Does anyone know where this grocery price cap idea has come from? It seems a bit odd that both the Scottish government and Westminster have had the same bright idea at the same time. Is there some horrifying forecast of food price inflation circulating?
Presumably it's inspired by Mamdani's idea of state-owned grocery stores - and therefore engineered lower prices - in New York
That particular story is going to be quite brilliant to watch.
It’s going to take two years to build (Wal-Mart can do a massive warehouse hypermarket in six months), is going to be staffed by Union staff on $40 an hour for a 35 hour week, time-and-a-half outside 9-5 and double time nights and weekends, has very little buying power, and is likely to be a massive target for shoplifting and looting, neither of which Mamdani currently sees as bad things.
It’s going to cost many millions and be a total failure. I know this because it’s been a total failure costing millions every time it’s been tried before.
Maybe, like trying communism, it’s going to be different this time……….
Indeed, will be a totally different type of communism this time, nothing like all the other failed attempts at it.
What people miss is that city-owned groceries is not an entirely new concept in the land of the free where several states own and run off-licences.
The state-run offies are enforced monopolies though.
This NY idea is going to be competing with Wal-Mart, Target, and Costco, plus many smaller grocery shops. Good luck with that.
I don't think that is the issue.
It is more like de-banked communities in the UK, and what happens to people who need them. As someone said earlier - food deserts.
I would point to the was US society is set up in a couple of ways:
1 - The basic price of food / cost of living. 2 - It's designed for driving by everything from planning policies to not building any sidewalks in many places to public transport being shite to police regarding "walking" as a suspicious activity, so if you can't afford the multi thousand dollar entry fee, you are f*cked. 3 - The unavailability of fresh food, but that's more to do with the food system. I recall a video of someone trying to buy an apple (fruit) in New York.
On his scheme, it looks to me as if he is wiring in some very high overheads. But state owned "fill the gaps" do exist. I think that supporting charitable / co-operative organisations may be more effective.
Authorities in Texas have removed a Tesla Cybertruck from a lake after the driver intentionally drove into it in an attempt to try the vehicle’s “wade mode.”
Very interesting piece on the consequences of Trump managing to get Thomas Massie deselected in Kentucky. Massie has, before and after the result, been extensively interviewed by Tucker Carlson on what was going down. So it should be pretty common knowledge among many in MAGA. That said, Massie noted that he had basically been excluded from Fox news which is where most of the older Republican voters in Kentucky get their news from.
Overreach on Trump and the Israeli lobby's part, as the article suggests? Dunno, but it certainly shows what a disastrous impact Trump 2 has had on US democracy. The media, justice dept, etc all completely corrupted by the Trump crowd, all of whom have been granted immunity in advance by Trump who will issue a blanket pardon to his favourites before he steps down.
Samuel Johnson's point about disputing the precedence between a louse and a flea comes to mind.
One can argue whether Massie was the louse or the flea, but he was certainly one of the two.
I reckon British twitter (Britter?) can be roughly divided into those that think John Cleese was a comedic national treasure who has been radicalised into being a tedious racist old arsehole and those who think he is even more of a national treasure because he’s a tedious racist old arsehole
I meet a lot of vaguely famous celebs, sports stars etc when we give them Honorary Degrees. You get a pretty good feel for them when you meet them and I can relate that Cleese is an arse.
Does anyone know where this grocery price cap idea has come from? It seems a bit odd that both the Scottish government and Westminster have had the same bright idea at the same time. Is there some horrifying forecast of food price inflation circulating?
I suspect it has come from the government planning for fallout of the Strait of Hormuz closure.
But it simply isn't going to work, food inflation is utterly unavoidable..
Indeed.
Within the next few months people will be experts in fertiliser production.
Gardeners growing their own vegetables, fruit and herbs - ** stares out of window ** - will be feeling very smug.
FPT slightly, and not an original observation, but I'm pretty sure that Streeting is angling to be Burnham's Chancellor, and I can see it happening.
Rachel Reeves is tarnished goods and too closely associated with Starmer. Absolutely no way she will continue.
Streeting is floating some smart, Burnham-adjacent ideas on taxation. He's also popularly viewed as centre-right so would probably pacify the almighty bond markets.
There are moderately good odds on Betfair Exchange if you feel so moved.
If that happens, Andy would be well advised to keep the joining door between numbers 10 and 11 firmly locked of a nighttime
Authorities in Texas have removed a Tesla Cybertruck from a lake after the driver intentionally drove into it in an attempt to try the vehicle’s “wade mode.”
I like the fact that he was charged with not having a boating license.
Does anyone know where this grocery price cap idea has come from? It seems a bit odd that both the Scottish government and Westminster have had the same bright idea at the same time. Is there some horrifying forecast of food price inflation circulating?
Presumably it's inspired by Mamdani's idea of state-owned grocery stores - and therefore engineered lower prices - in New York
That particular story is going to be quite brilliant to watch.
It’s going to take two years to build (Wal-Mart can do a massive warehouse hypermarket in six months), is going to be staffed by Union staff on $40 an hour for a 35 hour week, time-and-a-half outside 9-5 and double time nights and weekends, has very little buying power, and is likely to be a massive target for shoplifting and looting, neither of which Mamdani currently sees as bad things.
It’s going to cost many millions and be a total failure. I know this because it’s been a total failure costing millions every time it’s been tried before.
Maybe, like trying communism, it’s going to be different this time……….
Indeed, will be a totally different type of communism this time, nothing like all the other failed attempts at it.
What people miss is that city-owned groceries is not an entirely new concept in the land of the free where several states own and run off-licences.
The state-run offies are enforced monopolies though.
This NY idea is going to be competing with Wal-Mart, Target, and Costco, plus many smaller grocery shops. Good luck with that.
I don't think that is the issue.
It is more like de-banked communities in the UK, and what happens to people who need them. As someone said earlier - food deserts.
I would point to the was US society is set up in a couple of ways:
1 - The basic price of food / cost of living. 2 - It's designed for driving by everything from planning policies to not building any sidewalks in many places to public transport being shite to police regarding "walking" as a suspicious activity, so if you can't afford the multi thousand dollar entry fee, you are f*cked. 3 - The unavailability of fresh food, but that's more to do with the food system. I recall a video of someone trying to buy an apple (fruit) in New York.
On his scheme, it looks to me as if he is wiring in some very high overheads. But state owned "fill the gaps" do exist. I think that supporting charitable / co-operative organisations may be more effective.
If you want to imagine what the Roman Republic would look like, had it survived into the modern era, imagine the United States. Not only did the Founding Fathers adopt many of the trappings of Republican Rome, they sought quite consciously to model the new republic upon its social structure.
A big feature of that is that you really, really, do not want to be poor, in the United States.
Very interesting piece on the consequences of Trump managing to get Thomas Massie deselected in Kentucky. Massie has, before and after the result, been extensively interviewed by Tucker Carlson on what was going down. So it should be pretty common knowledge among many in MAGA. That said, Massie noted that he had basically been excluded from Fox news which is where most of the older Republican voters in Kentucky get their news from.
Overreach on Trump and the Israeli lobby's part, as the article suggests? Dunno, but it certainly shows what a disastrous impact Trump 2 has had on US democracy. The media, justice dept, etc all completely corrupted by the Trump crowd, all of whom have been granted immunity in advance by Trump who will issue a blanket pardon to his favourites before he steps down.
It’s way simpler than that.
He voted against the budget, so of course he got primaried.
In the UK Parliament, they’d lose the whip immediately for that offence.
Does anyone know where this grocery price cap idea has come from? It seems a bit odd that both the Scottish government and Westminster have had the same bright idea at the same time. Is there some horrifying forecast of food price inflation circulating?
Presumably it's inspired by Mamdani's idea of state-owned grocery stores - and therefore engineered lower prices - in New York
That particular story is going to be quite brilliant to watch.
It’s going to take two years to build (Wal-Mart can do a massive warehouse hypermarket in six months), is going to be staffed by Union staff on $40 an hour for a 35 hour week, time-and-a-half outside 9-5 and double time nights and weekends, has very little buying power, and is likely to be a massive target for shoplifting and looting, neither of which Mamdani currently sees as bad things.
It’s going to cost many millions and be a total failure. I know this because it’s been a total failure costing millions every time it’s been tried before.
Maybe, like trying communism, it’s going to be different this time……….
Indeed, will be a totally different type of communism this time, nothing like all the other failed attempts at it.
What people miss is that city-owned groceries is not an entirely new concept in the land of the free where several states own and run off-licences.
The state-run offies are enforced monopolies though.
This NY idea is going to be competing with Wal-Mart, Target, and Costco, plus many smaller grocery shops. Good luck with that.
I don't think that is the issue.
It is more like de-banked communities in the UK, and what happens to people who need them. As someone said earlier - food deserts.
I would point to the was US society is set up in a couple of ways:
1 - The basic price of food / cost of living. 2 - It's designed for driving by everything from planning policies to not building any sidewalks in many places to public transport being shite to police regarding "walking" as a suspicious activity, so if you can't afford the multi thousand dollar entry fee, you are f*cked. 3 - The unavailability of fresh food, but that's more to do with the food system. I recall a video of someone trying to buy an apple (fruit) in New York.
On his scheme, it looks to me as if he is wiring in some very high overheads. But state owned "fill the gaps" do exist. I think that supporting charitable / co-operative organisations may be more effective.
If you want to imagine what the Roman Republic would look like, had it survived into the modern era, imagine the United States. Not only did the Founding Fathers adopt many of the trappings of Republican Rome, they sought quite consciously to model the new republic upon its social structure.
A big feature of that is that you really, really, do not want to be poor, in the United States.
There's a bust of Justinian somewhere in Washington DC, alongside various other inspirational figures, for his Codex.
Justinian was rather overrated, though. Anastasius deserves way more credit.
Mahmood is proving to be very successful on this regard folliwing on from Cooper.
Net Migration figures going well and some credit to Tories for that specifically Cleverly. A shame Philp has to spout lies about alleged brain drain, down on last year and Tory days.
No doubt Gb News will be desperate for mini heatwave and county every illegal in with glee, of course when 80% of them are processed and most of them denied access and removed in 6 months they won't comment at all.
Mahmood has to remain Home Secretary who leads Labour
Does anyone know where this grocery price cap idea has come from? It seems a bit odd that both the Scottish government and Westminster have had the same bright idea at the same time. Is there some horrifying forecast of food price inflation circulating?
Presumably it's inspired by Mamdani's idea of state-owned grocery stores - and therefore engineered lower prices - in New York
That particular story is going to be quite brilliant to watch.
It’s going to take two years to build (Wal-Mart can do a massive warehouse hypermarket in six months), is going to be staffed by Union staff on $40 an hour for a 35 hour week, time-and-a-half outside 9-5 and double time nights and weekends, has very little buying power, and is likely to be a massive target for shoplifting and looting, neither of which Mamdani currently sees as bad things.
It’s going to cost many millions and be a total failure. I know this because it’s been a total failure costing millions every time it’s been tried before.
Maybe, like trying communism, it’s going to be different this time……….
Indeed, will be a totally different type of communism this time, nothing like all the other failed attempts at it.
What people miss is that city-owned groceries is not an entirely new concept in the land of the free where several states own and run off-licences.
Really not the same thing. The NY grocery market is pretty competitive.
The Mamdani markets won't pay rent or property taxes (which account for a lot of overhead in NY), so are heavily subsidised competition. If there are more than a handful of them, it will cause serious distortions with unpredictable effects.
Subsidising food banks would be a more sensible alternative, IMO.
That is not really the point I was making. Just that what seems to us to come out of nowhere is to an American just a variant of an existing concept.
I see Wes Streeting is proposing to match capital gains tax to income tax.
/If/ Labour allows inflation re-indexing of assets, so that the cost basis for capital gains tax is scaled with inflation then this is a sensible idea. If not, it will be the stupidist tax in the UK, even worse than stamp duty: A non-indexed high rate of CGT is a > 100% tax on long term gains & destroys private investment at a stroke, it’s an enormous incentive for the government to shadow tax assets by printing £ & makes incentivising employees through share options impossible.
Labour should, in fact, impose CGT at the sellers marginal income tax rate after inflation re-indexing & use the income to cut income taxes & reward work.
Failure to index the cost basis to inflation for the CGT calculation will destroy the economy: If you think we’ve got low growth now, wait till you see what happens when the real tax on capital gains is > 100% !
(Ironically, this represents a return to Tory orthodoxy: Nigel Lawson introduced almost exactly this system back in 1988 or so, I’m not sure why it was subsequently abandoned.)
CGT being taxed at income tax rates is f****** moronic, and not just for the reasons you’ve outlined.
I hold substantial unrealised gains from the US tech boom but since the 2024 budget changes I’ve capped my annual disposals at £50k to avoid triggering the higher rate. That means a large portion of capital is effectively stranded until CGT falls or I relocate abroad.
Since 2024, I’ve been approached twice to seed promising UK startups. Both times, I've declined because investing would push me over the threshold. In total, I’ve turned down £250k+ in domestic investment. That's capital that could have funded British business instead of remaining parked in US markets. One of those businesses did very well. The other failed. But 2023's budget changes were enough to adjust my risk/reward profile so I did not invest.
Where it really gets interesting is if CGT becomes treated as ordinary income. So if I earn £50k from work, I’d instantly face a 40% rate on any asset sales. The rational response in my case would be to stop working entirely and live off the £50k allowance at the lower band, effectively stepping out of the workforce until retirement age. For someone with two decades left in their career, that’s another direct blow to UK productivity. Nice for me, though.
However, in all honesty, I doubt I’ll stick around to see how it plays out. If cashing out equity gains before markets peak becomes my priority, options like EU non-lucrative visas, golden residence schemes, or the Crown Dependencies will suddenly look far more attractive, expensive yes but still cheaper than paying UK tax rates. If an exit tax is even hinted at, I’ll be long gone. These policies are always telegraphed well in advance.
My main reason for being in the UK at the moment is long term illness (I have private healthcare by the way, so not even burdening the NHS!) and not really wanting to navigate foreign systems while sick. Being able to cash in some of my investments both to reduce my workload and pay for private healthcare has been a real boon.
TL;DR: I will never pay 40%+ CGT. If it’s implemented, I’ll either stay under the threshold indefinitely or leave. The damage is already done - my behaviour has already shifted since 2024, resulting in less capital flowing into UK business.
If people don't like that or think me unpatriotic I'd point out I've already paid more in taxes by midlife than most people will earn in a lifetime, and I have private healthcare and no kids so really take very little from the state. I will not pay a penny more.
It may or may not be unpatriotic, but I get from your oeuvre that you are on the left of politics. But you're providing us with a perfect example of the dynamic effect of raising taxation. If you're personally heading for Belize at the first whiff of someone raising tax on your gains, why can't you join the dots about the economy in general?
Does anyone know where this grocery price cap idea has come from? It seems a bit odd that both the Scottish government and Westminster have had the same bright idea at the same time. Is there some horrifying forecast of food price inflation circulating?
I suspect it has come from the government planning for fallout of the Strait of Hormuz closure.
But it simply isn't going to work, food inflation is utterly unavoidable..
Indeed.
Within the next few months people will be experts in fertiliser production.
Gardeners growing their own vegetables, fruit and herbs - ** stares out of window ** - will be feeling very smug.
Does that mean I have to put a guard on my compost heap?
PS It is an impressive compost heap. About 3m x 6m x 2m. How does it compare to gold prices?
Very interesting piece on the consequences of Trump managing to get Thomas Massie deselected in Kentucky. Massie has, before and after the result, been extensively interviewed by Tucker Carlson on what was going down. So it should be pretty common knowledge among many in MAGA. That said, Massie noted that he had basically been excluded from Fox news which is where most of the older Republican voters in Kentucky get their news from.
Overreach on Trump and the Israeli lobby's part, as the article suggests? Dunno, but it certainly shows what a disastrous impact Trump 2 has had on US democracy. The media, justice dept, etc all completely corrupted by the Trump crowd, all of whom have been granted immunity in advance by Trump who will issue a blanket pardon to his favourites before he steps down.
It’s way simpler than that.
He voted against the budget, so of course he got primaried.
In the UK Parliament, they’d lose the whip immediately for that offence.
Very interesting piece on the consequences of Trump managing to get Thomas Massie deselected in Kentucky. Massie has, before and after the result, been extensively interviewed by Tucker Carlson on what was going down. So it should be pretty common knowledge among many in MAGA. That said, Massie noted that he had basically been excluded from Fox news which is where most of the older Republican voters in Kentucky get their news from.
Overreach on Trump and the Israeli lobby's part, as the article suggests? Dunno, but it certainly shows what a disastrous impact Trump 2 has had on US democracy. The media, justice dept, etc all completely corrupted by the Trump crowd, all of whom have been granted immunity in advance by Trump who will issue a blanket pardon to his favourites before he steps down.
It’s way simpler than that.
He voted against the budget, so of course he got primaried.
In the UK Parliament, they’d lose the whip immediately for that offence.
He voted against the budget because he is a spending hawk and doesn't want multi trillion dollar increases in state spending. I seem to remember both a President and a pb poster who were of a similar mindset along time ago when the fashion was DOGE rather than winning FIFA peace prizes by starting random wars.
Very interesting piece on the consequences of Trump managing to get Thomas Massie deselected in Kentucky. Massie has, before and after the result, been extensively interviewed by Tucker Carlson on what was going down. So it should be pretty common knowledge among many in MAGA. That said, Massie noted that he had basically been excluded from Fox news which is where most of the older Republican voters in Kentucky get their news from.
Overreach on Trump and the Israeli lobby's part, as the article suggests? Dunno, but it certainly shows what a disastrous impact Trump 2 has had on US democracy. The media, justice dept, etc all completely corrupted by the Trump crowd, all of whom have been granted immunity in advance by Trump who will issue a blanket pardon to his favourites before he steps down.
I think we are beyond "disastrous impact".
I'd say that the midterms may be the last chance saloon without a long drawn out process of potentially many years, or reversing the USA process will be like one of those countries where an authoritarian state has been reversed - whether Hungary, Chile or another.
Does anyone know where this grocery price cap idea has come from? It seems a bit odd that both the Scottish government and Westminster have had the same bright idea at the same time. Is there some horrifying forecast of food price inflation circulating?
Presumably it's inspired by Mamdani's idea of state-owned grocery stores - and therefore engineered lower prices - in New York
That particular story is going to be quite brilliant to watch.
It’s going to take two years to build (Wal-Mart can do a massive warehouse hypermarket in six months), is going to be staffed by Union staff on $40 an hour for a 35 hour week, time-and-a-half outside 9-5 and double time nights and weekends, has very little buying power, and is likely to be a massive target for shoplifting and looting, neither of which Mamdani currently sees as bad things.
It’s going to cost many millions and be a total failure. I know this because it’s been a total failure costing millions every time it’s been tried before.
Maybe, like trying communism, it’s going to be different this time……….
Problem is New York has food deserts in some parts of the city so he needs to do something
Something needs to be done. This is something.
Perhaps resolving the issues that cause food deserts. Especially ones caused by local govt. I’m not sure this proposed approach will work.
I reckon British twitter (Britter?) can be roughly divided into those that think John Cleese was a comedic national treasure who has been radicalised into being a tedious racist old arsehole and those who think he is even more of a national treasure because he’s a tedious racist old arsehole
Hardcore remainer and tedious old racist is a combo which complicates the split.
I preferred his twitter feed when he was bitching at Eric Idle and vice versa.
Very interesting piece on the consequences of Trump managing to get Thomas Massie deselected in Kentucky. Massie has, before and after the result, been extensively interviewed by Tucker Carlson on what was going down. So it should be pretty common knowledge among many in MAGA. That said, Massie noted that he had basically been excluded from Fox news which is where most of the older Republican voters in Kentucky get their news from.
Overreach on Trump and the Israeli lobby's part, as the article suggests? Dunno, but it certainly shows what a disastrous impact Trump 2 has had on US democracy. The media, justice dept, etc all completely corrupted by the Trump crowd, all of whom have been granted immunity in advance by Trump who will issue a blanket pardon to his favourites before he steps down.
