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.
It's considerably higher, I think. Why the stat is rather poignant is it flies against the animating idea of RTB, which was to spread home ownership. Combine with failure to restock and build, and the financialisation and promotion of residential property as an investment, these are amongst the factors that have led to the current situation.
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.
Those who do nails and those who have their nails done.
The two Britains of the 21st century.
(Nothing wrong on a personal level with spending your money how you see fit within the law. But my local.ahopping parade supports a couple of nail bars, which rather points to something being off somewhere in the big picture.)
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...
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.
Those who do nails and those who have their nails done.
The two Britains of the 21st century.
(Nothing wrong on a personal level with spending your money how you see fit within the law. But my local.ahopping parade supports a couple of nail bars, which rather points to something being off somewhere in the big picture.)
Yes. There is nothing wrong with spending your money how you see fit. The fact that we can now afford such niceties would suggest we are richer than we were.
And yet. Why do we treat the nail technician better than the nurse?
If we were paying for the nurse directly, would we both treat each other better?
All the polling says don't want that, but nobody values 'free'. How do we solve this?
If Ed Miliband is looking to be Chancellor he is showing some sense. He would probably do a better job of it than Reeves and get to grips with the economic detail but he doesn't have the charisma Streeting or Burnham have who would be better replacements of Starmer as Labour leader
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.
Those who do nails and those who have their nails done.
The two Britains of the 21st century.
(Nothing wrong on a personal level with spending your money how you see fit within the law. But my local.ahopping parade supports a couple of nail bars, which rather points to something being off somewhere in the big picture.)
Nail salons, hair salons, tattoo parlours and the like have become mainstays of our shopping centres because they require customer attendance, so cannot (yet) be successfully replicated online. Taz's wife is supporting the High Street and good for her.
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.
The problem with welfare reform was summed up by a conversation recorded in the Brandreth diaries.
Marcus Fox: We could cut a billion off welfare, easy.
Peter Lilley: That means taking a thousand pounds from a million poor families. It's not easy.
It is easy just takes having a backbone and the country's interests at heart. What bit of there is no money do these clowns not understand.
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
If Ed Miliband is looking to be Chancellor he is showing some sense. He would probably do a better job of it than Reeves and get to grips with the economic detail but he doesn't have the charisma Streeting or Burnham have who would be better replacements of Starmer as Labour leader
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.
Those who do nails and those who have their nails done.
The two Britains of the 21st century.
(Nothing wrong on a personal level with spending your money how you see fit within the law. But my local.ahopping parade supports a couple of nail bars, which rather points to something being off somewhere in the big picture.)
Yes; we're a bit like that; and a new one opened recently in a shop which was supposed to be expensive to rent. Usually seems busy when I trundle past to the barbers. And we used to have one 'traditional' mens and another two ladies hairdressers which would do men's hair, for those who had 'special needs'. Now we've got two more men establishments, both apparently Turkish.
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.
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.
Those who do nails and those who have their nails done.
The two Britains of the 21st century.
(Nothing wrong on a personal level with spending your money how you see fit within the law. But my local.ahopping parade supports a couple of nail bars, which rather points to something being off somewhere in the big picture.)
A third Britain of the 21st century are those who don't give a stuff about tacky false nails...
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.
Those who do nails and those who have their nails done.
The two Britains of the 21st century.
(Nothing wrong on a personal level with spending your money how you see fit within the law. But my local.ahopping parade supports a couple of nail bars, which rather points to something being off somewhere in the big picture.)
Nail salons, hair salons, tattoo parlours and the like have become mainstays of our shopping centres because they require customer attendance, so cannot (yet) be successfully replicated online. Taz's wife is supporting the High Street and good for her.
I thought that once you'd got a tattoo you'd got it. Couldn't get rid of it without painful and tedious (and expensive) skin grafts.
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.
As long as benefits give more than low wages you will not get people working. Just go on youtube watch a half dozen videos of how to get a shedload of payments for any old guff , free rent , council tax etc, apart from self respect why would these people want to work. Plus they can make even mor eon the side. You could not make it up.
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.
Those who do nails and those who have their nails done.
The two Britains of the 21st century.
(Nothing wrong on a personal level with spending your money how you see fit within the law. But my local.ahopping parade supports a couple of nail bars, which rather points to something being off somewhere in the big picture.)
Nail salons, hair salons, tattoo parlours and the like have become mainstays of our shopping centres because they require customer attendance, so cannot (yet) be successfully replicated online. Taz's wife is supporting the High Street and good for her.
I thought that once you'd got a tattoo you'd got it. Couldn't get rid of it without painful and tedious (and expensive) skin grafts.
True, but you still have to be in situ with the tattoo artist to get it, unless you know something I don't.
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.
Bad as she was we need someone like Thatcher who for all her faults had a backbone and was perfectly happy to take these arseholes on and sort them out.
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?
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.
BMA are bigger grifters than the teamsters were years ago. They need to be smashed.
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.
Whenever doctors strike people notice, they have an important job to do.
You obvuously shouldn't strike for maximum impact - the maximum impact would be to do it by surprise, during covid, and not provide minimum service for safety.
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.
Yes feck London, up here you get a nice 4 bed detached for half that price.
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:
Junior doctors have though received a 4% payrise this year compared to the average private sector payrise of 3-39.% at a time unemployment has risen to over 5% too.
Nurses only had a 3.6% payrise so I have more sympathy with them
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.
Do we not ? While the have number of documents, photos and video remain either redacted or withheld completely, there's no way knowing that.
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.
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.
Time to cut their cloth and not think they are better than they actually are. Sound like entitled twats.
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.
Bad as she was we need someone like Thatcher who for all her faults had a backbone and was perfectly happy to take these arseholes on and sort them out.
Whoever gets in is going to have far more to contend with than Thatcher, and far fewer resources at their disposal.
That's why it probably needs to be Reform AND the Tories. This stuff isn't going to be easy to do and there will be massive pushback. You can't really do it with the support of 35% of the electorate. Doing it on 58% is more achievable.
Today's "Junior" doctors knew what their salary scales would be when they chose* to apply to med school. What those salary scales were when their parents made that same choice is irrelevant.
They are on a conveyor belt to six-figure salaries, plus wheelbarrows of cash from private work on the side. They're not exactly queuing at the food bank.
