Stop voting for fucking Tories

[Biffer]

I don't accept the idea that UK people don't, become nurses or carers because they're feckless and lazy. For the majority they simply pursue work that actually pays a UK living wage.

One of the disgraceful things about our migration situation is that we're using migrants to plug gaps in low paying, gruelling positions often for less than even a UK resident would be paid to do the same (up to 20% believe). Combined with the Ts & Cs that bring many over for these shortage positions it's little short of indentured labour.

My parents had a Nepalese woman at their church whom the parishoners were helping to house because her wages as a carer make it very difficult to rent in the local area. To her, in Nepal, the money seemed wonderful, but she lacked any context for the UK cost of living and has told them that if she'd known she wouldn't have bothered crossing the world to be here.

Using migrants as we do continues to suppress wages in these sectors and make them less attractive to the native population while also victimising migrants. It's the absolute worst.

Paying workers in the care sector a better wage would in many ways be the right thing to do. Fairer for your parents' Nepalese parishioner and more encouraging for native carers. With many wonderful exceptions, I don't believe Brits are well disposed to the care sector - regardless of pay. It's partly cultural and perhaps partly economic but the sense of family and respect for elders isn't quite so strong here. There's also the question of work ethic and, I'm sorry, but here I'd back an Eastern European over a native any day of the week.

If a Rumanian or Pole felt shafted and had no other options, they'd be straight on the Easyjet back when they came or elsewhere in the EU. Credit to your parents and their parish. I do understand the indentured labour point there.

But what sickens me is our feckless government. How often have I heard Brexiters arguing the unfairness point and let's increase wages by cutting EU immigration.
It's unfair on the poorer countries who train our carers. Absolute crocodile tears. One of the 2019 election promises - long since erased from all agendas - was reform of the care sector with the (misleadingly) floated idea of limiting elders' personal contributions to £100,000, excluding the accommodation aspect.

Given the cost of nursing care in London and the Home Counties is about £90k per annum, wiping out the estates of small time home owners and given the bankruptcies of local authorities whose major drain is social care funding for those who can't afford £90k p.a., is the Brexiters' plan to increase council tax MASSIVELY and wipe out older voters' savings in 2 or 3 years of care to pay higher wages?

No. The circle is NEVER squared. We hate immigrants. We love lower tax. We favour high wages. Yeah, sure. Sometimes decisions need to be made but the Single Market is the easiest and most moderate solution to partly meeting labour market needs. IMO.

No disagreement there. I know Labour are gunshy about appearing too pro-Europe given their experience at the last election with the Red Wall and the Brexit years in general, but the quickest and easiest boost to the economy, in all manner of ways besides just migration, is getting as close to our prior relationship with the EU as possible.

We are in a bizarre situation at the moment where we're high tax and low service. Low tax - low service or high tax - high service are meant to be the norm. It's not immediately clear where all the money's been going, although the billions shelled out on failed procurement and projects during covid, for which Mone is currently providing a glimpse of the egregiousness of the mispend/funnelling of fund to mates and donors, hints at it. The public purse being drained without providing services and the upward funnelling of more and more wealth into fewer and fewer hands means there's less money in general for people to pay for things themselves or for the state to raise form them via taxation. And of course the greedflation of the last few years, particularly from utilities companies, has gobbled up tons of money that should've gone into services, but ended up literally just keeping the lights on.

We've been highish service lowish tax for a few decades, and which is what's got us into this shit show. There's a couple of generations who think it's normal to have low tax and high services and won't se the real world.

[Hal Jordan]

And are personally offended that they have to spend their inheritance because mother refuses to die in good order and they have to spend the money on her care.

[fishfoodie]

We've been highish service lowish tax for a few decades, and which is what's got us into this shit show. There's a couple of generations who think it's normal to have low tax and high services and won't se the real world.

It's like the phenomena when someone isn't getting enough proper nutrition, & the body starts to consume itself, & as a result long term irreversible damage is done to organs.

