Stop voting for fucking Tories

[tabascoboy]

There's such a difference between being "bold" and arrogant recklessness, if this were a Labour government the media here would have been relentless with no holding back giving them a right good shoeing.

[_Os_]

Booming consumer debt because people literally can't afford to live + inflation boosted by a tax cut + higher interest rates than would've been the case = 2.5% growth, apparently.

[SaintK]

Tory Boy being a Tory Boy

[Biffer]

Again I would argue that pitting public sector final salary recipients v private sector pension and share options scheme etc recipients is exactly what this Tory gov want to engender - getting them to fight amongst themselves whilst they continue to plunder the UK.

I don't want to repeat the same little analogy that I used before, but at some point, people are going to have to realise that they are being pitted against each other for the benefit of those who are, in effect, thieving from them. From them and from the people they are being told is their enemy, ie other normal working people.

Indeed. Divide and conquer, twas ever thus.
Out of interest I thought that all the final salary public pensions had now changed to average career salary.
In the NHS there a still a very small amount of staff that can retire at 55 on a final salary pension.
This perk has been phased out but I know in the next couple of years a lot of senior staff who are retiring.

Everyone who has joined in the last 10-15 years is on average salary, yes.

[Biffer]

Nobody is implying that. But everyone gets the state pension and many of them do live in luxury. 1/4 of pensioners are millionaires when you factor in asset wealth. More are millionaires than live in poverty in fact. 3 million millionaires Vs 2 million in poverty in fact.

So yes, the state pension is too low to survive on without a private pension and house. But the deal has always been you work, buy a house, invest, retire comfortably. A significant number did that and it's caused a litany of bad.

The state pension is a universal benefit earned by everyone who has contributed to the system. If you have a problem with pensioners with private pensions and big houses and other incomes living in luxury then the solution rests elsewhere ie taxation. Suggesting the state pension is the issue is wrong - if pensioners are living in luxury and that is a problem then we need to think about taxation of unearned incomes ie dividends, property taxes, etc. This really isn't anything to do with pensions per se.

Or having thresholds for the state pension of course to bring them in line with social security e.g. benefits.

And the issue is pensions and the care you need to pay for because as said on average people are living far longer and need far higher pension and healthcare spending than was ever envisaged when the state pensions, NHS etc was created. It's only going to get more expensive needing higher tax. It does need a solution sooner rather than later.

Thresholds for the state pension aren’t workable. I’m about 50, so if you introduced that I’d need to find something like an additional quarter of a million pounds to replace that over the next 15 years or so. That’s additional, over and above my current pension and savings plans.

Yes, you could do it for people who are just entering the workplace, but that’s a fifty year policy that no one is going to take on.

[Torquemada 1420]

4) It ABSOLUTELY is a British characteristic not to save. At least at generations below mine. I haven't looked in some time (and it's going to have worsened) but the UK is outside the first 100 countries in the world i.e. 3rd world ranking. I don't see how distinguishing the blame between Govt and populace has any meaning in this context. It's rather like obesity: EVERYONE knows it's bad for you and blaming anyone else for being a lard arse is simply shirking responsibility. If you want to die a horrible death from diabetes/cancer/heart disease, be my guest. Just don't ask me to pay for it.The Brits' obsession with houses is a key component in the problem.

Just on this one, especially more recently, it's because the main reason to save significant sums, was in order to get a deposit for a house. Now that's simply out of reach, there's a big feeling about what's the point in scrimping and saving, when instead life could be a bit more comfortable in the now. It's not as though that saving will achieve anything in the future. Especially with inflation beating a lot of typical interest rates.

That's certainly true, for some, in more recent times but this discrepancy has existed for decades. Don't forget that the UK's mortgage system has allowed for 95% (and even 100% or more) LTVs whereas Europe typically never allowed anything above 75%. Therefore, the deposit to price ratio has actually been lower in the UK (% and, as a result, absolute too), which, ironically, is part of the cause (along with BTL irresponsible lending) for the soaring rise in house prices.

[Camroc2]

She's going to carry on undaunted.

Liz Truss is preparing to push ahead with an unlimited number of “investment zones” despite a row within the government that it could hand an uncosted blank cheque of tax breaks to businesses.

The Treasury is believed to have raised concerns about “carpet bombing the entire country” with investment zones, with the government about to announce an appeal for areas to apply within days – as the Conservatives prepare for their annual conference in Birmingham.

