37 ms·

The UK has entered the institutional reform phase. Like Italy in the early 90s, it has become convinced that the country does not work because some random insti

by mmarq 4y ago

The UK has entered the institutional reform phase. Like Italy in the early 90s, it has become convinced that the country does not work because some random institutions need changing. In Italy it was `equal bicameralism`, the organisation of administrative divisions (regions and provinces), and other stuff not worth discussing here. In the UK, the institutional reform phase consists of Brexit, Scottish independence and, more recently, 'charter cities' and the abolition of the House of Lords. All this while taxes on productive activities (let it be labour or corporation tax) are increased, public investments are cut and the quality of public services is declining on a daily basis. The country is wondering why the NHS can't hire personnel, while a junior doctor in the UK has less purchasing power than a German janitor and nurses resort to food banks. The fact that since 2010 this country has been ruled by people whose main qualification is being children or husbands of rich people, doesn't help. From this cold island, Ursula von der Leyen, a failed German politician, looks like a monumental stateswoman.

pharmakom 4y ago
I blame the fetish that the UK has for Oxbridge graduates. The evidence shows they are not very good, perhaps even worse than the Russell Group average. We need to find better indicators of ability; this cannot go on.
- samwillis 4y ago
  Oxford and Cambridge are undeniably very good universities, I think "fetish" for their grads is going too far. I think it's that there is an expectation in some sectors that an Oxbridge grad is capable of working in wider areas than they are necessarily qualified. To much weight is place on the oxbridge "brand". The unfortunate thing is that we have been governed by a party which takes that unhealthy attitude towards senior party members, they have always been more about who you know than what you know. You don't see the same proportion of Oxbridge grads in the current opposition. Slightly anecdotal, my first job after graduating (from former polytechnic Loughborough) was in Cambridge for a company formed by a couple of Cambridge grads. There was a higher proportion of non Oxbridge grads at the company, I think we tended to have more practical experience.
  - newsclues 4y ago
    Universities aren't just places of learning, but designed to select leaders through the state. How does it select leaders? By finding the most talented, or by finding those who are controllable? Seems like the institutions are dual use.
    - pharmakom 4y ago
      Oxbridge selects for upper / upper-middle class polish and above average - but probably not exceptional and definitely not neurodivergent - intelligence.
      - biofox 4y ago
        Having been to both institutions, I can assure you that the comp sci and STEM programmes are dominated by neurodivergent types. Those aren't the people going into politics though.
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    The British political system isn't hiring Scientists, Engineers or MBA graduates out of Cambridge. It's also about Eton. Look at the last 3 that won elections: David Cameron - Eton, Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford, went straight into politics. Theresa May studied Geography at Oxford, worked at Bank of England and a few other institutions for a while. Boris Johnson - Eton, study of the Classics, ancient literature and classical philosophy. Worked as a journalist, was fired for lying, then became a politician.
    - sandworm101 4y ago
      Eton is more important. Children go to Eton. They dont chose to go. Their wealthy parents send them. Eton is where elite families form the bonds that are the backbone of the UK elite. Oxbridge is just the finishing school. How many politicians are hired or promoted by prime ministers not because of quality or background but social debts between families? Nobody really tracks those relationships.
- charlieyu1 4y ago
  I blame the recruiters.
- pricechild 4y ago
  > We need to find ... Who is "We" here? I think it would be reasonable to claim the two main parties come from very similar backgrounds. Both seem to be happy continuing with maintaining their status quo. Without their consent, is it likely or possible to see a third option rise?
  - pjc50 4y ago
    It's remarkable how the SNP have taken over and dominated Scottish politics by having exactly one radical policy and otherwise being a sort of Merkelist centre-right government. But that's undoubtedly linked to the use of AMS at the Scottish Parliament.
