Scottish tax hike for high earners backfires with loss of £22m
A top rate of 48p for incomes above £125,140, intended as a ‘progressive’ move to raise money for public services, has instead reduced revenues, expert analysis shows
A tax hike on high earners in Scotland has cost the public purse about £22 million in a single year, new analysis indicates.
Dan Neidle, a tax policy expert who was part of the Scottish government’s recently axed tax advisory group, said its decision to impose a 48p top rate had instead reduced revenues.
Rather than injecting money into struggling public services, as intended, evidence suggests high earners are so put off by the enormous rates, they are taking steps to avoid coming into that bracket.
An investigation by Neidle’s independent think tank, Tax Policy Associates, has found that Scotland has now probably “fallen over the Laffer curve” — the point at which tax rates become so high they cost the government money, because earners are so incentivised to avoid them.
Lol. It's not called the Laffer curve for nothing. Lol again
It'd be quite interesting if they varied the rate every year or so until they found out where the maximal tax take was. (And then they should choose quite a bit below that)
Bit in brackets - why?
A less certain thought - I'm sure it's right though.
Rather illogical though - find the optimum rate and then deliberately don't use it.
(I quite like your experiment idea, although you'd never have a stable environment to test it in.)
Well, I think that the costs of choosing too high a rate are very big. And also the idea that the government should be taking as much as they possibly can.. I think not. Alas of course they are taking as much as they possibly can and that's all wrong. It won't happen, and even though I think it's the right thing to do, but turn off the welfare tap for a year - see who really needs help.
8% of total public spending is on debt interest.
One pound in twelve that we pay in taxes right now is being paid on paying back money that wasn't taken in taxes in previous years.
That's the cost of choosing too low a rate. A mountain of debt.
And we need to (a) stop adding to it and (b) ideally start reducing it.
Or to put it another way, there is a valid argument for VAT and business rates to be applied to private schools. It's that as a nation we're more skint than an investor who put everything into Truth Social stock. The fact that the smug, lazy, ignorant, arrogant, rude, stupid and openly spiteful Bridget Phillipson wittered on about 6,500 extra teachers (which we will never recruit because she has blown up what little remained of teacher training) tells us rather too much and not in a good way about political discourse in this country.
Similarly, the government should be getting every penny it can to try and sort out the mess. That means maximising tax revenue and for that they definitely should be seeking for the sweet spot.
It may well be the case that currently we need to maximise tax income, but it shouldn't be the rule.
Here again though, we come back to 'if we ever eliminate the debt, we can transition to only raising what we need to fund our spending decisions.'
(I nearly wrote 'go back to,' but then it occurred to me to wonder when the last time we did that was, and I honestly couldn't think of one.)
Actually we probably wouldn't want to eliminate the debt - even if we were cash rich we'd want to maintain a bond market. In the late 80s the government repaid a lot of debt and it caused a contraction in the gilt market. Most notably in some wildly overpaid roles.
You mean, the bond market might not be able to intimidate everybody and a bunch of fat spivs wouldn't be able to make millions while holding us all to ransom?
Well, that really would be tragic.
Think of all the millions who would die laughing.
No I do not mean that. Can I suggest that you don't understand these issues if you post as such? I hope that I'm not being rude in saying so.
Bond markets are really important. (All they are is a gauge of long term financial stability.)
You may not have meant that, but it's effectively what you've said. Bond markets selling long term debt are a function of government failure, not a vital part of a capitalist society.
Indeed, having pointed out that public spending is not necessarily economically unproductive, I'd go further and point out that many such private companies are in fact a drag on economic growth by sucking money out of the real economy into the pockets of dubious rentiers.
Would we be noticeably worse off if bond markets, hedge funds and Centrica disappeared overnight?
Absolute poppycock. And again I really don't want to fall out with you. Long term debt is an essential tool. Money perhaps can be seen in this way. I presume you don't object to money?
Oh, lor, we're back on cash.
Look, money borrowed in the long term can be used intelligently, particularly by developing productive assets that will aid economic growth. Building HS2 with borrowed money would make sense, for example, because it would (if Sunak wasn't an anti-train nutjob) have made a big profit and powered economic growth in the north and Midlands which would have increased tax take and reduced social expenditure.
Money borrowed on long term to pay pensions is not such money.* That's what we've been doing for decades and that's where the bond markets have our balls in a vice. When you are borrowing from them merely to survive, they can dictate terms and they are doing so.
*And I am now looking north in the expectation of an incoming ballistic turnip.
If you have a ten pound note - what actually is it? It's a bond. You can't go wildly rambling about HS2 as a smokescreen.
A well managed company will probably have some debt. They have it because they foresee that their growth enabled by the funds will far outstrip the cost of servicing the debt.
Are you suggesting that the debts we have now are analogous to those of a well managed company?
If so, will you be taking out a mortgage to buy this bridge I am offering for sale?
By the way, I would love to ramble around HS2 wildly or otherwise, but as Sunak effectively not only cancelled it but illegally salted the wells to make sure nobody else could build it that would be quite tricky.
No, obviously we have debts that look like an ill managed company.
I'm entirely sure you now realise that there is a little gap in your knowledge around these issues. Go and think about it. If your middle name is not 'thoughtful' I'd be amazed.
My middle name is 'Frank' (yes, really).
I am afraid you have not convinced me of any gaps in my knowledge. Merely that you are confusing excess bond markets, which are an example of capitalist and governmental failure, with government debt, which is issued through bond markets but would not actually have to be.
You have also not convinced me that the way they manipulate debt and the interest on it to their own advantage thereby sucking money out of the government's accounts and requiring higher tax take for worse services is advantageous to the productive economy. If you could show that it is used to fund other economic activity rather than massive salaries for people with the integrity of Mafia bosses I would be willing to change my mind on that.
The fundamental issue is one of the tax deductibility of interest, and it's one of the reasons why BP selling\ its UK solar generation assets to the Kuwaitis is less likely to be a problem for the Exchequer than you would think.
The reality is that BP today will fund its UK solar assets out of an offshore entity which lends money to the UK solar developer. And so, profits almost certainly get taken out of the UK in a tax-free manner already.
What we probably should look to do is to find some way of limiting the tax deductibility of interest payments. (Differing rules on thr tax deductibility of interest also screws up the rental market because it effectively subsidises corporate landlords and penalises personal landlords.)
Why we adopt fiscal policies which encourage the draining of assets from the country is an interesting question.
Part of it, I think, is the fetishisation of the market by every government since at least the 80s, without a corresponding understanding (or even desire to understand on the part of politicians) of how markets operate, and to whose benefit.
We have tied ourselves to the philosophy/religion of globalisation. And done so in the most extreme way. It is great in theory but often bloody awful in practice.
No, it is the breakdown of globalisation which is causing the current problems.
I know what you mean, but the success of globalisation also causes the problems. When transport costs fall to a certain amount (as it did with containerisation), it becomes cheaper and more profitable to locate industries outside the UK and ship the product in. That's what globalisation is. But the state then becomes very vulnerable to external disruption or outside coercion. We can no longer build a functioning Armed Forces, we can be blackmailed by oil or gas producers like Saudi and Russia, goods can be supplied with spyware or withheld from China, the US can withdraw NATO cover on a pretext, and so on. Starmer, and possibly Burnham, failed to grasp this which is why Starmer was such a bad PM. I may have mentioned that.
With all due respect, those issues are not new. When Winston Churchill proposed moving the fleet from coal to oil in the early 1900s, it was recognised that the result of that was that Britain would no longer be able to provide the fuel for its fleet. But the alternative was that our fleet would not be as capable as those who had gone down the oil route.
Our fleet *is* not as capable as those who went down the oil route. Or any route higher than a paddling pool. The fleet is either tied up at dock, or at refit or at repairs. Some are so far gone they've had to be taken out of service because the hulls are compromised. You can't look at the current state of the Royal Navy and think everything is OK
(my apologies: it's $500bn over five years, not $500billion per year. My bad)
If you think he's wrong, tell me why.
I only watched the segment about putting AI servers is space, that's enough to convince me this guy has absolutely no idea what he's talking about. Space is a terrible place for computers of any kind.
It's late, so this is just the 10000 foot view of why it's a horrible idea:
Power - yes, you can use solar panels to generate power. But those are large, fragile and difficult to get into orbit in quality. To power one NVidia blackwell server rack you'd need a couple of hundred square meters of panels. Powering the equivalent of a ground based datacentre would need multiple square kilometres of panels. Getting those into space and installed would be terrifyingly expensive even for SpaceX.
Cooling - Ground datacentres can easily radiate heat into the air, but a vacuum makes that much harder. An orbital DC would need massive (and heavy) radiators and some kind of closed-loop cooling system. Plus, it's not just heat from the servers that needs dumped. One side of the satellite is being fried by the sun and the other is in freezing vacuum. The cooling system would need to be powerful enough to keep the internal temperature somewhat even.
Radiation - there's no atmosphere to protect against cosmic radiation, so the orbital DC would need considerable shielding. Good luck carrying hundreds of tonnes of lead plates into space. Modern chips are very vulnerable to radiation, so even with shielding there's a good chance of an increase in both hard and soft failures vs a ground facility. The most popular CPU used in space applications is a hardened version of a 1997 PowerPC chip, because modern chips are so much harder to shield effectively.
Maintenance - if something breaks, you can't fix it without enormous cost.
I could go on, but the idea is a dead duck just for the reasons above.
Current Stsrlink satellites generate approximately 75kW (and future ones possibly double that).. So you'd need something around 10,000 of them to provide the equivalent of a single earthbound GW datacentre.
Elon is speed running our way towards a large Kessler event. Not so bad in very low Earth orbit - you'd only lose space for a few years at Starlink's lower altitude before orbital decay cleared the debris - but at 500km plus, civilisationally catastrophic, potentially.
"Is there anyone who hasn't benefited from globalisation, if we're honest about it?"
Here's a general answer I came up with years ago: There are, net, benefits to diversity, density, and globalization. But all three of them make epidemic diseases more dangerous.
In the US, we find it even harder to come up with good strategies against "micro-parasites" than against "macro-parasites". For this reason I believe that RFK, Jr. will do even more damage to the US than the Loser.
The new trailer for Neuromancer is out. It doesn't look that bad, to be honest, but there is a part of me that says it won't capture the feelz, that this the future and it's very exciting. I don't know what to think about it. But anyway, here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g79GPZSQHBk
Neromancer, along with the rest of Gibson's early work, was a remarkable SF which technology obsoleted very rapidly indeed. But its cultural impact is permanent.
I don't think a film adaptation can adequately express that.
Far more seriously and importantly, how would you cast a Muppet Odyssey ? (And is Michael Cane too old to star ?)
I am considering one of the most pressing questions of our era: in a Muppets Odyssey, who would Miss Piggy play? There's an argument for: the cyclops (appetite and mēnis), Circe (native empiggification), Calypso (won't let Kermie go), Penelope (loyal, vaguely spurned) https://x.com/second_sailing/status/2081036158746722781
Kermit: Odysseus Miss Piggy: Penelope Telemachus: Kermits nephew Agamemnon: the eagle one The Trojan Horse: Fozzie Bear. Or Gonzo. I just want to see Kermit climbing out of Fozzie's bottom. You would pay to see that. All the bad guys are played by humans. All the good guys are played by Muppets. I don't know enough about the tale to cast Statler and Waldorf. The female good guys other than Penelope to be played by Janice. Michael Caine plays the old wise soothsayer: I assume there's one somewhere, there usually is.
Far more seriously and importantly, how would you cast a Muppet Odyssey ? (And is Michael Cane too old to star ?)
I am considering one of the most pressing questions of our era: in a Muppets Odyssey, who would Miss Piggy play? There's an argument for: the cyclops (appetite and mēnis), Circe (native empiggification), Calypso (won't let Kermie go), Penelope (loyal, vaguely spurned) https://x.com/second_sailing/status/2081036158746722781
Kermit: Odysseus Miss Piggy: Penelope Telemachus: Kermits nephew Agamemnon: the eagle one The Trojan Horse: Fozzie Bear. Or Gonzo. I just want to see Kermit climbing out of Fozzie's bottom. You would pay to see that. All the bad guys are played by humans. All the good guys are played by Muppets. I don't know enough about the tale to cast Statler and Waldorf. The female good guys other than Penelope to be played by Janice. Michael Caine plays the old wise soothsayer: I assume there's one somewhere, there usually is.
