Bus cap definitely being reduced to £2 got reported on today, starting from January excellent news. As I've said on it before, you need to encourage the use of public transport because it drives economic activity in other areas and eases the car burden on commercial centres.

also Ed Miliband has one of the most impressive careers of any parliamentarian currently sitting in the house and has numerous great moments far more important than his election loss, I've not been banging on about him doing a stellar job at energy for the last 2 years for nothing - and the right-wing rags' seething hatred of him only confirms how right I am.

they're also briefing about how Miatta Fahnbulleh called for net zero target to be accelerated, as if that's a bad thing.

13 hours ago, Iz様 🌟 said:

Bus cap definitely being reduced to £2 got reported on today, starting from January excellent news. As I've said on it before, you need to encourage the use of public transport because it drives economic activity in other areas and eases the car burden on commercial centres.

also Ed Miliband has one of the most impressive careers of any parliamentarian currently sitting in the house and has numerous great moments far more important than his election loss, I've not been banging on about him doing a stellar job at energy for the last 2 years for nothing - and the right-wing rags' seething hatred of him only confirms how right I am.

You should read what they're saying in the newspaper comments underneath articles about him. Calling him Milibland and an imbecile. Trump dislikes him over net zero so bound to fail they say! Worse FS than even Boris and he was bad. Also never forgetting how he betrayed his poor brother who's actually made millions more than him on the US. And that bacon sandwich....lol.

Edited Thursday at 08:142 days by CRAZY CHRIS

4 minutes ago, CRAZY CHRIS said:

You should read what they're saying in the newspaper comments underneath articles about him. Calling him Milibland and an imbecile. Trump dislikes him over net zero so bound to fail they say! Worse FS than even Boris and he was bad. Also never forgetting how he betrayed his poor brother who's actually made millions more than him ion the US. And that bacon sandwich....lol.

It's like these people weren't consciously aware of anything for the last decade given they resort to such old trite lines.

As always: Discussing current actually happening policy announcements >>> reliving the past.

20% cut on business rates for hospitality from next April announced this morning as Burnham's quickfire turns to helping out pubs and restaurants. The places people want to see in their communities, so far paid for by taxing those we don't want, e.g. vape shops, more.

Excellent strategy.

Yes two good first policies but as one of the papers said, most single stop bus fares are less than £2 anyway. Here, £1.75 with an Oyster. Daily cap is £4,50. We have free OAP passes anyway now.

Very clever strategy to drip feed good news policies slowly over the first few days in office, it means it dominates the headlines for a day and sticks in people's minds.

They're good policies, but nothing groundbreaking so far. That said, it is nice to see something positive after the effective continued austerity of 'short term pain for long term gain' or 'tough but fair decisions'. Starmer's government occasionally had some good policies as well, they just a) didn't communicate them well and b) were often too incremental. The way this has been delivered at least (so far), sorts the first problem, if not the second.

Cutting VAT on energy is welcome, even if it won't come to much with prices rising, but at least it's a counterbalance. Lower bus fares will help a lot of people, and always up for supporting pubs and live music venues, they desperately need something at the moment. Don't know if targeting vape shops to pay for it is enough, but no one really likes them and it's one kind of shop I wouldn't mind see closing down in droves.

Hoping to see something on student loans (specifically that threshold freeze), income tax thresholds, nationalisation of water and energy (I know there's been murmuring on all of these, but nothing official yet), and dare I say in terms of funding, windfall taxes on oil and gas companies raking in record profits*, closing loopholes for tax avoiding companies such as Amazon or even individual wealth taxes over £10 million and a capital gains review. But I'm not holding my breath.

*Also, on this note, if this North Sea nonsense is going ahead, can it at least be set up like Norway so it's not all sold on the global market by private companies with no benefit to the UK? Thanks. x