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.
Again, not a bailout.
In both cases though it needed state or Qatari investment for the 2 banks to be secure after 2008 and the collapse of Lehmans and Northern Rock, even if not a strict bailout.
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.
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.
“Medical and dental school places are capped in each part of the UK, with “intake targets” used to limit the number of students a higher education provider may recruit in each year. There are caps for both home students and overseas/international students.”
The allocation of places is a serious hardship to some - we are talking about married people being sent to opposite ends of the country!
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.
I've always thought the traditional definition was the top 33%. The more modern one is the top 50%.
Middle class is basically anyone with a degree or above average earnings nowadays. Working class is really nearly everyone else, though it sometimes includes high earning plumbers etc. The tiny upper class you have to be born into or marry into as always in Britain
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.
Are you brave enough to do what he does?
He plainly didn't need to be laid in a ditch
Reporting Hamas propaganda from Israel is far braver than I would be if I were there
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.
Labour will hope taxing the rich more will win back more 'progressive' voters who have gone Green than any losses to the Tories and LDs from centrist wealthy property owners who still back Labour
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.
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.
“Medical and dental school places are capped in each part of the UK, with “intake targets” used to limit the number of students a higher education provider may recruit in each year. There are caps for both home students and overseas/international students.”
The allocation of places is a serious hardship to some - we are talking about married people being sent to opposite ends of the country!
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.
Again, not a bailout.
In both cases though it needed state or Qatari investment for the 2 banks to be secure after 2008 and the collapse of Lehmans and Northern Rock, even if not a strict bailout.
The U.K. government was very angry that Barclays had survived without a bailout by them - they were worried that Barclays would be in batter position than the banks that were, effectively nationalised.
They even threatened, as the deal approached, to withdraw any help from the Bank of England. Except that it turned out the terms of the deal meant the Qataris would get a bigger percentage of Barclays the lower the shares went.
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.
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.
“Medical and dental school places are capped in each part of the UK, with “intake targets” used to limit the number of students a higher education provider may recruit in each year. There are caps for both home students and overseas/international students.”
The allocation of places is a serious hardship to some - we are talking about married people being sent to opposite ends of the country!
I understand that the training places can be hard. Our final year pharmacists have just been through the equivalent. But it’s true to say that couples both having careers is not restricted to medics in the modern age.
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…
Agreed. We should be training enough doctors to ensure supply exceeds demand. That would stop the BMA holding us to ransom.
I remember the 80s when the media announced the number of jobs lost in their news bulletins. Maybe we should have a daily news report of the number of operations cancelled and additional deaths due to the BMA. I don’t have a problem with the NHS, just the BMA.
- 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.
So will sales of warm clothing to wear indoors when the heat pump is unable to heat homes to an adequate level.
I don't see how the top 10% counts as "middle class".
Have often come across people (Daily Mail readers usually) who stated "my home is my pension!". There was also a separate older group who, when faced with selling up to use the cash for their 'pension' would be reluctant to sell. And other group further along the age profile who didn't want to sell to fund their care they needed, as they wanted to leave 'something for the next generation'. Suddenly these 'pensions' are going to be very expensive to have.
The effects can't yet be assessed but one of them might be a lot of downsizing to release accommodation for families.
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.
How do countries which produce most of their own doctors do it? How do ones which produce a surplus? Their senior doctors cannot be spending all their time on training and none on their own work...
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.
Again, not a bailout.
In both cases though it needed state or Qatari investment for the 2 banks to be secure after 2008 and the collapse of Lehmans and Northern Rock, even if not a strict bailout.
We are making progress.
Yes, Bradford & Bingley was bought at a good price and, yes, QIA invested in Barclays. And yes, neither of them were bailouts.
- 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.
So will sales of warm clothing to wear indoors when the heat pump is unable to heat homes to an adequate level.
Doesn't Sweeden have a lot of heat pumps and cold winters and manage fine?
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
I've flagged this - I think it's potentially libellous. The original post possibly more so.
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.
Again, not a bailout.
In both cases though it needed state or Qatari investment for the 2 banks to be secure after 2008 and the collapse of Lehmans and Northern Rock, even if not a strict bailout.
We are making progress.
Yes, Bradford & Bingley was bought at a good price and, yes, QIA invested in Barclays. And yes, neither of them were bailouts.
