More bleating from the hospitality industry and some petty spite planning to "ban Labour MPs" from pubs, restaurants etc.
I've very little sympathy - there are two aspects to the whingeing. First, the NI increases - well, all businesses have had to pay for the elephant trap laid for the incoming Government by Sunak and Hunt.
Second, the ending of business rate relief - this was introduced by the Conservatives in 2020 during COVID (and rightly so given no one could go out initially and the virus spreader Eat Out to Help Out was a politically motivated catastrophe) but instead of a rapid removal after a year or two it was left in place for a five year timeframe and of course Reeves and Starmer have been left holding that grenade when it exploded.
I suppose Reeves could have continued with the business rates relief (not quite sure why she didn't and that's her political error) but rather like Council Tax, the political pain of revaluation isn't worth it so the sleeping dog can remain unmolested in the lounge bar by the fire.
The other side of the argument is the hospitality industry has or should have prospered from reduced business rates in a way other businesses (presumably) haven't and the end of the relief has been akin to Cleese and Palin at the end of the fish slapping dance.
Nonetheless, it's quite clear a lot of this is simply playing politics - I've not for instance heard Badenoch or Stride commit to restoring the Business Rates relief at 2020 levels should they get into power next time (and Reform's position on this is also unknown). Pubs and restaurants can choose who they wish to serve but this is petty and vindictive and one could argue it was well known the relief would last only five years.
Don’t remember any anger or digs at hospitality when they banned Tory MPs from their establishments when the last lot were in power.
It’s tough for hospitality and I personally have a lot of sympathy with businesses ending up being forced to close as they cannot cover the additional/upcoming cost burden, especially when it is a big hit, on them especially as they won’t be able to just hike prices up due to customer resistance. It is not just NI and business rates but other increases such as the minimum wage increase, especially for younger people.
She should have phased the business rates change in over five years.
We need a govt that is friendly towards business and puts in place policies to fuel growth rather than just talk about it.
More bleating from the hospitality industry and some petty spite planning to "ban Labour MPs" from pubs, restaurants etc.
I've very little sympathy - there are two aspects to the whingeing. First, the NI increases - well, all businesses have had to pay for the elephant trap laid for the incoming Government by Sunak and Hunt.
Second, the ending of business rate relief - this was introduced by the Conservatives in 2020 during COVID (and rightly so given no one could go out initially and the virus spreader Eat Out to Help Out was a politically motivated catastrophe) but instead of a rapid removal after a year or two it was left in place for a five year timeframe and of course Reeves and Starmer have been left holding that grenade when it exploded.
I suppose Reeves could have continued with the business rates relief (not quite sure why she didn't and that's her political error) but rather like Council Tax, the political pain of revaluation isn't worth it so the sleeping dog can remain unmolested in the lounge bar by the fire.
The other side of the argument is the hospitality industry has or should have prospered from reduced business rates in a way other businesses (presumably) haven't and the end of the relief has been akin to Cleese and Palin at the end of the fish slapping dance.
Nonetheless, it's quite clear a lot of this is simply playing politics - I've not for instance heard Badenoch or Stride commit to restoring the Business Rates relief at 2020 levels should they get into power next time (and Reform's position on this is also unknown). Pubs and restaurants can choose who they wish to serve but this is petty and vindictive and one could argue it was well known the relief would last only five years.
In rural and less well off and less touristy areas it is obvious just from day to day experience that hospitality, pubs etc are in big trouble. Minimum wage and other employment costs have hit hard and pubs etc are dropping out rapidly.
A minimum wage of £25K+ may make sense in Hampstead, but not in a lot of rural areas. It's also hitting casual young people work hard.
This is the problem with well intentioned policies like the rapid increases in the min wage for young people. It ends up hurting those it should help.
It was tough for hospitality before these changes too, these just add fuel to the fire. Since COVID people go out less. We were in Durham last night for a drink and a meal. Last Saturday before Xmas. It was busy but not heaving.
It is a classic sign of labours joined up thinking that they make it less attractive to employ young people and their solution is a 700 plus million scheme to offer paid jobs to young people not in work or education 🤷♂️
A brief thought on the cricket - I don't think there's as much between us and the Australians as the whining and moaning of the "experts" suggests. It would be nice to get some objective analysis rather than the emotional tripe from people who spend too much time watching cricket.
I thought we did well today to get the margin to under 100 runs and I wouldn't be surprised if we won one of the last two tests. I follow a football team which often loses and they lose not because of a lack of ability but because individuals make poor choices under pressure - in cricket, that means poor shot selection with the bat, in football that means getting it wrong in defence and allowing the opposition to put the ball in the back of the net.
Perhaps it is the human element after all - all the coaching, training, sports development and the like can't stop human nature and sometimes we do what we do because we are who we are.
In Australia there is clearly a massive gulf. Since 1990 Australia are won 34 lost 6 drawn 7. The last four tours are won 16 drawn 2 lost 0, with the latest loss being the closest loss and we were never particularly in it.
Incidentally, on cricket many years ago a young opening batsman at Derbyshire was challenged by Kim Barnett about his poor returns.
His excuse was, 'I never seem to have a chance. I keep getting balls that are just too good for me.'
Barnett's reply was, 'well if the bowling is too good for you to have a chance, maybe being an opening batsman isn't for you?'
Similarly, if our Test players keep finding it too difficult to choose the right shot at the right moment, perhaps they should not be playing Test cricket?
Also from the Obs, today’s Rawnsley while we wait for the sun to emerge above the horizon…
It is not just the dire approval ratings that make the Starmer government look so bereft of allies; it is the absence of any visible cheerleaders at Westminster or beyond it. For that, Sir Keir is copping much of the blame from his party. It is not the case that the country has “fallen out of love” with Labour. It was never in love in the first place.
This is a broadly centrist government led by a serious and hardworking man who is committed to some worthy goals. Which is a terrible combination in our hyper-polarised media environment. The achievements it can fairly claim get next to no attention while its blunders receive maximum magnification.
He is also grappling with the systemic challenge that has defeated so many governments in the affluent world since the crippling financial crisis of 2007-09. How do you satisfy public demand for decent state services at reasonable levels of taxation when growth is so anaemic? The doom loop of higher taxes for unsatisfactory services feeds the corrosion of trust in the state and its ability to deliver.
There’s a compelling case that the defining political event of the past 12 months came in the summer when No 10 and the Treasury combined in an effort to curb the ballooning cost of disability benefits, only to be forced into an abject and authority-shredding retreat by their own backbenchers. Those who hated the idea of welfare reform liked the government no better for the fact that it was forced to capitulate. Those who think we need welfare reform despaired that the government proved incapable of implementing it. There was another chaotic tale surrounding the budget…. [which] became a spirit-sapping feel-bad affair about leaks and accusations of misrepresentation.
It’s an unmerry Christmas for those in power. As you gather in what I hope is the warm embrace of your loved ones, spare a thought for our sadly cheerless and friendless government.
Nah, fuck them. They made their bed. Weak leadership and a govt without any vision or capability to do what is needed. The people at the top are more concerned at keeping themselves in their positions of power than anything else.
You could argue we've not had a defining idea of Government since Liz Truss (apologies) and before that since the Blessed Margaret. There is no big idea or if there is, no one has presented one with significant clarity and thought.
We've mostly had Governments which have maintained what I call post-Thatcherite social democracy - Johnson's Government (had it not been derailed by a microscopic virus) would likely have bene similar to Blair's and what Cameron's would have been had it not had to deal with the consequences of 2008.
Even in 1979, what Thatcher presented was less radical than Heath's manifesto in 1970 but the events of the 1970s proved to everyone Butskellism had run its course. If the 2020s show post-Thatcherite social democracy to have run its course, there will be an audience receptive to new economic and social ideas but it seems at the moment all about an insular ethno-nationalism where we blame (in no particular order) migrants, welfare claimants, old people, tall people, young people and people whose surname begins with "S". Finding people to blame is easy - coming up with practical cost-effective solutions isn't and as the anecdote from Peter Lilley pointed out, simply hacking away at the incomes of the poorest to make the richest feel better isn't the answer and, to be fair, hacking away at the incomes of the richest to make the poorest feel better isn't the answer either.
The demographic transformation of the country has been the problem or the opportunity - we need to stop thinking in a 20th century industrial mindset and start thinking in a 21st century post-industrial way re-defining the contract between the State and the older citizen. I do think the age of sheer material acquisition is coming to an end but I also think while capitalism in essence works, the current model is corrupt and no longer fit for purpose.
Your last sentence applies to all Governments - it didn't start on July 5th 2024.
A brief thought on the cricket - I don't think there's as much between us and the Australians as the whining and moaning of the "experts" suggests. It would be nice to get some objective analysis rather than the emotional tripe from people who spend too much time watching cricket.
I thought we did well today to get the margin to under 100 runs and I wouldn't be surprised if we won one of the last two tests. I follow a football team which often loses and they lose not because of a lack of ability but because individuals make poor choices under pressure - in cricket, that means poor shot selection with the bat, in football that means getting it wrong in defence and allowing the opposition to put the ball in the back of the net.
Perhaps it is the human element after all - all the coaching, training, sports development and the like can't stop human nature and sometimes we do what we do because we are who we are.
In Australia there is clearly a massive gulf. Since 1990 Australia are won 34 lost 6 drawn 7. The last four tours are won 16 drawn 2 lost 0, with the latest loss being the closest loss and we were never particularly in it.
In India, however, there was not a massive gulf. There is a case England could have won that tour 4-1.
Instead, they lost 4-1.
Why? Because the batsmen after the first test over attacked and threw away positions of dominance.
And they did the same against Australia and India in England, and against Pakistan in Pakistan, and against New Zealand in 2023.
It's great to play aggressive and entertaining cricket and used in the right way it clearly can be a match winner (and was, at the start of the Stokes/McCullum period). But it's very frustrating to see it not being tempered by any common sense at all and the management batting away any criticism rather than actually doing something about it.
Viv Richards and Gordon Greenidge played cricket just as attacking as the one Stokes is trying to play. But they started with superb defensive games, and the knowledge of when to use them.
Also from the Obs, today’s Rawnsley while we wait for the sun to emerge above the horizon…
It is not just the dire approval ratings that make the Starmer government look so bereft of allies; it is the absence of any visible cheerleaders at Westminster or beyond it. For that, Sir Keir is copping much of the blame from his party. It is not the case that the country has “fallen out of love” with Labour. It was never in love in the first place.
This is a broadly centrist government led by a serious and hardworking man who is committed to some worthy goals. Which is a terrible combination in our hyper-polarised media environment. The achievements it can fairly claim get next to no attention while its blunders receive maximum magnification.
He is also grappling with the systemic challenge that has defeated so many governments in the affluent world since the crippling financial crisis of 2007-09. How do you satisfy public demand for decent state services at reasonable levels of taxation when growth is so anaemic? The doom loop of higher taxes for unsatisfactory services feeds the corrosion of trust in the state and its ability to deliver.
There’s a compelling case that the defining political event of the past 12 months came in the summer when No 10 and the Treasury combined in an effort to curb the ballooning cost of disability benefits, only to be forced into an abject and authority-shredding retreat by their own backbenchers. Those who hated the idea of welfare reform liked the government no better for the fact that it was forced to capitulate. Those who think we need welfare reform despaired that the government proved incapable of implementing it. There was another chaotic tale surrounding the budget…. [which] became a spirit-sapping feel-bad affair about leaks and accusations of misrepresentation.
It’s an unmerry Christmas for those in power. As you gather in what I hope is the warm embrace of your loved ones, spare a thought for our sadly cheerless and friendless government.
Nah, fuck them. They made their bed. Weak leadership and a govt without any vision or capability to do what is needed. The people at the top are more concerned at keeping themselves in their positions of power than anything else.
You could argue we've not had a defining idea of Government since Liz Truss (apologies) and before that since the Blessed Margaret. There is no big idea or if there is, no one has presented one with significant clarity and thought.
We've mostly had Governments which have maintained what I call post-Thatcherite social democracy - Johnson's Government (had it not been derailed by a microscopic virus) would likely have bene similar to Blair's and what Cameron's would have been had it not had to deal with the consequences of 2008.
Even in 1979, what Thatcher presented was less radical than Heath's manifesto in 1970 but the events of the 1970s proved to everyone Butskellism had run its course. If the 2020s show post-Thatcherite social democracy to have run its course, there will be an audience receptive to new economic and social ideas but it seems at the moment all about an insular ethno-nationalism where we blame (in no particular order) migrants, welfare claimants, old people, tall people, young people and people whose surname begins with "S". Finding people to blame is easy - coming up with practical cost-effective solutions isn't and as the anecdote from Peter Lilley pointed out, simply hacking away at the incomes of the poorest to make the richest feel better isn't the answer and, to be fair, hacking away at the incomes of the richest to make the poorest feel better isn't the answer either.
The demographic transformation of the country has been the problem or the opportunity - we need to stop thinking in a 20th century industrial mindset and start thinking in a 21st century post-industrial way re-defining the contract between the State and the older citizen. I do think the age of sheer material acquisition is coming to an end but I also think while capitalism in essence works, the current model is corrupt and no longer fit for purpose.
Your last sentence applies to all Governments - it didn't start on July 5th 2024.
My concern with capitalism is if young people cannot get a stake in society, like a home, why should they buy into the system. It needs to be aspirational.
The whole system feeling broken is why people on the right are moving to Reform and the left to the Greens. Neither have the solutions but both are NOTA.
A brief thought on the cricket - I don't think there's as much between us and the Australians as the whining and moaning of the "experts" suggests. It would be nice to get some objective analysis rather than the emotional tripe from people who spend too much time watching cricket.
I thought we did well today to get the margin to under 100 runs and I wouldn't be surprised if we won one of the last two tests. I follow a football team which often loses and they lose not because of a lack of ability but because individuals make poor choices under pressure - in cricket, that means poor shot selection with the bat, in football that means getting it wrong in defence and allowing the opposition to put the ball in the back of the net.
Perhaps it is the human element after all - all the coaching, training, sports development and the like can't stop human nature and sometimes we do what we do because we are who we are.
The issue is not that they make poor shot choices - it's that they keep doing it and as a result keep throwing away matches they should have won.
Without Lyon, Cummins and Smith we might win one of the last two Tests. But in a sense I actually hope we don't because it will serve to obscure the magnitude of the failings.
And make no mistake, this tour has been a mess. The Bashir situation alone demands a serious reckoning for the management,
Yes. What was the point of bringing Bashir into the team and then wimping out and not playing him for the Ashes?
We'd have been better off sticking with Leach.
No plan is perfect, but the very worst thing to do is to have a plan and then abandon it at the last moment when instead go with an almighty muddle. England lost their nerve and abandoned Bazball when they needed it most.
My nephew is in hospital at moment with RSV and complications. His care definitely seems substandard.
Terrible time for the junior doctors to strike. Feel very angry they've done this now during winter flu crisis.
If you're going to strike there's no point in doing it when nobody will notice. You strike when it has maximum impact.
They can strike all they want, the problem is there is no magic money pot to pay them anymore and no-one has got pay increases that match the 28% they got.
Heck I know a lot of people on less now then in 2023 rather than 28% more
Based on the header, I thought I'd ask an image-gen model to search the web for UK politics news about the Tories vs. Reform and do a 'classical style UK political cartoon'. It's not dreadful as these thing go.
AI's obvious error is that they are racing away from the finish line instead of towards it.
ETA however, that can easily be fixed. The question is whether this means the end of cartoonists' jobs, as per Leon, or the ability of every newsletter, blog or class 5 parents' group to publish its own daily cartoons.
Maybe the point of the joke is that they’re racing away from the finish line!
There have been England cricket teams with a lot less talent than this one but it is very hard to think of one that has played worse cricket. 3-0 flatters them.
More bleating from the hospitality industry and some petty spite planning to "ban Labour MPs" from pubs, restaurants etc.
I've very little sympathy - there are two aspects to the whingeing. First, the NI increases - well, all businesses have had to pay for the elephant trap laid for the incoming Government by Sunak and Hunt.
Second, the ending of business rate relief - this was introduced by the Conservatives in 2020 during COVID (and rightly so given no one could go out initially and the virus spreader Eat Out to Help Out was a politically motivated catastrophe) but instead of a rapid removal after a year or two it was left in place for a five year timeframe and of course Reeves and Starmer have been left holding that grenade when it exploded.
I suppose Reeves could have continued with the business rates relief (not quite sure why she didn't and that's her political error) but rather like Council Tax, the political pain of revaluation isn't worth it so the sleeping dog can remain unmolested in the lounge bar by the fire.
The other side of the argument is the hospitality industry has or should have prospered from reduced business rates in a way other businesses (presumably) haven't and the end of the relief has been akin to Cleese and Palin at the end of the fish slapping dance.
Nonetheless, it's quite clear a lot of this is simply playing politics - I've not for instance heard Badenoch or Stride commit to restoring the Business Rates relief at 2020 levels should they get into power next time (and Reform's position on this is also unknown). Pubs and restaurants can choose who they wish to serve but this is petty and vindictive and one could argue it was well known the relief would last only five years.
Don’t remember any anger or digs at hospitality when they banned Tory MPs from their establishments when the last lot were in power.
It’s tough for hospitality and I personally have a lot of sympathy with businesses ending up being forced to close as they cannot cover the additional/upcoming cost burden, especially when it is a big hit, on them especially as they won’t be able to just hike prices up due to customer resistance. It is not just NI and business rates but other increases such as the minimum wage increase, especially for younger people.
She should have phased the business rates change in over five years.
We need a govt that is friendly towards business and puts in place policies to fuel growth rather than just talk about it.
I don't remember Tory MPs being banned but if you say that happened, fair enough.
I don't argue the ending of the relief should have been phased and Hunt could have started that but he chose not to.
The key point is who gets the money - I believe a share of the money goes to local councils (as part of the devolution deal, some councils get all the business rates income) and with councils struggling to meet rising care costs, getting more income in will help (though not if the business closes though presumably rates are still charged to the owner of the site).
The failure to come to terms with social care sits squarely with BOTH Conservative and Labour Governments right back to the Dilmot report and before.
The minimum wage issue is one I'm less concerned about - should we have people working for £5 per hour? If they want to, they can become delivery drivers for one of the big courier firms. Perhaps indentured servitude is the answer.
I do accept giving businesses a break so they can afford to employ young people in particular is needed - you could call it a hospitality apprenticeship if you like.
Clinton may or may not be complicit in Epstein's crimes (and if he is deserves prosecuting with the rest of them). But this is just wrong.
“The administration inserted a photo of Bill Clinton, Michael Jackson, and Diana Ross into the Epstein files & falsely implied it showed them with victims.
A brief thought on the cricket - I don't think there's as much between us and the Australians as the whining and moaning of the "experts" suggests. It would be nice to get some objective analysis rather than the emotional tripe from people who spend too much time watching cricket.
I thought we did well today to get the margin to under 100 runs and I wouldn't be surprised if we won one of the last two tests. I follow a football team which often loses and they lose not because of a lack of ability but because individuals make poor choices under pressure - in cricket, that means poor shot selection with the bat, in football that means getting it wrong in defence and allowing the opposition to put the ball in the back of the net.
Perhaps it is the human element after all - all the coaching, training, sports development and the like can't stop human nature and sometimes we do what we do because we are who we are.
In Australia there is clearly a massive gulf. Since 1990 Australia are won 34 lost 6 drawn 7. The last four tours are won 16 drawn 2 lost 0, with the latest loss being the closest loss and we were never particularly in it.
In India, however, there was not a massive gulf. There is a case England could have won that tour 4-1.
Instead, they lost 4-1.
Why? Because the batsmen after the first test over attacked and threw away positions of dominance.
And they did the same against Australia and India in England, and against Pakistan in Pakistan, and against New Zealand in 2023.
It's great to play aggressive and entertaining cricket and used in the right way it clearly can be a match winner (and was, at the start of the Stokes/McCullum period). But it's very frustrating to see it not being tempered by any common sense at all and the management batting away any criticism rather than actually doing something about it.
Viv Richards and Gordon Greenidge played cricket just as attacking as the one Stokes is trying to play. But they started with superb defensive games, and the knowledge of when to use them.
And yet statistically, Stokes/McCullum has been one of the more successful England sides, certainly above average. I agree they have a tactical inflexibility that is costly and annoying but would be a bit more positive about what they have done. I also think think it is time for a change in approach and personnel, but I would prefer to start from bazball and change it to be more flexible, than to go back to the traditional path.
More bleating from the hospitality industry and some petty spite planning to "ban Labour MPs" from pubs, restaurants etc.
I've very little sympathy - there are two aspects to the whingeing. First, the NI increases - well, all businesses have had to pay for the elephant trap laid for the incoming Government by Sunak and Hunt.
Second, the ending of business rate relief - this was introduced by the Conservatives in 2020 during COVID (and rightly so given no one could go out initially and the virus spreader Eat Out to Help Out was a politically motivated catastrophe) but instead of a rapid removal after a year or two it was left in place for a five year timeframe and of course Reeves and Starmer have been left holding that grenade when it exploded.
I suppose Reeves could have continued with the business rates relief (not quite sure why she didn't and that's her political error) but rather like Council Tax, the political pain of revaluation isn't worth it so the sleeping dog can remain unmolested in the lounge bar by the fire.
The other side of the argument is the hospitality industry has or should have prospered from reduced business rates in a way other businesses (presumably) haven't and the end of the relief has been akin to Cleese and Palin at the end of the fish slapping dance.
Nonetheless, it's quite clear a lot of this is simply playing politics - I've not for instance heard Badenoch or Stride commit to restoring the Business Rates relief at 2020 levels should they get into power next time (and Reform's position on this is also unknown). Pubs and restaurants can choose who they wish to serve but this is petty and vindictive and one could argue it was well known the relief would last only five years.
As you say, it's a political error, and an avoidable one.
She didn't have to end up with a business rates settlement that will ultimately increase large supermarkets' business rates by only 4% but those of pubs by 76%, but she did. And she managed to mess it up politically despite continuing some quite significant term reliefs for pubs - limiting the rise in bills to no more than 15% each year and permanently reducing the multiplier that pubs pay to about 12% below those of other businesses. Had she just gone a bit further and permanently rebalanced the business rates burden a bit more to the permanent benefit of small retail, leisure and hospitality businesses, this could all have been avoided while maintaining the same business rates yield at zero net cost to the exchequer. Say just announce that the Covid relief would be made permanent at 25% (having already reduced it from 75% to 40% she instead abolished it) and make the phasing of increases more generous with a 10% limit, while adding a tad more on for large retail such as mega supermarkets and Amazon distribution warehouses and the like.
The irony is that she's now very likely to have to do a u-turn which will now unnecessarily cost the exchequer and is unlikely to undo a lot of the political damage. Or maybe that's something for her successor in the post.
My nephew is in hospital at moment with RSV and complications. His care definitely seems substandard.
Terrible time for the junior doctors to strike. Feel very angry they've done this now during winter flu crisis.
If you're going to strike there's no point in doing it when nobody will notice. You strike when it has maximum impact.
How very "caring professional" of them.
When Labour caved to their demand, they should have linked it to ending their right to strike Or else, as was predicrted, they would just come back for another bite at the NHS.
I also think think it is time for a change in approach and personnel, but I would prefer to start from bazball and change it to be more flexible, than to go back to the traditional path.