It’s way simpler than that.
He voted against the budget, so of course he got primaried.
In the UK Parliament, they’d lose the whip immediately for that offence.
He voted against the budget because he's an actual republican who believes in small government not a Trump bootlicker.
As with the UK Parliament, the convention is that you make your arguments against parts of the bill, but still vote the right way at the end of the process.
The idiots, for want of a better word, are the Tucker Carlsons who think everything he disagrees with is Israel’s fault. Massie, in his concession speech, started off by saying he had to go and find his opponent in Tel Aviv.
I see Wes Streeting is proposing to match capital gains tax to income tax.
/If/ Labour allows inflation re-indexing of assets, so that the cost basis for capital gains tax is scaled with inflation then this is a sensible idea. If not, it will be the stupidist tax in the UK, even worse than stamp duty: A non-indexed high rate of CGT is a > 100% tax on long term gains & destroys private investment at a stroke, it’s an enormous incentive for the government to shadow tax assets by printing £ & makes incentivising employees through share options impossible.
Labour should, in fact, impose CGT at the sellers marginal income tax rate after inflation re-indexing & use the income to cut income taxes & reward work.
Failure to index the cost basis to inflation for the CGT calculation will destroy the economy: If you think we’ve got low growth now, wait till you see what happens when the real tax on capital gains is > 100% !
(Ironically, this represents a return to Tory orthodoxy: Nigel Lawson introduced almost exactly this system back in 1988 or so, I’m not sure why it was subsequently abandoned.)
CGT being taxed at income tax rates is f****** moronic, and not just for the reasons you’ve outlined.
I hold substantial unrealised gains from the US tech boom but since the 2024 budget changes I’ve capped my annual disposals at £50k to avoid triggering the higher rate. That means a large portion of capital is effectively stranded until CGT falls or I relocate abroad.
Since 2024, I’ve been approached twice to seed promising UK startups. Both times, I've declined because investing would push me over the threshold. In total, I’ve turned down £250k+ in domestic investment. That's capital that could have funded British business instead of remaining parked in US markets. One of those businesses did very well. The other failed. But 2023's budget changes were enough to adjust my risk/reward profile so I did not invest.
Where it really gets interesting is if CGT becomes treated as ordinary income. So if I earn £50k from work, I’d instantly face a 40% rate on any asset sales. The rational response in my case would be to stop working entirely and live off the £50k allowance at the lower band, effectively stepping out of the workforce until retirement age. For someone with two decades left in their career, that’s another direct blow to UK productivity. Nice for me, though.
However, in all honesty, I doubt I’ll stick around to see how it plays out. If cashing out equity gains before markets peak becomes my priority, options like EU non-lucrative visas, golden residence schemes, or the Crown Dependencies will suddenly look far more attractive, expensive yes but still cheaper than paying UK tax rates. If an exit tax is even hinted at, I’ll be long gone. These policies are always telegraphed well in advance.
My main reason for being in the UK at the moment is long term illness (I have private healthcare by the way, so not even burdening the NHS!) and not really wanting to navigate foreign systems while sick. Being able to cash in some of my investments both to reduce my workload and pay for private healthcare has been a real boon.
TL;DR: I will never pay 40%+ CGT. If it’s implemented, I’ll either stay under the threshold indefinitely or leave. The damage is already done - my behaviour has already shifted since 2024, resulting in less capital flowing into UK business.
If people don't like that or think me unpatriotic I'd point out I've already paid more in taxes by midlife than most people will earn in a lifetime, and I have private healthcare and no kids so really take very little from the state. I will not pay a penny more.
It may or may not be unpatriotic, but I get from your oeuvre that you are on the left of politics. But you're providing us with a perfect example of the dynamic effect of raising taxation. If you're personally heading for Belize at the first whiff of someone raising tax on your gains, why can't you join the dots about the economy in general?
11 medical professionals, including doctors and nurses, sacked for accessing the medical records of the three murdered victims of Valdo Calocane in Nottingham without any reason to do so. Others disciplined. Good.
The same happened in Southport.
Police have also done this in Nottingham - and in far greater numbers - but we have yet to hear if any have been disciplined. There was a suggestion at one point that so many had done so that an amnesty might be needed.
How sick do you have to be to do this? How toxic must the culture be when so many think it ok to do this?
Very interesting piece on the consequences of Trump managing to get Thomas Massie deselected in Kentucky. Massie has, before and after the result, been extensively interviewed by Tucker Carlson on what was going down. So it should be pretty common knowledge among many in MAGA. That said, Massie noted that he had basically been excluded from Fox news which is where most of the older Republican voters in Kentucky get their news from.
Overreach on Trump and the Israeli lobby's part, as the article suggests? Dunno, but it certainly shows what a disastrous impact Trump 2 has had on US democracy. The media, justice dept, etc all completely corrupted by the Trump crowd, all of whom have been granted immunity in advance by Trump who will issue a blanket pardon to his favourites before he steps down.
It’s way simpler than that.
He voted against the budget, so of course he got primaried.
In the UK Parliament, they’d lose the whip immediately for that offence.
11 medical professionals, including doctors and nurses, sacked for accessing the medical records of the three murdered victims of Valdo Calocane in Nottingham without any reason to do so. Others disciplined. Good.
The same happened in Southport.
Police have also done this in Nottingham - and in far greater numbers - but we have yet to hear if any have been disciplined. There was a suggestion at one point that so many had done so that an amnesty might be needed.
How sick do you have to be to do this? How toxic must the culture be when so many think it ok to do this?
It doesn't say WHY they did it. And I cannot work out why other than prurient curiosity, but even then it's weird. Why??
11 medical professionals, including doctors and nurses, sacked for accessing the medical records of the three murdered victims of Valdo Calocane in Nottingham without any reason to do so. Others disciplined. Good.
The same happened in Southport.
Police have also done this in Nottingham - and in far greater numbers - but we have yet to hear if any have been disciplined. There was a suggestion at one point that so many had done so that an amnesty might be needed.
How sick do you have to be to do this? How toxic must the culture be when so many think it ok to do this?
Hey, at least they have the query logging enabled in the systems this time. It used to be that you had to be caught red-handed at the desk running personal queries on the PNC.
11 medical professionals, including doctors and nurses, sacked for accessing the medical records of the three murdered victims of Valdo Calocane in Nottingham without any reason to do so. Others disciplined. Good.
The same happened in Southport.
Police have also done this in Nottingham - and in far greater numbers - but we have yet to hear if any have been disciplined. There was a suggestion at one point that so many had done so that an amnesty might be needed.
How sick do you have to be to do this? How toxic must the culture be when so many think it ok to do this?
It doesn't say WHY they did it. And I cannot work out why other than prurient curiosity, but even then it's weird. Why??
Thought they could earn a few bob leaking info to the tabloids? Although, I don't think they are willing to pay these days like they would 20 years ago.
Does anyone know where this grocery price cap idea has come from? It seems a bit odd that both the Scottish government and Westminster have had the same bright idea at the same time. Is there some horrifying forecast of food price inflation circulating?
I suspect it has come from the government planning for fallout of the Strait of Hormuz closure.
But it simply isn't going to work, food inflation is utterly unavoidable..
Indeed.
Within the next few months people will be experts in fertiliser production.
Gardeners growing their own vegetables, fruit and herbs - ** stares out of window ** - will be feeling very smug.
Does that mean I have to put a guard on my compost heap?
PS It is an impressive compost heap. About 3m x 6m x 2m. How does it compare to gold prices?
That is impressive.
I did win second prize for my compost at the Broughton and Millom Agricultural Show last year. What with that and the Tree Preservation Order on my silver birch tree, 2025 was a good year - in gardening terms at least.
Very interesting piece on the consequences of Trump managing to get Thomas Massie deselected in Kentucky. Massie has, before and after the result, been extensively interviewed by Tucker Carlson on what was going down. So it should be pretty common knowledge among many in MAGA. That said, Massie noted that he had basically been excluded from Fox news which is where most of the older Republican voters in Kentucky get their news from.
Overreach on Trump and the Israeli lobby's part, as the article suggests? Dunno, but it certainly shows what a disastrous impact Trump 2 has had on US democracy. The media, justice dept, etc all completely corrupted by the Trump crowd, all of whom have been granted immunity in advance by Trump who will issue a blanket pardon to his favourites before he steps down.
It’s way simpler than that.
He voted against the budget, so of course he got primaried.
In the UK Parliament, they’d lose the whip immediately for that offence.
He voted against the budget because he's an actual republican who believes in small government not a Trump bootlicker.
As with the UK Parliament, the convention is that you make your arguments against parts of the bill, but still vote the right way at the end of the process.
The idiots, for want of a better word, are the Tucker Carlsons who think everything he disagrees with is Israel’s fault. Massie, in his concession speech, started off by saying he had to go and find his opponent in Tel Aviv.
Being anti-Israel does not, in and of itself, make you a good representative. A section of MAGA has turned against Israel, but Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, MTG etc. remain deeply unpleasant people.
I see Wes Streeting is proposing to match capital gains tax to income tax.
/If/ Labour allows inflation re-indexing of assets, so that the cost basis for capital gains tax is scaled with inflation then this is a sensible idea. If not, it will be the stupidist tax in the UK, even worse than stamp duty: A non-indexed high rate of CGT is a > 100% tax on long term gains & destroys private investment at a stroke, it’s an enormous incentive for the government to shadow tax assets by printing £ & makes incentivising employees through share options impossible.
Labour should, in fact, impose CGT at the sellers marginal income tax rate after inflation re-indexing & use the income to cut income taxes & reward work.
Failure to index the cost basis to inflation for the CGT calculation will destroy the economy: If you think we’ve got low growth now, wait till you see what happens when the real tax on capital gains is > 100% !
(Ironically, this represents a return to Tory orthodoxy: Nigel Lawson introduced almost exactly this system back in 1988 or so, I’m not sure why it was subsequently abandoned.)
CGT being taxed at income tax rates is f****** moronic, and not just for the reasons you’ve outlined.
I hold substantial unrealised gains from the US tech boom but since the 2024 budget changes I’ve capped my annual disposals at £50k to avoid triggering the higher rate. That means a large portion of capital is effectively stranded until CGT falls or I relocate abroad.
Since 2024, I’ve been approached twice to seed promising UK startups. Both times, I've declined because investing would push me over the threshold. In total, I’ve turned down £250k+ in domestic investment. That's capital that could have funded British business instead of remaining parked in US markets. One of those businesses did very well. The other failed. But 2023's budget changes were enough to adjust my risk/reward profile so I did not invest.
Where it really gets interesting is if CGT becomes treated as ordinary income. So if I earn £50k from work, I’d instantly face a 40% rate on any asset sales. The rational response in my case would be to stop working entirely and live off the £50k allowance at the lower band, effectively stepping out of the workforce until retirement age. For someone with two decades left in their career, that’s another direct blow to UK productivity. Nice for me, though.
However, in all honesty, I doubt I’ll stick around to see how it plays out. If cashing out equity gains before markets peak becomes my priority, options like EU non-lucrative visas, golden residence schemes, or the Crown Dependencies will suddenly look far more attractive, expensive yes but still cheaper than paying UK tax rates. If an exit tax is even hinted at, I’ll be long gone. These policies are always telegraphed well in advance.
My main reason for being in the UK at the moment is long term illness (I have private healthcare by the way, so not even burdening the NHS!) and not really wanting to navigate foreign systems while sick. Being able to cash in some of my investments both to reduce my workload and pay for private healthcare has been a real boon.
TL;DR: I will never pay 40%+ CGT. If it’s implemented, I’ll either stay under the threshold indefinitely or leave. The damage is already done - my behaviour has already shifted since 2024, resulting in less capital flowing into UK business.
If people don't like that or think me unpatriotic I'd point out I've already paid more in taxes by midlife than most people will earn in a lifetime, and I have private healthcare and no kids so really take very little from the state. I will not pay a penny more.
It may or may not be unpatriotic, but I get from your oeuvre that you are on the left of politics. But you're providing us with a perfect example of the dynamic effect of raising taxation. If you're personally heading for Belize at the first whiff of someone raising tax on your gains, why can't you join the dots about the economy in general?
I've always had him down as an unabashed capitalist, centre right, quite libertarian, pro-trans rights
An interesting niche, but deffo not left. However, maybe I missed lots of clues
I identify as a libertarian, tee hee.
But Leon has me down to a tee here - a centre right pro capitalist libertarian. I am very socially liberal (even before dating a trans woman, I was an unashamedly "people should be able to identify as a hatstand if they want and marry their golden retriever, it's none of the state's business" type).
My view is that there should be a great deal less interference in how others live their lives and that principle guides most of my views on everything from tax policy to trans rights (which I do not want to start on about again!).
11 medical professionals, including doctors and nurses, sacked for accessing the medical records of the three murdered victims of Valdo Calocane in Nottingham without any reason to do so. Others disciplined. Good.
The same happened in Southport.
Police have also done this in Nottingham - and in far greater numbers - but we have yet to hear if any have been disciplined. There was a suggestion at one point that so many had done so that an amnesty might be needed.
How sick do you have to be to do this? How toxic must the culture be when so many think it ok to do this?
It doesn't say WHY they did it. And I cannot work out why other than prurient curiosity, but even then it's weird. Why??
Thought they could earn a few bob leaking info to the tabloids? Although, I don't think they are willing to pay these days like they would 20 years ago.
Yeah that doesn't ring true. The tabs only pay for big stories these days, and they are - rightly - much warier of crossing lines, after the News of the World/phone-hacking. The medical records of a murder victim? I doubt the papers would go near it, let alone pay for it
So there must be some other reason, but I have no idea what it might be
Does anyone know where this grocery price cap idea has come from? It seems a bit odd that both the Scottish government and Westminster have had the same bright idea at the same time. Is there some horrifying forecast of food price inflation circulating?
I suspect it has come from the government planning for fallout of the Strait of Hormuz closure.
But it simply isn't going to work, food inflation is utterly unavoidable..
Indeed.
Within the next few months people will be experts in fertiliser production.
Gardeners growing their own vegetables, fruit and herbs - ** stares out of window ** - will be feeling very smug.
Does that mean I have to put a guard on my compost heap?
PS It is an impressive compost heap. About 3m x 6m x 2m. How does it compare to gold prices?
That is impressive.
I did win second prize for my compost at the Broughton and Millom Agricultural Show last year. What with that and the Tree Preservation Order on my silver birch tree, 2025 was a good year - in gardening terms at least.
My garden is 2/3 of an acre and although I use a mulching lawnmower, so no grass normally goes on it, I did scarify it this year. Boy did that produce a lot to add to the existing heap. The foxes love it and throw it everywhere. I am still working through the old heap. It is about 2m x 2m x 1m. I'll probably use that up this Autumn.
Very interesting piece on the consequences of Trump managing to get Thomas Massie deselected in Kentucky. Massie has, before and after the result, been extensively interviewed by Tucker Carlson on what was going down. So it should be pretty common knowledge among many in MAGA. That said, Massie noted that he had basically been excluded from Fox news which is where most of the older Republican voters in Kentucky get their news from.
Overreach on Trump and the Israeli lobby's part, as the article suggests? Dunno, but it certainly shows what a disastrous impact Trump 2 has had on US democracy. The media, justice dept, etc all completely corrupted by the Trump crowd, all of whom have been granted immunity in advance by Trump who will issue a blanket pardon to his favourites before he steps down.
Samuel Johnson's point about disputing the precedence between a louse and a flea comes to mind.
One can argue whether Massie was the louse or the flea, but he was certainly one of the two.
I think that's unfair, tbh. Unlike the vast majority of Republicans he has been prepared to take a stand. Lost his seat as a result. But, at least, he didn't subscribe to the Faustian pact and maybe his soul isn't destined for the fiery pit. Maybe just a few millennia in purgatory?
11 medical professionals, including doctors and nurses, sacked for accessing the medical records of the three murdered victims of Valdo Calocane in Nottingham without any reason to do so. Others disciplined. Good.
The same happened in Southport.
Police have also done this in Nottingham - and in far greater numbers - but we have yet to hear if any have been disciplined. There was a suggestion at one point that so many had done so that an amnesty might be needed.
How sick do you have to be to do this? How toxic must the culture be when so many think it ok to do this?
It is not sick. It is normal professional curiosity. That's why so many people looked. That is why there have to be rules or even laws against it.
11 medical professionals, including doctors and nurses, sacked for accessing the medical records of the three murdered victims of Valdo Calocane in Nottingham without any reason to do so. Others disciplined. Good.
The same happened in Southport.
Police have also done this in Nottingham - and in far greater numbers - but we have yet to hear if any have been disciplined. There was a suggestion at one point that so many had done so that an amnesty might be needed.
How sick do you have to be to do this? How toxic must the culture be when so many think it ok to do this?
It doesn't say WHY they did it. And I cannot work out why other than prurient curiosity, but even then it's weird. Why??
Thought they could earn a few bob leaking info to the tabloids? Although, I don't think they are willing to pay these days like they would 20 years ago.
Yeah that doesn't ring true. The tabs only pay for big stories these days, and they are - rightly - much warier of crossing lines, after the News of the World/phone-hacking. The medical records of a murder victim? I doubt the papers would go near it, let alone pay for it
So there must be some other reason, but I have no idea what it might be
It doesn't stop something thinking that though. Same way now whenever anything bad happens some twat's first instinct his pull their phone out and film it rather than a) help people if they can or b) get the hell out of dodge.
11 medical professionals, including doctors and nurses, sacked for accessing the medical records of the three murdered victims of Valdo Calocane in Nottingham without any reason to do so. Others disciplined. Good.
The same happened in Southport.
Police have also done this in Nottingham - and in far greater numbers - but we have yet to hear if any have been disciplined. There was a suggestion at one point that so many had done so that an amnesty might be needed.
How sick do you have to be to do this? How toxic must the culture be when so many think it ok to do this?
It doesn't say WHY they did it. And I cannot work out why other than prurient curiosity, but even then it's weird. Why??
Thought they could earn a few bob leaking info to the tabloids? Although, I don't think they are willing to pay these days like they would 20 years ago.
Yeah that doesn't ring true. The tabs only pay for big stories these days, and they are - rightly - much warier of crossing lines, after the News of the World/phone-hacking. The medical records of a murder victim? I doubt the papers would go near it, let alone pay for it
So there must be some other reason, but I have no idea what it might be
Rubbernecking.
People slow to look at the car crash, for the man with the broken nose after a fight, at the weird looking cripple. There are a chunk of people obsessed with 'True Crime'.
This is what happens when all you have is a computer terminal to do that stuff.
11 medical professionals, including doctors and nurses, sacked for accessing the medical records of the three murdered victims of Valdo Calocane in Nottingham without any reason to do so. Others disciplined. Good.
The same happened in Southport.
Police have also done this in Nottingham - and in far greater numbers - but we have yet to hear if any have been disciplined. There was a suggestion at one point that so many had done so that an amnesty might be needed.
How sick do you have to be to do this? How toxic must the culture be when so many think it ok to do this?
It doesn't say WHY they did it. And I cannot work out why other than prurient curiosity, but even then it's weird. Why??
Many years ago I came across a fellow lab member watching and rewatching footage of a plane hitting a mountain. Clearly no survivors. I asked him why he was watching it - he mumbled something about 'trying to see where it hit'. I suspect it was more the ghoulish fascination.
Humans are like that. Cases like the women who drowned at Brighton last week will always interest people - whenever there are unanswered questions, people will try to find answers.
On the current cases there is clearly morbid attraction to the information for some people and I suspect not a strong enough culture to stop transgression. These outcomes might help, but we have also probably lost good healthcare professionals too.
Very interesting piece on the consequences of Trump managing to get Thomas Massie deselected in Kentucky. Massie has, before and after the result, been extensively interviewed by Tucker Carlson on what was going down. So it should be pretty common knowledge among many in MAGA. That said, Massie noted that he had basically been excluded from Fox news which is where most of the older Republican voters in Kentucky get their news from.
