Best Of

Apart from here on PB, are there any old wise men left in the country beyond David Attenborough (Who is amazingly wise)?

Martin Lewis is the next one we produced but he is only 54. On that basis there should be an 8 year old coming through the ranks somewhere we should watch out for.

He's a decent shout.

When I was young there were a whole host of not exactly national heroes, but along those lines. Now there is one. DA.

What's happened? Maybe Dyson?

I guess the scale of things has diminished the prominence of the individual, but there still seems to be an inexplicable gap.

(Obviously it would have been me, but somehow...)

National Treasures

Dr Alice Roberts

Robert Plant

John Craven

Jules Holland

Twiggy

David Blunkett

Whispering Bob Harris

Gary Lineker

Lenny Henry

Tom Jones

Mo Farrah

Martin Brundle

Really?

I mean, really?

Why not

All have made significant impact

In the case of Plant, Farrah, Harris as good as there has even been in their field of expertise

Rowan Williams is astonishingly well informed / thoughtful, on a huge range of topics. But his material can be quite hard to engage with, so wide an deep are his references.

There are many others, but we have a tabloid politics as well as a 95% tabloid media, both broadcast and printed.

There are also various I think in the House of Lords, who of course are mainly non-political appointees.

I think the "bond market" is used as a bogeyman.

Truss really upset the bond markets by her cavalier cutting of taxes with a complete rejection of the OBR or any expert opinion of the consequences. But that was very extreme.

If I were Starmer I would get Bowler, Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, and Rachel Reeves in a room and say to Bowler "We are going to provide an extra £20b for defence by borrowing it, a War Bond if you like. I want you to find the best way of doing and presenting this. I don't want any objections. Just do it. If you feel you can't, then I'm happy to accept your resignation."
And then to Rachel "Rachel I need your support on this. If not, then I'm happy to accept your resignation too."

The bond markets will accept higher borrowing during war, because the survival of the state is at risk, and if the state does not survive then none of the existing government debt gets repaid.

I don't think you can work that argument absent total war like WWI and WWII, simply by calling the extra debt war bonds.

Remember that the bond market has been very lenient in allowing Britain to borrow vast sums of money already to spend on whatever it likes. But it's done so because there's always be a plan to stop borrowing within x years, and so there's been confidence that the money can be repaid.

If your government finance plan involves borrowing so much that you can't even create a theoretical explanation of how you would close the deficit in five years then you shouldn't expect anyone to willingly lend you money, because they would have no confidence in being repaid.

What’s the current cost to the UK of the Ukraine war, both in terms of military support (in actual money, not made-up military accounting), and in benefits to Ukranian refugees and host families in the UK?

Because that is money that no longer needs to be spent once we’ve put Putin back in his box, and should be able to be taken into account by the bond markets.

The total figure given by the government is £21.8bn since February 2022.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-support-to-ukraine-factsheet/uk-support-to-ukraine-factsheet

But I don't think that includes the spending on Ukrainian refugees in the UK, and it probably overstates the military support (if equipment provided from stocks was valued at its replacement cost).

It's a pretty small sum of money compared to the increase in defence spending that Britain has signed up to, so it doesn't affect them necessity of having to choose between some mix of spending cuts and tax increases if Britain intends to fulfil that commitment.

That's about £5.5 billion a year which is the equivalent of around 9 % of the current defence budget. Not really a small sum of money.

Incredible value for money though given it's actually being used to destroy our primary adversary's army and economy. £60 billion on defence doesn't even get us an operating attack sub; you'd be mad to send more money that way instead of Ukraine.

Oh agreed. I would like to see us do far more targeted support for Ukraine but we should also be spending far more on our own defence.

Although Ukraine is our own defence in that it's the frontline war on the eastern border of our continent against the greatest (probably only) serious military threat to it.

You are naïve if you think that Russia is the only serious military threat. Its probably not even the greatest, its just currently the most active.

The greater threat is China. Thank goodness they're not currently invading anywhere on Europe or Taiwan, but were they to choose to do so the consequences would make Russia's invasion of Ukraine look like but a minor skirmish.

I'm not sure I see what we could possibly do if Taiwan is invaded or blockade at least militarily.

We could bankrupt our universities by sending the Chinese students home.

I think the "bond market" is used as a bogeyman.

Truss really upset the bond markets by her cavalier cutting of taxes with a complete rejection of the OBR or any expert opinion of the consequences. But that was very extreme.

If I were Starmer I would get Bowler, Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, and Rachel Reeves in a room and say to Bowler "We are going to provide an extra £20b for defence by borrowing it, a War Bond if you like. I want you to find the best way of doing and presenting this. I don't want any objections. Just do it. If you feel you can't, then I'm happy to accept your resignation."
And then to Rachel "Rachel I need your support on this. If not, then I'm happy to accept your resignation too."

The bond markets will accept higher borrowing during war, because the survival of the state is at risk, and if the state does not survive then none of the existing government debt gets repaid.