Maybe, and I'm just spitballing here, they could play more like Australia...
I also think think it is time for a change in approach and personnel, but I would prefer to start from bazball and change it to be more flexible, than to go back to the traditional path.
Maybe, and I'm just spitballing here, they could play more like Australia...
Australians have grown up playing on those surfaces, we haven't. Good lengths and shot selections are very different.
My nephew is in hospital at moment with RSV and complications. His care definitely seems substandard.
Terrible time for the junior doctors to strike. Feel very angry they've done this now during winter flu crisis.
If you're going to strike there's no point in doing it when nobody will notice. You strike when it has maximum impact.
They can strike all they want, the problem is there is no magic money pot to pay them anymore and no-one has got pay increases that match the 28% they got.
Heck I know a lot of people on less now then in 2023 rather than 28% more
More bleating from the hospitality industry and some petty spite planning to "ban Labour MPs" from pubs, restaurants etc.
I've very little sympathy - there are two aspects to the whingeing. First, the NI increases - well, all businesses have had to pay for the elephant trap laid for the incoming Government by Sunak and Hunt.
Second, the ending of business rate relief - this was introduced by the Conservatives in 2020 during COVID (and rightly so given no one could go out initially and the virus spreader Eat Out to Help Out was a politically motivated catastrophe) but instead of a rapid removal after a year or two it was left in place for a five year timeframe and of course Reeves and Starmer have been left holding that grenade when it exploded.
I suppose Reeves could have continued with the business rates relief (not quite sure why she didn't and that's her political error) but rather like Council Tax, the political pain of revaluation isn't worth it so the sleeping dog can remain unmolested in the lounge bar by the fire.
The other side of the argument is the hospitality industry has or should have prospered from reduced business rates in a way other businesses (presumably) haven't and the end of the relief has been akin to Cleese and Palin at the end of the fish slapping dance.
Nonetheless, it's quite clear a lot of this is simply playing politics - I've not for instance heard Badenoch or Stride commit to restoring the Business Rates relief at 2020 levels should they get into power next time (and Reform's position on this is also unknown). Pubs and restaurants can choose who they wish to serve but this is petty and vindictive and one could argue it was well known the relief would last only five years.
Don’t remember any anger or digs at hospitality when they banned Tory MPs from their establishments when the last lot were in power.
It’s tough for hospitality and I personally have a lot of sympathy with businesses ending up being forced to close as they cannot cover the additional/upcoming cost burden, especially when it is a big hit, on them especially as they won’t be able to just hike prices up due to customer resistance. It is not just NI and business rates but other increases such as the minimum wage increase, especially for younger people.
She should have phased the business rates change in over five years.
We need a govt that is friendly towards business and puts in place policies to fuel growth rather than just talk about it.
I don't remember Tory MPs being banned but if you say that happened, fair enough.
I don't argue the ending of the relief should have been phased and Hunt could have started that but he chose not to.
The key point is who gets the money - I believe a share of the money goes to local councils (as part of the devolution deal, some councils get all the business rates income) and with councils struggling to meet rising care costs, getting more income in will help (though not if the business closes though presumably rates are still charged to the owner of the site).
The failure to come to terms with social care sits squarely with BOTH Conservative and Labour Governments right back to the Dilmot report and before.
The minimum wage issue is one I'm less concerned about - should we have people working for £5 per hour? If they want to, they can become delivery drivers for one of the big courier firms. Perhaps indentured servitude is the answer.
I do accept giving businesses a break so they can afford to employ young people in particular is needed - you could call it a hospitality apprenticeship if you like.
Yes the failure on care sits with all the main parties and Labour have just kicked it down the road.
The issue is not so much the min wage but the rapid increases in it, you could argue the same for the increase in the state pension and benefits too, and for 18-20 year olds the govt is aiming to get it aligned with the adult rate which I expect to have a negative impact on youth employment. Often well intentioned policies hurt the people they’re supposed to help.
Also from the Obs, today’s Rawnsley while we wait for the sun to emerge above the horizon…
It is not just the dire approval ratings that make the Starmer government look so bereft of allies; it is the absence of any visible cheerleaders at Westminster or beyond it. For that, Sir Keir is copping much of the blame from his party. It is not the case that the country has “fallen out of love” with Labour. It was never in love in the first place.
This is a broadly centrist government led by a serious and hardworking man who is committed to some worthy goals. Which is a terrible combination in our hyper-polarised media environment. The achievements it can fairly claim get next to no attention while its blunders receive maximum magnification.
He is also grappling with the systemic challenge that has defeated so many governments in the affluent world since the crippling financial crisis of 2007-09. How do you satisfy public demand for decent state services at reasonable levels of taxation when growth is so anaemic? The doom loop of higher taxes for unsatisfactory services feeds the corrosion of trust in the state and its ability to deliver.
There’s a compelling case that the defining political event of the past 12 months came in the summer when No 10 and the Treasury combined in an effort to curb the ballooning cost of disability benefits, only to be forced into an abject and authority-shredding retreat by their own backbenchers. Those who hated the idea of welfare reform liked the government no better for the fact that it was forced to capitulate. Those who think we need welfare reform despaired that the government proved incapable of implementing it. There was another chaotic tale surrounding the budget…. [which] became a spirit-sapping feel-bad affair about leaks and accusations of misrepresentation.
It’s an unmerry Christmas for those in power. As you gather in what I hope is the warm embrace of your loved ones, spare a thought for our sadly cheerless and friendless government.
Nah, fuck them. They made their bed. Weak leadership and a govt without any vision or capability to do what is needed. The people at the top are more concerned at keeping themselves in their positions of power than anything else.
You could argue we've not had a defining idea of Government since Liz Truss (apologies) and before that since the Blessed Margaret. There is no big idea or if there is, no one has presented one with significant clarity and thought.
We've mostly had Governments which have maintained what I call post-Thatcherite social democracy - Johnson's Government (had it not been derailed by a microscopic virus) would likely have bene similar to Blair's and what Cameron's would have been had it not had to deal with the consequences of 2008.
Even in 1979, what Thatcher presented was less radical than Heath's manifesto in 1970 but the events of the 1970s proved to everyone Butskellism had run its course. If the 2020s show post-Thatcherite social democracy to have run its course, there will be an audience receptive to new economic and social ideas but it seems at the moment all about an insular ethno-nationalism where we blame (in no particular order) migrants, welfare claimants, old people, tall people, young people and people whose surname begins with "S". Finding people to blame is easy - coming up with practical cost-effective solutions isn't and as the anecdote from Peter Lilley pointed out, simply hacking away at the incomes of the poorest to make the richest feel better isn't the answer and, to be fair, hacking away at the incomes of the richest to make the poorest feel better isn't the answer either.
The demographic transformation of the country has been the problem or the opportunity - we need to stop thinking in a 20th century industrial mindset and start thinking in a 21st century post-industrial way re-defining the contract between the State and the older citizen. I do think the age of sheer material acquisition is coming to an end but I also think while capitalism in essence works, the current model is corrupt and no longer fit for purpose.
Your last sentence applies to all Governments - it didn't start on July 5th 2024.
My concern with capitalism is if young people cannot get a stake in society, like a home, why should they buy into the system. It needs to be aspirational.
The whole system feeling broken is why people on the right are moving to Reform and the left to the Greens. Neither have the solutions but both are NOTA.
Aspiration comes in many forms, I'd argue, but obviously somewhere nice to live is a good start. Yet we are building properties and selling them at prices (in London) no one can afford until or unless they inherit from parents/grandparents etc.
In my part of town, the answer is rental - young couples have to rent because they earn enough but have no savings so both work to pay the rent. How do they ever get off the rental treadmill?
Conservatives like people to own their homes because they become Conservative voters obsessed with mortgage rates. Yet, rental has always been a big part of the London housing market and still is. Who is going to be able to afford £600k for a one-bed flat at the Twelvetrees developement by West Ham station? Not the people who need housing, those on the council waiting list, families in a single room, others who live in appalling conditions in private rental hellholes.
We build houses for profit, not to solve the housing crisis - that's how aspiration is framed.
There have been England cricket teams with a lot less talent than this one but it is very hard to think of one that has played worse cricket. 3-0 flatters them.
More bleating from the hospitality industry and some petty spite planning to "ban Labour MPs" from pubs, restaurants etc.
I've very little sympathy - there are two aspects to the whingeing. First, the NI increases - well, all businesses have had to pay for the elephant trap laid for the incoming Government by Sunak and Hunt.
Second, the ending of business rate relief - this was introduced by the Conservatives in 2020 during COVID (and rightly so given no one could go out initially and the virus spreader Eat Out to Help Out was a politically motivated catastrophe) but instead of a rapid removal after a year or two it was left in place for a five year timeframe and of course Reeves and Starmer have been left holding that grenade when it exploded.
I suppose Reeves could have continued with the business rates relief (not quite sure why she didn't and that's her political error) but rather like Council Tax, the political pain of revaluation isn't worth it so the sleeping dog can remain unmolested in the lounge bar by the fire.
The other side of the argument is the hospitality industry has or should have prospered from reduced business rates in a way other businesses (presumably) haven't and the end of the relief has been akin to Cleese and Palin at the end of the fish slapping dance.
Nonetheless, it's quite clear a lot of this is simply playing politics - I've not for instance heard Badenoch or Stride commit to restoring the Business Rates relief at 2020 levels should they get into power next time (and Reform's position on this is also unknown). Pubs and restaurants can choose who they wish to serve but this is petty and vindictive and one could argue it was well known the relief would last only five years.
As you say, it's a political error, and an avoidable one.
She didn't have to end up with a business rates settlement that will ultimately increase large supermarkets' business rates by only 4% but those of pubs by 76%, but she did. And she managed to mess it up politically despite continuing some quite significant term reliefs for pubs - limiting the rise in bills to no more than 15% each year and permanently reducing the multiplier that pubs pay to about 12% below those of other businesses. Had she just gone a bit further and permanently rebalanced the business rates burden a bit more to the permanent benefit of small retail, leisure and hospitality businesses, this could all have been avoided while maintaining the same business rates yield at zero net cost to the exchequer. Say just announce that the Covid relief would be made permanent at 25% (having already reduced it from 75% to 40% she instead abolished it) and make the phasing of increases more generous with a 10% limit, while adding a tad more on for large retail such as mega supermarkets and Amazon distribution warehouses and the like.
The irony is that she's now very likely to have to do a u-turn which will now unnecessarily cost the exchequer and is unlikely to undo a lot of the political damage. Or maybe that's something for her successor in the post.
Thank you for that well-informed comment which added detail of which I was unaware.
As you say, the anomalies between pubs/restaurants on the one hand and supermarkets/logisitics warehouses on the other is one that has evolved and needs to be addressed.
My nephew is in hospital at moment with RSV and complications. His care definitely seems substandard.
Terrible time for the junior doctors to strike. Feel very angry they've done this now during winter flu crisis.
If you're going to strike there's no point in doing it when nobody will notice. You strike when it has maximum impact.
They can strike all they want, the problem is there is no magic money pot to pay them anymore and no-one has got pay increases that match the 28% they got.
Heck I know a lot of people on less now then in 2023 rather than 28% more
Full fact have also fact checked the BMA’s claims. Unsurprisingly they are dubious. At least they’ve analysed it instead of just recycling them like the rest of the media.
Also I read The Guardian interview with the new leader of Unison. I’m wondering if it’s just posturing or we are heading for far more industrial strife next year. We really could be heading towards late seventies times again. We have little money but…..
‘ This will include a wide-ranging strategic review of taking strike action across the labour movement, leading to our adoption of the best methods to win. I will also launch a new strike-ready conference, convening workplace reps from across Unison to forge new organising approaches in the fight for better pay.’
Also from the Obs, today’s Rawnsley while we wait for the sun to emerge above the horizon…
It is not just the dire approval ratings that make the Starmer government look so bereft of allies; it is the absence of any visible cheerleaders at Westminster or beyond it. For that, Sir Keir is copping much of the blame from his party. It is not the case that the country has “fallen out of love” with Labour. It was never in love in the first place.
This is a broadly centrist government led by a serious and hardworking man who is committed to some worthy goals. Which is a terrible combination in our hyper-polarised media environment. The achievements it can fairly claim get next to no attention while its blunders receive maximum magnification.
He is also grappling with the systemic challenge that has defeated so many governments in the affluent world since the crippling financial crisis of 2007-09. How do you satisfy public demand for decent state services at reasonable levels of taxation when growth is so anaemic? The doom loop of higher taxes for unsatisfactory services feeds the corrosion of trust in the state and its ability to deliver.
There’s a compelling case that the defining political event of the past 12 months came in the summer when No 10 and the Treasury combined in an effort to curb the ballooning cost of disability benefits, only to be forced into an abject and authority-shredding retreat by their own backbenchers. Those who hated the idea of welfare reform liked the government no better for the fact that it was forced to capitulate. Those who think we need welfare reform despaired that the government proved incapable of implementing it. There was another chaotic tale surrounding the budget…. [which] became a spirit-sapping feel-bad affair about leaks and accusations of misrepresentation.
It’s an unmerry Christmas for those in power. As you gather in what I hope is the warm embrace of your loved ones, spare a thought for our sadly cheerless and friendless government.
Nah, fuck them. They made their bed. Weak leadership and a govt without any vision or capability to do what is needed. The people at the top are more concerned at keeping themselves in their positions of power than anything else.
You could argue we've not had a defining idea of Government since Liz Truss (apologies) and before that since the Blessed Margaret. There is no big idea or if there is, no one has presented one with significant clarity and thought.
We've mostly had Governments which have maintained what I call post-Thatcherite social democracy - Johnson's Government (had it not been derailed by a microscopic virus) would likely have bene similar to Blair's and what Cameron's would have been had it not had to deal with the consequences of 2008.
Even in 1979, what Thatcher presented was less radical than Heath's manifesto in 1970 but the events of the 1970s proved to everyone Butskellism had run its course. If the 2020s show post-Thatcherite social democracy to have run its course, there will be an audience receptive to new economic and social ideas but it seems at the moment all about an insular ethno-nationalism where we blame (in no particular order) migrants, welfare claimants, old people, tall people, young people and people whose surname begins with "S". Finding people to blame is easy - coming up with practical cost-effective solutions isn't and as the anecdote from Peter Lilley pointed out, simply hacking away at the incomes of the poorest to make the richest feel better isn't the answer and, to be fair, hacking away at the incomes of the richest to make the poorest feel better isn't the answer either.
The demographic transformation of the country has been the problem or the opportunity - we need to stop thinking in a 20th century industrial mindset and start thinking in a 21st century post-industrial way re-defining the contract between the State and the older citizen. I do think the age of sheer material acquisition is coming to an end but I also think while capitalism in essence works, the current model is corrupt and no longer fit for purpose.
Your last sentence applies to all Governments - it didn't start on July 5th 2024.
My concern with capitalism is if young people cannot get a stake in society, like a home, why should they buy into the system. It needs to be aspirational.
The whole system feeling broken is why people on the right are moving to Reform and the left to the Greens. Neither have the solutions but both are NOTA.
Aspiration comes in many forms, I'd argue, but obviously somewhere nice to live is a good start. Yet we are building properties and selling them at prices (in London) no one can afford until or unless they inherit from parents/grandparents etc.
In my part of town, the answer is rental - young couples have to rent because they earn enough but have no savings so both work to pay the rent. How do they ever get off the rental treadmill?
Conservatives like people to own their homes because they become Conservative voters obsessed with mortgage rates. Yet, rental has always been a big part of the London housing market and still is. Who is going to be able to afford £600k for a one-bed flat at the Twelvetrees developement by West Ham station? Not the people who need housing, those on the council waiting list, families in a single room, others who live in appalling conditions in private rental hellholes.
We build houses for profit, not to solve the housing crisis - that's how aspiration is framed.
Fairly amazing that no party has been a serious advocate of councils building houses for decades despite the population growing significantly and us selling off previous council stock.
Also from the Obs, today’s Rawnsley while we wait for the sun to emerge above the horizon…
It is not just the dire approval ratings that make the Starmer government look so bereft of allies; it is the absence of any visible cheerleaders at Westminster or beyond it. For that, Sir Keir is copping much of the blame from his party. It is not the case that the country has “fallen out of love” with Labour. It was never in love in the first place.
This is a broadly centrist government led by a serious and hardworking man who is committed to some worthy goals. Which is a terrible combination in our hyper-polarised media environment. The achievements it can fairly claim get next to no attention while its blunders receive maximum magnification.
He is also grappling with the systemic challenge that has defeated so many governments in the affluent world since the crippling financial crisis of 2007-09. How do you satisfy public demand for decent state services at reasonable levels of taxation when growth is so anaemic? The doom loop of higher taxes for unsatisfactory services feeds the corrosion of trust in the state and its ability to deliver.
There’s a compelling case that the defining political event of the past 12 months came in the summer when No 10 and the Treasury combined in an effort to curb the ballooning cost of disability benefits, only to be forced into an abject and authority-shredding retreat by their own backbenchers. Those who hated the idea of welfare reform liked the government no better for the fact that it was forced to capitulate. Those who think we need welfare reform despaired that the government proved incapable of implementing it. There was another chaotic tale surrounding the budget…. [which] became a spirit-sapping feel-bad affair about leaks and accusations of misrepresentation.
It’s an unmerry Christmas for those in power. As you gather in what I hope is the warm embrace of your loved ones, spare a thought for our sadly cheerless and friendless government.
Nah, fuck them. They made their bed. Weak leadership and a govt without any vision or capability to do what is needed. The people at the top are more concerned at keeping themselves in their positions of power than anything else.
You could argue we've not had a defining idea of Government since Liz Truss (apologies) and before that since the Blessed Margaret. There is no big idea or if there is, no one has presented one with significant clarity and thought.
We've mostly had Governments which have maintained what I call post-Thatcherite social democracy - Johnson's Government (had it not been derailed by a microscopic virus) would likely have bene similar to Blair's and what Cameron's would have been had it not had to deal with the consequences of 2008.
Even in 1979, what Thatcher presented was less radical than Heath's manifesto in 1970 but the events of the 1970s proved to everyone Butskellism had run its course. If the 2020s show post-Thatcherite social democracy to have run its course, there will be an audience receptive to new economic and social ideas but it seems at the moment all about an insular ethno-nationalism where we blame (in no particular order) migrants, welfare claimants, old people, tall people, young people and people whose surname begins with "S". Finding people to blame is easy - coming up with practical cost-effective solutions isn't and as the anecdote from Peter Lilley pointed out, simply hacking away at the incomes of the poorest to make the richest feel better isn't the answer and, to be fair, hacking away at the incomes of the richest to make the poorest feel better isn't the answer either.
The demographic transformation of the country has been the problem or the opportunity - we need to stop thinking in a 20th century industrial mindset and start thinking in a 21st century post-industrial way re-defining the contract between the State and the older citizen. I do think the age of sheer material acquisition is coming to an end but I also think while capitalism in essence works, the current model is corrupt and no longer fit for purpose.
Your last sentence applies to all Governments - it didn't start on July 5th 2024.
My concern with capitalism is if young people cannot get a stake in society, like a home, why should they buy into the system. It needs to be aspirational.
The whole system feeling broken is why people on the right are moving to Reform and the left to the Greens. Neither have the solutions but both are NOTA.
Aspiration comes in many forms, I'd argue, but obviously somewhere nice to live is a good start. Yet we are building properties and selling them at prices (in London) no one can afford until or unless they inherit from parents/grandparents etc.
In my part of town, the answer is rental - young couples have to rent because they earn enough but have no savings so both work to pay the rent. How do they ever get off the rental treadmill?
Conservatives like people to own their homes because they become Conservative voters obsessed with mortgage rates. Yet, rental has always been a big part of the London housing market and still is. Who is going to be able to afford £600k for a one-bed flat at the Twelvetrees developement by West Ham station? Not the people who need housing, those on the council waiting list, families in a single room, others who live in appalling conditions in private rental hellholes.
We build houses for profit, not to solve the housing crisis - that's how aspiration is framed.
Fairly amazing that no party has been a serious advocate of councils building houses for decades despite the population growing significantly and us selling off previous council stock.
Also from the Obs, today’s Rawnsley while we wait for the sun to emerge above the horizon…
It is not just the dire approval ratings that make the Starmer government look so bereft of allies; it is the absence of any visible cheerleaders at Westminster or beyond it. For that, Sir Keir is copping much of the blame from his party. It is not the case that the country has “fallen out of love” with Labour. It was never in love in the first place.
This is a broadly centrist government led by a serious and hardworking man who is committed to some worthy goals. Which is a terrible combination in our hyper-polarised media environment. The achievements it can fairly claim get next to no attention while its blunders receive maximum magnification.
He is also grappling with the systemic challenge that has defeated so many governments in the affluent world since the crippling financial crisis of 2007-09. How do you satisfy public demand for decent state services at reasonable levels of taxation when growth is so anaemic? The doom loop of higher taxes for unsatisfactory services feeds the corrosion of trust in the state and its ability to deliver.
There’s a compelling case that the defining political event of the past 12 months came in the summer when No 10 and the Treasury combined in an effort to curb the ballooning cost of disability benefits, only to be forced into an abject and authority-shredding retreat by their own backbenchers. Those who hated the idea of welfare reform liked the government no better for the fact that it was forced to capitulate. Those who think we need welfare reform despaired that the government proved incapable of implementing it. There was another chaotic tale surrounding the budget…. [which] became a spirit-sapping feel-bad affair about leaks and accusations of misrepresentation.
It’s an unmerry Christmas for those in power. As you gather in what I hope is the warm embrace of your loved ones, spare a thought for our sadly cheerless and friendless government.
Nah, fuck them. They made their bed. Weak leadership and a govt without any vision or capability to do what is needed. The people at the top are more concerned at keeping themselves in their positions of power than anything else.
You could argue we've not had a defining idea of Government since Liz Truss (apologies) and before that since the Blessed Margaret. There is no big idea or if there is, no one has presented one with significant clarity and thought.
We've mostly had Governments which have maintained what I call post-Thatcherite social democracy - Johnson's Government (had it not been derailed by a microscopic virus) would likely have bene similar to Blair's and what Cameron's would have been had it not had to deal with the consequences of 2008.
Even in 1979, what Thatcher presented was less radical than Heath's manifesto in 1970 but the events of the 1970s proved to everyone Butskellism had run its course. If the 2020s show post-Thatcherite social democracy to have run its course, there will be an audience receptive to new economic and social ideas but it seems at the moment all about an insular ethno-nationalism where we blame (in no particular order) migrants, welfare claimants, old people, tall people, young people and people whose surname begins with "S". Finding people to blame is easy - coming up with practical cost-effective solutions isn't and as the anecdote from Peter Lilley pointed out, simply hacking away at the incomes of the poorest to make the richest feel better isn't the answer and, to be fair, hacking away at the incomes of the richest to make the poorest feel better isn't the answer either.
The demographic transformation of the country has been the problem or the opportunity - we need to stop thinking in a 20th century industrial mindset and start thinking in a 21st century post-industrial way re-defining the contract between the State and the older citizen. I do think the age of sheer material acquisition is coming to an end but I also think while capitalism in essence works, the current model is corrupt and no longer fit for purpose.
Your last sentence applies to all Governments - it didn't start on July 5th 2024.
