Sky newsflash; Sir Alan Bates has settled with the Post Office. 'Seven figure sum;' suggested.
I would have given him and the other SPMs a chunk of Post Office stock (it's 100% owned by the government - given them 30%). Then made them the board of directors. With the existing management locked in, below them.
Oh, and given the prosecution unit at the PO the job of dealing with Vennells etc. "Hunt them down, all nightmare long".
Then bought popcorn.
It's a really nice fantasy, M, but realistically what would you do now? It's impossibe to put right decades of wrong. Money helps but the true financial cost is astronomic. Revenge isn't going to help and is imractical in may cases.
It was a desperately badly run organisation for decades. Had it been in private hands the situation would have been remedied by financial collapse. In the Public Sector it was able to persist through subsidy and the exercise of powers way beyond what was wise or fair.
The blame spreads very wide indeed, and I really do not envy the position of Sir Wyn NiceOldThing as he tries to sift through the evidence and come up wth sensible suggestions.
Ah yes. Lessons Will Be Learned*. Too Late For Legal Remedy.
The point is to create a horrific, savage, nasty, ghastly, hideous result. Pour encourager les autres**
Paula Vennells spending the next 2 decades in court, at her own cost sounds exactly like justice to me.
*Will not contain Lessons. Will not contain Learning. Will not contain Will. May not contain "Be". All wrongs reserved. **I came across a paper that analysed the performance of friend and relations of Admiral Byng in the RN. It seems that for the next 20 years, there was a marked performance improvement in the lower/mid management level in the RN, especially among them.
Rev Mrs Vennals should be condemned for the rest of her days to run a marginally viable local post office branch in some godforsaken area, attempting to scrape a living selling a declining number of postage stamps and the sort of tat that seems to get sold in POs these days. A horrific, savage, nasty, ghastly, hideous result - no? * and, of course, using a crap and error ridden IT system, together with regular special audit visits by whatever successor investigation unit used to intimidate PO managers
A view of the Refuk UK claims around Motability (Agent Anderson's Bring Back Invacar) from a thoughtful disabled friend who has been in this field for decades. He also wants reform of the scheme, but without Anderson's poisonous politics.
What's really depressing about this is it targetting the flaws in the scheme in such a way as to put the blame on disabled people! The scheme is basically a way of channelling the welfare budget into a subsidy for the car industry. The reason why you can buy a BMW is that if you couldn't BMW would crucify the government for unfair subsidies. Either Reform knows this and is being really malicious, or it doesn't, in which case its being stupid.
(Can't link - quoting from a private forum.)
The problem is that if the only new BMWs on a street of of old cars and hondas, belong to those “on the sick”, then it feeds massively into the narrative that those who get up and go to work end the morning end up worse off than “the scroungers”.
Resticting Motability to British-made cars is a good start, as is removing the VAT subsidy that makes “luxury” cars suddenly affordable on Motability that wouldn’t be otherwise.
I wondered about that in the debate last week here, and I agree it could be a logical use of our "Brexit freedoms".
My question was whether there is a wide-enough range of vehicles made in the UK, especially at the lower end. Looking at the Toyota and Nissan ranges made at Washington and Burnaston, that may be possible.
The one I don't think I can see is an equivalent of a Renault 5.
It could also add a benefit for micro car companies. Disabled adaptations are something of a micro industry, and there may be space for growth there, and for cost-effective provision of tailored services.
It seems the country's going to be a lot quieter once all the people supposedly leaving have gone....
We all know Reeves and Starmer should have been honest about raising income tax and perhaps VAT before the election but the shadow cast by 1992 is very long and it would have been manna from heaven for Sunak and Hunt - "Labour will raise your taxes, the Conservatives will cut them" - the social media messages write themselves.
We also know, in the event of their re-election, Hunt would likely have raised taxes as well.
The deficit remains eye watering - no one objects to borrowing for long term capital investment but borrowing to get from one month to the next doesn't work well for individuals or countries. The truth is even if we can bring the deficit and borrowing down we will still be saddled with the annual debt interest payments of £60-70 billion tearing a chunk out of our available expenditure.
The priority for now must be getting the deficit down and while some of the more fanciful ideas on here about slashing civil service headcount by 50% and cutting benefits by the same amount might make some on here feel better, we all know that won't happen under a Labour, Conservative or even Reform Government.
Raising basic rate progressively to 25p, higher rate to nearer 50p and instigating a third higher tax rate is probably where Reeves is going. I'd still be looking at Land Value Taxation or some measure relating to property valuations to replace Stamp Duty and possibly Council Tax. As a small gesture of carrot, I'd put thresholds up by 2x inflation this year and pledge to keep them in line with inflation for the rest of the Parliament.
It looks as though online gaming and FOBTs in betting shops will face higher tax but it may be the lobbying by the horse racing and greyhound industries has done enough to stop a significant rise in betting duty. I suspect fuel duty will go up by more than inflation as well.
The biggest problem is the entrenched belief, among the electorate, that increased taxes will simply disappear into the maw of government, without noticeable improvement.
It's fairly clear that much of Government, local and national has lost control of costs. It's Feast-Or-Famine - either there's no money for X or theres billions spent on something that should cost millions.
The migrant hotels farce is a prefect example of this - an avalanche of money for the owners. I don't blame them - times are tough in the hotel business. If someone is offering you a zero risk, unbelievably profitable multi-year contract, you'd be insane not to take it.
We need to start cutting our cloth according to the.... cloth we actually have.
I know that a British Museum catalogue without a logo, a Richard Rogeresque HQ, some abstract sculpture in the foyer and a mission statement, isn't exciting. Not to mention a "dynamic team" for the Board of Directors on 6 figures each for 2 days of work as year.
But if we ditch those things, we might be able to afford a... British Museum catalogue.
People also have very distorted ideas of where the money goes. Migrant hotels and the British Museum are not why public spending is high. The money goes on healthcare and pensions, both of which are going up with an ageing population.
But you see this pattern through government - the hospitals are both falling down and built for prices that are crazy.
My relative who runs a building business looked at the contract to build a school local to me - the price was higher, per square foot than digging luxury basements. Which is the most expensive thing to do in the construction industry. He said that he could do the job, and throw in a basement swimming pool, under the playground and still make 30%.
I can’t understand why contract management is so bad throughout the public sector.
It’s because “Chief contract negotiator” is a CL6 (sic) position, paying from £45,268 in year 1, to £53,826 in Year 8.
Meanwhile, the guy on the other side is making 1% of the contract value, and attracts people who want to make £10m a year.
Agreed. But you won’t fix that with cuts
Oh I’d be all in favour of central government having a crack team of contract negotiators on unlimited commission based on saving public money.
Disaster waiting to happen. For one, you wouldn’t be able to easily quantify what the “saving” was and as all commission systems do it would encourage meeting the metric only. I.e. low contract sum but costs heavily loaded in year 5 or whenever after any commission is paid.
Because the government is incapable of structuring incentive schemes that the private sector do all the time?
There are plenty of examples of private sector incentive schemes being gamed in favour of the gamer, rather than the organisation that they work for. We just don't notice it as much because they are subject to less scrutiny.
Indeed, it's hard to think how an incentive scheme (measuring some subset of what you really want) can be made totally game-proof.
Kemi has just said that the Tories have a record of protecting the NHS.
With a straight face.
What have they done then to make you say that? Funding for the NHS was never cut, even during 'austerity'.
It isn't funding, its structure. The Tories presided over an ENHS system where funding reached record highs AND funds available to front line medicine were dangerously low.
A significant driver of this? The faux market structures imposed a decade ago. The bureaucracy burns the cash. I always give Thornaby as a great example - a health centre containing two GP practices. Each with their own management teams and administrators and contracts for services with other parts of the local NHS. An absurd duplication burning cash for no benefit.
Remove all of the market structures and spend the money on healthcare not contract managers and lawyers.
Hi @RochdalePioneers That's really interesting. The GP practice I used to belong to (in north of Scotland) was one of two practices occupying the same premises. Always wondered what the point of it was. Presume something to do with GPs not being directly employed by NHS and, as partners, being able to run the business with an eye to financial return? Too cynical? Alternatively, is it more efficient, somehow, to have two practices? Do they, meaningfully, compete?
The mergers of GP practises at the moment seem to be a combination of service reduction and financialisation - a lot of the practices owned the property they are based in. Locally, a bunch of practises were taken over by a... consortium. Which then knocked down the biggest and built a tower on the site - lots of flats at the top and a a few floors of GPs at the bottom. They are in the process of negotiating sale/redevelopment of other sites.
TAX 1) Rewrite the tax code - we need to make it much simpler with far fewer discounts and loopholes. Raise more money by setting lower rates that people actually have to pay 2) Asset Value tax. Tax the land and the buildings, not a hypothetical rent from the 90s 3) Non-Dom tax. Please come here, live in swanky apartments in that London. Pay us half a mil a year and no further questions asked 4) Company Value tax. Offer companies a FAT discount off Corporation Tax if they invest in the value of their staff and assets. Do actual training and development so that your employees are the best they can be. Pay them enough money so that they can actually pay their bills. Trained and happy staff are more productive, boosting economic output and reducing in work welfare payments 5) Offshored assets tax, or the "Starbucks" tax. Basically tax them as if they're not actually buying coffee from Luxembourg - which despite their tax set up they are not. With a fat discount if they onshore fully. Radical idea - pay tax in the UK for business done in the UK you degenerate bastards 6) A sex tax. Getting some? Pay out. 7) Investment tax credits. Come and build your AI data server near where we have so much power that we have to switch the turbines off. Huge savings to be offered.
SPEND 1) Scrap the faux-market structures in public services. An end to endless NHS and Education trusts. 2) Create StateCo enterprises to run and modernise the railways, the post office, the roads, power infrastructure etc. Borrow, invest, ROI, Growth 3) HouseCo organisations. Borrow money at state rates, automatic planning permission given to build on redundant council sites. A use it or lose it 6 months deadline on landbanking by Barratts et al. Build affordable apartments and rent them at social rent levels. Thus collapsing the private rental sector and with it correcting house prices 4) Launch municipal funds - councils should be investing in civic infrastructure not property speculation. Copy Manchester - build apartments in run down town and city centres so people live there. The rest will follow as it has in Manchester. 5) Decouple energy prices from gas. Prices drop 30-40% as they have in Spain, freeing up cash to spend elsewhere 6) Abolish the OBR, hire new brains into the Treasury. Abolish the annual budget cycle - a cut to hit this year's budget target which costs more than the cut next year is economic vandalism, yet we do it over and over and over again. No more.
As a starter for 10
On Tax - I would have one rate of tax paid by all. Make it 20%. No changes to higher rates. The more you earn the more you pay.
PB - Explain why I am wrong.
We aren't that far apart. My UBI proposal (which I somehow left off the list) gives everyone a fixed income from the government and then taxes Every Single Penny you earn.
For most people that would mean a flat rate.
If the ultra rich paid 20% tax as you propose then we would be rolling in money. The challenge would be nailing shut their escape routes. Which is why we'd need to tax asset value and do something about scum who pay themselves through a company (hi).
From knowing some ultra-rich people (including relatives), a flat rate with no fiddle factors would probably get most of them to fire the tribes of accountants and lawyers they need. And just pay the tax.
Yup, make inheritance tax 10% except for farmers. No other exemptions at all. We’d all happily pay it.
Given that only around 4% of deaths currently result in inheritance tax, raising that to 100% (minus a few farmers) is going to be pissing a lot of people off as well as generating a lot more bureaucracy. Good news for accountants and lawyers though.
Quite the opposite in practice. People spend hundreds of thousands setting up trusts, paying lawyers and accountants to avoid the 40% tax, that if it were 10% would be mostly accepted.
But the vast majority of people don't pay IHT because their assets don't reach the threshold for IHT. By making it a flat 10%, you bringing in a huge number of people who wouldn't otherwise have paid anything. The people who spend hundreds of thousands setting up trusts, etc, are only a tiny proportion of the population.
Correct.
A 10% universal inheritance tax would almost certainly raise more money than the current system, and most people are unlikely to object to it.
Rachel also needs to take into account the hundreds of milions currently spent on accountants and lawyers, their VAT and income taxes. But who’s feeling sorry for the lawyers?
The big problem with that is it adds another layer of complexity to small estates. Do we really want to have everyone hire solicitors and accountants to find ten pounds is owed?
If there was a flat rate IHT of 15% on anything over £50,000 other than the main house that might be easier.
"Crocodiles are absolute bastards, says Attenborough filmmaker BBC’s Kingdom follows four predator families in Zambia and reveals the competition between them" (£)
TAX 1) Rewrite the tax code - we need to make it much simpler with far fewer discounts and loopholes. Raise more money by setting lower rates that people actually have to pay 2) Asset Value tax. Tax the land and the buildings, not a hypothetical rent from the 90s 3) Non-Dom tax. Please come here, live in swanky apartments in that London. Pay us half a mil a year and no further questions asked 4) Company Value tax. Offer companies a FAT discount off Corporation Tax if they invest in the value of their staff and assets. Do actual training and development so that your employees are the best they can be. Pay them enough money so that they can actually pay their bills. Trained and happy staff are more productive, boosting economic output and reducing in work welfare payments 5) Offshored assets tax, or the "Starbucks" tax. Basically tax them as if they're not actually buying coffee from Luxembourg - which despite their tax set up they are not. With a fat discount if they onshore fully. Radical idea - pay tax in the UK for business done in the UK you degenerate bastards 6) A sex tax. Getting some? Pay out. 7) Investment tax credits. Come and build your AI data server near where we have so much power that we have to switch the turbines off. Huge savings to be offered.
SPEND 1) Scrap the faux-market structures in public services. An end to endless NHS and Education trusts. 2) Create StateCo enterprises to run and modernise the railways, the post office, the roads, power infrastructure etc. Borrow, invest, ROI, Growth 3) HouseCo organisations. Borrow money at state rates, automatic planning permission given to build on redundant council sites. A use it or lose it 6 months deadline on landbanking by Barratts et al. Build affordable apartments and rent them at social rent levels. Thus collapsing the private rental sector and with it correcting house prices 4) Launch municipal funds - councils should be investing in civic infrastructure not property speculation. Copy Manchester - build apartments in run down town and city centres so people live there. The rest will follow as it has in Manchester. 5) Decouple energy prices from gas. Prices drop 30-40% as they have in Spain, freeing up cash to spend elsewhere 6) Abolish the OBR, hire new brains into the Treasury. Abolish the annual budget cycle - a cut to hit this year's budget target which costs more than the cut next year is economic vandalism, yet we do it over and over and over again. No more.
As a starter for 10
On Tax - I would have one rate of tax paid by all. Make it 20%. No changes to higher rates. The more you earn the more you pay.
PB - Explain why I am wrong.
We aren't that far apart. My UBI proposal (which I somehow left off the list) gives everyone a fixed income from the government and then taxes Every Single Penny you earn.
For most people that would mean a flat rate.
If the ultra rich paid 20% tax as you propose then we would be rolling in money. The challenge would be nailing shut their escape routes. Which is why we'd need to tax asset value and do something about scum who pay themselves through a company (hi).
From knowing some ultra-rich people (including relatives), a flat rate with no fiddle factors would probably get most of them to fire the tribes of accountants and lawyers they need. And just pay the tax.
Yup, make inheritance tax 10% except for farmers. No other exemptions at all. We’d all happily pay it.
Given that only around 4% of deaths currently result in inheritance tax, raising that to 100% (minus a few farmers) is going to be pissing a lot of people off as well as generating a lot more bureaucracy. Good news for accountants and lawyers though.
Quite the opposite in practice. People spend hundreds of thousands setting up trusts, paying lawyers and accountants to avoid the 40% tax, that if it were 10% would be mostly accepted.
But the vast majority of people don't pay IHT because their assets don't reach the threshold for IHT. By making it a flat 10%, you bringing in a huge number of people who wouldn't otherwise have paid anything. The people who spend hundreds of thousands setting up trusts, etc, are only a tiny proportion of the population.
Correct.
A 10% universal inheritance tax would almost certainly raise more money than the current system, and most people are unlikely to object to it.
Rachel also needs to take into account the hundreds of milions currently spent on accountants and lawyers, their VAT and income taxes. But who’s feeling sorry for the lawyers?
The big problem with that is it adds another layer of complexity to small estates. Do we really want to have everyone hire solicitors and accountants to find ten pounds is owed?
If there was a flat rate IHT of 15% on anything over £50,000 other than the main house that might be easier.
You've got to include the house otherwise it's yet another driver of high property prices.
I have no doubt whatsoever that Reeves is going to raise taxes to justify her largesse with the public sector and her inability to achieve cuts in welfare spending past her backbenchers
She casts around looking for someone to blame, but she reinstated the WFP and failed in attempts to cut back welfare
I would just say that the huge rise in the minimum wage for 18+ to adult rates is the receipe for long term youth employment as business will not be attracted to young workers as opposed to those of a more mature age and life experience
However, this is labour where spending and taxing is their DNA and they have no backbone to address the doom loop we are in
A truly game changing government, (like one with a landslide majority), would focus on means testing pensions and the NHS to ensure the viability of both
Why should the wealthy receive the state pension and free NHS treatment when it is crippling our economy and draining our resources for adequate funding other parts of the public sector including education, law and order, and defence to name a few
Until we accept that really hard decisions are needed, we are just going to make everything worse especially for our grandchildren and frankly is is unacceptable and utter cowardice
A view of the Refuk UK claims around Motability (Agent Anderson's Bring Back Invacar) from a thoughtful disabled friend who has been in this field for decades. He also wants reform of the scheme, but without Anderson's poisonous politics.
What's really depressing about this is it targetting the flaws in the scheme in such a way as to put the blame on disabled people! The scheme is basically a way of channelling the welfare budget into a subsidy for the car industry. The reason why you can buy a BMW is that if you couldn't BMW would crucify the government for unfair subsidies. Either Reform knows this and is being really malicious, or it doesn't, in which case its being stupid.
(Can't link - quoting from a private forum.)
The problem is that if the only new BMWs on a street of of old cars and hondas, belong to those “on the sick”, then it feeds massively into the narrative that those who get up and go to work end the morning end up worse off than “the scroungers”.
Resticting Motability to British-made cars is a good start, as is removing the VAT subsidy that makes “luxury” cars suddenly affordable on Motability that wouldn’t be otherwise.
I wondered about that in the debate last week here, and I agree it could be a logical use of our "Brexit freedoms".
My question was whether there is a wide-enough range of vehicles made in the UK, especially at the lower end. Looking at the Toyota and Nissan ranges made at Washington and Burnaston, that may be possible.
The one I don't think I can see is an equivalent of a Renault 5.
It could also add a benefit for micro car companies. Disabled adaptations are something of a micro industry, and there may be space for growth there, and for cost-effective provision of tailored services.
IIRC 90% of Motability vehicles are not adapted.
The thing to think about is "80% solutions". A solution that covers everything is usually impossible - certainly insanely expensive and difficult.
So create an 80% solution. Then an 80% solution for the 20% that is left. Then another 80% solution for the 4%. This is nearly always less expensive, and more adaptable to the actual humans and their requirements.
It seems the country's going to be a lot quieter once all the people supposedly leaving have gone....
We all know Reeves and Starmer should have been honest about raising income tax and perhaps VAT before the election but the shadow cast by 1992 is very long and it would have been manna from heaven for Sunak and Hunt - "Labour will raise your taxes, the Conservatives will cut them" - the social media messages write themselves.
We also know, in the event of their re-election, Hunt would likely have raised taxes as well.
The deficit remains eye watering - no one objects to borrowing for long term capital investment but borrowing to get from one month to the next doesn't work well for individuals or countries. The truth is even if we can bring the deficit and borrowing down we will still be saddled with the annual debt interest payments of £60-70 billion tearing a chunk out of our available expenditure.
The priority for now must be getting the deficit down and while some of the more fanciful ideas on here about slashing civil service headcount by 50% and cutting benefits by the same amount might make some on here feel better, we all know that won't happen under a Labour, Conservative or even Reform Government.
Raising basic rate progressively to 25p, higher rate to nearer 50p and instigating a third higher tax rate is probably where Reeves is going. I'd still be looking at Land Value Taxation or some measure relating to property valuations to replace Stamp Duty and possibly Council Tax. As a small gesture of carrot, I'd put thresholds up by 2x inflation this year and pledge to keep them in line with inflation for the rest of the Parliament.
It looks as though online gaming and FOBTs in betting shops will face higher tax but it may be the lobbying by the horse racing and greyhound industries has done enough to stop a significant rise in betting duty. I suspect fuel duty will go up by more than inflation as well.
The biggest problem is the entrenched belief, among the electorate, that increased taxes will simply disappear into the maw of government, without noticeable improvement.
It's fairly clear that much of Government, local and national has lost control of costs. It's Feast-Or-Famine - either there's no money for X or theres billions spent on something that should cost millions.
The migrant hotels farce is a prefect example of this - an avalanche of money for the owners. I don't blame them - times are tough in the hotel business. If someone is offering you a zero risk, unbelievably profitable multi-year contract, you'd be insane not to take it.
We need to start cutting our cloth according to the.... cloth we actually have.
I know that a British Museum catalogue without a logo, a Richard Rogeresque HQ, some abstract sculpture in the foyer and a mission statement, isn't exciting. Not to mention a "dynamic team" for the Board of Directors on 6 figures each for 2 days of work as year.
But if we ditch those things, we might be able to afford a... British Museum catalogue.
People also have very distorted ideas of where the money goes. Migrant hotels and the British Museum are not why public spending is high. The money goes on healthcare and pensions, both of which are going up with an ageing population.
But you see this pattern through government - the hospitals are both falling down and built for prices that are crazy.
My relative who runs a building business looked at the contract to build a school local to me - the price was higher, per square foot than digging luxury basements. Which is the most expensive thing to do in the construction industry. He said that he could do the job, and throw in a basement swimming pool, under the playground and still make 30%.
I can’t understand why contract management is so bad throughout the public sector.
It’s because “Chief contract negotiator” is a CL6 (sic) position, paying from £45,268 in year 1, to £53,826 in Year 8.
Meanwhile, the guy on the other side is making 1% of the contract value, and attracts people who want to make £10m a year.
Agreed. But you won’t fix that with cuts
Oh I’d be all in favour of central government having a crack team of contract negotiators on unlimited commission based on saving public money.
Let me at it!
Carbon Capture Schemes? gone.
Nuclear power projects - persuade me why they shouldn't be gone....
Carbon capture was always a waste of money - added cost zero benefit
Nuclear power - we shouldn’t be building big ones except the Korean design. Small modular ones we should be investing in to get the factories working so we start exporting them
Carbon capture is a designed to mitigate the amount of CO2 that is released. If you are determined that global temps need to be kept below 'x' degrees then carbon capture might be used as part of the process, even if it is hideously expensive.
Except that very few countries will be doing it, and the cost/benefit analysis is dreadful compared with other interventions.
A work colleague (DWP so he knows how it works) complained that neighbours on disability could apparently afford a new car every 3 years
My understanding is that a Motability lease lasts three years, so changing cars then is actually forced on people.
True, although I did find out by accident that if your mileage is low you can ask Motability to extend the lease to 4 or 5 years. They don't really advertise that though.
Most Motability leases require an up-front, non-returnable deposit. That can currently be up to £8k, say for and Audi Q4. So that's £222 pm in up-front payment + you're giving up £333pm PIP. £555pm for an Audi Q4 may be worth it and affordable for you but clearly some on here think that it's not right that disabled people should be allowed to lease such cars.
So how do they block a $5 virtual server in France and tailscale
When it is tracked down as a VPN, by the Think Of The Children Dept.
1) Your ISP is fined for giving access to it (to encourage ISPs to proactively look for VPNs) 2) You will be automatically given a criminal record, which eliminates a large number of jobs for you. You will probably be placed on a register as a Risk To Children. Which means your children, if any, are taken into care.
TAX 1) Rewrite the tax code - we need to make it much simpler with far fewer discounts and loopholes. Raise more money by setting lower rates that people actually have to pay 2) Asset Value tax. Tax the land and the buildings, not a hypothetical rent from the 90s 3) Non-Dom tax. Please come here, live in swanky apartments in that London. Pay us half a mil a year and no further questions asked 4) Company Value tax. Offer companies a FAT discount off Corporation Tax if they invest in the value of their staff and assets. Do actual training and development so that your employees are the best they can be. Pay them enough money so that they can actually pay their bills. Trained and happy staff are more productive, boosting economic output and reducing in work welfare payments 5) Offshored assets tax, or the "Starbucks" tax. Basically tax them as if they're not actually buying coffee from Luxembourg - which despite their tax set up they are not. With a fat discount if they onshore fully. Radical idea - pay tax in the UK for business done in the UK you degenerate bastards 6) A sex tax. Getting some? Pay out. 7) Investment tax credits. Come and build your AI data server near where we have so much power that we have to switch the turbines off. Huge savings to be offered.
