Labour result is bad enough though it could be worse.
For Her Majesty's Main Opposition Party though to go from 23% to 8% as the Conservative and Unionist Party is extermination level, no ifs no buts it's extermination.
LOL
Starmer and labour starring at a disaster and it's all about the tories
Friday 8th May will be all about Starmer, labour and how they can replace at best a middle manager on a tourist visa
You may howl on about Kemi but no matter May 7th, she will lead into GE 29 and why should the conservative party even listen to a lefty on a rant
Tory MPs won’t care how badly Labour do.
They will be looking at the second electoral cycle where the Tories have gone backwards and will think Badenoch will see us lose our seats in 2029.
Then they are bloody fools and no better than idiot football fans calling for their manager to be sacked. Of course the Tories have gone backwards. Everyone has gone backwards because there are now five parties rather than three. If they think the Tories are getting back into the high 20s with another leader they are living in cloud cuckoo land.
It does feel like the SNP is the only show in town in Scotland. Which isn't good.
SNP constituency vote down 7% on what Sturgeon got in 2021 and SNP list vote down 8% on the new Yougov MRP, there is no great enthusiasm for Swinney's government they just benefit from a divided opposition
"We asked participants where they thought Britain stood economically compared to our main competitors. It turns out voters are living in a dreamworld.
Nearly half of British voters think that we are as rich, or richer, than Switzerland. Over half think we are as rich or richer than Australia, Singapore, or Germany. And, incredibly, over half of us think Britain is as rich as, or richer, than the United States.
The truth of course is that we are poorer than all those countries – according to the IMF, we are 10 per cent poorer than Germany, 20 per cent poorer than Australia, about 40 per cent poorer than America or Singapore."
What's interesting is that we are meant to have a higher per capita income than Japan - I have just spent a fortnight in Japan and I have to say, that was not the impression I got! Alternatively, perhaps there are things we can do to make our country a lot more pleasant without raising our per capita income, if we are genuinely richer than Japan.
I think there is a problem with making a judgement "by walking about", as it is based on impression of quality of public realm.
We know that from 2010 (and perhaps a little earlier) through to 2025 investment in our public realm was deliberately and systematically undermined, and the Govt lived of the capital without investing in the maintenance.
That is in the numbers on resources available to local authorities, and the amount of expenditure required to be dedicated to statutory services increasing markedly.
Plus allocation of much funding by bid and competition.
We even have Rishi Sunak on video telling an audience at a garden party how proud he was to be transferring resources from poorer areas to wealthier areas such as where his audience lived. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xegB9J-mn1A
I qeustion whether you can judge on that basis.
Agreed on that. But this is also what I'm getting at, there may be places where we can spend a little bit of money and make people feel a lot happier about their lives. We allow our public spaces to become squalid, the Japanese don't. Why is that?
France is another interesting example. In GDP terms, both absolute and per capita, it hovers around parity with the UK and is currently a little below. But it *looks* much nicer because much more is spent on public spaces. And there’s far less of a gap in look and feel between the capital and the provinces than there is in Britain.
But the French are utterly depressed about their country, both the left and the right (with different though overlapping rationales for why). Part of it is the direction of travel. Yes the public realm and services are way better than in the UK, but they are becoming less good. Spending is being cut, municipalities are being merged to save money, schools being closed because there are no children left, things once taken for granted now under threat from their own version of austerity.
I do sometimes wonder whether people being utterly depressed is 100% driven by objective reality about stuff like economics or whether some of it reflects more intangible stuff, eg social media narratives, loneliness, ageing? I'm not angry and depressed and neither are most of the people I know. Do I live in a bubble? Or do people just like moaning?
I think a lot depends on where you live, how 'easy' your life is, whether you have financial worries or not.
One thing we noticed on Saturday. We went to Devizes (a small market town in Wiltshire) for a walk up the Caen Hill flight and some lunch in the town centre. The place was dead. We found a nice cafe and at 1.45 pm the place was empty. No customers besides ourselves. It was a nice enough day - the odd shower came through but it is April after all. But so, so quiet.
I would not want to be running small shops, cafes or other hospitality right now. Something is off.
I walked down to the nearest pub early on Friday night and it was jammed. Seems to be quite busy most days, TBH. Mrs C and I went to the local tapas bar for lunch the other day, too, and it was quite busy there. Not full, but close to it. There's a new cafe-bar (or similar, I think) opening across the road from the pub, too. Looking forward to giving that a go.
"We asked participants where they thought Britain stood economically compared to our main competitors. It turns out voters are living in a dreamworld.
Nearly half of British voters think that we are as rich, or richer, than Switzerland. Over half think we are as rich or richer than Australia, Singapore, or Germany. And, incredibly, over half of us think Britain is as rich as, or richer, than the United States.
The truth of course is that we are poorer than all those countries – according to the IMF, we are 10 per cent poorer than Germany, 20 per cent poorer than Australia, about 40 per cent poorer than America or Singapore."
What's interesting is that we are meant to have a higher per capita income than Japan - I have just spent a fortnight in Japan and I have to say, that was not the impression I got! Alternatively, perhaps there are things we can do to make our country a lot more pleasant without raising our per capita income, if we are genuinely richer than Japan.
I think there is a problem with making a judgement "by walking about", as it is based on impression of quality of public realm.
We know that from 2010 (and perhaps a little earlier) through to 2025 investment in our public realm was deliberately and systematically undermined, and the Govt lived of the capital without investing in the maintenance.
That is in the numbers on resources available to local authorities, and the amount of expenditure required to be dedicated to statutory services increasing markedly.
Plus allocation of much funding by bid and competition.
We even have Rishi Sunak on video telling an audience at a garden party how proud he was to be transferring resources from poorer areas to wealthier areas such as where his audience lived. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xegB9J-mn1A
I qeustion whether you can judge on that basis.
Agreed on that. But this is also what I'm getting at, there may be places where we can spend a little bit of money and make people feel a lot happier about their lives. We allow our public spaces to become squalid, the Japanese don't. Why is that?
France is another interesting example. In GDP terms, both absolute and per capita, it hovers around parity with the UK and is currently a little below. But it *looks* much nicer because much more is spent on public spaces. And there’s far less of a gap in look and feel between the capital and the provinces than there is in Britain.
But the French are utterly depressed about their country, both the left and the right (with different though overlapping rationales for why). Part of it is the direction of travel. Yes the public realm and services are way better than in the UK, but they are becoming less good. Spending is being cut, municipalities are being merged to save money, schools being closed because there are no children left, things once taken for granted now under threat from their own version of austerity.
I do sometimes wonder whether people being utterly depressed is 100% driven by objective reality about stuff like economics or whether some of it reflects more intangible stuff, eg social media narratives, loneliness, ageing? I'm not angry and depressed and neither are most of the people I know. Do I live in a bubble? Or do people just like moaning?
I can only speak for myself, but I'm sure social media doesn't help, though I think my main source of unhappinness is anxiety about the precariousness of my financial position in a capitalist economy.
To keep a roof over my head I absolutely have to pay the mortgage and so I absolutely have to work, but there's always a risk of losing your job for no fault of your own, and not being able to get another one - something many people will experience if the economy falls off a cliff following Trump's Folly and the subsequent closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
"We asked participants where they thought Britain stood economically compared to our main competitors. It turns out voters are living in a dreamworld.
Nearly half of British voters think that we are as rich, or richer, than Switzerland. Over half think we are as rich or richer than Australia, Singapore, or Germany. And, incredibly, over half of us think Britain is as rich as, or richer, than the United States.
The truth of course is that we are poorer than all those countries – according to the IMF, we are 10 per cent poorer than Germany, 20 per cent poorer than Australia, about 40 per cent poorer than America or Singapore."
What's interesting is that we are meant to have a higher per capita income than Japan - I have just spent a fortnight in Japan and I have to say, that was not the impression I got! Alternatively, perhaps there are things we can do to make our country a lot more pleasant without raising our per capita income, if we are genuinely richer than Japan.
I think there is a problem with making a judgement "by walking about", as it is based on impression of quality of public realm.
We know that from 2010 (and perhaps a little earlier) through to 2025 investment in our public realm was deliberately and systematically undermined, and the Govt lived of the capital without investing in the maintenance.
That is in the numbers on resources available to local authorities, and the amount of expenditure required to be dedicated to statutory services increasing markedly.
Plus allocation of much funding by bid and competition.
We even have Rishi Sunak on video telling an audience at a garden party how proud he was to be transferring resources from poorer areas to wealthier areas such as where his audience lived. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xegB9J-mn1A
I qeustion whether you can judge on that basis.
Agreed on that. But this is also what I'm getting at, there may be places where we can spend a little bit of money and make people feel a lot happier about their lives. We allow our public spaces to become squalid, the Japanese don't. Why is that?
France is another interesting example. In GDP terms, both absolute and per capita, it hovers around parity with the UK and is currently a little below. But it *looks* much nicer because much more is spent on public spaces. And there’s far less of a gap in look and feel between the capital and the provinces than there is in Britain.
But the French are utterly depressed about their country, both the left and the right (with different though overlapping rationales for why). Part of it is the direction of travel. Yes the public realm and services are way better than in the UK, but they are becoming less good. Spending is being cut, municipalities are being merged to save money, schools being closed because there are no children left, things once taken for granted now under threat from their own version of austerity.
I do sometimes wonder whether people being utterly depressed is 100% driven by objective reality about stuff like economics or whether some of it reflects more intangible stuff, eg social media narratives, loneliness, ageing? I'm not angry and depressed and neither are most of the people I know. Do I live in a bubble? Or do people just like moaning?
I think a lot depends on where you live, how 'easy' your life is, whether you have financial worries or not.
One thing we noticed on Saturday. We went to Devizes (a small market town in Wiltshire) for a walk up the Caen Hill flight and some lunch in the town centre. The place was dead. We found a nice cafe and at 1.45 pm the place was empty. No customers besides ourselves. It was a nice enough day - the odd shower came through but it is April after all. But so, so quiet.
I would not want to be running small shops, cafes or other hospitality right now. Something is off.
That's interesting, and sad. I suspect I do exist in a bubble of relative prosperity as well as living in a sociable neighbourhood amid the hustle and bustle of inner London.
I live in a different small market town, right on the edge, looking over a field with horses, sheep, goats, frequent deer and annoying pheasant. We like our neighbours (who own the field). We can walk into town in 15 minutes. We have a Waitrose, and a Morrisons to keep the scum out of Waitrose, and a Lidl to keep the scummier scum out of Morissons. Our town is way busier, so it may have been a more local effect, but it was odd.
"We asked participants where they thought Britain stood economically compared to our main competitors. It turns out voters are living in a dreamworld.
Nearly half of British voters think that we are as rich, or richer, than Switzerland. Over half think we are as rich or richer than Australia, Singapore, or Germany. And, incredibly, over half of us think Britain is as rich as, or richer, than the United States.
The truth of course is that we are poorer than all those countries – according to the IMF, we are 10 per cent poorer than Germany, 20 per cent poorer than Australia, about 40 per cent poorer than America or Singapore."
Is someone from the USA who has 2 weeks paid holiday not 5, who spends perhaps £10k per annum on healthcare that is free here, who gets little or no income when they are ill, and who on average will die 4 years earlier than other Western citizens really wealthier than a British citizen?
And that is leaving aside the distribution patterns of wealth.
I note that you havent consider the dystopian hell hole that is... Switzerland. Or Germany. Or Australia.
The problem remains what it has always been - inadequate levels of investment. Why we fail to invest as much as other countries is more of a mystery to me.
I think the main British issue is the people on our political Right have a weird, blind fetish about the USA .... even now as we watch it fall to pieces. So I comment on that.
No matter what happens, they will wreck the society. They will always live of past investment, and not support the future - so they can give a false impression to their supporters.
Just as they did for example with a highly successful policy such as Sure Start, or the initiative which cut out road deaths in half in a mere 9 years from 2000/1.
Even David Cameron - marketing himself as he did - did not give a damn, and just trampled it into the earth.
That's why in my view the Conservative Party - speaking as a former member - needs to die, and be replaced with something decent.
BiB - did road deaths double after that decision?
A bit of digging gets to this chart (annual UK road deaths on the Y-axis).
Suggests a drop from 2004 to 2010, but seems to be a continuation of a steady drop from 1970.
IIRC we have one of the lowest in the world - which is why that reduction tails off a bit.
Indeed. Is there a bottom number that is almost impossible to go lower without, say, employing benefits claimants to walk in front of cars with flags and the speed limit down to 4 miles per hour? You can argue no deaths (or indeed injuries, which are more common) but in reality for the number of miles travelled per person, our roads are rather safe.
"We asked participants where they thought Britain stood economically compared to our main competitors. It turns out voters are living in a dreamworld.
Nearly half of British voters think that we are as rich, or richer, than Switzerland. Over half think we are as rich or richer than Australia, Singapore, or Germany. And, incredibly, over half of us think Britain is as rich as, or richer, than the United States.
The truth of course is that we are poorer than all those countries – according to the IMF, we are 10 per cent poorer than Germany, 20 per cent poorer than Australia, about 40 per cent poorer than America or Singapore."
The public think we're doing much better than we actually are. The public are so pissed off with how we're doing that they want to ditch mainstream politics for flaky 'roll the dice' populism.
That public eh. Rum bunch.
The public think that we are richer than we are. In the sense of the whole country.
But that nearly infinite wealth has been hoarded by the Bankers, the Billionaires, the Immigrants, the Muslims, the Jews, the Lizard-Men-In-People-Suits.
So all we need to do is tax the Lizard Men and we will all be rolling in money.
Well I do keep stressing that the grossly unequal distribution of wealth is a big problem. Somebody will listen one day. But in the meantime lots more 'it's all about growing the pie' and 'a rising tide lifts all boats' wibbling to endure. I can take it. I'm strong.
Even if you confiscated all the money of UK billionaires, you couldn't fund the NHS for a year.
The giant stores of money in the UK are pensions and houses. And the notional value of property is not realisable, on the scale that the believers in the "Lizard Men took all the money:" want.
You can argue that some should pay more. But it won't create epic change.
Yes, real change comes from a radical change to the economic model not from tinkering around with taxation.
"We asked participants where they thought Britain stood economically compared to our main competitors. It turns out voters are living in a dreamworld.
Nearly half of British voters think that we are as rich, or richer, than Switzerland. Over half think we are as rich or richer than Australia, Singapore, or Germany. And, incredibly, over half of us think Britain is as rich as, or richer, than the United States.
The truth of course is that we are poorer than all those countries – according to the IMF, we are 10 per cent poorer than Germany, 20 per cent poorer than Australia, about 40 per cent poorer than America or Singapore."
What's interesting is that we are meant to have a higher per capita income than Japan - I have just spent a fortnight in Japan and I have to say, that was not the impression I got! Alternatively, perhaps there are things we can do to make our country a lot more pleasant without raising our per capita income, if we are genuinely richer than Japan.
I think there is a problem with making a judgement "by walking about", as it is based on impression of quality of public realm.
We know that from 2010 (and perhaps a little earlier) through to 2025 investment in our public realm was deliberately and systematically undermined, and the Govt lived of the capital without investing in the maintenance.
That is in the numbers on resources available to local authorities, and the amount of expenditure required to be dedicated to statutory services increasing markedly.
Plus allocation of much funding by bid and competition.
We even have Rishi Sunak on video telling an audience at a garden party how proud he was to be transferring resources from poorer areas to wealthier areas such as where his audience lived. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xegB9J-mn1A
I qeustion whether you can judge on that basis.
Agreed on that. But this is also what I'm getting at, there may be places where we can spend a little bit of money and make people feel a lot happier about their lives. We allow our public spaces to become squalid, the Japanese don't. Why is that?
France is another interesting example. In GDP terms, both absolute and per capita, it hovers around parity with the UK and is currently a little below. But it *looks* much nicer because much more is spent on public spaces. And there’s far less of a gap in look and feel between the capital and the provinces than there is in Britain.
But the French are utterly depressed about their country, both the left and the right (with different though overlapping rationales for why). Part of it is the direction of travel. Yes the public realm and services are way better than in the UK, but they are becoming less good. Spending is being cut, municipalities are being merged to save money, schools being closed because there are no children left, things once taken for granted now under threat from their own version of austerity.
I do sometimes wonder whether people being utterly depressed is 100% driven by objective reality about stuff like economics or whether some of it reflects more intangible stuff, eg social media narratives, loneliness, ageing? I'm not angry and depressed and neither are most of the people I know. Do I live in a bubble? Or do people just like moaning?
I think a lot depends on where you live, how 'easy' your life is, whether you have financial worries or not.
One thing we noticed on Saturday. We went to Devizes (a small market town in Wiltshire) for a walk up the Caen Hill flight and some lunch in the town centre. The place was dead. We found a nice cafe and at 1.45 pm the place was empty. No customers besides ourselves. It was a nice enough day - the odd shower came through but it is April after all. But so, so quiet.
I would not want to be running small shops, cafes or other hospitality right now. Something is off.
I walked down to the nearest pub early on Friday night and it was jammed. Seems to be quite busy most days, TBH. Mrs C and I went to the local tapas bar for lunch the other day, too, and it was quite busy there. Not full, but close to it. There's a new cafe-bar (or similar, I think) opening across the road from the pub, too. Looking forward to giving that a go.
So it's not all disaster.
That's good to hear. And it may have just been one of those days, but it was oddly quiet.
What is off is that noone has any money. Labour are taxing us and business to unaffordable levels. That what happens when you have an idiot in No 11 who.is untruthful on her cv and has the brain capacity of a banana.
Trump is having a mental health episode right now. He’s been posting on social media all night. He posted at:
9:49pm (Ai Jesus photo) 9:50pm (Trump tower on moon) 10:10pm (dumb meme) 10:32pm (news clip) 10:53pm (news clip) 12:43am (announcing Hormuz blockade) 2:35am (article about Biden) 2:36am (article on naval blockade) 2:37am (article on Rep. Swalwell) 2:37am (posted the same article about Biden again) 2:38am (article on his ballroom) 4:10am (article on Iran)
He’s not sleeping, he’s pretending to be Jesus, and he’s posting all night. He’s not well.
