Government plans to impose VAT on private schools from January 1st next year may have to be delayed because of warnings from unions, tax experts and school leaders that meeting the deadline will cause administrative chaos and teacher job losses, and put pressure on the state sector. The Observer has more.
The Treasury on Saturday night refused to confirm that the plan to impose 20% VAT on private school fees would go ahead from January 1st, as confirmed by the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, in July, instead saying it would be introduced “as soon as possible”.
Numerous organisations in the education sector, including ones that back the principle of imposing VAT, are calling for a delay until next September to give private schools more time to register for the new tax, assess the impact and adapt.
There are also concerns about the effect on the special educational needs and disabilities (Send) sector if more state schools have to carry out Send assessments on pupils moving over from private schools.
Leaders of private schools say they are still unable to register for VAT because the plans are not yet enshrined in law and will not be until after the budget on October 30th.
Accountants and tax experts says this will be too little time for organisations, often with little tax expertise, to adapt. Bills for the term starting in January are normally sent out in December. Doubts about the timetable are being raised after the Treasury was bombarded with calls for a delay and demands to carry out a proper impact assessment in the responses to an official consultation, which ended last month.
The NASUWT teaching union said in its response that while it shares the government’s ambition to “break down the barriers to opportunity” and to recruit 6,500 more teachers to the state sector, it is worried about redundancies for those in the private sector and the risk of a permanent loss of jobs from the profession.
It suggests that an impact assessment should be carried out on the possible increase in Send assessments in the state sector and the level of provision needed.
It says: “We request that a more reasonable timeframe is proposed in order to implement the change fairly and without excessive disruption for teachers, pupils and parents.”
The Association of School and College Leaders says in its submission: “We would strongly recommend that the government undertakes and publishes a comprehensive impact assessment and a full consultation on these proposals before they are formalised in legislation, and that it delays their implementation until September 2025 at the earliest.”
It’s all going a bit Pete Tong for Rachel Reeves, isn’t it?
Worth reading in full.
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https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/vallance-the-uniparty-and-the-great-betrayal-of-public-health/
A man with blood on his hands, Vallance is now the fox in the hen house.
Neville Hodgkinson with an overview of the many thoroughly dishonest practices that Vallance was engaged in. Of course his bank balance rose. As did the deaths. Children included. Nice man.
And to think some “lockdown sceptics” voted Labour. Nice one!
https://off-guardian.org/2024/07/08/supreme-court-makes-the-president-a-dictator-for-life/
A disturbing outcome from the US Supreme Court – the President is immune from prosecution while in office.
“The US Supreme Court has made it official: the president of the United States can now literally get away with murder.
In a devastating 6-3 ruling in Trump v. United States that is equal parts politically short-sighted, self-servingly partisan, and utterly devoid of any pretense that the president is anything other than a dictator, the Supreme Court has validated what Richard Nixon once claimed: “When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.”
Doubtless our judiciary will have been suitably primed by one T. Bliar.
Be careful who you vote for.
Well my understanding is that the immunity only applies to acts committed in his official capacity as President – I think the aim is to prevent politically motivated prosecutions. I believe that approach has some merit, though of course the tricky bit is who decides what constitutes an “official act”.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/macron-pours-petrol-on-the-flames/
An excellent overview of how the Micron is destroying France. Personally I believe civil war is a possibility. Just what the Davos Deviants are looking for.
“centrists will be the dominant force in the forthcoming Tory leadership contest”.
Not quick learners, are they.
Here is my counter narrative.
Despite all the noise, so called “populists” still make up a minority of the population. The vast majority are “centrists” which really means people who believe what they are told to believe by the BBC.
The Conservative Party accept that it’s Labour’s turn because that’s the Team A, Team B system we have. So they’re going to do what the team out of power always do and wait for their turn to come around again.
My money is on it working as it always does, but hope I’m wrong.
Hopefully not.
There are too many influencial ‘Managed Decliners’ in the party’s shadows.
I don’t like human trafficking anymore than the next guy, but if the state can hand out a travel ban without a court conviction to “suspected” traffickers, well that’s the social credit system right there by the back door.
This is how the bureaucracy always does these things. Apply it in the extreme cases that are hard to argue against. Human trafficking. Oh yes, that’s awful. Thereby establish the principle. Later expand.
