Magnificent list from @Username. I have comments about each.
1) In the world of macro-economics, education is an input and a determinant of economic growth - the money spent on it is massively repaid by the gains it produces. In non-macro terms, it's an investment that will pay. Now, I'm not one of these "growth is all that matters" twats because obviously it's impossible for the economy to grow indefinitely, but given that this country really is in the toilet these days a little growth would actually help. So you might be thinking "if that's all true, why do we pay teachers peanuts?" - well, thank you for asking. The answer is twofold:
Firstly, imagine we put teachers' pay up tomorrow to something that would actually entice some of our brighter minds into a career in education. Over the next 5 years, thanks to actually paying them a decent wage, the quality of our teachers would improve as the old guard retire and new blood comes in, you'd probably be looking at maybe a 5% increase in high caliber teachers over that time. You'd need maybe 40 to 50 years for the overall teach quality bar to rise enough to make a meaningful difference to the quality of the education the kids get. Add in another 2 decades of waiting for the kids who have received that better education to pass right through school and university and you can see why the politicians absolutely refuse to put this into practice, because they may or may not be in power when the investment pays off and Keir Shitting Starmer would rather discipline Labour MPs for standing on NUT picket lines. We have an electoral system that makes long-termism impossible, so both Labour and tories would rather do what they see as a quick win - deny those pesky teachers a decent wage and save a billion or so in the right-now budget.
Secondly, both parties know that as a country we need the under and un educated. We need people who will clean the streets and work in the sewers and press Rishi's trousers and not question any of it. In most countries who made the education bet decades ago, the low skilled workers are the immigrants. Here however, because we see education as an expense instead of an investment, and because we really don't want to upset the rich-get-richer gravy train, we're raising generations of the under educated to do the bidding of the wealthy, and then importing highly educated and skilled immigrants to be fucking doctors. All the while, both parties promise something akin to the American Dream - you too could become rich like us one day - all the while putting in place short term policies that widen the income gap and destroy social mobility. The likes of us are mere pawns.
2) We're actually not too bad on renewables in this country, I'll give both parties their dues for getting us to this point. However, it's a cronyocracy - almost all of the energy companies are big tory donors, and none of them actually need to be charging anything like what they are for the energy we use. They're all scumbags running a de-facto cartel - the smaller providers who try to sell it cheaper are all resellers so their hands are tied, and half of those have gone bust through running so close to cost. Nationalise it.
3) Yes. A thousand times yes.
4) Given that Brexit has been such a roaring success, I'm surprised that so many people I know have had their businesses and livelihoods completely destroyed by it. Absolute shitshow.
5) Again, strongly linked to number one. But also, fucking pay these people a proper fucking wage. The NHS should be the absolute crown jewel of the social contract.
6) Nearly every single one of the rail operators in this country is wholly owned by another EU country, and not only that, but most of them are owned by the national rail service of that country. Yes. That's right. When you buy an overpriced train ticket from Wycombe to Wembley with Arriva, the profit ends up in the German government's pocket as they're owned by Germany's state rail operator Deutsche Bahn. The state owned operators in France, Italy and Netherlands also run trains here. If those countries can efficiently run a nationalised rail service, why can't we? Why are we growing the economies of other countries instead of our own? We're a laughing stock to the rest of Europe, a free hand-out. When you actually get a Deutsche Bahn train in Germany it's clean, cheap and on time. They don't need to make an effort here because we're fucking idiots with a superiority complex who are happy to needlessly generate billions for other countries' governments while imagining that we're some kind of big deal on the world stage. We're not, we're a joke.
On point 3, there are somewhere between 700,000 and 1.25m unoccupied properties in the country, so simply building more houses, particularly on greenbelt, isn't necessarily the only option, but you address one major issue on this - second (and more) homes. A land tax would make owning multiple properties less lucrative and could free up some of those properties. Long term empty houses should be compulsorily taken into public ownership.
Also, just allow councils to build council houses, which would help stem some of the flow of public money into private landlords' bank accounts.
It’s a significant and exciting step up for the club. The immediate benefit of Harlington is the higher quality pitches and the longer term one is the space to start the academy.
