Labour gains a few points back as immigration comes down and economic growth exceeds expectations.
I expect a small Labour victory in 2029.
That is looking very possible.
From where I’m sitting, I think it’s at least possible, but I think there’s some big questions hanging over it.
Fundamentally I don’t believe Labour can win an election going into it with the sort of economic narrative they are in danger of running at the moment. The “raise taxes to spend on welfare” angle is very damaging, and if it beds in, it’s going to be a very bumpy time for them.
Their best case scenario is the economy improves enough, or the markets look favourably on them enough, that with some tinkering/sleights of hand they can get away with cancelling some of these tax rises in 2028/2029 (or deferring them until after the election) and getting away with it. That surely has to be the aim right now. A cynical game, but one that might pay off.
But if things continue to be unstable, or the economic outlook gets worse - and that must be a plausible outcome too, particularly given some of the policy impacts - then it suddenly looks a lot more challenging.
I don’t think the next election is won or lost for anyone but it’s a tough road to a majority for all parties IMHO.
BREAKING: Shadow Chancellor, Sir Mel Stride is calling for the Chancellor Rachel Reeves to resign, as she is accused of misleading the public in the run up to the Budget
It all sounds a bit desperate to be honest. What is Reeves supposed to have done? Floated some ideas and then changed her mind - hardly a hanging offence.
If she'd said I'll cut 10p off basic income tax that might be classed as misleading but as we know the final statement isn't completed until late in the process.
She certainly gave a highly inaccurate account of pre-budget OBR guidance, as a way of implying that tax rises (or cuts in capital spending) were a fiscal necessity.
That really wasn't true. What she meant was that she wanted more headroom to allow increased welfare spending, which she ought to have been honest about.
The OBR are miffed, but given their own enormous gaffe, it's probably knock for knock.
Neither come out of it particularly well.
I'm not quite following that. Doesn't more fiscal headroom mean less ability to increase spending?
BREAKING: Shadow Chancellor, Sir Mel Stride is calling for the Chancellor Rachel Reeves to resign, as she is accused of misleading the public in the run up to the Budget
It all sounds a bit desperate to be honest. What is Reeves supposed to have done? Floated some ideas and then changed her mind - hardly a hanging offence.
If she'd said I'll cut 10p off basic income tax that might be classed as misleading but as we know the final statement isn't completed until late in the process.
She certainly gave a highly inaccurate account of pre-budget OBR guidance, as a way of implying that tax rises (or cuts in capital spending) were a fiscal necessity.
That really wasn't true. What she meant was that she wanted more headroom to allow increased welfare spending, which she ought to have been honest about.
The OBR are miffed, but given their own enormous gaffe, it's probably knock for knock.
Neither come out of it particularly well.
I'm not quite following that. Doesn't more fiscal headroom mean less ability to increase spending?
That’s right, the headroom is a buffer in case things turn south.
Note to all: it’s still small by historical standards. It was slashed by Hunt in his last 2 budgets, and then further cut back to the bone in Reeves’ first.
I am surprised White Christmas is not higher. I watched it again last night. Vera Ellen was superb - I am surprised she never danced with Fred Astaire.
I'm in the 2% for White Christmas. Irving Berlin top notch songs, Crosby and Rosemary Clooney at the top of their game, pretty fine dance routines. The plot doesn't so much creak as being non existent. But who cares? The film's heart warming AND fun. Why would you want anything else for Christmas?
One of the awkward truths blurted out once by PB's resident lunatic, Dura Ace, was that when it came to corruption the Ukrainians could teach even the Russians a thing or two.
You mean that senior people can get actually arrested, rather than the prosecutors* throwing themselves out of windows/murder-suiciding their whole families?
*In the earl days of Putinism, some very very brave people tried to prosecute cronies of the regime for crimes. Character is who you are in the deepest darkness.
Labour gains a few points back as immigration comes down and economic growth exceeds expectations.
I expect a small Labour victory in 2029.
That is looking very possible.
From where I’m sitting, I think it’s at least possible, but I think there’s some big questions hanging over it.
Fundamentally I don’t believe Labour can win an election going into it with the sort of economic narrative they are in danger of running at the moment. The “raise taxes to spend on welfare” angle is very damaging, and if it beds in, it’s going to be a very bumpy time for them.
Their best case scenario is the economy improves enough, or the markets look favourably on them enough, that with some tinkering/sleights of hand they can get away with cancelling some of these tax rises in 2028/2029 (or deferring them until after the election) and getting away with it. That surely has to be the aim right now. A cynical game, but one that might pay off.
But if things continue to be unstable, or the economic outlook gets worse - and that must be a plausible outcome too, particularly given some of the policy impacts - then it suddenly looks a lot more challenging.
I don’t think the next election is won or lost for anyone.
It definitely isn't. Con Ref Lab Grn even LD could all win most seats. It's such a volatile uncertain time. Trump, for me, being the source of most of it. What Lab need above all else is an economic upturn. Growth to exceed forecasts. That and possibly a leader change if Starmer can't find a way of connecting a bit better. The second is more in their power than the first.
So on one side the government is fucking over private sector workers with tax charges to salary sacrifice pension contributions and on the other it looks like they are reducing tax charges for defined benefit pension holders who receive surplus payments from their scheme.
Labour stealing from the private sector and handing public sector workers tax cuts. I can't wait to be rid of them, I'm considering voting Reform if it's the best way to be shot of these absolute criminals.
Er ... not that I want to spoil your fun using public sector workers as a collective dartboard. But if the pensions in question are (a) DB and (b) have a surplus, then they're not being paid out of taxation. They're *private* pension funds.
Indeed: one of the confusing things about public sector pensions is that - while levels of benefit (i.e. final salary multiplied by years worked) are usually fairly similar - the extent to which the employer is fully funded is not.
Some UK councils have fully funded pension schemes. Bexley, for example, is 114% funded. Havering, by contrast, is just 80% funded.
Some UK government departments are also well funded, one way or another: the Univrersity Superannuation Scheme has a GBP10bn surplus, for example. Others are paid for entirely out of cashflow.
Ta muchly.
USS isn;t a givernment dept to be fair - it's operated by a consortium of unis (some unis, not the former polys). Issues of funding have been key in recent industrial disputes.
It's another piece of quasi-governmental comedy. Plausible deniability and layering... for government.
I am surprised White Christmas is not higher. I watched it again last night. Vera Ellen was superb - I am surprised she never danced with Fred Astaire.
I'm in the 2% for White Christmas. Irving Berlin top notch songs, Crosby and Rosemary Clooney at the top of their game, pretty fine dance routines. The plot doesn't so much creak as being non existent. But who cares? The film's heart warming AND fun. Why would you want anything else for Christmas?
This list is tosh.
The greatest xmas film of all time, bar none, is Scrooge - 1951 version of Xmas Carol with Sim.
Black and White masterpiece. I watch it most years during the festive period.
There have been concerns about Yermak for a long time. The masterstroke for Zelensky would be to bring back Zaluzhny. The foolishness of Trump/Putin is assuming that if Zelensky is weak they can force a deal on him (the opposite may be the case) and that if he was replaced it would be by someone more accommodating to them. One gets the sense that team Trump gets its understanding of Ukraine from the Kremlin. As if the 2022 invasion wasn't proof enough how little Russia understands Ukraine.