Overreach on Trump and the Israeli lobby's part, as the article suggests? Dunno, but it certainly shows what a disastrous impact Trump 2 has had on US democracy. The media, justice dept, etc all completely corrupted by the Trump crowd, all of whom have been granted immunity in advance by Trump who will issue a blanket pardon to his favourites before he steps down.
It’s way simpler than that.
He voted against the budget, so of course he got primaried.
In the UK Parliament, they’d lose the whip immediately for that offence.
He voted against the budget because he's an actual republican who believes in small government not a Trump bootlicker.
As with the UK Parliament, the convention is that you make your arguments against parts of the bill, but still vote the right way at the end of the process.
The idiots, for want of a better word, are the Tucker Carlsons who think everything he disagrees with is Israel’s fault. Massie, in his concession speech, started off by saying he had to go and find his opponent in Tel Aviv.
Being anti-Israel does not, in and of itself, make you a good representative. A section of MAGA has turned against Israel, but Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, MTG etc. remain deeply unpleasant people.
Indeed so, and Mr Massie has put himself firmly in the same camp of deeply unpleasant people.
I try to follow a wide variety of US commentary, but the likes of Candace and Tucker have become totally unwatchable in recent months, nothing but conspiracy theory backed with no evidence. Much of it antisemetic conspiracy theory.
I suspect that Candace Owens is about to be sued into bankruptcy by Erika Kirk, if Brigitte Macron hasn’t cleared her out first.
I see Wes Streeting is proposing to match capital gains tax to income tax.
/If/ Labour allows inflation re-indexing of assets, so that the cost basis for capital gains tax is scaled with inflation then this is a sensible idea. If not, it will be the stupidist tax in the UK, even worse than stamp duty: A non-indexed high rate of CGT is a > 100% tax on long term gains & destroys private investment at a stroke, it’s an enormous incentive for the government to shadow tax assets by printing £ & makes incentivising employees through share options impossible.
Labour should, in fact, impose CGT at the sellers marginal income tax rate after inflation re-indexing & use the income to cut income taxes & reward work.
Failure to index the cost basis to inflation for the CGT calculation will destroy the economy: If you think we’ve got low growth now, wait till you see what happens when the real tax on capital gains is > 100% !
(Ironically, this represents a return to Tory orthodoxy: Nigel Lawson introduced almost exactly this system back in 1988 or so, I’m not sure why it was subsequently abandoned.)
CGT being taxed at income tax rates is f****** moronic, and not just for the reasons you’ve outlined.
I hold substantial unrealised gains from the US tech boom but since the 2024 budget changes I’ve capped my annual disposals at £50k to avoid triggering the higher rate. That means a large portion of capital is effectively stranded until CGT falls or I relocate abroad.
Since 2024, I’ve been approached twice to seed promising UK startups. Both times, I've declined because investing would push me over the threshold. In total, I’ve turned down £250k+ in domestic investment. That's capital that could have funded British business instead of remaining parked in US markets. One of those businesses did very well. The other failed. But 2023's budget changes were enough to adjust my risk/reward profile so I did not invest.
Where it really gets interesting is if CGT becomes treated as ordinary income. So if I earn £50k from work, I’d instantly face a 40% rate on any asset sales. The rational response in my case would be to stop working entirely and live off the £50k allowance at the lower band, effectively stepping out of the workforce until retirement age. For someone with two decades left in their career, that’s another direct blow to UK productivity. Nice for me, though.
However, in all honesty, I doubt I’ll stick around to see how it plays out. If cashing out equity gains before markets peak becomes my priority, options like EU non-lucrative visas, golden residence schemes, or the Crown Dependencies will suddenly look far more attractive, expensive yes but still cheaper than paying UK tax rates. If an exit tax is even hinted at, I’ll be long gone. These policies are always telegraphed well in advance.
My main reason for being in the UK at the moment is long term illness (I have private healthcare by the way, so not even burdening the NHS!) and not really wanting to navigate foreign systems while sick. Being able to cash in some of my investments both to reduce my workload and pay for private healthcare has been a real boon.
TL;DR: I will never pay 40%+ CGT. If it’s implemented, I’ll either stay under the threshold indefinitely or leave. The damage is already done - my behaviour has already shifted since 2024, resulting in less capital flowing into UK business.
If people don't like that or think me unpatriotic I'd point out I've already paid more in taxes by midlife than most people will earn in a lifetime, and I have private healthcare and no kids so really take very little from the state. I will not pay a penny more.
I note all these points, but I wonder about the consequence. Because what needs to be explained is why working in the sense of the term for most people - employment on which IT and NI is paid - should be taxed more highly than any other sort of way of gaining money. I can't find it here.
Of course you might say that these taxes are also too high, and I am sure they are, but that doesn't deal with the point I am making.
11 medical professionals, including doctors and nurses, sacked for accessing the medical records of the three murdered victims of Valdo Calocane in Nottingham without any reason to do so. Others disciplined. Good.
The same happened in Southport.
Police have also done this in Nottingham - and in far greater numbers - but we have yet to hear if any have been disciplined. There was a suggestion at one point that so many had done so that an amnesty might be needed.
How sick do you have to be to do this? How toxic must the culture be when so many think it ok to do this?
It doesn't say WHY they did it. And I cannot work out why other than prurient curiosity, but even then it's weird. Why??
Thought they could earn a few bob leaking info to the tabloids? Although, I don't think they are willing to pay these days like they would 20 years ago.
Yeah that doesn't ring true. The tabs only pay for big stories these days, and they are - rightly - much warier of crossing lines, after the News of the World/phone-hacking. The medical records of a murder victim? I doubt the papers would go near it, let alone pay for it
So there must be some other reason, but I have no idea what it might be
It doesn't stop something thinking that though. Same way now whenever anything bad happens some twat's first instinct his pull their phone out and film it rather than a) help people if they can or b) get the hell out of dodge.
How many phone videos were there of that underground nightclub fire in Switzerland on New Year’s Eve?
“Hey look mate, cool indoor fireworks!” - but they didn’t get out of the one narrow entrance, and never made it to Jan 2nd.
If Labour follow through on these insane new taxes, tax hikes, taxes on everything, then we will see capital flight on a new and unprecedented scale. Which means one more tax. An exit tax. We are turning into Soviet Albania without the weather
Oh well, at least we managed to spend £100,000,000,000 on the world’s slowest railway which won’t become operational for another 450 years
Since you (a) apparently hate this country and (b) think there are too many people in it I would have thought there is a very obvious solution available to you...
OK, I’M LEAVING!
*Examines copious amounts of chichi knick knacks that will need to be wrapped up*
Ok, maybe not quite yet.
Where you see “chi chi knick knacks” I see a potential Knapper’s Gazette article, which I can bang out in an hour for £400, thereby paying for all these coffee cans - with £200 left over
Because I really am drinking more coffee - about twice as much - simply because the cans are so much more pleasurable to use. Lovely historic delicate beautiful noomy
I’ve been scouring the psych literature looking for a theory that covers this phenomenon. I can’t really find one. Affordance Theory and Cathedral Effect come close, but don’t really map it entirely
Fascinating
There is something about using objects with a past. A friend was describing his latest purchases - old split cane fishing rods and some reels - and how much he is looking forward to using them this summer.
The object still needs to be able to do the job, of course. No point buying a pair of 1950's batting gloves and hoping not to get broken fingers, for instance.
While Leon is eminently mockable, he's not wrong on this; there is appeal in old objects well beyond their actual utility. I feel the same (for example) about old film cameras that I couldn't afford when I was a kid.
Be interetsting to see if this turns out to be true,
Bits of the Westminster village think that "just" 700,000 non-British people arriving in a single year is a great success and represents what voters want. That's a city the size of Leeds every year. They are totally delusional.
A teenager who filmed his friend throwing a heavy sofa from the top floor of Westfield Stratford shopping centre has avoided jail.
The 15-year-old admitted criminal damage after a £500 blue sofa chair was hurled from a 50ft balcony at the east London mall on 1 March last year. He must attend victim awareness sessions, complete 13 hours of community reparations and abide by a three-month doorstep curfew
This is all getting a bit dull, so here's a change of subject
While we have been focused on Iran/Skyr/THE ARSE, America is reviving its UFO flap
It's got to the extent where Fox News is discussing "how many types of aliens there are". Nordics, greys, reptilians, etc. I am particularly unkeen on the ones that look like a giant praying mantis
'Non-human' bodies allegedly recovered from crashed UFO, documentary filmmaker claims Dan Farah alleges intelligence officials confirmed recovery of 'non-human' bodies in crashed UFO craft in new interviews"
"Neil DeGrasse Tyson explains why he is now entering the UFO and alien conversation after decades of debunking
“I would have never imagined if I didn't know Neil Degrass Tyson, he's not talking extraterrestrials. He's the debunker. Why would you write about extraterrestrial life?”
“What began to happen if you go back long enough, a few decades ago, most of the many of the accounts of UFOs and alien abductions and things were people who didn't otherwise have the title or integrity that their station in life would grant them.
There was the farmer in his back, there were drunken revelers at 2 a.m. staggering out of the bar. And it would be their accounts of UFOs that would get reported on.
And beginning a few years ago, and all of you in the media just ate it up when various whistleblowers and insiders, they're not drunken revelers. There's a parade of them. Many of them former military, ex intelligence agency officers and under oath in front of Congress.
By the way, this is the last and only time I remember in the past decade where both houses of Congress were just together with one investigative purpose. I was quite impressed by that. Aliens brought us together.
So when these people of high rank started reporting, I said, ‘All right, I have to jump in here. I can't stay silent. I have to be a participant in what's going on’.”"
Be interetsting to see if this turns out to be true,
Bits of the Westminster village think that "just" 700,000 non-British people arriving in a single year is a great success and represents what voters want. That's a city the size of Leeds every year. They are totally delusional.
So they want to stop any foreign students coming to the UK ? This is more pathetic goal post moving by those who can’t cope with the fact net migration is falling .
This is all getting a bit dull, so here's a change of subject
While we have been focused on Iran/Skyr/THE ARSE, America is reviving its UFO flap
It's got to the extent where Fox News is discussing "how many types of aliens there are". Nordics, greys, reptilians, etc. I am particularly unkeen on the ones that look like a giant praying mantis
'Non-human' bodies allegedly recovered from crashed UFO, documentary filmmaker claims Dan Farah alleges intelligence officials confirmed recovery of 'non-human' bodies in crashed UFO craft in new interviews"
"Neil DeGrasse Tyson explains why he is now entering the UFO and alien conversation after decades of debunking
“I would have never imagined if I didn't know Neil Degrass Tyson, he's not talking extraterrestrials. He's the debunker. Why would you write about extraterrestrial life?”
“What began to happen if you go back long enough, a few decades ago, most of the many of the accounts of UFOs and alien abductions and things were people who didn't otherwise have the title or integrity that their station in life would grant them.
There was the farmer in his back, there were drunken revelers at 2 a.m. staggering out of the bar. And it would be their accounts of UFOs that would get reported on.
And beginning a few years ago, and all of you in the media just ate it up when various whistleblowers and insiders, they're not drunken revelers. There's a parade of them. Many of them former military, ex intelligence agency officers and under oath in front of Congress.
By the way, this is the last and only time I remember in the past decade where both houses of Congress were just together with one investigative purpose. I was quite impressed by that. Aliens brought us together.
So when these people of high rank started reporting, I said, ‘All right, I have to jump in here. I can't stay silent. I have to be a participant in what's going on’.”"
A teenager who filmed his friend throwing a heavy sofa from the top floor of Westfield Stratford shopping centre has avoided jail.
The 15-year-old admitted criminal damage after a £500 blue sofa chair was hurled from a 50ft balcony at the east London mall on 1 March last year. He must attend victim awareness sessions, complete 13 hours of community reparations and abide by a three-month doorstep curfew
Does anyone know where this grocery price cap idea has come from? It seems a bit odd that both the Scottish government and Westminster have had the same bright idea at the same time. Is there some horrifying forecast of food price inflation circulating?
I suspect it has come from the government planning for fallout of the Strait of Hormuz closure.
But it simply isn't going to work, food inflation is utterly unavoidable..
Indeed.
Within the next few months people will be experts in fertiliser production.
Gardeners growing their own vegetables, fruit and herbs - ** stares out of window ** - will be feeling very smug.
Does that mean I have to put a guard on my compost heap?
PS It is an impressive compost heap. About 3m x 6m x 2m. How does it compare to gold prices?
That is impressive.
I did win second prize for my compost at the Broughton and Millom Agricultural Show last year. What with that and the Tree Preservation Order on my silver birch tree, 2025 was a good year - in gardening terms at least.
Congratulations. The compost heap holds compare with Lord Emsworth's silver medal for the Empress of Blandings, in the 'Fat Pigs' class at the Shropshire Agricultural Show...
Be interetsting to see if this turns out to be true,
Bits of the Westminster village think that "just" 700,000 non-British people arriving in a single year is a great success and represents what voters want. That's a city the size of Leeds every year. They are totally delusional.
A teenager who filmed his friend throwing a heavy sofa from the top floor of Westfield Stratford shopping centre has avoided jail.
The 15-year-old admitted criminal damage after a £500 blue sofa chair was hurled from a 50ft balcony at the east London mall on 1 March last year. He must attend victim awareness sessions, complete 13 hours of community reparations and abide by a three-month doorstep curfew
The prisons are full: If you want these people locked up then you need to let the government raise taxes sufficiently to pay for the building out of enough prison capacity & pay for staffing them.
People don’t want higher taxes, so the prisons don’t get built & staffed.
A teenager who filmed his friend throwing a heavy sofa from the top floor of Westfield Stratford shopping centre has avoided jail.
The 15-year-old admitted criminal damage after a £500 blue sofa chair was hurled from a 50ft balcony at the east London mall on 1 March last year. He must attend victim awareness sessions, complete 13 hours of community reparations and abide by a three-month doorstep curfew
The prisons are full: If you want these people locked up then you need to let the government raise taxes sufficiently to pay for the building out of enough prison capacity & pay for staffing them.
People don’t want higher taxes, so the prisons don’t get built & staffed.
Nobody said anything about sending to prison, I highlighted the patheticly small amount of community service.
CGT being taxed at income tax rates is f****** moronic, and not just for the reasons you’ve outlined.
I hold substantial unrealised gains from the US tech boom but since the 2024 budget changes I’ve capped my annual disposals at £50k to avoid triggering the higher rate. That means a large portion of capital is effectively stranded until CGT falls or I relocate abroad.
Since 2024, I’ve been approached twice to seed promising UK startups. Both times, I've declined because investing would push me over the threshold. In total, I’ve turned down £250k+ in domestic investment. That's capital that could have funded British business instead of remaining parked in US markets. One of those businesses did very well. The other failed. But 2023's budget changes were enough to adjust my risk/reward profile so I did not invest.
Where it really gets interesting is if CGT becomes treated as ordinary income. So if I earn £50k from work, I’d instantly face a 40% rate on any asset sales. The rational response in my case would be to stop working entirely and live off the £50k allowance at the lower band, effectively stepping out of the workforce until retirement age. For someone with two decades left in their career, that’s another direct blow to UK productivity. Nice for me, though.
However, in all honesty, I doubt I’ll stick around to see how it plays out. If cashing out equity gains before markets peak becomes my priority, options like EU non-lucrative visas, golden residence schemes, or the Crown Dependencies will suddenly look far more attractive, expensive yes but still cheaper than paying UK tax rates. If an exit tax is even hinted at, I’ll be long gone. These policies are always telegraphed well in advance.
My main reason for being in the UK at the moment is long term illness (I have private healthcare by the way, so not even burdening the NHS!) and not really wanting to navigate foreign systems while sick. Being able to cash in some of my investments both to reduce my workload and pay for private healthcare has been a real boon.
TL;DR: I will never pay 40%+ CGT. If it’s implemented, I’ll either stay under the threshold indefinitely or leave. The damage is already done - my behaviour has already shifted since 2024, resulting in less capital flowing into UK business.
If people don't like that or think me unpatriotic I'd point out I've already paid more in taxes by midlife than most people will earn in a lifetime, and I have private healthcare and no kids so really take very little from the state. I will not pay a penny more.
I note all these points, but I wonder about the consequence. Because what needs to be explained is why working in the sense of the term for most people - employment on which IT and NI is paid - should be taxed more highly than any other sort of way of gaining money. I can't find it here.
Of course you might say that these taxes are also too high, and I am sure they are, but that doesn't deal with the point I am making.
1. Risk. 2. Incentive.
If you go to your PAYE job and earn 100k a year you will take home £68,557, so £31,443 in tax. There is zero risk to you for doing so. You get paid simply for showing up.
If you invest 100k and it becomes 200k, you will pay £20263 in tax on it. (Consider also it may take 10 years to become 200k, by which time you will be paying tax on inflation as historically prices roughly double every 10 years!)
However, if you invest 100k you stand to lose it all. Therefore in order to incentivise you to invest that money, a lower rate of tax is demanded. The difference isn't as big as you think - it's 20k per 100k vs 30k per 100k depending on capital (risk) vs PAYE (no risk). But the point is the PAYE salary takes *absolutely no risk* to earn his 100k whereas the person investing 100k stands to lose it all if their investment goes badly.
In an economy you want people to invest, which means taking risk, which means incentivising accordingly through tax structure. If you tax investing more, you get less investment, which is a doom loop for the economy as we get less growth, fewer jobs, higher unemployment, less spending, a higher welfare bill etc. So taxing investment less than PAYE is good for everyone, not just the investors.
This is really simple economics - yes, I'm simplifying it a bit but you get the gist - and that so many of our political class cannot grasp it infuriates me.
If Labour follow through on these insane new taxes, tax hikes, taxes on everything, then we will see capital flight on a new and unprecedented scale. Which means one more tax. An exit tax. We are turning into Soviet Albania without the weather
Oh well, at least we managed to spend £100,000,000,000 on the world’s slowest railway which won’t become operational for another 450 years
Since you (a) apparently hate this country and (b) think there are too many people in it I would have thought there is a very obvious solution available to you...
OK, I’M LEAVING!
*Examines copious amounts of chichi knick knacks that will need to be wrapped up*
Ok, maybe not quite yet.
Where you see “chi chi knick knacks” I see a potential Knapper’s Gazette article, which I can bang out in an hour for £400, thereby paying for all these coffee cans - with £200 left over
Because I really am drinking more coffee - about twice as much - simply because the cans are so much more pleasurable to use. Lovely historic delicate beautiful noomy
I’ve been scouring the psych literature looking for a theory that covers this phenomenon. I can’t really find one. Affordance Theory and Cathedral Effect come close, but don’t really map it entirely
Fascinating
There is something about using objects with a past. A friend was describing his latest purchases - old split cane fishing rods and some reels - and how much he is looking forward to using them this summer.
The object still needs to be able to do the job, of course. No point buying a pair of 1950's batting gloves and hoping not to get broken fingers, for instance.
While Leon is eminently mockable, he's not wrong on this; there is appeal in old objects well beyond their actual utility. I feel the same (for example) about old film cameras that I couldn't afford when I was a kid.
That said, @turbotubbs is absolutely right that these objects need to do a job. It doesn't necessarily have to be the job they were designed for, but that have to do SOMETHING. They need utility
My one guiding principle since I started doing up my flat and buying stuff has been this: everything must have a purpose. The 18th century Japanese vase must work as a reed diffuser bottle, the 1960s Murano glass tazza must work as a way to protect yet display an antiquity, and so on. Unless the object is quite exceptionally beautiful or ancient, if it can't DO something, it doesn't make the cut
At the same time, when they do find their purpose - and it may be totally unexpected - it is hugely satisfying. My large Georgian silver tea caddy is an excellent and beautiful place to store all my batteries. I have a German cast iron mug from the 16th century which, it turns, is a perfect vessel for holding tubes of glue. My 15th century latten bowl filled with blue agate is a magnificent soap dish
The Regency coffee cans, unsurprisingly, make excellent coffee cups. Ideal for espresso. If they didn't do that I wouldn't even want them in the flat. The whole idea of museum objects, stuffed behind glass, sealed in vitrines, is ghastly to me
FPT slightly, and not an original observation, but I'm pretty sure that Streeting is angling to be Burnham's Chancellor, and I can see it happening.
