Friday 13th May 2022

[Willow904]

Morning All

I forgot about Sebastian Vettel on QT last night. Strangely enough I was having a conversation with my husband just yesterday about the environmental impact of F1. The only option I could think of for greening it up was holding it entirely in Europe to reduce long haul flights between races but of course it's owned by the Americans now so that's not going to happen. Instead we now have three, yes three, uninspiring US Grand Prix to keep shuttling back to the States for. (I know we haven't had Las Vegas yet, but you just know it's going to be super tacky and rubbish).

[frog222]

Morning
Many thanks to Sky for a great Report
Also his mention of this --

[gilsey]

[frog222]

From the Bloomberg article

Technical problems were most acute for the 2.6 million people on legacy benefits, which are still run on an IT system built in the 1980s and are being migrated to Universal Credit.

Changes to those benefits take around four months to implement. The system that administers payments for 12 million pensioners is even slower. However, there is little obstacle to raising benefits quickly for the 5.6 million people on Universal Credit.

A spokesman for the Department for Work and Pensions, which runs welfare, acknowledged that legacy benefits use “complex and inefficient paper-based systems that are slowed further by aging, inflexible IT.”

However, he appeared to contradict Sunak’s claim that the system can only be altered once a year, saying changes take “several months to process.”

Not Insuperable
Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said Sunak could have chosen to help those on Universal Credit regardless as he had done during the pandemic, when around 2 million people on legacy benefits did not receive equivalent support.

Torsten Bell, director of the Resolution Foundation, said: “The chancellor is right that it’s very difficult to change benefits outside the usual cycle, particularly for pensions. But these barriers can be overcome.”

[refitman]

[AnatolyKasparov]

You know the saying, where there's a will there's a way.

[gilsey]

You know the saying, where there's a will there's a way.

Indeed, as Jonathan Portes pointed out....... a week ago.

[refitman]

Oh my, how times have changed

[AnatolyKasparov]

Yes, this could certainly have been handled better.

[RogerOThornhill]

Good evening.

The latest Culture War crap from Abulafia.

[AnatolyKasparov]

Those poor oppressed Etonians, how on earth will they cope?

[RogerOThornhill]

Oh fuck off!

[refitman]