On the previous thread, it was implied by someone that Tesla Powerwalls have a tendency to catch fire. There have been just 7 recorded incidents globally in the ten years since their launch, from over a million installations. That is around 70x safer than the mean for all electrical products sold in the Uk.
They’re awesome, they let you run your house all day at the overnight tariff, and give backup when your utility fails you.
Doesn't every home battery system do that?
Yes to a greater or lesser extent, but the Tesla one has pretty much the most competitive cost/kwh of capacity, bearing in mind it’s also got the highest kw output capability.
IIRC they’ve, in California, setup so that you can sell power to the utilities from your PowerWall, at set prices.
So when the demand price *from the utility* goes over a set value, your PowerWall sells power to them. If you want - there’s also a reserve of x% of the PowerWall you can reserve, that won’t be sold.
That will end up being the standard for electric cars as well. If you get home early from a short commute, you can plug in your car and tell it to sell power back to the grid over the peak evening period, then recharge fully overnight when power is cheap.
I would like to retract all my previous criticisms of HSBC.
I now would be proud to work for HSBC and will be moving my main bank account to HSBC.
On a totally unrelated note.
BREAKING: George Osborne, the former chancellor, has emerged as a shock contender to become the next chairman of HSBC Holdings, one of the world's top banking jobs.
The Telegraph* have let themselves down badly there... the picture of Reeves is almost flattering.
(*Annoyingly, I can no longer use the hilariously witty moniker Torygraph, as the paper seems to have abandoned the Tories for Reform. Indeed the Conservatives are no longer Tories really either. All those life certainties fall away one-by-one.)
I would like to retract all my previous criticisms of HSBC.
I now would be proud to work for HSBC and will be moving my main bank account to HSBC.
On a totally unrelated note.
BREAKING: George Osborne, the former chancellor, has emerged as a shock contender to become the next chairman of HSBC Holdings, one of the world's top banking jobs.
Someone who showed only a moderate interest in financial matters whilst in government. Has he shown any particular enthusiasm since?
This may reflect the bank chairman role now being more of a political one. What does that say about where we are?
The chairman just sets long term strategy and leads the board, the CEO runs operations day to day
Presumably he's also expecting to be the DG of BBC at the same time? Maybe edit a couple of newspapers as well?
Will there still be a BBC by the time a replacement DG is lined up? I don't adequately have a grasp of the figures, but it strikes me a demand in the billions looks like a winding-up event?
It does feel like the Labour government of 74-79 when after two years Wilson was replaced by Callaghan. Perhaps this is what Kemi Badenoch is banking on? Some would argue the real turning point in post war UK politics was the IMF moment in 1976.
The BMA definitely seems out of control. The hard left is re-emerging as a proper menace. But will voters resort to the traditional conservative response anymore?
I remember the 74-76 period pretty well and today doesn't feel much like that period to me. Far too many differences to draw parallels.
For a start Starmer is not a patch on Wilson, and Badenoch is certainly no Thatcher.
Wasn't Wilson struggling by that point on a personal level? Anyway my point wasn't really about the individuals (the current crop of politicians do seem comparatively poor) but a government unable to govern. The budget process seems like a mess. The radical left being untameable.
Of course we're off the back of a period where the Tories weren't really able to govern either.
Wes Streeting has been accused of taking a “chaotic and incoherent approach” to reforming the NHS which makes it unlikely the government will hit its own targets, according to a damning report by the Institute for Government (IfG).
The report praises elements of how the health secretary has managed the health service in his first year in office, including improving performance and staff retention in hospitals. Thepay settlement he reached with resident doctors last year avoided a winter plagued by NHS strikes
But it also criticises significant aspects of his performance, including the way he handled the abolition of NHS England and his lack of action to stem the exodus of senior GPs.
On the previous thread, it was implied by someone that Tesla Powerwalls have a tendency to catch fire. There have been just 7 recorded incidents globally in the ten years since their launch, from over a million installations. That is around 70x safer than the mean for all electrical products sold in the Uk.
They’re awesome, they let you run your house all day at the overnight tariff, and give backup when your utility fails you.
Doesn't every home battery system do that?
Yes to a greater or lesser extent, but the Tesla one has pretty much the most competitive cost/kwh of capacity, bearing in mind it’s also got the highest kw output capability.
IIRC they’ve, in California, setup so that you can sell power to the utilities from your PowerWall, at set prices.
So when the demand price *from the utility* goes over a set value, your PowerWall sells power to them. If you want - there’s also a reserve of x% of the PowerWall you can reserve, that won’t be sold.
Intelligent Octopus Flux does that over here I believe, and not just for Tesla batteries.
SSE now guessing 4pm for my power to be restored. I have very little faith in them; their initial guess was 4:30pm yesterday. They're still digging up the pavement outside my house
Have they offered to put you up in a hotel?
If not, that is outrageous.
When I lived in Cradley, Herefordshire as a teenager in the late 1970s (and into the early 1980s) we could be without power for a fortnight without so much as a cheery "sorry" from the MEB. We lived in new houses which had oil powered central heating (fired by electricity). We lived in a row of seven executive style houses and our next door neighbour had furnished their house with a wood burning stove so we (all 6 other households) went to their house for the daylight hours.
A very well prepared colleague got the last laugh on those who mocked him, a few years back.
‘Leccy went out - big storm . First he knew was when the wife called him on the “funny phone” (satellite phone and she was very non-techical) - all the phones were dead, including mobile.
His house was fine, because he had a generator that ran on fuel oil, and a UPS. Main power going out caused the UPS to fire up the generator.
His house was the only one with heating and lights for a week.
My parents used to live at the end of a long electricity line. Despite their age they weren’t a priority. In the 80s the snow took out the electricity line and the estimate was 10 days to get the power back.
In order to prevent their food defrosting they balanced their freezer on a toboggan, chained it to a tractor and took it down to the nearest village to plug it into a friend’s garage…
Could they have just put it out in the snow?
Living in the backwoods who knows what the foxes and deer would have done with it?
It does feel like the Labour government of 74-79 when after two years Wilson was replaced by Callaghan. Perhaps this is what Kemi Badenoch is banking on? Some would argue the real turning point in post war UK politics was the IMF moment in 1976.
The BMA definitely seems out of control. The hard left is re-emerging as a proper menace. But will voters resort to the traditional conservative response anymore?
I remember the 74-76 period pretty well and today doesn't feel much like that period to me. Far too many differences to draw parallels.
For a start Starmer is not a patch on Wilson, and Badenoch is certainly no Thatcher.
Wasn't Wilson struggling by that point on a personal level? Anyway my point wasn't really about the individuals (the current crop of politicians do seem comparatively poor) but a government unable to govern. The budget process seems like a mess. The radical left being untameable.
Of course we're off the back of a period where the Tories weren't really able to govern either.
The big difference to my mind is that in 74-76, the government was struggling to govern partly due to a wafer-thin majority. PMs in that bracket always elicit some sympathy from me: it takes a massive amount of political skill. PMs with landslide majorities who struggle to govern are somewhat rarer.
- Freeze on thresholds to 2030 (worth £10bn) - New tax on some forms of gambling (£3bn) - Restriction on NI relief on salary sacrifice for pensions contributions (£2bn) - New 'mansion tax' see my earlier post (£1bn) - Maybe small changes ie increases to CGT and dividend tax but no obvious sign of this happening ditto IHT changes - 'Efficiencies' and the usual 'tax evasion clampdown' (£several bn)
And that's it
I don't think the 2 child cap will be lifted at least not in full. Fuel duty won't go up!
DYOR
Just hope they don't bring in general tax on betting wins.
I am really surprised governments haven't gone for at least those who make the bulk of their income from gambling. Lots of other governments have come up with stupid systems aimed at capping the amount of losses you can deduct etc, so that pro gambling end up paying income taxes e.g, Trumps big beautiful bill. The Greeks do it based on daily wins / losses.
EV mile tax is another fiddle around tax rather than actually govern.
Also reductions in hidden tax in energy bills in order to subsides heat pumps is another area for Treasury back slapping enjoyment on the day.
Going after EVs when you are also trying to get everybody into EVs by 2035....remember they added luxury car tax to EVs last time as well and congestion charge is getting added in Lodnon. £40k doesn't get you much car these days, a cheap Chinese EV. joined up thinking.
I'm not sure on that. If it keeps a bit of downward pressure on price and size, then so much the better.
Looking at my make - Skodas - all the ranges except the biggest electric SUV start at under 40k, and there are plenty between 20k and 30k, and hatchbacks down to £15k. That's all before discounts.
(They have a problem with the names, and the Electric models are on the whole physically huge. The models include Kamiq, Karoq, Kodiaq, Elroq, and Enyaq; someone put the ghost of Telly Savalas in the bloody computer.)
Except it hasnt. Luxury car tax came in 2017, average new car price is £50k now. Last few years up dramatically for a number of reasons. The UK favourite ICE car the Qashqai is now £40k if you spec it up a bit. And with Trump tariffs etc there is no downward pressure, just the Chinese selling at cost.
To me the average seems to be £40k or so, not £50k.
No, we did this the other day. The official figures are now that the average new car is £50k. I posted links.
So your argument seems to be you will drive a BYD or EV Skoda and be happy.
The whole idea was supposed to be EVs cost a bit more, but a) the government will provide a really good subsidsy so they are on par if not cheaper than an ICE vehicle, so you don't need to worry about base cost (remember most people buy on finance), no luxury car tax, no road tax and also no horrid congestion charges etc.
Now, even some Skoda EVs (which are ok cars but nobody would describe as luxury), but certainly the average car could cost you £2.5k in luxury car tax, plus if true another £300-400 in this PPM (which will of course only go up in cost over the years), plus you have to pay congestion charge.
Those are nudges all in the wrong direction if your policy is to get eveybody in an EV by 2035. Most people who foot the upfront cost of the car on finance will more than likely just go fuck it, cost me same in luxury car tax, same in road tax, same in congestion car, might as well just get an ICE car that is cheaper upfront.
This purported EV tax. Assuming it comes in at all, and then in the form proposed by the Daily Reformgraph.
3p a mile in tax is less than the 6.7p a mile the average petrol car pays. And if you mostly charge at home you're paying 5% VAT not 20% VAT, so that's another saving.
Road pricing is inevitable. Though knowing this government they will announce that they are going to raise £3bn by trialling it with a 5p a mile tax on Hydrogen cars.
It might be less than ICE car tax, but its another nudge not to....people won't do the maths, they will be just like WTF, so I have to pay another tax on my EV. As I say, on top of all the other taxes / reduced subsidies that have been enacted. And that's if you can charge from home etc etc etc.
Avoiding £2.5k in luxury car tax is a pretty good nudge in the EV direction. But that is gone unless you want to drive a shit box EV from China (China make some very good EVs, low end BYDs aren't them).
Youi are all in on EVs, nothing wrong with that. I am just pointing out from the general public perspective, getting a subsidy on an EV, no luxury car tax, no road tax, no congestion charge, ohhh that's interesting. Or yeah it costs more up front, yeah you have to pay luxury car tax, and PPM road tax and congestion charge. Ohhhh come on Maureen lets look at those ICE powered Toyotas. Not let me get the Excel spreadsheet out and work this out to the penny.
I've just bought an EV, ex demonstrator. I pay road tax, I will have to pay congestion charge from January, I am ulez compliant, but so are most cars less than 10 years old. Fuel duty I don't pay because I don't buy fuel, but I do pay 20% vat on my electrical energy as I don't have a home charger. I also don't pollute the atmosphere.
I think I made the right decision.
😐
The electricity produced to fuel your car will pollute the atmosphere. You’re merely moving your pollution downstream.
Actually, because less CO2 is produced creating electricity, and because EVs use less *power* per mile than ICE (they have to be more efficient, because of the cost/size of batteries) and the emissions from transporting and refining petrol, that is not so.
Even when the grid was majority coal fired, this meant that an EV was marginally better than an ICE.
Now that coal is gone and the grid is increasingly powered by zero emission sources, EVs win by a massive margin.
Luke Tryl and the new political editor of the New Statesman are saying that the party and the public are despairing of No10. They seem to be thinking that we could be nearing the end.
If true it would be a good idea to start thinking about a sensible replacement and that is NOT Andy Burnham however much he might think so himself.
I like Streeting. He's tough has a good backstory and is much the most articuate. He's also gay which is a small twist of lemon or USP as they're called
Luke Tryl and the new political editor of the New Statesman are saying that the party and the public are despairing of No10. They seem to be thinking that we could be nearing the end.
If true it would be a good idea to start thinking about a sensible replacement and that is NOT Andy Burnham however much he might think so himself.
I like Streeting. He's tough has a good backstory and is much the most articuate. He's also gay which is a small twist of lemon or USP as they're called
I was thinking the other day: is he the first (openly) gay man to be favourite for next PM?
Luke Tryl and the new political editor of the New Statesman are saying that the party and the public are despairing of No10. They seem to be thinking that we could be nearing the end.
If true it would be a good idea to start thinking about a sensible replacement and that is NOT Andy Burnham however much he might think so himself.
I like Streeting. He's tough has a good backstory and is much the most articuate. He's also gay which is a small twist of lemon or USP as they're called
It isn't possible to overstate the level of political danger Keir Starmer is now facing. May's elections are suddenly a very, very long way off.
I would like to retract all my previous criticisms of HSBC.
I now would be proud to work for HSBC and will be moving my main bank account to HSBC.
On a totally unrelated note.
BREAKING: George Osborne, the former chancellor, has emerged as a shock contender to become the next chairman of HSBC Holdings, one of the world's top banking jobs.
One of the few banks Brown didn't nationalise or bail out
That’s incorrect.
It is correct, only Barclays of the UK banks in 2008 also got no significant bail out but largely as it managed to get a large investment from the Middle East
Barclays is the big bank that didn’t get a bailout. RBS and HBOS needed one and Lloyds was forced to take one.
Abbey National, for example, received no bail out despite having a 10-13% UK market share depending on product.
And there are many more banks than that, even before you start on the building societies
I would like to retract all my previous criticisms of HSBC.
I now would be proud to work for HSBC and will be moving my main bank account to HSBC.
On a totally unrelated note.
BREAKING: George Osborne, the former chancellor, has emerged as a shock contender to become the next chairman of HSBC Holdings, one of the world's top banking jobs.
Someone who showed only a moderate interest in financial matters whilst in government. Has he shown any particular enthusiasm since?
This may reflect the bank chairman role now being more of a political one. What does that say about where we are?
The chairman just sets long term strategy and leads the board, the CEO runs operations day to day
Presumably he's also expecting to be the DG of BBC at the same time? Maybe edit a couple of newspapers as well?
Will there still be a BBC by the time a replacement DG is lined up? I don't adequately have a grasp of the figures, but it strikes me a demand in the billions looks like a winding-up event?
More likely that Trump is gone rather than the BBC by the time the next DG is lined up.
It does feel like the Labour government of 74-79 when after two years Wilson was replaced by Callaghan. Perhaps this is what Kemi Badenoch is banking on? Some would argue the real turning point in post war UK politics was the IMF moment in 1976.
The BMA definitely seems out of control. The hard left is re-emerging as a proper menace. But will voters resort to the traditional conservative response anymore?
I remember the 74-76 period pretty well and today doesn't feel much like that period to me. Far too many differences to draw parallels.
For a start Starmer is not a patch on Wilson, and Badenoch is certainly no Thatcher.
Wasn't Wilson struggling by that point on a personal level? Anyway my point wasn't really about the individuals (the current crop of politicians do seem comparatively poor) but a government unable to govern. The budget process seems like a mess. The radical left being untameable.
Of course we're off the back of a period where the Tories weren't really able to govern either.
The big difference to my mind is that in 74-76, the government was struggling to govern partly due to a wafer-thin majority. PMs in that bracket always elicit some sympathy from me: it takes a massive amount of political skill. PMs with landslide majorities who struggle to govern are somewhat rarer.
The Tories also had a big majority from 2019-24, removed two leaders and plotted to remove a third. Not to mention the summer of four chancellors in 2019.
Introducing Sky Sports Halo – the lil sis of Sky Sports 💫https://tiktok.com/@skysportshalo A new TikTok channel created specifically for female sports fans.
Luke Tryl and the new political editor of the New Statesman are saying that the party and the public are despairing of No10. They seem to be thinking that we could be nearing the end.
If true it would be a good idea to start thinking about a sensible replacement and that is NOT Andy Burnham however much he might think so himself.
I like Streeting. He's tough has a good backstory and is much the most articuate. He's also gay which is a small twist of lemon or USP as they're called
It isn't possible to overstate the level of political danger Keir Starmer is now facing. May's elections are suddenly a very, very long way off.
- Freeze on thresholds to 2030 (worth £10bn) - New tax on some forms of gambling (£3bn) - Restriction on NI relief on salary sacrifice for pensions contributions (£2bn) - New 'mansion tax' see my earlier post (£1bn) - Maybe small changes ie increases to CGT and dividend tax but no obvious sign of this happening ditto IHT changes - 'Efficiencies' and the usual 'tax evasion clampdown' (£several bn)
And that's it
I don't think the 2 child cap will be lifted at least not in full. Fuel duty won't go up!
DYOR
Just hope they don't bring in general tax on betting wins.
I am really surprised governments haven't gone for at least those who make the bulk of their income from gambling. Lots of other governments have come up with stupid systems aimed at capping the amount of losses you can deduct etc, so that pro gambling end up paying income taxes e.g, Trumps big beautiful bill. The Greeks do it based on daily wins / losses.
EV mile tax is another fiddle around tax rather than actually govern.
Also reductions in hidden tax in energy bills in order to subsides heat pumps is another area for Treasury back slapping enjoyment on the day.
Going after EVs when you are also trying to get everybody into EVs by 2035....remember they added luxury car tax to EVs last time as well and congestion charge is getting added in Lodnon. £40k doesn't get you much car these days, a cheap Chinese EV. joined up thinking.
I'm not sure on that. If it keeps a bit of downward pressure on price and size, then so much the better.
Looking at my make - Skodas - all the ranges except the biggest electric SUV start at under 40k, and there are plenty between 20k and 30k, and hatchbacks down to £15k. That's all before discounts.
(They have a problem with the names, and the Electric models are on the whole physically huge. The models include Kamiq, Karoq, Kodiaq, Elroq, and Enyaq; someone put the ghost of Telly Savalas in the bloody computer.)
Except it hasnt. Luxury car tax came in 2017, average new car price is £50k now. Last few years up dramatically for a number of reasons. The UK favourite ICE car the Qashqai is now £40k if you spec it up a bit. And with Trump tariffs etc there is no downward pressure, just the Chinese selling at cost.
To me the average seems to be £40k or so, not £50k.
No, we did this the other day. The official figures are now that the average new car is £50k. I posted links.
So your argument seems to be you will drive a BYD or EV Skoda and be happy.
The whole idea was supposed to be EVs cost a bit more, but a) the government will provide a really good subsidsy so they are on par if not cheaper than an ICE vehicle, so you don't need to worry about base cost (remember most people buy on finance), no luxury car tax, no road tax and also no horrid congestion charges etc.
Now, even some Skoda EVs (which are ok cars but nobody would describe as luxury), but certainly the average car could cost you £2.5k in luxury car tax, plus if true another £300-400 in this PPM (which will of course only go up in cost over the years), plus you have to pay congestion charge.