SPEND 1) Scrap the faux-market structures in public services. An end to endless NHS and Education trusts. 2) Create StateCo enterprises to run and modernise the railways, the post office, the roads, power infrastructure etc. Borrow, invest, ROI, Growth 3) HouseCo organisations. Borrow money at state rates, automatic planning permission given to build on redundant council sites. A use it or lose it 6 months deadline on landbanking by Barratts et al. Build affordable apartments and rent them at social rent levels. Thus collapsing the private rental sector and with it correcting house prices 4) Launch municipal funds - councils should be investing in civic infrastructure not property speculation. Copy Manchester - build apartments in run down town and city centres so people live there. The rest will follow as it has in Manchester. 5) Decouple energy prices from gas. Prices drop 30-40% as they have in Spain, freeing up cash to spend elsewhere 6) Abolish the OBR, hire new brains into the Treasury. Abolish the annual budget cycle - a cut to hit this year's budget target which costs more than the cut next year is economic vandalism, yet we do it over and over and over again. No more.
As a starter for 10
On Tax - I would have one rate of tax paid by all. Make it 20%. No changes to higher rates. The more you earn the more you pay.
PB - Explain why I am wrong.
We aren't that far apart. My UBI proposal (which I somehow left off the list) gives everyone a fixed income from the government and then taxes Every Single Penny you earn.
For most people that would mean a flat rate.
If the ultra rich paid 20% tax as you propose then we would be rolling in money. The challenge would be nailing shut their escape routes. Which is why we'd need to tax asset value and do something about scum who pay themselves through a company (hi).
From knowing some ultra-rich people (including relatives), a flat rate with no fiddle factors would probably get most of them to fire the tribes of accountants and lawyers they need. And just pay the tax.
Yup, make inheritance tax 10% except for farmers. No other exemptions at all. We’d all happily pay it.
Given that only around 4% of deaths currently result in inheritance tax, raising that to 100% (minus a few farmers) is going to be pissing a lot of people off as well as generating a lot more bureaucracy. Good news for accountants and lawyers though.
Quite the opposite in practice. People spend hundreds of thousands setting up trusts, paying lawyers and accountants to avoid the 40% tax, that if it were 10% would be mostly accepted.
But the vast majority of people don't pay IHT because their assets don't reach the threshold for IHT. By making it a flat 10%, you bringing in a huge number of people who wouldn't otherwise have paid anything. The people who spend hundreds of thousands setting up trusts, etc, are only a tiny proportion of the population.
Correct.
A 10% universal inheritance tax would almost certainly raise more money than the current system, and most people are unlikely to object to it.
Rachel also needs to take into account the hundreds of milions currently spent on accountants and lawyers, their VAT and income taxes. But who’s feeling sorry for the lawyers?
The big problem with that is it adds another layer of complexity to small estates. Do we really want to have everyone hire solicitors and accountants to find ten pounds is owed?
If there was a flat rate IHT of 15% on anything over £50,000 other than the main house that might be easier.
You've got to include the house otherwise it's yet another driver of high property prices.
It is, but it would be political suicide to do so.
It seems the country's going to be a lot quieter once all the people supposedly leaving have gone....
We all know Reeves and Starmer should have been honest about raising income tax and perhaps VAT before the election but the shadow cast by 1992 is very long and it would have been manna from heaven for Sunak and Hunt - "Labour will raise your taxes, the Conservatives will cut them" - the social media messages write themselves.
We also know, in the event of their re-election, Hunt would likely have raised taxes as well.
The deficit remains eye watering - no one objects to borrowing for long term capital investment but borrowing to get from one month to the next doesn't work well for individuals or countries. The truth is even if we can bring the deficit and borrowing down we will still be saddled with the annual debt interest payments of £60-70 billion tearing a chunk out of our available expenditure.
The priority for now must be getting the deficit down and while some of the more fanciful ideas on here about slashing civil service headcount by 50% and cutting benefits by the same amount might make some on here feel better, we all know that won't happen under a Labour, Conservative or even Reform Government.
Raising basic rate progressively to 25p, higher rate to nearer 50p and instigating a third higher tax rate is probably where Reeves is going. I'd still be looking at Land Value Taxation or some measure relating to property valuations to replace Stamp Duty and possibly Council Tax. As a small gesture of carrot, I'd put thresholds up by 2x inflation this year and pledge to keep them in line with inflation for the rest of the Parliament.
It looks as though online gaming and FOBTs in betting shops will face higher tax but it may be the lobbying by the horse racing and greyhound industries has done enough to stop a significant rise in betting duty. I suspect fuel duty will go up by more than inflation as well.
The biggest problem is the entrenched belief, among the electorate, that increased taxes will simply disappear into the maw of government, without noticeable improvement.
It's fairly clear that much of Government, local and national has lost control of costs. It's Feast-Or-Famine - either there's no money for X or theres billions spent on something that should cost millions.
The migrant hotels farce is a prefect example of this - an avalanche of money for the owners. I don't blame them - times are tough in the hotel business. If someone is offering you a zero risk, unbelievably profitable multi-year contract, you'd be insane not to take it.
We need to start cutting our cloth according to the.... cloth we actually have.
I know that a British Museum catalogue without a logo, a Richard Rogeresque HQ, some abstract sculpture in the foyer and a mission statement, isn't exciting. Not to mention a "dynamic team" for the Board of Directors on 6 figures each for 2 days of work as year.
But if we ditch those things, we might be able to afford a... British Museum catalogue.
People also have very distorted ideas of where the money goes. Migrant hotels and the British Museum are not why public spending is high. The money goes on healthcare and pensions, both of which are going up with an ageing population.
But you see this pattern through government - the hospitals are both falling down and built for prices that are crazy.
My relative who runs a building business looked at the contract to build a school local to me - the price was higher, per square foot than digging luxury basements. Which is the most expensive thing to do in the construction industry. He said that he could do the job, and throw in a basement swimming pool, under the playground and still make 30%.
I can’t understand why contract management is so bad throughout the public sector.
It’s because “Chief contract negotiator” is a CL6 (sic) position, paying from £45,268 in year 1, to £53,826 in Year 8.
Meanwhile, the guy on the other side is making 1% of the contract value, and attracts people who want to make £10m a year.
Agreed. But you won’t fix that with cuts
Oh I’d be all in favour of central government having a crack team of contract negotiators on unlimited commission based on saving public money.
Disaster waiting to happen. For one, you wouldn’t be able to easily quantify what the “saving” was and as all commission systems do it would encourage meeting the metric only. I.e. low contract sum but costs heavily loaded in year 5 or whenever after any commission is paid.
Because the government is incapable of structuring incentive schemes that the private sector do all the time?
There are plenty of examples of private sector incentive schemes being gamed in favour of the gamer, rather than the organisation that they work for. We just don't notice it as much because they are subject to less scrutiny.
Indeed, it's hard to think how an incentive scheme (measuring some subset of what you really want) can be made totally game-proof.
When I worked on a large private sector project a few years ago, decisions, contracts, etc were entirely based on the Project Director's personal incentive scheme and were frequently to the detriment of the project. The project went far more smoothly once he'd managed to exit himself and someone temporarily covered the position for the remainder of the project, they were never formally appointed and were given no incentive bonuses.
It seems the country's going to be a lot quieter once all the people supposedly leaving have gone....
We all know Reeves and Starmer should have been honest about raising income tax and perhaps VAT before the election but the shadow cast by 1992 is very long and it would have been manna from heaven for Sunak and Hunt - "Labour will raise your taxes, the Conservatives will cut them" - the social media messages write themselves.
We also know, in the event of their re-election, Hunt would likely have raised taxes as well.
The deficit remains eye watering - no one objects to borrowing for long term capital investment but borrowing to get from one month to the next doesn't work well for individuals or countries. The truth is even if we can bring the deficit and borrowing down we will still be saddled with the annual debt interest payments of £60-70 billion tearing a chunk out of our available expenditure.
The priority for now must be getting the deficit down and while some of the more fanciful ideas on here about slashing civil service headcount by 50% and cutting benefits by the same amount might make some on here feel better, we all know that won't happen under a Labour, Conservative or even Reform Government.
Raising basic rate progressively to 25p, higher rate to nearer 50p and instigating a third higher tax rate is probably where Reeves is going. I'd still be looking at Land Value Taxation or some measure relating to property valuations to replace Stamp Duty and possibly Council Tax. As a small gesture of carrot, I'd put thresholds up by 2x inflation this year and pledge to keep them in line with inflation for the rest of the Parliament.
It looks as though online gaming and FOBTs in betting shops will face higher tax but it may be the lobbying by the horse racing and greyhound industries has done enough to stop a significant rise in betting duty. I suspect fuel duty will go up by more than inflation as well.
The biggest problem is the entrenched belief, among the electorate, that increased taxes will simply disappear into the maw of government, without noticeable improvement.
It's fairly clear that much of Government, local and national has lost control of costs. It's Feast-Or-Famine - either there's no money for X or theres billions spent on something that should cost millions.
The migrant hotels farce is a prefect example of this - an avalanche of money for the owners. I don't blame them - times are tough in the hotel business. If someone is offering you a zero risk, unbelievably profitable multi-year contract, you'd be insane not to take it.
We need to start cutting our cloth according to the.... cloth we actually have.
I know that a British Museum catalogue without a logo, a Richard Rogeresque HQ, some abstract sculpture in the foyer and a mission statement, isn't exciting. Not to mention a "dynamic team" for the Board of Directors on 6 figures each for 2 days of work as year.
But if we ditch those things, we might be able to afford a... British Museum catalogue.
People also have very distorted ideas of where the money goes. Migrant hotels and the British Museum are not why public spending is high. The money goes on healthcare and pensions, both of which are going up with an ageing population.
But you see this pattern through government - the hospitals are both falling down and built for prices that are crazy.
My relative who runs a building business looked at the contract to build a school local to me - the price was higher, per square foot than digging luxury basements. Which is the most expensive thing to do in the construction industry. He said that he could do the job, and throw in a basement swimming pool, under the playground and still make 30%.
I can’t understand why contract management is so bad throughout the public sector.
It’s because “Chief contract negotiator” is a CL6 (sic) position, paying from £45,268 in year 1, to £53,826 in Year 8.
Meanwhile, the guy on the other side is making 1% of the contract value, and attracts people who want to make £10m a year.
Agreed. But you won’t fix that with cuts
Oh I’d be all in favour of central government having a crack team of contract negotiators on unlimited commission based on saving public money.
Let me at it!
Carbon Capture Schemes? gone.
Nuclear power projects - persuade me why they shouldn't be gone....
Carbon capture was always a waste of money - added cost zero benefit
Nuclear power - we shouldn’t be building big ones except the Korean design. Small modular ones we should be investing in to get the factories working so we start exporting them
Carbon capture is a designed to mitigate the amount of CO2 that is released. If you are determined that global temps need to be kept below 'x' degrees then carbon capture might be used as part of the process, even if it is hideously expensive.
Except that very few countries will be doing it, and the cost/benefit analysis is dreadful compared with other interventions.
Assuming the basic premise that you wish to reduce the amount of CO2 emitted is accepted, then CCS might possibly be useful in certain areas in which it is very difficult to replace the use of fossil fuels. Cement production, perhaps? But it's certainly a niche solution.
So how do they block a $5 virtual server in France and tailscale
When it is tracked down as a VPN, by the Think Of The Children Dept.
1) Your ISP is fined for giving access to it (to encourage ISPs to proactively look for VPNs) 2) You will be automatically given a criminal record, which eliminates a large number of jobs for you. You will probably be placed on a register as a Risk To Children. Which means your children, if any, are taken into care.
Love to know how 1 works - as someone with (granted out of date) knowledge on how ISPs work.
It's worth remembering that VPNs are essential for any remote working and the only client I've had in the last 12 years that didn't use one was Microsoft because well - I was customer facing so didn't need backend access.
Kemi has just said that the Tories have a record of protecting the NHS.
With a straight face.
What have they done then to make you say that? Funding for the NHS was never cut, even during 'austerity'.
Ask Google 'NHS waiting list versus party in power'
AI Overview
Analyzing the relationship between the governing political party and the NHS waiting list shows significant long-term increases in the waiting list under Conservative-led governments (pre-1997 and 2010-2024), and substantial reductions under the Labour governments of 1997-2010. However, direct comparisons across decades are challenging due to changes in how waiting lists are measured.
Historical Overview Conservative Governments (1987-1997): The waiting list rose substantially. However, it is noted that the median waiting time for patients, and the number waiting more than a year, actually fell during this period, indicating complex trends in how quickly patients were treated versus the total number on the list.
Labour Governments (1997-2010): The waiting list fell substantially under New Labour, especially after new targets were introduced around 2005. The total waiting list nearly halved by 2009, and median waiting times were lower than under the preceding Conservative governments.
Conservative/Coalition Governments (2010-2024): The NHS waiting list doubled in the decade before the COVID-19 pandemic, from around 2.3 million in January 2010 to 4.6 million in December 2019. Median waiting times also rose during this period. The 18-week treatment target (92% of patients treated within 18 weeks) has not been met since September 2015.
Post-Pandemic (2020 onwards): The waiting list grew rapidly during the COVID-19 pandemic, peaking at around 7.8 million in September 2023. The substantial disruption from the pandemic and subsequent industrial action exacerbated an already strained system.
Labour Government (from July 2024): The waiting list was around 7.6 million when Labour took office. Initial data shows a slight decrease in the total list (to around 7.4 million by August 2025) and improvements in the percentage of waits within 18 weeks.
It is risible to suggest that the waiting lists would not have rocketed if Labour were in power during the Covid epidemic. That massively undermines any "correlation".
If you remove the post-pandemic period, you still have waiting lists rising during Tory rule before 1997 and from 2010 to the pandemic, and waiting lists falling 1997-2010 and since the general election last year under Labour.
It seems the country's going to be a lot quieter once all the people supposedly leaving have gone....
We all know Reeves and Starmer should have been honest about raising income tax and perhaps VAT before the election but the shadow cast by 1992 is very long and it would have been manna from heaven for Sunak and Hunt - "Labour will raise your taxes, the Conservatives will cut them" - the social media messages write themselves.
We also know, in the event of their re-election, Hunt would likely have raised taxes as well.
The deficit remains eye watering - no one objects to borrowing for long term capital investment but borrowing to get from one month to the next doesn't work well for individuals or countries. The truth is even if we can bring the deficit and borrowing down we will still be saddled with the annual debt interest payments of £60-70 billion tearing a chunk out of our available expenditure.
The priority for now must be getting the deficit down and while some of the more fanciful ideas on here about slashing civil service headcount by 50% and cutting benefits by the same amount might make some on here feel better, we all know that won't happen under a Labour, Conservative or even Reform Government.
Raising basic rate progressively to 25p, higher rate to nearer 50p and instigating a third higher tax rate is probably where Reeves is going. I'd still be looking at Land Value Taxation or some measure relating to property valuations to replace Stamp Duty and possibly Council Tax. As a small gesture of carrot, I'd put thresholds up by 2x inflation this year and pledge to keep them in line with inflation for the rest of the Parliament.
It looks as though online gaming and FOBTs in betting shops will face higher tax but it may be the lobbying by the horse racing and greyhound industries has done enough to stop a significant rise in betting duty. I suspect fuel duty will go up by more than inflation as well.
The biggest problem is the entrenched belief, among the electorate, that increased taxes will simply disappear into the maw of government, without noticeable improvement.
It's fairly clear that much of Government, local and national has lost control of costs. It's Feast-Or-Famine - either there's no money for X or theres billions spent on something that should cost millions.
The migrant hotels farce is a prefect example of this - an avalanche of money for the owners. I don't blame them - times are tough in the hotel business. If someone is offering you a zero risk, unbelievably profitable multi-year contract, you'd be insane not to take it.
We need to start cutting our cloth according to the.... cloth we actually have.
I know that a British Museum catalogue without a logo, a Richard Rogeresque HQ, some abstract sculpture in the foyer and a mission statement, isn't exciting. Not to mention a "dynamic team" for the Board of Directors on 6 figures each for 2 days of work as year.
But if we ditch those things, we might be able to afford a... British Museum catalogue.
People also have very distorted ideas of where the money goes. Migrant hotels and the British Museum are not why public spending is high. The money goes on healthcare and pensions, both of which are going up with an ageing population.
But you see this pattern through government - the hospitals are both falling down and built for prices that are crazy.
My relative who runs a building business looked at the contract to build a school local to me - the price was higher, per square foot than digging luxury basements. Which is the most expensive thing to do in the construction industry. He said that he could do the job, and throw in a basement swimming pool, under the playground and still make 30%.
I can’t understand why contract management is so bad throughout the public sector.
It’s because “Chief contract negotiator” is a CL6 (sic) position, paying from £45,268 in year 1, to £53,826 in Year 8.
Meanwhile, the guy on the other side is making 1% of the contract value, and attracts people who want to make £10m a year.
Agreed. But you won’t fix that with cuts
Oh I’d be all in favour of central government having a crack team of contract negotiators on unlimited commission based on saving public money.
Let me at it!
Carbon Capture Schemes? gone.
Nuclear power projects - persuade me why they shouldn't be gone....
Carbon capture was always a waste of money - added cost zero benefit
Nuclear power - we shouldn’t be building big ones except the Korean design. Small modular ones we should be investing in to get the factories working so we start exporting them
Carbon capture is a designed to mitigate the amount of CO2 that is released. If you are determined that global temps need to be kept below 'x' degrees then carbon capture might be used as part of the process, even if it is hideously expensive.
Except that very few countries will be doing it, and the cost/benefit analysis is dreadful compared with other interventions.
If you don't burn the fossil fuel you don't need to capture the carbon. Given the way solar and battery prices are heading it makes even less sense then it did two decades ago.
It seems the country's going to be a lot quieter once all the people supposedly leaving have gone....
We all know Reeves and Starmer should have been honest about raising income tax and perhaps VAT before the election but the shadow cast by 1992 is very long and it would have been manna from heaven for Sunak and Hunt - "Labour will raise your taxes, the Conservatives will cut them" - the social media messages write themselves.
We also know, in the event of their re-election, Hunt would likely have raised taxes as well.
The deficit remains eye watering - no one objects to borrowing for long term capital investment but borrowing to get from one month to the next doesn't work well for individuals or countries. The truth is even if we can bring the deficit and borrowing down we will still be saddled with the annual debt interest payments of £60-70 billion tearing a chunk out of our available expenditure.
The priority for now must be getting the deficit down and while some of the more fanciful ideas on here about slashing civil service headcount by 50% and cutting benefits by the same amount might make some on here feel better, we all know that won't happen under a Labour, Conservative or even Reform Government.
Raising basic rate progressively to 25p, higher rate to nearer 50p and instigating a third higher tax rate is probably where Reeves is going. I'd still be looking at Land Value Taxation or some measure relating to property valuations to replace Stamp Duty and possibly Council Tax. As a small gesture of carrot, I'd put thresholds up by 2x inflation this year and pledge to keep them in line with inflation for the rest of the Parliament.
It looks as though online gaming and FOBTs in betting shops will face higher tax but it may be the lobbying by the horse racing and greyhound industries has done enough to stop a significant rise in betting duty. I suspect fuel duty will go up by more than inflation as well.
The biggest problem is the entrenched belief, among the electorate, that increased taxes will simply disappear into the maw of government, without noticeable improvement.
It's fairly clear that much of Government, local and national has lost control of costs. It's Feast-Or-Famine - either there's no money for X or theres billions spent on something that should cost millions.
The migrant hotels farce is a prefect example of this - an avalanche of money for the owners. I don't blame them - times are tough in the hotel business. If someone is offering you a zero risk, unbelievably profitable multi-year contract, you'd be insane not to take it.
We need to start cutting our cloth according to the.... cloth we actually have.
I know that a British Museum catalogue without a logo, a Richard Rogeresque HQ, some abstract sculpture in the foyer and a mission statement, isn't exciting. Not to mention a "dynamic team" for the Board of Directors on 6 figures each for 2 days of work as year.
But if we ditch those things, we might be able to afford a... British Museum catalogue.
People also have very distorted ideas of where the money goes. Migrant hotels and the British Museum are not why public spending is high. The money goes on healthcare and pensions, both of which are going up with an ageing population.
But you see this pattern through government - the hospitals are both falling down and built for prices that are crazy.
My relative who runs a building business looked at the contract to build a school local to me - the price was higher, per square foot than digging luxury basements. Which is the most expensive thing to do in the construction industry. He said that he could do the job, and throw in a basement swimming pool, under the playground and still make 30%.
I can’t understand why contract management is so bad throughout the public sector.
It’s because “Chief contract negotiator” is a CL6 (sic) position, paying from £45,268 in year 1, to £53,826 in Year 8.
Meanwhile, the guy on the other side is making 1% of the contract value, and attracts people who want to make £10m a year.
Agreed. But you won’t fix that with cuts
Oh I’d be all in favour of central government having a crack team of contract negotiators on unlimited commission based on saving public money.
Let me at it!
Carbon Capture Schemes? gone.
Nuclear power projects - persuade me why they shouldn't be gone....
Carbon capture was always a waste of money - added cost zero benefit
Nuclear power - we shouldn’t be building big ones except the Korean design. Small modular ones we should be investing in to get the factories working so we start exporting them
Carbon capture is a designed to mitigate the amount of CO2 that is released. If you are determined that global temps need to be kept below 'x' degrees then carbon capture might be used as part of the process, even if it is hideously expensive.
Except that very few countries will be doing it, and the cost/benefit analysis is dreadful compared with other interventions.
Assuming the basic premise that you wish to reduce the amount of CO2 emitted is accepted, then CCS might possibly be useful in certain areas in which it is very difficult to replace the use of fossil fuels. Cement production, perhaps? But it's certainly a niche solution.
And that's a useful signal to the market. If the cost of cleaning up after doing X is high, maybe you don't want to do X after all. (And remember, not cleaning up after yourself isn't really a money-saving option; it just pushes the cost onto someone else.)
It seems the country's going to be a lot quieter once all the people supposedly leaving have gone....
We all know Reeves and Starmer should have been honest about raising income tax and perhaps VAT before the election but the shadow cast by 1992 is very long and it would have been manna from heaven for Sunak and Hunt - "Labour will raise your taxes, the Conservatives will cut them" - the social media messages write themselves.
We also know, in the event of their re-election, Hunt would likely have raised taxes as well.
The deficit remains eye watering - no one objects to borrowing for long term capital investment but borrowing to get from one month to the next doesn't work well for individuals or countries. The truth is even if we can bring the deficit and borrowing down we will still be saddled with the annual debt interest payments of £60-70 billion tearing a chunk out of our available expenditure.
The priority for now must be getting the deficit down and while some of the more fanciful ideas on here about slashing civil service headcount by 50% and cutting benefits by the same amount might make some on here feel better, we all know that won't happen under a Labour, Conservative or even Reform Government.
Raising basic rate progressively to 25p, higher rate to nearer 50p and instigating a third higher tax rate is probably where Reeves is going. I'd still be looking at Land Value Taxation or some measure relating to property valuations to replace Stamp Duty and possibly Council Tax. As a small gesture of carrot, I'd put thresholds up by 2x inflation this year and pledge to keep them in line with inflation for the rest of the Parliament.
It looks as though online gaming and FOBTs in betting shops will face higher tax but it may be the lobbying by the horse racing and greyhound industries has done enough to stop a significant rise in betting duty. I suspect fuel duty will go up by more than inflation as well.
The biggest problem is the entrenched belief, among the electorate, that increased taxes will simply disappear into the maw of government, without noticeable improvement.
It's fairly clear that much of Government, local and national has lost control of costs. It's Feast-Or-Famine - either there's no money for X or theres billions spent on something that should cost millions.
The migrant hotels farce is a prefect example of this - an avalanche of money for the owners. I don't blame them - times are tough in the hotel business. If someone is offering you a zero risk, unbelievably profitable multi-year contract, you'd be insane not to take it.
We need to start cutting our cloth according to the.... cloth we actually have.
I know that a British Museum catalogue without a logo, a Richard Rogeresque HQ, some abstract sculpture in the foyer and a mission statement, isn't exciting. Not to mention a "dynamic team" for the Board of Directors on 6 figures each for 2 days of work as year.
But if we ditch those things, we might be able to afford a... British Museum catalogue.
People also have very distorted ideas of where the money goes. Migrant hotels and the British Museum are not why public spending is high. The money goes on healthcare and pensions, both of which are going up with an ageing population.
But you see this pattern through government - the hospitals are both falling down and built for prices that are crazy.
