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No, no, it isn’t

We also know that there are to be cuts to the civil service, with 10,000 posts to go, although for what reason it is not clear because that has not actually been explained. This is a policy put in place by Reeves’ headless heart, with the heart in question being motivated by a visceral hatred of those who work for the government that Reeves was herself so desperate to be a part of.

“visceral hatred”, eh?

D’ye know, I think Owen really believes this shite

After all, each cut inflicts more pain than the last, hacking away at a public realm and social expenditure already shrunken by the previous round of slashing.

What cuts? We’re still spending more than we were in 2008 as a portion of everything. Taxes are up, spending is up, in real, nominal and %ge of GDP terms.

Yet this week, our supposedly Labour chancellor, Rachel Reeves, will take a scalpel to departmental budgets already devastated by 15 years of austerity.

What austerity?

But I do think he really believes this shite:

Back in 2020, a team of accountants, economists and lawyers set up a Wealth Tax Commission. They weren’t messing about: one of its main architects specialised in helping private clients navigate the British tax system, and therefore knew its loopholes inside out.

Their proposal: a one-off wealth tax on millionaire couples for five years would raise £260bn.

Ah, yes, that was Arun Advani’s idea for flat out theft. Unlikely to work really….

I’d forgotten these

One of the grand financial blunders:

It marks the latest twist in the career of Mr George, who is best known for cashing in on “golden ticket” life insurance contracts sold by Aviva France.

Under the terms of these ill-conceived contracts, which he first received from his father aged seven, customers could trade funds based on last week’s prices.

Not only did this allow contract-holders to back-pedal on significant price swings to avoid losses, but it also meant they could switch to rising assets based on historical prices.

Either way, profits were guaranteed as long as they acted within a week.

Can’t recall quite why they were set up this way. Think it was pre-internet age, published prices, writing letters to shift funds. That sort of thing.

But th effect was that you had a life insurance contract which was really a savings vehicle. OK. You could shift funds around between investments within the contract OK. So, there had to be some method of publishing the prices at which you could trade by letter (I think that last is right). So, Aviva allowed you to trade this week based upon last week’s published prices. Coah and horses was driven through this idea.

A French entrepreneur who built his fortune from lucrative life insurance contracts has launched a new fund to invest billions of pounds in Britain.

Max-Hervé George, 35, is preparing to buy swathes of data centres across the UK, buoyed by the Government’s push to rip up planning rules and turbo-charge artificial intelligence.

And, well, yes. He might be a remarkable entrepreneur. But so far – at least as far as I know – the evidence of his ability is that he can trade this week on last week’sprices. Which isn’t a wholly informative track record…..

4D chess this is, 4D chess

Ed Miliband’s net zero drive risks killing off the fish and chip shop, the industry’s trade association has warned.

The National Federation of Fish Fryers (NFFF) said the Energy Secretary’s green ambitions could “further undermine” the industry and force restaurants and takeaways to shut up shop.

It comes as Mr Miliband’s department was unable to provide an estimate of how much the electrification of heating and cooking appliances could cost households.

Chippies are where you get the used frying oil to make synthetic jet fuel from. So, if they still exist the proles will still be able to fly. Can’t have that now, can we?

Erm yes, well, good luck

The Duchess of Sussex is convinced her new business ventures will make her extremely wealthy, The Telegraph can reveal.

A well-placed source said Meghan “thinks she’s going to be a billionaire” and that the team of executives she has hired can get her there.

It comes as the Duchess promised that her new “girl talk” podcast, Confessions Of A Female Founder, will advise listeners on how to turn “small ideas into billion-dollar businesses”.

Doubt it, but there we are……

Kids today, eh?

I was up against Labour MP Dan Tomlinson, who was just at infant school when the history of these things began in 1997 and is now the government’s ‘ growth champion’, having previously been at the Resolution Foundation as a senior economist.

I have to say that everything he said was entirely predictable and added nothing to the sum of human knowledge as a result, but I may be biased about the merits of our relative contributions. I did not hold back on my opinions.

Now children, can you guess who said that?

A certain excitement to the opening of this obituary

Dunlop with Lorenzo Montesini, who had claimed to be an Ottoman prince, before running off with the best man ahead of their planned wedding

That’s the photo caption. The fuller details:

After Venice entered the solemnities of Holy Week in 1990, the city’s canals rippled to a sensation as intriguing as any of its pre-Lenten medieval masquerades. The unlikely protagonist was a 36-year-old Australian called Primrose Dunlop, about to be elevated to the status of Ottoman princess after her marriage to Prince Giustiniani, aka Lorenzo Montesini, at the Basilica di San Pietro di Castello. Thereafter the couple would be borne triumphantly, the bride resplendent in a diadem of gold oak leaves, at the head of a regatta of gondolas to a candelit reception in the long marble hall of the Palazzetto Pisani.

Yet just before this fairytale could be played out, the groom and his lover (who was also the best man) absconded before Dunlop could slip into her Balenciaga wedding dress, making their exit to Paris pursued by the paparazzi, who could not believe their luck. The treasurer of the Conservative Party, Lord McAlpine, and the bestselling British novelist Barbara Taylor Bradford were among the 70 guests left looking at the moonlit waters in bewilderment. Yet before too many tears were shed, the reality of the proposed match came to light — though accounts differ.

The sort of thing you’d expect from an economist

Jagjit Chadha is professor of economics at Cambridge University. He was director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) from 2016-2024 and is a former academic adviser to HM Treasury, the Bank of England and the Treasury select committee

A top economist even:

The Bank of England and the government set monetary and fiscal policies respectively, and therefore GDP growth.

And so an therefore….not all that odd that an economist should concentrate upon economics, obviously.

