What amazing drama with her being cleared today . The fact is she didn’t receive a penalty and they accepted it was a mistake. People can disagree on that but it’s great news as far as I’m concerned . I’ve always been a fan of her and she may well be a marmite figure but she might just save us from Miliband .
The thing that screwed her wasn't the tax issue, it was complicated situation and actually there was a bit of sympathy for it. It was that she then went and did things like soft soap Beth Ribgy interview and told some porkies, that then lead into some more porkies, ultimiately came to head with trying to chuck lawyers under the bus and of course the lawyers turned around with the receipts and said no we didn't do what you claimed.
Growth has mildly outperformed expectations more often than not in recent years recently, under both governments. Not stellar, but better than you’d think from the headlines. The British mentality remains relentlessly negative. Which in turn holds back investment and consumer spending.
Last years early year bump when people who know looked into the numbers was driven big load of government spending and hence why it then went away pretty quickly. I will be interested to know what is driving this time when people have dug into the numbers*.
* not suggesting anything dodgy, genuinely interested what it is that is driving it.
Trade deficit up to 7.0 billion too, widened by £4.5 billion
Rising trade deficit alongside economic growth would suggest increased private spending. See USA for an example. So this appears to be private sector rather than government led (govt spending growth doesn’t generally expand the trade deficit).
There is so much stored up cash available to be splurged, that just a year or two of no crisis should give consumers the rationale they need.
The Trump war in Iran will probably nix that. I listened to a podcast interview with Andy Haldane who said the same as you. Basically economy in good shape and ready to go.
I think @numbertwelve may have gone a bit far with their reshuffle - I wouldn’t have Burnham anywhere near Downing Street - but now does seem the ideal time to have a spring clean in Cabinet…
The economic figures are relatively good. On Iran most of the country are in agreement it’s a fool’s run and we’re well to stay out of it. The Greens and Reform are posing electoral and political challenges but are untested. Is now the correct time to change leader? Why not reshuffle the Cabinet, bring Rayner back in (maybe even drop Streeting), and tell Burnham to wait his turn and make sure that Manchester is secure from any electoral threat?
Put simply, “We were out of office for 14 years and before that there was the global financial crisis. We were wrong to let you think we could turn it around so quickly but after 2 years, there are some green lights on the dashboard.
To what question is Angela Rayner the answer, seriously?
She was the housing minister for two years, oversaw a steep drop in housing starts, no legislation to make planning or building regs easier, and then had to resign over screwing up her own housing arrangements to the tune of £40k in tax.
£40k which she’s now managed to find under the mattress despite a huge drop in salary.
Hoping for some common sense from the MPs, when deciding who to nominate.
Ed Miliband goes in the same bucket, everything he’s done as a minister has held the country back.
Which parts of the Building Regulations do you want to make “easier”?
About the last three decades of them.
Also make modular homes and US-style wooden houses mortgageable.
So basically you don’t know and that was just a vacuous statement of hope and dreams as per our politicians.
And on mortgages, you want to put more regulations in place to force banks to mortgage wooden and modular homes? There is a huge contradiction there.
What amazing drama with her being cleared today . The fact is she didn’t receive a penalty and they accepted it was a mistake. People can disagree on that but it’s great news as far as I’m concerned . I’ve always been a fan of her and she may well be a marmite figure but she might just save us from Miliband .
The public are unlikely to be as impressed.
I do think Rayner plays an important role in the Labour Party and I do think she is clear to return to government now, but I remain unconvinced that a leadership run or Rayner PM-ship will be welcomed by the public at large.
To what question is Angela Rayner the answer, seriously?
She was the housing minister for two years, oversaw a steep drop in housing starts, no legislation to make planning or building regs easier, and then had to resign over screwing up her own housing arrangements to the tune of £40k in tax.
£40k which she’s now managed to find under the mattress despite a huge drop in salary.
Hoping for some common sense from the MPs, when deciding who to nominate.
Ed Miliband goes in the same bucket, everything he’s done as a minister has held the country back.
Though if you are honest you would say that any Labour candidate has held the country back. It isn’t about you. Or m me. Or the bond markets.
This is now a beauty parade for morons. Labour members - like Tory members before them - now get to choose based on their narrow perceptions of what good looks like.
Well yes, I’d say that I prefer Kemi Badenoch over any of the options Labour are likely to give their members; but given that option isn’t going to be on the table, someone who isn’t going to totally screw up the finances would be a good starting point!
Anecdotal evidence I know, but a couple of friends in the UK have started to ask me about the geopolitical situation in the sandpit, and I suspect it isn’t because they’re worried about me being hit by an Iranian drone. Not rich people, but middle-class entrepreneurial types.
So exactly as it was under the Tories then. The simple truth is that Labour and the Tories have screwed the economy. Being able to recognise that is the start of the recovery process.
You say someone who isn’t going to totally screw up the finances - so not the Tories then who did just that.
Last years economic growth was 1.4% with 0.6% Q1 this year. I wouldn't say that was spectacular but neither is it "screwed".
Thats not to say that there aren't economic problems, but that looks reasonably good when looking at other mature economies.
Yes and no. The problem is we need about 2% growth to really stand still against the general expectation of what the state will provide. And we haven't had that consitently for 25 years. And aside from the US, all other Western economies have struggled with the same issue.
It’s interesting challenge. Do parties go for someone who appeals to their base like Miliband or Badenoch or do they go with someone with broader appeal like Cameron or Blair? It’s a question of timing.
I think with the split into five parties the temptation to look to consolidate core support has to be very strong.
29% could well be enough to win a comfortable majority at the next GE, but it would historically be regarded as being reduced to the bedrock of core support.
The challenge for Labour is to be able to win over their base while also dealing with the realities of the problems faced in government. This is primarily a challenge of political storytelling rather than political positioning I think.
I’ve said this all along, Labour’s policies under Starmer should have pretty broad appeal with the kinds of voters they want to win. But Starmer has been unable to communicate that to the public.
Labour could do some basic stuff like create a £20bn fund over 2 years (stop wasting money on Welfare) to fund pothole repairs.
That could all be done by the next General Election, and it'd be noticed in hundreds of constituencies.
They need to address the enshittification, tell a story, and can then run on a "Don't Let Reform Ruin It" platform.
Well quite. Enshittification is the daily reminder to people how politics has failed them. No matter who they vote for or how much tax they pay or how hard they work, their community looks to be crumbling to ruin. Then add in the constant "these brown people get £5k off the government to open a shop selling drugs" nonsense and here we are.
Start with the basics. We are giving all councils a legal directive to fix their shit - here's the money, just do it. We are giving a directive to all police forces to focus their attention on theft, vandalism and ASB with extra resources handed to the forces who have the most immediate impact on numbers. And we're going to bring back the super-deduction for investment. Get on with it.
Labour could do some basic stuff like create a £20bn fund over 2 years (stop wasting money on Welfare) to fund pothole repairs.
That could all be done by the next General Election, and it'd be noticed in hundreds of constituencies.
They need to address the enshittification, tell a story, and can then run on a "Don't Let Reform Ruin It" platform.
Reform will definitely be running on the enshittification and potholes.
In Los Angeles there’s an independent guy running for mayor called Spencer Pratt. He’s unlikely to win, but he’s a really good communicator who lost his house in a big fire last year, and is running on cleaning up the city and getting it moving again.
It’s easy to see his campaign, full of straight talking about day-to-day problems seeming obvious to everyone except the political class, being a model used by others in the future.
I’m sure Reform will deliver enshittification and potholes, but it seems an odd manifesto to run on.
Growth has mildly outperformed expectations more often than not in recent years recently, under both governments. Not stellar, but better than you’d think from the headlines. The British mentality remains relentlessly negative. Which in turn holds back investment and consumer spending.
Yes, the gloom is way overdone. Our country has problems but a lot of strengths too.
Just a sign of the widespread, and inexplicable to me, Western dissatisfaction.
"The country is f*cked', 'worst government ever', etc. etc. And much of this from people who lived through the 70s, for example. By any set objective measures we are immeasurably better off than we were then.
A large part of the problem is increasing inequality by age and geography.
