Labour have two choices: Stick with the manifesto pledges, fiddle round the edges, the economy stagnates, they get blattered at the election Man up, things are bad, tax rise for growth, economy performs, people feel better, nobody cares about the manifesto
They'll probably manage to splice the front half of the second one and the back half of the first one...
Labour are dead anyway. The inertia, the Starmerwave, Starmer's genocide in Gaza and the hostile media have killed them. No one shed a tear. They might as well use their dying breath to do the right thing.
We are a right wing nation and we always have been. I suspect the nature of media ownership has made us so. Remember what Hitler and Goebbels said about propaganda? The sooner the Tories get back into the saddle, the sooner the media can go back to writing and broadcasting about Coronation Street. And those scumbag filth voters who don't vote Ref or Con can carp on about how nasty the Tories are to their heart's content.
Labour are *probably* dead. I don't think we can presume anything right now because the sands are shifting quickly. Remember that impossible things seem to happen every few years in our politics, so just because Labour winning in 2029 feels impossible now doesn't mean it is impossible.
Have the economy actually start to recover, have Refuk continue to fracture with a hard right battle between Farage and Tommeh Tiny-Dick about how many muslims they can deport and who knows where we go. Labour may seem like the least worst option.
The Labour Party are Monty Python's Norwegian Blue. Even if the economy recovers they are done.
I am assuming the Tories go full Jenrick and steal the vile stinking rags worn by Farage and Yaxley-Lennon ( why are we even considering these ****s as mainstream?). That is probably the least worst option going forward. Jenrick is a ruthless opportunist so once at the top of the greasy poll he might calm the rhetoric down.
I believe the nation is ungovernable by a party that antagonises the press and now the broadcast media like Labour did in 1964 to 70, in 74 to 79 and now from 2024. I have missed out the New Labour Government because hostility was limited, because initially Blair courted the Press Barons and sought approval from Mrs Thatcher, before then embarking on a US Republican led war against people the Press Barons didn't like and which the media were four square behind.
This time around the Telegraph's Allister Heath and Allison Pearson have been in the vanguard of unhinged headline after unhinged headline. On here too, we get a "scandal" a day. A "scandal" that wouldn't even have registered between 2010 and just prior to Johnson's defenestration.That said media hostility has gone hand in hand this time with appalling comms from the Government and an inertia that few would have forecast. So it's not entirely the media's fault.
If only the Tories (or Reform?) are allowed to govern unhindered by the Fourth Estate, why should anyone else bother trying?
Politics like nature abhors a vacuum. An election that is Tory v Reform for first place is not at the moment thinkable. The next election is going to be some version of Reformtory v The Not Reform party for first and second place, and for leadership of the next government.
Labour are likely to be the lead player in the Not Reform group, there being no other broad enough candidate in both policy (which excludes Green leadership) and demographics (LDs problem).
Labour are value, if any value is to be had. DYOR.
I am not convinced that Reform won't implode under the stress of Jenrick Tories.
I agree it's possible. But the general election will be a contest between ReformTory or ToryReform v Not ReformTory. Which places Labour in probable pole position as the main party which isn't Reform or Tory. About 50%+ of voters are going to vote for a party that isn't Tory or Reform. Their votes have to go somewhere. Most will go to Labour.
I am still not convinced by this theory.
At the moment the next GE looks to be shaping up as a fight between lots of parties that each have large numbers of opponents. But one of them has got to win.
Tactical voting will play a part, but I don’t buy the idea that there will be a huge Labour-voting alliance as a way to stop Reform. Labour will be battling a strong anti-incumbency feeling and a lot of people who will be voting against them too. To tactically vote, people also have to be aware of who in their constituency is most likely to beat the lead candidate. That might be easy in some places, but it’s going to be far from clear in a lot of the country if this political fragmentation continues.
As it stands, I still see a HP as a far more likely outcome, as this jumble of voting patterns fails to see anyone do enough to win. The jury is out on whether that means a Reform led government or some progressive alliance.
This is all based on the current landscape though. There’s over 3 years to go yet.
I very much agree with this analysis of the problem in general. In trying to read the next election - impossible but PB is about predicting that which can't be predicted and assessing probabilities well before it is rational to do so - we are dealing with irresistible forces and immovable objects.
Tactical voting - which I guess will be large, meets two immovable objects: in 400+ seats Labour is the tactical anti Reform vote because they are the incumbent. But in 400+ seats Labour being the incumbent is unpopular and execrated.
My seat (Penrith and Solway) is a lovely example. New boundaries. Clearly Tory leaning in the ancient era up to 2019. Labour in 2024. Projected to be clearly Reform in 2029. LDs never figure. Who do you vote for in 2029 if you want to vote against Reform? Labour are the only choice. Many seats are like that.
This is going to become fascinating in both political and betting terms. I still say that great forces will be in play to keep the Labour vote much higher than it currently appears.
Full disclosure: I am a dinosaur One Nation Tory. My MP was Rory. I therefore don't have a party. Voted Labour in 2024. Through gritted teeth would do so again as things stand.
I have some tales to tell about that MP, who was also mine. But isnt "one nation" just something Conservative supporters say when they are trying to hide away from the tough fiscal decisions that all governments make? "dont blame me, im a different kind of Tory".
There are more PBers in my neck of the woods than I realised.
Rory Stewart might have been a good man but he was not a good MP. His predecessor David Maclean might not have been a good man according to some people, but he was an excellent MP. In the next election Penrith and Solway will be Reform or Tory 1, Tory or Reform 2, Lab or LD 3, LD or Lab 4. So to keep Reform out in P and S vote Tory. It is the only answer.
I guess there will be many seats like this where it will be too complex to guess the votes, or most guessing electors will get it wrong. You could see a confused parliament with a government which falls quickly like 1923 and then the two factions group together having learnt from the election and then another election where there is one Right candidate against one left candidate in each seat.
I knew DM a little, very much a Francis Urquet type, without the cheery personality. Dour, but very competent and serious. Took his role very seriously.
This is the precise wording of the tax promise from the Labour Manifesto in 2024:
We will ensure taxes on working people are kept as low as possible. Labour will not increase taxes on working people, which is why we will not increase National Insurance, the basic, higher, or additional rates of Income Tax, or VAT.
There's wriggle room, but not much.
Just extend NIC to unearned income then. That is definitely 'not an increase in taxes on working people'
Pension contributions are paid after national insurance has been deducted (unless salary sacrifice is used) so extending national insurance to income from pensions will mean it is imposed twice and nobody will then voluntarily contribute to pensions.
Which means that they only viable way of extending the scope of national insurance is to get rid of it and simultaneously increase income tax by the same amount.
Well maybe. But if I save my net of ICT income outside of an ISA I will be paying ICT on the interest, so I don't see your objection as cast iron, or even gilt-edged.
You will be paying income tax on the interest gained not on any capital withdrawals.
Sure but what's the logic for not paying NIC on that interest?
You could extend national insurance to interest on savings if you wanted to take the political hit.
But its the far larger case of money taken out of pension pots where the imposition of national insurance would be disastrous.
All in all though why bother fiddling around with national insurance - just get rid of it and increase income tax.
Labour have two choices: Stick with the manifesto pledges, fiddle round the edges, the economy stagnates, they get blattered at the election Man up, things are bad, tax rise for growth, economy performs, people feel better, nobody cares about the manifesto
They'll probably manage to splice the front half of the second one and the back half of the first one...
You beg the question of whether tax rises will lead to economic growth. Why not cut taxes for growth? The Chancellor can't just tack “for growth” on the end of whatever the Treasury brainstormed and guarantee it will happen.
Sure! Its an option, but I'm not sure its one they can do.
Cut taxes to entrepreneurs like me to go generate economic growth. OK, infrastructure is bad and getting worse, my potential customers feel broke and aren't spending and now feel even worse as you've cut expenditure on vital stuff again.
Government could borrow to pay for the tax cuts for growth. No, hang on that was the Truss Delusion.
Whilst I agree that taxes are too high, they can't cut them now. But what they could do is unveil a completely revised tax code - change the game completely by rolling welfare into a universal payment and scrapping all the tax loopholes by abolishing the taxes they avoid.
You can't drive growth by taxing less. But you could drive growth by taxing differently...
You certainly could drive growth by taxing less.
Here's an example:
I'm currently running a business with a full order book out to 2028. I want to do more work, employ more people, maybe even make a larger profit and pay more tax.
My biggest constraint at the moment is premises. I basically need a steel framed shed with a decent sized overhead crane in it. I'm renting one that's 5k sq ft, I to grow really need 10-15k sq ft. I nearly bought a 21k sq ft site, the bit that kiboshed the deal was that it came with a £32k pa business rates bill, and covering that, and the stamp duty was just too much dead money to overcome straight after moving.
There are several things you could do which would enable me to grow. You could abolish planning permission, and let me build a suitable building on farmland (I'm in a rural area, and quite geographically constrained if I don't want to lose my existing staff). The site I was trying to buy was £850k, I could buy some land and build everything I want for about £250k.
Alternatively, imagine a scheme where when a business moves into a more expensive rateable premises, the difference in business rates is phased in over 5 years - that would have given me time to get over the "hump" of moving, and let me start expanding and taking on staff to get turnover up before I was hit for the rates.
Incidentally, the site I wanted to buy has been sold to a haulage firm. They are going to knock down the buildings to get out of the rates, and use the hardstanding to park lorries. So the council will lose the rates anyway, and there will be one less small industrial site out there for a manufacturing or engineering business.
Taxes, especially badly designed ones, destroy growth. The only route to meaningful growth is reducing taxes and/or regulation. Until we have a government which understands this, we will remain stuck in this doom loop of ever higher taxes and lower growth.
The idea that a high tax burden destroys growth just doesn't reconcile with the experience of the rest of Europe, where we see both economic growth and significantly higher standards of living in countries with higher tax burdens.
You might be right that the correct route for the UK is lower taxes, lower regulations. But it does come across as dogmatic when you assert in this way. You can make a strong argument that the 40% burden in Germany and the Netherlands, 45% in France has delivered more for their populations than the 33% in the UK.
Firstly, it is the opposite of dogma when a member takes time to relate his actual experience.
Secondly, Europe's growth has been stagnant vs. the USA over the last 20 years. Few countries have done quite as badly as the UK, with its toxic mix of high tax and regulation with an oddly laissez faire attitude to the family silver being sold off, but the overall trend is clearly shown in the relative growth figures. That absolutely reconciles with the theory that a high tax, high regulation environment kills growth, and it's absurd denialism to say otherwise.
Compared with the United States in the past 20 years or so, we have had Osborne's failed austerity but more subtle is the Covid response where Britain subsidised companies while America subsidised workers. It also of course has had a shedload of government investment which our faux free marketeers decry as ‘picking winners’.
We did not have 'failed austerity', we had an extremely modest attempt to rein in spending which led to a couple of years when Government spending didn't rise - it certainly didn't fall by much, and it soon continued its upward trajectory. There was no serious attempt to reduce the size of the state.
The USA practices austerity with knobs on. Federal and State expenditure is 36% of GDP, compared to 44% in the UK. Factor in a bigger share being spent on defence and healthcare, along with pork barrel projects, and you have a meaner State there than you do here.
We’ve been talking about the Danish system on here for years. Someone with better search capabilities than me might identify the first mention of the Danish approach.
This is the precise wording of the tax promise from the Labour Manifesto in 2024:
We will ensure taxes on working people are kept as low as possible. Labour will not increase taxes on working people, which is why we will not increase National Insurance, the basic, higher, or additional rates of Income Tax, or VAT.
There's wriggle room, but not much.
Just extend NIC to unearned income then. That is definitely 'not an increase in taxes on working people'
Yes it is. Lots of people who receive interest and dividends work.
It's a terrible idea anyway - the country needs to incentivise saving and investment, not penalise it.
Good point.
Tough shit though, still no reason why unearned income should be taxed less than earned income.
Labour have two choices: Stick with the manifesto pledges, fiddle round the edges, the economy stagnates, they get blattered at the election Man up, things are bad, tax rise for growth, economy performs, people feel better, nobody cares about the manifesto
They'll probably manage to splice the front half of the second one and the back half of the first one...
Labour are dead anyway. The inertia, the Starmerwave, Starmer's genocide in Gaza and the hostile media have killed them. No one shed a tear. They might as well use their dying breath to do the right thing.
We are a right wing nation and we always have been. I suspect the nature of media ownership has made us so. Remember what Hitler and Goebbels said about propaganda? The sooner the Tories get back into the saddle, the sooner the media can go back to writing and broadcasting about Coronation Street. And those scumbag filth voters who don't vote Ref or Con can carp on about how nasty the Tories are to their heart's content.
Labour are *probably* dead. I don't think we can presume anything right now because the sands are shifting quickly. Remember that impossible things seem to happen every few years in our politics, so just because Labour winning in 2029 feels impossible now doesn't mean it is impossible.
Have the economy actually start to recover, have Refuk continue to fracture with a hard right battle between Farage and Tommeh Tiny-Dick about how many muslims they can deport and who knows where we go. Labour may seem like the least worst option.
The Labour Party are Monty Python's Norwegian Blue. Even if the economy recovers they are done.
I am assuming the Tories go full Jenrick and steal the vile stinking rags worn by Farage and Yaxley-Lennon ( why are we even considering these ****s as mainstream?). That is probably the least worst option going forward. Jenrick is a ruthless opportunist so once at the top of the greasy poll he might calm the rhetoric down.
I believe the nation is ungovernable by a party that antagonises the press and now the broadcast media like Labour did in 1964 to 70, in 74 to 79 and now from 2024. I have missed out the New Labour Government because hostility was limited, because initially Blair courted the Press Barons and sought approval from Mrs Thatcher, before then embarking on a US Republican led war against people the Press Barons didn't like and which the media were four square behind.
This time around the Telegraph's Allister Heath and Allison Pearson have been in the vanguard of unhinged headline after unhinged headline. On here too, we get a "scandal" a day. A "scandal" that wouldn't even have registered between 2010 and just prior to Johnson's defenestration.That said media hostility has gone hand in hand this time with appalling comms from the Government and an inertia that few would have forecast. So it's not entirely the media's fault.
If only the Tories (or Reform?) are allowed to govern unhindered by the Fourth Estate, why should anyone else bother trying?
Politics like nature abhors a vacuum. An election that is Tory v Reform for first place is not at the moment thinkable. The next election is going to be some version of Reformtory v The Not Reform party for first and second place, and for leadership of the next government.
Labour are likely to be the lead player in the Not Reform group, there being no other broad enough candidate in both policy (which excludes Green leadership) and demographics (LDs problem).
Labour are value, if any value is to be had. DYOR.
I am not convinced that Reform won't implode under the stress of Jenrick Tories.
I agree it's possible. But the general election will be a contest between ReformTory or ToryReform v Not ReformTory. Which places Labour in probable pole position as the main party which isn't Reform or Tory. About 50%+ of voters are going to vote for a party that isn't Tory or Reform. Their votes have to go somewhere. Most will go to Labour.
I am still not convinced by this theory.
At the moment the next GE looks to be shaping up as a fight between lots of parties that each have large numbers of opponents. But one of them has got to win.
Tactical voting will play a part, but I don’t buy the idea that there will be a huge Labour-voting alliance as a way to stop Reform. Labour will be battling a strong anti-incumbency feeling and a lot of people who will be voting against them too. To tactically vote, people also have to be aware of who in their constituency is most likely to beat the lead candidate. That might be easy in some places, but it’s going to be far from clear in a lot of the country if this political fragmentation continues.
As it stands, I still see a HP as a far more likely outcome, as this jumble of voting patterns fails to see anyone do enough to win. The jury is out on whether that means a Reform led government or some progressive alliance.
This is all based on the current landscape though. There’s over 3 years to go yet.
I very much agree with this analysis of the problem in general. In trying to read the next election - impossible but PB is about predicting that which can't be predicted and assessing probabilities well before it is rational to do so - we are dealing with irresistible forces and immovable objects.
Tactical voting - which I guess will be large, meets two immovable objects: in 400+ seats Labour is the tactical anti Reform vote because they are the incumbent. But in 400+ seats Labour being the incumbent is unpopular and execrated.
My seat (Penrith and Solway) is a lovely example. New boundaries. Clearly Tory leaning in the ancient era up to 2019. Labour in 2024. Projected to be clearly Reform in 2029. LDs never figure. Who do you vote for in 2029 if you want to vote against Reform? Labour are the only choice. Many seats are like that.
This is going to become fascinating in both political and betting terms. I still say that great forces will be in play to keep the Labour vote much higher than it currently appears.
Full disclosure: I am a dinosaur One Nation Tory. My MP was Rory. I therefore don't have a party. Voted Labour in 2024. Through gritted teeth would do so again as things stand.
I have some tales to tell about that MP, who was also mine. But isnt "one nation" just something Conservative supporters say when they are trying to hide away from the tough fiscal decisions that all governments make? "dont blame me, im a different kind of Tory".
No.
One Nation Toryism (RIP) stood for a conscious adherence to the traditional Tory stuff of sound finance, free enterprise and free trade, money making, Burkean views on organic development in society, individual responsibility, small platoons, family, monarchy and established religion, sound defence but also did not regard the post WWII social democratic state as something to be derided, marginalised and neglected but as a central part of the social deal in a wealthy nation.
There are bits of it in Labour, LD and of course some Tories. Occasionally Farage shows flashes of understanding what it is all about too. But no party consistently does enough to keep that interesting and difficult balance of free enterprise, fiscal responsibility and the welfare state.
This is the precise wording of the tax promise from the Labour Manifesto in 2024:
We will ensure taxes on working people are kept as low as possible. Labour will not increase taxes on working people, which is why we will not increase National Insurance, the basic, higher, or additional rates of Income Tax, or VAT.
There's wriggle room, but not much.
Just extend NIC to unearned income then. That is definitely 'not an increase in taxes on working people'
Pension contributions are paid after national insurance has been deducted (unless salary sacrifice is used) so extending national insurance to income from pensions will mean it is imposed twice and nobody will then voluntarily contribute to pensions.
Which means that they only viable way of extending the scope of national insurance is to get rid of it and simultaneously increase income tax by the same amount.
Well maybe. But if I save my net of ICT income outside of an ISA I will be paying ICT on the interest, so I don't see your objection as cast iron, or even gilt-edged.
You will be paying income tax on the interest gained not on any capital withdrawals.
Sure but what's the logic for not paying NIC on that interest?
To incentivise saving. We'd like people to arrive at the point where they are too old to work with enough savings that we don't end up bailing them out.
Given there’s a huge industry behind the migration and also the asylum system, often charities and quangos funded by the govt, I doubt she will be able to implement anything after numerous legal challenges.
We’ve been talking about the Danish system on here for years. Someone with better search capabilities than me might identify the first mention of the Danish approach.
There used to be a poster on here who waxed lyrical about a bit of Danish. You could almost sense him getting moist as he typed ‘bulldozing immigrant ghettos’. Such a shame he’s not around to glory in this moment.
Given there’s a huge industry behind the migration and also the asylum system, often charities and quangos funded by the govt, I doubt she will be able to implement anything after numerous legal challenges.
There is a solution to much of this, stop funding these enemies within... It really is of the attractions of Reform, is the loud FO that many of these grifting organisations are going to get if they take charge. Maybe charities will return to being funded by the rattling of tins and not involuntary taxpayer largesse.
This is the precise wording of the tax promise from the Labour Manifesto in 2024:
We will ensure taxes on working people are kept as low as possible. Labour will not increase taxes on working people, which is why we will not increase National Insurance, the basic, higher, or additional rates of Income Tax, or VAT.
There's wriggle room, but not much.
Just extend NIC to unearned income then. That is definitely 'not an increase in taxes on working people'
Pension contributions are paid after national insurance has been deducted (unless salary sacrifice is used) so extending national insurance to income from pensions will mean it is imposed twice and nobody will then voluntarily contribute to pensions.
Which means that they only viable way of extending the scope of national insurance is to get rid of it and simultaneously increase income tax by the same amount.
Well maybe. But if I save my net of ICT income outside of an ISA I will be paying ICT on the interest, so I don't see your objection as cast iron, or even gilt-edged.
You will be paying income tax on the interest gained not on any capital withdrawals.
Sure but what's the logic for not paying NIC on that interest?
You could extend national insurance to interest on savings if you wanted to take the political hit.
But its the far larger case of money taken out of pension pots where the imposition of national insurance would be disastrous.
All in all though why bother fiddling around with national insurance - just get rid of it and increase income tax.
I agree with your last point. Effect would be the same though unless you think the country could afford to lose that NIC income without a commensurate increase in ICT.
Given there’s a huge industry behind the migration and also the asylum system, often charities and quangos funded by the govt, I doubt she will be able to implement anything after numerous legal challenges.
Her success, or her failure, will both be useful and instructive.
It will also be richly amusing to see our Labour supporters get behind such a stout and not at all fascistic defence of our borders*.
*which they'd have derided as fascist from Reform or Badenoch.
Labour have two choices: Stick with the manifesto pledges, fiddle round the edges, the economy stagnates, they get blattered at the election Man up, things are bad, tax rise for growth, economy performs, people feel better, nobody cares about the manifesto
They'll probably manage to splice the front half of the second one and the back half of the first one...
Patently tax increases are necessary. The various mini-me-Musks waving chainsaws around have nothing.
If the country just does not function because of degradation of basic facilities and maintenance of services - an example being the bush I saw growing out of a pedestrian refuge on one of the major roads in my town yesterday * - then investment in people, process and organisation is necessary.
We also have the bizarre idea that to improve in the private sector you spend money and invest in higher quality people, whilst in the public sector you just wave your chainsaw, cut everything, and make the quality of people lower to improve services. That perverse logic will not hold.
* Take any section of road and compare 2022 with 2009 on Streetview for what has changed since the local Councils were gutted.
This may be true but is not self evident. Public spending (TME or total managed expenditure) stands at 44-45% of GDP. About the same as Spain, lower than France, a bit lower than the EU average. A huge amount of money.
Running stuff competently (not letting prisoners out, police responding properly to crimes, eliminating benefit and tax fraud, teaching small boys to read even if they don't want to, smashing the gangs and stopping the boats, making sure poor kids don't miss school, getting medical stuff done right first time, answering the phone when Leon calls the HMRC) is cheaper than running it badly. Once that is all sorted, then people will be much more open to paying for improving what is already a very excellent service.
Empirically, raising the tax/expenditure ratio by 1% of GDP reduces GDP by 0.75%-1% in the medium/long term. Roughly, an increase of 1% of GDP in the state sector reduces the private sector by a little under 2% of GDP, or about 3-4 percentage points in size in total. See the excellent and comprehensive 2011 ECB panel data study on this issue. (That's an average, and it depends a great deal how you do it. Raising taxes on business profits or payroll reduces GDP far more than raising VAT. And guess which this moronic government did last year?)
Meta studies show a consensus of eight or nine to one that higher tax/spending ratios are associated with lower economic growth - a truly extraordinary ratio for a controversial issue in a social science.
This country desperately needs lower taxes and spending, not higher. Basic behavioural economics, not to mention common sense, teaches that the private sector, though not perfect, allocates resources much more efficiently than the public sector on average, for two simple reasons: private sector companies are constrained by a fear of bankruptcy in the way that the public sector, which can always extort more money, isn't, and the public sector is impeded from quick and effective decision making by political accountability constraints. Reducing taxes and serious deregulation are the two things the government could do to spur economic growth the most.
No, private sector companies are not “constrained by a fear of bankruptcy” for two reasons. They are paper entities who don’t have emotions and cannot go bankrupt. Yes, admittedly, there are analogous insolvency procedures for companies, but not bankruptcy, and self evidently, a fiction like a Ltd or an LLP can’t “fear” them.
Basic behavioural economics my arse. Companies exist to protect investors from the fear of bankruptcy by the use of limited liability. So those who could actually feel fear, the shareholders and directors, are shielded from the ultimate impact inefficient allocation of resources has beyond their investment.
Hence the GFC in 2008, when the people allocating resources, in the form of loans to homebuyers who could not possibly pay them back, knew they were shielded from the catastrophic ultimate consequences of their actions by, ironically enough, a the governmental fiction of the incorporated entity. And Grenfell, where the decision makers knew that the companies they ran, not them, would carry the can for allocating dangerous resources to clad blocks of flats.
Markets have their uses but let’s not pretend that we live in a world where directors who fuck up can’t just go and start a new company once they’ve lost the old one. Fear has very little to do with it.
No, private sector companies and their employees are absolutely constrained by the fear of bankruptcy. Their shareholders and debtholders because they fear losing their investment, and their employees because they fear losing their jobs. Directors can indeed generally start up a new company if their existing one goes bankrupt (assuming they haven't been banned for improper trading) but there are immense economic and reputational costs to doing so.
So behavourial economics, though not perfect, is valid in this case. The behaviour of a few banks and individuals during the global financial crisis, may slightly reduce in some cases, but does not in any way invalidate, the constraint that fear of bankruptcy has on firms and individuals in the private sector.
Labour have two choices: Stick with the manifesto pledges, fiddle round the edges, the economy stagnates, they get blattered at the election Man up, things are bad, tax rise for growth, economy performs, people feel better, nobody cares about the manifesto
They'll probably manage to splice the front half of the second one and the back half of the first one...
Labour are dead anyway. The inertia, the Starmerwave, Starmer's genocide in Gaza and the hostile media have killed them. No one shed a tear. They might as well use their dying breath to do the right thing.
We are a right wing nation and we always have been. I suspect the nature of media ownership has made us so. Remember what Hitler and Goebbels said about propaganda? The sooner the Tories get back into the saddle, the sooner the media can go back to writing and broadcasting about Coronation Street. And those scumbag filth voters who don't vote Ref or Con can carp on about how nasty the Tories are to their heart's content.
Labour are *probably* dead. I don't think we can presume anything right now because the sands are shifting quickly. Remember that impossible things seem to happen every few years in our politics, so just because Labour winning in 2029 feels impossible now doesn't mean it is impossible.
Have the economy actually start to recover, have Refuk continue to fracture with a hard right battle between Farage and Tommeh Tiny-Dick about how many muslims they can deport and who knows where we go. Labour may seem like the least worst option.
The Labour Party are Monty Python's Norwegian Blue. Even if the economy recovers they are done.
I am assuming the Tories go full Jenrick and steal the vile stinking rags worn by Farage and Yaxley-Lennon ( why are we even considering these ****s as mainstream?). That is probably the least worst option going forward. Jenrick is a ruthless opportunist so once at the top of the greasy poll he might calm the rhetoric down.
I believe the nation is ungovernable by a party that antagonises the press and now the broadcast media like Labour did in 1964 to 70, in 74 to 79 and now from 2024. I have missed out the New Labour Government because hostility was limited, because initially Blair courted the Press Barons and sought approval from Mrs Thatcher, before then embarking on a US Republican led war against people the Press Barons didn't like and which the media were four square behind.
This time around the Telegraph's Allister Heath and Allison Pearson have been in the vanguard of unhinged headline after unhinged headline. On here too, we get a "scandal" a day. A "scandal" that wouldn't even have registered between 2010 and just prior to Johnson's defenestration.That said media hostility has gone hand in hand this time with appalling comms from the Government and an inertia that few would have forecast. So it's not entirely the media's fault.
If only the Tories (or Reform?) are allowed to govern unhindered by the Fourth Estate, why should anyone else bother trying?
Politics like nature abhors a vacuum. An election that is Tory v Reform for first place is not at the moment thinkable. The next election is going to be some version of Reformtory v The Not Reform party for first and second place, and for leadership of the next government.
Labour are likely to be the lead player in the Not Reform group, there being no other broad enough candidate in both policy (which excludes Green leadership) and demographics (LDs problem).
Labour are value, if any value is to be had. DYOR.
I am not convinced that Reform won't implode under the stress of Jenrick Tories.
I agree it's possible. But the general election will be a contest between ReformTory or ToryReform v Not ReformTory. Which places Labour in probable pole position as the main party which isn't Reform or Tory. About 50%+ of voters are going to vote for a party that isn't Tory or Reform. Their votes have to go somewhere. Most will go to Labour.
I am still not convinced by this theory.
At the moment the next GE looks to be shaping up as a fight between lots of parties that each have large numbers of opponents. But one of them has got to win.
Tactical voting will play a part, but I don’t buy the idea that there will be a huge Labour-voting alliance as a way to stop Reform. Labour will be battling a strong anti-incumbency feeling and a lot of people who will be voting against them too. To tactically vote, people also have to be aware of who in their constituency is most likely to beat the lead candidate. That might be easy in some places, but it’s going to be far from clear in a lot of the country if this political fragmentation continues.
As it stands, I still see a HP as a far more likely outcome, as this jumble of voting patterns fails to see anyone do enough to win. The jury is out on whether that means a Reform led government or some progressive alliance.
This is all based on the current landscape though. There’s over 3 years to go yet.
I very much agree with this analysis of the problem in general. In trying to read the next election - impossible but PB is about predicting that which can't be predicted and assessing probabilities well before it is rational to do so - we are dealing with irresistible forces and immovable objects.
Tactical voting - which I guess will be large, meets two immovable objects: in 400+ seats Labour is the tactical anti Reform vote because they are the incumbent. But in 400+ seats Labour being the incumbent is unpopular and execrated.
My seat (Penrith and Solway) is a lovely example. New boundaries. Clearly Tory leaning in the ancient era up to 2019. Labour in 2024. Projected to be clearly Reform in 2029. LDs never figure. Who do you vote for in 2029 if you want to vote against Reform? Labour are the only choice. Many seats are like that.
This is going to become fascinating in both political and betting terms. I still say that great forces will be in play to keep the Labour vote much higher than it currently appears.
Full disclosure: I am a dinosaur One Nation Tory. My MP was Rory. I therefore don't have a party. Voted Labour in 2024. Through gritted teeth would do so again as things stand.
I have some tales to tell about that MP, who was also mine. But isnt "one nation" just something Conservative supporters say when they are trying to hide away from the tough fiscal decisions that all governments make? "dont blame me, im a different kind of Tory".
No.
One Nation Toryism (RIP) stood for a conscious adherence to the traditional Tory stuff of sound finance, free enterprise and free trade, money making, Burkean views on organic development in society, individual responsibility, small platoons, family, monarchy and established religion, sound defence but also did not regard the post WWII social democratic state as something to be derided, marginalised and neglected but as a central part of the social deal in a wealthy nation.
There are bits of it in Labour, LD and of course some Tories. Occasionally Farage shows flashes of understanding what it is all about too. But no party consistently does enough to keep that interesting and difficult balance of free enterprise, fiscal responsibility and the welfare state.
But who would you say moved away from that, in terms of major figures in the party? Thatcher? Major? Hague? IDS? Cameron? May? Johnson? Truss? Sunak?
They all fitted that mould in different ways. Remember Truss was brought down by an unfunded expansion of a fuel support system to stop people going into poverty.
Given there’s a huge industry behind the migration and also the asylum system, often charities and quangos funded by the govt, I doubt she will be able to implement anything after numerous legal challenges.
Idea!
Impose growing taxes on the industry. After “we need to raise the money”, “it’s just a small administrative charge, really”.
Leverage the national skill in taxing business out of existence.
Labour have two choices: Stick with the manifesto pledges, fiddle round the edges, the economy stagnates, they get blattered at the election Man up, things are bad, tax rise for growth, economy performs, people feel better, nobody cares about the manifesto
They'll probably manage to splice the front half of the second one and the back half of the first one...
You beg the question of whether tax rises will lead to economic growth. Why not cut taxes for growth? The Chancellor can't just tack “for growth” on the end of whatever the Treasury brainstormed and guarantee it will happen.
Sure! Its an option, but I'm not sure its one they can do.
