Donald Trump is becoming America’s Sir Keir Starmer – politicalbetting.com
Donald Trump is becoming America’s Sir Keir Starmer – politicalbetting.com
Enten on Trump's polling: "It's the worst this century for a president at this point in his second term … Donald John Trump — the worst ever net approval rating among independents at this point in a second term" pic.twitter.com/JfwcYa5ohg
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c935g67wyvgo
Not a u turn but certainly a climb down
Oh, and first.
Meanwhile this deal Trump has done with the Saudis seems another element of basically saying Iran has won, and a very unwise path.
The man is a complete idiot.
Hopefully the dems take rhe house and the senate and we get two years of a lame duck doing nothing but playing golf.
Burnham has an aspiration to do something, he can't do anything til the Budget anyway.
They need to see what fiscal leeway they have, they would have had a fair dollop had it not been for Iran and Trump, the need about 10bn to do anyting meaningful to allowances but there could well be incremental things they could add in.
A set ladder over 3-4 years of x % to cover inflation plus 1% as an example.
A specific increase for those of pensionable age to link to State Pension standard amount so no one purely on State Pension pasy tax on it
My hunch would be to find a way of balancing the tax allowance for pensioners to the triple lock, so that you start to unlock the triple lock to a median point where you commit to ensuring it by inceasing personal allowances instead initially for pensioners with then an aim of increasing for all!
Starmer is none of a sex offender, a traitor, or suffering from increasingly obvious mental decline.
Also, he sacks his fraudsters.
why shouldn’t pensioners pay tax above the threshold ? It’s income after all. Those purely on the state oension do get other passported benefits.
I think Dan Neidle is right. Leave this and target NI, it’s a tax on employment. We need more employment and to make work pay.
We were canvassed by our MP and his aides at the weekend. One thing I told them is work doesn’t pay in this country.
What a disaster.
I think we saw from the calamitous WFA debacle that once the public make up their mind it’s very hard to move them .
Burnham and Healey whilst not spending a great deal at least are trying to store up some goodwill .
The Senate is the key because it has the lock (see what I did there?) to the ever more corrupt Supreme Court. The Democrats must be in a position to stop Trump putting yet another lackie in there to plague decisions for another decade. Really, the House is a side show compared with that priority.
Operations scale
- Defensive
- Slightly sharp defensive operations
- Quite acerbic defensive operations
- Frank and free exchange of defensive operations
- Really rather outspoken defensive operations
- Yo moma defensive operations
Etc etc…
“Civil servants in Whitehall right now arguing about who should be sent to staff Burnham’s No10 North in Manchester”
https://x.com/aaron_r_rankin/status/2079566583836377100
Of course, it’s two russian WildBerries warehouses being on fire!
https://x.com/nexta_tv/status/2079782896588533846
Personal allowance changes are costed in the multiple billions.
Inflation unexpectedly continuing to go south against expectations is a positive too. (Burnham will be praying that continues to September when all the various pension indexs are linked to September inflation figure)
The politician in Burnham , as I suggested yesterday, will want to get the the budger and say we have saved the majority of the population £xxx (I think he'll be looking at £500 as a target) by these simple measures, there may be 10x £50 measures, that will qualify as his "breathing space"...
Budgets offer bigger more headline measures but if he can continue this "breathing space" theme trough in to 2027 it just starts to drip down like continual short but regular shwers into the public pshyche - far better than one off torrential downpout then drought!
The Tories can bleat it's uncosted (a) it's costed to a degree (b) the public don't care (c) the Public still don't believe any Tory on the economy., Reform can call for a GE all they like as Farage looks increasingly desperate and yesterdays man.
What we are seeing is the start of a Government that is far more politically tuned in and whilst it may not be a better one than Starmer, if the public have a modicum of trust and belief it goes a long way. Of course its the job of the right wing media, eg 90% of the media to disparage it and to just find moaners and whingers, but slowly but surely the thought that Government is on your side will permeate.
The GOP candidate is unprecedentedly weak.
