General Election 2017 | Cabinet reshuffle: Hunt re-appointed Health Secretary for record third time
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) is joined by CEO Duncan Drasdo and Financial Director Andy Green from the Manchester United Supporters Trust for a special episode on all things behind the scenes at Old Trafford including a brief history of MUST and their aims today, views on INEOS and Sir Jim Ratcliffe so far, and the Old Trafford regeneration.
As you were, basically. Still looks like a modest uptick in Labour's fortunes overall when you look at the poll of polls, but well within the margin of error.
However Theresa May's dead cat yesterday is likely to swing the polls her way again I reckon. Partly because the EU remains a popular enemy, but also because it puts Brexit squarely at the middle of the election again, which suits her and not Labour.
Wonder how low the turnout for the council elections will be, can't imagine people will bother. Seems to be the mood from people I've spoken to at work.
Will unfortunately benefit the tories as the retirees will be the only ones who bother
Will unfortunately benefit the tories as the retirees will be the only ones who bother
Yeah tends to be the case. I couldn't find much info on a lot of my local candidates, been and voted anyway though.
Yeah im not bothering, my council do a decent job so not sure id want to vote against them even if they are Tory.
Tories got circa 50% of the vote last time here with UKIP 30%. Just a 26% turnout. Will be less students around so i imagine Labour will do even worse.
I can't find any info on what my local candidates are standing for. Might even vote Conservative to help stop the UKIP getting in.
Are you guys still FPTP for council elections? We're STV up here now.
Yup
Yeah, European election are the only PR we have. Sorry, had
I'm in what was a Tory/Lib Dem marginal that the Tories won easily last time. Doubt it'll be close again this year with the UKIP vote to cannibalise but I'll give it a go. Tories are going to pretty much sweep the board here, but hopefully UKIP at least feck off.
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Just seen today's Oldham Chronicle. Oldham being a Labour stronghold. The Tories have have taken out an advert filling half of the front page and the entire back cover.
It is strongly indicative of their strategy in this election and their confidence of making significant gains in traditional Labour areas.
It is strongly indicative of their strategy in this election and their confidence of making significant gains in traditional Labour areas.
Seen that they've done the same in Bury and Mansfield, wonder if it's the same publisher or if they're targeting the NW in particular.
I think they will be going after all Labour+Brexit areas in this way.
Yeah, European election are the only PR we have. Sorry, had
I'm in what was a Tory/Lib Dem marginal that the Tories won easily last time. Doubt it'll be close again this year with the UKIP vote to cannibalise but I'll give it a go. Tories are going to pretty much sweep the board here, but hopefully UKIP at least feck off.
Mines will almost certainly go SNP - will just depend on whether it's a majority/minority administration. Interesting one will be whether Labour beat out the Tories or not - I think they will when second preferences etc are taken in, but might not be by much. Could say the same for them nationally in Scotland. Will be glad to see the council leader here gone - cnut of a man. The Lib Dems, for some reason, have a wife beater as a candidate, which is some...err, poor vetting, to say the least.
They're buying them all over. Michael Crick has been kind of tracking them.
Looking at the numbers, Im sure Oldham East is a Tory target. The UKIP + Tory vote is greater than the Labour vote. Plus 2 years ago the Lib Dems lost about 3000 votes to Labour, and might well gain some back. If we see a landslide in June, pretty sure this will be one of those to fall.
The older Labour voter in the north looks like a goldmine for the Tories, Oldham is one of many that I'm sure they'll be successful in.
Garden sign count - Lib Dem 3-0 Tory. Admittedly this may just be because the Lib Dems give them away to anyone that looks their way.
Why just a stronger economy? Why not a stronger and stable-r economy?
Theresa May for a strong and stapler office.
Thats early for signs, there's a large 5 bed house near us that always has a huge Tory banner. I've never understand why you'd advertise who you'll vote.
I hope those signs say 'Lib Dem and Proud' or 'Being Lib Dem isnt a sin", otherwise the remaining British political satire truly is dead
It depends, in Oldham and Royton West I can't see them toppling Labour as Labour have the Muslim vote on lockdown.
Not one mentions of the Tories in the ad. Making it about her and tying it to Brexit. She is like the Brexit messiah.
Crazy how the Tories' campaign is all about May, rather than the party. Her historic levels of popularity are insane considering her lack of social skills - they've been incredibly effective at selling this tough, competent image of her. You wonder if there will be a single event that makes it pop, or a long term trend downwards as Brexit talks don't move as smoothly as anticipated.
