If you’re thinking Starmer campaigning for his sworn opponent in a by-election is unprecedented you’re absolutely wrong! Here’s Dennis Healey campaigning for Tony Benn in the 1984 Chesterfield by-election.. https://x.com/BrynHGriffiths/status/2058089823093612860
I went up to help at that by-election! It was such a long shot for the Liberals, yet they turned in an impressive second place that laid the groundwork for their, even more remarkably, actually winning the seat and holding it for nine years, only to lose against the tide before the coalition rather than after.
Pb.com acquired a huge following because it filtered electoral prediction through cold, hard cash. Two things are threatening this preeminence: firstly, too few posters are actually looking for betting tips and won't put their money where their mouth is. (I have, to my cost as some here can testify). Secondly, politicians got too interested and began to try to rig and ramp the markets- as politicians will. The stuff the Tories tried to pull around the last general election is, I think, still under investigation by Plod. This latest naked ramping from Low deserves to be thumped in like manner and should be treated as what it is: a money making opportunity.for political bettors. So if the site needs to get it's mojo back, it is not going to happen by allowing Leon to post racist stuff about matters that are sub judice, it is to suggest politely that he backs his Reform ramping with some reasonable amount of dosh. If you can afford £20 for some slightly naff Crown Derby mug, you can certainly afford to take a few quid and back your mostly drunken and/or demented waffle supporting the treacherous Mr Farage as the likely next Prime Minister.
So, what odds are you giving us?
My lament about the site dying, last night, was based squarely on the fact that it is dying. In two ways
Last night we had barely a few comments over hours. At a time of huge political interest. Similarly, we get no new posters, ever. Except the execrable @Brixian59 who is surely a previous commenter reincarnating anyway. I’ve heard of this happening
Why? One big reason is the Blueskying of the site. It is now completely dominated by Dickless Centrist Dads like you. As relentlessly pompous as you are humourless, devoid of insight, caprice or wit. And fucking dull. And you have managed to push out anyone with a spark of wildness, plus that third of the country susceptible to Reform
If I was a newbie passing by, looking at this parade of sad old middlebrow “opinions”, I’d keep passing by
Sadly it has become the same old people rehashing the same old arguments - and PB would do well to consider why anyone who doesn't fit into one of two buckets of orthodoxy - "centrist (left leaning) dad" or "socially conservative right" tends to leave. I don't fit into either of those buckets and get piled on. I scan most days but rarely bother posting any more as a result.
Some of the more interesting _far_ left posters like 148grss - a literal Marxist if I recall - I disagreed with on almost everything, but found to be incredibly engaging and their arguments very well considered. To the point where they actually changed my mind about some things. That is rare. As for Reform voters, I'm a self confessed liberal metropolitan elite type who sees their voter base as utterly infra dig. But I wouldn't heap scorn on them either, because I've been out to the red wall many times to do focus groups, and absolutely get where the inchoate rage at the system is coming from. We would do well to listen to Reform voters and understand where they are coming from even if we disagree with them. But they are completely under-represented on this site - and dismissed and scorned when they do pop up.
However I don't think the problem is "middlebrow opinions" as much as it is piling on anyone who doesn't conform to the orthodoxy here. The tribalism is tiresome.
Try saying that Trump isn’t Hitler, and that he’s actually made huge achievements in immigration control, drug prices, combatting fraud, beautifying DC…
You’ll upset the PB herd if you say that !!
So, what are we meant to do?”!
Keep saying everyone the herd disagrees with is Hitler, obvs !!
I don't really think Bondygazoo's request for posting advice is genuine, but if I could ask some of our centre-left posters to change something, it would be to debate in good faith more of the time. PB is a debating forum, but it's not a campaigning forum, so there's really no need to try to misrepresent the views of others or the truth.
A mild example of this is our discussion on the 'charity' Hope Not Hate yesterday, where I read a response that portayed their work as 'taking on the BNP and the facists'. Everyone and their dog here knows that a great deal of HNH's recent 'work' has been to deligitimise pretty much all parties that campaign to reduce immigration, most notably Reform, so I'm not sure why I should waste time arguing against what we all, including the poster, know to be a specious representation of the facts. It's boring.
Both the Conservatives and Labour went into the last general election campaign saying they would reduce immigration. And indeed Labour have reduced immigration, and immigration was falling under Sunak. HNH has not sought to delegitimise Labour and the Conservatives, AFAIK. So your claim that they are trying to “deligitimise pretty much all parties that campaign to reduce immigration” seems questionable.
But, sure, complain about others trying to misrepresent the truth.
We're in a very difficult place here.
There are lots of people who quite reasonably see Reform as the natural vehicle for conservative Conservatives who feel abandoned by the Cameron project and the incompetence of the post-Cameron party. They don't see themselves as racist, mysogynist etc, in much the same way as many Labour supports believe themselves to be socially progressive, economically redistributive and that Labour is the party associated with that world view.
My not particularly well informed view from reading the tory knobheads on here, is that they actually prefer Fukker policies to tory ones. They can't have those policies in the tory party because Kemi can't sell that manky bill of goods with 10% of the elan and capacity that Big Nige can. Hence the somewhat dewy eyed reverence for the Fukkers that extends to pretending that their thick-as-shit, nylon clad voters are worthy of respect and even a hearing.
Kemi is certainly hampered by the fact that the press still have vague expectations that she should be speaking something close to the truth - a constraint with which The Clacton Horror is not encumbered.
She isn't choosing to speak the truth.
She and to a slightly lesser degree Starmer are scared of frightening off the racist tendency. They too couch their narrative in terms that won't scare the racists.
She can't speak the truth
Her personality traits are arrogance and refusal to apologise for her errors
Argumentative and unable to grasp the fact she's not always right and others aren't always wrong.
In a nutshell a terrifying lack of emotional maturity.
The Violet Elizabeth of UK politics.
She's not as fundamentally evil and insane as Braverman and extreme and nasty as Pritti but that's a fecking very low bar.
Tory polling is stagnant and recent losses to lowest ever Council numbers suggest extermination.
Her complete lack of realism and truth on this perfectly sums her up.
That may be true, and I suspect it is*, but you have ignored my point that our party of choice are equally culpable in their pandering to Reform racists.
* Although don't forget Tories are like cockroaches and they can survive Armageddon.
I really do believe that Shabana is best Home Secretary of recent times, the best Labour Home or Shadow Home Secretary in 2 decades.
I think she's the right person, with the right plan at this moment in time.
Her background I believe adds to her credibility and her management of a very tough brief very strong.
I believe that together with Phillipson she is the most effective current Cabinet Minister.
I sm in total agreement. Mahmood and Phillipson would be my top two picks to take over from Starmer.
Pb.com acquired a huge following because it filtered electoral prediction through cold, hard cash. Two things are threatening this preeminence: firstly, too few posters are actually looking for betting tips and won't put their money where their mouth is. (I have, to my cost as some here can testify). Secondly, politicians got too interested and began to try to rig and ramp the markets- as politicians will. The stuff the Tories tried to pull around the last general election is, I think, still under investigation by Plod. This latest naked ramping from Low deserves to be thumped in like manner and should be treated as what it is: a money making opportunity.for political bettors. So if the site needs to get it's mojo back, it is not going to happen by allowing Leon to post racist stuff about matters that are sub judice, it is to suggest politely that he backs his Reform ramping with some reasonable amount of dosh. If you can afford £20 for some slightly naff Crown Derby mug, you can certainly afford to take a few quid and back your mostly drunken and/or demented waffle supporting the treacherous Mr Farage as the likely next Prime Minister.
So, what odds are you giving us?
My lament about the site dying, last night, was based squarely on the fact that it is dying. In two ways
Last night we had barely a few comments over hours. At a time of huge political interest. Similarly, we get no new posters, ever. Except the execrable @Brixian59 who is surely a previous commenter reincarnating anyway. I’ve heard of this happening
Why? One big reason is the Blueskying of the site. It is now completely dominated by Dickless Centrist Dads like you. As relentlessly pompous as you are humourless, devoid of insight, caprice or wit. And fucking dull. And you have managed to push out anyone with a spark of wildness, plus that third of the country susceptible to Reform
If I was a newbie passing by, looking at this parade of sad old middlebrow “opinions”, I’d keep passing by
Sadly it has become the same old people rehashing the same old arguments - and PB would do well to consider why anyone who doesn't fit into one of two buckets of orthodoxy - "centrist (left leaning) dad" or "socially conservative right" tends to leave. I don't fit into either of those buckets and get piled on. I scan most days but rarely bother posting any more as a result.
Some of the more interesting _far_ left posters like 148grss - a literal Marxist if I recall - I disagreed with on almost everything, but found to be incredibly engaging and their arguments very well considered. To the point where they actually changed my mind about some things. That is rare. As for Reform voters, I'm a self confessed liberal metropolitan elite type who sees their voter base as utterly infra dig. But I wouldn't heap scorn on them either, because I've been out to the red wall many times to do focus groups, and absolutely get where the inchoate rage at the system is coming from. We would do well to listen to Reform voters and understand where they are coming from even if we disagree with them. But they are completely under-represented on this site - and dismissed and scorned when they do pop up.
However I don't think the problem is "middlebrow opinions" as much as it is piling on anyone who doesn't conform to the orthodoxy here. The tribalism is tiresome.
Try saying that Trump isn’t Hitler, and that he’s actually made huge achievements in immigration control, drug prices, combatting fraud, beautifying DC…
You’ll upset the PB herd if you say that !!
So, what are we meant to do?”!
Keep saying everyone the herd disagrees with is Hitler, obvs !!
I don't really think Bondygazoo's request for posting advice is genuine, but if I could ask some of our centre-left posters to change something, it would be to debate in good faith more of the time. PB is a debating forum, but it's not a campaigning forum, so there's really no need to try to misrepresent the views of others or the truth.
A mild example of this is our discussion on the 'charity' Hope Not Hate yesterday, where I read a response that portayed their work as 'taking on the BNP and the facists'. Everyone and their dog here knows that a great deal of HNH's recent 'work' has been to deligitimise pretty much all parties that campaign to reduce immigration, most notably Reform, so I'm not sure why I should waste time arguing against what we all, including the poster, know to be a specious representation of the facts. It's boring.
Both the Conservatives and Labour went into the last general election campaign saying they would reduce immigration. And indeed Labour have reduced immigration, and immigration was falling under Sunak. HNH has not sought to delegitimise Labour and the Conservatives, AFAIK. So your claim that they are trying to “deligitimise pretty much all parties that campaign to reduce immigration” seems questionable.
But, sure, complain about others trying to misrepresent the truth.
We're in a very difficult place here.
There are lots of people who quite reasonably see Reform as the natural vehicle for conservative Conservatives who feel abandoned by the Cameron project and the incompetence of the post-Cameron party. They don't see themselves as racist, mysogynist etc, in much the same way as many Labour supports believe themselves to be socially progressive, economically redistributive and that Labour is the party associated with that world view.
My not particularly well informed view from reading the tory knobheads on here, is that they actually prefer Fukker policies to tory ones. They can't have those policies in the tory party because Kemi can't sell that manky bill of goods with 10% of the elan and capacity that Big Nige can. Hence the somewhat dewy eyed reverence for the Fukkers that extends to pretending that their thick-as-shit, nylon clad voters are worthy of respect and even a hearing.
Kemi is certainly hampered by the fact that the press still have vague expectations that she should be speaking something close to the truth - a constraint with which The Clacton Horror is not encumbered.
She isn't choosing to speak the truth.
She and to a slightly lesser degree Starmer are scared of frightening off the racist tendency. They too couch their narrative in terms that won't scare the racists.
The trouble is you won't get any purchase unless you acknowledge people have legitimate concerns about migration and cultural change. If the vast majority of people arriving in the UK were liberal humanists with modern views on gender relations it wouldn't matter so much.
I am not sure I entirely agree.
We Brexited because we didn't like Poles, Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians. They were getting in the way of our kids's education, they were always Infront of us in the queue for the GP. Ironically they were very much in character with immigrants from Ireland from the last century, and the one before that (we didn't like them either). So we voted Brexit to send them home, despite the fact that within a generation they would have integrated in every way and we wouldn't have been able to tell whether their ancestors came from Warsaw or Walsall. Still, we didn't want them anyway, they sounded different to us and we sent them packing. Farage, the Mail and the Telegraph told us it was all a Blairite conspiracy to undermine Blighty, Englishness and the English language. And now we are saying we don't like people from the Indian subcontinent because they are different and Farage, the Mail , the Telegraph and GB News are telling us they are a Starmerite conspiracy to undermine Blighty, Englishness and the English language...
Poles, in general, don't go for cousin marriage, don't want sharia law, don't do female genital mutilation, don't want to blow me up, don't want to blow kids up, don't put their women in death shrouds, don't refuse to integrate, don't want homosexuals executed, don't want blasphemy laws, and don't commit sexual crimes about 12-20 times the national average (per Danish ethnic/crime data, this month)
So, there is bit of a difference between certain migrant groups. Is there not?
It's interesting how the far right argument against Islam is often "they want to throw queers off the roof you know" (and for all I know, many of them probably do) but it wasn't Muslims calling my partner a t***** or taking away her right to pee in the toilet aligned with the genitalia she possessed at her time of death, either. It was the far right and their fellow travellers.
I agree with you that we don't want to import knuckle-dragging, inbred, misogynists, homophobes and transphobes into the UK en masse, but what do we do about the home grown ones, of which there are many?
Well if you're Nigel Farage you set up a suitable political vehicle and hoover up their votes.
Pb.com acquired a huge following because it filtered electoral prediction through cold, hard cash. Two things are threatening this preeminence: firstly, too few posters are actually looking for betting tips and won't put their money where their mouth is. (I have, to my cost as some here can testify). Secondly, politicians got too interested and began to try to rig and ramp the markets- as politicians will. The stuff the Tories tried to pull around the last general election is, I think, still under investigation by Plod. This latest naked ramping from Low deserves to be thumped in like manner and should be treated as what it is: a money making opportunity.for political bettors. So if the site needs to get it's mojo back, it is not going to happen by allowing Leon to post racist stuff about matters that are sub judice, it is to suggest politely that he backs his Reform ramping with some reasonable amount of dosh. If you can afford £20 for some slightly naff Crown Derby mug, you can certainly afford to take a few quid and back your mostly drunken and/or demented waffle supporting the treacherous Mr Farage as the likely next Prime Minister.
So, what odds are you giving us?
My lament about the site dying, last night, was based squarely on the fact that it is dying. In two ways
Last night we had barely a few comments over hours. At a time of huge political interest. Similarly, we get no new posters, ever. Except the execrable @Brixian59 who is surely a previous commenter reincarnating anyway. I’ve heard of this happening
Why? One big reason is the Blueskying of the site. It is now completely dominated by Dickless Centrist Dads like you. As relentlessly pompous as you are humourless, devoid of insight, caprice or wit. And fucking dull. And you have managed to push out anyone with a spark of wildness, plus that third of the country susceptible to Reform
If I was a newbie passing by, looking at this parade of sad old middlebrow “opinions”, I’d keep passing by
Nah...you dont have the cojones to stand behind-your-narcissistic-to-the-point-of-camp opinions. If no one is prepared to help TSE, Peter the Punter or OGH to become richer through backing their always wrong opinions with cash, its just another chat site. Doesn't matter what your opinions are, just have the courage of your demented far-right blow hard bullshit opinions and put some bawbees down.
Lets start easy: £20 that Fartage faces censure from the House of Commons and/or criminal charges within one year from today. What odds will you give me he wont?
Just shut the fuck up
Look, this site was for serious punters who were interested in and knowledgeable about politics and who were prepared to back their judgement. Some flouncy old closet case sharing his execrable interior design taste can surely find somewhere more suitable. I'm here because I am upfront a Lib Dem partisan, active for a long time. You think Farage is an amusing old card, in short, a good egg of similar age and background to yourself. I think he is a malicious, treacherous fraud. I tell you what, I will give you 2-1 for a crisp tenner that the Lib Dems will hold more seats than a Farage-led Reform party after the next general election. What do you say? I have a sufficiently terrible track record that you could even win. Nothing personal here- we have never met, and if you bought me a drink I might even accept it. If you haven't got ten quid, I get it, Chalk Farm pads stuffed with tat from car boot sales won't come cheap, but if you really haven't got the balls to back your silly opinions I do feel like the rest of us can safely ignore your next Isadora Duncan style flouncy crosspatch nonsense.
I explicitly TOLD you to shut the fuck up
Now, temper, temper. I'm not going to do handbags at dawn, i dont want to scuff my Hermes. When you're ready to take the bet, let me know. Im off into the lovely sunshine.
I want to thank those here who have posted Matt cartoons from time to time. I've liked them enough so I have bought some of his collections, including, most recently, 30 Years of Matt.
Hull City owner Acun Ilicali has vowed to take legal action if the Tigers do not win Saturday's Championship play-off final against Middlesbrough.
And apparently Southampton players want to sue their owners for loss of earnings.
All a mess for an overreaction as to what happened. It’s a football game not giving away state secrets to Russia ffs . Who cares if teams spy on another really ?
Hull City owner Acun Ilicali has vowed to take legal action if the Tigers do not win Saturday's Championship play-off final against Middlesbrough.
And apparently Southampton players want to sue their owners for loss of earnings.
All a mess for an overreaction as to what happened. It’s a football game not giving away state secrets to Russia ffs . Who cares if teams spy on another really ?
The Championship playoff is perhaps the game with the biggest prize money in sport. It is a big deal.
Zack Polanski is facing a formal investigation by the London Assembly standards commissioner over whether he paid his council tax
The Labour and Conservative parties have reported the Green leader to the Greater London Authority’s (GLA) monitoring officer, who is responsible for ensuring assembly members behave ethically
is that 2:1 on LDs having more seats than Reform at the next GE still available?
If the cowardly Leon accepts the bet, I'd consider extending it for small stakes.
