Politics UK @PolitlcsUK 🚨 NEW: Andy Burnham is strongly considering replacing council tax and stamp duty with a 0.48% annual tax on a home's current value
Who would value all the houses in a relatively short period of time and who is going to deal with the enormous number of appeals?
Valuation is not hard. Last sale price uprated by the change in the Halifax or Nationwide house price index since the sale. Zoopla, Rightmove and quite a few others already do this. For the handful of houses that haven't been sold since the Nationwide House Price Index started in 1952, use the midpoint of their Council Tax band, uprated from April 1991 by the index.
If it is so simple why has there not been a revaluation for Council Tax since 1991?
Two adjacent terraced houses valued the same in 1991. One maintained in immaculate condition with a loft conversion, the other gone to rack and ruin. They're certainly not worth the same now. The difference could be £100k - £200k, depending on location.
That is the advantage of a proper land value tax over a property value one.
A landowner who invests in and maintains their land should not be penalised over one who neglects it.
You are having a really bad day on PB - you’ve been drinking loopy sauce. Land value tax is completely nutty socialism. What happens to farmers under LVT? There are no good answers what happens to us.
I've no idea about the details of LVT but didn't the original idea come from late 19th century Liberals not "nutty socialists"??
If something is nutty socialism today, it is nutty socialism no matter where it originally came from.
Nor are there any good answers what happens to old lady living alone in family home. If she could defer the hideous Land Value Tax bills to pay at death, it’s back door Dementia Tax.
Though I suspect it will be mainly old ladies living in £1 million+ mansions in central London or Surrey who will be affected most by Burnham's Land Value Tax so Labour won't be too concerned. Though the Tories and LDs certainly will be concerned on the old ladies behalf
Give one good reason why an old lady living in a million pound mansion should not be paying accordingly.
And any old lady in a million pound mansion who wants to downsize currently gets punished heftily with stamp duty - under this proposal stamp duty is abolished so the old lady who downsizes benefits rather than getting punished if they opt to do that.
Maybe as it is a family home than has been in her family for generations and she doesn't want to sell it and downsize
That's her prerogative, but she should be paying accordingly if so.
If she does choose to downsize, then she should not be overly taxed for doing so though.
Why should an old lady who wants to downsize be punished for doing that?
... with even Maureen Lipman saying this week she would vote for Kemi...
Dame Maureen has got close relatives in Israel and she's said in the past about how scared she is for them given the constant missile bombardment. Under Badenoch the Conservatives are solidly pro-Israel (I think - somebody correct me if wrong) and Labour under Burnham is lukewarm, so she has a valid reason for the switch.
Indeed, its sad to see the pro Hamas turn many in Labour have taken. Good to see principled lefties like Maureen take a stance.
It's not pro Hamas, it's anti genocidal, racist Israeli government
Barty seems to process scepticism of the Netanyahu Government as a pro Hamas narrative. Maybe Maureen Lipman is similarly minded.
I support the Israeli opposition that wants to see the corrupt Netanyahu be replaced, but be just as hardline at defeating Hamas.
The problem with Netanyahu is that he is (a) corrupt and (b) been too soft on Hamas.
Not that he has been too hard on them.
No, the problem is that Netanyahu's two goals, defeating Hamas and changing the regime in Iran, are and always were utterly unrealistic.
Israel simply cannot wipe out Hamas while the Palestinians' political grievances remain unaddressed. It has had limited military successes, but at the cost of further entrenching political support for Hames in Gaza.
And the war to overthrow the Iranian regime has been a total and utter failure - in fact, completely counter-productive because it has allowed the Iranian regime to clamp down on the opposition at home even more thoroughly.
All Netanyahu's strategy has achieved is to strengthen his enemies politically, ruin Israel's standing abroad and trap it in a never-ending cycle of war and atrocity.
It's the definition of a futile dead end.
From that point of view, at least, Netanyahu and Putin are twins.
That's quite a defeatist and nihilistic attitude.
It is absolutely possible to militarily defeat evil terrorists and fascist regimes like Hamas and Iran. There is plenty of precedence for doing so like defeating the Tamil Tigers and the Nazis and Imperial Japan.
What is needed is Total War until they are defeated and surrender unconditionally.
The problem is that Trump especially has been weak and chickened out, and Netanyahu has also been pulling his punches.
Israel needs to get more aggressive than it is and end the cycle of violence by eliminating the enemies.
Somewhat amazingly I find myself wanting to steer you back to the light comedy of the Laffer curve.
Barty is an absolutist. Even when it comes to killing civilians by the tens of thousands ... so long as it's done by the 'good guys'.
That is a fair comment.
I hold to the standards that what we did in WWII was right and that is the standard that Ukraine and Israel and other 'good guys' should operate to today.
Anything we did to defeat the Nazis was right and proper and legitimate for either Israel or Ukraine to do today.
War is hell and civilians die in it which is why it should be a last resort, but if you are in that last resort then you better bloody win.
If someone was to show that same indifference to the collective punishment of 2m Israeli citizens inc the slaughter of tens of thousands they would be outing themselves as a rank and disgusting antisemite.
You are no better. You're a sick joke on this topic.
Its not indifference. I literally said in the post you quoted that "war is hell".
That aids the prosecution not the defence. It's a banal throwaway phrase that very often (as in this case) precedes a justification of atrocities.
Specifically the utter nonsense of a WW2 comparison - equating the perpetrators of a terrorist attack against the dominant military power in the region, nuclear armed and backed to the hilt by the mighty USA, with the Nazi war machine.
I mean, cmon. You're taking the piss.
Sanctimonius holier than thou bullshit.
Its not a throwaway phrase, its the truth.
And it is not remotely nonsense to make a WW2 comparison. Hamas are every bit as evil as the Nazis and with an explicit goal to kill every Jew they can just like the Nazis.
You seem to think just because the power balance is different that is no reason to tackle and excise the evil. That is inexcusable and wrong.
Of course the power dynamic and proportionality is relevant.
Eg if a military unit obliterates a whole town and its population in order to kill a handful of enemy operatives who are hiding there that is not ok.
It's ridiculous to view Israel Palestine as a simple Good v Evil conflict - as regards the Oct 7th attack and the destruction of Gaza in response it's Evil v Evil.
Israel has not destroyed its population.
It very easily could and the way you speak about it is as if they had - but if they had then the conflict would be over and the cycle of violence ended, but in the most evil and horrific way imaginable. A real life genocide.
But they've not done that. Because they're not the evil ones, they could, but they don't.
Yet people here still demean actual genocides and actual war crimes by lobbing around such words like confetti.
Sure, they've only razed the place to the ground, killed 70k mostly innocent people, injured lots more, and displaced pretty much the whole 2m population. It's the very definition of restraint.
German privacy laws are very odd. Not only can they not name the person suspected of the attack, while publishing a photo of them, for data protection reasons they can't show the photo directly on social media only provide a link to their website which shows the photo.
I remember during COVID that they couldn't actually find out who were oldies for their vaccines, as they aren't allowed to know en masse this information for that reason, so they were guessing based on things like first names.
... with even Maureen Lipman saying this week she would vote for Kemi...
Dame Maureen has got close relatives in Israel and she's said in the past about how scared she is for them given the constant missile bombardment. Under Badenoch the Conservatives are solidly pro-Israel (I think - somebody correct me if wrong) and Labour under Burnham is lukewarm, so she has a valid reason for the switch.
Indeed, its sad to see the pro Hamas turn many in Labour have taken. Good to see principled lefties like Maureen take a stance.
It's not pro Hamas, it's anti genocidal, racist Israeli government
Barty seems to process scepticism of the Netanyahu Government as a pro Hamas narrative. Maybe Maureen Lipman is similarly minded.
I support the Israeli opposition that wants to see the corrupt Netanyahu be replaced, but be just as hardline at defeating Hamas.
The problem with Netanyahu is that he is (a) corrupt and (b) been too soft on Hamas.
Not that he has been too hard on them.
No, the problem is that Netanyahu's two goals, defeating Hamas and changing the regime in Iran, are and always were utterly unrealistic.
Israel simply cannot wipe out Hamas while the Palestinians' political grievances remain unaddressed. It has had limited military successes, but at the cost of further entrenching political support for Hames in Gaza.
And the war to overthrow the Iranian regime has been a total and utter failure - in fact, completely counter-productive because it has allowed the Iranian regime to clamp down on the opposition at home even more thoroughly.
All Netanyahu's strategy has achieved is to strengthen his enemies politically, ruin Israel's standing abroad and trap it in a never-ending cycle of war and atrocity.
It's the definition of a futile dead end.
From that point of view, at least, Netanyahu and Putin are twins.
That's quite a defeatist and nihilistic attitude.
It is absolutely possible to militarily defeat evil terrorists and fascist regimes like Hamas and Iran. There is plenty of precedence for doing so like defeating the Tamil Tigers and the Nazis and Imperial Japan.
What is needed is Total War until they are defeated and surrender unconditionally.
The problem is that Trump especially has been weak and chickened out, and Netanyahu has also been pulling his punches.
Israel needs to get more aggressive than it is and end the cycle of violence by eliminating the enemies.
Somewhat amazingly I find myself wanting to steer you back to the light comedy of the Laffer curve.
Barty is an absolutist. Even when it comes to killing civilians by the tens of thousands ... so long as it's done by the 'good guys'.
That is a fair comment.
I hold to the standards that what we did in WWII was right and that is the standard that Ukraine and Israel and other 'good guys' should operate to today.
Anything we did to defeat the Nazis was right and proper and legitimate for either Israel or Ukraine to do today.
War is hell and civilians die in it which is why it should be a last resort, but if you are in that last resort then you better bloody win.
If someone was to show that same indifference to the collective punishment of 2m Israeli citizens inc the slaughter of tens of thousands they would be outing themselves as a rank and disgusting antisemite.
You are no better. You're a sick joke on this topic.
Its not indifference. I literally said in the post you quoted that "war is hell".
That aids the prosecution not the defence. It's a banal throwaway phrase that very often (as in this case) precedes a justification of atrocities.
Specifically the utter nonsense of a WW2 comparison - equating the perpetrators of a terrorist attack against the dominant military power in the region, nuclear armed and backed to the hilt by the mighty USA, with the Nazi war machine.
I mean, cmon. You're taking the piss.
Sanctimonius holier than thou bullshit.
Its not a throwaway phrase, its the truth.
And it is not remotely nonsense to make a WW2 comparison. Hamas are every bit as evil as the Nazis and with an explicit goal to kill every Jew they can just like the Nazis.
You seem to think just because the power balance is different that is no reason to tackle and excise the evil. That is inexcusable and wrong.
Of course the power dynamic and proportionality is relevant.
Eg if a military unit obliterates a whole town and its population in order to kill a handful of enemy operatives who are hiding there that is not ok.
It's ridiculous to view Israel Palestine as a simple Good v Evil conflict - as regards the Oct 7th attack and the destruction of Gaza in response it's Evil v Evil.
Israel has not destroyed its population.
It very easily could and the way you speak about it is as if they had - but if they had then the conflict would be over and the cycle of violence ended, but in the most evil and horrific way imaginable. A real life genocide.
But they've not done that. Because they're not the evil ones, they could, but they don't.
Yet people here still demean actual genocides and actual war crimes by lobbing around such words like confetti.
Sure, they've only razed the place to the ground, killed 70k mostly innocent people, injured lots more, and displaced pretty much the whole 2m population. It's the very definition of restraint.
Buildings do tend to get damaged in war. Same happened in the UK and Nazi Germany.
They've not destroyed the population though.
Best way to avoid collateral damage is to avoid wars in the first place. Not an option when you're facing an enemy like Hamas though.
Politics UK @PolitlcsUK 🚨 NEW: Andy Burnham is strongly considering replacing council tax and stamp duty with a 0.48% annual tax on a home's current value
Who would value all the houses in a relatively short period of time and who is going to deal with the enormous number of appeals?
Valuation is not hard. Last sale price uprated by the change in the Halifax or Nationwide house price index since the sale. Zoopla, Rightmove and quite a few others already do this. For the handful of houses that haven't been sold since the Nationwide House Price Index started in 1952, use the midpoint of their Council Tax band, uprated from April 1991 by the index.
