Mailwatch(ed) Forum

Labour’s botched winter fuel U-turn raises questions over its purpose in power

Botched? I wish they hadn't changed policy- the triple lock will more than make up for the losses- but what's the problem with what they've said? "We'll make more people eligible next year in the budget" sounds pretty OK to me but apparently not.

Dropping an unpopular policy is not problematic in itself, and this is an extremely unpopular one. But U-turns are best carried out swiftly and comprehensively. Here, by contrast, Labour have left themselves unable to say how many of the 10 million people who lost out on the payment will get it back.

Crucially, they are also unable to say how it will be paid for

What bit of "set this out in the budget" is hard to understand? It's not a live policy now- the payments have been made for this winter. Surely it depends on all sorts of things- the economy, energy prices. Why would you expect them to decide it now?

https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... ir-starmer

Heather Stewart is generally fairer than this.

It's the Guardian putting the paisley Doc Martens in again.

I'd like them to explain exactly how it was botched.

I think the point is that the media (of which the Guardian probably doesn't consider itself part) will keep banging on about it till the budget.

So I take it we can look forward to stories about WFA in the middle of August. Meanwhile Simon Jenkins finally comes out against Brexit.

He was the editor of the Evening Standard when Jim Callaghan had just become Prime Minister. Why is even still being published?

Spectacularly lightweight effort here. Who does the Guardian get to survey the state of the rail industry with Great British Railways getting underway? A rail journalist? An industry executive? I dunno, a former rail minister? Someone who runs railways in another country? Nope, somebody from something called Common Wealth. And it's basically Owen Jones stuff.

Still, it delivers the devastating insight that it would be good if nationalization works.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... ed-to-work

Thick as mince. There is no way fares will fall as no one is yet championing the social value of connecting communities when determining the cost/benefits of the railway. She also thinks that money that went to TOCs should go on station staff and a spruce up, rather than deferred renewals of creaking infrastructure.

soulboy wrote: ↑Thu May 29, 2025 6:43 am Thick as mince. There is no way fares will fall as no one is yet championing the social value of connecting communities when determining the cost/benefits of the railway. She also thinks that money that went to TOCs should go on station staff and a spruce up, rather than deferred renewals of creaking infrastructure.

It's really not very good, is it?

The reason Heidi Alexander isn't promising lower fares is, as you say, the railways is in the shit. Guardian BTL loves quoting Germany for its cheap fares but reliability has become dreadful on German railways. The fares could have done with being more expensive to fund more investment (seeing Germany landed itself with that debt brake nonsense).

I wonder if the author actually knows that the Government sets so many of the fares on the UK railways. The reason they've gone up in real terms is that a decision was taken by the Brown Government (and every one since) that, given the social profile of rail users, they could afford to contribute more to the cost of tickets. We can take issue with that principle, but it was a government decision.

It's basically a bunch of campaigning material(loads of it by the RMT) written up like an objective article. I'll take what Corbyn's Brexit mates say with a grain of salt, if it's OK with the author.

Quite what she thinks one year of accounts proves, I don't know. Sure, the suppliers made a lot of money in 2022-3. But that's perfectly consistent with Covid having wrecked the business and taking a couple of years to recover. If, as I assume they do, they bill when the units are delivered, you're going to get years where that's a lot higher than others.

Today: "revealed". Government going to destroy the New Forest and the Peak District. Given the whole point is to get homes built in covenient locations, I think that's rather unlikely. The map has loads and loads of coast on it, which would be a very odd place to stick a load of houses.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... -proposals

Usual well-balanced set of experts.

Leading charities have called for this section to be scrapped entirely.

Dr Ruth Tingay, co-director of Wild Justice, said the government seemed intent on causing unrecoverable damage.

“Imagine flattening an irreplaceable grade I listed building like the Royal Albert Hall, replacing it with karaoke machines in various towns and then telling the public this is a ‘win-win’ for architecture and music. Swap the Royal Albert Hall for any one of the UK’s nationally important and protected habitats, swap the karaoke machines for a few pathetic tree-planting schemes, then tell people this is a ‘win-win’ for the environment and the public, and the analogy is brutally clear.”

I have never heard of this charity. Do they campaign for nature or silly analogies? These "karaoke machines", I assume, are houses that people need to live in.

And analysis like this.

Key concerns focus on part three of the bill, which provides a mechanism for developers to sidestep current environmental obligations by paying into a nature restoration fund, which will be used at a later date to create environmental improvements elsewhere.


Once the fee is paid, the development can go ahead even if it “inflicts adverse effects on the integrity of a protected site”. Dubbed a mechanism to pay “cash to trash”, the bill contains no requirement for developers to measure what harms are taking place during the planning process.

Nobody is sidestepping anything. The point is that the costs of a lot of small local mitigations quickly mount up. You can get more money off the developer if they're able to build more houses, and then you can use that money to improve nature more generally. One of the examples given is of a population of nightingales which might be threatened- the population nationally has crashed in the last 50 years. But boosting nightingales is exactly the sort of thing you might choose to spend money on.

A response to this article by "Warren Oates". He makes the point BTL that this stuff, like anything else, has trade offs. Do we redirect a planned rail line to save some woods, even if the alternative route which destroys half as many trees costs more? On current form we'd probably have expensive legal process in each location.