Leon doesn’t accept bets on political propositions because it forces him to commit to a position; the same reason why you won’t ever see him entering any PB prediction competition. Leon’s usual strategy, his being essentially utterly clueless about politics, is to try and get chips on all the possible outcomes by shading his comments through time so he has all bases covered. Hence, when Makerfield was announced, he predicted it would be a clear Reform win, then later he took to predicting it would be close, then later still he started farting about upping his predicted probability of a Labour win from 30% to 50%. So he can already try and claim credit for everything except a decisive Burnham win - the position already taken by me and a decent number of other clued up PB’ers.
Hull City owner Acun Ilicali has vowed to take legal action if the Tigers do not win Saturday's Championship play-off final against Middlesbrough.
They should have replayed the whole Southampton side of the draw from scratch with Wrexham taking Southampton's place and postponing the final until next week. Alternatively Saints could have taken their place in the Premiership or Championship next season.with a points deduction.
Pb.com acquired a huge following because it filtered electoral prediction through cold, hard cash. Two things are threatening this preeminence: firstly, too few posters are actually looking for betting tips and won't put their money where their mouth is. (I have, to my cost as some here can testify). Secondly, politicians got too interested and began to try to rig and ramp the markets- as politicians will. The stuff the Tories tried to pull around the last general election is, I think, still under investigation by Plod. This latest naked ramping from Low deserves to be thumped in like manner and should be treated as what it is: a money making opportunity.for political bettors. So if the site needs to get it's mojo back, it is not going to happen by allowing Leon to post racist stuff about matters that are sub judice, it is to suggest politely that he backs his Reform ramping with some reasonable amount of dosh. If you can afford £20 for some slightly naff Crown Derby mug, you can certainly afford to take a few quid and back your mostly drunken and/or demented waffle supporting the treacherous Mr Farage as the likely next Prime Minister.
So, what odds are you giving us?
I don't know why so many interesting posters have left the site. People like Antifrank, Richard Navabi, etc.
Four men and a woman aged between 23 and 47 were arrested this morning in the Ashton-under-Lyne area, as a result of what the police are calling ‘illegality and criminality’ in the run up to the St Peter’s ward election on May 7th. The arrests were made on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud, and police investigations are ongoing.
Our investigation heard that internal messages had been circulated in Labour WhatsApp groups leading to the election, discussing the tactic of planting stooge Independents in order to split the vote of opposition candidates who could benefit from defecting Labour supporters.
Pb.com acquired a huge following because it filtered electoral prediction through cold, hard cash. Two things are threatening this preeminence: firstly, too few posters are actually looking for betting tips and won't put their money where their mouth is. (I have, to my cost as some here can testify). Secondly, politicians got too interested and began to try to rig and ramp the markets- as politicians will. The stuff the Tories tried to pull around the last general election is, I think, still under investigation by Plod. This latest naked ramping from Low deserves to be thumped in like manner and should be treated as what it is: a money making opportunity.for political bettors. So if the site needs to get it's mojo back, it is not going to happen by allowing Leon to post racist stuff about matters that are sub judice, it is to suggest politely that he backs his Reform ramping with some reasonable amount of dosh. If you can afford £20 for some slightly naff Crown Derby mug, you can certainly afford to take a few quid and back your mostly drunken and/or demented waffle supporting the treacherous Mr Farage as the likely next Prime Minister.
So, what odds are you giving us?
My lament about the site dying, last night, was based squarely on the fact that it is dying. In two ways
Last night we had barely a few comments over hours. At a time of huge political interest. Similarly, we get no new posters, ever. Except the execrable @Brixian59 who is surely a previous commenter reincarnating anyway. I’ve heard of this happening
Why? One big reason is the Blueskying of the site. It is now completely dominated by Dickless Centrist Dads like you. As relentlessly pompous as you are humourless, devoid of insight, caprice or wit. And fucking dull. And you have managed to push out anyone with a spark of wildness, plus that third of the country susceptible to Reform
If I was a newbie passing by, looking at this parade of sad old middlebrow “opinions”, I’d keep passing by
Sadly it has become the same old people rehashing the same old arguments - and PB would do well to consider why anyone who doesn't fit into one of two buckets of orthodoxy - "centrist (left leaning) dad" or "socially conservative right" tends to leave. I don't fit into either of those buckets and get piled on. I scan most days but rarely bother posting any more as a result.
Some of the more interesting _far_ left posters like 148grss - a literal Marxist if I recall - I disagreed with on almost everything, but found to be incredibly engaging and their arguments very well considered. To the point where they actually changed my mind about some things. That is rare. As for Reform voters, I'm a self confessed liberal metropolitan elite type who sees their voter base as utterly infra dig. But I wouldn't heap scorn on them either, because I've been out to the red wall many times to do focus groups, and absolutely get where the inchoate rage at the system is coming from. We would do well to listen to Reform voters and understand where they are coming from even if we disagree with them. But they are completely under-represented on this site - and dismissed and scorned when they do pop up.
However I don't think the problem is "middlebrow opinions" as much as it is piling on anyone who doesn't conform to the orthodoxy here. The tribalism is tiresome.
Try saying that Trump isn’t Hitler, and that he’s actually made huge achievements in immigration control, drug prices, combatting fraud, beautifying DC…
You’ll upset the PB herd if you say that !!
So, what are we meant to do?”!
Keep saying everyone the herd disagrees with is Hitler, obvs !!
I don't really think Bondygazoo's request for posting advice is genuine, but if I could ask some of our centre-left posters to change something, it would be to debate in good faith more of the time. PB is a debating forum, but it's not a campaigning forum, so there's really no need to try to misrepresent the views of others or the truth.
A mild example of this is our discussion on the 'charity' Hope Not Hate yesterday, where I read a response that portayed their work as 'taking on the BNP and the facists'. Everyone and their dog here knows that a great deal of HNH's recent 'work' has been to deligitimise pretty much all parties that campaign to reduce immigration, most notably Reform, so I'm not sure why I should waste time arguing against what we all, including the poster, know to be a specious representation of the facts. It's boring.
Both the Conservatives and Labour went into the last general election campaign saying they would reduce immigration. And indeed Labour have reduced immigration, and immigration was falling under Sunak. HNH has not sought to delegitimise Labour and the Conservatives, AFAIK. So your claim that they are trying to “deligitimise pretty much all parties that campaign to reduce immigration” seems questionable.
But, sure, complain about others trying to misrepresent the truth.
We're in a very difficult place here.
There are lots of people who quite reasonably see Reform as the natural vehicle for conservative Conservatives who feel abandoned by the Cameron project and the incompetence of the post-Cameron party. They don't see themselves as racist, mysogynist etc, in much the same way as many Labour supports believe themselves to be socially progressive, economically redistributive and that Labour is the party associated with that world view.
My not particularly well informed view from reading the tory knobheads on here, is that they actually prefer Fukker policies to tory ones. They can't have those policies in the tory party because Kemi can't sell that manky bill of goods with 10% of the elan and capacity that Big Nige can. Hence the somewhat dewy eyed reverence for the Fukkers that extends to pretending that their thick-as-shit, nylon clad voters are worthy of respect and even a hearing.
Kemi is certainly hampered by the fact that the press still have vague expectations that she should be speaking something close to the truth - a constraint with which The Clacton Horror is not encumbered.
She isn't choosing to speak the truth.
She and to a slightly lesser degree Starmer are scared of frightening off the racist tendency. They too couch their narrative in terms that won't scare the racists.
The trouble is you won't get any purchase unless you acknowledge people have legitimate concerns about migration and cultural change. If the vast majority of people arriving in the UK were liberal humanists with modern views on gender relations it wouldn't matter so much.
I am not sure I entirely agree.
We Brexited because we didn't like Poles, Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians. They were getting in the way of our kids's education, they were always Infront of us in the queue for the GP. Ironically they were very much in character with immigrants from Ireland from the last century, and the one before that (we didn't like them either). So we voted Brexit to send them home, despite the fact that within a generation they would have integrated in every way and we wouldn't have been able to tell whether their ancestors came from Warsaw or Walsall. Still, we didn't want them anyway, they sounded different to us and we sent them packing. Farage, the Mail and the Telegraph told us it was all a Blairite conspiracy to undermine Blighty, Englishness and the English language. And now we are saying we don't like people from the Indian subcontinent because they are different and Farage, the Mail , the Telegraph and GB News are telling us they are a Starmerite conspiracy to undermine Blighty, Englishness and the English language...
Poles, in general, don't go for cousin marriage, don't want sharia law, don't do female genital mutilation, don't want to blow me up, don't want to blow kids up, don't put their women in death shrouds, don't refuse to integrate, don't want homosexuals executed, don't want blasphemy laws, and don't commit sexual crimes about 12-20 times the national average (per Danish ethnic/crime data, this month)
So, there is bit of a difference between certain migrant groups. Is there not?
It's interesting how the far right argument against Islam is often "they want to throw queers off the roof you know" (and for all I know, many of them probably do) but it wasn't Muslims calling my partner a t***** or taking away her right to pee in the toilet aligned with the genitalia she possessed at her time of death, either. It was the far right and their fellow travellers.
I agree with you that we don't want to import knuckle-dragging, inbred, misogynists, homophobes and transphobes into the UK en masse, but what do we do about the home grown ones, of which there are many?
Well if you're Nigel Farage you set up a suitable political vehicle and hoover up their votes.
Well quite. As a bloc vote, it's Reform you have to worry about if you have socially liberal views. Meanwhile the Muslims are voting for *checks notes again* the ardently pro trans rights party led by the gay Jew.
Four men and a woman aged between 23 and 47 were arrested this morning in the Ashton-under-Lyne area, as a result of what the police are calling ‘illegality and criminality’ in the run up to the St Peter’s ward election on May 7th. The arrests were made on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud, and police investigations are ongoing.
Our investigation heard that internal messages had been circulated in Labour WhatsApp groups leading to the election, discussing the tactic of planting stooge Independents in order to split the vote of opposition candidates who could benefit from defecting Labour supporters.
Four men and a woman aged between 23 and 47 were arrested this morning in the Ashton-under-Lyne area, as a result of what the police are calling ‘illegality and criminality’ in the run up to the St Peter’s ward election on May 7th. The arrests were made on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud, and police investigations are ongoing.
Our investigation heard that internal messages had been circulated in Labour WhatsApp groups leading to the election, discussing the tactic of planting stooge Independents in order to split the vote of opposition candidates who could benefit from defecting Labour supporters.
And alleged discussed in Big Ange's kitchen during a boozy BBQ.She denies all knowledge of hearing anything about this plan....
Four men and a woman aged between 23 and 47 were arrested this morning in the Ashton-under-Lyne area, as a result of what the police are calling ‘illegality and criminality’ in the run up to the St Peter’s ward election on May 7th. The arrests were made on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud, and police investigations are ongoing.
Our investigation heard that internal messages had been circulated in Labour WhatsApp groups leading to the election, discussing the tactic of planting stooge Independents in order to split the vote of opposition candidates who could benefit from defecting Labour supporters.
And alleged discussed in Big Ange's kitchen during a boozy BBQ.She denies all knowledge of hearing anything about this plan....
Four men and a woman aged between 23 and 47 were arrested this morning in the Ashton-under-Lyne area, as a result of what the police are calling ‘illegality and criminality’ in the run up to the St Peter’s ward election on May 7th. The arrests were made on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud, and police investigations are ongoing.
Our investigation heard that internal messages had been circulated in Labour WhatsApp groups leading to the election, discussing the tactic of planting stooge Independents in order to split the vote of opposition candidates who could benefit from defecting Labour supporters.
And alleged discussed in Big Ange's kitchen during a boozy BBQ.She denies all knowledge of hearing anything about this plan....
Four men and a woman aged between 23 and 47 were arrested this morning in the Ashton-under-Lyne area, as a result of what the police are calling ‘illegality and criminality’ in the run up to the St Peter’s ward election on May 7th. The arrests were made on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud, and police investigations are ongoing.
Our investigation heard that internal messages had been circulated in Labour WhatsApp groups leading to the election, discussing the tactic of planting stooge Independents in order to split the vote of opposition candidates who could benefit from defecting Labour supporters.
And alleged discussed in Big Ange's kitchen during a boozy BBQ.She denies all knowledge of hearing anything about this plan....
I read that one a few days ago and thought that's quite a high hope from the Telegraph in the light of their disinterest in the Harborne millions. The Rayner story hasn't gained much traction yet.
Pb.com acquired a huge following because it filtered electoral prediction through cold, hard cash. Two things are threatening this preeminence: firstly, too few posters are actually looking for betting tips and won't put their money where their mouth is. (I have, to my cost as some here can testify). Secondly, politicians got too interested and began to try to rig and ramp the markets- as politicians will. The stuff the Tories tried to pull around the last general election is, I think, still under investigation by Plod. This latest naked ramping from Low deserves to be thumped in like manner and should be treated as what it is: a money making opportunity.for political bettors. So if the site needs to get it's mojo back, it is not going to happen by allowing Leon to post racist stuff about matters that are sub judice, it is to suggest politely that he backs his Reform ramping with some reasonable amount of dosh. If you can afford £20 for some slightly naff Crown Derby mug, you can certainly afford to take a few quid and back your mostly drunken and/or demented waffle supporting the treacherous Mr Farage as the likely next Prime Minister.
So, what odds are you giving us?
My lament about the site dying, last night, was based squarely on the fact that it is dying. In two ways
Last night we had barely a few comments over hours. At a time of huge political interest. Similarly, we get no new posters, ever. Except the execrable @Brixian59 who is surely a previous commenter reincarnating anyway. I’ve heard of this happening
Why? One big reason is the Blueskying of the site. It is now completely dominated by Dickless Centrist Dads like you. As relentlessly pompous as you are humourless, devoid of insight, caprice or wit. And fucking dull. And you have managed to push out anyone with a spark of wildness, plus that third of the country susceptible to Reform
If I was a newbie passing by, looking at this parade of sad old middlebrow “opinions”, I’d keep passing by
Sadly it has become the same old people rehashing the same old arguments - and PB would do well to consider why anyone who doesn't fit into one of two buckets of orthodoxy - "centrist (left leaning) dad" or "socially conservative right" tends to leave. I don't fit into either of those buckets and get piled on. I scan most days but rarely bother posting any more as a result.
Some of the more interesting _far_ left posters like 148grss - a literal Marxist if I recall - I disagreed with on almost everything, but found to be incredibly engaging and their arguments very well considered. To the point where they actually changed my mind about some things. That is rare. As for Reform voters, I'm a self confessed liberal metropolitan elite type who sees their voter base as utterly infra dig. But I wouldn't heap scorn on them either, because I've been out to the red wall many times to do focus groups, and absolutely get where the inchoate rage at the system is coming from. We would do well to listen to Reform voters and understand where they are coming from even if we disagree with them. But they are completely under-represented on this site - and dismissed and scorned when they do pop up.
However I don't think the problem is "middlebrow opinions" as much as it is piling on anyone who doesn't conform to the orthodoxy here. The tribalism is tiresome.
Try saying that Trump isn’t Hitler, and that he’s actually made huge achievements in immigration control, drug prices, combatting fraud, beautifying DC…
You’ll upset the PB herd if you say that !!
So, what are we meant to do?”!
Keep saying everyone the herd disagrees with is Hitler, obvs !!
I don't really think Bondygazoo's request for posting advice is genuine, but if I could ask some of our centre-left posters to change something, it would be to debate in good faith more of the time. PB is a debating forum, but it's not a campaigning forum, so there's really no need to try to misrepresent the views of others or the truth.
A mild example of this is our discussion on the 'charity' Hope Not Hate yesterday, where I read a response that portayed their work as 'taking on the BNP and the facists'. Everyone and their dog here knows that a great deal of HNH's recent 'work' has been to deligitimise pretty much all parties that campaign to reduce immigration, most notably Reform, so I'm not sure why I should waste time arguing against what we all, including the poster, know to be a specious representation of the facts. It's boring.
Both the Conservatives and Labour went into the last general election campaign saying they would reduce immigration. And indeed Labour have reduced immigration, and immigration was falling under Sunak. HNH has not sought to delegitimise Labour and the Conservatives, AFAIK. So your claim that they are trying to “deligitimise pretty much all parties that campaign to reduce immigration” seems questionable.
But, sure, complain about others trying to misrepresent the truth.
We're in a very difficult place here.
There are lots of people who quite reasonably see Reform as the natural vehicle for conservative Conservatives who feel abandoned by the Cameron project and the incompetence of the post-Cameron party. They don't see themselves as racist, mysogynist etc, in much the same way as many Labour supports believe themselves to be socially progressive, economically redistributive and that Labour is the party associated with that world view.
My not particularly well informed view from reading the tory knobheads on here, is that they actually prefer Fukker policies to tory ones. They can't have those policies in the tory party because Kemi can't sell that manky bill of goods with 10% of the elan and capacity that Big Nige can. Hence the somewhat dewy eyed reverence for the Fukkers that extends to pretending that their thick-as-shit, nylon clad voters are worthy of respect and even a hearing.
Kemi is certainly hampered by the fact that the press still have vague expectations that she should be speaking something close to the truth - a constraint with which The Clacton Horror is not encumbered.
She isn't choosing to speak the truth.
She and to a slightly lesser degree Starmer are scared of frightening off the racist tendency. They too couch their narrative in terms that won't scare the racists.
The trouble is you won't get any purchase unless you acknowledge people have legitimate concerns about migration and cultural change. If the vast majority of people arriving in the UK were liberal humanists with modern views on gender relations it wouldn't matter so much.
I am not sure I entirely agree.
We Brexited because we didn't like Poles, Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians. They were getting in the way of our kids's education, they were always Infront of us in the queue for the GP. Ironically they were very much in character with immigrants from Ireland from the last century, and the one before that (we didn't like them either). So we voted Brexit to send them home, despite the fact that within a generation they would have integrated in every way and we wouldn't have been able to tell whether their ancestors came from Warsaw or Walsall. Still, we didn't want them anyway, they sounded different to us and we sent them packing. Farage, the Mail and the Telegraph told us it was all a Blairite conspiracy to undermine Blighty, Englishness and the English language. And now we are saying we don't like people from the Indian subcontinent because they are different and Farage, the Mail , the Telegraph and GB News are telling us they are a Starmerite conspiracy to undermine Blighty, Englishness and the English language...
