My understanding is that the cap on bankers' bonuses was imposed by the EU. So, lifting that cap means that the government can at last demonstrate one very clear benefit of Brexit as the UK goes it alone.
We should all celebrate: Brexit has a point, after all. Vote Brexit, make bankers richer. Yay.
That was identified by Remainers, rightly or wrongly, as a key motivation for Brexit IIRC even before the referendum, wasn't it? Also the impending EU clampdown on tax havens.
Revenues in some parts of the banking business are down 80-90% this year.
Historically you had low fixed costs (an MD at a broking firm might have a salary of £100k and earn up to £750k as a bonus. So you are ok in a horrible year.
Now the salaries are £300k and the bonuses capped at £600k. The total compensation is about the same - but in a bad year the banks lose pots of money
My heart bleeds. Poor bankers.
Not often you meet poor bankers. You have rich ones, very rich ones and filthy rich ones.
So willing to pay taxes though. Certainly there hasnt been decades of development of methods of tax avoidance, all totally necessary and reasonable and not a way for rich folks to get away with things poor people can't.
I am so looking forward to Jacob Rees Mogg declaring the end to the cap on bankers' bonuses as a big Brexit benefit and explaining why making the very rich even richer benefits everyone. It will be spectacular.
Something something politics of envy, British success story something constitutional outrage, large bowl of porridge, something Brexit.
My prediction is that Truss will turn out to be a lot better than many of us gave her credit for. Boris Johnson is a busted flush. He is yesterday's Clown; someone who achieved a great election victory against a ridiculously weedy opponent and managed very little else of note. His deranged supporters might want him back, but they will hopefully diminish in time, and before long it will be difficult to find anyone to admit they supported him.
I do wonder whether even he has fallen out of love with "Boris" as he always affectionately referred to him.
His posts do not indicate it so far, and I would be delighted if he would join those of us who want Truss to succeed and publicly accept Johnson is toxic and has damaged the party considerably
I support her as leader but she is still 10% behind on the latest poll and this end bankers' bonuses cap now was her decision not Boris'. She and Kwarteng own it
You demonstrate my point perfectly and until you condemn Johnson then you are part of his toxic legacy
I won't condemn the party's most successful leader since Thatcher
Leaving aside the question as to whether he was more successful than either Cameron or Major, looking at the rest of them that isn't exactly a high bar, is it?
Interesting that @HYUFD describes Johnson as "the party's most successful leader since Thatcher". This is a totally ridiculous proposition. He bases "most successful" solely on his election victory over Jeremy fecking Corbyn.
Johnson was responsible for one of the biggest fissures in the Tory Party since the Corn Laws. He became an international laughing stock. He thoroughly trashed the Conservative Party's reputation for sensible governance and found himself heaved out of No10 after only 3 years for dishonesty. Other than TMay you have to go back to 1827 to find a PM with a shorter tenure. He was hopeless. A bad joke. A man totally unfit for office. He was not successful, except in his ability to trounce the most ludicrous LoTO ever to have held that role, and to gull those foolish enough like @HYUFD into thinking he was appropriate to be Party leader and PM.
He also delivered Brexit and the vaccines on his watch and of course Theresa was sadly unable to defeat Corbyn.
Once we have gone through the Tory leaderships of Truss, Badenoch, Braverman and Rees Mogg even you might miss Boris!
Because of first the partial surprise of the energy announcement, and then immediately after, the Queen's passing, there's been incredibly little coverage of just how much this month's change in the energy prices alone, from the current level to next month's, where they will be set, is going to affect thousands, possibly millions of people.
"For an idea of the devastation to come, speak to Paul Morrison. A policy adviser at the Methodist church, he has been analysing the financial diaries recently filled in by visitors to food banks, debt clinics and other church-based projects.
Right now, he finds, a little over half of respondents – 56% – can carry on without falling into debt. It may mean walking an hour to the job centre, rather than taking a bus; it can be thrown off even by the smallest accident, but with luck it can be done.
Scroll forward two weeks, though, and add in higher energy prices, and everything changes. Even with Truss’s new measures, just 2% of his group can survive financially. The other 98% are wiped out. Years of reporting have shown me that the very poor are the best budgeters in the country – better than any pinstriped auditor. They can account for every pound in and every pound out. Come 1 October, they will have no margin to cushion them."
Hmm, I'd understood the energy price cap, on the "typical user" stat was going from £2000 to £2500. So, an 80% mooted rise had turned into a 25% rise.
Just looked at the unit prices compared with current, on a capped rate:
Electricity: 26.05p to 34p per kWh = 30% Gas: 6.93p to 10.3p = 48%
What gives? Is the 25% typical increase what the position will be AFTER the Rishi rebates are accounted for, or is my maths out??
The total bill will also include the daily standing charge, and I think, to their credit, that the government's reductions have been greater in the standing charge than on the unit rate. (I haven't checked the details, but I think this is what I saw, and it would explain the discrepancy).
You need a lot of unincreased standing charge to turn around 40% to 25% (ok, looked up the current average, it is actually £1971 to £2500, so around 27%).
Combined standing charges around £250 per year. So for that 40% unit price is on £1700 ish, and standing charges would literally have to halve to bring the overall back down.
Is that what is happening?
According to Ofgem the current cap is 28p for electricity and 7p for Gas.
28p to 34p is an increase of 21.4%
It also seems, according to Ofgem, that standing charges are effectively frozen and not going up.
So the 27% increase seems to be roughly from a doubling in the unit price of Gas, a roughly 21% increase in the unit price in Electricity, but no increase in the Standing Charge.
Which seems plausible to average out at about £2500 but it would vary heavily depending upon how much Gas you use.
Hundreds of them according to the Beeb. And 500 loos and provision for hot drinks. And the means to leave the Queue for food and rest breaks and return through a system of wristbands. The British sure do know how to queue.
If you are given a wristband that guarantees your position, and you can leave and return at will to that position, the queue itself is redundant.
Issue people wristbands in order at some place, and have a notice at Westminster Hall "now serving bands 18,378 to 18,465" and so on
More film of the omen and portent last night ((C) MoonRabbit).
"Steve Owens, an astronomer and science communicator at the Glasgow Science Centre, said (...) 'The one last night might have been the size of a golf ball or maybe a cricket ball, maybe bigger than that'."
No way was that object as small as a cricket ball.
Like HY and unlike Leon, I am a big traditionalist at heart - so instead of calling it a UFO I am calling it a dragon. They come from out the void and hide underneath the hill because before banks everyone used to bury their wealth and treasure and dragons love treasure.
The only other explanation is the importance of portents - if you are going to tell the bee’s the master is dead (just smacks of politeness to me but different if you truly superstitious) then what about signs in the sky, leaky pens - OMG 🫣
"Queen Elizabeth’s death marks the latest step away from divinely ordained monarchy, towards something else. No longer sacred, the European monarch would rather be a pilot, or a country gentleman interested in urban planning. Another step along the path we have travelled since the laying of hands on His Majesty to cure disease was suspended after Queen Anne. It is no longer possible to suspend disbelief. The magic — or rather the mindset — was gone. There have been tears for the Queen this week, but can we imagine the same for Prince William decades from now?"
The monarch will always be divinely ordained, whatever liberal intellectuals may wish
Alternatively, you will always believe in fairies, and the Tory party.
There's also the slight problem that, *on the monarchy's own evidence*, it supports two different religions, or at least two very different varieties of non-RC Christianity, one north and the other south of the border. The English variety of Catholic episcopalianism, subordinating Church to State, is completely incompatible with Calvinist Presbyterianism. As indeed the history of the High Kirk of St Giles reminds us.
That seems to me to be a bit of a theological distinction, in both senses. There are far too many nuances and shades of grey.
There is no established church in Scotland, so I don't see how particular religious requirements can be placed on the monarch or the nation.
Secondly, it gets more interesting elsewhere' King Charles is also head of state of Papua New Guinea, for example. And that is a *very* interesting place for religion.
And the links between CofS and CofE pointed out above imo suggest that 'completely incompatible' is an overstatement.
Sorry I was out - so replying now. I had also thought that the Church of Scotland (strictly designated) was disestablished but it's not, in the sense that it remains the official church of Scotland [edit] as far as the state is concerned. Ydoethur pointed that out in a very interesting post a day or two back. And KCIII was swearing to protect the Protestant C of S at his proclamation-wotsit a few days ago. I don't *think* he did that for the Niugini religions, did he?
Indeed, the Scottish Episcopal is the Anglican church in Scotland even if the Queen is not its Supreme Governor unlike the C of E. However as you say the Church of Scotland is the official national church in Scotland and effectively the established church there.
To be even more specific, the SEC is not the Anglican Church = C of E in Scotland , but a member of the Anglican network. Not the same thing, not least because they are independently derived from different dioceses/groups of dioceses of the Roman Cahtolic Church (though in the case of the SEC via the Church of Scotland proper, most of which became and remained Presbyterian).
The SEC is the Anglican church and a member of the Anglican communion. Same as the Church in Wales and the Church of Ireland, all who have the Archbishop of Canterbury as their ceremonial head even if they do not share the King as their Supreme Governor with the Church of England.
Pre Reformation both England and Scotland were majority Roman Catholic. The Scottish Episcopal Church actually started as early as 1582 just over 20 years after the Church of Scotland was founded to preserve bishops
"the Anglican church" - no, it isn't. That's the C of E if you are using those words. The SEC is quite different. It was never Anglican except in the sense that it joined the Anglican communion in recent years.
The two churches have different Reformations, different histories, different Williamite settlements.
Yes it is, every member of the Anglican communion including the SEC is an Anglican church.
Apart from not having the Kingas its SG there is little difference between the SEC and Church of England in service style or structure
The Anglican Communion is not the Anglican Church. Different levels, altogether. It's like confusing England and the United Kingdom.
And the SEC and C of E use different prayer books.
Yes it is, the global Anglican church is a denomination no different to the global Roman Catholic Church or Methodist Church etc and also more aligned than say Baptist or Pentecostal churches
Eh? That's a remarkable usage of the English language. The SEC is undoudtedly a different denomination from the C of E. Different prayer book, different finances, different location, and so on. It also follows the law of the land in allowing people of the same gender to marry. THe Archbish of Cantuar has nothing to do with that.
I wouldn't call the Free Church of Scotland and the FCoS (Continuing) different denominations. Yet they diffe3r less than the two above.
No it isn't, the SEP ceremonial leader is the Archbishop of Canterbury for starters. The SEP Prayer book is little different to the BCP in format. The fact it allows some priests personal choice as to whether to conduct gay blessings or not doesn't change that
Do the numbers of English angels and Scottish angels that can dance on the head of a pin differ?
Dunno about the numbers, but they are certainly in different heavenly hosts as fiar as discipline is concerned:
"It is [...] a common fault to refer to the Episcopal Church as the ‘English’ Church, whereas the Scottish Episcopal Church is entirely independent from the Church of England in its government, liturgies, and in the election of its bishops etc. it is, however, in full communion with the Church of England, as is the Church in Wales, the Church of Ireland and all the other members of the Anglican Communion (such as the Anglican Church in Japan or in Southern Africa)."
"From 1690, therefore, the Bishops and those who supported them, were forced out of the Church of Scotland: thus was the Scottish Episcopal Church born, and it has continued as a separate body ever since."
...and in other CoL crisis news the Royal Yacht HMS Boris Johnson is going ahead despite disinterest from King Charles 3.
(The Times)
Having seen some footage recently of HMQ and Britannia, and I more in favour of a new Royal Yacht than previously, especially since the FLSOJ will have no part in it
The question which needs to be answered is why hasn't Putin mobilised already? He definitely seems to be losing.
1. Will his population stand for it? Most of them, particularly those in Moscow, just want to carry on ignoring Ukraine. If they mobilise this will no longer be possible. Does it lead to serious unrest?
2. Does Putin think they are winning? Is it possible that no one is brave enough to tell him the truth? Or if as the early Twitter threads indicated is there lying from the bottom to the top so no one knows what is really going on?
For me this is the question that is the most puzzling. If he won't mobilise then how could he justify nukes as they would only be needed in a war and not a "special military operation".
I think the escalation sequence would be...
1. Iran/Iraq style "War of the Cities" 2. Full mobilisation chucking all of the Far East aviation units into the fray 3. Threaten some symbolic Ukrainian military target like the Naval HQ in Odessa with a nuke 4. Referendum on AV
My prediction is that Truss will turn out to be a lot better than many of us gave her credit for. Boris Johnson is a busted flush. He is yesterday's Clown; someone who achieved a great election victory against a ridiculously weedy opponent and managed very little else of note. His deranged supporters might want him back, but they will hopefully diminish in time, and before long it will be difficult to find anyone to admit they supported him.
I do wonder whether even he has fallen out of love with "Boris" as he always affectionately referred to him.
His posts do not indicate it so far, and I would be delighted if he would join those of us who want Truss to succeed and publicly accept Johnson is toxic and has damaged the party considerably
I support her as leader but she is still 10% behind on the latest poll and this end bankers' bonuses cap now was her decision not Boris'. She and Kwarteng own it
You demonstrate my point perfectly and until you condemn Johnson then you are part of his toxic legacy
Does the same apply to Truss Big G? She only used the platforms at leadership conference and Downing Street last week to praise her predecessor, not bury him.
Of course not - her comments were those of any successor to their predecessor
Whaaaaaaaaat? 🥹
You challenged HY with “ until you condemn Johnson then you are part of his toxic legacy” but Truss doesn’t have to distance herself from the toxic legacy? If anything she said more than really had to didn’t she?
Analyst on R5L’s wake up to money - tracking a basket of essential goods says price difference between Morrissons and Aldi is now 40%. Explained by Morrisons having to service a gigantic debt.
Shop at Aldi, people.
Good morning
I heard that report as well and it is astonishing that Morrisons apparently have a 7 billion debt
Shop anywhere but Morrisons would be the message
5live also discussed Kwarteng's proposal to abolish city bonuses and it really does make you wonder if the conservative party have lost all it's instincts to govern
It may be the right thing from a business sense, but the optics are shocking and hands yet another gift to labour
It is the right thing from city workers sense. It is a bad thing for shareholders and really bad for government and taxpayers who will eventually have to fund another bailout with years of austerity.
I'm curious about this idea that bankers bonuses caused the subprime mortgage crisis.
I am even more curious about the idea that there will ever be another bank bailout.
Extreme bankers bonuses create incentives for bankers to gamble with the banks money. If they win, fantastic, if they lose its not their money and as long as you can talk the talk and know some of the right people, it is still easy to get another job.
That culture feeds through to the banks to gamble, notionally with their money, but knowing they have a government funded back stop as they are too big to fail.
Take away the controls and regulation and sooner or later we shall be back to bail outs.
Well, it's too bad the Labour government didn't do something about it then...
Of course. Not sure why you think that is relevant when they have not been in power for a long time and it is the current governments policies that will matter.
Well, the view of Labour supporters on the GFC is "it started in America".
That's not the view of Labour supporters, it is a statement of fact.
The global [key word, there] financial crisis started in America. Britain was very poorly placed to weather it because Gordon Brown had spent the previous 6 years [after an admirable initial period of restraint] pissing money up the wall, spending more than he raked in even during times of relative financial health. Personally I couldn't give a fig how big bankers' bonuses are. I don't care at all about the optics, I care about the gap between what we spend and what we earn. That should be the #1 issue for a chancellor of the exchequer to worry about. If this measure narrows that gap (and I am at best agnostic about whether it will) it should be welcomed.
Britain was hit badly because we have a large globally exposed financial sector and one of our biggest banks was in the midst of an ill-advised over-leveraged buying spree at the top of the market. Running a structural deficit of 4% of GDP in 2007 compared to a G7 average of 3% is unlikely to have been a significant factor in explaining why we were hit worse than others, no matter how much people want it to be Gordon Brown's fault.
Running a structural deficit of 4% during pre-crash times is utterly catastrophic as when the crash inevitably comes and you inevitably need countercyclical spending to go with it, then you have nowhere to go.
The fact that some other countries were nearly as bad as the UK doesn't justify or excuse what Brown did.
But it is hard to blame Brown's fiscal policy for us being hit *much worse than others* when Brown's fiscal policy was *pretty much the same as others'*. That was the point I was responding to. Also worth noting that our debt to GDP ratio in 2007 was 41% (down from 43% in 1997) compared to a G7 average of 81%. So we had plenty of space to run countercyclical fiscal policy, certainly compared to other countries, and indeed the increase in our debt to GDP ratio between 2007 and 2010 (33pp) was almost identical to the G7 average (32pp), suggesting that we were indeed able to run a countercyclical fiscal policy just like other economies.
Except it wasn't the same as others, it was via your own figures worse than others. And of course its worth noting that the G7 average includes the UK so the G7 average was itself getting dragged down by Brown's terrible performance.
Debt to GDP isn't the relevant figure, the deficit is, although its worth noting via your own figures again in the span of three years Brown nearly doubled our debt-to-GDP figure whereas G7 nations debt-to-GDP increased by much less than half.
Gordon Brown's peak debt to GDP being around 3% iirc which was on a par with preceding Conservative governments. It was not significant and did not cause or exacerbate the GFC.
Also, aiui Team Truss has determined, as Cheney said of Reagan, that deficits don't matter and that George Osborne's austerity was a mistake that hobbled Britain's economy.
Except....this was a time of unprecedented receipts. The housing market was going bananas, profits were high, and it was a time where debt to GDP didn't need to be as high given the circumstances in the economy. Simply, we were spending too much. I don't think anyone disputes that, no matter what they think the answer (austerity/non-austerity) should have been.
Yes, there is a good deal in that. But as it happened, the GFC came along and rendered it all moot. Then Osborne came along and flatlined the nascent recovery inherited from Labour, and here we are.
The GFC didn't just "come along and render it moot", the GFC was a crash that the Government should have been preparing for as it was overdue. Crashes happen, and the GFC was a classic crash, not some exogenous and unforeseeable shock.
And you repeat the myth that Osborne flatlined the recovery. Don't you realise the UK in the 2010s grew faster than the Eurozone did, both in nominal terms and in per capita terms. "Despite Brexit" supposedly harming the UK during that decade.
If Brexit and Osborne "flatlined" or harmed the UK, then how come the UK grew faster than the Eurozone or the rest of the EU? Just how much faster than them would we have grown in your eyes were it not for Osborne or Brexit, and why?
Osborne's austerity was a mistake as even the current vintage of Tories now acknowledge. The problem is that they have pivoted to pro-growth fiscal policies at precisely the wrong moment, with inflation out of control, and so they will only succeed in pushing up inflation and interest rates. Euro area growth was low because of their sovereign debt crisis and because they followed similar austerity policies to us, and because they had lower population growth.
It was not a mistake, because the deficit was out of control.
Pro-growth policies are good now because the deficit was brought under control prior to the crash, unlike in Brown's time, and so we're in a much better fiscal position than we were then.
The UK grew faster than Europe on a per capita basis too, again despite "austerity" and "Brexit" being both accused of "flatlining" growth. We had our own sovereign debt crisis caused by Brown's borrowing too, which is why Osborne needed to clean up Brown's mess.
The UK deficit is set to grow considerably under Truss, who appears to believe in trickle-down economics, something known not to work. So, deficit up, but no significant improvement in growth.
Amused by your claim that trickle-down economics is "known not to work", it absolutely does work.
Cutting taxes in both the UK and the USA in the 80s led to significant growth and eventual budget surpluses in the 90s.
That the growth and surplus such tax cutting brought about was subsequently pissed away, is not a problem with "trickle down economics".
Analyst on R5L’s wake up to money - tracking a basket of essential goods says price difference between Morrissons and Aldi is now 40%. Explained by Morrisons having to service a gigantic debt.
Shop at Aldi, people.
Good morning
I heard that report as well and it is astonishing that Morrisons apparently have a 7 billion debt
Shop anywhere but Morrisons would be the message
5live also discussed Kwarteng's proposal to abolish city bonuses and it really does make you wonder if the conservative party have lost all it's instincts to govern
It may be the right thing from a business sense, but the optics are shocking and hands yet another gift to labour
It is the right thing from city workers sense. It is a bad thing for shareholders and really bad for government and taxpayers who will eventually have to fund another bailout with years of austerity.
I'm curious about this idea that bankers bonuses caused the subprime mortgage crisis.
I am even more curious about the idea that there will ever be another bank bailout.
Extreme bankers bonuses create incentives for bankers to gamble with the banks money. If they win, fantastic, if they lose its not their money and as long as you can talk the talk and know some of the right people, it is still easy to get another job.
That culture feeds through to the banks to gamble, notionally with their money, but knowing they have a government funded back stop as they are too big to fail.
Take away the controls and regulation and sooner or later we shall be back to bail outs.
Well, it's too bad the Labour government didn't do something about it then...
Of course. Not sure why you think that is relevant when they have not been in power for a long time and it is the current governments policies that will matter.
Well, the view of Labour supporters on the GFC is "it started in America".
That's not the view of Labour supporters, it is a statement of fact.
The global [key word, there] financial crisis started in America. Britain was very poorly placed to weather it because Gordon Brown had spent the previous 6 years [after an admirable initial period of restraint] pissing money up the wall, spending more than he raked in even during times of relative financial health. Personally I couldn't give a fig how big bankers' bonuses are. I don't care at all about the optics, I care about the gap between what we spend and what we earn. That should be the #1 issue for a chancellor of the exchequer to worry about. If this measure narrows that gap (and I am at best agnostic about whether it will) it should be welcomed.
