RefUK 26%(+1), CON 19%(nc), LAB 17%(-3), LDEM 16%(+1), GRN 15%(nc)
Note that Labour on 17% matches their lowest (previously reached in October), but this is the first time since the election we've had them behind the Tories (now that it necessarily means much when they are both well behind Reform).
If you take Keir Starmer's analysis of the political situation at face value, doesn't he have a duty to step down instead of squatting in Downing Street as the most unpopular PM in polling history while waiting for Reform to "tear this country apart"?
Kemi Badenoch for next PM at 5%, as in the header is, IMO, underpriced.
I like to hear at least one story about a possible PM that is slightly endearing. Like Blair was in. a band. Starmer was a human rights lawyer. Thatcher in private was very thoughtful and did hospital visiting at Christmas. Cameron had a disabled child and was an excellent father. Brown.....there were lots of him being a special human being. Ed Davey the same......
With Badenoch l've heard nothing and neither do I expect to.
There was that heartwarming story about her getting someone kicked out of school for cheating, wasn't there?
➖Destroy NATO ➖Create a EU-US trade war ➖Compel the US to militarily rule a reluctant Greenlandic population ➖Encourage a Russian attack on the Baltics ➖Destroy a range of US commercial interests: from the lock-out of (all/some) US defence, energy and tech companies as well as investors from EU markets ➖Create a political backlash in the US probably affecting the midterms
Fees like a long list of bad things. Are the supposed benefits really so great that they outweigh all those downsides?
I think the EU and UK need to make clear, privately, the consequences of annexing Greenland, for example:
- Closing all US bases on European soil. This would lose the US more in terms of military projection than it would gain from getting Greenland where they have large bases.
- The end of NATO and it's replacement with a ETO. Turkey is welcome to remain a part of the new organisation.
- Nuclear umbrella covers all of ETO. Or at least the UK and EU.
As the US has says, it's obvious the defending Greenland militarily is likely a non starter. So focus on other consequences that are in our control.
Do you really think Poland would send the Americans home over Greenland?
Tell me you don’t know any Poles without telling me you don’t know any Poles.
The Poles know all about the consequences of appeasement and a foreign power occupying them.
They also have quite strong feelings about how much a security guarantee from Britain and France is worth.
Which is why they've been spending so much on their own armed forces, and buying kit from South Korea, with domestic production as part of the deal.
➖Destroy NATO ➖Create a EU-US trade war ➖Compel the US to militarily rule a reluctant Greenlandic population ➖Encourage a Russian attack on the Baltics ➖Destroy a range of US commercial interests: from the lock-out of (all/some) US defence, energy and tech companies as well as investors from EU markets ➖Create a political backlash in the US probably affecting the midterms
Fees like a long list of bad things. Are the supposed benefits really so great that they outweigh all those downsides?
➖Destroy NATO ➖Create a EU-US trade war ➖Compel the US to militarily rule a reluctant Greenlandic population ➖Encourage a Russian attack on the Baltics ➖Destroy a range of US commercial interests: from the lock-out of (all/some) US defence, energy and tech companies as well as investors from EU markets ➖Create a political backlash in the US probably affecting the midterms
Fees like a long list of bad things. Are the supposed benefits really so great that they outweigh all those downsides?
Banks would very quickly need to create a non US based card payment system.
We should be doing it already.
Not hard to see the world adopting a "Buy American Last" approach.
Bit harder to implement a "Buy Danish First" movement. There's only so much bacon you can eat before we all get cancer, which is a tad counter-productive. Although, buying Danish wind turbines would have the added benefit of reaally pissing off Trump...
Denmark exports all manner of stuff.
Denmark punches way above its weight in multinationals and recognisable brands. The world’s biggest shipping company Maersk, Carlsberg, Lego, Wegovy and Ozempic maker Novo Nordisk to name just a few. And Arla makes much more than bacon.
Trump did an interview and, when asked who is in charge of Venezuela, said “me”. But he clearly isn’t, and Marco Rubio and Mike Johnson are going around saying that the Venezuelan government is still there. So… is Trump delusional? Stupid? What?
No. There's a Venezuelan government, and it will do what it's told
It does start to look as though Rodriguez was behind the snatch of Maduro, for all the official denials.
That does surprise me. I knew she was amoral, clever and ruthless but I did think one thing she was above all and all the time was anti-American.
If Trump thinks she will do as he tells her however I suspect he has a surprise in his future.
They BBC did a piece on her yesterday and it was quite impressive though she seems a surprising bedfellow of Trump. A dyed-in- the -wool communist who believed the poor were being exploited and whose father was executed for his beliefs
People who rise to the top in dictatorial regimes and survive are, generally, deeply committed to
1) Personal survival 2) Personal exit strategy in case of problems 3) Personal enrichment 4) … 1342) Ideology
This has been shown, repeatedly, since the Ancient Greeks.
➖Destroy NATO ➖Create a EU-US trade war ➖Compel the US to militarily rule a reluctant Greenlandic population ➖Encourage a Russian attack on the Baltics ➖Destroy a range of US commercial interests: from the lock-out of (all/some) US defence, energy and tech companies as well as investors from EU markets ➖Create a political backlash in the US probably affecting the midterms
Fees like a long list of bad things. Are the supposed benefits really so great that they outweigh all those downsides?
Banks would very quickly need to create a non US based card payment system.
We should be doing it already.
Not hard to see the world adopting a "Buy American Last" approach.
Bit harder to implement a "Buy Danish First" movement. There's only so much bacon you can eat before we all get cancer, which is a tad counter-productive. Although, buying Danish wind turbines would have the added benefit of reaally pissing off Trump...
Denmark exports all manner of stuff.
Denmark punches way above its weight in multinationals and recognisable brands. The world’s biggest shipping company Maersk, Carlsberg, Lego, Wegovy and Ozempic maker Novo Nordisk to name just a few. And Arla makes much more than bacon.
Lego is about 14 times bigger than Warhammer. It's huge.
Trump did an interview and, when asked who is in charge of Venezuela, said “me”. But he clearly isn’t, and Marco Rubio and Mike Johnson are going around saying that the Venezuelan government is still there. So… is Trump delusional? Stupid? What?
No. There's a Venezuelan government, and it will do what it's told
It does start to look as though Rodriguez was behind the snatch of Maduro, for all the official denials.
That does surprise me. I knew she was amoral, clever and ruthless but I did think one thing she was above all and all the time was anti-American.
If Trump thinks she will do as he tells her however I suspect he has a surprise in his future.
They BBC did a piece on her yesterday and it was quite impressive though she seems a surprising bedfellow of Trump. A dyed-in- the -wool communist who believed the poor were being exploited and whose father was executed for his beliefs
These are my principles.
If you don’t like them, I have others.
No
“These are my principles. If you don’t like them, I have a *range* of others. At reasonable prices.”
RefUK 26%(+1), CON 19%(nc), LAB 17%(-3), LDEM 16%(+1), GRN 15%(nc)
Note that Labour on 17% matches their lowest (previously reached in October), but this is the first time since the election we've had them behind the Tories (now that it necessarily means much when they are both well behind Reform).
If you take Keir Starmer's analysis of the political situation at face value, doesn't he have a duty to step down instead of squatting in Downing Street as the most unpopular PM in polling history while waiting for Reform to "tear this country apart"?
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
A more gradual rise might be easier to stomach, but I dont see why we should continue to have low rates for hospitality.
£50k extra tax bill could be an extra £2/main meal if you are open 250 days a year and have 100 meals served each day. Maybe my assumptions are way off but doesn't seem impossible to swallow...
Why shouldn’t we have low rates.
We give all sorts of incentives, subsidies, tax reliefs, for various industries. Why not hospitality which disproportionately employs a larger number of younger people.
Because we can't afford to give everyone subsidies and tax reliefs. We should reserve them for when there is an actual national interest. Helping everyone have cheaper meals out is not a priority.
Trump did an interview and, when asked who is in charge of Venezuela, said “me”. But he clearly isn’t, and Marco Rubio and Mike Johnson are going around saying that the Venezuelan government is still there. So… is Trump delusional? Stupid? What?
No. There's a Venezuelan government, and it will do what it's told
It does start to look as though Rodriguez was behind the snatch of Maduro, for all the official denials.
That does surprise me. I knew she was amoral, clever and ruthless but I did think one thing she was above all and all the time was anti-American.
If Trump thinks she will do as he tells her however I suspect he has a surprise in his future.
They BBC did a piece on her yesterday and it was quite impressive though she seems a surprising bedfellow of Trump. A dyed-in- the -wool communist who believed the poor were being exploited and whose father was executed for his beliefs
People who rise to the top in dictatorial regimes and survive are, generally, deeply committed to
1) Personal survival 2) Personal exit strategy in case of problems 3) Personal enrichment 4) … 1342) Ideology
This has been shown, repeatedly, since the Ancient Greeks.
RefUK 26%(+1), CON 19%(nc), LAB 17%(-3), LDEM 16%(+1), GRN 15%(nc)
Note that Labour on 17% matches their lowest (previously reached in October), but this is the first time since the election we've had them behind the Tories (now that it necessarily means much when they are both well behind Reform).
If you take Keir Starmer's analysis of the political situation at face value, doesn't he have a duty to step down instead of squatting in Downing Street as the most unpopular PM in polling history while waiting for Reform to "tear this country apart"?
Could we have a 'Trolls Corner'?
Good morning
You could be first then !!!!
Tch, tch Mr G. Not in a good mood this morning?
And Good Morning to you all.
Good morning
Yes I am fine, but when a poster suggest another poster is a troll because they do not like the post then it's fair to call it out
The success of PB is attracting political views from across politics and debating, not closing down debate
The best way for the US to acquire Greenland would surely be to offer to make all of its inhabitants into multi-millionaires and then demand that Denmark allows a referendum on joining the US. After all, who can argue against the principle of self-determination? At $10,000,000 per person, that'd cost around $500 billion, or about 2% of US GDP.
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
A more gradual rise might be easier to stomach, but I dont see why we should continue to have low rates for hospitality.
£50k extra tax bill could be an extra £2/main meal if you are open 250 days a year and have 100 meals served each day. Maybe my assumptions are way off but doesn't seem impossible to swallow...
Because price electricity of demand is really high for restaurants and pubs, putting £2 on each main course and you only sell perhaps 70 instead of 100 per day.
I could believe that about if a single restaurant did it but this affects the whole sector no?
If all restaurants increase prices by £2/meal (probably less than 5% of total cost), I can't see how it would have such a big change.
Because the primary decision people are making isn’t between different pubs/restaurants, it’s whether to eat out or stay in and cook.
Hospitality and retail are dying on their arse, and business rates is a large part of the reason why.
He charges £35 for fish and chips, you think his sales will go down by 30% if he makes it £37 and the rest of the industry also raises their prices? Implausible.
If people have a fixed budget for eating out, then a small increase in costs should correspond to a small decrease in eating out.
Perhaps not such a big effect at the £35 main course level, but at the £15-20 level absolutely.
The named chefs with ‘destination’ restaurants will most likely survive, in the same way as Jeremy Clarkson’s farm and pub will likely survive. That doesn’t mean that thousands of others are not in serious trouble though, and they welcome the more famous among themselves highlighting the issues.
I guess it will all be very clear come April. If we see swathes of restaurants closing by the Summer I will accept I was wrong.
But I think far more likely is prices go up a bit, a small number close and life goes on.
➖Destroy NATO ➖Create a EU-US trade war ➖Compel the US to militarily rule a reluctant Greenlandic population ➖Encourage a Russian attack on the Baltics ➖Destroy a range of US commercial interests: from the lock-out of (all/some) US defence, energy and tech companies as well as investors from EU markets ➖Create a political backlash in the US probably affecting the midterms
Fees like a long list of bad things. Are the supposed benefits really so great that they outweigh all those downsides?
I think the EU and UK need to make clear, privately, the consequences of annexing Greenland, for example:
- Closing all US bases on European soil. This would lose the US more in terms of military projection than it would gain from getting Greenland where they have large bases.
- The end of NATO and it's replacement with a ETO. Turkey is welcome to remain a part of the new organisation.
- Nuclear umbrella covers all of ETO. Or at least the UK and EU.