"We asked participants where they thought Britain stood economically compared to our main competitors. It turns out voters are living in a dreamworld.
Nearly half of British voters think that we are as rich, or richer, than Switzerland. Over half think we are as rich or richer than Australia, Singapore, or Germany. And, incredibly, over half of us think Britain is as rich as, or richer, than the United States.
The truth of course is that we are poorer than all those countries – according to the IMF, we are 10 per cent poorer than Germany, 20 per cent poorer than Australia, about 40 per cent poorer than America or Singapore."
Is someone from the USA who has 2 weeks paid holiday not 5, who spends perhaps £10k per annum on healthcare that is free here, who gets little or no income when they are ill, and who on average will die 4 years earlier than other Western citizens really wealthier than a British citizen?
And that is leaving aside the distribution patterns of wealth.
I note that you havent consider the dystopian hell hole that is... Switzerland. Or Germany. Or Australia.
The problem remains what it has always been - inadequate levels of investment. Why we fail to invest as much as other countries is more of a mystery to me.
I think the main British issue is the people on our political Right have a weird, blind fetish about the USA .... even now as we watch it fall to pieces. So I comment on that.
No matter what happens, they will wreck the society. They will always live of past investment, and not support the future - so they can give a false impression to their supporters.
Just as they did for example with a highly successful policy such as Sure Start, or the initiative which cut out road deaths in half in a mere 9 years from 2000/1.
Even David Cameron - marketing himself as he did - did not give a damn, and just trampled it into the earth.
That's why in my view the Conservative Party - speaking as a former member - needs to die, and be replaced with something decent.
Problem is the current replacement right wing party (Reform) is worse on every measure
Reform is the party for social conservatives, those who hate immigration and rightwing Thatcherites, so only worse if you are not in those groups.
There is also Restore for those who hate immigration even more than Reform and think even Farage isn't anti Islam enough
Reform is the party for miserable people. I could say miserable gits, but that would be a subjective term.
This is true. They are absolute misery guts. Got their Brexit but don't seem one iota happier.
"We asked participants where they thought Britain stood economically compared to our main competitors. It turns out voters are living in a dreamworld.
Nearly half of British voters think that we are as rich, or richer, than Switzerland. Over half think we are as rich or richer than Australia, Singapore, or Germany. And, incredibly, over half of us think Britain is as rich as, or richer, than the United States.
The truth of course is that we are poorer than all those countries – according to the IMF, we are 10 per cent poorer than Germany, 20 per cent poorer than Australia, about 40 per cent poorer than America or Singapore."
What's interesting is that we are meant to have a higher per capita income than Japan - I have just spent a fortnight in Japan and I have to say, that was not the impression I got! Alternatively, perhaps there are things we can do to make our country a lot more pleasant without raising our per capita income, if we are genuinely richer than Japan.
I think there is a problem with making a judgement "by walking about", as it is based on impression of quality of public realm.
We know that from 2010 (and perhaps a little earlier) through to 2025 investment in our public realm was deliberately and systematically undermined, and the Govt lived of the capital without investing in the maintenance.
That is in the numbers on resources available to local authorities, and the amount of expenditure required to be dedicated to statutory services increasing markedly.
Plus allocation of much funding by bid and competition.
We even have Rishi Sunak on video telling an audience at a garden party how proud he was to be transferring resources from poorer areas to wealthier areas such as where his audience lived. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xegB9J-mn1A
I qeustion whether you can judge on that basis.
Agreed on that. But this is also what I'm getting at, there may be places where we can spend a little bit of money and make people feel a lot happier about their lives. We allow our public spaces to become squalid, the Japanese don't. Why is that?
France is another interesting example. In GDP terms, both absolute and per capita, it hovers around parity with the UK and is currently a little below. But it *looks* much nicer because much more is spent on public spaces. And there’s far less of a gap in look and feel between the capital and the provinces than there is in Britain.
But the French are utterly depressed about their country, both the left and the right (with different though overlapping rationales for why). Part of it is the direction of travel. Yes the public realm and services are way better than in the UK, but they are becoming less good. Spending is being cut, municipalities are being merged to save money, schools being closed because there are no children left, things once taken for granted now under threat from their own version of austerity.
I do sometimes wonder whether people being utterly depressed is 100% driven by objective reality about stuff like economics or whether some of it reflects more intangible stuff, eg social media narratives, loneliness, ageing? I'm not angry and depressed and neither are most of the people I know. Do I live in a bubble? Or do people just like moaning?
I think a lot depends on where you live, how 'easy' your life is, whether you have financial worries or not.
One thing we noticed on Saturday. We went to Devizes (a small market town in Wiltshire) for a walk up the Caen Hill flight and some lunch in the town centre. The place was dead. We found a nice cafe and at 1.45 pm the place was empty. No customers besides ourselves. It was a nice enough day - the odd shower came through but it is April after all. But so, so quiet.
I would not want to be running small shops, cafes or other hospitality right now. Something is off.
That's interesting, and sad. I suspect I do exist in a bubble of relative prosperity as well as living in a sociable neighbourhood amid the hustle and bustle of inner London.
And yet people in small market towns assume London is an Islamic no go area where phones are snatched the instant you take it out of your secure pocket......
When some Scottish relatives visited London, I took them to Tayyabs on a sweltering summer evening.
It was interesting to see the reaction of the usually liberal younger generation. Not negative, but just expanding their minds. They hadn't been to an area like that before.
"We asked participants where they thought Britain stood economically compared to our main competitors. It turns out voters are living in a dreamworld.
Nearly half of British voters think that we are as rich, or richer, than Switzerland. Over half think we are as rich or richer than Australia, Singapore, or Germany. And, incredibly, over half of us think Britain is as rich as, or richer, than the United States.
The truth of course is that we are poorer than all those countries – according to the IMF, we are 10 per cent poorer than Germany, 20 per cent poorer than Australia, about 40 per cent poorer than America or Singapore."
The public think we're doing much better than we actually are. The public are so pissed off with how we're doing that they want to ditch mainstream politics for flaky 'roll the dice' populism.
That public eh. Rum bunch.
The public think that we are richer than we are. In the sense of the whole country.
But that nearly infinite wealth has been hoarded by the Bankers, the Billionaires, the Immigrants, the Muslims, the Jews, the Lizard-Men-In-People-Suits.
So all we need to do is tax the Lizard Men and we will all be rolling in money.
Well I do keep stressing that the grossly unequal distribution of wealth is a big problem. Somebody will listen one day. But in the meantime lots more 'it's all about growing the pie' and 'a rising tide lifts all boats' wibbling to endure. I can take it. I'm strong.
Even if you confiscated all the money of UK billionaires, you couldn't fund the NHS for a year.
The giant stores of money in the UK are pensions and houses. And the notional value of property is not realisable, on the scale that the believers in the "Lizard Men took all the money:" want.
You can argue that some should pay more. But it won't create epic change.
Yes, real change comes from a radical change to the economic model not from tinkering around with taxation.
Unless you generate radically more wealth, then there won't be radically more money to spend.
"We asked participants where they thought Britain stood economically compared to our main competitors. It turns out voters are living in a dreamworld.
Nearly half of British voters think that we are as rich, or richer, than Switzerland. Over half think we are as rich or richer than Australia, Singapore, or Germany. And, incredibly, over half of us think Britain is as rich as, or richer, than the United States.
The truth of course is that we are poorer than all those countries – according to the IMF, we are 10 per cent poorer than Germany, 20 per cent poorer than Australia, about 40 per cent poorer than America or Singapore."
The public think we're doing much better than we actually are. The public are so pissed off with how we're doing that they want to ditch mainstream politics for flaky 'roll the dice' populism.
That public eh. Rum bunch.
The public think that we are richer than we are. In the sense of the whole country.
But that nearly infinite wealth has been hoarded by the Bankers, the Billionaires, the Immigrants, the Muslims, the Jews, the Lizard-Men-In-People-Suits.
So all we need to do is tax the Lizard Men and we will all be rolling in money.
Well I do keep stressing that the grossly unequal distribution of wealth is a big problem. Somebody will listen one day. But in the meantime lots more 'it's all about growing the pie' and 'a rising tide lifts all boats' wibbling to endure. I can take it. I'm strong.
Even if you confiscated all the money of UK billionaires, you couldn't fund the NHS for a year.
The giant stores of money in the UK are pensions and houses. And the notional value of property is not realisable, on the scale that the believers in the "Lizard Men took all the money:" want.
You can argue that some should pay more. But it won't create epic change.
If you confiscated all of Elon Musk's money, you could pay for over four and a half years of the NHS, I believe.
Get that in a manifesto and watch the votes roll in!
Trump is having a mental health episode right now. He’s been posting on social media all night. He posted at:
9:49pm (Ai Jesus photo) 9:50pm (Trump tower on moon) 10:10pm (dumb meme) 10:32pm (news clip) 10:53pm (news clip) 12:43am (announcing Hormuz blockade) 2:35am (article about Biden) 2:36am (article on naval blockade) 2:37am (article on Rep. Swalwell) 2:37am (posted the same article about Biden again) 2:38am (article on his ballroom) 4:10am (article on Iran)
He’s not sleeping, he’s pretending to be Jesus, and he’s posting all night. He’s not well.
What is off is that noone has any money. Labour are taxing us and business to unaffordable levels. That what happens when you have an idiot in No 11 who.is untruthful on her cv and has the brain capacity of a banana.
Nope that’s what happens when you are elected on a tax and spend manifesto and discover that the previous Government screwed up the budget so that a whole set of pay increases hadn’t been factored into their tax plans.
Also we have an aging population which costs money and they are the people who vote for parties that give them sweeties
The murders of three girls in Southport could have been prevented if the killer’s parents and authorities had acted on opportunities to deal with him in the years before the attack, according to the findings of the Southport Inquiry. The first report from the inquiry into the Southport killings has just been published. It states that it is "highly likely" the attack would not have occurred if various agencies had dealt with the killer’s behaviour earlier. The report also concludes that if the killer's parents “had done what they morally ought to have done", he "would not have been at liberty to conduct the attack and it would not therefore have occurred".
Southport killer's family and authorities could have prevented deadly attack on UK dance class, inquiry finds
Trump is having a mental health episode right now. He’s been posting on social media all night. He posted at:
9:49pm (Ai Jesus photo) 9:50pm (Trump tower on moon) 10:10pm (dumb meme) 10:32pm (news clip) 10:53pm (news clip) 12:43am (announcing Hormuz blockade) 2:35am (article about Biden) 2:36am (article on naval blockade) 2:37am (article on Rep. Swalwell) 2:37am (posted the same article about Biden again) 2:38am (article on his ballroom) 4:10am (article on Iran)
He’s not sleeping, he’s pretending to be Jesus, and he’s posting all night. He’s not well.
"We asked participants where they thought Britain stood economically compared to our main competitors. It turns out voters are living in a dreamworld.
Nearly half of British voters think that we are as rich, or richer, than Switzerland. Over half think we are as rich or richer than Australia, Singapore, or Germany. And, incredibly, over half of us think Britain is as rich as, or richer, than the United States.
The truth of course is that we are poorer than all those countries – according to the IMF, we are 10 per cent poorer than Germany, 20 per cent poorer than Australia, about 40 per cent poorer than America or Singapore."
The public think we're doing much better than we actually are. The public are so pissed off with how we're doing that they want to ditch mainstream politics for flaky 'roll the dice' populism.
That public eh. Rum bunch.
The public think that we are richer than we are. In the sense of the whole country.
But that nearly infinite wealth has been hoarded by the Bankers, the Billionaires, the Immigrants, the Muslims, the Jews, the Lizard-Men-In-People-Suits.
So all we need to do is tax the Lizard Men and we will all be rolling in money.
Well I do keep stressing that the grossly unequal distribution of wealth is a big problem. Somebody will listen one day. But in the meantime lots more 'it's all about growing the pie' and 'a rising tide lifts all boats' wibbling to endure. I can take it. I'm strong.
Even if you confiscated all the money of UK billionaires, you couldn't fund the NHS for a year.
The giant stores of money in the UK are pensions and houses. And the notional value of property is not realisable, on the scale that the believers in the "Lizard Men took all the money:" want.
You can argue that some should pay more. But it won't create epic change.
If you confiscated all of Elon Musk's money, you could pay for over four and a half years of the NHS, I believe.
But Musk, like all billionaires, has most of his wealth tied up in assets that would depreciate massively the instant that the market realises they can be confiscated at will. So even if Musk were a UK citizen living in London, you couldn't actually capture all of his wealth, or even a small fraction of it.
"We asked participants where they thought Britain stood economically compared to our main competitors. It turns out voters are living in a dreamworld.
Nearly half of British voters think that we are as rich, or richer, than Switzerland. Over half think we are as rich or richer than Australia, Singapore, or Germany. And, incredibly, over half of us think Britain is as rich as, or richer, than the United States.
The truth of course is that we are poorer than all those countries – according to the IMF, we are 10 per cent poorer than Germany, 20 per cent poorer than Australia, about 40 per cent poorer than America or Singapore."
What's interesting is that we are meant to have a higher per capita income than Japan - I have just spent a fortnight in Japan and I have to say, that was not the impression I got! Alternatively, perhaps there are things we can do to make our country a lot more pleasant without raising our per capita income, if we are genuinely richer than Japan.
I think there is a problem with making a judgement "by walking about", as it is based on impression of quality of public realm.
We know that from 2010 (and perhaps a little earlier) through to 2025 investment in our public realm was deliberately and systematically undermined, and the Govt lived of the capital without investing in the maintenance.
That is in the numbers on resources available to local authorities, and the amount of expenditure required to be dedicated to statutory services increasing markedly.
Plus allocation of much funding by bid and competition.
We even have Rishi Sunak on video telling an audience at a garden party how proud he was to be transferring resources from poorer areas to wealthier areas such as where his audience lived. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xegB9J-mn1A
I qeustion whether you can judge on that basis.
Agreed on that. But this is also what I'm getting at, there may be places where we can spend a little bit of money and make people feel a lot happier about their lives. We allow our public spaces to become squalid, the Japanese don't. Why is that?
France is another interesting example. In GDP terms, both absolute and per capita, it hovers around parity with the UK and is currently a little below. But it *looks* much nicer because much more is spent on public spaces. And there’s far less of a gap in look and feel between the capital and the provinces than there is in Britain.
But the French are utterly depressed about their country, both the left and the right (with different though overlapping rationales for why). Part of it is the direction of travel. Yes the public realm and services are way better than in the UK, but they are becoming less good. Spending is being cut, municipalities are being merged to save money, schools being closed because there are no children left, things once taken for granted now under threat from their own version of austerity.
I do sometimes wonder whether people being utterly depressed is 100% driven by objective reality about stuff like economics or whether some of it reflects more intangible stuff, eg social media narratives, loneliness, ageing? I'm not angry and depressed and neither are most of the people I know. Do I live in a bubble? Or do people just like moaning?
I think a lot depends on where you live, how 'easy' your life is, whether you have financial worries or not.
One thing we noticed on Saturday. We went to Devizes (a small market town in Wiltshire) for a walk up the Caen Hill flight and some lunch in the town centre. The place was dead. We found a nice cafe and at 1.45 pm the place was empty. No customers besides ourselves. It was a nice enough day - the odd shower came through but it is April after all. But so, so quiet.
I would not want to be running small shops, cafes or other hospitality right now. Something is off.
That's interesting, and sad. I suspect I do exist in a bubble of relative prosperity as well as living in a sociable neighbourhood amid the hustle and bustle of inner London.
I live in a different small market town, right on the edge, looking over a field with horses, sheep, goats, frequent deer and annoying pheasant. We like our neighbours (who own the field). We can walk into town in 15 minutes. We have a Waitrose, and a Morrisons to keep the scum out of Waitrose, and a Lidl to keep the scummier scum out of Morissons. Our town is way busier, so it may have been a more local effect, but it was odd.
Until about 2024, we did all our shopping in Morrisons. I don’t think I’ve entered the store more than twice since then and usually head to Lidl / Aldi depending on mood, what’s down the middle aisle and whether I needs something that one or other does better than the other.
As for Waitrose - nope give my Booths any day and Marks is preferable to Waitrose
The murders of three girls in Southport could have been prevented if the killer’s parents and authorities had acted on opportunities to deal with him in the years before the attack, according to the findings of the Southport Inquiry. The first report from the inquiry into the Southport killings has just been published. It states that it is "highly likely" the attack would not have occurred if various agencies had dealt with the killer’s behaviour earlier. The report also concludes that if the killer's parents “had done what they morally ought to have done", he "would not have been at liberty to conduct the attack and it would not therefore have occurred".
Southport killer's family and authorities could have prevented deadly attack on UK dance class, inquiry finds
"We asked participants where they thought Britain stood economically compared to our main competitors. It turns out voters are living in a dreamworld.
Nearly half of British voters think that we are as rich, or richer, than Switzerland. Over half think we are as rich or richer than Australia, Singapore, or Germany. And, incredibly, over half of us think Britain is as rich as, or richer, than the United States.
The truth of course is that we are poorer than all those countries – according to the IMF, we are 10 per cent poorer than Germany, 20 per cent poorer than Australia, about 40 per cent poorer than America or Singapore."
What's interesting is that we are meant to have a higher per capita income than Japan - I have just spent a fortnight in Japan and I have to say, that was not the impression I got! Alternatively, perhaps there are things we can do to make our country a lot more pleasant without raising our per capita income, if we are genuinely richer than Japan.
I think there is a problem with making a judgement "by walking about", as it is based on impression of quality of public realm.
We know that from 2010 (and perhaps a little earlier) through to 2025 investment in our public realm was deliberately and systematically undermined, and the Govt lived of the capital without investing in the maintenance.
That is in the numbers on resources available to local authorities, and the amount of expenditure required to be dedicated to statutory services increasing markedly.
Plus allocation of much funding by bid and competition.
We even have Rishi Sunak on video telling an audience at a garden party how proud he was to be transferring resources from poorer areas to wealthier areas such as where his audience lived. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xegB9J-mn1A
I qeustion whether you can judge on that basis.