Who are the 'good' and 'bad' guys in the Odyssey ? For many of the important protagonists that's not very clear.
The BBC are running a disgraceful hit piece against me & will be hearing from my lawyers. It appears to be carefully coordinated & politically motivated within an hour of yet another Sunday Times story against Reform. Is it a coincidence the Met leadership are briefing against me to the BBC, just after we have confirmed our legal action against the NCA over their possible multiple criminal offences? No one has ever been in touch with me on this matter except the BBC today! The Establishment are playing dirtier than ever to try to smear & discredit Reform leaders
Far more seriously and importantly, how would you cast a Muppet Odyssey ? (And is Michael Cane too old to star ?)
I am considering one of the most pressing questions of our era: in a Muppets Odyssey, who would Miss Piggy play? There's an argument for: the cyclops (appetite and mēnis), Circe (native empiggification), Calypso (won't let Kermie go), Penelope (loyal, vaguely spurned) https://x.com/second_sailing/status/2081036158746722781
Kermit: Odysseus Miss Piggy: Penelope Telemachus: Kermits nephew Agamemnon: the eagle one The Trojan Horse: Fozzie Bear. Or Gonzo. I just want to see Kermit climbing out of Fozzie's bottom. You would pay to see that. All the bad guys are played by humans. All the good guys are played by Muppets. I don't know enough about the tale to cast Statler and Waldorf. The female good guys other than Penelope to be played by Janice. Michael Caine plays the old wise soothsayer: I assume there's one somewhere, there usually is.
Who are the 'good' and 'bad' guys in the Odyssey ? For many of the important protagonists that's not very clear.
Agamemnon is a dick by any standard, but judging others by a modern perspective, when the events occurred (most likely) over 3,000 years ago and they had a different moral structure might be deemed anachronistic.
The BBC are running a disgraceful hit piece against me & will be hearing from my lawyers. It appears to be carefully coordinated & politically motivated within an hour of yet another Sunday Times story against Reform. Is it a coincidence the Met leadership are briefing against me to the BBC, just after we have confirmed our legal action against the NCA over their possible multiple criminal offences? No one has ever been in touch with me on this matter except the BBC today! The Establishment are playing dirtier than ever to try to smear & discredit Reform leaders
What he needs is the simple sword of truth and the trusty shield of British fair play. That will sort it.
A nice symmetry in the BBC article. I'm sure they came up with that form of words entirely by their own choice.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yv4r5g55do ..Tice told the BBC earlier this month that it was entirely his choice for the company to give half of the money from Fiona Cottrell to his party..
And
..Asked by the Sunday Times if Cottrell had transferred money to his mother before she made donations to Reform UK, his lawyers at Carter Ruck said: "Our client has confirmed his instructions that any donations by his mother have been entirely her own decision."..
F1: Hamilton and Antonelli each have a three place grid drop, for impeding and yellow flag infringements respectively. Glad I didn't make an early bet on Hamilton (not impossible to win but Hungary's rough for passing).
The BBC are running a disgraceful hit piece against me & will be hearing from my lawyers. It appears to be carefully coordinated & politically motivated within an hour of yet another Sunday Times story against Reform. Is it a coincidence the Met leadership are briefing against me to the BBC, just after we have confirmed our legal action against the NCA over their possible multiple criminal offences? No one has ever been in touch with me on this matter except the BBC today! The Establishment are playing dirtier than ever to try to smear & discredit Reform leaders
What he needs is the simple sword of truth and the trusty shield of British fair play. That will sort it.
Classic Trump play book
When your deep in your own shit of alleged corruption and wrong doing blame the people who are telling everyone that you are deep in the shit of your alleged wrong doing.
Trump playbook, it might be shit it is wrong but it's not my fault its the fault of the people alleging I did it your honour!
The BBC are running a disgraceful hit piece against me & will be hearing from my lawyers. It appears to be carefully coordinated & politically motivated within an hour of yet another Sunday Times story against Reform. Is it a coincidence the Met leadership are briefing against me to the BBC, just after we have confirmed our legal action against the NCA over their possible multiple criminal offences? No one has ever been in touch with me on this matter except the BBC today! The Establishment are playing dirtier than ever to try to smear & discredit Reform leaders
What he needs is the simple sword of truth and the trusty shield of British fair play. That will sort it.
Classic Trump play book
When your deep in your own shit of alleged corruption and wrong doing blame the people who are telling everyone that you are deep in the shit of your alleged wrong doing.
Trump playbook, it might be shit it is wrong but it's not my fault its the fault of the people alleging I did it your honour!
Trump must have stolen it from the Conservatives then.
I still think the next General Election date most favours May 3rd 2029, though I admit, last Monday changes things a bit. The Conservatives and their media friends should plan for an election happening sooner than May 2029.
Is the Murdock Sunday Paper today just reporting an interesting ongoing police investigation, with the only added something to keep their weekly Reform bash on front page being the Party’s Bank dobbed them in to police several years ago, because it is newsworthy enough today?
Or has Murdoch and team made a firm decision to stick with the Conservatives, consciously aware the only way to stick with and help the Conservatives in FPTP system, where tactical votes can produce lopsided sided results - my recent header flagged this with evidence - meaning the focussed headspace is to KILL REFORM OFF completely - and, as Farage himself would put it - aye-sap?
I’m moving on to the next logical questions in this sequence. Will all Murdochs media take an increasingly campaigning, attack dog line to Kill Off Reform? And will they be joined by others, in fact the whole of the right wing media?
For four crazy years, the right wing media have been in a wishy washy dibblydobbly headspace, regards the two right wing parties cancelling each other out handing the centre and left unearned electoral treasure - will they all now make this same rational decision as the Sunday Times ownership appears to have done, and kill off Reform as quickly as possible, to help the Conservatives in an election which could come sooner rather than later?
How long before the Murdoch and slightly less extreme Right Wing Media pick up the cudgels for the hidden maelstrom forming like a torrid undercurrent under the kemification and idelological purge going on in the Tory Party. Potential mass deselection of current and former Tory MP;s and Candidates.
Not inconceivable that a well place header by Andy Street / Ruth Davison or both in the coming weeks could turn the 2026 Tory Party Conference in to something resembling the old internecine Bexit type splits between the centrists and the bog eyed kemiloons
Far more seriously and importantly, how would you cast a Muppet Odyssey ? (And is Michael Cane too old to star ?)
I am considering one of the most pressing questions of our era: in a Muppets Odyssey, who would Miss Piggy play? There's an argument for: the cyclops (appetite and mēnis), Circe (native empiggification), Calypso (won't let Kermie go), Penelope (loyal, vaguely spurned) https://x.com/second_sailing/status/2081036158746722781
Kermit: Odysseus Miss Piggy: Penelope Telemachus: Kermits nephew Agamemnon: the eagle one The Trojan Horse: Fozzie Bear. Or Gonzo. I just want to see Kermit climbing out of Fozzie's bottom. You would pay to see that. All the bad guys are played by humans. All the good guys are played by Muppets. I don't know enough about the tale to cast Statler and Waldorf. The female good guys other than Penelope to be played by Janice. Michael Caine plays the old wise soothsayer: I assume there's one somewhere, there usually is.
I'd cast Miss Piggy as Circe personally. Maybe Janice (the hippy one from the band) as Penelope. Statler and Waldorf need to be the Gods.
Scottish tax hike for high earners backfires with loss of £22m
A top rate of 48p for incomes above £125,140, intended as a ‘progressive’ move to raise money for public services, has instead reduced revenues, expert analysis shows
A tax hike on high earners in Scotland has cost the public purse about £22 million in a single year, new analysis indicates.
Dan Neidle, a tax policy expert who was part of the Scottish government’s recently axed tax advisory group, said its decision to impose a 48p top rate had instead reduced revenues.
Rather than injecting money into struggling public services, as intended, evidence suggests high earners are so put off by the enormous rates, they are taking steps to avoid coming into that bracket.
An investigation by Neidle’s independent think tank, Tax Policy Associates, has found that Scotland has now probably “fallen over the Laffer curve” — the point at which tax rates become so high they cost the government money, because earners are so incentivised to avoid them.
Lol. It's not called the Laffer curve for nothing. Lol again
It'd be quite interesting if they varied the rate every year or so until they found out where the maximal tax take was. (And then they should choose quite a bit below that)
Bit in brackets - why?
A less certain thought - I'm sure it's right though.
Rather illogical though - find the optimum rate and then deliberately don't use it.
(I quite like your experiment idea, although you'd never have a stable environment to test it in.)
Well, I think that the costs of choosing too high a rate are very big. And also the idea that the government should be taking as much as they possibly can.. I think not. Alas of course they are taking as much as they possibly can and that's all wrong. It won't happen, and even though I think it's the right thing to do, but turn off the welfare tap for a year - see who really needs help.
8% of total public spending is on debt interest.
One pound in twelve that we pay in taxes right now is being paid on paying back money that wasn't taken in taxes in previous years.
That's the cost of choosing too low a rate. A mountain of debt.
And we need to (a) stop adding to it and (b) ideally start reducing it.
Or to put it another way, there is a valid argument for VAT and business rates to be applied to private schools. It's that as a nation we're more skint than an investor who put everything into Truth Social stock. The fact that the smug, lazy, ignorant, arrogant, rude, stupid and openly spiteful Bridget Phillipson wittered on about 6,500 extra teachers (which we will never recruit because she has blown up what little remained of teacher training) tells us rather too much and not in a good way about political discourse in this country.
Similarly, the government should be getting every penny it can to try and sort out the mess. That means maximising tax revenue and for that they definitely should be seeking for the sweet spot.
It may well be the case that currently we need to maximise tax income, but it shouldn't be the rule.
Here again though, we come back to 'if we ever eliminate the debt, we can transition to only raising what we need to fund our spending decisions.'
(I nearly wrote 'go back to,' but then it occurred to me to wonder when the last time we did that was, and I honestly couldn't think of one.)
Actually we probably wouldn't want to eliminate the debt - even if we were cash rich we'd want to maintain a bond market. In the late 80s the government repaid a lot of debt and it caused a contraction in the gilt market. Most notably in some wildly overpaid roles.
You mean, the bond market might not be able to intimidate everybody and a bunch of fat spivs wouldn't be able to make millions while holding us all to ransom?
Well, that really would be tragic.
Think of all the millions who would die laughing.
No I do not mean that. Can I suggest that you don't understand these issues if you post as such? I hope that I'm not being rude in saying so.
Bond markets are really important. (All they are is a gauge of long term financial stability.)
You may not have meant that, but it's effectively what you've said. Bond markets selling long term debt are a function of government failure, not a vital part of a capitalist society.
Indeed, having pointed out that public spending is not necessarily economically unproductive, I'd go further and point out that many such private companies are in fact a drag on economic growth by sucking money out of the real economy into the pockets of dubious rentiers.
Would we be noticeably worse off if bond markets, hedge funds and Centrica disappeared overnight?
Absolute poppycock. And again I really don't want to fall out with you. Long term debt is an essential tool. Money perhaps can be seen in this way. I presume you don't object to money?
Oh, lor, we're back on cash.
Look, money borrowed in the long term can be used intelligently, particularly by developing productive assets that will aid economic growth. Building HS2 with borrowed money would make sense, for example, because it would (if Sunak wasn't an anti-train nutjob) have made a big profit and powered economic growth in the north and Midlands which would have increased tax take and reduced social expenditure.
Money borrowed on long term to pay pensions is not such money.* That's what we've been doing for decades and that's where the bond markets have our balls in a vice. When you are borrowing from them merely to survive, they can dictate terms and they are doing so.
*And I am now looking north in the expectation of an incoming ballistic turnip.
If you have a ten pound note - what actually is it? It's a bond. You can't go wildly rambling about HS2 as a smokescreen.
A well managed company will probably have some debt. They have it because they foresee that their growth enabled by the funds will far outstrip the cost of servicing the debt.
Are you suggesting that the debts we have now are analogous to those of a well managed company?
If so, will you be taking out a mortgage to buy this bridge I am offering for sale?
By the way, I would love to ramble around HS2 wildly or otherwise, but as Sunak effectively not only cancelled it but illegally salted the wells to make sure nobody else could build it that would be quite tricky.