On a very stretched definition, certainly without UK state injection of funds Santander would have been unlikely to buy Bradford and Bingley,
The Qatari investment in Barclays was also an investment by the Qatar state owned Qatar Investment Authority
I vaguely recall some passionate speeches in support of the British sausage from someone who was in a somewhat similar situation. There was a vacancy at the top (and you don't get much more vacant than Starmer) and it was necessary to make a splash with something the country could get behind you on.
Weirdly, I am struggling to find this in the history books but I remember it clearly, Hacker I think was his name?
- 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.
So will sales of warm clothing to wear indoors when the heat pump is unable to heat homes to an adequate level.
Doesn't Sweeden have a lot of heat pumps and cold winters and manage fine?
Around two thirds of houses in Norway rely on heat pumps, apparently with few problems. Perhaps heat pumps belong on the long list of things that the UK is seemingly unable to do.
- 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.
So will sales of warm clothing to wear indoors when the heat pump is unable to heat homes to an adequate level.
Doesn't Sweeden have a lot of heat pumps and cold winters and manage fine?
Around two thirds of houses in Norway rely on heat pumps, apparently with few problems. Perhaps heat pumps belong on the long list of things that the UK is seemingly unable to do.
Probably due to the abysmal quality of the housing stock.
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.
How do countries which produce most of their own doctors do it? How do ones which produce a surplus? Their senior doctors cannot be spending all their time on training and none on their own work...
Few OECD countries have their doctors all effectively employed by the State.
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
I've flagged this - I think it's potentially libellous. The original post possibly more so.
BBC editor says he 'doesn't regret one thing' after false Gaza hospital reporting The BBC's international editor Jeremy Bowen has said he doesn't regret his mistakes reporting on an explosion at a hospital in Gaza, claiming he "didn't race to judgement".
I vaguely recall some passionate speeches in support of the British sausage from someone who was in a somewhat similar situation. There was a vacancy at the top (and you don't get much more vacant than Starmer) and it was necessary to make a splash with something the country could get behind you on.
Weirdly, I am struggling to find this in the history books but I remember it clearly, Hacker I think was his name?
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
I've flagged this - I think it's potentially libellous. The original post possibly more so.
While my understanding on this is the same as Blanche's, kudos to Ben for saying who and why is flagging a thing.
I wonder whether Bowen's cameraman and sound guy were also laid in a ditch, or were they acceptable collateral damage for his brave reporting?
Honestly this is pathetic. He isn't in a ditch, he is behind an earth bank. The camera is at the same level as him (near ground level) and he is holding a microphone. You are just making this stuff up. Much of what you have posted is libellous and without any foundation and incredibly insulting and not based upon any facts and taken from trolls and Russian propagandists.
I don't know what you have against Bowen., but really this is unacceptable stuff.
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
I've flagged this - I think it's potentially libellous. The original post possibly more so.
While my understanding on this is the same as Blanche's, kudos to Ben for saying who and why is flagging a thing.
I've only ever flagged a couple of things tbh.
I'm a bit surprised you think Bowen was "pretending he was under attack" when it has been very effectively and independently shown that there was no pretence, the attack was very real.
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.
There is a simply rule - if you criticise someone for doing X, don't do the same thing yourself in the report that contains the criticism.
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.
The alloccation for the Foundation programme (the first 2 years after graduation) does contain a random element. This is used for those who do not get their first choice. In particular it is worth quoting "The ranking will not be informed by performance at medical school."
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
I've flagged this - I think it's potentially libellous. The original post possibly more so.
BBC editor says he 'doesn't regret one thing' after false Gaza hospital reporting The BBC's international editor Jeremy Bowen has said he doesn't regret his mistakes reporting on an explosion at a hospital in Gaza, claiming he "didn't race to judgement".
I vaguely recall some passionate speeches in support of the British sausage from someone who was in a somewhat similar situation. There was a vacancy at the top (and you don't get much more vacant than Starmer) and it was necessary to make a splash with something the country could get behind you on.
Weirdly, I am struggling to find this in the history books but I remember it clearly, Hacker I think was his name?
TBF it reflected reality if I remember rightly. The Eu were questioning whether the more breadcrumb/rusk laden of the mass produced UK sausages could meaningfully be called sausages and there was a hysterical campaign by the usual suspects in the media. But it was quite a long time ago - possibly the Yes Minister sketch postdated it.
- 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.
So will sales of warm clothing to wear indoors when the heat pump is unable to heat homes to an adequate level.
Doesn't Sweeden have a lot of heat pumps and cold winters and manage fine?
