There's been a few good news anecdotes on here about the NHS, so to balance things up I thought I'd share a story from my mother of a false economy leading to much greater cost.
"A resident here, Harry, went in to [an outer London] private hospital as an NHS patient for a hip replacement, sent home in a TAXI 2days after op, dumped in the carpark, I don't know how he got to his flat but the wound opened, he is now very ill in NHS hospital."
My mother has been recommended surgery to correct a case of Cavus foot that has developed as part of her Parkinson's, but recovery from surgery requires keeping weight off the foot for six weeks, so consensus among Parkinson sufferers is that the surgery is a ticket to requiring a wheelchair - at further expense for the NHS.
The NHS do seem overly focused on surgery as the cure for all ills, but then completely neglecting what happens afterwards.
I think, Mr LP, that your first case is a criticism of the private hospital, although also perhaps of the contracts manager in the NHS. When I worked in a private hospital, for a short time in the 80's, the surgeons always sent cases where there had been problems to the nearest NHS hospital.
With my Aunt, the lack of coordination between the various bits of the hospital (NHS) and the care teams outside was chronic.
Because I was down as next of kin, they started phoning me to ask what the other people were doing!
Having been on both sides of that particular fence I sympathise. Sometimes it doesn't work well; other times at all!
Everyone was well intentioned and hard working. The system wasn't letting them do their job.
I found myself sketching, in my head a web based* tool that would present, per patient, documentation, actions taken, actions to take, alerts, contacts in the various agencies that are part of the solution for that patient....
*So runs on everything - laptops, desktops, tablets and phones.
EDIT: It reminded me of an occasion when I saw a contractor for the road people trying to dig a hole with a shovel. No chance with that tool - he was hammering away, giving it his best, but...
There were proposals, about 20-25 years ago, for the NHS to have one standard system of documentation, as you say web-based. Unfortunately the technology at the time wasn't good enough and the scheme was scrapped. Not sure whether it was by the Coalition or just before. Last time I was taken into hospital the ambulance team had tablets whereon they could access my GP records, so we are now getting there. The fragmentation of secondary care doesn't, IMHO, help, though.
The disastrous NHS IT mega-project(s) ?
The technology was fine. But Big Bang Mega Projects never work.
What you should do is - create some standards and an architecture. Then you work towards that, piece by piece. Those ignorant of project management and OR then say - "But we will waste so much on making the old systems connect to the new. If we do a Big Bang..."
You really do start to question the boundary commissions judgement in creating Gorton and Denton - obviously all seats have some variation in them but in this case there are two wildly different sections that are looking for different things from an MP.
I cant wait until they start painting the kerb stones
We can't have Trump/ Putin adjacent fascists running our country.
But we can have a patriotic right wing majority, political rivals but united by a steely determination to reverse our national decline by repairing our institutions from the acid attack of the Blair/Brown constitutional 'reforms'.
You really do start to question the boundary commissions judgement in creating Gorton and Denton - obviously all seats have some variation in them but in this case there are two wildly different sections that are looking for different things from an MP.
Can you imagine the outrage if the opposite was true.
You really do start to question the boundary commissions judgement in creating Gorton and Denton - obviously all seats have some variation in them but in this case there are two wildly different sections that are looking for different things from an MP.
Blame Cameron and his gerrymandering requirements he hoisted on the Electoral Commission.
We can't have Trump/ Putin adjacent fascists running our country.
But we can have a patriotic right wing majority, political rivals but united by a steely determination to reverse our national decline by repairing our institutions from the acid attack of the Blair/Brown constitutional 'reforms'.
One a puppet of Trump and Putin the other a puppet of Netanyahu
You really do start to question the boundary commissions judgement in creating Gorton and Denton - obviously all seats have some variation in them but in this case there are two wildly different sections that are looking for different things from an MP.
I cant wait until they start painting the kerb stones
I've already reserved some domain names, to become a Community Leader.
There is a psephological argument (though I think a superficial one) in favour of the Tories going centrist. However, I am interested in how its proponents explain the palpable lack of enthusiasm for the Lib Dems. They are of the progressive centre. They are not tainted as the Tories are by Government. They are not responsible for any of Starmer's cock ups either. They are identified with pro-Europeanism - a supposed golden ticket - more than any other party. So why are they causing such a massive collective shrug, and why should the Tories be so desperate to get a slice of that rather meagre pie?
It's more complicated than that. The LDs are part of the old establishment, so are discounted except where they can win for the same reason the Tories are discounted in Bootle. Nothing to do with policy. They are nice people who can't win, which is better than nasty people who can't win.
We have had centrist government since WWII. That is, all governments have in fact (ignore the window dressing) tried to make the social democrat Attlee project work and update it but never fundamentally deny it or provide an alternative.
The Tories, who looked recently as if they were on the right lines, have gone backwards. The idea that there is room for two parties on the nationalist Right is wrong.
The great majority of voters vote centrist.
Incidentally, if Reform form a government (which Labour and Tories are doing their best to bring about) they will in fact govern as centrists (social democrats) with the addition of a very rancid entho-nationalism about borders and skin colour.
I have yet to see a convincing argument that yet more Tory bloodletting and the sixth leadership change in ten years will do anything to improve the party’s fortunes. People do appreciate that the Tories got so destroyed in 2024 because people stopped taking them seriously, yes?
Up against a populist but chaotic Reform offering and a disappointing chaotic Labour offering the only viable road for the Tories is the long game and stability. A sensible economic prospectus with a bit of red meat thrown in. That’s broadly the contours that Badenoch is sketching out - that’s not necessarily a recipe for landslide majority government but it’s a chance to keep the party viable. Maybe even largest party if the dice fall right (much will depend on what happens to Reform in the next three years).
I have no idea what James Cleverly is designed to offer as an alternative?
Well he is more likely to hold the 2024 Sunak vote and also more likely to get Labour and LD tactical votes in Tory held seats v Reform than Kemi is
What is your evidence for that, please?
Cleverly had double the support Kemi did amongst all voters in this poll during the 2024 Tory leadership election for example and also led her amongst Tory voters, though Reform voters were tied as to whether they preferred Kemi or Cleverly
69% expressed no preference/don’t know, in a poll taken over a year ago. I see little in that polling that suggests the general public have much of an impression of any of the Tory frontbench, let alone a clear picture on where any of them land on the political spectrum.
I do appreciate your long held view HYUFD re the position Badenoch will find herself in, in May. You have long said she will go if she doesn’t get second in NEV. But as a counterpoint I am saying that the party needs to think long and hard about panicking into another leadership change, especially given the chaos engulfing Labour right now, and given that Badenoch, whilst still presiding over bad VI polling, is at least starting to make a name for herself and improve her personal ratings.
Nonetheless it is clear evidence that amongst voters as a whole (including the tactical voters Tory MPs will need in their seats to hold off Reform) Cleverly is more popular than Kemi.
Think long and hard maybe but if the Tories are THIRD in May behind even a massively unpopular Starmer Labour party not just Reform then I am afraid the Tories are done under Kemi anyway. Tory MPs would feel they had no choice but to remove her.
It is up to Kemi, if the Tories get second in May she will survive but that is a minimum for her to continue
Re your first paragraph where is your evidence ?
If you had bothered to read it I just posted it earlier!!!
I have yet to see a convincing argument that yet more Tory bloodletting and the sixth leadership change in ten years will do anything to improve the party’s fortunes. People do appreciate that the Tories got so destroyed in 2024 because people stopped taking them seriously, yes?
Up against a populist but chaotic Reform offering and a disappointing chaotic Labour offering the only viable road for the Tories is the long game and stability. A sensible economic prospectus with a bit of red meat thrown in. That’s broadly the contours that Badenoch is sketching out - that’s not necessarily a recipe for landslide majority government but it’s a chance to keep the party viable. Maybe even largest party if the dice fall right (much will depend on what happens to Reform in the next three years).
I have no idea what James Cleverly is designed to offer as an alternative?
Well he is more likely to hold the 2024 Sunak vote and also more likely to get Labour and LD tactical votes in Tory held seats v Reform than Kemi is
What is your evidence for that, please?
Cleverly had double the support Kemi did amongst all voters in this poll during the 2024 Tory leadership election for example and also led her amongst Tory voters, though Reform voters were tied as to whether they preferred Kemi or Cleverly
69% expressed no preference/don’t know, in a poll taken over a year ago. I see little in that polling that suggests the general public have much of an impression of any of the Tory frontbench, let alone a clear picture on where any of them land on the political spectrum.
I do appreciate your long held view HYUFD re the position Badenoch will find herself in, in May. You have long said she will go if she doesn’t get second in NEV. But as a counterpoint I am saying that the party needs to think long and hard about panicking into another leadership change, especially given the chaos engulfing Labour right now, and given that Badenoch, whilst still presiding over bad VI polling, is at least starting to make a name for herself and improve her personal ratings.
Nonetheless it is clear evidence that amongst voters as a whole (including the tactical voters Tory MPs will need in their seats to hold off Reform) Cleverly is more popular than Kemi.
Think long and hard maybe but if the Tories are THIRD in May behind even a massively unpopular Starmer Labour party not just Reform then I am afraid the Tories are done under Kemi anyway. Tory MPs would feel they had no choice but to remove her.
It is up to Kemi, if the Tories get second in May she will survive but that is a minimum for her to continue
Re your first paragraph where is your evidence ?
If you had bothered to read it I just posted it earlier!!!
"Trump posts racist video depicting Obamas as monkeys.
"Donald Trump went on a massive social media spree overnight that included posting on Truth Social an election conspiracy video that ended with a clip depicting former president Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama as monkeys."
I wonder whether the sheer indecency of Trump (never mind the grifting, lying, salaciousness, etc) will at some point start registering. Or are we truly past the point of no return?
I have yet to see a convincing argument that yet more Tory bloodletting and the sixth leadership change in ten years will do anything to improve the party’s fortunes. People do appreciate that the Tories got so destroyed in 2024 because people stopped taking them seriously, yes?
Up against a populist but chaotic Reform offering and a disappointing chaotic Labour offering the only viable road for the Tories is the long game and stability. A sensible economic prospectus with a bit of red meat thrown in. That’s broadly the contours that Badenoch is sketching out - that’s not necessarily a recipe for landslide majority government but it’s a chance to keep the party viable. Maybe even largest party if the dice fall right (much will depend on what happens to Reform in the next three years).
I have no idea what James Cleverly is designed to offer as an alternative?
Well he is more likely to hold the 2024 Sunak vote and also more likely to get Labour and LD tactical votes in Tory held seats v Reform than Kemi is
What is your evidence for that, please?
I play snooker occasionally at the local Conservative Club. Now it is true that I have to hold my nose and promise to behave.
It is though very interesting to listen to local long standing Members.
Very few have a good word to say about Kemi. The few that have met her talk of her rudeness and arrogance.
They would very much have preferred Penny Mordaunt to have been elected Leader followed by Cleverly.
The overwhelming favourite though had he have stood would have been Jeremy Hunt. The other local favourite is Johnny Mercer
With a new LD MP and several Tory Councillors having defected to Reform and also more actually to fight on their personal record as independents, the mood is very downbeat and none see Kemi as a PM or long term Tory Leader.
Interesting, an Ipsos poll last year though had Boris clear favourite amongst 2024 Tory voters to return as leader if Kemi went, then Cleverly second and a returned Rishi third. Hunt was 5th after Tugendhat. Boris is ineligible though as not an MP so Cleverly is by default favourite with Tory voters now.
2024 Reform voters preferred Jenrick, then Boris second, then Braverman third, so BobbyJ and Suella found their natural home in the end
Put me in "surprised, but not shocked", and I don't even know the area.
1 Not many stories tip that many votes by themselves. (The main effect of Mandygate is likely to be more enthusiasm for anti-government parties and less for Labour than many actual switches.) I doubt that many people ever knew who Nathan Gill was, unfortunately.
2 There are always local factors, and they often swamp the national signal.
Taking the national pulse from any one local by-election is almost as silly as using FON.
It doesn't surprise me. No one in legacy media had any interest in the similarity from f speeches between Gill and other UKIP/Brexit/ Reform characters, including Farage.
Likewise Starmer will be removed, quite rightly, for the Epstein-Mandelson connection yet no one comments on the Farage-Trump-Musk- Bannon- Epstein linkage.
Reform are new and exciting and the positive coverage they are getting from the likes of Kuennsberg and Mason is remarkable. I believe Badenoch may have this week made the connection.
I have yet to see a convincing argument that yet more Tory bloodletting and the sixth leadership change in ten years will do anything to improve the party’s fortunes. People do appreciate that the Tories got so destroyed in 2024 because people stopped taking them seriously, yes?
Up against a populist but chaotic Reform offering and a disappointing chaotic Labour offering the only viable road for the Tories is the long game and stability. A sensible economic prospectus with a bit of red meat thrown in. That’s broadly the contours that Badenoch is sketching out - that’s not necessarily a recipe for landslide majority government but it’s a chance to keep the party viable. Maybe even largest party if the dice fall right (much will depend on what happens to Reform in the next three years).
I have no idea what James Cleverly is designed to offer as an alternative?
Well he is more likely to hold the 2024 Sunak vote and also more likely to get Labour and LD tactical votes in Tory held seats v Reform than Kemi is
What is your evidence for that, please?
I play snooker occasionally at the local Conservative Club. Now it is true that I have to hold my nose and promise to behave.
It is though very interesting to listen to local long standing Members.
Very few have a good word to say about Kemi. The few that have met her talk of her rudeness and arrogance.
They would very much have preferred Penny Mordaunt to have been elected Leader followed by Cleverly.
The overwhelming favourite though had he have stood would have been Jeremy Hunt. The other local favourite is Johnny Mercer
With a new LD MP and several Tory Councillors having defected to Reform and also more actually to fight on their personal record as independents, the mood is very downbeat and none see Kemi as a PM or long term Tory Leader.
Interesting, an Ipsos poll last year though had Boris clear favourite amongst 2024 Tory voters to return as leader if Kemi went, then Cleverly second and a returned Rishi third. Hunt was 5th after Tugendhat. Boris is ineligible though as not an MP so Cleverly is by default favourite with Tory voters now.
2024 Reform voters preferred Jenrick, then Boris second, then Braverman third, so BobbyJ and Suella found their natural home in the end
You really do start to question the boundary commissions judgement in creating Gorton and Denton - obviously all seats have some variation in them but in this case there are two wildly different sections that are looking for different things from an MP.
The criteria for boundaries was to keep within local authorities where possible. Just because 2 half’s of a constituency want different things doesn’t remove the fact it’s a consistency.
Put it this way is it better to have 2 swing seats that reflect public mood or 2 safe seats that never change
Tbh I doubt Trump made the video or watched enough of it to see the offending picture right at the end. Yet another reason he should be kept off social media.
We can't have Trump/ Putin adjacent fascists running our country.
But we can have a patriotic right wing majority, political rivals but united by a steely determination to reverse our national decline by repairing our institutions from the acid attack of the Blair/Brown constitutional 'reforms'.
One a puppet of Trump and Putin the other a puppet of Netanyahu
Jeffrey Epstein's unusual close relationship with Ehud Barak doesn't suggest Epstein worked for Israel. It proves the opposite.
Stuck on his election loss from over two decades ago, Barak has for years obsessively attempted to undermine Israeli democracy by working with the anti-Zionist radical left in failed attempts to overthrow the elected Israeli government.
Barak's personal fixation led him to engage in activities publicly and behind the scenes to undermine the government of Israel, including fueling mass protest movements, fomenting unrest and feeding false media narratives.
There is a psephological argument (though I think a superficial one) in favour of the Tories going centrist. However, I am interested in how its proponents explain the palpable lack of enthusiasm for the Lib Dems. They are of the progressive centre. They are not tainted as the Tories are by Government. They are not responsible for any of Starmer's cock ups either. They are identified with pro-Europeanism - a supposed golden ticket - more than any other party. So why are they causing such a massive collective shrug, and why should the Tories be so desperate to get a slice of that rather meagre pie?
Was just doing a search on PB for an old comment and it was extraordinary how many posters came up in the search who no longer post or have been banned. A really good range of positions too. A shame.
It is perhaps more surprising the number of people who persist. Maybe their first 80,000 post haven't changed a single persons view of Brexit, but who knows if the 80,001st post just might suddenly enlighten their opponents.
There are many good reasons for visiting PB.com, but to change people's minds isn't one of them.
There is a psephological argument (though I think a superficial one) in favour of the Tories going centrist. However, I am interested in how its proponents explain the palpable lack of enthusiasm for the Lib Dems. They are of the progressive centre. They are not tainted as the Tories are by Government. They are not responsible for any of Starmer's cock ups either. They are identified with pro-Europeanism - a supposed golden ticket - more than any other party. So why are they causing such a massive collective shrug, and why should the Tories be so desperate to get a slice of that rather meagre pie?
It's more complicated than that. The LDs are part of the old establishment, so are discounted except where they can win for the same reason the Tories are discounted in Bootle. Nothing to do with policy. They are nice people who can't win, which is better than nasty people who can't win.
We have had centrist government since WWII. That is, all governments have in fact (ignore the window dressing) tried to make the social democrat Attlee project work and update it but never fundamentally deny it or provide an alternative.
The Tories, who looked recently as if they were on the right lines, have gone backwards. The idea that there is room for two parties on the nationalist Right is wrong.
The great majority of voters vote centrist.
Incidentally, if Reform form a government (which Labour and Tories are doing their best to bring about) they will in fact govern as centrists (social democrats) with the addition of a very rancid entho-nationalism about borders and skin colour.
Not 100% true - the LibDems won Redcar in 2010 as a none of the above party
We can't have Trump/ Putin adjacent fascists running our country.
But we can have a patriotic right wing majority, political rivals but united by a steely determination to reverse our national decline by repairing our institutions from the acid attack of the Blair/Brown constitutional 'reforms'.
I suspect we both have a different definition of "patriotic".
I have yet to see a convincing argument that yet more Tory bloodletting and the sixth leadership change in ten years will do anything to improve the party’s fortunes. People do appreciate that the Tories got so destroyed in 2024 because people stopped taking them seriously, yes?
Up against a populist but chaotic Reform offering and a disappointing chaotic Labour offering the only viable road for the Tories is the long game and stability. A sensible economic prospectus with a bit of red meat thrown in. That’s broadly the contours that Badenoch is sketching out - that’s not necessarily a recipe for landslide majority government but it’s a chance to keep the party viable. Maybe even largest party if the dice fall right (much will depend on what happens to Reform in the next three years).
I have no idea what James Cleverly is designed to offer as an alternative?
Well he is more likely to hold the 2024 Sunak vote and also more likely to get Labour and LD tactical votes in Tory held seats v Reform than Kemi is
What is your evidence for that, please?
I play snooker occasionally at the local Conservative Club. Now it is true that I have to hold my nose and promise to behave.
It is though very interesting to listen to local long standing Members.
Very few have a good word to say about Kemi. The few that have met her talk of her rudeness and arrogance.
They would very much have preferred Penny Mordaunt to have been elected Leader followed by Cleverly.
The overwhelming favourite though had he have stood would have been Jeremy Hunt. The other local favourite is Johnny Mercer
With a new LD MP and several Tory Councillors having defected to Reform and also more actually to fight on their personal record as independents, the mood is very downbeat and none see Kemi as a PM or long term Tory Leader.
Interesting, an Ipsos poll last year though had Boris clear favourite amongst 2024 Tory voters to return as leader if Kemi went, then Cleverly second and a returned Rishi third. Hunt was 5th after Tugendhat. Boris is ineligible though as not an MP so Cleverly is by default favourite with Tory voters now.
2024 Reform voters preferred Jenrick, then Boris second, then Braverman third, so BobbyJ and Suella found their natural home in the end
Can't sell the flat for what he thinks he should get is the real issue. There is a price at which someone will buy, but it is probably a lot lower than he thought he was going to inherit.
Economics 101. Back in the real world, the story tells us buyers must be over 70 and pay £11,000 a year in service charges. What does that Venn diagram look like?
So no-one would buy for one pound?
Well, first, they'd have to live in the area already to know it was for sale; then they would need to be over 70, unable to afford a normally-priced flat, yet still able to pay £11,000 a year in service charges. So what's the Venn diagram?
And that ignores that your reductio ad absurdum would repel buyers because at that price there *must* be something wrong.
There is a lack of financial education and understanding here all round. £11k a year for that kind of property isn't ridiculous, including council tax (£1k), and weekly home care (worth approx £1.5k?). Having an on site hub and restaurant radically transforms the social life of the residents for the better. Care is also easier to access. If they are downsizing then being able to comfortably pay 10-15 years service charge towards end of life is not going to be particularly unusual.
86% of residents are happy - this is a good place to live, far more suitable for someone with declining health and mobility than trying to maintain a 3/4 bed family home on their own.
But it goes against the mindset of the UK property owning obsessions, service charges are as seen as rent which is seen as dead money. Capital must be preserved to pass down the generations even if that means poorer quality of life for those who have accumulated the capital.
That's not the issue.
The point is the restrictive covenants *on the empty properties* which can make the properties impossible even to give away (as the article suggests): ..One property we found had been vacant for more than nine years. In another case, family members face £60,000 in charges accrued since the property became vacant in 2019. A relative told us it was "like a noose around our necks", and another expressed frustration that "you can't give them away". Another beneficiary reported paying service charges of £750 per month on a flat that has been empty for four years, describing it as a "never-ending nightmare", adding: "It is infuriating and heartbreaking in equal measure."..
From the reporting on this, it really does not sound as though the inability to sell is entirely down to unrealistic expectations of value.
Until I see a link to an auction with a £1 reserve price - the issue is the price they are expecting to receive for the flat.
My expectation is that there is a lot of sunk cost fallacy involved here if you are paying £750 a month - and hoping for £60,000 - 1 year later and £9,000 down you now need that £60,000 to offset the £9,000 costs
Many, many people expect to inherit from their elderly parents and are quite shocked when care costs rapidly diminish the savings etc. No-one has a right to inherit - if money needs to be spent to care for someone it should be spent. And these type housing set up are 'care'.
Our former son in law and his sister paid over £250,000 in care fees for their mother and father
So did my family and then they took another chunk in inheritance tax and then taxed her on the income from interest on the house she had to sell to.pay the fees.
