draft of phase one.
Say what you like about Trump he does seem to have pulled off this Gaza peace deal with reports he is flying to Israel on Sunday
Sort of by default. Don't forget this is the Blair deal Biden offered to Netanyahu eighteen months ago. Netanyahu rejected it out of hand.
In a nutshell Qatar donated Trump ( not the Administration- but Mr Donald J. Trump) a few hundred million dollar aircraft. Doha was the bombed by Israel. The Emir of Qatar was furious. Emir Al Thani expressed his outrage to Trump (keep up, Al Thani has just gifted Trump an new airliner) so Trump became angry too. To cut a long story short Netanyahu became Trump's bitch and has to jump to his every command. Peace in the Middle East is the outcome. Who says bribing a president with expensive gifts is a waste of time and money?
Everybody is cheering but the Israelis haven't accepted it yet!
Hamas have made no commitment to lay down their arms either. All those nitwits with their WWII unconditional surrender bollox analogies must feel a bit silly.
Nice straw grasping, but Hamas laying down their arms is in the 20 point plan that has been accepted by Hamas. Hamas surrendering power over Gaza is also there.
Now if Hamas don't follow through, then of course war may sadly need to resume, rather than have a lasting peace, but we should all hope Hamas follow through on their surrender. If they don't, that'll be there choice just as every step of this has been, but at least the hostages will be free.
Realistically though, Hamas know they have been defeated. Good.
Say what you like about Trump he does seem to have pulled off this Gaza peace deal with reports he is flying to Israel on Sunday
I don't think Trump has pulled off this peace deal. I think the people who wrote it + US diplomats + changing circumstances have made it become possible. Trump has helped in that process.
It could and should have happened a long time ago. The ceasefire and hostage release, I mean. A genuine lasting peace deal is something else. If that is in due course achieved, fantastic, and Trump will for once merit praise and plaudits.
Indeed, I've been saying for years this war should end with the surrender of Hamas, their disarmament and removal from office and the release of all hostages.
Many people here have been opposing demanding the surrender of Hamas, calling demanding that "unrealistic" or "genocide" and other such bullshit.
Much bloodshed could have been avoided if Hamas had surrendered and released the hostages sooner, but kudos to Israel for not accepting a ceasefire before they did. Good job.
And no mythical "genocide".
A lot of people here have egg on their face.
That's as dumb and offensive as somebody equally fanatical on the other side of this cursed conflict calling October 7th a 'good job'.
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.
John Major’s biggest legacy, although why people make bets where the gross return is 50% is still a wonder. I was working in a shop in 1995 or 96 when it all started, the queues on Saturday afternoons were crazy.
Government spending on sports and arts has over time been replaced by lottery money, and allowed expansion in those areas. There’s now hundreds of Olympic athletes and coaches getting a stipend from the lottery, the crowning grory of which was the London Games.
We know that people are attracted to long-odds bets, such that bookies can offer shorter odds than warranted and still attract enough bets.
The lottery offers very long-odds bets. There's no other opportunity, albeit a slim one, of transforming a few pounds into many millions of pounds.
Even a large winning bet at 100/1 is not going to return enough money to change your life in the way a lottery jackpot win would.
I don't find it so illogical, viewed from a game theory point of view, rather than a purely numerical one.
Might not be much in it if this particular bid comes off. NB, the URL has the wrong figure in it (it works, it's just not correct in terms of the story).
The billionaire media mogul Richard Desmond will urge a court to “err on the side of generosity” in assessing a £1.3bn damages claim against the Gambling Commission that would probably have to be funded by taxpayers if he wins. [...]
The Dubai-based billionaire is seeking damages of up to £1.3bn. A victory for the media mogul could have a significant cost for charities and the taxpayer because any payout would have to come from a lottery pot of money set aside to fund good causes.
If the payout is larger than the fund, which is understood to receive about £30m a week from lottery ticket sales, the taxpayer would have to foot the bill."
That is entirely absurd. An emergency bill through the Commons to set this aside, and amend the relevant regulatory law is needed.
The lottery is entirely there to benefit the pubic purse. That is its sole purpose. The idea that some expat billionaire, whose contribution to British life is deeply questionable, should benefit in this way, at public expense, is manifestly wrong,
Say what you like about Trump he does seem to have pulled off this Gaza peace deal with reports he is flying to Israel on Sunday
I don't think Trump has pulled off this peace deal. I think the people who wrote it + US diplomats + changing circumstances have made it become possible. Trump has helped in that process.
It could and should have happened a long time ago. The ceasefire and hostage release, I mean. A genuine lasting peace deal is something else. If that is in due course achieved, fantastic, and Trump will for once merit praise and plaudits.
Indeed, I've been saying for years this war should end with the surrender of Hamas, their disarmament and removal from office and the release of all hostages.
Many people here have been opposing demanding the surrender of Hamas, calling demanding that "unrealistic" or "genocide" and other such bullshit.
Much bloodshed could have been avoided if Hamas had surrendered and released the hostages sooner, but kudos to Israel for not accepting a ceasefire before they did. Good job.
And no mythical "genocide".
A lot of people here have egg on their face.
People weren't calling the demand on Hamas to surrender "genocide". They are calling the stuff that looks like a genocide a genocide.
