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.
It doesn't actually and in any case it's too late. I'm not recommending premature release of a report as the right way to do scrutiny. Reviews of different scenarios published before the budget would be useful. Publishing a draft of the budget for comment before finalisation, which happens in several well run countries, might also lead to better decision making.
At the risk of Ben's irritation - she's not unattractive - she's entirely normal-looking. I don't personally find her attractive - far too much make up for my preference - but if she passed you in the street you would simply think 'there is an entirely normal-looking woman in her 40s'. My point is that her voice is unattractive.
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.
I don't really understand how her accent is "annoying". It's just an absolutely normal lower middle class London accent. Millions of people talk like her.
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.
It’s a pretty tough exam. You can’t just rock up and expect to pass it. The exam might not take much time to complete, but it takes years of accrued knowledge to pass. Do you understand how exams work?
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.
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.
The Treasury only cares about London because their internal rules on measuring return on investment woefully underestimate the demand for transport. We’ve seen it again and again in recent times - a new transport link finally opens and “surprise!” demand for it turns out to be 5x the original predictions. This persistent error leads them to believe that transport investment only delivers a return in London, and not anywhere else in the country.
You’d think by now they ought to have noticed that their models are shit - presumably there’s some Treasury-specific ideological reason that prevents them from doing so.
At the risk of Ben's irritation - she's not unattractive - she's entirely normal-looking. I don't personally find her attractive - far too much make up for my preference - but if she passed you in the street you would simply think 'there is an entirely normal-looking woman in her 40s'. My point is that her voice is unattractive.
Hey, as a west midlander we’ve lived with that for decades. Remember Barry from Auf Wiedersehn Pet.
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.
NPR was killed by the Treasury last time around, as was the TPU. Maybe they’ll happen this time, but I wouldn’t hold my breath - the Treasury has successfully killed off all the other rail projects.
Note also the lack of any serious roads investment in the north. Where are the motorways to fill in the gaps between the northern cities?
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.
"Not needed because no-one uses it now" is a massive problem in case-making for transport. Transport business cases tend to be done in a way which is very good for, for example, an additional slip road on a junction - where demonstrable demand already exists and we are just easing a flow which is already there. But it's very hard in the situation where nobody makes the journey because it is impossible. You give a very good example at the small scale: at the larger scale, this is one of the problems NPR has faced. Very few people make the commute between Manchester and Sheffield, for example (pace @TheScreamingEagles ) - because for most, it would result in a door to door journey of 90 minutes or so - beyond most people's threshold. But if you could reduce that to 60, you'd enable commuting to be a reasonable option for hundreds of thousands. A hard case to make under the current Green Book, though, because the numbers are currently so small.
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.
It’s a pretty tough exam. You can’t just rock up and expect to pass it. The exam might not take much time to complete, but it takes years of accrued knowledge to pass. Do you understand how exams work?
Yes.
The point being that U.K. trainees sent to the same training as the foreign trainees can do the same exam. Treat them same.
They will have to do far more exams and practicals as part of their medical training.
Not remotely tackled the hard decisions, like combining tax and NI, or reforming property taxes just jacking up a new tax on top.
And for everyone mocking the Telegraph etc for all the reported kites, it seems every awful idea leaked has been approved.
The absence of anything pointing toward any sensible reform of any tax is the biggest weakness of this budget, for sure. If they can’t start it now, nothing by way of serious reform will get done during this government’s term.
The Gordon Brown Academy of Budgetary Tinkering and Farting About has another graduate…
Not remotely tackled the hard decisions, like combining tax and NI, or reforming property taxes just jacking up a new tax on top.
And for everyone mocking the Telegraph etc for all the reported kites, it seems every awful idea leaked has been approved.
She's raising more money from me for more state pension contributions from abroad. The previous rules were absurdly generous, so I can't have any real complaint. But I agree, it looks like a do-nothing budget (extending the freeze on income tax allowances being enough to meet the lax fiscal rules) when change is required.
The one to watch there is the difference between self-employed and "owned via small companies". The Osborne measures drive quite a move towards property companies, which add a layer of cost, and can be done practically via sell-then-buy (With CGT triggered etc) but are complex, and potentially risky, to make tax efficient.
According to the BBC "There will be a new mileage tax for electric vehicles from April 2028. "In 2028-29, the charge will equal £0.03 per mile for battery electric cars and £0.015 per mile for plug-in hybrid cars, with the rate per mile increasing annually with CPI," the report says"
Why on earth are they going for half rate on plug in hybrids? They are already the best choice for most people - in most use cases you can do 95% of the milage on electric, but without having to get involved with the public charging tomfoolery on long journeys. Effectively giving EV owners a route to pay 50% discount on the milage tax for carting a petrol engine around with them seems bizarre.
The fiscal gap according to the OBR is all the fault of Gen Z who are drinking less and not providing the Treasury with much needed alcohol duties. Is there nothing the feckless youth do right?