Returns on capital are far better than on working, so the benefits of growth are accruing to those with assets rather than the wider population. So we see billionaires with superyachts while everyone else is struggling to pay the bills.
What amazing drama with her being cleared today . The fact is she didn’t receive a penalty and they accepted it was a mistake. People can disagree on that but it’s great news as far as I’m concerned . I’ve always been a fan of her and she may well be a marmite figure but she might just save us from Miliband .
The thing that screwed her wasn't the tax issue, it was complicated situation and actually there was a bit of sympathy for it. It was that she then went and did things like soft soap Beth Ribgy interview and told some porkies, that then lead into some more porkies, ultimiately came to head with trying to chuck lawyers under the bus and of course the lawyers turned around with the receipts and said no we didn't do what you claimed.
Impressive HMRC agreed that the actual Housing Secretary could not be assumed to be a competant person to carry out a housing transaction legally, and despite lying about receiving advice there was no ill intent.
I think @numbertwelve may have gone a bit far with their reshuffle - I wouldn’t have Burnham anywhere near Downing Street - but now does seem the ideal time to have a spring clean in Cabinet…
The economic figures are relatively good. On Iran most of the country are in agreement it’s a fool’s run and we’re well to stay out of it. The Greens and Reform are posing electoral and political challenges but are untested. Is now the correct time to change leader? Why not reshuffle the Cabinet, bring Rayner back in (maybe even drop Streeting), and tell Burnham to wait his turn and make sure that Manchester is secure from any electoral threat?
Put simply, “We were out of office for 14 years and before that there was the global financial crisis. We were wrong to let you think we could turn it around so quickly but after 2 years, there are some green lights on the dashboard.
And we’ve got breakfast clubs…”
It's too late for that. 90-odd MPs have already said Starmer should go. There's no coming back from that.
To what question is Angela Rayner the answer, seriously?
She was the housing minister for two years, oversaw a steep drop in housing starts, no legislation to make planning or building regs easier, and then had to resign over screwing up her own housing arrangements to the tune of £40k in tax.
£40k which she’s now managed to find under the mattress despite a huge drop in salary.
Hoping for some common sense from the MPs, when deciding who to nominate.
Ed Miliband goes in the same bucket, everything he’s done as a minister has held the country back.
Has she actually paid it back?
IIRC it was a timing issue and she was out by 9 months or so. From my (personal) experience of HMRC, I wouldn’t be surprised if once they were satisfied it wasn’t deliberate tax evasion and she hadn’t actually made a significant gain from it (she could face just waited a few months), they might have settled for less.
To what question is Angela Rayner the answer, seriously?
She was the housing minister for two years, oversaw a steep drop in housing starts, no legislation to make planning or building regs easier, and then had to resign over screwing up her own housing arrangements to the tune of £40k in tax.
£40k which she’s now managed to find under the mattress despite a huge drop in salary.
Hoping for some common sense from the MPs, when deciding who to nominate.
Ed Miliband goes in the same bucket, everything he’s done as a minister has held the country back.
Which parts of the Building Regulations do you want to make “easier”?
About the last three decades of them.
Also make modular homes and US-style wooden houses mortgageable.
So basically you don’t know and that was just a vacuous statement of hope and dreams as per our politicians.
And on mortgages, you want to put more regulations in place to force banks to mortgage wooden and modular homes? There is a huge contradiction there.
I suspect such homes are not mortgageable on the whole outside of specialist lenders because there is not a huge market for them in the UK from buyers. The British people don’t want prefab or wooden homes. They want bricks and mortar and the market reflects that.
What amazing drama with her being cleared today . The fact is she didn’t receive a penalty and they accepted it was a mistake. People can disagree on that but it’s great news as far as I’m concerned . I’ve always been a fan of her and she may well be a marmite figure but she might just save us from Miliband .
The public are unlikely to be as impressed.
I do think Rayner plays an important role in the Labour Party and I do think she is clear to return to government now, but I remain unconvinced that a leadership run or Rayner PM-ship will be welcomed by the public at large.
As opposed to Farage pocketing 5 million pounds .
The fact is she was cleared by HMRC . If Starmer hangs on then I expect her to be back in the cabinet quickly .
Value in laying Kier to survive the 3rd quarter? Wes backing off, Rayner and Ed M loyal and Burnham running around like the F1 driver with the worst agent ever.
I still think this will all likely blow over and Keir remains leader into 2028
20s to be replaced 28, lay at 1.8 to make October, 1.4 to make the year.
At this point it's a mexican standoff, Wes loses to Ange, Ange loses to Kier (Andy backs him), Wes loses to Kier (Andy backs him), Kier blocks Andy.
Value in laying Kier to survive the 3rd quarter? Wes backing off, Rayner and Ed M loyal and Burnham running around like the F1 driver with the worst agent ever.
I still think this will all likely blow over and Keir remains leader into 2028
20s to be replaced 28, lay at 1.8 to make October, 1.4 to make the year.
At this point it's a mexican standoff, Wes loses to Ange, Ange loses to Kier (Andy backs him), Wes loses to Kier (Andy backs him), Kier blocks Andy.
Growth has mildly outperformed expectations more often than not in recent years recently, under both governments. Not stellar, but better than you’d think from the headlines. The British mentality remains relentlessly negative. Which in turn holds back investment and consumer spending.
Last years early year bump when people who know looked into the numbers was driven big load of new government spending and hence why it then went away pretty quickly. I will be interested to know what is driving this time when people have dug into the numbers*.
* not suggesting anything dodgy, genuinely interested what it is that is driving it. Yes the ONS will say to the media construction or retail, but normally it takes a day or two for eggheads to really look at things to pinpoint what it is.
The economy is highly sectionalised. In some areas, people are doing well. But the massive inflation of the cost of doing many things has massively shrunk the group who feel well off.
Beyond that, you have a large number of people who feel they are just working to live - nothing left over after bills.
I think that is very true. I know quite a few people who work in London and used to commute in every day. Now they all moved further away from London, sold up for a load of dosh and got cheaper housing, mostly WFH, and go in a couple of days a week. And they are basically yes its costs a lot more for my 2 days in the office, but that is more than need up for given I still get London salary and don't spend much on days I WFH.
Growth has mildly outperformed expectations more often than not in recent years recently, under both governments. Not stellar, but better than you’d think from the headlines. The British mentality remains relentlessly negative. Which in turn holds back investment and consumer spending.
Yes, the gloom is way overdone. Our country has problems but a lot of strengths too.
Just a sign of the widespread, and inexplicable to me, Western dissatisfaction.
"The country is f*cked', 'worst government ever', etc. etc. And much of this from people who lived through the 70s, for example. By any set objective measures we are immeasurably better off than we were then.
A generation that defined itself as The Youth, and against The Old, has reached the stage where their oldness is impossible to deny.
A generation that has made the "now" that we currently live in doesn't like the consequences of their decisions.
So they look for a scapegoat. It's not the only problem, but it's why the problems never get solved. Because the underlying problem, the "what do you really want to happen?" problem, doesn't have a solution.
I think @numbertwelve may have gone a bit far with their reshuffle - I wouldn’t have Burnham anywhere near Downing Street - but now does seem the ideal time to have a spring clean in Cabinet…
The economic figures are relatively good. On Iran most of the country are in agreement it’s a fool’s run and we’re well to stay out of it. The Greens and Reform are posing electoral and political challenges but are untested. Is now the correct time to change leader? Why not reshuffle the Cabinet, bring Rayner back in (maybe even drop Streeting), and tell Burnham to wait his turn and make sure that Manchester is secure from any electoral threat?
Put simply, “We were out of office for 14 years and before that there was the global financial crisis. We were wrong to let you think we could turn it around so quickly but after 2 years, there are some green lights on the dashboard.
And we’ve got breakfast clubs…”
I don’t think that works because it continues to block Burnham from playing a role in government - and that’s really what a lot of the rebel MPs are hankering after.
If he wants to reinvent his government and really shore up his position, he needs to bring Burnham into the tent. If he doesn’t, a challenge at some point is inevitable I think.
We just need Streeting to be sunk by a Miliband-style picture of him munching on a cream cheese bagel and we can finally have the Streeting of Philadelphia headline...
