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So can Truss turn this round for the Tories – politicalbetting.com
So can Truss turn this round for the Tories – politicalbetting.com
This time next week the new PM will have been in office for two days and have handled, well or badly, the first PMQs.
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1.05 Liz Truss 95%
18.5 Rishi Sunak 5%
Next Conservative leader
1.05 Liz Truss 95%
19 Rishi Sunak 5%
Ironically, BEIS should be one of the most important portfolio in Cabinet right now.
Even besides the worsening climate crisis, we are seeing the collapse of the post-91 global order in which the USA relied on cheap imports from China and Europe relied on cheap energy from Russia.
China has become too technologically sophisticated and diplomatically menacing to rely upon, Russia has tipped into outright defiance of international law and brutality.
The consequence is that the West is in a race against time to renationalise key supply chain dependencies, including computer chips, energy, and commodities.
The UK spends fuck all on R&D and infrastructure, and wonders why it’s GDP has struggled to keep pace with its peers.
The Tory government has put a succession of laissez-faire plodders into BEIS, and Liz Truss threatens to top it with a man so incompetent he is not sure which century we are in.
Meanwhile FPT -
Well, while the country goes to hell in a hand basket etc, some small pieces of good news in the Cyclefree household -
- client likes my article and is singing my praises to various US media outlets
- More importantly, Youngest Son looks as if he has found himself somewhere to live. It was starting to stress him out as there was a dearth of reasonably priced accommodation and a lot of unhelpful agents. (Many thanks also to @kyf_100 for his valuable help.)
- And Eldest Son has passed his probationary period and is now a full time permanent employee of a well known and well regarded employer. Am SOO pleased for him. He has had some really tough times but has worked hard for this and is doing well and has found something he is good at and which will give him the self-confidence to build on what he has achieved.
So I'd quite like it please if the Tories could not fuck up the economy anymore than they have already. People's lives - like my sons' - depend on this.
As the late Seamus Heaney put it (about Ireland but it equally applies to us)
“We are not simply a credit rating or an economy but a history and a culture, a human population rather than a statistical phenomenon.”
Politicians would do well to remember the human population with whose care they are temporarily entrusted.
The question is would it be big enough for her to take the lead
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/aug/30/gypsies-travellers-fear-missing-out-energy-bills-support
But. As others have noted, large sectors of the State simply are not performing. Too many issues need dealing with at once.
She might utterly bomb, though.
Anyhoo, it's probably downhill from there...
https://twitter.com/jonsopel/status/1565046819687731203?s=20&t=yTBs4uDg0KXINUqmk8TmwQ
I'll get the support. Because I get a bill. Just don't fall under the cap.
But there are plenty in the same boat. Or caravan. Or flat.
Not too long I suspect.
I may well be wrong but I feel she could quickly become a national object of ridicule, making ludicrous pronouncement after pronouncement. Like Trump but without Trump's weird but clearly effective charisma.
I think though that she actually means it, and will have a brief premiership of ideological zeal, untethered by common sense.
This isn't a situation where Europe (and Germany especially) bought natural gas at some discount to the world market price. Yes, Russian and Norwegian gas was cheaper that Qatari or Australian natural gas, but that was largely a consequence of the fact that it came by pipeline (cost per mcf for transport 20cents 49 cents) rather than from around the world, after having been frozen into liquid form ($1-3).
Perhaps a windfall tax on utilities, but personally I don't support that.
https://twitter.com/DavidGauke/status/1565075628168192004
China 55% (up 10pp from 2019)
Belarus 49%
India 22%
Turkey 17%
Kazakhstan 13%
Serbia 11% (+9pp)
Iran 10% (+7pp)
UAE 3%
Saudi Arabia 2%
Pakistan 2%
(No mention of Armenia in the write-up.)
Least friendly:
USA 76% (+9pp)
Ukraine 43% (-10pp)
Britain 39% (+14pp)
Germany 32% (+23pp)
Poland 28%
France 21%
Latvia 14%
Lithuania 12%
Estonia 11%
Finland 5%
Bulgaria 2%
Czechia 2%
Georgia 1% (-12pp)
So: biggest changes in pp since 2019:
China, Serbia, Iran - UP among perceived FRIENDLIES;
Germany, Britain, USA - UP among perceived UNFRIENDLIES;
Georgia, Ukraine - DOWN among perceived UNFRIENDLIES.
