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Post by colin on Nov 22, 2024 12:48:45 GMT
Go for it. No good being middle class without using your middle class privilege  I am trying to make the most of it and have bought some nifty headphones from John Lewis for my music. (Your headphones might say a lot about what class you are in actually, but have to watch out for undue headphonism) Yes perhaps working class headphones will become compulsory now ? (Though Starmer might have to consult on the specification.) All vowels sound short ? |
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Post by c-a-r-f-r-e-w on Nov 22, 2024 13:00:23 GMT
I am trying to make the most of it and have bought some nifty headphones from John Lewis for my music. (Your headphones might say a lot about what class you are in actually, but have to watch out for undue headphonism) Yes perhaps working class headphones will become compulsory now ? (Though Starmer might have to consult on the specification.) All vowels sound short ? He probably won’t consult me on the spec. though, which is a shame as I consider great sound to be pretty much a human right, alongside sane energy prices, the avoidance of self-checkouts, subsidised iPads etc. |
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neilj
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Post by neilj on Nov 22, 2024 13:02:15 GMT
He subsequently said that tax wasn’t the real reason for getting the farm, the real reason was for shooting, but he didn’t feel he could say that, so he said inheritance tax instead. well, if you’re gonna make up another reason instead, Jezza, there are potentially better reasons you could have picked!… Yes, in atleast 2 interviews going back over the years he said he bought it to avoid inheritance tax When caught out for saying this during the farmers protest he then claimed it was so he could shoot So he was lying then or lying now, personally I think he's lying now, having been caught out he's come up with a reason. I suspect he picked shooting just to wind people up. If he really wanted to go shooting there's much cheaper ways |
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Post by c-a-r-f-r-e-w on Nov 22, 2024 13:06:46 GMT
He subsequently said that tax wasn’t the real reason for getting the farm, the real reason was for shooting, but he didn’t feel he could say that, so he said inheritance tax instead. well, if you’re gonna make up another reason instead, Jezza, there are potentially better reasons you could have picked!… Yes, in atleast 2 interviews going back over the years he said he bought it to avoid inheritance tax When caught out for saying this during the farmers protest he then claimed it was so he could shoot So he was lying then or lying now, personally I think he's lying now, having been caught out he's come up with a reason. I suspect he picked shooting just to wind people up. If he really wanted to go shooting there's much cheaper ways personally, I wouldn’t be surprised if he did it so that he could shoot, and avoid inheritance tax and make a telly programme out of it |
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Post by shevii on Nov 22, 2024 13:22:12 GMT
In the by elections counted today two Reform gains:
Election Maps UK
@electionmapsuk
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38m
Greenhithe & Knockhall (Dartford) Council By-Election Result:
➡️ RFM: 31.2% (New)
🏘️ SGRA: 27.6% (-17.2)
🌍 GRN: 16.5% (New)
🌹 LAB: 12.4% (-7.0)
🌳 CON: 12.3% (-23.5)
Reform GAIN from SGRA.
Changes w/ 2023.
Election Maps UK
@electionmapsuk
Swanscombe & Greenhithe (Kent) Council By-Election Result:
➡️ RFM: 29.1% (+27.5)
🌹 LAB: 24.6% (-7.5)
🏘️ SGRA: 16.5% (-23.9)
🌳 CON: 15.6% (-10.3)
🌍 GRN: 12.4% (New)
🔶 LDM: 1.8% (New)
Reform GAIN from SGRA.
Changes w/ 2021.
Also two Con Gains from LD:
Election Maps UK
@electionmapsuk
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1h
Denne (Horsham) Council By-Election Result:
🌳 CON: 38.6% (+9.3)
🔶 LDM: 36.4% (-13.2)
🌍 GRN: 13.8% (+5.0)
🌹 LAB: 11.1% (-1.0)
Conservative GAIN from Liberal Democrat.
Changes w/ 2023.