However, Whitehall officials, including in the Treasury, are extremely concerned about the potential liability of not capping the number of areas allowed to get favourable tax and planning treatment. There is also concern that some of the tax breaks under consideration will last for 10 years.

So, after already testing the patience of the markets by borrowing to pay for tax cuts; she's now going to give uncosted, uncapped, un-budgeted tax breaks for untried "investment zones".

Christ on a bike !

I hope you guys are eligible for EU passports.

[fishfoodie]

Old Etonian politician acting like an entitled twat shock, horror

In recent years, Bill Gates held a roundtable discussion to which Kwasi Kwarteng was invited as a senior minister.
The billionaire was hosting the meeting, surrounded by high-profile guests. But according to observers, when Kwarteng turned up, he began to act as if he was the one in charge of the meeting “offering his opinion on everything” and “lecturing” Gates about the businessman’s own expert subject. It was “bizarre and embarrassing” to watch, according to one person with knowledge of the episode.
One former cabinet minister who worked with Kwarteng as business secretary described him as having “the concentration span of a gnat” and an inability to sit through anything other than very short meetings. “He was never remotely interested in other people’s point of view,” the former minister said.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/ ... 4622188

Well after the drug swabs in Westminster, & his behaviour at the Funeral, I wouldn't be surprised that he's an even bigger coke head than Gove; he shows all the classic signs.

[Torquemada 1420]

I see you ignored my correction about your statement that the BoE was bailing out FS pensions?

1. It will take time but most sectors have now moved from FS schemes, the NHS is now based on average salary scheme, revised accrual rates and an increased retiral age = to state pension age. I suspect when you say FS schemes you really mean DP schemes? There is no pension fund for these schemes - they are paid out of contributions received from current employees. (Note: Local Gov schemes are funded) They are not designed to balance - the Treasury makes up any deficit but also receives any surplus. OBR have said the public sector pension costs relative to the size of the UK economy will drop from 2.1% of GDP to 1.5% of GDP over the next 30+ years due to the pension reforms above.

2. In the same way only a small % of those on public sector pension get a large pension - the average nurse pension is £14,500 given they will have taken time off for children, worked part time etc. The average pension paid across the four main sectors - NHS, teachers, Armed Forces and Civil Service was £10,008 pa. The fallacy of large gold plated private pensions is a myth for the vast majority of public sector workers. To suggest their pensions are a major problem is just nonsense. However how the Gov have managed them is another issue ...

3. Senior Firemen high earners pay 17% of their salary towards their pension. You are right in that NHS consultants pay 14.5%. Many senior staff in the NHS and other public sector services do breach their annual and/or lifetime allowance. My golfing buddy, an NHS consultant, got a bill from HMRC for £15,000 last month for 2020-21 financial year for breaching their allowances. There was a concept of a 'Psychological Contract' in public sector employment - look it up. OK it was not written down but it played a big part in people deciding to work and stay in public service based on contributing to the public good and the receipt of a rock solid pension.

4. Again I would argue that the Gov set the environment in which we live and have the fiscal powers to set the conditions in which people decide to save or spend. You then conflate the discussion into obesity and housing somehow, I won't bother talking about Public Health, public sector housing provision, etc.

5. I agree about the obsession about housing however if we had a solid and reliable source of good quality social housing owned and rented by councils or suchlike and rental was protected then I would imagine we might return to the days when living in a council house was normal and not anything to be ashamed of? However our current rental stock is dominated by private renters where stock is generally very poor and rental is a precarious situation at best and is often more expensive than owning your own house. I grew up in council houses.

However we digress ....

I didn't. The BofE acted to save the public sector schemes. If it was only private sector FS that were at risk, they would have let them burn and fall onto the PPF. The biggest holder of long dated gilts are public sector FS schemes and it was the plummeting price of the funded ones of those (too) which meant they were in breach of FRS17/102/whatever it is now. The hoohah about margin calls was a sideshow. I don't think any public sector schemes operate LDI strategies and so are not exposed to margin calls in that way. But it doesn't matter: if the value of a primary asset underpinning your pension has fallen by 75%, you are f**ked.

1) I don't need a lecture on how pension schemes operate! By "DP" I assume that is a typo and you meant DB? It's the same thing. FS = DB Funded or unfunded. Anyway, this is not going to be something we agree on and I'm not getting into minutiae arguments over OBR assumptions, SCAPE etc. The hole is as I described and it's gotten larger EVERY year in my professional lifetime. And that despite every attempt to fiddle the nos such as altering the FRS assumptions, waving or watering the min funding requirements, change to CPI etc.
https://www.pensions-expert.com/DB-Deri ... h-16-surge?