I don't think you can work that argument absent total war like WWI and WWII, simply by calling the extra debt war bonds.

Remember that the bond market has been very lenient in allowing Britain to borrow vast sums of money already to spend on whatever it likes. But it's done so because there's always be a plan to stop borrowing within x years, and so there's been confidence that the money can be repaid.

If your government finance plan involves borrowing so much that you can't even create a theoretical explanation of how you would close the deficit in five years then you shouldn't expect anyone to willingly lend you money, because they would have no confidence in being repaid.

That's not how it works.
There's never a plan to stop borrowing or repay all the debt. Any specific debt will repaid when it falls due by rolling it over and borrowing more. That is how businesses finance themselves.
The UK public debt is about equal to the UK's annual income (GDP). Households often have mortgages much in excess of 100% of their annual income.

It is what all the various fiscal rules have been about, and why British budget plans continue to include fictional increases in fuel duty in future years, so that the budget deficit can be shown to be reduced at the end of the budget plan.

I think your are missing deficit and debt. I did not claim that there's a plan for Britain to repay the debt, but there is a plan to close the deficit - and that's what creates the confidence to allow Britain to continue borrowing.

You said "But it's done so because there's always be a plan to stop borrowing within x years, and so there's been confidence that the money can be repaid."

I'm not confusing deficit and debt. It looks as if you are.

The current fiscal rules are that day-to-day government spending must be covered by tax revenues rather than by borrowing, but the government can borrow to fund long-term capital investments.
Some defence expenditure will be capital investment.

I was using "repaid" in an informal sense - i.e. that the country is good for the money. But if the government lose the confidence of the bond market then they won't be able to roll over debt, and so existing debt won't be able to be repaid when it falls due. So it's relevant without it being a scenario where the total amount of debt is reduced.

The point being that we can only borrow if there is credibility over the country's solvency, and that means demonstrating that there are limits on our borrowing.

Truss showed how brittle that credibility was. Simply adding increases in defence spending to already high levels of borrowing isn't credible in my view.

I don't know why we're still using the Truss episode as the nadir of bond market instability when things now (afaik) are far worse. It is Reeves and Starmer who get the gold medal.

I lost a quarter of the value of one of my pensions, on supposedly low risk investments, thanks to Liz Truss.

I don't feel warm and fuzzy towards her.

Nobody is asking you to feel warm and fuzzy.
, just to stay vaguely in touch with the facts.

The facts are that Liz Truss willfully did a stupid thing, which had bad consequences. Why should anyone afford her the benefit of the tiniest doubt? She deserves every bit of blame in her direction, and to the extent she involved the Conservative Party in her shenanigans, so do they.

Dear Lord in heaven above, sorry to shout, but BOND YIELDS ARE HIGHER NOW THAN THEY WERE DURING THE WORST OF THE LDI/MINIBUDGET CRISIS.

I am really struggling to see what part of this you don't understand. There is a higher premium for lending to Starmer and Reeves than there was for lending to Truss and Kwarteng. And that's without an energy price shock, or the Bank of England deciding to flog off £80bn bonds.

I don't particularly wish to relitigate the minibudget - by all means think as you wish, I am merely saying that the borrowing position is worse now.

Isn't is more intellectually honest than to compare the premium (or discount!) that investors demand for holding UK assets relative to peers?

And on that score again the UK is in a worse position than any of the other G7 countries.

Japan, Canada and Germany have Bond Yields below 4% (Germany is a whole 2% points lower than the UK)
France, Italy and the USA are below 5%.

So there is a clear Premium being demanded for UK assets. And it is getting worse, not better.

Which is why anyone claiming
Reeves has been anything short of
disaster really doesn't know what they are talking about. She is costing us serious money.

How much will the Burnham premium be ? One hopes he will realize that whether he likes it or not you can’t take too many liberties with the bond market .

Liz Truss was immensely stupid, actually reckless, but she did teach anyone paying any attention that the envelope available to British politicians is much smaller than we like to think. I very much hope that even Burnham has got that.

Truss' problem was she cut tax but not spending. Burnham has therefore said he will increase tax with a new land tax, increased income tax on high earners and a social care levy to find his extra spending and nationalisation of water and electricity plans. The City won't like that and it may hit growth but it would be funded

That's a very good point. Its not that spending cannot be increased, it is that it has to be paid for, not dumped on the credit card. We need borrowing reduced, urgently, but a government that isn't tied in the knots that Starmer made for himself still has some options.

Do we know if Restore and Reform voters are fully fungible?

I'd say no. Perhaps they are partly fungible.

Ref UK have many tribes.

I do not see all the grumpy Labour and Conservative voters currently supporting going for Rupert's concentration camps, for example, or all of Reform's ethnic minority supporters.

I'd agree.

There used to be the 'joke', that "not all Reform voters were racist, but all racists voted Reform".