Agreed on that. But this is also what I'm getting at, there may be places where we can spend a little bit of money and make people feel a lot happier about their lives. We allow our public spaces to become squalid, the Japanese don't. Why is that?
France is another interesting example. In GDP terms, both absolute and per capita, it hovers around parity with the UK and is currently a little below. But it *looks* much nicer because much more is spent on public spaces. And there’s far less of a gap in look and feel between the capital and the provinces than there is in Britain.
But the French are utterly depressed about their country, both the left and the right (with different though overlapping rationales for why). Part of it is the direction of travel. Yes the public realm and services are way better than in the UK, but they are becoming less good. Spending is being cut, municipalities are being merged to save money, schools being closed because there are no children left, things once taken for granted now under threat from their own version of austerity.
I do sometimes wonder whether people being utterly depressed is 100% driven by objective reality about stuff like economics or whether some of it reflects more intangible stuff, eg social media narratives, loneliness, ageing? I'm not angry and depressed and neither are most of the people I know. Do I live in a bubble? Or do people just like moaning?
I think a lot depends on where you live, how 'easy' your life is, whether you have financial worries or not.
One thing we noticed on Saturday. We went to Devizes (a small market town in Wiltshire) for a walk up the Caen Hill flight and some lunch in the town centre. The place was dead. We found a nice cafe and at 1.45 pm the place was empty. No customers besides ourselves. It was a nice enough day - the odd shower came through but it is April after all. But so, so quiet.
I would not want to be running small shops, cafes or other hospitality right now. Something is off.
The paradox is this.
There is a chunk of the population for who life is pretty comfortable right now. If you have a paid-off mortgage and either a triple-locked pension or savings you are spending on yourself or the sort of salary you get later in your career, life is materially OK.
Yet they tend to be the people who are most livid with the status quo.
(And I'm on Team Shabby Local Public Realm as the key that unlocks the door of the explanation. Thing is, that shabbiness follows smoothly from decisions that the electorate has voted for over decades.)
"We asked participants where they thought Britain stood economically compared to our main competitors. It turns out voters are living in a dreamworld.
Nearly half of British voters think that we are as rich, or richer, than Switzerland. Over half think we are as rich or richer than Australia, Singapore, or Germany. And, incredibly, over half of us think Britain is as rich as, or richer, than the United States.
The truth of course is that we are poorer than all those countries – according to the IMF, we are 10 per cent poorer than Germany, 20 per cent poorer than Australia, about 40 per cent poorer than America or Singapore."
What's interesting is that we are meant to have a higher per capita income than Japan - I have just spent a fortnight in Japan and I have to say, that was not the impression I got! Alternatively, perhaps there are things we can do to make our country a lot more pleasant without raising our per capita income, if we are genuinely richer than Japan.
I think there is a problem with making a judgement "by walking about", as it is based on impression of quality of public realm.
We know that from 2010 (and perhaps a little earlier) through to 2025 investment in our public realm was deliberately and systematically undermined, and the Govt lived of the capital without investing in the maintenance.
That is in the numbers on resources available to local authorities, and the amount of expenditure required to be dedicated to statutory services increasing markedly.
Plus allocation of much funding by bid and competition.
We even have Rishi Sunak on video telling an audience at a garden party how proud he was to be transferring resources from poorer areas to wealthier areas such as where his audience lived. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xegB9J-mn1A
I qeustion whether you can judge on that basis.
Agreed on that. But this is also what I'm getting at, there may be places where we can spend a little bit of money and make people feel a lot happier about their lives. We allow our public spaces to become squalid, the Japanese don't. Why is that?
France is another interesting example. In GDP terms, both absolute and per capita, it hovers around parity with the UK and is currently a little below. But it *looks* much nicer because much more is spent on public spaces. And there’s far less of a gap in look and feel between the capital and the provinces than there is in Britain.
But the French are utterly depressed about their country, both the left and the right (with different though overlapping rationales for why). Part of it is the direction of travel. Yes the public realm and services are way better than in the UK, but they are becoming less good. Spending is being cut, municipalities are being merged to save money, schools being closed because there are no children left, things once taken for granted now under threat from their own version of austerity.
I do sometimes wonder whether people being utterly depressed is 100% driven by objective reality about stuff like economics or whether some of it reflects more intangible stuff, eg social media narratives, loneliness, ageing? I'm not angry and depressed and neither are most of the people I know. Do I live in a bubble? Or do people just like moaning?
I think a lot depends on where you live, how 'easy' your life is, whether you have financial worries or not.
One thing we noticed on Saturday. We went to Devizes (a small market town in Wiltshire) for a walk up the Caen Hill flight and some lunch in the town centre. The place was dead. We found a nice cafe and at 1.45 pm the place was empty. No customers besides ourselves. It was a nice enough day - the odd shower came through but it is April after all. But so, so quiet.
I would not want to be running small shops, cafes or other hospitality right now. Something is off.
That's interesting, and sad. I suspect I do exist in a bubble of relative prosperity as well as living in a sociable neighbourhood amid the hustle and bustle of inner London.
I live in a different small market town, right on the edge, looking over a field with horses, sheep, goats, frequent deer and annoying pheasant. We like our neighbours (who own the field). We can walk into town in 15 minutes. We have a Waitrose, and a Morrisons to keep the scum out of Waitrose, and a Lidl to keep the scummier scum out of Morissons. Our town is way busier, so it may have been a more local effect, but it was odd.
Until about 2024, we did all our shopping in Morrisons. I don’t think I’ve entered the store more than twice since then and usually head to Lidl / Aldi depending on mood, what’s down the middle aisle and whether I needs something that one or other does better than the other.
As for Waitrose - nope give my Booths any day and Marks is preferable to Waitrose
I'd love to shop in Booths, but I've only ever seen them in the North (usually the Lakes). There is no M&S in Warminster yet.
"We asked participants where they thought Britain stood economically compared to our main competitors. It turns out voters are living in a dreamworld.
Nearly half of British voters think that we are as rich, or richer, than Switzerland. Over half think we are as rich or richer than Australia, Singapore, or Germany. And, incredibly, over half of us think Britain is as rich as, or richer, than the United States.
The truth of course is that we are poorer than all those countries – according to the IMF, we are 10 per cent poorer than Germany, 20 per cent poorer than Australia, about 40 per cent poorer than America or Singapore."
The public think we're doing much better than we actually are. The public are so pissed off with how we're doing that they want to ditch mainstream politics for flaky 'roll the dice' populism.
That public eh. Rum bunch.
The public think that we are richer than we are. In the sense of the whole country.
But that nearly infinite wealth has been hoarded by the Bankers, the Billionaires, the Immigrants, the Muslims, the Jews, the Lizard-Men-In-People-Suits.
So all we need to do is tax the Lizard Men and we will all be rolling in money.
Well I do keep stressing that the grossly unequal distribution of wealth is a big problem. Somebody will listen one day. But in the meantime lots more 'it's all about growing the pie' and 'a rising tide lifts all boats' wibbling to endure. I can take it. I'm strong.
Even if you confiscated all the money of UK billionaires, you couldn't fund the NHS for a year.
The giant stores of money in the UK are pensions and houses. And the notional value of property is not realisable, on the scale that the believers in the "Lizard Men took all the money:" want.
You can argue that some should pay more. But it won't create epic change.
If you confiscated all of Elon Musk's money, you could pay for over four and a half years of the NHS, I believe.
The slight problem there, is that Elon Musk isn't a tax payer in the UK. Or a citizen. Or a resident.
I am aware of that, but a lot of the UK’s wealth ends up in the hands of very rich Americans.
And we are back to growing the economy in the UK...
I am with Bondegezou on this one. The public are not entirely wrong in thinking that the country's wealth has been expropriated by billionaires, they're just wrong in their view that the billionaires, or even a good number of them live and pay tax in the UK.
What is off is that noone has any money. Labour are taxing us and business to unaffordable levels. That what happens when you have an idiot in No 11 who.is untruthful on her cv and has the brain capacity of a banana.
Well, to link the two topics, the happiest countries in the world are Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Austria, Norway, Netherlands etc etc
These are not low-tax economies. We may well tax and spend on the wrong things, but the overall burden is not the issue.
"We asked participants where they thought Britain stood economically compared to our main competitors. It turns out voters are living in a dreamworld.
Nearly half of British voters think that we are as rich, or richer, than Switzerland. Over half think we are as rich or richer than Australia, Singapore, or Germany. And, incredibly, over half of us think Britain is as rich as, or richer, than the United States.
The truth of course is that we are poorer than all those countries – according to the IMF, we are 10 per cent poorer than Germany, 20 per cent poorer than Australia, about 40 per cent poorer than America or Singapore."
The public think we're doing much better than we actually are. The public are so pissed off with how we're doing that they want to ditch mainstream politics for flaky 'roll the dice' populism.
That public eh. Rum bunch.
The public think that we are richer than we are. In the sense of the whole country.
But that nearly infinite wealth has been hoarded by the Bankers, the Billionaires, the Immigrants, the Muslims, the Jews, the Lizard-Men-In-People-Suits.
So all we need to do is tax the Lizard Men and we will all be rolling in money.
Well I do keep stressing that the grossly unequal distribution of wealth is a big problem. Somebody will listen one day. But in the meantime lots more 'it's all about growing the pie' and 'a rising tide lifts all boats' wibbling to endure. I can take it. I'm strong.
Even if you confiscated all the money of UK billionaires, you couldn't fund the NHS for a year.
The giant stores of money in the UK are pensions and houses. And the notional value of property is not realisable, on the scale that the believers in the "Lizard Men took all the money:" want.
You can argue that some should pay more. But it won't create epic change.
If you confiscated all of Elon Musk's money, you could pay for over four and a half years of the NHS, I believe.
But Musk, like all billionaires, has most of his wealth tied up in assets that would depreciate massively the instant that the market realises they can be confiscated at will. So even if Musk were a UK citizen living in London, you couldn't actually capture all of his wealth, or even a small fraction of it.
Or if you tried to sell them. Bit like housing - no, you can't just get 25% of the value of all the houses in the UK and use that to fund ponies for all.
A clear majority of votes for unionist parties. So why are pro-Independence parties going to win a majoirty under a supposedly partly proportional system?
What is off is that noone has any money. Labour are taxing us and business to unaffordable levels. That what happens when you have an idiot in No 11 who.is untruthful on her cv and has the brain capacity of a banana.
Nope that’s what happens when you are elected on a tax and spend manifesto and discover that the previous Government screwed up the budget so that a whole set of pay increases hadn’t been factored into their tax plans.
Also we have an aging population which costs money and they are the people who vote for parties that give them sweeties
Ask Mark Carney about Rachel's cv and don't believe the Right Wing bullcrap
BTW Kemi still to evidence the American College offer she claims that the College totally denies and also denies Course she claimed ever existed
What is off is that noone has any money. Labour are taxing us and business to unaffordable levels. That what happens when you have an idiot in No 11 who.is untruthful on her cv and has the brain capacity of a banana.
Well, to link the two topics, the happiest countries in the world are Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Austria, Norway, Netherlands etc etc
These are not low-tax economies. We may well tax and spend on the wrong things, but the overall burden is not the issue.
Their taxes on individuals are high (but not as high as popularly stated), but their taxation of business is lower. See also business costs.
"We asked participants where they thought Britain stood economically compared to our main competitors. It turns out voters are living in a dreamworld.
Nearly half of British voters think that we are as rich, or richer, than Switzerland. Over half think we are as rich or richer than Australia, Singapore, or Germany. And, incredibly, over half of us think Britain is as rich as, or richer, than the United States.
The truth of course is that we are poorer than all those countries – according to the IMF, we are 10 per cent poorer than Germany, 20 per cent poorer than Australia, about 40 per cent poorer than America or Singapore."
Is someone from the USA who has 2 weeks paid holiday not 5, who spends perhaps £10k per annum on healthcare that is free here, who gets little or no income when they are ill, and who on average will die 4 years earlier than other Western citizens really wealthier than a British citizen?
And that is leaving aside the distribution patterns of wealth.
This is shite. Have you been to America recently? I have. Several times in the past 3 years. And all over. From the Deep South to New England to the entire Pacific coast. From the richest states to the poorest, LITERALLY
America is now very obviously way ahead of Europe in general wealth. It’s the tiny things that you notice. The way they have special lights on toilets at airports to show you which are empty. Green or red lights. It’s a minuscule thing but it’s an indicative. They can afford that stuff we can’t
The infrastructure is getting better as ours declines and they’re even getting thinner coz they can all afford Mounjaro
Yes there are pockets of deep poverty. It’s America. But I think life in the USA is now noticeably better for the top 60-80% of people, compared to Europe
For the bottom 20% it’s about the same and for the bottom 5-10% America is much worse. But that’s just 10% max
"We asked participants where they thought Britain stood economically compared to our main competitors. It turns out voters are living in a dreamworld.
Nearly half of British voters think that we are as rich, or richer, than Switzerland. Over half think we are as rich or richer than Australia, Singapore, or Germany. And, incredibly, over half of us think Britain is as rich as, or richer, than the United States.
The truth of course is that we are poorer than all those countries – according to the IMF, we are 10 per cent poorer than Germany, 20 per cent poorer than Australia, about 40 per cent poorer than America or Singapore."
What's interesting is that we are meant to have a higher per capita income than Japan - I have just spent a fortnight in Japan and I have to say, that was not the impression I got! Alternatively, perhaps there are things we can do to make our country a lot more pleasant without raising our per capita income, if we are genuinely richer than Japan.
I think there is a problem with making a judgement "by walking about", as it is based on impression of quality of public realm.
We know that from 2010 (and perhaps a little earlier) through to 2025 investment in our public realm was deliberately and systematically undermined, and the Govt lived of the capital without investing in the maintenance.
That is in the numbers on resources available to local authorities, and the amount of expenditure required to be dedicated to statutory services increasing markedly.
Plus allocation of much funding by bid and competition.
We even have Rishi Sunak on video telling an audience at a garden party how proud he was to be transferring resources from poorer areas to wealthier areas such as where his audience lived. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xegB9J-mn1A
I qeustion whether you can judge on that basis.
Agreed on that. But this is also what I'm getting at, there may be places where we can spend a little bit of money and make people feel a lot happier about their lives. We allow our public spaces to become squalid, the Japanese don't. Why is that?
France is another interesting example. In GDP terms, both absolute and per capita, it hovers around parity with the UK and is currently a little below. But it *looks* much nicer because much more is spent on public spaces. And there’s far less of a gap in look and feel between the capital and the provinces than there is in Britain.
But the French are utterly depressed about their country, both the left and the right (with different though overlapping rationales for why). Part of it is the direction of travel. Yes the public realm and services are way better than in the UK, but they are becoming less good. Spending is being cut, municipalities are being merged to save money, schools being closed because there are no children left, things once taken for granted now under threat from their own version of austerity.
I do sometimes wonder whether people being utterly depressed is 100% driven by objective reality about stuff like economics or whether some of it reflects more intangible stuff, eg social media narratives, loneliness, ageing? I'm not angry and depressed and neither are most of the people I know. Do I live in a bubble? Or do people just like moaning?
I think a lot depends on where you live, how 'easy' your life is, whether you have financial worries or not.
One thing we noticed on Saturday. We went to Devizes (a small market town in Wiltshire) for a walk up the Caen Hill flight and some lunch in the town centre. The place was dead. We found a nice cafe and at 1.45 pm the place was empty. No customers besides ourselves. It was a nice enough day - the odd shower came through but it is April after all. But so, so quiet.
I would not want to be running small shops, cafes or other hospitality right now. Something is off.
That's interesting, and sad. I suspect I do exist in a bubble of relative prosperity as well as living in a sociable neighbourhood amid the hustle and bustle of inner London.
And yet people in small market towns assume London is an Islamic no go area where phones are snatched the instant you take it out of your secure pocket......
Personal experience, or lack of it, can be a huge factor.
Demonisation of Muslims (for example) in my experience plays in very particular groups, beyond those signed up to an ideology - it will play with those who have a Bad Experience and jump to a conclusion, or those who do not know any Muslims well so they can be assessed as "them".
The murders of three girls in Southport could have been prevented if the killer’s parents and authorities had acted on opportunities to deal with him in the years before the attack, according to the findings of the Southport Inquiry. The first report from the inquiry into the Southport killings has just been published. It states that it is "highly likely" the attack would not have occurred if various agencies had dealt with the killer’s behaviour earlier. The report also concludes that if the killer's parents “had done what they morally ought to have done", he "would not have been at liberty to conduct the attack and it would not therefore have occurred".
Southport killer's family and authorities could have prevented deadly attack on UK dance class, inquiry finds
"We asked participants where they thought Britain stood economically compared to our main competitors. It turns out voters are living in a dreamworld.
Nearly half of British voters think that we are as rich, or richer, than Switzerland. Over half think we are as rich or richer than Australia, Singapore, or Germany. And, incredibly, over half of us think Britain is as rich as, or richer, than the United States.
The truth of course is that we are poorer than all those countries – according to the IMF, we are 10 per cent poorer than Germany, 20 per cent poorer than Australia, about 40 per cent poorer than America or Singapore."
Is someone from the USA who has 2 weeks paid holiday not 5, who spends perhaps £10k per annum on healthcare that is free here, who gets little or no income when they are ill, and who on average will die 4 years earlier than other Western citizens really wealthier than a British citizen?
And that is leaving aside the distribution patterns of wealth.
I note that you havent consider the dystopian hell hole that is... Switzerland. Or Germany. Or Australia.
The problem remains what it has always been - inadequate levels of investment. Why we fail to invest as much as other countries is more of a mystery to me.
I think the main British issue is the people on our political Right have a weird, blind fetish about the USA .... even now as we watch it fall to pieces. So I comment on that.
No matter what happens, they will wreck the society. They will always live of past investment, and not support the future - so they can give a false impression to their supporters.
Just as they did for example with a highly successful policy such as Sure Start, or the initiative which cut out road deaths in half in a mere 9 years from 2000/1.
Even David Cameron - marketing himself as he did - did not give a damn, and just trampled it into the earth.
That's why in my view the Conservative Party - speaking as a former member - needs to die, and be replaced with something decent.
BiB - did road deaths double after that decision?
