Can we afford the Triple Lock? Not as a low tax partyA tale of two conference speeches: Ed Davey declared the Lib Dems to be the party of low taxes, and outlined £17bn of tax cuts to Income Tax and Fuel Duty, paid for by making a better deal with the EU, whilst Andy Burnham proposed a National Care Service – with an estimated cost of £18bn according to the Health Foundation. Burnham proposed funding this by adjusting the Triple Lock – although he didn't explain it that well in the speech. The new approach will tackle the "ratchet" effect – where inflation is high one year, wages grow high in ... (more) |
Ian Anderson on the old hippies who used punk to get on in musicEmbed from Getty ImagesIan Anderson of Jethro Tull has given Louder a guided tour of the band's many albums. When it gets to 1978 and Heavy Horses, he says: You have to remember, this was at the time punk's final embers were burning out and you had bands like The Police and The Stranglers, who were, collectively speaking, a bunch of old hippies. The brave new world of punk rock had perhaps become commercialised at that point. But bands like those two used punk as a means to get their foot in the door, just as I did with the ... (more) |
Lawrence Hogben, Pressure and the meteorologists of D-DayLawrence Hogben (1916-2015) was of the meteorologists who produced the vital weather forecasts before the D-Day landings in Normandy in 1944. This, of course, is the process dramatised in this year's film Pressure. In 1994, Hogben wrote about those days for the London Review of Books: "Everything on the Normandy beachhead will hang on your weather," said the D-Day planners, assuming that we meteorologists had total control of the elements. "Just name us five fine, calm days and we'll go." A hundred years of weather records suggested there was no hope of their getting this. They limited their demand to ... (more) |
Labour's new vape tax is disastrous policymakingOn Thursday, Labour's new vape tax came into effect. Vaping Products Duty charges £2.20 per 10ml of vape liquid. Because VAT is charged on top of the duty, the real cost at the till is £2.64. In practice, an average £3.00 bottle of 10ml liquid will now cost £5.64, an 88% price hike. VPZ, the UK's largest vape retailer, surveyed 2,640 of its customers ahead of the tax coming into force and found that 63% say it will be harder for them to stay off cigarettes and tobacco, 21% say they may return to smoking, and 34% say they will ... (more) |
Welcome to my day: 5 October 2026 - it's beginning to feel a lot like AGM season...For those of us who have been officers of Local Parties, Associated Organisations or any of the other myriad bodies across the Party who hold elections, this is the time of year when things change, and the cycle of persuading people to hold the positions that keep the show on the road begins anew. But as someone who hasn't been perhaps as active as in years past, I can now be a bit more relaxed. People don't necessarily ask me to be things, they ask me to run their elections instead. And that reminds me that the Party relies on ... (more) |
Green's split over 'Zionism is racism' policyHas the Green Party's bubble burst? The Mirror reports that things are not looking so rosy for Zach Polanski and the Green Party after their favourable bump in the polls has largely subsided, and Polanski's own ratings are not where he'd like them to be. They add that the Holborn and St Pancras by-election on Thursday, triggered by Keir Starmer's unexpected resignation as an MP, could well prove to be reckning for the Green Party leader if he doesn't perform as well as expected. And now a vote at their party conference looks like it has added to their troubles. ... (more) |
One in the eye for the Tory Bayeux Tapestry as Labour hits backOver on Beelzebub's Picture Book, the Labour Press account has posted this neat response to the Conservatives weird take on the Bayeux tapestry. (more) |
The Joy of Six 1586Jonathan Freedland argues that the Greens' anti-Zionism motion is yet another attempt to tell Jews what they should think: "In each generation, those making such demands of Jews believe they are acting in a righteous cause. The Christian persecutors of the Inquisition were sure that they were honouring Jesus; today's Greens are certain they are advancing the cause of anti-racism, even as they would hound and defame and shame a tiny minority." "Money matters in politics, especially if you have a lot of it. Alistair McAlpine understood this all too well. 'If you've got £1 million or £2 million to ... (more) |
What do Britain's death-penalty cheerleaders have to say about Christa Pike?When I was a little boy the whole of the United Kingdom knew when someone was going to be legally executed by the state. Hangings, which was the method used, were only carried out very rarely and indeed the UK has always had a very low murder rate compared to other countries especially the United States of America. They were always carried out at 8:00 in the morning and at 8:10 the newsreaders of the Today programme would solemnly read out the official death proclamation. It may reside in my childish imagination, but it seemed to me at the time ... (more) |
This is Lorelei: Billy Come BackFor most of his life, Nate Amos made music just to get through the day, writes Jazz Monroe in the Guardian: There was plenty of it: dozens of self-produced albums and EPs uploaded - since his This Is Lorelei project launched in 2012 - to what was then a plucky, independent platform called Bandcamp. Now 35, he is perhaps the quintessential Bandcamp artist: part bedroom-pop whiz, part alt-country troubadour, part indie rock rascal with a big, heavy heart. His peers treat him like a lost folk hero from a bygone era. And his new album as This is Lorelei? The ... (more) |