Election Maps UK
@electionmapsuk
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1h
Hemel Hempstead Town (Dacorum) Council By-Election Result:
🌳 CON: 43.7% (+17.3)
🔶 LDM: 21.9% (-24.8)
🌹 LAB: 18.5% (-8.4)
➡️ RFM: 9.9% (New)
🌍 GRN: 5.9% (New)
Conservative GAIN from Liberal Democrat.
Changes w/ 2023.
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Post by shevii on Nov 22, 2024 13:23:41 GMT
Plus a Lab gain from independent, although swing is to the Tories:
Election Maps UK
@electionmapsuk
Bennetts End (Dacorum) Council By-Election Result:
🌹 LAB: 37.1% (+6.4)
🌳 CON: 36.5% (+14.5)
🌍 GRN: 11.9% (+1.7)
➡️ RFM: 10.7% (New)
🔶 LDM: 3.7% (-3.6)
No IND (-29.7) as previous.
Labour GAIN from Independent.
Changes w/ 2023.
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Post by shevii on Nov 22, 2024 13:25:33 GMT
And scores on the doors:
Election Maps UK
@electionmapsuk
Aggregate Result of the 148 Council By-Elections (for 150 Seats) Since the 2024 General Election:
LAB: 53 (-22)
CON: 44 (+21)
LDM: 26 (=)
GRN: 8 (+2)
IND: 6 (-3)
RFM: 5 (+5)
SNP: 4 (-1)
PLC: 2 (=)
LOC: 2 (-2)
Aggregate Vote Share:
LAB: 24.5% (-8.1)
CON: 24.1% (+0.9)
LDM: 18.0% (+3.4)
GRN: 10.0% (+1.1)
SNP: 7.5% (-2.6)
RFM: 6.7% (+6.4)
PLC: 0.8% (+0.0)
Others: 8.3% (-1.2)
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Post by shevii on Nov 22, 2024 13:41:26 GMT
No -i'm not "relentlessly downbeat "in "real life" Perhaps your own implied distinction between real life and life on UKPR2 provides a marker. The forum is peopled by many political activists and party members. And mostly Labour Party ones.In light of the last GE election result i would expect them to be upbeat and i suppose any posts from me which jar against that will seem "downbeat" to you. As far as humanity in general is concerned , that would be a long explanation of my outlook. And i'm not even sure i could be certain about it  In general I quite like the search for "realism" . But its not always easy to establish ! You missed the PMI's turning negative today and you get called downbeat :-) On a more serious note- these poor economic figures are work in progress I feel. I do think Reeves talked the economy down using the playbook of the coalition in 2010 to put blame on the last government for a long term political advantage. I think she has a fair reason for doing this with the unfunded NIC cut pre-election effectively having to be reversed in a roundabout way. But she boxed herself in with some of her own pre-election pledges not to raise taxes and then to dampen the mood and creating a doom and gloom atmosphere. You would expect any announcements to fix financial black holes to have a negative effect but, as you pointed out with the borrowing figures, they seem to have been necessary and the judgment becomes whether they were well targeted or not. So work in progress because we have to see how temporary all these things are or whether a possible recession becomes exponential as it did in 2010. Brown feels a bit like the standout chancellor for handling a crisis but difficult to know how he would have handled the 2010 economy to prevent the recession that followed when Labour were promising slightly less severe cuts. I'm not sure that Reeves has handled this at all well in terms of her signalling and I don't feel she has hit the right targets either morally or fiscally for the austerity lite she has introduced. But this could just be a few months and companies start saying this isn't as bad as we expected. |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Nov 22, 2024 13:44:08 GMT
The regulated providers will have to pay the increased employment costs loaded by the government. 80% of their client base is LAs who will not increase their fees. They will you know. They will have to. |
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Post by Danny on Nov 22, 2024 13:48:56 GMT
I suspect as a party Reform still lacks coherent organisation and resources at present. That of course could change over time - or they could fall apart as UKIP did. I dont think it fair to characterise UKIP as having fallen apart. What actually happened was that the conservative party adopted their Raison d'etre, leaving the EU. Farage's blockbuster policy this time is to end immigration, so are either main party seriously planning to do that? |
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Post by Danny on Nov 22, 2024 13:54:16 GMT
