I wish I lived in the UK you apparently think we do, it sounds much nicer than the one I see every day.
All those pensioners living it large on their… hang on.. £241.30 a week full state pension.
Well yes. I know you’re saying it in a sarcastic voice, and think the statement is absurd. But that is a quite straight accurate statement. Give me the opportunity to give up work and live on £241 (plus housing benefits and various other perks) a week and I’d bite your arm off.
Would you, though? Which other “perks” do you think our aged population are getting? How much do you think they’re worth? Do you think you could “live large” off £12,500 a year in the UK?
It is pretty funny that someone who’s loudly complaining about their tax burden is simultaneously insisting that an annual income of slightly under the tax-free allowance is plenty to live on.
Doesn’t seem to me like spending money to subsidize public transit is “diverting” it from climate mitigation efforts. Rather, it’s a very effective use of such funds (assuming it is used efficiently in a way that actually encourages ridership, of course).
From what I understand of their distribution, there’s probably a Tesco within a mile of everywhere, and probably some Tescos sited within other Tescos.
Sounds like you need to get a new job, if you hate the one you have that much. Might want to vote for a government that will work to provide better jobs.
And just to be sure I’m following: “Net Zero” is a goal of zero net carbon dioxide emissions?
Yes, with a target date of 2050. There’s a new “carbon budget” every 5 years on the way there. It is a big undertaking, covering every sector of the economy and while it involves investment and job creation in some areas, it also involves e.g. reduction in oil and gas extraction which means that people currently well paid to do skilled trades are at risk of losing those jobs. Managing that transition in a way that minimises both actual pain and lost votes is the political challenge.
Another day, another positive bit of retail politics from Burnham - business rates for pubs, clubs and entertainment venues to be cut, paid for by increased rates on unspecified other businesses.
There is a case for this, and for reform of business rates for high street retailers generally, given that costs for businesses are climbing (energy, but also minimum wage and employer contributions to national insurance mandated buy Starmer’s government) and this is hurting growth. But framing it in terms of helping out he local pub is very considered presentation.
So I agree that defence and nuclear power are underfunded (but on nuclear power that’s very much my decarbonastion/Net Zero preference coming through.) I would also add housebuilding to the list.
But all this is about trade-offs. As a whole, the people of the UK want to have Western European standard public services on US tax rates. Without borrowing. And really, this is a “any 2 of the 3” situation.
Good stats here: How do UK tax revenues compare internationally? | Institute for Fiscal Studies
Notably, UK tax rates on the median earner are not even further below the OECD avreage than our overall tax rates.
We could cut spending on the NHS and pensions and justice and transport and welfare etc, which would cut borrowing massively and/or allow tax cuts. But with the exception of your good self, I don’t think many Brits would actually want that.
Unfortunately, successive election results suggest enough of us do - until we can’t get an NHS appointment right now, can’t see our friendly neighbourhood burglar on trial for eighteen months, have to wait an hour for a bus, etc., etc… Human nature is ever consistently inconsistent.
My new political party “The Unicorns and Puppies Alliance”, with its slogan “All the good stuff, none of the costs, you know its only fair” is poised to sweep to victory.
I dont’ how the word “not” got into that sentence, but a full inquiry is being held and the perpetrators will be shot.
Add “All foreigners to be flogged” and you’ve got Reform down pat.
It’s like how Binface promises “I will lower your taxes, and raise everyone else’s”.
I always liked that particular part of his platform
The truth will set you free.
There really is a lot to be said for a platform that’s nonsense in simple words. Which helps point out that everyone else’s platform is the same nonsense, just in more complicated words.
But note: business rates for cafes were not. So it’s good to cut rates for places if they sell alcoholic beverages, but not if they don’t?
Apparently!
It is very headliney and niche, and a general approach would be much better, but the headline grabbing is a big part of the point.
In actual big policy news, Burnham is apparently considering reforming local government funding by replacing stamp duty and council tax with a 0.48% property value tax.
This would be huge. Council tax in particular is a nonsense - property tax based not on the value of your home but on its relative value in 1991, or, if it were built after 1991, on what someone thinks it would have been worth had it existed then. Stamp duty as a transaction tax is definitionally bad, acting as a brake on housing liquidity. Replacing with a simple annual % on property values is in the broad strokes a good idea with a lot of benefits.
In the detail, it’s terrible. House prices are massively unequal, skewing much higher in London and the South East. So a flat rate tax across the country would mean that most households benefitted (i.e. they would pay less than they do now in council tax) but a substantial number would be worse off, to the tune of £000s per year.
There’s also the issue of how you phase this in. If you just bought a house and paid stamp duty on it, and find that you’re now on the hook for an annual %age tax you are rightly going to feel hard done by. If you own an expensive house but have a limited income (i.e. you are a pensioner) then likewise this is going to bite. To some extent this latter case is the point - this is a tax designed to ensure that assets are used efficiently, and if it encourages people to sell up and move somewhere cheaper then it is doing its job. But that is bloodless economics - effectively evicting pensioners and median-earners in expensive parts of the country and forcing them to move into smaller or more far-flung accommodation is going to come with political costs.*
There may be clever policy solutions that allow this (again, broad strokes positive) change to be introduced without costing huge numbers of votes, but the more moving parts you introduce, the more you lose the benefits of the simple system. Hence Burnham “considering” it rather than doing it at this stage.
It’s complicated.
Apart from the dings the industry took due to Brexit and Covid, the economics behind it are to blame.
Some of it is drinking habits (or spending habits on drinking) - people who used to go out to drink now rely on cheap supermarket alcohol instead. The price of a pint of beer has gotten stupidly expensive, and the ambiance of pubs isn’t enough to justify it. There’s also been more of a shift from beer to wine in younger demographics. And the concept of the local pub as the social center of the community has been fading as well.
The other half of it - which the government often stays very quiet about because they have deep pockets - is the “pubco” factor:
Which means that publicans have been getting increasingly squeezed between the owners doing everything to get as much money out of their assets as possible, and the customers going elsewhere due to the higher prices and general preference for other venues (including cafes). I’ve seen multiple interviews with pub landlords basically screaming about being held hostage to the increasing costs of doing business by their corporate bosses even as their customers fall away.
Will this new policy help? Maybe in the short-term, but it doesn’t solve either of the main problems. The solutions set out in the article are much more comprehensive (and also bolster pubs in smaller towns and villages), but as noted breaking the “beer tie” won’t be popular with the wealthy pubcos. And the issue of what technically is or isn’t a pub will remain (e.g. are gastropubs pubs or restaurants?).
The problem with any property value tax (and the reason why we ended up with today’s council tax system) is that, to be anywhere near fair, it needs continuous or at least periodic revaluation, as we used to have in the old system of rates. Throughout the 60s and into the 70s the revaluations (hence tax increases all over the place) occurred at inconvenient (to the government of the day) points in the electoral cycle. And that’s why central government has come to hold such a tight stranglehold on local government finances with no attempt at updating council tax. Any reform is going to mean all sorts of knock-on complications.