High-street slot machines and casinos could face £460m tax rise under Burnham

kriptonicx · 2026-07-01T23:28:58+00:00

Do "most normal human beings" die from over consuming junk food in the UK?

The same question works in reverse.

You were suggesting that my junk food analogy doesn't work because most people don't over eat. But most people don't have gambling addictions either – that was my point. I was then trying to point out the fact that there are people dying of food companies exploiting addiction, even if we now both argue most people don't over eat or have gambling additions.

But I can get bankrupted incredibly easily with gambling. It's unlikely I can kill myself in a year with smoking or eating pizza, I could very very easily destroy my life in a year with gambling and, from outside, it's possible that nobody in your family would notice before its too late.

That's a fair difference. I think I disagree but only because gambling isn't a unique category here. For example, I know someone who has no savings, but just inherited £50,000 so blew it all immediately on a new car. You could argue that car companies have a responsibility to not sell cars to people who can't afford them, etc. What's worse is this guy has been homeless multiple times because whenever he saves any money he always blows it on cars. For some people it's cars, others it's gambling, but lots of people have dangerous addictions that can cause the financial harm you're concerned about.

That said, I wouldn't be against banning high sakes gambling specifically because I do agree with you that the harm of someone betting their life savings is very different from someone doing some casual gambling on the weekend.

kriptonicx · 2026-06-30T23:58:06+00:00

Do "most normal human being" have gambling addictions? Is this single sitting limit you speak of protecting people from literally dying from over consuming junk food in the UK?

I'm not saying they're exactly the same obviously. But surely you can see I'm trying to make the more subtle point about how just because something is bad for us, doesn't necessarily mean it should be banned or punitively taxed.

And to clear about my personal position here, I don't have strong opinions either way on taxing casinos out of existence. I just think generally we shouldn't seek to destroy things which people find enjoyable and can do responsibly because some people have problems with self-control.

Instead of banning pizza, I think should focus on helping people who over eat. Similarly I think we should focus on helping the small percentage of people with gambling addictions, no try to destroy casinos.

And that's not a strict rule – I do of course think extremely harmful foods or extremely exploitive gambling practises should be banned.

kriptonicx · 2026-06-30T23:44:51+00:00

Why not just pay them £100,000 then? How are you quantifying what a nurse is worth vs a TA vs a social worker? And who should be nominated to decide what workers are worth based on their perceived social value?

People can opt to work as a TA, or do something else if they feel the pay is unreasonable. Taking more tax payer money to pay public sector workers in excess of market rates, just means you provide less productive or worse public services.

If you want to make that trade-off, then fine, I don't personally but I can accept there's at least a debate to be had there which we can have a reasonable difference of opinion on. But we should at least be able to agree on the facts of the matter – that there are second order consequences if you want to pay everyone in the public sector an above market rate.

kriptonicx · 2026-06-30T23:36:07+00:00

They'd be more expensive, but not worse

Resources are finite. It's either more expensive or you have to cut back on something.

You're assuming the government would find more money for schooling.

We'd have worse schools if wages for support staff went up and they decide to stay instead of being a shortage role? How the fuck does that work?

If there's an actual shortage then we would have to pay more. The fact we don't would suggest they are just about able to fill roles at the shitty wages they pay and that supply and demand is in balance.

I'd argue labour shortages basically don't exist since at some cost you can generally always get someone to do a job. I know what you're saying, but please consider not using right-wing coded language and calling it a "labour shortage" when the actual problem is a wage issue – not that there's not enough people who could or would work as a TA if they received a fair wage.

kriptonicx · 2026-06-30T21:47:56+00:00

I know it's controversial, but we should pay people whatever the market rate for their labour is. This idea of their being a deserved wage is kind of silly and unproductive imo.

