I think they are getting the unpopular policies out of the way but yeah I agree substantial change across the country is needed and they need to deliver otherwise they will open it up for Reform etc at the next election. The NHS for example is completely broken, I took my daughter into A and E a couple of months ago and had to wait 8 hours to be seen.
Westminster Politics 2024-2029
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) and Jamie (@Vault Dweller) review both the Everton and Bodø/Glimt victories at Old Trafford. Listen to the guys discuss 2 wins and 7 goals in the last week, analyse of the Amorim formation, focus on Amad and how he is playing, and also take a look at Hojlund, Rashford & Zirkzee – who starts v Arsenal?
I think they are getting the unpopular policies out of the way but yeah I agree substantial change across the country is needed and they need to deliver otherwise they will open it up for Reform etc at the next election. The NHS for example is completely broken, I took my daughter into A and E a couple of months ago and had to wait 8 hours to be seen.
I think the government needs to be ambitious if it wants transformational change.
Idea like building new estates with small surgeries which have A and E capabilities relative to the catchment area(s) is a good idea in my opinion. The kind of thing a Labour government ought to do. It will take the stress off the primary hospital centers in exponential terms. And I've been through the very same A and E nightmares as other people - I've done days in A and E. No bullshit. You see how fecking tired the staff are and how completely ill-equipped because of retention or else hiring problems the entire NHS is.
It has been, and this needs to be said, intentionally underfunded for years. They lie to you by saying things like "we've [technically] increased spending on the NHS". The problem is that it's a decade or two behind where it actually needs to be as a service so all the money they spend to tread-water really just equals sinking. It requires far more investment than 170bn which is its roughly annual budget. More like double that for a period of say 5 years (or take 800bn as a national investment and spread that out, in financial repayments, over a decade or more and go about sorting what to me is Victorian infrastructure in the 21st century). How do you pay for it? The inevitable question. Cut the sum in half and include only the building of new centres and a few hospitals (across the nation). The question isn't then how do you pay for it but how do you justify not paying for it? It required serious fecking investment. And the figures I'm quoting are in that ballpark of what would be required in mere infrastructure challenges for a population that is 20 million larger than the existing infrastructure allows for. That's in part why the NHS is so poorly run. It hasn't kept up with population growth over various governments.
For what is by far the most, and maybe even the only, trusted institution within the UK, it has been scandalous handled.
Unfortunately, I just see them going the American route and fecking it up entirely (and intentionally).
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Of course Starmers more of a threat, he is the prime minister of this country with a resounding majority. In contrast Farages reform is 5 or 6 MPs with little to no influence on any policy.
Farage may be a threat but as of now he doesn't have the same power as Starmer and unless there is an early GE, he won't have it for a number of years, and even that is debatable too. So I don't see him as The same level of threat right now.
Starmer has overseen a purge of the left wing within labour along with his cronies such as Smeeth, McSweeney, Phillips, Akehurst, Reeves and Co. From the left wing movement he inherited which proposed radical change to tackle the inequalities facing us and improve the lives of working people to a continuation of despair, poverty and neoliberalism trickle down economics dissolved of any hope.
If this is our blueprint of left wing politics with a huge majority, and what our media wish to keep reminding us is "left wing" then do not be at all surprised when people flock to Farage. Not because he's a better choice, but more because of how well marketed/platformed he is and an electorate growing more disillusioned by the day at the legacy parties.
Thanks, she was eventually but yeah they need to sort the NHS out.
You clearly support the left wing of the Labour party and I understand your feelings but just because Farage isn't in power it doesn't mean he isn't dangerous. You have seen the stuff he has peddled about Southport which contributed riots in the country, he spreads misinformation and stokes division. I think he is a far more dangerous threat than Starmer at the moment.
Presumably farming couples with farms worth over £3milliion fall into that definition of rich millionaires, yes? The very people who now have to pay IHT.
Or is this another example of rich people (like pensioners living in multi million pound homes) not really being rich.