Britain was hit badly because we have a large globally exposed financial sector and one of our biggest banks was in the midst of an ill-advised over-leveraged buying spree at the top of the market. Running a structural deficit of 4% of GDP in 2007 compared to a G7 average of 3% is unlikely to have been a significant factor in explaining why we were hit worse than others, no matter how much people want it to be Gordon Brown's fault.
Running a structural deficit of 4% during pre-crash times is utterly catastrophic as when the crash inevitably comes and you inevitably need countercyclical spending to go with it, then you have nowhere to go.
The fact that some other countries were nearly as bad as the UK doesn't justify or excuse what Brown did.
But it is hard to blame Brown's fiscal policy for us being hit *much worse than others* when Brown's fiscal policy was *pretty much the same as others'*. That was the point I was responding to. Also worth noting that our debt to GDP ratio in 2007 was 41% (down from 43% in 1997) compared to a G7 average of 81%. So we had plenty of space to run countercyclical fiscal policy, certainly compared to other countries, and indeed the increase in our debt to GDP ratio between 2007 and 2010 (33pp) was almost identical to the G7 average (32pp), suggesting that we were indeed able to run a countercyclical fiscal policy just like other economies.
Except it wasn't the same as others, it was via your own figures worse than others. And of course its worth noting that the G7 average includes the UK so the G7 average was itself getting dragged down by Brown's terrible performance.
Debt to GDP isn't the relevant figure, the deficit is, although its worth noting via your own figures again in the span of three years Brown nearly doubled our debt-to-GDP figure whereas G7 nations debt-to-GDP increased by much less than half.
Gordon Brown's peak debt to GDP being around 3% iirc which was on a par with preceding Conservative governments. It was not significant and did not cause or exacerbate the GFC.
Also, aiui Team Truss has determined, as Cheney said of Reagan, that deficits don't matter and that George Osborne's austerity was a mistake that hobbled Britain's economy.
Except....this was a time of unprecedented receipts. The housing market was going bananas, profits were high, and it was a time where debt to GDP didn't need to be as high given the circumstances in the economy. Simply, we were spending too much. I don't think anyone disputes that, no matter what they think the answer (austerity/non-austerity) should have been.
Yes, there is a good deal in that. But as it happened, the GFC came along and rendered it all moot. Then Osborne came along and flatlined the nascent recovery inherited from Labour, and here we are.
The GFC didn't just "come along and render it moot", the GFC was a crash that the Government should have been preparing for as it was overdue. Crashes happen, and the GFC was a classic crash, not some exogenous and unforeseeable shock.
And you repeat the myth that Osborne flatlined the recovery. Don't you realise the UK in the 2010s grew faster than the Eurozone did, both in nominal terms and in per capita terms. "Despite Brexit" supposedly harming the UK during that decade.
If Brexit and Osborne "flatlined" or harmed the UK, then how come the UK grew faster than the Eurozone or the rest of the EU? Just how much faster than them would we have grown in your eyes were it not for Osborne or Brexit, and why?
Osborne's austerity was a mistake as even the current vintage of Tories now acknowledge. The problem is that they have pivoted to pro-growth fiscal policies at precisely the wrong moment, with inflation out of control, and so they will only succeed in pushing up inflation and interest rates. Euro area growth was low because of their sovereign debt crisis and because they followed similar austerity policies to us, and because they had lower population growth.
"Queen Elizabeth’s death marks the latest step away from divinely ordained monarchy, towards something else. No longer sacred, the European monarch would rather be a pilot, or a country gentleman interested in urban planning. Another step along the path we have travelled since the laying of hands on His Majesty to cure disease was suspended after Queen Anne. It is no longer possible to suspend disbelief. The magic — or rather the mindset — was gone. There have been tears for the Queen this week, but can we imagine the same for Prince William decades from now?"
The monarch will always be divinely ordained, whatever liberal intellectuals may wish
Alternatively, you will always believe in fairies, and the Tory party.
There's also the slight problem that, *on the monarchy's own evidence*, it supports two different religions, or at least two very different varieties of non-RC Christianity, one north and the other south of the border. The English variety of Catholic episcopalianism, subordinating Church to State, is completely incompatible with Calvinist Presbyterianism. As indeed the history of the High Kirk of St Giles reminds us.
That seems to me to be a bit of a theological distinction, in both senses. There are far too many nuances and shades of grey.
There is no established church in Scotland, so I don't see how particular religious requirements can be placed on the monarch or the nation.
Secondly, it gets more interesting elsewhere' King Charles is also head of state of Papua New Guinea, for example. And that is a *very* interesting place for religion.
And the links between CofS and CofE pointed out above imo suggest that 'completely incompatible' is an overstatement.
Sorry I was out - so replying now. I had also thought that the Church of Scotland (strictly designated) was disestablished but it's not, in the sense that it remains the official church of Scotland [edit] as far as the state is concerned. Ydoethur pointed that out in a very interesting post a day or two back. And KCIII was swearing to protect the Protestant C of S at his proclamation-wotsit a few days ago. I don't *think* he did that for the Niugini religions, did he?
Indeed, the Scottish Episcopal is the Anglican church in Scotland even if the Queen is not its Supreme Governor unlike the C of E. However as you say the Church of Scotland is the official national church in Scotland and effectively the established church there.
To be even more specific, the SEC is not the Anglican Church = C of E in Scotland , but a member of the Anglican network. Not the same thing, not least because they are independently derived from different dioceses/groups of dioceses of the Roman Cahtolic Church (though in the case of the SEC via the Church of Scotland proper, most of which became and remained Presbyterian).
The SEC is the Anglican church and a member of the Anglican communion. Same as the Church in Wales and the Church of Ireland, all who have the Archbishop of Canterbury as their ceremonial head even if they do not share the King as their Supreme Governor with the Church of England.
Pre Reformation both England and Scotland were majority Roman Catholic. The Scottish Episcopal Church actually started as early as 1582 just over 20 years after the Church of Scotland was founded to preserve bishops
"the Anglican church" - no, it isn't. That's the C of E if you are using those words. The SEC is quite different. It was never Anglican except in the sense that it joined the Anglican communion in recent years.
The two churches have different Reformations, different histories, different Williamite settlements.
Yes it is, every member of the Anglican communion including the SEC is an Anglican church.
Apart from not having the Kingas its SG there is little difference between the SEC and Church of England in service style or structure
The Anglican Communion is not the Anglican Church. Different levels, altogether. It's like confusing England and the United Kingdom.
And the SEC and C of E use different prayer books.
Yes it is, the global Anglican church is a denomination no different to the global Roman Catholic Church or Methodist Church etc and also more aligned than say Baptist or Pentecostal churches
Eh? That's a remarkable usage of the English language. The SEC is undoudtedly a different denomination from the C of E. Different prayer book, different finances, different location, and so on. It also follows the law of the land in allowing people of the same gender to marry. THe Archbish of Cantuar has nothing to do with that.
I wouldn't call the Free Church of Scotland and the FCoS (Continuing) different denominations. Yet they diffe3r less than the two above.
No it isn't, the SEP ceremonial leader is the Archbishop of Canterbury for starters. The SEP Prayer book is little different to the BCP in format. The fact it allows some priests personal choice as to whether to conduct gay blessings or not doesn't change that
Do the numbers of English angels and Scottish angels that can dance on the head of a pin differ?
Dunno about the numbers, but they are certainly in different heavenly hosts as fiar as discipline is concerned:
"It is [...] a common fault to refer to the Episcopal Church as the ‘English’ Church, whereas the Scottish Episcopal Church is entirely independent from the Church of England in its government, liturgies, and in the election of its bishops etc. it is, however, in full communion with the Church of England, as is the Church in Wales, the Church of Ireland and all the other members of the Anglican Communion (such as the Anglican Church in Japan or in Southern Africa)."
"From 1690, therefore, the Bishops and those who supported them, were forced out of the Church of Scotland: thus was the Scottish Episcopal Church born, and it has continued as a separate body ever since."
If Putin tried to suggest to his high command that it was appropriate to use nuclear weapons (he cannot do it on his own) he knows he will be removed from power faster than a retreating "elite" Russian soldier on the Ukrainian front line.
How the fuck do you know this for a fact?
If Crimea comes into play then I think a full scale mobilisation and all out war is more likely than the nuclear options.
It was an opinion based on information I have read from reliable sources, so no, I don't know "the fuck" know it for a fact.
It was presented as certainty not opinion. What are these reliable sources that are guaranteeing Russian forces will disobey orders to use nuclear weapons?
There aren't any. I've seen guesstimates (and they are more guesses than estimates) from various military types (eg RUSI) that there's perhaps a 25% likelihood of Putin resorting to tactical nukes.
The only measure of agreement is that it's less likely to happen than it is to happen.
My prediction is that Truss will turn out to be a lot better than many of us gave her credit for. Boris Johnson is a busted flush. He is yesterday's Clown; someone who achieved a great election victory against a ridiculously weedy opponent and managed very little else of note. His deranged supporters might want him back, but they will hopefully diminish in time, and before long it will be difficult to find anyone to admit they supported him.
I do wonder whether even he has fallen out of love with "Boris" as he always affectionately referred to him.
His posts do not indicate it so far, and I would be delighted if he would join those of us who want Truss to succeed and publicly accept Johnson is toxic and has damaged the party considerably
I support her as leader but she is still 10% behind on the latest poll and this end bankers' bonuses cap now was her decision not Boris'. She and Kwarteng own it
You demonstrate my point perfectly and until you condemn Johnson then you are part of his toxic legacy
I won't condemn the party's most successful leader since Thatcher
Leaving aside the question as to whether he was more successful than either Cameron or Major, looking at the rest of them that isn't exactly a high bar, is it?
Interesting that @HYUFD describes Johnson as "the party's most successful leader since Thatcher". This is a totally ridiculous proposition. He bases "most successful" solely on his election victory over Jeremy fecking Corbyn.
Johnson was responsible for one of the biggest fissures in the Tory Party since the Corn Laws. He became an international laughing stock. He thoroughly trashed the Conservative Party's reputation for sensible governance and found himself heaved out of No10 after only 3 years for dishonesty. Other than TMay you have to go back to 1827 to find a PM with a shorter tenure. He was hopeless. A bad joke. A man totally unfit for office. He was not successful, except in his ability to trounce the most ludicrous LoTO ever to have held that role, and to gull those foolish enough like @HYUFD into thinking he was appropriate to be Party leader and PM.
He also delivered Brexit and the vaccines on his watch and of course Theresa was sadly unable to defeat Corbyn.
Once we have gone through the Tory leaderships of Truss, Badenoch, Braverman and Rees Mogg even you might miss Boris!
Analyst on R5L’s wake up to money - tracking a basket of essential goods says price difference between Morrissons and Aldi is now 40%. Explained by Morrisons having to service a gigantic debt.
Shop at Aldi, people.
Good morning
I heard that report as well and it is astonishing that Morrisons apparently have a 7 billion debt
Shop anywhere but Morrisons would be the message
5live also discussed Kwarteng's proposal to abolish city bonuses and it really does make you wonder if the conservative party have lost all it's instincts to govern
It may be the right thing from a business sense, but the optics are shocking and hands yet another gift to labour
It is the right thing from city workers sense. It is a bad thing for shareholders and really bad for government and taxpayers who will eventually have to fund another bailout with years of austerity.
I'm curious about this idea that bankers bonuses caused the subprime mortgage crisis.
I am even more curious about the idea that there will ever be another bank bailout.
Extreme bankers bonuses create incentives for bankers to gamble with the banks money. If they win, fantastic, if they lose its not their money and as long as you can talk the talk and know some of the right people, it is still easy to get another job.
That culture feeds through to the banks to gamble, notionally with their money, but knowing they have a government funded back stop as they are too big to fail.
Take away the controls and regulation and sooner or later we shall be back to bail outs.
Well, it's too bad the Labour government didn't do something about it then...
Of course. Not sure why you think that is relevant when they have not been in power for a long time and it is the current governments policies that will matter.
Well, the view of Labour supporters on the GFC is "it started in America".
That's not the view of Labour supporters, it is a statement of fact.
The global [key word, there] financial crisis started in America. Britain was very poorly placed to weather it because Gordon Brown had spent the previous 6 years [after an admirable initial period of restraint] pissing money up the wall, spending more than he raked in even during times of relative financial health. Personally I couldn't give a fig how big bankers' bonuses are. I don't care at all about the optics, I care about the gap between what we spend and what we earn. That should be the #1 issue for a chancellor of the exchequer to worry about. If this measure narrows that gap (and I am at best agnostic about whether it will) it should be welcomed.
Britain was hit badly because we have a large globally exposed financial sector and one of our biggest banks was in the midst of an ill-advised over-leveraged buying spree at the top of the market. Running a structural deficit of 4% of GDP in 2007 compared to a G7 average of 3% is unlikely to have been a significant factor in explaining why we were hit worse than others, no matter how much people want it to be Gordon Brown's fault.
Running a structural deficit of 4% during pre-crash times is utterly catastrophic as when the crash inevitably comes and you inevitably need countercyclical spending to go with it, then you have nowhere to go.
The fact that some other countries were nearly as bad as the UK doesn't justify or excuse what Brown did.
But it is hard to blame Brown's fiscal policy for us being hit *much worse than others* when Brown's fiscal policy was *pretty much the same as others'*. That was the point I was responding to. Also worth noting that our debt to GDP ratio in 2007 was 41% (down from 43% in 1997) compared to a G7 average of 81%. So we had plenty of space to run countercyclical fiscal policy, certainly compared to other countries, and indeed the increase in our debt to GDP ratio between 2007 and 2010 (33pp) was almost identical to the G7 average (32pp), suggesting that we were indeed able to run a countercyclical fiscal policy just like other economies.
Except it wasn't the same as others, it was via your own figures worse than others. And of course its worth noting that the G7 average includes the UK so the G7 average was itself getting dragged down by Brown's terrible performance.
Debt to GDP isn't the relevant figure, the deficit is, although its worth noting via your own figures again in the span of three years Brown nearly doubled our debt-to-GDP figure whereas G7 nations debt-to-GDP increased by much less than half.
Gordon Brown's peak debt to GDP being around 3% iirc which was on a par with preceding Conservative governments. It was not significant and did not cause or exacerbate the GFC.
Also, aiui Team Truss has determined, as Cheney said of Reagan, that deficits don't matter and that George Osborne's austerity was a mistake that hobbled Britain's economy.
Except....this was a time of unprecedented receipts. The housing market was going bananas, profits were high, and it was a time where debt to GDP didn't need to be as high given the circumstances in the economy. Simply, we were spending too much. I don't think anyone disputes that, no matter what they think the answer (austerity/non-austerity) should have been.
Yes, there is a good deal in that. But as it happened, the GFC came along and rendered it all moot. Then Osborne came along and flatlined the nascent recovery inherited from Labour, and here we are.
The GFC didn't just "come along and render it moot", the GFC was a crash that the Government should have been preparing for as it was overdue. Crashes happen, and the GFC was a classic crash, not some exogenous and unforeseeable shock.
And you repeat the myth that Osborne flatlined the recovery. Don't you realise the UK in the 2010s grew faster than the Eurozone did, both in nominal terms and in per capita terms. "Despite Brexit" supposedly harming the UK during that decade.
If Brexit and Osborne "flatlined" or harmed the UK, then how come the UK grew faster than the Eurozone or the rest of the EU? Just how much faster than them would we have grown in your eyes were it not for Osborne or Brexit, and why?
Osborne's austerity was a mistake as even the current vintage of Tories now acknowledge. The problem is that they have pivoted to pro-growth fiscal policies at precisely the wrong moment, with inflation out of control, and so they will only succeed in pushing up inflation and interest rates. Euro area growth was low because of their sovereign debt crisis and because they followed similar austerity policies to us, and because they had lower population growth.
It was not a mistake, because the deficit was out of control.
Pro-growth policies are good now because the deficit was brought under control prior to the crash, unlike in Brown's time, and so we're in a much better fiscal position than we were then.
The UK grew faster than Europe on a per capita basis too, again despite "austerity" and "Brexit" being both accused of "flatlining" growth. We had our own sovereign debt crisis caused by Brown's borrowing too, which is why Osborne needed to clean up Brown's mess.
The UK deficit is set to grow considerably under Truss, who appears to believe in trickle-down economics, something known not to work. So, deficit up, but no significant improvement in growth.
Your position of saying both Osborne and Truss are right does need an explanation Barty?
Fiscal control on the one hand versus abandoning fiscal control for a dash for growth on the other will sound like chalk and cheese to us non economic experts, until you explain this one to us.
Analyst on R5L’s wake up to money - tracking a basket of essential goods says price difference between Morrissons and Aldi is now 40%. Explained by Morrisons having to service a gigantic debt.
Shop at Aldi, people.
Good morning
I heard that report as well and it is astonishing that Morrisons apparently have a 7 billion debt
Shop anywhere but Morrisons would be the message
5live also discussed Kwarteng's proposal to abolish city bonuses and it really does make you wonder if the conservative party have lost all it's instincts to govern
It may be the right thing from a business sense, but the optics are shocking and hands yet another gift to labour
It is the right thing from city workers sense. It is a bad thing for shareholders and really bad for government and taxpayers who will eventually have to fund another bailout with years of austerity.
I'm curious about this idea that bankers bonuses caused the subprime mortgage crisis.
I am even more curious about the idea that there will ever be another bank bailout.
Extreme bankers bonuses create incentives for bankers to gamble with the banks money. If they win, fantastic, if they lose its not their money and as long as you can talk the talk and know some of the right people, it is still easy to get another job.
That culture feeds through to the banks to gamble, notionally with their money, but knowing they have a government funded back stop as they are too big to fail.
Take away the controls and regulation and sooner or later we shall be back to bail outs.
Well, it's too bad the Labour government didn't do something about it then...
Of course. Not sure why you think that is relevant when they have not been in power for a long time and it is the current governments policies that will matter.
Well, the view of Labour supporters on the GFC is "it started in America".
That's not the view of Labour supporters, it is a statement of fact.
The global [key word, there] financial crisis started in America. Britain was very poorly placed to weather it because Gordon Brown had spent the previous 6 years [after an admirable initial period of restraint] pissing money up the wall, spending more than he raked in even during times of relative financial health. Personally I couldn't give a fig how big bankers' bonuses are. I don't care at all about the optics, I care about the gap between what we spend and what we earn. That should be the #1 issue for a chancellor of the exchequer to worry about. If this measure narrows that gap (and I am at best agnostic about whether it will) it should be welcomed.
Britain was hit badly because we have a large globally exposed financial sector and one of our biggest banks was in the midst of an ill-advised over-leveraged buying spree at the top of the market. Running a structural deficit of 4% of GDP in 2007 compared to a G7 average of 3% is unlikely to have been a significant factor in explaining why we were hit worse than others, no matter how much people want it to be Gordon Brown's fault.
Running a structural deficit of 4% during pre-crash times is utterly catastrophic as when the crash inevitably comes and you inevitably need countercyclical spending to go with it, then you have nowhere to go.
The fact that some other countries were nearly as bad as the UK doesn't justify or excuse what Brown did.
But it is hard to blame Brown's fiscal policy for us being hit *much worse than others* when Brown's fiscal policy was *pretty much the same as others'*. That was the point I was responding to. Also worth noting that our debt to GDP ratio in 2007 was 41% (down from 43% in 1997) compared to a G7 average of 81%. So we had plenty of space to run countercyclical fiscal policy, certainly compared to other countries, and indeed the increase in our debt to GDP ratio between 2007 and 2010 (33pp) was almost identical to the G7 average (32pp), suggesting that we were indeed able to run a countercyclical fiscal policy just like other economies.
Except it wasn't the same as others, it was via your own figures worse than others. And of course its worth noting that the G7 average includes the UK so the G7 average was itself getting dragged down by Brown's terrible performance.
Debt to GDP isn't the relevant figure, the deficit is, although its worth noting via your own figures again in the span of three years Brown nearly doubled our debt-to-GDP figure whereas G7 nations debt-to-GDP increased by much less than half.
Gordon Brown's peak debt to GDP being around 3% iirc which was on a par with preceding Conservative governments. It was not significant and did not cause or exacerbate the GFC.
Also, aiui Team Truss has determined, as Cheney said of Reagan, that deficits don't matter and that George Osborne's austerity was a mistake that hobbled Britain's economy.
Except....this was a time of unprecedented receipts. The housing market was going bananas, profits were high, and it was a time where debt to GDP didn't need to be as high given the circumstances in the economy. Simply, we were spending too much. I don't think anyone disputes that, no matter what they think the answer (austerity/non-austerity) should have been.
Yes, there is a good deal in that. But as it happened, the GFC came along and rendered it all moot. Then Osborne came along and flatlined the nascent recovery inherited from Labour, and here we are.
The GFC didn't just "come along and render it moot", the GFC was a crash that the Government should have been preparing for as it was overdue. Crashes happen, and the GFC was a classic crash, not some exogenous and unforeseeable shock.
And you repeat the myth that Osborne flatlined the recovery. Don't you realise the UK in the 2010s grew faster than the Eurozone did, both in nominal terms and in per capita terms. "Despite Brexit" supposedly harming the UK during that decade.
