[Boiler]

There's a lot of "but Jeremy was always right"... and of course, the usual cybernats.

There's times BTL when it looks like the exchanges under Fuckwit Fenton's tedious drag 'n' drop blogs.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I’ve bookmarked one poster who hunts down Cybernat drivel very efficiently. His username is a jumble of letters and numbers.

[The Weeping Angel]

Here's Stephen bloody Bush.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Student loan repayments went up, he’s right about that. But so what? They had promises about what they’d not raise tax on, like every party has felt it needed to make. So you get stuff like this. Cameron put tax up on well off professionals with kids, who were a core voting group. They won the next 3 elections elections (albeit one without an overall majority). Cameron calculated that it was more important politically to reduce the deficit.

Labour are putting up some taxes up on their base to pay for better public services and hoping that works politically.

What’s the difference? Why are Labour uniquely clueless?

[Tubby Isaacs]

Part of Stephen Bush's problem with Labour is that he sees them as hostile to business- he's made that clear. Which is his prerogative, and we'll have to see how the new labour market settles down. But another part of the "Labour are really shit" media coalition would have a massive problem with Bush's policies if he were in power. So the idea there's all this simple stuff they could do and be much less unpopular is a myth. They could certainly have a bigger base than they do, but they'd still be getting very low approval rates. It's what happens to politicians nowadays. And this is just talking about people we recognize as mainstream. We're not talking about the right populism and left populism yet, which probably takes about a 35% of the population out of the equation.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I like Jim Pickard, but this is a sort of classic of the "government shouldn't change anything ever" genre.

I guess we have to keep giving rich couples a £40k a year tax free savings allowances, do we? As things stand, I think they'll still get £24k tax free. Isn't that enough?

[Tubby Isaacs]

Some stuff on salary sacrifice for pensions here.

https://moneyweek.com/personal-finance/ ... ion-limits

Government guidance shows the cost as a relief has increased markedly from £2.8 billion in forgone National Insurance contributions in tax year 2016/2017, rising to £5.8 billion in 2023/2024.

The Government's changes are expected to bring in £4.8bn in 2029/30. If it ever happens- at present it's just there as something to help meet the fiscal rule.

So we won't be that far from 2016/7 really. When, according to Stephen Bush, hardly anyone must have tried hard to save for a pension.

I have a friend who works in pensions and he's I'd guess a natural finance conservative, and he said that he didn't think you could justify some of the tax treatments for pensions at the top end, and could understand if there restrictions from the Labour Government. The one thing he didn't like was politicians who ignore trade offs with changes. I'll ask him where he stands on this.