Or will every single bump give her an opportunity to blame the other side, and increase her popularity? A scary thought.
Or will every single bump give her an opportunity to blame the other side, and increase her popularity? A scary thought.
Ha, was just thinking exactly the same. It's creepy. You've got to assume it's from Crosby's internal polling rather than any sort of messiah complex... hopefully.
Crazy how the Tories' campaign is all about May, rather than the party. Her historic levels of popularity are insane considering her lack of social skills - they've been incredibly effective at selling this tough, competent image of her. You wonder if there will be a single event that makes it pop, or a long term trend downwards as Brexit talks don't move as smoothly as anticipated.
Or will every single bump give her an opportunity to blame the other side, and increase her popularity? A scary thought.
Its not really about her, she's just the figurehead to the Brexit cause and they know one figure represents greater stability.
Theresa has worse jewellery than me even; and mine comes from Primark sales. The 'gold' sloughs off when it rains & my fingers go green.
Crazy how the Tories' campaign is all about May, rather than the party. Her historic levels of popularity are insane considering her lack of social skills - they've been incredibly effective at selling this tough, competent image of her. You wonder if there will be a single event that makes it pop, or a long term trend downwards as Brexit talks don't move as smoothly as anticipated.
Or will every single bump give her an opportunity to blame the other side, and increase her popularity? A scary thought.
All Prime Ministers leave office unpopular, have no fear of that.
Yes, there are economic problems, that need to get fixed, but we have to be smart about this. That starts with actually trying to describe reality accurately. The narrative that once you are rich you’ll always stay rich, while if you are not born rich, you have no chance, doesn’t hold up for the majority of people. Just look at the most valuable firms in the world. If you exclude financial institutions and resource companies, you’ll see that the founders didn’t inherit their wealth. They are able to provide amazing goods/services and that made them rich. It was always has been and always will be the case that a tiny minority of people are actually the initiators of lasting global economic (and intellectual) development. These people have always accumulated extreme wealth and in a globalised world, they will become even wealthier. Yet the actions of these people also benefits everyone else.
The debate is always about inequality, but it should be about the standard of living for normal people. I’d rather live in an extremely unequal society, where even the poorest are better off, than in a society, where that is equal but poor. The underlying fallacy is to assume, that people only get rich at someone else’s expense. That’s true when people get rich by extracting economic/political rents. There are some sectors where this is a significant problem but that won’t be solved by increasing taxes. The sectors that extract significant rents are often closely connected to governments. Parts of modern finance post ~1980/90ish or energy/resource companies are probably the most famous ones.
Having a boom in post-war years is hardly surprising regardless of taxes. We are also not living in the 50s anymore. I am also not per-se against high taxes; I am against extreme and random actions that would seriously undermine fundamental pillars of the current economic system without promising any lasting success.
Has the introduction of STV improved voter turnout, or are you still looking at percentages in the 20s and
30s?
It all depends on the benchmark you're starting with really. There's always the same argument made that taxes shouldn't increase but there's never a change in stance when taxes have come down to rebalance that stance. No matter the tax rates people will say it shouldn't go up.
We've even seen people get confused over Labour saying they'd reverse the cut, suddenly it became them increasing it to stupid levels.
When it rains her 'skin' sloughs off and she reveals herself as one of those lizards that David Icke is always harping on about.
Nah, still very low. There's a bit of confusion about the system to be honest, but I think that's more down to the fact that no one really cares about council elections and most parties are just using it as a chance to further their own national agendas.
I have no problem with increasing taxes. I have a problem with taxes that are in my opinion just terrible due to their effects. Like wealth or inheritance taxes. Or deliberately ignoring that consumers effectively are paying a significant share of corporate taxes.
Additionally, there is a lot of historic confusion about the development of taxes. Stuff like bracket creep, changing allowances, exemptions, inflation, different taxes and the overall complexity of the system means that just comparing (top) rates is misleading.
On the other hand, Denmark has something like 59% top income tax rate (they might not pay for social security like we do; not sure about that) and they are doing quite well. So just having high top tax rates isn’t the end of the world.
I think the current tax+social insurance contributions system is so complex that hardly anyone actually fully grasps how it works in detail. Consequently anyone can point at a random data point to legitimize his agenda.