He's not only corrupt; he's also a wimp.
Ken Paxton just melted down and stormed out of a press conference after being asked about his 15 houses and alleged voter fraud. ..
https://x.com/DemocraticWins/status/2079637271972622410
Being unable to brazen out simple questions like that - at a press conference where he's attacking his opponent's record - is just pathetic.
And he won't debate Talarico.
Early release: https://news.sky.com/story/pc-andrew-harpers-killers-may-be-eligible-for-early-release-government-confirms-13565822
I think not even this govt would release them.
You could be swapping your family home in e.g. Hackney for easily a 6 figure loss (3 forced sales, 2 forced purchases and 2 lots of stamp duty) and a family home in e.g. West Ham in 3-4 years time.
Plus it's likely your partner has a career which won't neatly synchronise with a relocation.
Thinking you can just relocate people show's a lack of understanding about real life in the 2020s, maybe it would have worked in the 1980s.
Samsung is in talks to invest hundreds of millions of euros in the AI start-up Mistral at a roughly €20bn valuation
https://x.com/IvanLevingston/status/2079810399734554759
A small deal by AI standards, but there's an obvious desire to have an alternative to both the US and China.
We must remember he will try every trick in the book to avoid electing a Dem. If it’s a close result expect chicanery.
The UK, Italy & Japan announce they’re accepting Canada becoming the 1st observer nation in the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP) meant to jointly develop a 6th-generation fighter jet
Canada will get privileged access & paving the way for future access to the project
https://x.com/visegrad24/status/2079574622136041636
The real question is not whether, but how far MAGA will go in trying illegitimately to tip the balance in November,
Are we seeing how shallow Burnham is now. He's making Kemi look statesman like.
https://bsky.app/profile/theatlantic.com/post/3mr7e7yv3b22j
If they think that is going to cut the mustard, they won't last very long in power.
https://x.com/cbsnews/status/2079375304527610360
https://x.com/StefanRousseau/status/2079591335351206351
As London house prices are currently falling, it may not be a bad time to be in the NW.
Burnham should just rrcruit new staff for No 10 North. There should be a fair number who are ambitious and talented with experience of him from the Mayoral office.
Today's announcement on the £2 bus fare cap is well targeted. The prime beneficiaries are going to be those who are younger or on lower incomes (because car ownership is highly correlated with income) and who are in work or studying and rely on the bus for that. Strivers who need to make work pay. But it still applies across the board if you're below pensionable age, so no-one's really going to object. There are also indirect benefits - an upturn in bus usage could bring back some services previously lost or increase the frequency of services - even pensioners relying on buses will benefit if that happens. So it's well targeted in terms of rewarding those who need to be rewarded, and well targeted in terms of likely political impact.
Certainly long enough that the officer’s parents aren’t still alive to see their adult child’s killers released from prison.
Turn shorter sentences for non-violent crimes into serious community service, and build more prisons - even temporary prisons on military land - before letting killers and sex offenders out early.
They could even think really outside the box, and have the prisoners living in the Portakabins help build their new permanent prison.
There's a current in British thinking that says that bad things shouldn't happen to anyone good ever. It's not particularly left or right, though it manifests in different ways. For various reasons, Andy Burnham has ridden that current all the way to Downing g Street. It's much easier to do as a Metro Mayor, much harder as PM.
(The right wing version goes something like this. Sir Marcus Fox once told Peter Lilley that it was easy to cut a billion from welfare. Lilley (no wet liberal he) replied that meant a thousand pounds from a million poor families so no it wasn't easy.)
Bubbles are pretty well unavoidable when a new technology comes along - that's been true at the very least since the original rail boom.
It's never meant that a new technology doesn't change the world.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34983416
"The ONS moved its statistical functions out of London in 2007, with most of them going to Newport.
About 90% of London-based staff chose to leave ONS rather than relocate."
Hundreds?! Fuxake, did he have personal peelers of grapes and a groom of the stool?
