Cable Munching Rats Cause 11 Day Openreach Broadband Outage in Doncaster
Nearly 100 premises in Askern, which is a town and civil parish within the City of Doncaster (South Yorkshire, England), have been left without access to Openreach’s UK broadband network after rodents – those with a seemingly strong appetite for telecoms infrastructure – chewed through one of the operator’s cables in the area. Nothing like a diet high in fibre.
I suspect the government have lit a ticking time bomb with the removal of the benefits cap.
Every time a story about a large non-working family comes out (there will be plenty), with taxpayers paying - it will be laid at their door.
They haven't removed the benefit cap (£22k); they've removed the two-child limit.
So stories about families on £60k worth of benefits won't be common*. Some child poverty think tanks have pointed out that the £22k limit significantly limits the effect of the change - they're not wrong, particularly somewhere like London where the just housing element could be £30k.
*There are a number of exemptions, particularly around disability benefits, but I reckon DWP will tighten that up.
If you're explaining, you're losing. And removing the two-child limit alone is politically damaging.
Taxes are going up by £3-4 billion to pay for it, and everyone knows that money is going on extra welfare and coming from their paycheck.
I don't disagree - just pointing out that the Mail will struggle to find those households.
The other thing that's interesting is what the Conservatives do. I had a flick through affected households by council area and it's not a bad proxy for areas where Reform are doing well. That's why Farage - by far our canniest politician - has come out in favour. Whether the Conservatives follow or not will be a signal into their strategy for the next 3 years.
Kemi has been clear the Conservatives would have kept the 2 child benefit cap. Though they should also back an increase in standard child benefit for most parents while keeping the two child benefit cap for parents on universal credit
But many people on UC are actually working ... your proposal is self-contradictory to a considerable degree.
Many aren’t whereas the vast majority on standard child benefit work and a parent out of work can only claim it for six months while on JSA
Go back and read what you wrote. You're demanding an increase in benefits for people who are well enough off not to need UC, while demanding the 2CC for people who are not well enough off not to need UC. That's *reverse* means testing.
If that's Modern Tory policy, heaven help the party.
No as you also cannot claim child benefit if your income is over £80k. It is working parents who are on middle income who earn less than that and don’t claim UC who would benefit from increased standard child benefit and given our low 1.4 fertility rate now that is why I back a rise in standard child benefit.
It would be a fantastic Tory pro middle income families policy
It would be unacceptable in the present climate
The two most unpopular decisions in the Budget according to YouGov were freezing thresholds and the 2 child benefit cap as the public draw the line on more taxes and benefits
Badenoch is correct to say she will reinstate the 2 child cap but needs to go further with abolishing the triple lock and means testing the state pension as part of a reduction in welfare spending and not adding to benefits other than by inflation
Means testing the state pension, as with other means testing, just creates an administrative burden. The better off already pay 40-60% tax on it.
Worse than that- if you means test the state pension, there isn't much point in making other arrangements for a lot of people. Why bother saving if it just reduces your state pension?
It would turn a small problem now into a much bigger problem in a few decades time. And nobody would want to be that short-sighted, would they?
I suspect the government have lit a ticking time bomb with the removal of the benefits cap.
Every time a story about a large non-working family comes out (there will be plenty), with taxpayers paying - it will be laid at their door.
They haven't removed the benefit cap (£22k); they've removed the two-child limit.
So stories about families on £60k worth of benefits won't be common*. Some child poverty think tanks have pointed out that the £22k limit significantly limits the effect of the change - they're not wrong, particularly somewhere like London where the just housing element could be £30k.
*There are a number of exemptions, particularly around disability benefits, but I reckon DWP will tighten that up.
If you're explaining, you're losing.
But with the consolation that at least you are comprehending.
Taxes are going up to pay for more welfare to give to those with larger families.
That's all that matters, and it happens to be true as well.
Once again, it's Lib Dems that are out here defending the Labour government. I wonder whether any of them have the self awareness to have their Alec Guinness moment before the next election and realise in their desperate rush to hate the Tories they've become defenders of incompetence and malevolence from Labour. I doubt it.
Treating politics as though it was a football match is why the UK keeps making crappy decisions. This childish view that everything your political opponents say, do, or even think is, ipso facto, wrong, and possibly criminal is the reason why UK politics doesn't deliver. It's not a set menu we need, it's a la carte. The problem is that the Tories are still struggling with a pathetic pool of talent and the legacy of 14 years of unacceptable failure. I hold no brief for Labour, but the day after the Tories finally make some well thought out and coherent policies, Then I might take your whinge seriously. Until then, you'd be better off hauding ye whisht.
Junior doctors rep Dr Dolphin having an absolutely shocker on Today. He might need to check into his own A&E after the savaging he’s getting from Nick Robinson.
Surely he can’t be any worse than the last junior doctors’ rep, who came across like Arthur Scargill with a stethoscope.
Junior doctors second only to the WASPI women when it comes to a lack of public sympathy, we all know they’ll quickly be on close to six figure salaries.
He's the new leader of the BMA. Tried and failed to get selected as a Labour candidate under Corbyn.
I suspect the government have lit a ticking time bomb with the removal of the benefits cap.
Every time a story about a large non-working family comes out (there will be plenty), with taxpayers paying - it will be laid at their door.
They haven't removed the benefit cap (£22k); they've removed the two-child limit.
So stories about families on £60k worth of benefits won't be common*. Some child poverty think tanks have pointed out that the £22k limit significantly limits the effect of the change - they're not wrong, particularly somewhere like London where the just housing element could be £30k.
*There are a number of exemptions, particularly around disability benefits, but I reckon DWP will tighten that up.
If you're explaining, you're losing. And removing the two-child limit alone is politically damaging.
Taxes are going up by £3-4 billion to pay for it, and everyone knows that money is going on extra welfare and coming from their paycheck.
If you're explaining, you're losing is true as a piece of practical politics, but it's pretty depressing as an insight into the human condition.
OK, I admit it. I'm on Team "It's probably more complicated than that", because of my brain function, skills and background. But many of the problems we have aren't just 'yay' or 'boo'. They are how do you trade-off two things that are both desirable but where you can only have one. Or two options which are both a bit bad, but you have to choose one.
To use Victorian language, how do you balance the needs of the 'deserving' poor with the reasonable wish of the taxpayer to not fund the 'undeserving' out of scarce resources? After all, a lot of the families benefiting from the change have got working parents, or didn't expect to be in the circumstances they were in when baby 3 was born.
Besides, the papers don't need to find people on high benefits. They can just recylce a think tank report that notes that if you are getting maxed-out disability benefits, you can get the equivalent of £71k a household. Except you don't want to explain the bit in italics. Because if you are explaining, you're losing.
I think this comes back to the sense of "not taking the piss". The British people will put up with a lot if they think that it's being done honestly and with good intent and people aren't taking the piss.
However it might have come about, the majority of people have lost that trust that welfare recipients are honest and aren't taking the piss. The same with asylum seekers. The same also with landlords and the wealthy. The targets might be different, but the underlying political logic is the same. These people are taking the piss and I'm not putting up with it anymore.
So, with the two-child limit we have earnest arguments being made in support of getting rid of it, but the majority view is that those people are taking the piss. When it comes to higher-income taxpayers we have different people making earnest arguments about why it is self-defeating to increase taxation on the wealthy, but the majority view is that those people are taking the piss, and so there's no sympathy for them.
I don't think there was ever a time when most people made decisions on the basis of rational argument rooted in facts, but there was a time when people had more societal trust, and didn't think that everyone else was taking the piss quite so much. If we could get back there then a lot of the negative emotion could be taken out of politics and there would be room for more rational decision-making to come to the fore.
Indeed so, a lot of it relates to trust in society and in government, not helped by the media and social media landscape that finds it easy to highlight edge cases and unusual situations.
With regard to the two-child cap, wait until the Tommy Robinsons and perhaps even the fringes of Reform note that certain “communities” are way more likely to have three or four children than others.
I suspect the government have lit a ticking time bomb with the removal of the benefits cap.
Every time a story about a large non-working family comes out (there will be plenty), with taxpayers paying - it will be laid at their door.
They haven't removed the benefit cap (£22k); they've removed the two-child limit.
So stories about families on £60k worth of benefits won't be common*. Some child poverty think tanks have pointed out that the £22k limit significantly limits the effect of the change - they're not wrong, particularly somewhere like London where the just housing element could be £30k.
*There are a number of exemptions, particularly around disability benefits, but I reckon DWP will tighten that up.
If you're explaining, you're losing. And removing the two-child limit alone is politically damaging.
Taxes are going up by £3-4 billion to pay for it, and everyone knows that money is going on extra welfare and coming from their paycheck.
I don't disagree - just pointing out that the Mail will struggle to find those households.
The other thing that's interesting is what the Conservatives do. I had a flick through affected households by council area and it's not a bad proxy for areas where Reform are doing well. That's why Farage - by far our canniest politician - has come out in favour. Whether the Conservatives follow or not will be a signal into their strategy for the next 3 years.
Kemi has been clear the Conservatives would have kept the 2 child benefit cap. Though they should also back an increase in standard child benefit for most parents while keeping the two child benefit cap for parents on universal credit
But many people on UC are actually working ... your proposal is self-contradictory to a considerable degree.
Many aren’t whereas the vast majority on standard child benefit work and a parent out of work can only claim it for six months while on JSA
Go back and read what you wrote. You're demanding an increase in benefits for people who are well enough off not to need UC, while demanding the 2CC for people who are not well enough off not to need UC. That's *reverse* means testing.
If that's Modern Tory policy, heaven help the party.
No as you also cannot claim child benefit if your income is over £80k. It is working parents who are on middle income who earn less than that and don’t claim UC who would benefit from increased standard child benefit and given our low 1.4 fertility rate now that is why I back a rise in standard child benefit.
It would be a fantastic Tory pro middle income families policy
It would be unacceptable in the present climate
The two most unpopular decisions in the Budget according to YouGov were freezing thresholds and the 2 child benefit cap as the public draw the line on more taxes and benefits
Badenoch is correct to say she will reinstate the 2 child cap but needs to go further with abolishing the triple lock and means testing the state pension as part of a reduction in welfare spending and not adding to benefits other than by inflation
Means testing the state pension, as with other means testing, just creates an administrative burden. The better off already pay 40-60% tax on it.
Worse than that- if you means test the state pension, there isn't much point in making other arrangements for a lot of people. Why bother saving if it just reduces your state pension?
It would turn a small problem now into a much bigger problem in a few decades time. And nobody would want to be that short-sighted, would they?
What is obvious is that the present arrangements cannot continue so either the state pension has some form of means testing or the age will have to increase to 70+
Neither are easy but then cutting welfare is never going to be easy
So Rachel from accounts won the sack race against Richard Hughes, with the OBR chief forced out rather than testify to the Committee today.
American sack race next, who wins out of SecDef Peter Hegseth and Minnesota Gov Tim Walz, both on the front pages for separate scandals over the weekend?
Ed Balls reckons they should reject the resignation
I find it hard to feel that the OBR early report release was a resignation matter. It's a nice easy to understand Westminster gossip type story that the media can get excited about, but at bottom it's "we made a mistake with the config of our Wordpress site so it wasn't requiring authentication for the file the way we expected". Yes, there's the "market sensitive information" aspect, but in practice that doesn't seem to have actually caused major harm. The closest to a real management failure is that they probably should have assessed whether they were taking the risks seriously enough (e.g. testing that their embargoed docs process really did prevent access) and whether the system they set up in 2013 was still the right one given how important the OBR has become these days. But if we lose a decent head of the OBR and it spends the next six months leaderless while selecting a new one who then has to get up to speed with the organisation's issues, is that really a benefit to the country?
No accountability, eh?
Next week - “Bombed the shipwrecked survivors *twice*. But losing the head of the military, is that really a benefit to the country? At this point does it really matter?”
If no one is punished for anything, then anything goes.
“Just open the gates, Constable, it’s not like anyone does anything if a bunch of scousers get crushed.”
I think that if we treat every mistake and oversight as if it was a wilful decision that could foreseeably cause multiple deaths, then every senior leader of every organisation or enterprise in the country would be out of a job every three months, to absolutely no benefit -- and those who presided over the real horrors will be no worse off than those where some minor mishap happened under their watch, which I'm sure they'd be happy about. There should be accountability, yes. But it should be proportional.
So we should just do nothing?
Excellent news for those who have a major fuck up on their watch, every three months or so.
I was in a meeting in a bank, where they explained Sarbanes-Oxley. When it was bought in.
A manger put his hand up - “So if someone working for me fucks up, I could go to prison? in America?”
Answer - “Yes. If you can’t prove they acted against policy and systems weren’t there to stop them.”
Within hours, shit was being tightened up. No more developers with access to production, traders “fixing” trades using the “admin” login.
I think fundamentally I disagree that this is "a major fuckup". And as far as I'm aware it's not part of a pattern of the organisation having major screwups every three months.
What do graphs like this say?
Oh, and an early release like this is a sacking offence in many contexts.
The fact that a junior employee hasn’t been binned strongly suggests that they don’t have a proper system in place. Probably because a senior manager decided not to fund it.
That was the commentary this morning - that their system was more appropriate to a small business. It's probably an issue which requires resignation to be offered, but not necessarily accepted automatically. I guess Reeves really did not want to save him.
I suspect the government have lit a ticking time bomb with the removal of the benefits cap.
Every time a story about a large non-working family comes out (there will be plenty), with taxpayers paying - it will be laid at their door.
They haven't removed the benefit cap (£22k); they've removed the two-child limit.
So stories about families on £60k worth of benefits won't be common*. Some child poverty think tanks have pointed out that the £22k limit significantly limits the effect of the change - they're not wrong, particularly somewhere like London where the just housing element could be £30k.
*There are a number of exemptions, particularly around disability benefits, but I reckon DWP will tighten that up.
If you're explaining, you're losing. And removing the two-child limit alone is politically damaging.
Taxes are going up by £3-4 billion to pay for it, and everyone knows that money is going on extra welfare and coming from their paycheck.
I don't disagree - just pointing out that the Mail will struggle to find those households.
The other thing that's interesting is what the Conservatives do. I had a flick through affected households by council area and it's not a bad proxy for areas where Reform are doing well. That's why Farage - by far our canniest politician - has come out in favour. Whether the Conservatives follow or not will be a signal into their strategy for the next 3 years.
Kemi has been clear the Conservatives would have kept the 2 child benefit cap. Though they should also back an increase in standard child benefit for most parents while keeping the two child benefit cap for parents on universal credit
But many people on UC are actually working ... your proposal is self-contradictory to a considerable degree.
Many aren’t whereas the vast majority on standard child benefit work and a parent out of work can only claim it for 91 days while on JSA
Almost three quarters of children in poverty are in working households. This Tory division into strivers and shirkers is a fundamentally dishonest narrative.
Would that be the nonsensical measure of relative poverty, cleverly redefining the term so it will always exist?
[Got to go out now, which is a shame, because I do like a debate about this sort of thing ]
I suspect the government have lit a ticking time bomb with the removal of the benefits cap.
Every time a story about a large non-working family comes out (there will be plenty), with taxpayers paying - it will be laid at their door.
They haven't removed the benefit cap (£22k); they've removed the two-child limit.
So stories about families on £60k worth of benefits won't be common*. Some child poverty think tanks have pointed out that the £22k limit significantly limits the effect of the change - they're not wrong, particularly somewhere like London where the just housing element could be £30k.
*There are a number of exemptions, particularly around disability benefits, but I reckon DWP will tighten that up.
If you're explaining, you're losing. And removing the two-child limit alone is politically damaging.
Taxes are going up by £3-4 billion to pay for it, and everyone knows that money is going on extra welfare and coming from their paycheck.
I don't disagree - just pointing out that the Mail will struggle to find those households.
The other thing that's interesting is what the Conservatives do. I had a flick through affected households by council area and it's not a bad proxy for areas where Reform are doing well. That's why Farage - by far our canniest politician - has come out in favour. Whether the Conservatives follow or not will be a signal into their strategy for the next 3 years.
Kemi has been clear the Conservatives would have kept the 2 child benefit cap. Though they should also back an increase in standard child benefit for most parents while keeping the two child benefit cap for parents on universal credit
But many people on UC are actually working ... your proposal is self-contradictory to a considerable degree.
Many aren’t whereas the vast majority on standard child benefit work and a parent out of work can only claim it for six months while on JSA
Go back and read what you wrote. You're demanding an increase in benefits for people who are well enough off not to need UC, while demanding the 2CC for people who are not well enough off not to need UC. That's *reverse* means testing.
If that's Modern Tory policy, heaven help the party.
No as you also cannot claim child benefit if your income is over £80k. It is working parents who are on middle income who earn less than that and don’t claim UC who would benefit from increased standard child benefit and given our low 1.4 fertility rate now that is why I back a rise in standard child benefit.
It would be a fantastic Tory pro middle income families policy
It would be unacceptable in the present climate
The two most unpopular decisions in the Budget according to YouGov were freezing thresholds and the 2 child benefit cap as the public draw the line on more taxes and benefits
Badenoch is correct to say she will reinstate the 2 child cap but needs to go further with abolishing the triple lock and means testing the state pension as part of a reduction in welfare spending and not adding to benefits other than by inflation
Means testing the state pension, as with other means testing, just creates an administrative burden. The better off already pay 40-60% tax on it.
Worse than that- if you means test the state pension, there isn't much point in making other arrangements for a lot of people. Why bother saving if it just reduces your state pension?
It would turn a small problem now into a much bigger problem in a few decades time. And nobody would want to be that short-sighted, would they?
What is obvious is that the present arrangements cannot continue so either the state pension has some form of means testing or the age will have to increase to 70+
Neither are easy but then cutting welfare is never going to be easy
I suspect the government have lit a ticking time bomb with the removal of the benefits cap.
Every time a story about a large non-working family comes out (there will be plenty), with taxpayers paying - it will be laid at their door.
They haven't removed the benefit cap (£22k); they've removed the two-child limit.
So stories about families on £60k worth of benefits won't be common*. Some child poverty think tanks have pointed out that the £22k limit significantly limits the effect of the change - they're not wrong, particularly somewhere like London where the just housing element could be £30k.
*There are a number of exemptions, particularly around disability benefits, but I reckon DWP will tighten that up.
If you're explaining, you're losing. And removing the two-child limit alone is politically damaging.
Taxes are going up by £3-4 billion to pay for it, and everyone knows that money is going on extra welfare and coming from their paycheck.
I don't disagree - just pointing out that the Mail will struggle to find those households.
The other thing that's interesting is what the Conservatives do. I had a flick through affected households by council area and it's not a bad proxy for areas where Reform are doing well. That's why Farage - by far our canniest politician - has come out in favour. Whether the Conservatives follow or not will be a signal into their strategy for the next 3 years.
Kemi has been clear the Conservatives would have kept the 2 child benefit cap. Though they should also back an increase in standard child benefit for most parents while keeping the two child benefit cap for parents on universal credit
But many people on UC are actually working ... your proposal is self-contradictory to a considerable degree.
Many aren’t whereas the vast majority on standard child benefit work and a parent out of work can only claim it for six months while on JSA
Go back and read what you wrote. You're demanding an increase in benefits for people who are well enough off not to need UC, while demanding the 2CC for people who are not well enough off not to need UC. That's *reverse* means testing.
If that's Modern Tory policy, heaven help the party.
No as you also cannot claim child benefit if your income is over £80k. It is working parents who are on middle income who earn less than that and don’t claim UC who would benefit from increased standard child benefit and given our low 1.4 fertility rate now that is why I back a rise in standard child benefit.
It would be a fantastic Tory pro middle income families policy
It would be unacceptable in the present climate
The two most unpopular decisions in the Budget according to YouGov were freezing thresholds and the 2 child benefit cap as the public draw the line on more taxes and benefits
Badenoch is correct to say she will reinstate the 2 child cap but needs to go further with abolishing the triple lock and means testing the state pension as part of a reduction in welfare spending and not adding to benefits other than by inflation
Means testing the state pension, as with other means testing, just creates an administrative burden. The better off already pay 40-60% tax on it.
Worse than that- if you means test the state pension, there isn't much point in making other arrangements for a lot of people. Why bother saving if it just reduces your state pension?
It would turn a small problem now into a much bigger problem in a few decades time. And nobody would want to be that short-sighted, would they?
What is obvious is that the present arrangements cannot continue so either the state pension has some form of means testing or the age will have to increase to 70+
Neither are easy but then cutting welfare is never going to be easy
I suspect the government have lit a ticking time bomb with the removal of the benefits cap.
Every time a story about a large non-working family comes out (there will be plenty), with taxpayers paying - it will be laid at their door.
They haven't removed the benefit cap (£22k); they've removed the two-child limit.
So stories about families on £60k worth of benefits won't be common*. Some child poverty think tanks have pointed out that the £22k limit significantly limits the effect of the change - they're not wrong, particularly somewhere like London where the just housing element could be £30k.
*There are a number of exemptions, particularly around disability benefits, but I reckon DWP will tighten that up.
If you're explaining, you're losing. And removing the two-child limit alone is politically damaging.
Taxes are going up by £3-4 billion to pay for it, and everyone knows that money is going on extra welfare and coming from their paycheck.
I don't disagree - just pointing out that the Mail will struggle to find those households.