If it is so simple why has there not been a revaluation for Council Tax since 1991?
Two adjacent terraced houses valued the same in 1991. One maintained in immaculate condition with a loft conversion, the other gone to rack and ruin. They're certainly not worth the same now. The difference could be £100k - £200k, depending on location.
That is the advantage of a proper land value tax over a property value one.
A landowner who invests in and maintains their land should not be penalised over one who neglects it.
You are having a really bad day on PB - you’ve been drinking loopy sauce. Land value tax is completely nutty socialism. What happens to farmers under LVT? There are no good answers what happens to us.
I've no idea about the details of LVT but didn't the original idea come from late 19th century Liberals not "nutty socialists"??
If something is nutty socialism today, it is nutty socialism no matter where it originally came from.
Nor are there any good answers what happens to old lady living alone in family home. If she could defer the hideous Land Value Tax bills to pay at death, it’s back door Dementia Tax.
Wiki tells me Adam Smith was in favour.
Yes the most arch of all liberal thinkers. But died in 1790. Smith fought Mercantilism and Feudalism with his idea of a Liberal Society - he had zero contact or knowledge of Modern Socialism, or our modern society, so the question is would he be backing socialist Burnham in Land Value Tax in modern Britain today? Or would Adam Smith be posting on PB “I am Adam Smith, and I urge you to listen to MoonRabbits warnings about implementing this type of land tax in modern Britain. She is absolutely right when she tales you the land values are higher in the south than the north, so the south will soon be being fleeced to fund the north via dollops of the new tax handed out to northern socialist mayors, creating a Two Tier country instantly. Civil Wars have started over less. And as for that resident pirate supporting using this tax to force little Doris out of her home and community, that’s not liberalism, thats hooliganism.”
I am certainly not. It is allowing me to do things in days that previously took months (if at all) and learn new things at an incredibly accelerated rate.
Politics UK @PolitlcsUK 🚨 NEW: Andy Burnham is strongly considering replacing council tax and stamp duty with a 0.48% annual tax on a home's current value
Who would value all the houses in a relatively short period of time and who is going to deal with the enormous number of appeals?
Valuation is not hard. Last sale price uprated by the change in the Halifax or Nationwide house price index since the sale. Zoopla, Rightmove and quite a few others already do this. For the handful of houses that haven't been sold since the Nationwide House Price Index started in 1952, use the midpoint of their Council Tax band, uprated from April 1991 by the index.
If it is so simple why has there not been a revaluation for Council Tax since 1991?
Two adjacent terraced houses valued the same in 1991. One maintained in immaculate condition with a loft conversion, the other gone to rack and ruin. They're certainly not worth the same now. The difference could be £100k - £200k, depending on location.
That is the advantage of a proper land value tax over a property value one.
A landowner who invests in and maintains their land should not be penalised over one who neglects it.
What if a neighbour applies fir olanning permission for a hideous extension and gets it? Bad enough but because your house is almost identical you could get it to. So your land is more valuable and you must pay more tax.
But your land doesn't currently have the planning permission, and won't have the extension on it. So your neighbour will pay more tax, unless you choose to go down the same route.
Farmers should pay LVT based on the land's value as farmland. As soon as planning permission for a housing estate is gained, then the land value and tax paid should multiply. Berkeley Homes should then pay the increased rate until sold.
Politics UK @PolitlcsUK 🚨 NEW: Andy Burnham is strongly considering replacing council tax and stamp duty with a 0.48% annual tax on a home's current value
Who would value all the houses in a relatively short period of time and who is going to deal with the enormous number of appeals?
Valuation is not hard. Last sale price uprated by the change in the Halifax or Nationwide house price index since the sale. Zoopla, Rightmove and quite a few others already do this. For the handful of houses that haven't been sold since the Nationwide House Price Index started in 1952, use the midpoint of their Council Tax band, uprated from April 1991 by the index.
If it is so simple why has there not been a revaluation for Council Tax since 1991?
Two adjacent terraced houses valued the same in 1991. One maintained in immaculate condition with a loft conversion, the other gone to rack and ruin. They're certainly not worth the same now. The difference could be £100k - £200k, depending on location.
That is the advantage of a proper land value tax over a property value one.
A landowner who invests in and maintains their land should not be penalised over one who neglects it.
You are having a really bad day on PB - you’ve been drinking loopy sauce. Land value tax is completely nutty socialism. What happens to farmers under LVT? There are no good answers what happens to us.
I've no idea about the details of LVT but didn't the original idea come from late 19th century Liberals not "nutty socialists"??
If something is nutty socialism today, it is nutty socialism no matter where it originally came from.
Nor are there any good answers what happens to old lady living alone in family home. If she could defer the hideous Land Value Tax bills to pay at death, it’s back door Dementia Tax.
Wiki tells me Adam Smith was in favour.
Yes the most arch of all liberal thinkers. But died in 1790. Smith fought Mercantilism and Feudalism with his idea of a Liberal Society - he had zero contact or knowledge of Modern Socialism, or our modern society, so the question is would he be backing socialist Burnham in Land Value Tax in modern Britain today? Or would Adam Smith be posting on PB “I am Adam Smith, and I urge you to listen to MoonRabbits warnings about implementing this type of land tax in modern Britain. She is absolutely right when she tales you the land values are higher in the south than the north, so the south will soon be being fleeced to fund the north via dollops of the new tax handed out to northern socialist mayors, creating a Two Tier country instantly. Civil Wars have started over less. And as for that resident pirate supporting using this tax to force little Doris out of her home and community, that’s not liberalism, thats hooliganism.”
We already have land taxes. Council tax is based on property prices. Business rates used to be but I think they are now based 9n turnover. There is a tax on buying and selling real property.
I am certainly not. It is allowing me to do things in days that previously took months (if at all) and learn new things at an incredibly accelerated rate.
It can be very useful. The problem for a lot of workers is they are being asked to make use of it to magically become a lot more efficient, and either the tool is not up to it, they have not been shown how to actually make use of it, or the bosses have wildly inflated expectations of what it can reasonably achieve (or all three).
So for many people 'before AI' is less about literally a time before such tools were available, and more about the anxiety of knowing your job is under threat because bosses with limited understanding are desperate (through necessity or otherwise) for magical solutions, and they are forcing you to use those tools (poorly) as part of that search to get rid of you to boot. Which because it is being done poorly might even make things more difficult, not less.
Politics UK @PolitlcsUK 🚨 NEW: Andy Burnham is strongly considering replacing council tax and stamp duty with a 0.48% annual tax on a home's current value
Who would value all the houses in a relatively short period of time and who is going to deal with the enormous number of appeals?
Valuation is not hard. Last sale price uprated by the change in the Halifax or Nationwide house price index since the sale. Zoopla, Rightmove and quite a few others already do this. For the handful of houses that haven't been sold since the Nationwide House Price Index started in 1952, use the midpoint of their Council Tax band, uprated from April 1991 by the index.
If it is so simple why has there not been a revaluation for Council Tax since 1991?
Two adjacent terraced houses valued the same in 1991. One maintained in immaculate condition with a loft conversion, the other gone to rack and ruin. They're certainly not worth the same now. The difference could be £100k - £200k, depending on location.
That is the advantage of a proper land value tax over a property value one.
A landowner who invests in and maintains their land should not be penalised over one who neglects it.
You are having a really bad day on PB - you’ve been drinking loopy sauce. Land value tax is completely nutty socialism. What happens to farmers under LVT? There are no good answers what happens to us.
I've no idea about the details of LVT but didn't the original idea come from late 19th century Liberals not "nutty socialists"??
If something is nutty socialism today, it is nutty socialism no matter where it originally came from.
Nor are there any good answers what happens to old lady living alone in family home. If she could defer the hideous Land Value Tax bills to pay at death, it’s back door Dementia Tax.
Though I suspect it will be mainly old ladies living in £1 million+ mansions in central London or Surrey who will be affected most by Burnham's Land Value Tax so Labour won't be too concerned. Though the Tories and LDs certainly will be concerned on the old ladies behalf
Give one good reason why an old lady living in a million pound mansion should not be paying accordingly.
And any old lady in a million pound mansion who wants to downsize currently gets punished heftily with stamp duty - under this proposal stamp duty is abolished so the old lady who downsizes benefits rather than getting punished if they opt to do that.
Maybe as it is a family home than has been in her family for generations and she doesn't want to sell it and downsize
That's her prerogative, but she should be paying accordingly if so.
If she does choose to downsize, then she should not be overly taxed for doing so though.
Why should an old lady who wants to downsize be punished for doing that?
Have you never heard of the Dementia Tax and understand the reasons why it is so hated? Burnham’s LVT is the new Dementia Tax.
You haven’t answered what happens to farms and farmhouses under LVT, that’s because you don’t have a good answer. No one does.
This was supposed to be the quiet recovery of public finances, debt levels, slowly improve the economy and public services Parliament. This new radical leftist government are genuine threat to our country.
Politics UK @PolitlcsUK 🚨 NEW: Andy Burnham is strongly considering replacing council tax and stamp duty with a 0.48% annual tax on a home's current value
Who would value all the houses in a relatively short period of time and who is going to deal with the enormous number of appeals?
Valuation is not hard. Last sale price uprated by the change in the Halifax or Nationwide house price index since the sale. Zoopla, Rightmove and quite a few others already do this. For the handful of houses that haven't been sold since the Nationwide House Price Index started in 1952, use the midpoint of their Council Tax band, uprated from April 1991 by the index.
If it is so simple why has there not been a revaluation for Council Tax since 1991?
Two adjacent terraced houses valued the same in 1991. One maintained in immaculate condition with a loft conversion, the other gone to rack and ruin. They're certainly not worth the same now. The difference could be £100k - £200k, depending on location.
That is the advantage of a proper land value tax over a property value one.
A landowner who invests in and maintains their land should not be penalised over one who neglects it.
You are having a really bad day on PB - you’ve been drinking loopy sauce. Land value tax is completely nutty socialism. What happens to farmers under LVT? There are no good answers what happens to us.
I've no idea about the details of LVT but didn't the original idea come from late 19th century Liberals not "nutty socialists"??
If something is nutty socialism today, it is nutty socialism no matter where it originally came from.
Nor are there any good answers what happens to old lady living alone in family home. If she could defer the hideous Land Value Tax bills to pay at death, it’s back door Dementia Tax.
Though I suspect it will be mainly old ladies living in £1 million+ mansions in central London or Surrey who will be affected most by Burnham's Land Value Tax so Labour won't be too concerned. Though the Tories and LDs certainly will be concerned on the old ladies behalf
Give one good reason why an old lady living in a million pound mansion should not be paying accordingly.
And any old lady in a million pound mansion who wants to downsize currently gets punished heftily with stamp duty - under this proposal stamp duty is abolished so the old lady who downsizes benefits rather than getting punished if they opt to do that.
Maybe as it is a family home than has been in her family for generations and she doesn't want to sell it and downsize
That's her prerogative, but she should be paying accordingly if so.
If she does choose to downsize, then she should not be overly taxed for doing so though.
Why should an old lady who wants to downsize be punished for doing that?
Have you never heard of the Dementia Tax and understand the reasons why it is so hated? Burnham’s LVT is the new Dementia Tax.
You haven’t answered what happens to farms and farmhouses under LVT, that’s because you don’t have a good answer. No one does.
This was supposed to be the quiet recovery of public finances, debt levels, slowly improve the economy and public services Parliament. This new radical leftist government are genuine threat to our country.
I didn't answer because JohnLilburne answered it well and I had nothing further to add.
Tax land zoned as farming as farmland. If zoned for housing, tax it accordingly. What's the issue there?
Stamp duty is a very harmful tax that is a threat to mobility and heftily penalises those who "get on their bike". Anyone who believes in mobility and hard work and getting on with your life should want to see it abolished.
"Inside the London borough that has banned phones from all schools
Pupils in Barnet are said to be happier, more sociable, better behaved and their academic results have improved — and they don’t miss their phones" (£)
Politics UK @PolitlcsUK 🚨 NEW: Andy Burnham is strongly considering replacing council tax and stamp duty with a 0.48% annual tax on a home's current value
Who would value all the houses in a relatively short period of time and who is going to deal with the enormous number of appeals?