Poles, in general, don't go for cousin marriage, don't want sharia law, don't do female genital mutilation, don't want to blow me up, don't want to blow kids up, don't put their women in death shrouds, don't refuse to integrate, don't want homosexuals executed, don't want blasphemy laws, and don't commit sexual crimes about 12-20 times the national average (per Danish ethnic/crime data, this month)
So, there is bit of a difference between certain migrant groups. Is there not?
It's interesting how the far right argument against Islam is often "they want to throw queers off the roof you know" (and for all I know, many of them probably do) but it wasn't Muslims calling my partner a t***** or taking away her right to pee in the toilet aligned with the genitalia she possessed at her time of death, either. It was the far right and their fellow travellers.
I agree with you that we don't want to import knuckle-dragging, inbred, misogynists, homophobes and transphobes into the UK en masse, but what do we do about the home grown ones, of which there are many?
Well if you're Nigel Farage you set up a suitable political vehicle and hoover up their votes.
I don't think objects and values are the lens to use to look at Farage's politics; he is about process. Farage is essentially a nihilist; he does not care who he is demonising as long as he has a demon he can use to scare his 'supporters' back into their silo.
Then he layers various constituencies on top.
Farage currently demonises all the Muslims by dishonestly imputing issues with small numbers to an entire community, to convince whoever will fall for the flim-flam.
He would be equally happy demonising Jews, or Irish, or woman, or blacks, or Indians, or gays, or trans, or disabled, or French, or those with mental health problems. He and his allies have done this on occasions.
Pb.com acquired a huge following because it filtered electoral prediction through cold, hard cash. Two things are threatening this preeminence: firstly, too few posters are actually looking for betting tips and won't put their money where their mouth is. (I have, to my cost as some here can testify). Secondly, politicians got too interested and began to try to rig and ramp the markets- as politicians will. The stuff the Tories tried to pull around the last general election is, I think, still under investigation by Plod. This latest naked ramping from Low deserves to be thumped in like manner and should be treated as what it is: a money making opportunity.for political bettors. So if the site needs to get it's mojo back, it is not going to happen by allowing Leon to post racist stuff about matters that are sub judice, it is to suggest politely that he backs his Reform ramping with some reasonable amount of dosh. If you can afford £20 for some slightly naff Crown Derby mug, you can certainly afford to take a few quid and back your mostly drunken and/or demented waffle supporting the treacherous Mr Farage as the likely next Prime Minister.
So, what odds are you giving us?
My lament about the site dying, last night, was based squarely on the fact that it is dying. In two ways
Last night we had barely a few comments over hours. At a time of huge political interest. Similarly, we get no new posters, ever. Except the execrable @Brixian59 who is surely a previous commenter reincarnating anyway. I’ve heard of this happening
Why? One big reason is the Blueskying of the site. It is now completely dominated by Dickless Centrist Dads like you. As relentlessly pompous as you are humourless, devoid of insight, caprice or wit. And fucking dull. And you have managed to push out anyone with a spark of wildness, plus that third of the country susceptible to Reform
If I was a newbie passing by, looking at this parade of sad old middlebrow “opinions”, I’d keep passing by
Sadly it has become the same old people rehashing the same old arguments - and PB would do well to consider why anyone who doesn't fit into one of two buckets of orthodoxy - "centrist (left leaning) dad" or "socially conservative right" tends to leave. I don't fit into either of those buckets and get piled on. I scan most days but rarely bother posting any more as a result.
Some of the more interesting _far_ left posters like 148grss - a literal Marxist if I recall - I disagreed with on almost everything, but found to be incredibly engaging and their arguments very well considered. To the point where they actually changed my mind about some things. That is rare. As for Reform voters, I'm a self confessed liberal metropolitan elite type who sees their voter base as utterly infra dig. But I wouldn't heap scorn on them either, because I've been out to the red wall many times to do focus groups, and absolutely get where the inchoate rage at the system is coming from. We would do well to listen to Reform voters and understand where they are coming from even if we disagree with them. But they are completely under-represented on this site - and dismissed and scorned when they do pop up.
However I don't think the problem is "middlebrow opinions" as much as it is piling on anyone who doesn't conform to the orthodoxy here. The tribalism is tiresome.
Try saying that Trump isn’t Hitler, and that he’s actually made huge achievements in immigration control, drug prices, combatting fraud, beautifying DC…
Well, quite. Can't say I agree with you on Trump but why bother expressing an unorthodox opinion when expressing any view outside of the norm turns into a pile on?
Being told I was a "leftist" poster the other day when I've spent years banging on about lower taxes and less regulation just because I'm socially liberal was quite an eye opener.
I have been meaning to apologise for that. It was a genuine moment of confusion following a helluva mental week. I am sorry.
No worries. Apology accepted and much appreciated.
The wider point about tribalism on this site stands though, I think people tend to consistently post "goodthink" for either the centrist dad tribe or the socially conservative tribe to gain likes, rather than say interesting stuff like "Well, I'm a low tax libertarian but actually the Greens are the only party seriously standing up for civil liberties in the UK - repeal of the online safety act, right to protest, legalisation of drugs etc so maybe I'll vote for them*"
*I won't actually vote for a party that plans to tax the economy into the ground.
I have been meaning to ask you about that capital gains thing, as a 'live' case study. I was shattered and couldn't really engage in the week.
I have long held the opinion (in the abstract) that capital gains in the UK were taxed too lightly, and it was encouraging people to grow businesses to a certain point and cash in by selling them abroad, to the detriment of the country. So I've not really listened to a lot of the anti capital gains tax stuff, because I felt Mandy Rice Davis applied.
You mentioned that threats to tax you on your capital gains had prevented you from investing in UK businesses (forgive me if I am oversimplifying or misrepresenting what you said). So how should the tax system (if this is possible) incentivise someone like you to invest in British businesses, but somehow discourage others to make the economy one big flog off so we end up having no British companies or brands left.
Honestly there's a few different things going on here....
My own situation is unusual. I invested heavily in US markets with my PAYE salary because, for a long time, I earned far more than I could spend and chose to invest it rather than spend it. That’s left me with very large unrealised gains, while my current work, effectively a fractional marketing director for startups, constantly exposes me to UK based investment opportunities. Given the current 18/24% CGT rates (up from 10/20% pre-2024), I’m much less inclined to sell to invest. That’s very different from someone selling a small business after 20 years for 1-2m, or someone scaling a tech startup from £500k to £50m in a few years.
More broadly, though, economies work best when capital is liquid and flowing in rather than out. Personally, I’d rather stay in US equities than cash out and reinvest in the UK because 24% already feels high to me and 45% would be absurd. Likewise, why would someone build a globally mobile tech company in the UK if they could face 45% CGT on a £50m exit when they could set up elsewhere? The UK loses competitiveness, investment, and jobs...
I agree with a fair amount of your argument, but I think what's proposed would have some special treatment for that particular case ?
BADR (business asset disposal relief for the purpose of capital gains) was already reduced from a lifetime amount of 10m to 1m. So if you build something worth 50m that 1m will not make much difference - I know two people who have relocated to Dubai already as a result of exceeding this amount. If they want to propose something else like a "special accidental multimillionaire's relief for people who go from a 500k startup to a 50m valuation in 3 years" then OK but a) once we get into all these exemptions isn't that utter anathema to the "capital should be taxed the same as income" mob currently driving policy thinking and b) relies on trust that the UK will not change / reduce the threshold in the next parliament (imagine the Greens get in in 2028 for example) - BADR has already been cut by 90%! and c) does nothing for the distorting effects of 45% on the rest of us (vs, as I say, 0% for buying a f****off big house and living in it for the next 40 years). I'm happy to pay 45% on my equity gains when the boomers are happy to pay 45% on their 7 figure primary residence gains...
£1m is fine for BADR relief. Neither making 100x your investment nor starting a business with solely £500k of a single individuals capital are remotely typical.
Doesn't matter whether it's typical or not (I would argue that 1 or 2 people starting with 500k is actually quite typical, certainly of my client base - usually serial entrepreneurs with proceeds from selling their first or second business). The point is how it impacts the behaviour of founders.
If you had 500k to invest, with *the aim* of turning that into 50m in the next 3 years, would you a) do that in the UK where tax is currently 24% and mooted to be raised to 45% with limited relief around the margins and probable exit tax (and to Foxy's _very_ valid point, a constantly changing and unstable regulatory environment?) or would you invest it somewhere that has been a flat 20% for the last 40 years and will likely continue to be?
So even if your business "fails" and only becomes worth 1m (and you sell it for 1m and try agian, which is what most of the "serial entrepreneurs" I know do) the point is if you're aiming for a 50m valuation every time, you set up in the country that will be optimal for that to maximise your gains if you do hit it big? I would not be looking to set up a business at all in the UK right now for the above reasons.
Fundamentally that our political class do not understand not only economics but also behavioural economics just leaves me pounding my head against the wall in frustration.
Thank you for expanding your original point and for this insight.
It goes without saying that the Government needs to create an environment (easy taxes, easily regulation, relatively flexible labour market, good education) within which businesses can be founded easily and grow. But there is something else within our system that incentivises speedy divestment, rather than the German way of proud factory owners being embedded within their local communities, or the American way of becoming world beating global corporations. It must be made easier to create and spend wealth within the UK, and perhaps harder to sell up, even if that does result in cases where the net effect is negative in the short term.
Pb.com acquired a huge following because it filtered electoral prediction through cold, hard cash. Two things are threatening this preeminence: firstly, too few posters are actually looking for betting tips and won't put their money where their mouth is. (I have, to my cost as some here can testify). Secondly, politicians got too interested and began to try to rig and ramp the markets- as politicians will. The stuff the Tories tried to pull around the last general election is, I think, still under investigation by Plod. This latest naked ramping from Low deserves to be thumped in like manner and should be treated as what it is: a money making opportunity.for political bettors. So if the site needs to get it's mojo back, it is not going to happen by allowing Leon to post racist stuff about matters that are sub judice, it is to suggest politely that he backs his Reform ramping with some reasonable amount of dosh. If you can afford £20 for some slightly naff Crown Derby mug, you can certainly afford to take a few quid and back your mostly drunken and/or demented waffle supporting the treacherous Mr Farage as the likely next Prime Minister.
So, what odds are you giving us?
My lament about the site dying, last night, was based squarely on the fact that it is dying. In two ways
Last night we had barely a few comments over hours. At a time of huge political interest. Similarly, we get no new posters, ever. Except the execrable @Brixian59 who is surely a previous commenter reincarnating anyway. I’ve heard of this happening
Why? One big reason is the Blueskying of the site. It is now completely dominated by Dickless Centrist Dads like you. As relentlessly pompous as you are humourless, devoid of insight, caprice or wit. And fucking dull. And you have managed to push out anyone with a spark of wildness, plus that third of the country susceptible to Reform
If I was a newbie passing by, looking at this parade of sad old middlebrow “opinions”, I’d keep passing by
Sadly it has become the same old people rehashing the same old arguments - and PB would do well to consider why anyone who doesn't fit into one of two buckets of orthodoxy - "centrist (left leaning) dad" or "socially conservative right" tends to leave. I don't fit into either of those buckets and get piled on. I scan most days but rarely bother posting any more as a result.
Some of the more interesting _far_ left posters like 148grss - a literal Marxist if I recall - I disagreed with on almost everything, but found to be incredibly engaging and their arguments very well considered. To the point where they actually changed my mind about some things. That is rare. As for Reform voters, I'm a self confessed liberal metropolitan elite type who sees their voter base as utterly infra dig. But I wouldn't heap scorn on them either, because I've been out to the red wall many times to do focus groups, and absolutely get where the inchoate rage at the system is coming from. We would do well to listen to Reform voters and understand where they are coming from even if we disagree with them. But they are completely under-represented on this site - and dismissed and scorned when they do pop up.
However I don't think the problem is "middlebrow opinions" as much as it is piling on anyone who doesn't conform to the orthodoxy here. The tribalism is tiresome.
Try saying that Trump isn’t Hitler, and that he’s actually made huge achievements in immigration control, drug prices, combatting fraud, beautifying DC…
You’ll upset the PB herd if you say that !!
So, what are we meant to do?”!
Keep saying everyone the herd disagrees with is Hitler, obvs !!
I don't really think Bondygazoo's request for posting advice is genuine, but if I could ask some of our centre-left posters to change something, it would be to debate in good faith more of the time. PB is a debating forum, but it's not a campaigning forum, so there's really no need to try to misrepresent the views of others or the truth.
A mild example of this is our discussion on the 'charity' Hope Not Hate yesterday, where I read a response that portayed their work as 'taking on the BNP and the facists'. Everyone and their dog here knows that a great deal of HNH's recent 'work' has been to deligitimise pretty much all parties that campaign to reduce immigration, most notably Reform, so I'm not sure why I should waste time arguing against what we all, including the poster, know to be a specious representation of the facts. It's boring.
Both the Conservatives and Labour went into the last general election campaign saying they would reduce immigration. And indeed Labour have reduced immigration, and immigration was falling under Sunak. HNH has not sought to delegitimise Labour and the Conservatives, AFAIK. So your claim that they are trying to “deligitimise pretty much all parties that campaign to reduce immigration” seems questionable.
But, sure, complain about others trying to misrepresent the truth.
We're in a very difficult place here.
There are lots of people who quite reasonably see Reform as the natural vehicle for conservative Conservatives who feel abandoned by the Cameron project and the incompetence of the post-Cameron party. They don't see themselves as racist, mysogynist etc, in much the same way as many Labour supports believe themselves to be socially progressive, economically redistributive and that Labour is the party associated with that world view.
My not particularly well informed view from reading the tory knobheads on here, is that they actually prefer Fukker policies to tory ones. They can't have those policies in the tory party because Kemi can't sell that manky bill of goods with 10% of the elan and capacity that Big Nige can. Hence the somewhat dewy eyed reverence for the Fukkers that extends to pretending that their thick-as-shit, nylon clad voters are worthy of respect and even a hearing.
Kemi is certainly hampered by the fact that the press still have vague expectations that she should be speaking something close to the truth - a constraint with which The Clacton Horror is not encumbered.
She isn't choosing to speak the truth.
She and to a slightly lesser degree Starmer are scared of frightening off the racist tendency. They too couch their narrative in terms that won't scare the racists.
The trouble is you won't get any purchase unless you acknowledge people have legitimate concerns about migration and cultural change. If the vast majority of people arriving in the UK were liberal humanists with modern views on gender relations it wouldn't matter so much.
I am not sure I entirely agree.
We Brexited because we didn't like Poles, Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians. They were getting in the way of our kids's education, they were always Infront of us in the queue for the GP. Ironically they were very much in character with immigrants from Ireland from the last century, and the one before that (we didn't like them either). So we voted Brexit to send them home, despite the fact that within a generation they would have integrated in every way and we wouldn't have been able to tell whether their ancestors came from Warsaw or Walsall. Still, we didn't want them anyway, they sounded different to us and we sent them packing. Farage, the Mail and the Telegraph told us it was all a Blairite conspiracy to undermine Blighty, Englishness and the English language. And now we are saying we don't like people from the Indian subcontinent because they are different and Farage, the Mail , the Telegraph and GB News are telling us they are a Starmerite conspiracy to undermine Blighty, Englishness and the English language...
Poles, in general, don't go for cousin marriage, don't want sharia law, don't do female genital mutilation, don't want to blow me up, don't want to blow kids up, don't put their women in death shrouds, don't refuse to integrate, don't want homosexuals executed, don't want blasphemy laws, and don't commit sexual crimes about 12-20 times the national average (per Danish ethnic/crime data, this month)
So, there is bit of a difference between certain migrant groups. Is there not?
It's interesting how the far right argument against Islam is often "they want to throw queers off the roof you know" (and for all I know, many of them probably do) but it wasn't Muslims calling my partner a t***** or taking away her right to pee in the toilet aligned with the genitalia she possessed at her time of death, either. It was the far right and their fellow travellers.
I agree with you that we don't want to import knuckle-dragging, inbred, misogynists, homophobes and transphobes into the UK en masse, but what do we do about the home grown ones, of which there are many?
Well if you're Nigel Farage you set up a suitable political vehicle and hoover up their votes.
Well quite. As a bloc vote, it's Reform you have to worry about if you have socially liberal views. Meanwhile the Muslims are voting for *checks notes again* the ardently pro trans rights party led by the gay Jew.
In Bradford, most Muslims voted for the "Independent" Islamic bloc.
As for the Greens, the contradictions in their voter base will result in them tearing themselves apart.
Hull City owner Acun Ilicali has vowed to take legal action if the Tigers do not win Saturday's Championship play-off final against Middlesbrough.
They should have replayed the whole Southampton side of the draw from scratch with Wrexham taking Southampton's place and postponing the final until next week. Alternatively Saints could have taken their place in the Premiership or Championship next season.with a points deduction.
Wouldn't be able to play at Wembley though (which they probably wouldn't care about, but the FA would)
is that 2:1 on LDs having more seats than Reform at the next GE still available?
If the cowardly Leon accepts the bet, I'd consider extending it for small stakes.
Leon doesn’t accept bets on political propositions because it forces him to commit to a position; the same reason why you won’t ever see him entering any PB prediction competition. Leon’s usual strategy, his being essentially utterly clueless about politics, is to try and get chips on all the possible outcomes by shading his comments through time so he has all bases covered. Hence, when Makerfield was announced, he predicted it would be a clear Reform win, then later he took to predicting it would be close, then later still he started farting about upping his predicted probability of a Labour win from 30% to 50%. So he can already try and claim credit for everything except a decisive Burnham win - the position already taken by me and a decent number of other clued up PB’ers.