I'm sure people inside the likes of the NHS, & Justice system, Police, Courts etc see the damage, & know that things will never be as good as they were in the 90s, but do the general populace have any clue what has been pissed away ?

[Sandstorm]

We've been highish service lowish tax for a few decades, and which is what's got us into this shit show. There's a couple of generations who think it's normal to have low tax and high services and won't se the real world.

It's like the phenomena when someone isn't getting enough proper nutrition, & the body starts to consume itself, & as a result long term irreversible damage is done to organs.

I'm sure people inside the likes of the NHS, & Justice system, Police, Courts etc see the damage, & know that things will never be as good as they were in the 90s, but do the general populace have any clue what has been pissed away ?

We know. We try calling the Police, courts and NHS.

[Biffer]

We've been highish service lowish tax for a few decades, and which is what's got us into this shit show. There's a couple of generations who think it's normal to have low tax and high services and won't se the real world.

It's like the phenomena when someone isn't getting enough proper nutrition, & the body starts to consume itself, & as a result long term irreversible damage is done to organs.

I'm sure people inside the likes of the NHS, & Justice system, Police, Courts etc see the damage, & know that things will never be as good as they were in the 90s, but do the general populace have any clue what has been pissed away ?

We know. We try calling the Police, courts and NHS.

The majority don't. On average, in a given year, we're not victims of crime, and we don't have to go to A&E.

[_Os_]

Where you've got jobs that have tough conditions and low pay, which includes teaching and boy are the missed recruitment targets there setting up a colossal problem, a lot of the time the only variable that can really move is pay. Some aspects to the conditions can improve if enough staff are recruited, but that comes after making it a more attractive proposition in the first place and primarily that means pay.

Professions like teaching and nursing once carried with them significant social capital, this is really the main reason they attracted high quality people (and in both particularly high quality female workers, because women were restricted essentially to teaching/nursing/secretary if they wanted a real career). It meant something to do those jobs, they were prestigious careers to have. Nursing still has this somewhat, but it's more sympathy based rather than people oversubscribing the vacancies.

With something like nursing, there is obviously training required and increasing wages substantially won't suddenly make a huge number of nurses available, although it would stop the bleed of existing staff and possibly tempt back many of those who've left in recent years to do things like retail because the money was comparable for less demanding work. The other aspect to raising the wage is to make it an attractive thing to train to do in the first place. That's a longer term thing and immigration has to be part of the immediate fix to our nursing deficit, but we can't necessarily rely on being able to plunder the developing world in perpetuity for its trained nurses, it needs to be made a career that the native population looks at as being worthwhile beyond it's moral and societal worth.

It likely just means more competition for workers between employers, wage inflation, leading to general inflation (wage price spiral etc). Probably the same amount of immigrants just in different sectors. The UK economy is built on top of the Single Market, which the UK has now left, but there's still an economy with more vacancies than can be filled by the UK's workforce. Then even if the labour problem were solved, there's the problem that the UK economy is still the same one which failed in 2008, the structure is still focused on services/concentration in London/finance industry.

As for why people don't retrain to become sparkies and plumbers when the money is so good, it's partly because people might not be inclined to that kind of work, but also because the cost of living is so high now that many are sceptical, even scared, of taking a significant backwards step to their earnings even for a couple of years. It's not so bad if you're still in your 20s and don't have much in the way of dependents and responsibilities, but the further along you get the bigger a risk it becomes.

It's easier to retrain as an electrician or plumber than it is to retrain as a nurse, and the pay is better than being a nurse, and there's no immense responsibility a nurse has. There's part time training courses to become an electrician or plumber specifically designed for older people to keep doing their current job whilst they train. Training to be a nurse is full time for three years. Once someone is a qualified electrician or plumber they'll always have work and never be on less than £30k, ie more than a nurse.

