Do they think we are stupid?

 We all know that the current crop of Labour MPs are not blessed with intelligence or basic maths skills but the now Housing Secretary "City" Steve Reed seems to be setting new depths at basic maths. In his speech at the Lloyd's Banking Group Social Housing Forum on the 6th July he said  "Taxpayers pay tens of billions in benefits to subsidise private landlords to rent out homes that taxpayers also paid to build." Either he is stupid or he is a liar.   Firstly I would say 99% of private landlords did not buy former council houses from the government.  They paid market rate + additional stamp duty to buy an asset that the government were stupid enough to sell at a 70% discount on market rate to the former renter.  Surely City Steve should get that providing massive discounts on this scale is ludicrous. In a recent blog post I analysed the current house building programme  and the social housing rents do not even cover the cost of finance. It would take ...

 NHS consultants have voted to go on strike over pay. If it's not Junior Doctors striking it's someone else in the NHS.  It seems the poor little darlings are struggling on a base salary of £152,000 per year + 23.7% employer pension contribution of £36,024 per year.  They can also get extra money for additional clinical sessions, on-call and Clinical Excellence Awards.  That also ignores the private work they can also do.  So it's quite a tidy little package. So by any stretch of the imagination the 63k consultants in England, 5k in Scotland, 2.5k in Wales and 1.5k in Northern Ireland are hardly poorly paid.  They are in the top 1% of highest paid people in the UK. Or to put it another pay - NHS Consultants make up 20% of all of the top 1% highest paid people in the UK. Of course the NHS is paid for out of taxes so these are public sector workers and therefore have to paid for out of taxation. NHS Consultants recently had an inflation busting 28% pay rise ...

 Labour tax adviser Dan Needle has suggested to Burnham that means testing the state pension could save £1 Billion to fund more freebies for those on benefits. I have a serious problem with this.  Firstly Labour consider a pensioner couple with  a combined gross income of £51,376 to be rich. However the retirements Standards states that for comfortable retirement a couple needs a gross income of £60,600 per year -  which is greater than the threshold Labour consider pensioners to be rich. If you engage with any adviser for retirement planning they factor in the state pension into the mix. The current state pension is £241.30 per week per person so assuming the couple have contributed enough then each will receive £12,547 per year which combined is £25,095 per year. That's 41% of the £60,600 joint income to be considered to be comfortable and 48.8% of Labour's rich pensioner threshold. So means testing eligibility for the state pension could actually leave those who h...

 The King of the North seems to want to put his devolved No 10 in Manchester - presumably for an easy commute.  Why Manchester and not Rotherham or Leeds? Manchester does have a high productivty rating - because of the Busy Bee population of Manchester - but the top performing town/city is Slough. Why not put No 10 there? Leeds is a vibrant fast growing city.  Excellent transport links which would allow access from around the country being more central than London. Rotherham is the fastest growing town in the UK in the last decade. Why not put No 10 there? I guess the commute for Andy is less convenient....

 Enter Starmer stage left Practice nasal tone... My fellow Britons, Now let me be clear.  I am here to announce something which will cause great sadness in the electorate. This is a moment of national mourning. A moment of great loss.  My thoughts are with the electorate at this difficult time and it will be hard for Britain to accept this loss.  I get it. I promised to put country before party but now is the time to put myself before party and party before country. But there is hope.  This is a serious moment for our country. It requires serious leadership, serious decisions, and, above all, serious people saying the word "serious" with sufficient seriousness. After careful reflection, I have decided to resign as Prime Minister. I get it. People are frustrated. People want change. People have questions. I've seen the polls. I've read the newspapers. I've avoided answering any questions at PMQ.  I've even listened to the Today programme. I was even consider...

 As the coronation of Burnham rolls ahead there is lots of speculation about who will be in his cabinet. It seems Rachel will be replaced which is concerning .  The alternatives seem dire and she is the best the Labour party has to offer although I think she's pretty useless.  In the real world candidates would sit exams and be screened on their ability but those rules don't apply in government.   To help Andy I've developed this little exam to screen candidates.  Rachel scored 50%.  Let's see if any of the candidates are clever enough to match Rachel's top score.  Feel free to do the test: Q1:  What is 1+1 ? Q2:  You are taking over an economy that raises £868 Billion / year from taxation and spends £1.2 Trillion / year.  You are borrowing money each month on the gilt markets simply to service the £3 trillion debt and cover the spending shortfall.  Your are forecast to increase the debt to £3.5 Trillion by the election term....