Valuation is not hard. Last sale price uprated by the change in the Halifax or Nationwide house price index since the sale. Zoopla, Rightmove and quite a few others already do this. For the handful of houses that haven't been sold since the Nationwide House Price Index started in 1952, use the midpoint of their Council Tax band, uprated from April 1991 by the index.
If it is so simple why has there not been a revaluation for Council Tax since 1991?
Two adjacent terraced houses valued the same in 1991. One maintained in immaculate condition with a loft conversion, the other gone to rack and ruin. They're certainly not worth the same now. The difference could be £100k - £200k, depending on location.
That is the advantage of a proper land value tax over a property value one.
A landowner who invests in and maintains their land should not be penalised over one who neglects it.
You are having a really bad day on PB - you’ve been drinking loopy sauce. Land value tax is completely nutty socialism. What happens to farmers under LVT? There are no good answers what happens to us.
I've no idea about the details of LVT but didn't the original idea come from late 19th century Liberals not "nutty socialists"??
If something is nutty socialism today, it is nutty socialism no matter where it originally came from.
Nor are there any good answers what happens to old lady living alone in family home. If she could defer the hideous Land Value Tax bills to pay at death, it’s back door Dementia Tax.
Wiki tells me Adam Smith was in favour.
Yes the most arch of all liberal thinkers. But died in 1790. Smith fought Mercantilism and Feudalism with his idea of a Liberal Society - he had zero contact or knowledge of Modern Socialism, or our modern society, so the question is would he be backing socialist Burnham in Land Value Tax in modern Britain today? Or would Adam Smith be posting on PB “I am Adam Smith, and I urge you to listen to MoonRabbits warnings about implementing this type of land tax in modern Britain. She is absolutely right when she tales you the land values are higher in the south than the north, so the south will soon be being fleeced to fund the north via dollops of the new tax handed out to northern socialist mayors, creating a Two Tier country instantly. Civil Wars have started over less. And as for that resident pirate supporting using this tax to force little Doris out of her home and community, that’s not liberalism, thats hooliganism.”
We already have land taxes. Council tax is based on property prices. Business rates used to be but I think they are now based 9n turnover. There is a tax on buying and selling real property.
Yes. But they’re not anything like this proposal from Burnham’s Government. It needs to be seen in context of how keen they are in devolution at the same time as introducing new tax like this - land values are higher in the south than the north, so the south will soon be funding the cheaper Land Value Taxes in the north, via dollops of the new tax handed out to northern socialist mayors to play with. I’m not wrong, this is exactly what Burnham’s governments plan is.
... with even Maureen Lipman saying this week she would vote for Kemi...
Dame Maureen has got close relatives in Israel and she's said in the past about how scared she is for them given the constant missile bombardment. Under Badenoch the Conservatives are solidly pro-Israel (I think - somebody correct me if wrong) and Labour under Burnham is lukewarm, so she has a valid reason for the switch.
Indeed, its sad to see the pro Hamas turn many in Labour have taken. Good to see principled lefties like Maureen take a stance.
It's not pro Hamas, it's anti genocidal, racist Israeli government
Barty seems to process scepticism of the Netanyahu Government as a pro Hamas narrative. Maybe Maureen Lipman is similarly minded.
I support the Israeli opposition that wants to see the corrupt Netanyahu be replaced, but be just as hardline at defeating Hamas.
The problem with Netanyahu is that he is (a) corrupt and (b) been too soft on Hamas.
Not that he has been too hard on them.
No, the problem is that Netanyahu's two goals, defeating Hamas and changing the regime in Iran, are and always were utterly unrealistic.
Israel simply cannot wipe out Hamas while the Palestinians' political grievances remain unaddressed. It has had limited military successes, but at the cost of further entrenching political support for Hames in Gaza.
And the war to overthrow the Iranian regime has been a total and utter failure - in fact, completely counter-productive because it has allowed the Iranian regime to clamp down on the opposition at home even more thoroughly.
All Netanyahu's strategy has achieved is to strengthen his enemies politically, ruin Israel's standing abroad and trap it in a never-ending cycle of war and atrocity.
It's the definition of a futile dead end.
From that point of view, at least, Netanyahu and Putin are twins.
That's quite a defeatist and nihilistic attitude.
It is absolutely possible to militarily defeat evil terrorists and fascist regimes like Hamas and Iran. There is plenty of precedence for doing so like defeating the Tamil Tigers and the Nazis and Imperial Japan.
What is needed is Total War until they are defeated and surrender unconditionally.
The problem is that Trump especially has been weak and chickened out, and Netanyahu has also been pulling his punches.
Israel needs to get more aggressive than it is and end the cycle of violence by eliminating the enemies.
Somewhat amazingly I find myself wanting to steer you back to the light comedy of the Laffer curve.
Barty is an absolutist. Even when it comes to killing civilians by the tens of thousands ... so long as it's done by the 'good guys'.
That is a fair comment.
I hold to the standards that what we did in WWII was right and that is the standard that Ukraine and Israel and other 'good guys' should operate to today.
Anything we did to defeat the Nazis was right and proper and legitimate for either Israel or Ukraine to do today.
War is hell and civilians die in it which is why it should be a last resort, but if you are in that last resort then you better bloody win.
If someone was to show that same indifference to the collective punishment of 2m Israeli citizens inc the slaughter of tens of thousands they would be outing themselves as a rank and disgusting antisemite.
You are no better. You're a sick joke on this topic.
Its not indifference. I literally said in the post you quoted that "war is hell".
That aids the prosecution not the defence. It's a banal throwaway phrase that very often (as in this case) precedes a justification of atrocities.
Specifically the utter nonsense of a WW2 comparison - equating the perpetrators of a terrorist attack against the dominant military power in the region, nuclear armed and backed to the hilt by the mighty USA, with the Nazi war machine.
I mean, cmon. You're taking the piss.
Sanctimonius holier than thou bullshit.
Its not a throwaway phrase, its the truth.
And it is not remotely nonsense to make a WW2 comparison. Hamas are every bit as evil as the Nazis and with an explicit goal to kill every Jew they can just like the Nazis.
You seem to think just because the power balance is different that is no reason to tackle and excise the evil. That is inexcusable and wrong.
Of course the power dynamic and proportionality is relevant.
Eg if a military unit obliterates a whole town and its population in order to kill a handful of enemy operatives who are hiding there that is not ok.
It's ridiculous to view Israel Palestine as a simple Good v Evil conflict - as regards the Oct 7th attack and the destruction of Gaza in response it's Evil v Evil.
Israel has not destroyed its population.
It very easily could and the way you speak about it is as if they had - but if they had then the conflict would be over and the cycle of violence ended, but in the most evil and horrific way imaginable. A real life genocide.
But they've not done that. Because they're not the evil ones, they could, but they don't.
Yet people here still demean actual genocides and actual war crimes by lobbing around such words like confetti.
Sure, they've only razed the place to the ground, killed 70k mostly innocent people, injured lots more, and displaced pretty much the whole 2m population. It's the very definition of restraint.
Buildings do tend to get damaged in war. Same happened in the UK and Nazi Germany.
They've not destroyed the population though.
Best way to avoid collateral damage is to avoid wars in the first place. Not an option when you're facing an enemy like Hamas though.
They have killed or injured or inflicted serious distress on the vast majority of a 2m population most of whom had nothing to do with the Oct 7th attack.
And your problem with this is they haven't been brutal enough. That's a weird take which is driven, can only be driven, by viewing Palestinians as inferior beings who are somehow less than human.
Where did you get that view from? I am genuinely curious about it.
Politics UK @PolitlcsUK 🚨 NEW: Andy Burnham is strongly considering replacing council tax and stamp duty with a 0.48% annual tax on a home's current value
Who would value all the houses in a relatively short period of time and who is going to deal with the enormous number of appeals?
Valuation is not hard. Last sale price uprated by the change in the Halifax or Nationwide house price index since the sale. Zoopla, Rightmove and quite a few others already do this. For the handful of houses that haven't been sold since the Nationwide House Price Index started in 1952, use the midpoint of their Council Tax band, uprated from April 1991 by the index.
If it is so simple why has there not been a revaluation for Council Tax since 1991?
Two adjacent terraced houses valued the same in 1991. One maintained in immaculate condition with a loft conversion, the other gone to rack and ruin. They're certainly not worth the same now. The difference could be £100k - £200k, depending on location.
That is the advantage of a proper land value tax over a property value one.
A landowner who invests in and maintains their land should not be penalised over one who neglects it.
You are having a really bad day on PB - you’ve been drinking loopy sauce. Land value tax is completely nutty socialism. What happens to farmers under LVT? There are no good answers what happens to us.
I've no idea about the details of LVT but didn't the original idea come from late 19th century Liberals not "nutty socialists"??
If something is nutty socialism today, it is nutty socialism no matter where it originally came from.
Nor are there any good answers what happens to old lady living alone in family home. If she could defer the hideous Land Value Tax bills to pay at death, it’s back door Dementia Tax.
Wiki tells me Adam Smith was in favour.
Yes the most arch of all liberal thinkers. But died in 1790. Smith fought Mercantilism and Feudalism with his idea of a Liberal Society - he had zero contact or knowledge of Modern Socialism, or our modern society, so the question is would he be backing socialist Burnham in Land Value Tax in modern Britain today? Or would Adam Smith be posting on PB “I am Adam Smith, and I urge you to listen to MoonRabbits warnings about implementing this type of land tax in modern Britain. She is absolutely right when she tales you the land values are higher in the south than the north, so the south will soon be being fleeced to fund the north via dollops of the new tax handed out to northern socialist mayors, creating a Two Tier country instantly. Civil Wars have started over less. And as for that resident pirate supporting using this tax to force little Doris out of her home and community, that’s not liberalism, thats hooliganism.”
We already have land taxes. Council tax is based on property prices. Business rates used to be but I think they are now based 9n turnover. There is a tax on buying and selling real property.
Yes. But they’re not anything like this proposal from Burnham’s Government. It needs to be seen in context of how keen they are in devolution at the same time as introducing new tax like this - land values are higher in the south than the north, so the south will soon be funding the cheaper Land Value Taxes in the north, via dollops of the new tax handed out to northern socialist mayors to play with. I’m not wrong, this is exactly what Burnham’s governments plan is.
Why shouldn't they?
The South has benefited for years with Treasury investment, see Crossrail and HS1 and HS2 and so on and so forth.
So land is worth more down there. Fine. Pay for it then, always have the option of moving if you don't want to.
Free choice, and free society.
If you don't like where you are, get on your bike. Which far leftist could have said that?
German privacy laws are very odd. Not only can they not name the person suspected of the attack, while publishing a photo of them, for data protection reasons they can't show the photo directly on social media only provide a link to their website which shows the photo.
I remember during COVID that they couldn't actually find out who were oldies for their vaccines, as they aren't allowed to know en masse this information for that reason, so they were guessing based on things like first names.
Of course the absolute worst example of their privacy laws was wrt the case of the Germanwings pilot with severe depression who crashed his plane with hundreds of people on board.
His doctor wasn't allowed to inform his company that he had a serious medical condition due to those laws. In most western countries it probably would have been compulsory for his doctor to have done so.
... with even Maureen Lipman saying this week she would vote for Kemi...
Dame Maureen has got close relatives in Israel and she's said in the past about how scared she is for them given the constant missile bombardment. Under Badenoch the Conservatives are solidly pro-Israel (I think - somebody correct me if wrong) and Labour under Burnham is lukewarm, so she has a valid reason for the switch.
Indeed, its sad to see the pro Hamas turn many in Labour have taken. Good to see principled lefties like Maureen take a stance.
It's not pro Hamas, it's anti genocidal, racist Israeli government
Barty seems to process scepticism of the Netanyahu Government as a pro Hamas narrative. Maybe Maureen Lipman is similarly minded.
I support the Israeli opposition that wants to see the corrupt Netanyahu be replaced, but be just as hardline at defeating Hamas.
The problem with Netanyahu is that he is (a) corrupt and (b) been too soft on Hamas.
Not that he has been too hard on them.
