"A plurality of voters" can go fuck themselves. Taxing an industry into oblivion is illogical. We are a bad country.
Now, now, we are always being told majorities are right about everything and policy should be dictated by what the people want via focus groups, elections, surveys etc.
There's a perception out there bookmakers and similar have grown fat on the proceeds from the poor punters (winners at 100/1 and 200/1 and Ascot on Saturday give that some marginal credence).
I've always been of the view the Lottery is a stealth tax on the poor - the chances of anyone winning that life-changing mount are infinitesimal (up there with either the Conservatives or Liberal Democrats forming a majority Government after the next election) yet people try twice a week plus the awful scratch cards.
Back to betting shops - they look like the only shops on many High Streets with money. They look bright, inviting and modern in contrast to much of the retail estate around them. They are open from 7.30am to 10pm every day and it seems no High Street can survive without seven or eight of them (if not more). In East Ham, we lost our Hills but still have two Ladbrokes, two BetFred, two Paddy Powers and a Jenningsbet and we aren't the wealthiest area in the world.
Perhaps there's a bit of neo-puritanism out there I don't know but as a punter I can see how it looks and we know the damage addiction to the FOBTs can cause not just to the addict but to those around them. We are already hearing the bleating from Fred Done and others and their unsubtle threats but that's how politics operates now - by threat. Propose anything and those affected threaten all sorts as a way to dissuade policy makers.
If the general public are anything like me, they haven't a clue what taxes there are on gambling, because they don't gamble. And I frequent PB!
Good morning, everybody.
The thing is many people don't like betting shops on the high street so will be happy to see them gone.
The fact that means people lose their jobs or the unit will be empty for ages afterwards are secondary factors which don't enter their minds when they think - high taxes, something I don't like gone...
It has a knock-on effect on local government income too - loss of business rates, possibly rent.
But again, that's not the immediate issue. And if it's not all of the shops at once people probably won't notice.
Business rates shift from the occupier to the landlord if empty - it's why when I've looked at property auctions I've avoided what looked like very decent commercial property deals, the downside is painful...
Now longer term most business rates are based on achieved rents but reductions take 2-5 years to feed through into business rates
I half read an article last week about landlords setting up “snail farms” in unoccupied buildings as they were exempt from the business rates due to some agricultural tax exemption. Quite an amusing dodge.
Not really. There are some unscrupulous advises running people around telling them to do this and costing the taxpayer - you and me - 10s of millions.
It may be legal but it’s unethical
There are millions of legislative bits and pieces for people to use, and a multitude of structural devices.. What counts as planning, common sense, altruism, dodge, fraud, scam etc depends on custom, habit and perspective.
Over the summer I visited the well known estate of a well known duke. Somewhere in the grounds I read a notice inviting donations towards the charity which I was apparently even the stepping on, and which was part of what I had paid an arm and a leg to enter. The duke's estate is thought to be worth somewhere short of a billion.
Morning all! Whilst we are doing revisionist history its worth looking at what the Tories were saying in the run up to the GFC:
Revisionists: Brown was overspending, stupidly assuming the city would generate mega money forever Tories07: We'll match ever pound of Labour's spending commitments AND inflate the bubble even harder to create cash for tax cuts. And we're sick of the city being tied up in all this red tape. Lets slash it and free the banks up to go even harder.
In hindsight what Brown/Darling did was stupid. But at the time the Tories offered the alternative of even harder stupid. Lets not stick one side on a pedestal and the other in the gutter - both were in the same gutter with the same policies. The only competition was who could let the city get furthest out of control fastest...
It’s not revisionism to learn lessons from the past.
The lesson was (and is) to try and run a surplus in the boom times.
Winter is coming.
No no, revisionism is rewriting the past, as so many Tories have done over this topic.
Lets assume Brown called an election in 2007 and lost. Osborne promised to match every single pound of Labour spending plans. He then wanted to inflate the bubble further by cutting regulation of the city so that he could then "share the proceeds of growth" in the form of tax cuts on top of matching Labour spending plans.
It wasn't Brown who caused the GFC regardless of what revisionist Tories claim. And the things they say he got wrong - spending too much and regulating too little? Their own plan At The Time was to spend the same and regulate even less.
If the general public are anything like me, they haven't a clue what taxes there are on gambling, because they don't gamble. And I frequent PB!
Good morning, everybody.
The thing is many people don't like betting shops on the high street so will be happy to see them gone.
The fact that means people lose their jobs or the unit will be empty for ages afterwards are secondary factors which don't enter their minds when they think - high taxes, something I don't like gone...
It has a knock-on effect on local government income too - loss of business rates, possibly rent.
But again, that's not the immediate issue. And if it's not all of the shops at once people probably won't notice.
Business rates shift from the occupier to the landlord if empty - it's why when I've looked at property auctions I've avoided what looked like very decent commercial property deals, the downside is painful...
Now longer term most business rates are based on achieved rents but reductions take 2-5 years to feed through into business rates
I half read an article last week about landlords setting up “snail farms” in unoccupied buildings as they were exempt from the business rates due to some agricultural tax exemption. Quite an amusing dodge.
Not really. There are some unscrupulous advises running people around telling them to do this and costing the taxpayer - you and me - 10s of millions.
It may be legal but it’s unethical
I wasn’t judging the morality etc as amusing, it just seemed quite ridiculous as the accompanying photo to the article was of rows of plastic tubs containing the snails in some west end office block. The thought of snails of all things being the secret to a tax dodge is unexpected and therefore amused me.
The courts ruled it was tax evasion in 2021…
Each time they do the media runs stories saying “isn’t this funny” and a bunch of muppets thinks it’s actually a good idea…
Though, once again, a court ruling without an enforcement mechanism doesn't help anyone much. In this case, it's really hard to enforce a ruling against a shell company with no assets.
So the government is borrowing £20bn in a month, and £100bn in the first six months, that latter figure 13% higher year-on-year.
Err, I think it’s fair to say the public finances are totally Donald Ducked at this point.
Rachel needs to find £50bn of tax rises and £50bn of spending cuts this year, as an absolute minimum, and that’s still only half way to fixing the problem. At this stage in the economic cycle govt should be close to running a surplus.
Should it? Running a surplus is rare enough to be noteworthy.
Yes! Yes we should.
Half the problem the country faces is that it’s never recovered from Brown turning on the taps after the 2001 election, which made the 2008-9 recession much worse than it should have been, and it was just about back to level when the pandemic hit, and now appears to be getting worse rather than better.
Even if you are right that Brown overspent, it had sod all to do with the GFC; it neither caused nor aggravated it. And of course, Gordon Brown was the last Chancellor actually to run a surplus.
The issue is that we had a massive *structural* deficit post Brown. Simplifying massively he believes the tax levels from financial services would continue at that level for ever and so spent to the max rather than being prudent.
When they were proven to be a mirage we had something like a 10% of GDP structural deficit (ie excluding the impact of normal fiscal cycles). That’s just not sustainable
Indeed. There was even. Concern that the time taken to form the Coalition government would cause a borrowing crisis.
If Brown had been running a 4% surplus (say) then the GFC would have wiped that out, maybe put us into mild deficit. And we would have had less debt. There would have been scope for some borrowing to be counter cyclic - rather than cuts.
Note that the Labour plan was more cuts than Osborne.
How do you run a 4% surplus when half the country always demands lower taxes, half the country always demands more from the state, and 100% of the country demands both?
(Yes, I know those numbers don't add up. That's the point.)
"A plurality of voters" can go fuck themselves. Taxing an industry into oblivion is illogical. We are a bad country.
Now, now, we are always being told majorities are right about everything and policy should be dictated by what the people want via focus groups, elections, surveys etc.
There's a perception out there bookmakers and similar have grown fat on the proceeds from the poor punters (winners at 100/1 and 200/1 and Ascot on Saturday give that some marginal credence).
I've always been of the view the Lottery is a stealth tax on the poor - the chances of anyone winning that life-changing mount are infinitesimal (up there with either the Conservatives or Liberal Democrats forming a majority Government after the next election) yet people try twice a week plus the awful scratch cards.
Back to betting shops - they look like the only shops on many High Streets with money. They look bright, inviting and modern in contrast to much of the retail estate around them. They are open from 7.30am to 10pm every day and it seems no High Street can survive without seven or eight of them (if not more). In East Ham, we lost our Hills but still have two Ladbrokes, two BetFred, two Paddy Powers and a Jenningsbet and we aren't the wealthiest area in the world.
Perhaps there's a bit of neo-puritanism out there I don't know but as a punter I can see how it looks and we know the damage addiction to the FOBTs can cause not just to the addict but to those around them. We are already hearing the bleating from Fred Done and others and their unsubtle threats but that's how politics operates now - by threat. Propose anything and those affected threaten all sorts as a way to dissuade policy makers.
Not to mention that if every country where betting is banned, you get illegal betting. Which is the basis of organised crime, usually.
One of the metrics for alcohol pricing/tax is the amount of fake booze that shows up. A few years back there was a spike in people being poisoned by fake vodka. The government responded by not increasing taxes on hard alcohol for a couple of years IIRC.
Anyway, today's economy. I don't know how to break the news to some of you, but the real economy already has businesses closing due to lack of cash circulating. People are feeling poor and not spending, which means businesses close and jobs are lost and tax revenues decline further.
We could do Austerity 2. Same outcome as Austerity 1. Or we could look at what we are spending money on and change that. I have zero expectation that Reeves will unveil a simplification of the tax code or a bonfire of faux market structures in the public service or actual investment to allow us to build the LHA homes we need to build or investment into power generation / transmission and transport and criminal justice.
We're going to punish working people again, throw in a few stupid concessions like tax gambling harder, and then wonder why we're in recession with an even higher deficit than before we started. We need to provoke economic output, not cut it further.
Non gamblers don't generally mind higher taxes on someone else. Most gamblers don't have any idea how gambling tax works, and anyway regard gambling as a form of entertainment for which a price is paid, with no question of overall making profits (which will remain untaxed!); any gamblers who make big money regularly will gamble offshore.
The real question for the CoE is how to keep a decent slice of the whole industry within UK tax system by ensuring it is overall competitive with Abroadland. There is an obvious logical problem about taxing gambling anyway - it automatically affects the odds setter who need a greater margin simply to break even, which if pushed far enough destroys the economic model of legal gambling, encouraging the illegal market. A bit like fags costing £150 for 20.
It is not that simple. There are an awful lot of anti-gamblers who see high street betting shops and online casinos as blights on their communities and a menace to society. For them, raising taxes is not about raising money, it is about ending gambling. Like fags.
I think Michael Gove was talking recently about the importance of the high street to voters, the feeling that empty shops and gambling shops show country is in decline even if broader economy has a different picture
I think the decline in bricks and mortar retail has a lot to do with people's sense of alienation and national decline, Gove is right. The best way to counter this is to build high density housing. Living in densely populated inner London I have observed that our high streets (Brockley, Nunhead, Peckham, Lewsham), though not without their issues, are in a far better state than those in suburban areas or small towns. The sheer volume of footfall we have, owing to population density, must be a factor.
"A plurality of voters" can go fuck themselves. Taxing an industry into oblivion is illogical. We are a bad country.
Now, now, we are always being told majorities are right about everything and policy should be dictated by what the people want via focus groups, elections, surveys etc.
There's a perception out there bookmakers and similar have grown fat on the proceeds from the poor punters (winners at 100/1 and 200/1 and Ascot on Saturday give that some marginal credence).
I've always been of the view the Lottery is a stealth tax on the poor - the chances of anyone winning that life-changing mount are infinitesimal (up there with either the Conservatives or Liberal Democrats forming a majority Government after the next election) yet people try twice a week plus the awful scratch cards.
Back to betting shops - they look like the only shops on many High Streets with money. They look bright, inviting and modern in contrast to much of the retail estate around them. They are open from 7.30am to 10pm every day and it seems no High Street can survive without seven or eight of them (if not more). In East Ham, we lost our Hills but still have two Ladbrokes, two BetFred, two Paddy Powers and a Jenningsbet and we aren't the wealthiest area in the world.
Perhaps there's a bit of neo-puritanism out there I don't know but as a punter I can see how it looks and we know the damage addiction to the FOBTs can cause not just to the addict but to those around them. We are already hearing the bleating from Fred Done and others and their unsubtle threats but that's how politics operates now - by threat. Propose anything and those affected threaten all sorts as a way to dissuade policy makers.
Not to mention that if every country where betting is banned, you get illegal betting. Which is the basis of organised crime, usually.
One of the metrics for alcohol pricing/tax is the amount of fake booze that shows up. A few years back there was a spike in people being poisoned by fake vodka. The government responded by not increasing taxes on hard alcohol for a couple of years IIRC.
Yep. Handing over cash is more real than tapping in numbers online. And the idea a problem gambler will have less of a problem if their only avenue is online (especially offshore sites with less commitment to responsible gambling tools) is optimism to a stupid extent.
Meanwhile, the workers in those shops will lose their jobs, sacrificed on a puritanical and innumerate altar of outrage.
If the Government actually wanted to make a significant step in this area they'd ban loot boxes. But as that would require a basic understanding of something related to technology that won't happen.
If the general public are anything like me, they haven't a clue what taxes there are on gambling, because they don't gamble. And I frequent PB!
Good morning, everybody.
The thing is many people don't like betting shops on the high street so will be happy to see them gone.
The fact that means people lose their jobs or the unit will be empty for ages afterwards are secondary factors which don't enter their minds when they think - high taxes, something I don't like gone...
It has a knock-on effect on local government income too - loss of business rates, possibly rent.
But again, that's not the immediate issue. And if it's not all of the shops at once people probably won't notice.
Business rates shift from the occupier to the landlord if empty - it's why when I've looked at property auctions I've avoided what looked like very decent commercial property deals, the downside is painful...
Now longer term most business rates are based on achieved rents but reductions take 2-5 years to feed through into business rates
I half read an article last week about landlords setting up “snail farms” in unoccupied buildings as they were exempt from the business rates due to some agricultural tax exemption. Quite an amusing dodge.
Not really. There are some unscrupulous advises running people around telling them to do this and costing the taxpayer - you and me - 10s of millions.
It may be legal but it’s unethical
I wasn’t judging the morality etc as amusing, it just seemed quite ridiculous as the accompanying photo to the article was of rows of plastic tubs containing the snails in some west end office block. The thought of snails of all things being the secret to a tax dodge is unexpected and therefore amused me.
The courts ruled it was tax evasion in 2021…
Each time they do the media runs stories saying “isn’t this funny” and a bunch of muppets thinks it’s actually a good idea…
Though, once again, a court ruling without an enforcement mechanism doesn't help anyone much. In this case, it's really hard to enforce a ruling against a shell company with no assets.
Put a lien on the property
...
No. The commercial property it is in. The purpose of the snails is to claim an agricultural exemption from rates.
So the government is borrowing £20bn in a month, and £100bn in the first six months, that latter figure 13% higher year-on-year.
Err, I think it’s fair to say the public finances are totally Donald Ducked at this point.
Rachel needs to find £50bn of tax rises and £50bn of spending cuts this year, as an absolute minimum, and that’s still only half way to fixing the problem. At this stage in the economic cycle govt should be close to running a surplus.
Should it? Running a surplus is rare enough to be noteworthy.
Yes! Yes we should.
Half the problem the country faces is that it’s never recovered from Brown turning on the taps after the 2001 election, which made the 2008-9 recession much worse than it should have been, and it was just about back to level when the pandemic hit, and now appears to be getting worse rather than better.
Even if you are right that Brown overspent, it had sod all to do with the GFC; it neither caused nor aggravated it. And of course, Gordon Brown was the last Chancellor actually to run a surplus.
The issue is that we had a massive *structural* deficit post Brown. Simplifying massively he believes the tax levels from financial services would continue at that level for ever and so spent to the max rather than being prudent.
When they were proven to be a mirage we had something like a 10% of GDP structural deficit (ie excluding the impact of normal fiscal cycles). That’s just not sustainable
Indeed. There was even. Concern that the time taken to form the Coalition government would cause a borrowing crisis.
If Brown had been running a 4% surplus (say) then the GFC would have wiped that out, maybe put us into mild deficit. And we would have had less debt. There would have been scope for some borrowing to be counter cyclic - rather than cuts.
Note that the Labour plan was more cuts than Osborne.
How do you run a 4% surplus when half the country always demands lower taxes, half the country always demands more from the state, and 100% of the country demands both?
(Yes, I know those numbers don't add up. That's the point.)
By being disciplined and a leader
Edit: in practice you create a line in the budget “sinking fund for debt repayment” and claim a balanced budget while simultaneously retiring 4% of GDP worth of debt
If the general public are anything like me, they haven't a clue what taxes there are on gambling, because they don't gamble. And I frequent PB!
Good morning, everybody.
I am not a big gambler, mostly a few quid on the Leicester City game each week, and at election time, and I dont know.
I think it is mostly seen as a sin tax, and discouraging gambling is like discouraging smoking, a good thing in all circumstances.
I agree that's very much the perceived (or received) wisdom. What changed my mind from that default view was fairly close acquaintance with a couple of men, in quite different walks of life, who each engaged in gambling as a profession, because they were good at it and it was the way they earned their living. Nothing remotely dark or underhand, just a job like any other.
Non gamblers don't generally mind higher taxes on someone else. Most gamblers don't have any idea how gambling tax works, and anyway regard gambling as a form of entertainment for which a price is paid, with no question of overall making profits (which will remain untaxed!); any gamblers who make big money regularly will gamble offshore.
The real question for the CoE is how to keep a decent slice of the whole industry within UK tax system by ensuring it is overall competitive with Abroadland. There is an obvious logical problem about taxing gambling anyway - it automatically affects the odds setter who need a greater margin simply to break even, which if pushed far enough destroys the economic model of legal gambling, encouraging the illegal market. A bit like fags costing £150 for 20.
It is not that simple. There are an awful lot of anti-gamblers who see high street betting shops and online casinos as blights on their communities and a menace to society. For them, raising taxes is not about raising money, it is about ending gambling. Like fags.