Maybe noone has a right to.inherit but nor should the Govt have the right to tax people on death. Certainly not on estates up to say 2 million.
You really do start to question the boundary commissions judgement in creating Gorton and Denton - obviously all seats have some variation in them but in this case there are two wildly different sections that are looking for different things from an MP.
It seems to me that for the Boundary Commission to start wondering who living where might vote how is to go down the USA route. Do they not exist for the purpose of deliberately ignoring exactly that?
And our MPs have no idea who voted for them, most of them know perfectly well that over half of voters didn't (good for their general humility) and have, SFAICS, a reasonable record of doing their best for their patch regardless.
"Trump posts racist video depicting Obamas as monkeys.
"Donald Trump went on a massive social media spree overnight that included posting on Truth Social an election conspiracy video that ended with a clip depicting former president Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama as monkeys."
I wonder whether the sheer indecency of Trump (never mind the grifting, lying, salaciousness, etc) will at some point start registering. Or are we truly past the point of no return?
Unfortunately there’s a US prism that sees Trump as a fine, upstanding, god fearing hero and the person below as a communistic, antisemitic terrorist.
There’s really no question to which Angela Rayner is the answer.
If she can’t run her own household without getting into financial trouble, what chance her running the country?
Can we imagine her turning up to a meeting with Trump or Xi, and be taken remotely seriously?
Her household was in financial trouble when she was born, because she grew up in poverty being raised by her grandma and left school at 16 without any qualifications.
I like the idea of a PM with an authentic working class background who has overcome extreme adversity to get to the top. Any foreign leader worth their salt would take seriously someone who has, although some are obviously not worth their salt. I wouldn't blame her for looking down on those born with a silver spoon in their mouth, like Trump.
Had she got to Oxbridge from that background or made herself a self made millionaire you might have a point but otherwise there are millions of single mother's raised on council estates who left school with no qualifications and maybe got a middle class office job with a bit of hard work. It doesn't mean they should be PM!
Rayner would be a better campaigner than Starmer no doubt and she she would rally the left more behind her as Corbyn did but she would turn off centrist swing voters and in terms of actual competence for the job Starmer would be better. Sir Keir was himself raised in a relatively working class household and through sheer hard work did manage to get to university and an Oxford postgrad degree and the bar and KC and on that basis if it were a choice between Rayner or keeping Starmer I would keep him
So your view is that she should know her place and stay there.
She has no degree and got no qualifications to speak of at school, effectively Rayner still is working class, just one who knows how to navigate a path to the top of the Labour party.
Starmer for all his faults actually did take himself from the skilled working class to the upper middle class by sheer hard work. Streeting too was working class by background, with relatives in prison and son of a single mother in a council flat who also got himself to Cambridge and the upper middle class by hard work
I would just say so what
You seem to think the only way to succeed is to go to University which is nonsense
Indeed, maybe we would be better with street wise, practical and honest people, then some of those governing us
I went to Uni and im useless
My issue with @HYUFD is he seems to think the only way to success is to go to University which is obviously silly
Angela Rayner has a formidable back story and to say she shouldn't have got pregnant at 16 is out of order
Indeed the 50% University policy of Blair was wrong and it is good to see the change to a more sensible mix with FEs
No, Winston Churchill did not go to university, nor did Disraeli, nor did Major nor did Lloyd George. All became PM but they all got more qualifications at school than Rayner did.
If you followed traditional religious teaching you wouldn't get pregnant until married
Who is the clever person
The University Graduate who learns what is required to pass exams and often doesnt enter a work environment until 22 or later, often drops in to a mid level role or
Someone with or without qualifications who enters work at 16, learns skills either white or blue collar, builds a career of understanding and knowledge and almost certainly a greater appreciation of real life.
BTW there is no right answer.
Those who think there is a right answer are IMHO the ones who are wrong.
It's a false dichotomy.
My brother-in-law here in Ireland is a welder. A blue collar occupation. So by your argument he would have left school at 16, gone straight into work, learned his trade that way, etc.
But he has had a technically-focused third level education. He's a graduate. Very highly skilled and good at what he does and well-paid for it.
The problem in Britain is that we have an idea of University that it is Oxbridge. It is a Classical education of the Trivium. All books in ancient libraries. Even the practical sciences are a bit of an oddity, more eccentrics in disused parts of buildings, rather than the core focus of the institution.
There's no room for a welder receiving an appropriate third-level education at a British University.
And so that's why British rates of graduate education are lower than its peers, and yet the debate in Britain is focused on making it lower still, and so the British economy lacks the skills to succeed, imports migrants to fill the gaps, and the culture is anti-education. It's so self-harming.
You can do degree apprenticeships too now products of which get well paid jobs
Age clearly impacts on my assessment
At age 16 in the 70s you were uni, white collar admin or blue collar
If you were lucky blue collar you got a good spprentiship in engineering, manufacturing or similar and a trade for life possibly some day release.
For too many their lives were dictated by a few hours in February of their 11th year.
Far more got into excellent academic state schools who were academic when we had grammar schools, pity we can't have a few more of them
I agree
I went to a Grammar School covenanted in the 16th Century by King Edward VI...
In my 3rd form year it was announced that there would be no new entrants in 2 years time as it was being abolished and turned in to a 6th form college.
My first year in 6th form was at my old school new college..
A shocking waste a tragic error.
I'll allow you to guess which Minister of Education made that decision?
My Headmaster a noted Latin scholar and author told 650 boys that if said Minister came to the school he would probably be arrested.
In many ways it defined my politcal direction of travel the sheer impact that decision did to the school, the separate Girls High, the town and the surrounding area.
The culling and wilful attack on some outstanding grammar and secondary schools.
For those under 60 who may wonder who the equivalent in Education to Beeching to the railways was.
The minister who destruction and wilful negligence destroyed a sector for generations.
There is a psephological argument (though I think a superficial one) in favour of the Tories going centrist. However, I am interested in how its proponents explain the palpable lack of enthusiasm for the Lib Dems. They are of the progressive centre. They are not tainted as the Tories are by Government. They are not responsible for any of Starmer's cock ups either. They are identified with pro-Europeanism - a supposed golden ticket - more than any other party. So why are they causing such a massive collective shrug, and why should the Tories be so desperate to get a slice of that rather meagre pie?
It's more complicated than that. The LDs are part of the old establishment, so are discounted except where they can win for the same reason the Tories are discounted in Bootle. Nothing to do with policy. They are nice people who can't win, which is better than nasty people who can't win.
We have had centrist government since WWII. That is, all governments have in fact (ignore the window dressing) tried to make the social democrat Attlee project work and update it but never fundamentally deny it or provide an alternative.
The Tories, who looked recently as if they were on the right lines, have gone backwards. The idea that there is room for two parties on the nationalist Right is wrong.
The great majority of voters vote centrist.
Incidentally, if Reform form a government (which Labour and Tories are doing their best to bring about) they will in fact govern as centrists (social democrats) with the addition of a very rancid entho-nationalism about borders and skin colour.
Not true about Thatcher though and many of the new Reform recruits from the Tories are diehard Thatcherites
There's been a few good news anecdotes on here about the NHS, so to balance things up I thought I'd share a story from my mother of a false economy leading to much greater cost.
"A resident here, Harry, went in to [an outer London] private hospital as an NHS patient for a hip replacement, sent home in a TAXI 2days after op, dumped in the carpark, I don't know how he got to his flat but the wound opened, he is now very ill in NHS hospital."
My mother has been recommended surgery to correct a case of Cavus foot that has developed as part of her Parkinson's, but recovery from surgery requires keeping weight off the foot for six weeks, so consensus among Parkinson sufferers is that the surgery is a ticket to requiring a wheelchair - at further expense for the NHS.
The NHS do seem overly focused on surgery as the cure for all ills, but then completely neglecting what happens afterwards.
I think, Mr LP, that your first case is a criticism of the private hospital, although also perhaps of the contracts manager in the NHS. When I worked in a private hospital, for a short time in the 80's, the surgeons always sent cases where there had been problems to the nearest NHS hospital.
With my Aunt, the lack of coordination between the various bits of the hospital (NHS) and the care teams outside was chronic.
Because I was down as next of kin, they started phoning me to ask what the other people were doing!
Having been on both sides of that particular fence I sympathise. Sometimes it doesn't work well; other times at all!
Everyone was well intentioned and hard working. The system wasn't letting them do their job.
I found myself sketching, in my head a web based* tool that would present, per patient, documentation, actions taken, actions to take, alerts, contacts in the various agencies that are part of the solution for that patient....
*So runs on everything - laptops, desktops, tablets and phones.
EDIT: It reminded me of an occasion when I saw a contractor for the road people trying to dig a hole with a shovel. No chance with that tool - he was hammering away, giving it his best, but...
There were proposals, about 20-25 years ago, for the NHS to have one standard system of documentation, as you say web-based. Unfortunately the technology at the time wasn't good enough and the scheme was scrapped. Not sure whether it was by the Coalition or just before. Last time I was taken into hospital the ambulance team had tablets whereon they could access my GP records, so we are now getting there. The fragmentation of secondary care doesn't, IMHO, help, though.
The disastrous NHS IT mega-project(s) ?
The technology was fine. But Big Bang Mega Projects never work.
What you should do is - create some standards and an architecture. Then you work towards that, piece by piece. Those ignorant of project management and OR then say - "But we will waste so much on making the old systems connect to the new. If we do a Big Bang..."
I quite like tales of IT projects. There's a book 'A Computer called Leo' which appeals.
Most IT projects are handicapped by two things - the developers don't know the domain, and the domain owners have no idea about development.
Edit: But I'm fairly sure that others here have a more refined view than mine.
It doesn't surprise me. No one in legacy media had any interest in the similarity from f speeches between Gill and other UKIP/Brexit/ Reform characters, including Farage.
Likewise Starmer will be removed, quite rightly, for the Epstein-Mandelson connection yet no one comments on the Farage-Trump-Musk- Bannon- Epstein linkage.
Reform are new and exciting and the positive coverage they are getting from the likes of Kuennsberg and Mason is remarkable. I believe Badenoch may have this week made the connection.
She did and called out Reform in Wales for having a former leader in jail
Put me in "surprised, but not shocked", and I don't even know the area.
1 Not many stories tip that many votes by themselves. (The main effect of Mandygate is likely to be more enthusiasm for anti-government parties and less for Labour than many actual switches.) I doubt that many people ever knew who Nathan Gill was, unfortunately.
2 There are always local factors, and they often swamp the national signal.
Taking the national pulse from any one local by-election is almost as silly as using FON.
I know (or knew, 30+ years ago) the area quite well. Holyhead never really was that great but there was employment at the ferry terminal and at RTZ / Anglesey Aluminium, which had a big plant on the island (at one time the largest single customer in the UK for electricity). This closed a number of years ago along with Wylva power station on the main island.
It is another left behind place now, ripe for Reform.
I doubt the new nuclear plant will help much, but that remains to be seen.
A shame, because it is quite a nice island otherwise. Trearddur Bay used to be a destination for well to do Liverpudlians - Nicholas Monserrat had a house there. Nowadays the caravans significantly outnumber the fancy houses.
Can't sell the flat for what he thinks he should get is the real issue. There is a price at which someone will buy, but it is probably a lot lower than he thought he was going to inherit.
Economics 101. Back in the real world, the story tells us buyers must be over 70 and pay £11,000 a year in service charges. What does that Venn diagram look like?
So no-one would buy for one pound?
Well, first, they'd have to live in the area already to know it was for sale; then they would need to be over 70, unable to afford a normally-priced flat, yet still able to pay £11,000 a year in service charges. So what's the Venn diagram?
And that ignores that your reductio ad absurdum would repel buyers because at that price there *must* be something wrong.
There is a lack of financial education and understanding here all round. £11k a year for that kind of property isn't ridiculous, including council tax (£1k), and weekly home care (worth approx £1.5k?). Having an on site hub and restaurant radically transforms the social life of the residents for the better. Care is also easier to access. If they are downsizing then being able to comfortably pay 10-15 years service charge towards end of life is not going to be particularly unusual.
86% of residents are happy - this is a good place to live, far more suitable for someone with declining health and mobility than trying to maintain a 3/4 bed family home on their own.
But it goes against the mindset of the UK property owning obsessions, service charges are as seen as rent which is seen as dead money. Capital must be preserved to pass down the generations even if that means poorer quality of life for those who have accumulated the capital.
That's not the issue.
The point is the restrictive covenants *on the empty properties* which can make the properties impossible even to give away (as the article suggests): ..One property we found had been vacant for more than nine years. In another case, family members face £60,000 in charges accrued since the property became vacant in 2019. A relative told us it was "like a noose around our necks", and another expressed frustration that "you can't give them away". Another beneficiary reported paying service charges of £750 per month on a flat that has been empty for four years, describing it as a "never-ending nightmare", adding: "It is infuriating and heartbreaking in equal measure."..
From the reporting on this, it really does not sound as though the inability to sell is entirely down to unrealistic expectations of value.
Until I see a link to an auction with a £1 reserve price - the issue is the price they are expecting to receive for the flat.
My expectation is that there is a lot of sunk cost fallacy involved here if you are paying £750 a month - and hoping for £60,000 - 1 year later and £9,000 down you now need that £60,000 to offset the £9,000 costs
Many, many people expect to inherit from their elderly parents and are quite shocked when care costs rapidly diminish the savings etc. No-one has a right to inherit - if money needs to be spent to care for someone it should be spent. And these type housing set up are 'care'.
Our former son in law and his sister paid over £250,000 in care fees for their mother and father
So did my family and then they took another chunk in inheritance tax and then taxed her on the income from interest on the house she had to sell to.pay the fees.
Maybe noone has a right to.inherit but nor should the Govt have the right to tax people on death. Certainly not on estates up to say 2 million.
So you don’t mind inheritance tax, you just want it at a level where you wouldn’t have paid it.
Can't sell the flat for what he thinks he should get is the real issue. There is a price at which someone will buy, but it is probably a lot lower than he thought he was going to inherit.
Economics 101. Back in the real world, the story tells us buyers must be over 70 and pay £11,000 a year in service charges. What does that Venn diagram look like?
So no-one would buy for one pound?
Well, first, they'd have to live in the area already to know it was for sale; then they would need to be over 70, unable to afford a normally-priced flat, yet still able to pay £11,000 a year in service charges. So what's the Venn diagram?
And that ignores that your reductio ad absurdum would repel buyers because at that price there *must* be something wrong.
There is a lack of financial education and understanding here all round. £11k a year for that kind of property isn't ridiculous, including council tax (£1k), and weekly home care (worth approx £1.5k?). Having an on site hub and restaurant radically transforms the social life of the residents for the better. Care is also easier to access. If they are downsizing then being able to comfortably pay 10-15 years service charge towards end of life is not going to be particularly unusual.
86% of residents are happy - this is a good place to live, far more suitable for someone with declining health and mobility than trying to maintain a 3/4 bed family home on their own.
But it goes against the mindset of the UK property owning obsessions, service charges are as seen as rent which is seen as dead money. Capital must be preserved to pass down the generations even if that means poorer quality of life for those who have accumulated the capital.
That's not the issue.
The point is the restrictive covenants *on the empty properties* which can make the properties impossible even to give away (as the article suggests): ..One property we found had been vacant for more than nine years. In another case, family members face £60,000 in charges accrued since the property became vacant in 2019. A relative told us it was "like a noose around our necks", and another expressed frustration that "you can't give them away". Another beneficiary reported paying service charges of £750 per month on a flat that has been empty for four years, describing it as a "never-ending nightmare", adding: "It is infuriating and heartbreaking in equal measure."..
From the reporting on this, it really does not sound as though the inability to sell is entirely down to unrealistic expectations of value.
Until I see a link to an auction with a £1 reserve price - the issue is the price they are expecting to receive for the flat.
My expectation is that there is a lot of sunk cost fallacy involved here if you are paying £750 a month - and hoping for £60,000 - 1 year later and £9,000 down you now need that £60,000 to offset the £9,000 costs
Many, many people expect to inherit from their elderly parents and are quite shocked when care costs rapidly diminish the savings etc. No-one has a right to inherit - if money needs to be spent to care for someone it should be spent. And these type housing set up are 'care'.
Our former son in law and his sister paid over £250,000 in care fees for their mother and father
So did my family and then they took another chunk in inheritance tax and then taxed her on the income from interest on the house she had to sell to.pay the fees.
Maybe noone has a right to.inherit but nor should the Govt have the right to tax people on death. Certainly not on estates up to say 2 million.
. And of course tax on interest post death whilst one waits for the appallingly slow probate procedure.. to allow release of the money. Anyone who has been an Executor of an estate needing probate will have suffered as a result of Govt and Solicitor inefficiency.
You really do start to question the boundary commissions judgement in creating Gorton and Denton - obviously all seats have some variation in them but in this case there are two wildly different sections that are looking for different things from an MP.
The criteria for boundaries was to keep within local authorities where possible. Just because 2 half’s of a constituency want different things doesn’t remove the fact it’s a consistency.
Put it this way is it better to have 2 swing seats that reflect public mood or 2 safe seats that never change
We can't have Trump/ Putin adjacent fascists running our country.
But we can have a patriotic right wing majority, political rivals but united by a steely determination to reverse our national decline by repairing our institutions from the acid attack of the Blair/Brown constitutional 'reforms'.
What? Removing the hereditary peers and introducing the Freedom of Information Act?
There’s really no question to which Angela Rayner is the answer.
If she can’t run her own household without getting into financial trouble, what chance her running the country?
Can we imagine her turning up to a meeting with Trump or Xi, and be taken remotely seriously?
Her household was in financial trouble when she was born, because she grew up in poverty being raised by her grandma and left school at 16 without any qualifications.
I like the idea of a PM with an authentic working class background who has overcome extreme adversity to get to the top. Any foreign leader worth their salt would take seriously someone who has, although some are obviously not worth their salt. I wouldn't blame her for looking down on those born with a silver spoon in their mouth, like Trump.
Had she got to Oxbridge from that background or made herself a self made millionaire you might have a point but otherwise there are millions of single mother's raised on council estates who left school with no qualifications and maybe got a middle class office job with a bit of hard work. It doesn't mean they should be PM!
Rayner would be a better campaigner than Starmer no doubt and she she would rally the left more behind her as Corbyn did but she would turn off centrist swing voters and in terms of actual competence for the job Starmer would be better. Sir Keir was himself raised in a relatively working class household and through sheer hard work did manage to get to university and an Oxford postgrad degree and the bar and KC and on that basis if it were a choice between Rayner or keeping Starmer I would keep him
So your view is that she should know her place and stay there.
She has no degree and got no qualifications to speak of at school, effectively Rayner still is working class, just one who knows how to navigate a path to the top of the Labour party.
Starmer for all his faults actually did take himself from the skilled working class to the upper middle class by sheer hard work. Streeting too was working class by background, with relatives in prison and son of a single mother in a council flat who also got himself to Cambridge and the upper middle class by hard work
I would just say so what
You seem to think the only way to succeed is to go to University which is nonsense
Indeed, maybe we would be better with street wise, practical and honest people, then some of those governing us
I went to Uni and im useless
My issue with @HYUFD is he seems to think the only way to success is to go to University which is obviously silly
Angela Rayner has a formidable back story and to say she shouldn't have got pregnant at 16 is out of order
Indeed the 50% University policy of Blair was wrong and it is good to see the change to a more sensible mix with FEs
No, Winston Churchill did not go to university, nor did Disraeli, nor did Major nor did Lloyd George. All became PM but they all got more qualifications at school than Rayner did.
If you followed traditional religious teaching you wouldn't get pregnant until married
Who is the clever person
The University Graduate who learns what is required to pass exams and often doesnt enter a work environment until 22 or later, often drops in to a mid level role or
Someone with or without qualifications who enters work at 16, learns skills either white or blue collar, builds a career of understanding and knowledge and almost certainly a greater appreciation of real life.
BTW there is no right answer.
Those who think there is a right answer are IMHO the ones who are wrong.
It's a false dichotomy.
My brother-in-law here in Ireland is a welder. A blue collar occupation. So by your argument he would have left school at 16, gone straight into work, learned his trade that way, etc.
But he has had a technically-focused third level education. He's a graduate. Very highly skilled and good at what he does and well-paid for it.
The problem in Britain is that we have an idea of University that it is Oxbridge. It is a Classical education of the Trivium. All books in ancient libraries. Even the practical sciences are a bit of an oddity, more eccentrics in disused parts of buildings, rather than the core focus of the institution.
There's no room for a welder receiving an appropriate third-level education at a British University.
And so that's why British rates of graduate education are lower than its peers, and yet the debate in Britain is focused on making it lower still, and so the British economy lacks the skills to succeed, imports migrants to fill the gaps, and the culture is anti-education. It's so self-harming.
You can do degree apprenticeships too now products of which get well paid jobs
Age clearly impacts on my assessment
At age 16 in the 70s you were uni, white collar admin or blue collar
If you were lucky blue collar you got a good spprentiship in engineering, manufacturing or similar and a trade for life possibly some day release.
For too many their lives were dictated by a few hours in February of their 11th year.
Far more got into excellent academic state schools who were academic when we had grammar schools, pity we can't have a few more of them
I agree
I went to a Grammar School covenanted in the 16th Century by King Edward VI...
In my 3rd form year it was announced that there would be no new entrants in 2 years time as it was being abolished and turned in to a 6th form college.
My first year in 6th form was at my old school new college..
A shocking waste a tragic error.
I'll allow you to guess which Minister of Education made that decision?
My Headmaster a noted Latin scholar and author told 650 boys that if said Minister came to the school he would probably be arrested.
In many ways it defined my politcal direction of travel the sheer impact that decision did to the school, the separate Girls High, the town and the surrounding area.
The culling and wilful attack on some outstanding grammar and secondary schools.
For those under 60 who may wonder who the equivalent in Education to Beeching to the railways was.
The minister who destruction and wilful negligence destroyed a sector for generations.
Her name was Margaret Hilda Thatcher.
Actually there were more pupils in grammar schools in 1997 than in 1979.
It was Labour Ministers Crosland and Williams who really ended grammar schools in most parts of the country, aided by Labour councils and merged them with secondary moderns and technical schools to create comprehensives.