As the US has says, it's obvious the defending Greenland militarily is likely a non starter. So focus on other consequences that are in our control.
Do you really think Poland would send the Americans home over Greenland?
Do you really think the US would help to defend Poland?
At a certain point you need to recognise that having US troops in Europe is a bigger threat than it is a benefit. The point at which the US takes European territory by force is a good time to enforce that.
In any case, we don't need to close every base to hurt the US.
As I keep repeating. Cut off US access to the data from Fylingdales. It is still a key part of their ballistic missile early warning system along with Thule and Clear, but is an RAF station. It would seem particularly apt given Thule is in Greenland.
Don't be silly. They'd build another and lock us out of all their systems.
Trump did an interview and, when asked who is in charge of Venezuela, said “me”. But he clearly isn’t, and Marco Rubio and Mike Johnson are going around saying that the Venezuelan government is still there. So… is Trump delusional? Stupid? What?
No. There's a Venezuelan government, and it will do what it's told
It does start to look as though Rodriguez was behind the snatch of Maduro, for all the official denials.
That does surprise me. I knew she was amoral, clever and ruthless but I did think one thing she was above all and all the time was anti-American.
If Trump thinks she will do as he tells her however I suspect he has a surprise in his future.
They BBC did a piece on her yesterday and it was quite impressive though she seems a surprising bedfellow of Trump. A dyed-in- the -wool communist who believed the poor were being exploited and whose father was executed for his beliefs
People who rise to the top in dictatorial regimes and survive are, generally, deeply committed to
1) Personal survival 2) Personal exit strategy in case of problems 3) Personal enrichment 4) … 1342) Ideology
This has been shown, repeatedly, since the Ancient Greeks.
Cynic
I read history.
All this has happened before. And will happen again.
I find it hard to engage with speculation about elections in 2029 when the start of 2026 presents an egregious crisis which threatens then entire western order. Who knows what the world will look like in 2029?
The best way for the US to acquire Greenland would surely be to offer to make all of its inhabitants into multi-millionaires and then demand that Denmark allows a referendum on joining the US. After all, who can argue against the principle of self-determination? At $10,000,000 per person, that'd cost around $500 billion, or about 2% of US GDP.
Would you trust Trump to give you millions once he has got what he wanted?
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
A more gradual rise might be easier to stomach, but I dont see why we should continue to have low rates for hospitality.
£50k extra tax bill could be an extra £2/main meal if you are open 250 days a year and have 100 meals served each day. Maybe my assumptions are way off but doesn't seem impossible to swallow...
Because price electricity of demand is really high for restaurants and pubs, putting £2 on each main course and you only sell perhaps 70 instead of 100 per day.
I could believe that about if a single restaurant did it but this affects the whole sector no?
If all restaurants increase prices by £2/meal (probably less than 5% of total cost), I can't see how it would have such a big change.
Because the primary decision people are making isn’t between different pubs/restaurants, it’s whether to eat out or stay in and cook.
Hospitality and retail are dying on their arse, and business rates is a large part of the reason why.
He charges £35 for fish and chips, you think his sales will go down by 30% if he makes it £37 and the rest of the industry also raises their prices? Implausible.
If people have a fixed budget for eating out, then a small increase in costs should correspond to a small decrease in eating out.
Perhaps not such a big effect at the £35 main course level, but at the £15-20 level absolutely.
The named chefs with ‘destination’ restaurants will most likely survive, in the same way as Jeremy Clarkson’s farm and pub will likely survive. That doesn’t mean that thousands of others are not in serious trouble though, and they welcome the more famous among themselves highlighting the issues.
I guess it will all be very clear come April. If we see swathes of restaurants closing by the Summer I will accept I was wrong.
But I think far more likely is prices go up a bit, a small number close and life goes on.
There is only so much the public will and can pay for eating out and it is astonishing that even a meal for 2 adults and 3 children easily exceeds £100
Talking to our family they and their friends have dramatically cut back eating out
The best way for the US to acquire Greenland would surely be to offer to make all of its inhabitants into multi-millionaires and then demand that Denmark allows a referendum on joining the US. After all, who can argue against the principle of self-determination? At $10,000,000 per person, that'd cost around $500 billion, or about 2% of US GDP.
You also offer Denmark (say) 20% of all mineral/hydrocarbon value extracted for the first (say) 25 years. That would be a huge win for Denmark if they don't have to fund the development costs. Turn them into the EU's Qatar.
How does Kemi (5% chance and underpriced) become next PM:
1) Starmer remains to fight election 2) Tories win at least one more seat than Reform, giving them priority 3) Tory + Reform win enough to prevent any other other government (300-310 seats? Or mathematically 325)
Minimum requirements: The Tories would need at least about 160 seats. Which is remarkably few. The centre left would have to fail in tactical voting, and split their vote in ways adverse to the LLG interest. The right of centre vote keeps at the total level of high 40s%, as now.
I find it hard to engage with speculation about elections in 2029 when the start of 2026 presents an egregious crisis which threatens then entire western order. Who knows what the world will look like in 2029?
I would suggest even earlier - we are living in dangerous and worrying times with no let up in sight and untold adverse consequences
The best way for the US to acquire Greenland would surely be to offer to make all of its inhabitants into multi-millionaires and then demand that Denmark allows a referendum on joining the US. After all, who can argue against the principle of self-determination? At $10,000,000 per person, that'd cost around $500 billion, or about 2% of US GDP.
You also offer Denmark (say) 20% of all mineral/hydrocarbon value extracted for the first (say) 25 years. That would be a huge win for Denmark if they don't have to fund the development costs. Turn them into the EU's Qatar.
It certainly makes a lot more sense for the US to exert its economic rather than its military might with regard to Greenland. Though as rkrkrk mentions, trust might be an issue!
Declaring a bank holiday is a cheap way for a government to court popularity as the cost falls entirely on private sector employers. I had to shell out an extra day's pay for 20 workers when Charles'n'Di got hitched in 1981. Didn't get a penny back when they divorced.
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
A more gradual rise might be easier to stomach, but I dont see why we should continue to have low rates for hospitality.
£50k extra tax bill could be an extra £2/main meal if you are open 250 days a year and have 100 meals served each day. Maybe my assumptions are way off but doesn't seem impossible to swallow...
Because price electricity of demand is really high for restaurants and pubs, putting £2 on each main course and you only sell perhaps 70 instead of 100 per day.
I could believe that about if a single restaurant did it but this affects the whole sector no?
If all restaurants increase prices by £2/meal (probably less than 5% of total cost), I can't see how it would have such a big change.
Because the primary decision people are making isn’t between different pubs/restaurants, it’s whether to eat out or stay in and cook.
Also, eating out has already become significantly more expensive over the last couple of years. It's not just eat out vs stay in and cook vs fast food, it's eat out vs some other form of entertainment
Yes, inflation in the sector has already been high in the past few years, now we have increasing minimum wage and business rates that only add to the problem. The NI changes last year made a big difference to businesses operating on unskilled labour.
Pubs in general are having a hard time. £5-7 a pint is outside many people's budget and if they are just using it to have a chinwag with friends they may take that elsewhere. Cask/craft enthusiasts like me will continue to budget for it, although some probably haven't stopped the mail order subscriptions they started during Covid. Young people are just not drinking like we used to in our 20s and 30s and for others maybe one pub visit a week rather than 2 or 3. I drink with a group of fairly well-heeled pensioners (I suspect they're all better off than me) but it's Wetherspoons every evening for them, with the occasional meal out instead
Yes. The 14p a pint we paid in London when I started drinking (about 1972) now equates with inflation to £1.67. Does the story need any further explanation when drinking other than in pubs can be done at a realistic price?
When I first started doing bar work, in 1989, as the British Legion in Shirley it was 50p a pint of lager. Carling Black label.
➖Destroy NATO ➖Create a EU-US trade war ➖Compel the US to militarily rule a reluctant Greenlandic population ➖Encourage a Russian attack on the Baltics ➖Destroy a range of US commercial interests: from the lock-out of (all/some) US defence, energy and tech companies as well as investors from EU markets ➖Create a political backlash in the US probably affecting the midterms
Fees like a long list of bad things. Are the supposed benefits really so great that they outweigh all those downsides?
I think the EU and UK need to make clear, privately, the consequences of annexing Greenland, for example:
- Closing all US bases on European soil. This would lose the US more in terms of military projection than it would gain from getting Greenland where they have large bases.
- The end of NATO and it's replacement with a ETO. Turkey is welcome to remain a part of the new organisation.
- Nuclear umbrella covers all of ETO. Or at least the UK and EU.
As the US has says, it's obvious the defending Greenland militarily is likely a non starter. So focus on other consequences that are in our control.
Do you really think Poland would send the Americans home over Greenland?
Do you really think the US would help to defend Poland?
At a certain point you need to recognise that having US troops in Europe is a bigger threat than it is a benefit. The point at which the US takes European territory by force is a good time to enforce that.
In any case, we don't need to close every base to hurt the US.
As I keep repeating. Cut off US access to the data from Fylingdales. It is still a key part of their ballistic missile early warning system along with Thule and Clear, but is an RAF station. It would seem particularly apt given Thule is in Greenland.
Don't be silly. They'd build another and lock us out of all their systems.
It’s a matter of position. Which is why Fylingdales is at Fylingdales.
How does Kemi (5% chance and underpriced) become next PM:
1) Starmer remains to fight election 2) Tories win at least one more seat than Reform, giving them priority 3) Tory + Reform win enough to prevent any other other government (300-310 seats? Or mathematically 325)
Minimum requirements: The Tories would need at least about 160 seats. Which is remarkably few. The centre left would have to fail in tactical voting, and split their vote in ways adverse to the LLG interest. The right of centre vote keeps at the total level of high 40s%, as now.
The other way is that Farage is no longer on the Reform scene by the next election (health/death/run off to America for the money) and Tice doesn't cut it. The Tories go back into the mid thirties with Reform on single digits. The Left is woefully split between Labour/Green/LDs/Your Party/Palestinian indies.
I find it hard to engage with speculation about elections in 2029 when the start of 2026 presents an egregious crisis which threatens then entire western order. Who knows what the world will look like in 2029?
Indeed. Simon Jenkins in the Guardian today says:
The polls sent Reform surging into a steady lead last spring. It held that position through the summer, with a high of 29% according to YouGov, and 33% according to More in Common. But pollsters now suggest that Farage’s party may have peaked – with YouGov’s December polling showing a drop in its vote share to 26%, its lowest since April. Some of this has been credited to increasing support for the Tory leader Kemi Badenoch and to the joint Lib Dem/Green vote surging to nearly 30%. It seems likely that this confusion will survive through this May’s local elections. Betting in this field is for madmen.
However this is to misunderstand what betting is. Unknowns and uncertainty is its essence. Certainty is betting's arch enemy. Foinavon's Grand National (I watched it live on TV), Botham's match, Leicester winning the Premiership, Tories by 2029 may be extinct or may run the country, NATO may cease the function by summer. This is the essence of betting and speculation. For anoraks it is one of life's delights especially as we plunge into WWIII darkness.
➖Destroy NATO ➖Create a EU-US trade war ➖Compel the US to militarily rule a reluctant Greenlandic population ➖Encourage a Russian attack on the Baltics ➖Destroy a range of US commercial interests: from the lock-out of (all/some) US defence, energy and tech companies as well as investors from EU markets ➖Create a political backlash in the US probably affecting the midterms
Fees like a long list of bad things. Are the supposed benefits really so great that they outweigh all those downsides?
I think the EU and UK need to make clear, privately, the consequences of annexing Greenland, for example:
- Closing all US bases on European soil. This would lose the US more in terms of military projection than it would gain from getting Greenland where they have large bases.
- The end of NATO and it's replacement with a ETO. Turkey is welcome to remain a part of the new organisation.
- Nuclear umbrella covers all of ETO. Or at least the UK and EU.
As the US has says, it's obvious the defending Greenland militarily is likely a non starter. So focus on other consequences that are in our control.
Do you really think Poland would send the Americans home over Greenland?
Do you really think the US would help to defend Poland?
At a certain point you need to recognise that having US troops in Europe is a bigger threat than it is a benefit. The point at which the US takes European territory by force is a good time to enforce that.