To what question is Angela Rayner the answer, seriously?
She was the housing minister for two years, oversaw a steep drop in housing starts, no legislation to make planning or building regs easier, and then had to resign over screwing up her own housing arrangements to the tune of £40k in tax.
£40k which she’s now managed to find under the mattress despite a huge drop in salary.
Hoping for some common sense from the MPs, when deciding who to nominate.
Ed Miliband goes in the same bucket, everything he’s done as a minister has held the country back.
Though if you are honest you would say that any Labour candidate has held the country back. It isn’t about you. Or m me. Or the bond markets.
This is now a beauty parade for morons. Labour members - like Tory members before them - now get to choose based on their narrow perceptions of what good looks like.
We chose Liz Truss, Labour members will do the same and the country will suffer.
Streeting really needs to have a long and hard think before resigning and attempting to trigger a leadership race. He may have good intentions and pledge to keep to the fiscal rules and work within the limits of what markets will allow but Rishi ran the same race and Tory members voted for fantasy economics with Truss. How will Labour party members avoid the same fate when at least 3 of the 4 potential runners will be proposing more borrowing and more OpEx spending?
Value in laying Kier to survive the 3rd quarter? Wes backing off, Rayner and Ed M loyal and Burnham running around like the F1 driver with the worst agent ever.
I still think this will all likely blow over and Keir remains leader into 2028
20s to be replaced 28, lay at 1.8 to make October, 1.4 to make the year.
At this point it's a mexican standoff, Wes loses to Ange, Ange loses to Kier (Andy backs him), Wes loses to Kier (Andy backs him), Kier blocks Andy.
So...can they all just fuck off and govern Mexico?
Growth has mildly outperformed expectations more often than not in recent years recently, under both governments. Not stellar, but better than you’d think from the headlines. The British mentality remains relentlessly negative. Which in turn holds back investment and consumer spending.
Yes, the gloom is way overdone. Our country has problems but a lot of strengths too.
Just a sign of the widespread, and inexplicable to me, Western dissatisfaction.
"The country is f*cked', 'worst government ever', etc. etc. And much of this from people who lived through the 70s, for example. By any set objective measures we are immeasurably better off than we were then.
Are you guys for real?
In 2003, as a 22 year old single income graduate I was able to buy a 3-bedroom house in Exeter - and I didn't have to pay a 9% graduate tax. Tell me again how life is better for today's graduates?
There are loads of other objective measures of how the state of the country has declined.
I really hope Rayner stands . The first female Labour PM with a great backstory and someone who can really connect with the public .
No-one has cared about this "first identity politics individual" stuff for about 20 years.
Today, we care about competence.
True enough, never heard a peep from the PB Tories about Labour’s female leader deficit. Mind you, Liz Truss has probably encouraged a period of silence on the subject.
What amazing drama with her being cleared today . The fact is she didn’t receive a penalty and they accepted it was a mistake. People can disagree on that but it’s great news as far as I’m concerned . I’ve always been a fan of her and she may well be a marmite figure but she might just save us from Miliband .
The public are unlikely to be as impressed.
I do think Rayner plays an important role in the Labour Party and I do think she is clear to return to government now, but I remain unconvinced that a leadership run or Rayner PM-ship will be welcomed by the public at large.
As opposed to Farage pocketing 5 million pounds .
The fact is she was cleared by HMRC . If Starmer hangs on then I expect her to be back in the cabinet quickly .
I agreed that she will return to cabinet. But I do not see a leadership run - that’s my view of the situation.
Growth has mildly outperformed expectations more often than not in recent years recently, under both governments. Not stellar, but better than you’d think from the headlines. The British mentality remains relentlessly negative. Which in turn holds back investment and consumer spending.
Yes, the gloom is way overdone. Our country has problems but a lot of strengths too.
Just a sign of the widespread, and inexplicable to me, Western dissatisfaction.
"The country is f*cked', 'worst government ever', etc. etc. And much of this from people who lived through the 70s, for example. By any set objective measures we are immeasurably better off than we were then.
A large part of the problem is increasing inequality by age and geography.
Returns on capital are far better than on working, so the benefits of growth are accruing to those with assets rather than the wider population. So we see billionaires with superyachts while everyone else is struggling to pay the bills.
I think we need to drop the “billionaires” thing. My own relatives, who aren’t stunningly rich, have made loads of cash from inheritance and house price inflation.
Even I have tbh - owning a flat in Edinburgh has been highly lucrative, and I’m also making significant gains from my ISA, protected by the ludicrously high annual allowance.
Bin NICs, CGT on property, drop ISA allowance to £5k.
I would not support a Labour Party lead by Angela Rayner.
Me neither. Can’t say Reform or anyone else will get my vote but I won’t vote Labour next time. Voted for them at every election since 87 although not always voted Labour in European or locals.
To sum up, you voted Labour in 2017 and 2019 when led by the Marxist Corbyn but Rayner is beyond the pale for you. Bizarre.
I would not vote for Corbyn Labour now. That was a mistake.
I voted for Corbyn. And Brexit. And Milliband.
There is consistency in those positions. After the crash we couldn't go on with Blairite globalisation - we needed significant reforms. And the further from that the more I cast around for fresh ideas and perspectives until I realised just how far down the rabbit hole I had gone. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa and all that.
But the need for mega changes is bigger than ever. Which is how the Tories ended up flailing around for direction even worse than I did and we now this leadership drama and Reformgreen stamping their authority.
My problem with Rayner is that her wing of the Labour movement don't seem to understand that government isn't the whole solution. Create the framework for business and industry, don't take over everything. And the unions? People aren't working effectively. Stop demanding extra cash for shit performance and start demanding training and career development so that their members can drive the growth that delivers direct rewards to their lives.
To what question is Angela Rayner the answer, seriously?
She was the housing minister for two years, oversaw a steep drop in housing starts, no legislation to make planning or building regs easier, and then had to resign over screwing up her own housing arrangements to the tune of £40k in tax.
£40k which she’s now managed to find under the mattress despite a huge drop in salary.
Hoping for some common sense from the MPs, when deciding who to nominate.
Ed Miliband goes in the same bucket, everything he’s done as a minister has held the country back.
Which parts of the Building Regulations do you want to make “easier”?
About the last three decades of them.
Also make modular homes and US-style wooden houses mortgageable.
So basically you don’t know and that was just a vacuous statement of hope and dreams as per our politicians.
And on mortgages, you want to put more regulations in place to force banks to mortgage wooden and modular homes? There is a huge contradiction there.
Try this as a simple example
Loft conversion on a terraced house.
You take out the roof, put in a steel frame to hold up the new roof shape *and protect the neighbouring houses*
I put in a fuckton of steel in. Hundreds of percent of structural margin.
Building control didn’t come round until the steel was covered.
So they looked at the plans and nodded. Could have been drop forged Wensleydale in there for all they knew.
The mountain of paperwork doesn’t matter a dog scratch. What counts is what is built.
I’ve seen blocks of flats where the paperwork, if you printed it, would weigh metric tons. But physical concrete sample tests weren’t done. So they had all the bullshit, but reality was utterly different.
To what question is Angela Rayner the answer, seriously?
She was the housing minister for two years, oversaw a steep drop in housing starts, no legislation to make planning or building regs easier, and then had to resign over screwing up her own housing arrangements to the tune of £40k in tax.
£40k which she’s now managed to find under the mattress despite a huge drop in salary.
Hoping for some common sense from the MPs, when deciding who to nominate.
Ed Miliband goes in the same bucket, everything he’s done as a minister has held the country back.
Which parts of the Building Regulations do you want to make “easier”?
About the last three decades of them.
Also make modular homes and US-style wooden houses mortgageable.
So basically you don’t know and that was just a vacuous statement of hope and dreams as per our politicians.
And on mortgages, you want to put more regulations in place to force banks to mortgage wooden and modular homes? There is a huge contradiction there.
Construction lawyer loves regulation. Well I’m stunned.
Asking for reform to make it easier to build, something the govt committed to do, is not unreasonable to expect them to do something. It is odd to expect a layman to have the fine detail.