Heath didn't reverse that trend either and as he was her boss Thatcher had to do what she was told as Education Secretary but where grammars survived it was almost always in Tory held councils
You really do start to question the boundary commissions judgement in creating Gorton and Denton - obviously all seats have some variation in them but in this case there are two wildly different sections that are looking for different things from an MP.
The criteria for boundaries was to keep within local authorities where possible. Just because 2 half’s of a constituency want different things doesn’t remove the fact it’s a consistency.
Put it this way is it better to have 2 swing seats that reflect public mood or 2 safe seats that never change
Isn't Denton and Gorton in TWO council areas?
Which part of where possible did you not grasp
And I say this sat in the starting point for the North East constituencies because the criteria meant - this local authority could be the constitency
There is a psephological argument (though I think a superficial one) in favour of the Tories going centrist. However, I am interested in how its proponents explain the palpable lack of enthusiasm for the Lib Dems. They are of the progressive centre. They are not tainted as the Tories are by Government. They are not responsible for any of Starmer's cock ups either. They are identified with pro-Europeanism - a supposed golden ticket - more than any other party. So why are they causing such a massive collective shrug, and why should the Tories be so desperate to get a slice of that rather meagre pie?
It's more complicated than that. The LDs are part of the old establishment, so are discounted except where they can win for the same reason the Tories are discounted in Bootle. Nothing to do with policy. They are nice people who can't win, which is better than nasty people who can't win.
We have had centrist government since WWII. That is, all governments have in fact (ignore the window dressing) tried to make the social democrat Attlee project work and update it but never fundamentally deny it or provide an alternative.
The Tories, who looked recently as if they were on the right lines, have gone backwards. The idea that there is room for two parties on the nationalist Right is wrong.
The great majority of voters vote centrist.
Incidentally, if Reform form a government (which Labour and Tories are doing their best to bring about) they will in fact govern as centrists (social democrats) with the addition of a very rancid entho-nationalism about borders and skin colour.
Not 100% true - the LibDems won Redcar in 2010 as a none of the above party
Special circs there. To do with steel industry, a v strong LibDem candidate, and the poor record of the losing Labour MP. Also Redcar seems to be quite capable of big swings - the Tories gained it in 2019. No doubt a Reform target now.
There's been a few good news anecdotes on here about the NHS, so to balance things up I thought I'd share a story from my mother of a false economy leading to much greater cost.
"A resident here, Harry, went in to [an outer London] private hospital as an NHS patient for a hip replacement, sent home in a TAXI 2days after op, dumped in the carpark, I don't know how he got to his flat but the wound opened, he is now very ill in NHS hospital."
My mother has been recommended surgery to correct a case of Cavus foot that has developed as part of her Parkinson's, but recovery from surgery requires keeping weight off the foot for six weeks, so consensus among Parkinson sufferers is that the surgery is a ticket to requiring a wheelchair - at further expense for the NHS.
The NHS do seem overly focused on surgery as the cure for all ills, but then completely neglecting what happens afterwards.
I think, Mr LP, that your first case is a criticism of the private hospital, although also perhaps of the contracts manager in the NHS. When I worked in a private hospital, for a short time in the 80's, the surgeons always sent cases where there had been problems to the nearest NHS hospital.
With my Aunt, the lack of coordination between the various bits of the hospital (NHS) and the care teams outside was chronic.
Because I was down as next of kin, they started phoning me to ask what the other people were doing!
Having been on both sides of that particular fence I sympathise. Sometimes it doesn't work well; other times at all!
Everyone was well intentioned and hard working. The system wasn't letting them do their job.
I found myself sketching, in my head a web based* tool that would present, per patient, documentation, actions taken, actions to take, alerts, contacts in the various agencies that are part of the solution for that patient....
*So runs on everything - laptops, desktops, tablets and phones.
EDIT: It reminded me of an occasion when I saw a contractor for the road people trying to dig a hole with a shovel. No chance with that tool - he was hammering away, giving it his best, but...
There were proposals, about 20-25 years ago, for the NHS to have one standard system of documentation, as you say web-based. Unfortunately the technology at the time wasn't good enough and the scheme was scrapped. Not sure whether it was by the Coalition or just before. Last time I was taken into hospital the ambulance team had tablets whereon they could access my GP records, so we are now getting there. The fragmentation of secondary care doesn't, IMHO, help, though.
The disastrous NHS IT mega-project(s) ?
The technology was fine. But Big Bang Mega Projects never work.
What you should do is - create some standards and an architecture. Then you work towards that, piece by piece. Those ignorant of project management and OR then say - "But we will waste so much on making the old systems connect to the new. If we do a Big Bang..."
I quite like tales of IT projects. There's a book 'A Computer called Leo' which appeals.
Most IT projects are handicapped by two things - the developers don't know the domain, and the domain owners have no idea about development.
Edit: But I'm fairly sure that others here have a more refined view than mine.
Pretty much
If you make everyone involved read "The Mythical Man Month", it's a start.
Was just doing a search on PB for an old comment and it was extraordinary how many posters came up in the search who no longer post or have been banned. A really good range of positions too. A shame.
It is perhaps more surprising the number of people who persist. Maybe their first 80,000 post haven't changed a single persons view of Brexit, but who knows if the 80,001st post just might suddenly enlighten their opponents.
There are many good reasons for visiting PB.com, but to change people's minds isn't one of them.
There is a psephological argument (though I think a superficial one) in favour of the Tories going centrist. However, I am interested in how its proponents explain the palpable lack of enthusiasm for the Lib Dems. They are of the progressive centre. They are not tainted as the Tories are by Government. They are not responsible for any of Starmer's cock ups either. They are identified with pro-Europeanism - a supposed golden ticket - more than any other party. So why are they causing such a massive collective shrug, and why should the Tories be so desperate to get a slice of that rather meagre pie?
It's more complicated than that. The LDs are part of the old establishment, so are discounted except where they can win for the same reason the Tories are discounted in Bootle. Nothing to do with policy. They are nice people who can't win, which is better than nasty people who can't win.
We have had centrist government since WWII. That is, all governments have in fact (ignore the window dressing) tried to make the social democrat Attlee project work and update it but never fundamentally deny it or provide an alternative.
The Tories, who looked recently as if they were on the right lines, have gone backwards. The idea that there is room for two parties on the nationalist Right is wrong.
The great majority of voters vote centrist.
Incidentally, if Reform form a government (which Labour and Tories are doing their best to bring about) they will in fact govern as centrists (social democrats) with the addition of a very rancid entho-nationalism about borders and skin colour.
Not true about Thatcher though and many of the new Reform recruits from the Tories are diehard Thatcherites
The Thatcher thing perpetuates a myth. She fits absolutely in the centre right updating of social democracy, shifting the balance of state and private but not altering the fundamentals of regulated private enterprise and welfare state which is the bedrock of the Attlee settlement. She tried to make it work better.
Can't sell the flat for what he thinks he should get is the real issue. There is a price at which someone will buy, but it is probably a lot lower than he thought he was going to inherit.
Economics 101. Back in the real world, the story tells us buyers must be over 70 and pay £11,000 a year in service charges. What does that Venn diagram look like?
So no-one would buy for one pound?
Well, first, they'd have to live in the area already to know it was for sale; then they would need to be over 70, unable to afford a normally-priced flat, yet still able to pay £11,000 a year in service charges. So what's the Venn diagram?
And that ignores that your reductio ad absurdum would repel buyers because at that price there *must* be something wrong.
There is a lack of financial education and understanding here all round. £11k a year for that kind of property isn't ridiculous, including council tax (£1k), and weekly home care (worth approx £1.5k?). Having an on site hub and restaurant radically transforms the social life of the residents for the better. Care is also easier to access. If they are downsizing then being able to comfortably pay 10-15 years service charge towards end of life is not going to be particularly unusual.
86% of residents are happy - this is a good place to live, far more suitable for someone with declining health and mobility than trying to maintain a 3/4 bed family home on their own.
But it goes against the mindset of the UK property owning obsessions, service charges are as seen as rent which is seen as dead money. Capital must be preserved to pass down the generations even if that means poorer quality of life for those who have accumulated the capital.
That's not the issue.
The point is the restrictive covenants *on the empty properties* which can make the properties impossible even to give away (as the article suggests): ..One property we found had been vacant for more than nine years. In another case, family members face £60,000 in charges accrued since the property became vacant in 2019. A relative told us it was "like a noose around our necks", and another expressed frustration that "you can't give them away". Another beneficiary reported paying service charges of £750 per month on a flat that has been empty for four years, describing it as a "never-ending nightmare", adding: "It is infuriating and heartbreaking in equal measure."..
From the reporting on this, it really does not sound as though the inability to sell is entirely down to unrealistic expectations of value.
Until I see a link to an auction with a £1 reserve price - the issue is the price they are expecting to receive for the flat.
My expectation is that there is a lot of sunk cost fallacy involved here if you are paying £750 a month - and hoping for £60,000 - 1 year later and £9,000 down you now need that £60,000 to offset the £9,000 costs
Many, many people expect to inherit from their elderly parents and are quite shocked when care costs rapidly diminish the savings etc. No-one has a right to inherit - if money needs to be spent to care for someone it should be spent. And these type housing set up are 'care'.
Our former son in law and his sister paid over £250,000 in care fees for their mother and father
So did my family and then they took another chunk in inheritance tax and then taxed her on the income from interest on the house she had to sell to.pay the fees.
Maybe noone has a right to.inherit but nor should the Govt have the right to tax people on death. Certainly not on estates up to say 2 million.
So you don’t mind inheritance tax, you just want it at a level where you wouldn’t have paid it.
There is a psephological argument (though I think a superficial one) in favour of the Tories going centrist. However, I am interested in how its proponents explain the palpable lack of enthusiasm for the Lib Dems. They are of the progressive centre. They are not tainted as the Tories are by Government. They are not responsible for any of Starmer's cock ups either. They are identified with pro-Europeanism - a supposed golden ticket - more than any other party. So why are they causing such a massive collective shrug, and why should the Tories be so desperate to get a slice of that rather meagre pie?
It's more complicated than that. The LDs are part of the old establishment, so are discounted except where they can win for the same reason the Tories are discounted in Bootle. Nothing to do with policy. They are nice people who can't win, which is better than nasty people who can't win.
We have had centrist government since WWII. That is, all governments have in fact (ignore the window dressing) tried to make the social democrat Attlee project work and update it but never fundamentally deny it or provide an alternative.
The Tories, who looked recently as if they were on the right lines, have gone backwards. The idea that there is room for two parties on the nationalist Right is wrong.
The great majority of voters vote centrist.
Incidentally, if Reform form a government (which Labour and Tories are doing their best to bring about) they will in fact govern as centrists (social democrats) with the addition of a very rancid entho-nationalism about borders and skin colour.
Not true about Thatcher though and many of the new Reform recruits from the Tories are diehard Thatcherites
The Thatcher thing perpetuates a myth. She fits absolutely in the centre right updating of social democracy, shifting the balance of state and private but not altering the fundamentals of regulated private enterprise and welfare state which is the bedrock of the Attlee settlement. She tried to make it work better.
There’s really no question to which Angela Rayner is the answer.
If she can’t run her own household without getting into financial trouble, what chance her running the country?
Can we imagine her turning up to a meeting with Trump or Xi, and be taken remotely seriously?
Her household was in financial trouble when she was born, because she grew up in poverty being raised by her grandma and left school at 16 without any qualifications.
I like the idea of a PM with an authentic working class background who has overcome extreme adversity to get to the top. Any foreign leader worth their salt would take seriously someone who has, although some are obviously not worth their salt. I wouldn't blame her for looking down on those born with a silver spoon in their mouth, like Trump.
Had she got to Oxbridge from that background or made herself a self made millionaire you might have a point but otherwise there are millions of single mother's raised on council estates who left school with no qualifications and maybe got a middle class office job with a bit of hard work. It doesn't mean they should be PM!
Rayner would be a better campaigner than Starmer no doubt and she she would rally the left more behind her as Corbyn did but she would turn off centrist swing voters and in terms of actual competence for the job Starmer would be better. Sir Keir was himself raised in a relatively working class household and through sheer hard work did manage to get to university and an Oxford postgrad degree and the bar and KC and on that basis if it were a choice between Rayner or keeping Starmer I would keep him
So your view is that she should know her place and stay there.
She has no degree and got no qualifications to speak of at school, effectively Rayner still is working class, just one who knows how to navigate a path to the top of the Labour party.
Starmer for all his faults actually did take himself from the skilled working class to the upper middle class by sheer hard work. Streeting too was working class by background, with relatives in prison and son of a single mother in a council flat who also got himself to Cambridge and the upper middle class by hard work
I would just say so what
You seem to think the only way to succeed is to go to University which is nonsense
Indeed, maybe we would be better with street wise, practical and honest people, then some of those governing us
I went to Uni and im useless
My issue with @HYUFD is he seems to think the only way to success is to go to University which is obviously silly
Angela Rayner has a formidable back story and to say she shouldn't have got pregnant at 16 is out of order
Indeed the 50% University policy of Blair was wrong and it is good to see the change to a more sensible mix with FEs
No, Winston Churchill did not go to university, nor did Disraeli, nor did Major nor did Lloyd George. All became PM but they all got more qualifications at school than Rayner did.
If you followed traditional religious teaching you wouldn't get pregnant until married
Who is the clever person
The University Graduate who learns what is required to pass exams and often doesnt enter a work environment until 22 or later, often drops in to a mid level role or
Someone with or without qualifications who enters work at 16, learns skills either white or blue collar, builds a career of understanding and knowledge and almost certainly a greater appreciation of real life.
BTW there is no right answer.
Those who think there is a right answer are IMHO the ones who are wrong.
It's a false dichotomy.
My brother-in-law here in Ireland is a welder. A blue collar occupation. So by your argument he would have left school at 16, gone straight into work, learned his trade that way, etc.
But he has had a technically-focused third level education. He's a graduate. Very highly skilled and good at what he does and well-paid for it.
The problem in Britain is that we have an idea of University that it is Oxbridge. It is a Classical education of the Trivium. All books in ancient libraries. Even the practical sciences are a bit of an oddity, more eccentrics in disused parts of buildings, rather than the core focus of the institution.
There's no room for a welder receiving an appropriate third-level education at a British University.
And so that's why British rates of graduate education are lower than its peers, and yet the debate in Britain is focused on making it lower still, and so the British economy lacks the skills to succeed, imports migrants to fill the gaps, and the culture is anti-education. It's so self-harming.
You can do degree apprenticeships too now products of which get well paid jobs
Age clearly impacts on my assessment
At age 16 in the 70s you were uni, white collar admin or blue collar
If you were lucky blue collar you got a good spprentiship in engineering, manufacturing or similar and a trade for life possibly some day release.
For too many their lives were dictated by a few hours in February of their 11th year.
Far more got into excellent academic state schools who were academic when we had grammar schools, pity we can't have a few more of them
I agree
I went to a Grammar School covenanted in the 16th Century by King Edward VI...
In my 3rd form year it was announced that there would be no new entrants in 2 years time as it was being abolished and turned in to a 6th form college.
My first year in 6th form was at my old school new college..
A shocking waste a tragic error.
I'll allow you to guess which Minister of Education made that decision?
My Headmaster a noted Latin scholar and author told 650 boys that if said Minister came to the school he would probably be arrested.
In many ways it defined my politcal direction of travel the sheer impact that decision did to the school, the separate Girls High, the town and the surrounding area.
The culling and wilful attack on some outstanding grammar and secondary schools.
For those under 60 who may wonder who the equivalent in Education to Beeching to the railways was.
The minister who destruction and wilful negligence destroyed a sector for generations.
Her name was Margaret Hilda Thatcher.
Actually there were more pupils in grammar schools in 1997 than in 1979.
It was Labour Ministers Crosland and Williams who really ended grammar schools in most parts of the country, aided by Labour councils and merged them with secondary moderns to create comprehensives.
Heath didn't reverse that trend either and as he was her boss Thatcher had to do what she was told as Education Secretary but where grammars survived it was almost always in Tory held councils
"Grammar schools" are PB's derived version of "Mornington Crescent". HYUFD threads invariably end at "Grammar school" irrespective of the starting position.
As someone who many decades ago went to both a Comprehensive and later a rural Grammar School I won't be changing my mind soon. F*** Grammar schools!
Can't sell the flat for what he thinks he should get is the real issue. There is a price at which someone will buy, but it is probably a lot lower than he thought he was going to inherit.
Economics 101. Back in the real world, the story tells us buyers must be over 70 and pay £11,000 a year in service charges. What does that Venn diagram look like?
So no-one would buy for one pound?
Well, first, they'd have to live in the area already to know it was for sale; then they would need to be over 70, unable to afford a normally-priced flat, yet still able to pay £11,000 a year in service charges. So what's the Venn diagram?
And that ignores that your reductio ad absurdum would repel buyers because at that price there *must* be something wrong.
There is a lack of financial education and understanding here all round. £11k a year for that kind of property isn't ridiculous, including council tax (£1k), and weekly home care (worth approx £1.5k?). Having an on site hub and restaurant radically transforms the social life of the residents for the better. Care is also easier to access. If they are downsizing then being able to comfortably pay 10-15 years service charge towards end of life is not going to be particularly unusual.
86% of residents are happy - this is a good place to live, far more suitable for someone with declining health and mobility than trying to maintain a 3/4 bed family home on their own.
But it goes against the mindset of the UK property owning obsessions, service charges are as seen as rent which is seen as dead money. Capital must be preserved to pass down the generations even if that means poorer quality of life for those who have accumulated the capital.
That's not the issue.
The point is the restrictive covenants *on the empty properties* which can make the properties impossible even to give away (as the article suggests): ..One property we found had been vacant for more than nine years. In another case, family members face £60,000 in charges accrued since the property became vacant in 2019. A relative told us it was "like a noose around our necks", and another expressed frustration that "you can't give them away". Another beneficiary reported paying service charges of £750 per month on a flat that has been empty for four years, describing it as a "never-ending nightmare", adding: "It is infuriating and heartbreaking in equal measure."..
From the reporting on this, it really does not sound as though the inability to sell is entirely down to unrealistic expectations of value.
Until I see a link to an auction with a £1 reserve price - the issue is the price they are expecting to receive for the flat.
My expectation is that there is a lot of sunk cost fallacy involved here if you are paying £750 a month - and hoping for £60,000 - 1 year later and £9,000 down you now need that £60,000 to offset the £9,000 costs
Many, many people expect to inherit from their elderly parents and are quite shocked when care costs rapidly diminish the savings etc. No-one has a right to inherit - if money needs to be spent to care for someone it should be spent. And these type housing set up are 'care'.
Our former son in law and his sister paid over £250,000 in care fees for their mother and father
So did my family and then they took another chunk in inheritance tax and then taxed her on the income from interest on the house she had to sell to.pay the fees.
Maybe noone has a right to.inherit but nor should the Govt have the right to tax people on death. Certainly not on estates up to say 2 million.
So you don’t mind inheritance tax, you just want it at a level where you wouldn’t have paid it.
"Trump posts racist video depicting Obamas as monkeys.
"Donald Trump went on a massive social media spree overnight that included posting on Truth Social an election conspiracy video that ended with a clip depicting former president Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama as monkeys."
I wonder whether the sheer indecency of Trump (never mind the grifting, lying, salaciousness, etc) will at some point start registering. Or are we truly past the point of no return?
The ability of voters for a cause to ignore facts is often remarkable.
"Trump posts racist video depicting Obamas as monkeys.
"Donald Trump went on a massive social media spree overnight that included posting on Truth Social an election conspiracy video that ended with a clip depicting former president Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama as monkeys."
I wonder whether the sheer indecency of Trump (never mind the grifting, lying, salaciousness, etc) will at some point start registering. Or are we truly past the point of no return?
We're still bothsides-ing.
A video shared by President Trump on social media depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as monkeys has been condemned as racist by prominent Democrats https://x.com/thetimes/status/2019720152078561338
This isn't press impartially; it's amorality, and it's the same passive collusion which enabled Trump in the first place.
Can't sell the flat for what he thinks he should get is the real issue. There is a price at which someone will buy, but it is probably a lot lower than he thought he was going to inherit.
Economics 101. Back in the real world, the story tells us buyers must be over 70 and pay £11,000 a year in service charges. What does that Venn diagram look like?
So no-one would buy for one pound?
Well, first, they'd have to live in the area already to know it was for sale; then they would need to be over 70, unable to afford a normally-priced flat, yet still able to pay £11,000 a year in service charges. So what's the Venn diagram?
And that ignores that your reductio ad absurdum would repel buyers because at that price there *must* be something wrong.
There is a lack of financial education and understanding here all round. £11k a year for that kind of property isn't ridiculous, including council tax (£1k), and weekly home care (worth approx £1.5k?). Having an on site hub and restaurant radically transforms the social life of the residents for the better. Care is also easier to access. If they are downsizing then being able to comfortably pay 10-15 years service charge towards end of life is not going to be particularly unusual.
86% of residents are happy - this is a good place to live, far more suitable for someone with declining health and mobility than trying to maintain a 3/4 bed family home on their own.
But it goes against the mindset of the UK property owning obsessions, service charges are as seen as rent which is seen as dead money. Capital must be preserved to pass down the generations even if that means poorer quality of life for those who have accumulated the capital.
That's not the issue.
The point is the restrictive covenants *on the empty properties* which can make the properties impossible even to give away (as the article suggests): ..One property we found had been vacant for more than nine years. In another case, family members face £60,000 in charges accrued since the property became vacant in 2019. A relative told us it was "like a noose around our necks", and another expressed frustration that "you can't give them away". Another beneficiary reported paying service charges of £750 per month on a flat that has been empty for four years, describing it as a "never-ending nightmare", adding: "It is infuriating and heartbreaking in equal measure."..
From the reporting on this, it really does not sound as though the inability to sell is entirely down to unrealistic expectations of value.
Until I see a link to an auction with a £1 reserve price - the issue is the price they are expecting to receive for the flat.
My expectation is that there is a lot of sunk cost fallacy involved here if you are paying £750 a month - and hoping for £60,000 - 1 year later and £9,000 down you now need that £60,000 to offset the £9,000 costs
Many, many people expect to inherit from their elderly parents and are quite shocked when care costs rapidly diminish the savings etc. No-one has a right to inherit - if money needs to be spent to care for someone it should be spent. And these type housing set up are 'care'.
