2024 UK politics - now with Labour in charge
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Even HS2 which is massive is still quite small as a percent of the annual budget and there will always be projects of that nature. What is important is working out the benefits that should arise from the capital expenditure. The problem with something like that though is the capital costs are hard to know (HS2's budget keeps changing) in advance and the benefits are even less certain. Transport projects are notoriously hard to forecast. Still, although the initial railways were built by private companies, something like HS2 will not built by anything other than the state, so they should just crack on.
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If you've ever read the economic justification for a road improvement you'll know how meaningless they are.
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Maybe I am answering the wrong question and I'm not a macroeconomist, but I don't see the point of 5 year economic forecasts for the whole country.
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Suspect it's because beyond 5 years it's just a vague guess.
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
I think it's fine to have five year forecasts of government spending and revenue, but makes no sense for that to justify a decision that you can "afford" a national insurance cut this year because in 2029, the forecast says that you are going to be borrowing 13bn less than in 2028.
I don't know which fiscal rule it is that means they can't "afford" to maintain the winter fuel allowance through another winter.
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How so? They primarily value time savings which people and businesses value. The UK's appraisal system is generally considered to be world-leading. How else do you propose to justify them?
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No HS2 needs scrapping - a huge waste of time and resources.
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It certainly is now as most of the money has already been committed.
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
Time savings for traffic turned into financial value somehow for the 60 years after construction. Theoretical accident reduction over a 60 year period turned into a value. Time lost during construction turned into a value on a very generous assumption. Including indirect tax revenues from time saved. That kind of thing.
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Apparently A&E waiting times are killing c.14,000 people per year.
higher hit rate per year than the British military has lost to the enemy entirely since ww2 🫡
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First sentence is shocking! Second sentence surprises me in that it is more than 1/10th and so high.
The above may be fact, or fiction, I may be serious, I may be jesting.
I am not sure. You have no chance.Veronese68 wrote:PB is the most sensible person on here.0 -
Assets fine, but fairly worthless for corporates.
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Well quite. The UK's transport appraisal methodology is probably as good as it gets, along the lines you note. If you've a better idea I'm sure DfT would be delighted to hear from you...
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I'm not expecting agreement, but cancel road plans and build public transport. Build it and they will come eg Elizabeth line.
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...or on a much more minor level, just a couple of stations on the Exmouth line. The local press lambasted them at the time of opening for the 'folly', but they had over 800k entries & exits in 2023.
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Not really. Partly for that reason.
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The fun bit is after leverage PE performance mirrors public equities - who knew!
and all that for less liquidity so they can pay themselves more.
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No there won't. You've made something up again. Try not to.
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All those oldies dying and no longer being a burden plus saving on NHS spending. Sounds positively Chasian policy.
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He really is either as thick as pigshit, or thinks we are (or both, I suppose). This was all under their watch.
Perhaps we can build some wind turbines instead.
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You're only saying that because you really, really want it not to be the case. Unfortunately you'll be disappointed. Happy to update you on future departures on top of those already reported 🙂
"I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
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Yeah that’s absolutely right.
What’s weird is the treasury seems to have learned the wrong lesson from the Truss debacle.
The markets lost their shit not because it was “too much borrowing” planned, but because it was an aggressively inflationary policy heading into an already very high inflation period, which would have meant really very dramatic rate rises to compensate, and so basically force a major recession to get it back under control.
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Not sure the extent to which that matters. Eventually steel will need to be produced some other way, so we should as a nation try to be at the forefront of that, whether it's hydrogen, coke from biomass (although every industry wants a bit of that and theres not enough to go around) or electrolysis (which I suspect is a dead end).
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And in the latest news on the exodus of the wealthy from the UK, Reeves is being pressured to introduce an exit tax to try to stem the flow:
"I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
Stevo, you are going to have to learn more about tenses in the English language, so that you can understand what's not happened.
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