2-1 odds on Lib Dem over Reform is free money to most punters. You suggest that the cowardly Leon doesn't understand politics... It seems he doesn't understand betting either. So why would he hang around a site called Politicalbetting.com? C'mon it's time the king of the Chalk Farm car boot sales explained himself.
Pb.com acquired a huge following because it filtered electoral prediction through cold, hard cash. Two things are threatening this preeminence: firstly, too few posters are actually looking for betting tips and won't put their money where their mouth is. (I have, to my cost as some here can testify). Secondly, politicians got too interested and began to try to rig and ramp the markets- as politicians will. The stuff the Tories tried to pull around the last general election is, I think, still under investigation by Plod. This latest naked ramping from Low deserves to be thumped in like manner and should be treated as what it is: a money making opportunity.for political bettors. So if the site needs to get it's mojo back, it is not going to happen by allowing Leon to post racist stuff about matters that are sub judice, it is to suggest politely that he backs his Reform ramping with some reasonable amount of dosh. If you can afford £20 for some slightly naff Crown Derby mug, you can certainly afford to take a few quid and back your mostly drunken and/or demented waffle supporting the treacherous Mr Farage as the likely next Prime Minister.
So, what odds are you giving us?
I don't know why so many interesting posters have left the site. People like Antifrank, Richard Navabi, etc.
Who knows, perhaps they came to the strange, irrational conclusion that if we discuss Brexit another 241 times it still won't change anyone's mind.
'Shameful' more spent on benefits than jobs for young people, says Milburn
'Welfare reform is absolutely essential and needs to be done. But as I said, it's got to be within the context of a wider set of reforms to state institutions."
Pb.com acquired a huge following because it filtered electoral prediction through cold, hard cash. Two things are threatening this preeminence: firstly, too few posters are actually looking for betting tips and won't put their money where their mouth is. (I have, to my cost as some here can testify). Secondly, politicians got too interested and began to try to rig and ramp the markets- as politicians will. The stuff the Tories tried to pull around the last general election is, I think, still under investigation by Plod. This latest naked ramping from Low deserves to be thumped in like manner and should be treated as what it is: a money making opportunity.for political bettors. So if the site needs to get it's mojo back, it is not going to happen by allowing Leon to post racist stuff about matters that are sub judice, it is to suggest politely that he backs his Reform ramping with some reasonable amount of dosh. If you can afford £20 for some slightly naff Crown Derby mug, you can certainly afford to take a few quid and back your mostly drunken and/or demented waffle supporting the treacherous Mr Farage as the likely next Prime Minister.
So, what odds are you giving us?
My lament about the site dying, last night, was based squarely on the fact that it is dying. In two ways
Last night we had barely a few comments over hours. At a time of huge political interest. Similarly, we get no new posters, ever. Except the execrable @Brixian59 who is surely a previous commenter reincarnating anyway. I’ve heard of this happening
Why? One big reason is the Blueskying of the site. It is now completely dominated by Dickless Centrist Dads like you. As relentlessly pompous as you are humourless, devoid of insight, caprice or wit. And fucking dull. And you have managed to push out anyone with a spark of wildness, plus that third of the country susceptible to Reform
If I was a newbie passing by, looking at this parade of sad old middlebrow “opinions”, I’d keep passing by
Sadly it has become the same old people rehashing the same old arguments - and PB would do well to consider why anyone who doesn't fit into one of two buckets of orthodoxy - "centrist (left leaning) dad" or "socially conservative right" tends to leave. I don't fit into either of those buckets and get piled on. I scan most days but rarely bother posting any more as a result.
Some of the more interesting _far_ left posters like 148grss - a literal Marxist if I recall - I disagreed with on almost everything, but found to be incredibly engaging and their arguments very well considered. To the point where they actually changed my mind about some things. That is rare. As for Reform voters, I'm a self confessed liberal metropolitan elite type who sees their voter base as utterly infra dig. But I wouldn't heap scorn on them either, because I've been out to the red wall many times to do focus groups, and absolutely get where the inchoate rage at the system is coming from. We would do well to listen to Reform voters and understand where they are coming from even if we disagree with them. But they are completely under-represented on this site - and dismissed and scorned when they do pop up.
However I don't think the problem is "middlebrow opinions" as much as it is piling on anyone who doesn't conform to the orthodoxy here. The tribalism is tiresome.
Try saying that Trump isn’t Hitler, and that he’s actually made huge achievements in immigration control, drug prices, combatting fraud, beautifying DC…
You’ll upset the PB herd if you say that !!
So, what are we meant to do?”!
Keep saying everyone the herd disagrees with is Hitler, obvs !!
I don't really think Bondygazoo's request for posting advice is genuine, but if I could ask some of our centre-left posters to change something, it would be to debate in good faith more of the time. PB is a debating forum, but it's not a campaigning forum, so there's really no need to try to misrepresent the views of others or the truth.
A mild example of this is our discussion on the 'charity' Hope Not Hate yesterday, where I read a response that portayed their work as 'taking on the BNP and the facists'. Everyone and their dog here knows that a great deal of HNH's recent 'work' has been to deligitimise pretty much all parties that campaign to reduce immigration, most notably Reform, so I'm not sure why I should waste time arguing against what we all, including the poster, know to be a specious representation of the facts. It's boring.
Both the Conservatives and Labour went into the last general election campaign saying they would reduce immigration. And indeed Labour have reduced immigration, and immigration was falling under Sunak. HNH has not sought to delegitimise Labour and the Conservatives, AFAIK. So your claim that they are trying to “deligitimise pretty much all parties that campaign to reduce immigration” seems questionable.
But, sure, complain about others trying to misrepresent the truth.
We're in a very difficult place here.
There are lots of people who quite reasonably see Reform as the natural vehicle for conservative Conservatives who feel abandoned by the Cameron project and the incompetence of the post-Cameron party. They don't see themselves as racist, mysogynist etc, in much the same way as many Labour supports believe themselves to be socially progressive, economically redistributive and that Labour is the party associated with that world view.
My not particularly well informed view from reading the tory knobheads on here, is that they actually prefer Fukker policies to tory ones. They can't have those policies in the tory party because Kemi can't sell that manky bill of goods with 10% of the elan and capacity that Big Nige can. Hence the somewhat dewy eyed reverence for the Fukkers that extends to pretending that their thick-as-shit, nylon clad voters are worthy of respect and even a hearing.
Kemi is certainly hampered by the fact that the press still have vague expectations that she should be speaking something close to the truth - a constraint with which The Clacton Horror is not encumbered.
She isn't choosing to speak the truth.
She and to a slightly lesser degree Starmer are scared of frightening off the racist tendency. They too couch their narrative in terms that won't scare the racists.
The trouble is you won't get any purchase unless you acknowledge people have legitimate concerns about migration and cultural change. If the vast majority of people arriving in the UK were liberal humanists with modern views on gender relations it wouldn't matter so much.
I am not sure I entirely agree.
We Brexited because we didn't like Poles, Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians. They were getting in the way of our kids's education, they were always Infront of us in the queue for the GP. Ironically they were very much in character with immigrants from Ireland from the last century, and the one before that (we didn't like them either). So we voted Brexit to send them home, despite the fact that within a generation they would have integrated in every way and we wouldn't have been able to tell whether their ancestors came from Warsaw or Walsall. Still, we didn't want them anyway, they sounded different to us and we sent them packing. Farage, the Mail and the Telegraph told us it was all a Blairite conspiracy to undermine Blighty, Englishness and the English language. And now we are saying we don't like people from the Indian subcontinent because they are different and Farage, the Mail , the Telegraph and GB News are telling us they are a Starmerite conspiracy to undermine Blighty, Englishness and the English language...
Poles, in general, don't go for cousin marriage, don't want sharia law, don't do female genital mutilation, don't want to blow me up, don't want to blow kids up, don't put their women in death shrouds, don't refuse to integrate, don't want homosexuals executed, don't want blasphemy laws, and don't commit sexual crimes about 12-20 times the national average (per Danish ethnic/crime data, this month)
So, there is bit of a difference between certain migrant groups. Is there not?
It's interesting how the far right argument against Islam is often "they want to throw queers off the roof you know" (and for all I know, many of them probably do) but it wasn't Muslims calling my partner a t***** or taking away her right to pee in the toilet aligned with the genitalia she possessed at her time of death, either. It was the far right and their fellow travellers.
I agree with you that we don't want to import knuckle-dragging, inbred, misogynists, homophobes and transphobes into the UK en masse, but what do we do about the home grown ones, of which there are many?
Well if you're Nigel Farage you set up a suitable political vehicle and hoover up their votes.
Well quite. As a bloc vote, it's Reform you have to worry about if you have socially liberal views. Meanwhile the Muslims are voting for *checks notes again* the ardently pro trans rights party led by the gay Jew.
In Bradford, most Muslims voted for the "Independent" Islamic bloc.
As for the Greens, the contradictions in their voter base will result in them tearing themselves apart.
Isn't that the fate of all political parties though?
The Tories effectively split in two (the other half being Reform) The Corbynite wing of Labour off to the Greens.
My point is that at this time Leon's arguments fall flat because I'm more worried about Reform voters than I am about Green ones (my Jewish friends say the opposite, however, and I wouldn't vote for either party)
Pb.com acquired a huge following because it filtered electoral prediction through cold, hard cash. Two things are threatening this preeminence: firstly, too few posters are actually looking for betting tips and won't put their money where their mouth is. (I have, to my cost as some here can testify). Secondly, politicians got too interested and began to try to rig and ramp the markets- as politicians will. The stuff the Tories tried to pull around the last general election is, I think, still under investigation by Plod. This latest naked ramping from Low deserves to be thumped in like manner and should be treated as what it is: a money making opportunity.for political bettors. So if the site needs to get it's mojo back, it is not going to happen by allowing Leon to post racist stuff about matters that are sub judice, it is to suggest politely that he backs his Reform ramping with some reasonable amount of dosh. If you can afford £20 for some slightly naff Crown Derby mug, you can certainly afford to take a few quid and back your mostly drunken and/or demented waffle supporting the treacherous Mr Farage as the likely next Prime Minister.
So, what odds are you giving us?
My lament about the site dying, last night, was based squarely on the fact that it is dying. In two ways
Last night we had barely a few comments over hours. At a time of huge political interest. Similarly, we get no new posters, ever. Except the execrable @Brixian59 who is surely a previous commenter reincarnating anyway. I’ve heard of this happening
Why? One big reason is the Blueskying of the site. It is now completely dominated by Dickless Centrist Dads like you. As relentlessly pompous as you are humourless, devoid of insight, caprice or wit. And fucking dull. And you have managed to push out anyone with a spark of wildness, plus that third of the country susceptible to Reform
If I was a newbie passing by, looking at this parade of sad old middlebrow “opinions”, I’d keep passing by
Sadly it has become the same old people rehashing the same old arguments - and PB would do well to consider why anyone who doesn't fit into one of two buckets of orthodoxy - "centrist (left leaning) dad" or "socially conservative right" tends to leave. I don't fit into either of those buckets and get piled on. I scan most days but rarely bother posting any more as a result.
Some of the more interesting _far_ left posters like 148grss - a literal Marxist if I recall - I disagreed with on almost everything, but found to be incredibly engaging and their arguments very well considered. To the point where they actually changed my mind about some things. That is rare. As for Reform voters, I'm a self confessed liberal metropolitan elite type who sees their voter base as utterly infra dig. But I wouldn't heap scorn on them either, because I've been out to the red wall many times to do focus groups, and absolutely get where the inchoate rage at the system is coming from. We would do well to listen to Reform voters and understand where they are coming from even if we disagree with them. But they are completely under-represented on this site - and dismissed and scorned when they do pop up.
However I don't think the problem is "middlebrow opinions" as much as it is piling on anyone who doesn't conform to the orthodoxy here. The tribalism is tiresome.
Try saying that Trump isn’t Hitler, and that he’s actually made huge achievements in immigration control, drug prices, combatting fraud, beautifying DC…
You’ll upset the PB herd if you say that !!
So, what are we meant to do?”!
Keep saying everyone the herd disagrees with is Hitler, obvs !!
I don't really think Bondygazoo's request for posting advice is genuine, but if I could ask some of our centre-left posters to change something, it would be to debate in good faith more of the time. PB is a debating forum, but it's not a campaigning forum, so there's really no need to try to misrepresent the views of others or the truth.
A mild example of this is our discussion on the 'charity' Hope Not Hate yesterday, where I read a response that portayed their work as 'taking on the BNP and the facists'. Everyone and their dog here knows that a great deal of HNH's recent 'work' has been to deligitimise pretty much all parties that campaign to reduce immigration, most notably Reform, so I'm not sure why I should waste time arguing against what we all, including the poster, know to be a specious representation of the facts. It's boring.
Both the Conservatives and Labour went into the last general election campaign saying they would reduce immigration. And indeed Labour have reduced immigration, and immigration was falling under Sunak. HNH has not sought to delegitimise Labour and the Conservatives, AFAIK. So your claim that they are trying to “deligitimise pretty much all parties that campaign to reduce immigration” seems questionable.
But, sure, complain about others trying to misrepresent the truth.
We're in a very difficult place here.
There are lots of people who quite reasonably see Reform as the natural vehicle for conservative Conservatives who feel abandoned by the Cameron project and the incompetence of the post-Cameron party. They don't see themselves as racist, mysogynist etc, in much the same way as many Labour supports believe themselves to be socially progressive, economically redistributive and that Labour is the party associated with that world view.
My not particularly well informed view from reading the tory knobheads on here, is that they actually prefer Fukker policies to tory ones. They can't have those policies in the tory party because Kemi can't sell that manky bill of goods with 10% of the elan and capacity that Big Nige can. Hence the somewhat dewy eyed reverence for the Fukkers that extends to pretending that their thick-as-shit, nylon clad voters are worthy of respect and even a hearing.
Kemi is certainly hampered by the fact that the press still have vague expectations that she should be speaking something close to the truth - a constraint with which The Clacton Horror is not encumbered.
She isn't choosing to speak the truth.
She and to a slightly lesser degree Starmer are scared of frightening off the racist tendency. They too couch their narrative in terms that won't scare the racists.
She can't speak the truth
Her personality traits are arrogance and refusal to apologise for her errors
Argumentative and unable to grasp the fact she's not always right and others aren't always wrong.
In a nutshell a terrifying lack of emotional maturity.
The Violet Elizabeth of UK politics.
She's not as fundamentally evil and insane as Braverman and extreme and nasty as Pritti but that's a fecking very low bar.
Tory polling is stagnant and recent losses to lowest ever Council numbers suggest extermination.
Her complete lack of realism and truth on this perfectly sums her up.
That may be true, and I suspect it is*, but you have ignored my point that our party of choice are equally culpable in their pandering to Reform racists.
* Although don't forget Tories are like cockroaches and they can survive Armageddon.
I really do believe that Shabana is best Home Secretary of recent times, the best Labour Home or Shadow Home Secretary in 2 decades.
I think she's the right person, with the right plan at this moment in time.
Her background I believe adds to her credibility and her management of a very tough brief very strong.
I believe that together with Phillipson she is the most effective current Cabinet Minister.
If that smug complacent fool Phillipson is the best Labour can offer, God have mercy on the nation.
Stop looking for Burnhamism - in six years, I’ve never found it. Watching the mayor up close in Manchester, I’ve seen his unusual gifts and glaring weaknesses. Would he make a good prime minister?
Pb.com acquired a huge following because it filtered electoral prediction through cold, hard cash. Two things are threatening this preeminence: firstly, too few posters are actually looking for betting tips and won't put their money where their mouth is. (I have, to my cost as some here can testify). Secondly, politicians got too interested and began to try to rig and ramp the markets- as politicians will. The stuff the Tories tried to pull around the last general election is, I think, still under investigation by Plod. This latest naked ramping from Low deserves to be thumped in like manner and should be treated as what it is: a money making opportunity.for political bettors. So if the site needs to get it's mojo back, it is not going to happen by allowing Leon to post racist stuff about matters that are sub judice, it is to suggest politely that he backs his Reform ramping with some reasonable amount of dosh. If you can afford £20 for some slightly naff Crown Derby mug, you can certainly afford to take a few quid and back your mostly drunken and/or demented waffle supporting the treacherous Mr Farage as the likely next Prime Minister.
So, what odds are you giving us?
My lament about the site dying, last night, was based squarely on the fact that it is dying. In two ways
Last night we had barely a few comments over hours. At a time of huge political interest. Similarly, we get no new posters, ever. Except the execrable @Brixian59 who is surely a previous commenter reincarnating anyway. I’ve heard of this happening
Why? One big reason is the Blueskying of the site. It is now completely dominated by Dickless Centrist Dads like you. As relentlessly pompous as you are humourless, devoid of insight, caprice or wit. And fucking dull. And you have managed to push out anyone with a spark of wildness, plus that third of the country susceptible to Reform
If I was a newbie passing by, looking at this parade of sad old middlebrow “opinions”, I’d keep passing by
Sadly it has become the same old people rehashing the same old arguments - and PB would do well to consider why anyone who doesn't fit into one of two buckets of orthodoxy - "centrist (left leaning) dad" or "socially conservative right" tends to leave. I don't fit into either of those buckets and get piled on. I scan most days but rarely bother posting any more as a result.
Some of the more interesting _far_ left posters like 148grss - a literal Marxist if I recall - I disagreed with on almost everything, but found to be incredibly engaging and their arguments very well considered. To the point where they actually changed my mind about some things. That is rare. As for Reform voters, I'm a self confessed liberal metropolitan elite type who sees their voter base as utterly infra dig. But I wouldn't heap scorn on them either, because I've been out to the red wall many times to do focus groups, and absolutely get where the inchoate rage at the system is coming from. We would do well to listen to Reform voters and understand where they are coming from even if we disagree with them. But they are completely under-represented on this site - and dismissed and scorned when they do pop up.
However I don't think the problem is "middlebrow opinions" as much as it is piling on anyone who doesn't conform to the orthodoxy here. The tribalism is tiresome.