There's no mad rush of people becoming electricians or plumbers, because they're careers without any social capital. People would prefer to earn less in an office. Thinking that nursing is any different looks wrong to me.

The economy and its priorities needs a total restructure in general with wealth redistribution at the heart of it. It's not a given that this would drive increases, but the level of hand to mouth existence and upward transferral of wealth we see in the UK

We both know anyone offering this isn't getting elected any time soon.

Productivity increases outstripped wages by miles for decades and people saw little to no reward for it and we've seen inflation driven almost solely by corporate greed recently. That's a poor reason to keep refusing to pay people enough that they can exist more comfortably and governments other than the current corporatist, crony capitalists would be looking at regulatory means to bitchslap companies that attempt to engineer further situations where prices jump wages in egregious fashion.

Tend to agree with this, not really convinced higher inflation in the UK has been generated by wage rises (what wage increases?), or that higher interest rates have done much. But if wages rise without productivity rising, then you will get inflation. Arguing that wages haven't tracked productivity doesn't really work, because you're still increasing wages without increasing productivity from where it is now.

[Paddington Bear]

It isn’t social capital that keeps people working in an office - it’s the fact that conditions in trades are obviously materially worse than sitting in an office all day and you tend to have to be self-employed.

We could easily recruit and train enough doctors and nurses, we don’t because we put in bizarre artificial barriers

[_Os_]

It isn’t social capital that keeps people working in an office - it’s the fact that conditions in trades are obviously materially worse than sitting in an office all day and you tend to have to be self-employed.

We could easily recruit and train enough doctors and nurses, we don’t because we put in bizarre artificial barriers

Do you detect any contradiction between the positions in the first and second sentence? Better conditions keep people working in an office rather than earning more money doing something non-office based, but recruiting nurses (physical labour not office work) will be easy with more pay.

A lot of attraction to professions like teaching/nursing/police, was the social capital they had. Market dominance/importance being determined by money has diminished a lot of this. They're now just tough jobs that carry massive responsibility, without the immediate respect/pillar of the community status.

[Paddington Bear]

It isn’t social capital that keeps people working in an office - it’s the fact that conditions in trades are obviously materially worse than sitting in an office all day and you tend to have to be self-employed.

We could easily recruit and train enough doctors and nurses, we don’t because we put in bizarre artificial barriers

Do you detect any contradiction between the positions in the first and second sentence? Better conditions keep people working in an office rather than earning more money doing something non-office based, but recruiting nurses (physical labour not office work) will be easy with more pay.

A lot of attraction to professions like teaching/nursing/police, was the social capital they had. Market dominance/importance being determined by money has diminished a lot of this. They're now just tough jobs that carry massive responsibility, without the immediate respect/pillar of the community status.

No, I don’t. Nursing recruits through universities and if we don’t allow enough people to attend nursing courses we’ll have shortages. This can be changed very quickly.

[fishfoodie]

No, I don’t. Nursing recruits through universities and if we don’t allow enough people to attend nursing courses we’ll have shortages. This can be changed very quickly.

Not if you aren't showing those teenagers a path where after ~20 years, they can turn their 3 years of 3rd level education, & the continuous learning afterward, into a job that is earning multiples of average wage; which it would be, if they opted for an IT course !

[Calculon]

What? How can your wife not get in based on being your wife? I was under the impression genuine marriage was an automatic entry.

Nope.

This is what these fuckers have done. They’ve slipped all this stuff in and they know the vast majority aren’t paying attention to it (because why would anyone?).

And all of a sudden we find out we have a much more racist, aggressively authoritarian country than we used to have.

I raise this again due to an article showing just how bonkers this is.

It turns out that the number of spouse visas is trivial in the grand scheme of things, and that there is no schedule as to when the new restrictions will be brought in other than incrementally from the Spring, starting at £29k.