My concern with capitalism is if young people cannot get a stake in society, like a home, why should they buy into the system. It needs to be aspirational.
The whole system feeling broken is why people on the right are moving to Reform and the left to the Greens. Neither have the solutions but both are NOTA.
Aspiration comes in many forms, I'd argue, but obviously somewhere nice to live is a good start. Yet we are building properties and selling them at prices (in London) no one can afford until or unless they inherit from parents/grandparents etc.
In my part of town, the answer is rental - young couples have to rent because they earn enough but have no savings so both work to pay the rent. How do they ever get off the rental treadmill?
Conservatives like people to own their homes because they become Conservative voters obsessed with mortgage rates. Yet, rental has always been a big part of the London housing market and still is. Who is going to be able to afford £600k for a one-bed flat at the Twelvetrees developement by West Ham station? Not the people who need housing, those on the council waiting list, families in a single room, others who live in appalling conditions in private rental hellholes.
We build houses for profit, not to solve the housing crisis - that's how aspiration is framed.
Fairly amazing that no party has been a serious advocate of councils building houses for decades despite the population growing significantly and us selling off previous council stock.
Bluntly, people do not aspire to a Council house, they live in one because the can't get anything better.
I think someone on here recommended The Fall of Boris Johnson by Sebastian Payne.
I’m afraid it’s not very good, simply a (sympathetic) day by day account that attributes his fall to badly judged circumstances rather than digging into his terrible character flaws.
So you didn't like it because it didn't agree with your existing opinion.
Also from the Obs, today’s Rawnsley while we wait for the sun to emerge above the horizon…
It is not just the dire approval ratings that make the Starmer government look so bereft of allies; it is the absence of any visible cheerleaders at Westminster or beyond it. For that, Sir Keir is copping much of the blame from his party. It is not the case that the country has “fallen out of love” with Labour. It was never in love in the first place.
This is a broadly centrist government led by a serious and hardworking man who is committed to some worthy goals. Which is a terrible combination in our hyper-polarised media environment. The achievements it can fairly claim get next to no attention while its blunders receive maximum magnification.
He is also grappling with the systemic challenge that has defeated so many governments in the affluent world since the crippling financial crisis of 2007-09. How do you satisfy public demand for decent state services at reasonable levels of taxation when growth is so anaemic? The doom loop of higher taxes for unsatisfactory services feeds the corrosion of trust in the state and its ability to deliver.
There’s a compelling case that the defining political event of the past 12 months came in the summer when No 10 and the Treasury combined in an effort to curb the ballooning cost of disability benefits, only to be forced into an abject and authority-shredding retreat by their own backbenchers. Those who hated the idea of welfare reform liked the government no better for the fact that it was forced to capitulate. Those who think we need welfare reform despaired that the government proved incapable of implementing it. There was another chaotic tale surrounding the budget…. [which] became a spirit-sapping feel-bad affair about leaks and accusations of misrepresentation.
It’s an unmerry Christmas for those in power. As you gather in what I hope is the warm embrace of your loved ones, spare a thought for our sadly cheerless and friendless government.
Nah, fuck them. They made their bed. Weak leadership and a govt without any vision or capability to do what is needed. The people at the top are more concerned at keeping themselves in their positions of power than anything else.
You could argue we've not had a defining idea of Government since Liz Truss (apologies) and before that since the Blessed Margaret. There is no big idea or if there is, no one has presented one with significant clarity and thought.
We've mostly had Governments which have maintained what I call post-Thatcherite social democracy - Johnson's Government (had it not been derailed by a microscopic virus) would likely have bene similar to Blair's and what Cameron's would have been had it not had to deal with the consequences of 2008.
Even in 1979, what Thatcher presented was less radical than Heath's manifesto in 1970 but the events of the 1970s proved to everyone Butskellism had run its course. If the 2020s show post-Thatcherite social democracy to have run its course, there will be an audience receptive to new economic and social ideas but it seems at the moment all about an insular ethno-nationalism where we blame (in no particular order) migrants, welfare claimants, old people, tall people, young people and people whose surname begins with "S". Finding people to blame is easy - coming up with practical cost-effective solutions isn't and as the anecdote from Peter Lilley pointed out, simply hacking away at the incomes of the poorest to make the richest feel better isn't the answer and, to be fair, hacking away at the incomes of the richest to make the poorest feel better isn't the answer either.
The demographic transformation of the country has been the problem or the opportunity - we need to stop thinking in a 20th century industrial mindset and start thinking in a 21st century post-industrial way re-defining the contract between the State and the older citizen. I do think the age of sheer material acquisition is coming to an end but I also think while capitalism in essence works, the current model is corrupt and no longer fit for purpose.
Your last sentence applies to all Governments - it didn't start on July 5th 2024.
My concern with capitalism is if young people cannot get a stake in society, like a home, why should they buy into the system. It needs to be aspirational.
The whole system feeling broken is why people on the right are moving to Reform and the left to the Greens. Neither have the solutions but both are NOTA.
Aspiration comes in many forms, I'd argue, but obviously somewhere nice to live is a good start. Yet we are building properties and selling them at prices (in London) no one can afford until or unless they inherit from parents/grandparents etc.
In my part of town, the answer is rental - young couples have to rent because they earn enough but have no savings so both work to pay the rent. How do they ever get off the rental treadmill?
Conservatives like people to own their homes because they become Conservative voters obsessed with mortgage rates. Yet, rental has always been a big part of the London housing market and still is. Who is going to be able to afford £600k for a one-bed flat at the Twelvetrees developement by West Ham station? Not the people who need housing, those on the council waiting list, families in a single room, others who live in appalling conditions in private rental hellholes.
We build houses for profit, not to solve the housing crisis - that's how aspiration is framed.
Fairly amazing that no party has been a serious advocate of councils building houses for decades despite the population growing significantly and us selling off previous council stock.
Bluntly, people do not aspire to a Council house, they live in one because the can't get anything better.
Perspective depends a bit on where you are on the ladder.
Compared to a suburban semi, or a quality flat you have chosen to live in, you're absolutely right.
Making a comparison with the grottier end of Private Rental, flat shares or worse, and aspiration looks rather different.
Also from the Obs, today’s Rawnsley while we wait for the sun to emerge above the horizon…
It is not just the dire approval ratings that make the Starmer government look so bereft of allies; it is the absence of any visible cheerleaders at Westminster or beyond it. For that, Sir Keir is copping much of the blame from his party. It is not the case that the country has “fallen out of love” with Labour. It was never in love in the first place.
This is a broadly centrist government led by a serious and hardworking man who is committed to some worthy goals. Which is a terrible combination in our hyper-polarised media environment. The achievements it can fairly claim get next to no attention while its blunders receive maximum magnification.
He is also grappling with the systemic challenge that has defeated so many governments in the affluent world since the crippling financial crisis of 2007-09. How do you satisfy public demand for decent state services at reasonable levels of taxation when growth is so anaemic? The doom loop of higher taxes for unsatisfactory services feeds the corrosion of trust in the state and its ability to deliver.
There’s a compelling case that the defining political event of the past 12 months came in the summer when No 10 and the Treasury combined in an effort to curb the ballooning cost of disability benefits, only to be forced into an abject and authority-shredding retreat by their own backbenchers. Those who hated the idea of welfare reform liked the government no better for the fact that it was forced to capitulate. Those who think we need welfare reform despaired that the government proved incapable of implementing it. There was another chaotic tale surrounding the budget…. [which] became a spirit-sapping feel-bad affair about leaks and accusations of misrepresentation.
It’s an unmerry Christmas for those in power. As you gather in what I hope is the warm embrace of your loved ones, spare a thought for our sadly cheerless and friendless government.
Nah, fuck them. They made their bed. Weak leadership and a govt without any vision or capability to do what is needed. The people at the top are more concerned at keeping themselves in their positions of power than anything else.
You could argue we've not had a defining idea of Government since Liz Truss (apologies) and before that since the Blessed Margaret. There is no big idea or if there is, no one has presented one with significant clarity and thought.
We've mostly had Governments which have maintained what I call post-Thatcherite social democracy - Johnson's Government (had it not been derailed by a microscopic virus) would likely have bene similar to Blair's and what Cameron's would have been had it not had to deal with the consequences of 2008.
Even in 1979, what Thatcher presented was less radical than Heath's manifesto in 1970 but the events of the 1970s proved to everyone Butskellism had run its course. If the 2020s show post-Thatcherite social democracy to have run its course, there will be an audience receptive to new economic and social ideas but it seems at the moment all about an insular ethno-nationalism where we blame (in no particular order) migrants, welfare claimants, old people, tall people, young people and people whose surname begins with "S". Finding people to blame is easy - coming up with practical cost-effective solutions isn't and as the anecdote from Peter Lilley pointed out, simply hacking away at the incomes of the poorest to make the richest feel better isn't the answer and, to be fair, hacking away at the incomes of the richest to make the poorest feel better isn't the answer either.
The demographic transformation of the country has been the problem or the opportunity - we need to stop thinking in a 20th century industrial mindset and start thinking in a 21st century post-industrial way re-defining the contract between the State and the older citizen. I do think the age of sheer material acquisition is coming to an end but I also think while capitalism in essence works, the current model is corrupt and no longer fit for purpose.
Your last sentence applies to all Governments - it didn't start on July 5th 2024.
My concern with capitalism is if young people cannot get a stake in society, like a home, why should they buy into the system. It needs to be aspirational.
The whole system feeling broken is why people on the right are moving to Reform and the left to the Greens. Neither have the solutions but both are NOTA.
Aspiration comes in many forms, I'd argue, but obviously somewhere nice to live is a good start. Yet we are building properties and selling them at prices (in London) no one can afford until or unless they inherit from parents/grandparents etc.
In my part of town, the answer is rental - young couples have to rent because they earn enough but have no savings so both work to pay the rent. How do they ever get off the rental treadmill?
Conservatives like people to own their homes because they become Conservative voters obsessed with mortgage rates. Yet, rental has always been a big part of the London housing market and still is. Who is going to be able to afford £600k for a one-bed flat at the Twelvetrees developement by West Ham station? Not the people who need housing, those on the council waiting list, families in a single room, others who live in appalling conditions in private rental hellholes.
We build houses for profit, not to solve the housing crisis - that's how aspiration is framed.
Fairly amazing that no party has been a serious advocate of councils building houses for decades despite the population growing significantly and us selling off previous council stock.
The Greens are coming round to it.
SNP never departed from it. Both DAvidL and I have been favourably impressed with recent council houses built under their administrations. Not huge or luxurious but decent jobs.
Also from the Obs, today’s Rawnsley while we wait for the sun to emerge above the horizon…
It is not just the dire approval ratings that make the Starmer government look so bereft of allies; it is the absence of any visible cheerleaders at Westminster or beyond it. For that, Sir Keir is copping much of the blame from his party. It is not the case that the country has “fallen out of love” with Labour. It was never in love in the first place.
This is a broadly centrist government led by a serious and hardworking man who is committed to some worthy goals. Which is a terrible combination in our hyper-polarised media environment. The achievements it can fairly claim get next to no attention while its blunders receive maximum magnification.
He is also grappling with the systemic challenge that has defeated so many governments in the affluent world since the crippling financial crisis of 2007-09. How do you satisfy public demand for decent state services at reasonable levels of taxation when growth is so anaemic? The doom loop of higher taxes for unsatisfactory services feeds the corrosion of trust in the state and its ability to deliver.
There’s a compelling case that the defining political event of the past 12 months came in the summer when No 10 and the Treasury combined in an effort to curb the ballooning cost of disability benefits, only to be forced into an abject and authority-shredding retreat by their own backbenchers. Those who hated the idea of welfare reform liked the government no better for the fact that it was forced to capitulate. Those who think we need welfare reform despaired that the government proved incapable of implementing it. There was another chaotic tale surrounding the budget…. [which] became a spirit-sapping feel-bad affair about leaks and accusations of misrepresentation.
It’s an unmerry Christmas for those in power. As you gather in what I hope is the warm embrace of your loved ones, spare a thought for our sadly cheerless and friendless government.
Nah, fuck them. They made their bed. Weak leadership and a govt without any vision or capability to do what is needed. The people at the top are more concerned at keeping themselves in their positions of power than anything else.
You could argue we've not had a defining idea of Government since Liz Truss (apologies) and before that since the Blessed Margaret. There is no big idea or if there is, no one has presented one with significant clarity and thought.
We've mostly had Governments which have maintained what I call post-Thatcherite social democracy - Johnson's Government (had it not been derailed by a microscopic virus) would likely have bene similar to Blair's and what Cameron's would have been had it not had to deal with the consequences of 2008.
Even in 1979, what Thatcher presented was less radical than Heath's manifesto in 1970 but the events of the 1970s proved to everyone Butskellism had run its course. If the 2020s show post-Thatcherite social democracy to have run its course, there will be an audience receptive to new economic and social ideas but it seems at the moment all about an insular ethno-nationalism where we blame (in no particular order) migrants, welfare claimants, old people, tall people, young people and people whose surname begins with "S". Finding people to blame is easy - coming up with practical cost-effective solutions isn't and as the anecdote from Peter Lilley pointed out, simply hacking away at the incomes of the poorest to make the richest feel better isn't the answer and, to be fair, hacking away at the incomes of the richest to make the poorest feel better isn't the answer either.
The demographic transformation of the country has been the problem or the opportunity - we need to stop thinking in a 20th century industrial mindset and start thinking in a 21st century post-industrial way re-defining the contract between the State and the older citizen. I do think the age of sheer material acquisition is coming to an end but I also think while capitalism in essence works, the current model is corrupt and no longer fit for purpose.
Your last sentence applies to all Governments - it didn't start on July 5th 2024.
My concern with capitalism is if young people cannot get a stake in society, like a home, why should they buy into the system. It needs to be aspirational.
The whole system feeling broken is why people on the right are moving to Reform and the left to the Greens. Neither have the solutions but both are NOTA.
Aspiration comes in many forms, I'd argue, but obviously somewhere nice to live is a good start. Yet we are building properties and selling them at prices (in London) no one can afford until or unless they inherit from parents/grandparents etc.
In my part of town, the answer is rental - young couples have to rent because they earn enough but have no savings so both work to pay the rent. How do they ever get off the rental treadmill?
Conservatives like people to own their homes because they become Conservative voters obsessed with mortgage rates. Yet, rental has always been a big part of the London housing market and still is. Who is going to be able to afford £600k for a one-bed flat at the Twelvetrees developement by West Ham station? Not the people who need housing, those on the council waiting list, families in a single room, others who live in appalling conditions in private rental hellholes.
We build houses for profit, not to solve the housing crisis - that's how aspiration is framed.
There is nothing wrong with building homes for a profit. Businesses exist to make a profit which in turn can be reinvested and they can grow more.
My issue with new build is the shit standard some of these are built too. There was a YouTube video of a building snagger showing some of the issues he came across. Horrendous. I’d never buy new build.
Ideally we should have local authorities building more to rent too. A mix of public and private provision especially where they re needed.
It’s all regional. I live in a nice part of North Durham, close to the countryside, nice estate, my 3 bed detached would fetch about half the price of that box in West Ham. So more provision where needed is required.
We also need to consider capacity. We do not have an abundance of the manual skills needed. A couple of developments near me regularly have signs up asking for brickies. One good thing the govt has done is recognised this and is putting in place additional training for the building industry. Not a short term fix but a long term plan that should pay off.
I think someone on here recommended The Fall of Boris Johnson by Sebastian Payne.
I’m afraid it’s not very good, simply a (sympathetic) day by day account that attributes his fall to badly judged circumstances rather than digging into his terrible character flaws.
So you didn't like it because it didn't agree with your existing opinion.
Without having read it i cannot say, and you could be right about motivation, but even if we take the position that it was mostly badly judged circumstances, is it likely character flaws played no part at all? MPs would not have turned on him as much if purely circumstance.
The flip side is when people dont acknowledge his character strengths which helped him win so big in 2019 - it wasnt all because of the circumstance of Corbyn was bad
Several days and a few hundred pounds into the process of verifying my identity on Companies House in order to prove that as an owner of one small flat, I am not an international money launderer (and tbh I'm not really sure how it proves this but I'm sure the government knows what it is doing) I have now acquired a passport and verified my identity to gov.uk.
The final step, then, is to associate my Companies House ID with my now-verified gov.uk ID.
But so far as I can see, there is no secure way to do that. Instead of logging in and pressing a couple of buttons, I have to hand my top-secret code to a complete stranger and trust him or her or them and their accountants and lawyers and cleaners to guard this code jealously and securely (not like pornhub or M&S or the Co-op or Jaguar or, erm, the government which keep getting hacked) and not use it to register their own money laundering network.
Also from the Obs, today’s Rawnsley while we wait for the sun to emerge above the horizon…
It is not just the dire approval ratings that make the Starmer government look so bereft of allies; it is the absence of any visible cheerleaders at Westminster or beyond it. For that, Sir Keir is copping much of the blame from his party. It is not the case that the country has “fallen out of love” with Labour. It was never in love in the first place.
This is a broadly centrist government led by a serious and hardworking man who is committed to some worthy goals. Which is a terrible combination in our hyper-polarised media environment. The achievements it can fairly claim get next to no attention while its blunders receive maximum magnification.
He is also grappling with the systemic challenge that has defeated so many governments in the affluent world since the crippling financial crisis of 2007-09. How do you satisfy public demand for decent state services at reasonable levels of taxation when growth is so anaemic? The doom loop of higher taxes for unsatisfactory services feeds the corrosion of trust in the state and its ability to deliver.
There’s a compelling case that the defining political event of the past 12 months came in the summer when No 10 and the Treasury combined in an effort to curb the ballooning cost of disability benefits, only to be forced into an abject and authority-shredding retreat by their own backbenchers. Those who hated the idea of welfare reform liked the government no better for the fact that it was forced to capitulate. Those who think we need welfare reform despaired that the government proved incapable of implementing it. There was another chaotic tale surrounding the budget…. [which] became a spirit-sapping feel-bad affair about leaks and accusations of misrepresentation.
It’s an unmerry Christmas for those in power. As you gather in what I hope is the warm embrace of your loved ones, spare a thought for our sadly cheerless and friendless government.
Nah, fuck them. They made their bed. Weak leadership and a govt without any vision or capability to do what is needed. The people at the top are more concerned at keeping themselves in their positions of power than anything else.
You could argue we've not had a defining idea of Government since Liz Truss (apologies) and before that since the Blessed Margaret. There is no big idea or if there is, no one has presented one with significant clarity and thought.
We've mostly had Governments which have maintained what I call post-Thatcherite social democracy - Johnson's Government (had it not been derailed by a microscopic virus) would likely have bene similar to Blair's and what Cameron's would have been had it not had to deal with the consequences of 2008.
Even in 1979, what Thatcher presented was less radical than Heath's manifesto in 1970 but the events of the 1970s proved to everyone Butskellism had run its course. If the 2020s show post-Thatcherite social democracy to have run its course, there will be an audience receptive to new economic and social ideas but it seems at the moment all about an insular ethno-nationalism where we blame (in no particular order) migrants, welfare claimants, old people, tall people, young people and people whose surname begins with "S". Finding people to blame is easy - coming up with practical cost-effective solutions isn't and as the anecdote from Peter Lilley pointed out, simply hacking away at the incomes of the poorest to make the richest feel better isn't the answer and, to be fair, hacking away at the incomes of the richest to make the poorest feel better isn't the answer either.
The demographic transformation of the country has been the problem or the opportunity - we need to stop thinking in a 20th century industrial mindset and start thinking in a 21st century post-industrial way re-defining the contract between the State and the older citizen. I do think the age of sheer material acquisition is coming to an end but I also think while capitalism in essence works, the current model is corrupt and no longer fit for purpose.
Your last sentence applies to all Governments - it didn't start on July 5th 2024.
My concern with capitalism is if young people cannot get a stake in society, like a home, why should they buy into the system. It needs to be aspirational.
The whole system feeling broken is why people on the right are moving to Reform and the left to the Greens. Neither have the solutions but both are NOTA.
Aspiration comes in many forms, I'd argue, but obviously somewhere nice to live is a good start. Yet we are building properties and selling them at prices (in London) no one can afford until or unless they inherit from parents/grandparents etc.
In my part of town, the answer is rental - young couples have to rent because they earn enough but have no savings so both work to pay the rent. How do they ever get off the rental treadmill?
Conservatives like people to own their homes because they become Conservative voters obsessed with mortgage rates. Yet, rental has always been a big part of the London housing market and still is. Who is going to be able to afford £600k for a one-bed flat at the Twelvetrees developement by West Ham station? Not the people who need housing, those on the council waiting list, families in a single room, others who live in appalling conditions in private rental hellholes.
We build houses for profit, not to solve the housing crisis - that's how aspiration is framed.
Fairly amazing that no party has been a serious advocate of councils building houses for decades despite the population growing significantly and us selling off previous council stock.
The Greens are coming round to it.
As long as they are not built either around here or anywhere green?
Also from the Obs, today’s Rawnsley while we wait for the sun to emerge above the horizon…
It is not just the dire approval ratings that make the Starmer government look so bereft of allies; it is the absence of any visible cheerleaders at Westminster or beyond it. For that, Sir Keir is copping much of the blame from his party. It is not the case that the country has “fallen out of love” with Labour. It was never in love in the first place.
This is a broadly centrist government led by a serious and hardworking man who is committed to some worthy goals. Which is a terrible combination in our hyper-polarised media environment. The achievements it can fairly claim get next to no attention while its blunders receive maximum magnification.
He is also grappling with the systemic challenge that has defeated so many governments in the affluent world since the crippling financial crisis of 2007-09. How do you satisfy public demand for decent state services at reasonable levels of taxation when growth is so anaemic? The doom loop of higher taxes for unsatisfactory services feeds the corrosion of trust in the state and its ability to deliver.
There’s a compelling case that the defining political event of the past 12 months came in the summer when No 10 and the Treasury combined in an effort to curb the ballooning cost of disability benefits, only to be forced into an abject and authority-shredding retreat by their own backbenchers. Those who hated the idea of welfare reform liked the government no better for the fact that it was forced to capitulate. Those who think we need welfare reform despaired that the government proved incapable of implementing it. There was another chaotic tale surrounding the budget…. [which] became a spirit-sapping feel-bad affair about leaks and accusations of misrepresentation.
It’s an unmerry Christmas for those in power. As you gather in what I hope is the warm embrace of your loved ones, spare a thought for our sadly cheerless and friendless government.
Nah, fuck them. They made their bed. Weak leadership and a govt without any vision or capability to do what is needed. The people at the top are more concerned at keeping themselves in their positions of power than anything else.
You could argue we've not had a defining idea of Government since Liz Truss (apologies) and before that since the Blessed Margaret. There is no big idea or if there is, no one has presented one with significant clarity and thought.
We've mostly had Governments which have maintained what I call post-Thatcherite social democracy - Johnson's Government (had it not been derailed by a microscopic virus) would likely have bene similar to Blair's and what Cameron's would have been had it not had to deal with the consequences of 2008.
