inspectorst

The goal here is that it's famously difficult for third parties to get an appropriate measure of media attention in the UK. The newspapers are highly partisan, and the TV news interprets the 'balance' requirement to mean they can just give the government view and the main opposition view on every issue (unless the government and main opposition happen to agree - which is why the Lib Dems got a fair hearing in the media on Iraq in the early 2000s).

So third parties need to have a gimmick to trick the media into giving them airtime, which then allows them to talk about their issues. Charles Kennedy did it but being entertaining on chatshows and HIGNFY; Nigel Farage does it by being outrageous and offensive; and Ed Davey has worked out that he can do it through stunts.

The MPs wanted Cleverly anyway but they shit the bed trying to engineer an easy opponent for him in the final two. He's now said he's not going to join the shadow cabinet, so while Badenoch has to deal with all the struggles of being LOTO, Cleverly will be on the backbenches, giving speeches to constituency parties, improving his reputation, sounding like some sort of experienced elder statesman to contrast with Badenoch.

A VONC to put Cleverly in charge seems very likely unless Starmer's polling numbers really tank over the next few years.

This is patently absurd. Labour already inherited the highest tax burden in 70 years from the Conservatives - this budget increases the tax burden by a further £40bn to fund extra spending. Government borrowing is also going to increase by an average of £32bn a year for the next five years due to this budget.

If this is what they call austerity, I'd hate to see what these people think government largesse looks like...

The mask always slips.

How do you define 'large percentage'? Musk owns 22% of Tesla shares whereas small business owners may own 100% of their business. Do you think Musk is more working class then the latter?

Shares are just an asset just like cash. Some people choose to hold their savings in cash. Some people choose to hold them in bonds, some in shares, some in property, and so on.

When I was younger and poorer than I am today, I owned a larger value of shares than I do now because I was still saving up for a deposit on my house. Then I took out my mortgage, bought the house and the value of my ISA dropped to almost nothing as I sold most of the shares to fund my deposit. Do you think I was a capitalist when I was poorer and didn't own a house, but working class now that I have a mortgage but fewer shares?

The form in which you hold your assets is irrelevant. It's how much assets you have that counts.

Yes, in many ways it's so much dumber. If I'm taking home a salary from Company A, my livelihood is dependent on Company A, and then as part of my pay package I get given $1000 of shares in Company A, then I would cash them in as soon as l could and buy a diversified portfolio of shares in Companies B, C, D, E, etc instead.

Keeping all your eggs in one basket is a bad idea. But keeping all your eggs in a basket whose performance is directly correlated with your risk of getting made redundant seems an exceptionally bad idea!

Also, you realise that everyone who has a pension is an indirect owner of shares in hundreds of different companies? Part of the problem of Starmer using this sort of idiotic language is that it willfully plays on and exacerbates voters' lack of awareness of the world they live in and where their pension savings are going...

Non-paywall link: https://archive.ph/fx3ug

Such a damningly poor and out-of-touch judgment from Starmer.

3 in 10 Britons own shares directly (i.e. not counting the many more who own them via their pension funds), the vast majority of them being very much working people who bring home most of their income through their salaries. The ISA system directly incentivises people to invest up to £20k a year tax free.

Most generally, at a time when the government claims to interested in boosting investment in the UK, it is a mad decision for the prime minister to come out against share ownership at a time when he should be encouraging Britons to invest more in shares and less in cash savings products.

How the turntables...

Whether he wins or loses, I still cannot fathom how a candidate like this can poll 45%+ in a country purporting to be a modern democracy.

Will the clocks still go back and forward an hour to help the farmers get up early though?

He's obviously talking his own book, but there does seem to be genuine concern that the government's analysis of the non-dom crackdown suggests that, yes, it will lead to a reduction in tax revenue. Because many of these people can in fact just move...

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/rachel-reeves-budget-non-dom-changes-tax-b2619863.html

I'm still annoyed that the Daily Star keeps getting credit for this joke.

The joke about Truss's premiership having the shelf life of a lettuce was from the Economist. And it wasn't about the 49 days she was PM - it was referencing the seven days or so that Truss was actually in the driving seat, once you take away the mourning period around the Queen's death when nothing could happen, and then the period after the mini-budget when Jeremy Hunt and the grown-ups took charge.

What the Star did was just riff on the Economist's joke by setting up a webcam.