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Comments
I suspect next summer the same fate may fall Oasis, a band with a decent back catalogue who sound tracked many peoples lives in the 90's have already been reduced to touting their own tickets. I suspect many may feel let down when they take the stage as Liam's voice is not what it was to say the least and Noel doesn't look that interested. I think people may also end up feeling they just paid for a memory which has just been lessened.
Used to watch a decent amount of boxing and certainly the headline bouts back in the day but it does not hold the same appeal for me nowadays.
Just saying how it looks from an outsider looking in…
People may try say that it’s because of years of indifferent decisions, but they seem to be trying to rub people up the wrong way in a very short time
On the plus side Kemi Badenoch is a huge boost for Labour, almost as useless as Liz Truss!
what is bizarre is that we have a Prime Minister who has only been ab MP for 9 years and a leader of the opposition that has only been an MP for 7 years
Hardly overflowing with parliamentary experience
Broken promise +1
The problem is finding a viable alternative that would not quickly fall into similar traps.
Now to find my private island ...
I do fear for the country under labour, taxing everything. Remembering the days of a base rate of income tax at 33%.
When I worked for HMG there was a project to convert from one software product to another product which was freeware, i.e. no licence to pay for, which they estimated would save a million or two a year. They hired 12 people for two years to do this, and at the end of the two year period only about 8% was completed, so they cancelled the project after an estimated spend of 750k.
When discussing this with one of the more senior civil servants .... his reply was - it's OK it's not our money.
After more than 3 decades of profit taking and huge under-investment, we now have a state of affairs where the water companies claim to need a big hike in prices to invest to avoid continuing to polute our rivers and seas, whereas in reality that money should have already been spent on infrastructure but was instead paid out in dividends over the last 35 years.
Unfortunately there's no easy answer. On a very basic level, people generally produce a higher output when they're incentivised to an extent; if there's no incentive then you can end up with an inefficient government apparatus where nearly everyone outside of it loses out by having to pay more taxes to support it. Ultimately I guess our individual philosophies dictate which compromises we prefer our government to take.
The Tories certainly didn't cover themselves in glory, but under Labour, I fear the worst sadly.
The prices paid in all cases were bordering on extortionate. She complained to management in the NHS and was told this was a convenient method and it’s not our money.
In the prison service she did the same to the area director and he didn’t believe the savings that could be made by just using normal stores. Vacuum cleaners for example were being ordered at £800 plus whereas they were £200 odd at Curry’s or Makro. He cancelled orders and gave the wife a credit card and she ordered supplies from wherever they were cheaper. Unfortunately he couldn’t convince other regional directors to follow suit as they had a so what attitude.
They did take the steering wheel from a populist Govt which means a govt that lives for today and seeks media led popularity before long term leadership. This means they now need find money and however they do that it will be unpopular with someone, as the electorate isn't really that reasonable as they tend to what tax cuts but increased services, which doesn't really work. What they will need ensure is the that the measures they impose do allow them to improve things, as if not they will quite rightly be voted out, so they need demonstrate by 2027 that things are looking better.
As a personal and quite pessimistic view I think social media is making democracy unviable and on a national level Brexit has taken the guts out of the economy, which is the driving force of any nation. I fear that Starmer may end up the last public servant politician.
I think he has done pretty well since taking over with a few moments of poor judgment regard the politics, but I think that is not his concern in year one as already mentioned.
Some of the controversial calls;
Winter allowance.
I think his instinct was correct as it's a non means tested benefit and hundreds of thousand of pensioners who were not in need of it were receiving it. They are doing what they can to bring those in need into the bracket that will still get the benefit. In my view they should have created an online very simple one page one question application for it which asked the following question. Is your household income under 30k? if so they then receive the benefit. This would have resulted in a simple meas test without a huge burden on the benefits system. Even if they never cross checked any application they would have achieved their aim of taking the benefit from these they sought to.
Riots
He dealt with them wonderfully by freeing up time in the justice system to deal with the rioters quickly. He said have your moment of mob power on the weekend and then go to prison the next week (in many cases). The perpetrators wanted nothing more than lawlessness to spread and the Govt and the police stopped that. Despite the crying in social media no one got imprisoned for protesting or posting disagreement with any govt policy. The sentences were in some cases very high but it was a deterrent, they will also only serve 40% of those sentences. You can bet your life however they will stay at home next time. The week before that Robinson character held a huge protest in London, as was his right, hardly any arrests, as no one gets arrested for protesting. What was happening in those days was not protest.
VAT on school fees
Quite right, it's a luxury purchase like private healthcare and I completely understand why someone would choose to make that purchase, but I cant see why it should be subsidised.
It's only a personal view but i think he is doing ok and what anyone thinks of them in their first year or two wont really matter.
First thing I'd say is that I only would characterise something as a lie if it was done deliberately and knowing It wasn't meant.
Otherwise it's just a thing that was said with every intention of following through, but having to change as the circs/situation changes.
Anyone who tells their kid we'll go to the park on Saturday, or tells a friend I'll call you tomorrow etc. Then they don't. If you genuinely say and believe that in each case, the person was telling porkies - fair enough. Apply the same standards to everyone including politicians. Of all parties.
And if you do, you'll find plenty of Tory politicians who told porkies too. Look at any Queens speech and you'll find a bunch of promises not carried out in the subsequent legislative programme.
I can cite you several, without having to google.
The last person to enter parliament with honourable intentions was Guy Fawkes
The UK news media lies or misleads far more than any politician and yet we rely on it for most of our information about politicians
The news would have us believe that the inheritance tax changes will be a disaster for farming in the UK but according to HMRC figures from 2022 out of 209,000 farms only 117 farms valued at over £2.5m would have to pay the full tax
If anyone wants to know the actual problems farming is facing read the Agri Brigade column in Private Eye, inheritance tax is definitely not the worst thing that has happened over the last ten years,
Never forget that if Fawkes had been successful we'd all be speaking Spanish and we'd be supporting FC Jamón del Oeste Unido