But Labour is in charge now and has raised the taxes to fix it. The tax rises are nothing like enough to fix the problem. Maybe stave off market panic that the Uk had an out of control deficit. |
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Post by c-a-r-f-r-e-w on Nov 22, 2024 14:00:18 GMT
The Democrat-leaning traditional media in the States, often try and debunk right-wing arguments, as you might expect. But the rise of alternative media is allowing more fact-checking of the Democrats and particularly Democrat-Leaning media. And indeed to check their so-called fact-checking. I mean, we expect the right-wing media to be a bit dodge, but I am being increasingly shocked at how bad the other side can be. It can offer a degree of amusement in the horror though. The NYT is getting flak for its attempt to “debunk” something RFK Jnr said, where he was highlighting poorer food standards in the US. He pointed out that fruit loops in America, contained more dodgy additives, than the ones in Canada. And so the NYT does a “fact check”, suggesting that RFK was wrong, that actually Fruit loops are pretty much the same in both countries… …apart from certain extra additives in the American fruit loops. In other words, they basically agreed with him, but portrayed it as if it was wrong. Here’s the New York Post explaining the NYT eff-up nypost.com/2024/11/17/us-news/nyt-dragged-for-hilariously-botched-fact-check-of-rfk-jr-s-war-on-artificial-ingredients/ |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Nov 22, 2024 14:03:02 GMT
2005 GE - UKIP 2.2% 2010 GE - UKIP 3.1% 2015 GE - UKIP 12.6% Seems hard to overstate CON's success at grabbing that particular vote. But totes agree with you that revisionists may be at work... Had a typo there, i meant to write brexit dominated from 2010 to 2023. However taking the numbers you quote, suppose Farage had never existed and ukip too. Then thats more votes for con in all those elections and probaby bye bye nick clegg from downing street. (ukip was picking up votes 2:1 from con rather than lab). And similarly had con not adopted euroscepticism themselves, then we might have expected UKIPs actual vote to have been significantly higher, mostly at con expense, in which case 2010 might reasonably have been lab largest party eying up a coalition with libs. |
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Post by Danny on Nov 22, 2024 14:04:48 GMT
Hiya lululemonmustdobetter ! I agree with a lot of what you wrote, but I think the exception to it is the NIC increase - by disproportionately targeting businesses that employ a lot of low-paid and/or part-time staff they are putting a much larger number of people in the frame than with niche areas like farming or private schools. But isnt that exactly what we want to do? We apparently have a labour shortage so we need to destroy poorly paid jobs leaving the better paid ones for the limited number of people. |
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Post by steve on Nov 22, 2024 14:06:25 GMT
neiljPersonally I wouldn't shoot at any living thing that couldn't shoot back, but if like Mr Broom Broom you like killing animals you can go to an organised game shoot with weapons and ammunition provided for a price of around £2500 for a day, the price is for a group of 16-20 people so around £125 a head. A bit less than £4.6 million!
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Post by turk on Nov 22, 2024 14:08:37 GMT
What a absolute fiasco the farmers inheritance tax is. We have the Labour government saying the farmers should pay inheritance tax whilst a year ago they said they absolutely wouldn’t.
Labour MP’s in rural constituencies actively encouraging farmers to evade paying the tax through either agricultural relief ,business relief or simply deeding the farm to there children crossing there fingers they don’t die before 7yrs are up.
And the Tories and Reform committed to abolishing the tax should they get back into power next time. And all the time the biggest land owners like the National trust, Forestry Commission, Crown Estate, RSPB,Pension funds and people like Anders Povisen a Danish entrepreneur will not pay a penny in this inheritance tax anyway.
By the time those farmers go through those above choices it makes you wonder just how much revenue the government are going to get from this deeply unpopular policy.