Our former son in law and his sister paid over £250,000 in care fees for their mother and father
So did my family and then they took another chunk in inheritance tax and then taxed her on the income from interest on the house she had to sell to.pay the fees.
Maybe noone has a right to.inherit but nor should the Govt have the right to tax people on death. Certainly not on estates up to say 2 million.
So you don’t mind inheritance tax, you just want it at a level where you wouldn’t have paid it.
Nos where 99% of people won't pay. Only the very
95% of estates already don't pay inheritance tax.
Only due to Osborne's main residence nil rate band, without that half of deceased home owners would now see inheritance tax paid on their estates
There’s really no question to which Angela Rayner is the answer.
If she can’t run her own household without getting into financial trouble, what chance her running the country?
Can we imagine her turning up to a meeting with Trump or Xi, and be taken remotely seriously?
Her household was in financial trouble when she was born, because she grew up in poverty being raised by her grandma and left school at 16 without any qualifications.
I like the idea of a PM with an authentic working class background who has overcome extreme adversity to get to the top. Any foreign leader worth their salt would take seriously someone who has, although some are obviously not worth their salt. I wouldn't blame her for looking down on those born with a silver spoon in their mouth, like Trump.
Had she got to Oxbridge from that background or made herself a self made millionaire you might have a point but otherwise there are millions of single mother's raised on council estates who left school with no qualifications and maybe got a middle class office job with a bit of hard work. It doesn't mean they should be PM!
Rayner would be a better campaigner than Starmer no doubt and she she would rally the left more behind her as Corbyn did but she would turn off centrist swing voters and in terms of actual competence for the job Starmer would be better. Sir Keir was himself raised in a relatively working class household and through sheer hard work did manage to get to university and an Oxford postgrad degree and the bar and KC and on that basis if it were a choice between Rayner or keeping Starmer I would keep him
So your view is that she should know her place and stay there.
She has no degree and got no qualifications to speak of at school, effectively Rayner still is working class, just one who knows how to navigate a path to the top of the Labour party.
Starmer for all his faults actually did take himself from the skilled working class to the upper middle class by sheer hard work. Streeting too was working class by background, with relatives in prison and son of a single mother in a council flat who also got himself to Cambridge and the upper middle class by hard work
I would just say so what
You seem to think the only way to succeed is to go to University which is nonsense
Indeed, maybe we would be better with street wise, practical and honest people, then some of those governing us
I went to Uni and im useless
My issue with @HYUFD is he seems to think the only way to success is to go to University which is obviously silly
Angela Rayner has a formidable back story and to say she shouldn't have got pregnant at 16 is out of order
Indeed the 50% University policy of Blair was wrong and it is good to see the change to a more sensible mix with FEs
No, Winston Churchill did not go to university, nor did Disraeli, nor did Major nor did Lloyd George. All became PM but they all got more qualifications at school than Rayner did.
If you followed traditional religious teaching you wouldn't get pregnant until married
Who is the clever person
The University Graduate who learns what is required to pass exams and often doesnt enter a work environment until 22 or later, often drops in to a mid level role or
Someone with or without qualifications who enters work at 16, learns skills either white or blue collar, builds a career of understanding and knowledge and almost certainly a greater appreciation of real life.
BTW there is no right answer.
Those who think there is a right answer are IMHO the ones who are wrong.
It's a false dichotomy.
My brother-in-law here in Ireland is a welder. A blue collar occupation. So by your argument he would have left school at 16, gone straight into work, learned his trade that way, etc.
But he has had a technically-focused third level education. He's a graduate. Very highly skilled and good at what he does and well-paid for it.
The problem in Britain is that we have an idea of University that it is Oxbridge. It is a Classical education of the Trivium. All books in ancient libraries. Even the practical sciences are a bit of an oddity, more eccentrics in disused parts of buildings, rather than the core focus of the institution.
There's no room for a welder receiving an appropriate third-level education at a British University.
And so that's why British rates of graduate education are lower than its peers, and yet the debate in Britain is focused on making it lower still, and so the British economy lacks the skills to succeed, imports migrants to fill the gaps, and the culture is anti-education. It's so self-harming.
You can do degree apprenticeships too now products of which get well paid jobs
Age clearly impacts on my assessment
At age 16 in the 70s you were uni, white collar admin or blue collar
If you were lucky blue collar you got a good spprentiship in engineering, manufacturing or similar and a trade for life possibly some day release.
For too many their lives were dictated by a few hours in February of their 11th year.
Far more got into excellent academic state schools who were academic when we had grammar schools, pity we can't have a few more of them
I agree
I went to a Grammar School covenanted in the 16th Century by King Edward VI...
In my 3rd form year it was announced that there would be no new entrants in 2 years time as it was being abolished and turned in to a 6th form college.
My first year in 6th form was at my old school new college..
A shocking waste a tragic error.
I'll allow you to guess which Minister of Education made that decision?
My Headmaster a noted Latin scholar and author told 650 boys that if said Minister came to the school he would probably be arrested.
In many ways it defined my politcal direction of travel the sheer impact that decision did to the school, the separate Girls High, the town and the surrounding area.
The culling and wilful attack on some outstanding grammar and secondary schools.
For those under 60 who may wonder who the equivalent in Education to Beeching to the railways was.
The minister who destruction and wilful negligence destroyed a sector for generations.
Her name was Margaret Hilda Thatcher.
Actually there were more pupils in grammar schools in 1997 than in 1979.
It was Labour Ministers Crosland and Williams who really ended grammar schools in most parts of the country, aided by Labour councils and merged them with secondary moderns and technical schools to create comprehensives.
Heath didn't reverse that trend either and as he was her boss Thatcher had to do what she was told as Education Secretary but where grammars survived it was almost always in Tory held councils
Thatcher definitely closed mine.
The then Tory MP, John Stokes (he actually made Enoch Powell sound like a Liberal) who always attended Speech day, was actually empty chaired by the Headmaster that year.
There’s really no question to which Angela Rayner is the answer.
If she can’t run her own household without getting into financial trouble, what chance her running the country?
Can we imagine her turning up to a meeting with Trump or Xi, and be taken remotely seriously?
Her household was in financial trouble when she was born, because she grew up in poverty being raised by her grandma and left school at 16 without any qualifications.
I like the idea of a PM with an authentic working class background who has overcome extreme adversity to get to the top. Any foreign leader worth their salt would take seriously someone who has, although some are obviously not worth their salt. I wouldn't blame her for looking down on those born with a silver spoon in their mouth, like Trump.
Had she got to Oxbridge from that background or made herself a self made millionaire you might have a point but otherwise there are millions of single mother's raised on council estates who left school with no qualifications and maybe got a middle class office job with a bit of hard work. It doesn't mean they should be PM!
Rayner would be a better campaigner than Starmer no doubt and she she would rally the left more behind her as Corbyn did but she would turn off centrist swing voters and in terms of actual competence for the job Starmer would be better. Sir Keir was himself raised in a relatively working class household and through sheer hard work did manage to get to university and an Oxford postgrad degree and the bar and KC and on that basis if it were a choice between Rayner or keeping Starmer I would keep him
So your view is that she should know her place and stay there.
She has no degree and got no qualifications to speak of at school, effectively Rayner still is working class, just one who knows how to navigate a path to the top of the Labour party.
Starmer for all his faults actually did take himself from the skilled working class to the upper middle class by sheer hard work. Streeting too was working class by background, with relatives in prison and son of a single mother in a council flat who also got himself to Cambridge and the upper middle class by hard work
I would just say so what
You seem to think the only way to succeed is to go to University which is nonsense
Indeed, maybe we would be better with street wise, practical and honest people, then some of those governing us
I went to Uni and im useless
My issue with @HYUFD is he seems to think the only way to success is to go to University which is obviously silly
Angela Rayner has a formidable back story and to say she shouldn't have got pregnant at 16 is out of order
Indeed the 50% University policy of Blair was wrong and it is good to see the change to a more sensible mix with FEs
No, Winston Churchill did not go to university, nor did Disraeli, nor did Major nor did Lloyd George. All became PM but they all got more qualifications at school than Rayner did.
If you followed traditional religious teaching you wouldn't get pregnant until married
Who is the clever person
The University Graduate who learns what is required to pass exams and often doesnt enter a work environment until 22 or later, often drops in to a mid level role or
Someone with or without qualifications who enters work at 16, learns skills either white or blue collar, builds a career of understanding and knowledge and almost certainly a greater appreciation of real life.
BTW there is no right answer.
Those who think there is a right answer are IMHO the ones who are wrong.
It's a false dichotomy.
My brother-in-law here in Ireland is a welder. A blue collar occupation. So by your argument he would have left school at 16, gone straight into work, learned his trade that way, etc.
But he has had a technically-focused third level education. He's a graduate. Very highly skilled and good at what he does and well-paid for it.
The problem in Britain is that we have an idea of University that it is Oxbridge. It is a Classical education of the Trivium. All books in ancient libraries. Even the practical sciences are a bit of an oddity, more eccentrics in disused parts of buildings, rather than the core focus of the institution.
There's no room for a welder receiving an appropriate third-level education at a British University.
And so that's why British rates of graduate education are lower than its peers, and yet the debate in Britain is focused on making it lower still, and so the British economy lacks the skills to succeed, imports migrants to fill the gaps, and the culture is anti-education. It's so self-harming.
You can do degree apprenticeships too now products of which get well paid jobs
Age clearly impacts on my assessment
At age 16 in the 70s you were uni, white collar admin or blue collar
If you were lucky blue collar you got a good spprentiship in engineering, manufacturing or similar and a trade for life possibly some day release.
For too many their lives were dictated by a few hours in February of their 11th year.
Far more got into excellent academic state schools who were academic when we had grammar schools, pity we can't have a few more of them
I agree
I went to a Grammar School covenanted in the 16th Century by King Edward VI...
In my 3rd form year it was announced that there would be no new entrants in 2 years time as it was being abolished and turned in to a 6th form college.
My first year in 6th form was at my old school new college..
A shocking waste a tragic error.
I'll allow you to guess which Minister of Education made that decision?
My Headmaster a noted Latin scholar and author told 650 boys that if said Minister came to the school he would probably be arrested.
In many ways it defined my politcal direction of travel the sheer impact that decision did to the school, the separate Girls High, the town and the surrounding area.
The culling and wilful attack on some outstanding grammar and secondary schools.
For those under 60 who may wonder who the equivalent in Education to Beeching to the railways was.
The minister who destruction and wilful negligence destroyed a sector for generations.
Her name was Margaret Hilda Thatcher.
Actually there were more pupils in grammar schools in 1997 than in 1979.
It was Labour Ministers Crosland and Williams who really ended grammar schools in most parts of the country, aided by Labour councils and merged them with secondary moderns to create comprehensives.
Heath didn't reverse that trend either and as he was her boss Thatcher had to do what she was told as Education Secretary but where grammars survived it was almost always in Tory held councils
"Grammar schools" are PB's derived version of "Mornington Crescent". HYUFD threads invariably end at "Grammar school" irrespective of the starting position.
As someone who many decades ago went to both a Comprehensive and later a rural Grammar School I won't be changing my mind soon. F*** Grammar schools!
Yes well you are left of centre and I am a Tory so we know we disagree on that.
You can't even petition to ballot to open new grammars in your area though but since New Labour you can petition to have ballots to close grammars that still exist in your area which is unfair
Can't sell the flat for what he thinks he should get is the real issue. There is a price at which someone will buy, but it is probably a lot lower than he thought he was going to inherit.
Economics 101. Back in the real world, the story tells us buyers must be over 70 and pay £11,000 a year in service charges. What does that Venn diagram look like?
So no-one would buy for one pound?
Well, first, they'd have to live in the area already to know it was for sale; then they would need to be over 70, unable to afford a normally-priced flat, yet still able to pay £11,000 a year in service charges. So what's the Venn diagram?
And that ignores that your reductio ad absurdum would repel buyers because at that price there *must* be something wrong.
There is a lack of financial education and understanding here all round. £11k a year for that kind of property isn't ridiculous, including council tax (£1k), and weekly home care (worth approx £1.5k?). Having an on site hub and restaurant radically transforms the social life of the residents for the better. Care is also easier to access. If they are downsizing then being able to comfortably pay 10-15 years service charge towards end of life is not going to be particularly unusual.
86% of residents are happy - this is a good place to live, far more suitable for someone with declining health and mobility than trying to maintain a 3/4 bed family home on their own.
But it goes against the mindset of the UK property owning obsessions, service charges are as seen as rent which is seen as dead money. Capital must be preserved to pass down the generations even if that means poorer quality of life for those who have accumulated the capital.
That's not the issue.
The point is the restrictive covenants *on the empty properties* which can make the properties impossible even to give away (as the article suggests): ..One property we found had been vacant for more than nine years. In another case, family members face £60,000 in charges accrued since the property became vacant in 2019. A relative told us it was "like a noose around our necks", and another expressed frustration that "you can't give them away". Another beneficiary reported paying service charges of £750 per month on a flat that has been empty for four years, describing it as a "never-ending nightmare", adding: "It is infuriating and heartbreaking in equal measure."..
From the reporting on this, it really does not sound as though the inability to sell is entirely down to unrealistic expectations of value.
Until I see a link to an auction with a £1 reserve price - the issue is the price they are expecting to receive for the flat.
My expectation is that there is a lot of sunk cost fallacy involved here if you are paying £750 a month - and hoping for £60,000 - 1 year later and £9,000 down you now need that £60,000 to offset the £9,000 costs
Many, many people expect to inherit from their elderly parents and are quite shocked when care costs rapidly diminish the savings etc. No-one has a right to inherit - if money needs to be spent to care for someone it should be spent. And these type housing set up are 'care'.
Our former son in law and his sister paid over £250,000 in care fees for their mother and father
So did my family and then they took another chunk in inheritance tax and then taxed her on the income from interest on the house she had to sell to.pay the fees.
Maybe noone has a right to.inherit but nor should the Govt have the right to tax people on death. Certainly not on estates up to say 2 million.
So you don’t mind inheritance tax, you just want it at a level where you wouldn’t have paid it.
Nos where 99% of people won't pay. Only the very
Only about 5% of estates pay IHT.
(I was pipped. I don't like it as a tax at all, much rather an annual property tax and a wider income tax, but there's no denying it's only the very richest paying it).
Can't sell the flat for what he thinks he should get is the real issue. There is a price at which someone will buy, but it is probably a lot lower than he thought he was going to inherit.
Economics 101. Back in the real world, the story tells us buyers must be over 70 and pay £11,000 a year in service charges. What does that Venn diagram look like?
So no-one would buy for one pound?
Well, first, they'd have to live in the area already to know it was for sale; then they would need to be over 70, unable to afford a normally-priced flat, yet still able to pay £11,000 a year in service charges. So what's the Venn diagram?
And that ignores that your reductio ad absurdum would repel buyers because at that price there *must* be something wrong.
There is a lack of financial education and understanding here all round. £11k a year for that kind of property isn't ridiculous, including council tax (£1k), and weekly home care (worth approx £1.5k?). Having an on site hub and restaurant radically transforms the social life of the residents for the better. Care is also easier to access. If they are downsizing then being able to comfortably pay 10-15 years service charge towards end of life is not going to be particularly unusual.
86% of residents are happy - this is a good place to live, far more suitable for someone with declining health and mobility than trying to maintain a 3/4 bed family home on their own.
But it goes against the mindset of the UK property owning obsessions, service charges are as seen as rent which is seen as dead money. Capital must be preserved to pass down the generations even if that means poorer quality of life for those who have accumulated the capital.
That's not the issue.
The point is the restrictive covenants *on the empty properties* which can make the properties impossible even to give away (as the article suggests): ..One property we found had been vacant for more than nine years. In another case, family members face £60,000 in charges accrued since the property became vacant in 2019. A relative told us it was "like a noose around our necks", and another expressed frustration that "you can't give them away". Another beneficiary reported paying service charges of £750 per month on a flat that has been empty for four years, describing it as a "never-ending nightmare", adding: "It is infuriating and heartbreaking in equal measure."..
From the reporting on this, it really does not sound as though the inability to sell is entirely down to unrealistic expectations of value.
Until I see a link to an auction with a £1 reserve price - the issue is the price they are expecting to receive for the flat.
My expectation is that there is a lot of sunk cost fallacy involved here if you are paying £750 a month - and hoping for £60,000 - 1 year later and £9,000 down you now need that £60,000 to offset the £9,000 costs
Many, many people expect to inherit from their elderly parents and are quite shocked when care costs rapidly diminish the savings etc. No-one has a right to inherit - if money needs to be spent to care for someone it should be spent. And these type housing set up are 'care'.
Our former son in law and his sister paid over £250,000 in care fees for their mother and father
So did my family and then they took another chunk in inheritance tax and then taxed her on the income from interest on the house she had to sell to.pay the fees.
Maybe noone has a right to.inherit but nor should the Govt have the right to tax people on death. Certainly not on estates up to say 2 million.
So you don’t mind inheritance tax, you just want it at a level where you wouldn’t have paid it.
Nos where 99% of people won't pay. Only the very
95% of estates already don't pay inheritance tax.
So make it 99pc. Perhaps the threshold should 20 million. Then only the super rich pay
There’s really no question to which Angela Rayner is the answer.
If she can’t run her own household without getting into financial trouble, what chance her running the country?
Can we imagine her turning up to a meeting with Trump or Xi, and be taken remotely seriously?
Her household was in financial trouble when she was born, because she grew up in poverty being raised by her grandma and left school at 16 without any qualifications.
I like the idea of a PM with an authentic working class background who has overcome extreme adversity to get to the top. Any foreign leader worth their salt would take seriously someone who has, although some are obviously not worth their salt. I wouldn't blame her for looking down on those born with a silver spoon in their mouth, like Trump.
Had she got to Oxbridge from that background or made herself a self made millionaire you might have a point but otherwise there are millions of single mother's raised on council estates who left school with no qualifications and maybe got a middle class office job with a bit of hard work. It doesn't mean they should be PM!
Rayner would be a better campaigner than Starmer no doubt and she she would rally the left more behind her as Corbyn did but she would turn off centrist swing voters and in terms of actual competence for the job Starmer would be better. Sir Keir was himself raised in a relatively working class household and through sheer hard work did manage to get to university and an Oxford postgrad degree and the bar and KC and on that basis if it were a choice between Rayner or keeping Starmer I would keep him
So your view is that she should know her place and stay there.
She has no degree and got no qualifications to speak of at school, effectively Rayner still is working class, just one who knows how to navigate a path to the top of the Labour party.
Starmer for all his faults actually did take himself from the skilled working class to the upper middle class by sheer hard work. Streeting too was working class by background, with relatives in prison and son of a single mother in a council flat who also got himself to Cambridge and the upper middle class by hard work
I would just say so what
You seem to think the only way to succeed is to go to University which is nonsense
Indeed, maybe we would be better with street wise, practical and honest people, then some of those governing us
I went to Uni and im useless
My issue with @HYUFD is he seems to think the only way to success is to go to University which is obviously silly
Angela Rayner has a formidable back story and to say she shouldn't have got pregnant at 16 is out of order
Indeed the 50% University policy of Blair was wrong and it is good to see the change to a more sensible mix with FEs
No, Winston Churchill did not go to university, nor did Disraeli, nor did Major nor did Lloyd George. All became PM but they all got more qualifications at school than Rayner did.
If you followed traditional religious teaching you wouldn't get pregnant until married
Who is the clever person
The University Graduate who learns what is required to pass exams and often doesnt enter a work environment until 22 or later, often drops in to a mid level role or
Someone with or without qualifications who enters work at 16, learns skills either white or blue collar, builds a career of understanding and knowledge and almost certainly a greater appreciation of real life.
BTW there is no right answer.
Those who think there is a right answer are IMHO the ones who are wrong.
It's a false dichotomy.
My brother-in-law here in Ireland is a welder. A blue collar occupation. So by your argument he would have left school at 16, gone straight into work, learned his trade that way, etc.
But he has had a technically-focused third level education. He's a graduate. Very highly skilled and good at what he does and well-paid for it.
The problem in Britain is that we have an idea of University that it is Oxbridge. It is a Classical education of the Trivium. All books in ancient libraries. Even the practical sciences are a bit of an oddity, more eccentrics in disused parts of buildings, rather than the core focus of the institution.
There's no room for a welder receiving an appropriate third-level education at a British University.
And so that's why British rates of graduate education are lower than its peers, and yet the debate in Britain is focused on making it lower still, and so the British economy lacks the skills to succeed, imports migrants to fill the gaps, and the culture is anti-education. It's so self-harming.
You can do degree apprenticeships too now products of which get well paid jobs
Age clearly impacts on my assessment
At age 16 in the 70s you were uni, white collar admin or blue collar
If you were lucky blue collar you got a good spprentiship in engineering, manufacturing or similar and a trade for life possibly some day release.
For too many their lives were dictated by a few hours in February of their 11th year.
Far more got into excellent academic state schools who were academic when we had grammar schools, pity we can't have a few more of them
I agree
I went to a Grammar School covenanted in the 16th Century by King Edward VI...
In my 3rd form year it was announced that there would be no new entrants in 2 years time as it was being abolished and turned in to a 6th form college.
My first year in 6th form was at my old school new college..
A shocking waste a tragic error.
I'll allow you to guess which Minister of Education made that decision?
My Headmaster a noted Latin scholar and author told 650 boys that if said Minister came to the school he would probably be arrested.
In many ways it defined my politcal direction of travel the sheer impact that decision did to the school, the separate Girls High, the town and the surrounding area.
The culling and wilful attack on some outstanding grammar and secondary schools.
For those under 60 who may wonder who the equivalent in Education to Beeching to the railways was.
The minister who destruction and wilful negligence destroyed a sector for generations.
Her name was Margaret Hilda Thatcher.
Actually there were more pupils in grammar schools in 1997 than in 1979.
It was Labour Ministers Crosland and Williams who really ended grammar schools in most parts of the country, aided by Labour councils and merged them with secondary moderns to create comprehensives.
