Extensive briefings from the government for weeks. This falls short of standards the house requires. A SUPREME DISCOURTESY and the clear breach of the ministerial code.
Ironic that the 'BBC Verify' post in the live feed about the two child benefit cap and poverty uses the bullshit 'relative poverty' measure.
You may not like it, that's fair enough, but it's a clear, objective, and widely used measure. Hardly something to criticise BBC Verify for.
Out of interest what would you propose as the measure of poverty? Does a child need to be starving, in rags, no shoes?
When we interrogate our idea of poverty it is always a relative concept at its core, because poverty is ultimately about being excluded from the normal patterns of consumption and participation in our current society. In my view it is so-called 'absolute' poverty measures that are bullshit.
Not being able to 'keep up with the Joneses' in a neighbourhood pissing contest doesn't make someone poor. It makes them unable to afford an unnecessary and 'fashionable' splurging of cash you don't have on things you don't need. And the idea that should be subsidised by the taxpayer is just another tier in the cake of relative poverty bullshit.
Edited: as an aside, I'll be AFK for the Budget, which is a shame but needs must.
It's not about keeping up with Jones's. The point is that what we might consider an absolute poverty line now would be very different to the absolute poverty line 50 years ago, because we have different expectations about what constitutes a minimum standard of living, and these expectations are related to what we consider a normal standard of living. This is why I find the idea of some kind of objective and immutable poverty line fundamentally dishonest.
As always it depends on what is done with the concept. Relative and absolute poverty are clearly different ideas. Relative poverty has the property of being more or less by definition ineradicable. Absolute poverty has the property of being a quantity of immiseration which is unacceptable when encountered, especially in children.
Damage is done by leftists who elide relative poverty into something self evidently bad, when it is not self evident. Rightists do harm by insisting the real measure should be more like absolute poverty, which we should not contemplate for anyone. Imprecision and ambiguity is the permanent friend of lobbyists.
Relative poverty is not ineradicable. If you define relative poverty as, say, 60% of the median wage, then it is straightforward (in mathematical terms) to have a distribution with no-one in relative poverty.
You still have the idea though that people are in poverty, when in reality, compared to previous generations and indeed most around the world, they lead comfortable lives, eat enough food, are warm and dry. The term is pernicious and says more about societal equality than the struggles of those who have less.
It makes sense though. Sheffield can't sustain two clubs other than bouncing around the Championship/Division 1. A single team might keep in the Premiership.
The same should apply to Liverpool.
And Manchester.
Glasgow too when it comes to succeeding in Europe.
Rivers of blood might be the most optimistic scenario if you proposed a merger between those two clubs.
AFAIUI, once upon a time the league had a rule that only one club from a town or city could be a member. I think Birmingham was the first with two clubs, in circumstances I can't recall.
Of course, ideally, players would simply represent their home county. Lancashire could play at Old Trafford, Northumberland at St. James' Park. And so on.
Flicking through the last thread I noticed a few of the Reform Lite posters criticising Rachel for being photographed with a chess board on her desk and one of them suggested she was trying to make herself look clever. She was infact underr 14 chess champion.
I think there's a lot of misogyny when it comes to Rachel. Would people be so patronising if it was Gove for example?
Gove is another misfit who got plenty of personal flak. It's the game.
I don't really get the chess thing, she was clearly very good, probably top 1% of all players, but not elite. To get to that level demonstrates a decent level of logic, planning and reasoning skills. To get to elite, does the same, but also requires a level of obsession that is probably unhealthy for a national leader.
A bit of internet digging suggests that she did little chess other than schoolgirl competitions. She doesn’t have a public ELO (chess ranking).
Now if she could say she was 2,000 ELO, close to a Master ranking, then she might be taken seriously in the chess world.
Huh? Why is this relevant? She’s proud of what she’s done and rightly so. If a politician rugby player had some end of season award he won from the Old Rubberduckians RFC on his desk it wouldn’t even be mentioned. Certainly no one would go carp about “lack of representative honours”
When you’re making it the centerpiece of your pre-budget photo, one is entitled to investigate.