The big boys probably enjoy being in the same room together flattering each other's egos so I wouldn't expect things to change.
I am surprised White Christmas is not higher. I watched it again last night. Vera Ellen was superb - I am surprised she never danced with Fred Astaire.
I'm in the 2% for White Christmas. Irving Berlin top notch songs, Crosby and Rosemary Clooney at the top of their game, pretty fine dance routines. The plot doesn't so much creak as being non existent. But who cares? The film's heart warming AND fun. Why would you want anything else for Christmas?
This list is tosh.
The greatest xmas film of all time, bar none, is Scrooge - 1951 version of Xmas Carol with Sim.
Black and White masterpiece. I watch it most years during the festive period.
My favourites are Muppet Christmas Carol and Elf. Miracle on 34th Street is good fun too, especially when Attenborough is in the dock
So on one side the government is fucking over private sector workers with tax charges to salary sacrifice pension contributions and on the other it looks like they are reducing tax charges for defined benefit pension holders who receive surplus payments from their scheme.
Labour stealing from the private sector and handing public sector workers tax cuts. I can't wait to be rid of them, I'm considering voting Reform if it's the best way to be shot of these absolute criminals.
Er ... not that I want to spoil your fun using public sector workers as a collective dartboard. But if the pensions in question are (a) DB and (b) have a surplus, then they're not being paid out of taxation. They're *private* pension funds.
Is this a good idea when we can see the AI bubble bursting soon? How exactly is the surplus calculated?
Actuaries do this kind of thing all the time. There are standardized ways of measuring this stuff, and you update every year based on movements in the value of assets, changes in life expectancy, changes in average tenure, changes in salaries, etc. It's one of the reasons why across the board pay increases can be so expensive, because they increase the value of future pension liabilities too.
As far as the AI bubble bursting, my guess is that local councils have minimal exposure. Most public sector pension schemes are fairly low risk: they'll be 60% bonds, 40% equities on average. They will also be overweight UK UK equitiies, and most of their holdings of (say) nVidia will be via US or Global index investments.
I would imagine NVDA will take a few with them if it does go pop, but if funds are heavy on bonds they might be OK.
There are presumably assumptions made on future returns (and life expectancy) in declaring a surplus, and that's what i wondered about.
'Surplus' funds were taken out of DB pension schemes before the dotcom crash (didn't BT have a payments holiday in the 1990s for example?), although maybe rules are different now on what they are allowed to assume.
In the late 1990s, a number of companies decided that... as equity markets had been so strong... well they should assume the market would be really strong in the future. When - of course - they should have been doing the opposite. Those changes in assumptions allows them to 'raid' the pension pots.
There have been concerns about Yermak for a long time. The masterstroke for Zelensky would be to bring back Zaluzhny. The foolishness of Trump/Putin is assuming that if Zelensky is weak they can force a deal on him (the opposite may be the case) and that if he was replaced it would be by someone more accommodating to them. One gets the sense that team Trump gets its understanding of Ukraine from the Kremlin. As if the 2022 invasion wasn't proof enough how little Russia understands Ukraine.
The big boys probably enjoy being in the same room together flattering each other's egos so I wouldn't expect things to change.
If Zelensky did go, all the people in line for the job are just as committed to fighting on.
One of the awkward truths blurted out once by PB's resident lunatic, Dura Ace, was that when it came to corruption the Ukrainians could teach even the Russians a thing or two.
Here's the thing: there's lots of corruption in the world, from the small to the big. There are imperfect democracies and imperfect people.
Ukraine has its fair share of corruption, and that is one of the reasons Zelenskky's TV show was such a hit, and why he became President.
None of these things justifies Russia's actions, and attempts to use them to downplay the invasion or the suffering of the Ukrainian people is fundamentally evil.
I hope nobody thought I was denigrating the Ukranian war effort or minimising the importance of us all supporting the country against the Russian invasion. I just think it's important to realise that corruption has always been a big problem there and one that will have to be dealt with sooner or later, war and its consequences notwithstanding.
I am surprised White Christmas is not higher. I watched it again last night. Vera Ellen was superb - I am surprised she never danced with Fred Astaire.
I'm in the 2% for White Christmas. Irving Berlin top notch songs, Crosby and Rosemary Clooney at the top of their game, pretty fine dance routines. The plot doesn't so much creak as being non existent. But who cares? The film's heart warming AND fun. Why would you want anything else for Christmas?
This list is tosh.
The greatest xmas film of all time, bar none, is Scrooge - 1951 version of Xmas Carol with Sim.
Black and White masterpiece. I watch it most years during the festive period.
My favourites are Muppet Christmas Carol and Elf. Miracle on 34th Street is good fun too, especially when Attenborough is in the dock
BREAKING: Shadow Chancellor, Sir Mel Stride is calling for the Chancellor Rachel Reeves to resign, as she is accused of misleading the public in the run up to the Budget
It all sounds a bit desperate to be honest. What is Reeves supposed to have done? Floated some ideas and then changed her mind - hardly a hanging offence.
If she'd said I'll cut 10p off basic income tax that might be classed as misleading but as we know the final statement isn't completed until late in the process.
She certainly gave a highly inaccurate account of pre-budget OBR guidance, as a way of implying that tax rises (or cuts in capital spending) were a fiscal necessity.
That really wasn't true. What she meant was that she wanted more headroom to allow increased welfare spending, which she ought to have been honest about.
The OBR are miffed, but given their own enormous gaffe, it's probably knock for knock.
Neither come out of it particularly well.
What was the ratio of more welfare spending to dragging the headroom back to something vaguely sane? One of the worst things Hunt did was to treat fiscal headroom like an increase in a credit card limit, which simply had to be spent now. Although it would never have flown politically, increasing taxes to improve headroom would be the right thing to do governmentally. And the bottom line is that our fiscal position is still sailing pretty close to the wind.
The interesting thing is the ghastly office politics between the OBR and the Treasury, and I don't know how you fix that.
Increasing the headroom takes away much of the immediate influence of the OBR, so in that predict it's a partial fix.
On a long view, they are supposed to act as some sort of critical friend, so I'm not sure a fix is necessary at all.
Anecdatal... but yesterday evening they were talking about Kemi's blistering response to Racheal down at my local pub.
Cut through?
The Tories are absolutely on the right side of the argument when it comes to taxing workers to pay more welfare. The public doesn't support it and the Tories have to now press their advantage by pledging to reintroduce the 2 child benefit cap and creating a new policy of maximum benefits claimable by a single family. There's families out there who receive welfare which would require a gross salary in excess of £80k and that is not a safety net, it's a lifestyle.
This is the wedge issue that can catapult the Tories back into a firm second and make them visible again.
I know I should be covering the budget but my brain is mush tonight.
No probs, TSE, I'll do it. Just quickly though. The 2 child benefit cap lifted. Headroom restored and doubled. Funded by extending the freeze on the personal allowance plus various bits and pieces. Markets happy, Labour MPs happy, SKS and Rachel Reeves therefore happy. Tories also happy (except Robert Jenrick) because Kemi Badenoch used her reply to audition for Mean Girls and kind of pulled it off.