It’s also hilarious reading comments from contributors on this site like Alec the man who has no sympathy for farmers because they don’t take advantage of tax avoidance schemes
That’s some U turn from him and others on these pages.
Now we have the Government actively think of making farmers over eighty exempt from inheritance tax .
Rachel from accounts really should let somebody else have a go in making policy or come next GE Labour might even break the 1935 record.
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Nov 22, 2024 14:20:02 GMT
You might say Clarkson has made a lucrative career out of ranting. I see the article you quote written by Clarkson agrees that land has become an investment asset for city types. So...it doesnt seem he has a leg to stand on if investors are buying up farms expecting a profit from appreciation of the land value. Not least because it attracts a variety of tax breaks. |
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Post by EmCat on Nov 22, 2024 14:21:19 GMT
In the by elections counted today two Reform gains: Reform GAIN from SGRA. Changes w/ 2023. Reform GAIN from SGRA. Changes w/ 2021. That suggests that, where a local issue party has ceased to engage the local population, that it's ok to vote for a mainstream party. It also looks as though Reform are an acceptable alternative, possibly because they now have MPs, and hence are perceived as a more than just a protest vote. |
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Post by Danny on Nov 22, 2024 14:28:04 GMT
“The average age of death in the UK is around 80, so they should bring it down to 73 to allow them to use the seven-year gifting rule. Actually, if you have already made it to 80 then your live expectancy may still be 7 years. Then older you are already, the more by which you are likely to exceed the average age at death. |
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steve
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Post by steve on Nov 22, 2024 14:28:12 GMT
EmCatA party where 20% of their mps have a criminal record for serious assault. I suppose given the republican party that's m a mainstream now.
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Nov 22, 2024 14:29:58 GMT
Interesting comparison on farm inheritance tax It's £1m untaxed, plus £325k of standard tax free inheritance. You can double that if the farmer is married. So farmers can hand down £2.65m tax free, and their kids pay 20% on everything else. Tax on your job is 40% over £50k Tax on working income is far higher than tax on capital. Reform of this obvious inequality is needed Also an obvious reason why farmers would not take income from their farm businesses to be taxed at 40%, thus artificially depressing their real incomes. |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Nov 22, 2024 14:35:43 GMT
what I hope is happening is that they are getting the bad news out of the way in early days in order to clear the decks to take proper progressive steps to rebalance economic prospects so that ordinary people, not just billionaires, can be much better off in years to come. The snag is that those years to come when people get the benefit from these policies is likely to be the next block of conservative governments. As we have discussed before, labour tend to fix the finances before con come in and screw them up again. |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Nov 22, 2024 14:39:27 GMT
2005 GE - UKIP 2.2% 2010 GE - UKIP 3.1% 2015 GE - UKIP 12.6% Seems hard to overstate CON's success at grabbing that particular vote. But totes agree with you that revisionists may be at work... Had a typo there, i meant to write brexit dominated from 2010 to 2023. However taking the numbers you quote, suppose Farage had never existed and ukip too. Then thats more votes for con in all those elections and probaby bye bye nick clegg from downing street. (ukip was picking up votes 2:1 from con rather than lab). And similarly had con not adopted euroscepticism themselves, then we might have expected UKIPs actual vote to have been significantly higher, mostly at con expense, in which case 2010 might reasonably have been lab largest party eying up a coalition with libs. [/quote] |
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Post by Danny on Nov 22, 2024 14:41:25 GMT
neiljPersonally I wouldn't shoot at any living thing that couldn't shoot back, Interesting axiom for a police officer. Plainly not shared by all. |
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Post by c-a-r-f-r-e-w on Nov 22, 2024 14:56:25 GMT
I suspect as a party Reform still lacks coherent organisation and resources at present. That of course could change over time - or they could fall apart as UKIP did. I dont think it fair to characterise UKIP as having fallen apart. What actually happened was that the conservative party adopted their Raison d'etre, leaving the EU. Farage's blockbuster policy this time is to end immigration, so are either main party seriously planning to do that? An interesting thing is if more immigrants start voting for Reform. If existing immigrants start having an issue with further immigration, like in the States. It may be that increasing immigration has a natural tailing-off in that regard? |
