They own land, give them (easy) money!

Spotted by TBH in The Daily Mail:

Homeowners who run into financial trouble will be able to make reduced mortgage payments under a deal brokered by Chancellor Jeremy Hunt at a summit with bank bosses yesterday.

The Treasury said last night bank chiefs had agreed a series of measures to help struggling customers. Those who run into difficulty with payments will be offered targeted help, which could include a ‘short-term reduction in monthly payments’, a temporary switch to interest-only payments or extension of the mortgage term to reduce monthly costs.

Banks also agreed that households coming to the end of their fixed rates should be offered a new deal without another affordability test, provided they have kept up with payments.

This is how they will keep the credit/land price bubble going for another two or three years before the inevitable big financial crisis/house price crash in 2025. Apparently, a recent Welfare Reform Bill had similar measures for people claiming Universal Credit.

In my next life.....

 ... I am coming back as something decorative and useless.  People will simply write me cheques for how I look.

In this life I am certainly not decorative but annoyingly I am not quite useless.  I am just competent enough to set up, run and grow a business.  It's bloody hard work.

But what's the bloody point when the obviously useless get paid to fail and then get re-appointed?  Yes, I am thinking of you Mr Jeremy Hunt (in passing I think of 'Hunt' in his context as a spelling error).

And because I am not entirely useless I worry about this crap. If I was really useless (or really clever I suppose) I wouldn't.

Sigh.

Mind you this J Hunt got it nearly right - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Hunt

Tory top-job contender tax plans

Please tell me the ones who have suggested anything not covered here!

1. Sajid Javid:

"My priority will always be to cut the basic rate of tax. But if cutting top rate means more revenue, like what happened last time it was cut, that means more nurses, police, I would cut it if it gives us brings in more revenue and bigger public services."

It comes after he told the Sunday Telegraph he would be willing to cut the top rate of tax from 45p for the highest earners to inject more "dynamism" into the economy.

Nice bit of double think there, cutting the basic rate is his 'priority', but first he's going to reduce the 45% additional rate to the normal 40% higher rate. Half a mark, I guess.

2. Jeremy Hunt:

Jeremy Hunt has praised Donald Trump's economic record and suggested he could introduce similar tax cuts for business if he becomes prime minister.

The foreign secretary, who is one of 12 candidates standing to succeed Theresa May, said the US president had delivered "double the GDP growth that we have" and said we would want to "look at" the Republican's policy of "big business cuts in tax".

Epic fail, the Trump tax cuts were super-regressive and will simply lead to higher deficits to bugger up the next Democrat president. Let's also contrast this with what he was saying a year ago when he was still Health Secretary:

People are willing to pay higher taxes to fund the NHS, Jeremy Hunt has said, amid an ongoing row among senior ministers over how to secure the future of the health service.

The health secretary said the public was open to the idea of tax hikes to pay for healthcare "provided they can see that it is not being wasted", after a major report said the NHS would need £2,000 from every household to stay afloat.

3. Michael Gove:

"My economic plan is driven by the need to increase investment, productivity and wages across the country, with a special focus on helping those areas and regions where productivity is lower," he wrote.

"It would mean reducing the regulations which hold business back, cutting and reforming taxes - such as business rates - which put pressure on small businesses and undermine our high streets, using the opportunity of life outside the EU to look to replace VAT with a lower, simpler, sales tax," he added.

So the usual special pleading for owners of high street premises, boo, but at least he's mentioned the possibility of scrapping VAT. A sales tax would have pretty much the same damaging economic effects as VAT, but if handled correctly, could at least be neutral (or a bit more neutral than VAT) and a lot simpler to calculate and pay. Basically, all business-to-business supplies might as well be exempt, only the retailer/final seller needs to pay it over.

4. Sam Gyimah:

That’s why today I am pledging to abolish Britain’s five worst taxes – the taxes that do the most damage for the money they raise, and whose abolition will get us the most bang for our buck. I would:

* Make the Annual Investment Allowance unlimited.
* Index the tax thresholds to inflation – permanently.
* Replace business rates with a commercial land tax.
* Eliminate the personal allowance withdrawal for higher earners.
* Move towards abolishing stamp duty for homes under £1 million.

Clearly the best of the bunch.

'Commercial Land Tax' sounds a lot like LVT, there is so much we could sweep up into this besides Business Rates (SDLT on commercial premises, planning fees etc).

Before we think about reducing the 45% additional rate to 40% (Javid's suggestion), the really stupid thing that Brown/Darling introduced is the effective 60% rate for incomes between £100,000 and £125,000 (or £100,000 + twice the annual personal allowance), so well spotted Mr Gyimah!

If we could nudge him towards rejigging Council Tax in exchange for getting rid of SDLT (get rid of it entirely, stupid tax), then so much the better.

5. Andrea Leadsom:

The first cuts we need to make are to swearing.

F*** off.