*Or in some cases, had it drilled into them from the age of 5 that any other degree option would bring disgrace on the family.
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.
Those who do nails and those who have their nails done.
The two Britains of the 21st century.
(Nothing wrong on a personal level with spending your money how you see fit within the law. But my local.ahopping parade supports a couple of nail bars, which rather points to something being off somewhere in the big picture.)
Yes. There is nothing wrong with spending your money how you see fit. The fact that we can now afford such niceties would suggest we are richer than we were.
And yet. Why do we treat the nail technician better than the nurse?
If we were paying for the nurse directly, would we both treat each other better?
All the polling says don't want that, but nobody values 'free'. How do we solve this?
Who treats nail technicians better than nurses, are you gaga
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
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.
Yes, bunch of lying spineless tossers.
we talking about the english test cricket team right?
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.
Those who do nails and those who have their nails done.
The two Britains of the 21st century.
(Nothing wrong on a personal level with spending your money how you see fit within the law. But my local.ahopping parade supports a couple of nail bars, which rather points to something being off somewhere in the big picture.)
Nail salons, hair salons, tattoo parlours and the like have become mainstays of our shopping centres because they require customer attendance, so cannot (yet) be successfully replicated online. Taz's wife is supporting the High Street and good for her.
I thought that once you'd got a tattoo you'd got it. Couldn't get rid of it without painful and tedious (and expensive) skin grafts.
True, but you still have to be in situ with the tattoo artist to get it, unless you know something I don't.
Yup, the skin and the sharp pointy thing need to be in contact. Unless, as on Thai beaches, you can get henna (temporary) tattoo's.
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.
I presume you objected to all the performative bans of politicians from other political parties?
Hunt’s “NI trap” was actually paid for by fiscal drag on the income tax rates.
Hospitality has been massively hit by the increase in employment costs since COVID. They are trapped between already high prices and rising costs. In a London pub an £18 burger is not uncommon now.
I really need to get my Water Shop project going. The idea is to show the cost per hour of a shop that, instead of coffee or whatever, gives you WiFi and a glass of tap water. The base cost of existing as a business, as it were.
The problem is a vast array of taxes, policies and government structure is based on the idea that small commercial premises are a fountain of money. That simply dipping the cup in the infinite well has no effect.
This was so, perhaps, several generations ago.
The world has changed. The high street is barely viable. If you talk to people in retail (I’ve got family working there and a friend’s wife runs HR for an outfit that owns several of the big chains) they are fighting a retreat, at the middle to low end.
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.
Those who do nails and those who have their nails done.
The two Britains of the 21st century.
(Nothing wrong on a personal level with spending your money how you see fit within the law. But my local.ahopping parade supports a couple of nail bars, which rather points to something being off somewhere in the big picture.)
Nail salons, hair salons, tattoo parlours and the like have become mainstays of our shopping centres because they require customer attendance, so cannot (yet) be successfully replicated online. Taz's wife is supporting the High Street and good for her.
I thought that once you'd got a tattoo you'd got it. Couldn't get rid of it without painful and tedious (and expensive) skin grafts.
These days they use lasers to break up the ink in the skin. It's painful. But so is tattooing.
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.
Those who do nails and those who have their nails done.
The two Britains of the 21st century.
(Nothing wrong on a personal level with spending your money how you see fit within the law. But my local.ahopping parade supports a couple of nail bars, which rather points to something being off somewhere in the big picture.)
Why .
It’s the changing face of the beauty industry.
I don’t see the problem and if it keeps a presence on the high street and rents and taxes coming in then all well and good.
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.
Those who do nails and those who have their nails done.
The two Britains of the 21st century.
(Nothing wrong on a personal level with spending your money how you see fit within the law. But my local.ahopping parade supports a couple of nail bars, which rather points to something being off somewhere in the big picture.)
Ah for the days when huge numbers of the young female population of Vietnam had been trafficked into the UK to work as slaves in nail bars. That is, 5-6 in every single one of the then 15k nail salons in the country.
70-100k of them, as reported by the Sunday Times.
100,000 Vietnamese manicurists This figure is based on a pretty routine journalistic practice that should always be avoided at all costs. In the absence of other sources, The Sunday Times quoted estimates from undisclosed private organisations.
Without providing their names, it is difficult for us to ask the sources for confirmation of their numbers. Even if we did, those manufacturers are ill-positioned to know the staffing levels of the companies they supply to – much less the nationalities of those staff.
29,000 Vietnamese migrants Given that the UK census is a far more robust source of data, their claim "census data states that only 29,000 Vietnamese-born migrants officially live in the UK" seems a much better starting point. From there we might work out the number of Vietnamese immigrants that are likely to be unaccounted for – and then to work out the likely proportion of them that are manicurists. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/reality-check/2013/aug/21/71000-vietnamese-manicurists-hidden-in-the-uk
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.
It's considerably higher, I think. Why the stat is rather poignant is it flies against the animating idea of RTB, which was to spread home ownership. Combine with failure to restock and build, and the financialisation and promotion of residential property as an investment, these are amongst the factors that have led to the current situation.
I suspect many people who invested in property as a one way bet. The ‘I don’t have a pension my property is my pension’ brigade. I think they are going to learn a life lesson.
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.
And yet banks manage to ID their customers - under threat of considerable legal penalty if they allow fraud on ID.
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.
Those who do nails and those who have their nails done.
The two Britains of the 21st century.
(Nothing wrong on a personal level with spending your money how you see fit within the law. But my local.ahopping parade supports a couple of nail bars, which rather points to something being off somewhere in the big picture.)
Nail salons, hair salons, tattoo parlours and the like have become mainstays of our shopping centres because they require customer attendance, so cannot (yet) be successfully replicated online. Taz's wife is supporting the High Street and good for her.
I thought that once you'd got a tattoo you'd got it. Couldn't get rid of it without painful and tedious (and expensive) skin grafts.
These days they use lasers to break up the ink in the skin. It's painful. But so is tattooing.
Years ago, when I worked with a Plastic Surgery Unit we occasionally saw tattoo removals.
Today's "Junior" doctors knew what their salary scales would be when they chose* to apply to med school. What those salary scales were when their parents made that same choice is irrelevant.
They are on a conveyor belt to six-figure salaries, plus wheelbarrows of cash from private work on the side. They're not exactly queuing at the food bank.