It happened with banking. First force the banks to stop giving service to suspected terrorists and drug dealers (not convicted ones). Before you know it they are doing the same to people with the “wrong” political ideas.
This point was what hit my eyes too. There are similar areas,, not involving the courts or banks. If a local authority or professional body “suspects” that you are sceptical of the official line on childcare or your work (especially teaching and medicine) you can expect your life to be made hell, such as by a covert smear campaign, cyberarchaeology*, media-faking, or blackballing. In theory you can take legal action to stop the harassment, but in practice few people have access to the money, cast-iron evidence and incorruptible judges to launch civil actions. The police do not consider harassment by a local authority official or a professional body to be a “crime”, or at least a type of crime which they are permitted to investigate.
I don’t see expect this situation to change over the five years of the new administration. Indeed, many of the procedural changes that created it date back the Blair era in which “justice” was shifted away from judges and towards unelected anonymous Star Chambers. These kangaroo courts impose onerous restrictions on “suspects” whose alleged “crimes”, often trumped-up, were typically “posing a risk” of committing some serious offence.
*deep searches of you social media “upticking”, unearthing of articles you Roneoed** for the student magazine fifty years ago…
** “roneo,” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/roneo. Accessed 7/9/2024.
Amazing. That name again – Bliar.
Is it all a bad dream
In five years time the Labour Administration will be facing a similar crisis that the Tories faced this year, and will be hoping that it is all a bad dream. Their crisis will be a fractious, disillusioned, cold, impoverished populace and a party split between the centrists and the extremists: the anti-lockdown versus the not-locking-down-soon-enough wings, extrapolated to any divisive issue. Added to which, it will have run out of other people’s money and, like France in five years, be in hock to the International Monetary Fund. Perhaps this is all planned?
” run out of other people’s money and, like France in five years, be in hock to the International Monetary Fund. Perhaps this is all planned?”
Of course this is all planned and I have been posting about it for months. Uk government spending is deliberately out of control. At some point we have to declare ourselves broke and turn cap in hand to the likes of the IMF at which point the whole country will become collateral for our loans, certainly everything physical in it and maybe even our houses. Labour have been installed to finish the job started by the Conservatives.
There will probably be some fiddling about with the bond markets when the time comes.
Monday Morning London Rd & Portsmouth Road Camberley
All lies and jest (Most of the media & political class)
Still a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest . . . (Most of the electorate)
. . . But the fighter still remains (?)
The Boxer – Simon & Garfunkel
How long can the magic money tree fund all this?
Having worked hard over the years to ensure a moderate income could feed, house and fund a family, I find I am at a toal loss with regard to how National and International finance works? Recent events and elections in various ‘western’ countries have shown the strains and limitations of our democratic systems. And yet most of these countries have various schemes in place that need huge amounts of money, the commitment to the Ukaine war which will doubtless be reinforced at the coming NATO summit requires colossal amounts of money.
Can the magic money tree go on for ever funding all this? After a lifetime spent eking out the family budget, national and international finance makes no sense to me at all? Does the road go on for ever and the party never end? or does this all crash out at some stage?
Bullets for your brain today
But we’ll forget it all again
Monuments put from pen to paper
Turns me into a gutless wonder
And if you tolerate this
Then your children will be next
Gravity keeps my head down
Or is it maybe shame
At being so young and being so vain?
Holes in your head today
But I’m a pacifist
I’ve walked La Ramblas
But not with real intent
And if you tolerate this
Then your children will be next
(James Dean Bradfield, Sean Moore 1998)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXedyrQHmNs
You fasten all the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you sit back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion
While the young people’s blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud
Bob Dylan 1963
‘(Masters of War’) is not an antiwar song.’
Bob Dylan 10 Sept 2001
‘Democracy don’t rule the world,
You’d better get that in your head;
This world is ruled by violence,
But I guess that’s better left unsaid.’
Bob Dylan 1983
It is impossible for a sovereign country that issues its own money to run out of money. It can always print more.
Read up on MMT.
Does it not then get to the stage where the money they print is worthless?