The other thing that's interesting is what the Conservatives do. I had a flick through affected households by council area and it's not a bad proxy for areas where Reform are doing well. That's why Farage - by far our canniest politician - has come out in favour. Whether the Conservatives follow or not will be a signal into their strategy for the next 3 years.
Kemi has been clear the Conservatives would have kept the 2 child benefit cap. Though they should also back an increase in standard child benefit for most parents while keeping the two child benefit cap for parents on universal credit
But many people on UC are actually working ... your proposal is self-contradictory to a considerable degree.
Many aren’t whereas the vast majority on standard child benefit work and a parent out of work can only claim it for 91 days while on JSA
Almost three quarters of children in poverty are in working households. This Tory division into strivers and shirkers is a fundamentally dishonest narrative.
Define 'poverty'.
Define 'working'.
The way in which such terms have had their meanings repeatedly stretched is very much part of the 'taking the piss' issue.
So Rachel from accounts won the sack race against Richard Hughes, with the OBR chief forced out rather than testify to the Committee today.
American sack race next, who wins out of SecDef Peter Hegseth and Minnesota Gov Tim Walz, both on the front pages for separate scandals over the weekend?
Ed Balls reckons they should reject the resignation
I find it hard to feel that the OBR early report release was a resignation matter. It's a nice easy to understand Westminster gossip type story that the media can get excited about, but at bottom it's "we made a mistake with the config of our Wordpress site so it wasn't requiring authentication for the file the way we expected". Yes, there's the "market sensitive information" aspect, but in practice that doesn't seem to have actually caused major harm. The closest to a real management failure is that they probably should have assessed whether they were taking the risks seriously enough (e.g. testing that their embargoed docs process really did prevent access) and whether the system they set up in 2013 was still the right one given how important the OBR has become these days. But if we lose a decent head of the OBR and it spends the next six months leaderless while selecting a new one who then has to get up to speed with the organisation's issues, is that really a benefit to the country?
No accountability, eh?
Next week - “Bombed the shipwrecked survivors *twice*. But losing the head of the military, is that really a benefit to the country? At this point does it really matter?”
If no one is punished for anything, then anything goes.
“Just open the gates, Constable, it’s not like anyone does anything if a bunch of scousers get crushed.”
I think that if we treat every mistake and oversight as if it was a wilful decision that could foreseeably cause multiple deaths, then every senior leader of every organisation or enterprise in the country would be out of a job every three months, to absolutely no benefit -- and those who presided over the real horrors will be no worse off than those where some minor mishap happened under their watch, which I'm sure they'd be happy about. There should be accountability, yes. But it should be proportional.
So we should just do nothing?
Excellent news for those who have a major fuck up on their watch, every three months or so.
I was in a meeting in a bank, where they explained Sarbanes-Oxley. When it was bought in.
A manger put his hand up - “So if someone working for me fucks up, I could go to prison? in America?”
Answer - “Yes. If you can’t prove they acted against policy and systems weren’t there to stop them.”
Within hours, shit was being tightened up. No more developers with access to production, traders “fixing” trades using the “admin” login.
I think fundamentally I disagree that this is "a major fuckup". And as far as I'm aware it's not part of a pattern of the organisation having major screwups every three months.
What do graphs like this say?
Oh, and an early release like this is a sacking offence in many contexts.
The fact that a junior employee hasn’t been binned strongly suggests that they don’t have a proper system in place. Probably because a senior manager decided not to fund it.
That was the commentary this morning - that their system was more appropriate to a small business. It's probably an issue which requires resignation to be offered, but not necessarily accepted automatically. I guess Reeves really did not want to save him.
Using Wordpress for anything that requires security or confidentiality is incompetence.
"Police inquiry into Post Office and Horizon may run out of cash Officers have told victims there will have to be ‘tough decisions’ on Operation Olympos despite the number of criminal suspects doubling to eight"
There never is. The British state is like an abuser who gets away with years of abuse but is never held properly accountable: it is untrustworthy, incompetent, malicious and unwilling / incapable of change, no matter what promises it makes or how many apologies are dragged out of it. We have a Potemkin justice system. And the inquiry reports lead to little more than a lot of bad headlines for a few days but no real change.
There is absolutely no point any more to any of it.
Budget eh?
Sorry I forgot to add that to my list -
Prediction - "It turned out that there 146 senior people potentially chargeable in matters arising from the Post Office. 3 are dead. 112 have taken early retirement. The rest have been diagnosed with stress and are in the luxury sections of various in-patient facilities paid for from their Post Office packages. So it would not be in the interests of justice to pursue them further. We have charged the lady who cleans on Thursdays with misconduct in a public office."
- the final report is being “trimmed” from thousands of pages to 400. In the interests of clarity - the full report will be archived, not released - all police officers involved are dead or retired.
So why, you ask, not release everything?
Well, *after* Hillsborough, for years, people in the system lied and covered up. Some of them are still alive. Some of them are still working in government.
Many will be The Right Sort. A Safe Pair of Hands.
#NU10K
What more is there to know?
The Police f*cked up, then they lied to cover this up, the Government supported them, and various members of the great and the good tried to write reports telling us all what we knew already but were hampered by concerns that they might upset too many of those who were to blame.
Need we spend more money on this?
Spycops is into its 10th year. We're getting rid of juries because just having a judge will be quicker...
There was a lengthy interview with a judge early this morning on Today, who reckoned it would make only a marginal difference to speed of trials. And that the only way to seriously tackle the backlog would be to provide more resources, judges and court time. (He had participated in a successful local exercise to reduce backlog, but it ended when they lost a couple of judges.)
As pointed out by several actual courtroom participants, here, there is a huge amount of faffing about in courtrooms. In classic OR methodology, speed up all the non-expert stuff.
For example, the screens/no-screens for witnesses. What about the following -
- screens attached/built into the witness stand. Slide up and down. Manual - think sash window. 2 seconds to pull up or down. - The giving-evidence-by-video-from-a-room thing. Each court provided with one (some courtrooms don’t have them, so they have to switch courts etc). Redundant systems, tested and maintained before sittings start.
I was in the shower at the time, so missed some of the detail, but that was very much the kind of thing he was talking about. it doesn't happen without sufficient resources to create the space to actually organise it; at the moment they're just fire fighting without enough fire appliances.
Lord Mann also highlighted an error in the West Midlands Police intelligence report which referenced a match between Maccabi Tel Aviv and West Ham, which had never happened, he said.
The chief constable admitted that had ended up in the report "due to a social media post".
The chief constable should be resigning over this farce.
I suspect the government have lit a ticking time bomb with the removal of the benefits cap.
Every time a story about a large non-working family comes out (there will be plenty), with taxpayers paying - it will be laid at their door.
They haven't removed the benefit cap (£22k); they've removed the two-child limit.
So stories about families on £60k worth of benefits won't be common*. Some child poverty think tanks have pointed out that the £22k limit significantly limits the effect of the change - they're not wrong, particularly somewhere like London where the just housing element could be £30k.
*There are a number of exemptions, particularly around disability benefits, but I reckon DWP will tighten that up.
If you're explaining, you're losing. And removing the two-child limit alone is politically damaging.
Taxes are going up by £3-4 billion to pay for it, and everyone knows that money is going on extra welfare and coming from their paycheck.
I don't disagree - just pointing out that the Mail will struggle to find those households.
The other thing that's interesting is what the Conservatives do. I had a flick through affected households by council area and it's not a bad proxy for areas where Reform are doing well. That's why Farage - by far our canniest politician - has come out in favour. Whether the Conservatives follow or not will be a signal into their strategy for the next 3 years.
Kemi has been clear the Conservatives would have kept the 2 child benefit cap. Though they should also back an increase in standard child benefit for most parents while keeping the two child benefit cap for parents on universal credit
But many people on UC are actually working ... your proposal is self-contradictory to a considerable degree.
Many aren’t whereas the vast majority on standard child benefit work and a parent out of work can only claim it for six months while on JSA
Go back and read what you wrote. You're demanding an increase in benefits for people who are well enough off not to need UC, while demanding the 2CC for people who are not well enough off not to need UC. That's *reverse* means testing.
If that's Modern Tory policy, heaven help the party.
No as you also cannot claim child benefit if your income is over £80k. It is working parents who are on middle income who earn less than that and don’t claim UC who would benefit from increased standard child benefit and given our low 1.4 fertility rate now that is why I back a rise in standard child benefit.
It would be a fantastic Tory pro middle income families policy
It would be unacceptable in the present climate
The two most unpopular decisions in the Budget according to YouGov were freezing thresholds and the 2 child benefit cap as the public draw the line on more taxes and benefits
Badenoch is correct to say she will reinstate the 2 child cap but needs to go further with abolishing the triple lock and means testing the state pension as part of a reduction in welfare spending and not adding to benefits other than by inflation
Means testing the state pension, as with other means testing, just creates an administrative burden. The better off already pay 40-60% tax on it.
Worse than that- if you means test the state pension, there isn't much point in making other arrangements for a lot of people. Why bother saving if it just reduces your state pension?
It would turn a small problem now into a much bigger problem in a few decades time. And nobody would want to be that short-sighted, would they?
What is obvious is that the present arrangements cannot continue so either the state pension has some form of means testing or the age will have to increase to 70+
Neither are easy but then cutting welfare is never going to be easy
The state pension age will increase to 70 and then over.
There is a point of principle involved in connection with the proposed Tourist Tax (to be levied by the directly-elected Mayors); how do you reconcile this tax with the fundamental principle of Democracy "No Taxation without Representation"?
There is a point of principle involved in connection with the proposed Tourist Tax (to be levied by the directly-elected Mayors); how do you reconcile this tax with the fundamental principle of Democracy "No Taxation without Representation"?
I suspect the government have lit a ticking time bomb with the removal of the benefits cap.
Every time a story about a large non-working family comes out (there will be plenty), with taxpayers paying - it will be laid at their door.
They haven't removed the benefit cap (£22k); they've removed the two-child limit.
So stories about families on £60k worth of benefits won't be common*. Some child poverty think tanks have pointed out that the £22k limit significantly limits the effect of the change - they're not wrong, particularly somewhere like London where the just housing element could be £30k.
*There are a number of exemptions, particularly around disability benefits, but I reckon DWP will tighten that up.
If you're explaining, you're losing.
But with the consolation that at least you are comprehending.
Taxes are going up to pay for more welfare to give to those with larger families.
That's all that matters, and it happens to be true as well.
Once again, it's Lib Dems that are out here defending the Labour government. I wonder whether any of them have the self awareness to have their Alec Guinness moment before the next election and realise in their desperate rush to hate the Tories they've become defenders of incompetence and malevolence from Labour. I doubt it.
Treating politics as though it was a football match is why the UK keeps making crappy decisions. This childish view that everything your political opponents say, do, or even think is, ipso facto, wrong, and possibly criminal is the reason why UK politics doesn't deliver. It's not a set menu we need, it's a la carte. The problem is that the Tories are still struggling with a pathetic pool of talent and the legacy of 14 years of unacceptable failure. I hold no brief for Labour, but the day after the Tories finally make some well thought out and coherent policies, Then I might take your whinge seriously. Until then, you'd be better off hauding ye whisht.
Besides, most of the people I see defending the plan are the vaguely paternalist one nation types who would have been Conservatives until fairly recently, but can't back the current iteration of the blue party as better than the current government. Because they aren't.
I suspect the government have lit a ticking time bomb with the removal of the benefits cap.
Every time a story about a large non-working family comes out (there will be plenty), with taxpayers paying - it will be laid at their door.
They haven't removed the benefit cap (£22k); they've removed the two-child limit.
So stories about families on £60k worth of benefits won't be common*. Some child poverty think tanks have pointed out that the £22k limit significantly limits the effect of the change - they're not wrong, particularly somewhere like London where the just housing element could be £30k.
*There are a number of exemptions, particularly around disability benefits, but I reckon DWP will tighten that up.
If you're explaining, you're losing. And removing the two-child limit alone is politically damaging.
Taxes are going up by £3-4 billion to pay for it, and everyone knows that money is going on extra welfare and coming from their paycheck.
I don't disagree - just pointing out that the Mail will struggle to find those households.
The other thing that's interesting is what the Conservatives do. I had a flick through affected households by council area and it's not a bad proxy for areas where Reform are doing well. That's why Farage - by far our canniest politician - has come out in favour. Whether the Conservatives follow or not will be a signal into their strategy for the next 3 years.
Kemi has been clear the Conservatives would have kept the 2 child benefit cap. Though they should also back an increase in standard child benefit for most parents while keeping the two child benefit cap for parents on universal credit
But many people on UC are actually working ... your proposal is self-contradictory to a considerable degree.
Many aren’t whereas the vast majority on standard child benefit work and a parent out of work can only claim it for six months while on JSA
Go back and read what you wrote. You're demanding an increase in benefits for people who are well enough off not to need UC, while demanding the 2CC for people who are not well enough off not to need UC. That's *reverse* means testing.
If that's Modern Tory policy, heaven help the party.
No as you also cannot claim child benefit if your income is over £80k. It is working parents who are on middle income who earn less than that and don’t claim UC who would benefit from increased standard child benefit and given our low 1.4 fertility rate now that is why I back a rise in standard child benefit.
It would be a fantastic Tory pro middle income families policy
It would be unacceptable in the present climate
The two most unpopular decisions in the Budget according to YouGov were freezing thresholds and the 2 child benefit cap as the public draw the line on more taxes and benefits
Badenoch is correct to say she will reinstate the 2 child cap but needs to go further with abolishing the triple lock and means testing the state pension as part of a reduction in welfare spending and not adding to benefits other than by inflation
Means testing the state pension, as with other means testing, just creates an administrative burden. The better off already pay 40-60% tax on it.
Worse than that- if you means test the state pension, there isn't much point in making other arrangements for a lot of people. Why bother saving if it just reduces your state pension?
It would turn a small problem now into a much bigger problem in a few decades time. And nobody would want to be that short-sighted, would they?
What is obvious is that the present arrangements cannot continue so either the state pension has some form of means testing or the age will have to increase to 70+
Neither are easy but then cutting welfare is never going to be easy
I suspect the government have lit a ticking time bomb with the removal of the benefits cap.
Every time a story about a large non-working family comes out (there will be plenty), with taxpayers paying - it will be laid at their door.
They haven't removed the benefit cap (£22k); they've removed the two-child limit.
So stories about families on £60k worth of benefits won't be common*. Some child poverty think tanks have pointed out that the £22k limit significantly limits the effect of the change - they're not wrong, particularly somewhere like London where the just housing element could be £30k.
*There are a number of exemptions, particularly around disability benefits, but I reckon DWP will tighten that up.
If you're explaining, you're losing. And removing the two-child limit alone is politically damaging.
Taxes are going up by £3-4 billion to pay for it, and everyone knows that money is going on extra welfare and coming from their paycheck.
I don't disagree - just pointing out that the Mail will struggle to find those households.
The other thing that's interesting is what the Conservatives do. I had a flick through affected households by council area and it's not a bad proxy for areas where Reform are doing well. That's why Farage - by far our canniest politician - has come out in favour. Whether the Conservatives follow or not will be a signal into their strategy for the next 3 years.
Kemi has been clear the Conservatives would have kept the 2 child benefit cap. Though they should also back an increase in standard child benefit for most parents while keeping the two child benefit cap for parents on universal credit
But many people on UC are actually working ... your proposal is self-contradictory to a considerable degree.
Many aren’t whereas the vast majority on standard child benefit work and a parent out of work can only claim it for six months while on JSA
Go back and read what you wrote. You're demanding an increase in benefits for people who are well enough off not to need UC, while demanding the 2CC for people who are not well enough off not to need UC. That's *reverse* means testing.
If that's Modern Tory policy, heaven help the party.
No as you also cannot claim child benefit if your income is over £80k. It is working parents who are on middle income who earn less than that and don’t claim UC who would benefit from increased standard child benefit and given our low 1.4 fertility rate now that is why I back a rise in standard child benefit.
It would be a fantastic Tory pro middle income families policy
It would be unacceptable in the present climate
The two most unpopular decisions in the Budget according to YouGov were freezing thresholds and the 2 child benefit cap as the public draw the line on more taxes and benefits
Badenoch is correct to say she will reinstate the 2 child cap but needs to go further with abolishing the triple lock and means testing the state pension as part of a reduction in welfare spending and not adding to benefits other than by inflation
Means testing the state pension, as with other means testing, just creates an administrative burden. The better off already pay 40-60% tax on it.
Worse than that- if you means test the state pension, there isn't much point in making other arrangements for a lot of people. Why bother saving if it just reduces your state pension?
It would turn a small problem now into a much bigger problem in a few decades time. And nobody would want to be that short-sighted, would they?
What is obvious is that the present arrangements cannot continue so either the state pension has some form of means testing or the age will have to increase to 70+
Neither are easy but then cutting welfare is never going to be easy
Age increases make more sense than means testing.
Remember that the state pension is paid out of current receipts, there is no fund. If the drawbridge is pulled up and those of working age, who pay for the state pension, are told they'll have to work for even longer while paying for those for retired far earlier then that could be the end of the state pension. The social contract between the generations will break.
Fairer, and more politically palatable, to means test or reduce the state pension in real terms. Given that pensioners are eligible for other benefits then the latter is effectively a cheaper way of doing the former.
I suspect the government have lit a ticking time bomb with the removal of the benefits cap.
Every time a story about a large non-working family comes out (there will be plenty), with taxpayers paying - it will be laid at their door.
They haven't removed the benefit cap (£22k); they've removed the two-child limit.
So stories about families on £60k worth of benefits won't be common*. Some child poverty think tanks have pointed out that the £22k limit significantly limits the effect of the change - they're not wrong, particularly somewhere like London where the just housing element could be £30k.
*There are a number of exemptions, particularly around disability benefits, but I reckon DWP will tighten that up.
If you're explaining, you're losing. And removing the two-child limit alone is politically damaging.
Taxes are going up by £3-4 billion to pay for it, and everyone knows that money is going on extra welfare and coming from their paycheck.
I don't disagree - just pointing out that the Mail will struggle to find those households.
The other thing that's interesting is what the Conservatives do. I had a flick through affected households by council area and it's not a bad proxy for areas where Reform are doing well. That's why Farage - by far our canniest politician - has come out in favour. Whether the Conservatives follow or not will be a signal into their strategy for the next 3 years.
Kemi has been clear the Conservatives would have kept the 2 child benefit cap. Though they should also back an increase in standard child benefit for most parents while keeping the two child benefit cap for parents on universal credit
But many people on UC are actually working ... your proposal is self-contradictory to a considerable degree.
Many aren’t whereas the vast majority on standard child benefit work and a parent out of work can only claim it for 91 days while on JSA
Almost three quarters of children in poverty are in working households. This Tory division into strivers and shirkers is a fundamentally dishonest narrative.
Would that be the nonsensical measure of relative poverty, cleverly redefining the term so it will always exist?
[Got to go out now, which is a shame, because I do like a debate about this sort of thing ]
Yeah we already had an argument on this topic. Tldr; you were wrong.
So Rachel from accounts won the sack race against Richard Hughes, with the OBR chief forced out rather than testify to the Committee today.
American sack race next, who wins out of SecDef Peter Hegseth and Minnesota Gov Tim Walz, both on the front pages for separate scandals over the weekend?
Just to be clear you are equating murder / a war crime (at best) with an administrative failure by the system (on Walz’s watch) which has resulted in a large number of prosecutions/ convictions?
Junior doctors rep Dr Dolphin having an absolutely shocker on Today. He might need to check into his own A&E after the savaging he’s getting from Nick Robinson.
So Rachel from accounts won the sack race against Richard Hughes, with the OBR chief forced out rather than testify to the Committee today.
American sack race next, who wins out of SecDef Peter Hegseth and Minnesota Gov Tim Walz, both on the front pages for separate scandals over the weekend?
Ed Balls reckons they should reject the resignation
I find it hard to feel that the OBR early report release was a resignation matter. It's a nice easy to understand Westminster gossip type story that the media can get excited about, but at bottom it's "we made a mistake with the config of our Wordpress site so it wasn't requiring authentication for the file the way we expected". Yes, there's the "market sensitive information" aspect, but in practice that doesn't seem to have actually caused major harm. The closest to a real management failure is that they probably should have assessed whether they were taking the risks seriously enough (e.g. testing that their embargoed docs process really did prevent access) and whether the system they set up in 2013 was still the right one given how important the OBR has become these days. But if we lose a decent head of the OBR and it spends the next six months leaderless while selecting a new one who then has to get up to speed with the organisation's issues, is that really a benefit to the country?
No accountability, eh?
Next week - “Bombed the shipwrecked survivors *twice*. But losing the head of the military, is that really a benefit to the country? At this point does it really matter?”
If no one is punished for anything, then anything goes.
“Just open the gates, Constable, it’s not like anyone does anything if a bunch of scousers get crushed.”
I think that if we treat every mistake and oversight as if it was a wilful decision that could foreseeably cause multiple deaths, then every senior leader of every organisation or enterprise in the country would be out of a job every three months, to absolutely no benefit -- and those who presided over the real horrors will be no worse off than those where some minor mishap happened under their watch, which I'm sure they'd be happy about. There should be accountability, yes. But it should be proportional.
So we should just do nothing?
Excellent news for those who have a major fuck up on their watch, every three months or so.
I was in a meeting in a bank, where they explained Sarbanes-Oxley. When it was bought in.