No, the problem is that Netanyahu's two goals, defeating Hamas and changing the regime in Iran, are and always were utterly unrealistic.
Israel simply cannot wipe out Hamas while the Palestinians' political grievances remain unaddressed. It has had limited military successes, but at the cost of further entrenching political support for Hames in Gaza.
And the war to overthrow the Iranian regime has been a total and utter failure - in fact, completely counter-productive because it has allowed the Iranian regime to clamp down on the opposition at home even more thoroughly.
All Netanyahu's strategy has achieved is to strengthen his enemies politically, ruin Israel's standing abroad and trap it in a never-ending cycle of war and atrocity.
It's the definition of a futile dead end.
From that point of view, at least, Netanyahu and Putin are twins.
That's quite a defeatist and nihilistic attitude.
It is absolutely possible to militarily defeat evil terrorists and fascist regimes like Hamas and Iran. There is plenty of precedence for doing so like defeating the Tamil Tigers and the Nazis and Imperial Japan.
What is needed is Total War until they are defeated and surrender unconditionally.
The problem is that Trump especially has been weak and chickened out, and Netanyahu has also been pulling his punches.
Israel needs to get more aggressive than it is and end the cycle of violence by eliminating the enemies.
Somewhat amazingly I find myself wanting to steer you back to the light comedy of the Laffer curve.
Barty is an absolutist. Even when it comes to killing civilians by the tens of thousands ... so long as it's done by the 'good guys'.
That is a fair comment.
I hold to the standards that what we did in WWII was right and that is the standard that Ukraine and Israel and other 'good guys' should operate to today.
Anything we did to defeat the Nazis was right and proper and legitimate for either Israel or Ukraine to do today.
War is hell and civilians die in it which is why it should be a last resort, but if you are in that last resort then you better bloody win.
If someone was to show that same indifference to the collective punishment of 2m Israeli citizens inc the slaughter of tens of thousands they would be outing themselves as a rank and disgusting antisemite.
You are no better. You're a sick joke on this topic.
Its not indifference. I literally said in the post you quoted that "war is hell".
That aids the prosecution not the defence. It's a banal throwaway phrase that very often (as in this case) precedes a justification of atrocities.
Specifically the utter nonsense of a WW2 comparison - equating the perpetrators of a terrorist attack against the dominant military power in the region, nuclear armed and backed to the hilt by the mighty USA, with the Nazi war machine.
I mean, cmon. You're taking the piss.
Sanctimonius holier than thou bullshit.
Its not a throwaway phrase, its the truth.
And it is not remotely nonsense to make a WW2 comparison. Hamas are every bit as evil as the Nazis and with an explicit goal to kill every Jew they can just like the Nazis.
You seem to think just because the power balance is different that is no reason to tackle and excise the evil. That is inexcusable and wrong.
Of course the power dynamic and proportionality is relevant.
Eg if a military unit obliterates a whole town and its population in order to kill a handful of enemy operatives who are hiding there that is not ok.
It's ridiculous to view Israel Palestine as a simple Good v Evil conflict - as regards the Oct 7th attack and the destruction of Gaza in response it's Evil v Evil.
Israel has not destroyed its population.
It very easily could and the way you speak about it is as if they had - but if they had then the conflict would be over and the cycle of violence ended, but in the most evil and horrific way imaginable. A real life genocide.
But they've not done that. Because they're not the evil ones, they could, but they don't.
Yet people here still demean actual genocides and actual war crimes by lobbing around such words like confetti.
Sure, they've only razed the place to the ground, killed 70k mostly innocent people, injured lots more, and displaced pretty much the whole 2m population. It's the very definition of restraint.
Buildings do tend to get damaged in war. Same happened in the UK and Nazi Germany.
They've not destroyed the population though.
Best way to avoid collateral damage is to avoid wars in the first place. Not an option when you're facing an enemy like Hamas though.
They have killed or injured or inflicted serious distress on the vast majority of a 2m population most of whom had nothing to do with the Oct 7th attack.
And your problem with this is they haven't been brutal enough. That's a weird take which is driven, can only be driven, by viewing Palestinians as inferior beings who are somehow less than human.
Where did you get that view from? I am genuinely curious about it.
Complete and utter bollocks.
It is viewed from wanting Hamas defeated.
We treated Germany worse in WWII than Israel has treated the Palestinians. Much worse.
Did we view Germany as somehow less than human? Or just as a human enemy that needs to be defeated.
Politics UK @PolitlcsUK 🚨 NEW: Andy Burnham is strongly considering replacing council tax and stamp duty with a 0.48% annual tax on a home's current value
Who would value all the houses in a relatively short period of time and who is going to deal with the enormous number of appeals?
Valuation is not hard. Last sale price uprated by the change in the Halifax or Nationwide house price index since the sale. Zoopla, Rightmove and quite a few others already do this. For the handful of houses that haven't been sold since the Nationwide House Price Index started in 1952, use the midpoint of their Council Tax band, uprated from April 1991 by the index.
If it is so simple why has there not been a revaluation for Council Tax since 1991?
Two adjacent terraced houses valued the same in 1991. One maintained in immaculate condition with a loft conversion, the other gone to rack and ruin. They're certainly not worth the same now. The difference could be £100k - £200k, depending on location.
That is the advantage of a proper land value tax over a property value one.
A landowner who invests in and maintains their land should not be penalised over one who neglects it.
You are having a really bad day on PB - you’ve been drinking loopy sauce. Land value tax is completely nutty socialism. What happens to farmers under LVT? There are no good answers what happens to us.
I've no idea about the details of LVT but didn't the original idea come from late 19th century Liberals not "nutty socialists"??
If something is nutty socialism today, it is nutty socialism no matter where it originally came from.
Nor are there any good answers what happens to old lady living alone in family home. If she could defer the hideous Land Value Tax bills to pay at death, it’s back door Dementia Tax.
Wiki tells me Adam Smith was in favour.
Yes the most arch of all liberal thinkers. But died in 1790. Smith fought Mercantilism and Feudalism with his idea of a Liberal Society - he had zero contact or knowledge of Modern Socialism, or our modern society, so the question is would he be backing socialist Burnham in Land Value Tax in modern Britain today? Or would Adam Smith be posting on PB “I am Adam Smith, and I urge you to listen to MoonRabbits warnings about implementing this type of land tax in modern Britain. She is absolutely right when she tales you the land values are higher in the south than the north, so the south will soon be being fleeced to fund the north via dollops of the new tax handed out to northern socialist mayors, creating a Two Tier country instantly. Civil Wars have started over less. And as for that resident pirate supporting using this tax to force little Doris out of her home and community, that’s not liberalism, thats hooliganism.”
We already have land taxes. Council tax is based on property prices. Business rates used to be but I think they are now based 9n turnover. There is a tax on buying and selling real property.
Yes. But they’re not anything like this proposal from Burnham’s Government. It needs to be seen in context of how keen they are in devolution at the same time as introducing new tax like this - land values are higher in the south than the north, so the south will soon be funding the cheaper Land Value Taxes in the north, via dollops of the new tax handed out to northern socialist mayors to play with. I’m not wrong, this is exactly what Burnham’s governments plan is.
Why shouldn't they?
The South has benefited for years with Treasury investment, see Crossrail and HS1 and HS2 and so on and so forth.
So land is worth more down there. Fine. Pay for it then, always have the option of moving if you don't want to.
Free choice, and free society.
If you don't like where you are, get on your bike. Which far leftist could have said that?
That Norman Tebbit line only applies if you're heading south to subsidy-junky London. Mainline those dodgy Treasury rules.
Excl: Kemi Badenoch will only support Andy Burnham’s social care reforms if they are funded by cutting spending rather than raising taxes.
Kemi Badenoch demonstrating yet again how unserious she is. Saying the State should not be involved in funding social care with all the problems that entails is a fiscally coherent position. It's what we have at the moment, at least in England. Saying let's have State funded social care but cut taxes to pay for it is pure magic money tree.
Excl: Kemi Badenoch will only support Andy Burnham’s social care reforms if they are funded by cutting spending rather than raising taxes.
Kemi Badenoch demonstrating yet again how unserious she is. Saying the State should not be involved in funding social care with all the problems that entails is a fiscally coherent position. It's what we have at the moment, at least in England. Saying let's have State funded social care but cut taxes to pay for it is pure magic money tree.
... with even Maureen Lipman saying this week she would vote for Kemi...
Dame Maureen has got close relatives in Israel and she's said in the past about how scared she is for them given the constant missile bombardment. Under Badenoch the Conservatives are solidly pro-Israel (I think - somebody correct me if wrong) and Labour under Burnham is lukewarm, so she has a valid reason for the switch.
Indeed, its sad to see the pro Hamas turn many in Labour have taken. Good to see principled lefties like Maureen take a stance.
It's not pro Hamas, it's anti genocidal, racist Israeli government
Barty seems to process scepticism of the Netanyahu Government as a pro Hamas narrative. Maybe Maureen Lipman is similarly minded.
I support the Israeli opposition that wants to see the corrupt Netanyahu be replaced, but be just as hardline at defeating Hamas.
The problem with Netanyahu is that he is (a) corrupt and (b) been too soft on Hamas.
Not that he has been too hard on them.
No, the problem is that Netanyahu's two goals, defeating Hamas and changing the regime in Iran, are and always were utterly unrealistic.
Israel simply cannot wipe out Hamas while the Palestinians' political grievances remain unaddressed. It has had limited military successes, but at the cost of further entrenching political support for Hames in Gaza.
And the war to overthrow the Iranian regime has been a total and utter failure - in fact, completely counter-productive because it has allowed the Iranian regime to clamp down on the opposition at home even more thoroughly.
All Netanyahu's strategy has achieved is to strengthen his enemies politically, ruin Israel's standing abroad and trap it in a never-ending cycle of war and atrocity.
It's the definition of a futile dead end.
From that point of view, at least, Netanyahu and Putin are twins.
That's quite a defeatist and nihilistic attitude.
It is absolutely possible to militarily defeat evil terrorists and fascist regimes like Hamas and Iran. There is plenty of precedence for doing so like defeating the Tamil Tigers and the Nazis and Imperial Japan.
What is needed is Total War until they are defeated and surrender unconditionally.
The problem is that Trump especially has been weak and chickened out, and Netanyahu has also been pulling his punches.
Israel needs to get more aggressive than it is and end the cycle of violence by eliminating the enemies.
Somewhat amazingly I find myself wanting to steer you back to the light comedy of the Laffer curve.
Barty is an absolutist. Even when it comes to killing civilians by the tens of thousands ... so long as it's done by the 'good guys'.
That is a fair comment.
I hold to the standards that what we did in WWII was right and that is the standard that Ukraine and Israel and other 'good guys' should operate to today.
Anything we did to defeat the Nazis was right and proper and legitimate for either Israel or Ukraine to do today.
War is hell and civilians die in it which is why it should be a last resort, but if you are in that last resort then you better bloody win.
If someone was to show that same indifference to the collective punishment of 2m Israeli citizens inc the slaughter of tens of thousands they would be outing themselves as a rank and disgusting antisemite.
You are no better. You're a sick joke on this topic.
Its not indifference. I literally said in the post you quoted that "war is hell".
That aids the prosecution not the defence. It's a banal throwaway phrase that very often (as in this case) precedes a justification of atrocities.
Specifically the utter nonsense of a WW2 comparison - equating the perpetrators of a terrorist attack against the dominant military power in the region, nuclear armed and backed to the hilt by the mighty USA, with the Nazi war machine.
I mean, cmon. You're taking the piss.
Sanctimonius holier than thou bullshit.
Its not a throwaway phrase, its the truth.
And it is not remotely nonsense to make a WW2 comparison. Hamas are every bit as evil as the Nazis and with an explicit goal to kill every Jew they can just like the Nazis.
You seem to think just because the power balance is different that is no reason to tackle and excise the evil. That is inexcusable and wrong.
Of course the power dynamic and proportionality is relevant.
Eg if a military unit obliterates a whole town and its population in order to kill a handful of enemy operatives who are hiding there that is not ok.
It's ridiculous to view Israel Palestine as a simple Good v Evil conflict - as regards the Oct 7th attack and the destruction of Gaza in response it's Evil v Evil.