Rachel Reeves is tarnished goods and too closely associated with Starmer. Absolutely no way she will continue.
Streeting is floating some smart, Burnham-adjacent ideas on taxation. He's also popularly viewed as centre-right so would probably pacify the almighty bond markets.
There are moderately good odds on Betfair Exchange if you feel so moved.
My view is that he won’t actually end up running for leader. He will claim it’s in the interests of the party to have Burnham and he will as you say try to become his chancellor.
I see Wes Streeting is proposing to match capital gains tax to income tax.
/If/ Labour allows inflation re-indexing of assets, so that the cost basis for capital gains tax is scaled with inflation then this is a sensible idea. If not, it will be the stupidist tax in the UK, even worse than stamp duty: A non-indexed high rate of CGT is a > 100% tax on long term gains & destroys private investment at a stroke, it’s an enormous incentive for the government to shadow tax assets by printing £ & makes incentivising employees through share options impossible.
Labour should, in fact, impose CGT at the sellers marginal income tax rate after inflation re-indexing & use the income to cut income taxes & reward work.
Failure to index the cost basis to inflation for the CGT calculation will destroy the economy: If you think we’ve got low growth now, wait till you see what happens when the real tax on capital gains is > 100% !
(Ironically, this represents a return to Tory orthodoxy: Nigel Lawson introduced almost exactly this system back in 1988 or so, I’m not sure why it was subsequently abandoned.)
CGT being taxed at income tax rates is f****** moronic, and not just for the reasons you’ve outlined.
I hold substantial unrealised gains from the US tech boom but since the 2024 budget changes I’ve capped my annual disposals at £50k to avoid triggering the higher rate. That means a large portion of capital is effectively stranded until CGT falls or I relocate abroad.
Since 2024, I’ve been approached twice to seed promising UK startups. Both times, I've declined because investing would push me over the threshold. In total, I’ve turned down £250k+ in domestic investment. That's capital that could have funded British business instead of remaining parked in US markets. One of those businesses did very well. The other failed. But 2023's budget changes were enough to adjust my risk/reward profile so I did not invest.
Where it really gets interesting is if CGT becomes treated as ordinary income. So if I earn £50k from work, I’d instantly face a 40% rate on any asset sales. The rational response in my case would be to stop working entirely and live off the £50k allowance at the lower band, effectively stepping out of the workforce until retirement age. For someone with two decades left in their career, that’s another direct blow to UK productivity. Nice for me, though.
However, in all honesty, I doubt I’ll stick around to see how it plays out. If cashing out equity gains before markets peak becomes my priority, options like EU non-lucrative visas, golden residence schemes, or the Crown Dependencies will suddenly look far more attractive, expensive yes but still cheaper than paying UK tax rates. If an exit tax is even hinted at, I’ll be long gone. These policies are always telegraphed well in advance.
My main reason for being in the UK at the moment is long term illness (I have private healthcare by the way, so not even burdening the NHS!) and not really wanting to navigate foreign systems while sick. Being able to cash in some of my investments both to reduce my workload and pay for private healthcare has been a real boon.
TL;DR: I will never pay 40%+ CGT. If it’s implemented, I’ll either stay under the threshold indefinitely or leave. The damage is already done - my behaviour has already shifted since 2024, resulting in less capital flowing into UK business.
If people don't like that or think me unpatriotic I'd point out I've already paid more in taxes by midlife than most people will earn in a lifetime, and I have private healthcare and no kids so really take very little from the state. I will not pay a penny more.
I note all these points, but I wonder about the consequence. Because what needs to be explained is why working in the sense of the term for most people - employment on which IT and NI is paid - should be taxed more highly than any other sort of way of gaining money. I can't find it here.
Of course you might say that these taxes are also too high, and I am sure they are, but that doesn't deal with the point I am making.
Having income taxed more heavily than gains creates an incentive for 'structures' which turn the first into the second.
11 medical professionals, including doctors and nurses, sacked for accessing the medical records of the three murdered victims of Valdo Calocane in Nottingham without any reason to do so. Others disciplined. Good.
The same happened in Southport.
Police have also done this in Nottingham - and in far greater numbers - but we have yet to hear if any have been disciplined. There was a suggestion at one point that so many had done so that an amnesty might be needed.
How sick do you have to be to do this? How toxic must the culture be when so many think it ok to do this?
It doesn't say WHY they did it. And I cannot work out why other than prurient curiosity, but even then it's weird. Why??
Many years ago I came across a fellow lab member watching and rewatching footage of a plane hitting a mountain. Clearly no survivors. I asked him why he was watching it - he mumbled something about 'trying to see where it hit'. I suspect it was more the ghoulish fascination.
Humans are like that. Cases like the women who drowned at Brighton last week will always interest people - whenever there are unanswered questions, people will try to find answers.
On the current cases there is clearly morbid attraction to the information for some people and I suspect not a strong enough culture to stop transgression. These outcomes might help, but we have also probably lost good healthcare professionals too.
I suspect it was just goulishness rather than looking for material gain.
It does perhaps illustrate the problems with electronic records. If these were not so prominent cases would anyone have done an audit of who accessed the records?
Does anyone know where this grocery price cap idea has come from? It seems a bit odd that both the Scottish government and Westminster have had the same bright idea at the same time. Is there some horrifying forecast of food price inflation circulating?
Presumably it's inspired by Mamdani's idea of state-owned grocery stores - and therefore engineered lower prices - in New York
That particular story is going to be quite brilliant to watch.
It’s going to take two years to build (Wal-Mart can do a massive warehouse hypermarket in six months), is going to be staffed by Union staff on $40 an hour for a 35 hour week, time-and-a-half outside 9-5 and double time nights and weekends, has very little buying power, and is likely to be a massive target for shoplifting and looting, neither of which Mamdani currently sees as bad things.
It’s going to cost many millions and be a total failure. I know this because it’s been a total failure costing millions every time it’s been tried before.
Maybe, like trying communism, it’s going to be different this time……….
Indeed, will be a totally different type of communism this time, nothing like all the other failed attempts at it.
What people miss is that city-owned groceries is not an entirely new concept in the land of the free where several states own and run off-licences.
The state-run offies are enforced monopolies though.
This NY idea is going to be competing with Wal-Mart, Target, and Costco, plus many smaller grocery shops. Good luck with that.
I don't think that is the issue.
It is more like de-banked communities in the UK, and what happens to people who need them. As someone said earlier - food deserts.
I would point to the was US society is set up in a couple of ways:
1 - The basic price of food / cost of living. 2 - It's designed for driving by everything from planning policies to not building any sidewalks in many places to public transport being shite to police regarding "walking" as a suspicious activity, so if you can't afford the multi thousand dollar entry fee, you are f*cked. 3 - The unavailability of fresh food, but that's more to do with the food system. I recall a video of someone trying to buy an apple (fruit) in New York.
On his scheme, it looks to me as if he is wiring in some very high overheads. But state owned "fill the gaps" do exist. I think that supporting charitable / co-operative organisations may be more effective.
If you want to imagine what the Roman Republic would look like, had it survived into the modern era, imagine the United States. Not only did the Founding Fathers adopt many of the trappings of Republican Rome, they sought quite consciously to model the new republic upon its social structure.
A big feature of that is that you really, really, do not want to be poor, in the United States.
I see Wes Streeting is proposing to match capital gains tax to income tax.
/If/ Labour allows inflation re-indexing of assets, so that the cost basis for capital gains tax is scaled with inflation then this is a sensible idea. If not, it will be the stupidist tax in the UK, even worse than stamp duty: A non-indexed high rate of CGT is a > 100% tax on long term gains & destroys private investment at a stroke, it’s an enormous incentive for the government to shadow tax assets by printing £ & makes incentivising employees through share options impossible.
Labour should, in fact, impose CGT at the sellers marginal income tax rate after inflation re-indexing & use the income to cut income taxes & reward work.
Failure to index the cost basis to inflation for the CGT calculation will destroy the economy: If you think we’ve got low growth now, wait till you see what happens when the real tax on capital gains is > 100% !
(Ironically, this represents a return to Tory orthodoxy: Nigel Lawson introduced almost exactly this system back in 1988 or so, I’m not sure why it was subsequently abandoned.)
CGT being taxed at income tax rates is f****** moronic, and not just for the reasons you’ve outlined.
I hold substantial unrealised gains from the US tech boom but since the 2024 budget changes I’ve capped my annual disposals at £50k to avoid triggering the higher rate. That means a large portion of capital is effectively stranded until CGT falls or I relocate abroad.
Since 2024, I’ve been approached twice to seed promising UK startups. Both times, I've declined because investing would push me over the threshold. In total, I’ve turned down £250k+ in domestic investment. That's capital that could have funded British business instead of remaining parked in US markets. One of those businesses did very well. The other failed. But 2023's budget changes were enough to adjust my risk/reward profile so I did not invest.
Where it really gets interesting is if CGT becomes treated as ordinary income. So if I earn £50k from work, I’d instantly face a 40% rate on any asset sales. The rational response in my case would be to stop working entirely and live off the £50k allowance at the lower band, effectively stepping out of the workforce until retirement age. For someone with two decades left in their career, that’s another direct blow to UK productivity. Nice for me, though.
However, in all honesty, I doubt I’ll stick around to see how it plays out. If cashing out equity gains before markets peak becomes my priority, options like EU non-lucrative visas, golden residence schemes, or the Crown Dependencies will suddenly look far more attractive, expensive yes but still cheaper than paying UK tax rates. If an exit tax is even hinted at, I’ll be long gone. These policies are always telegraphed well in advance.
My main reason for being in the UK at the moment is long term illness (I have private healthcare by the way, so not even burdening the NHS!) and not really wanting to navigate foreign systems while sick. Being able to cash in some of my investments both to reduce my workload and pay for private healthcare has been a real boon.
TL;DR: I will never pay 40%+ CGT. If it’s implemented, I’ll either stay under the threshold indefinitely or leave. The damage is already done - my behaviour has already shifted since 2024, resulting in less capital flowing into UK business.
If people don't like that or think me unpatriotic I'd point out I've already paid more in taxes by midlife than most people will earn in a lifetime, and I have private healthcare and no kids so really take very little from the state. I will not pay a penny more.
It may or may not be unpatriotic, but I get from your oeuvre that you are on the left of politics. But you're providing us with a perfect example of the dynamic effect of raising taxation. If you're personally heading for Belize at the first whiff of someone raising tax on your gains, why can't you join the dots about the economy in general?
I've always had him down as an unabashed capitalist, centre right, quite libertarian, pro-trans rights
An interesting niche, but deffo not left. However, maybe I missed lots of clues
I identify as a libertarian, tee hee.
But Leon has me down to a tee here - a centre right pro capitalist libertarian. I am very socially liberal (even before dating a trans woman, I was an unashamedly "people should be able to identify as a hatstand if they want and marry their golden retriever, it's none of the state's business" type).
My view is that there should be a great deal less interference in how others live their lives and that principle guides most of my views on everything from tax policy to trans rights (which I do not want to start on about again!).
Your rant about CGT sounded very like the inside of my own head. I have terrible cognitive dissonance, I keep saying to all and sundry "the problem in this country is that work is taxed too heavily and rent seeking is taxed too lightly" but I am sitting on unrealised capital gains that are now roughly 10-20 years on from the point in time where I was actually taking serious risk and working serious hours to generate the seed of them and I'm coasting and maybe now I am the problem, but at the same time I feel defensive and threatened and a little voice is saying "I refuse to be a slowly boiling frog, I'm definitely going to jump if they put up CGT/widen IHT/limit business asset reliefs just once more..." .
Sounds like council formation was fun in Kirklees yesterday, the ceremonial Green mayor (/meeting chair) and her Reform deputy were sworn in but no majority for political leadership of the council. With 35 needed Green led coalition got 34 votes, and Reform leadership got 27 votes (fewer than the 29 councillors they sport). Some procedural confusion prevented any tiebreaks being brought forward. So, officials run the council till they try again.
That Green voting number, by definition, has to include some Tories (or even some Reform councillors), so I hope Kemi has been kept abreast of the situation!
Meanwhile, Robbie Savage has taken the leadership of Wakefield council:
11 medical professionals, including doctors and nurses, sacked for accessing the medical records of the three murdered victims of Valdo Calocane in Nottingham without any reason to do so. Others disciplined. Good.
The same happened in Southport.
Police have also done this in Nottingham - and in far greater numbers - but we have yet to hear if any have been disciplined. There was a suggestion at one point that so many had done so that an amnesty might be needed.
How sick do you have to be to do this? How toxic must the culture be when so many think it ok to do this?
It is not sick. It is normal professional curiosity. That's why so many people looked. That is why there have to be rules or even laws against it.
Like what I had a vasectomy and a few days later my eldest "accidentally" kicked me in the nuts. I developed a haematoma the size of an orange. All the docs in A&E wanted a gander...
This is all getting a bit dull, so here's a change of subject
While we have been focused on Iran/Skyr/THE ARSE, America is reviving its UFO flap
It's got to the extent where Fox News is discussing "how many types of aliens there are". Nordics, greys, reptilians, etc. I am particularly unkeen on the ones that look like a giant praying mantis
'Non-human' bodies allegedly recovered from crashed UFO, documentary filmmaker claims Dan Farah alleges intelligence officials confirmed recovery of 'non-human' bodies in crashed UFO craft in new interviews"
"Neil DeGrasse Tyson explains why he is now entering the UFO and alien conversation after decades of debunking
“I would have never imagined if I didn't know Neil Degrass Tyson, he's not talking extraterrestrials. He's the debunker. Why would you write about extraterrestrial life?”
“What began to happen if you go back long enough, a few decades ago, most of the many of the accounts of UFOs and alien abductions and things were people who didn't otherwise have the title or integrity that their station in life would grant them.
There was the farmer in his back, there were drunken revelers at 2 a.m. staggering out of the bar. And it would be their accounts of UFOs that would get reported on.
And beginning a few years ago, and all of you in the media just ate it up when various whistleblowers and insiders, they're not drunken revelers. There's a parade of them. Many of them former military, ex intelligence agency officers and under oath in front of Congress.
By the way, this is the last and only time I remember in the past decade where both houses of Congress were just together with one investigative purpose. I was quite impressed by that. Aliens brought us together.
So when these people of high rank started reporting, I said, ‘All right, I have to jump in here. I can't stay silent. I have to be a participant in what's going on’.”"
WTF is up? Are they just getting crazier?
It's a distraction from real news.
Epstein? Maybe
That's the obvious motivation for Trump, but this goes far far beyond Trump
The Japanese are also doing it. A form of Disclosure
"BREAKING: Japan’s government admits it possesses UAP data, including video footage, and says public disclosure will begin within the limits of national security restrictions."
"Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara says Japan possesses footage and information related to UAP sightings, with possible future disclosures depending on security considerations."
11 medical professionals, including doctors and nurses, sacked for accessing the medical records of the three murdered victims of Valdo Calocane in Nottingham without any reason to do so. Others disciplined. Good.
The same happened in Southport.
Police have also done this in Nottingham - and in far greater numbers - but we have yet to hear if any have been disciplined. There was a suggestion at one point that so many had done so that an amnesty might be needed.
How sick do you have to be to do this? How toxic must the culture be when so many think it ok to do this?
It doesn't say WHY they did it. And I cannot work out why other than prurient curiosity, but even then it's weird. Why??
I cannot possibly conceive why anyone would even want to see those pictures. It’s bizarre.
That is indeed excellent. Not sure if this is confirmation bias on my part, but I came away from it more convinced that Burnham would win. Maybe 75% vs 70% previously. Would be interested on others' takes.
I see Wes Streeting is proposing to match capital gains tax to income tax.
/If/ Labour allows inflation re-indexing of assets, so that the cost basis for capital gains tax is scaled with inflation then this is a sensible idea. If not, it will be the stupidist tax in the UK, even worse than stamp duty: A non-indexed high rate of CGT is a > 100% tax on long term gains & destroys private investment at a stroke, it’s an enormous incentive for the government to shadow tax assets by printing £ & makes incentivising employees through share options impossible.
Labour should, in fact, impose CGT at the sellers marginal income tax rate after inflation re-indexing & use the income to cut income taxes & reward work.
Failure to index the cost basis to inflation for the CGT calculation will destroy the economy: If you think we’ve got low growth now, wait till you see what happens when the real tax on capital gains is > 100% !
(Ironically, this represents a return to Tory orthodoxy: Nigel Lawson introduced almost exactly this system back in 1988 or so, I’m not sure why it was subsequently abandoned.)
CGT being taxed at income tax rates is f****** moronic, and not just for the reasons you’ve outlined.
I hold substantial unrealised gains from the US tech boom but since the 2024 budget changes I’ve capped my annual disposals at £50k to avoid triggering the higher rate. That means a large portion of capital is effectively stranded until CGT falls or I relocate abroad.
Since 2024, I’ve been approached twice to seed promising UK startups. Both times, I've declined because investing would push me over the threshold. In total, I’ve turned down £250k+ in domestic investment. That's capital that could have funded British business instead of remaining parked in US markets. One of those businesses did very well. The other failed. But 2023's budget changes were enough to adjust my risk/reward profile so I did not invest.
Where it really gets interesting is if CGT becomes treated as ordinary income. So if I earn £50k from work, I’d instantly face a 40% rate on any asset sales. The rational response in my case would be to stop working entirely and live off the £50k allowance at the lower band, effectively stepping out of the workforce until retirement age. For someone with two decades left in their career, that’s another direct blow to UK productivity. Nice for me, though.
However, in all honesty, I doubt I’ll stick around to see how it plays out. If cashing out equity gains before markets peak becomes my priority, options like EU non-lucrative visas, golden residence schemes, or the Crown Dependencies will suddenly look far more attractive, expensive yes but still cheaper than paying UK tax rates. If an exit tax is even hinted at, I’ll be long gone. These policies are always telegraphed well in advance.
My main reason for being in the UK at the moment is long term illness (I have private healthcare by the way, so not even burdening the NHS!) and not really wanting to navigate foreign systems while sick. Being able to cash in some of my investments both to reduce my workload and pay for private healthcare has been a real boon.
TL;DR: I will never pay 40%+ CGT. If it’s implemented, I’ll either stay under the threshold indefinitely or leave. The damage is already done - my behaviour has already shifted since 2024, resulting in less capital flowing into UK business.
If people don't like that or think me unpatriotic I'd point out I've already paid more in taxes by midlife than most people will earn in a lifetime, and I have private healthcare and no kids so really take very little from the state. I will not pay a penny more.
I note all these points, but I wonder about the consequence. Because what needs to be explained is why working in the sense of the term for most people - employment on which IT and NI is paid - should be taxed more highly than any other sort of way of gaining money. I can't find it here.
Of course you might say that these taxes are also too high, and I am sure they are, but that doesn't deal with the point I am making.
Having income taxed more heavily than gains creates an incentive for 'structures' which turn the first into the second.
There’s a reason UK investors have long had an unusual fondness for long dated low interest government bonds , sold below par. Few other countries have quite so many.
If Labour follow through on these insane new taxes, tax hikes, taxes on everything, then we will see capital flight on a new and unprecedented scale. Which means one more tax. An exit tax. We are turning into Soviet Albania without the weather
Oh well, at least we managed to spend £100,000,000,000 on the world’s slowest railway which won’t become operational for another 450 years
Since you (a) apparently hate this country and (b) think there are too many people in it I would have thought there is a very obvious solution available to you...
OK, I’M LEAVING!
*Examines copious amounts of chichi knick knacks that will need to be wrapped up*
Ok, maybe not quite yet.
Where you see “chi chi knick knacks” I see a potential Knapper’s Gazette article, which I can bang out in an hour for £400, thereby paying for all these coffee cans - with £200 left over
Because I really am drinking more coffee - about twice as much - simply because the cans are so much more pleasurable to use. Lovely historic delicate beautiful noomy
I’ve been scouring the psych literature looking for a theory that covers this phenomenon. I can’t really find one. Affordance Theory and Cathedral Effect come close, but don’t really map it entirely
Fascinating
There is something about using objects with a past. A friend was describing his latest purchases - old split cane fishing rods and some reels - and how much he is looking forward to using them this summer.