*Or in some cases, had it drilled into them from the age of 5 that any other degree option would bring disgrace on the family.
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:
Junior doctors have though received a 4% payrise this year compared to the average private sector payrise of 3-39.% at a time unemployment has risen to over 5% too.
Nurses only had a 3.6% payrise so I have more sympathy with them
As discussed before none of this also takes into account the additional holidays, better pensions and the incremental pay scales they get too.
Perhaps a trade off in terms of lower pension for a higher base wage as well as student debt forgiveness would be a way forward, forgiveness dependent on remaining our NHS.
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:
Whichever measure you use, its not realistic to expect a Labour government in 1 year to make up for ~15 years of austerity.
The govt has clearly shown they are prepared to make a big offer to restore junior doctors' pay, and been more generous than for other health professions.
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.
Those who do nails and those who have their nails done.
The two Britains of the 21st century.
(Nothing wrong on a personal level with spending your money how you see fit within the law. But my local.ahopping parade supports a couple of nail bars, which rather points to something being off somewhere in the big picture.)
Nail salons, hair salons, tattoo parlours and the like have become mainstays of our shopping centres because they require customer attendance, so cannot (yet) be successfully replicated online. Taz's wife is supporting the High Street and good for her.
I thought that once you'd got a tattoo you'd got it. Couldn't get rid of it without painful and tedious (and expensive) skin grafts.
These days they use lasers to break up the ink in the skin. It's painful. But so is tattooing.
Everyone: you look fine as you are. Certainly better than if you draw pictures on yourself, attach things to the end of your fingers, paint yourself browny-orange, inflate your lips or other bits of your face, or any one of the peculiar unpleasant and counter-productive things which humans increasingly appear to do to themselves for the misguided sake of their appearance. I can accept the need for a haircut from time to time though I can't for the life of me understand why we need quite so many people fulfilling that function. (I opted out of that particular market six years ago.)
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.
And yet banks manage to ID their customers - under threat of considerable legal penalty if they allow fraud on ID.
Banks are also proportionate. You can get your cash out from a hole in the wall with a plastic card and a 4-digit number.
When they are allowed to be. I've heard complaints from business owners that they cannot easily open new accounts for the same company with the same bank.
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.
I presume you objected to all the performative bans of politicians from other political parties?
Hunt’s “NI trap” was actually paid for by fiscal drag on the income tax rates.
Hospitality has been massively hit by the increase in employment costs since COVID. They are trapped between already high prices and rising costs. In a London pub an £18 burger is not uncommon now.
I really need to get my Water Shop project going. The idea is to show the cost per hour of a shop that, instead of coffee or whatever, gives you WiFi and a glass of tap water. The base cost of existing as a business, as it were.
The problem is a vast array of taxes, policies and government structure is based on the idea that small commercial premises are a fountain of money. That simply dipping the cup in the infinite well has no effect.
This was so, perhaps, several generations ago.
The world has changed. The high street is barely viable. If you talk to people in retail (I’ve got family working there and a friend’s wife runs HR for an outfit that owns several of the big chains) they are fighting a retreat, at the middle to low end.
Labour has always believed that dupping the cup in the infinite well has no effect - either in terms of tax or obligation or regulation.
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:
Whichever measure you use, its not realistic to expect a Labour government in 1 year to make up for ~15 years of austerity.
The govt has clearly shown they are prepared to make a big offer to restore junior doctors' pay, and been more generous than for other health professions.
Yet they throw it all back in the govts face when the govt gave them a lot of money with no strings. No good deed goes unpunished,
The measure is important as when they are demanding full restoration there is a massive gap based on what they claim using CPI and Full fact using HCI.
Also the starting point was cherry picked.
Labour should have called them out on both in opposition. They made a rod for their own back.
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:
Junior doctors have though received a 4% payrise this year compared to the average private sector payrise of 3-39.% at a time unemployment has risen to over 5% too.
Nurses only had a 3.6% payrise so I have more sympathy with them
As discussed before none of this also takes into account the additional holidays, better pensions and the incremental pay scales they get too.
Perhaps a trade off in terms of lower pension for a higher base wage as well as student debt forgiveness would be a way forward, forgiveness dependent on remaining our NHS.
They also get paid overtime , shift allowances , specialty allowances , etc. Bunch of whingers.
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.
Time to cut their cloth and not think they are better than they actually are. Sound like entitled twats.
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:
Whichever measure you use, its not realistic to expect a Labour government in 1 year to make up for ~15 years of austerity.
The govt has clearly shown they are prepared to make a big offer to restore junior doctors' pay, and been more generous than for other health professions.
Yes and the greedy barstewards just kick them in the goolies, labour were naive giving them almost 30% without something in return
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.
Those who do nails and those who have their nails done.
The two Britains of the 21st century.
(Nothing wrong on a personal level with spending your money how you see fit within the law. But my local.ahopping parade supports a couple of nail bars, which rather points to something being off somewhere in the big picture.)
Yes. There is nothing wrong with spending your money how you see fit. The fact that we can now afford such niceties would suggest we are richer than we were.
And yet. Why do we treat the nail technician better than the nurse?
If we were paying for the nurse directly, would we both treat each other better?
All the polling says don't want that, but nobody values 'free'. How do we solve this?
Who treats nail technicians better than nurses, are you gaga
That was the claim above, not mine specifically.
Though I doubt many nail technicians are on £60k+ I don't suppose they get sworn at quite as much (but then, nor do they drug non-compliant customers).
Round here there is a strong suspicion that Nail Bars and Turkish Barbers are mostly money laundering rather than successful businesses, so maybe the comparison depends on where you are.
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:
Junior doctors have though received a 4% payrise this year compared to the average private sector payrise of 3-39.% at a time unemployment has risen to over 5% too.
Nurses only had a 3.6% payrise so I have more sympathy with them
As discussed before none of this also takes into account the additional holidays, better pensions and the incremental pay scales they get too.
Perhaps a trade off in terms of lower pension for a higher base wage as well as student debt forgiveness would be a way forward, forgiveness dependent on remaining our NHS.
They also get paid overtime , shift allowances , specialty allowances , etc. Bunch of whingers.
