Local authorities still pay the pupil grant though.
Also, of course, we have the enormous costs around SEND provision which they have to fund.
The DfE were, for once, actually right to realise the latter is a huge and worsening problem that needs sorting out, but unfortunately their proposals would make things worse not better.
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
Has anyone told Burnham yet? The final figure would not be dissimilar for me.
Nor me - in fact it's spookily close.
My current council tax: £3110.54.
0.48% of my house's current value according to Zoopla: £3110.40.
So Andy Burnham would be giving me a 14p tax cut, which is kind of him. Not sure it makes up for Starmer tanking our family's finances in several different ways, but every little counts, right?
Good morning
I assume this is an England only plan as it is devolved to Scotland and Wales
Based on .48% I would pay about £2,600 when my council tax is presently £4,200 so quite a saving
The questions to be asked include how much does it raise, how are properties valued, and does the single discount still appply ?
I would assume it to be popular in the north but not so in the south including London
And Kemi is right not to offer Burnham a blank cheque as we cannot go on increasing taxes and certainly not borrowing more not least because defence spending has to be a priority not least when Streeting says he will resign if defence is not funded
Londoner here. I reckon it would mean a small reduction for me - current Band C Council Tax is £2155, 0.48% of my property would be under £1968 based on what I paid for it 3 years ago (I think prices have actually drifted down slightly since then, but I'll assume not)
So even in London the effects may not be as dramatic as you might think outside Westminster, K&C and Camden.
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
Has anyone told Burnham yet? The final figure would not be dissimilar for me.
Nor me - in fact it's spookily close.
My current council tax: £3110.54.
0.48% of my house's current value according to Zoopla: £3110.40.
So Andy Burnham would be giving me a 14p tax cut, which is kind of him. Not sure it makes up for Starmer tanking our family's finances in several different ways, but every little counts, right?
Good morning
I assume this is an England only plan as it is devolved to Scotland and Wales
Based on .48% I would pay about £2,600 when my council tax is presently £4,200 so quite a saving
The questions to be asked include how much does it raise, how are properties valued, and does the single discount still appply ?
I would assume it to be popular in the north but not so in the south including London
And Kemi is right not to offer Burnham a blank cheque as we cannot go on increasing taxes and certainly not borrowing more not least because defence spending has to be a priority not least when Streeting says he will resign if defence is not funded
I had no idea who had written this post until I reached "And Kemi is right..", and then I knew!
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
Has anyone told Burnham yet? The final figure would not be dissimilar for me.
Nor me - in fact it's spookily close.
My current council tax: £3110.54.
0.48% of my house's current value according to Zoopla: £3110.40.
So Andy Burnham would be giving me a 14p tax cut, which is kind of him. Not sure it makes up for Starmer tanking our family's finances in several different ways, but every little counts, right?
Good morning
I assume this is an England only plan as it is devolved to Scotland and Wales
Based on .48% I would pay about £2,600 when my council tax is presently £4,200 so quite a saving
The questions to be asked include how much does it raise, how are properties valued, and does the single discount still appply ?
I would assume it to be popular in the north but not so in the south including London
And Kemi is right not to offer Burnham a blank cheque as we cannot go on increasing taxes and certainly not borrowing more not least because defence spending has to be a priority not least when Streeting says he will resign if defence is not funded
I had no idea who had written this post until I reached "And Kemi is right..", and then I knew!
... 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.
Hardly obsessed. I'm not even particularly anti-Israel as regards the broad history of the conflict. I post quite sparingly on this topic
But Bart (who is obsessed) sometimes says stuff that is beyond the pale in its contempt for the Palestinians and indifference to their plight.
I normally let it go (since there's a trolling element) but every so often I am moved to respond and then we have a little tumble.
Comments
Also, of course, we have the enormous costs around SEND provision which they have to fund.
The DfE were, for once, actually right to realise the latter is a huge and worsening problem that needs sorting out, but unfortunately their proposals would make things worse not better.
NEW THREAD
So even in London the effects may not be as dramatic as you might think outside Westminster, K&C and Camden.
But Bart (who is obsessed) sometimes says stuff that is beyond the pale in its contempt for the Palestinians and indifference to their plight.
I normally let it go (since there's a trolling element) but every so often I am moved to respond and then we have a little tumble.