onlooker

I think he meansthat the 40% rate still applies, but that estates below the current threshold should be taxed at 20%. There are a lot of these lower value estates, so I can well believe that the Govt tax take could be 20 billion. Of course, a lot of poor to middle income beneficiaries would see their inheritance slashed.

This is all valid evidence, even if it doesn't support the global warming theory. How about another: https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/ This is the Met Office version of the famous Central England temperature data set. 2000-Sept 2021 are warm, but it is not getting warmer.

But only the coastal zone of Cornwall is actually attractive. Some of the interior has pleasant rolling hills and woods, but much is ex industrial land and other mediocre stuff, all with a wet and unappealing climate. Why is there so much reluctance to build inland?

I'm all for setting IHT at 20%. That is half what it is at the moment. I assume you want the tax free threshold reduced from its current £325,000 per person (+£175,000 exemption for houses left to children, if the total estate is <£2million). It would certainly make IHT much simpler and fairer if IHT were 20% of everything over say £16,000.

It might almost be regarded as an incentive to get a job.

I was around though not borrowing more. I am pretty sure mortgages were easier to get, IF you were deemed a good risk to repay the money. But as unemployment went up, nobody was deemed a good enough risk to lend to.

The southwestern section of the M25 is slow every time I use it. Around the A3 intersection, and Cobham services. I assume this is because too much local traffic uses the M25 to avoid all the twisting A roads around Leatherhead, Woking and Chertsey - an area of wealth so great that there are probably more cars per head of population than anywhere else in the UK. Also it is not true that the M25 is all 4 lane. Around some junctions such as the A3, the road at the junction has only 3 lanes. This is a serious design fault which also contributes to the congestion. I agree about the A303, but then we have the luddite environmentalists to thank for that.

By "incompetent and deceitful economic policies of the last two decades" you mean becoming reliant on cheap imported labour, and not incentivising or upskilling our own workforce?

Article says low pay, an ageing workforce, backlog of HGV driving licences issued, and IR35 abolition are reasons. Eastern EU drivers going home because of Covid and IR35 withdrawal.

That suggests a shortage of loading staff rather than drivers? interesting article in the Daily Mail about the driver shortage. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9927671/Whats-really-driving-food-shelves-HARRY-WALLOP-goes-scenes-investigate.html

There will not be another crash until immigration rates turns negative and real interest rates turn positive.

Must be difficult being brought up in a Labour family, if you want to make something of yourself., and rise above the herd.

They can't build Pakistan/Afghanistan when, as you say, they are less than 10%, and 90% is white. But when they become 40-50%? 80-90%? These are the proportions in many cities in the UK, and over large areas in future times when my grandchildren will have to change to fit in, in what was their own country.

If we take their men as well, they will just build Afghanistan within the UK. With all its backwardness and medieval attitudes. You can take the man out of Afghanistan, but you will never take Afghanistan out of the man.

I agree, I think the plan is set in stone, because as I understood it, the pension increases involved in the new erroneously called flat rate pension were to be funded by the rise in normal pension age. If the age comes down, the increases might have to be clawed back. edit to add, an important driver AIUI, is that manual workers would be particularly hit by a further rise in pension age. Who wants to still be doing labouring when they are 70?

Continuing pension age extension? There are no proposals as yet to extend the pension age above 67.

£22 billion, and all we got was 600 dead soldiers, and many mutilated, and 25,000 more taxi drivers, drug dealers, gang members and welfare farmers. Of course it will be more like 250,000 after a few years. The Gvmt can’t count when it comes to immigration.

I would agree that modern houses depreciate rapidly, but not the land they are built on. Move up there and make room for 25,000 more.

Seems to be plenty of vacancies for hospitality workers and people to serve alcohol. Can Afghans do that? But job vacancies is not the same as “more room”.

Where did this “more room” come from?

You don’t invest in a car (unless it’s vintage). A car is a depreciating asset, which might be a status symbol when new.

Don’t think Afghans are noted for their work ethic nor their encouraging family structures. They will be taxi drivers, drug dealers and gang members like all the others, as well as welfare farmers.

When will the West wake up to the way the Chinese are undermining our strengths and our values. We should not be dealing with Huawei, at all.

Much of the UK operates as a zero sum game, it's just that often people are distracted so they don't notice. Housing is very expensive because demand is high, and so those with lower incomes have to live in smaller and smaller spaces. What will adding a million Hong Kongers to the UK population do? More houses can be built, but then we all lose the amenity value of the countryside, and pay for it through increased congestion, more pollution, poorer education and less access to GPs/dentists. One thing that is certain is there would be no concomitant increase in spending on infrastructure. Knowing our luck, we will just add Chinese gangs to existing mix of ethnic gangs. Employment has been shown to be at least partly a zero sum game. EEs have depressed wages, as shown by the effect of the departure of a few of them on lorry driver wages.

AIUI Hong Kong is (was) successful primariy because it is (was) a low tax environment. Successive UK governments have decided that the UK must be a high tax environment. We all suffer accordingly. I don't deride financial dealing as a way to make a living, but as a previous poster said "Yes we need immigrants that can out bid the locals." Should we just sit and accept a reduction in our quality of life?