General News Thread

[Sol thewall Bamba]

2 hours ago, UniFox21 said:

VAT removed from electricity bills from October, saving around £45 a year. Not exactly a huge saving, averaging less than £4 a month.

You know people would moan if it went up by £4 a month though. 

[UniFox21]

21 minutes ago, Sol thewall Bamba said:

You know people would moan if it went up by £4 a month though. 

Oh absolutely, £4 a month saving is still good.

Does cancel out the price cap increase of the same in October as well 

[davieG]

55 minutes ago, MrSpaM said:

Can they honestly not think of any other way of using these billions saved on digital ID than giving people the money equivalent of a Tesco meal deal every month

 

Surely pumping that money directly into helping the country build more sustainable energy is a much better idea in the long run

There's no money allocated to the Digital ID thing.

 

[Lionator]

Controversial statement, but if Trump died today and Vance (who I understand is a weirdo himself) became president, half the world’s geopolitical issues would be solved in weeks. 

[Wymsey]

12 minutes ago, Lionator said:

Controversial statement, but if Trump died today and Vance (who I understand is a weirdo himself) became president, half the world’s geopolitical issues would be solved in weeks. 

There'd be a hell of a lot of lawsuits...

[st albans fox]

40 minutes ago, Lionator said:

Controversial statement, but if Trump died today and Vance (who I understand is a weirdo himself) became president, half the world’s geopolitical issues would be solved in weeks. 

Really ?

cant see it would make much difference 

 

The issues would still be there 

some will become less of an issue and some would become worse 

 

 

[Livid]

Why does everything have to be London or Manchester ?  

 

It's bad enough every UK "tour" now being a date in London and one in Manchester but now we appear to be getting a No.10 of the North in guess where......Manchester.

 

I get that's where he's from and I wish him the best but for all that's holy how about focussing on the rest of the country. 

[kenny]

3 minutes ago, Livid said:

Why does everything have to be London or Manchester ?  

 

It's bad enough every UK "tour" now being a date in London and one in Manchester but now we appear to be getting a No.10 of the North in guess where......Manchester.

 

I get that's where he's from and I wish him the best but for all that's holy how about focussing on the rest of the country. 

Like Scotland you mean?

[ian__marshall]

50 minutes ago, Livid said:

Why does everything have to be London or Manchester ?  

 

It's bad enough every UK "tour" now being a date in London and one in Manchester but now we appear to be getting a No.10 of the North in guess where......Manchester.

 

I get that's where he's from and I wish him the best but for all that's holy how about focussing on the rest of the country. 

Agreed. Despite being home to England's second city, I can see the Midlands ending up on the periphery when it comes to investment. London will always be a priority and now it looks like the North West will get an injection of cash. We'll just be forced to make do with whatever crumbs come our way.

 

I hope I'm wrong, but ABs definition of leveling up seems to be solely focused on his stomping ground. Surprised Leeds isn't getting more attention from him, however in fairness they probably don't need it as the city is quite self sustaining now a lot of the large financial institutions have located there. Certainly the investment that has gone into the city will ensure many of the big institutions that have moved in won't be moving away anytime soon. 

[Livid]

1 hour ago, kenny said:

Like Scotland you mean?

Scotland, Wales, East Anglia, Sheffield, the North East, South West just not Manchester! 

[UniFox21]

29 minutes ago, ian__marshall said:

Agreed. Despite being home to England's second city, I can see the Midlands ending up on the periphery when it comes to investment. London will always be a priority and now it looks like the North West will get an injection of cash. We'll just be forced to make do with whatever crumbs come our way.

 

I hope I'm wrong, but ABs definition of leveling up seems to be solely focused on his stomping ground. Surprised Leeds isn't getting more attention from him, however in fairness they probably don't need it as the city is quite self sustaining now a lot of the large financial institutions have located there. Certainly the investment that has gone into the city will ensure many of the big institutions that have moved in won't be moving away anytime soon. 

Fully agree, I think we'll get crumbs of infrastructure here and there as he connects Manchester to the South/London more. 

 

Many of his points focus on bringing wealth/jobs to places like Manchester, and then tries to sprinkle in comments about every postcode ignore by London etc. 

[kenny]

18 minutes ago, Livid said:

Scotland, Wales, East Anglia, Sheffield, the North East, South West just not Manchester! 

Its a Leicester board and the Midlands was even left out of your list! 

[Trav Le Bleu]

54 minutes ago, kenny said:

Its a Leicester board and the Midlands was even left out of your list! 

I don't know who's more Livid?!

[LCFCJohn]

1 hour ago, Livid said:

Scotland, Wales, East Anglia, Sheffield, the North East, South West just not Manchester! 

I’m South Yorkshire based and there are a couple of prominent SY based MPs in the cabinet, Louise Haigh (Sheffield Heeley) as what I think is basically the deputy role, John Healey (Rawmarch and Conisboriugh in Rotherham) and Milliband (Doncaster) although he’s not local to the area like the others.

 

I’d say our region will be pretty well covered with the cabinet make up but appreciate that won’t be the case for all area. It’s still an improvement on London centric though.

[Alf Bentley]

4 hours ago, davieG said:

There's no money allocated to the Digital ID thing.

 

 

It sounds as if you're right about this - but it certainly would've cost the taxpayer to introduce it.

It seems that the allocated cost was £1.8bn over 3 years, which was to be found from savings in other departmental budgets, not a designated digital ID budget.

 

So, essentially, Burnham is reassigning £1.8bn of unidentified savings from the digital ID project to money off electricity bills.

 

That certainly means that the Govt still has to find the savings, but I think reassigning the funds is a better use of taxpayer's money.

I also think it's a better decision politically/electorally. I'm sure splashing out cash on digital ID when people are struggling with the cost of living would've proved unpopular.

In the context of total annual Govt spending of £1.4 trillion, £600m per annum isn't a massive sum (0.05% of budget?), so they'll find it, I'm sure - other promises may prove tougher to keep.

 

Darren Jones has gone right down in my estimation. Regardless of whether he's right on the facts about no money being allocated - sounds like he is - it's pretty traitorous to make such an announcement publicly. If he'd merely been a loyal govt supporter wishing to draw their attention to the issue, he could've done it privately, rather than publicly handing ammunition to the opposition and to hostile media. Of course, he did it the day after he'd been sacked, which makes it even worse. Hopefully that's the end of his career - though, as he seems quite capable on a personal level. I'm sure lucrative opportunities will arise in the private sector for him..... 

[SkidsFox]

1 hour ago, kenny said:

Its a Leicester board and the Midlands was even left out of your list! 

If resources were allocated to "the Midlands", where do you think they'd end up? Birmingham/Coventry/Stoke or Nottingham/Leicester/Northampton? 

 

[davieG]

5 minutes ago, SkidsFox said:

If resources were allocated to "the Midlands", where do you think they'd end up? Birmingham/Coventry/Stoke or Nottingham/Leicester/Northampton? 

 

Nottingham you can't beat the Sherriff of Nottingham even Richard 111 failed to do that.