Bank Holiday Weekend 25 to27 May 2024

[frog222]

Good morning

40 days to go !

[frog222]

Hunt wants to reduce taxes -- welcome to more potholes !

and "Inheritance Tax is against Tory values", so will we end up with one person owning everything ?

Both parties say they want to reduce the National Debt ( make cuts ???) I think the IFS has something to say on that ...

The frontpages are fun -- https://www.tomorrowspapers.co.uk/



And I love the idea of SKS being leftwing --

[refitman]

Haha hahahaha - Starmer 'left-wing'.

[frog222]

"Trussism ... without Truss ! "

[frog222]

ADITYA--

Worth reading the whole article, but back to the IFS --

Consider the economy, supposedly the number one issue in this election. The big picture is that the UK has been through a shockingly bad five years, in which people are on average worse off than they were at the start of this parliament, even while taxes are reaching a record high – and still rising. In those two facts alone, you have enough explanation for why any government would get kicked out.

“Two different countries, two different futures,” said Starmer this week. Not according to his own economics. He and Rachel Reeves have sworn themselves to budgetary rules that are practically identical to those currently enforced by Sunak and Jeremy Hunt – which leaves both sides on the hook for huge spending cuts.

Analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies suggests that, whichever of the two parties comes to power in July, day-to-day spending on everything outside health, defence and education is promised to fall by around £20bn. That is roughly equal to shutting the entire Home Office, or closing the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. The next time a journalist interviews a Labour frontbencher they should ask which of those options they would prefer.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... ishi-sunak

[gilsey]

Yes, this 'stability' Starmer & Reeves bang on about sounds to us like more of the same, which won't easily buy him a second term.

Their answer to the question Aditya poses above would be how that 'stability' will lead to economic growth and therefore higher govt revenues. Good luck with that.


Our only hope is if AK is right and they do an about-turn in office. Maybe they will, but even if they do I fear they'll have left it too long and irrevocably tarnished their reputation.

[gilsey]

Bim Afolami isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer.

[gilsey]

Stopped clock and all that, even *unt isn't wrong about everything.

Workers lose £1 of their tax-free personal allowance for every £2 their earnings rise above £100,000, and anyone on more than £125,140 gets no allowance.

Hunt used an interview with the Daily Telegraph to dangle the prospect of a change to the current system.

If you look at the distortions in the tax system between £50,000 and £125,000, they are bad economically because they disincentivise people from doing what we need, which is to work, work harder. And we are the party of hard work.

He explicitly confirmed a Tory government would aim to correct these “distortions” within five years.

Osborne's wizard wheeze of course. The withdrawal of child benefit for higher earners should be reversed as well, a sensible chancellor would raise the higher tax rate to compensate.

[refitman]

Fucking hell, Waugh's dumb enough when he's describing policy. What's he gonna be like trying to make it?

[refitman]

Oh come on, really? They're just trying to throw the election

[refitman]

At least we're getting to see some of the worst people completely melting down

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Yup, it didn't even end with a whimper. Will Labour do anything to reverse the enshittification of the BBC?

[AnatolyKasparov]

Fucking hell, Waugh's dumb enough when he's describing policy. What's he gonna be like trying to make it?

There's a decent chance he would have held the byelection for Labour, and either way his chances must be reasonable now.

(many didn't notice in the general excitement about "Labour Gaza Backlash", but the actual Workers Party showing here was distinctly underwhelming)

[frog222]

[frog222]

[Sky'sGoneOut]

I'm experiencing an unexpected bout of happiness.

[refitman]

Well, I'm here to make you feel old (I just crumbled to dust)

Smalltown Boy was released 40 years ago.

[frog222]

Like the 'tactical voting' bit --

[refitman]

Any ideas Sky?

[RogerOThornhill]

Is he going for the record of lowest number of seats ever?

[RogerOThornhill]

This ^^^ isn't really aimed at the young who he knows won't vote for him anyway but trying to win back Reform voters who almost certainly won't have done NS but love the idea of it.

