Am I just being impatient and mean? New PM

They have a website which explains all Sunshinegirls, here you are.
patrioticmillionaires.uk/

I find it strange too, Casdon . I'm certainly not in that category but I'd be happy to pay more tax because I want to live in a less divisive and fairer society. I already contribute to charities of my choice as do most of the "Patriotic millionaires" but this should be about government policy, not personal choice.

Sunshinegirls

Why don't the so called Patriotic Millionaires get together and do something good for the country ie help the homeless etc etc or some other worthy cause they could get behind or just send some money to the tax man if they are that keen on paying more tax instead of all this virtue signalling.

I would imagine that most of them do charitable deeds; the best people don’t publicise it though so you often only find out after they’ve died. ( eg George Michael).

Well I'm certain most hardworking alarm clock britons infact anyone who has to pay tax doesn't want to pay anymore, why would they, we are taxed to the hilt.

We are divided as a nation, and as Gransnetters, into people who think as you suggest, and people who do not object to paying more tax to support a fairer society Subshinegirls.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham announced a 20% business rates cut for pubs, social clubs, and live music venues in England, starting April 2027 to support the alcohol-serving hospitality industry.

The relief is designed to "prioritise the businesses that bring people together" and act as the "beating heart of our communities.
It’s a great idea for some of the places that have never really recovered since Covid.

For many people, old and young, restaurants and particularly cafés are also important as places to bring people together, so why are they excluded from the relief?

Why is alcohol more important than tea, coffee etc?

He can’t win. Whatever positive measures he introduces to support some businesses, others will scream unfair, and his opponents will scream why didn’t you do xyz as well, or instead. I don’t think cafes are struggling as much as pubs are on average, there seem to be new ones opening all the time, and they are busy, it’s a leisure activity of choice these days, but maybe it should be extended to restaurants as they are closing in numbers too.

"Why is alcohol more important than tea, coffee etc?"

Perhaps because the government receives a lot of revenue from those places that sell alcohol. There is an alcohol duty as well as a 20% VAT.

Maremia

In attempting to cut the welfare bill, who do you 'sacrifice'?

Exactly. Helping to remove family’s barriers to work, decent work related training, better links with JCP work coaches to their local labour market, longer, more dedicated appointments with JCP work coaches, and very good career advice whilst in secondary school and finally easy and quick access to mental health services, will automatically cut welfare as people enter the labour market.

Tbf, it’s not rocket science.

foxie48

"Why is alcohol more important than tea, coffee etc?"

Perhaps because the government receives a lot of revenue from those places that sell alcohol. There is an alcohol duty as well as a 20% VAT.

👏👏👏

Pubs sell coffee.

Here you go Gary et al, there’s a mechanism for you to make voluntary tax contributions.

You’re welcome

www.gov.uk/guidance/voluntary-payments-donations-to-government

Great. Actions speak louder than words so just do it Gary and chums.

And yet I’ve just heard on the news that domestic violence increased due to drinking when England were playing in the World Cup. So are pubs the best thing to prioritise given all the other problems the country faces? Which voters is this being aimed at? Will there be any announcements about eg education?

foxie48
"Why is alcohol more important than tea, coffee etc?"

Cossy
Perhaps because the government receives a lot of revenue from those places that sell alcohol. There is an alcohol duty as well as a 20% VAT.

It’s not all bad news though. Some of the money raised in tax from encouraging people into pubs and clubs to drink
will go to the NHS so can be used for treating alcohol-related illnesses, A&E visits, and ambulance call-outs etc.

I don’t think that the reduction in business rates for pubs etc. is going to make a huge difference to pub users. It won’t reduce pub prices.

What it might do is save some pubs from having to close or cut their opening hours. Or be able to keep their menu prices stable.

To me it seems that the only voters most likely to benefit are pub landlords.

From FT - nicely summarised

“Andy Burnham has announced a 20% cut to business rates for pubs, clubs and live music venues from next April. The measure, costing about £100m a year, will be funded by reviewing tax relief for businesses that don’t make a “positive contribution” to communities, such as vape shops.

