Theresa May's Conservatives
Jeremy Corbyn's Labour
Tim Farron's Liberal Democrats
Paul Nuttall's UKIP
2 people's Greens
Nicholas Durgeon's Scottish Nationalists
Satan's Sinn Fein
Dr Ian Paisley's DUP
Some other bunch of nonces
I'm foreign, but I wish I were an Englishman
The only thing this whole thing has taught me is how short mortgages are here. I wondered why prices were so high in Switzerland for places (outside of the obvious) but seeing this and then looking at a Swiss mortgage which is paid over the course of 100 years. Makes sense.
Inflation was already running at 6% in mid 2021. Taking action then would have meant when Russia happened it wouldn’t have had such a massive impact as it did.
The property market for example needed cooling down at that point and people didn’t need access to cheap money like they had done during lockdown.
No I think there will be some kind of fudge between the government and the banks whilst this goes on to stop things getting that severe.
I reckon 70% of people I do a mortgage for have a car on PCP this is the flip side of it choice between having a house and a car you hand back the fucking car. Some people do need to kind of learn to live with that as a choice.
Question Time tonight is the one with the audience of all Leave voters. Might be interesting.
Escalation to five days for the next round of "Junior" Doctor strikes in mid-July.
Consultants to ballot on strike action soon as well.
Indefinite walk-out is coming![]()
But Andrew Bailey said you should stop asking for wage rises. How dare you.
As long as it won't risk patients' welfare![]()
Which it demonstrably doesn't, yes.
Consultants going on strike however could be spicy.
As long as it's not management consultants we'll be alright.
Consultants have voted (pretty emphatically) to strike as well.
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How are Thames Water in a position where they are asking for a government bailout a year on from £1.2bn dividends?
Of course they will be bailed out because we are in the stranglehold of “privatise profits, socialise debts” but really it ought to be seized back into public ownership and the crooks on the board thrown in jail because that is horrendous mismanagement.
The water companies are taking the absolute piss and all of the execs involved need firing into the sun.
The infrastcuture is as bad as it was pre-privatisation and 10x more expensive. I've never seen a better advert for nationalisation.
The infrastructure does tickle me. Not to the extent where I've yet felt motivated enough to look into it but drought and hosepipe bans for a tiny island with its furthest point from sea coming in at 84 miles suggests something is wrong and it's not Giggles refusing to go vegan.
The infrastructure was shit when the state ran it, and we've added ten million people to the population since (that we know about) without the government letting the companies build any new national-scale reservoirs. Hence, shortages. That said, if Thames Water does go down the tubes whilst putting its money elsewhere, it probably ought to just be re-nationalised for nothing and everyone involved banned from having anything to do with anything.
Average dividend payouts of 2.1 billion pounds per year since privatisation...
Terminal 5 was fought by every hippy up and down the country and every mp in that area and still got done but it’s still the governments fault that a monopoly went bust. If private enterprise wants something done they pay the people that they need off to get it done. They didn’t want to.
Investment has also doubled since privatisation, which is why water lost to leaks is down about half over the same period. The idea that it has been thirty solid years of ripping consumers off isn't really backed up by anything.
Terminal 5 took ten years to get planning permission, and Heathrow still doesn't have its third runway seventeen years after the first public consultation. If your point is that the government doesn't block infrastructure, do I have to post the extended history of the Abingdon reservoir again, or just that the government blocked it in 2011 because there was 'no immediate need' for it (population increase since: roughly five million)?
So what you're saying is that they've achieved largely nothing outside of making us leak a little less water (but increasing amounts of sewage) while taking massive amounts of money out of the system. So let's check their effectiveness over time.
As yes, seems that they did some original investment and then did absolutely nothing but pillage the system ever since.
Meanwhile anyone who listens to this podcast should be removed from the electoral roll
I don't think you should expect some sort of linear decrease down to zero leaks, since presumably at some point it becomes more cost effective to simply not dig up half the South East for pipe replacement. There was a very good Twitter thread the other month about the current myths around sewage, and it sounds like, beyond challenges like rapid population increase, dealing with old infrastructure (and government blocking new infrastructure), and cunts flushing rubbish down the toilet, water is in pretty decent shape.
Labour should scrap the entire election campaign plan and just dish out printouts of that.
Why does Sunak always look photoshopped in even when he's not? I honestly don't think he's human.
Sunak would make Taz look big.
This NHS workforce plan is terrifying. Healthcare in this country is at the precipice and this will shove it flailing into the abyss. People should be very worried.
Oliver Dowden looks alarmingly like what I imagine Martin from Game On would look like now, and googling only confirms this in an even more alarming way.
He looks like Charles Kennedy and Lembit Opik's test tube mistake.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-...r-66168798.amp
These are the people they are trying to expand the workforce with. It's a fucking scandal.
Cue some boring comment from Lewis about doctor's killing people. This diagnosis wouldn't be missed by a second year medical student. It is terrifying these people are seeing patients independently and presenting themselves as equivalent to doctors.
Also, if a doctor missed that, they'd be hauled up in front of the GMC and lose their license (in fact they'd probably face criminal charges). Because PAs are completely unregulated, this person was sacked from the GP practice but is now locuming elsewhere in London and has faced zero other repercussions. It's absolute insanity.
NHS Direct sends those symptoms to 999, the dumb bitch.
Only way to learn is by doing. I'm sure she'll get it right next time.
Scrapping IHT...fuck me![]()
In fairness inheritance tax is an absolute rort.
It needs tightening up and work done on it but there's no 'in fairness' here.
I'm sure this won't adversely effect public finances at all the same party that had some wretch stood in Parliament the other day claiming the UK has taken 550 million immigrants in the last decade will have their sums right I'm sure.
Talking about inheritance tax is the official 'we have run out of ideas' signal.
They never had any ideas. Corrupt, incompetent, rancid bunch of cunts.
What about lifetime transfers of wealth? Should you be allowed to give your money away to others if you want or does the government need to vet everything everyone does?
Inheritance tax is a rort because, as with most aspects of the stupid British tax system, those who you'd want it to target avoid it entirely and so all it ends up doing is punishing those who, through choice or ignorance, structure their affairs poorly.
These are all loopholes that could be addressed if there were any appetite to.
I don't have an answers to everything, but generational wealth is stupid and directly hinders the growth they say they want. Capitalism has essentially been gamified and the "Completed it mate" elites are sitting on and hoarding anything worth a fuck. Usually from abroad, which isn't ideal. We are living in a real world game of GTA Online at the moment. If you got in early and got all the money, you're set. If you got in late, good luck. Maybe try a heist?
We're fucked.
Bring in UBI so we can all stop caring about money and just take on a couple cash in hand jobs each year for holidays.
We had a £100 giftcard which is only reason we had to humour these cunts but a meal last night at a fairly ordinary restaurant cost £180 for 2 of us.
If you're not disabled/LGBTQIA+/reliant on unbreakable family bonds and you're not planning an exit route out this country, you have my sympathies.
I'm moving over in two weeks.![]()
I still remember this from the very first day I started doing training in financial advice. Inheritance tax is ‘an optional’ tax. Anyone with enough money and planning doesn’t pay it or pays a minimum amount. The people who get caught by it bought a house for fuck all 40 years ago and now it’s worth £1.5 million.
No point even attempting punitive IHT, as Labour know. People want their money to go to their kids, not where some civil servant thinks it should go.