Not if you can control inflation. MMT attempts to square that circle. I am not saying that I believe it, or advocate it, but it is trivially true that a government that issues money can always print more of it. That is why the PIGS were completely stuffed post 2008 – they had lost the ability to print their own money.
This is the book on MMT if you want to know more: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Deficit-Myth-Modern-Monetary-Economy/dp/B086JQ5QB3/
“it is trivially true that a government that issues money can always print more of it.”
So what? Money is just a means to an end, without intrinsic value. Ask Chavez in Venezuela about controlling inflation.
Again, I can only point you to MMT’s answer to this, which lies in the world of full employment, UBIs, and understanding taxation not as a means of generating revenue, but as a tool to control spending.
I can’t detail all this I’m afraid as it is 3 years since I read the book. There are a load of YT videos too if you are impatient.
Again, I am not advocating it, but it is an interestingly different way of looking at the fact that remarkably the US, with its massive debt, has chugged happily along. Whether you accept MMT as viable or not depends, I guess, on whether or not you believe the fiat money system is about to collapse.
MMT is very big state and technocratic!
The US produces a lot of goods, services and raw materials. You can print money, but money is just a way to lubricate exchange. So printing it is just fiddling to smooth things out a bit. It may be that we’re able to keep the lights on and food on the table with fewer people than are currently employed – in the sector I work in there seem to be a lot of middle management jobs for midwits who seem to hinder more than help.
Shhhhhh!
The point is reached when the cost of recycling the plastic that money is printed on costs more than the face value of the money, which is why they are all so keen on digital currency, which has no such limit.
Most money in the economy exists only in digital form. Cash in circulation is a very small proportion.
“does this all crash out at some stage?”
I believe a crash is inevitable as it allows for a ‘reset of the system.’
Money to the likes of Ukraine is just money laundering. That’s how the likes of Biden, Obama, Bliar, Kerry – all of them make their millions.
The speech tour circuit? Yeah right.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/07/08/statement-from-president-joe-biden-on-russian-missile-strikes-in-ukraine/
What’s really going on?
‘Russia’s missile strikes that today killed dozens of Ukrainian civilians and caused damage and casualties at Kyiv’s largest children’s hospital are a horrific reminder of Russia’s brutality.’ (The White House)
Meanwhile, in the comments section on this site (comments under yesterdays news round up), drawing attention to the Russian strike, comments like:
‘Oh, goody’
‘a call has gone out for make up artists who specialise in injuries.’
Together with a smiling face emoji.
Here is footage of the strike and aftermath.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyshb6fBVXQ
‘Russia……hit Okhmadyt with a Kh-101 missile. The video of the attack shows that it was not a deflection of the missile’
At first, (Russia) claimed their strike on the Okhmadyt children’s hospital in Kyiv was due to an alleged military meeting taking place there.
Later, the narrative changed to claiming the missile was shot down by Ukrainian air defence so it hit the hospital.
In fact, a number of Russian specialized platforms across social media openly stated that the facility had been hit by a Russian Kh-101.
‘Just look closely at the missile seen in the video, especially pay attention to its tail unit and the…….turbojet engine located there.’
The missile used in the strike was quite clearly a Russian Kh 101
The Kh-101/102 is powered by a TRDD-50A turbojet.
‘The Kh-101 missile flew at an ultra-low altitude and before hitting the Okhmatdyt, where Russian terrorists had laid down specific coordinates, it ascended and hit the hospital. To bypass Ukrainian air defence systems, the missile could have used thermal (flares).’
……the combined strike included several Kh-22 missiles, two of which were not shot down.
‘The use of these missiles indicates the terrorist nature of this attack. Because there is no military sense in using such missiles, which have a deviation of 500 meters to several kilometres’
Oh dear, we appear to have struck a nerve.
Just for clarification the “oh, goody” refers to a suggestion that “the Ukrainian correspondent won’t be happy with this” and is not a comment on the alleged attack.
I take it that you admit to being that Ukrainian correspondent.
PS Not wanting to speak for another, but I think the emoji signified amusement at the idea of you being a Uke correspondant, and was certainly not treatinjg the plight of any casualties as in any way funny.
“Ohmatdyt” is the biggest children’s hospital in Ukraine. Since 1894, the institution has been constantly saving lives. In peacetime, Okhmatdyt performs more than 10,000 surgeries a year. In total, the hospital has 720 hospital beds and treats more than 20,000 people annually.