And Sir Mellow Stride credibly accused Reeves of misleading the markets (and everyone else) about the unpublished OBR guidance, pre-budget.
He's developing signs of a public persona.
He's the sort of tory I'd be pleased to see prosper (within reason).
Pet Tory.
Yes, sort of. Although not quite as popular with my type as David Gauke. The great David Gauke. There are opposite equivalents, Labour MPs beloved of Tories. Frank Field was maybe the best example of that.
Shabana Mahmoud. Lord Glassman. I like Sharon Graham too.
Oh gosh yes, Lord Glassman. Why do wish Sharon Graham was PM?
I don't wish she was PM, I do think she's one of the very few impressive and compelling figures I've seen on the Labour side.
Those figures have realised that a limit on the sort of pernicious progressivism must somehow be found, or all Labour stands for is progressive (in all senses) societal and economic breakdown.
Anecdatal... but yesterday evening they were talking about Kemi's blistering response to Racheal down at my local pub.
Cut through?
I think so. But the jury is very much out on how many people will come back to the Tories (or at least consider them) as a result.
I think she’s got a window to try and get a bit more of a hearing now. Whether that then leads to a revival in fortunes - well, it’s a very long road back for the Tories, and they’ve only just started on it. But she’s certainly had a good week, the open question is whether she can build on it.
So on one side the government is fucking over private sector workers with tax charges to salary sacrifice pension contributions and on the other it looks like they are reducing tax charges for defined benefit pension holders who receive surplus payments from their scheme.
Labour stealing from the private sector and handing public sector workers tax cuts. I can't wait to be rid of them, I'm considering voting Reform if it's the best way to be shot of these absolute criminals.
Er ... not that I want to spoil your fun using public sector workers as a collective dartboard. But if the pensions in question are (a) DB and (b) have a surplus, then they're not being paid out of taxation. They're *private* pension funds.
Is this a good idea when we can see the AI bubble bursting soon? How exactly is the surplus calculated?
Actuaries do this kind of thing all the time. There are standardized ways of measuring this stuff, and you update every year based on movements in the value of assets, changes in life expectancy, changes in average tenure, changes in salaries, etc. It's one of the reasons why across the board pay increases can be so expensive, because they increase the value of future pension liabilities too.
As far as the AI bubble bursting, my guess is that local councils have minimal exposure. Most public sector pension schemes are fairly low risk: they'll be 60% bonds, 40% equities on average. They will also be overweight UK UK equitiies, and most of their holdings of (say) nVidia will be via US or Global index investments.
I would imagine NVDA will take a few with them if it does go pop, but if funds are heavy on bonds they might be OK.
There are presumably assumptions made on future returns (and life expectancy) in declaring a surplus, and that's what i wondered about.
'Surplus' funds were taken out of DB pension schemes before the dotcom crash (didn't BT have a payments holiday in the 1990s for example?), although maybe rules are different now on what they are allowed to assume.
In the late 1990s, a number of companies decided that... as equity markets had been so strong... well they should assume the market would be really strong in the future. When - of course - they should have been doing the opposite. Those changes in assumptions allows them to 'raid' the pension pots.
Exactly. So isn't the threat to just repeat that? The result was several pension schemes with a company attached.
Is the chancellor that desperate that it gets spent?
So on one side the government is fucking over private sector workers with tax charges to salary sacrifice pension contributions and on the other it looks like they are reducing tax charges for defined benefit pension holders who receive surplus payments from their scheme.
Labour stealing from the private sector and handing public sector workers tax cuts. I can't wait to be rid of them, I'm considering voting Reform if it's the best way to be shot of these absolute criminals.
Er ... not that I want to spoil your fun using public sector workers as a collective dartboard. But if the pensions in question are (a) DB and (b) have a surplus, then they're not being paid out of taxation. They're *private* pension funds.
Is this a good idea when we can see the AI bubble bursting soon? How exactly is the surplus calculated?
Actuaries do this kind of thing all the time. There are standardized ways of measuring this stuff, and you update every year based on movements in the value of assets, changes in life expectancy, changes in average tenure, changes in salaries, etc. It's one of the reasons why across the board pay increases can be so expensive, because they increase the value of future pension liabilities too.
As far as the AI bubble bursting, my guess is that local councils have minimal exposure. Most public sector pension schemes are fairly low risk: they'll be 60% bonds, 40% equities on average. They will also be overweight UK UK equitiies, and most of their holdings of (say) nVidia will be via US or Global index investments.
I would imagine NVDA will take a few with them if it does go pop, but if funds are heavy on bonds they might be OK.
There are presumably assumptions made on future returns (and life expectancy) in declaring a surplus, and that's what i wondered about.
'Surplus' funds were taken out of DB pension schemes before the dotcom crash (didn't BT have a payments holiday in the 1990s for example?), although maybe rules are different now on what they are allowed to assume.
In the late 1990s, a number of companies decided that... as equity markets had been so strong... well they should assume the market would be really strong in the future. When - of course - they should have been doing the opposite. Those changes in assumptions allows them to 'raid' the pension pots.
Exactly. So isn't the threat to just repeat that? The result was several pension schemes with a company attached.
Is the chancellor that desperate that it gets spent?
Those that remember history would politely suggest it is time to *increase* input into the schemes.
Two Russian shadow fleet tankers in the Black Sea are burning. It seems they were hit by Ukrainian drones, opening up a new front in the naval war, so that justifies an #explodey
I see Kemi Badenoch is not ruling out a Reform-Conservative Government in Wales after the Senedd elections last year.
To quote her directly: "When people vote and there is no clear winner, Conservatives will look to see who will help them deliver a Conservative agenda"
Worth pointing out, however, she claims the final decision would be for Darren Millar though it seems inconceivable he would act contrary to her instructions. The problem is IF the Conservatives are seen to publicly support Reform in Wales, it will be seized on as indication that's what they would do at Westminster after a General Election.
The OBR says something interesting about the Blairite panacea.
Meanwhile, in France, you can have a one-off electronic ID card to stop your physical ID card safe because a fifth of the population have been victims of identity theft. Hold on, aren't ID cards supposed to prevent that? https://france-identite.gouv.fr/justificatif/
In all seriousness, I wish there had been a market on the govt abandoning “day 1” unfair dismissal rights and replacing the proposal with a far shorter qualifying period. I’d even been telling clients that’s what I thought they’d end up doing, even going so far as to predict 6 months. Sage me. Sage.
The only acceptable answer to favourite Christmas film is Muppet's Christmas Carol.
Exactly as Dickens would have imagined the tale.
My wife and daughter watched that (again) at the Usher Hall with a live orchestra earlier this week. It is just fabulous (if not quite as good as Miracle).
I know I should be covering the budget but my brain is mush tonight.
No probs, TSE, I'll do it. Just quickly though. The 2 child benefit cap lifted. Headroom restored and doubled. Funded by extending the freeze on the personal allowance plus various bits and pieces. Markets happy, Labour MPs happy, SKS and Rachel Reeves therefore happy. Tories also happy (except Robert Jenrick) because Kemi Badenoch used her reply to audition for Mean Girls and kind of pulled it off.