Say what you like about Trump he does seem to have pulled off this Gaza peace deal with reports he is flying to Israel on Sunday
I don't think Trump has pulled off this peace deal. I think the people who wrote it + US diplomats + changing circumstances have made it become possible. Trump has helped in that process.
It could and should have happened a long time ago. The ceasefire and hostage release, I mean. A genuine lasting peace deal is something else. If that is in due course achieved, fantastic, and Trump will for once merit praise and plaudits.
Indeed, I've been saying for years this war should end with the surrender of Hamas, their disarmament and removal from office and the release of all hostages.
Many people here have been opposing demanding the surrender of Hamas, calling demanding that "unrealistic" or "genocide" and other such bullshit.
Much bloodshed could have been avoided if Hamas had surrendered and released the hostages sooner, but kudos to Israel for not accepting a ceasefire before they did. Good job.
And no mythical "genocide".
A lot of people here have egg on their face.
That's as dumb and offensive as somebody equally fanatical on the other side of this cursed conflict calling October 7th a 'good job'.
Oh cut the crap.
Hamas chose this war, and they lost it. Good riddance.
Say what you like about Trump he does seem to have pulled off this Gaza peace deal with reports he is flying to Israel on Sunday
I don't think Trump has pulled off this peace deal. I think the people who wrote it + US diplomats + changing circumstances have made it become possible. Trump has helped in that process.
It could and should have happened a long time ago. The ceasefire and hostage release, I mean. A genuine lasting peace deal is something else. If that is in due course achieved, fantastic, and Trump will for once merit praise and plaudits.
Indeed, I've been saying for years this war should end with the surrender of Hamas, their disarmament and removal from office and the release of all hostages.
Many people here have been opposing demanding the surrender of Hamas, calling demanding that "unrealistic" or "genocide" and other such bullshit.
Much bloodshed could have been avoided if Hamas had surrendered and released the hostages sooner, but kudos to Israel for not accepting a ceasefire before they did. Good job.
And no mythical "genocide".
A lot of people here have egg on their face.
People weren't calling the demand on Hamas to surrender "genocide". They are calling the stuff that looks like a genocide a genocide.
Say what you like about Trump he does seem to have pulled off this Gaza peace deal with reports he is flying to Israel on Sunday
I don't think Trump has pulled off this peace deal. I think the people who wrote it + US diplomats + changing circumstances have made it become possible. Trump has helped in that process.
It could and should have happened a long time ago. The ceasefire and hostage release, I mean. A genuine lasting peace deal is something else. If that is in due course achieved, fantastic, and Trump will for once merit praise and plaudits.
Indeed, I've been saying for years this war should end with the surrender of Hamas, their disarmament and removal from office and the release of all hostages.
Many people here have been opposing demanding the surrender of Hamas, calling demanding that "unrealistic" or "genocide" and other such bullshit.
Much bloodshed could have been avoided if Hamas had surrendered and released the hostages sooner, but kudos to Israel for not accepting a ceasefire before they did. Good job.
And no mythical "genocide".
A lot of people here have egg on their face.
People weren't calling the demand on Hamas to surrender "genocide". They are calling the stuff that looks like a genocide a genocide.
Say what you like about Trump he does seem to have pulled off this Gaza peace deal with reports he is flying to Israel on Sunday
Sort of by default. Don't forget this is the Blair deal Biden offered to Netanyahu eighteen months ago. Netanyahu rejected it out of hand.
In a nutshell Qatar donated Trump ( not the Administration- but Mr Donald J. Trump) a few hundred million dollar aircraft. Doha was the bombed by Israel. The Emir of Qatar was furious. Emir Al Thani expressed his outrage to Trump (keep up, Al Thani has just gifted Trump an new airliner) so Trump became angry too. To cut a long story short Netanyahu became Trump's bitch and has to jump to his every command. Peace in the Middle East is the outcome. Who says bribing a president with expensive gifts is a waste of time and money?
Everybody is cheering but the Israelis haven't accepted it yet!
Hamas have made no commitment to lay down their arms either. All those nitwits with their WWII unconditional surrender bollox analogies must feel a bit silly.
Nice straw grasping, but Hamas laying down their arms is in the 20 point plan that has been accepted by Hamas. Hamas surrendering power over Gaza is also there.
Now if Hamas don't follow through, then of course war may sadly need to resume, rather than have a lasting peace, but we should all hope Hamas follow through on their surrender. If they don't, that'll be there choice just as every step of this has been, but at least the hostages will be free.
Realistically though, Hamas know they have been defeated. Good.
I don’t want to distract you from your habitual ramming of a fact based square peg into your round hole of intransigence, but have you got a link to Hamas agreeing to the laying down their arms part of the peace plan?
Wrt UBI. One thing I haven't seen mentioned is retraining (sorry I haven't read the whole thread). For example. There is the issue of folk on benefits with mental ill health. We know what works. (And no, it isn't taking away their benefits and telling them to pull their scrounging arses together louder and more frequently). Talking therapy has huge waiting lists or is prohibitively expensive. Why? Because there aren't enough people to deliver. Well. Have you seen the cost of training? It's almost impossible to get any help if you have a first degree. And it isn't something you necessarily want new graduates in their early twenties doing. And that's before the costs of supervision and the time to study as well as 150 hours of unpaid practice. Right now it lends itself open to being an occupation for the already well off.
