The British state is not fit for Starmer’s purpose
Unpaywalled archive link: https://archive.is/Pmbfo
OECD boosts Rachel Reeves with call to rewrite ‘short-termist’ fiscal rules
Unpaywalled archive link: https://archive.is/76Rjx
Exclusive: Ex-Labour leader gives speech at event where organisers say they aim to start party named Collective
Dan Neidle: ‘A UK wealth tax wouldn’t work’
Unpaywalled archive link: https://archive.is/ms1Dl
> He argued that council tax, business rates and stamp duty should all be abolished and replaced with a land tax “that would actually act as an engine for growth” and supported former Conservative chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s desire to end national insurance, describing it as a “dumb form of income tax” as it did not apply to income from savings, investments, property or retired people. > > “Any of these things could be looked at by a reforming government and I believe they would all drive growth, they might even raise a bit of revenue, but the main game should be growth. One per cent on UK GDP is worth way more than mucking around with pension tax here or there.”
UK government secures 131 clean energy projects in latest auction round
Unpaywalled archive link: https://archive.is/xBjYy
The article states that 70% of those occupying social housing have their rent payed for by housing benefit. The article also mentions that housing benefit comes from central government.
So the effect of this is a transfer of more money from central government to councils and housing associations. As well as an increase in the incomes of councils and HAs from those 30% that are well-off enough to no longer receive housing benefit but are still living in social housing.
I'd say this is less about reducing CO2 and more about making cities and towns nicer places to live and helping people live healthier lives.
I have no idea what the stats on this are, but I'd guess that the amount of emissions saved in people cycling more vs using a petrol car or electric car wouldn't actually be much compared to measures that reduce emissions from goods transport.
Transport secretary says government’s strategy for active travel could cut GP appointments by millions
TBH I thought the article was actually particularly good because it specifically pointed out that "immigration" isn't one homogeneous thing.
We end up with these worst-of-all worlds outcomes because we talk about immigration as if it’s one thing when in reality it is many very different things, because we refuse to confront trade-offs — and because each side has its own conversational no-go areas.
I think that point of refusing to discuss tradeoffs is also particularly pertinent. Significant chunks of the electorate will happily vote for Reform but then moan about the lack of staffing in healthcare. Or conversely, others will happily quote the stats that on average migrants are a net benefit to the country, but then refuse to investigate this thought further and realise that this is an average and those benefits may not be spread evenly (perhaps some areas are even negatively affected).
Time for a grown-up conversation about immigration
Unpaywalled archive link: https://archive.is/jlyiS
Wouldn't this be pretty bang-on expected for less premium groceries where profit margins are much thinner?
For example, a food product retailing at £2 where £1.80 covers farming costs and operational costs, inflation of 10% will increase those costs to £1.98, to keep a 20p profit, the retailer would increase the price to £2.18 (9% increase). A more premium food product that retails for £3.50 where the farming costs are only slightly higher might have a £2 cost for the retailer with a much higher markup of £1.50. To keep that same profit after 10% cost inflation (to £2.20), the price would rise to £3.70 (5.7% increase).
Rachel Reeves leaves door open to higher borrowing to tackle UK ‘fiscal hole’
Unwalled archive link: https://archive.is/dd0K6
Doves vs hawks: BoE remains split despite interest rate cut
Unwalled archive link: https://archive.is/OP9ny
Macquarie - famous for fucking over Thames Water by creating a deliberately complex company structure so they could load it up with debt in order to pay out dividends.
Macquarie takes full ownership of Britain’s gas network
Unwalled archive link: https://archive.is/w8qYz
Lib Dems push for extra parliamentary rights to reflect jump in number of MPs
Unwalled archive link: https://archive.is/0hDcx
Adrian Ramsay wants Labour to consider other options for a 114-mile pylon route across three counties.
