Former director, @pricedoutuk | geeky liberal | YIMBY
Oxford, Oxford-Cambridge Arc
Joined April 2009
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Duncan Stott 🏗️🔰🇺🇦 retweeted
yes, the times I’ve been to Oxford street with any of my children (two of which currently toddlers) I have always thought to myself: thank god for this huge main road next to this overcrowded pavement!
Duncan Stott 🏗️🔰🇺🇦 retweeted
Such a blackpill that people have been complaining about this for years and neither Labour nor the Tories have done anything about it for all the years they’ve been in power. Surely this should be such a simple fix?
Duncan Stott 🏗️🔰🇺🇦 retweeted
Wonder if an unexpected announcement in tomorrow's Budget will be to reverse the freeze Rachel Reeves imposed on the student loan repayment threshold
The Treasury Select Committee, in its recent report, said this would be a 'modest fiscal reversal' and is a critical moral obligation
Tonight, ahead of Wednesday's Budget, 128 MPs and peers have signed my letter to the Chancellor on student loans. It builds on the letter Sadik Al-Hassan sent in August, and the cross-party support keeps growing.
My recent parliamentary questions found more than 2 million graduates saw their debt go up despite making regular repayments. Nurses, teachers and engineers paying in every month and still falling behind.
As a Plan 2 graduate, I know what it's like to sign up to one deal and be made to repay on another. No other lender could get away with it.
On Wednesday, the Chancellor must:
❌ Stop the Plan 2 threshold freeze before it hits pay packets in April 2027
📉 Scrap RPI for a fairer interest rate, like CPI
🔒 Guarantee loan terms will never again be changed retrospectively
No party that's governed in recent decades comes to this with clean hands. That's why it needs all of us to fix it.
A generation was promised a deal. Wednesday is the chance for this new Chancellor to honour it.
👇 Full letter below.
Duncan Stott 🏗️🔰🇺🇦 retweeted
Against a target of 1.5 million homes built in five years, we are on track for 856,000 (57%). Such an abject failure would in any other venture require an urgent change of strategy. Here, they just quietly abandon the target.
ft.com/content/285af47d-a0cc…
Duncan Stott 🏗️🔰🇺🇦 retweeted
Labour’s housebuilding target ‘effectively dead’ ft.trib.al/CofnHZE
Duncan Stott 🏗️🔰🇺🇦 retweeted
Socialism is supporting the local petit bourgeoisie and the more you support the local property owners the more socialist it is
Duncan Stott 🏗️🔰🇺🇦 retweeted
what happened to the promised parallel cycle route to divert cyclists away from Oxford Street? it's currently "on hold" awaiting direction from Westminster transport lead @timjmitchell. Officers say there is "Lack of clarity on direction and delivery mechanism"
Duncan Stott 🏗️🔰🇺🇦 retweeted
imagine if someone suggested cramming all these people onto the pavements to make space for motor traffic down the middle
Pensions policy ought to help 60 something's gradually transition into retirement. Reduce hours or switch to a part-time job, rather than go straight to fully retired in one moment.
This horrible fudge on income tax incentivises the opposite.
One issue we face when we begin to draw down from our pensions is that we probably want to still keep them in medium-risk investments. We might live for many decades, plenty of time for long-term growth. But a bad sequence of returns early into retirement can be ruinous.
Duncan Stott 🏗️🔰🇺🇦 retweeted
This was Wigmore Street at 4pm. Regent Street was running fine too. We don’t always need to dial up the drama to 11.
Duncan Stott 🏗️🔰🇺🇦 retweeted
Considering pensioners also don’t pay NI, this makes pensioners at the new limit ~£130 a year better off than people who work for exactly the same money.
Exclusive:
The chancellor will use his budget this week to protect pensioners and those saving for their retirement as he announces plans to shield nearly one million people from paying income tax
John Healey is expected to confirm on Wednesday that the full state pension will rise by £489 to £13,036 - equivalent to 3.9%
However, the rise will push about one million people on low incomes who rely on the state pension above the £12,570 personal allowance threshold, meaning they would be dragged into paying income tax
To retain the principle that the state pension is not taxable, Healey is expected to announce a rise in the tax-free allowance for low-income pensioners to £13,036. The move will cost taxpayers £200m a year by 2030
It will rise in line with increases in the state pension over the course of this parliament. However, millions of pensioners with higher incomes - such as those who have private pensions - will still pay income tax
The Times has also been told that the chancellor has decided not to reduce the tax-free pension lump sum. Pension savers can take 25 per cent of their pension tax-free from the age of 55 up to a maximum of £268,275
There were suggestions that Healey could reduce the tax-free amount to £100,000, but he has chosen to retain the current level
The moves to protect pensioners and those saving for their retirement come after Andy Burnham announced plans to end the pensions triple lock - under which the state pension rises in line with inflation, wages or 2.5 per cent - in 2030 to help fund social care
thetimes.com/article/47291ec…
Duncan Stott 🏗️🔰🇺🇦 retweeted
A wee stat ahead of Wednesday's budget, on a policy that almost certainly won't change:
In 2021, roughly 1 in 10 full-time nurses paid 40% income tax. In 2026, it's closer to 1 in 3.
That's the power of the "fiscal drag" tax. The term "high earner" has been quietly redefined.
Duncan Stott 🏗️🔰🇺🇦 retweeted
I've been saying this for months and it gets people really mad for some reason.
The thing you must understand about NIMBYs is that they do not actually care about the things they say they do. No matter the specifics of the project, they will always find some excuse to oppose it.
Duncan Stott 🏗️🔰🇺🇦 retweeted
Unfortunately not, and this is the problem. The average pensioner receives substantially more in pensions, health and other benefits than they contributed in tax/NI during their working lives. (Difficult to calculate but some estimates put the average difference at around £200K). The reasons for this underfunding are 1. the ‘contributions’ were not saved - they have already been spent and 2. the level of contribution was calculated when life expectancy was 65 and people died after short illnesses, rather than spending 20 years or more receiving pensions and increasingly expensive healthcare. The fact that we can’t afford the current pension arrangements is not a moral issue; it’s a mathematical one.