Past performance is no indication etc...., but just looking at the top scoring perceived unfriendlies you gotta wonder whether Britain and perhaps also Germany might soon overtake Ukraine.
As far as I can tell the Tory Party has gone completely stark raving mad.
Those are the only three choices for finding enough money to keep the ship of state from sinking: tax, borrow, cut spending. The Tory magic money tree (cut taxes and growth will magically plug the budget holes, because Laffer) is no more realistic than the idea that we can print money ad infinitum without consequence. So, what's it going to be?
Europe (Germany’s) export powerhouse has been built on easy access to Russian energy.
Those days are now over, and the benign environment that roughly characterised 1991 onwards is now at an end.
The implication for the UK in terms of industrial policy is to do pretty much the precise opposite of what Liz Truss (and her fellow travellers) think.
Karma's a fucking bitch.
Take that Cramp FC.
You shouldn’t need a PhD in pricing strategy, or even an impeccable credit history, to access energy at a reasonable cost.
Same might also be said of ministers. This is Andrea Jenkyns, who shortly after making this gesture imported from the USA is reported to have shouted "He who laughs last, laughs the loudest. Wait and see!"
She is what the police call a "hundred yard hero".
The worst economic crisis since the 1970s will finally finish the job I think.
Two more years of chaos and crisis and untold damage and civil unrest and then a new government. Time for change will never have resonated so much.
Oh dear, oh dear.
Er, no.
https://obr.uk/box/the-receipts-to-gdp-ratio-since-1986-87/
Since the end of this graph tax receipts have fallen as a proportion of GDP. Of course that will change again if HMG organises another recession.
It's war time stuff.
Without the bombs or conscription obviously.
Anyway inflation was lower in 1980 😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡
The gaps in energy prices between prices, though, have been converging for the last two decades, as getting gas around has gotten a hell of a lot cheaper.
The differentials blew out with the invasion of Ukraine, but the reasons (LNG, massive gas deposits in countries with little ability to use resources domestically) have not gone away in the medium term. It's just that right now, we don't have the LNG vessels to easily balance the market.
The result is that the US and European prices for gas used to be linked, because if gas got too cheap in the US, someone would buy it up and ship it to Europe (cost $2), and pocket the profit.
Now, though, there simply aren't enough tankers to make the market balance.
But a lack of shipping capacity is a very short-term problem. I can assure you that in Korea and Japan, the shipyards are going to be flooded with orders. And - sure - it'll take a couple of years for the ships to be built. But built they will be.
I apologize. That was a big boo boo.
Window tax. Mine are tiny.
PS But also powder tax for wigs. And servant tax.
Brick those heat losing holes up, save money, win-win.
And then recall Truss is about to become PM.
Labour ties
Why is Labour tying?
Labour pulls ahead
Why is Labour not further ahead?
Labour pulls 15 points ahead
Keir Starmer will always be useless because the same people who say so wouldn't vote for him anyway
That's a big wedge. Yet most will have voted three weeks ago.
It's like relying on Boris to chaperone your attractive fiance
1.05 was 25th February 1985.
WE MUST GET RID OF SPEED LIMITS
Liz Truss:
what a great policy!
Just one example: when I finally fell asleep (at about 6am) I had vivid disturbing dreams of children being weirdly forced to play, on the stairs and in the garden
At 10am the staff came back to make me a delicious breakfast. I asked the cheery chef if the place was haunted. He said "Oh we often get guests saying that, they claim they see a little girl playing on the stairs"
No joke. BRRR. That was the only time I have ever had occasion to believe in ghosts. I still don't know what happened
ANYWAY the darkest moment of that long dark night of the soul was just before dawn. When it seemed that dawn would never come
(You added the ‘just’.)
"Who likes me?"
*licks pencil, gets out notepaper, prepares to write*
"Errr, those Nazis in China, who want to rule us. They seem kinda friendly, even if they act..... strangely. Do I have any other friends? How about those people I bully in Belaruss? They keep saying nice things"
So sad. Russia is a great country, reduced to this
Phatboi John owls did Ed is crap is pm posts every bloody day 2013 to 15. Why anyone thinks a reprise is OK is anybody's guess