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Thread | Kings of Anglia
at 12:14 8 Oct 2024
The latest Kings of Anglia podcast has the title
A bad day at the office - but reasons to be positive
Having listened to it, it is a balanced listen, as is always the case with the EADT when things go against us.
But perhaps the best part of it is these words from Mark Heath.
"If you are one of the people sending abuse to players on social media, give your head a bloody good wobble, look in the mirror, slap yourself, give yourself a good talking to, cause that is nonsense friends."
[Post edited 8 Oct 15:27]
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Thread | Delay to VAT on private schools?
at 12:00 6 Oct 2024
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/oct/05/doubts-grow-over-labours-vat-p
It always struck me as unfair to make the change in the middle of the academic year, but this suggests the Government may not have thought things through by opting for 1 January.
Following on from the winter fuel change, it may indicate that Reeves is not the safe pair of hands that we were led to believe. And it seems to me to prove that decisions made in advance of the forecasts and scrutiny that go into the Budget are not a wise thing to do. [Post edited 6 Oct 13:18]
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Thread | The fiscal rules
at 08:21 26 Sep 2024
This, from the FT is to be welcomed, as I always thought the Tory fiscal rules were too tight and that Labour was wrong to stick to them. This report follows similar reports in the Guardian and the Telegraph in recent days.
Sir Keir Starmer has cleared the way for a big increase in capital spending at next month’s Budget, as his government won the backing of the Paris-based OECD for reforms to boost growth-enhancing public investment.
Speaking in New York, the prime minister said he wanted government spending to act as a “catalyst” to private investment, and signalled he believed the UK’s fiscal rules should be designed to aid capital spending. “I’ve always thought that we should borrow to invest,” he said.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves will set out revised fiscal rules at the Budget on October 30, with Whitehall insiders saying she wants to ensure they do not stop billions of pounds being invested in areas such as the green energy transition, roads and hospitals.
Before the election, Starmer slashed Labour’s flagship green spending plan from £28bn annually to just £4.7bn a year because of the fragile state of the public finances. Some of those cuts could now be reversed.
Starmer insisted there was a difference between borrowing to fund day-to-day spending and using public debt to finance investment, which he said could help grow the economy.
Speaking on the margins of the UN General Assembly, he told the BBC: “Borrowing and public investment have to come alongside private investment, to be a catalyst for it.”
His comments came as the OECD, a think-tank for 38 mostly rich countries, urged the UK to rewrite its “short-termist” fiscal rules to allow higher public investment that would drive growth.
Alvaro Pereira, the OECD’s chief economist, said the fiscal rules could lead to “the deterioration of the public finances in the long run”, given the need to improve Britain’s infrastructure and boost productivity.
The existing rules are based on a rolling five-year horizon, which Pereira said gives ministers an incentive to delay cuts in day-to-day spending but makes it hard to justify long-term investment.
Reeves paved the way for higher capital spending during a speech at the Labour party conference on Monday, in which she vowed to end the “low investment that feeds decline”.
Government officials are considering a range of options to loosen constraints on investment imposed by the existing fiscal rules, which require debt to fall as a share of GDP in five years’ time.
Reeves wants the Treasury to better recognise the benefits of investment, rather than primarily the costs.
As part of this, officials are examining alternative measures of the government balance sheet that reflect the assets created via investment, and not just the liabilities.
IMF researchers have argued that gauges of the government finances such as public sector net worth are more “conducive” to investment.
Another metric under examination in the Treasury is public sector net financial liabilities, which counts a wider range of assets than the existing government debt gauge, potentially substantially increasing budgetary headroom.
The government also wants to better reflect the assets of state investment vehicles such as its national wealth fund and Great British Energy, as well as their liabilities, or to shift them off the official balance sheet.
[Post edited 26 Sep 8:25]
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Thread | The Telegraph
at 09:10 25 Sep 2024
These are the headlines to articles in today's Telegraph, and this goes on day after day.
Not even CCHQ could match this. And whilst it's fun to see how paranoid they all are, does the paper not care about the mental health and sanity of its mainly elderly readers, who will be snorting into their G and Ts?
The state will take back control of people’s lives, says Starmer
Starmer took £20k for accommodation so son could sit GCSEs ‘undisturbed’
Why Sue Gray is a hypocrite – according to those who worked with her
Why Labour’s ‘aggressive’ attack on pensioners will ruin lives
Starmer’s slip-up shows how little he cares about Israel’s hostages
Starmer must declare war on the unions, or they’ll destroy him
When the last pub calls last orders it will be time to die
The fun police are back, and they’re ready to make our lives even more joyless
Just three months in, Labour has shown it has no inkling of how to support business
Clueless Starmer is blind to the scale of disaster to come
Who in Labour will speak for those with a lifetime’s work behind them?
Miliband is poised to wreck Britain – Starmer has little time to rein him in
Forget easy answers – Labour has no answers at all
[Post edited 25 Sep 9:13]
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Thread | Burgess and Woolfenden
at 15:36 23 Sep 2024
This sort of question must have been asked before, but would both Burgess and Woolfenden have travelled to Southampton just in case of injuries?
And if they did, what happens before, during and after a game? Are they in and around the changing rooms before the game? Are they able to sit with with the subs and trainers etc, or are they banished to somewhere else? Are they able to celebrate in the changing rooms with their team mates after the game?