Heath didn't reverse that trend either and as he was her boss Thatcher had to do what she was told as Education Secretary but where grammars survived it was almost always in Tory held councils
"Grammar schools" are PB's derived version of "Mornington Crescent". HYUFD threads invariably end at "Grammar school" irrespective of the starting position.
As someone who many decades ago went to both a Comprehensive and later a rural Grammar School I won't be changing my mind soon. F*** Grammar schools!
Interesting.
Perceptions can surprise.
I've always been "of the left" but I have never forgotten the honour and privilege of being able to go to an historic grammar school. I have to say it was superbly led and never was anyone judged on anything other than work ethic or ability.
I was definitely lucky to go to such an establishment.
There is a psephological argument (though I think a superficial one) in favour of the Tories going centrist. However, I am interested in how its proponents explain the palpable lack of enthusiasm for the Lib Dems. They are of the progressive centre. They are not tainted as the Tories are by Government. They are not responsible for any of Starmer's cock ups either. They are identified with pro-Europeanism - a supposed golden ticket - more than any other party. So why are they causing such a massive collective shrug, and why should the Tories be so desperate to get a slice of that rather meagre pie?
It's more complicated than that. The LDs are part of the old establishment, so are discounted except where they can win for the same reason the Tories are discounted in Bootle. Nothing to do with policy. They are nice people who can't win, which is better than nasty people who can't win.
We have had centrist government since WWII. That is, all governments have in fact (ignore the window dressing) tried to make the social democrat Attlee project work and update it but never fundamentally deny it or provide an alternative.
The Tories, who looked recently as if they were on the right lines, have gone backwards. The idea that there is room for two parties on the nationalist Right is wrong.
The great majority of voters vote centrist.
Incidentally, if Reform form a government (which Labour and Tories are doing their best to bring about) they will in fact govern as centrists (social democrats) with the addition of a very rancid entho-nationalism about borders and skin colour.
Not true about Thatcher though and many of the new Reform recruits from the Tories are diehard Thatcherites
The Thatcher thing perpetuates a myth. She fits absolutely in the centre right updating of social democracy, shifting the balance of state and private but not altering the fundamentals of regulated private enterprise and welfare state which is the bedrock of the Attlee settlement. She tried to make it work better.
Thatcher privatised air, telecommunications, gas, water and electricity (which Major continued for rail and the coal industry and Cameron and Clegg for Royal Mail) she slashed income tax at all levels and cut spending and enforced union ballots being required before strikes. She shifted the UK firmly back in a more capitalist direction so that even Blair and Starmer were/are right of say where Heath or Macmillan's governments were economically let alone Attlee and Wilson's.
Had Corbyn won in 2017 or 2019 he would have shifted the UK firmly back towards social democracy or even further to socialism but he didn't
Can't sell the flat for what he thinks he should get is the real issue. There is a price at which someone will buy, but it is probably a lot lower than he thought he was going to inherit.
Economics 101. Back in the real world, the story tells us buyers must be over 70 and pay £11,000 a year in service charges. What does that Venn diagram look like?
So no-one would buy for one pound?
Well, first, they'd have to live in the area already to know it was for sale; then they would need to be over 70, unable to afford a normally-priced flat, yet still able to pay £11,000 a year in service charges. So what's the Venn diagram?
And that ignores that your reductio ad absurdum would repel buyers because at that price there *must* be something wrong.
There is a lack of financial education and understanding here all round. £11k a year for that kind of property isn't ridiculous, including council tax (£1k), and weekly home care (worth approx £1.5k?). Having an on site hub and restaurant radically transforms the social life of the residents for the better. Care is also easier to access. If they are downsizing then being able to comfortably pay 10-15 years service charge towards end of life is not going to be particularly unusual.
86% of residents are happy - this is a good place to live, far more suitable for someone with declining health and mobility than trying to maintain a 3/4 bed family home on their own.
But it goes against the mindset of the UK property owning obsessions, service charges are as seen as rent which is seen as dead money. Capital must be preserved to pass down the generations even if that means poorer quality of life for those who have accumulated the capital.
That's not the issue.
The point is the restrictive covenants *on the empty properties* which can make the properties impossible even to give away (as the article suggests): ..One property we found had been vacant for more than nine years. In another case, family members face £60,000 in charges accrued since the property became vacant in 2019. A relative told us it was "like a noose around our necks", and another expressed frustration that "you can't give them away". Another beneficiary reported paying service charges of £750 per month on a flat that has been empty for four years, describing it as a "never-ending nightmare", adding: "It is infuriating and heartbreaking in equal measure."..
From the reporting on this, it really does not sound as though the inability to sell is entirely down to unrealistic expectations of value.
Until I see a link to an auction with a £1 reserve price - the issue is the price they are expecting to receive for the flat.
My expectation is that there is a lot of sunk cost fallacy involved here if you are paying £750 a month - and hoping for £60,000 - 1 year later and £9,000 down you now need that £60,000 to offset the £9,000 costs
Many, many people expect to inherit from their elderly parents and are quite shocked when care costs rapidly diminish the savings etc. No-one has a right to inherit - if money needs to be spent to care for someone it should be spent. And these type housing set up are 'care'.
Our former son in law and his sister paid over £250,000 in care fees for their mother and father
So did my family and then they took another chunk in inheritance tax and then taxed her on the income from interest on the house she had to sell to.pay the fees.
Maybe noone has a right to.inherit but nor should the Govt have the right to tax people on death. Certainly not on estates up to say 2 million.
So you don’t mind inheritance tax, you just want it at a level where you wouldn’t have paid it.
Nos where 99% of people won't pay. Only the very
Only about 5% of estates pay IHT.
Is that because they have been planned, or because they don't reach the threshold? With house prices as they are, I can't believe that figure won't change.
NEW The government is sifting through “high tens of thousands” of documents it holds on Peter Mandelson’s vetting to be US ambassador, I understand. Either the information will be released piecemeal in coming weeks, or in one go at a later date. Parliament’s intelligence and security committee will have a say over anything withheld due to “national security” or “international relations”. This one will run and run. More now at @GBNEWS .
There is a psephological argument (though I think a superficial one) in favour of the Tories going centrist. However, I am interested in how its proponents explain the palpable lack of enthusiasm for the Lib Dems. They are of the progressive centre. They are not tainted as the Tories are by Government. They are not responsible for any of Starmer's cock ups either. They are identified with pro-Europeanism - a supposed golden ticket - more than any other party. So why are they causing such a massive collective shrug, and why should the Tories be so desperate to get a slice of that rather meagre pie?
It's more complicated than that. The LDs are part of the old establishment, so are discounted except where they can win for the same reason the Tories are discounted in Bootle. Nothing to do with policy. They are nice people who can't win, which is better than nasty people who can't win.
We have had centrist government since WWII. That is, all governments have in fact (ignore the window dressing) tried to make the social democrat Attlee project work and update it but never fundamentally deny it or provide an alternative.
The Tories, who looked recently as if they were on the right lines, have gone backwards. The idea that there is room for two parties on the nationalist Right is wrong.
The great majority of voters vote centrist.
Incidentally, if Reform form a government (which Labour and Tories are doing their best to bring about) they will in fact govern as centrists (social democrats) with the addition of a very rancid entho-nationalism about borders and skin colour.
Not true about Thatcher though and many of the new Reform recruits from the Tories are diehard Thatcherites
The Thatcher thing perpetuates a myth. She fits absolutely in the centre right updating of social democracy, shifting the balance of state and private but not altering the fundamentals of regulated private enterprise and welfare state which is the bedrock of the Attlee settlement. She tried to make it work better.
She shifted it a lot.
You only have to look at the percentage of UK GDP that is state managed expenditure (about 44-45%) to see that in fact it wasn't shifted very much. And I suspect that the entire welfare budget, and other expenditure too, needs another centre right government looking at it, not to be extreme but to get its principles back closer to those of Attlee's post war government.
The smell of death is in the Westminster air. Labour’s King Rat Peter Mandelson has again cast his sulphurous odour of villainy around the palace, and contamination may drag a decent, well-intentioned Labour leader down with him.
Can't sell the flat for what he thinks he should get is the real issue. There is a price at which someone will buy, but it is probably a lot lower than he thought he was going to inherit.
Economics 101. Back in the real world, the story tells us buyers must be over 70 and pay £11,000 a year in service charges. What does that Venn diagram look like?
So no-one would buy for one pound?
Well, first, they'd have to live in the area already to know it was for sale; then they would need to be over 70, unable to afford a normally-priced flat, yet still able to pay £11,000 a year in service charges. So what's the Venn diagram?
And that ignores that your reductio ad absurdum would repel buyers because at that price there *must* be something wrong.
There is a lack of financial education and understanding here all round. £11k a year for that kind of property isn't ridiculous, including council tax (£1k), and weekly home care (worth approx £1.5k?). Having an on site hub and restaurant radically transforms the social life of the residents for the better. Care is also easier to access. If they are downsizing then being able to comfortably pay 10-15 years service charge towards end of life is not going to be particularly unusual.
86% of residents are happy - this is a good place to live, far more suitable for someone with declining health and mobility than trying to maintain a 3/4 bed family home on their own.
But it goes against the mindset of the UK property owning obsessions, service charges are as seen as rent which is seen as dead money. Capital must be preserved to pass down the generations even if that means poorer quality of life for those who have accumulated the capital.
That's not the issue.
The point is the restrictive covenants *on the empty properties* which can make the properties impossible even to give away (as the article suggests): ..One property we found had been vacant for more than nine years. In another case, family members face £60,000 in charges accrued since the property became vacant in 2019. A relative told us it was "like a noose around our necks", and another expressed frustration that "you can't give them away". Another beneficiary reported paying service charges of £750 per month on a flat that has been empty for four years, describing it as a "never-ending nightmare", adding: "It is infuriating and heartbreaking in equal measure."..
From the reporting on this, it really does not sound as though the inability to sell is entirely down to unrealistic expectations of value.
Until I see a link to an auction with a £1 reserve price - the issue is the price they are expecting to receive for the flat.
My expectation is that there is a lot of sunk cost fallacy involved here if you are paying £750 a month - and hoping for £60,000 - 1 year later and £9,000 down you now need that £60,000 to offset the £9,000 costs
Many, many people expect to inherit from their elderly parents and are quite shocked when care costs rapidly diminish the savings etc. No-one has a right to inherit - if money needs to be spent to care for someone it should be spent. And these type housing set up are 'care'.
Our former son in law and his sister paid over £250,000 in care fees for their mother and father
So did my family and then they took another chunk in inheritance tax and then taxed her on the income from interest on the house she had to sell to.pay the fees.
Maybe noone has a right to.inherit but nor should the Govt have the right to tax people on death. Certainly not on estates up to say 2 million.
So you don’t mind inheritance tax, you just want it at a level where you wouldn’t have paid it.
Nos where 99% of people won't pay. Only the very
Only about 5% of estates pay IHT.
Is that because they have been planned, or because they don't reach the threshold? With house prices as they are, I can't believe that figure won't change.
Well quite. It's a pernicious tax on the stupid and the unlucky. The 7 year rule is easily swerved unless you drop dead - though that's why I don't have much time for the landowners making a gigantic fuss about it - a real farmer would have passed that land on decades earlier.
We can't have Trump/ Putin adjacent fascists running our country.
But we can have a patriotic right wing majority, political rivals but united by a steely determination to reverse our national decline by repairing our institutions from the acid attack of the Blair/Brown constitutional 'reforms'.
One a puppet of Trump and Putin the other a puppet of Netanyahu
Jeffrey Epstein's unusual close relationship with Ehud Barak doesn't suggest Epstein worked for Israel. It proves the opposite.
Stuck on his election loss from over two decades ago, Barak has for years obsessively attempted to undermine Israeli democracy by working with the anti-Zionist radical left in failed attempts to overthrow the elected Israeli government.
Barak's personal fixation led him to engage in activities publicly and behind the scenes to undermine the government of Israel, including fueling mass protest movements, fomenting unrest and feeding false media narratives.
There is a psephological argument (though I think a superficial one) in favour of the Tories going centrist. However, I am interested in how its proponents explain the palpable lack of enthusiasm for the Lib Dems. They are of the progressive centre. They are not tainted as the Tories are by Government. They are not responsible for any of Starmer's cock ups either. They are identified with pro-Europeanism - a supposed golden ticket - more than any other party. So why are they causing such a massive collective shrug, and why should the Tories be so desperate to get a slice of that rather meagre pie?
It's more complicated than that. The LDs are part of the old establishment, so are discounted except where they can win for the same reason the Tories are discounted in Bootle. Nothing to do with policy. They are nice people who can't win, which is better than nasty people who can't win.
We have had centrist government since WWII. That is, all governments have in fact (ignore the window dressing) tried to make the social democrat Attlee project work and update it but never fundamentally deny it or provide an alternative.
The Tories, who looked recently as if they were on the right lines, have gone backwards. The idea that there is room for two parties on the nationalist Right is wrong.
The great majority of voters vote centrist.
Incidentally, if Reform form a government (which Labour and Tories are doing their best to bring about) they will in fact govern as centrists (social democrats) with the addition of a very rancid entho-nationalism about borders and skin colour.
Not true about Thatcher though and many of the new Reform recruits from the Tories are diehard Thatcherites
The Thatcher thing perpetuates a myth. She fits absolutely in the centre right updating of social democracy, shifting the balance of state and private but not altering the fundamentals of regulated private enterprise and welfare state which is the bedrock of the Attlee settlement. She tried to make it work better.
She shifted it a lot.
You only have to look at the percentage of UK GDP that is state managed expenditure (about 44-45%) to see that in fact it wasn't shifted very much. And I suspect that the entire welfare budget, and other expenditure too, needs another centre right government looking at it, not to be extreme but to get its principles back closer to those of Attlee's post war government.
Can't sell the flat for what he thinks he should get is the real issue. There is a price at which someone will buy, but it is probably a lot lower than he thought he was going to inherit.
Economics 101. Back in the real world, the story tells us buyers must be over 70 and pay £11,000 a year in service charges. What does that Venn diagram look like?
So no-one would buy for one pound?
Well, first, they'd have to live in the area already to know it was for sale; then they would need to be over 70, unable to afford a normally-priced flat, yet still able to pay £11,000 a year in service charges. So what's the Venn diagram?
And that ignores that your reductio ad absurdum would repel buyers because at that price there *must* be something wrong.
There is a lack of financial education and understanding here all round. £11k a year for that kind of property isn't ridiculous, including council tax (£1k), and weekly home care (worth approx £1.5k?). Having an on site hub and restaurant radically transforms the social life of the residents for the better. Care is also easier to access. If they are downsizing then being able to comfortably pay 10-15 years service charge towards end of life is not going to be particularly unusual.
86% of residents are happy - this is a good place to live, far more suitable for someone with declining health and mobility than trying to maintain a 3/4 bed family home on their own.
But it goes against the mindset of the UK property owning obsessions, service charges are as seen as rent which is seen as dead money. Capital must be preserved to pass down the generations even if that means poorer quality of life for those who have accumulated the capital.
That's not the issue.
The point is the restrictive covenants *on the empty properties* which can make the properties impossible even to give away (as the article suggests): ..One property we found had been vacant for more than nine years. In another case, family members face £60,000 in charges accrued since the property became vacant in 2019. A relative told us it was "like a noose around our necks", and another expressed frustration that "you can't give them away". Another beneficiary reported paying service charges of £750 per month on a flat that has been empty for four years, describing it as a "never-ending nightmare", adding: "It is infuriating and heartbreaking in equal measure."..
From the reporting on this, it really does not sound as though the inability to sell is entirely down to unrealistic expectations of value.
Until I see a link to an auction with a £1 reserve price - the issue is the price they are expecting to receive for the flat.
My expectation is that there is a lot of sunk cost fallacy involved here if you are paying £750 a month - and hoping for £60,000 - 1 year later and £9,000 down you now need that £60,000 to offset the £9,000 costs
Many, many people expect to inherit from their elderly parents and are quite shocked when care costs rapidly diminish the savings etc. No-one has a right to inherit - if money needs to be spent to care for someone it should be spent. And these type housing set up are 'care'.
Our former son in law and his sister paid over £250,000 in care fees for their mother and father
So did my family and then they took another chunk in inheritance tax and then taxed her on the income from interest on the house she had to sell to.pay the fees.
Maybe noone has a right to.inherit but nor should the Govt have the right to tax people on death. Certainly not on estates up to say 2 million.
So you don’t mind inheritance tax, you just want it at a level where you wouldn’t have paid it.
Nos where 99% of people won't pay. Only the very
Only about 5% of estates pay IHT.
Is that because they have been planned, or because they don't reach the threshold? With house prices as they are, I can't believe that figure won't change.
For most people, well advised, the tax is essentially voluntary. The richest of course take most care and get the best advice. The Duke of Westminster and the Duke of Devonshire too have to buy shoes for their children.
For most people who bother to think about it at all the real threshold is towards £1million, being £325K x 2 + RNRB x 2.
The smell of death is in the Westminster air. Labour’s King Rat Peter Mandelson has again cast his sulphurous odour of villainy around the palace, and contamination may drag a decent, well-intentioned Labour leader down with him.
That’s the tragedy.
The smell of ham amongst the influencers is vomit inducing as I remind myself that opinions are like ar**holes. Everyone has them.
NEW The government is sifting through “high tens of thousands” of documents it holds on Peter Mandelson’s vetting to be US ambassador, I understand. Either the information will be released piecemeal in coming weeks, or in one go at a later date. Parliament’s intelligence and security committee will have a say over anything withheld due to “national security” or “international relations”. This one will run and run. More now at @GBNEWS .
We'll just await the golden nugget from McSweeney to Starmer (imaginary of course)
"Dear Keir
We cannot control the orange nutter you've got 2 ace Cards"
Give him a State Visit to soothe his ego.
Put Mandy in as Ambassador for year with his envelope. That picture of Trump Mandy Epstein and The HRH Andy gang banging boys and girls in Trump Towers"
There’s really no question to which Angela Rayner is the answer.
If she can’t run her own household without getting into financial trouble, what chance her running the country?
Can we imagine her turning up to a meeting with Trump or Xi, and be taken remotely seriously?
Her household was in financial trouble when she was born, because she grew up in poverty being raised by her grandma and left school at 16 without any qualifications.
I like the idea of a PM with an authentic working class background who has overcome extreme adversity to get to the top. Any foreign leader worth their salt would take seriously someone who has, although some are obviously not worth their salt. I wouldn't blame her for looking down on those born with a silver spoon in their mouth, like Trump.
Had she got to Oxbridge from that background or made herself a self made millionaire you might have a point but otherwise there are millions of single mother's raised on council estates who left school with no qualifications and maybe got a middle class office job with a bit of hard work. It doesn't mean they should be PM!
Rayner would be a better campaigner than Starmer no doubt and she she would rally the left more behind her as Corbyn did but she would turn off centrist swing voters and in terms of actual competence for the job Starmer would be better. Sir Keir was himself raised in a relatively working class household and through sheer hard work did manage to get to university and an Oxford postgrad degree and the bar and KC and on that basis if it were a choice between Rayner or keeping Starmer I would keep him
So your view is that she should know her place and stay there.
She has no degree and got no qualifications to speak of at school, effectively Rayner still is working class, just one who knows how to navigate a path to the top of the Labour party.
Starmer for all his faults actually did take himself from the skilled working class to the upper middle class by sheer hard work. Streeting too was working class by background, with relatives in prison and son of a single mother in a council flat who also got himself to Cambridge and the upper middle class by hard work
I would just say so what
You seem to think the only way to succeed is to go to University which is nonsense
Indeed, maybe we would be better with street wise, practical and honest people, then some of those governing us
I went to Uni and im useless
My issue with @HYUFD is he seems to think the only way to success is to go to University which is obviously silly
Angela Rayner has a formidable back story and to say she shouldn't have got pregnant at 16 is out of order
Indeed the 50% University policy of Blair was wrong and it is good to see the change to a more sensible mix with FEs
No, Winston Churchill did not go to university, nor did Disraeli, nor did Major nor did Lloyd George. All became PM but they all got more qualifications at school than Rayner did.
If you followed traditional religious teaching you wouldn't get pregnant until married
Who is the clever person
The University Graduate who learns what is required to pass exams and often doesnt enter a work environment until 22 or later, often drops in to a mid level role or
Someone with or without qualifications who enters work at 16, learns skills either white or blue collar, builds a career of understanding and knowledge and almost certainly a greater appreciation of real life.
BTW there is no right answer.
Those who think there is a right answer are IMHO the ones who are wrong.
It's a false dichotomy.
My brother-in-law here in Ireland is a welder. A blue collar occupation. So by your argument he would have left school at 16, gone straight into work, learned his trade that way, etc.
But he has had a technically-focused third level education. He's a graduate. Very highly skilled and good at what he does and well-paid for it.
The problem in Britain is that we have an idea of University that it is Oxbridge. It is a Classical education of the Trivium. All books in ancient libraries. Even the practical sciences are a bit of an oddity, more eccentrics in disused parts of buildings, rather than the core focus of the institution.
There's no room for a welder receiving an appropriate third-level education at a British University.
And so that's why British rates of graduate education are lower than its peers, and yet the debate in Britain is focused on making it lower still, and so the British economy lacks the skills to succeed, imports migrants to fill the gaps, and the culture is anti-education. It's so self-harming.
You can do degree apprenticeships too now products of which get well paid jobs
Age clearly impacts on my assessment
At age 16 in the 70s you were uni, white collar admin or blue collar
If you were lucky blue collar you got a good spprentiship in engineering, manufacturing or similar and a trade for life possibly some day release.
For too many their lives were dictated by a few hours in February of their 11th year.
Far more got into excellent academic state schools who were academic when we had grammar schools, pity we can't have a few more of them
I agree
I went to a Grammar School covenanted in the 16th Century by King Edward VI...
In my 3rd form year it was announced that there would be no new entrants in 2 years time as it was being abolished and turned in to a 6th form college.
My first year in 6th form was at my old school new college..
A shocking waste a tragic error.
I'll allow you to guess which Minister of Education made that decision?
My Headmaster a noted Latin scholar and author told 650 boys that if said Minister came to the school he would probably be arrested.
In many ways it defined my politcal direction of travel the sheer impact that decision did to the school, the separate Girls High, the town and the surrounding area.
