Were I looking for a Big Bang policy - especially for the young - I'd do something on student loans: reducing the interest rate to zero, for instance.
We underestimate how much this issue annoys the young - a debt which no matter how much they pay off only increases.
Yes, the main problem with that would be finding the £30-50 billion or so that it would cost over the next 30 years or so.
Also it would of course advantage a wealthier section of society at the expense of the taxpayer as a whole - I don't have a problem with that, but good luck selling it to the Labour Party, which still occasionally pretends to care about equality.
I think the solution to the student loans problem has to be reducing the number of each year group who go to university back towards the 30% or so that it was before that lying idiot Blair decided that 50% was the right number, deceitfully claiming that some research backed it up, when there was none. That would mean lower subsidies and enable fees to be cut, and would also mean that fewer jobs pointlessly ask for degrees.
Pension relief at 25% for all.
Having said that, a proper policy for the young would not be pissing around with student loans. Housing, housing, housing.
Is this random crap / half baked idea evening - that fails to work on so many grounds that I don’t know where to begin pointing out the flaws
But the main one is pensions are subject to NI when paid in and income tax when paid out.
I'm not sure that the centralisation of the British state explains that much of the economic problems of provincial Britain. The truth is that London benefits from being a major financial centre and the English language, common law etc which attracted global elites. You aren't going to replicate that elsewhere. The only solution is surely fixing the investment/productivity problem.
While in inner London the Tories won control of Westminster council and held Kensington and Chelsea council and won most seats in Wandsworth and there were 3 Tory councillors elected in Camden and 6 in Hackney on Thursday.
Inner London is clearly far more of a fan of Kemi than Farage
the sitting Reform councillor in Bromley who lost his seat yesterday actually lived in Belgravia
Yes Reform candidates know where their potential voters are, that doesn't mean the rich ones actually want to live with them!
I alarmed myself when I found I was nodding along to the economic policies of Reform UK Scotland, or whatever they call themselves. ie they have economic policies.
No way I will vote for that collection of antisemites, Islamophobes, all-sorts-of-other-phobes. Worrying nevertheless.
Scottish Labour's line is 'time for change". A message I am very receptive to. They didn't think it necessary to explain even in the broadest terms what they would change, why and how.
I think this is an interesting straw in the wind. Reform are serious about winning power and are attracting serious people with serious ideas.
All very well, until you think "Ah, but Nigel Farage, though". A deeply unserious chancer with no hidden intellect and not too many political principles either.
I thought they all have only one political principle - if you're not a winner you're a loser. I don't like Farage and don't want him as the next PM but Starmer, Badenoch and the rest of them are just as much chancers with no principles as he is.
Most politicians who win have to be chancers to some extent and that goes way back to Blair, Wilson, Churchill, Lloyd George, Disraeli etc as well as Boris and Cameron of course.
Rarely do you get a principled politician who sticks rigidly to one ideological view who elects their party to power, maybe Thatcher and Attlee but even they had to adapt to circumstance
2 more Reform seats in Croydon (which remains NOC, Lab and Con almost level pegging).
My Uncle refused to accept that Croydon was not still part of Surrey and continued to provide his address incorrectly until his death in the early 2000s.
I think there is still a postal address 'Cockfosters, Barnet, Herts' followed by the postcode.
Cockfosters is in fact in the London Borough of Enfield, within the Greater London area. Prior to being in Enfield, London, it was in Middlesex not Hertfordshire. It wasn't and isn't in the borough of Barnet. Apart from that the address is right.
Isn't 'the correct postal address' an urban myth ?
Reality is all you need is
2 Some Road POSTCODE
And that is what the post office need, anything else is utterly irrelevant and has no 'right' or 'wrong' about it
I had a weird conversation about this in NZ with one of the department secretaries (still a thing back then). She was convinced U.K. addresses were ridiculously long. I pointed out the postcode system (which they also have), but she wouldn’t have it.
Were I looking for a Big Bang policy - especially for the young - I'd do something on student loans: reducing the interest rate to zero, for instance.
We underestimate how much this issue annoys the young - a debt which no matter how much they pay off only increases.
Yes, the main problem with that would be finding the £30-50 billion or so that it would cost over the next 30 years or so.
Also it would of course advantage a wealthier section of society at the expense of the taxpayer as a whole - I don't have a problem with that, but good luck selling it to the Labour Party, which still occasionally pretends to care about equality.
I think the solution to the student loans problem has to be reducing the number of each year group who go to university back towards the 30% or so that it was before that lying idiot Blair decided that 50% was the right number, deceitfully claiming that some research backed it up, when there was none. That would mean lower subsidies and enable fees to be cut, and would also mean that fewer jobs pointlessly ask for degrees.
Pension relief at 25% for all.
Having said that, a proper policy for the young would not be pissing around with student loans. Housing, housing, housing.
If nothing else, until housing costs are sorted, any tax reductions or income increases will fairly rapidly end up in higher rents.
And whilst Labour have made teeny tiny steps on the way, they are teeny tiny.
And unless we build a shed load of housing people younger than 40 are going to end up renting into their retirement which opens up a whole set of additional issues
I wouldn't go that far, most people are on the housing ladder by 40 but yes we do need to get more 25 to 40s owning affordable homes with mortgages and not renting
Comments
But the main one is pensions are subject to NI when paid in and income tax when paid out.
NEW THREAD
Rarely do you get a principled politician who sticks rigidly to one ideological view who elects their party to power, maybe Thatcher and Attlee but even they had to adapt to circumstance
W3W would blow her mind.