Still we can carry on as we are and keep getting what we’re getting.
Reform of this may help, Sunak tried and was blocked for political reasons.
Value in laying Kier to survive the 3rd quarter? Wes backing off, Rayner and Ed M loyal and Burnham running around like the F1 driver with the worst agent ever.
I still think this will all likely blow over and Keir remains leader into 2028
20s to be replaced 28, lay at 1.8 to make October, 1.4 to make the year.
At this point it's a mexican standoff, Wes loses to Ange, Ange loses to Kier (Andy backs him), Wes loses to Kier (Andy backs him), Kier blocks Andy.
So...can they all just fuck off and govern Mexico?
Perhaps they could govern here? Still no idea what Charlie announced on Wednesday thanks to Wes.
If Rayner does get the nominations to run then Labour members polls show she would beat Starmer and Streeting. However that would be great news for Farage, as a Peston poll of voters for ITV last night showed Farage performed better against Rayner as preferred PM than he did against Burnham, Streeting or even Starmer. Her tax and spend, class war agenda is not popular with swing voters
To what question is Angela Rayner the answer, seriously?
She was the housing minister for two years, oversaw a steep drop in housing starts, no legislation to make planning or building regs easier, and then had to resign over screwing up her own housing arrangements to the tune of £40k in tax.
£40k which she’s now managed to find under the mattress despite a huge drop in salary.
Hoping for some common sense from the MPs, when deciding who to nominate.
Ed Miliband goes in the same bucket, everything he’s done as a minister has held the country back.
Which parts of the Building Regulations do you want to make “easier”?
About the last three decades of them.
Also make modular homes and US-style wooden houses mortgageable.
So basically you don’t know and that was just a vacuous statement of hope and dreams as per our politicians.
And on mortgages, you want to put more regulations in place to force banks to mortgage wooden and modular homes? There is a huge contradiction there.
No, I’m saying that almost nothing good has come out of building regulations since 1997. As @Malmesbury said, there’s piles of paperwork, and hundreds of compliance standards for efficiency and environmental impacts, most of which are mostly observed in the breach and penalise good builders in favour of bad builders.
On ‘temporary’ homes, what’s required is some sort of industry insurance scheme that certifies them for 50 years, underwritten by government.
A standard three-bed, 1,000sqft house should cost £100k to build, plus the land and infrastructure works. The government should be finding every parcel of land they can and facilitating the building a couple of million of them per year. Planning regulations should be torn up to facilitate this.
That’s how you solve a housing shortage, just as happened after WWII.
Pretty much everything else in the economy gets better quickly if housing becomes affordable again.
If Rayner does get the nominations to run then Labour members polls show she would beat Starmer and Streeting. However that would be great news for Farage, as a Peston poll of voters for ITV last night showed Farage performed better against Rayner as preferred PM than he did against Burnham, Streeting or even Starmer. Her tax and spend, class war agenda is not popular with swing voters
I may be being completely naïve here but surely Streeting would not have acted the way he has if he was not very confident he had the numbers for a challenge. Even by Labour party standards that would be totally brainless.
For all those of us who DON'T have a NS subscription, an AI summary of the text in that article is:
"...The recent election results reflect a long-standing sentiment among working people that the system is failing them. Issues such as deindustrialization, austerity, Brexit, and COVID-19 contributed to widespread feelings of insecurity. People believe that working hard should guarantee a stable life, but economic and community instability prevents that. Carns argues that the interconnectedness of defence, economy, healthcare, and education underscores the fragility of the nation. Simplistic solutions from figures like Nigel Farage are appealing because they exploit those disillusioned by politics. But these proposals lack serious plans for the country's recovery and can lead to further division without addressing the root causes of insecurity faced by families..."
In short, it's an article that is too long on sentiment and far too short on policies that will fix this. I don't care that he was in the Marines and can kick the crap out of me, he should have his arse slapped for such a lazy article. I KNOW PEOPLE ARE INSECURE AND THAT FARAGE IS OFFERING SIMPLISTIC SOLUTIONS. NOW TELL ME HOW TO FIX IT.
@TheScreamingEagles@TSE@rcs1000 , what's the site position on AI summaries of paywalled articles? I know cut-and-paste isn't allowed, but are AI summaries?
Not allowed
1) Bypasses paywalls
2) AI produces crap
3) Too much AI content and Vanilla thinks you're a spammer abd takes appropriate action.
There are probably an awful lot of taxpayers under investigation at the moment who wish they could just have a flunky call up the HMRC officer and............ get things resolved in one phone call.
I may be being completely naïve here but surely Streeting would not have acted the way he has if he was not very confident he had the numbers for a challenge. Even by Labour party standards that would be totally brainless.
Labour standards? He’s just following Cleverley’s example.
Streeting has higher net favourables than Rayner, Ed Miliband and Farage, Lowe and Badenoch and Polanski there as well as Starmer, though still worse than Burnham and tied with Cooper
I may be being completely naïve here but surely Streeting would not have acted the way he has if he was not very confident he had the numbers for a challenge. Even by Labour party standards that would be totally brainless.
He might have the numbers but I can’t see anyway he wins now . The membership will vote for any soft left candidate against him. If he was just up against Starmer then he’d have a chance .
Very impressive from the King of the North. Given those ratings, its absurd to think he wouldn't win most Manchester by-elections despite the council elections - indeed a big part of Labour doing badly in Manchester was the lack of consideration given to their King by the party leadership in Westeros.
Growth has mildly outperformed expectations more often than not in recent years recently, under both governments. Not stellar, but better than you’d think from the headlines. The British mentality remains relentlessly negative. Which in turn holds back investment and consumer spending.
Yes, the gloom is way overdone. Our country has problems but a lot of strengths too.
Just a sign of the widespread, and inexplicable to me, Western dissatisfaction.
"The country is f*cked', 'worst government ever', etc. etc. And much of this from people who lived through the 70s, for example. By any set objective measures we are immeasurably better off than we were then.
A large part of the problem is increasing inequality by age and geography.
Returns on capital are far better than on working, so the benefits of growth are accruing to those with assets rather than the wider population. So we see billionaires with superyachts while everyone else is struggling to pay the bills.
Everyone else ???
I'm not and I bet you're not and I doubt many PBers are.
Likewise many/most of us will be financial asset owners as well.
The divide between those doing well and those struggling is a lot lower than the billionaire level.
I may be being completely naïve here but surely Streeting would not have acted the way he has if he was not very confident he had the numbers for a challenge. Even by Labour party standards that would be totally brainless.
That's one explanation. The other is that he really wants to be PM, his best chance is now, and he's faking it until he makes it.
The risk with that strategy is that the bandwagon never starts to roll under its own power, but it was a risk worth taking for personal ambition.
I may be being completely naïve here but surely Streeting would not have acted the way he has if he was not very confident he had the numbers for a challenge. Even by Labour party standards that would be totally brainless.
That's one explanation. The other is that he really wants to be PM, his best chance is now, and he's faking it until he makes it.
The risk with that strategy is that the bandwagon never starts to roll under its own power, but it was a risk worth taking for personal ambition.
See also Andy "totally got a seat to run in" Burnham.
Out of interest, why do broadcasters all seem to use ths obscure Labour patois where Streeting is deemed right wing and what most people would consider far left nutters are 'the soft left'?
Very impressive from the King of the North. Given those ratings, its absurd to think he wouldn't win most Manchester by-elections despite the council elections - indeed a big part of Labour doing badly in Manchester was the lack of consideration given to their King by the party leadership in Westeros.
On the face of it, it’s impressive for Starmer too. Basically any Labour leader beats Farage easily in a 1:1.
I guess this is where the rationale comes from for a left-wing leader, because you need those left wind voters to actually get up and vote for Labour to beat Reform. A Cooper or a Streeting or a Starmer is not going to do that.
I may be being completely naïve here but surely Streeting would not have acted the way he has if he was not very confident he had the numbers for a challenge. Even by Labour party standards that would be totally brainless.
He’s in a lose lose situation now I think.
He probably does just need to go for it. Even if he loses the political wilderness doesn’t tend to last forever and if he loses he possibly becomes the “look what you could have had” candidate for the future.