Around two thirds of houses in Norway rely on heat pumps, apparently with few problems. Perhaps heat pumps belong on the long list of things that the UK is seemingly unable to do.
Probably due to the abysmal quality of the housing stock.
Well I've had a heat pump for over ten years and most of the time it is excellent. But when it goes wrong then it is expensive, and it does go wrong now and then. It is difficult to get a heating engineer out to it and you are damned cold for a long time before you do. That might just be the set-up who put it in for me but I think it is general. You can tell what has gone wrong yourself but you HAVE to get the local firm out to look. THEN they bring in the national company who won't talk to you direct. This is a long waste of time as you know what is wrong from the outset.
Gripe Two: Pumping water around was heating for nothing when electricity was cheap. But it isn't cheap anymore and so ground source is no longer cheap.
Gripe Three: I am told not to use my Wood Buring Stoves as they cause the Ground Source to turn off and that damages it. I have enough wood to fuel Manchester here on my farm and it is good for nothing else but burning.
- 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.
So will sales of warm clothing to wear indoors when the heat pump is unable to heat homes to an adequate level.
Doesn't Sweeden have a lot of heat pumps and cold winters and manage fine?
Around two thirds of houses in Norway rely on heat pumps, apparently with few problems. Perhaps heat pumps belong on the long list of things that the UK is seemingly unable to do.
Probably due to the abysmal quality of the housing stock.
Well I've had a heat pump for over ten years and most of the time it is excellent. But when it goes wrong then it is expensive, and it does go wrong now and then. It is difficult to get a heating engineer out to it and you are damned cold for a long time before you do. That might just be the set-up who put it in for me but I think it is general. You can tell what has gone wrong yourself but you HAVE to get the local firm out to look. THEN they bring in the national company who won't talk to you direct. This is a long waste of time as you know what is wrong from the outset.
Gripe Two: Pumping water around was heating for nothing when electricity was cheap. But it isn't cheap anymore and so ground source is no longer cheap.
Gripe Three: I am told not to use my Wood Buring Stoves as they cause the Ground Source to turn off and that damages it. I have enough wood to fuel Manchester here on my farm and it is good for nothing else but burning.
Would I go for it again. Yes but ...
I've had a heat pump for two years, replacing both our air conditioning and heating.
It's been an enormous money saver: our annual electrically bill has almost halved.
We've had no mechanical trouble at all, maybe because we've been lucky. Maybe because our unit is newer.
My only criticism is that it is slightly slower to heat and cool the house than the old system. But financially, it was well worth it.
I vaguely recall some passionate speeches in support of the British sausage from someone who was in a somewhat similar situation. There was a vacancy at the top (and you don't get much more vacant than Starmer) and it was necessary to make a splash with something the country could get behind you on.
Weirdly, I am struggling to find this in the history books but I remember it clearly, Hacker I think was his name?
TBF it reflected reality if I remember rightly. The Eu were questioning whether the more breadcrumb/rusk laden of the mass produced UK sausages could meaningfully be called sausages and there was a hysterical campaign by the usual suspects in the media. But it was quite a long time ago - possibly the Yes Minister sketch postdated it.
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
While I sympathise with your predicament, it could be worse.
Labour, for example, were out of power for 14 years.
Yes, but for a significant number of those years they chose to be led by Ed Miliband and then Jeremy Corbyn so they really have no one to blame but themselves. I am increasingly anxious that the Miliband mistake might be repeated in circumstances where he can do real damage.
- 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.
So will sales of warm clothing to wear indoors when the heat pump is unable to heat homes to an adequate level.
Doesn't Sweeden have a lot of heat pumps and cold winters and manage fine?
Around two thirds of houses in Norway rely on heat pumps, apparently with few problems. Perhaps heat pumps belong on the long list of things that the UK is seemingly unable to do.
Heat pumps are fine in cold climates so long as your house is well insulated.
"First Labour MP calls for Starmer to step down MP for Norwich South says Andy Burnham should return to the parliamentary Labour Party and ‘become the next prime minister’"
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.)
- 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.
Talking your book, Sandy. Heat pump technology is advancing much quicker (in terms of economic viability) than carbon capture, or green hydrogen.
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.)
"First Labour MP calls for Starmer to step down MP for Norwich South says Andy Burnham should return to the parliamentary Labour Party and ‘become the next prime minister’"
Judgment at Nuremberg on BBC2 at the moment. great cast including Marlene, Judy Garland and Montgomery Clift*. Possibly the gayest movie ever made about the Holocaust.