Perhaps I am naive, but I would have though that if there was one group the proverbial man on the Clapham omnibus would agree was reasonable to allow easily into the country are bona fide spouses of UK citizens.

This just seems mad to me. The impact will be minor, the damage to those affected could be huge, with little obvious politcal benefit.

What am I missing? Where is the perceived upside?

Isn't this at least partly about preventing some Brits importing their spouses from Pakistan. I had a Pashtun friend in the UK who brought his wife in from some town in the North East frontier region, she couldn't speak a word of English but is a lovely lady. This was in around 2001 and as far as i recall he didn't have any problem brining her over. Thing are different know and it's fucking with people's lives

[Insane_Homer]

What the actual fuck!

https://news.sky.com/story/home-secreta ... k-13037198

Home Secretary James Cleverly told female guests at a No 10 reception that 'a little bit of Rohypnol in her drink every night' was 'not really illegal if it’s only a little bit'
Responding to The Mirror's report, "Mr Cleverly's office said this happened in what was always understood as a private conversation"
I guess the UK's Home Secretary joking about a date rape drug is 'ok' because it was a 'private conversation' to a group of women at a No 10 event.

Mr Cleverly also laughed that the secret to a long marriage was ensuring your spouse was "someone who is always mildly sedated so she can never realise there are better men out there".

It was a "private conversion" to a room full of women and just a 'joke'?

[_Os_]

It isn’t social capital that keeps people working in an office - it’s the fact that conditions in trades are obviously materially worse than sitting in an office all day and you tend to have to be self-employed.

We could easily recruit and train enough doctors and nurses, we don’t because we put in bizarre artificial barriers

Do you detect any contradiction between the positions in the first and second sentence? Better conditions keep people working in an office rather than earning more money doing something non-office based, but recruiting nurses (physical labour not office work) will be easy with more pay.

A lot of attraction to professions like teaching/nursing/police, was the social capital they had. Market dominance/importance being determined by money has diminished a lot of this. They're now just tough jobs that carry massive responsibility, without the immediate respect/pillar of the community status.

No, I don’t. Nursing recruits through universities and if we don’t allow enough people to attend nursing courses we’ll have shortages. This can be changed very quickly.

The UK isn't alone in training nurses through universities. The entry requirements are very low given the responsibility, it amounts to "can you read, write, and add up?". If it's a degree course or not the entry requirements will remain the same, the time taken to train will remain the same, and the training will be done in the same places it is now. Training to be a fully qualified nurse takes 3 to 4 years anywhere in the world, a moron who couldn't manage a C at GCSE in maths and English (these are the entry requirements) is unlikely to make it through that. Even before degree qualification had been fully phased in back in the late 90s and early 00s, 40%-50% of newly registered nurses in the UK were immigrants. The proportion of newly registered nurses that were immigrants declined through the 00s as the degree system was implemented, 90%-ish of newly registered nurses were from the UK in 08/09 and 10/11. Since then the percentage of newly registered nurses who are immigrants has increased back to where it was in the late 90s/early 00s, it's now at around half (with 40k registered nurse vacancies).

The big changes in the UK (only England?) were moving to large tuition fees by way of ending the student nurse bursary. My understanding is the Tories ended the student nurse bursary as part of austerity meaning nurses had huge student debt when they qualified, nursing numbers tanked and the Tories brought in a maintenance grant which was a fraction of the bursary they ended (cut from a basic of £10k which included paying tuition fees, to £5k?).

It's a shit job. People literally have to be paid to train to do it. Even then the UK still needs foreign nurses.

[dpedin]

Do you detect any contradiction between the positions in the first and second sentence? Better conditions keep people working in an office rather than earning more money doing something non-office based, but recruiting nurses (physical labour not office work) will be easy with more pay.

A lot of attraction to professions like teaching/nursing/police, was the social capital they had. Market dominance/importance being determined by money has diminished a lot of this. They're now just tough jobs that carry massive responsibility, without the immediate respect/pillar of the community status.

