That Starmer fella...

It is definitely not a bad as people predicted. It's a fairly "good" budget in fact. Certainly not all doom and gloom and pretty balanced. The last Tory government really fucked us over. It needs to be fixed.

Personally, this will affect me very little.

Working for a relatively small company the NI for employers doesn't help, Boss already mention no pay rise/bonus and no new hires.

Although not had a pay rise in such long time it barely matters, but the bonus and hiring is a pain..

What about those red Tories, eh?

Indistinguishable from the last lot, two cheeks of the same arse etc.

Wibble.

How much of that is convenience and how much of it is actually due to the budget?

I'd say 70/30

Boss

I identified your problem!

it’s a labour budget of taking a beggars cap to multinationals and private equity in exchange for slapping the poor and disabled about publicly.

Really the predictions were quite accurate.

Compromising on CGT and focusing major investment on stuff like CCS/datacenters/ and private investment vehicles as opposed to doubling down on more granular public infrastructure and green investment will bite them hard, as it has done with the last time they did it. The raise seems to be calculated to avoid the zone for the biggest income potential as a policy and is still below PAYE. No one feels a 2% raise in gdp, but they know how to laugh when you don’t hit it and things still feel shite. Not even radical, sweeny believes this.

Freezing fuel duty while raising the bus cap 50% on fairs is crazy, especially given climate targets.

Keeping right to buy also seems insane, you’ll never build as fast as they sell, nor match the waiting lists in areas where it’s needed most. combined with talk of “affordable” housing in these same areas it still means purchasing is out of reach for many who are below average or median wage. With no talk of targeted taxation on private renting to build public stock and renter protection you’re kicking the can down the road at best.

Am not going to sniff at nhs spending but how it’s implemented will be something to be seen. Especially with Wesley over seeing it, guy thinks it was a google calendar appointment which stopped his liver rotting as opposed to a highly paid consultant who’s overly comfortable with true crime podcasts. As with a lot of these policies of private public partnerships the results are really to be judged decades later. The data generally doesn’t look too good there.

Found this quite good:

https://x.com/macrodosepod/status/1851604618616209591

Slamming bus and train users but freezing costs for drivers is chefs kiss

Power, corruption and lies..

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Is this saying what you purport it to say? Perhaps you could link to the article?

It’s here, with the headline now changed.

Essentially, the OBR won’t put a figure on it (the £22bn) but the Tories did indeed hide budgetary “pressures” (i.e. unfunded spending) from them.

The sub seems to suggest that the Treasury was still hiding costs and that commitments were not funded.

Seems like a good budget. Only issue for me is the fuel but it’s hardly a big deal.

mostly positive I think, apart from the cost of public transport going up but fuel duty staying the same.

looks like they'll. be keeping the two child cap after all then

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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c62j7q452jro

Not just bus passengers paying for the fuel duty freeze

Has anyone noticed that Rachel reeves sounds exactly like that Starmer fella?

The automated till robot voice?

Or the nasal glottal stops of estuary English?

Perfect…….I'm stealing that.

Is it surprising that people who grew up within 20 miles of each other with similar backgrounds sound similar?

They both sound horrific. It must be a real bummer to grow up speaking estuary English. I'm amazed they didn't get Lord Ali to buy them new voice chips.

Anyways peace out.. back for the next fiscal event.

Can't wait.

Cummings on Gray

Sue Gray and the intel agencies

As you can see the old political media cannot report on the Cabinet Office and the true deep state. One effect is the absence of explanations about things like the lack of a PPS to the PM. Another is there is very little coverage I can see of another important fact — many powerful officials in the intelligence agencies strongly oppose Sue Gray staying and are briefing to undermine her. This is partly because of her views on Ireland where she is not, to put it mildly, aligned with the punchier ends of the deep state (and cf. her son, now an MP). And she has cut the agencies out of meetings with the PM.

This has also, I’m told, affected the battle over the new Cabinet Secretary. Cabinet Office officials thought for months that SG had stitched up the process for her friend Olly Robbins — in Whitehall the normal hypocrisy is for everyone to talk loudly about ‘meritocracy’ while stitching up a fake process to give the desired result. But there is a push among a network of officials to dissuade Starmer from this and instead appoint a figure they trust and who will not represent an axis of power with SG. If a spad controls the PPS and the Cabinet Secretary, they are more powerful than anybody but the PM — and given what a NPC Starmer is, this effect would be enhanced.

Now obviously if these sort of things had been going on when I was there, the screams of ‘fascism’ would have been deafening. But always remember, the centre of gravity among SW1 political hacks — wherever they work, including in places like the Telegraph — is to the left of Blair and is deeply friendly to the Cabinet Office system. They puffed up SG as a genius. So it is even harder than usual for them to cover what’s really happening. The median lobby hack/pundit sees Labour fixing appointments as ‘grownup government’ but Tories doing it as ‘fascism’.

But always remember, the centre of gravity among SW1 political hacks — wherever they work, including in places like the Telegraph — is to the left of Blair

His understanding of the political spectrum is pretty weird. The kinds of middling pundits he's talking about clearly aren't left wing, they're very much in the image of Blair in a sort of technocratic managerial capitalist with democratic vibes kind of way.

The median lobby hack/pundit sees Labour fixing appointments as ‘grownup government’

And from that analysis, this sort of behaviour was expected and obvious for all to see

[...] but Tories doing it as ‘fascism’.

If he's concerned that he or his party are being called fascists, maybe he should stop referring to people as sub-human NPCs