Now, seriously sick children stay in the basements, women give birth in the shelters, and doctors work 24/7. Before the war, Okhmatdyt Hospital was a medical institution №1. In 80 departments, we to provide medical care to children with a variety of problems: oncology, rare diseases, injuries and kidney failure, genetic diseases such as SMA. We were one of the first in the country to do bone marrow transplants from unrelated donors, as well as organ transplants, including kidney transplants from posthumous donors.
All our plans were destroyed and canceled by the war. Now we are on duty in the wards where the children are on life support devices – they cannot be transported to the bomb shelter. We are hiding from air raid sirens and explosions, performing extremely complex surgeries in makeshift operating rooms in basements.
As before, we are saving lives. Only now ambulances are bringing us children and adults who were happy and healthy a week ago. Today they are dying from bomb shelling by the Russian army.
We appeal to the whole world community for help. At this critical time, we are doing even more than we can. But when we are being cynically bomb shelled, the lives of children and women in labor are being taken (as was the case with the missile strikes in Kharkiv), we need your support.’
https://ohmatdyt.com.ua/en/slider/the-hospital-is-working-and-standing-for-life/
So it was mighty lucky that the missile, of whatever provenance, hit the corner of the oncology centre, several hundred yards from the childrens hospital.
If you study the pictures which have been published you will see the damage is to a 2 storey building; the multistorey building in the background is the children’s hospital.
You might also observe that multistorey building has received superficial damage consistent with the explosion of an anti-aircraft missile, whose warhead contains multiple small blocks of tungsten. This is a well tried method of disabling a target (aircraft, missile) without having to achieve a direct hit – they have proximity fuses – dating back to the 1950s. The British Bloodhound AA missile employed a similar technique.
As I say, a complete freak show…..
It’s a war crime:
‘Lesia Lysytsia, a doctor at the hospital, told the BBC the moment the missile struck had been “like in a film” with a “big light, then an awful sound”.
“One part of the hospital was destroyed and there was a fire in another. It’s really very damaged – maybe 60-70% of the hospital,” she said.
Pictures from the scene showed young children – some with IV drips – sitting outside the hospital as it was evacuated.
Vitaliy Klitschko, Kyiv’s mayor, said the two who died at the hospital were adults – one of whom was a doctor. He added that rescuers feared more people were trapped under the rubble.’
‘The trajectory of the missile in the video and the visible turbojet engine under its hull match the frame of a Russian Kh-101 and do not support claims that it was an air defence interceptor, nor does the missile appear damaged by air defence interceptors.
The serial numbers of the missile components match those of other Russian Kh-101s launched at Ukraine.
Some Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces were attempting to strike the Artem machine building plant roughly 1.6 kilometers north of the Okhmatdyt Children’s Hospital, but other Russian missiles actually hit the Artem Plant during the strike.
Russian forces conducted two rounds of combined missile strikes on July 8—first launching four Kh-101 cruise missiles from Saratov Oblast and two Iskander-M ballistic missiles from occupied Crimea and Kursk Oblast overnight on July 7 to 8, and then launching a second wave of missiles, including one Kh-47 Kinzhal aeroballistic missile, four Iskander-M ballistic missiles, one 3M22 Zircon cruise missile, 13 Kh-101 cruise missiles, 14 Kalibr cruise missiles, two Kh-22 cruise missiles, and three Kh-59/69 guided air missiles around 1000 local time on July 8.
Ukrainian air defense shot down two Kh-101s in the first wave, and one Kh-47, three Iskanders, 11 Kh-101s, 12 Kalibrs, and three Kh-59/69s during the second wave.
Russian forces targeted residential and other civilian infrastructure in Kyiv, Dnipro, Kryvyi Rih, Slovyansk, and Kramatorsk cities.
The Okhmatdyt Children’s Hospital is notably not a military hospital—it is the largest multidisciplinary children’s hospital in Ukraine and treats up to 18,000 children per year.
Article 19 of the Geneva Convention, to which Russia is a signatory, relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War states that the international legal protection to civilian hospitals does not end unless the hospital undertakes “acts harmful to the enemy,” and Article 19 explicitly excludes the presence of sick or wounded military personnel as an act “harmful to the enemy.”