Those are nudges all in the wrong direction if your policy is to get eveybody in an EV by 2035. Most people who foot the upfront cost of the car on finance will more than likely just go fuck it, cost me same in luxury car tax, same in road tax, same in congestion car, might as well just get an ICE car that is cheaper upfront.
This purported EV tax. Assuming it comes in at all, and then in the form proposed by the Daily Reformgraph.
3p a mile in tax is less than the 6.7p a mile the average petrol car pays. And if you mostly charge at home you're paying 5% VAT not 20% VAT, so that's another saving.
Road pricing is inevitable. Though knowing this government they will announce that they are going to raise £3bn by trialling it with a 5p a mile tax on Hydrogen cars.
It might be less than ICE car tax, but its another nudge not to....people won't do the maths, they will be just like WTF, so I have to pay another tax on my EV. As I say, on top of all the other taxes / reduced subsidies that have been enacted. And that's if you can charge from home etc etc etc.
Avoiding £2.5k in luxury car tax is a pretty good nudge in the EV direction. But that is gone unless you want to drive a shit box EV from China (China make some very good EVs, low end BYDs aren't them).
Youi are all in on EVs, nothing wrong with that. I am just pointing out from the general public perspective, getting a subsidy on an EV, no luxury car tax, no road tax, no congestion charge, ohhh that's interesting. Or yeah it costs more up front, yeah you have to pay luxury car tax, and PPM road tax and congestion charge. Ohhhh come on Maureen lets look at those ICE powered Toyotas. Not let me get the Excel spreadsheet out and work this out to the penny.
I've just bought an EV, ex demonstrator. I pay road tax, I will have to pay congestion charge from January, I am ulez compliant, but so are most cars less than 10 years old. Fuel duty I don't pay because I don't buy fuel, but I do pay 20% vat on my electrical energy as I don't have a home charger. I also don't pollute the atmosphere.
I think I made the right decision.
😐
The electricity produced to fuel your car will pollute the atmosphere. You’re merely moving your pollution downstream.
Actually, because less CO2 is produced creating electricity, and because EVs use less *power* per mile than ICE (they have to be more efficient, because of the cost/size of batteries) and the emissions from transporting and refining petrol, that is not so.
Even when the grid was majority coal fired, this meant that an EV was marginally better than an ICE.
Now that coal is gone and the grid is increasingly powered by zero emission sources, EVs win by a massive margin.
The lack of tailpipe emissions is the really important thing, especially in urban environments. A reason why hybrids are also very helpful even if their fuel consumption on long journeys is nothing special.
Respiratory diseases caused by pollution still kill tens of thousands each year but the numbers have fallen sharply here since the ULEZ.
The big sport story today is Wales v Japan this evening
They are ranked 12th and 13th in the world respectively. Only the top twelve get seeded in the World Cup draw in a few weeks time
If Japan win they move up to 12th, and Wales will face two seeded teams in their group
Go Eddie Jones!
I certainly wouldn't back Wales at 1-6 but Japan at 4-1 looks pretty good.
I think we'll win but some people seem to be placing bets on Japan as an insurance option. Jac Morgan is a huge loss but at least he plays in a position where Wales actually have some depth.
I would like to retract all my previous criticisms of HSBC.
I now would be proud to work for HSBC and will be moving my main bank account to HSBC.
On a totally unrelated note.
BREAKING: George Osborne, the former chancellor, has emerged as a shock contender to become the next chairman of HSBC Holdings, one of the world's top banking jobs.
Someone who showed only a moderate interest in financial matters whilst in government. Has he shown any particular enthusiasm since?
This may reflect the bank chairman role now being more of a political one. What does that say about where we are?
The chairman just sets long term strategy and leads the board, the CEO runs operations day to day
Presumably he's also expecting to be the DG of BBC at the same time? Maybe edit a couple of newspapers as well?
Will there still be a BBC by the time a replacement DG is lined up? I don't adequately have a grasp of the figures, but it strikes me a demand in the billions looks like a winding-up event?
A British court isn’t going to issue a billion-pound anything, even for an egregious defamation, and it’s difficult to see what an American court can do given that the programme concerned wasn’t broadcast in the US.
Most likely the BBC agrees to a donation in the seven figures to a Trump-nominated charity such as his library fund, and everyone involved in the programme gets a right bollocking over basic journalistic standards and the need to be fair even to those you dislike.
What the BBC won’t want is anything that looks like the American process of “discovery”, where any and all written correspondence regarding the J6 speech gets sent to Trump’s lawyers.
- Freeze on thresholds to 2030 (worth £10bn) - New tax on some forms of gambling (£3bn) - Restriction on NI relief on salary sacrifice for pensions contributions (£2bn) - New 'mansion tax' see my earlier post (£1bn) - Maybe small changes ie increases to CGT and dividend tax but no obvious sign of this happening ditto IHT changes - 'Efficiencies' and the usual 'tax evasion clampdown' (£several bn)
And that's it
I don't think the 2 child cap will be lifted at least not in full. Fuel duty won't go up!
DYOR
Just hope they don't bring in general tax on betting wins.
I am really surprised governments haven't gone for at least those who make the bulk of their income from gambling. Lots of other governments have come up with stupid systems aimed at capping the amount of losses you can deduct etc, so that pro gambling end up paying income taxes e.g, Trumps big beautiful bill. The Greeks do it based on daily wins / losses.
EV mile tax is another fiddle around tax rather than actually govern.
Also reductions in hidden tax in energy bills in order to subsides heat pumps is another area for Treasury back slapping enjoyment on the day.
Going after EVs when you are also trying to get everybody into EVs by 2035....remember they added luxury car tax to EVs last time as well and congestion charge is getting added in Lodnon. £40k doesn't get you much car these days, a cheap Chinese EV. joined up thinking.
I'm not sure on that. If it keeps a bit of downward pressure on price and size, then so much the better.
Looking at my make - Skodas - all the ranges except the biggest electric SUV start at under 40k, and there are plenty between 20k and 30k, and hatchbacks down to £15k. That's all before discounts.
(They have a problem with the names, and the Electric models are on the whole physically huge. The models include Kamiq, Karoq, Kodiaq, Elroq, and Enyaq; someone put the ghost of Telly Savalas in the bloody computer.)
Except it hasnt. Luxury car tax came in 2017, average new car price is £50k now. Last few years up dramatically for a number of reasons. The UK favourite ICE car the Qashqai is now £40k if you spec it up a bit. And with Trump tariffs etc there is no downward pressure, just the Chinese selling at cost.
To me the average seems to be £40k or so, not £50k.
No, we did this the other day. The official figures are now that the average new car is £50k. I posted links.
So your argument seems to be you will drive a BYD or EV Skoda and be happy.
The whole idea was supposed to be EVs cost a bit more, but a) the government will provide a really good subsidsy so they are on par if not cheaper than an ICE vehicle, so you don't need to worry about base cost (remember most people buy on finance), no luxury car tax, no road tax and also no horrid congestion charges etc.
Now, even some Skoda EVs (which are ok cars but nobody would describe as luxury), but certainly the average car could cost you £2.5k in luxury car tax, plus if true another £300-400 in this PPM (which will of course only go up in cost over the years), plus you have to pay congestion charge.
Those are nudges all in the wrong direction if your policy is to get eveybody in an EV by 2035. Most people who foot the upfront cost of the car on finance will more than likely just go fuck it, cost me same in luxury car tax, same in road tax, same in congestion car, might as well just get an ICE car that is cheaper upfront.
This purported EV tax. Assuming it comes in at all, and then in the form proposed by the Daily Reformgraph.
3p a mile in tax is less than the 6.7p a mile the average petrol car pays. And if you mostly charge at home you're paying 5% VAT not 20% VAT, so that's another saving.
Road pricing is inevitable. Though knowing this government they will announce that they are going to raise £3bn by trialling it with a 5p a mile tax on Hydrogen cars.
It might be less than ICE car tax, but its another nudge not to....people won't do the maths, they will be just like WTF, so I have to pay another tax on my EV. As I say, on top of all the other taxes / reduced subsidies that have been enacted. And that's if you can charge from home etc etc etc.
Avoiding £2.5k in luxury car tax is a pretty good nudge in the EV direction. But that is gone unless you want to drive a shit box EV from China (China make some very good EVs, low end BYDs aren't them).
Youi are all in on EVs, nothing wrong with that. I am just pointing out from the general public perspective, getting a subsidy on an EV, no luxury car tax, no road tax, no congestion charge, ohhh that's interesting. Or yeah it costs more up front, yeah you have to pay luxury car tax, and PPM road tax and congestion charge. Ohhhh come on Maureen lets look at those ICE powered Toyotas. Not let me get the Excel spreadsheet out and work this out to the penny.
I've just bought an EV, ex demonstrator. I pay road tax, I will have to pay congestion charge from January, I am ulez compliant, but so are most cars less than 10 years old. Fuel duty I don't pay because I don't buy fuel, but I do pay 20% vat on my electrical energy as I don't have a home charger. I also don't pollute the atmosphere.
I think I made the right decision.
😐
The electricity produced to fuel your car will pollute the atmosphere. You’re merely moving your pollution downstream.
A lot of the mains leccy these days is renewable (excepting the capital cost of things like concrete etc. tbf). Potentially all, e.g. Scotland when it is windy.
That's not an option for ICE cars (biodiesel and monkey business with alcohol in petrol apart).
I would like to retract all my previous criticisms of HSBC.
I now would be proud to work for HSBC and will be moving my main bank account to HSBC.
On a totally unrelated note.
BREAKING: George Osborne, the former chancellor, has emerged as a shock contender to become the next chairman of HSBC Holdings, one of the world's top banking jobs.
Someone who showed only a moderate interest in financial matters whilst in government. Has he shown any particular enthusiasm since?
This may reflect the bank chairman role now being more of a political one. What does that say about where we are?
The chairman just sets long term strategy and leads the board, the CEO runs operations day to day
Presumably he's also expecting to be the DG of BBC at the same time? Maybe edit a couple of newspapers as well?
Will there still be a BBC by the time a replacement DG is lined up? I don't adequately have a grasp of the figures, but it strikes me a demand in the billions looks like a winding-up event?
A British court isn’t going to issue a billion-pound anything, even for an egregious defamation, and it’s difficult to see what an American court can do given that the programme concerned wasn’t broadcast in the US.
Most likely the BBC agrees to a donation in the seven figures to a Trump-nominated charity such as his library fund, and everyone involved in the programme gets a right bollocking over basic journalistic standards and the need to be fair even to those you dislike.
What the BBC won’t want is anything that looks like the American process of “discovery”, where any and all written correspondence regarding the J6 speech gets sent to Trump’s lawyers.
It’s timed out in the UK and the US courts don’t have jurisdiction
- Freeze on thresholds to 2030 (worth £10bn) - New tax on some forms of gambling (£3bn) - Restriction on NI relief on salary sacrifice for pensions contributions (£2bn) - New 'mansion tax' see my earlier post (£1bn) - Maybe small changes ie increases to CGT and dividend tax but no obvious sign of this happening ditto IHT changes - 'Efficiencies' and the usual 'tax evasion clampdown' (£several bn)
And that's it
I don't think the 2 child cap will be lifted at least not in full. Fuel duty won't go up!
DYOR
Just hope they don't bring in general tax on betting wins.
I am really surprised governments haven't gone for at least those who make the bulk of their income from gambling. Lots of other governments have come up with stupid systems aimed at capping the amount of losses you can deduct etc, so that pro gambling end up paying income taxes e.g, Trumps big beautiful bill. The Greeks do it based on daily wins / losses.
EV mile tax is another fiddle around tax rather than actually govern.
Also reductions in hidden tax in energy bills in order to subsides heat pumps is another area for Treasury back slapping enjoyment on the day.
Going after EVs when you are also trying to get everybody into EVs by 2035....remember they added luxury car tax to EVs last time as well and congestion charge is getting added in Lodnon. £40k doesn't get you much car these days, a cheap Chinese EV. joined up thinking.
I'm not sure on that. If it keeps a bit of downward pressure on price and size, then so much the better.
Looking at my make - Skodas - all the ranges except the biggest electric SUV start at under 40k, and there are plenty between 20k and 30k, and hatchbacks down to £15k. That's all before discounts.
(They have a problem with the names, and the Electric models are on the whole physically huge. The models include Kamiq, Karoq, Kodiaq, Elroq, and Enyaq; someone put the ghost of Telly Savalas in the bloody computer.)
Except it hasnt. Luxury car tax came in 2017, average new car price is £50k now. Last few years up dramatically for a number of reasons. The UK favourite ICE car the Qashqai is now £40k if you spec it up a bit. And with Trump tariffs etc there is no downward pressure, just the Chinese selling at cost.
To me the average seems to be £40k or so, not £50k.
No, we did this the other day. The official figures are now that the average new car is £50k. I posted links.
So your argument seems to be you will drive a BYD or EV Skoda and be happy.
The whole idea was supposed to be EVs cost a bit more, but a) the government will provide a really good subsidsy so they are on par if not cheaper than an ICE vehicle, so you don't need to worry about base cost (remember most people buy on finance), no luxury car tax, no road tax and also no horrid congestion charges etc.
Now, even some Skoda EVs (which are ok cars but nobody would describe as luxury), but certainly the average car could cost you £2.5k in luxury car tax, plus if true another £300-400 in this PPM (which will of course only go up in cost over the years), plus you have to pay congestion charge.
Those are nudges all in the wrong direction if your policy is to get eveybody in an EV by 2035. Most people who foot the upfront cost of the car on finance will more than likely just go fuck it, cost me same in luxury car tax, same in road tax, same in congestion car, might as well just get an ICE car that is cheaper upfront.
This purported EV tax. Assuming it comes in at all, and then in the form proposed by the Daily Reformgraph.
3p a mile in tax is less than the 6.7p a mile the average petrol car pays. And if you mostly charge at home you're paying 5% VAT not 20% VAT, so that's another saving.
Road pricing is inevitable. Though knowing this government they will announce that they are going to raise £3bn by trialling it with a 5p a mile tax on Hydrogen cars.
It might be less than ICE car tax, but its another nudge not to....people won't do the maths, they will be just like WTF, so I have to pay another tax on my EV. As I say, on top of all the other taxes / reduced subsidies that have been enacted. And that's if you can charge from home etc etc etc.
Avoiding £2.5k in luxury car tax is a pretty good nudge in the EV direction. But that is gone unless you want to drive a shit box EV from China (China make some very good EVs, low end BYDs aren't them).
Youi are all in on EVs, nothing wrong with that. I am just pointing out from the general public perspective, getting a subsidy on an EV, no luxury car tax, no road tax, no congestion charge, ohhh that's interesting. Or yeah it costs more up front, yeah you have to pay luxury car tax, and PPM road tax and congestion charge. Ohhhh come on Maureen lets look at those ICE powered Toyotas. Not let me get the Excel spreadsheet out and work this out to the penny.
I've just bought an EV, ex demonstrator. I pay road tax, I will have to pay congestion charge from January, I am ulez compliant, but so are most cars less than 10 years old. Fuel duty I don't pay because I don't buy fuel, but I do pay 20% vat on my electrical energy as I don't have a home charger. I also don't pollute the atmosphere.
I think I made the right decision.
😐
The electricity produced to fuel your car will pollute the atmosphere. You’re merely moving your pollution downstream.
Actually, because less CO2 is produced creating electricity, and because EVs use less *power* per mile than ICE (they have to be more efficient, because of the cost/size of batteries) and the emissions from transporting and refining petrol, that is not so.
Even when the grid was majority coal fired, this meant that an EV was marginally better than an ICE.
Now that coal is gone and the grid is increasingly powered by zero emission sources, EVs win by a massive margin.
The lack of tailpipe emissions is the really important thing, especially in urban environments. A reason why hybrids are also very helpful even if their fuel consumption on long journeys is nothing special.
Respiratory diseases caused by pollution still kill tens of thousands each year but the numbers have fallen sharply here since the ULEZ.
A bigger effect (but in a similar period to ULEZ) was a crack down on the tiny minority of vehicles that produce huge emissions.
Getting all the taxi drivers out of old bangers and into Priuses was a big win - that was largely due to them being stopped for tail pipe checks/MOT fails.
I would like to retract all my previous criticisms of HSBC.
I now would be proud to work for HSBC and will be moving my main bank account to HSBC.
On a totally unrelated note.
BREAKING: George Osborne, the former chancellor, has emerged as a shock contender to become the next chairman of HSBC Holdings, one of the world's top banking jobs.
One of the few banks Brown didn't nationalise or bail out
That’s incorrect.
It is correct, only Barclays of the UK banks in 2008 also got no significant bail out but largely as it managed to get a large investment from the Middle East
Barclays is the big bank that didn’t get a bailout. RBS and HBOS needed one and Lloyds was forced to take one.
Abbey National, for example, received no bail out despite having a 10-13% UK market share depending on product.
And there are many more banks than that, even before you start on the building societies
Abbey National was part of Santander in 2008 and of course Santander received a bailout for the likes of Bradford and Bingley it took over in 2008.
I would like to retract all my previous criticisms of HSBC.
I now would be proud to work for HSBC and will be moving my main bank account to HSBC.
On a totally unrelated note.
BREAKING: George Osborne, the former chancellor, has emerged as a shock contender to become the next chairman of HSBC Holdings, one of the world's top banking jobs.
Someone who showed only a moderate interest in financial matters whilst in government. Has he shown any particular enthusiasm since?
This may reflect the bank chairman role now being more of a political one. What does that say about where we are?
The chairman just sets long term strategy and leads the board, the CEO runs operations day to day
Presumably he's also expecting to be the DG of BBC at the same time? Maybe edit a couple of newspapers as well?
Will there still be a BBC by the time a replacement DG is lined up? I don't adequately have a grasp of the figures, but it strikes me a demand in the billions looks like a winding-up event?
A British court isn’t going to issue a billion-pound anything, even for an egregious defamation, and it’s difficult to see what an American court can do given that the programme concerned wasn’t broadcast in the US.
Most likely the BBC agrees to a donation in the seven figures to a Trump-nominated charity such as his library fund, and everyone involved in the programme gets a right bollocking over basic journalistic standards and the need to be fair even to those you dislike.
What the BBC won’t want is anything that looks like the American process of “discovery”, where any and all written correspondence regarding the J6 speech gets sent to Trump’s lawyers.
It’s timed out in the UK and the US courts don’t have jurisdiction
Worth remembering that 'friends of the BBC' are very keen to keep the focus on Trump (nasty man wants to destroy auntie!) and not all the other awkward stuff in the Prescott report.
Wes Streeting has been accused of taking a “chaotic and incoherent approach” to reforming the NHS which makes it unlikely the government will hit its own targets, according to a damning report by the Institute for Government (IfG).
The report praises elements of how the health secretary has managed the health service in his first year in office, including improving performance and staff retention in hospitals. Thepay settlement he reached with resident doctors last year avoided a winter plagued by NHS strikes
But it also criticises significant aspects of his performance, including the way he handled the abolition of NHS England and his lack of action to stem the exodus of senior GPs.
There’s quite a few Twitter stories about people who have just graduated in medicine or nursing, who are finding it very difficult to get training placements in the NHS.