You’re right, I was forgetting paid overtime and the like. I last got paid overtime in a staff job in 1990 😂
In the words of the Labour manifesto 'it is being used as a smokescreen for the hunting of wild animals' and in fairness this is true. There have been so many examples. Only the other week hunt saboteurs recorded exactly this from a drone - clear hunting of a fox.
The hunts only have themselves to blame for this. It is a shame because a British tradition could have been kept if it had adapted, but they seem incapable of doing so and keeping to the law.
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.
Perhaps the third Bloc is people who didn't vote, or said they were not going to/were undecided, moving to the Tories or Reform. It does seem odd that only 36% voted for the Right Bloc at the the last GE, yet they are on 48%ish now without movement from labour or LDs. The only way i can think to marry that up is movement from Non voters. I think that fits because a lot of 2019 Tories did not vote at the last Election, that is why Labour got such a majority with so few votes
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:
Whichever measure you use, its not realistic to expect a Labour government in 1 year to make up for ~15 years of austerity.
The govt has clearly shown they are prepared to make a big offer to restore junior doctors' pay, and been more generous than for other health professions.
Yes and the greedy barstewards just kick them in the goolies, labour were naive giving them almost 30% without something in return
The BMA is like the scorpion in the fable of the scorpion and the frog. No sooner do they get a government to their liking, than they stab it in the back, because it's in their nature.
Ineffectual governments will often poke their opponents in the eye.
I think this is completely trivial, just a piece of nastiness.
Perhaps but an equally cynical motive might be to keep backbenchers onside since they can't deliver the new Jerusalem in this parliament. If there's no money left, do something that's free.
Ineffectual governments will often poke their opponents in the eye.
I think this is completely trivial, just a piece of nastiness.
Perhaps but an equally cynical motive might be to keep backbenchers onside since they can't deliver the new Jerusalem in this parliament. If there's no money left, do something that's free.
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.
And yet banks manage to ID their customers - under threat of considerable legal penalty if they allow fraud on ID.
Banks are also proportionate. You can get your cash out from a hole in the wall with a plastic card and a 4-digit number.
When they are allowed to be. I've heard complaints from business owners that they cannot easily open new accounts for the same company with the same bank.
When TanksAlot was de-banked for supplying light armoured vehicles to Ukraine, there was a story that some anonymous chaps from the Home Office ordered one of the banks to take them on.
Haven't women (mainly) always had their nails done? One of my distinctive childhood memories is the disgusting smell of my mother's nail varnish. All that's changed is, due to increased affluence, more people are paying for a professional job rather than DIY. As I know to my cost: Mrs Al spent £37 on it this morning, although she was quick to point out that's less than I spend in a couple of days in the pub. As for nail technicians being well paid - nonsense. It's minimum wage work, at best.
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.
I presume you objected to all the performative bans of politicians from other political parties?
Hunt’s “NI trap” was actually paid for by fiscal drag on the income tax rates.
Hospitality has been massively hit by the increase in employment costs since COVID. They are trapped between already high prices and rising costs. In a London pub an £18 burger is not uncommon now.
I really need to get my Water Shop project going. The idea is to show the cost per hour of a shop that, instead of coffee or whatever, gives you WiFi and a glass of tap water. The base cost of existing as a business, as it were.
The problem is a vast array of taxes, policies and government structure is based on the idea that small commercial premises are a fountain of money. That simply dipping the cup in the infinite well has no effect.
This was so, perhaps, several generations ago.
The world has changed. The high street is barely viable. If you talk to people in retail (I’ve got family working there and a friend’s wife runs HR for an outfit that owns several of the big chains) they are fighting a retreat, at the middle to low end.
That water shop would be an Interesting concept.
Especially as a counter to the endless people on social media, usually with a red rose symbol next to their name, telling businesses concerned at the sharp rises in their costs that if they cannot afford these sudden sharp increases their businesses aren’t viable and they deserve to close.
What a business needs, from my limited experience of P&L responsibility, is consistency. No sudden sharp shocks. Labour are giving them shocks in abundance which makes it hard to plan for and absorb especially when you are reliant on the public for trade.
In the words of the Labour manifesto 'it is being used as a smokescreen for the hunting of wild animals' and in fairness this is true. There have been so many examples. Only the other week hunt saboteurs recorded exactly this from a drone - clear hunting of a fox.
The hunts only have themselves to blame for this. It is a shame because a British tradition could have been kept if it had adapted, but they seem incapable of doing so and keeping to the law.
The original ban was done out of spite too and has made it difficult to keep fox numbers down and protect sheep and livestock and pet rabbits etc
Re header: Ed Milliband - the same Ed Milliband that cratered when asked about Labour's economic policies and crushed his own ambitions? That Ed Milliband? To be put in charge of the country's money.
There's no sensible reason why he should be next chancellor in any circumstances - many though why not. Also any plausible path involves him propping up someone like Phillipson.
As is the case with Burnham betting the possible path matters.
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.
Time to cut their cloth and not think they are better than they actually are. Sound like entitled twats.
Haven't women (mainly) always had their nails done? One of my distinctive childhood memories is the disgusting smell of my mother's nail varnish. All that's changed is, due to increased affluence, more people are paying for a professional job rather than DIY. As I know to my cost: Mrs Al spent £37 on it this morning, although she was quick to point out that's less than I spend in a couple of days in the pub. As for nail technicians being well paid - nonsense. It's minimum wage work, at best.
Haven't women (mainly) always had their nails done? One of my distinctive childhood memories is the disgusting smell of my mother's nail varnish. All that's changed is, due to increased affluence, more people are paying for a professional job rather than DIY. As I know to my cost: Mrs Al spent £37 on it this morning, although she was quick to point out that's less than I spend in a couple of days in the pub. As for nail technicians being well paid - nonsense. It's minimum wage work, at best.
Depends on the outfit/area.
I think it may be rather like retail - cheap shops have hideous pay and conditions. The high end, where people spend big money, has tips, bonuses based on sales etc.
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.
It's considerably higher, I think. Why the stat is rather poignant is it flies against the animating idea of RTB, which was to spread home ownership. Combine with failure to restock and build, and the financialisation and promotion of residential property as an investment, these are amongst the factors that have led to the current situation.
I suspect many people who invested in property as a one way bet. The ‘I don’t have a pension my property is my pension’ brigade. I think they are going to learn a life lesson.