Israel has not destroyed its population.
It very easily could and the way you speak about it is as if they had - but if they had then the conflict would be over and the cycle of violence ended, but in the most evil and horrific way imaginable. A real life genocide.
But they've not done that. Because they're not the evil ones, they could, but they don't.
Yet people here still demean actual genocides and actual war crimes by lobbing around such words like confetti.
Sure, they've only razed the place to the ground, killed 70k mostly innocent people, injured lots more, and displaced pretty much the whole 2m population. It's the very definition of restraint.
Buildings do tend to get damaged in war. Same happened in the UK and Nazi Germany.
They've not destroyed the population though.
Best way to avoid collateral damage is to avoid wars in the first place. Not an option when you're facing an enemy like Hamas though.
They have killed or injured or inflicted serious distress on the vast majority of a 2m population most of whom had nothing to do with the Oct 7th attack.
And your problem with this is they haven't been brutal enough. That's a weird take which is driven, can only be driven, by viewing Palestinians as inferior beings who are somehow less than human.
Where did you get that view from? I am genuinely curious about it.
Complete and utter bollocks.
It is viewed from wanting Hamas defeated.
We treated Germany worse in WWII than Israel has treated the Palestinians. Much worse.
Did we view Germany as somehow less than human? Or just as a human enemy that needs to be defeated.
Ok I didn't think you'd answer. Worth a try.
But believe me everything you write on Gaza demonstrates that you view Palestinians as sub-human.
As I've pointed out before, if the sort of stuff you come out with on this topic was flipped to be about the mass suffering of Israeli civilians you'd be outing yourself as an antisemite.
Excl: Kemi Badenoch will only support Andy Burnham’s social care reforms if they are funded by cutting spending rather than raising taxes.
Kemi Badenoch demonstrating yet again how unserious she is. Saying the State should not be involved in funding social care with all the problems that entails is a fiscally coherent position. It's what we have at the moment, at least in England. Saying let's have State funded social care but cut taxes to pay for it is pure magic money tree.
She didn't say cut taxes to pay for it.
Sorry you're right. She said cut spending. It's still fiscally incoherent. You broadly pay for what you get. If you are asking the State to take on new activities with additional spending that increases the tax you end up paying
... with even Maureen Lipman saying this week she would vote for Kemi...
Dame Maureen has got close relatives in Israel and she's said in the past about how scared she is for them given the constant missile bombardment. Under Badenoch the Conservatives are solidly pro-Israel (I think - somebody correct me if wrong) and Labour under Burnham is lukewarm, so she has a valid reason for the switch.
Indeed, its sad to see the pro Hamas turn many in Labour have taken. Good to see principled lefties like Maureen take a stance.
It's not pro Hamas, it's anti genocidal, racist Israeli government
Barty seems to process scepticism of the Netanyahu Government as a pro Hamas narrative. Maybe Maureen Lipman is similarly minded.
I support the Israeli opposition that wants to see the corrupt Netanyahu be replaced, but be just as hardline at defeating Hamas.
The problem with Netanyahu is that he is (a) corrupt and (b) been too soft on Hamas.
Not that he has been too hard on them.
No, the problem is that Netanyahu's two goals, defeating Hamas and changing the regime in Iran, are and always were utterly unrealistic.
Israel simply cannot wipe out Hamas while the Palestinians' political grievances remain unaddressed. It has had limited military successes, but at the cost of further entrenching political support for Hames in Gaza.
And the war to overthrow the Iranian regime has been a total and utter failure - in fact, completely counter-productive because it has allowed the Iranian regime to clamp down on the opposition at home even more thoroughly.
All Netanyahu's strategy has achieved is to strengthen his enemies politically, ruin Israel's standing abroad and trap it in a never-ending cycle of war and atrocity.
It's the definition of a futile dead end.
From that point of view, at least, Netanyahu and Putin are twins.
That's quite a defeatist and nihilistic attitude.
It is absolutely possible to militarily defeat evil terrorists and fascist regimes like Hamas and Iran. There is plenty of precedence for doing so like defeating the Tamil Tigers and the Nazis and Imperial Japan.
What is needed is Total War until they are defeated and surrender unconditionally.
The problem is that Trump especially has been weak and chickened out, and Netanyahu has also been pulling his punches.
Israel needs to get more aggressive than it is and end the cycle of violence by eliminating the enemies.
Somewhat amazingly I find myself wanting to steer you back to the light comedy of the Laffer curve.
Barty is an absolutist. Even when it comes to killing civilians by the tens of thousands ... so long as it's done by the 'good guys'.
That is a fair comment.
I hold to the standards that what we did in WWII was right and that is the standard that Ukraine and Israel and other 'good guys' should operate to today.
Anything we did to defeat the Nazis was right and proper and legitimate for either Israel or Ukraine to do today.
War is hell and civilians die in it which is why it should be a last resort, but if you are in that last resort then you better bloody win.
If someone was to show that same indifference to the collective punishment of 2m Israeli citizens inc the slaughter of tens of thousands they would be outing themselves as a rank and disgusting antisemite.
You are no better. You're a sick joke on this topic.
Its not indifference. I literally said in the post you quoted that "war is hell".
That aids the prosecution not the defence. It's a banal throwaway phrase that very often (as in this case) precedes a justification of atrocities.
Specifically the utter nonsense of a WW2 comparison - equating the perpetrators of a terrorist attack against the dominant military power in the region, nuclear armed and backed to the hilt by the mighty USA, with the Nazi war machine.
I mean, cmon. You're taking the piss.
Sanctimonius holier than thou bullshit.
Its not a throwaway phrase, its the truth.
And it is not remotely nonsense to make a WW2 comparison. Hamas are every bit as evil as the Nazis and with an explicit goal to kill every Jew they can just like the Nazis.
You seem to think just because the power balance is different that is no reason to tackle and excise the evil. That is inexcusable and wrong.
Of course the power dynamic and proportionality is relevant.
Eg if a military unit obliterates a whole town and its population in order to kill a handful of enemy operatives who are hiding there that is not ok.
It's ridiculous to view Israel Palestine as a simple Good v Evil conflict - as regards the Oct 7th attack and the destruction of Gaza in response it's Evil v Evil.
Israel has not destroyed its population.
It very easily could and the way you speak about it is as if they had - but if they had then the conflict would be over and the cycle of violence ended, but in the most evil and horrific way imaginable. A real life genocide.
But they've not done that. Because they're not the evil ones, they could, but they don't.
Yet people here still demean actual genocides and actual war crimes by lobbing around such words like confetti.
Sure, they've only razed the place to the ground, killed 70k mostly innocent people, injured lots more, and displaced pretty much the whole 2m population. It's the very definition of restraint.
Buildings do tend to get damaged in war. Same happened in the UK and Nazi Germany.
They've not destroyed the population though.
Best way to avoid collateral damage is to avoid wars in the first place. Not an option when you're facing an enemy like Hamas though.
They have killed or injured or inflicted serious distress on the vast majority of a 2m population most of whom had nothing to do with the Oct 7th attack.
And your problem with this is they haven't been brutal enough. That's a weird take which is driven, can only be driven, by viewing Palestinians as inferior beings who are somehow less than human.
Where did you get that view from? I am genuinely curious about it.
Complete and utter bollocks.
It is viewed from wanting Hamas defeated.
We treated Germany worse in WWII than Israel has treated the Palestinians. Much worse.
Did we view Germany as somehow less than human? Or just as a human enemy that needs to be defeated.
Ok I didn't think you'd answer. Worth a try.
But believe me everything you write on Gaza demonstrates that you view Palestinians as sub-human.
As I've pointed out before, if the sort of stuff you come out with on this topic was flipped to be about the mass suffering of Israeli civilians you'd be outing yourself as an antisemite.
The mass suffering of Palestinians is caused by the Palestinian leadership and the leadership of other Arab countries, which has treated them abjectly time and time again. Rejecting peace time and time again, including at what should have been the founding of a state called Palestine in 1948 (where instead Egypt and Jordan annexed the land) and time and time again since including 2000 when Arafat rejected peace and 2023 when Hamas launched its atrocity and again and again and again. Israel accepted the peace proposals in 1948 and 2000 and did not even have any settlements or troops in Gaza in 2023.
Wanting to see Hamas defeated is not viewing anyone as sub-human. I want to see Russia defeated too. Enemies need to be defeated sometimes. Your cloud cuckoo land idea that we can live without conflict if only we could all get along and so we should not fight Hamas or Russia or any other threats and neither should our allies is just pathetic garbage and not intellectualism or better morals.
Does everyone on the left agree that it's unsustainable for 53% of households to be taking more from the state than they're contributing to it?
I'm not on the left, but I would have thought the number -over people's lifetime, and when you include the value of education, healthcare, pensions, roads, law enforcement, etc.- is going to result in at least 90% of households being net recipients.
Excl: Kemi Badenoch will only support Andy Burnham’s social care reforms if they are funded by cutting spending rather than raising taxes.
Kemi Badenoch demonstrating yet again how unserious she is. Saying the State should not be involved in funding social care with all the problems that entails is a fiscally coherent position. It's what we have at the moment, at least in England. Saying let's have State funded social care but cut taxes to pay for it is pure magic money tree.
She didn't say cut taxes to pay for it.
Sorry you're right. She said cut spending. It's still fiscally incoherent. You broadly pay for what you get. If you are asking the State to take on new activities with additional spending that increases the tax you end up paying
Unless you cut expenditure on something else.
Governance sometimes is about making choices. Saying "we will do this, so therefore we can not do that".
Not adding an ever growing list of expenditures without ever cutting back.
Excl: Kemi Badenoch will only support Andy Burnham’s social care reforms if they are funded by cutting spending rather than raising taxes.
Kemi Badenoch demonstrating yet again how unserious she is. Saying the State should not be involved in funding social care with all the problems that entails is a fiscally coherent position. It's what we have at the moment, at least in England. Saying let's have State funded social care but cut taxes to pay for it is pure magic money tree.
She didn't say cut taxes to pay for it.
Sorry you're right. She said cut spending. It's still fiscally incoherent. You broadly pay for what you get. If you are asking the State to take on new activities with additional spending that increases the tax you end up paying
Unless you cut expenditure on something else.
Governance sometimes is about making choices. Saying "we will do this, so therefore we can not do that".
Not adding an ever growing list of expenditures without ever cutting back.
And what are Kemi Badenoch's choices? She doesn't even hint at having to make a choice let alone say twhat it is.
Excl: Kemi Badenoch will only support Andy Burnham’s social care reforms if they are funded by cutting spending rather than raising taxes.
Kemi Badenoch demonstrating yet again how unserious she is. Saying the State should not be involved in funding social care with all the problems that entails is a fiscally coherent position. It's what we have at the moment, at least in England. Saying let's have State funded social care but cut taxes to pay for it is pure magic money tree.
She didn't say cut taxes to pay for it.
Sorry you're right. She said cut spending. It's still fiscally incoherent. You broadly pay for what you get. If you are asking the State to take on new activities with additional spending that increases the tax you end up paying
Unless you cut expenditure on something else.
Governance sometimes is about making choices. Saying "we will do this, so therefore we can not do that".
Not adding an ever growing list of expenditures without ever cutting back.
And what are Kemi Badenoch's choices? She doesn't even hint at having to make a choice let alone say twhat it is.
She's not the Prime Minister, Burnham is, so if Burnham wants to add a new expenditure he should be detailing what he proposes to stop doing instead.
Like he has done to be fair for the past week. We're not going to do ID cards, so that frees up money to spend on my priority instead.
There are plenty of cuts I could propose that would be sensible, such as abolishing the triple lock, or abolishing planning etc - but the government of the day needs to balance what it can and can't do, rather than insist it can do extra without letting something else go instead.
... with even Maureen Lipman saying this week she would vote for Kemi...
Dame Maureen has got close relatives in Israel and she's said in the past about how scared she is for them given the constant missile bombardment. Under Badenoch the Conservatives are solidly pro-Israel (I think - somebody correct me if wrong) and Labour under Burnham is lukewarm, so she has a valid reason for the switch.