There’s likely more to a lot of the stories, such as an unwillingness to move hundreds of miles, but on the face of it there seems to be a planning problem within the NHS.
'The Telegraph understands the Treasury will use the existing council tax system to revalue 2.4 million of the most valuable properties across bands F, G and H over the next few years – representing one in 10 English homes.
It is understood that a new, separate surcharge on top of existing council tax bills will then be applied to 300,000 of the most valuable properties across the top three bands..More than 65,000 band F, G and H homes in Buckinghamshire would face revaluation, along with 59,000 in Westminster and 46,000 in Kensington and Chelsea.'
I would like to retract all my previous criticisms of HSBC.
I now would be proud to work for HSBC and will be moving my main bank account to HSBC.
On a totally unrelated note.
BREAKING: George Osborne, the former chancellor, has emerged as a shock contender to become the next chairman of HSBC Holdings, one of the world's top banking jobs.
Someone who showed only a moderate interest in financial matters whilst in government. Has he shown any particular enthusiasm since?
This may reflect the bank chairman role now being more of a political one. What does that say about where we are?
The chairman just sets long term strategy and leads the board, the CEO runs operations day to day
Presumably he's also expecting to be the DG of BBC at the same time? Maybe edit a couple of newspapers as well?
Will there still be a BBC by the time a replacement DG is lined up? I don't adequately have a grasp of the figures, but it strikes me a demand in the billions looks like a winding-up event?
A British court isn’t going to issue a billion-pound anything, even for an egregious defamation, and it’s difficult to see what an American court can do given that the programme concerned wasn’t broadcast in the US.
Most likely the BBC agrees to a donation in the seven figures to a Trump-nominated charity such as his library fund, and everyone involved in the programme gets a right bollocking over basic journalistic standards and the need to be fair even to those you dislike.
What the BBC won’t want is anything that looks like the American process of “discovery”, where any and all written correspondence regarding the J6 speech gets sent to Trump’s lawyers.
It’s timed out in the UK and the US courts don’t have jurisdiction
Worth remembering that 'friends of the BBC' are very keen to keep the focus on Trump (nasty man wants to destroy auntie!) and not all the other awkward stuff in the Prescott report.
Yes the BBC are trying hard to make the story about Trump, where they might have some sympathy with the British public in general who don’t look too hard at what they actually did.
They really don’t want the focus to be on their lack of balance related to gender issues or the war in the Middle East, where they appear to have been captured by a loud group of activist young staff who have little public support.
Wes Streeting has been accused of taking a “chaotic and incoherent approach” to reforming the NHS which makes it unlikely the government will hit its own targets, according to a damning report by the Institute for Government (IfG).
The report praises elements of how the health secretary has managed the health service in his first year in office, including improving performance and staff retention in hospitals. Thepay settlement he reached with resident doctors last year avoided a winter plagued by NHS strikes
But it also criticises significant aspects of his performance, including the way he handled the abolition of NHS England and his lack of action to stem the exodus of senior GPs.
There’s quite a few Twitter stories about people who have just graduated in medicine or nursing, who are finding it very difficult to get training placements in the NHS.
There’s likely more to a lot of the stories, such as an unwillingness to move hundreds of miles, but on the face of it there seems to be a planning problem within the NHS.
We’ve been taking about this for *years* on PB.
To recap. To make a medic, you send them to university. Then you send them for x years of training in actual hospitals. This is proven methodology and works - same round the world.
The government caps the university places, then provides less than that in training places. In addition the system of allocating places to people in the NHS involves such fun as randomly sending them round the country.
So we educate far fewer medics than the NHS requires, train less and then treat them in a manner that a 19th cent mill owner would regard as a bit fruity.
So we make up the huge gap by importing medics.
Further, these numbers are increasing far slower than the NHS is growing. So our dependence on foreign labour is growing.
To add to the fun - remember the A level/uni fun during COVID. Some university classes were expanded by 25% because of that. Guess who is coming off the end of the production line, now? And no, they didn’t increase training places in the NHS.
So we have a shortage of training places in hospitals.
I do wonder if Streeting is letting this happen to put pressure on the treasury to release funds to increase the very expensive hospital training places. Or is that giving him too much credit?
I would like to retract all my previous criticisms of HSBC.
I now would be proud to work for HSBC and will be moving my main bank account to HSBC.
On a totally unrelated note.
BREAKING: George Osborne, the former chancellor, has emerged as a shock contender to become the next chairman of HSBC Holdings, one of the world's top banking jobs.
One of the few banks Brown didn't nationalise or bail out
That’s incorrect.
It is correct, only Barclays of the UK banks in 2008 also got no significant bail out but largely as it managed to get a large investment from the Middle East
Barclays is the big bank that didn’t get a bailout. RBS and HBOS needed one and Lloyds was forced to take one.
Abbey National, for example, received no bail out despite having a 10-13% UK market share depending on product.
And there are many more banks than that, even before you start on the building societies
Abbey National was part of Santander in 2008 and of course Santander received a bailout for the likes of Bradford and Bingley it took over in 2008.
It bought Bradford and Bingley’s savings business from the state. The UK government included a dowry to make the deal attractive. That’s not the same as a “bailout”.
And the FCA harassment of Barclays was politically motivated - the government was pissed off that they refused a bailout and so went after them for anything and everything they could
I would like to retract all my previous criticisms of HSBC.
I now would be proud to work for HSBC and will be moving my main bank account to HSBC.
On a totally unrelated note.
BREAKING: George Osborne, the former chancellor, has emerged as a shock contender to become the next chairman of HSBC Holdings, one of the world's top banking jobs.
Someone who showed only a moderate interest in financial matters whilst in government. Has he shown any particular enthusiasm since?
This may reflect the bank chairman role now being more of a political one. What does that say about where we are?
The chairman just sets long term strategy and leads the board, the CEO runs operations day to day
Presumably he's also expecting to be the DG of BBC at the same time? Maybe edit a couple of newspapers as well?
Will there still be a BBC by the time a replacement DG is lined up? I don't adequately have a grasp of the figures, but it strikes me a demand in the billions looks like a winding-up event?
A British court isn’t going to issue a billion-pound anything, even for an egregious defamation, and it’s difficult to see what an American court can do given that the programme concerned wasn’t broadcast in the US.
Most likely the BBC agrees to a donation in the seven figures to a Trump-nominated charity such as his library fund, and everyone involved in the programme gets a right bollocking over basic journalistic standards and the need to be fair even to those you dislike.
What the BBC won’t want is anything that looks like the American process of “discovery”, where any and all written correspondence regarding the J6 speech gets sent to Trump’s lawyers.
It’s timed out in the UK and the US courts don’t have jurisdiction
Worth remembering that 'friends of the BBC' are very keen to keep the focus on Trump (nasty man wants to destroy auntie!) and not all the other awkward stuff in the Prescott report.
Yes the BBC are trying hard to make the story about Trump, where they might have some sympathy with the British public in general who don’t look too hard at what they actually did.
They really don’t want the focus to be on their lack of balance related to gender issues or the war in the Middle East, where they appear to have been captured by a loud group of activist young staff who have little public support.
Is this the nonsense that's doing the rounds in the Brit bars of Dubai at the moment?
Wes Streeting has been accused of taking a “chaotic and incoherent approach” to reforming the NHS which makes it unlikely the government will hit its own targets, according to a damning report by the Institute for Government (IfG).
The report praises elements of how the health secretary has managed the health service in his first year in office, including improving performance and staff retention in hospitals. Thepay settlement he reached with resident doctors last year avoided a winter plagued by NHS strikes
But it also criticises significant aspects of his performance, including the way he handled the abolition of NHS England and his lack of action to stem the exodus of senior GPs.
There’s quite a few Twitter stories about people who have just graduated in medicine or nursing, who are finding it very difficult to get training placements in the NHS.
There’s likely more to a lot of the stories, such as an unwillingness to move hundreds of miles, but on the face of it there seems to be a planning problem within the NHS.
We’ve been taking about this for *years* on PB.
To recap. To make a medic, you send them to university. Then you send them for x years of training in actual hospitals. This is proven methodology and works - same round the world.
The government caps the university places, then provides less than that in training places. In addition the system of allocating places to people in the NHS involves such fun as randomly sending them round the country.
So we educate far fewer medics than the NHS requires, train less and then treat them in a manner that a 19th cent mill owner would regard as a bit fruity.
So we make up the huge gap by importing medics.
Further, these numbers are increasing far slower than the NHS is growing. So our dependence on foreign labour is growing.
To add to the fun - remember the A level/uni fun during COVID. Some university classes were expanded by 25% because of that. Guess who is coming off the end of the production line, now? And no, they didn’t increase training places in the NHS.
So we have a shortage of training places in hospitals.
I do wonder if Streeting is letting this happen to put pressure on the treasury to release funds to increase the very expensive hospital training places. Or is that giving him too much credit?
It is important to realise that postgraduate training places involve a great deal of service work, indeed out of hours most specialities are run by the Residents.
There has been recent circulars in my Trust to allow us to convert non training middle grade posts to postgraduate training places.
There also is an issue that the NHS 10 year plan requires a shift from hospital specialities to General Pracice. I think this is probably correct, but the training resources need to be allocated appropriately for this.
I would like to retract all my previous criticisms of HSBC.
I now would be proud to work for HSBC and will be moving my main bank account to HSBC.
On a totally unrelated note.
BREAKING: George Osborne, the former chancellor, has emerged as a shock contender to become the next chairman of HSBC Holdings, one of the world's top banking jobs.
Someone who showed only a moderate interest in financial matters whilst in government. Has he shown any particular enthusiasm since?
This may reflect the bank chairman role now being more of a political one. What does that say about where we are?
The chairman just sets long term strategy and leads the board, the CEO runs operations day to day
Presumably he's also expecting to be the DG of BBC at the same time? Maybe edit a couple of newspapers as well?
Will there still be a BBC by the time a replacement DG is lined up? I don't adequately have a grasp of the figures, but it strikes me a demand in the billions looks like a winding-up event?
A British court isn’t going to issue a billion-pound anything, even for an egregious defamation, and it’s difficult to see what an American court can do given that the programme concerned wasn’t broadcast in the US.
Most likely the BBC agrees to a donation in the seven figures to a Trump-nominated charity such as his library fund, and everyone involved in the programme gets a right bollocking over basic journalistic standards and the need to be fair even to those you dislike.
What the BBC won’t want is anything that looks like the American process of “discovery”, where any and all written correspondence regarding the J6 speech gets sent to Trump’s lawyers.
It’s timed out in the UK and the US courts don’t have jurisdiction
Worth remembering that 'friends of the BBC' are very keen to keep the focus on Trump (nasty man wants to destroy auntie!) and not all the other awkward stuff in the Prescott report.
Yes the BBC are trying hard to make the story about Trump, where they might have some sympathy with the British public in general who don’t look too hard at what they actually did.
They really don’t want the focus to be on their lack of balance related to gender issues or the war in the Middle East, where they appear to have been captured by a loud group of activist young staff who have little public support.
Can I order you a taxi from Trader Vics? I think you have had enough.
Trump is making this all about Trump. Wait, it is all about Trump! He incited a seditious coup.
I would like to retract all my previous criticisms of HSBC.
I now would be proud to work for HSBC and will be moving my main bank account to HSBC.
On a totally unrelated note.
BREAKING: George Osborne, the former chancellor, has emerged as a shock contender to become the next chairman of HSBC Holdings, one of the world's top banking jobs.
One of the few banks Brown didn't nationalise or bail out
That’s incorrect.
It is correct, only Barclays of the UK banks in 2008 also got no significant bail out but largely as it managed to get a large investment from the Middle East
Barclays is the big bank that didn’t get a bailout. RBS and HBOS needed one and Lloyds was forced to take one.
Abbey National, for example, received no bail out despite having a 10-13% UK market share depending on product.
And there are many more banks than that, even before you start on the building societies
Abbey National was part of Santander in 2008 and of course Santander received a bailout for the likes of Bradford and Bingley it took over in 2008.
It bought Bradford and Bingley’s savings business from the state. The UK government included a dowry to make the deal attractive. That’s not the same as a “bailout”.
And the FCA harassment of Barclays was politically motivated - the government was pissed off that they refused a bailout and so went after them for anything and everything they could
Given Santander needed that dowry from the state to take Bradford and Bingley on it effectively was.
Note Barclays ultimately accepted the FCA ruling given it only got the Qatar investment by giving the Qataris a significant discount its existing shareholders did not get
I've just been reminded by Twix about the time Jeremy Bowen laid in a ditch in Ukraine, pretending he was under attack, while recording a report. A Ukrainian lady walking her dog stopped to check that he was ok
He really is just an aged Damien Day (Drop The Dead Donkey). Thank fuck we've had him as our man in the Middle East, faithfully reporting Hamas propaganda
- Freeze on thresholds to 2030 (worth £10bn) - New tax on some forms of gambling (£3bn) - Restriction on NI relief on salary sacrifice for pensions contributions (£2bn) - New 'mansion tax' see my earlier post (£1bn) - Maybe small changes ie increases to CGT and dividend tax but no obvious sign of this happening ditto IHT changes - 'Efficiencies' and the usual 'tax evasion clampdown' (£several bn)
And that's it
I don't think the 2 child cap will be lifted at least not in full. Fuel duty won't go up!
DYOR
Just hope they don't bring in general tax on betting wins.
I am really surprised governments haven't gone for at least those who make the bulk of their income from gambling. Lots of other governments have come up with stupid systems aimed at capping the amount of losses you can deduct etc, so that pro gambling end up paying income taxes e.g, Trumps big beautiful bill. The Greeks do it based on daily wins / losses.
EV mile tax is another fiddle around tax rather than actually govern.
Also reductions in hidden tax in energy bills in order to subsides heat pumps is another area for Treasury back slapping enjoyment on the day.
Going after EVs when you are also trying to get everybody into EVs by 2035....remember they added luxury car tax to EVs last time as well and congestion charge is getting added in Lodnon. £40k doesn't get you much car these days, a cheap Chinese EV. joined up thinking.
I'm not sure on that. If it keeps a bit of downward pressure on price and size, then so much the better.
Looking at my make - Skodas - all the ranges except the biggest electric SUV start at under 40k, and there are plenty between 20k and 30k, and hatchbacks down to £15k. That's all before discounts.
(They have a problem with the names, and the Electric models are on the whole physically huge. The models include Kamiq, Karoq, Kodiaq, Elroq, and Enyaq; someone put the ghost of Telly Savalas in the bloody computer.)
Except it hasnt. Luxury car tax came in 2017, average new car price is £50k now. Last few years up dramatically for a number of reasons. The UK favourite ICE car the Qashqai is now £40k if you spec it up a bit. And with Trump tariffs etc there is no downward pressure, just the Chinese selling at cost.
To me the average seems to be £40k or so, not £50k.
No, we did this the other day. The official figures are now that the average new car is £50k. I posted links.
So your argument seems to be you will drive a BYD or EV Skoda and be happy.
The whole idea was supposed to be EVs cost a bit more, but a) the government will provide a really good subsidsy so they are on par if not cheaper than an ICE vehicle, so you don't need to worry about base cost (remember most people buy on finance), no luxury car tax, no road tax and also no horrid congestion charges etc.
Now, even some Skoda EVs (which are ok cars but nobody would describe as luxury), but certainly the average car could cost you £2.5k in luxury car tax, plus if true another £300-400 in this PPM (which will of course only go up in cost over the years), plus you have to pay congestion charge.
Those are nudges all in the wrong direction if your policy is to get eveybody in an EV by 2035. Most people who foot the upfront cost of the car on finance will more than likely just go fuck it, cost me same in luxury car tax, same in road tax, same in congestion car, might as well just get an ICE car that is cheaper upfront.
This purported EV tax. Assuming it comes in at all, and then in the form proposed by the Daily Reformgraph.
3p a mile in tax is less than the 6.7p a mile the average petrol car pays. And if you mostly charge at home you're paying 5% VAT not 20% VAT, so that's another saving.
Road pricing is inevitable. Though knowing this government they will announce that they are going to raise £3bn by trialling it with a 5p a mile tax on Hydrogen cars.
It might be less than ICE car tax, but its another nudge not to....people won't do the maths, they will be just like WTF, so I have to pay another tax on my EV. As I say, on top of all the other taxes / reduced subsidies that have been enacted. And that's if you can charge from home etc etc etc.
Avoiding £2.5k in luxury car tax is a pretty good nudge in the EV direction. But that is gone unless you want to drive a shit box EV from China (China make some very good EVs, low end BYDs aren't them).
Youi are all in on EVs, nothing wrong with that. I am just pointing out from the general public perspective, getting a subsidy on an EV, no luxury car tax, no road tax, no congestion charge, ohhh that's interesting. Or yeah it costs more up front, yeah you have to pay luxury car tax, and PPM road tax and congestion charge. Ohhhh come on Maureen lets look at those ICE powered Toyotas. Not let me get the Excel spreadsheet out and work this out to the penny.
I've just bought an EV, ex demonstrator. I pay road tax, I will have to pay congestion charge from January, I am ulez compliant, but so are most cars less than 10 years old. Fuel duty I don't pay because I don't buy fuel, but I do pay 20% vat on my electrical energy as I don't have a home charger. I also don't pollute the atmosphere.
I think I made the right decision.
😐
The electricity produced to fuel your car will pollute the atmosphere. You’re merely moving your pollution downstream.
Actually, because less CO2 is produced creating electricity, and because EVs use less *power* per mile than ICE (they have to be more efficient, because of the cost/size of batteries) and the emissions from transporting and refining petrol, that is not so.
Even when the grid was majority coal fired, this meant that an EV was marginally better than an ICE.
Now that coal is gone and the grid is increasingly powered by zero emission sources, EVs win by a massive margin.
It's not just the cost and size of the battery - an electric motor is intrinsically more efficient than an ICE (80% v 30%, though it depends on how you measure it).
So while we're going to a lot more electricity generation than we do now, the overall energy consumption from road transport is going to drop markedly.
Wes Streeting has been accused of taking a “chaotic and incoherent approach” to reforming the NHS which makes it unlikely the government will hit its own targets, according to a damning report by the Institute for Government (IfG).
The report praises elements of how the health secretary has managed the health service in his first year in office, including improving performance and staff retention in hospitals. Thepay settlement he reached with resident doctors last year avoided a winter plagued by NHS strikes
But it also criticises significant aspects of his performance, including the way he handled the abolition of NHS England and his lack of action to stem the exodus of senior GPs.
There’s quite a few Twitter stories about people who have just graduated in medicine or nursing, who are finding it very difficult to get training placements in the NHS.
There’s likely more to a lot of the stories, such as an unwillingness to move hundreds of miles, but on the face of it there seems to be a planning problem within the NHS.
We’ve been taking about this for *years* on PB.
To recap. To make a medic, you send them to university. Then you send them for x years of training in actual hospitals. This is proven methodology and works - same round the world.
The government caps the university places, then provides less than that in training places. In addition the system of allocating places to people in the NHS involves such fun as randomly sending them round the country.
So we educate far fewer medics than the NHS requires, train less and then treat them in a manner that a 19th cent mill owner would regard as a bit fruity.
So we make up the huge gap by importing medics.
Further, these numbers are increasing far slower than the NHS is growing. So our dependence on foreign labour is growing.