I would start with a Universal Basic Income of £15k payable to everyone over 18 to replace all benefits including state pension (though I would keep PIP) - all the evidence from around the world is this leads to reductions in homelessness & low level crime, improves health, increases employment & productivity & especially creativity & ends reducing state costs.
Tax - increase personal allowance to £15k, tax all income (earned or not) at a start rate of 20% with progressive incremental increases of 1% for every £25k from £50k onwards up to £1m then 50% on everything after that. Corporation tax a flat rate 20% with an associated bonfire of allowances.
Housing - I would move ALL rental housing into local authority control (paying original purchase price rather than current market value, as especially buy to rent is a major contributor to house infaltion), fund councils to build new housing, diminish landbanking by giving a maximum of 3 years to gain planning permission & commence building or the land has to be offered to the local authority, outlaw any new leaseholds; replace rates with a land value tax assessed once every 2.5 years (gets rid of the nonsense of Buck Palace paying less than a 2 bed house in Wycombe)
Education - pretty much what @drcongo said, but also get rid of student loans & go back to direct funding of universities for tuition (living costs covered by UBI per above). Also at minimum remove charity status from private schools, I am happy for nobs to pay for their kids education but not at the expense of state schools who are not exempted from VAT or business rates.
Bring ALL public utilities/services back into public control (energy, water, sewerage, rail, buses), with a legal obligation on them to reinvest profits into service provision/staff.
Healthcare - pay staff decent wages, offer all those out of work doctors jobs, get rid of PAs, join up social care with the NHS, get rid of the internal market bullshit.
The rental market is not the evil that you may think. Where the property market is most dysfunctional is where vast amounts of properties are used for nefarious reasons.
There are thousands of properties in cities where properties are in most demand that are bought off plan, never occupied, just used as a way to get money out of a country and into a clean asset.
Nationalising the whole rental market is unnecessary. Tightening the rules on unoccupied properties would make them less attractive and doing some due diligence on where the cash originates might help too.
How about a mid-summer RTBs Phil to introduce us to some of the new faces behind the scenes and for players to give thoughts on the new training ground?
I agree with almost everything that @Erroll_Sims has written above, especially the UBI proposal, which would vastly cut the cost of the benefits system, and incentivise people to get full or part time jobs to achieve a better standard of living.
However, as an ex-landlord myself, I'm not sure about taking all private rental housing into LA control. When the last of our parents died, we inherited some cash, and bought a 2-bed flat in Loudwater for £118,000 at auction, then spent another £7-8K bringing it up to a decent standard.
It was rented out to 5 different tenants between 2012 and 2023, all of whom were not in a position to buy a home of their own. The property was well maintained, with any reported issues fixed straight away, and there were no significant shortages on rent payments, as I personally vetted all prospective tenants before handing over the keys.
The lack of Council housing in the Wycombe district, largely due to Thatcher's policy of selling off Council houses, meant that there was high demand for private rentals, and every time a tenant left, a new tenant was found within days.
I sold it last September for £190k (paying CGT on the profit) to a young Nigerian family, getting their first step on the property ladder.
So for 11 years it provided me with some extra income, and gave 5 people / couples somewhere decent to live. I really can't see what's wrong with any of that.
One of the most important factors in any election is height. Tonight Biden 1.83m 'debates' Trump 1.9m in what should be an easy win for Trump, what with Biden being smaller and senile.
In the UK we see how bad things have become when Starmer 5'8 debated Sunak 4'2 last night. Little men.
Lincoln was 1.9m but his big hat must have made him about 2.4m which in 1860 would have been the equivalent of 3m by today's standards. No wonder they made him president. Surprised they didn't worship him as some kind of god.
Tory minister Steve Baker is set to launch a bid to replace Rishi Sunak as party leader should the Conservatives lose next week's general election, it emerged today.
The 53-year-old joined other senior Tories in jostling for position ahead of a possible leadership contest by hinting he would run for the party's top job.
But Mr Baker - who once labelled himself the 'hard man of Brexit' - faces an immediate challenge in clinging on to his Wycombe constituency on 4 July.
For the love of Christ it goes to show how out of touch these f'ing idiots are. Who woke up this morning and said to themselves 'tell you what I reckon Steve Backer will be the strong voice of opposition holding the government to account over the next five years'.
