Labour heavyweights

Saw Andrew Marr interviewing Peter Mandelson this morning. Mandelson is very quick–witted and intelligent and very good at dealing with questions and fencing with an interviewer, but he doesn’t come across as likeable in the least. He certainly is not the man to overcome the perception of a stark divide between “political elite” versus “man in the street”. By contrast, Alan Johnson, who was interviewed later on the Politics Show, came across as a nice sort of bloke. But I’m not sure I could imagine him leading the country. What sort of politics and what sort of leaders do we actually want?

Labels: TV, UK politics

London Marathon

So, did the London Marathon today in pretty warm conditions and I am disappointed to report that my attempt at sub–3 failed spectacularly. First few miles were OK, but approaching halfway across Tower Bridge, it felt like I had raced a half–marathon. I tried to hang on for a bit to see whether it was just a wave, but by half–way I knew it had gone and changed my plan to shoot for a PB at least. Quickly realised that this wasn’t on either, as people streamed past me down the Highway on the way into Docklands and wondered whether at least 3:10 was on. By 18 my body was screaming at me to stop and walk, I threw away my pace–band in frustration and the new aim was to dig deep and just get to the finish without walking. This, I managed to do, although felt pretty terrible for the last 6 miles or so and I really had to grit my teeth to keep going. Some others obviously had a bad day too, because although people continued to pass me, I caught a good number of people whom I recognised from their flying past me with a spring in their step 10 miles before on the Highway.

Cramp hit in the last mile and I had to stop 3 or 4 times to stretch out my right calf, before resuming a painful slow jog (was damned if I was going to walk, even if I was overtaken and beaten by a man dressed as a gnome in the last mile or so!). Not quite the day I had been looking for and a pretty sorry outcome given all the hard training I have done over the last 6 months and the 10K and half–marathon PBs I have bagged along the way. Have spent the afternoon feeling very nauseous — dehydration and exhaustion I guess. These are what the numbers of a bad race look like:

Labels: diary, training

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Strange mixture of comedy foreigner bits and normal bits.

This is very cool — stop motion with wolf and pig.

Labels: arts, movies

Pension tax relief - 1,000th post!

There have been murmurings that the Government is thinking of cancelling tax relief on pension contributions for higher rate tax payers, so that such pension contributions are no longer effectively paid out of pre–tax income. Robert Peston states on his blog:

“So some would say it’s a bit rum that for every £5,000 put into a pension pot by a top–rate taxpayer there’s a refund of £2,000, whereas the refund on the same contribution would be just £1,000 for a basic–rate taxpayer. Is that fair — especially when there are more than 23m basic–rate taxpayers and less than 4m paying the top rate of 40%?”

Well, the obvious point is that it is not necessarily as manifestly unfair as Peston’s statement would imply (“the rich get two grand into their pension from the Government, the poor only get a grand!!”). The higher rate tax payer isn’t getting special treatment. If the principle is that pension contributions should be out of pre–tax income, higher rate payers get more back because more has been taken away in the first place. Someone has posted an amusing (if somewhat condescending) story in the comments on Peston’s blog to seek to illustrate why the instinctive outrage over tax relief being of greater benefit to those who pay more (or any) tax (“the rich”) is flawed:

“HOW THE TAX SYSTEM WORKS

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to £100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this: The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing. The fifth would pay £1. The sixth would pay £3. The seventh would pay £7. The eighth would pay £12. The ninth would pay £18. The tenth man (the richest) would pay £59.

So, that’s what they decided to do. The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. ‘Since you are all such good customers,’ he said, ‘I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by £20.’ Drinks for the ten now cost just £80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men — the paying customers? How could they divide the £20 windfall so that everyone would get his ‘fair share?’ They realised that £20 divided by six is £3.33. But if they subtracted that from everyone’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer.

So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by roughly the same proportion, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay. And so: The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% saving). The sixth now paid £2 instead of £3 (33% saving). The seventh now paid £5 instead of £7 (28% saving). The eighth now paid £9 instead of £12 (25% saving). The ninth now paid £14 instead of £18 (22% saving). The tenth now paid £49 instead of £59 (16% saving). Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free.