Jobcentre revamp to focus on career advice rather than policing benefits
Full text archive link: https://archive.is/lhS3k
Some further thoughts from the FT politics newsletter:
> Labour has an ambitious target to increase the UK’s employment rate to 80 per cent — for context, the OECD average is 70 per cent, and the UK is currently at 75 per cent. If it could achieve this, the UK would be part of a small group of countries: Iceland, the Netherlands and Switzerland are the only OECD countries with employment rates above 80 per cent > > However, while the UK’s employment rate looks good next to its peers, it is also the only G7 country that has an employment rate lower than it was before the Covid-19 pandemic. So while it is an ambitious target, a) it is not an impossible one and b) the UK could almost certainly get closer to 80 per cent than it is now. > > One lever that Labour wants to pull to turn that around is to reform what jobcentres do — Delphine Strauss’s story is here — getting them to focus more on providing career advice than policing the benefits system. > > When government departments and agencies work well, they are obsessed with improving performance. When they are working badly, they are obsessed with improving performance indicators. When this happens in education it leads to grade inflation, because it is always in the interest of the government of the day to be able to point to better grades. (Some more thoughts on that here.) > > Jobcentres have essentially always been the part of the government that is most geared towards producing improved performance indicators rather than improved performance. While it matters a great deal to the UK’s economic performance whether someone who comes into contact with a jobcentre leaves with a better job than the one they had lost or with a new qualification, in political debates all that really matters is whether or not you can say that the number of people claiming unemployment benefit has fallen. > > One way Labour is trying to change that is, for the first time since the Thatcher government, by having two different ministers in charge of employment (Alison McGovern) and social security (Stephen Timms, who having been a very effective select committee chair and a former minister in the last Labour government, is perhaps the most Keir Starmer-y appointment it is possible to make) at the DWP. > > But it’s a big, big, big cultural change the party is looking to bring about in jobcentres, and doing so is a big part of how it is going to try and meet what is its most ambitious target when it comes to social policy.
Saw the first clip in the video and couldn't handle watching any more. I'm all for allowing people the autonomy to take their own sensible risks and avoid over safety-fying things, but some people are ridiculous (and selfish in this context). If you're going to go over a level crossing when the barriers are closed, at least have the respect to run across, knowing that you're doing something risky, rather than casually stroll through the danger zone!
Steve Reed will meet chiefs of companies including Thames Water hours after a crucial set of rulings by the industry regulator Ofwat, Sky News can reveal.
Redfield & Wilton: Labour are more trusted than the Conservatives on EVERY policy issue prompted.
Source: RedfieldWilton@twitter
> Labour are more trusted than the Conservatives on EVERY policy issue prompted. > > Which party do voters trust most on...? > > (Lab | Con) > > NHS (42% | 17%) > Education (39% | 20%) > Economy (38% | 23%) > Immigration (33% | 21%) > 🇺🇦 (31% | 24%)
Westminster Voting Intention: LAB: 45% (+1) CON: 19% (-2) RFM: 14% (+2) LDM: 12% (=) GRN: 5% (-1) Via @techneUK, 22-23 May. Changes w/ 15-16 May.
Westminster Voting Intention:
- LAB: 45% (+1)
- CON: 19% (-2)
- RFM: 14% (+2)
- LDM: 12% (=)
- GRN: 5% (-1)
Via @techneUK , 22-23 May. Changes w/ 15-16 May.
Heineken to reopen closed UK pubs as cost of living pressures ease
Full text archive link: https://archive.is/SDX09
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Brewer will put £40mn annually into refurbishing its UK estate as pub groups regain confidence
Heineken is reopening 62 UK pubs it had closed in recent years and will put about £40mn annually into refurbishing its estate in the latest sign that pub groups are regaining confidence as cost of living pressures ease.
The move by the world’s second-largest brewer, which owns 2,400 pubs in the UK through its Star Pubs and Bars arm, will restore the number of operating outlets in its estate to pre-pandemic levels.
“Now is clearly a significant moment in terms of the resilience of pubs coming back and showing how they can still work very well for consumers up and down the country,” said Lawson Mountstevens, Star Pubs’ managing director.
Heineken, which leases out most of its pubs, has spent more than £200mn maintaining them over the past five years and plans to continue investing at a similar level.
This year it will put £39mn into the reopenings and makeovers across 94 outlets, mainly in suburban areas where more people work from home. The spending will include increasing kitchen space and improving gardens, as outdoor space has become more popular since the pandemic. A total of 612 pubs will benefit from investment.
“I would envision us investing at around those levels for the next four years or so,” Mountstevens said. Continued investment was Heineken’s “massive vote of confidence in the longevity of pubs in the UK”, he added.