A manger put his hand up - “So if someone working for me fucks up, I could go to prison? in America?”
Answer - “Yes. If you can’t prove they acted against policy and systems weren’t there to stop them.”
Within hours, shit was being tightened up. No more developers with access to production, traders “fixing” trades using the “admin” login.
I think fundamentally I disagree that this is "a major fuckup". And as far as I'm aware it's not part of a pattern of the organisation having major screwups every three months.
What do graphs like this say?
Oh, and an early release like this is a sacking offence in many contexts.
The fact that a junior employee hasn’t been binned strongly suggests that they don’t have a proper system in place. Probably because a senior manager decided not to fund it.
That was the commentary this morning - that their system was more appropriate to a small business. It's probably an issue which requires resignation to be offered, but not necessarily accepted automatically. I guess Reeves really did not want to save him.
I wonder if the resignation isn’t mostly to do with the unpublished early release, but actually more to do with the conversation around the timelines certain discussions were had and figures laid out to the Chancellor and the Treasury.
He was due to be in Committee today, and may well have accused the Chancellor of telling untruths, in which case she’s pleased to have forced him out beforehand
"Police inquiry into Post Office and Horizon may run out of cash Officers have told victims there will have to be ‘tough decisions’ on Operation Olympos despite the number of criminal suspects doubling to eight"
There never is. The British state is like an abuser who gets away with years of abuse but is never held properly accountable: it is untrustworthy, incompetent, malicious and unwilling / incapable of change, no matter what promises it makes or how many apologies are dragged out of it. We have a Potemkin justice system. And the inquiry reports lead to little more than a lot of bad headlines for a few days but no real change.
There is absolutely no point any more to any of it.
Budget eh?
Sorry I forgot to add that to my list -
Prediction - "It turned out that there 146 senior people potentially chargeable in matters arising from the Post Office. 3 are dead. 112 have taken early retirement. The rest have been diagnosed with stress and are in the luxury sections of various in-patient facilities paid for from their Post Office packages. So it would not be in the interests of justice to pursue them further. We have charged the lady who cleans on Thursdays with misconduct in a public office."
- the final report is being “trimmed” from thousands of pages to 400. In the interests of clarity - the full report will be archived, not released - all police officers involved are dead or retired.
So why, you ask, not release everything?
Well, *after* Hillsborough, for years, people in the system lied and covered up. Some of them are still alive. Some of them are still working in government.
Many will be The Right Sort. A Safe Pair of Hands.
#NU10K
What more is there to know?
The Police f*cked up, then they lied to cover this up, the Government supported them, and various members of the great and the good tried to write reports telling us all what we knew already but were hampered by concerns that they might upset too many of those who were to blame.
Need we spend more money on this?
I would add - the culture of football hooliganism was the main cause of the disaster. No need for fences to control hooligans = no one dying at Hillsborough. People don't like it but many of the fans who were at Hillsborough were also at Heysel, and some of them were probably amongst those who contributed to 39 Juventus fans dying. Then add in the poor condition of football stadia at the time. Then add in the fact that despite the awful conditions it had safety certificates.
And then add in the police making mistakes.
Swiss cheese model of accident prevention applies.
However the cover-up and lies were atrocious, and sadly, all too many people were prepared to believe them.
People have a natural instinct to want justice for wrongs, and sometimes revenge. Sometimes its better to have truth and reconciliation.
Baseline + trend monitoring is quite common although i wouldn’t use “preventative” to describe it. But it’s costly so I doubt the NHS does it outside of high risk categories
However it was interesting that Leavitt went into a lot of data about cardio and abdominal. What about neurovascular?
I suspect the government have lit a ticking time bomb with the removal of the benefits cap.
Every time a story about a large non-working family comes out (there will be plenty), with taxpayers paying - it will be laid at their door.
They haven't removed the benefit cap (£22k); they've removed the two-child limit.
So stories about families on £60k worth of benefits won't be common*. Some child poverty think tanks have pointed out that the £22k limit significantly limits the effect of the change - they're not wrong, particularly somewhere like London where the just housing element could be £30k.
*There are a number of exemptions, particularly around disability benefits, but I reckon DWP will tighten that up.
If you're explaining, you're losing. And removing the two-child limit alone is politically damaging.
Taxes are going up by £3-4 billion to pay for it, and everyone knows that money is going on extra welfare and coming from their paycheck.
I don't disagree - just pointing out that the Mail will struggle to find those households.
The other thing that's interesting is what the Conservatives do. I had a flick through affected households by council area and it's not a bad proxy for areas where Reform are doing well. That's why Farage - by far our canniest politician - has come out in favour. Whether the Conservatives follow or not will be a signal into their strategy for the next 3 years.
Kemi has been clear the Conservatives would have kept the 2 child benefit cap. Though they should also back an increase in standard child benefit for most parents while keeping the two child benefit cap for parents on universal credit
But many people on UC are actually working ... your proposal is self-contradictory to a considerable degree.
Many aren’t whereas the vast majority on standard child benefit work and a parent out of work can only claim it for 91 days while on JSA
Almost three quarters of children in poverty are in working households. This Tory division into strivers and shirkers is a fundamentally dishonest narrative.
Would that be the nonsensical measure of relative poverty, cleverly redefining the term so it will always exist?
[Got to go out now, which is a shame, because I do like a debate about this sort of thing ]
Yeah we already had an argument on this topic. Tldr; you were wrong.
Can confirm that Morris_Dancer continues to be completely wrong about whether relative poverty can be eliminated or not.
(Relative poverty is defined as having below 50%/60% of median income. You could lift everyone above the poverty line and achieve 0% poverty).
"At the Heysel Stadium in Brussels in 1985, 39 Juventus supporters were killed, primarily as a consequence of a charge by drunken opposition fans. Four years later, at Hillsborough, Sheffield, more than twice as many spectators were crushed to death, primarily as a result of police contempt for the hooligan minority. That both tragedies involved Liverpool followers – 96 of whom died at Hillsborough – is the unhappiest, most divisive and most problematic of coincidences. Yet while it would be naïve, at best, to deny any other connection, the long-running inquiry into the Hillsborough tragedy has bred denial about Heysel, and not exclusively among Liverpool supporters. Further hampered by the reluctance of Juventus to desecrate the club’s first European Cup final triumph by reopening old wounds, debate has been stifled. To suggest that the fatal charge at Heysel might have contributed to the unconscionable behaviour of the police at Hillsborough, or that the fences that contributed so heavily to the deaths would not have been there but for pitch invasions, is to wade into toxic waters. Written to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Heysel tragedy, this paper investigates the various ‘truths’, interviews witnesses and addresses the inherent contradictions of ‘The Tragedy That Dare Not Speak Its Name’."
I suspect the government have lit a ticking time bomb with the removal of the benefits cap.
Every time a story about a large non-working family comes out (there will be plenty), with taxpayers paying - it will be laid at their door.
They haven't removed the benefit cap (£22k); they've removed the two-child limit.
So stories about families on £60k worth of benefits won't be common*. Some child poverty think tanks have pointed out that the £22k limit significantly limits the effect of the change - they're not wrong, particularly somewhere like London where the just housing element could be £30k.
*There are a number of exemptions, particularly around disability benefits, but I reckon DWP will tighten that up.
If you're explaining, you're losing. And removing the two-child limit alone is politically damaging.
Taxes are going up by £3-4 billion to pay for it, and everyone knows that money is going on extra welfare and coming from their paycheck.
I don't disagree - just pointing out that the Mail will struggle to find those households.
The other thing that's interesting is what the Conservatives do. I had a flick through affected households by council area and it's not a bad proxy for areas where Reform are doing well. That's why Farage - by far our canniest politician - has come out in favour. Whether the Conservatives follow or not will be a signal into their strategy for the next 3 years.
Kemi has been clear the Conservatives would have kept the 2 child benefit cap. Though they should also back an increase in standard child benefit for most parents while keeping the two child benefit cap for parents on universal credit
But many people on UC are actually working ... your proposal is self-contradictory to a considerable degree.
Many aren’t whereas the vast majority on standard child benefit work and a parent out of work can only claim it for 91 days while on JSA
Almost three quarters of children in poverty are in working households. This Tory division into strivers and shirkers is a fundamentally dishonest narrative.
Would that be the nonsensical measure of relative poverty, cleverly redefining the term so it will always exist?
[Got to go out now, which is a shame, because I do like a debate about this sort of thing ]
Yeah we already had an argument on this topic. Tldr; you were wrong.
Can confirm that Morris_Dancer continues to be completely wrong about whether relative poverty can be eliminated or not.
(Relative poverty is defined as having below 50%/60% of median income. You could lift everyone above the poverty line and achieve 0% poverty).
Junior doctors rep Dr Dolphin having an absolutely shocker on Today. He might need to check into his own A&E after the savaging he’s getting from Nick Robinson.
I suspect the government have lit a ticking time bomb with the removal of the benefits cap.
Every time a story about a large non-working family comes out (there will be plenty), with taxpayers paying - it will be laid at their door.
They haven't removed the benefit cap (£22k); they've removed the two-child limit.
So stories about families on £60k worth of benefits won't be common*. Some child poverty think tanks have pointed out that the £22k limit significantly limits the effect of the change - they're not wrong, particularly somewhere like London where the just housing element could be £30k.
*There are a number of exemptions, particularly around disability benefits, but I reckon DWP will tighten that up.
If you're explaining, you're losing. And removing the two-child limit alone is politically damaging.
Taxes are going up by £3-4 billion to pay for it, and everyone knows that money is going on extra welfare and coming from their paycheck.
I don't disagree - just pointing out that the Mail will struggle to find those households.
The other thing that's interesting is what the Conservatives do. I had a flick through affected households by council area and it's not a bad proxy for areas where Reform are doing well. That's why Farage - by far our canniest politician - has come out in favour. Whether the Conservatives follow or not will be a signal into their strategy for the next 3 years.
Kemi has been clear the Conservatives would have kept the 2 child benefit cap. Though they should also back an increase in standard child benefit for most parents while keeping the two child benefit cap for parents on universal credit
But many people on UC are actually working ... your proposal is self-contradictory to a considerable degree.
Many aren’t whereas the vast majority on standard child benefit work and a parent out of work can only claim it for 91 days while on JSA
Almost three quarters of children in poverty are in working households. This Tory division into strivers and shirkers is a fundamentally dishonest narrative.
Define 'poverty'.
Define 'working'.
The way in which such terms have had their meanings repeatedly stretched is very much part of the 'taking the piss' issue.
Quite. Daily T podcast recently had a bit about the calculations the TUC uses (which is where the Government is getting its '400,000 children lifted out of poverty' statistic from. The notion of poverty is based being some way below the median income - so the current outflux of millionaires and high earners is, in and of itself, 'lifting children out of poverty'. Huzzah!
There is a point of principle involved in connection with the proposed Tourist Tax (to be levied by the directly-elected Mayors); how do you reconcile this tax with the fundamental principle of Democracy "No Taxation without Representation"?
That's an incomplete "principle". People too young to vote have always paid tax, income tax if earning, petrol duty if they are a driver, VAT of course.
The other principle is of visitors taking advantage of local services without having paid for them.
Agent Anderson, in a debate on the School Curriculum this week:
Year 9 students at Quarrydale academy in Ashfield are currently studying politics, and on their display board they had the words “extreme right-wing parties”, “Nazi party” and “fascism”. At the side of those words, they had pictures of Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, my hon. Friend the Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) and me. Does the Minister think that should be on the curriculum?
I suspect the government have lit a ticking time bomb with the removal of the benefits cap.
Every time a story about a large non-working family comes out (there will be plenty), with taxpayers paying - it will be laid at their door.
They haven't removed the benefit cap (£22k); they've removed the two-child limit.
So stories about families on £60k worth of benefits won't be common*. Some child poverty think tanks have pointed out that the £22k limit significantly limits the effect of the change - they're not wrong, particularly somewhere like London where the just housing element could be £30k.
*There are a number of exemptions, particularly around disability benefits, but I reckon DWP will tighten that up.
If you're explaining, you're losing. And removing the two-child limit alone is politically damaging.
Taxes are going up by £3-4 billion to pay for it, and everyone knows that money is going on extra welfare and coming from their paycheck.
I don't disagree - just pointing out that the Mail will struggle to find those households.
The other thing that's interesting is what the Conservatives do. I had a flick through affected households by council area and it's not a bad proxy for areas where Reform are doing well. That's why Farage - by far our canniest politician - has come out in favour. Whether the Conservatives follow or not will be a signal into their strategy for the next 3 years.
Kemi has been clear the Conservatives would have kept the 2 child benefit cap. Though they should also back an increase in standard child benefit for most parents while keeping the two child benefit cap for parents on universal credit
But many people on UC are actually working ... your proposal is self-contradictory to a considerable degree.
Many aren’t whereas the vast majority on standard child benefit work and a parent out of work can only claim it for 91 days while on JSA
Almost three quarters of children in poverty are in working households. This Tory division into strivers and shirkers is a fundamentally dishonest narrative.
Would that be the nonsensical measure of relative poverty, cleverly redefining the term so it will always exist?
[Got to go out now, which is a shame, because I do like a debate about this sort of thing ]
Yeah we already had an argument on this topic. Tldr; you were wrong.
Can confirm that Morris_Dancer continues to be completely wrong about whether relative poverty can be eliminated or not.
(Relative poverty is defined as having below 50%/60% of median income. You could lift everyone above the poverty line and achieve 0% poverty).
But what is special about 50%/60%?
That's a different question.
The logic for it is that living in an economy where the price of most things is set by aggregate demand becomes very tricky indeed at 60% of median income. Some other countries use 50%. It correlates closely with other measures like material deprivation and absolute poverty.
I suspect the government have lit a ticking time bomb with the removal of the benefits cap.
Every time a story about a large non-working family comes out (there will be plenty), with taxpayers paying - it will be laid at their door.
They haven't removed the benefit cap (£22k); they've removed the two-child limit.
So stories about families on £60k worth of benefits won't be common*. Some child poverty think tanks have pointed out that the £22k limit significantly limits the effect of the change - they're not wrong, particularly somewhere like London where the just housing element could be £30k.
*There are a number of exemptions, particularly around disability benefits, but I reckon DWP will tighten that up.
If you're explaining, you're losing. And removing the two-child limit alone is politically damaging.
Taxes are going up by £3-4 billion to pay for it, and everyone knows that money is going on extra welfare and coming from their paycheck.
I don't disagree - just pointing out that the Mail will struggle to find those households.
The other thing that's interesting is what the Conservatives do. I had a flick through affected households by council area and it's not a bad proxy for areas where Reform are doing well. That's why Farage - by far our canniest politician - has come out in favour. Whether the Conservatives follow or not will be a signal into their strategy for the next 3 years.
Kemi has been clear the Conservatives would have kept the 2 child benefit cap. Though they should also back an increase in standard child benefit for most parents while keeping the two child benefit cap for parents on universal credit
But many people on UC are actually working ... your proposal is self-contradictory to a considerable degree.
Many aren’t whereas the vast majority on standard child benefit work and a parent out of work can only claim it for six months while on JSA
Go back and read what you wrote. You're demanding an increase in benefits for people who are well enough off not to need UC, while demanding the 2CC for people who are not well enough off not to need UC. That's *reverse* means testing.
If that's Modern Tory policy, heaven help the party.
No as you also cannot claim child benefit if your income is over £80k. It is working parents who are on middle income who earn less than that and don’t claim UC who would benefit from increased standard child benefit and given our low 1.4 fertility rate now that is why I back a rise in standard child benefit.
It would be a fantastic Tory pro middle income families policy
It would be unacceptable in the present climate
The two most unpopular decisions in the Budget according to YouGov were freezing thresholds and the 2 child benefit cap as the public draw the line on more taxes and benefits
Badenoch is correct to say she will reinstate the 2 child cap but needs to go further with abolishing the triple lock and means testing the state pension as part of a reduction in welfare spending and not adding to benefits other than by inflation
Means testing the state pension, as with other means testing, just creates an administrative burden. The better off already pay 40-60% tax on it.
Worse than that- if you means test the state pension, there isn't much point in making other arrangements for a lot of people. Why bother saving if it just reduces your state pension?
It would turn a small problem now into a much bigger problem in a few decades time. And nobody would want to be that short-sighted, would they?
What is obvious is that the present arrangements cannot continue so either the state pension has some form of means testing or the age will have to increase to 70+
Neither are easy but then cutting welfare is never going to be easy
The state pension age will increase to 70 and then over.
This is already accepted by the young.
Is it? Who's asked them? One for YouGov "Are you happy paying a 9% higher rate of income tax than the generations older than you for the next 50+ years (until you're 70+) to pay for people who retired at 65 to have an RPI+ linked state pension?"
"At the Heysel Stadium in Brussels in 1985, 39 Juventus supporters were killed, primarily as a consequence of a charge by drunken opposition fans. Four years later, at Hillsborough, Sheffield, more than twice as many spectators were crushed to death, primarily as a result of police contempt for the hooligan minority. That both tragedies involved Liverpool followers – 96 of whom died at Hillsborough – is the unhappiest, most divisive and most problematic of coincidences. Yet while it would be naïve, at best, to deny any other connection, the long-running inquiry into the Hillsborough tragedy has bred denial about Heysel, and not exclusively among Liverpool supporters. Further hampered by the reluctance of Juventus to desecrate the club’s first European Cup final triumph by reopening old wounds, debate has been stifled. To suggest that the fatal charge at Heysel might have contributed to the unconscionable behaviour of the police at Hillsborough, or that the fences that contributed so heavily to the deaths would not have been there but for pitch invasions, is to wade into toxic waters. Written to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Heysel tragedy, this paper investigates the various ‘truths’, interviews witnesses and addresses the inherent contradictions of ‘The Tragedy That Dare Not Speak Its Name’."
PM me for the full article.
Liverpool 39 Juventus 0
Seen on school walls and desks all over England after Heysel.
There is a point of principle involved in connection with the proposed Tourist Tax (to be levied by the directly-elected Mayors); how do you reconcile this tax with the fundamental principle of Democracy "No Taxation without Representation"?
That's an incomplete "principle". People too young to vote have always paid tax, income tax if earning, petrol duty if they are a driver, VAT of course.
The other principle is of visitors taking advantage of local services without having paid for them.
If you don’t like paying a tourist tax you can vote by not visiting the town / city.
It’s worth saying that Ben Houchen has explicitly said he won’t use it as Teesside is really people visiting family or work so using that tax doesn’t work around there
I suspect the government have lit a ticking time bomb with the removal of the benefits cap.
Every time a story about a large non-working family comes out (there will be plenty), with taxpayers paying - it will be laid at their door.
They haven't removed the benefit cap (£22k); they've removed the two-child limit.
So stories about families on £60k worth of benefits won't be common*. Some child poverty think tanks have pointed out that the £22k limit significantly limits the effect of the change - they're not wrong, particularly somewhere like London where the just housing element could be £30k.
*There are a number of exemptions, particularly around disability benefits, but I reckon DWP will tighten that up.
If you're explaining, you're losing. And removing the two-child limit alone is politically damaging.
Taxes are going up by £3-4 billion to pay for it, and everyone knows that money is going on extra welfare and coming from their paycheck.
I don't disagree - just pointing out that the Mail will struggle to find those households.
The other thing that's interesting is what the Conservatives do. I had a flick through affected households by council area and it's not a bad proxy for areas where Reform are doing well. That's why Farage - by far our canniest politician - has come out in favour. Whether the Conservatives follow or not will be a signal into their strategy for the next 3 years.
Kemi has been clear the Conservatives would have kept the 2 child benefit cap. Though they should also back an increase in standard child benefit for most parents while keeping the two child benefit cap for parents on universal credit
But many people on UC are actually working ... your proposal is self-contradictory to a considerable degree.
Many aren’t whereas the vast majority on standard child benefit work and a parent out of work can only claim it for six months while on JSA
Go back and read what you wrote. You're demanding an increase in benefits for people who are well enough off not to need UC, while demanding the 2CC for people who are not well enough off not to need UC. That's *reverse* means testing.
If that's Modern Tory policy, heaven help the party.
No as you also cannot claim child benefit if your income is over £80k. It is working parents who are on middle income who earn less than that and don’t claim UC who would benefit from increased standard child benefit and given our low 1.4 fertility rate now that is why I back a rise in standard child benefit.
It would be a fantastic Tory pro middle income families policy
It would be unacceptable in the present climate
The two most unpopular decisions in the Budget according to YouGov were freezing thresholds and the 2 child benefit cap as the public draw the line on more taxes and benefits
Badenoch is correct to say she will reinstate the 2 child cap but needs to go further with abolishing the triple lock and means testing the state pension as part of a reduction in welfare spending and not adding to benefits other than by inflation
Means testing the state pension, as with other means testing, just creates an administrative burden. The better off already pay 40-60% tax on it.
Worse than that- if you means test the state pension, there isn't much point in making other arrangements for a lot of people. Why bother saving if it just reduces your state pension?
It would turn a small problem now into a much bigger problem in a few decades time. And nobody would want to be that short-sighted, would they?
What is obvious is that the present arrangements cannot continue so either the state pension has some form of means testing or the age will have to increase to 70+
Neither are easy but then cutting welfare is never going to be easy
The state pension age will increase to 70 and then over.
This is already accepted by the young.
