Things that piss you off that shouldn't

[mjmooney]

2 hours ago, bickster said:

No thats not what I'm talking about

Your bus fares for example, in 2019, were subsidised from the public purse by £700 million. That doesn't happen elsewhere. Our taxes subsidise your public transport

And if you're an over 60 Londoner you get free transport (buses and tubes) with an Oyster card. The rest of the country has to wait until state pension age (could be up to 67 or older) to get a more limited bus pass. Boils my piss. 

[Xann]

Public services in the UK are ****.

Down to people not grasping reality around voting time.

[bickster]

21 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

And if you're an over 60 Londoner you get free transport (buses and tubes) with an Oyster card. The rest of the country has to wait until state pension age (could be up to 67 or older) to get a more limited bus pass. Boils my piss. 

Not true, we get in at 60 too on Merseyside. There is a cost but it's £12 a year (admin fee I guess.) I think it depends on your local authorities. Here its the Merseyside Combined Authority  i.e. the one with the Regional Mayor that allocate the money for it. I took the missus to get hers the other week

[mjmooney]

25 minutes ago, bickster said:

Not true, we get in at 60 too on Merseyside. There is a cost but it's £12 a year (admin fee I guess.) I think it depends on your local authorities. Here its the Merseyside Combined Authority  i.e. the one with the Regional Mayor that allocate the money for it. I took the missus to get hers the other week

Don't spoil a good anti-London rant. 

[Davkaus]

Why are 60 year olds getting free bus passes anyway? They're not pensioners yet. Means test it and give it to everyone who qualifies, or make everyone pay.

[bickster]

3 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

Why are 60 year olds getting free bus passes anyway? They're not pensioners yet. Means test it and give it to everyone who qualifies, or make everyone pay.

Means testing something like this usually costs more in administration than the money it would save by giving it to everyone of a certain age

[Davkaus]

Just now, bickster said:

Means testing something like this usually costs more in administration than the money it would save by giving it to everyone of a certain age

I could just about get on board with it if it were linked directly to the state pension, but 60 year olds, plenty of whom are still high earners?

I guess those high earners aren't often going to choose to slum it on the bus even if it's free though, so the cost is minimal, but I still think it ought to go to people on plenty of other benefits.

For loads of people it's a postcode lottery whether they can easily get to a job centre for their meetings to keep getting support, or are forced to give a big chunk of it to Stagecoach

[KentVillan]

5 hours ago, bickster said:

No thats not what I'm talking about

Your bus fares for example, in 2019, were subsidised from the public purse by £700 million. That doesn't happen elsewhere. Our taxes subsidise your public transport

The ONS tried to quantify the net fiscal contribution of each region: https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/governmentpublicsectorandtaxes/publicsectorfinance/articles/countryandregionalpublicsectorfinances/financialyearending2021

Quote

• London raised the most revenue per head (£18,430) in FYE March 2021, while the North East and Northern Ireland raised the least (£8,700 and £8,750 respectively).
• London had the highest expenditure per head in FYE March 2021 at £19,230 while the East Midlands had the lowest at £15,000.

I don’t think it’s so much a case that London gets too much investment (it’s the engine room of the economy, and surely we want it to have good public transport) but that other regions don’t get enough.

Pitting regions against each other ignores the main problem, which is nationwide lack of investment in things that clearly create more value than they require to build.

 

[fruitvilla]

20 hours ago, KentVillan said:

I think back in the day (pre-1980s maybe?) it wasn't as class coded in British English as it is now. Nowadays you'd probably only hear it from a Boris Johnson type.

My knowledge of British English dates back to the pre-eighties. Posh rugby-playing public schools versus state football-playing schools. And here the use of public school is used in its anachronistic sense.

[tinker]

4 hours ago, KentVillan said:

The ONS tried to quantify the net fiscal contribution of each region: https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/governmentpublicsectorandtaxes/publicsectorfinance/articles/countryandregionalpublicsectorfinances/financialyearending2021

I don’t think it’s so much a case that London gets too much investment (it’s the engine room of the economy, and surely we want it to have good public transport) but that other regions don’t get enough.

Pitting regions against each other ignores the main problem, which is nationwide lack of investment in things that clearly create more value than they require to build.

 

If there's only a set amount to go around and one area getting 90% of it then that's a problem. The TV licencing fee is a classic example where certain region are getting nothing while others get far more than they pay in.

London's infrastructure has a huge influence on its productivity, give any city a decent underground system and it's going boom. How much was the cross rail system, £19b. And there's more developments planned for the future, another cross rail, north to south London and a few more projects as well. 

While the rest of country has a few trams and buses, it's wrong and its killing the UK's development. 

[KentVillan]

58 minutes ago, tinker said:

If there's only a set amount to go around and one area getting 90% of it then that's a problem. The TV licencing fee is a classic example where certain region are getting nothing while others get far more than they pay in.

London's infrastructure has a huge influence on its productivity, give any city a decent underground system and it's going boom. How much was the cross rail system, £19b. And there's more developments planned for the future, another cross rail, north to south London and a few more projects as well. 

While the rest of country has a few trams and buses, it's wrong and its killing the UK's development. 

There isn’t a finite amount to go around though. Boosting London’s productivity boosts tax revenues = more money for govt to spend. It’s a virtuous circle, and seeing it as London “stealing” from other regions is the wrong way to look at it.