Here's the historical graph. They decided to stop trying, and progress stopped.
There's always a soft limit to how far casualty rates can be reduced without actually banning motor vehicles or significantly restricting their use, particularly in the UK where our rate is already very low.
Introducing 20mph limits all over the place is more or less performative; most accidents resulting in KSIs don't happen because someone is doing 30mph down a residential street, they happen on faster roads (particularly NSL roads) or because the driver is speeding. So reducing the limit buys almost no real decrease in casualties. But it lets the government say they're doing something.
Making a notable difference would require politically unpalatable decisions, like introducing age and power gated car licences, similar to the current motorcycle licence system. Make drivers do a mandatory competence check every few years. Ban vehicles with poor forward visibility, etc.
No government will do any of those, particularly give the experiment with age and power gates on bike licences is now acknowledged to have significantly reduce the number of people riding bikes, to the point where the DVSA are in the process of making it easier and cheaper for bikers to upgrade their licences.
"We asked participants where they thought Britain stood economically compared to our main competitors. It turns out voters are living in a dreamworld.
Nearly half of British voters think that we are as rich, or richer, than Switzerland. Over half think we are as rich or richer than Australia, Singapore, or Germany. And, incredibly, over half of us think Britain is as rich as, or richer, than the United States.
The truth of course is that we are poorer than all those countries – according to the IMF, we are 10 per cent poorer than Germany, 20 per cent poorer than Australia, about 40 per cent poorer than America or Singapore."
This may be part of the explanation 'Over half of UK citizens take no flights at all in a given year, and the average number of overseas trips is one or two. Overwhelmingly most go to the European countries comparable to or even slightly poorer than the UK, such as Spain, France and Italy. Hardly anyone visits the wealthier places like Germany, and very few travel outside Europe – a hundred times as many Brits go to Spain every year as to Australia.'
The wealthiest countries by economic, culture, relative equality, the gap between haves and have not, and general happiness, have in my experience been in one specific area of Europe.
Scandinavia.
For social democrats yes if you like relatively dull big state societies which are high tax and high public spending
Well I have never heard of Scandinavian countries ever being called dull. Normally the reverse. Most come very high up on happiness scales (whatever that means) and are considered very vibrant.
I was in Copenhagen only a few weeks ago and it was buzzing. Lots of outdoor bars and eating even though the old harbour port was still frozen when we arrived. I managed to take part in two organised pub crawls. As a recommendation I would suggest using 'Politically Incorrect' if you want a guide.
"We asked participants where they thought Britain stood economically compared to our main competitors. It turns out voters are living in a dreamworld.
Nearly half of British voters think that we are as rich, or richer, than Switzerland. Over half think we are as rich or richer than Australia, Singapore, or Germany. And, incredibly, over half of us think Britain is as rich as, or richer, than the United States.
The truth of course is that we are poorer than all those countries – according to the IMF, we are 10 per cent poorer than Germany, 20 per cent poorer than Australia, about 40 per cent poorer than America or Singapore."
What's interesting is that we are meant to have a higher per capita income than Japan - I have just spent a fortnight in Japan and I have to say, that was not the impression I got! Alternatively, perhaps there are things we can do to make our country a lot more pleasant without raising our per capita income, if we are genuinely richer than Japan.
I think there is a problem with making a judgement "by walking about", as it is based on impression of quality of public realm.
We know that from 2010 (and perhaps a little earlier) through to 2025 investment in our public realm was deliberately and systematically undermined, and the Govt lived of the capital without investing in the maintenance.
That is in the numbers on resources available to local authorities, and the amount of expenditure required to be dedicated to statutory services increasing markedly.
Plus allocation of much funding by bid and competition.
We even have Rishi Sunak on video telling an audience at a garden party how proud he was to be transferring resources from poorer areas to wealthier areas such as where his audience lived. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xegB9J-mn1A
I qeustion whether you can judge on that basis.
Agreed on that. But this is also what I'm getting at, there may be places where we can spend a little bit of money and make people feel a lot happier about their lives. We allow our public spaces to become squalid, the Japanese don't. Why is that?
France is another interesting example. In GDP terms, both absolute and per capita, it hovers around parity with the UK and is currently a little below. But it *looks* much nicer because much more is spent on public spaces. And there’s far less of a gap in look and feel between the capital and the provinces than there is in Britain.
But the French are utterly depressed about their country, both the left and the right (with different though overlapping rationales for why). Part of it is the direction of travel. Yes the public realm and services are way better than in the UK, but they are becoming less good. Spending is being cut, municipalities are being merged to save money, schools being closed because there are no children left, things once taken for granted now under threat from their own version of austerity.
I do sometimes wonder whether people being utterly depressed is 100% driven by objective reality about stuff like economics or whether some of it reflects more intangible stuff, eg social media narratives, loneliness, ageing? I'm not angry and depressed and neither are most of the people I know. Do I live in a bubble? Or do people just like moaning?
I think a lot depends on where you live, how 'easy' your life is, whether you have financial worries or not.
One thing we noticed on Saturday. We went to Devizes (a small market town in Wiltshire) for a walk up the Caen Hill flight and some lunch in the town centre. The place was dead. We found a nice cafe and at 1.45 pm the place was empty. No customers besides ourselves. It was a nice enough day - the odd shower came through but it is April after all. But so, so quiet.
I would not want to be running small shops, cafes or other hospitality right now. Something is off.
That's interesting, and sad. I suspect I do exist in a bubble of relative prosperity as well as living in a sociable neighbourhood amid the hustle and bustle of inner London.
And yet people in small market towns assume London is an Islamic no go area where phones are snatched the instant you take it out of your secure pocket......
Personal experience, or lack of it, can be a huge factor.
Demonisation of Muslims (for example) in my experience plays in very particular groups, beyond those signed up to an ideology - it will play with those who have a Bad Experience and jump to a conclusion, or those who do not know any Muslims well so they can be assessed as "them".
Lack of experience can be the issue. I have recently travelled to countries with substantial Muslim populations in Europe and Asia and enjoyed the experience (Kosovo, Bosnia, N Macedonia, Malaysia) I find it non-threatening and find myself using the Maghreb call to prayer telling me it is time to wind down my day's tourism and go back to my hotel/find a pub. Maybe more people should experience countries with mature, confident Muslim populations. Morocco of course, but many people will just stay in resort hotels and get tours out to the medina
Labour result is bad enough though it could be worse.
For Her Majesty's Main Opposition Party though to go from 23% to 8% as the Conservative and Unionist Party is extermination level, no ifs no buts it's extermination.
LOL
Starmer and labour starring at a disaster and it's all about the tories
Friday 8th May will be all about Starmer, labour and how they can replace at best a middle manager on a tourist visa
You may howl on about Kemi but no matter May 7th, she will lead into GE 29 and why should the conservative party even listen to a lefty on a rant
Tory MPs won’t care how badly Labour do.
They will be looking at the second electoral cycle where the Tories have gone backwards and will think Badenoch will see us lose our seats in 2029.
Then they are bloody fools and no better than idiot football fans calling for their manager to be sacked. Of course the Tories have gone backwards. Everyone has gone backwards because there are now five parties rather than three. If they think the Tories are getting back into the high 20s with another leader they are living in cloud cuckoo land.
Hunt or Cleverley would have Tories above 25% within 6 months.
Thats where any actual Leader could and should have the Tories right now.
That centre ground is ripe for skimming off at least 5%
If Tories retain Farage with braids they will be extinct by 2030
"We asked participants where they thought Britain stood economically compared to our main competitors. It turns out voters are living in a dreamworld.
Nearly half of British voters think that we are as rich, or richer, than Switzerland. Over half think we are as rich or richer than Australia, Singapore, or Germany. And, incredibly, over half of us think Britain is as rich as, or richer, than the United States.
The truth of course is that we are poorer than all those countries – according to the IMF, we are 10 per cent poorer than Germany, 20 per cent poorer than Australia, about 40 per cent poorer than America or Singapore."
Is someone from the USA who has 2 weeks paid holiday not 5, who spends perhaps £10k per annum on healthcare that is free here, who gets little or no income when they are ill, and who on average will die 4 years earlier than other Western citizens really wealthier than a British citizen?
And that is leaving aside the distribution patterns of wealth.
I note that you havent consider the dystopian hell hole that is... Switzerland. Or Germany. Or Australia.
The problem remains what it has always been - inadequate levels of investment. Why we fail to invest as much as other countries is more of a mystery to me.
I think the main British issue is the people on our political Right have a weird, blind fetish about the USA .... even now as we watch it fall to pieces. So I comment on that.
No matter what happens, they will wreck the society. They will always live of past investment, and not support the future - so they can give a false impression to their supporters.
Just as they did for example with a highly successful policy such as Sure Start, or the initiative which cut out road deaths in half in a mere 9 years from 2000/1.
Even David Cameron - marketing himself as he did - did not give a damn, and just trampled it into the earth.
That's why in my view the Conservative Party - speaking as a former member - needs to die, and be replaced with something decent.
BiB - did road deaths double after that decision?
Here's the historical graph. They decided to stop trying, and progress stopped.
There's always a soft limit to how far casualty rates can be reduced without actually banning motor vehicles or significantly restricting their use, particularly in the UK where our rate is already very low.
Introducing 20mph limits all over the place is more or less performative; most accidents resulting in KSIs don't happen because someone is doing 30mph down a residential street, they happen on faster roads (particularly NSL roads) or because the driver is speeding. So reducing the limit buys almost no real decrease in casualties. But it lets the government say they're doing something.
Making a notable difference would require politically unpalatable decisions, like introducing age and power gated car licences, similar to the current motorcycle licence system. Make drivers do a mandatory competence check every few years. Ban vehicles with poor forward visibility, etc.
No government will do any of those, particularly give the experiment with age and power gates on bike licences is now acknowledged to have significantly reduce the number of people riding bikes, to the point where the DVSA are in the process of making it easier and cheaper for bikers to upgrade their licences.
It’s had a significant impact here in Edinburgh. And in Wales.
But this is why self-driving cars are going to be such a revolution. If we fine firms £10 million per fatality they are involved in (or whatever value you think is right), they will drive at the socially optimal rate. 10mph down the Cowgate at 3am, 90mph on the M74.
"We asked participants where they thought Britain stood economically compared to our main competitors. It turns out voters are living in a dreamworld.
Nearly half of British voters think that we are as rich, or richer, than Switzerland. Over half think we are as rich or richer than Australia, Singapore, or Germany. And, incredibly, over half of us think Britain is as rich as, or richer, than the United States.
The truth of course is that we are poorer than all those countries – according to the IMF, we are 10 per cent poorer than Germany, 20 per cent poorer than Australia, about 40 per cent poorer than America or Singapore."
The public think we're doing much better than we actually are. The public are so pissed off with how we're doing that they want to ditch mainstream politics for flaky 'roll the dice' populism.
That public eh. Rum bunch.
The public think that we are richer than we are. In the sense of the whole country.
But that nearly infinite wealth has been hoarded by the Bankers, the Billionaires, the Immigrants, the Muslims, the Jews, the Lizard-Men-In-People-Suits.
So all we need to do is tax the Lizard Men and we will all be rolling in money.
Well I do keep stressing that the grossly unequal distribution of wealth is a big problem. Somebody will listen one day. But in the meantime lots more 'it's all about growing the pie' and 'a rising tide lifts all boats' wibbling to endure. I can take it. I'm strong.
Even if you confiscated all the money of UK billionaires, you couldn't fund the NHS for a year.
The giant stores of money in the UK are pensions and houses. And the notional value of property is not realisable, on the scale that the believers in the "Lizard Men took all the money:" want.
You can argue that some should pay more. But it won't create epic change.
If you confiscated all of Elon Musk's money, you could pay for over four and a half years of the NHS, I believe.
But Musk, like all billionaires, has most of his wealth tied up in assets that would depreciate massively the instant that the market realises they can be confiscated at will. So even if Musk were a UK citizen living in London, you couldn't actually capture all of his wealth, or even a small fraction of it.
Leaving aside the actual practicalities of confiscating Elon Musk's wealth, I think my point is about globalisation. Globalisation is great in many ways, but it also means that wealth leaves communities for far, far away. Big US companies take money, while avoiding tax (e.g., Apple in Ireland) or leaving us with their expensive externalities (damage done by social media).
But, you know, there's a new album of archival recordings by t.A.T.u., В Поднебесной, to enjoy.
The murders of three girls in Southport could have been prevented if the killer’s parents and authorities had acted on opportunities to deal with him in the years before the attack, according to the findings of the Southport Inquiry. The first report from the inquiry into the Southport killings has just been published. It states that it is "highly likely" the attack would not have occurred if various agencies had dealt with the killer’s behaviour earlier. The report also concludes that if the killer's parents “had done what they morally ought to have done", he "would not have been at liberty to conduct the attack and it would not therefore have occurred".
Southport killer's family and authorities could have prevented deadly attack on UK dance class, inquiry finds
"We asked participants where they thought Britain stood economically compared to our main competitors. It turns out voters are living in a dreamworld.
Nearly half of British voters think that we are as rich, or richer, than Switzerland. Over half think we are as rich or richer than Australia, Singapore, or Germany. And, incredibly, over half of us think Britain is as rich as, or richer, than the United States.
The truth of course is that we are poorer than all those countries – according to the IMF, we are 10 per cent poorer than Germany, 20 per cent poorer than Australia, about 40 per cent poorer than America or Singapore."
The public think we're doing much better than we actually are. The public are so pissed off with how we're doing that they want to ditch mainstream politics for flaky 'roll the dice' populism.
That public eh. Rum bunch.
The public think that we are richer than we are. In the sense of the whole country.
But that nearly infinite wealth has been hoarded by the Bankers, the Billionaires, the Immigrants, the Muslims, the Jews, the Lizard-Men-In-People-Suits.
So all we need to do is tax the Lizard Men and we will all be rolling in money.
Well I do keep stressing that the grossly unequal distribution of wealth is a big problem. Somebody will listen one day. But in the meantime lots more 'it's all about growing the pie' and 'a rising tide lifts all boats' wibbling to endure. I can take it. I'm strong.
Even if you confiscated all the money of UK billionaires, you couldn't fund the NHS for a year.
The giant stores of money in the UK are pensions and houses. And the notional value of property is not realisable, on the scale that the believers in the "Lizard Men took all the money:" want.
You can argue that some should pay more. But it won't create epic change.
Yes, real change comes from a radical change to the economic model not from tinkering around with taxation.
Unless you generate radically more wealth, then there won't be radically more money to spend.
And unless you create a far more equitable distribution you will never meet the basic aspirations of the majority of people. A very difficult task of course. If it wasn't it would have been done. The same goes for generating radically more wealth without most of it going to an elite. So I guess the least bad option might be to carry on as we are. Certainly that's better than a failed populist experiment. Esp if it comes with a generous dollop of racism.
"We asked participants where they thought Britain stood economically compared to our main competitors. It turns out voters are living in a dreamworld.
Nearly half of British voters think that we are as rich, or richer, than Switzerland. Over half think we are as rich or richer than Australia, Singapore, or Germany. And, incredibly, over half of us think Britain is as rich as, or richer, than the United States.
The truth of course is that we are poorer than all those countries – according to the IMF, we are 10 per cent poorer than Germany, 20 per cent poorer than Australia, about 40 per cent poorer than America or Singapore."
What's interesting is that we are meant to have a higher per capita income than Japan - I have just spent a fortnight in Japan and I have to say, that was not the impression I got! Alternatively, perhaps there are things we can do to make our country a lot more pleasant without raising our per capita income, if we are genuinely richer than Japan.
I think there is a problem with making a judgement "by walking about", as it is based on impression of quality of public realm.
We know that from 2010 (and perhaps a little earlier) through to 2025 investment in our public realm was deliberately and systematically undermined, and the Govt lived of the capital without investing in the maintenance.
That is in the numbers on resources available to local authorities, and the amount of expenditure required to be dedicated to statutory services increasing markedly.
Plus allocation of much funding by bid and competition.
We even have Rishi Sunak on video telling an audience at a garden party how proud he was to be transferring resources from poorer areas to wealthier areas such as where his audience lived. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xegB9J-mn1A
I qeustion whether you can judge on that basis.
Agreed on that. But this is also what I'm getting at, there may be places where we can spend a little bit of money and make people feel a lot happier about their lives. We allow our public spaces to become squalid, the Japanese don't. Why is that?
France is another interesting example. In GDP terms, both absolute and per capita, it hovers around parity with the UK and is currently a little below. But it *looks* much nicer because much more is spent on public spaces. And there’s far less of a gap in look and feel between the capital and the provinces than there is in Britain.
But the French are utterly depressed about their country, both the left and the right (with different though overlapping rationales for why). Part of it is the direction of travel. Yes the public realm and services are way better than in the UK, but they are becoming less good. Spending is being cut, municipalities are being merged to save money, schools being closed because there are no children left, things once taken for granted now under threat from their own version of austerity.
I do sometimes wonder whether people being utterly depressed is 100% driven by objective reality about stuff like economics or whether some of it reflects more intangible stuff, eg social media narratives, loneliness, ageing? I'm not angry and depressed and neither are most of the people I know. Do I live in a bubble? Or do people just like moaning?
I think a lot depends on where you live, how 'easy' your life is, whether you have financial worries or not.
One thing we noticed on Saturday. We went to Devizes (a small market town in Wiltshire) for a walk up the Caen Hill flight and some lunch in the town centre. The place was dead. We found a nice cafe and at 1.45 pm the place was empty. No customers besides ourselves. It was a nice enough day - the odd shower came through but it is April after all. But so, so quiet.
I would not want to be running small shops, cafes or other hospitality right now. Something is off.
That's interesting, and sad. I suspect I do exist in a bubble of relative prosperity as well as living in a sociable neighbourhood amid the hustle and bustle of inner London.
I live in a different small market town, right on the edge, looking over a field with horses, sheep, goats, frequent deer and annoying pheasant. We like our neighbours (who own the field). We can walk into town in 15 minutes. We have a Waitrose, and a Morrisons to keep the scum out of Waitrose, and a Lidl to keep the scummier scum out of Morissons. Our town is way busier, so it may have been a more local effect, but it was odd.