You’re entitled to “investigate” (although the word is overused - I once googled the late Stuart Dickson and made the mistake of outing myself by clicking his LinkedIn profile while logged into my own - you’d think I was stalking the fucker from the reaction) but your conclusion appears to be that she hadn’t earned it. Bollocks to that.
"Notice regarding Economic and fiscal outlook being released today A link to our Economic and fiscal outlook document went live on our website too early this morning. It has been removed.
We apologise for this technical error and have initiated an investigation into how this happened.
We will be reporting to our Oversight Board, the Treasury, and the Commons Treasury Committee on how this happened, and we will make sure this does not happen again."
"Notice regarding Economic and fiscal outlook being released today A link to our Economic and fiscal outlook document went live on our website too early this morning. It has been removed.
We apologise for this technical error and have initiated an investigation into how this happened.
We will be reporting to our Oversight Board, the Treasury, and the Commons Treasury Committee on how this happened, and we will make sure this does not happen again."
BBC and Sky not covering PMQs but discussing the details of Reeves budget before she stands up
Surreal but heads must roll over this
Did heads roll in 1996 when the budget was leaked in its entirety.
Just looking that up, an interesting contrast to today. The budget was leaked to the Mirror and Piers Morgan, of all people, returned the papers without publishing as he said that was his 'public duty'.
The main effect was to allow Blair to properly prepare a response ahead of the statement.
Ironic that the 'BBC Verify' post in the live feed about the two child benefit cap and poverty uses the bullshit 'relative poverty' measure.
You may not like it, that's fair enough, but it's a clear, objective, and widely used measure. Hardly something to criticise BBC Verify for.
Out of interest what would you propose as the measure of poverty? Does a child need to be starving, in rags, no shoes?
When we interrogate our idea of poverty it is always a relative concept at its core, because poverty is ultimately about being excluded from the normal patterns of consumption and participation in our current society. In my view it is so-called 'absolute' poverty measures that are bullshit.
Not being able to 'keep up with the Joneses' in a neighbourhood pissing contest doesn't make someone poor. It makes them unable to afford an unnecessary and 'fashionable' splurging of cash you don't have on things you don't need. And the idea that should be subsidised by the taxpayer is just another tier in the cake of relative poverty bullshit.
Edited: as an aside, I'll be AFK for the Budget, which is a shame but needs must.
It's not about keeping up with Jones's. The point is that what we might consider an absolute poverty line now would be very different to the absolute poverty line 50 years ago, because we have different expectations about what constitutes a minimum standard of living, and these expectations are related to what we consider a normal standard of living. This is why I find the idea of some kind of objective and immutable poverty line fundamentally dishonest.
Disagree with this. I don't like the idea of relative poverty.
Not least because you can bring people out of relative poverty by simply making rich people poorer.
Relative poverty is based on the median. Making your average rich (i.e. above median) person somewhat poorer will have zero effect on the median. Likewise, making them richer (even way, way richer) has no effect. You have to make people on middling incomes poorer to shift the median down.
Steven Swinford @Steven_Swinford · 27m The OBR has broken **the entire Budget**. It's extraordinary. Completely unprecedented. Hyperbole doesn't do it justice
But I'll do hyperbole anyway. Clearly a massive cock up on the part of the OBR but actually I think early release of material information is good. Even if inadvertent in this case. The more scrutiny the better. I have always disliked the "rabbit out of the hat" aspect of budgets and I don't think it results in good decision making.
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
There is no way 2 would work - most people will just fast forward the video or put it on and do something else
Have all the jury prep etc run by court staff. The day before.
Have jury prep as a courthouse function, run by staff. As a continual operation. Lining up juries, get them sorted, warned, lanyarded.
So 9am, the judge, lawyers, etc all roll in together.
Judge can have the option to say - “I don’t look this jury, do you have a similar one? But in a shade of mauve?”
You're right, of course you're right, but you know the objections.
Spending a bit more to get a lot more is still spending more, and we've conditioned ourselves to not want that.
It's moving spending from frontline staff to backstage. And we've massively conditioned ourselves to not want that.
Yet again on pb the most vociferous criticism of the removal of jury trials comes from the very same people who want to massively cut public spending and reduce public sector pay and benefits dramatically.
The concept of we only get what we are willing to pay for seems to have completely passed them by.