The object still needs to be able to do the job, of course. No point buying a pair of 1950's batting gloves and hoping not to get broken fingers, for instance.
While Leon is eminently mockable, he's not wrong on this; there is appeal in old objects well beyond their actual utility. I feel the same (for example) about old film cameras that I couldn't afford when I was a kid.
That said, @turbotubbs is absolutely right that these objects need to do a job. It doesn't necessarily have to be the job they were designed for, but that have to do SOMETHING. They need utility
My one guiding principle since I started doing up my flat and buying stuff has been this: everything must have a purpose. The 18th century Japanese vase must work as a reed diffuser bottle, the 1960s Murano glass tazza must work as a way to protect yet display an antiquity, and so on. Unless the object is quite exceptionally beautiful or ancient, if it can't DO something, it doesn't make the cut
At the same time, when they do find their purpose - and it may be totally unexpected - it is hugely satisfying. My large Georgian silver tea caddy is an excellent and beautiful place to store all my batteries. I have a German cast iron mug from the 16th century which, it turns, is a perfect vessel for holding tubes of glue. My 15th century latten bowl filled with blue agate is a magnificent soap dish
The Regency coffee cans, unsurprisingly, make excellent coffee cups. Ideal for espresso. If they didn't do that I wouldn't even want them in the flat. The whole idea of museum objects, stuffed behind glass, sealed in vitrines, is ghastly to me
CGT being taxed at income tax rates is f****** moronic, and not just for the reasons you’ve outlined.
I hold substantial unrealised gains from the US tech boom but since the 2024 budget changes I’ve capped my annual disposals at £50k to avoid triggering the higher rate. That means a large portion of capital is effectively stranded until CGT falls or I relocate abroad.
Since 2024, I’ve been approached twice to seed promising UK startups. Both times, I've declined because investing would push me over the threshold. In total, I’ve turned down £250k+ in domestic investment. That's capital that could have funded British business instead of remaining parked in US markets. One of those businesses did very well. The other failed. But 2023's budget changes were enough to adjust my risk/reward profile so I did not invest.
Where it really gets interesting is if CGT becomes treated as ordinary income. So if I earn £50k from work, I’d instantly face a 40% rate on any asset sales. The rational response in my case would be to stop working entirely and live off the £50k allowance at the lower band, effectively stepping out of the workforce until retirement age. For someone with two decades left in their career, that’s another direct blow to UK productivity. Nice for me, though.
However, in all honesty, I doubt I’ll stick around to see how it plays out. If cashing out equity gains before markets peak becomes my priority, options like EU non-lucrative visas, golden residence schemes, or the Crown Dependencies will suddenly look far more attractive, expensive yes but still cheaper than paying UK tax rates. If an exit tax is even hinted at, I’ll be long gone. These policies are always telegraphed well in advance.
My main reason for being in the UK at the moment is long term illness (I have private healthcare by the way, so not even burdening the NHS!) and not really wanting to navigate foreign systems while sick. Being able to cash in some of my investments both to reduce my workload and pay for private healthcare has been a real boon.
TL;DR: I will never pay 40%+ CGT. If it’s implemented, I’ll either stay under the threshold indefinitely or leave. The damage is already done - my behaviour has already shifted since 2024, resulting in less capital flowing into UK business.
If people don't like that or think me unpatriotic I'd point out I've already paid more in taxes by midlife than most people will earn in a lifetime, and I have private healthcare and no kids so really take very little from the state. I will not pay a penny more.
I note all these points, but I wonder about the consequence. Because what needs to be explained is why working in the sense of the term for most people - employment on which IT and NI is paid - should be taxed more highly than any other sort of way of gaining money. I can't find it here.
Of course you might say that these taxes are also too high, and I am sure they are, but that doesn't deal with the point I am making.
1. Risk. 2. Incentive.
If you go to your PAYE job and earn 100k a year you will take home £68,557, so £31,443 in tax. There is zero risk to you for doing so. You get paid simply for showing up.
If you invest 100k and it becomes 200k, you will pay £20263 in tax on it. (Consider also it may take 10 years to become 200k, by which time you will be paying tax on inflation as historically prices roughly double every 10 years!)
However, if you invest 100k you stand to lose it all. Therefore in order to incentivise you to invest that money, a lower rate of tax is demanded. The difference isn't as big as you think - it's 20k per 100k vs 30k per 100k depending on capital (risk) vs PAYE (no risk). But the point is the PAYE salary takes *absolutely no risk* to earn his 100k whereas the person investing 100k stands to lose it all if their investment goes badly.
In an economy you want people to invest, which means taking risk, which means incentivising accordingly through tax structure. If you tax investing more, you get less investment, which is a doom loop for the economy as we get less growth, fewer jobs, higher unemployment, less spending, a higher welfare bill etc. So taxing investment less than PAYE is good for everyone, not just the investors.
This is really simple economics - yes, I'm simplifying it a bit but you get the gist - and that so many of our political class cannot grasp it infuriates me.
Dan Neidle makes the point on indexation
‘ Also the problem: long term investors get no allowance for inflation.
Invest £100k in 2016 and get £150k back today, and that's a gain of only £10k after inflation. But you pay £12k tax on that £10k of "real" gain. Effective rate 120%.
If Labour follow through on these insane new taxes, tax hikes, taxes on everything, then we will see capital flight on a new and unprecedented scale. Which means one more tax. An exit tax. We are turning into Soviet Albania without the weather
Oh well, at least we managed to spend £100,000,000,000 on the world’s slowest railway which won’t become operational for another 450 years
Since you (a) apparently hate this country and (b) think there are too many people in it I would have thought there is a very obvious solution available to you...
OK, I’M LEAVING!
*Examines copious amounts of chichi knick knacks that will need to be wrapped up*
Ok, maybe not quite yet.
Where you see “chi chi knick knacks” I see a potential Knapper’s Gazette article, which I can bang out in an hour for £400, thereby paying for all these coffee cans - with £200 left over
Because I really am drinking more coffee - about twice as much - simply because the cans are so much more pleasurable to use. Lovely historic delicate beautiful noomy
I’ve been scouring the psych literature looking for a theory that covers this phenomenon. I can’t really find one. Affordance Theory and Cathedral Effect come close, but don’t really map it entirely
Fascinating
There is something about using objects with a past. A friend was describing his latest purchases - old split cane fishing rods and some reels - and how much he is looking forward to using them this summer.
The object still needs to be able to do the job, of course. No point buying a pair of 1950's batting gloves and hoping not to get broken fingers, for instance.
While Leon is eminently mockable, he's not wrong on this; there is appeal in old objects well beyond their actual utility. I feel the same (for example) about old film cameras that I couldn't afford when I was a kid.
That said, @turbotubbs is absolutely right that these objects need to do a job... The whole idea of museum objects, stuffed behind glass, sealed in vitrines, is ghastly to me
Almost all old interchangeable (and some non interchangeable) camera lenses work on modern cameras, with adapters. And old film cameras are only of interest if I can occasionally run a roll of film through them.
An old pic of my cat through a 1950s preset Takumar:
CGT being taxed at income tax rates is f****** moronic, and not just for the reasons you’ve outlined.
I hold substantial unrealised gains from the US tech boom but since the 2024 budget changes I’ve capped my annual disposals at £50k to avoid triggering the higher rate. That means a large portion of capital is effectively stranded until CGT falls or I relocate abroad.
Since 2024, I’ve been approached twice to seed promising UK startups. Both times, I've declined because investing would push me over the threshold. In total, I’ve turned down £250k+ in domestic investment. That's capital that could have funded British business instead of remaining parked in US markets. One of those businesses did very well. The other failed. But 2023's budget changes were enough to adjust my risk/reward profile so I did not invest.
Where it really gets interesting is if CGT becomes treated as ordinary income. So if I earn £50k from work, I’d instantly face a 40% rate on any asset sales. The rational response in my case would be to stop working entirely and live off the £50k allowance at the lower band, effectively stepping out of the workforce until retirement age. For someone with two decades left in their career, that’s another direct blow to UK productivity. Nice for me, though.
However, in all honesty, I doubt I’ll stick around to see how it plays out. If cashing out equity gains before markets peak becomes my priority, options like EU non-lucrative visas, golden residence schemes, or the Crown Dependencies will suddenly look far more attractive, expensive yes but still cheaper than paying UK tax rates. If an exit tax is even hinted at, I’ll be long gone. These policies are always telegraphed well in advance.
My main reason for being in the UK at the moment is long term illness (I have private healthcare by the way, so not even burdening the NHS!) and not really wanting to navigate foreign systems while sick. Being able to cash in some of my investments both to reduce my workload and pay for private healthcare has been a real boon.
TL;DR: I will never pay 40%+ CGT. If it’s implemented, I’ll either stay under the threshold indefinitely or leave. The damage is already done - my behaviour has already shifted since 2024, resulting in less capital flowing into UK business.
If people don't like that or think me unpatriotic I'd point out I've already paid more in taxes by midlife than most people will earn in a lifetime, and I have private healthcare and no kids so really take very little from the state. I will not pay a penny more.
I note all these points, but I wonder about the consequence. Because what needs to be explained is why working in the sense of the term for most people - employment on which IT and NI is paid - should be taxed more highly than any other sort of way of gaining money. I can't find it here.
Of course you might say that these taxes are also too high, and I am sure they are, but that doesn't deal with the point I am making.
1. Risk. 2. Incentive.
If you go to your PAYE job and earn 100k a year you will take home £68,557, so £31,443 in tax. There is zero risk to you for doing so. You get paid simply for showing up.
If you invest 100k and it becomes 200k, you will pay £20263 in tax on it. (Consider also it may take 10 years to become 200k, by which time you will be paying tax on inflation as historically prices roughly double every 10 years!)
However, if you invest 100k you stand to lose it all. Therefore in order to incentivise you to invest that money, a lower rate of tax is demanded. The difference isn't as big as you think - it's 20k per 100k vs 30k per 100k depending on capital (risk) vs PAYE (no risk). But the point is the PAYE salary takes *absolutely no risk* to earn his 100k whereas the person investing 100k stands to lose it all if their investment goes badly.
In an economy you want people to invest, which means taking risk, which means incentivising accordingly through tax structure. If you tax investing more, you get less investment, which is a doom loop for the economy as we get less growth, fewer jobs, higher unemployment, less spending, a higher welfare bill etc. So taxing investment less than PAYE is good for everyone, not just the investors.
This is really simple economics - yes, I'm simplifying it a bit but you get the gist - and that so many of our political class cannot grasp it infuriates me.
Thank you. Good points all. One comment.
Bloke has job earning 100K, taxed as described above. He also is, like many, and excellent investor and has as it happens 100K to utilise. His information, research and contacts are good. He turns 100K into 200K in a few years. He has personally done nothing apart from intelligently pursue an interest with his laptop. yes, he could lose it all, but the long term history of stock exchanges suggest he will do OK.
His 100K job is demanding, exacting, long hours of difficult expertise in a complex field requiring years of training.
If Labour follow through on these insane new taxes, tax hikes, taxes on everything, then we will see capital flight on a new and unprecedented scale. Which means one more tax. An exit tax. We are turning into Soviet Albania without the weather
Oh well, at least we managed to spend £100,000,000,000 on the world’s slowest railway which won’t become operational for another 450 years
Since you (a) apparently hate this country and (b) think there are too many people in it I would have thought there is a very obvious solution available to you...
OK, I’M LEAVING!
*Examines copious amounts of chichi knick knacks that will need to be wrapped up*
Ok, maybe not quite yet.
Where you see “chi chi knick knacks” I see a potential Knapper’s Gazette article, which I can bang out in an hour for £400, thereby paying for all these coffee cans - with £200 left over
Because I really am drinking more coffee - about twice as much - simply because the cans are so much more pleasurable to use. Lovely historic delicate beautiful noomy
I’ve been scouring the psych literature looking for a theory that covers this phenomenon. I can’t really find one. Affordance Theory and Cathedral Effect come close, but don’t really map it entirely
Fascinating
There is something about using objects with a past. A friend was describing his latest purchases - old split cane fishing rods and some reels - and how much he is looking forward to using them this summer.
The object still needs to be able to do the job, of course. No point buying a pair of 1950's batting gloves and hoping not to get broken fingers, for instance.
While Leon is eminently mockable, he's not wrong on this; there is appeal in old objects well beyond their actual utility. I feel the same (for example) about old film cameras that I couldn't afford when I was a kid.
That said, @turbotubbs is absolutely right that these objects need to do a job. It doesn't necessarily have to be the job they were designed for, but that have to do SOMETHING. They need utility
My one guiding principle since I started doing up my flat and buying stuff has been this: everything must have a purpose. The 18th century Japanese vase must work as a reed diffuser bottle, the 1960s Murano glass tazza must work as a way to protect yet display an antiquity, and so on. Unless the object is quite exceptionally beautiful or ancient, if it can't DO something, it doesn't make the cut
At the same time, when they do find their purpose - and it may be totally unexpected - it is hugely satisfying. My large Georgian silver tea caddy is an excellent and beautiful place to store all my batteries. I have a German cast iron mug from the 16th century which, it turns, is a perfect vessel for holding tubes of glue. My 15th century latten bowl filled with blue agate is a magnificent soap dish
The Regency coffee cans, unsurprisingly, make excellent coffee cups. Ideal for espresso. If they didn't do that I wouldn't even want them in the flat. The whole idea of museum objects, stuffed behind glass, sealed in vitrines, is ghastly to me
I'm no expert on tea caddies, batteries and electrochemistry but are you sure it is a good idea to store batteries inside a metal container, or is it lined with wood?
If Labour follow through on these insane new taxes, tax hikes, taxes on everything, then we will see capital flight on a new and unprecedented scale. Which means one more tax. An exit tax. We are turning into Soviet Albania without the weather
Oh well, at least we managed to spend £100,000,000,000 on the world’s slowest railway which won’t become operational for another 450 years
Since you (a) apparently hate this country and (b) think there are too many people in it I would have thought there is a very obvious solution available to you...
OK, I’M LEAVING!
*Examines copious amounts of chichi knick knacks that will need to be wrapped up*
Ok, maybe not quite yet.
Where you see “chi chi knick knacks” I see a potential Knapper’s Gazette article, which I can bang out in an hour for £400, thereby paying for all these coffee cans - with £200 left over
Because I really am drinking more coffee - about twice as much - simply because the cans are so much more pleasurable to use. Lovely historic delicate beautiful noomy
I’ve been scouring the psych literature looking for a theory that covers this phenomenon. I can’t really find one. Affordance Theory and Cathedral Effect come close, but don’t really map it entirely
Fascinating
There is something about using objects with a past. A friend was describing his latest purchases - old split cane fishing rods and some reels - and how much he is looking forward to using them this summer.
The object still needs to be able to do the job, of course. No point buying a pair of 1950's batting gloves and hoping not to get broken fingers, for instance.
While Leon is eminently mockable, he's not wrong on this; there is appeal in old objects well beyond their actual utility. I feel the same (for example) about old film cameras that I couldn't afford when I was a kid.
That said, @turbotubbs is absolutely right that these objects need to do a job. It doesn't necessarily have to be the job they were designed for, but that have to do SOMETHING. They need utility
My one guiding principle since I started doing up my flat and buying stuff has been this: everything must have a purpose. The 18th century Japanese vase must work as a reed diffuser bottle, the 1960s Murano glass tazza must work as a way to protect yet display an antiquity, and so on. Unless the object is quite exceptionally beautiful or ancient, if it can't DO something, it doesn't make the cut
At the same time, when they do find their purpose - and it may be totally unexpected - it is hugely satisfying. My large Georgian silver tea caddy is an excellent and beautiful place to store all my batteries. I have a German cast iron mug from the 16th century which, it turns, is a perfect vessel for holding tubes of glue. My 15th century latten bowl filled with blue agate is a magnificent soap dish
The Regency coffee cans, unsurprisingly, make excellent coffee cups. Ideal for espresso. If they didn't do that I wouldn't even want them in the flat. The whole idea of museum objects, stuffed behind glass, sealed in vitrines, is ghastly to me
Why do I immediately think of Horcruxes?
The Theory of Noom also works here (I am now applying Noom to objects as well as places)
By giving these objects a purpose, a task, a role, once again, you revive some noom, which has been hidden in them, but inert. Merely putting them on show does not do that
Rachel Reeves’ “Great British Summer Savings” scheme is estimated to cost around £300 million, the Treasury has said.
“This will apply to ticket prices for both adults and children, covering attractions such as fairs, theme parks, zoos, and museums. It will include children’s tickets for cinemas, concerts, soft play, and the theatre, and it will cut the cost of children’s meals in restaurants and cafes from VAT to five per cent as well.
Final costings for all the measures will be detailed at the next budget following scoring from the Office for Budget Responsibility, the department said.
I see Wes Streeting is proposing to match capital gains tax to income tax.
/If/ Labour allows inflation re-indexing of assets, so that the cost basis for capital gains tax is scaled with inflation then this is a sensible idea. If not, it will be the stupidist tax in the UK, even worse than stamp duty: A non-indexed high rate of CGT is a > 100% tax on long term gains & destroys private investment at a stroke, it’s an enormous incentive for the government to shadow tax assets by printing £ & makes incentivising employees through share options impossible.
Labour should, in fact, impose CGT at the sellers marginal income tax rate after inflation re-indexing & use the income to cut income taxes & reward work.
Failure to index the cost basis to inflation for the CGT calculation will destroy the economy: If you think we’ve got low growth now, wait till you see what happens when the real tax on capital gains is > 100% !
(Ironically, this represents a return to Tory orthodoxy: Nigel Lawson introduced almost exactly this system back in 1988 or so, I’m not sure why it was subsequently abandoned.)
CGT being taxed at income tax rates is f****** moronic, and not just for the reasons you’ve outlined.
I hold substantial unrealised gains from the US tech boom but since the 2024 budget changes I’ve capped my annual disposals at £50k to avoid triggering the higher rate. That means a large portion of capital is effectively stranded until CGT falls or I relocate abroad.
Since 2024, I’ve been approached twice to seed promising UK startups. Both times, I've declined because investing would push me over the threshold. In total, I’ve turned down £250k+ in domestic investment. That's capital that could have funded British business instead of remaining parked in US markets. One of those businesses did very well. The other failed. But 2023's budget changes were enough to adjust my risk/reward profile so I did not invest.
Where it really gets interesting is if CGT becomes treated as ordinary income. So if I earn £50k from work, I’d instantly face a 40% rate on any asset sales. The rational response in my case would be to stop working entirely and live off the £50k allowance at the lower band, effectively stepping out of the workforce until retirement age. For someone with two decades left in their career, that’s another direct blow to UK productivity. Nice for me, though.
However, in all honesty, I doubt I’ll stick around to see how it plays out. If cashing out equity gains before markets peak becomes my priority, options like EU non-lucrative visas, golden residence schemes, or the Crown Dependencies will suddenly look far more attractive, expensive yes but still cheaper than paying UK tax rates. If an exit tax is even hinted at, I’ll be long gone. These policies are always telegraphed well in advance.
My main reason for being in the UK at the moment is long term illness (I have private healthcare by the way, so not even burdening the NHS!) and not really wanting to navigate foreign systems while sick. Being able to cash in some of my investments both to reduce my workload and pay for private healthcare has been a real boon.
TL;DR: I will never pay 40%+ CGT. If it’s implemented, I’ll either stay under the threshold indefinitely or leave. The damage is already done - my behaviour has already shifted since 2024, resulting in less capital flowing into UK business.
If people don't like that or think me unpatriotic I'd point out I've already paid more in taxes by midlife than most people will earn in a lifetime, and I have private healthcare and no kids so really take very little from the state. I will not pay a penny more.