I think Michael Gove was talking recently about the importance of the high street to voters, the feeling that empty shops and gambling shops show country is in decline even if broader economy has a different picture
I think the decline in bricks and mortar retail has a lot to do with people's sense of alienation and national decline, Gove is right. The best way to counter this is to build high density housing. Living in densely populated inner London I have observed that our high streets (Brockley, Nunhead, Peckham, Lewsham), though not without their issues, are in a far better state than those in suburban areas or small towns. The sheer volume of footfall we have, owing to population density, must be a factor.
I've been saying more or less that for a couple of decades (though medium density is probably more attractive - both to residents, and for town centres). The pitiful attempts of government and local authorities to revive retail in provincial high streets. and their repeated failure, seem to have taught them nothing.
"A plurality of voters" can go fuck themselves. Taxing an industry into oblivion is illogical. We are a bad country.
Now, now, we are always being told majorities are right about everything and policy should be dictated by what the people want via focus groups, elections, surveys etc.
There's a perception out there bookmakers and similar have grown fat on the proceeds from the poor punters (winners at 100/1 and 200/1 and Ascot on Saturday give that some marginal credence).
I've always been of the view the Lottery is a stealth tax on the poor - the chances of anyone winning that life-changing mount are infinitesimal (up there with either the Conservatives or Liberal Democrats forming a majority Government after the next election) yet people try twice a week plus the awful scratch cards.
Back to betting shops - they look like the only shops on many High Streets with money. They look bright, inviting and modern in contrast to much of the retail estate around them. They are open from 7.30am to 10pm every day and it seems no High Street can survive without seven or eight of them (if not more). In East Ham, we lost our Hills but still have two Ladbrokes, two BetFred, two Paddy Powers and a Jenningsbet and we aren't the wealthiest area in the world.
Perhaps there's a bit of neo-puritanism out there I don't know but as a punter I can see how it looks and we know the damage addiction to the FOBTs can cause not just to the addict but to those around them. We are already hearing the bleating from Fred Done and others and their unsubtle threats but that's how politics operates now - by threat. Propose anything and those affected threaten all sorts as a way to dissuade policy makers.
How many threads ago were we told Words matter ?
Now suppose the question had been "Should the government raise more money from Gambling ?" What would the responses have been ? Probably a resounding yes. But as that could only be achieved by a significant reduction in Gambling taxes I guess that would mean Gambling taxes should be lowered. And, as they always say on "Mind your Decisions" youtube channel, "That is the right answer."
If the general public are anything like me, they haven't a clue what taxes there are on gambling, because they don't gamble. And I frequent PB!
Good morning, everybody.
I am not a big gambler, mostly a few quid on the Leicester City game each week, and at election time, and I dont know.
I think it is mostly seen as a sin tax, and discouraging gambling is like discouraging smoking, a good thing in all circumstances.
I agree that's very much the perceived (or received) wisdom. What changed my mind from that default view was fairly close acquaintance with a couple of men, in quite different walks of life, who each engaged in gambling as a profession, because they were good at it and it was the way they earned their living. Nothing remotely dark or underhand, just a job like any other.
I think we've got, or at least have had, a couple at least of those on here.
Morning all! Whilst we are doing revisionist history its worth looking at what the Tories were saying in the run up to the GFC:
Revisionists: Brown was overspending, stupidly assuming the city would generate mega money forever Tories07: We'll match ever pound of Labour's spending commitments AND inflate the bubble even harder to create cash for tax cuts. And we're sick of the city being tied up in all this red tape. Lets slash it and free the banks up to go even harder.
In hindsight what Brown/Darling did was stupid. But at the time the Tories offered the alternative of even harder stupid. Lets not stick one side on a pedestal and the other in the gutter - both were in the same gutter with the same policies. The only competition was who could let the city get furthest out of control fastest...
The problem with financial regulation pre-2007 wasn't that it was insufficient, it was that it was ineffectively applied. The mechanisms existed to control financial markets, but the ineffective regulators in the FSA and the top management at the banks simply didn't understand the risks they were running.
Not all Tories favoured ever higher public spending and debt - many hated Cameron's and Osborne's Heir to Blair crap and foresaw it would end it tears when the money stopped flowing, and that it wouldn't even be particularly popular electorally, as shown when supposedly slick PR man Cameron failed to get an overall majority against GORDON BROWN for Christ's sake.
"A plurality of voters" can go fuck themselves. Taxing an industry into oblivion is illogical. We are a bad country.
Now, now, we are always being told majorities are right about everything and policy should be dictated by what the people want via focus groups, elections, surveys etc.
There's a perception out there bookmakers and similar have grown fat on the proceeds from the poor punters (winners at 100/1 and 200/1 and Ascot on Saturday give that some marginal credence).
I've always been of the view the Lottery is a stealth tax on the poor - the chances of anyone winning that life-changing mount are infinitesimal (up there with either the Conservatives or Liberal Democrats forming a majority Government after the next election) yet people try twice a week plus the awful scratch cards.
Back to betting shops - they look like the only shops on many High Streets with money. They look bright, inviting and modern in contrast to much of the retail estate around them. They are open from 7.30am to 10pm every day and it seems no High Street can survive without seven or eight of them (if not more). In East Ham, we lost our Hills but still have two Ladbrokes, two BetFred, two Paddy Powers and a Jenningsbet and we aren't the wealthiest area in the world.
Perhaps there's a bit of neo-puritanism out there I don't know but as a punter I can see how it looks and we know the damage addiction to the FOBTs can cause not just to the addict but to those around them. We are already hearing the bleating from Fred Done and others and their unsubtle threats but that's how politics operates now - by threat. Propose anything and those affected threaten all sorts as a way to dissuade policy makers.
On the lottery, it is very good value if you only buy the one ticket for the draw.
For your £2
£1.06 back in prizes 50p in good causes 24p in tax (effectively good causes still) 10p to the retailer (protects your local high street) 10p to the organisers (of which 2p is their profit)
The real non distributive cost is less than 20p and for that you get a sliver of a chance at a life changing event, the dreams associated with that and a conversation piece. That seems like as good a transaction as we get in modern life to me.
The tax on the poor bit is the repeated buying of scratch cards or buying multiple tickets for the same draw.
"A plurality of voters" can go fuck themselves. Taxing an industry into oblivion is illogical. We are a bad country.
Now, now, we are always being told majorities are right about everything and policy should be dictated by what the people want via focus groups, elections, surveys etc.
There's a perception out there bookmakers and similar have grown fat on the proceeds from the poor punters (winners at 100/1 and 200/1 and Ascot on Saturday give that some marginal credence).
I've always been of the view the Lottery is a stealth tax on the poor - the chances of anyone winning that life-changing mount are infinitesimal (up there with either the Conservatives or Liberal Democrats forming a majority Government after the next election) yet people try twice a week plus the awful scratch cards.
Back to betting shops - they look like the only shops on many High Streets with money. They look bright, inviting and modern in contrast to much of the retail estate around them. They are open from 7.30am to 10pm every day and it seems no High Street can survive without seven or eight of them (if not more). In East Ham, we lost our Hills but still have two Ladbrokes, two BetFred, two Paddy Powers and a Jenningsbet and we aren't the wealthiest area in the world.
Perhaps there's a bit of neo-puritanism out there I don't know but as a punter I can see how it looks and we know the damage addiction to the FOBTs can cause not just to the addict but to those around them. We are already hearing the bleating from Fred Done and others and their unsubtle threats but that's how politics operates now - by threat. Propose anything and those affected threaten all sorts as a way to dissuade policy makers.
On the lottery, it is very good value if you only buy the one ticket for the draw.
For your £2
£1.06 back in prizes 50p in good causes 24p in tax (effectively good causes still) 10p to the retailer (protects your local high street) 10p to the organisers (of which 2p is their profit)
The real non distributive cost is less than 20p and for that you get a sliver of a chance at a life changing event, the dreams associated with that and a conversation piece. That seems like as good a transaction as we get in modern life to me.
The tax on the poor bit is the repeated buying of scratch cards or buying multiple tickets for the same draw.
So the government is borrowing £20bn in a month, and £100bn in the first six months, that latter figure 13% higher year-on-year.
Err, I think it’s fair to say the public finances are totally Donald Ducked at this point.
Rachel needs to find £50bn of tax rises and £50bn of spending cuts this year, as an absolute minimum, and that’s still only half way to fixing the problem. At this stage in the economic cycle govt should be close to running a surplus.
Should it? Running a surplus is rare enough to be noteworthy.
Yes! Yes we should.
Half the problem the country faces is that it’s never recovered from Brown turning on the taps after the 2001 election, which made the 2008-9 recession much worse than it should have been, and it was just about back to level when the pandemic hit, and now appears to be getting worse rather than better.
Even if you are right that Brown overspent, it had sod all to do with the GFC; it neither caused nor aggravated it. And of course, Gordon Brown was the last Chancellor actually to run a surplus.
The issue is that we had a massive *structural* deficit post Brown. Simplifying massively he believes the tax levels from financial services would continue at that level for ever and so spent to the max rather than being prudent.
When they were proven to be a mirage we had something like a 10% of GDP structural deficit (ie excluding the impact of normal fiscal cycles). That’s just not sustainable
Indeed. There was even. Concern that the time taken to form the Coalition government would cause a borrowing crisis.
If Brown had been running a 4% surplus (say) then the GFC would have wiped that out, maybe put us into mild deficit. And we would have had less debt. There would have been scope for some borrowing to be counter cyclic - rather than cuts.
Note that the Labour plan was more cuts than Osborne.
How do you run a 4% surplus when half the country always demands lower taxes, half the country always demands more from the state, and 100% of the country demands both?
(Yes, I know those numbers don't add up. That's the point.)
By being disciplined and a leader
Edit: in practice you create a line in the budget “sinking fund for debt repayment” and claim a balanced budget while simultaneously retiring 4% of GDP worth of debt
There are a whole set of things that you should be doing before repairing debt - building infrastructure such as roads or HS2 to grow the economy would be a better use of some of the money.
Non gamblers don't generally mind higher taxes on someone else. Most gamblers don't have any idea how gambling tax works, and anyway regard gambling as a form of entertainment for which a price is paid, with no question of overall making profits (which will remain untaxed!); any gamblers who make big money regularly will gamble offshore.
The real question for the CoE is how to keep a decent slice of the whole industry within UK tax system by ensuring it is overall competitive with Abroadland. There is an obvious logical problem about taxing gambling anyway - it automatically affects the odds setter who need a greater margin simply to break even, which if pushed far enough destroys the economic model of legal gambling, encouraging the illegal market. A bit like fags costing £150 for 20.
It is not that simple. There are an awful lot of anti-gamblers who see high street betting shops and online casinos as blights on their communities and a menace to society. For them, raising taxes is not about raising money, it is about ending gambling. Like fags.
I think Michael Gove was talking recently about the importance of the high street to voters, the feeling that empty shops and gambling shops show country is in decline even if broader economy has a different picture
I think the decline in bricks and mortar retail has a lot to do with people's sense of alienation and national decline, Gove is right. The best way to counter this is to build high density housing. Living in densely populated inner London I have observed that our high streets (Brockley, Nunhead, Peckham, Lewsham), though not without their issues, are in a far better state than those in suburban areas or small towns. The sheer volume of footfall we have, owing to population density, must be a factor.
And in the end, bricks and mortar retail has faded because we have collectively chosen not to use it. My bit of Romford has gone from three neighbourhood butchers to one in recent years because most of us find supermarkets and online more convenient. It's sad that provincial department stores, whether Grace Brothers or Debenhams, no longer exist. But given online and easier travel to big cities, only a madman would reinvent them. (Yes, it would be lovely if there were a John Lewis in Romford, no it's not going to happen.)
To be clear, this makes the country a sadder place than it was. But if there's a conspiracy, it involves all of us. And the only way out I see working involves using retail land for housing.
If the general public are anything like me, they haven't a clue what taxes there are on gambling, because they don't gamble. And I frequent PB!
Good morning, everybody.
I am not a big gambler, mostly a few quid on the Leicester City game each week, and at election time, and I dont know.
I think it is mostly seen as a sin tax, and discouraging gambling is like discouraging smoking, a good thing in all circumstances.
I agree that's very much the perceived (or received) wisdom. What changed my mind from that default view was fairly close acquaintance with a couple of men, in quite different walks of life, who each engaged in gambling as a profession, because they were good at it and it was the way they earned their living. Nothing remotely dark or underhand, just a job like any other.
There are several different types of gambler:
1. The professionals, as you note, are the same as any other professional who spends their day mostly working through spreadsheets.
2. The Grand National or on-course better, who sees it as part of the cost of the occasional day out, and mostly has fun.
3. The casual gambler who bets on the football on his phone from the pub, and probably loses more money than he tells his wife he lost.
4. The poor sod who puts his whole week’s pay packet into the FOBT machines in a couple of hours, and now needs to find rent and food money.
The four are all over-generalisations of course, but the government approach to them needs to be different. 1 and 2 are not a problem, 3 can turn into a problem, and 4 is a big problem.
So the government is borrowing £20bn in a month, and £100bn in the first six months, that latter figure 13% higher year-on-year.
Err, I think it’s fair to say the public finances are totally Donald Ducked at this point.
Rachel needs to find £50bn of tax rises and £50bn of spending cuts this year, as an absolute minimum, and that’s still only half way to fixing the problem. At this stage in the economic cycle govt should be close to running a surplus.
Should it? Running a surplus is rare enough to be noteworthy.
Yes! Yes we should.
Half the problem the country faces is that it’s never recovered from Brown turning on the taps after the 2001 election, which made the 2008-9 recession much worse than it should have been, and it was just about back to level when the pandemic hit, and now appears to be getting worse rather than better.
Even if you are right that Brown overspent, it had sod all to do with the GFC; it neither caused nor aggravated it. And of course, Gordon Brown was the last Chancellor actually to run a surplus.
The issue is that we had a massive *structural* deficit post Brown. Simplifying massively he believes the tax levels from financial services would continue at that level for ever and so spent to the max rather than being prudent.
When they were proven to be a mirage we had something like a 10% of GDP structural deficit (ie excluding the impact of normal fiscal cycles). That’s just not sustainable
Indeed. There was even. Concern that the time taken to form the Coalition government would cause a borrowing crisis.
If Brown had been running a 4% surplus (say) then the GFC would have wiped that out, maybe put us into mild deficit. And we would have had less debt. There would have been scope for some borrowing to be counter cyclic - rather than cuts.
Note that the Labour plan was more cuts than Osborne.
How do you run a 4% surplus when half the country always demands lower taxes, half the country always demands more from the state, and 100% of the country demands both?
(Yes, I know those numbers don't add up. That's the point.)
By being disciplined and a leader
Edit: in practice you create a line in the budget “sinking fund for debt repayment” and claim a balanced budget while simultaneously retiring 4% of GDP worth of debt
There are a whole set of things that you should be doing before repairing debt - building infrastructure such as roads or HS2 to grow the economy would be a better use of some of the money.
There are choices to be made, yes. But I was answering a mechanical question
"A plurality of voters" can go fuck themselves. Taxing an industry into oblivion is illogical. We are a bad country.
Now, now, we are always being told majorities are right about everything and policy should be dictated by what the people want via focus groups, elections, surveys etc.
There's a perception out there bookmakers and similar have grown fat on the proceeds from the poor punters (winners at 100/1 and 200/1 and Ascot on Saturday give that some marginal credence).
I've always been of the view the Lottery is a stealth tax on the poor - the chances of anyone winning that life-changing mount are infinitesimal (up there with either the Conservatives or Liberal Democrats forming a majority Government after the next election) yet people try twice a week plus the awful scratch cards.
Back to betting shops - they look like the only shops on many High Streets with money. They look bright, inviting and modern in contrast to much of the retail estate around them. They are open from 7.30am to 10pm every day and it seems no High Street can survive without seven or eight of them (if not more). In East Ham, we lost our Hills but still have two Ladbrokes, two BetFred, two Paddy Powers and a Jenningsbet and we aren't the wealthiest area in the world.
Perhaps there's a bit of neo-puritanism out there I don't know but as a punter I can see how it looks and we know the damage addiction to the FOBTs can cause not just to the addict but to those around them. We are already hearing the bleating from Fred Done and others and their unsubtle threats but that's how politics operates now - by threat. Propose anything and those affected threaten all sorts as a way to dissuade policy makers.
On the lottery, it is very good value if you only buy the one ticket for the draw.
For your £2
£1.06 back in prizes 50p in good causes 24p in tax (effectively good causes still) 10p to the retailer (protects your local high street) 10p to the organisers (of which 2p is their profit)
The real non distributive cost is less than 20p and for that you get a sliver of a chance at a life changing event, the dreams associated with that and a conversation piece. That seems like as good a transaction as we get in modern life to me.
The tax on the poor bit is the repeated buying of scratch cards or buying multiple tickets for the same draw.
Tax “effectively good causes”… hah!
I know a lot of people on the right think like that, but its essentially hospitals, schools, defence, law and order, paying back our debt, pensions and welfare. To me clearly good causes, but put effectively as I know that perception is not shared by some.
Anyway, today's economy. I don't know how to break the news to some of you, but the real economy already has businesses closing due to lack of cash circulating. People are feeling poor and not spending, which means businesses close and jobs are lost and tax revenues decline further.
We could do Austerity 2. Same outcome as Austerity 1. Or we could look at what we are spending money on and change that. I have zero expectation that Reeves will unveil a simplification of the tax code or a bonfire of faux market structures in the public service or actual investment to allow us to build the LHA homes we need to build or investment into power generation / transmission and transport and criminal justice.
We're going to punish working people again, throw in a few stupid concessions like tax gambling harder, and then wonder why we're in recession with an even higher deficit than before we started. We need to provoke economic output, not cut it further.
You’re right, of course, but I’m afraid it won’t happen. We’ve changed one inept govt for another
So the government is borrowing £20bn in a month, and £100bn in the first six months, that latter figure 13% higher year-on-year.
Err, I think it’s fair to say the public finances are totally Donald Ducked at this point.