But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings. ‘I only got a pound out of the £20,’ declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man, ‘but he got £10!’ ‘Yes, that’s right,’ exclaimed the fifth man. ‘I only saved a pound, too. It’s unfair that he got ten times more than I did’ ‘That’s true!!’ shouted the seventh man. ‘Why should he get £10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks’ ‘Wait a minute,’ yelled the first four men in unison. ‘We didn’t get anything at all. The system exploits the poor.’

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up. The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill. And that, ladies and gentlemen, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works.”

Question: without the higher rate tax relief, does the balance sway in the direction of private pensions being an unattractive option for the higher rate tax payer, when you weigh the loss of control and the requirement to buy an overpriced annuity at the end of it all against the basic rate tax relief alone? Tinkering with the tax reliefs so that pension contributions are no longer universally taken out of pre–tax income is not about “fairness”, but is in reality just a stealth tax rise. If the top rate of tax needs to go up, put it up and we can vote at the next General Election about whether the move to a slightly more redistributive tax balance that results is democratically acceptable.

Update @13:30: turns out the Chancellor has both raised the top tax rate from 40% to 50%, and restricted pension tax relief for top rate tax payers… but only for people earning over £150,000. Screw those rich bastards, I say…

Labels: economics, UK politics

Political doublespeak

I know that politicians are supposed to talk rubbish that doesn’t bear logical analysis, but this Government is taking it to a new level. In the early part of this week, we had Ed Balls on school inspections: “if schools are ‘satisfactory’, it’s not good enough”. Er, isn’t that what “satisfactory” means, Mr Balls? And yesterday, we had Gordon Brown talking about the evil plot to write rude emails about the Tories: “I take full responsibility for what happened. That’s why the person who was responsible went immediately”. Er, I thought you just said one second ago that that was you, Mr Brown, and you seem to be still here.

Labels: UK politics

Reading Half

So, did the Reading Half today. Excellent weather for running, so no complaints there. Didn’t feel as strong as I had hoped, though. Maybe something to do with the sore throat I’ve had for the last few days. But who knows. I could just be a bit tired from the training (stuck to my usual schedule except for taking Friday and Saturday off). I just about managed to sustain the 6:20/mile average split on the Garmin that was my initial plan, but I couldn’t find the bit extra in the second half that I had been hoping for. It was very hard work for the last five miles. I must have run around a bit more than necessary, too (it was pretty crowded, especially in the early miles), so the 6:20 split over the watch distance of 13.22 gave me a gun time of 1:24:21 and a chip time of 1:23:59 (ha!). Running those numbers:

So all in all, not the triumph for which I had been secretly hoping, but in the event that there are no disasters in the last four weeks of training (and when the skin grows back on the soles of my feet — what the hell is that about?!), that benchmark means that it is probably worth having a crack at pacing the marathon for a 3 hour time (2:59:59!), although it’s right on the wire.

Labels: training

Marathon training - obsessive analysis phase

I am running the Reading half–marathon this weekend. I am hoping to use my time as a good indicator of what to shoot for in the London marathon in a month’s time. This article deals with the correlation between half times and full times. In my only other marathon attempt I ran 3:04:21, with 1:31:07 at the halfway point, having run a 1:26:10 half–marathon a month before. Those numbers stack up as follows:

That suggests that my performance on that occasion was bang on what would be expected by the analysis set out in the article. Accordingly, in order to justify having a crack at a 3 hour marathon, I need to get around Reading in sub–1:25. The marathon split should then be relatively even, but allow for about 8 seconds a mile to be lost on average from 18 miles to the end. I am under no illusions here. The experience of friends suggests that following this plan on the basis of those numbers, I am still more likely than not to fail to break 3 hours. But those numbers would mean that it is worth at least having a crack. First question: can I go sub–1:25 at Reading (no mean feat in itself)?

Labels: training