In any case, we don't need to close every base to hurt the US.
As I keep repeating. Cut off US access to the data from Fylingdales. It is still a key part of their ballistic missile early warning system along with Thule and Clear, but is an RAF station. It would seem particularly apt given Thule is in Greenland.
Don't be silly. They'd build another and lock us out of all their systems.
It’s a matter of position. Which is why Fylingdales is at Fylingdales.
The UK authorities do not even know what the Americans do at Menwith Hill- it's one of the world's most important listening posts for the NSA, and we have no control over what happens there. It is generally believed that the USAF has nuclear weapons at Lakenheath, again we only have an understanding they would not be used without our agreement. Even if the US kept some bases, the base agreements will need to be drastically tightened.
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
A more gradual rise might be easier to stomach, but I dont see why we should continue to have low rates for hospitality.
£50k extra tax bill could be an extra £2/main meal if you are open 250 days a year and have 100 meals served each day. Maybe my assumptions are way off but doesn't seem impossible to swallow...
Because price electricity of demand is really high for restaurants and pubs, putting £2 on each main course and you only sell perhaps 70 instead of 100 per day.
I could believe that about if a single restaurant did it but this affects the whole sector no?
If all restaurants increase prices by £2/meal (probably less than 5% of total cost), I can't see how it would have such a big change.
Because the primary decision people are making isn’t between different pubs/restaurants, it’s whether to eat out or stay in and cook.
Also, eating out has already become significantly more expensive over the last couple of years. It's not just eat out vs stay in and cook vs fast food, it's eat out vs some other form of entertainment
Yes, inflation in the sector has already been high in the past few years, now we have increasing minimum wage and business rates that only add to the problem. The NI changes last year made a big difference to businesses operating on unskilled labour.
Pubs in general are having a hard time. £5-7 a pint is outside many people's budget and if they are just using it to have a chinwag with friends they may take that elsewhere. Cask/craft enthusiasts like me will continue to budget for it, although some probably haven't stopped the mail order subscriptions they started during Covid. Young people are just not drinking like we used to in our 20s and 30s and for others maybe one pub visit a week rather than 2 or 3. I drink with a group of fairly well-heeled pensioners (I suspect they're all better off than me) but it's Wetherspoons every evening for them, with the occasional meal out instead
Yes. The 14p a pint we paid in London when I started drinking (about 1972) now equates with inflation to £1.67. Does the story need any further explanation when drinking other than in pubs can be done at a realistic price?
When I first started doing bar work, in 1989, as the British Legion in Shirley it was 50p a pint of lager. Carling Black label.
That’s around £1.61 in today’s money
A pint of mild was 35p
Looking at the historic alcohol duty rates I am surprised to see that they have increased at slightly below the rate of inflation since 1993.
So the increase in the price of a pint above inflation must be entirely due to the tendency for service sector inflation to be higher than overall inflation given the reduction in inflation due to outsourcing manufacturing to China, and other effects (PubCos extracting more profit by increasing rents? Business rate increases? Loss of volume, so fewer pints sold need to cover the overheads?)
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
A more gradual rise might be easier to stomach, but I dont see why we should continue to have low rates for hospitality.
£50k extra tax bill could be an extra £2/main meal if you are open 250 days a year and have 100 meals served each day. Maybe my assumptions are way off but doesn't seem impossible to swallow...
Because price electricity of demand is really high for restaurants and pubs, putting £2 on each main course and you only sell perhaps 70 instead of 100 per day.
I could believe that about if a single restaurant did it but this affects the whole sector no?
If all restaurants increase prices by £2/meal (probably less than 5% of total cost), I can't see how it would have such a big change.
Because the primary decision people are making isn’t between different pubs/restaurants, it’s whether to eat out or stay in and cook.
Hospitality and retail are dying on their arse, and business rates is a large part of the reason why.
He charges £35 for fish and chips, you think his sales will go down by 30% if he makes it £37 and the rest of the industry also raises their prices? Implausible.
If people have a fixed budget for eating out, then a small increase in costs should correspond to a small decrease in eating out.
Perhaps not such a big effect at the £35 main course level, but at the £15-20 level absolutely.
The named chefs with ‘destination’ restaurants will most likely survive, in the same way as Jeremy Clarkson’s farm and pub will likely survive. That doesn’t mean that thousands of others are not in serious trouble though, and they welcome the more famous among themselves highlighting the issues.
I guess it will all be very clear come April. If we see swathes of restaurants closing by the Summer I will accept I was wrong.
But I think far more likely is prices go up a bit, a small number close and life goes on.
There is only so much the public will and can pay for eating out and it is astonishing that even a meal for 2 adults and 3 children easily exceeds £100
Talking to our family they and their friends have dramatically cut back eating out
Hospitality is in crisis
We’re the same. We used to go out 2 or 3 times a week for a meal, sometimes including a concert or the theatre. Now it’s once at most.
Hospitality is in crisis. Lots of additional costs it cannot easily pass on.
Do we really want a hospitality industry ? I get the impression quite a few don’t really.
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
A more gradual rise might be easier to stomach, but I dont see why we should continue to have low rates for hospitality.
£50k extra tax bill could be an extra £2/main meal if you are open 250 days a year and have 100 meals served each day. Maybe my assumptions are way off but doesn't seem impossible to swallow...
Because price electricity of demand is really high for restaurants and pubs, putting £2 on each main course and you only sell perhaps 70 instead of 100 per day.
I could believe that about if a single restaurant did it but this affects the whole sector no?
If all restaurants increase prices by £2/meal (probably less than 5% of total cost), I can't see how it would have such a big change.
Because the primary decision people are making isn’t between different pubs/restaurants, it’s whether to eat out or stay in and cook.
Also, eating out has already become significantly more expensive over the last couple of years. It's not just eat out vs stay in and cook vs fast food, it's eat out vs some other form of entertainment
Yes, inflation in the sector has already been high in the past few years, now we have increasing minimum wage and business rates that only add to the problem. The NI changes last year made a big difference to businesses operating on unskilled labour.
Pubs in general are having a hard time. £5-7 a pint is outside many people's budget and if they are just using it to have a chinwag with friends they may take that elsewhere. Cask/craft enthusiasts like me will continue to budget for it, although some probably haven't stopped the mail order subscriptions they started during Covid. Young people are just not drinking like we used to in our 20s and 30s and for others maybe one pub visit a week rather than 2 or 3. I drink with a group of fairly well-heeled pensioners (I suspect they're all better off than me) but it's Wetherspoons every evening for them, with the occasional meal out instead
Yes. The 14p a pint we paid in London when I started drinking (about 1972) now equates with inflation to £1.67. Does the story need any further explanation when drinking other than in pubs can be done at a realistic price?
When I first started doing bar work, in 1989, as the British Legion in Shirley it was 50p a pint of lager. Carling Black label.
That’s around £1.61 in today’s money
A pint of mild was 35p
Looking at the historic alcohol duty rates I am surprised to see that they have increased at slightly below the rate of inflation since 1993.
So the increase in the price of a pint above inflation must be entirely due to the tendency for service sector inflation to be higher than overall inflation given the reduction in inflation due to outsourcing manufacturing to China, and other effects (PubCos extracting more profit by increasing rents? Business rate increases? Loss of volume, so fewer pints sold need to cover the overheads?)
The changes under Jeremy Hunt has seen a reduction in ABV on quite a few popular drinks. The growth of 3.4% beers and wines around 11% has been noticeable.
By the way as a public service broadcaster, the BBC instead of asking politicians whether situation X has broken international law should be summoning the genuine expertise, existing both in house (legal department and BBC Verify) and externally, to tell us the answer and what it means.
RefUK 26%(+1), CON 19%(nc), LAB 17%(-3), LDEM 16%(+1), GRN 15%(nc)
Note that Labour on 17% matches their lowest (previously reached in October), but this is the first time since the election we've had them behind the Tories (now that it necessarily means much when they are both well behind Reform).
If you take Keir Starmer's analysis of the political situation at face value, doesn't he have a duty to step down instead of squatting in Downing Street as the most unpopular PM in polling history while waiting for Reform to "tear this country apart"?
Which previous Prime Ministers has that not been said of?
Starmer is the one saying that Reform are different and that we are in "the fight of our lives" to stop this dangerous new political force. If he genuinely believes that, he really should let someone with some political skills take over, because he's not up to it.
Even if we accepted your obviously partial analysis, the best time to hand over would be a year to eighteen months before the election. From Labour's perspective, he'd be a fool to do so now, and allow his successor enough time to become just as unpopular as he is. So that makes his leaving in 2026 a lay.
Indeed, if it looks like he's going to be backed into a corner by colleagues, promising to step down next year is surely the gambit of last resort?
RefUK 26%(+1), CON 19%(nc), LAB 17%(-3), LDEM 16%(+1), GRN 15%(nc)
Note that Labour on 17% matches their lowest (previously reached in October), but this is the first time since the election we've had them behind the Tories (now that it necessarily means much when they are both well behind Reform).
If you take Keir Starmer's analysis of the political situation at face value, doesn't he have a duty to step down instead of squatting in Downing Street as the most unpopular PM in polling history while waiting for Reform to "tear this country apart"?
Which previous Prime Ministers has that not been said of?
Starmer is the one saying that Reform are different and that we are in "the fight of our lives" to stop this dangerous new political force. If he genuinely believes that, he really should let someone with some political skills take over, because he's not up to it.
Even if we accepted your obviously partial analysis, the best time to hand over would be a year to eighteen months before the election. From Labour's perspective, he'd be a fool to do so now, and allow his successor enough time to become just as unpopular as he is. So that makes his leaving in 2026 a lay.
Indeed, if it looks like he's going to be backed into a corner by colleagues, promising to step down next year is surely the gambit of last resort?
Has a government with such a large majority ever come so far undone so quickly?
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
A more gradual rise might be easier to stomach, but I dont see why we should continue to have low rates for hospitality.
£50k extra tax bill could be an extra £2/main meal if you are open 250 days a year and have 100 meals served each day. Maybe my assumptions are way off but doesn't seem impossible to swallow...
Because price electricity of demand is really high for restaurants and pubs, putting £2 on each main course and you only sell perhaps 70 instead of 100 per day.
I could believe that about if a single restaurant did it but this affects the whole sector no?
If all restaurants increase prices by £2/meal (probably less than 5% of total cost), I can't see how it would have such a big change.
Because the primary decision people are making isn’t between different pubs/restaurants, it’s whether to eat out or stay in and cook.
Also, eating out has already become significantly more expensive over the last couple of years. It's not just eat out vs stay in and cook vs fast food, it's eat out vs some other form of entertainment
Yes, inflation in the sector has already been high in the past few years, now we have increasing minimum wage and business rates that only add to the problem. The NI changes last year made a big difference to businesses operating on unskilled labour.
Pubs in general are having a hard time. £5-7 a pint is outside many people's budget and if they are just using it to have a chinwag with friends they may take that elsewhere. Cask/craft enthusiasts like me will continue to budget for it, although some probably haven't stopped the mail order subscriptions they started during Covid. Young people are just not drinking like we used to in our 20s and 30s and for others maybe one pub visit a week rather than 2 or 3. I drink with a group of fairly well-heeled pensioners (I suspect they're all better off than me) but it's Wetherspoons every evening for them, with the occasional meal out instead
Yes. The 14p a pint we paid in London when I started drinking (about 1972) now equates with inflation to £1.67. Does the story need any further explanation when drinking other than in pubs can be done at a realistic price?
When I first started doing bar work, in 1989, as the British Legion in Shirley it was 50p a pint of lager. Carling Black label.
That’s around £1.61 in today’s money
A pint of mild was 35p
When I went to University in 1983 I recall it was about 70p for a pint of McEwans 80/- (originally it was 67p or 69p but soon went over 70p) which is £3.43 in today's money. Which is actually more than I pay in my local Wetherspoons. But if that was general pub pricing, I would say beer would still be more accessible.
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
A more gradual rise might be easier to stomach, but I dont see why we should continue to have low rates for hospitality.
£50k extra tax bill could be an extra £2/main meal if you are open 250 days a year and have 100 meals served each day. Maybe my assumptions are way off but doesn't seem impossible to swallow...