Even in 1979, what Thatcher presented was less radical than Heath's manifesto in 1970 but the events of the 1970s proved to everyone Butskellism had run its course. If the 2020s show post-Thatcherite social democracy to have run its course, there will be an audience receptive to new economic and social ideas but it seems at the moment all about an insular ethno-nationalism where we blame (in no particular order) migrants, welfare claimants, old people, tall people, young people and people whose surname begins with "S". Finding people to blame is easy - coming up with practical cost-effective solutions isn't and as the anecdote from Peter Lilley pointed out, simply hacking away at the incomes of the poorest to make the richest feel better isn't the answer and, to be fair, hacking away at the incomes of the richest to make the poorest feel better isn't the answer either.
The demographic transformation of the country has been the problem or the opportunity - we need to stop thinking in a 20th century industrial mindset and start thinking in a 21st century post-industrial way re-defining the contract between the State and the older citizen. I do think the age of sheer material acquisition is coming to an end but I also think while capitalism in essence works, the current model is corrupt and no longer fit for purpose.
Your last sentence applies to all Governments - it didn't start on July 5th 2024.
My concern with capitalism is if young people cannot get a stake in society, like a home, why should they buy into the system. It needs to be aspirational.
The whole system feeling broken is why people on the right are moving to Reform and the left to the Greens. Neither have the solutions but both are NOTA.
Aspiration comes in many forms, I'd argue, but obviously somewhere nice to live is a good start. Yet we are building properties and selling them at prices (in London) no one can afford until or unless they inherit from parents/grandparents etc.
In my part of town, the answer is rental - young couples have to rent because they earn enough but have no savings so both work to pay the rent. How do they ever get off the rental treadmill?
Conservatives like people to own their homes because they become Conservative voters obsessed with mortgage rates. Yet, rental has always been a big part of the London housing market and still is. Who is going to be able to afford £600k for a one-bed flat at the Twelvetrees developement by West Ham station? Not the people who need housing, those on the council waiting list, families in a single room, others who live in appalling conditions in private rental hellholes.
We build houses for profit, not to solve the housing crisis - that's how aspiration is framed.
Fairly amazing that no party has been a serious advocate of councils building houses for decades despite the population growing significantly and us selling off previous council stock.
Bluntly, people do not aspire to a Council house, they live in one because the can't get anything better.
People in flat shares and lodgings do aspire to a council house. And you know, we could, err, possibly, maybe have a stab at building some council houses people do want to live in.
I think someone on here recommended The Fall of Boris Johnson by Sebastian Payne.
I’m afraid it’s not very good, simply a (sympathetic) day by day account that attributes his fall to badly judged circumstances rather than digging into his terrible character flaws.
So you didn't like it because it didn't agree with your existing opinion.
Without having read it i cannot say, and you could be right about motivation, but even if we take the position that it was mostly badly judged circumstances, is it likely character flaws played no part at all? MPs would not have turned on him as much if purely circumstance.
The flip side is when people dont acknowledge his character strengths which helped him win so big in 2019 - it wasnt all because of the circumstance of Corbyn was bad
Tentative idea.
Bazball cricket worked brilliantly when it burst on the scene. Some of that was the power of belief, some of it was shock value- if you're not expecting it, you're not going to exploit its flaws. But some of its risk/benefit calculations were always a bit flawed, so it was more problematic in the long run. But fun while it lasted.
Bozball politics worked brilliantly when it burst on the scene. Some of that was the power of belief, some of it was shock value- if you're not expecting it, you're not going to exploit its flaws. But some of its risk/benefit calculations were always a bit flawed, so it was more problematic in the long run. But fun while it lasted.
I also think think it is time for a change in approach and personnel, but I would prefer to start from bazball and change it to be more flexible, than to go back to the traditional path.
Maybe, and I'm just spitballing here, they could play more like Australia...
Australians have grown up playing on those surfaces, we haven't. Good lengths and shot selections are very different.
Which is why they need more practice in those conditions. We moa inn at the players for making the same mistakes but the management have been as well. If the pitches demand a fuller length why pick your "hit the deck" bowlers. Gideon Haigh has written something about this for the observer but seems it's now paywalled
Looking at these latest Epstein releases, I'm a bit worried the value of my Clinton coin is about to plummet.
The Epstein files are a huge disappointment so far. Where are all the videos of politicians, celebrities and members of the Pizza Hut loyalty programme shagging like rabbits that Epstein secretly filmed for blackmail purposes?
I think someone on here recommended The Fall of Boris Johnson by Sebastian Payne.
I’m afraid it’s not very good, simply a (sympathetic) day by day account that attributes his fall to badly judged circumstances rather than digging into his terrible character flaws.
So you didn't like it because it didn't agree with your existing opinion.
I found the scene filmed on the tube where various pawky Londoners gave Boris the thumbs up and advised him to keep buggering on particularly far fetched.
Also from the Obs, today’s Rawnsley while we wait for the sun to emerge above the horizon…
It is not just the dire approval ratings that make the Starmer government look so bereft of allies; it is the absence of any visible cheerleaders at Westminster or beyond it. For that, Sir Keir is copping much of the blame from his party. It is not the case that the country has “fallen out of love” with Labour. It was never in love in the first place.
This is a broadly centrist government led by a serious and hardworking man who is committed to some worthy goals. Which is a terrible combination in our hyper-polarised media environment. The achievements it can fairly claim get next to no attention while its blunders receive maximum magnification.
He is also grappling with the systemic challenge that has defeated so many governments in the affluent world since the crippling financial crisis of 2007-09. How do you satisfy public demand for decent state services at reasonable levels of taxation when growth is so anaemic? The doom loop of higher taxes for unsatisfactory services feeds the corrosion of trust in the state and its ability to deliver.
There’s a compelling case that the defining political event of the past 12 months came in the summer when No 10 and the Treasury combined in an effort to curb the ballooning cost of disability benefits, only to be forced into an abject and authority-shredding retreat by their own backbenchers. Those who hated the idea of welfare reform liked the government no better for the fact that it was forced to capitulate. Those who think we need welfare reform despaired that the government proved incapable of implementing it. There was another chaotic tale surrounding the budget…. [which] became a spirit-sapping feel-bad affair about leaks and accusations of misrepresentation.
It’s an unmerry Christmas for those in power. As you gather in what I hope is the warm embrace of your loved ones, spare a thought for our sadly cheerless and friendless government.
Nah, fuck them. They made their bed. Weak leadership and a govt without any vision or capability to do what is needed. The people at the top are more concerned at keeping themselves in their positions of power than anything else.
You could argue we've not had a defining idea of Government since Liz Truss (apologies) and before that since the Blessed Margaret. There is no big idea or if there is, no one has presented one with significant clarity and thought.
We've mostly had Governments which have maintained what I call post-Thatcherite social democracy - Johnson's Government (had it not been derailed by a microscopic virus) would likely have bene similar to Blair's and what Cameron's would have been had it not had to deal with the consequences of 2008.
Even in 1979, what Thatcher presented was less radical than Heath's manifesto in 1970 but the events of the 1970s proved to everyone Butskellism had run its course. If the 2020s show post-Thatcherite social democracy to have run its course, there will be an audience receptive to new economic and social ideas but it seems at the moment all about an insular ethno-nationalism where we blame (in no particular order) migrants, welfare claimants, old people, tall people, young people and people whose surname begins with "S". Finding people to blame is easy - coming up with practical cost-effective solutions isn't and as the anecdote from Peter Lilley pointed out, simply hacking away at the incomes of the poorest to make the richest feel better isn't the answer and, to be fair, hacking away at the incomes of the richest to make the poorest feel better isn't the answer either.
The demographic transformation of the country has been the problem or the opportunity - we need to stop thinking in a 20th century industrial mindset and start thinking in a 21st century post-industrial way re-defining the contract between the State and the older citizen. I do think the age of sheer material acquisition is coming to an end but I also think while capitalism in essence works, the current model is corrupt and no longer fit for purpose.
Your last sentence applies to all Governments - it didn't start on July 5th 2024.
My concern with capitalism is if young people cannot get a stake in society, like a home, why should they buy into the system. It needs to be aspirational.
The whole system feeling broken is why people on the right are moving to Reform and the left to the Greens. Neither have the solutions but both are NOTA.
Aspiration comes in many forms, I'd argue, but obviously somewhere nice to live is a good start. Yet we are building properties and selling them at prices (in London) no one can afford until or unless they inherit from parents/grandparents etc.
In my part of town, the answer is rental - young couples have to rent because they earn enough but have no savings so both work to pay the rent. How do they ever get off the rental treadmill?
Conservatives like people to own their homes because they become Conservative voters obsessed with mortgage rates. Yet, rental has always been a big part of the London housing market and still is. Who is going to be able to afford £600k for a one-bed flat at the Twelvetrees developement by West Ham station? Not the people who need housing, those on the council waiting list, families in a single room, others who live in appalling conditions in private rental hellholes.
We build houses for profit, not to solve the housing crisis - that's how aspiration is framed.
Fairly amazing that no party has been a serious advocate of councils building houses for decades despite the population growing significantly and us selling off previous council stock.
Bluntly, people do not aspire to a Council house, they live in one because the can't get anything better.
People in flat shares and lodgings do aspire to a council house. And you know, we could, err, possibly, maybe have a stab at building some council houses people do want to live in.
One of my boys rents in London, with a shifting range of flatmates. He doesn't want a council flat, what he wants is for private housing to be more affordable.
Also from the Obs, today’s Rawnsley while we wait for the sun to emerge above the horizon…
It is not just the dire approval ratings that make the Starmer government look so bereft of allies; it is the absence of any visible cheerleaders at Westminster or beyond it. For that, Sir Keir is copping much of the blame from his party. It is not the case that the country has “fallen out of love” with Labour. It was never in love in the first place.
This is a broadly centrist government led by a serious and hardworking man who is committed to some worthy goals. Which is a terrible combination in our hyper-polarised media environment. The achievements it can fairly claim get next to no attention while its blunders receive maximum magnification.
He is also grappling with the systemic challenge that has defeated so many governments in the affluent world since the crippling financial crisis of 2007-09. How do you satisfy public demand for decent state services at reasonable levels of taxation when growth is so anaemic? The doom loop of higher taxes for unsatisfactory services feeds the corrosion of trust in the state and its ability to deliver.
There’s a compelling case that the defining political event of the past 12 months came in the summer when No 10 and the Treasury combined in an effort to curb the ballooning cost of disability benefits, only to be forced into an abject and authority-shredding retreat by their own backbenchers. Those who hated the idea of welfare reform liked the government no better for the fact that it was forced to capitulate. Those who think we need welfare reform despaired that the government proved incapable of implementing it. There was another chaotic tale surrounding the budget…. [which] became a spirit-sapping feel-bad affair about leaks and accusations of misrepresentation.
It’s an unmerry Christmas for those in power. As you gather in what I hope is the warm embrace of your loved ones, spare a thought for our sadly cheerless and friendless government.
Nah, fuck them. They made their bed. Weak leadership and a govt without any vision or capability to do what is needed. The people at the top are more concerned at keeping themselves in their positions of power than anything else.
You could argue we've not had a defining idea of Government since Liz Truss (apologies) and before that since the Blessed Margaret. There is no big idea or if there is, no one has presented one with significant clarity and thought.
We've mostly had Governments which have maintained what I call post-Thatcherite social democracy - Johnson's Government (had it not been derailed by a microscopic virus) would likely have bene similar to Blair's and what Cameron's would have been had it not had to deal with the consequences of 2008.
Even in 1979, what Thatcher presented was less radical than Heath's manifesto in 1970 but the events of the 1970s proved to everyone Butskellism had run its course. If the 2020s show post-Thatcherite social democracy to have run its course, there will be an audience receptive to new economic and social ideas but it seems at the moment all about an insular ethno-nationalism where we blame (in no particular order) migrants, welfare claimants, old people, tall people, young people and people whose surname begins with "S". Finding people to blame is easy - coming up with practical cost-effective solutions isn't and as the anecdote from Peter Lilley pointed out, simply hacking away at the incomes of the poorest to make the richest feel better isn't the answer and, to be fair, hacking away at the incomes of the richest to make the poorest feel better isn't the answer either.
The demographic transformation of the country has been the problem or the opportunity - we need to stop thinking in a 20th century industrial mindset and start thinking in a 21st century post-industrial way re-defining the contract between the State and the older citizen. I do think the age of sheer material acquisition is coming to an end but I also think while capitalism in essence works, the current model is corrupt and no longer fit for purpose.
Your last sentence applies to all Governments - it didn't start on July 5th 2024.
My concern with capitalism is if young people cannot get a stake in society, like a home, why should they buy into the system. It needs to be aspirational.
The whole system feeling broken is why people on the right are moving to Reform and the left to the Greens. Neither have the solutions but both are NOTA.
Aspiration comes in many forms, I'd argue, but obviously somewhere nice to live is a good start. Yet we are building properties and selling them at prices (in London) no one can afford until or unless they inherit from parents/grandparents etc.
In my part of town, the answer is rental - young couples have to rent because they earn enough but have no savings so both work to pay the rent. How do they ever get off the rental treadmill?
Conservatives like people to own their homes because they become Conservative voters obsessed with mortgage rates. Yet, rental has always been a big part of the London housing market and still is. Who is going to be able to afford £600k for a one-bed flat at the Twelvetrees developement by West Ham station? Not the people who need housing, those on the council waiting list, families in a single room, others who live in appalling conditions in private rental hellholes.
We build houses for profit, not to solve the housing crisis - that's how aspiration is framed.
Fairly amazing that no party has been a serious advocate of councils building houses for decades despite the population growing significantly and us selling off previous council stock.
Bluntly, people do not aspire to a Council house, they live in one because the can't get anything better.
People in flat shares and lodgings do aspire to a council house. And you know, we could, err, possibly, maybe have a stab at building some council houses people do want to live in.
One of my boys rents in London, with a shifting range of flatmates. He doesn't want a council flat, what he wants is for private housing to be more affordable.
That’s just him. The market can, and should, sustain both private and LG housing.
Building more homes where needed would help but property prices are starting to fall and are falling relative to wage growth,
I think someone on here recommended The Fall of Boris Johnson by Sebastian Payne.
I’m afraid it’s not very good, simply a (sympathetic) day by day account that attributes his fall to badly judged circumstances rather than digging into his terrible character flaws.
So you didn't like it because it didn't agree with your existing opinion.
Without having read it i cannot say, and you could be right about motivation, but even if we take the position that it was mostly badly judged circumstances, is it likely character flaws played no part at all? MPs would not have turned on him as much if purely circumstance.
The flip side is when people dont acknowledge his character strengths which helped him win so big in 2019 - it wasnt all because of the circumstance of Corbyn was bad
Tentative idea.
Bazball cricket worked brilliantly when it burst on the scene. Some of that was the power of belief, some of it was shock value- if you're not expecting it, you're not going to exploit its flaws. But some of its risk/benefit calculations were always a bit flawed, so it was more problematic in the long run. But fun while it lasted.
Bozball politics worked brilliantly when it burst on the scene. Some of that was the power of belief, some of it was shock value- if you're not expecting it, you're not going to exploit its flaws. But some of its risk/benefit calculations were always a bit flawed, so it was more problematic in the long run. But fun while it lasted.
If we take this further, is there an idea here that English cricket is still and about to enter it's Liz Truss era?
I think someone on here recommended The Fall of Boris Johnson by Sebastian Payne.
I’m afraid it’s not very good, simply a (sympathetic) day by day account that attributes his fall to badly judged circumstances rather than digging into his terrible character flaws.
So you didn't like it because it didn't agree with your existing opinion.
Without having read it i cannot say, and you could be right about motivation, but even if we take the position that it was mostly badly judged circumstances, is it likely character flaws played no part at all? MPs would not have turned on him as much if purely circumstance.
The flip side is when people dont acknowledge his character strengths which helped him win so big in 2019 - it wasnt all because of the circumstance of Corbyn was bad
Tentative idea.
Bazball cricket worked brilliantly when it burst on the scene. Some of that was the power of belief, some of it was shock value- if you're not expecting it, you're not going to exploit its flaws. But some of its risk/benefit calculations were always a bit flawed, so it was more problematic in the long run. But fun while it lasted.
Bozball politics worked brilliantly when it burst on the scene. Some of that was the power of belief, some of it was shock value- if you're not expecting it, you're not going to exploit its flaws. But some of its risk/benefit calculations were always a bit flawed, so it was more problematic in the long run. But fun while it lasted.
If we take this further, is there an idea here that English cricket is still and about to enter it's Liz Truss era?
Poll of 5,195 voters between 11th and 15th December
Changes since previous Ashcroft poll in November:
Ref -2 Con +2 Grn +1 Lab nc LD -1
That seems on trend
I think the Tories can take the lead next year, with the help of centrist voters.
How many of us will have forgotton Austerity, Brexit and Boris Johnson by next year? Particularly if you continue your Reform, performative-cruelty agenda. One of the reasons for Labour tanking is their Reform, performative cruelty agenda.
@isam posted a link from Ben Ansell which explained the emergence of blocs. Reform performative cruelty politics lies within the right bloc so adopting it helps Kemi. But it doesn't fall within the left bloc, so Starmer going full Enoch lost him support which bled into the other left bloc parties, principally the Greens who mopped up the votes Starmer was pissing away.
The one who wins is the party who soaks up the votes for their block. A 50/50 split in the right block just results in a lot of second places for Reform & Tories. Kemi has to be aiming for over 30%. She may do it given the time to 2029
Apart from the obvious - that people see similarly-aligned parties to their old one as an easier, more palatable switch, I don't see how this is really borne out by the polling. C/R was scoring around 38% after the election. They are now on around 48%. That is a lot of bloc movement in less than two years.
Regarding 'performative cruelty' which I take it translates as the belief that being in work should pay better than not being in work, or that we should be able to set our own immigration policy, Labour's attempts in Government to deploy these policies have been superficial and short-lived. Its attempt to dampen welfare spending growth slightly fell victim to its own MPs. Starmer's speech didn't survive the whiff of grapeshot before he was crying about it to a newspaper. When you are in Government people believe (perhaps naively) that you can do something other than making a speech.
Also from the Obs, today’s Rawnsley while we wait for the sun to emerge above the horizon…
It is not just the dire approval ratings that make the Starmer government look so bereft of allies; it is the absence of any visible cheerleaders at Westminster or beyond it. For that, Sir Keir is copping much of the blame from his party. It is not the case that the country has “fallen out of love” with Labour. It was never in love in the first place.
This is a broadly centrist government led by a serious and hardworking man who is committed to some worthy goals. Which is a terrible combination in our hyper-polarised media environment. The achievements it can fairly claim get next to no attention while its blunders receive maximum magnification.
He is also grappling with the systemic challenge that has defeated so many governments in the affluent world since the crippling financial crisis of 2007-09. How do you satisfy public demand for decent state services at reasonable levels of taxation when growth is so anaemic? The doom loop of higher taxes for unsatisfactory services feeds the corrosion of trust in the state and its ability to deliver.
There’s a compelling case that the defining political event of the past 12 months came in the summer when No 10 and the Treasury combined in an effort to curb the ballooning cost of disability benefits, only to be forced into an abject and authority-shredding retreat by their own backbenchers. Those who hated the idea of welfare reform liked the government no better for the fact that it was forced to capitulate. Those who think we need welfare reform despaired that the government proved incapable of implementing it. There was another chaotic tale surrounding the budget…. [which] became a spirit-sapping feel-bad affair about leaks and accusations of misrepresentation.
It’s an unmerry Christmas for those in power. As you gather in what I hope is the warm embrace of your loved ones, spare a thought for our sadly cheerless and friendless government.
Nah, fuck them. They made their bed. Weak leadership and a govt without any vision or capability to do what is needed. The people at the top are more concerned at keeping themselves in their positions of power than anything else.
You could argue we've not had a defining idea of Government since Liz Truss (apologies) and before that since the Blessed Margaret. There is no big idea or if there is, no one has presented one with significant clarity and thought.
We've mostly had Governments which have maintained what I call post-Thatcherite social democracy - Johnson's Government (had it not been derailed by a microscopic virus) would likely have bene similar to Blair's and what Cameron's would have been had it not had to deal with the consequences of 2008.
Even in 1979, what Thatcher presented was less radical than Heath's manifesto in 1970 but the events of the 1970s proved to everyone Butskellism had run its course. If the 2020s show post-Thatcherite social democracy to have run its course, there will be an audience receptive to new economic and social ideas but it seems at the moment all about an insular ethno-nationalism where we blame (in no particular order) migrants, welfare claimants, old people, tall people, young people and people whose surname begins with "S". Finding people to blame is easy - coming up with practical cost-effective solutions isn't and as the anecdote from Peter Lilley pointed out, simply hacking away at the incomes of the poorest to make the richest feel better isn't the answer and, to be fair, hacking away at the incomes of the richest to make the poorest feel better isn't the answer either.
The demographic transformation of the country has been the problem or the opportunity - we need to stop thinking in a 20th century industrial mindset and start thinking in a 21st century post-industrial way re-defining the contract between the State and the older citizen. I do think the age of sheer material acquisition is coming to an end but I also think while capitalism in essence works, the current model is corrupt and no longer fit for purpose.
Your last sentence applies to all Governments - it didn't start on July 5th 2024.
My concern with capitalism is if young people cannot get a stake in society, like a home, why should they buy into the system. It needs to be aspirational.
The whole system feeling broken is why people on the right are moving to Reform and the left to the Greens. Neither have the solutions but both are NOTA.
Aspiration comes in many forms, I'd argue, but obviously somewhere nice to live is a good start. Yet we are building properties and selling them at prices (in London) no one can afford until or unless they inherit from parents/grandparents etc.
In my part of town, the answer is rental - young couples have to rent because they earn enough but have no savings so both work to pay the rent. How do they ever get off the rental treadmill?
Conservatives like people to own their homes because they become Conservative voters obsessed with mortgage rates. Yet, rental has always been a big part of the London housing market and still is. Who is going to be able to afford £600k for a one-bed flat at the Twelvetrees developement by West Ham station? Not the people who need housing, those on the council waiting list, families in a single room, others who live in appalling conditions in private rental hellholes.
We build houses for profit, not to solve the housing crisis - that's how aspiration is framed.
Fairly amazing that no party has been a serious advocate of councils building houses for decades despite the population growing significantly and us selling off previous council stock.
Bluntly, people do not aspire to a Council house, they live in one because the can't get anything better.
People in flat shares and lodgings do aspire to a council house. And you know, we could, err, possibly, maybe have a stab at building some council houses people do want to live in.
One of my boys rents in London, with a shifting range of flatmates. He doesn't want a council flat, what he wants is for private housing to be more affordable.
How much of that is because he’s conditioned by council housing being for people on benefits and not for people like him?
I support right to buy, but from quite a negative perspective. An alternative universe where the council houses weren’t sold off and I got a council property in London because I worked in London is quite a compelling one.
But I don’t think that universe exists. The alternative is that my parents didn’t get to own their house and I wouldn’t be deemed deserving of a London property. At least with right to buy my sister and I stand to inherit if we look after our parents.
On cricket. Why didn't Bazball work? It's not to do with the batting, it's to do with the bowling. The Aussies are much, much better at bowling line and length than we are, so to score quickly necessitates much more risk, leading to inevitable dismissals. By contrast, our bowlers frequently miss line and length, mainly by bowling too short, meaning that there are frequent 'hittable' balls and low risk attacking shots to make. That's why Travis Head got so many runs - he just waited for the dross balls. Compare Carse with Boland, for example: most of Boland's deliveries are aimed at top of off stump, while too many of Carse's are aimed at top of second slip. And, of course, it doesn't help that we don't have a spin bowler that would have been selected for my old village club.