And Sir Mellow Stride credibly accused Reeves of misleading the markets (and everyone else) about the unpublished OBR guidance, pre-budget.
He's developing signs of a public persona.
He's the sort of tory I'd be pleased to see prosper (within reason).
Pet Tory.
Yes, sort of. Although not quite as popular with my type as David Gauke. The great David Gauke. There are opposite equivalents, Labour MPs beloved of Tories. Frank Field was maybe the best example of that.
Shabana Mahmoud. Lord Glassman. I like Sharon Graham too.
Oh gosh yes, Lord Glassman. Why do you wish Sharon Graham was PM?
I don't wish she was PM, I do think she's one of the very few impressive and compelling figures I've seen on the Labour side.
Those figures have realised that a limit on the sort of pernicious progressivism must somehow be found, or all Labour stands for is progressive (in all senses) societal and economic breakdown.
Really? Sharon Graham? I haven't heard her railing against progressivism. Do you have an example of it to point me to?
So on one side the government is fucking over private sector workers with tax charges to salary sacrifice pension contributions and on the other it looks like they are reducing tax charges for defined benefit pension holders who receive surplus payments from their scheme.
Labour stealing from the private sector and handing public sector workers tax cuts. I can't wait to be rid of them, I'm considering voting Reform if it's the best way to be shot of these absolute criminals.
Er ... not that I want to spoil your fun using public sector workers as a collective dartboard. But if the pensions in question are (a) DB and (b) have a surplus, then they're not being paid out of taxation. They're *private* pension funds.
I know they're not being paid out of taxation, it's that surplus disbursement is subject to additional tax on the recipient funds that the government is set to cut. It's a bung to public sector DB pensioners.
It's not. The surplus release reforms are almost entirely aimed at private sector corporate DB schemes that are now often more than 100% funded.
Public sector (funded) schemes, such as LGPS, are open schemes and have no intention of paying out surpluses. They just reduce future accrual contributions a bit if better funded. Which is a good thing for taxpayer
I think they’re going to be very ill-tempered for a while. Badenoch has seen what works for her now (more punch than Punch and Judy) so I expect it’s going to get quite personal.
Two Russian shadow fleet tankers in the Black Sea are burning. It seems they were hit by Ukrainian drones, opening up a new front in the naval war, so that justifies an #explodey
The significance is that buyers of Russian oil face a twin threat – American sanctions and unreliability of the Russian supply.
One irony of this damn stupid war is both sides would be better off if with a return to Russia paying Ukraine to pipe oil across its territory to Europe.
He must have known what the OBR had said in September, that the increase in the shortfall from productivity was going to be almost entirely (actually it turned out more than 100%) offset by higher taxes caused by inflation. So he was dishonest. Much more seriously, he and his woeful Chancellor let speculation of £20bn of immediate taxes run rampant for weeks paralysing the economy and investment decisions and destroying the housing market. They are both an utter disgrace, not only playing politics with our economy but playing it so badly they have emptied a double barrelled Shotgun at their own feet.
He must have known what the OBR had said in September, that the increase in the shortfall from productivity was going to be almost entirely (actually it turned out more than 100%) offset by higher taxes caused by inflation. So he was dishonest. Much more seriously, he and his woeful Chancellor let speculation of £20bn of immediate taxes run rampant for weeks paralysing the economy and investment decisions and destroying the housing market. They are both an utter disgrace, not only playing politics with our economy but playing it so badly they have emptied a double barrelled Shotgun at their own feet.
The only acceptable answer to favourite Christmas film is Muppet's Christmas Carol.
Exactly as Dickens would have imagined the tale.
My wife and daughter watched that (again) at the Usher Hall with a live orchestra earlier this week. It is just fabulous (if not quite as good as Miracle).
Can anyone on PB tell me the name of the short (very old) film that is, I believe, traditionally watched in Germany on either Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve? I saw it once, it's about an ancient butler serving an ancient lady and getting more & more drunk.
The only acceptable answer to favourite Christmas film is Muppet's Christmas Carol.
Exactly as Dickens would have imagined the tale.
My wife and daughter watched that (again) at the Usher Hall with a live orchestra earlier this week. It is just fabulous (if not quite as good as Miracle).
Can anyone on PB tell me the name of the short (very old) film that is, I believe, traditionally watched in Germany on either Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve? I saw it once, it's about an ancient butler serving an ancient lady and getting more & more drunk.
So on one side the government is fucking over private sector workers with tax charges to salary sacrifice pension contributions and on the other it looks like they are reducing tax charges for defined benefit pension holders who receive surplus payments from their scheme.
Labour stealing from the private sector and handing public sector workers tax cuts. I can't wait to be rid of them, I'm considering voting Reform if it's the best way to be shot of these absolute criminals.
Er ... not that I want to spoil your fun using public sector workers as a collective dartboard. But if the pensions in question are (a) DB and (b) have a surplus, then they're not being paid out of taxation. They're *private* pension funds.
I know they're not being paid out of taxation, it's that surplus disbursement is subject to additional tax on the recipient funds that the government is set to cut. It's a bung to public sector DB pensioners.
How can it be a bung to pensioners, if the pension is defined and the fund in reasonable order? If it were DC you might have a point.
It also goes to corporate funds too. No distinction between public and private.
The only acceptable answer to favourite Christmas film is Muppet's Christmas Carol.
Exactly as Dickens would have imagined the tale.
My wife and daughter watched that (again) at the Usher Hall with a live orchestra earlier this week. It is just fabulous (if not quite as good as Miracle).
Can anyone on PB tell me the name of the short (very old) film that is, I believe, traditionally watched in Germany on either Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve? I saw it once, it's about an ancient butler serving an ancient lady and getting more & more drunk.
Its called Dinner for One. It is funny but I really don't get why the Germans are obsessed with it.
The only acceptable answer to favourite Christmas film is Muppet's Christmas Carol.
Exactly as Dickens would have imagined the tale.
My wife and daughter watched that (again) at the Usher Hall with a live orchestra earlier this week. It is just fabulous (if not quite as good as Miracle).
Can anyone on PB tell me the name of the short (very old) film that is, I believe, traditionally watched in Germany on either Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve? I saw it once, it's about an ancient butler serving an ancient lady and getting more & more drunk.
Its called Dinner for One. It is funny but I really don't get why the Germans are obsessed with it.
The only acceptable answer to favourite Christmas film is Muppet's Christmas Carol.
Exactly as Dickens would have imagined the tale.
My wife and daughter watched that (again) at the Usher Hall with a live orchestra earlier this week. It is just fabulous (if not quite as good as Miracle).
Can anyone on PB tell me the name of the short (very old) film that is, I believe, traditionally watched in Germany on either Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve? I saw it once, it's about an ancient butler serving an ancient lady and getting more & more drunk.
Its called Dinner for One. It is funny but I really don't get why the Germans are obsessed with it.
The only acceptable answer to favourite Christmas film is Muppet's Christmas Carol.
Exactly as Dickens would have imagined the tale.
My wife and daughter watched that (again) at the Usher Hall with a live orchestra earlier this week. It is just fabulous (if not quite as good as Miracle).