If Brexit and Osborne "flatlined" or harmed the UK, then how come the UK grew faster than the Eurozone or the rest of the EU? Just how much faster than them would we have grown in your eyes were it not for Osborne or Brexit, and why?
Osborne's austerity was a mistake as even the current vintage of Tories now acknowledge. The problem is that they have pivoted to pro-growth fiscal policies at precisely the wrong moment, with inflation out of control, and so they will only succeed in pushing up inflation and interest rates. Euro area growth was low because of their sovereign debt crisis and because they followed similar austerity policies to us, and because they had lower population growth.
It was not a mistake, because the deficit was out of control.
Pro-growth policies are good now because the deficit was brought under control prior to the crash, unlike in Brown's time, and so we're in a much better fiscal position than we were then.
The UK grew faster than Europe on a per capita basis too, again despite "austerity" and "Brexit" being both accused of "flatlining" growth. We had our own sovereign debt crisis caused by Brown's borrowing too, which is why Osborne needed to clean up Brown's mess.
The UK deficit is set to grow considerably under Truss, who appears to believe in trickle-down economics, something known not to work. So, deficit up, but no significant improvement in growth.
Amused by your claim that trickle-down economics is "known not to work", it absolutely does work.
Cutting taxes in both the UK and the USA in the 80s led to significant growth and eventual budget surpluses in the 90s.
That the growth and surplus such tax cutting brought about was subsequently pissed away, is not a problem with "trickle down economics".
Analyst on R5L’s wake up to money - tracking a basket of essential goods says price difference between Morrissons and Aldi is now 40%. Explained by Morrisons having to service a gigantic debt.
Shop at Aldi, people.
Good morning
I heard that report as well and it is astonishing that Morrisons apparently have a 7 billion debt
Shop anywhere but Morrisons would be the message
5live also discussed Kwarteng's proposal to abolish city bonuses and it really does make you wonder if the conservative party have lost all it's instincts to govern
It may be the right thing from a business sense, but the optics are shocking and hands yet another gift to labour
It is the right thing from city workers sense. It is a bad thing for shareholders and really bad for government and taxpayers who will eventually have to fund another bailout with years of austerity.
I'm curious about this idea that bankers bonuses caused the subprime mortgage crisis.
I am even more curious about the idea that there will ever be another bank bailout.
Extreme bankers bonuses create incentives for bankers to gamble with the banks money. If they win, fantastic, if they lose its not their money and as long as you can talk the talk and know some of the right people, it is still easy to get another job.
That culture feeds through to the banks to gamble, notionally with their money, but knowing they have a government funded back stop as they are too big to fail.
Take away the controls and regulation and sooner or later we shall be back to bail outs.
Well, it's too bad the Labour government didn't do something about it then...
Of course. Not sure why you think that is relevant when they have not been in power for a long time and it is the current governments policies that will matter.
Well, the view of Labour supporters on the GFC is "it started in America".
That's not the view of Labour supporters, it is a statement of fact.
The global [key word, there] financial crisis started in America. Britain was very poorly placed to weather it because Gordon Brown had spent the previous 6 years [after an admirable initial period of restraint] pissing money up the wall, spending more than he raked in even during times of relative financial health. Personally I couldn't give a fig how big bankers' bonuses are. I don't care at all about the optics, I care about the gap between what we spend and what we earn. That should be the #1 issue for a chancellor of the exchequer to worry about. If this measure narrows that gap (and I am at best agnostic about whether it will) it should be welcomed.
Britain was hit badly because we have a large globally exposed financial sector and one of our biggest banks was in the midst of an ill-advised over-leveraged buying spree at the top of the market. Running a structural deficit of 4% of GDP in 2007 compared to a G7 average of 3% is unlikely to have been a significant factor in explaining why we were hit worse than others, no matter how much people want it to be Gordon Brown's fault.
Running a structural deficit of 4% during pre-crash times is utterly catastrophic as when the crash inevitably comes and you inevitably need countercyclical spending to go with it, then you have nowhere to go.
The fact that some other countries were nearly as bad as the UK doesn't justify or excuse what Brown did.
But it is hard to blame Brown's fiscal policy for us being hit *much worse than others* when Brown's fiscal policy was *pretty much the same as others'*. That was the point I was responding to. Also worth noting that our debt to GDP ratio in 2007 was 41% (down from 43% in 1997) compared to a G7 average of 81%. So we had plenty of space to run countercyclical fiscal policy, certainly compared to other countries, and indeed the increase in our debt to GDP ratio between 2007 and 2010 (33pp) was almost identical to the G7 average (32pp), suggesting that we were indeed able to run a countercyclical fiscal policy just like other economies.
Except it wasn't the same as others, it was via your own figures worse than others. And of course its worth noting that the G7 average includes the UK so the G7 average was itself getting dragged down by Brown's terrible performance.
Debt to GDP isn't the relevant figure, the deficit is, although its worth noting via your own figures again in the span of three years Brown nearly doubled our debt-to-GDP figure whereas G7 nations debt-to-GDP increased by much less than half.
Gordon Brown's peak debt to GDP being around 3% iirc which was on a par with preceding Conservative governments. It was not significant and did not cause or exacerbate the GFC.
Also, aiui Team Truss has determined, as Cheney said of Reagan, that deficits don't matter and that George Osborne's austerity was a mistake that hobbled Britain's economy.
Except....this was a time of unprecedented receipts. The housing market was going bananas, profits were high, and it was a time where debt to GDP didn't need to be as high given the circumstances in the economy. Simply, we were spending too much. I don't think anyone disputes that, no matter what they think the answer (austerity/non-austerity) should have been.
Yes, there is a good deal in that. But as it happened, the GFC came along and rendered it all moot. Then Osborne came along and flatlined the nascent recovery inherited from Labour, and here we are.
The GFC didn't just "come along and render it moot", the GFC was a crash that the Government should have been preparing for as it was overdue. Crashes happen, and the GFC was a classic crash, not some exogenous and unforeseeable shock.
And you repeat the myth that Osborne flatlined the recovery. Don't you realise the UK in the 2010s grew faster than the Eurozone did, both in nominal terms and in per capita terms. "Despite Brexit" supposedly harming the UK during that decade.
If Brexit and Osborne "flatlined" or harmed the UK, then how come the UK grew faster than the Eurozone or the rest of the EU? Just how much faster than them would we have grown in your eyes were it not for Osborne or Brexit, and why?
Osborne's austerity was a mistake as even the current vintage of Tories now acknowledge. The problem is that they have pivoted to pro-growth fiscal policies at precisely the wrong moment, with inflation out of control, and so they will only succeed in pushing up inflation and interest rates. Euro area growth was low because of their sovereign debt crisis and because they followed similar austerity policies to us, and because they had lower population growth.
It was not a mistake, because the deficit was out of control.
Pro-growth policies are good now because the deficit was brought under control prior to the crash, unlike in Brown's time, and so we're in a much better fiscal position than we were then.
The UK grew faster than Europe on a per capita basis too, again despite "austerity" and "Brexit" being both accused of "flatlining" growth. We had our own sovereign debt crisis caused by Brown's borrowing too, which is why Osborne needed to clean up Brown's mess.
The UK deficit is set to grow considerably under Truss, who appears to believe in trickle-down economics, something known not to work. So, deficit up, but no significant improvement in growth.
Your position of saying both Osborne and Truss are right does need an explanation Barty?
Fiscal control on the one hand versus abandoning fiscal control for a dash for growth on the other will sound like chalk and cheese to us non economic, experts until you explain this one to us.
Different stages of the economic cycle.
Brown's deficit spending blew the budget up pre-crash, taking us from a budget surplus to a maxed out deficit before the recession even hit us.
Pre-recession the budget deficit shrank every single year for a decade under the Tories.
A dash for growth now is a viable option as Osborne fixed the roof while the sun was shining. Brown didn't.
On the radio I heard an interesting tip for @Casino_Royale or anyone else going into the queen queue, especially at night. Take a pack or to of small individually-wrapped chocolates, such as Heroes or eclairs. Eat them slowly over the night to keep your energy up, and offer some to the volunteers along the route.
It hadn't occurred to me that there would be volunteers on the route, but it makes sense.
Wow - such groundbreaking , monumental advice from the Radio there - was it Cadburys FM?
That is brilliant. Britain at its best. That is how we do communal experiences.
I can feel my next novel coming on: Queuing with Strangers. Endless possibilities for plot lines before, during and after the queue, as strangers intersect and new friends (or enemies) are made. Hope nobody beats me to it.
More interestingly you don’t get your wristband until the London Eye
Has the Queue grown… is it a preQueue? Or a queue to join the Queue?
We should be told!
Get a wristband, four hours in the pub, come back when your place is near the front.
That is brilliant. Britain at its best. That is how we do communal experiences.
I can feel my next novel coming on: Queuing with Strangers. Endless possibilities for plot lines before, during and after the queue, as strangers intersect and new friends (or enemies) are made. Hope nobody beats me to it.
More interestingly you don’t get your wristband until the London Eye
Has the Queue grown… is it a preQueue? Or a queue to join the Queue?
We should be told!
Get a wristband, four hours in the pub, come back when your place is near the front.
Is that how it works?
the wristbands only start at the London Eye so near the end . Watching it for an hour today I did see some peopel who obviously had a Disney style Fast Pass but did not recognize them
My prediction is that Truss will turn out to be a lot better than many of us gave her credit for. Boris Johnson is a busted flush. He is yesterday's Clown; someone who achieved a great election victory against a ridiculously weedy opponent and managed very little else of note. His deranged supporters might want him back, but they will hopefully diminish in time, and before long it will be difficult to find anyone to admit they supported him.
I do wonder whether even he has fallen out of love with "Boris" as he always affectionately referred to him.
His posts do not indicate it so far, and I would be delighted if he would join those of us who want Truss to succeed and publicly accept Johnson is toxic and has damaged the party considerably
I support her as leader but she is still 10% behind on the latest poll and this end bankers' bonuses cap now was her decision not Boris'. She and Kwarteng own it
You demonstrate my point perfectly and until you condemn Johnson then you are part of his toxic legacy
I won't condemn the party's most successful leader since Thatcher
Leaving aside the question as to whether he was more successful than either Cameron or Major, looking at the rest of them that isn't exactly a high bar, is it?
Interesting that @HYUFD describes Johnson as "the party's most successful leader since Thatcher". This is a totally ridiculous proposition. He bases "most successful" solely on his election victory over Jeremy fecking Corbyn.
Johnson was responsible for one of the biggest fissures in the Tory Party since the Corn Laws. He became an international laughing stock. He thoroughly trashed the Conservative Party's reputation for sensible governance and found himself heaved out of No10 after only 3 years for dishonesty. Other than TMay you have to go back to 1827 to find a PM with a shorter tenure. He was hopeless. A bad joke. A man totally unfit for office. He was not successful, except in his ability to trounce the most ludicrous LoTO ever to have held that role, and to gull those foolish enough like @HYUFD into thinking he was appropriate to be Party leader and PM.
He also delivered Brexit and the vaccines on his watch and of course Theresa was sadly unable to defeat Corbyn.
Once we have gone through the Tory leaderships of Truss, Badenoch, Braverman and Rees Mogg even you might miss Boris!
Mr Johnson is a medical immunologist?
This is a bit divisive. Did Churchill win the second world war (from a British perspective - I know USSR/USA etc)? Yes. Did he fight in Normandy, the Ardennes, Crossing of the Rhine, in a Lancaster over Berlin? No (although he tried to get to Normandy...)
Did Johnson head into the lab, roll up his sleeves and say 'right, we've got the spike sequence, its time to see if mRNA vaccines work...'? Of course not. Did he appoint the right people, let them spend what was needed and keep out of the way? Yes he did.
It is fair to give him credit for things done well just as it is fair to blame for the things that went wrong. Don't let hatred or disdain for Johnson cloud that. There is enough to mock already.
Analyst on R5L’s wake up to money - tracking a basket of essential goods says price difference between Morrissons and Aldi is now 40%. Explained by Morrisons having to service a gigantic debt.
Shop at Aldi, people.
Good morning
I heard that report as well and it is astonishing that Morrisons apparently have a 7 billion debt
Shop anywhere but Morrisons would be the message
5live also discussed Kwarteng's proposal to abolish city bonuses and it really does make you wonder if the conservative party have lost all it's instincts to govern
It may be the right thing from a business sense, but the optics are shocking and hands yet another gift to labour
It is the right thing from city workers sense. It is a bad thing for shareholders and really bad for government and taxpayers who will eventually have to fund another bailout with years of austerity.
I'm curious about this idea that bankers bonuses caused the subprime mortgage crisis.
I am even more curious about the idea that there will ever be another bank bailout.
Extreme bankers bonuses create incentives for bankers to gamble with the banks money. If they win, fantastic, if they lose its not their money and as long as you can talk the talk and know some of the right people, it is still easy to get another job.
That culture feeds through to the banks to gamble, notionally with their money, but knowing they have a government funded back stop as they are too big to fail.
Take away the controls and regulation and sooner or later we shall be back to bail outs.
Well, it's too bad the Labour government didn't do something about it then...
Of course. Not sure why you think that is relevant when they have not been in power for a long time and it is the current governments policies that will matter.
Well, the view of Labour supporters on the GFC is "it started in America".
That's not the view of Labour supporters, it is a statement of fact.
The global [key word, there] financial crisis started in America. Britain was very poorly placed to weather it because Gordon Brown had spent the previous 6 years [after an admirable initial period of restraint] pissing money up the wall, spending more than he raked in even during times of relative financial health. Personally I couldn't give a fig how big bankers' bonuses are. I don't care at all about the optics, I care about the gap between what we spend and what we earn. That should be the #1 issue for a chancellor of the exchequer to worry about. If this measure narrows that gap (and I am at best agnostic about whether it will) it should be welcomed.
Britain was hit badly because we have a large globally exposed financial sector and one of our biggest banks was in the midst of an ill-advised over-leveraged buying spree at the top of the market. Running a structural deficit of 4% of GDP in 2007 compared to a G7 average of 3% is unlikely to have been a significant factor in explaining why we were hit worse than others, no matter how much people want it to be Gordon Brown's fault.
Running a structural deficit of 4% during pre-crash times is utterly catastrophic as when the crash inevitably comes and you inevitably need countercyclical spending to go with it, then you have nowhere to go.
The fact that some other countries were nearly as bad as the UK doesn't justify or excuse what Brown did.
But it is hard to blame Brown's fiscal policy for us being hit *much worse than others* when Brown's fiscal policy was *pretty much the same as others'*. That was the point I was responding to. Also worth noting that our debt to GDP ratio in 2007 was 41% (down from 43% in 1997) compared to a G7 average of 81%. So we had plenty of space to run countercyclical fiscal policy, certainly compared to other countries, and indeed the increase in our debt to GDP ratio between 2007 and 2010 (33pp) was almost identical to the G7 average (32pp), suggesting that we were indeed able to run a countercyclical fiscal policy just like other economies.
Except it wasn't the same as others, it was via your own figures worse than others. And of course its worth noting that the G7 average includes the UK so the G7 average was itself getting dragged down by Brown's terrible performance.
Debt to GDP isn't the relevant figure, the deficit is, although its worth noting via your own figures again in the span of three years Brown nearly doubled our debt-to-GDP figure whereas G7 nations debt-to-GDP increased by much less than half.
Gordon Brown's peak debt to GDP being around 3% iirc which was on a par with preceding Conservative governments. It was not significant and did not cause or exacerbate the GFC.
Also, aiui Team Truss has determined, as Cheney said of Reagan, that deficits don't matter and that George Osborne's austerity was a mistake that hobbled Britain's economy.
Except....this was a time of unprecedented receipts. The housing market was going bananas, profits were high, and it was a time where debt to GDP didn't need to be as high given the circumstances in the economy. Simply, we were spending too much. I don't think anyone disputes that, no matter what they think the answer (austerity/non-austerity) should have been.
Yes, there is a good deal in that. But as it happened, the GFC came along and rendered it all moot. Then Osborne came along and flatlined the nascent recovery inherited from Labour, and here we are.
The GFC didn't just "come along and render it moot", the GFC was a crash that the Government should have been preparing for as it was overdue. Crashes happen, and the GFC was a classic crash, not some exogenous and unforeseeable shock.
And you repeat the myth that Osborne flatlined the recovery. Don't you realise the UK in the 2010s grew faster than the Eurozone did, both in nominal terms and in per capita terms. "Despite Brexit" supposedly harming the UK during that decade.
If Brexit and Osborne "flatlined" or harmed the UK, then how come the UK grew faster than the Eurozone or the rest of the EU? Just how much faster than them would we have grown in your eyes were it not for Osborne or Brexit, and why?
Osborne's austerity was a mistake as even the current vintage of Tories now acknowledge. The problem is that they have pivoted to pro-growth fiscal policies at precisely the wrong moment, with inflation out of control, and so they will only succeed in pushing up inflation and interest rates. Euro area growth was low because of their sovereign debt crisis and because they followed similar austerity policies to us, and because they had lower population growth.
It was not a mistake, because the deficit was out of control.
Pro-growth policies are good now because the deficit was brought under control prior to the crash, unlike in Brown's time, and so we're in a much better fiscal position than we were then.
The UK grew faster than Europe on a per capita basis too, again despite "austerity" and "Brexit" being both accused of "flatlining" growth. We had our own sovereign debt crisis caused by Brown's borrowing too, which is why Osborne needed to clean up Brown's mess.
The UK deficit is set to grow considerably under Truss, who appears to believe in trickle-down economics, something known not to work. So, deficit up, but no significant improvement in growth.
Your position of saying both Osborne and Truss are right does need an explanation Barty?
Fiscal control on the one hand versus abandoning fiscal control for a dash for growth on the other will sound like chalk and cheese to us non economic, experts until you explain this one to us.
Different stages of the economic cycle.
Brown's deficit spending blew the budget up pre-crash, taking us from a budget surplus to a maxed out deficit before the recession even hit us.
Pre-recession the budget deficit shrank every single year for a decade under the Tories.
A dash for growth now is a viable option as Osborne fixed the roof while the sun was shining. Brown didn't.
Analyst on R5L’s wake up to money - tracking a basket of essential goods says price difference between Morrissons and Aldi is now 40%. Explained by Morrisons having to service a gigantic debt.
Shop at Aldi, people.
Good morning
I heard that report as well and it is astonishing that Morrisons apparently have a 7 billion debt
Shop anywhere but Morrisons would be the message
5live also discussed Kwarteng's proposal to abolish city bonuses and it really does make you wonder if the conservative party have lost all it's instincts to govern
It may be the right thing from a business sense, but the optics are shocking and hands yet another gift to labour
It is the right thing from city workers sense. It is a bad thing for shareholders and really bad for government and taxpayers who will eventually have to fund another bailout with years of austerity.
I'm curious about this idea that bankers bonuses caused the subprime mortgage crisis.
I am even more curious about the idea that there will ever be another bank bailout.
Extreme bankers bonuses create incentives for bankers to gamble with the banks money. If they win, fantastic, if they lose its not their money and as long as you can talk the talk and know some of the right people, it is still easy to get another job.
That culture feeds through to the banks to gamble, notionally with their money, but knowing they have a government funded back stop as they are too big to fail.
Take away the controls and regulation and sooner or later we shall be back to bail outs.
Well, it's too bad the Labour government didn't do something about it then...
Of course. Not sure why you think that is relevant when they have not been in power for a long time and it is the current governments policies that will matter.
Well, the view of Labour supporters on the GFC is "it started in America".
That's not the view of Labour supporters, it is a statement of fact.
The global [key word, there] financial crisis started in America. Britain was very poorly placed to weather it because Gordon Brown had spent the previous 6 years [after an admirable initial period of restraint] pissing money up the wall, spending more than he raked in even during times of relative financial health. Personally I couldn't give a fig how big bankers' bonuses are. I don't care at all about the optics, I care about the gap between what we spend and what we earn. That should be the #1 issue for a chancellor of the exchequer to worry about. If this measure narrows that gap (and I am at best agnostic about whether it will) it should be welcomed.
Britain was hit badly because we have a large globally exposed financial sector and one of our biggest banks was in the midst of an ill-advised over-leveraged buying spree at the top of the market. Running a structural deficit of 4% of GDP in 2007 compared to a G7 average of 3% is unlikely to have been a significant factor in explaining why we were hit worse than others, no matter how much people want it to be Gordon Brown's fault.
Running a structural deficit of 4% during pre-crash times is utterly catastrophic as when the crash inevitably comes and you inevitably need countercyclical spending to go with it, then you have nowhere to go.
The fact that some other countries were nearly as bad as the UK doesn't justify or excuse what Brown did.
But it is hard to blame Brown's fiscal policy for us being hit *much worse than others* when Brown's fiscal policy was *pretty much the same as others'*. That was the point I was responding to. Also worth noting that our debt to GDP ratio in 2007 was 41% (down from 43% in 1997) compared to a G7 average of 81%. So we had plenty of space to run countercyclical fiscal policy, certainly compared to other countries, and indeed the increase in our debt to GDP ratio between 2007 and 2010 (33pp) was almost identical to the G7 average (32pp), suggesting that we were indeed able to run a countercyclical fiscal policy just like other economies.
Except it wasn't the same as others, it was via your own figures worse than others. And of course its worth noting that the G7 average includes the UK so the G7 average was itself getting dragged down by Brown's terrible performance.