My nephew is in hospital at moment with RSV and complications. His care definitely seems substandard.
Terrible time for the junior doctors to strike. Feel very angry they've done this now during winter flu crisis.
If you're going to strike there's no point in doing it when nobody will notice. You strike when it has maximum impact.
They can strike all they want, the problem is there is no magic money pot to pay them anymore and no-one has got pay increases that match the 28% they got.
Heck I know a lot of people on less now then in 2023 rather than 28% more
The reason you get the 28% figure is 1) that's a cumulative figure over three years 2) during a period of massive inflation 3) from a low base.
Frankly, it's extraordinary entitlement from a public that puts massive demand on a service run largely by young people, struggling to get on the housing ladder and with enormous debt. They want to see the state to use it's overwhelming monopsonistic power to drive down wages at the expense of working people.
This graph shows what has happened to pay before Labour got in:
Also from the Obs, today’s Rawnsley while we wait for the sun to emerge above the horizon…
It is not just the dire approval ratings that make the Starmer government look so bereft of allies; it is the absence of any visible cheerleaders at Westminster or beyond it. For that, Sir Keir is copping much of the blame from his party. It is not the case that the country has “fallen out of love” with Labour. It was never in love in the first place.
This is a broadly centrist government led by a serious and hardworking man who is committed to some worthy goals. Which is a terrible combination in our hyper-polarised media environment. The achievements it can fairly claim get next to no attention while its blunders receive maximum magnification.
He is also grappling with the systemic challenge that has defeated so many governments in the affluent world since the crippling financial crisis of 2007-09. How do you satisfy public demand for decent state services at reasonable levels of taxation when growth is so anaemic? The doom loop of higher taxes for unsatisfactory services feeds the corrosion of trust in the state and its ability to deliver.
There’s a compelling case that the defining political event of the past 12 months came in the summer when No 10 and the Treasury combined in an effort to curb the ballooning cost of disability benefits, only to be forced into an abject and authority-shredding retreat by their own backbenchers. Those who hated the idea of welfare reform liked the government no better for the fact that it was forced to capitulate. Those who think we need welfare reform despaired that the government proved incapable of implementing it. There was another chaotic tale surrounding the budget…. [which] became a spirit-sapping feel-bad affair about leaks and accusations of misrepresentation.
It’s an unmerry Christmas for those in power. As you gather in what I hope is the warm embrace of your loved ones, spare a thought for our sadly cheerless and friendless government.
Nah, fuck them. They made their bed. Weak leadership and a govt without any vision or capability to do what is needed. The people at the top are more concerned at keeping themselves in their positions of power than anything else.
You could argue we've not had a defining idea of Government since Liz Truss (apologies) and before that since the Blessed Margaret. There is no big idea or if there is, no one has presented one with significant clarity and thought.
We've mostly had Governments which have maintained what I call post-Thatcherite social democracy - Johnson's Government (had it not been derailed by a microscopic virus) would likely have bene similar to Blair's and what Cameron's would have been had it not had to deal with the consequences of 2008.
Even in 1979, what Thatcher presented was less radical than Heath's manifesto in 1970 but the events of the 1970s proved to everyone Butskellism had run its course. If the 2020s show post-Thatcherite social democracy to have run its course, there will be an audience receptive to new economic and social ideas but it seems at the moment all about an insular ethno-nationalism where we blame (in no particular order) migrants, welfare claimants, old people, tall people, young people and people whose surname begins with "S". Finding people to blame is easy - coming up with practical cost-effective solutions isn't and as the anecdote from Peter Lilley pointed out, simply hacking away at the incomes of the poorest to make the richest feel better isn't the answer and, to be fair, hacking away at the incomes of the richest to make the poorest feel better isn't the answer either.
The demographic transformation of the country has been the problem or the opportunity - we need to stop thinking in a 20th century industrial mindset and start thinking in a 21st century post-industrial way re-defining the contract between the State and the older citizen. I do think the age of sheer material acquisition is coming to an end but I also think while capitalism in essence works, the current model is corrupt and no longer fit for purpose.
Your last sentence applies to all Governments - it didn't start on July 5th 2024.
My concern with capitalism is if young people cannot get a stake in society, like a home, why should they buy into the system. It needs to be aspirational.
The whole system feeling broken is why people on the right are moving to Reform and the left to the Greens. Neither have the solutions but both are NOTA.
Aspiration comes in many forms, I'd argue, but obviously somewhere nice to live is a good start. Yet we are building properties and selling them at prices (in London) no one can afford until or unless they inherit from parents/grandparents etc.
In my part of town, the answer is rental - young couples have to rent because they earn enough but have no savings so both work to pay the rent. How do they ever get off the rental treadmill?
Conservatives like people to own their homes because they become Conservative voters obsessed with mortgage rates. Yet, rental has always been a big part of the London housing market and still is. Who is going to be able to afford £600k for a one-bed flat at the Twelvetrees developement by West Ham station? Not the people who need housing, those on the council waiting list, families in a single room, others who live in appalling conditions in private rental hellholes.
We build houses for profit, not to solve the housing crisis - that's how aspiration is framed.
Fairly amazing that no party has been a serious advocate of councils building houses for decades despite the population growing significantly and us selling off previous council stock.
Bluntly, people do not aspire to a Council house, they live in one because the can't get anything better.
People in flat shares and lodgings do aspire to a council house. And you know, we could, err, possibly, maybe have a stab at building some council houses people do want to live in.
One of my boys rents in London, with a shifting range of flatmates. He doesn't want a council flat, what he wants is for private housing to be more affordable.
How much of that is because he’s conditioned by council housing being for people on benefits and not for people like him?
I support right to buy, but from quite a negative perspective. An alternative universe where the council houses weren’t sold off and I got a council property in London because I worked in London is quite a compelling one.
But I don’t think that universe exists. The alternative is that my parents didn’t get to own their house and I wouldn’t be deemed deserving of a London property. At least with right to buy my sister and I stand to inherit if we look after our parents.
Also, if we build a lot of council houses *and* have right to buy, then:
* the stock of council houses for people who need one remains good * demand on the private rental sector declines because of the people now in council houses rather than private rental * supply of private sector housing goes up because of the steady flow into it of the right to buy properties
The disadvantage, of course, is that the government is paying out a lot of money to build houses. The optimistic take is that this triggers growth that we can use to pay for it, plus it's a form of redistribution. The pessimistic take is that it's an unaffordable pipedream.
My nephew is in hospital at moment with RSV and complications. His care definitely seems substandard.
Terrible time for the junior doctors to strike. Feel very angry they've done this now during winter flu crisis.
If you're going to strike there's no point in doing it when nobody will notice. You strike when it has maximum impact.
They can strike all they want, the problem is there is no magic money pot to pay them anymore and no-one has got pay increases that match the 28% they got.
Heck I know a lot of people on less now then in 2023 rather than 28% more
The reason you get the 28% figure is 1) that's a cumulative figure over three years 2) during a period of massive inflation 3) from a low base.
Frankly, it's extraordinary entitlement from a public that puts massive demand on a service run largely by young people, struggling to get on the housing ladder and with enormous debt. They want to see the state to use it's overwhelming monopsonistic power to drive down wages at the expense of working people.
This graph shows what has happened to pay before Labour got in:
In the last year TWO new licensed premises have opened in this small town. We already have three pubs, three licensed restaurants (as well as the pubs) and a Conservative club, which seems a popular drinking place. There has been some building, but not that much.
Also from the Obs, today’s Rawnsley while we wait for the sun to emerge above the horizon…
It is not just the dire approval ratings that make the Starmer government look so bereft of allies; it is the absence of any visible cheerleaders at Westminster or beyond it. For that, Sir Keir is copping much of the blame from his party. It is not the case that the country has “fallen out of love” with Labour. It was never in love in the first place.
This is a broadly centrist government led by a serious and hardworking man who is committed to some worthy goals. Which is a terrible combination in our hyper-polarised media environment. The achievements it can fairly claim get next to no attention while its blunders receive maximum magnification.
He is also grappling with the systemic challenge that has defeated so many governments in the affluent world since the crippling financial crisis of 2007-09. How do you satisfy public demand for decent state services at reasonable levels of taxation when growth is so anaemic? The doom loop of higher taxes for unsatisfactory services feeds the corrosion of trust in the state and its ability to deliver.
There’s a compelling case that the defining political event of the past 12 months came in the summer when No 10 and the Treasury combined in an effort to curb the ballooning cost of disability benefits, only to be forced into an abject and authority-shredding retreat by their own backbenchers. Those who hated the idea of welfare reform liked the government no better for the fact that it was forced to capitulate. Those who think we need welfare reform despaired that the government proved incapable of implementing it. There was another chaotic tale surrounding the budget…. [which] became a spirit-sapping feel-bad affair about leaks and accusations of misrepresentation.
It’s an unmerry Christmas for those in power. As you gather in what I hope is the warm embrace of your loved ones, spare a thought for our sadly cheerless and friendless government.
Nah, fuck them. They made their bed. Weak leadership and a govt without any vision or capability to do what is needed. The people at the top are more concerned at keeping themselves in their positions of power than anything else.
You could argue we've not had a defining idea of Government since Liz Truss (apologies) and before that since the Blessed Margaret. There is no big idea or if there is, no one has presented one with significant clarity and thought.
We've mostly had Governments which have maintained what I call post-Thatcherite social democracy - Johnson's Government (had it not been derailed by a microscopic virus) would likely have bene similar to Blair's and what Cameron's would have been had it not had to deal with the consequences of 2008.
Even in 1979, what Thatcher presented was less radical than Heath's manifesto in 1970 but the events of the 1970s proved to everyone Butskellism had run its course. If the 2020s show post-Thatcherite social democracy to have run its course, there will be an audience receptive to new economic and social ideas but it seems at the moment all about an insular ethno-nationalism where we blame (in no particular order) migrants, welfare claimants, old people, tall people, young people and people whose surname begins with "S". Finding people to blame is easy - coming up with practical cost-effective solutions isn't and as the anecdote from Peter Lilley pointed out, simply hacking away at the incomes of the poorest to make the richest feel better isn't the answer and, to be fair, hacking away at the incomes of the richest to make the poorest feel better isn't the answer either.
The demographic transformation of the country has been the problem or the opportunity - we need to stop thinking in a 20th century industrial mindset and start thinking in a 21st century post-industrial way re-defining the contract between the State and the older citizen. I do think the age of sheer material acquisition is coming to an end but I also think while capitalism in essence works, the current model is corrupt and no longer fit for purpose.
Your last sentence applies to all Governments - it didn't start on July 5th 2024.
My concern with capitalism is if young people cannot get a stake in society, like a home, why should they buy into the system. It needs to be aspirational.
The whole system feeling broken is why people on the right are moving to Reform and the left to the Greens. Neither have the solutions but both are NOTA.
Aspiration comes in many forms, I'd argue, but obviously somewhere nice to live is a good start. Yet we are building properties and selling them at prices (in London) no one can afford until or unless they inherit from parents/grandparents etc.
In my part of town, the answer is rental - young couples have to rent because they earn enough but have no savings so both work to pay the rent. How do they ever get off the rental treadmill?
Conservatives like people to own their homes because they become Conservative voters obsessed with mortgage rates. Yet, rental has always been a big part of the London housing market and still is. Who is going to be able to afford £600k for a one-bed flat at the Twelvetrees developement by West Ham station? Not the people who need housing, those on the council waiting list, families in a single room, others who live in appalling conditions in private rental hellholes.
We build houses for profit, not to solve the housing crisis - that's how aspiration is framed.
Fairly amazing that no party has been a serious advocate of councils building houses for decades despite the population growing significantly and us selling off previous council stock.
Bluntly, people do not aspire to a Council house, they live in one because the can't get anything better.
If you're destitute, in PRS with your landlord milking your housing benefit as far they can (often in what used to be a council house), it's genuinely aspirational.
The government currently spends between £30 billion and £40 billion per year on housing costs for benefit claimant - that goes straight into the pocket of landlords. That's very stupid. Only about £2 billion goes on building council houses/social housing.
My nephew is in hospital at moment with RSV and complications. His care definitely seems substandard.
Terrible time for the junior doctors to strike. Feel very angry they've done this now during winter flu crisis.
If you're going to strike there's no point in doing it when nobody will notice. You strike when it has maximum impact.
They can strike all they want, the problem is there is no magic money pot to pay them anymore and no-one has got pay increases that match the 28% they got.
Heck I know a lot of people on less now then in 2023 rather than 28% more
The reason you get the 28% figure is 1) that's a cumulative figure over three years 2) during a period of massive inflation 3) from a low base.
Frankly, it's extraordinary entitlement from a public that puts massive demand on a service run largely by young people, struggling to get on the housing ladder and with enormous debt. They want to see the state to use it's overwhelming monopsonistic power to drive down wages at the expense of working people.
This graph shows what has happened to pay before Labour got in:
My nephew is in hospital at moment with RSV and complications. His care definitely seems substandard.
Terrible time for the junior doctors to strike. Feel very angry they've done this now during winter flu crisis.
If you're going to strike there's no point in doing it when nobody will notice. You strike when it has maximum impact.
They can strike all they want, the problem is there is no magic money pot to pay them anymore and no-one has got pay increases that match the 28% they got.
Heck I know a lot of people on less now then in 2023 rather than 28% more
The reason you get the 28% figure is 1) that's a cumulative figure over three years 2) during a period of massive inflation 3) from a low base.
Frankly, it's extraordinary entitlement from a public that puts massive demand on a service run largely by young people, struggling to get on the housing ladder and with enormous debt. They want to see the state to use it's overwhelming monopsonistic power to drive down wages at the expense of working people.
This graph shows what has happened to pay before Labour got in:
Relative over Christmas told an anecdote about an ex-nurse friend of theirs: intensive care nurse, burnt out during the pandemic, quit and is now a nail technician -- and is making more money than she did as a nurse...
Also from the Obs, today’s Rawnsley while we wait for the sun to emerge above the horizon…
It is not just the dire approval ratings that make the Starmer government look so bereft of allies; it is the absence of any visible cheerleaders at Westminster or beyond it. For that, Sir Keir is copping much of the blame from his party. It is not the case that the country has “fallen out of love” with Labour. It was never in love in the first place.
This is a broadly centrist government led by a serious and hardworking man who is committed to some worthy goals. Which is a terrible combination in our hyper-polarised media environment. The achievements it can fairly claim get next to no attention while its blunders receive maximum magnification.
He is also grappling with the systemic challenge that has defeated so many governments in the affluent world since the crippling financial crisis of 2007-09. How do you satisfy public demand for decent state services at reasonable levels of taxation when growth is so anaemic? The doom loop of higher taxes for unsatisfactory services feeds the corrosion of trust in the state and its ability to deliver.
There’s a compelling case that the defining political event of the past 12 months came in the summer when No 10 and the Treasury combined in an effort to curb the ballooning cost of disability benefits, only to be forced into an abject and authority-shredding retreat by their own backbenchers. Those who hated the idea of welfare reform liked the government no better for the fact that it was forced to capitulate. Those who think we need welfare reform despaired that the government proved incapable of implementing it. There was another chaotic tale surrounding the budget…. [which] became a spirit-sapping feel-bad affair about leaks and accusations of misrepresentation.
It’s an unmerry Christmas for those in power. As you gather in what I hope is the warm embrace of your loved ones, spare a thought for our sadly cheerless and friendless government.
Nah, fuck them. They made their bed. Weak leadership and a govt without any vision or capability to do what is needed. The people at the top are more concerned at keeping themselves in their positions of power than anything else.
You could argue we've not had a defining idea of Government since Liz Truss (apologies) and before that since the Blessed Margaret. There is no big idea or if there is, no one has presented one with significant clarity and thought.
We've mostly had Governments which have maintained what I call post-Thatcherite social democracy - Johnson's Government (had it not been derailed by a microscopic virus) would likely have bene similar to Blair's and what Cameron's would have been had it not had to deal with the consequences of 2008.
Even in 1979, what Thatcher presented was less radical than Heath's manifesto in 1970 but the events of the 1970s proved to everyone Butskellism had run its course. If the 2020s show post-Thatcherite social democracy to have run its course, there will be an audience receptive to new economic and social ideas but it seems at the moment all about an insular ethno-nationalism where we blame (in no particular order) migrants, welfare claimants, old people, tall people, young people and people whose surname begins with "S". Finding people to blame is easy - coming up with practical cost-effective solutions isn't and as the anecdote from Peter Lilley pointed out, simply hacking away at the incomes of the poorest to make the richest feel better isn't the answer and, to be fair, hacking away at the incomes of the richest to make the poorest feel better isn't the answer either.
The demographic transformation of the country has been the problem or the opportunity - we need to stop thinking in a 20th century industrial mindset and start thinking in a 21st century post-industrial way re-defining the contract between the State and the older citizen. I do think the age of sheer material acquisition is coming to an end but I also think while capitalism in essence works, the current model is corrupt and no longer fit for purpose.
Your last sentence applies to all Governments - it didn't start on July 5th 2024.
My concern with capitalism is if young people cannot get a stake in society, like a home, why should they buy into the system. It needs to be aspirational.
The whole system feeling broken is why people on the right are moving to Reform and the left to the Greens. Neither have the solutions but both are NOTA.
Aspiration comes in many forms, I'd argue, but obviously somewhere nice to live is a good start. Yet we are building properties and selling them at prices (in London) no one can afford until or unless they inherit from parents/grandparents etc.
In my part of town, the answer is rental - young couples have to rent because they earn enough but have no savings so both work to pay the rent. How do they ever get off the rental treadmill?
Conservatives like people to own their homes because they become Conservative voters obsessed with mortgage rates. Yet, rental has always been a big part of the London housing market and still is. Who is going to be able to afford £600k for a one-bed flat at the Twelvetrees developement by West Ham station? Not the people who need housing, those on the council waiting list, families in a single room, others who live in appalling conditions in private rental hellholes.
We build houses for profit, not to solve the housing crisis - that's how aspiration is framed.
I would build social housing and allow renters’ payments to be 90% rent and 10% towards the purchase of the property. Gradually increase the proportion that is used towards the purchase until the renters are in a position to purchase the property outright with a mortgage. They also pay towards the cost of repairs and maintenance at the same percentage they are paying for rent, to get them used to paying for the upkeep of their home.
The rental income received by the property owners is ringfenced for building more properties.
It will need an initial grant or loan to enable the scheme to be started, which will be an investment.
More bleating from the hospitality industry and some petty spite planning to "ban Labour MPs" from pubs, restaurants etc.
I've very little sympathy - there are two aspects to the whingeing. First, the NI increases - well, all businesses have had to pay for the elephant trap laid for the incoming Government by Sunak and Hunt.
Second, the ending of business rate relief - this was introduced by the Conservatives in 2020 during COVID (and rightly so given no one could go out initially and the virus spreader Eat Out to Help Out was a politically motivated catastrophe) but instead of a rapid removal after a year or two it was left in place for a five year timeframe and of course Reeves and Starmer have been left holding that grenade when it exploded.
I suppose Reeves could have continued with the business rates relief (not quite sure why she didn't and that's her political error) but rather like Council Tax, the political pain of revaluation isn't worth it so the sleeping dog can remain unmolested in the lounge bar by the fire.
The other side of the argument is the hospitality industry has or should have prospered from reduced business rates in a way other businesses (presumably) haven't and the end of the relief has been akin to Cleese and Palin at the end of the fish slapping dance.
Nonetheless, it's quite clear a lot of this is simply playing politics - I've not for instance heard Badenoch or Stride commit to restoring the Business Rates relief at 2020 levels should they get into power next time (and Reform's position on this is also unknown). Pubs and restaurants can choose who they wish to serve but this is petty and vindictive and one could argue it was well known the relief would last only five years.
Don’t remember any anger or digs at hospitality when they banned Tory MPs from their establishments when the last lot were in power.
It’s tough for hospitality and I personally have a lot of sympathy with businesses ending up being forced to close as they cannot cover the additional/upcoming cost burden, especially when it is a big hit, on them especially as they won’t be able to just hike prices up due to customer resistance. It is not just NI and business rates but other increases such as the minimum wage increase, especially for younger people.
She should have phased the business rates change in over five years.
We need a govt that is friendly towards business and puts in place policies to fuel growth rather than just talk about it.
Do we know what transitional relief will be available ? Depending on the detail, that could well have the effect of phasing it in over a number of years for the worst affected.
My nephew is in hospital at moment with RSV and complications. His care definitely seems substandard.
Terrible time for the junior doctors to strike. Feel very angry they've done this now during winter flu crisis.
If you're going to strike there's no point in doing it when nobody will notice. You strike when it has maximum impact.
They can strike all they want, the problem is there is no magic money pot to pay them anymore and no-one has got pay increases that match the 28% they got.
Heck I know a lot of people on less now then in 2023 rather than 28% more
The reason you get the 28% figure is 1) that's a cumulative figure over three years 2) during a period of massive inflation 3) from a low base.
Frankly, it's extraordinary entitlement from a public that puts massive demand on a service run largely by young people, struggling to get on the housing ladder and with enormous debt. They want to see the state to use it's overwhelming monopsonistic power to drive down wages at the expense of working people.
This graph shows what has happened to pay before Labour got in:
Relative over Christmas told an anecdote about an ex-nurse friend of theirs: intensive care nurse, burnt out during the pandemic, quit and is now a nail technician -- and is making more money than she did as a nurse...
And there’s no fear that as a nail technician you will make a mistake and get struck off, or worse harm someone.
Based on the header, I thought I'd ask an image-gen model to search the web for UK politics news about the Tories vs. Reform and do a 'classical style UK political cartoon'. It's not dreadful as these thing go.
AI's obvious error is that they are racing away from the finish line instead of towards it.
ETA however, that can easily be fixed. The question is whether this means the end of cartoonists' jobs, as per Leon, or the ability of every newsletter, blog or class 5 parents' group to publish its own daily cartoons.
Maybe the point of the joke is that they’re racing away from the finish line!
It correctly has Farage looking unwilling to go anywhere near Westminster.
Based on the header, I thought I'd ask an image-gen model to search the web for UK politics news about the Tories vs. Reform and do a 'classical style UK political cartoon'. It's not dreadful as these thing go.
Badenoch being seen as a steady plodder shows how successfully she's shaken off the culture warrior, firebrand image. A more effective opposition leader than Hague during the equivalent period in the late 1990s.
More bleating from the hospitality industry and some petty spite planning to "ban Labour MPs" from pubs, restaurants etc.
I've very little sympathy - there are two aspects to the whingeing. First, the NI increases - well, all businesses have had to pay for the elephant trap laid for the incoming Government by Sunak and Hunt.
Second, the ending of business rate relief - this was introduced by the Conservatives in 2020 during COVID (and rightly so given no one could go out initially and the virus spreader Eat Out to Help Out was a politically motivated catastrophe) but instead of a rapid removal after a year or two it was left in place for a five year timeframe and of course Reeves and Starmer have been left holding that grenade when it exploded.
I suppose Reeves could have continued with the business rates relief (not quite sure why she didn't and that's her political error) but rather like Council Tax, the political pain of revaluation isn't worth it so the sleeping dog can remain unmolested in the lounge bar by the fire.
