steve
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Post by steve on Oct 1, 2022 7:30:27 GMT
Someone still thinks the 2010-15 government consisted of 350 clones of Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander
Nothing to do with the Tories!
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Post by alec on Oct 1, 2022 7:37:00 GMT
jib - oddly enough, maybe Simon Clarke needs to look through this data set - stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?QueryId=107229#Lots of Western European countries doing very nicely on productivity, thank you very much. I think it's clear now that they have deliberately created the conditions to give themselves an excuse to attack the welfare state. Labour need to full on assault this, starting with attacking the 45% rate cut and constantly relating every suggested spending cut to the £170bn the taxpayer is giving to the energy companies. If this message that the way out of this is permanently lower spending, from a country that already has a relatively low tax base, then the country is done for.
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Oct 1, 2022 7:40:23 GMT
@danny 'Kwarteng's budget seems broadly a keynsian stimulus. Classic keynes- govenment borrows to boost growth during a recession. People are arguing about the details of how the borrowing is being spent and whether it is affordable at all, but keynes argued fundamentally it doesnt matter who gets it, so long as government spends. So the budget would be expected to mitigate the current near recession' The problem with your analysis is that it appears Truss intends to cut back on Government spending (benefits etc), so there would be no Keynesian boost. well yes, I agree. But that hasn't happened yet, so I am judging on what has. However the whole party has had a consistent policy of cutting public sector pay at every opportunity for 50 years. So that in itself is hardly controversial. If it was acceptable from Cameron and Thatcher, why not Truss? |
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neilj
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Post by neilj on Oct 1, 2022 7:43:21 GMT
@danny
Not quite sure I know quite what you are saying, but you seem to agree with me there will be no Keynesian boost?
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neilj
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Post by neilj on Oct 1, 2022 7:49:15 GMT
Clever move by Labour if they can pull it off especially if the OBR figures don't back up Truss's 2.5% growth prediction
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Post by barbara on Oct 1, 2022 7:49:18 GMT
Barbara wrote :- James O'Brien did a phone in this morning on the reasons for the polls and there were loads of ex Tories phoning in to say they were going to vote Tory and alongside the obvious car crash that is Truss they to a man/woman said they were impressed with Starmer's speech at conference and viewed him as safe and reliable and when challenged said that boring and competent is what we need. This included several who had worked for and campaigned for and joined the Tories in the past. Barbara, I am assuming and hoping you have a typo, "phoning in to say they were going to vote Tory". Hopefully you meant Lab. If so, I will give you a like Sorry!!! I did mean Labour. |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Oct 1, 2022 7:50:55 GMT
hireton - the investment zone problems I suspect will mount, if they are anything like as briefed. Last night I gather that Channel 4 covered the Teesport dredging scandal, quoting experts saying that toxic sludge should be dumped in controlled landfill sites. Their investigation showed that some of the samples taken of the material to be moved exceeded pollution levels which could be dumped at sea. The environment agency was aware of this but still issued them a licence to dump saying (approx) ' because this area has in the past had very high levels of industrial contamination you can dump it anyway'. This sounds like a cock up, because they had anticipated the contaminated material would sit relatively inert on the sea bed, but instead it has spread along the coast. Basically the dredging company did the right thing, government knew the stuff was contaminated but told them to dump anyway. |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Oct 1, 2022 8:00:23 GMT
The Times is reporting that Simon Clarke, the levelling-up secretary, is now floating Austerity 2.0 - the blue version as opposed to the 2010-15 Orange version. He says "My big concern in politics is that western Europe is just living in a fool’s paradise whereby we can be ever less productive relative to our peers, and yet still enjoy a very large welfare state and persist in thinking that the two are somehow compatible over the medium to long term." Sure to go down well in the Northern Seats. Developed countries always have lower growth than developing ones. Duh, the clue is in the name. If you have already developed most of your environment and aquired the necessities then many of the luxuries you might desire...then there is less developing that it is possible to do and anyway you just might sit back and enjoy what you have aleady got. So maybe the idea is if government makes us all poor then we will work harder. Lets start by applying that to the really rich? |
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Post by crossbat11 on Oct 1, 2022 8:00:34 GMT
I set off soon for the third leg of my Road to Wembley adventure. FA Cup 3rd Qualifying Round this afternoon and my winding road leads me to Peterborough Sports FC. For the second time, actually. They beat Redditch in the second round but were forced into a replay by a battling Reds outfit. The replay entailed a 200 round trip to the Cambridgeshire outpost on a Tuesday night. A test of my mettle safely passed. Now I'm hoping for either Peterborough to be drawn away in the 4th Round should they win today or Hemel Hempstead, their opponents, to win. Much as I enjoy the Redditch-esque road system of Peterborough and its sprawling array of retail parks ind industrial units, a third visit may be one to far. The Harwich and Felixstowe bound HGV traffic on the A14 is a dubious pleasure to negotiate too.