It may or may not be unpatriotic, but I get from your oeuvre that you are on the left of politics. But you're providing us with a perfect example of the dynamic effect of raising taxation. If you're personally heading for Belize at the first whiff of someone raising tax on your gains, why can't you join the dots about the economy in general?
I've always had him down as an unabashed capitalist, centre right, quite libertarian, pro-trans rights
An interesting niche, but deffo not left. However, maybe I missed lots of clues
I identify as a libertarian, tee hee.
But Leon has me down to a tee here - a centre right pro capitalist libertarian. I am very socially liberal (even before dating a trans woman, I was an unashamedly "people should be able to identify as a hatstand if they want and marry their golden retriever, it's none of the state's business" type).
My view is that there should be a great deal less interference in how others live their lives and that principle guides most of my views on everything from tax policy to trans rights (which I do not want to start on about again!).
Your rant about CGT sounded very like the inside of my own head. I have terrible cognitive dissonance, I keep saying to all and sundry "the problem in this country is that work is taxed too heavily and rent seeking is taxed too lightly" but I am sitting on unrealised capital gains that are now roughly 10-20 years on from the point in time where I was actually taking serious risk and working serious hours to generate the seed of them and I'm coasting and maybe now I am the problem, but at the same time I feel defensive and threatened and a little voice is saying "I refuse to be a slowly boiling frog, I'm definitely going to jump if they put up CGT/widen IHT/limit business asset reliefs just once more..." .
Yes, precisely.
In most people's heads, capital gains is a thing paid by billionaire plutocrats and people with generational wealth who have never worked a day in their lives, when in reality it is largely paid by people like me who chose to invest the PAYE salary we were already being taxed at 40%+ (thus CGT is a kind of double dipping), or people like yourself, who worked hard and took a lot of risk and are now seeing that bear fruit 20 years later.
As others have noted there is also the problem of the small business owner who builds their business every year for 20 years and sells in retirement, paying far more than they would had they just had a PAYE job for those 20 years as they pay money on the lump sum rather than the lower PAYE rate every year. While there are forms of business asset disposal relief these have been curtailed in recent years and there is no guarantee they will exist at all in 20 years so why would anyone set up a business if CGT = Income tax rates at all? All the risk, far less reward.
Like HS2 disaster, the Tories are going to struggle to ever shed themselves as the party of 1 million (net) immigrants.
The Boriswave.
Which I see someone has now put on the list of waves within Wikipedia, by coincidence on the same day as, and not long after, our discussion about it not being there on there
Like HS2 disaster, the Tories are going to struggle to ever shed themselves as the party of 1 million (net) immigrants.
The Boriswave.
Jenrick's work on housing illegal immigrants in former hotels doesn't seem to have stopped him complaining about illegal immigrants being housed in former hotels.
and when you mention it Reform voters get very upset (at you for telling them)...
Rachel Reeves’ “Great British Summer Savings” scheme is estimated to cost around £300 million, the Treasury has said.
“This will apply to ticket prices for both adults and children, covering attractions such as fairs, theme parks, zoos, and museums. It will include children’s tickets for cinemas, concerts, soft play, and the theatre, and it will cut the cost of children’s meals in restaurants and cafes from VAT to five per cent as well.
Final costings for all the measures will be detailed at the next budget following scoring from the Office for Budget Responsibility, the department said.
It could actually be quite clever, as encouraging people to go out more, even discounted, probably pushes up consumer spending overall
FPT slightly, and not an original observation, but I'm pretty sure that Streeting is angling to be Burnham's Chancellor, and I can see it happening.
Rachel Reeves is tarnished goods and too closely associated with Starmer. Absolutely no way she will continue.
Streeting is floating some smart, Burnham-adjacent ideas on taxation. He's also popularly viewed as centre-right so would probably pacify the almighty bond markets.
There are moderately good odds on Betfair Exchange if you feel so moved.
My view is that he won’t actually end up running for leader. He will claim it’s in the interests of the party to have Burnham and he will as you say try to become his chancellor.
Burnham is more likely to make Cooper or Ed Miliband his chancellor, Streeting infuriated the Burnham camp with his rejoin the EU speech
If Labour follow through on these insane new taxes, tax hikes, taxes on everything, then we will see capital flight on a new and unprecedented scale. Which means one more tax. An exit tax. We are turning into Soviet Albania without the weather
Oh well, at least we managed to spend £100,000,000,000 on the world’s slowest railway which won’t become operational for another 450 years
Since you (a) apparently hate this country and (b) think there are too many people in it I would have thought there is a very obvious solution available to you...
OK, I’M LEAVING!
*Examines copious amounts of chichi knick knacks that will need to be wrapped up*
Ok, maybe not quite yet.
Where you see “chi chi knick knacks” I see a potential Knapper’s Gazette article, which I can bang out in an hour for £400, thereby paying for all these coffee cans - with £200 left over
Because I really am drinking more coffee - about twice as much - simply because the cans are so much more pleasurable to use. Lovely historic delicate beautiful noomy
I’ve been scouring the psych literature looking for a theory that covers this phenomenon. I can’t really find one. Affordance Theory and Cathedral Effect come close, but don’t really map it entirely
Fascinating
There is something about using objects with a past. A friend was describing his latest purchases - old split cane fishing rods and some reels - and how much he is looking forward to using them this summer.
The object still needs to be able to do the job, of course. No point buying a pair of 1950's batting gloves and hoping not to get broken fingers, for instance.
While Leon is eminently mockable, he's not wrong on this; there is appeal in old objects well beyond their actual utility. I feel the same (for example) about old film cameras that I couldn't afford when I was a kid.
That said, @turbotubbs is absolutely right that these objects need to do a job. It doesn't necessarily have to be the job they were designed for, but that have to do SOMETHING. They need utility
My one guiding principle since I started doing up my flat and buying stuff has been this: everything must have a purpose. The 18th century Japanese vase must work as a reed diffuser bottle, the 1960s Murano glass tazza must work as a way to protect yet display an antiquity, and so on. Unless the object is quite exceptionally beautiful or ancient, if it can't DO something, it doesn't make the cut
At the same time, when they do find their purpose - and it may be totally unexpected - it is hugely satisfying. My large Georgian silver tea caddy is an excellent and beautiful place to store all my batteries. I have a German cast iron mug from the 16th century which, it turns, is a perfect vessel for holding tubes of glue. My 15th century latten bowl filled with blue agate is a magnificent soap dish
The Regency coffee cans, unsurprisingly, make excellent coffee cups. Ideal for espresso. If they didn't do that I wouldn't even want them in the flat. The whole idea of museum objects, stuffed behind glass, sealed in vitrines, is ghastly to me
I'm no expert on tea caddies, batteries and electrochemistry but are you sure it is a good idea to store batteries inside a metal container, or is it lined with wood?
The batteries are all in packaging
That said, I very much doubt there's a risk of my being electrocuted by a tea caddy because it contains a lot of Duracell AAAs
Like HS2 disaster, the Tories are going to struggle to ever shed themselves as the party of 1 million (net) immigrants.
The Boriswave.
Jenrick's work on housing illegal immigrants in former hotels doesn't seem to have stopped him complaining about illegal immigrants being housed in former hotels.
and when you mention it Reform voters get very upset (at you for telling them)...
Yes, but Jenrick (and RefUK) is about complaining, not about the subject.
Nigel Farage, and all around him, are a marketing shell.
11 medical professionals, including doctors and nurses, sacked for accessing the medical records of the three murdered victims of Valdo Calocane in Nottingham without any reason to do so. Others disciplined. Good.
The same happened in Southport.
Police have also done this in Nottingham - and in far greater numbers - but we have yet to hear if any have been disciplined. There was a suggestion at one point that so many had done so that an amnesty might be needed.
How sick do you have to be to do this? How toxic must the culture be when so many think it ok to do this?
It doesn't say WHY they did it. And I cannot work out why other than prurient curiosity, but even then it's weird. Why??
As they could I expect out of nosiness. Shows the need for better records management and stricter access controls in the NHS and police
I see Wes Streeting is proposing to match capital gains tax to income tax.
/If/ Labour allows inflation re-indexing of assets, so that the cost basis for capital gains tax is scaled with inflation then this is a sensible idea. If not, it will be the stupidist tax in the UK, even worse than stamp duty: A non-indexed high rate of CGT is a > 100% tax on long term gains & destroys private investment at a stroke, it’s an enormous incentive for the government to shadow tax assets by printing £ & makes incentivising employees through share options impossible.
Labour should, in fact, impose CGT at the sellers marginal income tax rate after inflation re-indexing & use the income to cut income taxes & reward work.
Failure to index the cost basis to inflation for the CGT calculation will destroy the economy: If you think we’ve got low growth now, wait till you see what happens when the real tax on capital gains is > 100% !
(Ironically, this represents a return to Tory orthodoxy: Nigel Lawson introduced almost exactly this system back in 1988 or so, I’m not sure why it was subsequently abandoned.)
CGT being taxed at income tax rates is f****** moronic, and not just for the reasons you’ve outlined.
I hold substantial unrealised gains from the US tech boom but since the 2024 budget changes I’ve capped my annual disposals at £50k to avoid triggering the higher rate. That means a large portion of capital is effectively stranded until CGT falls or I relocate abroad.
Since 2024, I’ve been approached twice to seed promising UK startups. Both times, I've declined because investing would push me over the threshold. In total, I’ve turned down £250k+ in domestic investment. That's capital that could have funded British business instead of remaining parked in US markets. One of those businesses did very well. The other failed. But 2023's budget changes were enough to adjust my risk/reward profile so I did not invest.
Where it really gets interesting is if CGT becomes treated as ordinary income. So if I earn £50k from work, I’d instantly face a 40% rate on any asset sales. The rational response in my case would be to stop working entirely and live off the £50k allowance at the lower band, effectively stepping out of the workforce until retirement age. For someone with two decades left in their career, that’s another direct blow to UK productivity. Nice for me, though.
However, in all honesty, I doubt I’ll stick around to see how it plays out. If cashing out equity gains before markets peak becomes my priority, options like EU non-lucrative visas, golden residence schemes, or the Crown Dependencies will suddenly look far more attractive, expensive yes but still cheaper than paying UK tax rates. If an exit tax is even hinted at, I’ll be long gone. These policies are always telegraphed well in advance.
My main reason for being in the UK at the moment is long term illness (I have private healthcare by the way, so not even burdening the NHS!) and not really wanting to navigate foreign systems while sick. Being able to cash in some of my investments both to reduce my workload and pay for private healthcare has been a real boon.
TL;DR: I will never pay 40%+ CGT. If it’s implemented, I’ll either stay under the threshold indefinitely or leave. The damage is already done - my behaviour has already shifted since 2024, resulting in less capital flowing into UK business.
If people don't like that or think me unpatriotic I'd point out I've already paid more in taxes by midlife than most people will earn in a lifetime, and I have private healthcare and no kids so really take very little from the state. I will not pay a penny more.
I note all these points, but I wonder about the consequence. Because what needs to be explained is why working in the sense of the term for most people - employment on which IT and NI is paid - should be taxed more highly than any other sort of way of gaining money. I can't find it here.
Of course you might say that these taxes are also too high, and I am sure they are, but that doesn't deal with the point I am making.
Having income taxed more heavily than gains creates an incentive for 'structures' which turn the first into the second.
There’s a reason UK investors have long had an unusual fondness for long dated low interest government bonds , sold below par. Few other countries have quite so many.
Yes deep discount bonds can perform that trick. If you do it with gilts it's tax free because they're exempt from CGT. Although reflected somewhat in the price.
CGT being taxed at income tax rates is f****** moronic, and not just for the reasons you’ve outlined.
I hold substantial unrealised gains from the US tech boom but since the 2024 budget changes I’ve capped my annual disposals at £50k to avoid triggering the higher rate. That means a large portion of capital is effectively stranded until CGT falls or I relocate abroad.
Since 2024, I’ve been approached twice to seed promising UK startups. Both times, I've declined because investing would push me over the threshold. In total, I’ve turned down £250k+ in domestic investment. That's capital that could have funded British business instead of remaining parked in US markets. One of those businesses did very well. The other failed. But 2023's budget changes were enough to adjust my risk/reward profile so I did not invest.
Where it really gets interesting is if CGT becomes treated as ordinary income. So if I earn £50k from work, I’d instantly face a 40% rate on any asset sales. The rational response in my case would be to stop working entirely and live off the £50k allowance at the lower band, effectively stepping out of the workforce until retirement age. For someone with two decades left in their career, that’s another direct blow to UK productivity. Nice for me, though.
However, in all honesty, I doubt I’ll stick around to see how it plays out. If cashing out equity gains before markets peak becomes my priority, options like EU non-lucrative visas, golden residence schemes, or the Crown Dependencies will suddenly look far more attractive, expensive yes but still cheaper than paying UK tax rates. If an exit tax is even hinted at, I’ll be long gone. These policies are always telegraphed well in advance.
My main reason for being in the UK at the moment is long term illness (I have private healthcare by the way, so not even burdening the NHS!) and not really wanting to navigate foreign systems while sick. Being able to cash in some of my investments both to reduce my workload and pay for private healthcare has been a real boon.
TL;DR: I will never pay 40%+ CGT. If it’s implemented, I’ll either stay under the threshold indefinitely or leave. The damage is already done - my behaviour has already shifted since 2024, resulting in less capital flowing into UK business.
If people don't like that or think me unpatriotic I'd point out I've already paid more in taxes by midlife than most people will earn in a lifetime, and I have private healthcare and no kids so really take very little from the state. I will not pay a penny more.
I note all these points, but I wonder about the consequence. Because what needs to be explained is why working in the sense of the term for most people - employment on which IT and NI is paid - should be taxed more highly than any other sort of way of gaining money. I can't find it here.
Of course you might say that these taxes are also too high, and I am sure they are, but that doesn't deal with the point I am making.
1. Risk. 2. Incentive.
If you go to your PAYE job and earn 100k a year you will take home £68,557, so £31,443 in tax. There is zero risk to you for doing so. You get paid simply for showing up.
If you invest 100k and it becomes 200k, you will pay £20263 in tax on it. (Consider also it may take 10 years to become 200k, by which time you will be paying tax on inflation as historically prices roughly double every 10 years!)
However, if you invest 100k you stand to lose it all. Therefore in order to incentivise you to invest that money, a lower rate of tax is demanded. The difference isn't as big as you think - it's 20k per 100k vs 30k per 100k depending on capital (risk) vs PAYE (no risk). But the point is the PAYE salary takes *absolutely no risk* to earn his 100k whereas the person investing 100k stands to lose it all if their investment goes badly.
In an economy you want people to invest, which means taking risk, which means incentivising accordingly through tax structure. If you tax investing more, you get less investment, which is a doom loop for the economy as we get less growth, fewer jobs, higher unemployment, less spending, a higher welfare bill etc. So taxing investment less than PAYE is good for everyone, not just the investors.
This is really simple economics - yes, I'm simplifying it a bit but you get the gist - and that so many of our political class cannot grasp it infuriates me.
There are a lot of tax reliefs available that reduce the taxes an investor actually pays.
Pensions ISAs Entrepreneurs relief SEIS EIS VCTs
The actual tax rates paid by investors are not the ones that assume these don't exist.
I've never had to pay a penny of CGT despite investment gains into six figures.
CGT being taxed at income tax rates is f****** moronic, and not just for the reasons you’ve outlined.
I hold substantial unrealised gains from the US tech boom but since the 2024 budget changes I’ve capped my annual disposals at £50k to avoid triggering the higher rate. That means a large portion of capital is effectively stranded until CGT falls or I relocate abroad.
Since 2024, I’ve been approached twice to seed promising UK startups. Both times, I've declined because investing would push me over the threshold. In total, I’ve turned down £250k+ in domestic investment. That's capital that could have funded British business instead of remaining parked in US markets. One of those businesses did very well. The other failed. But 2023's budget changes were enough to adjust my risk/reward profile so I did not invest.
Where it really gets interesting is if CGT becomes treated as ordinary income. So if I earn £50k from work, I’d instantly face a 40% rate on any asset sales. The rational response in my case would be to stop working entirely and live off the £50k allowance at the lower band, effectively stepping out of the workforce until retirement age. For someone with two decades left in their career, that’s another direct blow to UK productivity. Nice for me, though.
However, in all honesty, I doubt I’ll stick around to see how it plays out. If cashing out equity gains before markets peak becomes my priority, options like EU non-lucrative visas, golden residence schemes, or the Crown Dependencies will suddenly look far more attractive, expensive yes but still cheaper than paying UK tax rates. If an exit tax is even hinted at, I’ll be long gone. These policies are always telegraphed well in advance.
My main reason for being in the UK at the moment is long term illness (I have private healthcare by the way, so not even burdening the NHS!) and not really wanting to navigate foreign systems while sick. Being able to cash in some of my investments both to reduce my workload and pay for private healthcare has been a real boon.
TL;DR: I will never pay 40%+ CGT. If it’s implemented, I’ll either stay under the threshold indefinitely or leave. The damage is already done - my behaviour has already shifted since 2024, resulting in less capital flowing into UK business.
If people don't like that or think me unpatriotic I'd point out I've already paid more in taxes by midlife than most people will earn in a lifetime, and I have private healthcare and no kids so really take very little from the state. I will not pay a penny more.
I note all these points, but I wonder about the consequence. Because what needs to be explained is why working in the sense of the term for most people - employment on which IT and NI is paid - should be taxed more highly than any other sort of way of gaining money. I can't find it here.
Of course you might say that these taxes are also too high, and I am sure they are, but that doesn't deal with the point I am making.
1. Risk. 2. Incentive.
If you go to your PAYE job and earn 100k a year you will take home £68,557, so £31,443 in tax. There is zero risk to you for doing so. You get paid simply for showing up.
If you invest 100k and it becomes 200k, you will pay £20263 in tax on it. (Consider also it may take 10 years to become 200k, by which time you will be paying tax on inflation as historically prices roughly double every 10 years!)
However, if you invest 100k you stand to lose it all. Therefore in order to incentivise you to invest that money, a lower rate of tax is demanded. The difference isn't as big as you think - it's 20k per 100k vs 30k per 100k depending on capital (risk) vs PAYE (no risk). But the point is the PAYE salary takes *absolutely no risk* to earn his 100k whereas the person investing 100k stands to lose it all if their investment goes badly.
In an economy you want people to invest, which means taking risk, which means incentivising accordingly through tax structure. If you tax investing more, you get less investment, which is a doom loop for the economy as we get less growth, fewer jobs, higher unemployment, less spending, a higher welfare bill etc. So taxing investment less than PAYE is good for everyone, not just the investors.
This is really simple economics - yes, I'm simplifying it a bit but you get the gist - and that so many of our political class cannot grasp it infuriates me.
Thank you. Good points all. One comment.
Bloke has job earning 100K, taxed as described above. He also is, like many, and excellent investor and has as it happens 100K to utilise. His information, research and contacts are good. He turns 100K into 200K in a few years. He has personally done nothing apart from intelligently pursue an interest with his laptop. yes, he could lose it all, but the long term history of stock exchanges suggest he will do OK.
His 100K job is demanding, exacting, long hours of difficult expertise in a complex field requiring years of training.
Which should attract higher tax rates?
You're making the mistake of assigning morality to money (IMHO!).
The nurses who cared for my grandfather (not an easy man to care for!) and mopped up his bodily fluids in his latter years - were paid minimum wage to do so. Investment bankers get paid millions. I was paid six figures to shuffle papers in an office and manage marketing campaigns - a "golgafrincham ark b" job if I ever heard of it. Which should be paid more? Which has more value to society?
We don't pay people based on how moral or socially good their jobs are, nor should we tax on that basis. We pay based on perceived economic activity generated, and we tax in order to incentivise behaviour. In this case, we want Bloke You Describe Above to invest his money rather than, say, keep it under the mattress, in a low interest savings account, or spend it all on toblerones. Therefore we tax it accordingly.
Increasing tax on employment via the employer's NI rise in 2024 was a stupid decision because it disincentivised people from taking on new staff and increased unemployment. When you tax something more, you get less of it. Now the (possible) next PM wants to double down and start taxing investment... Courageous, as Sir Humphrey might put it!