To add to the fun - remember the A level/uni fun during COVID. Some university classes were expanded by 25% because of that. Guess who is coming off the end of the production line, now? And no, they didn’t increase training places in the NHS.
So we have a shortage of training places in hospitals.
I do wonder if Streeting is letting this happen to put pressure on the treasury to release funds to increase the very expensive hospital training places. Or is that giving him too much credit?
But that's the cheat code that every government in my lifetime has used- spending less and getting more now by not doing the sorts of investment that will pay off after the next election.
I think Dr Foxy has noted that expanding postgrad training means taking senior doctors off current doctoring, so they can train future doctors. And since the NHS is always run at 110% capacity, that won't fly.
Of course it would be better if governments didn't do that. But there is a name for governments that don't give the electorate what they want right now- and that name is the opposition.
I would like to retract all my previous criticisms of HSBC.
I now would be proud to work for HSBC and will be moving my main bank account to HSBC.
On a totally unrelated note.
BREAKING: George Osborne, the former chancellor, has emerged as a shock contender to become the next chairman of HSBC Holdings, one of the world's top banking jobs.
Someone who showed only a moderate interest in financial matters whilst in government. Has he shown any particular enthusiasm since?
This may reflect the bank chairman role now being more of a political one. What does that say about where we are?
The chairman just sets long term strategy and leads the board, the CEO runs operations day to day
Presumably he's also expecting to be the DG of BBC at the same time? Maybe edit a couple of newspapers as well?
Will there still be a BBC by the time a replacement DG is lined up? I don't adequately have a grasp of the figures, but it strikes me a demand in the billions looks like a winding-up event?
A British court isn’t going to issue a billion-pound anything, even for an egregious defamation, and it’s difficult to see what an American court can do given that the programme concerned wasn’t broadcast in the US.
Most likely the BBC agrees to a donation in the seven figures to a Trump-nominated charity such as his library fund, and everyone involved in the programme gets a right bollocking over basic journalistic standards and the need to be fair even to those you dislike.
What the BBC won’t want is anything that looks like the American process of “discovery”, where any and all written correspondence regarding the J6 speech gets sent to Trump’s lawyers.
It’s timed out in the UK and the US courts don’t have jurisdiction
Worth remembering that 'friends of the BBC' are very keen to keep the focus on Trump (nasty man wants to destroy auntie!) and not all the other awkward stuff in the Prescott report.
Yes the BBC are trying hard to make the story about Trump, where they might have some sympathy with the British public in general who don’t look too hard at what they actually did.
They really don’t want the focus to be on their lack of balance related to gender issues or the war in the Middle East, where they appear to have been captured by a loud group of activist young staff who have little public support.
Do you just do a show of hands in your Dubai apartment block?
If you think the BBC are not representing the opinions of the Great British public take a look.
I don't see how the top 10% counts as "middle class".
Isn’t that roughly the traditional definition of “middle class” in the UK? See also, R4 listenership.
Top end of upper middle class but remember in 2024 Labour actually won ABs and those earning over £70k for the first time, these measures could certainly send Westminster and Kensington and some of the wealthier home counties seats back to the Tories. Labour can't really afford to lose them given it has been leaking white working class voters it won in 2024 to Reform and inner city progressives to the Greens
Just back from a walk, and it seems that SSE were digging in the wrong place. They've started a new hole in the pavement outside my house
I remember 10 years ago or so ago at a previous house, the street light broke outside our house. Phoned up the council, weeks later, a truck with a cherry picker arrives, they go to the light one down, unscrew the bulb, replace it and drive off. Another call to the coucil, weeks later, a truck with a cherry picker arrives, they go to the light one up, unscrew the bulb, replaceit and drive off. Third time lucky correct bulb replaced. Week later, cable company comes to put in high speed cable to the street, manage to damage the cable to the lamp post while digging up the road, and back to no light.
Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s prime minister, is an exceptional politician. Under her leadership there has been political stability in Italy for the first time in over 15 years https://www.youtube.com/shorts/JYZ3OdkfRM4
Three minutes from the Economist on Meloni.
She's now a pro EU centrist and she's her own person. What's not to like?
- Freeze on thresholds to 2030 (worth £10bn) - New tax on some forms of gambling (£3bn) - Restriction on NI relief on salary sacrifice for pensions contributions (£2bn) - New 'mansion tax' see my earlier post (£1bn) - Maybe small changes ie increases to CGT and dividend tax but no obvious sign of this happening ditto IHT changes - 'Efficiencies' and the usual 'tax evasion clampdown' (£several bn)
And that's it
I don't think the 2 child cap will be lifted at least not in full. Fuel duty won't go up!
DYOR
Just hope they don't bring in general tax on betting wins.
I am really surprised governments haven't gone for at least those who make the bulk of their income from gambling. Lots of other governments have come up with stupid systems aimed at capping the amount of losses you can deduct etc, so that pro gambling end up paying income taxes e.g, Trumps big beautiful bill. The Greeks do it based on daily wins / losses.
EV mile tax is another fiddle around tax rather than actually govern.
Also reductions in hidden tax in energy bills in order to subsides heat pumps is another area for Treasury back slapping enjoyment on the day.
Going after EVs when you are also trying to get everybody into EVs by 2035....remember they added luxury car tax to EVs last time as well and congestion charge is getting added in Lodnon. £40k doesn't get you much car these days, a cheap Chinese EV. joined up thinking.
I'm not sure on that. If it keeps a bit of downward pressure on price and size, then so much the better.
Looking at my make - Skodas - all the ranges except the biggest electric SUV start at under 40k, and there are plenty between 20k and 30k, and hatchbacks down to £15k. That's all before discounts.
(They have a problem with the names, and the Electric models are on the whole physically huge. The models include Kamiq, Karoq, Kodiaq, Elroq, and Enyaq; someone put the ghost of Telly Savalas in the bloody computer.)
Except it hasnt. Luxury car tax came in 2017, average new car price is £50k now. Last few years up dramatically for a number of reasons. The UK favourite ICE car the Qashqai is now £40k if you spec it up a bit. And with Trump tariffs etc there is no downward pressure, just the Chinese selling at cost.
To me the average seems to be £40k or so, not £50k.
No, we did this the other day. The official figures are now that the average new car is £50k. I posted links.
So your argument seems to be you will drive a BYD or EV Skoda and be happy.
The whole idea was supposed to be EVs cost a bit more, but a) the government will provide a really good subsidsy so they are on par if not cheaper than an ICE vehicle, so you don't need to worry about base cost (remember most people buy on finance), no luxury car tax, no road tax and also no horrid congestion charges etc.
Now, even some Skoda EVs (which are ok cars but nobody would describe as luxury), but certainly the average car could cost you £2.5k in luxury car tax, plus if true another £300-400 in this PPM (which will of course only go up in cost over the years), plus you have to pay congestion charge.
Those are nudges all in the wrong direction if your policy is to get eveybody in an EV by 2035. Most people who foot the upfront cost of the car on finance will more than likely just go fuck it, cost me same in luxury car tax, same in road tax, same in congestion car, might as well just get an ICE car that is cheaper upfront.
This purported EV tax. Assuming it comes in at all, and then in the form proposed by the Daily Reformgraph.
3p a mile in tax is less than the 6.7p a mile the average petrol car pays. And if you mostly charge at home you're paying 5% VAT not 20% VAT, so that's another saving.
Road pricing is inevitable. Though knowing this government they will announce that they are going to raise £3bn by trialling it with a 5p a mile tax on Hydrogen cars.
It might be less than ICE car tax, but its another nudge not to....people won't do the maths, they will be just like WTF, so I have to pay another tax on my EV. As I say, on top of all the other taxes / reduced subsidies that have been enacted. And that's if you can charge from home etc etc etc.
Avoiding £2.5k in luxury car tax is a pretty good nudge in the EV direction. But that is gone unless you want to drive a shit box EV from China (China make some very good EVs, low end BYDs aren't them).
Youi are all in on EVs, nothing wrong with that. I am just pointing out from the general public perspective, getting a subsidy on an EV, no luxury car tax, no road tax, no congestion charge, ohhh that's interesting. Or yeah it costs more up front, yeah you have to pay luxury car tax, and PPM road tax and congestion charge. Ohhhh come on Maureen lets look at those ICE powered Toyotas. Not let me get the Excel spreadsheet out and work this out to the penny.
I've just bought an EV, ex demonstrator. I pay road tax, I will have to pay congestion charge from January, I am ulez compliant, but so are most cars less than 10 years old. Fuel duty I don't pay because I don't buy fuel, but I do pay 20% vat on my electrical energy as I don't have a home charger. I also don't pollute the atmosphere.
I think I made the right decision.
😐
The electricity produced to fuel your car will pollute the atmosphere. You’re merely moving your pollution downstream.
Actually, because less CO2 is produced creating electricity, and because EVs use less *power* per mile than ICE (they have to be more efficient, because of the cost/size of batteries) and the emissions from transporting and refining petrol, that is not so.
Even when the grid was majority coal fired, this meant that an EV was marginally better than an ICE.
Now that coal is gone and the grid is increasingly powered by zero emission sources, EVs win by a massive margin.
It's not just the cost and size of the battery - an electric motor is intrinsically more efficient than an ICE (80% v 30%, though it depends on how you measure it).
So while we're going to a lot more electricity generation than we do now, the overall energy consumption from road transport is going to drop markedly.
The reason EVs work is that everything, apart from the battery, has insane capacity, tiny loses and light weight.
An average person can pick up a 200hp electric motor. Try that with an ICE engine. Similarly transmission losses of ‘leccy and the efficiency of motors turning that into power (and back for regenerative braking) are very small.
The killer is batteries. 300 Wh per kg. Petrol is 13,000…
Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s prime minister, is an exceptional politician. Under her leadership there has been political stability in Italy for the first time in over 15 years https://www.youtube.com/shorts/JYZ3OdkfRM4
Three minutes from the Economist on Meloni.
She's now a pro EU centrist and she's her own person. What's not to like?
Is she really a centrist?
I remember when she was first elected, many in the media were making it sound like she would make Hitler look like a moderate.
As we're talking about Trump vs the truth the BBC again, can we talk about what the BBC should do next?
Tell him to see them in court. Let's put Trump on the stand. Great entertainment, broadcast LIVE on BBC1.
If Trump actually went through with legal action against 1% of the people he threatened to do so, the courts would be doing nothing more than hearing his cases.
Wes Streeting has been accused of taking a “chaotic and incoherent approach” to reforming the NHS which makes it unlikely the government will hit its own targets, according to a damning report by the Institute for Government (IfG).
The report praises elements of how the health secretary has managed the health service in his first year in office, including improving performance and staff retention in hospitals. Thepay settlement he reached with resident doctors last year avoided a winter plagued by NHS strikes
But it also criticises significant aspects of his performance, including the way he handled the abolition of NHS England and his lack of action to stem the exodus of senior GPs.
There’s quite a few Twitter stories about people who have just graduated in medicine or nursing, who are finding it very difficult to get training placements in the NHS.
There’s likely more to a lot of the stories, such as an unwillingness to move hundreds of miles, but on the face of it there seems to be a planning problem within the NHS.
We’ve been taking about this for *years* on PB.
To recap. To make a medic, you send them to university. Then you send them for x years of training in actual hospitals. This is proven methodology and works - same round the world.
The government caps the university places, then provides less than that in training places. In addition the system of allocating places to people in the NHS involves such fun as randomly sending them round the country.
So we educate far fewer medics than the NHS requires, train less and then treat them in a manner that a 19th cent mill owner would regard as a bit fruity.
So we make up the huge gap by importing medics.
Further, these numbers are increasing far slower than the NHS is growing. So our dependence on foreign labour is growing.
To add to the fun - remember the A level/uni fun during COVID. Some university classes were expanded by 25% because of that. Guess who is coming off the end of the production line, now? And no, they didn’t increase training places in the NHS.
So we have a shortage of training places in hospitals.
I do wonder if Streeting is letting this happen to put pressure on the treasury to release funds to increase the very expensive hospital training places. Or is that giving him too much credit?
But that's the cheat code that every government in my lifetime has used- spending less and getting more now by not doing the sorts of investment that will pay off after the next election.
I think Dr Foxy has noted that expanding postgrad training means taking senior doctors off current doctoring, so they can train future doctors. And since the NHS is always run at 110% capacity, that won't fly.
Of course it would be better if governments didn't do that. But there is a name for governments that don't give the electorate what they want right now- and that name is the opposition.
Oh indeed.
I think it is possible that Streeting is trying to create a build up at the next log jam - training places in the NHS. To shake more money for training out of the Treasury. It’s an old trick in OR.
The rational approach would be a decades long expansion of training in the NHS. X above the increase needed to keep up with the increasing size of the NHs. Until we have capacity *above* the requirements of the NHS.
One idea that was suggested was using training programs abroad - the Philippines came up in one discussion. Send University grads there to become doctors…
I would like to retract all my previous criticisms of HSBC.
I now would be proud to work for HSBC and will be moving my main bank account to HSBC.
On a totally unrelated note.
BREAKING: George Osborne, the former chancellor, has emerged as a shock contender to become the next chairman of HSBC Holdings, one of the world's top banking jobs.
Someone who showed only a moderate interest in financial matters whilst in government. Has he shown any particular enthusiasm since?
This may reflect the bank chairman role now being more of a political one. What does that say about where we are?
The chairman just sets long term strategy and leads the board, the CEO runs operations day to day
Presumably he's also expecting to be the DG of BBC at the same time? Maybe edit a couple of newspapers as well?
Will there still be a BBC by the time a replacement DG is lined up? I don't adequately have a grasp of the figures, but it strikes me a demand in the billions looks like a winding-up event?
A British court isn’t going to issue a billion-pound anything, even for an egregious defamation, and it’s difficult to see what an American court can do given that the programme concerned wasn’t broadcast in the US.
Most likely the BBC agrees to a donation in the seven figures to a Trump-nominated charity such as his library fund, and everyone involved in the programme gets a right bollocking over basic journalistic standards and the need to be fair even to those you dislike.
What the BBC won’t want is anything that looks like the American process of “discovery”, where any and all written correspondence regarding the J6 speech gets sent to Trump’s lawyers.
It’s timed out in the UK and the US courts don’t have jurisdiction
Worth remembering that 'friends of the BBC' are very keen to keep the focus on Trump (nasty man wants to destroy auntie!) and not all the other awkward stuff in the Prescott report.
Yes the BBC are trying hard to make the story about Trump, where they might have some sympathy with the British public in general who don’t look too hard at what they actually did.
They really don’t want the focus to be on their lack of balance related to gender issues or the war in the Middle East, where they appear to have been captured by a loud group of activist young staff who have little public support.
Do you just do a show of hands in your Dubai apartment block?
If you think the BBC are not representing the opinions of the Great British public take a look.
I would like to retract all my previous criticisms of HSBC.
I now would be proud to work for HSBC and will be moving my main bank account to HSBC.
On a totally unrelated note.
BREAKING: George Osborne, the former chancellor, has emerged as a shock contender to become the next chairman of HSBC Holdings, one of the world's top banking jobs.
Someone who showed only a moderate interest in financial matters whilst in government. Has he shown any particular enthusiasm since?
This may reflect the bank chairman role now being more of a political one. What does that say about where we are?
The chairman just sets long term strategy and leads the board, the CEO runs operations day to day
Presumably he's also expecting to be the DG of BBC at the same time? Maybe edit a couple of newspapers as well?
Will there still be a BBC by the time a replacement DG is lined up? I don't adequately have a grasp of the figures, but it strikes me a demand in the billions looks like a winding-up event?
A British court isn’t going to issue a billion-pound anything, even for an egregious defamation, and it’s difficult to see what an American court can do given that the programme concerned wasn’t broadcast in the US.
Most likely the BBC agrees to a donation in the seven figures to a Trump-nominated charity such as his library fund, and everyone involved in the programme gets a right bollocking over basic journalistic standards and the need to be fair even to those you dislike.
What the BBC won’t want is anything that looks like the American process of “discovery”, where any and all written correspondence regarding the J6 speech gets sent to Trump’s lawyers.
It’s timed out in the UK and the US courts don’t have jurisdiction
Worth remembering that 'friends of the BBC' are very keen to keep the focus on Trump (nasty man wants to destroy auntie!) and not all the other awkward stuff in the Prescott report.
Yes the BBC are trying hard to make the story about Trump, where they might have some sympathy with the British public in general who don’t look too hard at what they actually did.
They really don’t want the focus to be on their lack of balance related to gender issues or the war in the Middle East, where they appear to have been captured by a loud group of activist young staff who have little public support.
Do you just do a show of hands in your Dubai apartment block?
If you think the BBC are not representing the opinions of the Great British public take a look.
I would like to retract all my previous criticisms of HSBC.
I now would be proud to work for HSBC and will be moving my main bank account to HSBC.
On a totally unrelated note.
BREAKING: George Osborne, the former chancellor, has emerged as a shock contender to become the next chairman of HSBC Holdings, one of the world's top banking jobs.
Someone who showed only a moderate interest in financial matters whilst in government. Has he shown any particular enthusiasm since?
This may reflect the bank chairman role now being more of a political one. What does that say about where we are?
The chairman just sets long term strategy and leads the board, the CEO runs operations day to day
Presumably he's also expecting to be the DG of BBC at the same time? Maybe edit a couple of newspapers as well?
Will there still be a BBC by the time a replacement DG is lined up? I don't adequately have a grasp of the figures, but it strikes me a demand in the billions looks like a winding-up event?
A British court isn’t going to issue a billion-pound anything, even for an egregious defamation, and it’s difficult to see what an American court can do given that the programme concerned wasn’t broadcast in the US.
Most likely the BBC agrees to a donation in the seven figures to a Trump-nominated charity such as his library fund, and everyone involved in the programme gets a right bollocking over basic journalistic standards and the need to be fair even to those you dislike.
What the BBC won’t want is anything that looks like the American process of “discovery”, where any and all written correspondence regarding the J6 speech gets sent to Trump’s lawyers.
It’s timed out in the UK and the US courts don’t have jurisdiction
Worth remembering that 'friends of the BBC' are very keen to keep the focus on Trump (nasty man wants to destroy auntie!) and not all the other awkward stuff in the Prescott report.
Aka right-wing attempt to turn the BBC into another GB News.
"Fears that Britain is due for a bout of mass violence on such a scale – or greater – have metastasised through the body politic in recent months. Speaking to the New Statesman earlier this year, Lisa Nandy said she believed that northern England was so tense it could “go up in flames” at any time. Dominic Cummings has claimed the intelligence services are discussing the potential for “racial/ethnic/mob/gang violence”. David Betz, a professor at the King’s College Department of War Studies, has gone further still and won much attention for predicting that Britain is sliding towards civil war.
According to Betz’s argument, governments such as our own can no longer peacefully manage multicultural societies fractured by ethnic grievance. We can therefore expect cities such as London to become “feral” with no-go zones spreading as the state’s authority dims. If civic conflict does break out, one side will push the metropolis into crisis by cutting off power and supplies, he argues. Such a scenario would leave the Met officers trained in Gravesend fighting to avert anarchy."
If they’re messing with Council Tax they should really go the full hog and commit to a full rebanding exercise, which is long overdue, but that would have been another one better done in their first budget and they might not feel they have the political cover now (if they’ve backed off the IT rise). Property taxes are risky.