Rachel needs to find £50bn of tax rises and £50bn of spending cuts this year, as an absolute minimum, and that’s still only half way to fixing the problem. At this stage in the economic cycle govt should be close to running a surplus.
Should it? Running a surplus is rare enough to be noteworthy.
Yes! Yes we should.
Half the problem the country faces is that it’s never recovered from Brown turning on the taps after the 2001 election, which made the 2008-9 recession much worse than it should have been, and it was just about back to level when the pandemic hit, and now appears to be getting worse rather than better.
Even if you are right that Brown overspent, it had sod all to do with the GFC; it neither caused nor aggravated it. And of course, Gordon Brown was the last Chancellor actually to run a surplus.
The issue is that we had a massive *structural* deficit post Brown. Simplifying massively he believes the tax levels from financial services would continue at that level for ever and so spent to the max rather than being prudent.
When they were proven to be a mirage we had something like a 10% of GDP structural deficit (ie excluding the impact of normal fiscal cycles). That’s just not sustainable
Indeed. There was even. Concern that the time taken to form the Coalition government would cause a borrowing crisis.
If Brown had been running a 4% surplus (say) then the GFC would have wiped that out, maybe put us into mild deficit. And we would have had less debt. There would have been scope for some borrowing to be counter cyclic - rather than cuts.
Note that the Labour plan was more cuts than Osborne.
How do you run a 4% surplus when half the country always demands lower taxes, half the country always demands more from the state, and 100% of the country demands both?
(Yes, I know those numbers don't add up. That's the point.)
By being disciplined and a leader
Edit: in practice you create a line in the budget “sinking fund for debt repayment” and claim a balanced budget while simultaneously retiring 4% of GDP worth of debt
That's fine as a mechanism.
The harder question is... How do you do that and win an election? Because if you don't win an election, someone more irresponsible gets in.
"A plurality of voters" can go fuck themselves. Taxing an industry into oblivion is illogical. We are a bad country.
Now, now, we are always being told majorities are right about everything and policy should be dictated by what the people want via focus groups, elections, surveys etc.
There's a perception out there bookmakers and similar have grown fat on the proceeds from the poor punters (winners at 100/1 and 200/1 and Ascot on Saturday give that some marginal credence).
I've always been of the view the Lottery is a stealth tax on the poor - the chances of anyone winning that life-changing mount are infinitesimal (up there with either the Conservatives or Liberal Democrats forming a majority Government after the next election) yet people try twice a week plus the awful scratch cards.
Back to betting shops - they look like the only shops on many High Streets with money. They look bright, inviting and modern in contrast to much of the retail estate around them. They are open from 7.30am to 10pm every day and it seems no High Street can survive without seven or eight of them (if not more). In East Ham, we lost our Hills but still have two Ladbrokes, two BetFred, two Paddy Powers and a Jenningsbet and we aren't the wealthiest area in the world.
Perhaps there's a bit of neo-puritanism out there I don't know but as a punter I can see how it looks and we know the damage addiction to the FOBTs can cause not just to the addict but to those around them. We are already hearing the bleating from Fred Done and others and their unsubtle threats but that's how politics operates now - by threat. Propose anything and those affected threaten all sorts as a way to dissuade policy makers.
On the lottery, it is very good value if you only buy the one ticket for the draw.
For your £2
£1.06 back in prizes 50p in good causes 24p in tax (effectively good causes still) 10p to the retailer (protects your local high street) 10p to the organisers (of which 2p is their profit)
The real non distributive cost is less than 20p and for that you get a sliver of a chance at a life changing event, the dreams associated with that and a conversation piece. That seems like as good a transaction as we get in modern life to me.
The tax on the poor bit is the repeated buying of scratch cards or buying multiple tickets for the same draw.
Tax “effectively good causes”… hah!
I know a lot of people on the right think like that, but its essentially hospitals, schools, defence, law and order, paying back our debt, pensions and welfare. To me clearly good causes, but put effectively as I know that perception is not shared by some.
It’s not particularly helpful to conflate spending decisions by government - core functions and societal choices - with “good causes” which are essentially “nice to haves”
So the government is borrowing £20bn in a month, and £100bn in the first six months, that latter figure 13% higher year-on-year.
Err, I think it’s fair to say the public finances are totally Donald Ducked at this point.
Rachel needs to find £50bn of tax rises and £50bn of spending cuts this year, as an absolute minimum, and that’s still only half way to fixing the problem. At this stage in the economic cycle govt should be close to running a surplus.
Should it? Running a surplus is rare enough to be noteworthy.
Yes! Yes we should.
Half the problem the country faces is that it’s never recovered from Brown turning on the taps after the 2001 election, which made the 2008-9 recession much worse than it should have been, and it was just about back to level when the pandemic hit, and now appears to be getting worse rather than better.
Even if you are right that Brown overspent, it had sod all to do with the GFC; it neither caused nor aggravated it. And of course, Gordon Brown was the last Chancellor actually to run a surplus.
The issue is that we had a massive *structural* deficit post Brown. Simplifying massively he believes the tax levels from financial services would continue at that level for ever and so spent to the max rather than being prudent.
When they were proven to be a mirage we had something like a 10% of GDP structural deficit (ie excluding the impact of normal fiscal cycles). That’s just not sustainable
Indeed. There was even. Concern that the time taken to form the Coalition government would cause a borrowing crisis.
If Brown had been running a 4% surplus (say) then the GFC would have wiped that out, maybe put us into mild deficit. And we would have had less debt. There would have been scope for some borrowing to be counter cyclic - rather than cuts.
Note that the Labour plan was more cuts than Osborne.
How do you run a 4% surplus when half the country always demands lower taxes, half the country always demands more from the state, and 100% of the country demands both?
(Yes, I know those numbers don't add up. That's the point.)
By being disciplined and a leader
Edit: in practice you create a line in the budget “sinking fund for debt repayment” and claim a balanced budget while simultaneously retiring 4% of GDP worth of debt
That's fine as a mechanism.
The harder question is... How do you do that and win an election? Because if you don't win an election, someone more irresponsible gets in.
You need to educate people over time. But it’s not easy
Anyway, today's economy. I don't know how to break the news to some of you, but the real economy already has businesses closing due to lack of cash circulating. People are feeling poor and not spending, which means businesses close and jobs are lost and tax revenues decline further.
We could do Austerity 2. Same outcome as Austerity 1. Or we could look at what we are spending money on and change that. I have zero expectation that Reeves will unveil a simplification of the tax code or a bonfire of faux market structures in the public service or actual investment to allow us to build the LHA homes we need to build or investment into power generation / transmission and transport and criminal justice.
We're going to punish working people again, throw in a few stupid concessions like tax gambling harder, and then wonder why we're in recession with an even higher deficit than before we started. We need to provoke economic output, not cut it further.
You’re right, of course, but I’m afraid it won’t happen. We’ve changed one inept govt for another
No matter who you vote for, the government always gets elected.
You didn't tell me it was Boris Day in Parliament! The King of our Hearts is running rings around Labour MPs as we speak. I have a meeting at 10.30, but until then this God is on LBC News.
It does seem lack of schools planning for COVID was everyone else's fault by the sound of it. Good boy!
"A plurality of voters" can go fuck themselves. Taxing an industry into oblivion is illogical. We are a bad country.
Now, now, we are always being told majorities are right about everything and policy should be dictated by what the people want via focus groups, elections, surveys etc.
There's a perception out there bookmakers and similar have grown fat on the proceeds from the poor punters (winners at 100/1 and 200/1 and Ascot on Saturday give that some marginal credence).
I've always been of the view the Lottery is a stealth tax on the poor - the chances of anyone winning that life-changing mount are infinitesimal (up there with either the Conservatives or Liberal Democrats forming a majority Government after the next election) yet people try twice a week plus the awful scratch cards.
Back to betting shops - they look like the only shops on many High Streets with money. They look bright, inviting and modern in contrast to much of the retail estate around them. They are open from 7.30am to 10pm every day and it seems no High Street can survive without seven or eight of them (if not more). In East Ham, we lost our Hills but still have two Ladbrokes, two BetFred, two Paddy Powers and a Jenningsbet and we aren't the wealthiest area in the world.
Perhaps there's a bit of neo-puritanism out there I don't know but as a punter I can see how it looks and we know the damage addiction to the FOBTs can cause not just to the addict but to those around them. We are already hearing the bleating from Fred Done and others and their unsubtle threats but that's how politics operates now - by threat. Propose anything and those affected threaten all sorts as a way to dissuade policy makers.
On the lottery, it is very good value if you only buy the one ticket for the draw.
For your £2
£1.06 back in prizes 50p in good causes 24p in tax (effectively good causes still) 10p to the retailer (protects your local high street) 10p to the organisers (of which 2p is their profit)
The real non distributive cost is less than 20p and for that you get a sliver of a chance at a life changing event, the dreams associated with that and a conversation piece. That seems like as good a transaction as we get in modern life to me.
The tax on the poor bit is the repeated buying of scratch cards or buying multiple tickets for the same draw.
Tax “effectively good causes”… hah!
I know a lot of people on the right think like that, but its essentially hospitals, schools, defence, law and order, paying back our debt, pensions and welfare. To me clearly good causes, but put effectively as I know that perception is not shared by some.
It’s not particularly helpful to conflate spending decisions by government - core functions and societal choices - with “good causes” which are essentially “nice to haves”
To me they are the same. If a hospital has a bit extra, great, it might have a better waiting room, or one more nurse. It is a good cause.
If the general public are anything like me, they haven't a clue what taxes there are on gambling, because they don't gamble. And I frequent PB!
Good morning, everybody.
I am not a big gambler, mostly a few quid on the Leicester City game each week, and at election time, and I dont know.
I think it is mostly seen as a sin tax, and discouraging gambling is like discouraging smoking, a good thing in all circumstances.
I agree that's very much the perceived (or received) wisdom. What changed my mind from that default view was fairly close acquaintance with a couple of men, in quite different walks of life, who each engaged in gambling as a profession, because they were good at it and it was the way they earned their living. Nothing remotely dark or underhand, just a job like any other.
There are several different types of gambler:
1. The professionals, as you note, are the same as any other professional who spends their day mostly working through spreadsheets.
2. The Grand National or on-course better, who sees it as part of the cost of the occasional day out, and mostly has fun.
3. The casual gambler who bets on the football on his phone from the pub, and probably loses more money than he tells his wife he lost.
4. The poor sod who puts his whole week’s pay packet into the FOBT machines in a couple of hours, and now needs to find rent and food money.
The four are all over-generalisations of course, but the government approach to them needs to be different. 1 and 2 are not a problem, 3 can turn into a problem, and 4 is a big problem.
A couple of weekends ago we discovered another class of gambler masquerading as investor when the cryptocurrency flash crash cleaned out a few City types (and probably more in America). Although prices rebounded, because they had been heavily leveraged, their positions were automatically liquidated at the bottom so they copped all the losses and none of the recovery.
"A plurality of voters" can go fuck themselves. Taxing an industry into oblivion is illogical. We are a bad country.
Now, now, we are always being told majorities are right about everything and policy should be dictated by what the people want via focus groups, elections, surveys etc.
There's a perception out there bookmakers and similar have grown fat on the proceeds from the poor punters (winners at 100/1 and 200/1 and Ascot on Saturday give that some marginal credence).
I've always been of the view the Lottery is a stealth tax on the poor - the chances of anyone winning that life-changing mount are infinitesimal (up there with either the Conservatives or Liberal Democrats forming a majority Government after the next election) yet people try twice a week plus the awful scratch cards.
Back to betting shops - they look like the only shops on many High Streets with money. They look bright, inviting and modern in contrast to much of the retail estate around them. They are open from 7.30am to 10pm every day and it seems no High Street can survive without seven or eight of them (if not more). In East Ham, we lost our Hills but still have two Ladbrokes, two BetFred, two Paddy Powers and a Jenningsbet and we aren't the wealthiest area in the world.
Perhaps there's a bit of neo-puritanism out there I don't know but as a punter I can see how it looks and we know the damage addiction to the FOBTs can cause not just to the addict but to those around them. We are already hearing the bleating from Fred Done and others and their unsubtle threats but that's how politics operates now - by threat. Propose anything and those affected threaten all sorts as a way to dissuade policy makers.
On the lottery, it is very good value if you only buy the one ticket for the draw.
For your £2
£1.06 back in prizes 50p in good causes 24p in tax (effectively good causes still) 10p to the retailer (protects your local high street) 10p to the organisers (of which 2p is their profit)
The real non distributive cost is less than 20p and for that you get a sliver of a chance at a life changing event, the dreams associated with that and a conversation piece. That seems like as good a transaction as we get in modern life to me.
The tax on the poor bit is the repeated buying of scratch cards or buying multiple tickets for the same draw.
Tax “effectively good causes”… hah!
I know a lot of people on the right think like that, but its essentially hospitals, schools, defence, law and order, paying back our debt, pensions and welfare. To me clearly good causes, but put effectively as I know that perception is not shared by some.
It’s not particularly helpful to conflate spending decisions by government - core functions and societal choices - with “good causes” which are essentially “nice to haves”
To me they are the same. If a hospital has a bit extra, great, it might have a better waiting room, or one more nurse. It is a good cause.
In the context of the national lottery “good causes” has a specific meaning
Edit: and its important not to conflate them because otherwise the spending gets absorbed by the treasury and reallocated because things like sport and heritage aren’t schools’n’hospitals
If the general public are anything like me, they haven't a clue what taxes there are on gambling, because they don't gamble. And I frequent PB!
Good morning, everybody.
I am not a big gambler, mostly a few quid on the Leicester City game each week, and at election time, and I dont know.
I think it is mostly seen as a sin tax, and discouraging gambling is like discouraging smoking, a good thing in all circumstances.
I agree that's very much the perceived (or received) wisdom. What changed my mind from that default view was fairly close acquaintance with a couple of men, in quite different walks of life, who each engaged in gambling as a profession, because they were good at it and it was the way they earned their living. Nothing remotely dark or underhand, just a job like any other.
There are several different types of gambler:
1. The professionals, as you note, are the same as any other professional who spends their day mostly working through spreadsheets.
2. The Grand National or on-course better, who sees it as part of the cost of the occasional day out, and mostly has fun.
3. The casual gambler who bets on the football on his phone from the pub, and probably loses more money than he tells his wife he lost.
4. The poor sod who puts his whole week’s pay packet into the FOBT machines in a couple of hours, and now needs to find rent and food money.
The four are all over-generalisations of course, but the government approach to them needs to be different. 1 and 2 are not a problem, 3 can turn into a problem, and 4 is a big problem.
A couple of weekends ago we discovered another class of gambler masquerading as investor when the cryptocurrency flash crash cleaned out a few City types (and probably more in America). Although prices rebounded, because they had been heavily leveraged, their positions were automatically liquidated at the bottom so they copped all the losses and none of the recovery.
Quite a few in the US based on my twitter. Mugs using leverage now owe a packet. So they claim. Based on what you say happening
With Russia unwilling to drop its demands for a Ukrainian surrender of Donbas as a precondition to a ceasefire, it starts looking doubtful that the Budapest summit between Putin and Trump will happen anytime soon, if at all. The Lavrov-Rubio preparatory meeting, which Trump said was scheduled for this week, hasn’t been agreed to by Russia and, as per Lavrov deputy Ryabkov, “requires additional preparation.”
So the government is borrowing £20bn in a month, and £100bn in the first six months, that latter figure 13% higher year-on-year.
Err, I think it’s fair to say the public finances are totally Donald Ducked at this point.
Rachel needs to find £50bn of tax rises and £50bn of spending cuts this year, as an absolute minimum, and that’s still only half way to fixing the problem. At this stage in the economic cycle govt should be close to running a surplus.
Should it? Running a surplus is rare enough to be noteworthy.
Yes! Yes we should.
Half the problem the country faces is that it’s never recovered from Brown turning on the taps after the 2001 election, which made the 2008-9 recession much worse than it should have been, and it was just about back to level when the pandemic hit, and now appears to be getting worse rather than better.
Even if you are right that Brown overspent, it had sod all to do with the GFC; it neither caused nor aggravated it. And of course, Gordon Brown was the last Chancellor actually to run a surplus.
The issue is that we had a massive *structural* deficit post Brown. Simplifying massively he believes the tax levels from financial services would continue at that level for ever and so spent to the max rather than being prudent.
When they were proven to be a mirage we had something like a 10% of GDP structural deficit (ie excluding the impact of normal fiscal cycles). That’s just not sustainable
Indeed. There was even. Concern that the time taken to form the Coalition government would cause a borrowing crisis.
If Brown had been running a 4% surplus (say) then the GFC would have wiped that out, maybe put us into mild deficit. And we would have had less debt. There would have been scope for some borrowing to be counter cyclic - rather than cuts.
Note that the Labour plan was more cuts than Osborne.
How do you run a 4% surplus when half the country always demands lower taxes, half the country always demands more from the state, and 100% of the country demands both?
(Yes, I know those numbers don't add up. That's the point.)
By being disciplined and a leader
Edit: in practice you create a line in the budget “sinking fund for debt repayment” and claim a balanced budget while simultaneously retiring 4% of GDP worth of debt
That's fine as a mechanism.
The harder question is... How do you do that and win an election? Because if you don't win an election, someone more irresponsible gets in.
You need to educate people over time. But it’s not easy
Obviously, I'm all for the power of education.
But it strikes me that what you're asking for is someone to do a lesson on the benefits of healthy eating... while Krusty the Clown is also in the room, handing out free Krustyburgers.
So the government is borrowing £20bn in a month, and £100bn in the first six months, that latter figure 13% higher year-on-year.
Err, I think it’s fair to say the public finances are totally Donald Ducked at this point.
Rachel needs to find £50bn of tax rises and £50bn of spending cuts this year, as an absolute minimum, and that’s still only half way to fixing the problem. At this stage in the economic cycle govt should be close to running a surplus.
Should it? Running a surplus is rare enough to be noteworthy.
Yes! Yes we should.
Half the problem the country faces is that it’s never recovered from Brown turning on the taps after the 2001 election, which made the 2008-9 recession much worse than it should have been, and it was just about back to level when the pandemic hit, and now appears to be getting worse rather than better.