My relative who runs a building business looked at the contract to build a school local to me - the price was higher, per square foot than digging luxury basements. Which is the most expensive thing to do in the construction industry. He said that he could do the job, and throw in a basement swimming pool, under the playground and still make 30%.
I can’t understand why contract management is so bad throughout the public sector.
It’s because “Chief contract negotiator” is a CL6 (sic) position, paying from £45,268 in year 1, to £53,826 in Year 8.
Meanwhile, the guy on the other side is making 1% of the contract value, and attracts people who want to make £10m a year.
Agreed. But you won’t fix that with cuts
Oh I’d be all in favour of central government having a crack team of contract negotiators on unlimited commission based on saving public money.
Let me at it!
Carbon Capture Schemes? gone.
Nuclear power projects - persuade me why they shouldn't be gone....
Carbon capture was always a waste of money - added cost zero benefit
Nuclear power - we shouldn’t be building big ones except the Korean design. Small modular ones we should be investing in to get the factories working so we start exporting them
How govt hasn’t funded the RR SMR is crazy. Outside the EU, it’s the first thing that should have been funded. The US and Chinese SMRs are going to end up winning the race.
Yes, for large nuclear plants the Korean solution is now the best, as we see here in UAE.
UK nuclear power is 5 times the cost of Korean nuclear power.
The SMR business model is far from proven. A Seattle company going ahead with the project for microreactors went into Chapter 11:
It seems the country's going to be a lot quieter once all the people supposedly leaving have gone....
We all know Reeves and Starmer should have been honest about raising income tax and perhaps VAT before the election but the shadow cast by 1992 is very long and it would have been manna from heaven for Sunak and Hunt - "Labour will raise your taxes, the Conservatives will cut them" - the social media messages write themselves.
We also know, in the event of their re-election, Hunt would likely have raised taxes as well.
The deficit remains eye watering - no one objects to borrowing for long term capital investment but borrowing to get from one month to the next doesn't work well for individuals or countries. The truth is even if we can bring the deficit and borrowing down we will still be saddled with the annual debt interest payments of £60-70 billion tearing a chunk out of our available expenditure.
The priority for now must be getting the deficit down and while some of the more fanciful ideas on here about slashing civil service headcount by 50% and cutting benefits by the same amount might make some on here feel better, we all know that won't happen under a Labour, Conservative or even Reform Government.
Raising basic rate progressively to 25p, higher rate to nearer 50p and instigating a third higher tax rate is probably where Reeves is going. I'd still be looking at Land Value Taxation or some measure relating to property valuations to replace Stamp Duty and possibly Council Tax. As a small gesture of carrot, I'd put thresholds up by 2x inflation this year and pledge to keep them in line with inflation for the rest of the Parliament.
It looks as though online gaming and FOBTs in betting shops will face higher tax but it may be the lobbying by the horse racing and greyhound industries has done enough to stop a significant rise in betting duty. I suspect fuel duty will go up by more than inflation as well.
The biggest problem is the entrenched belief, among the electorate, that increased taxes will simply disappear into the maw of government, without noticeable improvement.
It's fairly clear that much of Government, local and national has lost control of costs. It's Feast-Or-Famine - either there's no money for X or theres billions spent on something that should cost millions.
The migrant hotels farce is a prefect example of this - an avalanche of money for the owners. I don't blame them - times are tough in the hotel business. If someone is offering you a zero risk, unbelievably profitable multi-year contract, you'd be insane not to take it.
We need to start cutting our cloth according to the.... cloth we actually have.
I know that a British Museum catalogue without a logo, a Richard Rogeresque HQ, some abstract sculpture in the foyer and a mission statement, isn't exciting. Not to mention a "dynamic team" for the Board of Directors on 6 figures each for 2 days of work as year.
But if we ditch those things, we might be able to afford a... British Museum catalogue.
People also have very distorted ideas of where the money goes. Migrant hotels and the British Museum are not why public spending is high. The money goes on healthcare and pensions, both of which are going up with an ageing population.
But you see this pattern through government - the hospitals are both falling down and built for prices that are crazy.
My relative who runs a building business looked at the contract to build a school local to me - the price was higher, per square foot than digging luxury basements. Which is the most expensive thing to do in the construction industry. He said that he could do the job, and throw in a basement swimming pool, under the playground and still make 30%.
I can’t understand why contract management is so bad throughout the public sector.
It’s because “Chief contract negotiator” is a CL6 (sic) position, paying from £45,268 in year 1, to £53,826 in Year 8.
Meanwhile, the guy on the other side is making 1% of the contract value, and attracts people who want to make £10m a year.
Agreed. But you won’t fix that with cuts
Oh I’d be all in favour of central government having a crack team of contract negotiators on unlimited commission based on saving public money.
Let me at it!
Carbon Capture Schemes? gone.
Nuclear power projects - persuade me why they shouldn't be gone....
Carbon capture was always a waste of money - added cost zero benefit
Nuclear power - we shouldn’t be building big ones except the Korean design. Small modular ones we should be investing in to get the factories working so we start exporting them
How govt hasn’t funded the RR SMR is crazy. Outside the EU, it’s the first thing that should have been funded. The US and Chinese SMRs are going to end up winning the race.
Yes, for large nuclear plants the Korean solution is now the best, as we see here in UAE.
UK nuclear power is 5 times the cost of Korean nuclear power.
The SMR business model is far from proven. A Seattle company going ahead with the project for microreactors went into Chapter 11:
Yes because we insist on reinventing the wheel every single time. The whole point of SMR is that we would have a fixed design that is repeatedly built.
Not supporting RR is one of the biggest screw ups of the past 7 years...
A work colleague (DWP so he knows how it works) complained that neighbours on disability could apparently afford a new car every 3 years
My understanding is that a Motability lease lasts three years, so changing cars then is actually forced on people.
True, although I did find out by accident that if your mileage is low you can ask Motability to extend the lease to 4 or 5 years. They don't really advertise that though.
Most Motability leases require an up-front, non-returnable deposit. That can currently be up to £8k, say for and Audi Q4. So that's £222 pm in up-front payment + you're giving up £333pm PIP. £555pm for an Audi Q4 may be worth it and affordable for you but clearly some on here think that it's not right that disabled people should be allowed to lease such cars.
Kemi has just said that the Tories have a record of protecting the NHS.
With a straight face.
What have they done then to make you say that? Funding for the NHS was never cut, even during 'austerity'.
Ask Google 'NHS waiting list versus party in power'
AI Overview
Analyzing the relationship between the governing political party and the NHS waiting list shows significant long-term increases in the waiting list under Conservative-led governments (pre-1997 and 2010-2024), and substantial reductions under the Labour governments of 1997-2010. However, direct comparisons across decades are challenging due to changes in how waiting lists are measured.
Historical Overview Conservative Governments (1987-1997): The waiting list rose substantially. However, it is noted that the median waiting time for patients, and the number waiting more than a year, actually fell during this period, indicating complex trends in how quickly patients were treated versus the total number on the list.
Labour Governments (1997-2010): The waiting list fell substantially under New Labour, especially after new targets were introduced around 2005. The total waiting list nearly halved by 2009, and median waiting times were lower than under the preceding Conservative governments.
Conservative/Coalition Governments (2010-2024): The NHS waiting list doubled in the decade before the COVID-19 pandemic, from around 2.3 million in January 2010 to 4.6 million in December 2019. Median waiting times also rose during this period. The 18-week treatment target (92% of patients treated within 18 weeks) has not been met since September 2015.
Post-Pandemic (2020 onwards): The waiting list grew rapidly during the COVID-19 pandemic, peaking at around 7.8 million in September 2023. The substantial disruption from the pandemic and subsequent industrial action exacerbated an already strained system.
Labour Government (from July 2024): The waiting list was around 7.6 million when Labour took office. Initial data shows a slight decrease in the total list (to around 7.4 million by August 2025) and improvements in the percentage of waits within 18 weeks.
It is risible to suggest that the waiting lists would not have rocketed if Labour were in power during the Covid epidemic. That massively undermines any "correlation".
It would be risible but no one is suggesting that, so enough of your whataboutery. Ignoring 2020-2024 the pattern is very clear.
A work colleague (DWP so he knows how it works) complained that neighbours on disability could apparently afford a new car every 3 years
My understanding is that a Motability lease lasts three years, so changing cars then is actually forced on people.
True, although I did find out by accident that if your mileage is low you can ask Motability to extend the lease to 4 or 5 years. They don't really advertise that though.
Most Motability leases require an up-front, non-returnable deposit. That can currently be up to £8k, say for and Audi Q4. So that's £222 pm in up-front payment + you're giving up £333pm PIP. £555pm for an Audi Q4 may be worth it and affordable for you but clearly some on here think that it's not right that disabled people should be allowed to lease such cars.
5 years on adapted vehicles.
No. 5 years on Wheelchair Accessible Vehicle. My car is adapted (hand controls) but it's a 3 year lease.
A work colleague (DWP so he knows how it works) complained that neighbours on disability could apparently afford a new car every 3 years
My understanding is that a Motability lease lasts three years, so changing cars then is actually forced on people.
True, although I did find out by accident that if your mileage is low you can ask Motability to extend the lease to 4 or 5 years. They don't really advertise that though.
Most Motability leases require an up-front, non-returnable deposit. That can currently be up to £8k, say for and Audi Q4. So that's £222 pm in up-front payment + you're giving up £333pm PIP. £555pm for an Audi Q4 may be worth it and affordable for you but clearly some on here think that it's not right that disabled people should be allowed to lease such cars.
5 years on adapted vehicles.
No. 5 years on Wheelchair Accessible Vehicle. My car is adapted (hand controls) but it's a 3 year lease.
So how do they block a $5 virtual server in France and tailscale
When it is tracked down as a VPN, by the Think Of The Children Dept.
1) Your ISP is fined for giving access to it (to encourage ISPs to proactively look for VPNs) 2) You will be automatically given a criminal record, which eliminates a large number of jobs for you. You will probably be placed on a register as a Risk To Children. Which means your children, if any, are taken into care.
Love to know how 1 works - as someone with (granted out of date) knowledge on how ISPs work.
It's worth remembering that VPNs are essential for any remote working and the only client I've had in the last 12 years that didn't use one was Microsoft because well - I was customer facing so didn't need backend access.
1) Doesn't actually work - but it provides a lot of work for the Think Of The Children Dept. This justifies the logo, the Richard Rogeresque building with the big abstract sculptures in the foyer. It allows a series of ministers to pontificate on the Serious Work their Dept undertakes. Millions of pages of reports.
I have no doubt whatsoever that Reeves is going to raise taxes to justify her largesse with the public sector and her inability to achieve cuts in welfare spending past her backbenchers
She casts around looking for someone to blame, but she reinstated the WFP and failed in attempts to cut back welfare
I would just say that the huge rise in the minimum wage for 18+ to adult rates is the receipe for long term youth employment as business will not be attracted to young workers as opposed to those of a more mature age and life experience
However, this is labour where spending and taxing is their DNA and they have no backbone to address the doom loop we are in
A truly game changing government, (like one with a landslide majority), would focus on means testing pensions and the NHS to ensure the viability of both
Why should the wealthy receive the state pension and free NHS treatment when it is crippling our economy and draining our resources for adequate funding other parts of the public sector including education, law and order, and defence to name a few
Until we accept that really hard decisions are needed, we are just going to make everything worse especially for our grandchildren and frankly is is unacceptable and utter cowardice
Because the effect of means-testing the state pension is that most people won't find it worth saving for their retirement at all. That just stores up a massive social and economic problem for a few decades down the line. See also expensive bits of healthcare and social care.
Besides, provided they have paid a decent wodge of tax along the way, I don't see any reason to begrudge richer people than me getting some of it back when they are old. (And more cynically, lower-than-otherwise taxes funded by more means testing would probably benefit plutocrats compared with the status quo.)
It seems the country's going to be a lot quieter once all the people supposedly leaving have gone....
We all know Reeves and Starmer should have been honest about raising income tax and perhaps VAT before the election but the shadow cast by 1992 is very long and it would have been manna from heaven for Sunak and Hunt - "Labour will raise your taxes, the Conservatives will cut them" - the social media messages write themselves.
We also know, in the event of their re-election, Hunt would likely have raised taxes as well.
The deficit remains eye watering - no one objects to borrowing for long term capital investment but borrowing to get from one month to the next doesn't work well for individuals or countries. The truth is even if we can bring the deficit and borrowing down we will still be saddled with the annual debt interest payments of £60-70 billion tearing a chunk out of our available expenditure.
The priority for now must be getting the deficit down and while some of the more fanciful ideas on here about slashing civil service headcount by 50% and cutting benefits by the same amount might make some on here feel better, we all know that won't happen under a Labour, Conservative or even Reform Government.
Raising basic rate progressively to 25p, higher rate to nearer 50p and instigating a third higher tax rate is probably where Reeves is going. I'd still be looking at Land Value Taxation or some measure relating to property valuations to replace Stamp Duty and possibly Council Tax. As a small gesture of carrot, I'd put thresholds up by 2x inflation this year and pledge to keep them in line with inflation for the rest of the Parliament.
It looks as though online gaming and FOBTs in betting shops will face higher tax but it may be the lobbying by the horse racing and greyhound industries has done enough to stop a significant rise in betting duty. I suspect fuel duty will go up by more than inflation as well.
The biggest problem is the entrenched belief, among the electorate, that increased taxes will simply disappear into the maw of government, without noticeable improvement.
It's fairly clear that much of Government, local and national has lost control of costs. It's Feast-Or-Famine - either there's no money for X or theres billions spent on something that should cost millions.
The migrant hotels farce is a prefect example of this - an avalanche of money for the owners. I don't blame them - times are tough in the hotel business. If someone is offering you a zero risk, unbelievably profitable multi-year contract, you'd be insane not to take it.
We need to start cutting our cloth according to the.... cloth we actually have.
I know that a British Museum catalogue without a logo, a Richard Rogeresque HQ, some abstract sculpture in the foyer and a mission statement, isn't exciting. Not to mention a "dynamic team" for the Board of Directors on 6 figures each for 2 days of work as year.
But if we ditch those things, we might be able to afford a... British Museum catalogue.
People also have very distorted ideas of where the money goes. Migrant hotels and the British Museum are not why public spending is high. The money goes on healthcare and pensions, both of which are going up with an ageing population.
But you see this pattern through government - the hospitals are both falling down and built for prices that are crazy.
My relative who runs a building business looked at the contract to build a school local to me - the price was higher, per square foot than digging luxury basements. Which is the most expensive thing to do in the construction industry. He said that he could do the job, and throw in a basement swimming pool, under the playground and still make 30%.
I can’t understand why contract management is so bad throughout the public sector.
It’s because “Chief contract negotiator” is a CL6 (sic) position, paying from £45,268 in year 1, to £53,826 in Year 8.
Meanwhile, the guy on the other side is making 1% of the contract value, and attracts people who want to make £10m a year.
Agreed. But you won’t fix that with cuts
Oh I’d be all in favour of central government having a crack team of contract negotiators on unlimited commission based on saving public money.
Let me at it!
Carbon Capture Schemes? gone.
Nuclear power projects - persuade me why they shouldn't be gone....
Carbon capture was always a waste of money - added cost zero benefit
Nuclear power - we shouldn’t be building big ones except the Korean design. Small modular ones we should be investing in to get the factories working so we start exporting them
Carbon capture is a designed to mitigate the amount of CO2 that is released. If you are determined that global temps need to be kept below 'x' degrees then carbon capture might be used as part of the process, even if it is hideously expensive.
Except that very few countries will be doing it, and the cost/benefit analysis is dreadful compared with other interventions.
Assuming the basic premise that you wish to reduce the amount of CO2 emitted is accepted, then CCS might possibly be useful in certain areas in which it is very difficult to replace the use of fossil fuels. Cement production, perhaps? But it's certainly a niche solution.
There's a case for committing R&D funding, but trying to implement it industrially with current technology is just mental.
On Tuesday, District Judge Sam Goozee found Robinson not guilty of failing to comply with the counter-terrorism powers during the incident on July 28 last year.
Mr Goozee said: “I cannot put out of my mind that it was actually what you stood for and your political beliefs that acted for the principle reason for this stop.”
A work colleague (DWP so he knows how it works) complained that neighbours on disability could apparently afford a new car every 3 years
My understanding is that a Motability lease lasts three years, so changing cars then is actually forced on people.
True, although I did find out by accident that if your mileage is low you can ask Motability to extend the lease to 4 or 5 years. They don't really advertise that though.
Most Motability leases require an up-front, non-returnable deposit. That can currently be up to £8k, say for and Audi Q4. So that's £222 pm in up-front payment + you're giving up £333pm PIP. £555pm for an Audi Q4 may be worth it and affordable for you but clearly some on here think that it's not right that disabled people should be allowed to lease such cars.
That £333 PIP being "given up" is costing the government extra in foregone VAT compared with using it for many other expenses.
Motability: £45k car, 8k from you. Cost to motability £36000 (because no vat) minus 8k equals £28000. They sell it after 3 years for £20000. Notional lease cost per month £333.
If VAT were charged: £45k car, 8k from you. Cost to motability £45000 minus 8k equals £37000. They sell it after 3 years for £20000. Notional lease cost per month £708.
A work colleague (DWP so he knows how it works) complained that neighbours on disability could apparently afford a new car every 3 years
My understanding is that a Motability lease lasts three years, so changing cars then is actually forced on people.
True, although I did find out by accident that if your mileage is low you can ask Motability to extend the lease to 4 or 5 years. They don't really advertise that though.
Most Motability leases require an up-front, non-returnable deposit. That can currently be up to £8k, say for and Audi Q4. So that's £222 pm in up-front payment + you're giving up £333pm PIP. £555pm for an Audi Q4 may be worth it and affordable for you but clearly some on here think that it's not right that disabled people should be allowed to lease such cars.
That £333 PIP being "given up" is costing the government extra in foregone VAT compared with using it for many other expenses.
Motability: £45k car, 8k from you. Cost to motability £36000 (because no vat) minus 8k equals £28000. They sell it after 3 years for £20000. Notional lease cost per month £333.
If VAT were charged: £45k car, 8k from you. Cost to motability £45000 minus 8k equals £37000. They sell it after 3 years for £20000. Notional lease cost per month £833.
The car wouldn't be leased at £833 a month.
It's worth saying that UK second hand car prices are far lower than the rest of the world - I suspect Motobility has a lot to do with that.
Edit - the other thing to say is that motobility won't be paying anything like list price for the car. if they aren't getting a 25% discount on the car I would eat my hat.
Reason why I suspect that's the level of discount - the only car brand you can't get on Motobility is Tesla...
A work colleague (DWP so he knows how it works) complained that neighbours on disability could apparently afford a new car every 3 years
My understanding is that a Motability lease lasts three years, so changing cars then is actually forced on people.
True, although I did find out by accident that if your mileage is low you can ask Motability to extend the lease to 4 or 5 years. They don't really advertise that though.
Most Motability leases require an up-front, non-returnable deposit. That can currently be up to £8k, say for and Audi Q4. So that's £222 pm in up-front payment + you're giving up £333pm PIP. £555pm for an Audi Q4 may be worth it and affordable for you but clearly some on here think that it's not right that disabled people should be allowed to lease such cars.
That £333 PIP being "given up" is costing the government extra in foregone VAT compared with using it for many other expenses.
Motability: £45k car, 8k from you. Cost to motability £36000 (because no vat) minus 8k equals £28000. They sell it after 3 years for £20000. Notional lease cost per month £333.
If VAT were charged: £45k car, 8k from you. Cost to motability £45000 minus 8k equals £37000. They sell it after 3 years for £20000. Notional lease cost per month £833.
The car wouldn't be leased at £833 a month.
It's worth saying that UK second hand car prices are far lower than the rest of the world - I suspect Motobility has a lot to do with that.
Would our PBStopPamperingtheDisabled fraction complain if they had to pay more for their jam-jars because Motability was scrapped?
On Tuesday, District Judge Sam Goozee found Robinson not guilty of failing to comply with the counter-terrorism powers during the incident on July 28 last year.
Mr Goozee said: “I cannot put out of my mind that it was actually what you stood for and your political beliefs that acted for the principle reason for this stop.”
A work colleague (DWP so he knows how it works) complained that neighbours on disability could apparently afford a new car every 3 years
My understanding is that a Motability lease lasts three years, so changing cars then is actually forced on people.
True, although I did find out by accident that if your mileage is low you can ask Motability to extend the lease to 4 or 5 years. They don't really advertise that though.
Most Motability leases require an up-front, non-returnable deposit. That can currently be up to £8k, say for and Audi Q4. So that's £222 pm in up-front payment + you're giving up £333pm PIP. £555pm for an Audi Q4 may be worth it and affordable for you but clearly some on here think that it's not right that disabled people should be allowed to lease such cars.
That £333 PIP being "given up" is costing the government extra in foregone VAT compared with using it for many other expenses.
Motability: £45k car, 8k from you. Cost to motability £36000 (because no vat) minus 8k equals £28000. They sell it after 3 years for £20000. Notional lease cost per month £333.
If VAT were charged: £45k car, 8k from you. Cost to motability £45000 minus 8k equals £37000. They sell it after 3 years for £20000. Notional lease cost per month £708.
I can't argue with that (not being in the market for a Q4 anyway ;-))
Maybe that's the answer - remove the VAT exemption. A bit like private school fees really. As I say, I have no argument with that.
(Disabled equipment and adaptations are VAT free and that feels right to me, but that would just be zero-rating the cost of any adaptation.)
Incidentally the VAT exemption for Motability cars was introduced by that arch left-winger Margaret Thatcher in 1984.
I have no doubt whatsoever that Reeves is going to raise taxes to justify her largesse with the public sector and her inability to achieve cuts in welfare spending past her backbenchers
She casts around looking for someone to blame, but she reinstated the WFP and failed in attempts to cut back welfare
I would just say that the huge rise in the minimum wage for 18+ to adult rates is the receipe for long term youth employment as business will not be attracted to young workers as opposed to those of a more mature age and life experience
However, this is labour where spending and taxing is their DNA and they have no backbone to address the doom loop we are in
A truly game changing government, (like one with a landslide majority), would focus on means testing pensions and the NHS to ensure the viability of both
Why should the wealthy receive the state pension and free NHS treatment when it is crippling our economy and draining our resources for adequate funding other parts of the public sector including education, law and order, and defence to name a few
Until we accept that really hard decisions are needed, we are just going to make everything worse especially for our grandchildren and frankly is is unacceptable and utter cowardice
Because the effect of means-testing the state pension is that most people won't find it worth saving for their retirement at all. That just stores up a massive social and economic problem for a few decades down the line. See also expensive bits of healthcare and social care.
Besides, provided they have paid a decent wodge of tax along the way, I don't see any reason to begrudge richer people than me getting some of it back when they are old. (And more cynically, lower-than-otherwise taxes funded by more means testing would probably benefit plutocrats compared with the status quo.)
Yes - it is nice to have but not affordable
Either it is means tested at some point or the starting age will be beyond 70
A work colleague (DWP so he knows how it works) complained that neighbours on disability could apparently afford a new car every 3 years
My understanding is that a Motability lease lasts three years, so changing cars then is actually forced on people.
True, although I did find out by accident that if your mileage is low you can ask Motability to extend the lease to 4 or 5 years. They don't really advertise that though.
Most Motability leases require an up-front, non-returnable deposit. That can currently be up to £8k, say for and Audi Q4. So that's £222 pm in up-front payment + you're giving up £333pm PIP. £555pm for an Audi Q4 may be worth it and affordable for you but clearly some on here think that it's not right that disabled people should be allowed to lease such cars.
That £333 PIP being "given up" is costing the government extra in foregone VAT compared with using it for many other expenses.
Motability: £45k car, 8k from you. Cost to motability £36000 (because no vat) minus 8k equals £28000. They sell it after 3 years for £20000. Notional lease cost per month £333.
If VAT were charged: £45k car, 8k from you. Cost to motability £45000 minus 8k equals £37000. They sell it after 3 years for £20000. Notional lease cost per month £833.
The car wouldn't be leased at £833 a month.
It's worth saying that UK second hand car prices are far lower than the rest of the world - I suspect Motobility has a lot to do with that.
Would our PBStopPamperingtheDisabled fraction complain if they had to pay more for their jam-jars because Motability was scrapped?
The thing that surprises me, is the claim that new cars are required because they cost less to maintain.
For years, the optimal cost vehicle, for most people, has been dealer reconditioned second hand cars, with warranties. From one of the brands that scores highly on low maintenance.
On Tuesday, District Judge Sam Goozee found Robinson not guilty of failing to comply with the counter-terrorism powers during the incident on July 28 last year.
Mr Goozee said: “I cannot put out of my mind that it was actually what you stood for and your political beliefs that acted for the principle reason for this stop.”