It's not just the lack of people to provide talking therapy, but on an NHS-basis, psychiatric hospitals prioritise hiring nurses over other staff. Largely, the money decisions in Edinburgh are made by nurses and ex-nurses. So from friday 5pm until monday morning 9am the Royal Edinburgh Hospital will have two psychiatrists on for the whole hospital, and they will be junior doctors. These people might only have five minutes to talk to you and will be instrumental in deciding whether or not you're detained and medicated against your will etc etc. There's a shortage of psychologists, and even a shortage of Occupational Therapists who in many ways are more useful than the nurses, certainly for anything related to rehab or discharge. Thank you for reading another moan about the ongoing collapse of mental health services.
(Also some things are a waste of time wrt talking therapies - CBT for schizophrenia used to get a lot of hype but I remember going to a talk by Keith Laws who is now a neuropsychologist somewhere or other, but who used to be in The The, just run through all of the studies that the Guardian claimed meant that we'd never have to dole out antipsychotics ever again, and showed that what they were really saying was that Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is as good as, and in some cases worse than, doing nothing, just off the statistics.)
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.
In 2009-10 the uk government spent £739 billion. In 2025-6 they are budgeted to spend £1,335 billion.
According to the Bank of England, £739 billion in 2009/10 is equivalent to £1,077 billion today.
So in real terms the government is spending £258 billion more than the Brown government (which was not known for fiscal rectitude).
The only “profoundly unserious” people on here are those who claim that every penny of that is wisely spent and absolutely no savings are possible
Where did I say Government money is wisely spent? Central and local government are profligate. I can give you one of manifold examples of each. From central government we have the PPE scandal and from local government we have the £63m invisible Garden Bridge over the Thames.
Those savings Badenoch has claimed to have in mind I would question; why was the saving not implemented up to July 2024?
One area ripe for reform across government is procurement. That doesn't necessarily mean siding less, but rather getting value for what we do spend.
Government is way too gullible compared with the private sector.
I buy 16 x paracetamol for 37 pence a pack in Lidl. The NHS spends several pounds for 16 x paracetamol.
Answer? Tell people paracetamol is no longer available on prescription and delist.
Prescription wastage is also a national scandal. Once a medicine has been prescribed and becomes unwanted,even if it is unused and in date there is a cost to dispose.
There are a thousand examples along those lines, large and small, from PPI contracts, to Ajax, to HS2, to the CCS boondoggle.
No one is going to save tens of billions on current spending during the course of a parliament by reforming the way public purchasing is done. But implemented well across government, it could save many tens of billions over a couple of decades.
Say what you like about Trump he does seem to have pulled off this Gaza peace deal with reports he is flying to Israel on Sunday
I don't think Trump has pulled off this peace deal. I think the people who wrote it + US diplomats + changing circumstances have made it become possible. Trump has helped in that process.
It could and should have happened a long time ago. The ceasefire and hostage release, I mean. A genuine lasting peace deal is something else. If that is in due course achieved, fantastic, and Trump will for once merit praise and plaudits.
Indeed, I've been saying for years this war should end with the surrender of Hamas, their disarmament and removal from office and the release of all hostages.
Many people here have been opposing demanding the surrender of Hamas, calling demanding that "unrealistic" or "genocide" and other such bullshit.
Much bloodshed could have been avoided if Hamas had surrendered and released the hostages sooner, but kudos to Israel for not accepting a ceasefire before they did. Good job.
And no mythical "genocide".
A lot of people here have egg on their face.
That's as dumb and offensive as somebody equally fanatical on the other side of this cursed conflict calling October 7th a 'good job'.
Oh cut the crap.
Hamas chose this war, and they lost it. Good riddance.
Hopefully the future can be better without them.
Bibi funded Hamas to prevent a two state solution. Some say by up to a billion dollars. Real estate in Doha is not cheap. As part of the deal Hamas grandees get to keep their gated homes and condo penthouses.
Had 240kg of fuel on board when it landed, that’s the car equivalent of doing 50 miles with the light on. They’d have been unable to go around at Manchester. Ryanair are going to get the book thrown at them by the AAIB.
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.
John Major’s biggest legacy, although why people make bets where the gross return is 50% is still a wonder. I was working in a shop in 1995 or 96 when it all started, the queues on Saturday afternoons were crazy.
Government spending on sports and arts has over time been replaced by lottery money, and allowed expansion in those areas. There’s now hundreds of Olympic athletes and coaches getting a stipend from the lottery, the crowning grory of which was the London Games.
We know that people are attracted to long-odds bets, such that bookies can offer shorter odds than warranted and still attract enough bets.
The lottery offers very long-odds bets. There's no other opportunity, albeit a slim one, of transforming a few pounds into many millions of pounds.
Even a large winning bet at 100/1 is not going to return enough money to change your life in the way a lottery jackpot win would.
I don't find it so illogical, viewed from a game theory point of view, rather than a purely numerical one.
