Rockets

Fascinating The Rest is Politics questions this week and they deal with the farmer issue as the first question. Rory Stewart has a fascinating insight into the issues here - about the high cost of land and the low returns from farming and how this is anything but a few farms being affected. Well worth a listen for those that want to hear both sides of the argument.

No it's about Cllr Leeming posting his judgement on what happened - with his comment "should be banned from driving" he is projecting significant fault to the driver, he is suggesting it was sufficiently dangerous/careless driving to warrant a ban. So, we must presume he either knows the finer details of exactly what happened and the outcome of any police investigation or he is speculating and apportioning blame to the driver.

...said by the person who started the thread using inaccurate information.....maybe that's why you want the discussion off this forum because it is exposing the very issue we have been complaining about for some time about the way car accidents are treated by those on the anti-car side of the discussion. Everyone seems very quick to jump to conclusions without ever checking the facts.

Earl, you're doing it again.....

Perhaps Cllr Leeming is a magistrate in his spare time? Does he know the finer details of what happened to such an extent that he knows that the cause warrants a ban or is he, like so many when they post anything about car accidents, taking a wild guess and speculating? And if he is, in his position as an elected official, could he be prejudicing a future case with that post (this is not a snarky comment but a legitimate question to anyone who knows the law in relation to such things)?

It’s from the Treasury report…https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/fixing-the-foundations-public-spending-audit-2024-25/fixing-the-foundations-public-spending-audit-2024-25-html 1. Executive summary On 8 July, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced that she had instructed Treasury officials to undertake a rapid audit of public spending. This document sets out the outcome of the audit, the immediate action the government is taking in response, and the long-term measures being introduced to restore public spending control. The audit carried out by the Treasury shows that the forecast overspend on departmental spending is expected to be £21.9 billion above the resource departmental expenditure limit (RDEL) totals set by the Treasury at Spring Budget 2024.[footnote 1],[footnote 2]

2.5 Public sector pay At SR21 the government set overall budgets in cash terms on an assumption that pay for public sector workforces would increase by around 3%, 2%, and 2% respectively in the three years covered. Pay for most frontline public sector workers including NHS staff, teachers, police, armed forces and prison officers is set based on recommendations from independent Pay Review Bodies (PRBs). These recommendations have responded to higher levels of wage growth across the wider economy and so actual pay awards across PRB workforces increased by an average of 5% in 2022-23, and 6% in 2023-24.[footnote 11] This – alongside some exceptional pay increases agreed outside the PRB process and pay awards across the Civil Service – has meant that public spending on pay is expected to be around £11-12 billion higher across central government departments in 2024-25 than it was projected to be at SR21, even before accounting for 2024-25 pay awards.[footnote 12]

You're certainly a creature of habit Earl I will give you that! Well I am not chancellor but clearly if I doctored my CV then I could be one day...!! (Too soon.....sorry I could not resist...;-)) But, for example, I probably wouldn't have given junior doctors a 22% pay rise and then claimed that as part of the 22bn black hole "inherited" by this government and then told farmers and pensioners to suck it up because of said 22bn black hole...but, to be fair, farmers and pensioners didn't help the election campaign did they so I presume they weren't owed their payday?! 😉

?????

This is why the NFU are so unhappy that Clarkson is involved as it distracts from the issues for real farmers. Your assumption that all land is purchased as a tax dodge is a wide sweeping dog whistle generalisation and, I suspect, a long way from the truth but something to government would love for people to think. Again, read this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c62jdz61j3yo

Because it's only a windfall if they sell it - until that time it is an asset - and in this case a working asset but, as far a the government is concerned a taxable asset. The farm is the tool that they use to earn a living - a living that they will be taxed on in the same way a nurse is - it's just to do their job they are now expected to pay extra tax for the privilege - just because the farm was passed to them. Or are you advocating nurses pay tax on the tools they are provided to do their job too? 😉 Now, if they sell the farm then yes, they should pay inheritance tax in the same way people who are left items of value from relatives are because they have realised the value and taken the asset as cash. Our farming industry is built upon family business - generations of farmers from the same families working the land and this is an ideological attack and, like so many of Labour's policies, is aimed at a few rich farmers/farm owners (insert pensioners on Fuel Duty), but creates collateral damage for a whole load of other farmers who aren't rich (insert 50,000 pensioners now struggling in relative poverty due to Winter Fuel) and will have to sell land to fund it because, well, they are farmers who don't earn much at all doing a very tough job - the average wage of someone in agriculture is, according to the BBC around £500 a week and the national average is £671. Do you see the point now and why so many farmers are upset about this? It's another tax the many to get to the few. Maybe farmers should wear Donkey jackets rather than Barbour's and the government may look on them a little more favourably.... Some good background from the BBC on why farmers are fighting so hard. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c62jdz61j3yo