But I don’t think he’s got a route to the top job in any contest held now.
Given that the collective Labour Party tends to be lacking in vertebrae, I think there’s a bigger chance he meekly backs down in return for keeping his job (though if I were SKS I’d probably end up sacking him in due course).
If Rayner does get the nominations to run then Labour members polls show she would beat Starmer and Streeting. However that would be great news for Farage, as a Peston poll of voters for ITV last night showed Farage performed better against Rayner as preferred PM than he did against Burnham, Streeting or even Starmer. Her tax and spend, class war agenda is not popular with swing voters
That polling was done before she’d been cleared .
Her tax and spend, class war agenda is the same as it was yesterday regardless
To what question is Angela Rayner the answer, seriously?
She was the housing minister for two years, oversaw a steep drop in housing starts, no legislation to make planning or building regs easier, and then had to resign over screwing up her own housing arrangements to the tune of £40k in tax.
£40k which she’s now managed to find under the mattress despite a huge drop in salary.
Hoping for some common sense from the MPs, when deciding who to nominate.
Ed Miliband goes in the same bucket, everything he’s done as a minister has held the country back.
Has she actually paid it back?
IIRC it was a timing issue and she was out by 9 months or so. From my (personal) experience of HMRC, I wouldn’t be surprised if once they were satisfied it wasn’t deliberate tax evasion and she hadn’t actually made a significant gain from it (she could face just waited a few months), they might have settled for less.
Yes it was reported this morning that she had paid the bill.
Very impressive from the King of the North. Given those ratings, its absurd to think he wouldn't win most Manchester by-elections despite the council elections - indeed a big part of Labour doing badly in Manchester was the lack of consideration given to their King by the party leadership in Westeros.
On the face of it, it’s impressive for Starmer too. Basically any Labour leader beats Farage easily in a 1:1.
I guess this is where the rationale comes from for a left-wing leader, because you need those left wind voters to actually get up and vote for Labour to beat Reform. A Cooper or a Streeting or a Starmer is not going to do that.
Starmer was a left wing leader until he had to balance the budgets......expect the same for whoever comes in next
Out of interest, why do broadcasters all seem to use ths obscure Labour patois where Streeting is deemed right wing and what most people would consider far left nutters are 'the soft left'?
Its the theory of relativity. Those "far left nutters" are actually quite moderate compared with the true left nutters. And their existence (despite the ongoing joke that is Your Party) makes Streeting right wing too.
Out of interest, why do broadcasters all seem to use ths obscure Labour patois where Streeting is deemed right wing and what most people would consider far left nutters are 'the soft left'?
There are also posters on here who consider that the UK has been consistently led by lefty liberals for the last thirty years.....
Out of interest, why do broadcasters all seem to use ths obscure Labour patois where Streeting is deemed right wing and what most people would consider far left nutters are 'the soft left'?
Its the theory of relativity. Those "far left nutters" are actually quite moderate compared with the true left nutters. And their existence (despite the ongoing joke that is Your Party) makes Streeting right wing too.
Just seems quite helpful framing for those particular nutters given many of the same broadcasters will feel quite comfortable calling the most popular party in the country far right
For all those of us who DON'T have a NS subscription, an AI summary of the text in that article is:
"...The recent election results reflect a long-standing sentiment among working people that the system is failing them. Issues such as deindustrialization, austerity, Brexit, and COVID-19 contributed to widespread feelings of insecurity. People believe that working hard should guarantee a stable life, but economic and community instability prevents that. Carns argues that the interconnectedness of defence, economy, healthcare, and education underscores the fragility of the nation. Simplistic solutions from figures like Nigel Farage are appealing because they exploit those disillusioned by politics. But these proposals lack serious plans for the country's recovery and can lead to further division without addressing the root causes of insecurity faced by families..."
In short, it's an article that is too long on sentiment and far too short on policies that will fix this. I don't care that he was in the Marines and can kick the crap out of me, he should have his arse slapped for such a lazy article. I KNOW PEOPLE ARE INSECURE AND THAT FARAGE IS OFFERING SIMPLISTIC SOLUTIONS. NOW TELL ME HOW TO FIX IT.
@TheScreamingEagles@TSE@rcs1000 , what's the site position on AI summaries of paywalled articles? I know cut-and-paste isn't allowed, but are AI summaries?
Not allowed
1) Bypasses paywalls
2) AI produces crap
3) Too much AI content and Vanilla thinks you're a spammer abd takes appropriate action.
I looked into this recently
Using a paywall bypass breaks the Copyright Designs and Patents Act, 1998 - which prohibits the use of “technological devices” to breach copyright. If you do it at home alone you’re still breaking the law but no one will ever catch you
Doing it then posting it on here would be quite public law breaking. So, a very sensible rule
To what question is Angela Rayner the answer, seriously?
She was the housing minister for two years, oversaw a steep drop in housing starts, no legislation to make planning or building regs easier, and then had to resign over screwing up her own housing arrangements to the tune of £40k in tax.
£40k which she’s now managed to find under the mattress despite a huge drop in salary.
Hoping for some common sense from the MPs, when deciding who to nominate.
Ed Miliband goes in the same bucket, everything he’s done as a minister has held the country back.
Rayner is the answer to those who want more welfare, more trade union power, more municipal socialism. more 'the lanyard class knows best'.
For all her 'interesting back story' I don't sense she has any interest in or any empathy towards people different to herself.
I may be being completely naïve here but surely Streeting would not have acted the way he has if he was not very confident he had the numbers for a challenge. Even by Labour party standards that would be totally brainless.
He’s in a lose lose situation now I think.
He probably does just need to go for it. Even if he loses the political wilderness doesn’t tend to last forever and if he loses he possibly becomes the “look what you could have had” candidate for the future.
But I don’t think he’s got a route to the top job in any contest held now.
Given that the collective Labour Party tends to be lacking in vertebrae, I think there’s a bigger chance he meekly backs down in return for keeping his job (though if I were SKS I’d probably end up sacking him in due course).
Yes, if he goes for it he's probably no worse off. Can maybe get foreign office and becomes the Rishi, if the winner becomes a Truss
Out of interest, why do broadcasters all seem to use ths obscure Labour patois where Streeting is deemed right wing and what most people would consider far left nutters are 'the soft left'?
Because the broadcasters ex GB News are not far right nutters.
I may be being completely naïve here but surely Streeting would not have acted the way he has if he was not very confident he had the numbers for a challenge. Even by Labour party standards that would be totally brainless.
He’s in a lose lose situation now I think.
He probably does just need to go for it. Even if he loses the political wilderness doesn’t tend to last forever and if he loses he possibly becomes the “look what you could have had” candidate for the future.
But I don’t think he’s got a route to the top job in any contest held now.
Given that the collective Labour Party tends to be lacking in vertebrae, I think there’s a bigger chance he meekly backs down in return for keeping his job (though if I were SKS I’d probably end up sacking him in due course).
I told you all over and over and over again before
DARREN JONES
Streeting has to stick or twist today - he is, as a few Labour commentators have pointed out - The next Clive Lewis
Rayner, if as reported , has got her HMRC pass...will be the left candidate (negating Miliband)
Mahmood - too right wing
Cooper - too wedded to the past
Burnham - as you'll all know, I simply don't rate him, see him as a chancer and if he can't get a seat and a by-election announced by next Tuesday could be dead in the water.
The dark horse is DARREN JONES
Very much a Cameron moment!
Young Photogenic Excellent Communicator Fiscally smart enough not to upset the Markets but to understand the left requirements Young enough but experienced enough to make all other Party leaders look "past it" Would have Ms Aggression for toast.
If he's not next Leader and PM, he's nailed on the be next Chancellor imho
To what question is Angela Rayner the answer, seriously?
She was the housing minister for two years, oversaw a steep drop in housing starts, no legislation to make planning or building regs easier, and then had to resign over screwing up her own housing arrangements to the tune of £40k in tax.
£40k which she’s now managed to find under the mattress despite a huge drop in salary.
Hoping for some common sense from the MPs, when deciding who to nominate.
Ed Miliband goes in the same bucket, everything he’s done as a minister has held the country back.