This is all getting a bit dull, so here's a change of subject
While we have been focused on Iran/Skyr/THE ARSE, America is reviving its UFO flap
It's got to the extent where Fox News is discussing "how many types of aliens there are". Nordics, greys, reptilians, etc. I am particularly unkeen on the ones that look like a giant praying mantis
'Non-human' bodies allegedly recovered from crashed UFO, documentary filmmaker claims Dan Farah alleges intelligence officials confirmed recovery of 'non-human' bodies in crashed UFO craft in new interviews"
"Neil DeGrasse Tyson explains why he is now entering the UFO and alien conversation after decades of debunking
“I would have never imagined if I didn't know Neil Degrass Tyson, he's not talking extraterrestrials. He's the debunker. Why would you write about extraterrestrial life?”
“What began to happen if you go back long enough, a few decades ago, most of the many of the accounts of UFOs and alien abductions and things were people who didn't otherwise have the title or integrity that their station in life would grant them.
There was the farmer in his back, there were drunken revelers at 2 a.m. staggering out of the bar. And it would be their accounts of UFOs that would get reported on.
And beginning a few years ago, and all of you in the media just ate it up when various whistleblowers and insiders, they're not drunken revelers. There's a parade of them. Many of them former military, ex intelligence agency officers and under oath in front of Congress.
By the way, this is the last and only time I remember in the past decade where both houses of Congress were just together with one investigative purpose. I was quite impressed by that. Aliens brought us together.
So when these people of high rank started reporting, I said, ‘All right, I have to jump in here. I can't stay silent. I have to be a participant in what's going on’.”"
Rachel Reeves’ “Great British Summer Savings” scheme is estimated to cost around £300 million, the Treasury has said.
“This will apply to ticket prices for both adults and children, covering attractions such as fairs, theme parks, zoos, and museums. It will include children’s tickets for cinemas, concerts, soft play, and the theatre, and it will cut the cost of children’s meals in restaurants and cafes from VAT to five per cent as well.
Final costings for all the measures will be detailed at the next budget following scoring from the Office for Budget Responsibility, the department said.
Great British Summer Savings sounds like half a good idea but I suspect it will help already engaged parents take their children on day trips they'd have taken anyway, while doing very little for those struggling with day-to-day living costs.
If Labour follow through on these insane new taxes, tax hikes, taxes on everything, then we will see capital flight on a new and unprecedented scale. Which means one more tax. An exit tax. We are turning into Soviet Albania without the weather
Oh well, at least we managed to spend £100,000,000,000 on the world’s slowest railway which won’t become operational for another 450 years
Since you (a) apparently hate this country and (b) think there are too many people in it I would have thought there is a very obvious solution available to you...
OK, I’M LEAVING!
*Examines copious amounts of chichi knick knacks that will need to be wrapped up*
Ok, maybe not quite yet.
Where you see “chi chi knick knacks” I see a potential Knapper’s Gazette article, which I can bang out in an hour for £400, thereby paying for all these coffee cans - with £200 left over
Because I really am drinking more coffee - about twice as much - simply because the cans are so much more pleasurable to use. Lovely historic delicate beautiful noomy
I’ve been scouring the psych literature looking for a theory that covers this phenomenon. I can’t really find one. Affordance Theory and Cathedral Effect come close, but don’t really map it entirely
Fascinating
There is something about using objects with a past. A friend was describing his latest purchases - old split cane fishing rods and some reels - and how much he is looking forward to using them this summer.
The object still needs to be able to do the job, of course. No point buying a pair of 1950's batting gloves and hoping not to get broken fingers, for instance.
While Leon is eminently mockable, he's not wrong on this; there is appeal in old objects well beyond their actual utility. I feel the same (for example) about old film cameras that I couldn't afford when I was a kid.
That said, @turbotubbs is absolutely right that these objects need to do a job. It doesn't necessarily have to be the job they were designed for, but that have to do SOMETHING. They need utility
My one guiding principle since I started doing up my flat and buying stuff has been this: everything must have a purpose. The 18th century Japanese vase must work as a reed diffuser bottle, the 1960s Murano glass tazza must work as a way to protect yet display an antiquity, and so on. Unless the object is quite exceptionally beautiful or ancient, if it can't DO something, it doesn't make the cut
At the same time, when they do find their purpose - and it may be totally unexpected - it is hugely satisfying. My large Georgian silver tea caddy is an excellent and beautiful place to store all my batteries. I have a German cast iron mug from the 16th century which, it turns, is a perfect vessel for holding tubes of glue. My 15th century latten bowl filled with blue agate is a magnificent soap dish
The Regency coffee cans, unsurprisingly, make excellent coffee cups. Ideal for espresso. If they didn't do that I wouldn't even want them in the flat. The whole idea of museum objects, stuffed behind glass, sealed in vitrines, is ghastly to me
I'm no expert on tea caddies, batteries and electrochemistry but are you sure it is a good idea to store batteries inside a metal container, or is it lined with wood?
The batteries are all in packaging
That said, I very much doubt there's a risk of my being electrocuted by a tea caddy because it contains a lot of Duracell AAAs
Its not the electrocution its more the leakage from batteries in contact with metals (obv not if still in packaging).
CGT being taxed at income tax rates is f****** moronic, and not just for the reasons you’ve outlined.
I hold substantial unrealised gains from the US tech boom but since the 2024 budget changes I’ve capped my annual disposals at £50k to avoid triggering the higher rate. That means a large portion of capital is effectively stranded until CGT falls or I relocate abroad.
Since 2024, I’ve been approached twice to seed promising UK startups. Both times, I've declined because investing would push me over the threshold. In total, I’ve turned down £250k+ in domestic investment. That's capital that could have funded British business instead of remaining parked in US markets. One of those businesses did very well. The other failed. But 2023's budget changes were enough to adjust my risk/reward profile so I did not invest.
Where it really gets interesting is if CGT becomes treated as ordinary income. So if I earn £50k from work, I’d instantly face a 40% rate on any asset sales. The rational response in my case would be to stop working entirely and live off the £50k allowance at the lower band, effectively stepping out of the workforce until retirement age. For someone with two decades left in their career, that’s another direct blow to UK productivity. Nice for me, though.
However, in all honesty, I doubt I’ll stick around to see how it plays out. If cashing out equity gains before markets peak becomes my priority, options like EU non-lucrative visas, golden residence schemes, or the Crown Dependencies will suddenly look far more attractive, expensive yes but still cheaper than paying UK tax rates. If an exit tax is even hinted at, I’ll be long gone. These policies are always telegraphed well in advance.
My main reason for being in the UK at the moment is long term illness (I have private healthcare by the way, so not even burdening the NHS!) and not really wanting to navigate foreign systems while sick. Being able to cash in some of my investments both to reduce my workload and pay for private healthcare has been a real boon.
TL;DR: I will never pay 40%+ CGT. If it’s implemented, I’ll either stay under the threshold indefinitely or leave. The damage is already done - my behaviour has already shifted since 2024, resulting in less capital flowing into UK business.
If people don't like that or think me unpatriotic I'd point out I've already paid more in taxes by midlife than most people will earn in a lifetime, and I have private healthcare and no kids so really take very little from the state. I will not pay a penny more.
I note all these points, but I wonder about the consequence. Because what needs to be explained is why working in the sense of the term for most people - employment on which IT and NI is paid - should be taxed more highly than any other sort of way of gaining money. I can't find it here.
Of course you might say that these taxes are also too high, and I am sure they are, but that doesn't deal with the point I am making.
1. Risk. 2. Incentive.
If you go to your PAYE job and earn 100k a year you will take home £68,557, so £31,443 in tax. There is zero risk to you for doing so. You get paid simply for showing up.
If you invest 100k and it becomes 200k, you will pay £20263 in tax on it. (Consider also it may take 10 years to become 200k, by which time you will be paying tax on inflation as historically prices roughly double every 10 years!)
However, if you invest 100k you stand to lose it all. Therefore in order to incentivise you to invest that money, a lower rate of tax is demanded. The difference isn't as big as you think - it's 20k per 100k vs 30k per 100k depending on capital (risk) vs PAYE (no risk). But the point is the PAYE salary takes *absolutely no risk* to earn his 100k whereas the person investing 100k stands to lose it all if their investment goes badly.
In an economy you want people to invest, which means taking risk, which means incentivising accordingly through tax structure. If you tax investing more, you get less investment, which is a doom loop for the economy as we get less growth, fewer jobs, higher unemployment, less spending, a higher welfare bill etc. So taxing investment less than PAYE is good for everyone, not just the investors.
This is really simple economics - yes, I'm simplifying it a bit but you get the gist - and that so many of our political class cannot grasp it infuriates me.
Thank you. Good points all. One comment.
Bloke has job earning 100K, taxed as described above. He also is, like many, and excellent investor and has as it happens 100K to utilise. His information, research and contacts are good. He turns 100K into 200K in a few years. He has personally done nothing apart from intelligently pursue an interest with his laptop. yes, he could lose it all, but the long term history of stock exchanges suggest he will do OK.
His 100K job is demanding, exacting, long hours of difficult expertise in a complex field requiring years of training.
Which should attract higher tax rates?
You're making the mistake of assigning morality to money (IMHO!).
The nurses who cared for my grandfather (not an easy man to care for!) and mopped up his bodily fluids in his latter years - were paid minimum wage to do so. Investment bankers get paid millions. I was paid six figures to shuffle papers in an office and manage marketing campaigns - a "golgafrincham ark b" job if I ever heard of it. Which should be paid more? Which has more value to society?
We don't pay people based on how moral or socially good their jobs are, nor should we tax on that basis. We pay based on perceived economic activity generated, and we tax in order to incentivise behaviour. In this case, we want Bloke You Describe Above to invest his money rather than, say, keep it under the mattress, in a low interest savings account, or spend it all on toblerones. Therefore we tax it accordingly.
Increasing tax on employment via the employer's NI rise in 2024 was a stupid decision because it disincentivised people from taking on new staff and increased unemployment. When you tax something more, you get less of it. Now the (possible) next PM wants to double down and start taxing investment... Courageous, as Sir Humphrey might put it!
Everyone misses the point of the Golgafrincham B ark.
Although it was supposedly about getting rid of the useless. What happens to the Golgafrincham when the B Ark left.
After the departure of the B Ark the entire remaining population subsequently died from a virulent disease contracted from a dirty telephone.
The telephone sanitisers weren’t so useless after all.
This is all getting a bit dull, so here's a change of subject
While we have been focused on Iran/Skyr/THE ARSE, America is reviving its UFO flap
It's got to the extent where Fox News is discussing "how many types of aliens there are". Nordics, greys, reptilians, etc. I am particularly unkeen on the ones that look like a giant praying mantis
'Non-human' bodies allegedly recovered from crashed UFO, documentary filmmaker claims Dan Farah alleges intelligence officials confirmed recovery of 'non-human' bodies in crashed UFO craft in new interviews"
"Neil DeGrasse Tyson explains why he is now entering the UFO and alien conversation after decades of debunking
“I would have never imagined if I didn't know Neil Degrass Tyson, he's not talking extraterrestrials. He's the debunker. Why would you write about extraterrestrial life?”
“What began to happen if you go back long enough, a few decades ago, most of the many of the accounts of UFOs and alien abductions and things were people who didn't otherwise have the title or integrity that their station in life would grant them.
There was the farmer in his back, there were drunken revelers at 2 a.m. staggering out of the bar. And it would be their accounts of UFOs that would get reported on.
And beginning a few years ago, and all of you in the media just ate it up when various whistleblowers and insiders, they're not drunken revelers. There's a parade of them. Many of them former military, ex intelligence agency officers and under oath in front of Congress.
By the way, this is the last and only time I remember in the past decade where both houses of Congress were just together with one investigative purpose. I was quite impressed by that. Aliens brought us together.
So when these people of high rank started reporting, I said, ‘All right, I have to jump in here. I can't stay silent. I have to be a participant in what's going on’.”"
WTF is up? Are they just getting crazier?
Its just the same grift as always.
This is always your go-to explanation - and to be fair, I am sure there is a lot of grift going on - but, as ever, it doesn't remotely explain the widescale nature of this, nor the fact very senior people are involved (who have no obvious monetary motive)
However I have some knapping to do, slightly tedious but essential to pay for my next Mousterian hand axe, so a debate must wait. Anon
Rachel Reeves’ “Great British Summer Savings” scheme is estimated to cost around £300 million, the Treasury has said.
“This will apply to ticket prices for both adults and children, covering attractions such as fairs, theme parks, zoos, and museums. It will include children’s tickets for cinemas, concerts, soft play, and the theatre, and it will cut the cost of children’s meals in restaurants and cafes from VAT to five per cent as well.
Final costings for all the measures will be detailed at the next budget following scoring from the Office for Budget Responsibility, the department said.
Great British Summer Savings sounds like half a good idea but I suspect it will help already engaged parents take their children on day trips they'd have taken anyway, while doing very little for those struggling with day-to-day living costs.
+1 - it seems to be making trips to museums (if they charge) and eating out cheaper. I suspect for those with little money it will make no difference (because they never went to such things) and those who do such things they won't notice the probably not that significant savings it makes.
This is all getting a bit dull, so here's a change of subject
While we have been focused on Iran/Skyr/THE ARSE, America is reviving its UFO flap
It's got to the extent where Fox News is discussing "how many types of aliens there are". Nordics, greys, reptilians, etc. I am particularly unkeen on the ones that look like a giant praying mantis
'Non-human' bodies allegedly recovered from crashed UFO, documentary filmmaker claims Dan Farah alleges intelligence officials confirmed recovery of 'non-human' bodies in crashed UFO craft in new interviews"
"Neil DeGrasse Tyson explains why he is now entering the UFO and alien conversation after decades of debunking
“I would have never imagined if I didn't know Neil Degrass Tyson, he's not talking extraterrestrials. He's the debunker. Why would you write about extraterrestrial life?”
“What began to happen if you go back long enough, a few decades ago, most of the many of the accounts of UFOs and alien abductions and things were people who didn't otherwise have the title or integrity that their station in life would grant them.
There was the farmer in his back, there were drunken revelers at 2 a.m. staggering out of the bar. And it would be their accounts of UFOs that would get reported on.
And beginning a few years ago, and all of you in the media just ate it up when various whistleblowers and insiders, they're not drunken revelers. There's a parade of them. Many of them former military, ex intelligence agency officers and under oath in front of Congress.
By the way, this is the last and only time I remember in the past decade where both houses of Congress were just together with one investigative purpose. I was quite impressed by that. Aliens brought us together.
So when these people of high rank started reporting, I said, ‘All right, I have to jump in here. I can't stay silent. I have to be a participant in what's going on’.”"
WTF is up? Are they just getting crazier?
It's a distraction from real news.
Epstein? Maybe
That's the obvious motivation for Trump, but this goes far far beyond Trump
The Japanese are also doing it. A form of Disclosure
"BREAKING: Japan’s government admits it possesses UAP data, including video footage, and says public disclosure will begin within the limits of national security restrictions."
"Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara says Japan possesses footage and information related to UAP sightings, with possible future disclosures depending on security considerations."
When I was growing up in the late 70's and 80's I was hooked on all things Fortean and I still am. At the time I wanted there to be a world with cameras everywhere, so that no longer would we have blurring single shot film photos from hundreds of yards away, but would finally get proper evidence. Well we have arrived at that world now, and the evidence is getting worse. Mick West talks about UAP's being in the low information zone and he is right. Like the ghost we see in the corner of our eyes, when we look more closely we see the dressing gown on the door. All these videos are ultimately shown up to be artefacts and misidentifications. There is also a disturbing tendency to ascribe extra weight to 'trained observers' such as pilots or police officers as if they are somehow immune from being fooled.
There is an enormous market for telling tall tales about Aliens, UFO's, Skinwalker ranches and so on. There is the constant promise of the good stuff to come and yet what do we get? A green egg on a piece of string purporting to be an alien craft retrieval.
There is a strong suggestion that many of the origin tales about the US government having crashed UFO's comes from a hazing exercise regularly carried out on people.
At heart many people want to believe, and thats all it takes for some to be able to spin yarns and make money out of lies.
This is all getting a bit dull, so here's a change of subject
While we have been focused on Iran/Skyr/THE ARSE, America is reviving its UFO flap
It's got to the extent where Fox News is discussing "how many types of aliens there are". Nordics, greys, reptilians, etc. I am particularly unkeen on the ones that look like a giant praying mantis
'Non-human' bodies allegedly recovered from crashed UFO, documentary filmmaker claims Dan Farah alleges intelligence officials confirmed recovery of 'non-human' bodies in crashed UFO craft in new interviews"
"Neil DeGrasse Tyson explains why he is now entering the UFO and alien conversation after decades of debunking
“I would have never imagined if I didn't know Neil Degrass Tyson, he's not talking extraterrestrials. He's the debunker. Why would you write about extraterrestrial life?”
“What began to happen if you go back long enough, a few decades ago, most of the many of the accounts of UFOs and alien abductions and things were people who didn't otherwise have the title or integrity that their station in life would grant them.
There was the farmer in his back, there were drunken revelers at 2 a.m. staggering out of the bar. And it would be their accounts of UFOs that would get reported on.
And beginning a few years ago, and all of you in the media just ate it up when various whistleblowers and insiders, they're not drunken revelers. There's a parade of them. Many of them former military, ex intelligence agency officers and under oath in front of Congress.
By the way, this is the last and only time I remember in the past decade where both houses of Congress were just together with one investigative purpose. I was quite impressed by that. Aliens brought us together.
So when these people of high rank started reporting, I said, ‘All right, I have to jump in here. I can't stay silent. I have to be a participant in what's going on’.”"
WTF is up? Are they just getting crazier?
Its just the same grift as always.
This is always your go-to explanation - and to be fair, I am sure there is a lot of grift going on - but, as ever, it doesn't remotely explain the widescale nature of this, nor the fact very senior people are involved (who have no obvious monetary motive)
However I have some knapping to do, slightly tedious but essential to pay for my next Mousterian hand axe, so a debate must wait. Anon
See my response below - senior people are just as prone to being gullible as randoms on PB.
CGT being taxed at income tax rates is f****** moronic, and not just for the reasons you’ve outlined.
I hold substantial unrealised gains from the US tech boom but since the 2024 budget changes I’ve capped my annual disposals at £50k to avoid triggering the higher rate. That means a large portion of capital is effectively stranded until CGT falls or I relocate abroad.
Since 2024, I’ve been approached twice to seed promising UK startups. Both times, I've declined because investing would push me over the threshold. In total, I’ve turned down £250k+ in domestic investment. That's capital that could have funded British business instead of remaining parked in US markets. One of those businesses did very well. The other failed. But 2023's budget changes were enough to adjust my risk/reward profile so I did not invest.
Where it really gets interesting is if CGT becomes treated as ordinary income. So if I earn £50k from work, I’d instantly face a 40% rate on any asset sales. The rational response in my case would be to stop working entirely and live off the £50k allowance at the lower band, effectively stepping out of the workforce until retirement age. For someone with two decades left in their career, that’s another direct blow to UK productivity. Nice for me, though.
However, in all honesty, I doubt I’ll stick around to see how it plays out. If cashing out equity gains before markets peak becomes my priority, options like EU non-lucrative visas, golden residence schemes, or the Crown Dependencies will suddenly look far more attractive, expensive yes but still cheaper than paying UK tax rates. If an exit tax is even hinted at, I’ll be long gone. These policies are always telegraphed well in advance.
My main reason for being in the UK at the moment is long term illness (I have private healthcare by the way, so not even burdening the NHS!) and not really wanting to navigate foreign systems while sick. Being able to cash in some of my investments both to reduce my workload and pay for private healthcare has been a real boon.
TL;DR: I will never pay 40%+ CGT. If it’s implemented, I’ll either stay under the threshold indefinitely or leave. The damage is already done - my behaviour has already shifted since 2024, resulting in less capital flowing into UK business.