Yes, and when they are forced to sell their property to pay for their retirement they should be bottom of the housing waiting list. I can’t wait to see a ‘I don’t have a pension my property is my pension’ idiot selling the Big Issue aged 75.
Not sure Wes/Ed would be the combo though. I think it could be Ange/Ed.
She knows she needs a Westminster insider with Treasury experience at Number 11. He knows the Labour party wants a woman for leader, that he lacks a compelling back story and that the other leading contenders are more right wing than he is.
Yes, yet another attack on the countryside from Labour
Hunts are not universally liked in the countryside. In fact you'll come across farmers who absolutely detest them. And talking of pets, it's not uncommon for a family dog or cat to get ripped into pieces by them.
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:
Junior doctors have though received a 4% payrise this year compared to the average private sector payrise of 3-39.% at a time unemployment has risen to over 5% too.
Nurses only had a 3.6% payrise so I have more sympathy with them
As discussed before none of this also takes into account the additional holidays, better pensions and the incremental pay scales they get too.
Perhaps a trade off in terms of lower pension for a higher base wage as well as student debt forgiveness would be a way forward, forgiveness dependent on remaining our NHS.
They also get paid overtime , shift allowances , specialty allowances , etc. Bunch of whingers.
They should give it up and get benefits as apparently you get 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.
I presume you objected to all the performative bans of politicians from other political parties?
Hunt’s “NI trap” was actually paid for by fiscal drag on the income tax rates.
Hospitality has been massively hit by the increase in employment costs since COVID. They are trapped between already high prices and rising costs. In a London pub an £18 burger is not uncommon now.
I really need to get my Water Shop project going. The idea is to show the cost per hour of a shop that, instead of coffee or whatever, gives you WiFi and a glass of tap water. The base cost of existing as a business, as it were.
The problem is a vast array of taxes, policies and government structure is based on the idea that small commercial premises are a fountain of money. That simply dipping the cup in the infinite well has no effect.
This was so, perhaps, several generations ago.
The world has changed. The high street is barely viable. If you talk to people in retail (I’ve got family working there and a friend’s wife runs HR for an outfit that owns several of the big chains) they are fighting a retreat, at the middle to low end.
That water shop would be an Interesting concept.
Especially as a counter to the endless people on social media, usually with a red rose symbol next to their name, telling businesses concerned at the sharp rises in their costs that if they cannot afford these sudden sharp increases their businesses aren’t viable and they deserve to close.
What a business needs, from my limited experience of P&L responsibility, is consistency. No sudden sharp shocks. Labour are giving them shocks in abundance which makes it hard to plan for and absorb especially when you are reliant on the public for trade.
You may want consistency but you never get it. In new management speak it's being agile or being able to pivot. And you have plan for it. (Or pay some very expensive people to lobby for you.)
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.
It's considerably higher, I think. Why the stat is rather poignant is it flies against the animating idea of RTB, which was to spread home ownership. Combine with failure to restock and build, and the financialisation and promotion of residential property as an investment, these are amongst the factors that have led to the current situation.
I suspect many people who invested in property as a one way bet. The ‘I don’t have a pension my property is my pension’ brigade. I think they are going to learn a life lesson.
Yes, and when they are forced to sell their property to pay for their retirement they should be bottom of the housing waiting list. I can’t wait to see a ‘I don’t have a pension my property is my pension’ idiot selling the Big Issue aged 75.
When government policy for a generation has been to
- suppress house building - encourage a growing population by whatever means - suppress other kinds of wealth creation via taxation.
What do you expect? Buy a house, and you get free accommodation after 20 years plus a guaranteed return.
It’s the discovery, by the people who assiduously bred and trained face eating leopards that they have a sufficiency of face eating leopards, that amuses me.
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.
I presume you objected to all the performative bans of politicians from other political parties?
Hunt’s “NI trap” was actually paid for by fiscal drag on the income tax rates.
Hospitality has been massively hit by the increase in employment costs since COVID. They are trapped between already high prices and rising costs. In a London pub an £18 burger is not uncommon now.
I really need to get my Water Shop project going. The idea is to show the cost per hour of a shop that, instead of coffee or whatever, gives you WiFi and a glass of tap water. The base cost of existing as a business, as it were.
The problem is a vast array of taxes, policies and government structure is based on the idea that small commercial premises are a fountain of money. That simply dipping the cup in the infinite well has no effect.
This was so, perhaps, several generations ago.
The world has changed. The high street is barely viable. If you talk to people in retail (I’ve got family working there and a friend’s wife runs HR for an outfit that owns several of the big chains) they are fighting a retreat, at the middle to low end.
That water shop would be an Interesting concept.
Especially as a counter to the endless people on social media, usually with a red rose symbol next to their name, telling businesses concerned at the sharp rises in their costs that if they cannot afford these sudden sharp increases their businesses aren’t viable and they deserve to close.
What a business needs, from my limited experience of P&L responsibility, is consistency. No sudden sharp shocks. Labour are giving them shocks in abundance which makes it hard to plan for and absorb especially when you are reliant on the public for trade.
You may want consistency but you never get it. In new management speak it's being agile or being able to pivot. And you have plan for it. (Or pay some very expensive people to lobby for you.)
Or go into organised crime.
The next fun will be the realisation that the ludicrous valuation on some commercial premises is based on the extremely high rents that certain “businesses” pay the landlord. Aka money laundering to the boss.
Haven't women (mainly) always had their nails done? One of my distinctive childhood memories is the disgusting smell of my mother's nail varnish. All that's changed is, due to increased affluence, more people are paying for a professional job rather than DIY. As I know to my cost: Mrs Al spent £37 on it this morning, although she was quick to point out that's less than I spend in a couple of days in the pub. As for nail technicians being well paid - nonsense. It's minimum wage work, at best.
It’s higher now too and the holidays are great. 33 plus 8 by year 10. They will also, as a band three, have had two additional increases going up through the scales to the top of the band.
There is also the opportunity, if the are motivated, to upskill and move up through the bands into other roles.
No such opportunity exists for people doing nails.
Speaking of which, you know Windows 11 is probably uploading your files and even everything you copy and paste? They say it is for backups, though, so that's all right. Not to mention your phone (and therefore phone company) faithfully records where you are at any given moment (and how fast you were driving!). So's your new car.