Is it? Who's asked them? One for YouGov "Are you happy paying a 9% higher rate of income tax than the generations older than you for the next 50+ years (until you're 70+) to pay for people who retired at 65 to have an RPI+ linked state pension?"
Happy ? No.
But the other options they have is not to work or to emigrate.
I suspect the government have lit a ticking time bomb with the removal of the benefits cap.
Every time a story about a large non-working family comes out (there will be plenty), with taxpayers paying - it will be laid at their door.
They haven't removed the benefit cap (£22k); they've removed the two-child limit.
So stories about families on £60k worth of benefits won't be common*. Some child poverty think tanks have pointed out that the £22k limit significantly limits the effect of the change - they're not wrong, particularly somewhere like London where the just housing element could be £30k.
*There are a number of exemptions, particularly around disability benefits, but I reckon DWP will tighten that up.
If you're explaining, you're losing. And removing the two-child limit alone is politically damaging.
Taxes are going up by £3-4 billion to pay for it, and everyone knows that money is going on extra welfare and coming from their paycheck.
I don't disagree - just pointing out that the Mail will struggle to find those households.
The other thing that's interesting is what the Conservatives do. I had a flick through affected households by council area and it's not a bad proxy for areas where Reform are doing well. That's why Farage - by far our canniest politician - has come out in favour. Whether the Conservatives follow or not will be a signal into their strategy for the next 3 years.
Kemi has been clear the Conservatives would have kept the 2 child benefit cap. Though they should also back an increase in standard child benefit for most parents while keeping the two child benefit cap for parents on universal credit
But many people on UC are actually working ... your proposal is self-contradictory to a considerable degree.
Many aren’t whereas the vast majority on standard child benefit work and a parent out of work can only claim it for 91 days while on JSA
Almost three quarters of children in poverty are in working households. This Tory division into strivers and shirkers is a fundamentally dishonest narrative.
Define 'poverty'.
Define 'working'.
The way in which such terms have had their meanings repeatedly stretched is very much part of the 'taking the piss' issue.
Quite. Daily T podcast recently had a bit about the calculations the TUC uses (which is where the Government is getting its '400,000 children lifted out of poverty' statistic from. The notion of poverty is based being some way below the median income - so the current outflux of millionaires and high earners is, in and of itself, 'lifting children out of poverty'. Huzzah!
Median not mean, the "outflux of millionaires and high earners" will have little to no effect on the median.
So Rachel from accounts won the sack race against Richard Hughes, with the OBR chief forced out rather than testify to the Committee today.
American sack race next, who wins out of SecDef Peter Hegseth and Minnesota Gov Tim Walz, both on the front pages for separate scandals over the weekend?
Ed Balls reckons they should reject the resignation
I find it hard to feel that the OBR early report release was a resignation matter. It's a nice easy to understand Westminster gossip type story that the media can get excited about, but at bottom it's "we made a mistake with the config of our Wordpress site so it wasn't requiring authentication for the file the way we expected". Yes, there's the "market sensitive information" aspect, but in practice that doesn't seem to have actually caused major harm. The closest to a real management failure is that they probably should have assessed whether they were taking the risks seriously enough (e.g. testing that their embargoed docs process really did prevent access) and whether the system they set up in 2013 was still the right one given how important the OBR has become these days. But if we lose a decent head of the OBR and it spends the next six months leaderless while selecting a new one who then has to get up to speed with the organisation's issues, is that really a benefit to the country?
No accountability, eh?
Next week - “Bombed the shipwrecked survivors *twice*. But losing the head of the military, is that really a benefit to the country? At this point does it really matter?”
If no one is punished for anything, then anything goes.
“Just open the gates, Constable, it’s not like anyone does anything if a bunch of scousers get crushed.”
I think that if we treat every mistake and oversight as if it was a wilful decision that could foreseeably cause multiple deaths, then every senior leader of every organisation or enterprise in the country would be out of a job every three months, to absolutely no benefit -- and those who presided over the real horrors will be no worse off than those where some minor mishap happened under their watch, which I'm sure they'd be happy about. There should be accountability, yes. But it should be proportional.
So we should just do nothing?
Excellent news for those who have a major fuck up on their watch, every three months or so.
I was in a meeting in a bank, where they explained Sarbanes-Oxley. When it was bought in.
A manger put his hand up - “So if someone working for me fucks up, I could go to prison? in America?”
Answer - “Yes. If you can’t prove they acted against policy and systems weren’t there to stop them.”
Within hours, shit was being tightened up. No more developers with access to production, traders “fixing” trades using the “admin” login.
I think fundamentally I disagree that this is "a major fuckup". And as far as I'm aware it's not part of a pattern of the organisation having major screwups every three months.
What do graphs like this say?
Oh, and an early release like this is a sacking offence in many contexts.
The fact that a junior employee hasn’t been binned strongly suggests that they don’t have a proper system in place. Probably because a senior manager decided not to fund it.
That was the commentary this morning - that their system was more appropriate to a small business. It's probably an issue which requires resignation to be offered, but not necessarily accepted automatically. I guess Reeves really did not want to save him.
The story is that the OBR doesn’t really have an IT department at all & the OBR website is effectively an off the shelf Wordpress job (the kind of thing that a small web services outfit would knock up for a small business) that everyone in the department could have access to & data releases were done by whoever had last touched the document in question uploading it by hand to the server & adding the relevant links.
No process whatsoever in other words. Obviously process can be the enemy of agility & responsiveness, but this is one of those places where agility & responsiveness ought to be a secondary concern.
"Police inquiry into Post Office and Horizon may run out of cash Officers have told victims there will have to be ‘tough decisions’ on Operation Olympos despite the number of criminal suspects doubling to eight"
There never is. The British state is like an abuser who gets away with years of abuse but is never held properly accountable: it is untrustworthy, incompetent, malicious and unwilling / incapable of change, no matter what promises it makes or how many apologies are dragged out of it. We have a Potemkin justice system. And the inquiry reports lead to little more than a lot of bad headlines for a few days but no real change.
There is absolutely no point any more to any of it.
Budget eh?
Sorry I forgot to add that to my list -
Prediction - "It turned out that there 146 senior people potentially chargeable in matters arising from the Post Office. 3 are dead. 112 have taken early retirement. The rest have been diagnosed with stress and are in the luxury sections of various in-patient facilities paid for from their Post Office packages. So it would not be in the interests of justice to pursue them further. We have charged the lady who cleans on Thursdays with misconduct in a public office."
- the final report is being “trimmed” from thousands of pages to 400. In the interests of clarity - the full report will be archived, not released - all police officers involved are dead or retired.
So why, you ask, not release everything?
Well, *after* Hillsborough, for years, people in the system lied and covered up. Some of them are still alive. Some of them are still working in government.
Many will be The Right Sort. A Safe Pair of Hands.
#NU10K
What more is there to know?
The Police f*cked up, then they lied to cover this up, the Government supported them, and various members of the great and the good tried to write reports telling us all what we knew already but were hampered by concerns that they might upset too many of those who were to blame.
Need we spend more money on this?
I would add - the culture of football hooliganism was the main cause of the disaster. No need for fences to control hooligans = no one dying at Hillsborough. People don't like it but many of the fans who were at Hillsborough were also at Heysel, and some of them were probably amongst those who contributed to 39 Juventus fans dying. Then add in the poor condition of football stadia at the time. Then add in the fact that despite the awful conditions it had safety certificates.
And then add in the police making mistakes.
Swiss cheese model of accident prevention applies.
However the cover-up and lies were atrocious, and sadly, all too many people were prepared to believe them.
People have a natural instinct to want justice for wrongs, and sometimes revenge. Sometimes its better to have truth and reconciliation.
We don’t have truth
We don’t have reconciliation
I am reminded of the time I went to an SWP sponsored book signing thing by a former PIRA member. Who refused, when I asked him, to regret his actions. And then his sidekicks were upset that I didn’t forgive.
Interesting be ming accused of being “Unchristian” by a member of the ComradeDelta Fan Club.
I’ll believe it when actions match words, but a rare compliment to the PM if he can actually succeed in avoiding a £700m salmon party at the next reactor, and get at least a couple of SMRs underway before the next election.
Yes, and he will extend it to other types of infrastructure build too
Meanwhile the nuclear plant in Anglesey is held up by arctic terns.
Vicious buggers, terns. If they don't like the idea of building work on Anglesey then it ain't going to happen!
I suspect the government have lit a ticking time bomb with the removal of the benefits cap.
Every time a story about a large non-working family comes out (there will be plenty), with taxpayers paying - it will be laid at their door.
They haven't removed the benefit cap (£22k); they've removed the two-child limit.
So stories about families on £60k worth of benefits won't be common*. Some child poverty think tanks have pointed out that the £22k limit significantly limits the effect of the change - they're not wrong, particularly somewhere like London where the just housing element could be £30k.
*There are a number of exemptions, particularly around disability benefits, but I reckon DWP will tighten that up.
If you're explaining, you're losing. And removing the two-child limit alone is politically damaging.
Taxes are going up by £3-4 billion to pay for it, and everyone knows that money is going on extra welfare and coming from their paycheck.
I don't disagree - just pointing out that the Mail will struggle to find those households.
The other thing that's interesting is what the Conservatives do. I had a flick through affected households by council area and it's not a bad proxy for areas where Reform are doing well. That's why Farage - by far our canniest politician - has come out in favour. Whether the Conservatives follow or not will be a signal into their strategy for the next 3 years.
Kemi has been clear the Conservatives would have kept the 2 child benefit cap. Though they should also back an increase in standard child benefit for most parents while keeping the two child benefit cap for parents on universal credit
But many people on UC are actually working ... your proposal is self-contradictory to a considerable degree.
Many aren’t whereas the vast majority on standard child benefit work and a parent out of work can only claim it for 91 days while on JSA
Almost three quarters of children in poverty are in working households. This Tory division into strivers and shirkers is a fundamentally dishonest narrative.
Would that be the nonsensical measure of relative poverty, cleverly redefining the term so it will always exist?
[Got to go out now, which is a shame, because I do like a debate about this sort of thing ]
Yeah we already had an argument on this topic. Tldr; you were wrong.
Can confirm that Morris_Dancer continues to be completely wrong about whether relative poverty can be eliminated or not.
(Relative poverty is defined as having below 50%/60% of median income. You could lift everyone above the poverty line and achieve 0% poverty).
The easiest way to do that would be to get rid of all the rich and well paid people.
Which would also result in an increase in absolute poverty.
So which is more important absolute poverty or relative poverty ?
I’ll believe it when actions match words, but a rare compliment to the PM if he can actually succeed in avoiding a £700m salmon party at the next reactor, and get at least a couple of SMRs underway before the next election.
Yes, and he will extend it to other types of infrastructure build too
Meanwhile the nuclear plant in Anglesey is held up by arctic terns.
Vicious buggers, terns. If they don't like the idea of building work on Anglesey then it ain't going to happen!
The Royal Nay is rolling out multi-megawatt lasers for point defence…
So Rachel from accounts won the sack race against Richard Hughes, with the OBR chief forced out rather than testify to the Committee today.
American sack race next, who wins out of SecDef Peter Hegseth and Minnesota Gov Tim Walz, both on the front pages for separate scandals over the weekend?
Ed Balls reckons they should reject the resignation
I find it hard to feel that the OBR early report release was a resignation matter. It's a nice easy to understand Westminster gossip type story that the media can get excited about, but at bottom it's "we made a mistake with the config of our Wordpress site so it wasn't requiring authentication for the file the way we expected". Yes, there's the "market sensitive information" aspect, but in practice that doesn't seem to have actually caused major harm. The closest to a real management failure is that they probably should have assessed whether they were taking the risks seriously enough (e.g. testing that their embargoed docs process really did prevent access) and whether the system they set up in 2013 was still the right one given how important the OBR has become these days. But if we lose a decent head of the OBR and it spends the next six months leaderless while selecting a new one who then has to get up to speed with the organisation's issues, is that really a benefit to the country?
If the head of the OBR does not take security seriously, in what sense is he decent? That he knows which knife and fork to use? The report is pretty damning, and there is plenty of blame to go round. Leaving aside security, the whole OBR publication process seems absurdly fragile.
But can we also note the whole investigation and report took less than a week rather than the usual two decades.
I suspect the government have lit a ticking time bomb with the removal of the benefits cap.
Every time a story about a large non-working family comes out (there will be plenty), with taxpayers paying - it will be laid at their door.
They haven't removed the benefit cap (£22k); they've removed the two-child limit.
So stories about families on £60k worth of benefits won't be common*. Some child poverty think tanks have pointed out that the £22k limit significantly limits the effect of the change - they're not wrong, particularly somewhere like London where the just housing element could be £30k.
*There are a number of exemptions, particularly around disability benefits, but I reckon DWP will tighten that up.
If you're explaining, you're losing. And removing the two-child limit alone is politically damaging.
Taxes are going up by £3-4 billion to pay for it, and everyone knows that money is going on extra welfare and coming from their paycheck.
I don't disagree - just pointing out that the Mail will struggle to find those households.
The other thing that's interesting is what the Conservatives do. I had a flick through affected households by council area and it's not a bad proxy for areas where Reform are doing well. That's why Farage - by far our canniest politician - has come out in favour. Whether the Conservatives follow or not will be a signal into their strategy for the next 3 years.
Kemi has been clear the Conservatives would have kept the 2 child benefit cap. Though they should also back an increase in standard child benefit for most parents while keeping the two child benefit cap for parents on universal credit
But many people on UC are actually working ... your proposal is self-contradictory to a considerable degree.
Many aren’t whereas the vast majority on standard child benefit work and a parent out of work can only claim it for 91 days while on JSA
Almost three quarters of children in poverty are in working households. This Tory division into strivers and shirkers is a fundamentally dishonest narrative.
Define 'poverty'.
Define 'working'.
The way in which such terms have had their meanings repeatedly stretched is very much part of the 'taking the piss' issue.
Quite. Daily T podcast recently had a bit about the calculations the TUC uses (which is where the Government is getting its '400,000 children lifted out of poverty' statistic from. The notion of poverty is based being some way below the median income - so the current outflux of millionaires and high earners is, in and of itself, 'lifting children out of poverty'. Huzzah!
Median not mean, the "outflux of millionaires and high earners" will have little to no effect on the median.
I suspect the government have lit a ticking time bomb with the removal of the benefits cap.
Every time a story about a large non-working family comes out (there will be plenty), with taxpayers paying - it will be laid at their door.
They haven't removed the benefit cap (£22k); they've removed the two-child limit.
So stories about families on £60k worth of benefits won't be common*. Some child poverty think tanks have pointed out that the £22k limit significantly limits the effect of the change - they're not wrong, particularly somewhere like London where the just housing element could be £30k.
*There are a number of exemptions, particularly around disability benefits, but I reckon DWP will tighten that up.
If you're explaining, you're losing. And removing the two-child limit alone is politically damaging.
Taxes are going up by £3-4 billion to pay for it, and everyone knows that money is going on extra welfare and coming from their paycheck.
I don't disagree - just pointing out that the Mail will struggle to find those households.
The other thing that's interesting is what the Conservatives do. I had a flick through affected households by council area and it's not a bad proxy for areas where Reform are doing well. That's why Farage - by far our canniest politician - has come out in favour. Whether the Conservatives follow or not will be a signal into their strategy for the next 3 years.
Kemi has been clear the Conservatives would have kept the 2 child benefit cap. Though they should also back an increase in standard child benefit for most parents while keeping the two child benefit cap for parents on universal credit
But many people on UC are actually working ... your proposal is self-contradictory to a considerable degree.
Many aren’t whereas the vast majority on standard child benefit work and a parent out of work can only claim it for 91 days while on JSA
Almost three quarters of children in poverty are in working households. This Tory division into strivers and shirkers is a fundamentally dishonest narrative.
Would that be the nonsensical measure of relative poverty, cleverly redefining the term so it will always exist?
[Got to go out now, which is a shame, because I do like a debate about this sort of thing ]
Yeah we already had an argument on this topic. Tldr; you were wrong.
Can confirm that Morris_Dancer continues to be completely wrong about whether relative poverty can be eliminated or not.
(Relative poverty is defined as having below 50%/60% of median income. You could lift everyone above the poverty line and achieve 0% poverty).
The easiest way to do that would be to get rid of all the rich and well paid people.
Which would also result in an increase in absolute poverty.
So which is more important absolute poverty or relative poverty ?
Absolute poverty is just relative poverty indexed to 2010-11 btw. So it's not a good measure imo (my preference is things like SIMD).
You'd have to deport millions of high earners to get anywhere near a significant shift in the median income - the income distribution of the UK is clustered around the median.
I suspect the government have lit a ticking time bomb with the removal of the benefits cap.
Every time a story about a large non-working family comes out (there will be plenty), with taxpayers paying - it will be laid at their door.
They haven't removed the benefit cap (£22k); they've removed the two-child limit.
So stories about families on £60k worth of benefits won't be common*. Some child poverty think tanks have pointed out that the £22k limit significantly limits the effect of the change - they're not wrong, particularly somewhere like London where the just housing element could be £30k.
*There are a number of exemptions, particularly around disability benefits, but I reckon DWP will tighten that up.
If you're explaining, you're losing. And removing the two-child limit alone is politically damaging.
Taxes are going up by £3-4 billion to pay for it, and everyone knows that money is going on extra welfare and coming from their paycheck.
I don't disagree - just pointing out that the Mail will struggle to find those households.
The other thing that's interesting is what the Conservatives do. I had a flick through affected households by council area and it's not a bad proxy for areas where Reform are doing well. That's why Farage - by far our canniest politician - has come out in favour. Whether the Conservatives follow or not will be a signal into their strategy for the next 3 years.
Kemi has been clear the Conservatives would have kept the 2 child benefit cap. Though they should also back an increase in standard child benefit for most parents while keeping the two child benefit cap for parents on universal credit
But many people on UC are actually working ... your proposal is self-contradictory to a considerable degree.
Many aren’t whereas the vast majority on standard child benefit work and a parent out of work can only claim it for 91 days while on JSA
Almost three quarters of children in poverty are in working households. This Tory division into strivers and shirkers is a fundamentally dishonest narrative.
Define 'poverty'.
Define 'working'.
The way in which such terms have had their meanings repeatedly stretched is very much part of the 'taking the piss' issue.
Quite. Daily T podcast recently had a bit about the calculations the TUC uses (which is where the Government is getting its '400,000 children lifted out of poverty' statistic from. The notion of poverty is based being some way below the median income - so the current outflux of millionaires and high earners is, in and of itself, 'lifting children out of poverty'. Huzzah!
Median not mean, the "outflux of millionaires and high earners" will have little to no effect on the median.
Though the immigration of millions of poor and low paid would and has.
So Rachel from accounts won the sack race against Richard Hughes, with the OBR chief forced out rather than testify to the Committee today.
American sack race next, who wins out of SecDef Peter Hegseth and Minnesota Gov Tim Walz, both on the front pages for separate scandals over the weekend?
Ed Balls reckons they should reject the resignation
I find it hard to feel that the OBR early report release was a resignation matter. It's a nice easy to understand Westminster gossip type story that the media can get excited about, but at bottom it's "we made a mistake with the config of our Wordpress site so it wasn't requiring authentication for the file the way we expected". Yes, there's the "market sensitive information" aspect, but in practice that doesn't seem to have actually caused major harm. The closest to a real management failure is that they probably should have assessed whether they were taking the risks seriously enough (e.g. testing that their embargoed docs process really did prevent access) and whether the system they set up in 2013 was still the right one given how important the OBR has become these days. But if we lose a decent head of the OBR and it spends the next six months leaderless while selecting a new one who then has to get up to speed with the organisation's issues, is that really a benefit to the country?
No accountability, eh?
Next week - “Bombed the shipwrecked survivors *twice*. But losing the head of the military, is that really a benefit to the country? At this point does it really matter?”
If no one is punished for anything, then anything goes.
“Just open the gates, Constable, it’s not like anyone does anything if a bunch of scousers get crushed.”
I think that if we treat every mistake and oversight as if it was a wilful decision that could foreseeably cause multiple deaths, then every senior leader of every organisation or enterprise in the country would be out of a job every three months, to absolutely no benefit -- and those who presided over the real horrors will be no worse off than those where some minor mishap happened under their watch, which I'm sure they'd be happy about. There should be accountability, yes. But it should be proportional.
So we should just do nothing?
Excellent news for those who have a major fuck up on their watch, every three months or so.
I was in a meeting in a bank, where they explained Sarbanes-Oxley. When it was bought in.
A manger put his hand up - “So if someone working for me fucks up, I could go to prison? in America?”
Answer - “Yes. If you can’t prove they acted against policy and systems weren’t there to stop them.”
Within hours, shit was being tightened up. No more developers with access to production, traders “fixing” trades using the “admin” login.
I think fundamentally I disagree that this is "a major fuckup". And as far as I'm aware it's not part of a pattern of the organisation having major screwups every three months.
What do graphs like this say?
Oh, and an early release like this is a sacking offence in many contexts.
The fact that a junior employee hasn’t been binned strongly suggests that they don’t have a proper system in place. Probably because a senior manager decided not to fund it.
That was the commentary this morning - that their system was more appropriate to a small business. It's probably an issue which requires resignation to be offered, but not necessarily accepted automatically. I guess Reeves really did not want to save him.
I wonder if the resignation isn’t mostly to do with the unpublished early release, but actually more to do with the conversation around the timelines certain discussions were had and figures laid out to the Chancellor and the Treasury.