It's nuanced, isn't it? Farmland (at scale) can be worth a lot of money but the farmer, in absentia of selling that land, may not exactly live like a millionaire. I know many people who if they sold what is farmland (by zoning) would probably rack up a decent amount of money but these are not millionaires I'm taking about. So it is nuanced.
But should they gift it then they can no longer live in the farmhouse (without paying their kids a market rent) and they cant draw income from it. So effectively they're homeless and jobless.
I guess maybe I see Starmer more as a threat to the left wing than I see Farage would be a better way to phrase it then.
"Stop the tories" may have worked this time but I think Starmers lost alot of good will now and caused unrepairable fractions and divisions within the Labour Party. Just like we've seen in the USA, I don't think a "Stop Farage/Tories" will work next time around.
The best thing Starmer could do for the left wing now would be to push through electoral reform such as PR or STV. It has to be the right type though as I see in Wales they're introducing closed list PR which removes candidate accountability to their local constituency. If we had that today then Labour, under this current leadership, could put all their more right wing candidates at the top of the list and it does nobody any good then. The system in Scotland is much better in my opinion.
You say that, but it still needs to be paid for. I don't disagree that more investment in the NHS is needed, but at that level it would require massive cuts elsewhere or further huge hikes in tax or a combination of both.
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Beyond parody.
Won't someone think of the Norman castle owners!?
They seem to be trying to entirely disassociate the political class from the responsibilities of running the country.
We have a generation of politicians both red and blue who genuinely think sitting round the table with blackrock and carving up the country's assets is their job.
We have a generation of politicians both red and blue who genuinely think sitting round the table with blackrock and carving up the country's assets is their job.
Even a relatively small loosening of the fiscal rules in the budget to enable a little more borrowing, led to a rise in gilt prices. The money isn't available, and the market (our creditor) is sending a warning, especially while growth is so slow. The British economy is deeply screwed.
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But I thought, given these are generational farms, that arranging your finances in order to keep the farm in the family was the whole point?
Not for no reason is IHT called a tax you only pay if you really don't trust your kids...
Or, and you are a finance expert, so you would know, surely we can raise money through bond offerings? Or is that a terrible landscape at the moment. I don't mean the hundreds of billions, because I don't see bonds doing anything like that. But twenty or thirty billion? You're best placed to answer these questions on this site as it was your job, of sorts, iirc.
I mean the money does have to come from somewhere. But other than housing, healthcare, and education, what else is there to prioritize? For a state, any state, these are necessaries. You can build state of the art hospitals, ten or so, for what? 15 billion? No more than 25 billion if other nations, comparable, are anything to go by. But the other pressures come in wages for workers and shortages in staff. That is, iirc, more expensive that building the hospitals themselves, en masse.
Minutes after this photo was taken I believe he went on a football forum to repeat his rants about a private school shutting down.
Honestly, the silence from some people when it comes to society's ills yet the biggest travesties seems to be that someone with a shit load of money might end up with a slightly smaller amount of a shit load of money.
Hard disagree, if there is anything the NHS is in prime shape for right now it is that.
So long as people choose "spend 72 hours on a stretcher in a hospital corridor" as the mode of death.
It's sickening to watch the way some people talk about those on benefits.
I'm still amazing they keep getting that complete cnut Andrew Pierce on. He is a twat.
Finally a petition I can put my name to.
If you wrote this in some dystopian novel, people would claim it is too far fetched.
An elected MP, who is part of the government, setting up a go fund me to cover the costs of a natural disaster. And he thinks this is a good thing.
An elected MP, who is part of the government, setting up a go fund me to cover the costs of a natural disaster. And he thinks this is a good thing.
Expert would be a massive stretch, but I do write about financial services.
Reeves could add another £30bn or so of extra borrowing to boost the NHS, but you need to consider the scale of the borrowing already and what that would do to annual debt repayment costs.
She announced £30bn of extra borrowing in the Budget and that's pushing issuance in the current financial year to nearly 6% of GDP, around double normal issuance outside of times of crisis. Yields are 4.4% on 10-year gilts now, so not cheap and would move higher you'd assume if she pumps out loads more issuance, so the cost of servicing it will only grow. The paltry growth forecast -average of 1.6% pa over next five years- not exactly promising either.