Has she actually paid it back?
IIRC it was a timing issue and she was out by 9 months or so. From my (personal) experience of HMRC, I wouldn’t be surprised if once they were satisfied it wasn’t deliberate tax evasion and she hadn’t actually made a significant gain from it (she could face just waited a few months), they might have settled for less.
Yes it was reported this morning that she had paid the bill.
Growth has mildly outperformed expectations more often than not in recent years recently, under both governments. Not stellar, but better than you’d think from the headlines. The British mentality remains relentlessly negative. Which in turn holds back investment and consumer spending.
Yes, the gloom is way overdone. Our country has problems but a lot of strengths too.
Just a sign of the widespread, and inexplicable to me, Western dissatisfaction.
"The country is f*cked', 'worst government ever', etc. etc. And much of this from people who lived through the 70s, for example. By any set objective measures we are immeasurably better off than we were then.
My theory is both we compare ourselves against the best in the world, similar to a social media effect, and because many smaller things are frustrating or bad despite costing more and more, it leads to pessimism - the low grade crappiness theory.
I told you all over and over and over again before
DARREN JONES
Streeting has to stick or twist today - he is, as a few Labour commentators have pointed out - The next Clive Lewis
Rayner, if as reported , has got her HMRC pass...will be the left candidate (negating Miliband)
Mahmood - too right wing
Cooper - too wedded to the past
Burnham - as you'll all know, I simply don't rate him, see him as a chancer and if he can't get a seat and a by-election announced by next Tuesday could be dead in the water.
The dark horse is DARREN JONES
Very much a Cameron moment!
Young Photogenic Excellent Communicator Fiscally smart enough not to upset the Markets but to understand the left requirements Young enough but experienced enough to make all other Party leaders look "past it" Would have Ms Aggression for toast.
If he's not next Leader and PM, he's nailed on the be next Chancellor imho
To what question is Angela Rayner the answer, seriously?
She was the housing minister for two years, oversaw a steep drop in housing starts, no legislation to make planning or building regs easier, and then had to resign over screwing up her own housing arrangements to the tune of £40k in tax.
£40k which she’s now managed to find under the mattress despite a huge drop in salary.
Hoping for some common sense from the MPs, when deciding who to nominate.
Ed Miliband goes in the same bucket, everything he’s done as a minister has held the country back.
Which parts of the Building Regulations do you want to make “easier”?
About the last three decades of them.
Also make modular homes and US-style wooden houses mortgageable.
So basically you don’t know and that was just a vacuous statement of hope and dreams as per our politicians.
And on mortgages, you want to put more regulations in place to force banks to mortgage wooden and modular homes? There is a huge contradiction there.
Construction lawyer loves regulation. Well I’m stunned.
Asking for reform to make it easier to build, something the govt committed to do, is not unreasonable to expect them to do something. It is odd to expect a layman to have the fine detail.
Still we can carry on as we are and keep getting what we’re getting.
Reform of this may help, Sunak tried and was blocked for political reasons.
I don’t love regulations at all so that is a misrepresentation. I just asked exactly what he wants to change, which is a fair question. Simply saying “I want reform!” Is meaningless.
Nutrient neutrality is a planning regulation not a building regulation and I have never been a fan of that.
To what question is Angela Rayner the answer, seriously?
She was the housing minister for two years, oversaw a steep drop in housing starts, no legislation to make planning or building regs easier, and then had to resign over screwing up her own housing arrangements to the tune of £40k in tax.
£40k which she’s now managed to find under the mattress despite a huge drop in salary.
Hoping for some common sense from the MPs, when deciding who to nominate.
Ed Miliband goes in the same bucket, everything he’s done as a minister has held the country back.
Which parts of the Building Regulations do you want to make “easier”?
About the last three decades of them.
Also make modular homes and US-style wooden houses mortgageable.
So basically you don’t know and that was just a vacuous statement of hope and dreams as per our politicians.
And on mortgages, you want to put more regulations in place to force banks to mortgage wooden and modular homes? There is a huge contradiction there.
No, I’m saying that almost nothing good has come out of building regulations since 1997. As @Malmesbury said, there’s piles of paperwork, and hundreds of compliance standards for efficiency and environmental impacts, most of which are mostly observed in the breach and penalise good builders in favour of bad builders.
On ‘temporary’ homes, what’s required is some sort of industry insurance scheme that certifies them for 50 years, underwritten by government.
A standard three-bed, 1,000sqft house should cost £100k to build, plus the land and infrastructure works. The government should be finding every parcel of land they can and facilitating the building a couple of million of them per year. Planning regulations should be torn up to facilitate this.
That’s how you solve a housing shortage, just as happened after WWII.
Pretty much everything else in the economy gets better quickly if housing becomes affordable again.
Fires in domestic residences are still going down, I believe. That's evidence of building regs doing something good.
To what question is Angela Rayner the answer, seriously?
She was the housing minister for two years, oversaw a steep drop in housing starts, no legislation to make planning or building regs easier, and then had to resign over screwing up her own housing arrangements to the tune of £40k in tax.
£40k which she’s now managed to find under the mattress despite a huge drop in salary.
Hoping for some common sense from the MPs, when deciding who to nominate.
Ed Miliband goes in the same bucket, everything he’s done as a minister has held the country back.
Which parts of the Building Regulations do you want to make “easier”?
About the last three decades of them.
Also make modular homes and US-style wooden houses mortgageable.
So basically you don’t know and that was just a vacuous statement of hope and dreams as per our politicians.
And on mortgages, you want to put more regulations in place to force banks to mortgage wooden and modular homes? There is a huge contradiction there.
No, I’m saying that almost nothing good has come out of building regulations since 1997. As @Malmesbury said, there’s piles of paperwork, and hundreds of compliance standards for efficiency and environmental impacts, most of which are mostly observed in the breach and penalise good builders in favour of bad builders.
On ‘temporary’ homes, what’s required is some sort of industry insurance scheme that certifies them for 50 years, underwritten by government.
A standard three-bed, 1,000sqft house should cost £100k to build, plus the land and infrastructure works. The government should be finding every parcel of land they can and facilitating the building a couple of million of them per year. Planning regulations should be torn up to facilitate this.
That’s how you solve a housing shortage, just as happened after WWII.
Pretty much everything else in the economy gets better quickly if housing becomes affordable again.
We also need a national effort to refurbish and renew all of the derelict housing. So many communities and large parts of some towns are semi-derelict with decaying housing stock owned by God knows who and left to decay. CPO the lot, have the LA refit them and regentrify the area.
I may be being completely naïve here but surely Streeting would not have acted the way he has if he was not very confident he had the numbers for a challenge. Even by Labour party standards that would be totally brainless.
He’s in a lose lose situation now I think.
He probably does just need to go for it. Even if he loses the political wilderness doesn’t tend to last forever and if he loses he possibly becomes the “look what you could have had” candidate for the future.
But I don’t think he’s got a route to the top job in any contest held now.
Given that the collective Labour Party tends to be lacking in vertebrae, I think there’s a bigger chance he meekly backs down in return for keeping his job (though if I were SKS I’d probably end up sacking him in due course).
I'm guessing he misjudged Starmer and thought that he would be standing down rather than fighting and wanted to make sure he got his hat in the ring. But if you don't have the support of 81 out of 400 your thinking that you are in with a chance is seriously delusional. I thought he was supposed to be the sane one?
Growth has mildly outperformed expectations more often than not in recent years recently, under both governments. Not stellar, but better than you’d think from the headlines. The British mentality remains relentlessly negative. Which in turn holds back investment and consumer spending.
Yes, the gloom is way overdone. Our country has problems but a lot of strengths too.
Just a sign of the widespread, and inexplicable to me, Western dissatisfaction.
"The country is f*cked', 'worst government ever', etc. etc. And much of this from people who lived through the 70s, for example. By any set objective measures we are immeasurably better off than we were then.
A large part of the problem is increasing inequality by age and geography.
Returns on capital are far better than on working, so the benefits of growth are accruing to those with assets rather than the wider population. So we see billionaires with superyachts while everyone else is struggling to pay the bills.
Everyone else ???
I'm not and I bet you're not and I doubt many PBers are.