No, obviously we have debts that look like an ill managed company.
I'm entirely sure you now realise that there is a little gap in your knowledge around these issues. Go and think about it. If your middle name is not 'thoughtful' I'd be amazed.
My middle name is 'Frank' (yes, really).
I am afraid you have not convinced me of any gaps in my knowledge. Merely that you are confusing excess bond markets, which are an example of capitalist and governmental failure, with government debt, which is issued through bond markets but would not actually have to be.
You have also not convinced me that the way they manipulate debt and the interest on it to their own advantage thereby sucking money out of the government's accounts and requiring higher tax take for worse services is advantageous to the productive economy. If you could show that it is used to fund other economic activity rather than massive salaries for people with the integrity of Mafia bosses I would be willing to change my mind on that.
The fundamental issue is one of the tax deductibility of interest, and it's one of the reasons why BP selling\ its UK solar generation assets to the Kuwaitis is less likely to be a problem for the Exchequer than you would think.
The reality is that BP today will fund its UK solar assets out of an offshore entity which lends money to the UK solar developer. And so, profits almost certainly get taken out of the UK in a tax-free manner already.
What we probably should look to do is to find some way of limiting the tax deductibility of interest payments. (Differing rules on thr tax deductibility of interest also screws up the rental market because it effectively subsidises corporate landlords and penalises personal landlords.)
Why we adopt fiscal policies which encourage the draining of assets from the country is an interesting question.
Part of it, I think, is the fetishisation of the market by every government since at least the 80s, without a corresponding understanding (or even desire to understand on the part of politicians) of how markets operate, and to whose benefit.
We have tied ourselves to the philosophy/religion of globalisation. And done so in the most extreme way. It is great in theory but often bloody awful in practice.
No, it is the breakdown of globalisation which is causing the current problems.
I know what you mean, but the success of globalisation also causes the problems. When transport costs fall to a certain amount (as it did with containerisation), it becomes cheaper and more profitable to locate industries outside the UK and ship the product in. That's what globalisation is. But the state then becomes very vulnerable to external disruption or outside coercion. We can no longer build a functioning Armed Forces, we can be blackmailed by oil or gas producers like Saudi and Russia, goods can be supplied with spyware or withheld from China, the US can withdraw NATO cover on a pretext, and so on. Starmer, and possibly Burnham, failed to grasp this which is why Starmer was such a bad PM. I may have mentioned that.
With all due respect, those issues are not new. When Winston Churchill proposed moving the fleet from coal to oil in the early 1900s, it was recognised that the result of that was that Britain would no longer be able to provide the fuel for its fleet. But the alternative was that our fleet would not be as capable as those who had gone down the oil route.
Then what options do we have? Are we going to see the dissolution of the nation state, with no or wildly inadequate armed forces, an economy built on importing poorer and poorer people to plug the gap left by more and more rich people emigrating, selling more and more land to foreign pension firms so that they can build skyscraper flats to those poor people for an exorbitant rent and export the rent to foreign lands, lending more and more money so we can pay people to be unemployed and keep old people alive for thirty years, whilst anybody with a good idea fucks off, any company that makes a profit leaves, Parliament is neutered, and governments become Potemkin bodies issuing commands that won't be obeyed due to judicial reviews whilst providing just enough entertainment to keep podcasters chatting whilst the discipline of journalism crumbles into the dust and the only communication bodies listened to just plug sex and racism all day until people explode.
It's like one of those old dystopian futures where everything falls apart and I really didn't envisage my later years stuck under radio telescopes near Rngstone Round wondering how to stop it. And I am frankly out of ideas.
I still think the next General Election date most favours May 3rd 2029, though I admit, last Monday changes things a bit. The Conservatives and their media friends should plan for an election happening sooner than May 2029.
Is the Murdock Sunday Paper today just reporting an interesting ongoing police investigation, with the only added something to keep their weekly Reform bash on front page being the Party’s Bank dobbed them in to police several years ago, because it is newsworthy enough today?
Or has Murdoch and team made a firm decision to stick with the Conservatives, consciously aware the only way to stick with and help the Conservatives in FPTP system, where tactical votes can produce lopsided sided results - my recent header flagged this with evidence - meaning the focussed headspace is to KILL REFORM OFF completely - and, as Farage himself would put it - aye-sap?
I’m moving on to the next logical questions in this sequence. Will all Murdochs media take an increasingly campaigning, attack dog line to Kill Off Reform? And will they be joined by others, in fact the whole of the right wing media?
For four crazy years, the right wing media have been in a wishy washy dibblydobbly headspace, regards the two right wing parties cancelling each other out handing the centre and left unearned electoral treasure - will they all now make this same rational decision as the Sunday Times ownership appears to have done, and kill off Reform as quickly as possible, to help the Conservatives in an election which could come sooner rather than later?
How long before the Murdoch and slightly less extreme Right Wing Media pick up the cudgels for the hidden maelstrom forming like a torrid undercurrent under the kemification and idelological purge going on in the Tory Party. Potential mass deselection of current and former Tory MP;s and Candidates.
Not inconceivable that a well place header by Andy Street / Ruth Davison or both in the coming weeks could turn the 2026 Tory Party Conference in to something resembling the old internecine Bexit type splits between the centrists and the bog eyed kemiloons
I wouldn't hold your breath if I were you.
The Murdoch press are totally on board with "make me sustainable, but not yet" and the nostalgic idea that the North Sea can make any meaningful difference to energy costs or the public finances. See today's top leader;
(The key thing about newspapers is that nobody under the age of about 50 buys them, and publishers aren't even trying to attract anyone younger any more.)
As for Andy S or Ruth D making a stand... look at what didn't happen with the Rwanda madness. There might be some clucking, but institutional loyalty tends to win out fairly rapidly. We're not called wets for nothing.
F1: Hamilton and Antonelli each have a three place grid drop, for impeding and yellow flag infringements respectively. Glad I didn't make an early bet on Hamilton (not impossible to win but Hungary's rough for passing).
God knows how or why hUngary has sy=urvived for so long.
A glorified Go Kart Track bettered only for utter boredom by Monaco
We are promised a “10-year plan”, but the chef is still working on the recipe and the dish won’t come out of the oven until sometime in the autumn. The opening flurry of announcements, designed to advertise that a new regime is up and running, has been about business rates on pubs, bus fares, utility bills and rough sleeping. Welcome to government by the Mayor of Great Britain. This will be quite popular, at least for a while.
[Burnham] hopes modest changes will be seen as a down payment on better times to come. He’s seeking to lure voters back from the Greens and contain Reform by fashioning a leftish version of populism. He’s also using these applause-seeking initiatives to buy himself space while he grapples with the seriously knotty challenges facing his government, such as fixing social care and funding defence. . “He’s spent his first week spending money. That can’t go on for long,” says one of the cabinet members sacked by Mr Burnham. “We’re not in the real world yet.”
His pledge to “do politics differently” is regarded as a sick joke by the casualties of the brutal reshuffle, which lavished rewards on his followers while dishing out retribution on those who resisted his coronation. To his supporters, the spoils. For those left out in the cold, this feels cruelly factional. The dispossessed will probably bite their tongue for the time being, not wanting to come across as churlish. But when the waters get choppy, they will relish his discomfort.
I still think the next General Election date most favours May 3rd 2029, though I admit, last Monday changes things a bit. The Conservatives and their media friends should plan for an election happening sooner than May 2029.
Is the Murdock Sunday Paper today just reporting an interesting ongoing police investigation, with the only added something to keep their weekly Reform bash on front page being the Party’s Bank dobbed them in to police several years ago, because it is newsworthy enough today?
Or has Murdoch and team made a firm decision to stick with the Conservatives, consciously aware the only way to stick with and help the Conservatives in FPTP system, where tactical votes can produce lopsided sided results - my recent header flagged this with evidence - meaning the focussed headspace is to KILL REFORM OFF completely - and, as Farage himself would put it - aye-sap?
I’m moving on to the next logical questions in this sequence. Will all Murdochs media take an increasingly campaigning, attack dog line to Kill Off Reform? And will they be joined by others, in fact the whole of the right wing media?
For four crazy years, the right wing media have been in a wishy washy dibblydobbly headspace, regards the two right wing parties cancelling each other out handing the centre and left unearned electoral treasure - will they all now make this same rational decision as the Sunday Times ownership appears to have done, and kill off Reform as quickly as possible, to help the Conservatives in an election which could come sooner rather than later?
How long before the Murdoch and slightly less extreme Right Wing Media pick up the cudgels for the hidden maelstrom forming like a torrid undercurrent under the kemification and idelological purge going on in the Tory Party. Potential mass deselection of current and former Tory MP;s and Candidates.
Not inconceivable that a well place header by Andy Street / Ruth Davison or both in the coming weeks could turn the 2026 Tory Party Conference in to something resembling the old internecine Bexit type splits between the centrists and the bog eyed kemiloons
I wouldn't hold your breath if I were you.
The Murdoch press are totally on board with "make me sustainable, but not yet" and the nostalgic idea that the North Sea can make any meaningful difference to energy costs or the public finances. See today's top leader;
(The key thing about newspapers is that nobody under the age of about 50 buys them, and publishers aren't even trying to attract anyone younger any more.)
As for Andy S or Ruth D making a stand... look at what didn't happen with the Rwanda madness. There might be some clucking, but institutional loyalty tends to win out fairly rapidly. We're not called wets for nothing.
I won't say that the Conservative Party is dying but .... this from our Conservative MP in an increasingly teal coloured hinterland
I have a campaigning evening tomorrow where I will be knocking on doors talking to residents about their priorities. If you'd like to help me with that let me know! You don't necessarily have to support any political party, you might just think I'm doing a good job and want to support me as an individual.
And those nice Reform people have cut the funding for children's' holiday food vouchers. This targets the most deprived families in the county.
Scottish tax hike for high earners backfires with loss of £22m
A top rate of 48p for incomes above £125,140, intended as a ‘progressive’ move to raise money for public services, has instead reduced revenues, expert analysis shows
A tax hike on high earners in Scotland has cost the public purse about £22 million in a single year, new analysis indicates.
Dan Neidle, a tax policy expert who was part of the Scottish government’s recently axed tax advisory group, said its decision to impose a 48p top rate had instead reduced revenues.
Rather than injecting money into struggling public services, as intended, evidence suggests high earners are so put off by the enormous rates, they are taking steps to avoid coming into that bracket.
An investigation by Neidle’s independent think tank, Tax Policy Associates, has found that Scotland has now probably “fallen over the Laffer curve” — the point at which tax rates become so high they cost the government money, because earners are so incentivised to avoid them.
Lol. It's not called the Laffer curve for nothing. Lol again
It'd be quite interesting if they varied the rate every year or so until they found out where the maximal tax take was. (And then they should choose quite a bit below that)
Bit in brackets - why?
A less certain thought - I'm sure it's right though.
Rather illogical though - find the optimum rate and then deliberately don't use it.
(I quite like your experiment idea, although you'd never have a stable environment to test it in.)
Well, I think that the costs of choosing too high a rate are very big. And also the idea that the government should be taking as much as they possibly can.. I think not. Alas of course they are taking as much as they possibly can and that's all wrong. It won't happen, and even though I think it's the right thing to do, but turn off the welfare tap for a year - see who really needs help.
8% of total public spending is on debt interest.
One pound in twelve that we pay in taxes right now is being paid on paying back money that wasn't taken in taxes in previous years.
That's the cost of choosing too low a rate. A mountain of debt.
And we need to (a) stop adding to it and (b) ideally start reducing it.
Or to put it another way, there is a valid argument for VAT and business rates to be applied to private schools. It's that as a nation we're more skint than an investor who put everything into Truth Social stock. The fact that the smug, lazy, ignorant, arrogant, rude, stupid and openly spiteful Bridget Phillipson wittered on about 6,500 extra teachers (which we will never recruit because she has blown up what little remained of teacher training) tells us rather too much and not in a good way about political discourse in this country.
Similarly, the government should be getting every penny it can to try and sort out the mess. That means maximising tax revenue and for that they definitely should be seeking for the sweet spot.
It may well be the case that currently we need to maximise tax income, but it shouldn't be the rule.
Here again though, we come back to 'if we ever eliminate the debt, we can transition to only raising what we need to fund our spending decisions.'
