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That depends on how you define a subsidy. I didn't pay VAT on my dinner today, but I wouldn't say it was subsidised. And I bet if VAT rose to 25%, there wouldn't be great approval for the government for increasing food subsidies by 5% across the board. When it was the "tampon tax", the...

There's surely little element of subsidy involved? By definition, if they're charities they're non-profit making and so the absence of Corporation tax makes no difference.

When they talk about poverty, they often quote the number of children whose parents can't afford to give them breakfast. And if you can't even afford the price of bread and jam or porridge, which can be done for £1 a week, then you can't afford an expensive TV - stick with the cheapie from Argos.

If he can save £10k per year on train tickets, he can have several hobbies.

A Ponzi scheme is one that pays interest to existing shareholders/members out of funds generated by the capital received from new shareholders/members. If the entity doesn't earn income but claims to pay dividends out of income, then it's a Ponzi. Crypto doesn't generate income, so if it...

The only way Wales can stop England is by winning by 4 and qualifying themselves. Has Moore got his priorities a bit cockeyed, or is he just a bit dim?

If you're not a high wage area, how do you justify those season ticket prices?

One benefit is clearly that we have the right to control who comes into the country. The obvious downside is that we haven't yet found politicians who can do that. I suspect the entrenched incompetence of the Home Office hasn't helped. I know that in high wage areas like Brighton, you rather...

You may have missed the point about what tolerance is. Tolerance does not mean agreeing with your opinion, it means accepting your right to have it, and not calling you rude names if I disagree with you.

It's your board, and yes, I agree it has its share of "I'm glad I'm not prejudiced like Northerners are" people. But not a majority.

Exactly. If you only tolerate opinions you agree with, then you are 100% intolerant. Your anger and attitude says a lot about you but nothing about me.

Incidentally, there aren't that many brick terraces in Burnley. Accrington's the place where they built everything in brick.

I think you've pretty much summed up the reason certain politicians are so unpopular, especially round here. Whether you are tongue in cheek or not, there is a type of person who believes that they genuinely have a more valuable opinion than the lower orders because they went to the right...

Surely the vast amounts of government borrowing will have an effect on future GDP? Even if they don't, they'll have an effect on future wealth.

Why do Brexit arguments always come down to "I am clever and you are stupid so I will call you rude names"? I can't produce evidence of the quality that Watfordzero produced in his initial 6 links (I haven't read the extra ones added later), but those six mostly consisted a one man;s...

The total cost of covid is a cost in general. It's money spent that must be repaid, or collected in tax, or inflated out of existence. Whether any of those things affect GDP or not, it is still a cost.

The problem is, of course, that there is more than one way to count inflation. This calculation, as you can see on pages 32-34 of the report, is based on assumptions and logarithms and other complexities, and concludes that prices in September 2021 are 6% higher, relative to previous years'...

Yes, but I'm not actually all that interested in Richard Hughes' predictions, either of the long term 4% GDP damage or of the predicted inflation rate of 4.4%. I don't deal in out-of-date predictions. It has been said that Brexit has cost the UK economy more than twice what covid cost. I can...

I doubt that. Are there any massed ranks of people demanding political union with the USA because of ESTAs, queues at airports, and more expensive mobile phones? You'll probably find more grumbling is directed at the people who are charging the money and failing to work the customs offices...

Have you got links for that? The reason I ask is that covid costs appear to be around the £400 billion mark, while total exports to the EU were £293 billion in 2019, so what you're saying is that the cost of Brexit is something like 3 times the total exports pre-Brexit. That seems impossible...