I would like to retract all my previous criticisms of HSBC.
I now would be proud to work for HSBC and will be moving my main bank account to HSBC.
On a totally unrelated note.
BREAKING: George Osborne, the former chancellor, has emerged as a shock contender to become the next chairman of HSBC Holdings, one of the world's top banking jobs.
One of the few banks Brown didn't nationalise or bail out
That’s incorrect.
It is correct, only Barclays of the UK banks in 2008 also got no significant bail out but largely as it managed to get a large investment from the Middle East
Barclays is the big bank that didn’t get a bailout. RBS and HBOS needed one and Lloyds was forced to take one.
Abbey National, for example, received no bail out despite having a 10-13% UK market share depending on product.
And there are many more banks than that, even before you start on the building societies
Abbey National was part of Santander in 2008 and of course Santander received a bailout for the likes of Bradford and Bingley it took over in 2008.
It bought Bradford and Bingley’s savings business from the state. The UK government included a dowry to make the deal attractive. That’s not the same as a “bailout”.
And the FCA harassment of Barclays was politically motivated - the government was pissed off that they refused a bailout and so went after them for anything and everything they could
Given Santander needed that dowry from the state to take Bradford and Bingley on it effectively was.
Note Barclays ultimately accepted the FCA ruling given it only got the Qatar investment by giving the Qataris a significant discount its existing shareholders did not get
No, it wasn’t a bailout.
There was a competitive bidding process for the Bradford and Bingley savings business (*not* the whole company). The best bid was “minus X” (i.e. we will buy this business if you inject £x billion into it first).
That was the market price and the government was willing to accept it.
A bailout is “I’m going bankrupt will you give me some money” - the government said yes, but charged a fee, took seniority in the cap stack and a chunk of the equity.
The Barclays issue wasn’t the discount, but because they did it on a pre-emptive basis (ie went straight to Qatar) rather than running a full rights issue. The problem was that a rights issue would have required a prospectus and a 21 day period for shareholders to decide whether to participate. Barclays believed that because the Qatari investment was structured (ie not common equity) it didn’t count towards the pre-emptive limit. The FCA believed otherwise and Barclays is smart enough to realise that fighting with your regulator is not a good idea.
I would like to retract all my previous criticisms of HSBC.
I now would be proud to work for HSBC and will be moving my main bank account to HSBC.
On a totally unrelated note.
BREAKING: George Osborne, the former chancellor, has emerged as a shock contender to become the next chairman of HSBC Holdings, one of the world's top banking jobs.
Someone who showed only a moderate interest in financial matters whilst in government. Has he shown any particular enthusiasm since?
This may reflect the bank chairman role now being more of a political one. What does that say about where we are?
The chairman just sets long term strategy and leads the board, the CEO runs operations day to day
Presumably he's also expecting to be the DG of BBC at the same time? Maybe edit a couple of newspapers as well?
Will there still be a BBC by the time a replacement DG is lined up? I don't adequately have a grasp of the figures, but it strikes me a demand in the billions looks like a winding-up event?
A British court isn’t going to issue a billion-pound anything, even for an egregious defamation, and it’s difficult to see what an American court can do given that the programme concerned wasn’t broadcast in the US.
Most likely the BBC agrees to a donation in the seven figures to a Trump-nominated charity such as his library fund, and everyone involved in the programme gets a right bollocking over basic journalistic standards and the need to be fair even to those you dislike.
What the BBC won’t want is anything that looks like the American process of “discovery”, where any and all written correspondence regarding the J6 speech gets sent to Trump’s lawyers.
It’s timed out in the UK and the US courts don’t have jurisdiction
Worth remembering that 'friends of the BBC' are very keen to keep the focus on Trump (nasty man wants to destroy auntie!) and not all the other awkward stuff in the Prescott report.
Yes the BBC are trying hard to make the story about Trump, where they might have some sympathy with the British public in general who don’t look too hard at what they actually did.
They really don’t want the focus to be on their lack of balance related to gender issues or the war in the Middle East, where they appear to have been captured by a loud group of activist young staff who have little public support.
Do you just do a show of hands in your Dubai apartment block?
If you think the BBC are not representing the opinions of the Great British public take a look.
What an idiotic poll. Ask me whether I sympathise with the Israeli or Palestinian side (or “neither”, or say I don’t know) and I would utterly reject the premise of the question.
The only answer any intelligent human being could give would be “it depends”. Do we mean Israel or the Israeli Government? Do we mean Palestinians, the Palestinian authority, or Hamas? What do we mean by “sympathise”?
"Fears that Britain is due for a bout of mass violence on such a scale – or greater – have metastasised through the body politic in recent months. Speaking to the New Statesman earlier this year, Lisa Nandy said she believed that northern England was so tense it could “go up in flames” at any time. Dominic Cummings has claimed the intelligence services are discussing the potential for “racial/ethnic/mob/gang violence”. David Betz, a professor at the King’s College Department of War Studies, has gone further still and won much attention for predicting that Britain is sliding towards civil war.
According to Betz’s argument, governments such as our own can no longer peacefully manage multicultural societies fractured by ethnic grievance. We can therefore expect cities such as London to become “feral” with no-go zones spreading as the state’s authority dims. If civic conflict does break out, one side will push the metropolis into crisis by cutting off power and supplies, he argues. Such a scenario would leave the Met officers trained in Gravesend fighting to avert anarchy."
I’ve already put in an order for Namer. It will really upset the anti-Isreal lot. And Malmesbury’s 1st Heavy Infantry (New Model) will definitely be *heavy*
I would like to retract all my previous criticisms of HSBC.
I now would be proud to work for HSBC and will be moving my main bank account to HSBC.
On a totally unrelated note.
BREAKING: George Osborne, the former chancellor, has emerged as a shock contender to become the next chairman of HSBC Holdings, one of the world's top banking jobs.
Someone who showed only a moderate interest in financial matters whilst in government. Has he shown any particular enthusiasm since?
This may reflect the bank chairman role now being more of a political one. What does that say about where we are?
The chairman just sets long term strategy and leads the board, the CEO runs operations day to day
Presumably he's also expecting to be the DG of BBC at the same time? Maybe edit a couple of newspapers as well?
Will there still be a BBC by the time a replacement DG is lined up? I don't adequately have a grasp of the figures, but it strikes me a demand in the billions looks like a winding-up event?
A British court isn’t going to issue a billion-pound anything, even for an egregious defamation, and it’s difficult to see what an American court can do given that the programme concerned wasn’t broadcast in the US.
Most likely the BBC agrees to a donation in the seven figures to a Trump-nominated charity such as his library fund, and everyone involved in the programme gets a right bollocking over basic journalistic standards and the need to be fair even to those you dislike.
What the BBC won’t want is anything that looks like the American process of “discovery”, where any and all written correspondence regarding the J6 speech gets sent to Trump’s lawyers.
It’s timed out in the UK and the US courts don’t have jurisdiction
Worth remembering that 'friends of the BBC' are very keen to keep the focus on Trump (nasty man wants to destroy auntie!) and not all the other awkward stuff in the Prescott report.
Yes the BBC are trying hard to make the story about Trump, where they might have some sympathy with the British public in general who don’t look too hard at what they actually did.
They really don’t want the focus to be on their lack of balance related to gender issues or the war in the Middle East, where they appear to have been captured by a loud group of activist young staff who have little public support.
Is this the nonsense that's doing the rounds in the Brit bars of Dubai at the moment?
It’s a disgrace that the BBC isn’t showing vids of ISIS throwing gays off roofs in Iraq and stating that it’s Hamas. That’s the kind of reporting more gullible PBers can get behind.
In any case I thought polling suggests the UK public was largely against the Gazan..er..Special Military Operation.
I've just been reminded by Twix about the time Jeremy Bowen laid in a ditch in Ukraine, pretending he was under attack, while recording a report. A Ukrainian lady walking her dog stopped to check that he was ok
He really is just an aged Damien Day (Drop The Dead Donkey). Thank fuck we've had him as our man in the Middle East, faithfully reporting Hamas propaganda
A quick check and you would have found your claim is fake.. It took just 30 seconds to check. It is not right to defame people, particularly those who put their lives at risk to report news.
I've just been reminded by Twix about the time Jeremy Bowen laid in a ditch in Ukraine, pretending he was under attack, while recording a report. A Ukrainian lady walking her dog stopped to check that he was ok
He really is just an aged Damien Day (Drop The Dead Donkey). Thank fuck we've had him as our man in the Middle East, faithfully reporting Hamas propaganda
A quick check and you would have found your claim is fake.. It took just 30 seconds to check. It is not right to defame people, particularly those who put their lives at risk to report news.
Now, now, don't start confusing Blanche with mere facts.
- Freeze on thresholds to 2030 (worth £10bn) - New tax on some forms of gambling (£3bn) - Restriction on NI relief on salary sacrifice for pensions contributions (£2bn) - New 'mansion tax' see my earlier post (£1bn) - Maybe small changes ie increases to CGT and dividend tax but no obvious sign of this happening ditto IHT changes - 'Efficiencies' and the usual 'tax evasion clampdown' (£several bn)
And that's it
I don't think the 2 child cap will be lifted at least not in full. Fuel duty won't go up!
DYOR
Just hope they don't bring in general tax on betting wins.
I am really surprised governments haven't gone for at least those who make the bulk of their income from gambling. Lots of other governments have come up with stupid systems aimed at capping the amount of losses you can deduct etc, so that pro gambling end up paying income taxes e.g, Trumps big beautiful bill. The Greeks do it based on daily wins / losses.
EV mile tax is another fiddle around tax rather than actually govern.
Also reductions in hidden tax in energy bills in order to subsides heat pumps is another area for Treasury back slapping enjoyment on the day.
Going after EVs when you are also trying to get everybody into EVs by 2035....remember they added luxury car tax to EVs last time as well and congestion charge is getting added in Lodnon. £40k doesn't get you much car these days, a cheap Chinese EV. joined up thinking.
I'm not sure on that. If it keeps a bit of downward pressure on price and size, then so much the better.
Looking at my make - Skodas - all the ranges except the biggest electric SUV start at under 40k, and there are plenty between 20k and 30k, and hatchbacks down to £15k. That's all before discounts.
(They have a problem with the names, and the Electric models are on the whole physically huge. The models include Kamiq, Karoq, Kodiaq, Elroq, and Enyaq; someone put the ghost of Telly Savalas in the bloody computer.)
Except it hasnt. Luxury car tax came in 2017, average new car price is £50k now. Last few years up dramatically for a number of reasons. The UK favourite ICE car the Qashqai is now £40k if you spec it up a bit. And with Trump tariffs etc there is no downward pressure, just the Chinese selling at cost.
To me the average seems to be £40k or so, not £50k.
No, we did this the other day. The official figures are now that the average new car is £50k. I posted links.
So your argument seems to be you will drive a BYD or EV Skoda and be happy.
The whole idea was supposed to be EVs cost a bit more, but a) the government will provide a really good subsidsy so they are on par if not cheaper than an ICE vehicle, so you don't need to worry about base cost (remember most people buy on finance), no luxury car tax, no road tax and also no horrid congestion charges etc.
Now, even some Skoda EVs (which are ok cars but nobody would describe as luxury), but certainly the average car could cost you £2.5k in luxury car tax, plus if true another £300-400 in this PPM (which will of course only go up in cost over the years), plus you have to pay congestion charge.
Those are nudges all in the wrong direction if your policy is to get eveybody in an EV by 2035. Most people who foot the upfront cost of the car on finance will more than likely just go fuck it, cost me same in luxury car tax, same in road tax, same in congestion car, might as well just get an ICE car that is cheaper upfront.
This purported EV tax. Assuming it comes in at all, and then in the form proposed by the Daily Reformgraph.
3p a mile in tax is less than the 6.7p a mile the average petrol car pays. And if you mostly charge at home you're paying 5% VAT not 20% VAT, so that's another saving.
Road pricing is inevitable. Though knowing this government they will announce that they are going to raise £3bn by trialling it with a 5p a mile tax on Hydrogen cars.
It might be less than ICE car tax, but its another nudge not to....people won't do the maths, they will be just like WTF, so I have to pay another tax on my EV. As I say, on top of all the other taxes / reduced subsidies that have been enacted. And that's if you can charge from home etc etc etc.
Avoiding £2.5k in luxury car tax is a pretty good nudge in the EV direction. But that is gone unless you want to drive a shit box EV from China (China make some very good EVs, low end BYDs aren't them).
Youi are all in on EVs, nothing wrong with that. I am just pointing out from the general public perspective, getting a subsidy on an EV, no luxury car tax, no road tax, no congestion charge, ohhh that's interesting. Or yeah it costs more up front, yeah you have to pay luxury car tax, and PPM road tax and congestion charge. Ohhhh come on Maureen lets look at those ICE powered Toyotas. Not let me get the Excel spreadsheet out and work this out to the penny.
I've just bought an EV, ex demonstrator. I pay road tax, I will have to pay congestion charge from January, I am ulez compliant, but so are most cars less than 10 years old. Fuel duty I don't pay because I don't buy fuel, but I do pay 20% vat on my electrical energy as I don't have a home charger. I also don't pollute the atmosphere.
I think I made the right decision.
😐
The electricity produced to fuel your car will pollute the atmosphere. You’re merely moving your pollution downstream.
Actually, because less CO2 is produced creating electricity, and because EVs use less *power* per mile than ICE (they have to be more efficient, because of the cost/size of batteries) and the emissions from transporting and refining petrol, that is not so.
Even when the grid was majority coal fired, this meant that an EV was marginally better than an ICE.
Now that coal is gone and the grid is increasingly powered by zero emission sources, EVs win by a massive margin.
It's not just the cost and size of the battery - an electric motor is intrinsically more efficient than an ICE (80% v 30%, though it depends on how you measure it).
So while we're going to a lot more electricity generation than we do now, the overall energy consumption from road transport is going to drop markedly.
Hannah Ritchie estimates about a quarter of our current electricity demand for all cars, and forty percent or so for all road transport.
But electricity use has been falling over the last couple of decades, so it's eminently doable.
(Sniff test: our car does about 250 Wh per mile, and 250 Wh is what you save from a roomful of low energy bulbs in an hour. Modern fridge freezers save about 1000 Wh per day. An average car does about 20 miles a day, so yeah... numbers look like roughly adding up.
I would like to retract all my previous criticisms of HSBC.
I now would be proud to work for HSBC and will be moving my main bank account to HSBC.
On a totally unrelated note.
BREAKING: George Osborne, the former chancellor, has emerged as a shock contender to become the next chairman of HSBC Holdings, one of the world's top banking jobs.
Someone who showed only a moderate interest in financial matters whilst in government. Has he shown any particular enthusiasm since?
This may reflect the bank chairman role now being more of a political one. What does that say about where we are?
The chairman just sets long term strategy and leads the board, the CEO runs operations day to day
Presumably he's also expecting to be the DG of BBC at the same time? Maybe edit a couple of newspapers as well?
Will there still be a BBC by the time a replacement DG is lined up? I don't adequately have a grasp of the figures, but it strikes me a demand in the billions looks like a winding-up event?
A British court isn’t going to issue a billion-pound anything, even for an egregious defamation, and it’s difficult to see what an American court can do given that the programme concerned wasn’t broadcast in the US.
Most likely the BBC agrees to a donation in the seven figures to a Trump-nominated charity such as his library fund, and everyone involved in the programme gets a right bollocking over basic journalistic standards and the need to be fair even to those you dislike.
What the BBC won’t want is anything that looks like the American process of “discovery”, where any and all written correspondence regarding the J6 speech gets sent to Trump’s lawyers.
It’s timed out in the UK and the US courts don’t have jurisdiction
Worth remembering that 'friends of the BBC' are very keen to keep the focus on Trump (nasty man wants to destroy auntie!) and not all the other awkward stuff in the Prescott report.
Yes the BBC are trying hard to make the story about Trump, where they might have some sympathy with the British public in general who don’t look too hard at what they actually did.
They really don’t want the focus to be on their lack of balance related to gender issues or the war in the Middle East, where they appear to have been captured by a loud group of activist young staff who have little public support.
Do you just do a show of hands in your Dubai apartment block?
If you think the BBC are not representing the opinions of the Great British public take a look.
What would you expect, when the BBC have spent two years pushing Hamas propoganda into everyone’s house 24 hours a day under pain of imprisonment.
So the ‘activist young staff who have little public support’ have also simultaneously propagandised the UK public into thinking slaughtering tens of thousands of civilians is bad? Things are even more complicated than I thought.
I would like to retract all my previous criticisms of HSBC.
I now would be proud to work for HSBC and will be moving my main bank account to HSBC.
On a totally unrelated note.
BREAKING: George Osborne, the former chancellor, has emerged as a shock contender to become the next chairman of HSBC Holdings, one of the world's top banking jobs.
Someone who showed only a moderate interest in financial matters whilst in government. Has he shown any particular enthusiasm since?
This may reflect the bank chairman role now being more of a political one. What does that say about where we are?
The chairman just sets long term strategy and leads the board, the CEO runs operations day to day
Presumably he's also expecting to be the DG of BBC at the same time? Maybe edit a couple of newspapers as well?
Will there still be a BBC by the time a replacement DG is lined up? I don't adequately have a grasp of the figures, but it strikes me a demand in the billions looks like a winding-up event?
A British court isn’t going to issue a billion-pound anything, even for an egregious defamation, and it’s difficult to see what an American court can do given that the programme concerned wasn’t broadcast in the US.
Most likely the BBC agrees to a donation in the seven figures to a Trump-nominated charity such as his library fund, and everyone involved in the programme gets a right bollocking over basic journalistic standards and the need to be fair even to those you dislike.
What the BBC won’t want is anything that looks like the American process of “discovery”, where any and all written correspondence regarding the J6 speech gets sent to Trump’s lawyers.
It’s timed out in the UK and the US courts don’t have jurisdiction
Worth remembering that 'friends of the BBC' are very keen to keep the focus on Trump (nasty man wants to destroy auntie!) and not all the other awkward stuff in the Prescott report.
Yes the BBC are trying hard to make the story about Trump, where they might have some sympathy with the British public in general who don’t look too hard at what they actually did.
They really don’t want the focus to be on their lack of balance related to gender issues or the war in the Middle East, where they appear to have been captured by a loud group of activist young staff who have little public support.
Do you just do a show of hands in your Dubai apartment block?
If you think the BBC are not representing the opinions of the Great British public take a look.
What an idiotic poll. Ask me whether I sympathise with the Israeli or Palestinian side (or “neither”, or say I don’t know) and I would utterly reject the premise of the question.
The only answer any intelligent human being could give would be “it depends”. Do we mean Israel or the Israeli Government? Do we mean Palestinians, the Palestinian authority, or Hamas? What do we mean by “sympathise”?
I think the sensible thing to say is that one has no sympathy whatsoever with either the ghastly Israeli or the atrocious Palestinian governments, but has every sympathy with the innocent civilians whose lives have been ended or otherwise destroyed by their appalling incompetence, greed and malice.
If they’re messing with Council Tax they should really go the full hog and commit to a full rebanding exercise, which is long overdue, but that would have been another one better done in their first budget and they might not feel they have the political cover now (if they’ve backed off the IT rise). Property taxes are risky.