I have no idea if this is true, but it is rational for opinions to come in related sets, and opinions which don't arise in related ways lack an underlying coherence. Rather than turning the point into a meaningless (and maybe unverified) piece of ad hominem, it would be more useful to examine the relation of the set of opinions, and consider its worth.
What is irrational about wanting to have a much smaller state while keeping the jury system? We had juries when we had a much smaller state. (I am not proposing either, personally, but there is nothing counter intuitive about it.)
The frustration is the party led by this group of people have been in power most of my lifetime, and to be fair match the views of the electorate in not wanting to increase taxes.
So we have court rooms out of use because of leaks, because we don't want to spend money. We have a lack of lawyers and judges, because we don't want to spend money. Our prisons can't cope, because we don't want to spend money. Prisoners come out early, without any thought of rehabilitation and commit more crime.
Whilst I would prefer jury trials and functioning prisons myself, it does grate to hear the attacks on the status quo from the supporters of the establishment party with zero consideration of how we get here, or any serious thought on how we can change course and what resources that requires.
Except for a very short time under Mrs T, public expenditure has risen throughout the last decades. The state in various forms manages 44% of total expenditure, over £40,000 per household, just a little short of the highest in Europe and in the middle of the developed pack. Despite that there is not a single area not crying out for much more spending. Something is wrong with the model, but it isn't that taxes are very significantly too low.
We have no money
Yet we are spending £700 million on saving a handful of salmon. Billions on an armoured vehicle that literally makes the occupants chronically ill. We can’t find GPs, while we train GPs who can’t get jobs. We have no money to look after children with special needs, but councils are block booking taxis to send them to school - as opposed to a school bus.
It’s feast-or-famine mode spending. Often on insane things.
This has probably always happened. Citing examples of "waste" is only one side of the argument. A lot of people have their lives helped if not enhanced by what Government and its agencies do and to simply and perpetually highlight the faults misses the point.
When I was in local Government, there was this paradox of apparent waste (though tens of thousands against a total budget of more than a £1 billion isn't that significant) but you knew what the council was providing in terms of libraries, youth centres and social care and the people providing it was making a difference to people's lives.
The problem is the pattern - we have lost control of public spending. Which results in starving spending on needed things.
Spend £700 million on court infrastructure and staff, say. Rather than saving a shop windows worth of salmon. Think how many clerks you could hire to prepare juries for the courts.
Merge NI & IT to reduce the admin overhead.
Buy the “world beating” ACV that actually exists - CV-90. Aside from it actually working, costing a fraction of what Ajax does, it will reduce the burden on the NHS.
Train U.K. medics overseas. Using the overseas aid budget - it will be supporting developing world health systems, after all. Then we have more medics - so less agency staff on the NHS (cheaper), less stress on the existing NHS staff (retainment), more U.K. citizens with qualifications for jobs which are in high demand…
This is about running procurement and government intelligently. Cost control and productivity - both are not being done.
Plenty of places where we recognise their pill-rolling certificates. If they are good enough to train their own people to our standards, why not train our people to the same standard?
“ Part 1: Consists of a multiple choice format examination paper with 180 SBA's (One Hundred Eighty Single Best Answer questions with 5 options and one SBA) lasting 3 hours. This is a paper-based exam which is answered on a sheet provided by the invigilator (not computer-based). This part is conducted in a number of countries including Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, Bangladesh, Egypt, India, Pakistan, Nigeria and Sri Lanka.[2] Part 2: Consists of an objective structured clinical examination (OSCE). This part is only available in Manchester.[citation needed] It consists of 16 clinical stations. All the stations are eight minutes long, plus two minutes reading time. The standard of both parts of the PLAB exam is set at the level of competence of a doctor at the start of Foundation Year 2 (F2) in the Foundation Programme.”
So overseas trained UK doctors need to do an exam and 160 minutes of OCSE?
That doesn’t sound like a show stopper.
I didn't say it was, although plenty of doctors will tell you it's a difficult exam! My point is that your repeated claims that we recognise overseas training is wrong. We partly recognise it, but require an additional test on top.
And, to go back several steps in the conversation, the paper I posted shows that, even with the PLAB, overseas-trained doctors get into trouble more often than UK-trained ones. Now, why that is is complicated and may be for a multitude of reasons, but the conclusion of the research is that the PLAB might have to be tightened.