Can anyone on PB tell me the name of the short (very old) film that is, I believe, traditionally watched in Germany on either Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve? I saw it once, it's about an ancient butler serving an ancient lady and getting more & more drunk.
Its called Dinner for One. It is funny but I really don't get why the Germans are obsessed with it.
He must have known what the OBR had said in September, that the increase in the shortfall from productivity was going to be almost entirely (actually it turned out more than 100%) offset by higher taxes caused by inflation. So he was dishonest. Much more seriously, he and his woeful Chancellor let speculation of £20bn of immediate taxes run rampant for weeks paralysing the economy and investment decisions and destroying the housing market. They are both an utter disgrace, not only playing politics with our economy but playing it so badly they have emptied a double barrelled Shotgun at their own feet.
Not to indulge in whataboutery (which I never would) but I recall the Conservatives fighting and pretty much winning the 2010 general election on the highly dubious (being kind) assertion that the UK was becoming like Greece. That was as broadly accurate in relation to the finances as it would have been about the weather.
"Kemi Badenoch says welfare spending is unchristian
Responding to Rachel Reeves’s budget, the Conservative Party leader told the Political Thinking podcast that ‘in early Christian times there was no state or welfare’" (£)
The only acceptable answer to favourite Christmas film is Muppet's Christmas Carol.
Exactly as Dickens would have imagined the tale.
My wife and daughter watched that (again) at the Usher Hall with a live orchestra earlier this week. It is just fabulous (if not quite as good as Miracle).
Can anyone on PB tell me the name of the short (very old) film that is, I believe, traditionally watched in Germany on either Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve? I saw it once, it's about an ancient butler serving an ancient lady and getting more & more drunk.
Its called Dinner for One. It is funny but I really don't get why the Germans are obsessed with it.
The same procedure as last year
The funny thing is the number of times Germans use 'same procedure' in day to day conversation. As in for me. 'OK another take. Same procedure''
The damage to the the Soyuz pad at Baikonur is confirmed.
This is the only pad the Russians currently have to launch to ISS. This means crew rotations blocked, but more importantly (perhaps) Progress cargo craft can't be sent to the station. The ISS can only be refuelled by Progress. Which means that after a while ISS will run out of fuel for attitude control related matters (It's a bit complicated with gyroscopes and de saturation, but that's the size of it)
To fix the pad, they would need to -
1) build a new service structure under the pad 2) Take a service structure from a mothballed pad 3) Convert/reactivate another pad - would ned to include work for Progress and the Suyuz spacecraft.
1) Will take a long, long time. SpaceX they are not. Years 2) Not been done before. It's a huge piece of equipment - might well need to be cut into sections, moved, rebuilt. 3) Again, will take a long, long time. Experience with Russian space tech and other Russian stuff is that the Russian approach to "moth balling" is "leave it to rust".
So no launches to the space station for months. Possibly years.
Which means a growing problem for the ISS - and a humiliation for Putin, incoming.
Is there a way to refuel ISS from a US or European pad (eg launch Progress from there)?
I am not an expert, but a space station lacking the ability to control altitude sounds… concerning…
Only Progress can refuel the station, via the Russian segment(s).
No current spacecraft from other nations can transfer the fuel in question (hydrazine).
Launching Progress on another rocket would require years of work.
The Soyuz pad in Guiana is at the wrong inclination (location) and is being demolished at the moment.
So if the Russians can't get the pad working, it's either abandon ISS or get SpaceX* to come up with something worryingly fast.
*Some people will get upset by specifying SpaceX. They are the only company that has demonstrated the ability to build space hardware in the timescales required - months.
Isn't the ISS due to be retired and deorbited (albeit in a controlled manner) before long anyway?
I wonder what will then replace it as the single most expensive thing made by man?
HS2?
Saudi Arabia's wall project is supposed to come in at around $500bn, but I would guess it will never be completed.
TSMC's planned 1.4nm chip fab is likely to cost as much as $50bn.
If you consider the web and its attached data centres as a single thing, then you will get up to several trillions.
Maybe in real terms PPP the Great Wall of China? Not that it would be easy to calculate.
Surely it depends on how you categorise something? Is 'London' a single thing?
Fair point but... the Great Wall is surely allowable as a single thing?
Nope - its not just one wall. People have the very wrong idea about it!
Fair enough, it was probably a silly suggestion on my part anyway.
Since you can't see the Great Wall of China from the ISS but you can see the ISS from the Great Wall, perhaps it makes sense that the ISS cost more. Or something.
Can you see your new house from the ISS would be the pertinent question...
I hope not. That would mean the ISS is FAR too low!
One of my regular Youtubers, Bigjobber, who basic theme is to do insurance liability commentaries on dashcam videos as he is or was a claims negotiator, uses "Bungalow" as his Youtube friendly insult.
It's another form of driver education.
As in "this one is a bit of a bungalow". TLDR: Not much upstairs.
Ours is not a bungalow; it's a single-storey dwelling. ;-)
He must have known what the OBR had said in September, that the increase in the shortfall from productivity was going to be almost entirely (actually it turned out more than 100%) offset by higher taxes caused by inflation. So he was dishonest. Much more seriously, he and his woeful Chancellor let speculation of £20bn of immediate taxes run rampant for weeks paralysing the economy and investment decisions and destroying the housing market. They are both an utter disgrace, not only playing politics with our economy but playing it so badly they have emptied a double barrelled Shotgun at their own feet.
Not to indulge in whataboutery (which I never would) but I recall the Conservatives fighting and pretty much winning the 2010 general election on the highly dubious (being kind) assertion that the UK was becoming like Greece. That was as broadly accurate in relation to the finances as it would have been about the weather.
I completely disagree. We were in at least as bad a situation as Greece in 2010. Fortunately we had more room for manoeuvre because we had never joined the Euro but we had a catastrophic structural deficit caused by the collapse in Financial Services tax revenues as well as a series of policies destined to drive public spending ever higher. If anything, I think the Tories understated the risks we were facing.
In contrast, I would agree that Sunak and Hunt really should have done far more to consolidate our accounts and reduce our deficit in the last Parliament. The criticism that difficult decisions were being deferred and the CSR was dodged (just as Brown had done in 2009) was entirely valid. Unfortunately, after this week they are still being deferred.
One well-placed source said: “It’s increasingly clear the Americans don’t care about the European position. They say the Europeans can do whatever they want.”"
The only acceptable answer to favourite Christmas film is Muppet's Christmas Carol.
Exactly as Dickens would have imagined the tale.
My wife and daughter watched that (again) at the Usher Hall with a live orchestra earlier this week. It is just fabulous (if not quite as good as Miracle).
Can anyone on PB tell me the name of the short (very old) film that is, I believe, traditionally watched in Germany on either Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve? I saw it once, it's about an ancient butler serving an ancient lady and getting more & more drunk.
The only acceptable answer to favourite Christmas film is Muppet's Christmas Carol.
Exactly as Dickens would have imagined the tale.
My wife and daughter watched that (again) at the Usher Hall with a live orchestra earlier this week. It is just fabulous (if not quite as good as Miracle).
Can anyone on PB tell me the name of the short (very old) film that is, I believe, traditionally watched in Germany on either Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve? I saw it once, it's about an ancient butler serving an ancient lady and getting more & more drunk.