The culling and wilful attack on some outstanding grammar and secondary schools.
For those under 60 who may wonder who the equivalent in Education to Beeching to the railways was.
The minister who destruction and wilful negligence destroyed a sector for generations.
Her name was Margaret Hilda Thatcher.
Actually there were more pupils in grammar schools in 1997 than in 1979.
It was Labour Ministers Crosland and Williams who really ended grammar schools in most parts of the country, aided by Labour councils and merged them with secondary moderns to create comprehensives.
Heath didn't reverse that trend either and as he was her boss Thatcher had to do what she was told as Education Secretary but where grammars survived it was almost always in Tory held councils
"Grammar schools" are PB's derived version of "Mornington Crescent". HYUFD threads invariably end at "Grammar school" irrespective of the starting position.
As someone who many decades ago went to both a Comprehensive and later a rural Grammar School I won't be changing my mind soon. F*** Grammar schools!
I am giving you a like for your first paaragraph, which made me laugh, though I don't share the views expressed so pithily in your final sentence (I am definitely in the 'see both sides' camp).
The smell of death is in the Westminster air. Labour’s King Rat Peter Mandelson has again cast his sulphurous odour of villainy around the palace, and contamination may drag a decent, well-intentioned Labour leader down with him.
That’s the tragedy.
The smell of ham amongst the influencers is vomit inducing as I remind myself that opinions are like ar**holes. Everyone has them.
NEW The government is sifting through “high tens of thousands” of documents it holds on Peter Mandelson’s vetting to be US ambassador, I understand. Either the information will be released piecemeal in coming weeks, or in one go at a later date. Parliament’s intelligence and security committee will have a say over anything withheld due to “national security” or “international relations”. This one will run and run. More now at @GBNEWS .
Chair: Beamish (Labour peer, appointed by Starmer) Dep Chair: Sir Jeremy Wright Con Peer, Ex Kenilworth MP) Baroness Brown: Crossbencher Dowd, Lab, Bootle Foord, Lib Dem Honiton Hayes, Con - South Holland and the Deepings Morden, Lab - Newport East Twigg, Lab - Widnes Lord West, Lab Peer
There is a psephological argument (though I think a superficial one) in favour of the Tories going centrist. However, I am interested in how its proponents explain the palpable lack of enthusiasm for the Lib Dems. They are of the progressive centre. They are not tainted as the Tories are by Government. They are not responsible for any of Starmer's cock ups either. They are identified with pro-Europeanism - a supposed golden ticket - more than any other party. So why are they causing such a massive collective shrug, and why should the Tories be so desperate to get a slice of that rather meagre pie?
It's more complicated than that. The LDs are part of the old establishment, so are discounted except where they can win for the same reason the Tories are discounted in Bootle. Nothing to do with policy. They are nice people who can't win, which is better than nasty people who can't win.
We have had centrist government since WWII. That is, all governments have in fact (ignore the window dressing) tried to make the social democrat Attlee project work and update it but never fundamentally deny it or provide an alternative.
The Tories, who looked recently as if they were on the right lines, have gone backwards. The idea that there is room for two parties on the nationalist Right is wrong.
The great majority of voters vote centrist.
Incidentally, if Reform form a government (which Labour and Tories are doing their best to bring about) they will in fact govern as centrists (social democrats) with the addition of a very rancid entho-nationalism about borders and skin colour.
Not true about Thatcher though and many of the new Reform recruits from the Tories are diehard Thatcherites
The Thatcher thing perpetuates a myth. She fits absolutely in the centre right updating of social democracy, shifting the balance of state and private but not altering the fundamentals of regulated private enterprise and welfare state which is the bedrock of the Attlee settlement. She tried to make it work better.
She shifted it a lot.
You only have to look at the percentage of UK GDP that is state managed expenditure (about 44-45%) to see that in fact it wasn't shifted very much. And I suspect that the entire welfare budget, and other expenditure too, needs another centre right government looking at it, not to be extreme but to get its principles back closer to those of Attlee's post war government.
That is not the only metric that matters here.
Indeed not, but writing the book takes longer. However, to deny that the UK has a continuous unbroken social democrat history since WWII flies in the face of quotidien reality. (NATO, regulated private enterprise, free education to 18, welfare state, NHS.) Reform will be no different except for the ethno-nationalism.
The smell of death is in the Westminster air. Labour’s King Rat Peter Mandelson has again cast his sulphurous odour of villainy around the palace, and contamination may drag a decent, well-intentioned Labour leader down with him.
That’s the tragedy.
If anyone still had any doubts about whether Starmer would survive this surely a forecast by Polly that he is going is conclusive proof that he will be fine.
Can't sell the flat for what he thinks he should get is the real issue. There is a price at which someone will buy, but it is probably a lot lower than he thought he was going to inherit.
Economics 101. Back in the real world, the story tells us buyers must be over 70 and pay £11,000 a year in service charges. What does that Venn diagram look like?
So no-one would buy for one pound?
Well, first, they'd have to live in the area already to know it was for sale; then they would need to be over 70, unable to afford a normally-priced flat, yet still able to pay £11,000 a year in service charges. So what's the Venn diagram?
And that ignores that your reductio ad absurdum would repel buyers because at that price there *must* be something wrong.
There is a lack of financial education and understanding here all round. £11k a year for that kind of property isn't ridiculous, including council tax (£1k), and weekly home care (worth approx £1.5k?). Having an on site hub and restaurant radically transforms the social life of the residents for the better. Care is also easier to access. If they are downsizing then being able to comfortably pay 10-15 years service charge towards end of life is not going to be particularly unusual.
86% of residents are happy - this is a good place to live, far more suitable for someone with declining health and mobility than trying to maintain a 3/4 bed family home on their own.
But it goes against the mindset of the UK property owning obsessions, service charges are as seen as rent which is seen as dead money. Capital must be preserved to pass down the generations even if that means poorer quality of life for those who have accumulated the capital.
That's not the issue.
The point is the restrictive covenants *on the empty properties* which can make the properties impossible even to give away (as the article suggests): ..One property we found had been vacant for more than nine years. In another case, family members face £60,000 in charges accrued since the property became vacant in 2019. A relative told us it was "like a noose around our necks", and another expressed frustration that "you can't give them away". Another beneficiary reported paying service charges of £750 per month on a flat that has been empty for four years, describing it as a "never-ending nightmare", adding: "It is infuriating and heartbreaking in equal measure."..
From the reporting on this, it really does not sound as though the inability to sell is entirely down to unrealistic expectations of value.
Until I see a link to an auction with a £1 reserve price - the issue is the price they are expecting to receive for the flat.
My expectation is that there is a lot of sunk cost fallacy involved here if you are paying £750 a month - and hoping for £60,000 - 1 year later and £9,000 down you now need that £60,000 to offset the £9,000 costs
Many, many people expect to inherit from their elderly parents and are quite shocked when care costs rapidly diminish the savings etc. No-one has a right to inherit - if money needs to be spent to care for someone it should be spent. And these type housing set up are 'care'.
Our former son in law and his sister paid over £250,000 in care fees for their mother and father
So did my family and then they took another chunk in inheritance tax and then taxed her on the income from interest on the house she had to sell to.pay the fees.
Maybe noone has a right to.inherit but nor should the Govt have the right to tax people on death. Certainly not on estates up to say 2 million.
So you don’t mind inheritance tax, you just want it at a level where you wouldn’t have paid it.
Nos where 99% of people won't pay. Only the very
Only about 5% of estates pay IHT.
Is that because they have been planned, or because they don't reach the threshold? With house prices as they are, I can't believe that figure won't change.
Here's the crux
Those that should will invariably spend thousands to join those that shouldn't in not paying and therefore screwing the systen
We can't have Trump/ Putin adjacent fascists running our country.
But we can have a patriotic right wing majority, political rivals but united by a steely determination to reverse our national decline by repairing our institutions from the acid attack of the Blair/Brown constitutional 'reforms'.
I suspect we both have a different definition of "patriotic".
We probably do, but there is only one meaning. To govern patriotically means to govern in the national interest. That's not giving away territory and forcing the nation to borrow billions for the pay for the privilege. It's not facilitating the legal pursuit of former troops who were following orders. It's not presiding over the absence of borders. It's not passing on sensitive information to foreign banks, advising them to 'bully' ones' Government colleagues. It's not giving away 12 years of fishing rights for literally nothing. It's not allowing a nasty dictatorship to erect a spy centre with dungeons in the heart of ones' capital.
We need to get rid of this progressive tactic of subverting the language. There are not 'many forms of patriotism and this is mine' - you are either for the security, prosperity and wellbeing of fellow Britons, or you are against it. You could be against it for what you see as a moral reason - pro 'the world' not just a country, pro the global proletariat, pro 'global south', or just lining your own pockets, but don't sit in front of a Union flag and try to pass off your betrayal as patriotism.
Keir Starmer’s allies are warning that an Angela Rayner leadership coup would trigger a general election.
It is being argued Rayner’s left-wing policy platform would differ to the 2024 manifesto and she would not have a personal mandate as PM.
One Labour figure who served on Starmer’s front bench tells @Telegraph : “Presumably Angela Rayner, if she got elected, would have a completely different agenda.
“If you come in with a completely different agenda then the country legitimately says, ‘We didn’t vote for this’.
“And so what are the grounds for refusing a general election? You can claim constitutional grounds, but in the world of frenzied media, of TikTok, YouTube and GB News, is it really sustainable? It doesn’t feel sustainable to me.”
A current cabinet minister said of a leadership switch: “The pressure for an election would be enormous.”
The arguments are backed up by Rayner’s own position in 2022 when she demanded an election after Tory leader changes.
Rayner said back then: “The Tories have crowned Rishi Sunak without him saying a word about what he would do as PM. He has no mandate, no answers and no ideas. Nobody voted for this.
“The public deserve their say on Britain’s future through a general election. It’s time for a fresh start with Labour.”
This idea could make Labour MPs pause for thought before any attempt to switch leader given the party’s deep unpopularity.
(If an election result matched the current average polls, with Labour on 19%, scores of MPs would be kicked out of the Commons.)
However… it is worth noting this same claim was made by allies of one Boris Johnson as he wobbled in 2022. Tory MPs then switched leader not once but twice. No snap election was called.
I’ve just sent the coolest WhatsApp message in history
No doubt you could have some grand flag tailored and fly it above the Camden garret. Financial markets must be abuzz with this news though. Whatsapp doubling in perceived value simply by way of the coolness of your message.
We always thought you were a bit of an old soak, but now - well, hello Zaphod! Welcome to Earth.
Keir Starmer’s allies are warning that an Angela Rayner leadership coup would trigger a general election.
It is being argued Rayner’s left-wing policy platform would differ to the 2024 manifesto and she would not have a personal mandate as PM.
One Labour figure who served on Starmer’s front bench tells @Telegraph : “Presumably Angela Rayner, if she got elected, would have a completely different agenda.
“If you come in with a completely different agenda then the country legitimately says, ‘We didn’t vote for this’.
“And so what are the grounds for refusing a general election? You can claim constitutional grounds, but in the world of frenzied media, of TikTok, YouTube and GB News, is it really sustainable? It doesn’t feel sustainable to me.”
A current cabinet minister said of a leadership switch: “The pressure for an election would be enormous.”
The arguments are backed up by Rayner’s own position in 2022 when she demanded an election after Tory leader changes.
Rayner said back then: “The Tories have crowned Rishi Sunak without him saying a word about what he would do as PM. He has no mandate, no answers and no ideas. Nobody voted for this.
“The public deserve their say on Britain’s future through a general election. It’s time for a fresh start with Labour.”
This idea could make Labour MPs pause for thought before any attempt to switch leader given the party’s deep unpopularity.
(If an election result matched the current average polls, with Labour on 19%, scores of MPs would be kicked out of the Commons.)
However… it is worth noting this same claim was made by allies of one Boris Johnson as he wobbled in 2022. Tory MPs then switched leader not once but twice. No snap election was called.
Nothing in this at all, on any level. except to note that Starmer's allies may be running out of ideas.
One issue is this: would a new PM in place before May be immune from attack over the May elections? I think so. It's a factor to bear in mind over what could happen.
The smell of death is in the Westminster air. Labour’s King Rat Peter Mandelson has again cast his sulphurous odour of villainy around the palace, and contamination may drag a decent, well-intentioned Labour leader down with him.
That’s the tragedy.
The best you can say of Starmer is that he's slow, stupid and much in awe of people with money, (who give him free stuff) and celebrity status within the liberal left. His pathetic whining yesterday even sickened Harriet Harman. He's done and all that's keeping him in place is the sheer awfulness of the talent puddle around him.
It was reducing the permitted variance in size from +- 8.5% to +- 5% in the name of "more equal" constituencies which resulted in the breakup of many more natural boundaries. At the same time they increased the number of statutory constituencies which wildly break this rule from 2 to 5.
There is a psephological argument (though I think a superficial one) in favour of the Tories going centrist. However, I am interested in how its proponents explain the palpable lack of enthusiasm for the Lib Dems. They are of the progressive centre. They are not tainted as the Tories are by Government. They are not responsible for any of Starmer's cock ups either. They are identified with pro-Europeanism - a supposed golden ticket - more than any other party. So why are they causing such a massive collective shrug, and why should the Tories be so desperate to get a slice of that rather meagre pie?
It's more complicated than that. The LDs are part of the old establishment, so are discounted except where they can win for the same reason the Tories are discounted in Bootle. Nothing to do with policy. They are nice people who can't win, which is better than nasty people who can't win.
We have had centrist government since WWII. That is, all governments have in fact (ignore the window dressing) tried to make the social democrat Attlee project work and update it but never fundamentally deny it or provide an alternative.
The Tories, who looked recently as if they were on the right lines, have gone backwards. The idea that there is room for two parties on the nationalist Right is wrong.
The great majority of voters vote centrist.
Incidentally, if Reform form a government (which Labour and Tories are doing their best to bring about) they will in fact govern as centrists (social democrats) with the addition of a very rancid entho-nationalism about borders and skin colour.
Not true about Thatcher though and many of the new Reform recruits from the Tories are diehard Thatcherites
The Thatcher thing perpetuates a myth. She fits absolutely in the centre right updating of social democracy, shifting the balance of state and private but not altering the fundamentals of regulated private enterprise and welfare state which is the bedrock of the Attlee settlement. She tried to make it work better.
She shifted it a lot.
You only have to look at the percentage of UK GDP that is state managed expenditure (about 44-45%) to see that in fact it wasn't shifted very much. And I suspect that the entire welfare budget, and other expenditure too, needs another centre right government looking at it, not to be extreme but to get its principles back closer to those of Attlee's post war government.
Can't sell the flat for what he thinks he should get is the real issue. There is a price at which someone will buy, but it is probably a lot lower than he thought he was going to inherit.
Economics 101. Back in the real world, the story tells us buyers must be over 70 and pay £11,000 a year in service charges. What does that Venn diagram look like?
So no-one would buy for one pound?
Well, first, they'd have to live in the area already to know it was for sale; then they would need to be over 70, unable to afford a normally-priced flat, yet still able to pay £11,000 a year in service charges. So what's the Venn diagram?
And that ignores that your reductio ad absurdum would repel buyers because at that price there *must* be something wrong.
There is a lack of financial education and understanding here all round. £11k a year for that kind of property isn't ridiculous, including council tax (£1k), and weekly home care (worth approx £1.5k?). Having an on site hub and restaurant radically transforms the social life of the residents for the better. Care is also easier to access. If they are downsizing then being able to comfortably pay 10-15 years service charge towards end of life is not going to be particularly unusual.
86% of residents are happy - this is a good place to live, far more suitable for someone with declining health and mobility than trying to maintain a 3/4 bed family home on their own.
But it goes against the mindset of the UK property owning obsessions, service charges are as seen as rent which is seen as dead money. Capital must be preserved to pass down the generations even if that means poorer quality of life for those who have accumulated the capital.
That's not the issue.
The point is the restrictive covenants *on the empty properties* which can make the properties impossible even to give away (as the article suggests): ..One property we found had been vacant for more than nine years. In another case, family members face £60,000 in charges accrued since the property became vacant in 2019. A relative told us it was "like a noose around our necks", and another expressed frustration that "you can't give them away". Another beneficiary reported paying service charges of £750 per month on a flat that has been empty for four years, describing it as a "never-ending nightmare", adding: "It is infuriating and heartbreaking in equal measure."..
From the reporting on this, it really does not sound as though the inability to sell is entirely down to unrealistic expectations of value.
Until I see a link to an auction with a £1 reserve price - the issue is the price they are expecting to receive for the flat.
My expectation is that there is a lot of sunk cost fallacy involved here if you are paying £750 a month - and hoping for £60,000 - 1 year later and £9,000 down you now need that £60,000 to offset the £9,000 costs
Many, many people expect to inherit from their elderly parents and are quite shocked when care costs rapidly diminish the savings etc. No-one has a right to inherit - if money needs to be spent to care for someone it should be spent. And these type housing set up are 'care'.
Our former son in law and his sister paid over £250,000 in care fees for their mother and father
So did my family and then they took another chunk in inheritance tax and then taxed her on the income from interest on the house she had to sell to.pay the fees.
Maybe noone has a right to.inherit but nor should the Govt have the right to tax people on death. Certainly not on estates up to say 2 million.
So you don’t mind inheritance tax, you just want it at a level where you wouldn’t have paid it.
Nos where 99% of people won't pay. Only the very
Only about 5% of estates pay IHT.
Is that because they have been planned, or because they don't reach the threshold? With house prices as they are, I can't believe that figure won't change.
Well quite. It's a pernicious tax on the stupid and the unlucky. The 7 year rule is easily swerved unless you drop dead - though that's why I don't have much time for the landowners making a gigantic fuss about it - a real farmer would have passed that land on decades earlier.
One of the farmer's round here had to take over the family farm when his father sadly dropped dead at 50
Scottish Westminster Figures with MiC are very tasty
SNP 28 Ref 23 Lab 20 LD 12 Con 11 Grn 5
This is the sort of stuff that’s going to see the Tories ditch Kemi in May.
Wishful thinking.
Kemi cutting through is not welcome apparently
The Tories doing worse than 2024 is not cut through.
They might try changing the Scottish Leader in that case. You know, a proportionate response
Surely not? Why the Scottish electorate has not yet warmed to Russell ‘in Liz we trust’ Findlay is a mystery, but he’s got 4 months to turn it around.
Beg David Duguid to come back and give him the gig
Afternoon,
Many thanks for the poll data woolie
Does any one know if MIC poll really well for Reform? The regional polling only has SNP and Green at 34 combined, that seems low but it could be right enough
Woolie, I think the Tories should throw the kitchen sink at Eastwood, its a white collar seat so not a prime target for Reform, without Barrhead the boundaries are favourable for JC. At the minute it seems to go between Tories/Labour in an anti SNP vote between Holyrood and Westminster.
Where I think Reform could surprise on the upside, semi rural seats like Carrick and Cumnock, Cunninghame N/S, urban seats around Glasgow, but not Glasgow itself - it'll need a huge effort if they are to win FPTP anywhere other than Banff and Border areas.
I'm not sure Mr Findlay is enjoying his stint as leader given the Reform surge but who would want the gig - Meghan Gallacher maybe?
David Duguid is wise to stay clear of the Tories for now!
There is a psephological argument (though I think a superficial one) in favour of the Tories going centrist. However, I am interested in how its proponents explain the palpable lack of enthusiasm for the Lib Dems. They are of the progressive centre. They are not tainted as the Tories are by Government. They are not responsible for any of Starmer's cock ups either. They are identified with pro-Europeanism - a supposed golden ticket - more than any other party. So why are they causing such a massive collective shrug, and why should the Tories be so desperate to get a slice of that rather meagre pie?
It's more complicated than that. The LDs are part of the old establishment, so are discounted except where they can win for the same reason the Tories are discounted in Bootle. Nothing to do with policy. They are nice people who can't win, which is better than nasty people who can't win.
We have had centrist government since WWII. That is, all governments have in fact (ignore the window dressing) tried to make the social democrat Attlee project work and update it but never fundamentally deny it or provide an alternative.
The Tories, who looked recently as if they were on the right lines, have gone backwards. The idea that there is room for two parties on the nationalist Right is wrong.
The great majority of voters vote centrist.
Incidentally, if Reform form a government (which Labour and Tories are doing their best to bring about) they will in fact govern as centrists (social democrats) with the addition of a very rancid entho-nationalism about borders and skin colour.
Not true about Thatcher though and many of the new Reform recruits from the Tories are diehard Thatcherites
The Thatcher thing perpetuates a myth. She fits absolutely in the centre right updating of social democracy, shifting the balance of state and private but not altering the fundamentals of regulated private enterprise and welfare state which is the bedrock of the Attlee settlement. She tried to make it work better.
Thatcher privatised air, telecommunications, gas, water and electricity (which Major continued for rail and the coal industry and Cameron and Clegg for Royal Mail) she slashed income tax at all levels and cut spending and enforced union ballots being required before strikes. She shifted the UK firmly back in a more capitalist direction so that even Blair and Starmer were/are right of say where Heath or Macmillan's governments were economically let alone Attlee and Wilson's.
Had Corbyn won in 2017 or 2019 he would have shifted the UK firmly back towards social democracy or even further to socialism but he didn't
Public spending rose under Thatcher is real terms in every year bar 2.
It took 8 years before it fell as a percentage of GDP
Keir Starmer’s allies are warning that an Angela Rayner leadership coup would trigger a general election.
It is being argued Rayner’s left-wing policy platform would differ to the 2024 manifesto and she would not have a personal mandate as PM.
One Labour figure who served on Starmer’s front bench tells @Telegraph : “Presumably Angela Rayner, if she got elected, would have a completely different agenda.
“If you come in with a completely different agenda then the country legitimately says, ‘We didn’t vote for this’.
“And so what are the grounds for refusing a general election? You can claim constitutional grounds, but in the world of frenzied media, of TikTok, YouTube and GB News, is it really sustainable? It doesn’t feel sustainable to me.”
A current cabinet minister said of a leadership switch: “The pressure for an election would be enormous.”
The arguments are backed up by Rayner’s own position in 2022 when she demanded an election after Tory leader changes.
Rayner said back then: “The Tories have crowned Rishi Sunak without him saying a word about what he would do as PM. He has no mandate, no answers and no ideas. Nobody voted for this.