Cut taxes to entrepreneurs like me to go generate economic growth. OK, infrastructure is bad and getting worse, my potential customers feel broke and aren't spending and now feel even worse as you've cut expenditure on vital stuff again.
Government could borrow to pay for the tax cuts for growth. No, hang on that was the Truss Delusion.
Whilst I agree that taxes are too high, they can't cut them now. But what they could do is unveil a completely revised tax code - change the game completely by rolling welfare into a universal payment and scrapping all the tax loopholes by abolishing the taxes they avoid.
You can't drive growth by taxing less. But you could drive growth by taxing differently...
You certainly could drive growth by taxing less.
Here's an example:
I'm currently running a business with a full order book out to 2028. I want to do more work, employ more people, maybe even make a larger profit and pay more tax.
My biggest constraint at the moment is premises. I basically need a steel framed shed with a decent sized overhead crane in it. I'm renting one that's 5k sq ft, I to grow really need 10-15k sq ft. I nearly bought a 21k sq ft site, the bit that kiboshed the deal was that it came with a £32k pa business rates bill, and covering that, and the stamp duty was just too much dead money to overcome straight after moving.
There are several things you could do which would enable me to grow. You could abolish planning permission, and let me build a suitable building on farmland (I'm in a rural area, and quite geographically constrained if I don't want to lose my existing staff). The site I was trying to buy was £850k, I could buy some land and build everything I want for about £250k.
Alternatively, imagine a scheme where when a business moves into a more expensive rateable premises, the difference in business rates is phased in over 5 years - that would have given me time to get over the "hump" of moving, and let me start expanding and taking on staff to get turnover up before I was hit for the rates.
Incidentally, the site I wanted to buy has been sold to a haulage firm. They are going to knock down the buildings to get out of the rates, and use the hardstanding to park lorries. So the council will lose the rates anyway, and there will be one less small industrial site out there for a manufacturing or engineering business.
Taxes, especially badly designed ones, destroy growth. The only route to meaningful growth is reducing taxes and/or regulation. Until we have a government which understands this, we will remain stuck in this doom loop of ever higher taxes and lower growth.
The idea that a high tax burden destroys growth just doesn't reconcile with the experience of the rest of Europe, where we see both economic growth and significantly higher standards of living in countries with higher tax burdens.
You might be right that the correct route for the UK is lower taxes, lower regulations. But it does come across as dogmatic when you assert in this way. You can make a strong argument that the 40% burden in Germany and the Netherlands, 45% in France has delivered more for their populations than the 33% in the UK.
Firstly, it is the opposite of dogma when a member takes time to relate his actual experience.
Secondly, Europe's growth has been stagnant vs. the USA over the last 20 years. Few countries have done quite as badly as the UK, with its toxic mix of high tax and regulation with an oddly laissez faire attitude to the family silver being sold off, but the overall trend is clearly shown in the relative growth figures. That absolutely reconciles with the theory that a high tax, high regulation environment kills growth, and it's absurd denialism to say otherwise.
Compared with the United States in the past 20 years or so, we have had Osborne's failed austerity but more subtle is the Covid response where Britain subsidised companies while America subsidised workers. It also of course has had a shedload of government investment which our faux free marketeers decry as ‘picking winners’.
We did not have 'failed austerity', we had an extremely modest attempt to rein in spending which led to a couple of years when Government spending didn't rise - it certainly didn't fall by much, and it soon continued its upward trajectory. There was no serious attempt to reduce the size of the state.
A tip for you, don’t say size of state, say cost. When you say size, people’s minds think you will be taking something from them - pip payments now that they are ill, swapping out NHS for US style system etc. taking their job! instead say it as cost, like do you need that mayonnaise,or that pot cream, or that coffee brand, when for half the price or less you can get something that performs just as well. At the same time, reform processes. Digital and AI is not releasing bad criminals early by mistake, eighteenth century systems based on pen and paper and fax machines is actually the more expensive way of governing a country.
There has never, in modern times been an attempt to reduce the size or cost of the state. Not even Mrs T (though no-one believes this). It is nearly all hot air. Politicians are incredibly reluctant to say how much the state spends (public expenditure or TME - total managed expenditure.) Left leaning people don't want to because it shows it isn't rising much and is less than the EU average, and fiscally dry people don't want to because it it shows it isn't falling much or at all and is way about USA levels.
The UK level is about 44.4% of GDP.
Prediction: Farage isn't going to let on what he thinks it will be after 5 years of Reform government as a % of GDP. He will avoid setting a target. Just like the others. They think we are all fools.
So people are more forgiving if it’s others who get hammered with tax rises . Who knew !
Clearly Reeves is going to throw in some sweeteners as she breaks the manifesto pledge so the child benefit cap to go , VAT on energy to go . Raising income tax and cutting NI at the same time might look on the face of it as political damage limitation but that will mean pensioners and those self-employed miss out.
It might be better to do something with tax thresholds equivalent to the cost of lowering NI by 2p.
Reeves needs to do something surprising which can deflect from the broken manifesto pledge .
One which I have not seen re-mentioned recently but which was being discussed months ago was a reduction in the VAT threshold for small businesses. Ours is anomalously high compared to European peers.
I think a problem is that that one can't be "middle way"-ed. It has to be the current "can earn a living without exceeding the threshold" (90k), or drop to a level where all such businesses are caught and "side gigs" are exempt, which would be more like £25k.
That imo makes it a difficult policy option - it is difficult to reduce to say £75k then £50k over several years.
This is an AI list of current EU numbers by country. They are free to set them below a max of €85k.
Austria €55,000 Belgium €25,000 Czech Republic ~€79,000 (CZK 2,000,000) Denmark ~€6,700 (DKK 50,000) Estonia €40,000 Finland €15,000 France €34,400 (services), €91,000 (goods) Germany €25,000 (previous year turnover, current forecast to exceed €100,000) Hungary None; exemption available for turnover below ~€30,000 (HUF 12,000,000) Ireland €42,500 (services), €85,000 (goods) Italy €85,000 (for special regime eligibility) Latvia €50,000 Lithuania €45,000 Luxembourg €35,000 Netherlands €25,000 Poland ~€46,500 (PLN 200,000) Slovak Republic €49,790 Slovenia €50,000 Spain No general threshold; registration required for any taxable activity Sweden ~€7,000 (SEK 80,000)
Er - if they're free to set them below a max of E85,000 why are several above that figure?
Also, I think VAT is going to be rolled into the Making Tax Digital nonsense anyway, which would cut the threshold to £20,000 by 2028.
That does not alter the fact that it's a stupid tax that tends to hit the poorest hardest.
The only ones I see are France (they are French !), and Germany (which is a forecast to catch growing omcpanies).
Labour have two choices: Stick with the manifesto pledges, fiddle round the edges, the economy stagnates, they get blattered at the election Man up, things are bad, tax rise for growth, economy performs, people feel better, nobody cares about the manifesto
They'll probably manage to splice the front half of the second one and the back half of the first one...
Labour are dead anyway. The inertia, the Starmerwave, Starmer's genocide in Gaza and the hostile media have killed them. No one shed a tear. They might as well use their dying breath to do the right thing.
We are a right wing nation and we always have been. I suspect the nature of media ownership has made us so. Remember what Hitler and Goebbels said about propaganda? The sooner the Tories get back into the saddle, the sooner the media can go back to writing and broadcasting about Coronation Street. And those scumbag filth voters who don't vote Ref or Con can carp on about how nasty the Tories are to their heart's content.
Labour are *probably* dead. I don't think we can presume anything right now because the sands are shifting quickly. Remember that impossible things seem to happen every few years in our politics, so just because Labour winning in 2029 feels impossible now doesn't mean it is impossible.
Have the economy actually start to recover, have Refuk continue to fracture with a hard right battle between Farage and Tommeh Tiny-Dick about how many muslims they can deport and who knows where we go. Labour may seem like the least worst option.
The Labour Party are Monty Python's Norwegian Blue. Even if the economy recovers they are done.
I am assuming the Tories go full Jenrick and steal the vile stinking rags worn by Farage and Yaxley-Lennon ( why are we even considering these ****s as mainstream?). That is probably the least worst option going forward. Jenrick is a ruthless opportunist so once at the top of the greasy poll he might calm the rhetoric down.
I believe the nation is ungovernable by a party that antagonises the press and now the broadcast media like Labour did in 1964 to 70, in 74 to 79 and now from 2024. I have missed out the New Labour Government because hostility was limited, because initially Blair courted the Press Barons and sought approval from Mrs Thatcher, before then embarking on a US Republican led war against people the Press Barons didn't like and which the media were four square behind.
This time around the Telegraph's Allister Heath and Allison Pearson have been in the vanguard of unhinged headline after unhinged headline. On here too, we get a "scandal" a day. A "scandal" that wouldn't even have registered between 2010 and just prior to Johnson's defenestration.That said media hostility has gone hand in hand this time with appalling comms from the Government and an inertia that few would have forecast. So it's not entirely the media's fault.
If only the Tories (or Reform?) are allowed to govern unhindered by the Fourth Estate, why should anyone else bother trying?
Politics like nature abhors a vacuum. An election that is Tory v Reform for first place is not at the moment thinkable. The next election is going to be some version of Reformtory v The Not Reform party for first and second place, and for leadership of the next government.
Labour are likely to be the lead player in the Not Reform group, there being no other broad enough candidate in both policy (which excludes Green leadership) and demographics (LDs problem).
Labour are value, if any value is to be had. DYOR.
I am not convinced that Reform won't implode under the stress of Jenrick Tories.
I agree it's possible. But the general election will be a contest between ReformTory or ToryReform v Not ReformTory. Which places Labour in probable pole position as the main party which isn't Reform or Tory. About 50%+ of voters are going to vote for a party that isn't Tory or Reform. Their votes have to go somewhere. Most will go to Labour.
I am still not convinced by this theory.
At the moment the next GE looks to be shaping up as a fight between lots of parties that each have large numbers of opponents. But one of them has got to win.
Tactical voting will play a part, but I don’t buy the idea that there will be a huge Labour-voting alliance as a way to stop Reform. Labour will be battling a strong anti-incumbency feeling and a lot of people who will be voting against them too. To tactically vote, people also have to be aware of who in their constituency is most likely to beat the lead candidate. That might be easy in some places, but it’s going to be far from clear in a lot of the country if this political fragmentation continues.
As it stands, I still see a HP as a far more likely outcome, as this jumble of voting patterns fails to see anyone do enough to win. The jury is out on whether that means a Reform led government or some progressive alliance.
This is all based on the current landscape though. There’s over 3 years to go yet.
I very much agree with this analysis of the problem in general. In trying to read the next election - impossible but PB is about predicting that which can't be predicted and assessing probabilities well before it is rational to do so - we are dealing with irresistible forces and immovable objects.
Tactical voting - which I guess will be large, meets two immovable objects: in 400+ seats Labour is the tactical anti Reform vote because they are the incumbent. But in 400+ seats Labour being the incumbent is unpopular and execrated.
My seat (Penrith and Solway) is a lovely example. New boundaries. Clearly Tory leaning in the ancient era up to 2019. Labour in 2024. Projected to be clearly Reform in 2029. LDs never figure. Who do you vote for in 2029 if you want to vote against Reform? Labour are the only choice. Many seats are like that.
This is going to become fascinating in both political and betting terms. I still say that great forces will be in play to keep the Labour vote much higher than it currently appears.
Full disclosure: I am a dinosaur One Nation Tory. My MP was Rory. I therefore don't have a party. Voted Labour in 2024. Through gritted teeth would do so again as things stand.
I have some tales to tell about that MP, who was also mine. But isnt "one nation" just something Conservative supporters say when they are trying to hide away from the tough fiscal decisions that all governments make? "dont blame me, im a different kind of Tory".
No.
One Nation Toryism (RIP) stood for a conscious adherence to the traditional Tory stuff of sound finance, free enterprise and free trade, money making, Burkean views on organic development in society, individual responsibility, small platoons, family, monarchy and established religion, sound defence but also did not regard the post WWII social democratic state as something to be derided, marginalised and neglected but as a central part of the social deal in a wealthy nation.
There are bits of it in Labour, LD and of course some Tories. Occasionally Farage shows flashes of understanding what it is all about too. But no party consistently does enough to keep that interesting and difficult balance of free enterprise, fiscal responsibility and the welfare state.
But who would you say moved away from that, in terms of major figures in the party? Thatcher? Major? Hague? IDS? Cameron? May? Johnson? Truss? Sunak?
They all fitted that mould in different ways. Remember Truss was brought down by an unfunded expansion of a fuel support system to stop people going into poverty.
Labour have two choices: Stick with the manifesto pledges, fiddle round the edges, the economy stagnates, they get blattered at the election Man up, things are bad, tax rise for growth, economy performs, people feel better, nobody cares about the manifesto
They'll probably manage to splice the front half of the second one and the back half of the first one...
Labour are dead anyway. The inertia, the Starmerwave, Starmer's genocide in Gaza and the hostile media have killed them. No one shed a tear. They might as well use their dying breath to do the right thing.
We are a right wing nation and we always have been. I suspect the nature of media ownership has made us so. Remember what Hitler and Goebbels said about propaganda? The sooner the Tories get back into the saddle, the sooner the media can go back to writing and broadcasting about Coronation Street. And those scumbag filth voters who don't vote Ref or Con can carp on about how nasty the Tories are to their heart's content.
Labour are *probably* dead. I don't think we can presume anything right now because the sands are shifting quickly. Remember that impossible things seem to happen every few years in our politics, so just because Labour winning in 2029 feels impossible now doesn't mean it is impossible.
Have the economy actually start to recover, have Refuk continue to fracture with a hard right battle between Farage and Tommeh Tiny-Dick about how many muslims they can deport and who knows where we go. Labour may seem like the least worst option.
The Labour Party are Monty Python's Norwegian Blue. Even if the economy recovers they are done.
I am assuming the Tories go full Jenrick and steal the vile stinking rags worn by Farage and Yaxley-Lennon ( why are we even considering these ****s as mainstream?). That is probably the least worst option going forward. Jenrick is a ruthless opportunist so once at the top of the greasy poll he might calm the rhetoric down.
I believe the nation is ungovernable by a party that antagonises the press and now the broadcast media like Labour did in 1964 to 70, in 74 to 79 and now from 2024. I have missed out the New Labour Government because hostility was limited, because initially Blair courted the Press Barons and sought approval from Mrs Thatcher, before then embarking on a US Republican led war against people the Press Barons didn't like and which the media were four square behind.
This time around the Telegraph's Allister Heath and Allison Pearson have been in the vanguard of unhinged headline after unhinged headline. On here too, we get a "scandal" a day. A "scandal" that wouldn't even have registered between 2010 and just prior to Johnson's defenestration.That said media hostility has gone hand in hand this time with appalling comms from the Government and an inertia that few would have forecast. So it's not entirely the media's fault.
If only the Tories (or Reform?) are allowed to govern unhindered by the Fourth Estate, why should anyone else bother trying?
Politics like nature abhors a vacuum. An election that is Tory v Reform for first place is not at the moment thinkable. The next election is going to be some version of Reformtory v The Not Reform party for first and second place, and for leadership of the next government.
Labour are likely to be the lead player in the Not Reform group, there being no other broad enough candidate in both policy (which excludes Green leadership) and demographics (LDs problem).
Labour are value, if any value is to be had. DYOR.
I am not convinced that Reform won't implode under the stress of Jenrick Tories.
I agree it's possible. But the general election will be a contest between ReformTory or ToryReform v Not ReformTory. Which places Labour in probable pole position as the main party which isn't Reform or Tory. About 50%+ of voters are going to vote for a party that isn't Tory or Reform. Their votes have to go somewhere. Most will go to Labour.
I am still not convinced by this theory.
At the moment the next GE looks to be shaping up as a fight between lots of parties that each have large numbers of opponents. But one of them has got to win.
Tactical voting will play a part, but I don’t buy the idea that there will be a huge Labour-voting alliance as a way to stop Reform. Labour will be battling a strong anti-incumbency feeling and a lot of people who will be voting against them too. To tactically vote, people also have to be aware of who in their constituency is most likely to beat the lead candidate. That might be easy in some places, but it’s going to be far from clear in a lot of the country if this political fragmentation continues.
As it stands, I still see a HP as a far more likely outcome, as this jumble of voting patterns fails to see anyone do enough to win. The jury is out on whether that means a Reform led government or some progressive alliance.
This is all based on the current landscape though. There’s over 3 years to go yet.
I very much agree with this analysis of the problem in general. In trying to read the next election - impossible but PB is about predicting that which can't be predicted and assessing probabilities well before it is rational to do so - we are dealing with irresistible forces and immovable objects.
Tactical voting - which I guess will be large, meets two immovable objects: in 400+ seats Labour is the tactical anti Reform vote because they are the incumbent. But in 400+ seats Labour being the incumbent is unpopular and execrated.
My seat (Penrith and Solway) is a lovely example. New boundaries. Clearly Tory leaning in the ancient era up to 2019. Labour in 2024. Projected to be clearly Reform in 2029. LDs never figure. Who do you vote for in 2029 if you want to vote against Reform? Labour are the only choice. Many seats are like that.
This is going to become fascinating in both political and betting terms. I still say that great forces will be in play to keep the Labour vote much higher than it currently appears.
Full disclosure: I am a dinosaur One Nation Tory. My MP was Rory. I therefore don't have a party. Voted Labour in 2024. Through gritted teeth would do so again as things stand.
I have some tales to tell about that MP, who was also mine. But isnt "one nation" just something Conservative supporters say when they are trying to hide away from the tough fiscal decisions that all governments make? "dont blame me, im a different kind of Tory".
No.
One Nation Toryism (RIP) stood for a conscious adherence to the traditional Tory stuff of sound finance, free enterprise and free trade, money making, Burkean views on organic development in society, individual responsibility, small platoons, family, monarchy and established religion, sound defence but also did not regard the post WWII social democratic state as something to be derided, marginalised and neglected but as a central part of the social deal in a wealthy nation.
There are bits of it in Labour, LD and of course some Tories. Occasionally Farage shows flashes of understanding what it is all about too. But no party consistently does enough to keep that interesting and difficult balance of free enterprise, fiscal responsibility and the welfare state.
But who would you say moved away from that, in terms of major figures in the party? Thatcher? Major? Hague? IDS? Cameron? May? Johnson? Truss? Sunak?
They all fitted that mould in different ways. Remember Truss was brought down by an unfunded expansion of a fuel support system to stop people going into poverty.
Truss was brought down by the incoherence of the totality of her plans. And evidence that major planks of policy and the even bigger planks she had appointed to deliver them would be changed without warning. Her energy support scheme was just an egregious example of this chaos.
Labour have two choices: Stick with the manifesto pledges, fiddle round the edges, the economy stagnates, they get blattered at the election Man up, things are bad, tax rise for growth, economy performs, people feel better, nobody cares about the manifesto
They'll probably manage to splice the front half of the second one and the back half of the first one...
Labour are dead anyway. The inertia, the Starmerwave, Starmer's genocide in Gaza and the hostile media have killed them. No one shed a tear. They might as well use their dying breath to do the right thing.
We are a right wing nation and we always have been. I suspect the nature of media ownership has made us so. Remember what Hitler and Goebbels said about propaganda? The sooner the Tories get back into the saddle, the sooner the media can go back to writing and broadcasting about Coronation Street. And those scumbag filth voters who don't vote Ref or Con can carp on about how nasty the Tories are to their heart's content.
Labour are *probably* dead. I don't think we can presume anything right now because the sands are shifting quickly. Remember that impossible things seem to happen every few years in our politics, so just because Labour winning in 2029 feels impossible now doesn't mean it is impossible.
Have the economy actually start to recover, have Refuk continue to fracture with a hard right battle between Farage and Tommeh Tiny-Dick about how many muslims they can deport and who knows where we go. Labour may seem like the least worst option.
The Labour Party are Monty Python's Norwegian Blue. Even if the economy recovers they are done.
I am assuming the Tories go full Jenrick and steal the vile stinking rags worn by Farage and Yaxley-Lennon ( why are we even considering these ****s as mainstream?). That is probably the least worst option going forward. Jenrick is a ruthless opportunist so once at the top of the greasy poll he might calm the rhetoric down.
I believe the nation is ungovernable by a party that antagonises the press and now the broadcast media like Labour did in 1964 to 70, in 74 to 79 and now from 2024. I have missed out the New Labour Government because hostility was limited, because initially Blair courted the Press Barons and sought approval from Mrs Thatcher, before then embarking on a US Republican led war against people the Press Barons didn't like and which the media were four square behind.
This time around the Telegraph's Allister Heath and Allison Pearson have been in the vanguard of unhinged headline after unhinged headline. On here too, we get a "scandal" a day. A "scandal" that wouldn't even have registered between 2010 and just prior to Johnson's defenestration.That said media hostility has gone hand in hand this time with appalling comms from the Government and an inertia that few would have forecast. So it's not entirely the media's fault.
If only the Tories (or Reform?) are allowed to govern unhindered by the Fourth Estate, why should anyone else bother trying?
Politics like nature abhors a vacuum. An election that is Tory v Reform for first place is not at the moment thinkable. The next election is going to be some version of Reformtory v The Not Reform party for first and second place, and for leadership of the next government.
Labour are likely to be the lead player in the Not Reform group, there being no other broad enough candidate in both policy (which excludes Green leadership) and demographics (LDs problem).
Labour are value, if any value is to be had. DYOR.
I am not convinced that Reform won't implode under the stress of Jenrick Tories.
I agree it's possible. But the general election will be a contest between ReformTory or ToryReform v Not ReformTory. Which places Labour in probable pole position as the main party which isn't Reform or Tory. About 50%+ of voters are going to vote for a party that isn't Tory or Reform. Their votes have to go somewhere. Most will go to Labour.
I am still not convinced by this theory.
At the moment the next GE looks to be shaping up as a fight between lots of parties that each have large numbers of opponents. But one of them has got to win.
Tactical voting will play a part, but I don’t buy the idea that there will be a huge Labour-voting alliance as a way to stop Reform. Labour will be battling a strong anti-incumbency feeling and a lot of people who will be voting against them too. To tactically vote, people also have to be aware of who in their constituency is most likely to beat the lead candidate. That might be easy in some places, but it’s going to be far from clear in a lot of the country if this political fragmentation continues.
As it stands, I still see a HP as a far more likely outcome, as this jumble of voting patterns fails to see anyone do enough to win. The jury is out on whether that means a Reform led government or some progressive alliance.
This is all based on the current landscape though. There’s over 3 years to go yet.
I very much agree with this analysis of the problem in general. In trying to read the next election - impossible but PB is about predicting that which can't be predicted and assessing probabilities well before it is rational to do so - we are dealing with irresistible forces and immovable objects.
Tactical voting - which I guess will be large, meets two immovable objects: in 400+ seats Labour is the tactical anti Reform vote because they are the incumbent. But in 400+ seats Labour being the incumbent is unpopular and execrated.
My seat (Penrith and Solway) is a lovely example. New boundaries. Clearly Tory leaning in the ancient era up to 2019. Labour in 2024. Projected to be clearly Reform in 2029. LDs never figure. Who do you vote for in 2029 if you want to vote against Reform? Labour are the only choice. Many seats are like that.
This is going to become fascinating in both political and betting terms. I still say that great forces will be in play to keep the Labour vote much higher than it currently appears.
Full disclosure: I am a dinosaur One Nation Tory. My MP was Rory. I therefore don't have a party. Voted Labour in 2024. Through gritted teeth would do so again as things stand.
I have some tales to tell about that MP, who was also mine. But isnt "one nation" just something Conservative supporters say when they are trying to hide away from the tough fiscal decisions that all governments make? "dont blame me, im a different kind of Tory".
No.
One Nation Toryism (RIP) stood for a conscious adherence to the traditional Tory stuff of sound finance, free enterprise and free trade, money making, Burkean views on organic development in society, individual responsibility, small platoons, family, monarchy and established religion, sound defence but also did not regard the post WWII social democratic state as something to be derided, marginalised and neglected but as a central part of the social deal in a wealthy nation.
There are bits of it in Labour, LD and of course some Tories. Occasionally Farage shows flashes of understanding what it is all about too. But no party consistently does enough to keep that interesting and difficult balance of free enterprise, fiscal responsibility and the welfare state.
Good job SKS, your hero, is delivering all of that then.
Labour have two choices: Stick with the manifesto pledges, fiddle round the edges, the economy stagnates, they get blattered at the election Man up, things are bad, tax rise for growth, economy performs, people feel better, nobody cares about the manifesto
They'll probably manage to splice the front half of the second one and the back half of the first one...
Patently tax increases are necessary. The various mini-me-Musks waving chainsaws around have nothing.
If the country just does not function because of degradation of basic facilities and maintenance of services - an example being the bush I saw growing out of a pedestrian refuge on one of the major roads in my town yesterday * - then investment in people, process and organisation is necessary.
We also have the bizarre idea that to improve in the private sector you spend money and invest in higher quality people, whilst in the public sector you just wave your chainsaw, cut everything, and make the quality of people lower to improve services. That perverse logic will not hold.
* Take any section of road and compare 2022 with 2009 on Streetview for what has changed since the local Councils were gutted.
This may be true but is not self evident. Public spending (TME or total managed expenditure) stands at 44-45% of GDP. About the same as Spain, lower than France, a bit lower than the EU average. A huge amount of money.
Running stuff competently (not letting prisoners out, police responding properly to crimes, eliminating benefit and tax fraud, teaching small boys to read even if they don't want to, smashing the gangs and stopping the boats, making sure poor kids don't miss school, getting medical stuff done right first time, answering the phone when Leon calls the HMRC) is cheaper than running it badly. Once that is all sorted, then people will be much more open to paying for improving what is already a very excellent service.
Empirically, raising the tax/expenditure ratio by 1% of GDP reduces GDP by 0.75%-1% in the medium/long term. Roughly, an increase of 1% of GDP in the state sector reduces the private sector by a little under 2% of GDP, or about 3-4 percentage points in size in total. See the excellent and comprehensive 2011 ECB panel data study on this issue. (That's an average, and it depends a great deal how you do it. Raising taxes on business profits or payroll reduces GDP far more than raising VAT. And guess which this moronic government did last year?)
Meta studies show a consensus of eight or nine to one that higher tax/spending ratios are associated with lower economic growth - a truly extraordinary ratio for a controversial issue in a social science.
This country desperately needs lower taxes and spending, not higher. Basic behavioural economics, not to mention common sense, teaches that the private sector, though not perfect, allocates resources much more efficiently than the public sector on average, for two simple reasons: private sector companies are constrained by a fear of bankruptcy in the way that the public sector, which can always extort more money, isn't, and the public sector is impeded from quick and effective decision making by political accountability constraints. Reducing taxes and serious deregulation are the two things the government could do to spur economic growth the most.
No, private sector companies are not “constrained by a fear of bankruptcy” for two reasons. They are paper entities who don’t have emotions and cannot go bankrupt. Yes, admittedly, there are analogous insolvency procedures for companies, but not bankruptcy, and self evidently, a fiction like a Ltd or an LLP can’t “fear” them.
Basic behavioural economics my arse. Companies exist to protect investors from the fear of bankruptcy by the use of limited liability. So those who could actually feel fear, the shareholders and directors, are shielded from the ultimate impact inefficient allocation of resources has beyond their investment.
Hence the GFC in 2008, when the people allocating resources, in the form of loans to homebuyers who could not possibly pay them back, knew they were shielded from the catastrophic ultimate consequences of their actions by, ironically enough, a the governmental fiction of the incorporated entity. And Grenfell, where the decision makers knew that the companies they ran, not them, would carry the can for allocating dangerous resources to clad blocks of flats.
Markets have their uses but let’s not pretend that we live in a world where directors who fuck up can’t just go and start a new company once they’ve lost the old one. Fear has very little to do with it.
No, private sector companies and their employees are absolutely constrained by the fear of bankruptcy. Their shareholders and debtholders because they fear losing their investment, and their employees because they fear losing their jobs. Directors can indeed generally start up a new company if their existing one goes bankrupt (assuming they haven't been banned for improper trading) but there are immense economic and reputational costs to doing so.
So behavourial economics, though not perfect, is valid in this case. The behaviour of a few banks and individuals during the global financial crisis, may slightly reduce in some cases, but does not in any way invalidate, the constraint that fear of bankruptcy has on firms and individuals in the private sector.
That's the theory anyway. How, practically, however, can an individual receptionist at an Estate Agent or production line worker at JLR change their behaviour to prevent bankruptcy?
Labour have two choices: Stick with the manifesto pledges, fiddle round the edges, the economy stagnates, they get blattered at the election Man up, things are bad, tax rise for growth, economy performs, people feel better, nobody cares about the manifesto
They'll probably manage to splice the front half of the second one and the back half of the first one...
Labour are dead anyway. The inertia, the Starmerwave, Starmer's genocide in Gaza and the hostile media have killed them. No one shed a tear. They might as well use their dying breath to do the right thing.
We are a right wing nation and we always have been. I suspect the nature of media ownership has made us so. Remember what Hitler and Goebbels said about propaganda? The sooner the Tories get back into the saddle, the sooner the media can go back to writing and broadcasting about Coronation Street. And those scumbag filth voters who don't vote Ref or Con can carp on about how nasty the Tories are to their heart's content.
Labour are *probably* dead. I don't think we can presume anything right now because the sands are shifting quickly. Remember that impossible things seem to happen every few years in our politics, so just because Labour winning in 2029 feels impossible now doesn't mean it is impossible.
Have the economy actually start to recover, have Refuk continue to fracture with a hard right battle between Farage and Tommeh Tiny-Dick about how many muslims they can deport and who knows where we go. Labour may seem like the least worst option.
The Labour Party are Monty Python's Norwegian Blue. Even if the economy recovers they are done.
I am assuming the Tories go full Jenrick and steal the vile stinking rags worn by Farage and Yaxley-Lennon ( why are we even considering these ****s as mainstream?). That is probably the least worst option going forward. Jenrick is a ruthless opportunist so once at the top of the greasy poll he might calm the rhetoric down.
I believe the nation is ungovernable by a party that antagonises the press and now the broadcast media like Labour did in 1964 to 70, in 74 to 79 and now from 2024. I have missed out the New Labour Government because hostility was limited, because initially Blair courted the Press Barons and sought approval from Mrs Thatcher, before then embarking on a US Republican led war against people the Press Barons didn't like and which the media were four square behind.
This time around the Telegraph's Allister Heath and Allison Pearson have been in the vanguard of unhinged headline after unhinged headline. On here too, we get a "scandal" a day. A "scandal" that wouldn't even have registered between 2010 and just prior to Johnson's defenestration.That said media hostility has gone hand in hand this time with appalling comms from the Government and an inertia that few would have forecast. So it's not entirely the media's fault.
If only the Tories (or Reform?) are allowed to govern unhindered by the Fourth Estate, why should anyone else bother trying?
Politics like nature abhors a vacuum. An election that is Tory v Reform for first place is not at the moment thinkable. The next election is going to be some version of Reformtory v The Not Reform party for first and second place, and for leadership of the next government.
Labour are likely to be the lead player in the Not Reform group, there being no other broad enough candidate in both policy (which excludes Green leadership) and demographics (LDs problem).
Labour are value, if any value is to be had. DYOR.
I am not convinced that Reform won't implode under the stress of Jenrick Tories.
I agree it's possible. But the general election will be a contest between ReformTory or ToryReform v Not ReformTory. Which places Labour in probable pole position as the main party which isn't Reform or Tory. About 50%+ of voters are going to vote for a party that isn't Tory or Reform. Their votes have to go somewhere. Most will go to Labour.
I am still not convinced by this theory.