Might not be much in it if this particular bid comes off. NB, the URL has the wrong figure in it (it works, it's just not correct in terms of the story).
The billionaire media mogul Richard Desmond will urge a court to “err on the side of generosity” in assessing a £1.3bn damages claim against the Gambling Commission that would probably have to be funded by taxpayers if he wins. [...]
The Dubai-based billionaire is seeking damages of up to £1.3bn. A victory for the media mogul could have a significant cost for charities and the taxpayer because any payout would have to come from a lottery pot of money set aside to fund good causes.
If the payout is larger than the fund, which is understood to receive about £30m a week from lottery ticket sales, the taxpayer would have to foot the bill."
That is entirely absurd. An emergency bill through the Commons to set this aside, and amend the relevant regulatory law is needed.
The lottery is entirely there to benefit the pubic purse. That is its sole purpose. The idea that some expat billionaire, whose contribution to British life is deeply questionable, should benefit in this way, at public expense, is manifestly wrong,
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.
In 2009-10 the uk government spent £739 billion. In 2025-6 they are budgeted to spend £1,335 billion.
According to the Bank of England, £739 billion in 2009/10 is equivalent to £1,077 billion today.
So in real terms the government is spending £258 billion more than the Brown government (which was not known for fiscal rectitude).
The only “profoundly unserious” people on here are those who claim that every penny of that is wisely spent and absolutely no savings are possible
Where did I say Government money is wisely spent? Central and local government are profligate. I can give you one of manifold examples of each. From central government we have the PPE scandal and from local government we have the £63m invisible Garden Bridge over the Thames.
Those savings Badenoch has claimed to have in mind I would question; why was the saving not implemented up to July 2024?
One area ripe for reform across government is procurement. That doesn't necessarily mean siding less, but rather getting value for what we do spend.
Government is way too gullible compared with the private sector.
I buy 16 x paracetamol for 37 pence a pack in Lidl. The NHS spends several pounds for 16 x paracetamol.
Answer? Tell people paracetamol is no longer available on prescription and delist.
Prescription wastage is also a national scandal. Once a medicine has been prescribed and becomes unwanted,even if it is unused and in date there is a cost to dispose.
Paracetamol is the only pain killer I am permitted to take and like you buy them on my weekly Asda order [max 2 packets]
I could get them prescribed but just do not think it is right to do so, especially at that cost
My late father was having them in 500s from the pharmacy. I put a stop to that. The dispensary cost alone would have been astronomical.
He had deliveries each week from Lloyds Pharmacy. If he needed an item once they would restock it weekly. I disposed of probably several hundred pounds worth of weapons grade Deoralite.
When he passed I kept the unspent Nitromin for my own self-diagnosed angina. Waste not want not.
My sister much the same but ultimately her cancer required tramadol
The amount of paracetamol I returned to the chemist was extraordinary
Sometimes the quantities I saw returned were heartbreaking. Prescribing review can be tedious but done well money can be saved.
Say what you like about Trump he does seem to have pulled off this Gaza peace deal with reports he is flying to Israel on Sunday
I don't think Trump has pulled off this peace deal. I think the people who wrote it + US diplomats + changing circumstances have made it become possible. Trump has helped in that process.
It could and should have happened a long time ago. The ceasefire and hostage release, I mean. A genuine lasting peace deal is something else. If that is in due course achieved, fantastic, and Trump will for once merit praise and plaudits.
Indeed, I've been saying for years this war should end with the surrender of Hamas, their disarmament and removal from office and the release of all hostages.
Many people here have been opposing demanding the surrender of Hamas, calling demanding that "unrealistic" or "genocide" and other such bullshit.
Much bloodshed could have been avoided if Hamas had surrendered and released the hostages sooner, but kudos to Israel for not accepting a ceasefire before they did. Good job.
And no mythical "genocide".
A lot of people here have egg on their face.
That's as dumb and offensive as somebody equally fanatical on the other side of this cursed conflict calling October 7th a 'good job'.
Oh cut the crap.
Hamas chose this war, and they lost it. Good riddance.
Hopefully the future can be better without them.
Bibi funded Hamas to prevent a two state solution. Some say by up to a billion dollars. Real estate in Doha is not cheap. As part of the deal Hamas grandees get to keep their gated homes and condo penthouses.
It's a funny old game Saint.
Indeed, and Bibi should be in a prison cell. I've said so repeatedly.
Funding Hamas was the wrong thing to do. Fighting them was the right thing to do.
My working assumption on all this flag business is: - Union Flag the right way up = more patriotic than racist - Union Flag the wrong way up = more racist than patriotic
Ultimately the people who are putting them up are doing so to make people not born here or born here but to parents from overseas feel uncomfortable. You can be fine with that or not, I am not. Even if some of them look good.
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.
In 2009-10 the uk government spent £739 billion. In 2025-6 they are budgeted to spend £1,335 billion.
According to the Bank of England, £739 billion in 2009/10 is equivalent to £1,077 billion today.
So in real terms the government is spending £258 billion more than the Brown government (which was not known for fiscal rectitude).
The only “profoundly unserious” people on here are those who claim that every penny of that is wisely spent and absolutely no savings are possible
Where did I say Government money is wisely spent? Central and local government are profligate. I can give you one of manifold examples of each. From central government we have the PPE scandal and from local government we have the £63m invisible Garden Bridge over the Thames.