He was due to be in Committee today, and may well have accused the Chancellor of telling untruths, in which case she’s pleased to have forced him out beforehand
He can still be summoned by the Treasury Select Committee to give evidence, even though he has resigned his position
There is a point of principle involved in connection with the proposed Tourist Tax (to be levied by the directly-elected Mayors); how do you reconcile this tax with the fundamental principle of Democracy "No Taxation without Representation"?
That's an incomplete "principle". People too young to vote have always paid tax, income tax if earning, petrol duty if they are a driver, VAT of course.
The other principle is of visitors taking advantage of local services without having paid for them.
If you don’t like paying a tourist tax you can vote by not visiting the town / city.
It’s worth saying that Ben Houchen has explicitly said he won’t use it as Teesside is really people visiting family or work so using that tax doesn’t work around there
I frequently pay a Tourist Tax when travelling abroad. It is slightly annoying as it can be billed separately and you have to pay in cash when the rest of the bill has been settled by credit card, but it's usually about the price of a coffee per diem and I have never found one that is a significant cost compared with the room price, or has put me off visiting somewhere.
Of course in the UK we will probably implement it particularly badly.
I suspect the government have lit a ticking time bomb with the removal of the benefits cap.
Every time a story about a large non-working family comes out (there will be plenty), with taxpayers paying - it will be laid at their door.
They haven't removed the benefit cap (£22k); they've removed the two-child limit.
So stories about families on £60k worth of benefits won't be common*. Some child poverty think tanks have pointed out that the £22k limit significantly limits the effect of the change - they're not wrong, particularly somewhere like London where the just housing element could be £30k.
*There are a number of exemptions, particularly around disability benefits, but I reckon DWP will tighten that up.
If you're explaining, you're losing. And removing the two-child limit alone is politically damaging.
Taxes are going up by £3-4 billion to pay for it, and everyone knows that money is going on extra welfare and coming from their paycheck.
I don't disagree - just pointing out that the Mail will struggle to find those households.
The other thing that's interesting is what the Conservatives do. I had a flick through affected households by council area and it's not a bad proxy for areas where Reform are doing well. That's why Farage - by far our canniest politician - has come out in favour. Whether the Conservatives follow or not will be a signal into their strategy for the next 3 years.
Kemi has been clear the Conservatives would have kept the 2 child benefit cap. Though they should also back an increase in standard child benefit for most parents while keeping the two child benefit cap for parents on universal credit
But many people on UC are actually working ... your proposal is self-contradictory to a considerable degree.
Many aren’t whereas the vast majority on standard child benefit work and a parent out of work can only claim it for six months while on JSA
Go back and read what you wrote. You're demanding an increase in benefits for people who are well enough off not to need UC, while demanding the 2CC for people who are not well enough off not to need UC. That's *reverse* means testing.
If that's Modern Tory policy, heaven help the party.
No as you also cannot claim child benefit if your income is over £80k. It is working parents who are on middle income who earn less than that and don’t claim UC who would benefit from increased standard child benefit and given our low 1.4 fertility rate now that is why I back a rise in standard child benefit.
It would be a fantastic Tory pro middle income families policy
It would be unacceptable in the present climate
The two most unpopular decisions in the Budget according to YouGov were freezing thresholds and the 2 child benefit cap as the public draw the line on more taxes and benefits
Badenoch is correct to say she will reinstate the 2 child cap but needs to go further with abolishing the triple lock and means testing the state pension as part of a reduction in welfare spending and not adding to benefits other than by inflation
Means testing the state pension, as with other means testing, just creates an administrative burden. The better off already pay 40-60% tax on it.
Worse than that- if you means test the state pension, there isn't much point in making other arrangements for a lot of people. Why bother saving if it just reduces your state pension?
It would turn a small problem now into a much bigger problem in a few decades time. And nobody would want to be that short-sighted, would they?
What is obvious is that the present arrangements cannot continue so either the state pension has some form of means testing or the age will have to increase to 70+
Neither are easy but then cutting welfare is never going to be easy
What would be interesting (and probably political suicide) would be to have essentially an OAP budget per person and then acturial approach to dishing it out. So you can take it as soon as you like (maybe with some limit, say 60 or so) but if you wait longerthen you'll get more per year (and if you're actually in bad health with limited life expectancy, then you can access it sooner at a higher rate as the calculations say you'll fall off the perch sooner).
Given associations between health, wealth and life expectancy, it would of course penalise mostly the better off, older, voting pensioners, which is why it would be 'courageous'. It would however mean that those well able to work would work a bit longer. Those with severe COPD in their 60s would retire earlier. it could also shift some of the disability benefits into OAP, potentially, for those younger people with poor health.
I suspect the government have lit a ticking time bomb with the removal of the benefits cap.
Every time a story about a large non-working family comes out (there will be plenty), with taxpayers paying - it will be laid at their door.
They haven't removed the benefit cap (£22k); they've removed the two-child limit.
So stories about families on £60k worth of benefits won't be common*. Some child poverty think tanks have pointed out that the £22k limit significantly limits the effect of the change - they're not wrong, particularly somewhere like London where the just housing element could be £30k.
*There are a number of exemptions, particularly around disability benefits, but I reckon DWP will tighten that up.
If you're explaining, you're losing. And removing the two-child limit alone is politically damaging.
Taxes are going up by £3-4 billion to pay for it, and everyone knows that money is going on extra welfare and coming from their paycheck.
I don't disagree - just pointing out that the Mail will struggle to find those households.
The other thing that's interesting is what the Conservatives do. I had a flick through affected households by council area and it's not a bad proxy for areas where Reform are doing well. That's why Farage - by far our canniest politician - has come out in favour. Whether the Conservatives follow or not will be a signal into their strategy for the next 3 years.
Kemi has been clear the Conservatives would have kept the 2 child benefit cap. Though they should also back an increase in standard child benefit for most parents while keeping the two child benefit cap for parents on universal credit
But many people on UC are actually working ... your proposal is self-contradictory to a considerable degree.
Many aren’t whereas the vast majority on standard child benefit work and a parent out of work can only claim it for six months while on JSA
Go back and read what you wrote. You're demanding an increase in benefits for people who are well enough off not to need UC, while demanding the 2CC for people who are not well enough off not to need UC. That's *reverse* means testing.
If that's Modern Tory policy, heaven help the party.
No as you also cannot claim child benefit if your income is over £80k. It is working parents who are on middle income who earn less than that and don’t claim UC who would benefit from increased standard child benefit and given our low 1.4 fertility rate now that is why I back a rise in standard child benefit.
It would be a fantastic Tory pro middle income families policy
It would be unacceptable in the present climate
The two most unpopular decisions in the Budget according to YouGov were freezing thresholds and the 2 child benefit cap as the public draw the line on more taxes and benefits
Badenoch is correct to say she will reinstate the 2 child cap but needs to go further with abolishing the triple lock and means testing the state pension as part of a reduction in welfare spending and not adding to benefits other than by inflation
Means testing the state pension, as with other means testing, just creates an administrative burden. The better off already pay 40-60% tax on it.
Worse than that- if you means test the state pension, there isn't much point in making other arrangements for a lot of people. Why bother saving if it just reduces your state pension?
It would turn a small problem now into a much bigger problem in a few decades time. And nobody would want to be that short-sighted, would they?
What is obvious is that the present arrangements cannot continue so either the state pension has some form of means testing or the age will have to increase to 70+
Neither are easy but then cutting welfare is never going to be easy
What would be interesting (and probably political suicide) would be to have essentially an OAP budget per person and then acturial approach to dishing it out. So you can take it as soon as you like (maybe with some limit, say 60 or so) but if you wait longerthen you'll get more per year (and if you're actually in bad health with limited life expectancy, then you can access it sooner at a higher rate as the calculations say you'll fall off the perch sooner).
Given associations between health, wealth and life expectancy, it would of course penalise mostly the better off, older, voting pensioners, which is why it would be 'courageous'. It would however mean that those well able to work would work a bit longer. Those with severe COPD in their 60s would retire earlier. it could also shift some of the disability benefits into OAP, potentially, for those younger people with poor health.
It's already possible to do this, or more precisely defer the pension (not take it early).
I suspect the government have lit a ticking time bomb with the removal of the benefits cap.
Every time a story about a large non-working family comes out (there will be plenty), with taxpayers paying - it will be laid at their door.
They haven't removed the benefit cap (£22k); they've removed the two-child limit.
So stories about families on £60k worth of benefits won't be common*. Some child poverty think tanks have pointed out that the £22k limit significantly limits the effect of the change - they're not wrong, particularly somewhere like London where the just housing element could be £30k.
*There are a number of exemptions, particularly around disability benefits, but I reckon DWP will tighten that up.
If you're explaining, you're losing. And removing the two-child limit alone is politically damaging.
Taxes are going up by £3-4 billion to pay for it, and everyone knows that money is going on extra welfare and coming from their paycheck.
I don't disagree - just pointing out that the Mail will struggle to find those households.
The other thing that's interesting is what the Conservatives do. I had a flick through affected households by council area and it's not a bad proxy for areas where Reform are doing well. That's why Farage - by far our canniest politician - has come out in favour. Whether the Conservatives follow or not will be a signal into their strategy for the next 3 years.
Kemi has been clear the Conservatives would have kept the 2 child benefit cap. Though they should also back an increase in standard child benefit for most parents while keeping the two child benefit cap for parents on universal credit
But many people on UC are actually working ... your proposal is self-contradictory to a considerable degree.
Many aren’t whereas the vast majority on standard child benefit work and a parent out of work can only claim it for 91 days while on JSA
Almost three quarters of children in poverty are in working households. This Tory division into strivers and shirkers is a fundamentally dishonest narrative.
Define 'poverty'.
Define 'working'.
The way in which such terms have had their meanings repeatedly stretched is very much part of the 'taking the piss' issue.
Quite. Daily T podcast recently had a bit about the calculations the TUC uses (which is where the Government is getting its '400,000 children lifted out of poverty' statistic from. The notion of poverty is based being some way below the median income - so the current outflux of millionaires and high earners is, in and of itself, 'lifting children out of poverty'. Huzzah!
Median not mean, the "outflux of millionaires and high earners" will have little to no effect on the median.
Though the immigration of millions of poor and low paid would and has.
Indeed, increasing income inequality means that the measure of relative poverty is lower than if income distribution was more equal.
I suspect the government have lit a ticking time bomb with the removal of the benefits cap.
Every time a story about a large non-working family comes out (there will be plenty), with taxpayers paying - it will be laid at their door.
They haven't removed the benefit cap (£22k); they've removed the two-child limit.
So stories about families on £60k worth of benefits won't be common*. Some child poverty think tanks have pointed out that the £22k limit significantly limits the effect of the change - they're not wrong, particularly somewhere like London where the just housing element could be £30k.
*There are a number of exemptions, particularly around disability benefits, but I reckon DWP will tighten that up.
If you're explaining, you're losing. And removing the two-child limit alone is politically damaging.
Taxes are going up by £3-4 billion to pay for it, and everyone knows that money is going on extra welfare and coming from their paycheck.
I don't disagree - just pointing out that the Mail will struggle to find those households.
The other thing that's interesting is what the Conservatives do. I had a flick through affected households by council area and it's not a bad proxy for areas where Reform are doing well. That's why Farage - by far our canniest politician - has come out in favour. Whether the Conservatives follow or not will be a signal into their strategy for the next 3 years.
Kemi has been clear the Conservatives would have kept the 2 child benefit cap. Though they should also back an increase in standard child benefit for most parents while keeping the two child benefit cap for parents on universal credit
But many people on UC are actually working ... your proposal is self-contradictory to a considerable degree.
Many aren’t whereas the vast majority on standard child benefit work and a parent out of work can only claim it for 91 days while on JSA
Almost three quarters of children in poverty are in working households. This Tory division into strivers and shirkers is a fundamentally dishonest narrative.
Would that be the nonsensical measure of relative poverty, cleverly redefining the term so it will always exist?
[Got to go out now, which is a shame, because I do like a debate about this sort of thing ]
Yeah we already had an argument on this topic. Tldr; you were wrong.
Can confirm that Morris_Dancer continues to be completely wrong about whether relative poverty can be eliminated or not.
(Relative poverty is defined as having below 50%/60% of median income. You could lift everyone above the poverty line and achieve 0% poverty).
The easiest way to do that would be to get rid of all the rich and well paid people.
Which would also result in an increase in absolute poverty.
So which is more important absolute poverty or relative poverty ?
If you mean 'get rid of' literally (deport/kill) then you'd be right. But simply trimming incomes at the top end, down to anything above the 50th centile, wouldn't change the median, obviously ('rich and well paid people' are presumably above median incomes?).
Another government service given over to a private monopoly that cannot be removed & has no inventive to serve it’s users in a timely or reasonable fashion whatsoever inevitably turns into an engine of misery and fury for everyone involved. Accountability is no where to be found, neither in the private company running the service, nor the NHS management.
It’s entirely plausible that NHS management were forced to privatise this service by past UK governments, in the vague hope that “savings” would result. Ever since, everyone involved has had a huge incentive to turn a blind eye to the actual experience of their end-users. Those who could afford to do so simply opt out of the service as far as possible, whilst those who can’t end up back in hospital & so no longer need to be serviced.
It’s this kind of thing that generates so much combined anger & depression amongst the electorate - it demonstrates that the government simply doesn’t care about the experiences of people on the receiving end, who are forced to endure whatever limited service the system can be bothered to give them. Money alone can’t solve this - indeed, throwing more money into this system will probably make it worse, as Blair discovered when he tried to “fix” the NHS the first time around.
I suspect the government have lit a ticking time bomb with the removal of the benefits cap.
Every time a story about a large non-working family comes out (there will be plenty), with taxpayers paying - it will be laid at their door.
They haven't removed the benefit cap (£22k); they've removed the two-child limit.
So stories about families on £60k worth of benefits won't be common*. Some child poverty think tanks have pointed out that the £22k limit significantly limits the effect of the change - they're not wrong, particularly somewhere like London where the just housing element could be £30k.
*There are a number of exemptions, particularly around disability benefits, but I reckon DWP will tighten that up.
If you're explaining, you're losing. And removing the two-child limit alone is politically damaging.
Taxes are going up by £3-4 billion to pay for it, and everyone knows that money is going on extra welfare and coming from their paycheck.
I don't disagree - just pointing out that the Mail will struggle to find those households.
The other thing that's interesting is what the Conservatives do. I had a flick through affected households by council area and it's not a bad proxy for areas where Reform are doing well. That's why Farage - by far our canniest politician - has come out in favour. Whether the Conservatives follow or not will be a signal into their strategy for the next 3 years.
Kemi has been clear the Conservatives would have kept the 2 child benefit cap. Though they should also back an increase in standard child benefit for most parents while keeping the two child benefit cap for parents on universal credit
But many people on UC are actually working ... your proposal is self-contradictory to a considerable degree.
Many aren’t whereas the vast majority on standard child benefit work and a parent out of work can only claim it for six months while on JSA
Go back and read what you wrote. You're demanding an increase in benefits for people who are well enough off not to need UC, while demanding the 2CC for people who are not well enough off not to need UC. That's *reverse* means testing.
If that's Modern Tory policy, heaven help the party.
No as you also cannot claim child benefit if your income is over £80k. It is working parents who are on middle income who earn less than that and don’t claim UC who would benefit from increased standard child benefit and given our low 1.4 fertility rate now that is why I back a rise in standard child benefit.
It would be a fantastic Tory pro middle income families policy
It would be unacceptable in the present climate
The two most unpopular decisions in the Budget according to YouGov were freezing thresholds and the 2 child benefit cap as the public draw the line on more taxes and benefits
Badenoch is correct to say she will reinstate the 2 child cap but needs to go further with abolishing the triple lock and means testing the state pension as part of a reduction in welfare spending and not adding to benefits other than by inflation
Means testing the state pension, as with other means testing, just creates an administrative burden. The better off already pay 40-60% tax on it.
Worse than that- if you means test the state pension, there isn't much point in making other arrangements for a lot of people. Why bother saving if it just reduces your state pension?
It would turn a small problem now into a much bigger problem in a few decades time. And nobody would want to be that short-sighted, would they?
What is obvious is that the present arrangements cannot continue so either the state pension has some form of means testing or the age will have to increase to 70+
Neither are easy but then cutting welfare is never going to be easy
The state pension age will increase to 70 and then over.
This is already accepted by the young.
If we manage to drop life expectancy enough, then there's still some hope for the sub-70 pension!
There is a point of principle involved in connection with the proposed Tourist Tax (to be levied by the directly-elected Mayors); how do you reconcile this tax with the fundamental principle of Democracy "No Taxation without Representation"?
That's an incomplete "principle". People too young to vote have always paid tax, income tax if earning, petrol duty if they are a driver, VAT of course.
The other principle is of visitors taking advantage of local services without having paid for them.
If you don’t like paying a tourist tax you can vote by not visiting the town / city.
It’s worth saying that Ben Houchen has explicitly said he won’t use it as Teesside is really people visiting family or work so using that tax doesn’t work around there
I frequently pay a Tourist Tax when travelling abroad. It is slightly annoying as it can be billed separately and you have to pay in cash when the rest of the bill has been settled by credit card, but it's usually about the price of a coffee per diem and I have never found one that is a significant cost compared with the room price, or has put me off visiting somewhere.
Of course in the UK we will probably implement it particularly badly.
Yes, it does seem to be a feature of these taxes that they are paid in cash directly to the hotel, presumably to avoid processing fees and agent commissions etc.
One might expect London, Edinburgh, and a few historic and leafy cities (York, Salisbury etc) to be first in line to implement once the legislation passes.
I suspect the government have lit a ticking time bomb with the removal of the benefits cap.
Every time a story about a large non-working family comes out (there will be plenty), with taxpayers paying - it will be laid at their door.
They haven't removed the benefit cap (£22k); they've removed the two-child limit.
So stories about families on £60k worth of benefits won't be common*. Some child poverty think tanks have pointed out that the £22k limit significantly limits the effect of the change - they're not wrong, particularly somewhere like London where the just housing element could be £30k.
*There are a number of exemptions, particularly around disability benefits, but I reckon DWP will tighten that up.
If you're explaining, you're losing. And removing the two-child limit alone is politically damaging.
Taxes are going up by £3-4 billion to pay for it, and everyone knows that money is going on extra welfare and coming from their paycheck.
I don't disagree - just pointing out that the Mail will struggle to find those households.
The other thing that's interesting is what the Conservatives do. I had a flick through affected households by council area and it's not a bad proxy for areas where Reform are doing well. That's why Farage - by far our canniest politician - has come out in favour. Whether the Conservatives follow or not will be a signal into their strategy for the next 3 years.
Kemi has been clear the Conservatives would have kept the 2 child benefit cap. Though they should also back an increase in standard child benefit for most parents while keeping the two child benefit cap for parents on universal credit
But many people on UC are actually working ... your proposal is self-contradictory to a considerable degree.
Many aren’t whereas the vast majority on standard child benefit work and a parent out of work can only claim it for 91 days while on JSA
Almost three quarters of children in poverty are in working households. This Tory division into strivers and shirkers is a fundamentally dishonest narrative.
Would that be the nonsensical measure of relative poverty, cleverly redefining the term so it will always exist?
[Got to go out now, which is a shame, because I do like a debate about this sort of thing ]
Yeah we already had an argument on this topic. Tldr; you were wrong.
Can confirm that Morris_Dancer continues to be completely wrong about whether relative poverty can be eliminated or not.
(Relative poverty is defined as having below 50%/60% of median income. You could lift everyone above the poverty line and achieve 0% poverty).
The easiest way to do that would be to get rid of all the rich and well paid people.
Which would also result in an increase in absolute poverty.
So which is more important absolute poverty or relative poverty ?
If you mean 'get rid of' literally (deport/kill) then you'd be right. But simply trimming incomes at the top end, down to anything above the 50th centile, wouldn't change the median, obviously ('rich and well paid people' are presumably above median incomes?).
So the easiest way to fix “child poverty” is to import a few million young minimum-wage workers with no children.
I suspect the government have lit a ticking time bomb with the removal of the benefits cap.
Every time a story about a large non-working family comes out (there will be plenty), with taxpayers paying - it will be laid at their door.
They haven't removed the benefit cap (£22k); they've removed the two-child limit.
So stories about families on £60k worth of benefits won't be common*. Some child poverty think tanks have pointed out that the £22k limit significantly limits the effect of the change - they're not wrong, particularly somewhere like London where the just housing element could be £30k.
*There are a number of exemptions, particularly around disability benefits, but I reckon DWP will tighten that up.
If you're explaining, you're losing. And removing the two-child limit alone is politically damaging.
Taxes are going up by £3-4 billion to pay for it, and everyone knows that money is going on extra welfare and coming from their paycheck.
I don't disagree - just pointing out that the Mail will struggle to find those households.
The other thing that's interesting is what the Conservatives do. I had a flick through affected households by council area and it's not a bad proxy for areas where Reform are doing well. That's why Farage - by far our canniest politician - has come out in favour. Whether the Conservatives follow or not will be a signal into their strategy for the next 3 years.
Kemi has been clear the Conservatives would have kept the 2 child benefit cap. Though they should also back an increase in standard child benefit for most parents while keeping the two child benefit cap for parents on universal credit
But many people on UC are actually working ... your proposal is self-contradictory to a considerable degree.