Steven Swinford @Steven_Swinford · 27m The OBR has broken **the entire Budget**. It's extraordinary. Completely unprecedented. Hyperbole doesn't do it justice
But I'll do hyperbole anyway. Clearly a massive cock up on the part of the OBR but actually I think early release of material information is good. Even if inadvertent in this case. The more scrutiny the better. I have always disliked the "rabbit out of the hat" aspect of budgets and I don't think it results in good decision making.
Yebbut... an extra half hour's scrutiny?
Let's return to a period Budget purdah in future, I say.
Ironic that the 'BBC Verify' post in the live feed about the two child benefit cap and poverty uses the bullshit 'relative poverty' measure.
You may not like it, that's fair enough, but it's a clear, objective, and widely used measure. Hardly something to criticise BBC Verify for.
Out of interest what would you propose as the measure of poverty? Does a child need to be starving, in rags, no shoes?
When we interrogate our idea of poverty it is always a relative concept at its core, because poverty is ultimately about being excluded from the normal patterns of consumption and participation in our current society. In my view it is so-called 'absolute' poverty measures that are bullshit.
Not being able to 'keep up with the Joneses' in a neighbourhood pissing contest doesn't make someone poor. It makes them unable to afford an unnecessary and 'fashionable' splurging of cash you don't have on things you don't need. And the idea that should be subsidised by the taxpayer is just another tier in the cake of relative poverty bullshit.
Edited: as an aside, I'll be AFK for the Budget, which is a shame but needs must.
It's not about keeping up with Jones's. The point is that what we might consider an absolute poverty line now would be very different to the absolute poverty line 50 years ago, because we have different expectations about what constitutes a minimum standard of living, and these expectations are related to what we consider a normal standard of living. This is why I find the idea of some kind of objective and immutable poverty line fundamentally dishonest.
As always it depends on what is done with the concept. Relative and absolute poverty are clearly different ideas. Relative poverty has the property of being more or less by definition ineradicable. Absolute poverty has the property of being a quantity of immiseration which is unacceptable when encountered, especially in children.
Damage is done by leftists who elide relative poverty into something self evidently bad, when it is not self evident. Rightists do harm by insisting the real measure should be more like absolute poverty, which we should not contemplate for anyone. Imprecision and ambiguity is the permanent friend of lobbyists.
Relative poverty is not ineradicable. If you define relative poverty as, say, 60% of the median wage, then it is straightforward (in mathematical terms) to have a distribution with no-one in relative poverty.
You still have the idea though that people are in poverty, when in reality, compared to previous generations and indeed most around the world, they lead comfortable lives, eat enough food, are warm and dry. The term is pernicious and says more about societal equality than the struggles of those who have less.
And you still ignore that many children are in absolute poverty, the number rising. There are people in this country who do not eat enough foor and are not warm and dry.
However, my point was not on these broader questions or on how it is best to assess poverty in the country. My point was just that lots of you can't do maths. If you're going to complain about relative poverty measures, it behooves you to understand the underlying calculation.
Heads need to roll at the OBR. This feels like a deliberate attempt to sabotage Government Comms. I will be very surprised, in the current political climate, if this was not an individual with an agenda.
Surely the new ISA policy is a direct attack on first time buyers, who need to save up cash and then hold it outside of risky assets while they find and purchase a property.
Ok I'll say it: We need to get to the bottom of whether the OBR leak was a cock-up (most likely) or an act of deliberate sabotage by an individual with a grudge or goal.
1) "pull jurors out of a hat" - my experience is being sorted into groups of 16 at the beginning of the week but it could just be done by computer in a matter of seconds once the juror register is complete 2) Judge briefing the Jury on their duties and responsibilities - apart from case specific issues this is boilerplate. Could be online with a little quiz and declaration, e.g. "If I do my own research on the internet" will I a) be better briefed than the legal counsel, b) be helping my fellow jurors to understand the case or c) do 6 months d) all of the above? 3) Check in advance whether witnesses need screens and prepare. In your cases I assume it's a given, so the screens should be there by default.
None of the above has to be on the critical path.