6. Rory Stewart:

The international development secretary -- an outsider in the race to succeed Theresa May -- said he won’t make spending promises the U.K. can’t afford. Candidates who do so would put the country’s reputation for economic stability and competence at risk, Stewart said in a statement to Bloomberg on Wednesday.

“Candidates cannot on the one hand attack Jeremy Corbyn for fiscal irresponsibility and at the same time make unfunded promises,” Stewart said, referring to the opposition Labour Party leader. Some rivals’ plans are incompatible with the economic fallout from leaving the European Union without an agreement on Oct. 31, which they are also advocating, he said.

Fair point, but not very specific about what his plans are, if any.

Jeremy Hunt on top form.

From the BBC:

... the pay packets of some NHS senior managers will also be trimmed. Currently, more than a fifth of all directors in the NHS earn more than £142,500 - the amount the Prime Minister is paid. Mr Hunt is asking Trust bosses to justify why.

Mr Hunt said: "The NHS is a public service and needs to show restraint on handing out generous pay packages as a matter of course.

"Expensive staffing agencies are quite simply ripping off the NHS. It's outrageous that taxpayers are being taken for a ride by companies charging up to £3,500 a shift for a doctor. The NHS is bigger than all of these companies, so we'll use that bargaining power to drive down rates and beat them at their own game."

Simon Stevens, chief executive of NHS England, has said the rising costs are partly due to hospitals putting more nurses on wards, following the public inquiry into the Stafford Hospital scandal. Others blame government mismanagement of the NHS.

I'm not sure that the NHS is "being ripped off" so much as "chucking money down the toilet", so Hunt is being generous to them. If you need permanent staff, then employ permanent staff; and to the extent that they have to balance out peaks and troughs, there is no earthly reason why the NHS can have its own pool of nurses in each area, it can't be rocket science to co-ordinate this.

Three cheers for Jeremy Hunt

From The Daily Mail:

A panel of scientific advisers had recommended in October 2013 that the vaccine should not be introduced as it was not deemed cost-effective. But ministers told the Joint Committee of Vaccination and Immunisation to carry out another assessment and this concluded last March that it should be offered.

The Government then spent almost a year negotiating with drugs manufacturers trying to agree a cheaper price. On Saturday, the Mail highlighted how the jab was being denied to babies because of the cost row. Nearly 800,000 babies each year would be eligible for the jab at an average annual cost of £16million.

It's an impossible problem*, and fair play to Jeremy Hunt for going on telly and fronting it out.

The other good news is that a lot of health services around the world take the price the NHS have negotiated as their benchmark price and end up paying the same low-ish amount.

* On the one hand, the marginal cost to the manufacturer is pennies per dose.

But the value to the 'customer' is huge. The approximate cost to the NHS can be estimated in £millions, but how do you estimate the cost of the death and disability of possibly hundreds of people a year, i.e. the value of avoiding it?

The NHS wants to pitch the price closer to the pennies per dose (plus a reasonable contribution towards R&D costs) and the manufacturer wants to hold out for a price which is nearer the value to the customer. The difference is 'rent'. This wasn't an example of the UK government being hard hearted or intransigent, it was the manufacturer who was holding us all to ransom.

And how do you trade off that cost/benefit with the cost/benefit of all the other things people would like the NHS to do? The NHS/Jeremy Hunt's basic argument is (or should be) "Look, we are terribly sorry for the tragedies which have happened over the past couple of years, but with the money we've saved, we'll be able to treat lots of other people for other things."

Readers' letters of the day

From today's Metro:

When Alex Salmond first went to Downing Street to discuss the questions on the ballot paper with David Cameron, he wanted Yes/No and devo max tick boxes but Mr Cameron and the other two parties only wanted Yes/No.

Now, suddenly, Gordon Brown comes to Scotland offering the people of Scotland devo max if they vote No. To me, this is what Mr Salmond wanted. Now devo max might be given without the people voting for it.

Andrew Nutt, South Wales.
--------------------
As I understand it, at the momembet Scottish and other EU students, with the exception of those from the remainder of Britain, do not pay university tuition fees. After independence, the rest of the UK will have to be treated as any other EU country.

It follows that a Scottish government will have to choose between allowing UK students to study without these fees, or introducing fees for all. A hard choice to be made between allowing a flood of English, Welsh and Northern Irish applicatns, or imposing fees on Scottish students.

David Moss, Lancashire.
--------------------
So health secretary Jeremy Hunt wants to fine people for visiting A&E. What about people who do extreme sports? What about the person who crosses the road in the wrong place?

I don't get drunk but this suggestion is stupid.

Jean Prior, Hertfordshire.

Remaining clueless 'would make consultants Billions'

From the BBC:

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt wants the NHS to remain clueless about IT projects until 2018 - a move a report says could help make consultants billions of pounds a year.

In a speech, Mr Hunt will say a first step is to give consultants really big projects that won't be ready by March 2015.And by April 2018, any remaining projects will still be running.

PwC suggests a potential £4.4bn could be put into their pockets by running lots of projects going around in circles.

