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matruman.bsky.social
Former editor, Taxation Magazine; former LLM (Reader) Church of England; current PhD candidate researching implicit religion and lived theology in The Repair Shop.
273 posts 175 followers 207 following
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Sunak’s an RCB fan, what a surprise… #AnyoneButRCB
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Even 40 years ago many Con Clubs had a very tenuous, and not always helpful, relationship with the party. It wasn’t uncommon for them to operate an informal colour bar, for example.
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I agree, but that’s why I would have put BR IT up last budget. We desperately need to break the 50 year old idea that it only goes down.
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I get the point, but I just don’t think it works. Hunt cut worker NI by a third in 23-24 and no one noticed… The psychology of loss aversion seems to be getting worse to me.
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This is obviously right, but it’s almost impossible to do politically. The main negative impact is on pensioners, and look what’s happened with winter fuel allowance. “Why am I still paying for my pension when I’m already getting it?” etc etc.
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Politically, though, reform needs scope for cuts overall to reduce the negative impact, while accepting that those who benefit will give you little credit. Needed, say, 2% on IT last budget for headroom.
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And a wider lesson for democracies generally in these times: “The rise of chauvinistic, illiberal parties and movements is an international phenomenon. What that means for any particular country, however, depends on how mainstream conservative parties respond. “
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I had never realised that the difference between connected roundels linking two lines and one that covered both was the length of time it took to change.
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TBF Hugh Dennis was an excellent awards host. Read the brief, sat on the top table for the meal chatting with the guests, etc.
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Oh, I’d forgotten the dessicated coconut! I’d forgotten the apple too, but it’s on the front of the Vesta packet in the illustration.
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They also don’t know that PIP is paid regardless of work status.
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Or possibly from when people stopped putting sultanas in curries? That Vesta curry (which I remember well) has pineapple and apple in as well.
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What exactly are you basing those figures on?
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The impression given in that statement that it’s reciprocal (“our tax systems”) and somehow the Manx tax system is also suffering from U.K. based scheme providers is quite funny. But yes, a pragmatic move.
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True, though truer at HQ, I suspect, than the Oval where I go. Not so many blazers and ties, but a nice line in comfy trousers and old anoraks…
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It doesn't seem to occur to many so-called patriots that London has been & remains one of the world's great cities precisely because it is cosmopolitan & a home for immigrants & refugees.
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Nope, not cricket. Out by about a couple of decades either way - too young for a county championship match, too old for T20 on a Friday night. I never understood why they stopped the county matches in Covid; it was the ideal way to isolate old men in the open air metres away from anyone else…
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There was definitely a spate of TV programmes around that time, some sympathetic and some not, about people with very large families - a dozen or so children.
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I’m not sure that’s quite right? From what I remember from BL updates, they held the database of electronic legal deposit for all the libraries, and they recovered it. I think it’s just the interfaces - the other libraries are using an interim one, the BL is building a completely new system.
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I wonder what the overlap is, though? I make it about 1.8m who DO submit a return, and apparently just over 1m higher rate tax paying pensioners. If almost all of the latter are in the former it could work, though it would be a lot less revenue raised.
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There’s a simple problem with using the tax system to clawback the winter fuel allowance from higher earning pensioners. 85% of pensioners don’t complete a tax return.
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I think that speculating about the circumstances around a live criminal case is a very dangerous game. There’s a reason why all the reports about this since the arrests are so anodyne - see warnings passim ad infinitum from @barristersecret et al.
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And the key, defining feature of the Chatham House rule, the one that distinguishes it from all similar organisations that have sensitive discussions under a veil, is that _you can share anything you learn_
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Yes, 45% from 100k is looking more and more obvious. The PA thing was partly because it’s “worth more” to a top rate payer. The solution would be to replace it with a tax credit of £2500, but the amount of reprogramming of PAYE systems would be enormous.
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Oh, absolutely. I do wonder whether cakeism is getting to the point of no return, and that a really good communicator laying out unpalatable choices might be able to capture a broad centre majority at the next election.
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While that would have been politically easier, income tax is fairer - catches well-off pensioners and those paying themselves through dividends.
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But what do you pull eurorabbits out of…? A beret? A Tyrolean feathered hat?
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I had sort of assumed that they knew their tax promises were unkeepable and that they would put through some straightforward income tax rate rises in the first budget, then some proper system reform in the next. It’s almost too late now, and I hear there’s no big reforms being planned.
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Farage gets on TV a lot because he’s very good at TV. The piece you originally linked to is just some poor hack trying to keep the “live report” plates spinning. On the whole, BBC News is clearly centrist-left-leaning, doing its damnedest to be impartial.
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That’s one post in an ongoing live report/blog. It’s clearly been collated from social media posts, so it’s just who posted fastest. The idea that the BBC is pro-Reform and anti-EU doesn’t stand up to even the briefest scrutiny.
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That was an entirely untrue allegation by Margaret Hodge, actually about KPMG, and made under the protection of parliamentary privilege. www.taxation.co.uk/articles/201...
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Be wary of online accounts using tonight's events for engagement farming by posting unrelated yet dramatic images and videos and falsely linking them to Indian strikes. This video shows the Beirut explosion in 2020. It's unrelated to tensions between India and Pakistan.
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AIUI, they come through indirectly, though. E.g. you typically use a U.K. production Co to pick up the U.K. tax credit, which just gets reflected in the total cost passed on to the JV vehicle.