Even if you are right that Brown overspent, it had sod all to do with the GFC; it neither caused nor aggravated it. And of course, Gordon Brown was the last Chancellor actually to run a surplus.
The issue is that we had a massive *structural* deficit post Brown. Simplifying massively he believes the tax levels from financial services would continue at that level for ever and so spent to the max rather than being prudent.
When they were proven to be a mirage we had something like a 10% of GDP structural deficit (ie excluding the impact of normal fiscal cycles). That’s just not sustainable
Indeed. There was even. Concern that the time taken to form the Coalition government would cause a borrowing crisis.
If Brown had been running a 4% surplus (say) then the GFC would have wiped that out, maybe put us into mild deficit. And we would have had less debt. There would have been scope for some borrowing to be counter cyclic - rather than cuts.
Note that the Labour plan was more cuts than Osborne.
How do you run a 4% surplus when half the country always demands lower taxes, half the country always demands more from the state, and 100% of the country demands both?
(Yes, I know those numbers don't add up. That's the point.)
By being disciplined and a leader
Edit: in practice you create a line in the budget “sinking fund for debt repayment” and claim a balanced budget while simultaneously retiring 4% of GDP worth of debt
That's fine as a mechanism.
The harder question is... How do you do that and win an election? Because if you don't win an election, someone more irresponsible gets in.
You need to educate people over time. But it’s not easy
Obviously, I'm all for the power of education.
But it strikes me that what you're asking for is someone to do a lesson on the benefits of healthy eating... while Krusty the Clown is also in the room, handing out free Krustyburgers.
I mean, I'm good... but I'm not that good.
Politicians need to lay the ground work. That’s literally their job.
"A plurality of voters" can go fuck themselves. Taxing an industry into oblivion is illogical. We are a bad country.
Now, now, we are always being told majorities are right about everything and policy should be dictated by what the people want via focus groups, elections, surveys etc.
There's a perception out there bookmakers and similar have grown fat on the proceeds from the poor punters (winners at 100/1 and 200/1 and Ascot on Saturday give that some marginal credence).
I've always been of the view the Lottery is a stealth tax on the poor - the chances of anyone winning that life-changing mount are infinitesimal (up there with either the Conservatives or Liberal Democrats forming a majority Government after the next election) yet people try twice a week plus the awful scratch cards.
Back to betting shops - they look like the only shops on many High Streets with money. They look bright, inviting and modern in contrast to much of the retail estate around them. They are open from 7.30am to 10pm every day and it seems no High Street can survive without seven or eight of them (if not more). In East Ham, we lost our Hills but still have two Ladbrokes, two BetFred, two Paddy Powers and a Jenningsbet and we aren't the wealthiest area in the world.
Perhaps there's a bit of neo-puritanism out there I don't know but as a punter I can see how it looks and we know the damage addiction to the FOBTs can cause not just to the addict but to those around them. We are already hearing the bleating from Fred Done and others and their unsubtle threats but that's how politics operates now - by threat. Propose anything and those affected threaten all sorts as a way to dissuade policy makers.
On the lottery, it is very good value if you only buy the one ticket for the draw.
For your £2
£1.06 back in prizes 50p in good causes 24p in tax (effectively good causes still) 10p to the retailer (protects your local high street) 10p to the organisers (of which 2p is their profit)
The real non distributive cost is less than 20p and for that you get a sliver of a chance at a life changing event, the dreams associated with that and a conversation piece. That seems like as good a transaction as we get in modern life to me.
The tax on the poor bit is the repeated buying of scratch cards or buying multiple tickets for the same draw.
Tax “effectively good causes”… hah!
I know a lot of people on the right think like that, but its essentially hospitals, schools, defence, law and order, paying back our debt, pensions and welfare. To me clearly good causes, but put effectively as I know that perception is not shared by some.
It’s not particularly helpful to conflate spending decisions by government - core functions and societal choices - with “good causes” which are essentially “nice to haves”
To me they are the same. If a hospital has a bit extra, great, it might have a better waiting room, or one more nurse. It is a good cause.
In the context of the national lottery “good causes” has a specific meaning
Edit: and its important not to conflate them because otherwise the spending gets absorbed by the treasury and reallocated because things like sport and heritage aren’t schools’n’hospitals
I wish my words translated into policy as you suggest, the world would be a better place.
Cricket's Women's World Cup latest match about to start in Colombo. At least it doesn't seem to be raining yet! Whose bright idea (joining the complainers club) was it to play so many matches there is the rainy season?
You didn't tell me it was Boris Day in Parliament! The King of our Hearts is running rings around Labour MPs as we speak. I have a meeting at 10.30, but until then this God is on LBC News.
It does seem lack of schools planning for COVID was everyone else's fault by the sound of it. Good boy!
I hate to side with Johnson, but listening to St. Boris. I do believe he is being questioned by some idiot Labour MP with the benefit of hindsight.
School lockdowns were an imperative under the circumstances regardless of whether vulnerable children were at risk. School closures were the least worst national outcome even if some children were put in harms way.
If the general public are anything like me, they haven't a clue what taxes there are on gambling, because they don't gamble. And I frequent PB!
Good morning, everybody.
I am not a big gambler, mostly a few quid on the Leicester City game each week, and at election time, and I dont know.
I think it is mostly seen as a sin tax, and discouraging gambling is like discouraging smoking, a good thing in all circumstances.
I agree that's very much the perceived (or received) wisdom. What changed my mind from that default view was fairly close acquaintance with a couple of men, in quite different walks of life, who each engaged in gambling as a profession, because they were good at it and it was the way they earned their living. Nothing remotely dark or underhand, just a job like any other.
There are several different types of gambler:
1. The professionals, as you note, are the same as any other professional who spends their day mostly working through spreadsheets.
2. The Grand National or on-course better, who sees it as part of the cost of the occasional day out, and mostly has fun.
3. The casual gambler who bets on the football on his phone from the pub, and probably loses more money than he tells his wife he lost.
4. The poor sod who puts his whole week’s pay packet into the FOBT machines in a couple of hours, and now needs to find rent and food money.
The four are all over-generalisations of course, but the government approach to them needs to be different. 1 and 2 are not a problem, 3 can turn into a problem, and 4 is a big problem.
A couple of weekends ago we discovered another class of gambler masquerading as investor when the cryptocurrency flash crash cleaned out a few City types (and probably more in America). Although prices rebounded, because they had been heavily leveraged, their positions were automatically liquidated at the bottom so they copped all the losses and none of the recovery.
Ah yes, much of the cryptocurrency industry is naked gambling and scamming dressed up as investment, as they speed run though the last 150 years of financial services regulation.
Ironically, the crash was much worse than it otherwise would have been precisely because a bunch of gamblers with over-leveraged “investments” faced automated margin calls on the way down.
"A plurality of voters" can go fuck themselves. Taxing an industry into oblivion is illogical. We are a bad country.
Now, now, we are always being told majorities are right about everything and policy should be dictated by what the people want via focus groups, elections, surveys etc.
There's a perception out there bookmakers and similar have grown fat on the proceeds from the poor punters (winners at 100/1 and 200/1 and Ascot on Saturday give that some marginal credence).
I've always been of the view the Lottery is a stealth tax on the poor - the chances of anyone winning that life-changing mount are infinitesimal (up there with either the Conservatives or Liberal Democrats forming a majority Government after the next election) yet people try twice a week plus the awful scratch cards.
Back to betting shops - they look like the only shops on many High Streets with money. They look bright, inviting and modern in contrast to much of the retail estate around them. They are open from 7.30am to 10pm every day and it seems no High Street can survive without seven or eight of them (if not more). In East Ham, we lost our Hills but still have two Ladbrokes, two BetFred, two Paddy Powers and a Jenningsbet and we aren't the wealthiest area in the world.
Perhaps there's a bit of neo-puritanism out there I don't know but as a punter I can see how it looks and we know the damage addiction to the FOBTs can cause not just to the addict but to those around them. We are already hearing the bleating from Fred Done and others and their unsubtle threats but that's how politics operates now - by threat. Propose anything and those affected threaten all sorts as a way to dissuade policy makers.
Not to mention that if every country where betting is banned, you get illegal betting. Which is the basis of organised crime, usually.
One of the metrics for alcohol pricing/tax is the amount of fake booze that shows up. A few years back there was a spike in people being poisoned by fake vodka. The government responded by not increasing taxes on hard alcohol for a couple of years IIRC.
Yep. Handing over cash is more real than tapping in numbers online. And the idea a problem gambler will have less of a problem if their only avenue is online (especially offshore sites with less commitment to responsible gambling tools) is optimism to a stupid extent.
Meanwhile, the workers in those shops will lose their jobs, sacrificed on a puritanical and innumerate altar of outrage.
If the Government actually wanted to make a significant step in this area they'd ban loot boxes. But as that would require a basic understanding of something related to technology that won't happen.
It's more complex - it's a question of how you view gambling. Some see it as an addiction, others don't. It's a bit like alcohol, I suppose.
Those who have first hand experience of the impacts of those addictions will have a different view.
A lot of Fred Done's comments are threats, bluff and bluster. Yes, he may close a few shops but they will be the ones which are losing money - the betting shop estate, like all other retail estates, is a mix of profitable and unprofitable shops and the Government are providing cover for the bookmakers to divest themselves of the unprofitable parts of their estate.
If the general public are anything like me, they haven't a clue what taxes there are on gambling, because they don't gamble. And I frequent PB!
Good morning, everybody.
I am not a big gambler, mostly a few quid on the Leicester City game each week, and at election time, and I dont know.
I think it is mostly seen as a sin tax, and discouraging gambling is like discouraging smoking, a good thing in all circumstances.
I agree that's very much the perceived (or received) wisdom. What changed my mind from that default view was fairly close acquaintance with a couple of men, in quite different walks of life, who each engaged in gambling as a profession, because they were good at it and it was the way they earned their living. Nothing remotely dark or underhand, just a job like any other.
There are several different types of gambler:
1. The professionals, as you note, are the same as any other professional who spends their day mostly working through spreadsheets.
2. The Grand National or on-course better, who sees it as part of the cost of the occasional day out, and mostly has fun.
3. The casual gambler who bets on the football on his phone from the pub, and probably loses more money than he tells his wife he lost.
4. The poor sod who puts his whole week’s pay packet into the FOBT machines in a couple of hours, and now needs to find rent and food money.
The four are all over-generalisations of course, but the government approach to them needs to be different. 1 and 2 are not a problem, 3 can turn into a problem, and 4 is a big problem.
A couple of weekends ago we discovered another class of gambler masquerading as investor when the cryptocurrency flash crash cleaned out a few City types (and probably more in America). Although prices rebounded, because they had been heavily leveraged, their positions were automatically liquidated at the bottom so they copped all the losses and none of the recovery.
Ah yes, much of the cryptocurrency industry is naked gambling and scamming dressed up as investment, as they speed run though the last 150 years of financial services regulation.
Ironically, the crash was much worse than it otherwise would have been precisely because a bunch of gamblers with over-leveraged “investments” faced automated margin calls on the way down.
Speaking of crypto, is the insanity of NFT 'art' still a thing?
If the general public are anything like me, they haven't a clue what taxes there are on gambling, because they don't gamble. And I frequent PB!
Good morning, everybody.
I am not a big gambler, mostly a few quid on the Leicester City game each week, and at election time, and I dont know.
I think it is mostly seen as a sin tax, and discouraging gambling is like discouraging smoking, a good thing in all circumstances.
I agree that's very much the perceived (or received) wisdom. What changed my mind from that default view was fairly close acquaintance with a couple of men, in quite different walks of life, who each engaged in gambling as a profession, because they were good at it and it was the way they earned their living. Nothing remotely dark or underhand, just a job like any other.
There are several different types of gambler:
1. The professionals, as you note, are the same as any other professional who spends their day mostly working through spreadsheets.
2. The Grand National or on-course better, who sees it as part of the cost of the occasional day out, and mostly has fun.
3. The casual gambler who bets on the football on his phone from the pub, and probably loses more money than he tells his wife he lost.
4. The poor sod who puts his whole week’s pay packet into the FOBT machines in a couple of hours, and now needs to find rent and food money.
The four are all over-generalisations of course, but the government approach to them needs to be different. 1 and 2 are not a problem, 3 can turn into a problem, and 4 is a big problem.
A couple of weekends ago we discovered another class of gambler masquerading as investor when the cryptocurrency flash crash cleaned out a few City types (and probably more in America). Although prices rebounded, because they had been heavily leveraged, their positions were automatically liquidated at the bottom so they copped all the losses and none of the recovery.
Ah yes, much of the cryptocurrency industry is naked gambling and scamming dressed up as investment, as they speed run though the last 150 years of financial services regulation.
Ironically, the crash was much worse than it otherwise would have been precisely because a bunch of gamblers with over-leveraged “investments” faced automated margin calls on the way down.
Speaking of crypto, is the insanity of NFT 'art' still a thing?
It’s pretty much dead, and what’s left is mostly at a significant discount to a couple of years ago.
If the general public are anything like me, they haven't a clue what taxes there are on gambling, because they don't gamble. And I frequent PB!
Good morning, everybody.
I am not a big gambler, mostly a few quid on the Leicester City game each week, and at election time, and I dont know.
I think it is mostly seen as a sin tax, and discouraging gambling is like discouraging smoking, a good thing in all circumstances.
I agree that's very much the perceived (or received) wisdom. What changed my mind from that default view was fairly close acquaintance with a couple of men, in quite different walks of life, who each engaged in gambling as a profession, because they were good at it and it was the way they earned their living. Nothing remotely dark or underhand, just a job like any other.
There are several different types of gambler:
1. The professionals, as you note, are the same as any other professional who spends their day mostly working through spreadsheets.
2. The Grand National or on-course better, who sees it as part of the cost of the occasional day out, and mostly has fun.
3. The casual gambler who bets on the football on his phone from the pub, and probably loses more money than he tells his wife he lost.
4. The poor sod who puts his whole week’s pay packet into the FOBT machines in a couple of hours, and now needs to find rent and food money.
The four are all over-generalisations of course, but the government approach to them needs to be different. 1 and 2 are not a problem, 3 can turn into a problem, and 4 is a big problem.
A couple of weekends ago we discovered another class of gambler masquerading as investor when the cryptocurrency flash crash cleaned out a few City types (and probably more in America). Although prices rebounded, because they had been heavily leveraged, their positions were automatically liquidated at the bottom so they copped all the losses and none of the recovery.
Ah yes, much of the cryptocurrency industry is naked gambling and scamming dressed up as investment, as they speed run though the last 150 years of financial services regulation.
Ironically, the crash was much worse than it otherwise would have been precisely because a bunch of gamblers with over-leveraged “investments” faced automated margin calls on the way down.
Speaking of crypto, is the insanity of NFT 'art' still a thing?
Amusing that the NFT bubble was just a year or two before "here's an AI which can generate any image you can describe".
I hate to side with Johnson, but listening to St. Boris. I do believe he is being questioned by some idiot Labour MP with the benefit of hindsight.
School lockdowns were an imperative under the circumstances regardless of whether vulnerable children were at risk. School closures were the least worst national outcome even if some children were put in harms way.
"School lockdowns were an imperative" 🤔 Does anyone believe this ridiculous narrative anymore? 💩
"A plurality of voters" can go fuck themselves. Taxing an industry into oblivion is illogical. We are a bad country.
Now, now, we are always being told majorities are right about everything and policy should be dictated by what the people want via focus groups, elections, surveys etc.
There's a perception out there bookmakers and similar have grown fat on the proceeds from the poor punters (winners at 100/1 and 200/1 and Ascot on Saturday give that some marginal credence).
I've always been of the view the Lottery is a stealth tax on the poor - the chances of anyone winning that life-changing mount are infinitesimal (up there with either the Conservatives or Liberal Democrats forming a majority Government after the next election) yet people try twice a week plus the awful scratch cards.
Back to betting shops - they look like the only shops on many High Streets with money. They look bright, inviting and modern in contrast to much of the retail estate around them. They are open from 7.30am to 10pm every day and it seems no High Street can survive without seven or eight of them (if not more). In East Ham, we lost our Hills but still have two Ladbrokes, two BetFred, two Paddy Powers and a Jenningsbet and we aren't the wealthiest area in the world.
Perhaps there's a bit of neo-puritanism out there I don't know but as a punter I can see how it looks and we know the damage addiction to the FOBTs can cause not just to the addict but to those around them. We are already hearing the bleating from Fred Done and others and their unsubtle threats but that's how politics operates now - by threat. Propose anything and those affected threaten all sorts as a way to dissuade policy makers.
On the lottery, it is very good value if you only buy the one ticket for the draw.
For your £2
£1.06 back in prizes 50p in good causes 24p in tax (effectively good causes still) 10p to the retailer (protects your local high street) 10p to the organisers (of which 2p is their profit)
The real non distributive cost is less than 20p and for that you get a sliver of a chance at a life changing event, the dreams associated with that and a conversation piece. That seems like as good a transaction as we get in modern life to me.
The tax on the poor bit is the repeated buying of scratch cards or buying multiple tickets for the same draw.
Tax “effectively good causes”… hah!
I know a lot of people on the right think like that, but its essentially hospitals, schools, defence, law and order, paying back our debt, pensions and welfare. To me clearly good causes, but put effectively as I know that perception is not shared by some.
It’s not particularly helpful to conflate spending decisions by government - core functions and societal choices - with “good causes” which are essentially “nice to haves”
Arguably, the small scale lottery projects are extremely efficient spending.
Things like new changing rooms for the local park/field used by schools for their sports.
"A plurality of voters" can go fuck themselves. Taxing an industry into oblivion is illogical. We are a bad country.
Now, now, we are always being told majorities are right about everything and policy should be dictated by what the people want via focus groups, elections, surveys etc.
There's a perception out there bookmakers and similar have grown fat on the proceeds from the poor punters (winners at 100/1 and 200/1 and Ascot on Saturday give that some marginal credence).