The other side of the argument is the hospitality industry has or should have prospered from reduced business rates in a way other businesses (presumably) haven't and the end of the relief has been akin to Cleese and Palin at the end of the fish slapping dance.
Nonetheless, it's quite clear a lot of this is simply playing politics - I've not for instance heard Badenoch or Stride commit to restoring the Business Rates relief at 2020 levels should they get into power next time (and Reform's position on this is also unknown). Pubs and restaurants can choose who they wish to serve but this is petty and vindictive and one could argue it was well known the relief would last only five years.
Don’t remember any anger or digs at hospitality when they banned Tory MPs from their establishments when the last lot were in power.
It’s tough for hospitality and I personally have a lot of sympathy with businesses ending up being forced to close as they cannot cover the additional/upcoming cost burden, especially when it is a big hit, on them especially as they won’t be able to just hike prices up due to customer resistance. It is not just NI and business rates but other increases such as the minimum wage increase, especially for younger people.
She should have phased the business rates change in over five years.
We need a govt that is friendly towards business and puts in place policies to fuel growth rather than just talk about it.
Do we know what transitional relief will be available ? Depending on the detail, that could well have the effect of phasing it in over a number of years for the worst affected.
I see Wilfrun has already answered that (and added some very good commentary). A larger increase in supermarkets etc might even have funded the concessions suggested.
Based on the header, I thought I'd ask an image-gen model to search the web for UK politics news about the Tories vs. Reform and do a 'classical style UK political cartoon'. It's not dreadful as these thing go.
AI's obvious error is that they are racing away from the finish line instead of towards it.
ETA however, that can easily be fixed. The question is whether this means the end of cartoonists' jobs, as per Leon, or the ability of every newsletter, blog or class 5 parents' group to publish its own daily cartoons.
Maybe the point of the joke is that they’re racing away from the finish line!
It correctly has Farage looking unwilling to go anywhere near Westminster.
So
Fast forward three years.
You're Nigel Farage, you're top of the polls. You're self-aware enough to know that Reform is nowhere near ready for government.
Having annoyed almost everyone with that last sentence... What do you do?
My nephew is in hospital at moment with RSV and complications. His care definitely seems substandard.
Terrible time for the junior doctors to strike. Feel very angry they've done this now during winter flu crisis.
If you're going to strike there's no point in doing it when nobody will notice. You strike when it has maximum impact.
They can strike all they want, the problem is there is no magic money pot to pay them anymore and no-one has got pay increases that match the 28% they got.
Heck I know a lot of people on less now then in 2023 rather than 28% more
The reason you get the 28% figure is 1) that's a cumulative figure over three years 2) during a period of massive inflation 3) from a low base.
Frankly, it's extraordinary entitlement from a public that puts massive demand on a service run largely by young people, struggling to get on the housing ladder and with enormous debt. They want to see the state to use it's overwhelming monopsonistic power to drive down wages at the expense of working people.
This graph shows what has happened to pay before Labour got in:
Relative over Christmas told an anecdote about an ex-nurse friend of theirs: intensive care nurse, burnt out during the pandemic, quit and is now a nail technician -- and is making more money than she did as a nurse...
The history of nurses' pay awards, 40 or 50 years ago, for older PBers who recall the Whitley Council, Halsbury and Clegg commissions.
Some doggerel from (probably) the New Statesman that would probably get someone cancelled nowadays:- Nurses can add benignly To better pay than Clegg's By lying down supinely And opening their legs.
It is a perennial problem where pay, especially in the public sector, is allowed to slip until necessitating large, headline-grabbing increases to restore salaries to the levels of a few years previously.
My nephew is in hospital at moment with RSV and complications. His care definitely seems substandard.
Terrible time for the junior doctors to strike. Feel very angry they've done this now during winter flu crisis.
If you're going to strike there's no point in doing it when nobody will notice. You strike when it has maximum impact.
They can strike all they want, the problem is there is no magic money pot to pay them anymore and no-one has got pay increases that match the 28% they got.
Heck I know a lot of people on less now then in 2023 rather than 28% more
The reason you get the 28% figure is 1) that's a cumulative figure over three years 2) during a period of massive inflation 3) from a low base.
Frankly, it's extraordinary entitlement from a public that puts massive demand on a service run largely by young people, struggling to get on the housing ladder and with enormous debt. They want to see the state to use it's overwhelming monopsonistic power to drive down wages at the expense of working people.
This graph shows what has happened to pay before Labour got in:
Relative over Christmas told an anecdote about an ex-nurse friend of theirs: intensive care nurse, burnt out during the pandemic, quit and is now a nail technician -- and is making more money than she did as a nurse...
And there’s no fear that as a nail technician you will make a mistake and get struck off, or worse harm someone.
My immediate thought is to ask when being a "nail technician" became a thing and also who is spending money on their services.
My nephew is in hospital at moment with RSV and complications. His care definitely seems substandard.
Terrible time for the junior doctors to strike. Feel very angry they've done this now during winter flu crisis.
If you're going to strike there's no point in doing it when nobody will notice. You strike when it has maximum impact.
They can strike all they want, the problem is there is no magic money pot to pay them anymore and no-one has got pay increases that match the 28% they got.
Heck I know a lot of people on less now then in 2023 rather than 28% more
The reason you get the 28% figure is 1) that's a cumulative figure over three years 2) during a period of massive inflation 3) from a low base.
Frankly, it's extraordinary entitlement from a public that puts massive demand on a service run largely by young people, struggling to get on the housing ladder and with enormous debt. They want to see the state to use it's overwhelming monopsonistic power to drive down wages at the expense of working people.
This graph shows what has happened to pay before Labour got in:
On cricket. Why didn't Bazball work? It's not to do with the batting, it's to do with the bowling. The Aussies are much, much better at bowling line and length than we are, so to score quickly necessitates much more risk, leading to inevitable dismissals. By contrast, our bowlers frequently miss line and length, mainly by bowling too short, meaning that there are frequent 'hittable' balls and low risk attacking shots to make. That's why Travis Head got so many runs - he just waited for the dross balls. Compare Carse with Boland, for example: most of Boland's deliveries are aimed at top of off stump, while too many of Carse's are aimed at top of second slip. And, of course, it doesn't help that we don't have a spin bowler that would have been selected for my old village club.
Whatever the deficiencies in the bowling (and there were plenty) the number of England batsmen who chucked away their wickets through ridiculous shot selection gives the lie to that. We failed in both departments, and you can also look at incoherent selection and lack of preparation.
There have been England cricket teams with a lot less talent than this one but it is very hard to think of one that has played worse cricket. 3-0 flatters them.
Lost by 381, 218, 150, 281 and 8 wickets. Barely won a session.
Perhaps we're seeing a bit of the 'performance = outcome - expectations' thing.
Going in, there was a widespread view (inc in the betting) that this England team had a decent chance of winning or at least would be competitive. It was a much anticipated series.
So now the reality (3/0 down and all over in less than 11 days play) feels particularly gutting.
My nephew is in hospital at moment with RSV and complications. His care definitely seems substandard.
Terrible time for the junior doctors to strike. Feel very angry they've done this now during winter flu crisis.
If you're going to strike there's no point in doing it when nobody will notice. You strike when it has maximum impact.
They can strike all they want, the problem is there is no magic money pot to pay them anymore and no-one has got pay increases that match the 28% they got.
Heck I know a lot of people on less now then in 2023 rather than 28% more
The reason you get the 28% figure is 1) that's a cumulative figure over three years 2) during a period of massive inflation 3) from a low base.
Frankly, it's extraordinary entitlement from a public that puts massive demand on a service run largely by young people, struggling to get on the housing ladder and with enormous debt. They want to see the state to use it's overwhelming monopsonistic power to drive down wages at the expense of working people.
This graph shows what has happened to pay before Labour got in:
Relative over Christmas told an anecdote about an ex-nurse friend of theirs: intensive care nurse, burnt out during the pandemic, quit and is now a nail technician -- and is making more money than she did as a nurse...
The history of nurses' pay awards, 40 or 50 years ago, for older PBers who recall the Whitley Council, Halsbury and Clegg commissions.
Some doggerel from (probably) the New Statesman that would probably get someone cancelled nowadays:- Nurses can add benignly To better pay than Clegg's By lying down supinely And opening their legs.
It is a perennial problem where pay, especially in the public sector, is allowed to slip until necessitating large, headline-grabbing increases to restore salaries to the levels of a few years previously.
Before the anti-LD posters here get properly steamed up, the Clegg referred to was nothing whatsoever to do with Nick!
Looking at these latest Epstein releases, I'm a bit worried the value of my Clinton coin is about to plummet.
The Epstein files are a huge disappointment so far. Where are all the videos of politicians, celebrities and members of the Pizza Hut loyalty programme shagging like rabbits that Epstein secretly filmed for blackmail purposes?
We have all the dots but no means of connecting them. That was lost when Epstein was murdered. It is unlikely anyone else can provide the missing links, although Ghislaine Maxwell must know a thing or two. She is currently languishing in a five star deluxe open prison. After Trump, she must be the most powerful person in America.
There have been England cricket teams with a lot less talent than this one but it is very hard to think of one that has played worse cricket. 3-0 flatters them.
Lost by 381, 218, 150, 281 and 8 wickets. Barely won a session.
Perhaps we're seeing a bit of the 'performance = outcome - expectations' thing.
Going in, there was a widespread view (inc in the betting) that this England team had a decent chance of winning or at least would be competitive. It was a much anticipated series.
So now the reality (3/0 down and all over in less than 11 days play) feels particularly gutting.
On cricket. Why didn't Bazball work? It's not to do with the batting, it's to do with the bowling. The Aussies are much, much better at bowling line and length than we are, so to score quickly necessitates much more risk, leading to inevitable dismissals. By contrast, our bowlers frequently miss line and length, mainly by bowling too short, meaning that there are frequent 'hittable' balls and low risk attacking shots to make. That's why Travis Head got so many runs - he just waited for the dross balls. Compare Carse with Boland, for example: most of Boland's deliveries are aimed at top of off stump, while too many of Carse's are aimed at top of second slip. And, of course, it doesn't help that we don't have a spin bowler that would have been selected for my old village club.
Whatever the deficiencies in the bowling (and there were plenty) the number of England batsmen who chucked away their wickets through ridiculous shot selection gives the lie to that. We failed in both departments, and you can also look at incoherent selection and lack of preparation.
I think that 'lack of preparation' has a lot to do with it. Look at the number of Aussie cricketers who have a season or two (or three) in cricket her, and compare it with the number (zero) who've played 'over there". As someone else pointed out English players used to spend a winter or so, at least, in Australia. Doesn't seem to happen now, due partly at least tot eh amount of franchise cricket, especially in the Gulf.
My nephew is in hospital at moment with RSV and complications. His care definitely seems substandard.
Terrible time for the junior doctors to strike. Feel very angry they've done this now during winter flu crisis.
If you're going to strike there's no point in doing it when nobody will notice. You strike when it has maximum impact.
They can strike all they want, the problem is there is no magic money pot to pay them anymore and no-one has got pay increases that match the 28% they got.
Heck I know a lot of people on less now then in 2023 rather than 28% more
The reason you get the 28% figure is 1) that's a cumulative figure over three years 2) during a period of massive inflation 3) from a low base.
Frankly, it's extraordinary entitlement from a public that puts massive demand on a service run largely by young people, struggling to get on the housing ladder and with enormous debt. They want to see the state to use it's overwhelming monopsonistic power to drive down wages at the expense of working people.
This graph shows what has happened to pay before Labour got in:
Relative over Christmas told an anecdote about an ex-nurse friend of theirs: intensive care nurse, burnt out during the pandemic, quit and is now a nail technician -- and is making more money than she did as a nurse...
The history of nurses' pay awards, 40 or 50 years ago, for older PBers who recall the Whitley Council, Halsbury and Clegg commissions.
Some doggerel from (probably) the New Statesman that would probably get someone cancelled nowadays:- Nurses can add benignly To better pay than Clegg's By lying down supinely And opening their legs.
It is a perennial problem where pay, especially in the public sector, is allowed to slip until necessitating large, headline-grabbing increases to restore salaries to the levels of a few years previously.
Before the anti-LD posters here get properly steamed up, the Clegg referred to was nothing whatsoever to do with Nick!
I wouldn't mind being a pound behind Nick Clegg's pay.
Looking at these latest Epstein releases, I'm a bit worried the value of my Clinton coin is about to plummet.
The Epstein files are a huge disappointment so far. Where are all the videos of politicians, celebrities and members of the Pizza Hut loyalty programme shagging like rabbits that Epstein secretly filmed for blackmail purposes?
We have all the dots but no means of connecting them. That was lost when Epstein was murdered. It is unlikely anyone else can provide the missing links, although Ghislaine Maxwell must know a thing or two. She is currently languishing in a five star deluxe open prison. After Trump, she must be the most powerful person in America.
After what happened to Epstein I'd say she's the most vulnerable person in America.
My nephew is in hospital at moment with RSV and complications. His care definitely seems substandard.
Terrible time for the junior doctors to strike. Feel very angry they've done this now during winter flu crisis.
If you're going to strike there's no point in doing it when nobody will notice. You strike when it has maximum impact.
They can strike all they want, the problem is there is no magic money pot to pay them anymore and no-one has got pay increases that match the 28% they got.
Heck I know a lot of people on less now then in 2023 rather than 28% more
The reason you get the 28% figure is 1) that's a cumulative figure over three years 2) during a period of massive inflation 3) from a low base.
Frankly, it's extraordinary entitlement from a public that puts massive demand on a service run largely by young people, struggling to get on the housing ladder and with enormous debt. They want to see the state to use it's overwhelming monopsonistic power to drive down wages at the expense of working people.
This graph shows what has happened to pay before Labour got in:
The FT analysis uses CPI, not RPI, and consistent with what full fact have calculated.
Even with the "28% pay rise", doctors are still significantly behind CPI and overall wages.
I do know that given I read it 🙄
Full fact clearly debunks their claims with verifiable data and shows it’s very selective too. That’s the point. At least they challenge the BMA.
Still, you want to be fluffer in chief for the BMA knock yourself out sunshine,
If you examine the graph I posted, you'll note a label on the x-axis showing that it is based on CPI. You will also discover that the graph was not produced by the BMA but rather the FT.
I think someone on here recommended The Fall of Boris Johnson by Sebastian Payne.
I’m afraid it’s not very good, simply a (sympathetic) day by day account that attributes his fall to badly judged circumstances rather than digging into his terrible character flaws.
So you didn't like it because it didn't agree with your existing opinion.
Without having read it i cannot say, and you could be right about motivation, but even if we take the position that it was mostly badly judged circumstances, is it likely character flaws played no part at all? MPs would not have turned on him as much if purely circumstance.
The flip side is when people dont acknowledge his character strengths which helped him win so big in 2019 - it wasnt all because of the circumstance of Corbyn was bad
Tentative idea.
Bazball cricket worked brilliantly when it burst on the scene. Some of that was the power of belief, some of it was shock value- if you're not expecting it, you're not going to exploit its flaws. But some of its risk/benefit calculations were always a bit flawed, so it was more problematic in the long run. But fun while it lasted.
Bozball politics worked brilliantly when it burst on the scene. Some of that was the power of belief, some of it was shock value- if you're not expecting it, you're not going to exploit its flaws. But some of its risk/benefit calculations were always a bit flawed, so it was more problematic in the long run. But fun while it lasted.
@Luckyguy1983 the recovery in the right wing vote really takes it back to normal. In 2015, it was 51%, in 2017, 45%, in 2018, 48%. It dipped to 38% in 2024, due both to some switchers to Labour and Lib Dem’s, but more to abstainers.
Now, the Labour switchers have switched back, and the abstainers are re-engaged.
Based on the header, I thought I'd ask an image-gen model to search the web for UK politics news about the Tories vs. Reform and do a 'classical style UK political cartoon'. It's not dreadful as these thing go.
AI's obvious error is that they are racing away from the finish line instead of towards it.
ETA however, that can easily be fixed. The question is whether this means the end of cartoonists' jobs, as per Leon, or the ability of every newsletter, blog or class 5 parents' group to publish its own daily cartoons.
Maybe the point of the joke is that they’re racing away from the finish line!
It correctly has Farage looking unwilling to go anywhere near Westminster.
So
Fast forward three years.
You're Nigel Farage, you're top of the polls. You're self-aware enough to know that Reform is nowhere near ready for government.
Having annoyed almost everyone with that last sentence... What do you do?
Get a hugely well-paid job in the States. Hand over to Tice. Blame him when Reform goes tits up.
Also from the Obs, today’s Rawnsley while we wait for the sun to emerge above the horizon…
It is not just the dire approval ratings that make the Starmer government look so bereft of allies; it is the absence of any visible cheerleaders at Westminster or beyond it. For that, Sir Keir is copping much of the blame from his party. It is not the case that the country has “fallen out of love” with Labour. It was never in love in the first place.
This is a broadly centrist government led by a serious and hardworking man who is committed to some worthy goals. Which is a terrible combination in our hyper-polarised media environment. The achievements it can fairly claim get next to no attention while its blunders receive maximum magnification.
He is also grappling with the systemic challenge that has defeated so many governments in the affluent world since the crippling financial crisis of 2007-09. How do you satisfy public demand for decent state services at reasonable levels of taxation when growth is so anaemic? The doom loop of higher taxes for unsatisfactory services feeds the corrosion of trust in the state and its ability to deliver.
There’s a compelling case that the defining political event of the past 12 months came in the summer when No 10 and the Treasury combined in an effort to curb the ballooning cost of disability benefits, only to be forced into an abject and authority-shredding retreat by their own backbenchers. Those who hated the idea of welfare reform liked the government no better for the fact that it was forced to capitulate. Those who think we need welfare reform despaired that the government proved incapable of implementing it. There was another chaotic tale surrounding the budget…. [which] became a spirit-sapping feel-bad affair about leaks and accusations of misrepresentation.
It’s an unmerry Christmas for those in power. As you gather in what I hope is the warm embrace of your loved ones, spare a thought for our sadly cheerless and friendless government.
Nah, fuck them. They made their bed. Weak leadership and a govt without any vision or capability to do what is needed. The people at the top are more concerned at keeping themselves in their positions of power than anything else.
You could argue we've not had a defining idea of Government since Liz Truss (apologies) and before that since the Blessed Margaret. There is no big idea or if there is, no one has presented one with significant clarity and thought.
We've mostly had Governments which have maintained what I call post-Thatcherite social democracy - Johnson's Government (had it not been derailed by a microscopic virus) would likely have bene similar to Blair's and what Cameron's would have been had it not had to deal with the consequences of 2008.
Even in 1979, what Thatcher presented was less radical than Heath's manifesto in 1970 but the events of the 1970s proved to everyone Butskellism had run its course. If the 2020s show post-Thatcherite social democracy to have run its course, there will be an audience receptive to new economic and social ideas but it seems at the moment all about an insular ethno-nationalism where we blame (in no particular order) migrants, welfare claimants, old people, tall people, young people and people whose surname begins with "S". Finding people to blame is easy - coming up with practical cost-effective solutions isn't and as the anecdote from Peter Lilley pointed out, simply hacking away at the incomes of the poorest to make the richest feel better isn't the answer and, to be fair, hacking away at the incomes of the richest to make the poorest feel better isn't the answer either.
The demographic transformation of the country has been the problem or the opportunity - we need to stop thinking in a 20th century industrial mindset and start thinking in a 21st century post-industrial way re-defining the contract between the State and the older citizen. I do think the age of sheer material acquisition is coming to an end but I also think while capitalism in essence works, the current model is corrupt and no longer fit for purpose.
Your last sentence applies to all Governments - it didn't start on July 5th 2024.
My concern with capitalism is if young people cannot get a stake in society, like a home, why should they buy into the system. It needs to be aspirational.
The whole system feeling broken is why people on the right are moving to Reform and the left to the Greens. Neither have the solutions but both are NOTA.
Aspiration comes in many forms, I'd argue, but obviously somewhere nice to live is a good start. Yet we are building properties and selling them at prices (in London) no one can afford until or unless they inherit from parents/grandparents etc.
In my part of town, the answer is rental - young couples have to rent because they earn enough but have no savings so both work to pay the rent. How do they ever get off the rental treadmill?
Conservatives like people to own their homes because they become Conservative voters obsessed with mortgage rates. Yet, rental has always been a big part of the London housing market and still is. Who is going to be able to afford £600k for a one-bed flat at the Twelvetrees developement by West Ham station? Not the people who need housing, those on the council waiting list, families in a single room, others who live in appalling conditions in private rental hellholes.
We build houses for profit, not to solve the housing crisis - that's how aspiration is framed.
I would build social housing and allow renters’ payments to be 90% rent and 10% towards the purchase of the property. Gradually increase the proportion that is used towards the purchase until the renters are in a position to purchase the property outright with a mortgage. They also pay towards the cost of repairs and maintenance at the same percentage they are paying for rent, to get them used to paying for the upkeep of their home.
The rental income received by the property owners is ringfenced for building more properties.
It will need an initial grant or loan to enable the scheme to be started, which will be an investment.
A stat I came across - 40% of council houses sold under RTB are now owned by private landlords. A renewal of that sector (however structured) is key to addressing our housing crisis imo. Re the big picture a mindset change would be healthy. Residential property to be viewed primarily as a utility not an investment.
My nephew is in hospital at moment with RSV and complications. His care definitely seems substandard.
Terrible time for the junior doctors to strike. Feel very angry they've done this now during winter flu crisis.
If you're going to strike there's no point in doing it when nobody will notice. You strike when it has maximum impact.
They can strike all they want, the problem is there is no magic money pot to pay them anymore and no-one has got pay increases that match the 28% they got.
Heck I know a lot of people on less now then in 2023 rather than 28% more
The reason you get the 28% figure is 1) that's a cumulative figure over three years 2) during a period of massive inflation 3) from a low base.
Frankly, it's extraordinary entitlement from a public that puts massive demand on a service run largely by young people, struggling to get on the housing ladder and with enormous debt. They want to see the state to use it's overwhelming monopsonistic power to drive down wages at the expense of working people.
This graph shows what has happened to pay before Labour got in:
The FT analysis uses CPI, not RPI, and consistent with what full fact have calculated.
Even with the "28% pay rise", doctors are still significantly behind CPI and overall wages.
I do know that given I read it 🙄
Full fact clearly debunks their claims with verifiable data and shows it’s very selective too. That’s the point. At least they challenge the BMA.
Still, you want to be fluffer in chief for the BMA knock yourself out sunshine,
If you examine the graph I posted, you'll note a label on the x-axis showing that it is based on CPI. You will also discover that the graph was not produced by the BMA but rather the FT.
Yes, I had spotted it but thanks anyway, and I recognise the name of John Burn Murdoch too,.
Doesn’t invalidate the Full Fact research which is impartial, a newspaper has leanings and sympathies which often drives its narrative.
There have been England cricket teams with a lot less talent than this one but it is very hard to think of one that has played worse cricket. 3-0 flatters them.
Lost by 381, 218, 150, 281 and 8 wickets. Barely won a session.
Perhaps we're seeing a bit of the 'performance = outcome - expectations' thing.
Going in, there was a widespread view (inc in the betting) that this England team had a decent chance of winning or at least would be competitive. It was a much anticipated series.