    - WeylandYutani 4y ago
      Merkel presided over economic growth. The Torry government saw the UK economy barely move.
- traceroute66 4y ago
  > I blame the fetish that the UK has for Oxbridge graduates. Yup. As the old joke goes ... How do you know someone went to Oxford ? Don't worry, they'll tell you.
- pjc50 4y ago
  The hiring is not being driven by ability, it's being driven by connections. Oxford PPE graduates are being hired .. by other Oxford PPE graduates. And then promoted in the newspapers by the same.
- morbia 4y ago
  Some anecdotal evidence ahead. I've been interviewing graduates in the UK for many years now from a very broad range of universities, all focused on CS or stem degrees. In my experience, I've yet to interview an oxbridge graduate who wasn't at least great academically, and this is speaking as someone who went to a lesser university. Clearly whatever standards they have for teaching and entry selection criteria really work. That said, graduates from other universities are easily on par with oxbridge, just that there were some total morons amongst their peers as well. In my opinion, the problem is not that the UK fetishes oxbridge candidates, the problem is politics is dominated by arts and ppe graduates which does not offer the problem solving skills stem degrees do. I genuinely think we'd be in a much better place if our leaders weren't trained just in communication, but instead on actually logically thinking through problems and resolving them.
  - traceroute66 4y ago
    > I genuinely think we'd be in a much better place if our leaders weren't trained just in communication, but instead on actually logically thinking through problems and resolving them. The other half of the problem is that the archaic UK parliament needs to change, its not fit for the 21st century. For example ... MP's perks and expenses - why do MPs get HEAVILY subsidised food and drink ? why do they get such generous expenses ? why do they get Friday's off ? why do they get so many recess holidays ? why does the whole place shut down for party conference silly season ? Prime Minister's Questions - Its a disgrace. The clue is in the word "Questions". Instead it's a farcical theatrical display where someone asks a question and then the Prime Minister doesn't answer it and/or the Prime Minister's backbenches ensure the answer gets drowned out in noise. Planted Questons - All the planted questions from the Prime Minister's back benches. What's all that about ? Do they really think people are that stupid ? Too many "gentleman's agreements" - For example, what's with the whole "you can 'unknowingly' lie, but you can't accuse others of lying" thing ? Lack of independent scrutiny - Enquiries and investigations are all based on the "gentleman's agreement" that the Prime Minister can be trusted to be a "good man" and will therefore, of course, launch any necessary investigations into alleged acts of wrong doing. However as we saw with Johnson, well .... Ministerial Code - The ultimate joke. A code with no teeth. Again, Johnson demonstrated how circles could be run round it. Archaic "parliamentary protocol" - So many examples here, perhaps one of the most infamous is Christopher Chope MP shouting "object" and blocking progress of the Up-skirting bill. The perogueing of parliament by the Johnson government in relation to Brexit is another.
imtringued 4y ago
When you think about taxation, in principle if the taxation strategy were perfectly optimal then the government would never have a spiraling debt problem. The explanation is quite simple. If you subscribe to MMT, the government issues legal tender currency and creates it and today that happens via debt. This means debt just represents untaxed money in the private sector. In other words, the government didn't bother to collect all the money that is in the private sector. When you understand this, then having a single tax like income tax be the primary source of tax revenue is a bad thing. Let's assume that we have an economy where all income exists in the form of wages and therefore is taxed at the income tax rate of 50% (I can't do this math on the phone, sorry). This means the half the income is taxed once every year. This money has a half life of exactly one year if the government were to use all of it to pay off debt. This means that in this example the government can never really go bankrupt as long as it doesn't do some inherently backwards things that break the economy in the long run. But what if there are two types of incomes that are taxed at different rates and at different frequency? What if