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.
Why then 'leak' it to the Telegraph? If he's a genuine advisor without alterior motive just be straight.
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.
Again, not a bailout.
In both cases though it needed state or Qatari investment for the 2 banks to be secure after 2008 and the collapse of Lehmans and Northern Rock, even if not a strict bailout.
We are making progress.
Yes, Bradford & Bingley was bought at a good price and, yes, QIA invested in Barclays. And yes, neither of them were bailouts.
On a very stretched definition, certainly without UK state injection of funds Santander would have been unlikely to buy Bradford and Bingley,
The Qatari investment in Barclays was also an investment by the Qatar state owned Qatar Investment Authority
Sure Santander got a bargain, because the Uk government needed to sell. Great deal for them… not a bailout
And QIA, like Berkshire Hathaway, got some great bargains too because they had the readies when everyone else was under real pressure… there is a difference between a bailout and an investment
"First Labour MP calls for Starmer to step down MP for Norwich South says Andy Burnham should return to the parliamentary Labour Party and ‘become the next prime minister’"
I vaguely recall some passionate speeches in support of the British sausage from someone who was in a somewhat similar situation. There was a vacancy at the top (and you don't get much more vacant than Starmer) and it was necessary to make a splash with something the country could get behind you on.
Weirdly, I am struggling to find this in the history books but I remember it clearly, Hacker I think was his name?
"First Labour MP calls for Starmer to step down MP for Norwich South says Andy Burnham should return to the parliamentary Labour Party and ‘become the next prime minister’"
Indeed, I suspect Starmer would welcome a stalking horse challenge by Lewis who is from the uber Corbynite wing of his party as Redwood was from the uber Thatcherite wing of the Tories. It was that wing making trouble for Major as it is Lewis' wing most hostile to Starmer
- 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.
So will sales of warm clothing to wear indoors when the heat pump is unable to heat homes to an adequate level.
Doesn't Sweeden have a lot of heat pumps and cold winters and manage fine?
Around two thirds of houses in Norway rely on heat pumps, apparently with few problems. Perhaps heat pumps belong on the long list of things that the UK is seemingly unable to do.
Heat pumps are fine if the houses are designed for them, but they do require more electricity, which Norway has plenty of thanks to hydroelectric power.
"First Labour MP calls for Starmer to step down MP for Norwich South says Andy Burnham should return to the parliamentary Labour Party and ‘become the next prime minister’"
- 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.
So will sales of warm clothing to wear indoors when the heat pump is unable to heat homes to an adequate level.
Doesn't Sweeden have a lot of heat pumps and cold winters and manage fine?
Around two thirds of houses in Norway rely on heat pumps, apparently with few problems. Perhaps heat pumps belong on the long list of things that the UK is seemingly unable to do.
Probably due to the abysmal quality of the housing stock.
Well I've had a heat pump for over ten years and most of the time it is excellent. But when it goes wrong then it is expensive, and it does go wrong now and then. It is difficult to get a heating engineer out to it and you are damned cold for a long time before you do. That might just be the set-up who put it in for me but I think it is general. You can tell what has gone wrong yourself but you HAVE to get the local firm out to look. THEN they bring in the national company who won't talk to you direct. This is a long waste of time as you know what is wrong from the outset.
Gripe Two: Pumping water around was heating for nothing when electricity was cheap. But it isn't cheap anymore and so ground source is no longer cheap.
Gripe Three: I am told not to use my Wood Buring Stoves as they cause the Ground Source to turn off and that damages it. I have enough wood to fuel Manchester here on my farm and it is good for nothing else but burning.
Would I go for it again. Yes but ...
I've had a heat pump for two years, replacing both our air conditioning and heating.
It's been an enormous money saver: our annual electrically bill has almost halved.
We've had no mechanical trouble at all, maybe because we've been lucky. Maybe because our unit is newer.
My only criticism is that it is slightly slower to heat and cool the house than the old system. But financially, it was well worth it.
In the bestpart of a decade between the two systems, technology has moved on a bit.
"First Labour MP calls for Starmer to step down MP for Norwich South says Andy Burnham should return to the parliamentary Labour Party and ‘become the next prime minister’"
"First Labour MP calls for Starmer to step down MP for Norwich South says Andy Burnham should return to the parliamentary Labour Party and ‘become the next prime minister’"
Translated: an MP that sees that Starmer’s days are now numbered and doesn’t fancy uber-Blairite Streeting as next leader
A friend of mine who is supposed to Know About These Things tells me that young Clive Lewis is the Coming Man in the Labour Party these days, and definitely One To Watch. Be that as it may, putting his head above the parapet just now strikes me as a bit foolhardy rather than heroic.