£2.2tn.

The net public sector pension represents 44 per cent of the government’s total liabilities and is the largest liability in the government’s accounts, which were released on June 6. It does not include the state pension.

2) You get that for a private pension to fund an equivalent annuity of £14,500pa would require a pension pot well in excess of £400k? How many private sector workers have a pot even 1/4 that size do you reckon? Gold plated is exactly what they remain cw with the average, not public sector man in the st.

3) Yup. There are a lot of senior public sector workers who breach both the AA and LTA. And f**k all in the private sector. As you know, to breach the AA requires contributions to exceed £160k per rolling 4 years and to exceed the LTA needs a (equivalent) pension pot in excess of just under £1.1m. This was a massive f**k up by Govt/Treasury in introducing there rules because they were designed to hurt the private sector but, like Kwarteng, they hadn't done the maths and every public sector pension worker with an entitlement to £50k pa + got caught too. The MASSIVE disproportion of those caught in the public sector to the private shows how skewed the pension system had become in regards retirement prospects. How many private pension pots exceed £1.1m do you reckon?

The irony is that when the stupid rules were introduced, I immediately wrote that you'd see a mass exodus from the NHS of senior consultants: either taking early retirement, fleeing abroad or switching to private consulting back to the NHS. Et voila.

4) No. Like I said, there is blame on both sides. Some people do take responsibility and save. Just because the system is bad does not mean that resorting to self harm gets you off the hook from any personal responsibility. However, I'm all ears as to what you think should change to encourage people to save because, in the end, the will not to was so bad that the Government ended up legislating that pension scheme membership was mandatory.

5) One thing we can agree upon then ! And I have written various analyses and reports on this subject over the years (I don't have any data on my home machine but if I remember, I'll throw up a chart confirming your assertions next week). The simple answer to this always was to restrict BTL mortgages to a maximum (say) of 50% LTV. But, as other posters have written too, the whole UK's economy is built upon the rising price (but imagined value) of houses and so Govt and banks had a vested interest in continuing with the debt escalator model.

[dpedin]

I don't want to repeat the same little analogy that I used before, but at some point, people are going to have to realise that they are being pitted against each other for the benefit of those who are, in effect, thieving from them. From them and from the people they are being told is their enemy, ie other normal working people.

Indeed. Divide and conquer, twas ever thus.
Out of interest I thought that all the final salary public pensions had now changed to average career salary.
In the NHS there a still a very small amount of staff that can retire at 55 on a final salary pension.
This perk has been phased out but I know in the next couple of years a lot of senior staff who are retiring.

Everyone who has joined in the last 10-15 years is on average salary, yes.

Retiring at 55 was restricted to a very, very small group of staff working in specific roles within mental health under the old pension scheme and/or clinical staff who joined scheme prior to 1995. The old scheme changed to average salary a few years ago with the last few on the FS and retiral age of 60 all but gone now however the Gov cocked up the implementation and were found to have contravened age discrimination regs and had to do a rework. As of this year everyone is now in new scheme albeit with previous pensions protected - this has triggered many nurses et al retiring earlier than planned. Most of the senior guys retiring now are doing so because of having reached the lifetime allowance and being clobbered by HMRC. Many are reducing hours to remain within the limits. End result is loss of clinical capacity and therefore reduced throughout of patients ending and longer waiting times.

[Insane_Homer]

We didnt know



only kidding

[_Os_]

Another quite mysterious IEA man.

Singham is from London and was involved in Thatcherite privatisations in the late 1980s/early 1990s. He then disappears to the US becomes a dual national referring to himself as American and ends up deeply imbedded with the American right (lobbying/think tanks/Republican Party). This is where he headed up a project for Babson Global (connected to the Kochs), to create Special Economic Zones (SEZs) in third world nations. These are areas of low-transparency, low-regulation, low-tax, that are supposed to broadly get rid of democracy/human rights based law system/welfare to achieve high economic growth. It's the Chinese model but not really, because it ignores all the other factors in China's reform (which were more significant), only focusing on the SEZs element (which was a way for the CCP to obtain economic growth, without liberalising China more broadly). I'm not sure he really understands the SEZ concept. As far as I can tell all these projects failed or are failing, the one in Honduras has been written about widely.