Because they have been awful - scoring own-goal after own-goal. You cannot be an apologist for their diabolical first 100 days on the basis that the previous lot were worse - in the same way the whole of the 14 years of Tory rule was tarred with the brush of despair about their very worst behaviour in the latter years Labour run the risk of their government being tarred with the same brush on the basis of their first 100 days. It has probably been some of the worst 100 days of any new government and Starmer's approval ratings aren't as low as they are without reason. You know they are in trouble when MPs start posting the good bits from their first 100 days - it's a sure sign they know they have a problem. And when this government have a problem the frontbenchers disappear from media interviews and they roll-out the likes of Pat McFadden to provide some air cover. Yesterday it was farmers. Today it is the pensioners being pushed into poverty by Winter Fuel payments. It's a perceptual disaster and has been since day 1 - they have to get a grip on it else this leadership team is doomed. You highlight the very problem here. Farmers are not being gifted money. They are being gifted assets. Assets that they don't realise as they continue to work those assets to provide food for the country. Most inheritance is cash or an asset (a house) that people sell to generate cash. Passing a farm to younger family members is very different. On the news they interviewed a farmer whose family had owned the farm since 1822 and he broke down in tears when he spoke about his 13 year old son who was working in the farm to continue it - no doubt in the realisation that his son would be hit by a tax bill when he took it over. Given farmers are not cash rich then the decision would likely be that they would need to sell some of the land that generations had worked hard to build to fund the tax bill - and so many farms are on a knife's edge that it might be enough to send them over the edge. There are many valid reasons why the government are doing what they are doing but those reasons are not cutting through and they are losing control of the narrative. That is a massive issue for them.

No, I bang on about Dulwich Roads, and others like the OP on this thread, because much of their content is based on ideological hope rather than reality. They post misleading information designed only to further their personal crusade against cars. On that subject, if this is in the hands of a police investigation is Cllr Leeming ok saying this:

But do you not understand how tough farming is, especially post-Brexit when some of the subsidies were lost and costs have increased massively yet the prices farmers can charge has not? On the BBC News tonight they said pig farming costs had gone up 54% since 2019, cow farming costs up 44% and cereal costs up 43%. The NFU said that the margins are on average 0.5% return on capital. Land and buildings are assets that don't make money until you sell them...it's what you do with them that makes money and farms are struggling to make money and so many farms are generational family businesses so never realise the assets (one farmers on the news said his farm had been in the family since 1822) but will have to to pay tax for continuing the family business. On another news item tonight there was a short piece saying the government has said that 50,000 more pensioners will be forced into relative poverty (60% of the average income) due to the Winter Fuel Allowance removal which will rise to 100,000 more by 2027. James Murray from the Treasury was rolled out on Newsnight to try and defend that and couldn't. You can't give doctors 20%+ and push more pensioners into poverty as a result. The problem for Labour is the court of public opinion will judge them and right now the jury is out after a series of own-goals, really poor communication and ill-thought-out idealogical policies. And don't ever annoy the farmers.....;-)

Farmers groups say 35% of farms will be affected while the Treasury reckons its 27% - neither figure is a tiny portion. The problem is farming is often asset rich but cash poor meaning that those who inherit farms and have to pay the tax will likely need to sell land to pay for it and could well further impact the cash poor nature and productivity of that farm. I would have thought those who align on the left would be welcoming farmers protesting on the streets against a government making their lives more difficult. Good on them. Makes a change from tube and rail strikes at least! I was shocked to read that the average weekly earnings for agricultural workers was significantly lower than the national average. Clearly Labour doesn't consider these working people.