[AnatolyKasparov]

I'm experiencing an unexpected bout of happiness.

They are still going to sack EtH though aren't they. Still, that would put him in fairly good company.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Any ideas Sky?

Much as I'm tempted to post something stupid and offensive for once I'm going to give this some thought.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Is he going for the record of lowest number of seats ever?

If the comments at the Mail are anything to go by it's going down like a gallon of cold sick among what remains of the Tory faithful.

[refitman]

Any ideas Sky?

Much as I'm tempted to post something stupid and offensive for once I'm going to give this some thought.

This was my first thought for it

[RogerOThornhill]

Even the crank right don't think much of this...when I was 18 I was working. The idea that I'd do 5 days work and then a weekend of 'voluntary' work wouldn't have gone well with 18 y.o. me.

[frog222]

39 DAYS !!!!!!!!!!!!

[gilsey]

It's going to be a long 39 days with the MSM wasting endless column inches and breath discussing Sunak's latest half-baked wheeze.

[refitman]

Even the crank right don't think much of this...when I was 18 I was working. The idea that I'd do 5 days work and then a weekend of 'voluntary' work wouldn't have gone well with 18 y.o. me.

Dunt's being very coy on his thoughts on the proposal. I think we should hear what he really thinks

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Any ideas Sky?

[refitman]

Oh no, they've lost Hodges


This is also a good point

[refitman]

Can you imagine if Nadia was in a party that actually offered any of these things

[frog222]

Sonia Sodha is an Observer columnist --

Finally, there has as of yet been less scrutiny of the independent and Green candidates trying to appeal to Labour-sceptical voters than there has of Reform on the other side of the spectrum. It is not just Labour that has changed: the Green party has mopped up enough of the cranks expelled by Labour that it has had to acknowledge its growing problem with antisemitism.

Akhmed Yakoob, the independent who came third in the West Midlands mayoral election and who is now running against Mahmood, promoted a video that was manipulated to falsely suggest a teacher campaigning for Labour used racist language, which prompted a viral hate campaign against her. (Yakoob says he did not intend to cause distress and that the video was hard to hear.)

Starmer is not without weaknesses, as shown by the days he took to clarify an interview last October in which he gave the impression he thought Israel had the right to withhold power and food from Gaza. But there is no doubt whatsoever he would make a vastly more compassionate and competent prime minister than Sunak. To encourage people to put that outcome at risk by casting a protest vote against a Labour government that does not yet exist is perhaps the ultimate form of luxury belief campaigning.

So the scores of expelled Jewish anti-Zionists are cranks, and the only safe Labour ISM is now Zionism, and certainly not socialism.

The compassionate SKS is the State dept accomplice who worked very hard indeed to hand over Gary McKinnon and Julian Assange to spend decades in US prisons .

On those boats, bugger safe and secure routes, MORE cops !!

[RogerOThornhill]

An utter shambles posing as a political party.

[frog222]

An utter shambles posing as a political party.

I always enjoy my free reads at the FT --

(AVM) Stringer added: “Some form of national service has been a popular success in the JEF countries [Scandinavian and Baltic nations] that have used it as a part of building national resilience.”

The idea of some form of compulsory national service is not the preserve of the Conservative right: it was also advocated by David Lammy, now shadow foreign secretary, in his 2020 book Tribes.

“If you’re serious about nation building, which is what I think we’ve got to be serious about, then you have to be serious about obligation as well as choice,” he said in April 2020.

Labour on Sunday attacked the proposed funding of the £2.5bn-a-year national service plan, which Sunak said would be funded by £1bn from a crackdown on tax avoidance and evasion, with a further £1.5bn diverted from the post-Brexit “shared prosperity” regional aid fund.

HoldJ --

""which Sunak said would be funded by £1bn from a crackdown on tax avoidance and evasion ""

Why wait 14 years to crack down on it?

Anyway, Rishi, start with Zahawi, Hunt and, well, yourself.