At the moment the next GE looks to be shaping up as a fight between lots of parties that each have large numbers of opponents. But one of them has got to win.
Tactical voting will play a part, but I don’t buy the idea that there will be a huge Labour-voting alliance as a way to stop Reform. Labour will be battling a strong anti-incumbency feeling and a lot of people who will be voting against them too. To tactically vote, people also have to be aware of who in their constituency is most likely to beat the lead candidate. That might be easy in some places, but it’s going to be far from clear in a lot of the country if this political fragmentation continues.
As it stands, I still see a HP as a far more likely outcome, as this jumble of voting patterns fails to see anyone do enough to win. The jury is out on whether that means a Reform led government or some progressive alliance.
This is all based on the current landscape though. There’s over 3 years to go yet.
I very much agree with this analysis of the problem in general. In trying to read the next election - impossible but PB is about predicting that which can't be predicted and assessing probabilities well before it is rational to do so - we are dealing with irresistible forces and immovable objects.
Tactical voting - which I guess will be large, meets two immovable objects: in 400+ seats Labour is the tactical anti Reform vote because they are the incumbent. But in 400+ seats Labour being the incumbent is unpopular and execrated.
My seat (Penrith and Solway) is a lovely example. New boundaries. Clearly Tory leaning in the ancient era up to 2019. Labour in 2024. Projected to be clearly Reform in 2029. LDs never figure. Who do you vote for in 2029 if you want to vote against Reform? Labour are the only choice. Many seats are like that.
This is going to become fascinating in both political and betting terms. I still say that great forces will be in play to keep the Labour vote much higher than it currently appears.
Full disclosure: I am a dinosaur One Nation Tory. My MP was Rory. I therefore don't have a party. Voted Labour in 2024. Through gritted teeth would do so again as things stand.
I have some tales to tell about that MP, who was also mine. But isnt "one nation" just something Conservative supporters say when they are trying to hide away from the tough fiscal decisions that all governments make? "dont blame me, im a different kind of Tory".
No.
One Nation Toryism (RIP) stood for a conscious adherence to the traditional Tory stuff of sound finance, free enterprise and free trade, money making, Burkean views on organic development in society, individual responsibility, small platoons, family, monarchy and established religion, sound defence but also did not regard the post WWII social democratic state as something to be derided, marginalised and neglected but as a central part of the social deal in a wealthy nation.
There are bits of it in Labour, LD and of course some Tories. Occasionally Farage shows flashes of understanding what it is all about too. But no party consistently does enough to keep that interesting and difficult balance of free enterprise, fiscal responsibility and the welfare state.
But who would you say moved away from that, in terms of major figures in the party? Thatcher? Major? Hague? IDS? Cameron? May? Johnson? Truss? Sunak?
They all fitted that mould in different ways. Remember Truss was brought down by an unfunded expansion of a fuel support system to stop people going into poverty.
The increase in debt masterminded by Tories from 2010 with no plan to deal with it except by inflation, together with quantitative easing and zero interest rates for years together did not show fiscal responsibility; the Boriswave of over rapid migration did not demonstrate a Burkean approach to social change. The failure to plan and prepare for Brexit was a huge betrayal, as was Cameron's resignation.
There are many ways to spend a Saturday morning - arguing with a man over a game of Totopoly in a Derbyshire field probably isn't the most obvious. Even that critical barometer of the economy, the car boot sale, is struggling.
The honest truth is we all have far too much "stuff" which we have been encouraged to buy (as a means of achieving some level of existential improvement it seems) and if I were to blame any single group for the failure (or perceived failure) of capitalism, it would be advertisers.
In the end, even what you try to sell to strangers for pennies speaks volumes - the lofts, spare rooms and basements of Britain are a hoarder's paradise full of useless irrelevant unuseable trivia, the detritus of a lifetime of consumption and waste - is it any wonder some are questioning the point of it all?
Into the ever picturesque town of Matlock and on the corner of Crown Square, the group known as Matlock for Palestine were setting up their weekly protest at 11am. A typical old fashioned protest - middle aged and older men and women with a goodly assortment of Palestine flags bring studiously ignoed by most if not all save for the odd car horn of support.
I'll wait for the inevitable comment - shouldn't think it will be too long? Police? No, not necessary - this is Matlock, above all, civilised even in disagreement.
Oddly enough, I came away heartened by the spectacle - this was as law abiding a protest as you could possibly imagine and the irony of their protest with the town's lamp posts festooned not by the Union Jacks and St George's Crosses seen in so much else of this part of Derbyshire but poppies wasn't lost.
That's all politics is sometimes - irony (I won't do the Blackadder gag as it's passe). The irony of the Union flags and the Reform anti-migrant sentiment in an area with hardly a migrant or immigrant to be seen. After East Ham, Amber Valley and the Derbyshire Dales seem pale.
Labour have two choices: Stick with the manifesto pledges, fiddle round the edges, the economy stagnates, they get blattered at the election Man up, things are bad, tax rise for growth, economy performs, people feel better, nobody cares about the manifesto
They'll probably manage to splice the front half of the second one and the back half of the first one...
"Tax rise for growth" lol do you have even a basic understanding of how the economy functions?
Yes. Raise x. Invest it. Return xx
Cash needs to flow or the economy contracts. Do YOU understand how the economy works? Rich people aren't letting the cash even trickle down any more - most people feel broke and the economy contracts which makes more people broke.
THis is what happens when you don't invest. Could be a major story next year, to put it mildly, if it doesn't start pishing it down. Edit: NB mooted restrictions affecting businesses.
This is the guardian equivalent of the regular Daily Express winter stories about massive snowfalls due soon.
I wouldn't put it that way. For one thing, DE is about future point events. THis is about an ongoing phenomenon.
Edit: and the state of the water mains is a known issue. Replacing them is (a) investment and (b) saves water, a lot of it.
Isn’t that what most of the punitive water bill increases is supposed to cover.
Building a few more reservoirs would help too. Sadly NIMBYism has nixed that more than once.
I'm inclined to suspect the latter was just an excuse for the water companies to do FA. If they really worried about the water supply rather than stockholder dividends they'd have done more to deal with ageing mains to the same effect.
They've been able to do it in the past - Rutland Water in relatively recent years. Relatively recent admittedly taking a lot of load there, it was 1980s IIRC, but Rutlandshire even then was not your average Welsh valley with about 50 people and a trillion sheep.
And as a bonus they got lots of birds and a giant ichthyosaur. What's not to like?
Certainly your first paragraph is the NIMBY argument for stopping new reservoirs being built.
However they are not mutually exclusive. They could do both.
Now the water companies are getting a large cash injection through front loaded increases, and some have been back to the regulator for a little more and got it, let’s see what happens.
First para is not a Nimby argument in itself - it is something they needed to do anyway (contamination, bursts, damage to roads, stoppage to supplies). And because that really is where a lot of water is wasted. It's only a Nimby argument insofar as the water companies were so badly managed it was an open goal for the Nimbies to ask why they wanted to build reservoirs to pump the equivalent straignt into the ground.
Sorry if I wasn’t clear. The first paragraph is a NIMBY argument in the sense I’ve seen it proferred as an excuse not to build reservoirs. If you solve the leaks you don’t need a reservoir.
With a growing poluplation I’d say we need both, especially where the population is growing in the south.
But we need it controlled appropriately. That's why strong scrutiny of plans is so important.
In the late 70s water providers were attempting to ram reservoirs into Dartmoor and Exmoor.
Here's Kate Ashbrook's account of fighting to protect the Dartmoor National Park when the Roadford Rerservoir Scheme was proposed on top of all kind of historical remains etc, and involved false claims about alternative sites. The enquiry resulted in a presumption that future reservoirs would not swallow parts of Dartmoor. https://campaignerkate.wordpress.com/2018/04/22/the-dartmoor-reservoir-saga-40-years-ago/
One of the more pernicious aspects is that local authorities sometimes want to pander to Water Companies (as they are now) or landowners *, rather than the local community.
There's another one where a water provider wanted to bury a valley under their spoil, because it was convenient for them.
* They tried to do this in the Hoogstraten case, so it was necessary to get a law passed that allowed Local Authorities to be compelled to perform their statutory duties.
Labour have two choices: Stick with the manifesto pledges, fiddle round the edges, the economy stagnates, they get blattered at the election Man up, things are bad, tax rise for growth, economy performs, people feel better, nobody cares about the manifesto
They'll probably manage to splice the front half of the second one and the back half of the first one...
"Tax rise for growth" lol do you have even a basic understanding of how the economy functions?
Yes. Raise x. Invest it. Return xx
Cash needs to flow or the economy contracts. Do YOU understand how the economy works? Rich people aren't letting the cash even trickle down any more - most people feel broke and the economy contracts which makes more people broke.
THis is what happens when you don't invest. Could be a major story next year, to put it mildly, if it doesn't start pishing it down. Edit: NB mooted restrictions affecting businesses.
This is the guardian equivalent of the regular Daily Express winter stories about massive snowfalls due soon.
I wouldn't put it that way. For one thing, DE is about future point events. THis is about an ongoing phenomenon.
Edit: and the state of the water mains is a known issue. Replacing them is (a) investment and (b) saves water, a lot of it.
Isn’t that what most of the punitive water bill increases is supposed to cover.
Building a few more reservoirs would help too. Sadly NIMBYism has nixed that more than once.
I'm inclined to suspect the latter was just an excuse for the water companies to do FA. If they really worried about the water supply rather than stockholder dividends they'd have done more to deal with ageing mains to the same effect.
They've been able to do it in the past - Rutland Water in relatively recent years. Relatively recent admittedly taking a lot of load there, it was 1980s IIRC, but Rutlandshire even then was not your average Welsh valley with about 50 people and a trillion sheep.
And as a bonus they got lots of birds and a giant ichthyosaur. What's not to like?
Certainly your first paragraph is the NIMBY argument for stopping new reservoirs being built.
However they are not mutually exclusive. They could do both.
Now the water companies are getting a large cash injection through front loaded increases, and some have been back to the regulator for a little more and got it, let’s see what happens.
First para is not a Nimby argument in itself - it is something they needed to do anyway (contamination, bursts, damage to roads, stoppage to supplies). And because that really is where a lot of water is wasted. It's only a Nimby argument insofar as the water companies were so badly managed it was an open goal for the Nimbies to ask why they wanted to build reservoirs to pump the equivalent straignt into the ground.
Sorry if I wasn’t clear. The first paragraph is a NIMBY argument in the sense I’ve seen it proferred as an excuse not to build reservoirs. If you solve the leaks you don’t need a reservoir.
With a growing poluplation I’d say we need both, especially where the population is growing in the south.
But we need it controlled tightly. That's why strong scrutiny of plans is so important.
In the late 70s water providers were attempting to ram reservoirs into Dartmoor and Exmoor.
Here's Kate Ashbrook's account of fighting to protect the Dartmoor National Park when the Roadford Rerservoir Scheme was proposed on top of all kind of historical remains etc, and involved made up claims. The enquiry resulted in a presumption that future reservoirs would not swallow parts of Dartmoor. https://campaignerkate.wordpress.com/2018/04/22/the-dartmoor-reservoir-saga-40-years-ago/
One of the more pernicious aspects is that local authorities sometimes want to pander to Water Companies (as they are now) or landowners *, rather than the local community.
There's another one where a water provider wanted to bury a valley under their spoil, because it was convenient for them.
* They tried to do this in the Hoogstraten case, so it was necessary to get a law passed that allowed Local Authorities to be compelled to perform their statutory duties.
Barty will be along soon to declare that anyone should be allowed to build anything anywhere.
There are many ways to spend a Saturday morning - arguing with a man over a game of Totopoly in a Derbyshire field probably isn't the most obvious. Even that critical barometer of the economy, the car boot sale, is struggling.
The honest truth is we all have far too much "stuff" which we have been encouraged to buy (as a means of achieving some level of existential improvement it seems) and if I were to blame any single group for the failure (or perceived failure) of capitalism, it would be advertisers.
In the end, even what you try to sell to strangers for pennies speaks volumes - the lofts, spare rooms and basements of Britain are a hoarder's paradise full of useless irrelevant unuseable trivia, the detritus of a lifetime of consumption and waste - is it any wonder some are questioning the point of it all?
Into the ever picturesque town of Matlock and on the corner of Crown Square, the group known as Matlock for Palestine were setting up their weekly protest at 11am. A typical old fashioned protest - middle aged and older men and women with a goodly assortment of Palestine flags bring studiously ignoed by most if not all save for the odd car horn of support.
I'll wait for the inevitable comment - shouldn't think it will be too long? Police? No, not necessary - this is Matlock, above all, civilised even in disagreement.
Oddly enough, I came away heartened by the spectacle - this was as law abiding a protest as you could possibly imagine and the irony of their protest with the town's lamp posts festooned not by the Union Jacks and St George's Crosses seen in so much else of this part of Derbyshire but poppies wasn't lost.
That's all politics is sometimes - irony (I won't do the Blackadder gag as it's passe). The irony of the Union flags and the Reform anti-migrant sentiment in an area with hardly a migrant or immigrant to be seen. After East Ham, Amber Valley and the Derbyshire Dales seem pale.
Labour have two choices: Stick with the manifesto pledges, fiddle round the edges, the economy stagnates, they get blattered at the election Man up, things are bad, tax rise for growth, economy performs, people feel better, nobody cares about the manifesto
They'll probably manage to splice the front half of the second one and the back half of the first one...
Labour are dead anyway. The inertia, the Starmerwave, Starmer's genocide in Gaza and the hostile media have killed them. No one shed a tear. They might as well use their dying breath to do the right thing.
We are a right wing nation and we always have been. I suspect the nature of media ownership has made us so. Remember what Hitler and Goebbels said about propaganda? The sooner the Tories get back into the saddle, the sooner the media can go back to writing and broadcasting about Coronation Street. And those scumbag filth voters who don't vote Ref or Con can carp on about how nasty the Tories are to their heart's content.
Labour are *probably* dead. I don't think we can presume anything right now because the sands are shifting quickly. Remember that impossible things seem to happen every few years in our politics, so just because Labour winning in 2029 feels impossible now doesn't mean it is impossible.
Have the economy actually start to recover, have Refuk continue to fracture with a hard right battle between Farage and Tommeh Tiny-Dick about how many muslims they can deport and who knows where we go. Labour may seem like the least worst option.
The Labour Party are Monty Python's Norwegian Blue. Even if the economy recovers they are done.
I am assuming the Tories go full Jenrick and steal the vile stinking rags worn by Farage and Yaxley-Lennon ( why are we even considering these ****s as mainstream?). That is probably the least worst option going forward. Jenrick is a ruthless opportunist so once at the top of the greasy poll he might calm the rhetoric down.
I believe the nation is ungovernable by a party that antagonises the press and now the broadcast media like Labour did in 1964 to 70, in 74 to 79 and now from 2024. I have missed out the New Labour Government because hostility was limited, because initially Blair courted the Press Barons and sought approval from Mrs Thatcher, before then embarking on a US Republican led war against people the Press Barons didn't like and which the media were four square behind.
This time around the Telegraph's Allister Heath and Allison Pearson have been in the vanguard of unhinged headline after unhinged headline. On here too, we get a "scandal" a day. A "scandal" that wouldn't even have registered between 2010 and just prior to Johnson's defenestration.That said media hostility has gone hand in hand this time with appalling comms from the Government and an inertia that few would have forecast. So it's not entirely the media's fault.
If only the Tories (or Reform?) are allowed to govern unhindered by the Fourth Estate, why should anyone else bother trying?
Politics like nature abhors a vacuum. An election that is Tory v Reform for first place is not at the moment thinkable. The next election is going to be some version of Reformtory v The Not Reform party for first and second place, and for leadership of the next government.
Labour are likely to be the lead player in the Not Reform group, there being no other broad enough candidate in both policy (which excludes Green leadership) and demographics (LDs problem).
Labour are value, if any value is to be had. DYOR.
I am not convinced that Reform won't implode under the stress of Jenrick Tories.
I agree it's possible. But the general election will be a contest between ReformTory or ToryReform v Not ReformTory. Which places Labour in probable pole position as the main party which isn't Reform or Tory. About 50%+ of voters are going to vote for a party that isn't Tory or Reform. Their votes have to go somewhere. Most will go to Labour.
I am still not convinced by this theory.
At the moment the next GE looks to be shaping up as a fight between lots of parties that each have large numbers of opponents. But one of them has got to win.
Tactical voting will play a part, but I don’t buy the idea that there will be a huge Labour-voting alliance as a way to stop Reform. Labour will be battling a strong anti-incumbency feeling and a lot of people who will be voting against them too. To tactically vote, people also have to be aware of who in their constituency is most likely to beat the lead candidate. That might be easy in some places, but it’s going to be far from clear in a lot of the country if this political fragmentation continues.
As it stands, I still see a HP as a far more likely outcome, as this jumble of voting patterns fails to see anyone do enough to win. The jury is out on whether that means a Reform led government or some progressive alliance.
This is all based on the current landscape though. There’s over 3 years to go yet.
I very much agree with this analysis of the problem in general. In trying to read the next election - impossible but PB is about predicting that which can't be predicted and assessing probabilities well before it is rational to do so - we are dealing with irresistible forces and immovable objects.
Tactical voting - which I guess will be large, meets two immovable objects: in 400+ seats Labour is the tactical anti Reform vote because they are the incumbent. But in 400+ seats Labour being the incumbent is unpopular and execrated.
My seat (Penrith and Solway) is a lovely example. New boundaries. Clearly Tory leaning in the ancient era up to 2019. Labour in 2024. Projected to be clearly Reform in 2029. LDs never figure. Who do you vote for in 2029 if you want to vote against Reform? Labour are the only choice. Many seats are like that.
This is going to become fascinating in both political and betting terms. I still say that great forces will be in play to keep the Labour vote much higher than it currently appears.
Full disclosure: I am a dinosaur One Nation Tory. My MP was Rory. I therefore don't have a party. Voted Labour in 2024. Through gritted teeth would do so again as things stand.
I have some tales to tell about that MP, who was also mine. But isnt "one nation" just something Conservative supporters say when they are trying to hide away from the tough fiscal decisions that all governments make? "dont blame me, im a different kind of Tory".
No.
One Nation Toryism (RIP) stood for a conscious adherence to the traditional Tory stuff of sound finance, free enterprise and free trade, money making, Burkean views on organic development in society, individual responsibility, small platoons, family, monarchy and established religion, sound defence but also did not regard the post WWII social democratic state as something to be derided, marginalised and neglected but as a central part of the social deal in a wealthy nation.
There are bits of it in Labour, LD and of course some Tories. Occasionally Farage shows flashes of understanding what it is all about too. But no party consistently does enough to keep that interesting and difficult balance of free enterprise, fiscal responsibility and the welfare state.
But who would you say moved away from that, in terms of major figures in the party? Thatcher? Major? Hague? IDS? Cameron? May? Johnson? Truss? Sunak?
They all fitted that mould in different ways. Remember Truss was brought down by an unfunded expansion of a fuel support system to stop people going into poverty.
Thatcher. It's always Thatcher...
The implied regret for the passing of the post-war consensus, which incidentally (not incidentally) was the last time the country was driven into the shitter, is extraordinarily fatuous.
Labour have two choices: Stick with the manifesto pledges, fiddle round the edges, the economy stagnates, they get blattered at the election Man up, things are bad, tax rise for growth, economy performs, people feel better, nobody cares about the manifesto
They'll probably manage to splice the front half of the second one and the back half of the first one...
"Tax rise for growth" lol do you have even a basic understanding of how the economy functions?
Yes. Raise x. Invest it. Return xx
Cash needs to flow or the economy contracts. Do YOU understand how the economy works? Rich people aren't letting the cash even trickle down any more - most people feel broke and the economy contracts which makes more people broke.
THis is what happens when you don't invest. Could be a major story next year, to put it mildly, if it doesn't start pishing it down. Edit: NB mooted restrictions affecting businesses.
This is the guardian equivalent of the regular Daily Express winter stories about massive snowfalls due soon.
I wouldn't put it that way. For one thing, DE is about future point events. THis is about an ongoing phenomenon.
Edit: and the state of the water mains is a known issue. Replacing them is (a) investment and (b) saves water, a lot of it.
Isn’t that what most of the punitive water bill increases is supposed to cover.
Building a few more reservoirs would help too. Sadly NIMBYism has nixed that more than once.
I'm inclined to suspect the latter was just an excuse for the water companies to do FA. If they really worried about the water supply rather than stockholder dividends they'd have done more to deal with ageing mains to the same effect.
They've been able to do it in the past - Rutland Water in relatively recent years. Relatively recent admittedly taking a lot of load there, it was 1980s IIRC, but Rutlandshire even then was not your average Welsh valley with about 50 people and a trillion sheep.
And as a bonus they got lots of birds and a giant ichthyosaur. What's not to like?
Certainly your first paragraph is the NIMBY argument for stopping new reservoirs being built.
However they are not mutually exclusive. They could do both.
Now the water companies are getting a large cash injection through front loaded increases, and some have been back to the regulator for a little more and got it, let’s see what happens.
First para is not a Nimby argument in itself - it is something they needed to do anyway (contamination, bursts, damage to roads, stoppage to supplies). And because that really is where a lot of water is wasted. It's only a Nimby argument insofar as the water companies were so badly managed it was an open goal for the Nimbies to ask why they wanted to build reservoirs to pump the equivalent straignt into the ground.
Sorry if I wasn’t clear. The first paragraph is a NIMBY argument in the sense I’ve seen it proferred as an excuse not to build reservoirs. If you solve the leaks you don’t need a reservoir.
With a growing poluplation I’d say we need both, especially where the population is growing in the south.
But we need it controlled tightly. That's why strong scrutiny of plans is so important.
In the late 70s water providers were attempting to ram reservoirs into Dartmoor and Exmoor.
Here's Kate Ashbrook's account of fighting to protect the Dartmoor National Park when the Roadford Rerservoir Scheme was proposed on top of all kind of historical remains etc, and involved made up claims. The enquiry resulted in a presumption that future reservoirs would not swallow parts of Dartmoor. https://campaignerkate.wordpress.com/2018/04/22/the-dartmoor-reservoir-saga-40-years-ago/
One of the more pernicious aspects is that local authorities sometimes want to pander to Water Companies (as they are now) or landowners *, rather than the local community.
There's another one where a water provider wanted to bury a valley under their spoil, because it was convenient for them.
* They tried to do this in the Hoogstraten case, so it was necessary to get a law passed that allowed Local Authorities to be compelled to perform their statutory duties.
The problem is that “scrutiny of the plans” has become lawfare, with the objective of making it impossible via time and cost to build anything.
There are law firms that will quote you on a package to obstruct and delay planning - they are upfront if the application is actually valid. What they are offering is delay. Complete with advice and contacts on how to structure the “local campaign” to maximise press/political notice.
The inevitable result is that, in the not too distant future, a government will get in on the basis of “FuckTheCountryside(InOurOpponentsContituencies)”
So all the bits of Dartmoor that vote the wrong way will be concreted over.
Sanity would be to make the process (ha!) work *now*
We are seeing the start of this in London. A community activist wanted to oppose a development in Elephant & Castle. The meeting was overwhelmed by pro-construction people - who shouted the organisers down and demanded building *anything* right now.
Labour have two choices: Stick with the manifesto pledges, fiddle round the edges, the economy stagnates, they get blattered at the election Man up, things are bad, tax rise for growth, economy performs, people feel better, nobody cares about the manifesto
They'll probably manage to splice the front half of the second one and the back half of the first one...
"Tax rise for growth" lol do you have even a basic understanding of how the economy functions?
Yes. Raise x. Invest it. Return xx
Cash needs to flow or the economy contracts. Do YOU understand how the economy works? Rich people aren't letting the cash even trickle down any more - most people feel broke and the economy contracts which makes more people broke.
THis is what happens when you don't invest. Could be a major story next year, to put it mildly, if it doesn't start pishing it down. Edit: NB mooted restrictions affecting businesses.
This is the guardian equivalent of the regular Daily Express winter stories about massive snowfalls due soon.
I wouldn't put it that way. For one thing, DE is about future point events. THis is about an ongoing phenomenon.
Edit: and the state of the water mains is a known issue. Replacing them is (a) investment and (b) saves water, a lot of it.
Isn’t that what most of the punitive water bill increases is supposed to cover.
Building a few more reservoirs would help too. Sadly NIMBYism has nixed that more than once.
I'm inclined to suspect the latter was just an excuse for the water companies to do FA. If they really worried about the water supply rather than stockholder dividends they'd have done more to deal with ageing mains to the same effect.
They've been able to do it in the past - Rutland Water in relatively recent years. Relatively recent admittedly taking a lot of load there, it was 1980s IIRC, but Rutlandshire even then was not your average Welsh valley with about 50 people and a trillion sheep.
And as a bonus they got lots of birds and a giant ichthyosaur. What's not to like?
Certainly your first paragraph is the NIMBY argument for stopping new reservoirs being built.
However they are not mutually exclusive. They could do both.
Now the water companies are getting a large cash injection through front loaded increases, and some have been back to the regulator for a little more and got it, let’s see what happens.
First para is not a Nimby argument in itself - it is something they needed to do anyway (contamination, bursts, damage to roads, stoppage to supplies). And because that really is where a lot of water is wasted. It's only a Nimby argument insofar as the water companies were so badly managed it was an open goal for the Nimbies to ask why they wanted to build reservoirs to pump the equivalent straignt into the ground.
Sorry if I wasn’t clear. The first paragraph is a NIMBY argument in the sense I’ve seen it proferred as an excuse not to build reservoirs. If you solve the leaks you don’t need a reservoir.
With a growing poluplation I’d say we need both, especially where the population is growing in the south.
But we need it controlled tightly. That's why strong scrutiny of plans is so important.
In the late 70s water providers were attempting to ram reservoirs into Dartmoor and Exmoor.
Here's Kate Ashbrook's account of fighting to protect the Dartmoor National Park when the Roadford Rerservoir Scheme was proposed on top of all kind of historical remains etc, and involved made up claims. The enquiry resulted in a presumption that future reservoirs would not swallow parts of Dartmoor. https://campaignerkate.wordpress.com/2018/04/22/the-dartmoor-reservoir-saga-40-years-ago/
One of the more pernicious aspects is that local authorities sometimes want to pander to Water Companies (as they are now) or landowners *, rather than the local community.
There's another one where a water provider wanted to bury a valley under their spoil, because it was convenient for them.
* They tried to do this in the Hoogstraten case, so it was necessary to get a law passed that allowed Local Authorities to be compelled to perform their statutory duties.
Barty will be along soon to declare that anyone should be allowed to build anything anywhere.
They should certainly have built a vast amount more reservoirs than European regulations allowed. The last major reservoir project completed in the UK was in 1992. Do you think that is in any way defensible given that we have nearly 10 million more people living here?
Where it's the NHS, PIPs, adult social care or mental health, individually and all together it's just extremely expensive and it risks our bankruptcy.
My take on this is, unsurprisingly, different to yours.
My thinking is that as the standard of living increases (as it continues to do, just) we should indeed devote an ever-increasing proportion on health. Because after the basics of food, clothes and shelter, nothing is more important than health.
The alternative is that personal income gets frittered away on ever more 'stuff' (as outlined by @stodge in his 2:45pm post).
I appreciate we are probably diametrically opposed on this, as on a lot of things, but that's my feeling.
Labour have two choices: Stick with the manifesto pledges, fiddle round the edges, the economy stagnates, they get blattered at the election Man up, things are bad, tax rise for growth, economy performs, people feel better, nobody cares about the manifesto
They'll probably manage to splice the front half of the second one and the back half of the first one...
"Tax rise for growth" lol do you have even a basic understanding of how the economy functions?
Yes. Raise x. Invest it. Return xx
Cash needs to flow or the economy contracts. Do YOU understand how the economy works? Rich people aren't letting the cash even trickle down any more - most people feel broke and the economy contracts which makes more people broke.
THis is what happens when you don't invest. Could be a major story next year, to put it mildly, if it doesn't start pishing it down. Edit: NB mooted restrictions affecting businesses.
This is the guardian equivalent of the regular Daily Express winter stories about massive snowfalls due soon.
I wouldn't put it that way. For one thing, DE is about future point events. THis is about an ongoing phenomenon.
Edit: and the state of the water mains is a known issue. Replacing them is (a) investment and (b) saves water, a lot of it.
Isn’t that what most of the punitive water bill increases is supposed to cover.
Building a few more reservoirs would help too. Sadly NIMBYism has nixed that more than once.
I'm inclined to suspect the latter was just an excuse for the water companies to do FA. If they really worried about the water supply rather than stockholder dividends they'd have done more to deal with ageing mains to the same effect.
They've been able to do it in the past - Rutland Water in relatively recent years. Relatively recent admittedly taking a lot of load there, it was 1980s IIRC, but Rutlandshire even then was not your average Welsh valley with about 50 people and a trillion sheep.
And as a bonus they got lots of birds and a giant ichthyosaur. What's not to like?
Certainly your first paragraph is the NIMBY argument for stopping new reservoirs being built.
However they are not mutually exclusive. They could do both.
Now the water companies are getting a large cash injection through front loaded increases, and some have been back to the regulator for a little more and got it, let’s see what happens.
First para is not a Nimby argument in itself - it is something they needed to do anyway (contamination, bursts, damage to roads, stoppage to supplies). And because that really is where a lot of water is wasted. It's only a Nimby argument insofar as the water companies were so badly managed it was an open goal for the Nimbies to ask why they wanted to build reservoirs to pump the equivalent straignt into the ground.
Sorry if I wasn’t clear. The first paragraph is a NIMBY argument in the sense I’ve seen it proferred as an excuse not to build reservoirs. If you solve the leaks you don’t need a reservoir.
With a growing poluplation I’d say we need both, especially where the population is growing in the south.
But we need it controlled tightly. That's why strong scrutiny of plans is so important.
In the late 70s water providers were attempting to ram reservoirs into Dartmoor and Exmoor.
Here's Kate Ashbrook's account of fighting to protect the Dartmoor National Park when the Roadford Rerservoir Scheme was proposed on top of all kind of historical remains etc, and involved made up claims. The enquiry resulted in a presumption that future reservoirs would not swallow parts of Dartmoor. https://campaignerkate.wordpress.com/2018/04/22/the-dartmoor-reservoir-saga-40-years-ago/
One of the more pernicious aspects is that local authorities sometimes want to pander to Water Companies (as they are now) or landowners *, rather than the local community.
There's another one where a water provider wanted to bury a valley under their spoil, because it was convenient for them.
* They tried to do this in the Hoogstraten case, so it was necessary to get a law passed that allowed Local Authorities to be compelled to perform their statutory duties.
Barty will be along soon to declare that anyone should be allowed to build anything anywhere.
They should certainly have built a vast amount more reservoirs than European regulations allowed. The last major reservoir project completed in the UK was in 1992. Do you think that is in any way defensible given that we have nearly 10 million more people living here?
Was there an EU regulation preventing the building of reservoirs, or was it just incompetence of our own government?
Labour have two choices: Stick with the manifesto pledges, fiddle round the edges, the economy stagnates, they get blattered at the election Man up, things are bad, tax rise for growth, economy performs, people feel better, nobody cares about the manifesto
They'll probably manage to splice the front half of the second one and the back half of the first one...
"Tax rise for growth" lol do you have even a basic understanding of how the economy functions?
Yes. Raise x. Invest it. Return xx
Cash needs to flow or the economy contracts. Do YOU understand how the economy works? Rich people aren't letting the cash even trickle down any more - most people feel broke and the economy contracts which makes more people broke.
THis is what happens when you don't invest. Could be a major story next year, to put it mildly, if it doesn't start pishing it down. Edit: NB mooted restrictions affecting businesses.