"First Labour MP calls for Starmer to step down MP for Norwich South says Andy Burnham should return to the parliamentary Labour Party and ‘become the next prime minister’"
Translated: an MP that sees that Starmer’s days are now numbered and doesn’t fancy uber-Blairite Streeting as next leader
If you rule out Miliband and Burnham, the only plausible ‘stop Streeting’ candidate is Mahmood.
In a parallel universe, I wonder how that is turning out. Whether Labour members are ready to plump for both their first female and first ethnic minority (discounting Ed) leader, in our current universe, when the individual gets immediately parachuted into becoming UK PM, is another matter.
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.
It is not "commonly accepted" at all. Rather it's the subject of considerable public dispute, as opinion polling reflects.
And plenty of the criticisms of Prescott are not smears in the least.
Whether you agree with the substance of his complaints or not, they are fairly clearly written from a particular political position; he is not some impartial arbiter.
You don't have to agree with Aaronovitch's views to accept that there are perfectly valid reasons to complain that the BBC is sometimes partial in the other direction - and that nowhere is that reflected in Prescott's dossier.
"First Labour MP calls for Starmer to step down MP for Norwich South says Andy Burnham should return to the parliamentary Labour Party and ‘become the next prime minister’"
"First Labour MP calls for Starmer to step down MP for Norwich South says Andy Burnham should return to the parliamentary Labour Party and ‘become the next prime minister’"
Of course had Miguel Portillo not had a Hamlet like moment of indecision in 1995 and not only installed but activated his phonelines then Redwood would not likely have run and Portillo would have been the Thatcherite candidate and might even have won.
He still wouldn't have beaten Blair in 1997 but like Sunak and Brown would have got a couple of years as PM, by 2001 when Portillo made his actual bid for leader over half the Thatcherites had dumped him for IDS and he still wasn't moderate enough for the One Nation wing who backed Ken Clarke
"First Labour MP calls for Starmer to step down MP for Norwich South says Andy Burnham should return to the parliamentary Labour Party and ‘become the next prime minister’"
"First Labour MP calls for Starmer to step down MP for Norwich South says Andy Burnham should return to the parliamentary Labour Party and ‘become the next prime minister’"
"First Labour MP calls for Starmer to step down MP for Norwich South says Andy Burnham should return to the parliamentary Labour Party and ‘become the next prime minister’"
Half of all UK jobs shed since Labour came to power are among under-25s
With the government under fire before the autumn budget, Guardian analysis shows the dramatic leap in UK unemployment to the highest levels since the Covid pandemic is being fuelled by a youth jobs crisis.
As many as 46% of the 170,000 jobs lost from company payrolls since June last year are from those under the age of 25 – the equivalent of more than 150 jobs lost per day.
Youth unemployment has increased from 14.8% a year ago to 15.3%, the highest level outside the Covid pandemic since 2015, and more than three times the headline jobless rate for people over the age of 16. Long-term youth joblessness is also at a decade high.
Streeting has managed to cultivate a reputation as a well performing minister without i would say much evidence of it.
Probably quite a key skill in a PM to be honest.
...because that's worked really well so far?
Starmer is the reverse. The substance of what he has achieved, particularly in foreign affairs is pretty good. But he gets no credit, his PR/messaging is dreadful.
Half of all UK jobs shed since Labour came to power are among under-25s
With the government under fire before the autumn budget, Guardian analysis shows the dramatic leap in UK unemployment to the highest levels since the Covid pandemic is being fuelled by a youth jobs crisis.
As many as 46% of the 170,000 jobs lost from company payrolls since June last year are from those under the age of 25 – the equivalent of more than 150 jobs lost per day.
Youth unemployment has increased from 14.8% a year ago to 15.3%, the highest level outside the Covid pandemic since 2015, and more than three times the headline jobless rate for people over the age of 16. Long-term youth joblessness is also at a decade high.
Half of all UK jobs shed since Labour came to power are among under-25s
With the government under fire before the autumn budget, Guardian analysis shows the dramatic leap in UK unemployment to the highest levels since the Covid pandemic is being fuelled by a youth jobs crisis.
As many as 46% of the 170,000 jobs lost from company payrolls since June last year are from those under the age of 25 – the equivalent of more than 150 jobs lost per day.