The hard man of Brexit? WTF does that even mean apart from a xenophobic war cry to some?
We have Brexit. Lots of us (not enough) didn't want it and now we need grown ups who are prepared to act like grown ups when it comes to our future with Europe. Not these chest thumping ego maniacs.
According to Electoral Calculus, which takes a consolidated average of all the polls, Baker only has a 15% probability of retaining the Wycombe seat, whereas Labour are at 85% to win here.
So he can't be the next leader if he is no longer an MP.
Even worse news for the Tories is that the Lib Dems are predicted to take 71 seats to the Conservatives' 65, which means that Ed Davey would become Leader of the Opposition, assuming that he doesn't fall off the green benches.
I suggest that people would need to have to prove they were UK citizens & have at minimum an NI number, this excludes the migrants Mooneyman refers to until they are given leave to stay/take & pass the citizenship test.
Given that GDP is in the region of £3trillion and we all in our own small part contribute should we not in some small way share in that common wealth? UBI is a way of recognising this and creating a platform of opportunity for all citizens. Where substantive trials have been conducted they move over time to a broadly cost neutral or better position due to increased economic activity, improved health leading to reductions in healthcare costs, reduced crime/justice costs.
It wouldn't "cost" 600 billion would it, because it would replace all other benefits currently being paid and save the cost of assessment, admin etc of those
Shouldn't you be asking what the net cost of such a policy would be, taking into account all of those other things?
Comments
I just couldn’t think of any bird related stuff.
David Titterton
What a player he was!
Hey Phil,
what are your first impressions regarding our new training ground? All the players seem to be very happy with it.
Magnificent list from @Username. I have comments about each.
1) In the world of macro-economics, education is an input and a determinant of economic growth - the money spent on it is massively repaid by the gains it produces. In non-macro terms, it's an investment that will pay. Now, I'm not one of these "growth is all that matters" twats because obviously it's impossible for the economy to grow indefinitely, but given that this country really is in the toilet these days a little growth would actually help. So you might be thinking "if that's all true, why do we pay teachers peanuts?" - well, thank you for asking. The answer is twofold:
Firstly, imagine we put teachers' pay up tomorrow to something that would actually entice some of our brighter minds into a career in education. Over the next 5 years, thanks to actually paying them a decent wage, the quality of our teachers would improve as the old guard retire and new blood comes in, you'd probably be looking at maybe a 5% increase in high caliber teachers over that time. You'd need maybe 40 to 50 years for the overall teach quality bar to rise enough to make a meaningful difference to the quality of the education the kids get. Add in another 2 decades of waiting for the kids who have received that better education to pass right through school and university and you can see why the politicians absolutely refuse to put this into practice, because they may or may not be in power when the investment pays off and Keir Shitting Starmer would rather discipline Labour MPs for standing on NUT picket lines. We have an electoral system that makes long-termism impossible, so both Labour and tories would rather do what they see as a quick win - deny those pesky teachers a decent wage and save a billion or so in the right-now budget.
Secondly, both parties know that as a country we need the under and un educated. We need people who will clean the streets and work in the sewers and press Rishi's trousers and not question any of it. In most countries who made the education bet decades ago, the low skilled workers are the immigrants. Here however, because we see education as an expense instead of an investment, and because we really don't want to upset the rich-get-richer gravy train, we're raising generations of the under educated to do the bidding of the wealthy, and then importing highly educated and skilled immigrants to be fucking doctors. All the while, both parties promise something akin to the American Dream - you too could become rich like us one day - all the while putting in place short term policies that widen the income gap and destroy social mobility. The likes of us are mere pawns.
2) We're actually not too bad on renewables in this country, I'll give both parties their dues for getting us to this point. However, it's a cronyocracy - almost all of the energy companies are big tory donors, and none of them actually need to be charging anything like what they are for the energy we use. They're all scumbags running a de-facto cartel - the smaller providers who try to sell it cheaper are all resellers so their hands are tied, and half of those have gone bust through running so close to cost. Nationalise it.
3) Yes. A thousand times yes.
4) Given that Brexit has been such a roaring success, I'm surprised that so many people I know have had their businesses and livelihoods completely destroyed by it. Absolute shitshow.
