I like the changes to car parking fines that Burnham's pushing through, that and the £100 fine for headphones, a pretty deliberate strategy to tackle all the small little annoyances that end up grinding people down. Good strategy.

Agreed on the headphones thing. I don't know why people even do it. I cannot make sense of it at all.

6 minutes ago, Hassaan said:

Agreed on the headphones thing. I don't know why people even do it. I cannot make sense of it at all.

Its mostly the shorter bursts of music that probably are Tiktok videos that people play out loud on public transport in my experience.

Edited October 20Oct 20 by TheSnake

46 minutes ago, TheSnake said:

Its mostly the shorter bursts of music that probably are Tiktok videos that people play out loud on public transport in my experience.

I don't get it. Surely you can't hear it that well anyway.

1 hour ago, Hassaan said:

I don't get it. Surely you can't hear it that well anyway.

I was on a train recently and someone watched TikToks for the whole 90 minutes on full blast. Where is the respect for the other passengers?

23 minutes ago, LTScream said:

I was on a train recently and someone watched TikToks for the whole 90 minutes on full blast. Where is the respect for the other passengers?

That's just weird to me. What do you gain from that?

On 20/10/2026 at 20:10, Brett-Butler said:

Perron Moon, the MP for Camborne and Redruth, has become the second Labour MP to be suspended from the party for suspected impropriety on paying back Covid loans.

That’s his real name?

On 20/10/2026 at 22:41, LTScream said:

I was on a train recently and someone watched TikToks for the whole 90 minutes on full blast. Where is the respect for the other passengers?

I bet loads of them had that maddening wheeze laugh as well

12 hours ago, Steve201 said:

That’s his real name?

Short for Peregrine but yes - what's wrong with that? Proper Cornish name that is.

Good to see process like this still ticking along though, don't want to see corruption in government- pending investigation in this case. A self-referral and he's insisting that he complied with rules so we'll see.

3 hours ago, Jacob- said:

Short for Peregrine but yes - what's wrong with that? Proper Cornish name that is.

Good to see process like this still ticking along though, don't want to see corruption in government- pending investigation in this case. A self-referral and he's insisting that he complied with rules so we'll see.

It’s just unique that’s all 😂 can’t imagine a Labour Mp in Camborne surviving more that 1/2 elections anyway!

Emergency rationing. They are nervous about el niño and maaaybe Putin bombing a power station

Possibly not a long term Labour seat, but having lived in/ near to that area for a while, I know that Falmouth, Redruth and Cambourne have fairly strong Labour bases, despite Cornwall as a whole being traditionally Liberal/ Lib Dem, and obviously a Tory base which comes from the most rural areas. The constituency changing from Falmouth and Cambourne separated out those bases in 2010.

Budget out - mixed feelings.

They've rowed back on the Cash ISA change, which isn't great as this means more risk-averse attitudes to saving. Decent work on cost of living and taxes to readjust and make things marginally fairer, happily not going gung-ho on defence despite Healey's previous resignation.

Shrug budget but there seems to be more done than the ones under Starmer and Reeves and hopefully nothing too egregious that will have their opponents droning on for months afterwards?

Seems I'm eligible for the household energy payment...I mean I'm grateful and it's a nice thing to do, but prices are just ridiculous here that I'm pretty sure it'll be a drop in the ocean of what I have to pay for winter overall.

Not a bad budget, some good things like getting rid of the standing price on gas, but feels a bit minimal and not really got a whole lot to shout about, I do appreciate they're prioritising help rather than the doom and gloom message we got last time.

I'm happy they have stuck with the £20,000 for ISA (not that I have 20k to put into it) as I do put a portion of my wage into one so that does benefit me personally. Also think the budget isn't too bad, could have been braver but not massively disappointed at the same time.

Also qualify for the Winter Fuel payment but as Chez said, I'm pretty sure it will be a drop in the ocean to what costs are going to be this winter. I'm deliberately refusing to put the heating on at the minute despite it being freezing in my house keep using blankets and jumpers instead. Putting it off for as long as I can to save money.

Sin taxes on gambling and vape shops, which I’m happy with. Nothing else to get excited about.

It's fine but hardly keeping up with the rhetoric of ending 40 years of neoliberalism. It really feels like business as usual and pretending it's not, albeit with some slightly more positive moves than previous years, in some areas. More tinkering done a bit cleverer and with better comms. Marginally better than Starmer's government, a lot better than the Tories, nothing too exciting. It'll never be a ground-breaking change of the system while Labour are still sticking to those infernal fiscal rules, originally more or less copied from the Tories, lest we forget.

Good to see taxes on banks (easy sell, after they were bailed out in 2008), talk of clamping down on loopholes for online retailers and taxes on gambling, good stuff, but disappointing to see nothing with capital gains and no move towards other tax increases on the higher end. Still waiting on those taxes on oil and gas giants and failing water companies raking in record profits.

The £100 will be very welcome (I believe it's going to work by just coming off council tax?) but it's one month of relief. Nice, but not lifechanging, and likely largely wiped out by price increases. It is good to get a bit of hope, rather than endless "tough decisions" mind you.

Also great to see more on rough sleeping, so good to see a government actually making significant moves to tackle homelessness.

It's what wasn't there that has me disappointed. Still keeping the fiscal drag of ever increasingly painful income tax thresholds. Personal allowance frozen for 6 years now (in effect, 8 years because the 2021 increase from 2019 was a pitiful £70), now doubling it up with the fiscal drag for the exploitative student loans for those that have them. Really feeling increasingly more bitter about my loan with each passing year. It's a broken system built on mis-selling a financial product to minors and apparently no political party has the balls to do something about it, but I digress.

I don't want to see pensioners on the absolute bare minimum state pension start paying tax, it's only really enough money to live on if said pensioner owns their own home and has paid off a mortgage, but they could've upped the personal allowance for workers too and avoided the issue that way - it's only running into this problem because of that damn personal allowance freeze. I appreciate that costs more, but the endless catering to pensioners as a specific group while ignoring everyone else is getting really tiresome, slight tweak to the triple lock in the next parliament notwithstanding.

I'm very happy to pay tax to get good services, but it can't all be collected from income tax staying frozen in perpetuity, ordinary people will just slowly get worse off over time, they won't spend as much, and the economy will slow, therefore less VAT collected, etc etc.

It’s funny how Labour can’t win with these budgets - don’t spend enough your not Labour enough, show fiscal prudence and you are underwhelming people. Did people really think neoliberalism was going to be gone in one chancellors budget?