Labour Party/government Watch

[clv101]

That's a terrible rate of return.

Absolutely! That is the problem, the simply awful rate of return on capital, well under 1% when any conventional business would be expecting 5-10%. The current model simply isn't a viable business.

[Lurkalot]

Don't forget that a farm is a highly illiquid asset; difficult to sell quickly unless you want to sell quickly to a low bidder who is likely to be an institutional investor. Who would you rather own these farms? A family or some institutional investor such as Blackrock?

Farmland being sold off cheaply , one and a half million houses to be built , easing of planning and the grey belt ..
Good job I’m not a cynical old sod.

[Forever_Winter]

I am not in a position to have a strong opinion on the numbers involved. Hard to know who to believe.

That's a fair position. My point is that Labour could go after much juicier assets than the squeezed middle class. A small wealth tax on multi millionaires and billionaires would be a much better option in my opinion (and its my opinion of course)

[UndercoverElephant]

That's a terrible rate of return.

Absolutely! That is the problem, the simply awful rate of return on capital, well under 1% when any conventional business would be expecting 5-10%. The current model simply isn't a viable business.

So what is the answer?

[clv101]

Well, only about 15% of the sticker price of food finds its way back to the farmer. The retailers, and manufactures etc are taking a larger share. Maybe their margins could be cut while farmer's margins increased? Or better still simply do less 'manufacturing'. The more processed a food is, the more additional, for-profit, steps have been added between the farmer and your plate.

Also, farmland should be much cheaper. This might be worked on through the planning system by defaulting agricultural land ONLY to agriculture - ie make it harder/more costly to change use to development, solar farms etc, this could genuinely decrease the value of land to something closer to the actual value that can be extracted from it. Put limitations on who can own farmland. France have a farming licensing scheme which would (which has) prevented people like James Dyson buying (and bidding up the price) the land. The idea is that land ownership should stay with folk who farm, not billionaire vacuum cleaner designers.

[Forever_Winter]

Scotland to introduce an additional winter fuel payment from next year. Makes Labour look very silly. I wonder how much they'll save on the original amount when a lot of pensioners end up in hospital (or worse, die)? Perhaps thats what Labour want i.e. dead pensioners don't claim their state pension.....

[Forever_Winter]

Oh dear. The Plodder blaming Brexit for an 'open doors' policy. Hmm this started under Blair....

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/20 ... onference/

[clv101]

It was post-Brexit Tory policy to increase net immigration to record levels, don't blame Brexit, blame the Tories.

[BritDownUnder]

... i.e. dead pensioners don't claim their state pension.....

I worked in the Insurance and Pensions business for a while and quite a lot of British Expats used to claim their dead spouses (usually dead husband's) company pension for quite a while after they died. The registration of a death was not easily transferred from Spain to the UK. Also cases in India where an annual fingerprint was needed to claim a benefit and the deceased's finger was duly kept in a state of preservation long after the rest of them was cremated or otherwise sent off into the next world.

[Forever_Winter]

Transport Secretary Louise Haigh resigns after criminal conviction revealed to do wit a stolen mobile phone. From the media outlet of your choice.

[Ralphw2]

On the surface this conviction was cockup rather than criminal intent. A conditional discharge and a spent conviction About 1 on the Richter scale of politcal scandals. Not sure if anything further will be dredged up, but compared to previous government's dodgy dealings on the scale of billions, it really does not register. I still remember the day when the then director of public prosecutions was arrested for curb crawling.

[Potemkin Villager]

Surely you mean the director of public prostitution!

[Forever_Winter]

Did anyone see Labour's new 'launch' speech earlier today? I didn't but apparently Starmer took a swipe at the civil service. Will he bring in a DOGE (department of government efficiency) like the US is looking to do? Why does the party need a relaunch when they've only been in for 5 months? Not a good look for Labour......

[Forever_Winter]

So the WASPI women will lose out on compensation due to a Labour U-turn. That would only cost about a few billion. The IHT tax raid is likely to raise a lot less than it will bring in.

The Plodder is also looking to tightening the rules around foreign donations with Elon Musk looking to donate to Reform - Labour are obviously really rattled by this.

They also want to move council elections to 2027 in the hope this will stop Reform - it won't.

It's not all bad though - there is a good song out about pensioners freezing at Xmas which has been quite well done. It's here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQrvmY5s2mo

In other news, Mauritius rejects the The Plodders Chagos deal - probably the Americans leant on them due to the base on Diego Garcia not too far away...

This has got to be the worst start for a government in my lifetime

[clv101]

Worth remembering this was a Tory policy in 1995 to move women from 60 to 65 by 2020, then a Tory/LibDem policy to accelerate it to 2018. Proper communication was the responsibility of those governments - this isn't really a Labour mess but they get the blame?