I enjoyed the mostly negative comments at the Times too . One point rarely made was the relationship with distance from Russia and for some the additional experience of living behind the Iron Curtain

[frog222]

I checked -- Len Deighton is still with us, he was 95 in February !

No kidding at all , this Austrian plotting might well have been invented by him --

[frog222]

Good point

[AnatolyKasparov]

It's going to be a long 39 days with the MSM wasting endless column inches and breath discussing Sunak's latest half-baked wheeze.

Its the old Bannon playbook again innit, just flood the airwaves with sewage. Not sure how they convince themselves it will actually win votes tho.

[RogerOThornhill]

Yes, I had a quick look at the telegraph article about this 'private school closing due to Labour policy' and worked out that they were about 100 pupils short of capacity & struggling to get pupils in for years.

[frog222]

Oh dear, how sad ..

Shippers -- " MPs are furious that they have had little time to prepare for the end of their careers. “It’s all right for him,” one ex-minister said. “We all know he’s got a job lined up in California and he doesn’t need the money anyway. I wish he’d just resigned and let Penny [Mordaunt] have a go. I haven’t had a chance to get a job. Everyone is going to be stripped of their passes and kicked out of their offices by Wednesday. People are having to lay off their staff.” "

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/why- ... -lzgqfkgxt

[frog222]

Yes, I had a quick look at the telegraph article about this 'private school closing due to Labour policy' and worked out that they were about 100 pupils short of capacity & struggling to get pupils in for years.

Very good thread too !

The numbers of people quitting Xitter seem to have declined ?

Confess I was too lazy to find a backup, well also short of time

[frog222]

Julia Davis does a noble job subtitling the mainstream RU TV, demonstrating the routine insistence that we here all deserve a good nuking --



Which shit deserves a businesslike answer --

[AnatolyKasparov]

Oh dear, how sad ..

Shippers -- " MPs are furious that they have had little time to prepare for the end of their careers. “It’s all right for him,” one ex-minister said. “We all know he’s got a job lined up in California and he doesn’t need the money anyway. I wish he’d just resigned and let Penny [Mordaunt] have a go. I haven’t had a chance to get a job. Everyone is going to be stripped of their passes and kicked out of their offices by Wednesday. People are having to lay off their staff.” "

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/why- ... -lzgqfkgxt

Well yeah world's smallest violin and all that, but the fact remains that all of <checks notes> two weeks ago, number 10 told MPs and the wider party that a summer election was definitely OFF and everybody could thus plan ahead accordingly.

Some have suggested that the abrupt change was due to the threshold of letters for a leadership contest nearly getting reached. Perish the thought eh.

[frog222]

AK -- WOE indeed if there really were serious numbers going for yet another leadership selection in the Shires .

Now too late to bring on the Swordbearer or Mophead !

[refitman]

Labour going full terf?

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Met Office forecast...things are going to be fine after 6 o'clock. Actual weather, 'Ha ha look at this moron let's give him a thunderstorm when he least expects it so he has to hide under a tree then soak him on the way home just for a laugh'.

Fortunately my friend gave me an umbrella which he had procured from the lost and found at Leeds gallery otherwise I'd have been well and truly Sunaked.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Labour going full terf?

Sorry Refitman but it can't have escaped your notice that the trans lobby is currently losing the argument, at least politically.

Maybe a different approach is called for, one that doesn't involve stigmatising other's views and calling them names.

I appreciate some on the other side are awful but perhaps it would be wise not to stoop to their level pissing about on Twitter and instead engage with the only political party in England which could at least offer a compromise if not a solution.

[AnatolyKasparov]

Labour going full terf?

Genuine question, why "Labour" and not Streeting? We have known that he is on the "trans-sceptic" side of the party for a long time now.

Plus, what Sky said.

[refitman]

Labour going full terf?

Genuine question, why "Labour" and not Streeting? We have known that he is on the "trans-sceptic" side of the party for a long time now.

Plus, what Sky said.

Because he's making statements to the press in his role as Shadow Health. If this isn't the actual direction of travel for Labour, they need to reign him in and correct the messaging.

[Sky'sGoneOut]