So now the reality (3/0 down and all over in less than 11 days play) feels particularly gutting.
Just listened to the Athers and Nass podcast, and the gutting thing is that the Aussies were without Cummings for two Tests, Hazelwood for three, Lyon for one and a bit, and Smith for one. Had you told us that a year ago we would have expected to be leading at this point, not out for the count. Throw in the fact that we almost literally handed them the first win from a position of extreme strength, and collapsed to 168-8 on a flat pitch in the first innings here, and it adds up to a justified sense of disappointment
I don't get the obsession form the Head Honcho's with pace; Aussies have beaten us with consistent line and length for decades. Glenn McGrath wasn't that quick, and he must surely be a decent bowler try and emulate. They always have a good spinner, we don't even pick one. Just seems crazy
Based on the header, I thought I'd ask an image-gen model to search the web for UK politics news about the Tories vs. Reform and do a 'classical style UK political cartoon'. It's not dreadful as these thing go.
AI's obvious error is that they are racing away from the finish line instead of towards it.
ETA however, that can easily be fixed. The question is whether this means the end of cartoonists' jobs, as per Leon, or the ability of every newsletter, blog or class 5 parents' group to publish its own daily cartoons.
Maybe the point of the joke is that they’re racing away from the finish line!
It correctly has Farage looking unwilling to go anywhere near Westminster.
So
Fast forward three years.
You're Nigel Farage, you're top of the polls. You're self-aware enough to know that Reform is nowhere near ready for government.
Having annoyed almost everyone with that last sentence... What do you do?
Also from the Obs, today’s Rawnsley while we wait for the sun to emerge above the horizon…
It is not just the dire approval ratings that make the Starmer government look so bereft of allies; it is the absence of any visible cheerleaders at Westminster or beyond it. For that, Sir Keir is copping much of the blame from his party. It is not the case that the country has “fallen out of love” with Labour. It was never in love in the first place.
This is a broadly centrist government led by a serious and hardworking man who is committed to some worthy goals. Which is a terrible combination in our hyper-polarised media environment. The achievements it can fairly claim get next to no attention while its blunders receive maximum magnification.
He is also grappling with the systemic challenge that has defeated so many governments in the affluent world since the crippling financial crisis of 2007-09. How do you satisfy public demand for decent state services at reasonable levels of taxation when growth is so anaemic? The doom loop of higher taxes for unsatisfactory services feeds the corrosion of trust in the state and its ability to deliver.
There’s a compelling case that the defining political event of the past 12 months came in the summer when No 10 and the Treasury combined in an effort to curb the ballooning cost of disability benefits, only to be forced into an abject and authority-shredding retreat by their own backbenchers. Those who hated the idea of welfare reform liked the government no better for the fact that it was forced to capitulate. Those who think we need welfare reform despaired that the government proved incapable of implementing it. There was another chaotic tale surrounding the budget…. [which] became a spirit-sapping feel-bad affair about leaks and accusations of misrepresentation.
It’s an unmerry Christmas for those in power. As you gather in what I hope is the warm embrace of your loved ones, spare a thought for our sadly cheerless and friendless government.
Nah, fuck them. They made their bed. Weak leadership and a govt without any vision or capability to do what is needed. The people at the top are more concerned at keeping themselves in their positions of power than anything else.
You could argue we've not had a defining idea of Government since Liz Truss (apologies) and before that since the Blessed Margaret. There is no big idea or if there is, no one has presented one with significant clarity and thought.
We've mostly had Governments which have maintained what I call post-Thatcherite social democracy - Johnson's Government (had it not been derailed by a microscopic virus) would likely have bene similar to Blair's and what Cameron's would have been had it not had to deal with the consequences of 2008.
Even in 1979, what Thatcher presented was less radical than Heath's manifesto in 1970 but the events of the 1970s proved to everyone Butskellism had run its course. If the 2020s show post-Thatcherite social democracy to have run its course, there will be an audience receptive to new economic and social ideas but it seems at the moment all about an insular ethno-nationalism where we blame (in no particular order) migrants, welfare claimants, old people, tall people, young people and people whose surname begins with "S". Finding people to blame is easy - coming up with practical cost-effective solutions isn't and as the anecdote from Peter Lilley pointed out, simply hacking away at the incomes of the poorest to make the richest feel better isn't the answer and, to be fair, hacking away at the incomes of the richest to make the poorest feel better isn't the answer either.
The demographic transformation of the country has been the problem or the opportunity - we need to stop thinking in a 20th century industrial mindset and start thinking in a 21st century post-industrial way re-defining the contract between the State and the older citizen. I do think the age of sheer material acquisition is coming to an end but I also think while capitalism in essence works, the current model is corrupt and no longer fit for purpose.
Your last sentence applies to all Governments - it didn't start on July 5th 2024.
My concern with capitalism is if young people cannot get a stake in society, like a home, why should they buy into the system. It needs to be aspirational.
The whole system feeling broken is why people on the right are moving to Reform and the left to the Greens. Neither have the solutions but both are NOTA.
Aspiration comes in many forms, I'd argue, but obviously somewhere nice to live is a good start. Yet we are building properties and selling them at prices (in London) no one can afford until or unless they inherit from parents/grandparents etc.
In my part of town, the answer is rental - young couples have to rent because they earn enough but have no savings so both work to pay the rent. How do they ever get off the rental treadmill?
Conservatives like people to own their homes because they become Conservative voters obsessed with mortgage rates. Yet, rental has always been a big part of the London housing market and still is. Who is going to be able to afford £600k for a one-bed flat at the Twelvetrees developement by West Ham station? Not the people who need housing, those on the council waiting list, families in a single room, others who live in appalling conditions in private rental hellholes.
We build houses for profit, not to solve the housing crisis - that's how aspiration is framed.
I would build social housing and allow renters’ payments to be 90% rent and 10% towards the purchase of the property. Gradually increase the proportion that is used towards the purchase until the renters are in a position to purchase the property outright with a mortgage. They also pay towards the cost of repairs and maintenance at the same percentage they are paying for rent, to get them used to paying for the upkeep of their home.
The rental income received by the property owners is ringfenced for building more properties.
It will need an initial grant or loan to enable the scheme to be started, which will be an investment.
A stat I came across - 40% of council houses sold under RTB are now owned by private landlords. A renewal of that sector (however structured) is key to addressing our housing crisis imo. Re the big picture a mindset change would be healthy. Residential property to be viewed primarily as a utility not an investment.
How does that stat compare to other housing of a similar standard ?
People need a mix of housing. Buying or renting.
We need to build more where they are needed and that can be private and LG
But what is our capacity given the shortages in those professions that go into the trade.
My nephew is in hospital at moment with RSV and complications. His care definitely seems substandard.
Terrible time for the junior doctors to strike. Feel very angry they've done this now during winter flu crisis.
If you're going to strike there's no point in doing it when nobody will notice. You strike when it has maximum impact.
They can strike all they want, the problem is there is no magic money pot to pay them anymore and no-one has got pay increases that match the 28% they got.
Heck I know a lot of people on less now then in 2023 rather than 28% more
The reason you get the 28% figure is 1) that's a cumulative figure over three years 2) during a period of massive inflation 3) from a low base.
Frankly, it's extraordinary entitlement from a public that puts massive demand on a service run largely by young people, struggling to get on the housing ladder and with enormous debt. They want to see the state to use it's overwhelming monopsonistic power to drive down wages at the expense of working people.
This graph shows what has happened to pay before Labour got in:
The FT analysis uses CPI, not RPI, and consistent with what full fact have calculated.
Even with the "28% pay rise", doctors are still significantly behind CPI and overall wages.
I do know that given I read it 🙄
Full fact clearly debunks their claims with verifiable data and shows it’s very selective too. That’s the point. At least they challenge the BMA.
Still, you want to be fluffer in chief for the BMA knock yourself out sunshine,
If you examine the graph I posted, you'll note a label on the x-axis showing that it is based on CPI. You will also discover that the graph was not produced by the BMA but rather the FT.
Yes, I had spotted it but thanks anyway, and I recognise the name of John Burn Murdoch too,.
Doesn’t invalidate the Full Fact research which is impartial, a newspaper has leanings and sympathies which often drives its narrative.
They won’t get the money they demand.
That post demonstrates that you still can't comprehend the analysis.
BMA = RPI FT = CPI Full Fact = CPI
The graph I posted is just the Full Fact methodology visualised. By questioning the FT's methodology, you're questioning the same analysis that you've posted as a rebuttal.
Based on the header, I thought I'd ask an image-gen model to search the web for UK politics news about the Tories vs. Reform and do a 'classical style UK political cartoon'. It's not dreadful as these thing go.
AI's obvious error is that they are racing away from the finish line instead of towards it.
ETA however, that can easily be fixed. The question is whether this means the end of cartoonists' jobs, as per Leon, or the ability of every newsletter, blog or class 5 parents' group to publish its own daily cartoons.
Maybe the point of the joke is that they’re racing away from the finish line!
It correctly has Farage looking unwilling to go anywhere near Westminster.
So
Fast forward three years.
You're Nigel Farage, you're top of the polls. You're self-aware enough to know that Reform is nowhere near ready for government.
Having annoyed almost everyone with that last sentence... What do you do?
Why do you think that last sentence you refer to has annoyed almost everyone ? I doubt it would annoy anyone here.
Reform don’t even have spokesmen and women as shadows for the govt ministers.
On cricket. Why didn't Bazball work? It's not to do with the batting, it's to do with the bowling. The Aussies are much, much better at bowling line and length than we are, so to score quickly necessitates much more risk, leading to inevitable dismissals. By contrast, our bowlers frequently miss line and length, mainly by bowling too short, meaning that there are frequent 'hittable' balls and low risk attacking shots to make. That's why Travis Head got so many runs - he just waited for the dross balls. Compare Carse with Boland, for example: most of Boland's deliveries are aimed at top of off stump, while too many of Carse's are aimed at top of second slip. And, of course, it doesn't help that we don't have a spin bowler that would have been selected for my old village club.
One of the points of Bazball was to put the pressure onto the opposition, and so to throw the opposition bowlers off their line and length.
This England team have failed at least partly because they lost faith in Bazball.
My nephew is in hospital at moment with RSV and complications. His care definitely seems substandard.
Terrible time for the junior doctors to strike. Feel very angry they've done this now during winter flu crisis.
If you're going to strike there's no point in doing it when nobody will notice. You strike when it has maximum impact.
They can strike all they want, the problem is there is no magic money pot to pay them anymore and no-one has got pay increases that match the 28% they got.
Heck I know a lot of people on less now then in 2023 rather than 28% more
The reason you get the 28% figure is 1) that's a cumulative figure over three years 2) during a period of massive inflation 3) from a low base.
Frankly, it's extraordinary entitlement from a public that puts massive demand on a service run largely by young people, struggling to get on the housing ladder and with enormous debt. They want to see the state to use it's overwhelming monopsonistic power to drive down wages at the expense of working people.
This graph shows what has happened to pay before Labour got in:
Relative over Christmas told an anecdote about an ex-nurse friend of theirs: intensive care nurse, burnt out during the pandemic, quit and is now a nail technician -- and is making more money than she did as a nurse...
My nephew is in hospital at moment with RSV and complications. His care definitely seems substandard.
Terrible time for the junior doctors to strike. Feel very angry they've done this now during winter flu crisis.
If you're going to strike there's no point in doing it when nobody will notice. You strike when it has maximum impact.
They can strike all they want, the problem is there is no magic money pot to pay them anymore and no-one has got pay increases that match the 28% they got.
Heck I know a lot of people on less now then in 2023 rather than 28% more
The reason you get the 28% figure is 1) that's a cumulative figure over three years 2) during a period of massive inflation 3) from a low base.
Frankly, it's extraordinary entitlement from a public that puts massive demand on a service run largely by young people, struggling to get on the housing ladder and with enormous debt. They want to see the state to use it's overwhelming monopsonistic power to drive down wages at the expense of working people.
This graph shows what has happened to pay before Labour got in:
The FT analysis uses CPI, not RPI, and consistent with what full fact have calculated.
Even with the "28% pay rise", doctors are still significantly behind CPI and overall wages.
I do know that given I read it 🙄
Full fact clearly debunks their claims with verifiable data and shows it’s very selective too. That’s the point. At least they challenge the BMA.
Still, you want to be fluffer in chief for the BMA knock yourself out sunshine,
Good morning
It simply does not matter how many stats and charts are used in an attempt to justify the doctors strike because in the eyes of the public they received a 28%+ pay rise last year which was far above other workers and the public simply will not accept any argument to justify more
This is Streeting's problem now, but he caved in far too easily last year when that rise should have had conditions applied to it that included the end to high percentage annual pay rises, especially in our high taxed economy
Unfortunately for Starmer, Reeves and Streeting it is going to get a whole lot worse with a new militant leader of Unison who already is talking at being at war with them
I expect 2026 to see numerous strikes across the public sector as the unions turn left aided and abetted by the workers rights legislation
There seems to be no way back to popularity for Starmer and labour, though if I am being fair I doubt anyone else has the answers though Badenoch demands for minimum staffing levels in the NHS is likely to prove popular as time goes by
My nephew is in hospital at moment with RSV and complications. His care definitely seems substandard.
Terrible time for the junior doctors to strike. Feel very angry they've done this now during winter flu crisis.
If you're going to strike there's no point in doing it when nobody will notice. You strike when it has maximum impact.
They can strike all they want, the problem is there is no magic money pot to pay them anymore and no-one has got pay increases that match the 28% they got.
Heck I know a lot of people on less now then in 2023 rather than 28% more
The reason you get the 28% figure is 1) that's a cumulative figure over three years 2) during a period of massive inflation 3) from a low base.
Frankly, it's extraordinary entitlement from a public that puts massive demand on a service run largely by young people, struggling to get on the housing ladder and with enormous debt. They want to see the state to use it's overwhelming monopsonistic power to drive down wages at the expense of working people.
This graph shows what has happened to pay before Labour got in:
The FT analysis uses CPI, not RPI, and consistent with what full fact have calculated.
Even with the "28% pay rise", doctors are still significantly behind CPI and overall wages.
I do know that given I read it 🙄
Full fact clearly debunks their claims with verifiable data and shows it’s very selective too. That’s the point. At least they challenge the BMA.
Still, you want to be fluffer in chief for the BMA knock yourself out sunshine,
If you examine the graph I posted, you'll note a label on the x-axis showing that it is based on CPI. You will also discover that the graph was not produced by the BMA but rather the FT.
Yes, I had spotted it but thanks anyway, and I recognise the name of John Burn Murdoch too,.
Doesn’t invalidate the Full Fact research which is impartial, a newspaper has leanings and sympathies which often drives its narrative.
They won’t get the money they demand.
That post demonstrates that you still can't comprehend the analysis.
BMA = RPI FT = CPI Full Fact = CPI
The graph I posted is just the Full Fact methodology visualised. By questioning the FT's methodology, you're questioning the same analysis that you've posted as a rebuttal.
From the Full fact page
‘ Either way, our calculations using HCI—which have been independently verified by Jill Leyland, a former vice president of the RSS who now represents it on the National Statistician’s Advisory Panel on Consumer Prices—suggest that the erosion of resident doctors’ pay is about a third as much as the BMA has estimated.’
My nephew is in hospital at moment with RSV and complications. His care definitely seems substandard.
Terrible time for the junior doctors to strike. Feel very angry they've done this now during winter flu crisis.
If you're going to strike there's no point in doing it when nobody will notice. You strike when it has maximum impact.
They can strike all they want, the problem is there is no magic money pot to pay them anymore and no-one has got pay increases that match the 28% they got.
Heck I know a lot of people on less now then in 2023 rather than 28% more
The reason you get the 28% figure is 1) that's a cumulative figure over three years 2) during a period of massive inflation 3) from a low base.
Frankly, it's extraordinary entitlement from a public that puts massive demand on a service run largely by young people, struggling to get on the housing ladder and with enormous debt. They want to see the state to use it's overwhelming monopsonistic power to drive down wages at the expense of working people.
This graph shows what has happened to pay before Labour got in:
The FT analysis uses CPI, not RPI, and consistent with what full fact have calculated.
Even with the "28% pay rise", doctors are still significantly behind CPI and overall wages.
I do know that given I read it 🙄
Full fact clearly debunks their claims with verifiable data and shows it’s very selective too. That’s the point. At least they challenge the BMA.
Still, you want to be fluffer in chief for the BMA knock yourself out sunshine,
Good morning
It simply does not matter how many stats and charts are used in an attempt to justify the doctors strike because in the eyes of the public they received a 28%+ pay rise last year which was far above other workers and the public simply will not accept any argument to justify more
This is Streeting's problem now, but he caved in far too easily last year when that rise should have had conditions applied to it that included the end to high percentage annual pay rises, especially in our high taxed economy
Unfortunately for Starmer, Reeves and Streeting it is going to get a whole lot worse with a new militant leader of Unison who already is talking at being at war with them
I expect 2026 to see numerous strikes across the public sector as the unions turn left aided and abetted by the workers rights legislation
There seems to be no way back to popularity for Starmer and labour, though if I am being fair I doubt anyone else has the answers though Badenoch demands for minimum staffing levels in the NHS is likely to prove popular as time goes by
Yes, the new leader of Unison seems to be another in the mould of the Unite leader.
The guardian interview I linked to above makes it quite clear strikes are on the agenda and an escalation of the . It may be sabre rattling and scene setting ahead of negotiations or it may be something more.
My nephew is in hospital at moment with RSV and complications. His care definitely seems substandard.
Terrible time for the junior doctors to strike. Feel very angry they've done this now during winter flu crisis.
If you're going to strike there's no point in doing it when nobody will notice. You strike when it has maximum impact.
They can strike all they want, the problem is there is no magic money pot to pay them anymore and no-one has got pay increases that match the 28% they got.
Heck I know a lot of people on less now then in 2023 rather than 28% more
The reason you get the 28% figure is 1) that's a cumulative figure over three years 2) during a period of massive inflation 3) from a low base.
Frankly, it's extraordinary entitlement from a public that puts massive demand on a service run largely by young people, struggling to get on the housing ladder and with enormous debt. They want to see the state to use it's overwhelming monopsonistic power to drive down wages at the expense of working people.
This graph shows what has happened to pay before Labour got in:
Relative over Christmas told an anecdote about an ex-nurse friend of theirs: intensive care nurse, burnt out during the pandemic, quit and is now a nail technician -- and is making more money than she did as a nurse...
And there’s no fear that as a nail technician you will make a mistake and get struck off, or worse harm someone.
My immediate thought is to ask when being a "nail technician" became a thing and also who is spending money on their services.
People who,get their nails done, like my wife.
The fashion is now for glue on gels not varnish.
My wife got some Xmas ones last week. Not cheap either.
Also from the Obs, today’s Rawnsley while we wait for the sun to emerge above the horizon…
It is not just the dire approval ratings that make the Starmer government look so bereft of allies; it is the absence of any visible cheerleaders at Westminster or beyond it. For that, Sir Keir is copping much of the blame from his party. It is not the case that the country has “fallen out of love” with Labour. It was never in love in the first place.
This is a broadly centrist government led by a serious and hardworking man who is committed to some worthy goals. Which is a terrible combination in our hyper-polarised media environment. The achievements it can fairly claim get next to no attention while its blunders receive maximum magnification.
He is also grappling with the systemic challenge that has defeated so many governments in the affluent world since the crippling financial crisis of 2007-09. How do you satisfy public demand for decent state services at reasonable levels of taxation when growth is so anaemic? The doom loop of higher taxes for unsatisfactory services feeds the corrosion of trust in the state and its ability to deliver.
There’s a compelling case that the defining political event of the past 12 months came in the summer when No 10 and the Treasury combined in an effort to curb the ballooning cost of disability benefits, only to be forced into an abject and authority-shredding retreat by their own backbenchers. Those who hated the idea of welfare reform liked the government no better for the fact that it was forced to capitulate. Those who think we need welfare reform despaired that the government proved incapable of implementing it. There was another chaotic tale surrounding the budget…. [which] became a spirit-sapping feel-bad affair about leaks and accusations of misrepresentation.
It’s an unmerry Christmas for those in power. As you gather in what I hope is the warm embrace of your loved ones, spare a thought for our sadly cheerless and friendless government.
Nah, fuck them. They made their bed. Weak leadership and a govt without any vision or capability to do what is needed. The people at the top are more concerned at keeping themselves in their positions of power than anything else.
You could argue we've not had a defining idea of Government since Liz Truss (apologies) and before that since the Blessed Margaret. There is no big idea or if there is, no one has presented one with significant clarity and thought.
We've mostly had Governments which have maintained what I call post-Thatcherite social democracy - Johnson's Government (had it not been derailed by a microscopic virus) would likely have bene similar to Blair's and what Cameron's would have been had it not had to deal with the consequences of 2008.
Even in 1979, what Thatcher presented was less radical than Heath's manifesto in 1970 but the events of the 1970s proved to everyone Butskellism had run its course. If the 2020s show post-Thatcherite social democracy to have run its course, there will be an audience receptive to new economic and social ideas but it seems at the moment all about an insular ethno-nationalism where we blame (in no particular order) migrants, welfare claimants, old people, tall people, young people and people whose surname begins with "S". Finding people to blame is easy - coming up with practical cost-effective solutions isn't and as the anecdote from Peter Lilley pointed out, simply hacking away at the incomes of the poorest to make the richest feel better isn't the answer and, to be fair, hacking away at the incomes of the richest to make the poorest feel better isn't the answer either.
The demographic transformation of the country has been the problem or the opportunity - we need to stop thinking in a 20th century industrial mindset and start thinking in a 21st century post-industrial way re-defining the contract between the State and the older citizen. I do think the age of sheer material acquisition is coming to an end but I also think while capitalism in essence works, the current model is corrupt and no longer fit for purpose.
Your last sentence applies to all Governments - it didn't start on July 5th 2024.
My concern with capitalism is if young people cannot get a stake in society, like a home, why should they buy into the system. It needs to be aspirational.
The whole system feeling broken is why people on the right are moving to Reform and the left to the Greens. Neither have the solutions but both are NOTA.
Aspiration comes in many forms, I'd argue, but obviously somewhere nice to live is a good start. Yet we are building properties and selling them at prices (in London) no one can afford until or unless they inherit from parents/grandparents etc.
In my part of town, the answer is rental - young couples have to rent because they earn enough but have no savings so both work to pay the rent. How do they ever get off the rental treadmill?
Conservatives like people to own their homes because they become Conservative voters obsessed with mortgage rates. Yet, rental has always been a big part of the London housing market and still is. Who is going to be able to afford £600k for a one-bed flat at the Twelvetrees developement by West Ham station? Not the people who need housing, those on the council waiting list, families in a single room, others who live in appalling conditions in private rental hellholes.
We build houses for profit, not to solve the housing crisis - that's how aspiration is framed.
I would build social housing and allow renters’ payments to be 90% rent and 10% towards the purchase of the property. Gradually increase the proportion that is used towards the purchase until the renters are in a position to purchase the property outright with a mortgage. They also pay towards the cost of repairs and maintenance at the same percentage they are paying for rent, to get them used to paying for the upkeep of their home.
The rental income received by the property owners is ringfenced for building more properties.
It will need an initial grant or loan to enable the scheme to be started, which will be an investment.