Until about 2024, we did all our shopping in Morrisons. I don’t think I’ve entered the store more than twice since then and usually head to Lidl / Aldi depending on mood, what’s down the middle aisle and whether I needs something that one or other does better than the other.
As for Waitrose - nope give my Booths any day and Marks is preferable to Waitrose
I'd love to shop in Booths, but I've only ever seen them in the North (usually the Lakes). There is no M&S in Warminster yet.
I've found ocado is a great way to get m&s stuff without driving all the way to the nearest physical store. Ocado plus Lidl covers 99% of my food shopping.
"We asked participants where they thought Britain stood economically compared to our main competitors. It turns out voters are living in a dreamworld.
Nearly half of British voters think that we are as rich, or richer, than Switzerland. Over half think we are as rich or richer than Australia, Singapore, or Germany. And, incredibly, over half of us think Britain is as rich as, or richer, than the United States.
The truth of course is that we are poorer than all those countries – according to the IMF, we are 10 per cent poorer than Germany, 20 per cent poorer than Australia, about 40 per cent poorer than America or Singapore."
What's interesting is that we are meant to have a higher per capita income than Japan - I have just spent a fortnight in Japan and I have to say, that was not the impression I got! Alternatively, perhaps there are things we can do to make our country a lot more pleasant without raising our per capita income, if we are genuinely richer than Japan.
I think there is a problem with making a judgement "by walking about", as it is based on impression of quality of public realm.
We know that from 2010 (and perhaps a little earlier) through to 2025 investment in our public realm was deliberately and systematically undermined, and the Govt lived of the capital without investing in the maintenance.
That is in the numbers on resources available to local authorities, and the amount of expenditure required to be dedicated to statutory services increasing markedly.
Plus allocation of much funding by bid and competition.
We even have Rishi Sunak on video telling an audience at a garden party how proud he was to be transferring resources from poorer areas to wealthier areas such as where his audience lived. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xegB9J-mn1A
I qeustion whether you can judge on that basis.
Agreed on that. But this is also what I'm getting at, there may be places where we can spend a little bit of money and make people feel a lot happier about their lives. We allow our public spaces to become squalid, the Japanese don't. Why is that?
France is another interesting example. In GDP terms, both absolute and per capita, it hovers around parity with the UK and is currently a little below. But it *looks* much nicer because much more is spent on public spaces. And there’s far less of a gap in look and feel between the capital and the provinces than there is in Britain.
But the French are utterly depressed about their country, both the left and the right (with different though overlapping rationales for why). Part of it is the direction of travel. Yes the public realm and services are way better than in the UK, but they are becoming less good. Spending is being cut, municipalities are being merged to save money, schools being closed because there are no children left, things once taken for granted now under threat from their own version of austerity.
I do sometimes wonder whether people being utterly depressed is 100% driven by objective reality about stuff like economics or whether some of it reflects more intangible stuff, eg social media narratives, loneliness, ageing? I'm not angry and depressed and neither are most of the people I know. Do I live in a bubble? Or do people just like moaning?
I think a lot depends on where you live, how 'easy' your life is, whether you have financial worries or not.
One thing we noticed on Saturday. We went to Devizes (a small market town in Wiltshire) for a walk up the Caen Hill flight and some lunch in the town centre. The place was dead. We found a nice cafe and at 1.45 pm the place was empty. No customers besides ourselves. It was a nice enough day - the odd shower came through but it is April after all. But so, so quiet.
I would not want to be running small shops, cafes or other hospitality right now. Something is off.
That's interesting, and sad. I suspect I do exist in a bubble of relative prosperity as well as living in a sociable neighbourhood amid the hustle and bustle of inner London.
I live in a different small market town, right on the edge, looking over a field with horses, sheep, goats, frequent deer and annoying pheasant. We like our neighbours (who own the field). We can walk into town in 15 minutes. We have a Waitrose, and a Morrisons to keep the scum out of Waitrose, and a Lidl to keep the scummier scum out of Morissons. Our town is way busier, so it may have been a more local effect, but it was odd.
Until about 2024, we did all our shopping in Morrisons. I don’t think I’ve entered the store more than twice since then and usually head to Lidl / Aldi depending on mood, what’s down the middle aisle and whether I needs something that one or other does better than the other.
As for Waitrose - nope give my Booths any day and Marks is preferable to Waitrose
I have both an M&S Food and a Waitrose, and pretty much only use Waitrose. I don't think M&S is somewhere you can do all your shopping. Sometimes go to Sainsburys or Morrisons for specific items (Morrisons sometimes has some good cheap meat cuts, Waitrose for some reason doesn't sell big bottles of Nando's piri piri sauce, I won't pay Waitrose prices for cooking wine). I live on my own and Waitrose is good for small packs and loose pruduce, and I think the price/quality ratio is pretty good, although are some things I won't buy. But eg Craster kippers on Friday when fish is 20% off are great.
Went into Booths a couple of times when in the Lake District last year and it struck me as *very* expensive, even as a Waitrose shopper
The murders of three girls in Southport could have been prevented if the killer’s parents and authorities had acted on opportunities to deal with him in the years before the attack, according to the findings of the Southport Inquiry. The first report from the inquiry into the Southport killings has just been published. It states that it is "highly likely" the attack would not have occurred if various agencies had dealt with the killer’s behaviour earlier. The report also concludes that if the killer's parents “had done what they morally ought to have done", he "would not have been at liberty to conduct the attack and it would not therefore have occurred".
Southport killer's family and authorities could have prevented deadly attack on UK dance class, inquiry finds
"We asked participants where they thought Britain stood economically compared to our main competitors. It turns out voters are living in a dreamworld.
Nearly half of British voters think that we are as rich, or richer, than Switzerland. Over half think we are as rich or richer than Australia, Singapore, or Germany. And, incredibly, over half of us think Britain is as rich as, or richer, than the United States.
The truth of course is that we are poorer than all those countries – according to the IMF, we are 10 per cent poorer than Germany, 20 per cent poorer than Australia, about 40 per cent poorer than America or Singapore."
Is someone from the USA who has 2 weeks paid holiday not 5, who spends perhaps £10k per annum on healthcare that is free here, who gets little or no income when they are ill, and who on average will die 4 years earlier than other Western citizens really wealthier than a British citizen?
And that is leaving aside the distribution patterns of wealth.
I note that you havent consider the dystopian hell hole that is... Switzerland. Or Germany. Or Australia.
The problem remains what it has always been - inadequate levels of investment. Why we fail to invest as much as other countries is more of a mystery to me.
I think the main British issue is the people on our political Right have a weird, blind fetish about the USA .... even now as we watch it fall to pieces. So I comment on that.
No matter what happens, they will wreck the society. They will always live of past investment, and not support the future - so they can give a false impression to their supporters.
Just as they did for example with a highly successful policy such as Sure Start, or the initiative which cut out road deaths in half in a mere 9 years from 2000/1.
Even David Cameron - marketing himself as he did - did not give a damn, and just trampled it into the earth.
That's why in my view the Conservative Party - speaking as a former member - needs to die, and be replaced with something decent.
BiB - did road deaths double after that decision?
Here's the historical graph. They decided to stop trying, and progress stopped.
There's always a soft limit to how far casualty rates can be reduced without actually banning motor vehicles or significantly restricting their use, particularly in the UK where our rate is already very low.
Introducing 20mph limits all over the place is more or less performative; most accidents resulting in KSIs don't happen because someone is doing 30mph down a residential street, they happen on faster roads (particularly NSL roads) or because the driver is speeding. So reducing the limit buys almost no real decrease in casualties. But it lets the government say they're doing something.
Making a notable difference would require politically unpalatable decisions, like introducing age and power gated car licences, similar to the current motorcycle licence system. Make drivers do a mandatory competence check every few years. Ban vehicles with poor forward visibility, etc.
No government will do any of those, particularly give the experiment with age and power gates on bike licences is now acknowledged to have significantly reduce the number of people riding bikes, to the point where the DVSA are in the process of making it easier and cheaper for bikers to upgrade their licences.
As I noted above, the UK has the 6th lowest rate in the world.
The murders of three girls in Southport could have been prevented if the killer’s parents and authorities had acted on opportunities to deal with him in the years before the attack, according to the findings of the Southport Inquiry. The first report from the inquiry into the Southport killings has just been published. It states that it is "highly likely" the attack would not have occurred if various agencies had dealt with the killer’s behaviour earlier. The report also concludes that if the killer's parents “had done what they morally ought to have done", he "would not have been at liberty to conduct the attack and it would not therefore have occurred".
Southport killer's family and authorities could have prevented deadly attack on UK dance class, inquiry finds
A clear majority of votes for unionist parties. So why are pro-Independence parties going to win a majoirty under a supposedly partly proportional system?
There are two problems with additional member systems. One, you need enough non-constituency seats to balance out disproportionality in the constituencies, and currently the constituencies are on course to give a very non-proportional result (nearly all SNP when their vote share is about 40%). Two, you can cheat the system by voting for one party in the constituencies and a similar party for the top-up seats, which is what some SNP/Green voters are doing.
Neither of these are problems if you use STV (as Scottish local elections do) or a purely list system (as the Sennedd is now doing).
A clear majority of votes for unionist parties. So why are pro-Independence parties going to win a majoirty under a supposedly partly proportional system?
Because, as you say, its only partly proportional. The result is posited on the SNP winning a disproportionately high number of constituency seats, aided by Reform undermining the competitiveness of the other unionist parties in the marginals. The list seats won't be enough to correct the overall imbalance. And some SNP voters will tactically vote Green as they know the SNP won't be getting many, if any, list seats due to their success in the constituencies. Hence you'll get a pro-Indy majority on the back of a minority pro-Indy vote.
Again I feel like the SNP’s strength is essentially “who can stop Reform”.
I think there is some truth in this. Swinney will definitely bang this drum and quite likely to get some Labour folk to vote tactically SNP. Will be an even bigger feature in Wales, with Plaid the beneficiary.
"We asked participants where they thought Britain stood economically compared to our main competitors. It turns out voters are living in a dreamworld.
Nearly half of British voters think that we are as rich, or richer, than Switzerland. Over half think we are as rich or richer than Australia, Singapore, or Germany. And, incredibly, over half of us think Britain is as rich as, or richer, than the United States.
The truth of course is that we are poorer than all those countries – according to the IMF, we are 10 per cent poorer than Germany, 20 per cent poorer than Australia, about 40 per cent poorer than America or Singapore."
We have got poorer over the past 15 years - but that’s only obvious if you travel abroad. But equally I notice the change around the UK, the difference between London / Manchester and elsewhere is obvious
Yes all teh money is being channeled in a very few places for sure.
The murders of three girls in Southport could have been prevented if the killer’s parents and authorities had acted on opportunities to deal with him in the years before the attack, according to the findings of the Southport Inquiry. The first report from the inquiry into the Southport killings has just been published. It states that it is "highly likely" the attack would not have occurred if various agencies had dealt with the killer’s behaviour earlier. The report also concludes that if the killer's parents “had done what they morally ought to have done", he "would not have been at liberty to conduct the attack and it would not therefore have occurred".
Southport killer's family and authorities could have prevented deadly attack on UK dance class, inquiry finds
Again I feel like the SNP’s strength is essentially “who can stop Reform”.
I think there is some truth in this. Swinney will definitely bang this drum and quite likely to get some Labour folk to vote tactically SNP. Will be an even bigger feature in Wales, with Plaid the beneficiary.
But if Swinney bangs the "SNP majority means new referendum" drum, that might push those Labour folk away again.
A clear majority of votes for unionist parties. So why are pro-Independence parties going to win a majoirty under a supposedly partly proportional system?
There are two problems with additional member systems. One, you need enough non-constituency seats to balance out disproportionality in the constituencies, and currently the constituencies are on course to give a very non-proportional result (nearly all SNP when their vote share is about 40%). Two, you can cheat the system by voting for one party in the constituencies and a similar party for the top-up seats, which is what some SNP/Green voters are doing.
Neither of these are problems if you use STV (as Scottish local elections do) or a purely list system (as the Sennedd is now doing).
Scotland should switch to d'Hondt, just like Wales.
Indeed, the UK should switch to d'Hondt.
And local authorities too.
Basically, any election to a body with a multitude of members should be conducted using d'Hondt.
And an election to a single post, (e.g., party leader, president, pope) should be conducted using...
As if Your Party will manage to hold together until 2029!
They'll have a great slogan
We wanted to be, We couldnt agree
Your Party
Have YP managed to stand any candidates in the locals anywhere?
I scanned Kirklees the other day and the left is represented by Community Action Kirklees and Gaza Independents, plus a full Green slate of 69 candidates (matching the other 4 main parties).
It does feel like the SNP is the only show in town in Scotland. Which isn't good.
As I’ve mentioned before the Unionist sub branches in Scotland are permanently infantilised because much of government in Scotland is still decided by their own parties in Westminster so no real motive to make a decent offer themselves (on the dangerous assumption that they have talented, independent minded folk that could think up such an offer). Sarwar’s ‘break’ with Starmer was entirely a dunderheided tactic to try and endear himself with Scottish voters which has flopped. The fitful attempts to portray him as some kind of Caledonian Zohran are painful.
Afraid we’re stuck in this limbo until something genuinely breaks. The duopoly of Cons and Lab being smashed might be it, but PM Farage is a heavy price to pay.
I'm not sure they are more infantalised than the SNP. At least you get a choice amongst unionist parties. SNP have got the independence market sewn up and that puts them in a commanding position regardless of what else they do. And it is very regardless. It's more that they are assumed by everyone to be the natural party of power in Scotland, as Labour used to be, and the Conservatives have been in England. It isn't a healthy state of affairs.
As long as the SNP are teh only real Scottish party ( discounting greens as looneys) then the English carpetbagger parties are going nowhere.
As if Your Party will manage to hold together until 2029!
They'll have a great slogan
We wanted to be, We couldnt agree
Your Party
Have YP managed to stand any candidates in the locals anywhere?
I scanned Kirklees the other day and the left is represented by Community Action Kirklees and Gaza Independents, plus a full Green slate of 69 candidates (matching the other 4 main parties).
They're backing a lot of candidates standing for other groups/under other names. That's their deliberate strategy. I believe, however, that there are a few candidates explicitly under the "Your Party" name.
"We asked participants where they thought Britain stood economically compared to our main competitors. It turns out voters are living in a dreamworld.
Nearly half of British voters think that we are as rich, or richer, than Switzerland. Over half think we are as rich or richer than Australia, Singapore, or Germany. And, incredibly, over half of us think Britain is as rich as, or richer, than the United States.
The truth of course is that we are poorer than all those countries – according to the IMF, we are 10 per cent poorer than Germany, 20 per cent poorer than Australia, about 40 per cent poorer than America or Singapore."
What did the questions actually ask? The UK has a bigger GDP than Switzerland, so you could say the UK is richer than Switzerland, but Switzerland has a bigger GDP per capita, so the mean Swiss person is richer than the mean UK person.
Trying to fob us off with statistics, statistics and damn lies.
Labour result is bad enough though it could be worse.
For Her Majesty's Main Opposition Party though to go from 23% to 8% as the Conservative and Unionist Party is extermination level, no ifs no buts it's extermination.
LOL
Starmer and labour starring at a disaster and it's all about the tories
Friday 8th May will be all about Starmer, labour and how they can replace at best a middle manager on a tourist visa
You may howl on about Kemi but no matter May 7th, she will lead into GE 29 and why should the conservative party even listen to a lefty on a rant
Tory MPs won’t care how badly Labour do.
They will be looking at the second electoral cycle where the Tories have gone backwards and will think Badenoch will see us lose our seats in 2029.
Then they are bloody fools and no better than idiot football fans calling for their manager to be sacked. Of course the Tories have gone backwards. Everyone has gone backwards because there are now five parties rather than three. If they think the Tories are getting back into the high 20s with another leader they are living in cloud cuckoo land.
Hunt or Cleverley would have Tories above 25% within 6 months.
Thats where any actual Leader could and should have the Tories right now.
That centre ground is ripe for skimming off at least 5%
If Tories retain Farage with braids they will be extinct by 2030
Cleverly still available at 100 on Betfair next PM market.
The murders of three girls in Southport could have been prevented if the killer’s parents and authorities had acted on opportunities to deal with him in the years before the attack, according to the findings of the Southport Inquiry. The first report from the inquiry into the Southport killings has just been published. It states that it is "highly likely" the attack would not have occurred if various agencies had dealt with the killer’s behaviour earlier. The report also concludes that if the killer's parents “had done what they morally ought to have done", he "would not have been at liberty to conduct the attack and it would not therefore have occurred".
Southport killer's family and authorities could have prevented deadly attack on UK dance class, inquiry finds
Again I feel like the SNP’s strength is essentially “who can stop Reform”.
I think there is some truth in this. Swinney will definitely bang this drum and quite likely to get some Labour folk to vote tactically SNP. Will be an even bigger feature in Wales, with Plaid the beneficiary.
It is a false argument under d'Hondt. Won't stop politicians making it, mind.
Again I feel like the SNP’s strength is essentially “who can stop Reform”.
I think there is some truth in this. Swinney will definitely bang this drum and quite likely to get some Labour folk to vote tactically SNP. Will be an even bigger feature in Wales, with Plaid the beneficiary.
Plaid will benefit from both reform and the desire to get rid of labour
"We asked participants where they thought Britain stood economically compared to our main competitors. It turns out voters are living in a dreamworld.
Nearly half of British voters think that we are as rich, or richer, than Switzerland. Over half think we are as rich or richer than Australia, Singapore, or Germany. And, incredibly, over half of us think Britain is as rich as, or richer, than the United States.
The truth of course is that we are poorer than all those countries – according to the IMF, we are 10 per cent poorer than Germany, 20 per cent poorer than Australia, about 40 per cent poorer than America or Singapore."
Is someone from the USA who has 2 weeks paid holiday not 5, who spends perhaps £10k per annum on healthcare that is free here, who gets little or no income when they are ill, and who on average will die 4 years earlier than other Western citizens really wealthier than a British citizen?
And that is leaving aside the distribution patterns of wealth.