He then pops up in the Uk again for Brexit, and finds a place in Tufton Street thinktanks, and the IEA. He ends up very closely associated with the ERG, because he told them what they wanted to hear. I remember reading an IEA paper by him in 2018 on his post-Brexit plan, basically it would all be easy and FTAs would hugely boost growth, there was so much wrong with it I remember not even knowing where to start as I read it. There's a good longform bio on that part of his career here. He was known to all the Brexit supporting Tory MPs and became an advisor to Truss when she was International Trade Secretary. Whitehall civil servants regarded him as a "total clown" and “like any of these Brexiteers, he comes up with these ideas that aren’t workable. He’s a good blue-sky thinker, but on the practicalities and details he gets blown apart.”.

Fast forward to today and Truss is crashing ahead with an unlimited amount of "investment zones", which it's unlikely don't have a straight line connection to Singham. He was quite influential among Brexiters immediately after the referendum (and before reality hit and it got difficult), and this was his idea even before Brexit and his return to the UK.

He's now delighting in the "howls of anguish from those who object to reform", the language of a revolutionary madman.

[Ovals]

I'm retired and I now spend far more money than I did whilst working - largely because I saved while working, whereas I now don't need to. Us pensioners tend to spend what money we get because you can't take it with you. We've also got more time to fill and that costs money !!

There seems to be two categories.

The first one the IEA guy and some Tory MPs target, that the triple lock should end to reduce government spending. It's a lot like universal credit though, as you say the money gets put back into the real economy, so reducing this is making people poorer and taking money out of the economy. The poorer the pensioner is the more they're spending, someone relying on a state pension isn't wealthy. The recipient of the tax cut, probably isn't spending as much. And there's the societal cost of making people poorer too, it may not be the tax cut it seems.

The second is about accumulated lifetime wealth (which you seem to be in!). Which for most people is a private pension and their house. Some particularly on the left want to tax this asset wealth, it's something Labour under Starmer are avoiding talking about. Problem there is, why then spend your life saving at all if it's just going to be taken away? This is particularly an issue when people have a lot of wealth locked up in their house on paper, but are actually living poorly (more category one than this category). It's surely morally wrong to punish someone forgoing things when they were younger so they could live more as they wish when they are old.

Growth from forcing pensioners to either not spend (category one) or spend everything earlier (category two), looks illusionary. It seems more like the early stages of creating a new bogeyman to blame for everything, there's the usual bogeyman contradiction too a "the immigrants are taking all the benefits and taking all the jobs" gambit.

It's a fact the young in the UK have been fucked, can't see how fucking the old will change that. It'll really just mean those young people are eventually fucked twice.

This

However, even better off pensioners will tend to spend more if their pension increases. Most of us don't like dipping into savings for everyday living or even hols. We still tend to base our everyday standard of living on our everyday income - but dip into savings for capital spends.

[_Os_]

It's also self protecting. The more people say "you are morons" the more they think they are right, because they define themselves against the orthodoxy, being the outsider is their validation. This is incidentally exactly how conspiracy theories work.

As I was saying, from the Times:


"“Senior Treasury officials made clear there was a big risk,” a senior Tory said. “The cabinet secretary [Simon Case] made it clear that there was a huge risk. You can do what you said in the leadership election — reverse the national insurance rise and stop the corporation tax rise — but once you get into further tax cuts you have to have someone mark your homework.”

Far from deterred, Truss seems to have fed off the prospect of negative fallout, using it as evidence that the establishment would always fight real economic radicalism. “She was told, ‘Don’t do this, no one will like it.’ And her attitude was basically, ‘I don’t care’.” Downing Street sources do not confirm this form of words but agree Truss’s attitude was that the economy would have to weather an initial period of turbulence

Upon learning what was intended, a very senior civil servant declared privately: “She is completely mad.” A senior figure at the Treasury called the decision to scrap the top rate of tax in a cost-of-living crisis “f***ing insane,” the day before the budget. Another said the unfunded tax cuts were “what Venezuela does”."

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/trus ... -ntwxk3tbd

[Torquemada 1420]

Retiring at 55 was restricted to a very, very small group of staff working in specific roles within mental health under the old pension scheme and/or clinical staff who joined scheme prior to 1995. The old scheme changed to average salary a few years ago with the last few on the FS and retiral age of 60 all but gone now however the Gov cocked up the implementation and were found to have contravened age discrimination regs and had to do a rework. As of this year everyone is now in new scheme albeit with previous pensions protected - this has triggered many nurses et al retiring earlier than planned. Most of the senior guys retiring now are doing so because of having reached the lifetime allowance and being clobbered by HMRC. Many are reducing hours to remain within the limits. End result is loss of clinical capacity and therefore reduced throughout of patients ending and longer waiting times.