If people don't like that or think me unpatriotic I'd point out I've already paid more in taxes by midlife than most people will earn in a lifetime, and I have private healthcare and no kids so really take very little from the state. I will not pay a penny more.
I note all these points, but I wonder about the consequence. Because what needs to be explained is why working in the sense of the term for most people - employment on which IT and NI is paid - should be taxed more highly than any other sort of way of gaining money. I can't find it here.
Of course you might say that these taxes are also too high, and I am sure they are, but that doesn't deal with the point I am making.
1. Risk. 2. Incentive.
If you go to your PAYE job and earn 100k a year you will take home £68,557, so £31,443 in tax. There is zero risk to you for doing so. You get paid simply for showing up.
If you invest 100k and it becomes 200k, you will pay £20263 in tax on it. (Consider also it may take 10 years to become 200k, by which time you will be paying tax on inflation as historically prices roughly double every 10 years!)
However, if you invest 100k you stand to lose it all. Therefore in order to incentivise you to invest that money, a lower rate of tax is demanded. The difference isn't as big as you think - it's 20k per 100k vs 30k per 100k depending on capital (risk) vs PAYE (no risk). But the point is the PAYE salary takes *absolutely no risk* to earn his 100k whereas the person investing 100k stands to lose it all if their investment goes badly.
In an economy you want people to invest, which means taking risk, which means incentivising accordingly through tax structure. If you tax investing more, you get less investment, which is a doom loop for the economy as we get less growth, fewer jobs, higher unemployment, less spending, a higher welfare bill etc. So taxing investment less than PAYE is good for everyone, not just the investors.
This is really simple economics - yes, I'm simplifying it a bit but you get the gist - and that so many of our political class cannot grasp it infuriates me.
Thank you. Good points all. One comment.
Bloke has job earning 100K, taxed as described above. He also is, like many, and excellent investor and has as it happens 100K to utilise. His information, research and contacts are good. He turns 100K into 200K in a few years. He has personally done nothing apart from intelligently pursue an interest with his laptop. yes, he could lose it all, but the long term history of stock exchanges suggest he will do OK.
His 100K job is demanding, exacting, long hours of difficult expertise in a complex field requiring years of training.
Which should attract higher tax rates?
You're making the mistake of assigning morality to money (IMHO!).
The nurses who cared for my grandfather (not an easy man to care for!) and mopped up his bodily fluids in his latter years - were paid minimum wage to do so. Investment bankers get paid millions. I was paid six figures to shuffle papers in an office and manage marketing campaigns - a "golgafrincham ark b" job if I ever heard of it. Which should be paid more? Which has more value to society?
We don't pay people based on how moral or socially good their jobs are, nor should we tax on that basis. We pay based on perceived economic activity generated, and we tax in order to incentivise behaviour. In this case, we want Bloke You Describe Above to invest his money rather than, say, keep it under the mattress, in a low interest savings account, or spend it all on toblerones. Therefore we tax it accordingly.
Increasing tax on employment via the employer's NI rise in 2024 was a stupid decision because it disincentivised people from taking on new staff and increased unemployment. When you tax something more, you get less of it. Now the (possible) next PM wants to double down and start taxing investment... Courageous, as Sir Humphrey might put it!
Thank you. I think we are agreed about the nature of the debate and its difficulties and probably the morally precarious nature of trying to sort relative goods, and that governments should tax and spend less anyway.
Yes, I assign morality to money and I am going to continue to do so!
Impending mass global-famine related migration aside, it looks like net migration will stabilise well above 100,000, with net migration of non-EU+ nationals no lower than 200,000 (latest figure 350k).
I think we can expect immigration to remain a major political issue even if people were to have an accurate understanding of the statistics, because the voters have consistently demonstrated a preference for much lower rates of migration and politicians haven't advocated for higher rates.
Any net migration is going to be a very hard sell if there really are going to be food supply issues. Both that year and for a number of years afterwards.
The issue is no longer migration. It’s the people here that need to go home
How would you make this happen? Should I be worried? Do I need to pack my bags?
Since Leon is gaily talking of deporting millions, then quite possibly.
Well, we gaily imported millions - literally a million a year at peak Boriswave, an insane policy which no one ever asked for (and for which Boris should do time) it seems fitting that we reverse the policy with the same cheery insouciance
OK - so how would you implement it? No point just talking about some an aspiration - how matters too!
Expire visas and raise income thresholds so unskilled visas are renewable, most people will go back voluntarily. Use existing deportation rules for overstayers. It's not very controversial. Also have a massive crackdown on agencies and universities that are nothing more than visa factories.
We don't need a UK ICE, or anything ridiculous like that, just enforcing the existing law and substantially closing the loopholes and abuses of the legal immigration system.
Comments
It is more like de-banked communities in the UK, and what happens to people who need them. As someone said earlier - food deserts.
I would point to the was US society is set up in a couple of ways:
1 - The basic price of food / cost of living.
2 - It's designed for driving by everything from planning policies to not building any sidewalks in many places to public transport being shite to police regarding "walking" as a suspicious activity, so if you can't afford the multi thousand dollar entry fee, you are f*cked.
3 - The unavailability of fresh food, but that's more to do with the food system. I recall a video of someone trying to buy an apple (fruit) in New York.
On his scheme, it looks to me as if he is wiring in some very high overheads. But state owned "fill the gaps" do exist. I think that supporting charitable / co-operative organisations may be more effective.
Authorities in Texas have removed a Tesla Cybertruck from a lake after the driver intentionally drove into it in an attempt to try the vehicle’s “wade mode.”
One can argue whether Massie was the louse or the flea, but he was certainly one of the two.
https://swingometer.substack.com/p/the-makerfield-by-election-high-risk?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1186392&post_id=197826300&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1mnpci&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
A big feature of that is that you really, really, do not want to be poor, in the United States.
He voted against the budget, so of course he got primaried.
In the UK Parliament, they’d lose the whip immediately for that offence.
Scott Jennings (CNN’s token Republican, who happens to be from Kentucky) explains it in 30 seconds.
https://x.com/scottjenningsky/status/2057130281119723758
Justinian was rather overrated, though. Anastasius deserves way more credit.
Aysylum Claim response times are excellent
Mahmood is proving to be very successful on this regard folliwing on from Cooper.
Net Migration figures going well and some credit to Tories for that specifically Cleverly. A shame Philp has to spout lies about alleged brain drain, down on last year and Tory days.
No doubt Gb News will be desperate for mini heatwave and county every illegal in with glee, of course when 80% of them are processed and most of them denied access and removed in 6 months they won't comment at all.
Mahmood has to remain Home Secretary who leads Labour
PS It is an impressive compost heap. About 3m x 6m x 2m. How does it compare to gold prices?
I'd say that the midterms may be the last chance saloon without a long drawn out process of potentially many years, or reversing the USA process will be like one of those countries where an authoritarian state has been reversed - whether Hungary, Chile or another.
Perhaps resolving the issues that cause food deserts. Especially ones caused by local govt. I’m not sure this proposed approach will work.
The idiots, for want of a better word, are the Tucker Carlsons who think everything he disagrees with is Israel’s fault. Massie, in his concession speech, started off by saying he had to go and find his opponent in Tel Aviv.
I've always had him down as an unabashed capitalist, centre right, quite libertarian, pro-trans rights
An interesting niche, but deffo not left. However, maybe I missed lots of clues
11 medical professionals, including doctors and nurses, sacked for accessing the medical records of the three murdered victims of Valdo Calocane in Nottingham without any reason to do so. Others disciplined. Good.
The same happened in Southport.
Police have also done this in Nottingham - and in far greater numbers - but we have yet to hear if any have been disciplined. There was a suggestion at one point that so many had done so that an amnesty might be needed.
How sick do you have to be to do this? How toxic must the culture be when so many think it ok to do this?
I did win second prize for my compost at the Broughton and Millom Agricultural Show last year. What with that and the Tree Preservation Order on my silver birch tree, 2025 was a good year - in gardening terms at least.
But Leon has me down to a tee here - a centre right pro capitalist libertarian. I am very socially liberal (even before dating a trans woman, I was an unashamedly "people should be able to identify as a hatstand if they want and marry their golden retriever, it's none of the state's business" type).
My view is that there should be a great deal less interference in how others live their lives and that principle guides most of my views on everything from tax policy to trans rights (which I do not want to start on about again!).
So there must be some other reason, but I have no idea what it might be
How do you win a prize for a compost heap?
People slow to look at the car crash, for the man with the broken nose after a fight, at the weird looking cripple. There are a chunk of people obsessed with 'True Crime'.
This is what happens when all you have is a computer terminal to do that stuff.
Humans are like that. Cases like the women who drowned at Brighton last week will always interest people - whenever there are unanswered questions, people will try to find answers.
On the current cases there is clearly morbid attraction to the information for some people and I suspect not a strong enough culture to stop transgression. These outcomes might help, but we have also probably lost good healthcare professionals too.
I try to follow a wide variety of US commentary, but the likes of Candace and Tucker have become totally unwatchable in recent months, nothing but conspiracy theory backed with no evidence. Much of it antisemetic conspiracy theory.
I suspect that Candace Owens is about to be sued into bankruptcy by Erika Kirk, if Brigitte Macron hasn’t cleared her out first.
Of course you might say that these taxes are also too high, and I am sure they are, but that doesn't deal with the point I am making.
“Hey look mate, cool indoor fireworks!” - but they didn’t get out of the one narrow entrance, and never made it to Jan 2nd.
I feel the same (for example) about old film cameras that I couldn't afford when I was a kid.
Bits of the Westminster village think that "just" 700,000 non-British people arriving in a single year is a great success and represents what voters want. That's a city the size of Leeds every year. They are totally delusional.
https://x.com/NeilDotObrien/status/2057416773784224195?s=20
A teenager who filmed his friend throwing a heavy sofa from the top floor of Westfield Stratford shopping centre has avoided jail.
The 15-year-old admitted criminal damage after a £500 blue sofa chair was hurled from a 50ft balcony at the east London mall on 1 March last year. He must attend victim awareness sessions, complete 13 hours of community reparations and abide by a three-month doorstep curfew
https://x.com/CrimeLdn/status/2057421404090347612?s=20
While we have been focused on Iran/Skyr/THE ARSE, America is reviving its UFO flap
It's got to the extent where Fox News is discussing "how many types of aliens there are". Nordics, greys, reptilians, etc. I am particularly unkeen on the ones that look like a giant praying mantis
'Non-human' bodies allegedly recovered from crashed UFO, documentary filmmaker claims
Dan Farah alleges intelligence officials confirmed recovery of 'non-human' bodies in crashed UFO craft in new interviews"
https://www.foxnews.com/media/non-human-bodies-allegedly-recovered-crashed-ufo-documentary-filmmaker-claims
Total madness, Fox chasing clicks? Maybe. But previous skeptics like Neil De G Tyson are also now hedging their bets
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/05/17/politics/video/take-me-to-your-leader-aliens-ufo
However, I note he has a book to sell
"Neil DeGrasse Tyson explains why he is now entering the UFO and alien conversation after decades of debunking
“I would have never imagined if I didn't know Neil Degrass Tyson, he's not talking extraterrestrials. He's the debunker. Why would you write about extraterrestrial life?”
“What began to happen if you go back long enough, a few decades ago, most of the many of the accounts of UFOs and alien abductions and things were people who didn't otherwise have the title or integrity that their station in life would grant them.
There was the farmer in his back, there were drunken revelers at 2 a.m. staggering out of the bar. And it would be their accounts of UFOs that would get reported on.
And beginning a few years ago, and all of you in the media just ate it up when various whistleblowers and insiders, they're not drunken revelers. There's a parade of them. Many of them former military, ex intelligence agency officers and under oath in front of Congress.
By the way, this is the last and only time I remember in the past decade where both houses of Congress were just together with one investigative purpose. I was quite impressed by that. Aliens brought us together.
So when these people of high rank started reporting, I said, ‘All right, I have to jump in here. I can't stay silent. I have to be a participant in what's going on’.”"
WTF is up? Are they just getting crazier?
I expect our man on the spot to report on Monday.
The compost heap holds compare with Lord Emsworth's silver medal for the Empress of Blandings, in the 'Fat Pigs' class at the Shropshire Agricultural Show...
People don’t want higher taxes, so the prisons don’t get built & staffed.
2. Incentive.
If you go to your PAYE job and earn 100k a year you will take home £68,557, so £31,443 in tax. There is zero risk to you for doing so. You get paid simply for showing up.
If you invest 100k and it becomes 200k, you will pay £20263 in tax on it. (Consider also it may take 10 years to become 200k, by which time you will be paying tax on inflation as historically prices roughly double every 10 years!)
However, if you invest 100k you stand to lose it all. Therefore in order to incentivise you to invest that money, a lower rate of tax is demanded. The difference isn't as big as you think - it's 20k per 100k vs 30k per 100k depending on capital (risk) vs PAYE (no risk). But the point is the PAYE salary takes *absolutely no risk* to earn his 100k whereas the person investing 100k stands to lose it all if their investment goes badly.
In an economy you want people to invest, which means taking risk, which means incentivising accordingly through tax structure. If you tax investing more, you get less investment, which is a doom loop for the economy as we get less growth, fewer jobs, higher unemployment, less spending, a higher welfare bill etc. So taxing investment less than PAYE is good for everyone, not just the investors.
This is really simple economics - yes, I'm simplifying it a bit but you get the gist - and that so many of our political class cannot grasp it infuriates me.
My one guiding principle since I started doing up my flat and buying stuff has been this: everything must have a purpose. The 18th century Japanese vase must work as a reed diffuser bottle, the 1960s Murano glass tazza must work as a way to protect yet display an antiquity, and so on. Unless the object is quite exceptionally beautiful or ancient, if it can't DO something, it doesn't make the cut
At the same time, when they do find their purpose - and it may be totally unexpected - it is hugely satisfying. My large Georgian silver tea caddy is an excellent and beautiful place to store all my batteries. I have a German cast iron mug from the 16th century which, it turns, is a perfect vessel for holding tubes of glue. My 15th century latten bowl filled with blue agate is a magnificent soap dish
The Regency coffee cans, unsurprisingly, make excellent coffee cups. Ideal for espresso. If they didn't do that I wouldn't even want them in the flat. The whole idea of museum objects, stuffed behind glass, sealed in vitrines, is ghastly to me
They’ll make the UK so hostile no one will want to come here and Brits will be desperately trying to escape .
It does perhaps illustrate the problems with electronic records. If these were not so prominent cases would anyone have done an audit of who accessed the records?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDTLjkjC_ZI
Sounds like council formation was fun in Kirklees yesterday, the ceremonial Green mayor (/meeting chair) and her Reform deputy were sworn in but no majority for political leadership of the council. With 35 needed Green led coalition got 34 votes, and Reform leadership got 27 votes (fewer than the 29 councillors they sport). Some procedural confusion prevented any tiebreaks being brought forward. So, officials run the council till they try again.
That Green voting number, by definition, has to include some Tories (or even some Reform councillors), so I hope Kemi has been kept abreast of the situation!
Meanwhile, Robbie Savage has taken the leadership of Wakefield council:
BBC News - New leaders sworn in for West Yorkshire councils - BBC News
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3924lzvy9lo
That's the obvious motivation for Trump, but this goes far far beyond Trump
The Japanese are also doing it. A form of Disclosure
"BREAKING: Japan’s government admits it possesses UAP data, including video footage, and says public disclosure will begin within the limits of national security restrictions."
"Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara says Japan possesses footage and information related to UAP sightings, with possible future disclosures depending on security considerations."
https://x.com/spaceandtech_/status/2054236403182280766?s=20
‘ Also the problem: long term investors get no allowance for inflation.
Invest £100k in 2016 and get £150k back today, and that's a gain of only £10k after inflation. But you pay £12k tax on that £10k of "real" gain. Effective rate 120%.
Disincentive to long term investment’
https://x.com/danneidle/status/2057384179592032690?s=61
And old film cameras are only of interest if I can occasionally run a roll of film through them.
An old pic of my cat through a 1950s preset Takumar:
Bloke has job earning 100K, taxed as described above. He also is, like many, and excellent investor and has as it happens 100K to utilise. His information, research and contacts are good. He turns 100K into 200K in a few years. He has personally done nothing apart from intelligently pursue an interest with his laptop. yes, he could lose it all, but the long term history of stock exchanges suggest he will do OK.
His 100K job is demanding, exacting, long hours of difficult expertise in a complex field requiring years of training.
Which should attract higher tax rates?
By giving these objects a purpose, a task, a role, once again, you revive some noom, which has been hidden in them, but inert. Merely putting them on show does not do that
“This will apply to ticket prices for both adults and children, covering attractions such as fairs, theme parks, zoos, and museums. It will include children’s tickets for cinemas, concerts, soft play, and the theatre, and it will cut the cost of children’s meals in restaurants and cafes from VAT to five per cent as well.
Final costings for all the measures will be detailed at the next budget following scoring from the Office for Budget Responsibility, the department said.
In most people's heads, capital gains is a thing paid by billionaire plutocrats and people with generational wealth who have never worked a day in their lives, when in reality it is largely paid by people like me who chose to invest the PAYE salary we were already being taxed at 40%+ (thus CGT is a kind of double dipping), or people like yourself, who worked hard and took a lot of risk and are now seeing that bear fruit 20 years later.
As others have noted there is also the problem of the small business owner who builds their business every year for 20 years and sells in retirement, paying far more than they would had they just had a PAYE job for those 20 years as they pay money on the lump sum rather than the lower PAYE rate every year. While there are forms of business asset disposal relief these have been curtailed in recent years and there is no guarantee they will exist at all in 20 years so why would anyone set up a business if CGT = Income tax rates at all? All the risk, far less reward.
and when you mention it Reform voters get very upset (at you for telling them)...
That said, I very much doubt there's a risk of my being electrocuted by a tea caddy because it contains a lot of Duracell AAAs
Nigel Farage, and all around him, are a marketing shell.
Pensions
ISAs
Entrepreneurs relief
SEIS
EIS
VCTs
The actual tax rates paid by investors are not the ones that assume these don't exist.
I've never had to pay a penny of CGT despite investment gains into six figures.
The nurses who cared for my grandfather (not an easy man to care for!) and mopped up his bodily fluids in his latter years - were paid minimum wage to do so. Investment bankers get paid millions. I was paid six figures to shuffle papers in an office and manage marketing campaigns - a "golgafrincham ark b" job if I ever heard of it. Which should be paid more? Which has more value to society?
We don't pay people based on how moral or socially good their jobs are, nor should we tax on that basis. We pay based on perceived economic activity generated, and we tax in order to incentivise behaviour. In this case, we want Bloke You Describe Above to invest his money rather than, say, keep it under the mattress, in a low interest savings account, or spend it all on toblerones. Therefore we tax it accordingly.
Increasing tax on employment via the employer's NI rise in 2024 was a stupid decision because it disincentivised people from taking on new staff and increased unemployment. When you tax something more, you get less of it. Now the (possible) next PM wants to double down and start taxing investment... Courageous, as Sir Humphrey might put it!
Although it was supposedly about getting rid of the useless. What happens to the Golgafrincham when the B Ark left.
After the departure of the B Ark the entire remaining population subsequently died from a virulent disease contracted from a dirty telephone.
The telephone sanitisers weren’t so useless after all.
However I have some knapping to do, slightly tedious but essential to pay for my next Mousterian hand axe, so a debate must wait. Anon
There is an enormous market for telling tall tales about Aliens, UFO's, Skinwalker ranches and so on. There is the constant promise of the good stuff to come and yet what do we get? A green egg on a piece of string purporting to be an alien craft retrieval.
There is a strong suggestion that many of the origin tales about the US government having crashed UFO's comes from a hazing exercise regularly carried out on people.
At heart many people want to believe, and thats all it takes for some to be able to spin yarns and make money out of lies.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/great-british-summer-savings-vat-slashed-to-save-families-money-on-days-out
Yes, I assign morality to money and I am going to continue to do so!
We don't need a UK ICE, or anything ridiculous like that, just enforcing the existing law and substantially closing the loopholes and abuses of the legal immigration system.