“The public deserve their say on Britain’s future through a general election. It’s time for a fresh start with Labour.”
This idea could make Labour MPs pause for thought before any attempt to switch leader given the party’s deep unpopularity.
(If an election result matched the current average polls, with Labour on 19%, scores of MPs would be kicked out of the Commons.)
However… it is worth noting this same claim was made by allies of one Boris Johnson as he wobbled in 2022. Tory MPs then switched leader not once but twice. No snap election was called.
Starmer's allies have a point there.
Remember though most of the 2024 new Labour MPs elected for the first time were only approved as Labour candidates by the NEC as they were Starmer loyalists, so I think the idea that Rayner could even get the required 81 Labour MPs to nominate her and challenge Starmer is questionable.
Rayner would beat Starmer and probably Streeting too if Starmer resigned first if it got to the Labour membership but she would have to get there first
Can't sell the flat for what he thinks he should get is the real issue. There is a price at which someone will buy, but it is probably a lot lower than he thought he was going to inherit.
Economics 101. Back in the real world, the story tells us buyers must be over 70 and pay £11,000 a year in service charges. What does that Venn diagram look like?
So no-one would buy for one pound?
Well, first, they'd have to live in the area already to know it was for sale; then they would need to be over 70, unable to afford a normally-priced flat, yet still able to pay £11,000 a year in service charges. So what's the Venn diagram?
And that ignores that your reductio ad absurdum would repel buyers because at that price there *must* be something wrong.
There is a lack of financial education and understanding here all round. £11k a year for that kind of property isn't ridiculous, including council tax (£1k), and weekly home care (worth approx £1.5k?). Having an on site hub and restaurant radically transforms the social life of the residents for the better. Care is also easier to access. If they are downsizing then being able to comfortably pay 10-15 years service charge towards end of life is not going to be particularly unusual.
86% of residents are happy - this is a good place to live, far more suitable for someone with declining health and mobility than trying to maintain a 3/4 bed family home on their own.
But it goes against the mindset of the UK property owning obsessions, service charges are as seen as rent which is seen as dead money. Capital must be preserved to pass down the generations even if that means poorer quality of life for those who have accumulated the capital.
That's not the issue.
The point is the restrictive covenants *on the empty properties* which can make the properties impossible even to give away (as the article suggests): ..One property we found had been vacant for more than nine years. In another case, family members face £60,000 in charges accrued since the property became vacant in 2019. A relative told us it was "like a noose around our necks", and another expressed frustration that "you can't give them away". Another beneficiary reported paying service charges of £750 per month on a flat that has been empty for four years, describing it as a "never-ending nightmare", adding: "It is infuriating and heartbreaking in equal measure."..
From the reporting on this, it really does not sound as though the inability to sell is entirely down to unrealistic expectations of value.
Until I see a link to an auction with a £1 reserve price - the issue is the price they are expecting to receive for the flat.
My expectation is that there is a lot of sunk cost fallacy involved here if you are paying £750 a month - and hoping for £60,000 - 1 year later and £9,000 down you now need that £60,000 to offset the £9,000 costs
Many, many people expect to inherit from their elderly parents and are quite shocked when care costs rapidly diminish the savings etc. No-one has a right to inherit - if money needs to be spent to care for someone it should be spent. And these type housing set up are 'care'.
Oh I know and I don't expect to inherit (although in the case of my M-i-L I do hope to recover the money i've paid to purchase a car / operations / teeth back).
Looking at the article the first flat seems to be a perfect example of not understanding that a £225,000 brand new flat has a new flat premium and was otherwise probably only worth £175,000 or so.
Which means they've seriously overpriced the flat, add on the fact 30% of the residents have now died off and you can see the problem. Were I buying I would be offering on a number of them and going how low can you go, lowest price gets the sale because it wouldn't surprise me if the real value of the flat is £75,000.
What surprises me is that more of the people who buy them new aren't getting them second hand instead, when there's such a gulf in price. The only thing I can think of is that if you get them new you start out with a bunch of similarly aged 70 year olds who can have dinner parties and discuss hip replacements and GB News with one another for the next 25 years as they slowly die off, whereas if you buy second hand you come in as the "youngsters" and never quite fit in.
Perhaps then there's some edge in waiting for these places to be almost uninhabited then snapping up some of the flats ready for either a "new generation" or the whole thing to be redeveloped. If that ever happens (and if it doesn't, then clearly people are buying them in reality).
There is a psephological argument (though I think a superficial one) in favour of the Tories going centrist. However, I am interested in how its proponents explain the palpable lack of enthusiasm for the Lib Dems. They are of the progressive centre. They are not tainted as the Tories are by Government. They are not responsible for any of Starmer's cock ups either. They are identified with pro-Europeanism - a supposed golden ticket - more than any other party. So why are they causing such a massive collective shrug, and why should the Tories be so desperate to get a slice of that rather meagre pie?
It's more complicated than that. The LDs are part of the old establishment, so are discounted except where they can win for the same reason the Tories are discounted in Bootle. Nothing to do with policy. They are nice people who can't win, which is better than nasty people who can't win.
We have had centrist government since WWII. That is, all governments have in fact (ignore the window dressing) tried to make the social democrat Attlee project work and update it but never fundamentally deny it or provide an alternative.
The Tories, who looked recently as if they were on the right lines, have gone backwards. The idea that there is room for two parties on the nationalist Right is wrong.
The great majority of voters vote centrist.
Incidentally, if Reform form a government (which Labour and Tories are doing their best to bring about) they will in fact govern as centrists (social democrats) with the addition of a very rancid entho-nationalism about borders and skin colour.
Not true about Thatcher though and many of the new Reform recruits from the Tories are diehard Thatcherites
The Thatcher thing perpetuates a myth. She fits absolutely in the centre right updating of social democracy, shifting the balance of state and private but not altering the fundamentals of regulated private enterprise and welfare state which is the bedrock of the Attlee settlement. She tried to make it work better.
Thatcher privatised air, telecommunications, gas, water and electricity (which Major continued for rail and the coal industry and Cameron and Clegg for Royal Mail) she slashed income tax at all levels and cut spending and enforced union ballots being required before strikes. She shifted the UK firmly back in a more capitalist direction so that even Blair and Starmer were/are right of say where Heath or Macmillan's governments were economically let alone Attlee and Wilson's.
Had Corbyn won in 2017 or 2019 he would have shifted the UK firmly back towards social democracy or even further to socialism but he didn't
Public spending rose under Thatcher is real terms in every year bar 2.
It took 8 years before it fell as a percentage of GDP
Keir Starmer’s allies are warning that an Angela Rayner leadership coup would trigger a general election.
It is being argued Rayner’s left-wing policy platform would differ to the 2024 manifesto and she would not have a personal mandate as PM.
One Labour figure who served on Starmer’s front bench tells @Telegraph : “Presumably Angela Rayner, if she got elected, would have a completely different agenda.
“If you come in with a completely different agenda then the country legitimately says, ‘We didn’t vote for this’.
“And so what are the grounds for refusing a general election? You can claim constitutional grounds, but in the world of frenzied media, of TikTok, YouTube and GB News, is it really sustainable? It doesn’t feel sustainable to me.”
A current cabinet minister said of a leadership switch: “The pressure for an election would be enormous.”
The arguments are backed up by Rayner’s own position in 2022 when she demanded an election after Tory leader changes.
Rayner said back then: “The Tories have crowned Rishi Sunak without him saying a word about what he would do as PM. He has no mandate, no answers and no ideas. Nobody voted for this.
“The public deserve their say on Britain’s future through a general election. It’s time for a fresh start with Labour.”
This idea could make Labour MPs pause for thought before any attempt to switch leader given the party’s deep unpopularity.
(If an election result matched the current average polls, with Labour on 19%, scores of MPs would be kicked out of the Commons.)
However… it is worth noting this same claim was made by allies of one Boris Johnson as he wobbled in 2022. Tory MPs then switched leader not once but twice. No snap election was called.
So this will be exactly why Major, Brown, Sunak and Truss all had general elections immediately after they took office? Its complete tosh. If that is the best argument they can make against Rayner they should be reading PB.
There's been a few good news anecdotes on here about the NHS, so to balance things up I thought I'd share a story from my mother of a false economy leading to much greater cost.
"A resident here, Harry, went in to [an outer London] private hospital as an NHS patient for a hip replacement, sent home in a TAXI 2days after op, dumped in the carpark, I don't know how he got to his flat but the wound opened, he is now very ill in NHS hospital."
My mother has been recommended surgery to correct a case of Cavus foot that has developed as part of her Parkinson's, but recovery from surgery requires keeping weight off the foot for six weeks, so consensus among Parkinson sufferers is that the surgery is a ticket to requiring a wheelchair - at further expense for the NHS.
The NHS do seem overly focused on surgery as the cure for all ills, but then completely neglecting what happens afterwards.
I think, Mr LP, that your first case is a criticism of the private hospital, although also perhaps of the contracts manager in the NHS. When I worked in a private hospital, for a short time in the 80's, the surgeons always sent cases where there had been problems to the nearest NHS hospital.
With my Aunt, the lack of coordination between the various bits of the hospital (NHS) and the care teams outside was chronic.
Because I was down as next of kin, they started phoning me to ask what the other people were doing!
Having been on both sides of that particular fence I sympathise. Sometimes it doesn't work well; other times at all!
Everyone was well intentioned and hard working. The system wasn't letting them do their job.
I found myself sketching, in my head a web based* tool that would present, per patient, documentation, actions taken, actions to take, alerts, contacts in the various agencies that are part of the solution for that patient....
*So runs on everything - laptops, desktops, tablets and phones.
EDIT: It reminded me of an occasion when I saw a contractor for the road people trying to dig a hole with a shovel. No chance with that tool - he was hammering away, giving it his best, but...
There were proposals, about 20-25 years ago, for the NHS to have one standard system of documentation, as you say web-based. Unfortunately the technology at the time wasn't good enough and the scheme was scrapped. Not sure whether it was by the Coalition or just before. Last time I was taken into hospital the ambulance team had tablets whereon they could access my GP records, so we are now getting there. The fragmentation of secondary care doesn't, IMHO, help, though.
The disastrous NHS IT mega-project(s) ?
The technology was fine. But Big Bang Mega Projects never work.
What you should do is - create some standards and an architecture. Then you work towards that, piece by piece. Those ignorant of project management and OR then say - "But we will waste so much on making the old systems connect to the new. If we do a Big Bang..."
Data standards are key. Then you can connect or convert data.
There is a psephological argument (though I think a superficial one) in favour of the Tories going centrist. However, I am interested in how its proponents explain the palpable lack of enthusiasm for the Lib Dems. They are of the progressive centre. They are not tainted as the Tories are by Government. They are not responsible for any of Starmer's cock ups either. They are identified with pro-Europeanism - a supposed golden ticket - more than any other party. So why are they causing such a massive collective shrug, and why should the Tories be so desperate to get a slice of that rather meagre pie?
It's more complicated than that. The LDs are part of the old establishment, so are discounted except where they can win for the same reason the Tories are discounted in Bootle. Nothing to do with policy. They are nice people who can't win, which is better than nasty people who can't win.
We have had centrist government since WWII. That is, all governments have in fact (ignore the window dressing) tried to make the social democrat Attlee project work and update it but never fundamentally deny it or provide an alternative.
The Tories, who looked recently as if they were on the right lines, have gone backwards. The idea that there is room for two parties on the nationalist Right is wrong.
The great majority of voters vote centrist.
Incidentally, if Reform form a government (which Labour and Tories are doing their best to bring about) they will in fact govern as centrists (social democrats) with the addition of a very rancid entho-nationalism about borders and skin colour.
Not true about Thatcher though and many of the new Reform recruits from the Tories are diehard Thatcherites
The Thatcher thing perpetuates a myth. She fits absolutely in the centre right updating of social democracy, shifting the balance of state and private but not altering the fundamentals of regulated private enterprise and welfare state which is the bedrock of the Attlee settlement. She tried to make it work better.
She shifted it a lot.
You only have to look at the percentage of UK GDP that is state managed expenditure (about 44-45%) to see that in fact it wasn't shifted very much. And I suspect that the entire welfare budget, and other expenditure too, needs another centre right government looking at it, not to be extreme but to get its principles back closer to those of Attlee's post war government.
ahem!
Thanks. That's useful. Thatcher's social democrat centrist regime brought public spending down to the lower end of post WWII levels - as in 1955-1960 - correctly rebalancing the formula. This was not maintained and here we are today still running a centrist social democratic regime at far too high a cost. However there are some excuses.
Scottish Westminster Figures with MiC are very tasty
SNP 28 Ref 23 Lab 20 LD 12 Con 11 Grn 5
This is the sort of stuff that’s going to see the Tories ditch Kemi in May.
Wishful thinking.
Kemi cutting through is not welcome apparently
The Tories doing worse than 2024 is not cut through.
They might try changing the Scottish Leader in that case. You know, a proportionate response
Surely not? Why the Scottish electorate has not yet warmed to Russell ‘in Liz we trust’ Findlay is a mystery, but he’s got 4 months to turn it around.
Beg David Duguid to come back and give him the gig
Afternoon,
Many thanks for the poll data woolie
Does any one know if MIC poll really well for Reform? The regional polling only has SNP and Green at 34 combined, that seems low but it could be right enough
Woolie, I think the Tories should throw the kitchen sink at Eastwood, its a white collar seat so not a prime target for Reform, without Barrhead the boundaries are favourable for JC. At the minute it seems to go between Tories/Labour in an anti SNP vote between Holyrood and Westminster.
Where I think Reform could surprise on the upside, semi rural seats like Carrick and Cumnock, Cunninghame N/S, urban seats around Glasgow, but not Glasgow itself - it'll need a huge effort if they are to win FPTP anywhere other than Banff and Border areas.
I'm not sure Mr Findlay is enjoying his stint as leader given the Reform surge but who would want the gig - Meghan Gallacher maybe?
David Duguid is wise to stay clear of the Tories for now!
On the straight SNP and Tory to Reform swing since 2021 in Yougov and MiC much of rural Perthshire and Aberdeenshire could go Reform as could the Borders
NEW The government is sifting through “high tens of thousands” of documents it holds on Peter Mandelson’s vetting to be US ambassador, I understand. Either the information will be released piecemeal in coming weeks, or in one go at a later date. Parliament’s intelligence and security committee will have a say over anything withheld due to “national security” or “international relations”. This one will run and run. More now at @GBNEWS .
Chair: Beamish (Labour peer, appointed by Starmer) Dep Chair: Sir Jeremy Wright Con Peer, Ex Kenilworth MP) Baroness Brown: Crossbencher Dowd, Lab, Bootle Foord, Lib Dem Honiton Hayes, Con - South Holland and the Deepings Morden, Lab - Newport East Twigg, Lab - Widnes Lord West, Lab Peer
I would have thought that Sir John Hayes would be pretty independently minded - trenchant right-winger. And Lord West is a former First Sea Lord whose ship went down during the Falklands. Not so familiar with the others.
Can't sell the flat for what he thinks he should get is the real issue. There is a price at which someone will buy, but it is probably a lot lower than he thought he was going to inherit.
Economics 101. Back in the real world, the story tells us buyers must be over 70 and pay £11,000 a year in service charges. What does that Venn diagram look like?
So no-one would buy for one pound?
Well, first, they'd have to live in the area already to know it was for sale; then they would need to be over 70, unable to afford a normally-priced flat, yet still able to pay £11,000 a year in service charges. So what's the Venn diagram?
And that ignores that your reductio ad absurdum would repel buyers because at that price there *must* be something wrong.
There is a lack of financial education and understanding here all round. £11k a year for that kind of property isn't ridiculous, including council tax (£1k), and weekly home care (worth approx £1.5k?). Having an on site hub and restaurant radically transforms the social life of the residents for the better. Care is also easier to access. If they are downsizing then being able to comfortably pay 10-15 years service charge towards end of life is not going to be particularly unusual.
86% of residents are happy - this is a good place to live, far more suitable for someone with declining health and mobility than trying to maintain a 3/4 bed family home on their own.
But it goes against the mindset of the UK property owning obsessions, service charges are as seen as rent which is seen as dead money. Capital must be preserved to pass down the generations even if that means poorer quality of life for those who have accumulated the capital.
That's not the issue.
The point is the restrictive covenants *on the empty properties* which can make the properties impossible even to give away (as the article suggests): ..One property we found had been vacant for more than nine years. In another case, family members face £60,000 in charges accrued since the property became vacant in 2019. A relative told us it was "like a noose around our necks", and another expressed frustration that "you can't give them away". Another beneficiary reported paying service charges of £750 per month on a flat that has been empty for four years, describing it as a "never-ending nightmare", adding: "It is infuriating and heartbreaking in equal measure."..
From the reporting on this, it really does not sound as though the inability to sell is entirely down to unrealistic expectations of value.
Until I see a link to an auction with a £1 reserve price - the issue is the price they are expecting to receive for the flat.
My expectation is that there is a lot of sunk cost fallacy involved here if you are paying £750 a month - and hoping for £60,000 - 1 year later and £9,000 down you now need that £60,000 to offset the £9,000 costs
Many, many people expect to inherit from their elderly parents and are quite shocked when care costs rapidly diminish the savings etc. No-one has a right to inherit - if money needs to be spent to care for someone it should be spent. And these type housing set up are 'care'.
Our former son in law and his sister paid over £250,000 in care fees for their mother and father
So did my family and then they took another chunk in inheritance tax and then taxed her on the income from interest on the house she had to sell to.pay the fees.
Maybe noone has a right to.inherit but nor should the Govt have the right to tax people on death. Certainly not on estates up to say 2 million.
So you don’t mind inheritance tax, you just want it at a level where you wouldn’t have paid it.
Nos where 99% of people won't pay. Only the very
Only about 5% of estates pay IHT.
Is that because they have been planned, or because they don't reach the threshold? With house prices as they are, I can't believe that figure won't change.
Well quite. It's a pernicious tax on the stupid and the unlucky. The 7 year rule is easily swerved unless you drop dead - though that's why I don't have much time for the landowners making a gigantic fuss about it - a real farmer would have passed that land on decades earlier.
One of the farmer's round here had to take over the family farm when his father sadly dropped dead at 50
If you are of working are the cost of insuring against that sort of tax bill is a large amount of live assurance which would cost probably 0.1% of the tax bill annually AND be a tax deductible expense
There is a psephological argument (though I think a superficial one) in favour of the Tories going centrist. However, I am interested in how its proponents explain the palpable lack of enthusiasm for the Lib Dems. They are of the progressive centre. They are not tainted as the Tories are by Government. They are not responsible for any of Starmer's cock ups either. They are identified with pro-Europeanism - a supposed golden ticket - more than any other party. So why are they causing such a massive collective shrug, and why should the Tories be so desperate to get a slice of that rather meagre pie?
It's more complicated than that. The LDs are part of the old establishment, so are discounted except where they can win for the same reason the Tories are discounted in Bootle. Nothing to do with policy. They are nice people who can't win, which is better than nasty people who can't win.
We have had centrist government since WWII. That is, all governments have in fact (ignore the window dressing) tried to make the social democrat Attlee project work and update it but never fundamentally deny it or provide an alternative.
The Tories, who looked recently as if they were on the right lines, have gone backwards. The idea that there is room for two parties on the nationalist Right is wrong.
The great majority of voters vote centrist.
Incidentally, if Reform form a government (which Labour and Tories are doing their best to bring about) they will in fact govern as centrists (social democrats) with the addition of a very rancid entho-nationalism about borders and skin colour.
Not true about Thatcher though and many of the new Reform recruits from the Tories are diehard Thatcherites
The Thatcher thing perpetuates a myth. She fits absolutely in the centre right updating of social democracy, shifting the balance of state and private but not altering the fundamentals of regulated private enterprise and welfare state which is the bedrock of the Attlee settlement. She tried to make it work better.
She shifted it a lot.
You only have to look at the percentage of UK GDP that is state managed expenditure (about 44-45%) to see that in fact it wasn't shifted very much. And I suspect that the entire welfare budget, and other expenditure too, needs another centre right government looking at it, not to be extreme but to get its principles back closer to those of Attlee's post war government.
ahem!
Thanks. That's useful. Thatcher's social democrat centrist regime brought public spending down to the lower end of post WWII levels - as in 1955-1960 - correctly rebalancing the formula. This was not maintained and here we are today still running a centrist social democratic regime at far too high a cost. However there are some excuses.
I think it was Blair who said the essential argument in politics is between spending 35% of GDP and spending 45% - but that was too boring for ideological types.
Keir Starmer’s allies are warning that an Angela Rayner leadership coup would trigger a general election.
It is being argued Rayner’s left-wing policy platform would differ to the 2024 manifesto and she would not have a personal mandate as PM.
One Labour figure who served on Starmer’s front bench tells @Telegraph : “Presumably Angela Rayner, if she got elected, would have a completely different agenda.
“If you come in with a completely different agenda then the country legitimately says, ‘We didn’t vote for this’.
“And so what are the grounds for refusing a general election? You can claim constitutional grounds, but in the world of frenzied media, of TikTok, YouTube and GB News, is it really sustainable? It doesn’t feel sustainable to me.”
A current cabinet minister said of a leadership switch: “The pressure for an election would be enormous.”
The arguments are backed up by Rayner’s own position in 2022 when she demanded an election after Tory leader changes.
Rayner said back then: “The Tories have crowned Rishi Sunak without him saying a word about what he would do as PM. He has no mandate, no answers and no ideas. Nobody voted for this.
“The public deserve their say on Britain’s future through a general election. It’s time for a fresh start with Labour.”
This idea could make Labour MPs pause for thought before any attempt to switch leader given the party’s deep unpopularity.
(If an election result matched the current average polls, with Labour on 19%, scores of MPs would be kicked out of the Commons.)
However… it is worth noting this same claim was made by allies of one Boris Johnson as he wobbled in 2022. Tory MPs then switched leader not once but twice. No snap election was called.
Starmer's few remaining supporters really are getting desperate.
What they say doesn't stand up either constitutionally or practically or in terms of precedent. Constitutionally, the PM is he who commands the support of the majority of MPs in the Commons. He is not a President whose mandate comes from the people.