you have wages and offshore companies where income tax can be delayed indefinitely until you bring the money back home where it is taxed at the usual income tax rate? Then suddenly it is possible for money to be stuck abroad and never taxed for long periods of time. As we know, this is money the government simply didn't bother to collect. It actively lets people keep the money abroad untaxed, so it shouldn't be surprising that the problem cannot be solved by hiking income taxes. The debt has to be extended not because the government is living beyond its means but because it is simply not collecting the money necessary to pay off its debts. This is supposed to be an illustration, not a perfect description of the real world. I didn't talk about low capital gains taxes. Which also means money could be stuck domestically inside the financial systems. The lower the tax rate and the lower the frequency of the taxable event, the more time money gets to spend away from the government and the longer the government will spend its time being in debt and I am still assuming that debts are eventually paid off. In principle there is no rule that money can't be stuck in a non productive sector indefinitely which then means the government must constantly intervene by spraying money at the productive sectors so they don't dry out like plants in a desert.
- fallingknife 4y ago
  The central idea that the government knows what sectors are productive and not productive is laughable.
pjc50 4y ago
> the institutional reform phase consists of Brexit, Scottish independence and, more recently, 'charter cities' and the abolition of the House of Lords It's just Brexit. The rest will not be allowed to be tried. And Brexit was popular precisely because it located the failed institutions outside the country where they could be a convenient scapegoat, without having to look at the big failing institution: the media-intelligensia-Tory circle of people. Institutional failure reached the point of allowing Liz Truss to be PM, the UK's shortest PM term at 45 days. The sort of governmental turnover that you'd expect from Italy in the 90s. (Where's the air disaster type writeup of "how did the Truss failure occur?" in the media? You won't see that because it implicates too many people. Yet it was the organisational equivalent of handing control to an untrained junior who immediately flew the plane into the ground.)
- mmarq 4y ago
  You don’t necessarily have to do anything, you just need to keep your mind busy to avoid introspection. Do you think Italy has abolished ‘equal bicameralism’? Liz Truss can barely speak in her native language and in normal circumstances she wouldn’t have been allowed to become a member of Parliament, let alone a senior minister or the Prime Minister.
- flopriore 4y ago
  > The sort of governmental turnover that you'd expect from Italy in the 90s. Government turnover in Italy has always been a nightmare since 1945. The difference between the First Republic and the Second Republic is the former basically had the same ruling party and the same electoral law, the latter has had coalitions with very different parties and a different electoral law in almost all the elections.
- foldr 4y ago
  >It's just Brexit. The rest will not be allowed to be tried. A lot of people said that about Brexit, before it happened. Scottish independence is a real possibility (although I think it is an equally bad idea).
  - pjc50 4y ago
skippyboxedhero 4y ago
von der Leyen was a housewife. Sunak was a partner at one of the most successful hedge funds of all-time (in his late 20s), and founded his own multi-billion hedge fund. His Chancellor started his own business and sold it for $20m before going into politics. Leader of the Opposition was a barrister in one of the top chambers, head of CPS. Shadow Chancellor worked at the BoE. Britain has no shortage of extremely competent politicians, and a strong political system. There is no comparison possible with German politics. German politicians wouldn't be councillors in the UK, and their system is totally cooked (Russia appears to have purchased almost all of the SPD, the media is non-existent, the farce around the Merkel transition was incredible). Junior doctors do not have less purchasing power than a German janitor. One of the main issues with the NHS is doctors going part-time because the pay is so high. The BMA have actually mooted the idea of tax cuts for doctors only between the band of £100-125k in order to get more of them into work (and btw, part of the issue with pay is regional inequality, doctors in London can work two days a week and earn £300k/year...London is distinct). One