Likewise many/most of us will be financial asset owners as well.
The divide between those doing well and those struggling is a lot lower than the billionaire level.
A bit of hyperbole, but a lot of people are struggling to pay their bills.
Age inequality in wealth is tremendous, and as a sixty-something I am part of that, albeit my wealth has accrued via savings from income rather than inheritance or house price inflation. It helps to have a talent for making money and modest tastes.
Growth has mildly outperformed expectations more often than not in recent years recently, under both governments. Not stellar, but better than you’d think from the headlines. The British mentality remains relentlessly negative. Which in turn holds back investment and consumer spending.
Yes, the gloom is way overdone. Our country has problems but a lot of strengths too.
Just a sign of the widespread, and inexplicable to me, Western dissatisfaction.
"The country is f*cked', 'worst government ever', etc. etc. And much of this from people who lived through the 70s, for example. By any set objective measures we are immeasurably better off than we were then.
A large part of the problem is increasing inequality by age and geography.
Returns on capital are far better than on working, so the benefits of growth are accruing to those with assets rather than the wider population. So we see billionaires with superyachts while everyone else is struggling to pay the bills.
I think we need to drop the “billionaires” thing. My own relatives, who aren’t stunningly rich, have made loads of cash from inheritance and house price inflation.
Even I have tbh - owning a flat in Edinburgh has been highly lucrative, and I’m also making significant gains from my ISA, protected by the ludicrously high annual allowance.
Bin NICs, CGT on property, drop ISA allowance to £5k.
Having an overall cap on ISAs - for example £100k in cash ISAs and another £100k in an investment ISA - would certainly be worth considering, capping the overall benefit in a similar way as was done for pensions. When ISAs (originally PEPs) were introduced, the intention was to provide an incentive for ordinary people to save relatively modest amounts, free of tax. No-one envisaged that decades later there would be middle-aged people using their accumulated allowance to shelter the income and capital gains from a £million or more of savings and investments from tax.
Growth has mildly outperformed expectations more often than not in recent years recently, under both governments. Not stellar, but better than you’d think from the headlines. The British mentality remains relentlessly negative. Which in turn holds back investment and consumer spending.
Yes, the gloom is way overdone. Our country has problems but a lot of strengths too.
Just a sign of the widespread, and inexplicable to me, Western dissatisfaction.
"The country is f*cked', 'worst government ever', etc. etc. And much of this from people who lived through the 70s, for example. By any set objective measures we are immeasurably better off than we were then.
We live in a 'victim culture'.
Those who are 'victims' get more entitlements, those who aren't get more responsibilities.
And if you're not complaining you're not a 'victim'.
To what question is Angela Rayner the answer, seriously?
She was the housing minister for two years, oversaw a steep drop in housing starts, no legislation to make planning or building regs easier, and then had to resign over screwing up her own housing arrangements to the tune of £40k in tax.
£40k which she’s now managed to find under the mattress despite a huge drop in salary.
Hoping for some common sense from the MPs, when deciding who to nominate.
Ed Miliband goes in the same bucket, everything he’s done as a minister has held the country back.
Which parts of the Building Regulations do you want to make “easier”?
About the last three decades of them.
Also make modular homes and US-style wooden houses mortgageable.
So basically you don’t know and that was just a vacuous statement of hope and dreams as per our politicians.
And on mortgages, you want to put more regulations in place to force banks to mortgage wooden and modular homes? There is a huge contradiction there.
Try this as a simple example
Loft conversion on a terraced house.
You take out the roof, put in a steel frame to hold up the new roof shape *and protect the neighbouring houses*
I put in a fuckton of steel in. Hundreds of percent of structural margin.
Building control didn’t come round until the steel was covered.
So they looked at the plans and nodded. Could have been drop forged Wensleydale in there for all they knew.
The mountain of paperwork doesn’t matter a dog scratch. What counts is what is built.
I’ve seen blocks of flats where the paperwork, if you printed it, would weigh metric tons. But physical concrete sample tests weren’t done. So they had all the bullshit, but reality was utterly different.
Right. I don’t disagree with anything you’ve said but I don’t understand your point. That’s an example of the regulations not being applied properly. It’s unclear how making them “easier” would fix that issue.
I have a bit of a crush on Rayner, but trying to not let that lead me to under estimate the risks of her leadership I'm still not confident in guessing how good or bad (nearly) anyone will be.
Policies might be good or bad but will change. General competence can be estimated but is often wildly wrong. Style and tone can be offputting but not always relevant to outcomes.
I just don't know. I do feel confident Streeting would lose to her and is sacked whoever becomes PM if not him.
Just finished my foraging expedition in the lovely unexpected sunshine
Gemma, our forager, gave us the remarkable information that just five little needles of a yew tree, if ingested, will very likely kill you. And it’s not a nice death. It’s notably painful, almost entirely irreversible once you eat them, the pain increases over hours and then you drop dead of a heart attack
Gemma also mentioned that when we all had a formal dinner last night she noted the owners of this impressive baronial hall - where we dined - had decorated the tables with green spring foliage. Including small branches of yew tree
Seeing this she half panicked and went around making sure none of the yew sprigs were poised over anyone’s plate, potentially dropping leaves (she found a couple of questionable placements)
It occurs to me this could be an excellent plot device in a thriller, if we have any thriller writers in the forum
Out of interest, why do broadcasters all seem to use ths obscure Labour patois where Streeting is deemed right wing and what most people would consider far left nutters are 'the soft left'?
There are also posters on here who consider that the UK has been consistently led by lefty liberals for the last thirty years.....
They'd be happier posting on ConHome, where almost everybody thinks that.
To what question is Angela Rayner the answer, seriously?
She was the housing minister for two years, oversaw a steep drop in housing starts, no legislation to make planning or building regs easier, and then had to resign over screwing up her own housing arrangements to the tune of £40k in tax.
£40k which she’s now managed to find under the mattress despite a huge drop in salary.
Hoping for some common sense from the MPs, when deciding who to nominate.
Ed Miliband goes in the same bucket, everything he’s done as a minister has held the country back.
Rayner is the answer to those who want more welfare, more trade union power, more municipal socialism. more 'the lanyard class knows best'.
For all her 'interesting back story' I don't sense she has any interest in or any empathy towards people different to herself.
Neither do I.
I don’t especially like her, her policy platform recently would be a disaster.
I suspect she’s a working class Everyman, or woman, to middle class people. Can’t see her really appealing to the red wall.
Comments
We'll be in safe hands if we need to go to war with the Nazis.
In all other respects...
The economic figures are relatively good. On Iran most of the country are in agreement it’s a fool’s run and we’re well to stay out of it. The Greens and Reform are posing electoral and political challenges but are untested. Is now the correct time to change leader? Why not reshuffle the Cabinet, bring Rayner back in (maybe even drop Streeting), and tell Burnham to wait his turn and make sure that Manchester is secure from any electoral threat?
Put simply, “We were out of office for 14 years and before that there was the global financial crisis. We were wrong to let you think we could turn it around so quickly but after 2 years, there are some green lights on the dashboard.
And we’ve got breakfast clubs…”
What a mess
I am not at all sure Rayner is the answer nor indeed any of the challengers
Maybe Starmer will limp on, damaged and with no authority but beggars cannot be choosers
I expect labour are looking at a one term government
And on mortgages, you want to put more regulations in place to force banks to mortgage wooden and modular homes? There is a huge contradiction there.
I do think Rayner plays an important role in the Labour Party and I do think she is clear to return to government now, but I remain unconvinced that a leadership run or Rayner PM-ship will be welcomed by the public at large.
Start with the basics. We are giving all councils a legal directive to fix their shit - here's the money, just do it. We are giving a directive to all police forces to focus their attention on theft, vandalism and ASB with extra resources handed to the forces who have the most immediate impact on numbers. And we're going to bring back the super-deduction for investment. Get on with it.
Returns on capital are far better than on working, so the benefits of growth are accruing to those with assets rather than the wider population. So we see billionaires with superyachts while everyone else is struggling to pay the bills.