This is the guardian equivalent of the regular Daily Express winter stories about massive snowfalls due soon.
I wouldn't put it that way. For one thing, DE is about future point events. THis is about an ongoing phenomenon.
Edit: and the state of the water mains is a known issue. Replacing them is (a) investment and (b) saves water, a lot of it.
Isn’t that what most of the punitive water bill increases is supposed to cover.
Building a few more reservoirs would help too. Sadly NIMBYism has nixed that more than once.
I'm inclined to suspect the latter was just an excuse for the water companies to do FA. If they really worried about the water supply rather than stockholder dividends they'd have done more to deal with ageing mains to the same effect.
They've been able to do it in the past - Rutland Water in relatively recent years. Relatively recent admittedly taking a lot of load there, it was 1980s IIRC, but Rutlandshire even then was not your average Welsh valley with about 50 people and a trillion sheep.
And as a bonus they got lots of birds and a giant ichthyosaur. What's not to like?
Certainly your first paragraph is the NIMBY argument for stopping new reservoirs being built.
However they are not mutually exclusive. They could do both.
Now the water companies are getting a large cash injection through front loaded increases, and some have been back to the regulator for a little more and got it, let’s see what happens.
First para is not a Nimby argument in itself - it is something they needed to do anyway (contamination, bursts, damage to roads, stoppage to supplies). And because that really is where a lot of water is wasted. It's only a Nimby argument insofar as the water companies were so badly managed it was an open goal for the Nimbies to ask why they wanted to build reservoirs to pump the equivalent straignt into the ground.
Sorry if I wasn’t clear. The first paragraph is a NIMBY argument in the sense I’ve seen it proferred as an excuse not to build reservoirs. If you solve the leaks you don’t need a reservoir.
With a growing poluplation I’d say we need both, especially where the population is growing in the south.
But we need it controlled tightly. That's why strong scrutiny of plans is so important.
In the late 70s water providers were attempting to ram reservoirs into Dartmoor and Exmoor.
Here's Kate Ashbrook's account of fighting to protect the Dartmoor National Park when the Roadford Rerservoir Scheme was proposed on top of all kind of historical remains etc, and involved made up claims. The enquiry resulted in a presumption that future reservoirs would not swallow parts of Dartmoor. https://campaignerkate.wordpress.com/2018/04/22/the-dartmoor-reservoir-saga-40-years-ago/
One of the more pernicious aspects is that local authorities sometimes want to pander to Water Companies (as they are now) or landowners *, rather than the local community.
There's another one where a water provider wanted to bury a valley under their spoil, because it was convenient for them.
* They tried to do this in the Hoogstraten case, so it was necessary to get a law passed that allowed Local Authorities to be compelled to perform their statutory duties.
Barty will be along soon to declare that anyone should be allowed to build anything anywhere.
They should certainly have built a vast amount more reservoirs than European regulations allowed. The last major reservoir project completed in the UK was in 1992. Do you think that is in any way defensible given that we have nearly 10 million more people living here?
Was there an EU regulation preventing the building of reservoirs, or was it just incompetence of our own government?
Labour have two choices: Stick with the manifesto pledges, fiddle round the edges, the economy stagnates, they get blattered at the election Man up, things are bad, tax rise for growth, economy performs, people feel better, nobody cares about the manifesto
They'll probably manage to splice the front half of the second one and the back half of the first one...
"Tax rise for growth" lol do you have even a basic understanding of how the economy functions?
Yes. Raise x. Invest it. Return xx
Cash needs to flow or the economy contracts. Do YOU understand how the economy works? Rich people aren't letting the cash even trickle down any more - most people feel broke and the economy contracts which makes more people broke.
THis is what happens when you don't invest. Could be a major story next year, to put it mildly, if it doesn't start pishing it down. Edit: NB mooted restrictions affecting businesses.
This is the guardian equivalent of the regular Daily Express winter stories about massive snowfalls due soon.
I wouldn't put it that way. For one thing, DE is about future point events. THis is about an ongoing phenomenon.
Edit: and the state of the water mains is a known issue. Replacing them is (a) investment and (b) saves water, a lot of it.
Isn’t that what most of the punitive water bill increases is supposed to cover.
Building a few more reservoirs would help too. Sadly NIMBYism has nixed that more than once.
I'm inclined to suspect the latter was just an excuse for the water companies to do FA. If they really worried about the water supply rather than stockholder dividends they'd have done more to deal with ageing mains to the same effect.
They've been able to do it in the past - Rutland Water in relatively recent years. Relatively recent admittedly taking a lot of load there, it was 1980s IIRC, but Rutlandshire even then was not your average Welsh valley with about 50 people and a trillion sheep.
And as a bonus they got lots of birds and a giant ichthyosaur. What's not to like?
Certainly your first paragraph is the NIMBY argument for stopping new reservoirs being built.
However they are not mutually exclusive. They could do both.
Now the water companies are getting a large cash injection through front loaded increases, and some have been back to the regulator for a little more and got it, let’s see what happens.
First para is not a Nimby argument in itself - it is something they needed to do anyway (contamination, bursts, damage to roads, stoppage to supplies). And because that really is where a lot of water is wasted. It's only a Nimby argument insofar as the water companies were so badly managed it was an open goal for the Nimbies to ask why they wanted to build reservoirs to pump the equivalent straignt into the ground.
Sorry if I wasn’t clear. The first paragraph is a NIMBY argument in the sense I’ve seen it proferred as an excuse not to build reservoirs. If you solve the leaks you don’t need a reservoir.
With a growing poluplation I’d say we need both, especially where the population is growing in the south.
But we need it controlled tightly. That's why strong scrutiny of plans is so important.
In the late 70s water providers were attempting to ram reservoirs into Dartmoor and Exmoor.
Here's Kate Ashbrook's account of fighting to protect the Dartmoor National Park when the Roadford Rerservoir Scheme was proposed on top of all kind of historical remains etc, and involved made up claims. The enquiry resulted in a presumption that future reservoirs would not swallow parts of Dartmoor. https://campaignerkate.wordpress.com/2018/04/22/the-dartmoor-reservoir-saga-40-years-ago/
One of the more pernicious aspects is that local authorities sometimes want to pander to Water Companies (as they are now) or landowners *, rather than the local community.
There's another one where a water provider wanted to bury a valley under their spoil, because it was convenient for them.
* They tried to do this in the Hoogstraten case, so it was necessary to get a law passed that allowed Local Authorities to be compelled to perform their statutory duties.
Barty will be along soon to declare that anyone should be allowed to build anything anywhere.
They should certainly have built a vast amount more reservoirs than European regulations allowed. The last major reservoir project completed in the UK was in 1992. Do you think that is in any way defensible given that we have nearly 10 million more people living here?
Was there an EU regulation preventing the building of reservoirs, or was it just incompetence of our own government?
The process for the one they're proposing to build near here started in 2022 with a plan for construction to start in 2030 and be actually in operation in 2036: https://fensreservoir.co.uk/consultation/next-steps/
I don't think you can blame that on the EU. And IMHO six years of multiple consultation phases before the relevant minister makes a decision is ridiculous.
Labour have two choices: Stick with the manifesto pledges, fiddle round the edges, the economy stagnates, they get blattered at the election Man up, things are bad, tax rise for growth, economy performs, people feel better, nobody cares about the manifesto
They'll probably manage to splice the front half of the second one and the back half of the first one...
You beg the question of whether tax rises will lead to economic growth. Why not cut taxes for growth? The Chancellor can't just tack “for growth” on the end of whatever the Treasury brainstormed and guarantee it will happen.
Sure! Its an option, but I'm not sure its one they can do.
Cut taxes to entrepreneurs like me to go generate economic growth. OK, infrastructure is bad and getting worse, my potential customers feel broke and aren't spending and now feel even worse as you've cut expenditure on vital stuff again.
Government could borrow to pay for the tax cuts for growth. No, hang on that was the Truss Delusion.
Whilst I agree that taxes are too high, they can't cut them now. But what they could do is unveil a completely revised tax code - change the game completely by rolling welfare into a universal payment and scrapping all the tax loopholes by abolishing the taxes they avoid.
You can't drive growth by taxing less. But you could drive growth by taxing differently...
You certainly could drive growth by taxing less.
Here's an example:
I'm currently running a business with a full order book out to 2028. I want to do more work, employ more people, maybe even make a larger profit and pay more tax.
My biggest constraint at the moment is premises. I basically need a steel framed shed with a decent sized overhead crane in it. I'm renting one that's 5k sq ft, I to grow really need 10-15k sq ft. I nearly bought a 21k sq ft site, the bit that kiboshed the deal was that it came with a £32k pa business rates bill, and covering that, and the stamp duty was just too much dead money to overcome straight after moving.
There are several things you could do which would enable me to grow. You could abolish planning permission, and let me build a suitable building on farmland (I'm in a rural area, and quite geographically constrained if I don't want to lose my existing staff). The site I was trying to buy was £850k, I could buy some land and build everything I want for about £250k.
Alternatively, imagine a scheme where when a business moves into a more expensive rateable premises, the difference in business rates is phased in over 5 years - that would have given me time to get over the "hump" of moving, and let me start expanding and taking on staff to get turnover up before I was hit for the rates.
Incidentally, the site I wanted to buy has been sold to a haulage firm. They are going to knock down the buildings to get out of the rates, and use the hardstanding to park lorries. So the council will lose the rates anyway, and there will be one less small industrial site out there for a manufacturing or engineering business.
Taxes, especially badly designed ones, destroy growth. The only route to meaningful growth is reducing taxes and/or regulation. Until we have a government which understands this, we will remain stuck in this doom loop of ever higher taxes and lower growth.
The idea that a high tax burden destroys growth just doesn't reconcile with the experience of the rest of Europe, where we see both economic growth and significantly higher standards of living in countries with higher tax burdens.
You might be right that the correct route for the UK is lower taxes, lower regulations. But it does come across as dogmatic when you assert in this way. You can make a strong argument that the 40% burden in Germany and the Netherlands, 45% in France has delivered more for their populations than the 33% in the UK.
Firstly, it is the opposite of dogma when a member takes time to relate his actual experience.
Secondly, Europe's growth has been stagnant vs. the USA over the last 20 years. Few countries have done quite as badly as the UK, with its toxic mix of high tax and regulation with an oddly laissez faire attitude to the family silver being sold off, but the overall trend is clearly shown in the relative growth figures. That absolutely reconciles with the theory that a high tax, high regulation environment kills growth, and it's absurd denialism to say otherwise.
Compared with the United States in the past 20 years or so, we have had Osborne's failed austerity but more subtle is the Covid response where Britain subsidised companies while America subsidised workers. It also of course has had a shedload of government investment which our faux free marketeers decry as ‘picking winners’.
We did not have 'failed austerity', we had an extremely modest attempt to rein in spending which led to a couple of years when Government spending didn't rise - it certainly didn't fall by much, and it soon continued its upward trajectory. There was no serious attempt to reduce the size of the state.
A tip for you, don’t say size of state, say cost. When you say size, people’s minds think you will be taking something from them - pip payments now that they are ill, swapping out NHS for US style system etc. taking their job! instead say it as cost, like do you need that mayonnaise,or that pot cream, or that coffee brand, when for half the price or less you can get something that performs just as well. At the same time, reform processes. Digital and AI is not releasing bad criminals early by mistake, eighteenth century systems based on pen and paper and fax machines is actually the more expensive way of governing a country.
There has never, in modern times been an attempt to reduce the size or cost of the state. Not even Mrs T (though no-one believes this). It is nearly all hot air. Politicians are incredibly reluctant to say how much the state spends (public expenditure or TME - total managed expenditure.) Left leaning people don't want to because it shows it isn't rising much and is less than the EU average, and fiscally dry people don't want to because it it shows it isn't falling much or at all and is way about USA levels.
The UK level is about 44.4% of GDP.
Prediction: Farage isn't going to let on what he thinks it will be after 5 years of Reform government as a % of GDP. He will avoid setting a target. Just like the others. They think we are all fools.
By far the biggest function of the modern state is to look after people in their old age through pensions, healthcare and social care. So it's hardy surprising that as society ages the state keeps getting bigger. The other parts of the state have actually been flat overall or have shrunk, certainly as a share of GDP. That's why our pavements are all sprouting weeds and our prisons keep letting the wrong people out!
Labour have two choices: Stick with the manifesto pledges, fiddle round the edges, the economy stagnates, they get blattered at the election Man up, things are bad, tax rise for growth, economy performs, people feel better, nobody cares about the manifesto
They'll probably manage to splice the front half of the second one and the back half of the first one...
"Tax rise for growth" lol do you have even a basic understanding of how the economy functions?
Yes. Raise x. Invest it. Return xx
Cash needs to flow or the economy contracts. Do YOU understand how the economy works? Rich people aren't letting the cash even trickle down any more - most people feel broke and the economy contracts which makes more people broke.
THis is what happens when you don't invest. Could be a major story next year, to put it mildly, if it doesn't start pishing it down. Edit: NB mooted restrictions affecting businesses.
This is the guardian equivalent of the regular Daily Express winter stories about massive snowfalls due soon.
I wouldn't put it that way. For one thing, DE is about future point events. THis is about an ongoing phenomenon.
Edit: and the state of the water mains is a known issue. Replacing them is (a) investment and (b) saves water, a lot of it.
Isn’t that what most of the punitive water bill increases is supposed to cover.
Building a few more reservoirs would help too. Sadly NIMBYism has nixed that more than once.
I'm inclined to suspect the latter was just an excuse for the water companies to do FA. If they really worried about the water supply rather than stockholder dividends they'd have done more to deal with ageing mains to the same effect.
They've been able to do it in the past - Rutland Water in relatively recent years. Relatively recent admittedly taking a lot of load there, it was 1980s IIRC, but Rutlandshire even then was not your average Welsh valley with about 50 people and a trillion sheep.
And as a bonus they got lots of birds and a giant ichthyosaur. What's not to like?
Certainly your first paragraph is the NIMBY argument for stopping new reservoirs being built.
However they are not mutually exclusive. They could do both.
Now the water companies are getting a large cash injection through front loaded increases, and some have been back to the regulator for a little more and got it, let’s see what happens.
First para is not a Nimby argument in itself - it is something they needed to do anyway (contamination, bursts, damage to roads, stoppage to supplies). And because that really is where a lot of water is wasted. It's only a Nimby argument insofar as the water companies were so badly managed it was an open goal for the Nimbies to ask why they wanted to build reservoirs to pump the equivalent straignt into the ground.
Sorry if I wasn’t clear. The first paragraph is a NIMBY argument in the sense I’ve seen it proferred as an excuse not to build reservoirs. If you solve the leaks you don’t need a reservoir.
With a growing poluplation I’d say we need both, especially where the population is growing in the south.
But we need it controlled tightly. That's why strong scrutiny of plans is so important.
In the late 70s water providers were attempting to ram reservoirs into Dartmoor and Exmoor.
Here's Kate Ashbrook's account of fighting to protect the Dartmoor National Park when the Roadford Rerservoir Scheme was proposed on top of all kind of historical remains etc, and involved made up claims. The enquiry resulted in a presumption that future reservoirs would not swallow parts of Dartmoor. https://campaignerkate.wordpress.com/2018/04/22/the-dartmoor-reservoir-saga-40-years-ago/
One of the more pernicious aspects is that local authorities sometimes want to pander to Water Companies (as they are now) or landowners *, rather than the local community.
There's another one where a water provider wanted to bury a valley under their spoil, because it was convenient for them.
* They tried to do this in the Hoogstraten case, so it was necessary to get a law passed that allowed Local Authorities to be compelled to perform their statutory duties.
Barty will be along soon to declare that anyone should be allowed to build anything anywhere.
They should certainly have built a vast amount more reservoirs than European regulations allowed. The last major reservoir project completed in the UK was in 1992. Do you think that is in any way defensible given that we have nearly 10 million more people living here?
Was there an EU regulation preventing the building of reservoirs, or was it just incompetence of our own government?
The process for the one they're proposing to build near here started in 2022 with a plan for construction to start in 2030 and be actually in operation in 2036: https://fensreservoir.co.uk/consultation/next-steps/
I don't think you can blame that on the EU. And IMHO six years of multiple consultation phases before the relevant minister makes a decision is ridiculous.
After 30 years of only building a handful of small reservoirs.
Labour have two choices: Stick with the manifesto pledges, fiddle round the edges, the economy stagnates, they get blattered at the election Man up, things are bad, tax rise for growth, economy performs, people feel better, nobody cares about the manifesto
They'll probably manage to splice the front half of the second one and the back half of the first one...
"Tax rise for growth" lol do you have even a basic understanding of how the economy functions?
Yes. Raise x. Invest it. Return xx
Cash needs to flow or the economy contracts. Do YOU understand how the economy works? Rich people aren't letting the cash even trickle down any more - most people feel broke and the economy contracts which makes more people broke.
THis is what happens when you don't invest. Could be a major story next year, to put it mildly, if it doesn't start pishing it down. Edit: NB mooted restrictions affecting businesses.
This is the guardian equivalent of the regular Daily Express winter stories about massive snowfalls due soon.
I wouldn't put it that way. For one thing, DE is about future point events. THis is about an ongoing phenomenon.
Edit: and the state of the water mains is a known issue. Replacing them is (a) investment and (b) saves water, a lot of it.
Isn’t that what most of the punitive water bill increases is supposed to cover.
Building a few more reservoirs would help too. Sadly NIMBYism has nixed that more than once.
I'm inclined to suspect the latter was just an excuse for the water companies to do FA. If they really worried about the water supply rather than stockholder dividends they'd have done more to deal with ageing mains to the same effect.
They've been able to do it in the past - Rutland Water in relatively recent years. Relatively recent admittedly taking a lot of load there, it was 1980s IIRC, but Rutlandshire even then was not your average Welsh valley with about 50 people and a trillion sheep.
And as a bonus they got lots of birds and a giant ichthyosaur. What's not to like?
Certainly your first paragraph is the NIMBY argument for stopping new reservoirs being built.
However they are not mutually exclusive. They could do both.
Now the water companies are getting a large cash injection through front loaded increases, and some have been back to the regulator for a little more and got it, let’s see what happens.
First para is not a Nimby argument in itself - it is something they needed to do anyway (contamination, bursts, damage to roads, stoppage to supplies). And because that really is where a lot of water is wasted. It's only a Nimby argument insofar as the water companies were so badly managed it was an open goal for the Nimbies to ask why they wanted to build reservoirs to pump the equivalent straignt into the ground.
Sorry if I wasn’t clear. The first paragraph is a NIMBY argument in the sense I’ve seen it proferred as an excuse not to build reservoirs. If you solve the leaks you don’t need a reservoir.
With a growing poluplation I’d say we need both, especially where the population is growing in the south.
But we need it controlled tightly. That's why strong scrutiny of plans is so important.
In the late 70s water providers were attempting to ram reservoirs into Dartmoor and Exmoor.
Here's Kate Ashbrook's account of fighting to protect the Dartmoor National Park when the Roadford Rerservoir Scheme was proposed on top of all kind of historical remains etc, and involved made up claims. The enquiry resulted in a presumption that future reservoirs would not swallow parts of Dartmoor. https://campaignerkate.wordpress.com/2018/04/22/the-dartmoor-reservoir-saga-40-years-ago/
One of the more pernicious aspects is that local authorities sometimes want to pander to Water Companies (as they are now) or landowners *, rather than the local community.
There's another one where a water provider wanted to bury a valley under their spoil, because it was convenient for them.
* They tried to do this in the Hoogstraten case, so it was necessary to get a law passed that allowed Local Authorities to be compelled to perform their statutory duties.
Barty will be along soon to declare that anyone should be allowed to build anything anywhere.
They should certainly have built a vast amount more reservoirs than European regulations allowed. The last major reservoir project completed in the UK was in 1992. Do you think that is in any way defensible given that we have nearly 10 million more people living here?
Maybe the water companies could have focused a bit more on fixing leaks (3 billion litres per day - 20% of total demand) and reducing sewage spills instead of syphoning off profits (£83bn) much of it to foreign owners (70%).
BREAKING - 1,500 Channel migrants have crossed illegally from France since Thursday. For the third straight day, hundreds more are crossing into UK waters. The total for the year is now over 38,500 - That figure is well ahead of the 36,816 who arrived during the whole of 2024
Off topic, but this Seattle quirk may amuse some of you:
Seattle elections are known to see big leftward swings in later vote counts — and that's largely because younger, more progressive voters tend to cast their ballots on or near Election Day, two political consultants tell Axios.
The big picture: That leftward shift can make it difficult to know the results in close city races for several days, a dynamic now playing out in the race for Seattle mayor.
How big can the swings be? As much as 9-11 percent.
As a result, we may not know who won the mayor's race until late next week, even though Bruce Harrell had a lead of almost 6 percent over Katie Wilson, as of Thursday (91,263-61-81,355 votes).
(For the record: Wilson is not just unqualified, but obviously unqualified for that difficult job.)
BREAKING - 1,500 Channel migrants have crossed illegally from France since Thursday. For the third straight day, hundreds more are crossing into UK waters. The total for the year is now over 38,500 - That figure is well ahead of the 36,816 who arrived during the whole of 2024
Labour have two choices: Stick with the manifesto pledges, fiddle round the edges, the economy stagnates, they get blattered at the election Man up, things are bad, tax rise for growth, economy performs, people feel better, nobody cares about the manifesto
They'll probably manage to splice the front half of the second one and the back half of the first one...
"Tax rise for growth" lol do you have even a basic understanding of how the economy functions?
Yes. Raise x. Invest it. Return xx
Cash needs to flow or the economy contracts. Do YOU understand how the economy works? Rich people aren't letting the cash even trickle down any more - most people feel broke and the economy contracts which makes more people broke.
THis is what happens when you don't invest. Could be a major story next year, to put it mildly, if it doesn't start pishing it down. Edit: NB mooted restrictions affecting businesses.
This is the guardian equivalent of the regular Daily Express winter stories about massive snowfalls due soon.
I wouldn't put it that way. For one thing, DE is about future point events. THis is about an ongoing phenomenon.
Edit: and the state of the water mains is a known issue. Replacing them is (a) investment and (b) saves water, a lot of it.
Isn’t that what most of the punitive water bill increases is supposed to cover.
Building a few more reservoirs would help too. Sadly NIMBYism has nixed that more than once.
I'm inclined to suspect the latter was just an excuse for the water companies to do FA. If they really worried about the water supply rather than stockholder dividends they'd have done more to deal with ageing mains to the same effect.
They've been able to do it in the past - Rutland Water in relatively recent years. Relatively recent admittedly taking a lot of load there, it was 1980s IIRC, but Rutlandshire even then was not your average Welsh valley with about 50 people and a trillion sheep.
And as a bonus they got lots of birds and a giant ichthyosaur. What's not to like?
Certainly your first paragraph is the NIMBY argument for stopping new reservoirs being built.
However they are not mutually exclusive. They could do both.
Now the water companies are getting a large cash injection through front loaded increases, and some have been back to the regulator for a little more and got it, let’s see what happens.
First para is not a Nimby argument in itself - it is something they needed to do anyway (contamination, bursts, damage to roads, stoppage to supplies). And because that really is where a lot of water is wasted. It's only a Nimby argument insofar as the water companies were so badly managed it was an open goal for the Nimbies to ask why they wanted to build reservoirs to pump the equivalent straignt into the ground.
Sorry if I wasn’t clear. The first paragraph is a NIMBY argument in the sense I’ve seen it proferred as an excuse not to build reservoirs. If you solve the leaks you don’t need a reservoir.
With a growing poluplation I’d say we need both, especially where the population is growing in the south.
But we need it controlled tightly. That's why strong scrutiny of plans is so important.
In the late 70s water providers were attempting to ram reservoirs into Dartmoor and Exmoor.
Here's Kate Ashbrook's account of fighting to protect the Dartmoor National Park when the Roadford Rerservoir Scheme was proposed on top of all kind of historical remains etc, and involved made up claims. The enquiry resulted in a presumption that future reservoirs would not swallow parts of Dartmoor. https://campaignerkate.wordpress.com/2018/04/22/the-dartmoor-reservoir-saga-40-years-ago/
One of the more pernicious aspects is that local authorities sometimes want to pander to Water Companies (as they are now) or landowners *, rather than the local community.
There's another one where a water provider wanted to bury a valley under their spoil, because it was convenient for them.
* They tried to do this in the Hoogstraten case, so it was necessary to get a law passed that allowed Local Authorities to be compelled to perform their statutory duties.
Barty will be along soon to declare that anyone should be allowed to build anything anywhere.
They should certainly have built a vast amount more reservoirs than European regulations allowed. The last major reservoir project completed in the UK was in 1992. Do you think that is in any way defensible given that we have nearly 10 million more people living here?
Maybe the water companies could have focused a bit more on fixing leaks (3 billion litres per day - 20% of total demand) and reducing sewage spills instead of syphoning off profits (£83bn) much of it to foreign owners (70%).
Water privatisation was a huge mistake.
The government regulator spend a lot of time and effort discouraging digging up streets.
A decade back the leaks in London came into the news. The regulator was ordered by the government to Do Something. Thames Water started digging up roads with enthusiasm. Trenching whole roads to replace mains.
Within a week or 2 the political backlash at the inconvenience had the government turn the other way…
How big can the swings be? As much as 9-11 percent.
As a result, we may not know who won the mayor's race until late next week, even though Bruce Harrell had a lead of almost 6 percent over Katie Wilson, as of Thursday (91,263-61-81,355 votes).
(For the record: Wilson is not just unqualified, but obviously unqualified for that difficult job.)
People outside the US simply cannot fathom how it could take more than 48 hours to count votes in an election, even with postal votes.
Labour have two choices: Stick with the manifesto pledges, fiddle round the edges, the economy stagnates, they get blattered at the election Man up, things are bad, tax rise for growth, economy performs, people feel better, nobody cares about the manifesto
They'll probably manage to splice the front half of the second one and the back half of the first one...
"Tax rise for growth" lol do you have even a basic understanding of how the economy functions?
Yes. Raise x. Invest it. Return xx
Cash needs to flow or the economy contracts. Do YOU understand how the economy works? Rich people aren't letting the cash even trickle down any more - most people feel broke and the economy contracts which makes more people broke.
THis is what happens when you don't invest. Could be a major story next year, to put it mildly, if it doesn't start pishing it down. Edit: NB mooted restrictions affecting businesses.
This is the guardian equivalent of the regular Daily Express winter stories about massive snowfalls due soon.
I wouldn't put it that way. For one thing, DE is about future point events. THis is about an ongoing phenomenon.
Edit: and the state of the water mains is a known issue. Replacing them is (a) investment and (b) saves water, a lot of it.
Isn’t that what most of the punitive water bill increases is supposed to cover.
Building a few more reservoirs would help too. Sadly NIMBYism has nixed that more than once.
I'm inclined to suspect the latter was just an excuse for the water companies to do FA. If they really worried about the water supply rather than stockholder dividends they'd have done more to deal with ageing mains to the same effect.
They've been able to do it in the past - Rutland Water in relatively recent years. Relatively recent admittedly taking a lot of load there, it was 1980s IIRC, but Rutlandshire even then was not your average Welsh valley with about 50 people and a trillion sheep.
And as a bonus they got lots of birds and a giant ichthyosaur. What's not to like?
Certainly your first paragraph is the NIMBY argument for stopping new reservoirs being built.
However they are not mutually exclusive. They could do both.
Now the water companies are getting a large cash injection through front loaded increases, and some have been back to the regulator for a little more and got it, let’s see what happens.
First para is not a Nimby argument in itself - it is something they needed to do anyway (contamination, bursts, damage to roads, stoppage to supplies). And because that really is where a lot of water is wasted. It's only a Nimby argument insofar as the water companies were so badly managed it was an open goal for the Nimbies to ask why they wanted to build reservoirs to pump the equivalent straignt into the ground.
Sorry if I wasn’t clear. The first paragraph is a NIMBY argument in the sense I’ve seen it proferred as an excuse not to build reservoirs. If you solve the leaks you don’t need a reservoir.
With a growing poluplation I’d say we need both, especially where the population is growing in the south.
But we need it controlled tightly. That's why strong scrutiny of plans is so important.
In the late 70s water providers were attempting to ram reservoirs into Dartmoor and Exmoor.
Here's Kate Ashbrook's account of fighting to protect the Dartmoor National Park when the Roadford Rerservoir Scheme was proposed on top of all kind of historical remains etc, and involved made up claims. The enquiry resulted in a presumption that future reservoirs would not swallow parts of Dartmoor. https://campaignerkate.wordpress.com/2018/04/22/the-dartmoor-reservoir-saga-40-years-ago/
One of the more pernicious aspects is that local authorities sometimes want to pander to Water Companies (as they are now) or landowners *, rather than the local community.
There's another one where a water provider wanted to bury a valley under their spoil, because it was convenient for them.
* They tried to do this in the Hoogstraten case, so it was necessary to get a law passed that allowed Local Authorities to be compelled to perform their statutory duties.
Barty will be along soon to declare that anyone should be allowed to build anything anywhere.
They should certainly have built a vast amount more reservoirs than European regulations allowed. The last major reservoir project completed in the UK was in 1992. Do you think that is in any way defensible given that we have nearly 10 million more people living here?
Was there an EU regulation preventing the building of reservoirs, or was it just incompetence of our own government?
The process for the one they're proposing to build near here started in 2022 with a plan for construction to start in 2030 and be actually in operation in 2036: https://fensreservoir.co.uk/consultation/next-steps/
I don't think you can blame that on the EU. And IMHO six years of multiple consultation phases before the relevant minister makes a decision is ridiculous.
You are suggesting that the plans for reservoirs have just been delayed for more than 30 years?
We’ve been talking about the Danish system on here for years. Someone with better search capabilities than me might identify the first mention of the Danish approach.
There used to be a poster on here who waxed lyrical about a bit of Danish. You could almost sense him getting moist as he typed ‘bulldozing immigrant ghettos’. Such a shame he’s not around to glory in this moment.
Labour have two choices: Stick with the manifesto pledges, fiddle round the edges, the economy stagnates, they get blattered at the election Man up, things are bad, tax rise for growth, economy performs, people feel better, nobody cares about the manifesto
They'll probably manage to splice the front half of the second one and the back half of the first one...
"Tax rise for growth" lol do you have even a basic understanding of how the economy functions?
Yes. Raise x. Invest it. Return xx
Cash needs to flow or the economy contracts. Do YOU understand how the economy works? Rich people aren't letting the cash even trickle down any more - most people feel broke and the economy contracts which makes more people broke.
THis is what happens when you don't invest. Could be a major story next year, to put it mildly, if it doesn't start pishing it down. Edit: NB mooted restrictions affecting businesses.
This is the guardian equivalent of the regular Daily Express winter stories about massive snowfalls due soon.
I wouldn't put it that way. For one thing, DE is about future point events. THis is about an ongoing phenomenon.
Edit: and the state of the water mains is a known issue. Replacing them is (a) investment and (b) saves water, a lot of it.
Isn’t that what most of the punitive water bill increases is supposed to cover.
Building a few more reservoirs would help too. Sadly NIMBYism has nixed that more than once.
I'm inclined to suspect the latter was just an excuse for the water companies to do FA. If they really worried about the water supply rather than stockholder dividends they'd have done more to deal with ageing mains to the same effect.
They've been able to do it in the past - Rutland Water in relatively recent years. Relatively recent admittedly taking a lot of load there, it was 1980s IIRC, but Rutlandshire even then was not your average Welsh valley with about 50 people and a trillion sheep.
And as a bonus they got lots of birds and a giant ichthyosaur. What's not to like?