Indeed, its sad to see the pro Hamas turn many in Labour have taken. Good to see principled lefties like Maureen take a stance.
It's not pro Hamas, it's anti genocidal, racist Israeli government
Barty seems to process scepticism of the Netanyahu Government as a pro Hamas narrative. Maybe Maureen Lipman is similarly minded.
I support the Israeli opposition that wants to see the corrupt Netanyahu be replaced, but be just as hardline at defeating Hamas.
The problem with Netanyahu is that he is (a) corrupt and (b) been too soft on Hamas.
Not that he has been too hard on them.
No, the problem is that Netanyahu's two goals, defeating Hamas and changing the regime in Iran, are and always were utterly unrealistic.
Israel simply cannot wipe out Hamas while the Palestinians' political grievances remain unaddressed. It has had limited military successes, but at the cost of further entrenching political support for Hames in Gaza.
And the war to overthrow the Iranian regime has been a total and utter failure - in fact, completely counter-productive because it has allowed the Iranian regime to clamp down on the opposition at home even more thoroughly.
All Netanyahu's strategy has achieved is to strengthen his enemies politically, ruin Israel's standing abroad and trap it in a never-ending cycle of war and atrocity.
It's the definition of a futile dead end.
From that point of view, at least, Netanyahu and Putin are twins.
That's quite a defeatist and nihilistic attitude.
It is absolutely possible to militarily defeat evil terrorists and fascist regimes like Hamas and Iran. There is plenty of precedence for doing so like defeating the Tamil Tigers and the Nazis and Imperial Japan.
What is needed is Total War until they are defeated and surrender unconditionally.
The problem is that Trump especially has been weak and chickened out, and Netanyahu has also been pulling his punches.
Israel needs to get more aggressive than it is and end the cycle of violence by eliminating the enemies.
Somewhat amazingly I find myself wanting to steer you back to the light comedy of the Laffer curve.
Barty is an absolutist. Even when it comes to killing civilians by the tens of thousands ... so long as it's done by the 'good guys'.
That is a fair comment.
I hold to the standards that what we did in WWII was right and that is the standard that Ukraine and Israel and other 'good guys' should operate to today.
Anything we did to defeat the Nazis was right and proper and legitimate for either Israel or Ukraine to do today.
War is hell and civilians die in it which is why it should be a last resort, but if you are in that last resort then you better bloody win.
If someone was to show that same indifference to the collective punishment of 2m Israeli citizens inc the slaughter of tens of thousands they would be outing themselves as a rank and disgusting antisemite.
You are no better. You're a sick joke on this topic.
Its not indifference. I literally said in the post you quoted that "war is hell".
That aids the prosecution not the defence. It's a banal throwaway phrase that very often (as in this case) precedes a justification of atrocities.
Specifically the utter nonsense of a WW2 comparison - equating the perpetrators of a terrorist attack against the dominant military power in the region, nuclear armed and backed to the hilt by the mighty USA, with the Nazi war machine.
I mean, cmon. You're taking the piss.
Sanctimonius holier than thou bullshit.
Its not a throwaway phrase, its the truth.
And it is not remotely nonsense to make a WW2 comparison. Hamas are every bit as evil as the Nazis and with an explicit goal to kill every Jew they can just like the Nazis.
You seem to think just because the power balance is different that is no reason to tackle and excise the evil. That is inexcusable and wrong.
Of course the power dynamic and proportionality is relevant.
Eg if a military unit obliterates a whole town and its population in order to kill a handful of enemy operatives who are hiding there that is not ok.
It's ridiculous to view Israel Palestine as a simple Good v Evil conflict - as regards the Oct 7th attack and the destruction of Gaza in response it's Evil v Evil.
Israel has not destroyed its population.
It very easily could and the way you speak about it is as if they had - but if they had then the conflict would be over and the cycle of violence ended, but in the most evil and horrific way imaginable. A real life genocide.
But they've not done that. Because they're not the evil ones, they could, but they don't.
Yet people here still demean actual genocides and actual war crimes by lobbing around such words like confetti.
Sure, they've only razed the place to the ground, killed 70k mostly innocent people, injured lots more, and displaced pretty much the whole 2m population. It's the very definition of restraint.
Buildings do tend to get damaged in war. Same happened in the UK and Nazi Germany.
They've not destroyed the population though.
Best way to avoid collateral damage is to avoid wars in the first place. Not an option when you're facing an enemy like Hamas though.
They have killed or injured or inflicted serious distress on the vast majority of a 2m population most of whom had nothing to do with the Oct 7th attack.
And your problem with this is they haven't been brutal enough. That's a weird take which is driven, can only be driven, by viewing Palestinians as inferior beings who are somehow less than human.
Where did you get that view from? I am genuinely curious about it.
Complete and utter bollocks.
It is viewed from wanting Hamas defeated.
We treated Germany worse in WWII than Israel has treated the Palestinians. Much worse.
Did we view Germany as somehow less than human? Or just as a human enemy that needs to be defeated.
Ok I didn't think you'd answer. Worth a try.
But believe me everything you write on Gaza demonstrates that you view Palestinians as sub-human.
As I've pointed out before, if the sort of stuff you come out with on this topic was flipped to be about the mass suffering of Israeli civilians you'd be outing yourself as an antisemite.
The mass suffering of Palestinians is caused by the Palestinian leadership and the leadership of other Arab countries, which has treated them abjectly time and time again. Rejecting peace time and time again, including at what should have been the founding of a state called Palestine in 1948 (where instead Egypt and Jordan annexed the land) and time and time again since including 2000 when Arafat rejected peace and 2023 when Hamas launched its atrocity and again and again and again. Israel accepted the peace proposals in 1948 and 2000 and did not even have any settlements or troops in Gaza in 2023.
Wanting to see Hamas defeated is not viewing anyone as sub-human. I want to see Russia defeated too. Enemies need to be defeated sometimes. Your cloud cuckoo land idea that we can live without conflict if only we could all get along and so we should not fight Hamas or Russia or any other threats and neither should our allies is just pathetic garbage and not intellectualism or better morals.
I know you are strongly pro Israel on the matter of the overall long running conflict. But I'm not interested in your take on that. I'm interested in why you view Palestinians as sub human. Or, to tone the language down a bit, as people of lesser worth than Israelis. Because you clearly do. Your language on Gaza shows this without a shadow of a doubt. So why is that? Where's it coming from? That's all I'm asking.
... with even Maureen Lipman saying this week she would vote for Kemi...
Dame Maureen has got close relatives in Israel and she's said in the past about how scared she is for them given the constant missile bombardment. Under Badenoch the Conservatives are solidly pro-Israel (I think - somebody correct me if wrong) and Labour under Burnham is lukewarm, so she has a valid reason for the switch.
Indeed, its sad to see the pro Hamas turn many in Labour have taken. Good to see principled lefties like Maureen take a stance.
It's not pro Hamas, it's anti genocidal, racist Israeli government
Barty seems to process scepticism of the Netanyahu Government as a pro Hamas narrative. Maybe Maureen Lipman is similarly minded.
I support the Israeli opposition that wants to see the corrupt Netanyahu be replaced, but be just as hardline at defeating Hamas.
The problem with Netanyahu is that he is (a) corrupt and (b) been too soft on Hamas.
Not that he has been too hard on them.
No, the problem is that Netanyahu's two goals, defeating Hamas and changing the regime in Iran, are and always were utterly unrealistic.
Israel simply cannot wipe out Hamas while the Palestinians' political grievances remain unaddressed. It has had limited military successes, but at the cost of further entrenching political support for Hames in Gaza.
And the war to overthrow the Iranian regime has been a total and utter failure - in fact, completely counter-productive because it has allowed the Iranian regime to clamp down on the opposition at home even more thoroughly.
All Netanyahu's strategy has achieved is to strengthen his enemies politically, ruin Israel's standing abroad and trap it in a never-ending cycle of war and atrocity.
It's the definition of a futile dead end.
From that point of view, at least, Netanyahu and Putin are twins.
That's quite a defeatist and nihilistic attitude.
It is absolutely possible to militarily defeat evil terrorists and fascist regimes like Hamas and Iran. There is plenty of precedence for doing so like defeating the Tamil Tigers and the Nazis and Imperial Japan.
What is needed is Total War until they are defeated and surrender unconditionally.
The problem is that Trump especially has been weak and chickened out, and Netanyahu has also been pulling his punches.
Israel needs to get more aggressive than it is and end the cycle of violence by eliminating the enemies.
Somewhat amazingly I find myself wanting to steer you back to the light comedy of the Laffer curve.
Barty is an absolutist. Even when it comes to killing civilians by the tens of thousands ... so long as it's done by the 'good guys'.
That is a fair comment.
I hold to the standards that what we did in WWII was right and that is the standard that Ukraine and Israel and other 'good guys' should operate to today.
Anything we did to defeat the Nazis was right and proper and legitimate for either Israel or Ukraine to do today.
War is hell and civilians die in it which is why it should be a last resort, but if you are in that last resort then you better bloody win.
If someone was to show that same indifference to the collective punishment of 2m Israeli citizens inc the slaughter of tens of thousands they would be outing themselves as a rank and disgusting antisemite.
You are no better. You're a sick joke on this topic.
Its not indifference. I literally said in the post you quoted that "war is hell".
That aids the prosecution not the defence. It's a banal throwaway phrase that very often (as in this case) precedes a justification of atrocities.
Specifically the utter nonsense of a WW2 comparison - equating the perpetrators of a terrorist attack against the dominant military power in the region, nuclear armed and backed to the hilt by the mighty USA, with the Nazi war machine.
I mean, cmon. You're taking the piss.
Sanctimonius holier than thou bullshit.
Its not a throwaway phrase, its the truth.
And it is not remotely nonsense to make a WW2 comparison. Hamas are every bit as evil as the Nazis and with an explicit goal to kill every Jew they can just like the Nazis.
You seem to think just because the power balance is different that is no reason to tackle and excise the evil. That is inexcusable and wrong.
Of course the power dynamic and proportionality is relevant.
Eg if a military unit obliterates a whole town and its population in order to kill a handful of enemy operatives who are hiding there that is not ok.
It's ridiculous to view Israel Palestine as a simple Good v Evil conflict - as regards the Oct 7th attack and the destruction of Gaza in response it's Evil v Evil.
Israel has not destroyed its population.
It very easily could and the way you speak about it is as if they had - but if they had then the conflict would be over and the cycle of violence ended, but in the most evil and horrific way imaginable. A real life genocide.
But they've not done that. Because they're not the evil ones, they could, but they don't.
Yet people here still demean actual genocides and actual war crimes by lobbing around such words like confetti.
Sure, they've only razed the place to the ground, killed 70k mostly innocent people, injured lots more, and displaced pretty much the whole 2m population. It's the very definition of restraint.
Buildings do tend to get damaged in war. Same happened in the UK and Nazi Germany.
They've not destroyed the population though.
Best way to avoid collateral damage is to avoid wars in the first place. Not an option when you're facing an enemy like Hamas though.
They have killed or injured or inflicted serious distress on the vast majority of a 2m population most of whom had nothing to do with the Oct 7th attack.
And your problem with this is they haven't been brutal enough. That's a weird take which is driven, can only be driven, by viewing Palestinians as inferior beings who are somehow less than human.
Where did you get that view from? I am genuinely curious about it.
Complete and utter bollocks.
It is viewed from wanting Hamas defeated.
We treated Germany worse in WWII than Israel has treated the Palestinians. Much worse.
Did we view Germany as somehow less than human? Or just as a human enemy that needs to be defeated.
Ok I didn't think you'd answer. Worth a try.
But believe me everything you write on Gaza demonstrates that you view Palestinians as sub-human.
As I've pointed out before, if the sort of stuff you come out with on this topic was flipped to be about the mass suffering of Israeli civilians you'd be outing yourself as an antisemite.
The mass suffering of Palestinians is caused by the Palestinian leadership and the leadership of other Arab countries, which has treated them abjectly time and time again. Rejecting peace time and time again, including at what should have been the founding of a state called Palestine in 1948 (where instead Egypt and Jordan annexed the land) and time and time again since including 2000 when Arafat rejected peace and 2023 when Hamas launched its atrocity and again and again and again. Israel accepted the peace proposals in 1948 and 2000 and did not even have any settlements or troops in Gaza in 2023.