I've always been of the view the Lottery is a stealth tax on the poor - the chances of anyone winning that life-changing mount are infinitesimal (up there with either the Conservatives or Liberal Democrats forming a majority Government after the next election) yet people try twice a week plus the awful scratch cards.
Back to betting shops - they look like the only shops on many High Streets with money. They look bright, inviting and modern in contrast to much of the retail estate around them. They are open from 7.30am to 10pm every day and it seems no High Street can survive without seven or eight of them (if not more). In East Ham, we lost our Hills but still have two Ladbrokes, two BetFred, two Paddy Powers and a Jenningsbet and we aren't the wealthiest area in the world.
Perhaps there's a bit of neo-puritanism out there I don't know but as a punter I can see how it looks and we know the damage addiction to the FOBTs can cause not just to the addict but to those around them. We are already hearing the bleating from Fred Done and others and their unsubtle threats but that's how politics operates now - by threat. Propose anything and those affected threaten all sorts as a way to dissuade policy makers.
On the lottery, it is very good value if you only buy the one ticket for the draw.
For your £2
£1.06 back in prizes 50p in good causes 24p in tax (effectively good causes still) 10p to the retailer (protects your local high street) 10p to the organisers (of which 2p is their profit)
The real non distributive cost is less than 20p and for that you get a sliver of a chance at a life changing event, the dreams associated with that and a conversation piece. That seems like as good a transaction as we get in modern life to me.
The tax on the poor bit is the repeated buying of scratch cards or buying multiple tickets for the same draw.
Tax “effectively good causes”… hah!
I know a lot of people on the right think like that, but its essentially hospitals, schools, defence, law and order, paying back our debt, pensions and welfare. To me clearly good causes, but put effectively as I know that perception is not shared by some.
It’s not particularly helpful to conflate spending decisions by government - core functions and societal choices - with “good causes” which are essentially “nice to haves”
Arguably, the small scale lottery projects are extremely efficient spending.
Things like new changing rooms for the local park/field used by schools for their sports.
It's not easy to get money from the National Lottery. The form is quite complex.
"A plurality of voters" can go fuck themselves. Taxing an industry into oblivion is illogical. We are a bad country.
Now, now, we are always being told majorities are right about everything and policy should be dictated by what the people want via focus groups, elections, surveys etc.
There's a perception out there bookmakers and similar have grown fat on the proceeds from the poor punters (winners at 100/1 and 200/1 and Ascot on Saturday give that some marginal credence).
I've always been of the view the Lottery is a stealth tax on the poor - the chances of anyone winning that life-changing mount are infinitesimal (up there with either the Conservatives or Liberal Democrats forming a majority Government after the next election) yet people try twice a week plus the awful scratch cards.
Back to betting shops - they look like the only shops on many High Streets with money. They look bright, inviting and modern in contrast to much of the retail estate around them. They are open from 7.30am to 10pm every day and it seems no High Street can survive without seven or eight of them (if not more). In East Ham, we lost our Hills but still have two Ladbrokes, two BetFred, two Paddy Powers and a Jenningsbet and we aren't the wealthiest area in the world.
Perhaps there's a bit of neo-puritanism out there I don't know but as a punter I can see how it looks and we know the damage addiction to the FOBTs can cause not just to the addict but to those around them. We are already hearing the bleating from Fred Done and others and their unsubtle threats but that's how politics operates now - by threat. Propose anything and those affected threaten all sorts as a way to dissuade policy makers.
On the lottery, it is very good value if you only buy the one ticket for the draw.
For your £2
£1.06 back in prizes 50p in good causes 24p in tax (effectively good causes still) 10p to the retailer (protects your local high street) 10p to the organisers (of which 2p is their profit)
The real non distributive cost is less than 20p and for that you get a sliver of a chance at a life changing event, the dreams associated with that and a conversation piece. That seems like as good a transaction as we get in modern life to me.
The tax on the poor bit is the repeated buying of scratch cards or buying multiple tickets for the same draw.
Tax “effectively good causes”… hah!
I know a lot of people on the right think like that, but its essentially hospitals, schools, defence, law and order, paying back our debt, pensions and welfare. To me clearly good causes, but put effectively as I know that perception is not shared by some.
It’s not particularly helpful to conflate spending decisions by government - core functions and societal choices - with “good causes” which are essentially “nice to haves”
To me they are the same. If a hospital has a bit extra, great, it might have a better waiting room, or one more nurse. It is a good cause.
In the context of the national lottery “good causes” has a specific meaning
Edit: and its important not to conflate them because otherwise the spending gets absorbed by the treasury and reallocated because things like sport and heritage aren’t schools’n’hospitals
There was and is, a chunk of the Labour Party that wants all Lottery money possible going straight to the Treasury.
Another day, another poor set of borrowing figures. And yet no politician wanting to confront the elephant in the room I.e. the amount of people out of work, subsidised by an ever smaller pool of workers.
Top that off with the ridiculous gamble on carbon capture, NHS improvement, making it more expensive to employ people etc, and we are doomed. No wonder people are fed up
Non gamblers don't generally mind higher taxes on someone else. Most gamblers don't have any idea how gambling tax works, and anyway regard gambling as a form of entertainment for which a price is paid, with no question of overall making profits (which will remain untaxed!); any gamblers who make big money regularly will gamble offshore.
The real question for the CoE is how to keep a decent slice of the whole industry within UK tax system by ensuring it is overall competitive with Abroadland. There is an obvious logical problem about taxing gambling anyway - it automatically affects the odds setter who need a greater margin simply to break even, which if pushed far enough destroys the economic model of legal gambling, encouraging the illegal market. A bit like fags costing £150 for 20.
It is not that simple. There are an awful lot of anti-gamblers who see high street betting shops and online casinos as blights on their communities and a menace to society. For them, raising taxes is not about raising money, it is about ending gambling. Like fags.
I think Michael Gove was talking recently about the importance of the high street to voters, the feeling that empty shops and gambling shops show country is in decline even if broader economy has a different picture
Yes it reminds me of the Luddite movement in the early 19th century protesting against the mechanisation of weaving or farmers in the mid-19th century or the protests against closing coal mines in the 1980s and 1990s - sentimental drivel about technologies whose market is fast disappearing.
It would be harmless enough, but it prevents labour and capital flowing into more productive areas and so harms productive and enterprising industries and therefore the economy as a whole.
"A plurality of voters" can go fuck themselves. Taxing an industry into oblivion is illogical. We are a bad country.
Now, now, we are always being told majorities are right about everything and policy should be dictated by what the people want via focus groups, elections, surveys etc.
There's a perception out there bookmakers and similar have grown fat on the proceeds from the poor punters (winners at 100/1 and 200/1 and Ascot on Saturday give that some marginal credence).
I've always been of the view the Lottery is a stealth tax on the poor - the chances of anyone winning that life-changing mount are infinitesimal (up there with either the Conservatives or Liberal Democrats forming a majority Government after the next election) yet people try twice a week plus the awful scratch cards.
Back to betting shops - they look like the only shops on many High Streets with money. They look bright, inviting and modern in contrast to much of the retail estate around them. They are open from 7.30am to 10pm every day and it seems no High Street can survive without seven or eight of them (if not more). In East Ham, we lost our Hills but still have two Ladbrokes, two BetFred, two Paddy Powers and a Jenningsbet and we aren't the wealthiest area in the world.
Perhaps there's a bit of neo-puritanism out there I don't know but as a punter I can see how it looks and we know the damage addiction to the FOBTs can cause not just to the addict but to those around them. We are already hearing the bleating from Fred Done and others and their unsubtle threats but that's how politics operates now - by threat. Propose anything and those affected threaten all sorts as a way to dissuade policy makers.
On the lottery, it is very good value if you only buy the one ticket for the draw.
For your £2
£1.06 back in prizes 50p in good causes 24p in tax (effectively good causes still) 10p to the retailer (protects your local high street) 10p to the organisers (of which 2p is their profit)
The real non distributive cost is less than 20p and for that you get a sliver of a chance at a life changing event, the dreams associated with that and a conversation piece. That seems like as good a transaction as we get in modern life to me.
The tax on the poor bit is the repeated buying of scratch cards or buying multiple tickets for the same draw.
Tax “effectively good causes”… hah!
I know a lot of people on the right think like that, but its essentially hospitals, schools, defence, law and order, paying back our debt, pensions and welfare. To me clearly good causes, but put effectively as I know that perception is not shared by some.
It’s not particularly helpful to conflate spending decisions by government - core functions and societal choices - with “good causes” which are essentially “nice to haves”
To me they are the same. If a hospital has a bit extra, great, it might have a better waiting room, or one more nurse. It is a good cause.
In the context of the national lottery “good causes” has a specific meaning
Edit: and its important not to conflate them because otherwise the spending gets absorbed by the treasury and reallocated because things like sport and heritage aren’t schools’n’hospitals
There was and is, a chunk of the Labour Party that wants all Lottery money possible going straight to the Treasury.
Anyone with that attitude needs to be shown a highlights reel of the 2012 Olympics.
Probably the last time the country truly came together for an event.
His observations were published in his book The Condition of the Working Class in England, a blistering, furious polemic of life in Manchester seen as the defining text of the British industrial experience.
In it he described shocking segregation. He wrote about swathes of “unmixed working-people’s quarters” stretching “like a girdle”. Beyond them were the middle bourgeoisie in their townhouses and beyond that “in remoter villas with gardens in Chorlton and Ardwick” were the upper bourgeoise, also living it up on the “breezy heights of Cheetham Hill, Broughton, and Pendleton, in free, wholesome country air”.
Many historians have taken Engels’ observations at face value and assumed this was how Manchester was, with the middle classes sheltering in their smarter houses from the poor.
But the Cambridge University historian Emily Chung, by mapping digitised census data, has uncovered a much more complicated picture.
“I wouldn’t go as far to as to say Engels was wrong,” she said. “I think what my research shows is that Engels exaggerated and took creative liberties.”
Chung’s research shows that many middle-class Mancunians did in fact live in the same buildings and streets as those in the working class.
It finds that more than 60% of buildings housing the wealthiest classes also housed unskilled labourers. In Manchester’s “slums”, more than 10% of the population was from the better-off, employed classes.
“Manchester’s wealthier classes did not confine themselves to townhouses in the city centre and suburban villas, as we’ve been led to believe,” Chung said...
Another day, another poor set of borrowing figures. And yet no politician wanting to confront the elephant in the room I.e. the amount of people out of work, subsidised by an ever smaller pool of workers.
Top that off with the ridiculous gamble on carbon capture, NHS improvement, making it more expensive to employ people etc, and we are doomed. No wonder people are fed up
Slight problem if those people have citizenship then chances are they were given it while the Tories were in power between 2010 and 2024.
Remember Labour started with a very poor hand in 2024 and this is an example of issues created previously which can never be fixed
"A plurality of voters" can go fuck themselves. Taxing an industry into oblivion is illogical. We are a bad country.
Now, now, we are always being told majorities are right about everything and policy should be dictated by what the people want via focus groups, elections, surveys etc.
There's a perception out there bookmakers and similar have grown fat on the proceeds from the poor punters (winners at 100/1 and 200/1 and Ascot on Saturday give that some marginal credence).
I've always been of the view the Lottery is a stealth tax on the poor - the chances of anyone winning that life-changing mount are infinitesimal (up there with either the Conservatives or Liberal Democrats forming a majority Government after the next election) yet people try twice a week plus the awful scratch cards.
Back to betting shops - they look like the only shops on many High Streets with money. They look bright, inviting and modern in contrast to much of the retail estate around them. They are open from 7.30am to 10pm every day and it seems no High Street can survive without seven or eight of them (if not more). In East Ham, we lost our Hills but still have two Ladbrokes, two BetFred, two Paddy Powers and a Jenningsbet and we aren't the wealthiest area in the world.
Perhaps there's a bit of neo-puritanism out there I don't know but as a punter I can see how it looks and we know the damage addiction to the FOBTs can cause not just to the addict but to those around them. We are already hearing the bleating from Fred Done and others and their unsubtle threats but that's how politics operates now - by threat. Propose anything and those affected threaten all sorts as a way to dissuade policy makers.
On the lottery, it is very good value if you only buy the one ticket for the draw.
For your £2
£1.06 back in prizes 50p in good causes 24p in tax (effectively good causes still) 10p to the retailer (protects your local high street) 10p to the organisers (of which 2p is their profit)
The real non distributive cost is less than 20p and for that you get a sliver of a chance at a life changing event, the dreams associated with that and a conversation piece. That seems like as good a transaction as we get in modern life to me.
The tax on the poor bit is the repeated buying of scratch cards or buying multiple tickets for the same draw.
Tax “effectively good causes”… hah!
I know a lot of people on the right think like that, but its essentially hospitals, schools, defence, law and order, paying back our debt, pensions and welfare. To me clearly good causes, but put effectively as I know that perception is not shared by some.
It’s not particularly helpful to conflate spending decisions by government - core functions and societal choices - with “good causes” which are essentially “nice to haves”
To me they are the same. If a hospital has a bit extra, great, it might have a better waiting room, or one more nurse. It is a good cause.
In the context of the national lottery “good causes” has a specific meaning
Edit: and its important not to conflate them because otherwise the spending gets absorbed by the treasury and reallocated because things like sport and heritage aren’t schools’n’hospitals
There was and is, a chunk of the Labour Party that wants all Lottery money possible going straight to the Treasury.
Anyone with that attitude needs to be shown a highlights reel of the 2012 Olympics.
Probably the last time the country truly came together for an event.
Nonsense. There was that time when we all applauded the nurses, when we queued to pay respec' to Her Majesty, and when we laughed at Liz Truss losing her seat. The great unifying national moments continue unabated.
If, by this, she means serious and deep planning reform (for example) then it is entirely credible. In theory. What isn't particularly credible is any pledge to actually deliver that.
With Russia unwilling to drop its demands for a Ukrainian surrender of Donbas as a precondition to a ceasefire, it starts looking doubtful that the Budapest summit between Putin and Trump will happen anytime soon, if at all. The Lavrov-Rubio preparatory meeting, which Trump said was scheduled for this week, hasn’t been agreed to by Russia and, as per Lavrov deputy Ryabkov, “requires additional preparation.”
So Putin has managed to forestall the supply of Tomahawks by promising Trump a peace summit which now isn't going to happen?
I can't decide between Trump being an idiot who is easily played by Putin, or actively malign who is cooperating with Putin to deflect pressure on him to act from the Republicans who would support Ukraine. Maybe it's a mix?
If Europe as a whole gets its act together the war can be won. And that will be easier done now than when Le Pen is running France and Farage is running Britain. Get on with it.
"A plurality of voters" can go fuck themselves. Taxing an industry into oblivion is illogical. We are a bad country.
Now, now, we are always being told majorities are right about everything and policy should be dictated by what the people want via focus groups, elections, surveys etc.
There's a perception out there bookmakers and similar have grown fat on the proceeds from the poor punters (winners at 100/1 and 200/1 and Ascot on Saturday give that some marginal credence).
I've always been of the view the Lottery is a stealth tax on the poor - the chances of anyone winning that life-changing mount are infinitesimal (up there with either the Conservatives or Liberal Democrats forming a majority Government after the next election) yet people try twice a week plus the awful scratch cards.
Back to betting shops - they look like the only shops on many High Streets with money. They look bright, inviting and modern in contrast to much of the retail estate around them. They are open from 7.30am to 10pm every day and it seems no High Street can survive without seven or eight of them (if not more). In East Ham, we lost our Hills but still have two Ladbrokes, two BetFred, two Paddy Powers and a Jenningsbet and we aren't the wealthiest area in the world.
Perhaps there's a bit of neo-puritanism out there I don't know but as a punter I can see how it looks and we know the damage addiction to the FOBTs can cause not just to the addict but to those around them. We are already hearing the bleating from Fred Done and others and their unsubtle threats but that's how politics operates now - by threat. Propose anything and those affected threaten all sorts as a way to dissuade policy makers.
On the lottery, it is very good value if you only buy the one ticket for the draw.
For your £2
£1.06 back in prizes 50p in good causes 24p in tax (effectively good causes still) 10p to the retailer (protects your local high street) 10p to the organisers (of which 2p is their profit)
The real non distributive cost is less than 20p and for that you get a sliver of a chance at a life changing event, the dreams associated with that and a conversation piece. That seems like as good a transaction as we get in modern life to me.
The tax on the poor bit is the repeated buying of scratch cards or buying multiple tickets for the same draw.
Tax “effectively good causes”… hah!
I know a lot of people on the right think like that, but its essentially hospitals, schools, defence, law and order, paying back our debt, pensions and welfare. To me clearly good causes, but put effectively as I know that perception is not shared by some.
It’s not particularly helpful to conflate spending decisions by government - core functions and societal choices - with “good causes” which are essentially “nice to haves”
To me they are the same. If a hospital has a bit extra, great, it might have a better waiting room, or one more nurse. It is a good cause.
In the context of the national lottery “good causes” has a specific meaning
Edit: and its important not to conflate them because otherwise the spending gets absorbed by the treasury and reallocated because things like sport and heritage aren’t schools’n’hospitals
I wish my words translated into policy as you suggest, the world would be a better place.
I had someone explicitly deny to me last week that she could influence the US government… although I was teasing her about it…
Johnson isn't doing too badly, but he does look like absolute shite.
You'd think Carrie would have told him to get his hair cut, at least.
And it's already raining in Colombo.
You get the strong impression she keeps slipping him twenty quid to go to the barbers, and he keeps slipping into Majestic Wines next door to spend it.
I hate to side with Johnson, but listening to St. Boris. I do believe he is being questioned by some idiot Labour MP with the benefit of hindsight.
School lockdowns were an imperative under the circumstances regardless of whether vulnerable children were at risk. School closures were the least worst national outcome even if some children were put in harms way.
"School lockdowns were an imperative" 🤔 Does anyone believe this ridiculous narrative anymore? 💩
You have the benefit of hindsight. Johnson did not.
Johnson isn't doing too badly, but he does look like absolute shite.
You'd think Carrie would have told him to get his hair cut, at least.
And it's already raining in Colombo.