(I nearly wrote 'go back to,' but then it occurred to me to wonder when the last time we did that was, and I honestly couldn't think of one.)
Actually we probably wouldn't want to eliminate the debt - even if we were cash rich we'd want to maintain a bond market. In the late 80s the government repaid a lot of debt and it caused a contraction in the gilt market. Most notably in some wildly overpaid roles.
You mean, the bond market might not be able to intimidate everybody and a bunch of fat spivs wouldn't be able to make millions while holding us all to ransom?
Well, that really would be tragic.
Think of all the millions who would die laughing.
No I do not mean that. Can I suggest that you don't understand these issues if you post as such? I hope that I'm not being rude in saying so.
Bond markets are really important. (All they are is a gauge of long term financial stability.)
You may not have meant that, but it's effectively what you've said. Bond markets selling long term debt are a function of government failure, not a vital part of a capitalist society.
Indeed, having pointed out that public spending is not necessarily economically unproductive, I'd go further and point out that many such private companies are in fact a drag on economic growth by sucking money out of the real economy into the pockets of dubious rentiers.
Would we be noticeably worse off if bond markets, hedge funds and Centrica disappeared overnight?
Absolute poppycock. And again I really don't want to fall out with you. Long term debt is an essential tool. Money perhaps can be seen in this way. I presume you don't object to money?
Oh, lor, we're back on cash.
Look, money borrowed in the long term can be used intelligently, particularly by developing productive assets that will aid economic growth. Building HS2 with borrowed money would make sense, for example, because it would (if Sunak wasn't an anti-train nutjob) have made a big profit and powered economic growth in the north and Midlands which would have increased tax take and reduced social expenditure.
Money borrowed on long term to pay pensions is not such money.* That's what we've been doing for decades and that's where the bond markets have our balls in a vice. When you are borrowing from them merely to survive, they can dictate terms and they are doing so.
*And I am now looking north in the expectation of an incoming ballistic turnip.
If you have a ten pound note - what actually is it? It's a bond. You can't go wildly rambling about HS2 as a smokescreen.
A well managed company will probably have some debt. They have it because they foresee that their growth enabled by the funds will far outstrip the cost of servicing the debt.
Are you suggesting that the debts we have now are analogous to those of a well managed company?
If so, will you be taking out a mortgage to buy this bridge I am offering for sale?
By the way, I would love to ramble around HS2 wildly or otherwise, but as Sunak effectively not only cancelled it but illegally salted the wells to make sure nobody else could build it that would be quite tricky.
No, obviously we have debts that look like an ill managed company.
I'm entirely sure you now realise that there is a little gap in your knowledge around these issues. Go and think about it. If your middle name is not 'thoughtful' I'd be amazed.
My middle name is 'Frank' (yes, really).
I am afraid you have not convinced me of any gaps in my knowledge. Merely that you are confusing excess bond markets, which are an example of capitalist and governmental failure, with government debt, which is issued through bond markets but would not actually have to be.
You have also not convinced me that the way they manipulate debt and the interest on it to their own advantage thereby sucking money out of the government's accounts and requiring higher tax take for worse services is advantageous to the productive economy. If you could show that it is used to fund other economic activity rather than massive salaries for people with the integrity of Mafia bosses I would be willing to change my mind on that.
The fundamental issue is one of the tax deductibility of interest, and it's one of the reasons why BP selling\ its UK solar generation assets to the Kuwaitis is less likely to be a problem for the Exchequer than you would think.
The reality is that BP today will fund its UK solar assets out of an offshore entity which lends money to the UK solar developer. And so, profits almost certainly get taken out of the UK in a tax-free manner already.
What we probably should look to do is to find some way of limiting the tax deductibility of interest payments. (Differing rules on thr tax deductibility of interest also screws up the rental market because it effectively subsidises corporate landlords and penalises personal landlords.)
Why we adopt fiscal policies which encourage the draining of assets from the country is an interesting question.
Part of it, I think, is the fetishisation of the market by every government since at least the 80s, without a corresponding understanding (or even desire to understand on the part of politicians) of how markets operate, and to whose benefit.
We have tied ourselves to the philosophy/religion of globalisation. And done so in the most extreme way. It is great in theory but often bloody awful in practice.
No, it is the breakdown of globalisation which is causing the current problems.
I know what you mean, but the success of globalisation also causes the problems. When transport costs fall to a certain amount (as it did with containerisation), it becomes cheaper and more profitable to locate industries outside the UK and ship the product in. That's what globalisation is. But the state then becomes very vulnerable to external disruption or outside coercion. We can no longer build a functioning Armed Forces, we can be blackmailed by oil or gas producers like Saudi and Russia, goods can be supplied with spyware or withheld from China, the US can withdraw NATO cover on a pretext, and so on. Starmer, and possibly Burnham, failed to grasp this which is why Starmer was such a bad PM. I may have mentioned that.
With all due respect, those issues are not new. When Winston Churchill proposed moving the fleet from coal to oil in the early 1900s, it was recognised that the result of that was that Britain would no longer be able to provide the fuel for its fleet. But the alternative was that our fleet would not be as capable as those who had gone down the oil route.
Then what options do we have? Are we going to see the dissolution of the nation state, with no or wildly inadequate armed forces, an economy built on importing poorer and poorer people to plug the gap left by more and more rich people emigrating, selling more and more land to foreign pension firms so that they can build skyscraper flats to those poor people for an exorbitant rent and export the rent to foreign lands, lending more and more money so we can pay people to be unemployed and keep old people alive for thirty years, whilst anybody with a good idea fucks off, any company that makes a profit leaves, Parliament is neutered, and governments become Potemkin bodies issuing commands that won't be obeyed due to judicial reviews whilst providing just enough entertainment to keep podcasters chatting whilst the discipline of journalism crumbles into the dust and the only communication bodies listened to just plug sex and racism all day until people explode.
It's like one of those old dystopian futures where everything falls apart and I really didn't envisage my later years stuck under radio telescopes near Rngstone Round wondering how to stop it. And I am frankly out of ideas.
Excellent post.
It’s perfectly possible to mitigate such issues. Churchill supported a policy that included the government buying a chunk of an oil company, a strategic reserve etc etc.
It’s notable that in two world wars, oil supply for the fleet wasn’t a big issue.
Similarly, looking at other matters, requires taking an overall view.
It’s long been a part of Operational Research to discuss security of supply chains. The problem is that the cheapest way to get to the next election is to do nothing.
For example, PPE for COVID showed a massive gap. Analysis of the gap shows that using disposable PPE (as perviously) for a pandemic is extremely expensive - the material doesn’t have a long shelf life and would require
1) huge stockpiles to be made and throw away regularly 2) vast stockpiles of precursor chemicals - which have their own shelf life issues.
So nothing was done.
A rational approach would have been to consider a return to the non-disposable PPE - at least as a stockpile for pandemics. Which would also offer the possibility of protecting against other threats - such as airborne virus or chemical attacks.
But that would be expensive (though cheaper than a PPE stockpile/capability), and require Changing The Way We Do Things.
For extra fun - disposable PPE is made from oil, and contributes lots and lots of microplastics to the environment.
I still think the next General Election date most favours May 3rd 2029, though I admit, last Monday changes things a bit. The Conservatives and their media friends should plan for an election happening sooner than May 2029.
Is the Murdock Sunday Paper today just reporting an interesting ongoing police investigation, with the only added something to keep their weekly Reform bash on front page being the Party’s Bank dobbed them in to police several years ago, because it is newsworthy enough today?
Or has Murdoch and team made a firm decision to stick with the Conservatives, consciously aware the only way to stick with and help the Conservatives in FPTP system, where tactical votes can produce lopsided sided results - my recent header flagged this with evidence - meaning the focussed headspace is to KILL REFORM OFF completely - and, as Farage himself would put it - aye-sap?
I’m moving on to the next logical questions in this sequence. Will all Murdochs media take an increasingly campaigning, attack dog line to Kill Off Reform? And will they be joined by others, in fact the whole of the right wing media?
For four crazy years, the right wing media have been in a wishy washy dibblydobbly headspace, regards the two right wing parties cancelling each other out handing the centre and left unearned electoral treasure - will they all now make this same rational decision as the Sunday Times ownership appears to have done, and kill off Reform as quickly as possible, to help the Conservatives in an election which could come sooner rather than later?
How long before the Murdoch and slightly less extreme Right Wing Media pick up the cudgels for the hidden maelstrom forming like a torrid undercurrent under the kemification and idelological purge going on in the Tory Party. Potential mass deselection of current and former Tory MP;s and Candidates.
Not inconceivable that a well place header by Andy Street / Ruth Davison or both in the coming weeks could turn the 2026 Tory Party Conference in to something resembling the old internecine Bexit type splits between the centrists and the bog eyed kemiloons
I wouldn't hold your breath if I were you.
The Murdoch press are totally on board with "make me sustainable, but not yet" and the nostalgic idea that the North Sea can make any meaningful difference to energy costs or the public finances. See today's top leader;
(The key thing about newspapers is that nobody under the age of about 50 buys them, and publishers aren't even trying to attract anyone younger any more.)
As for Andy S or Ruth D making a stand... look at what didn't happen with the Rwanda madness. There might be some clucking, but institutional loyalty tends to win out fairly rapidly. We're not called wets for nothing.
I still think the next General Election date most favours May 3rd 2029, though I admit, last Monday changes things a bit. The Conservatives and their media friends should plan for an election happening sooner than May 2029.
Is the Murdock Sunday Paper today just reporting an interesting ongoing police investigation, with the only added something to keep their weekly Reform bash on front page being the Party’s Bank dobbed them in to police several years ago, because it is newsworthy enough today?
Or has Murdoch and team made a firm decision to stick with the Conservatives, consciously aware the only way to stick with and help the Conservatives in FPTP system, where tactical votes can produce lopsided sided results - my recent header flagged this with evidence - meaning the focussed headspace is to KILL REFORM OFF completely - and, as Farage himself would put it - aye-sap?
I’m moving on to the next logical questions in this sequence. Will all Murdochs media take an increasingly campaigning, attack dog line to Kill Off Reform? And will they be joined by others, in fact the whole of the right wing media?
For four crazy years, the right wing media have been in a wishy washy dibblydobbly headspace, regards the two right wing parties cancelling each other out handing the centre and left unearned electoral treasure - will they all now make this same rational decision as the Sunday Times ownership appears to have done, and kill off Reform as quickly as possible, to help the Conservatives in an election which could come sooner rather than later?
How long before the Murdoch and slightly less extreme Right Wing Media pick up the cudgels for the hidden maelstrom forming like a torrid undercurrent under the kemification and idelological purge going on in the Tory Party. Potential mass deselection of current and former Tory MP;s and Candidates.
Not inconceivable that a well place header by Andy Street / Ruth Davison or both in the coming weeks could turn the 2026 Tory Party Conference in to something resembling the old internecine Bexit type splits between the centrists and the bog eyed kemiloons
I wouldn't hold your breath if I were you.
The Murdoch press are totally on board with "make me sustainable, but not yet" and the nostalgic idea that the North Sea can make any meaningful difference to energy costs or the public finances. See today's top leader;
(The key thing about newspapers is that nobody under the age of about 50 buys them, and publishers aren't even trying to attract anyone younger any more.)
As for Andy S or Ruth D making a stand... look at what didn't happen with the Rwanda madness. There might be some clucking, but institutional loyalty tends to win out fairly rapidly. We're not called wets for nothing.
Rwanda didn't involved around 40 sitting MP's and 200 former MP's seeking reselection being forced out because they don't totally oppose Net Zero or don't want to throw away hundreds/thousands of human rights enshrined in a law that Churchill was fundamental in creating.
We are promised a “10-year plan”, but the chef is still working on the recipe and the dish won’t come out of the oven until sometime in the autumn. The opening flurry of announcements, designed to advertise that a new regime is up and running, has been about business rates on pubs, bus fares, utility bills and rough sleeping. Welcome to government by the Mayor of Great Britain. This will be quite popular, at least for a while.
[Burnham] hopes modest changes will be seen as a down payment on better times to come. He’s seeking to lure voters back from the Greens and contain Reform by fashioning a leftish version of populism. He’s also using these applause-seeking initiatives to buy himself space while he grapples with the seriously knotty challenges facing his government, such as fixing social care and funding defence. . “He’s spent his first week spending money. That can’t go on for long,” says one of the cabinet members sacked by Mr Burnham. “We’re not in the real world yet.”