Because price electricity of demand is really high for restaurants and pubs, putting £2 on each main course and you only sell perhaps 70 instead of 100 per day.
I could believe that about if a single restaurant did it but this affects the whole sector no?
If all restaurants increase prices by £2/meal (probably less than 5% of total cost), I can't see how it would have such a big change.
Because the primary decision people are making isn’t between different pubs/restaurants, it’s whether to eat out or stay in and cook.
Hospitality and retail are dying on their arse, and business rates is a large part of the reason why.
He charges £35 for fish and chips, you think his sales will go down by 30% if he makes it £37 and the rest of the industry also raises their prices? Implausible.
If people have a fixed budget for eating out, then a small increase in costs should correspond to a small decrease in eating out.
Perhaps not such a big effect at the £35 main course level, but at the £15-20 level absolutely.
The named chefs with ‘destination’ restaurants will most likely survive, in the same way as Jeremy Clarkson’s farm and pub will likely survive. That doesn’t mean that thousands of others are not in serious trouble though, and they welcome the more famous among themselves highlighting the issues.
I guess it will all be very clear come April. If we see swathes of restaurants closing by the Summer I will accept I was wrong.
But I think far more likely is prices go up a bit, a small number close and life goes on.
There is only so much the public will and can pay for eating out and it is astonishing that even a meal for 2 adults and 3 children easily exceeds £100
Talking to our family they and their friends have dramatically cut back eating out
Hospitality is in crisis
We’re the same. We used to go out 2 or 3 times a week for a meal, sometimes including a concert or the theatre. Now it’s once at most.
Hospitality is in crisis. Lots of additional costs it cannot easily pass on.
Do we really want a hospitality industry ? I get the impression quite a few don’t really.
That question only works if you add the other half of the equation.
Do we want a hospitality industry so much that we are willing to increase other taxes or cut other spending to subsidise it?
Do we want a hospitality industry so much that we are happy to have a lot of unskilled workers paid not very much to staff it at prices that the moderately comfortable are happy to pay on a frequent basis?
The best way for the US to acquire Greenland would surely be to offer to make all of its inhabitants into multi-millionaires and then demand that Denmark allows a referendum on joining the US. After all, who can argue against the principle of self-determination? At $10,000,000 per person, that'd cost around $500 billion, or about 2% of US GDP.
If they're sitting on all these extremely valuable minerals, surely they're in Norway's position when it found oil, and should be able to cash in on them while remaining (semi) independent?
I find it hard to engage with speculation about elections in 2029 when the start of 2026 presents an egregious crisis which threatens then entire western order. Who knows what the world will look like in 2029?
Indeed. Simon Jenkins in the Guardian today says:
The polls sent Reform surging into a steady lead last spring. It held that position through the summer, with a high of 29% according to YouGov, and 33% according to More in Common. But pollsters now suggest that Farage’s party may have peaked – with YouGov’s December polling showing a drop in its vote share to 26%, its lowest since April. Some of this has been credited to increasing support for the Tory leader Kemi Badenoch and to the joint Lib Dem/Green vote surging to nearly 30%. It seems likely that this confusion will survive through this May’s local elections. Betting in this field is for madmen.
However this is to misunderstand what betting is. Unknowns and uncertainty is its essence. Certainty is betting's arch enemy. Foinavon's Grand National (I watched it live on TV), Botham's match, Leicester winning the Premiership, Tories by 2029 may be extinct or may run the country, NATO may cease the function by summer. This is the essence of betting and speculation. For anoraks it is one of life's delights especially as we plunge into WWIII darkness.
I have little doubt that there is mega money to be made. My reality is that my clear focus for at least the first half of this year is developing my new business (and my existing businesses) and that leaves zero room for politics. Happy to comment on it, but I'm not an active participant this time.
After the hellscape that was 2025 I have had to do some serious rethinking of my priorities for 2026. And political shenanigans had to go, as fun as a field for madmen would have been to play in...
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
A more gradual rise might be easier to stomach, but I dont see why we should continue to have low rates for hospitality.
£50k extra tax bill could be an extra £2/main meal if you are open 250 days a year and have 100 meals served each day. Maybe my assumptions are way off but doesn't seem impossible to swallow...
Because price electricity of demand is really high for restaurants and pubs, putting £2 on each main course and you only sell perhaps 70 instead of 100 per day.
I could believe that about if a single restaurant did it but this affects the whole sector no?
If all restaurants increase prices by £2/meal (probably less than 5% of total cost), I can't see how it would have such a big change.
Because the primary decision people are making isn’t between different pubs/restaurants, it’s whether to eat out or stay in and cook.
Hospitality and retail are dying on their arse, and business rates is a large part of the reason why.
He charges £35 for fish and chips, you think his sales will go down by 30% if he makes it £37 and the rest of the industry also raises their prices? Implausible.
If people have a fixed budget for eating out, then a small increase in costs should correspond to a small decrease in eating out.
Perhaps not such a big effect at the £35 main course level, but at the £15-20 level absolutely.
The named chefs with ‘destination’ restaurants will most likely survive, in the same way as Jeremy Clarkson’s farm and pub will likely survive. That doesn’t mean that thousands of others are not in serious trouble though, and they welcome the more famous among themselves highlighting the issues.
I guess it will all be very clear come April. If we see swathes of restaurants closing by the Summer I will accept I was wrong.
But I think far more likely is prices go up a bit, a small number close and life goes on.
There is only so much the public will and can pay for eating out and it is astonishing that even a meal for 2 adults and 3 children easily exceeds £100
Talking to our family they and their friends have dramatically cut back eating out
Hospitality is in crisis
The number of vacancies is roughly the same as before COVID, and the number of people in employment in the sector is 3% higher.
It's not in crisis. Some firms are making a big fuss because the COVID discount on business rates is coming to a close, and they are having to pay a slightly higher minimum-wage. That's their right, but MRD applies.
➖Destroy NATO ➖Create a EU-US trade war ➖Compel the US to militarily rule a reluctant Greenlandic population ➖Encourage a Russian attack on the Baltics ➖Destroy a range of US commercial interests: from the lock-out of (all/some) US defence, energy and tech companies as well as investors from EU markets ➖Create a political backlash in the US probably affecting the midterms
Fees like a long list of bad things. Are the supposed benefits really so great that they outweigh all those downsides?
I think the EU and UK need to make clear, privately, the consequences of annexing Greenland, for example:
- Closing all US bases on European soil. This would lose the US more in terms of military projection than it would gain from getting Greenland where they have large bases.
- The end of NATO and it's replacement with a ETO. Turkey is welcome to remain a part of the new organisation.
- Nuclear umbrella covers all of ETO. Or at least the UK and EU.
As the US has says, it's obvious the defending Greenland militarily is likely a non starter. So focus on other consequences that are in our control.
Do you really think Poland would send the Americans home over Greenland?
Do you really think the US would help to defend Poland?
At a certain point you need to recognise that having US troops in Europe is a bigger threat than it is a benefit. The point at which the US takes European territory by force is a good time to enforce that.
In any case, we don't need to close every base to hurt the US.
As I keep repeating. Cut off US access to the data from Fylingdales. It is still a key part of their ballistic missile early warning system along with Thule and Clear, but is an RAF station. It would seem particularly apt given Thule is in Greenland.
Don't be silly. They'd build another and lock us out of all their systems.
It’s a matter of position. Which is why Fylingdales is at Fylingdales.
The UK authorities do not even know what the Americans do at Menwith Hill- it's one of the world's most important listening posts for the NSA, and we have no control over what happens there. It is generally believed that the USAF has nuclear weapons at Lakenheath, again we only have an understanding they would not be used without our agreement. Even if the US kept some bases, the base agreements will need to be drastically tightened.
There are a lot of agreements that will need to be renegotiated, for example making visiting personnel subject to national law when outside their bases, and much more.
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
A more gradual rise might be easier to stomach, but I dont see why we should continue to have low rates for hospitality.
£50k extra tax bill could be an extra £2/main meal if you are open 250 days a year and have 100 meals served each day. Maybe my assumptions are way off but doesn't seem impossible to swallow...
Because price electricity of demand is really high for restaurants and pubs, putting £2 on each main course and you only sell perhaps 70 instead of 100 per day.
I could believe that about if a single restaurant did it but this affects the whole sector no?
If all restaurants increase prices by £2/meal (probably less than 5% of total cost), I can't see how it would have such a big change.
Because the primary decision people are making isn’t between different pubs/restaurants, it’s whether to eat out or stay in and cook.
Hospitality and retail are dying on their arse, and business rates is a large part of the reason why.
He charges £35 for fish and chips, you think his sales will go down by 30% if he makes it £37 and the rest of the industry also raises their prices? Implausible.
If people have a fixed budget for eating out, then a small increase in costs should correspond to a small decrease in eating out.
Perhaps not such a big effect at the £35 main course level, but at the £15-20 level absolutely.
The named chefs with ‘destination’ restaurants will most likely survive, in the same way as Jeremy Clarkson’s farm and pub will likely survive. That doesn’t mean that thousands of others are not in serious trouble though, and they welcome the more famous among themselves highlighting the issues.
I guess it will all be very clear come April. If we see swathes of restaurants closing by the Summer I will accept I was wrong.
But I think far more likely is prices go up a bit, a small number close and life goes on.
There is only so much the public will and can pay for eating out and it is astonishing that even a meal for 2 adults and 3 children easily exceeds £100
Talking to our family they and their friends have dramatically cut back eating out
Hospitality is in crisis
We’re the same. We used to go out 2 or 3 times a week for a meal, sometimes including a concert or the theatre. Now it’s once at most.
Hospitality is in crisis. Lots of additional costs it cannot easily pass on.
Do we really want a hospitality industry ? I get the impression quite a few don’t really.
That question only works if you add the other half of the equation.
Do we want a hospitality industry so much that we are willing to increase other taxes or cut other spending to subsidise it?
Do we want a hospitality industry so much that we are happy to have a lot of unskilled workers paid not very much to staff it at prices that the moderately comfortable are happy to pay on a frequent basis?
Do we want a hospitality industry so much that we are willing to increase other taxes or cut other spending to subsidise it
The belief that not taxing an industry to the point of collapsing it, is a subsidy, is interesting.
Perhaps a 100% tax increase on NGOs, and quangos advising the government is in order. If they go out of business, it’s their fault for not being able to support the extra tax.
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
A more gradual rise might be easier to stomach, but I dont see why we should continue to have low rates for hospitality.
£50k extra tax bill could be an extra £2/main meal if you are open 250 days a year and have 100 meals served each day. Maybe my assumptions are way off but doesn't seem impossible to swallow...
Because price electricity of demand is really high for restaurants and pubs, putting £2 on each main course and you only sell perhaps 70 instead of 100 per day.
I could believe that about if a single restaurant did it but this affects the whole sector no?
If all restaurants increase prices by £2/meal (probably less than 5% of total cost), I can't see how it would have such a big change.
Because the primary decision people are making isn’t between different pubs/restaurants, it’s whether to eat out or stay in and cook.
Hospitality and retail are dying on their arse, and business rates is a large part of the reason why.
He charges £35 for fish and chips, you think his sales will go down by 30% if he makes it £37 and the rest of the industry also raises their prices? Implausible.
If people have a fixed budget for eating out, then a small increase in costs should correspond to a small decrease in eating out.
Perhaps not such a big effect at the £35 main course level, but at the £15-20 level absolutely.
The named chefs with ‘destination’ restaurants will most likely survive, in the same way as Jeremy Clarkson’s farm and pub will likely survive. That doesn’t mean that thousands of others are not in serious trouble though, and they welcome the more famous among themselves highlighting the issues.
I guess it will all be very clear come April. If we see swathes of restaurants closing by the Summer I will accept I was wrong.
But I think far more likely is prices go up a bit, a small number close and life goes on.
There is only so much the public will and can pay for eating out and it is astonishing that even a meal for 2 adults and 3 children easily exceeds £100
Talking to our family they and their friends have dramatically cut back eating out
Hospitality is in crisis
We’re the same. We used to go out 2 or 3 times a week for a meal, sometimes including a concert or the theatre. Now it’s once at most.
Hospitality is in crisis. Lots of additional costs it cannot easily pass on.