Debt to GDP isn't the relevant figure, the deficit is, although its worth noting via your own figures again in the span of three years Brown nearly doubled our debt-to-GDP figure whereas G7 nations debt-to-GDP increased by much less than half.
Gordon Brown's peak debt to GDP being around 3% iirc which was on a par with preceding Conservative governments. It was not significant and did not cause or exacerbate the GFC.
Also, aiui Team Truss has determined, as Cheney said of Reagan, that deficits don't matter and that George Osborne's austerity was a mistake that hobbled Britain's economy.
Except....this was a time of unprecedented receipts. The housing market was going bananas, profits were high, and it was a time where debt to GDP didn't need to be as high given the circumstances in the economy. Simply, we were spending too much. I don't think anyone disputes that, no matter what they think the answer (austerity/non-austerity) should have been.
Yes, there is a good deal in that. But as it happened, the GFC came along and rendered it all moot. Then Osborne came along and flatlined the nascent recovery inherited from Labour, and here we are.
The GFC didn't just "come along and render it moot", the GFC was a crash that the Government should have been preparing for as it was overdue. Crashes happen, and the GFC was a classic crash, not some exogenous and unforeseeable shock.
And you repeat the myth that Osborne flatlined the recovery. Don't you realise the UK in the 2010s grew faster than the Eurozone did, both in nominal terms and in per capita terms. "Despite Brexit" supposedly harming the UK during that decade.
If Brexit and Osborne "flatlined" or harmed the UK, then how come the UK grew faster than the Eurozone or the rest of the EU? Just how much faster than them would we have grown in your eyes were it not for Osborne or Brexit, and why?
Osborne's austerity was a mistake as even the current vintage of Tories now acknowledge. The problem is that they have pivoted to pro-growth fiscal policies at precisely the wrong moment, with inflation out of control, and so they will only succeed in pushing up inflation and interest rates. Euro area growth was low because of their sovereign debt crisis and because they followed similar austerity policies to us, and because they had lower population growth.
It was not a mistake, because the deficit was out of control.
Pro-growth policies are good now because the deficit was brought under control prior to the crash, unlike in Brown's time, and so we're in a much better fiscal position than we were then.
The UK grew faster than Europe on a per capita basis too, again despite "austerity" and "Brexit" being both accused of "flatlining" growth. We had our own sovereign debt crisis caused by Brown's borrowing too, which is why Osborne needed to clean up Brown's mess.
The UK deficit is set to grow considerably under Truss, who appears to believe in trickle-down economics, something known not to work. So, deficit up, but no significant improvement in growth.
Amused by your claim that trickle-down economics is "known not to work", it absolutely does work.
Cutting taxes in both the UK and the USA in the 80s led to significant growth and eventual budget surpluses in the 90s.
That the growth and surplus such tax cutting brought about was subsequently pissed away, is not a problem with "trickle down economics".
There are other definitions of "ork" - usually, trickle down is literally understood by most to mean that eventually the poor benefit.
...and in other CoL crisis news the Royal Yacht HMS Boris Johnson is going ahead despite disinterest from King Charles 3.
(The Times)
Having seen some footage recently of HMQ and Britannia, and I more in favour of a new Royal Yacht than previously, especially since the FLSOJ will have no part in it
Meanwhile the FOC date for F-35B has been pushed to the right by two years by the MoD to save money. The flegship might me more defensible if it didn't have to come out of the defence budget.
It is politically impossible to cancel it while the country is in the grip of ultra nationalist fleg bukkake. Starmer will have to quietly shelve it in a few years time under the guise of "pausing to review options about the onboard provision of pens" or similar bollocks.
Analyst on R5L’s wake up to money - tracking a basket of essential goods says price difference between Morrissons and Aldi is now 40%. Explained by Morrisons having to service a gigantic debt.
Shop at Aldi, people.
Good morning
I heard that report as well and it is astonishing that Morrisons apparently have a 7 billion debt
Shop anywhere but Morrisons would be the message
5live also discussed Kwarteng's proposal to abolish city bonuses and it really does make you wonder if the conservative party have lost all it's instincts to govern
It may be the right thing from a business sense, but the optics are shocking and hands yet another gift to labour
It is the right thing from city workers sense. It is a bad thing for shareholders and really bad for government and taxpayers who will eventually have to fund another bailout with years of austerity.
I'm curious about this idea that bankers bonuses caused the subprime mortgage crisis.
I am even more curious about the idea that there will ever be another bank bailout.
Extreme bankers bonuses create incentives for bankers to gamble with the banks money. If they win, fantastic, if they lose its not their money and as long as you can talk the talk and know some of the right people, it is still easy to get another job.
That culture feeds through to the banks to gamble, notionally with their money, but knowing they have a government funded back stop as they are too big to fail.
Take away the controls and regulation and sooner or later we shall be back to bail outs.
Well, it's too bad the Labour government didn't do something about it then...
Of course. Not sure why you think that is relevant when they have not been in power for a long time and it is the current governments policies that will matter.
Well, the view of Labour supporters on the GFC is "it started in America".
That's not the view of Labour supporters, it is a statement of fact.
The global [key word, there] financial crisis started in America. Britain was very poorly placed to weather it because Gordon Brown had spent the previous 6 years [after an admirable initial period of restraint] pissing money up the wall, spending more than he raked in even during times of relative financial health. Personally I couldn't give a fig how big bankers' bonuses are. I don't care at all about the optics, I care about the gap between what we spend and what we earn. That should be the #1 issue for a chancellor of the exchequer to worry about. If this measure narrows that gap (and I am at best agnostic about whether it will) it should be welcomed.
Britain was hit badly because we have a large globally exposed financial sector and one of our biggest banks was in the midst of an ill-advised over-leveraged buying spree at the top of the market. Running a structural deficit of 4% of GDP in 2007 compared to a G7 average of 3% is unlikely to have been a significant factor in explaining why we were hit worse than others, no matter how much people want it to be Gordon Brown's fault.
Running a structural deficit of 4% during pre-crash times is utterly catastrophic as when the crash inevitably comes and you inevitably need countercyclical spending to go with it, then you have nowhere to go.
The fact that some other countries were nearly as bad as the UK doesn't justify or excuse what Brown did.
But it is hard to blame Brown's fiscal policy for us being hit *much worse than others* when Brown's fiscal policy was *pretty much the same as others'*. That was the point I was responding to. Also worth noting that our debt to GDP ratio in 2007 was 41% (down from 43% in 1997) compared to a G7 average of 81%. So we had plenty of space to run countercyclical fiscal policy, certainly compared to other countries, and indeed the increase in our debt to GDP ratio between 2007 and 2010 (33pp) was almost identical to the G7 average (32pp), suggesting that we were indeed able to run a countercyclical fiscal policy just like other economies.
Except it wasn't the same as others, it was via your own figures worse than others. And of course its worth noting that the G7 average includes the UK so the G7 average was itself getting dragged down by Brown's terrible performance.
Debt to GDP isn't the relevant figure, the deficit is, although its worth noting via your own figures again in the span of three years Brown nearly doubled our debt-to-GDP figure whereas G7 nations debt-to-GDP increased by much less than half.
Gordon Brown's peak debt to GDP being around 3% iirc which was on a par with preceding Conservative governments. It was not significant and did not cause or exacerbate the GFC.
Also, aiui Team Truss has determined, as Cheney said of Reagan, that deficits don't matter and that George Osborne's austerity was a mistake that hobbled Britain's economy.
Except....this was a time of unprecedented receipts. The housing market was going bananas, profits were high, and it was a time where debt to GDP didn't need to be as high given the circumstances in the economy. Simply, we were spending too much. I don't think anyone disputes that, no matter what they think the answer (austerity/non-austerity) should have been.
Yes, there is a good deal in that. But as it happened, the GFC came along and rendered it all moot. Then Osborne came along and flatlined the nascent recovery inherited from Labour, and here we are.
The GFC didn't just "come along and render it moot", the GFC was a crash that the Government should have been preparing for as it was overdue. Crashes happen, and the GFC was a classic crash, not some exogenous and unforeseeable shock.
And you repeat the myth that Osborne flatlined the recovery. Don't you realise the UK in the 2010s grew faster than the Eurozone did, both in nominal terms and in per capita terms. "Despite Brexit" supposedly harming the UK during that decade.
If Brexit and Osborne "flatlined" or harmed the UK, then how come the UK grew faster than the Eurozone or the rest of the EU? Just how much faster than them would we have grown in your eyes were it not for Osborne or Brexit, and why?
Osborne's austerity was a mistake as even the current vintage of Tories now acknowledge. The problem is that they have pivoted to pro-growth fiscal policies at precisely the wrong moment, with inflation out of control, and so they will only succeed in pushing up inflation and interest rates. Euro area growth was low because of their sovereign debt crisis and because they followed similar austerity policies to us, and because they had lower population growth.
It was not a mistake, because the deficit was out of control.
Pro-growth policies are good now because the deficit was brought under control prior to the crash, unlike in Brown's time, and so we're in a much better fiscal position than we were then.
The UK grew faster than Europe on a per capita basis too, again despite "austerity" and "Brexit" being both accused of "flatlining" growth. We had our own sovereign debt crisis caused by Brown's borrowing too, which is why Osborne needed to clean up Brown's mess.
The UK deficit is set to grow considerably under Truss, who appears to believe in trickle-down economics, something known not to work. So, deficit up, but no significant improvement in growth.
Amused by your claim that trickle-down economics is "known not to work", it absolutely does work.
Cutting taxes in both the UK and the USA in the 80s led to significant growth and eventual budget surpluses in the 90s.
That the growth and surplus such tax cutting brought about was subsequently pissed away, is not a problem with "trickle down economics".
Other factors might have been in play....
Perhaps, but regardless the last time we had substantial economic growth and a budget surplus was when we were following the policies that @bondegezou now claims is "known not to work".
Abandoning those policies and following decades of Brownian taxing and spending has resulted in stagnation, not growth.
Reverting back to the policies that did work is not going back to something known not to work. Even if you think other factors were in play, its a bit rich to say a reversion back to your last stable state is a bad idea.
"Queen Elizabeth’s death marks the latest step away from divinely ordained monarchy, towards something else. No longer sacred, the European monarch would rather be a pilot, or a country gentleman interested in urban planning. Another step along the path we have travelled since the laying of hands on His Majesty to cure disease was suspended after Queen Anne. It is no longer possible to suspend disbelief. The magic — or rather the mindset — was gone. There have been tears for the Queen this week, but can we imagine the same for Prince William decades from now?"
The monarch will always be divinely ordained, whatever liberal intellectuals may wish
Alternatively, you will always believe in fairies, and the Tory party.
There's also the slight problem that, *on the monarchy's own evidence*, it supports two different religions, or at least two very different varieties of non-RC Christianity, one north and the other south of the border. The English variety of Catholic episcopalianism, subordinating Church to State, is completely incompatible with Calvinist Presbyterianism. As indeed the history of the High Kirk of St Giles reminds us.
That seems to me to be a bit of a theological distinction, in both senses. There are far too many nuances and shades of grey.
There is no established church in Scotland, so I don't see how particular religious requirements can be placed on the monarch or the nation.
Secondly, it gets more interesting elsewhere' King Charles is also head of state of Papua New Guinea, for example. And that is a *very* interesting place for religion.
And the links between CofS and CofE pointed out above imo suggest that 'completely incompatible' is an overstatement.
Sorry I was out - so replying now. I had also thought that the Church of Scotland (strictly designated) was disestablished but it's not, in the sense that it remains the official church of Scotland [edit] as far as the state is concerned. Ydoethur pointed that out in a very interesting post a day or two back. And KCIII was swearing to protect the Protestant C of S at his proclamation-wotsit a few days ago. I don't *think* he did that for the Niugini religions, did he?
Indeed, the Scottish Episcopal is the Anglican church in Scotland even if the Queen is not its Supreme Governor unlike the C of E. However as you say the Church of Scotland is the official national church in Scotland and effectively the established church there.
To be even more specific, the SEC is not the Anglican Church = C of E in Scotland , but a member of the Anglican network. Not the same thing, not least because they are independently derived from different dioceses/groups of dioceses of the Roman Cahtolic Church (though in the case of the SEC via the Church of Scotland proper, most of which became and remained Presbyterian).
The SEC is the Anglican church and a member of the Anglican communion. Same as the Church in Wales and the Church of Ireland, all who have the Archbishop of Canterbury as their ceremonial head even if they do not share the King as their Supreme Governor with the Church of England.
Pre Reformation both England and Scotland were majority Roman Catholic. The Scottish Episcopal Church actually started as early as 1582 just over 20 years after the Church of Scotland was founded to preserve bishops
"the Anglican church" - no, it isn't. That's the C of E if you are using those words. The SEC is quite different. It was never Anglican except in the sense that it joined the Anglican communion in recent years.
The two churches have different Reformations, different histories, different Williamite settlements.
Yes it is, every member of the Anglican communion including the SEC is an Anglican church.
Apart from not having the Kingas its SG there is little difference between the SEC and Church of England in service style or structure
The Anglican Communion is not the Anglican Church. Different levels, altogether. It's like confusing England and the United Kingdom.
And the SEC and C of E use different prayer books.
I'm afraid I have to agree with HYUFD here. You are the one who is confusing England and the United Kingdom. The Anglican Communion is the Anglican Church and members of any of the churches in the Anglican Communion, including the SEC, are Anglicans (although they are also referred to as Episcopalians in some countries). The Church of England is an Anglican church. It is not the Anglican church. The SEC is also an Anglican church, hence its website being scotland.anglican.org.
You've touched on, but also missed the problem of, the key distinction between "the Anglican church", which by default and indeed your own example is the C of E, and "an Anglican church" which you say is the wording for a member of the Anglican communion - much as we'd say 'a Commonwealth country".
The problem was that HYUFD claimed that "The SEC is the Anglican church". That can only be interpreted as meaning that it was integral with the C of E. If he would only admit he makes mistakes instead of trying to justify them ...
It is politically impossible to cancel it while the country is in the grip of ultra nationalist fleg bukkake. Starmer will have to quietly shelve it in a few years time under the guise of "pausing to review options about the onboard provision of pens" or similar bollocks.
That is brilliant. Britain at its best. That is how we do communal experiences.
I can feel my next novel coming on: Queuing with Strangers. Endless possibilities for plot lines before, during and after the queue, as strangers intersect and new friends (or enemies) are made. Hope nobody beats me to it.
More interestingly you don’t get your wristband until the London Eye
Has the Queue grown… is it a preQueue? Or a queue to join the Queue?
We should be told!
Get a wristband, four hours in the pub, come back when your place is near the front.
Is that how it works?
Possibly, but only an idiot would miss out on the best bit, which is the queue itself, not the minute in Westminster Hall...
Analyst on R5L’s wake up to money - tracking a basket of essential goods says price difference between Morrissons and Aldi is now 40%. Explained by Morrisons having to service a gigantic debt.
Shop at Aldi, people.
Good morning
I heard that report as well and it is astonishing that Morrisons apparently have a 7 billion debt
Shop anywhere but Morrisons would be the message
5live also discussed Kwarteng's proposal to abolish city bonuses and it really does make you wonder if the conservative party have lost all it's instincts to govern
It may be the right thing from a business sense, but the optics are shocking and hands yet another gift to labour
It is the right thing from city workers sense. It is a bad thing for shareholders and really bad for government and taxpayers who will eventually have to fund another bailout with years of austerity.
I'm curious about this idea that bankers bonuses caused the subprime mortgage crisis.
I am even more curious about the idea that there will ever be another bank bailout.
Extreme bankers bonuses create incentives for bankers to gamble with the banks money. If they win, fantastic, if they lose its not their money and as long as you can talk the talk and know some of the right people, it is still easy to get another job.
That culture feeds through to the banks to gamble, notionally with their money, but knowing they have a government funded back stop as they are too big to fail.
Take away the controls and regulation and sooner or later we shall be back to bail outs.
Well, it's too bad the Labour government didn't do something about it then...
Of course. Not sure why you think that is relevant when they have not been in power for a long time and it is the current governments policies that will matter.
Well, the view of Labour supporters on the GFC is "it started in America".
That's not the view of Labour supporters, it is a statement of fact.
The global [key word, there] financial crisis started in America. Britain was very poorly placed to weather it because Gordon Brown had spent the previous 6 years [after an admirable initial period of restraint] pissing money up the wall, spending more than he raked in even during times of relative financial health. Personally I couldn't give a fig how big bankers' bonuses are. I don't care at all about the optics, I care about the gap between what we spend and what we earn. That should be the #1 issue for a chancellor of the exchequer to worry about. If this measure narrows that gap (and I am at best agnostic about whether it will) it should be welcomed.
Britain was hit badly because we have a large globally exposed financial sector and one of our biggest banks was in the midst of an ill-advised over-leveraged buying spree at the top of the market. Running a structural deficit of 4% of GDP in 2007 compared to a G7 average of 3% is unlikely to have been a significant factor in explaining why we were hit worse than others, no matter how much people want it to be Gordon Brown's fault.
Running a structural deficit of 4% during pre-crash times is utterly catastrophic as when the crash inevitably comes and you inevitably need countercyclical spending to go with it, then you have nowhere to go.
The fact that some other countries were nearly as bad as the UK doesn't justify or excuse what Brown did.
But it is hard to blame Brown's fiscal policy for us being hit *much worse than others* when Brown's fiscal policy was *pretty much the same as others'*. That was the point I was responding to. Also worth noting that our debt to GDP ratio in 2007 was 41% (down from 43% in 1997) compared to a G7 average of 81%. So we had plenty of space to run countercyclical fiscal policy, certainly compared to other countries, and indeed the increase in our debt to GDP ratio between 2007 and 2010 (33pp) was almost identical to the G7 average (32pp), suggesting that we were indeed able to run a countercyclical fiscal policy just like other economies.
Except it wasn't the same as others, it was via your own figures worse than others. And of course its worth noting that the G7 average includes the UK so the G7 average was itself getting dragged down by Brown's terrible performance.
Debt to GDP isn't the relevant figure, the deficit is, although its worth noting via your own figures again in the span of three years Brown nearly doubled our debt-to-GDP figure whereas G7 nations debt-to-GDP increased by much less than half.
Gordon Brown's peak debt to GDP being around 3% iirc which was on a par with preceding Conservative governments. It was not significant and did not cause or exacerbate the GFC.
Also, aiui Team Truss has determined, as Cheney said of Reagan, that deficits don't matter and that George Osborne's austerity was a mistake that hobbled Britain's economy.
Except....this was a time of unprecedented receipts. The housing market was going bananas, profits were high, and it was a time where debt to GDP didn't need to be as high given the circumstances in the economy. Simply, we were spending too much. I don't think anyone disputes that, no matter what they think the answer (austerity/non-austerity) should have been.
Yes, there is a good deal in that. But as it happened, the GFC came along and rendered it all moot. Then Osborne came along and flatlined the nascent recovery inherited from Labour, and here we are.
The GFC didn't just "come along and render it moot", the GFC was a crash that the Government should have been preparing for as it was overdue. Crashes happen, and the GFC was a classic crash, not some exogenous and unforeseeable shock.
And you repeat the myth that Osborne flatlined the recovery. Don't you realise the UK in the 2010s grew faster than the Eurozone did, both in nominal terms and in per capita terms. "Despite Brexit" supposedly harming the UK during that decade.
If Brexit and Osborne "flatlined" or harmed the UK, then how come the UK grew faster than the Eurozone or the rest of the EU? Just how much faster than them would we have grown in your eyes were it not for Osborne or Brexit, and why?
Osborne's austerity was a mistake as even the current vintage of Tories now acknowledge. The problem is that they have pivoted to pro-growth fiscal policies at precisely the wrong moment, with inflation out of control, and so they will only succeed in pushing up inflation and interest rates. Euro area growth was low because of their sovereign debt crisis and because they followed similar austerity policies to us, and because they had lower population growth.
It was not a mistake, because the deficit was out of control.
Pro-growth policies are good now because the deficit was brought under control prior to the crash, unlike in Brown's time, and so we're in a much better fiscal position than we were then.
The UK grew faster than Europe on a per capita basis too, again despite "austerity" and "Brexit" being both accused of "flatlining" growth. We had our own sovereign debt crisis caused by Brown's borrowing too, which is why Osborne needed to clean up Brown's mess.
The UK deficit is set to grow considerably under Truss, who appears to believe in trickle-down economics, something known not to work. So, deficit up, but no significant improvement in growth.
Your position of saying both Osborne and Truss are right does need an explanation Barty?
Fiscal control on the one hand versus abandoning fiscal control for a dash for growth on the other will sound like chalk and cheese to us non economic, experts until you explain this one to us.
Different stages of the economic cycle.
Brown's deficit spending blew the budget up pre-crash, taking us from a budget surplus to a maxed out deficit before the recession even hit us.
Pre-recession the budget deficit shrank every single year for a decade under the Tories.
A dash for growth now is a viable option as Osborne fixed the roof while the sun was shining. Brown didn't.
Analyst on R5L’s wake up to money - tracking a basket of essential goods says price difference between Morrissons and Aldi is now 40%. Explained by Morrisons having to service a gigantic debt.
Shop at Aldi, people.
Good morning
I heard that report as well and it is astonishing that Morrisons apparently have a 7 billion debt
Shop anywhere but Morrisons would be the message
5live also discussed Kwarteng's proposal to abolish city bonuses and it really does make you wonder if the conservative party have lost all it's instincts to govern
It may be the right thing from a business sense, but the optics are shocking and hands yet another gift to labour
It is the right thing from city workers sense. It is a bad thing for shareholders and really bad for government and taxpayers who will eventually have to fund another bailout with years of austerity.