Try saying that Trump isn’t Hitler, and that he’s actually made huge achievements in immigration control, drug prices, combatting fraud, beautifying DC…
Well, quite. Can't say I agree with you on Trump but why bother expressing an unorthodox opinion when expressing any view outside of the norm turns into a pile on?
Being told I was a "leftist" poster the other day when I've spent years banging on about lower taxes and less regulation just because I'm socially liberal was quite an eye opener.
I have been meaning to apologise for that. It was a genuine moment of confusion following a helluva mental week. I am sorry.
No worries. Apology accepted and much appreciated.
The wider point about tribalism on this site stands though, I think people tend to consistently post "goodthink" for either the centrist dad tribe or the socially conservative tribe to gain likes, rather than say interesting stuff like "Well, I'm a low tax libertarian but actually the Greens are the only party seriously standing up for civil liberties in the UK - repeal of the online safety act, right to protest, legalisation of drugs etc so maybe I'll vote for them*"
*I won't actually vote for a party that plans to tax the economy into the ground.
I have been meaning to ask you about that capital gains thing, as a 'live' case study. I was shattered and couldn't really engage in the week.
I have long held the opinion (in the abstract) that capital gains in the UK were taxed too lightly, and it was encouraging people to grow businesses to a certain point and cash in by selling them abroad, to the detriment of the country. So I've not really listened to a lot of the anti capital gains tax stuff, because I felt Mandy Rice Davis applied.
You mentioned that threats to tax you on your capital gains had prevented you from investing in UK businesses (forgive me if I am oversimplifying or misrepresenting what you said). So how should the tax system (if this is possible) incentivise someone like you to invest in British businesses, but somehow discourage others to make the economy one big flog off so we end up having no British companies or brands left.
Honestly there's a few different things going on here....
My own situation is unusual. I invested heavily in US markets with my PAYE salary because, for a long time, I earned far more than I could spend and chose to invest it rather than spend it. That’s left me with very large unrealised gains, while my current work, effectively a fractional marketing director for startups, constantly exposes me to UK based investment opportunities. Given the current 18/24% CGT rates (up from 10/20% pre-2024), I’m much less inclined to sell to invest. That’s very different from someone selling a small business after 20 years for 1-2m, or someone scaling a tech startup from £500k to £50m in a few years.
More broadly, though, economies work best when capital is liquid and flowing in rather than out. Personally, I’d rather stay in US equities than cash out and reinvest in the UK because 24% already feels high to me and 45% would be absurd. Likewise, why would someone build a globally mobile tech company in the UK if they could face 45% CGT on a £50m exit when they could set up elsewhere? The UK loses competitiveness, investment, and jobs...
I agree with a fair amount of your argument, but I think what's proposed would have some special treatment for that particular case ?
BADR (business asset disposal relief for the purpose of capital gains) was already reduced from a lifetime amount of 10m to 1m. So if you build something worth 50m that 1m will not make much difference - I know two people who have relocated to Dubai already as a result of exceeding this amount. If they want to propose something else like a "special accidental multimillionaire's relief for people who go from a 500k startup to a 50m valuation in 3 years" then OK but a) once we get into all these exemptions isn't that utter anathema to the "capital should be taxed the same as income" mob currently driving policy thinking and b) relies on trust that the UK will not change / reduce the threshold in the next parliament (imagine the Greens get in in 2028 for example) - BADR has already been cut by 90%! and c) does nothing for the distorting effects of 45% on the rest of us (vs, as I say, 0% for buying a f****off big house and living in it for the next 40 years). I'm happy to pay 45% on my equity gains when the boomers are happy to pay 45% on their 7 figure primary residence gains...
£1m is fine for BADR relief. Neither making 100x your investment nor starting a business with solely £500k of a single individuals capital are remotely typical.
We need the untypical businesses, though.
I have mentioned this a number of times before. The UK has a bipolar business landscape, huge numbers of one man bands / micro businesses and then mega-corps who employ 10,000s. The number of companies employing say 500 - 5000 is very small (I can't remember the exact stat) compared to other developed economies, the likes of Germany, who has more of a balance of sized businesses.
Basically it is very very hard to scale a business in the UK from getting investment, turn over taxes, potential exit, etc. There is also a culture in the UK compared to the US which far too often the people who do scale a business sell and then take their money, perhaps do a bit of angel investing here or there, but protect their wealth is number one priority.
Where as the Americans are much more lets go again, they are willing to keep putting large amount of their capital on the line time and time again.
I think BADR is too low at £1 million, £10 million I think was ok, but maybe somewhere in the middle is fine. I wonder if there is a way to incentize that those willing to take their payouts and go backing British businesses from that money.
For every serial entrepreneur there’s a subgroup of people who have helped them achieve their targets. Entrepreneurs are the visionaries but will succeed or fail by the quality of support they choose. Even Bill Gates admitted he succeeded by recognising his limitations and hiring smart people. It’s the whole infrastructure that needs incentives not just the visionaries. An entrepreneurial culture so to speak
I see the 2nd worst SoS for Health (behind Lansley) Alun Milburn is today banging on in his typical Right Wing Labour way about Welfare
Only SKS could think the guy who cost the NHS billions with wrong headed thinking for NHS was the right person to ask and now proposes equally wrong analysis re Welfare
Stop looking for Burnhamism - in six years, I’ve never found it. Watching the mayor up close in Manchester, I’ve seen his unusual gifts and glaring weaknesses. Would he make a good prime minister?
"Perhaps the best thing for Burnham to do, recognising his weaknesses at wielding hard power, would be to get himself into Downing Street and immediately start giving it away."
is what this country actually needs and it's possible that Burnham knows that and could implement it
Pb.com acquired a huge following because it filtered electoral prediction through cold, hard cash. Two things are threatening this preeminence: firstly, too few posters are actually looking for betting tips and won't put their money where their mouth is. (I have, to my cost as some here can testify). Secondly, politicians got too interested and began to try to rig and ramp the markets- as politicians will. The stuff the Tories tried to pull around the last general election is, I think, still under investigation by Plod. This latest naked ramping from Low deserves to be thumped in like manner and should be treated as what it is: a money making opportunity.for political bettors. So if the site needs to get it's mojo back, it is not going to happen by allowing Leon to post racist stuff about matters that are sub judice, it is to suggest politely that he backs his Reform ramping with some reasonable amount of dosh. If you can afford £20 for some slightly naff Crown Derby mug, you can certainly afford to take a few quid and back your mostly drunken and/or demented waffle supporting the treacherous Mr Farage as the likely next Prime Minister.
So, what odds are you giving us?
My lament about the site dying, last night, was based squarely on the fact that it is dying. In two ways
Last night we had barely a few comments over hours. At a time of huge political interest. Similarly, we get no new posters, ever. Except the execrable @Brixian59 who is surely a previous commenter reincarnating anyway. I’ve heard of this happening
Why? One big reason is the Blueskying of the site. It is now completely dominated by Dickless Centrist Dads like you. As relentlessly pompous as you are humourless, devoid of insight, caprice or wit. And fucking dull. And you have managed to push out anyone with a spark of wildness, plus that third of the country susceptible to Reform
If I was a newbie passing by, looking at this parade of sad old middlebrow “opinions”, I’d keep passing by
Sadly it has become the same old people rehashing the same old arguments - and PB would do well to consider why anyone who doesn't fit into one of two buckets of orthodoxy - "centrist (left leaning) dad" or "socially conservative right" tends to leave. I don't fit into either of those buckets and get piled on. I scan most days but rarely bother posting any more as a result.
Some of the more interesting _far_ left posters like 148grss - a literal Marxist if I recall - I disagreed with on almost everything, but found to be incredibly engaging and their arguments very well considered. To the point where they actually changed my mind about some things. That is rare. As for Reform voters, I'm a self confessed liberal metropolitan elite type who sees their voter base as utterly infra dig. But I wouldn't heap scorn on them either, because I've been out to the red wall many times to do focus groups, and absolutely get where the inchoate rage at the system is coming from. We would do well to listen to Reform voters and understand where they are coming from even if we disagree with them. But they are completely under-represented on this site - and dismissed and scorned when they do pop up.
However I don't think the problem is "middlebrow opinions" as much as it is piling on anyone who doesn't conform to the orthodoxy here. The tribalism is tiresome.
Try saying that Trump isn’t Hitler, and that he’s actually made huge achievements in immigration control, drug prices, combatting fraud, beautifying DC…
Well, quite. Can't say I agree with you on Trump but why bother expressing an unorthodox opinion when expressing any view outside of the norm turns into a pile on?
Being told I was a "leftist" poster the other day when I've spent years banging on about lower taxes and less regulation just because I'm socially liberal was quite an eye opener.
I have been meaning to apologise for that. It was a genuine moment of confusion following a helluva mental week. I am sorry.
No worries. Apology accepted and much appreciated.
The wider point about tribalism on this site stands though, I think people tend to consistently post "goodthink" for either the centrist dad tribe or the socially conservative tribe to gain likes, rather than say interesting stuff like "Well, I'm a low tax libertarian but actually the Greens are the only party seriously standing up for civil liberties in the UK - repeal of the online safety act, right to protest, legalisation of drugs etc so maybe I'll vote for them*"
*I won't actually vote for a party that plans to tax the economy into the ground.
I have been meaning to ask you about that capital gains thing, as a 'live' case study. I was shattered and couldn't really engage in the week.
I have long held the opinion (in the abstract) that capital gains in the UK were taxed too lightly, and it was encouraging people to grow businesses to a certain point and cash in by selling them abroad, to the detriment of the country. So I've not really listened to a lot of the anti capital gains tax stuff, because I felt Mandy Rice Davis applied.
You mentioned that threats to tax you on your capital gains had prevented you from investing in UK businesses (forgive me if I am oversimplifying or misrepresenting what you said). So how should the tax system (if this is possible) incentivise someone like you to invest in British businesses, but somehow discourage others to make the economy one big flog off so we end up having no British companies or brands left.
Honestly there's a few different things going on here....
My own situation is unusual. I invested heavily in US markets with my PAYE salary because, for a long time, I earned far more than I could spend and chose to invest it rather than spend it. That’s left me with very large unrealised gains, while my current work, effectively a fractional marketing director for startups, constantly exposes me to UK based investment opportunities. Given the current 18/24% CGT rates (up from 10/20% pre-2024), I’m much less inclined to sell to invest. That’s very different from someone selling a small business after 20 years for 1-2m, or someone scaling a tech startup from £500k to £50m in a few years.
More broadly, though, economies work best when capital is liquid and flowing in rather than out. Personally, I’d rather stay in US equities than cash out and reinvest in the UK because 24% already feels high to me and 45% would be absurd. Likewise, why would someone build a globally mobile tech company in the UK if they could face 45% CGT on a £50m exit when they could set up elsewhere? The UK loses competitiveness, investment, and jobs...
I agree with a fair amount of your argument, but I think what's proposed would have some special treatment for that particular case ?
BADR (business asset disposal relief for the purpose of capital gains) was already reduced from a lifetime amount of 10m to 1m. So if you build something worth 50m that 1m will not make much difference - I know two people who have relocated to Dubai already as a result of exceeding this amount. If they want to propose something else like a "special accidental multimillionaire's relief for people who go from a 500k startup to a 50m valuation in 3 years" then OK but a) once we get into all these exemptions isn't that utter anathema to the "capital should be taxed the same as income" mob currently driving policy thinking and b) relies on trust that the UK will not change / reduce the threshold in the next parliament (imagine the Greens get in in 2028 for example) - BADR has already been cut by 90%! and c) does nothing for the distorting effects of 45% on the rest of us (vs, as I say, 0% for buying a f****off big house and living in it for the next 40 years). I'm happy to pay 45% on my equity gains when the boomers are happy to pay 45% on their 7 figure primary residence gains...
£1m is fine for BADR relief. Neither making 100x your investment nor starting a business with solely £500k of a single individuals capital are remotely typical.
Doesn't matter whether it's typical or not (I would argue that 1 or 2 people starting with 500k is actually quite typical, certainly of my client base - usually serial entrepreneurs with proceeds from selling their first or second business). The point is how it impacts the behaviour of founders.
If you had 500k to invest, with *the aim* of turning that into 50m in the next 3 years, would you a) do that in the UK where tax is currently 24% and mooted to be raised to 45% with limited relief around the margins and probable exit tax (and to Foxy's _very_ valid point, a constantly changing and unstable regulatory environment?) or would you invest it somewhere that has been a flat 20% for the last 40 years and will likely continue to be?
So even if your business "fails" and only becomes worth 1m (and you sell it for 1m and try agian, which is what most of the "serial entrepreneurs" I know do) the point is if you're aiming for a 50m valuation every time, you set up in the country that will be optimal for that to maximise your gains if you do hit it big? I would not be looking to set up a business at all in the UK right now for the above reasons.
Fundamentally that our political class do not understand not only economics but also behavioural economics just leaves me pounding my head against the wall in frustration.
Thank you for expanding your original point and for this insight.
It goes without saying that the Government needs to create an environment (easy taxes, easily regulation, relatively flexible labour market, good education) within which businesses can be founded easily and grow. But there is something else within our system that incentivises speedy divestment, rather than the German way of proud factory owners being embedded within their local communities, or the American way of becoming world beating global corporations. It must be made easier to create and spend wealth within the UK, and perhaps harder to sell up, even if that does result in cases where the net effect is negative in the short term.
The US has long term and short term capital gains bands, so you could aguably incentivise long term holding through that. The problem is you are back to making capital less liquid again - forcing people to tie their money up for decades to get the desired effect.
I think the problem you have identified is one of culture. The Germans want to build real businesses over a decade, whereas the British have much more of the "quick buck and sell up" mentality. You could fiddle with that through economic incentives but the overall culture would remain. I'd argue part of the reason in the UK we're so keen to sell up and cash out the minute the going gets good is the fear it might turn at any moment. For example by sticking CGT up from 20% to 45% in just 3 years... better to take the money now, and run. Which comes back to Foxy's point about stability being key if you really want long term investment. There is a strong case to be made that shall we say our "evolving" relationship with Europe hasn't helped our image as a stable country internationally, either.
It's been a while since I was at business school but the classic case study is how the UK treated North Sea Oil vs Norway. We keep changing the regulations every few years and the tax bands and then imposing windfall taxes and so on until the whole thing becomes uninvestable. Whereas Norway keep everything the same for decades and reap the rewards of stable investment. Something something hare and tortoise, innit?
Stop looking for Burnhamism - in six years, I’ve never found it. Watching the mayor up close in Manchester, I’ve seen his unusual gifts and glaring weaknesses. Would he make a good prime minister?
"Perhaps the best thing for Burnham to do, recognising his weaknesses at wielding hard power, would be to get himself into Downing Street and immediately start giving it away."
is what this country actually needs and it's possible that Burnham knows that and could implement it
One can only hope. Too many governments have arrived believing in localism and then found the levers of power too intoxicating to give away. The LibDems in coalition pushed the Tories into a localism bill, but even that only delivered baby steps. The combined Tory and Labour effort to thrust larger mayoral areas onto localities can easy be seen as an attempt to actually centralise, given the way our electoral and political processes work. If someone actually arrives intending to deliver genuine localism it would be a most refreshing change
On the shambles that is the Championship play off Hull winning can only be the result that is fair IMHO
Why? They would have had to have played a final. If Southampton had made it they would be playing a team that is the form team in the Championship and beat Middlesbrough in the semi.
Now Hull get to play a team that is on all metrics not as good as Southampton and so they should be happy.
If Hull cannot beat Middlesbrough then they don’t deserve to go up. They knew that if they finished in the top six they would have to play a final to get promotion and now they have, in theory, a pun easier route.
The chances of any spying being hugely useful to Southampton were low but the laws are the laws and so they were chucked out.
Hull’s owner is a dick for saying they will take legal action if they don’t win. It’s pathetic and completely unsporting. Would he also start taking legal action if they get promoted and VAR mistakes go against them? Hull just need to win and that’s the only acceptable route.
There is nothing socially liberal about wanting to take away women's rights.
I'm not going to stink up PB with the same tired old debate on trans rights - I published pretty much everything I want to say on the subject in my response to Viewcode's article. You can re-read that if you want to rehash the same old arguments. For the hundredth time. Again.
I'll just leave this short clip here of one of your lot - Kellie Jay Keen, the self-declared TERF who popularised the "adult human female" meme, at the Tommy Robinson rally last week, giving a rousing speech. A speech that begins "It's not too late to get Islam out of the building..."
There is nothing socially liberal about wanting to take away women's rights.
I'm not going to stink up PB with the same tired old debate on trans rights - I published pretty much everything I want to say on the subject in my response to Viewcode's article. You can re-read that if you want to rehash the same old arguments. For the hundredth time. Again.
I'll just leave this short clip here of one of your lot - Kellie Jay Keen, the self-declared TERF who popularised the "adult human female" meme, at the Tommy Robinson rally last week, giving a rousing speech. A speech that begins "It's not too late to get Islam out of the building..."
Pb.com acquired a huge following because it filtered electoral prediction through cold, hard cash. Two things are threatening this preeminence: firstly, too few posters are actually looking for betting tips and won't put their money where their mouth is. (I have, to my cost as some here can testify). Secondly, politicians got too interested and began to try to rig and ramp the markets- as politicians will. The stuff the Tories tried to pull around the last general election is, I think, still under investigation by Plod. This latest naked ramping from Low deserves to be thumped in like manner and should be treated as what it is: a money making opportunity.for political bettors. So if the site needs to get it's mojo back, it is not going to happen by allowing Leon to post racist stuff about matters that are sub judice, it is to suggest politely that he backs his Reform ramping with some reasonable amount of dosh. If you can afford £20 for some slightly naff Crown Derby mug, you can certainly afford to take a few quid and back your mostly drunken and/or demented waffle supporting the treacherous Mr Farage as the likely next Prime Minister.
So, what odds are you giving us?