Do we really want a hospitality industry ? I get the impression quite a few don’t really.
That question only works if you add the other half of the equation.
Do we want a hospitality industry so much that we are willing to increase other taxes or cut other spending to subsidise it?
Do we want a hospitality industry so much that we are happy to have a lot of unskilled workers paid not very much to staff it at prices that the moderately comfortable are happy to pay on a frequent basis?
Do we want a hospitality industry so much that we are willing to increase other taxes or cut other spending to subsidise it
The belief that not taxing an industry to the point of collapsing it, is a subsidy, is interesting.
Perhaps a 100% tax increase on NGOs, and quangos advising the government is in order. If they go out of business, it’s their fault for not being able to support the extra tax.
It is a subsidy if it enjoys preferential tax treatment.
I find it hard to engage with speculation about elections in 2029 when the start of 2026 presents an egregious crisis which threatens then entire western order. Who knows what the world will look like in 2029?
This week, it feels like we should define success as still having a planet in 2029. It’s a low bar, but we’re far from guaranteed to clear it….
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
A more gradual rise might be easier to stomach, but I dont see why we should continue to have low rates for hospitality.
£50k extra tax bill could be an extra £2/main meal if you are open 250 days a year and have 100 meals served each day. Maybe my assumptions are way off but doesn't seem impossible to swallow...
Because price electricity of demand is really high for restaurants and pubs, putting £2 on each main course and you only sell perhaps 70 instead of 100 per day.
I could believe that about if a single restaurant did it but this affects the whole sector no?
If all restaurants increase prices by £2/meal (probably less than 5% of total cost), I can't see how it would have such a big change.
Because the primary decision people are making isn’t between different pubs/restaurants, it’s whether to eat out or stay in and cook.
Hospitality and retail are dying on their arse, and business rates is a large part of the reason why.
He charges £35 for fish and chips, you think his sales will go down by 30% if he makes it £37 and the rest of the industry also raises their prices? Implausible.
If people have a fixed budget for eating out, then a small increase in costs should correspond to a small decrease in eating out.
Perhaps not such a big effect at the £35 main course level, but at the £15-20 level absolutely.
The named chefs with ‘destination’ restaurants will most likely survive, in the same way as Jeremy Clarkson’s farm and pub will likely survive. That doesn’t mean that thousands of others are not in serious trouble though, and they welcome the more famous among themselves highlighting the issues.
I guess it will all be very clear come April. If we see swathes of restaurants closing by the Summer I will accept I was wrong.
But I think far more likely is prices go up a bit, a small number close and life goes on.
There is only so much the public will and can pay for eating out and it is astonishing that even a meal for 2 adults and 3 children easily exceeds £100
Talking to our family they and their friends have dramatically cut back eating out
Hospitality is in crisis
We’re the same. We used to go out 2 or 3 times a week for a meal, sometimes including a concert or the theatre. Now it’s once at most.
Hospitality is in crisis. Lots of additional costs it cannot easily pass on.
Do we really want a hospitality industry ? I get the impression quite a few don’t really.
That question only works if you add the other half of the equation.
Do we want a hospitality industry so much that we are willing to increase other taxes or cut other spending to subsidise it?
Do we want a hospitality industry so much that we are happy to have a lot of unskilled workers paid not very much to staff it at prices that the moderately comfortable are happy to pay on a frequent basis?
Do we want a hospitality industry so much that we are willing to increase other taxes or cut other spending to subsidise it
The belief that not taxing an industry to the point of collapsing it, is a subsidy, is interesting.
Perhaps a 100% tax increase on NGOs, and quangos advising the government is in order. If they go out of business, it’s their fault for not being able to support the extra tax.
Why is the hospitality industry in crisis? Push and pull - people have less money to spend and it costs ever increasing amounts to run a hospitality business and manufacture food / drink.
The unifying factor to both push and pull? The enormous cost of electricity.
Decouple leccy prices from gas. The price drops sharply, the price of making anything drops sharply, the price of the food and the leccy at the hospitality premises drop. Prices drop, punters have more money to spend.
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
A more gradual rise might be easier to stomach, but I dont see why we should continue to have low rates for hospitality.
£50k extra tax bill could be an extra £2/main meal if you are open 250 days a year and have 100 meals served each day. Maybe my assumptions are way off but doesn't seem impossible to swallow...
Because price electricity of demand is really high for restaurants and pubs, putting £2 on each main course and you only sell perhaps 70 instead of 100 per day.
I could believe that about if a single restaurant did it but this affects the whole sector no?
If all restaurants increase prices by £2/meal (probably less than 5% of total cost), I can't see how it would have such a big change.
Because the primary decision people are making isn’t between different pubs/restaurants, it’s whether to eat out or stay in and cook.
Hospitality and retail are dying on their arse, and business rates is a large part of the reason why.
He charges £35 for fish and chips, you think his sales will go down by 30% if he makes it £37 and the rest of the industry also raises their prices? Implausible.
If people have a fixed budget for eating out, then a small increase in costs should correspond to a small decrease in eating out.
Perhaps not such a big effect at the £35 main course level, but at the £15-20 level absolutely.
The named chefs with ‘destination’ restaurants will most likely survive, in the same way as Jeremy Clarkson’s farm and pub will likely survive. That doesn’t mean that thousands of others are not in serious trouble though, and they welcome the more famous among themselves highlighting the issues.
I guess it will all be very clear come April. If we see swathes of restaurants closing by the Summer I will accept I was wrong.
But I think far more likely is prices go up a bit, a small number close and life goes on.
There is only so much the public will and can pay for eating out and it is astonishing that even a meal for 2 adults and 3 children easily exceeds £100
Talking to our family they and their friends have dramatically cut back eating out
Hospitality is in crisis
The number of vacancies is roughly the same as before COVID, and the number of people in employment in the sector is 3% higher.
It's not in crisis. Some firms are making a big fuss because the COVID discount on business rates is coming to a close, and they are having to pay a slightly higher minimum-wage. That's their right, but MRD applies.
Ingredients and fuel costs are through the roof as well. Essentially the dilemma is whether to increase prices and lose some customers, or reduce quality and lose other customers.
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
A more gradual rise might be easier to stomach, but I dont see why we should continue to have low rates for hospitality.
£50k extra tax bill could be an extra £2/main meal if you are open 250 days a year and have 100 meals served each day. Maybe my assumptions are way off but doesn't seem impossible to swallow...
Because price electricity of demand is really high for restaurants and pubs, putting £2 on each main course and you only sell perhaps 70 instead of 100 per day.
I could believe that about if a single restaurant did it but this affects the whole sector no?
If all restaurants increase prices by £2/meal (probably less than 5% of total cost), I can't see how it would have such a big change.
Because the primary decision people are making isn’t between different pubs/restaurants, it’s whether to eat out or stay in and cook.
Hospitality and retail are dying on their arse, and business rates is a large part of the reason why.
He charges £35 for fish and chips, you think his sales will go down by 30% if he makes it £37 and the rest of the industry also raises their prices? Implausible.
If people have a fixed budget for eating out, then a small increase in costs should correspond to a small decrease in eating out.
Perhaps not such a big effect at the £35 main course level, but at the £15-20 level absolutely.
The named chefs with ‘destination’ restaurants will most likely survive, in the same way as Jeremy Clarkson’s farm and pub will likely survive. That doesn’t mean that thousands of others are not in serious trouble though, and they welcome the more famous among themselves highlighting the issues.
I guess it will all be very clear come April. If we see swathes of restaurants closing by the Summer I will accept I was wrong.
But I think far more likely is prices go up a bit, a small number close and life goes on.
There is only so much the public will and can pay for eating out and it is astonishing that even a meal for 2 adults and 3 children easily exceeds £100
Talking to our family they and their friends have dramatically cut back eating out
Hospitality is in crisis
The number of vacancies is roughly the same as before COVID, and the number of people in employment in the sector is 3% higher.
It's not in crisis. Some firms are making a big fuss because the COVID discount on business rates is coming to a close, and they are having to pay a slightly higher minimum-wage. That's their right, but MRD applies.
Minimum wage is about to go up by 7%, on top of the large NI rises last year, and the business rates.
I find it hard to engage with speculation about elections in 2029 when the start of 2026 presents an egregious crisis which threatens then entire western order. Who knows what the world will look like in 2029?
Indeed. Simon Jenkins in the Guardian today says:
The polls sent Reform surging into a steady lead last spring. It held that position through the summer, with a high of 29% according to YouGov, and 33% according to More in Common. But pollsters now suggest that Farage’s party may have peaked – with YouGov’s December polling showing a drop in its vote share to 26%, its lowest since April. Some of this has been credited to increasing support for the Tory leader Kemi Badenoch and to the joint Lib Dem/Green vote surging to nearly 30%. It seems likely that this confusion will survive through this May’s local elections. Betting in this field is for madmen.
However this is to misunderstand what betting is. Unknowns and uncertainty is its essence. Certainty is betting's arch enemy. Foinavon's Grand National (I watched it live on TV), Botham's match, Leicester winning the Premiership, Tories by 2029 may be extinct or may run the country, NATO may cease the function by summer. This is the essence of betting and speculation. For anoraks it is one of life's delights especially as we plunge into WWIII darkness.
Betting can still be fun if you lose. Many many years ago (early 80s) when I worked in a big office I would collect a £1 off everyone and back the worst horse in the Grand National. Usually at 500/1 or 1000/1. It was great fun placing the bet as the bookies would go into panic mode and need to make a call. Once they determined I was a loony and not someone with inside knowledge they took the bet. Most years the horse would stop to eat privet from a hedge, but once our horse was leading very close to the end, but sadly taken out by loose horses refusing at a fence.
Everyone had a whale of a time watching. Sadly I never ever had the pleasure of picking up 50 - 100 grand.
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
A more gradual rise might be easier to stomach, but I dont see why we should continue to have low rates for hospitality.
£50k extra tax bill could be an extra £2/main meal if you are open 250 days a year and have 100 meals served each day. Maybe my assumptions are way off but doesn't seem impossible to swallow...
Because price electricity of demand is really high for restaurants and pubs, putting £2 on each main course and you only sell perhaps 70 instead of 100 per day.
I could believe that about if a single restaurant did it but this affects the whole sector no?
If all restaurants increase prices by £2/meal (probably less than 5% of total cost), I can't see how it would have such a big change.
Because the primary decision people are making isn’t between different pubs/restaurants, it’s whether to eat out or stay in and cook.
Also, eating out has already become significantly more expensive over the last couple of years. It's not just eat out vs stay in and cook vs fast food, it's eat out vs some other form of entertainment
Yes, inflation in the sector has already been high in the past few years, now we have increasing minimum wage and business rates that only add to the problem. The NI changes last year made a big difference to businesses operating on unskilled labour.
Pubs in general are having a hard time. £5-7 a pint is outside many people's budget and if they are just using it to have a chinwag with friends they may take that elsewhere. Cask/craft enthusiasts like me will continue to budget for it, although some probably haven't stopped the mail order subscriptions they started during Covid. Young people are just not drinking like we used to in our 20s and 30s and for others maybe one pub visit a week rather than 2 or 3. I drink with a group of fairly well-heeled pensioners (I suspect they're all better off than me) but it's Wetherspoons every evening for them, with the occasional meal out instead
Yes. The 14p a pint we paid in London when I started drinking (about 1972) now equates with inflation to £1.67. Does the story need any further explanation when drinking other than in pubs can be done at a realistic price?
When I first started doing bar work, in 1989, as the British Legion in Shirley it was 50p a pint of lager. Carling Black label.
That’s around £1.61 in today’s money
A pint of mild was 35p
When I went to University in 1983 I recall it was about 70p for a pint of McEwans 80/- (originally it was 67p or 69p but soon went over 70p) which is £3.43 in today's money. Which is actually more than I pay in my local Wetherspoons. But if that was general pub pricing, I would say beer would still be more accessible.
It was amusing when McEwans eventually made the transition from 80/- a barrel to 80/- a pint. They should have stopped there.
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
A more gradual rise might be easier to stomach, but I dont see why we should continue to have low rates for hospitality.
£50k extra tax bill could be an extra £2/main meal if you are open 250 days a year and have 100 meals served each day. Maybe my assumptions are way off but doesn't seem impossible to swallow...
