The Labour Government...

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  • Of course they had. That's what political parties do. The Conservatives do the same when Labour is in power.
  • Telford wrote: »

    More or less, but Hunt never claimed things were good.

    Don't forget that Labour had been talking about everything being in a mess for years

    I've just checked back at the March statement on Hansard. You are being generous to the Rt Hon Mr Hunt.

    In the meantime: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-11-05/uk-budget-watchdog-says-treasury-officials-may-have-broken-law
  • HugalHugal Shipmate
    Yep Civil Servants are not allowed to put their political leanings ahead of their duties.
    Where the Labour Party as misinformed as they say. We have to take their word for it. It is how they are proceeding anyway. It is essentially true even if it isn’t.
  • I am seeing Lord Peter Mandelson as the next Ambassador to the USA
  • HugalHugal Shipmate
    I read that as the detective Lord Peter Whimsy.
  • ArethosemyfeetArethosemyfeet Shipmate, Heaven Host
    Telford wrote: »
    I am seeing Lord Peter Mandelson as the next Ambassador to the USA

    Great. Him and Trump can reminisce about Epstein.
  • EigonEigon Shipmate
    If I remember correctly, Lord Peter Wimsey did do some diplomatic work over the course of the novels.

  • Great. Him and Trump can reminisce about Epstein.

    I did not realise they were both Beatles fans.

  • Or sculpture aficionados.

    (You aren't the only one who can do one-liners)
  • Or sculpture aficionados.

    (You aren't the only one who can do one-liners)
    But I'm the only one who gets punished for them



  • la vie en rougela vie en rouge Purgatory Host, Circus Host
    Telford wrote: »
    But I'm the only one who gets punished for them

    Hostly beret on

    @Telford if you want to take issue with the way you are hosted, you may do so in the Styx. Please don't do it here.

    @Gamma Gamaliel if you want to complain about another contributor's posting style, Hell would be the place.

    Hostly beret off

    la vie en rouge, Purgatory host
  • I was teasing not criticising but point taken. I won't call @Telford to Hell for things I do myself.
  • https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/diwali-downing-street-starmer-meat-alcohol-b2647761.html

    Sir Keir, who appears to know very little about Hinduism, needed some good advice. Perhaps he should have asked Rishi.
  • Yes, that was a gaff.
  • ArethosemyfeetArethosemyfeet Shipmate, Heaven Host
    Telford wrote: »
    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/diwali-downing-street-starmer-meat-alcohol-b2647761.html

    Sir Keir, who appears to know very little about Hinduism, needed some good advice. Perhaps he should have asked Rishi.

    Please tell me they at least avoided beef.
  • https://www.express.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/1976741/Rachel-Reeves-caught-editing-CV-stint-disastrous-Chancellor

    Just one of the newspapers reporting that Ms Reeves has lied about her financial experience.
  • BroJamesBroJames Purgatory Host
    edited November 2024
    The Sun, the Express, the Mail, and the Telegraph among other Tory supporting “news media”* have all jumped on this story. Here’s a fact check from the non-partisan Independent
    Evaluation
    Ms Reeves, 45, spent six years working for the Bank of England between 2000 and 2006.

    The facts
    A LinkedIn page which appears to belong to Ms Reeves says that she worked at the Bank of England between September 2000 and December 2006.

    The Bank of England confirmed to the PA news agency that Ms Reeves worked for them during the dates on the LinkedIn page.

    This includes a stint with the British Embassy in Washington DC, which was a secondment from the UK’s central bank – and which Ms Reeves talked about in a video posted to X, formerly Twitter, in August 2023.

    Some of Ms Reeves’s time at the Bank can also be charted through papers she contributed to during her employment there.

    In a December 2005 paper she is listed as part of the Bank’s structural economic analysis division, which matches the detail on the LinkedIn page.

    She is also thanked for her contributions to a December 2001 speech by Charlie Bean, who was the Bank of England’s chief economist at the time.

    * scare quotes because I’m not sure the term is fitting for media which publish politically motivated material without elementary checking.
  • TelfordTelford Shipmate
    edited November 2024
    Some of the confusions is about her job at the Bank of England. She does not appear to have been an economist. Some reports say that she was working in retail banking.
  • BroJamesBroJames Purgatory Host
    She worked as an economist at the Bank of England for five or six years, and then in retail banking at Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS). It was her entry for HBOS that wrongly stated she worked there as an economist.

    Without knowing, or having capacity to investigate, timelines or the LinkedIn interface, I rather suspect that was a plain clerical error which was only picked up once the record came under scrutiny, and then it was corrected.
  • Given the utter pish the Express sees fit to publish as front page headlines regarding the weather, I wouldn't even treat it a source of the date without checking
  • Given the utter pish the Express sees fit to publish as front page headlines regarding the weather, I wouldn't even treat it a source of the date without checking

    Quite. Although as an ex daily reader when it was still true, I find myself rolling on the floor laughing at the description of The Independent these days as ‘non-Partisan’ !