My lament about the site dying, last night, was based squarely on the fact that it is dying. In two ways
Last night we had barely a few comments over hours. At a time of huge political interest. Similarly, we get no new posters, ever. Except the execrable @Brixian59 who is surely a previous commenter reincarnating anyway. I’ve heard of this happening
Why? One big reason is the Blueskying of the site. It is now completely dominated by Dickless Centrist Dads like you. As relentlessly pompous as you are humourless, devoid of insight, caprice or wit. And fucking dull. And you have managed to push out anyone with a spark of wildness, plus that third of the country susceptible to Reform
If I was a newbie passing by, looking at this parade of sad old middlebrow “opinions”, I’d keep passing by
Sadly it has become the same old people rehashing the same old arguments - and PB would do well to consider why anyone who doesn't fit into one of two buckets of orthodoxy - "centrist (left leaning) dad" or "socially conservative right" tends to leave. I don't fit into either of those buckets and get piled on. I scan most days but rarely bother posting any more as a result.
Some of the more interesting _far_ left posters like 148grss - a literal Marxist if I recall - I disagreed with on almost everything, but found to be incredibly engaging and their arguments very well considered. To the point where they actually changed my mind about some things. That is rare. As for Reform voters, I'm a self confessed liberal metropolitan elite type who sees their voter base as utterly infra dig. But I wouldn't heap scorn on them either, because I've been out to the red wall many times to do focus groups, and absolutely get where the inchoate rage at the system is coming from. We would do well to listen to Reform voters and understand where they are coming from even if we disagree with them. But they are completely under-represented on this site - and dismissed and scorned when they do pop up.
However I don't think the problem is "middlebrow opinions" as much as it is piling on anyone who doesn't conform to the orthodoxy here. The tribalism is tiresome.
Try saying that Trump isn’t Hitler, and that he’s actually made huge achievements in immigration control, drug prices, combatting fraud, beautifying DC…
You’ll upset the PB herd if you say that !!
So, what are we meant to do?”!
Keep saying everyone the herd disagrees with is Hitler, obvs !!
I don't really think Bondygazoo's request for posting advice is genuine, but if I could ask some of our centre-left posters to change something, it would be to debate in good faith more of the time. PB is a debating forum, but it's not a campaigning forum, so there's really no need to try to misrepresent the views of others or the truth.
A mild example of this is our discussion on the 'charity' Hope Not Hate yesterday, where I read a response that portayed their work as 'taking on the BNP and the facists'. Everyone and their dog here knows that a great deal of HNH's recent 'work' has been to deligitimise pretty much all parties that campaign to reduce immigration, most notably Reform, so I'm not sure why I should waste time arguing against what we all, including the poster, know to be a specious representation of the facts. It's boring.
Both the Conservatives and Labour went into the last general election campaign saying they would reduce immigration. And indeed Labour have reduced immigration, and immigration was falling under Sunak. HNH has not sought to delegitimise Labour and the Conservatives, AFAIK. So your claim that they are trying to “deligitimise pretty much all parties that campaign to reduce immigration” seems questionable.
But, sure, complain about others trying to misrepresent the truth.
We're in a very difficult place here.
There are lots of people who quite reasonably see Reform as the natural vehicle for conservative Conservatives who feel abandoned by the Cameron project and the incompetence of the post-Cameron party. They don't see themselves as racist, mysogynist etc, in much the same way as many Labour supports believe themselves to be socially progressive, economically redistributive and that Labour is the party associated with that world view.
My not particularly well informed view from reading the tory knobheads on here, is that they actually prefer Fukker policies to tory ones. They can't have those policies in the tory party because Kemi can't sell that manky bill of goods with 10% of the elan and capacity that Big Nige can. Hence the somewhat dewy eyed reverence for the Fukkers that extends to pretending that their thick-as-shit, nylon clad voters are worthy of respect and even a hearing.
Kemi is certainly hampered by the fact that the press still have vague expectations that she should be speaking something close to the truth - a constraint with which The Clacton Horror is not encumbered.
She isn't choosing to speak the truth.
She and to a slightly lesser degree Starmer are scared of frightening off the racist tendency. They too couch their narrative in terms that won't scare the racists.
The trouble is you won't get any purchase unless you acknowledge people have legitimate concerns about migration and cultural change. If the vast majority of people arriving in the UK were liberal humanists with modern views on gender relations it wouldn't matter so much.
I am not sure I entirely agree.
We Brexited because we didn't like Poles, Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians. They were getting in the way of our kids's education, they were always Infront of us in the queue for the GP. Ironically they were very much in character with immigrants from Ireland from the last century, and the one before that (we didn't like them either). So we voted Brexit to send them home, despite the fact that within a generation they would have integrated in every way and we wouldn't have been able to tell whether their ancestors came from Warsaw or Walsall. Still, we didn't want them anyway, they sounded different to us and we sent them packing. Farage, the Mail and the Telegraph told us it was all a Blairite conspiracy to undermine Blighty, Englishness and the English language. And now we are saying we don't like people from the Indian subcontinent because they are different and Farage, the Mail , the Telegraph and GB News are telling us they are a Starmerite conspiracy to undermine Blighty, Englishness and the English language...
Poles, in general, don't go for cousin marriage, don't want sharia law, don't do female genital mutilation, don't want to blow me up, don't want to blow kids up, don't put their women in death shrouds, don't refuse to integrate, don't want homosexuals executed, don't want blasphemy laws, and don't commit sexual crimes about 12-20 times the national average (per Danish ethnic/crime data, this month)
So, there is bit of a difference between certain migrant groups. Is there not?
It's interesting how the far right argument against Islam is often "they want to throw queers off the roof you know" (and for all I know, many of them probably do) but it wasn't Muslims calling my partner a t***** or taking away her right to pee in the toilet aligned with the genitalia she possessed at her time of death, either. It was the far right and their fellow travellers.
I agree with you that we don't want to import knuckle-dragging, inbred, misogynists, homophobes and transphobes into the UK en masse, but what do we do about the home grown ones, of which there are many?
Well if you're Nigel Farage you set up a suitable political vehicle and hoover up their votes.
I don't think objects and values are the lens to use to look at Farage's politics; he is about process. Farage is essentially a nihilist; he does not care who he is demonising as long as he has a demon he can use to scare his 'supporters' back into their silo.
Then he layers various constituencies on top.
Farage currently demonises all the Muslims by dishonestly imputing issues with small numbers to an entire community, to convince whoever will fall for the flim-flam.
He would be equally happy demonising Jews, or Irish, or woman, or blacks, or Indians, or gays, or trans, or disabled, or French, or those with mental health problems. He and his allies have done this on occasions.
Yes he's an operator. He exploited a certain set of grievances to get his desired result in the EU Referendum and with Reform is essentially rerunning the strategy. Mission this time, capture enough of the vote that delivered Brexit to win a GE and become PM.
@sentdefender President Donald J. Trump has just posted an image to Truth Social of a map of the Middle East centered on Iran covered in the stars & stripes with the title "United States of the Middle East?" This follows the abrupt cancellation of his weekend trip to the Bahamas for the wedding of Don Jr. followed by a weekend at his property in Bedminster, NJ.
@sentdefender President Donald J. Trump has just posted an image to Truth Social of a map of the Middle East centered on Iran covered in the stars & stripes with the title "United States of the Middle East?" This follows the abrupt cancellation of his weekend trip to the Bahamas for the wedding of Don Jr. followed by a weekend at his property in Bedminster, NJ.
Well, I can think of worse outcomes all around. Mad demented sexually depraved and corrupt human being though he is, he's still better than the Khamanei dynasty.
(One of the most astonishing things about this saga is how Trump has managed to put the Iranian regime squarely in the right. I mean, that's like finding Mao had some good points.)
There is nothing socially liberal about wanting to take away women's rights.
I'm not going to stink up PB with the same tired old debate on trans rights - I published pretty much everything I want to say on the subject in my response to Viewcode's article. You can re-read that if you want to rehash the same old arguments. For the hundredth time. Again.
I'll just leave this short clip here of one of your lot - Kellie Jay Keen, the self-declared TERF who popularised the "adult human female" meme, at the Tommy Robinson rally last week, giving a rousing speech. A speech that begins "It's not too late to get Islam out of the building..."
I think I'll throw my lot in with the "socially liberal" types, thank you.
In any event I sincerely hope you're well.
That's like saying you're against vegetarianism because Hitler was vegetarian...
Never expect logical or coherent arguments from kyf. They are far too close to the whole issue to allow rational opinion to intrude on debate. I understand it but that doesn't mean I agree with it and it makes me doubt everything they say on the subject.
How is this for localism. Mayor in small town offering building plots. Could it catch on where strategic plans are followed by the authority making a profit to invest in local services?
On the shambles that is the Championship play off Hull winning can only be the result that is fair IMHO
The whole affair is a disaster but if Boro had lost to Saints as a result of Saints spying this is a more appropriate end than just handing the tie to Hull. Of all the permutations this was the third or fourth least bad outcome. We could have had the Boro side of the draw replayed with Wrexham instead of Saints. Saints could have gone into the final and had a points deduction next season whether they won or lost (that would most likely be how I would have gone). I am not sure kicking Saints out was necessarily the most appropriate result but giving Boro a walk over into the final doesn't seem to be in the spirit of the game either. Whichever way one looks it's hard to see any reasonable outcome.
On the shambles that is the Championship play off Hull winning can only be the result that is fair IMHO
The whole affair is a disaster but if Boro had lost to Saints as a result of Saints spying this is a more appropriate end than just handing the tie to Hull. Of all the permutations this was the third or fourth least bad outcome. We could have had the Boro side of the draw replayed with Wrexham instead of Saints. Saints could have gone into the final and had a points deduction next season whether they won or lost (that would most likely be how I would have gone). I am not sure kicking Saints out was necessarily the most appropriate result but giving Boro a walk over into the final doesn't seem to be in the spirit of the game either. Whichever way one looks it's hard to see any reasonable outcome.
I think the logic goes Southampton forfeited the first leg so Boro won it 3-0 which means they then won the semi-final across both legs
Everything else then became a complete nightmare due to the 1 week delay before the hearing.
@FrancisUrquhart has already posted it below and I commented there that the last sentence is all important
The last sentence
"Perhaps the best thing for Burnham to do, recognising his weaknesses at wielding hard power, would be to get himself into Downing Street and immediately start giving it away."
As that is what this country actually needs and if Burnham knows that and could implement it - it would be great.
There is nothing socially liberal about wanting to take away women's rights.
I'm not going to stink up PB with the same tired old debate on trans rights - I published pretty much everything I want to say on the subject in my response to Viewcode's article. You can re-read that if you want to rehash the same old arguments. For the hundredth time. Again.
I'll just leave this short clip here of one of your lot - Kellie Jay Keen, the self-declared TERF who popularised the "adult human female" meme, at the Tommy Robinson rally last week, giving a rousing speech. A speech that begins "It's not too late to get Islam out of the building..."
I think I'll throw my lot in with the "socially liberal" types, thank you.
In any event I sincerely hope you're well.
That's like saying you're against vegetarianism because Hitler was vegetarian...
Never expect logical or coherent arguments from kyf. They are far too close to the whole issue to allow rational opinion to intrude on debate. I understand it but that doesn't mean I agree with it and it makes me doubt everything they say on the subject.
What a delightful little ad hominem.
Please do read the 4500 word response to Viewcode I wrote, published in the appendicies to his article (alongside a similar length contribution from Cyclefree), which -in addition to being extremely carefully argued - contained no fewer than 18 footnotes from a variety of academic, legal, journalistic and statistical sources.
Pb.com acquired a huge following because it filtered electoral prediction through cold, hard cash. Two things are threatening this preeminence: firstly, too few posters are actually looking for betting tips and won't put their money where their mouth is. (I have, to my cost as some here can testify). Secondly, politicians got too interested and began to try to rig and ramp the markets- as politicians will. The stuff the Tories tried to pull around the last general election is, I think, still under investigation by Plod. This latest naked ramping from Low deserves to be thumped in like manner and should be treated as what it is: a money making opportunity.for political bettors. So if the site needs to get it's mojo back, it is not going to happen by allowing Leon to post racist stuff about matters that are sub judice, it is to suggest politely that he backs his Reform ramping with some reasonable amount of dosh. If you can afford £20 for some slightly naff Crown Derby mug, you can certainly afford to take a few quid and back your mostly drunken and/or demented waffle supporting the treacherous Mr Farage as the likely next Prime Minister.
So, what odds are you giving us?
My lament about the site dying, last night, was based squarely on the fact that it is dying. In two ways
Last night we had barely a few comments over hours. At a time of huge political interest. Similarly, we get no new posters, ever. Except the execrable @Brixian59 who is surely a previous commenter reincarnating anyway. I’ve heard of this happening
Why? One big reason is the Blueskying of the site. It is now completely dominated by Dickless Centrist Dads like you. As relentlessly pompous as you are humourless, devoid of insight, caprice or wit. And fucking dull. And you have managed push out anyone with a spark of wildness, plus that third of the country susceptible to Reform
If I was a newbie passing by, looking at this parade of sad old middlebrow “opinions”, I’d keep passing by
That option is still very much available to you..... just saying.....
I doubt many tears would be shed if he goose-stepped off into the ether.
There is nothing socially liberal about wanting to take away women's rights.
I'm not going to stink up PB with the same tired old debate on trans rights - I published pretty much everything I want to say on the subject in my response to Viewcode's article. You can re-read that if you want to rehash the same old arguments. For the hundredth time. Again.
I'll just leave this short clip here of one of your lot - Kellie Jay Keen, the self-declared TERF who popularised the "adult human female" meme, at the Tommy Robinson rally last week, giving a rousing speech. A speech that begins "It's not too late to get Islam out of the building..."
I think I'll throw my lot in with the "socially liberal" types, thank you.
In any event I sincerely hope you're well.
That's like saying you're against vegetarianism because Hitler was vegetarian...
Never expect logical or coherent arguments from kyf. They are far too close to the whole issue to allow rational opinion to intrude on debate. I understand it but that doesn't mean I agree with it and it makes me doubt everything they say on the subject.
What a delightful little ad hominem.
Please do read the 4500 word response to Viewcode I wrote, published in the appendicies to his article (alongside a similar length contribution from Cyclefree), which -in addition to being extremely carefully argued - contained no fewer than 18 footnotes from a variety of academic, legal, journalistic and statistical sources.
Or just say I'm irrational, whatevs.
I did read it. I read everything written on here on the subject including your regular fall back concerning your personal life when arguments get too much for you or you can't find a logical or reasoned response to those you disagree with. Like I said, I understand it, I just don't agree with it. You have made a stand on one particular side of the debate due to your own personal experiences and will not be moved from that.
On the shambles that is the Championship play off Hull winning can only be the result that is fair IMHO
Hull were statistically the *second worst* team in the Championship, according to the experts at Opta. Not 7th or 8th. Not middle-of-the-pack, but ahead only of Sheffield Wednesday.
A colossal overachievement. Or, put another way, the beneficiaries of absolutely outrageous good luck over the course of a season.
That's not 'margin of error' stuff.
So either one accepts that they shouldn't be playing this game and indeed are fortunate not to be playing in League One next season *or* you have to reject the entire current model of in-game analysis and statistical modelling. And these are the expert analysts that clubs themselves pay for data, not just journos and TV people.
Either way, this should be a far, far bigger story, because we're dealing with either monumental injustice or we're putting our faith into a system that is unfit for purpose.
Personally I think the existing analytics is generally a good guide. Some minor tweaks can iron out flaws, but it is pretty damn close. You're never going to convince blinkered, biased supporters though.
Another right of centre posted banned. Will Leon be back or is he destined to spend His remaining says in Jessops cuck chair 🥴
Banned for abusing our host's hospitality, rather than for right-wingery, surely?
I wouldn't want to draw a line between the kind of dickery that causes people to abuse hospitality and the kind of right-wingery that finds a home with Farage myself.
Pb.com acquired a huge following because it filtered electoral prediction through cold, hard cash. Two things are threatening this preeminence: firstly, too few posters are actually looking for betting tips and won't put their money where their mouth is. (I have, to my cost as some here can testify). Secondly, politicians got too interested and began to try to rig and ramp the markets- as politicians will. The stuff the Tories tried to pull around the last general election is, I think, still under investigation by Plod. This latest naked ramping from Low deserves to be thumped in like manner and should be treated as what it is: a money making opportunity.for political bettors. So if the site needs to get it's mojo back, it is not going to happen by allowing Leon to post racist stuff about matters that are sub judice, it is to suggest politely that he backs his Reform ramping with some reasonable amount of dosh. If you can afford £20 for some slightly naff Crown Derby mug, you can certainly afford to take a few quid and back your mostly drunken and/or demented waffle supporting the treacherous Mr Farage as the likely next Prime Minister.
So, what odds are you giving us?
My lament about the site dying, last night, was based squarely on the fact that it is dying. In two ways
Last night we had barely a few comments over hours. At a time of huge political interest. Similarly, we get no new posters, ever. Except the execrable @Brixian59 who is surely a previous commenter reincarnating anyway. I’ve heard of this happening
Why? One big reason is the Blueskying of the site. It is now completely dominated by Dickless Centrist Dads like you. As relentlessly pompous as you are humourless, devoid of insight, caprice or wit. And fucking dull. And you have managed to push out anyone with a spark of wildness, plus that third of the country susceptible to Reform
If I was a newbie passing by, looking at this parade of sad old middlebrow “opinions”, I’d keep passing by
Sadly it has become the same old people rehashing the same old arguments - and PB would do well to consider why anyone who doesn't fit into one of two buckets of orthodoxy - "centrist (left leaning) dad" or "socially conservative right" tends to leave. I don't fit into either of those buckets and get piled on. I scan most days but rarely bother posting any more as a result.
Some of the more interesting _far_ left posters like 148grss - a literal Marxist if I recall - I disagreed with on almost everything, but found to be incredibly engaging and their arguments very well considered. To the point where they actually changed my mind about some things. That is rare. As for Reform voters, I'm a self confessed liberal metropolitan elite type who sees their voter base as utterly infra dig. But I wouldn't heap scorn on them either, because I've been out to the red wall many times to do focus groups, and absolutely get where the inchoate rage at the system is coming from. We would do well to listen to Reform voters and understand where they are coming from even if we disagree with them. But they are completely under-represented on this site - and dismissed and scorned when they do pop up.