I don't have a clue what the Judge means. "Protected characteristic" is the language of the Equality Act. What protected characteristic?
There's a bit of a whiff of police cockup about this imo. If he had an illegal amount of cash on him for export undeclared, why was that not charged?
Presumably the protected characteristic is political belief?
Anyway, Robinson must be relieved. Now he can concentrate on the ongoing legal fight over whether he is hiding any money with his insolvency that he owes in libel damages, and his trial due next year on harassment charges.
A work colleague (DWP so he knows how it works) complained that neighbours on disability could apparently afford a new car every 3 years
My understanding is that a Motability lease lasts three years, so changing cars then is actually forced on people.
True, although I did find out by accident that if your mileage is low you can ask Motability to extend the lease to 4 or 5 years. They don't really advertise that though.
Most Motability leases require an up-front, non-returnable deposit. That can currently be up to £8k, say for and Audi Q4. So that's £222 pm in up-front payment + you're giving up £333pm PIP. £555pm for an Audi Q4 may be worth it and affordable for you but clearly some on here think that it's not right that disabled people should be allowed to lease such cars.
That £333 PIP being "given up" is costing the government extra in foregone VAT compared with using it for many other expenses.
Motability: £45k car, 8k from you. Cost to motability £36000 (because no vat) minus 8k equals £28000. They sell it after 3 years for £20000. Notional lease cost per month £333.
If VAT were charged: £45k car, 8k from you. Cost to motability £45000 minus 8k equals £37000. They sell it after 3 years for £20000. Notional lease cost per month £833.
The car wouldn't be leased at £833 a month.
It's worth saying that UK second hand car prices are far lower than the rest of the world - I suspect Motobility has a lot to do with that.
Would our PBStopPamperingtheDisabled fraction complain if they had to pay more for their jam-jars because Motability was scrapped?
The thing that surprises me, is the claim that new cars are required because they cost less to maintain.
In the days of rust-buckets, this may have been true.
I have no doubt whatsoever that Reeves is going to raise taxes to justify her largesse with the public sector and her inability to achieve cuts in welfare spending past her backbenchers
She casts around looking for someone to blame, but she reinstated the WFP and failed in attempts to cut back welfare
I would just say that the huge rise in the minimum wage for 18+ to adult rates is the receipe for long term youth employment as business will not be attracted to young workers as opposed to those of a more mature age and life experience
However, this is labour where spending and taxing is their DNA and they have no backbone to address the doom loop we are in
A truly game changing government, (like one with a landslide majority), would focus on means testing pensions and the NHS to ensure the viability of both
Why should the wealthy receive the state pension and free NHS treatment when it is crippling our economy and draining our resources for adequate funding other parts of the public sector including education, law and order, and defence to name a few
Until we accept that really hard decisions are needed, we are just going to make everything worse especially for our grandchildren and frankly is is unacceptable and utter cowardice
Because the effect of means-testing the state pension is that most people won't find it worth saving for their retirement at all. That just stores up a massive social and economic problem for a few decades down the line. See also expensive bits of healthcare and social care.
Besides, provided they have paid a decent wodge of tax along the way, I don't see any reason to begrudge richer people than me getting some of it back when they are old. (And more cynically, lower-than-otherwise taxes funded by more means testing would probably benefit plutocrats compared with the status quo.)
Also, means testing would mean that the well off would campaign even more ferociously against the State Pension than they do in the media they control - and this works right down to PB itself, where it's the posters who control the debate (the odd virtual tasering excursion by TSE et al excepted).
Plus more admin and more bureaucracy, which PB rightists are supposed to loathe.
A work colleague (DWP so he knows how it works) complained that neighbours on disability could apparently afford a new car every 3 years
My understanding is that a Motability lease lasts three years, so changing cars then is actually forced on people.
True, although I did find out by accident that if your mileage is low you can ask Motability to extend the lease to 4 or 5 years. They don't really advertise that though.
Most Motability leases require an up-front, non-returnable deposit. That can currently be up to £8k, say for and Audi Q4. So that's £222 pm in up-front payment + you're giving up £333pm PIP. £555pm for an Audi Q4 may be worth it and affordable for you but clearly some on here think that it's not right that disabled people should be allowed to lease such cars.
That £333 PIP being "given up" is costing the government extra in foregone VAT compared with using it for many other expenses.
Motability: £45k car, 8k from you. Cost to motability £36000 (because no vat) minus 8k equals £28000. They sell it after 3 years for £20000. Notional lease cost per month £333.
If VAT were charged: £45k car, 8k from you. Cost to motability £45000 minus 8k equals £37000. They sell it after 3 years for £20000. Notional lease cost per month £833.
The car wouldn't be leased at £833 a month.
It's worth saying that UK second hand car prices are far lower than the rest of the world - I suspect Motobility has a lot to do with that.
Would our PBStopPamperingtheDisabled fraction complain if they had to pay more for their jam-jars because Motability was scrapped?
The thing that surprises me, is the claim that new cars are required because they cost less to maintain.
In the days of rust-buckets, this may have been true.
But that's decades ago. How many of us know people who've put a zillion miles on a Toyota or a Skoda?
Labour would probably be quite comfortably the largest party, on the back of tactical voting from Greens and Lib Dems.
Yougov shows a much bigger vote lead for the left wing parties than the other polling companies do (51% to 43% for Con and Reform, compared to an average of 48% to 49%. Or 55% to 43% including the nationalists, compared to 51% to 49%).
It seems the country's going to be a lot quieter once all the people supposedly leaving have gone....
We all know Reeves and Starmer should have been honest about raising income tax and perhaps VAT before the election but the shadow cast by 1992 is very long and it would have been manna from heaven for Sunak and Hunt - "Labour will raise your taxes, the Conservatives will cut them" - the social media messages write themselves.
We also know, in the event of their re-election, Hunt would likely have raised taxes as well.
The deficit remains eye watering - no one objects to borrowing for long term capital investment but borrowing to get from one month to the next doesn't work well for individuals or countries. The truth is even if we can bring the deficit and borrowing down we will still be saddled with the annual debt interest payments of £60-70 billion tearing a chunk out of our available expenditure.
The priority for now must be getting the deficit down and while some of the more fanciful ideas on here about slashing civil service headcount by 50% and cutting benefits by the same amount might make some on here feel better, we all know that won't happen under a Labour, Conservative or even Reform Government.
Raising basic rate progressively to 25p, higher rate to nearer 50p and instigating a third higher tax rate is probably where Reeves is going. I'd still be looking at Land Value Taxation or some measure relating to property valuations to replace Stamp Duty and possibly Council Tax. As a small gesture of carrot, I'd put thresholds up by 2x inflation this year and pledge to keep them in line with inflation for the rest of the Parliament.
It looks as though online gaming and FOBTs in betting shops will face higher tax but it may be the lobbying by the horse racing and greyhound industries has done enough to stop a significant rise in betting duty. I suspect fuel duty will go up by more than inflation as well.
The biggest problem is the entrenched belief, among the electorate, that increased taxes will simply disappear into the maw of government, without noticeable improvement.
It's fairly clear that much of Government, local and national has lost control of costs. It's Feast-Or-Famine - either there's no money for X or theres billions spent on something that should cost millions.
The migrant hotels farce is a prefect example of this - an avalanche of money for the owners. I don't blame them - times are tough in the hotel business. If someone is offering you a zero risk, unbelievably profitable multi-year contract, you'd be insane not to take it.
We need to start cutting our cloth according to the.... cloth we actually have.
I know that a British Museum catalogue without a logo, a Richard Rogeresque HQ, some abstract sculpture in the foyer and a mission statement, isn't exciting. Not to mention a "dynamic team" for the Board of Directors on 6 figures each for 2 days of work as year.
But if we ditch those things, we might be able to afford a... British Museum catalogue.
People also have very distorted ideas of where the money goes. Migrant hotels and the British Museum are not why public spending is high. The money goes on healthcare and pensions, both of which are going up with an ageing population.
But you see this pattern through government - the hospitals are both falling down and built for prices that are crazy.
My relative who runs a building business looked at the contract to build a school local to me - the price was higher, per square foot than digging luxury basements. Which is the most expensive thing to do in the construction industry. He said that he could do the job, and throw in a basement swimming pool, under the playground and still make 30%.
I can’t understand why contract management is so bad throughout the public sector.
It’s because “Chief contract negotiator” is a CL6 (sic) position, paying from £45,268 in year 1, to £53,826 in Year 8.
Meanwhile, the guy on the other side is making 1% of the contract value, and attracts people who want to make £10m a year.
Agreed. But you won’t fix that with cuts
Oh I’d be all in favour of central government having a crack team of contract negotiators on unlimited commission based on saving public money.
Let me at it!
Carbon Capture Schemes? gone.
Nuclear power projects - persuade me why they shouldn't be gone....
Carbon capture was always a waste of money - added cost zero benefit
Nuclear power - we shouldn’t be building big ones except the Korean design. Small modular ones we should be investing in to get the factories working so we start exporting them
Carbon capture is a designed to mitigate the amount of CO2 that is released. If you are determined that global temps need to be kept below 'x' degrees then carbon capture might be used as part of the process, even if it is hideously expensive.
Except that very few countries will be doing it, and the cost/benefit analysis is dreadful compared with other interventions.
I don't disagree - it wouldn't be my choice. I'd be going hell for leather for renewables (tidal, wind, solar, battery storage, huge storage reservoirs etc).
A work colleague (DWP so he knows how it works) complained that neighbours on disability could apparently afford a new car every 3 years
My understanding is that a Motability lease lasts three years, so changing cars then is actually forced on people.
True, although I did find out by accident that if your mileage is low you can ask Motability to extend the lease to 4 or 5 years. They don't really advertise that though.
Most Motability leases require an up-front, non-returnable deposit. That can currently be up to £8k, say for and Audi Q4. So that's £222 pm in up-front payment + you're giving up £333pm PIP. £555pm for an Audi Q4 may be worth it and affordable for you but clearly some on here think that it's not right that disabled people should be allowed to lease such cars.
That £333 PIP being "given up" is costing the government extra in foregone VAT compared with using it for many other expenses.
Motability: £45k car, 8k from you. Cost to motability £36000 (because no vat) minus 8k equals £28000. They sell it after 3 years for £20000. Notional lease cost per month £333.
If VAT were charged: £45k car, 8k from you. Cost to motability £45000 minus 8k equals £37000. They sell it after 3 years for £20000. Notional lease cost per month £708.
I can't argue with that (not being in the market for a Q4 anyway ;-))
Maybe that's the answer - remove the VAT exemption. A bit like private school fees really. As I say, I have no argument with that.
(Disabled equipment and adaptations are VAT free and that feels right to me, but that would just be zero-rating the cost of any adaptation.)
Incidentally the VAT exemption for Motability cars was introduced by that arch left-winger Margaret Thatcher in 1984.
I hesitate to disagree with Mrs T over that distinction. When I was at work I realised how useful ramps were for everyone else, as well as the wheelchair user for which they had originally been built often using Government funding. But that's no reason not to build the ramp for the wheelchair user in the first place,
It seems the country's going to be a lot quieter once all the people supposedly leaving have gone....
We all know Reeves and Starmer should have been honest about raising income tax and perhaps VAT before the election but the shadow cast by 1992 is very long and it would have been manna from heaven for Sunak and Hunt - "Labour will raise your taxes, the Conservatives will cut them" - the social media messages write themselves.
We also know, in the event of their re-election, Hunt would likely have raised taxes as well.
The deficit remains eye watering - no one objects to borrowing for long term capital investment but borrowing to get from one month to the next doesn't work well for individuals or countries. The truth is even if we can bring the deficit and borrowing down we will still be saddled with the annual debt interest payments of £60-70 billion tearing a chunk out of our available expenditure.
The priority for now must be getting the deficit down and while some of the more fanciful ideas on here about slashing civil service headcount by 50% and cutting benefits by the same amount might make some on here feel better, we all know that won't happen under a Labour, Conservative or even Reform Government.
Raising basic rate progressively to 25p, higher rate to nearer 50p and instigating a third higher tax rate is probably where Reeves is going. I'd still be looking at Land Value Taxation or some measure relating to property valuations to replace Stamp Duty and possibly Council Tax. As a small gesture of carrot, I'd put thresholds up by 2x inflation this year and pledge to keep them in line with inflation for the rest of the Parliament.
It looks as though online gaming and FOBTs in betting shops will face higher tax but it may be the lobbying by the horse racing and greyhound industries has done enough to stop a significant rise in betting duty. I suspect fuel duty will go up by more than inflation as well.
The biggest problem is the entrenched belief, among the electorate, that increased taxes will simply disappear into the maw of government, without noticeable improvement.
It's fairly clear that much of Government, local and national has lost control of costs. It's Feast-Or-Famine - either there's no money for X or theres billions spent on something that should cost millions.
The migrant hotels farce is a prefect example of this - an avalanche of money for the owners. I don't blame them - times are tough in the hotel business. If someone is offering you a zero risk, unbelievably profitable multi-year contract, you'd be insane not to take it.
We need to start cutting our cloth according to the.... cloth we actually have.
I know that a British Museum catalogue without a logo, a Richard Rogeresque HQ, some abstract sculpture in the foyer and a mission statement, isn't exciting. Not to mention a "dynamic team" for the Board of Directors on 6 figures each for 2 days of work as year.
But if we ditch those things, we might be able to afford a... British Museum catalogue.
People also have very distorted ideas of where the money goes. Migrant hotels and the British Museum are not why public spending is high. The money goes on healthcare and pensions, both of which are going up with an ageing population.
But you see this pattern through government - the hospitals are both falling down and built for prices that are crazy.
My relative who runs a building business looked at the contract to build a school local to me - the price was higher, per square foot than digging luxury basements. Which is the most expensive thing to do in the construction industry. He said that he could do the job, and throw in a basement swimming pool, under the playground and still make 30%.
I can’t understand why contract management is so bad throughout the public sector.
It’s because “Chief contract negotiator” is a CL6 (sic) position, paying from £45,268 in year 1, to £53,826 in Year 8.
Meanwhile, the guy on the other side is making 1% of the contract value, and attracts people who want to make £10m a year.
Agreed. But you won’t fix that with cuts
Oh I’d be all in favour of central government having a crack team of contract negotiators on unlimited commission based on saving public money.
Disaster waiting to happen. For one, you wouldn’t be able to easily quantify what the “saving” was and as all commission systems do it would encourage meeting the metric only. I.e. low contract sum but costs heavily loaded in year 5 or whenever after any commission is paid.
Because the government is incapable of structuring incentive schemes that the private sector do all the time?
It seems the country's going to be a lot quieter once all the people supposedly leaving have gone....
We all know Reeves and Starmer should have been honest about raising income tax and perhaps VAT before the election but the shadow cast by 1992 is very long and it would have been manna from heaven for Sunak and Hunt - "Labour will raise your taxes, the Conservatives will cut them" - the social media messages write themselves.
We also know, in the event of their re-election, Hunt would likely have raised taxes as well.
The deficit remains eye watering - no one objects to borrowing for long term capital investment but borrowing to get from one month to the next doesn't work well for individuals or countries. The truth is even if we can bring the deficit and borrowing down we will still be saddled with the annual debt interest payments of £60-70 billion tearing a chunk out of our available expenditure.
The priority for now must be getting the deficit down and while some of the more fanciful ideas on here about slashing civil service headcount by 50% and cutting benefits by the same amount might make some on here feel better, we all know that won't happen under a Labour, Conservative or even Reform Government.
Raising basic rate progressively to 25p, higher rate to nearer 50p and instigating a third higher tax rate is probably where Reeves is going. I'd still be looking at Land Value Taxation or some measure relating to property valuations to replace Stamp Duty and possibly Council Tax. As a small gesture of carrot, I'd put thresholds up by 2x inflation this year and pledge to keep them in line with inflation for the rest of the Parliament.
It looks as though online gaming and FOBTs in betting shops will face higher tax but it may be the lobbying by the horse racing and greyhound industries has done enough to stop a significant rise in betting duty. I suspect fuel duty will go up by more than inflation as well.
The biggest problem is the entrenched belief, among the electorate, that increased taxes will simply disappear into the maw of government, without noticeable improvement.
It's fairly clear that much of Government, local and national has lost control of costs. It's Feast-Or-Famine - either there's no money for X or theres billions spent on something that should cost millions.
The migrant hotels farce is a prefect example of this - an avalanche of money for the owners. I don't blame them - times are tough in the hotel business. If someone is offering you a zero risk, unbelievably profitable multi-year contract, you'd be insane not to take it.
We need to start cutting our cloth according to the.... cloth we actually have.
I know that a British Museum catalogue without a logo, a Richard Rogeresque HQ, some abstract sculpture in the foyer and a mission statement, isn't exciting. Not to mention a "dynamic team" for the Board of Directors on 6 figures each for 2 days of work as year.
But if we ditch those things, we might be able to afford a... British Museum catalogue.
People also have very distorted ideas of where the money goes. Migrant hotels and the British Museum are not why public spending is high. The money goes on healthcare and pensions, both of which are going up with an ageing population.
But you see this pattern through government - the hospitals are both falling down and built for prices that are crazy.
My relative who runs a building business looked at the contract to build a school local to me - the price was higher, per square foot than digging luxury basements. Which is the most expensive thing to do in the construction industry. He said that he could do the job, and throw in a basement swimming pool, under the playground and still make 30%.
I can’t understand why contract management is so bad throughout the public sector.
It’s because “Chief contract negotiator” is a CL6 (sic) position, paying from £45,268 in year 1, to £53,826 in Year 8.
Meanwhile, the guy on the other side is making 1% of the contract value, and attracts people who want to make £10m a year.
Agreed. But you won’t fix that with cuts
Oh I’d be all in favour of central government having a crack team of contract negotiators on unlimited commission based on saving public money.
Let me at it!
Carbon Capture Schemes? gone.
Nuclear power projects - persuade me why they shouldn't be gone....
Carbon capture was always a waste of money - added cost zero benefit
Nuclear power - we shouldn’t be building big ones except the Korean design. Small modular ones we should be investing in to get the factories working so we start exporting them
Carbon capture is a designed to mitigate the amount of CO2 that is released. If you are determined that global temps need to be kept below 'x' degrees then carbon capture might be used as part of the process, even if it is hideously expensive.
Except that very few countries will be doing it, and the cost/benefit analysis is dreadful compared with other interventions.
I don't disagree - it wouldn't be my choice. I'd be going hell for leather for renewables (tidal, wind, solar, battery storage, huge storage reservoirs etc).
The one good use for carbon capture and storage would be if we used excess renewable electricity to create methane (via electrolysis and the Sabatier process) and then captured the carbon when burning that gas. You'd then have a negative carbon process to balance things like the warming from jet plane contrails.
But we're a long way from that, and instead they're talking about using CCS for production of hydrogen from fossil methane, which is absurd.
It seems the country's going to be a lot quieter once all the people supposedly leaving have gone....
We all know Reeves and Starmer should have been honest about raising income tax and perhaps VAT before the election but the shadow cast by 1992 is very long and it would have been manna from heaven for Sunak and Hunt - "Labour will raise your taxes, the Conservatives will cut them" - the social media messages write themselves.
We also know, in the event of their re-election, Hunt would likely have raised taxes as well.
The deficit remains eye watering - no one objects to borrowing for long term capital investment but borrowing to get from one month to the next doesn't work well for individuals or countries. The truth is even if we can bring the deficit and borrowing down we will still be saddled with the annual debt interest payments of £60-70 billion tearing a chunk out of our available expenditure.
The priority for now must be getting the deficit down and while some of the more fanciful ideas on here about slashing civil service headcount by 50% and cutting benefits by the same amount might make some on here feel better, we all know that won't happen under a Labour, Conservative or even Reform Government.
Raising basic rate progressively to 25p, higher rate to nearer 50p and instigating a third higher tax rate is probably where Reeves is going. I'd still be looking at Land Value Taxation or some measure relating to property valuations to replace Stamp Duty and possibly Council Tax. As a small gesture of carrot, I'd put thresholds up by 2x inflation this year and pledge to keep them in line with inflation for the rest of the Parliament.
It looks as though online gaming and FOBTs in betting shops will face higher tax but it may be the lobbying by the horse racing and greyhound industries has done enough to stop a significant rise in betting duty. I suspect fuel duty will go up by more than inflation as well.
The biggest problem is the entrenched belief, among the electorate, that increased taxes will simply disappear into the maw of government, without noticeable improvement.
It's fairly clear that much of Government, local and national has lost control of costs. It's Feast-Or-Famine - either there's no money for X or theres billions spent on something that should cost millions.
The migrant hotels farce is a prefect example of this - an avalanche of money for the owners. I don't blame them - times are tough in the hotel business. If someone is offering you a zero risk, unbelievably profitable multi-year contract, you'd be insane not to take it.
We need to start cutting our cloth according to the.... cloth we actually have.
I know that a British Museum catalogue without a logo, a Richard Rogeresque HQ, some abstract sculpture in the foyer and a mission statement, isn't exciting. Not to mention a "dynamic team" for the Board of Directors on 6 figures each for 2 days of work as year.
But if we ditch those things, we might be able to afford a... British Museum catalogue.
People also have very distorted ideas of where the money goes. Migrant hotels and the British Museum are not why public spending is high. The money goes on healthcare and pensions, both of which are going up with an ageing population.
But you see this pattern through government - the hospitals are both falling down and built for prices that are crazy.
My relative who runs a building business looked at the contract to build a school local to me - the price was higher, per square foot than digging luxury basements. Which is the most expensive thing to do in the construction industry. He said that he could do the job, and throw in a basement swimming pool, under the playground and still make 30%.
I can’t understand why contract management is so bad throughout the public sector.
It’s because “Chief contract negotiator” is a CL6 (sic) position, paying from £45,268 in year 1, to £53,826 in Year 8.
Meanwhile, the guy on the other side is making 1% of the contract value, and attracts people who want to make £10m a year.
Agreed. But you won’t fix that with cuts
Oh I’d be all in favour of central government having a crack team of contract negotiators on unlimited commission based on saving public money.
Disaster waiting to happen. For one, you wouldn’t be able to easily quantify what the “saving” was and as all commission systems do it would encourage meeting the metric only. I.e. low contract sum but costs heavily loaded in year 5 or whenever after any commission is paid.
Because the government is incapable of structuring incentive schemes that the private sector do all the time?
The same happens in the private sector.
If Tesco can build a custom facility to "negotiate" with suppliers - rooms setup so that a single representative from the supplier is brow beaten by groups of Tesco buyers - why can't the government?
I have no doubt whatsoever that Reeves is going to raise taxes to justify her largesse with the public sector and her inability to achieve cuts in welfare spending past her backbenchers
She casts around looking for someone to blame, but she reinstated the WFP and failed in attempts to cut back welfare
I would just say that the huge rise in the minimum wage for 18+ to adult rates is the receipe for long term youth employment as business will not be attracted to young workers as opposed to those of a more mature age and life experience
However, this is labour where spending and taxing is their DNA and they have no backbone to address the doom loop we are in
A truly game changing government, (like one with a landslide majority), would focus on means testing pensions and the NHS to ensure the viability of both
Why should the wealthy receive the state pension and free NHS treatment when it is crippling our economy and draining our resources for adequate funding other parts of the public sector including education, law and order, and defence to name a few
Until we accept that really hard decisions are needed, we are just going to make everything worse especially for our grandchildren and frankly is is unacceptable and utter cowardice
Because the effect of means-testing the state pension is that most people won't find it worth saving for their retirement at all. That just stores up a massive social and economic problem for a few decades down the line. See also expensive bits of healthcare and social care.
Besides, provided they have paid a decent wodge of tax along the way, I don't see any reason to begrudge richer people than me getting some of it back when they are old. (And more cynically, lower-than-otherwise taxes funded by more means testing would probably benefit plutocrats compared with the status quo.)
Yes - it is nice to have but not affordable
Either it is means tested at some point or the starting age will be beyond 70
It's not about nice to have- it's about whether to dump another, even bigger, cost on future generations. And you and I have done enough of that already.
A work colleague (DWP so he knows how it works) complained that neighbours on disability could apparently afford a new car every 3 years
My understanding is that a Motability lease lasts three years, so changing cars then is actually forced on people.
True, although I did find out by accident that if your mileage is low you can ask Motability to extend the lease to 4 or 5 years. They don't really advertise that though.
Most Motability leases require an up-front, non-returnable deposit. That can currently be up to £8k, say for and Audi Q4. So that's £222 pm in up-front payment + you're giving up £333pm PIP. £555pm for an Audi Q4 may be worth it and affordable for you but clearly some on here think that it's not right that disabled people should be allowed to lease such cars.
That £333 PIP being "given up" is costing the government extra in foregone VAT compared with using it for many other expenses.