Certainly your first paragraph is the NIMBY argument for stopping new reservoirs being built.
However they are not mutually exclusive. They could do both.
Now the water companies are getting a large cash injection through front loaded increases, and some have been back to the regulator for a little more and got it, let’s see what happens.
First para is not a Nimby argument in itself - it is something they needed to do anyway (contamination, bursts, damage to roads, stoppage to supplies). And because that really is where a lot of water is wasted. It's only a Nimby argument insofar as the water companies were so badly managed it was an open goal for the Nimbies to ask why they wanted to build reservoirs to pump the equivalent straignt into the ground.
Sorry if I wasn’t clear. The first paragraph is a NIMBY argument in the sense I’ve seen it proferred as an excuse not to build reservoirs. If you solve the leaks you don’t need a reservoir.
With a growing poluplation I’d say we need both, especially where the population is growing in the south.
But we need it controlled tightly. That's why strong scrutiny of plans is so important.
In the late 70s water providers were attempting to ram reservoirs into Dartmoor and Exmoor.
Here's Kate Ashbrook's account of fighting to protect the Dartmoor National Park when the Roadford Rerservoir Scheme was proposed on top of all kind of historical remains etc, and involved made up claims. The enquiry resulted in a presumption that future reservoirs would not swallow parts of Dartmoor. https://campaignerkate.wordpress.com/2018/04/22/the-dartmoor-reservoir-saga-40-years-ago/
One of the more pernicious aspects is that local authorities sometimes want to pander to Water Companies (as they are now) or landowners *, rather than the local community.
There's another one where a water provider wanted to bury a valley under their spoil, because it was convenient for them.
* They tried to do this in the Hoogstraten case, so it was necessary to get a law passed that allowed Local Authorities to be compelled to perform their statutory duties.
Barty will be along soon to declare that anyone should be allowed to build anything anywhere.
They should certainly have built a vast amount more reservoirs than European regulations allowed. The last major reservoir project completed in the UK was in 1992. Do you think that is in any way defensible given that we have nearly 10 million more people living here?
Was there an EU regulation preventing the building of reservoirs, or was it just incompetence of our own government?
The process for the one they're proposing to build near here started in 2022 with a plan for construction to start in 2030 and be actually in operation in 2036: https://fensreservoir.co.uk/consultation/next-steps/
I don't think you can blame that on the EU. And IMHO six years of multiple consultation phases before the relevant minister makes a decision is ridiculous.
You are suggesting that the plans for reservoirs have just been delayed for more than 30 years?
I'm suggesting that if we want reservoirs we would probably get more of them without an eight year long massively expensive consultation and planning process.
Noting the BBC report about Danish immigration policy can we expect PB’s prominent exponent of the same on here this afternoon? Been away myself for a bit.
Labour have two choices: Stick with the manifesto pledges, fiddle round the edges, the economy stagnates, they get blattered at the election Man up, things are bad, tax rise for growth, economy performs, people feel better, nobody cares about the manifesto
They'll probably manage to splice the front half of the second one and the back half of the first one...
"Tax rise for growth" lol do you have even a basic understanding of how the economy functions?
Yes. Raise x. Invest it. Return xx
Cash needs to flow or the economy contracts. Do YOU understand how the economy works? Rich people aren't letting the cash even trickle down any more - most people feel broke and the economy contracts which makes more people broke.
THis is what happens when you don't invest. Could be a major story next year, to put it mildly, if it doesn't start pishing it down. Edit: NB mooted restrictions affecting businesses.
This is the guardian equivalent of the regular Daily Express winter stories about massive snowfalls due soon.
I wouldn't put it that way. For one thing, DE is about future point events. THis is about an ongoing phenomenon.
Edit: and the state of the water mains is a known issue. Replacing them is (a) investment and (b) saves water, a lot of it.
Isn’t that what most of the punitive water bill increases is supposed to cover.
Building a few more reservoirs would help too. Sadly NIMBYism has nixed that more than once.
I'm inclined to suspect the latter was just an excuse for the water companies to do FA. If they really worried about the water supply rather than stockholder dividends they'd have done more to deal with ageing mains to the same effect.
They've been able to do it in the past - Rutland Water in relatively recent years. Relatively recent admittedly taking a lot of load there, it was 1980s IIRC, but Rutlandshire even then was not your average Welsh valley with about 50 people and a trillion sheep.
And as a bonus they got lots of birds and a giant ichthyosaur. What's not to like?
Certainly your first paragraph is the NIMBY argument for stopping new reservoirs being built.
However they are not mutually exclusive. They could do both.
Now the water companies are getting a large cash injection through front loaded increases, and some have been back to the regulator for a little more and got it, let’s see what happens.
First para is not a Nimby argument in itself - it is something they needed to do anyway (contamination, bursts, damage to roads, stoppage to supplies). And because that really is where a lot of water is wasted. It's only a Nimby argument insofar as the water companies were so badly managed it was an open goal for the Nimbies to ask why they wanted to build reservoirs to pump the equivalent straignt into the ground.
Sorry if I wasn’t clear. The first paragraph is a NIMBY argument in the sense I’ve seen it proferred as an excuse not to build reservoirs. If you solve the leaks you don’t need a reservoir.
With a growing poluplation I’d say we need both, especially where the population is growing in the south.
But we need it controlled tightly. That's why strong scrutiny of plans is so important.
In the late 70s water providers were attempting to ram reservoirs into Dartmoor and Exmoor.
Here's Kate Ashbrook's account of fighting to protect the Dartmoor National Park when the Roadford Rerservoir Scheme was proposed on top of all kind of historical remains etc, and involved made up claims. The enquiry resulted in a presumption that future reservoirs would not swallow parts of Dartmoor. https://campaignerkate.wordpress.com/2018/04/22/the-dartmoor-reservoir-saga-40-years-ago/
One of the more pernicious aspects is that local authorities sometimes want to pander to Water Companies (as they are now) or landowners *, rather than the local community.
There's another one where a water provider wanted to bury a valley under their spoil, because it was convenient for them.
* They tried to do this in the Hoogstraten case, so it was necessary to get a law passed that allowed Local Authorities to be compelled to perform their statutory duties.
Barty will be along soon to declare that anyone should be allowed to build anything anywhere.
They should certainly have built a vast amount more reservoirs than European regulations allowed. The last major reservoir project completed in the UK was in 1992. Do you think that is in any way defensible given that we have nearly 10 million more people living here?
Maybe the water companies could have focused a bit more on fixing leaks (3 billion litres per day - 20% of total demand) and reducing sewage spills instead of syphoning off profits (£83bn) much of it to foreign owners (70%).
Water privatisation was a huge mistake.
The government regulator spend a lot of time and effort discouraging digging up streets.
A decade back the leaks in London came into the news. The regulator was ordered by the government to Do Something. Thames Water started digging up roads with enthusiasm. Trenching whole roads to replace mains.
Within a week or 2 the political backlash at the inconvenience had the government turn the other way…
Thames Water seem to be digging up every road in South East London right now. But we've also had frequent road closures caused by burst pipes. At least there's some sense they're getting to grips with it now.
Rather than spending hugely on willy waving aircraft carriers that need US permission to work we should have spent a lot of money on smaller coastal protection vessels. Just sayin’
Noting the BBC report about Danish immigration policy can we expect PB’s prominent exponent of the same on here this afternoon? Been away myself for a bit.
Noting the BBC report about Danish immigration policy can we expect PB’s prominent exponent of the same on here this afternoon? Been away myself for a bit.
Labour have two choices: Stick with the manifesto pledges, fiddle round the edges, the economy stagnates, they get blattered at the election Man up, things are bad, tax rise for growth, economy performs, people feel better, nobody cares about the manifesto
They'll probably manage to splice the front half of the second one and the back half of the first one...
"Tax rise for growth" lol do you have even a basic understanding of how the economy functions?
Yes. Raise x. Invest it. Return xx
Cash needs to flow or the economy contracts. Do YOU understand how the economy works? Rich people aren't letting the cash even trickle down any more - most people feel broke and the economy contracts which makes more people broke.
THis is what happens when you don't invest. Could be a major story next year, to put it mildly, if it doesn't start pishing it down. Edit: NB mooted restrictions affecting businesses.
This is the guardian equivalent of the regular Daily Express winter stories about massive snowfalls due soon.
I wouldn't put it that way. For one thing, DE is about future point events. THis is about an ongoing phenomenon.
Edit: and the state of the water mains is a known issue. Replacing them is (a) investment and (b) saves water, a lot of it.
Isn’t that what most of the punitive water bill increases is supposed to cover.
Building a few more reservoirs would help too. Sadly NIMBYism has nixed that more than once.
I'm inclined to suspect the latter was just an excuse for the water companies to do FA. If they really worried about the water supply rather than stockholder dividends they'd have done more to deal with ageing mains to the same effect.
They've been able to do it in the past - Rutland Water in relatively recent years. Relatively recent admittedly taking a lot of load there, it was 1980s IIRC, but Rutlandshire even then was not your average Welsh valley with about 50 people and a trillion sheep.
And as a bonus they got lots of birds and a giant ichthyosaur. What's not to like?
Certainly your first paragraph is the NIMBY argument for stopping new reservoirs being built.
However they are not mutually exclusive. They could do both.
Now the water companies are getting a large cash injection through front loaded increases, and some have been back to the regulator for a little more and got it, let’s see what happens.
First para is not a Nimby argument in itself - it is something they needed to do anyway (contamination, bursts, damage to roads, stoppage to supplies). And because that really is where a lot of water is wasted. It's only a Nimby argument insofar as the water companies were so badly managed it was an open goal for the Nimbies to ask why they wanted to build reservoirs to pump the equivalent straignt into the ground.
Sorry if I wasn’t clear. The first paragraph is a NIMBY argument in the sense I’ve seen it proferred as an excuse not to build reservoirs. If you solve the leaks you don’t need a reservoir.
With a growing poluplation I’d say we need both, especially where the population is growing in the south.
But we need it controlled tightly. That's why strong scrutiny of plans is so important.
In the late 70s water providers were attempting to ram reservoirs into Dartmoor and Exmoor.
Here's Kate Ashbrook's account of fighting to protect the Dartmoor National Park when the Roadford Rerservoir Scheme was proposed on top of all kind of historical remains etc, and involved made up claims. The enquiry resulted in a presumption that future reservoirs would not swallow parts of Dartmoor. https://campaignerkate.wordpress.com/2018/04/22/the-dartmoor-reservoir-saga-40-years-ago/
One of the more pernicious aspects is that local authorities sometimes want to pander to Water Companies (as they are now) or landowners *, rather than the local community.
There's another one where a water provider wanted to bury a valley under their spoil, because it was convenient for them.
* They tried to do this in the Hoogstraten case, so it was necessary to get a law passed that allowed Local Authorities to be compelled to perform their statutory duties.
Barty will be along soon to declare that anyone should be allowed to build anything anywhere.
They should certainly have built a vast amount more reservoirs than European regulations allowed. The last major reservoir project completed in the UK was in 1992. Do you think that is in any way defensible given that we have nearly 10 million more people living here?
Maybe the water companies could have focused a bit more on fixing leaks (3 billion litres per day - 20% of total demand) and reducing sewage spills instead of syphoning off profits (£83bn) much of it to foreign owners (70%).
Water privatisation was a huge mistake.
The government regulator spend a lot of time and effort discouraging digging up streets.
A decade back the leaks in London came into the news. The regulator was ordered by the government to Do Something. Thames Water started digging up roads with enthusiasm. Trenching whole roads to replace mains.
Within a week or 2 the political backlash at the inconvenience had the government turn the other way…
Right well, how about we simplify all this by just having a nationalised water corporation, governed by a charter set by parliament, and no regulator?
Oh, and plough all the profits back into fixing leaks preventing sewage spills and building new infrastructure.
Labour have two choices: Stick with the manifesto pledges, fiddle round the edges, the economy stagnates, they get blattered at the election Man up, things are bad, tax rise for growth, economy performs, people feel better, nobody cares about the manifesto
They'll probably manage to splice the front half of the second one and the back half of the first one...
Labour are dead anyway. The inertia, the Starmerwave, Starmer's genocide in Gaza and the hostile media have killed them. No one shed a tear. They might as well use their dying breath to do the right thing.
We are a right wing nation and we always have been. I suspect the nature of media ownership has made us so. Remember what Hitler and Goebbels said about propaganda? The sooner the Tories get back into the saddle, the sooner the media can go back to writing and broadcasting about Coronation Street. And those scumbag filth voters who don't vote Ref or Con can carp on about how nasty the Tories are to their heart's content.
Labour are *probably* dead. I don't think we can presume anything right now because the sands are shifting quickly. Remember that impossible things seem to happen every few years in our politics, so just because Labour winning in 2029 feels impossible now doesn't mean it is impossible.
Have the economy actually start to recover, have Refuk continue to fracture with a hard right battle between Farage and Tommeh Tiny-Dick about how many muslims they can deport and who knows where we go. Labour may seem like the least worst option.
The Labour Party are Monty Python's Norwegian Blue. Even if the economy recovers they are done.
I am assuming the Tories go full Jenrick and steal the vile stinking rags worn by Farage and Yaxley-Lennon ( why are we even considering these ****s as mainstream?). That is probably the least worst option going forward. Jenrick is a ruthless opportunist so once at the top of the greasy poll he might calm the rhetoric down.
I believe the nation is ungovernable by a party that antagonises the press and now the broadcast media like Labour did in 1964 to 70, in 74 to 79 and now from 2024. I have missed out the New Labour Government because hostility was limited, because initially Blair courted the Press Barons and sought approval from Mrs Thatcher, before then embarking on a US Republican led war against people the Press Barons didn't like and which the media were four square behind.
This time around the Telegraph's Allister Heath and Allison Pearson have been in the vanguard of unhinged headline after unhinged headline. On here too, we get a "scandal" a day. A "scandal" that wouldn't even have registered between 2010 and just prior to Johnson's defenestration.That said media hostility has gone hand in hand this time with appalling comms from the Government and an inertia that few would have forecast. So it's not entirely the media's fault.
If only the Tories (or Reform?) are allowed to govern unhindered by the Fourth Estate, why should anyone else bother trying?
Politics like nature abhors a vacuum. An election that is Tory v Reform for first place is not at the moment thinkable. The next election is going to be some version of Reformtory v The Not Reform party for first and second place, and for leadership of the next government.
Labour are likely to be the lead player in the Not Reform group, there being no other broad enough candidate in both policy (which excludes Green leadership) and demographics (LDs problem).
Labour are value, if any value is to be had. DYOR.
I am not convinced that Reform won't implode under the stress of Jenrick Tories.
I agree it's possible. But the general election will be a contest between ReformTory or ToryReform v Not ReformTory. Which places Labour in probable pole position as the main party which isn't Reform or Tory. About 50%+ of voters are going to vote for a party that isn't Tory or Reform. Their votes have to go somewhere. Most will go to Labour.
I am still not convinced by this theory.
At the moment the next GE looks to be shaping up as a fight between lots of parties that each have large numbers of opponents. But one of them has got to win.
Tactical voting will play a part, but I don’t buy the idea that there will be a huge Labour-voting alliance as a way to stop Reform. Labour will be battling a strong anti-incumbency feeling and a lot of people who will be voting against them too. To tactically vote, people also have to be aware of who in their constituency is most likely to beat the lead candidate. That might be easy in some places, but it’s going to be far from clear in a lot of the country if this political fragmentation continues.
As it stands, I still see a HP as a far more likely outcome, as this jumble of voting patterns fails to see anyone do enough to win. The jury is out on whether that means a Reform led government or some progressive alliance.
This is all based on the current landscape though. There’s over 3 years to go yet.
I very much agree with this analysis of the problem in general. In trying to read the next election - impossible but PB is about predicting that which can't be predicted and assessing probabilities well before it is rational to do so - we are dealing with irresistible forces and immovable objects.
Tactical voting - which I guess will be large, meets two immovable objects: in 400+ seats Labour is the tactical anti Reform vote because they are the incumbent. But in 400+ seats Labour being the incumbent is unpopular and execrated.
My seat (Penrith and Solway) is a lovely example. New boundaries. Clearly Tory leaning in the ancient era up to 2019. Labour in 2024. Projected to be clearly Reform in 2029. LDs never figure. Who do you vote for in 2029 if you want to vote against Reform? Labour are the only choice. Many seats are like that.
This is going to become fascinating in both political and betting terms. I still say that great forces will be in play to keep the Labour vote much higher than it currently appears.
Full disclosure: I am a dinosaur One Nation Tory. My MP was Rory. I therefore don't have a party. Voted Labour in 2024. Through gritted teeth would do so again as things stand.
I have some tales to tell about that MP, who was also mine. But isnt "one nation" just something Conservative supporters say when they are trying to hide away from the tough fiscal decisions that all governments make? "dont blame me, im a different kind of Tory".
There are more PBers in my neck of the woods than I realised.
Rory Stewart might have been a good man but he was not a good MP. His predecessor David Maclean might not have been a good man according to some people, but he was an excellent MP. In the next election Penrith and Solway will be Reform or Tory 1, Tory or Reform 2, Lab or LD 3, LD or Lab 4. So to keep Reform out in P and S vote Tory. It is the only answer.
I guess there will be many seats like this where it will be too complex to guess the votes, or most guessing electors will get it wrong. You could see a confused parliament with a government which falls quickly like 1923 and then the two factions group together having learnt from the election and then another election where there is one Right candidate against one left candidate in each seat.
I knew DM a little, very much a Francis Urquet type, without the cheery personality. Dour, but very competent and serious. Took his role very seriously.
I seem to recall reading that he turned down a cabinet post because he preferred to say as a junior minister (in the home office?) as he felt he could make more impact there. So, yes, quite serious.
He later became Lord Blencathra - can't be many titles more picturesque than that. (I was always smile when I remember that Ted Short became Lord Glenamara, which wasn't a bad effort).
Labour have two choices: Stick with the manifesto pledges, fiddle round the edges, the economy stagnates, they get blattered at the election Man up, things are bad, tax rise for growth, economy performs, people feel better, nobody cares about the manifesto
They'll probably manage to splice the front half of the second one and the back half of the first one...
"Tax rise for growth" lol do you have even a basic understanding of how the economy functions?
Yes. Raise x. Invest it. Return xx
Cash needs to flow or the economy contracts. Do YOU understand how the economy works? Rich people aren't letting the cash even trickle down any more - most people feel broke and the economy contracts which makes more people broke.
THis is what happens when you don't invest. Could be a major story next year, to put it mildly, if it doesn't start pishing it down. Edit: NB mooted restrictions affecting businesses.
This is the guardian equivalent of the regular Daily Express winter stories about massive snowfalls due soon.
I wouldn't put it that way. For one thing, DE is about future point events. THis is about an ongoing phenomenon.
Edit: and the state of the water mains is a known issue. Replacing them is (a) investment and (b) saves water, a lot of it.
Isn’t that what most of the punitive water bill increases is supposed to cover.
Building a few more reservoirs would help too. Sadly NIMBYism has nixed that more than once.
I'm inclined to suspect the latter was just an excuse for the water companies to do FA. If they really worried about the water supply rather than stockholder dividends they'd have done more to deal with ageing mains to the same effect.
They've been able to do it in the past - Rutland Water in relatively recent years. Relatively recent admittedly taking a lot of load there, it was 1980s IIRC, but Rutlandshire even then was not your average Welsh valley with about 50 people and a trillion sheep.
And as a bonus they got lots of birds and a giant ichthyosaur. What's not to like?
Certainly your first paragraph is the NIMBY argument for stopping new reservoirs being built.
However they are not mutually exclusive. They could do both.
Now the water companies are getting a large cash injection through front loaded increases, and some have been back to the regulator for a little more and got it, let’s see what happens.
First para is not a Nimby argument in itself - it is something they needed to do anyway (contamination, bursts, damage to roads, stoppage to supplies). And because that really is where a lot of water is wasted. It's only a Nimby argument insofar as the water companies were so badly managed it was an open goal for the Nimbies to ask why they wanted to build reservoirs to pump the equivalent straignt into the ground.
Sorry if I wasn’t clear. The first paragraph is a NIMBY argument in the sense I’ve seen it proferred as an excuse not to build reservoirs. If you solve the leaks you don’t need a reservoir.
With a growing poluplation I’d say we need both, especially where the population is growing in the south.
But we need it controlled tightly. That's why strong scrutiny of plans is so important.
In the late 70s water providers were attempting to ram reservoirs into Dartmoor and Exmoor.
Here's Kate Ashbrook's account of fighting to protect the Dartmoor National Park when the Roadford Rerservoir Scheme was proposed on top of all kind of historical remains etc, and involved made up claims. The enquiry resulted in a presumption that future reservoirs would not swallow parts of Dartmoor. https://campaignerkate.wordpress.com/2018/04/22/the-dartmoor-reservoir-saga-40-years-ago/
One of the more pernicious aspects is that local authorities sometimes want to pander to Water Companies (as they are now) or landowners *, rather than the local community.
There's another one where a water provider wanted to bury a valley under their spoil, because it was convenient for them.
* They tried to do this in the Hoogstraten case, so it was necessary to get a law passed that allowed Local Authorities to be compelled to perform their statutory duties.
Barty will be along soon to declare that anyone should be allowed to build anything anywhere.
They should certainly have built a vast amount more reservoirs than European regulations allowed. The last major reservoir project completed in the UK was in 1992. Do you think that is in any way defensible given that we have nearly 10 million more people living here?
Maybe the water companies could have focused a bit more on fixing leaks (3 billion litres per day - 20% of total demand) and reducing sewage spills instead of syphoning off profits (£83bn) much of it to foreign owners (70%).
Water privatisation was a huge mistake.
Same old broken record - nothing can be blamed on the EU, everything is the result of the evul Tories.
AI:
The Habitats Directive 1992 (implemented in UK law through the Habitats Regulations) had a significant impact on reservoir building by introducing rigorous environmental assessments, particularly the Habitats Regulations Assessment (HRA) (or Appropriate Assessment), which made it much harder to build large infrastructure projects in or near protected nature sites.
Key Impacts
-Mandatory Assessment: Any proposed reservoir project likely to have a significant effect on a "European site" (Special Areas of Conservation or Special Protection Areas, now part of the UK's national site network) requires a formal HRA. This assessment must determine if the project will have an "adverse effect on the integrity" of the site.
-Precautionary Principle: The assessment process requires a precautionary approach. If there is a mere possibility of a significant effect, an HRA is needed.
-Strict Protection: The legislation provides a high level of protection for designated sites and species. Unlike development on other sites (e.g., Sites of Special Scientific Interest), development on a European site generally cannot proceed if it causes harm unless there are "imperative reasons of overriding public interest" (IROPI) and compensatory measures are provided. This high bar has significantly restricted development in such areas.
-Focus on Alternatives and Mitigation: The directive forces developers and planning authorities to consider alternative solutions and ensure any proposed mitigation measures are effective and certain at the time of the assessment, rather than relying on future possibilities.
-Increased Scrutiny and Legal Challenges: The stringent requirements mean that any proposed reservoir project faces significant scrutiny from environmental bodies and the public, often leading to legal challenges if the proper procedures are not followed or if the environmental impact is deemed unacceptable. This has increased complexity, costs, and potential delays for developers.
-Strategic Planning: The directive's principles have been integrated into high-level planning, such as National Policy Statements for Water Resources, requiring water companies to consider environmental sustainability in their long-term water management plans and assess potential impacts on protected sites.
So in common language - after 1992 (or 94 in the case of UK statute), there was a de facto ban on new reservoir development. Yes, I am sure our regulators and planning authorities on a power trip didn't help, and nor did well-meaning idiots protesting that 368 square miles of Dartmoor would be submerged under a mega-reservoir, and nor did the water companies, who would have used the regulations as an excuse to do nothing and bank profits.
However, the fundamental reason for the situation is not greedy water companies, it is EU regulation.
Whenever someone refers to POTUS as DJT I think of Radio 1’s lamented Hairy Cornflake. Good times.
DLT was bang average imo. Like a lot of people in the media, he became a star because he could do the job, not because he was particularly good at it. It's the same as ordinary jobs, come to think of it, once you are established, basic competence is enough.
Labour have two choices: Stick with the manifesto pledges, fiddle round the edges, the economy stagnates, they get blattered at the election Man up, things are bad, tax rise for growth, economy performs, people feel better, nobody cares about the manifesto
They'll probably manage to splice the front half of the second one and the back half of the first one...
Labour are dead anyway. The inertia, the Starmerwave, Starmer's genocide in Gaza and the hostile media have killed them. No one shed a tear. They might as well use their dying breath to do the right thing.
We are a right wing nation and we always have been. I suspect the nature of media ownership has made us so. Remember what Hitler and Goebbels said about propaganda? The sooner the Tories get back into the saddle, the sooner the media can go back to writing and broadcasting about Coronation Street. And those scumbag filth voters who don't vote Ref or Con can carp on about how nasty the Tories are to their heart's content.
Labour are *probably* dead. I don't think we can presume anything right now because the sands are shifting quickly. Remember that impossible things seem to happen every few years in our politics, so just because Labour winning in 2029 feels impossible now doesn't mean it is impossible.
Have the economy actually start to recover, have Refuk continue to fracture with a hard right battle between Farage and Tommeh Tiny-Dick about how many muslims they can deport and who knows where we go. Labour may seem like the least worst option.
The Labour Party are Monty Python's Norwegian Blue. Even if the economy recovers they are done.
I am assuming the Tories go full Jenrick and steal the vile stinking rags worn by Farage and Yaxley-Lennon ( why are we even considering these ****s as mainstream?). That is probably the least worst option going forward. Jenrick is a ruthless opportunist so once at the top of the greasy poll he might calm the rhetoric down.
I believe the nation is ungovernable by a party that antagonises the press and now the broadcast media like Labour did in 1964 to 70, in 74 to 79 and now from 2024. I have missed out the New Labour Government because hostility was limited, because initially Blair courted the Press Barons and sought approval from Mrs Thatcher, before then embarking on a US Republican led war against people the Press Barons didn't like and which the media were four square behind.
This time around the Telegraph's Allister Heath and Allison Pearson have been in the vanguard of unhinged headline after unhinged headline. On here too, we get a "scandal" a day. A "scandal" that wouldn't even have registered between 2010 and just prior to Johnson's defenestration.That said media hostility has gone hand in hand this time with appalling comms from the Government and an inertia that few would have forecast. So it's not entirely the media's fault.
If only the Tories (or Reform?) are allowed to govern unhindered by the Fourth Estate, why should anyone else bother trying?
Politics like nature abhors a vacuum. An election that is Tory v Reform for first place is not at the moment thinkable. The next election is going to be some version of Reformtory v The Not Reform party for first and second place, and for leadership of the next government.
Labour are likely to be the lead player in the Not Reform group, there being no other broad enough candidate in both policy (which excludes Green leadership) and demographics (LDs problem).
Labour are value, if any value is to be had. DYOR.
I am not convinced that Reform won't implode under the stress of Jenrick Tories.
I agree it's possible. But the general election will be a contest between ReformTory or ToryReform v Not ReformTory. Which places Labour in probable pole position as the main party which isn't Reform or Tory. About 50%+ of voters are going to vote for a party that isn't Tory or Reform. Their votes have to go somewhere. Most will go to Labour.
I am still not convinced by this theory.
At the moment the next GE looks to be shaping up as a fight between lots of parties that each have large numbers of opponents. But one of them has got to win.
Tactical voting will play a part, but I don’t buy the idea that there will be a huge Labour-voting alliance as a way to stop Reform. Labour will be battling a strong anti-incumbency feeling and a lot of people who will be voting against them too. To tactically vote, people also have to be aware of who in their constituency is most likely to beat the lead candidate. That might be easy in some places, but it’s going to be far from clear in a lot of the country if this political fragmentation continues.
As it stands, I still see a HP as a far more likely outcome, as this jumble of voting patterns fails to see anyone do enough to win. The jury is out on whether that means a Reform led government or some progressive alliance.
This is all based on the current landscape though. There’s over 3 years to go yet.
I very much agree with this analysis of the problem in general. In trying to read the next election - impossible but PB is about predicting that which can't be predicted and assessing probabilities well before it is rational to do so - we are dealing with irresistible forces and immovable objects.
Tactical voting - which I guess will be large, meets two immovable objects: in 400+ seats Labour is the tactical anti Reform vote because they are the incumbent. But in 400+ seats Labour being the incumbent is unpopular and execrated.
My seat (Penrith and Solway) is a lovely example. New boundaries. Clearly Tory leaning in the ancient era up to 2019. Labour in 2024. Projected to be clearly Reform in 2029. LDs never figure. Who do you vote for in 2029 if you want to vote against Reform? Labour are the only choice. Many seats are like that.
This is going to become fascinating in both political and betting terms. I still say that great forces will be in play to keep the Labour vote much higher than it currently appears.
Full disclosure: I am a dinosaur One Nation Tory. My MP was Rory. I therefore don't have a party. Voted Labour in 2024. Through gritted teeth would do so again as things stand.
I have some tales to tell about that MP, who was also mine. But isnt "one nation" just something Conservative supporters say when they are trying to hide away from the tough fiscal decisions that all governments make? "dont blame me, im a different kind of Tory".
No.
One Nation Toryism (RIP) stood for a conscious adherence to the traditional Tory stuff of sound finance, free enterprise and free trade, money making, Burkean views on organic development in society, individual responsibility, small platoons, family, monarchy and established religion, sound defence but also did not regard the post WWII social democratic state as something to be derided, marginalised and neglected but as a central part of the social deal in a wealthy nation.
There are bits of it in Labour, LD and of course some Tories. Occasionally Farage shows flashes of understanding what it is all about too. But no party consistently does enough to keep that interesting and difficult balance of free enterprise, fiscal responsibility and the welfare state.
But who would you say moved away from that, in terms of major figures in the party? Thatcher? Major? Hague? IDS? Cameron? May? Johnson? Truss? Sunak?
They all fitted that mould in different ways. Remember Truss was brought down by an unfunded expansion of a fuel support system to stop people going into poverty.
Thatcher. It's always Thatcher...
The implied regret for the passing of the post-war consensus, which incidentally (not incidentally) was the last time the country was driven into the shitter, is extraordinarily fatuous.
Labour have two choices: Stick with the manifesto pledges, fiddle round the edges, the economy stagnates, they get blattered at the election Man up, things are bad, tax rise for growth, economy performs, people feel better, nobody cares about the manifesto
They'll probably manage to splice the front half of the second one and the back half of the first one...
"Tax rise for growth" lol do you have even a basic understanding of how the economy functions?
Yes. Raise x. Invest it. Return xx
Cash needs to flow or the economy contracts. Do YOU understand how the economy works? Rich people aren't letting the cash even trickle down any more - most people feel broke and the economy contracts which makes more people broke.
THis is what happens when you don't invest. Could be a major story next year, to put it mildly, if it doesn't start pishing it down. Edit: NB mooted restrictions affecting businesses.
This is the guardian equivalent of the regular Daily Express winter stories about massive snowfalls due soon.
I wouldn't put it that way. For one thing, DE is about future point events. THis is about an ongoing phenomenon.
Edit: and the state of the water mains is a known issue. Replacing them is (a) investment and (b) saves water, a lot of it.
Isn’t that what most of the punitive water bill increases is supposed to cover.
Building a few more reservoirs would help too. Sadly NIMBYism has nixed that more than once.
I'm inclined to suspect the latter was just an excuse for the water companies to do FA. If they really worried about the water supply rather than stockholder dividends they'd have done more to deal with ageing mains to the same effect.
They've been able to do it in the past - Rutland Water in relatively recent years. Relatively recent admittedly taking a lot of load there, it was 1980s IIRC, but Rutlandshire even then was not your average Welsh valley with about 50 people and a trillion sheep.