There isn't the capacity to do a full revaluing exercise. And that's before the big forthcoming issue with the Valuation Office being merged into HMRC and so removing the independence it once had.
I've just been reminded by Twix about the time Jeremy Bowen laid in a ditch in Ukraine, pretending he was under attack, while recording a report. A Ukrainian lady walking her dog stopped to check that he was ok
He really is just an aged Damien Day (Drop The Dead Donkey). Thank fuck we've had him as our man in the Middle East, faithfully reporting Hamas propaganda
A quick check and you would have found your claim is fake.. It took just 30 seconds to check. It is not right to defame people, particularly those who put their lives at risk to report news.
Now, now, don't start confusing Blanche with mere facts.
I would like to retract all my previous criticisms of HSBC.
I now would be proud to work for HSBC and will be moving my main bank account to HSBC.
On a totally unrelated note.
BREAKING: George Osborne, the former chancellor, has emerged as a shock contender to become the next chairman of HSBC Holdings, one of the world's top banking jobs.
Someone who showed only a moderate interest in financial matters whilst in government. Has he shown any particular enthusiasm since?
This may reflect the bank chairman role now being more of a political one. What does that say about where we are?
The chairman just sets long term strategy and leads the board, the CEO runs operations day to day
Presumably he's also expecting to be the DG of BBC at the same time? Maybe edit a couple of newspapers as well?
Will there still be a BBC by the time a replacement DG is lined up? I don't adequately have a grasp of the figures, but it strikes me a demand in the billions looks like a winding-up event?
A British court isn’t going to issue a billion-pound anything, even for an egregious defamation, and it’s difficult to see what an American court can do given that the programme concerned wasn’t broadcast in the US.
Most likely the BBC agrees to a donation in the seven figures to a Trump-nominated charity such as his library fund, and everyone involved in the programme gets a right bollocking over basic journalistic standards and the need to be fair even to those you dislike.
What the BBC won’t want is anything that looks like the American process of “discovery”, where any and all written correspondence regarding the J6 speech gets sent to Trump’s lawyers.
It’s timed out in the UK and the US courts don’t have jurisdiction
Worth remembering that 'friends of the BBC' are very keen to keep the focus on Trump (nasty man wants to destroy auntie!) and not all the other awkward stuff in the Prescott report.
Yes the BBC are trying hard to make the story about Trump, where they might have some sympathy with the British public in general who don’t look too hard at what they actually did.
They really don’t want the focus to be on their lack of balance related to gender issues or the war in the Middle East, where they appear to have been captured by a loud group of activist young staff who have little public support.
Do you just do a show of hands in your Dubai apartment block?
If you think the BBC are not representing the opinions of the Great British public take a look.
The BBC isn't supposed to represent opinions, not in its news coverage. It is supposed to report the facts in an unbiased manner.
"Archeology is the search for fact, not truth. If it's truth you're interested in, Dr. Tyree's philosophy class is right down the hall." - Indiana Jones.
Wes Streeting has been accused of taking a “chaotic and incoherent approach” to reforming the NHS which makes it unlikely the government will hit its own targets, according to a damning report by the Institute for Government (IfG).
The report praises elements of how the health secretary has managed the health service in his first year in office, including improving performance and staff retention in hospitals. Thepay settlement he reached with resident doctors last year avoided a winter plagued by NHS strikes
But it also criticises significant aspects of his performance, including the way he handled the abolition of NHS England and his lack of action to stem the exodus of senior GPs.
There’s quite a few Twitter stories about people who have just graduated in medicine or nursing, who are finding it very difficult to get training placements in the NHS.
There’s likely more to a lot of the stories, such as an unwillingness to move hundreds of miles, but on the face of it there seems to be a planning problem within the NHS.
We’ve been taking about this for *years* on PB.
To recap. To make a medic, you send them to university. Then you send them for x years of training in actual hospitals. This is proven methodology and works - same round the world.
The government caps the university places, then provides less than that in training places. In addition the system of allocating places to people in the NHS involves such fun as randomly sending them round the country.
So we educate far fewer medics than the NHS requires, train less and then treat them in a manner that a 19th cent mill owner would regard as a bit fruity.
So we make up the huge gap by importing medics.
Further, these numbers are increasing far slower than the NHS is growing. So our dependence on foreign labour is growing.
To add to the fun - remember the A level/uni fun during COVID. Some university classes were expanded by 25% because of that. Guess who is coming off the end of the production line, now? And no, they didn’t increase training places in the NHS.
So we have a shortage of training places in hospitals.
I do wonder if Streeting is letting this happen to put pressure on the treasury to release funds to increase the very expensive hospital training places. Or is that giving him too much credit?
But that's the cheat code that every government in my lifetime has used- spending less and getting more now by not doing the sorts of investment that will pay off after the next election.
I think Dr Foxy has noted that expanding postgrad training means taking senior doctors off current doctoring, so they can train future doctors. And since the NHS is always run at 110% capacity, that won't fly.
Of course it would be better if governments didn't do that. But there is a name for governments that don't give the electorate what they want right now- and that name is the opposition.
Oh indeed.
I think it is possible that Streeting is trying to create a build up at the next log jam - training places in the NHS. To shake more money for training out of the Treasury. It’s an old trick in OR.
The rational approach would be a decades long expansion of training in the NHS. X above the increase needed to keep up with the increasing size of the NHs. Until we have capacity *above* the requirements of the NHS.
One idea that was suggested was using training programs abroad - the Philippines came up in one discussion. Send University grads there to become doctors…
So there aren't enough jobs available for Medic Grads to all get a job in their chosen profession.
So just the same as for graduates in every other subject.
I've just been reminded by Twix about the time Jeremy Bowen laid in a ditch in Ukraine, pretending he was under attack, while recording a report. A Ukrainian lady walking her dog stopped to check that he was ok
He really is just an aged Damien Day (Drop The Dead Donkey). Thank fuck we've had him as our man in the Middle East, faithfully reporting Hamas propaganda
A quick check and you would have found your claim is fake.. It took just 30 seconds to check. It is not right to defame people, particularly those who put their lives at risk to report news.
Now, now, don't start confusing Blanche with mere facts.
I would like to retract all my previous criticisms of HSBC.
I now would be proud to work for HSBC and will be moving my main bank account to HSBC.
On a totally unrelated note.
BREAKING: George Osborne, the former chancellor, has emerged as a shock contender to become the next chairman of HSBC Holdings, one of the world's top banking jobs.
Someone who showed only a moderate interest in financial matters whilst in government. Has he shown any particular enthusiasm since?
This may reflect the bank chairman role now being more of a political one. What does that say about where we are?
The chairman just sets long term strategy and leads the board, the CEO runs operations day to day
Presumably he's also expecting to be the DG of BBC at the same time? Maybe edit a couple of newspapers as well?
Will there still be a BBC by the time a replacement DG is lined up? I don't adequately have a grasp of the figures, but it strikes me a demand in the billions looks like a winding-up event?
A British court isn’t going to issue a billion-pound anything, even for an egregious defamation, and it’s difficult to see what an American court can do given that the programme concerned wasn’t broadcast in the US.
Most likely the BBC agrees to a donation in the seven figures to a Trump-nominated charity such as his library fund, and everyone involved in the programme gets a right bollocking over basic journalistic standards and the need to be fair even to those you dislike.
What the BBC won’t want is anything that looks like the American process of “discovery”, where any and all written correspondence regarding the J6 speech gets sent to Trump’s lawyers.
It’s timed out in the UK and the US courts don’t have jurisdiction
Worth remembering that 'friends of the BBC' are very keen to keep the focus on Trump (nasty man wants to destroy auntie!) and not all the other awkward stuff in the Prescott report.
Yes the BBC are trying hard to make the story about Trump, where they might have some sympathy with the British public in general who don’t look too hard at what they actually did.
They really don’t want the focus to be on their lack of balance related to gender issues or the war in the Middle East, where they appear to have been captured by a loud group of activist young staff who have little public support.
Do you just do a show of hands in your Dubai apartment block?
If you think the BBC are not representing the opinions of the Great British public take a look.
What would you expect, when the BBC have spent two years pushing Hamas propoganda into everyone’s house 24 hours a day under pain of imprisonment.
So the ‘activist young staff who have little public support’ have also simultaneously propagandised the UK public into thinking slaughtering tens of thousands of civilians is bad? Things are even more complicated than I thought.
Take it easy, the latest Epstein revelations must be hard to deal with.
(I always think it's astonishing how adept outfits like the Netanyahu administration and the O&G industry are at projecting what they do against their opponents. It's highly effective - I've actually been accused in person of taking bribes from the "cycling lobby", and we've had members of my local church accused of being terrorist sympathisers.)
"Fears that Britain is due for a bout of mass violence on such a scale – or greater – have metastasised through the body politic in recent months. Speaking to the New Statesman earlier this year, Lisa Nandy said she believed that northern England was so tense it could “go up in flames” at any time. Dominic Cummings has claimed the intelligence services are discussing the potential for “racial/ethnic/mob/gang violence”. David Betz, a professor at the King’s College Department of War Studies, has gone further still and won much attention for predicting that Britain is sliding towards civil war.
According to Betz’s argument, governments such as our own can no longer peacefully manage multicultural societies fractured by ethnic grievance. We can therefore expect cities such as London to become “feral” with no-go zones spreading as the state’s authority dims. If civic conflict does break out, one side will push the metropolis into crisis by cutting off power and supplies, he argues. Such a scenario would leave the Met officers trained in Gravesend fighting to avert anarchy."
I would like to retract all my previous criticisms of HSBC.
I now would be proud to work for HSBC and will be moving my main bank account to HSBC.
On a totally unrelated note.
BREAKING: George Osborne, the former chancellor, has emerged as a shock contender to become the next chairman of HSBC Holdings, one of the world's top banking jobs.
Someone who showed only a moderate interest in financial matters whilst in government. Has he shown any particular enthusiasm since?
This may reflect the bank chairman role now being more of a political one. What does that say about where we are?
The chairman just sets long term strategy and leads the board, the CEO runs operations day to day
Presumably he's also expecting to be the DG of BBC at the same time? Maybe edit a couple of newspapers as well?
Will there still be a BBC by the time a replacement DG is lined up? I don't adequately have a grasp of the figures, but it strikes me a demand in the billions looks like a winding-up event?
A British court isn’t going to issue a billion-pound anything, even for an egregious defamation, and it’s difficult to see what an American court can do given that the programme concerned wasn’t broadcast in the US.
Most likely the BBC agrees to a donation in the seven figures to a Trump-nominated charity such as his library fund, and everyone involved in the programme gets a right bollocking over basic journalistic standards and the need to be fair even to those you dislike.
What the BBC won’t want is anything that looks like the American process of “discovery”, where any and all written correspondence regarding the J6 speech gets sent to Trump’s lawyers.
It’s timed out in the UK and the US courts don’t have jurisdiction
Worth remembering that 'friends of the BBC' are very keen to keep the focus on Trump (nasty man wants to destroy auntie!) and not all the other awkward stuff in the Prescott report.
Yes the BBC are trying hard to make the story about Trump, where they might have some sympathy with the British public in general who don’t look too hard at what they actually did.
They really don’t want the focus to be on their lack of balance related to gender issues or the war in the Middle East, where they appear to have been captured by a loud group of activist young staff who have little public support.
Do you just do a show of hands in your Dubai apartment block?
If you think the BBC are not representing the opinions of the Great British public take a look.
What would you expect, when the BBC have spent two years pushing Hamas propoganda into everyone’s house 24 hours a day under pain of imprisonment.
So the ‘activist young staff who have little public support’ have also simultaneously propagandised the UK public into thinking slaughtering tens of thousands of civilians is bad? Things are even more complicated than I thought.
Take it easy, the latest Epstein revelations must be hard to deal with.
(I always think it's astonishing how adept outfits like the Netanyahu administration and the O&G industry are at projecting what they do against their opponents. It's highly effective - I've actually been accused in person of taking bribes from the "cycling lobby". )
"Fears that Britain is due for a bout of mass violence on such a scale – or greater – have metastasised through the body politic in recent months. Speaking to the New Statesman earlier this year, Lisa Nandy said she believed that northern England was so tense it could “go up in flames” at any time. Dominic Cummings has claimed the intelligence services are discussing the potential for “racial/ethnic/mob/gang violence”. David Betz, a professor at the King’s College Department of War Studies, has gone further still and won much attention for predicting that Britain is sliding towards civil war.
According to Betz’s argument, governments such as our own can no longer peacefully manage multicultural societies fractured by ethnic grievance. We can therefore expect cities such as London to become “feral” with no-go zones spreading as the state’s authority dims. If civic conflict does break out, one side will push the metropolis into crisis by cutting off power and supplies, he argues. Such a scenario would leave the Met officers trained in Gravesend fighting to avert anarchy."
One of my taxi drivers - there are many - insist that the UK is on the verge of civil war. I keep telling him it's melodramatic nonsense. The UK has ~15million pensioners. It's not going to have a civil war.
I would like to retract all my previous criticisms of HSBC.
I now would be proud to work for HSBC and will be moving my main bank account to HSBC.
On a totally unrelated note.
BREAKING: George Osborne, the former chancellor, has emerged as a shock contender to become the next chairman of HSBC Holdings, one of the world's top banking jobs.
Someone who showed only a moderate interest in financial matters whilst in government. Has he shown any particular enthusiasm since?
This may reflect the bank chairman role now being more of a political one. What does that say about where we are?
The chairman just sets long term strategy and leads the board, the CEO runs operations day to day
Presumably he's also expecting to be the DG of BBC at the same time? Maybe edit a couple of newspapers as well?
Will there still be a BBC by the time a replacement DG is lined up? I don't adequately have a grasp of the figures, but it strikes me a demand in the billions looks like a winding-up event?
A British court isn’t going to issue a billion-pound anything, even for an egregious defamation, and it’s difficult to see what an American court can do given that the programme concerned wasn’t broadcast in the US.
Most likely the BBC agrees to a donation in the seven figures to a Trump-nominated charity such as his library fund, and everyone involved in the programme gets a right bollocking over basic journalistic standards and the need to be fair even to those you dislike.
What the BBC won’t want is anything that looks like the American process of “discovery”, where any and all written correspondence regarding the J6 speech gets sent to Trump’s lawyers.
It’s timed out in the UK and the US courts don’t have jurisdiction
Worth remembering that 'friends of the BBC' are very keen to keep the focus on Trump (nasty man wants to destroy auntie!) and not all the other awkward stuff in the Prescott report.
Yes the BBC are trying hard to make the story about Trump, where they might have some sympathy with the British public in general who don’t look too hard at what they actually did.
They really don’t want the focus to be on their lack of balance related to gender issues or the war in the Middle East, where they appear to have been captured by a loud group of activist young staff who have little public support.
Do you just do a show of hands in your Dubai apartment block?
If you think the BBC are not representing the opinions of the Great British public take a look.
The BBC isn't supposed to represent opinions, not in its news coverage. It is supposed to report the facts in an unbiased manner.
The fun bit will be Trump's team arguing that he didn't incite a riot. In fact there was no riot. The rioters jailed who said Trump incited them to riot? Clearly paid protestors / ANTIFA.
I've just been reminded by Twix about the time Jeremy Bowen laid in a ditch in Ukraine, pretending he was under attack, while recording a report. A Ukrainian lady walking her dog stopped to check that he was ok
He really is just an aged Damien Day (Drop The Dead Donkey). Thank fuck we've had him as our man in the Middle East, faithfully reporting Hamas propaganda
A quick check and you would have found your claim is fake.. It took just 30 seconds to check. It is not right to defame people, particularly those who put their lives at risk to report news.
Why the fuck does anyone believe the rubbish that gets pushed on X?
"Fears that Britain is due for a bout of mass violence on such a scale – or greater – have metastasised through the body politic in recent months. Speaking to the New Statesman earlier this year, Lisa Nandy said she believed that northern England was so tense it could “go up in flames” at any time. Dominic Cummings has claimed the intelligence services are discussing the potential for “racial/ethnic/mob/gang violence”. David Betz, a professor at the King’s College Department of War Studies, has gone further still and won much attention for predicting that Britain is sliding towards civil war.
According to Betz’s argument, governments such as our own can no longer peacefully manage multicultural societies fractured by ethnic grievance. We can therefore expect cities such as London to become “feral” with no-go zones spreading as the state’s authority dims. If civic conflict does break out, one side will push the metropolis into crisis by cutting off power and supplies, he argues. Such a scenario would leave the Met officers trained in Gravesend fighting to avert anarchy."
I’ve already put in an order for Namer. It will really upset the anti-Isreal lot. And Malmesbury’s 1st Heavy Infantry (New Model) will definitely be *heavy*
Wes Streeting has been accused of taking a “chaotic and incoherent approach” to reforming the NHS which makes it unlikely the government will hit its own targets, according to a damning report by the Institute for Government (IfG).
The report praises elements of how the health secretary has managed the health service in his first year in office, including improving performance and staff retention in hospitals. Thepay settlement he reached with resident doctors last year avoided a winter plagued by NHS strikes
But it also criticises significant aspects of his performance, including the way he handled the abolition of NHS England and his lack of action to stem the exodus of senior GPs.
There’s quite a few Twitter stories about people who have just graduated in medicine or nursing, who are finding it very difficult to get training placements in the NHS.
There’s likely more to a lot of the stories, such as an unwillingness to move hundreds of miles, but on the face of it there seems to be a planning problem within the NHS.
We’ve been taking about this for *years* on PB.
To recap. To make a medic, you send them to university. Then you send them for x years of training in actual hospitals. This is proven methodology and works - same round the world.
The government caps the university places, then provides less than that in training places. In addition the system of allocating places to people in the NHS involves such fun as randomly sending them round the country.
So we educate far fewer medics than the NHS requires, train less and then treat them in a manner that a 19th cent mill owner would regard as a bit fruity.
So we make up the huge gap by importing medics.
Further, these numbers are increasing far slower than the NHS is growing. So our dependence on foreign labour is growing.
To add to the fun - remember the A level/uni fun during COVID. Some university classes were expanded by 25% because of that. Guess who is coming off the end of the production line, now? And no, they didn’t increase training places in the NHS.
So we have a shortage of training places in hospitals.
I do wonder if Streeting is letting this happen to put pressure on the treasury to release funds to increase the very expensive hospital training places. Or is that giving him too much credit?
But that's the cheat code that every government in my lifetime has used- spending less and getting more now by not doing the sorts of investment that will pay off after the next election.
I think Dr Foxy has noted that expanding postgrad training means taking senior doctors off current doctoring, so they can train future doctors. And since the NHS is always run at 110% capacity, that won't fly.
Of course it would be better if governments didn't do that. But there is a name for governments that don't give the electorate what they want right now- and that name is the opposition.
Oh indeed.
I think it is possible that Streeting is trying to create a build up at the next log jam - training places in the NHS. To shake more money for training out of the Treasury. It’s an old trick in OR.
The rational approach would be a decades long expansion of training in the NHS. X above the increase needed to keep up with the increasing size of the NHs. Until we have capacity *above* the requirements of the NHS.
One idea that was suggested was using training programs abroad - the Philippines came up in one discussion. Send University grads there to become doctors…
So there aren't enough jobs available for Medic Grads to all get a job in their chosen profession.