Youth unemployment has increased from 14.8% a year ago to 15.3%, the highest level outside the Covid pandemic since 2015, and more than three times the headline jobless rate for people over the age of 16. Long-term youth joblessness is also at a decade high.
Half of all UK jobs shed since Labour came to power are among under-25s
With the government under fire before the autumn budget, Guardian analysis shows the dramatic leap in UK unemployment to the highest levels since the Covid pandemic is being fuelled by a youth jobs crisis.
As many as 46% of the 170,000 jobs lost from company payrolls since June last year are from those under the age of 25 – the equivalent of more than 150 jobs lost per day.
Youth unemployment has increased from 14.8% a year ago to 15.3%, the highest level outside the Covid pandemic since 2015, and more than three times the headline jobless rate for people over the age of 16. Long-term youth joblessness is also at a decade high.
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.
How do countries which produce most of their own doctors do it? How do ones which produce a surplus? Their senior doctors cannot be spending all their time on training and none on their own work...
Cuba does or did. Was a way of spreading influence. Think I met one when visiting the West Bank but may be hallucinating.
- 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.
They are not zero emission sources. Windmills have a limited lifespan and their building (in coal burning China), transportation, installation and maintenance all uses carbon.
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 am in Cambridge today, and just saw someone being arrested for shoplifting!
I'd been in the CoOp earlier, and the staff were talking about a guy who'd robbed them twice in the last couple of days. Then a few hours later, I arrived to find a gentleman being escored by two police out of the CoOp into a van, and not looking too happy.
My suspicion is that when they saw said scrote arriving, they called the police who managed to be there to arrest him as he departed the store with his purloined goods.
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.
"First Labour MP calls for Starmer to step down MP for Norwich South says Andy Burnham should return to the parliamentary Labour Party and ‘become the next prime minister’"
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.
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.
no point arguing with sandpit he's been radicalised by his social media feed
He's entitled to his opinions like you, me and the rest, without your smears.
Fair.
But in this case it's one of those arguments which isn't falsifiable - "public opinion is meaningless because it's a result of BBC propaganda"...
So can't be taken particularly seriously.
The BBC has a responsibility to be especially vigilant but it's clear to.me that, at times, they are not, as they freely admit. The result can be seen as they lose respect.
NEWS: Ro Khanna tells us *50 Republicans* may be set to join him, Thomas Massie, and Democrats in voting to release the Epstein files.
Perhaps explains why Trump is now spinning out of control, attacking Republicans like Massie and MTG who are joining Democrats in responding to the public demand.
Half of all UK jobs shed since Labour came to power are among under-25s
With the government under fire before the autumn budget, Guardian analysis shows the dramatic leap in UK unemployment to the highest levels since the Covid pandemic is being fuelled by a youth jobs crisis.
As many as 46% of the 170,000 jobs lost from company payrolls since June last year are from those under the age of 25 – the equivalent of more than 150 jobs lost per day.
Youth unemployment has increased from 14.8% a year ago to 15.3%, the highest level outside the Covid pandemic since 2015, and more than three times the headline jobless rate for people over the age of 16. Long-term youth joblessness is also at a decade high.
I am sure that another above inflation increase in the minimum wage in April 2026 will help!
The biggest killer is the massive reduction in the threshold when a company has to pay employer NI. How do people get into jobs, often it is come and do some hours part time. Supermarkets run on mums, oldies, students, etc coming and doing part-time. It often the way a company can try you out, particularly if you never been in the workforce, or not been in it for a while.
What company is going to do that. Then you add on higher mimimum wage etc. You might as well just hire only full time people.
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.
no point arguing with sandpit he's been radicalised by his social media feed
He's entitled to his opinions like you, me and the rest, without your smears.
Fair.
But in this case it's one of those arguments which isn't falsifiable - "public opinion is meaningless because it's a result of BBC propaganda"...
So can't be taken particularly seriously.
The BBC has a responsibility to be especially vigilant but it's clear to.me that, at times, they are not, as they freely admit. The result can be seen as they lose respect.
A distinction needs to be made between: 1. Holding the BBC to a higher standard than other news outlets and calling out it's pomposity and failings (which we definitely should do); and 2. Trying to destroy the BBC (which we should not do, the alternatives take us further down the path of partisan post-truth news).