Article 19 also states that the “enemy” must give a warning prior to attacking a hospital allegedly containing a “harmful” military target, and no Russian sources are claiming that Russian authorities issued such a warning, nor have any offered proof that a hospital full of sick children was posing an imminent threat to Russian forces.
The Russian MoD’s claim that a Ukrainian air defence interceptor hit civilian objects, a Russian milblogger claims that a Russian missile accidentally hit the hospital, also do not absolve Russian forces of responsibility for this war crime.
Well if it was on the BBC it must be true.
A war crime? Yes, attacking civilians is a war crime in which Ukraine excels. 16,000 dead civilians in Donbas since 2014? Ukrainian civilians killed by Ukrainian shelling of their Ukrainian cities, towns and villages. Why? Because many ethnic Russians live in that part of Ukraine.
And there are monuments in both Donetsk and Luhansk, dedicated to the literally hundreds of children already killed in the daily shelling of those areas – long before the Russians embarked on their Special Military Operation in 2022.
As I wrote yesterday, Patrick Lancaster has made hundreds of videos from these areas (https://www.youtube.com/@PatrickLancasterNewsToday), interviewing local civilians and always asking the same questions: from what direction was the projectile fired that impacted your house, school or hospital and who fired the projectile – Ukraine or Russia? The answers are always the same (mostly with astonished looks as to how someone could ask such questions when the answers were obvious): from the direction of Ukrainian troops, fired by Ukrainians.
And just copying some denigrating report on Patrick does not change anything. He has the courage to go to the areas under attack, sometimes directly on the front line, and to speak to the people directly involved. All answers are translated into English in the subtitles. Anyone can check for themselves.
‘……there are many wonderful journalists who’ve worked on Mariupol, and remain fully committed to that – Semen Pegov, Andrey Guselnikov, Alexander Sladkov, and more. I fully respect them. As you may have gathered, I do not respect Lancaster, because he hasn’t earned that, and doesn’t deserve it. Journalism should be a profession of integrity, and honesty, not over-dramatizing everything to make yourself seem more important, lazy glory-hunting, and constant grifting.’
As others have now discovered, Lancaster is not at all well:
‘To be honest, i am sorry for Patrick, but i unfollowed him a years ago. Asking for money and then buying alcohol for that money is not OK. I remember when he spilled vodka on his laptop and then he asked for money, telling to the people that there was some leakage in his apartment. If he go public and admit to the people that he have a huge drinking problem, people will respect that and they will support him if he wants to win that illness.’
Well, it’s all over bar the shouting. Most people still believe in the elites electoral system, and the opportunity to force discussion of the need for real change wasn’t taken. What comes next is the far-left under a Labour government enacting a multitude of small constitutional changes which cements their position as the ruling body. Once that is complete (first term is my guess) then the second term will see what we’ve all been talking about – a biometric, social credit system. I might be wrong, perhaps they won’t need to wait for the second term.
Our only route back to real democracy is now a civil war. Even people with guns have to choose a side. I think, however, we’re royally f*cked and I see little point in spending the remainder of my life moaning about the endless attacks on our liberties. We all signed up for this in our own misguided ways, and we all have to live with the consequences.
In case you haven’t seen The Five Musketeers entry into Parliament today, this will cheer you up:
Nigel Farage MP on X: “We are ready for business.
https://t.co/QDsFnodsrU” / X
As commenter Mr. Mild Manners said on Breitbart,
“It took leftists, communists and corrupt totalitarians nearly 100 years to slowly creep into the halls of western power and subvert our governments. It might take nearly as long to correct this mistake, but this is a start.”
Farage Enters Parliament: Reform UK Team Arrive in Westminster (breitbart.com)
Belinda de Lucy on X: “Good luck lads may the force of 4 million be with you in Parliament
https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/15.0.3/svg/1f1ec-1f1e7.svg #ReformUK https://t.co/dbt6F3ZMgZ” / X
Rupert Lowe MP on X: “Reform has arrived in Westminster – expect to hear an awful lot more from all of us. I’m here to fight for Great Yarmouth, and to fight for the British people. The real work has just started… https://t.co/4p5XQl6lAu” / X