You get the strong impression she keeps slipping him twenty quid to go to the barbers, and he keeps slipping into Majestic Wines next door to spend it.
The shirt hanging out is also in keeping with the comedic Benny Hill character. He smashed the comedy look out of the park.
Cricket's Women's World Cup latest match about to start in Colombo. At least it doesn't seem to be raining yet! Whose bright idea (joining the complainers club) was it to play so many matches there is the rainy season?
Unfortunately the people running/ruining global sport these days are much more concerned with money and politics to care about the actual sport.
If wealthy entities and influential politicians decide that their concerns and requirements are preeminent then they choose the timing regardless of the damage to the sport or players.
With football you had the travesty of the winter World Cup in Qatar running a football calendar that had worked well forever, you have the next one where matches will be taking place in conditions that are dangerous for the footballers due to heat because of timings and preferences from the US and then we will have another winter World Cup in Saudi. Now a cynical person might look at Infantino and his glee at being at Trump fests - even the Gaza summit in Egypt and even the clearly scurrilous allegations that he is now a billionaire in his own right.
Then you have rugby where there is set to be a breakaway league which will deny international teams from picking certain players for their own preservation of leagues and unions. You have players who played international tours and Lions over the summer who are just starting to be available for clubs.
Sport is just a product for the administrators now and as long as the sponsorship and gravy train keeps running their is no interest for them to stop ruining it.
With Russia unwilling to drop its demands for a Ukrainian surrender of Donbas as a precondition to a ceasefire, it starts looking doubtful that the Budapest summit between Putin and Trump will happen anytime soon, if at all. The Lavrov-Rubio preparatory meeting, which Trump said was scheduled for this week, hasn’t been agreed to by Russia and, as per Lavrov deputy Ryabkov, “requires additional preparation.”
So Putin has managed to forestall the supply of Tomahawks by promising Trump a peace summit which now isn't going to happen?
I can't decide between Trump being an idiot who is easily played by Putin, or actively malign who is cooperating with Putin to deflect pressure on him to act from the Republicans who would support Ukraine. Maybe it's a mix?
If Europe as a whole gets its act together the war can be won. And that will be easier done now than when Le Pen is running France and Farage is running Britain. Get on with it.
It doesn’t have to be big ticket items - I saw this cool thing in the Sun this morning which demonstrated that a bit of ingenuity can be as good as a lot of expensive kit, basically the British Space force engineers cobbled together launchers made up of chassis from APCs and missile rails from obsolete jets like the Jaguar and Tornado and have supplied the relevant missiles and created a successful mobile missile platform in a few months.
With Russia unwilling to drop its demands for a Ukrainian surrender of Donbas as a precondition to a ceasefire, it starts looking doubtful that the Budapest summit between Putin and Trump will happen anytime soon, if at all. The Lavrov-Rubio preparatory meeting, which Trump said was scheduled for this week, hasn’t been agreed to by Russia and, as per Lavrov deputy Ryabkov, “requires additional preparation.”
So Putin has managed to forestall the supply of Tomahawks by promising Trump a peace summit which now isn't going to happen?
I can't decide between Trump being an idiot who is easily played by Putin, or actively malign who is cooperating with Putin to deflect pressure on him to act from the Republicans who would support Ukraine. Maybe it's a mix?
If Europe as a whole gets its act together the war can be won. And that will be easier done now than when Le Pen is running France and Farage is running Britain. Get on with it.
It doesn’t have to be big ticket items - I saw this cool thing in the Sun this morning which demonstrated that a bit of ingenuity can be as good as a lot of expensive kit, basically the British Space force engineers cobbled together launchers made up of chassis from APCs and missile rails from obsolete jets like the Jaguar and Tornado and have supplied the relevant missiles and created a successful mobile missile platform in a few months.
There’s plenty of ingenuity going on in Ukraine, and not all of it makes the papers. Lots of obsolete weaponry being repurposed, lots of improvised weapons like the drones that can drop artillery shells. Fun and useful projects for small teams of engineers, rather than the multi-year boondoggles that are modern military procurement. War does that.
Johnson isn't doing too badly, but he does look like absolute shite.
You'd think Carrie would have told him to get his hair cut, at least.
And it's already raining in Colombo.
You get the strong impression she keeps slipping him twenty quid to go to the barbers, and he keeps slipping into Majestic Wines next door to spend it.
Johnson isn't doing too badly, but he does look like absolute shite.
You'd think Carrie would have told him to get his hair cut, at least.
And it's already raining in Colombo.
You get the strong impression she keeps slipping him twenty quid to go to the barbers, and he keeps slipping into Majestic Wines next door to spend it.
As the old joke goes, Boris Johnson spends £520 on his haircut.
£20 to have his hair cut.
Then £500 to pay a farmer to drag him through some hedgerows for an hour.
With Russia unwilling to drop its demands for a Ukrainian surrender of Donbas as a precondition to a ceasefire, it starts looking doubtful that the Budapest summit between Putin and Trump will happen anytime soon, if at all. The Lavrov-Rubio preparatory meeting, which Trump said was scheduled for this week, hasn’t been agreed to by Russia and, as per Lavrov deputy Ryabkov, “requires additional preparation.”
So Putin has managed to forestall the supply of Tomahawks by promising Trump a peace summit which now isn't going to happen?
I can't decide between Trump being an idiot who is easily played by Putin, or actively malign who is cooperating with Putin to deflect pressure on him to act from the Republicans who would support Ukraine. Maybe it's a mix?
If Europe as a whole gets its act together the war can be won. And that will be easier done now than when Le Pen is running France and Farage is running Britain. Get on with it.
It doesn’t have to be big ticket items - I saw this cool thing in the Sun this morning which demonstrated that a bit of ingenuity can be as good as a lot of expensive kit, basically the British Space force engineers cobbled together launchers made up of chassis from APCs and missile rails from obsolete jets like the Jaguar and Tornado and have supplied the relevant missiles and created a successful mobile missile platform in a few months.
There’s been lots of that going on. To the fury of big ticket contractors who see such expedients as stopping them getting proper programs at a proper price. Plus creating history that such things can be cheap.
Another day, another poor set of borrowing figures. And yet no politician wanting to confront the elephant in the room I.e. the amount of people out of work, subsidised by an ever smaller pool of workers.
Top that off with the ridiculous gamble on carbon capture, NHS improvement, making it more expensive to employ people etc, and we are doomed. No wonder people are fed up
Slight problem if those people have citizenship then chances are they were given it while the Tories were in power between 2010 and 2024.
Remember Labour started with a very poor hand in 2024 and this is an example of issues created previously which can never be fixed
There are many things to criticise the previous government for but Burngreave became a taxpayer subsidised immigrant ghetto long before 2010.
His observations were published in his book The Condition of the Working Class in England, a blistering, furious polemic of life in Manchester seen as the defining text of the British industrial experience.
In it he described shocking segregation. He wrote about swathes of “unmixed working-people’s quarters” stretching “like a girdle”. Beyond them were the middle bourgeoisie in their townhouses and beyond that “in remoter villas with gardens in Chorlton and Ardwick” were the upper bourgeoise, also living it up on the “breezy heights of Cheetham Hill, Broughton, and Pendleton, in free, wholesome country air”.
Many historians have taken Engels’ observations at face value and assumed this was how Manchester was, with the middle classes sheltering in their smarter houses from the poor.
But the Cambridge University historian Emily Chung, by mapping digitised census data, has uncovered a much more complicated picture.
“I wouldn’t go as far to as to say Engels was wrong,” she said. “I think what my research shows is that Engels exaggerated and took creative liberties.”
Chung’s research shows that many middle-class Mancunians did in fact live in the same buildings and streets as those in the working class.
It finds that more than 60% of buildings housing the wealthiest classes also housed unskilled labourers. In Manchester’s “slums”, more than 10% of the population was from the better-off, employed classes.
“Manchester’s wealthier classes did not confine themselves to townhouses in the city centre and suburban villas, as we’ve been led to believe,” Chung said...
Elizabeth Gaskell's first novel Mary Barton, contemporary with Engels' magnum opus, gives a similar vivid and grim portayal of Manchester in the 1840s.
With Russia unwilling to drop its demands for a Ukrainian surrender of Donbas as a precondition to a ceasefire, it starts looking doubtful that the Budapest summit between Putin and Trump will happen anytime soon, if at all. The Lavrov-Rubio preparatory meeting, which Trump said was scheduled for this week, hasn’t been agreed to by Russia and, as per Lavrov deputy Ryabkov, “requires additional preparation.”
So Putin has managed to forestall the supply of Tomahawks by promising Trump a peace summit which now isn't going to happen?
I can't decide between Trump being an idiot who is easily played by Putin, or actively malign who is cooperating with Putin to deflect pressure on him to act from the Republicans who would support Ukraine. Maybe it's a mix?
If Europe as a whole gets its act together the war can be won. And that will be easier done now than when Le Pen is running France and Farage is running Britain. Get on with it.
It doesn’t have to be big ticket items - I saw this cool thing in the Sun this morning which demonstrated that a bit of ingenuity can be as good as a lot of expensive kit, basically the British Space force engineers cobbled together launchers made up of chassis from APCs and missile rails from obsolete jets like the Jaguar and Tornado and have supplied the relevant missiles and created a successful mobile missile platform in a few months.
There’s been lots of that going on. To the fury of big ticket contractors who see such expedients as stopping them getting proper programs at a proper price. Plus creating history that such things can be cheap.
How would today’s contractors have coped in WWII?
They still haven’t clicked that wartime procurement looks very different from peacetime procurement.
When there’s peace, you maintain the industrial capability and push the future technology, but when there’s a war on you just want shedloads of last year’s weapons and want them yesterday.
His observations were published in his book The Condition of the Working Class in England, a blistering, furious polemic of life in Manchester seen as the defining text of the British industrial experience.
In it he described shocking segregation. He wrote about swathes of “unmixed working-people’s quarters” stretching “like a girdle”. Beyond them were the middle bourgeoisie in their townhouses and beyond that “in remoter villas with gardens in Chorlton and Ardwick” were the upper bourgeoise, also living it up on the “breezy heights of Cheetham Hill, Broughton, and Pendleton, in free, wholesome country air”.
Many historians have taken Engels’ observations at face value and assumed this was how Manchester was, with the middle classes sheltering in their smarter houses from the poor.
But the Cambridge University historian Emily Chung, by mapping digitised census data, has uncovered a much more complicated picture.
“I wouldn’t go as far to as to say Engels was wrong,” she said. “I think what my research shows is that Engels exaggerated and took creative liberties.”
Chung’s research shows that many middle-class Mancunians did in fact live in the same buildings and streets as those in the working class.
It finds that more than 60% of buildings housing the wealthiest classes also housed unskilled labourers. In Manchester’s “slums”, more than 10% of the population was from the better-off, employed classes.
“Manchester’s wealthier classes did not confine themselves to townhouses in the city centre and suburban villas, as we’ve been led to believe,” Chung said...
Another article in the Guardianthis morning where emotion has obscured fact or tried to speculate to create a potentially made up narrative.
Instead of simply celebrating a rare thing, a painting of a black military bandsman who was at Waterloo, there is a load of guesswork and extrapolation to create a better story instead of letting the story be itself.
“There’s this misconception that there weren’t any Black soldiers at Waterloo,” said the museum’s art curator, Anna Lavelle.
Really? I’ve never heard anyone suggest this. Anyone who has a passing interest in Waterloo and the Napoleonic Wars would know that most of the sides involved were empires and would have African, Caribbean, South American, Arab and Berber men in their armies to various extents and in various roles.
“He was willing to get hurt and put his life at risk for other people in his regiment.”
Well, duh, part of being in the regiment in a war/battle regardless of colour.
“There were about 20 soldiers who were looking after the officers’ baggage, but James was the only one noted to have been severely wounded,” she said. “He obviously put up a really good fight – a spirited defence – which I think says a lot about his character and his sense of camaraderie.”
How do they know he was severely wounded because he obviously put up a really good fight? How do they know the others weren’t severely wounded because they were better fighters, or that he was severely wounded because he was caught off guard? How can they just assume this?
Officers, she said, must also have felt they could trust James with their belongings, probably containing money, jewellery and mess silver. “I think he was brave foremost, and honourable as well.”
Again, he was a bandsman so it’s not surprising he was part of the group looking after the officers baggage and valuables.
Yes, someone decided he was worthy of this portrait being made, it could have been organised as a mark of his bravery six years later, or it could be because he was a curio.
There was no need to create some mythology around the guy, the fact that he was a rare black man in the British army who was at Waterloo and had a great portrait painted is of enough interest without the guesswork to push some point.
With Russia unwilling to drop its demands for a Ukrainian surrender of Donbas as a precondition to a ceasefire, it starts looking doubtful that the Budapest summit between Putin and Trump will happen anytime soon, if at all. The Lavrov-Rubio preparatory meeting, which Trump said was scheduled for this week, hasn’t been agreed to by Russia and, as per Lavrov deputy Ryabkov, “requires additional preparation.”
So Putin has managed to forestall the supply of Tomahawks by promising Trump a peace summit which now isn't going to happen?
I can't decide between Trump being an idiot who is easily played by Putin, or actively malign who is cooperating with Putin to deflect pressure on him to act from the Republicans who would support Ukraine. Maybe it's a mix?
If Europe as a whole gets its act together the war can be won. And that will be easier done now than when Le Pen is running France and Farage is running Britain. Get on with it.
It doesn’t have to be big ticket items - I saw this cool thing in the Sun this morning which demonstrated that a bit of ingenuity can be as good as a lot of expensive kit, basically the British Space force engineers cobbled together launchers made up of chassis from APCs and missile rails from obsolete jets like the Jaguar and Tornado and have supplied the relevant missiles and created a successful mobile missile platform in a few months.
It needs to be lots of different things, at scale, quickly.
The important thing is that there has to be a strategy to win, and there has to be follow through to do what is required to achieve victory.
At the moment European strategy is still predicated on the belief that, if we simply make the war too hard for Putin, he will give up. But he isn't cooperating with that.
Putin's strategy is that if he can just keep himself in the fight then political change in the West will see Ukraine abandoned. That strategy is working. Trump has stopped US support. Fico's victory in Slovakia ended their support. Looks like similar following the recent Czech election. Putin can look forward to other countries following the same path.
So if we want to avoid a Russian victory we have to aim to win. We have to give Ukraine the means to destroy the Russian oil industry, to destroy its armaments industry and its logistics. The key ingredient is long-range strike capability in large quantities.
With Russia unwilling to drop its demands for a Ukrainian surrender of Donbas as a precondition to a ceasefire, it starts looking doubtful that the Budapest summit between Putin and Trump will happen anytime soon, if at all. The Lavrov-Rubio preparatory meeting, which Trump said was scheduled for this week, hasn’t been agreed to by Russia and, as per Lavrov deputy Ryabkov, “requires additional preparation.”
So Putin has managed to forestall the supply of Tomahawks by promising Trump a peace summit which now isn't going to happen?
I can't decide between Trump being an idiot who is easily played by Putin, or actively malign who is cooperating with Putin to deflect pressure on him to act from the Republicans who would support Ukraine. Maybe it's a mix?
If Europe as a whole gets its act together the war can be won. And that will be easier done now than when Le Pen is running France and Farage is running Britain. Get on with it.
It doesn’t have to be big ticket items - I saw this cool thing in the Sun this morning which demonstrated that a bit of ingenuity can be as good as a lot of expensive kit, basically the British Space force engineers cobbled together launchers made up of chassis from APCs and missile rails from obsolete jets like the Jaguar and Tornado and have supplied the relevant missiles and created a successful mobile missile platform in a few months.
There’s been lots of that going on. To the fury of big ticket contractors who see such expedients as stopping them getting proper programs at a proper price. Plus creating history that such things can be cheap.
How would today’s contractors have coped in WWII?
They still haven’t clicked that wartime procurement looks very different from peacetime procurement.
When there’s peace, you maintain the industrial capability and push the future technology, but when there’s a war on you just want shedloads of last year’s weapons and want them yesterday.
Air Marshall Harris suggested that he could take 12 months off the war, if he was allowed to shoot a few hundred civil servants and senior management in the aircraft industry.
Highlights
- Harris personally authorised, against the wish of officials, an improved gun mounting for the Hampden. Told the manufacturers of the mountings he would be personally be liable, financially. - The System telling him that increasing the size of the Lancaster escape hatch was impossible. Even for next years production. - The continued production of the Stirling - the Rose turret saga - Etc
Johnson isn't doing too badly, but he does look like absolute shite.
You'd think Carrie would have told him to get his hair cut, at least.
And it's already raining in Colombo.
You get the strong impression she keeps slipping him twenty quid to go to the barbers, and he keeps slipping into Majestic Wines next door to spend it.
As the old joke goes, Boris Johnson spends £520 on his haircut.
£20 to have his hair cut.
Then £500 to pay a farmer to drag him through some hedgerows for an hour.
That reminds me of school where we would pop into “house bank” after lunch where we would tell the housemaster we wanted £30 for a haircut, he would put that in a ledger that was added to our parents’s bills at the end of term, give us the cash and we would go to a cheap barber for a £5 and spend the rest on pints allowing us to keep our bank accounts flush without the inconvenience of using them towards fun when not necessary.
Our housemaster must have been very pleased that the local salons were doing so well and that we cared enough about our smart appearance to have a haircut every couple of weeks.
Shoes would also be resoled at great expense on other weeks amongst other wheezes.
With Russia unwilling to drop its demands for a Ukrainian surrender of Donbas as a precondition to a ceasefire, it starts looking doubtful that the Budapest summit between Putin and Trump will happen anytime soon, if at all. The Lavrov-Rubio preparatory meeting, which Trump said was scheduled for this week, hasn’t been agreed to by Russia and, as per Lavrov deputy Ryabkov, “requires additional preparation.”
So Putin has managed to forestall the supply of Tomahawks by promising Trump a peace summit which now isn't going to happen?
I can't decide between Trump being an idiot who is easily played by Putin, or actively malign who is cooperating with Putin to deflect pressure on him to act from the Republicans who would support Ukraine. Maybe it's a mix?