Those savings Badenoch has claimed to have in mind I would question; why was the saving not implemented up to July 2024?
One area ripe for reform across government is procurement. That doesn't necessarily mean siding less, but rather getting value for what we do spend.
Government is way too gullible compared with the private sector.
I buy 16 x paracetamol for 37 pence a pack in Lidl. The NHS spends several pounds for 16 x paracetamol.
Answer? Tell people paracetamol is no longer available on prescription and delist.
Prescription wastage is also a national scandal. Once a medicine has been prescribed and becomes unwanted,even if it is unused and in date there is a cost to dispose.
Paracetamol is the only pain killer I am permitted to take and like you buy them on my weekly Asda order [max 2 packets]
I could get them prescribed but just do not think it is right to do so, especially at that cost
My late father was having them in 500s from the pharmacy. I put a stop to that. The dispensary cost alone would have been astronomical.
He had deliveries each week from Lloyds Pharmacy. If he needed an item once they would restock it weekly. I disposed of probably several hundred pounds worth of weapons grade Deoralite.
When he passed I kept the unspent Nitromin for my own self-diagnosed angina. Waste not want not.
My sister much the same but ultimately her cancer required tramadol
The amount of paracetamol I returned to the chemist was extraordinary
Same with my dad. I could have retired if I'd sold his unspent Tramadol on eBay rather than returning it to Lloyds Chemists.
Now that was an expensive, dangerous narcotic and he had a house full of it. And just try cancelling. To quote the Small Faces it was "all or nothing".
My working assumption on all this flag business is: - Union Flag the right way up = more patriotic than racist - Union Flag the wrong way up = more racist than patriotic
Ultimately the people who are putting them up are doing so to make people not born here or born here but to parents from overseas feel uncomfortable. You can be fine with that or not, I am not. Even if some of them look good.
I went to the NFL at Wembley a few years ago. They were clearly racist:
My working assumption on all this flag business is: - Union Flag the right way up = more patriotic than racist - Union Flag the wrong way up = more racist than patriotic
Ultimately the people who are putting them up are doing so to make people not born here or born here but to parents from overseas feel uncomfortable. You can be fine with that or not, I am not. Even if some of them look good.
I went to the NFL at Wembley a few years ago. They were clearly racist:
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.
In 2009-10 the uk government spent £739 billion. In 2025-6 they are budgeted to spend £1,335 billion.
According to the Bank of England, £739 billion in 2009/10 is equivalent to £1,077 billion today.
So in real terms the government is spending £258 billion more than the Brown government (which was not known for fiscal rectitude).
The only “profoundly unserious” people on here are those who claim that every penny of that is wisely spent and absolutely no savings are possible
Where did I say Government money is wisely spent? Central and local government are profligate. I can give you one of manifold examples of each. From central government we have the PPE scandal and from local government we have the £63m invisible Garden Bridge over the Thames.
Those savings Badenoch has claimed to have in mind I would question; why was the saving not implemented up to July 2024?
One area ripe for reform across government is procurement. That doesn't necessarily mean siding less, but rather getting value for what we do spend.
Government is way too gullible compared with the private sector.
I buy 16 x paracetamol for 37 pence a pack in Lidl. The NHS spends several pounds for 16 x paracetamol.
Answer? Tell people paracetamol is no longer available on prescription and delist.
Prescription wastage is also a national scandal. Once a medicine has been prescribed and becomes unwanted,even if it is unused and in date there is a cost to dispose.
Paracetamol is the only pain killer I am permitted to take and like you buy them on my weekly Asda order [max 2 packets]
I could get them prescribed but just do not think it is right to do so, especially at that cost
My late father was having them in 500s from the pharmacy. I put a stop to that. The dispensary cost alone would have been astronomical.
He had deliveries each week from Lloyds Pharmacy. If he needed an item once they would restock it weekly. I disposed of probably several hundred pounds worth of weapons grade Deoralite.
When he passed I kept the unspent Nitromin for my own self-diagnosed angina. Waste not want not.
My sister much the same but ultimately her cancer required tramadol
The amount of paracetamol I returned to the chemist was extraordinary
Same with my dad. I could have retired if I'd sold his unspent Tramadol on eBay rather than returning it to Lloyds Chemists.
Now that was an expensive, dangerous narcotic and he had a house full of it. And just try cancelling. To quote the Small Faces it was "all or nothing".
Far too often patients just tick everything on the form, and equally far too often surgery 'medication reviews' are just an automatic renewal on the computer.
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.
In 2009-10 the uk government spent £739 billion. In 2025-6 they are budgeted to spend £1,335 billion.
According to the Bank of England, £739 billion in 2009/10 is equivalent to £1,077 billion today.
So in real terms the government is spending £258 billion more than the Brown government (which was not known for fiscal rectitude).
The only “profoundly unserious” people on here are those who claim that every penny of that is wisely spent and absolutely no savings are possible
Where did I say Government money is wisely spent? Central and local government are profligate. I can give you one of manifold examples of each. From central government we have the PPE scandal and from local government we have the £63m invisible Garden Bridge over the Thames.