of the negative aspects of the UK political system is that the BMA has massive political/media/PR influence so people will say things like doctors are underpaid, without connecting to this any other information that they have. Nurses are generally overpaid too. One of the problems in the NHS has been low productivity, and part of that has been significant growth in nurse numbers. But there is a hard cap on their productivity (and a result pay). Starting pay is £27k/year...for reference, this is as much as engineering grads make (generally speaking, almost all grads are underpaid in the UK apart from those going into tech/finance/medicine...relatively low-skill work is almost always overpaid). I actually agree with your point in part, a lot of it is naval-gazing but there is a need for more local powers (if you look at what is happening around Manchester, it is clear that this can work). Thankfully, leading politicians of both parties today are largely past it. Also, public investment isn't being cut whilst taxes are rising...taxes are significantly below the level required to fund public investment. One of the main political issues is that voters don't understand this.
- pjc50 4y ago
  > His Chancellor started his own business and sold it for $20m before going into politics Would this be the same Chancellor who's just resigned in disgrace over ordering HMRC not to investigate him for not paying tax, then threatening any journalist who mentioned it with a libel lawsuit? > Britain has no shortage of extremely competent politicians We have a massive shortage of competent politicians at delivering benefits to the country. They're only competent at delivering benefits to themselves. If there wasn't a shortage, Truss would never have been put in charge. Anyone trying to defend the Tory record has to defend Truss without just memory-holing that whole 45 day period. Not just herself - a hapless, content-free cipher, now discarded - but everyone who voted for her should be regarded as grossly incompetent. As should people who published positive press about her. Just as SBF got so many glowing reviews before stealing/losing several billions of dollars of customer money.
ricardobayes 4y ago
I don't know how true that bit is about the German janitor, junior doctors earn around 40k GBP in the UK, which is more than enough to buy a good lifestyle. I assume most janitors in Germany would be earning minimum wage (around 15k GBP, converted).
- alistairSH 4y ago
  Is that junior doctor fully credentialed, or wrapping up specialization? In the US, a resident will earn somewhere in the $50k-$80k range, depending on specialty. Once out of residency, the average junior salary jumps up to somewhere north of $150k. Although by that point, the doctor is likely almost 30 and possibly carrying $100k+ in student loans. They’re well paid, no question, but makes for non-optimal (for society) choices - harder than it should be for them to enter poor areas or lower salary specialties.
- pjc50 4y ago
  > 40k GBP in the UK, which is more than enough to buy a good lifestyle. sigh what multiple of salary mortgage are you going to get on that? And what are average house prices?
  - ricardobayes 4y ago
    Depends, that's across the UK, but housing prices differ greatly. I've seen new built houses for 170k around Newcastle. Most of the "north" is affordable, even towns near Manchester etc. It's nowhere nearly as bad as Ireland, the Netherlands and other parts of Europe.
- mmarq 4y ago
  A junior doctor makes as low as 25-28K, that is not enough to rent a room in London, and tend to have massive a student debt
auctoritas 4y ago
The problem is mostly the welfare state. But the Leftists and their media cronies will never admit it, of course. They drive the narrative. This continued decay is on them. They like to pretend the Truss debacle was something entirely of her own making which they merely observed and reported, but it was an engineered political takedown. The Tories of course are pathetic and spineless so they put up little resistance.
- mmarq 4y ago
  I’m fine with German taxation and the German welfare state, I’m also fine with a minimal state where I have to pay for healthcare. What I don’t like is the current situation in the UK, where I pay more income tax than I would pay in Germany and I also have to pay for healthcare and childcare and education.
onetimeusename 4y ago
Why are taxes going up but public investment is going down? Where is the money going?
- LQDH 4y ago
  An aging population means you need more money to provide the same level of pensions, healthcare, etc. And you have less working people to tax income from.