    ‘Basket case, interestingly funded, check the ownership’ on the other hand…
  • I get regularly depressed by the utter destruction of The Independent over the last 10 years or so. It’s now not even a comic. YMMV.
  • BroJames wrote: »
    She worked as an economist at the Bank of England for five or six years, and then in retail banking at Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS). It was her entry for HBOS that wrongly stated she worked there as an economist.

    Without knowing, or having capacity to investigate, timelines or the LinkedIn interface, I rather suspect that was a plain clerical error which was only picked up once the record came under scrutiny, and then it was corrected.

    If this is all true, we should hear no more about it. unless we hear that several newspapers have been sued.

  • BroJamesBroJames Purgatory Host
    edited November 2024
    If were a lawyer with her best interests at heart, even if what the papers have said is clearly false, I’d advise her not to sue. It would merely give the story legs. Otherwise it’s just a flash in the pan.
  • TelfordTelford Shipmate
    edited November 2024
    BroJames wrote: »
    If were a lawyer with her best interests at heart, even if what the papers have said is clearly false, I’d advise her not to sue. It would merely give the story legs. Otherwise it’s just a flash in the pan.
    Why do all these papers have the same false story ? It doesn't make sense

  • BroJamesBroJames Purgatory Host
    Actually, not all the papers carry the same story. See my post with the fact check above. Less partisan outlets (including the Press Association) fact-checked the claim before deciding whether to publish. Having checked they decided that the fact-check was the story, rather than the false claim.

    Why do you think the right wing media (including ‘only the facts’ GB News) simply published, without apparently checking, an easily checked untrue true claim discreditable to a Labour Chancellor?
  • North East QuineNorth East Quine Purgatory Host
    edited November 2024
    Telford wrote: »
    Why do all these papers have the same false story ? It doesn't make sense

    They have latched onto a true fact - that RR has changed a previous job title and they have built a story, with imputed motives round that. They have done so in order to get a story which fits into their narrative about the Labour government.

    Can I give you an example from my own experience, @Telford? Some years ago, I nominated a woman for a blue plaque in Aberdeen. She was the niece of a man involved in Gladstone's prostitute-rescue scheme, but her efforts were focussed on providing innovative safety-nets to prevent women from falling into prostitution. The local press covered the unveiling of the blue plaque.

    I was contacted by a Mail reporter and interviewed over the phone. I thought the interview went very well. Imagine my surprise to read the subsequent full-page story in the Mail on Sunday. Daughter of the Manse on a mission to save women from the Ripper it was headlined, and it was illustrated with a photo from a film about Jack the Ripper.

    At no point in the telephone interview had Jack the Ripper been mentioned. I have no interest in JtR. The article quoted me accurately, but what I said was sandwiched between lurid and salacious paragraphs about JtR, Victorian prostitution etc.

    Had I been told at the outset that the story was going to be about JtR I wouldn't have given the interview, because at that point I knew so little about JtR I didn't even know if the dates matched up. But everything I was quoted on was, in fact, true - the woman, the plaque, her innovative schemes.

    The end result was that, instead of sounding like a serious historian, I sounded like a seedy crank.

    This is how it is done - the newspaper takes a fact and "spins" it, to a story which fits their agenda, or their readership's appetite for titillating stories.
  • As a corollary to that, on February 15th 2020 the Daily Mail published an article claiming that London's Chinatown was deserted because everyone was afraid of the new disease spreading from China, complete with "photo, yesterday " of a deserted Chinatown.

    The Knotweed and I were *in* Chinatown the previous evening. It was anything but deserted, maybe more masks than usual but still bustling.

    In this case, the "news"paper published a bare-faced lie, and I can bear witness to that.
  • What a surprise that right wing media try to trash Labour. Why ever would they do that?
  • What a surprise that right wing media try to trash Labour. Why ever would they do that?

    I agree. Typing ecomomist when you meant to type retail bank worker is an easy mistake to make . Still, she has corrected it now and never need be mentioned again.

  • Meanwhile the self-inflicted wound of trying to nobble the farmers is going splendidly.
  • ArethosemyfeetArethosemyfeet Shipmate, Heaven Host
    Meanwhile the self-inflicted wound of trying to nobble the farmers is going splendidly.

    Apart from it not nobbling the farmers and not being a wound you're exactly right.

    Like pretty much all scaremongering about inheritance tax it's the press winding up the moderately well off to support the super rich. The loudest voice being the man who explicitly bought a farm as a tax dodge and is now whining. As our friend on the other side of the pond say: "hit dogs holler".
  • Meanwhile the self-inflicted wound of trying to nobble the farmers is going splendidly.