His pledge to “do politics differently” is regarded as a sick joke by the casualties of the brutal reshuffle, which lavished rewards on his followers while dishing out retribution on those who resisted his coronation. To his supporters, the spoils. For those left out in the cold, this feels cruelly factional. The dispossessed will probably bite their tongue for the time being, not wanting to come across as churlish. But when the waters get choppy, they will relish his discomfort.
There are two assumptions here.
One is that Burnham could have constructed a cabinet which was immune from criticism from somewhere within the Labour party. No-one has indicated what that might have looked like. It's just a hard fact that about 50 people think they should be entitled to a top 10 job. Tough.
The second is that taken as a whole the Labour party will always want, and at this moment especially does want, the Labour party to fail.
Good morning from Southern Burgundy, where I’ve woken up to the stink of forest fires in Gironde, several hundred miles away. And a fine layer of ash on the car and garden table.
We are promised a “10-year plan”, but the chef is still working on the recipe and the dish won’t come out of the oven until sometime in the autumn. The opening flurry of announcements, designed to advertise that a new regime is up and running, has been about business rates on pubs, bus fares, utility bills and rough sleeping. Welcome to government by the Mayor of Great Britain. This will be quite popular, at least for a while.
[Burnham] hopes modest changes will be seen as a down payment on better times to come. He’s seeking to lure voters back from the Greens and contain Reform by fashioning a leftish version of populism. He’s also using these applause-seeking initiatives to buy himself space while he grapples with the seriously knotty challenges facing his government, such as fixing social care and funding defence. . “He’s spent his first week spending money. That can’t go on for long,” says one of the cabinet members sacked by Mr Burnham. “We’re not in the real world yet.”
His pledge to “do politics differently” is regarded as a sick joke by the casualties of the brutal reshuffle, which lavished rewards on his followers while dishing out retribution on those who resisted his coronation. To his supporters, the spoils. For those left out in the cold, this feels cruelly factional. The dispossessed will probably bite their tongue for the time being, not wanting to come across as churlish. But when the waters get choppy, they will relish his discomfort.
There are two assumptions here.
One is that Burnham could have constructed a cabinet which was immune from criticism from somewhere within the Labour party. No-one has indicated what that might have looked like. It's just a hard fact that about 50 people think they should be entitled to a top 10 job. Tough.
The second is that taken as a whole the Labour party will always want, and at this moment especially does want, the Labour party to fail.
50 think that they are entitled to a top 10 job. Less than 5 actually capable of it. Burnham is playing a slightly tricky hand in no trumps.
We are promised a “10-year plan”, but the chef is still working on the recipe and the dish won’t come out of the oven until sometime in the autumn. The opening flurry of announcements, designed to advertise that a new regime is up and running, has been about business rates on pubs, bus fares, utility bills and rough sleeping. Welcome to government by the Mayor of Great Britain. This will be quite popular, at least for a while.
[Burnham] hopes modest changes will be seen as a down payment on better times to come. He’s seeking to lure voters back from the Greens and contain Reform by fashioning a leftish version of populism. He’s also using these applause-seeking initiatives to buy himself space while he grapples with the seriously knotty challenges facing his government, such as fixing social care and funding defence. . “He’s spent his first week spending money. That can’t go on for long,” says one of the cabinet members sacked by Mr Burnham. “We’re not in the real world yet.”
His pledge to “do politics differently” is regarded as a sick joke by the casualties of the brutal reshuffle, which lavished rewards on his followers while dishing out retribution on those who resisted his coronation. To his supporters, the spoils. For those left out in the cold, this feels cruelly factional. The dispossessed will probably bite their tongue for the time being, not wanting to come across as churlish. But when the waters get choppy, they will relish his discomfort.
There are two assumptions here.
One is that Burnham could have constructed a cabinet which was immune from criticism from somewhere within the Labour party. No-one has indicated what that might have looked like. It's just a hard fact that about 50 people think they should be entitled to a top 10 job. Tough.
The second is that taken as a whole the Labour party will always want, and at this moment especially does want, the Labour party to fail.
I'm inclined to agree. Burnham was always going to want people around him who would buy into his agenda. And for the disposessed to start plotting against their own side would be suicidal. On the other hand, there's none so petty, childish and factional as professional politicians.
I thought that Burnham was meant to be good at this politics malarkey.
With flights from Glasgow to Manchester and wearing three hundred quid jeans, he's just making ammunition for his opponents.
Get a grip, lad.
£300 jeans?? I get my suits for about that. Of course I am a man of the people.
Flying commercial from Glasgow to Manchester is hardly the bling lifestyle. Can be cheaper than the rail fare.
By the time you have faffed about with airports at both ends and been dumped in the back of beyond at Manchester I would be amazed if it was any quicker. Maybe queues are less of an issue if you are PM.
I still think the next General Election date most favours May 3rd 2029, though I admit, last Monday changes things a bit. The Conservatives and their media friends should plan for an election happening sooner than May 2029.
Is the Murdock Sunday Paper today just reporting an interesting ongoing police investigation, with the only added something to keep their weekly Reform bash on front page being the Party’s Bank dobbed them in to police several years ago, because it is newsworthy enough today?
Or has Murdoch and team made a firm decision to stick with the Conservatives, consciously aware the only way to stick with and help the Conservatives in FPTP system, where tactical votes can produce lopsided sided results - my recent header flagged this with evidence - meaning the focussed headspace is to KILL REFORM OFF completely - and, as Farage himself would put it - aye-sap?
I’m moving on to the next logical questions in this sequence. Will all Murdochs media take an increasingly campaigning, attack dog line to Kill Off Reform? And will they be joined by others, in fact the whole of the right wing media?
For four crazy years, the right wing media have been in a wishy washy dibblydobbly headspace, regards the two right wing parties cancelling each other out handing the centre and left unearned electoral treasure - will they all now make this same rational decision as the Sunday Times ownership appears to have done, and kill off Reform as quickly as possible, to help the Conservatives in an election which could come sooner rather than later?
How long before the Murdoch and slightly less extreme Right Wing Media pick up the cudgels for the hidden maelstrom forming like a torrid undercurrent under the kemification and idelological purge going on in the Tory Party. Potential mass deselection of current and former Tory MP;s and Candidates.
Not inconceivable that a well place header by Andy Street / Ruth Davison or both in the coming weeks could turn the 2026 Tory Party Conference in to something resembling the old internecine Bexit type splits between the centrists and the bog eyed kemiloons
The parties labelled right of centre are still commanding half the votes in polling. This is amazing considering how useless both the parties are. There is a huge reserve of support for the conservative way of looking at our post WWII social democrat consensus, which neither the Tories or Reform seriously question. But both parties act as if they are determined to lose, and especially to lose the central middle class/aspirational core of right of centre support.
We are promised a “10-year plan”, but the chef is still working on the recipe and the dish won’t come out of the oven until sometime in the autumn. The opening flurry of announcements, designed to advertise that a new regime is up and running, has been about business rates on pubs, bus fares, utility bills and rough sleeping. Welcome to government by the Mayor of Great Britain. This will be quite popular, at least for a while.
[Burnham] hopes modest changes will be seen as a down payment on better times to come. He’s seeking to lure voters back from the Greens and contain Reform by fashioning a leftish version of populism. He’s also using these applause-seeking initiatives to buy himself space while he grapples with the seriously knotty challenges facing his government, such as fixing social care and funding defence. . “He’s spent his first week spending money. That can’t go on for long,” says one of the cabinet members sacked by Mr Burnham. “We’re not in the real world yet.”
His pledge to “do politics differently” is regarded as a sick joke by the casualties of the brutal reshuffle, which lavished rewards on his followers while dishing out retribution on those who resisted his coronation. To his supporters, the spoils. For those left out in the cold, this feels cruelly factional. The dispossessed will probably bite their tongue for the time being, not wanting to come across as churlish. But when the waters get choppy, they will relish his discomfort.
There are two assumptions here.
One is that Burnham could have constructed a cabinet which was immune from criticism from somewhere within the Labour party. No-one has indicated what that might have looked like. It's just a hard fact that about 50 people think they should be entitled to a top 10 job. Tough.
The second is that taken as a whole the Labour party will always want, and at this moment especially does want, the Labour party to fail.
50 think that they are entitled to a top 10 job. Less than 5 actually capable of it. Burnham is playing a slightly tricky hand in no trumps.
Yes. 'There is always room at the top' is a wonderful and ambiguous line.
Good morning from Southern Burgundy, where I’ve woken up to the stink of forest fires in Gironde, several hundred miles away. And a fine layer of ash on the car and garden table.
Woke up to the sound of dripping. Something odd falling from the sky. Apparently it's called 'rain' and looking at the forecast I shouldn't get used to it...
I thought that Burnham was meant to be good at this politics malarkey.
With flights from Glasgow to Manchester and wearing three hundred quid jeans, he's just making ammunition for his opponents.
Get a grip, lad.
£300 jeans?? I get my suits for about that. Of course I am a man of the people.
Flying commercial from Glasgow to Manchester is hardly the bling lifestyle. Can be cheaper than the rail fare.
Except that he didn’t fly commercial, he was on the government Airbus A321.
(Actually I don’t have a problem with the PM and entourage taking the government plane on a multi-leg trip, he was in Glasgow for the Commonweath Games opening ceremony. The critisism will come if he keeps needlessly dragging dozens of people from London to Manchester every Friday, just so he can be back home a day early).
Scottish tax hike for high earners backfires with loss of £22m
A top rate of 48p for incomes above £125,140, intended as a ‘progressive’ move to raise money for public services, has instead reduced revenues, expert analysis shows
A tax hike on high earners in Scotland has cost the public purse about £22 million in a single year, new analysis indicates.
Dan Neidle, a tax policy expert who was part of the Scottish government’s recently axed tax advisory group, said its decision to impose a 48p top rate had instead reduced revenues.
Rather than injecting money into struggling public services, as intended, evidence suggests high earners are so put off by the enormous rates, they are taking steps to avoid coming into that bracket.
An investigation by Neidle’s independent think tank, Tax Policy Associates, has found that Scotland has now probably “fallen over the Laffer curve” — the point at which tax rates become so high they cost the government money, because earners are so incentivised to avoid them.
Lol. It's not called the Laffer curve for nothing. Lol again
It'd be quite interesting if they varied the rate every year or so until they found out where the maximal tax take was. (And then they should choose quite a bit below that)
Bit in brackets - why?
A less certain thought - I'm sure it's right though.
Rather illogical though - find the optimum rate and then deliberately don't use it.
(I quite like your experiment idea, although you'd never have a stable environment to test it in.)
Well, I think that the costs of choosing too high a rate are very big. And also the idea that the government should be taking as much as they possibly can.. I think not. Alas of course they are taking as much as they possibly can and that's all wrong. It won't happen, and even though I think it's the right thing to do, but turn off the welfare tap for a year - see who really needs help.
8% of total public spending is on debt interest.
One pound in twelve that we pay in taxes right now is being paid on paying back money that wasn't taken in taxes in previous years.
That's the cost of choosing too low a rate. A mountain of debt.
And we need to (a) stop adding to it and (b) ideally start reducing it.
Or to put it another way, there is a valid argument for VAT and business rates to be applied to private schools. It's that as a nation we're more skint than an investor who put everything into Truth Social stock. The fact that the smug, lazy, ignorant, arrogant, rude, stupid and openly spiteful Bridget Phillipson wittered on about 6,500 extra teachers (which we will never recruit because she has blown up what little remained of teacher training) tells us rather too much and not in a good way about political discourse in this country.
Similarly, the government should be getting every penny it can to try and sort out the mess. That means maximising tax revenue and for that they definitely should be seeking for the sweet spot.
It may well be the case that currently we need to maximise tax income, but it shouldn't be the rule.
Here again though, we come back to 'if we ever eliminate the debt, we can transition to only raising what we need to fund our spending decisions.'
(I nearly wrote 'go back to,' but then it occurred to me to wonder when the last time we did that was, and I honestly couldn't think of one.)
Actually we probably wouldn't want to eliminate the debt - even if we were cash rich we'd want to maintain a bond market. In the late 80s the government repaid a lot of debt and it caused a contraction in the gilt market. Most notably in some wildly overpaid roles.