5) Again, strongly linked to number one. But also, fucking pay these people a proper fucking wage. The NHS should be the absolute crown jewel of the social contract.
6) Nearly every single one of the rail operators in this country is wholly owned by another EU country, and not only that, but most of them are owned by the national rail service of that country. Yes. That's right. When you buy an overpriced train ticket from Wycombe to Wembley with Arriva, the profit ends up in the German government's pocket as they're owned by Germany's state rail operator Deutsche Bahn. The state owned operators in France, Italy and Netherlands also run trains here. If those countries can efficiently run a nationalised rail service, why can't we? Why are we growing the economies of other countries instead of our own? We're a laughing stock to the rest of Europe, a free hand-out. When you actually get a Deutsche Bahn train in Germany it's clean, cheap and on time. They don't need to make an effort here because we're fucking idiots with a superiority complex who are happy to needlessly generate billions for other countries' governments while imagining that we're some kind of big deal on the world stage. We're not, we're a joke.
That took me so long to type out that we've moved back to birds.
I might bookmark this thread and come back in five years to see if Keir Shitbag Starmer has done even the tiniest thing toward addressing any of that.
You'll have a pretty clear idea by the end of this year.
I once gave a talk at the club at The Ivy (the real one) about all this. Sorry for the language, it makes me pretty angry.
Kirk Corbin
On point 3, there are somewhere between 700,000 and 1.25m unoccupied properties in the country, so simply building more houses, particularly on greenbelt, isn't necessarily the only option, but you address one major issue on this - second (and more) homes. A land tax would make owning multiple properties less lucrative and could free up some of those properties. Long term empty houses should be compulsorily taken into public ownership.
Also, just allow councils to build council houses, which would help stem some of the flow of public money into private landlords' bank accounts.
It’s a significant and exciting step up for the club. The immediate benefit of Harlington is the higher quality pitches and the longer term one is the space to start the academy.
I would start with a Universal Basic Income of £15k payable to everyone over 18 to replace all benefits including state pension (though I would keep PIP) - all the evidence from around the world is this leads to reductions in homelessness & low level crime, improves health, increases employment & productivity & especially creativity & ends reducing state costs.
Tax - increase personal allowance to £15k, tax all income (earned or not) at a start rate of 20% with progressive incremental increases of 1% for every £25k from £50k onwards up to £1m then 50% on everything after that. Corporation tax a flat rate 20% with an associated bonfire of allowances.
Housing - I would move ALL rental housing into local authority control (paying original purchase price rather than current market value, as especially buy to rent is a major contributor to house infaltion), fund councils to build new housing, diminish landbanking by giving a maximum of 3 years to gain planning permission & commence building or the land has to be offered to the local authority, outlaw any new leaseholds; replace rates with a land value tax assessed once every 2.5 years (gets rid of the nonsense of Buck Palace paying less than a 2 bed house in Wycombe)
Education - pretty much what @drcongo said, but also get rid of student loans & go back to direct funding of universities for tuition (living costs covered by UBI per above). Also at minimum remove charity status from private schools, I am happy for nobs to pay for their kids education but not at the expense of state schools who are not exempted from VAT or business rates.
Bring ALL public utilities/services back into public control (energy, water, sewerage, rail, buses), with a legal obligation on them to reinvest profits into service provision/staff.
Healthcare - pay staff decent wages, offer all those out of work doctors jobs, get rid of PAs, join up social care with the NHS, get rid of the internal market bullshit.
Rejoin the single market/EFTA
The rental market is not the evil that you may think. Where the property market is most dysfunctional is where vast amounts of properties are used for nefarious reasons.
There are thousands of properties in cities where properties are in most demand that are bought off plan, never occupied, just used as a way to get money out of a country and into a clean asset.
Nationalising the whole rental market is unnecessary. Tightening the rules on unoccupied properties would make them less attractive and doing some due diligence on where the cash originates might help too.
How about a mid-summer RTBs Phil to introduce us to some of the new faces behind the scenes and for players to give thoughts on the new training ground?
I agree with almost everything that @Erroll_Sims has written above, especially the UBI proposal, which would vastly cut the cost of the benefits system, and incentivise people to get full or part time jobs to achieve a better standard of living.