That said, I'm at the mercy of the velvet bag and the capriciousness of football.
Come on the Hemel boys!
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domjg
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Post by domjg on Oct 1, 2022 8:09:17 GMT
Someone still thinks the 2010-15 government consisted of 350 clones of Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander Nothing to do with the Tories! I don't take anything he writes seriously anymore, it's just amusing now. |
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steve
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Post by steve on Oct 1, 2022 8:17:50 GMT
crossbat11Have you ever visited the Vauxhall Road stadium, the proverbial three men and a dog supporters have been getting quite vociferous recently . The teams has existed for over 130 years, not all the same players obviously, and it's a tad surprising that they haven't progressed to professional status given the 150,000+ local population now and a ground that could support development.
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Oct 1, 2022 8:18:10 GMT
@danny Not quite sure I know quite what you are saying, but you seem to agree with me there will be no Keynesian boost? In part. you are right they might take away what they have given. But all in all I doubt they will. There's the energy subsidy to be considered too, which is a huge stimulus, even if it's only trying to fill a vast hole of money fllying from the uk to energy companies abroad. I'm not sure how well matched it is, but government realy needs to prevent a house price collapse. Interest rises were inevitable. Cuts in income tax and ni might be regarded as seeking to address the problem of middle class professionals suddenly finding they cannot afford their homes. Whether that's fair or nor for the poor, it might be necessary. It's difficult for con to say "we are giving you this cut because thanks to our policies over the last ten years you are really going to need it" |
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steve
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Post by steve on Oct 1, 2022 8:24:11 GMT
domjg Indeed but just for the avoidance of doubt in someone's head. I was a member of the Labour party throughout the coalition . Voted Labour in 2010 and 2015. And while able to vote in the last liberal democrat leadership election and voted for Layla Moran who wasn't an mp until 2017, to clarify that means Ed Davey wasn't " my man" though he seems to be doing an ok job.
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Post by EmCat on Oct 1, 2022 8:32:17 GMT
@danny 'Kwarteng's budget seems broadly a keynsian stimulus. Classic keynes- govenment borrows to boost growth during a recession. People are arguing about the details of how the borrowing is being spent and whether it is affordable at all, but keynes argued fundamentally it doesnt matter who gets it, so long as government spends. So the budget would be expected to mitigate the current near recession' The problem with your analysis is that it appears Truss intends to cut back on Government spending (benefits etc), so there would be no Keynesian boost. The extra borrowing will be for tax cuts, personally I don't think the trickle down economics philosophy behind tax cuts for the very wealthy will work If you want growth far better to give the money to the people at the bottom, who will spend it in the economy. Alternatively increased Government spending on infrastructure projects for example, which goes straight into the economy, I don't think it's intended to work. On the other hand, it is meant to appear to have worked, so that it can be lauded as the reason (in a year's time) for the economy to have improved. Even though the real reason will be the UK economy gradually following the rest of the world. |
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Post by johntel on Oct 1, 2022 8:49:12 GMT
Just been looking at the leantossup projection for Mole Valley. I have to say I think it's garbage, at least for my constituency of Mole Valley. They show the Lib Dem vote actually going down from 35% to 31%! That is not going to happen - I've every hope that the Lib Dems will take the seat.
That got me thinking.... It's obvious that ukpr2 people have a huge amount of local knowledge between them and pretty much cover the entire UK - I suspect we all know our own areas better than any of the polling companies. How about if we start a spreadsheet combining all our own predictions for the constituencies we know well? For example, I think Mole Valley is Con 50% Lab 50% at the moment. If did that for the whole country we could make a national prediction, keep it up to date and then compare it with the polling companies at the next election. Anyone willing to give it a go?