Many aren’t whereas the vast majority on standard child benefit work and a parent out of work can only claim it for six months while on JSA
Go back and read what you wrote. You're demanding an increase in benefits for people who are well enough off not to need UC, while demanding the 2CC for people who are not well enough off not to need UC. That's *reverse* means testing.
If that's Modern Tory policy, heaven help the party.
No as you also cannot claim child benefit if your income is over £80k. It is working parents who are on middle income who earn less than that and don’t claim UC who would benefit from increased standard child benefit and given our low 1.4 fertility rate now that is why I back a rise in standard child benefit.
It would be a fantastic Tory pro middle income families policy
It would be unacceptable in the present climate
The two most unpopular decisions in the Budget according to YouGov were freezing thresholds and the 2 child benefit cap as the public draw the line on more taxes and benefits
Badenoch is correct to say she will reinstate the 2 child cap but needs to go further with abolishing the triple lock and means testing the state pension as part of a reduction in welfare spending and not adding to benefits other than by inflation
Means testing the state pension, as with other means testing, just creates an administrative burden. The better off already pay 40-60% tax on it.
Worse than that- if you means test the state pension, there isn't much point in making other arrangements for a lot of people. Why bother saving if it just reduces your state pension?
It would turn a small problem now into a much bigger problem in a few decades time. And nobody would want to be that short-sighted, would they?
What is obvious is that the present arrangements cannot continue so either the state pension has some form of means testing or the age will have to increase to 70+
Neither are easy but then cutting welfare is never going to be easy
What would be interesting (and probably political suicide) would be to have essentially an OAP budget per person and then acturial approach to dishing it out. So you can take it as soon as you like (maybe with some limit, say 60 or so) but if you wait longerthen you'll get more per year (and if you're actually in bad health with limited life expectancy, then you can access it sooner at a higher rate as the calculations say you'll fall off the perch sooner).
Given associations between health, wealth and life expectancy, it would of course penalise mostly the better off, older, voting pensioners, which is why it would be 'courageous'. It would however mean that those well able to work would work a bit longer. Those with severe COPD in their 60s would retire earlier. it could also shift some of the disability benefits into OAP, potentially, for those younger people with poor health.
It's already possible to do this, or more precisely defer the pension (not take it early).
I've no real problem with the state pension age going up and tracking life expectancy-minus-something, for example. But there are those who most definitively can't work to 70. I suspect, but don't know, that the spread of viable working ages is getting wider due to lifestyle differences etc. We either use disability benefits (as now) or tweak the state pension provision.
There is a point of principle involved in connection with the proposed Tourist Tax (to be levied by the directly-elected Mayors); how do you reconcile this tax with the fundamental principle of Democracy "No Taxation without Representation"?
That's an incomplete "principle". People too young to vote have always paid tax, income tax if earning, petrol duty if they are a driver, VAT of course.
The other principle is of visitors taking advantage of local services without having paid for them.
If you don’t like paying a tourist tax you can vote by not visiting the town / city.
It’s worth saying that Ben Houchen has explicitly said he won’t use it as Teesside is really people visiting family or work so using that tax doesn’t work around there
I frequently pay a Tourist Tax when travelling abroad. It is slightly annoying as it can be billed separately and you have to pay in cash when the rest of the bill has been settled by credit card, but it's usually about the price of a coffee per diem and I have never found one that is a significant cost compared with the room price, or has put me off visiting somewhere.
Of course in the UK we will probably implement it particularly badly.
Yes, it does seem to be a feature of these taxes that they are paid in cash directly to the hotel, presumably to avoid processing fees and agent commissions etc.
One might expect London, Edinburgh, and a few historic and leafy cities (York, Salisbury etc) to be first in line to implement once the legislation passes.
Bath more than Salisbury, except for Russians, of course.
I suspect the government have lit a ticking time bomb with the removal of the benefits cap.
Every time a story about a large non-working family comes out (there will be plenty), with taxpayers paying - it will be laid at their door.
They haven't removed the benefit cap (£22k); they've removed the two-child limit.
So stories about families on £60k worth of benefits won't be common*. Some child poverty think tanks have pointed out that the £22k limit significantly limits the effect of the change - they're not wrong, particularly somewhere like London where the just housing element could be £30k.
*There are a number of exemptions, particularly around disability benefits, but I reckon DWP will tighten that up.
If you're explaining, you're losing. And removing the two-child limit alone is politically damaging.
Taxes are going up by £3-4 billion to pay for it, and everyone knows that money is going on extra welfare and coming from their paycheck.
I don't disagree - just pointing out that the Mail will struggle to find those households.
The other thing that's interesting is what the Conservatives do. I had a flick through affected households by council area and it's not a bad proxy for areas where Reform are doing well. That's why Farage - by far our canniest politician - has come out in favour. Whether the Conservatives follow or not will be a signal into their strategy for the next 3 years.
Kemi has been clear the Conservatives would have kept the 2 child benefit cap. Though they should also back an increase in standard child benefit for most parents while keeping the two child benefit cap for parents on universal credit
But many people on UC are actually working ... your proposal is self-contradictory to a considerable degree.
Many aren’t whereas the vast majority on standard child benefit work and a parent out of work can only claim it for six months while on JSA
Go back and read what you wrote. You're demanding an increase in benefits for people who are well enough off not to need UC, while demanding the 2CC for people who are not well enough off not to need UC. That's *reverse* means testing.
If that's Modern Tory policy, heaven help the party.
No as you also cannot claim child benefit if your income is over £80k. It is working parents who are on middle income who earn less than that and don’t claim UC who would benefit from increased standard child benefit and given our low 1.4 fertility rate now that is why I back a rise in standard child benefit.
It would be a fantastic Tory pro middle income families policy
It would be unacceptable in the present climate
The two most unpopular decisions in the Budget according to YouGov were freezing thresholds and the 2 child benefit cap as the public draw the line on more taxes and benefits
Badenoch is correct to say she will reinstate the 2 child cap but needs to go further with abolishing the triple lock and means testing the state pension as part of a reduction in welfare spending and not adding to benefits other than by inflation
Means testing the state pension, as with other means testing, just creates an administrative burden. The better off already pay 40-60% tax on it.
Worse than that- if you means test the state pension, there isn't much point in making other arrangements for a lot of people. Why bother saving if it just reduces your state pension?
It would turn a small problem now into a much bigger problem in a few decades time. And nobody would want to be that short-sighted, would they?
What is obvious is that the present arrangements cannot continue so either the state pension has some form of means testing or the age will have to increase to 70+
Neither are easy but then cutting welfare is never going to be easy
What would be interesting (and probably political suicide) would be to have essentially an OAP budget per person and then acturial approach to dishing it out. So you can take it as soon as you like (maybe with some limit, say 60 or so) but if you wait longerthen you'll get more per year (and if you're actually in bad health with limited life expectancy, then you can access it sooner at a higher rate as the calculations say you'll fall off the perch sooner).
Given associations between health, wealth and life expectancy, it would of course penalise mostly the better off, older, voting pensioners, which is why it would be 'courageous'. It would however mean that those well able to work would work a bit longer. Those with severe COPD in their 60s would retire earlier. it could also shift some of the disability benefits into OAP, potentially, for those younger people with poor health.
It's already possible to do this, or more precisely defer the pension (not take it early).
I've no real problem with the state pension age going up and tracking life expectancy-minus-something, for example. But there are those who most definitively can't work to 70. I suspect, but don't know, that the spread of viable working ages is getting wider due to lifestyle differences etc. We either use disability benefits (as now) or tweak the state pension provision.
Depends on the job also, though - posties or scaffies* would need to retire earlier. But I'm not sure I could tolerate an office job with keyboard all day until I was 70. But that only reinforces your point.
Another government service given over to a private monopoly that cannot be removed & has no inventive to serve it’s users in a timely or reasonable fashion whatsoever inevitably turns into an engine of misery and fury for everyone involved. Accountability is no where to be found, neither in the private company running the service, nor the NHS management.
It’s entirely plausible that NHS management were forced to privatise this service by past UK governments, in the vague hope that “savings” would result. Ever since, everyone involved has had a huge incentive to turn a blind eye to the actual experience of their end-users. Those who could afford to do so simply opt out of the service as far as possible, whilst those who can’t end up back in hospital & so no longer need to be serviced.
It’s this kind of thing that generates so much combined anger & depression amongst the electorate - it demonstrates that the government simply doesn’t care about the experiences of people on the receiving end, who are forced to endure whatever limited service the system can be bothered to give them. Money alone can’t solve this - indeed, throwing more money into this system will probably make it worse, as Blair discovered when he tried to “fix” the NHS the first time around.
My Aunt found - as many people do - that a variety of private companies can provide a vast range of wheelchairs at less than the price charged to the NHS. Which is, of course, eye watering.
It would be of interest to ask such companies why they aren’t supplying the NHS. I would guess expensive certification of products, registration as an approved supplier, and plain not being asked.
I suspect the government have lit a ticking time bomb with the removal of the benefits cap.
Every time a story about a large non-working family comes out (there will be plenty), with taxpayers paying - it will be laid at their door.
They haven't removed the benefit cap (£22k); they've removed the two-child limit.
So stories about families on £60k worth of benefits won't be common*. Some child poverty think tanks have pointed out that the £22k limit significantly limits the effect of the change - they're not wrong, particularly somewhere like London where the just housing element could be £30k.
*There are a number of exemptions, particularly around disability benefits, but I reckon DWP will tighten that up.
If you're explaining, you're losing. And removing the two-child limit alone is politically damaging.
Taxes are going up by £3-4 billion to pay for it, and everyone knows that money is going on extra welfare and coming from their paycheck.
I don't disagree - just pointing out that the Mail will struggle to find those households.
The other thing that's interesting is what the Conservatives do. I had a flick through affected households by council area and it's not a bad proxy for areas where Reform are doing well. That's why Farage - by far our canniest politician - has come out in favour. Whether the Conservatives follow or not will be a signal into their strategy for the next 3 years.
Kemi has been clear the Conservatives would have kept the 2 child benefit cap. Though they should also back an increase in standard child benefit for most parents while keeping the two child benefit cap for parents on universal credit
But many people on UC are actually working ... your proposal is self-contradictory to a considerable degree.
Many aren’t whereas the vast majority on standard child benefit work and a parent out of work can only claim it for 91 days while on JSA
Almost three quarters of children in poverty are in working households. This Tory division into strivers and shirkers is a fundamentally dishonest narrative.
Would that be the nonsensical measure of relative poverty, cleverly redefining the term so it will always exist?
[Got to go out now, which is a shame, because I do like a debate about this sort of thing ]
Yeah we already had an argument on this topic. Tldr; you were wrong.
Can confirm that Morris_Dancer continues to be completely wrong about whether relative poverty can be eliminated or not.
(Relative poverty is defined as having below 50%/60% of median income. You could lift everyone above the poverty line and achieve 0% poverty).
The easiest way to do that would be to get rid of all the rich and well paid people.
Which would also result in an increase in absolute poverty.
So which is more important absolute poverty or relative poverty ?
If you mean 'get rid of' literally (deport/kill) then you'd be right. But simply trimming incomes at the top end, down to anything above the 50th centile, wouldn't change the median, obviously ('rich and well paid people' are presumably above median incomes?).
So the easiest way to fix “child poverty” is to import a few million young minimum-wage workers with no children.
Indeed - were you a SPAD in the late-Blair era governments by any chance?
I suspect the government have lit a ticking time bomb with the removal of the benefits cap.
Every time a story about a large non-working family comes out (there will be plenty), with taxpayers paying - it will be laid at their door.
They haven't removed the benefit cap (£22k); they've removed the two-child limit.
So stories about families on £60k worth of benefits won't be common*. Some child poverty think tanks have pointed out that the £22k limit significantly limits the effect of the change - they're not wrong, particularly somewhere like London where the just housing element could be £30k.
*There are a number of exemptions, particularly around disability benefits, but I reckon DWP will tighten that up.
If you're explaining, you're losing. And removing the two-child limit alone is politically damaging.
Taxes are going up by £3-4 billion to pay for it, and everyone knows that money is going on extra welfare and coming from their paycheck.
I don't disagree - just pointing out that the Mail will struggle to find those households.
The other thing that's interesting is what the Conservatives do. I had a flick through affected households by council area and it's not a bad proxy for areas where Reform are doing well. That's why Farage - by far our canniest politician - has come out in favour. Whether the Conservatives follow or not will be a signal into their strategy for the next 3 years.
Kemi has been clear the Conservatives would have kept the 2 child benefit cap. Though they should also back an increase in standard child benefit for most parents while keeping the two child benefit cap for parents on universal credit
But many people on UC are actually working ... your proposal is self-contradictory to a considerable degree.
Many aren’t whereas the vast majority on standard child benefit work and a parent out of work can only claim it for six months while on JSA
Go back and read what you wrote. You're demanding an increase in benefits for people who are well enough off not to need UC, while demanding the 2CC for people who are not well enough off not to need UC. That's *reverse* means testing.
If that's Modern Tory policy, heaven help the party.
No as you also cannot claim child benefit if your income is over £80k. It is working parents who are on middle income who earn less than that and don’t claim UC who would benefit from increased standard child benefit and given our low 1.4 fertility rate now that is why I back a rise in standard child benefit.
It would be a fantastic Tory pro middle income families policy
It would be unacceptable in the present climate
The two most unpopular decisions in the Budget according to YouGov were freezing thresholds and the 2 child benefit cap as the public draw the line on more taxes and benefits
Badenoch is correct to say she will reinstate the 2 child cap but needs to go further with abolishing the triple lock and means testing the state pension as part of a reduction in welfare spending and not adding to benefits other than by inflation
Means testing the state pension, as with other means testing, just creates an administrative burden. The better off already pay 40-60% tax on it.
Worse than that- if you means test the state pension, there isn't much point in making other arrangements for a lot of people. Why bother saving if it just reduces your state pension?
It would turn a small problem now into a much bigger problem in a few decades time. And nobody would want to be that short-sighted, would they?
What is obvious is that the present arrangements cannot continue so either the state pension has some form of means testing or the age will have to increase to 70+
Neither are easy but then cutting welfare is never going to be easy
What would be interesting (and probably political suicide) would be to have essentially an OAP budget per person and then acturial approach to dishing it out. So you can take it as soon as you like (maybe with some limit, say 60 or so) but if you wait longerthen you'll get more per year (and if you're actually in bad health with limited life expectancy, then you can access it sooner at a higher rate as the calculations say you'll fall off the perch sooner).
Given associations between health, wealth and life expectancy, it would of course penalise mostly the better off, older, voting pensioners, which is why it would be 'courageous'. It would however mean that those well able to work would work a bit longer. Those with severe COPD in their 60s would retire earlier. it could also shift some of the disability benefits into OAP, potentially, for those younger people with poor health.
It's already possible to do this, or more precisely defer the pension (not take it early).
I've no real problem with the state pension age going up and tracking life expectancy-minus-something, for example. But there are those who most definitively can't work to 70. I suspect, but don't know, that the spread of viable working ages is getting wider due to lifestyle differences etc. We either use disability benefits (as now) or tweak the state pension provision.
Depends on the job also, though - posties or scaffies* would need to retire earlier. But I'm not sure I could tolerate an office job with keyboard all day until I was 70. But that only reinforces your point.
*Anglice: refuse operatives
Thanks for the * - I read as scaffold workers (they would also be earlier retirees). Less a job thing to some extent though - changing job due to changing physique is a thing, e.g. footballers. Although they have fewer retirement funding issues! But other sports too, of course.
This, I guess, was the logic behind early retirement ages for police and fire fighters etc.
There is a point of principle involved in connection with the proposed Tourist Tax (to be levied by the directly-elected Mayors); how do you reconcile this tax with the fundamental principle of Democracy "No Taxation without Representation"?
That's an incomplete "principle". People too young to vote have always paid tax, income tax if earning, petrol duty if they are a driver, VAT of course.
The other principle is of visitors taking advantage of local services without having paid for them.
If you don’t like paying a tourist tax you can vote by not visiting the town / city.
It’s worth saying that Ben Houchen has explicitly said he won’t use it as Teesside is really people visiting family or work so using that tax doesn’t work around there
The prospect is proving controversial in the Highlands and Islands where the hospitality sector is already under a lot of pressure, with numerous hotel closures, and grannies giving up on their B&Bs, while the roads are flooded with campervans.
It's up to the councils whether to introduce but they are under considerable pressure to do so by Holyrood which has cut their funding over the years. Not easy.
Cable Munching Rats Cause 11 Day Openreach Broadband Outage in Doncaster
Nearly 100 premises in Askern, which is a town and civil parish within the City of Doncaster (South Yorkshire, England), have been left without access to Openreach’s UK broadband network after rodents – those with a seemingly strong appetite for telecoms infrastructure – chewed through one of the operator’s cables in the area. Nothing like a diet high in fibre.
I suspect the government have lit a ticking time bomb with the removal of the benefits cap.
Every time a story about a large non-working family comes out (there will be plenty), with taxpayers paying - it will be laid at their door.
They haven't removed the benefit cap (£22k); they've removed the two-child limit.
So stories about families on £60k worth of benefits won't be common*. Some child poverty think tanks have pointed out that the £22k limit significantly limits the effect of the change - they're not wrong, particularly somewhere like London where the just housing element could be £30k.
*There are a number of exemptions, particularly around disability benefits, but I reckon DWP will tighten that up.
If you're explaining, you're losing. And removing the two-child limit alone is politically damaging.
Taxes are going up by £3-4 billion to pay for it, and everyone knows that money is going on extra welfare and coming from their paycheck.
I don't disagree - just pointing out that the Mail will struggle to find those households.
The other thing that's interesting is what the Conservatives do. I had a flick through affected households by council area and it's not a bad proxy for areas where Reform are doing well. That's why Farage - by far our canniest politician - has come out in favour. Whether the Conservatives follow or not will be a signal into their strategy for the next 3 years.
Kemi has been clear the Conservatives would have kept the 2 child benefit cap. Though they should also back an increase in standard child benefit for most parents while keeping the two child benefit cap for parents on universal credit
But many people on UC are actually working ... your proposal is self-contradictory to a considerable degree.
Many aren’t whereas the vast majority on standard child benefit work and a parent out of work can only claim it for 91 days while on JSA
Almost three quarters of children in poverty are in working households. This Tory division into strivers and shirkers is a fundamentally dishonest narrative.
Would that be the nonsensical measure of relative poverty, cleverly redefining the term so it will always exist?
[Got to go out now, which is a shame, because I do like a debate about this sort of thing ]
Yeah we already had an argument on this topic. Tldr; you were wrong.
Can confirm that Morris_Dancer continues to be completely wrong about whether relative poverty can be eliminated or not.
(Relative poverty is defined as having below 50%/60% of median income. You could lift everyone above the poverty line and achieve 0% poverty).
The easiest way to do that would be to get rid of all the rich and well paid people.
Which would also result in an increase in absolute poverty.
So which is more important absolute poverty or relative poverty ?
If you mean 'get rid of' literally (deport/kill) then you'd be right. But simply trimming incomes at the top end, down to anything above the 50th centile, wouldn't change the median, obviously ('rich and well paid people' are presumably above median incomes?).
So the easiest way to fix “child poverty” is to import a few million young minimum-wage workers with no children.
Indeed - were you a SPAD in the late-Blair era governments by any chance?
Sadly not, but it’s not difficult to see how all of these measures can be achieved by taking decisions that are otherwise undesirable in order to meet an arbitary target. Taking children out of “poverty” means very little if you’ve also increased the cost of housing and job availability.
There is a point of principle involved in connection with the proposed Tourist Tax (to be levied by the directly-elected Mayors); how do you reconcile this tax with the fundamental principle of Democracy "No Taxation without Representation"?
That's an incomplete "principle". People too young to vote have always paid tax, income tax if earning, petrol duty if they are a driver, VAT of course.
The other principle is of visitors taking advantage of local services without having paid for them.
If you don’t like paying a tourist tax you can vote by not visiting the town / city.
It’s worth saying that Ben Houchen has explicitly said he won’t use it as Teesside is really people visiting family or work so using that tax doesn’t work around there
The prospect is proving controversial in the Highlands and Islands where the hospitality sector is already under a lot of pressure, with numerous hotel closures, and grannies giving up on their B&Bs, while the roads are flooded with campervans.
It's up to the councils whether to introduce but they are under considerable pressure to do so by Holyrood which has cut their funding over the years. Not easy.
Surely someone with a sense of humour in Holyrood has proposed a campervan tax by now?
I suspect the government have lit a ticking time bomb with the removal of the benefits cap.
Every time a story about a large non-working family comes out (there will be plenty), with taxpayers paying - it will be laid at their door.
They haven't removed the benefit cap (£22k); they've removed the two-child limit.
So stories about families on £60k worth of benefits won't be common*. Some child poverty think tanks have pointed out that the £22k limit significantly limits the effect of the change - they're not wrong, particularly somewhere like London where the just housing element could be £30k.
*There are a number of exemptions, particularly around disability benefits, but I reckon DWP will tighten that up.
If you're explaining, you're losing. And removing the two-child limit alone is politically damaging.
Taxes are going up by £3-4 billion to pay for it, and everyone knows that money is going on extra welfare and coming from their paycheck.
I don't disagree - just pointing out that the Mail will struggle to find those households.
