kenny

The driving factor behind the change is that more British nationals are thought to have emigrated in 2024 than initially recorded, with 100,000 fewer now thought to be living in the UK. I wonder how many of these are the high net worth individuals that are absolutely not leaving the UK due to the actions of the current government?

Wow, any day with a season ticket?

Maurizios here too. But peters is open earlier and it's hard for your child to offend anyone I there. Plus it's mega quick for food to arrive.

Discount??

They are common in the Ukraine war, so it's feasible that loitering drones will be deployed to protect against other drones.

Leicester council has done a terrible job in recent years and now it wants harborough. If their plan is accepted, it probably means harborough gets worse rather than Leicester getting better.

Reckon Shabana Mahmood has added herself to the 'not a ****wit' list with Streeting and possibly Nandy. Might be time to start a cabinet best 11.

Depending on the measure capital expenditure is down under labour not up. They have plans to increase it, but at present it's lower overall than the previous government levels. All being well (manifesto pledges) it should come up to the Tory levels in real terms by the end of their term. As I've said before, there are a lot of projects being quietly sidelined at the moment. Not cancelled as such, but the cash is no longer there.

Perhaps the trickling is the additional 200k people that are 'employed' by the state on benefits due to unemployment. There are also 1.1m additional people claiming UC since labour came to power. So there is that trickle too.

I agree tbh. What we are seeing is that the manifesto was not properly costed as they claimed. In their excitement of bringing in a load of progressive policies they also hadn't considered that there would be any negative effects which has made that lack of planning worse. I think they thought the unions would help them and support the government, I think they have now realised they are a difficult ally to have.

The smarter option would be to help businesses and encourage growth. Reducing NIC would be a good place to start as would business rates.

Thanks. Funnily enough we are suffering from the same issues with the current government on projects. It is resulting in significant redundancies as the staff were employed for projects that have not been officially shelved but have gone silent instead.

Interesting. I don't know much about it other than it's been on the news for a number of years and saw the r&d funding. Was it site selection that was slow or simply construction funding? What has labour changed?

Agreed. Most of that has been years in the making and the current government is continuing on previous government policies - which is the right thing to do. What it isn't is Labour doing anything different or spectacular, it also isn't a sign that the previous government did nothing on nuclear power as I have already explained. The pre-construction work at sizewell started while sunak was PM.

Good news. As the Tories have been funding r & d on these since 2018, I'm pleased milliband has had the foresight to keep them part of UK energy policy, particularly as they have been a formal part of the energy strategy since 2012. Construction was due to start in 2025, but I'm not sure where we are in that timeline. Probably in a form of delay like many infrastructure projects seem to be at the moment.

https://archive.ph/yoWyh Interesting article suggesting UK housing isn't as expensive as we would think relative to other countries. I suspect if London and the SE were considered alone it would be different

I've always wondered if it was easy to change pricing on energy why successive governments haven't done it. I read that it is because we have to have gas generators on permanent standby to cover for low wind and solar days, in effect having to pay for energy generating twice. We also have to pay when we generate too much to turn off the turbines. I haven't read what millibands plan for this issue is. Though I suspect I have a copy of his plan in front of me at present in the form of a blank piece of paper.

I think they have increased the day to day spending by around 3% which is in line with the increases under the Tories. It's probably under the radar, but the the 3% annual increase isnt huge, albeit it's still £22bn or so each year. They have committed £5bn more than the Tories in capital expenditure, but also spent £3bn in salary increases so far plus £1.5bn in additional funding for private hospitals. So I suspect there is some massaging going on. GB energy we will have to see, but it stinks of the next PFI mess. Hopefully it's better thought through.

GB news has changed the narrative so much it doesn't appear to feature in that list.

I don't think we should raise it again, we need to stop spending what we don't have. That being said, I would go for: Either scrap NI and increase tax, or increase the age that NI stops being paid to 70. Increase the state pension age to 70. Online retail tax for any business that doesn't have a high street offering. 10% on all Amazon purchases for example but Argos would be exempt. Vehicle exercise duty has to be reformed. EV vehicles can't be free forever, but taxing them as luxury car then paying fuel duty on top won't encourage people to move over. Mandatory GP charge for all users regardless of income. £10 each raise £3.6bn a year and would help with time wasters.

Back to the 🔔 - not 🔔 list. On the not 🔔 list. He survives the cull for me.

Got to be 3-5-2

From memory the OBR accounted for £7bn of the black hole left behind. I think we are looking at over £70bn of blackhole so far. The other point to note, is that pay rises are easy to give out when you aren't paying the costs. The government is now realising that bowing down to the unions is dangerous and the only one standing up to them is Streeting. I didn't say great under Rishi.... fwiw the best our economy can achieve is probably dull and unremarkable, so for them to achieve that is a mark of success.

I've been really worried about the state of the economy for a while. Under rishi it was unremarkable but working, then immediately declared broken by Labour. Him and Hunt were doing a decent job IMO. 18 months in and every tax has risen while I employment is increasing daily. What's worse is that we aren't even seeing anything for our money. The amount of public investment projects being paused or mothballed is weird and is one of the drivers of the construction industry output drops we have seen. The downright bizarre approach of reducing housing targets on cities, to force new housing into greenbelt development is criminal. It is encouraging a car reliant society and effecting food security as they believed it would deliver quick wins. When I know someone that has had their life improved by this government then I think your criticism of Tommy will have some merit.

This graph popped up the other day. The government is reliant on housebuilding to stimulate economic growth. This is where we are relative to their target of 1.5m homes.