No, I don’t. Nursing recruits through universities and if we don’t allow enough people to attend nursing courses we’ll have shortages. This can be changed very quickly.

The UK isn't alone in training nurses through universities. The entry requirements are very low given the responsibility, it amounts to "can you read, write, and add up?". If it's a degree course or not the entry requirements will remain the same, the time taken to train will remain the same, and the training will be done in the same places it is now. Training to be a fully qualified nurse takes 3 to 4 years anywhere in the world, a moron who couldn't manage a C at GCSE in maths and English (these are the entry requirements) is unlikely to make it through that. Even before degree qualification had been fully phased in back in the late 90s and early 00s, 40%-50% of newly registered nurses in the UK were immigrants. The proportion of newly registered nurses that were immigrants declined through the 00s as the degree system was implemented, 90%-ish of newly registered nurses were from the UK in 08/09 and 10/11. Since then the percentage of newly registered nurses who are immigrants has increased back to where it was in the late 90s/early 00s, it's now at around half (with 40k registered nurse vacancies).

The big changes in the UK (only England?) were moving to large tuition fees by way of ending the student nurse bursary. My understanding is the Tories ended the student nurse bursary as part of austerity meaning nurses had huge student debt when they qualified, nursing numbers tanked and the Tories brought in a maintenance grant which was a fraction of the bursary they ended (cut from a basic of £10k which included paying tuition fees, to £5k?).

It's a shit job. People literally have to be paid to train to do it. Even then the UK still needs foreign nurses.

Numbers recruited into nurse degrees has fallen in every UK country this year. Many places left unfilled. Numbers who complete courses is also down. It looks like we will only produce c50% of the numbers of nurses and doctors we need in the country to sustain services hence the dependency on immigration. Reasons seem to be low wages when qualifying, debt incurred whilst training and general public perception that the jobs are not valued!

This is not a new phenomena and has been widely predicted for the last 10+ years. The age profile within nursing and midwifery has meant we would see a large bulge of existing staff leave as they hit their late50s/early 60s since mid 2010 and this was accelerated by the pissing about with the pension and covid. This was particularly the case in smaller areas of nursing such as mental health, learning disabilities and community nursing. We should have gradually increased training numbers about 10 years ago given the 5 year lead in time, increased wages to make jobs competitive, implemented pension changes without breaking the law and maintained the nursing bursary. However all that would have cost money and required a bit of foresight, instead of investing we now pay large p[remiums to privately Tory owned agencies for nurses to fill the gaps! As a famous philosopher and baseball player once said 'The future aint what it used to be!'

[Hal Jordan]

What the actual fuck!

https://news.sky.com/story/home-secreta ... k-13037198

Home Secretary James Cleverly told female guests at a No 10 reception that 'a little bit of Rohypnol in her drink every night' was 'not really illegal if it’s only a little bit'
Responding to The Mirror's report, "Mr Cleverly's office said this happened in what was always understood as a private conversation"
I guess the UK's Home Secretary joking about a date rape drug is 'ok' because it was a 'private conversation' to a group of women at a No 10 event.

Mr Cleverly also laughed that the secret to a long marriage was ensuring your spouse was "someone who is always mildly sedated so she can never realise there are better men out there".

It was a "private conversion" to a room full of women and just a 'joke'?

In a normal world, a resigning offence. In this Government, not even unexpected.

[tabascoboy]

What the actual fuck!

https://news.sky.com/story/home-secreta ... k-13037198

Home Secretary James Cleverly told female guests at a No 10 reception that 'a little bit of Rohypnol in her drink every night' was 'not really illegal if it’s only a little bit'
Responding to The Mirror's report, "Mr Cleverly's office said this happened in what was always understood as a private conversation"
I guess the UK's Home Secretary joking about a date rape drug is 'ok' because it was a 'private conversation' to a group of women at a No 10 event.

