Thursday 23rd November 2023

[refitman]

Morning,

[frog222]

Morning refit

Something to correct the majority Tory press --

[frog222]

The front page of the Times



is very different from the online one

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/

[frog222]

• Tax burden will be highest level since Second World War

But the context for a series of announcements designed to boost the economy and the Conservatives’ flagging electoral prospects was downgraded growth forecasts and a tax burden still rising every year to a postwar high.

Surging receipts from freezes to income tax thresholds until 2028 are projected to raise £44.6 billion, £15 billion more than thought in the spring, as incomes rise in cash terms. The Office for Budget Responsibility estimates that four million people will be dragged into paying the 20p basic rate, with a further three million pulled into paying 40p tax and 400,000 more paying the top rate of 45p.

Tax cuts

Millions of workers will benefit from a 2p cut in national insurance. Hunt said 27 million workers would be better off, announcing that the main rate of employee national insurance would drop from 12 per cent to 10 per cent, saving people more than £450.

“If we want people to get up early in the morning to work nights to go the extra mile we need to recognise their hard work benefits us all,” he said.

He also cut national insurance for two million self-employed workers, giving them an extra £350 a year by abolishing class two national insurance and cutting class four payments.00,000 more paying the top rate of 45p.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/autu ... -gt72cdfpq

[frog222]

[gilsey]

• Tax burden will be highest level since Second World War

History of recent tory govts tells us that they tend to cut income tax, which benefits the pensioners, and raise NI, which doesn't affect them.

But it seems the cut will apply from January, not April. This is possible for NI but not for income tax, which is cumulative.

But they're not planning a May election, of course not.


At the very least they're keeping their options open.

[frog222]

ADITYA

" Yes, the Tories lag far behind in the polls; and sure, Rishi Sunak’s personal ratings fall almost as short as his trouser legs. But boy, does the prime minister want you to know he’s up for a fight. That’s why his chancellor is giving away tens of billions of pounds in tax cuts. It also explains his haste in pushing those pounds into voters’ pockets. Rather than wait until April to make that 2p cut to national insurance, Jeremy Hunt will ensure it hits pay packets in January. Ever get the feeling you’re being bribed?

There is no magic money tree, Theresa May used to say. But that was three prime ministers ago, and anyway it was a lie – a government steeling itself for an election can always lay its hands on some cash. Best of all is taxpayers’ money, which Hunt gleefully handed out in sweeteners worth £21bn a year. "

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... -statement

[gilsey]

Rishi Sunak’s personal ratings fall almost as short as his trouser legs.

Like it.


"Mr Hunt is, by the narrowest of tiny margins, still on course to meet his (poorly designed) fiscal rule that debt as a fraction of national income should be falling in the last year of the forecast period. In reality debt is set to be just about flat at around 93 per cent of national income over the whole period. And that is on the basis of a series of questionable, if not plain implausible, assumptions. It assumes that many aspects of day to day public service spending will be cut. It assumes a substantial real cut in public investment spending. It assumes that rates of fuel duties will rise year on year with inflation – which they have not done in more than a decade and they surely will not do next April. It assumes that the constant roll over of “temporary” business rates cuts will stop. It assumes, of course, that the economy doesn’t suffer any negative shocks.

Like his predecessors Mr Hunt has taken a modest improvement in the public finance forecasts and spent most of it. He has spent up front and told us he will meet his targets largely by unspecified fiscal restraint at some point in the future. What he will do in March if the OBR downgrades its forecasts we do not know. Any such downgrading would leave him with a big headache. More importantly he or his successor is going to have the mother and father of a headache when it comes to making the tough decisions implied by this statement in a year or two’s time."

Paul Johnson, IFS. Copied from the G.

https://ifs.org.uk/collections/autumn-statement-2023

[gilsey]

Hard not to conclude that the tories have worked out that Labour won't push back on any of this, thereby setting them* up for a pretty disastrous 5 years.

Go on Starmer & Reeves, surprise us.



* and us

[frog222]

Thanks gilsey, didn't get around to reading all the coverage, but we have it in a nutshell here !

The many hundreds of $millions invested in the GoP candidates' campaigns make the few £100K of dark money spent on Starmer's look very cheap

[AnatolyKasparov]

If the worst thing Luke Akehurst has ever done is emailing councillors, then even the Corbynite left would struggle to make him into a bogey figure.

There are lots of things you can say about him, but this is a total nothingburger and then some.

[frog222]

WATO --

the Moggster says you don't need UK fruit and veg, just buy it from abroad !

Why stop there ...

[gilsey]

Be nice if he'd thought of that before the referendum.

[AnatolyKasparov]

Hard not to conclude that the tories have worked out that Labour won't push back on any of this, thereby setting them* up for a pretty disastrous 5 years.

Go on Starmer & Reeves, surprise us.

* and us

One thing that Starmer and Reeves definitely want is not just to be elected, but re-elected. They can see Hunt's blindingly obvious "trap" as well as anyone, and because they do want to be re-elected they will have plans to counter it.

You can expect not that much of them overall, and still believe this.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Yay Patrick Grant! Boo Isabel Oakeshott!