Its called Dinner for One. It is funny but I really don't get why the Germans are obsessed with it.
So on one side the government is fucking over private sector workers with tax charges to salary sacrifice pension contributions and on the other it looks like they are reducing tax charges for defined benefit pension holders who receive surplus payments from their scheme.
Labour stealing from the private sector and handing public sector workers tax cuts. I can't wait to be rid of them, I'm considering voting Reform if it's the best way to be shot of these absolute criminals.
Er ... not that I want to spoil your fun using public sector workers as a collective dartboard. But if the pensions in question are (a) DB and (b) have a surplus, then they're not being paid out of taxation. They're *private* pension funds.
I know they're not being paid out of taxation, it's that surplus disbursement is subject to additional tax on the recipient funds that the government is set to cut. It's a bung to public sector DB pensioners.
How can it be a bung to pensioners, if the pension is defined and the fund in reasonable order? If it were DC you might have a point.
It also goes to corporate funds too. No distinction between public and private.
In Max's world DB ≡ public sector pensions, but about 7% of private sector schemes are DB (my bank pension for example).
He also conveniently forgets that salaries are often lower in jobs with DB pensions, and that people have made judgement calls on whether to remain an employee of a company with a DB scheme or go elsewhere to earn more.
He seeks to retrospectively wipe the DB pension advantage out whilst not compensating with the historic higher salaries that DB scheme members have sacrificed.
Changes from the last poll at the end of August. Not quite sure how the positives are 10 and the negatives are 6. Others would be down two on this - BMG had PC on 1% in August as well. Probably a bit of rounding at work.
I wouldn't be surprised if Reform's vote started dropping. I think it didn't occur to people until last week that Farage was actually a racist not just someone concerned about immigration. Amazing I know but Reform voters aren't necessarily known for their perception
So on one side the government is fucking over private sector workers with tax charges to salary sacrifice pension contributions and on the other it looks like they are reducing tax charges for defined benefit pension holders who receive surplus payments from their scheme.
Labour stealing from the private sector and handing public sector workers tax cuts. I can't wait to be rid of them, I'm considering voting Reform if it's the best way to be shot of these absolute criminals.
Er ... not that I want to spoil your fun using public sector workers as a collective dartboard. But if the pensions in question are (a) DB and (b) have a surplus, then they're not being paid out of taxation. They're *private* pension funds.
One well-placed source said: “It’s increasingly clear the Americans don’t care about the European position. They say the Europeans can do whatever they want.”"
There is a really (to my memory) fantastic scene played out between Graham Crowden and Tony Doyle in the back of a car. Detailing the rise of 'money' and the demise of politics & democracy. I might be misremembering as it's a good 20 years since I watched it - but in my recollection it's quite to the point.
And is also on my 'rewatch over the Christmas break' list.
BREAKING: Shadow Chancellor, Sir Mel Stride is calling for the Chancellor Rachel Reeves to resign, as she is accused of misleading the public in the run up to the Budget
It all sounds a bit desperate to be honest. What is Reeves supposed to have done? Floated some ideas and then changed her mind - hardly a hanging offence.
If she'd said I'll cut 10p off basic income tax that might be classed as misleading but as we know the final statement isn't completed until late in the process.
She certainly gave a highly inaccurate account of pre-budget OBR guidance, as a way of implying that tax rises (or cuts in capital spending) were a fiscal necessity.
That really wasn't true. What she meant was that she wanted more headroom to allow increased welfare spending, which she ought to have been honest about.
The OBR are miffed, but given their own enormous gaffe, it's probably knock for knock.
Neither come out of it particularly well.
I'm not quite following that. Doesn't more fiscal headroom mean less ability to increase spending?
No, it means that if (when) some of our numbers prove to be a tad optimistic we can still stick to the original plan (such as it is) because the deficit is still within the envelope forecast. One of the many problems with Reeves' first budget was that "headroom" was no more than a rounding error so every minor bump made it likely that Reeves was going to miss her targets and have to do something drastic. So, it is a sensible precaution but all of that headroom and more is being generated from fiscal drift that won't really start to generate more money for another 3 years in all of which we are borrowing more.
Changes from the last poll at the end of August. Not quite sure how the positives are 10 and the negatives are 6. Others would be down two on this - BMG had PC on 1% in August as well. Probably a bit of rounding at work.
I wouldn't be surprised if Reform's vote started dropping. I think it didn't occur to people until last week that Farage was actually a racist not just someone concerned about immigration. Amazing I know but Reform voters aren't necessarily known for their perception
It isn't dropping on average. It's sticking at around 30%.
Changes from the last poll at the end of August. Not quite sure how the positives are 10 and the negatives are 6. Others would be down two on this - BMG had PC on 1% in August as well. Probably a bit of rounding at work.
I wouldn't be surprised if Reform's vote started dropping. I think it didn't occur to people until last week that Farage was actually a racist not just someone concerned about immigration. Amazing I know but Reform voters aren't necessarily known for their perception
I have a horrible feeling it's because the Americans have started covering it. Brits can cover it all the live-long day and nobody cares, but the minute somebody in the USA covers it people sit up.
At a meeting in No 10 in September of this year, one source heard a special adviser ask: “What are gilt yields?” A government whose opponents were destroyed by the bond markets, and which is paying those markets £300m a day in debt interest, apparently employs people who have not taken five minutes to understand how they work.
I asked the other day, and didn't get a single response
Are there any PBers who actually want Polanski to be our Prime Minister?
If for no other reason than being led by The Boob Whisperer seems to fit in with this timeline - wtf not? Won't vote for him myself - but it seems all too plausible.
I'm coming in late. What's the latest Reeves drama, in a nutshell?
She's lied about something, but people aren't quite agreed about what, except it's do with OBR predictions and how much extra tax she's decided to raise.
At a meeting in No 10 in September of this year, one source heard a special adviser ask: “What are gilt yields?” A government whose opponents were destroyed by the bond markets, and which is paying those markets £300m a day in debt interest, apparently employs people who have not taken five minutes to understand how they work.
I'm sadly now picturing another adviser explaining that they were 'Difficult, difficult. Lemon difficult.'
Giving the oldies a higher personal tax allowance was a bad enough idea but keeping it at the same level but not bothering to get the tax due sets an appalling example.
At a meeting in No 10 in September of this year, one source heard a special adviser ask: “What are gilt yields?” A government whose opponents were destroyed by the bond markets, and which is paying those markets £300m a day in debt interest, apparently employs people who have not taken five minutes to understand how they work.
After last year’s general election was called, one hedge fund commissioned detailed research on Labour. This is the kind of thing hedge funds do: they buy satellite images of harvests or data on freight movements, looking for information other people don’t have, discovering the true price of something before the rest of the market figures it out. The fund wanted to know who Labour’s MPs and ministers would be, what policies they would have, and how effectively they would deploy them. The polls said Labour was heading for a landslide victory and a huge majority. The research, according to a person familiar with the report, said, “There is no plan, there is no vision, and they’re not going to succeed because they don’t have the talent.” The fund decided to take a short position on UK gilts, effectively betting that Britain’s borrowing costs would rise. They made a lot of money on that bet.