So it stands to reason we need proper phone surveillance. How else are we to catch the PA or JSO terrorists planning to massacre cinema-goers or stand in the road with placards? Identify Reform supporters, or Greens or ScotNats?
Oh yes, and something something keep children safe.
And a good thing, too. Anyone who lives in the countryside knows that the hunts have been taking the p*** ever since the original ban was passed into law.
In the words of the Labour manifesto 'it is being used as a smokescreen for the hunting of wild animals' and in fairness this is true. There have been so many examples. Only the other week hunt saboteurs recorded exactly this from a drone - clear hunting of a fox.
The hunts only have themselves to blame for this. It is a shame because a British tradition could have been kept if it had adapted, but they seem incapable of doing so and keeping to the law.
The original ban was done out of spite too and has made it difficult to keep fox numbers down and protect sheep and livestock and pet rabbits etc
They should do zoning for fox hunting. Focus on urban areas.
Plenty of potential demand for hunts here in the South East London suburbs. It seems there’s a fox in every back garden, and another rifling through every food caddy that’s not been tightly clipped shut.
The height of the walls and fences might be a challenge for the horses though.
In the words of the Labour manifesto 'it is being used as a smokescreen for the hunting of wild animals' and in fairness this is true. There have been so many examples. Only the other week hunt saboteurs recorded exactly this from a drone - clear hunting of a fox.
The hunts only have themselves to blame for this. It is a shame because a British tradition could have been kept if it had adapted, but they seem incapable of doing so and keeping to the law.
Those wild animals which are going to be killed one way or another.
According to AI, there have been 228 convictions for hunting with dogs since the ban came into force in 2004. 228 convictions in 20 years is a miniscule figure. This is a malicious, despicable ban from an entirely rotten Government.
According to AI, there have been 228 convictions for hunting with dogs since the ban came into force in 2004. 228 convictions in 20 years is a miniscule figure. This is a malicious, despicable ban from an entirely rotten Government.
Because in the middle of the countryside with the hunts’ heavies all around, offences are extremely difficult to evidence and prove. That there have been that many shows how the hunts have been having a laugh at the expense of the law.
According to AI, there have been 228 convictions for hunting with dogs since the ban came into force in 2004. 228 convictions in 20 years is a miniscule figure. This is a malicious, despicable ban from an entirely rotten Government.
Because in the middle of the countryside with the hunts’ heavies all around, offences are extremely difficult to evidence and prove.
Bollocks. There is a far larger army of equally unsavoury hunt saboteurs who are as determined as trans activists to use the law to eliminate country sports. If there were more offences, we'd know about it.
In the words of the Labour manifesto 'it is being used as a smokescreen for the hunting of wild animals' and in fairness this is true. There have been so many examples. Only the other week hunt saboteurs recorded exactly this from a drone - clear hunting of a fox.
The hunts only have themselves to blame for this. It is a shame because a British tradition could have been kept if it had adapted, but they seem incapable of doing so and keeping to the law.
The original ban was done out of spite too and has made it difficult to keep fox numbers down and protect sheep and livestock and pet rabbits etc
They should do zoning for fox hunting. Focus on urban areas.
Plenty of potential demand for hunts here in the South East London suburbs. It seems there’s a fox in every back garden, and another rifling through every food caddy that’s not been tightly clipped shut.
The height of the walls and fences might be a challenge for the horses though.
That's part of the fun. Steeplechasing and all that. Apparently. As for any pet pussycats they come across ...
Yes, yet another attack on the countryside from Labour
Hunts are not universally liked in the countryside. In fact you'll come across farmers who absolutely detest them. And talking of pets, it's not uncommon for a family dog or cat to get ripped into pieces by them.
Which pets rip family dogs or cats into pieces?
#pedanticbetting.com
(Seriously, though, this is just more red meat for the nutters on Labour's left wing. 'We may be stripping people of disability benefits and kept a SEND denier* as chief of the DfE, but we're banning hunting! Yay!'
Hunting is basically an irrelevance, which is why Theresa May was a fool to talk about it the other way.)
*A reference to the latest inanities from Susan Acland-Hood.
Haven't women (mainly) always had their nails done? One of my distinctive childhood memories is the disgusting smell of my mother's nail varnish. All that's changed is, due to increased affluence, more people are paying for a professional job rather than DIY. As I know to my cost: Mrs Al spent £37 on it this morning, although she was quick to point out that's less than I spend in a couple of days in the pub. As for nail technicians being well paid - nonsense. It's minimum wage work, at best.
It’s higher now too and the holidays are great. 33 plus 8 by year 10. They will also, as a band three, have had two additional increases going up through the scales to the top of the band.
There is also the opportunity, if the are motivated, to upskill and move up through the bands into other roles.
No such opportunity exists for people doing nails.
Smuggling, people-trafficking, dope-dealing, money-laundering, gun-running... Opportunities abound for those willing to seize them.
In the words of the Labour manifesto 'it is being used as a smokescreen for the hunting of wild animals' and in fairness this is true. There have been so many examples. Only the other week hunt saboteurs recorded exactly this from a drone - clear hunting of a fox.
The hunts only have themselves to blame for this. It is a shame because a British tradition could have been kept if it had adapted, but they seem incapable of doing so and keeping to the law.
The original ban was done out of spite too and has made it difficult to keep fox numbers down and protect sheep and livestock and pet rabbits etc
They should do zoning for fox hunting. Focus on urban areas.
Plenty of potential demand for hunts here in the South East London suburbs. It seems there’s a fox in every back garden, and another rifling through every food caddy that’s not been tightly clipped shut.
The height of the walls and fences might be a challenge for the horses though.
If only asylum seekers could be encouraged to consume foxes.
Though then there would be the inevitable 'save ar proud British foxes' campaign from the fashy nutters.
In the words of the Labour manifesto 'it is being used as a smokescreen for the hunting of wild animals' and in fairness this is true. There have been so many examples. Only the other week hunt saboteurs recorded exactly this from a drone - clear hunting of a fox.
The hunts only have themselves to blame for this. It is a shame because a British tradition could have been kept if it had adapted, but they seem incapable of doing so and keeping to the law.
Those wild animals which are going to be killed one way or another.
It is curious though that drone footage of a fox being hunted by the fancy dress outfit brings such bewailing from leftists when there's no shortage of YouTube videos of people shooting foxes.