I must say you brits have a tough decision, the only party that seems strong enough for a vote is the party headed by May, who even as an outsider without in-depth knowledge seems to be an undesirable leader. I'm still amused by her and her parties change in stance on brexit (thought they were against it at the referendum), especially seeing as there's a strong population base against it. It's really hard to predict what the future holds atm, so many variables.
On a side note, apparently as a commonwealth citizen I'm eligible to vote in this election
On a side note, apparently as a commonwealth citizen I'm eligible to vote in this election
And? That's just part of the flow of money, we're paying for a lot of things if you take that definition. You're not suggesting there's a correlation to prices surely?
You do have a general point, the tax system is complex and political football but it does sound like you're making arguments to discount tax...the old I would give but they'll just spend it on crack line.
Id question why you think IHT has 'terrible effects' but its been done to death on here so i wont
Just to say, I've never once said that once you are rich, you will always stay rich (just look at Premier League footballers, '3/5 go bankrupt within 5 years'). Indeed, that's not the point. However, as you say, inequality is growing year on year.
The super rich are becoming super richer. Even as Bill Gates and Warren Buffett give "most of their money to charity" their wealth grows faster and faster. Using "old money" to increase your wealth, is a lot easier than starting from scratch, that much should be obvious. To put some numbers on it; in 2000 the top 10 richest people in the world has a combined wealth of $275 bn. Today the top 10 richest people in the world have a combined wealth of $612 bn. The US Economy in the same time frame grew from a GDP of 10 trillion usd to around 18 trillion usd. (You could say I'm being slightly unfair here, but we'll leave it for now)
And to be clear, I'm not criticising the rich or the super rich. I'm more than happy for them to try and make trillions, and then pass as much of that on to their children as possible. And indeed, a 40% inheritance tax is too high (although as Jippy says, only idiots pay it).
But we both agree that inequality is a thing, so let's move on to the next point
I've never said that people only get rich off of other people's expense, but likewise, I think you're committing a fallacy yourself when you assume that people's standards of living will go up because we let the rich become super rich.
I will try to strengthen my argument with a series of statements
- With hedge funds, wealth management services and indeed just investment funds, it has never been easier to make your wealth work for you. In the old days, turning wealth into greater wealth was more difficult.
- We having an aging population, people are living older than ever. Previously, within 100 years, a large wealth might have been divided up 20 ways. Now, a large amount of wealth might only be divided up 2-6 ways in that 100 years.
- House prices in parts of the western world are growing faster than the average wage, and have been for a long time.
- The CEO/Worker wage ratio has increased thousands fold over the years
- Automation has, at least the possibility, of causing mass unemployment. But the owners of the these companies will get super rich as the cost of manufacturing, production and delivery collapses.
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And? That's just part of the flow of money, we're paying for a lot of things if you take that definition. You're not suggesting there's a correlation to prices surely?
You do have a general point, the tax system is complex and political football but it does sound like you're making arguments to discount tax...the old I would give but they'll just spend it on crack line.
Id question why you think IHT has 'terrible effects' but its been done to death on here so i wont
Where you levy taxes doesn’t determine who actually has to bear the costs. That is undisputed and 100% established fact. Consequently, some slogans like “higher taxes for corporations/big companies” sound great, but the costs of these taxes are not bearded by who you think - at least not to a significant part. That’s something that gets almost completely ignored in the public debate about corporate tax codes.
I am for lower taxes, but I recognise that there are also reasonable arguments for higher taxes. Many politicians who campaign for lower taxes base their arguments on nonsense. So I might agree with them, but I am still annoyed but much of their reasoning. That’s why I happily concede, that raising income tax rates (or reversing some former cuts) is certainly not destroying the economy. That kind of scaremongering is obviously wrong and not helpful. These decisions are always about trade-offs and it would be great if both sides were able to concede that these things are not entirely one-sided.
I am in principle for a much simpler tax code and one that is less distortive. Let’s not have the debate why some specific forms of taxation suck. That does not lead us anywhere. All I can say is that I am absolutely convinced that inherence and wealth taxes are a truly horrible idea, that have many unintended effects, that nobody wants.
Average returns across the global market is 7% a year. Hedge funds should beat that, or aren't really doing their jobs.
40% inheritance tax is too high, but one years average returns is too little.
40% inheritance tax is too high, but one years average returns is too little.
Are you one of these types that would like a x percentage tax (i.e. 30%) across the board?