Britain’s hostelries have been hard hit by the cost of living crisis; consumers are spending less money in pubs and bars than at any time since Covid lockdowns ended, according to recent research by Deloitte. Beer is one of the consumer goods they have particularly cut back on, FT research recently found.
Rising operating costs and financing challenges have also affected the sector. But the bullishness of Star Pubs is the latest sign that large players in the industry are shifting to the offensive. The pub sector expects improvements in trading and financing this year.
Greene King announced last week that it would invest £40mn in a new brewery in Bury St Edmunds, with plans for this to replace the existing brewery there in 2027. Punch Pubs announced last week that it had acquired 24 pubs from the Milton Three pub group, which fell into administration in November. The deal is believed to be worth about £15mn.
“Consumer confidence is beginning to return, which is reflected in the tentative signs of an uplift in pub sales,” said Emma McClarkin, chief executive of the British Beer and Pub Association, the industry body. “Investors are making big investments into the UK in our sector and confidence in the beer and pub sector for the long-term is strong.”
The UK has 45,300 pubs but 530 of them shut their doors last year, according to the BBPA. The number of closures was higher than even the height of the pandemic in both 2020 and 2021 when the government provided support.
Peel Hunt analyst Douglas Jack warned that borrowing costs still remained high for many private companies but added: “Confidence is improving as real disposable income is growing and interest rates are forecast to fall.”
I'm a big fan of middle class ideals. Just have a look on Google maps, there's more around than you might expect.
See if you have a local pottery near you that could make a new lid to fit.
A handful of wealthy countries have grown used to giving lectures to the rest — now they need to start taking lessons as well
Full text archive link: https://archive.is/r24HZ
A well considered and thoughtful piece I think.
In comparison, grocery sales were hugely increased this past Christmas - https://www.kantar.com/uki/inspiration/fmcg/2024-wp-record-numbers-hit-the-shops-as-supermarkets-experience-busiest-christmas-since-2019 .
Perhaps messages about being eco conscious have moved some people away from spending on plastic tat and focused more on having lavish food for the Christmas period? Or does this figure not take into account inflation and this is just to do with food price inflation being higher than other sectors?
Yeah I think YSH can pipe around structured data. This wiki page has some details:
Oils is interesting.
An Old World Ocean Map Goes Viral
A story about the "Spilhaus projection" – a map projection that went viral in fall 2018 and is now supported in ArcGIS.
BNC connector, such a satisfying screw and click into place mechanism.
I can imagine a hacky way to anonymise voting would be to have a pool of fake user accounts on your instance. When someone on the instance clicks to up/downvote, a random fake account is used to make the vote instead. This would then kind of work like a vote tumbler and keep the voting anonymous but still work with activity pub.
Maybe activitypub is actually a bit crap and we should all be using something better like nostr though?
The two potential roads seem somewhat equivalent to me:
- Threads federation is blocked by the main Mastodon instances. A huge user base of non-techies starts using Threads and it dwarfs the rest of the fediverse acting as a singular centralised platform. The fediverse continues to be a techie/ideological anti-corporate community as it is now with a relatively small community in the grand scheme of things.
- Threads federated with some of the big Mastodon instances. Fediverse instances outside of Threads get a large amount of growth as people see the extra content available in this larger federated environment. Growth of Threads still outpaces all other fediverse instances combined. Meta then carries out some form of EEE tactics and some large chunk of the userbase of the non-Threads instances switch to Threads. The techie/anti-corporate community continues to use fediverse instances without any interaction with Threads.
Both scenarios end in a large centralised platform run by Meta and a small community that want to avoid a corporate platform.
I think it's also wise to separate the effect of large corporate instances in the fediverse between effects on Mastodon (where users follow users) vs Lemmy/Kbin (where users follow communities). In the case of Mastodon, the effects of EEE tactics will be strong due to a more powerful network effect because it's important that a particular person is on the same platform as you (i.e. this is a similar situation to XMPP and gchat). In contrast, you just need some people to participate in a Lemmy/Kbin community to make it worth joining, but it doesn't matter exactly who, meaning that membership can be small and sparse but the community still has a meaningful existence (i.e like niche forums).
Another great bastion of reddit content has been felled.
Another reason for redditors to leave and join Lemmy.