Ha ha.... Why do I need to when some on here do exactly what they do...thus illustrating and validating my point entirely about many of the posts from the anti-car lobby lacking, ahem, accuracy!? 😉

Yes we can all agree on that but can we also agree that people need to take more care when posting and try and ensure better accuracy? DKHB good job for acknowledging your mistake - perhaps you can have a word with whomever is behind Dulwich Roads as they seem to refuse to acknowledge their own mistakes and prefer doubling-down when someone challenges them on misleading and inaccurate posts! 😉

BBC and the IFS https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2e12j4gz0o From BBC Verify: Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies think tank said Reeves "may be overegging the £22bn black hole". What about the rest of the £22bn? The government published a breakdown, external of how it had got from the Treasury's £9.5bn shortfall in February to the £22bn "black hole". It said that there was another £7bn between February and the actual Budget in March, as departments found out about new spending pressures and the government spent more on the NHS and the Household Support Fund There was a final £5.6bn between then and late July, which includes almost a month when Labour was in power. That was largely caused by increases in public sector pay. It was the Labour government that accepted the recommendations of the Pay Review Bodies (PRBs), but they said that the previous government should have budgeted for more than a 2% increase in public sector pay. Prof Stephen Millard from the National Institute of Economic and Social Research think tank told BBC Verify: "The 'political' question is whether you would count this as part of the fiscal black hole or not. If you do, then you get to the £22bn figure; if not, then you’re left with around £12.5bn to £13.5bn." It isn't this at all. When you run on an agenda of change and cleaning up politics and you put all of the eggs of despair in a basket at the door of the previous government you better hope you have a long honeymoon period to give you time to deliver the change you have promised. Look at the NHS, before the election it was all...it's broken because of 14 years of Tory incompetence and the implication was that Labour could fix is quickly. Then Wes Streeting (who is one of the smarter political cabinet members and is clearly able to play the long game) started talking about the need to change the NHS before the election - he talked about privatising parts of it (much to the annoyance of the left). He was being pragmatic because the only magic wand that is going to fix the NHS is massive reform - it's broken and has been for decades and throwing money at it has just papered over the cracks. Now Labour talk about the NHS needing 10 years of healing for there to be real difference and people are saying....what..... Words in opposition are easy; actions in government are a lot harder and I fear that given the structural issues caused by Covid, the energy crisis, the war in Ukraine (and now maybe a massive US/China trade war if Trump isn't bluffing) that we are heading to constant one-term governments. I don't think there was a government (and correct me if I am wrong) that survived Covid and in a lot of countries since Covid they have had regular government change (I think what is playing out in the US with them voting Trump in is reflective of the challenges all countries face). Labour massively over-egged the 14 years of hurt (who could blame them) but it is going to make things a lot tougher for them as they have set the expectation that changing government cures all the ills and as we have seen in the first 90 days of their tenure that is very much not the case. Completely agree but the big risk if Farage. If Labour don't deliver what they promised or hit "working people" then the populists win - it's happening everywhere. Dangerous, dangerous times ahead and Labour have to get it right - for all our sakes - no matter what party we support. P.S. Lammy is also one of the better Labour front-bench folks - he just is suffering from Labour's inability to think far enough ahead to realise that some posts might come back to haunt you...but in his defence did anyone really think Americans would be daft enough to vote him in again....;-)