Mr Cleverly also laughed that the secret to a long marriage was ensuring your spouse was "someone who is always mildly sedated so she can never realise there are better men out there".

It was a "private conversion" to a room full of women and just a 'joke'?

In a normal world, a resigning offence. In this Government, not even unexpected.

What kind of wokery is this when a Home Secretary can't make jokes about date rape drugging and casual misogyny to a group of women? #irony

[Sandstorm]

Why would a group of women take a meeting with this dickhead?

[TedMaul]

At least we know Refry’s identity now.

[shaggy]

What the actual fuck!

https://news.sky.com/story/home-secreta ... k-13037198



It was a "private conversion" to a room full of women and just a 'joke'?

In a normal world, a resigning offence. In this Government, not even unexpected.

What kind of wokery is this when a Home Secretary can't make jokes about date rape drugging and casual misogyny to a group of women? #irony

It was even more dumb than that, it was a group of journalists.

[Hal Jordan]

Client or real journalists?

[Insane_Homer]

Tory_nuts.jpg (185.23 KiB) Viewed 2365 times

[Hal Jordan]

Wow, knighthoods come cheap and fast now. Tim Martin gave the Tory Party £50,000 at the start of the week and is now a Sir.

[fishfoodie]

Wow, knighthoods come cheap and fast now. Tim Martin gave the Tory Party £50,000 at the start of the week and is now a Sir.

Presumably he's now going to only sell pints of wine in return

[Insane_Homer]

Vodermann tearing Mercer a new one this week

[SaintK]

Wow, knighthoods come cheap and fast now. Tim Martin gave the Tory Party £50,000 at the start of the week and is now a Sir.

Presumably he's now going to only sell pints of wine in return

Nope. Another Brexit fantasy.

“No one is going to make a pint-sized bottle,” said one English winemaker, who asked not to be named, citing the “toxic” debate around imperial measures as the reason for anonymity.
“In order to make a pint-sized bottle, you’re going to have to invest a huge amount of money. It’s a silly measure.”
Of the 10 big English wine producers contacted by the Guardian, none responded to welcome the opportunity to sell wine by the pint.
“Bespoke bottle sizes add further cost, and take more resource to create – which is also less sustainable. Added to that, wine ages more gracefully in larger bottles and so generally tastes better, too.”
In a statement on its website, the Rathfinny estate in Sussex has described the pint measure as “redundant”, adding that it was unlikely to take off.
“We don’t understand why the government has introduced a pint measure for wine after consulting the industry and being told that no one seems to favour going back to imperial measures,” Mark Driver, a co-owner of the estate, told the Guardian.

[Biffer]

Good thread on inheritance tax by John Burn Murdoch this morning. The replies are something, particularly showing that people really don’t understand what capitalism and free market economics are about.

https://x.com/jburnmurdoch/status/17406 ... nnPXVLAY7w

The number of people who worry about inheritance tax with absolutely no need to is ridiculous. If, as a couple, you’re leaving less than a million, your estate won’t be taxed (talking about the UK).

I’d be all for each of us having an allowance for what we can inherit, rather than it being on the estate. That way we’re taxing the living not the dead.

[Sandstorm]

Good thread on inheritance tax by John Burn Murdoch this morning. The replies are something, particularly showing that people really don’t understand what capitalism and free market economics are about.

https://x.com/jburnmurdoch/status/17406 ... nnPXVLAY7w

The number of people who worry about inheritance tax with absolutely no need to is ridiculous. If, as a couple, you’re leaving less than a million, your estate won’t be taxed (talking about the UK).

I’d be all for each of us having an allowance for what we can inherit, rather than it being on the estate. That way we’re taxing the living not the dead.

1.1. million quid in half the counties of England/Scotland isn't unreasonable what dead Mum's house sells for these days. However I do like you idea about the taxable allowance per person....