Because price electricity of demand is really high for restaurants and pubs, putting £2 on each main course and you only sell perhaps 70 instead of 100 per day.
I could believe that about if a single restaurant did it but this affects the whole sector no?
If all restaurants increase prices by £2/meal (probably less than 5% of total cost), I can't see how it would have such a big change.
Because the primary decision people are making isn’t between different pubs/restaurants, it’s whether to eat out or stay in and cook.
Hospitality and retail are dying on their arse, and business rates is a large part of the reason why.
He charges £35 for fish and chips, you think his sales will go down by 30% if he makes it £37 and the rest of the industry also raises their prices? Implausible.
If people have a fixed budget for eating out, then a small increase in costs should correspond to a small decrease in eating out.
Perhaps not such a big effect at the £35 main course level, but at the £15-20 level absolutely.
The named chefs with ‘destination’ restaurants will most likely survive, in the same way as Jeremy Clarkson’s farm and pub will likely survive. That doesn’t mean that thousands of others are not in serious trouble though, and they welcome the more famous among themselves highlighting the issues.
I guess it will all be very clear come April. If we see swathes of restaurants closing by the Summer I will accept I was wrong.
But I think far more likely is prices go up a bit, a small number close and life goes on.
There is only so much the public will and can pay for eating out and it is astonishing that even a meal for 2 adults and 3 children easily exceeds £100
Talking to our family they and their friends have dramatically cut back eating out
Hospitality is in crisis
The number of vacancies is roughly the same as before COVID, and the number of people in employment in the sector is 3% higher.
It's not in crisis. Some firms are making a big fuss because the COVID discount on business rates is coming to a close, and they are having to pay a slightly higher minimum-wage. That's their right, but MRD applies.
Minimum wage is about to go up by 7%, on top of the large NI rises last year, and the business rates.
I know - it will be interesting to see what happens. But there's no appreciable impact on the sector so far - indeed vacancies have stabilised over the last year, and employment is higher.
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
A more gradual rise might be easier to stomach, but I dont see why we should continue to have low rates for hospitality.
£50k extra tax bill could be an extra £2/main meal if you are open 250 days a year and have 100 meals served each day. Maybe my assumptions are way off but doesn't seem impossible to swallow...
Because price electricity of demand is really high for restaurants and pubs, putting £2 on each main course and you only sell perhaps 70 instead of 100 per day.
I could believe that about if a single restaurant did it but this affects the whole sector no?
If all restaurants increase prices by £2/meal (probably less than 5% of total cost), I can't see how it would have such a big change.
Because the primary decision people are making isn’t between different pubs/restaurants, it’s whether to eat out or stay in and cook.
Hospitality and retail are dying on their arse, and business rates is a large part of the reason why.
He charges £35 for fish and chips, you think his sales will go down by 30% if he makes it £37 and the rest of the industry also raises their prices? Implausible.
If people have a fixed budget for eating out, then a small increase in costs should correspond to a small decrease in eating out.
Perhaps not such a big effect at the £35 main course level, but at the £15-20 level absolutely.
The named chefs with ‘destination’ restaurants will most likely survive, in the same way as Jeremy Clarkson’s farm and pub will likely survive. That doesn’t mean that thousands of others are not in serious trouble though, and they welcome the more famous among themselves highlighting the issues.
I guess it will all be very clear come April. If we see swathes of restaurants closing by the Summer I will accept I was wrong.
But I think far more likely is prices go up a bit, a small number close and life goes on.
There is only so much the public will and can pay for eating out and it is astonishing that even a meal for 2 adults and 3 children easily exceeds £100
Talking to our family they and their friends have dramatically cut back eating out
Hospitality is in crisis
The number of vacancies is roughly the same as before COVID, and the number of people in employment in the sector is 3% higher.
It's not in crisis. Some firms are making a big fuss because the COVID discount on business rates is coming to a close, and they are having to pay a slightly higher minimum-wage. That's their right, but MRD applies.
I find it hard to engage with speculation about elections in 2029 when the start of 2026 presents an egregious crisis which threatens then entire western order. Who knows what the world will look like in 2029?
Indeed. Simon Jenkins in the Guardian today says:
The polls sent Reform surging into a steady lead last spring. It held that position through the summer, with a high of 29% according to YouGov, and 33% according to More in Common. But pollsters now suggest that Farage’s party may have peaked – with YouGov’s December polling showing a drop in its vote share to 26%, its lowest since April. Some of this has been credited to increasing support for the Tory leader Kemi Badenoch and to the joint Lib Dem/Green vote surging to nearly 30%. It seems likely that this confusion will survive through this May’s local elections. Betting in this field is for madmen.
However this is to misunderstand what betting is. Unknowns and uncertainty is its essence. Certainty is betting's arch enemy. Foinavon's Grand National (I watched it live on TV), Botham's match, Leicester winning the Premiership, Tories by 2029 may be extinct or may run the country, NATO may cease the function by summer. This is the essence of betting and speculation. For anoraks it is one of life's delights especially as we plunge into WWIII darkness.
Betting can still be fun if you lose. Many many years ago (early 80s) when I worked in a big office I would collect a £1 off everyone and back the worst horse in the Grand National. Usually at 500/1 or 1000/1. It was great fun placing the bet as the bookies would go into panic mode and need to make a call. Once they determined I was a loony and not someone with inside knowledge they took the bet. Most years the horse would stop to eat privet from a hedge, but once our horse was leading very close to the end, but sadly taken out by loose horses refusing at a fence.
Everyone had a whale of a time watching. Sadly I never ever had the pleasure of picking up 50 - 100 grand.
Privet is poisonous for horses, but not that quickly.
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
A more gradual rise might be easier to stomach, but I dont see why we should continue to have low rates for hospitality.
£50k extra tax bill could be an extra £2/main meal if you are open 250 days a year and have 100 meals served each day. Maybe my assumptions are way off but doesn't seem impossible to swallow...
Because price electricity of demand is really high for restaurants and pubs, putting £2 on each main course and you only sell perhaps 70 instead of 100 per day.
I could believe that about if a single restaurant did it but this affects the whole sector no?
If all restaurants increase prices by £2/meal (probably less than 5% of total cost), I can't see how it would have such a big change.
Because the primary decision people are making isn’t between different pubs/restaurants, it’s whether to eat out or stay in and cook.
Hospitality and retail are dying on their arse, and business rates is a large part of the reason why.
He charges £35 for fish and chips, you think his sales will go down by 30% if he makes it £37 and the rest of the industry also raises their prices? Implausible.
If people have a fixed budget for eating out, then a small increase in costs should correspond to a small decrease in eating out.
Perhaps not such a big effect at the £35 main course level, but at the £15-20 level absolutely.
The named chefs with ‘destination’ restaurants will most likely survive, in the same way as Jeremy Clarkson’s farm and pub will likely survive. That doesn’t mean that thousands of others are not in serious trouble though, and they welcome the more famous among themselves highlighting the issues.
I guess it will all be very clear come April. If we see swathes of restaurants closing by the Summer I will accept I was wrong.
But I think far more likely is prices go up a bit, a small number close and life goes on.
There is only so much the public will and can pay for eating out and it is astonishing that even a meal for 2 adults and 3 children easily exceeds £100
Talking to our family they and their friends have dramatically cut back eating out
Hospitality is in crisis
The number of vacancies is roughly the same as before COVID, and the number of people in employment in the sector is 3% higher.
It's not in crisis. Some firms are making a big fuss because the COVID discount on business rates is coming to a close, and they are having to pay a slightly higher minimum-wage. That's their right, but MRD applies.
I find it hard to engage with speculation about elections in 2029 when the start of 2026 presents an egregious crisis which threatens then entire western order. Who knows what the world will look like in 2029?
Indeed. Simon Jenkins in the Guardian today says:
The polls sent Reform surging into a steady lead last spring. It held that position through the summer, with a high of 29% according to YouGov, and 33% according to More in Common. But pollsters now suggest that Farage’s party may have peaked – with YouGov’s December polling showing a drop in its vote share to 26%, its lowest since April. Some of this has been credited to increasing support for the Tory leader Kemi Badenoch and to the joint Lib Dem/Green vote surging to nearly 30%. It seems likely that this confusion will survive through this May’s local elections. Betting in this field is for madmen.
However this is to misunderstand what betting is. Unknowns and uncertainty is its essence. Certainty is betting's arch enemy. Foinavon's Grand National (I watched it live on TV), Botham's match, Leicester winning the Premiership, Tories by 2029 may be extinct or may run the country, NATO may cease the function by summer. This is the essence of betting and speculation. For anoraks it is one of life's delights especially as we plunge into WWIII darkness.
Betting can still be fun if you lose. Many many years ago (early 80s) when I worked in a big office I would collect a £1 off everyone and back the worst horse in the Grand National. Usually at 500/1 or 1000/1. It was great fun placing the bet as the bookies would go into panic mode and need to make a call. Once they determined I was a loony and not someone with inside knowledge they took the bet. Most years the horse would stop to eat privet from a hedge, but once our horse was leading very close to the end, but sadly taken out by loose horses refusing at a fence.
Everyone had a whale of a time watching. Sadly I never ever had the pleasure of picking up 50 - 100 grand.
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
I think the fundamental problem is that low margin businesses requiring high rent properties struggle to pay correspondingly big rates bills. The issue is structural. Sunak applied a band aid, which has now been yanked off.
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
I think the fundamental problem is that low margin businesses requiring high rent properties struggle to pay correspondingly big rates bills. The issue is structural. Sunak applied a band aid, which has now been yanked off.
Fixing that may require the dead urban centre property price adjustment that everyone has been terrified of since 2008.
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
A more gradual rise might be easier to stomach, but I dont see why we should continue to have low rates for hospitality.
£50k extra tax bill could be an extra £2/main meal if you are open 250 days a year and have 100 meals served each day. Maybe my assumptions are way off but doesn't seem impossible to swallow...
Because price electricity of demand is really high for restaurants and pubs, putting £2 on each main course and you only sell perhaps 70 instead of 100 per day.
I could believe that about if a single restaurant did it but this affects the whole sector no?
If all restaurants increase prices by £2/meal (probably less than 5% of total cost), I can't see how it would have such a big change.
Because the primary decision people are making isn’t between different pubs/restaurants, it’s whether to eat out or stay in and cook.
Hospitality and retail are dying on their arse, and business rates is a large part of the reason why.
He charges £35 for fish and chips, you think his sales will go down by 30% if he makes it £37 and the rest of the industry also raises their prices? Implausible.
If people have a fixed budget for eating out, then a small increase in costs should correspond to a small decrease in eating out.
Perhaps not such a big effect at the £35 main course level, but at the £15-20 level absolutely.
The named chefs with ‘destination’ restaurants will most likely survive, in the same way as Jeremy Clarkson’s farm and pub will likely survive. That doesn’t mean that thousands of others are not in serious trouble though, and they welcome the more famous among themselves highlighting the issues.
I guess it will all be very clear come April. If we see swathes of restaurants closing by the Summer I will accept I was wrong.
But I think far more likely is prices go up a bit, a small number close and life goes on.
There is only so much the public will and can pay for eating out and it is astonishing that even a meal for 2 adults and 3 children easily exceeds £100
Talking to our family they and their friends have dramatically cut back eating out
Hospitality is in crisis
The number of vacancies is roughly the same as before COVID, and the number of people in employment in the sector is 3% higher.
It's not in crisis. Some firms are making a big fuss because the COVID discount on business rates is coming to a close, and they are having to pay a slightly higher minimum-wage. That's their right, but MRD applies.
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
I think the fundamental problem is that low margin businesses requiring high rent properties struggle to pay correspondingly big rates bills. The issue is structural. Sunak applied a band aid, which has now been yanked off.
Fixing that may require the dead urban centre property price adjustment that everyone has been terrified of since 2008.
I was quite surprised at the market rent and subsequent NDR on property in central Dundee. It simply does not reflect what you can see in front of you.
Kemi Badenoch for next PM at 5%, as in the header is, IMO, underpriced.