However, as an ex-landlord myself, I'm not sure about taking all private rental housing into LA control. When the last of our parents died, we inherited some cash, and bought a 2-bed flat in Loudwater for £118,000 at auction, then spent another £7-8K bringing it up to a decent standard.
It was rented out to 5 different tenants between 2012 and 2023, all of whom were not in a position to buy a home of their own. The property was well maintained, with any reported issues fixed straight away, and there were no significant shortages on rent payments, as I personally vetted all prospective tenants before handing over the keys.
The lack of Council housing in the Wycombe district, largely due to Thatcher's policy of selling off Council houses, meant that there was high demand for private rentals, and every time a tenant left, a new tenant was found within days.
I sold it last September for £190k (paying CGT on the profit) to a young Nigerian family, getting their first step on the property ladder.
So for 11 years it provided me with some extra income, and gave 5 people / couples somewhere decent to live. I really can't see what's wrong with any of that.
Chick Martini
Kortney House Martin
roughly 40m adults at £15k - that is £600bn - or roughly 30% of UK GDP
Do you have an idea where the money is coming from or are you Liz Truss
Knowing the UK as well as I do, if you gave everybody £15,000 then a cup of coffee would suddenly cost £1,250.
One of the most important factors in any election is height. Tonight Biden 1.83m 'debates' Trump 1.9m in what should be an easy win for Trump, what with Biden being smaller and senile.
In the UK we see how bad things have become when Starmer 5'8 debated Sunak 4'2 last night. Little men.
Lincoln was 1.9m but his big hat must have made him about 2.4m which in 1860 would have been the equivalent of 3m by today's standards. No wonder they made him president. Surprised they didn't worship him as some kind of god.
So the next PM after Starmer will be Peter Crouch?
Tory minister Steve Baker is set to launch a bid to replace Rishi Sunak as party leader should the Conservatives lose next week's general election, it emerged today.
The 53-year-old joined other senior Tories in jostling for position ahead of a possible leadership contest by hinting he would run for the party's top job.
But Mr Baker - who once labelled himself the 'hard man of Brexit' - faces an immediate challenge in clinging on to his Wycombe constituency on 4 July.
(From the Daily Mail)
For the love of Christ it goes to show how out of touch these f'ing idiots are. Who woke up this morning and said to themselves 'tell you what I reckon Steve Backer will be the strong voice of opposition holding the government to account over the next five years'.
The hard man of Brexit? WTF does that even mean apart from a xenophobic war cry to some?
We have Brexit. Lots of us (not enough) didn't want it and now we need grown ups who are prepared to act like grown ups when it comes to our future with Europe. Not these chest thumping ego maniacs.
Rant over. Apologies.
You are spot on though. Baker is fooling himself.
According to Electoral Calculus, which takes a consolidated average of all the polls, Baker only has a 15% probability of retaining the Wycombe seat, whereas Labour are at 85% to win here.
So he can't be the next leader if he is no longer an MP.
Even worse news for the Tories is that the Lib Dems are predicted to take 71 seats to the Conservatives' 65, which means that Ed Davey would become Leader of the Opposition, assuming that he doesn't fall off the green benches.
And the current level of asylum seekers would rocket, plus unfortunately benefit the human traffickers.
I suggest that people would need to have to prove they were UK citizens & have at minimum an NI number, this excludes the migrants Mooneyman refers to until they are given leave to stay/take & pass the citizenship test.
Given that GDP is in the region of £3trillion and we all in our own small part contribute should we not in some small way share in that common wealth? UBI is a way of recognising this and creating a platform of opportunity for all citizens. Where substantive trials have been conducted they move over time to a broadly cost neutral or better position due to increased economic activity, improved health leading to reductions in healthcare costs, reduced crime/justice costs.
I believe the 3trillion figure you refer to is in dollars. In sterling terms GDP is about 2.3 trillion or in more understandable figures 2300 billion.
your policy would cost around 600 billion.
how do you fund it?
It wouldn't "cost" 600 billion would it, because it would replace all other benefits currently being paid and save the cost of assessment, admin etc of those
Shouldn't you be asking what the net cost of such a policy would be, taking into account all of those other things?
Ok. What would the net cost be in your opinion and how is that funded?