A stat I came across - 40% of council houses sold under RTB are now owned by private landlords. A renewal of that sector (however structured) is key to addressing our housing crisis imo. Re the big picture a mindset change would be healthy. Residential property to be viewed primarily as a utility not an investment.
Social housing needs to come with a resale covenant that only permits it to be sold back to the local authority or housing association at full market rate or to someone who owns no other properties.
I think someone on here recommended The Fall of Boris Johnson by Sebastian Payne.
I’m afraid it’s not very good, simply a (sympathetic) day by day account that attributes his fall to badly judged circumstances rather than digging into his terrible character flaws.
So you didn't like it because it didn't agree with your existing opinion.
Without having read it i cannot say, and you could be right about motivation, but even if we take the position that it was mostly badly judged circumstances, is it likely character flaws played no part at all? MPs would not have turned on him as much if purely circumstance.
The flip side is when people dont acknowledge his character strengths which helped him win so big in 2019 - it wasnt all because of the circumstance of Corbyn was bad
Tentative idea.
Bazball cricket worked brilliantly when it burst on the scene. Some of that was the power of belief, some of it was shock value- if you're not expecting it, you're not going to exploit its flaws. But some of its risk/benefit calculations were always a bit flawed, so it was more problematic in the long run. But fun while it lasted.
Bozball politics worked brilliantly when it burst on the scene. Some of that was the power of belief, some of it was shock value- if you're not expecting it, you're not going to exploit its flaws. But some of its risk/benefit calculations were always a bit flawed, so it was more problematic in the long run. But fun while it lasted.
Also from the Obs, today’s Rawnsley while we wait for the sun to emerge above the horizon…
It is not just the dire approval ratings that make the Starmer government look so bereft of allies; it is the absence of any visible cheerleaders at Westminster or beyond it. For that, Sir Keir is copping much of the blame from his party. It is not the case that the country has “fallen out of love” with Labour. It was never in love in the first place.
This is a broadly centrist government led by a serious and hardworking man who is committed to some worthy goals. Which is a terrible combination in our hyper-polarised media environment. The achievements it can fairly claim get next to no attention while its blunders receive maximum magnification.
He is also grappling with the systemic challenge that has defeated so many governments in the affluent world since the crippling financial crisis of 2007-09. How do you satisfy public demand for decent state services at reasonable levels of taxation when growth is so anaemic? The doom loop of higher taxes for unsatisfactory services feeds the corrosion of trust in the state and its ability to deliver.
There’s a compelling case that the defining political event of the past 12 months came in the summer when No 10 and the Treasury combined in an effort to curb the ballooning cost of disability benefits, only to be forced into an abject and authority-shredding retreat by their own backbenchers. Those who hated the idea of welfare reform liked the government no better for the fact that it was forced to capitulate. Those who think we need welfare reform despaired that the government proved incapable of implementing it. There was another chaotic tale surrounding the budget…. [which] became a spirit-sapping feel-bad affair about leaks and accusations of misrepresentation.
It’s an unmerry Christmas for those in power. As you gather in what I hope is the warm embrace of your loved ones, spare a thought for our sadly cheerless and friendless government.
Nah, fuck them. They made their bed. Weak leadership and a govt without any vision or capability to do what is needed. The people at the top are more concerned at keeping themselves in their positions of power than anything else.
You could argue we've not had a defining idea of Government since Liz Truss (apologies) and before that since the Blessed Margaret. There is no big idea or if there is, no one has presented one with significant clarity and thought.
We've mostly had Governments which have maintained what I call post-Thatcherite social democracy - Johnson's Government (had it not been derailed by a microscopic virus) would likely have bene similar to Blair's and what Cameron's would have been had it not had to deal with the consequences of 2008.
Even in 1979, what Thatcher presented was less radical than Heath's manifesto in 1970 but the events of the 1970s proved to everyone Butskellism had run its course. If the 2020s show post-Thatcherite social democracy to have run its course, there will be an audience receptive to new economic and social ideas but it seems at the moment all about an insular ethno-nationalism where we blame (in no particular order) migrants, welfare claimants, old people, tall people, young people and people whose surname begins with "S". Finding people to blame is easy - coming up with practical cost-effective solutions isn't and as the anecdote from Peter Lilley pointed out, simply hacking away at the incomes of the poorest to make the richest feel better isn't the answer and, to be fair, hacking away at the incomes of the richest to make the poorest feel better isn't the answer either.
The demographic transformation of the country has been the problem or the opportunity - we need to stop thinking in a 20th century industrial mindset and start thinking in a 21st century post-industrial way re-defining the contract between the State and the older citizen. I do think the age of sheer material acquisition is coming to an end but I also think while capitalism in essence works, the current model is corrupt and no longer fit for purpose.
Your last sentence applies to all Governments - it didn't start on July 5th 2024.
My concern with capitalism is if young people cannot get a stake in society, like a home, why should they buy into the system. It needs to be aspirational.
The whole system feeling broken is why people on the right are moving to Reform and the left to the Greens. Neither have the solutions but both are NOTA.
Aspiration comes in many forms, I'd argue, but obviously somewhere nice to live is a good start. Yet we are building properties and selling them at prices (in London) no one can afford until or unless they inherit from parents/grandparents etc.
In my part of town, the answer is rental - young couples have to rent because they earn enough but have no savings so both work to pay the rent. How do they ever get off the rental treadmill?
Conservatives like people to own their homes because they become Conservative voters obsessed with mortgage rates. Yet, rental has always been a big part of the London housing market and still is. Who is going to be able to afford £600k for a one-bed flat at the Twelvetrees developement by West Ham station? Not the people who need housing, those on the council waiting list, families in a single room, others who live in appalling conditions in private rental hellholes.
We build houses for profit, not to solve the housing crisis - that's how aspiration is framed.
Fairly amazing that no party has been a serious advocate of councils building houses for decades despite the population growing significantly and us selling off previous council stock.
Bluntly, people do not aspire to a Council house, they live in one because the can't get anything better.
Back in my day, there was no need for anything better. Well built, spacious houses local amenities, public transport. People who could afford to buy bought their council house and stayed there because they liked the place they lived.
On cricket. Why didn't Bazball work? It's not to do with the batting, it's to do with the bowling. The Aussies are much, much better at bowling line and length than we are, so to score quickly necessitates much more risk, leading to inevitable dismissals. By contrast, our bowlers frequently miss line and length, mainly by bowling too short, meaning that there are frequent 'hittable' balls and low risk attacking shots to make. That's why Travis Head got so many runs - he just waited for the dross balls. Compare Carse with Boland, for example: most of Boland's deliveries are aimed at top of off stump, while too many of Carse's are aimed at top of second slip. And, of course, it doesn't help that we don't have a spin bowler that would have been selected for my old village club.
Whatever the deficiencies in the bowling (and there were plenty) the number of England batsmen who chucked away their wickets through ridiculous shot selection gives the lie to that. We failed in both departments, and you can also look at incoherent selection and lack of preparation.
I think that 'lack of preparation' has a lot to do with it. Look at the number of Aussie cricketers who have a season or two (or three) in cricket her, and compare it with the number (zero) who've played 'over there". As someone else pointed out English players used to spend a winter or so, at least, in Australia. Doesn't seem to happen now, due partly at least tot eh amount of franchise cricket, especially in the Gulf.
In the current social media, Twenty20 age, speed of batting and bowling is rated more highly than skill. That attitude is fundamentally unsuited to test cricket.
Comments
It’s tough for hospitality and I personally have a lot of sympathy with businesses ending up being forced to close as they cannot cover the additional/upcoming cost burden, especially when it is a big hit, on them especially as they won’t be able to just hike prices up due to customer resistance. It is not just NI and business rates but other increases such as the minimum wage increase, especially for younger people.
She should have phased the business rates change in over five years.
We need a govt that is friendly towards business and puts in place policies to fuel growth rather than just talk about it.
It was tough for hospitality before these changes too, these just add fuel to the fire. Since COVID people go out less. We were in Durham last night for a drink and a meal. Last Saturday before Xmas. It was busy but not heaving.
It is a classic sign of labours joined up thinking that they make it less attractive to employ young people and their solution is a 700 plus million scheme to offer paid jobs to young people not in work or education 🤷♂️
His excuse was, 'I never seem to have a chance. I keep getting balls that are just too good for me.'
Barnett's reply was, 'well if the bowling is too good for you to have a chance, maybe being an opening batsman isn't for you?'
Similarly, if our Test players keep finding it too difficult to choose the right shot at the right moment, perhaps they should not be playing Test cricket?
We've mostly had Governments which have maintained what I call post-Thatcherite social democracy - Johnson's Government (had it not been derailed by a microscopic virus) would likely have bene similar to Blair's and what Cameron's would have been had it not had to deal with the consequences of 2008.
Even in 1979, what Thatcher presented was less radical than Heath's manifesto in 1970 but the events of the 1970s proved to everyone Butskellism had run its course. If the 2020s show post-Thatcherite social democracy to have run its course, there will be an audience receptive to new economic and social ideas but it seems at the moment all about an insular ethno-nationalism where we blame (in no particular order) migrants, welfare claimants, old people, tall people, young people and people whose surname begins with "S". Finding people to blame is easy - coming up with practical cost-effective solutions isn't and as the anecdote from Peter Lilley pointed out, simply hacking away at the incomes of the poorest to make the richest feel better isn't the answer and, to be fair, hacking away at the incomes of the richest to make the poorest feel better isn't the answer either.
The demographic transformation of the country has been the problem or the opportunity - we need to stop thinking in a 20th century industrial mindset and start thinking in a 21st century post-industrial way re-defining the contract between the State and the older citizen. I do think the age of sheer material acquisition is coming to an end but I also think while capitalism in essence works, the current model is corrupt and no longer fit for purpose.
Your last sentence applies to all Governments - it didn't start on July 5th 2024.
Instead, they lost 4-1.
Why? Because the batsmen after the first test over attacked and threw away positions of dominance.
And they did the same against Australia and India in England, and against Pakistan in Pakistan, and against New Zealand in 2023.
It's great to play aggressive and entertaining cricket and used in the right way it clearly can be a match winner (and was, at the start of the Stokes/McCullum period). But it's very frustrating to see it not being tempered by any common sense at all and the management batting away any criticism rather than actually doing something about it.
Viv Richards and Gordon Greenidge played cricket just as attacking as the one Stokes is trying to play. But they started with superb defensive games, and the knowledge of when to use them.
My concern with capitalism is if young people cannot get a stake in society, like a home, why should they buy into the system. It needs to be aspirational.
The whole system feeling broken is why people on the right are moving to Reform and the left to the Greens. Neither have the solutions but both are NOTA.
We'd have been better off sticking with Leach.
No plan is perfect, but the very worst thing to do is to have a plan and then abandon it at the last moment when instead go with an almighty muddle. England lost their nerve and abandoned Bazball when they needed it most.
Heck I know a lot of people on less now then in 2023 rather than 28% more
There have been England cricket teams with a lot less talent than this one but it is very hard to think of one that has played worse cricket. 3-0 flatters them.
https://x.com/alexmassie/status/2002652982224339290?s=20
I don't argue the ending of the relief should have been phased and Hunt could have started that but he chose not to.
The key point is who gets the money - I believe a share of the money goes to local councils (as part of the devolution deal, some councils get all the business rates income) and with councils struggling to meet rising care costs, getting more income in will help (though not if the business closes though presumably rates are still charged to the owner of the site).
The failure to come to terms with social care sits squarely with BOTH Conservative and Labour Governments right back to the Dilmot report and before.
The minimum wage issue is one I'm less concerned about - should we have people working for £5 per hour? If they want to, they can become delivery drivers for one of the big courier firms. Perhaps indentured servitude is the answer.
I do accept giving businesses a break so they can afford to employ young people in particular is needed - you could call it a hospitality apprenticeship if you like.
She didn't have to end up with a business rates settlement that will ultimately increase large supermarkets' business rates by only 4% but those of pubs by 76%, but she did. And she managed to mess it up politically despite continuing some quite significant term reliefs for pubs - limiting the rise in bills to no more than 15% each year and permanently reducing the multiplier that pubs pay to about 12% below those of other businesses. Had she just gone a bit further and permanently rebalanced the business rates burden a bit more to the permanent benefit of small retail, leisure and hospitality businesses, this could all have been avoided while maintaining the same business rates yield at zero net cost to the exchequer. Say just announce that the Covid relief would be made permanent at 25% (having already reduced it from 75% to 40% she instead abolished it) and make the phasing of increases more generous with a 10% limit, while adding a tad more on for large retail such as mega supermarkets and Amazon distribution warehouses and the like.
The irony is that she's now very likely to have to do a u-turn which will now unnecessarily cost the exchequer and is unlikely to undo a lot of the political damage. Or maybe that's something for her successor in the post.
When Labour caved to their demand, they should have linked it to ending their right to strike Or else, as was predicrted, they would just come back for another bite at the NHS.
The issue is not so much the min wage but the rapid increases in it, you could argue the same for the increase in the state pension and benefits too, and for 18-20 year olds the govt is aiming to get it aligned with the adult rate which I expect to have a negative impact on youth employment. Often well intentioned policies hurt the people they’re supposed to help.
In my part of town, the answer is rental - young couples have to rent because they earn enough but have no savings so both work to pay the rent. How do they ever get off the rental treadmill?
Conservatives like people to own their homes because they become Conservative voters obsessed with mortgage rates. Yet, rental has always been a big part of the London housing market and still is. Who is going to be able to afford £600k for a one-bed flat at the Twelvetrees developement by West Ham station? Not the people who need housing, those on the council waiting list, families in a single room, others who live in appalling conditions in private rental hellholes.
We build houses for profit, not to solve the housing crisis - that's how aspiration is framed.
2013-4
Lost by 381, 218, 150, 281 and 8 wickets. Barely won a session.
As you say, the anomalies between pubs/restaurants on the one hand and supermarkets/logisitics warehouses on the other is one that has evolved and needs to be addressed.
https://x.com/fullfact/status/2001625753390125361?s=61
Also I read The Guardian interview with the new leader of Unison. I’m wondering if it’s just posturing or we are heading for far more industrial strife next year. We really could be heading towards late seventies times again. We have little money but…..
‘ This will include a wide-ranging strategic review of taking strike action across the labour movement, leading to our adoption of the best methods to win. I will also launch a new strike-ready conference, convening workplace reps from across Unison to forge new organising approaches in the fight for better pay.’
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/19/new-head-unison-politicians-unions-labour
The Delaware Supreme Court rules to reinstate his 2018 Tesla stock options worth $139bn, taking his net worth past an unprecedented $700bn.
https://news.sky.com/story/elon-musk-closer-to-becoming-first-ever-trillionaire-as-he-marks-major-milestone-13486155
Hey Grok, what was this week's birthday boy on about? Easier for a rich man to buy a camel...
https://news.sky.com/story/nine-people-dead-after-south-africa-tavern-attack-13486268
Compared to a suburban semi, or a quality flat you have chosen to live in, you're absolutely right.
Making a comparison with the grottier end of Private Rental, flat shares or worse, and aspiration looks rather different.
My issue with new build is the shit standard some of these are built too. There was a YouTube video of a building snagger showing some of the issues he came across. Horrendous. I’d never buy new build.
Ideally we should have local authorities building more to rent too. A mix of public and private provision especially where they re needed.
It’s all regional. I live in a nice part of North Durham, close to the countryside, nice estate, my 3 bed detached would fetch about half the price of that box in West Ham. So more provision where needed is required.
We also need to consider capacity. We do not have an abundance of the manual skills needed. A couple of developments near me regularly have signs up asking for brickies. One good thing the govt has done is recognised this and is putting in place additional training for the building industry. Not a short term fix but a long term plan that should pay off.
The flip side is when people dont acknowledge his character strengths which helped him win so big in 2019 - it wasnt all because of the circumstance of Corbyn was bad
Several days and a few hundred pounds into the process of verifying my identity on Companies House in order to prove that as an owner of one small flat, I am not an international money launderer (and tbh I'm not really sure how it proves this but I'm sure the government knows what it is doing) I have now acquired a passport and verified my identity to gov.uk.
The final step, then, is to associate my Companies House ID with my now-verified gov.uk ID.
But so far as I can see, there is no secure way to do that. Instead of logging in and pressing a couple of buttons, I have to hand my top-secret code to a complete stranger and trust him or her or them and their accountants and lawyers and cleaners to guard this code jealously and securely (not like pornhub or M&S or the Co-op or Jaguar or, erm, the government which keep getting hacked) and not use it to register their own money laundering network.
Seriously, I am torn between FFS and WTF.
Bazball cricket worked brilliantly when it burst on the scene. Some of that was the power of belief, some of it was shock value- if you're not expecting it, you're not going to exploit its flaws. But some of its risk/benefit calculations were always a bit flawed, so it was more problematic in the long run. But fun while it lasted.
Bozball politics worked brilliantly when it burst on the scene. Some of that was the power of belief, some of it was shock value- if you're not expecting it, you're not going to exploit its flaws. But some of its risk/benefit calculations were always a bit flawed, so it was more problematic in the long run. But fun while it lasted.
If the pitches demand a fuller length why pick your "hit the deck" bowlers. Gideon Haigh has written something about this for the observer but seems it's now paywalled
Building more homes where needed would help but property prices are starting to fall and are falling relative to wage growth,
Regarding 'performative cruelty' which I take it translates as the belief that being in work should pay better than not being in work, or that we should be able to set our own immigration policy, Labour's attempts in Government to deploy these policies have been superficial and short-lived. Its attempt to dampen welfare spending growth slightly fell victim to its own MPs. Starmer's speech didn't survive the whiff of grapeshot before he was crying about it to a newspaper. When you are in Government people believe (perhaps naively) that you can do something other than making a speech.
I support right to buy, but from quite a negative perspective. An alternative universe where the council houses weren’t sold off and I got a council property in London because I worked in London is quite a compelling one.
But I don’t think that universe exists. The alternative is that my parents didn’t get to own their house and I wouldn’t be deemed deserving of a London property. At least with right to buy my sister and I stand to inherit if we look after our parents.
And, of course, it doesn't help that we don't have a spin bowler that would have been selected for my old village club.
Frankly, it's extraordinary entitlement from a public that puts massive demand on a service run largely by young people, struggling to get on the housing ladder and with enormous debt. They want to see the state to use it's overwhelming monopsonistic power to drive down wages at the expense of working people.
This graph shows what has happened to pay before Labour got in:
* the stock of council houses for people who need one remains good
* demand on the private rental sector declines because of the people now in council houses rather than private rental
* supply of private sector housing goes up because of the steady flow into it of the right to buy properties
The disadvantage, of course, is that the government is paying out a lot of money to build houses. The optimistic take is that this triggers growth that we can use to pay for it, plus it's a form of redistribution. The pessimistic take is that it's an unaffordable pipedream.
https://fullfact.org/health/bma-resident-doctors-pay-hci/
In the last year TWO new licensed premises have opened in this small town.
We already have three pubs, three licensed restaurants (as well as the pubs) and a Conservative club, which seems a popular drinking place.
There has been some building, but not that much.
The government currently spends between £30 billion and £40 billion per year on housing costs for benefit claimant - that goes straight into the pocket of landlords. That's very stupid. Only about £2 billion goes on building council houses/social housing.
Even with the "28% pay rise", doctors are still significantly behind CPI and overall wages.
The rental income received by the property owners is ringfenced for building more properties.
It will need an initial grant or loan to enable the scheme to be started, which will be an investment.
Call for time limits on public inquiries as costs soar.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yd08q3pj8o
Depending on the detail, that could well have the effect of phasing it in over a number of years for the worst affected.
A larger increase in supermarkets etc might even have funded the concessions suggested.
Apologies.
Fast forward three years.
You're Nigel Farage, you're top of the polls. You're self-aware enough to know that Reform is nowhere near ready for government.
Having annoyed almost everyone with that last sentence... What do you do?
Volume 15: debated on Monday 21 December 1981
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1981-12-21/debates/8d6650e9-1071-45be-8dc4-15d37225b8df/Nurses(Pay)
The history of nurses' pay awards, 40 or 50 years ago, for older PBers who recall the Whitley Council, Halsbury and Clegg commissions.
Some doggerel from (probably) the New Statesman that would probably get someone cancelled nowadays:-
Nurses can add benignly
To better pay than Clegg's
By lying down supinely
And opening their legs.
It is a perennial problem where pay, especially in the public sector, is allowed to slip until necessitating large, headline-grabbing increases to restore salaries to the levels of a few years previously.
I don't know why im surprised there are not timeframes at least.
Full fact clearly debunks their claims with verifiable data and shows it’s very selective too. That’s the point. At least they challenge the BMA.
Still, you want to be fluffer in chief for the BMA knock yourself out sunshine,
We failed in both departments, and you can also look at incoherent selection and lack of preparation.
Going in, there was a widespread view (inc in the betting) that this England team had a decent chance of winning or at least would be competitive. It was a much anticipated series.
So now the reality (3/0 down and all over in less than 11 days play) feels particularly gutting.
Now, the Labour switchers have switched back, and the abstainers are re-engaged.
Doesn’t invalidate the Full Fact research which is impartial, a newspaper has leanings and sympathies which often drives its narrative.
They won’t get the money they demand.
I don't get the obsession form the Head Honcho's with pace; Aussies have beaten us with consistent line and length for decades. Glenn McGrath wasn't that quick, and he must surely be a decent bowler try and emulate. They always have a good spinner, we don't even pick one. Just seems crazy
People need a mix of housing. Buying or renting.
We need to build more where they are needed and that can be private and LG
But what is our capacity given the shortages in those professions that go into the trade.
BMA = RPI
FT = CPI
Full Fact = CPI
The graph I posted is just the Full Fact methodology visualised. By questioning the FT's methodology, you're questioning the same analysis that you've posted as a rebuttal.
Reform don’t even have spokesmen and women as shadows for the govt ministers.
This England team have failed at least partly because they lost faith in Bazball.
It simply does not matter how many stats and charts are used in an attempt to justify the doctors strike because in the eyes of the public they received a 28%+ pay rise last year which was far above other workers and the public simply will not accept any argument to justify more
This is Streeting's problem now, but he caved in far too easily last year when that rise should have had conditions applied to it that included the end to high percentage annual pay rises, especially in our high taxed economy
Unfortunately for Starmer, Reeves and Streeting it is going to get a whole lot worse with a new militant leader of Unison who already is talking at being at war with them
I expect 2026 to see numerous strikes across the public sector as the unions turn left aided and abetted by the workers rights legislation
There seems to be no way back to popularity for Starmer and labour, though if I am being fair I doubt anyone else has the answers though Badenoch demands for minimum staffing levels in the NHS is likely to prove popular as time goes by
‘ Either way, our calculations using HCI—which have been independently verified by Jill Leyland, a former vice president of the RSS who now represents it on the National Statistician’s Advisory Panel on Consumer Prices—suggest that the erosion of resident doctors’ pay is about a third as much as the BMA has estimated.’
Yes, the new leader of Unison seems to be another in the mould of the Unite leader.
The guardian interview I linked to above makes it quite clear strikes are on the agenda and an escalation of the . It may be sabre rattling and scene setting ahead of negotiations or it may be something more.
The fashion is now for glue on gels not varnish.
My wife got some Xmas ones last week. Not cheap either.