The other thing that's interesting is what the Conservatives do. I had a flick through affected households by council area and it's not a bad proxy for areas where Reform are doing well. That's why Farage - by far our canniest politician - has come out in favour. Whether the Conservatives follow or not will be a signal into their strategy for the next 3 years.
Kemi has been clear the Conservatives would have kept the 2 child benefit cap. Though they should also back an increase in standard child benefit for most parents while keeping the two child benefit cap for parents on universal credit
But many people on UC are actually working ... your proposal is self-contradictory to a considerable degree.
Many aren’t whereas the vast majority on standard child benefit work and a parent out of work can only claim it for six months while on JSA
Go back and read what you wrote. You're demanding an increase in benefits for people who are well enough off not to need UC, while demanding the 2CC for people who are not well enough off not to need UC. That's *reverse* means testing.
If that's Modern Tory policy, heaven help the party.
No as you also cannot claim child benefit if your income is over £80k. It is working parents who are on middle income who earn less than that and don’t claim UC who would benefit from increased standard child benefit and given our low 1.4 fertility rate now that is why I back a rise in standard child benefit.
It would be a fantastic Tory pro middle income families policy
It would be unacceptable in the present climate
The two most unpopular decisions in the Budget according to YouGov were freezing thresholds and the 2 child benefit cap as the public draw the line on more taxes and benefits
Badenoch is correct to say she will reinstate the 2 child cap but needs to go further with abolishing the triple lock and means testing the state pension as part of a reduction in welfare spending and not adding to benefits other than by inflation
Means testing the state pension, as with other means testing, just creates an administrative burden. The better off already pay 40-60% tax on it.
Worse than that- if you means test the state pension, there isn't much point in making other arrangements for a lot of people. Why bother saving if it just reduces your state pension?
It would turn a small problem now into a much bigger problem in a few decades time. And nobody would want to be that short-sighted, would they?
What is obvious is that the present arrangements cannot continue so either the state pension has some form of means testing or the age will have to increase to 70+
Neither are easy but then cutting welfare is never going to be easy
What would be interesting (and probably political suicide) would be to have essentially an OAP budget per person and then acturial approach to dishing it out. So you can take it as soon as you like (maybe with some limit, say 60 or so) but if you wait longerthen you'll get more per year (and if you're actually in bad health with limited life expectancy, then you can access it sooner at a higher rate as the calculations say you'll fall off the perch sooner).
Given associations between health, wealth and life expectancy, it would of course penalise mostly the better off, older, voting pensioners, which is why it would be 'courageous'. It would however mean that those well able to work would work a bit longer. Those with severe COPD in their 60s would retire earlier. it could also shift some of the disability benefits into OAP, potentially, for those younger people with poor health.
The problem with this approach is that it incentivises people to claim poor health and imminent mortality in older age, rewarding those who are able to browbeat their GP into certifying them as at death's door. You'd create a lot of bureaucracy policing the system and it would create a feeling that other people were taking the piss, "miraculously" surviving a diagnosis of minimal life expectancy.
Even if the system worked as intended, you'd have to reduce the level of the state pension for the average recipient, because at present the system saves a packet on those who die early.
I'd favour taking that sort of approach, but for the population as a whole. I'd put a ceiling on state pension payouts, equal to some percentage of GDP for the last five years. If you increase the pension age and pay out to fewer people then you can have a higher state pension, and vice versa.
I suspect the government have lit a ticking time bomb with the removal of the benefits cap.
Every time a story about a large non-working family comes out (there will be plenty), with taxpayers paying - it will be laid at their door.
They haven't removed the benefit cap (£22k); they've removed the two-child limit.
So stories about families on £60k worth of benefits won't be common*. Some child poverty think tanks have pointed out that the £22k limit significantly limits the effect of the change - they're not wrong, particularly somewhere like London where the just housing element could be £30k.
*There are a number of exemptions, particularly around disability benefits, but I reckon DWP will tighten that up.
If you're explaining, you're losing. And removing the two-child limit alone is politically damaging.
Taxes are going up by £3-4 billion to pay for it, and everyone knows that money is going on extra welfare and coming from their paycheck.
I don't disagree - just pointing out that the Mail will struggle to find those households.
The other thing that's interesting is what the Conservatives do. I had a flick through affected households by council area and it's not a bad proxy for areas where Reform are doing well. That's why Farage - by far our canniest politician - has come out in favour. Whether the Conservatives follow or not will be a signal into their strategy for the next 3 years.
Kemi has been clear the Conservatives would have kept the 2 child benefit cap. Though they should also back an increase in standard child benefit for most parents while keeping the two child benefit cap for parents on universal credit
But many people on UC are actually working ... your proposal is self-contradictory to a considerable degree.
Many aren’t whereas the vast majority on standard child benefit work and a parent out of work can only claim it for six months while on JSA
Go back and read what you wrote. You're demanding an increase in benefits for people who are well enough off not to need UC, while demanding the 2CC for people who are not well enough off not to need UC. That's *reverse* means testing.
If that's Modern Tory policy, heaven help the party.
No as you also cannot claim child benefit if your income is over £80k. It is working parents who are on middle income who earn less than that and don’t claim UC who would benefit from increased standard child benefit and given our low 1.4 fertility rate now that is why I back a rise in standard child benefit.
It would be a fantastic Tory pro middle income families policy
It would be unacceptable in the present climate
The two most unpopular decisions in the Budget according to YouGov were freezing thresholds and the 2 child benefit cap as the public draw the line on more taxes and benefits
Badenoch is correct to say she will reinstate the 2 child cap but needs to go further with abolishing the triple lock and means testing the state pension as part of a reduction in welfare spending and not adding to benefits other than by inflation
Means testing the state pension, as with other means testing, just creates an administrative burden. The better off already pay 40-60% tax on it.
Worse than that- if you means test the state pension, there isn't much point in making other arrangements for a lot of people. Why bother saving if it just reduces your state pension?
It would turn a small problem now into a much bigger problem in a few decades time. And nobody would want to be that short-sighted, would they?
What is obvious is that the present arrangements cannot continue so either the state pension has some form of means testing or the age will have to increase to 70+
Neither are easy but then cutting welfare is never going to be easy
What would be interesting (and probably political suicide) would be to have essentially an OAP budget per person and then acturial approach to dishing it out. So you can take it as soon as you like (maybe with some limit, say 60 or so) but if you wait longerthen you'll get more per year (and if you're actually in bad health with limited life expectancy, then you can access it sooner at a higher rate as the calculations say you'll fall off the perch sooner).
Given associations between health, wealth and life expectancy, it would of course penalise mostly the better off, older, voting pensioners, which is why it would be 'courageous'. It would however mean that those well able to work would work a bit longer. Those with severe COPD in their 60s would retire earlier. it could also shift some of the disability benefits into OAP, potentially, for those younger people with poor health.
It's already possible to do this, or more precisely defer the pension (not take it early).
I've no real problem with the state pension age going up and tracking life expectancy-minus-something, for example. But there are those who most definitively can't work to 70. I suspect, but don't know, that the spread of viable working ages is getting wider due to lifestyle differences etc. We either use disability benefits (as now) or tweak the state pension provision.
Depends on the job also, though - posties or scaffies* would need to retire earlier. But I'm not sure I could tolerate an office job with keyboard all day until I was 70. But that only reinforces your point.
*Anglice: refuse operatives
Thanks for the * - I read as scaffold workers (they would also be earlier retirees). Less a job thing to some extent though - changing job due to changing physique is a thing, e.g. footballers. Although they have fewer retirement funding issues! But other sports too, of course.
This, I guess, was the logic behind early retirement ages for police and fire fighters etc.
Another government service given over to a private monopoly that cannot be removed & has no inventive to serve it’s users in a timely or reasonable fashion whatsoever inevitably turns into an engine of misery and fury for everyone involved. Accountability is no where to be found, neither in the private company running the service, nor the NHS management.
It’s entirely plausible that NHS management were forced to privatise this service by past UK governments, in the vague hope that “savings” would result. Ever since, everyone involved has had a huge incentive to turn a blind eye to the actual experience of their end-users. Those who could afford to do so simply opt out of the service as far as possible, whilst those who can’t end up back in hospital & so no longer need to be serviced.
It’s this kind of thing that generates so much combined anger & depression amongst the electorate - it demonstrates that the government simply doesn’t care about the experiences of people on the receiving end, who are forced to endure whatever limited service the system can be bothered to give them. Money alone can’t solve this - indeed, throwing more money into this system will probably make it worse, as Blair discovered when he tried to “fix” the NHS the first time around.
This passage particularly sticks out.
“The crazy thing is, a wheelchair service’s mandate is only to make sure you can mobilise indoors, in your home. On a flat smooth surface, I can do that in a manual wheelchair. But outside, on rough and angled surfaces, I lack the hand and upper body strength.”
As a result, he faced being issued with a wheelchair that would have kept him housebound. “My aim was to go back to work, rebuild my life,” he says. “But to do that, I had to lie to wheelchair services and make out I was more disabled than I am, so that I could get a power chair and access the outdoors.” It was either lie, or give up on having any kind of a life.
I suspect the government have lit a ticking time bomb with the removal of the benefits cap.
Every time a story about a large non-working family comes out (there will be plenty), with taxpayers paying - it will be laid at their door.
They haven't removed the benefit cap (£22k); they've removed the two-child limit.
So stories about families on £60k worth of benefits won't be common*. Some child poverty think tanks have pointed out that the £22k limit significantly limits the effect of the change - they're not wrong, particularly somewhere like London where the just housing element could be £30k.
*There are a number of exemptions, particularly around disability benefits, but I reckon DWP will tighten that up.
If you're explaining, you're losing. And removing the two-child limit alone is politically damaging.
Taxes are going up by £3-4 billion to pay for it, and everyone knows that money is going on extra welfare and coming from their paycheck.
I don't disagree - just pointing out that the Mail will struggle to find those households.
The other thing that's interesting is what the Conservatives do. I had a flick through affected households by council area and it's not a bad proxy for areas where Reform are doing well. That's why Farage - by far our canniest politician - has come out in favour. Whether the Conservatives follow or not will be a signal into their strategy for the next 3 years.
Kemi has been clear the Conservatives would have kept the 2 child benefit cap. Though they should also back an increase in standard child benefit for most parents while keeping the two child benefit cap for parents on universal credit
But many people on UC are actually working ... your proposal is self-contradictory to a considerable degree.
Many aren’t whereas the vast majority on standard child benefit work and a parent out of work can only claim it for six months while on JSA
Go back and read what you wrote. You're demanding an increase in benefits for people who are well enough off not to need UC, while demanding the 2CC for people who are not well enough off not to need UC. That's *reverse* means testing.
If that's Modern Tory policy, heaven help the party.
No as you also cannot claim child benefit if your income is over £80k. It is working parents who are on middle income who earn less than that and don’t claim UC who would benefit from increased standard child benefit and given our low 1.4 fertility rate now that is why I back a rise in standard child benefit.
It would be a fantastic Tory pro middle income families policy
It would be unacceptable in the present climate
The two most unpopular decisions in the Budget according to YouGov were freezing thresholds and the 2 child benefit cap as the public draw the line on more taxes and benefits
Badenoch is correct to say she will reinstate the 2 child cap but needs to go further with abolishing the triple lock and means testing the state pension as part of a reduction in welfare spending and not adding to benefits other than by inflation
Means testing the state pension, as with other means testing, just creates an administrative burden. The better off already pay 40-60% tax on it.
Worse than that- if you means test the state pension, there isn't much point in making other arrangements for a lot of people. Why bother saving if it just reduces your state pension?
It would turn a small problem now into a much bigger problem in a few decades time. And nobody would want to be that short-sighted, would they?
What is obvious is that the present arrangements cannot continue so either the state pension has some form of means testing or the age will have to increase to 70+
Neither are easy but then cutting welfare is never going to be easy
What would be interesting (and probably political suicide) would be to have essentially an OAP budget per person and then acturial approach to dishing it out. So you can take it as soon as you like (maybe with some limit, say 60 or so) but if you wait longerthen you'll get more per year (and if you're actually in bad health with limited life expectancy, then you can access it sooner at a higher rate as the calculations say you'll fall off the perch sooner).
Given associations between health, wealth and life expectancy, it would of course penalise mostly the better off, older, voting pensioners, which is why it would be 'courageous'. It would however mean that those well able to work would work a bit longer. Those with severe COPD in their 60s would retire earlier. it could also shift some of the disability benefits into OAP, potentially, for those younger people with poor health.
It's already possible to do this, or more precisely defer the pension (not take it early).
I've no real problem with the state pension age going up and tracking life expectancy-minus-something, for example. But there are those who most definitively can't work to 70. I suspect, but don't know, that the spread of viable working ages is getting wider due to lifestyle differences etc. We either use disability benefits (as now) or tweak the state pension provision.
People can, and should, move jobs and careers as ageing and health have effects.
Otherwise we would have footballers claiming the state pension at 40.
Increasing personal pensions also give options as to how long and how much people work as they grow older.
May I please trouble PBers for comments on a phenomenon I have mentioned here before and seems to be becoming more prevalent. It concerns pre-dating of letters from Government departments.
During a long-running dispute with HMRC a few years back I noted that their letters repeatedly bore a date many days before they flopped through the box. The post around here isn't bad so I assume the letters were being predated deliberately, often by as much as seven to ten days. This was particularly irritating when the letter stipulated a time limit for replying, which would typically be a fortnight. Since the reply would normally involve the production of documents this practice commonly created a scramble at my end to get the answer back in time.
Today I received a letter from HMRC dated 13th November 2025. That's nineteen days to reach me and is a new record even for them. Can anyone else beat this? What is going on here? Is it some kind of little scam to make them look more efficient than the people they are writing to?
The letter in question is a demand for payment, accompanied by the usual threats. The amount in question was paid without prompting on 12th November, a day before the demand was issued, so if it's a computer to blame, it is slacking.
Another government service given over to a private monopoly that cannot be removed & has no inventive to serve it’s users in a timely or reasonable fashion whatsoever inevitably turns into an engine of misery and fury for everyone involved. Accountability is no where to be found, neither in the private company running the service, nor the NHS management.
It’s entirely plausible that NHS management were forced to privatise this service by past UK governments, in the vague hope that “savings” would result. Ever since, everyone involved has had a huge incentive to turn a blind eye to the actual experience of their end-users. Those who could afford to do so simply opt out of the service as far as possible, whilst those who can’t end up back in hospital & so no longer need to be serviced.
It’s this kind of thing that generates so much combined anger & depression amongst the electorate - it demonstrates that the government simply doesn’t care about the experiences of people on the receiving end, who are forced to endure whatever limited service the system can be bothered to give them. Money alone can’t solve this - indeed, throwing more money into this system will probably make it worse, as Blair discovered when he tried to “fix” the NHS the first time around.
Robin Smith has died, like his test career, an innings cut far too short.
Sad news. I think he was dropped from the team in 1996 far too early and abruptly. Remember watching him batting at Old Trafford in 1995 when he carried on batting despite being hit in the face by a ball from Ian Bishop.
I suspect the government have lit a ticking time bomb with the removal of the benefits cap.
Every time a story about a large non-working family comes out (there will be plenty), with taxpayers paying - it will be laid at their door.
They haven't removed the benefit cap (£22k); they've removed the two-child limit.
So stories about families on £60k worth of benefits won't be common*. Some child poverty think tanks have pointed out that the £22k limit significantly limits the effect of the change - they're not wrong, particularly somewhere like London where the just housing element could be £30k.
*There are a number of exemptions, particularly around disability benefits, but I reckon DWP will tighten that up.
If you're explaining, you're losing. And removing the two-child limit alone is politically damaging.
Taxes are going up by £3-4 billion to pay for it, and everyone knows that money is going on extra welfare and coming from their paycheck.
I don't disagree - just pointing out that the Mail will struggle to find those households.
The other thing that's interesting is what the Conservatives do. I had a flick through affected households by council area and it's not a bad proxy for areas where Reform are doing well. That's why Farage - by far our canniest politician - has come out in favour. Whether the Conservatives follow or not will be a signal into their strategy for the next 3 years.
Kemi has been clear the Conservatives would have kept the 2 child benefit cap. Though they should also back an increase in standard child benefit for most parents while keeping the two child benefit cap for parents on universal credit
But many people on UC are actually working ... your proposal is self-contradictory to a considerable degree.
Many aren’t whereas the vast majority on standard child benefit work and a parent out of work can only claim it for six months while on JSA
Go back and read what you wrote. You're demanding an increase in benefits for people who are well enough off not to need UC, while demanding the 2CC for people who are not well enough off not to need UC. That's *reverse* means testing.
If that's Modern Tory policy, heaven help the party.
No as you also cannot claim child benefit if your income is over £80k. It is working parents who are on middle income who earn less than that and don’t claim UC who would benefit from increased standard child benefit and given our low 1.4 fertility rate now that is why I back a rise in standard child benefit.
It would be a fantastic Tory pro middle income families policy
It would be unacceptable in the present climate
The two most unpopular decisions in the Budget according to YouGov were freezing thresholds and the 2 child benefit cap as the public draw the line on more taxes and benefits
Badenoch is correct to say she will reinstate the 2 child cap but needs to go further with abolishing the triple lock and means testing the state pension as part of a reduction in welfare spending and not adding to benefits other than by inflation
Means testing the state pension, as with other means testing, just creates an administrative burden. The better off already pay 40-60% tax on it.
Worse than that- if you means test the state pension, there isn't much point in making other arrangements for a lot of people. Why bother saving if it just reduces your state pension?
It would turn a small problem now into a much bigger problem in a few decades time. And nobody would want to be that short-sighted, would they?
What is obvious is that the present arrangements cannot continue so either the state pension has some form of means testing or the age will have to increase to 70+
Neither are easy but then cutting welfare is never going to be easy
What would be interesting (and probably political suicide) would be to have essentially an OAP budget per person and then acturial approach to dishing it out. So you can take it as soon as you like (maybe with some limit, say 60 or so) but if you wait longerthen you'll get more per year (and if you're actually in bad health with limited life expectancy, then you can access it sooner at a higher rate as the calculations say you'll fall off the perch sooner).
Given associations between health, wealth and life expectancy, it would of course penalise mostly the better off, older, voting pensioners, which is why it would be 'courageous'. It would however mean that those well able to work would work a bit longer. Those with severe COPD in their 60s would retire earlier. it could also shift some of the disability benefits into OAP, potentially, for those younger people with poor health.
It's already possible to do this, or more precisely defer the pension (not take it early).
I've no real problem with the state pension age going up and tracking life expectancy-minus-something, for example. But there are those who most definitively can't work to 70. I suspect, but don't know, that the spread of viable working ages is getting wider due to lifestyle differences etc. We either use disability benefits (as now) or tweak the state pension provision.
People can, and should, move jobs and careers as ageing and health have effects.
Otherwise we would have footballers claiming the state pension at 40.
Increasing personal pensions also give options as to how long and how much people work as they grow older.
I recall much derision about an advert advocating IT training for ex-ballet people.
Who finish a poorly paid career before 40, usually with non-trivial damage to their bodies.
Another government service given over to a private monopoly that cannot be removed & has no inventive to serve it’s users in a timely or reasonable fashion whatsoever inevitably turns into an engine of misery and fury for everyone involved. Accountability is no where to be found, neither in the private company running the service, nor the NHS management.
It’s entirely plausible that NHS management were forced to privatise this service by past UK governments, in the vague hope that “savings” would result. Ever since, everyone involved has had a huge incentive to turn a blind eye to the actual experience of their end-users. Those who could afford to do so simply opt out of the service as far as possible, whilst those who can’t end up back in hospital & so no longer need to be serviced.
It’s this kind of thing that generates so much combined anger & depression amongst the electorate - it demonstrates that the government simply doesn’t care about the experiences of people on the receiving end, who are forced to endure whatever limited service the system can be bothered to give them. Money alone can’t solve this - indeed, throwing more money into this system will probably make it worse, as Blair discovered when he tried to “fix” the NHS the first time around.
The equipment service is similarly broken. They provide simple stuff like kitchen trolleys and walking frames to more complex stuff like beds. It can take ages for some things to turn up, and often it is a requirement that it does so before the recipient can be discharged from hospital.
My mother in law needed a hoist as she has very poor mobility (dementia).
She got a hoist, but the correct sling was not available at the time. One did turn up several months later but of course we'd had to buy one ourselves. Without it she would have been left in bed without the use of a commode for weeks, which would have not have been great, to put it mildly.
Soon after the contracted provider in this area went bust leaving everyone in the lurch. The new provider stopped collecting items for a while and we had some to get rid of, so we said we'll bring our stuff to the new depot as it was no longer needed.
It was ... interesting.
Whilst I understand questions over infections and the like, the skips full of discarded items which were more or less in new condition was disturbing.
Like re-usable PPE, it seems the preferred process is to throw out things that may only have been used for a couple of weeks and would be perfectly serviceable. The waste is awful.
So Rachel from accounts won the sack race against Richard Hughes, with the OBR chief forced out rather than testify to the Committee today.
American sack race next, who wins out of SecDef Peter Hegseth and Minnesota Gov Tim Walz, both on the front pages for separate scandals over the weekend?