Wanting to see Hamas defeated is not viewing anyone as sub-human. I want to see Russia defeated too. Enemies need to be defeated sometimes. Your cloud cuckoo land idea that we can live without conflict if only we could all get along and so we should not fight Hamas or Russia or any other threats and neither should our allies is just pathetic garbage and not intellectualism or better morals.
I know you are strongly pro Israel on the matter of the overall long running conflict. But I'm not interested in your take on that. I'm interested in why you view Palestinians as sub human. Or, to tone the language down a bit, as people of lesser worth than Israelis. Because you clearly do. Your language on Gaza shows this without a shadow of a doubt. So why is that? Where's it coming from? That's all I'm asking.
I don't view them as sub-human. I don't view Germans as sub-human. I don't view Russians as sub-human. I don't view Iranians as sub-human.
You are just simply closed-minded and refuse to see good faith in wanting enemies defeated.
... with even Maureen Lipman saying this week she would vote for Kemi...
Dame Maureen has got close relatives in Israel and she's said in the past about how scared she is for them given the constant missile bombardment. Under Badenoch the Conservatives are solidly pro-Israel (I think - somebody correct me if wrong) and Labour under Burnham is lukewarm, so she has a valid reason for the switch.
Indeed, its sad to see the pro Hamas turn many in Labour have taken. Good to see principled lefties like Maureen take a stance.
It's not pro Hamas, it's anti genocidal, racist Israeli government
Barty seems to process scepticism of the Netanyahu Government as a pro Hamas narrative. Maybe Maureen Lipman is similarly minded.
I support the Israeli opposition that wants to see the corrupt Netanyahu be replaced, but be just as hardline at defeating Hamas.
The problem with Netanyahu is that he is (a) corrupt and (b) been too soft on Hamas.
Not that he has been too hard on them.
No, the problem is that Netanyahu's two goals, defeating Hamas and changing the regime in Iran, are and always were utterly unrealistic.
Israel simply cannot wipe out Hamas while the Palestinians' political grievances remain unaddressed. It has had limited military successes, but at the cost of further entrenching political support for Hames in Gaza.
And the war to overthrow the Iranian regime has been a total and utter failure - in fact, completely counter-productive because it has allowed the Iranian regime to clamp down on the opposition at home even more thoroughly.
All Netanyahu's strategy has achieved is to strengthen his enemies politically, ruin Israel's standing abroad and trap it in a never-ending cycle of war and atrocity.
It's the definition of a futile dead end.
From that point of view, at least, Netanyahu and Putin are twins.
That's quite a defeatist and nihilistic attitude.
It is absolutely possible to militarily defeat evil terrorists and fascist regimes like Hamas and Iran. There is plenty of precedence for doing so like defeating the Tamil Tigers and the Nazis and Imperial Japan.
What is needed is Total War until they are defeated and surrender unconditionally.
The problem is that Trump especially has been weak and chickened out, and Netanyahu has also been pulling his punches.
Israel needs to get more aggressive than it is and end the cycle of violence by eliminating the enemies.
Somewhat amazingly I find myself wanting to steer you back to the light comedy of the Laffer curve.
Barty is an absolutist. Even when it comes to killing civilians by the tens of thousands ... so long as it's done by the 'good guys'.
That is a fair comment.
I hold to the standards that what we did in WWII was right and that is the standard that Ukraine and Israel and other 'good guys' should operate to today.
Anything we did to defeat the Nazis was right and proper and legitimate for either Israel or Ukraine to do today.
War is hell and civilians die in it which is why it should be a last resort, but if you are in that last resort then you better bloody win.
If someone was to show that same indifference to the collective punishment of 2m Israeli citizens inc the slaughter of tens of thousands they would be outing themselves as a rank and disgusting antisemite.
You are no better. You're a sick joke on this topic.
Its not indifference. I literally said in the post you quoted that "war is hell".
That aids the prosecution not the defence. It's a banal throwaway phrase that very often (as in this case) precedes a justification of atrocities.
Specifically the utter nonsense of a WW2 comparison - equating the perpetrators of a terrorist attack against the dominant military power in the region, nuclear armed and backed to the hilt by the mighty USA, with the Nazi war machine.
I mean, cmon. You're taking the piss.
Sanctimonius holier than thou bullshit.
Its not a throwaway phrase, its the truth.
And it is not remotely nonsense to make a WW2 comparison. Hamas are every bit as evil as the Nazis and with an explicit goal to kill every Jew they can just like the Nazis.
You seem to think just because the power balance is different that is no reason to tackle and excise the evil. That is inexcusable and wrong.
Of course the power dynamic and proportionality is relevant.
Eg if a military unit obliterates a whole town and its population in order to kill a handful of enemy operatives who are hiding there that is not ok.
It's ridiculous to view Israel Palestine as a simple Good v Evil conflict - as regards the Oct 7th attack and the destruction of Gaza in response it's Evil v Evil.
Israel has not destroyed its population.
It very easily could and the way you speak about it is as if they had - but if they had then the conflict would be over and the cycle of violence ended, but in the most evil and horrific way imaginable. A real life genocide.
But they've not done that. Because they're not the evil ones, they could, but they don't.
Yet people here still demean actual genocides and actual war crimes by lobbing around such words like confetti.
Sure, they've only razed the place to the ground, killed 70k mostly innocent people, injured lots more, and displaced pretty much the whole 2m population. It's the very definition of restraint.
Buildings do tend to get damaged in war. Same happened in the UK and Nazi Germany.
They've not destroyed the population though.
Best way to avoid collateral damage is to avoid wars in the first place. Not an option when you're facing an enemy like Hamas though.
They have killed or injured or inflicted serious distress on the vast majority of a 2m population most of whom had nothing to do with the Oct 7th attack.
And your problem with this is they haven't been brutal enough. That's a weird take which is driven, can only be driven, by viewing Palestinians as inferior beings who are somehow less than human.
Where did you get that view from? I am genuinely curious about it.
Complete and utter bollocks.
It is viewed from wanting Hamas defeated.
We treated Germany worse in WWII than Israel has treated the Palestinians. Much worse.
Did we view Germany as somehow less than human? Or just as a human enemy that needs to be defeated.
Ok I didn't think you'd answer. Worth a try.
But believe me everything you write on Gaza demonstrates that you view Palestinians as sub-human.
As I've pointed out before, if the sort of stuff you come out with on this topic was flipped to be about the mass suffering of Israeli civilians you'd be outing yourself as an antisemite.
The mass suffering of Palestinians is caused by the Palestinian leadership and the leadership of other Arab countries, which has treated them abjectly time and time again. Rejecting peace time and time again, including at what should have been the founding of a state called Palestine in 1948 (where instead Egypt and Jordan annexed the land) and time and time again since including 2000 when Arafat rejected peace and 2023 when Hamas launched its atrocity and again and again and again. Israel accepted the peace proposals in 1948 and 2000 and did not even have any settlements or troops in Gaza in 2023.
Wanting to see Hamas defeated is not viewing anyone as sub-human. I want to see Russia defeated too. Enemies need to be defeated sometimes. Your cloud cuckoo land idea that we can live without conflict if only we could all get along and so we should not fight Hamas or Russia or any other threats and neither should our allies is just pathetic garbage and not intellectualism or better morals.
I know you are strongly pro Israel on the matter of the overall long running conflict. But I'm not interested in your take on that. I'm interested in why you view Palestinians as sub human. Or, to tone the language down a bit, as people of lesser worth than Israelis. Because you clearly do. Your language on Gaza shows this without a shadow of a doubt. So why is that? Where's it coming from? That's all I'm asking.
The obsession which you and many left wingers have about Israel and Gaza is bizarre. Hama's operates embedded in the towns and cities making it near impossible to avoid collateral damage. This is the tragedy.
Does everyone on the left agree that it's unsustainable for 53% of households to be taking more from the state than they're contributing to it?
When you consider that the service from the state includes the nuclear umbrella, the armed forces. the schools, the police, the law and its enforcement, etc, and that many of the population are children and retirees, then that number is not as surprising as you think. We've had a welfare state since the 1940s and the country isn't a free country with individuals incurring risk in hope of reward, it's a safe country with individuals shielded from risk for their own good, or at least what other people think is their own good. Look at the increasing interference with gambling, because adults can no longer be trusted to wager their own money in case Things Go Wrong. This tendency accelerated during Covid and turned the country into something I don't like, but it's been on the cards for a long time.
Anyhoo, The Odyssey box-office drop in the first week is just 30%, which is surprisingly good. It now looks highly likely that the global gross will be over $1billion, which is nice. Nolan's ability to drag people to the cinema for the unlikeliest of subjects remains undimned.
(incidentally Matt Damon famously turned down the Sam Worthington part in Avatar. He seems to have overcome that with the only director capable of overhauling James Cameron)
Today's Sunday Times claimed that Burnham could be left-wing on economics and right-wing on social issues.
We have heard this from every government for donkeys years. If the Tories wouldn't do it and they are all scared that some paper pusher will strip some genuinely vulnerable person for infringements not taking into consideration some diagnosed condition and they go on to do harm to themselves (and given the explosion in mental health issues, current young generation are far less mental robust), the thought that Burnham will get this past his backbenchers ain't going to happen. The Guardian and BBC will be filled with scare stories about people previously getting sanctioned unfairly (in their opinion) and how they had to eat dog food as they couldn't afford to survive*, and everybody will fold.
* Rowntree foundation only last week were banging on about how millions of people can't afford toothbushes etc.
I think not only will I vote Labour at the next election I will be joining the Labour Party.
Compulsory voting on the table as Burnham ponders electoral reform
Proposals seen by the prime minister’s advisers suggest a £10 fine for those who do not cast a ballot, with a ‘none of the above’ option to be included
Voting would be compulsory under proposals seen by some of Andy Burnham’s most senior advisers, with suggestions those who stay at home be hit with a £10 fine.
MPs have already attempted to insert compulsory voting into legislation inherited by the new government, while three think tanks influential in Labour policy circles advocated the change.
The prime minister is known to be interested in electoral reform, and has pledged to make the case for it to be included in the next Labour manifesto.
While it is understood compulsory voting does not form part of that plan at present, proposals were seen by members of Burnham’s transition team before he entered Downing Street, while papers advocating the policy were produced or approved by people who have since taken senior roles in No 10.
If you have ploughed through the voter roll after an election to see who voted/who didn't you'll see a lot of non-voters in areas that might be termed 'Reform adjacent'.
Politics UK @PolitlcsUK 🚨 NEW: Andy Burnham is strongly considering replacing council tax and stamp duty with a 0.48% annual tax on a home's current value
Who would value all the houses in a relatively short period of time and who is going to deal with the enormous number of appeals?
Would they be asking for a higher valuation or lower? And how about the effects on house price inflation / Loan to Value ratio for mortgages.
Does this change essentially feed into CPI/RPI inflation calculations which themselves set the benefits budget.
Today's Sunday Times claimed that Burnham could be left-wing on economics and right-wing on social issues.
That's the worst, illiberal combination.
Being left-wing on economics and right-wing on social issues is also the combination that is most attractive to professional politicians like Burnham because it gives them the opportunity to interfere the most, validating their existence and importance.
With that policy mix can keep up an endless stream of headline-grabbing announcements the more you interfere in the economy and society, and if, as usual, the cure is worse than what it pretends to address, well, that's the public's problem years or decades hence.
... with even Maureen Lipman saying this week she would vote for Kemi...
Dame Maureen has got close relatives in Israel and she's said in the past about how scared she is for them given the constant missile bombardment. Under Badenoch the Conservatives are solidly pro-Israel (I think - somebody correct me if wrong) and Labour under Burnham is lukewarm, so she has a valid reason for the switch.
Indeed, its sad to see the pro Hamas turn many in Labour have taken. Good to see principled lefties like Maureen take a stance.
It's not pro Hamas, it's anti genocidal, racist Israeli government
Barty seems to process scepticism of the Netanyahu Government as a pro Hamas narrative. Maybe Maureen Lipman is similarly minded.