Giving the oldies a higher personal tax allowance was a bad enough idea but keeping it at the same level but not bothering to get the tax due sets an appalling example.
Er, more specifically the basic state pension and *only* if no other income. The issue is more fairness within the oldies. I can't see it myself, given the insane marginal tax rates implied if only by comparison between oldies. Graun is rather more downbeat:
' Steve Webb, a former pensions minister and now a partner at the consultancy LCP, said the idea of not levying income tax on one set of retirees “raises several questions of fairness”. [...]
He said the new scheme would risk penalising people with small private pensions who would not be protected from tax compared with those who have no private pension who will be protected.
“This penalises those who have saved, even modest amounts. And the new rules will mean that a pensioner just above the tax threshold will pay no tax whilst an employee on exactly the same income will pay both tax and national insurance contributions which seems unfair.”
Webb added that there was no costing for the policy in the budget documents, suggesting this may still be at the ideas stage. The main document states: “The government is exploring the best way to achieve this and will set out more detail next year.”'
But remember the point I made earlier - that the Tories messed up tax for almost all of us and made us do tax returns just to make life a bit easier for those in precisely the OAP plus a little bank interest bracket. Edit: so things like that could just happen.
Ordinary people are noticing that taxes on working people are rising to pay for the lazy and feckless to sit at home.
The Tories need to really have a welfare reform plan and start to put together £100bn welfare cuts plan. We can no longer allow people to sit on their fat arses and do nothing, they're sucking the lifeblood out of the country.
Changes from the last poll at the end of August. Not quite sure how the positives are 10 and the negatives are 6. Others would be down two on this - BMG had PC on 1% in August as well. Probably a bit of rounding at work.
I wouldn't be surprised if Reform's vote started dropping. I think it didn't occur to people until last week that Farage was actually a racist not just someone concerned about immigration. Amazing I know but Reform voters aren't necessarily known for their perception
It isn't dropping on average. It's sticking at around 30%.
BREAKING: Shadow Chancellor, Sir Mel Stride is calling for the Chancellor Rachel Reeves to resign, as she is accused of misleading the public in the run up to the Budget
It all sounds a bit desperate to be honest. What is Reeves supposed to have done? Floated some ideas and then changed her mind - hardly a hanging offence.
If she'd said I'll cut 10p off basic income tax that might be classed as misleading but as we know the final statement isn't completed until late in the process.
She certainly gave a highly inaccurate account of pre-budget OBR guidance, as a way of implying that tax rises (or cuts in capital spending) were a fiscal necessity.
That really wasn't true. What she meant was that she wanted more headroom to allow increased welfare spending, which she ought to have been honest about.
The OBR are miffed, but given their own enormous gaffe, it's probably knock for knock.
Neither come out of it particularly well.
I'm not quite following that. Doesn't more fiscal headroom mean less ability to increase spending?
No, it means that if (when) some of our numbers prove to be a tad optimistic we can still stick to the original plan (such as it is) because the deficit is still within the envelope forecast. One of the many problems with Reeves' first budget was that "headroom" was no more than a rounding error so every minor bump made it likely that Reeves was going to miss her targets and have to do something drastic. So, it is a sensible precaution but all of that headroom and more is being generated from fiscal drift that won't really start to generate more money for another 3 years in all of which we are borrowing more.
My recollection, possibly wrong, is that after the Autumn 24 budget, the OBR downgraded it's forecasts wiping out the theoretical headroom she'd given herself, so it's not a massive surprise, maybe even "PRUDENT", that, despite the OBR's current more optimistic forecast, she's left herself a bigger margin this time.
That the OBR have splashed it all over the press probably only reinforces her paranoia that they were going to do it again.
Giving the oldies a higher personal tax allowance was a bad enough idea but keeping it at the same level but not bothering to get the tax due sets an appalling example.
Er, more specifically the basic state pension and *only* if no other income. The issue is more fairness within the oldies. I can't see it myself, given the insane marginal tax rates implied if only by comparison between oldies. Graun is rather more downbeat:
' Steve Webb, a former pensions minister and now a partner at the consultancy LCP, said the idea of not levying income tax on one set of retirees “raises several questions of fairness”. [...]
He said the new scheme would risk penalising people with small private pensions who would not be protected from tax compared with those who have no private pension who will be protected.
“This penalises those who have saved, even modest amounts. And the new rules will mean that a pensioner just above the tax threshold will pay no tax whilst an employee on exactly the same income will pay both tax and national insurance contributions which seems unfair.”
Webb added that there was no costing for the policy in the budget documents, suggesting this may still be at the ideas stage. The main document states: “The government is exploring the best way to achieve this and will set out more detail next year.”'
But remember the point I made earlier - that the Tories messed up tax for almost all of us and made us do tax returns just to make life a bit easier for those in precisely the OAP plus a little bank interest bracket.
As I said its an appalling example.
Work and save and you receive fewer benefits and pay more taxes.
Don't work or save and you don't even have to pay the tax you owe.
And given that triple lock pensions will rapidly go far beyond the frozen personal tax allowance that uncollected tax will add up quickly.
And in further 'one law for oldies and another law for you' news:
Savers who attempt to swerve the chancellor’s cash Isa crackdown by exploiting a loophole in stocks and shares Isas will face a new “stealth tax”.
HMRC has confirmed it will introduce a charge on interest made on cash that is held in stocks and shares Isas but is not invested. Finance experts such as Martin Lewis previously suggested this could be an effective way to get around the cash Isa cut.
The Reeves/Starmer deception revealed today about a "black hole" in the lead up to the Budget, which has been contradicted by the OBR, should be terminal for them They will not be missed
Comments
Fundamentally I don’t believe Labour can win an election going into it with the sort of economic narrative they are in danger of running at the moment. The “raise taxes to spend on welfare” angle is very damaging, and if it beds in, it’s going to be a very bumpy time for them.
Their best case scenario is the economy improves enough, or the markets look favourably on them enough, that with some tinkering/sleights of hand they can get away with cancelling some of these tax rises in 2028/2029 (or deferring them until after the election) and getting away with it. That surely has to be the aim right now. A cynical game, but one that might pay off.
But if things continue to be unstable, or the economic outlook gets worse - and that must be a plausible outcome too, particularly given some of the policy impacts - then it suddenly looks a lot more challenging.
I don’t think the next election is won or lost for anyone but it’s a tough road to a majority for all parties IMHO.
Note to all: it’s still small by historical standards. It was slashed by Hunt in his last 2 budgets, and then further cut back to the bone in Reeves’ first.
Cut through?
*In the earl days of Putinism, some very very brave people tried to prosecute cronies of the regime for crimes. Character is who you are in the deepest darkness.
I expect Con to lead Lab in at least three polls in the next fortnight, and then to stay ahead
The greatest xmas film of all time, bar none, is Scrooge - 1951 version of Xmas Carol with Sim.
Black and White masterpiece. I watch it most years during the festive period.
The big boys probably enjoy being in the same room together flattering each other's egos so I wouldn't expect things to change.
On a long view, they are supposed to act as some sort of critical friend, so I'm not sure a fix is necessary at all.