My own views on the current mess are skewed by the fact that I think there have been plenty of people with power over the BBC over the past 15 years who have been aiming for 2. This means that I am extremely wary of accepting any criticism of it at face value, especially from those on the right.
I'm not trying to deny it's failings; I am doubting the sincerity of (many of) those who criticise it.
Starmer's (and by extension Labour's) schtick was supposed to be "boring competence". Boring incompetence isn't what the script requires.
Its not been particularly boring either. A scandal every other week. Freebie gate, Mandy big mates with Epstein, housing ministers stiffing tenants, corruption minister up for corruption, the transport minister a thief, the Deputy PM a tax dodger, the chancellor fake CV and lying about knowlege of housing licence, the "independent" football bod has bunged the right people money. It just goes on and on.
Admittedly we haven't topped Tractor-gate yet for giggles.
NEWS: Ro Khanna tells us *50 Republicans* may be set to join him, Thomas Massie, and Democrats in voting to release the Epstein files.
Perhaps explains why Trump is now spinning out of control, attacking Republicans like Massie and MTG who are joining Democrats in responding to the public demand.
Why stand behind Trump? He's done. His power is evaporating.
These Republicans are hearing the stories of what will come out. Word is, quite stomach-turning stuff is held by the FBI. Counselling for those with kids who've seen it. The risk of being primaried by Trump now has far less power than being evicted by the voters for standing by the Pedo President.
I told you these were going to be interesting times!
Comments
What we get from Rachel Reeves is logic? Come on, stupid - zero optimism ultimately (8,5)
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9735/
“Medical and dental school places are capped in each part of the UK, with “intake targets” used to limit the number of students a higher education provider may recruit in each year. There are caps for both home students and overseas/international students.”
The allocation of places is a serious hardship to some - we are talking about married people being sent to opposite ends of the country!
Reporting Hamas propaganda from Israel is far braver than I would be if I were there
They even threatened, as the deal approached, to withdraw any help from the Bank of England. Except that it turned out the terms of the deal meant the Qataris would get a bigger percentage of Barclays the lower the shares went.
I remember the 80s when the media announced the number of jobs lost in their news bulletins. Maybe we should have a daily news report of the number of operations cancelled and additional deaths due to the BMA. I don’t have a problem with the NHS, just the BMA.
The effects can't yet be assessed but one of them might be a lot of downsizing to release accommodation for families.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=438UKM1Av1g&pp=ygUoRmx5aW5nIHRyYW5zY2VuZGVudGFsIHBhcnR5IHVrIGJyb2FkY2FzdA==
Yes, Bradford & Bingley was bought at a good price and, yes, QIA invested in Barclays. And yes, neither of them were bailouts.
The Qatari investment in Barclays was also an investment by the Qatar state owned Qatar Investment Authority
Weirdly, I am struggling to find this in the history books but I remember it clearly, Hacker I think was his name?
The BBC's international editor Jeremy Bowen has said he doesn't regret his mistakes reporting on an explosion at a hospital in Gaza, claiming he "didn't race to judgement".
https://www.skynews.com.au/business/bbc-editor-says-he-doesnt-regret-one-thing-after-false-gaza-hospital-reporting/news-story/43104046427018e98a91b14e5f876556
I don't know what you have against Bowen., but really this is unacceptable stuff.
I'm a bit surprised you think Bowen was "pretending he was under attack" when it has been very effectively and independently shown that there was no pretence, the attack was very real.
https://foundationprogramme.nhs.uk/programmes/2-year-foundation-programme/ukfp/application-process/allocation-to-a-foundation-school/
This is deliberate, the idea being to send doctors to under served regions.
Off to open my latest book in the post.
Gripe Two: Pumping water around was heating for nothing when electricity was cheap. But it isn't cheap anymore and so ground source is no longer cheap.
Gripe Three: I am told not to use my Wood Buring Stoves as they cause the Ground Source to turn off and that damages it. I have enough wood to fuel Manchester here on my farm and it is good for nothing else but burning.
Would I go for it again. Yes but ...
It's been an enormous money saver: our annual electrically bill has almost halved.
We've had no mechanical trouble at all, maybe because we've been lucky. Maybe because our unit is newer.
My only criticism is that it is slightly slower to heat and cool the house than the old system. But financially, it was well worth it.
You've said enough about Jeremy Bowen for today.
Wales are desperate to boost their goal difference against a Liechtenstein who have conceded an average of four in their previous three home matches.
Wales (-4) to win available at 19/10 boosted with Ladbrokes.