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Post by c-a-r-f-r-e-w on Nov 22, 2024 14:58:16 GMT
neilj Personally I wouldn't shoot at any living thing that couldn't shoot back, Interesting axiom for a police officer. Plainly not shared by all. So has steve changed his mind on de Menezes then? |
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Post by wb61 on Nov 22, 2024 15:17:27 GMT
Interesting axiom for a police officer. Plainly not shared by all. So has steve changed his mind on de Menezes then? Are you confusing the practical with the philosophical? The distinction between the capability which would allow the potential of shooting back and the ability which would encompass the practicality of shooting back on a particular occasion  |
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Post by alec on Nov 22, 2024 15:20:31 GMT
I've said for a long time that I suspect long covid cases, as well as the broader impacts of covid on society, are likely to heavily under estimated, and this study offers some hard evidence for this view - scitechdaily.com/scientists-uncover-hidden-long-covid-cases-tripling-previous-estimates/Using AI to sift through medical records, make diagnoses etc, both improves the quantitative assessment capability, but it also significantly reduces the observer bias, so this kind of finding is significant. My suspicion is that the two major issues we are facing is firstly the inability to connect symptoms with disease, because we've not only stopped widespread testing, but we've also tried to will away covid symptoms as something else. (I've lost count of the number of times I've had the conversation - 'are you ill?' - 'yes, but it's not covid' - 'so you've tested then?' - 'no, but it's not covid'). So we now struggle to identify when and what people have been infected with, so when they develop subsequent long term symptoms, it's just another of those mystery ailments that have strangely increased dramatically since March 2020. The second reason is that few doctors are willing to consider long term symptoms from what most still see as a 'seasonal respiratory virus', and so it can be a real battle to get this registered on medical records. My good friend, now having to retire from his self employed physical job years earlier than he had planned because of a heart condition that came after a mild covid infection following years of excellent health, was surprised when the NHS cardiologist told him it's "almost certainly" caused by covid and that they were 'snowed under' with previously healthy, relatively young patients with new onset conditions following covid, saying covid is the 'gift that keeps on giving'. But nowhere does covid appear on his health records. So I'm not in the least surprised to see that an AI based assessment finds LC rates three times the official number. I suspect we're going to see a lot more of this, with all the real world evidence suggesting a rapid surge in the numbers of people with a long term health condition since the onset of the pandemic. Around 2.5% of the UK workforce has been forced out of the labour market since 2020 because of long term illness, reversing the pre-pandemic long term trend. That's a huge economic impact. We've basically taken 1 worker in every 40 and turned them from a tax contributor into an expensive tax consumer. Until we start acknowledging what covid is actually doing to people's health, we're not going to be able to fix the economy. |
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Post by c-a-r-f-r-e-w on Nov 22, 2024 15:28:11 GMT
So has steve changed his mind on de Menezes then? Are you confusing the practical with the philosophical? The distinction between the capability which would allow the potential of shooting back and the ability which would encompass the practicality of shooting back on a particular occasion Neither apply. He didn’t have the ability to do much back at all. He was unarmed. |
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pjw1961
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Post by pjw1961 on Nov 22, 2024 15:33:53 GMT
I suspect as a party Reform still lacks coherent organisation and resources at present. That of course could change over time - or they could fall apart as UKIP did. I dont think it fair to characterise UKIP as having fallen apart. What actually happened was that the conservative party adopted their Raison d'etre, leaving the EU. Farage's blockbuster policy this time is to end immigration, so are either main party seriously planning to do that? True, but there was also a lot of chaos within the party, multiple leaders and in-fighting going as far as fist fights in the corridors of the European Parliament. The radical right are prone to such things and I think if Farage ever loses interest, Reform is toast. |
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