If Europe as a whole gets its act together the war can be won. And that will be easier done now than when Le Pen is running France and Farage is running Britain. Get on with it.
It doesn’t have to be big ticket items - I saw this cool thing in the Sun this morning which demonstrated that a bit of ingenuity can be as good as a lot of expensive kit, basically the British Space force engineers cobbled together launchers made up of chassis from APCs and missile rails from obsolete jets like the Jaguar and Tornado and have supplied the relevant missiles and created a successful mobile missile platform in a few months.
There’s been lots of that going on. To the fury of big ticket contractors who see such expedients as stopping them getting proper programs at a proper price. Plus creating history that such things can be cheap.
How would today’s contractors have coped in WWII?
They still haven’t clicked that wartime procurement looks very different from peacetime procurement.
When there’s peace, you maintain the industrial capability and push the future technology, but when there’s a war on you just want shedloads of last year’s weapons and want them yesterday.
That might not be true. There was very rapid technological advancement in weaponry (and tactics) in both world wars. To take one example, we went from mark one Spitfires in the Battle of Britain to mark nine over Normandy. You are right that production matters but on the allied side at least, it was turning over much civilian production to military needs that made the difference, especially but not only in the United States. We had shadow factories; the Soviets relocated their arms manufacturers behind the Urals out of Nazi reach.
With Russia unwilling to drop its demands for a Ukrainian surrender of Donbas as a precondition to a ceasefire, it starts looking doubtful that the Budapest summit between Putin and Trump will happen anytime soon, if at all. The Lavrov-Rubio preparatory meeting, which Trump said was scheduled for this week, hasn’t been agreed to by Russia and, as per Lavrov deputy Ryabkov, “requires additional preparation.”
So Putin has managed to forestall the supply of Tomahawks by promising Trump a peace summit which now isn't going to happen?
I can't decide between Trump being an idiot who is easily played by Putin, or actively malign who is cooperating with Putin to deflect pressure on him to act from the Republicans who would support Ukraine. Maybe it's a mix?
If Europe as a whole gets its act together the war can be won. And that will be easier done now than when Le Pen is running France and Farage is running Britain. Get on with it.
It doesn’t have to be big ticket items - I saw this cool thing in the Sun this morning which demonstrated that a bit of ingenuity can be as good as a lot of expensive kit, basically the British Space force engineers cobbled together launchers made up of chassis from APCs and missile rails from obsolete jets like the Jaguar and Tornado and have supplied the relevant missiles and created a successful mobile missile platform in a few months.
There’s been lots of that going on. To the fury of big ticket contractors who see such expedients as stopping them getting proper programs at a proper price. Plus creating history that such things can be cheap.
How would today’s contractors have coped in WWII?
They still haven’t clicked that wartime procurement looks very different from peacetime procurement.
When there’s peace, you maintain the industrial capability and push the future technology, but when there’s a war on you just want shedloads of last year’s weapons and want them yesterday.
That might not be true. There was very rapid technological advancement in weaponry (and tactics) in both world wars. To take one example, we went from mark one Spitfires in the Battle of Britain to mark nine over Normandy. You are right that production matters but on the allied side at least, it was turning over much civilian production to military needs that made the difference, especially but not only in the United States. We had shadow factories; the Soviets relocated their arms manufacturers behind the Urals out of Nazi reach.
It's a mix. War clarifies what actually works and what you want lots more of, and where you have a capability gap that needs filling with something new - as with all the many drone/anti-drone developments in this war, and more recently with Ukraine's progress on long-range capabilities.
Johnson isn't doing too badly, but he does look like absolute shite.
You'd think Carrie would have told him to get his hair cut, at least.
And it's already raining in Colombo.
You get the strong impression she keeps slipping him twenty quid to go to the barbers, and he keeps slipping into Majestic Wines next door to spend it.
As the old joke goes, Boris Johnson spends £520 on his haircut.
£20 to have his hair cut.
Then £500 to pay a farmer to drag him through some hedgerows for an hour.
That reminds me of school where we would pop into “house bank” after lunch where we would tell the housemaster we wanted £30 for a haircut, he would put that in a ledger that was added to our parents’s bills at the end of term, give us the cash and we would go to a cheap barber for a £5 and spend the rest on pints allowing us to keep our bank accounts flush without the inconvenience of using them towards fun when not necessary.
Our housemaster must have been very pleased that the local salons were doing so well and that we cared enough about our smart appearance to have a haircut every couple of weeks.
Shoes would also be resoled at great expense on other weeks amongst other wheezes.
I wonder how much the housemaster knew! Quite a lot, I expect!
With Russia unwilling to drop its demands for a Ukrainian surrender of Donbas as a precondition to a ceasefire, it starts looking doubtful that the Budapest summit between Putin and Trump will happen anytime soon, if at all. The Lavrov-Rubio preparatory meeting, which Trump said was scheduled for this week, hasn’t been agreed to by Russia and, as per Lavrov deputy Ryabkov, “requires additional preparation.”
So Putin has managed to forestall the supply of Tomahawks by promising Trump a peace summit which now isn't going to happen?
I can't decide between Trump being an idiot who is easily played by Putin, or actively malign who is cooperating with Putin to deflect pressure on him to act from the Republicans who would support Ukraine. Maybe it's a mix?
If Europe as a whole gets its act together the war can be won. And that will be easier done now than when Le Pen is running France and Farage is running Britain. Get on with it.
Is there any sense in Trump's suggestion that a Putin-Trump tunnel be built from Siberia to Alaska?
With Russia unwilling to drop its demands for a Ukrainian surrender of Donbas as a precondition to a ceasefire, it starts looking doubtful that the Budapest summit between Putin and Trump will happen anytime soon, if at all. The Lavrov-Rubio preparatory meeting, which Trump said was scheduled for this week, hasn’t been agreed to by Russia and, as per Lavrov deputy Ryabkov, “requires additional preparation.”
So Putin has managed to forestall the supply of Tomahawks by promising Trump a peace summit which now isn't going to happen?
I can't decide between Trump being an idiot who is easily played by Putin, or actively malign who is cooperating with Putin to deflect pressure on him to act from the Republicans who would support Ukraine. Maybe it's a mix?
If Europe as a whole gets its act together the war can be won. And that will be easier done now than when Le Pen is running France and Farage is running Britain. Get on with it.
It doesn’t have to be big ticket items - I saw this cool thing in the Sun this morning which demonstrated that a bit of ingenuity can be as good as a lot of expensive kit, basically the British Space force engineers cobbled together launchers made up of chassis from APCs and missile rails from obsolete jets like the Jaguar and Tornado and have supplied the relevant missiles and created a successful mobile missile platform in a few months.
There’s been lots of that going on. To the fury of big ticket contractors who see such expedients as stopping them getting proper programs at a proper price. Plus creating history that such things can be cheap.
How would today’s contractors have coped in WWII?
They still haven’t clicked that wartime procurement looks very different from peacetime procurement.
When there’s peace, you maintain the industrial capability and push the future technology, but when there’s a war on you just want shedloads of last year’s weapons and want them yesterday.
Air Marshall Harris suggested that he could take 12 months off the war, if he was allowed to shoot a few hundred civil servants and senior management in the aircraft industry.
Highlights
- Harris personally authorised, against the wish of officials, an improved gun mounting for the Hampden. Told the manufacturers of the mountings he would be personally be liable, financially. - The System telling him that increasing the size of the Lancaster escape hatch was impossible. Even for next years production. - The continued production of the Stirling - the Rose turret saga - Etc
We could probably have knocked a year off the war by sacking Harris. The area bombing campaign, whatever you think of its morality, was ludicrously ineffective until better navigation, first by onboard radar and then by properly using onboard radar, meant bombs could be dropped within 50 yards of the target rather than within five miles.
It might also have freed Lancasters (for their range, not capacity) for the Battle of the Atlantic.
ETA it would also have saved British lives. Directly, aircrew had a 50 per cent death rate per tour. Indirectly, bombing German arms factories rather than French farmers' fields would have starved Nazis of weapons to shoot back.
With Russia unwilling to drop its demands for a Ukrainian surrender of Donbas as a precondition to a ceasefire, it starts looking doubtful that the Budapest summit between Putin and Trump will happen anytime soon, if at all. The Lavrov-Rubio preparatory meeting, which Trump said was scheduled for this week, hasn’t been agreed to by Russia and, as per Lavrov deputy Ryabkov, “requires additional preparation.”
So Putin has managed to forestall the supply of Tomahawks by promising Trump a peace summit which now isn't going to happen?
I can't decide between Trump being an idiot who is easily played by Putin, or actively malign who is cooperating with Putin to deflect pressure on him to act from the Republicans who would support Ukraine. Maybe it's a mix?
If Europe as a whole gets its act together the war can be won. And that will be easier done now than when Le Pen is running France and Farage is running Britain. Get on with it.
Is there any sense in Trump's suggestion that a Putin-Trump tunnel be built from Siberia to Alaska?
It sounds ... far fetched.
The sense is that it is precisely the sort of grandiose idea that Trump is attracted to, like a toddler distracted by a stuffed toy.
With Russia unwilling to drop its demands for a Ukrainian surrender of Donbas as a precondition to a ceasefire, it starts looking doubtful that the Budapest summit between Putin and Trump will happen anytime soon, if at all. The Lavrov-Rubio preparatory meeting, which Trump said was scheduled for this week, hasn’t been agreed to by Russia and, as per Lavrov deputy Ryabkov, “requires additional preparation.”
So Putin has managed to forestall the supply of Tomahawks by promising Trump a peace summit which now isn't going to happen?
I can't decide between Trump being an idiot who is easily played by Putin, or actively malign who is cooperating with Putin to deflect pressure on him to act from the Republicans who would support Ukraine. Maybe it's a mix?
If Europe as a whole gets its act together the war can be won. And that will be easier done now than when Le Pen is running France and Farage is running Britain. Get on with it.
Is there any sense in Trump's suggestion that a Putin-Trump tunnel be built from Siberia to Alaska?
It sounds ... far fetched.
The sense is that it is precisely the sort of grandiose idea that Trump is attracted to, like a toddler distracted by a stuffed toy.
It’s got about as much economic value as Bozo’s tunnel to Northern Ireland.
I won’t criticize Boris Island as that is how other counties have solved their were the f do we sensible put our airport question
Johnson isn't doing too badly, but he does look like absolute shite.
You'd think Carrie would have told him to get his hair cut, at least.
And it's already raining in Colombo.
You get the strong impression she keeps slipping him twenty quid to go to the barbers, and he keeps slipping into Majestic Wines next door to spend it.
As the old joke goes, Boris Johnson spends £520 on his haircut.
£20 to have his hair cut.
Then £500 to pay a farmer to drag him through some hedgerows for an hour.
That reminds me of school where we would pop into “house bank” after lunch where we would tell the housemaster we wanted £30 for a haircut, he would put that in a ledger that was added to our parents’s bills at the end of term, give us the cash and we would go to a cheap barber for a £5 and spend the rest on pints allowing us to keep our bank accounts flush without the inconvenience of using them towards fun when not necessary.
Our housemaster must have been very pleased that the local salons were doing so well and that we cared enough about our smart appearance to have a haircut every couple of weeks.
Shoes would also be resoled at great expense on other weeks amongst other wheezes.
With Russia unwilling to drop its demands for a Ukrainian surrender of Donbas as a precondition to a ceasefire, it starts looking doubtful that the Budapest summit between Putin and Trump will happen anytime soon, if at all. The Lavrov-Rubio preparatory meeting, which Trump said was scheduled for this week, hasn’t been agreed to by Russia and, as per Lavrov deputy Ryabkov, “requires additional preparation.”
So Putin has managed to forestall the supply of Tomahawks by promising Trump a peace summit which now isn't going to happen?
I can't decide between Trump being an idiot who is easily played by Putin, or actively malign who is cooperating with Putin to deflect pressure on him to act from the Republicans who would support Ukraine. Maybe it's a mix?
If Europe as a whole gets its act together the war can be won. And that will be easier done now than when Le Pen is running France and Farage is running Britain. Get on with it.
It doesn’t have to be big ticket items - I saw this cool thing in the Sun this morning which demonstrated that a bit of ingenuity can be as good as a lot of expensive kit, basically the British Space force engineers cobbled together launchers made up of chassis from APCs and missile rails from obsolete jets like the Jaguar and Tornado and have supplied the relevant missiles and created a successful mobile missile platform in a few months.
There’s been lots of that going on. To the fury of big ticket contractors who see such expedients as stopping them getting proper programs at a proper price. Plus creating history that such things can be cheap.
How would today’s contractors have coped in WWII?
They still haven’t clicked that wartime procurement looks very different from peacetime procurement.
When there’s peace, you maintain the industrial capability and push the future technology, but when there’s a war on you just want shedloads of last year’s weapons and want them yesterday.
Air Marshall Harris suggested that he could take 12 months off the war, if he was allowed to shoot a few hundred civil servants and senior management in the aircraft industry.
Highlights
- Harris personally authorised, against the wish of officials, an improved gun mounting for the Hampden. Told the manufacturers of the mountings he would be personally be liable, financially. - The System telling him that increasing the size of the Lancaster escape hatch was impossible. Even for next years production. - The continued production of the Stirling - the Rose turret saga - Etc
We could probably have knocked a year off the war by sacking Harris. The area bombing campaign, whatever you think of its morality, was ludicrously ineffective until better navigation, first by onboard radar and then by properly using onboard radar, meant bombs could be dropped within 50 yards of the target rather than within five miles.
It might also have freed Lancasters (for their range, not capacity) for the Battle of the Atlantic.
ETA it would also have saved British lives. Directly, aircrew had a 50 per cent death rate per tour. Indirectly, bombing German arms factories rather than French farmers' fields would have starved Nazis of weapons to shoot back.
Is this the case that they wanted to do something - now that something was utterly ineffective but you can see why they may want to do something pointless so they are seen to do something
Another day, another poor set of borrowing figures. And yet no politician wanting to confront the elephant in the room I.e. the amount of people out of work, subsidised by an ever smaller pool of workers.
Top that off with the ridiculous gamble on carbon capture, NHS improvement, making it more expensive to employ people etc, and we are doomed. No wonder people are fed up
Slight problem if those people have citizenship then chances are they were given it while the Tories were in power between 2010 and 2024.
Remember Labour started with a very poor hand in 2024 and this is an example of issues created previously which can never be fixed
There are many things to criticise the previous government for but Burngreave became a taxpayer subsidised immigrant ghetto long before 2010.
I work in the (what's left !) of the industrial area there. Behold what we once had:
With Russia unwilling to drop its demands for a Ukrainian surrender of Donbas as a precondition to a ceasefire, it starts looking doubtful that the Budapest summit between Putin and Trump will happen anytime soon, if at all. The Lavrov-Rubio preparatory meeting, which Trump said was scheduled for this week, hasn’t been agreed to by Russia and, as per Lavrov deputy Ryabkov, “requires additional preparation.”
So Putin has managed to forestall the supply of Tomahawks by promising Trump a peace summit which now isn't going to happen?
I can't decide between Trump being an idiot who is easily played by Putin, or actively malign who is cooperating with Putin to deflect pressure on him to act from the Republicans who would support Ukraine. Maybe it's a mix?
If Europe as a whole gets its act together the war can be won. And that will be easier done now than when Le Pen is running France and Farage is running Britain. Get on with it.
It doesn’t have to be big ticket items - I saw this cool thing in the Sun this morning which demonstrated that a bit of ingenuity can be as good as a lot of expensive kit, basically the British Space force engineers cobbled together launchers made up of chassis from APCs and missile rails from obsolete jets like the Jaguar and Tornado and have supplied the relevant missiles and created a successful mobile missile platform in a few months.
There’s been lots of that going on. To the fury of big ticket contractors who see such expedients as stopping them getting proper programs at a proper price. Plus creating history that such things can be cheap.
How would today’s contractors have coped in WWII?
They still haven’t clicked that wartime procurement looks very different from peacetime procurement.
When there’s peace, you maintain the industrial capability and push the future technology, but when there’s a war on you just want shedloads of last year’s weapons and want them yesterday.
Air Marshall Harris suggested that he could take 12 months off the war, if he was allowed to shoot a few hundred civil servants and senior management in the aircraft industry.
Highlights
- Harris personally authorised, against the wish of officials, an improved gun mounting for the Hampden. Told the manufacturers of the mountings he would be personally be liable, financially. - The System telling him that increasing the size of the Lancaster escape hatch was impossible. Even for next years production. - The continued production of the Stirling - the Rose turret saga - Etc
We could probably have knocked a year off the war by sacking Harris. The area bombing campaign, whatever you think of its morality, was ludicrously ineffective until better navigation, first by onboard radar and then by properly using onboard radar, meant bombs could be dropped within 50 yards of the target rather than within five miles.
It might also have freed Lancasters (for their range, not capacity) for the Battle of the Atlantic.
ETA it would also have saved British lives. Directly, aircrew had a 50 per cent death rate per tour. Indirectly, bombing German arms factories rather than French farmers' fields would have starved Nazis of weapons to shoot back.
Is this the case that they wanted to do something - now that something was utterly ineffective but you can see why they may want to do something pointless so they are seen to do something
The original point was that systemic issues were a big problem in WWII.
It took Harris steamrollering things to get the Lancaster in the first place. The “officials” (in conjunction with the manufacturers) had determined that a nice trio of the Halifax, Stirling and Manchester was just the ticket for spreading work among the firms. Avro “hogging the work” upset a lot of port glasses.
Johnson isn't doing too badly, but he does look like absolute shite.
You'd think Carrie would have told him to get his hair cut, at least.
And it's already raining in Colombo.
You get the strong impression she keeps slipping him twenty quid to go to the barbers, and he keeps slipping into Majestic Wines next door to spend it.
As the old joke goes, Boris Johnson spends £520 on his haircut.
£20 to have his hair cut.
Then £500 to pay a farmer to drag him through some hedgerows for an hour.