Comment

Burnham: “Fail again. Fail worse.” Carl Court/Getty
Only a crisis will bring Britain to its senses
To those hoping Andy Burnham will turn out a “bit less socialist” than is generally feared, says Janan Ganesh in the FT: be careful what you wish for. If our new PM muddles through, Britain will remain in purgatory – not dysfunctional enough to change, “but not so functional as to be happy”. Better for everyone if Burnham fails so badly his successor is licensed to finally make the sweeping reforms we dearly need. Bad ideas must be tested to destruction. And Burnhamism, with its cheap shots at “neoliberalism” and London, its earnest belief in tax-and-spend paternalism, its sapping welfare largesse, and its featherweight MPs is, collectively, a bad idea in every respect. Best to give it one last heave. “Then voters will accept change.”
Remember the stakes: Britain hasn’t balanced its fiscal budget since the millennium. Every region runs a deficit bar London and the South East. Welfare takes up more of national output than it did before Margaret Thatcher came to power. “The UK borrows more expensively than Greece.” We have, proportionally, more social housing than either France or Germany. Our tax burden is up. Government debt is around 95% of GDP – one of the highest levels since the 1960s. And still, a lot of people, including Andy Burnham, think the problem is something called neoliberalism. It’s less a belief than a “religious incantation”, so it will only budge when public spending causes a breaking point. So “let Andy be Andy”– price controls, subsidies, perhaps another stab at “industrial strategy” from a state that couldn’t build a high-speed rail from Birmingham to Manchester without disgracing itself. Reform only happens when it absolutely has to happen. “So try again, prime minister. Fail again. Fail worse.”

Bit early in the day for such long term detialed analysis?

detailed.

Just a journalist being a journalist and making sensationalist points to trigger responses ie to sell more of his/her work.

It was the whole article, I think, Wyllow3

This may help:

Best Practices for Quoting

Keep it Short: Use brief snippets or single sentences rather than whole paragraphs.

Add Attribution: Always name the original publication, author, and date.

Paraphrase Instead: Rewrite general facts in your own words if you need to share a large amount of information.
(Various sources)

Casdon

We are divided as a nation, and as Gransnetters, into people who think as you suggest, and people who do not object to paying more tax to support a fairer society Subshinegirls.

Most people IMO think as you do Sunshinegirls.

If we could see the benefits of paying more tax, ie better healthcare, better state pensions, better public services, it might be different.

Our taxes seem to be spent on benefits and gravy trains.

I don’t understand what that long piece from the FT is. Is it a journalist’s piece or is it a reader’s comment? Or is it a summary of an FT article from a blog?

Whatever it is don’t forget that the FT’s purpose is to service business and the wealthy and its viewpoint will always reflect that. It has no interest in equable distribution of resources or in the wellbeing of the whole population. And the FT journalists can be as economically illiterate as any other 😆

It’s an opinion piece by Janan Ganesh which starts with:

[Burnham] ^knows the Labour movement is made up of featherheads who just want nice vibes^… goes on to complain about too much welfare and too much social housing … and says the answer to the UK's problems is less public spending.

For him Burnham has failed before he’s even been in the job a week.

It may come as no surprise that Ganesh chose to write an unauthorised biography (but with cooperation from the subject), George Osborne: The Austerity Chancellor

Described by Michael Ashcroft in his review for The Guardian as by no means a one sided account this paragraph from Ashcroft struck me:

It was also [Osborne’s and Andy Coulson’s] view that taking chunks out of your opponent was an essential element of politics. Their relentless attacks perhaps owed something to Osborne's preoccupation with the then PM, which Ganesh documents well – though I disagree when he says "it helped that Osborne genuinely despised Brown"; I don't think it helped at all. Either way, this obsession with attacking is surely one of the main reasons the Tory agenda was not articulated more clearly.

Obsession with attacking. This is exactly where we are now and Ganesh is part of that bandwagon.

Whole piece with paywall removed:

archive.is/20260722185917/https://www.ft.com/content/0c03cd07-ab33-4dff-9970-8cbc21baef45#selection-1809.479-1809.556

^ goes on to complain about too much welfare and too much social housing … and says the answer to the UK's problems is less public spending.^

Which just goes to illustrate Ganesh's economic illiteracy. I presume it arises from the neoliberal belief that public spending crowds out private investment. An idiocy completely disproven by the fact that George Osborne's (another economic illiterate) austerity destroyed many private businesses by losing them government contracts as a result of cutting government spending with the resultant loss of jobs increasing spending on the welfare bill and no private companies rushing in to fill the gap.

Many private companies rely on government spending for much of their business, either directly through the government buying their goods and services (a reminder; the state provides very little, or nothing, in the way of goods and services required for running its projects) and indirectly through the purchasing power of state employees spending their wages in the domestic economy.

Private enterprise will not invest unless it sees a profit to be made. Cut the money available in the economy and they won't see any profit materialising, therefore, they won't invest.

This failure to understand the way that money works in an economy utterly frustrates me.