Housing, healthcare and education are important sure, but you've also had a big round of public sector pay rises, the government badly needs to invest in more police, prisons, defence, infrastructure and a million other things I'm forgetting.
Not seen a projected figure of benefit savings and increased tax take you'd get from getting a lot of sick people into work, but there would be some down the line, granted.
EDIT: There are also genuine concerns that if you're trying to spend tens of billions quickly, loads of it will get pissed away on duff projects. It needs serious long-term planning and a coherent approach using the NHS's buying power to drive down costs.
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Nothing to do with Monsoon posting pre-tax losses of £1.8m last year? This is the same company that was asking landlords for rent reductions in 2019. They are not the barometer of UK business, they're poorly run with a poor proposition.
Cheers. But assume the cost of 1.5bn for a hospital. Which isn't out of the range. Surely ten of these, at about 17bn~ (assume the government does what it always does and spends more than it says), spread over y number of years, albeit through debt (by bond, I assume, because I cannot see how you cur other areas unless you impose a wealth tax: now that could easily raise that money, but this gvmnt won't do it). Anyway, surely considering the Victorian infrastructure (uneven, it has to be said, throughout the nation) and the fact that the NHS is apparently a service equipped to handle 50m or so in a nation of 70m... all this, to me, just says raise that money and go big or feck off. I would take the debt (however unfavorable - i mean it won't lead to economic collapse) for these hospital infrastructures. And you could include sites in catchment areas which double up as a&e as well as GP surgeries (a novel idea). These wouldn't be that expensive. Indeed, if that's all the government did, but on a national level, it might even be more beneficial than building brand new hospitals because it would take a massive load off the extant infrastructure. And probably be a lot cheaper (millions per site rather than a billion, minimally, a piece.
Good points though.
Mandelson is genuinely awful. He’s the worst of the New Labour ghouls.
They have gone big though, it's just the scale of investment needed is so huge.
Another issue is if you do go bigger, then you've got a problem when the next crisis comes along and it will. Eventually the bond markets will baulk at the glut of issuance.
Defence is going to be tricky as well, particularly if Trump weakens or kills Nato. That could be a massive drain on resources too.
I don't think they are poorly run as a business, it think the shop front retail industry is falling.
but that wasn't the point, it isn't just them saying it.
interestingly i was with a customer working on a returns processes using machine vision, there is a huge cost in the process - lots of big UK companies are waiting for the online stores to blink.
"You've had FOURTEEN YEARS to get a plan to fix all the stuff we broke, and this is the best you can do? You're the problem here!"
You're missing the point. He's saying the budget is what's breaking his business, I'm saying that his business hasn't been sustainable for 5 years and has been making losses, propped up by private equity.
European Union nations' government expenditures as a percentage of their GDP for 2023:
France: ~59.1%
Italy: ~56.8%
Belgium: ~55.7%
Sweden: ~51.8%
Germany: ~47.2%
Spain: ~45.4%
Netherlands: ~43.5%
Portugal: ~42.4%
Ireland: ~22.7% (lowest in the EU)
An interesting metric. I have (unfounded) suspicions that this has to do with off-shoring of actual GDP for Ireland in ways I cannot substantiate but basically I suspect its tax-haven status (legal) fecks with the numbers.
France: ~59.1%
Italy: ~56.8%
Belgium: ~55.7%
Sweden: ~51.8%
Germany: ~47.2%
Spain: ~45.4%
Netherlands: ~43.5%
Portugal: ~42.4%
Ireland: ~22.7% (lowest in the EU)
An interesting metric. I have (unfounded) suspicions that this has to do with off-shoring of actual GDP for Ireland in ways I cannot substantiate but basically I suspect its tax-haven status (legal) fecks with the numbers.
Yet the French government presently refuses to curb state expenditures, rather opting for tax hikes. Go figure
No, your missing the point.
A group of UK largest businesses have warned that raise tax will lead to inevitable, job losses and price rises.
At the start. Its not just Monsoon. They are all going to get hit.