IIRC it was a timing issue and she was out by 9 months or so. From my (personal) experience of HMRC, I wouldn’t be surprised if once they were satisfied it wasn’t deliberate tax evasion and she hadn’t actually made a significant gain from it (she could face just waited a few months), they might have settled for less.
The fact is she was cleared by HMRC . If Starmer hangs on then I expect her to be back in the cabinet quickly .
At this point it's a mexican standoff, Wes loses to Ange, Ange loses to Kier (Andy backs him), Wes loses to Kier (Andy backs him), Kier blocks Andy.
At this point it's a mexican standoff, Wes loses to Ange, Ange loses to Kier (Andy backs him), Wes loses to Kier (Andy backs him), Kier blocks Andy.
A generation that has made the "now" that we currently live in doesn't like the consequences of their decisions.
So they look for a scapegoat. It's not the only problem, but it's why the problems never get solved. Because the underlying problem, the "what do you really want to happen?" problem, doesn't have a solution.
If he wants to reinvent his government and really shore up his position, he needs to bring Burnham into the tent. If he doesn’t, a challenge at some point is inevitable I think.
Streeting really needs to have a long and hard think before resigning and attempting to trigger a leadership race. He may have good intentions and pledge to keep to the fiscal rules and work within the limits of what markets will allow but Rishi ran the same race and Tory members voted for fantasy economics with Truss. How will Labour party members avoid the same fate when at least 3 of the 4 potential runners will be proposing more borrowing and more OpEx spending?
In 2003, as a 22 year old single income graduate I was able to buy a 3-bedroom house in Exeter - and I didn't have to pay a 9% graduate tax. Tell me again how life is better for today's graduates?
There are loads of other objective measures of how the state of the country has declined.
Even I have tbh - owning a flat in Edinburgh has been highly lucrative, and I’m also making significant gains from my ISA, protected by the ludicrously high annual allowance.
Bin NICs, CGT on property, drop ISA allowance to £5k.
Farage criticised for backing preacher who says homosexuality is ‘abomination’
Reform UK leader records video with Essex pastor to support his battle against council banning order
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/may/14/farage-criticised-for-backing-preacher-who-says-homosexality-is-abomination
There is consistency in those positions. After the crash we couldn't go on with Blairite globalisation - we needed significant reforms. And the further from that the more I cast around for fresh ideas and perspectives until I realised just how far down the rabbit hole I had gone. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa and all that.
But the need for mega changes is bigger than ever. Which is how the Tories ended up flailing around for direction even worse than I did and we now this leadership drama and Reformgreen stamping their authority.
My problem with Rayner is that her wing of the Labour movement don't seem to understand that government isn't the whole solution. Create the framework for business and industry, don't take over everything. And the unions? People aren't working effectively. Stop demanding extra cash for shit performance and start demanding training and career development so that their members can drive the growth that delivers direct rewards to their lives.
Loft conversion on a terraced house.
You take out the roof, put in a steel frame to hold up the new roof shape *and protect the neighbouring houses*
I put in a fuckton of steel in. Hundreds of percent of structural margin.
Building control didn’t come round until the steel was covered.
So they looked at the plans and nodded. Could have been drop forged Wensleydale in there for all they knew.
The mountain of paperwork doesn’t matter a dog scratch. What counts is what is built.
I’ve seen blocks of flats where the paperwork, if you printed it, would weigh metric tons. But physical concrete sample tests weren’t done. So they had all the bullshit, but reality was utterly different.
Asking for reform to make it easier to build, something the govt committed to do, is not unreasonable to expect them to do something. It is odd to expect a layman to have the fine detail.
Still we can carry on as we are and keep getting what we’re getting.
Reform of this may help, Sunak tried and was blocked for political reasons.
https://www.hbf.co.uk/policy/campaigns-and-initiatives/nutrient-neutrality/
She may well be telling the truth. But the timing is suspicious to say the least
On ‘temporary’ homes, what’s required is some sort of industry insurance scheme that certifies them for 50 years, underwritten by government.
A standard three-bed, 1,000sqft house should cost £100k to build, plus the land and infrastructure works. The government should be finding every parcel of land they can and facilitating the building a couple of million of them per year. Planning regulations should be torn up to facilitate this.
That’s how you solve a housing shortage, just as happened after WWII.
Pretty much everything else in the economy gets better quickly if housing becomes affordable again.
1) Bypasses paywalls
2) AI produces crap
3) Too much AI content and Vanilla thinks you're a spammer abd takes appropriate action.
I'm not and I bet you're not and I doubt many PBers are.
Likewise many/most of us will be financial asset owners as well.
The divide between those doing well and those struggling is a lot lower than the billionaire level.
The risk with that strategy is that the bandwagon never starts to roll under its own power, but it was a risk worth taking for personal ambition.
I guess this is where the rationale comes from for a left-wing leader, because you need those left wind voters to actually get up and vote for Labour to beat Reform. A Cooper or a Streeting or a Starmer is not going to do that.
He probably does just need to go for it. Even if he loses the political wilderness doesn’t tend to last forever and if he loses he possibly becomes the “look what you could have had” candidate for the future.
But I don’t think he’s got a route to the top job in any contest held now.
Given that the collective Labour Party tends to be lacking in vertebrae, I think there’s a bigger chance he meekly backs down in return for keeping his job (though if I were SKS I’d probably end up sacking him in due course).
Using a paywall bypass breaks the Copyright Designs and Patents Act, 1998 - which prohibits the use of “technological devices” to breach copyright. If you do it at home alone you’re still breaking the law but no one will ever catch you
Doing it then posting it on here would be quite public law breaking. So, a very sensible rule
For all her 'interesting back story' I don't sense she has any interest in or any empathy towards people different to herself.
Q1 2026 G7:
🇬🇧 0.6%
🇺🇸 0.5%
🇨🇦 0.4%
🇩🇪 0.3%
🇮🇹 0.2%
🇫🇷 0%
🇯🇵 (not yet reported but estimates are 0.4%)
I told you all over and over and over again before
DARREN JONES
Streeting has to stick or twist today - he is, as a few Labour commentators have pointed out - The next Clive Lewis
Rayner, if as reported , has got her HMRC pass...will be the left candidate (negating Miliband)
Mahmood - too right wing
Cooper - too wedded to the past
Burnham - as you'll all know, I simply don't rate him, see him as a chancer and if he can't get a seat and a by-election announced by next Tuesday could be dead in the water.
The dark horse is DARREN JONES
Very much a Cameron moment!
Young
Photogenic
Excellent Communicator
Fiscally smart enough not to upset the Markets but to understand the left requirements
Young enough but experienced enough to make all other Party leaders look "past it"
Would have Ms Aggression for toast.
If he's not next Leader and PM, he's nailed on the be next Chancellor imho
Thanks Donald!
Nutrient neutrality is a planning regulation not a building regulation and I have never been a fan of that.
Age inequality in wealth is tremendous, and as a sixty-something I am part of that, albeit my wealth has accrued via savings from income rather than inheritance or house price inflation. It helps to have a talent for making money and modest tastes.
Those who are 'victims' get more entitlements, those who aren't get more responsibilities.
And if you're not complaining you're not a 'victim'.
Policies might be good or bad but will change. General competence can be estimated but is often wildly wrong. Style and tone can be offputting but not always relevant to outcomes.
I just don't know. I do feel confident Streeting would lose to her and is sacked whoever becomes PM if not him.
Gemma, our forager, gave us the remarkable information that just five little needles of a yew tree, if ingested, will very likely kill you. And it’s not a nice death. It’s notably painful, almost entirely irreversible once you eat them, the pain increases over hours and then you drop dead of a heart attack
Gemma also mentioned that when we all had a formal dinner last night she noted the owners of this impressive baronial hall - where we dined - had decorated the tables with green spring foliage. Including small branches of yew tree
Seeing this she half panicked and went around making sure none of the yew sprigs were poised over anyone’s plate, potentially dropping leaves (she found a couple of questionable placements)
It occurs to me this could be an excellent plot device in a thriller, if we have any thriller writers in the forum
I don’t especially like her, her policy platform recently would be a disaster.
I suspect she’s a working class Everyman, or woman, to middle class people. Can’t see her really appealing to the red wall.