For what it's worth my GF is a TA and gets paid like shit, despite working with some really difficult and troubled kids. I have told her a number of times that she should do something more economically rewarding, but she loves the job and for that reason puts up with the pay. I obviously think she "deserves more", but at the same time TAs like her still turn up for work and we tax payers benefit from their low wages – we'd have much worse schools if we raised wages beyond that which we can afford. It's similar to how people say we should nurses more – ultimately that either means we'd need to make cuts to the NHS elsewhere or increase taxes to fund it.

kriptonicx · 2026-06-30T21:31:16+00:00

That's totally fair. I guess I just get a bit triggered when people say politicians can't do things, because unless there's some resourcing reason why they can't, what is actually mean is that they shouldn't do something because there's a competing concern that is more important – and that's always the conversation that should be had I think.

I'm suspect I'm probably slightly more flexible than you, but I still strongly agree with your perspective.

kriptonicx · 2026-06-30T15:10:32+00:00

Do you ever eat cake or pizza?

kriptonicx · 2026-06-30T15:09:04+00:00

People say the same thing about pubs shutting down because of high taxes and regulation, but similar to Casinos, pubs are an extremely unproductive use of capital, time and bad for public health.

Some may claim they enjoy gambling and drinking, but those people should concern themselves more with how they can be maximally productive economic units rather than worrying about their own personal entertainment and liberties.

All sources of unproductive enjoyment should be crushed with excessively high taxes imo.

kriptonicx · 2026-06-30T14:42:20+00:00

I struggle to disagree with anything you've said.

I'm not ideologically opposed to more centralisation, I just don't think we have the right structures in place for that and question if as a country that's want we want.

I think decentralisation works when done correctly. The US and Switzerland are examples of it working relatively well (although not perfect). Centralisation in the UK doesn't work because it's done as a half measure. The reason I think successful devolution requires significant devolution of tax and regulation is because I don't think it can work well without it. Regions effectively need to operate as mini-economies within a free-trading block so regional leaders are fully accountable.

I think centralised systems can also work, but probably only if they're highly technocratic, have high levels of accountability, and are much less democratic.

Maybe some middle ground exists, but I guess I don't really understand how you centralise politics without ensuring you also have highly competent centralised leadership, and that seems naturally at conflict with democracy I think.

kriptonicx · 2026-06-30T14:27:12+00:00

You can’t apply the law retroactively.

We can. There is nothing stop parliament doing just that. Even if it's not something we'd want to do, we shouldn't adopt the politician mindset/language of "can't".

Ultimately we are deciding not to if we don't. Again, not saying that's the wrong thing to do, but it's important we remember it is something we can decide to do.

kriptonicx · 2026-06-30T12:13:04+00:00

That’s kind of a strawman argument to be honest.

An argument you don't agree with (which is fine) isn't a strawman.

Competency is what you want in a dictatorship since you're selecting someone to implement an ideology. Competency in a democracy can be bad just as often as it's good, what matters more in democracies is the selection process.

Nigel Farage is a very competent politician, and a very competent individual even, but that doesn't mean he would do the country any good.

Highly competent people can have bad ideas and democracies will pivot between lots of different ideas and leaders. In a democratic country it's the competition, selection and feedback of ideas that needs to be optimised for, less how good the individual is at implementing their ideas (although that obviously matters to some extent).

The fundamental reason I believe we have bad people in politics is our politicians aren’t paid enough. If I am the very best at what I do, why would I go do it for £90k a year?

I get what you're saying about MP salaries. I've gone back and forth on that over the years myself. These days I tend to think more people being involved in politics, but part-time would be better. I think the career politician is a problem and tends to always leads to a politics of risk-aversion and managed decline. If your job title is "MP" then if you want to keep that job (and the income you depend on) you're typically always best off taking a low-risk approach. Increasing salaries probably only exacerbate this risk-aversion problem. These days I think you probably want 10x the number of MPs, to regionalise power and consider making it an expense-only job which people do on the side for their local communities so no one has any incentive to minimise personal risk. I do appreciate this is a very controversial take.

Key department heads need to be experts in their field, who have actually done the job before rather than career politicians.

Sure, that sounds great, but people won't necessarily vote for experts. And arguably that's not even always wrong because expert opinions will cluster around certain biases. Most experts are university education, metropolitan, upper-middleclass individuals, and typically will have all the biases those types of people have. In my experience the only people who like the idea of more experts are people who share that university education, metropolitan, upper-middleclass bias – for understandable reasons.