In a speech to think tank Policy Exchange, Mr Hunt will say hospitals should plan to start drawing up large, complicated contracts that restrict them to a limited number of suppliers, probably using some poor software that they bought off the shelf and have to do thousands of changes to because of various arcane NHS rules, with live dates of March 2015.

This will means that consultants will have penalty clauses and change requests for all the times that the NHS changes its mind.

"We need to continue to be clueless about sorting out the structure of the NHS, or using clear, staged deliverables with a strong project sponsor, so that consultants can continue taking the piss and ensuring that people are still wheeling files around the NHS like it's the 70s" he will say.

Mr Hunt's comments come as a report by PwC said whatever Mr Hunt wanted, as he pays the bills and every consultancy knows that you tell the client what they want to hear.

Labour says the public will struggle to understand why they're criticising the Tories for wasting the money on the same projects that they did.

Oh gosh, what a surprise...

... says Bob E, who emailed in this one-two-three-gotcha exchange between the Labour opposition, the civil servants and the Conservative government:

So, late Friday or early Saturday first this:

Ban high-sugar cereals to tackle child obesity, says Andy Burnham

Labour targets foods that can be over one-third sugar as OECD report says English children are among fattest in Europe.

And did the Department of Health have anything to say about this "demand"?

But the Department of Health said it has helped reduce the levels of fat, sugar and salt in foods. A spokesman said: "By working with industry through the Responsibility Deal we have helped to reduce fat, sugar and salt in foods. There is now less salt in the food we buy, companies are cutting and capping calories and artificial trans fats are being widely taken out of food.

"We are working to reduce the amount of salt in food further, cut saturated fat consumption and we are exploring how to promote healthier food choices more widely. We also want more businesses making pledges so we get bigger results."

... and yet, a scant few hours later ...

Childhood obesity: Jeremy Hunt threatens food industry with legislation

Supermarkets and manufacturers told to get 'their house in order' or face laws to curb high levels of sugar and fat in food

The health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has said he will consider introducing new laws to limit the amount of sugar, salt and fat in processed foods to curb childhood obesity but said he wanted to give supermarkets and manufacturers a chance to get their "house in order" before resorting to legislation.

The comments come after his Labour counterpart, Andy Burnham, announced a consultation on capping sugar and fat levels in food targeted at children. Hunt criticised the former health secretary for failing to tackle the problem while he was in power, and said Labour had left the nation with the highest childhood obesity rate in Europe.

Olympic Tourism

From The Independent:

[Jeremy Hunt] said he was not disappointed by reports of empty streets and a dramatic fall in trade since the Games began.

"It is very difficult to predict what will actually happen to consumer spending in one part of London during something like an Olympic games because the upheaval is so huge. We are hoping to come away net positive in terms of the overall period of the Games but we don't know."

Well, not really. Economists have looked at the figures for the last three Olympiads and if Jeremy Hunt had done the same, he'd know that they show no or little tourism boost, either short- or long-term from hosting the Olympics.

What you get from the Olympics is a three-week sporting/marketing festival. That's it. Love the sport, but it has to be pointed out that we are paying a huge amount of money for the right to see the handball from the inside of a stadium in London rather than the inside of a stadium in Paris.

Hunt sabotages self

It's all right for some

Spotted by DNAse in The Guardian:

London's Olympic Village has been sold to the Qatari ruling family's property company in a deal that leaves UK taxpayers £275m out of pocket. Qatari Diar, the oil-rich state's investment arm, and UK property developer Delancey Estates teamed up to buy the athletes' village next to the Olympic Park in east London for £557m...

Qatari Diar and Delancey plan to turn the bulk of their share of the residences – 1,439 properties – into private rental accommodation, rather than selling them. They say this will create the first UK private sector residential fund of more than 1,000 homes to be owned and directly managed as an investment....

Jeremy Hunt, the culture secretary, hailed the sale as a "fantastic deal that will give taxpayers a great return and shows how we are securing a legacy from London's Games". The village cost £1.1bn to build, but the ODA insisted it never expected to recoup building costs. "It was an entirely empty site, it didn't have any infrastructure, roads or parks. There was always going to be a public sector contribution to help put those in," said a spokesman.

He added: "We weren't just looking for the highest bidder, but for the best owner with long-term commitment." He said the ODA supported the property investors' plans to turn most of the residences into rental accommodation...

The ODA had to dip into the Olympic contingency fund and use £324m of public funds after a private developer, Lend Lease, failed to put forward a funding package in 2009 due to the financial crisis. That money will now be repaid to the Olympic budget out of the village sale proceeds – this has been uncertain during the economic downturn.

What on earth is Jeremy Hunt talking about, is there anybody who buys land and buildings in the UK without a "long term commitment" and the whole things was taxpayer-funded, why on earth were they not sold to the highest bidder, to the extent that they had to be sold at all? Why not just keep them and collect the rental income on behalf of the UK taxpayer?