I note that you havent consider the dystopian hell hole that is... Switzerland. Or Germany. Or Australia.
The problem remains what it has always been - inadequate levels of investment. Why we fail to invest as much as other countries is more of a mystery to me.
I think the main British issue is the people on our political Right have a weird, blind fetish about the USA .... even now as we watch it fall to pieces. So I comment on that.
No matter what happens, they will wreck the society. They will always live of past investment, and not support the future - so they can give a false impression to their supporters.
Just as they did for example with a highly successful policy such as Sure Start, or the initiative which cut out road deaths in half in a mere 9 years from 2000/1.
Even David Cameron - marketing himself as he did - did not give a damn, and just trampled it into the earth.
That's why in my view the Conservative Party - speaking as a former member - needs to die, and be replaced with something decent.
BiB - did road deaths double after that decision?
A bit of digging gets to this chart (annual UK road deaths on the Y-axis).
Suggests a drop from 2004 to 2010, but seems to be a continuation of a steady drop from 1970.
IIRC we have one of the lowest in the world - which is why that reduction tails off a bit.
We were about the best in the world. We are now by analogy perhaps half way down the Premier League. On particular aspects we have been serious below par laggards, such as provision for safe walking (which means that there are loads of places where roads are "safe" because no one dares go there outside a vehicle) and allowing legal drink driving (we have decades of research on this).
It is not a "steady drop". It is a staircase where improvement happens when Road Safety is a policy priority and stops when the politicians sit on their bottoms in their deckchairs.
There was a major initiative in 1987, and a manifesto pledge to cut child deaths by 40-50% in 2001, followed by a programme of targets in 2002, which delivered results by 2004. Casualties halved over a few years.
In 2011 David Cameron abolished the targets and did no significant policy and paid no attention, and people continued being killed at the same rate. Which is what we would expect.
eg An interviewee suggested that the choice not to continue casualty reduction targets was illustrative of the policy shift: “… in 2010 they decided they weren't going to have any more … targets. It was a pivotal move in the wrong direction. If I compare and contrast 1987 to 2010 … that was absolutely devastating alongside a recession that meant that a lot of the road safety teams were decimated”
Again I feel like the SNP’s strength is essentially “who can stop Reform”.
I think there is some truth in this. Swinney will definitely bang this drum and quite likely to get some Labour folk to vote tactically SNP. Will be an even bigger feature in Wales, with Plaid the beneficiary.
Plaid will benefit from both reform and the desire to get rid of labour
Meanwhile the Tories will suffer thanks to Reform, and fail to capitalise on the desire to get rid of Labour.
"We asked participants where they thought Britain stood economically compared to our main competitors. It turns out voters are living in a dreamworld.
Nearly half of British voters think that we are as rich, or richer, than Switzerland. Over half think we are as rich or richer than Australia, Singapore, or Germany. And, incredibly, over half of us think Britain is as rich as, or richer, than the United States.
The truth of course is that we are poorer than all those countries – according to the IMF, we are 10 per cent poorer than Germany, 20 per cent poorer than Australia, about 40 per cent poorer than America or Singapore."
Is someone from the USA who has 2 weeks paid holiday not 5, who spends perhaps £10k per annum on healthcare that is free here, who gets little or no income when they are ill, and who on average will die 4 years earlier than other Western citizens really wealthier than a British citizen?
And that is leaving aside the distribution patterns of wealth.
I note that you havent consider the dystopian hell hole that is... Switzerland. Or Germany. Or Australia.
The problem remains what it has always been - inadequate levels of investment. Why we fail to invest as much as other countries is more of a mystery to me.
I think the main British issue is the people on our political Right have a weird, blind fetish about the USA .... even now as we watch it fall to pieces. So I comment on that.
No matter what happens, they will wreck the society. They will always live of past investment, and not support the future - so they can give a false impression to their supporters.
Just as they did for example with a highly successful policy such as Sure Start, or the initiative which cut out road deaths in half in a mere 9 years from 2000/1.
Even David Cameron - marketing himself as he did - did not give a damn, and just trampled it into the earth.
That's why in my view the Conservative Party - speaking as a former member - needs to die, and be replaced with something decent.
BiB - did road deaths double after that decision?
A bit of digging gets to this chart (annual UK road deaths on the Y-axis).
Suggests a drop from 2004 to 2010, but seems to be a continuation of a steady drop from 1970.
IIRC we have one of the lowest in the world - which is why that reduction tails off a bit.
We were about the best in the world. We are now by analogy perhaps half way down the Premier League. On particular aspects we have been serious below par laggards, such as provision for safe walking (which means that there are loads of places where roads are "safe" because no one dares go there outside a vehicle) and allowing legal drink driving (we have decades of research on this).
It is not a "steady drop". It is a staircase where improvement happens when Road Safety is a policy priority and stops when the politicians sit on their bottoms in their deckchairs.
There was a major initiative in 1987, and a manifesto pledge to cut child deaths by 40-50% in 2001, followed by a programme of targets in 2002, which delivered results by 2004. Casualties halved over a few years.
In 2011 David Cameron abolished the targets and did no significant policy and paid no attention, and people continued being killed at the same rate. Which is what we would expect.
eg An interviewee suggested that the choice not to continue casualty reduction targets was illustrative of the policy shift: “… in 2010 they decided they weren't going to have any more … targets. It was a pivotal move in the wrong direction. If I compare and contrast 1987 to 2010 … that was absolutely devastating alongside a recession that meant that a lot of the road safety teams were decimated”
We are 6th in the world.
Maldives 1.3 1 Norway 1.5 2 Malta 1.9 3 Singapore 1.9 3 Sweden 2.1 4 Denmark 2.3 5 Iceland 2.4 6 Switzerland 2.4 6 UK and Northern Ireland 2.4 6 Andorra 2.5 7 Japan 2.7 8 Ireland 2.8 9 Germany 3.3 10 Netherlands (Kingdom of the) 3.4 11 Spain 3.5 12 Brunei Darussalam 3.6 13 Cyprus 3.9 14 Luxembourg 3.9 14 Finland 4.2 15 Israel 4.2 15 Estonia 4.4 16 Australia 4.5 17 Austria 4.6 18 Belgium 4.6 18 Canada 4.7 19 France 4.7 19
A clear majority of votes for unionist parties. So why are pro-Independence parties going to win a majoirty under a supposedly partly proportional system?
Because, as you say, its only partly proportional. The result is posited on the SNP winning a disproportionately high number of constituency seats, aided by Reform undermining the competitiveness of the other unionist parties in the marginals. The list seats won't be enough to correct the overall imbalance. And some SNP voters will tactically vote Green as they know the SNP won't be getting many, if any, list seats due to their success in the constituencies. Hence you'll get a pro-Indy majority on the back of a minority pro-Indy vote.
Independence is also not the only agenda on show. If you want a centre-left party that is not beholden to London, then you can quite easily vote SNP, then, if there's a referendum, vote Remain. Conversely, Labour has had its fair share of indy-minded members and voters. Lib Dem are generally pro EU and federalist (devo max, which was probably the most popular option at the time of the vote). There just isn't two big umbrella votes.
Again I feel like the SNP’s strength is essentially “who can stop Reform”.
I think there is some truth in this. Swinney will definitely bang this drum and quite likely to get some Labour folk to vote tactically SNP. Will be an even bigger feature in Wales, with Plaid the beneficiary.
Plaid will benefit from both reform and the desire to get rid of labour
Meanwhile the Tories will suffer thanks to Reform, and fail to capitalise on the desire to get rid of Labour.
The SNP have been shockingly poor in government. Our once proud education system slips ever further down the PISA rankings. Our excellent Universities are incredibly dependent on rUK students paying something like the proper rate in fees whilst the Scottish government pays little more than half that for Scottish students. Our drug deaths remain the highest in Europe. Our Criminal Justice system creaks ever more alarmingly. Only this morning I had a trial fixed for a bog standard 5 day rape case in May 2027 at a Preliminary Hearing that had been able to go ahead 9 months after the service of the indictment. Non sex prisoners now spend 40% of their sentence in jail. Our health outcomes are no better than those in rUK despite spending a lot more. The minimum fee for alcohol has not really worked. Large sums of money have been spent on trans based litigation for no obvious purpose. Absurd sums are spent on regulation. We have the highest taxes in the UK. The ST reported that £6bn has been given to "charities" that are obliged to follow the government line and are instantly punished if they are foolish enough to step out of line. It is, overall, a shocking record of institutional corruption, incompetence, waste and ineptitude.
But there is no effective opposition. The Tories do their best in the Scottish Parliament but are about to be annihilated. Labour are almost invisible. Reform are led by a madman. The Greens are frankly insane. Their latest policy is apparently the abolition of prisons. There's even a group called the Lib Dems, apparently. God knows what they are for or against.
Where oh where are the Scottish Magyars that can make this place fit to build a business in, to create wealth, to fund working public services and who can sweep away this corrupt cronyism?
The murders of three girls in Southport could have been prevented if the killer’s parents and authorities had acted on opportunities to deal with him in the years before the attack, according to the findings of the Southport Inquiry. The first report from the inquiry into the Southport killings has just been published. It states that it is "highly likely" the attack would not have occurred if various agencies had dealt with the killer’s behaviour earlier. The report also concludes that if the killer's parents “had done what they morally ought to have done", he "would not have been at liberty to conduct the attack and it would not therefore have occurred".
Southport killer's family and authorities could have prevented deadly attack on UK dance class, inquiry finds
Multitude of questions here for Government and especially Home Office Ministers involved to answer 2019 to 2024
So how does any government minister control the failure of the parents ?
Who has said they can.
The report has highlighted Government deficiencies.
The issue of parents is separate.
You really do need to stop being such a tribal bore.
To have the front to post that is genuinely praiseworthy, well done 👏🏻
One would hope that the Cons do not try and be tribal bores on this, since the Southport killings occurred on 5 July 2024, and the Starmer Government was only elected on July 29th 2024 ie 3 weeks later.
If Mr Starmer manages to lose the political battle on this one, it really will be a triumph of lack of political communications over folorn hope.
One hopes KB does her homework this week, or before the next PMQ.
"We asked participants where they thought Britain stood economically compared to our main competitors. It turns out voters are living in a dreamworld.
Nearly half of British voters think that we are as rich, or richer, than Switzerland. Over half think we are as rich or richer than Australia, Singapore, or Germany. And, incredibly, over half of us think Britain is as rich as, or richer, than the United States.
The truth of course is that we are poorer than all those countries – according to the IMF, we are 10 per cent poorer than Germany, 20 per cent poorer than Australia, about 40 per cent poorer than America or Singapore."
Is someone from the USA who has 2 weeks paid holiday not 5, who spends perhaps £10k per annum on healthcare that is free here, who gets little or no income when they are ill, and who on average will die 4 years earlier than other Western citizens really wealthier than a British citizen?
And that is leaving aside the distribution patterns of wealth.
I note that you havent consider the dystopian hell hole that is... Switzerland. Or Germany. Or Australia.
The problem remains what it has always been - inadequate levels of investment. Why we fail to invest as much as other countries is more of a mystery to me.
I think the main British issue is the people on our political Right have a weird, blind fetish about the USA .... even now as we watch it fall to pieces. So I comment on that.
No matter what happens, they will wreck the society. They will always live of past investment, and not support the future - so they can give a false impression to their supporters.
Just as they did for example with a highly successful policy such as Sure Start, or the initiative which cut out road deaths in half in a mere 9 years from 2000/1.
Even David Cameron - marketing himself as he did - did not give a damn, and just trampled it into the earth.
That's why in my view the Conservative Party - speaking as a former member - needs to die, and be replaced with something decent.
BiB - did road deaths double after that decision?
A bit of digging gets to this chart (annual UK road deaths on the Y-axis).
Suggests a drop from 2004 to 2010, but seems to be a continuation of a steady drop from 1970.
IIRC we have one of the lowest in the world - which is why that reduction tails off a bit.
We were about the best in the world. We are now by analogy perhaps half way down the Premier League. On particular aspects we have been serious below par laggards, such as provision for safe walking (which means that there are loads of places where roads are "safe" because no one dares go there outside a vehicle) and allowing legal drink driving (we have decades of research on this).
It is not a "steady drop". It is a staircase where improvement happens when Road Safety is a policy priority and stops when the politicians sit on their bottoms in their deckchairs.
There was a major initiative in 1987, and a manifesto pledge to cut child deaths by 40-50% in 2001, followed by a programme of targets in 2002, which delivered results by 2004. Casualties halved over a few years.
In 2011 David Cameron abolished the targets and did no significant policy and paid no attention, and people continued being killed at the same rate. Which is what we would expect.
eg An interviewee suggested that the choice not to continue casualty reduction targets was illustrative of the policy shift: “… in 2010 they decided they weren't going to have any more … targets. It was a pivotal move in the wrong direction. If I compare and contrast 1987 to 2010 … that was absolutely devastating alongside a recession that meant that a lot of the road safety teams were decimated”
We are 6th in the world.
Maldives 1.3 1 Norway 1.5 2 Malta 1.9 3 Singapore 1.9 3 Sweden 2.1 4 Denmark 2.3 5 Iceland 2.4 6 Switzerland 2.4 6 UK and Northern Ireland 2.4 6 Andorra 2.5 7 Japan 2.7 8 Ireland 2.8 9 Germany 3.3 10 Netherlands (Kingdom of the) 3.4 11 Spain 3.5 12 Brunei Darussalam 3.6 13 Cyprus 3.9 14 Luxembourg 3.9 14 Finland 4.2 15 Israel 4.2 15 Estonia 4.4 16 Australia 4.5 17 Austria 4.6 18 Belgium 4.6 18 Canada 4.7 19 France 4.7 19
That is pretty impressive, and much better than our typical comparotor countries like France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Canada, US, Australia. Scandis winning as they normally seem to do. Singapore has very few cars, wouldnt be surprised if Maldives similar.
The murders of three girls in Southport could have been prevented if the killer’s parents and authorities had acted on opportunities to deal with him in the years before the attack, according to the findings of the Southport Inquiry. The first report from the inquiry into the Southport killings has just been published. It states that it is "highly likely" the attack would not have occurred if various agencies had dealt with the killer’s behaviour earlier. The report also concludes that if the killer's parents “had done what they morally ought to have done", he "would not have been at liberty to conduct the attack and it would not therefore have occurred".
Southport killer's family and authorities could have prevented deadly attack on UK dance class, inquiry finds
"We asked participants where they thought Britain stood economically compared to our main competitors. It turns out voters are living in a dreamworld.
Nearly half of British voters think that we are as rich, or richer, than Switzerland. Over half think we are as rich or richer than Australia, Singapore, or Germany. And, incredibly, over half of us think Britain is as rich as, or richer, than the United States.
The truth of course is that we are poorer than all those countries – according to the IMF, we are 10 per cent poorer than Germany, 20 per cent poorer than Australia, about 40 per cent poorer than America or Singapore."
Is someone from the USA who has 2 weeks paid holiday not 5, who spends perhaps £10k per annum on healthcare that is free here, who gets little or no income when they are ill, and who on average will die 4 years earlier than other Western citizens really wealthier than a British citizen?
And that is leaving aside the distribution patterns of wealth.
I note that you havent consider the dystopian hell hole that is... Switzerland. Or Germany. Or Australia.
The problem remains what it has always been - inadequate levels of investment. Why we fail to invest as much as other countries is more of a mystery to me.
I think the main British issue is the people on our political Right have a weird, blind fetish about the USA .... even now as we watch it fall to pieces. So I comment on that.
No matter what happens, they will wreck the society. They will always live of past investment, and not support the future - so they can give a false impression to their supporters.
Just as they did for example with a highly successful policy such as Sure Start, or the initiative which cut out road deaths in half in a mere 9 years from 2000/1.
Even David Cameron - marketing himself as he did - did not give a damn, and just trampled it into the earth.
That's why in my view the Conservative Party - speaking as a former member - needs to die, and be replaced with something decent.
BiB - did road deaths double after that decision?
A bit of digging gets to this chart (annual UK road deaths on the Y-axis).
Suggests a drop from 2004 to 2010, but seems to be a continuation of a steady drop from 1970.
IIRC we have one of the lowest in the world - which is why that reduction tails off a bit.
We were about the best in the world. We are now by analogy perhaps half way down the Premier League. On particular aspects we have been serious below par laggards, such as provision for safe walking (which means that there are loads of places where roads are "safe" because no one dares go there outside a vehicle) and allowing legal drink driving (we have decades of research on this).
It is not a "steady drop". It is a staircase where improvement happens when Road Safety is a policy priority and stops when the politicians sit on their bottoms in their deckchairs.
There was a major initiative in 1987, and a manifesto pledge to cut child deaths by 40-50% in 2001, followed by a programme of targets in 2002, which delivered results by 2004. Casualties halved over a few years.
In 2011 David Cameron abolished the targets and did no significant policy and paid no attention, and people continued being killed at the same rate. Which is what we would expect.
eg An interviewee suggested that the choice not to continue casualty reduction targets was illustrative of the policy shift: “… in 2010 they decided they weren't going to have any more … targets. It was a pivotal move in the wrong direction. If I compare and contrast 1987 to 2010 … that was absolutely devastating alongside a recession that meant that a lot of the road safety teams were decimated”
We are 6th in the world.