Guy Shrubsole, a Guardian regular, claims BTL there's nothing to stop all these sites being developed. As Anna Clarke says, sites at the top of mountains with no roads near them will probably be ok, not to mention those that are (very literally) right by the sea and in places (eg West Cumbria) where not all that many people want to live anyway. Where there may be some impact is those close to areas with very bad housing shortages.

More "stick it to Starmer" stuff (with a bit of sticking it to other politicians too), from Zoe Williams who I always thought of as a good features type writer rather than a political hard hitter.

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

Why are steel and fishing the only industries politicians care about? What about the ones that make real money?

The US and the EU are both long term UK allies, with shared interests. So how is each viewed?

Am I worried about the lickspittle running-dog nation that we are, abandoning all solidarity with the EU and others in order to carve out a side-deal, testament to our “special relationship”?

Brexit happened. We're on our own, as you and so many others rightly lamented. So we do our deals.

Does it look as though we may have to make concessions on digital taxes in order to get this over the line, and forego even the pretence of making our own policy in our own interests? Probably, yes.

Probably in that it was definitely happening before, according to this paper.

. Last year, steel contributed £1.7bn to the UK economy, or 0.1%, and directly supported 37,000 jobs – neatly, also 0.1% – which somehow makes it important enough that every other geopolitical consideration vis-a-vis the US comes second.

Aluminium and cars were also in the US deal too. Both larger than steel.

Anyway, steel and fishing clearly have a strong element of regional policy to them. If Scunthorpe or Grimsby were in Central London, I think it's unlikely we'd be nationalizing the steelworks or paying out a load for better fishing boats.

The creative industries, meanwhile, contributed £124bn in 2023

Does this not sound a lot to you? You're right, it does. Because it's not referring just to music, art, ballet etc. It's referring to basically anything you can describe as creative- so advertising, marketing, even IT, which together are over £70Bn of it. £21bn is film and television, which is a lot but this sector is massively funded by the TV license fee (nearly £4bn). As it should be, of course, but that's government intervention just as much as rebuilding a quayside in a fishing port. Perhaps fishing would swap with TV and prefer the government to mandate a fifth of its income like that? There are also considerable tax reliefs for film production. Indeed a few years ago, somebody faked making a film so that they could pocket the subsidies. (They got caught).

Someone BTL points out that the government has called in an application for a large studio on green belt land near Beaconsfield, which has been opposed by the local council. Doubtless this will get "fair dos, government helping creative sector" treatment, right?

We did a Trade deal with the EU. Was that just forgotten?

Not good enough apparently because it didn't include her preoccupation of small bands touring. Which is a right nuisance, a cultural loss, and something they should try harder to get rid of but the article is supposed to be about economics. Bigger bands have the capacity to pass on the costs of the bureaucracy so can tour like before. It's smaller bands who can't. Having read some indie music biographies, I know that even relatively successful bands like Lush were getting paid really poorly. So I'm rather doubtful that there's a big economic loss to the equivalent of pre-indie chart Lush not touring Europe.

She's right about overseas students though.

Five new sound stages are to be built on the former BBC Elstree site: the main driver is AXA Investment Management. It's how pensions get funded these days, the creative industries.

https://www.watfordobserver.co.uk/news/ ... w-studios/

There's also the big Universal theme park near Bedford, which I assume would count as creative industries in some way. Sure, the economic benefits of these things are exaggerated but it's undeniably a big thing, and the government gave it strong support. The attitude below the line was "this is a load of minimum wage shit, and anyway it should be built in the Durham Coalfield where they need the jobs".

Tubby Isaacs wrote: ↑Wed Jun 04, 2025 9:04 am Not good enough apparently because it didn't include her preoccupation of small bands touring. Which is a right nuisance, a cultural loss, and something they should try harder to get rid of but the article is supposed to be about economics. Bigger bands have the capacity to pass on the costs of the bureaucracy so can tour like before. It's smaller bands who can't. Having read some indie music biographies, I know that even relatively successful bands like Lush were getting paid really poorly. So I'm rather doubtful that there's a big economic loss to the equivalent of pre-indie chart Lush not touring Europe.

Bands getting stiffed by managers, promoters, labels etc is hardly new. It's more a how than a why.

Tubby Isaacs wrote: ↑Wed Jun 04, 2025 9:24 am There's also the big Universal theme park near Bedford, which I assume would count as creative industries in some way. Sure, the economic benefits of these things are exaggerated but it's undeniably a big thing, and the government gave it strong support. The attitude below the line was "this is a load of minimum wage shit, and anyway it should be built in the Durham Coalfield where they need the jobs".

Mmm... and what bits of the Durham coalfields have the M1, the new A428 and a new railway line alongside where this is going to be built? Are unemployed miners more important than unemployed brickyard workers? Didn't realise it was a pissing contest...

BTL Guardian thinks the Government can just tell private firms where to build stuff. Anything else is "neoliberalism".

As you say, the location of the theme park isn't affluent anyway.

Andy McDandy wrote: ↑Wed Jun 04, 2025 9:44 am
Bands getting stiffed by managers, promoters, labels etc is hardly new. It's more a how than a why.

I didn't get the impression Lush were getting stiffed by 4AD. Perhaps there was some arty incompetence there, but mostly I think they just weren't taking in a lot of money. I'm trying to remember what I'd have paid to see a "proper" indie band in 1990, probably about a fiver but that wasn't much money even then, with four band members and a crew to pay.