And as a bonus they got lots of birds and a giant ichthyosaur. What's not to like?
Certainly your first paragraph is the NIMBY argument for stopping new reservoirs being built.
However they are not mutually exclusive. They could do both.
Now the water companies are getting a large cash injection through front loaded increases, and some have been back to the regulator for a little more and got it, let’s see what happens.
First para is not a Nimby argument in itself - it is something they needed to do anyway (contamination, bursts, damage to roads, stoppage to supplies). And because that really is where a lot of water is wasted. It's only a Nimby argument insofar as the water companies were so badly managed it was an open goal for the Nimbies to ask why they wanted to build reservoirs to pump the equivalent straignt into the ground.
Sorry if I wasn’t clear. The first paragraph is a NIMBY argument in the sense I’ve seen it proferred as an excuse not to build reservoirs. If you solve the leaks you don’t need a reservoir.
With a growing poluplation I’d say we need both, especially where the population is growing in the south.
But we need it controlled tightly. That's why strong scrutiny of plans is so important.
In the late 70s water providers were attempting to ram reservoirs into Dartmoor and Exmoor.
Here's Kate Ashbrook's account of fighting to protect the Dartmoor National Park when the Roadford Rerservoir Scheme was proposed on top of all kind of historical remains etc, and involved made up claims. The enquiry resulted in a presumption that future reservoirs would not swallow parts of Dartmoor. https://campaignerkate.wordpress.com/2018/04/22/the-dartmoor-reservoir-saga-40-years-ago/
One of the more pernicious aspects is that local authorities sometimes want to pander to Water Companies (as they are now) or landowners *, rather than the local community.
There's another one where a water provider wanted to bury a valley under their spoil, because it was convenient for them.
* They tried to do this in the Hoogstraten case, so it was necessary to get a law passed that allowed Local Authorities to be compelled to perform their statutory duties.
Barty will be along soon to declare that anyone should be allowed to build anything anywhere.
They should certainly have built a vast amount more reservoirs than European regulations allowed. The last major reservoir project completed in the UK was in 1992. Do you think that is in any way defensible given that we have nearly 10 million more people living here?
Was there an EU regulation preventing the building of reservoirs, or was it just incompetence of our own government?
The process for the one they're proposing to build near here started in 2022 with a plan for construction to start in 2030 and be actually in operation in 2036: https://fensreservoir.co.uk/consultation/next-steps/
I don't think you can blame that on the EU. And IMHO six years of multiple consultation phases before the relevant minister makes a decision is ridiculous.
You are suggesting that the plans for reservoirs have just been delayed for more than 30 years?
I'm suggesting that if we want reservoirs we would probably get more of them without an eight year long massively expensive consultation and planning process.
Most of that consultation and planning process comes from the EU.
Labour have two choices: Stick with the manifesto pledges, fiddle round the edges, the economy stagnates, they get blattered at the election Man up, things are bad, tax rise for growth, economy performs, people feel better, nobody cares about the manifesto
They'll probably manage to splice the front half of the second one and the back half of the first one...
"Tax rise for growth" lol do you have even a basic understanding of how the economy functions?
Yes. Raise x. Invest it. Return xx
Cash needs to flow or the economy contracts. Do YOU understand how the economy works? Rich people aren't letting the cash even trickle down any more - most people feel broke and the economy contracts which makes more people broke.
THis is what happens when you don't invest. Could be a major story next year, to put it mildly, if it doesn't start pishing it down. Edit: NB mooted restrictions affecting businesses.
This is the guardian equivalent of the regular Daily Express winter stories about massive snowfalls due soon.
I wouldn't put it that way. For one thing, DE is about future point events. THis is about an ongoing phenomenon.
Edit: and the state of the water mains is a known issue. Replacing them is (a) investment and (b) saves water, a lot of it.
Isn’t that what most of the punitive water bill increases is supposed to cover.
Building a few more reservoirs would help too. Sadly NIMBYism has nixed that more than once.
I'm inclined to suspect the latter was just an excuse for the water companies to do FA. If they really worried about the water supply rather than stockholder dividends they'd have done more to deal with ageing mains to the same effect.
They've been able to do it in the past - Rutland Water in relatively recent years. Relatively recent admittedly taking a lot of load there, it was 1980s IIRC, but Rutlandshire even then was not your average Welsh valley with about 50 people and a trillion sheep.
And as a bonus they got lots of birds and a giant ichthyosaur. What's not to like?
Certainly your first paragraph is the NIMBY argument for stopping new reservoirs being built.
However they are not mutually exclusive. They could do both.
Now the water companies are getting a large cash injection through front loaded increases, and some have been back to the regulator for a little more and got it, let’s see what happens.
First para is not a Nimby argument in itself - it is something they needed to do anyway (contamination, bursts, damage to roads, stoppage to supplies). And because that really is where a lot of water is wasted. It's only a Nimby argument insofar as the water companies were so badly managed it was an open goal for the Nimbies to ask why they wanted to build reservoirs to pump the equivalent straignt into the ground.
Sorry if I wasn’t clear. The first paragraph is a NIMBY argument in the sense I’ve seen it proferred as an excuse not to build reservoirs. If you solve the leaks you don’t need a reservoir.
With a growing poluplation I’d say we need both, especially where the population is growing in the south.
But we need it controlled tightly. That's why strong scrutiny of plans is so important.
In the late 70s water providers were attempting to ram reservoirs into Dartmoor and Exmoor.
Here's Kate Ashbrook's account of fighting to protect the Dartmoor National Park when the Roadford Rerservoir Scheme was proposed on top of all kind of historical remains etc, and involved made up claims. The enquiry resulted in a presumption that future reservoirs would not swallow parts of Dartmoor. https://campaignerkate.wordpress.com/2018/04/22/the-dartmoor-reservoir-saga-40-years-ago/
One of the more pernicious aspects is that local authorities sometimes want to pander to Water Companies (as they are now) or landowners *, rather than the local community.
There's another one where a water provider wanted to bury a valley under their spoil, because it was convenient for them.
* They tried to do this in the Hoogstraten case, so it was necessary to get a law passed that allowed Local Authorities to be compelled to perform their statutory duties.
Barty will be along soon to declare that anyone should be allowed to build anything anywhere.
They should certainly have built a vast amount more reservoirs than European regulations allowed. The last major reservoir project completed in the UK was in 1992. Do you think that is in any way defensible given that we have nearly 10 million more people living here?
Maybe the water companies could have focused a bit more on fixing leaks (3 billion litres per day - 20% of total demand) and reducing sewage spills instead of syphoning off profits (£83bn) much of it to foreign owners (70%).
Water privatisation was a huge mistake.
Same old broken record - nothing can be blamed on the EU, everything is the result of the evul Tories.
AI:
The Habitats Directive 1992 (implemented in UK law through the Habitats Regulations) had a significant impact on reservoir building by introducing rigorous environmental assessments, particularly the Habitats Regulations Assessment (HRA) (or Appropriate Assessment), which made it much harder to build large infrastructure projects in or near protected nature sites.
Key Impacts
-Mandatory Assessment: Any proposed reservoir project likely to have a significant effect on a "European site" (Special Areas of Conservation or Special Protection Areas, now part of the UK's national site network) requires a formal HRA. This assessment must determine if the project will have an "adverse effect on the integrity" of the site.
-Precautionary Principle: The assessment process requires a precautionary approach. If there is a mere possibility of a significant effect, an HRA is needed.
-Strict Protection: The legislation provides a high level of protection for designated sites and species. Unlike development on other sites (e.g., Sites of Special Scientific Interest), development on a European site generally cannot proceed if it causes harm unless there are "imperative reasons of overriding public interest" (IROPI) and compensatory measures are provided. This high bar has significantly restricted development in such areas.
-Focus on Alternatives and Mitigation: The directive forces developers and planning authorities to consider alternative solutions and ensure any proposed mitigation measures are effective and certain at the time of the assessment, rather than relying on future possibilities.
-Increased Scrutiny and Legal Challenges: The stringent requirements mean that any proposed reservoir project faces significant scrutiny from environmental bodies and the public, often leading to legal challenges if the proper procedures are not followed or if the environmental impact is deemed unacceptable. This has increased complexity, costs, and potential delays for developers.
-Strategic Planning: The directive's principles have been integrated into high-level planning, such as National Policy Statements for Water Resources, requiring water companies to consider environmental sustainability in their long-term water management plans and assess potential impacts on protected sites.
So in common language - after 1992 (or 94 in the case of UK statute), there was a de facto ban on new reservoir development. Yes, I am sure our regulators and planning authorities on a power trip didn't help, and nor did well-meaning idiots protesting that 368 square miles of Dartmoor would be submerged under a mega-reservoir, and nor did the water companies, who would have used the regulations as an excuse to do nothing and bank profits.
However, the fundamental reason for the situation is not greedy water companies, it is EU regulation.
Did you even bother to read my post? As an alternative to trashing the environment with new reservoirs how about firstly fixing the leaks that cause 20% of supply to be literally pissed away.
Labour have two choices: Stick with the manifesto pledges, fiddle round the edges, the economy stagnates, they get blattered at the election Man up, things are bad, tax rise for growth, economy performs, people feel better, nobody cares about the manifesto
They'll probably manage to splice the front half of the second one and the back half of the first one...
Labour are dead anyway. The inertia, the Starmerwave, Starmer's genocide in Gaza and the hostile media have killed them. No one shed a tear. They might as well use their dying breath to do the right thing.
We are a right wing nation and we always have been. I suspect the nature of media ownership has made us so. Remember what Hitler and Goebbels said about propaganda? The sooner the Tories get back into the saddle, the sooner the media can go back to writing and broadcasting about Coronation Street. And those scumbag filth voters who don't vote Ref or Con can carp on about how nasty the Tories are to their heart's content.
Labour are *probably* dead. I don't think we can presume anything right now because the sands are shifting quickly. Remember that impossible things seem to happen every few years in our politics, so just because Labour winning in 2029 feels impossible now doesn't mean it is impossible.
Have the economy actually start to recover, have Refuk continue to fracture with a hard right battle between Farage and Tommeh Tiny-Dick about how many muslims they can deport and who knows where we go. Labour may seem like the least worst option.
The Labour Party are Monty Python's Norwegian Blue. Even if the economy recovers they are done.
I am assuming the Tories go full Jenrick and steal the vile stinking rags worn by Farage and Yaxley-Lennon ( why are we even considering these ****s as mainstream?). That is probably the least worst option going forward. Jenrick is a ruthless opportunist so once at the top of the greasy poll he might calm the rhetoric down.
I believe the nation is ungovernable by a party that antagonises the press and now the broadcast media like Labour did in 1964 to 70, in 74 to 79 and now from 2024. I have missed out the New Labour Government because hostility was limited, because initially Blair courted the Press Barons and sought approval from Mrs Thatcher, before then embarking on a US Republican led war against people the Press Barons didn't like and which the media were four square behind.
This time around the Telegraph's Allister Heath and Allison Pearson have been in the vanguard of unhinged headline after unhinged headline. On here too, we get a "scandal" a day. A "scandal" that wouldn't even have registered between 2010 and just prior to Johnson's defenestration.That said media hostility has gone hand in hand this time with appalling comms from the Government and an inertia that few would have forecast. So it's not entirely the media's fault.
If only the Tories (or Reform?) are allowed to govern unhindered by the Fourth Estate, why should anyone else bother trying?
Politics like nature abhors a vacuum. An election that is Tory v Reform for first place is not at the moment thinkable. The next election is going to be some version of Reformtory v The Not Reform party for first and second place, and for leadership of the next government.
Labour are likely to be the lead player in the Not Reform group, there being no other broad enough candidate in both policy (which excludes Green leadership) and demographics (LDs problem).
Labour are value, if any value is to be had. DYOR.
I am not convinced that Reform won't implode under the stress of Jenrick Tories.
I agree it's possible. But the general election will be a contest between ReformTory or ToryReform v Not ReformTory. Which places Labour in probable pole position as the main party which isn't Reform or Tory. About 50%+ of voters are going to vote for a party that isn't Tory or Reform. Their votes have to go somewhere. Most will go to Labour.
I am still not convinced by this theory.
At the moment the next GE looks to be shaping up as a fight between lots of parties that each have large numbers of opponents. But one of them has got to win.
Tactical voting will play a part, but I don’t buy the idea that there will be a huge Labour-voting alliance as a way to stop Reform. Labour will be battling a strong anti-incumbency feeling and a lot of people who will be voting against them too. To tactically vote, people also have to be aware of who in their constituency is most likely to beat the lead candidate. That might be easy in some places, but it’s going to be far from clear in a lot of the country if this political fragmentation continues.
As it stands, I still see a HP as a far more likely outcome, as this jumble of voting patterns fails to see anyone do enough to win. The jury is out on whether that means a Reform led government or some progressive alliance.
This is all based on the current landscape though. There’s over 3 years to go yet.
I very much agree with this analysis of the problem in general. In trying to read the next election - impossible but PB is about predicting that which can't be predicted and assessing probabilities well before it is rational to do so - we are dealing with irresistible forces and immovable objects.
Tactical voting - which I guess will be large, meets two immovable objects: in 400+ seats Labour is the tactical anti Reform vote because they are the incumbent. But in 400+ seats Labour being the incumbent is unpopular and execrated.
My seat (Penrith and Solway) is a lovely example. New boundaries. Clearly Tory leaning in the ancient era up to 2019. Labour in 2024. Projected to be clearly Reform in 2029. LDs never figure. Who do you vote for in 2029 if you want to vote against Reform? Labour are the only choice. Many seats are like that.
This is going to become fascinating in both political and betting terms. I still say that great forces will be in play to keep the Labour vote much higher than it currently appears.
Full disclosure: I am a dinosaur One Nation Tory. My MP was Rory. I therefore don't have a party. Voted Labour in 2024. Through gritted teeth would do so again as things stand.
I have some tales to tell about that MP, who was also mine. But isnt "one nation" just something Conservative supporters say when they are trying to hide away from the tough fiscal decisions that all governments make? "dont blame me, im a different kind of Tory".
There are more PBers in my neck of the woods than I realised.
Rory Stewart might have been a good man but he was not a good MP. His predecessor David Maclean might not have been a good man according to some people, but he was an excellent MP. In the next election Penrith and Solway will be Reform or Tory 1, Tory or Reform 2, Lab or LD 3, LD or Lab 4. So to keep Reform out in P and S vote Tory. It is the only answer.
I guess there will be many seats like this where it will be too complex to guess the votes, or most guessing electors will get it wrong. You could see a confused parliament with a government which falls quickly like 1923 and then the two factions group together having learnt from the election and then another election where there is one Right candidate against one left candidate in each seat.
I knew DM a little, very much a Francis Urquet type, without the cheery personality. Dour, but very competent and serious. Took his role very seriously.
I seem to recall reading that he turned down a cabinet post because he preferred to say as a junior minister (in the home office?) as he felt he could make more impact there. So, yes, quite serious.
He later became Lord Blencathra - can't be many titles more picturesque than that. (I was always smile when I remember that Ted Short became Lord Glenamara, which wasn't a bad effort).
Just looked him up on wiki.
"Lord Blencathra returned to the frontbenches for the first time in 19 years on 1 September 2024 as Shadow Minister for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs."
Labour have two choices: Stick with the manifesto pledges, fiddle round the edges, the economy stagnates, they get blattered at the election Man up, things are bad, tax rise for growth, economy performs, people feel better, nobody cares about the manifesto
They'll probably manage to splice the front half of the second one and the back half of the first one...
Labour are dead anyway. The inertia, the Starmerwave, Starmer's genocide in Gaza and the hostile media have killed them. No one shed a tear. They might as well use their dying breath to do the right thing.
We are a right wing nation and we always have been. I suspect the nature of media ownership has made us so. Remember what Hitler and Goebbels said about propaganda? The sooner the Tories get back into the saddle, the sooner the media can go back to writing and broadcasting about Coronation Street. And those scumbag filth voters who don't vote Ref or Con can carp on about how nasty the Tories are to their heart's content.
Labour are *probably* dead. I don't think we can presume anything right now because the sands are shifting quickly. Remember that impossible things seem to happen every few years in our politics, so just because Labour winning in 2029 feels impossible now doesn't mean it is impossible.
Have the economy actually start to recover, have Refuk continue to fracture with a hard right battle between Farage and Tommeh Tiny-Dick about how many muslims they can deport and who knows where we go. Labour may seem like the least worst option.
The Labour Party are Monty Python's Norwegian Blue. Even if the economy recovers they are done.
I am assuming the Tories go full Jenrick and steal the vile stinking rags worn by Farage and Yaxley-Lennon ( why are we even considering these ****s as mainstream?). That is probably the least worst option going forward. Jenrick is a ruthless opportunist so once at the top of the greasy poll he might calm the rhetoric down.
I believe the nation is ungovernable by a party that antagonises the press and now the broadcast media like Labour did in 1964 to 70, in 74 to 79 and now from 2024. I have missed out the New Labour Government because hostility was limited, because initially Blair courted the Press Barons and sought approval from Mrs Thatcher, before then embarking on a US Republican led war against people the Press Barons didn't like and which the media were four square behind.
This time around the Telegraph's Allister Heath and Allison Pearson have been in the vanguard of unhinged headline after unhinged headline. On here too, we get a "scandal" a day. A "scandal" that wouldn't even have registered between 2010 and just prior to Johnson's defenestration.That said media hostility has gone hand in hand this time with appalling comms from the Government and an inertia that few would have forecast. So it's not entirely the media's fault.
If only the Tories (or Reform?) are allowed to govern unhindered by the Fourth Estate, why should anyone else bother trying?
Politics like nature abhors a vacuum. An election that is Tory v Reform for first place is not at the moment thinkable. The next election is going to be some version of Reformtory v The Not Reform party for first and second place, and for leadership of the next government.
Labour are likely to be the lead player in the Not Reform group, there being no other broad enough candidate in both policy (which excludes Green leadership) and demographics (LDs problem).
Labour are value, if any value is to be had. DYOR.
I am not convinced that Reform won't implode under the stress of Jenrick Tories.
I agree it's possible. But the general election will be a contest between ReformTory or ToryReform v Not ReformTory. Which places Labour in probable pole position as the main party which isn't Reform or Tory. About 50%+ of voters are going to vote for a party that isn't Tory or Reform. Their votes have to go somewhere. Most will go to Labour.
I am still not convinced by this theory.
At the moment the next GE looks to be shaping up as a fight between lots of parties that each have large numbers of opponents. But one of them has got to win.
Tactical voting will play a part, but I don’t buy the idea that there will be a huge Labour-voting alliance as a way to stop Reform. Labour will be battling a strong anti-incumbency feeling and a lot of people who will be voting against them too. To tactically vote, people also have to be aware of who in their constituency is most likely to beat the lead candidate. That might be easy in some places, but it’s going to be far from clear in a lot of the country if this political fragmentation continues.
As it stands, I still see a HP as a far more likely outcome, as this jumble of voting patterns fails to see anyone do enough to win. The jury is out on whether that means a Reform led government or some progressive alliance.
This is all based on the current landscape though. There’s over 3 years to go yet.
I very much agree with this analysis of the problem in general. In trying to read the next election - impossible but PB is about predicting that which can't be predicted and assessing probabilities well before it is rational to do so - we are dealing with irresistible forces and immovable objects.
Tactical voting - which I guess will be large, meets two immovable objects: in 400+ seats Labour is the tactical anti Reform vote because they are the incumbent. But in 400+ seats Labour being the incumbent is unpopular and execrated.
My seat (Penrith and Solway) is a lovely example. New boundaries. Clearly Tory leaning in the ancient era up to 2019. Labour in 2024. Projected to be clearly Reform in 2029. LDs never figure. Who do you vote for in 2029 if you want to vote against Reform? Labour are the only choice. Many seats are like that.
This is going to become fascinating in both political and betting terms. I still say that great forces will be in play to keep the Labour vote much higher than it currently appears.
Full disclosure: I am a dinosaur One Nation Tory. My MP was Rory. I therefore don't have a party. Voted Labour in 2024. Through gritted teeth would do so again as things stand.
I have some tales to tell about that MP, who was also mine. But isnt "one nation" just something Conservative supporters say when they are trying to hide away from the tough fiscal decisions that all governments make? "dont blame me, im a different kind of Tory".
No.
One Nation Toryism (RIP) stood for a conscious adherence to the traditional Tory stuff of sound finance, free enterprise and free trade, money making, Burkean views on organic development in society, individual responsibility, small platoons, family, monarchy and established religion, sound defence but also did not regard the post WWII social democratic state as something to be derided, marginalised and neglected but as a central part of the social deal in a wealthy nation.
There are bits of it in Labour, LD and of course some Tories. Occasionally Farage shows flashes of understanding what it is all about too. But no party consistently does enough to keep that interesting and difficult balance of free enterprise, fiscal responsibility and the welfare state.
But who would you say moved away from that, in terms of major figures in the party? Thatcher? Major? Hague? IDS? Cameron? May? Johnson? Truss? Sunak?
They all fitted that mould in different ways. Remember Truss was brought down by an unfunded expansion of a fuel support system to stop people going into poverty.
Thatcher. It's always Thatcher...
The implied regret for the passing of the post-war consensus, which incidentally (not incidentally) was the last time the country was driven into the shitter, is extraordinarily fatuous.
It was surely better than the pre-war consensus.
Pre war house building was far superior to post war, despite the fact houses needed to be replaced post blitz.
We saw one of the fastest increase in construction and living standards in the interwar period. We have never again seen rates of development since as we saw then.
Labour have two choices: Stick with the manifesto pledges, fiddle round the edges, the economy stagnates, they get blattered at the election Man up, things are bad, tax rise for growth, economy performs, people feel better, nobody cares about the manifesto
They'll probably manage to splice the front half of the second one and the back half of the first one...
Labour are dead anyway. The inertia, the Starmerwave, Starmer's genocide in Gaza and the hostile media have killed them. No one shed a tear. They might as well use their dying breath to do the right thing.
We are a right wing nation and we always have been. I suspect the nature of media ownership has made us so. Remember what Hitler and Goebbels said about propaganda? The sooner the Tories get back into the saddle, the sooner the media can go back to writing and broadcasting about Coronation Street. And those scumbag filth voters who don't vote Ref or Con can carp on about how nasty the Tories are to their heart's content.
Labour are *probably* dead. I don't think we can presume anything right now because the sands are shifting quickly. Remember that impossible things seem to happen every few years in our politics, so just because Labour winning in 2029 feels impossible now doesn't mean it is impossible.
Have the economy actually start to recover, have Refuk continue to fracture with a hard right battle between Farage and Tommeh Tiny-Dick about how many muslims they can deport and who knows where we go. Labour may seem like the least worst option.
The Labour Party are Monty Python's Norwegian Blue. Even if the economy recovers they are done.
I am assuming the Tories go full Jenrick and steal the vile stinking rags worn by Farage and Yaxley-Lennon ( why are we even considering these ****s as mainstream?). That is probably the least worst option going forward. Jenrick is a ruthless opportunist so once at the top of the greasy poll he might calm the rhetoric down.
I believe the nation is ungovernable by a party that antagonises the press and now the broadcast media like Labour did in 1964 to 70, in 74 to 79 and now from 2024. I have missed out the New Labour Government because hostility was limited, because initially Blair courted the Press Barons and sought approval from Mrs Thatcher, before then embarking on a US Republican led war against people the Press Barons didn't like and which the media were four square behind.
This time around the Telegraph's Allister Heath and Allison Pearson have been in the vanguard of unhinged headline after unhinged headline. On here too, we get a "scandal" a day. A "scandal" that wouldn't even have registered between 2010 and just prior to Johnson's defenestration.That said media hostility has gone hand in hand this time with appalling comms from the Government and an inertia that few would have forecast. So it's not entirely the media's fault.
If only the Tories (or Reform?) are allowed to govern unhindered by the Fourth Estate, why should anyone else bother trying?
Politics like nature abhors a vacuum. An election that is Tory v Reform for first place is not at the moment thinkable. The next election is going to be some version of Reformtory v The Not Reform party for first and second place, and for leadership of the next government.
Labour are likely to be the lead player in the Not Reform group, there being no other broad enough candidate in both policy (which excludes Green leadership) and demographics (LDs problem).
Labour are value, if any value is to be had. DYOR.
I am not convinced that Reform won't implode under the stress of Jenrick Tories.
I agree it's possible. But the general election will be a contest between ReformTory or ToryReform v Not ReformTory. Which places Labour in probable pole position as the main party which isn't Reform or Tory. About 50%+ of voters are going to vote for a party that isn't Tory or Reform. Their votes have to go somewhere. Most will go to Labour.
I am still not convinced by this theory.
At the moment the next GE looks to be shaping up as a fight between lots of parties that each have large numbers of opponents. But one of them has got to win.
Tactical voting will play a part, but I don’t buy the idea that there will be a huge Labour-voting alliance as a way to stop Reform. Labour will be battling a strong anti-incumbency feeling and a lot of people who will be voting against them too. To tactically vote, people also have to be aware of who in their constituency is most likely to beat the lead candidate. That might be easy in some places, but it’s going to be far from clear in a lot of the country if this political fragmentation continues.
As it stands, I still see a HP as a far more likely outcome, as this jumble of voting patterns fails to see anyone do enough to win. The jury is out on whether that means a Reform led government or some progressive alliance.
This is all based on the current landscape though. There’s over 3 years to go yet.
I very much agree with this analysis of the problem in general. In trying to read the next election - impossible but PB is about predicting that which can't be predicted and assessing probabilities well before it is rational to do so - we are dealing with irresistible forces and immovable objects.
Tactical voting - which I guess will be large, meets two immovable objects: in 400+ seats Labour is the tactical anti Reform vote because they are the incumbent. But in 400+ seats Labour being the incumbent is unpopular and execrated.
My seat (Penrith and Solway) is a lovely example. New boundaries. Clearly Tory leaning in the ancient era up to 2019. Labour in 2024. Projected to be clearly Reform in 2029. LDs never figure. Who do you vote for in 2029 if you want to vote against Reform? Labour are the only choice. Many seats are like that.
This is going to become fascinating in both political and betting terms. I still say that great forces will be in play to keep the Labour vote much higher than it currently appears.
Full disclosure: I am a dinosaur One Nation Tory. My MP was Rory. I therefore don't have a party. Voted Labour in 2024. Through gritted teeth would do so again as things stand.
I have some tales to tell about that MP, who was also mine. But isnt "one nation" just something Conservative supporters say when they are trying to hide away from the tough fiscal decisions that all governments make? "dont blame me, im a different kind of Tory".
No.
One Nation Toryism (RIP) stood for a conscious adherence to the traditional Tory stuff of sound finance, free enterprise and free trade, money making, Burkean views on organic development in society, individual responsibility, small platoons, family, monarchy and established religion, sound defence but also did not regard the post WWII social democratic state as something to be derided, marginalised and neglected but as a central part of the social deal in a wealthy nation.
There are bits of it in Labour, LD and of course some Tories. Occasionally Farage shows flashes of understanding what it is all about too. But no party consistently does enough to keep that interesting and difficult balance of free enterprise, fiscal responsibility and the welfare state.
But who would you say moved away from that, in terms of major figures in the party? Thatcher? Major? Hague? IDS? Cameron? May? Johnson? Truss? Sunak?
They all fitted that mould in different ways. Remember Truss was brought down by an unfunded expansion of a fuel support system to stop people going into poverty.
Thatcher. It's always Thatcher...
The implied regret for the passing of the post-war consensus, which incidentally (not incidentally) was the last time the country was driven into the shitter, is extraordinarily fatuous.
It was surely better than the pre-war consensus.
Pre war house building was far superior to post war, despite the fact houses needed to be replaced post blitz.
We saw one of the fastest increase in construction and living standards in the interwar period. We have never again seen rates of development since as we saw then.
It’s quite astonishing that we’ve seen nothing about housebuilding or planning reform, when Labour themselves before the election said that housing was one of the biggest issues facing the country.
Labour have two choices: Stick with the manifesto pledges, fiddle round the edges, the economy stagnates, they get blattered at the election Man up, things are bad, tax rise for growth, economy performs, people feel better, nobody cares about the manifesto
They'll probably manage to splice the front half of the second one and the back half of the first one...
Labour are dead anyway. The inertia, the Starmerwave, Starmer's genocide in Gaza and the hostile media have killed them. No one shed a tear. They might as well use their dying breath to do the right thing.
We are a right wing nation and we always have been. I suspect the nature of media ownership has made us so. Remember what Hitler and Goebbels said about propaganda? The sooner the Tories get back into the saddle, the sooner the media can go back to writing and broadcasting about Coronation Street. And those scumbag filth voters who don't vote Ref or Con can carp on about how nasty the Tories are to their heart's content.
Labour are *probably* dead. I don't think we can presume anything right now because the sands are shifting quickly. Remember that impossible things seem to happen every few years in our politics, so just because Labour winning in 2029 feels impossible now doesn't mean it is impossible.
Have the economy actually start to recover, have Refuk continue to fracture with a hard right battle between Farage and Tommeh Tiny-Dick about how many muslims they can deport and who knows where we go. Labour may seem like the least worst option.
The Labour Party are Monty Python's Norwegian Blue. Even if the economy recovers they are done.
I am assuming the Tories go full Jenrick and steal the vile stinking rags worn by Farage and Yaxley-Lennon ( why are we even considering these ****s as mainstream?). That is probably the least worst option going forward. Jenrick is a ruthless opportunist so once at the top of the greasy poll he might calm the rhetoric down.
I believe the nation is ungovernable by a party that antagonises the press and now the broadcast media like Labour did in 1964 to 70, in 74 to 79 and now from 2024. I have missed out the New Labour Government because hostility was limited, because initially Blair courted the Press Barons and sought approval from Mrs Thatcher, before then embarking on a US Republican led war against people the Press Barons didn't like and which the media were four square behind.
This time around the Telegraph's Allister Heath and Allison Pearson have been in the vanguard of unhinged headline after unhinged headline. On here too, we get a "scandal" a day. A "scandal" that wouldn't even have registered between 2010 and just prior to Johnson's defenestration.That said media hostility has gone hand in hand this time with appalling comms from the Government and an inertia that few would have forecast. So it's not entirely the media's fault.
If only the Tories (or Reform?) are allowed to govern unhindered by the Fourth Estate, why should anyone else bother trying?
Politics like nature abhors a vacuum. An election that is Tory v Reform for first place is not at the moment thinkable. The next election is going to be some version of Reformtory v The Not Reform party for first and second place, and for leadership of the next government.
Labour are likely to be the lead player in the Not Reform group, there being no other broad enough candidate in both policy (which excludes Green leadership) and demographics (LDs problem).
Labour are value, if any value is to be had. DYOR.
I am not convinced that Reform won't implode under the stress of Jenrick Tories.
I agree it's possible. But the general election will be a contest between ReformTory or ToryReform v Not ReformTory. Which places Labour in probable pole position as the main party which isn't Reform or Tory. About 50%+ of voters are going to vote for a party that isn't Tory or Reform. Their votes have to go somewhere. Most will go to Labour.
I am still not convinced by this theory.
At the moment the next GE looks to be shaping up as a fight between lots of parties that each have large numbers of opponents. But one of them has got to win.
Tactical voting will play a part, but I don’t buy the idea that there will be a huge Labour-voting alliance as a way to stop Reform. Labour will be battling a strong anti-incumbency feeling and a lot of people who will be voting against them too. To tactically vote, people also have to be aware of who in their constituency is most likely to beat the lead candidate. That might be easy in some places, but it’s going to be far from clear in a lot of the country if this political fragmentation continues.