[Raggs]

Good thread on inheritance tax by John Burn Murdoch this morning. The replies are something, particularly showing that people really don’t understand what capitalism and free market economics are about.

https://x.com/jburnmurdoch/status/17406 ... nnPXVLAY7w

The number of people who worry about inheritance tax with absolutely no need to is ridiculous. If, as a couple, you’re leaving less than a million, your estate won’t be taxed (talking about the UK).

I’d be all for each of us having an allowance for what we can inherit, rather than it being on the estate. That way we’re taxing the living not the dead.

1.1. million quid in half the counties of England/Scotland isn't unreasonable what dead Mum's house sells for these days. However I do like you idea about the taxable allowance per person....

Nah, 1.1million is still a daft sum, that not many can hope to reach. Average house prices are well below that figure, even for London.

Tax on each person inheriting is an interesting idea, but not sure I like it.

[I like neeps]

Wow, knighthoods come cheap and fast now. Tim Martin gave the Tory Party £50,000 at the start of the week and is now a Sir.

Not a fan of Mr Martin's political views but Weatherspoons is a good business. Quite tastefully refurbs nice old buildings, only place these days that's reasonably priced and the quality is hardly awful. Wouldn't chose to drink in one regularly but don't mind the odd trip. One of Britain's most recognized brands.

[Raggs]

Wow, knighthoods come cheap and fast now. Tim Martin gave the Tory Party £50,000 at the start of the week and is now a Sir.

Not a fan of Mr Martin's political views but Weatherspoons is a good business. Quite tastefully refurbs nice old buildings, only place these days that's reasonably priced and the quality is hardly awful. Wouldn't chose to drink in one regularly but don't mind the odd trip. One of Britain's most recognized brands.

Fairly sure they pay tax too?

[sockwithaticket]

James Daly, with a majority of just 105, has decided to say:

"Most of the kids who struggle in Bury [his constiuency] are the products of crap parents and so what do we do to try to address that issue? On the left it would just be: we’ll throw money at this and hope something sticks. Somebody like me thinks about this more fundamentally.”

In addition to insulting the parenting skills of many who likely voted for him last time, there doesn't seem to have been any follow up on what thinking about things more fundamentally actually entails.

And while 'throwing money' isn't the be all and end all of solutions, for the majority in certain socio-economic brackets it's certainly moreso one than upbraiding parents and waffling about the importance of family while offering no tangible help.

[C69]

Wow, knighthoods come cheap and fast now. Tim Martin gave the Tory Party £50,000 at the start of the week and is now a Sir.

Not a fan of Mr Martin's political views but Weatherspoons is a good business. Quite tastefully refurbs nice old buildings, only place these days that's reasonably priced and the quality is hardly awful. Wouldn't chose to drink in one regularly but don't mind the odd trip. One of Britain's most recognized brands.

Fairly sure they pay tax too?

Martin may be a bellend but he isn't the worst honours recipient I've ever seen.

[sockwithaticket]

Not a fan of Mr Martin's political views but Weatherspoons is a good business. Quite tastefully refurbs nice old buildings, only place these days that's reasonably priced and the quality is hardly awful. Wouldn't chose to drink in one regularly but don't mind the odd trip. One of Britain's most recognized brands.

Fairly sure they pay tax too?

Martin may be a bellend but he isn't the worst honours recipient I've ever seen.

That speaks more to how low standards have become than anything.

[weegie01]

Good thread on inheritance tax by John Burn Murdoch this morning. The replies are something, particularly showing that people really don’t understand what capitalism and free market economics are about.

https://x.com/jburnmurdoch/status/17406 ... nnPXVLAY7w

The number of people who worry about inheritance tax with absolutely no need to is ridiculous. If, as a couple, you’re leaving less than a million, your estate won’t be taxed (talking about the UK).

I’d be all for each of us having an allowance for what we can inherit, rather than it being on the estate. That way we’re taxing the living not the dead.