All of this, esp the last line.

[Torquemada 1420]

Another quite mysterious IEA man.

Singham is from London and was involved in Thatcherite privatisations in the late 1980s/early 1990s. He then disappears to the US becomes a dual national referring to himself as American and ends up deeply imbedded with the American right (lobbying/think tanks/Republican Party). This is where he headed up a project for Babson Global (connected to the Kochs), to create Special Economic Zones (SEZs) in third world nations. These are areas of low-transparency, low-regulation, low-tax, that are supposed to broadly get rid of democracy/human rights based law system/welfare to achieve high economic growth. It's the Chinese model but not really, because it ignores all the other factors in China's reform (which were more significant), only focusing on the SEZs element (which was a way for the CCP to obtain economic growth, without liberalising China more broadly). I'm not sure he really understands the SEZ concept. As far as I can tell all these projects failed or are failing, the one in Honduras has been written about widely.

He then pops up in the Uk again for Brexit, and finds a place in Tufton Street thinktanks, and the IEA. He ends up very closely associated with the ERG, because he told them what they wanted to hear. I remember reading an IEA paper by him in 2018 on his post-Brexit plan, basically it would all be easy and FTAs would hugely boost growth, there was so much wrong with it I remember not even knowing where to start as I read it. There's a good longform bio on that part of his career here. He was known to all the Brexit supporting Tory MPs and became an advisor to Truss when she was International Trade Secretary. Whitehall civil servants regarded him as a "total clown" and “like any of these Brexiteers, he comes up with these ideas that aren’t workable. He’s a good blue-sky thinker, but on the practicalities and details he gets blown apart.”.

Fast forward to today and Truss is crashing ahead with an unlimited amount of "investment zones", which it's unlikely don't have a straight line connection to Singham. He was quite influential among Brexiters immediately after the referendum (and before reality hit and it got difficult), and this was his idea even before Brexit and his return to the UK.

He's now delighting in the "howls of anguish from those who object to reform", the language of a revolutionary madman.

Never heard of this guy. Good shout to highlight him.

[Torquemada 1420]

Or having thresholds for the state pension of course to bring them in line with social security e.g. benefits.

And the issue is pensions and the care you need to pay for because as said on average people are living far longer and need far higher pension and healthcare spending than was ever envisaged when the state pensions, NHS etc was created. It's only going to get more expensive needing higher tax. It does need a solution sooner rather than later.

Lots of moving parts in here, most of the important ones Govts have behind the curve on or ignored.

1) The State Pension is paid for by (almost) everyone via NI. If it's not going to be a universal entitlement, then stop taking the NI. In fact, scrap NI altogether and simply call it Income Tax....... but that won't happen because then Govt. would have to cease lying in claiming the UK has low Income Tax rates whereas in reality, the starting rate is in excess of 45% for everyone who earns. Tax Freedom Day is going to end up at Halloween at this rate.

2) People aren't living far longer any more. The mortality curve has peaked and is in reverse. Mainly because of lard arses removing themselves from the population but not before they've drained £ billions from the NHS. And that's the real killer (ahem): not the extension** in life expectancy but the explosion in ill health during the extension.

3)** Because after Barber v GRE, the UK Govt took the chance to jump women's retirement age to 65 too and since then, has been cranking it up for all. The trend is probably that people are working longer as a proportion of life expectancy (war death adjusted) than since a century ago. Worse, Govt peddle the lies that "it's okay to retire later because you are living longer". Tell you what, I'll retire at 55 and go back to work at 80: how does that sound? Because stealing the best remaining years of my life in exchange for the worst is not a deal I am buying into.

4) Successive Govts have p*ssed NI (and taxes) up the wall earmarked for pensions. They've tried every fiddle in the book to fix the now unfunded hole but every one has failed because............... they've then p*ssed the NI up the wall earmarked for pensions.
- more increases in NI than Coffey's waistline
- graduated pensions, SERPS, S2P and more changes in these than any human being can recall
- continually jumping up the State Pension Age
all of it has failed as the collections have been poured into the debt abyss

[C69]

Well LK should just give in now, her interview with LT was an embarrassment.
At least she threw Quasi under the bus.