As it stands, I still see a HP as a far more likely outcome, as this jumble of voting patterns fails to see anyone do enough to win. The jury is out on whether that means a Reform led government or some progressive alliance.
This is all based on the current landscape though. There’s over 3 years to go yet.
I very much agree with this analysis of the problem in general. In trying to read the next election - impossible but PB is about predicting that which can't be predicted and assessing probabilities well before it is rational to do so - we are dealing with irresistible forces and immovable objects.
Tactical voting - which I guess will be large, meets two immovable objects: in 400+ seats Labour is the tactical anti Reform vote because they are the incumbent. But in 400+ seats Labour being the incumbent is unpopular and execrated.
My seat (Penrith and Solway) is a lovely example. New boundaries. Clearly Tory leaning in the ancient era up to 2019. Labour in 2024. Projected to be clearly Reform in 2029. LDs never figure. Who do you vote for in 2029 if you want to vote against Reform? Labour are the only choice. Many seats are like that.
This is going to become fascinating in both political and betting terms. I still say that great forces will be in play to keep the Labour vote much higher than it currently appears.
Full disclosure: I am a dinosaur One Nation Tory. My MP was Rory. I therefore don't have a party. Voted Labour in 2024. Through gritted teeth would do so again as things stand.
I have some tales to tell about that MP, who was also mine. But isnt "one nation" just something Conservative supporters say when they are trying to hide away from the tough fiscal decisions that all governments make? "dont blame me, im a different kind of Tory".
No.
One Nation Toryism (RIP) stood for a conscious adherence to the traditional Tory stuff of sound finance, free enterprise and free trade, money making, Burkean views on organic development in society, individual responsibility, small platoons, family, monarchy and established religion, sound defence but also did not regard the post WWII social democratic state as something to be derided, marginalised and neglected but as a central part of the social deal in a wealthy nation.
There are bits of it in Labour, LD and of course some Tories. Occasionally Farage shows flashes of understanding what it is all about too. But no party consistently does enough to keep that interesting and difficult balance of free enterprise, fiscal responsibility and the welfare state.
But who would you say moved away from that, in terms of major figures in the party? Thatcher? Major? Hague? IDS? Cameron? May? Johnson? Truss? Sunak?
They all fitted that mould in different ways. Remember Truss was brought down by an unfunded expansion of a fuel support system to stop people going into poverty.
Thatcher. It's always Thatcher...
The implied regret for the passing of the post-war consensus, which incidentally (not incidentally) was the last time the country was driven into the shitter, is extraordinarily fatuous.
It was surely better than the pre-war consensus.
Pre war house building was far superior to post war, despite the fact houses needed to be replaced post blitz.
We saw one of the fastest increase in construction and living standards in the interwar period. We have never again seen rates of development since as we saw then.
Massive new housing estates (council and private); new suburbs; new towns. That's what we had then and need now.
Labour have two choices: Stick with the manifesto pledges, fiddle round the edges, the economy stagnates, they get blattered at the election Man up, things are bad, tax rise for growth, economy performs, people feel better, nobody cares about the manifesto
They'll probably manage to splice the front half of the second one and the back half of the first one...
Labour are dead anyway. The inertia, the Starmerwave, Starmer's genocide in Gaza and the hostile media have killed them. No one shed a tear. They might as well use their dying breath to do the right thing.
We are a right wing nation and we always have been. I suspect the nature of media ownership has made us so. Remember what Hitler and Goebbels said about propaganda? The sooner the Tories get back into the saddle, the sooner the media can go back to writing and broadcasting about Coronation Street. And those scumbag filth voters who don't vote Ref or Con can carp on about how nasty the Tories are to their heart's content.
Labour are *probably* dead. I don't think we can presume anything right now because the sands are shifting quickly. Remember that impossible things seem to happen every few years in our politics, so just because Labour winning in 2029 feels impossible now doesn't mean it is impossible.
Have the economy actually start to recover, have Refuk continue to fracture with a hard right battle between Farage and Tommeh Tiny-Dick about how many muslims they can deport and who knows where we go. Labour may seem like the least worst option.
The Labour Party are Monty Python's Norwegian Blue. Even if the economy recovers they are done.
I am assuming the Tories go full Jenrick and steal the vile stinking rags worn by Farage and Yaxley-Lennon ( why are we even considering these ****s as mainstream?). That is probably the least worst option going forward. Jenrick is a ruthless opportunist so once at the top of the greasy poll he might calm the rhetoric down.
I believe the nation is ungovernable by a party that antagonises the press and now the broadcast media like Labour did in 1964 to 70, in 74 to 79 and now from 2024. I have missed out the New Labour Government because hostility was limited, because initially Blair courted the Press Barons and sought approval from Mrs Thatcher, before then embarking on a US Republican led war against people the Press Barons didn't like and which the media were four square behind.
This time around the Telegraph's Allister Heath and Allison Pearson have been in the vanguard of unhinged headline after unhinged headline. On here too, we get a "scandal" a day. A "scandal" that wouldn't even have registered between 2010 and just prior to Johnson's defenestration.That said media hostility has gone hand in hand this time with appalling comms from the Government and an inertia that few would have forecast. So it's not entirely the media's fault.
If only the Tories (or Reform?) are allowed to govern unhindered by the Fourth Estate, why should anyone else bother trying?
Politics like nature abhors a vacuum. An election that is Tory v Reform for first place is not at the moment thinkable. The next election is going to be some version of Reformtory v The Not Reform party for first and second place, and for leadership of the next government.
Labour are likely to be the lead player in the Not Reform group, there being no other broad enough candidate in both policy (which excludes Green leadership) and demographics (LDs problem).
Labour are value, if any value is to be had. DYOR.
I am not convinced that Reform won't implode under the stress of Jenrick Tories.
I agree it's possible. But the general election will be a contest between ReformTory or ToryReform v Not ReformTory. Which places Labour in probable pole position as the main party which isn't Reform or Tory. About 50%+ of voters are going to vote for a party that isn't Tory or Reform. Their votes have to go somewhere. Most will go to Labour.
I am still not convinced by this theory.
At the moment the next GE looks to be shaping up as a fight between lots of parties that each have large numbers of opponents. But one of them has got to win.
Tactical voting will play a part, but I don’t buy the idea that there will be a huge Labour-voting alliance as a way to stop Reform. Labour will be battling a strong anti-incumbency feeling and a lot of people who will be voting against them too. To tactically vote, people also have to be aware of who in their constituency is most likely to beat the lead candidate. That might be easy in some places, but it’s going to be far from clear in a lot of the country if this political fragmentation continues.
As it stands, I still see a HP as a far more likely outcome, as this jumble of voting patterns fails to see anyone do enough to win. The jury is out on whether that means a Reform led government or some progressive alliance.
This is all based on the current landscape though. There’s over 3 years to go yet.
I very much agree with this analysis of the problem in general. In trying to read the next election - impossible but PB is about predicting that which can't be predicted and assessing probabilities well before it is rational to do so - we are dealing with irresistible forces and immovable objects.
Tactical voting - which I guess will be large, meets two immovable objects: in 400+ seats Labour is the tactical anti Reform vote because they are the incumbent. But in 400+ seats Labour being the incumbent is unpopular and execrated.
My seat (Penrith and Solway) is a lovely example. New boundaries. Clearly Tory leaning in the ancient era up to 2019. Labour in 2024. Projected to be clearly Reform in 2029. LDs never figure. Who do you vote for in 2029 if you want to vote against Reform? Labour are the only choice. Many seats are like that.
This is going to become fascinating in both political and betting terms. I still say that great forces will be in play to keep the Labour vote much higher than it currently appears.
Full disclosure: I am a dinosaur One Nation Tory. My MP was Rory. I therefore don't have a party. Voted Labour in 2024. Through gritted teeth would do so again as things stand.
I have some tales to tell about that MP, who was also mine. But isnt "one nation" just something Conservative supporters say when they are trying to hide away from the tough fiscal decisions that all governments make? "dont blame me, im a different kind of Tory".
No.
One Nation Toryism (RIP) stood for a conscious adherence to the traditional Tory stuff of sound finance, free enterprise and free trade, money making, Burkean views on organic development in society, individual responsibility, small platoons, family, monarchy and established religion, sound defence but also did not regard the post WWII social democratic state as something to be derided, marginalised and neglected but as a central part of the social deal in a wealthy nation.
There are bits of it in Labour, LD and of course some Tories. Occasionally Farage shows flashes of understanding what it is all about too. But no party consistently does enough to keep that interesting and difficult balance of free enterprise, fiscal responsibility and the welfare state.
But who would you say moved away from that, in terms of major figures in the party? Thatcher? Major? Hague? IDS? Cameron? May? Johnson? Truss? Sunak?
They all fitted that mould in different ways. Remember Truss was brought down by an unfunded expansion of a fuel support system to stop people going into poverty.
Thatcher. It's always Thatcher...
The implied regret for the passing of the post-war consensus, which incidentally (not incidentally) was the last time the country was driven into the shitter, is extraordinarily fatuous.
It was surely better than the pre-war consensus.
Pre war house building was far superior to post war, despite the fact houses needed to be replaced post blitz.
We saw one of the fastest increase in construction and living standards in the interwar period. We have never again seen rates of development since as we saw then.
Massive new housing estates (council and private); new suburbs; new towns. That's what we had then and need now.
Absofrigginglutely!
A return to 1930s planning laws would be a huge step in the right direction and unlock a lot of potential economic growth.
Labour have two choices: Stick with the manifesto pledges, fiddle round the edges, the economy stagnates, they get blattered at the election Man up, things are bad, tax rise for growth, economy performs, people feel better, nobody cares about the manifesto
They'll probably manage to splice the front half of the second one and the back half of the first one...
"Tax rise for growth" lol do you have even a basic understanding of how the economy functions?
Yes. Raise x. Invest it. Return xx
Cash needs to flow or the economy contracts. Do YOU understand how the economy works? Rich people aren't letting the cash even trickle down any more - most people feel broke and the economy contracts which makes more people broke.
THis is what happens when you don't invest. Could be a major story next year, to put it mildly, if it doesn't start pishing it down. Edit: NB mooted restrictions affecting businesses.
This is the guardian equivalent of the regular Daily Express winter stories about massive snowfalls due soon.
I wouldn't put it that way. For one thing, DE is about future point events. THis is about an ongoing phenomenon.
Edit: and the state of the water mains is a known issue. Replacing them is (a) investment and (b) saves water, a lot of it.
Isn’t that what most of the punitive water bill increases is supposed to cover.
Building a few more reservoirs would help too. Sadly NIMBYism has nixed that more than once.
I'm inclined to suspect the latter was just an excuse for the water companies to do FA. If they really worried about the water supply rather than stockholder dividends they'd have done more to deal with ageing mains to the same effect.
They've been able to do it in the past - Rutland Water in relatively recent years. Relatively recent admittedly taking a lot of load there, it was 1980s IIRC, but Rutlandshire even then was not your average Welsh valley with about 50 people and a trillion sheep.
And as a bonus they got lots of birds and a giant ichthyosaur. What's not to like?
Certainly your first paragraph is the NIMBY argument for stopping new reservoirs being built.
However they are not mutually exclusive. They could do both.
Now the water companies are getting a large cash injection through front loaded increases, and some have been back to the regulator for a little more and got it, let’s see what happens.
First para is not a Nimby argument in itself - it is something they needed to do anyway (contamination, bursts, damage to roads, stoppage to supplies). And because that really is where a lot of water is wasted. It's only a Nimby argument insofar as the water companies were so badly managed it was an open goal for the Nimbies to ask why they wanted to build reservoirs to pump the equivalent straignt into the ground.
Sorry if I wasn’t clear. The first paragraph is a NIMBY argument in the sense I’ve seen it proferred as an excuse not to build reservoirs. If you solve the leaks you don’t need a reservoir.
With a growing poluplation I’d say we need both, especially where the population is growing in the south.
But we need it controlled tightly. That's why strong scrutiny of plans is so important.
In the late 70s water providers were attempting to ram reservoirs into Dartmoor and Exmoor.
Here's Kate Ashbrook's account of fighting to protect the Dartmoor National Park when the Roadford Rerservoir Scheme was proposed on top of all kind of historical remains etc, and involved made up claims. The enquiry resulted in a presumption that future reservoirs would not swallow parts of Dartmoor. https://campaignerkate.wordpress.com/2018/04/22/the-dartmoor-reservoir-saga-40-years-ago/
One of the more pernicious aspects is that local authorities sometimes want to pander to Water Companies (as they are now) or landowners *, rather than the local community.
There's another one where a water provider wanted to bury a valley under their spoil, because it was convenient for them.
* They tried to do this in the Hoogstraten case, so it was necessary to get a law passed that allowed Local Authorities to be compelled to perform their statutory duties.
Barty will be along soon to declare that anyone should be allowed to build anything anywhere.
They should certainly have built a vast amount more reservoirs than European regulations allowed. The last major reservoir project completed in the UK was in 1992. Do you think that is in any way defensible given that we have nearly 10 million more people living here?
Maybe the water companies could have focused a bit more on fixing leaks (3 billion litres per day - 20% of total demand) and reducing sewage spills instead of syphoning off profits (£83bn) much of it to foreign owners (70%).
Water privatisation was a huge mistake.
The government regulator spend a lot of time and effort discouraging digging up streets.
A decade back the leaks in London came into the news. The regulator was ordered by the government to Do Something. Thames Water started digging up roads with enthusiasm. Trenching whole roads to replace mains.
Within a week or 2 the political backlash at the inconvenience had the government turn the other way…
Right well, how about we simplify all this by just having a nationalised water corporation, governed by a charter set by parliament, and no regulator?
Oh, and plough all the profits back into fixing leaks preventing sewage spills and building new infrastructure.
Under nationalisation, investment was always blocked the Treasury.
One big reason for privatisation was the upcoming need to invest in water quality for tap water (EEC rules, interestingly). The Treasury pushed for more waivers…
We’ve been talking about the Danish system on here for years. Someone with better search capabilities than me might identify the first mention of the Danish approach.
There used to be a poster on here who waxed lyrical about a bit of Danish. You could almost sense him getting moist as he typed ‘bulldozing immigrant ghettos’. Such a shame he’s not around to glory in this moment.
Rather than spending hugely on willy waving aircraft carriers that need US permission to work we should have spent a lot of money on smaller coastal protection vessels. Just sayin’
Whilst I agree with you on the folly of the aircraft carriers I’m not sure what you think the extra coastal patrol vessels will do as they can tow back so all they will be doing is escorting in more small boat migrants
Labour have two choices: Stick with the manifesto pledges, fiddle round the edges, the economy stagnates, they get blattered at the election Man up, things are bad, tax rise for growth, economy performs, people feel better, nobody cares about the manifesto
They'll probably manage to splice the front half of the second one and the back half of the first one...
Labour are dead anyway. The inertia, the Starmerwave, Starmer's genocide in Gaza and the hostile media have killed them. No one shed a tear. They might as well use their dying breath to do the right thing.
We are a right wing nation and we always have been. I suspect the nature of media ownership has made us so. Remember what Hitler and Goebbels said about propaganda? The sooner the Tories get back into the saddle, the sooner the media can go back to writing and broadcasting about Coronation Street. And those scumbag filth voters who don't vote Ref or Con can carp on about how nasty the Tories are to their heart's content.
Labour are *probably* dead. I don't think we can presume anything right now because the sands are shifting quickly. Remember that impossible things seem to happen every few years in our politics, so just because Labour winning in 2029 feels impossible now doesn't mean it is impossible.
Have the economy actually start to recover, have Refuk continue to fracture with a hard right battle between Farage and Tommeh Tiny-Dick about how many muslims they can deport and who knows where we go. Labour may seem like the least worst option.
The Labour Party are Monty Python's Norwegian Blue. Even if the economy recovers they are done.
I am assuming the Tories go full Jenrick and steal the vile stinking rags worn by Farage and Yaxley-Lennon ( why are we even considering these ****s as mainstream?). That is probably the least worst option going forward. Jenrick is a ruthless opportunist so once at the top of the greasy poll he might calm the rhetoric down.
I believe the nation is ungovernable by a party that antagonises the press and now the broadcast media like Labour did in 1964 to 70, in 74 to 79 and now from 2024. I have missed out the New Labour Government because hostility was limited, because initially Blair courted the Press Barons and sought approval from Mrs Thatcher, before then embarking on a US Republican led war against people the Press Barons didn't like and which the media were four square behind.
This time around the Telegraph's Allister Heath and Allison Pearson have been in the vanguard of unhinged headline after unhinged headline. On here too, we get a "scandal" a day. A "scandal" that wouldn't even have registered between 2010 and just prior to Johnson's defenestration.That said media hostility has gone hand in hand this time with appalling comms from the Government and an inertia that few would have forecast. So it's not entirely the media's fault.
If only the Tories (or Reform?) are allowed to govern unhindered by the Fourth Estate, why should anyone else bother trying?
Politics like nature abhors a vacuum. An election that is Tory v Reform for first place is not at the moment thinkable. The next election is going to be some version of Reformtory v The Not Reform party for first and second place, and for leadership of the next government.
Labour are likely to be the lead player in the Not Reform group, there being no other broad enough candidate in both policy (which excludes Green leadership) and demographics (LDs problem).
Labour are value, if any value is to be had. DYOR.
I am not convinced that Reform won't implode under the stress of Jenrick Tories.
I agree it's possible. But the general election will be a contest between ReformTory or ToryReform v Not ReformTory. Which places Labour in probable pole position as the main party which isn't Reform or Tory. About 50%+ of voters are going to vote for a party that isn't Tory or Reform. Their votes have to go somewhere. Most will go to Labour.
I am still not convinced by this theory.
At the moment the next GE looks to be shaping up as a fight between lots of parties that each have large numbers of opponents. But one of them has got to win.
Tactical voting will play a part, but I don’t buy the idea that there will be a huge Labour-voting alliance as a way to stop Reform. Labour will be battling a strong anti-incumbency feeling and a lot of people who will be voting against them too. To tactically vote, people also have to be aware of who in their constituency is most likely to beat the lead candidate. That might be easy in some places, but it’s going to be far from clear in a lot of the country if this political fragmentation continues.
As it stands, I still see a HP as a far more likely outcome, as this jumble of voting patterns fails to see anyone do enough to win. The jury is out on whether that means a Reform led government or some progressive alliance.
This is all based on the current landscape though. There’s over 3 years to go yet.
I very much agree with this analysis of the problem in general. In trying to read the next election - impossible but PB is about predicting that which can't be predicted and assessing probabilities well before it is rational to do so - we are dealing with irresistible forces and immovable objects.
Tactical voting - which I guess will be large, meets two immovable objects: in 400+ seats Labour is the tactical anti Reform vote because they are the incumbent. But in 400+ seats Labour being the incumbent is unpopular and execrated.
My seat (Penrith and Solway) is a lovely example. New boundaries. Clearly Tory leaning in the ancient era up to 2019. Labour in 2024. Projected to be clearly Reform in 2029. LDs never figure. Who do you vote for in 2029 if you want to vote against Reform? Labour are the only choice. Many seats are like that.
This is going to become fascinating in both political and betting terms. I still say that great forces will be in play to keep the Labour vote much higher than it currently appears.
Full disclosure: I am a dinosaur One Nation Tory. My MP was Rory. I therefore don't have a party. Voted Labour in 2024. Through gritted teeth would do so again as things stand.
I have some tales to tell about that MP, who was also mine. But isnt "one nation" just something Conservative supporters say when they are trying to hide away from the tough fiscal decisions that all governments make? "dont blame me, im a different kind of Tory".
No.
One Nation Toryism (RIP) stood for a conscious adherence to the traditional Tory stuff of sound finance, free enterprise and free trade, money making, Burkean views on organic development in society, individual responsibility, small platoons, family, monarchy and established religion, sound defence but also did not regard the post WWII social democratic state as something to be derided, marginalised and neglected but as a central part of the social deal in a wealthy nation.
There are bits of it in Labour, LD and of course some Tories. Occasionally Farage shows flashes of understanding what it is all about too. But no party consistently does enough to keep that interesting and difficult balance of free enterprise, fiscal responsibility and the welfare state.
In economic terms Boris was probably the most One Nation Tory PM since MacMillan if you ignore Brexit. In his own words a ‘Brexity Hezza’
Rather than spending hugely on willy waving aircraft carriers that need US permission to work we should have spent a lot of money on smaller coastal protection vessels. Just sayin’
Whilst I agree with you on the folly of the aircraft carriers I’m not sure what you think the extra coastal patrol vessels will do as they can tow back so all they will be doing is escorting in more small boat migrants
Labour have two choices: Stick with the manifesto pledges, fiddle round the edges, the economy stagnates, they get blattered at the election Man up, things are bad, tax rise for growth, economy performs, people feel better, nobody cares about the manifesto
They'll probably manage to splice the front half of the second one and the back half of the first one...
You beg the question of whether tax rises will lead to economic growth. Why not cut taxes for growth? The Chancellor can't just tack “for growth” on the end of whatever the Treasury brainstormed and guarantee it will happen.
Sure! Its an option, but I'm not sure its one they can do.
Cut taxes to entrepreneurs like me to go generate economic growth. OK, infrastructure is bad and getting worse, my potential customers feel broke and aren't spending and now feel even worse as you've cut expenditure on vital stuff again.
Government could borrow to pay for the tax cuts for growth. No, hang on that was the Truss Delusion.
Whilst I agree that taxes are too high, they can't cut them now. But what they could do is unveil a completely revised tax code - change the game completely by rolling welfare into a universal payment and scrapping all the tax loopholes by abolishing the taxes they avoid.
You can't drive growth by taxing less. But you could drive growth by taxing differently...
You certainly could drive growth by taxing less.
Here's an example:
I'm currently running a business with a full order book out to 2028. I want to do more work, employ more people, maybe even make a larger profit and pay more tax.
My biggest constraint at the moment is premises. I basically need a steel framed shed with a decent sized overhead crane in it. I'm renting one that's 5k sq ft, I to grow really need 10-15k sq ft. I nearly bought a 21k sq ft site, the bit that kiboshed the deal was that it came with a £32k pa business rates bill, and covering that, and the stamp duty was just too much dead money to overcome straight after moving.
There are several things you could do which would enable me to grow. You could abolish planning permission, and let me build a suitable building on farmland (I'm in a rural area, and quite geographically constrained if I don't want to lose my existing staff). The site I was trying to buy was £850k, I could buy some land and build everything I want for about £250k.
Alternatively, imagine a scheme where when a business moves into a more expensive rateable premises, the difference in business rates is phased in over 5 years - that would have given me time to get over the "hump" of moving, and let me start expanding and taking on staff to get turnover up before I was hit for the rates.
Incidentally, the site I wanted to buy has been sold to a haulage firm. They are going to knock down the buildings to get out of the rates, and use the hardstanding to park lorries. So the council will lose the rates anyway, and there will be one less small industrial site out there for a manufacturing or engineering business.
Taxes, especially badly designed ones, destroy growth. The only route to meaningful growth is reducing taxes and/or regulation. Until we have a government which understands this, we will remain stuck in this doom loop of ever higher taxes and lower growth.
The idea that a high tax burden destroys growth just doesn't reconcile with the experience of the rest of Europe, where we see both economic growth and significantly higher standards of living in countries with higher tax burdens.
You might be right that the correct route for the UK is lower taxes, lower regulations. But it does come across as dogmatic when you assert in this way. You can make a strong argument that the 40% burden in Germany and the Netherlands, 45% in France has delivered more for their populations than the 33% in the UK.
Firstly, it is the opposite of dogma when a member takes time to relate his actual experience.
Secondly, Europe's growth has been stagnant vs. the USA over the last 20 years. Few countries have done quite as badly as the UK, with its toxic mix of high tax and regulation with an oddly laissez faire attitude to the family silver being sold off, but the overall trend is clearly shown in the relative growth figures. That absolutely reconciles with the theory that a high tax, high regulation environment kills growth, and it's absurd denialism to say otherwise.
Compared with the United States in the past 20 years or so, we have had Osborne's failed austerity but more subtle is the Covid response where Britain subsidised companies while America subsidised workers. It also of course has had a shedload of government investment which our faux free marketeers decry as ‘picking winners’.
We did not have 'failed austerity', we had an extremely modest attempt to rein in spending which led to a couple of years when Government spending didn't rise - it certainly didn't fall by much, and it soon continued its upward trajectory. There was no serious attempt to reduce the size of the state.
The USA practices austerity with knobs on. Federal and State expenditure is 36% of GDP, compared to 44% in the UK. Factor in a bigger share being spent on defence and healthcare, along with pork barrel projects, and you have a meaner State there than you do here.
Albeit when austerity was happening here, Obama was increasing spending in the USA. Hence Osborne received a standing ovation in the early 2010s when he addressed a GOP dinner and the Tea Party was at its height
We’ve been talking about the Danish system on here for years. Someone with better search capabilities than me might identify the first mention of the Danish approach.
There used to be a poster on here who waxed lyrical about a bit of Danish. You could almost sense him getting moist as he typed ‘bulldozing immigrant ghettos’. Such a shame he’s not around to glory in this moment.
Rather than spending hugely on willy waving aircraft carriers that need US permission to work we should have spent a lot of money on smaller coastal protection vessels. Just sayin’
Whilst I agree with you on the folly of the aircraft carriers I’m not sure what you think the extra coastal patrol vessels will do as they can tow back so all they will be doing is escorting in more small boat migrants
So an island nation that gives up on Sea Control?
Excellent.
How can a very expensive pair of carriers, with barely enough of a support fleet control the seas around the UK in a way that can’t be done by subs, other surface vessels and land based aircraft from the UK and Europe?
The potential enemy is Russia and I’m not sure an aircraft carrier will make a huge positive, especially based on the state of theor military.
As for other seas, we can’t stretch to defending them on either cost or kit. We can’t be a world policeman anymore so the money should be spent on what is most useful for our sector of NATO territory.
Rather than spending hugely on willy waving aircraft carriers that need US permission to work we should have spent a lot of money on smaller coastal protection vessels. Just sayin’
Whilst I agree with you on the folly of the aircraft carriers I’m not sure what you think the extra coastal patrol vessels will do as they can tow back so all they will be doing is escorting in more small boat migrants
So an island nation that gives up on Sea Control?
Excellent.
How can a very expensive pair of carriers, with barely enough of a support fleet control the seas around the UK in a way that can’t be done by subs, other surface vessels and land based aircraft from the UK and Europe?
The potential enemy is Russia and I’m not sure an aircraft carrier will make a huge positive, especially based on the state of theor military.
As for other seas, we can’t stretch to defending them on either cost or kit. We can’t be a world policeman anymore so the money should be spent on what is most useful for our sector of NATO territory.
The use of carriers in exercises with Northern European nations might be of interest to you
You should also consider the number of other countries expanding their carrier programs. And why.
Rather than spending hugely on willy waving aircraft carriers that need US permission to work we should have spent a lot of money on smaller coastal protection vessels. Just sayin’
Whilst I agree with you on the folly of the aircraft carriers I’m not sure what you think the extra coastal patrol vessels will do as they can tow back so all they will be doing is escorting in more small boat migrants
So an island nation that gives up on Sea Control?
Excellent.
How can a very expensive pair of carriers, with barely enough of a support fleet control the seas around the UK in a way that can’t be done by subs, other surface vessels and land based aircraft from the UK and Europe?
The potential enemy is Russia and I’m not sure an aircraft carrier will make a huge positive, especially based on the state of theor military.
As for other seas, we can’t stretch to defending them on either cost or kit. We can’t be a world policeman anymore so the money should be spent on what is most useful for our sector of NATO territory.
The use of carriers in exercises with Northern European nations might be of interest to you
You should also consider the number of other countries expanding their carrier programs. And why.
Labour have two choices: Stick with the manifesto pledges, fiddle round the edges, the economy stagnates, they get blattered at the election Man up, things are bad, tax rise for growth, economy performs, people feel better, nobody cares about the manifesto
They'll probably manage to splice the front half of the second one and the back half of the first one...
You beg the question of whether tax rises will lead to economic growth. Why not cut taxes for growth? The Chancellor can't just tack “for growth” on the end of whatever the Treasury brainstormed and guarantee it will happen.
Sure! Its an option, but I'm not sure its one they can do.
Cut taxes to entrepreneurs like me to go generate economic growth. OK, infrastructure is bad and getting worse, my potential customers feel broke and aren't spending and now feel even worse as you've cut expenditure on vital stuff again.
Government could borrow to pay for the tax cuts for growth. No, hang on that was the Truss Delusion.
Whilst I agree that taxes are too high, they can't cut them now. But what they could do is unveil a completely revised tax code - change the game completely by rolling welfare into a universal payment and scrapping all the tax loopholes by abolishing the taxes they avoid.
You can't drive growth by taxing less. But you could drive growth by taxing differently...
You certainly could drive growth by taxing less.
Here's an example:
I'm currently running a business with a full order book out to 2028. I want to do more work, employ more people, maybe even make a larger profit and pay more tax.
My biggest constraint at the moment is premises. I basically need a steel framed shed with a decent sized overhead crane in it. I'm renting one that's 5k sq ft, I to grow really need 10-15k sq ft. I nearly bought a 21k sq ft site, the bit that kiboshed the deal was that it came with a £32k pa business rates bill, and covering that, and the stamp duty was just too much dead money to overcome straight after moving.
There are several things you could do which would enable me to grow. You could abolish planning permission, and let me build a suitable building on farmland (I'm in a rural area, and quite geographically constrained if I don't want to lose my existing staff). The site I was trying to buy was £850k, I could buy some land and build everything I want for about £250k.
Alternatively, imagine a scheme where when a business moves into a more expensive rateable premises, the difference in business rates is phased in over 5 years - that would have given me time to get over the "hump" of moving, and let me start expanding and taking on staff to get turnover up before I was hit for the rates.
Incidentally, the site I wanted to buy has been sold to a haulage firm. They are going to knock down the buildings to get out of the rates, and use the hardstanding to park lorries. So the council will lose the rates anyway, and there will be one less small industrial site out there for a manufacturing or engineering business.
Taxes, especially badly designed ones, destroy growth. The only route to meaningful growth is reducing taxes and/or regulation. Until we have a government which understands this, we will remain stuck in this doom loop of ever higher taxes and lower growth.
The idea that a high tax burden destroys growth just doesn't reconcile with the experience of the rest of Europe, where we see both economic growth and significantly higher standards of living in countries with higher tax burdens.
You might be right that the correct route for the UK is lower taxes, lower regulations. But it does come across as dogmatic when you assert in this way. You can make a strong argument that the 40% burden in Germany and the Netherlands, 45% in France has delivered more for their populations than the 33% in the UK.
Firstly, it is the opposite of dogma when a member takes time to relate his actual experience.
Secondly, Europe's growth has been stagnant vs. the USA over the last 20 years. Few countries have done quite as badly as the UK, with its toxic mix of high tax and regulation with an oddly laissez faire attitude to the family silver being sold off, but the overall trend is clearly shown in the relative growth figures. That absolutely reconciles with the theory that a high tax, high regulation environment kills growth, and it's absurd denialism to say otherwise.
Compared with the United States in the past 20 years or so, we have had Osborne's failed austerity but more subtle is the Covid response where Britain subsidised companies while America subsidised workers. It also of course has had a shedload of government investment which our faux free marketeers decry as ‘picking winners’.
We did not have 'failed austerity', we had an extremely modest attempt to rein in spending which led to a couple of years when Government spending didn't rise - it certainly didn't fall by much, and it soon continued its upward trajectory. There was no serious attempt to reduce the size of the state.