I support the Israeli opposition that wants to see the corrupt Netanyahu be replaced, but be just as hardline at defeating Hamas.
The problem with Netanyahu is that he is (a) corrupt and (b) been too soft on Hamas.
Not that he has been too hard on them.
No, the problem is that Netanyahu's two goals, defeating Hamas and changing the regime in Iran, are and always were utterly unrealistic.
Israel simply cannot wipe out Hamas while the Palestinians' political grievances remain unaddressed. It has had limited military successes, but at the cost of further entrenching political support for Hames in Gaza.
And the war to overthrow the Iranian regime has been a total and utter failure - in fact, completely counter-productive because it has allowed the Iranian regime to clamp down on the opposition at home even more thoroughly.
All Netanyahu's strategy has achieved is to strengthen his enemies politically, ruin Israel's standing abroad and trap it in a never-ending cycle of war and atrocity.
It's the definition of a futile dead end.
From that point of view, at least, Netanyahu and Putin are twins.
That's quite a defeatist and nihilistic attitude.
It is absolutely possible to militarily defeat evil terrorists and fascist regimes like Hamas and Iran. There is plenty of precedence for doing so like defeating the Tamil Tigers and the Nazis and Imperial Japan.
What is needed is Total War until they are defeated and surrender unconditionally.
The problem is that Trump especially has been weak and chickened out, and Netanyahu has also been pulling his punches.
Israel needs to get more aggressive than it is and end the cycle of violence by eliminating the enemies.
Somewhat amazingly I find myself wanting to steer you back to the light comedy of the Laffer curve.
Barty is an absolutist. Even when it comes to killing civilians by the tens of thousands ... so long as it's done by the 'good guys'.
That is a fair comment.
I hold to the standards that what we did in WWII was right and that is the standard that Ukraine and Israel and other 'good guys' should operate to today.
Anything we did to defeat the Nazis was right and proper and legitimate for either Israel or Ukraine to do today.
War is hell and civilians die in it which is why it should be a last resort, but if you are in that last resort then you better bloody win.
If someone was to show that same indifference to the collective punishment of 2m Israeli citizens inc the slaughter of tens of thousands they would be outing themselves as a rank and disgusting antisemite.
You are no better. You're a sick joke on this topic.
Its not indifference. I literally said in the post you quoted that "war is hell".
That aids the prosecution not the defence. It's a banal throwaway phrase that very often (as in this case) precedes a justification of atrocities.
Specifically the utter nonsense of a WW2 comparison - equating the perpetrators of a terrorist attack against the dominant military power in the region, nuclear armed and backed to the hilt by the mighty USA, with the Nazi war machine.
I mean, cmon. You're taking the piss.
Sanctimonius holier than thou bullshit.
Its not a throwaway phrase, its the truth.
And it is not remotely nonsense to make a WW2 comparison. Hamas are every bit as evil as the Nazis and with an explicit goal to kill every Jew they can just like the Nazis.
You seem to think just because the power balance is different that is no reason to tackle and excise the evil. That is inexcusable and wrong.
Of course the power dynamic and proportionality is relevant.
Eg if a military unit obliterates a whole town and its population in order to kill a handful of enemy operatives who are hiding there that is not ok.
It's ridiculous to view Israel Palestine as a simple Good v Evil conflict - as regards the Oct 7th attack and the destruction of Gaza in response it's Evil v Evil.
Israel has not destroyed its population.
It very easily could and the way you speak about it is as if they had - but if they had then the conflict would be over and the cycle of violence ended, but in the most evil and horrific way imaginable. A real life genocide.
But they've not done that. Because they're not the evil ones, they could, but they don't.
Yet people here still demean actual genocides and actual war crimes by lobbing around such words like confetti.
Sure, they've only razed the place to the ground, killed 70k mostly innocent people, injured lots more, and displaced pretty much the whole 2m population. It's the very definition of restraint.
Buildings do tend to get damaged in war. Same happened in the UK and Nazi Germany.
They've not destroyed the population though.
Best way to avoid collateral damage is to avoid wars in the first place. Not an option when you're facing an enemy like Hamas though.
They have killed or injured or inflicted serious distress on the vast majority of a 2m population most of whom had nothing to do with the Oct 7th attack.
And your problem with this is they haven't been brutal enough. That's a weird take which is driven, can only be driven, by viewing Palestinians as inferior beings who are somehow less than human.
Where did you get that view from? I am genuinely curious about it.
Complete and utter bollocks.
It is viewed from wanting Hamas defeated.
We treated Germany worse in WWII than Israel has treated the Palestinians. Much worse.
Did we view Germany as somehow less than human? Or just as a human enemy that needs to be defeated.
Ok I didn't think you'd answer. Worth a try.
But believe me everything you write on Gaza demonstrates that you view Palestinians as sub-human.
As I've pointed out before, if the sort of stuff you come out with on this topic was flipped to be about the mass suffering of Israeli civilians you'd be outing yourself as an antisemite.
The mass suffering of Palestinians is caused by the Palestinian leadership and the leadership of other Arab countries, which has treated them abjectly time and time again. Rejecting peace time and time again, including at what should have been the founding of a state called Palestine in 1948 (where instead Egypt and Jordan annexed the land) and time and time again since including 2000 when Arafat rejected peace and 2023 when Hamas launched its atrocity and again and again and again. Israel accepted the peace proposals in 1948 and 2000 and did not even have any settlements or troops in Gaza in 2023.
Wanting to see Hamas defeated is not viewing anyone as sub-human. I want to see Russia defeated too. Enemies need to be defeated sometimes. Your cloud cuckoo land idea that we can live without conflict if only we could all get along and so we should not fight Hamas or Russia or any other threats and neither should our allies is just pathetic garbage and not intellectualism or better morals.
I know you are strongly pro Israel on the matter of the overall long running conflict. But I'm not interested in your take on that. I'm interested in why you view Palestinians as sub human. Or, to tone the language down a bit, as people of lesser worth than Israelis. Because you clearly do. Your language on Gaza shows this without a shadow of a doubt. So why is that? Where's it coming from? That's all I'm asking.
The obsession which you and many left wingers have about Israel and Gaza is bizarre. Hama's operates embedded in the towns and cities making it near impossible to avoid collateral damage. This is the tragedy.
But the "collateral damage" simply creates more support for Hamas and ensures that the war will continue for yet another generation and doubtless far beyond that.
The way to defeat Hamas is to undermine its support, and the way you do that isn't by infuriating the Palestinians yet more, it's by addressing the Palestinian people's legitimate political grievances.
Which the Israeli government is not only refusing to do, with its support for settlement building, its blockade of Gaza and its never-ending wars against its neighbours, it's actually making much worse.
Comments
'Horrendous attack in Berlin last night.
The strange left wing alliance between Islamists and the LGBT community in this country cannot last.'
https://x.com/Nigel_Farage/status/2081343972207632537?s=20
If she does choose to downsize, then she should not be overly taxed for doing so though.
Why should an old lady who wants to downsize be punished for doing that?
"Why workers are nostalgic for life before AI
Many white-collar professionals worry about the tech inhibiting creativity and making errors" (£)
https://www.ft.com/content/2ddef625-df80-4690-9475-f3ce86171593
"Why workers are nostalgic for life before AI
Many white-collar professionals worry about the tech inhibiting creativity and making errors" (£)
https://www.ft.com/content/2ddef625-df80-4690-9475-f3ce86171593
I remember during COVID that they couldn't actually find out who were oldies for their vaccines, as they aren't allowed to know en masse this information for that reason, so they were guessing based on things like first names.
They've not destroyed the population though.
Best way to avoid collateral damage is to avoid wars in the first place. Not an option when you're facing an enemy like Hamas though.
Farmers should pay LVT based on the land's value as farmland. As soon as planning permission for a housing estate is gained, then the land value and tax paid should multiply. Berkeley Homes should then pay the increased rate until sold.
May help to prevent land-banking.
So for many people 'before AI' is less about literally a time before such tools were available, and more about the anxiety of knowing your job is under threat because bosses with limited understanding are desperate (through necessity or otherwise) for magical solutions, and they are forcing you to use those tools (poorly) as part of that search to get rid of you to boot. Which because it is being done poorly might even make things more difficult, not less.
You haven’t answered what happens to farms and farmhouses under LVT, that’s because you don’t have a good answer. No one does.
This was supposed to be the quiet recovery of public finances, debt levels, slowly improve the economy and public services Parliament. This new radical leftist government are genuine threat to our country.
Tax land zoned as farming as farmland. If zoned for housing, tax it accordingly. What's the issue there?
Stamp duty is a very harmful tax that is a threat to mobility and heftily penalises those who "get on their bike". Anyone who believes in mobility and hard work and getting on with your life should want to see it abolished.
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/education/article/inside-london-borough-banned-phones-all-schools-3chxth3mh
"Inside the London borough that has banned phones from all schools
Pupils in Barnet are said to be happier, more sociable, better behaved and their academic results have improved — and they don’t miss their phones" (£)
And your problem with this is they haven't been brutal enough. That's a weird take which is driven, can only be driven, by viewing Palestinians as inferior beings who are somehow less than human.
Where did you get that view from? I am genuinely curious about it.
The South has benefited for years with Treasury investment, see Crossrail and HS1 and HS2 and so on and so forth.
So land is worth more down there. Fine. Pay for it then, always have the option of moving if you don't want to.
Free choice, and free society.
If you don't like where you are, get on your bike. Which far leftist could have said that?
His doctor wasn't allowed to inform his company that he had a serious medical condition due to those laws. In most western countries it probably would have been compulsory for his doctor to have done so.
It is viewed from wanting Hamas defeated.
We treated Germany worse in WWII than Israel has treated the Palestinians. Much worse.
Did we view Germany as somehow less than human? Or just as a human enemy that needs to be defeated.
But believe me everything you write on Gaza demonstrates that you view Palestinians as sub-human.
As I've pointed out before, if the sort of stuff you come out with on this topic was flipped to be about the mass suffering of Israeli civilians you'd be outing yourself as an antisemite.
Wanting to see Hamas defeated is not viewing anyone as sub-human. I want to see Russia defeated too. Enemies need to be defeated sometimes. Your cloud cuckoo land idea that we can live without conflict if only we could all get along and so we should not fight Hamas or Russia or any other threats and neither should our allies is just pathetic garbage and not intellectualism or better morals.
Governance sometimes is about making choices. Saying "we will do this, so therefore we can not do that".
Not adding an ever growing list of expenditures without ever cutting back.
Like he has done to be fair for the past week. We're not going to do ID cards, so that frees up money to spend on my priority instead.
There are plenty of cuts I could propose that would be sensible, such as abolishing the triple lock, or abolishing planning etc - but the government of the day needs to balance what it can and can't do, rather than insist it can do extra without letting something else go instead.
I don't view Germans as sub-human.
I don't view Russians as sub-human.
I don't view Iranians as sub-human.
You are just simply closed-minded and refuse to see good faith in wanting enemies defeated.
Young people face being stripped of welfare payments unless they do training or voluntary work
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2026/07/26/andy-burnham-to-crack-down-on-youth-sickness-benefits/
https://www.the-numbers.com/#20260726-projections
(incidentally Matt Damon famously turned down the Sam Worthington part in Avatar. He seems to have overcome that with the only director capable of overhauling James Cameron)
* Rowntree foundation only last week were banging on about how millions of people can't afford toothbushes etc.
If you have ploughed through the voter roll after an election to see who voted/who didn't you'll see a lot of non-voters in areas that might be termed 'Reform adjacent'.
Does this change essentially feed into CPI/RPI inflation calculations which themselves set the benefits budget.
Lots of links / effects in this one.
With that policy mix can keep up an endless stream of headline-grabbing announcements the more you interfere in the economy and society, and if, as usual, the cure is worse than what it pretends to address, well, that's the public's problem years or decades hence.
The way to defeat Hamas is to undermine its support, and the way you do that isn't by infuriating the Palestinians yet more, it's by addressing the Palestinian people's legitimate political grievances.
Which the Israeli government is not only refusing to do, with its support for settlement building, its blockade of Gaza and its never-ending wars against its neighbours, it's actually making much worse.