My experience is that if you're assigned to a trial in the morning then it's 11.30am by the time you're sat down, HHJ does his solemn briefing etc, now 12, they have a brief conflab and decide that there isn't time for 2 opening addresses before lunch, "jury will only remember one side", so break. 2pm before you're back in court in the afternoon, if Judge or barristers don't have an afternoon clash.
There are delays around sending Juries out and reassembling them, but they can just be sent to the next room rather than allowed to disperse.
Juries can be taken off the critical path for most of it. Leveson has just blamed them for the inefficiency of the professionals involved.
There is no way 2 would work - most people will just fast forward the video or put it on and do something else
Have all the jury prep etc run by court staff. The day before.
Have jury prep as a courthouse function, run by staff. As a continual operation. Lining up juries, get them sorted, warned, lanyarded.
So 9am, the judge, lawyers, etc all roll in together.
Judge can have the option to say - “I don’t look this jury, do you have a similar one? But in a shade of mauve?”
You're right, of course you're right, but you know the objections.
Spending a bit more to get a lot more is still spending more, and we've conditioned ourselves to not want that.
It's moving spending from frontline staff to backstage. And we've massively conditioned ourselves to not want that.
Yet again on pb the most vociferous criticism of the removal of jury trials comes from the very same people who want to massively cut public spending and reduce public sector pay and benefits dramatically.
The concept of we only get what we are willing to pay for seems to have completely passed them by.
I have no idea if this is true, but it is rational for opinions to come in related sets, and opinions which don't arise in related ways lack an underlying coherence. Rather than turning the point into a meaningless (and maybe unverified) piece of ad hominem, it would be more useful to examine the relation of the set of opinions, and consider its worth.
What is irrational about wanting to have a much smaller state while keeping the jury system? We had juries when we had a much smaller state. (I am not proposing either, personally, but there is nothing counter intuitive about it.)
The frustration is the party led by this group of people have been in power most of my lifetime, and to be fair match the views of the electorate in not wanting to increase taxes.
So we have court rooms out of use because of leaks, because we don't want to spend money. We have a lack of lawyers and judges, because we don't want to spend money. Our prisons can't cope, because we don't want to spend money. Prisoners come out early, without any thought of rehabilitation and commit more crime.
Whilst I would prefer jury trials and functioning prisons myself, it does grate to hear the attacks on the status quo from the supporters of the establishment party with zero consideration of how we get here, or any serious thought on how we can change course and what resources that requires.
Except for a very short time under Mrs T, public expenditure has risen throughout the last decades. The state in various forms manages 44% of total expenditure, over £40,000 per household, just a little short of the highest in Europe and in the middle of the developed pack. Despite that there is not a single area not crying out for much more spending. Something is wrong with the model, but it isn't that taxes are very significantly too low.
We have no money
Yet we are spending £700 million on saving a handful of salmon. Billions on an armoured vehicle that literally makes the occupants chronically ill. We can’t find GPs, while we train GPs who can’t get jobs. We have no money to look after children with special needs, but councils are block booking taxis to send them to school - as opposed to a school bus.
It’s feast-or-famine mode spending. Often on insane things.
This has probably always happened. Citing examples of "waste" is only one side of the argument. A lot of people have their lives helped if not enhanced by what Government and its agencies do and to simply and perpetually highlight the faults misses the point.
When I was in local Government, there was this paradox of apparent waste (though tens of thousands against a total budget of more than a £1 billion isn't that significant) but you knew what the council was providing in terms of libraries, youth centres and social care and the people providing it was making a difference to people's lives.
The problem is the pattern - we have lost control of public spending. Which results in starving spending on needed things.
Spend £700 million on court infrastructure and staff, say. Rather than saving a shop windows worth of salmon. Think how many clerks you could hire to prepare juries for the courts.
Merge NI & IT to reduce the admin overhead.
Buy the “world beating” ACV that actually exists - CV-90. Aside from it actually working, costing a fraction of what Ajax does, it will reduce the burden on the NHS.
Train U.K. medics overseas. Using the overseas aid budget - it will be supporting developing world health systems, after all. Then we have more medics - so less agency staff on the NHS (cheaper), less stress on the existing NHS staff (retainment), more U.K. citizens with qualifications for jobs which are in high demand…
This is about running procurement and government intelligently. Cost control and productivity - both are not being done.