However I don't think the problem is "middlebrow opinions" as much as it is piling on anyone who doesn't conform to the orthodoxy here. The tribalism is tiresome.
Try saying that Trump isn’t Hitler, and that he’s actually made huge achievements in immigration control, drug prices, combatting fraud, beautifying DC…
Would you accept he's the most corrupt President is US history?
I’m willing to discuss specific allegations of corruption.
A $1.776B payment by the Government to January 6th convicts on its own meets the most corrupt President in history criteria I would have thought.
Not flash enough. I’m going with the gold encrusted airplane
Hull City owner Acun Ilicali has vowed to take legal action if the Tigers do not win Saturday's Championship play-off final against Middlesbrough.
And apparently Southampton players want to sue their owners for loss of earnings.
All a mess for an overreaction as to what happened. It’s a football game not giving away state secrets to Russia ffs . Who cares if teams spy on another really ?
r There are plenty of goals scored from training ground corner and fee kick routines which could be stopped if known about in advance.
There is nothing socially liberal about wanting to take away women's rights.
I'm not going to stink up PB with the same tired old debate on trans rights - I published pretty much everything I want to say on the subject in my response to Viewcode's article. You can re-read that if you want to rehash the same old arguments. For the hundredth time. Again.
I'll just leave this short clip here of one of your lot - Kellie Jay Keen, the self-declared TERF who popularised the "adult human female" meme, at the Tommy Robinson rally last week, giving a rousing speech. A speech that begins "It's not too late to get Islam out of the building..."
I think I'll throw my lot in with the "socially liberal" types, thank you.
In any event I sincerely hope you're well.
That's like saying you're against vegetarianism because Hitler was vegetarian...
Never expect logical or coherent arguments from kyf. They are far too close to the whole issue to allow rational opinion to intrude on debate. I understand it but that doesn't mean I agree with it and it makes me doubt everything they say on the subject.
What a delightful little ad hominem.
Please do read the 4500 word response to Viewcode I wrote, published in the appendicies to his article (alongside a similar length contribution from Cyclefree), which -in addition to being extremely carefully argued - contained no fewer than 18 footnotes from a variety of academic, legal, journalistic and statistical sources.
Or just say I'm irrational, whatevs.
I did read it. I read everything written on here on the subject including your regular fall back concerning your personal life when arguments get too much for you or you can't find a logical or reasoned response to those you disagree with. Like I said, I understand it, I just don't agree with it. You have made a stand on one particular side of the debate due to your own personal experiences and will not be moved from that.
Again, with the ad hominems. If you've read my work you could at least do me the courtesy of noting how logical and reasoned it is, even if you disagree with the direction. I think, given how given the level of personal involvement I have in the debate, I've remained remarkably calm about it all.
As others have frequently pointed out, my position on that subject is quite moderate (against self id etc). Indeed, the compromise I proposed in my response to Viewcode is so moderate I didn't dare send it to any of my progressive friends for fear of being excommunicated from some of the more progressive spaces I'm in!
For that reason, and because I popped in here to talk about tax policy, not trans rights, I'll leave you to your love in for the day.
As others have noted, PB is more interesting when it doesn't rehash the same tired old debates. C-ya!
On the shambles that is the Championship play off Hull winning can only be the result that is fair IMHO
Hull were statistically the *second worst* team in the Championship, according to the experts at Opta. Not 7th or 8th. Not middle-of-the-pack, but ahead only of Sheffield Wednesday.
A colossal overachievement. Or, put another way, the beneficiaries of absolutely outrageous good luck over the course of a season.
That's not 'margin of error' stuff.
So either one accepts that they shouldn't be playing this game and indeed are fortunate not to be playing in League One next season *or* you have to reject the entire current model of in-game analysis and statistical modelling. And these are the expert analysts that clubs themselves pay for data, not just journos and TV people.
Either way, this should be a far, far bigger story, because we're dealing with either monumental injustice or we're putting our faith into a system that is unfit for purpose.
Personally I think the existing analytics is generally a good guide. Some minor tweaks can iron out flaws, but it is pretty damn close. You're never going to convince blinkered, biased supporters though.
Pretty much going as expected in the first half. Boro have about 70% of the possession and yet the best chance went to Hull when McBurnie hit the bar just before half-time
Another right of centre posted banned. Will Leon be back or is he destined to spend His remaining says in Jessops cuck chair 🥴
You really are a nasty piece of work.
Bye.
You’ve been unpleasant to me consistently so GFY
I don't think so.
I'll make it clear: Mrs J reads PB. @Leon said something she took offence at, and he apologised. A few weeks later, he repeated the comment, and lied by saying he had never apoloigised.
I left PB. Since then, you have repeated variants of his comment, sometimes tagging me sometimes not. And called *me* a bully.
So, I'm off. I probably won't even read it any more, in case I get dragged back in again.
Edit: the thing is, I've only glanced on PB a few times this week, and one of the times I see you doing this.
How is this for localism. Mayor in small town offering building plots. Could it catch on where strategic plans are followed by the authority making a profit to invest in local services?
I think we have that in place (since early Cameron or earlier?) already via Registers of potential Self-Builders held by Councils.
And there are certainly serviced-plot schemes around, though fewer than say in the late 1970s when they were popular.
There is nothing socially liberal about wanting to take away women's rights.
I'm not going to stink up PB with the same tired old debate on trans rights - I published pretty much everything I want to say on the subject in my response to Viewcode's article. You can re-read that if you want to rehash the same old arguments. For the hundredth time. Again.
I'll just leave this short clip here of one of your lot - Kellie Jay Keen, the self-declared TERF who popularised the "adult human female" meme, at the Tommy Robinson rally last week, giving a rousing speech. A speech that begins "It's not too late to get Islam out of the building..."
I think I'll throw my lot in with the "socially liberal" types, thank you.
In any event I sincerely hope you're well.
That's like saying you're against vegetarianism because Hitler was vegetarian...
Otoh it can be - and imo usually is - more a sign of arrogance than independence of thought to pay no regard whatsoever to the sorts of people who agree or disagree with an opinion you hold.
Eg say I believe something and it transpires that the vast majority of people whose opinions I usually find repellent agree with me whilst few others do. That won't per se change my mind but it will give me pause and make me take a closer look at it.
Pb.com acquired a huge following because it filtered electoral prediction through cold, hard cash. Two things are threatening this preeminence: firstly, too few posters are actually looking for betting tips and won't put their money where their mouth is. (I have, to my cost as some here can testify). Secondly, politicians got too interested and began to try to rig and ramp the markets- as politicians will. The stuff the Tories tried to pull around the last general election is, I think, still under investigation by Plod. This latest naked ramping from Low deserves to be thumped in like manner and should be treated as what it is: a money making opportunity.for political bettors. So if the site needs to get it's mojo back, it is not going to happen by allowing Leon to post racist stuff about matters that are sub judice, it is to suggest politely that he backs his Reform ramping with some reasonable amount of dosh. If you can afford £20 for some slightly naff Crown Derby mug, you can certainly afford to take a few quid and back your mostly drunken and/or demented waffle supporting the treacherous Mr Farage as the likely next Prime Minister.
So, what odds are you giving us?
My lament about the site dying, last night, was based squarely on the fact that it is dying. In two ways
Last night we had barely a few comments over hours. At a time of huge political interest. Similarly, we get no new posters, ever. Except the execrable @Brixian59 who is surely a previous commenter reincarnating anyway. I’ve heard of this happening
Why? One big reason is the Blueskying of the site. It is now completely dominated by Dickless Centrist Dads like you. As relentlessly pompous as you are humourless, devoid of insight, caprice or wit. And fucking dull. And you have managed to push out anyone with a spark of wildness, plus that third of the country susceptible to Reform
If I was a newbie passing by, looking at this parade of sad old middlebrow “opinions”, I’d keep passing by
Sadly it has become the same old people rehashing the same old arguments - and PB would do well to consider why anyone who doesn't fit into one of two buckets of orthodoxy - "centrist (left leaning) dad" or "socially conservative right" tends to leave. I don't fit into either of those buckets and get piled on. I scan most days but rarely bother posting any more as a result.
Some of the more interesting _far_ left posters like 148grss - a literal Marxist if I recall - I disagreed with on almost everything, but found to be incredibly engaging and their arguments very well considered. To the point where they actually changed my mind about some things. That is rare. As for Reform voters, I'm a self confessed liberal metropolitan elite type who sees their voter base as utterly infra dig. But I wouldn't heap scorn on them either, because I've been out to the red wall many times to do focus groups, and absolutely get where the inchoate rage at the system is coming from. We would do well to listen to Reform voters and understand where they are coming from even if we disagree with them. But they are completely under-represented on this site - and dismissed and scorned when they do pop up.
However I don't think the problem is "middlebrow opinions" as much as it is piling on anyone who doesn't conform to the orthodoxy here. The tribalism is tiresome.
Try saying that Trump isn’t Hitler, and that he’s actually made huge achievements in immigration control, drug prices, combatting fraud, beautifying DC…
Well, quite. Can't say I agree with you on Trump but why bother expressing an unorthodox opinion when expressing any view outside of the norm turns into a pile on?
Being told I was a "leftist" poster the other day when I've spent years banging on about lower taxes and less regulation just because I'm socially liberal was quite an eye opener.
I have been meaning to apologise for that. It was a genuine moment of confusion following a helluva mental week. I am sorry.
No worries. Apology accepted and much appreciated.
The wider point about tribalism on this site stands though, I think people tend to consistently post "goodthink" for either the centrist dad tribe or the socially conservative tribe to gain likes, rather than say interesting stuff like "Well, I'm a low tax libertarian but actually the Greens are the only party seriously standing up for civil liberties in the UK - repeal of the online safety act, right to protest, legalisation of drugs etc so maybe I'll vote for them*"
*I won't actually vote for a party that plans to tax the economy into the ground.
I have been meaning to ask you about that capital gains thing, as a 'live' case study. I was shattered and couldn't really engage in the week.
I have long held the opinion (in the abstract) that capital gains in the UK were taxed too lightly, and it was encouraging people to grow businesses to a certain point and cash in by selling them abroad, to the detriment of the country. So I've not really listened to a lot of the anti capital gains tax stuff, because I felt Mandy Rice Davis applied.
You mentioned that threats to tax you on your capital gains had prevented you from investing in UK businesses (forgive me if I am oversimplifying or misrepresenting what you said). So how should the tax system (if this is possible) incentivise someone like you to invest in British businesses, but somehow discourage others to make the economy one big flog off so we end up having no British companies or brands left.
Honestly there's a few different things going on here....
My own situation is unusual. I invested heavily in US markets with my PAYE salary because, for a long time, I earned far more than I could spend and chose to invest it rather than spend it. That’s left me with very large unrealised gains, while my current work, effectively a fractional marketing director for startups, constantly exposes me to UK based investment opportunities. Given the current 18/24% CGT rates (up from 10/20% pre-2024), I’m much less inclined to sell to invest. That’s very different from someone selling a small business after 20 years for 1-2m, or someone scaling a tech startup from £500k to £50m in a few years.
More broadly, though, economies work best when capital is liquid and flowing in rather than out. Personally, I’d rather stay in US equities than cash out and reinvest in the UK because 24% already feels high to me and 45% would be absurd. Likewise, why would someone build a globally mobile tech company in the UK if they could face 45% CGT on a £50m exit when they could set up elsewhere? The UK loses competitiveness, investment, and jobs...
I agree with a fair amount of your argument, but I think what's proposed would have some special treatment for that particular case ?
BADR (business asset disposal relief for the purpose of capital gains) was already reduced from a lifetime amount of 10m to 1m. So if you build something worth 50m that 1m will not make much difference - I know two people who have relocated to Dubai already as a result of exceeding this amount. If they want to propose something else like a "special accidental multimillionaire's relief for people who go from a 500k startup to a 50m valuation in 3 years" then OK but a) once we get into all these exemptions isn't that utter anathema to the "capital should be taxed the same as income" mob currently driving policy thinking and b) relies on trust that the UK will not change / reduce the threshold in the next parliament (imagine the Greens get in in 2028 for example) - BADR has already been cut by 90%! and c) does nothing for the distorting effects of 45% on the rest of us (vs, as I say, 0% for buying a f****off big house and living in it for the next 40 years). I'm happy to pay 45% on my equity gains when the boomers are happy to pay 45% on their 7 figure primary residence gains...
£1m is fine for BADR relief. Neither making 100x your investment nor starting a business with solely £500k of a single individuals capital are remotely typical.
Doesn't matter whether it's typical or not (I would argue that 1 or 2 people starting with 500k is actually quite typical, certainly of my client base - usually serial entrepreneurs with proceeds from selling their first or second business). The point is how it impacts the behaviour of founders.
If you had 500k to invest, with *the aim* of turning that into 50m in the next 3 years, would you a) do that in the UK where tax is currently 24% and mooted to be raised to 45% with limited relief around the margins and probable exit tax (and to Foxy's _very_ valid point, a constantly changing and unstable regulatory environment?) or would you invest it somewhere that has been a flat 20% for the last 40 years and will likely continue to be?
So even if your business "fails" and only becomes worth 1m (and you sell it for 1m and try agian, which is what most of the "serial entrepreneurs" I know do) the point is if you're aiming for a 50m valuation every time, you set up in the country that will be optimal for that to maximise your gains if you do hit it big? I would not be looking to set up a business at all in the UK right now for the above reasons.
Fundamentally that our political class do not understand not only economics but also behavioural economics just leaves me pounding my head against the wall in frustration.
Thank you for expanding your original point and for this insight.
It goes without saying that the Government needs to create an environment (easy taxes, easily regulation, relatively flexible labour market, good education) within which businesses can be founded easily and grow. But there is something else within our system that incentivises speedy divestment, rather than the German way of proud factory owners being embedded within their local communities, or the American way of becoming world beating global corporations. It must be made easier to create and spend wealth within the UK, and perhaps harder to sell up, even if that does result in cases where the net effect is negative in the short term.
The US has long term and short term capital gains bands, so you could aguably incentivise long term holding through that. The problem is you are back to making capital less liquid again - forcing people to tie their money up for decades to get the desired effect.
I think the problem you have identified is one of culture. The Germans want to build real businesses over a decade, whereas the British have much more of the "quick buck and sell up" mentality. You could fiddle with that through economic incentives but the overall culture would remain. I'd argue part of the reason in the UK we're so keen to sell up and cash out the minute the going gets good is the fear it might turn at any moment. For example by sticking CGT up from 20% to 45% in just 3 years... better to take the money now, and run. Which comes back to Foxy's point about stability being key if you really want long term investment. There is a strong case to be made that shall we say our "evolving" relationship with Europe hasn't helped our image as a stable country internationally, either.
It's been a while since I was at business school but the classic case study is how the UK treated North Sea Oil vs Norway. We keep changing the regulations every few years and the tax bands and then imposing windfall taxes and so on until the whole thing becomes uninvestable. Whereas Norway keep everything the same for decades and reap the rewards of stable investment. Something something hare and tortoise, innit?
I agree with you about what the culture is, but I believe in the power of incentives more, because I'm basically a behaviourist. I believe our behaviour in any given situation depends more on the consequences than the antecedents, and your current case is a good example. Culture is really just the path of least resistance over time. If we have the settled view that the incentives must change, and they do, culture will follow eventually.
There is nothing socially liberal about wanting to take away women's rights.
I'm not going to stink up PB with the same tired old debate on trans rights - I published pretty much everything I want to say on the subject in my response to Viewcode's article. You can re-read that if you want to rehash the same old arguments. For the hundredth time. Again.
I'll just leave this short clip here of one of your lot - Kellie Jay Keen, the self-declared TERF who popularised the "adult human female" meme, at the Tommy Robinson rally last week, giving a rousing speech. A speech that begins "It's not too late to get Islam out of the building..."
I think I'll throw my lot in with the "socially liberal" types, thank you.
In any event I sincerely hope you're well.
That's like saying you're against vegetarianism because Hitler was vegetarian...
Otoh it can be - and imo usually is - more a sign of arrogance than independence of thought to pay no regard whatsoever to the sorts of people who agree or disagree with an opinion you hold.
Eg say I believe something and it transpires that the vast majority of people whose opinions I usually find repellent agree with me whilst few others do. That won't per se change my mind but it will give me pause and make me take a closer look at it.
Whatever else you may say about Kelly J Kean, she has absolute balls of steel. She actually walks up to people wearing the niquab (with their male companions obviously) and says 'Free your faces'. She'd probably hate courage being connoted with balls, but there we go.
Another right of centre posted banned. Will Leon be back or is he destined to spend His remaining says in Jessops cuck chair 🥴
Banned for abusing our host's hospitality, rather than for right-wingery, surely?
I wouldn't want to draw a line between the kind of dickery that causes people to abuse hospitality and the kind of right-wingery that finds a home with Farage myself.
1) man sets himself on fire 2) discovers it hurts 3) blames centrist dads 4) man sets himself on fire : 1345) blames centrist dads
Pb.com acquired a huge following because it filtered electoral prediction through cold, hard cash. Two things are threatening this preeminence: firstly, too few posters are actually looking for betting tips and won't put their money where their mouth is. (I have, to my cost as some here can testify). Secondly, politicians got too interested and began to try to rig and ramp the markets- as politicians will. The stuff the Tories tried to pull around the last general election is, I think, still under investigation by Plod. This latest naked ramping from Low deserves to be thumped in like manner and should be treated as what it is: a money making opportunity.for political bettors. So if the site needs to get it's mojo back, it is not going to happen by allowing Leon to post racist stuff about matters that are sub judice, it is to suggest politely that he backs his Reform ramping with some reasonable amount of dosh. If you can afford £20 for some slightly naff Crown Derby mug, you can certainly afford to take a few quid and back your mostly drunken and/or demented waffle supporting the treacherous Mr Farage as the likely next Prime Minister.