So just the same as for graduates in every other subject.
There are plenty of jobs in the NHS. The percentage of foreigners is climbing ever higher. The question is whether we can recruit ever higher number of medics abroad.
So there are plenty of jobs. There are plenty of grads - and we could increase those relatively easily.
The bottleneck is post-graduate training. Which is a tiny fraction of requirements for the NHS.
- Freeze on thresholds to 2030 (worth £10bn) - New tax on some forms of gambling (£3bn) - Restriction on NI relief on salary sacrifice for pensions contributions (£2bn) - New 'mansion tax' see my earlier post (£1bn) - Maybe small changes ie increases to CGT and dividend tax but no obvious sign of this happening ditto IHT changes - 'Efficiencies' and the usual 'tax evasion clampdown' (£several bn)
And that's it
I don't think the 2 child cap will be lifted at least not in full. Fuel duty won't go up!
DYOR
Just hope they don't bring in general tax on betting wins.
I am really surprised governments haven't gone for at least those who make the bulk of their income from gambling. Lots of other governments have come up with stupid systems aimed at capping the amount of losses you can deduct etc, so that pro gambling end up paying income taxes e.g, Trumps big beautiful bill. The Greeks do it based on daily wins / losses.
EV mile tax is another fiddle around tax rather than actually govern.
Also reductions in hidden tax in energy bills in order to subsides heat pumps is another area for Treasury back slapping enjoyment on the day.
Going after EVs when you are also trying to get everybody into EVs by 2035....remember they added luxury car tax to EVs last time as well and congestion charge is getting added in Lodnon. £40k doesn't get you much car these days, a cheap Chinese EV. joined up thinking.
I'm not sure on that. If it keeps a bit of downward pressure on price and size, then so much the better.
Looking at my make - Skodas - all the ranges except the biggest electric SUV start at under 40k, and there are plenty between 20k and 30k, and hatchbacks down to £15k. That's all before discounts.
(They have a problem with the names, and the Electric models are on the whole physically huge. The models include Kamiq, Karoq, Kodiaq, Elroq, and Enyaq; someone put the ghost of Telly Savalas in the bloody computer.)
Except it hasnt. Luxury car tax came in 2017, average new car price is £50k now. Last few years up dramatically for a number of reasons. The UK favourite ICE car the Qashqai is now £40k if you spec it up a bit. And with Trump tariffs etc there is no downward pressure, just the Chinese selling at cost.
To me the average seems to be £40k or so, not £50k.
No, we did this the other day. The official figures are now that the average new car is £50k. I posted links.
So your argument seems to be you will drive a BYD or EV Skoda and be happy.
The whole idea was supposed to be EVs cost a bit more, but a) the government will provide a really good subsidsy so they are on par if not cheaper than an ICE vehicle, so you don't need to worry about base cost (remember most people buy on finance), no luxury car tax, no road tax and also no horrid congestion charges etc.
Now, even some Skoda EVs (which are ok cars but nobody would describe as luxury), but certainly the average car could cost you £2.5k in luxury car tax, plus if true another £300-400 in this PPM (which will of course only go up in cost over the years), plus you have to pay congestion charge.
Those are nudges all in the wrong direction if your policy is to get eveybody in an EV by 2035. Most people who foot the upfront cost of the car on finance will more than likely just go fuck it, cost me same in luxury car tax, same in road tax, same in congestion car, might as well just get an ICE car that is cheaper upfront.
This purported EV tax. Assuming it comes in at all, and then in the form proposed by the Daily Reformgraph.
3p a mile in tax is less than the 6.7p a mile the average petrol car pays. And if you mostly charge at home you're paying 5% VAT not 20% VAT, so that's another saving.
Road pricing is inevitable. Though knowing this government they will announce that they are going to raise £3bn by trialling it with a 5p a mile tax on Hydrogen cars.
It might be less than ICE car tax, but its another nudge not to....people won't do the maths, they will be just like WTF, so I have to pay another tax on my EV. As I say, on top of all the other taxes / reduced subsidies that have been enacted. And that's if you can charge from home etc etc etc.
Avoiding £2.5k in luxury car tax is a pretty good nudge in the EV direction. But that is gone unless you want to drive a shit box EV from China (China make some very good EVs, low end BYDs aren't them).
Youi are all in on EVs, nothing wrong with that. I am just pointing out from the general public perspective, getting a subsidy on an EV, no luxury car tax, no road tax, no congestion charge, ohhh that's interesting. Or yeah it costs more up front, yeah you have to pay luxury car tax, and PPM road tax and congestion charge. Ohhhh come on Maureen lets look at those ICE powered Toyotas. Not let me get the Excel spreadsheet out and work this out to the penny.
I've just bought an EV, ex demonstrator. I pay road tax, I will have to pay congestion charge from January, I am ulez compliant, but so are most cars less than 10 years old. Fuel duty I don't pay because I don't buy fuel, but I do pay 20% vat on my electrical energy as I don't have a home charger. I also don't pollute the atmosphere.
I think I made the right decision.
😐
The electricity produced to fuel your car will pollute the atmosphere. You’re merely moving your pollution downstream.
Actually, because less CO2 is produced creating electricity, and because EVs use less *power* per mile than ICE (they have to be more efficient, because of the cost/size of batteries) and the emissions from transporting and refining petrol, that is not so.
Even when the grid was majority coal fired, this meant that an EV was marginally better than an ICE.
Now that coal is gone and the grid is increasingly powered by zero emission sources, EVs win by a massive margin.
It's not just the cost and size of the battery - an electric motor is intrinsically more efficient than an ICE (80% v 30%, though it depends on how you measure it).
So while we're going to a lot more electricity generation than we do now, the overall energy consumption from road transport is going to drop markedly.
Hannah Ritchie estimates about a quarter of our current electricity demand for all cars, and forty percent or so for all road transport.
But electricity use has been falling over the last couple of decades, so it's eminently doable.
(Sniff test: our car does about 250 Wh per mile, and 250 Wh is what you save from a roomful of low energy bulbs in an hour. Modern fridge freezers save about 1000 Wh per day. An average car does about 20 miles a day, so yeah... numbers look like roughly adding up.
If we all get forced to rip out our central heating boilers and install godawful air source heat pumps electricity consumption will go through the roof.
I've just been reminded by Twix about the time Jeremy Bowen laid in a ditch in Ukraine, pretending he was under attack, while recording a report. A Ukrainian lady walking her dog stopped to check that he was ok
He really is just an aged Damien Day (Drop The Dead Donkey). Thank fuck we've had him as our man in the Middle East, faithfully reporting Hamas propaganda
A quick check and you would have found your claim is fake.. It took just 30 seconds to check. It is not right to defame people, particularly those who put their lives at risk to report news.
Now, now, don't start confusing Blanche with mere facts.
A quick check on the internet gives the following:
Refers to debunked social media claims from late 2022 that BBC journalist Jeremy Bowen staged a news report from the front line near Irpin, Ukraine, where he was filmed lying on the ground.
These allegations, primarily spread by social media users and some Russian officials, were fact-checked and proven to be utterly false. The full video footage and independent verification showed that Bowen and his crew were genuinely in an active war zone, taking cover from heavy Russian shelling, and the civilian in the background was also fleeing the attacks.
Jeremy Bowen himself addressed the accusations on Twitter (now X), calling them "malicious" and "#fakenews," and stating: "Don't insult thousands of civilians fleeing over Irpin bridge into Kyiv from Russian shelling and war crimes".
Wes Streeting has been accused of taking a “chaotic and incoherent approach” to reforming the NHS which makes it unlikely the government will hit its own targets, according to a damning report by the Institute for Government (IfG).
The report praises elements of how the health secretary has managed the health service in his first year in office, including improving performance and staff retention in hospitals. Thepay settlement he reached with resident doctors last year avoided a winter plagued by NHS strikes
But it also criticises significant aspects of his performance, including the way he handled the abolition of NHS England and his lack of action to stem the exodus of senior GPs.
There’s quite a few Twitter stories about people who have just graduated in medicine or nursing, who are finding it very difficult to get training placements in the NHS.
There’s likely more to a lot of the stories, such as an unwillingness to move hundreds of miles, but on the face of it there seems to be a planning problem within the NHS.
We’ve been taking about this for *years* on PB.
To recap. To make a medic, you send them to university. Then you send them for x years of training in actual hospitals. This is proven methodology and works - same round the world.
The government caps the university places, then provides less than that in training places. In addition the system of allocating places to people in the NHS involves such fun as randomly sending them round the country.
So we educate far fewer medics than the NHS requires, train less and then treat them in a manner that a 19th cent mill owner would regard as a bit fruity.
So we make up the huge gap by importing medics.
Further, these numbers are increasing far slower than the NHS is growing. So our dependence on foreign labour is growing.
To add to the fun - remember the A level/uni fun during COVID. Some university classes were expanded by 25% because of that. Guess who is coming off the end of the production line, now? And no, they didn’t increase training places in the NHS.
So we have a shortage of training places in hospitals.
I do wonder if Streeting is letting this happen to put pressure on the treasury to release funds to increase the very expensive hospital training places. Or is that giving him too much credit?
But that's the cheat code that every government in my lifetime has used- spending less and getting more now by not doing the sorts of investment that will pay off after the next election.
I think Dr Foxy has noted that expanding postgrad training means taking senior doctors off current doctoring, so they can train future doctors. And since the NHS is always run at 110% capacity, that won't fly.
Of course it would be better if governments didn't do that. But there is a name for governments that don't give the electorate what they want right now- and that name is the opposition.
Oh indeed.
I think it is possible that Streeting is trying to create a build up at the next log jam - training places in the NHS. To shake more money for training out of the Treasury. It’s an old trick in OR.
The rational approach would be a decades long expansion of training in the NHS. X above the increase needed to keep up with the increasing size of the NHs. Until we have capacity *above* the requirements of the NHS.
One idea that was suggested was using training programs abroad - the Philippines came up in one discussion. Send University grads there to become doctors…
So there aren't enough jobs available for Medic Grads to all get a job in their chosen profession.
So just the same as for graduates in every other subject.
There are plenty of jobs in the NHS. The percentage of foreigners is climbing ever higher. The question is whether we can recruit ever higher number of medics abroad.
So there are plenty of jobs. There are plenty of grads - and we could increase those relatively easily.
The bottleneck is post-graduate training. Which is a tiny fraction of requirements for the NHS.
Yes. Graduate jobs. Jobs for new graduates.
Just like a vacancy for a principal engineer is irrelevant to a new engineering grad, a vacancy for a senior registrar is irrelevant to a new medical grad.
Wes Streeting has been accused of taking a “chaotic and incoherent approach” to reforming the NHS which makes it unlikely the government will hit its own targets, according to a damning report by the Institute for Government (IfG).
The report praises elements of how the health secretary has managed the health service in his first year in office, including improving performance and staff retention in hospitals. Thepay settlement he reached with resident doctors last year avoided a winter plagued by NHS strikes
But it also criticises significant aspects of his performance, including the way he handled the abolition of NHS England and his lack of action to stem the exodus of senior GPs.
There’s quite a few Twitter stories about people who have just graduated in medicine or nursing, who are finding it very difficult to get training placements in the NHS.
There’s likely more to a lot of the stories, such as an unwillingness to move hundreds of miles, but on the face of it there seems to be a planning problem within the NHS.
We’ve been taking about this for *years* on PB.
To recap. To make a medic, you send them to university. Then you send them for x years of training in actual hospitals. This is proven methodology and works - same round the world.
The government caps the university places, then provides less than that in training places. In addition the system of allocating places to people in the NHS involves such fun as randomly sending them round the country.
So we educate far fewer medics than the NHS requires, train less and then treat them in a manner that a 19th cent mill owner would regard as a bit fruity.
So we make up the huge gap by importing medics.
Further, these numbers are increasing far slower than the NHS is growing. So our dependence on foreign labour is growing.
To add to the fun - remember the A level/uni fun during COVID. Some university classes were expanded by 25% because of that. Guess who is coming off the end of the production line, now? And no, they didn’t increase training places in the NHS.
So we have a shortage of training places in hospitals.
I do wonder if Streeting is letting this happen to put pressure on the treasury to release funds to increase the very expensive hospital training places. Or is that giving him too much credit?
I don’t think the second para is quite right. The government doesn’t cap Uni places. Training places in England are via health education England. And allocation of places is NOT random, but students are ranked and the best student gets the first pick etc.
I would like to retract all my previous criticisms of HSBC.
I now would be proud to work for HSBC and will be moving my main bank account to HSBC.
On a totally unrelated note.
BREAKING: George Osborne, the former chancellor, has emerged as a shock contender to become the next chairman of HSBC Holdings, one of the world's top banking jobs.
Someone who showed only a moderate interest in financial matters whilst in government. Has he shown any particular enthusiasm since?
This may reflect the bank chairman role now being more of a political one. What does that say about where we are?
The chairman just sets long term strategy and leads the board, the CEO runs operations day to day
Presumably he's also expecting to be the DG of BBC at the same time? Maybe edit a couple of newspapers as well?
Will there still be a BBC by the time a replacement DG is lined up? I don't adequately have a grasp of the figures, but it strikes me a demand in the billions looks like a winding-up event?
A British court isn’t going to issue a billion-pound anything, even for an egregious defamation, and it’s difficult to see what an American court can do given that the programme concerned wasn’t broadcast in the US.
Most likely the BBC agrees to a donation in the seven figures to a Trump-nominated charity such as his library fund, and everyone involved in the programme gets a right bollocking over basic journalistic standards and the need to be fair even to those you dislike.
What the BBC won’t want is anything that looks like the American process of “discovery”, where any and all written correspondence regarding the J6 speech gets sent to Trump’s lawyers.
It’s timed out in the UK and the US courts don’t have jurisdiction
Worth remembering that 'friends of the BBC' are very keen to keep the focus on Trump (nasty man wants to destroy auntie!) and not all the other awkward stuff in the Prescott report.
Yes the BBC are trying hard to make the story about Trump, where they might have some sympathy with the British public in general who don’t look too hard at what they actually did.
They really don’t want the focus to be on their lack of balance related to gender issues or the war in the Middle East, where they appear to have been captured by a loud group of activist young staff who have little public support.
Do you just do a show of hands in your Dubai apartment block?
If you think the BBC are not representing the opinions of the Great British public take a look.
I've just been reminded by Twix about the time Jeremy Bowen laid in a ditch in Ukraine, pretending he was under attack, while recording a report. A Ukrainian lady walking her dog stopped to check that he was ok
He really is just an aged Damien Day (Drop The Dead Donkey). Thank fuck we've had him as our man in the Middle East, faithfully reporting Hamas propaganda
A quick check and you would have found your claim is fake.. It took just 30 seconds to check. It is not right to defame people, particularly those who put their lives at risk to report news.
Now, now, don't start confusing Blanche with mere facts.
A quick check on the internet gives the following:
Refers to debunked social media claims from late 2022 that BBC journalist Jeremy Bowen staged a news report from the front line near Irpin, Ukraine, where he was filmed lying on the ground.
These allegations, primarily spread by social media users and some Russian officials, were fact-checked and proven to be utterly false. The full video footage and independent verification showed that Bowen and his crew were genuinely in an active war zone, taking cover from heavy Russian shelling, and the civilian in the background was also fleeing the attacks.
Jeremy Bowen himself addressed the accusations on Twitter (now X), calling them "malicious" and "#fakenews," and stating: "Don't insult thousands of civilians fleeing over Irpin bridge into Kyiv from Russian shelling and war crimes".
Jeremy Bowen himself addressed it? Now I'm fucking convinced. He reported that a misfired Palestinian rocket in a carpark was a hospital destroyed by Israel - and he doesn't regret it
I would like to retract all my previous criticisms of HSBC.
I now would be proud to work for HSBC and will be moving my main bank account to HSBC.
On a totally unrelated note.
BREAKING: George Osborne, the former chancellor, has emerged as a shock contender to become the next chairman of HSBC Holdings, one of the world's top banking jobs.
Someone who showed only a moderate interest in financial matters whilst in government. Has he shown any particular enthusiasm since?
This may reflect the bank chairman role now being more of a political one. What does that say about where we are?
The chairman just sets long term strategy and leads the board, the CEO runs operations day to day
Presumably he's also expecting to be the DG of BBC at the same time? Maybe edit a couple of newspapers as well?
Will there still be a BBC by the time a replacement DG is lined up? I don't adequately have a grasp of the figures, but it strikes me a demand in the billions looks like a winding-up event?
A British court isn’t going to issue a billion-pound anything, even for an egregious defamation, and it’s difficult to see what an American court can do given that the programme concerned wasn’t broadcast in the US.
Most likely the BBC agrees to a donation in the seven figures to a Trump-nominated charity such as his library fund, and everyone involved in the programme gets a right bollocking over basic journalistic standards and the need to be fair even to those you dislike.
What the BBC won’t want is anything that looks like the American process of “discovery”, where any and all written correspondence regarding the J6 speech gets sent to Trump’s lawyers.
It’s timed out in the UK and the US courts don’t have jurisdiction
Worth remembering that 'friends of the BBC' are very keen to keep the focus on Trump (nasty man wants to destroy auntie!) and not all the other awkward stuff in the Prescott report.
Yes the BBC are trying hard to make the story about Trump, where they might have some sympathy with the British public in general who don’t look too hard at what they actually did.
They really don’t want the focus to be on their lack of balance related to gender issues or the war in the Middle East, where they appear to have been captured by a loud group of activist young staff who have little public support.
Is this the nonsense that's doing the rounds in the Brit bars of Dubai at the moment?
No, it’s commonly accepted back in Blighty too. There has been a classic campaign of smearing Prescott because, shock horror, he is right wing. Supposedly that makes his critique invalid.
Does your PM exercise regularly? Does his wife? (Flying and shopping don't count.)
If so, what do they do?
I honestly don't know sir. I know past PM/Cabinet members tend to show weight-gain during their tenure (wasn't Cameron prone to this?) although Sunak remained whippet-thin throughout.
- Freeze on thresholds to 2030 (worth £10bn) - New tax on some forms of gambling (£3bn) - Restriction on NI relief on salary sacrifice for pensions contributions (£2bn) - New 'mansion tax' see my earlier post (£1bn) - Maybe small changes ie increases to CGT and dividend tax but no obvious sign of this happening ditto IHT changes - 'Efficiencies' and the usual 'tax evasion clampdown' (£several bn)
And that's it
I don't think the 2 child cap will be lifted at least not in full. Fuel duty won't go up!
DYOR
Just hope they don't bring in general tax on betting wins.
I am really surprised governments haven't gone for at least those who make the bulk of their income from gambling. Lots of other governments have come up with stupid systems aimed at capping the amount of losses you can deduct etc, so that pro gambling end up paying income taxes e.g, Trumps big beautiful bill. The Greeks do it based on daily wins / losses.
EV mile tax is another fiddle around tax rather than actually govern.
Also reductions in hidden tax in energy bills in order to subsides heat pumps is another area for Treasury back slapping enjoyment on the day.
Going after EVs when you are also trying to get everybody into EVs by 2035....remember they added luxury car tax to EVs last time as well and congestion charge is getting added in Lodnon. £40k doesn't get you much car these days, a cheap Chinese EV. joined up thinking.