According to AI, there have been 228 convictions for hunting with dogs since the ban came into force in 2004. 228 convictions in 20 years is a miniscule figure. This is a malicious, despicable ban from an entirely rotten Government.
Because in the middle of the countryside with the hunts’ heavies all around, offences are extremely difficult to evidence and prove.
Bollocks. There is a far larger army of equally unsavoury hunt saboteurs who are as determined as trans activists to use the law to eliminate country sports. If there were more offences, we'd know about it.
Are trans activists using the law to eliminate country sports? Is there nothing they won't stoop to?
It comes as a bit of a shock to me that you're pro hunting.
I don't like the bookmaker's way of wording the bet "Who Will Replace Rachel Reeves As The Next Chancellor of The Exchequer". Is "Next" necessary? It seems to alter the meaning to me, as if Reeves is the next chancellor rather than the incumbent
In the words of the Labour manifesto 'it is being used as a smokescreen for the hunting of wild animals' and in fairness this is true. There have been so many examples. Only the other week hunt saboteurs recorded exactly this from a drone - clear hunting of a fox.
The hunts only have themselves to blame for this. It is a shame because a British tradition could have been kept if it had adapted, but they seem incapable of doing so and keeping to the law.
Those wild animals which are going to be killed one way or another.
It is curious though that drone footage of a fox being hunted by the fancy dress outfit brings such bewailing from leftists when there's no shortage of YouTube videos of people shooting foxes.
Ineffectual governments will often poke their opponents in the eye.
I think this is completely trivial, just a piece of nastiness.
Perhaps but an equally cynical motive might be to keep backbenchers onside since they can't deliver the new Jerusalem in this parliament. If there's no money left, do something that's free.
Most likely about party management. It's an emotive issue for some.
I had thought that, after the family farm tax, Labour would have been reluctant to trigger another row with the rural community. But, actually, on reflection, that's the whole point of it. Not much political pain in having a row with them.
In the words of the Labour manifesto 'it is being used as a smokescreen for the hunting of wild animals' and in fairness this is true. There have been so many examples. Only the other week hunt saboteurs recorded exactly this from a drone - clear hunting of a fox.
The hunts only have themselves to blame for this. It is a shame because a British tradition could have been kept if it had adapted, but they seem incapable of doing so and keeping to the law.
The original ban was done out of spite too and has made it difficult to keep fox numbers down and protect sheep and livestock and pet rabbits etc
They should do zoning for fox hunting. Focus on urban areas.
Plenty of potential demand for hunts here in the South East London suburbs. It seems there’s a fox in every back garden, and another rifling through every food caddy that’s not been tightly clipped shut.
The height of the walls and fences might be a challenge for the horses though.
We have to feed ours every night. It's a sort of protection racket they run. If you don't you end up having to pick up their crap in the back garden every morning.
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.
It's considerably higher, I think. Why the stat is rather poignant is it flies against the animating idea of RTB, which was to spread home ownership. Combine with failure to restock and build, and the financialisation and promotion of residential property as an investment, these are amongst the factors that have led to the current situation.
I suspect many people who invested in property as a one way bet. The ‘I don’t have a pension my property is my pension’ brigade. I think they are going to learn a life lesson.
Yes, and when they are forced to sell their property to pay for their retirement they should be bottom of the housing waiting list. I can’t wait to see a ‘I don’t have a pension my property is my pension’ idiot selling the Big Issue aged 75.
When government policy for a generation has been to
- suppress house building - encourage a growing population by whatever means - suppress other kinds of wealth creation via taxation.
What do you expect? Buy a house, and you get free accommodation after 20 years plus a guaranteed return.
It’s the discovery, by the people who assiduously bred and trained face eating leopards that they have a sufficiency of face eating leopards, that amuses me.
The elasticity of demand for housing scuppers any attempt to fix the problem with building. We need to make them hot potatoes - only hold onto them when strictly necessary for actually living in. After that, building more will suddenly become effective.
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.
Time to cut their cloth and not think they are better than they actually are. Sound like entitled twats.
Nice to see seasonal cheer being spread.
It's not time to be visted by three ghosts yet.
Hey you're closing in on 100k. No pressure but it needs to be an absolute stonker, combining expertise, insight, wisdom, originality and humour, all in one concise, deftly written package. I predict the 'likes' record will fall if you deliver.
Comments
The two Britains of the 21st century.
(Nothing wrong on a personal level with spending your money how you see fit within the law. But my local.ahopping parade supports a couple of nail bars, which rather points to something being off somewhere in the big picture.)
And yet. Why do we treat the nail technician better than the nurse?
If we were paying for the nurse directly, would we both treat each other better?
All the polling says don't want that, but nobody values 'free'. How do we solve this?
You obvuously shouldn't strike for maximum impact - the maximum impact would be to do it by surprise, during covid, and not provide minimum service for safety.
Nurses only had a 3.6% payrise so I have more sympathy with them
While the have number of documents, photos and video remain either redacted or withheld completely, there's no way knowing that.
That's why it probably needs to be Reform AND the Tories. This stuff isn't going to be easy to do and there will be massive pushback. You can't really do it with the support of 35% of the electorate. Doing it on 58% is more achievable.
They are on a conveyor belt to six-figure salaries, plus wheelbarrows of cash from private work on the side. They're not exactly queuing at the food bank.
*Or in some cases, had it drilled into them from the age of 5 that any other degree option would bring disgrace on the family.
Hunt’s “NI trap” was actually paid for by fiscal drag on the income tax rates.
Hospitality has been massively hit by the increase in employment costs since COVID. They are trapped between already high prices and rising costs. In a London pub an £18 burger is not uncommon now.
I really need to get my Water Shop project going. The idea is to show the cost per hour of a shop that, instead of coffee or whatever, gives you WiFi and a glass of tap water. The base cost of existing as a business, as it were.
The problem is a vast array of taxes, policies and government structure is based on the idea that small commercial premises are a fountain of money. That simply dipping the cup in the infinite well has no effect.
This was so, perhaps, several generations ago.
The world has changed. The high street is barely viable. If you talk to people in retail (I’ve got family working there and a friend’s wife runs HR for an outfit that owns several of the big chains) they are fighting a retreat, at the middle to low end.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g9y20j259o
It’s the changing face of the beauty industry.
I don’t see the problem and if it keeps a presence on the high street and rents and taxes coming in then all well and good.