Two better solutions:
Build more prisons
Cut prison population by bringing immigration down - more 10% of prisoners are foreign nationals
Otherwise those in charge will be seen as soft on crime.
I continue to blame Clive Dunn and St Winifred's School Choir.
The early release scheme simple doesn't apply to the driver, so there's no decision to be made.
If you’re a foreigner sentenced to imprisonment, you’ve forfeited your right to remain in the country. Knowing that you’ll serve your sentence in your own country will probably help moderate certain behaviours among recent immigrants too. British prisons are 5* hotels to most countries.
There will be a few that the UK want to keep in prison, such as well-connected fraudsters or politically-motivated violent criminals, but the vast majority can better serve their sentences in their own countries.
The idea of creating a centre of political power outside of London is a good one, but it will take more than three years to embed.
We need to do a mix of things, much faster justice, more prisons, more investment in rehabilitation and probation, and reform of suspended sentencing so that they are suspended for a decade or two rather than a year or two.
Burnham has started well even though his giveaways are tiny and they do have to be paid for.
However, far larger questions loom on the horizon which will require radical thinking on merging tax and NI, equalising pension tax relief, ending the triple lock, and reducing welfare spending
In the last month we have travelled first class to Euston for the day and in the first case the train broke down between Chester and Crewe resulting in the journey terminating in Crewe
Yesterday signal failure around Stafford caused immense delays on the WCML with our return journey arriving in Colwyn Bay 75 minutes late
The result is that in these 2 journeys Avanti will have refunded us £625 and the cost to the railway industry must be in the billions
Whether it is in public or private ownership until network rail resolves near daily problems and the rolling stock's efficiency is immeasurably improved railways are going to drain the exchequer
Basically, Hunt and Sunak were both extremely nasty pieces of work in the second half of their time in office. Neither of them has properly been called out on it.
Sometimes self-interest aligns with the public interest; IMO, that's the case here.
Bangladeshi ‘tourists’ have a very different profile from most Western European, American, Japanese tourists who are there to see London and Edinburgh and Stratford and Stonehenge.
Incoming UK tourists from Bangladesh are the middle and upper classes who can afford the flight, are often visiting UK-based family and friends and business partners, and have a bad record of overstaying, absconding, and blackmarket employment.
The UK blocking incoming visas and aid then becomes a political problem for Bangladeshi politicians in Bangladesh.
Pull the data of the most populous foreign nationals in UK prisons, start from the top and work down.
You can also go further and start taxing “remittances” to certain countries from the UK. All options should be on the table for unco-operative countries.
The only difference is that I don't pay NI. Maybe I should.
In terms of the US Senate, the Maine (once the new Democrat nominee is selected) and Texas races will likely be key. If the Democrats win both then they could take the Senate. Even if they do win both chambers of Congress though they will likely only be able to block Trump's agenda not impeach and convict him which requires a 2/3 Senate majority to do. They would still likely be below the 56 Senators the Democrats had in 1972 which helped force Nixon's resignation in 1973 (along with the fact Nixon had fewer loyalist GOP Senators and Congressmen than Trump does)
The other thing to bear in mind is that if Britain starts sending Australians and Spaniards it has imprisoned back to Australia and Spain to serve their prison sentences, then we can expect those countries to reciprocate. The net reduction in prisoner numbers will inevitably be lower.
It’s also massively preferable to hire ex-military types from Kenya or Nigeria, than to end up with the recent trend of hiring naive 25-year-old British women as officers into men’s prisons - with the inevitable headlines we see seemingly every month.
If you provide wage guarantees, rather than demanding salaries halve*, then the selling point if cheaper living costs (housing) is a big deal for younger people.
*companies have tried that approach. Yes, really.
Now if the new location is half decent it’s not a problem - a fair number of people in Treasury north now have 4 bedroom detached houses with no mortgage but there are limited places where people are willing to move to,
Manchester is however one where your other half may also be able to find a job - it’s not look Newport where the options were Cardiff or an expensive journey towards Bristol