by mmarq 4y ago

pharmakom 4y ago

I blame the fetish that the UK has for Oxbridge graduates. The evidence shows they are not very good, perhaps even worse than the Russell Group average. We need to find better indicators of ability; this cannot go on.

samwillis 4y ago
Oxford and Cambridge are undeniably very good universities, I think "fetish" for their grads is going too far. I think it's that there is an expectation in some sectors that an Oxbridge grad is capable of working in wider areas than they are necessarily qualified. To much weight is place on the oxbridge "brand". The unfortunate thing is that we have been governed by a party which takes that unhealthy attitude towards senior party members, they have always been more about who you know than what you know. You don't see the same proportion of Oxbridge grads in the current opposition. Slightly anecdotal, my first job after graduating (from former polytechnic Loughborough) was in Cambridge for a company formed by a couple of Cambridge grads. There was a higher proportion of non Oxbridge grads at the company, I think we tended to have more practical experience.
- newsclues 4y ago
  Universities aren't just places of learning, but designed to select leaders through the state. How does it select leaders? By finding the most talented, or by finding those who are controllable? Seems like the institutions are dual use.
  - pharmakom 4y ago
    Oxbridge selects for upper / upper-middle class polish and above average - but probably not exceptional and definitely not neurodivergent - intelligence.
    - biofox 4y ago
      Having been to both institutions, I can assure you that the comp sci and STEM programmes are dominated by neurodivergent types. Those aren't the people going into politics though.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  The British political system isn't hiring Scientists, Engineers or MBA graduates out of Cambridge. It's also about Eton. Look at the last 3 that won elections: David Cameron - Eton, Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford, went straight into politics. Theresa May studied Geography at Oxford, worked at Bank of England and a few other institutions for a while. Boris Johnson - Eton, study of the Classics, ancient literature and classical philosophy. Worked as a journalist, was fired for lying, then became a politician.
  - sandworm101 4y ago
    Eton is more important. Children go to Eton. They dont chose to go. Their wealthy parents send them. Eton is where elite families form the bonds that are the backbone of the UK elite. Oxbridge is just the finishing school. How many politicians are hired or promoted by prime ministers not because of quality or background but social debts between families? Nobody really tracks those relationships.
charlieyu1 4y ago
I blame the recruiters.
pricechild 4y ago
> We need to find ... Who is "We" here? I think it would be reasonable to claim the two main parties come from very similar backgrounds. Both seem to be happy continuing with maintaining their status quo. Without their consent, is it likely or possible to see a third option rise?
- pjc50 4y ago
  It's remarkable how the SNP have taken over and dominated Scottish politics by having exactly one radical policy and otherwise being a sort of Merkelist centre-right government. But that's undoubtedly linked to the use of AMS at the Scottish Parliament.
  - WeylandYutani 4y ago
    Merkel presided over economic growth. The Torry government saw the UK economy barely move.
traceroute66 4y ago
> I blame the fetish that the UK has for Oxbridge graduates. Yup. As the old joke goes ... How do you know someone went to Oxford ? Don't worry, they'll tell you.
pjc50 4y ago
The hiring is not being driven by ability, it's being driven by connections. Oxford PPE graduates are being hired .. by other Oxford PPE graduates. And then promoted in the newspapers by the same.
morbia 4y ago
Some anecdotal evidence ahead. I've been interviewing graduates in the UK for many years now from a very broad range of universities, all focused on CS or stem degrees. In my experience, I've yet to interview an oxbridge graduate who wasn't at least great academically, and this is speaking as someone who went to a lesser university. Clearly whatever standards they have for teaching and entry selection criteria really work. That said, graduates from other universities are easily on par with oxbridge, just that there were some total morons amongst their peers as well. In my opinion, the problem is not that the UK fetishes oxbridge candidates, the problem is politics is dominated by arts and ppe graduates which does not offer the problem solving skills stem degrees do. I genuinely think we'd be in a much better place if our leaders weren't trained just in communication, but instead on actually logically thinking through problems and resolving them.
- traceroute66 4y ago
  > I genuinely think we'd be in a much better place if our leaders weren't trained just in communication, but instead on actually logically thinking through problems and resolving them. The other half of the problem is that the archaic UK parliament needs to change, its not fit for the 21st century. For example ... MP's perks and expenses - why do MPs get HEAVILY subsidised food and drink ? why do they get such generous expenses ? why do they get Friday's off ? why do they get so many recess holidays ? why does the whole place shut down for party conference silly season ? Prime Minister's Questions - Its a disgrace. The clue is in the word "Questions". Instead it's a farcical theatrical display where someone asks a question and then the Prime Minister doesn't answer it and/or the Prime Minister's backbenches ensure the answer gets drowned out in noise. Planted Questons - All the planted questions from the Prime Minister's back benches. What's all that about ? Do they really think people are that stupid ? Too many "gentleman's agreements" - For example, what's with the whole "you can 'unknowingly' lie, but you can't accuse others of lying" thing ? Lack of independent scrutiny - Enquiries and investigations are all based on the "gentleman's agreement" that the Prime Minister can be trusted to be a "good man" and will therefore, of course, launch any necessary investigations into alleged acts of wrong doing. However as we saw with Johnson, well .... Ministerial Code - The ultimate joke. A code with no teeth. Again, Johnson demonstrated how circles could be run round it. Archaic "parliamentary protocol" - So many examples here, perhaps one of the most infamous is Christopher Chope MP shouting "object" and blocking progress of the Up-skirting bill. The perogueing of parliament by the Johnson government in relation to Brexit is another.