You mean, the bond market might not be able to intimidate everybody and a bunch of fat spivs wouldn't be able to make millions while holding us all to ransom?
Well, that really would be tragic.
Think of all the millions who would die laughing.
No I do not mean that. Can I suggest that you don't understand these issues if you post as such? I hope that I'm not being rude in saying so.
Bond markets are really important. (All they are is a gauge of long term financial stability.)
You may not have meant that, but it's effectively what you've said. Bond markets selling long term debt are a function of government failure, not a vital part of a capitalist society.
Indeed, having pointed out that public spending is not necessarily economically unproductive, I'd go further and point out that many such private companies are in fact a drag on economic growth by sucking money out of the real economy into the pockets of dubious rentiers.
Would we be noticeably worse off if bond markets, hedge funds and Centrica disappeared overnight?
Absolute poppycock. And again I really don't want to fall out with you. Long term debt is an essential tool. Money perhaps can be seen in this way. I presume you don't object to money?
Oh, lor, we're back on cash.
Look, money borrowed in the long term can be used intelligently, particularly by developing productive assets that will aid economic growth. Building HS2 with borrowed money would make sense, for example, because it would (if Sunak wasn't an anti-train nutjob) have made a big profit and powered economic growth in the north and Midlands which would have increased tax take and reduced social expenditure.
Money borrowed on long term to pay pensions is not such money.* That's what we've been doing for decades and that's where the bond markets have our balls in a vice. When you are borrowing from them merely to survive, they can dictate terms and they are doing so.
*And I am now looking north in the expectation of an incoming ballistic turnip.
If you have a ten pound note - what actually is it? It's a bond. You can't go wildly rambling about HS2 as a smokescreen.
A well managed company will probably have some debt. They have it because they foresee that their growth enabled by the funds will far outstrip the cost of servicing the debt.
Are you suggesting that the debts we have now are analogous to those of a well managed company?
If so, will you be taking out a mortgage to buy this bridge I am offering for sale?
By the way, I would love to ramble around HS2 wildly or otherwise, but as Sunak effectively not only cancelled it but illegally salted the wells to make sure nobody else could build it that would be quite tricky.
No, obviously we have debts that look like an ill managed company.
I'm entirely sure you now realise that there is a little gap in your knowledge around these issues. Go and think about it. If your middle name is not 'thoughtful' I'd be amazed.
My middle name is 'Frank' (yes, really).
I am afraid you have not convinced me of any gaps in my knowledge. Merely that you are confusing excess bond markets, which are an example of capitalist and governmental failure, with government debt, which is issued through bond markets but would not actually have to be.
You have also not convinced me that the way they manipulate debt and the interest on it to their own advantage thereby sucking money out of the government's accounts and requiring higher tax take for worse services is advantageous to the productive economy. If you could show that it is used to fund other economic activity rather than massive salaries for people with the integrity of Mafia bosses I would be willing to change my mind on that.
The fundamental issue is one of the tax deductibility of interest, and it's one of the reasons why BP selling\ its UK solar generation assets to the Kuwaitis is less likely to be a problem for the Exchequer than you would think.
The reality is that BP today will fund its UK solar assets out of an offshore entity which lends money to the UK solar developer. And so, profits almost certainly get taken out of the UK in a tax-free manner already.
What we probably should look to do is to find some way of limiting the tax deductibility of interest payments. (Differing rules on thr tax deductibility of interest also screws up the rental market because it effectively subsidises corporate landlords and penalises personal landlords.)
Why we adopt fiscal policies which encourage the draining of assets from the country is an interesting question.
Part of it, I think, is the fetishisation of the market by every government since at least the 80s, without a corresponding understanding (or even desire to understand on the part of politicians) of how markets operate, and to whose benefit.
We have tied ourselves to the philosophy/religion of globalisation. And done so in the most extreme way. It is great in theory but often bloody awful in practice.
No, it is the breakdown of globalisation which is causing the current problems.
I know what you mean, but the success of globalisation also causes the problems. When transport costs fall to a certain amount (as it did with containerisation), it becomes cheaper and more profitable to locate industries outside the UK and ship the product in. That's what globalisation is. But the state then becomes very vulnerable to external disruption or outside coercion. We can no longer build a functioning Armed Forces, we can be blackmailed by oil or gas producers like Saudi and Russia, goods can be supplied with spyware or withheld from China, the US can withdraw NATO cover on a pretext, and so on. Starmer, and possibly Burnham, failed to grasp this which is why Starmer was such a bad PM. I may have mentioned that.
With all due respect, those issues are not new. When Winston Churchill proposed moving the fleet from coal to oil in the early 1900s, it was recognised that the result of that was that Britain would no longer be able to provide the fuel for its fleet. But the alternative was that our fleet would not be as capable as those who had gone down the oil route.
Then what options do we have? Are we going to see the dissolution of the nation state, with no or wildly inadequate armed forces, an economy built on importing poorer and poorer people to plug the gap left by more and more rich people emigrating, selling more and more land to foreign pension firms so that they can build skyscraper flats to those poor people for an exorbitant rent and export the rent to foreign lands, lending more and more money so we can pay people to be unemployed and keep old people alive for thirty years, whilst anybody with a good idea fucks off, any company that makes a profit leaves, Parliament is neutered, and governments become Potemkin bodies issuing commands that won't be obeyed due to judicial reviews whilst providing just enough entertainment to keep podcasters chatting whilst the discipline of journalism crumbles into the dust and the only communication bodies listened to just plug sex and racism all day until people explode.
It's like one of those old dystopian futures where everything falls apart and I really didn't envisage my later years stuck under radio telescopes near Rngstone Round wondering how to stop it. And I am frankly out of ideas.
Excellent post.
This looks like an interesting conversation, I don't disagree with @viewcode's last post, though would add that every government since 1979 has enabled or pushed the globalisation agenda.
As an aside, a question for @rcs1000: When PB moves from Vanilla is there any opportunity to make reading multiple blockquotes easier? This particular conversation has 27 comments, which means 27 levels of indented block quote, making it impossible for me at least to read the early comments and nigh on impossible to work out who said what. Just a simple single level indent for what has cone before with
- commenter: comment; - commenter: comment;
etc. would be much easier to follow. Just a thought.
Good morning from Southern Burgundy, where I’ve woken up to the stink of forest fires in Gironde, several hundred miles away. And a fine layer of ash on the car and garden table.
Woke up to the sound of dripping. Something odd falling from the sky. Apparently it's called 'rain' and looking at the forecast I shouldn't get used to it...
Good morning from Southern Burgundy, where I’ve woken up to the stink of forest fires in Gironde, several hundred miles away. And a fine layer of ash on the car and garden table.
Woke up to the sound of dripping. Something odd falling from the sky. Apparently it's called 'rain' and looking at the forecast I shouldn't get used to it...
We have had a trace of rain but not enough to trouble the weatherstation (so less than 0.2mm) - which means no wet days have been recorded in July. And none forecast for the rest of the month.
The longest period of dry days ever recorded in the UK is 73 consecutive days without rain, which occurred in Mile End, East London in 1893.
This historic dry spell lasted from March 4 to May 15, 1893, during an exceptionally dry and warm spring caused by a dominant high-pressure system.
Top Historic UK Dry Spells While the 1893 record stands as the absolute maximum, several other notable extended dry streaks have been officially logged across the country:
73 Days (1893): Mile End, London (The absolute UK record). 72 Days (1893): Twickenham, Greater London. 70 Days (1969): Sudbury and Washmere Green in Suffolk went without rainfall from August 31 to November 8. 60 Days (1893): Multiple areas across Kent and Sussex, including Maidstone, Lewes, and Hastings. 42 Days (1947): Large areas of Essex experienced a massive 6-week "absolute drought". 39 Days (1976): Jersey recorded its longest-ever absolute drought during the infamous, punishing summer heatwave of 1976.
I still think the next General Election date most favours May 3rd 2029, though I admit, last Monday changes things a bit. The Conservatives and their media friends should plan for an election happening sooner than May 2029.
Is the Murdock Sunday Paper today just reporting an interesting ongoing police investigation, with the only added something to keep their weekly Reform bash on front page being the Party’s Bank dobbed them in to police several years ago, because it is newsworthy enough today?
Or has Murdoch and team made a firm decision to stick with the Conservatives, consciously aware the only way to stick with and help the Conservatives in FPTP system, where tactical votes can produce lopsided sided results - my recent header flagged this with evidence - meaning the focussed headspace is to KILL REFORM OFF completely - and, as Farage himself would put it - aye-sap?
I’m moving on to the next logical questions in this sequence. Will all Murdochs media take an increasingly campaigning, attack dog line to Kill Off Reform? And will they be joined by others, in fact the whole of the right wing media?
For four crazy years, the right wing media have been in a wishy washy dibblydobbly headspace, regards the two right wing parties cancelling each other out handing the centre and left unearned electoral treasure - will they all now make this same rational decision as the Sunday Times ownership appears to have done, and kill off Reform as quickly as possible, to help the Conservatives in an election which could come sooner rather than later?
How long before the Murdoch and slightly less extreme Right Wing Media pick up the cudgels for the hidden maelstrom forming like a torrid undercurrent under the kemification and idelological purge going on in the Tory Party. Potential mass deselection of current and former Tory MP;s and Candidates.
Not inconceivable that a well place header by Andy Street / Ruth Davison or both in the coming weeks could turn the 2026 Tory Party Conference in to something resembling the old internecine Bexit type splits between the centrists and the bog eyed kemiloons
The parties labelled right of centre are still commanding half the votes in polling. This is amazing considering how useless both the parties are. There is a huge reserve of support for the conservative way of looking at our post WWII social democrat consensus, which neither the Tories or Reform seriously question. But both parties act as if they are determined to lose, and especially to lose the central middle class/aspirational core of right of centre support.
Actually the Tories now do best with that group again. The latest Yougov has the Tories on 22% with those in the Higher Socioeconomic classification, 20% with those in the Intermediate and on only 19% with those in the Routine classificiation.
It is Reform who are the working class party who turn off the aspirational middle class, Farage's party are on 30% with those in the Routine classification, 28% with those in the Intermediate and just 17% with those in the Higher classification
We are promised a “10-year plan”, but the chef is still working on the recipe and the dish won’t come out of the oven until sometime in the autumn. The opening flurry of announcements, designed to advertise that a new regime is up and running, has been about business rates on pubs, bus fares, utility bills and rough sleeping. Welcome to government by the Mayor of Great Britain. This will be quite popular, at least for a while.
[Burnham] hopes modest changes will be seen as a down payment on better times to come. He’s seeking to lure voters back from the Greens and contain Reform by fashioning a leftish version of populism. He’s also using these applause-seeking initiatives to buy himself space while he grapples with the seriously knotty challenges facing his government, such as fixing social care and funding defence. . “He’s spent his first week spending money. That can’t go on for long,” says one of the cabinet members sacked by Mr Burnham. “We’re not in the real world yet.”
His pledge to “do politics differently” is regarded as a sick joke by the casualties of the brutal reshuffle, which lavished rewards on his followers while dishing out retribution on those who resisted his coronation. To his supporters, the spoils. For those left out in the cold, this feels cruelly factional. The dispossessed will probably bite their tongue for the time being, not wanting to come across as churlish. But when the waters get choppy, they will relish his discomfort.
There are two assumptions here.
One is that Burnham could have constructed a cabinet which was immune from criticism from somewhere within the Labour party. No-one has indicated what that might have looked like. It's just a hard fact that about 50 people think they should be entitled to a top 10 job. Tough.
The second is that taken as a whole the Labour party will always want, and at this moment especially does want, the Labour party to fail.
Starmer elevated factionalism to new levels - he expelled a chunk of the parliamentary party and pushed a big chunk of the Labour coalition to vote Green.
This led, in part to his downfall. Because it reduced Labour polling to new depths. Among other things.
To complain about factionalism and exclusion after that, takes some brass neck.
I thought that Burnham was meant to be good at this politics malarkey.
With flights from Glasgow to Manchester and wearing three hundred quid jeans, he's just making ammunition for his opponents.
Get a grip, lad.
£300 jeans?? I get my suits for about that. Of course I am a man of the people.