Ed Balls reckons they should reject the resignation
I find it hard to feel that the OBR early report release was a resignation matter. It's a nice easy to understand Westminster gossip type story that the media can get excited about, but at bottom it's "we made a mistake with the config of our Wordpress site so it wasn't requiring authentication for the file the way we expected". Yes, there's the "market sensitive information" aspect, but in practice that doesn't seem to have actually caused major harm. The closest to a real management failure is that they probably should have assessed whether they were taking the risks seriously enough (e.g. testing that their embargoed docs process really did prevent access) and whether the system they set up in 2013 was still the right one given how important the OBR has become these days. But if we lose a decent head of the OBR and it spends the next six months leaderless while selecting a new one who then has to get up to speed with the organisation's issues, is that really a benefit to the country?
No accountability, eh?
Next week - “Bombed the shipwrecked survivors *twice*. But losing the head of the military, is that really a benefit to the country? At this point does it really matter?”
If no one is punished for anything, then anything goes.
“Just open the gates, Constable, it’s not like anyone does anything if a bunch of scousers get crushed.”
Ah, relative poverty. The measure that concludes if everyone in the UK earned £100 a year, nobody would be poor.
'Relative' is, I think you'll find, an important part of the term 'relative poverty'.
If everyone in the UK earned £100 a year there wouldn't be a government to measure poverty in the first place. It's a facile observation.
No measure is perfect, but there's no doubt that an income if 60% median is pretty tough, and there's a decent rationale for it given the current structure of our labour market, welfare system and economy. Other options are available and I look forward to Morris_Dancer explaining which is best.
Ah, relative poverty. The measure that concludes if everyone in the UK earned £100 a year, nobody would be poor.
'Relative' is, I think you'll find, an important part of the term 'relative poverty'.
If everyone in the UK earned £100 a year there wouldn't be a government to measure poverty in the first place. It's a facile observation.
No measure is perfect, but there's no doubt that an income if 60% median is pretty tough, and there's a decent rationale for it given the current structure of our labour market, welfare system and economy. Other options are available and I look forward to Morris_Dancer explaining which is best.
Another government service given over to a private monopoly that cannot be removed & has no inventive to serve it’s users in a timely or reasonable fashion whatsoever inevitably turns into an engine of misery and fury for everyone involved. Accountability is no where to be found, neither in the private company running the service, nor the NHS management.
It’s entirely plausible that NHS management were forced to privatise this service by past UK governments, in the vague hope that “savings” would result. Ever since, everyone involved has had a huge incentive to turn a blind eye to the actual experience of their end-users. Those who could afford to do so simply opt out of the service as far as possible, whilst those who can’t end up back in hospital & so no longer need to be serviced.
It’s this kind of thing that generates so much combined anger & depression amongst the electorate - it demonstrates that the government simply doesn’t care about the experiences of people on the receiving end, who are forced to endure whatever limited service the system can be bothered to give them. Money alone can’t solve this - indeed, throwing more money into this system will probably make it worse, as Blair discovered when he tried to “fix” the NHS the first time around.
The equipment service is similarly broken. They provide simple stuff like kitchen trolleys and walking frames to more complex stuff like beds. It can take ages for some things to turn up, and often it is a requirement that it does so before the recipient can be discharged from hospital.
My mother in law needed a hoist as she has very poor mobility (dementia).
She got a hoist, but the correct sling was not available at the time. One did turn up several months later but of course we'd had to buy one ourselves. Without it she would have been left in bed without the use of a commode for weeks, which would have not have been great, to put it mildly.
Soon after the contracted provider in this area went bust leaving everyone in the lurch. The new provider stopped collecting items for a while and we had some to get rid of, so we said we'll bring our stuff to the new depot as it was no longer needed.
It was ... interesting.
Whilst I understand questions over infections and the like, the skips full of discarded items which were more or less in new condition was disturbing.
Like re-usable PPE, it seems the preferred process is to throw out things that may only have been used for a couple of weeks and would be perfectly serviceable. The waste is awful.
The incentives are -
1) if something is slightly stained/broken there will be complaints. 2) fixing stuff is complicated 3) the NHS won’t buy more wheelchairs from you if they are cheaper. 4) no real questioning of prices.
You’d have to be a saint, not to supply brand new only and raise the price to cover any problems.
Ah, relative poverty. The measure that concludes if everyone in the UK earned £100 a year, nobody would be poor.
'Relative' is, I think you'll find, an important part of the term 'relative poverty'.
If everyone in the UK earned £100 a year there wouldn't be a government to measure poverty in the first place. It's a facile observation.
No measure is perfect, but there's no doubt that an income if 60% median is pretty tough, and there's a decent rationale for it given the current structure of our labour market, welfare system and economy. Other options are available and I look forward to Morris_Dancer explaining which is best.
Ah, relative poverty. The measure that concludes if everyone in the UK earned £100 a year, nobody would be poor.
'Relative' is, I think you'll find, an important part of the term 'relative poverty'.
If everyone in the UK earned £100 a year there wouldn't be a government to measure poverty in the first place. It's a facile observation.
No measure is perfect, but there's no doubt that an income if 60% median is pretty tough, and there's a decent rationale for it given the current structure of our labour market, welfare system and economy. Other options are available and I look forward to Morris_Dancer explaining which is best.
Is that before or after housing costs? Are you equivalising?
You might end up with a rate of poverty higher than the one we have now.
Morris Dancer's definition sounds like the Joseph Rowntree Foundation's 'minimum income standard' which as of 2024 was 71% higher than the relative poverty line for a couple with two children.
Cable Munching Rats Cause 11 Day Openreach Broadband Outage in Doncaster
Nearly 100 premises in Askern, which is a town and civil parish within the City of Doncaster (South Yorkshire, England), have been left without access to Openreach’s UK broadband network after rodents – those with a seemingly strong appetite for telecoms infrastructure – chewed through one of the operator’s cables in the area. Nothing like a diet high in fibre.
Cable Munching Rats Cause 11 Day Openreach Broadband Outage in Doncaster
Nearly 100 premises in Askern, which is a town and civil parish within the City of Doncaster (South Yorkshire, England), have been left without access to Openreach’s UK broadband network after rodents – those with a seemingly strong appetite for telecoms infrastructure – chewed through one of the operator’s cables in the area. Nothing like a diet high in fibre.
That pun is so awesome you would think I worked for that website.
I hate* to inject a note of pedantry, but the percentage of fibre (as opposed to what surrounds it) in an optical cable can be very low indeed.
*not really
Yes most of the physical cable is shielding, supposedly to stop errant rodents chomping through it or workmen digging it up.
Maybe we should incorporate rat poison into it ?
That’s probably a great idea until someone’s pet dog digs up a cable.
You want dog poison as well as rat poison? No wonder taxes are always going up.
1) coat the cables in mercury bichloride. 2) invest heavily in companies that specialise in toxic waste removal, for when the toxic disaster you created with 1) becomes a scandal 3) invest in legal firms specialising in public enquiries for 2)
I suspect the government have lit a ticking time bomb with the removal of the benefits cap.
Every time a story about a large non-working family comes out (there will be plenty), with taxpayers paying - it will be laid at their door.
They haven't removed the benefit cap (£22k); they've removed the two-child limit.
So stories about families on £60k worth of benefits won't be common*. Some child poverty think tanks have pointed out that the £22k limit significantly limits the effect of the change - they're not wrong, particularly somewhere like London where the just housing element could be £30k.
*There are a number of exemptions, particularly around disability benefits, but I reckon DWP will tighten that up.
If you're explaining, you're losing. And removing the two-child limit alone is politically damaging.
Taxes are going up by £3-4 billion to pay for it, and everyone knows that money is going on extra welfare and coming from their paycheck.
I don't disagree - just pointing out that the Mail will struggle to find those households.
The other thing that's interesting is what the Conservatives do. I had a flick through affected households by council area and it's not a bad proxy for areas where Reform are doing well. That's why Farage - by far our canniest politician - has come out in favour. Whether the Conservatives follow or not will be a signal into their strategy for the next 3 years.
Kemi has been clear the Conservatives would have kept the 2 child benefit cap. Though they should also back an increase in standard child benefit for most parents while keeping the two child benefit cap for parents on universal credit
But many people on UC are actually working ... your proposal is self-contradictory to a considerable degree.
Many aren’t whereas the vast majority on standard child benefit work and a parent out of work can only claim it for 91 days while on JSA
Almost three quarters of children in poverty are in working households. This Tory division into strivers and shirkers is a fundamentally dishonest narrative.
Define 'poverty'.
Define 'working'.
The way in which such terms have had their meanings repeatedly stretched is very much part of the 'taking the piss' issue.
Quite. Daily T podcast recently had a bit about the calculations the TUC uses (which is where the Government is getting its '400,000 children lifted out of poverty' statistic from. The notion of poverty is based being some way below the median income - so the current outflux of millionaires and high earners is, in and of itself, 'lifting children out of poverty'. Huzzah!
Median not mean, the "outflux of millionaires and high earners" will have little to no effect on the median.
That is surely not correct. With less high earners being counted, median wealth would fall. Therefore the phenomena I suggested is correct.
Ah, relative poverty. The measure that concludes if everyone in the UK earned £100 a year, nobody would be poor.
'Relative' is, I think you'll find, an important part of the term 'relative poverty'.
If everyone in the UK earned £100 a year there wouldn't be a government to measure poverty in the first place. It's a facile observation.
No measure is perfect, but there's no doubt that an income if 60% median is pretty tough, and there's a decent rationale for it given the current structure of our labour market, welfare system and economy. Other options are available and I look forward to Morris_Dancer explaining which is best.
Sounds like more than 60% of median, to me. We're somewhat above median and your definition isn't too far off me. But we do have four kids. If single and childless I'd feel rich!
Or do you mean your definition should replace median and poverty is e.g. 60% of that?
Comments
It would turn a small problem now into a much bigger problem in a few decades time. And nobody would want to be that short-sighted, would they?
The problem is that the Tories are still struggling with a pathetic pool of talent and the legacy of 14 years of unacceptable failure. I hold no brief for Labour, but the day after the Tories finally make some well thought out and coherent policies, Then I might take your whinge seriously. Until then, you'd be better off hauding ye whisht.
Tried and failed to get selected as a Labour candidate under Corbyn.
With regard to the two-child cap, wait until the Tommy Robinsons and perhaps even the fringes of Reform note that certain “communities” are way more likely to have three or four children than others.
Neither are easy but then cutting welfare is never going to be easy
It's probably an issue which requires resignation to be offered, but not necessarily accepted automatically. I guess Reeves really did not want to save him.
[Got to go out now, which is a shame, because I do like a debate about this sort of thing
Define 'working'.
The way in which such terms have had their meanings repeatedly stretched is very much part of the 'taking the piss' issue.
Just by itself.
it doesn't happen without sufficient resources to create the space to actually organise it; at the moment they're just fire fighting without enough fire appliances.
Lord Mann also highlighted an error in the West Midlands Police intelligence report which referenced a match between Maccabi Tel Aviv and West Ham, which had never happened, he said.
The chief constable admitted that had ended up in the report "due to a social media post".
The chief constable should be resigning over this farce.
This is already accepted by the young.
I’m sure we get the deserving cases like the ones from Matt W but there are loads like this out there.
We probably need to go the same way as Wales with SEND.
https://x.com/ba5tardeyes/status/1995483248319709229?s=61
If the drawbridge is pulled up and those of working age, who pay for the state pension, are told they'll have to work for even longer while paying for those for retired far earlier then that could be the end of the state pension. The social contract between the generations will break.
Fairer, and more politically palatable, to means test or reduce the state pension in real terms. Given that pensioners are eligible for other benefits then the latter is effectively a cheaper way of doing the former.
He was due to be in Committee today, and may well have accused the Chancellor of telling untruths, in which case she’s pleased to have forced him out beforehand
And then add in the police making mistakes.
Swiss cheese model of accident prevention applies.
However the cover-up and lies were atrocious, and sadly, all too many people were prepared to believe them.
People have a natural instinct to want justice for wrongs, and sometimes revenge. Sometimes its better to have truth and reconciliation.
However it was interesting that Leavitt went into a lot of data about cardio and abdominal. What about neurovascular?
(Relative poverty is defined as having below 50%/60% of median income. You could lift everyone above the poverty line and achieve 0% poverty).
https://tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17430437.2015.1079011
"At the Heysel Stadium in Brussels in 1985, 39 Juventus supporters were killed, primarily as a consequence of a charge by drunken opposition fans. Four years later, at Hillsborough, Sheffield, more than twice as many spectators were crushed to death, primarily as a result of police contempt for the hooligan minority. That both tragedies involved Liverpool followers – 96 of whom died at Hillsborough – is the unhappiest, most divisive and most problematic of coincidences. Yet while it would be naïve, at best, to deny any other connection, the long-running inquiry into the Hillsborough tragedy has bred denial about Heysel, and not exclusively among Liverpool supporters. Further hampered by the reluctance of Juventus to desecrate the club’s first European Cup final triumph by reopening old wounds, debate has been stifled. To suggest that the fatal charge at Heysel might have contributed to the unconscionable behaviour of the police at Hillsborough, or that the fences that contributed so heavily to the deaths would not have been there but for pitch invasions, is to wade into toxic waters. Written to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Heysel tragedy, this paper investigates the various ‘truths’, interviews witnesses and addresses the inherent contradictions of ‘The Tragedy That Dare Not Speak Its Name’."
PM me for the full article.
Edit - 1970s. I hadn’t realised it was so long ago.
The other principle is of visitors taking advantage of local services without having paid for them.
Year 9 students at Quarrydale academy in Ashfield are currently studying politics, and on their display board they had the words “extreme right-wing parties”, “Nazi party” and “fascism”. At the side of those words, they had pictures of Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, my hon. Friend the Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) and me. Does the Minister think that should be on the curriculum?
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2025-12-01/debates/4B61AA31-8085-4BCF-9E43-C42398BE7233/NationalCurriculumReform?highlight=quarrydale#contribution-0E2E8FB4-2E5E-45A6-BE50-6010133B19CB
Perhaps he needs to go and take part in educating them about his civic attitude and moderation.
The logic for it is that living in an economy where the price of most things is set by aggregate demand becomes very tricky indeed at 60% of median income. Some other countries use 50%. It correlates closely with other measures like material deprivation and absolute poverty.
One for YouGov
"Are you happy paying a 9% higher rate of income tax than the generations older than you for the next 50+ years (until you're 70+) to pay for people who retired at 65 to have an RPI+ linked state pension?"
Seen on school walls and desks all over England after Heysel.
It’s worth saying that Ben Houchen has explicitly said he won’t use it as Teesside is really people visiting family or work so using that tax doesn’t work around there
But the other options they have is not to work or to emigrate.
No process whatsoever in other words. Obviously process can be the enemy of agility & responsiveness, but this is one of those places where agility & responsiveness ought to be a secondary concern.
We don’t have reconciliation
I am reminded of the time I went to an SWP sponsored book signing thing by a former PIRA member. Who refused, when I asked him, to regret his actions. And then his sidekicks were upset that I didn’t forgive.
Interesting be ming accused of being “Unchristian” by a member of the ComradeDelta Fan Club.
Which would also result in an increase in absolute poverty.
So which is more important absolute poverty or relative poverty ?
But can we also note the whole investigation and report took less than a week rather than the usual two decades.
Here it is for anyone who has not seen it:-
https://obr.uk/docs/dlm_uploads/01122025-Investigation-into-November-2025-EFO-publication-error.pdf
And suggests that part of the solution, in particular cases, can be better policing of entitlement.
You'd have to deport millions of high earners to get anywhere near a significant shift in the median income - the income distribution of the UK is clustered around the median.
Of course in the UK we will probably implement it particularly badly.
Given associations between health, wealth and life expectancy, it would of course penalise mostly the better off, older, voting pensioners, which is why it would be 'courageous'. It would however mean that those well able to work would work a bit longer. Those with severe COPD in their 60s would retire earlier. it could also shift some of the disability benefits into OAP, potentially, for those younger people with poor health.
https://www.gov.uk/deferring-state-pension
Another government service given over to a private monopoly that cannot be removed & has no inventive to serve it’s users in a timely or reasonable fashion whatsoever inevitably turns into an engine of misery and fury for everyone involved. Accountability is no where to be found, neither in the private company running the service, nor the NHS management.
It’s entirely plausible that NHS management were forced to privatise this service by past UK governments, in the vague hope that “savings” would result. Ever since, everyone involved has had a huge incentive to turn a blind eye to the actual experience of their end-users. Those who could afford to do so simply opt out of the service as far as possible, whilst those who can’t end up back in hospital & so no longer need to be serviced.
It’s this kind of thing that generates so much combined anger & depression amongst the electorate - it demonstrates that the government simply doesn’t care about the experiences of people on the receiving end, who are forced to endure whatever limited service the system can be bothered to give them. Money alone can’t solve this - indeed, throwing more money into this system will probably make it worse, as Blair discovered when he tried to “fix” the NHS the first time around.
One might expect London, Edinburgh, and a few historic and leafy cities (York, Salisbury etc) to be first in line to implement once the legislation passes.
I've no real problem with the state pension age going up and tracking life expectancy-minus-something, for example. But there are those who most definitively can't work to 70. I suspect, but don't know, that the spread of viable working ages is getting wider due to lifestyle differences etc. We either use disability benefits (as now) or tweak the state pension provision.
*Anglice: refuse operatives
It would be of interest to ask such companies why they aren’t supplying the NHS. I would guess expensive certification of products, registration as an approved supplier, and plain not being asked.
This, I guess, was the logic behind early retirement ages for police and fire fighters etc.
It's up to the councils whether to introduce but they are under considerable pressure to do so by Holyrood which has cut their funding over the years. Not easy.
Even if the system worked as intended, you'd have to reduce the level of the state pension for the average recipient, because at present the system saves a packet on those who die early.
I'd favour taking that sort of approach, but for the population as a whole. I'd put a ceiling on state pension payouts, equal to some percentage of GDP for the last five years. If you increase the pension age and pay out to fewer people then you can have a higher state pension, and vice versa.
Findings from the interim evaluations into the administration, delivery and impacts of the Heat Network Efficiency Scheme (HNES).
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/heat-network-efficiency-scheme-hnes-evaluation
“The crazy thing is, a wheelchair service’s mandate is only to make sure you can mobilise indoors, in your home. On a flat smooth surface, I can do that in a manual wheelchair. But outside, on rough and angled surfaces, I lack the hand and upper body strength.”
As a result, he faced being issued with a wheelchair that would have kept him housebound. “My aim was to go back to work, rebuild my life,” he says. “But to do that, I had to lie to wheelchair services and make out I was more disabled than I am, so that I could get a power chair and access the outdoors.” It was either lie, or give up on having any kind of a life.
Otherwise we would have footballers claiming the state pension at 40.
Increasing personal pensions also give options as to how long and how much people work as they grow older.
During a long-running dispute with HMRC a few years back I noted that their letters repeatedly bore a date many days before they flopped through the box. The post around here isn't bad so I assume the letters were being predated deliberately, often by as much as seven to ten days. This was particularly irritating when the letter stipulated a time limit for replying, which would typically be a fortnight. Since the reply would normally involve the production of documents this practice commonly created a scramble at my end to get the answer back in time.
Today I received a letter from HMRC dated 13th November 2025. That's nineteen days to reach me and is a new record even for them. Can anyone else beat this? What is going on here? Is it some kind of little scam to make them look more efficient than the people they are writing to?
The letter in question is a demand for payment, accompanied by the usual threats. The amount in question was paid without prompting on 12th November, a day before the demand was issued, so if it's a computer to blame, it is slacking.
Thanks
https://www.waterstones.com/book/late-soviet-britain/abby-innes/9781009373630
Who finish a poorly paid career before 40, usually with non-trivial damage to their bodies.
My mother in law needed a hoist as she has very poor mobility (dementia).
She got a hoist, but the correct sling was not available at the time. One did turn up several months later but of course we'd had to buy one ourselves. Without it she would have been left in bed without the use of a commode for weeks, which would have not have been great, to put it mildly.
Soon after the contracted provider in this area went bust leaving everyone in the lurch. The new provider stopped collecting items for a while and we had some to get rid of, so we said we'll bring our stuff to the new depot as it was no longer needed.
It was ... interesting.
Whilst I understand questions over infections and the like, the skips full of discarded items which were more or less in new condition was disturbing.
Like re-usable PPE, it seems the preferred process is to throw out things that may only have been used for a couple of weeks and would be perfectly serviceable. The waste is awful.
No measure is perfect, but there's no doubt that an income if 60% median is pretty tough, and there's a decent rationale for it given the current structure of our labour market, welfare system and economy. Other options are available and I look forward to Morris_Dancer explaining which is best.
https://vf.politicalbetting.com/discussion/comment/5387186#Comment_5387186
1) if something is slightly stained/broken there will be complaints.
2) fixing stuff is complicated
3) the NHS won’t buy more wheelchairs from you if they are cheaper.
4) no real questioning of prices.
You’d have to be a saint, not to supply brand new only and raise the price to cover any problems.
You might end up with a rate of poverty higher than the one we have now.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2e0y3913jo
2) invest heavily in companies that specialise in toxic waste removal, for when the toxic disaster you created with 1) becomes a scandal
3) invest in legal firms specialising in public enquiries for 2)
There - a business plan for the next 50 years.
Or do you mean your definition should replace median and poverty is e.g. 60% of that?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8e9py8g2yyo
Justice Secretary David Lammy has said 12 prisoners have been accidentally released in the past three weeks, two of whom are still at large.