imtringued 4y ago

When you think about taxation, in principle if the taxation strategy were perfectly optimal then the government would never have a spiraling debt problem. The explanation is quite simple. If you subscribe to MMT, the government issues legal tender currency and creates it and today that happens via debt. This means debt just represents untaxed money in the private sector. In other words, the government didn't bother to collect all the money that is in the private sector. When you understand this, then having a single tax like income tax be the primary source of tax revenue is a bad thing. Let's assume that we have an economy where all income exists in the form of wages and therefore is taxed at the income tax rate of 50% (I can't do this math on the phone, sorry). This means the half the income is taxed once every year. This money has a half life of exactly one year if the government were to use all of it to pay off debt. This means that in this example the government can never really go bankrupt as long as it doesn't do some inherently backwards things that break the economy in the long run. But what if there are two types of incomes that are taxed at different rates and at different frequency? What if you have wages and offshore companies where income tax can be delayed indefinitely until you bring the money back home where it is taxed at the usual income tax rate? Then suddenly it is possible for money to be stuck abroad and never taxed for long periods of time. As we know, this is money the government simply didn't bother to collect. It actively lets people keep the money abroad untaxed, so it shouldn't be surprising that the problem cannot be solved by hiking income taxes. The debt has to be extended not because the government is living beyond its means but because it is simply not collecting the money necessary to pay off its debts. This is supposed to be an illustration, not a perfect description of the real world. I didn't talk about low capital gains taxes. Which also means money could be stuck domestically inside the financial systems. The lower the tax rate and the lower the frequency of the taxable event, the more time money gets to spend away from the government and the longer the government will spend its time being in debt and I am still assuming that debts are eventually paid off. In principle there is no rule that money can't be stuck in a non productive sector indefinitely which then means the government must constantly intervene by spraying money at the productive sectors so they don't dry out like plants in a desert.

fallingknife 4y ago
The central idea that the government knows what sectors are productive and not productive is laughable.

pjc50 4y ago

> the institutional reform phase consists of Brexit, Scottish independence and, more recently, 'charter cities' and the abolition of the House of Lords It's just Brexit. The rest will not be allowed to be tried. And Brexit was popular precisely because it located the failed institutions outside the country where they could be a convenient scapegoat, without having to look at the big failing institution: the media-intelligensia-Tory circle of people. Institutional failure reached the point of allowing Liz Truss to be PM, the UK's shortest PM term at 45 days. The sort of governmental turnover that you'd expect from Italy in the 90s. (Where's the air disaster type writeup of "how did the Truss failure occur?" in the media? You won't see that because it implicates too many people. Yet it was the organisational equivalent of handing control to an untrained junior who immediately flew the plane into the ground.)

mmarq 4y ago
You don’t necessarily have to do anything, you just need to keep your mind busy to avoid introspection. Do you think Italy has abolished ‘equal bicameralism’? Liz Truss can barely speak in her native language and in normal circumstances she wouldn’t have been allowed to become a member of Parliament, let alone a senior minister or the Prime Minister.
flopriore 4y ago
> The sort of governmental turnover that you'd expect from Italy in the 90s. Government turnover in Italy has always been a nightmare since 1945. The difference between the First Republic and the Second Republic is the former basically had the same ruling party and the same electoral law, the latter has had coalitions with very different parties and a different electoral law in almost all the elections.
foldr 4y ago
>It's just Brexit. The rest will not be allowed to be tried. A lot of people said that about Brexit, before it happened. Scottish independence is a real possibility (although I think it is an equally bad idea).
- pjc50 4y ago