Flying commercial from Glasgow to Manchester is hardly the bling lifestyle. Can be cheaper than the rail fare.
Except that he didn’t fly commercial, he was on the government Airbus A321.
(Actually I don’t have a problem with the PM and entourage taking the government plane on a multi-leg trip, he was in Glasgow for the Commonweath Games opening ceremony. The critisism will come if he keeps needlessly dragging dozens of people from London to Manchester every Friday, just so he can be back home a day early).
The government plane(s) work out cheaper, IIRC. Because of the security issue, mainly.
F1: Hamilton and Antonelli each have a three place grid drop, for impeding and yellow flag infringements respectively. Glad I didn't make an early bet on Hamilton (not impossible to win but Hungary's rough for passing).
Actually the Ferrari has a decent chance. Unfortunately that's now Leclerc's Ferrari.
Had they been starting 2/3, it would have been odds on.
'In an exclusive interview with the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg, Andy Burnham explicitly dismissed the idea of an early general election, saying "I'm going to rule it out... I don't think people want it."
Explaining his decision, the new prime minister suggested the majority of the electorate "voted for a manifesto" in the last election, and vowed he would "honour that manifesto" with the support of parliamentary colleagues.
Burnham went on to say, "I just think what I most need to do is get Britain focused on getting the country back where it should be, getting it working."
'Andy Burnham says he would be prepared to call out Donald Trump to defend Britain's "national interest before anything else" if it is the right thing to do, in his first major interview as prime minister.
Speaking exclusively to the BBC, Burnham said he had had a good first exchange with Trump, finding him to be "really warm".
But asked twice if he would trust the US president, he did not say, answering, "it's a changing world isn't it, and you just obviously have to call things as they develop".
In the interview, to be broadcast in full on Monday, he said: "I can't at any point say that I won't take a different opinion from him [Trump], that I will need to voice a different idea that is right for Britain." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clye651yzdjo
'Maine Democrats officially have a new U.S. Senate nominee.
Troy Jackson, a veteran state politician and logger, secured the nomination Saturday at the party's state convention which was held weeks after the Democratic nominee Graham Platner bowed out due to mounting scandals.
Jackson, who secured 566 votes, defeated the only other candidate in the race, Sandra Pelletier, who received only five votes.'
I thought that Burnham was meant to be good at this politics malarkey.
With flights from Glasgow to Manchester and wearing three hundred quid jeans, he's just making ammunition for his opponents.
Get a grip, lad.
£300 jeans?? I get my suits for about that. Of course I am a man of the people.
Flying commercial from Glasgow to Manchester is hardly the bling lifestyle. Can be cheaper than the rail fare.
By the time you have faffed about with airports at both ends and been dumped in the back of beyond at Manchester I would be amazed if it was any quicker. Maybe queues are less of an issue if you are PM.
I bet he doesn’t get charged iniquitous drop off/pick up charges at either end. He needs to take the airport bus to be a real man of the people.
I thought that Burnham was meant to be good at this politics malarkey.
With flights from Glasgow to Manchester and wearing three hundred quid jeans, he's just making ammunition for his opponents.
Get a grip, lad.
£300 jeans?? I get my suits for about that. Of course I am a man of the people.
Flying commercial from Glasgow to Manchester is hardly the bling lifestyle. Can be cheaper than the rail fare.
Except that he didn’t fly commercial, he was on the government Airbus A321.
(Actually I don’t have a problem with the PM and entourage taking the government plane on a multi-leg trip, he was in Glasgow for the Commonweath Games opening ceremony. The critisism will come if he keeps needlessly dragging dozens of people from London to Manchester every Friday, just so he can be back home a day early).
The government plane(s) work out cheaper, IIRC. Because of the security issue, mainly.
The UKG VIP A321is owned by the government but operated by Titan - worst of both worlds! Presumably they do it this way because the chances of retaining A32x type rated RAF crew after their return-of-service period is 0%.
Good morning from Southern Burgundy, where I’ve woken up to the stink of forest fires in Gironde, several hundred miles away. And a fine layer of ash on the car and garden table.
Woke up to the sound of dripping. Something odd falling from the sky. Apparently it's called 'rain' and looking at the forecast I shouldn't get used to it...
You lucky bastard, we missed it here.
It was veritable Camelot last night.
The rain may never fall till after sundown By 8, the morning fog must disappear In short, there's simply not A more congenial spot For happily-ever-aftering Than here in ... West Yorkshire
I thought that Burnham was meant to be good at this politics malarkey.
With flights from Glasgow to Manchester and wearing three hundred quid jeans, he's just making ammunition for his opponents.
Get a grip, lad.
£300 jeans?? I get my suits for about that. Of course I am a man of the people.
Flying commercial from Glasgow to Manchester is hardly the bling lifestyle. Can be cheaper than the rail fare.
By the time you have faffed about with airports at both ends and been dumped in the back of beyond at Manchester I would be amazed if it was any quicker. Maybe queues are less of an issue if you are PM.
I bet he doesn’t get charged iniquitous drop off/pick up charges at either end. He needs to take the airport bus to be a real man of the people.
Bus? You get the first train to Piccadily (as that takes 15 minutes but the metro takes 45)..
Caught the start of Newsnight ,and Nick sodding Clegg is lecturing others about sanctimony.
He's been popping up a bit recently.
Tell me he's not planning a return to frontline politics some way or other?
His coalition was one if the best periods of government in recent decades. Maybe I am in a minority of one, but I think he put the country ahead of his party and himself and should be given credit for that. I would give him a knighthood.
It's a view. It's also a view that his refusing to discuss our membership of the EU during the Coalition resulted in Brexit.
If Clegg and Cameron had gone into the rose garden early in the Colition and called a Referendum - recommendeding staying in - it would have been won c.60:40.
Thank you, Nick Clegg.
Alexa, explain "gaslighting" to me.
To be fair, Clegg had called for an In/Out referendum on the EU. It was his 'reasoning' for abstaining on the Lisbon referendum when his party's manifesto had committed them to supporting one.
Good morning, everyone.
Imagine a world where we'd had a referendum on the Lisbon treaty. We could have arrived at a world where there was a happy consensus on Europe - this far but no further. The great missed opportunity of British politics. All because the Lib Dems could not let a manifesto promise or a vague commitment to democracy outweigh their knee-jerk desire for all things Europe.
I don't disagree, in principle, but the Lisbon treaty was already ratified by 2010. How would that have worked ?
When Brown was PM, their was a vote on parliament: the government position was that Lisbon should br ratified, the Tory amendment was, I think, that there should be a referendum. There were enough Labour Eurosceptics that Lib Dems going with their stated policy position of 'there should be a referendum' would have resulted in a referendum. Knowing this, Ed Davey led a contrived walkout of Lib Dem MPs, nominally in protest that actually there should be a referendum on British EU membership per se (yes, really). It didn't need the coalition to be in power - it was one of the rare occasions where oppositiom could have forced a position.
Davey wasn't LibDem Leader then; he was quite a way away from it as I recall (Kennedy, Clegg, Farron, Swinson wee in front of him IIRC. ) Would he really have had that amount of power back then?
Yes, it was his brief and he led the walkout. I'm surprised this isn't better recalled.
A quick exchange with Chatgpt on the subject:
Hi Chatgpt - around the time of the Lisbon treaty, when it was being debated in the UK parliament, I seem to remember Ed Davey leading a walkout of Lib Dem MPs. Is there a clip of this anywhere online?
Yes — I think you're remembering the incident on 26 February 2008, during the Commons debate on the Lisbon Treaty Bill.
What happened was:
The Liberal Democrats had tabled an amendment calling for a referendum on whether the UK should remain in the EU, rather than just on the Lisbon Treaty itself.
The Speaker decided not to select that amendment for debate.
Ed Davey, then the Liberal Democrats' foreign affairs spokesman, repeatedly challenged the ruling on points of order, calling it "an outrage".
Deputy Speaker Sir Michael Lord eventually named and ejected Davey from the Chamber.
Nick Clegg and the rest of the Lib Dem MPs then walked out in protest.
As for video: there almost certainly was a live BBC Parliament feed, but it's surprisingly difficult to find online today.
The best leads are:
The official Hansard transcript of the exchange, which confirms the sequence of events and Davey's expulsion.
Contemporary news reports from The Guardian and Politics.co.uk, both of which describe the walkout.
A Lib Dem Voice post from the day reporting that Davey had been thrown out and that the parliamentary party had walked out.
Is there actually a clip? I couldn't find an easily accessible YouTube or Parliament-hosted video of the incident itself.
If it still exists publicly, it's most likely to be:
in the BBC Parliament archive (though much of the 2008 output isn't indexed online),
in a news package from BBC News or Sky News from 26 February 2008,
or in an archived TV recording uploaded years ago under a less obvious title.
The search results today don't surface a working video of the actual ejection or walkout.
If you're interested, I can also help dig into TV archive sources (including the BBC Genome and Internet Archive) to see whether a surviving recording of that specific Commons exchange is available somewhere obscure.
Here's your clip of the Deputy Speaker chucking out Ed Davey:
Edit the time parameter to see the before and after (scrubbing is difficult).
Surprisingly quick to find, though not by his name (maybe due to "Rt Hon" being in the menu, and he wasn't then), using a search by date then looking for the piece of the debate)
Massive kudos to MattW and his searching abilitiea here. Real intelligence still trumps artificial intelligemce!
Thanks. The key was being given the exact date, and looking in the archive back at Lib Dem Voice - which is still pretty much unchanged from 2007, so as with Word Press all the different types of archive (including eg funny things such as tag feeds). Back then I made a deliberate point of being cross-partisan, so I actually wrote for all 3 main parties at least once mainly around "politics and the internet", and got to know how they worked.
I was surprised that the main long archive available was Westminster Live. The surprising omission that really needs to be online is a public archive of the full run of "Today in Parliament" from Radio 4, which apparently goes back to October 1945 (I thought it was mid-1970s).
The Mike Smithson assessment of political betting, and all the "over-optimistic Tories" differently queering the pitch, was pure serendipity. It was the next line down in the LDV list of titles for February 2008: https://www.libdemvoice.org/date/2008/02
The longest period of dry days ever recorded in the UK is 73 consecutive days without rain, which occurred in Mile End, East London in 1893.
This historic dry spell lasted from March 4 to May 15, 1893, during an exceptionally dry and warm spring caused by a dominant high-pressure system.
Top Historic UK Dry Spells While the 1893 record stands as the absolute maximum, several other notable extended dry streaks have been officially logged across the country:
73 Days (1893): Mile End, London (The absolute UK record). 72 Days (1893): Twickenham, Greater London. 70 Days (1969): Sudbury and Washmere Green in Suffolk went without rainfall from August 31 to November 8. 60 Days (1893): Multiple areas across Kent and Sussex, including Maidstone, Lewes, and Hastings. 42 Days (1947): Large areas of Essex experienced a massive 6-week "absolute drought". 39 Days (1976): Jersey recorded its longest-ever absolute drought during the infamous, punishing summer heatwave of 1976.
..Spain has declared a national emergency, the first time the country has ever done so over a wildfire.
France’s evacuations constituted “probably” the biggest peacetime evacuation the country has ever seen, its interior minister said.
I thought that Burnham was meant to be good at this politics malarkey.
With flights from Glasgow to Manchester and wearing three hundred quid jeans, he's just making ammunition for his opponents.
Get a grip, lad.
£300 jeans?? I get my suits for about that. Of course I am a man of the people.
Flying commercial from Glasgow to Manchester is hardly the bling lifestyle. Can be cheaper than the rail fare.
By the time you have faffed about with airports at both ends and been dumped in the back of beyond at Manchester I would be amazed if it was any quicker. Maybe queues are less of an issue if you are PM.
I bet he doesn’t get charged iniquitous drop off/pick up charges at either end. He needs to take the airport bus to be a real man of the people.
You all need to do what our Tesla correspondent does and drive all the way from (iirc) the north coast to Devon. If he does it weekly that is my entire annual mileage in little more than a month.
So, Laura K has done a full interview with Burnham for the BBC, to be broadcast on Panorama and I-player tomorrow. But they are releasing little snippets this morning to whet the appetite. Am I alone in finding this irritating? Either release the full interview now, or don't release anything until it's on tomorrow. It's just clickbait to get some headlines today, but is bound to be selective.