[sefton]

Gove’s refusal to commit to voting in support of this fiscal event could be the most interesting snippet to come out of that car crash.

[PCPhil]

Well LK should just give in now, her interview with LT was an embarrassment.
At least she threw Quasi under the bus.

The Beeb have had one ball cut off and the other one dangling by the tories. Can you imagine the line of questioning of any other political party after the chaos of last week/year/decade.

[dpedin]

Or having thresholds for the state pension of course to bring them in line with social security e.g. benefits.

And the issue is pensions and the care you need to pay for because as said on average people are living far longer and need far higher pension and healthcare spending than was ever envisaged when the state pensions, NHS etc was created. It's only going to get more expensive needing higher tax. It does need a solution sooner rather than later.

Lots of moving parts in here, most of the important ones Govts have behind the curve on or ignored.

1) The State Pension is paid for by (almost) everyone via NI. If it's not going to be a universal entitlement, then stop taking the NI. In fact, scrap NI altogether and simply call it Income Tax....... but that won't happen because then Govt. would have to cease lying in claiming the UK has low Income Tax rates whereas in reality, the starting rate is in excess of 45% for everyone who earns. Tax Freedom Day is going to end up at Halloween at this rate.

2) People aren't living far longer any more. The mortality curve has peaked and is in reverse. Mainly because of lard arses removing themselves from the population but not before they've drained £ billions from the NHS. And that's the real killer (ahem): not the extension** in life expectancy but the explosion in ill health during the extension.

3)** Because after Barber v GRE, the UK Govt took the chance to jump women's retirement age to 65 too and since then, has been cranking it up for all. The trend is probably that people are working longer as a proportion of life expectancy (war death adjusted) than since a century ago. Worse, Govt peddle the lies that "it's okay to retire later because you are living longer". Tell you what, I'll retire at 55 and go back to work at 80: how does that sound? Because stealing the best remaining years of my life in exchange for the worst is not a deal I am buying into.

4) Successive Govts have p*ssed NI (and taxes) up the wall earmarked for pensions. They've tried every fiddle in the book to fix the now unfunded hole but every one has failed because............... they've then p*ssed the NI up the wall earmarked for pensions.
- more increases in NI than Coffey's waistline
- graduated pensions, SERPS, S2P and more changes in these than any human being can recall
- continually jumping up the State Pension Age
all of it has failed as the collections have been poured into the debt abyss

Can't disagree with any of this. It is interesting that the Gov claim we are one of the highest taxed countries but have one of the lowest state pensions - where does all the money go? The UK spends about 4.5 - 5.0% of GDP on state pensions and benefits compared with OECD average of 6.5% and is significantly lower than almost every other comparable European country. In the UK pensioners are heavily reliant on occupational or private pensions when compared to most other OECD countries. If you can't or choose not to save for your retirement then you are fecked in the UK. Our state pension is insufficient to live on,

Life expectancy has come down over the last few years mainly due to covid but it now seems also because of the NHS and social care struggling to perform with continual cuts in funding. Ave excess deaths are running about 1,000 per month above pre pandemic levels. More worryingly though is the number of folk of working age who are inactive or leaving the workforce - the BoE suggested a few months ago that this is due to ill health, in particular long covid, and also that it now includes men and women up to age of 66 and many can't work for health reasons.

Ill health in older age is a major issue. The NHS has been remarkable successful in keeping folk alive but this comes with costs. In the bad old days if you contracted cancer chances are you died from that primary cancer, now with new drugs, radiotherapy, early detection, etc we can ensure most folk survive their cancer. However chances are it will reoccur somewhere down the line and we will treat them again. this can go on for many cycles with cancer sufferers having a reasonable quality of life. However it costs a lot more than it did - 2,3,4+ cycles of expensive treatment compared with one cycle then death. I remember someone telling me TAVI was a great technique in replacing heart valves particularly in the over 85s. Where do we draw the line? When the NHS tries to do this the public outcry is huge and the politicians retreat to avoid losing votes - think IVF treatment, certain types of cosmetic surgery, prescribing exercise classes instead of drugs, etc. Its easy to criticise but feckin difficult to make the decisions.

[SaintK]

Well LK should just give in now, her interview with LT was an embarrassment.
At least she threw Quasi under the bus.