Motability: £45k car, 8k from you. Cost to motability £36000 (because no vat) minus 8k equals £28000. They sell it after 3 years for £20000. Notional lease cost per month £333.
If VAT were charged: £45k car, 8k from you. Cost to motability £45000 minus 8k equals £37000. They sell it after 3 years for £20000. Notional lease cost per month £833.
The car wouldn't be leased at £833 a month.
It's worth saying that UK second hand car prices are far lower than the rest of the world - I suspect Motobility has a lot to do with that.
Edit - the other thing to say is that motobility won't be paying anything like list price for the car. if they aren't getting a 25% discount on the car I would eat my hat.
Reason why I suspect that's the level of discount - the only car brand you can't get on Motobility is Tesla...
A couple of other thoughts on Motability:
- It's by far the biggest lease company in Europe, has tremendous buying power, and gets good deals from the manufacturers.
- Manufacturers 'use' Motability to boost sales and dump modes and variants they need to shift for whatever reason.
- Because of the above availability of car models is not unrestricted - manfacturers will choose not to offer popular models they can shift easily on Motability. For example the Fiat 500 comes on and off the scheme quite regularly. The list of available models is updated quarterly and the fiat 500 is not on the current list but it was on earlier in the year.
It seems the country's going to be a lot quieter once all the people supposedly leaving have gone....
We all know Reeves and Starmer should have been honest about raising income tax and perhaps VAT before the election but the shadow cast by 1992 is very long and it would have been manna from heaven for Sunak and Hunt - "Labour will raise your taxes, the Conservatives will cut them" - the social media messages write themselves.
We also know, in the event of their re-election, Hunt would likely have raised taxes as well.
The deficit remains eye watering - no one objects to borrowing for long term capital investment but borrowing to get from one month to the next doesn't work well for individuals or countries. The truth is even if we can bring the deficit and borrowing down we will still be saddled with the annual debt interest payments of £60-70 billion tearing a chunk out of our available expenditure.
The priority for now must be getting the deficit down and while some of the more fanciful ideas on here about slashing civil service headcount by 50% and cutting benefits by the same amount might make some on here feel better, we all know that won't happen under a Labour, Conservative or even Reform Government.
Raising basic rate progressively to 25p, higher rate to nearer 50p and instigating a third higher tax rate is probably where Reeves is going. I'd still be looking at Land Value Taxation or some measure relating to property valuations to replace Stamp Duty and possibly Council Tax. As a small gesture of carrot, I'd put thresholds up by 2x inflation this year and pledge to keep them in line with inflation for the rest of the Parliament.
It looks as though online gaming and FOBTs in betting shops will face higher tax but it may be the lobbying by the horse racing and greyhound industries has done enough to stop a significant rise in betting duty. I suspect fuel duty will go up by more than inflation as well.
The biggest problem is the entrenched belief, among the electorate, that increased taxes will simply disappear into the maw of government, without noticeable improvement.
It's fairly clear that much of Government, local and national has lost control of costs. It's Feast-Or-Famine - either there's no money for X or theres billions spent on something that should cost millions.
The migrant hotels farce is a prefect example of this - an avalanche of money for the owners. I don't blame them - times are tough in the hotel business. If someone is offering you a zero risk, unbelievably profitable multi-year contract, you'd be insane not to take it.
We need to start cutting our cloth according to the.... cloth we actually have.
I know that a British Museum catalogue without a logo, a Richard Rogeresque HQ, some abstract sculpture in the foyer and a mission statement, isn't exciting. Not to mention a "dynamic team" for the Board of Directors on 6 figures each for 2 days of work as year.
But if we ditch those things, we might be able to afford a... British Museum catalogue.
People also have very distorted ideas of where the money goes. Migrant hotels and the British Museum are not why public spending is high. The money goes on healthcare and pensions, both of which are going up with an ageing population.
But you see this pattern through government - the hospitals are both falling down and built for prices that are crazy.
My relative who runs a building business looked at the contract to build a school local to me - the price was higher, per square foot than digging luxury basements. Which is the most expensive thing to do in the construction industry. He said that he could do the job, and throw in a basement swimming pool, under the playground and still make 30%.
I can’t understand why contract management is so bad throughout the public sector.
It’s because “Chief contract negotiator” is a CL6 (sic) position, paying from £45,268 in year 1, to £53,826 in Year 8.
Meanwhile, the guy on the other side is making 1% of the contract value, and attracts people who want to make £10m a year.
Agreed. But you won’t fix that with cuts
Oh I’d be all in favour of central government having a crack team of contract negotiators on unlimited commission based on saving public money.
Disaster waiting to happen. For one, you wouldn’t be able to easily quantify what the “saving” was and as all commission systems do it would encourage meeting the metric only. I.e. low contract sum but costs heavily loaded in year 5 or whenever after any commission is paid.
Because the government is incapable of structuring incentive schemes that the private sector do all the time?
The same happens in the private sector.
If Tesco can build a custom facility to "negotiate" with suppliers - rooms setup so that a single representative from the supplier is brow beaten by groups of Tesco buyers - why can't the government?
It seems the country's going to be a lot quieter once all the people supposedly leaving have gone....
We all know Reeves and Starmer should have been honest about raising income tax and perhaps VAT before the election but the shadow cast by 1992 is very long and it would have been manna from heaven for Sunak and Hunt - "Labour will raise your taxes, the Conservatives will cut them" - the social media messages write themselves.
We also know, in the event of their re-election, Hunt would likely have raised taxes as well.
The deficit remains eye watering - no one objects to borrowing for long term capital investment but borrowing to get from one month to the next doesn't work well for individuals or countries. The truth is even if we can bring the deficit and borrowing down we will still be saddled with the annual debt interest payments of £60-70 billion tearing a chunk out of our available expenditure.
The priority for now must be getting the deficit down and while some of the more fanciful ideas on here about slashing civil service headcount by 50% and cutting benefits by the same amount might make some on here feel better, we all know that won't happen under a Labour, Conservative or even Reform Government.
Raising basic rate progressively to 25p, higher rate to nearer 50p and instigating a third higher tax rate is probably where Reeves is going. I'd still be looking at Land Value Taxation or some measure relating to property valuations to replace Stamp Duty and possibly Council Tax. As a small gesture of carrot, I'd put thresholds up by 2x inflation this year and pledge to keep them in line with inflation for the rest of the Parliament.
It looks as though online gaming and FOBTs in betting shops will face higher tax but it may be the lobbying by the horse racing and greyhound industries has done enough to stop a significant rise in betting duty. I suspect fuel duty will go up by more than inflation as well.
The biggest problem is the entrenched belief, among the electorate, that increased taxes will simply disappear into the maw of government, without noticeable improvement.
It's fairly clear that much of Government, local and national has lost control of costs. It's Feast-Or-Famine - either there's no money for X or theres billions spent on something that should cost millions.
The migrant hotels farce is a prefect example of this - an avalanche of money for the owners. I don't blame them - times are tough in the hotel business. If someone is offering you a zero risk, unbelievably profitable multi-year contract, you'd be insane not to take it.
We need to start cutting our cloth according to the.... cloth we actually have.
I know that a British Museum catalogue without a logo, a Richard Rogeresque HQ, some abstract sculpture in the foyer and a mission statement, isn't exciting. Not to mention a "dynamic team" for the Board of Directors on 6 figures each for 2 days of work as year.
But if we ditch those things, we might be able to afford a... British Museum catalogue.
People also have very distorted ideas of where the money goes. Migrant hotels and the British Museum are not why public spending is high. The money goes on healthcare and pensions, both of which are going up with an ageing population.
But you see this pattern through government - the hospitals are both falling down and built for prices that are crazy.
My relative who runs a building business looked at the contract to build a school local to me - the price was higher, per square foot than digging luxury basements. Which is the most expensive thing to do in the construction industry. He said that he could do the job, and throw in a basement swimming pool, under the playground and still make 30%.
I can’t understand why contract management is so bad throughout the public sector.
It’s because “Chief contract negotiator” is a CL6 (sic) position, paying from £45,268 in year 1, to £53,826 in Year 8.
Meanwhile, the guy on the other side is making 1% of the contract value, and attracts people who want to make £10m a year.
Agreed. But you won’t fix that with cuts
Oh I’d be all in favour of central government having a crack team of contract negotiators on unlimited commission based on saving public money.
Let me at it!
Carbon Capture Schemes? gone.
Nuclear power projects - persuade me why they shouldn't be gone....
Carbon capture was always a waste of money - added cost zero benefit
Nuclear power - we shouldn’t be building big ones except the Korean design. Small modular ones we should be investing in to get the factories working so we start exporting them
Carbon capture is a designed to mitigate the amount of CO2 that is released. If you are determined that global temps need to be kept below 'x' degrees then carbon capture might be used as part of the process, even if it is hideously expensive.
Except that very few countries will be doing it, and the cost/benefit analysis is dreadful compared with other interventions.
I don't disagree - it wouldn't be my choice. I'd be going hell for leather for renewables (tidal, wind, solar, battery storage, huge storage reservoirs etc).
The one good use for carbon capture and storage would be if we used excess renewable electricity to create methane (via electrolysis and the Sabatier process) and then captured the carbon when burning that gas. You'd then have a negative carbon process to balance things like the warming from jet plane contrails.
But we're a long way from that, and instead they're talking about using CCS for production of hydrogen from fossil methane, which is absurd.
I'm trying to find the link - there was an interesting startup in the US that was looking at Solar -> Methane. But without battery storage or even converter electronics - just feed the power into the process from the panels. So it would run when there was power. The idea was simplicity and lower costs.....
It seems the country's going to be a lot quieter once all the people supposedly leaving have gone....
We all know Reeves and Starmer should have been honest about raising income tax and perhaps VAT before the election but the shadow cast by 1992 is very long and it would have been manna from heaven for Sunak and Hunt - "Labour will raise your taxes, the Conservatives will cut them" - the social media messages write themselves.
We also know, in the event of their re-election, Hunt would likely have raised taxes as well.
The deficit remains eye watering - no one objects to borrowing for long term capital investment but borrowing to get from one month to the next doesn't work well for individuals or countries. The truth is even if we can bring the deficit and borrowing down we will still be saddled with the annual debt interest payments of £60-70 billion tearing a chunk out of our available expenditure.
The priority for now must be getting the deficit down and while some of the more fanciful ideas on here about slashing civil service headcount by 50% and cutting benefits by the same amount might make some on here feel better, we all know that won't happen under a Labour, Conservative or even Reform Government.
Raising basic rate progressively to 25p, higher rate to nearer 50p and instigating a third higher tax rate is probably where Reeves is going. I'd still be looking at Land Value Taxation or some measure relating to property valuations to replace Stamp Duty and possibly Council Tax. As a small gesture of carrot, I'd put thresholds up by 2x inflation this year and pledge to keep them in line with inflation for the rest of the Parliament.
It looks as though online gaming and FOBTs in betting shops will face higher tax but it may be the lobbying by the horse racing and greyhound industries has done enough to stop a significant rise in betting duty. I suspect fuel duty will go up by more than inflation as well.
The biggest problem is the entrenched belief, among the electorate, that increased taxes will simply disappear into the maw of government, without noticeable improvement.
It's fairly clear that much of Government, local and national has lost control of costs. It's Feast-Or-Famine - either there's no money for X or theres billions spent on something that should cost millions.
The migrant hotels farce is a prefect example of this - an avalanche of money for the owners. I don't blame them - times are tough in the hotel business. If someone is offering you a zero risk, unbelievably profitable multi-year contract, you'd be insane not to take it.
We need to start cutting our cloth according to the.... cloth we actually have.
I know that a British Museum catalogue without a logo, a Richard Rogeresque HQ, some abstract sculpture in the foyer and a mission statement, isn't exciting. Not to mention a "dynamic team" for the Board of Directors on 6 figures each for 2 days of work as year.
But if we ditch those things, we might be able to afford a... British Museum catalogue.
People also have very distorted ideas of where the money goes. Migrant hotels and the British Museum are not why public spending is high. The money goes on healthcare and pensions, both of which are going up with an ageing population.
But you see this pattern through government - the hospitals are both falling down and built for prices that are crazy.
My relative who runs a building business looked at the contract to build a school local to me - the price was higher, per square foot than digging luxury basements. Which is the most expensive thing to do in the construction industry. He said that he could do the job, and throw in a basement swimming pool, under the playground and still make 30%.
I can’t understand why contract management is so bad throughout the public sector.
It’s because “Chief contract negotiator” is a CL6 (sic) position, paying from £45,268 in year 1, to £53,826 in Year 8.
Meanwhile, the guy on the other side is making 1% of the contract value, and attracts people who want to make £10m a year.
Agreed. But you won’t fix that with cuts
Oh I’d be all in favour of central government having a crack team of contract negotiators on unlimited commission based on saving public money.
Disaster waiting to happen. For one, you wouldn’t be able to easily quantify what the “saving” was and as all commission systems do it would encourage meeting the metric only. I.e. low contract sum but costs heavily loaded in year 5 or whenever after any commission is paid.
Because the government is incapable of structuring incentive schemes that the private sector do all the time?
The same happens in the private sector.
If Tesco can build a custom facility to "negotiate" with suppliers - rooms setup so that a single representative from the supplier is brow beaten by groups of Tesco buyers - why can't the government?
It seems the country's going to be a lot quieter once all the people supposedly leaving have gone....
We all know Reeves and Starmer should have been honest about raising income tax and perhaps VAT before the election but the shadow cast by 1992 is very long and it would have been manna from heaven for Sunak and Hunt - "Labour will raise your taxes, the Conservatives will cut them" - the social media messages write themselves.
We also know, in the event of their re-election, Hunt would likely have raised taxes as well.
The deficit remains eye watering - no one objects to borrowing for long term capital investment but borrowing to get from one month to the next doesn't work well for individuals or countries. The truth is even if we can bring the deficit and borrowing down we will still be saddled with the annual debt interest payments of £60-70 billion tearing a chunk out of our available expenditure.
The priority for now must be getting the deficit down and while some of the more fanciful ideas on here about slashing civil service headcount by 50% and cutting benefits by the same amount might make some on here feel better, we all know that won't happen under a Labour, Conservative or even Reform Government.
Raising basic rate progressively to 25p, higher rate to nearer 50p and instigating a third higher tax rate is probably where Reeves is going. I'd still be looking at Land Value Taxation or some measure relating to property valuations to replace Stamp Duty and possibly Council Tax. As a small gesture of carrot, I'd put thresholds up by 2x inflation this year and pledge to keep them in line with inflation for the rest of the Parliament.
It looks as though online gaming and FOBTs in betting shops will face higher tax but it may be the lobbying by the horse racing and greyhound industries has done enough to stop a significant rise in betting duty. I suspect fuel duty will go up by more than inflation as well.
The biggest problem is the entrenched belief, among the electorate, that increased taxes will simply disappear into the maw of government, without noticeable improvement.
It's fairly clear that much of Government, local and national has lost control of costs. It's Feast-Or-Famine - either there's no money for X or theres billions spent on something that should cost millions.
The migrant hotels farce is a prefect example of this - an avalanche of money for the owners. I don't blame them - times are tough in the hotel business. If someone is offering you a zero risk, unbelievably profitable multi-year contract, you'd be insane not to take it.
We need to start cutting our cloth according to the.... cloth we actually have.
I know that a British Museum catalogue without a logo, a Richard Rogeresque HQ, some abstract sculpture in the foyer and a mission statement, isn't exciting. Not to mention a "dynamic team" for the Board of Directors on 6 figures each for 2 days of work as year.
But if we ditch those things, we might be able to afford a... British Museum catalogue.
People also have very distorted ideas of where the money goes. Migrant hotels and the British Museum are not why public spending is high. The money goes on healthcare and pensions, both of which are going up with an ageing population.
But you see this pattern through government - the hospitals are both falling down and built for prices that are crazy.
My relative who runs a building business looked at the contract to build a school local to me - the price was higher, per square foot than digging luxury basements. Which is the most expensive thing to do in the construction industry. He said that he could do the job, and throw in a basement swimming pool, under the playground and still make 30%.
I can’t understand why contract management is so bad throughout the public sector.
It’s because “Chief contract negotiator” is a CL6 (sic) position, paying from £45,268 in year 1, to £53,826 in Year 8.
Meanwhile, the guy on the other side is making 1% of the contract value, and attracts people who want to make £10m a year.
Agreed. But you won’t fix that with cuts
Oh I’d be all in favour of central government having a crack team of contract negotiators on unlimited commission based on saving public money.
Disaster waiting to happen. For one, you wouldn’t be able to easily quantify what the “saving” was and as all commission systems do it would encourage meeting the metric only. I.e. low contract sum but costs heavily loaded in year 5 or whenever after any commission is paid.
Because the government is incapable of structuring incentive schemes that the private sector do all the time?
The same happens in the private sector.
If Tesco can build a custom facility to "negotiate" with suppliers - rooms setup so that a single representative from the supplier is brow beaten by groups of Tesco buyers - why can't the government?
I have no doubt whatsoever that Reeves is going to raise taxes to justify her largesse with the public sector and her inability to achieve cuts in welfare spending past her backbenchers
She casts around looking for someone to blame, but she reinstated the WFP and failed in attempts to cut back welfare
I would just say that the huge rise in the minimum wage for 18+ to adult rates is the receipe for long term youth employment as business will not be attracted to young workers as opposed to those of a more mature age and life experience
However, this is labour where spending and taxing is their DNA and they have no backbone to address the doom loop we are in
A truly game changing government, (like one with a landslide majority), would focus on means testing pensions and the NHS to ensure the viability of both
Why should the wealthy receive the state pension and free NHS treatment when it is crippling our economy and draining our resources for adequate funding other parts of the public sector including education, law and order, and defence to name a few
Until we accept that really hard decisions are needed, we are just going to make everything worse especially for our grandchildren and frankly is is unacceptable and utter cowardice
Because the effect of means-testing the state pension is that most people won't find it worth saving for their retirement at all. That just stores up a massive social and economic problem for a few decades down the line. See also expensive bits of healthcare and social care.
The State Pension isn't enough to live on. So people will need to save.
What is needed to force them to do so is to progressively withdraw Pension Credit and Housing Benefit from pensioners.
I have no doubt whatsoever that Reeves is going to raise taxes to justify her largesse with the public sector and her inability to achieve cuts in welfare spending past her backbenchers
She casts around looking for someone to blame, but she reinstated the WFP and failed in attempts to cut back welfare
I would just say that the huge rise in the minimum wage for 18+ to adult rates is the receipe for long term youth employment as business will not be attracted to young workers as opposed to those of a more mature age and life experience
However, this is labour where spending and taxing is their DNA and they have no backbone to address the doom loop we are in
A truly game changing government, (like one with a landslide majority), would focus on means testing pensions and the NHS to ensure the viability of both
Why should the wealthy receive the state pension and free NHS treatment when it is crippling our economy and draining our resources for adequate funding other parts of the public sector including education, law and order, and defence to name a few
Until we accept that really hard decisions are needed, we are just going to make everything worse especially for our grandchildren and frankly is is unacceptable and utter cowardice
Because the effect of means-testing the state pension is that most people won't find it worth saving for their retirement at all. That just stores up a massive social and economic problem for a few decades down the line. See also expensive bits of healthcare and social care.
Besides, provided they have paid a decent wodge of tax along the way, I don't see any reason to begrudge richer people than me getting some of it back when they are old. (And more cynically, lower-than-otherwise taxes funded by more means testing would probably benefit plutocrats compared with the status quo.)
Yes - it is nice to have but not affordable
Either it is means tested at some point or the starting age will be beyond 70
It's not about nice to have- it's about whether to dump another, even bigger, cost on future generations. And you and I have done enough of that already.
Reeves could trigger a consumer boom by proposing to means-test the state pension based on pension income / fund size in the near future. Those drawing down their pensions would be incentivized to get the money out early
It seems the country's going to be a lot quieter once all the people supposedly leaving have gone....
We all know Reeves and Starmer should have been honest about raising income tax and perhaps VAT before the election but the shadow cast by 1992 is very long and it would have been manna from heaven for Sunak and Hunt - "Labour will raise your taxes, the Conservatives will cut them" - the social media messages write themselves.
We also know, in the event of their re-election, Hunt would likely have raised taxes as well.
The deficit remains eye watering - no one objects to borrowing for long term capital investment but borrowing to get from one month to the next doesn't work well for individuals or countries. The truth is even if we can bring the deficit and borrowing down we will still be saddled with the annual debt interest payments of £60-70 billion tearing a chunk out of our available expenditure.
The priority for now must be getting the deficit down and while some of the more fanciful ideas on here about slashing civil service headcount by 50% and cutting benefits by the same amount might make some on here feel better, we all know that won't happen under a Labour, Conservative or even Reform Government.
Raising basic rate progressively to 25p, higher rate to nearer 50p and instigating a third higher tax rate is probably where Reeves is going. I'd still be looking at Land Value Taxation or some measure relating to property valuations to replace Stamp Duty and possibly Council Tax. As a small gesture of carrot, I'd put thresholds up by 2x inflation this year and pledge to keep them in line with inflation for the rest of the Parliament.
It looks as though online gaming and FOBTs in betting shops will face higher tax but it may be the lobbying by the horse racing and greyhound industries has done enough to stop a significant rise in betting duty. I suspect fuel duty will go up by more than inflation as well.
The biggest problem is the entrenched belief, among the electorate, that increased taxes will simply disappear into the maw of government, without noticeable improvement.
It's fairly clear that much of Government, local and national has lost control of costs. It's Feast-Or-Famine - either there's no money for X or theres billions spent on something that should cost millions.
The migrant hotels farce is a prefect example of this - an avalanche of money for the owners. I don't blame them - times are tough in the hotel business. If someone is offering you a zero risk, unbelievably profitable multi-year contract, you'd be insane not to take it.
We need to start cutting our cloth according to the.... cloth we actually have.
I know that a British Museum catalogue without a logo, a Richard Rogeresque HQ, some abstract sculpture in the foyer and a mission statement, isn't exciting. Not to mention a "dynamic team" for the Board of Directors on 6 figures each for 2 days of work as year.
But if we ditch those things, we might be able to afford a... British Museum catalogue.
People also have very distorted ideas of where the money goes. Migrant hotels and the British Museum are not why public spending is high. The money goes on healthcare and pensions, both of which are going up with an ageing population.
But you see this pattern through government - the hospitals are both falling down and built for prices that are crazy.
My relative who runs a building business looked at the contract to build a school local to me - the price was higher, per square foot than digging luxury basements. Which is the most expensive thing to do in the construction industry. He said that he could do the job, and throw in a basement swimming pool, under the playground and still make 30%.
I can’t understand why contract management is so bad throughout the public sector.
It’s because “Chief contract negotiator” is a CL6 (sic) position, paying from £45,268 in year 1, to £53,826 in Year 8.
Meanwhile, the guy on the other side is making 1% of the contract value, and attracts people who want to make £10m a year.
Agreed. But you won’t fix that with cuts
Oh I’d be all in favour of central government having a crack team of contract negotiators on unlimited commission based on saving public money.
Disaster waiting to happen. For one, you wouldn’t be able to easily quantify what the “saving” was and as all commission systems do it would encourage meeting the metric only. I.e. low contract sum but costs heavily loaded in year 5 or whenever after any commission is paid.
Because the government is incapable of structuring incentive schemes that the private sector do all the time?
The same happens in the private sector.
If Tesco can build a custom facility to "negotiate" with suppliers - rooms setup so that a single representative from the supplier is brow beaten by groups of Tesco buyers - why can't the government?
Can't we just poach the Tesco team ?
Or rent them from Tesco?
Another PPI deal ? We'd get rinsed.
Pay them with a percentage of savings - over 25 years.
It seems the country's going to be a lot quieter once all the people supposedly leaving have gone....
We all know Reeves and Starmer should have been honest about raising income tax and perhaps VAT before the election but the shadow cast by 1992 is very long and it would have been manna from heaven for Sunak and Hunt - "Labour will raise your taxes, the Conservatives will cut them" - the social media messages write themselves.
We also know, in the event of their re-election, Hunt would likely have raised taxes as well.
The deficit remains eye watering - no one objects to borrowing for long term capital investment but borrowing to get from one month to the next doesn't work well for individuals or countries. The truth is even if we can bring the deficit and borrowing down we will still be saddled with the annual debt interest payments of £60-70 billion tearing a chunk out of our available expenditure.
The priority for now must be getting the deficit down and while some of the more fanciful ideas on here about slashing civil service headcount by 50% and cutting benefits by the same amount might make some on here feel better, we all know that won't happen under a Labour, Conservative or even Reform Government.
