[Tubby Isaacs]

Long thread here on the Climate Change Committee's latest analysis. It's pretty positive. Gives credit both the Tories and to the new Government. Sadly, this will get hardly any attention. If you're spending your time getting into a pickle on welfare, you have to take a lot of the blame for that.

[Tubby Isaacs]

More energy news. Looks like Zonal Electricity Pricing won't happen. (there's a very obviously scraped version of the paywalled Bloomberg article in the link elsewhere on the internet)

Despite being a happy Octopus Energy customer, I'm not persuaded by it.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Big Pat McFadden's been leaking, by the look of it. And on this occasion I fully approve.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

I just received a message from the DWP reminding me that if I want the WFP I have to apply. If I don’t then the money will go to someone who needs it.
I don’t know if there are any conditions. But I am happy to leave it there.
Good choice Keir.

>edit<
Or is it a scam?

>edit<
It's a scam! Pity, I would have supported that 100%.

[Tubby Isaacs]

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... ice-report

Local bus services in England still declining despite investment – report
National Audit Office questions viability of many routes, with half of all operator income from public subsidy

This is pretty grim, but no surprise

Hard to see what can be done about this. Buses are free for pensioners, who are very much in evidence where I live. Hardly any of them use the bus. Do they start using it if it becomes more frequent? I'd be surprised.

Much cheaper or free buses in cities might work though. Trouble is local authorities are potless, and raising council tax is unpopular. Perhaps some sort of ringfence precept could be allowed, which would at least give a sense that something extra was being delivered.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Thread about the industrial strategy. No fewer than 37 strategic industries, which is only 2 fewer than Jim Callaghan. See how this goes, but doesn't sound like the "neoliberalism" I keep hearing about (which, per a sage on social media yesterday, Rachel Reeves learned at Oxford on her PPE course).

[Tubby Isaacs]

"Too bad that all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxicabs and cutting hair", said George Burns. Or writing newspaper columns.

Labour could find the money it wants without raising taxes. This is austerity by amnesia

It isn't austerity, it's a fiscal expansion overall, about as much as we can get away with, judging from the price of debt. There are some bad regressive choices within that, but that's not austerity.

Someone BTL. comments that this "easy painless solution" stuff just helps Farage. This is a literal Farage policy, a tax on banks, which they'd pass on to businesses and consumers.

Various experts who've looked at it aren't sure it's a good tax, and even if were, it would raise far less than £40bn which seems to what this writer thinks. That's higher than the total UK bank profits.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... hel-reeves

[Tubby Isaacs]

And the obligatory "let's get all money we need off other people" article, by Richard Burgon. Fair points about benefit cuts- but try leveling with your constituents about how they'd be paying a lot of the extra cost themselves.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... e#comments