I'm curious about this idea that bankers bonuses caused the subprime mortgage crisis.
I am even more curious about the idea that there will ever be another bank bailout.
Extreme bankers bonuses create incentives for bankers to gamble with the banks money. If they win, fantastic, if they lose its not their money and as long as you can talk the talk and know some of the right people, it is still easy to get another job.
That culture feeds through to the banks to gamble, notionally with their money, but knowing they have a government funded back stop as they are too big to fail.
Take away the controls and regulation and sooner or later we shall be back to bail outs.
Well, it's too bad the Labour government didn't do something about it then...
Of course. Not sure why you think that is relevant when they have not been in power for a long time and it is the current governments policies that will matter.
Well, the view of Labour supporters on the GFC is "it started in America".
That's not the view of Labour supporters, it is a statement of fact.
The global [key word, there] financial crisis started in America. Britain was very poorly placed to weather it because Gordon Brown had spent the previous 6 years [after an admirable initial period of restraint] pissing money up the wall, spending more than he raked in even during times of relative financial health. Personally I couldn't give a fig how big bankers' bonuses are. I don't care at all about the optics, I care about the gap between what we spend and what we earn. That should be the #1 issue for a chancellor of the exchequer to worry about. If this measure narrows that gap (and I am at best agnostic about whether it will) it should be welcomed.
Britain was hit badly because we have a large globally exposed financial sector and one of our biggest banks was in the midst of an ill-advised over-leveraged buying spree at the top of the market. Running a structural deficit of 4% of GDP in 2007 compared to a G7 average of 3% is unlikely to have been a significant factor in explaining why we were hit worse than others, no matter how much people want it to be Gordon Brown's fault.
Running a structural deficit of 4% during pre-crash times is utterly catastrophic as when the crash inevitably comes and you inevitably need countercyclical spending to go with it, then you have nowhere to go.
The fact that some other countries were nearly as bad as the UK doesn't justify or excuse what Brown did.
But it is hard to blame Brown's fiscal policy for us being hit *much worse than others* when Brown's fiscal policy was *pretty much the same as others'*. That was the point I was responding to. Also worth noting that our debt to GDP ratio in 2007 was 41% (down from 43% in 1997) compared to a G7 average of 81%. So we had plenty of space to run countercyclical fiscal policy, certainly compared to other countries, and indeed the increase in our debt to GDP ratio between 2007 and 2010 (33pp) was almost identical to the G7 average (32pp), suggesting that we were indeed able to run a countercyclical fiscal policy just like other economies.
Except it wasn't the same as others, it was via your own figures worse than others. And of course its worth noting that the G7 average includes the UK so the G7 average was itself getting dragged down by Brown's terrible performance.
Debt to GDP isn't the relevant figure, the deficit is, although its worth noting via your own figures again in the span of three years Brown nearly doubled our debt-to-GDP figure whereas G7 nations debt-to-GDP increased by much less than half.
Gordon Brown's peak debt to GDP being around 3% iirc which was on a par with preceding Conservative governments. It was not significant and did not cause or exacerbate the GFC.
Also, aiui Team Truss has determined, as Cheney said of Reagan, that deficits don't matter and that George Osborne's austerity was a mistake that hobbled Britain's economy.
Except....this was a time of unprecedented receipts. The housing market was going bananas, profits were high, and it was a time where debt to GDP didn't need to be as high given the circumstances in the economy. Simply, we were spending too much. I don't think anyone disputes that, no matter what they think the answer (austerity/non-austerity) should have been.
Yes, there is a good deal in that. But as it happened, the GFC came along and rendered it all moot. Then Osborne came along and flatlined the nascent recovery inherited from Labour, and here we are.
The GFC didn't just "come along and render it moot", the GFC was a crash that the Government should have been preparing for as it was overdue. Crashes happen, and the GFC was a classic crash, not some exogenous and unforeseeable shock.
And you repeat the myth that Osborne flatlined the recovery. Don't you realise the UK in the 2010s grew faster than the Eurozone did, both in nominal terms and in per capita terms. "Despite Brexit" supposedly harming the UK during that decade.
If Brexit and Osborne "flatlined" or harmed the UK, then how come the UK grew faster than the Eurozone or the rest of the EU? Just how much faster than them would we have grown in your eyes were it not for Osborne or Brexit, and why?
Osborne's austerity was a mistake as even the current vintage of Tories now acknowledge. The problem is that they have pivoted to pro-growth fiscal policies at precisely the wrong moment, with inflation out of control, and so they will only succeed in pushing up inflation and interest rates. Euro area growth was low because of their sovereign debt crisis and because they followed similar austerity policies to us, and because they had lower population growth.
It was not a mistake, because the deficit was out of control.
Pro-growth policies are good now because the deficit was brought under control prior to the crash, unlike in Brown's time, and so we're in a much better fiscal position than we were then.
The UK grew faster than Europe on a per capita basis too, again despite "austerity" and "Brexit" being both accused of "flatlining" growth. We had our own sovereign debt crisis caused by Brown's borrowing too, which is why Osborne needed to clean up Brown's mess.
The UK deficit is set to grow considerably under Truss, who appears to believe in trickle-down economics, something known not to work. So, deficit up, but no significant improvement in growth.
Your position of saying both Osborne and Truss are right does need an explanation Barty?
Fiscal control on the one hand versus abandoning fiscal control for a dash for growth on the other will sound like chalk and cheese to us non economic, experts until you explain this one to us.
Different stages of the economic cycle.
Brown's deficit spending blew the budget up pre-crash, taking us from a budget surplus to a maxed out deficit before the recession even hit us.
Pre-recession the budget deficit shrank every single year for a decade under the Tories.
A dash for growth now is a viable option as Osborne fixed the roof while the sun was shining. Brown didn't.
So in this analogy, what exactly is “the roof”?
The roof ought to be infrastructure and training/upskilling of the population. Creating the environment for business to thrive.
Analyst on R5L’s wake up to money - tracking a basket of essential goods says price difference between Morrissons and Aldi is now 40%. Explained by Morrisons having to service a gigantic debt.
Shop at Aldi, people.
Good morning
I heard that report as well and it is astonishing that Morrisons apparently have a 7 billion debt
Shop anywhere but Morrisons would be the message
5live also discussed Kwarteng's proposal to abolish city bonuses and it really does make you wonder if the conservative party have lost all it's instincts to govern
It may be the right thing from a business sense, but the optics are shocking and hands yet another gift to labour
It is the right thing from city workers sense. It is a bad thing for shareholders and really bad for government and taxpayers who will eventually have to fund another bailout with years of austerity.
I'm curious about this idea that bankers bonuses caused the subprime mortgage crisis.
I am even more curious about the idea that there will ever be another bank bailout.
Extreme bankers bonuses create incentives for bankers to gamble with the banks money. If they win, fantastic, if they lose its not their money and as long as you can talk the talk and know some of the right people, it is still easy to get another job.
That culture feeds through to the banks to gamble, notionally with their money, but knowing they have a government funded back stop as they are too big to fail.
Take away the controls and regulation and sooner or later we shall be back to bail outs.
Well, it's too bad the Labour government didn't do something about it then...
Of course. Not sure why you think that is relevant when they have not been in power for a long time and it is the current governments policies that will matter.
Well, the view of Labour supporters on the GFC is "it started in America".
That's not the view of Labour supporters, it is a statement of fact.
The global [key word, there] financial crisis started in America. Britain was very poorly placed to weather it because Gordon Brown had spent the previous 6 years [after an admirable initial period of restraint] pissing money up the wall, spending more than he raked in even during times of relative financial health. Personally I couldn't give a fig how big bankers' bonuses are. I don't care at all about the optics, I care about the gap between what we spend and what we earn. That should be the #1 issue for a chancellor of the exchequer to worry about. If this measure narrows that gap (and I am at best agnostic about whether it will) it should be welcomed.
Britain was hit badly because we have a large globally exposed financial sector and one of our biggest banks was in the midst of an ill-advised over-leveraged buying spree at the top of the market. Running a structural deficit of 4% of GDP in 2007 compared to a G7 average of 3% is unlikely to have been a significant factor in explaining why we were hit worse than others, no matter how much people want it to be Gordon Brown's fault.
Running a structural deficit of 4% during pre-crash times is utterly catastrophic as when the crash inevitably comes and you inevitably need countercyclical spending to go with it, then you have nowhere to go.
The fact that some other countries were nearly as bad as the UK doesn't justify or excuse what Brown did.
But it is hard to blame Brown's fiscal policy for us being hit *much worse than others* when Brown's fiscal policy was *pretty much the same as others'*. That was the point I was responding to. Also worth noting that our debt to GDP ratio in 2007 was 41% (down from 43% in 1997) compared to a G7 average of 81%. So we had plenty of space to run countercyclical fiscal policy, certainly compared to other countries, and indeed the increase in our debt to GDP ratio between 2007 and 2010 (33pp) was almost identical to the G7 average (32pp), suggesting that we were indeed able to run a countercyclical fiscal policy just like other economies.
Except it wasn't the same as others, it was via your own figures worse than others. And of course its worth noting that the G7 average includes the UK so the G7 average was itself getting dragged down by Brown's terrible performance.
Debt to GDP isn't the relevant figure, the deficit is, although its worth noting via your own figures again in the span of three years Brown nearly doubled our debt-to-GDP figure whereas G7 nations debt-to-GDP increased by much less than half.
Gordon Brown's peak debt to GDP being around 3% iirc which was on a par with preceding Conservative governments. It was not significant and did not cause or exacerbate the GFC.
Also, aiui Team Truss has determined, as Cheney said of Reagan, that deficits don't matter and that George Osborne's austerity was a mistake that hobbled Britain's economy.
Except....this was a time of unprecedented receipts. The housing market was going bananas, profits were high, and it was a time where debt to GDP didn't need to be as high given the circumstances in the economy. Simply, we were spending too much. I don't think anyone disputes that, no matter what they think the answer (austerity/non-austerity) should have been.
Yes, there is a good deal in that. But as it happened, the GFC came along and rendered it all moot. Then Osborne came along and flatlined the nascent recovery inherited from Labour, and here we are.
The GFC didn't just "come along and render it moot", the GFC was a crash that the Government should have been preparing for as it was overdue. Crashes happen, and the GFC was a classic crash, not some exogenous and unforeseeable shock.
And you repeat the myth that Osborne flatlined the recovery. Don't you realise the UK in the 2010s grew faster than the Eurozone did, both in nominal terms and in per capita terms. "Despite Brexit" supposedly harming the UK during that decade.
If Brexit and Osborne "flatlined" or harmed the UK, then how come the UK grew faster than the Eurozone or the rest of the EU? Just how much faster than them would we have grown in your eyes were it not for Osborne or Brexit, and why?
Osborne's austerity was a mistake as even the current vintage of Tories now acknowledge. The problem is that they have pivoted to pro-growth fiscal policies at precisely the wrong moment, with inflation out of control, and so they will only succeed in pushing up inflation and interest rates. Euro area growth was low because of their sovereign debt crisis and because they followed similar austerity policies to us, and because they had lower population growth.
It was not a mistake, because the deficit was out of control.
Pro-growth policies are good now because the deficit was brought under control prior to the crash, unlike in Brown's time, and so we're in a much better fiscal position than we were then.
The UK grew faster than Europe on a per capita basis too, again despite "austerity" and "Brexit" being both accused of "flatlining" growth. We had our own sovereign debt crisis caused by Brown's borrowing too, which is why Osborne needed to clean up Brown's mess.
The UK deficit is set to grow considerably under Truss, who appears to believe in trickle-down economics, something known not to work. So, deficit up, but no significant improvement in growth.
Your position of saying both Osborne and Truss are right does need an explanation Barty?
Fiscal control on the one hand versus abandoning fiscal control for a dash for growth on the other will sound like chalk and cheese to us non economic, experts until you explain this one to us.
Different stages of the economic cycle.
Brown's deficit spending blew the budget up pre-crash, taking us from a budget surplus to a maxed out deficit before the recession even hit us.
Pre-recession the budget deficit shrank every single year for a decade under the Tories.
A dash for growth now is a viable option as Osborne fixed the roof while the sun was shining. Brown didn't.
So in this analogy, what exactly is “the roof”?
The deficit.
It traditionally goes up during and immediately after a recession due to countercyclical factors, while it comes down in the years of growth. Brown instead took us from budget surplus to maxed out deficit pre-crash meaning we were terribly exposed when the inevitable crash inevitably happened.
More film of the omen and portent last night ((C) MoonRabbit).
"Steve Owens, an astronomer and science communicator at the Glasgow Science Centre, said (...) 'The one last night might have been the size of a golf ball or maybe a cricket ball, maybe bigger than that'."
No way was that object as small as a cricket ball.
How the hell do you know? The bright light you see from most meteors you see crossing the sky at night are not much bigger than a grain of sand. I tend to go with the expert unless they say something obviously stupid.
Well it was bigger than a grain of sand - anything that small decelerates much more quickly, or completely burns up, so doesn't leave a lengthy trail like this one did.
With enough footage from different know locations it would be possible to work out speed and deceleration, but none of us have that data (and most including me wouldn't have a clue what to do with it).
My prediction is that Truss will turn out to be a lot better than many of us gave her credit for. Boris Johnson is a busted flush. He is yesterday's Clown; someone who achieved a great election victory against a ridiculously weedy opponent and managed very little else of note. His deranged supporters might want him back, but they will hopefully diminish in time, and before long it will be difficult to find anyone to admit they supported him.
I do wonder whether even he has fallen out of love with "Boris" as he always affectionately referred to him.
His posts do not indicate it so far, and I would be delighted if he would join those of us who want Truss to succeed and publicly accept Johnson is toxic and has damaged the party considerably
I support her as leader but she is still 10% behind on the latest poll and this end bankers' bonuses cap now was her decision not Boris'. She and Kwarteng own it
You demonstrate my point perfectly and until you condemn Johnson then you are part of his toxic legacy
I won't condemn the party's most successful leader since Thatcher
Leaving aside the question as to whether he was more successful than either Cameron or Major, looking at the rest of them that isn't exactly a high bar, is it?
Interesting that @HYUFD describes Johnson as "the party's most successful leader since Thatcher". This is a totally ridiculous proposition. He bases "most successful" solely on his election victory over Jeremy fecking Corbyn.
Johnson was responsible for one of the biggest fissures in the Tory Party since the Corn Laws. He became an international laughing stock. He thoroughly trashed the Conservative Party's reputation for sensible governance and found himself heaved out of No10 after only 3 years for dishonesty. Other than TMay you have to go back to 1827 to find a PM with a shorter tenure. He was hopeless. A bad joke. A man totally unfit for office. He was not successful, except in his ability to trounce the most ludicrous LoTO ever to have held that role, and to gull those foolish enough like @HYUFD into thinking he was appropriate to be Party leader and PM.
He also delivered Brexit and the vaccines on his watch and of course Theresa was sadly unable to defeat Corbyn.
Once we have gone through the Tory leaderships of Truss, Badenoch, Braverman and Rees Mogg even you might miss Boris!
Mr Johnson is a medical immunologist?
This is a bit divisive. Did Churchill win the second world war (from a British perspective - I know USSR/USA etc)? Yes. Did he fight in Normandy, the Ardennes, Crossing of the Rhine, in a Lancaster over Berlin? No (although he tried to get to Normandy...)
Did Johnson head into the lab, roll up his sleeves and say 'right, we've got the spike sequence, its time to see if mRNA vaccines work...'? Of course not. Did he appoint the right people, let them spend what was needed and keep out of the way? Yes he did.
It is fair to give him credit for things done well just as it is fair to blame for the things that went wrong. Don't let hatred or disdain for Johnson cloud that. There is enough to mock already.
In his leaving speech he claimed he achieved one of his big promises, and fixed social care.
Are we okay to work on the basis that he didn’t and ask, will we ever have a government that will actually fix social care?
Analyst on R5L’s wake up to money - tracking a basket of essential goods says price difference between Morrissons and Aldi is now 40%. Explained by Morrisons having to service a gigantic debt.
Shop at Aldi, people.
Good morning
I heard that report as well and it is astonishing that Morrisons apparently have a 7 billion debt
Shop anywhere but Morrisons would be the message
5live also discussed Kwarteng's proposal to abolish city bonuses and it really does make you wonder if the conservative party have lost all it's instincts to govern
It may be the right thing from a business sense, but the optics are shocking and hands yet another gift to labour
It is the right thing from city workers sense. It is a bad thing for shareholders and really bad for government and taxpayers who will eventually have to fund another bailout with years of austerity.
I'm curious about this idea that bankers bonuses caused the subprime mortgage crisis.
I am even more curious about the idea that there will ever be another bank bailout.
Extreme bankers bonuses create incentives for bankers to gamble with the banks money. If they win, fantastic, if they lose its not their money and as long as you can talk the talk and know some of the right people, it is still easy to get another job.
That culture feeds through to the banks to gamble, notionally with their money, but knowing they have a government funded back stop as they are too big to fail.
Take away the controls and regulation and sooner or later we shall be back to bail outs.
Well, it's too bad the Labour government didn't do something about it then...
Of course. Not sure why you think that is relevant when they have not been in power for a long time and it is the current governments policies that will matter.
Well, the view of Labour supporters on the GFC is "it started in America".
That's not the view of Labour supporters, it is a statement of fact.
The global [key word, there] financial crisis started in America. Britain was very poorly placed to weather it because Gordon Brown had spent the previous 6 years [after an admirable initial period of restraint] pissing money up the wall, spending more than he raked in even during times of relative financial health. Personally I couldn't give a fig how big bankers' bonuses are. I don't care at all about the optics, I care about the gap between what we spend and what we earn. That should be the #1 issue for a chancellor of the exchequer to worry about. If this measure narrows that gap (and I am at best agnostic about whether it will) it should be welcomed.
Britain was hit badly because we have a large globally exposed financial sector and one of our biggest banks was in the midst of an ill-advised over-leveraged buying spree at the top of the market. Running a structural deficit of 4% of GDP in 2007 compared to a G7 average of 3% is unlikely to have been a significant factor in explaining why we were hit worse than others, no matter how much people want it to be Gordon Brown's fault.
Running a structural deficit of 4% during pre-crash times is utterly catastrophic as when the crash inevitably comes and you inevitably need countercyclical spending to go with it, then you have nowhere to go.
The fact that some other countries were nearly as bad as the UK doesn't justify or excuse what Brown did.
But it is hard to blame Brown's fiscal policy for us being hit *much worse than others* when Brown's fiscal policy was *pretty much the same as others'*. That was the point I was responding to. Also worth noting that our debt to GDP ratio in 2007 was 41% (down from 43% in 1997) compared to a G7 average of 81%. So we had plenty of space to run countercyclical fiscal policy, certainly compared to other countries, and indeed the increase in our debt to GDP ratio between 2007 and 2010 (33pp) was almost identical to the G7 average (32pp), suggesting that we were indeed able to run a countercyclical fiscal policy just like other economies.
Except it wasn't the same as others, it was via your own figures worse than others. And of course its worth noting that the G7 average includes the UK so the G7 average was itself getting dragged down by Brown's terrible performance.
Debt to GDP isn't the relevant figure, the deficit is, although its worth noting via your own figures again in the span of three years Brown nearly doubled our debt-to-GDP figure whereas G7 nations debt-to-GDP increased by much less than half.
Gordon Brown's peak debt to GDP being around 3% iirc which was on a par with preceding Conservative governments. It was not significant and did not cause or exacerbate the GFC.
Also, aiui Team Truss has determined, as Cheney said of Reagan, that deficits don't matter and that George Osborne's austerity was a mistake that hobbled Britain's economy.
Except....this was a time of unprecedented receipts. The housing market was going bananas, profits were high, and it was a time where debt to GDP didn't need to be as high given the circumstances in the economy. Simply, we were spending too much. I don't think anyone disputes that, no matter what they think the answer (austerity/non-austerity) should have been.
Yes, there is a good deal in that. But as it happened, the GFC came along and rendered it all moot. Then Osborne came along and flatlined the nascent recovery inherited from Labour, and here we are.
The GFC didn't just "come along and render it moot", the GFC was a crash that the Government should have been preparing for as it was overdue. Crashes happen, and the GFC was a classic crash, not some exogenous and unforeseeable shock.
And you repeat the myth that Osborne flatlined the recovery. Don't you realise the UK in the 2010s grew faster than the Eurozone did, both in nominal terms and in per capita terms. "Despite Brexit" supposedly harming the UK during that decade.
If Brexit and Osborne "flatlined" or harmed the UK, then how come the UK grew faster than the Eurozone or the rest of the EU? Just how much faster than them would we have grown in your eyes were it not for Osborne or Brexit, and why?
Osborne's austerity was a mistake as even the current vintage of Tories now acknowledge. The problem is that they have pivoted to pro-growth fiscal policies at precisely the wrong moment, with inflation out of control, and so they will only succeed in pushing up inflation and interest rates. Euro area growth was low because of their sovereign debt crisis and because they followed similar austerity policies to us, and because they had lower population growth.
It was not a mistake, because the deficit was out of control.
Pro-growth policies are good now because the deficit was brought under control prior to the crash, unlike in Brown's time, and so we're in a much better fiscal position than we were then.