Raising basic rate progressively to 25p, higher rate to nearer 50p and instigating a third higher tax rate is probably where Reeves is going. I'd still be looking at Land Value Taxation or some measure relating to property valuations to replace Stamp Duty and possibly Council Tax. As a small gesture of carrot, I'd put thresholds up by 2x inflation this year and pledge to keep them in line with inflation for the rest of the Parliament.
It looks as though online gaming and FOBTs in betting shops will face higher tax but it may be the lobbying by the horse racing and greyhound industries has done enough to stop a significant rise in betting duty. I suspect fuel duty will go up by more than inflation as well.
The biggest problem is the entrenched belief, among the electorate, that increased taxes will simply disappear into the maw of government, without noticeable improvement.
It's fairly clear that much of Government, local and national has lost control of costs. It's Feast-Or-Famine - either there's no money for X or theres billions spent on something that should cost millions.
The migrant hotels farce is a prefect example of this - an avalanche of money for the owners. I don't blame them - times are tough in the hotel business. If someone is offering you a zero risk, unbelievably profitable multi-year contract, you'd be insane not to take it.
We need to start cutting our cloth according to the.... cloth we actually have.
I know that a British Museum catalogue without a logo, a Richard Rogeresque HQ, some abstract sculpture in the foyer and a mission statement, isn't exciting. Not to mention a "dynamic team" for the Board of Directors on 6 figures each for 2 days of work as year.
But if we ditch those things, we might be able to afford a... British Museum catalogue.
People also have very distorted ideas of where the money goes. Migrant hotels and the British Museum are not why public spending is high. The money goes on healthcare and pensions, both of which are going up with an ageing population.
But you see this pattern through government - the hospitals are both falling down and built for prices that are crazy.
My relative who runs a building business looked at the contract to build a school local to me - the price was higher, per square foot than digging luxury basements. Which is the most expensive thing to do in the construction industry. He said that he could do the job, and throw in a basement swimming pool, under the playground and still make 30%.
I can’t understand why contract management is so bad throughout the public sector.
It’s because “Chief contract negotiator” is a CL6 (sic) position, paying from £45,268 in year 1, to £53,826 in Year 8.
Meanwhile, the guy on the other side is making 1% of the contract value, and attracts people who want to make £10m a year.
Agreed. But you won’t fix that with cuts
Oh I’d be all in favour of central government having a crack team of contract negotiators on unlimited commission based on saving public money.
Disaster waiting to happen. For one, you wouldn’t be able to easily quantify what the “saving” was and as all commission systems do it would encourage meeting the metric only. I.e. low contract sum but costs heavily loaded in year 5 or whenever after any commission is paid.
Because the government is incapable of structuring incentive schemes that the private sector do all the time?
The same happens in the private sector.
If Tesco can build a custom facility to "negotiate" with suppliers - rooms setup so that a single representative from the supplier is brow beaten by groups of Tesco buyers - why can't the government?
Can't we just poach the Tesco team ?
Or rent them from Tesco?
Another PPI deal ? We'd get rinsed.
Especially if we were negotiating the cost of hiring the Tesco negotiators with the Tesco negotiators.
(There must be an updated Gilbert and Sullivan plot in there somewhere.)
It seems the country's going to be a lot quieter once all the people supposedly leaving have gone....
We all know Reeves and Starmer should have been honest about raising income tax and perhaps VAT before the election but the shadow cast by 1992 is very long and it would have been manna from heaven for Sunak and Hunt - "Labour will raise your taxes, the Conservatives will cut them" - the social media messages write themselves.
We also know, in the event of their re-election, Hunt would likely have raised taxes as well.
The deficit remains eye watering - no one objects to borrowing for long term capital investment but borrowing to get from one month to the next doesn't work well for individuals or countries. The truth is even if we can bring the deficit and borrowing down we will still be saddled with the annual debt interest payments of £60-70 billion tearing a chunk out of our available expenditure.
The priority for now must be getting the deficit down and while some of the more fanciful ideas on here about slashing civil service headcount by 50% and cutting benefits by the same amount might make some on here feel better, we all know that won't happen under a Labour, Conservative or even Reform Government.
Raising basic rate progressively to 25p, higher rate to nearer 50p and instigating a third higher tax rate is probably where Reeves is going. I'd still be looking at Land Value Taxation or some measure relating to property valuations to replace Stamp Duty and possibly Council Tax. As a small gesture of carrot, I'd put thresholds up by 2x inflation this year and pledge to keep them in line with inflation for the rest of the Parliament.
It looks as though online gaming and FOBTs in betting shops will face higher tax but it may be the lobbying by the horse racing and greyhound industries has done enough to stop a significant rise in betting duty. I suspect fuel duty will go up by more than inflation as well.
The biggest problem is the entrenched belief, among the electorate, that increased taxes will simply disappear into the maw of government, without noticeable improvement.
It's fairly clear that much of Government, local and national has lost control of costs. It's Feast-Or-Famine - either there's no money for X or theres billions spent on something that should cost millions.
The migrant hotels farce is a prefect example of this - an avalanche of money for the owners. I don't blame them - times are tough in the hotel business. If someone is offering you a zero risk, unbelievably profitable multi-year contract, you'd be insane not to take it.
We need to start cutting our cloth according to the.... cloth we actually have.
I know that a British Museum catalogue without a logo, a Richard Rogeresque HQ, some abstract sculpture in the foyer and a mission statement, isn't exciting. Not to mention a "dynamic team" for the Board of Directors on 6 figures each for 2 days of work as year.
But if we ditch those things, we might be able to afford a... British Museum catalogue.
People also have very distorted ideas of where the money goes. Migrant hotels and the British Museum are not why public spending is high. The money goes on healthcare and pensions, both of which are going up with an ageing population.
But you see this pattern through government - the hospitals are both falling down and built for prices that are crazy.
My relative who runs a building business looked at the contract to build a school local to me - the price was higher, per square foot than digging luxury basements. Which is the most expensive thing to do in the construction industry. He said that he could do the job, and throw in a basement swimming pool, under the playground and still make 30%.
I can’t understand why contract management is so bad throughout the public sector.
It’s because “Chief contract negotiator” is a CL6 (sic) position, paying from £45,268 in year 1, to £53,826 in Year 8.
Meanwhile, the guy on the other side is making 1% of the contract value, and attracts people who want to make £10m a year.
Agreed. But you won’t fix that with cuts
Oh I’d be all in favour of central government having a crack team of contract negotiators on unlimited commission based on saving public money.
Let me at it!
Carbon Capture Schemes? gone.
Nuclear power projects - persuade me why they shouldn't be gone....
Carbon capture was always a waste of money - added cost zero benefit
Nuclear power - we shouldn’t be building big ones except the Korean design. Small modular ones we should be investing in to get the factories working so we start exporting them
Carbon capture is a designed to mitigate the amount of CO2 that is released. If you are determined that global temps need to be kept below 'x' degrees then carbon capture might be used as part of the process, even if it is hideously expensive.
Except that very few countries will be doing it, and the cost/benefit analysis is dreadful compared with other interventions.
I don't disagree - it wouldn't be my choice. I'd be going hell for leather for renewables (tidal, wind, solar, battery storage, huge storage reservoirs etc).
The one good use for carbon capture and storage would be if we used excess renewable electricity to create methane (via electrolysis and the Sabatier process) and then captured the carbon when burning that gas. You'd then have a negative carbon process to balance things like the warming from jet plane contrails.
But we're a long way from that, and instead they're talking about using CCS for production of hydrogen from fossil methane, which is absurd.
I'm trying to find the link - there was an interesting startup in the US that was looking at Solar -> Methane. But without battery storage or even converter electronics - just feed the power into the process from the panels. So it would run when there was power. The idea was simplicity and lower costs.....
We also already have a lot of infrastructure for methane distribution and storage.
It seems the country's going to be a lot quieter once all the people supposedly leaving have gone....
We all know Reeves and Starmer should have been honest about raising income tax and perhaps VAT before the election but the shadow cast by 1992 is very long and it would have been manna from heaven for Sunak and Hunt - "Labour will raise your taxes, the Conservatives will cut them" - the social media messages write themselves.
We also know, in the event of their re-election, Hunt would likely have raised taxes as well.
The deficit remains eye watering - no one objects to borrowing for long term capital investment but borrowing to get from one month to the next doesn't work well for individuals or countries. The truth is even if we can bring the deficit and borrowing down we will still be saddled with the annual debt interest payments of £60-70 billion tearing a chunk out of our available expenditure.
The priority for now must be getting the deficit down and while some of the more fanciful ideas on here about slashing civil service headcount by 50% and cutting benefits by the same amount might make some on here feel better, we all know that won't happen under a Labour, Conservative or even Reform Government.
Raising basic rate progressively to 25p, higher rate to nearer 50p and instigating a third higher tax rate is probably where Reeves is going. I'd still be looking at Land Value Taxation or some measure relating to property valuations to replace Stamp Duty and possibly Council Tax. As a small gesture of carrot, I'd put thresholds up by 2x inflation this year and pledge to keep them in line with inflation for the rest of the Parliament.
It looks as though online gaming and FOBTs in betting shops will face higher tax but it may be the lobbying by the horse racing and greyhound industries has done enough to stop a significant rise in betting duty. I suspect fuel duty will go up by more than inflation as well.
The biggest problem is the entrenched belief, among the electorate, that increased taxes will simply disappear into the maw of government, without noticeable improvement.
It's fairly clear that much of Government, local and national has lost control of costs. It's Feast-Or-Famine - either there's no money for X or theres billions spent on something that should cost millions.
The migrant hotels farce is a prefect example of this - an avalanche of money for the owners. I don't blame them - times are tough in the hotel business. If someone is offering you a zero risk, unbelievably profitable multi-year contract, you'd be insane not to take it.
We need to start cutting our cloth according to the.... cloth we actually have.
I know that a British Museum catalogue without a logo, a Richard Rogeresque HQ, some abstract sculpture in the foyer and a mission statement, isn't exciting. Not to mention a "dynamic team" for the Board of Directors on 6 figures each for 2 days of work as year.
But if we ditch those things, we might be able to afford a... British Museum catalogue.
People also have very distorted ideas of where the money goes. Migrant hotels and the British Museum are not why public spending is high. The money goes on healthcare and pensions, both of which are going up with an ageing population.
But you see this pattern through government - the hospitals are both falling down and built for prices that are crazy.
My relative who runs a building business looked at the contract to build a school local to me - the price was higher, per square foot than digging luxury basements. Which is the most expensive thing to do in the construction industry. He said that he could do the job, and throw in a basement swimming pool, under the playground and still make 30%.
I can’t understand why contract management is so bad throughout the public sector.
It’s because “Chief contract negotiator” is a CL6 (sic) position, paying from £45,268 in year 1, to £53,826 in Year 8.
Meanwhile, the guy on the other side is making 1% of the contract value, and attracts people who want to make £10m a year.
Agreed. But you won’t fix that with cuts
Oh I’d be all in favour of central government having a crack team of contract negotiators on unlimited commission based on saving public money.
Disaster waiting to happen. For one, you wouldn’t be able to easily quantify what the “saving” was and as all commission systems do it would encourage meeting the metric only. I.e. low contract sum but costs heavily loaded in year 5 or whenever after any commission is paid.
Because the government is incapable of structuring incentive schemes that the private sector do all the time?
The same happens in the private sector.
If Tesco can build a custom facility to "negotiate" with suppliers - rooms setup so that a single representative from the supplier is brow beaten by groups of Tesco buyers - why can't the government?
Can't we just poach the Tesco team ?
Or rent them from Tesco?
Another PPI deal ? We'd get rinsed.
Especially if we were negotiating the cost of hiring the Tesco negotiators with the Tesco negotiators.
(There must be an updated Gilbert and Sullivan plot in there somewhere.)
I have no doubt whatsoever that Reeves is going to raise taxes to justify her largesse with the public sector and her inability to achieve cuts in welfare spending past her backbenchers
She casts around looking for someone to blame, but she reinstated the WFP and failed in attempts to cut back welfare
I would just say that the huge rise in the minimum wage for 18+ to adult rates is the receipe for long term youth employment as business will not be attracted to young workers as opposed to those of a more mature age and life experience
However, this is labour where spending and taxing is their DNA and they have no backbone to address the doom loop we are in
A truly game changing government, (like one with a landslide majority), would focus on means testing pensions and the NHS to ensure the viability of both
Why should the wealthy receive the state pension and free NHS treatment when it is crippling our economy and draining our resources for adequate funding other parts of the public sector including education, law and order, and defence to name a few
Until we accept that really hard decisions are needed, we are just going to make everything worse especially for our grandchildren and frankly is is unacceptable and utter cowardice
Because the effect of means-testing the state pension is that most people won't find it worth saving for their retirement at all. That just stores up a massive social and economic problem for a few decades down the line. See also expensive bits of healthcare and social care.
Besides, provided they have paid a decent wodge of tax along the way, I don't see any reason to begrudge richer people than me getting some of it back when they are old. (And more cynically, lower-than-otherwise taxes funded by more means testing would probably benefit plutocrats compared with the status quo.)
Yes - it is nice to have but not affordable
Either it is means tested at some point or the starting age will be beyond 70
It's not about nice to have- it's about whether to dump another, even bigger, cost on future generations. And you and I have done enough of that already.
Reeves could trigger a consumer boom by proposing to means-test the state pension based on pension income / fund size in the near future. Those drawing down their pensions would be incentivized to get the money out early
More seriously, the fairer solution would be to end / downgrade the triple lock. There's a very real danger that if pensioners votes mean that the qualifying age is pulled up behind them then public sentiment will turn towards abolishing the state pension.
It seems the country's going to be a lot quieter once all the people supposedly leaving have gone....
We all know Reeves and Starmer should have been honest about raising income tax and perhaps VAT before the election but the shadow cast by 1992 is very long and it would have been manna from heaven for Sunak and Hunt - "Labour will raise your taxes, the Conservatives will cut them" - the social media messages write themselves.
We also know, in the event of their re-election, Hunt would likely have raised taxes as well.
The deficit remains eye watering - no one objects to borrowing for long term capital investment but borrowing to get from one month to the next doesn't work well for individuals or countries. The truth is even if we can bring the deficit and borrowing down we will still be saddled with the annual debt interest payments of £60-70 billion tearing a chunk out of our available expenditure.
The priority for now must be getting the deficit down and while some of the more fanciful ideas on here about slashing civil service headcount by 50% and cutting benefits by the same amount might make some on here feel better, we all know that won't happen under a Labour, Conservative or even Reform Government.
Raising basic rate progressively to 25p, higher rate to nearer 50p and instigating a third higher tax rate is probably where Reeves is going. I'd still be looking at Land Value Taxation or some measure relating to property valuations to replace Stamp Duty and possibly Council Tax. As a small gesture of carrot, I'd put thresholds up by 2x inflation this year and pledge to keep them in line with inflation for the rest of the Parliament.
It looks as though online gaming and FOBTs in betting shops will face higher tax but it may be the lobbying by the horse racing and greyhound industries has done enough to stop a significant rise in betting duty. I suspect fuel duty will go up by more than inflation as well.
The biggest problem is the entrenched belief, among the electorate, that increased taxes will simply disappear into the maw of government, without noticeable improvement.
It's fairly clear that much of Government, local and national has lost control of costs. It's Feast-Or-Famine - either there's no money for X or theres billions spent on something that should cost millions.
The migrant hotels farce is a prefect example of this - an avalanche of money for the owners. I don't blame them - times are tough in the hotel business. If someone is offering you a zero risk, unbelievably profitable multi-year contract, you'd be insane not to take it.
We need to start cutting our cloth according to the.... cloth we actually have.
I know that a British Museum catalogue without a logo, a Richard Rogeresque HQ, some abstract sculpture in the foyer and a mission statement, isn't exciting. Not to mention a "dynamic team" for the Board of Directors on 6 figures each for 2 days of work as year.
But if we ditch those things, we might be able to afford a... British Museum catalogue.
People also have very distorted ideas of where the money goes. Migrant hotels and the British Museum are not why public spending is high. The money goes on healthcare and pensions, both of which are going up with an ageing population.
But you see this pattern through government - the hospitals are both falling down and built for prices that are crazy.
My relative who runs a building business looked at the contract to build a school local to me - the price was higher, per square foot than digging luxury basements. Which is the most expensive thing to do in the construction industry. He said that he could do the job, and throw in a basement swimming pool, under the playground and still make 30%.
I can’t understand why contract management is so bad throughout the public sector.
It’s because “Chief contract negotiator” is a CL6 (sic) position, paying from £45,268 in year 1, to £53,826 in Year 8.
Meanwhile, the guy on the other side is making 1% of the contract value, and attracts people who want to make £10m a year.
Agreed. But you won’t fix that with cuts
Oh I’d be all in favour of central government having a crack team of contract negotiators on unlimited commission based on saving public money.
Disaster waiting to happen. For one, you wouldn’t be able to easily quantify what the “saving” was and as all commission systems do it would encourage meeting the metric only. I.e. low contract sum but costs heavily loaded in year 5 or whenever after any commission is paid.
Because the government is incapable of structuring incentive schemes that the private sector do all the time?
The same happens in the private sector.
If Tesco can build a custom facility to "negotiate" with suppliers - rooms setup so that a single representative from the supplier is brow beaten by groups of Tesco buyers - why can't the government?
They can. But the “Government” ie the public sector is probably negotiating hundreds of different contracts every single day and you need to have knowledgable, experienced, and skilled staff for all manner of different disciplines working on every one.
It seems the country's going to be a lot quieter once all the people supposedly leaving have gone....
We all know Reeves and Starmer should have been honest about raising income tax and perhaps VAT before the election but the shadow cast by 1992 is very long and it would have been manna from heaven for Sunak and Hunt - "Labour will raise your taxes, the Conservatives will cut them" - the social media messages write themselves.
We also know, in the event of their re-election, Hunt would likely have raised taxes as well.
The deficit remains eye watering - no one objects to borrowing for long term capital investment but borrowing to get from one month to the next doesn't work well for individuals or countries. The truth is even if we can bring the deficit and borrowing down we will still be saddled with the annual debt interest payments of £60-70 billion tearing a chunk out of our available expenditure.
The priority for now must be getting the deficit down and while some of the more fanciful ideas on here about slashing civil service headcount by 50% and cutting benefits by the same amount might make some on here feel better, we all know that won't happen under a Labour, Conservative or even Reform Government.
Raising basic rate progressively to 25p, higher rate to nearer 50p and instigating a third higher tax rate is probably where Reeves is going. I'd still be looking at Land Value Taxation or some measure relating to property valuations to replace Stamp Duty and possibly Council Tax. As a small gesture of carrot, I'd put thresholds up by 2x inflation this year and pledge to keep them in line with inflation for the rest of the Parliament.
It looks as though online gaming and FOBTs in betting shops will face higher tax but it may be the lobbying by the horse racing and greyhound industries has done enough to stop a significant rise in betting duty. I suspect fuel duty will go up by more than inflation as well.
The biggest problem is the entrenched belief, among the electorate, that increased taxes will simply disappear into the maw of government, without noticeable improvement.
It's fairly clear that much of Government, local and national has lost control of costs. It's Feast-Or-Famine - either there's no money for X or theres billions spent on something that should cost millions.
The migrant hotels farce is a prefect example of this - an avalanche of money for the owners. I don't blame them - times are tough in the hotel business. If someone is offering you a zero risk, unbelievably profitable multi-year contract, you'd be insane not to take it.
We need to start cutting our cloth according to the.... cloth we actually have.
I know that a British Museum catalogue without a logo, a Richard Rogeresque HQ, some abstract sculpture in the foyer and a mission statement, isn't exciting. Not to mention a "dynamic team" for the Board of Directors on 6 figures each for 2 days of work as year.
But if we ditch those things, we might be able to afford a... British Museum catalogue.
People also have very distorted ideas of where the money goes. Migrant hotels and the British Museum are not why public spending is high. The money goes on healthcare and pensions, both of which are going up with an ageing population.
But you see this pattern through government - the hospitals are both falling down and built for prices that are crazy.
My relative who runs a building business looked at the contract to build a school local to me - the price was higher, per square foot than digging luxury basements. Which is the most expensive thing to do in the construction industry. He said that he could do the job, and throw in a basement swimming pool, under the playground and still make 30%.
I can’t understand why contract management is so bad throughout the public sector.
It’s because “Chief contract negotiator” is a CL6 (sic) position, paying from £45,268 in year 1, to £53,826 in Year 8.
Meanwhile, the guy on the other side is making 1% of the contract value, and attracts people who want to make £10m a year.
Agreed. But you won’t fix that with cuts
Oh I’d be all in favour of central government having a crack team of contract negotiators on unlimited commission based on saving public money.
Disaster waiting to happen. For one, you wouldn’t be able to easily quantify what the “saving” was and as all commission systems do it would encourage meeting the metric only. I.e. low contract sum but costs heavily loaded in year 5 or whenever after any commission is paid.
Because the government is incapable of structuring incentive schemes that the private sector do all the time?
The same happens in the private sector.
If Tesco can build a custom facility to "negotiate" with suppliers - rooms setup so that a single representative from the supplier is brow beaten by groups of Tesco buyers - why can't the government?
Can't we just poach the Tesco team ?
The government’s procurement of petrol, food and industrial warehouses will certainly improve
It seems the country's going to be a lot quieter once all the people supposedly leaving have gone....
We all know Reeves and Starmer should have been honest about raising income tax and perhaps VAT before the election but the shadow cast by 1992 is very long and it would have been manna from heaven for Sunak and Hunt - "Labour will raise your taxes, the Conservatives will cut them" - the social media messages write themselves.
We also know, in the event of their re-election, Hunt would likely have raised taxes as well.
The deficit remains eye watering - no one objects to borrowing for long term capital investment but borrowing to get from one month to the next doesn't work well for individuals or countries. The truth is even if we can bring the deficit and borrowing down we will still be saddled with the annual debt interest payments of £60-70 billion tearing a chunk out of our available expenditure.
The priority for now must be getting the deficit down and while some of the more fanciful ideas on here about slashing civil service headcount by 50% and cutting benefits by the same amount might make some on here feel better, we all know that won't happen under a Labour, Conservative or even Reform Government.
Raising basic rate progressively to 25p, higher rate to nearer 50p and instigating a third higher tax rate is probably where Reeves is going. I'd still be looking at Land Value Taxation or some measure relating to property valuations to replace Stamp Duty and possibly Council Tax. As a small gesture of carrot, I'd put thresholds up by 2x inflation this year and pledge to keep them in line with inflation for the rest of the Parliament.
It looks as though online gaming and FOBTs in betting shops will face higher tax but it may be the lobbying by the horse racing and greyhound industries has done enough to stop a significant rise in betting duty. I suspect fuel duty will go up by more than inflation as well.
The biggest problem is the entrenched belief, among the electorate, that increased taxes will simply disappear into the maw of government, without noticeable improvement.
It's fairly clear that much of Government, local and national has lost control of costs. It's Feast-Or-Famine - either there's no money for X or theres billions spent on something that should cost millions.
The migrant hotels farce is a prefect example of this - an avalanche of money for the owners. I don't blame them - times are tough in the hotel business. If someone is offering you a zero risk, unbelievably profitable multi-year contract, you'd be insane not to take it.
We need to start cutting our cloth according to the.... cloth we actually have.
I know that a British Museum catalogue without a logo, a Richard Rogeresque HQ, some abstract sculpture in the foyer and a mission statement, isn't exciting. Not to mention a "dynamic team" for the Board of Directors on 6 figures each for 2 days of work as year.
But if we ditch those things, we might be able to afford a... British Museum catalogue.
People also have very distorted ideas of where the money goes. Migrant hotels and the British Museum are not why public spending is high. The money goes on healthcare and pensions, both of which are going up with an ageing population.
But you see this pattern through government - the hospitals are both falling down and built for prices that are crazy.
My relative who runs a building business looked at the contract to build a school local to me - the price was higher, per square foot than digging luxury basements. Which is the most expensive thing to do in the construction industry. He said that he could do the job, and throw in a basement swimming pool, under the playground and still make 30%.
I can’t understand why contract management is so bad throughout the public sector.
It’s because “Chief contract negotiator” is a CL6 (sic) position, paying from £45,268 in year 1, to £53,826 in Year 8.
Meanwhile, the guy on the other side is making 1% of the contract value, and attracts people who want to make £10m a year.
Agreed. But you won’t fix that with cuts
Oh I’d be all in favour of central government having a crack team of contract negotiators on unlimited commission based on saving public money.
Let me at it!
Carbon Capture Schemes? gone.
Nuclear power projects - persuade me why they shouldn't be gone....