1.1. million quid in half the counties of England/Scotland isn't unreasonable what dead Mum's house sells for these days. However I do like you idea about the taxable allowance per person....

Nah, 1.1million is still a daft sum, that not many can hope to reach. Average house prices are well below that figure, even for London.

Tax on each person inheriting is an interesting idea, but not sure I like it.

There are circa 700k houses in the UK worth over £1m.

10% of households have assets of nearly £1m.

Neither of which look like 'not many' to me'.

Figures on how many estates paid tax are deeply misleading. The majority of people who are financially aware and have reasonable wealth will have made provisions so that their estates are not affected, or are minimally affected, by IHT. The people who are penalised are those comfortably off, but who lack the financial understanding of how IHT works and what can be done to manage it. Typically these are people for whom these sums were unimaginable until house price inflation, pension pots etc along with the fiscal drag of IHT thresholds not changing put them in the IHT net. The general expectation is that this number will increase sharply over the next few years as the same reasons drag a greater proportion of the population into the IHT net.

[Raggs]

1.1. million quid in half the counties of England/Scotland isn't unreasonable what dead Mum's house sells for these days. However I do like you idea about the taxable allowance per person....

Nah, 1.1million is still a daft sum, that not many can hope to reach. Average house prices are well below that figure, even for London.

Tax on each person inheriting is an interesting idea, but not sure I like it.

There are circa 700k houses in the UK worth over £1m.

10% of households have assets of nearly £1m.

Neither of which look like 'not many' to me'.

Figures on how many estates paid tax are deeply misleading. The majority of people who are financially aware and have reasonable wealth will have made provisions so that their estates are not affected, or are minimally affected, by IHT. The people who are penalised are those comfortably off, but who lack the financial understanding of how IHT works and what can be done to manage it. Typically these are people for whom these sums were unimaginable until house price inflation, pension pots etc along with the fiscal drag of IHT thresholds not changing put them in the IHT net. The general expectation is that this number will increase sharply over the next few years as the same reasons drag a greater proportion of the population into the IHT net.

700k houses is roughly 2.5%. That's not many.

Assets worth nearly £1m. Meaning they're likely already not qualifying for IHT. On top of that, how much of those assets are also pensions? Which don't count towards IHT anyway.

EDIT- It's still a tiny minority that will be effected by IHT by any degree.

[C69]

Fairly sure they pay tax too?

Martin may be a bellend but he isn't the worst honours recipient I've ever seen.

That speaks more to how low standards have become than anything.

Exactly my point.
I would abolish the whole system, it's as anachronistic as the HOL.

[Dinsdale Piranha]

Martin may be a bellend but he isn't the worst honours recipient I've ever seen.

That speaks more to how low standards have become than anything.

Exactly my point.
I would abolish the whole system, it's as anachronistic as the HOL.

IIRC Lloyd George's price list started at about half a million at current value. I guess Martin has probably donated that over the years.

[Paddington Bear]

That speaks more to how low standards have become than anything.

Exactly my point.
I would abolish the whole system, it's as anachronistic as the HOL.

IIRC Lloyd George's price list started at about half a million at current value. I guess Martin has probably donated that over the years.

This is always the counter to ‘standards have slipped’. It’s always been like this, you just hate the current government! Fwiw Martin has made a very successful business in a culturally important sector - don’t have to love the bloke or his pubs to accept that ticks a knighthood box fairly nicely

[Sandstorm]

Don’t knock ‘Spoons. Nowhere else can you get an ice-cold Bud Light pint. Mmmmm.

[Blackmac]

Don’t knock ‘Spoons. Nowhere else can you get an ice-cold Bud Light pint. Mmmmm.

To be fair. He heavily supports local craft beer breweries and they always have a great selection of beers at good prices.

My wife and I were in Edinburgh a few weeks ago and a pint of Stewart's IPA and a large wine was £16 in a pub in the west end. Same drinks in the Spoons were less than £8.