Not sure who was worst Kuenssberg or Truss.
Though we do know now that Kwarteng is soley to blame for the 45% tax abolition and Michael Gove would maake a good leader of the opposition

[I like neeps]

The state pension is a universal benefit earned by everyone who has contributed to the system. If you have a problem with pensioners with private pensions and big houses and other incomes living in luxury then the solution rests elsewhere ie taxation. Suggesting the state pension is the issue is wrong - if pensioners are living in luxury and that is a problem then we need to think about taxation of unearned incomes ie dividends, property taxes, etc. This really isn't anything to do with pensions per se.

Or having thresholds for the state pension of course to bring them in line with social security e.g. benefits.

And the issue is pensions and the care you need to pay for because as said on average people are living far longer and need far higher pension and healthcare spending than was ever envisaged when the state pensions, NHS etc was created. It's only going to get more expensive needing higher tax. It does need a solution sooner rather than later.

Thresholds for the state pension aren’t workable. I’m about 50, so if you introduced that I’d need to find something like an additional quarter of a million pounds to replace that over the next 15 years or so. That’s additional, over and above my current pension and savings plans.

Yes, you could do it for people who are just entering the workplace, but that’s a fifty year policy that no one is going to take on.

Right, there are no good options. And this isn't a UK specific problem. Every western nation has increasing life expectancy, decreasing birthrates and the social security for retirees is a ticking time bomb globally.

[fishfoodie]

Well LK should just give in now, her interview with LT was an embarrassment.
At least she threw Quasi under the bus.

Not sure who was worst Kuenssberg or Truss.
Though we do know now that Kwarteng is soley to blame for the 45% tax abolition and Michael Gove would maake a good leader of the opposition

Dizzy is a very forgiving Boss; most would immediately sack a subordinate that hadn't previously cleared, such a major, & unpopular change beforehand with them !

Was she asked why she is refusing to publish the ORB report until November, even though it will be available next week ?

[fishfoodie]

That's the right motivation. It's how households work. People know that when their bills arrive they can either cut their consumption or they can get a higher salary, go out and get that new job. That's the approach the government is taking, we're
saying: look, let's create growth so households can afford their bills.

https://www.bbc.com/news/live/uk-politics-63074338

Fuck me pink; are these not the same pricks who are refusing to engage with Unions seeking those higher salaries ?

.... and obviously saying that these increases will be inflationary

[_Os_]

"My Tufton Street minions didn't prepare me for this one! What is the answer! Fuck!".

[_Os_]

Can't disagree with any of this. It is interesting that the Gov claim we are one of the highest taxed countries but have one of the lowest state pensions - where does all the money go?

I don't know enough about the ins and outs of pensions to add anything to what you and Torq have posted. But this is a different question.

The big thing that's happened in the past few weeks, is the Tory energy bailout costing £60bn (some estimate the eventual cost could be much higher, even £200bn). That's UK public debt going to private energy companies that are currently making windfall profits because of the Russia/Ukraine war, Thatcher used a windfall tax but the Tories deem that too left wing now, nationalisation was also rejected. All that's being paid for is a limited period of lower energy bills for consumers. It's a huge public debt to fund consumption with nothing else to show for it.

These assets were originally privatised under Thatcherism to supposedly drive growth and efficiency etc. In economics it's called "crowding out" when state speeding prevents private investment, because the state's expanded fiscal policy means interest rates rise and suck up all the private investment spending, why go to the effort of investing when you can buy bonds at a high interest rate and get a similar return with the same or less risk. This has been known since at least the 18th century (the two Scots, Hume and Smith). This is all the libertarian (IEA, Thatcherism etc) stuff is built on, most of the rest is ideological bullshit and billionaires refusing to pay taxes.

This has happened before. After the 2008 GFC, and Covid PPE. The 2008 crash wasn't really "bailing out the banks" they're not free floating entities disconnected from anything else in the economy, it was bailing home owners and pensions. The Covid PPE spend just looks like mass looting. It's all really just an asset swap, private junk becomes public debt.

The next move that happens, is everyone looks at the huge government debt mountain and says "there's a public debt crisis!", when actually there isn't. In the absence of growth government spending is cut to try and reduce this debt, this is what austerity is. During the austerity phase everyone fights like mad bastards to cut who knows what blaming anyone that isn't them for destroying the economy. What this really means is liquidating assets to try and pay off debts, spending on teachers or roads isn't a cost it's an asset. Ultimately assets generate the growth, and the assets are the public goods (good luck having a "high skilled high wage economy" if the education system is unequal and underfunded). Liquidating assets to pay off debt, usually means you have a reduced asset pool and so reduced scope to outgrow the debt ... and in the end more debt (the debt to asset ratio rises). All through the Tory austerity years the UK's debt kept growing and there was little growth.