That reminds me of school where we would pop into “house bank” after lunch where we would tell the housemaster we wanted £30 for a haircut, he would put that in a ledger that was added to our parents’s bills at the end of term, give us the cash and we would go to a cheap barber for a £5 and spend the rest on pints allowing us to keep our bank accounts flush without the inconvenience of using them towards fun when not necessary.
Our housemaster must have been very pleased that the local salons were doing so well and that we cared enough about our smart appearance to have a haircut every couple of weeks.
Shoes would also be resoled at great expense on other weeks amongst other wheezes.
Not quite my experience at my Secondary Modern.
Explains a lot about parliamentary expenses though.....
Johnson isn't doing too badly, but he does look like absolute shite.
You'd think Carrie would have told him to get his hair cut, at least.
And it's already raining in Colombo.
You get the strong impression she keeps slipping him twenty quid to go to the barbers, and he keeps slipping into Majestic Wines next door to spend it.
As the old joke goes, Boris Johnson spends £520 on his haircut.
£20 to have his hair cut.
Then £500 to pay a farmer to drag him through some hedgerows for an hour.
That reminds me of school where we would pop into “house bank” after lunch where we would tell the housemaster we wanted £30 for a haircut, he would put that in a ledger that was added to our parents’s bills at the end of term, give us the cash and we would go to a cheap barber for a £5 and spend the rest on pints allowing us to keep our bank accounts flush without the inconvenience of using them towards fun when not necessary.
Our housemaster must have been very pleased that the local salons were doing so well and that we cared enough about our smart appearance to have a haircut every couple of weeks.
Shoes would also be resoled at great expense on other weeks amongst other wheezes.
Was there not a story of the local Corals manager imploring the headmaster of Eton to crack down on gambling because the sons of owners and trainers were cleaning up?
With Russia unwilling to drop its demands for a Ukrainian surrender of Donbas as a precondition to a ceasefire, it starts looking doubtful that the Budapest summit between Putin and Trump will happen anytime soon, if at all. The Lavrov-Rubio preparatory meeting, which Trump said was scheduled for this week, hasn’t been agreed to by Russia and, as per Lavrov deputy Ryabkov, “requires additional preparation.”
So Putin has managed to forestall the supply of Tomahawks by promising Trump a peace summit which now isn't going to happen?
I can't decide between Trump being an idiot who is easily played by Putin, or actively malign who is cooperating with Putin to deflect pressure on him to act from the Republicans who would support Ukraine. Maybe it's a mix?
If Europe as a whole gets its act together the war can be won. And that will be easier done now than when Le Pen is running France and Farage is running Britain. Get on with it.
Is there any sense in Trump's suggestion that a Putin-Trump tunnel be built from Siberia to Alaska?
It sounds ... far fetched.
It sounds imbecilic. So very Trump. Even if technically feasible at reasonable cost (highly unlikely), there's zero economic case for it.
Connecting on remote, inhospitable, resource rich region with another remote, inhospitable, resource rich region would give you a ... remote, inhospitable, resource rich region.
Comments
There's a perception out there bookmakers and similar have grown fat on the proceeds from the poor punters (winners at 100/1 and 200/1 and Ascot on Saturday give that some marginal credence).
I've always been of the view the Lottery is a stealth tax on the poor - the chances of anyone winning that life-changing mount are infinitesimal (up there with either the Conservatives or Liberal Democrats forming a majority Government after the next election) yet people try twice a week plus the awful scratch cards.
Back to betting shops - they look like the only shops on many High Streets with money. They look bright, inviting and modern in contrast to much of the retail estate around them. They are open from 7.30am to 10pm every day and it seems no High Street can survive without seven or eight of them (if not more). In East Ham, we lost our Hills but still have two Ladbrokes, two BetFred, two Paddy Powers and a Jenningsbet and we aren't the wealthiest area in the world.
Perhaps there's a bit of neo-puritanism out there I don't know but as a punter I can see how it looks and we know the damage addiction to the FOBTs can cause not just to the addict but to those around them. We are already hearing the bleating from Fred Done and others and their unsubtle threats but that's how politics operates now - by threat. Propose anything and those affected threaten all sorts as a way to dissuade policy makers.
Over the summer I visited the well known estate of a well known duke. Somewhere in the grounds I read a notice inviting donations towards the charity which I was apparently even the stepping on, and which was part of what I had paid an arm and a leg to enter. The duke's estate is thought to be worth somewhere short of a billion.
Planning? Scam? Altruism? Take your pick.
Lets assume Brown called an election in 2007 and lost. Osborne promised to match every single pound of Labour spending plans. He then wanted to inflate the bubble further by cutting regulation of the city so that he could then "share the proceeds of growth" in the form of tax cuts on top of matching Labour spending plans.
It wasn't Brown who caused the GFC regardless of what revisionist Tories claim. And the things they say he got wrong - spending too much and regulating too little? Their own plan At The Time was to spend the same and regulate even less.
(Yes, I know those numbers don't add up. That's the point.)
One of the metrics for alcohol pricing/tax is the amount of fake booze that shows up. A few years back there was a spike in people being poisoned by fake vodka. The government responded by not increasing taxes on hard alcohol for a couple of years IIRC.
We could do Austerity 2. Same outcome as Austerity 1. Or we could look at what we are spending money on and change that. I have zero expectation that Reeves will unveil a simplification of the tax code or a bonfire of faux market structures in the public service or actual investment to allow us to build the LHA homes we need to build or investment into power generation / transmission and transport and criminal justice.
We're going to punish working people again, throw in a few stupid concessions like tax gambling harder, and then wonder why we're in recession with an even higher deficit than before we started. We need to provoke economic output, not cut it further.
Meanwhile, the workers in those shops will lose their jobs, sacrificed on a puritanical and innumerate altar of outrage.
If the Government actually wanted to make a significant step in this area they'd ban loot boxes. But as that would require a basic understanding of something related to technology that won't happen.
Edit: in practice you create a line in the budget “sinking fund for debt repayment” and claim a balanced budget while simultaneously retiring 4% of GDP worth of debt
The pitiful attempts of government and local authorities to revive retail in provincial high streets. and their repeated failure, seem to have taught them nothing.
And at the same time we have housing shortages.
Now suppose the question had been "Should the government raise more money from Gambling ?" What would the responses have been ? Probably a resounding yes. But as that could only be achieved by a significant reduction in Gambling taxes I guess that would mean Gambling taxes should be lowered. And, as they always say on "Mind your Decisions" youtube channel, "That is the right answer."
Not all Tories favoured ever higher public spending and debt - many hated Cameron's and Osborne's Heir to Blair crap and foresaw it would end it tears when the money stopped flowing, and that it wouldn't even be particularly popular electorally, as shown when supposedly slick PR man Cameron failed to get an overall majority against GORDON BROWN for Christ's sake.
For your £2
£1.06 back in prizes
50p in good causes
24p in tax (effectively good causes still)
10p to the retailer (protects your local high street)
10p to the organisers (of which 2p is their profit)
The real non distributive cost is less than 20p and for that you get a sliver of a chance at a life changing event, the dreams associated with that and a conversation piece. That seems like as good a transaction as we get in modern life to me.
The tax on the poor bit is the repeated buying of scratch cards or buying multiple tickets for the same draw.
To be clear, this makes the country a sadder place than it was. But if there's a conspiracy, it involves all of us. And the only way out I see working involves using retail land for housing.
1. The professionals, as you note, are the same as any other professional who spends their day mostly working through spreadsheets.
2. The Grand National or on-course better, who sees it as part of the cost of the occasional day out, and mostly has fun.
3. The casual gambler who bets on the football on his phone from the pub, and probably loses more money than he tells his wife he lost.
4. The poor sod who puts his whole week’s pay packet into the FOBT machines in a couple of hours, and now needs to find rent and food money.
The four are all over-generalisations of course, but the government approach to them needs to be different. 1 and 2 are not a problem, 3 can turn into a problem, and 4 is a big problem.
The harder question is... How do you do that and win an election? Because if you don't win an election, someone more irresponsible gets in.
NEW: Keir Starmer will go to COP30 in Brazil next month. Had been expected not to go but No10 says he will attend to bang the drum for net zero
https://x.com/lizzybuchan/status/1980269640006668487?s=46&t=d8CnRhyZJ-m4vy0k55W8XQ
It does seem lack of schools planning for COVID was everyone else's fault by the sound of it. Good boy!
Edit: and its important not to conflate them because otherwise the spending gets absorbed by the treasury and reallocated because things like sport and heritage aren’t schools’n’hospitals
With Russia unwilling to drop its demands for a Ukrainian surrender of Donbas as a precondition to a ceasefire, it starts looking doubtful that the Budapest summit between Putin and Trump will happen anytime soon, if at all. The Lavrov-Rubio preparatory meeting, which Trump said was scheduled for this week, hasn’t been agreed to by Russia and, as per Lavrov deputy Ryabkov, “requires additional preparation.”
https://x.com/yarotrof/status/1980529712137953587
But it strikes me that what you're asking for is someone to do a lesson on the benefits of healthy eating... while Krusty the Clown is also in the room, handing out free Krustyburgers.
I mean, I'm good... but I'm not that good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lAGOxHsx7w
School lockdowns were an imperative under the circumstances regardless of whether vulnerable children were at risk. School closures were the least worst national outcome even if some children were put in harms way.
Ironically, the crash was much worse than it otherwise would have been precisely because a bunch of gamblers with over-leveraged “investments” faced automated margin calls on the way down.
Those who have first hand experience of the impacts of those addictions will have a different view.
A lot of Fred Done's comments are threats, bluff and bluster. Yes, he may close a few shops but they will be the ones which are losing money - the betting shop estate, like all other retail estates, is a mix of profitable and unprofitable shops and the Government are providing cover for the bookmakers to divest themselves of the unprofitable parts of their estate.
Things like new changing rooms for the local park/field used by schools for their sports.
Has anyone seen the migration watch data? There’s literally large towns and cities in the UK now that 1) were not born here and 2) are in subsidised social housing and do not work https://x.com/migrationwatch/status/1980544332470895088?s=46&t=2iv1prQ4P8HyMrM-UX0Dig
Top that off with the ridiculous gamble on carbon capture, NHS improvement, making it more expensive to employ people etc, and we are doomed. No wonder people are fed up
It would be harmless enough, but it prevents labour and capital flowing into more productive areas and so harms productive and enterprising industries and therefore the economy as a whole.
Probably the last time the country truly came together for an event.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgkm2j0xelo
Friedrich Engels ‘took creative liberties’ with descriptions of class divides in Manchester
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/oct/21/friedrich-engels-segregated-manchester-cambridge-historian
..The great socialist thinker, who co-authored with Karl Marx the Communist manifesto, was a Manchester resident, appalled and galvanised by the squalor and inequality he saw in the city.
His observations were published in his book The Condition of the Working Class in England, a blistering, furious polemic of life in Manchester seen as the defining text of the British industrial experience.
In it he described shocking segregation. He wrote about swathes of “unmixed working-people’s quarters” stretching “like a girdle”. Beyond them were the middle bourgeoisie in their townhouses and beyond that “in remoter villas with gardens in Chorlton and Ardwick” were the upper bourgeoise, also living it up on the “breezy heights of Cheetham Hill, Broughton, and Pendleton, in free, wholesome country air”.
Many historians have taken Engels’ observations at face value and assumed this was how Manchester was, with the middle classes sheltering in their smarter houses from the poor.
But the Cambridge University historian Emily Chung, by mapping digitised census data, has uncovered a much more complicated picture.
“I wouldn’t go as far to as to say Engels was wrong,” she said. “I think what my research shows is that Engels exaggerated and took creative liberties.”
Chung’s research shows that many middle-class Mancunians did in fact live in the same buildings and streets as those in the working class.
It finds that more than 60% of buildings housing the wealthiest classes also housed unskilled labourers. In Manchester’s “slums”, more than 10% of the population was from the better-off, employed classes.
“Manchester’s wealthier classes did not confine themselves to townhouses in the city centre and suburban villas, as we’ve been led to believe,” Chung said...
And it's already raining in Colombo.
Remember Labour started with a very poor hand in 2024 and this is an example of issues created previously which can never be fixed
What isn't particularly credible is any pledge to actually deliver that.
Reeves’s pledge to save firms £6bn by cutting red tape dismissed as not ‘remotely serious’ by Tories
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2025/oct/21/rachel-reeves-economy-starmer-labour-streeting-sentencing-bill-uk-politics-live-news-updates
I can't decide between Trump being an idiot who is easily played by Putin, or actively malign who is cooperating with Putin to deflect pressure on him to act from the Republicans who would support Ukraine. Maybe it's a mix?
If Europe as a whole gets its act together the war can be won. And that will be easier done now than when Le Pen is running France and Farage is running Britain. Get on with it.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/21/nicolas-sarkozy-enters-prison-paris-france
If wealthy entities and influential politicians decide that their concerns and requirements are preeminent then they choose the timing regardless of the damage to the sport or players.
With football you had the travesty of the winter World Cup in Qatar running a football calendar that had worked well forever, you have the next one where matches will be taking place in conditions that are dangerous for the footballers due to heat because of timings and preferences from the US and then we will have another winter World Cup in Saudi. Now a cynical person might look at Infantino and his glee at being at Trump fests - even the Gaza summit in Egypt and even the clearly scurrilous allegations that he is now a billionaire in his own right.
Then you have rugby where there is set to be a breakaway league which will deny international teams from picking certain players for their own preservation of leagues and unions. You have players who played international tours and Lions over the summer who are just starting to be available for clubs.
Sport is just a product for the administrators now and as long as the sponsorship and gravy train keeps running their is no interest for them to stop ruining it.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/37071931/british-missile-launchers-downing-russian-rockets-drones/
"California is a big culprit. I mean, California, they're out of control. And we're not going to pay California”
https://x.com/SpencerHakimian/status/1980076287780938144
Contrast with the Biden administration funding new manufacturing in red states.
£20 to have his hair cut.
Then £500 to pay a farmer to drag him through some hedgerows for an hour.
They still haven’t clicked that wartime procurement looks very different from peacetime procurement.
When there’s peace, you maintain the industrial capability and push the future technology, but when there’s a war on you just want shedloads of last year’s weapons and want them yesterday.
Instead of simply celebrating a rare thing, a painting of a black military bandsman who was at Waterloo, there is a load of guesswork and extrapolation to create a better story instead of letting the story be itself.
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2025/oct/21/london-museum-identifies-black-waterloo-veteran-in-rare-1821-painting
“There’s this misconception that there weren’t any Black soldiers at Waterloo,” said the museum’s art curator, Anna Lavelle.
Really? I’ve never heard anyone suggest this. Anyone who has a passing interest in Waterloo and the Napoleonic Wars would know that most of the sides involved were empires and would have African, Caribbean, South American, Arab and Berber men in their armies to various extents and in various roles.
“He was willing to get hurt and put his life at risk for other people in his regiment.”
Well, duh, part of being in the regiment in a war/battle regardless of colour.
“There were about 20 soldiers who were looking after the officers’ baggage, but James was the only one noted to have been severely wounded,” she said. “He obviously put up a really good fight – a spirited defence – which I think says a lot about his character and his sense of camaraderie.”
How do they know he was severely wounded because he obviously put up a really good fight? How do they know the others weren’t severely wounded because they were better fighters, or that he was severely wounded because he was caught off guard? How can they just assume this?
Officers, she said, must also have felt they could trust James with their belongings, probably containing money, jewellery and mess silver. “I think he was brave foremost, and honourable as well.”
Again, he was a bandsman so it’s not surprising he was part of the group looking after the officers baggage and valuables.
Yes, someone decided he was worthy of this portrait being made, it could have been organised as a mark of his bravery six years later, or it could be because he was a curio.
There was no need to create some mythology around the guy, the fact that he was a rare black man in the British army who was at Waterloo and had a great portrait painted is of enough interest without the guesswork to push some point.
The important thing is that there has to be a strategy to win, and there has to be follow through to do what is required to achieve victory.
At the moment European strategy is still predicated on the belief that, if we simply make the war too hard for Putin, he will give up. But he isn't cooperating with that.
Putin's strategy is that if he can just keep himself in the fight then political change in the West will see Ukraine abandoned. That strategy is working. Trump has stopped US support. Fico's victory in Slovakia ended their support. Looks like similar following the recent Czech election. Putin can look forward to other countries following the same path.
So if we want to avoid a Russian victory we have to aim to win. We have to give Ukraine the means to destroy the Russian oil industry, to destroy its armaments industry and its logistics. The key ingredient is long-range strike capability in large quantities.
Highlights
- Harris personally authorised, against the wish of officials, an improved gun mounting for the Hampden. Told the manufacturers of the mountings he would be personally be liable, financially.
- The System telling him that increasing the size of the Lancaster escape hatch was impossible. Even for next years production.
- The continued production of the Stirling
- the Rose turret saga
- Etc
Our housemaster must have been very pleased that the local salons were doing so well and that we cared enough about our smart appearance to have a haircut every couple of weeks.
Shoes would also be resoled at great expense on other weeks amongst other wheezes.
It sounds ... far fetched.
It might also have freed Lancasters (for their range, not capacity) for the Battle of the Atlantic.
ETA it would also have saved British lives. Directly, aircrew had a 50 per cent death rate per tour. Indirectly, bombing German arms factories rather than French farmers' fields would have starved Nazis of weapons to shoot back.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rG-zOxWSK4
I won’t criticize Boris Island as that is how other counties have solved their were the f do we sensible put our airport question
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I work in the (what's left !) of the industrial area there.Behold what we once had:
It took Harris steamrollering things to get the Lancaster in the first place. The “officials” (in conjunction with the manufacturers) had determined that a nice trio of the Halifax, Stirling and Manchester was just the ticket for spreading work among the firms. Avro “hogging the work” upset a lot of port glasses.
Even if technically feasible at reasonable cost (highly unlikely), there's zero economic case for it.
Connecting on remote, inhospitable, resource rich region with another remote, inhospitable, resource rich region would give you a ... remote, inhospitable, resource rich region.
https://news.sky.com/story/demolition-work-begins-on-white-house-east-wing-for-trumps-186m-ballroom-13454284