Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Josquius]

I dunno, shoot for the moon and set stretch goals and all that.
Getting new nuclear capacity online would be great, but in the meanwhile we need to seriously build more wind and start being serious about hydro.

[Gups]

I agree, Shelf. Virtually impossibble. And all very well shooting for the moon but very unwise to make it a promise.

[Josquius]

So Labour is planning to get rid of VAT free status on private school fees.
Which seems an amazingly common sense move.
But obviously has parents with kids in private school up in arms with 70,000 signing a petition against the party that isn't even in government doing something.

Reading this.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/24/britain-richest-10-per-cent-wealthy-inequality-labour-private-schools

Two shocking facts.


1: The leader of this campaign with the big petition is on 60k a year and sends his kid to a 20k a year school....wut. No wonder you're desperate not to pay VAT on that. This is not a sensible financial decision.
2: £59k and above puts you in the top 10% of earners. Which...Wow. The article speaks of the delusions of people on such salaries, harking back to question time man on 80k who didn't think he even made the top 50%.
Though I think the bigger story here is how absolutely shit a state the UK is in that this is the case.  As thats decent enough money, but you're hardly living it up on that amount.
People on such amounts are right to feel not particularly well off- though they should stop and think for a little if thats the case for them, quite what things are like for those on 30k or less.

Also, an additional complaint. It links off to an article where 25% of those on over 100k call themselves working class with an air of judgement of this being wrong. Guhhhh. Can we stop this linking of class to current earnings please? Thats not how it works.

[garbon]

So Labour is planning to get rid of VAT free status on private school fees.
Which seems an amazingly common sense move.
But obviously has parents with kids in private school up in arms with 70,000 signing a petition against the party that isn't even in government doing something.

What kind of weirdo would happily accept new taxes that target their specific group?

1: The leader of this campaign with the big petition is on 60k a year and sends his kid to a 20k a year school....wut. No wonder you're desperate not to pay VAT on that. This is not a sensible financial decision.

I don't have a Telegraph subscription so I don't know what it says about him. Possible his wife also works, no? Otherwise yeah that is wild.

2: £59k and above puts you in the top 10% of earners. Which...Wow. The article speaks of the delusions of people on such salaries, harking back to question time man on 80k who didn't think he even made the top 50%.
Though I think the bigger story here is how absolutely shit a state the UK is in that this is the case.  As thats decent enough money, but you're hardly living it up on that amount.
People on such amounts are right to feel not particularly well off- though they should stop and think for a little if thats the case for them, quite what things are like for those on 30k or less.

Agreed, when I read that article last night, I said to my husband, damn the UK really is a poor fucking country.

[Gups]

Don't forget that £59k includes part time workers. It's more like £65k for full time workers

[Zanza]

Yeah - as I say I think it's a pretty impossible target (I think that's the consensus in the sector too). But when it was first made in the early days of Starmer's leadership so 2020-ish there were supposed to be three new nuclear plants coming online by the end of the decade. I imagine that was part of the plan.

So the delays in the last few years make an already very very challenging target, I think, probably even more difficult (arguably it never should have been made and Ed Miliband might be a bit of a liability).

Considering the age of the British nuclear plants, it is more likely that Britain has just a single working plant (Sizewell B) in 2030. The recently communicated target of 24 GW Output - about 18 reactors - seems impossible short of drastic improvement of building methods.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah - although target isn't really linked to the immediate decarbonisation of the grid by 2030 or 2035.

It's a target for 2050 and I think is pinning a lot of hope on the SMRs. It's obviously important for net zero from the perspective of us needing to not just decarbonise the current grid but to also massively increase the amount of power available as we electrify everything else.

I take your point on nuclear. But I've mentioned it before because I think it gets at a bigger problem - even aside from complex things like nuclear power and only to meet current expected increased demand for electricity, the National Grif said (last year, so it's worse now) that we need to build more grid infrastructure in the next seven years than we have in the last thirty.

You're right to be sceptical of Britain's nuclear plans (but they are the right thing to do) - at the minute I'm sceptical of Britain building enough basic infrastructure (not to mention the slow speed of connecting renewables). And on the production side, ultimately there's only so much energy we can import from France.

[HVC]

Uk Canada free trade talks put on hold by the Brit side.

[Barrister]

Uk Canada free trade talks put on hold by the Brit side.

Apparently they broke down over cheese.

[Tamas]

Uk Canada free trade talks put on hold by the Brit side.

Apparently they broke down over cheese.

Did you lot refuse to admit the superiority of cheddar?! 

[Sheilbh]

Uk Canada free trade talks put on hold by the Brit side.

Apparently they broke down over cheese.

Reporting here was hormones beef. Probably spin on both sides.

[garbon]

Uk Canada free trade talks put on hold by the Brit side.

Apparently they broke down over cheese.

Reporting here was hormones beef. Probably spin on both sides.

I watched breakfast television this morning. They reported on both sides.

[Barrister]

Uk Canada free trade talks put on hold by the Brit side.

Apparently they broke down over cheese.

Reporting here was hormones beef. Probably spin on both sides.

UK wanted more access to our cheese market, Canada wanted food safety rules for beef harmonized.

[Sheilbh]

Ah sorry I only saw Guardian which was bigger on beef.

I think the UK won't ever have a deal with hormone beef or chlorine washed chicken etc. Far too politically toxic.

[PJL]

Uk Canada free trade talks put on hold by the Brit side.

Apparently they broke down over cheese.

Reporting here was hormones beef. Probably spin on both sides.

UK wanted more access to our cheese market, Canada wanted food safety rules for beef harmonized watered down.

Corrected FYP. Well at least that was what was reported here.