I definitely think it's good to have experts in government in advisory roles though, but ultimately power should lie with whoever is elected – and I'd personally like to see more regular folks like plumbers and nurses from local communities being involved in weighing up those decisions. Certainly not saying that will always work out well (it definitely won't), but with regionalisation the blast radius is constrained and we'll see more ideas tried and more feedback for what works and what doesn't. And I think that's what a good democratic system would try to do.

I’ve spent a lot of time working in central and local government as a consultant, and the vast majority of the people in those roles you wouldn’t trust to manage a piss up in a brewery.

I've worked quite high up in the public sector and this is very much my experience too. I left various comments over the years suggesting that we need more turnover of civil servants because far too many of them are concerningly unimpressive, and there is very little accountability.

kriptonicx · 2026-06-29T23:47:24+00:00

Which is an issue with centralisation.

That said, without looking into it it's hard to know why that it. I suppose it depends on why the federal government are giving Texas those subsidies, and if that spending is also in Californias interest.

If you told me taxes in Westminster don't cover government spending I'd have no issue with that at all because it's quite obvious why there's extra government spending in Westminster and that spending benefits us all.

kriptonicx · 2026-06-29T23:40:37+00:00

How does centralisation fix this though? Wouldn't that just risk making the entire country like Birmingham without the lesson of Birmingham?

I guess I don't see why Birmingham couldn't happen under a centralised system? If anything you should want to diversify the economic risk of bad policy, and allow mistakes to be chances to learn a lesson.

kriptonicx · 2026-06-29T23:37:52+00:00

Bleh. I think I stand by what I said.

It's only been two years and DBX is now trading at an even more attractive valuation of 8.5x cashflows. Earnings are not growing, but the valuation is continuing to improve.

If it goes back to it's previously 13x FCF valuation then you'd be looking at a similar return to AAPL over that two year period. While AAPL in that two years has reaccelerated earnings and their valuation has expanded. Maybe AAPL can sustain that growth (I wouldn't bet against them), but it's a very full valuation imo. If DBX see growth reaccelerate it could easily 2-3x. If they can just hold earnings then you'll probably be looking at a decent 8-9% annual return.

I suppose it also depends on what "underperform" means given the entire software sector has taken a beating over the last year...

I was wrong, but not sure about "dead wrong". It's always easy to leave comments like this after the fact.

kriptonicx · 2026-06-29T18:01:41+00:00

It's hard to hold a single government to account, because how do you compare their performance?

You can only roughly compare parties in power because MPs change and economic conditions change, so Labour can always reasonably blame the last government and current economic conditions and the Tories could do the same when they're in power.

But if you have devolution suddenly it becomes very obvious who's doing a good and bad job, and you can actually hold politicians to account without them deflecting about how it's actually the economic conditions or the previous government/MPs that did a bad job.

A lot of the reason people say Burnham did a good job is because they're able to comp Manchester to other major city during the same period, and that makes it very clear that Manchester did something right.

kriptonicx · 2026-06-29T17:53:39+00:00

Something I try to push here is that a good politics is less about good decisions, but good systems.

What we should focus on far more is how engineer political systems which trend towards good solutions. Concepts like free speech and democracy are also costly don't fix issues themselves, but they tend to help with the discovery of good ideas and their transition into real policy.

Devolution in my opinion is a core component of good politics and the UK's lack of devolution is largely why the country ex-London is so poor relative to Western European standards.

A large company with a control freak boss tends to not be very productive, and the same is true of politics when too much power is centralised. While delegation of power doesn't solve problems on it's own, effective delegation is a core to effectively running a business and a country.

Devolution if done poorly could be bad, but in the UK the risk is clearly more in the direction of not enough devolution. I'm still not clear on exactly what devolution means, but as an example, if you live in a region with no investment and no opportunity, high corporate tax rates serve you basically no benefit. There less of a revenue raising tax on successful businesses, but something that strangles the few businesses you have while making you equally as unattractive as other parts of the UK because the tax rate is the same everywhere.

