mattyboy1973

Yes, this is the only reasonable conclusion one can draw. They were so confident that they would win any referendum, that they didn't even bother to do the bare minimum that they could have done within the confines of EU membership to limit immigration/make it less attractive.

My understanding, such that it is, is that we could have done an awful lot more to limit immigration - e.g. benefits eligibility to new arrivals etc - whilst still within the EU than we actually did. Why we didn't take any of those sorts of measures, I don't know.

Pay utimately comes down to market forces (supply and demand), obviously coupled with a ceiling amount, above which it is no longer profitable to employ somebody in that position. What the productivity graph shows, very roughly, is that pay could be perhaps 2x what it is currently as a general average, and companies could be as profitable as they were in the 1970's. The money would have to come from somewhere, of course, I suspect mostly from the pay packets of those further up the corporate ladder.

Seeing this too around me. This is the "homes under the hammer" effect, whereby people vastly underestimate the time and cost involved in renovating a house (especially in today's market), and vastly overestimate their own ability to manage such a project. They might get away with it in a rising market, but the value isn't there. I say all that, btw, as someone who undertook a signifcant renovation and didn't manage it well at all - estimating time/money for something you have no experience in is hard, as is dealing with tradesmen.

I'm not sure that's true at all any more, unfortunately. The link between productivity and wage growth was broken decades ago - back in the 70's, if you believe the graphs (US, I assume, but the same holds):

Why would you do this? Most businesses would offer £9.01 in this situation, their mandate being to maximise profit over everything else, with of course on component of that being reducing costs as much as possible. There's no easy answer to any of your questions, really, other than to state the point that not all business models are viable and, in my opinion at least, businesses in this country shouldn't be able to hire people at below a living wage and have the government make up the difference. That's corporate welfare disguised as welfare. It is an incredibly difficult problem to solve

Firstly, emplyers will always pay as little as they can get away with for labour - it is just another resource, after all - so don't expect employment tax cuts to find their way into employee pay packets. Secondly, the benefits/wages relationship is a little more complex than you make out. Arguably, benefits are the thing that actually allow employers to pay wages that are far below liveable, in the knowledge (both employer's and employee's) that they will be topped up. One thing is clear; benefits are not generous right now, and very few people strive towards a benefit lifestyle. If wage

I think that is almost certainly true, but if your business used to rely on minimum wage staff doing crappy jobs on zero hours contracts, then it might just be the case now that your business isn't viable. That's the way it goes.

If people are better off on benefits than working for you, then you are not paying enough. Every time you hear an employer bleat that they "cannot recruit anybody", there is a part missing from the end of the sentence: "..for the wages we are offering.". There isn't a job in the land that can't be filled tomorrow if the price is right.

Exactly - there is no one. Starmer seemed the best (by far) of a very average bunch at the last leadership election. I literally can't think of anyone better than him in the parliamentary Labour party right now. Maybe Burnham or Jarvis, but they are both mayors somewhere else now. Frankly, the dearth of political talent spreads across all parties, but somehow the Tories are getting a pass. The current cabinet is perhaps the least competent that I have ever witnessed but I couldn't say with any confidence that a Labour one would be better.

Not a pleasant situation. If it was me, I'd take the £430 on the proviso that she can move quickly. Get it sold, get her out of your life, move on with yours - and you and your brother still get a very substantial sum each.

Fuel tax as it is now is actually not a terrible proxy for road usage, albeit some cars or more or less efficient than others, some do much more damage (trucks) etc. The challenge is going to be replicating (or improving) on that, without being able to tax the "fuel" in the same way. Doing it without privacy concerns is going to be tough, IMO, and if they do they it will have to be as you say, just a raw odometer reading. Anything that tries to get clever with time, congestion etc is going to need a lot of information about how you use your car.

Yes, which is why I said that EVs were in a honeymoon period right now. The problem is, though, that EVs are still so expensive that the finances don't add up for most, even with the savings on tax and fuel. By the time EVs are cost comparable, the tax savings will be gone. That's not a complaint, btw, this is how it always works when tax policy is used to incentivise a change in behaviour. It's just that some people look at EVs and see low/zero tax and super cheap mileage, without realising that this can't last. Road and fuel tax brings in some £40bn, roughly 5% of tax revenue, so something w

Yeah, I get it - but that is still some way off. My point is that, right now, if you have an EV you are currently enjoying a very low level of costs from taxation (fuel, road tax), and this won't last. It should be obvious to everyone that, once enough people have switched over to EVs, the tax income will have to be maintained somehow, so anyone who is labouring under the illusion that the higher purchase price of an EV will somehow pay for itself through cheaper motoring in the long run may well be disappointed. My guess is that taxing and driving an EV in the future will cost pretty much exa

Make the most of it while you can. EVs are in a honeymoon period with respect to taxation, both because they are trying to drive adoption, and because they haven't figured out how to tax them yet. The government can't do without road and fuel taxes, and since tax is the largest component in current petrol prices, my guess is that we can expect to be eventually be paying almost as much to drive our EVs around as we do our current cars.