This is the wedge issue that can catapult the Tories back into a firm second and make them visible again.
I can see that it is better in a very multiparty environment in making sure that more votes count, but I just don't see it.
Those figures have realised that a limit on the sort of pernicious progressivism must somehow be found, or all Labour stands for is progressive (in all senses) societal and economic breakdown.
"Rich Purnell Jesse Pietz/Sagar Bhatt is a steely-eyed missile man" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-propellant_maneuver
Are there any PBers who actually want Polanski to be our Prime Minister?
I think she’s got a window to try and get a bit more of a hearing now. Whether that then leads to a revival in fortunes - well, it’s a very long road back for the Tories, and they’ve only just started on it. But she’s certainly had a good week, the open question is whether she can build on it.
Is the chancellor that desperate that it gets spent?
Because the complete collapse of the country will cause all to flock to my banner.
Outline of policies here - https://youtu.be/XEECxN5P1nw?si=5wJArV8Xo9gwsnik
Two Russian shadow fleet tankers in the Black Sea are burning. It seems they were hit by Ukrainian drones, opening up a new front in the naval war, so that justifies an #explodey
https://bsky.app/profile/chadbourn.bsky.social/post/3m6pnliskpk27
This democracy thing is wildly overrated. People are idiots. Can't be trusted with any meaningful decisions at all.
To quote her directly: "When people vote and there is no clear winner, Conservatives will look to see who will help them deliver a Conservative agenda"
Worth pointing out, however, she claims the final decision would be for Darren Millar though it seems inconceivable he would act contrary to her instructions. The problem is IF the Conservatives are seen to publicly support Reform in Wales, it will be seized on as indication that's what they would do at Westminster after a General Election.
https://x.com/mrnickharvey/status/1373955726301933571
OBR says the scheme will cost £600M a year with no identified savings
https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/28/digital_id_cost/
The OBR says something interesting about the Blairite panacea.
Meanwhile, in France, you can have a one-off electronic ID card to stop your physical ID card safe because a fifth of the population have been victims of identity theft. Hold on, aren't ID cards supposed to prevent that?
https://france-identite.gouv.fr/justificatif/
Like the Truss comeback.
@andrew_lilico
·
40m
What were the exact words here? Did Starmer lie to Parliament?
https://x.com/andrew_lilico/status/1994485042756948211
Public sector (funded) schemes, such as LGPS, are open schemes and have no intention of paying out surpluses. They just reduce future accrual contributions a bit if better funded. Which is a good thing for taxpayer
Polanski not for PM! Down with that sort of thing
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/11/28/green-party-revolution-poised-wipe-out-labour/
One irony of this damn stupid war is both sides would be better off if with a return to Russia paying Ukraine to pipe oil across its territory to Europe.
Bell? Jones?
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2025/09/02/bell-ends-up-as-the-next-chancellor/
BBC News - Flights disrupted as Airbus requests modifications to thousands of planes
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8e9d13x2z7o
A lot of software remediation but a hardware swap on some planes.
It also goes to corporate funds too. No distinction between public and private.
Don't be on a flight when there's a massive solar storm?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8e9d13x2z7o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nysm_ErwdFE
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/indigenous-actress-elaine-miles-says-ice-called-her-tribal-id-fake/
https://magazine.newstatesman.com/2025/11/19/meet-the-bond-market-vigilantes/content.html
In contrast, I would agree that Sunak and Hunt really should have done far more to consolidate our accounts and reduce our deficit in the last Parliament. The criticism that difficult decisions were being deferred and the CSR was dodged (just as Brown had done in 2009) was entirely valid. Unfortunately, after this week they are still being deferred.
https://x.com/prestonstew_/status/1994405520522776955
"The plan to recognize territory, which breaks US diplomatic convention, is likely to go ahead despite concerns among Ukraine’s European allies.
One well-placed source said: “It’s increasingly clear the Americans don’t care about the European position. They say the Europeans can do whatever they want.”"
DIE HARD IS THE BEST CHRISTMAS MOVIE EVER MADE!
The Taiwanese ambassador to Finland sings a song at a music festival in Finland
https://www.reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglevel/s/NSCsCqmL6k
He also conveniently forgets that salaries are often lower in jobs with DB pensions, and that people have made judgement calls on whether to remain an employee of a company with a DB scheme or go elsewhere to earn more.
He seeks to retrospectively wipe the DB pension advantage out whilst not compensating with the historic higher salaries that DB scheme members have sacrificed.
This happens all the time.
See the breathless accounts of car mass recalls.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0163546/
"Beloved Enemy (Play for Today, 1981)".
There is a really (to my memory) fantastic scene played out between Graham Crowden and Tony Doyle in the back of a car. Detailing the rise of 'money' and the demise of politics & democracy. I might be misremembering as it's a good 20 years since I watched it - but in my recollection it's quite to the point.
And is also on my 'rewatch over the Christmas break' list.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Admira_Wacker
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cev8ed9klz1o
Giving the oldies a higher personal tax allowance was a bad enough idea but keeping it at the same level but not bothering to get the tax due sets an appalling example.
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2025/nov/28/people-deriving-income-solely-from-state-pension-wont-be-taxed-says-chancellor
' Steve Webb, a former pensions minister and now a partner at the consultancy LCP, said the idea of not levying income tax on one set of retirees “raises several questions of fairness”. [...]
He said the new scheme would risk penalising people with small private pensions who would not be protected from tax compared with those who have no private pension who will be protected.
“This penalises those who have saved, even modest amounts. And the new rules will mean that a pensioner just above the tax threshold will pay no tax whilst an employee on exactly the same income will pay both tax and national insurance contributions which seems unfair.”
Webb added that there was no costing for the policy in the budget documents, suggesting this may still be at the ideas stage. The main document states: “The government is exploring the best way to achieve this and will set out more detail next year.”'
But remember the point I made earlier - that the Tories messed up tax for almost all of us and made us do tax returns just to make life a bit easier for those in precisely the OAP plus a little bank interest bracket. Edit: so things like that could just happen.
Ordinary people are noticing that taxes on working people are rising to pay for the lazy and feckless to sit at home.
The Tories need to really have a welfare reform plan and start to put together £100bn welfare cuts plan. We can no longer allow people to sit on their fat arses and do nothing, they're sucking the lifeblood out of the country.
That the OBR have splashed it all over the press probably only reinforces her paranoia that they were going to do it again.
Work and save and you receive fewer benefits and pay more taxes.
Don't work or save and you don't even have to pay the tax you owe.
And given that triple lock pensions will rapidly go far beyond the frozen personal tax allowance that uncollected tax will add up quickly.
Savers who attempt to swerve the chancellor’s cash Isa crackdown by exploiting a loophole in stocks and shares Isas will face a new “stealth tax”.
HMRC has confirmed it will introduce a charge on interest made on cash that is held in stocks and shares Isas but is not invested. Finance experts such as Martin Lewis previously suggested this could be an effective way to get around the cash Isa cut.
https://www.thetimes.com/money/article/savers-who-swerve-cash-isa-crackdown-to-be-punished-by-hmrc-27bvpd00g
Taxing anything within an ISA is the easiest way to lose trust in the system.
They will not be missed