    You mean their union organised a demo (the language of 'union barons' has been startlingly absent in the coverage), and a bunch of far right fringe figures showed up.
  • Very funny watching Jeremy Clarkson trying to backtrack from his own statement that his farm was a tax dodge. I find it all confusing, conflicting stats abound.
  • For example, the govt seem to be using the scenario of a married couple owning a farm, where their tax free limit for inheritance would be £3 million.
  • Hello from the March…
  • betjemaniacbetjemaniac Shipmate
    edited November 2024
  • DoublethinkDoublethink Admin, 8th Day Host
    @betjemaniac given this, why is it a problem for people inheriting 3 million pounds worth of property, to pay half the standard rate of inheritance tax on 2 million pounds worth of it ?
  • betjemaniacbetjemaniac Shipmate
    edited November 2024
    @betjemaniac given this, why is it a problem for people inheriting 3 million pounds worth of property, to pay half the standard rate of inheritance tax on 2 million pounds worth of it ?

    Margin of sub 1%? They’ve got no cash, they already live there and it’s their home as well as their business. It’s not like any other industry
  • Farmland has become a Ponzi scheme because of agricultural property relief. If land value now reflects actual returns more closely, that can only be a good thing.
  • Farmland has become a Ponzi scheme because of agricultural property relief. If land value now reflects actual returns more closely, that can only be a good thing.

    Agree… except… how many reasonably innocent bystanders get taken out while that happens because their parent has the misfortune to die? The changes of themselves make sense, and there is absolutely an issue with buying farmland to shelter from tax. But this change applied this way breaks too many butterflies under the wheel in pursuit of that. A £5m threshold would address your big investors, this crushes the smaller family set-ups at 1-5m, and all their land will be bought by the same big investors who can afford the dodges to keep sheltering.
  • Fundamentally, as one of my friends I travelled down with said, on paper their farm is worth £3m. But only if they sell it. Meanwhile the margins are such that last year they struggled to buy new school shoes for their 9yo daughter.
  • Fundamentally, as one of my friends I travelled down with said, on paper their farm is worth £3m. But only if they sell it. Meanwhile the margins are such that last year they struggled to buy new school shoes for their 9yo daughter.

    If I was sitting on £3m and struggling for day to day costs you wouldn't see me for dust as I headed to the Estate Agents.
  • I get it on some levels. It's more like a vocation than a job, and the balance between managing the land both as an asset and for its biological value, and earning revenue is clearly both difficult and exhausting. But there has to be something other than grossly inflated tax breaks that will allow that to continue. The sense of entitlement which seems to surround farmers, both here and in France, is nauseating. French farmers are like toddlers.
  • KarlLB wrote: »

    If I was sitting on £3m and struggling for day to day costs you wouldn't see me for dust as I headed to the Estate Agents.
    KarlLB wrote: »

    If I was sitting on £3m and struggling for day to day costs you wouldn't see me for dust as I headed to the Estate Agents.

    Which is why you’re not a farmer. Most of them have to be born to it because in reality (never mind on paper) it’s a pretty ludicrous proposition as a way to spend your life.
  • The second half of my above post was a little intemperate, and I apologise. But 100% agricultural property relief is pure welfare for the rich, and creates huge tax inequalities. And treating farmers as being more like the rest of the population has to be an option. What is really needed is wholesale reform of Inheritance Tax, including the flagrant abuse of trusts, but that would require serious asbestos underpants, and I don't think Starmer has them.
  • But there has to be something other than grossly inflated tax breaks that will allow that to continue.

    Again, agree. The issue though is that no one in government is looking for that something, they’ve gone straight to whacking up the tax, and done nothing else. and proposed nothing else. And talked to no one at all in agriculture (and most damningly even no one in their own sodding agriculture ministry) before doing so.



  • Which is why you’re not a farmer. Most of them have to be born to it because in reality (never mind on paper) it’s a pretty ludicrous proposition as a way to spend your life.

    Yeah but let's not pretend that there are absolutely no benefits in having that amount in assets.

  • Yeah but let's not pretend that there are absolutely no benefits in having that amount in assets.

    Yeah but (it’s always ‘yeah but’ isn’t it), the cash still isn’t there.
  • ArethosemyfeetArethosemyfeet Shipmate, Heaven Host
    Fundamentally, as one of my friends I travelled down with said, on paper their farm is worth £3m. But only if they sell it. Meanwhile the margins are such that last year they struggled to buy new school shoes for their 9yo daughter.

    Thing is, just the presence of the tax will reduce prices so that paper 3 million will rapidly be less than that. It will become more feasible to buy land to farm and even more farms will drop below the IHT threshold.

    Here of course, nobody much cares because no crofter has 1 million in assets, nevermind 3.
This discussion has been closed.