Carbon capture was always a waste of money - added cost zero benefit
Nuclear power - we shouldn’t be building big ones except the Korean design. Small modular ones we should be investing in to get the factories working so we start exporting them
Carbon capture is a designed to mitigate the amount of CO2 that is released. If you are determined that global temps need to be kept below 'x' degrees then carbon capture might be used as part of the process, even if it is hideously expensive.
Except that very few countries will be doing it, and the cost/benefit analysis is dreadful compared with other interventions.
I don't disagree - it wouldn't be my choice. I'd be going hell for leather for renewables (tidal, wind, solar, battery storage, huge storage reservoirs etc).
The one good use for carbon capture and storage would be if we used excess renewable electricity to create methane (via electrolysis and the Sabatier process) and then captured the carbon when burning that gas. You'd then have a negative carbon process to balance things like the warming from jet plane contrails.
But we're a long way from that, and instead they're talking about using CCS for production of hydrogen from fossil methane, which is absurd.
I'm trying to find the link - there was an interesting startup in the US that was looking at Solar -> Methane. But without battery storage or even converter electronics - just feed the power into the process from the panels. So it would run when there was power. The idea was simplicity and lower costs.....
We also already have a lot of infrastructure for methane distribution and storage.
OTOH, there are very few photo opportunities presented by reused. Big new builds however….
It seems the country's going to be a lot quieter once all the people supposedly leaving have gone....
We all know Reeves and Starmer should have been honest about raising income tax and perhaps VAT before the election but the shadow cast by 1992 is very long and it would have been manna from heaven for Sunak and Hunt - "Labour will raise your taxes, the Conservatives will cut them" - the social media messages write themselves.
We also know, in the event of their re-election, Hunt would likely have raised taxes as well.
The deficit remains eye watering - no one objects to borrowing for long term capital investment but borrowing to get from one month to the next doesn't work well for individuals or countries. The truth is even if we can bring the deficit and borrowing down we will still be saddled with the annual debt interest payments of £60-70 billion tearing a chunk out of our available expenditure.
The priority for now must be getting the deficit down and while some of the more fanciful ideas on here about slashing civil service headcount by 50% and cutting benefits by the same amount might make some on here feel better, we all know that won't happen under a Labour, Conservative or even Reform Government.
Raising basic rate progressively to 25p, higher rate to nearer 50p and instigating a third higher tax rate is probably where Reeves is going. I'd still be looking at Land Value Taxation or some measure relating to property valuations to replace Stamp Duty and possibly Council Tax. As a small gesture of carrot, I'd put thresholds up by 2x inflation this year and pledge to keep them in line with inflation for the rest of the Parliament.
It looks as though online gaming and FOBTs in betting shops will face higher tax but it may be the lobbying by the horse racing and greyhound industries has done enough to stop a significant rise in betting duty. I suspect fuel duty will go up by more than inflation as well.
The biggest problem is the entrenched belief, among the electorate, that increased taxes will simply disappear into the maw of government, without noticeable improvement.
It's fairly clear that much of Government, local and national has lost control of costs. It's Feast-Or-Famine - either there's no money for X or theres billions spent on something that should cost millions.
The migrant hotels farce is a prefect example of this - an avalanche of money for the owners. I don't blame them - times are tough in the hotel business. If someone is offering you a zero risk, unbelievably profitable multi-year contract, you'd be insane not to take it.
We need to start cutting our cloth according to the.... cloth we actually have.
I know that a British Museum catalogue without a logo, a Richard Rogeresque HQ, some abstract sculpture in the foyer and a mission statement, isn't exciting. Not to mention a "dynamic team" for the Board of Directors on 6 figures each for 2 days of work as year.
But if we ditch those things, we might be able to afford a... British Museum catalogue.
People also have very distorted ideas of where the money goes. Migrant hotels and the British Museum are not why public spending is high. The money goes on healthcare and pensions, both of which are going up with an ageing population.
But you see this pattern through government - the hospitals are both falling down and built for prices that are crazy.
My relative who runs a building business looked at the contract to build a school local to me - the price was higher, per square foot than digging luxury basements. Which is the most expensive thing to do in the construction industry. He said that he could do the job, and throw in a basement swimming pool, under the playground and still make 30%.
I can’t understand why contract management is so bad throughout the public sector.
It’s because “Chief contract negotiator” is a CL6 (sic) position, paying from £45,268 in year 1, to £53,826 in Year 8.
Meanwhile, the guy on the other side is making 1% of the contract value, and attracts people who want to make £10m a year.
Agreed. But you won’t fix that with cuts
Oh I’d be all in favour of central government having a crack team of contract negotiators on unlimited commission based on saving public money.
Disaster waiting to happen. For one, you wouldn’t be able to easily quantify what the “saving” was and as all commission systems do it would encourage meeting the metric only. I.e. low contract sum but costs heavily loaded in year 5 or whenever after any commission is paid.
Because the government is incapable of structuring incentive schemes that the private sector do all the time?
The same happens in the private sector.
If Tesco can build a custom facility to "negotiate" with suppliers - rooms setup so that a single representative from the supplier is brow beaten by groups of Tesco buyers - why can't the government?
They can. But the “Government” ie the public sector is probably negotiating hundreds of different contracts every single day and you need to have knowledgable, experienced, and skilled staff for all manner of different disciplines working on every one.
Indeed. But policy is not to do that. Because generalists.
I have no doubt whatsoever that Reeves is going to raise taxes to justify her largesse with the public sector and her inability to achieve cuts in welfare spending past her backbenchers
She casts around looking for someone to blame, but she reinstated the WFP and failed in attempts to cut back welfare
I would just say that the huge rise in the minimum wage for 18+ to adult rates is the receipe for long term youth employment as business will not be attracted to young workers as opposed to those of a more mature age and life experience
However, this is labour where spending and taxing is their DNA and they have no backbone to address the doom loop we are in
A truly game changing government, (like one with a landslide majority), would focus on means testing pensions and the NHS to ensure the viability of both
Why should the wealthy receive the state pension and free NHS treatment when it is crippling our economy and draining our resources for adequate funding other parts of the public sector including education, law and order, and defence to name a few
Until we accept that really hard decisions are needed, we are just going to make everything worse especially for our grandchildren and frankly is is unacceptable and utter cowardice
Because the effect of means-testing the state pension is that most people won't find it worth saving for their retirement at all. That just stores up a massive social and economic problem for a few decades down the line. See also expensive bits of healthcare and social care.
The State Pension isn't enough to live on. So people will need to save.
What is needed to force them to do so is to progressively withdraw Pension Credit and Housing Benefit from pensioners.
This is all looking at it the wrong way around. Reduce tax relief once people have built up a big enough pension pot to get to average wage when you add in the state pension.
That brings in tax instantly and is a lot simpler.
It seems the country's going to be a lot quieter once all the people supposedly leaving have gone....
We all know Reeves and Starmer should have been honest about raising income tax and perhaps VAT before the election but the shadow cast by 1992 is very long and it would have been manna from heaven for Sunak and Hunt - "Labour will raise your taxes, the Conservatives will cut them" - the social media messages write themselves.
We also know, in the event of their re-election, Hunt would likely have raised taxes as well.
The deficit remains eye watering - no one objects to borrowing for long term capital investment but borrowing to get from one month to the next doesn't work well for individuals or countries. The truth is even if we can bring the deficit and borrowing down we will still be saddled with the annual debt interest payments of £60-70 billion tearing a chunk out of our available expenditure.
The priority for now must be getting the deficit down and while some of the more fanciful ideas on here about slashing civil service headcount by 50% and cutting benefits by the same amount might make some on here feel better, we all know that won't happen under a Labour, Conservative or even Reform Government.
Raising basic rate progressively to 25p, higher rate to nearer 50p and instigating a third higher tax rate is probably where Reeves is going. I'd still be looking at Land Value Taxation or some measure relating to property valuations to replace Stamp Duty and possibly Council Tax. As a small gesture of carrot, I'd put thresholds up by 2x inflation this year and pledge to keep them in line with inflation for the rest of the Parliament.
It looks as though online gaming and FOBTs in betting shops will face higher tax but it may be the lobbying by the horse racing and greyhound industries has done enough to stop a significant rise in betting duty. I suspect fuel duty will go up by more than inflation as well.
The biggest problem is the entrenched belief, among the electorate, that increased taxes will simply disappear into the maw of government, without noticeable improvement.
It's fairly clear that much of Government, local and national has lost control of costs. It's Feast-Or-Famine - either there's no money for X or theres billions spent on something that should cost millions.
The migrant hotels farce is a prefect example of this - an avalanche of money for the owners. I don't blame them - times are tough in the hotel business. If someone is offering you a zero risk, unbelievably profitable multi-year contract, you'd be insane not to take it.
We need to start cutting our cloth according to the.... cloth we actually have.
I know that a British Museum catalogue without a logo, a Richard Rogeresque HQ, some abstract sculpture in the foyer and a mission statement, isn't exciting. Not to mention a "dynamic team" for the Board of Directors on 6 figures each for 2 days of work as year.
But if we ditch those things, we might be able to afford a... British Museum catalogue.
People also have very distorted ideas of where the money goes. Migrant hotels and the British Museum are not why public spending is high. The money goes on healthcare and pensions, both of which are going up with an ageing population.
But you see this pattern through government - the hospitals are both falling down and built for prices that are crazy.
My relative who runs a building business looked at the contract to build a school local to me - the price was higher, per square foot than digging luxury basements. Which is the most expensive thing to do in the construction industry. He said that he could do the job, and throw in a basement swimming pool, under the playground and still make 30%.
I can’t understand why contract management is so bad throughout the public sector.
It’s because “Chief contract negotiator” is a CL6 (sic) position, paying from £45,268 in year 1, to £53,826 in Year 8.
Meanwhile, the guy on the other side is making 1% of the contract value, and attracts people who want to make £10m a year.
Agreed. But you won’t fix that with cuts
Oh I’d be all in favour of central government having a crack team of contract negotiators on unlimited commission based on saving public money.
Disaster waiting to happen. For one, you wouldn’t be able to easily quantify what the “saving” was and as all commission systems do it would encourage meeting the metric only. I.e. low contract sum but costs heavily loaded in year 5 or whenever after any commission is paid.
Because the government is incapable of structuring incentive schemes that the private sector do all the time?
The same happens in the private sector.
If Tesco can build a custom facility to "negotiate" with suppliers - rooms setup so that a single representative from the supplier is brow beaten by groups of Tesco buyers - why can't the government?
Can't we just poach the Tesco team ?
The government’s procurement of petrol, food and industrial warehouses will certainly improve
It seems the country's going to be a lot quieter once all the people supposedly leaving have gone....
We all know Reeves and Starmer should have been honest about raising income tax and perhaps VAT before the election but the shadow cast by 1992 is very long and it would have been manna from heaven for Sunak and Hunt - "Labour will raise your taxes, the Conservatives will cut them" - the social media messages write themselves.
We also know, in the event of their re-election, Hunt would likely have raised taxes as well.
The deficit remains eye watering - no one objects to borrowing for long term capital investment but borrowing to get from one month to the next doesn't work well for individuals or countries. The truth is even if we can bring the deficit and borrowing down we will still be saddled with the annual debt interest payments of £60-70 billion tearing a chunk out of our available expenditure.
The priority for now must be getting the deficit down and while some of the more fanciful ideas on here about slashing civil service headcount by 50% and cutting benefits by the same amount might make some on here feel better, we all know that won't happen under a Labour, Conservative or even Reform Government.
Raising basic rate progressively to 25p, higher rate to nearer 50p and instigating a third higher tax rate is probably where Reeves is going. I'd still be looking at Land Value Taxation or some measure relating to property valuations to replace Stamp Duty and possibly Council Tax. As a small gesture of carrot, I'd put thresholds up by 2x inflation this year and pledge to keep them in line with inflation for the rest of the Parliament.
It looks as though online gaming and FOBTs in betting shops will face higher tax but it may be the lobbying by the horse racing and greyhound industries has done enough to stop a significant rise in betting duty. I suspect fuel duty will go up by more than inflation as well.
The biggest problem is the entrenched belief, among the electorate, that increased taxes will simply disappear into the maw of government, without noticeable improvement.
It's fairly clear that much of Government, local and national has lost control of costs. It's Feast-Or-Famine - either there's no money for X or theres billions spent on something that should cost millions.
The migrant hotels farce is a prefect example of this - an avalanche of money for the owners. I don't blame them - times are tough in the hotel business. If someone is offering you a zero risk, unbelievably profitable multi-year contract, you'd be insane not to take it.
We need to start cutting our cloth according to the.... cloth we actually have.
I know that a British Museum catalogue without a logo, a Richard Rogeresque HQ, some abstract sculpture in the foyer and a mission statement, isn't exciting. Not to mention a "dynamic team" for the Board of Directors on 6 figures each for 2 days of work as year.
But if we ditch those things, we might be able to afford a... British Museum catalogue.
People also have very distorted ideas of where the money goes. Migrant hotels and the British Museum are not why public spending is high. The money goes on healthcare and pensions, both of which are going up with an ageing population.
But you see this pattern through government - the hospitals are both falling down and built for prices that are crazy.
My relative who runs a building business looked at the contract to build a school local to me - the price was higher, per square foot than digging luxury basements. Which is the most expensive thing to do in the construction industry. He said that he could do the job, and throw in a basement swimming pool, under the playground and still make 30%.
I can’t understand why contract management is so bad throughout the public sector.
It’s because “Chief contract negotiator” is a CL6 (sic) position, paying from £45,268 in year 1, to £53,826 in Year 8.
Meanwhile, the guy on the other side is making 1% of the contract value, and attracts people who want to make £10m a year.
Agreed. But you won’t fix that with cuts
Oh I’d be all in favour of central government having a crack team of contract negotiators on unlimited commission based on saving public money.
Disaster waiting to happen. For one, you wouldn’t be able to easily quantify what the “saving” was and as all commission systems do it would encourage meeting the metric only. I.e. low contract sum but costs heavily loaded in year 5 or whenever after any commission is paid.
Because the government is incapable of structuring incentive schemes that the private sector do all the time?
The same happens in the private sector.
If Tesco can build a custom facility to "negotiate" with suppliers - rooms setup so that a single representative from the supplier is brow beaten by groups of Tesco buyers - why can't the government?
Can't we just poach the Tesco team ?
Or rent them from Tesco?
Another PPI deal ? We'd get rinsed.
Especially if we were negotiating the cost of hiring the Tesco negotiators with the Tesco negotiators.
(There must be an updated Gilbert and Sullivan plot in there somewhere.)
More like a Terry Gilliam plot, Shirley?
Depends on whether you prefer nightmarish visions or jolly musical theatre.
I have no doubt whatsoever that Reeves is going to raise taxes to justify her largesse with the public sector and her inability to achieve cuts in welfare spending past her backbenchers
She casts around looking for someone to blame, but she reinstated the WFP and failed in attempts to cut back welfare
I would just say that the huge rise in the minimum wage for 18+ to adult rates is the receipe for long term youth employment as business will not be attracted to young workers as opposed to those of a more mature age and life experience
However, this is labour where spending and taxing is their DNA and they have no backbone to address the doom loop we are in
A truly game changing government, (like one with a landslide majority), would focus on means testing pensions and the NHS to ensure the viability of both
Why should the wealthy receive the state pension and free NHS treatment when it is crippling our economy and draining our resources for adequate funding other parts of the public sector including education, law and order, and defence to name a few
Until we accept that really hard decisions are needed, we are just going to make everything worse especially for our grandchildren and frankly is is unacceptable and utter cowardice
Because the effect of means-testing the state pension is that most people won't find it worth saving for their retirement at all. That just stores up a massive social and economic problem for a few decades down the line. See also expensive bits of healthcare and social care.
Besides, provided they have paid a decent wodge of tax along the way, I don't see any reason to begrudge richer people than me getting some of it back when they are old. (And more cynically, lower-than-otherwise taxes funded by more means testing would probably benefit plutocrats compared with the status quo.)
Yes - it is nice to have but not affordable
Either it is means tested at some point or the starting age will be beyond 70
It's not about nice to have- it's about whether to dump another, even bigger, cost on future generations. And you and I have done enough of that already.
Reeves could trigger a consumer boom by proposing to means-test the state pension based on pension income / fund size in the near future. Those drawing down their pensions would be incentivized to get the money out early
By retiring early - which depending on your viewpoint may or may not be a good thing.
It seems the country's going to be a lot quieter once all the people supposedly leaving have gone....
We all know Reeves and Starmer should have been honest about raising income tax and perhaps VAT before the election but the shadow cast by 1992 is very long and it would have been manna from heaven for Sunak and Hunt - "Labour will raise your taxes, the Conservatives will cut them" - the social media messages write themselves.
We also know, in the event of their re-election, Hunt would likely have raised taxes as well.
The deficit remains eye watering - no one objects to borrowing for long term capital investment but borrowing to get from one month to the next doesn't work well for individuals or countries. The truth is even if we can bring the deficit and borrowing down we will still be saddled with the annual debt interest payments of £60-70 billion tearing a chunk out of our available expenditure.
The priority for now must be getting the deficit down and while some of the more fanciful ideas on here about slashing civil service headcount by 50% and cutting benefits by the same amount might make some on here feel better, we all know that won't happen under a Labour, Conservative or even Reform Government.
Raising basic rate progressively to 25p, higher rate to nearer 50p and instigating a third higher tax rate is probably where Reeves is going. I'd still be looking at Land Value Taxation or some measure relating to property valuations to replace Stamp Duty and possibly Council Tax. As a small gesture of carrot, I'd put thresholds up by 2x inflation this year and pledge to keep them in line with inflation for the rest of the Parliament.
It looks as though online gaming and FOBTs in betting shops will face higher tax but it may be the lobbying by the horse racing and greyhound industries has done enough to stop a significant rise in betting duty. I suspect fuel duty will go up by more than inflation as well.
The biggest problem is the entrenched belief, among the electorate, that increased taxes will simply disappear into the maw of government, without noticeable improvement.
It's fairly clear that much of Government, local and national has lost control of costs. It's Feast-Or-Famine - either there's no money for X or theres billions spent on something that should cost millions.
The migrant hotels farce is a prefect example of this - an avalanche of money for the owners. I don't blame them - times are tough in the hotel business. If someone is offering you a zero risk, unbelievably profitable multi-year contract, you'd be insane not to take it.
We need to start cutting our cloth according to the.... cloth we actually have.
I know that a British Museum catalogue without a logo, a Richard Rogeresque HQ, some abstract sculpture in the foyer and a mission statement, isn't exciting. Not to mention a "dynamic team" for the Board of Directors on 6 figures each for 2 days of work as year.
But if we ditch those things, we might be able to afford a... British Museum catalogue.
People also have very distorted ideas of where the money goes. Migrant hotels and the British Museum are not why public spending is high. The money goes on healthcare and pensions, both of which are going up with an ageing population.
But you see this pattern through government - the hospitals are both falling down and built for prices that are crazy.
My relative who runs a building business looked at the contract to build a school local to me - the price was higher, per square foot than digging luxury basements. Which is the most expensive thing to do in the construction industry. He said that he could do the job, and throw in a basement swimming pool, under the playground and still make 30%.
I can’t understand why contract management is so bad throughout the public sector.
It’s because “Chief contract negotiator” is a CL6 (sic) position, paying from £45,268 in year 1, to £53,826 in Year 8.
Meanwhile, the guy on the other side is making 1% of the contract value, and attracts people who want to make £10m a year.
Agreed. But you won’t fix that with cuts
Oh I’d be all in favour of central government having a crack team of contract negotiators on unlimited commission based on saving public money.
Disaster waiting to happen. For one, you wouldn’t be able to easily quantify what the “saving” was and as all commission systems do it would encourage meeting the metric only. I.e. low contract sum but costs heavily loaded in year 5 or whenever after any commission is paid.
Because the government is incapable of structuring incentive schemes that the private sector do all the time?
The same happens in the private sector.
If Tesco can build a custom facility to "negotiate" with suppliers - rooms setup so that a single representative from the supplier is brow beaten by groups of Tesco buyers - why can't the government?
Can't we just poach the Tesco team ?
Or rent them from Tesco?
Another PPI deal ? We'd get rinsed.
Especially if we were negotiating the cost of hiring the Tesco negotiators with the Tesco negotiators.
(There must be an updated Gilbert and Sullivan plot in there somewhere.)
More like a Terry Gilliam plot, Shirley?
Depends on whether you prefer nightmarish visions or jolly musical theatre.
What if I want nightmarish visions as part of (apparently) jolly musical theatre?
A work colleague (DWP so he knows how it works) complained that neighbours on disability could apparently afford a new car every 3 years
My understanding is that a Motability lease lasts three years, so changing cars then is actually forced on people.
True, although I did find out by accident that if your mileage is low you can ask Motability to extend the lease to 4 or 5 years. They don't really advertise that though.
Most Motability leases require an up-front, non-returnable deposit. That can currently be up to £8k, say for and Audi Q4. So that's £222 pm in up-front payment + you're giving up £333pm PIP. £555pm for an Audi Q4 may be worth it and affordable for you but clearly some on here think that it's not right that disabled people should be allowed to lease such cars.
That £333 PIP being "given up" is costing the government extra in foregone VAT compared with using it for many other expenses.
Motability: £45k car, 8k from you. Cost to motability £36000 (because no vat) minus 8k equals £28000. They sell it after 3 years for £20000. Notional lease cost per month £333.
If VAT were charged: £45k car, 8k from you. Cost to motability £45000 minus 8k equals £37000. They sell it after 3 years for £20000. Notional lease cost per month £708.
Yes, it’s similar to the electric car subsidies that meant a company car Porsche Taycan Turbo (list price £130k) was the same price in lease + BIK as a VW Golf GTI (list price £40k) if it was charged to your own business.
It seems the country's going to be a lot quieter once all the people supposedly leaving have gone....
We all know Reeves and Starmer should have been honest about raising income tax and perhaps VAT before the election but the shadow cast by 1992 is very long and it would have been manna from heaven for Sunak and Hunt - "Labour will raise your taxes, the Conservatives will cut them" - the social media messages write themselves.
We also know, in the event of their re-election, Hunt would likely have raised taxes as well.
The deficit remains eye watering - no one objects to borrowing for long term capital investment but borrowing to get from one month to the next doesn't work well for individuals or countries. The truth is even if we can bring the deficit and borrowing down we will still be saddled with the annual debt interest payments of £60-70 billion tearing a chunk out of our available expenditure.
The priority for now must be getting the deficit down and while some of the more fanciful ideas on here about slashing civil service headcount by 50% and cutting benefits by the same amount might make some on here feel better, we all know that won't happen under a Labour, Conservative or even Reform Government.
Raising basic rate progressively to 25p, higher rate to nearer 50p and instigating a third higher tax rate is probably where Reeves is going. I'd still be looking at Land Value Taxation or some measure relating to property valuations to replace Stamp Duty and possibly Council Tax. As a small gesture of carrot, I'd put thresholds up by 2x inflation this year and pledge to keep them in line with inflation for the rest of the Parliament.
It looks as though online gaming and FOBTs in betting shops will face higher tax but it may be the lobbying by the horse racing and greyhound industries has done enough to stop a significant rise in betting duty. I suspect fuel duty will go up by more than inflation as well.
The biggest problem is the entrenched belief, among the electorate, that increased taxes will simply disappear into the maw of government, without noticeable improvement.
It's fairly clear that much of Government, local and national has lost control of costs. It's Feast-Or-Famine - either there's no money for X or theres billions spent on something that should cost millions.
The migrant hotels farce is a prefect example of this - an avalanche of money for the owners. I don't blame them - times are tough in the hotel business. If someone is offering you a zero risk, unbelievably profitable multi-year contract, you'd be insane not to take it.
We need to start cutting our cloth according to the.... cloth we actually have.
I know that a British Museum catalogue without a logo, a Richard Rogeresque HQ, some abstract sculpture in the foyer and a mission statement, isn't exciting. Not to mention a "dynamic team" for the Board of Directors on 6 figures each for 2 days of work as year.
But if we ditch those things, we might be able to afford a... British Museum catalogue.
People also have very distorted ideas of where the money goes. Migrant hotels and the British Museum are not why public spending is high. The money goes on healthcare and pensions, both of which are going up with an ageing population.
But you see this pattern through government - the hospitals are both falling down and built for prices that are crazy.
My relative who runs a building business looked at the contract to build a school local to me - the price was higher, per square foot than digging luxury basements. Which is the most expensive thing to do in the construction industry. He said that he could do the job, and throw in a basement swimming pool, under the playground and still make 30%.
I can’t understand why contract management is so bad throughout the public sector.
It’s because “Chief contract negotiator” is a CL6 (sic) position, paying from £45,268 in year 1, to £53,826 in Year 8.
Meanwhile, the guy on the other side is making 1% of the contract value, and attracts people who want to make £10m a year.