I thought that Burnham was meant to be good at this politics malarkey.
With flights from Glasgow to Manchester and wearing three hundred quid jeans, he's just making ammunition for his opponents.
Get a grip, lad.
£300 jeans?? I get my suits for about that. Of course I am a man of the people.
Flying commercial from Glasgow to Manchester is hardly the bling lifestyle. Can be cheaper than the rail fare.
Except that he didn’t fly commercial, he was on the government Airbus A321.
(Actually I don’t have a problem with the PM and entourage taking the government plane on a multi-leg trip, he was in Glasgow for the Commonweath Games opening ceremony. The critisism will come if he keeps needlessly dragging dozens of people from London to Manchester every Friday, just so he can be back home a day early).
The government plane(s) work out cheaper, IIRC. Because of the security issue, mainly.
The UKG VIP A321is owned by the government but operated by Titan - worst of both worlds! Presumably they do it this way because the chances of retaining A32x type rated RAF crew after their return-of-service period is 0%.
Haha true dat. Who would want to do Kittyhawk flights for one day longer than committed, when BA or EasyJet would offer a six-figure salary to jump across to civvy street?
F1: Hamilton and Antonelli each have a three place grid drop, for impeding and yellow flag infringements respectively. Glad I didn't make an early bet on Hamilton (not impossible to win but Hungary's rough for passing).
Actually the Ferrari has a decent chance. Unfortunately that's now Leclerc's Ferrari.
Had they been starting 2/3, it would have been odds on.
Dirty side of the track, I think, may be a big problem for Leclerc, and others with even numbers.
Comments
The Navy is fucked: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gru2EDJvj9Q
The nukes are fucked: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2Z0Y-mFMBk
The Navy is really fucked: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBe_36XfZb4
The entire military is fucked: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7JxykuyxBo
Warships and Warriors
The amphibious navy is fucked: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ckhBA8cp-k
The resupply ships are fucked: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4eYjkFBFwc
The subs are fucked: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RF0g-mPJafA
No, the subs are really fucked: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SprdigWmKA
The entire Navy is fucked: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1WCx7Tqw8M
Not What You Think
The destroyers are fucked (but there's a reason for that): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDKwEzlIm_k
The Navy is fucked: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlSZFZvk7Qc
...and so on
So you'd need something around 10,000 of them to provide the equivalent of a single earthbound GW datacentre.
Elon is speed running our way towards a large Kessler event. Not so bad in very low Earth orbit - you'd only lose space for a few years at Starlink's lower altitude before orbital decay cleared the debris - but at 500km plus, civilisationally catastrophic, potentially.
So SpaceX could make negative trillions.
I don't think a film adaptation can adequately express that.
Miss Piggy: Penelope
Telemachus: Kermits nephew
Agamemnon: the eagle one
The Trojan Horse: Fozzie Bear. Or Gonzo. I just want to see Kermit climbing out of Fozzie's bottom. You would pay to see that.
All the bad guys are played by humans. All the good guys are played by Muppets. I don't know enough about the tale to cast Statler and Waldorf. The female good guys other than Penelope to be played by Janice. Michael Caine plays the old wise soothsayer: I assume there's one somewhere, there usually is.
For many of the important protagonists that's not very clear.
Agamemnon is a bad guy, fairly unequivocally (see the Orestia).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oresteia
Odysseus certainly isn't a good guy.
Agamemnon is a dick by any standard, but judging others by a modern perspective, when the events occurred (most likely) over 3,000 years ago and they had a different moral structure might be deemed anachronistic.
I'm sure they came up with that form of words entirely by their own choice.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yv4r5g55do
..Tice told the BBC earlier this month that it was entirely his choice for the company to give half of the money from Fiona Cottrell to his party..
And
..Asked by the Sunday Times if Cottrell had transferred money to his mother before she made donations to Reform UK, his lawyers at Carter Ruck said: "Our client has confirmed his instructions that any donations by his mother have been entirely her own decision."..
When your deep in your own shit of alleged corruption and wrong doing blame the people who are telling everyone that you are deep in the shit of your alleged wrong doing.
Trump playbook, it might be shit it is wrong but it's not my fault its the fault of the people alleging I did it your honour!
Not inconceivable that a well place header by Andy Street / Ruth Davison or both in the coming weeks could turn the 2026 Tory Party Conference in to something resembling the old internecine Bexit type splits between the centrists and the bog eyed kemiloons
The Murdoch press are totally on board with "make me sustainable, but not yet" and the nostalgic idea that the North Sea can make any meaningful difference to energy costs or the public finances. See today's top leader;
https://www.thetimes.com/article/daf7221e-8512-4873-bf0d-9e8770fdf748?shareToken=232543f10d737920c758473c79eff3e5
(The key thing about newspapers is that nobody under the age of about 50 buys them, and publishers aren't even trying to attract anyone younger any more.)
As for Andy S or Ruth D making a stand... look at what didn't happen with the Rwanda madness. There might be some clucking, but institutional loyalty tends to win out fairly rapidly. We're not called wets for nothing.
A glorified Go Kart Track bettered only for utter boredom by Monaco
We are promised a “10-year plan”, but the chef is still working on the recipe and the dish won’t come out of the oven until sometime in the autumn. The opening flurry of announcements, designed to advertise that a new regime is up and running, has been about business rates on pubs, bus fares, utility bills and rough sleeping. Welcome to government by the Mayor of Great Britain. This will be quite popular, at least for a while.
[Burnham] hopes modest changes will be seen as a down payment on better times to come. He’s seeking to lure voters back from the Greens and contain Reform by fashioning a leftish version of populism. He’s also using these applause-seeking initiatives to buy himself space while he grapples with the seriously knotty challenges facing his government, such as fixing social care and funding defence. . “He’s spent his first week spending money. That can’t go on for long,” says one of the cabinet members sacked by Mr Burnham. “We’re not in the real world yet.”
His pledge to “do politics differently” is regarded as a sick joke by the casualties of the brutal reshuffle, which lavished rewards on his followers while dishing out retribution on those who resisted his coronation. To his supporters, the spoils. For those left out in the cold, this feels cruelly factional. The dispossessed will probably bite their tongue for the time being, not wanting to come across as churlish. But when the waters get choppy, they will relish his discomfort.
And those nice Reform people have cut the funding for children's' holiday food vouchers. This targets the most deprived families in the county.
It’s notable that in two world wars, oil supply for the fleet wasn’t a big issue.
Similarly, looking at other matters, requires taking an overall view.
It’s long been a part of Operational Research to discuss security of supply chains. The problem is that the cheapest way to get to the next election is to do nothing.
For example, PPE for COVID showed a massive gap. Analysis of the gap shows that using disposable PPE (as perviously) for a pandemic is extremely expensive - the material doesn’t have a long shelf life and would require
1) huge stockpiles to be made and throw away regularly
2) vast stockpiles of precursor chemicals - which have their own shelf life issues.
So nothing was done.
A rational approach would have been to consider a return to the non-disposable PPE - at least as a stockpile for pandemics. Which would also offer the possibility of protecting against other threats - such as airborne virus or chemical attacks.
But that would be expensive (though cheaper than a PPE stockpile/capability), and require Changing The Way We Do Things.
For extra fun - disposable PPE is made from oil, and contributes lots and lots of microplastics to the environment.
One is that Burnham could have constructed a cabinet which was immune from criticism from somewhere within the Labour party. No-one has indicated what that might have looked like. It's just a hard fact that about 50 people think they should be entitled to a top 10 job. Tough.
The second is that taken as a whole the Labour party will always want, and at this moment especially does want, the Labour party to fail.
With flights from Glasgow to Manchester and wearing three hundred quid jeans, he's just making ammunition for his opponents.
Get a grip, lad.
(Remember that Rachel Reeves went much further on reducing energy bills than King Andy, and got approximately zero credit for it.)
(Actually I don’t have a problem with the PM and entourage taking the government plane on a multi-leg trip, he was in Glasgow for the Commonweath Games opening ceremony. The critisism will come if he keeps needlessly dragging dozens of people from London to Manchester every Friday, just so he can be back home a day early).
As an aside, a question for @rcs1000: When PB moves from Vanilla is there any opportunity to make reading multiple blockquotes easier? This particular conversation has 27 comments, which means 27 levels of indented block quote, making it impossible for me at least to read the early comments and nigh on impossible to work out who said what. Just a simple single level indent for what has cone before with
- commenter: comment;
- commenter: comment;
etc. would be much easier to follow. Just a thought.
The longest period of dry days ever recorded in the UK is 73 consecutive days without rain, which occurred in Mile End, East London in 1893.
This historic dry spell lasted from March 4 to May 15, 1893, during an exceptionally dry and warm spring caused by a dominant high-pressure system.
Top Historic UK Dry Spells
While the 1893 record stands as the absolute maximum, several other notable extended dry streaks have been officially logged across the country:
73 Days (1893): Mile End, London (The absolute UK record).
72 Days (1893): Twickenham, Greater London.
70 Days (1969): Sudbury and Washmere Green in Suffolk went without rainfall from August 31 to November 8.
60 Days (1893): Multiple areas across Kent and Sussex, including Maidstone, Lewes, and Hastings.
42 Days (1947): Large areas of Essex experienced a massive 6-week "absolute drought".
39 Days (1976): Jersey recorded its longest-ever absolute drought during the infamous, punishing summer heatwave of 1976.
It is Reform who are the working class party who turn off the aspirational middle class, Farage's party are on 30% with those in the Routine classification, 28% with those in the Intermediate and just 17% with those in the Higher classification
https://ygo-assets-websites-editorial-emea.yougov.net/documents/VotingIntention_MRP_Results_260723_w.pdf
This led, in part to his downfall. Because it reduced Labour polling to new depths. Among other things.
To complain about factionalism and exclusion after that, takes some brass neck.
Berlin police say they are searching for a 21-year-old suspect who they have named as Abdul B.'
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c3r2nz9ed3lt
Unfortunately that's now Leclerc's Ferrari.
Had they been starting 2/3, it would have been odds on.
Explaining his decision, the new prime minister suggested the majority of the electorate "voted for a manifesto" in the last election, and vowed he would "honour that manifesto" with the support of parliamentary colleagues.
Burnham went on to say, "I just think what I most need to do is get Britain focused on getting the country back where it should be, getting it working."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/c935kzyq6r4o
Speaking exclusively to the BBC, Burnham said he had had a good first exchange with Trump, finding him to be "really warm".
But asked twice if he would trust the US president, he did not say, answering, "it's a changing world isn't it, and you just obviously have to call things as they develop".
In the interview, to be broadcast in full on Monday, he said: "I can't at any point say that I won't take a different opinion from him [Trump], that I will need to voice a different idea that is right for Britain."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clye651yzdjo
Troy Jackson, a veteran state politician and logger, secured the nomination Saturday at the party's state convention which was held weeks after the Democratic nominee Graham Platner bowed out due to mounting scandals.
Jackson, who secured 566 votes, defeated the only other candidate in the race, Sandra Pelletier, who received only five votes.'
https://abcnews.com/Politics/troy-jackson-secures-democratic-nomination-maine-senate-race/story?id=135085406
The rain may never fall till after sundown
By 8, the morning fog must disappear
In short, there's simply not
A more congenial spot
For happily-ever-aftering
Than here in ... West Yorkshire
I was surprised that the main long archive available was Westminster Live. The surprising omission that really needs to be online is a public archive of the full run of "Today in Parliament" from Radio 4, which apparently goes back to October 1945 (I thought it was mid-1970s).
The Mike Smithson assessment of political betting, and all the "over-optimistic Tories" differently queering the pitch, was pure serendipity. It was the next line down in the LDV list of titles for February 2008:
https://www.libdemvoice.org/date/2008/02
For Mike's piece, which is fun:
https://www.libdemvoice.org/smithsons-view-why-i-wont-bet-on-the-lib-dems-any-more-2238.html
..Spain has declared a national emergency, the first time the country has ever done so over a wildfire.
France’s evacuations constituted “probably” the biggest peacetime evacuation the country has ever seen, its interior minister said.
Hundreds of firefighters have worked to contain the blazes, which have been fuelled by persistent heatwaves and the climate crisis, but were still unable to stop their advance...<:I>
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/jul/26/europe-wildfires-spain-france-bordeaux-madrid-evacuations
NEW THREAD