Or the government have it wrong. Certainly picking a fight with farmers, the very definition of working people, is probably not going to end well. The problem here is that Labour hung their hat on not taxing "working people" which was clearly the output of some awful focus group and clearly not the term they wanted to use. They failed to properly qualify what a working person is and it is now coming back to haunt them because the very definition of a working person is anyone who is, well, working and that covers a whole gamut of people and salaries. Don't pick a fight with farmers if you have stated you aren't going after working people because public opinion will be against you. Farmers are the backbone of any country and work so hard and yes, there are some that are incredibly well off but the majority are not and farming is a trade that gets handed down through the generations. And farmers will make their case very public in ways other groups won't. Labour's communication has been awful but they got a free pass before the election because everyone was so focused on how awful the Tories were. But now they are in power and they are tripping themselves up because in leadership you need more than soundbites. The "Son of a Toolmaker" is the type of thing that haunts politicians until the end of their career. Clearly someone decided to detach Keir from his grammar school, university (including Oxford), legal career, knight of the realm background. His face when everyone laughed when he mentioned it during one of the pre-election debates was a picture. He is the son of a toolmaker but you look a bit silly when people then say yes but your dad ran a tool-making company... Coming into power on a ticket of "look how they have been behaving" and then behaving in many ways the Tories were has been a disaster for politicians of all parties. The clothing funding and access to no.10 was just a nightmare for them and in these days where today's newspaper is no longer tomorrow's chip paper the comments made about Trump (which I am sure most people can agree with) are just embarrassing. Winter Fuel Tax has been a disaster. Yes, there are many pensioners who don't need it but those aren't going to be the ones talking to the media about how awful the winter is going to be and people only remember those shouting the loudest. The budget was an interesting one. I was watching Theo Pathitis on TV and he had swung from the Tories to Labour ahead of the election and was talking about the impact of the Employer NI and you could tell that he was very carefully choosing his words as he knew how hard this was going to be on business and what the implications are but clearly didn't want to be left with egg on his face as he was telling everyone to vote Labour ahead of the election. Labour were, understandably, happy to right the massive wave of Tory discontent and pre-election all of the world's ills were down to the Tories. The first speech Starmer gave after winning spoke nothing about the previous government but everything about global challenges that were going to make it tough. The challenge for Labour is they convinced people that every problem was down to the Tories and that removing them would solve everything but things are not as straight forward as that. I senses things changing when they announced the 22bn blackhole and many people said...but 9bn of that are based on decisions you made in relation to public sector pay rises. Labour are finding out, to their cost, that being in opposition is easy. Being in power is not.

DKHB - come on, admit it. You got it wrong. You posted incorrect information and by doing so have highlighted the very point I was making about Dulwich Roads - that some, in their keenness to make a point and further their ideological attack on cars, post misleading and inaccurate information every time they see an accident and never bother to correct it when they get it wrong. You were clearly hoping it was an accident caused by speed and that it happened during school rush hour.

Earl, perhaps more instructive is that the OP insinuates that speed was a factor and that this happened during rush hour (the suggestion being that this was during the school run so children were at risk) - when a quick search of the web find media articles saying that the accident happened at 5am. The article also says the driver fled the scene so, of course, we can all make assumptions about why that might have been. https://www.newsshopper.co.uk/news/24734134.dulwich-village-car-abandoned-crash/ But this goes to demonstrate the challenge I have with people knee-jerk posting without ever taking time to determine what actually happened. DKHB took a leaf out of the Dulwich Roads playbook by posting inaccurate/misleading information that painted a picture very different to the reality.

DKHB - What an awful accident. Was everyone ok - does anyone know what caused it? Thanks for pointing out it is a 20mph zone - by this are you trying to suggest that speed was a factor here? What time did this happen? It looks like Dulwich Roads was on the scene a little bit after you! https://x.com/DulwichRoads/status/1858796233034182959?s=19

The demonising of anyone who dares challenge the council's point of view and actions is a dangerous precedent. First it started (often by the council themselves) as a narrative of a "small vocal minority' and when that didn't dampen the voices against the measures the council's supporters leaned into the Tory/covid-denier/pertrolhead/fascist narrative. Still that didn't work. It's a lazy tactic to try and demonise the opposition and one the left leans in on all the time. Sadiq did it during his people's question time - portray anyone who had a differing view as some nut-job fascist. Doing so is politically weak and actually demonstrates you lack a rational counter-argument to the points being raised and you're having to resort to childish name calling. The challenge is sometimes, as we have seen in the US elections, it massively backfires and stokes the fires of populism and creates incredibly dangerous situations. What astonishes me the most is, in relation to the years of discussion on this forum about these measures is how some, who support the council, will defend them to the death and turn a blind eye to things that if another political party was doing them they would be fighting against. There has been so much idealogical blindness by some that is empowers those in power to continue behaving appallingly.

Mal, this isn't going away. The council is reaping what they sowed. They have, and continue to, behave appallingly, treating their constituents with contempt. They lie and they manipulate in the process of getting what they want. A increasingly large number of local residents will not forgive them for that and with each own goal they make it worse for themselves as more people become aware of their hypocrisy.

I do wonder sometimes whether councillors are coming on here and posting under someone else's name such is the blind faith some are putting in the council....all very Leo Pollack at times...and when you read the stuff some post probably the only plausible explanation for the fan-boi approach to everything the council does.