So, what odds are you giving us?
My lament about the site dying, last night, was based squarely on the fact that it is dying. In two ways
Last night we had barely a few comments over hours. At a time of huge political interest. Similarly, we get no new posters, ever. Except the execrable @Brixian59 who is surely a previous commenter reincarnating anyway. I’ve heard of this happening
Why? One big reason is the Blueskying of the site. It is now completely dominated by Dickless Centrist Dads like you. As relentlessly pompous as you are humourless, devoid of insight, caprice or wit. And fucking dull. And you have managed to push out anyone with a spark of wildness, plus that third of the country susceptible to Reform
If I was a newbie passing by, looking at this parade of sad old middlebrow “opinions”, I’d keep passing by
Nah...you dont have the cojones to stand behind-your-narcissistic-to-the-point-of-camp opinions. If no one is prepared to help TSE, Peter the Punter or OGH to become richer through backing their always wrong opinions with cash, its just another chat site. Doesn't matter what your opinions are, just have the courage of your demented far-right blow hard bullshit opinions and put some bawbees down.
Lets start easy: £20 that Fartage faces censure from the House of Commons and/or criminal charges within one year from today. What odds will you give me he wont?
Just shut the fuck up
Look, this site was for serious punters who were interested in and knowledgeable about politics and who were prepared to back their judgement. Some flouncy old closet case sharing his execrable interior design taste can surely find somewhere more suitable. I'm here because I am upfront a Lib Dem partisan, active for a long time. You think Farage is an amusing old card, in short, a good egg of similar age and background to yourself. I think he is a malicious, treacherous fraud. I tell you what, I will give you 2-1 for a crisp tenner that the Lib Dems will hold more seats than a Farage-led Reform party after the next general election. What do you say? I have a sufficiently terrible track record that you could even win. Nothing personal here- we have never met, and if you bought me a drink I might even accept it. If you haven't got ten quid, I get it, Chalk Farm pads stuffed with tat from car boot sales won't come cheap, but if you really haven't got the balls to back your silly opinions I do feel like the rest of us can safely ignore your next Isadora Duncan style flouncy crosspatch nonsense.
Do you think the Lib Dems would do any better if they weren't so insufferably pompous?
No, because it didn't hurt Boris Johnson.
Boris was very many bad things (and a few good things). But he was never pompous. Either you don't understand the English language, or you don't understand human character, or the perception thereof. Boris was anti-pompous, self deprecating, willing to laugh at himself. Remember when he got stuck on the zip wire, waving the Union Jack. A pompous man would have found that unbearable, an insult to his dignity, might have even been a career killer
Boris was able to laugh it off and actually make himself a bit more likeable, because he is NOT pompous. That was an essential part of his USPs
I'm trying to imagine Gordon Brown stuck on that zip-wire.
Nope.
Even better, a tandem with Brown and Farage.
I'd laugh at that. Not sure either of them would...
Yes, Farage is less able to self deprecate than Boris. He can be prickly. Brown was even worse
Blair was good at it. Burnham is, I suspect, pretty good at it. Starmer is not. Thatcher managed to avoid the question through moral greatness
Enoch Powell was once photographed on a pogo stick.
Ted Heath on a skateboard:
(Now he WAS a pompous so and so - from a friend who's orchestra he once conducted.)
Is that the young John Selwyn Gummer in the background ?
How is this for localism. Mayor in small town offering building plots. Could it catch on where strategic plans are followed by the authority making a profit to invest in local services?
I think we have that in place (since early Cameron or earlier?) already via Registers of potential Self-Builders held by Councils.
And there are certainly serviced-plot schemes around, though fewer than say in the late 1970s when they were popular.
It tends to conflict with "get maximum value".
In Frogistan, making a rural small town grow is *the* job of the major.
It brings more money to the town.
To put it another way. When I was last in Chablis, it is beginning to swallow hamlets on the edge of town. The locals love this - especially the ones in the hamlets. When the following was built, they celebrated -
There is nothing socially liberal about wanting to take away women's rights.
I'm not going to stink up PB with the same tired old debate on trans rights - I published pretty much everything I want to say on the subject in my response to Viewcode's article. You can re-read that if you want to rehash the same old arguments. For the hundredth time. Again.
I'll just leave this short clip here of one of your lot - Kellie Jay Keen, the self-declared TERF who popularised the "adult human female" meme, at the Tommy Robinson rally last week, giving a rousing speech. A speech that begins "It's not too late to get Islam out of the building..."
I think I'll throw my lot in with the "socially liberal" types, thank you.
In any event I sincerely hope you're well.
That's like saying you're against vegetarianism because Hitler was vegetarian...
Otoh it can be - and imo usually is - more a sign of arrogance than independence of thought to pay no regard whatsoever to the sorts of people who agree or disagree with an opinion you hold.
Eg say I believe something and it transpires that the vast majority of people whose opinions I usually find repellent agree with me whilst few others do. That won't per se change my mind but it will give me pause and make me take a closer look at it.
Whatever else you may say about Kelly J Kean, she has absolute balls of steel. She actually walks up to people wearing the niquab (with their male companions obviously) and says 'Free your faces'. She'd probably hate courage being connoted with balls, but there we go.
I'm not finding that particularly admirable but I suppose you have to be there.
Formula 1 great Alain Prost suffered a head injury when a masked gang raided his home, Swiss media reports claim.
The violent robbery took place at the home of the French four-time world champion in Nyon, about 25km north of Geneva, according to Blick., external. Police have confirmed a family was targeted by robbers at around 8:30am on Thursday, but have not released the victims' identities.
Since it’s pointless photo time, here’s one of some mountains, with nothing in particular to look at other than a small reservoir. Sadly there’s no dog for scale, as he was having a crap off stage left, so you will have to guess yourselves how big they are.
There is nothing socially liberal about wanting to take away women's rights.
I'm not going to stink up PB with the same tired old debate on trans rights - I published pretty much everything I want to say on the subject in my response to Viewcode's article. You can re-read that if you want to rehash the same old arguments. For the hundredth time. Again.
I'll just leave this short clip here of one of your lot - Kellie Jay Keen, the self-declared TERF who popularised the "adult human female" meme, at the Tommy Robinson rally last week, giving a rousing speech. A speech that begins "It's not too late to get Islam out of the building..."
I think I'll throw my lot in with the "socially liberal" types, thank you.
In any event I sincerely hope you're well.
That's like saying you're against vegetarianism because Hitler was vegetarian...
Otoh it can be - and imo usually is - more a sign of arrogance than independence of thought to pay no regard whatsoever to the sorts of people who agree or disagree with an opinion you hold.
Eg say I believe something and it transpires that the vast majority of people whose opinions I usually find repellent agree with me whilst few others do. That won't per se change my mind but it will give me pause and make me take a closer look at it.
Whatever else you may say about Kelly J Kean, she has absolute balls of steel. She actually walks up to people wearing the niquab (with their male companions obviously) and says 'Free your faces'. She'd probably hate courage being connoted with balls, but there we go.
I'm not finding that particularly admirable but I suppose you have to be there.
I didn't say I found it admirable. I find it rather rude. But it takes a great deal more balls than I have, and I'm happy to admit it.
There is nothing socially liberal about wanting to take away women's rights.
I'm not going to stink up PB with the same tired old debate on trans rights - I published pretty much everything I want to say on the subject in my response to Viewcode's article. You can re-read that if you want to rehash the same old arguments. For the hundredth time. Again.
I'll just leave this short clip here of one of your lot - Kellie Jay Keen, the self-declared TERF who popularised the "adult human female" meme, at the Tommy Robinson rally last week, giving a rousing speech. A speech that begins "It's not too late to get Islam out of the building..."
I think I'll throw my lot in with the "socially liberal" types, thank you.
In any event I sincerely hope you're well.
That's like saying you're against vegetarianism because Hitler was vegetarian...
Otoh it can be - and imo usually is - more a sign of arrogance than independence of thought to pay no regard whatsoever to the sorts of people who agree or disagree with an opinion you hold.
Eg say I believe something and it transpires that the vast majority of people whose opinions I usually find repellent agree with me whilst few others do. That won't per se change my mind but it will give me pause and make me take a closer look at it.
Whatever else you may say about Kelly J Kean, she has absolute balls of steel. She actually walks up to people wearing the niquab (with their male companions obviously) and says 'Free your faces'. She'd probably hate courage being connoted with balls, but there we go.
You post things like that and don't grasp how far down the right wing xenophobic rabbit hole you've fallen.
Comments
(My favorite modern American editorial cartoonist is Michael Ramirez: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Ramirez
Who is, to say the least, rather different from Matt.
I had not known this, until quite recently: "Ramirez was born in Tokyo, Japan, to a Mexican-American father and Japanese-American mother.")
'Suddenly I could see myself': Why breast reductions are more popular now
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3d2k4xz42no
The Labour and Conservative parties have reported the Green leader to the Greater London Authority’s (GLA) monitoring officer, who is responsible for ensuring assembly members behave ethically
https://x.com/Steven_Swinford/status/2058162724316586209?s=20
Our investigation heard that internal messages had been circulated in Labour WhatsApp groups leading to the election, discussing the tactic of planting stooge Independents in order to split the vote of opposition candidates who could benefit from defecting Labour supporters.
Former deputy prime minister received letter detailing complaint about fake candidates
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2026/05/22/rayner-warned-about-electoral-fraud-in-april-did-not-act/
Then he layers various constituencies on top.
Farage currently demonises all the Muslims by dishonestly imputing issues with small numbers to an entire community, to convince whoever will fall for the flim-flam.
He would be equally happy demonising Jews, or Irish, or woman, or blacks, or Indians, or gays, or trans, or disabled, or French, or those with mental health problems. He and his allies have done this on occasions.
It goes without saying that the Government needs to create an environment (easy taxes, easily regulation, relatively flexible labour market, good education) within which businesses can be founded easily and grow. But there is something else within our system that incentivises speedy divestment, rather than the German way of proud factory owners being embedded within their local communities, or the American way of becoming world beating global corporations. It must be made easier to create and spend wealth within the UK, and perhaps harder to sell up, even if that does result in cases where the net effect is negative in the short term.
As for the Greens, the contradictions in their voter base will result in them tearing themselves apart.
'Welfare reform is absolutely essential and needs to be done. But as I said, it's got to be within the context of a wider set of reforms to state institutions."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crrpx4p1z71o
I thought he had been working for Streeting on NHS?
The Tories effectively split in two (the other half being Reform)
The Corbynite wing of Labour off to the Greens.
My point is that at this time Leon's arguments fall flat because I'm more worried about Reform voters than I am about Green ones (my Jewish friends say the opposite, however, and I wouldn't vote for either party)
https://manchestermill.co.uk/stop-looking-for-burnhamism-in-six-years-ive-never-found-it/
Only SKS could think the guy who cost the NHS billions with wrong headed thinking for NHS was the right person to ask and now proposes equally wrong analysis re Welfare
Absolute Ghouls these failed Blairite Tories
"Perhaps the best thing for Burnham to do, recognising his weaknesses at wielding hard power, would be to get himself into Downing Street and immediately start giving it away."
is what this country actually needs and it's possible that Burnham knows that and could implement it
I think the problem you have identified is one of culture. The Germans want to build real businesses over a decade, whereas the British have much more of the "quick buck and sell up" mentality. You could fiddle with that through economic incentives but the overall culture would remain. I'd argue part of the reason in the UK we're so keen to sell up and cash out the minute the going gets good is the fear it might turn at any moment. For example by sticking CGT up from 20% to 45% in just 3 years... better to take the money now, and run. Which comes back to Foxy's point about stability being key if you really want long term investment. There is a strong case to be made that shall we say our "evolving" relationship with Europe hasn't helped our image as a stable country internationally, either.
It's been a while since I was at business school but the classic case study is how the UK treated North Sea Oil vs Norway. We keep changing the regulations every few years and the tax bands and then imposing windfall taxes and so on until the whole thing becomes uninvestable. Whereas Norway keep everything the same for decades and reap the rewards of stable investment. Something something hare and tortoise, innit?
On the shambles that is the Championship play off Hull winning can only be the result that is fair IMHO
Is that the rights to which you refer
Now Hull get to play a team that is on all metrics not as good as Southampton and so they should be happy.
If Hull cannot beat Middlesbrough then they don’t deserve to go up. They knew that if they finished in the top six they would have to play a final to get promotion and now they have, in theory, a pun easier route.
The chances of any spying being hugely useful to Southampton were low but the laws are the laws and so they were chucked out.
Hull’s owner is a dick for saying they will take legal action if they don’t win. It’s pathetic and completely unsporting. Would he also start taking legal action if they get promoted and VAR mistakes go against them? Hull just need to win and that’s the only acceptable route.
I'll just leave this short clip here of one of your lot - Kellie Jay Keen, the self-declared TERF who popularised the "adult human female" meme, at the Tommy Robinson rally last week, giving a rousing speech. A speech that begins "It's not too late to get Islam out of the building..."
https://www.instagram.com/reels/DYcBnxzjiVv/
I think I'll throw my lot in with the "socially liberal" types, thank you.
In any event I sincerely hope you're well.
@sentdefender
President Donald J. Trump has just posted an image to Truth Social of a map of the Middle East centered on Iran covered in the stars & stripes with the title "United States of the Middle East?" This follows the abrupt cancellation of his weekend trip to the Bahamas for the wedding of Don Jr. followed by a weekend at his property in Bedminster, NJ.
https://x.com/sentdefender/status/2058175049782231164
Well, I can think of worse outcomes all around. Mad demented sexually depraved and corrupt human being though he is, he's still better than the Khamanei dynasty.
(One of the most astonishing things about this saga is how Trump has managed to put the Iranian regime squarely in the right. I mean, that's like finding Mao had some good points.)
https://manchestermill.co.uk/stop-looking-for-burnhamism-in-six-years-ive-never-found-it/
Everything else then became a complete nightmare due to the 1 week delay before the hearing.
The last sentence
"Perhaps the best thing for Burnham to do, recognising his weaknesses at wielding hard power, would be to get himself into Downing Street and immediately start giving it away."
As that is what this country actually needs and if Burnham knows that and could implement it - it would be great.
Please do read the 4500 word response to Viewcode I wrote, published in the appendicies to his article (alongside a similar length contribution from Cyclefree), which -in addition to being extremely carefully argued - contained no fewer than 18 footnotes from a variety of academic, legal, journalistic and statistical sources.
Or just say I'm irrational, whatevs.
Lab 1.45, Ref 3.75
Now it's Lab 1.62, Ref 2.88
Is there a poll which has leaked?
https://www.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2026/05/22/we-could-soon-see-crossover-on-the-most-seats-markets/
Hull were statistically the *second worst* team in the Championship, according to the experts at Opta. Not 7th or 8th. Not middle-of-the-pack, but ahead only of Sheffield Wednesday.
A colossal overachievement. Or, put another way, the beneficiaries of absolutely outrageous good luck over the course of a season.
That's not 'margin of error' stuff.
So either one accepts that they shouldn't be playing this game and indeed are fortunate not to be playing in League One next season *or* you have to reject the entire current model of in-game analysis and statistical modelling. And these are the expert analysts that clubs themselves pay for data, not just journos and TV people.
Either way, this should be a far, far bigger story, because we're dealing with either monumental injustice or we're putting our faith into a system that is unfit for purpose.
Personally I think the existing analytics is generally a good guide. Some minor tweaks can iron out flaws, but it is pretty damn close. You're never going to convince blinkered, biased supporters though.
He's been warned many times previously about this.
I wouldn't want to draw a line between the kind of dickery that causes people to abuse hospitality and the kind of right-wingery that finds a home with Farage myself.
Bye.
There are plenty of goals scored from training ground corner and fee kick routines which could be stopped if known about in advance.
As others have frequently pointed out, my position on that subject is quite moderate (against self id etc). Indeed, the compromise I proposed in my response to Viewcode is so moderate I didn't dare send it to any of my progressive friends for fear of being excommunicated from some of the more progressive spaces I'm in!
For that reason, and because I popped in here to talk about tax policy, not trans rights, I'll leave you to your love in for the day.
As others have noted, PB is more interesting when it doesn't rehash the same tired old debates. C-ya!
I'll make it clear: Mrs J reads PB. @Leon said something she took offence at, and he apologised. A few weeks later, he repeated the comment, and lied by saying he had never apoloigised.
I left PB. Since then, you have repeated variants of his comment, sometimes tagging me sometimes not. And called *me* a bully.
So, I'm off. I probably won't even read it any more, in case I get dragged back in again.
Edit: the thing is, I've only glanced on PB a few times this week, and one of the times I see you doing this.
PB’ers now have another chance to assess to what extent the quality of debate and analysis here rises, for at least a while.
And there are certainly serviced-plot schemes around, though fewer than say in the late 1970s when they were popular.
It tends to conflict with "get maximum value".
Eg say I believe something and it transpires that the vast majority of people whose opinions I usually find repellent agree with me whilst few others do. That won't per se change my mind but it will give me pause and make me take a closer look at it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToKcmnrE5oY
2) discovers it hurts
3) blames centrist dads
4) man sets himself on fire
:
1345) blames centrist dads
It brings more money to the town.
To put it another way. When I was last in Chablis, it is beginning to swallow hamlets on the edge of town. The locals love this - especially the ones in the hamlets. When the following was built, they celebrated -
The violent robbery took place at the home of the French four-time world champion in Nyon, about 25km north of Geneva, according to Blick., external. Police have confirmed a family was targeted by robbers at around 8:30am on Thursday, but have not released the victims' identities.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/articles/clyp65zpxe0o
of some mountains, with nothing in particular to look at other than a small reservoir. Sadly there’s no dog for scale, as he was having a crap off stage left, so you will have to guess yourselves how big they are.
https://x.com/reformparty_uk/status/2058199656270582075?s=20
Very Trumpian where you welcome the bust up over using somebodies music etc.