Plus London isn’t more productive because it gets more investment - it’s more productive for all kinds of geographical and historic reasons that pre-date the existence of the tube.

We definitely need way more investment outside London, but turning it into a competition for a hypothetical finite pool of funding is a mistake IMO.

[Anthony]

22 hours ago, KentVillan said:

Hate to explain the joke, but for sake of clarity, “faucet”, “trash”, “Fall” and “gotten” are, like “soccer”, all supposed Americanisms that actually originated in British English.

I got the joke. 

[KentVillan]

5 minutes ago, Anthony said:

I got the joke. 

Sorry!

[Davkaus]

6 hours ago, KentVillan said:

The ONS tried to quantify the net fiscal contribution of each region: https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/governmentpublicsectorandtaxes/publicsectorfinance/articles/countryandregionalpublicsectorfinances/financialyearending2021

I don’t think it’s so much a case that London gets too much investment (it’s the engine room of the economy, and surely we want it to have good public transport) but that other regions don’t get enough.

Pitting regions against each other ignores the main problem, which is nationwide lack of investment in things that clearly create more value than they require to build.

 

I've had a skim through and can't see anything to suggest they've tried to mitigate the usually problem of the head office effect, of the income generated being reported on where the companies' head offices are. I believe this leads to, for example, all of the tax generated nationally by Sainsbury's being reported under the London region

[KentVillan]

11 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

I've had a skim through and can't see anything to suggest they've tried to mitigate the usually problem of the head office effect, of the income generated being reported on where the companies' head offices are. I believe this leads to, for example, all of the tax generated nationally by Sainsbury's being reported under the London region

There is some effort made (and I think certainly for a business like Sainsbury’s this would be fairly accurate):

Quote

Category (ii) profits, which make up the majority of taxable profits, were allocated to countries according to geographical regions, based on the location of a company’s branches and the proportion of employees based in those branches. If no employment data were available, then category (ii) profits are allocated based on its group employment information. If this is also unknown, or not relevant, all the category (ii) profits are allocated to the same geographic location as category (I).

From https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/governmentpublicsectorandtaxes/publicsectorfinance/methodologies/countryandregionalpublicsectorfinancesmethodologyguide#corporation-tax-onshore

But it’s not perfect. Generally I think the ONS are one of the few govt bodies that do their job properly and aren’t politically biased, but no doubt this is a particularly difficult task to get right.

[Davkaus]

41 minutes ago, KentVillan said:

There is some effort made (and I think certainly for a business like Sainsbury’s this would be fairly accurate):

From https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/governmentpublicsectorandtaxes/publicsectorfinance/methodologies/countryandregionalpublicsectorfinancesmethodologyguide#corporation-tax-onshore

But it’s not perfect. Generally I think the ONS are one of the few govt bodies that do their job properly and aren’t politically biased, but no doubt this is a particularly difficult task to get right.

Fair play, did look for that but missed it, thanks for the correction

[tinker]

8 hours ago, KentVillan said:

There isn’t a finite amount to go around though. Boosting London’s productivity boosts tax revenues = more money for govt to spend. It’s a virtuous circle, and seeing it as London “stealing” from other regions is the wrong way to look at it.

Plus London isn’t more productive because it gets more investment - it’s more productive for all kinds of geographical and historic reasons that pre-date the existence of the tube.

We definitely need way more investment outside London, but turning it into a competition for a hypothetical finite pool of funding is a mistake IMO.

This article from is from 2015, it's a big eye opener to Birminghams past.

"Birmingham finally bouncing back after 70 years says Centre for Cities

City is now finally overturning a deliberate policy to stifle economic growth lasting seven decades as influential thinktank reveals Birmingham is finally becoming a boom town again"

https://www.business-live.co.uk/economic-development/birmingham-finally-bouncing-back-after-8772639

[sidcow]

1 hour ago, tinker said:

This article from is from 2015, it's a big eye opener to Birminghams past.

"Birmingham finally bouncing back after 70 years says Centre for Cities

City is now finally overturning a deliberate policy to stifle economic growth lasting seven decades as influential thinktank reveals Birmingham is finally becoming a boom town again"

https://www.business-live.co.uk/economic-development/birmingham-finally-bouncing-back-after-8772639

Yeah, there was at the time genuine concern in Whitehall that Birmingham could become a real challanger to London so they set about trying to stifle growth here. 

Another site I contribute to go on about this quite a lot. 

Edited November 28, 2022 by sidcow

[Amsterdam_Neil_D]

12 hours ago, tinker said:

While the rest of country has a few trams and buses, it's wrong and its killing the UK's development. 

I suppose the problem is scale,  an underground only makes sense for a certain city population size for example.

It needs a certain throughput of people a day for it to be worthwhile for all public transport types I guess.
 

[tinker]

36 minutes ago, Amsterdam_Neil_D said:

I suppose the problem is scale,  an underground only makes sense for a certain city population size for example.

It needs a certain throughput of people a day for it to be worthwhile for all public transport types I guess.
 

Well the west midlands has a population of 2.7m and that's in a small area. Even if it was a substantial tram or train network it would be a vast improvement on what we have now which is mix of bus companies all vying for the busy routes and a cycle network that's laughable.

Hard to imagine we could build anything like the canal network we had in the past now, we quite clearly couldn't, despite not having to dig them out by hand like we did in the past.