Plenty of places where we recognise their pill-rolling certificates. If they are good enough to train their own people to our standards, why not train our people to the same standard?
“ Part 1: Consists of a multiple choice format examination paper with 180 SBA's (One Hundred Eighty Single Best Answer questions with 5 options and one SBA) lasting 3 hours. This is a paper-based exam which is answered on a sheet provided by the invigilator (not computer-based). This part is conducted in a number of countries including Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, Bangladesh, Egypt, India, Pakistan, Nigeria and Sri Lanka.[2] Part 2: Consists of an objective structured clinical examination (OSCE). This part is only available in Manchester.[citation needed] It consists of 16 clinical stations. All the stations are eight minutes long, plus two minutes reading time. The standard of both parts of the PLAB exam is set at the level of competence of a doctor at the start of Foundation Year 2 (F2) in the Foundation Programme.”
So overseas trained UK doctors need to do an exam and 160 minutes of OCSE?
That doesn’t sound like a show stopper.
I didn't say it was, although plenty of doctors will tell you it's a difficult exam! My point is that your repeated claims that we recognise overseas training is wrong. We partly recognise it, but require an additional test on top.
And, to go back several steps in the conversation, the paper I posted shows that, even with the PLAB, overseas-trained doctors get into trouble more often than UK-trained ones. Now, why that is is complicated and may be for a multitude of reasons, but the conclusion of the research is that the PLAB might have to be tightened.
Well, if all it takes is a single exam and a few hours of practicals vs years of training… we do recognise overseas training, just do a rather simple check.
In addition, if the U.K. government were to fund classes, in bulk, at an overseas facility, some due diligence/quality wouldn’t be a vast ask.
Steven Swinford @Steven_Swinford · 27m The OBR has broken **the entire Budget**. It's extraordinary. Completely unprecedented. Hyperbole doesn't do it justice
But I'll do hyperbole anyway. Clearly a massive cock up on the part of the OBR but actually I think early release of material information is good. Even if inadvertent in this case. The more scrutiny the better. I have always disliked the "rabbit out of the hat" aspect of budgets and I don't think it results in good decision making.
Yebbut... an extra half hour's scrutiny?
Let's return to a period Budget purdah in future, I say.
Quite. Any scrutiny is better than none. Which is the default.
Cut in cash ISA limit only applies to people below 65. That’s nice and fair then.
There is a logic to this. Investing is for the long term and carries risk to capital. Older people don't have the same time horizon to see losses recover.
Heads need to roll at the OBR. This feels like a deliberate attempt to sabotage Government Comms. I will be very surprised, in the current political climate, if this was not an individual with an agenda.
He/she didn't just have an agenda, they had the whole bloody report!
Cut in cash ISA limit only applies to people below 65. That’s nice and fair then.
There is a logic to this. Investing is for the long term and carries risk to capital. Older people don't have the same time horizon to see losses recover.
Ok I'll say it: We need to get to the bottom of whether the OBR leak was a cock-up (most likely) or an act of deliberate sabotage by an individual with a grudge or goal.
With a bit of luck HMG can spin this leak into a reason for abolishing the OBR.
Steven Swinford @Steven_Swinford · 27m The OBR has broken **the entire Budget**. It's extraordinary. Completely unprecedented. Hyperbole doesn't do it justice
But I'll do hyperbole anyway. Clearly a massive cock up on the part of the OBR but actually I think early release of material information is good. Even if inadvertent in this case. The more scrutiny the better. I have always disliked the "rabbit out of the hat" aspect of budgets and I don't think it results in good decision making.
Yebbut... an extra half hour's scrutiny?
Let's return to a period Budget purdah in future, I say.
I think it is more the effect on the markets that is of concern.
Heads need to roll at the OBR. This feels like a deliberate attempt to sabotage Government Comms. I will be very surprised, in the current political climate, if this was not an individual with an agenda.
I see myself there. I have just uploaded the report to website. What else do I need to do before I take my lunch break?
Cut in cash ISA limit only applies to people below 65. That’s nice and fair then.
There is a logic to this. Investing is for the long term and carries risk to capital. Older people don't have the same time horizon to see losses recover.