Agreed. But you won’t fix that with cuts
Oh I’d be all in favour of central government having a crack team of contract negotiators on unlimited commission based on saving public money.
Disaster waiting to happen. For one, you wouldn’t be able to easily quantify what the “saving” was and as all commission systems do it would encourage meeting the metric only. I.e. low contract sum but costs heavily loaded in year 5 or whenever after any commission is paid.
Because the government is incapable of structuring incentive schemes that the private sector do all the time?
The same happens in the private sector.
If Tesco can build a custom facility to "negotiate" with suppliers - rooms setup so that a single representative from the supplier is brow beaten by groups of Tesco buyers - why can't the government?
Can't we just poach the Tesco team ?
The government’s procurement of petrol, food and industrial warehouses will certainly improve
Algerian immigrant. Those people on X are total scumbags.
My comment to my wife when I read the news a few minutes ago... 'Well that is going to completely fuck the brains of the racists now isn't it.'
More importantly the guy really is a hero. A term misused far too often today. Putting yourself in harms way to save others is properly heroic. I hope he pulls through and gets well deserved reward for what he did.
It seems the country's going to be a lot quieter once all the people supposedly leaving have gone....
We all know Reeves and Starmer should have been honest about raising income tax and perhaps VAT before the election but the shadow cast by 1992 is very long and it would have been manna from heaven for Sunak and Hunt - "Labour will raise your taxes, the Conservatives will cut them" - the social media messages write themselves.
We also know, in the event of their re-election, Hunt would likely have raised taxes as well.
The deficit remains eye watering - no one objects to borrowing for long term capital investment but borrowing to get from one month to the next doesn't work well for individuals or countries. The truth is even if we can bring the deficit and borrowing down we will still be saddled with the annual debt interest payments of £60-70 billion tearing a chunk out of our available expenditure.
The priority for now must be getting the deficit down and while some of the more fanciful ideas on here about slashing civil service headcount by 50% and cutting benefits by the same amount might make some on here feel better, we all know that won't happen under a Labour, Conservative or even Reform Government.
Raising basic rate progressively to 25p, higher rate to nearer 50p and instigating a third higher tax rate is probably where Reeves is going. I'd still be looking at Land Value Taxation or some measure relating to property valuations to replace Stamp Duty and possibly Council Tax. As a small gesture of carrot, I'd put thresholds up by 2x inflation this year and pledge to keep them in line with inflation for the rest of the Parliament.
It looks as though online gaming and FOBTs in betting shops will face higher tax but it may be the lobbying by the horse racing and greyhound industries has done enough to stop a significant rise in betting duty. I suspect fuel duty will go up by more than inflation as well.
The biggest problem is the entrenched belief, among the electorate, that increased taxes will simply disappear into the maw of government, without noticeable improvement.
It's fairly clear that much of Government, local and national has lost control of costs. It's Feast-Or-Famine - either there's no money for X or theres billions spent on something that should cost millions.
The migrant hotels farce is a prefect example of this - an avalanche of money for the owners. I don't blame them - times are tough in the hotel business. If someone is offering you a zero risk, unbelievably profitable multi-year contract, you'd be insane not to take it.
We need to start cutting our cloth according to the.... cloth we actually have.
I know that a British Museum catalogue without a logo, a Richard Rogeresque HQ, some abstract sculpture in the foyer and a mission statement, isn't exciting. Not to mention a "dynamic team" for the Board of Directors on 6 figures each for 2 days of work as year.
But if we ditch those things, we might be able to afford a... British Museum catalogue.
People also have very distorted ideas of where the money goes. Migrant hotels and the British Museum are not why public spending is high. The money goes on healthcare and pensions, both of which are going up with an ageing population.
But you see this pattern through government - the hospitals are both falling down and built for prices that are crazy.
My relative who runs a building business looked at the contract to build a school local to me - the price was higher, per square foot than digging luxury basements. Which is the most expensive thing to do in the construction industry. He said that he could do the job, and throw in a basement swimming pool, under the playground and still make 30%.
I can’t understand why contract management is so bad throughout the public sector.
It’s because “Chief contract negotiator” is a CL6 (sic) position, paying from £45,268 in year 1, to £53,826 in Year 8.
Meanwhile, the guy on the other side is making 1% of the contract value, and attracts people who want to make £10m a year.
Agreed. But you won’t fix that with cuts
Oh I’d be all in favour of central government having a crack team of contract negotiators on unlimited commission based on saving public money.
Disaster waiting to happen. For one, you wouldn’t be able to easily quantify what the “saving” was and as all commission systems do it would encourage meeting the metric only. I.e. low contract sum but costs heavily loaded in year 5 or whenever after any commission is paid.
Because the government is incapable of structuring incentive schemes that the private sector do all the time?
The same happens in the private sector.
If Tesco can build a custom facility to "negotiate" with suppliers - rooms setup so that a single representative from the supplier is brow beaten by groups of Tesco buyers - why can't the government?
Can't we just poach the Tesco team ?
The government’s procurement of petrol, food and industrial warehouses will certainly improve
Algerian immigrant. Those people on X are total scumbags.
My comment to my wife when I read the news a few minutes ago... 'Well that is going to completely fuck the brains of the racists now isn't it.'
More importantly the guy really is a hero. A term misused far too often today. Putting yourself in harms way to save others is properly heroic. I hope he pulls through and gets well deserved reward for what he did.
You are very kind to assume that all the racists have brains they bother to use.
Still, all those who assumed that this story turned on immigration (they know who they are) were sort of right.
It seems the country's going to be a lot quieter once all the people supposedly leaving have gone....
We all know Reeves and Starmer should have been honest about raising income tax and perhaps VAT before the election but the shadow cast by 1992 is very long and it would have been manna from heaven for Sunak and Hunt - "Labour will raise your taxes, the Conservatives will cut them" - the social media messages write themselves.
We also know, in the event of their re-election, Hunt would likely have raised taxes as well.
The deficit remains eye watering - no one objects to borrowing for long term capital investment but borrowing to get from one month to the next doesn't work well for individuals or countries. The truth is even if we can bring the deficit and borrowing down we will still be saddled with the annual debt interest payments of £60-70 billion tearing a chunk out of our available expenditure.
The priority for now must be getting the deficit down and while some of the more fanciful ideas on here about slashing civil service headcount by 50% and cutting benefits by the same amount might make some on here feel better, we all know that won't happen under a Labour, Conservative or even Reform Government.
Raising basic rate progressively to 25p, higher rate to nearer 50p and instigating a third higher tax rate is probably where Reeves is going. I'd still be looking at Land Value Taxation or some measure relating to property valuations to replace Stamp Duty and possibly Council Tax. As a small gesture of carrot, I'd put thresholds up by 2x inflation this year and pledge to keep them in line with inflation for the rest of the Parliament.
It looks as though online gaming and FOBTs in betting shops will face higher tax but it may be the lobbying by the horse racing and greyhound industries has done enough to stop a significant rise in betting duty. I suspect fuel duty will go up by more than inflation as well.
The biggest problem is the entrenched belief, among the electorate, that increased taxes will simply disappear into the maw of government, without noticeable improvement.
It's fairly clear that much of Government, local and national has lost control of costs. It's Feast-Or-Famine - either there's no money for X or theres billions spent on something that should cost millions.
The migrant hotels farce is a prefect example of this - an avalanche of money for the owners. I don't blame them - times are tough in the hotel business. If someone is offering you a zero risk, unbelievably profitable multi-year contract, you'd be insane not to take it.
We need to start cutting our cloth according to the.... cloth we actually have.
I know that a British Museum catalogue without a logo, a Richard Rogeresque HQ, some abstract sculpture in the foyer and a mission statement, isn't exciting. Not to mention a "dynamic team" for the Board of Directors on 6 figures each for 2 days of work as year.
But if we ditch those things, we might be able to afford a... British Museum catalogue.
People also have very distorted ideas of where the money goes. Migrant hotels and the British Museum are not why public spending is high. The money goes on healthcare and pensions, both of which are going up with an ageing population.
But you see this pattern through government - the hospitals are both falling down and built for prices that are crazy.
My relative who runs a building business looked at the contract to build a school local to me - the price was higher, per square foot than digging luxury basements. Which is the most expensive thing to do in the construction industry. He said that he could do the job, and throw in a basement swimming pool, under the playground and still make 30%.
I can’t understand why contract management is so bad throughout the public sector.
It’s because “Chief contract negotiator” is a CL6 (sic) position, paying from £45,268 in year 1, to £53,826 in Year 8.
Meanwhile, the guy on the other side is making 1% of the contract value, and attracts people who want to make £10m a year.
Agreed. But you won’t fix that with cuts
Oh I’d be all in favour of central government having a crack team of contract negotiators on unlimited commission based on saving public money.
Let me at it!
Carbon Capture Schemes? gone.
Nuclear power projects - persuade me why they shouldn't be gone....
Carbon capture was always a waste of money - added cost zero benefit
Nuclear power - we shouldn’t be building big ones except the Korean design. Small modular ones we should be investing in to get the factories working so we start exporting them
Carbon capture is a designed to mitigate the amount of CO2 that is released. If you are determined that global temps need to be kept below 'x' degrees then carbon capture might be used as part of the process, even if it is hideously expensive.
Except that very few countries will be doing it, and the cost/benefit analysis is dreadful compared with other interventions.
I don't disagree - it wouldn't be my choice. I'd be going hell for leather for renewables (tidal, wind, solar, battery storage, huge storage reservoirs etc).
The one good use for carbon capture and storage would be if we used excess renewable electricity to create methane (via electrolysis and the Sabatier process) and then captured the carbon when burning that gas. You'd then have a negative carbon process to balance things like the warming from jet plane contrails.
But we're a long way from that, and instead they're talking about using CCS for production of hydrogen from fossil methane, which is absurd.
I'm trying to find the link - there was an interesting startup in the US that was looking at Solar -> Methane. But without battery storage or even converter electronics - just feed the power into the process from the panels. So it would run when there was power. The idea was simplicity and lower costs.....
We also already have a lot of infrastructure for methane distribution and storage.
The problem with hydrogen via electrolysis is still cost. It's probably going to be beyond the end of this decade before it's cheaper than fossil fuel based production with CCS. But as solar prices continue to fall and installed capacity to rise (which will eventually mean a lot of solar electric at a marginal costs of zero), incremental technology improvements ought to make it cheaper than fossil fuel based production, even without CCS, by 2040ish.
A lot of developments got cancelled when Russia's invasion of Ukraine sent gas prices through the roof. But things are still progressing slowly.
It seems the country's going to be a lot quieter once all the people supposedly leaving have gone....
We all know Reeves and Starmer should have been honest about raising income tax and perhaps VAT before the election but the shadow cast by 1992 is very long and it would have been manna from heaven for Sunak and Hunt - "Labour will raise your taxes, the Conservatives will cut them" - the social media messages write themselves.
We also know, in the event of their re-election, Hunt would likely have raised taxes as well.
The deficit remains eye watering - no one objects to borrowing for long term capital investment but borrowing to get from one month to the next doesn't work well for individuals or countries. The truth is even if we can bring the deficit and borrowing down we will still be saddled with the annual debt interest payments of £60-70 billion tearing a chunk out of our available expenditure.
The priority for now must be getting the deficit down and while some of the more fanciful ideas on here about slashing civil service headcount by 50% and cutting benefits by the same amount might make some on here feel better, we all know that won't happen under a Labour, Conservative or even Reform Government.
Raising basic rate progressively to 25p, higher rate to nearer 50p and instigating a third higher tax rate is probably where Reeves is going. I'd still be looking at Land Value Taxation or some measure relating to property valuations to replace Stamp Duty and possibly Council Tax. As a small gesture of carrot, I'd put thresholds up by 2x inflation this year and pledge to keep them in line with inflation for the rest of the Parliament.
It looks as though online gaming and FOBTs in betting shops will face higher tax but it may be the lobbying by the horse racing and greyhound industries has done enough to stop a significant rise in betting duty. I suspect fuel duty will go up by more than inflation as well.
The biggest problem is the entrenched belief, among the electorate, that increased taxes will simply disappear into the maw of government, without noticeable improvement.
It's fairly clear that much of Government, local and national has lost control of costs. It's Feast-Or-Famine - either there's no money for X or theres billions spent on something that should cost millions.
The migrant hotels farce is a prefect example of this - an avalanche of money for the owners. I don't blame them - times are tough in the hotel business. If someone is offering you a zero risk, unbelievably profitable multi-year contract, you'd be insane not to take it.
We need to start cutting our cloth according to the.... cloth we actually have.
I know that a British Museum catalogue without a logo, a Richard Rogeresque HQ, some abstract sculpture in the foyer and a mission statement, isn't exciting. Not to mention a "dynamic team" for the Board of Directors on 6 figures each for 2 days of work as year.
But if we ditch those things, we might be able to afford a... British Museum catalogue.
People also have very distorted ideas of where the money goes. Migrant hotels and the British Museum are not why public spending is high. The money goes on healthcare and pensions, both of which are going up with an ageing population.
But you see this pattern through government - the hospitals are both falling down and built for prices that are crazy.
My relative who runs a building business looked at the contract to build a school local to me - the price was higher, per square foot than digging luxury basements. Which is the most expensive thing to do in the construction industry. He said that he could do the job, and throw in a basement swimming pool, under the playground and still make 30%.
I can’t understand why contract management is so bad throughout the public sector.
It’s because “Chief contract negotiator” is a CL6 (sic) position, paying from £45,268 in year 1, to £53,826 in Year 8.
Meanwhile, the guy on the other side is making 1% of the contract value, and attracts people who want to make £10m a year.
Agreed. But you won’t fix that with cuts
Oh I’d be all in favour of central government having a crack team of contract negotiators on unlimited commission based on saving public money.
Disaster waiting to happen. For one, you wouldn’t be able to easily quantify what the “saving” was and as all commission systems do it would encourage meeting the metric only. I.e. low contract sum but costs heavily loaded in year 5 or whenever after any commission is paid.
Because the government is incapable of structuring incentive schemes that the private sector do all the time?
The same happens in the private sector.
If Tesco can build a custom facility to "negotiate" with suppliers - rooms setup so that a single representative from the supplier is brow beaten by groups of Tesco buyers - why can't the government?
Can't we just poach the Tesco team ?
The government’s procurement of petrol, food and industrial warehouses will certainly improve
Algerian immigrant. Those people on X are total scumbags.
Not just online.
I’m from Sri Lankan heritage. I commanded submarines for the Royal Navy. I’ve served this country almost my entire adult life. And in the last year, I’ve been challenged directly about my skin colour in the UK. Never happened since the 1970's and 80's...
..Has Britain suddenly become racist? I don’t think so. I think pressure, politics, and online rage are dragging old ideas to the surface. Fear is being weaponised. Division is easy currency. https://x.com/SSN14CO/status/1985299647774990358
Communist/Democratic Socialist v Total Scumbag v Guardian Angel
I think the Republicans could have won this. In principle Cuomo get votes from Democrats doubtful about Mamdani but they seem solidly behind him. I'm struggling to see a scenario where Mamdani doesn't soundly beat all comers.
Comments
A horrific, savage, nasty, ghastly, hideous result - no?
* and, of course, using a crap and error ridden IT system, together with regular special audit visits by whatever successor investigation unit used to intimidate PO managers
My question was whether there is a wide-enough range of vehicles made in the UK, especially at the lower end. Looking at the Toyota and Nissan ranges made at Washington and Burnaston, that may be possible.
The one I don't think I can see is an equivalent of a Renault 5.
It could also add a benefit for micro car companies. Disabled adaptations are something of a micro industry, and there may be space for growth there, and for cost-effective provision of tailored services.
Indeed, it's hard to think how an incentive scheme (measuring some subset of what you really want) can be made totally game-proof.
If there was a flat rate IHT of 15% on anything over £50,000 other than the main house that might be easier.
"Crocodiles are absolute bastards, says Attenborough filmmaker
BBC’s Kingdom follows four predator families in Zambia and reveals the competition between them" (£)
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/11/04/crocodiles-bastards-david-attenborough-kingdom-zambia-bbc
She casts around looking for someone to blame, but she reinstated the WFP and failed in attempts to cut back welfare
I would just say that the huge rise in the minimum wage for 18+ to adult rates is the receipe for long term youth employment as business will not be attracted to young workers as opposed to those of a more mature age and life experience
However, this is labour where spending and taxing is their DNA and they have no backbone to address the doom loop we are in
A truly game changing government, (like one with a landslide majority), would focus on means testing pensions and the NHS to ensure the viability of both
Why should the wealthy receive the state pension and free NHS treatment when it is crippling our economy and draining our resources for adequate funding other parts of the public sector including education, law and order, and defence to name a few
Until we accept that really hard decisions are needed, we are just going to make everything worse especially for our grandchildren and frankly is is unacceptable and utter cowardice
The thing to think about is "80% solutions". A solution that covers everything is usually impossible - certainly insanely expensive and difficult.
So create an 80% solution. Then an 80% solution for the 20% that is left. Then another 80% solution for the 4%. This is nearly always less expensive, and more adaptable to the actual humans and their requirements.
Most Motability leases require an up-front, non-returnable deposit. That can currently be up to £8k, say for and Audi Q4. So that's £222 pm in up-front payment + you're giving up £333pm PIP. £555pm for an Audi Q4 may be worth it and affordable for you but clearly some on here think that it's not right that disabled people should be allowed to lease such cars.
1) Your ISP is fined for giving access to it (to encourage ISPs to proactively look for VPNs)
2) You will be automatically given a criminal record, which eliminates a large number of jobs for you. You will probably be placed on a register as a Risk To Children. Which means your children, if any, are taken into care.
(Too soon?)
The project went far more smoothly once he'd managed to exit himself and someone temporarily covered the position for the remainder of the project, they were never formally appointed and were given no incentive bonuses.
It's worth remembering that VPNs are essential for any remote working and the only client I've had in the last 12 years that didn't use one was Microsoft because well - I was customer facing so didn't need backend access.
The SMR business model is far from proven. A Seattle company going ahead with the project for microreactors went into Chapter 11:
https://www.ans.org/news/article-6525/ultra-safe-nuclear-files-for-bankruptcy/
Ditto in Utah:
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/nuscale-power-uamps-agree-terminate-nuclear-project-2023-11-08/
Not supporting RR is one of the biggest screw ups of the past 7 years...
Reform UK: 27% (no change from 26-27 Oct)
Labour: 20% (+3)
Conservatives: 16% (-1)
Greens: 16% (=)
Lib Dems: 15% (=)
SNP: 3% (=)
So what was the cause of death, Mr Cheney?
Known known,
known unknown,
unknown known,
or unknown unknown?
Besides, provided they have paid a decent wodge of tax along the way, I don't see any reason to begrudge richer people than me getting some of it back when they are old. (And more cynically, lower-than-otherwise taxes funded by more means testing would probably benefit plutocrats compared with the status quo.)
On Tuesday, District Judge Sam Goozee found Robinson not guilty of failing to comply with the counter-terrorism powers during the incident on July 28 last year.
Mr Goozee said: “I cannot put out of my mind that it was actually what you stood for and your political beliefs that acted for the principle reason for this stop.”
He also said Pc Mitchell Thorogood’s decision to stop Robinson was based on a “protected characteristic”, adding: “I cannot convict you.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/11/04/tommy-robinson-not-guilty-terror-offence/
I don't have a clue what the Judge means. "Protected characteristic" is the language of the Equality Act. What protected characteristic?
There's a bit of a whiff of police cockup about this imo. If he had an illegal amount of cash on him for export undeclared, why was that not charged?
Motability: £45k car, 8k from you. Cost to motability £36000 (because no vat) minus 8k equals £28000. They sell it after 3 years for £20000. Notional lease cost per month £333.
If VAT were charged: £45k car, 8k from you. Cost to motability £45000 minus 8k equals £37000. They sell it after 3 years for £20000. Notional lease cost per month £708.
Hmmm.
(Thanks.)
It's worth saying that UK second hand car prices are far lower than the rest of the world - I suspect Motobility has a lot to do with that.
Edit - the other thing to say is that motobility won't be paying anything like list price for the car. if they aren't getting a 25% discount on the car I would eat my hat.
Reason why I suspect that's the level of discount - the only car brand you can't get on Motobility is Tesla...
Given his health problems (see the lengthy Wikipedia entry), it's a tribute to US medical capabilities that he lasted as long as he did.
What is being discussed here is using the powers to force people to unlock their phones on police demand.
https://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKEAT/2009/0219_09_0311.html
The EAT (Employment Appeal Tribunal) decided that in order for a view to be a philosophical belief under the Equality Act 2010, it must:
Maybe that's the answer - remove the VAT exemption. A bit like private school fees really. As I say, I have no argument with that.
(Disabled equipment and adaptations are VAT free and that feels right to me, but that would just be zero-rating the cost of any adaptation.)
Incidentally the VAT exemption for Motability cars was introduced by that arch left-winger Margaret Thatcher in 1984.
She must be spinning in her grave.
Either it is means tested at some point or the starting age will be beyond 70
For years, the optimal cost vehicle, for most people, has been dealer reconditioned second hand cars, with warranties. From one of the brands that scores highly on low maintenance.
Anyway, Robinson must be relieved. Now he can concentrate on the ongoing legal fight over whether he is hiding any money with his insolvency that he owes in libel damages, and his trial due next year on harassment charges.
Plus more admin and more bureaucracy, which PB rightists are supposed to loathe.
Cambridgeshire stabbing attack: ‘heroic’ train worker praised for saving passengers’ lives
LNER employee Samir Zitouni, who was hospitalised after Saturday’s incident, hailed by police for ‘incredibly brave’ actions
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/nov/04/cambridgeshire-stabbing-attack-hero-train-worker-samir-zitouni-praised
Yougov shows a much bigger vote lead for the left wing parties than the other polling companies do (51% to 43% for Con and Reform, compared to an average of 48% to 49%. Or 55% to 43% including the nationalists, compared to 51% to 49%).
Trump says he'll "be involved" in Netanyahu's corruption trial "to help him out".
https://x.com/BarakRavid/status/1985167668559950188
But we're a long way from that, and instead they're talking about using CCS for production of hydrogen from fossil methane, which is absurd.
Just in case he gets to heaven. Unlikely.
- It's by far the biggest lease company in Europe, has tremendous buying power, and gets good deals from the manufacturers.
- Manufacturers 'use' Motability to boost sales and dump modes and variants they need to shift for whatever reason.
- Because of the above availability of car models is not unrestricted - manfacturers will choose not to offer popular models they can shift easily on Motability. For example the Fiat 500 comes on and off the scheme quite regularly. The list of available models is updated quarterly and the fiat 500 is not on the current list but it was on earlier in the year.
Or indeed, down below.
We'd get rinsed.
What is needed to force them to do so is to progressively withdraw Pension Credit and Housing Benefit from pensioners.
Those drawing down their pensions would be incentivized to get the money out early
(There must be an updated Gilbert and Sullivan plot in there somewhere.)
There's a very real danger that if pensioners votes mean that the qualifying age is pulled up behind them then public sentiment will turn towards abolishing the state pension.
That brings in tax instantly and is a lot simpler.
petrol
food
industrial warehouses
comms
IT
power
What would the Romans Tesco do for us?
More importantly the guy really is a hero. A term misused far too often today. Putting yourself in harms way to save others is properly heroic. I hope he pulls through and gets well deserved reward for what he did.
Still, all those who assumed that this story turned on immigration (they know who they are) were sort of right.
It's probably going to be beyond the end of this decade before it's cheaper than fossil fuel based production with CCS. But as solar prices continue to fall and installed capacity to rise (which will eventually mean a lot of solar electric at a marginal costs of zero), incremental technology improvements ought to make it cheaper than fossil fuel based production, even without CCS, by 2040ish.
A lot of developments got cancelled when Russia's invasion of Ukraine sent gas prices through the roof.
But things are still progressing slowly.
China again has the most capacity globally.
https://www.iea.org/reports/global-hydrogen-review-2025/executive-summary
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0PSyiRXIEyc
I’m from Sri Lankan heritage.
I commanded submarines for the Royal Navy.
I’ve served this country almost my entire adult life.
And in the last year, I’ve been challenged directly about my skin colour in the UK.
Never happened since the 1970's and 80's...
..Has Britain suddenly become racist?
I don’t think so.
I think pressure, politics, and online rage are dragging old ideas to the surface.
Fear is being weaponised.
Division is easy currency.
https://x.com/SSN14CO/status/1985299647774990358
Communist/Democratic Socialist v Total Scumbag v Guardian Angel
I think the Republicans could have won this.
In principle Cuomo get votes from Democrats doubtful about Mamdani but they seem solidly behind him. I'm struggling to see a scenario where Mamdani doesn't soundly beat all comers.
Unless there's an epic level polling failure.