The reason I ask is that I feel a bit for them (especially Burgess), and it would be nice to think they still feel part of the matchday experience, realising of course that I don't think they are permitted on the pitch with the subs. [Post edited 23 Sep 15:41]
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Thread | Phillip May must be disappointed
at 09:18 17 Sep 2024
He never had a wardrobe bought for him, a front row seat at London Fashion Week and a borrowed outfit for the occasion.
More seriously, Starmer and his wife's freeloading seems to me to be totally indefensible. [Post edited 17 Sep 9:39]
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Thread | Playing out from the back
at 09:27 15 Sep 2024
Muric is clearly a great shot-stopper and commands his area but having now seen him play in every league game, it does not seem to me that he is as good playing it out from the back, or playing it long, as Hladky.
And I realise it is difficult to judge after seeing him in only two games, but I do not get the impression that O'Shea offers as much in terms of playing it out from the back as Woolfy.
Having said this, it would appear to be the case that McKenna prefers the additional defensive solidity that Muric and presumably O'Shea offers us, and he knows far more than I do. But I did get the impression yesterday that lack of playing out from the back yesterday did mean we rarely got control of the ball and often played ourselves into danger. |
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Thread | Covid jab
at 09:28 13 Sep 2024
I am approaching 65 and booked my usual flu jab a couple of weeks ago.
I subsequently got a message saying I could have a Covid jab at the same time which is good news.
And this from a recent BBC article indicates that they have widened eligibility this winter. Perhaps its due to poor uptake in older groups, or perhaps they know something we don't.
"Who can get an NHS Covid booster jab this autumn?
The following groups will be able to have an NHS Covid booster between 3 October and 20 December:
over-64s
people aged between six months and 64 years with health conditions that make them more vulnerable
people living in care homes for older people
front-line health and social-care staff, including in care homes for older people"
[Post edited 13 Sep 9:28]
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Thread | Liberal Democrat hypocrisy?
at 10:50 12 Sep 2024
From the same article in today's Guardian.
[Darsi] details how the NHS experienced three shocks during the 2010s: austerity funding under the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government; Andrew Lansley’s “disastrous” reorganisation; and the arrival of Covid – the first two of which were “choices made in Westminster”.
Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat leader, said: “This report shows the NHS is on its knees after years of the Conservatives driving local health services into the ground.” Fixing the health service “is this country’s greatest challenge”, he added. [Post edited 12 Sep 10:51]
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Thread | How are our boys doing?
at 18:36 7 Sep 2024
and I don't mean the England or Ireland team. [Post edited 7 Sep 18:37]
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Thread | O'Shea
at 10:09 29 Aug 2024
didn't look as tall to me as Woolfy, and according to Wikipedia he is 6 ft 1 inch.
Maybe that is part of the explanation for the two goals we conceded, the crosses for each of which just went over the head of Burgess.
We also didn't have the height of a Hirst or Moore to compensate.
As regards O'Shea's playing out from the back, it was difficult to judge because Wimbledon didn't really press us. [Post edited 29 Aug 10:09]
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Thread | Perspective
at 10:14 25 Aug 2024
There is a case for saying at all the goals we conceded were self-inflicted, if you say that Muric shouldn't have overcommitted himself for the third, and should (from where I was sat) have been able to save fourth.
That being the case, Man City didn't create a barrel-load of other chances, the other chances they had mainly being in a crazy spell just after we fell to pieces, and when I feared we could go on to lose 10-1.
Of course, you could say that City took their foot off the ball but I thought we performed/defended admirably for much of the rest of the game. [Post edited 25 Aug 10:15]
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Thread | Too much content?
at 16:58 21 Aug 2024
I first started using TWDT in earnest and listening to Blue Monday and Kings of Anglia podcasts during lockdown because there was little else to do.
These days there is so much content (newspapers, radio, podcasts, Town TV, TV generally) that I find I just don't have the capacity or inclination to consume that much of it, and I limit myself to TWTD, the Star, the odd podcast from Blue Monday and Kings of Anglia, and Final Whistle on Radio Suffolk on the way home from games.
This post was prompted by yet more content, Town Rewind, but I am wondering whether any others feel the same as me.
[Post edited 21 Aug 17:02]
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Thread | Tugendhat is an idiot: Part 37
at 16:21 13 Aug 2024
I challenge anyone to read the extracts from Tugendhat's leadership speech, a bit lower down the following link, and conclude he is intellectually coherent.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2024/aug/13/conservative-leadership-co
Some highlights are the following.
After a lengthy passage listing everything he thinks is wrong with the modern UK, Tom Tugendhat finishes by describing it as “the greatest country on Earth”
I didn’t quite catch who it was, I think it was Christian Calgie of the Daily Express, who given the opportunity to ask a question of Tom Tugendhat, said:
"Mass immigration. Segregated communities. Lack of prison places. Weak justice for criminals. Importing identity politics from abroad. Looking at cracking down on freedom of speech. Collapsing social trust. This is just a shocking list of Tory failures, isn’t it?"
In a passage likely to draw a sharp response from the government, Conservative leadership hopeful Tom Tugendhat has accused the prime minister of “pretending” that he inherited full prisons and had to introduce an early release scheme.
In a marked contrast from shadow cabinet messaging during the recent riots in England and Northern Ireland, Conservative leadership hopeful Tom Tugendhat has accused the prime minister of failing the country in the last two weeks.
The BTL comments are worth reading, and this is my favourite.
"Further proof that the Tory party has an inexhaustible supply of idiots, bullsh*tters and batshi*t crazies." [Post edited 13 Aug 16:33]
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