I like to hear at least one story about a possible PM that is slightly endearing. Like Blair was in. a band. Starmer was a human rights lawyer. Thatcher in private was very thoughtful and did hospital visiting at Christmas. Cameron had a disabled child and was an excellent father. Brown.....there were lots of him being a special human being. Ed Davey the same......
With Badenoch l've heard nothing and neither do I expect to.
The endearing story about Badenoch would be a Nigerian immigrant who came to this country with very little went on to be Prime Minister, showing anyone can fulfil their dreams
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
I think the fundamental problem is that low margin businesses requiring high rent properties struggle to pay correspondingly big rates bills. The issue is structural. Sunak applied a band aid, which has now been yanked off.
For me, the answer to these questions is always the same.
Is there a government policy in place that has so artificially restricted the market that it cannot function? If so, and we want to keep the market, then change the policy. Otherwise, let the market find the answer, and whilst that creative destruction takes place, look after the workers affected.
In this case, we have to decide how much we care about retaining diverse high streets away from the highest footfall areas. I think the missed opportunity, which Cummings as a disruptor should have gone for, was to really push for the retention of hybrid working after lockdown, as a means of revitalising high streets where people live and not where they work.
RefUK 26%(+1), CON 19%(nc), LAB 17%(-3), LDEM 16%(+1), GRN 15%(nc)
Note that Labour on 17% matches their lowest (previously reached in October), but this is the first time since the election we've had them behind the Tories (now that it necessarily means much when they are both well behind Reform).
If you take Keir Starmer's analysis of the political situation at face value, doesn't he have a duty to step down instead of squatting in Downing Street as the most unpopular PM in polling history while waiting for Reform to "tear this country apart"?
Which previous Prime Ministers has that not been said of?
Starmer is the one saying that Reform are different and that we are in "the fight of our lives" to stop this dangerous new political force. If he genuinely believes that, he really should let someone with some political skills take over, because he's not up to it.
Even if we accepted your obviously partial analysis, the best time to hand over would be a year to eighteen months before the election. From Labour's perspective, he'd be a fool to do so now, and allow his successor enough time to become just as unpopular as he is. So that makes his leaving in 2026 a lay.
Indeed, if it looks like he's going to be backed into a corner by colleagues, promising to step down next year is surely the gambit of last resort?
That's pretty much where I am on SKS exit. My book is short of 26, long of 27 and 28, flat on 29+.
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
I think the fundamental problem is that low margin businesses requiring high rent properties struggle to pay correspondingly big rates bills. The issue is structural. Sunak applied a band aid, which has now been yanked off.
Fixing that may require the dead urban centre property price adjustment that everyone has been terrified of since 2008.
Doesn’t that involve a load of listed companies and banks having to formally write down values of property in their accounts?
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
I think the fundamental problem is that low margin businesses requiring high rent properties struggle to pay correspondingly big rates bills. The issue is structural. Sunak applied a band aid, which has now been yanked off.
Fixing that may require the dead urban centre property price adjustment that everyone has been terrified of since 2008.
Doesn’t that involve a load of listed companies and banks having to formally write down values of property in their accounts?
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch says US action in Venezuela was 'morally' the right thing to do.
She tells @bbcnickrobinson nations 'go through the motions' of rules-based order, but 'the world has changed'.
Do you not see such a statement on so many levels is unwise?
Yesterday we were beating up on Starmer for his fence sitting and comparing him to Chamberlain. Isn't this worse?
Stephen Miller's unhinged interview with Jake Tapper suggests to me she has made far more of an error that any current Conservatives on here would admit.
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
I think the fundamental problem is that low margin businesses requiring high rent properties struggle to pay correspondingly big rates bills. The issue is structural. Sunak applied a band aid, which has now been yanked off.
For me, the answer to these questions is always the same.
Is there a government policy in place that has so artificially restricted the market that it cannot function? If so, and we want to keep the market, then change the policy. Otherwise, let the market find the answer, and whilst that creative destruction takes place, look after the workers affected.
In this case, we have to decide how much we care about retaining diverse high streets away from the highest footfall areas. I think the missed opportunity, which Cummings as a disruptor should have gone for, was to really push for the retention of hybrid working after lockdown, as a means of revitalising high streets where people live and not where they work.
Agreed. I think rates do need to be tied to ability to pay, in practice profitability. The problem there, profits are easily manipulated unlike property, so you have the Starbucks situation where they engineer away nominal profits through intellectual property transfers but at least the shops get taxed through rates.
Also if you reduce taxes on low margin businesses you will need to raise them on high margin ones to compensate. This would be a perverse incentive if you see high margin businesses as desirable for the economy.
So I think change is necessary but it's not straightforward.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch says US action in Venezuela was 'morally' the right thing to do.
She tells @bbcnickrobinson nations 'go through the motions' of rules-based order, but 'the world has changed'.
Off her tits:
The Chavez regime is bad, lets remove it US abducts Maduro US declares it has freed Venezuela from the regime The regime installs the deputy as acting leader and continues to oppress people
"...One of the problems we're facing at the moment is the resurrection of arguments which nobody has had to defend in living memory. "Might Makes Right"
The pervert Stephen Miller has been let off his leash to make this argument all over the news post-Maduro. And nobody remembers what the counter-argument is, because it's an argument only a pervert would make
One answer of course is that Might Makes Right leads to perverts like Miller being in government instead of being locked in a basement in a gimp suit where they belong. Sadly, it seems science fiction, or a sh*tty French r*c*st abusing our art, must take some responsibility for the pervert Stephen Miller..."
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch says US action in Venezuela was 'morally' the right thing to do.
She tells @bbcnickrobinson nations 'go through the motions' of rules-based order, but 'the world has changed'.
Dangerous and very cynical. Grovelling to Trump is bad politics and bad strategy.
Dangerous and cynical would be Ed Davey's approach of threatening the special relationship, which is music to Putin's ears.
International Law is very clear. Davey is not being cynical in defending it. The only special relationship Trump believes in is the degree of humiliation he intends to inflict on democratic governments. Putin's cuck - a treacherous friend- is far more dangerous than Putin himself.
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
A more gradual rise might be easier to stomach, but I dont see why we should continue to have low rates for hospitality.
£50k extra tax bill could be an extra £2/main meal if you are open 250 days a year and have 100 meals served each day. Maybe my assumptions are way off but doesn't seem impossible to swallow...
Because price electricity of demand is really high for restaurants and pubs, putting £2 on each main course and you only sell perhaps 70 instead of 100 per day.
I could believe that about if a single restaurant did it but this affects the whole sector no?
If all restaurants increase prices by £2/meal (probably less than 5% of total cost), I can't see how it would have such a big change.
Because the primary decision people are making isn’t between different pubs/restaurants, it’s whether to eat out or stay in and cook.
Hospitality and retail are dying on their arse, and business rates is a large part of the reason why.
He charges £35 for fish and chips, you think his sales will go down by 30% if he makes it £37 and the rest of the industry also raises their prices? Implausible.
If people have a fixed budget for eating out, then a small increase in costs should correspond to a small decrease in eating out.
Perhaps not such a big effect at the £35 main course level, but at the £15-20 level absolutely.
The named chefs with ‘destination’ restaurants will most likely survive, in the same way as Jeremy Clarkson’s farm and pub will likely survive. That doesn’t mean that thousands of others are not in serious trouble though, and they welcome the more famous among themselves highlighting the issues.
I guess it will all be very clear come April. If we see swathes of restaurants closing by the Summer I will accept I was wrong.
But I think far more likely is prices go up a bit, a small number close and life goes on.
There is only so much the public will and can pay for eating out and it is astonishing that even a meal for 2 adults and 3 children easily exceeds £100
Talking to our family they and their friends have dramatically cut back eating out
Hospitality is in crisis
The number of vacancies is roughly the same as before COVID, and the number of people in employment in the sector is 3% higher.
It's not in crisis. Some firms are making a big fuss because the COVID discount on business rates is coming to a close, and they are having to pay a slightly higher minimum-wage. That's their right, but MRD applies.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch says US action in Venezuela was 'morally' the right thing to do.
She tells @bbcnickrobinson nations 'go through the motions' of rules-based order, but 'the world has changed'.
Lol at 'moral' with Donald Trump but putting snide aside - the moral case to have any credence whatsoever relies on the US now facilitating (as a priority) a Venezuelan government chosen by the Venezuelan people.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch says US action in Venezuela was 'morally' the right thing to do.
She tells @bbcnickrobinson nations 'go through the motions' of rules-based order, but 'the world has changed'.
Do you not see such a statement on so many levels is unwise?
Yesterday we were beating up on Starmer for his fence sitting and comparing him to Chamberlain. Isn't this worse?
Stephen Miller's unhinged interview with Jake Tapper suggests to me she has made far more of an error that any current Conservatives on here would admit.
If people haven't seen that, go find ot. Off his fucking tits. And he is the National Security Advisor.
Anyone downplaying the threat to NATO needs to watch that interview. The mad king is being advised by a madman.
This might be nothing, or it might be tomorrow’s headline.
There’s definitely a fair amount of surveillance underway on the vessel, from documented aircraft movements. Could set up a diplomatic row between the US and Russia. 🍿
There is speculation that US special forces flying from the UK will try to capture tanker MV Bella 1, now in the Western Atlantic.
The vessel was sanctioned by the US and has carried Venezuelan crude oil. On 30th Dec, the ship was renamed MV Marinera and re-flagged as a Russian vessel.
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
I think the fundamental problem is that low margin businesses requiring high rent properties struggle to pay correspondingly big rates bills. The issue is structural. Sunak applied a band aid, which has now been yanked off.
For me, the answer to these questions is always the same.
Is there a government policy in place that has so artificially restricted the market that it cannot function? If so, and we want to keep the market, then change the policy. Otherwise, let the market find the answer, and whilst that creative destruction takes place, look after the workers affected.
In this case, we have to decide how much we care about retaining diverse high streets away from the highest footfall areas. I think the missed opportunity, which Cummings as a disruptor should have gone for, was to really push for the retention of hybrid working after lockdown, as a means of revitalising high streets where people live and not where they work.
Agreed. I think rates do need to be tied to ability to pay, in practice profitability. The problem there, profits are easily manipulated unlike property, so you have the Starbucks situation where they engineer away nominal profits through intellectual property transfers but at least the shops get taxed through rates.
Also if you reduce taxes on low margin businesses you will need to raise them on high margin ones to compensate. This would be a perverse incentive if you see high margin businesses as desirable for the economy.
So I think change is necessary but it's not straightforward.
What about two tax options?
- the current one with fixed/turnover elements. For complicated business like Starbucks where they “create” losses through tax games. - one for “simple” businesses, which is profit based.
Make the second lower. To qualify you need to demonstrate a clear, simple structure to the tax man.
If you want to play the Double Dutch, fine. But make it cost more.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch says US action in Venezuela was 'morally' the right thing to do.
She tells @bbcnickrobinson nations 'go through the motions' of rules-based order, but 'the world has changed'.
She is correct that the world has changed. She can make an argument that removing Maduro was a moral thing to do (he appears to be a bad man to the detriment of his electorate) but she doesn't appear to be doing so. Instead she is noting that Trump has created a "might makes right" world and is approving of it. I disapprove of her stance on this. I think that i) she is constitutionally incapable of believing Trump can do bad things, and that ii) this shows poor judgement on her part.
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
A more gradual rise might be easier to stomach, but I dont see why we should continue to have low rates for hospitality.
£50k extra tax bill could be an extra £2/main meal if you are open 250 days a year and have 100 meals served each day. Maybe my assumptions are way off but doesn't seem impossible to swallow...
Because price electricity of demand is really high for restaurants and pubs, putting £2 on each main course and you only sell perhaps 70 instead of 100 per day.
I could believe that about if a single restaurant did it but this affects the whole sector no?
If all restaurants increase prices by £2/meal (probably less than 5% of total cost), I can't see how it would have such a big change.
Because the primary decision people are making isn’t between different pubs/restaurants, it’s whether to eat out or stay in and cook.
Hospitality and retail are dying on their arse, and business rates is a large part of the reason why.
He charges £35 for fish and chips, you think his sales will go down by 30% if he makes it £37 and the rest of the industry also raises their prices? Implausible.
If people have a fixed budget for eating out, then a small increase in costs should correspond to a small decrease in eating out.