[frog222]

Looking forward to it !

[Sky'sGoneOut]

I've spent the last couple of afternoons trying to explain the proposed benefit changes to (often frightened) people on a couple of disability benefit forums and I've had to admit defeat. The documents the government produced yesterday are so full of ambiguous and contradictory statements that it's impossible to make any sense of entire sections of them. This leaves 2.4 million people in the support/LCWRA group wondering what the hell is going to happen to their benefits. And I mean now, not at some nebulous date in the future. For example, are reassessments still going to take place or have they been scrapped? Who knows because the document has two completely contradictory statements about it on the same page. And it's not just me being a bit thick, benefit advisors whose job it is to interpret this shit are baffled.

These Tories need to go, they're not just arseholes they're also fucking useless.

[AnatolyKasparov]

The cynical view is that being vague lets them make tough sounding noises, without actually committing themselves to anything specific (especially if it might upset more voters than just the "undeserving poor") But as you say, that won't make a lot of often already anxious and vulnerable people any less worried.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

The cynical view is that being vague lets them make tough sounding noises, without actually committing themselves to anything specific

It's simply incompetence. I was messaging a benefits advisor from the Scope charity earlier today and he was saying this is par for the course and it could take weeks before the clarifications they're asking for are received. After watching the evidence from the Covid enquiry this comes as no surprise. They're a total shambles.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Question Time came to you tonight from Stevenage. A place I unfortunately know all too well as I often change trains there with time to kill so get to marvel at the glorious concrete town centre. I wouldn't go full Cleverly and call it a shithole but it's pretty grim. So a perfect venue for a thoroughly grim debate this evening.

We might as well start with Isabel Oakshott because tonight it was her show. She was allowed free rein to interrupt, talk over, and sneer at every other panellist without any censure whatsoever. She was having a whale of a time using the usual right wing commentators trick when faced with the public of painting herself as a voice of the people having a go at both the Tories and Labour. And it was working, she was getting laughs and applause....until she got carried away and started telling the audience what she really thought and it did not go well for her. As soon as she began ranting about immigration and how she wanted it to come down to zero she was met with absolute silence. Tumbleweed rolled by as the stupid smirk dropped from her weird plastic face. Then an NHS doctor explained that her idiocy would collapse the health service and Isabel's night was done.

For the Tories we had Penfold from Dangermouse, oops no sorry I mean Andrew Griffith. Andrew appears to have what I could only describe as anti-charisma. The more Andrew talked the less anyone seemed to give a shit. He tried gaslighting the audience telling them yesterdays' budget was brilliant and no one cared. He tried wowing them with a tale of pulling himself up by his bootstraps, running a successful business, then entering politics as a form of public duty and no one cared. For an hour Andrew rambled on when given the opportunity and yet his banal utterances barely raised a flicker of interest from anyone. As I've mentioned before this is dire stuff for the government. People can't even be bothered to get angry or laugh at them now. There's an overwhelming sense of, 'Yeah whatever...when are you going to fuck off?'

For Labour we had Alison McGovern. Dear oh dear, what can I say? Alison was clearly very nervous and as an anxiety sufferer myself allowances have to be made for that, and the Oakeshott creature talked over her whenever she liked which also didn't help. But even taking those into account Alison had a shocker. She waffled, couldn't provide details, wouldn't answer straight questions, it was almost as if she was representing a political party that did exactly the same things, an embodiment of it if you will, and it did not go down well. I felt genuinely sorry for her because she clearly realised it was going badly and was upset about it. Which in a way is a good thing because at least she was showing some emotion as opposed to the usual Labour robots. But besides that atom width silver lining she was absolutely bloody awful.

For the Sewing Bee we had Patrick Grant. Patrick seemed to have a bee in his bonnet tonight about education and how it's failing to provide people in this country with the skills to meet their full potential, especially in the jobs market. Which is fine if he'd only mentioned it once but he kept trying to shoehorn it in to every answer as if he'd just spoken to some special interest group or charity and agreed to get their message out there. Ultimately it made him sound like a monomaniacal loon resulting in him being absolutely rubbish compared to the last time he was a panellist. Which was a shame.

On a separate note I'd just like to add that one of the questions was about the disability benefit reforms I've previously been going on about in other posts. Now I've mentioned the government have provided policy documents that are a dogs' breakfast, but they're nothing compared to the total ignorance displayed tonight by Fiona Bruce, every member of the panel, and members of the audience this evening.

Numbers on said benefits, wildly wrong. Names of said benefits, more than a decade out of date. Conditions applied to claimants, again wildly wrong.

The only good thing about such unfamiliarity with the facts is Oakeshott (and presumably all the idiots like her) are evidently under the impression that certain things are happening which are in fact not happening at all. She's fallen for the crap spewed by right wing journalists like herself and I think we should leave it that way.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

For anyone wondering why I keep having to change trains in Stevenage and enjoy its concrete monstrosity new town centre it's entirely Porfavor's fault.

[PorFavor]

@Sky'sGoneOut

One day you'll thank me for broadening your horizon.

[PorFavor]

Night night.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

My horizon is fine as it is thank you.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

[Sky'sGoneOut]