Maldives 1.3 1 Norway 1.5 2 Malta 1.9 3 Singapore 1.9 3 Sweden 2.1 4 Denmark 2.3 5 Iceland 2.4 6 Switzerland 2.4 6 UK and Northern Ireland 2.4 6 Andorra 2.5 7 Japan 2.7 8 Ireland 2.8 9 Germany 3.3 10 Netherlands (Kingdom of the) 3.4 11 Spain 3.5 12 Brunei Darussalam 3.6 13 Cyprus 3.9 14 Luxembourg 3.9 14 Finland 4.2 15 Israel 4.2 15 Estonia 4.4 16 Australia 4.5 17 Austria 4.6 18 Belgium 4.6 18 Canada 4.7 19 France 4.7 19
The SNP have been shockingly poor in government. Our once proud education system slips ever further down the PISA rankings. Our excellent Universities are incredibly dependent on rUK students paying something like the proper rate in fees whilst the Scottish government pays little more than half that for Scottish students. Our drug deaths remain the highest in Europe. Our Criminal Justice system creaks ever more alarmingly. Only this morning I had a trial fixed for a bog standard 5 day rape case in May 2027 at a Preliminary Hearing that had been able to go ahead 9 months after the service of the indictment. Non sex prisoners now spend 40% of their sentence in jail. Our health outcomes are no better than those in rUK despite spending a lot more. The minimum fee for alcohol has not really worked. Large sums of money have been spent on trans based litigation for no obvious purpose. Absurd sums are spent on regulation. We have the highest taxes in the UK. The ST reported that £6bn has been given to "charities" that are obliged to follow the government line and are instantly punished if they are foolish enough to step out of line. It is, overall, a shocking record of institutional corruption, incompetence, waste and ineptitude.
But there is no effective opposition. The Tories do their best in the Scottish Parliament but are about to be annihilated. Labour are almost invisible. Reform are led by a madman. The Greens are frankly insane. Their latest policy is apparently the abolition of prisons. There's even a group called the Lib Dems, apparently. God knows what they are for or against.
Where oh where are the Scottish Magyars that can make this place fit to build a business in, to create wealth, to fund working public services and who can sweep away this corrupt cronyism?
That was a Party Political Broadcast for the DavidL Party.
“US has allies, an alliance of gangster dictators, corrupt royal houses, and the lumpen proles of filling station personnel.” No, that’s not a line from yesterday’s newspaper, but a scrap from the notebooks for JG Ballard’s last and uncompleted novel, provisionally titled, An Immodest Proposal, or How the World Declared War on America. Ballard never lost his prescience, even at the end of his life.
"We asked participants where they thought Britain stood economically compared to our main competitors. It turns out voters are living in a dreamworld.
Nearly half of British voters think that we are as rich, or richer, than Switzerland. Over half think we are as rich or richer than Australia, Singapore, or Germany. And, incredibly, over half of us think Britain is as rich as, or richer, than the United States.
The truth of course is that we are poorer than all those countries – according to the IMF, we are 10 per cent poorer than Germany, 20 per cent poorer than Australia, about 40 per cent poorer than America or Singapore."
Is someone from the USA who has 2 weeks paid holiday not 5, who spends perhaps £10k per annum on healthcare that is free here, who gets little or no income when they are ill, and who on average will die 4 years earlier than other Western citizens really wealthier than a British citizen?
And that is leaving aside the distribution patterns of wealth.
I note that you havent consider the dystopian hell hole that is... Switzerland. Or Germany. Or Australia.
The problem remains what it has always been - inadequate levels of investment. Why we fail to invest as much as other countries is more of a mystery to me.
I think the main British issue is the people on our political Right have a weird, blind fetish about the USA .... even now as we watch it fall to pieces. So I comment on that.
No matter what happens, they will wreck the society. They will always live of past investment, and not support the future - so they can give a false impression to their supporters.
Just as they did for example with a highly successful policy such as Sure Start, or the initiative which cut out road deaths in half in a mere 9 years from 2000/1.
Even David Cameron - marketing himself as he did - did not give a damn, and just trampled it into the earth.
That's why in my view the Conservative Party - speaking as a former member - needs to die, and be replaced with something decent.
BiB - did road deaths double after that decision?
A bit of digging gets to this chart (annual UK road deaths on the Y-axis).
Suggests a drop from 2004 to 2010, but seems to be a continuation of a steady drop from 1970.
IIRC we have one of the lowest in the world - which is why that reduction tails off a bit.
We were about the best in the world. We are now by analogy perhaps half way down the Premier League. On particular aspects we have been serious below par laggards, such as provision for safe walking (which means that there are loads of places where roads are "safe" because no one dares go there outside a vehicle) and allowing legal drink driving (we have decades of research on this).
It is not a "steady drop". It is a staircase where improvement happens when Road Safety is a policy priority and stops when the politicians sit on their bottoms in their deckchairs.
There was a major initiative in 1987, and a manifesto pledge to cut child deaths by 40-50% in 2001, followed by a programme of targets in 2002, which delivered results by 2004. Casualties halved over a few years.
In 2011 David Cameron abolished the targets and did no significant policy and paid no attention, and people continued being killed at the same rate. Which is what we would expect.
eg An interviewee suggested that the choice not to continue casualty reduction targets was illustrative of the policy shift: “… in 2010 they decided they weren't going to have any more … targets. It was a pivotal move in the wrong direction. If I compare and contrast 1987 to 2010 … that was absolutely devastating alongside a recession that meant that a lot of the road safety teams were decimated”
We are 6th in the world.
Maldives 1.3 1 Norway 1.5 2 Malta 1.9 3 Singapore 1.9 3 Sweden 2.1 4 Denmark 2.3 5 Iceland 2.4 6 Switzerland 2.4 6 UK and Northern Ireland 2.4 6 Andorra 2.5 7 Japan 2.7 8 Ireland 2.8 9 Germany 3.3 10 Netherlands (Kingdom of the) 3.4 11 Spain 3.5 12 Brunei Darussalam 3.6 13 Cyprus 3.9 14 Luxembourg 3.9 14 Finland 4.2 15 Israel 4.2 15 Estonia 4.4 16 Australia 4.5 17 Austria 4.6 18 Belgium 4.6 18 Canada 4.7 19 France 4.7 19
That is pretty impressive, and much better than our typical comparotor countries like France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Canada, US, Australia. Scandis winning as they normally seem to do. Singapore has very few cars, wouldnt be surprised if Maldives similar.
Impressive, but I remember when we were top, pipping Sweden to the post.
Long, self-indulgent post alert: I've joined the Greens.
I'm intend to start (gently) door knocking for them and trying to get involved in the development of their economic policy. If anyone can be bothered I'd welcome being challenged on the reasoning below. If not, please feel free to ignore.
- For my whole adult life politics has been the art of finding the least worst option to support, and currently I feel that is the Greens (despite their laughable economic policy). - Capitalism as a vehicle for economic development has been spectacularly successful but has increasingly been captured by interests that don't serve us well. As an example the monetisation of ever-wider aspects of life (I'm particularly thinking of the monetisation of our attention through our phones and the concomitant promotion of widespread narcissism) is, I think, creating externalities that we will be paying for for generations to come. - Therefore I am looking for a political project that attempts to address the structure of our economic system, rather than tinkering with tax rates and our generosity or otherwise to those at the wrong end of inequality. - This is tempered by a natural conservatism; for a long time I have felt that reforming our economic structures is much more likely to make things worse rather than better. However, unless the next couple of years surprise on the upside (and economically this seems very unlikely) I think the next election is going to be won by a non-establishment party and given a forced choice between the Greens and Reform the Greens are a clear choice for me. - Finally, I have a three year old and a six year old. As someone relatively wealthy but with a big mortgage I have quite a lot to lose personally from a green government. But I would gladly lose that to invest in a project that might make the UK a healthier place (in the broadest sense) for my kids to grow up in.
What I want to vote for economically: - A gradual experiment of enforced worker- and community-representation on the boards of private companies to counterbalance the short-termism of our current emphasis on shareholder value. - A gradual move from taxing productivity (e.g. wages) towards taxing non-productivity (principally a wealth tax on property) - A gradual implementation of a maximum ratio between the lowest paid and the highest paid in any institution. - A commitment to gradually reducing our national debt through a combination of tax rises and spending cuts so that we are less beholden to bond markets in the medium term.
The SNP have been shockingly poor in government. Our once proud education system slips ever further down the PISA rankings. Our excellent Universities are incredibly dependent on rUK students paying something like the proper rate in fees whilst the Scottish government pays little more than half that for Scottish students. Our drug deaths remain the highest in Europe. Our Criminal Justice system creaks ever more alarmingly. Only this morning I had a trial fixed for a bog standard 5 day rape case in May 2027 at a Preliminary Hearing that had been able to go ahead 9 months after the service of the indictment. Non sex prisoners now spend 40% of their sentence in jail. Our health outcomes are no better than those in rUK despite spending a lot more. The minimum fee for alcohol has not really worked. Large sums of money have been spent on trans based litigation for no obvious purpose. Absurd sums are spent on regulation. We have the highest taxes in the UK. The ST reported that £6bn has been given to "charities" that are obliged to follow the government line and are instantly punished if they are foolish enough to step out of line. It is, overall, a shocking record of institutional corruption, incompetence, waste and ineptitude.
But there is no effective opposition. The Tories do their best in the Scottish Parliament but are about to be annihilated. Labour are almost invisible. Reform are led by a madman. The Greens are frankly insane. Their latest policy is apparently the abolition of prisons. There's even a group called the Lib Dems, apparently. God knows what they are for or against.
Where oh where are the Scottish Magyars that can make this place fit to build a business in, to create wealth, to fund working public services and who can sweep away this corrupt cronyism?
That was a Party Political Broadcast for the DavidL Party.
Yep. Unfortunately it is rather small and not very effective.
"We asked participants where they thought Britain stood economically compared to our main competitors. It turns out voters are living in a dreamworld.
Nearly half of British voters think that we are as rich, or richer, than Switzerland. Over half think we are as rich or richer than Australia, Singapore, or Germany. And, incredibly, over half of us think Britain is as rich as, or richer, than the United States.
The truth of course is that we are poorer than all those countries – according to the IMF, we are 10 per cent poorer than Germany, 20 per cent poorer than Australia, about 40 per cent poorer than America or Singapore."
Is someone from the USA who has 2 weeks paid holiday not 5, who spends perhaps £10k per annum on healthcare that is free here, who gets little or no income when they are ill, and who on average will die 4 years earlier than other Western citizens really wealthier than a British citizen?
And that is leaving aside the distribution patterns of wealth.
I note that you havent consider the dystopian hell hole that is... Switzerland. Or Germany. Or Australia.
The problem remains what it has always been - inadequate levels of investment. Why we fail to invest as much as other countries is more of a mystery to me.
I think the main British issue is the people on our political Right have a weird, blind fetish about the USA .... even now as we watch it fall to pieces. So I comment on that.
No matter what happens, they will wreck the society. They will always live of past investment, and not support the future - so they can give a false impression to their supporters.
Just as they did for example with a highly successful policy such as Sure Start, or the initiative which cut out road deaths in half in a mere 9 years from 2000/1.
Even David Cameron - marketing himself as he did - did not give a damn, and just trampled it into the earth.
That's why in my view the Conservative Party - speaking as a former member - needs to die, and be replaced with something decent.
BiB - did road deaths double after that decision?
A bit of digging gets to this chart (annual UK road deaths on the Y-axis).
Suggests a drop from 2004 to 2010, but seems to be a continuation of a steady drop from 1970.
IIRC we have one of the lowest in the world - which is why that reduction tails off a bit.
We were about the best in the world. We are now by analogy perhaps half way down the Premier League. On particular aspects we have been serious below par laggards, such as provision for safe walking (which means that there are loads of places where roads are "safe" because no one dares go there outside a vehicle) and allowing legal drink driving (we have decades of research on this).
It is not a "steady drop". It is a staircase where improvement happens when Road Safety is a policy priority and stops when the politicians sit on their bottoms in their deckchairs.
There was a major initiative in 1987, and a manifesto pledge to cut child deaths by 40-50% in 2001, followed by a programme of targets in 2002, which delivered results by 2004. Casualties halved over a few years.
In 2011 David Cameron abolished the targets and did no significant policy and paid no attention, and people continued being killed at the same rate. Which is what we would expect.
eg An interviewee suggested that the choice not to continue casualty reduction targets was illustrative of the policy shift: “… in 2010 they decided they weren't going to have any more … targets. It was a pivotal move in the wrong direction. If I compare and contrast 1987 to 2010 … that was absolutely devastating alongside a recession that meant that a lot of the road safety teams were decimated”
We are 6th in the world.
Maldives 1.3 1 Norway 1.5 2 Malta 1.9 3 Singapore 1.9 3 Sweden 2.1 4 Denmark 2.3 5 Iceland 2.4 6 Switzerland 2.4 6 UK and Northern Ireland 2.4 6 Andorra 2.5 7 Japan 2.7 8 Ireland 2.8 9 Germany 3.3 10 Netherlands (Kingdom of the) 3.4 11 Spain 3.5 12 Brunei Darussalam 3.6 13 Cyprus 3.9 14 Luxembourg 3.9 14 Finland 4.2 15 Israel 4.2 15 Estonia 4.4 16 Australia 4.5 17 Austria 4.6 18 Belgium 4.6 18 Canada 4.7 19 France 4.7 19
That Malta figure is a miracle considering how they drive.
Because no one is brave enough to walk anywhere?
Part of the reason we have so few casualties in the UK is because we don’t have as much active travel. Our cycle fatality rate per km cycled is 2-3x higher than the Netherlands. The same goes for walking.
Our children no longer play outside, so naturally fatalities have fallen.
"We asked participants where they thought Britain stood economically compared to our main competitors. It turns out voters are living in a dreamworld.
Nearly half of British voters think that we are as rich, or richer, than Switzerland. Over half think we are as rich or richer than Australia, Singapore, or Germany. And, incredibly, over half of us think Britain is as rich as, or richer, than the United States.
The truth of course is that we are poorer than all those countries – according to the IMF, we are 10 per cent poorer than Germany, 20 per cent poorer than Australia, about 40 per cent poorer than America or Singapore."
Is someone from the USA who has 2 weeks paid holiday not 5, who spends perhaps £10k per annum on healthcare that is free here, who gets little or no income when they are ill, and who on average will die 4 years earlier than other Western citizens really wealthier than a British citizen?
And that is leaving aside the distribution patterns of wealth.
I note that you havent consider the dystopian hell hole that is... Switzerland. Or Germany. Or Australia.
The problem remains what it has always been - inadequate levels of investment. Why we fail to invest as much as other countries is more of a mystery to me.
I think the main British issue is the people on our political Right have a weird, blind fetish about the USA .... even now as we watch it fall to pieces. So I comment on that.
No matter what happens, they will wreck the society. They will always live of past investment, and not support the future - so they can give a false impression to their supporters.
Just as they did for example with a highly successful policy such as Sure Start, or the initiative which cut out road deaths in half in a mere 9 years from 2000/1.
Even David Cameron - marketing himself as he did - did not give a damn, and just trampled it into the earth.
That's why in my view the Conservative Party - speaking as a former member - needs to die, and be replaced with something decent.
BiB - did road deaths double after that decision?
Here's the historical graph. They decided to stop trying, and progress stopped.
There's always a soft limit to how far casualty rates can be reduced without actually banning motor vehicles or significantly restricting their use, particularly in the UK where our rate is already very low.
Introducing 20mph limits all over the place is more or less performative; most accidents resulting in KSIs don't happen because someone is doing 30mph down a residential street, they happen on faster roads (particularly NSL roads) or because the driver is speeding. So reducing the limit buys almost no real decrease in casualties. But it lets the government say they're doing something.
Making a notable difference would require politically unpalatable decisions, like introducing age and power gated car licences, similar to the current motorcycle licence system. Make drivers do a mandatory competence check every few years. Ban vehicles with poor forward visibility, etc.
No government will do any of those, particularly give the experiment with age and power gates on bike licences is now acknowledged to have significantly reduce the number of people riding bikes, to the point where the DVSA are in the process of making it easier and cheaper for bikers to upgrade their licences.
I note that it is usually a moveable soft limit, based on many factors. In 1967 there were a lot of people opposed to breathalyzers; we turned that around. We are doing the same with mobile phone usage. Such is not difficult, but requires a little resolve, and application, over a period of time.
On the other aspects, I think you are mistaken on of all of them.
We already have decades of data that 20mph limits in residential areas are not just performative. Just in Wales in year one overall KSI were down by 1/4 to 1/3, and even insurance premiums fell. That argument is over - they will be throughout England in a decade or so, just depending on political will. It is also the case that very large numbers of collision happen soon after leavign, or shortly before returning to, home.
We already have age gated licenses - at 17. We already ban vehicles with poor forward visibility, and things that prevent good visibility - uncleared snow, for example, or too dark tints, or bonnet protrusions, or windscreen blocking camera placement.
We already restrict use of motor vehicles extensively. We have speed limits, you cannot take one into Meadow Hall, speed limits, keep off pavements, do not drive into schoolyard at breaktime or across Zebra crossings mowing people down, not if you are blind or drunk or have fits, and the rest. Use of motor vehicles is a restricted privilege, which is how it should be.
The current Road Safety Strategy, brought forward in January this year, will bring forward many of these measures, including compulsory eye tests for people over 70, reduced drink drive limits, and several thing around young drivers. Keir Starmer is a very timid politician, and as far as I can see the ones he has proposed are only those which already have widespread and evidence-based support. Where I have seen them in the Telegraph they have strong support below the line, which is remarkable for a Starmer policy.
It's an enormous missed opportunity, but at least he won't be sitting on his bottom, which is something. Safety will improve.
Long, self-indulgent post alert: I've joined the Greens.
I'm intend to start (gently) door knocking for them and trying to get involved in the development of their economic policy. If anyone can be bothered I'd welcome being challenged on the reasoning below. If not, please feel free to ignore.
- For my whole adult life politics has been the art of finding the least worst option to support, and currently I feel that is the Greens (despite their laughable economic policy). - Capitalism as a vehicle for economic development has been spectacularly successful but has increasingly been captured by interests that don't serve us well. As an example the monetisation of ever-wider aspects of life (I'm particularly thinking of the monetisation of our attention through our phones and the concomitant promotion of widespread narcissism) is, I think, creating externalities that we will be paying for for generations to come. - Therefore I am looking for a political project that attempts to address the structure of our economic system, rather than tinkering with tax rates and our generosity or otherwise to those at the wrong end of inequality. - This is tempered by a natural conservatism; for a long time I have felt that reforming our economic structures is much more likely to make things worse rather than better. However, unless the next couple of years surprise on the upside (and economically this seems very unlikely) I think the next election is going to be won by a non-establishment party and given a forced choice between the Greens and Reform the Greens are a clear choice for me. - Finally, I have a three year old and a six year old. As someone relatively wealthy but with a big mortgage I have quite a lot to lose personally from a green government. But I would gladly lose that to invest in a project that might make the UK a healthier place (in the broadest sense) for my kids to grow up in.