I'm not sure on that. If it keeps a bit of downward pressure on price and size, then so much the better.
Looking at my make - Skodas - all the ranges except the biggest electric SUV start at under 40k, and there are plenty between 20k and 30k, and hatchbacks down to £15k. That's all before discounts.
(They have a problem with the names, and the Electric models are on the whole physically huge. The models include Kamiq, Karoq, Kodiaq, Elroq, and Enyaq; someone put the ghost of Telly Savalas in the bloody computer.)
Except it hasnt. Luxury car tax came in 2017, average new car price is £50k now. Last few years up dramatically for a number of reasons. The UK favourite ICE car the Qashqai is now £40k if you spec it up a bit. And with Trump tariffs etc there is no downward pressure, just the Chinese selling at cost.
To me the average seems to be £40k or so, not £50k.
No, we did this the other day. The official figures are now that the average new car is £50k. I posted links.
So your argument seems to be you will drive a BYD or EV Skoda and be happy.
The whole idea was supposed to be EVs cost a bit more, but a) the government will provide a really good subsidsy so they are on par if not cheaper than an ICE vehicle, so you don't need to worry about base cost (remember most people buy on finance), no luxury car tax, no road tax and also no horrid congestion charges etc.
Now, even some Skoda EVs (which are ok cars but nobody would describe as luxury), but certainly the average car could cost you £2.5k in luxury car tax, plus if true another £300-400 in this PPM (which will of course only go up in cost over the years), plus you have to pay congestion charge.
Those are nudges all in the wrong direction if your policy is to get eveybody in an EV by 2035. Most people who foot the upfront cost of the car on finance will more than likely just go fuck it, cost me same in luxury car tax, same in road tax, same in congestion car, might as well just get an ICE car that is cheaper upfront.
This purported EV tax. Assuming it comes in at all, and then in the form proposed by the Daily Reformgraph.
3p a mile in tax is less than the 6.7p a mile the average petrol car pays. And if you mostly charge at home you're paying 5% VAT not 20% VAT, so that's another saving.
Road pricing is inevitable. Though knowing this government they will announce that they are going to raise £3bn by trialling it with a 5p a mile tax on Hydrogen cars.
It might be less than ICE car tax, but its another nudge not to....people won't do the maths, they will be just like WTF, so I have to pay another tax on my EV. As I say, on top of all the other taxes / reduced subsidies that have been enacted. And that's if you can charge from home etc etc etc.
Avoiding £2.5k in luxury car tax is a pretty good nudge in the EV direction. But that is gone unless you want to drive a shit box EV from China (China make some very good EVs, low end BYDs aren't them).
Youi are all in on EVs, nothing wrong with that. I am just pointing out from the general public perspective, getting a subsidy on an EV, no luxury car tax, no road tax, no congestion charge, ohhh that's interesting. Or yeah it costs more up front, yeah you have to pay luxury car tax, and PPM road tax and congestion charge. Ohhhh come on Maureen lets look at those ICE powered Toyotas. Not let me get the Excel spreadsheet out and work this out to the penny.
I've just bought an EV, ex demonstrator. I pay road tax, I will have to pay congestion charge from January, I am ulez compliant, but so are most cars less than 10 years old. Fuel duty I don't pay because I don't buy fuel, but I do pay 20% vat on my electrical energy as I don't have a home charger. I also don't pollute the atmosphere.
I think I made the right decision.
😐
The electricity produced to fuel your car will pollute the atmosphere. You’re merely moving your pollution downstream.
Actually, because less CO2 is produced creating electricity, and because EVs use less *power* per mile than ICE (they have to be more efficient, because of the cost/size of batteries) and the emissions from transporting and refining petrol, that is not so.
Even when the grid was majority coal fired, this meant that an EV was marginally better than an ICE.
Now that coal is gone and the grid is increasingly powered by zero emission sources, EVs win by a massive margin.
It's not just the cost and size of the battery - an electric motor is intrinsically more efficient than an ICE (80% v 30%, though it depends on how you measure it).
So while we're going to a lot more electricity generation than we do now, the overall energy consumption from road transport is going to drop markedly.
Hannah Ritchie estimates about a quarter of our current electricity demand for all cars, and forty percent or so for all road transport.
But electricity use has been falling over the last couple of decades, so it's eminently doable.
(Sniff test: our car does about 250 Wh per mile, and 250 Wh is what you save from a roomful of low energy bulbs in an hour. Modern fridge freezers save about 1000 Wh per day. An average car does about 20 miles a day, so yeah... numbers look like roughly adding up.
If we all get forced to rip out our central heating boilers and install godawful air source heat pumps electricity consumption will go through the roof.
They’re aren’t god awful.
A few nasty rip off merchants installed some early ones, badly.
The current ones are excellent - building firm I am involved with has installed some for very rich people. The types who sue if the light switches are 0.25 degrees crooked. They don’t complain - in fact, compliment them in follow ups.
I've just been reminded by Twix about the time Jeremy Bowen laid in a ditch in Ukraine, pretending he was under attack, while recording a report. A Ukrainian lady walking her dog stopped to check that he was ok
He really is just an aged Damien Day (Drop The Dead Donkey). Thank fuck we've had him as our man in the Middle East, faithfully reporting Hamas propaganda
A quick check and you would have found your claim is fake.. It took just 30 seconds to check. It is not right to defame people, particularly those who put their lives at risk to report news.
Now, now, don't start confusing Blanche with mere facts.
A quick check on the internet gives the following:
Refers to debunked social media claims from late 2022 that BBC journalist Jeremy Bowen staged a news report from the front line near Irpin, Ukraine, where he was filmed lying on the ground.
These allegations, primarily spread by social media users and some Russian officials, were fact-checked and proven to be utterly false. The full video footage and independent verification showed that Bowen and his crew were genuinely in an active war zone, taking cover from heavy Russian shelling, and the civilian in the background was also fleeing the attacks.
Jeremy Bowen himself addressed the accusations on Twitter (now X), calling them "malicious" and "#fakenews," and stating: "Don't insult thousands of civilians fleeing over Irpin bridge into Kyiv from Russian shelling and war crimes".
Jeremy Bowen himself addressed it? Now I'm fucking convinced. He reported that a misfired Palestinian rocket in a carpark was a hospital destroyed by Israel - and he doesn't regret it
He's a cheap sensationalist
You seem to ignore that others fact-checked and debunked this, so why are you still posting Russian propaganda? Admit you got this one wrong.
I've just been reminded by Twix about the time Jeremy Bowen laid in a ditch in Ukraine, pretending he was under attack, while recording a report. A Ukrainian lady walking her dog stopped to check that he was ok
He really is just an aged Damien Day (Drop The Dead Donkey). Thank fuck we've had him as our man in the Middle East, faithfully reporting Hamas propaganda
A quick check and you would have found your claim is fake.. It took just 30 seconds to check. It is not right to defame people, particularly those who put their lives at risk to report news.
Now, now, don't start confusing Blanche with mere facts.
A quick check on the internet gives the following:
Refers to debunked social media claims from late 2022 that BBC journalist Jeremy Bowen staged a news report from the front line near Irpin, Ukraine, where he was filmed lying on the ground.
These allegations, primarily spread by social media users and some Russian officials, were fact-checked and proven to be utterly false. The full video footage and independent verification showed that Bowen and his crew were genuinely in an active war zone, taking cover from heavy Russian shelling, and the civilian in the background was also fleeing the attacks.
Jeremy Bowen himself addressed the accusations on Twitter (now X), calling them "malicious" and "#fakenews," and stating: "Don't insult thousands of civilians fleeing over Irpin bridge into Kyiv from Russian shelling and war crimes".
Jeremy Bowen himself addressed it? Now I'm fucking convinced. He reported that a misfired Palestinian rocket in a carpark was a hospital destroyed by Israel - and he doesn't regret it
He's a cheap sensationalist
No only the last paragraph said he addressed it. How about the first 2 paragraphs which wasn't him addressing it but refers to it being independently verified and being utterly false? Were they wrong as well or do you prefer getting your facts from Russian propaganda and X trolls?
And use a bit of common sense. Do you think that if they were going to fake it they would release footage of the woman walking with her dog. If it was faked they would have shot it again without her there wouldn't they? Use your brain and don't get sucked in by this crap.
Comments
(*Annoyingly, I can no longer use the hilariously witty moniker Torygraph, as the paper seems to have abandoned the Tories for Reform. Indeed the Conservatives are no longer Tories really either. All those life certainties fall away one-by-one.)
Of course we're off the back of a period where the Tories weren't really able to govern either.
The report praises elements of how the health secretary has managed the health service in his first year in office, including improving performance and staff retention in hospitals. Thepay settlement he reached with resident doctors last year avoided a winter plagued by NHS strikes
But it also criticises significant aspects of his performance, including the way he handled the abolition of NHS England and his lack of action to stem the exodus of senior GPs.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/nov/15/wes-streeting-accused-of-chaotic-and-incoherent-approach-to-nhs-reform
They are ranked 12th and 13th in the world respectively. Only the top twelve get seeded in the World Cup draw in a few weeks time
If Japan win they move up to 12th, and Wales will face two seeded teams in their group
Go Eddie Jones!
PMs with landslide majorities who struggle to govern are somewhat rarer.
Even when the grid was majority coal fired, this meant that an EV was marginally better than an ICE.
Now that coal is gone and the grid is increasingly powered by zero emission sources, EVs win by a massive margin.
If true it would be a good idea to start thinking about a sensible replacement and that is NOT Andy Burnham however much he might think so himself.
I like Streeting. He's tough has a good backstory and is much the most articuate. He's also gay which is a small twist of lemon or USP as they're called
a very, very long way off.
https://x.com/DPJHodges/status/1989634834457592263?s=20
Given the above tweet, Starmer is safe as houses!
Barclays is the big bank that didn’t get a bailout. RBS and HBOS needed one and Lloyds was forced to take one.
Abbey National, for example, received no bail out despite having a 10-13% UK market share depending on product.
And there are many more banks than that, even before you start on the building societies
https://x.com/SkySports/status/1988936646771843294
This isn't going down well with the ladies.
https://www.declassifieduk.org/our-friend-how-the-israel-lobby-spent-30000-on-wes-streeting/
Respiratory diseases caused by pollution still kill tens of thousands each year but the numbers have fallen sharply here since the ULEZ.
I think we'll win but some people seem to be placing bets on Japan as an insurance option. Jac Morgan is a huge loss but at least he plays in a position where Wales actually have some depth.
Most likely the BBC agrees to a donation in the seven figures to a Trump-nominated charity such as his library fund, and everyone involved in the programme gets a right bollocking over basic journalistic standards and the need to be fair even to those you dislike.
What the BBC won’t want is anything that looks like the American process of “discovery”, where any and all written correspondence regarding the J6 speech gets sent to Trump’s lawyers.
That's not an option for ICE cars (biodiesel and monkey business with alcohol in petrol apart).
Getting all the taxi drivers out of old bangers and into Priuses was a big win - that was largely due to them being stopped for tail pipe checks/MOT fails.
Barclays got no state bailout but was fined by the FCA after it had to do a fundraising deal with Qatar after it failed to inform its shareholders of a steep discount given to the Qatar Investment Authority other shareholders did not get
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/nov/25/barclays-fined-2008-qatari-fundraising-fca-deal
There’s likely more to a lot of the stories, such as an unwillingness to move hundreds of miles, but on the face of it there seems to be a planning problem within the NHS.
It is understood that a new, separate surcharge on top of existing council tax bills will then be applied to 300,000 of the most valuable properties across the top three bands..More than 65,000 band F, G and H homes in Buckinghamshire would face revaluation, along with 59,000 in Westminster and 46,000 in Kensington and Chelsea.'
Worryingly you may be right and Eddie Jones will be more insufferable than usual.
They really don’t want the focus to be on their lack of balance related to gender issues or the war in the Middle East, where they appear to have been captured by a loud group of activist young staff who have little public support.
To recap. To make a medic, you send them to university. Then you send them for x years of training in actual hospitals. This is proven methodology and works - same round the world.
The government caps the university places, then provides less than that in training places. In addition the system of allocating places to people in the NHS involves such fun as randomly sending them round the country.
So we educate far fewer medics than the NHS requires, train less and then treat them in a manner that a 19th cent mill owner would regard as a bit fruity.
So we make up the huge gap by importing medics.
Further, these numbers are increasing far slower than the NHS is growing. So our dependence on foreign labour is growing.
To add to the fun - remember the A level/uni fun during COVID. Some university classes were expanded by 25% because of that. Guess who is coming off the end of the production line, now? And no, they didn’t increase training places in the NHS.
So we have a shortage of training places in hospitals.
I do wonder if Streeting is letting this happen to put pressure on the treasury to release funds to increase the very expensive hospital training places. Or is that giving him too much credit?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/11/14/reeves-plots-new-tax-on-middle-class-homeowners/
I don't see how the top 10% counts as "middle class".
And the FCA harassment of Barclays was politically motivated - the government was pissed off that they refused a bailout and so went after them for anything and everything they could
There has been recent circulars in my Trust to allow us to convert non training middle grade posts to postgraduate training places.
There also is an issue that the NHS 10 year plan requires a shift from hospital specialities to General Pracice. I think this is probably correct, but the training resources need to be allocated appropriately for this.
Trump is making this all about Trump. Wait, it is all about Trump! He incited a seditious coup.
Note Barclays ultimately accepted the FCA ruling given it only got the Qatar investment by giving the Qataris a significant discount its existing shareholders did not get
He really is just an aged Damien Day (Drop The Dead Donkey). Thank fuck we've had him as our man in the Middle East, faithfully reporting Hamas propaganda
So while we're going to a lot more electricity generation than we do now, the overall energy consumption from road transport is going to drop markedly.
Labour, for example, were out of power for 14 years.
I think Dr Foxy has noted that expanding postgrad training means taking senior doctors off current doctoring, so they can train future doctors. And since the NHS is always run at 110% capacity, that won't fly.
Of course it would be better if governments didn't do that. But there is a name for governments that don't give the electorate what they want right now- and that name is the opposition.
If you think the BBC are not representing the opinions of the Great British public take a look.
https://yougov.co.uk/international/articles/52694-british-attitudes-to-the-israel-gaza-conflict-july-2025-update
the truththe BBC again, can we talk about what the BBC should do next?Tell him to see them in court. Let's put Trump on the stand. Great entertainment, broadcast LIVE on BBC1.
An average person can pick up a 200hp electric motor. Try that with an ICE engine. Similarly transmission losses of ‘leccy and the efficiency of motors turning that into power (and back for regenerative braking) are very small.
The killer is batteries. 300 Wh per kg. Petrol is 13,000…
I think it is possible that Streeting is trying to create a build up at the next log jam - training places in the NHS. To shake more money for training out of the Treasury. It’s an old trick in OR.
The rational approach would be a decades long expansion of training in the NHS. X above the increase needed to keep up with the increasing size of the NHs. Until we have capacity *above* the requirements of the NHS.
One idea that was suggested was using training programs abroad - the Philippines came up in one discussion. Send University grads there to become doctors…
"Fears that Britain is due for a bout of mass violence on such a scale – or greater – have metastasised through the body politic in recent months. Speaking to the New Statesman earlier this year, Lisa Nandy said she believed that northern England was so tense it could “go up in flames” at any time. Dominic Cummings has claimed the intelligence services are discussing the potential for “racial/ethnic/mob/gang violence”. David Betz, a professor at the King’s College Department of War Studies, has gone further still and won much attention for predicting that Britain is sliding towards civil war.
According to Betz’s argument, governments such as our own can no longer peacefully manage multicultural societies fractured by ethnic grievance. We can therefore expect cities such as London to become “feral” with no-go zones spreading as the state’s authority dims. If civic conflict does break out, one side will push the metropolis into crisis by cutting off power and supplies, he argues. Such a scenario would leave the Met officers trained in Gravesend fighting to avert anarchy."
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-politics/2025/11/the-british-police-are-preparing-for-civil-war
There was a competitive bidding process for the Bradford and Bingley savings business (*not* the whole company). The best bid was “minus X” (i.e. we will buy this business if you inject £x billion into it first).
That was the market price and the government was willing to accept it.
A bailout is “I’m going bankrupt will you give me some money” - the government said yes, but charged a fee, took seniority in the cap stack and a chunk of the equity.
The Barclays issue wasn’t the discount, but because they did it on a pre-emptive basis (ie went straight to Qatar) rather than running a full rights issue. The problem was that a rights issue would have required a prospectus and a 21 day period for shareholders to decide whether to participate. Barclays believed that because the Qatari investment was structured (ie not common equity) it didn’t count towards the pre-emptive limit. The FCA believed otherwise and Barclays is smart enough to realise that fighting with your regulator is not a good idea.
Again, not a bailout.
The only answer any intelligent human being could give would be “it depends”. Do we mean Israel or the Israeli Government? Do we mean Palestinians, the Palestinian authority, or Hamas? What do we mean by “sympathise”?
Anyone want to start an AirCav unit?
In any case I thought polling suggests the UK public was largely against the Gazan..er..Special Military Operation.
https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/uk-ev-electricity-demand
But electricity use has been falling over the last couple of decades, so it's eminently doable.
(Sniff test: our car does about 250 Wh per mile, and 250 Wh is what you save from a roomful of low energy bulbs in an hour. Modern fridge freezers save about 1000 Wh per day. An average car does about 20 miles a day, so yeah... numbers look like roughly adding up.
Things are even more complicated than I thought.
So just the same as for graduates in every other subject.
(I always think it's astonishing how adept outfits like the Netanyahu administration and the O&G industry are at projecting what they do against their opponents. It's highly effective - I've actually been accused in person of taking bribes from the "cycling lobby", and we've had members of my local church accused of being terrorist sympathisers.)
Live on BBC1 please.
If so, what do they do?
So there are plenty of jobs. There are plenty of grads - and we could increase those relatively easily.
The bottleneck is post-graduate training. Which is a tiny fraction of requirements for the NHS.
A quick check on the internet gives the following:
Refers to debunked social media claims from late 2022 that BBC journalist Jeremy Bowen staged a news report from the front line near Irpin, Ukraine, where he was filmed lying on the ground.
These allegations, primarily spread by social media users and some Russian officials, were fact-checked and proven to be utterly false. The full video footage and independent verification showed that Bowen and his crew were genuinely in an active war zone, taking cover from heavy Russian shelling, and the civilian in the background was also fleeing the attacks.
Jeremy Bowen himself addressed the accusations on Twitter (now X), calling them "malicious" and "#fakenews," and stating: "Don't insult thousands of civilians fleeing over Irpin bridge into Kyiv from Russian shelling and war crimes".
Just like a vacancy for a principal engineer is irrelevant to a new engineering grad, a vacancy for a senior registrar is irrelevant to a new medical grad.
He's a cheap sensationalist
Probably quite a key skill in a PM to be honest.
A few nasty rip off merchants installed some early ones, badly.
The current ones are excellent - building firm I am involved with has installed some for very rich people. The types who sue if the light switches are 0.25 degrees crooked. They don’t complain - in fact, compliment them in follow ups.
And use a bit of common sense. Do you think that if they were going to fake it they would release footage of the woman walking with her dog. If it was faked they would have shot it again without her there wouldn't they? Use your brain and don't get sucked in by this crap.
Are you brave enough to do what he does?