Those savings Badenoch has claimed to have in mind I would question; why was the saving not implemented up to July 2024?
One area ripe for reform across government is procurement. That doesn't necessarily mean siding less, but rather getting value for what we do spend.
Government is way too gullible compared with the private sector.
I buy 16 x paracetamol for 37 pence a pack in Lidl. The NHS spends several pounds for 16 x paracetamol.
Answer? Tell people paracetamol is no longer available on prescription and delist.
Prescription wastage is also a national scandal. Once a medicine has been prescribed and becomes unwanted,even if it is unused and in date there is a cost to dispose.
I think I'd look seriously at who is exempt from prescription charges. For instance, wealthy pensioners really could be paying. I generally seem to be the only person actually paying for prescriptions at the pharmacy.
Getting your prescriptions free means that a patient has no penalty for not using them. De-prescribing is something we should do a lot more of.
About 10% of prescriptions in England are paid for.
When Scotland abolished prescription charges the admin savings were greater than the loss of prescription income.
Having only 10% of prescriptions paid for seems like a system designed to maximise administration costs above either the "nice to have" of free prescriptions for everyone or the revenue that charging everyone for them would obtain.
My working assumption on all this flag business is: - Union Flag the right way up = more patriotic than racist - Union Flag the wrong way up = more racist than patriotic
Ultimately the people who are putting them up are doing so to make people not born here or born here but to parents from overseas feel uncomfortable. You can be fine with that or not, I am not. Even if some of them look good.
I went to the NFL at Wembley a few years ago. They were clearly racist:
Why? Did they burn a Palestinian flag on the pitch?
My working assumption on all this flag business is: - Union Flag the right way up = more patriotic than racist - Union Flag the wrong way up = more racist than patriotic
Ultimately the people who are putting them up are doing so to make people not born here or born here but to parents from overseas feel uncomfortable. You can be fine with that or not, I am not. Even if some of them look good.
My assumption is that people putting them up are doing so in order to make 'those in charge' - (e.g. local councils, government ... I don't think any more thinking than that has gone into it) feel uncomfortable. Since they so clearly do. I don't think people born overseas feel uncomfortable at flags. I don't feel uncomfortable at other countries' flags when I go abroad. But I'm guessing rather.
My working assumption on all this flag business is: - Union Flag the right way up = more patriotic than racist - Union Flag the wrong way up = more racist than patriotic
Ultimately the people who are putting them up are doing so to make people not born here or born here but to parents from overseas feel uncomfortable. You can be fine with that or not, I am not. Even if some of them look good.
My assumption is that people putting them up are doing so in order to make 'those in charge' - (e.g. local councils, government ... I don't think any more thinking than that has gone into it) feel uncomfortable. Since they so clearly do. I don't think people born overseas feel uncomfortable at flags. I don't feel uncomfortable at other countries' flags when I go abroad. But I'm guessing rather.
Precisely no-one born abroad “feels uncomfortable” with seeing British flags in the UK.
Those who “feel uncomfortable” are the over-educated woke leftists.
Say what you like about Trump he does seem to have pulled off this Gaza peace deal with reports he is flying to Israel on Sunday
I don't think Trump has pulled off this peace deal. I think the people who wrote it + US diplomats + changing circumstances have made it become possible. Trump has helped in that process.
It could and should have happened a long time ago. The ceasefire and hostage release, I mean. A genuine lasting peace deal is something else. If that is in due course achieved, fantastic, and Trump will for once merit praise and plaudits.
Indeed, I've been saying for years this war should end with the surrender of Hamas, their disarmament and removal from office and the release of all hostages.
Many people here have been opposing demanding the surrender of Hamas, calling demanding that "unrealistic" or "genocide" and other such bullshit.
Much bloodshed could have been avoided if Hamas had surrendered and released the hostages sooner, but kudos to Israel for not accepting a ceasefire before they did. Good job.
And no mythical "genocide".
A lot of people here have egg on their face.
People weren't calling the demand on Hamas to surrender "genocide". They are calling the stuff that looks like a genocide a genocide.
The indiscriminate death of millions is a genocide, that has not happened.
The defeat of an enemy at war is not.
That is not a standard definition of genocide, no.
You're right, the extermination (or attempted extermination) of a group is.
That hasn't happened, instead a war has been fought, a war triggered by Hamas.
If Israel had wanted to do a genocide, then millions could have died. They didn't. It was never that, it was a war.
A war Hamas chose.
A war Hamas lost.
The indiscriminate killing of Palestinian Arabs in Gaza could indeed constitute an attempt at genocide. Particularly targeting of children, maternity hospitals etc. Which is what the Serbs did to the Bosniaks (snipers obove Sarajevo targeted children and pregnant women). Plus the ethnic cleansing, which is a form of genocide in itself
Say what you like about Trump he does seem to have pulled off this Gaza peace deal with reports he is flying to Israel on Sunday
I don't think Trump has pulled off this peace deal. I think the people who wrote it + US diplomats + changing circumstances have made it become possible. Trump has helped in that process.
It could and should have happened a long time ago. The ceasefire and hostage release, I mean. A genuine lasting peace deal is something else. If that is in due course achieved, fantastic, and Trump will for once merit praise and plaudits.