She may or may not be the worst chancellor of my lifetime, but she is definitely the one with the most annoying voice.
I’ve got distant memories of some posters here saying she was a bit phwoar early in the last parliament.
She's not an unattractive woman. Just has an unattractive voice.
Would we be having this conversation about any previous CoE? No.
So how about focusing on the details of the budget rather than engaging in sexist 'banter'?
I'm not engaging in sexist banter Ben. I'm saying she has an annoying voice. She is actively annoying to listen to. This is a political consideration. If you actively alienate people when you speak, you are doing your job poorly.
Faisal Islam @faisalislam · 8m Absolutely extraordinary that the OBR report has been accidentally published with ALL the details of the Budget before the speech….
The most important number… headroom has more than doubled to £22bn from 9.9bn…
What does headroom mean?
It's all bollocks.
Was I the only person who visualised the gap between the cave ceiling and the top of the rising water being gradually filled with bobbing testicles?
Steven Swinford @Steven_Swinford · 27m The OBR has broken **the entire Budget**. It's extraordinary. Completely unprecedented. Hyperbole doesn't do it justice
But I'll do hyperbole anyway. Clearly a massive cock up on the part of the OBR but actually I think early release of material information is good. Even if inadvertent in this case. The more scrutiny the better. I have always disliked the "rabbit out of the hat" aspect of budgets and I don't think it results in good decision making.
Yebbut... an extra half hour's scrutiny?
Let's return to a period Budget purdah in future, I say.
Quite. Any scrutiny is better than none. Which is the default.
The scrutiny happens once the budget is announced.
The Chancellor has completely bottled the Nuclear Taskforce response. No commitment to accept any of it at all: they'll come back with their plans in *three months*!! Pathetic. https://x.com/s8mb/status/1993663890669056050
Glad to hear her focus on debt, even if the barb it the Greens was a bit bizarre, But the chutzpah of the woman to complain about the size of the debt she inherited when the fella next to her spent the whole of 2020-2021 calling for further restrictions on lockdown.
She may or may not be the worst chancellor of my lifetime, but she is definitely the one with the most annoying voice.
I’ve got distant memories of some posters here saying she was a bit phwoar early in the last parliament.
She's not an unattractive woman. Just has an unattractive voice.
Would we be having this conversation about any previous CoE? No.
So how about focusing on the details of the budget rather than engaging in sexist 'banter'?
I'm not engaging in sexist banter Ben. I'm saying she has an annoying voice. She is actively annoying to listen to. This is a political consideration. If you actively alienate people when you speak, you are doing your job poorly.
Ok, I missed your first post which gives a different context to your second - apologies.
I agree. Thamesmead has been snakebit by a lack of rail linkage for decades. Apparently the rail extension is going ahead.
Be nice if she made some similar commitments outside of London. A brief statement on TRU - which is already happening - and a vague statement of support without commitment on NPR. Not really enough. But maybe there's no room in the speech for detail.
Surely the new ISA policy is a direct attack on first time buyers, who need to save up cash and then hold it outside of risky assets while they find and purchase a property.
Money market fund gives (very nearly) risk free returns at a better rate. That's what my house deposit fund is in.
I agree. Thamesmead has been snakebit by a lack of rail linkage for decades. Apparently the rail extension is going ahead.
Will we still have no practical mobility crossings east of Tower Bridge? There's likely a demand for 100s of thousand of cross-Thanes crossings per day. Very little data, however. It's the old "not needed because no one uses it now" that we get on highly dangerous roads that no one goes near because they would be killing zones.
Ironic that the 'BBC Verify' post in the live feed about the two child benefit cap and poverty uses the bullshit 'relative poverty' measure.
You may not like it, that's fair enough, but it's a clear, objective, and widely used measure. Hardly something to criticise BBC Verify for.
Out of interest what would you propose as the measure of poverty? Does a child need to be starving, in rags, no shoes?
When we interrogate our idea of poverty it is always a relative concept at its core, because poverty is ultimately about being excluded from the normal patterns of consumption and participation in our current society. In my view it is so-called 'absolute' poverty measures that are bullshit.