What I want to vote for economically: - A gradual experiment of enforced worker- and community-representation on the boards of private companies to counterbalance the short-termism of our current emphasis on shareholder value. - A gradual move from taxing productivity (e.g. wages) towards taxing non-productivity (principally a wealth tax on property) - A gradual implementation of a maximum ratio between the lowest paid and the highest paid in any institution. - A commitment to gradually reducing our national debt through a combination of tax rises and spending cuts so that we are less beholden to bond markets in the medium term.
Interesting post. That very last point will be challenging with The Greens.
"We asked participants where they thought Britain stood economically compared to our main competitors. It turns out voters are living in a dreamworld.
Nearly half of British voters think that we are as rich, or richer, than Switzerland. Over half think we are as rich or richer than Australia, Singapore, or Germany. And, incredibly, over half of us think Britain is as rich as, or richer, than the United States.
The truth of course is that we are poorer than all those countries – according to the IMF, we are 10 per cent poorer than Germany, 20 per cent poorer than Australia, about 40 per cent poorer than America or Singapore."
What did the questions actually ask? The UK has a bigger GDP than Switzerland, so you could say the UK is richer than Switzerland, but Switzerland has a bigger GDP per capita, so the mean Swiss person is richer than the mean UK person.
Trying to fob us off with statistics, statistics and damn lies.
I have to maintain my Chatered Statistician status somehow.
“US has allies, an alliance of gangster dictators, corrupt royal houses, and the lumpen proles of filling station personnel.” No, that’s not a line from yesterday’s newspaper, but a scrap from the notebooks for JG Ballard’s last and uncompleted novel, provisionally titled, An Immodest Proposal, or How the World Declared War on America. Ballard never lost his prescience, even at the end of his life.
I didn't know there was an unfinished Ballard novel. Interesting.
"We asked participants where they thought Britain stood economically compared to our main competitors. It turns out voters are living in a dreamworld.
Nearly half of British voters think that we are as rich, or richer, than Switzerland. Over half think we are as rich or richer than Australia, Singapore, or Germany. And, incredibly, over half of us think Britain is as rich as, or richer, than the United States.
The truth of course is that we are poorer than all those countries – according to the IMF, we are 10 per cent poorer than Germany, 20 per cent poorer than Australia, about 40 per cent poorer than America or Singapore."
What's interesting is that we are meant to have a higher per capita income than Japan - I have just spent a fortnight in Japan and I have to say, that was not the impression I got! Alternatively, perhaps there are things we can do to make our country a lot more pleasant without raising our per capita income, if we are genuinely richer than Japan.
I think there is a problem with making a judgement "by walking about", as it is based on impression of quality of public realm.
We know that from 2010 (and perhaps a little earlier) through to 2025 investment in our public realm was deliberately and systematically undermined, and the Govt lived of the capital without investing in the maintenance.
That is in the numbers on resources available to local authorities, and the amount of expenditure required to be dedicated to statutory services increasing markedly.
Plus allocation of much funding by bid and competition.
We even have Rishi Sunak on video telling an audience at a garden party how proud he was to be transferring resources from poorer areas to wealthier areas such as where his audience lived. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xegB9J-mn1A
I qeustion whether you can judge on that basis.
Agreed on that. But this is also what I'm getting at, there may be places where we can spend a little bit of money and make people feel a lot happier about their lives. We allow our public spaces to become squalid, the Japanese don't. Why is that?
France is another interesting example. In GDP terms, both absolute and per capita, it hovers around parity with the UK and is currently a little below. But it *looks* much nicer because much more is spent on public spaces. And there’s far less of a gap in look and feel between the capital and the provinces than there is in Britain.
But the French are utterly depressed about their country, both the left and the right (with different though overlapping rationales for why). Part of it is the direction of travel. Yes the public realm and services are way better than in the UK, but they are becoming less good. Spending is being cut, municipalities are being merged to save money, schools being closed because there are no children left, things once taken for granted now under threat from their own version of austerity.
I do sometimes wonder whether people being utterly depressed is 100% driven by objective reality about stuff like economics or whether some of it reflects more intangible stuff, eg social media narratives, loneliness, ageing? I'm not angry and depressed and neither are most of the people I know. Do I live in a bubble? Or do people just like moaning?
By your own account you're fairly wealthy, so perhaps you do ?
More generally, where you live likely has quite a lot to do with it. The decades long deterioration (relative and absolute) of the state of provincial towns is strikingly illustrated by this article (from Jan this year).
Comments
Your Party's entire Scottish interim executive has resigned en masse, declaring it "over" and saying they will start a new party instead.
Says Your Party is not a "serious attempt to unite the left" and "cannot recover."
@davidherdson.bsky.social
Some of us could have said this from the start.
Indeed, some of us did.
There's a new cafe-bar (or similar, I think) opening across the road from the pub, too. Looking forward to giving that a go.
So it's not all disaster.
To keep a roof over my head I absolutely have to pay the mortgage and so I absolutely have to work, but there's always a risk of losing your job for no fault of your own, and not being able to get another one - something many people will experience if the economy falls off a cliff following Trump's Folly and the subsequent closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
Our town is way busier, so it may have been a more local effect, but it was odd.
we have the 6th lowest (out of 138) in the world. And that is 2024 data. I think it has dropped again.
🔴 Lab: 20 (-39)
🟢 Grn: 19 (+19)
➡️ Ref: 17 (+17)
🔵 Con: 11 (+2)
🟠 Lib: 6 (=)
🟥 YP: 2 (+1)
https://x.com/LeftieStats/status/2043615036807999647?s=20
That what happens when you have an idiot in No 11 who.is untruthful on her cv and has the brain capacity of a banana.
Trump is having a mental health episode right now. He’s been posting on social media all night. He posted at:
9:49pm (Ai Jesus photo)
9:50pm (Trump tower on moon)
10:10pm (dumb meme)
10:32pm (news clip)
10:53pm (news clip)
12:43am (announcing Hormuz blockade)
2:35am (article about Biden)
2:36am (article on naval blockade)
2:37am (article on Rep. Swalwell)
2:37am (posted the same article about Biden again)
2:38am (article on his ballroom)
4:10am (article on Iran)
He’s not sleeping, he’s pretending to be Jesus, and he’s posting all night. He’s not well.
https://x.com/harryjsisson/status/2043627709553692942?s=20
It was interesting to see the reaction of the usually liberal younger generation. Not negative, but just expanding their minds. They hadn't been to an area like that before.
Also we have an aging population which costs money and they are the people who vote for parties that give them sweeties
The first report from the inquiry into the Southport killings has just been published.
It states that it is "highly likely" the attack would not have occurred if various agencies had dealt with the killer’s behaviour earlier.
The report also concludes that if the killer's parents “had done what they morally ought to have done", he "would not have been at liberty to conduct the attack and it would not therefore have occurred".
Southport killer's family and authorities could have prevented deadly attack on UK dance class, inquiry finds
https://x.com/bbcbreaking/status/2043646352727347424?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
🎗️ SNP: 61 (-3) - 38.9% | 30.1% - 4 Short.
🌹 LAB: 18 (-4) - 18.6% | 16.3%
➡️ RFM: 17 (+17) - 17.1% | 17.0%
🌍 GRN: 13 (+5) - 1.5% | 13.0%
🌳 CON: 11 (-20) - 10.2% | 10.9%
🔶 LDM: 9 (+5) - 10.1% | 9.3%
https://x.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/2043378111891361917?s=20
As for Waitrose - nope give my Booths any day and Marks is preferable to Waitrose
May not include Lessons. Does not including Learning. Does not include Will or Be. May include nuts. May include nutters. All wrongs reserved.
There is a chunk of the population for who life is pretty comfortable right now. If you have a paid-off mortgage and either a triple-locked pension or savings you are spending on yourself or the sort of salary you get later in your career, life is materially OK.
Yet they tend to be the people who are most livid with the status quo.
(And I'm on Team Shabby Local Public Realm as the key that unlocks the door of the explanation. Thing is, that shabbiness follows smoothly from decisions that the electorate has voted for over decades.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lxKr_TTH20
These are not low-tax economies. We may well tax and spend on the wrong things, but the overall burden is not the issue.
UPears
BTW Kemi still to evidence the American College offer she claims that the College totally denies and also denies Course she claimed ever existed
Try selling that in the UK.
America is now very obviously way ahead of Europe in general wealth. It’s the tiny things that you notice. The way they have special lights on toilets at airports to show you which are empty. Green or red lights. It’s a minuscule thing but it’s an indicative. They can afford that stuff we can’t
The infrastructure is getting better as ours declines and they’re even getting thinner coz they can all afford Mounjaro
Yes there are pockets of deep poverty. It’s America. But I think life in the USA is now noticeably better for the top 60-80% of people, compared to Europe
For the bottom 20% it’s about the same and for the bottom 5-10% America is much worse. But that’s just 10% max
Demonisation of Muslims (for example) in my experience plays in very particular groups, beyond those signed up to an ideology - it will play with those who have a Bad Experience and jump to a conclusion, or those who do not know any Muslims well so they can be assessed as "them".
Introducing 20mph limits all over the place is more or less performative; most accidents resulting in KSIs don't happen because someone is doing 30mph down a residential street, they happen on faster roads (particularly NSL roads) or because the driver is speeding. So reducing the limit buys almost no real decrease in casualties. But it lets the government say they're doing something.
Making a notable difference would require politically unpalatable decisions, like introducing age and power gated car licences, similar to the current motorcycle licence system. Make drivers do a mandatory competence check every few years. Ban vehicles with poor forward visibility, etc.
No government will do any of those, particularly give the experiment with age and power gates on bike licences is now acknowledged to have significantly reduce the number of people riding bikes, to the point where the DVSA are in the process of making it easier and cheaper for bikers to upgrade their licences.
I was in Copenhagen only a few weeks ago and it was buzzing. Lots of outdoor bars and eating even though the old harbour port was still frozen when we arrived. I managed to take part in two organised pub crawls. As a recommendation I would suggest using 'Politically Incorrect' if you want a guide.
Thats where any actual Leader could and should have the Tories right now.
That centre ground is ripe for skimming off at least 5%
If Tories retain Farage with braids they will be extinct by 2030
But this is why self-driving cars are going to be such a revolution. If we fine firms £10 million per fatality they are involved in (or whatever value you think is right), they will drive at the socially optimal rate. 10mph down the Cowgate at 3am, 90mph on the M74.
But, you know, there's a new album of archival recordings by t.A.T.u., В Поднебесной, to enjoy.
Went into Booths a couple of times when in the Lake District last year and it struck me as *very* expensive, even as a Waitrose shopper
The report has highlighted Government deficiencies.
The issue of parents is separate.
You really do need to stop being such a tribal bore.
*Not literally.
Neither of these are problems if you use STV (as Scottish local elections do) or a purely list system (as the Sennedd is now doing).
We wanted to be,
We couldnt agree
Your Party
Indeed, the UK should switch to d'Hondt.
And local authorities too.
Basically, any election to a body with a multitude of members should be conducted using d'Hondt.
And an election to a single post, (e.g., party leader, president, pope) should be conducted using...
...AV!
I scanned Kirklees the other day and the left is represented by Community Action Kirklees and Gaza Independents, plus a full Green slate of 69 candidates (matching the other 4 main parties).
"AV - endorsed by god"
Starmer evens to make the end of the year
Tribal bore. LOL
And by the way it is the key point of the report if you have read it
It is not a "steady drop". It is a staircase where improvement happens when Road Safety is a policy priority and stops when the politicians sit on their bottoms in their deckchairs.
There was a major initiative in 1987, and a manifesto pledge to cut child deaths by 40-50% in 2001, followed by a programme of targets in 2002, which delivered results by 2004. Casualties halved over a few years.
In 2011 David Cameron abolished the targets and did no significant policy and paid no attention, and people continued being killed at the same rate. Which is what we would expect.
There's an academic paper about the history here:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0967070X24002622
eg An interviewee suggested that the choice not to continue casualty reduction targets was illustrative of the policy shift: “… in 2010 they decided they weren't going to have any more … targets. It was a pivotal move in the wrong direction. If I compare and contrast 1987 to 2010 … that was absolutely devastating alongside a recession that meant that a lot of the road safety teams were decimated”
Maldives 1.3 1
Norway 1.5 2
Malta 1.9 3
Singapore 1.9 3
Sweden 2.1 4
Denmark 2.3 5
Iceland 2.4 6
Switzerland 2.4 6
UK and Northern Ireland 2.4 6
Andorra 2.5 7
Japan 2.7 8
Ireland 2.8 9
Germany 3.3 10
Netherlands (Kingdom of the) 3.4 11
Spain 3.5 12
Brunei Darussalam 3.6 13
Cyprus 3.9 14
Luxembourg 3.9 14
Finland 4.2 15
Israel 4.2 15
Estonia 4.4 16
Australia 4.5 17
Austria 4.6 18
Belgium 4.6 18
Canada 4.7 19
France 4.7 19
https://www.theworldofdriving.com/safest-roads-by-country-in-order-2024/
There just isn't two big umbrella votes.
But there is no effective opposition. The Tories do their best in the Scottish Parliament but are about to be annihilated. Labour are almost invisible. Reform are led by a madman. The Greens are frankly insane. Their latest policy is apparently the abolition of prisons. There's even a group called the Lib Dems, apparently. God knows what they are for or against.
Where oh where are the Scottish Magyars that can make this place fit to build a business in, to create wealth, to fund working public services and who can sweep away this corrupt cronyism?
If Mr Starmer manages to lose the political battle on this one, it really will be a triumph of lack of political communications over folorn hope.
One hopes KB does her homework this week, or before the next PMQ.
https://x.com/iraninthailand/status/2043616789612118127?s=61
“US has allies, an alliance of gangster dictators, corrupt royal houses, and the lumpen proles of filling station personnel.” No, that’s not a line from yesterday’s newspaper, but a scrap from the notebooks for JG Ballard’s last and uncompleted novel, provisionally titled, An Immodest Proposal, or How the World Declared War on America. Ballard never lost his prescience, even at the end of his life.
I'm intend to start (gently) door knocking for them and trying to get involved in the development of their economic policy.
If anyone can be bothered I'd welcome being challenged on the reasoning below. If not, please feel free to ignore.
- For my whole adult life politics has been the art of finding the least worst option to support, and currently I feel that is the Greens (despite their laughable economic policy).
- Capitalism as a vehicle for economic development has been spectacularly successful but has increasingly been captured by interests that don't serve us well. As an example the monetisation of ever-wider aspects of life (I'm particularly thinking of the monetisation of our attention through our phones and the concomitant promotion of widespread narcissism) is, I think, creating externalities that we will be paying for for generations to come.
- Therefore I am looking for a political project that attempts to address the structure of our economic system, rather than tinkering with tax rates and our generosity or otherwise to those at the wrong end of inequality.
- This is tempered by a natural conservatism; for a long time I have felt that reforming our economic structures is much more likely to make things worse rather than better. However, unless the next couple of years surprise on the upside (and economically this seems very unlikely) I think the next election is going to be won by a non-establishment party and given a forced choice between the Greens and Reform the Greens are a clear choice for me.
- Finally, I have a three year old and a six year old. As someone relatively wealthy but with a big mortgage I have quite a lot to lose personally from a green government. But I would gladly lose that to invest in a project that might make the UK a healthier place (in the broadest sense) for my kids to grow up in.
What I want to vote for economically:
- A gradual experiment of enforced worker- and community-representation on the boards of private companies to counterbalance the short-termism of our current emphasis on shareholder value.
- A gradual move from taxing productivity (e.g. wages) towards taxing non-productivity (principally a wealth tax on property)
- A gradual implementation of a maximum ratio between the lowest paid and the highest paid in any institution.
- A commitment to gradually reducing our national debt through a combination of tax rises and spending cuts so that we are less beholden to bond markets in the medium term.
Didn’t expect to see this.
https://x.com/cryptonews_eth/status/2043601936625123385?s=61
Part of the reason we have so few casualties in the UK is because we don’t have as much active travel. Our cycle fatality rate per km cycled is 2-3x higher than the Netherlands. The same goes for walking.
Our children no longer play outside, so naturally fatalities have fallen.
On the other aspects, I think you are mistaken on of all of them.
We already have decades of data that 20mph limits in residential areas are not just performative. Just in Wales in year one overall KSI were down by 1/4 to 1/3, and even insurance premiums fell. That argument is over - they will be throughout England in a decade or so, just depending on political will. It is also the case that very large numbers of collision happen soon after leavign, or shortly before returning to, home.
We already have age gated licenses - at 17. We already ban vehicles with poor forward visibility, and things that prevent good visibility - uncleared snow, for example, or too dark tints, or bonnet protrusions, or windscreen blocking camera placement.
We already restrict use of motor vehicles extensively. We have speed limits, you cannot take one into Meadow Hall, speed limits, keep off pavements, do not drive into schoolyard at breaktime or across Zebra crossings mowing people down, not if you are blind or drunk or have fits, and the rest. Use of motor vehicles is a restricted privilege, which is how it should be.
The current Road Safety Strategy, brought forward in January this year, will bring forward many of these measures, including compulsory eye tests for people over 70, reduced drink drive limits, and several thing around young drivers. Keir Starmer is a very timid politician, and as far as I can see the ones he has proposed are only those which already have widespread and evidence-based support. Where I have seen them in the Telegraph they have strong support below the line, which is remarkable for a Starmer policy.
It's an enormous missed opportunity, but at least he won't be sitting on his bottom, which is something. Safety will improve.
More generally, where you live likely has quite a lot to do with it. The decades long deterioration (relative and absolute) of the state of provincial towns is strikingly illustrated by this article (from Jan this year).
‘You’d be ashamed to bring someone here’: The struggling billionaire-owned high street that shows Reform’s road to No 10
https://www.theguardian.com/society/ng-interactive/2026/jan/28/newton-aycliffe-county-durham-high-street-decline
https://www.crowdcube.com/early-access/w3w
What three words! I think I’ll pass.