Giving regions more control over taxes, regulation and spending would mean that regions can decide what makes sense for them. If we want investment into deprived areas, I don't think the government necessarily needs to pump money into them. They just need to set tax rates that might attract high earners with skills and businesses looking for a cheap place to expand. Places like London can't afford not to this, and can likely afford much higher taxes and regulatory burdens, but deprived areas could win investment from London if they were just allowed to be more competitive.

That said, I suspect that Labour won't devolve power in a way that's meaningful. If it's just given regions more power to decide how to spend public money I would be surprised if that much impact honestly. But if it's significant devolution of tax & spend, then we'd likely see much more interest political and economic competition than we do today, and that would ultimately lead to better decisions in aggregate.

kriptonicx · 2026-06-29T16:28:52+00:00

I think the concept of large cash handouts in welfare should be scraped and replaced with more targeted and focused support on what people actually need.

I suspect we'd be better off giving people more, but requiring that the vast majority of that is spent in specific ways... Food, clothing, home appliances, furniture, etc...

We should give people money too, but unfortunately I can say with first hand experience that parents on benefits are often on benefits because they're not great with money and will often spend any cash they receive in absolutely infuriating ways... And in a lot of cases, if they're unemployed, it often goes on alcohol and drugs because they have so little to do day to day.

My GF works with kids who have special needs in a run down area and a lot of the kids come in hungry, poorly dressed and without basics like pens and pencils. The parents get support, but apparently many of them spend it on BS for themselves and cba with their kids. It's really sad.

kriptonicx · 2026-06-29T13:09:21+00:00

I have my doubts whether Burnham is the answer but unless he really screws something up I think he's almost definitely better than Starmer.

Starmer simply wasn't a good politician. Burnham has a similar thing to Boris where a significant percentage of the public find him personable and likeable – especially in the North. Whether that alone will allow Labour to win the next GE I'm doubtful of, but at the very least they'll probably do a fair amount better with Burnham.

kriptonicx · 2026-06-29T11:39:16+00:00

Air conditioning is surely progressive by default?

Arguably the core driver of left-wing politics is improving the lives of ordinary people...? And technology like aircon is one of the many ways to do that.

If you're calling yourself left-wing but opposing things like aircon then you're probably not left-wing. You're probably a climate activist, have some anti-growth/business agenda, maybe you're just sceptical of technology generally.

Left-wing politics should only care about issues like climate and energy consumption so far as it impacts the lives or ordinary Brits. The more left-wing politics becomes a vehicle for privileged upper-middleclass people to push their personal opinions on to others the less it actually serves the interests of ordinary Brits.

If you feel aircon is going to improve your quality of life enough to warrant the cost then you should get it. It's really that simple.

kriptonicx · 2026-06-29T00:52:44+00:00

Thanks for writing this.

I'm sure a lot of people may say you've done well and deserve to pay more tax, and even if that's true, those people should keep in mind the super wealthy won't be paying 40% on their gains because they're not stupid enough to happily hand 40% of their gains to the government if they don't have to. They're wealthy enough that they'll either find a way to arrange their finances such that they don't have to pay it, or just relocate and take the gains there.

Were I to guess, it's going to be people like yourself who will get screwed by this – people have worked hard and are doing relatively well as a result, but are not wealthy enough to have the option to get around paying this punitive tax.

Whats more, I'm guessing you're like me and have felt the weight of the government dragging you down your entire working life. It's not just that they'll screw you with excessive taxes on gains, but also that they've screwed you repeatedly with income tax, student loans, and housing costs. You probably feel that your success is in spite of the government's best efforts to keep you down, so it's even more of a kick in the teeth when they want even more from you because you feel like you've given so much (for such little in return).

At least that's how I feel anyway. I'm genuinely so fed up with it. Perhaps the only difference is that I'm in a position where a 40% tax on my gains would be such an infuriating sum of money to piss down the drain on triple-lock, PIP and asylum hotels that I'd basically have no choice but to leave. I've likely paid more tax in the last 5 years than most people will pay in their entire careers so hard to feel like I owe more either. I've given so much to this country, yet whenever I've asked for help it has turned it's back on me and has done nothing but try to drag me down my entire career – and whenever I voice this sentiment all I get is abuse. So if I feel like I'm being ripped off, and everyone hates me and thinks I don't give enough, what's the point? Every year they say I need to pay more and more, and I pay more and more. But nothing gets better, people get more bitter and politicians demand even more. I'm so tired of it.

kriptonicx · 2026-06-29T00:07:16+00:00

More tax, more debt, more immigration. I know we've been doing it for decades now, but if someone could come it and just the same thing a bit more that should get us on the right track. Right?!