The UK grew faster than Europe on a per capita basis too, again despite "austerity" and "Brexit" being both accused of "flatlining" growth. We had our own sovereign debt crisis caused by Brown's borrowing too, which is why Osborne needed to clean up Brown's mess.
The UK deficit is set to grow considerably under Truss, who appears to believe in trickle-down economics, something known not to work. So, deficit up, but no significant improvement in growth.
Your position of saying both Osborne and Truss are right does need an explanation Barty?
Fiscal control on the one hand versus abandoning fiscal control for a dash for growth on the other will sound like chalk and cheese to us non economic, experts until you explain this one to us.
Different stages of the economic cycle.
Brown's deficit spending blew the budget up pre-crash, taking us from a budget surplus to a maxed out deficit before the recession even hit us.
Pre-recession the budget deficit shrank every single year for a decade under the Tories.
A dash for growth now is a viable option as Osborne fixed the roof while the sun was shining. Brown didn't.
So in this analogy, what exactly is “the roof”?
It's Westminster slang for Shappsie's wig.
I thought it was the liquid stuff certain MPs picked up before a hard evening's recreation, or indeed a hard day's work.
That is brilliant. Britain at its best. That is how we do communal experiences.
I can feel my next novel coming on: Queuing with Strangers. Endless possibilities for plot lines before, during and after the queue, as strangers intersect and new friends (or enemies) are made. Hope nobody beats me to it.
More interestingly you don’t get your wristband until the London Eye
Has the Queue grown… is it a preQueue? Or a queue to join the Queue?
We should be told!
Get a wristband, four hours in the pub, come back when your place is near the front.
Is that how it works?
Get a wristband, go home, tell everyone you were there.
Analyst on R5L’s wake up to money - tracking a basket of essential goods says price difference between Morrissons and Aldi is now 40%. Explained by Morrisons having to service a gigantic debt.
Shop at Aldi, people.
Good morning
I heard that report as well and it is astonishing that Morrisons apparently have a 7 billion debt
Shop anywhere but Morrisons would be the message
5live also discussed Kwarteng's proposal to abolish city bonuses and it really does make you wonder if the conservative party have lost all it's instincts to govern
It may be the right thing from a business sense, but the optics are shocking and hands yet another gift to labour
It is the right thing from city workers sense. It is a bad thing for shareholders and really bad for government and taxpayers who will eventually have to fund another bailout with years of austerity.
I'm curious about this idea that bankers bonuses caused the subprime mortgage crisis.
I am even more curious about the idea that there will ever be another bank bailout.
Extreme bankers bonuses create incentives for bankers to gamble with the banks money. If they win, fantastic, if they lose its not their money and as long as you can talk the talk and know some of the right people, it is still easy to get another job.
That culture feeds through to the banks to gamble, notionally with their money, but knowing they have a government funded back stop as they are too big to fail.
Take away the controls and regulation and sooner or later we shall be back to bail outs.
Well, it's too bad the Labour government didn't do something about it then...
Of course. Not sure why you think that is relevant when they have not been in power for a long time and it is the current governments policies that will matter.
Well, the view of Labour supporters on the GFC is "it started in America".
That's not the view of Labour supporters, it is a statement of fact.
The global [key word, there] financial crisis started in America. Britain was very poorly placed to weather it because Gordon Brown had spent the previous 6 years [after an admirable initial period of restraint] pissing money up the wall, spending more than he raked in even during times of relative financial health. Personally I couldn't give a fig how big bankers' bonuses are. I don't care at all about the optics, I care about the gap between what we spend and what we earn. That should be the #1 issue for a chancellor of the exchequer to worry about. If this measure narrows that gap (and I am at best agnostic about whether it will) it should be welcomed.
Britain was hit badly because we have a large globally exposed financial sector and one of our biggest banks was in the midst of an ill-advised over-leveraged buying spree at the top of the market. Running a structural deficit of 4% of GDP in 2007 compared to a G7 average of 3% is unlikely to have been a significant factor in explaining why we were hit worse than others, no matter how much people want it to be Gordon Brown's fault.
Running a structural deficit of 4% during pre-crash times is utterly catastrophic as when the crash inevitably comes and you inevitably need countercyclical spending to go with it, then you have nowhere to go.
The fact that some other countries were nearly as bad as the UK doesn't justify or excuse what Brown did.
But it is hard to blame Brown's fiscal policy for us being hit *much worse than others* when Brown's fiscal policy was *pretty much the same as others'*. That was the point I was responding to. Also worth noting that our debt to GDP ratio in 2007 was 41% (down from 43% in 1997) compared to a G7 average of 81%. So we had plenty of space to run countercyclical fiscal policy, certainly compared to other countries, and indeed the increase in our debt to GDP ratio between 2007 and 2010 (33pp) was almost identical to the G7 average (32pp), suggesting that we were indeed able to run a countercyclical fiscal policy just like other economies.
Except it wasn't the same as others, it was via your own figures worse than others. And of course its worth noting that the G7 average includes the UK so the G7 average was itself getting dragged down by Brown's terrible performance.
Debt to GDP isn't the relevant figure, the deficit is, although its worth noting via your own figures again in the span of three years Brown nearly doubled our debt-to-GDP figure whereas G7 nations debt-to-GDP increased by much less than half.
Gordon Brown's peak debt to GDP being around 3% iirc which was on a par with preceding Conservative governments. It was not significant and did not cause or exacerbate the GFC.
Also, aiui Team Truss has determined, as Cheney said of Reagan, that deficits don't matter and that George Osborne's austerity was a mistake that hobbled Britain's economy.
Except....this was a time of unprecedented receipts. The housing market was going bananas, profits were high, and it was a time where debt to GDP didn't need to be as high given the circumstances in the economy. Simply, we were spending too much. I don't think anyone disputes that, no matter what they think the answer (austerity/non-austerity) should have been.
Yes, there is a good deal in that. But as it happened, the GFC came along and rendered it all moot. Then Osborne came along and flatlined the nascent recovery inherited from Labour, and here we are.
The GFC didn't just "come along and render it moot", the GFC was a crash that the Government should have been preparing for as it was overdue. Crashes happen, and the GFC was a classic crash, not some exogenous and unforeseeable shock.
And you repeat the myth that Osborne flatlined the recovery. Don't you realise the UK in the 2010s grew faster than the Eurozone did, both in nominal terms and in per capita terms. "Despite Brexit" supposedly harming the UK during that decade.
If Brexit and Osborne "flatlined" or harmed the UK, then how come the UK grew faster than the Eurozone or the rest of the EU? Just how much faster than them would we have grown in your eyes were it not for Osborne or Brexit, and why?
Osborne's austerity was a mistake as even the current vintage of Tories now acknowledge. The problem is that they have pivoted to pro-growth fiscal policies at precisely the wrong moment, with inflation out of control, and so they will only succeed in pushing up inflation and interest rates. Euro area growth was low because of their sovereign debt crisis and because they followed similar austerity policies to us, and because they had lower population growth.
It was not a mistake, because the deficit was out of control.
Pro-growth policies are good now because the deficit was brought under control prior to the crash, unlike in Brown's time, and so we're in a much better fiscal position than we were then.
The UK grew faster than Europe on a per capita basis too, again despite "austerity" and "Brexit" being both accused of "flatlining" growth. We had our own sovereign debt crisis caused by Brown's borrowing too, which is why Osborne needed to clean up Brown's mess.
The UK deficit is set to grow considerably under Truss, who appears to believe in trickle-down economics, something known not to work. So, deficit up, but no significant improvement in growth.
Amused by your claim that trickle-down economics is "known not to work", it absolutely does work.
Cutting taxes in both the UK and the USA in the 80s led to significant growth and eventual budget surpluses in the 90s.
That the growth and surplus such tax cutting brought about was subsequently pissed away, is not a problem with "trickle down economics".
(The US in the ‘80s saw growth, you say, so this proves trickle down works. Except Reagan did other things: he increased government spending by 2.5% a year. And he massively increased the national debt from $997 billion in 1981 to $2.85 trillion in 1989. Meanwhile, income inequality massively increased.)
Analyst on R5L’s wake up to money - tracking a basket of essential goods says price difference between Morrissons and Aldi is now 40%. Explained by Morrisons having to service a gigantic debt.
Shop at Aldi, people.
Good morning
I heard that report as well and it is astonishing that Morrisons apparently have a 7 billion debt
Shop anywhere but Morrisons would be the message
5live also discussed Kwarteng's proposal to abolish city bonuses and it really does make you wonder if the conservative party have lost all it's instincts to govern
It may be the right thing from a business sense, but the optics are shocking and hands yet another gift to labour
It is the right thing from city workers sense. It is a bad thing for shareholders and really bad for government and taxpayers who will eventually have to fund another bailout with years of austerity.
I'm curious about this idea that bankers bonuses caused the subprime mortgage crisis.
I am even more curious about the idea that there will ever be another bank bailout.
Extreme bankers bonuses create incentives for bankers to gamble with the banks money. If they win, fantastic, if they lose its not their money and as long as you can talk the talk and know some of the right people, it is still easy to get another job.
That culture feeds through to the banks to gamble, notionally with their money, but knowing they have a government funded back stop as they are too big to fail.
Take away the controls and regulation and sooner or later we shall be back to bail outs.
Well, it's too bad the Labour government didn't do something about it then...
Of course. Not sure why you think that is relevant when they have not been in power for a long time and it is the current governments policies that will matter.
Well, the view of Labour supporters on the GFC is "it started in America".
That's not the view of Labour supporters, it is a statement of fact.
The global [key word, there] financial crisis started in America. Britain was very poorly placed to weather it because Gordon Brown had spent the previous 6 years [after an admirable initial period of restraint] pissing money up the wall, spending more than he raked in even during times of relative financial health. Personally I couldn't give a fig how big bankers' bonuses are. I don't care at all about the optics, I care about the gap between what we spend and what we earn. That should be the #1 issue for a chancellor of the exchequer to worry about. If this measure narrows that gap (and I am at best agnostic about whether it will) it should be welcomed.
Britain was hit badly because we have a large globally exposed financial sector and one of our biggest banks was in the midst of an ill-advised over-leveraged buying spree at the top of the market. Running a structural deficit of 4% of GDP in 2007 compared to a G7 average of 3% is unlikely to have been a significant factor in explaining why we were hit worse than others, no matter how much people want it to be Gordon Brown's fault.
Running a structural deficit of 4% during pre-crash times is utterly catastrophic as when the crash inevitably comes and you inevitably need countercyclical spending to go with it, then you have nowhere to go.
The fact that some other countries were nearly as bad as the UK doesn't justify or excuse what Brown did.
But it is hard to blame Brown's fiscal policy for us being hit *much worse than others* when Brown's fiscal policy was *pretty much the same as others'*. That was the point I was responding to. Also worth noting that our debt to GDP ratio in 2007 was 41% (down from 43% in 1997) compared to a G7 average of 81%. So we had plenty of space to run countercyclical fiscal policy, certainly compared to other countries, and indeed the increase in our debt to GDP ratio between 2007 and 2010 (33pp) was almost identical to the G7 average (32pp), suggesting that we were indeed able to run a countercyclical fiscal policy just like other economies.
Except it wasn't the same as others, it was via your own figures worse than others. And of course its worth noting that the G7 average includes the UK so the G7 average was itself getting dragged down by Brown's terrible performance.
Debt to GDP isn't the relevant figure, the deficit is, although its worth noting via your own figures again in the span of three years Brown nearly doubled our debt-to-GDP figure whereas G7 nations debt-to-GDP increased by much less than half.
Gordon Brown's peak debt to GDP being around 3% iirc which was on a par with preceding Conservative governments. It was not significant and did not cause or exacerbate the GFC.
Also, aiui Team Truss has determined, as Cheney said of Reagan, that deficits don't matter and that George Osborne's austerity was a mistake that hobbled Britain's economy.
Except....this was a time of unprecedented receipts. The housing market was going bananas, profits were high, and it was a time where debt to GDP didn't need to be as high given the circumstances in the economy. Simply, we were spending too much. I don't think anyone disputes that, no matter what they think the answer (austerity/non-austerity) should have been.
Yes, there is a good deal in that. But as it happened, the GFC came along and rendered it all moot. Then Osborne came along and flatlined the nascent recovery inherited from Labour, and here we are.
The GFC didn't just "come along and render it moot", the GFC was a crash that the Government should have been preparing for as it was overdue. Crashes happen, and the GFC was a classic crash, not some exogenous and unforeseeable shock.
And you repeat the myth that Osborne flatlined the recovery. Don't you realise the UK in the 2010s grew faster than the Eurozone did, both in nominal terms and in per capita terms. "Despite Brexit" supposedly harming the UK during that decade.
If Brexit and Osborne "flatlined" or harmed the UK, then how come the UK grew faster than the Eurozone or the rest of the EU? Just how much faster than them would we have grown in your eyes were it not for Osborne or Brexit, and why?
Osborne's austerity was a mistake as even the current vintage of Tories now acknowledge. The problem is that they have pivoted to pro-growth fiscal policies at precisely the wrong moment, with inflation out of control, and so they will only succeed in pushing up inflation and interest rates. Euro area growth was low because of their sovereign debt crisis and because they followed similar austerity policies to us, and because they had lower population growth.
It was not a mistake, because the deficit was out of control.
Pro-growth policies are good now because the deficit was brought under control prior to the crash, unlike in Brown's time, and so we're in a much better fiscal position than we were then.
The UK grew faster than Europe on a per capita basis too, again despite "austerity" and "Brexit" being both accused of "flatlining" growth. We had our own sovereign debt crisis caused by Brown's borrowing too, which is why Osborne needed to clean up Brown's mess.
The UK deficit is set to grow considerably under Truss, who appears to believe in trickle-down economics, something known not to work. So, deficit up, but no significant improvement in growth.
Amused by your claim that trickle-down economics is "known not to work", it absolutely does work.
Cutting taxes in both the UK and the USA in the 80s led to significant growth and eventual budget surpluses in the 90s.
That the growth and surplus such tax cutting brought about was subsequently pissed away, is not a problem with "trickle down economics".
(The US in the ‘80s saw growth, you say, so this proves trickle down works. Except Reagan did other things: he increased government spending by 2.5% a year. And he massively increased the national debt from $997 billion in 1981 to $2.85 trillion in 1989. Meanwhile, income inequality massively increased.)
Analyst on R5L’s wake up to money - tracking a basket of essential goods says price difference between Morrissons and Aldi is now 40%. Explained by Morrisons having to service a gigantic debt.
Shop at Aldi, people.
Good morning
I heard that report as well and it is astonishing that Morrisons apparently have a 7 billion debt
Shop anywhere but Morrisons would be the message
5live also discussed Kwarteng's proposal to abolish city bonuses and it really does make you wonder if the conservative party have lost all it's instincts to govern
It may be the right thing from a business sense, but the optics are shocking and hands yet another gift to labour
It is the right thing from city workers sense. It is a bad thing for shareholders and really bad for government and taxpayers who will eventually have to fund another bailout with years of austerity.
I'm curious about this idea that bankers bonuses caused the subprime mortgage crisis.
I am even more curious about the idea that there will ever be another bank bailout.
Extreme bankers bonuses create incentives for bankers to gamble with the banks money. If they win, fantastic, if they lose its not their money and as long as you can talk the talk and know some of the right people, it is still easy to get another job.
That culture feeds through to the banks to gamble, notionally with their money, but knowing they have a government funded back stop as they are too big to fail.
Take away the controls and regulation and sooner or later we shall be back to bail outs.
Well, it's too bad the Labour government didn't do something about it then...
Of course. Not sure why you think that is relevant when they have not been in power for a long time and it is the current governments policies that will matter.
Well, the view of Labour supporters on the GFC is "it started in America".
That's not the view of Labour supporters, it is a statement of fact.
The global [key word, there] financial crisis started in America. Britain was very poorly placed to weather it because Gordon Brown had spent the previous 6 years [after an admirable initial period of restraint] pissing money up the wall, spending more than he raked in even during times of relative financial health. Personally I couldn't give a fig how big bankers' bonuses are. I don't care at all about the optics, I care about the gap between what we spend and what we earn. That should be the #1 issue for a chancellor of the exchequer to worry about. If this measure narrows that gap (and I am at best agnostic about whether it will) it should be welcomed.
Britain was hit badly because we have a large globally exposed financial sector and one of our biggest banks was in the midst of an ill-advised over-leveraged buying spree at the top of the market. Running a structural deficit of 4% of GDP in 2007 compared to a G7 average of 3% is unlikely to have been a significant factor in explaining why we were hit worse than others, no matter how much people want it to be Gordon Brown's fault.
Running a structural deficit of 4% during pre-crash times is utterly catastrophic as when the crash inevitably comes and you inevitably need countercyclical spending to go with it, then you have nowhere to go.
The fact that some other countries were nearly as bad as the UK doesn't justify or excuse what Brown did.
But it is hard to blame Brown's fiscal policy for us being hit *much worse than others* when Brown's fiscal policy was *pretty much the same as others'*. That was the point I was responding to. Also worth noting that our debt to GDP ratio in 2007 was 41% (down from 43% in 1997) compared to a G7 average of 81%. So we had plenty of space to run countercyclical fiscal policy, certainly compared to other countries, and indeed the increase in our debt to GDP ratio between 2007 and 2010 (33pp) was almost identical to the G7 average (32pp), suggesting that we were indeed able to run a countercyclical fiscal policy just like other economies.
Except it wasn't the same as others, it was via your own figures worse than others. And of course its worth noting that the G7 average includes the UK so the G7 average was itself getting dragged down by Brown's terrible performance.
Debt to GDP isn't the relevant figure, the deficit is, although its worth noting via your own figures again in the span of three years Brown nearly doubled our debt-to-GDP figure whereas G7 nations debt-to-GDP increased by much less than half.
Gordon Brown's peak debt to GDP being around 3% iirc which was on a par with preceding Conservative governments. It was not significant and did not cause or exacerbate the GFC.
Also, aiui Team Truss has determined, as Cheney said of Reagan, that deficits don't matter and that George Osborne's austerity was a mistake that hobbled Britain's economy.
Except....this was a time of unprecedented receipts. The housing market was going bananas, profits were high, and it was a time where debt to GDP didn't need to be as high given the circumstances in the economy. Simply, we were spending too much. I don't think anyone disputes that, no matter what they think the answer (austerity/non-austerity) should have been.
Yes, there is a good deal in that. But as it happened, the GFC came along and rendered it all moot. Then Osborne came along and flatlined the nascent recovery inherited from Labour, and here we are.
The GFC didn't just "come along and render it moot", the GFC was a crash that the Government should have been preparing for as it was overdue. Crashes happen, and the GFC was a classic crash, not some exogenous and unforeseeable shock.
And you repeat the myth that Osborne flatlined the recovery. Don't you realise the UK in the 2010s grew faster than the Eurozone did, both in nominal terms and in per capita terms. "Despite Brexit" supposedly harming the UK during that decade.
If Brexit and Osborne "flatlined" or harmed the UK, then how come the UK grew faster than the Eurozone or the rest of the EU? Just how much faster than them would we have grown in your eyes were it not for Osborne or Brexit, and why?
Osborne's austerity was a mistake as even the current vintage of Tories now acknowledge. The problem is that they have pivoted to pro-growth fiscal policies at precisely the wrong moment, with inflation out of control, and so they will only succeed in pushing up inflation and interest rates. Euro area growth was low because of their sovereign debt crisis and because they followed similar austerity policies to us, and because they had lower population growth.
It was not a mistake, because the deficit was out of control.
Pro-growth policies are good now because the deficit was brought under control prior to the crash, unlike in Brown's time, and so we're in a much better fiscal position than we were then.
The UK grew faster than Europe on a per capita basis too, again despite "austerity" and "Brexit" being both accused of "flatlining" growth. We had our own sovereign debt crisis caused by Brown's borrowing too, which is why Osborne needed to clean up Brown's mess.
The UK deficit is set to grow considerably under Truss, who appears to believe in trickle-down economics, something known not to work. So, deficit up, but no significant improvement in growth.
Your position of saying both Osborne and Truss are right does need an explanation Barty?
Fiscal control on the one hand versus abandoning fiscal control for a dash for growth on the other will sound like chalk and cheese to us non economic, experts until you explain this one to us.
Different stages of the economic cycle.
Brown's deficit spending blew the budget up pre-crash, taking us from a budget surplus to a maxed out deficit before the recession even hit us.
Pre-recession the budget deficit shrank every single year for a decade under the Tories.
A dash for growth now is a viable option as Osborne fixed the roof while the sun was shining. Brown didn't.
So in this analogy, what exactly is “the roof”?
The deficit.
It traditionally goes up during and immediately after a recession due to countercyclical factors, while it comes down in the years of growth. Brown instead took us from budget surplus to maxed out deficit pre-crash meaning we were terribly exposed when the inevitable crash inevitably happened.
So what are the deficit figures from 2007, 2010, 2016, and today to absolutely prove your argument right here right now?
I think its rather magnificent that the two things Britain still leads the world in and does to elite level - Royalty and forming an orderly queue have merged at this time .
More film of the omen and portent last night ((C) MoonRabbit).
"Steve Owens, an astronomer and science communicator at the Glasgow Science Centre, said (...) 'The one last night might have been the size of a golf ball or maybe a cricket ball, maybe bigger than that'."