But I’m unconvinced (me, a Third from the LSE shouting at a prof at Cambridge) that it is in fact either fiscal or monetary policy at fault, Sure, both could be different, better even. But I think what ails the British economy is that it’s damn near illegal for any bugger to do anything. We’ve the morons like Tony Juniper insisting that we cannot build thousands upon thousands of houses at Ebbsfleet (in what is actually a very good redeployment of the ideas behind Metroland pre-WWII) because a spider that likes nbrownfield sites has been found on a brownfield site.

It’s bureaucracy, pecksniffs in charge, that is the problem. We have to execute that bureaucracy then dig up the corpse and hang it again to be sure.

And, in my telling of it at least, if we do that the fiscal and monetary policy will take care of themselves.

Cue Mark Twain

Elon Musk’s trans daughter: He is a pathetic man-child
Vivian Jenna Wilson has launched another scathing attack on the tycoon, while he continues to rail against the transgender ‘woke mind virus’

Currently 18. At which point, cue Mark Twain.

I left home when I was 18 and didn;t see my father until again until I was 25. It was amazing how much he’d learned in those 7 years.

My word, fancy that!

It doesn’t need to be this way, Atkinson says. Looking back, she wonders how her life would be different had childcare been more accessible when her children were young. She may have pursued the out-of-state work opportunity, propelling her career in a different direction. Additionally, she and her husband might have invested the $200,000 they estimate having spent on care over the years, paid off their mortgage or saved up to cover their children’s college tuition.

“Imagine if I had been able to save that,” she said. “There’s so much we could have done for our own financial stability.”

Atkinson’s experience is a common one throughout the US, raising the questions: how did childcare become so bad – and what could the US be like if the problem were actually fixed?

If everyone else had had to pay for my childcare through their taxes then my life would be better!

Surprise!

Of course, this does also mean that you’re going to have to pay, for life, the cost of everyone else’s childcare through your taxes….given the likely costs of the intervening bureaucracy this is unlikely to be a good deal.

Can you say trade restriction?

Defective heat pumps will be fitted in new homes under net zero plans, the Government has been warned.

From 2027, new homes will be fitted with a heat pump as standard under rules that are expected to be introduced within weeks.

But while heat pumps installed under Government grant schemes in existing homes must be fitted by accredited technicians, there are no such standards for new homes.

Households have been warned that, as a result, “rogue traders” may be fitting their heat pumps, potentially leading to a mis-selling scandal.

What’s the betting this is coming from the society of accredited heat pump technicians?

Jeez these are petty little bastards

A multimillionaire backer of Reform was threatened with being stripped of his OBE over a social media attack on Sir Sadiq Khan.

The secretive Honours Forfeiture Committee first accused Charlie Mullins of “bringing the honours system into disrepute” in September, over comments dating back to 2022.

They said they were “minded to recommend to His Majesty that your OBE be revoked”.

Mr Mullins, the founder of Pimlico Plumbers, accused Sir Keir Starmer of a political revenge attack on Monday night after officials attempted to revoke the honour. They cited a controversial post about the Mayor of London as well as offensive jokes made online and in person.

Offensive jokes, eh?

Sure, there’s that committee that revokes honours. Get jugged and they’ll whip your BEM off you. This is why peerages can only be revoked by a bill of attainder. Because a peerage (not so much now for hereditaries but still) brings with it legislative position and power and we’re not going to have that decided by some appointed grouping of pecksniffs. That is, we know the dangers of having committees deciding who gets to keep their honours.

Won’t be long now, you’ll only keep your CBE as long as you say Ed’s right on net zero….

Not another Jololoyon scheme going wrong?

HMRC could be forced to repay Uber £1.3bn after losing a key court battle over attempts to charge VAT on minicab fares.

The tax authority is at risk of steep payments after failing to overturn a legal ruling against Bolt, Uber’s Estonian rival.

This decision is likely to have implications for other ride-hailing apps, including Uber, which has been battling HMRC over the £1.3bn VAT bill it has been charged since 2022.

I’m sure I remember Jolly shouting that Uber must charge him VAT….

This is bad, terribly bad

An Istanbul court has formally arrested the city’s mayor, Ekrem İmamoğlu, on corruption charges, sending him to pre-trial detention on the day he received his party’s nomination to run for president, while tens of thousands of demonstrators gathered in the city.

On the other hand, banning that Romanian from running for office is terribly good, very good indeed.

One is a bit left, d’ye see? The other isn’t….

Nice story

An illegal Iraqi migrant who fled his home country over his part in an alleged exam fraud has avoided deportation after claiming a people smuggler threw away his ID and phone.

The man fled Iraq after being threatened with arrest for the alleged fraud when he was caught on CCTV delivering test papers to an address a day before students were due to sit for the qualification.

He claimed that an “agent” who facilitated his passage to the UK had not only thrown away his ID documents but also made him get rid of his phone, on which he had his family’s numbers.

The Iraqi, who was granted anonymity, told an immigration tribunal that he could not remember the telephone numbers for his family, which meant he could not get their help to replace his lost ID card.

The amazement is that the court bought it.

Do we not have an offence of “taking the piss”?

Man’s truly deluded

In addition, the vast majority of flights into and out of the UK are undertaken by people in the top 10% of income earners in the world, which group broadly aligns with the top 10% of income learners in the UK.

Eh?

Top 10% UK households earn about £80k a year. -Ish.

Top 10% global households earn about £15,000.

The rough comparison is actually that top 10% UK are around and about top 1% global. -Ish. People part time on minimum wage in the UK are top 10% global……

New definition arriving

The reason why is very simple and very straightforward. An austerity programme is a programme of government expenditure that is designed to manage a debt crisis.

It doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily cuts.

They just make up definitions to suit their desires, don’t they?

The actual definition of austerity in an economic sense is policy designed to cut the budget deficit.