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Post by crossbat11 on Oct 1, 2022 9:01:58 GMT
crossbat11Have you ever visited the Vauxhall Road stadium, the proverbial three men and a dog supporters have been getting quite vociferous recently . The teams has existed for over 130 years, not all the same players obviously, and it's a tad surprising that they haven't progressed to professional status given the 150,000+ local population now and a ground that could support development. No, I haven't been yet, but I'm hoping to in the next round if the result today and Monday's fourth round draw are kind to me. Interesting what you say about them. I think they are slowly progressing as a club though. Two or three years ago they were a struggling seventh tier side but are now in the National League South, just two levels below Football League level. They appear to be a lower mid table outfit, rather like Peterborough Sports are in the National League North, the same level of non-league football. On paper it looks an evenly matched game. A replay at Hemel Hempstead on Tuesday night, maybe??? |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Oct 1, 2022 9:14:43 GMT
Will post a thread from John Burns Murdoch on current covid infection rates over on the Covid thread in a moment. Worth noting this is nothing at all like flu. We're just coming out of a trough, yet we have weekly prevalence rates from 1.4 - 2.2%, and we have not been below 1% since sometime early in 2021. That's staggering, and is the main reason why the NHS is failing on so many fronts, along with a reasonable chunk of GDP shaved off through having so many people off sick. In a really bad once in a decade 'flu season, we might see 20% of the population infected across 6 months, but covid is doing this every 5 - 10 weeks or so. And we are providing more widespread vaccination for flu than covid. Absolutely barking. Heres the latest Zoe prevalence data.
From which you can see this is coming up for the fourth peak this year. Also that background levels have never fallen much below 1,000,000 concurent cases all year. Currently zoe estimating 2.2 million active cases. But its not much worse right now than for the rest of the last year. Did anyone notice it being disastrous?
As to flu, no one knows how many concurrent cases of flu there are in a normal flu year in the Uk. because no one has ever done mass testing in the way we have tested for covid. We only found covid after we started testing for it, and the same would apply to flu. Most of these people with covid arent very ill and the same would apply to flu.
This is not however why the NHS is failing. Its failing because its budget -and that of social care even moreso - is inadequate for the tasks it has been given. Before covid as much as during. This is not a covid issue, but a political decision. The money spent on covid lockdowns was out of all proportion considering the lives saved to what we are willing to spend normally to save the same number of people. It was money largely wasted which could have been spent over several years and done far more good. Had the NHS been in better shape, then it would have managed better with covid too.
The NHS if falling over because of staff shortages. You will have read my recent post that 42% of GPs are likely or very likely to leave medicine in the next 5 years because of stress and excessive workload. yesterday someone was talking about the nurses shortage, and similar problem that people feel they can get as much pay and less stress doing something else. Mentioned the antisocial 12 hour shifts. Some may like them when young, but if you have family commitments or getting older...maybe not for you.
The NHS is starting to exhibit cascade failure, where overload for one reason causes more collapses of service elsewhere, which causes another problem...and so on. The biggest problem caused by covid has been our decision to keep the covid epdemic going for longer using lockdowns. All this did was literally make it take longer to work through and cost vastly more. Making the epidemic take twice as long has caused twice as much disruption.
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steve
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Post by steve on Oct 1, 2022 9:19:08 GMT
Danny and Alec the covid blog is that way>
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Post by lefthanging on Oct 1, 2022 9:21:02 GMT
Clever move by Labour if they can pull it off especially if the OBR figures don't back up Truss's 2.5% growth prediction This sounds good but if - as expected - the OBR figures are terrible, and this causes another negative market response, is there a risk that Labour gets some of the blame for the fallout? Obviously in one sense it makes no difference - it's just delaying the inevitable - but presumably the government would argue that any potential negative response would be mitigated by pairing the release of the forecast with November's 'medium-term fiscal plan'. |
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Post by RAF on Oct 1, 2022 9:35:33 GMT
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pjw1961
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Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.