No way was that object as small as a cricket ball.
Like HY and unlike Leon, I am a big traditionalist at heart - so instead of calling it a UFO I am calling it a dragon. They come from out the void and hide underneath the hill because before banks everyone used to bury their wealth and treasure and dragons love treasure.
The only other explanation is the importance of portents - if you are going to tell the bee’s the master is dead (just smacks of politeness to me but different if you truly superstitious) then what about signs in the sky, leaky pens - OMG 🫣
Personally, I am watching for news items about the sea boiling south of the Hebrides and communication slowly being lost with communities along the West Coast of Scotland....
a week before Boris was ousted I cleaned behind the fridge, and all the grime looked just like a hand squeezing a dogs genitals.
My prediction is that Truss will turn out to be a lot better than many of us gave her credit for. Boris Johnson is a busted flush. He is yesterday's Clown; someone who achieved a great election victory against a ridiculously weedy opponent and managed very little else of note. His deranged supporters might want him back, but they will hopefully diminish in time, and before long it will be difficult to find anyone to admit they supported him.
I do wonder whether even he has fallen out of love with "Boris" as he always affectionately referred to him.
His posts do not indicate it so far, and I would be delighted if he would join those of us who want Truss to succeed and publicly accept Johnson is toxic and has damaged the party considerably
I support her as leader but she is still 10% behind on the latest poll and this end bankers' bonuses cap now was her decision not Boris'. She and Kwarteng own it
You demonstrate my point perfectly and until you condemn Johnson then you are part of his toxic legacy
I won't condemn the party's most successful leader since Thatcher
Leaving aside the question as to whether he was more successful than either Cameron or Major, looking at the rest of them that isn't exactly a high bar, is it?
Interesting that @HYUFD describes Johnson as "the party's most successful leader since Thatcher". This is a totally ridiculous proposition. He bases "most successful" solely on his election victory over Jeremy fecking Corbyn.
Johnson was responsible for one of the biggest fissures in the Tory Party since the Corn Laws. He became an international laughing stock. He thoroughly trashed the Conservative Party's reputation for sensible governance and found himself heaved out of No10 after only 3 years for dishonesty. Other than TMay you have to go back to 1827 to find a PM with a shorter tenure. He was hopeless. A bad joke. A man totally unfit for office. He was not successful, except in his ability to trounce the most ludicrous LoTO ever to have held that role, and to gull those foolish enough like @HYUFD into thinking he was appropriate to be Party leader and PM.
He also delivered Brexit and the vaccines on his watch and of course Theresa was sadly unable to defeat Corbyn.
Once we have gone through the Tory leaderships of Truss, Badenoch, Braverman and Rees Mogg even you might miss Boris!
Mr Johnson is a medical immunologist?
This is a bit divisive. Did Churchill win the second world war (from a British perspective - I know USSR/USA etc)? Yes. Did he fight in Normandy, the Ardennes, Crossing of the Rhine, in a Lancaster over Berlin? No (although he tried to get to Normandy...)
Did Johnson head into the lab, roll up his sleeves and say 'right, we've got the spike sequence, its time to see if mRNA vaccines work...'? Of course not. Did he appoint the right people, let them spend what was needed and keep out of the way? Yes he did.
It is fair to give him credit for things done well just as it is fair to blame for the things that went wrong. Don't let hatred or disdain for Johnson cloud that. There is enough to mock already.
In his leaving speech he claimed he achieved one of his big promises, and fixed social care.
Are we okay to work on the basis that he didn’t and ask, will we ever have a government that will actually fix social care?
The last person going into an election promising to fix social care and with a tax raising plan to do it, was widely perceived to have lost (albeit they formed a government). Its really hard to do. Ultimately I think we don't do well in the country as don't expect to look after our own family when they get old - we regard that as the job of the state. We also don't want to pay the state to do it. Then there is the bizarre fixation about passing on wealth to your children. If I don't inherit a penny from my folks it won't matter - if they need the money to be comfortable as they age then so be it. Its not MY money - it's theirs. Yet some like @HYUFD are obsessed with the idea that inheritance is sacrosanct.
My prediction is that Truss will turn out to be a lot better than many of us gave her credit for. Boris Johnson is a busted flush. He is yesterday's Clown; someone who achieved a great election victory against a ridiculously weedy opponent and managed very little else of note. His deranged supporters might want him back, but they will hopefully diminish in time, and before long it will be difficult to find anyone to admit they supported him.
I do wonder whether even he has fallen out of love with "Boris" as he always affectionately referred to him.
His posts do not indicate it so far, and I would be delighted if he would join those of us who want Truss to succeed and publicly accept Johnson is toxic and has damaged the party considerably
I support her as leader but she is still 10% behind on the latest poll and this end bankers' bonuses cap now was her decision not Boris'. She and Kwarteng own it
You demonstrate my point perfectly and until you condemn Johnson then you are part of his toxic legacy
I won't condemn the party's most successful leader since Thatcher
Leaving aside the question as to whether he was more successful than either Cameron or Major, looking at the rest of them that isn't exactly a high bar, is it?
Interesting that @HYUFD describes Johnson as "the party's most successful leader since Thatcher". This is a totally ridiculous proposition. He bases "most successful" solely on his election victory over Jeremy fecking Corbyn.
Johnson was responsible for one of the biggest fissures in the Tory Party since the Corn Laws. He became an international laughing stock. He thoroughly trashed the Conservative Party's reputation for sensible governance and found himself heaved out of No10 after only 3 years for dishonesty. Other than TMay you have to go back to 1827 to find a PM with a shorter tenure. He was hopeless. A bad joke. A man totally unfit for office. He was not successful, except in his ability to trounce the most ludicrous LoTO ever to have held that role, and to gull those foolish enough like @HYUFD into thinking he was appropriate to be Party leader and PM.
He also delivered Brexit and the vaccines on his watch and of course Theresa was sadly unable to defeat Corbyn.
Once we have gone through the Tory leaderships of Truss, Badenoch, Braverman and Rees Mogg even you might miss Boris!
Mr Johnson is a medical immunologist?
This is a bit divisive. Did Churchill win the second world war (from a British perspective - I know USSR/USA etc)? Yes. Did he fight in Normandy, the Ardennes, Crossing of the Rhine, in a Lancaster over Berlin? No (although he tried to get to Normandy...)
Did Johnson head into the lab, roll up his sleeves and say 'right, we've got the spike sequence, its time to see if mRNA vaccines work...'? Of course not. Did he appoint the right people, let them spend what was needed and keep out of the way? Yes he did.
It is fair to give him credit for things done well just as it is fair to blame for the things that went wrong. Don't let hatred or disdain for Johnson cloud that. There is enough to mock already.
In his leaving speech he claimed he achieved one of his big promises, and fixed social care.
Are we okay to work on the basis that he didn’t and ask, will we ever have a government that will actually fix social care?
The last person going into an election promising to fix social care and with a tax raising plan to do it, was widely perceived to have lost (albeit they formed a government). Its really hard to do. Ultimately I think we don't do well in the country as don't expect to look after our own family when they get old - we regard that as the job of the state. We also don't want to pay the state to do it. Then there is the bizarre fixation about passing on wealth to your children. If I don't inherit a penny from my folks it won't matter - if they need the money to be comfortable as they age then so be it. Its not MY money - it's theirs. Yet some like @HYUFD are obsessed with the idea that inheritance is sacrosanct.
Slightly tactless to comment on inheritance at the moment ... some of us have to pay tax, but others don't because thet have the right sort of children, right sort of divine right, etc. etc. ...
Hundreds of them according to the Beeb. And 500 loos and provision for hot drinks. And the means to leave the Queue for food and rest breaks and return through a system of wristbands. The British sure do know how to queue.
If you are given a wristband that guarantees your position, and you can leave and return at will to that position, the queue itself is redundant.
Issue people wristbands in order at some place, and have a notice at Westminster Hall "now serving bands 18,378 to 18,465" and so on
How do you determine who gets the wristbands and in what order?
A Ukrainian govt adviser tells the BBC that around 1000 dead bodies have been found in the newly captured town of Izyum, held by Russia for many months. He says there were more civilian deaths in Izyum than in Bucha, where the Russians committed documented atrocities. https://mobile.twitter.com/JohnSimpsonNews/status/1570341055224221696
Analyst on R5L’s wake up to money - tracking a basket of essential goods says price difference between Morrissons and Aldi is now 40%. Explained by Morrisons having to service a gigantic debt.
Shop at Aldi, people.
Good morning
I heard that report as well and it is astonishing that Morrisons apparently have a 7 billion debt
Shop anywhere but Morrisons would be the message
5live also discussed Kwarteng's proposal to abolish city bonuses and it really does make you wonder if the conservative party have lost all it's instincts to govern
It may be the right thing from a business sense, but the optics are shocking and hands yet another gift to labour
It is the right thing from city workers sense. It is a bad thing for shareholders and really bad for government and taxpayers who will eventually have to fund another bailout with years of austerity.
I'm curious about this idea that bankers bonuses caused the subprime mortgage crisis.
I am even more curious about the idea that there will ever be another bank bailout.
Extreme bankers bonuses create incentives for bankers to gamble with the banks money. If they win, fantastic, if they lose its not their money and as long as you can talk the talk and know some of the right people, it is still easy to get another job.
That culture feeds through to the banks to gamble, notionally with their money, but knowing they have a government funded back stop as they are too big to fail.
Take away the controls and regulation and sooner or later we shall be back to bail outs.
Well, it's too bad the Labour government didn't do something about it then...
Of course. Not sure why you think that is relevant when they have not been in power for a long time and it is the current governments policies that will matter.
Well, the view of Labour supporters on the GFC is "it started in America".
That's not the view of Labour supporters, it is a statement of fact.
The global [key word, there] financial crisis started in America. Britain was very poorly placed to weather it because Gordon Brown had spent the previous 6 years [after an admirable initial period of restraint] pissing money up the wall, spending more than he raked in even during times of relative financial health. Personally I couldn't give a fig how big bankers' bonuses are. I don't care at all about the optics, I care about the gap between what we spend and what we earn. That should be the #1 issue for a chancellor of the exchequer to worry about. If this measure narrows that gap (and I am at best agnostic about whether it will) it should be welcomed.
Britain was hit badly because we have a large globally exposed financial sector and one of our biggest banks was in the midst of an ill-advised over-leveraged buying spree at the top of the market. Running a structural deficit of 4% of GDP in 2007 compared to a G7 average of 3% is unlikely to have been a significant factor in explaining why we were hit worse than others, no matter how much people want it to be Gordon Brown's fault.
Running a structural deficit of 4% during pre-crash times is utterly catastrophic as when the crash inevitably comes and you inevitably need countercyclical spending to go with it, then you have nowhere to go.
The fact that some other countries were nearly as bad as the UK doesn't justify or excuse what Brown did.
But it is hard to blame Brown's fiscal policy for us being hit *much worse than others* when Brown's fiscal policy was *pretty much the same as others'*. That was the point I was responding to. Also worth noting that our debt to GDP ratio in 2007 was 41% (down from 43% in 1997) compared to a G7 average of 81%. So we had plenty of space to run countercyclical fiscal policy, certainly compared to other countries, and indeed the increase in our debt to GDP ratio between 2007 and 2010 (33pp) was almost identical to the G7 average (32pp), suggesting that we were indeed able to run a countercyclical fiscal policy just like other economies.
Except it wasn't the same as others, it was via your own figures worse than others. And of course its worth noting that the G7 average includes the UK so the G7 average was itself getting dragged down by Brown's terrible performance.
Debt to GDP isn't the relevant figure, the deficit is, although its worth noting via your own figures again in the span of three years Brown nearly doubled our debt-to-GDP figure whereas G7 nations debt-to-GDP increased by much less than half.
Gordon Brown's peak debt to GDP being around 3% iirc which was on a par with preceding Conservative governments. It was not significant and did not cause or exacerbate the GFC.
Also, aiui Team Truss has determined, as Cheney said of Reagan, that deficits don't matter and that George Osborne's austerity was a mistake that hobbled Britain's economy.
Except....this was a time of unprecedented receipts. The housing market was going bananas, profits were high, and it was a time where debt to GDP didn't need to be as high given the circumstances in the economy. Simply, we were spending too much. I don't think anyone disputes that, no matter what they think the answer (austerity/non-austerity) should have been.
Yes, there is a good deal in that. But as it happened, the GFC came along and rendered it all moot. Then Osborne came along and flatlined the nascent recovery inherited from Labour, and here we are.
The GFC didn't just "come along and render it moot", the GFC was a crash that the Government should have been preparing for as it was overdue. Crashes happen, and the GFC was a classic crash, not some exogenous and unforeseeable shock.
And you repeat the myth that Osborne flatlined the recovery. Don't you realise the UK in the 2010s grew faster than the Eurozone did, both in nominal terms and in per capita terms. "Despite Brexit" supposedly harming the UK during that decade.
If Brexit and Osborne "flatlined" or harmed the UK, then how come the UK grew faster than the Eurozone or the rest of the EU? Just how much faster than them would we have grown in your eyes were it not for Osborne or Brexit, and why?
Osborne's austerity was a mistake as even the current vintage of Tories now acknowledge. The problem is that they have pivoted to pro-growth fiscal policies at precisely the wrong moment, with inflation out of control, and so they will only succeed in pushing up inflation and interest rates. Euro area growth was low because of their sovereign debt crisis and because they followed similar austerity policies to us, and because they had lower population growth.
It was not a mistake, because the deficit was out of control.
Pro-growth policies are good now because the deficit was brought under control prior to the crash, unlike in Brown's time, and so we're in a much better fiscal position than we were then.
The UK grew faster than Europe on a per capita basis too, again despite "austerity" and "Brexit" being both accused of "flatlining" growth. We had our own sovereign debt crisis caused by Brown's borrowing too, which is why Osborne needed to clean up Brown's mess.
The UK deficit is set to grow considerably under Truss, who appears to believe in trickle-down economics, something known not to work. So, deficit up, but no significant improvement in growth.
Amused by your claim that trickle-down economics is "known not to work", it absolutely does work.
Cutting taxes in both the UK and the USA in the 80s led to significant growth and eventual budget surpluses in the 90s.
That the growth and surplus such tax cutting brought about was subsequently pissed away, is not a problem with "trickle down economics".
North Sea oil revenues, mass privatisations and the fiscal constraints imposed on the UK government after the ERM debacle were pretty important to the elimination of the deficit at the end of the 1990s. You are too young to remember, but it was also a time of schools, hospitals and other public services in a state of serious disrepair. The UK lesson is that you can cut taxes without borrowing if you have other sources of income, and if you are prepared to oversee significant degradation of the public realm. The US lesson is to be the world's largest economy and to have control of the dollar. I am not sure that either works for the Truss government in the 2020s.
Analyst on R5L’s wake up to money - tracking a basket of essential goods says price difference between Morrissons and Aldi is now 40%. Explained by Morrisons having to service a gigantic debt.
Shop at Aldi, people.
Good morning
I heard that report as well and it is astonishing that Morrisons apparently have a 7 billion debt
Shop anywhere but Morrisons would be the message
5live also discussed Kwarteng's proposal to abolish city bonuses and it really does make you wonder if the conservative party have lost all it's instincts to govern
It may be the right thing from a business sense, but the optics are shocking and hands yet another gift to labour
It is the right thing from city workers sense. It is a bad thing for shareholders and really bad for government and taxpayers who will eventually have to fund another bailout with years of austerity.
I'm curious about this idea that bankers bonuses caused the subprime mortgage crisis.
I am even more curious about the idea that there will ever be another bank bailout.
Extreme bankers bonuses create incentives for bankers to gamble with the banks money. If they win, fantastic, if they lose its not their money and as long as you can talk the talk and know some of the right people, it is still easy to get another job.
That culture feeds through to the banks to gamble, notionally with their money, but knowing they have a government funded back stop as they are too big to fail.
Take away the controls and regulation and sooner or later we shall be back to bail outs.
Well, it's too bad the Labour government didn't do something about it then...
Of course. Not sure why you think that is relevant when they have not been in power for a long time and it is the current governments policies that will matter.
Well, the view of Labour supporters on the GFC is "it started in America".
That's not the view of Labour supporters, it is a statement of fact.
The global [key word, there] financial crisis started in America. Britain was very poorly placed to weather it because Gordon Brown had spent the previous 6 years [after an admirable initial period of restraint] pissing money up the wall, spending more than he raked in even during times of relative financial health. Personally I couldn't give a fig how big bankers' bonuses are. I don't care at all about the optics, I care about the gap between what we spend and what we earn. That should be the #1 issue for a chancellor of the exchequer to worry about. If this measure narrows that gap (and I am at best agnostic about whether it will) it should be welcomed.
Britain was hit badly because we have a large globally exposed financial sector and one of our biggest banks was in the midst of an ill-advised over-leveraged buying spree at the top of the market. Running a structural deficit of 4% of GDP in 2007 compared to a G7 average of 3% is unlikely to have been a significant factor in explaining why we were hit worse than others, no matter how much people want it to be Gordon Brown's fault.
Running a structural deficit of 4% during pre-crash times is utterly catastrophic as when the crash inevitably comes and you inevitably need countercyclical spending to go with it, then you have nowhere to go.
The fact that some other countries were nearly as bad as the UK doesn't justify or excuse what Brown did.
But it is hard to blame Brown's fiscal policy for us being hit *much worse than others* when Brown's fiscal policy was *pretty much the same as others'*. That was the point I was responding to. Also worth noting that our debt to GDP ratio in 2007 was 41% (down from 43% in 1997) compared to a G7 average of 81%. So we had plenty of space to run countercyclical fiscal policy, certainly compared to other countries, and indeed the increase in our debt to GDP ratio between 2007 and 2010 (33pp) was almost identical to the G7 average (32pp), suggesting that we were indeed able to run a countercyclical fiscal policy just like other economies.
Except it wasn't the same as others, it was via your own figures worse than others. And of course its worth noting that the G7 average includes the UK so the G7 average was itself getting dragged down by Brown's terrible performance.
Debt to GDP isn't the relevant figure, the deficit is, although its worth noting via your own figures again in the span of three years Brown nearly doubled our debt-to-GDP figure whereas G7 nations debt-to-GDP increased by much less than half.
Gordon Brown's peak debt to GDP being around 3% iirc which was on a par with preceding Conservative governments. It was not significant and did not cause or exacerbate the GFC.
Also, aiui Team Truss has determined, as Cheney said of Reagan, that deficits don't matter and that George Osborne's austerity was a mistake that hobbled Britain's economy.
Except....this was a time of unprecedented receipts. The housing market was going bananas, profits were high, and it was a time where debt to GDP didn't need to be as high given the circumstances in the economy. Simply, we were spending too much. I don't think anyone disputes that, no matter what they think the answer (austerity/non-austerity) should have been.
Yes, there is a good deal in that. But as it happened, the GFC came along and rendered it all moot. Then Osborne came along and flatlined the nascent recovery inherited from Labour, and here we are.
The GFC didn't just "come along and render it moot", the GFC was a crash that the Government should have been preparing for as it was overdue. Crashes happen, and the GFC was a classic crash, not some exogenous and unforeseeable shock.
And you repeat the myth that Osborne flatlined the recovery. Don't you realise the UK in the 2010s grew faster than the Eurozone did, both in nominal terms and in per capita terms. "Despite Brexit" supposedly harming the UK during that decade.
If Brexit and Osborne "flatlined" or harmed the UK, then how come the UK grew faster than the Eurozone or the rest of the EU? Just how much faster than them would we have grown in your eyes were it not for Osborne or Brexit, and why?
Osborne's austerity was a mistake as even the current vintage of Tories now acknowledge. The problem is that they have pivoted to pro-growth fiscal policies at precisely the wrong moment, with inflation out of control, and so they will only succeed in pushing up inflation and interest rates. Euro area growth was low because of their sovereign debt crisis and because they followed similar austerity policies to us, and because they had lower population growth.
It was not a mistake, because the deficit was out of control.
Pro-growth policies are good now because the deficit was brought under control prior to the crash, unlike in Brown's time, and so we're in a much better fiscal position than we were then.
The UK grew faster than Europe on a per capita basis too, again despite "austerity" and "Brexit" being both accused of "flatlining" growth. We had our own sovereign debt crisis caused by Brown's borrowing too, which is why Osborne needed to clean up Brown's mess.
The UK deficit is set to grow considerably under Truss, who appears to believe in trickle-down economics, something known not to work. So, deficit up, but no significant improvement in growth.
Amused by your claim that trickle-down economics is "known not to work", it absolutely does work.
Cutting taxes in both the UK and the USA in the 80s led to significant growth and eventual budget surpluses in the 90s.
That the growth and surplus such tax cutting brought about was subsequently pissed away, is not a problem with "trickle down economics".
Cutting UK taxes in the 80s? Not according to The World Bank. Tax take rose from 22% of GDP in 1978 and 1979 to 26% of GDP in 1982 and it averaged >24% through the 80s. Doubling VAT may have had something to do with that.
Analyst on R5L’s wake up to money - tracking a basket of essential goods says price difference between Morrissons and Aldi is now 40%. Explained by Morrisons having to service a gigantic debt.
Shop at Aldi, people.