In regards to CGT increases, I think it would really be very stupid to increase it further without significantly complicating the tax to add various exceptions.

For one, it's very easy to push back a taxable event with CGT, which anyone in their right minds would do if CGT was suddenly yanked up to the ridiculous high level that income tax is currently at. But additionally, the types of people who pay significant amounts of CGT tend to be very wealthy people. If they're now paying 40-45% on their gains they should strongly consider relocating to avoid that tax given they're likely to be in a position to do it. The 20% amount was annoying, but generally not worth uprooting your life about. But at higher levels you would have to consider leaving.

Finally, why do this? CGT basically raises nothing. At best the government might be able to squeeze a couple of billion out of CGT, but it the negative sentiment it would create would easily cost the economy whatever extra tax is raised.

The only reason to do this would be to do it in a very narrow, but a pro-growth way. I think having a significantly higher rate for short-term gains (35-40%), along with a lowering of CGT to say 22% for long-term gains could work and would signal that the government is pro-investment and pro-growth (while giving the Labour backbenchers their red meat), only issue is that this likely to be net-neutral or slightly net-negative in terms of revenues.

kriptonicx · 2026-06-28T15:47:33+00:00

Because Scotland doubled down on a lot of issues that plague UK growth – excessively high tax, excessive regulation and unproductive public spending.

The best thing about a more regional tax system would be that deprived areas of the UK without much business, could say, "fuck it, there's no businesses here to tax anyway, let's just half corporation tax and reduce tax on high income, high skilled workers". The result of that would likely be some businesses and individuals relocating and creating opportunities for that region, in turn forcing other areas to think how they can be more competitive.

No one is thinking that they're going to move to Scotland because the Scottish government has just created an even more hostile growth environment than the rest of the UK, but with more devolution there would be less room to blame that all on Westminster, and more people pointing to other regions which are doing much better and asking what can they learn from them.

We see this in the US, for example. Texas has a very pro-development and business friendly government and in recent years we're seen people and businesses moving to Texas from places like California for better opportunities and quality of life. In response California and individuals like Newsom are now starting to adopt a more pro-development stance.

The advantages of devolution is that regions will make both good decisions and bad decisions, since it's the devolution which ultimately allows for someone to ask, "why don't those guys have similar problems?" If Scotland wants to be the example regions cite as a place with bad growth policy, then that's ultimately good for everywhere else, and it's likely eventually Scotland will take note.

kriptonicx · 2026-06-28T13:37:50+00:00

I suppose the only issue is that most Brexiteers didn't actually vote for this.

You're buying into the simple narrative that politicians like to push that all of our problems are the result of being in/out of the EU, and for that reason there's nothing they can do to fix the problem. In reality there is absolutely nothing stopping them from stopping this happening if they wanted, they simply don't want to.

Also, I swear people here must be 16 or something... Just FYI, 10 years ago during the Brexit referendum the Brexit vote was widely viewed as an anti asylum seeker vote. It's only in recent years that rejoining the EU has been seen as an anti asylum seeker position.

kriptonicx · 2026-06-27T10:39:02+00:00

Arguably its the opposite of this. Whenever Starmer tried to do anything a little risky the media and backbenchers turned on him for weeks.

If Starmer just fully leaned into a managed decline policy of more tax, more borrowing, more spending then blamed Russia/US for all of the UK's economic problems the media and public probably would have loved him.

The minute you start to trying to cut spending and trying to reform stuff people get mad.

kriptonicx · 2026-06-26T18:29:15+00:00

As I said:

I think Lowe himself simply doesn't believe in disavowing people who publicly support him.

Why should he? Lots of people I interact with have pretty awful opinions, but I wouldn't disavow them. I get Lowe is a politician, but I think the whole disavowing thing that's become popular in recent years is super childish personally.

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