Then it gets weird.

First the Tories privatise everything they can to prevent crowding out, then they pump up government debt and give it to those same private entities. Now there's potentially privatisation and crowding out. Truss and Kamikwazi don't know what they're talking about because they're okay with massive interest rate increases and also talk about private sector generated growth (when there's shitloads of UK bonds that could be paying 6%?). Then it gets even more weird, they're now cutting taxes in an attempt to increase growth, which there's no evidence works, besides the UK already having low corporate taxation and all sorts of loopholes. To fund this tax cutting there'll apparently be further austerity (which as the track record shows means more debt).

... You can tell this isn't really understood, because there's little outrage over how the energy bailout was funded, Tories normally get away with saying it's an excellent solution (which it is, for their funders).

[Hal Jordan]

I see the social media message for the cheerleaders is " The pound has rallied, MSM get a grip and stop panicking the markets!"

Risible bullshit.

[Biffer]

He’s a prick, but fair play to Fabricant for this

[C69]

Gove’s refusal to commit to voting in support of this fiscal event could be the most interesting snippet to come out of that car crash.

Anyone voting against will be expelled from the Tory Party.
Not too sure about those who abstain

[Biffer]

Gove’s refusal to commit to voting in support of this fiscal event could be the most interesting snippet to come out of that car crash.

Anyone voting against will be expelled from the Tory Party.
Not too sure about those who abstain

There may be some that are past the point where they give a fuck

[C69]

Gove’s refusal to commit to voting in support of this fiscal event could be the most interesting snippet to come out of that car crash.

Anyone voting against will be expelled from the Tory Party.
Not too sure about those who abstain

There may be some that are past the point where they give a fuck

Shitloads of the Red Wall Tory MPs are fecked anyway so they have nowt to lose

[fishfoodie]

Anyone voting against will be expelled from the Tory Party.
Not too sure about those who abstain

There may be some that are past the point where they give a fuck

Shitloads of the Red Wall Tory MPs are fecked anyway so they have nowt to lose

They'd probably all prefer another couple of years on the gravy train, with their £150k, & expenses to keep the heating on in their stables !

It'd be nice to think they'd pull the whole thing down; but the last twelve years hasn't exactly been marked with many instances of Tories putting the Nations interests before their own.

[Margin__Walker]

U-Turn incoming on the 45p top rate cut.

[C69]

U-Turn incoming on the 45p top rate cut.

The damage is done. The tag of the Party of the rich will stick.
This will ahow the markets that they are indecisive as well as useless.

[Hal Jordan]

I wonder how much influence Grima Gove had, emerging from his bunker to say how he wasn't in favour.

Meanwhile, Chris Philp has decided businesses with less than 500 employees need absolutely no regulatory oversight at at all. This is, of course, a classic case of saying outrageous shit to "back down" to the only marginally less outrageous shit you wanted all along, but fucking hell.

And in other meritocracy news, Rees-Mogg's Somerset Capital co-founder and Tory donor, Dominic Johnson gets a trade minister job and has a knighthood chucked in for good measure.

[SaintK]

I wonder how much influence Grima Gove had, emerging from his bunker to say how he wasn't in favour.

Meanwhile, Chris Philp has decided businesses with less than 500 employees need absolutely no regulatory oversight at at all. This is, of course, a classic case of saying outrageous shit to "back down" to the only marginally less outrageous shit you wanted all along, but fucking hell.

And in other meritocracy news, Rees-Mogg's Somerset Capital co-founder and Tory donor, Dominic Johnson gets a trade minister job and has a knighthood chucked in for good measure.

I think you'll find it's a peerage!!!

[JM2K6]

[Mahoney]

That's kind of a feature of the system though - if you want to bring someone into government and they aren't an MP then you have to give them a peerage to get them into Parliament.

The bit it makes some kind of sense to be outraged about is that particular person being made a minister, and / or a non-MP being made a minister (though that has been the case for as long as our constitution has existed). The rest is just mechanics.

[Hal Jordan]

And as if by magic, even as the dead cat of tax cuts bounces off the table of time (RIP Humph), Kwarteng announces cuts of up to £18bn for public services.

Although in this inflationary time of fucked currency, that's probably the cost of a couple of trainee nurses and a teaching assistant.