A tip for you, don’t say size of state, say cost. When you say size, people’s minds think you will be taking something from them - pip payments now that they are ill, swapping out NHS for US style system etc. instead say it as cost, like do you need that mayonnaise,or that pot cream, or that coffee brand, when for half the price or less you can get something that performs just as well. At the same time, reform processes. Digital and AI is not releasing bad criminals early by mistake, eighteenth century systems based on pen and paper and fax machines is actually the more expensive way of governing a country.
I see what you're saying, but as I think that most PBers are fairly decided folk politically, I'm not campaigning, I'm saying what I think should happen.
I really do mean the size of the state, or perhaps more accurately the scope of the state. It needs to get out of many areas it's stepped into, and become cheaper as a result of that process, not just 'skimp' on what it does for a while and then turn the taps back on when the public inevitably complains.
A microcosm of this would be Labour's botched welfare cuts. They didn't cut the welfare budget by removing the anxious and the acne sufferers from PIP eligibility and reserving it for those with serious issues - they top-sliced it for everyone, meaning those with more serious conditions would have felt the cuts, and even if successfully implemented, inevitably the cuts would soon have been reversed when a few sob stories had come out.
“ Labour's botched welfare cuts”
Yes. The moment Labours huge majority couldn’t not prune welfare at all was the moment this Labour government died, and made it certain to be a one term government. And idiot Labour MPs who killed this Labour government and lost their own seat in the process, wear the fact a new, serious, slash and burn government is formed in May 2029 like a badge showing the world just so utterly thick they are.
This is the precise wording of the tax promise from the Labour Manifesto in 2024:
We will ensure taxes on working people are kept as low as possible. Labour will not increase taxes on working people, which is why we will not increase National Insurance, the basic, higher, or additional rates of Income Tax, or VAT.
There's wriggle room, but not much.
Just extend NIC to unearned income then. That is definitely 'not an increase in taxes on working people'
Pension contributions are paid after national insurance has been deducted (unless salary sacrifice is used) so extending national insurance to income from pensions will mean it is imposed twice and nobody will then voluntarily contribute to pensions.
Which means that they only viable way of extending the scope of national insurance is to get rid of it and simultaneously increase income tax by the same amount.
Well maybe. But if I save my net of ICT income outside of an ISA I will be paying ICT on the interest, so I don't see your objection as cast iron, or even gilt-edged.
You will be paying income tax on the interest gained not on any capital withdrawals.
Sure but what's the logic for not paying NIC on that interest?
To incentivise saving. We'd like people to arrive at the point where they are too old to work with enough savings that we don't end up bailing them out.
Amazing how all the losers who live on freebies always want to take money off people who work their butts off.
Rather than spending hugely on willy waving aircraft carriers that need US permission to work we should have spent a lot of money on smaller coastal protection vessels. Just sayin’
Whilst I agree with you on the folly of the aircraft carriers I’m not sure what you think the extra coastal patrol vessels will do as they can tow back so all they will be doing is escorting in more small boat migrants
So an island nation that gives up on Sea Control?
Excellent.
How can a very expensive pair of carriers, with barely enough of a support fleet control the seas around the UK in a way that can’t be done by subs, other surface vessels and land based aircraft from the UK and Europe?
The potential enemy is Russia and I’m not sure an aircraft carrier will make a huge positive, especially based on the state of theor military.
As for other seas, we can’t stretch to defending them on either cost or kit. We can’t be a world policeman anymore so the money should be spent on what is most useful for our sector of NATO territory.
The use of carriers in exercises with Northern European nations might be of interest to you
You should also consider the number of other countries expanding their carrier programs. And why.
Global warming, means rising seas levels, means more sea?
Rather than spending hugely on willy waving aircraft carriers that need US permission to work we should have spent a lot of money on smaller coastal protection vessels. Just sayin’
Whilst I agree with you on the folly of the aircraft carriers I’m not sure what you think the extra coastal patrol vessels will do as they can tow back so all they will be doing is escorting in more small boat migrants
So an island nation that gives up on Sea Control?
Excellent.
How can a very expensive pair of carriers, with barely enough of a support fleet control the seas around the UK in a way that can’t be done by subs, other surface vessels and land based aircraft from the UK and Europe?
The potential enemy is Russia and I’m not sure an aircraft carrier will make a huge positive, especially based on the state of theor military.
As for other seas, we can’t stretch to defending them on either cost or kit. We can’t be a world policeman anymore so the money should be spent on what is most useful for our sector of NATO territory.
The use of carriers in exercises with Northern European nations might be of interest to you
You should also consider the number of other countries expanding their carrier programs. And why.
Global warming, means rising seas levels, means more sea?
They want to control the seas around their countries.
This is the precise wording of the tax promise from the Labour Manifesto in 2024:
We will ensure taxes on working people are kept as low as possible. Labour will not increase taxes on working people, which is why we will not increase National Insurance, the basic, higher, or additional rates of Income Tax, or VAT.
There's wriggle room, but not much.
Just extend NIC to unearned income then. That is definitely 'not an increase in taxes on working people'
Pension contributions are paid after national insurance has been deducted (unless salary sacrifice is used) so extending national insurance to income from pensions will mean it is imposed twice and nobody will then voluntarily contribute to pensions.
Which means that they only viable way of extending the scope of national insurance is to get rid of it and simultaneously increase income tax by the same amount.
Well maybe. But if I save my net of ICT income outside of an ISA I will be paying ICT on the interest, so I don't see your objection as cast iron, or even gilt-edged.
You will be paying income tax on the interest gained not on any capital withdrawals.
Sure but what's the logic for not paying NIC on that interest?
To incentivise saving. We'd like people to arrive at the point where they are too old to work with enough savings that we don't end up bailing them out.
Amazing how all the losers who live on freebies always want to take money off people who work their butts off.
For Washington state, the major reason for the time taken in counting is that ballots are legal as long as they are postmarked by election day. So the counties do not have all of the ballots when they begin counting on election night.
(For the record: I prefer voting in person, for everyone able to do so, but recognize that I am in a minority in my home state.)
Labour have two choices: Stick with the manifesto pledges, fiddle round the edges, the economy stagnates, they get blattered at the election Man up, things are bad, tax rise for growth, economy performs, people feel better, nobody cares about the manifesto
They'll probably manage to splice the front half of the second one and the back half of the first one...
You beg the question of whether tax rises will lead to economic growth. Why not cut taxes for growth? The Chancellor can't just tack “for growth” on the end of whatever the Treasury brainstormed and guarantee it will happen.
Sure! Its an option, but I'm not sure its one they can do.
Cut taxes to entrepreneurs like me to go generate economic growth. OK, infrastructure is bad and getting worse, my potential customers feel broke and aren't spending and now feel even worse as you've cut expenditure on vital stuff again.
Government could borrow to pay for the tax cuts for growth. No, hang on that was the Truss Delusion.
Whilst I agree that taxes are too high, they can't cut them now. But what they could do is unveil a completely revised tax code - change the game completely by rolling welfare into a universal payment and scrapping all the tax loopholes by abolishing the taxes they avoid.
You can't drive growth by taxing less. But you could drive growth by taxing differently...
You certainly could drive growth by taxing less.
Here's an example:
I'm currently running a business with a full order book out to 2028. I want to do more work, employ more people, maybe even make a larger profit and pay more tax.
My biggest constraint at the moment is premises. I basically need a steel framed shed with a decent sized overhead crane in it. I'm renting one that's 5k sq ft, I to grow really need 10-15k sq ft. I nearly bought a 21k sq ft site, the bit that kiboshed the deal was that it came with a £32k pa business rates bill, and covering that, and the stamp duty was just too much dead money to overcome straight after moving.
There are several things you could do which would enable me to grow. You could abolish planning permission, and let me build a suitable building on farmland (I'm in a rural area, and quite geographically constrained if I don't want to lose my existing staff). The site I was trying to buy was £850k, I could buy some land and build everything I want for about £250k.
Alternatively, imagine a scheme where when a business moves into a more expensive rateable premises, the difference in business rates is phased in over 5 years - that would have given me time to get over the "hump" of moving, and let me start expanding and taking on staff to get turnover up before I was hit for the rates.
Incidentally, the site I wanted to buy has been sold to a haulage firm. They are going to knock down the buildings to get out of the rates, and use the hardstanding to park lorries. So the council will lose the rates anyway, and there will be one less small industrial site out there for a manufacturing or engineering business.
Taxes, especially badly designed ones, destroy growth. The only route to meaningful growth is reducing taxes and/or regulation. Until we have a government which understands this, we will remain stuck in this doom loop of ever higher taxes and lower growth.
The idea that a high tax burden destroys growth just doesn't reconcile with the experience of the rest of Europe, where we see both economic growth and significantly higher standards of living in countries with higher tax burdens.
You might be right that the correct route for the UK is lower taxes, lower regulations. But it does come across as dogmatic when you assert in this way. You can make a strong argument that the 40% burden in Germany and the Netherlands, 45% in France has delivered more for their populations than the 33% in the UK.
Firstly, it is the opposite of dogma when a member takes time to relate his actual experience.
Secondly, Europe's growth has been stagnant vs. the USA over the last 20 years. Few countries have done quite as badly as the UK, with its toxic mix of high tax and regulation with an oddly laissez faire attitude to the family silver being sold off, but the overall trend is clearly shown in the relative growth figures. That absolutely reconciles with the theory that a high tax, high regulation environment kills growth, and it's absurd denialism to say otherwise.
Compared with the United States in the past 20 years or so, we have had Osborne's failed austerity but more subtle is the Covid response where Britain subsidised companies while America subsidised workers. It also of course has had a shedload of government investment which our faux free marketeers decry as ‘picking winners’.
We did not have 'failed austerity', we had an extremely modest attempt to rein in spending which led to a couple of years when Government spending didn't rise - it certainly didn't fall by much, and it soon continued its upward trajectory. There was no serious attempt to reduce the size of the state.
It was one of those situations where looking at the aggregate figures was misleading. The Tories increased the rate at which the state pension increased in value. To an extent they protected Health and Education spending. Therefore, to achieve only a modest overall attempt to rein in spending the austerity axe had to fall very heavily on other areas of government spending, such as the criminal justice system, local government, social care and elsewhere.
That is why Britain is now characterised as a country of two societies. We have a large number of affluent pensioners, and we have a criminal justice system on the verge of breaking down. The country was not "all in it together".
This is the precise wording of the tax promise from the Labour Manifesto in 2024:
We will ensure taxes on working people are kept as low as possible. Labour will not increase taxes on working people, which is why we will not increase National Insurance, the basic, higher, or additional rates of Income Tax, or VAT.
There's wriggle room, but not much.
Just extend NIC to unearned income then. That is definitely 'not an increase in taxes on working people'
Pension contributions are paid after national insurance has been deducted (unless salary sacrifice is used) so extending national insurance to income from pensions will mean it is imposed twice and nobody will then voluntarily contribute to pensions.
Which means that they only viable way of extending the scope of national insurance is to get rid of it and simultaneously increase income tax by the same amount.
Well maybe. But if I save my net of ICT income outside of an ISA I will be paying ICT on the interest, so I don't see your objection as cast iron, or even gilt-edged.
You will be paying income tax on the interest gained not on any capital withdrawals.
Sure but what's the logic for not paying NIC on that interest?
To incentivise saving. We'd like people to arrive at the point where they are too old to work with enough savings that we don't end up bailing them out.
Amazing how all the losers who live on freebies always want to take money off people who work their butts off.
Hard agree. And it's so ethically troubling too.
How do the Scots live with themselves?
Usual Little Englander excuse, it is always a big boy did it and ran away.
Labour have two choices: Stick with the manifesto pledges, fiddle round the edges, the economy stagnates, they get blattered at the election Man up, things are bad, tax rise for growth, economy performs, people feel better, nobody cares about the manifesto
They'll probably manage to splice the front half of the second one and the back half of the first one...
You beg the question of whether tax rises will lead to economic growth. Why not cut taxes for growth? The Chancellor can't just tack “for growth” on the end of whatever the Treasury brainstormed and guarantee it will happen.
Sure! Its an option, but I'm not sure its one they can do.
Cut taxes to entrepreneurs like me to go generate economic growth. OK, infrastructure is bad and getting worse, my potential customers feel broke and aren't spending and now feel even worse as you've cut expenditure on vital stuff again.
Government could borrow to pay for the tax cuts for growth. No, hang on that was the Truss Delusion.
Whilst I agree that taxes are too high, they can't cut them now. But what they could do is unveil a completely revised tax code - change the game completely by rolling welfare into a universal payment and scrapping all the tax loopholes by abolishing the taxes they avoid.
You can't drive growth by taxing less. But you could drive growth by taxing differently...
You certainly could drive growth by taxing less.
Here's an example:
I'm currently running a business with a full order book out to 2028. I want to do more work, employ more people, maybe even make a larger profit and pay more tax.
My biggest constraint at the moment is premises. I basically need a steel framed shed with a decent sized overhead crane in it. I'm renting one that's 5k sq ft, I to grow really need 10-15k sq ft. I nearly bought a 21k sq ft site, the bit that kiboshed the deal was that it came with a £32k pa business rates bill, and covering that, and the stamp duty was just too much dead money to overcome straight after moving.
There are several things you could do which would enable me to grow. You could abolish planning permission, and let me build a suitable building on farmland (I'm in a rural area, and quite geographically constrained if I don't want to lose my existing staff). The site I was trying to buy was £850k, I could buy some land and build everything I want for about £250k.
Alternatively, imagine a scheme where when a business moves into a more expensive rateable premises, the difference in business rates is phased in over 5 years - that would have given me time to get over the "hump" of moving, and let me start expanding and taking on staff to get turnover up before I was hit for the rates.
Incidentally, the site I wanted to buy has been sold to a haulage firm. They are going to knock down the buildings to get out of the rates, and use the hardstanding to park lorries. So the council will lose the rates anyway, and there will be one less small industrial site out there for a manufacturing or engineering business.
Taxes, especially badly designed ones, destroy growth. The only route to meaningful growth is reducing taxes and/or regulation. Until we have a government which understands this, we will remain stuck in this doom loop of ever higher taxes and lower growth.
The idea that a high tax burden destroys growth just doesn't reconcile with the experience of the rest of Europe, where we see both economic growth and significantly higher standards of living in countries with higher tax burdens.
You might be right that the correct route for the UK is lower taxes, lower regulations. But it does come across as dogmatic when you assert in this way. You can make a strong argument that the 40% burden in Germany and the Netherlands, 45% in France has delivered more for their populations than the 33% in the UK.
Firstly, it is the opposite of dogma when a member takes time to relate his actual experience.
Secondly, Europe's growth has been stagnant vs. the USA over the last 20 years. Few countries have done quite as badly as the UK, with its toxic mix of high tax and regulation with an oddly laissez faire attitude to the family silver being sold off, but the overall trend is clearly shown in the relative growth figures. That absolutely reconciles with the theory that a high tax, high regulation environment kills growth, and it's absurd denialism to say otherwise.
Compared with the United States in the past 20 years or so, we have had Osborne's failed austerity but more subtle is the Covid response where Britain subsidised companies while America subsidised workers. It also of course has had a shedload of government investment which our faux free marketeers decry as ‘picking winners’.
We did not have 'failed austerity', we had an extremely modest attempt to rein in spending which led to a couple of years when Government spending didn't rise - it certainly didn't fall by much, and it soon continued its upward trajectory. There was no serious attempt to reduce the size of the state.
A tip for you, don’t say size of state, say cost. When you say size, people’s minds think you will be taking something from them - pip payments now that they are ill, swapping out NHS for US style system etc. instead say it as cost, like do you need that mayonnaise,or that pot cream, or that coffee brand, when for half the price or less you can get something that performs just as well. At the same time, reform processes. Digital and AI is not releasing bad criminals early by mistake, eighteenth century systems based on pen and paper and fax machines is actually the more expensive way of governing a country.
I see what you're saying, but as I think that most PBers are fairly decided folk politically, I'm not campaigning, I'm saying what I think should happen.
I really do mean the size of the state, or perhaps more accurately the scope of the state. It needs to get out of many areas it's stepped into, and become cheaper as a result of that process, not just 'skimp' on what it does for a while and then turn the taps back on when the public inevitably complains.
A microcosm of this would be Labour's botched welfare cuts. They didn't cut the welfare budget by removing the anxious and the acne sufferers from PIP eligibility and reserving it for those with serious issues - they top-sliced it for everyone, meaning those with more serious conditions would have felt the cuts, and even if successfully implemented, inevitably the cuts would soon have been reversed when a few sob stories had come out.
“ Labour's botched welfare cuts”
Yes. The moment Labours huge majority couldn’t not prune welfare at all was the moment this Labour government died, and made it certain to be a one term government. And idiot Labour MPs who killed this Labour government and lost their own seat in the process, wear the fact a new, serious, slash and burn government is formed in May 2029 like a badge showing the world just so utterly thick they are.
So you are now forecasting PM Kemi in 2029 then Moon? Interesting
Rather than spending hugely on willy waving aircraft carriers that need US permission to work we should have spent a lot of money on smaller coastal protection vessels. Just sayin’
Whilst I agree with you on the folly of the aircraft carriers I’m not sure what you think the extra coastal patrol vessels will do as they can tow back so all they will be doing is escorting in more small boat migrants
So an island nation that gives up on Sea Control?
Excellent.
How can a very expensive pair of carriers, with barely enough of a support fleet control the seas around the UK in a way that can’t be done by subs, other surface vessels and land based aircraft from the UK and Europe?
The potential enemy is Russia and I’m not sure an aircraft carrier will make a huge positive, especially based on the state of theor military.
As for other seas, we can’t stretch to defending them on either cost or kit. We can’t be a world policeman anymore so the money should be spent on what is most useful for our sector of NATO territory.
The use of carriers in exercises with Northern European nations might be of interest to you
You should also consider the number of other countries expanding their carrier programs. And why.
Global warming, means rising seas levels, means more sea?
They want to control the seas around their countries.
Carriers wouldn’t really help with that. They are about force projection. You need cruisers to control domestic waters
This is the precise wording of the tax promise from the Labour Manifesto in 2024:
We will ensure taxes on working people are kept as low as possible. Labour will not increase taxes on working people, which is why we will not increase National Insurance, the basic, higher, or additional rates of Income Tax, or VAT.
There's wriggle room, but not much.
Just extend NIC to unearned income then. That is definitely 'not an increase in taxes on working people'
Pension contributions are paid after national insurance has been deducted (unless salary sacrifice is used) so extending national insurance to income from pensions will mean it is imposed twice and nobody will then voluntarily contribute to pensions.
Which means that they only viable way of extending the scope of national insurance is to get rid of it and simultaneously increase income tax by the same amount.
Well maybe. But if I save my net of ICT income outside of an ISA I will be paying ICT on the interest, so I don't see your objection as cast iron, or even gilt-edged.
You will be paying income tax on the interest gained not on any capital withdrawals.
Sure but what's the logic for not paying NIC on that interest?
To incentivise saving. We'd like people to arrive at the point where they are too old to work with enough savings that we don't end up bailing them out.
Amazing how all the losers who live on freebies always want to take money off people who work their butts off.
Hard agree. And it's so ethically troubling too.
How do the Scots live with themselves?
If we were as impoverished as you seem to think, the UK would be glad to be rid of us. But as we provide your energy, fish and a home for your nuclear weapons, you are desperate for us not to be independent.
Rather than spending hugely on willy waving aircraft carriers that need US permission to work we should have spent a lot of money on smaller coastal protection vessels. Just sayin’
Whilst I agree with you on the folly of the aircraft carriers I’m not sure what you think the extra coastal patrol vessels will do as they can tow back so all they will be doing is escorting in more small boat migrants
So an island nation that gives up on Sea Control?
Excellent.
How can a very expensive pair of carriers, with barely enough of a support fleet control the seas around the UK in a way that can’t be done by subs, other surface vessels and land based aircraft from the UK and Europe?
The potential enemy is Russia and I’m not sure an aircraft carrier will make a huge positive, especially based on the state of theor military.
As for other seas, we can’t stretch to defending them on either cost or kit. We can’t be a world policeman anymore so the money should be spent on what is most useful for our sector of NATO territory.
The use of carriers in exercises with Northern European nations might be of interest to you
You should also consider the number of other countries expanding their carrier programs. And why.
Global warming, means rising seas levels, means more sea?
They want to control the seas around their countries.
Carriers wouldn’t really help with that. They are about force projection. You need cruisers to control domestic waters
I’m talking blue water here. Not fisheries protection.
Though given the efficiency of carriers for helicopter operations, they certainly are useful for inshore ASW work
Comments
But its the far larger case of money taken out of pension pots where the imposition of national insurance would be disastrous.
All in all though why bother fiddling around with national insurance - just get rid of it and increase income tax.
Tough shit though, still no reason why unearned income should be taxed less than earned income.
One Nation Toryism (RIP) stood for a conscious adherence to the traditional Tory stuff of sound finance, free enterprise and free trade, money making, Burkean views on organic development in society, individual responsibility, small platoons, family, monarchy and established religion, sound defence but also did not regard the post WWII social democratic state as something to be derided, marginalised and neglected but as a central part of the social deal in a wealthy nation.
There are bits of it in Labour, LD and of course some Tories. Occasionally Farage shows flashes of understanding what it is all about too. But no party consistently does enough to keep that interesting and difficult balance of free enterprise, fiscal responsibility and the welfare state.
Such a shame he’s not around to glory in this moment.
It will also be richly amusing to see our Labour supporters get behind such a stout and not at all fascistic defence of our borders*.
*which they'd have derided as fascist from Reform or Badenoch.
So behavourial economics, though not perfect, is valid in this case. The behaviour of a few banks and individuals during the global financial crisis, may slightly reduce in some cases, but does not in any way invalidate, the constraint that fear of bankruptcy has on firms and individuals in the private sector.
They all fitted that mould in different ways. Remember Truss was brought down by an unfunded expansion of a fuel support system to stop people going into poverty.
Impose growing taxes on the industry. After “we need to raise the money”, “it’s just a small administrative charge, really”.
Leverage the national skill in taxing business out of existence.
The UK level is about 44.4% of GDP.
Prediction: Farage isn't going to let on what he thinks it will be after 5 years of Reform government as a % of GDP. He will avoid setting a target. Just like the others. They think we are all fools.
https://www.youtube.com/post/UgkxgUvhgIHY8J0Qk3rUVbZ0lhcUY921bBpP
Talking.
Where it's the NHS, PIPs, adult social care or mental health, individually and all together it's just extremely expensive and it risks our bankruptcy.
Her energy support scheme was just an egregious example of this chaos.
How, practically, however, can an individual receptionist at an Estate Agent or production line worker at JLR change their behaviour to prevent bankruptcy?
There are many ways to spend a Saturday morning - arguing with a man over a game of Totopoly in a Derbyshire field probably isn't the most obvious. Even that critical barometer of the economy, the car boot sale, is struggling.
The honest truth is we all have far too much "stuff" which we have been encouraged to buy (as a means of achieving some level of existential improvement it seems) and if I were to blame any single group for the failure (or perceived failure) of capitalism, it would be advertisers.
In the end, even what you try to sell to strangers for pennies speaks volumes - the lofts, spare rooms and basements of Britain are a hoarder's paradise full of useless irrelevant unuseable trivia, the detritus of a lifetime of consumption and waste - is it any wonder some are questioning the point of it all?
Into the ever picturesque town of Matlock and on the corner of Crown Square, the group known as Matlock for Palestine were setting up their weekly protest at 11am. A typical old fashioned protest - middle aged and older men and women with a goodly assortment of Palestine flags bring studiously ignoed by most if not all save for the odd car horn of support.
I'll wait for the inevitable comment - shouldn't think it will be too long? Police? No, not necessary - this is Matlock, above all, civilised even in disagreement.
Oddly enough, I came away heartened by the spectacle - this was as law abiding a protest as you could possibly imagine and the irony of their protest with the town's lamp posts festooned not by the Union Jacks and St George's Crosses seen in so much else of this part of Derbyshire but poppies wasn't lost.
That's all politics is sometimes - irony (I won't do the Blackadder gag as it's passe). The irony of the Union flags and the Reform anti-migrant sentiment in an area with hardly a migrant or immigrant to be seen. After East Ham, Amber Valley and the Derbyshire Dales seem pale.
In the late 70s water providers were attempting to ram reservoirs into Dartmoor and Exmoor.
Here's Kate Ashbrook's account of fighting to protect the Dartmoor National Park when the Roadford Rerservoir Scheme was proposed on top of all kind of historical remains etc, and involved false claims about alternative sites. The enquiry resulted in a presumption that future reservoirs would not swallow parts of Dartmoor.
https://campaignerkate.wordpress.com/2018/04/22/the-dartmoor-reservoir-saga-40-years-ago/
One of the more pernicious aspects is that local authorities sometimes want to pander to Water Companies (as they are now) or landowners *, rather than the local community.
There's another one where a water provider wanted to bury a valley under their spoil, because it was convenient for them.
* They tried to do this in the Hoogstraten case, so it was necessary to get a law passed that allowed Local Authorities to be compelled to perform their statutory duties.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/61CloKw5IKA
Happy days.
There are law firms that will quote you on a package to obstruct and delay planning - they are upfront if the application is actually valid. What they are offering is delay. Complete with advice and contacts on how to structure the “local campaign” to maximise press/political notice.
The inevitable result is that, in the not too distant future, a government will get in on the basis of “FuckTheCountryside(InOurOpponentsContituencies)”
So all the bits of Dartmoor that vote the wrong way will be concreted over.
Sanity would be to make the process (ha!) work *now*
We are seeing the start of this in London. A community activist wanted to oppose a development in Elephant & Castle. The meeting was overwhelmed by pro-construction people - who shouted the organisers down and demanded building *anything* right now.
My thinking is that as the standard of living increases (as it continues to do, just) we should indeed devote an ever-increasing proportion on health. Because after the basics of food, clothes and shelter, nothing is more important than health.
The alternative is that personal income gets frittered away on ever more 'stuff' (as outlined by @stodge in his 2:45pm post).
I appreciate we are probably diametrically opposed on this, as on a lot of things, but that's my feeling.
"Sauber have a big job on their hands to get the rookie ready for qualifying at 18:00 GMT"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/live/c784321zjd0t
I don't think you can blame that on the EU. And IMHO six years of multiple consultation phases before the relevant minister makes a decision is ridiculous.
A couple of big accidents in that Sprint, thankfully the drivers walked away.
Water privatisation was a huge mistake.
BREAKING - 1,500 Channel migrants have crossed illegally from France since Thursday. For the third straight day, hundreds more are crossing into UK waters. The total for the year is now over 38,500 - That figure is well ahead of the 36,816 who arrived during the whole of 2024
https://x.com/markwhitetv/status/1987129322331672847?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
How big can the swings be? As much as 9-11 percent.
As a result, we may not know who won the mayor's race until late next week, even though Bruce Harrell had a lead of almost 6 percent over Katie Wilson, as of Thursday (91,263-61-81,355 votes).
(For the record: Wilson is not just unqualified, but obviously unqualified for that difficult job.)
A decade back the leaks in London came into the news. The regulator was ordered by the government to Do Something. Thames Water started digging up roads with enthusiasm. Trenching whole roads to replace mains.
Within a week or 2 the political backlash at the inconvenience had the government turn the other way…
Isaiah Willoughby, convicted felon and perennial candidate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Seattle_mayoral_election
Surely that is the perfect strapline for DJT:
"Donald Trump, convicted felon and perennial candidate."
Oh, and plough all the profits back into fixing leaks preventing sewage spills and building new infrastructure.
He later became Lord Blencathra - can't be many titles more picturesque than that. (I was always smile when I remember that Ted Short became Lord Glenamara, which wasn't a bad effort).
AI:
Key Impacts
-Mandatory Assessment: Any proposed reservoir project likely to have a significant effect on a "European site" (Special Areas of Conservation or Special Protection Areas, now part of the UK's national site network) requires a formal HRA. This assessment must determine if the project will have an "adverse effect on the integrity" of the site.
-Precautionary Principle: The assessment process requires a precautionary approach. If there is a mere possibility of a significant effect, an HRA is needed.
-Strict Protection: The legislation provides a high level of protection for designated sites and species. Unlike development on other sites (e.g., Sites of Special Scientific Interest), development on a European site generally cannot proceed if it causes harm unless there are "imperative reasons of overriding public interest" (IROPI) and compensatory measures are provided. This high bar has significantly restricted development in such areas.
-Focus on Alternatives and Mitigation: The directive forces developers and planning authorities to consider alternative solutions and ensure any proposed mitigation measures are effective and certain at the time of the assessment, rather than relying on future possibilities.
-Increased Scrutiny and Legal Challenges: The stringent requirements mean that any proposed reservoir project faces significant scrutiny from environmental bodies and the public, often leading to legal challenges if the proper procedures are not followed or if the environmental impact is deemed unacceptable. This has increased complexity, costs, and potential delays for developers.
-Strategic Planning: The directive's principles have been integrated into high-level planning, such as National Policy Statements for Water Resources, requiring water companies to consider environmental sustainability in their long-term water management plans and assess potential impacts on protected sites.
So in common language - after 1992 (or 94 in the case of UK statute), there was a de facto ban on new reservoir development. Yes, I am sure our regulators and planning authorities on a power trip didn't help, and nor did well-meaning idiots protesting that 368 square miles of Dartmoor would be submerged under a mega-reservoir, and nor did the water companies, who would have used the regulations as an excuse to do nothing and bank profits.
However, the fundamental reason for the situation is not greedy water companies, it is EU regulation.
"Lord Blencathra returned to the frontbenches for the first time in 19 years on 1 September 2024 as Shadow Minister for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs."
19 years! A record, surely?
I can't see NIC Reeves turning that around, she might have to bob down for a mortimer.
We saw one of the fastest increase in construction and living standards in the interwar period. We have never again seen rates of development since as we saw then.
A return to 1930s planning laws would be a huge step in the right direction and unlock a lot of potential economic growth.
One big reason for privatisation was the upcoming need to invest in water quality for tap water (EEC rules, interestingly). The Treasury pushed for more waivers…
Excellent.
Fun Fact: Everybody President Obama endorsed won, everybody Trump endorsed lost their elections last Tuesday.
https://x.com/acnewsitics/status/1986840687929962976?s=20
The potential enemy is Russia and I’m not sure an aircraft carrier will make a huge positive, especially based on the state of theor military.
As for other seas, we can’t stretch to defending them on either cost or kit. We can’t be a world policeman anymore so the money should be spent on what is most useful for our sector of NATO territory.
To add another aqueous metaphor, we are up the creek without a paddle.
You should also consider the number of other countries expanding their carrier programs. And why.
You'd think that R1's target audience was men in their fifties with shite like that.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2lpww7pw72o
Yes. The moment Labours huge majority couldn’t not prune welfare at all was the moment this Labour government died, and made it certain to be a one term government. And idiot Labour MPs who killed this Labour government and lost their own seat in the process, wear the fact a new, serious, slash and burn government is formed in May 2029 like a badge showing the world just so utterly thick they are.
How do the Scots live with themselves?
As is so often true, it depends on the state (and sometimes the locality). Here's a long long explanation:
https://news.ballotpedia.org/2025/04/25/why-do-some-states-count-and-report-election-results-faster-than-others/
For Washington state, the major reason for the time taken in counting is that ballots are legal as long as they are postmarked by election day. So the counties do not have all of the ballots when they begin counting on election night.
(For the record: I prefer voting in person, for everyone able to do so, but recognize that I am in a minority in my home state.)
That is why Britain is now characterised as a country of two societies. We have a large number of affluent pensioners, and we have a criminal justice system on the verge of breaking down. The country was not "all in it together".
Though given the efficiency of carriers for helicopter operations, they certainly are useful for inshore ASW work