Indeed, I've been saying for years this war should end with the surrender of Hamas, their disarmament and removal from office and the release of all hostages.
Many people here have been opposing demanding the surrender of Hamas, calling demanding that "unrealistic" or "genocide" and other such bullshit.
Much bloodshed could have been avoided if Hamas had surrendered and released the hostages sooner, but kudos to Israel for not accepting a ceasefire before they did. Good job.
And no mythical "genocide".
A lot of people here have egg on their face.
People weren't calling the demand on Hamas to surrender "genocide". They are calling the stuff that looks like a genocide a genocide.
The indiscriminate death of millions is a genocide, that has not happened.
The defeat of an enemy at war is not.
That is not a standard definition of genocide, no.
You're right, the extermination (or attempted extermination) of a group is.
That hasn't happened, instead a war has been fought, a war triggered by Hamas.
If Israel had wanted to do a genocide, then millions could have died. They didn't. It was never that, it was a war.
A war Hamas chose.
A war Hamas lost.
The indiscriminate killing of Palestinian Arabs in Gaza could indeed constitute an attempt at genocide. Particularly targeting of children, maternity hospitals etc. Which is what the Serbs did to the Bosniaks (snipers obove Sarajevo targeted children and pregnant women). Plus the ethnic cleansing, which is a form of genocide in itself
Indeed, and if that had happened then give Israel's firepower millions would have died and it would have been genocide.
Comments
If you move home for work, selling a home of one value and buying another home of the exact same value, then instead of merely having to pay moving costs (already disruptive enough), you have a huge lump sum tax burden liable too, when you are no better off.
It discourages mobility. It is the worst possible tax, other than NI.
A non-working single parent with kids receives way, way more than £12k in benefits.
We're even paying child benefit to people earning up to £80k.
Would there be a kids UBI? Or just a top-up for low(ish) income people with kids (and bear in mind that at the moment MOST people with kids are getting a top-up).
The fundamental problem is that bringing-up kids is obviously very expensive. Yet jobs pay the same whether or not you have kids. So either massive intervention is needed, or else only wealthy people can have kids.
But this intervention will negate most of the supposed benefits of UBI - because it will bring back incentives not to work - ie higher kids top-up if low income.
Or if you have a kids UBI - ie everyone with kids gets it - then that income tax rate won't be 50%, it'll be miles higher, probably about 70%.
https://x.com/lukedepulford/status/1976252099907420517
Seriously thinking no change of direction required and been outflanked into irrelevance by left and right.
SKS was always going to be a Farage enabler but now with Zack he is going to finish off Centrist Lab forever.
Well done Mr Polanski
Answer? Tell people paracetamol is no longer available on prescription and delist.
Prescription wastage is also a national scandal. Once a medicine has been prescribed and becomes unwanted,even if it is unused and in date there is a cost to dispose.
That said I am making a subjective analysis so in both cases I may be wrong.
Getting your prescriptions free means that a patient has no penalty for not using them. De-prescribing is something we should do a lot more of.
https://xcancel.com/LeftieStats/status/1976267907773403628#m
Projected vote:
➡️ REF – 32% (-3)
🔴 LAB – 17% (-2)
🔵 CON – 17% (+3)
🟢 GRN – 15% (+4)
🟠 LD – 12% (-)
Projected seat result:
➡️ REF – 397 (+392)
🟠 LD – 81 (+9)
🔴 LAB – 54 (-357)
🟡 SNP – 46 (+37)
🔵 CON – 21 (-100)
🟢 GRN – 13 (+9)
Based on @FindoutnowUK poll, 8 Oct (changes vs 1 Oct)
We are only picking one or two of you, and we demand an appropriate price for your right to be included.
I could get them prescribed but just do not think it is right to do so, especially at that cost
Have Hamas recognised Israel?
Have Netanyahu and his Cabinet recognised Palestine?
Government needs to hire a bunch of sh!t-hot procurement people, who can negotiate contacts on behalf of the State.
They need £250k basic, plus exceptional and unlimited commission.
Because that’s what’s on the other side of the fence, and government keeps being walked over for hundreds of millions in every contract they sign.
This credit giving thing is complicated.
In a nutshell Qatar donated Trump ( not the Administration- but Mr Donald J. Trump) a few hundred million dollar aircraft. Doha was the bombed by Israel. The Emir of Qatar was furious. Emir Al Thani expressed his outrage to Trump (keep up, Al Thani has just gifted Trump an new airliner) so Trump became angry too. To cut a long story short Netanyahu became Trump's bitch and has to jump to his every command. Peace in the Middle East is the outcome. Who says bribing a president with expensive gifts is a waste of time and money?
He had deliveries each week from Lloyds Pharmacy. If he needed an item once they would restock it weekly. I disposed of probably several hundred pounds worth of weapons grade Deoralite.
When he passed I kept the unspent Nitromin for my own self-diagnosed angina. Waste not want not.
Many people here have been opposing demanding the surrender of Hamas, calling demanding that "unrealistic" or "genocide" and other such bullshit.