skippyboxedhero 4y ago

von der Leyen was a housewife. Sunak was a partner at one of the most successful hedge funds of all-time (in his late 20s), and founded his own multi-billion hedge fund. His Chancellor started his own business and sold it for $20m before going into politics. Leader of the Opposition was a barrister in one of the top chambers, head of CPS. Shadow Chancellor worked at the BoE. Britain has no shortage of extremely competent politicians, and a strong political system. There is no comparison possible with German politics. German politicians wouldn't be councillors in the UK, and their system is totally cooked (Russia appears to have purchased almost all of the SPD, the media is non-existent, the farce around the Merkel transition was incredible). Junior doctors do not have less purchasing power than a German janitor. One of the main issues with the NHS is doctors going part-time because the pay is so high. The BMA have actually mooted the idea of tax cuts for doctors only between the band of £100-125k in order to get more of them into work (and btw, part of the issue with pay is regional inequality, doctors in London can work two days a week and earn £300k/year...London is distinct). One of the negative aspects of the UK political system is that the BMA has massive political/media/PR influence so people will say things like doctors are underpaid, without connecting to this any other information that they have. Nurses are generally overpaid too. One of the problems in the NHS has been low productivity, and part of that has been significant growth in nurse numbers. But there is a hard cap on their productivity (and a result pay). Starting pay is £27k/year...for reference, this is as much as engineering grads make (generally speaking, almost all grads are underpaid in the UK apart from those going into tech/finance/medicine...relatively low-skill work is almost always overpaid). I actually agree with your point in part, a lot of it is naval-gazing but there is a need for more local powers (if you look at what is happening around Manchester, it is clear that this can work). Thankfully, leading politicians of both parties today are largely past it. Also, public investment isn't being cut whilst taxes are rising...taxes are significantly below the level required to fund public investment. One of the main political issues is that voters don't understand this.

pjc50 4y ago
> His Chancellor started his own business and sold it for $20m before going into politics Would this be the same Chancellor who's just resigned in disgrace over ordering HMRC not to investigate him for not paying tax, then threatening any journalist who mentioned it with a libel lawsuit? > Britain has no shortage of extremely competent politicians We have a massive shortage of competent politicians at delivering benefits to the country. They're only competent at delivering benefits to themselves. If there wasn't a shortage, Truss would never have been put in charge. Anyone trying to defend the Tory record has to defend Truss without just memory-holing that whole 45 day period. Not just herself - a hapless, content-free cipher, now discarded - but everyone who voted for her should be regarded as grossly incompetent. As should people who published positive press about her. Just as SBF got so many glowing reviews before stealing/losing several billions of dollars of customer money.

ricardobayes 4y ago

I don't know how true that bit is about the German janitor, junior doctors earn around 40k GBP in the UK, which is more than enough to buy a good lifestyle. I assume most janitors in Germany would be earning minimum wage (around 15k GBP, converted).

alistairSH 4y ago
Is that junior doctor fully credentialed, or wrapping up specialization? In the US, a resident will earn somewhere in the $50k-$80k range, depending on specialty. Once out of residency, the average junior salary jumps up to somewhere north of $150k. Although by that point, the doctor is likely almost 30 and possibly carrying $100k+ in student loans. They’re well paid, no question, but makes for non-optimal (for society) choices - harder than it should be for them to enter poor areas or lower salary specialties.
pjc50 4y ago
> 40k GBP in the UK, which is more than enough to buy a good lifestyle. sigh what multiple of salary mortgage are you going to get on that? And what are average house prices?
- ricardobayes 4y ago
  Depends, that's across the UK, but housing prices differ greatly. I've seen new built houses for 170k around Newcastle. Most of the "north" is affordable, even towns near Manchester etc. It's nowhere nearly as bad as Ireland, the Netherlands and other parts of Europe.
mmarq 4y ago
A junior doctor makes as low as 25-28K, that is not enough to rent a room in London, and tend to have massive a student debt

auctoritas 4y ago

The problem is mostly the welfare state. But the Leftists and their media cronies will never admit it, of course. They drive the narrative. This continued decay is on them. They like to pretend the Truss debacle was something entirely of her own making which they merely observed and reported, but it was an engineered political takedown. The Tories of course are pathetic and spineless so they put up little resistance.

mmarq 4y ago
I’m fine with German taxation and the German welfare state, I’m also fine with a minimal state where I have to pay for healthcare. What I don’t like is the current situation in the UK, where I pay more income tax than I would pay in Germany and I also have to pay for healthcare and childcare and education.

onetimeusename 4y ago

Why are taxes going up but public investment is going down? Where is the money going?

LQDH 4y ago
An aging population means you need more money to provide the same level of pensions, healthcare, etc. And you have less working people to tax income from.