70-100k of them, as reported by the Sunday Times.
100,000 Vietnamese manicurists
This figure is based on a pretty routine journalistic practice that should always be avoided at all costs. In the absence of other sources, The Sunday Times quoted estimates from undisclosed private organisations.
Without providing their names, it is difficult for us to ask the sources for confirmation of their numbers. Even if we did, those manufacturers are ill-positioned to know the staffing levels of the companies they supply to – much less the nationalities of those staff.
29,000 Vietnamese migrants
Given that the UK census is a far more robust source of data, their claim "census data states that only 29,000 Vietnamese-born migrants officially live in the UK" seems a much better starting point. From there we might work out the number of Vietnamese immigrants that are likely to be unaccounted for – and then to work out the likely proportion of them that are manicurists.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/reality-check/2013/aug/21/71000-vietnamese-manicurists-hidden-in-the-uk
https://www.bmj.com/careers/article/the-bmj-s-guide-to-gp-partnerships
Consultant surgeons earn from £77,913 to £105,042 on average but one surgeon even reported earnings as high as £740,000 a year
https://universitycompare.com/guides/career/surgeon
Perhaps a trade off in terms of lower pension for a higher base wage as well as student debt forgiveness would be a way forward, forgiveness dependent on remaining our NHS.
The govt has clearly shown they are prepared to make a big offer to restore junior doctors' pay, and been more generous than for other health professions.
I can accept the need for a haircut from time to time though I can't for the life of me understand why we need quite so many people fulfilling that function. (I opted out of that particular market six years ago.)
When they are allowed to be. I've heard complaints from business owners that they cannot easily open new accounts for the same company with the same bank.
About 8 treatments needed.
https://youtube.com/shorts/2uU6CMD169I?si=dbQw7rF4UICTvqHi
The measure is important as when they are demanding full restoration there is a massive gap based on what they claim using CPI and Full fact using HCI.
Also the starting point was cherry picked.
Labour should have called them out on both in opposition. They made a rod for their own back.
Merry Xmas malc.
I think this is completely trivial, just a piece of nastiness.
Though I doubt many nail technicians are on £60k+ I don't suppose they get sworn at quite as much (but then, nor do they drug non-compliant customers).
Round here there is a strong suspicion that Nail Bars and Turkish Barbers are mostly money laundering rather than successful businesses, so maybe the comparison depends on where you are.
The hunts only have themselves to blame for this. It is a shame because a British tradition could have been kept if it had adapted, but they seem incapable of doing so and keeping to the law.
As for nail technicians being well paid - nonsense. It's minimum wage work, at best.
Especially as a counter to the endless people on social media, usually with a red rose symbol next to their name, telling businesses concerned at the sharp rises in their costs that if they cannot afford these sudden sharp increases their businesses aren’t viable and they deserve to close.
What a business needs, from my limited experience of P&L responsibility, is consistency. No sudden sharp shocks. Labour are giving them shocks in abundance which makes it hard to plan for and absorb especially when you are reliant on the public for trade.
There's no sensible reason why he should be next chancellor in any circumstances - many though why not. Also any plausible path involves him propping up someone like Phillipson.
As is the case with Burnham betting the possible path matters.
https://www.jobs.nhs.uk/candidate/jobadvert/C9371-23-1182
Better pension, though.
I think it may be rather like retail - cheap shops have hideous pay and conditions. The high end, where people spend big money, has tips, bonuses based on sales etc.
Not sure Wes/Ed would be the combo though.
I think it could be Ange/Ed.
She knows she needs a Westminster insider with Treasury experience at Number 11. He knows the Labour party wants a woman for leader, that he lacks a compelling back story and that the other leading contenders are more right wing than he is.
- suppress house building
- encourage a growing population by whatever means
- suppress other kinds of wealth creation via taxation.
What do you expect? Buy a house, and you get free accommodation after 20 years plus a guaranteed return.
It’s the discovery, by the people who assiduously bred and trained face eating leopards that they have a sufficiency of face eating leopards, that amuses me.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/OMYjfDgWXxQ (90 secs)
Centrist, my arse
The next fun will be the realisation that the ludicrous valuation on some commercial premises is based on the extremely high rents that certain “businesses” pay the landlord. Aka money laundering to the boss.
There is also the opportunity, if the are motivated, to upskill and move up through the bands into other roles.
No such opportunity exists for people doing nails.
So it stands to reason we need proper phone surveillance. How else are we to catch the PA or JSO terrorists planning to massacre cinema-goers or stand in the road with placards? Identify Reform supporters, or Greens or ScotNats?
Oh yes, and something something keep children safe.
Plenty of potential demand for hunts here in the South East London suburbs. It seems there’s a fox in every back garden, and another rifling through every food caddy that’s not been tightly clipped shut.
The height of the walls and fences might be a challenge for the horses though.
#pedanticbetting.com
(Seriously, though, this is just more red meat for the nutters on Labour's left wing. 'We may be stripping people of disability benefits and kept a SEND denier* as chief of the DfE, but we're banning hunting! Yay!'
Hunting is basically an irrelevance, which is why Theresa May was a fool to talk about it the other way.)
*A reference to the latest inanities from Susan Acland-Hood.
Though then there would be the inevitable 'save ar proud British foxes' campaign from the fashy nutters.
Here's one from a big game hunter in Chelsea:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhiLEiQmso8
He did at least use a gun rather a club as brave Jolyon Maugham did.
It comes as a bit of a shock to me that you're pro hunting.
I don't like the bookmaker's way of wording the bet "Who Will Replace Rachel Reeves As The Next Chancellor of The Exchequer". Is "Next" necessary? It seems to alter the meaning to me, as if Reeves is the next chancellor rather than the incumbent
*In fairness I don't know what happened in the Maugham case, whether the fox went for him etc.
I had thought that, after the family farm tax, Labour would have been reluctant to trigger another row with the rural community. But, actually, on reflection, that's the whole point of it. Not much political pain in having a row with them.
(If they want to do something serious about animal welfare there are many other options: https://theweek.com/58447/halal-meat-what-does-it-involve-and-is-it-cruel-to-animals)
https://x.com/osinttechnical/status/2002711161574428974
The Americans have seized a shadow fleet tanker near Venezuela yesterday too.
Not a good weekend for the Russians.