Much bloodshed could have been avoided if Hamas had surrendered and released the hostages sooner, but kudos to Israel for not accepting a ceasefire before they did. Good job.
And no mythical "genocide".
A lot of people here have egg on their face.
Everybody is cheering but the Israelis haven't accepted it yet!
England appears to be the only place in the world that doesn’t celebrate its own national flag.
Which is part of the issue: someone may graffiti a cross of St George on a mini-roundabout because they feel a surge of patriotism; but they are aiding those who want to send people like my wife home.
Except that isn’t happening, I wonder why not…
It's a sullen refusal to change by people who are sick of being told their opposition to immigration is racist.
The point of something like this (like the Chinese blank-piece-of-paper protests) is that when all you use is an image rather than a specific set of demands, it's deliberately difficult to pin down what the protest is actually saying. It could be:
1) Despite what we feel we are constantly told, we still quite like being British (or given nation within that)
2) We are discontent with this government
3) Come on government, stop the boats
4) Come on government, stop all immigration
or
5) We don't like brown people.
It's quite easy to get people to support (1), but quite hard to get them to support (5), with a sliding scale between them. The point of a deliberately vague and slogan-free protest like this is that it doesn't alienate those who might agree with 1, 2 or 3.
Inconveniently, I rather suspect some to many of those more actively involved are at 4 or 5.
This sort of thing isn't the sole preserve of the right, of course. I'm sure lots of people who sympathised with the BLM protests would have strongly rejected a lot of the rather extreme stuff that many of those behind the protests actually proposed.
Here's the case South Africa brought before the ICJ: https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20231228-app-01-00-en.pdf It makes no mention of the demad on Hamas to surrender.
A pharmacist I know worked out that he could save the local PCT (in those days) quite a considerable sum by careful monitoring of the prescriptions for a local Care Home. He asked the PCT if he did a) what would they do, and b) what percentage of the savings could he have for doing all the work?
The answer was a) say thank you and b) none.
The defeat of an enemy at war is not.
I wouldn't now. It would give wrong impression. I also drive a German car these days.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/10/09/former-bbc-dj-tim-westwood-charged-with-rape/
The amount of paracetamol I returned to the chemist was extraordinary
Now if Hamas don't follow through, then of course war may sadly need to resume, rather than have a lasting peace, but we should all hope Hamas follow through on their surrender. If they don't, that'll be there choice just as every step of this has been, but at least the hostages will be free.
Realistically though, Hamas know they have been defeated. Good.
An emergency bill through the Commons to set this aside, and amend the relevant regulatory law is needed.
The lottery is entirely there to benefit the pubic purse. That is its sole purpose.
The idea that some expat billionaire, whose contribution to British life is deeply questionable, should benefit in this way, at public expense, is manifestly wrong,
Hamas chose this war, and they lost it. Good riddance.
Hopefully the future can be better without them.
Srebrenica was genocide. 8,000 died.
That hasn't happened, instead a war has been fought, a war triggered by Hamas.
If Israel had wanted to do a genocide, then millions could have died. They didn't. It was never that, it was a war.
A war Hamas chose.
A war Hamas lost.
(Also some things are a waste of time wrt talking therapies - CBT for schizophrenia used to get a lot of hype but I remember going to a talk by Keith Laws who is now a neuropsychologist somewhere or other, but who used to be in The The, just run through all of the studies that the Guardian claimed meant that we'd never have to dole out antipsychotics ever again, and showed that what they were really saying was that Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is as good as, and in some cases worse than, doing nothing, just off the statistics.)
No one is going to save tens of billions on current spending during the course of a parliament by reforming the way public purchasing is done. But implemented well across government, it could save many tens of billions over a couple of decades.
It's a funny old game Saint.
https://x.com/aviationbrk/status/1976253125670350888
Went around twice at Prestwick, once at Edinburgh, ended up at Manchester.
https://x.com/markus_c1/status/1976291011962790340
https://x.com/ondisasters/status/1975125103722799471
Had 240kg of fuel on board when it landed, that’s the car equivalent of doing 50 miles with the light on. They’d have been unable to go around at Manchester. Ryanair are going to get the book thrown at them by the AAIB.
Funding Hamas was the wrong thing to do.
Fighting them was the right thing to do.
- Union Flag the right way up = more patriotic than racist
- Union Flag the wrong way up = more racist than patriotic
Ultimately the people who are putting them up are doing so to make people not born here or born here but to parents from overseas feel uncomfortable. You can be fine with that or not, I am not. Even if some of them look good.
Now that was an expensive, dangerous narcotic and he had a house full of it. And just try cancelling. To quote the Small Faces it was "all or nothing".
Much more interesting is this. Just launched an hour ago
https://x.com/figure_robot/status/1976272678618308864?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw
I remember once @Benpointer saying “wake me up when a robot can stack my dishwasher”
Well, here it is, Ben. About two years after you asked for it. These will soon start appearing in posh hotels, then exponentially spread
As I say I think Green plus Your Party will get circa 30% with Lab on 10% if they ploughman's the austerity furrow.
BTW Beth Rigby hasn't a clue re SKS marvellous speech as proved by the unbounce
But I'm guessing rather.
Those who “feel uncomfortable” are the over-educated woke leftists.
But it didn't happen.