Practically, if Ange is PM, Labour MPs are going to be just as terrified of the electorate then as they are now. And the new PM isn't going to want to rival Liz Truss in terms of durability. So the chances of there being an election are zero.
And there is no precedent in recent history for a new PM calling an election just because they replaced the old PM - Callaghan didn't in 76, Major didn't in 90, Brown didn't in 07, Truss didn't in 22 and Sunak didn't later that year. The only arguable precedent is May in 2017, and she didn't call an election because she had different policies, she did so because she had no majority and thought she'd win a huge one.
Truly desperate crap from McSweeney or whoever Starmer's remaining supporter is.
Another Labour MP has publicly and explicitly called for Keir Starmer to quit.
Duncan-Jordan, the MP for Poole, told his local BBC radio station this:
"We can't just keep going on like this - lurching from one crisis to the next. One of the best ways of resetting is to have a renewal of the Labour Party, to restart our offer to the British public, and that means changing who's in charge."
He added: "We are losing the trust and the confidence of the British people, which is very hard won and very easily given away, and we have to address that.
"The Labour party needs to change and that includes the Number 10 operation in its entirety, in my view."
Can't sell the flat for what he thinks he should get is the real issue. There is a price at which someone will buy, but it is probably a lot lower than he thought he was going to inherit.
Economics 101. Back in the real world, the story tells us buyers must be over 70 and pay £11,000 a year in service charges. What does that Venn diagram look like?
So no-one would buy for one pound?
Well, first, they'd have to live in the area already to know it was for sale; then they would need to be over 70, unable to afford a normally-priced flat, yet still able to pay £11,000 a year in service charges. So what's the Venn diagram?
And that ignores that your reductio ad absurdum would repel buyers because at that price there *must* be something wrong.
There is a lack of financial education and understanding here all round. £11k a year for that kind of property isn't ridiculous, including council tax (£1k), and weekly home care (worth approx £1.5k?). Having an on site hub and restaurant radically transforms the social life of the residents for the better. Care is also easier to access. If they are downsizing then being able to comfortably pay 10-15 years service charge towards end of life is not going to be particularly unusual.
86% of residents are happy - this is a good place to live, far more suitable for someone with declining health and mobility than trying to maintain a 3/4 bed family home on their own.
But it goes against the mindset of the UK property owning obsessions, service charges are as seen as rent which is seen as dead money. Capital must be preserved to pass down the generations even if that means poorer quality of life for those who have accumulated the capital.
That's not the issue.
The point is the restrictive covenants *on the empty properties* which can make the properties impossible even to give away (as the article suggests): ..One property we found had been vacant for more than nine years. In another case, family members face £60,000 in charges accrued since the property became vacant in 2019. A relative told us it was "like a noose around our necks", and another expressed frustration that "you can't give them away". Another beneficiary reported paying service charges of £750 per month on a flat that has been empty for four years, describing it as a "never-ending nightmare", adding: "It is infuriating and heartbreaking in equal measure."..
From the reporting on this, it really does not sound as though the inability to sell is entirely down to unrealistic expectations of value.
Until I see a link to an auction with a £1 reserve price - the issue is the price they are expecting to receive for the flat.
My expectation is that there is a lot of sunk cost fallacy involved here if you are paying £750 a month - and hoping for £60,000 - 1 year later and £9,000 down you now need that £60,000 to offset the £9,000 costs
Many, many people expect to inherit from their elderly parents and are quite shocked when care costs rapidly diminish the savings etc. No-one has a right to inherit - if money needs to be spent to care for someone it should be spent. And these type housing set up are 'care'.
Oh I know and I don't expect to inherit (although in the case of my M-i-L I do hope to recover the money i've paid to purchase a car / operations / teeth back).
Looking at the article the first flat seems to be a perfect example of not understanding that a £225,000 brand new flat has a new flat premium and was otherwise probably only worth £175,000 or so.
Which means they've seriously overpriced the flat, add on the fact 30% of the residents have now died off and you can see the problem. Were I buying I would be offering on a number of them and going how low can you go, lowest price gets the sale because it wouldn't surprise me if the real value of the flat is £75,000.
What surprises me is that more of the people who buy them new aren't getting them second hand instead, when there's such a gulf in price. The only thing I can think of is that if you get them new you start out with a bunch of similarly aged 70 year olds who can have dinner parties and discuss hip replacements and GB News with one another for the next 25 years as they slowly die off, whereas if you buy second hand you come in as the "youngsters" and never quite fit in.
Perhaps then there's some edge in waiting for these places to be almost uninhabited then snapping up some of the flats ready for either a "new generation" or the whole thing to be redeveloped. If that ever happens (and if it doesn't, then clearly people are buying them in reality).
Massive marketing of the new builds. The companies are strangely reticent about helping owners to sell theirs, as opposed to the companies own, new built flats.
NEW The government is sifting through “high tens of thousands” of documents it holds on Peter Mandelson’s vetting to be US ambassador, I understand. Either the information will be released piecemeal in coming weeks, or in one go at a later date. Parliament’s intelligence and security committee will have a say over anything withheld due to “national security” or “international relations”. This one will run and run. More now at @GBNEWS .
Chair: Beamish (Labour peer, appointed by Starmer) Dep Chair: Sir Jeremy Wright Con Peer, Ex Kenilworth MP) Baroness Brown: Crossbencher Dowd, Lab, Bootle Foord, Lib Dem Honiton Hayes, Con - South Holland and the Deepings Morden, Lab - Newport East Twigg, Lab - Widnes Lord West, Lab Peer
I would have thought that Sir John Hayes would be pretty independently minded - trenchant right-winger. And Lord West is a former First Sea Lord whose ship went down during the Falklands. Not so familiar with the others.
Ah, didn't realise Beamish is the former Kevan Jones MP. Was a defence minister. I've encountered him. Cigar-smoking right-winger. Bit of a machine politician with close union ties. But seemed a nice bloke. I would think quite sound.
NEW The government is sifting through “high tens of thousands” of documents it holds on Peter Mandelson’s vetting to be US ambassador, I understand. Either the information will be released piecemeal in coming weeks, or in one go at a later date. Parliament’s intelligence and security committee will have a say over anything withheld due to “national security” or “international relations”. This one will run and run. More now at @GBNEWS .
Chair: Beamish (Labour peer, appointed by Starmer) Dep Chair: Sir Jeremy Wright Con Peer, Ex Kenilworth MP) Baroness Brown: Crossbencher Dowd, Lab, Bootle Foord, Lib Dem Honiton Hayes, Con - South Holland and the Deepings Morden, Lab - Newport East Twigg, Lab - Widnes Lord West, Lab Peer
I would have thought that Sir John Hayes would be pretty independently minded - trenchant right-winger. And Lord West is a former First Sea Lord whose ship went down during the Falklands. Not so familiar with the others.
Keir Starmer’s allies are warning that an Angela Rayner leadership coup would trigger a general election.
It is being argued Rayner’s left-wing policy platform would differ to the 2024 manifesto and she would not have a personal mandate as PM.
One Labour figure who served on Starmer’s front bench tells @Telegraph : “Presumably Angela Rayner, if she got elected, would have a completely different agenda.
“If you come in with a completely different agenda then the country legitimately says, ‘We didn’t vote for this’.
“And so what are the grounds for refusing a general election? You can claim constitutional grounds, but in the world of frenzied media, of TikTok, YouTube and GB News, is it really sustainable? It doesn’t feel sustainable to me.”
A current cabinet minister said of a leadership switch: “The pressure for an election would be enormous.”
The arguments are backed up by Rayner’s own position in 2022 when she demanded an election after Tory leader changes.
Rayner said back then: “The Tories have crowned Rishi Sunak without him saying a word about what he would do as PM. He has no mandate, no answers and no ideas. Nobody voted for this.
“The public deserve their say on Britain’s future through a general election. It’s time for a fresh start with Labour.”
This idea could make Labour MPs pause for thought before any attempt to switch leader given the party’s deep unpopularity.
(If an election result matched the current average polls, with Labour on 19%, scores of MPs would be kicked out of the Commons.)
However… it is worth noting this same claim was made by allies of one Boris Johnson as he wobbled in 2022. Tory MPs then switched leader not once but twice. No snap election was called.
So this will be exactly why Major, Brown, Sunak and Truss all had general elections immediately after they took office? Its complete tosh. If that is the best argument they can make against Rayner they should be reading PB.
Keir Starmer’s allies are warning that an Angela Rayner leadership coup would trigger a general election.
It is being argued Rayner’s left-wing policy platform would differ to the 2024 manifesto and she would not have a personal mandate as PM.
One Labour figure who served on Starmer’s front bench tells @Telegraph : “Presumably Angela Rayner, if she got elected, would have a completely different agenda.
“If you come in with a completely different agenda then the country legitimately says, ‘We didn’t vote for this’.
“And so what are the grounds for refusing a general election? You can claim constitutional grounds, but in the world of frenzied media, of TikTok, YouTube and GB News, is it really sustainable? It doesn’t feel sustainable to me.”
A current cabinet minister said of a leadership switch: “The pressure for an election would be enormous.”
The arguments are backed up by Rayner’s own position in 2022 when she demanded an election after Tory leader changes.
Rayner said back then: “The Tories have crowned Rishi Sunak without him saying a word about what he would do as PM. He has no mandate, no answers and no ideas. Nobody voted for this.
“The public deserve their say on Britain’s future through a general election. It’s time for a fresh start with Labour.”
This idea could make Labour MPs pause for thought before any attempt to switch leader given the party’s deep unpopularity.
(If an election result matched the current average polls, with Labour on 19%, scores of MPs would be kicked out of the Commons.)
However… it is worth noting this same claim was made by allies of one Boris Johnson as he wobbled in 2022. Tory MPs then switched leader not once but twice. No snap election was called.
So this will be exactly why Major, Brown, Sunak and Truss all had general elections immediately after they took office? Its complete tosh. If that is the best argument they can make against Rayner they should be reading PB.
There should be a GE if Starmer is deposed, and the fact Rayner explicitly called for one when the same chaos was happening in the Tory govt means she would instantly lose respect if she was imposed on the public. Same old, same old
Comments
The technology was fine. But Big Bang Mega Projects never work.
What you should do is - create some standards and an architecture. Then you work towards that, piece by piece. Those ignorant of project management and OR then say - "But we will waste so much on making the old systems connect to the new. If we do a Big Bang..."
Yeah right.
No thank you.
We have had centrist government since WWII. That is, all governments have in fact (ignore the window dressing) tried to make the social democrat Attlee project work and update it but never fundamentally deny it or provide an alternative.
The Tories, who looked recently as if they were on the right lines, have gone backwards. The idea that there is room for two parties on the nationalist Right is wrong.
The great majority of voters vote centrist.
Incidentally, if Reform form a government (which Labour and Tories are doing their best to bring about) they will in fact govern as centrists (social democrats) with the addition of a very rancid entho-nationalism about borders and skin colour.
"Trump posts racist video depicting Obamas as monkeys.
"Donald Trump went on a massive social media spree overnight that included posting on Truth Social an election conspiracy video that ended with a clip depicting former president Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama as monkeys."
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2026/feb/06/trump-barack-obama-michelle-truth-social-epstein-latest-news-updates
I wonder whether the sheer indecency of Trump (never mind the grifting, lying, salaciousness, etc) will at some point start registering. Or are we truly past the point of no return?
Likewise Starmer will be removed, quite rightly, for the Epstein-Mandelson connection yet no one comments on the Farage-Trump-Musk- Bannon- Epstein linkage.
Reform are new and exciting and the positive coverage they are getting from the likes of Kuennsberg and Mason is remarkable. I believe Badenoch may have this week made the connection.
She's merely benefitting from being considered as a nothing who isn't Farage or Starmer.
It's like marking the WW2 dictators.
Whose the worst
Hitler
Stalin
Mussolini
Mussolini would be least unpopular because in comparison he's a nobody. Kemi is irrelevant.
Put it this way is it better to have 2 swing seats that reflect public mood or 2 safe seats that never change
https://x.com/netanyahu/status/2019739136660222088
Jeffrey Epstein's unusual close relationship with Ehud Barak doesn't suggest Epstein worked for Israel. It proves the opposite.
Stuck on his election loss from over two decades ago, Barak has for years obsessively attempted to undermine Israeli democracy by working with the anti-Zionist radical left in failed attempts to overthrow the elected Israeli government.
Barak's personal fixation led him to engage in activities publicly and behind the scenes to undermine the government of Israel, including fueling mass protest movements, fomenting unrest and feeding false media narratives.
LibDem 58 (+20)
Con 23 (-24)
You are in for a very big surprise over the next 3 years
Maybe noone has a right to.inherit but nor should the Govt have the right to tax people on death. Certainly not on estates up to say 2 million.
And our MPs have no idea who voted for them, most of them know perfectly well that over half of voters didn't (good for their general humility) and have, SFAICS, a reasonable record of doing their best for their patch regardless.
https://x.com/acyn/status/2019622964719911206?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
The minister who destruction and wilful negligence destroyed a sector for generations.
Her name was Margaret Hilda Thatcher.
Most IT projects are handicapped by two things - the developers don't know the domain, and the domain owners have no idea about development.
Edit: But I'm fairly sure that others here have a more refined view than mine.
It is another left behind place now, ripe for Reform.
I doubt the new nuclear plant will help much, but that remains to be seen.
A shame, because it is quite a nice island otherwise. Trearddur Bay used to be a destination for well to do Liverpudlians - Nicholas Monserrat had a house there. Nowadays the caravans significantly outnumber the fancy houses.
And of course tax on interest post death whilst one waits for the appallingly slow probate procedure.. to allow release of the money.
Anyone who has been an Executor of an estate needing probate will have suffered as a result of Govt and Solicitor inefficiency.
It was Labour Ministers Crosland and Williams who really ended grammar schools in most parts of the country, aided by Labour councils and merged them with secondary moderns and technical schools to create comprehensives.
Heath didn't reverse that trend either and as he was her boss Thatcher had to do what she was told as Education Secretary but where grammars survived it was almost always in Tory held councils
And I say this sat in the starting point for the North East constituencies because the criteria meant - this local authority could be the constitency
The sales team dubbed it Lose Every Order
If you make everyone involved read "The Mythical Man Month", it's a start.
As someone who many decades ago went to both a Comprehensive and later a rural Grammar School I won't be changing my mind soon. F*** Grammar schools!
See the effects on Reform, in Wales, for having this - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yd878ejqko
A video shared by President Trump on social media depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as monkeys has been condemned as racist by prominent Democrats
https://x.com/thetimes/status/2019720152078561338
This isn't press impartially; it's amorality, and it's the same passive collusion which enabled Trump in the first place.
The then Tory MP, John Stokes (he actually made Enoch Powell sound like a Liberal) who always attended Speech day, was actually empty chaired by the Headmaster that year.
Tumultuous days
You can't even petition to ballot to open new grammars in your area though but since New Labour you can petition to have ballots to close grammars that still exist in your area which is unfair
(I was pipped. I don't like it as a tax at all, much rather an annual property tax and a wider income tax, but there's no denying it's only the very richest paying it).
Perceptions can surprise.
I've always been "of the left" but I have never forgotten the honour and privilege of being able to go to an historic grammar school. I have to say it was superbly led and never was anyone judged on anything other than work ethic or ability.
I was definitely lucky to go to such an establishment.
Had Corbyn won in 2017 or 2019 he would have shifted the UK firmly back towards social democracy or even further to socialism but he didn't
@christopherhope
NEW The government is sifting through “high tens of thousands” of documents it holds on Peter Mandelson’s vetting to be US ambassador, I understand.
Either the information will be released piecemeal in coming weeks, or in one go at a later date. Parliament’s intelligence and security committee will have a say over anything withheld due to “national security” or “international relations”. This one will run and run. More now at
@GBNEWS
.
https://x.com/christopherhope/status/2019755825770713428
The smell of death is in the Westminster air. Labour’s King Rat Peter Mandelson has again cast his sulphurous odour of villainy around the palace, and contamination may drag a decent, well-intentioned Labour leader down with him.
That’s the tragedy.
For most people who bother to think about it at all the real threshold is towards £1million, being £325K x 2 + RNRB x 2.
"Dear Keir
We cannot control the orange nutter you've got 2 ace Cards"
Give him a State Visit to soothe his ego.
Put Mandy in as Ambassador for year with his envelope. That picture of Trump Mandy Epstein and The HRH Andy gang banging boys and girls in Trump Towers"
Yours
MMc
Chair: Beamish (Labour peer, appointed by Starmer)
Dep Chair: Sir Jeremy Wright Con Peer, Ex Kenilworth MP)
Baroness Brown: Crossbencher
Dowd, Lab, Bootle
Foord, Lib Dem Honiton
Hayes, Con - South Holland and the Deepings
Morden, Lab - Newport East
Twigg, Lab - Widnes
Lord West, Lab Peer
Those that should will invariably spend thousands to join those that shouldn't in not paying and therefore screwing the systen
We need to get rid of this progressive tactic of subverting the language. There are not 'many forms of patriotism and this is mine' - you are either for the security, prosperity and wellbeing of fellow Britons, or you are against it. You could be against it for what you see as a moral reason - pro 'the world' not just a country, pro the global proletariat, pro 'global south', or just lining your own pockets, but don't sit in front of a Union flag and try to pass off your betrayal as patriotism.
NEW
Keir Starmer’s allies are warning that an Angela Rayner leadership coup would trigger a general election.
It is being argued Rayner’s left-wing policy platform would differ to the 2024 manifesto and she would not have a personal mandate as PM.
One Labour figure who served on Starmer’s front bench tells
@Telegraph
: “Presumably Angela Rayner, if she got elected, would have a completely different agenda.
“If you come in with a completely different agenda then the country legitimately says, ‘We didn’t vote for this’.
“And so what are the grounds for refusing a general election? You can claim constitutional grounds, but in the world of frenzied media, of TikTok, YouTube and GB News, is it really sustainable? It doesn’t feel sustainable to me.”
A current cabinet minister said of a leadership switch: “The pressure for an election would be enormous.”
The arguments are backed up by Rayner’s own position in 2022 when she demanded an election after Tory leader changes.
Rayner said back then: “The Tories have crowned Rishi Sunak without him saying a word about what he would do as PM. He has no mandate, no answers and no ideas. Nobody voted for this.
“The public deserve their say on Britain’s future through a general election. It’s time for a fresh start with Labour.”
This idea could make Labour MPs pause for thought before any attempt to switch leader given the party’s deep unpopularity.
(If an election result matched the current average polls, with Labour on 19%, scores of MPs would be kicked out of the Commons.)
However… it is worth noting this same claim was made by allies of one Boris Johnson as he wobbled in 2022. Tory MPs then switched leader not once but twice. No snap election was called.
We always thought you were a bit of an old soak, but now - well, hello Zaphod! Welcome to Earth.
One issue is this: would a new PM in place before May be immune from attack over the May elections? I think so. It's a factor to bear in mind over what could happen.
At the same time they increased the number of statutory constituencies which wildly break this rule from 2 to 5.
Many thanks for the poll data woolie
Does any one know if MIC poll really well for Reform? The regional polling only has SNP and Green at 34 combined, that seems low but it could be right enough
Woolie, I think the Tories should throw the kitchen sink at Eastwood, its a white collar seat so not a prime target for Reform, without Barrhead the boundaries are favourable for JC. At the minute it seems to go between Tories/Labour in an anti SNP vote between Holyrood and Westminster.
Where I think Reform could surprise on the upside, semi rural seats like Carrick and Cumnock, Cunninghame N/S, urban seats around Glasgow, but not Glasgow itself - it'll need a huge effort if they are to win FPTP anywhere other than Banff and Border areas.
I'm not sure Mr Findlay is enjoying his stint as leader given the Reform surge but who would want the gig - Meghan Gallacher maybe?
David Duguid is wise to stay clear of the Tories for now!
It took 8 years before it fell as a percentage of GDP
Remember though most of the 2024 new Labour MPs elected for the first time were only approved as Labour candidates by the NEC as they were Starmer loyalists, so I think the idea that Rayner could even get the required 81 Labour MPs to nominate her and challenge Starmer is questionable.
Rayner would beat Starmer and probably Streeting too if Starmer resigned first if it got to the Labour membership but she would have to get there first
What surprises me is that more of the people who buy them new aren't getting them second hand instead, when there's such a gulf in price. The only thing I can think of is that if you get them new you start out with a bunch of similarly aged 70 year olds who can have dinner parties and discuss hip replacements and GB News with one another for the next 25 years as they slowly die off, whereas if you buy second hand you come in as the "youngsters" and never quite fit in.
Perhaps then there's some edge in waiting for these places to be almost uninhabited then snapping up some of the flats ready for either a "new generation" or the whole thing to be redeveloped. If that ever happens (and if it doesn't, then clearly people are buying them in reality).
What they say doesn't stand up either constitutionally or practically or in terms of precedent. Constitutionally, the PM is he who commands the support of the majority of MPs in the Commons. He is not a President whose mandate comes from the people.
Practically, if Ange is PM, Labour MPs are going to be just as terrified of the electorate then as they are now. And the new PM isn't going to want to rival Liz Truss in terms of durability. So the chances of there being an election are zero.
And there is no precedent in recent history for a new PM calling an election just because they replaced the old PM - Callaghan didn't in 76, Major didn't in 90, Brown didn't in 07, Truss didn't in 22 and Sunak didn't later that year. The only arguable precedent is May in 2017, and she didn't call an election because she had different policies, she did so because she had no majority and thought she'd win a huge one.
Truly desperate crap from McSweeney or whoever Starmer's remaining supporter is.
BREAKING
Another Labour MP has publicly and explicitly called for Keir Starmer to quit.
Duncan-Jordan, the MP for Poole, told his local BBC radio station this:
"We can't just keep going on like this - lurching from one crisis to the next. One of the best ways of resetting is to have a renewal of the Labour Party, to restart our offer to the British public, and that means changing who's in charge."
He added: "We are losing the trust and the confidence of the British people, which is very hard won and very easily given away, and we have to address that.
"The Labour party needs to change and that includes the Number 10 operation in its entirety, in my view."
4 PMs from 1 GE is the bar.
https://x.com/jurgen_nauditt/status/2019728736971559061