She seems to have adopted the Trump tariff change of abolishing the low-value exemption for customs charges, which has done so much to wreck cross-border trade for small businesses into the US.
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.
The Treasury only cares about London because their internal rules on measuring return on investment woefully underestimate the demand for transport. We’ve seen it again and again in recent times - a new transport link finally opens and “surprise!” demand for it turns out to be 5x the original predictions. This persistent error leads them to believe that transport investment only delivers a return in London, and not anywhere else in the country.
You’d think by now they ought to have noticed that their models are shit - presumably there’s some Treasury-specific ideological reason that prevents them from doing so.
I would sack everyone in the Treasury running those models.
Thin end of the wedge, like the godawful Health & Social Care Levy that Sunak introduced which thank goodness Truss had the common sense to strangle at birth and abolish.
Once introduced, it would have the thresholds frozen (dragging in more via fiscal drag) and rates increased and eventually it would be raising much, much more.
Without any sensible reform such as abolishing stamp duty which a properly organised property tax should be able to fund to fix the perversions in the system.
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.
The Treasury only cares about London because their internal rules on measuring return on investment woefully underestimate the demand for transport. We’ve seen it again and again in recent times - a new transport link finally opens and “surprise!” demand for it turns out to be 5x the original predictions. This persistent error leads them to believe that transport investment only delivers a return in London, and not anywhere else in the country.
You’d think by now they ought to have noticed that their models are shit - presumably there’s some Treasury-specific ideological reason that prevents them from doing so.
I would sack everyone in the Treasury running those models.
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.
I'm not ignoring it. Absolute poverty does exist. But relative poverty is a poor measure of that.
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.
It’s a pretty tough exam. You can’t just rock up and expect to pass it. The exam might not take much time to complete, but it takes years of accrued knowledge to pass. Do you understand how exams work?
Yes.
The point being that U.K. trainees sent to the same training as the foreign trainees can do the same exam. Treat them same.
They will have to do far more exams and practicals as part of their medical training.
The point being that overseas-trained doctors who have passed PLAB are still not performing at the same standard as UK-trained doctors (in some circumstances some of the time).
It is curious that this is considered a bad thing to happen.
Fewer homes to rent while unemployment is rising and she is hammering businesses with tax and regulation and minimum wage rises so fewer can afford to buy too = higher rents from those landlords still doing it
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.
NPR was killed by the Treasury last time around, as was the TPU. Maybe they’ll happen this time, but I wouldn’t hold my breath - the Treasury has successfully killed off all the other rail projects.
Note also the lack of any serious roads investment in the north. Where are the motorways to fill in the gaps between the northern cities?
I don't think there's a pair of cities of comparable size, in the whole of Europe, with transport links as poor as those between Manchester and Sheffield, for example.
It's an insult to intelligence to state that there would be no great economic return on remedying that.
According to the BBC "There will be a new mileage tax for electric vehicles from April 2028. "In 2028-29, the charge will equal £0.03 per mile for battery electric cars and £0.015 per mile for plug-in hybrid cars, with the rate per mile increasing annually with CPI," the report says"
Why on earth are they going for half rate on plug in hybrids? They are already the best choice for most people - in most use cases you can do 95% of the milage on electric, but without having to get involved with the public charging tomfoolery on long journeys. Effectively giving EV owners a route to pay 50% discount on the milage tax for carting a petrol engine around with them seems bizarre.
Presumably it’s half rate on hybrids because hybrid drivers are already paying substantial fuel duty on half of their fuel.
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.
NPR was killed by the Treasury last time around, as was the TPU. Maybe they’ll happen this time, but I wouldn’t hold my breath - the Treasury has successfully killed off all the other rail projects.
Note also the lack of any serious roads investment in the north. Where are the motorways to fill in the gaps between the northern cities?
I don't think there's a pair of cities of comparable size, in the whole of Europe, with transport links as poor as those between Manchester and Sheffield, for example.
It's an insult to intelligence to state that there would be no great economic return on remedying that.
Manchester Sheffield is secondary - Manchester - Leeds and Leeds - Sheffield links are probably as bad...
It is curious that this is considered a bad thing to happen.
Why is it a good thing ?
The property mix needs landlords renting as much as anything else. Not everyone wants to buy.
Mostly I meant that given that a lot of men spend a high proportion of their life trying to get fucked, how did this linguistically become a terrible thing to be done to them?
But yes also asset owners have had the benefit of QE for the last 15 years, time to share the pain.
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.
"Not needed because no-one uses it now" is a massive problem in case-making for transport. Transport business cases tend to be done in a way which is very good for, for example, an additional slip road on a junction - where demonstrable demand already exists and we are just easing a flow which is already there. But it's very hard in the situation where nobody makes the journey because it is impossible. You give a very good example at the small scale: at the larger scale, this is one of the problems NPR has faced. Very few people make the commute between Manchester and Sheffield, for example (pace @TheScreamingEagles ) - because for most, it would result in a door to door journey of 90 minutes or so - beyond most people's threshold. But if you could reduce that to 60, you'd enable commuting to be a reasonable option for hundreds of thousands. A hard case to make under the current Green Book, though, because the numbers are currently so small.