Perhaps not such a big effect at the £35 main course level, but at the £15-20 level absolutely.
The named chefs with ‘destination’ restaurants will most likely survive, in the same way as Jeremy Clarkson’s farm and pub will likely survive. That doesn’t mean that thousands of others are not in serious trouble though, and they welcome the more famous among themselves highlighting the issues.
I guess it will all be very clear come April. If we see swathes of restaurants closing by the Summer I will accept I was wrong.
But I think far more likely is prices go up a bit, a small number close and life goes on.
There is only so much the public will and can pay for eating out and it is astonishing that even a meal for 2 adults and 3 children easily exceeds £100
Talking to our family they and their friends have dramatically cut back eating out
Hospitality is in crisis
We’re the same. We used to go out 2 or 3 times a week for a meal, sometimes including a concert or the theatre. Now it’s once at most.
Hospitality is in crisis. Lots of additional costs it cannot easily pass on.
Do we really want a hospitality industry ? I get the impression quite a few don’t really.
2 or 3 times a week? Blimey! Even now when I have the most positive cash flow of my life, being single and with grown up children, I probably eat out once a month typically, perhaps twice if there is a special event. When the children were younger we ate out hardly at all, as a family for birthdays and maybe once or twice on days out as a treat, and I went out with just my wife for our anniversary and maybe randomly once or twice. And at this time I was probably around the top 10% mark in terms of earnings. - I expect we ate out more than most (and I expect I do now too).
Am I alone in noting the inconsistency between calling for lower low-wage immigration at the same time as complaints about its impact? I wonder what it'll be like when the social care sector has to start paying a decent wage to its staff.
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
A more gradual rise might be easier to stomach, but I dont see why we should continue to have low rates for hospitality.
£50k extra tax bill could be an extra £2/main meal if you are open 250 days a year and have 100 meals served each day. Maybe my assumptions are way off but doesn't seem impossible to swallow...
Because price electricity of demand is really high for restaurants and pubs, putting £2 on each main course and you only sell perhaps 70 instead of 100 per day.
I could believe that about if a single restaurant did it but this affects the whole sector no?
If all restaurants increase prices by £2/meal (probably less than 5% of total cost), I can't see how it would have such a big change.
Because the primary decision people are making isn’t between different pubs/restaurants, it’s whether to eat out or stay in and cook.
Hospitality and retail are dying on their arse, and business rates is a large part of the reason why.
He charges £35 for fish and chips, you think his sales will go down by 30% if he makes it £37 and the rest of the industry also raises their prices? Implausible.
If people have a fixed budget for eating out, then a small increase in costs should correspond to a small decrease in eating out.
Perhaps not such a big effect at the £35 main course level, but at the £15-20 level absolutely.
The named chefs with ‘destination’ restaurants will most likely survive, in the same way as Jeremy Clarkson’s farm and pub will likely survive. That doesn’t mean that thousands of others are not in serious trouble though, and they welcome the more famous among themselves highlighting the issues.
I guess it will all be very clear come April. If we see swathes of restaurants closing by the Summer I will accept I was wrong.
But I think far more likely is prices go up a bit, a small number close and life goes on.
There is only so much the public will and can pay for eating out and it is astonishing that even a meal for 2 adults and 3 children easily exceeds £100
Talking to our family they and their friends have dramatically cut back eating out
Hospitality is in crisis
The number of vacancies is roughly the same as before COVID, and the number of people in employment in the sector is 3% higher.
It's not in crisis. Some firms are making a big fuss because the COVID discount on business rates is coming to a close, and they are having to pay a slightly higher minimum-wage. That's their right, but MRD applies.
Comments
What I’m talking about is a replacement to Visa, Mastercard / Amex. There is Wepay but that’s Chinese so no better really
Globalization is rapidly coming to an end
1) Personal survival
2) Personal exit strategy in case of problems
3) Personal enrichment
4) …
1342) Ideology
This has been shown, repeatedly, since the Ancient Greeks.
“These are my principles. If you don’t like them, I have a *range* of others. At reasonable prices.”
And Good Morning to you all.
Yes I am fine, but when a poster suggest another poster is a troll because they do not like the post then it's fair to call it out
The success of PB is attracting political views from across politics and debating, not closing down debate
If we see swathes of restaurants closing by the Summer I will accept I was wrong.
But I think far more likely is prices go up a bit, a small number close and life goes on.
All this has happened before. And will happen again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisthenes
Zero: the number of cars BYD sold in America in the year where it became global brand leader in EVs.
How relevant is the US market to the globe if you just ignore it? Zero...
Talking to our family they and their friends have dramatically cut back eating out
Hospitality is in crisis
1) Starmer remains to fight election
2) Tories win at least one more seat than Reform, giving them priority
3) Tory + Reform win enough to prevent any other other government (300-310 seats? Or mathematically 325)
Minimum requirements:
The Tories would need at least about 160 seats. Which is remarkably few.
The centre left would have to fail in tactical voting, and split their vote in ways adverse to the LLG interest.
The right of centre vote keeps at the total level of high 40s%, as now.
Declaring a bank holiday is a cheap way for a government to court popularity as the cost falls entirely on private sector employers. I had to shell out an extra day's pay for 20 workers when Charles'n'Di got hitched in 1981. Didn't get a penny back when they divorced.
That’s around £1.61 in today’s money
A pint of mild was 35p
Better than a 5% outcome.
The polls sent Reform surging into a steady lead last spring. It held that position through the summer, with a high of 29% according to YouGov, and 33% according to More in Common. But pollsters now suggest that Farage’s party may have peaked – with YouGov’s December polling showing a drop in its vote share to 26%, its lowest since April. Some of this has been credited to increasing support for the Tory leader Kemi Badenoch and to the joint Lib Dem/Green vote surging to nearly 30%. It seems likely that this confusion will survive through this May’s local elections. Betting in this field is for madmen.
However this is to misunderstand what betting is. Unknowns and uncertainty is its essence. Certainty is betting's arch enemy. Foinavon's Grand National (I watched it live on TV), Botham's match, Leicester winning the Premiership, Tories by 2029 may be extinct or may run the country, NATO may cease the function by summer. This is the essence of betting and speculation. For anoraks it is one of life's delights especially as we plunge into WWIII darkness.
So the increase in the price of a pint above inflation must be entirely due to the tendency for service sector inflation to be higher than overall inflation given the reduction in inflation due to outsourcing manufacturing to China, and other effects (PubCos extracting more profit by increasing rents? Business rate increases? Loss of volume, so fewer pints sold need to cover the overheads?)
Hospitality is in crisis. Lots of additional costs it cannot easily pass on.
Do we really want a hospitality industry ? I get the impression quite a few don’t really.
The price has not changed.
https://davidallengreen.com/2026/01/but-what-about-international-law/
By the way as a public service broadcaster, the BBC instead of asking politicians whether situation X has broken international law should be summoning the genuine expertise, existing both in house (legal department and BBC Verify) and externally, to tell us the answer and what it means.
https://x.com/ceemacbee/status/2008460321082466331
Rumours of a handover of food and agriculture standards from the UK to the EU.
Currently UK standards are in most cases higher, and the proposal as mooted will lead to undercutting of UK food by EU food of lower standard.
https://x.com/mamedovgyunduz/status/2008116229181939945
Indeed, if it looks like he's going to be backed into a corner by colleagues, promising to step down next year is surely the gambit of last resort?
The election was only 18 months ago.
Do we want a hospitality industry so much that we are willing to increase other taxes or cut other spending to subsidise it?
Do we want a hospitality industry so much that we are happy to have a lot of unskilled workers paid not very much to staff it at prices that the moderately comfortable are happy to pay on a frequent basis?
After the hellscape that was 2025 I have had to do some serious rethinking of my priorities for 2026. And political shenanigans had to go, as fun as a field for madmen would have been to play in...
It's not in crisis. Some firms are making a big fuss because the COVID discount on business rates is coming to a close, and they are having to pay a slightly higher minimum-wage. That's their right, but MRD applies.
Do we want a hospitality industry so much that we are willing to increase other taxes or cut other spending to subsidise it
The belief that not taxing an industry to the point of collapsing it, is a subsidy, is interesting.
Perhaps a 100% tax increase on NGOs, and quangos advising the government is in order. If they go out of business, it’s their fault for not being able to support the extra tax.
The unifying factor to both push and pull? The enormous cost of electricity.
Decouple leccy prices from gas. The price drops sharply, the price of making anything drops sharply, the price of the food and the leccy at the hospitality premises drop. Prices drop, punters have more money to spend.
Everyone had a whale of a time watching. Sadly I never ever had the pleasure of picking up 50 - 100 grand.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd6x092xex0o
Maggie knew to ignore that sort of thing, and she was right.
Smells like dodgy accounting.
But it's a story she rejects herself.
https://x.com/bbcr4today/status/2008474525382361560
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch says US action in Venezuela was 'morally' the right thing to do.
She tells @bbcnickrobinson nations 'go through the motions' of rules-based order, but 'the world has changed'.
Is there a government policy in place that has so artificially restricted the market that it cannot function? If so, and we want to keep the market, then change the policy. Otherwise, let the market find the answer, and whilst that creative destruction takes place, look after the workers affected.
In this case, we have to decide how much we care about retaining diverse high streets away from the highest footfall areas. I think the missed opportunity, which Cummings as a disruptor should have gone for, was to really push for the retention of hybrid working after lockdown, as a means of revitalising high streets where people live and not where they work.
Yesterday we were beating up on Starmer for his fence sitting and comparing him to Chamberlain. Isn't this worse?
Stephen Miller's unhinged interview with Jake Tapper suggests to me she has made far more of an error that any current Conservatives on here would admit.
(OK that's not very good I know)
Also if you reduce taxes on low margin businesses you will need to raise them on high margin ones to compensate. This would be a perverse incentive if you see high margin businesses as desirable for the economy.
So I think change is necessary but it's not straightforward.
The Chavez regime is bad, lets remove it
US abducts Maduro
US declares it has freed Venezuela from the regime
The regime installs the deputy as acting leader and continues to oppress people
Its an oil heist.
"Do not defrost your windscreen with boiling water."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/videos/c36zx50pdxlo
The pervert Stephen Miller has been let off his leash to make this argument all over the news post-Maduro. And nobody remembers what the counter-argument is, because it's an argument only a pervert would make
One answer of course is that Might Makes Right leads to perverts like Miller being in government instead of being locked in a basement in a gimp suit where they belong. Sadly, it seems science fiction, or a sh*tty French r*c*st abusing our art, must take some responsibility for the pervert Stephen Miller..."
- https://www.youtube.com/post/UgkxK_T56mSzeDtABv4HotyFh4dIsUCXUvx-
I will take the industry and the fact labour mps have been banned from pubs as evidence of the crisis you seem to be in denial off
I'm desperate, but not THAT desperate
Anyone downplaying the threat to NATO needs to watch that interview. The mad king is being advised by a madman.
There’s definitely a fair amount of surveillance underway on the vessel, from documented aircraft movements. Could set up a diplomatic row between the US and Russia. 🍿
https://x.com/navylookout/status/2008487426440712681
There is speculation that US special forces flying from the UK will try to capture tanker MV Bella 1, now in the Western Atlantic.
The vessel was sanctioned by the US and has carried Venezuelan crude oil. On 30th Dec, the ship was renamed MV Marinera and re-flagged as a Russian vessel.
- the current one with fixed/turnover elements. For complicated business like Starbucks where they “create” losses through tax games.
- one for “simple” businesses, which is profit based.
Make the second lower. To qualify you need to demonstrate a clear, simple structure to the tax man.
If you want to play the Double Dutch, fine. But make it cost more.
Am I alone in noting the inconsistency between calling for lower low-wage immigration at the same time as complaints about its impact? I wonder what it'll be like when the social care sector has to start paying a decent wage to its staff.
https://bmmagazine.co.uk/news/hospitality-shift-hours-fall-pubs-restaurants-2025/
Overall it is the third largest employer in the U.K. and offers entry level opportunities to young people to start working.
If we don’t want pubs and restaurants as they pay mostly low pay, as some suggest, then the same must apply to hotels, theatres and supermarkets 🤷♂️