Great to speak to the Times this week on how to reform council tax. The "Westminster vs. Hartlepool" comparisons are a red herring - the real problem that has to be overcome is that council tax is *locally* regressive in every part of the country.

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Worth noting Labour bringing back Sure Start should be getting more headlines. A brilliant Blair-era policy scrapped by successive govts. It gave kids the best start in life, backed by evidence, and its removal hit families hard. Good to see it return. Credit where it’s due.

Such nonsense. The state pension is income & hence subject to income tax. If recipients are surprised at their tax liability, it’s because governments have raised the state pension in line with the triple lock. Pensioners should really pipe down & curb their sense of entitlement.

Asking witnesses for initial accounts straight after incidents increased the accuracy of their subsequent witness statements. The improvement occurred whether that account was obtained by a person *or an AI chatbot*. (Note lab setting, small sample size) doi.org/10.1038/s41598…

So how to raise more tax, if that's what we want to do? I published a long list of potential tax increases, but there is no way to raise lots of money painlessly. There’s never a free lunch. taxpolicy.org.uk/2024/10/18/the…

Making the pensions indexed to inflation, and removing the triple lock, saves £7-8 billion a year. But instead of a serious conversation around stuff like that, the likely next government is going to make savings by ‘cutting woke’.

I think I’d said it before but I’ll say it again, if there’s one figure the Left seriously need to be engaging with (and the assessments they make), it’s Mr Neidle. He’s done a really important thread here.

Our energy market is broken. We are paying huge sums to wind farms to turn off when it’s too windy. The way to fix it has just been ruled out by DESNZ after intense lobbying. But don’t worry “all the brain power” in the civil service is on the job.

I wonder if this nonsense is unique to the anglosphere? As I know the anglosphere is uniquely awful at building houses. I’m desperately fascinated to understand this more.

The biggest mistake the .Metropolitan Police service did was getting rid of local crime and robbery squads. At the same time as closing police stations and withdrawing from communities. Dedicated police officers targeting those responsible for committing the majority of crime.

More broadly decline of water cooler cultural moments am sure contributes to more atomised society. One reason something like the Traitors felt so different in that it was one of those shows that a good bulk of people watched simultaneously.

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I'll just come out and say it and you can think I'm mad and it's a step too far and of course I'd say that --- but I do honestly reckon zonal electricity pricing would have been a bit more likely if it was South East England that got the cheaper electricity first.

I wonder if the stamp heled him to be apprehended. Stamps on wholesale cocaine blocks seems completely stupid to me

This - and - the transferred wealth will likely cause more house price inflation… Further pricing those without wealthy parents out of the housing market Or, at least, out of buying the homes they need and want

Macron says Brexit has made illegal migration worse "Since Brexit, there is no migration deal with the EU. There is no legal route to come to the UK and no way to return migrants, this is an incentive to cross the Channel.”

Austerity saw the national debt increase because productivity & growth flatlined. Osborne pursued deficit reduction via cuts to capital budgets, wages/incomes suppression (pensioners being the exception), and prolonged squeezes on Departmental budgets. The two phenomena are

Hard to find a worse economist than George Osborne

EVENT: Fri 11 July, starting at 12 noon Webinar: Drug Use in Prison Register your place now on Eventbrite via link tinyurl.com/yxhakrr8 or QR code below. More info from the organisers Drug Science Thanks to James Morgan for this information. #prisons #drugs #topical