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Post by pjw1961 on Oct 1, 2022 9:53:28 GMT
Anyone familiar with these folk? Seem to be a Canadian outfit, but they're a new one on me. I quite enjoyed having a browse of their GE constituency projection map at the foot of the page here - leantossup.ca/uk-westminster/ (tbh, I'm a sucker for these things anyway, but I prefer the ones that aren't just operating on a UNS basis and it looks as though their model is a little more sophisticated than some). Blimey, if that happened, you'd be able to drive from Land's End to Bristol, Bath and Southampton without ever passing through a Tory seat. Bet that's never happened before! Actually, that was true in 1997. In fact it was possible to drive from Lands End to John O'Groats and only pass through one Tory held constituency - William Hague's in Richmond (Yorks). P.s. - I note that hotbed of socialism "Red Bournemouth" - Chrisaberavon will be interested  Edit: to correct myself slightly - you couldn't get to Southampton from Lands end in 1997 - but Bristol and Bath were on. |
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Post by ladyvalerie on Oct 1, 2022 9:57:52 GMT
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Post by ladyvalerie on Oct 1, 2022 10:13:20 GMT
I set off soon for the third leg of my Road to Wembley adventure. FA Cup 3rd Qualifying Round this afternoon and my winding road leads me to Peterborough Sports FC. For the second time, actually. They beat Redditch in the second round but were forced into a replay by a battling Reds outfit. The replay entailed a 200 round trip to the Cambridgeshire outpost on a Tuesday night. A test of my mettle safely passed. Now I'm hoping for either Peterborough to be drawn away in the 4th Round should they win today or Hemel Hempstead, their opponents, to win. Much as I enjoy the Redditch-esque road system of Peterborough and its sprawling array of retail parks ind industrial units, a third visit may be one to far. The Harwich and Felixstowe bound HGV traffic on the A14 is a dubious pleasure to negotiate too. That said, I'm at the mercy of the velvet bag and the capriciousness of football. Come on the Hemel boys! I have family who live near Norbold, funnily enough, and sometimes my brother and I go by car. Manchester - Colchester. not for the faint hearted. |
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steve
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Post by steve on Oct 1, 2022 10:25:22 GMT
Spare a thought for the quandry facing the sect's chancellor.
It will take 55 families on universal credit to have their real income cut by 6% pa to fund just one millionaires tax cuts.
We need more in abject poverty to make the numbers add up.
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jib
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Post by jib on Oct 1, 2022 10:32:15 GMT
Someone still thinks the 2010-15 government consisted of 350 clones of Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander Nothing to do with the Tories! I don't take anything he writes seriously anymore, it's just amusing now. Keep that head in the sand eh, wish away that coalition all you want, but it wouldn't have happened without the Lib Dems. |
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Post by lululemonmustdobetter on Oct 1, 2022 10:46:32 GMT
Just been looking at the leantossup projection for Mole Valley. I have to say I think it's garbage, at least for my constituency of Mole Valley. They show the Lib Dem vote actually going down from 35% to 31%! That is not going to happen - I've every hope that the Lib Dems will take the seat.
I think a more interesting one to watch will be Epsom and Ewell. In that area you are getting the factor of people moving out to the suburbs bringing their politics with them, also it voted remain (slightly) and at the last election the Tory vote share dropped by 6%. There are a lot of families with mortgages. The non-Tory vote has been evenly split over the past few elections, and either could emerge as a serious contender given current political trends. I suspect Labour will emerge as the main challenger, but there wont be sufficient tactical voting for them to get close to the Tories and remove Failing Grayling.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Oct 1, 2022 10:47:24 GMT
A very warm welcome back to UKPR to the Clacton sage, polymath and an all round fine fellow to boot. As they say around my old neck of the woods - Where yer bin, kid? Very good to have Norman back. |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 1, 2022 10:48:58 GMT
@danny Not quite sure I know quite what you are saying. Join a very large club Neil. |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 1, 2022 10:55:21 GMT
Just been looking at the leantossup projection for Mole Valley. I have to say I think it's garbage, at least for my constituency of Mole Valley. They show the Lib Dem vote actually going down from 35% to 31%! That is not going to happen - I've every hope that the Lib Dems will take the seat. That got me thinking.... It's obvious that ukpr2 people have a huge amount of local knowledge between them and pretty much cover the entire UK - I suspect we all know our own areas better than any of the polling companies. How about if we start a spreadsheet combining all our own predictions for the constituencies we know well? For example, I think Mole Valley is Con 50% Lab 50% at the moment. If did that for the whole country we could make a national prediction, keep it up to date and then compare it with the polling companies at the next election. Anyone willing to give it a go? To make this work you might need to start a projections thread for anyone interested to do their bit. My constituency is Bishop Auckland and certain to revert to Labour I would say. |
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Post by alec on Oct 1, 2022 10:57:24 GMT
Ukrainian troops in Lyman -
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