YIMBY. Failed politician. I had a blog.. then I had a podcast... and now I am back to blogging (occasionally) again...
Joined June 2012
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Leo Gibbons retweeted
I think no one in Britain feels like they are getting the standard of living that they'd expect from where they sit in salary distribution.
And it's basically because of housing. The trip to Japan has never been cheaper but the 3 bed semi looks out of reach.
I earn £100 grand a year.
I have a detached house. 2 cars and my wife is a full time home maker.
I can just about afford this. I probably couldn’t afford the house I own if I was buying for the first time today.
My salary puts me in the top 5% of earners in the UK.
Top 5% to have a similar standard of living to Homer Simpson.
That is a disgrace.
We have a flatter salary distribution than Soviet Russia and the highest taxes and borrowing costs we’ve seen in generations.
Success is almost impossible because our tax system means hard work makes you a stressed out tax cow, not wealthy and certainly not free.
We need something radical.
Less state.
More family.
Less handouts.
More reward for risk.
Instead. Tomorrow, Labour will offer another batch of policies which will send one message to aspirational Brits: why bother.
Leo Gibbons retweeted
Back in 2010, the minimum wage was £12,064 and the 'higher earner' band started at £43,875.
You only paid 40% tax once you were earning 3.6x the minimum wage.
There was clear incentive to progress, learn and aspire for more.
As things stand, you now start paying 40% tax once you earn £50,270 which is just 1.83x the minimum wage.
If it was the same multiple as 2010, the 'higher earning' band would be £98,841 and everyone below this amount would be paying 20%.
Someone on £98,841 is effectively losing out on £9714.20 net per year if the bandings had simply moved in line with previous multiples relative to minimum wage.
This is one of the reasons why the middle class is being eroded and why there's a cost of living crisis in the UK.
An increase to £13.20p/h equates to a minimum wage of £27,456, based on a 40 hour week.
Once you factor in employers NI and basic pension contributions, the MINIMUM cost to hire a 21 year old for a company would be £31,461.
This is before you factor in any overarching business costs like office space, laptops, phone, software, training, support staff, vehicles etc.
This is going to be devastating to SME's who cant put together a simple 12 month budget without the goalposts being moved & their margins squeezed.
It'll also be catastrophic to youngsters opportunities because businesses will simply not be able to afford to hire them.
What's also incredible is that anything above £50,270 is seen as 'high earnings' in the UK and is taxed at 40%!
We are governed by financially and economically illiterate morons.
This will not end well.
Leo Gibbons retweeted
we used to let animals just do shit
xitter.cf/shitbritishpics/status…
Leo Gibbons retweeted
In my culture we love freely associating on the basis of individual interests instead of on the basis of kinship ties ☺️
Leo Gibbons retweeted
Mao Zedong was a brutal dictator who killed between 40 and 80 million people,
if even the mildest mockery of him is unacceptable, then we live in a clown world
Desde LALIGA lamentamos profundamente las declaraciones de Kylian Mbappé que han causado malestar y ofensa en China. Entendemos el daño ocasionado y, en nombre de LALIGA, quiero trasladar nuestras sinceras disculpas al pueblo chino.
Durante muchos años hemos construido una relación de respeto, confianza y cooperación con China, sus autoridades, sus instituciones deportivas, sus operadores audiovisuales y millones de aficionados al fútbol español.
No podemos permitir que una actuación individual empañe esa relación ni perjudique a los más de 20 clubes de nuestras competiciones profesionales y a millones de aficionados chinos.
Estamos adoptando las medidas a nuestro alcance y trabajando directamente con nuestros socios e interlocutores en China para superar esta situación.
Nuestro compromiso con China, su pueblo y sus instituciones es firme. Una relación construida durante tantos años no puede quedar dañada por un episodio individual.
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
Contexto importante: Mao Zedong fue efectivamente un dictador.
es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_Zedong
I despise British Christmas Markets.
Cheap food with scam-worthy mark-ups, stalls selling overpriced tat, and a general sense of tackiness and shallow commerciality. Soulless spaces filled with smothering crowds, all
penned in by anti-Jihadist crash barriers.
However, are they nicer in Denmark?
Leo Gibbons retweeted
A £27,456 baseline wage against a frozen £50,270 threshold means the entire career progression of the British working class is being squeezed into an absurdly narrow band.