And before you ask, I’m not brave enough to also back Scotland- watching them will be stressful enough.
MP for Norwich South says Andy Burnham should return to the parliamentary Labour Party and ‘become the next prime minister’"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/11/15/labour-mp-clive-lewis-calls-for-starmer-to-step-down
Heat pump technology is advancing much quicker (in terms of economic viability) than carbon capture, or green hydrogen.
*And William Shatner!
And QIA, like Berkshire Hathaway, got some great bargains too because they had the readies when everyone else was under real pressure… there is a difference between a bailout and an investment
John Redwood's bid to topple John Major died the second we saw his backers.
https://www.shutterstock.com/editorial/image-editorial/john-redwood-245512c
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VTFSBJaCXD8
Zero = o
Optimism ultimately = m
ECONOMIC GLOOM (what we get from Rach)
And plenty of the criticisms of Prescott are not smears in the least.
Whether you agree with the substance of his complaints or not, they are fairly clearly written from a particular political position; he is not some impartial arbiter.
Here's one analysis arguing that:
https://observer.co.uk/news/opinion-and-ideas/article/the-prescott-memo-flunks-the-impartiality-test
You don't have to agree with Aaronovitch's views to accept that there are perfectly valid reasons to complain that the BBC is sometimes partial in the other direction - and that nowhere is that reflected in Prescott's dossier.
He still wouldn't have beaten Blair in 1997 but like Sunak and Brown would have got a couple of years as PM, by 2001 when Portillo made his actual bid for leader over half the Thatcherites had dumped him for IDS and he still wasn't moderate enough for the One Nation wing who backed Ken Clarke
Rayner perhaps, or Powell, or even Lewis.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c874v0x91evo
With the government under fire before the autumn budget, Guardian analysis shows the dramatic leap in UK unemployment to the highest levels since the Covid pandemic is being fuelled by a youth jobs crisis.
As many as 46% of the 170,000 jobs lost from company payrolls since June last year are from those under the age of 25 – the equivalent of more than 150 jobs lost per day.
Youth unemployment has increased from 14.8% a year ago to 15.3%, the highest level outside the Covid pandemic since 2015, and more than three times the headline jobless rate for people over the age of 16. Long-term youth joblessness is also at a decade high.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/nov/15/half-of-all-uk-jobs-shed-since-labour-came-to-power-are-among-under-25s
Who could have foreseen this issue.
TenEight?https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20240619-palestinian-medical-students-in-cuba-highlight-pain-of-diaspora
I'm in the pub watching the rugby, but one of my neighbours just came in and told me his is back on
I'd been in the CoOp earlier, and the staff were talking about a guy who'd robbed them twice in the last couple of days. Then a few hours later, I arrived to find a gentleman being escored by two police out of the CoOp into a van, and not looking too happy.
My suspicion is that when they saw said scrote arriving, they called the police who managed to be there to arrest him as he departed the store with his purloined goods.
It's quite restored my faith in human nature.
But in this case it's one of those arguments which isn't falsifiable - "public opinion is meaningless because it's a result of BBC propaganda"...
So can't be taken particularly seriously.
NEWS: Ro Khanna tells us *50 Republicans* may be set to join him, Thomas Massie, and Democrats in voting to release the Epstein files.
Perhaps explains why Trump is now spinning out of control, attacking Republicans like Massie and MTG who are joining Democrats in responding to the public demand.
https://bsky.app/profile/premthakker.bsky.social/post/3m5omhcuu422o
What company is going to do that. Then you add on higher mimimum wage etc. You might as well just hire only full time people.
1. Holding the BBC to a higher standard than other news outlets and calling out it's pomposity and failings (which we definitely should do); and
2. Trying to destroy the BBC (which we should not do, the alternatives take us further down the path of partisan post-truth news).
My own views on the current mess are skewed by the fact that I think there have been plenty of people with power over the BBC over the past 15 years who have been aiming for 2. This means that I am extremely wary of accepting any criticism of it at face value, especially from those on the right.
I'm not trying to deny it's failings; I am doubting the sincerity of (many of) those who criticise it.
Admittedly we haven't topped Tractor-gate yet for giggles.
Why stand behind Trump? He's done. His power is evaporating.
These Republicans are hearing the stories of what will come out. Word is, quite stomach-turning stuff is held by the FBI. Counselling for those with kids who've seen it. The risk of being primaried by Trump now has far less power than being evicted by the voters for standing by the Pedo President.
I told you these were going to be interesting times!