Not being able to 'keep up with the Joneses' in a neighbourhood pissing contest doesn't make someone poor. It makes them unable to afford an unnecessary and 'fashionable' splurging of cash you don't have on things you don't need. And the idea that should be subsidised by the taxpayer is just another tier in the cake of relative poverty bullshit.
Edited: as an aside, I'll be AFK for the Budget, which is a shame but needs must.
It's not about keeping up with Jones's. The point is that what we might consider an absolute poverty line now would be very different to the absolute poverty line 50 years ago, because we have different expectations about what constitutes a minimum standard of living, and these expectations are related to what we consider a normal standard of living. This is why I find the idea of some kind of objective and immutable poverty line fundamentally dishonest.
Disagree with this. I don't like the idea of relative poverty.
Not least because you can bring people out of relative poverty by simply making rich people poorer.
Relative poverty is based on the median. Making your average rich (i.e. above median) person somewhat poorer will have zero effect on the median. Likewise, making them richer (even way, way richer) has no effect. You have to make people on middling incomes poorer to shift the median down.
Fortunately, making people on middling incomes poorer is pretty much the mission statement of this government, so poverty should eradicated shortly...
Only one forecast a year now from the OBR . This seems sensible .
Was about to comment this.
Good news. It means no need for further fiscal twiddling until this time next year, so we can get rid of constant speculation on tax rises and the fiscal headroom.
And it means there is only a maximum of 3 more fiscal events / OBR forecasts etc this Parliament.
Surely the new ISA policy is a direct attack on first time buyers, who need to save up cash and then hold it outside of risky assets while they find and purchase a property.
Money market fund gives (very nearly) risk free returns at a better rate. That's what my house deposit fund is in.
Exactly. Even with platform fees it gives a better return than a cash ISA.
Comments
Extensive briefings from the government for weeks. This falls short of standards the house requires. A SUPREME DISCOURTESY and the clear breach of the ministerial code.
Piss funny on stilts
Of course, ideally, players would simply represent their home county. Lancashire could play at Old Trafford, Northumberland at St. James' Park. And so on.
👍
The OBR was designed by George Osborne as a poison pill for future Labour governments. It's certainly delivered today. #budget
This government is a complete mess.
A link to our Economic and fiscal outlook document went live on our website too early this morning. It has been removed.
We apologise for this technical error and have initiated an investigation into how this happened.
We will be reporting to our Oversight Board, the Treasury, and the Commons Treasury Committee on how this happened, and we will make sure this does not happen again."
https://obr.uk
The main effect was to allow Blair to properly prepare a response ahead of the statement.
I have very little time for her, but I agree she deserves sympathy for this.
And, to go back several steps in the conversation, the paper I posted shows that, even with the PLAB, overseas-trained doctors get into trouble more often than UK-trained ones. Now, why that is is complicated and may be for a multitude of reasons, but the conclusion of the research is that the PLAB might have to be tightened.
Let's return to a period Budget purdah in future, I say.
However, my point was not on these broader questions or on how it is best to assess poverty in the country. My point was just that lots of you can't do maths. If you're going to complain about relative poverty measures, it behooves you to understand the underlying calculation.
In addition, if the U.K. government were to fund classes, in bulk, at an overseas facility, some due diligence/quality wouldn’t be a vast ask.
If he can sack that guy for being incompetent, what's stopping him from sacking ALL the others...
So how about focusing on the details of the budget rather than engaging in sexist 'banter'?
The Chancellor has completely bottled the Nuclear Taskforce response. No commitment to accept any of it at all: they'll come back with their plans in *three months*!! Pathetic.
https://x.com/s8mb/status/1993663890669056050
I'm running late on the budget; my kitchen clock unfortunately ran out of battery at 11:40am and threw me off.
The OBR, or someone therein, is for the high jump.
I'm more sympathetic to this Govt than many here; I agree, however, that the CofE's voie is a little grating.
My punt is that will be a significant amount of measures hidden in the undergrowth.
We Brummies rejoice in that, so do our yam yam friends Aynock and Ayli.
Good news. It means no need for further fiscal twiddling until this time next year, so we can get rid of constant speculation on tax rises and the fiscal headroom.
And it means there is only a maximum of 3 more fiscal events / OBR forecasts etc this Parliament.
Part of my SIPP is in one.