It ought to be precisely the opposite of a hard case to make. They are basically arguing against the very principle of investment.
Child benefit cap gone. I think this is the sum total of what this budget is about. Shore up Starmer and Reeves’ position and defer the sensible decisions for another day.
According to the BBC "There will be a new mileage tax for electric vehicles from April 2028. "In 2028-29, the charge will equal £0.03 per mile for battery electric cars and £0.015 per mile for plug-in hybrid cars, with the rate per mile increasing annually with CPI," the report says"
Why on earth are they going for half rate on plug in hybrids? They are already the best choice for most people - in most use cases you can do 95% of the milage on electric, but without having to get involved with the public charging tomfoolery on long journeys. Effectively giving EV owners a route to pay 50% discount on the milage tax for carting a petrol engine around with them seems bizarre.
Running a pure petrol, self-charging hybrid is already considerably cheaper than running an EV on public chargers. This always queues some "I'm alright Jack" idiot to respond by saying how cheap charging at home is for them, which isn't an option for tens of millions of people.
This insanity means that it continues even more. Why switch to electric when petrol is more affordable, and the cost of petrol is mostly tax already.
Child benefit cap gone. I think this is the sum total of what this budget is about. Shore up Starmer and Reeves’ position and defer the sensible decisions for another day.
For another government.
They've got a working majority of 169 and they're a lame duck government that can't make any sensible decisions.
Comments
(*I am assuming it's pretence.)
It’s not impossible, but it’s now extremely tough for them.
NPR = Northern Powerhouse Rail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Powerhouse_Rail
You’d think by now they ought to have noticed that their models are shit - presumably there’s some Treasury-specific ideological reason that prevents them from doing so.
Note also the lack of any serious roads investment in the north. Where are the motorways to fill in the gaps between the northern cities?
Transport business cases tend to be done in a way which is very good for, for example, an additional slip road on a junction - where demonstrable demand already exists and we are just easing a flow which is already there. But it's very hard in the situation where nobody makes the journey because it is impossible. You give a very good example at the small scale: at the larger scale, this is one of the problems NPR has faced. Very few people make the commute between Manchester and Sheffield, for example (pace @TheScreamingEagles ) - because for most, it would result in a door to door journey of 90 minutes or so - beyond most people's threshold. But if you could reduce that to 60, you'd enable commuting to be a reasonable option for hundreds of thousands. A hard case to make under the current Green Book, though, because the numbers are currently so small.
The point being that U.K. trainees sent to the same training as the foreign trainees can do the same exam. Treat them same.
They will have to do far more exams and practicals as part of their medical training.
650 Naughty old Hectors.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJMAeuFoxRI
Last Labour govt, anyone?
Not remotely tackled the hard decisions, like combining tax and NI, or reforming property taxes just jacking up a new tax on top.
And for everyone mocking the Telegraph etc for all the reported kites, it seems every awful idea leaked has been approved.
I expected Labour to revert to type when they reached the fag end of their government. I did not expect them to revert to type within 2 years.
We’re screwed.
The Gordon Brown Academy of Budgetary Tinkering and Farting About has another graduate…
(beats own head repeatedly against wall...
The property mix needs landlords renting as much as anything else. Not everyone wants to buy.
"There will be a new mileage tax for electric vehicles from April 2028. "In 2028-29, the charge will equal £0.03 per mile for battery electric cars and £0.015 per mile for plug-in hybrid cars, with the rate per mile increasing annually with CPI," the report says"
Why on earth are they going for half rate on plug in hybrids? They are already the best choice for most people - in most use cases you can do 95% of the milage on electric, but without having to get involved with the public charging tomfoolery on long journeys.
Effectively giving EV owners a route to pay 50% discount on the milage tax for carting a petrol engine around with them seems bizarre.
ie Houses now worth £1.5m might well end up paying by end of decade.
Once introduced, it would have the thresholds frozen (dragging in more via fiscal drag) and rates increased and eventually it would be raising much, much more.
Without any sensible reform such as abolishing stamp duty which a properly organised property tax should be able to fund to fix the perversions in the system.
But only because "thats fucking crazy that can't be right" is replaced by "they are fucking crazy"
In other news, the stampede of Landlords exiting the market is making rentals very difficult to obtain, and pushing rents through the roof...
It's an insult to intelligence to state that there would be no great economic return on remedying that.
In fact, it's massively unpopular - even with Labour voters.
But yes also asset owners have had the benefit of QE for the last 15 years, time to share the pain.
They are basically arguing against the very principle of investment.
This insanity means that it continues even more. Why switch to electric when petrol is more affordable, and the cost of petrol is mostly tax already.
They've got a working majority of 169 and they're a lame duck government that can't make any sensible decisions.
Pathetic.