Factor in fiscal drag and student loan repayments, and middle earners face punitive marginal tax rates before they have even built a modest savings pot.
Mandating wage hikes without underlying productivity growth does not raise living standards; it simply fuels inflation and destroys the incentive to upskill.
The thing is, voters will love these goodies, these little carve outs.
🤖 Made with AI
Healey vows cheaper marmalade and gherkins in pre-Budget package of 'everyday fixes' bbc.in/4zTnQ4K
Leo Gibbons retweeted
One thing I've noticed is that people are blind to infrastructure. In this image, you see a well-maintained road, even with pedestrian infrastructure, neatly clipped grass, a powerline, almost no trash etc. yet the person thinks it's Nigeria because the houses are shabby.
Leo Gibbons retweeted
One stat I like on the normalisation of Harry Kane's goalscoring:
If you only take the England goals Kane has scored since turning 28, he'd still be the top scorer in our history.
Leo Gibbons retweeted
If Britain wants to sort out it's ailing high streets we need to learn from Spain.
- turn up the urban dial
- allow more 6 to 12 storey buildings even if next door is 3 storeys
- LATE licences of any kind
- let any venue occupy the adjacent street
- reduce tax on hospitality
Leo Gibbons retweeted
The Left complain about “neoliberalism”. The Right complain about a “Big State” requiring a Milei-style chainsaw.
Both are half right. We have sold off national assets/critical industries to foreign shareholders, watched the public realm deteriorate, & built a financialised, globalised, low-investment, service-dominated open market economy, dependent on FDI, imports, consumer debt and inflows of cheap, low-productivity labour. Meanwhile, the private sector is throttled by regulation, building/development is blocked by a nimby vetocracy, the tax burden grows to fund ballooning cash transfers/entitlements, and gov. policy/Ministerial initiative is overruled by the judiciary/permanent bureaucracy/unaccountable state agencies. This is the nightmare hybrid legacy of Thatcher & New Labour.
It’d be no bad thing if a lot of Tej’s (👇) pro-market/supply-side agenda was combined with the restoration of a robust social democracy and an active, interventionist state.
Do a two-pronged Budget for *FULL ANGLO-DENGIST MARKET SOCIALISM*—
MARKET:
👉Zonal/non-discretionary planning system
👉Generous capital allowances/full expensing
👉Tax relief for UK investments — pensions, new British ISA etc.
👉Welfare reform/jobs guarantees
👉End to 3-lock properly
👉Bonfire of QUANGOs/consolidate regulatory agencies/leave Aarhus Convention etc.
👉End tax cliff-edges & shift burden from work/productive investment to land/unproductive asset wealth
SOCIALISM:
👉Medium-term plan for gov. joint equity stakes/full national/public/regional/municipal ownership of utilities/natural monopolies/critical infrastructure & critical industries
👉BIG investment in regional energy/transport/digital infrastructure + urban social housebuilding via NWF/GB Energy/BBB/GB Rail ‘puffins’ + local/mayoral authorities etc.
👉Sectoral collective bargaining agreements
👉Robust industrial strategy for supporting UK advanced manufacturing/science & tech via public procurement/tariff policy/R&D/‘triple helix’ public-private partnerships etc etc.
Begin a shift AWAY from a bureaucratic cash transfer/entitlement state, and TOWARDS an agile, investment-first/productive state. Be willing to fundamentally alter BoE-HMT relationship to this end. Do fiscal-monetary coordination, financial repression. Introduce PSNW accounting. Plan for a current budget primary surplus but combine with a BIG push to upgrade public capital stock. 👍👍💪🇬🇧
THREAD (1/7) Britain’s Budget on Wednesday is expected to be low-key. After recent chaos, that is no bad thing.
But escaping the country’s economic drift will require something far bolder: a dose of shock therapy.
My latest column for @FT:
as.ft.com/r/aa18babc-96c7-4f…
Leo Gibbons retweeted
Pints in normal London pubs will be £10 very soon with these increases.
Leo Gibbons retweeted
"According to Phoebe, 36, who lives in Teddington: “The vast majority of people attending our school have faked their way into it, and the vicar is very aware of what they’re doing.”
thetimes.com/life-style/pare…
Leo Gibbons retweeted
There’s basically no price differentiation in the entire bottom half of the labour market and then people act surprised when gluts and shortages emerge. Obviously, when all jobs pay the same, people will choose between them based solely on factors like which jobs are nicer to do.