Clearly Farage has been very, very good at making people feel like they're not racist, despite spending his political life stoking fear of "others". However, all that hard word has helped create an environment where a lot more people don't care if they're seen as racists - and Restore have capitalised.

Exhibit A:

Rupert Lowe has posted leaflet showing how Restore define Reform to voters
- Scale of deportations: "millions must go" inc legal migrants
- Death Penalty
- Disagrees with Farage warning on "alienating the whole of Islam" [to tackle extremism] saying "Islamification" must end
- Jenrick + Zahawi

https://bsky.app/profile/sundersays.bsky.social/post/3mo64dqe6hc2s

Horrible, but very effectively done.

'millions must go' is a clear sign of how far politics has come along in the last 10 years, or even 5 years - even if is a position only held by Restore voters, that it is on the table signals what a different environment we are in.

David Cameron promised to reduce immigration to the tens of thousands and people repeatedly voted for restrictions on immigration, but instead the government invited millions more into the country. It seems hard to argue that wanting to reverse that shouldn't be a democratically legitimate opinion.

Should the trend of the last 2 years continue much longer, Cameron's target of reducing net immigration to the tens of thousands will be met by the end of 2026.

A lot of that is just boriswavers going home. When 1000000 people come in one year, you can expect maybe 400000(?) of them to leave some time in the following five years.

Net migration might be the headline figure, but it's not the whole story.

Net UK migration by year ending:
Dec 22 891k
Dec 23 848k
Dec 24 331k
Dec 25 171k

Drops of 61% and 48% in the last two years respectively. A consistent trend - in every one of the last 11 quarters, the 12 month rolling total has been lower than for the quarter before. So with that consistent trend there seems a decent chance of the figure dropping to the tens of thousands by Dec 26.

Thanks to Sunak and Starmer not amending his measures

It isn’t that simple. The Ukraine/Russia front is the obsession night now, but throw in directed energy weapons and high end electronic warfare to take on the drones, and you’ll be back to infantry and protected mobility in no time.

Indeed. People who are saying we should go all-in on drones don't seem to understand we're in a period where a new weapon is highly effective because countermeasures have not been deployed at scale. Current air defence systems are designed to counter aircraft and missiles, not small slow flying drones.

All those Russian tanks died because they had no way of taking out the drones. That will not be the case in future. Similarly, Ukraine is having success with their larger, long-range drones because Russia has almost no functional air-defence network left and what little they have is protecting Putin's bunkers.

Directed energy weapons, either laser or RF, will murder drones when they become common. There's no way to protect a drone against those weapons with making it unfeasibly large and heavy.

How big an area do you intend to protect with these energy weapons? At the moment they need a big power supply. It is fine if you've got a ship to protect and two turrets but covering any sort of land asset is nigh on impossible.

Drones are not slow compared to their size. A tiny drone moving at 100km/h+ low to the ground is not an easy target.

You have to stop them being launched in the first place.

The Ukrainians have an anti-drone laser system that is battery powered and fits on a trailer.

The technology has developed. It will continue to develop.

Drones that attack infantry on land in Ukraine size between 0.5 to two or three metres and are subsonic. Counter-drone systems cannot rely on large power supplies being available and have to defend against hundreds of drones in a given attack

Drones that attack ships at sea are usually larger and faster, and counter-drone systems can rely on large power supplies because a ship is a large mobile power generator. Shipborne counter-drone systems have to defend against tens of drones in a given attack.

Although there is some crossover (laser-based ground defence is available) generally a system built for sea will not cope well on land and vice-versa.

Your theory is all well and good, but Ukraine have a laser anti-drone system that has had good results in practice. At the moment it's only available on limited numbers and is being used to defend forward command posts, but the technology will continue to develop.

Sometimes you have to adjust theory to keep up with developments in reality.

Well as long as we can get the enemy to promise they won’t attack when it’s heavy rain snow or fog, our lasers will be just what we need!!!!

Peter.

Updates from Neo North Korea on Trump's "deal" starting to come in:


Aaron Rupar
@atrupar
·
17m
Burgum: "President Trump won the war militarily. Then he won the war economically ... diplomatically, militarily, economically -- three ways to win a war. Trump won all three of them."

https://x.com/atrupar/status/2065852772835033538

If you have to explain how you won, you probably haven't won.

And there is the small matter of not actually having a deal. Again.

No deal is better than a bad deal.

Not in Trump's...I was going to say brain but you know what I mean. He is absolutely desperate for any deal, any deal at all that he can lie about. No deal just makes him look even more stupid than usual.

Thrump will get a great deal...he always does.

Watch the Apprentice (film).

The Three Rules of Winning.

Attack, Attack, Attack: Go on the offensive and counter-attack relentlessly when threatened.
Admit Nothing and Deny Everything: Never concede fault, regardless of the evidence or circumstances.
Always Claim Victory: No matter what happens or how badly a situation unfolds, declare that you won and never admit defeat.

Peter.