Good morning
I heard that report as well and it is astonishing that Morrisons apparently have a 7 billion debt
Shop anywhere but Morrisons would be the message
5live also discussed Kwarteng's proposal to abolish city bonuses and it really does make you wonder if the conservative party have lost all it's instincts to govern
It may be the right thing from a business sense, but the optics are shocking and hands yet another gift to labour
It is the right thing from city workers sense. It is a bad thing for shareholders and really bad for government and taxpayers who will eventually have to fund another bailout with years of austerity.
I'm curious about this idea that bankers bonuses caused the subprime mortgage crisis.
I am even more curious about the idea that there will ever be another bank bailout.
Extreme bankers bonuses create incentives for bankers to gamble with the banks money. If they win, fantastic, if they lose its not their money and as long as you can talk the talk and know some of the right people, it is still easy to get another job.
That culture feeds through to the banks to gamble, notionally with their money, but knowing they have a government funded back stop as they are too big to fail.
Take away the controls and regulation and sooner or later we shall be back to bail outs.
Well, it's too bad the Labour government didn't do something about it then...
Of course. Not sure why you think that is relevant when they have not been in power for a long time and it is the current governments policies that will matter.
Well, the view of Labour supporters on the GFC is "it started in America".
That's not the view of Labour supporters, it is a statement of fact.
The global [key word, there] financial crisis started in America. Britain was very poorly placed to weather it because Gordon Brown had spent the previous 6 years [after an admirable initial period of restraint] pissing money up the wall, spending more than he raked in even during times of relative financial health. Personally I couldn't give a fig how big bankers' bonuses are. I don't care at all about the optics, I care about the gap between what we spend and what we earn. That should be the #1 issue for a chancellor of the exchequer to worry about. If this measure narrows that gap (and I am at best agnostic about whether it will) it should be welcomed.
Britain was hit badly because we have a large globally exposed financial sector and one of our biggest banks was in the midst of an ill-advised over-leveraged buying spree at the top of the market. Running a structural deficit of 4% of GDP in 2007 compared to a G7 average of 3% is unlikely to have been a significant factor in explaining why we were hit worse than others, no matter how much people want it to be Gordon Brown's fault.
Running a structural deficit of 4% during pre-crash times is utterly catastrophic as when the crash inevitably comes and you inevitably need countercyclical spending to go with it, then you have nowhere to go.
The fact that some other countries were nearly as bad as the UK doesn't justify or excuse what Brown did.
But it is hard to blame Brown's fiscal policy for us being hit *much worse than others* when Brown's fiscal policy was *pretty much the same as others'*. That was the point I was responding to. Also worth noting that our debt to GDP ratio in 2007 was 41% (down from 43% in 1997) compared to a G7 average of 81%. So we had plenty of space to run countercyclical fiscal policy, certainly compared to other countries, and indeed the increase in our debt to GDP ratio between 2007 and 2010 (33pp) was almost identical to the G7 average (32pp), suggesting that we were indeed able to run a countercyclical fiscal policy just like other economies.
Except it wasn't the same as others, it was via your own figures worse than others. And of course its worth noting that the G7 average includes the UK so the G7 average was itself getting dragged down by Brown's terrible performance.
Debt to GDP isn't the relevant figure, the deficit is, although its worth noting via your own figures again in the span of three years Brown nearly doubled our debt-to-GDP figure whereas G7 nations debt-to-GDP increased by much less than half.
Gordon Brown's peak debt to GDP being around 3% iirc which was on a par with preceding Conservative governments. It was not significant and did not cause or exacerbate the GFC.
Also, aiui Team Truss has determined, as Cheney said of Reagan, that deficits don't matter and that George Osborne's austerity was a mistake that hobbled Britain's economy.
Except....this was a time of unprecedented receipts. The housing market was going bananas, profits were high, and it was a time where debt to GDP didn't need to be as high given the circumstances in the economy. Simply, we were spending too much. I don't think anyone disputes that, no matter what they think the answer (austerity/non-austerity) should have been.
Yes, there is a good deal in that. But as it happened, the GFC came along and rendered it all moot. Then Osborne came along and flatlined the nascent recovery inherited from Labour, and here we are.
The GFC didn't just "come along and render it moot", the GFC was a crash that the Government should have been preparing for as it was overdue. Crashes happen, and the GFC was a classic crash, not some exogenous and unforeseeable shock.
And you repeat the myth that Osborne flatlined the recovery. Don't you realise the UK in the 2010s grew faster than the Eurozone did, both in nominal terms and in per capita terms. "Despite Brexit" supposedly harming the UK during that decade.
If Brexit and Osborne "flatlined" or harmed the UK, then how come the UK grew faster than the Eurozone or the rest of the EU? Just how much faster than them would we have grown in your eyes were it not for Osborne or Brexit, and why?
Osborne's austerity was a mistake as even the current vintage of Tories now acknowledge. The problem is that they have pivoted to pro-growth fiscal policies at precisely the wrong moment, with inflation out of control, and so they will only succeed in pushing up inflation and interest rates. Euro area growth was low because of their sovereign debt crisis and because they followed similar austerity policies to us, and because they had lower population growth.
It was not a mistake, because the deficit was out of control.
Pro-growth policies are good now because the deficit was brought under control prior to the crash, unlike in Brown's time, and so we're in a much better fiscal position than we were then.
The UK grew faster than Europe on a per capita basis too, again despite "austerity" and "Brexit" being both accused of "flatlining" growth. We had our own sovereign debt crisis caused by Brown's borrowing too, which is why Osborne needed to clean up Brown's mess.
The UK deficit is set to grow considerably under Truss, who appears to believe in trickle-down economics, something known not to work. So, deficit up, but no significant improvement in growth.
Your position of saying both Osborne and Truss are right does need an explanation Barty?
Fiscal control on the one hand versus abandoning fiscal control for a dash for growth on the other will sound like chalk and cheese to us non economic, experts until you explain this one to us.
Different stages of the economic cycle.
Brown's deficit spending blew the budget up pre-crash, taking us from a budget surplus to a maxed out deficit before the recession even hit us.
Pre-recession the budget deficit shrank every single year for a decade under the Tories.
A dash for growth now is a viable option as Osborne fixed the roof while the sun was shining. Brown didn't.
So in this analogy, what exactly is “the roof”?
The deficit.
It traditionally goes up during and immediately after a recession due to countercyclical factors, while it comes down in the years of growth. Brown instead took us from budget surplus to maxed out deficit pre-crash meaning we were terribly exposed when the inevitable crash inevitably happened.
...and in other CoL crisis news the Royal Yacht HMS Boris Johnson is going ahead despite disinterest from King Charles 3.
(The Times)
Having seen some footage recently of HMQ and Britannia, and I more in favour of a new Royal Yacht than previously, especially since the FLSOJ will have no part in it
Meanwhile the FOC date for F-35B has been pushed to the right by two years by the MoD to save money. The flegship might me more defensible if it didn't have to come out of the defence budget.
It is politically impossible to cancel it while the country is in the grip of ultra nationalist fleg bukkake. Starmer will have to quietly shelve it in a few years time under the guise of "pausing to review options about the onboard provision of pens" or similar bollocks.
Could just sell Clarence House to a Saudi royal, use the money to pay for New Britannia, Saudi Royal and Britannia hire all the sacked Clarence House staff. Everyone ecstatically happy.
Make sure pen for signing the sale deed is a Schaeffer no-nonsense on a big desk.
"Amidst ongoing concerns about services across the UK that will be cancelled or closed next Monday, including operations and funerals, the Scottish government has issued its own guidance.
Whilst it says that school should close as a mark of respect, essential healthcare services should continue, including pre-planned treatments, and the winter vaccination programme.
Most public transport services are currently expected to run as normal."
Our bins not being collected that day - but simply postponed till Saturday.
More film of the omen and portent last night ((C) MoonRabbit).
"Steve Owens, an astronomer and science communicator at the Glasgow Science Centre, said (...) 'The one last night might have been the size of a golf ball or maybe a cricket ball, maybe bigger than that'."
No way was that object as small as a cricket ball.
Like HY and unlike Leon, I am a big traditionalist at heart - so instead of calling it a UFO I am calling it a dragon. They come from out the void and hide underneath the hill because before banks everyone used to bury their wealth and treasure and dragons love treasure.
The only other explanation is the importance of portents - if you are going to tell the bee’s the master is dead (just smacks of politeness to me but different if you truly superstitious) then what about signs in the sky, leaky pens - OMG 🫣
Personally, I am watching for news items about the sea boiling south of the Hebrides and communication slowly being lost with communities along the West Coast of Scotland....
Having watched it cross the heavens, I am testing myself hourly for newly gained super powers… so far I have failed to ignite the cooker hob with a stern look of the eyes and have strained my back trying to lift the car whilst examining Mrs P”s undergarments…
If you start losing your sight, do remember to stock up on glyphosate.
Underrated IMHO. Johnson is an election winner and could easily come back if, as I predict, Truss becomes extremely unpopular. She is in the process of blowing up the electoral coalition Johnson assembled. Does Truss have the nous to make sure Johnson's political future is destroyed by the privileges investigation? I doubt it.
Johnson was an election winner. He is now toxic and the primary reason behind the Labour poll leads we see now. The Tories have done their leader change this Parliament, there is no road left for them to travel other than to roll the dice with Liz and hope.
So toxic that if he had been in the run off in this Tory leadership election he would have won it.
The Labour Party are loving the fact Boris is out of the way.
Toxic with the general population; not toxic with the rather unrepresentative Tory membership.
If you cannot see the difference there you might as well give up.
That’s rather combative post from you. you want some eh, come on 😆
But you are just plain wrong Ben.
Let’s take a look at the stats - party gate plunged Boris a lot, but they were swinging back in the right direction over time were they not? Are you saying for certain Boris would have lost the next election? I don’t think anyone can say that for certain can they - it’s for that reason I say you are plain wrong if you claim for certain he would have got a bad result against Starmer’s Labour.
Losing the argument, you change the parameters.
Of course I'm not saying for certain Johnson would have lost the next election; I'm saying that Johnson's undisputed popularity with Tory members does not mean he isn't toxic with the general population.
Well no. At height of party gate he was more unpopular with party members than when the parliamentary party ousted him. Swing back was going on in both Tory membership AND the country. He was coming back, the more partygate was history not in the news the more Boris was coming back. Just look at some government and PM ratings in the past mid terms and how they came back to win.
You are quite wrong, Labour did want him out the way and far more confident now because the way Boris comes alive in campaigns was an X factor in the calculation they could do without.
"Amidst ongoing concerns about services across the UK that will be cancelled or closed next Monday, including operations and funerals, the Scottish government has issued its own guidance.
Whilst it says that school should close as a mark of respect, essential healthcare services should continue, including pre-planned treatments, and the winter vaccination programme.
Most public transport services are currently expected to run as normal."
Our bins not being collected that day - but simply postponed till Saturday.
How much of the working population do you eliminate by closing schools? It must be a sizable chunk of it.
A Ukrainian govt adviser tells the BBC that around 1000 dead bodies have been found in the newly captured town of Izyum, held by Russia for many months. He says there were more civilian deaths in Izyum than in Bucha, where the Russians committed documented atrocities. https://mobile.twitter.com/JohnSimpsonNews/status/1570341055224221696
It will be the same everywhere.
This is what anyone calling for a ceasefire is inflicting on the residents under Russian control. The Russian default setting is "Utter Depravity".
Analyst on R5L’s wake up to money - tracking a basket of essential goods says price difference between Morrissons and Aldi is now 40%. Explained by Morrisons having to service a gigantic debt.
Shop at Aldi, people.
Good morning
I heard that report as well and it is astonishing that Morrisons apparently have a 7 billion debt
Shop anywhere but Morrisons would be the message
5live also discussed Kwarteng's proposal to abolish city bonuses and it really does make you wonder if the conservative party have lost all it's instincts to govern
It may be the right thing from a business sense, but the optics are shocking and hands yet another gift to labour
It is the right thing from city workers sense. It is a bad thing for shareholders and really bad for government and taxpayers who will eventually have to fund another bailout with years of austerity.
I'm curious about this idea that bankers bonuses caused the subprime mortgage crisis.
I am even more curious about the idea that there will ever be another bank bailout.
Extreme bankers bonuses create incentives for bankers to gamble with the banks money. If they win, fantastic, if they lose its not their money and as long as you can talk the talk and know some of the right people, it is still easy to get another job.
That culture feeds through to the banks to gamble, notionally with their money, but knowing they have a government funded back stop as they are too big to fail.
Take away the controls and regulation and sooner or later we shall be back to bail outs.
Well, it's too bad the Labour government didn't do something about it then...
Of course. Not sure why you think that is relevant when they have not been in power for a long time and it is the current governments policies that will matter.
Well, the view of Labour supporters on the GFC is "it started in America".
That's not the view of Labour supporters, it is a statement of fact.
The global [key word, there] financial crisis started in America. Britain was very poorly placed to weather it because Gordon Brown had spent the previous 6 years [after an admirable initial period of restraint] pissing money up the wall, spending more than he raked in even during times of relative financial health. Personally I couldn't give a fig how big bankers' bonuses are. I don't care at all about the optics, I care about the gap between what we spend and what we earn. That should be the #1 issue for a chancellor of the exchequer to worry about. If this measure narrows that gap (and I am at best agnostic about whether it will) it should be welcomed.
Britain was hit badly because we have a large globally exposed financial sector and one of our biggest banks was in the midst of an ill-advised over-leveraged buying spree at the top of the market. Running a structural deficit of 4% of GDP in 2007 compared to a G7 average of 3% is unlikely to have been a significant factor in explaining why we were hit worse than others, no matter how much people want it to be Gordon Brown's fault.
Running a structural deficit of 4% during pre-crash times is utterly catastrophic as when the crash inevitably comes and you inevitably need countercyclical spending to go with it, then you have nowhere to go.
The fact that some other countries were nearly as bad as the UK doesn't justify or excuse what Brown did.
But it is hard to blame Brown's fiscal policy for us being hit *much worse than others* when Brown's fiscal policy was *pretty much the same as others'*. That was the point I was responding to. Also worth noting that our debt to GDP ratio in 2007 was 41% (down from 43% in 1997) compared to a G7 average of 81%. So we had plenty of space to run countercyclical fiscal policy, certainly compared to other countries, and indeed the increase in our debt to GDP ratio between 2007 and 2010 (33pp) was almost identical to the G7 average (32pp), suggesting that we were indeed able to run a countercyclical fiscal policy just like other economies.
Except it wasn't the same as others, it was via your own figures worse than others. And of course its worth noting that the G7 average includes the UK so the G7 average was itself getting dragged down by Brown's terrible performance.
Debt to GDP isn't the relevant figure, the deficit is, although its worth noting via your own figures again in the span of three years Brown nearly doubled our debt-to-GDP figure whereas G7 nations debt-to-GDP increased by much less than half.
Gordon Brown's peak debt to GDP being around 3% iirc which was on a par with preceding Conservative governments. It was not significant and did not cause or exacerbate the GFC.
Also, aiui Team Truss has determined, as Cheney said of Reagan, that deficits don't matter and that George Osborne's austerity was a mistake that hobbled Britain's economy.
Except....this was a time of unprecedented receipts. The housing market was going bananas, profits were high, and it was a time where debt to GDP didn't need to be as high given the circumstances in the economy. Simply, we were spending too much. I don't think anyone disputes that, no matter what they think the answer (austerity/non-austerity) should have been.
Yes, there is a good deal in that. But as it happened, the GFC came along and rendered it all moot. Then Osborne came along and flatlined the nascent recovery inherited from Labour, and here we are.
The GFC didn't just "come along and render it moot", the GFC was a crash that the Government should have been preparing for as it was overdue. Crashes happen, and the GFC was a classic crash, not some exogenous and unforeseeable shock.
And you repeat the myth that Osborne flatlined the recovery. Don't you realise the UK in the 2010s grew faster than the Eurozone did, both in nominal terms and in per capita terms. "Despite Brexit" supposedly harming the UK during that decade.
If Brexit and Osborne "flatlined" or harmed the UK, then how come the UK grew faster than the Eurozone or the rest of the EU? Just how much faster than them would we have grown in your eyes were it not for Osborne or Brexit, and why?
Osborne's austerity was a mistake as even the current vintage of Tories now acknowledge. The problem is that they have pivoted to pro-growth fiscal policies at precisely the wrong moment, with inflation out of control, and so they will only succeed in pushing up inflation and interest rates. Euro area growth was low because of their sovereign debt crisis and because they followed similar austerity policies to us, and because they had lower population growth.
It was not a mistake, because the deficit was out of control.
Pro-growth policies are good now because the deficit was brought under control prior to the crash, unlike in Brown's time, and so we're in a much better fiscal position than we were then.
The UK grew faster than Europe on a per capita basis too, again despite "austerity" and "Brexit" being both accused of "flatlining" growth. We had our own sovereign debt crisis caused by Brown's borrowing too, which is why Osborne needed to clean up Brown's mess.
The UK deficit is set to grow considerably under Truss, who appears to believe in trickle-down economics, something known not to work. So, deficit up, but no significant improvement in growth.
Your position of saying both Osborne and Truss are right does need an explanation Barty?
Fiscal control on the one hand versus abandoning fiscal control for a dash for growth on the other will sound like chalk and cheese to us non economic, experts until you explain this one to us.
Different stages of the economic cycle.
Brown's deficit spending blew the budget up pre-crash, taking us from a budget surplus to a maxed out deficit before the recession even hit us.
Pre-recession the budget deficit shrank every single year for a decade under the Tories.
A dash for growth now is a viable option as Osborne fixed the roof while the sun was shining. Brown didn't.
So in this analogy, what exactly is “the roof”?
The deficit.
It traditionally goes up during and immediately after a recession due to countercyclical factors, while it comes down in the years of growth. Brown instead took us from budget surplus to maxed out deficit pre-crash meaning we were terribly exposed when the inevitable crash inevitably happened.
So what are the deficit figures from 2007, 2010, 2016, and today to absolutely prove your argument right here right now?
From 2002 to 2007, pre-crash, the Budget deficit increased from a surplus of 1.4% to a deficit of 2.9% . . . a pre-crash worsening of 4.3% of GDP
From 2013 to 2019, pre-crash, the Budget deficit fell from 7.4% to 1.5%, a pre-crash improvement of 5.9% of GDP
The net difference between a 4.3% deterioration in the accounts, and a 5.9% improvement in them, is 10.2% of GDP.
"Amidst ongoing concerns about services across the UK that will be cancelled or closed next Monday, including operations and funerals, the Scottish government has issued its own guidance.
Whilst it says that school should close as a mark of respect, essential healthcare services should continue, including pre-planned treatments, and the winter vaccination programme.
Most public transport services are currently expected to run as normal."
Our bins not being collected that day - but simply postponed till Saturday.
How much of the working population do you eliminate by closing schools? It must be a sizable chunk of it.
Hundreds of them according to the Beeb. And 500 loos and provision for hot drinks. And the means to leave the Queue for food and rest breaks and return through a system of wristbands. The British sure do know how to queue.
If you are given a wristband that guarantees your position, and you can leave and return at will to that position, the queue itself is redundant.
Issue people wristbands in order at some place, and have a notice at Westminster Hall "now serving bands 18,378 to 18,465" and so on
How do you determine who gets the wristbands and in what order?
You queue up for them?
Reminds me of when we did a day trip to Rome off a cruise ship on what happened to be Easter Saturday. Overheard a US lady on the phone to a friend complaining that she had been queuing for two hours for a ticket to the Colosseum and once she got it there was another hour-long queue to get in.
(She should have brought a wheelchair, I just wheeled up to the entrance and got let in straight away - for free. I love Italy!)
...and in other CoL crisis news the Royal Yacht HMS Boris Johnson is going ahead despite disinterest from King Charles 3.
(The Times)
Having seen some footage recently of HMQ and Britannia, and I more in favour of a new Royal Yacht than previously, especially since the FLSOJ will have no part in it
We really don't need it.Lizzy Truss successfully negotiated her dairy for Japanese cars contra deal without it.
My prediction is that Truss will turn out to be a lot better than many of us gave her credit for. Boris Johnson is a busted flush. He is yesterday's Clown; someone who achieved a great election victory against a ridiculously weedy opponent and managed very little else of note. His deranged supporters might want him back, but they will hopefully diminish in time, and before long it will be difficult to find anyone to admit they supported him.
I do wonder whether even he has fallen out of love with "Boris" as he always affectionately referred to him.
His posts do not indicate it so far, and I would be delighted if he would join those of us who want Truss to succeed and publicly accept Johnson is toxic and has damaged the party considerably
I support her as leader but she is still 10% behind on the latest poll and this end bankers' bonuses cap now was her decision not Boris'. She and Kwarteng own it
You demonstrate my point perfectly and until you condemn Johnson then you are part of his toxic legacy
I won't condemn the party's most successful leader since Thatcher
Leaving aside the question as to whether he was more successful than either Cameron or Major, looking at the rest of them that isn't exactly a high bar, is it?
Interesting that @HYUFD describes Johnson as "the party's most successful leader since Thatcher". This is a totally ridiculous proposition. He bases "most successful" solely on his election victory over Jeremy fecking Corbyn.
Johnson was responsible for one of the biggest fissures in the Tory Party since the Corn Laws. He became an international laughing stock. He thoroughly trashed the Conservative Party's reputation for sensible governance and found himself heaved out of No10 after only 3 years for dishonesty. Other than TMay you have to go back to 1827 to find a PM with a shorter tenure. He was hopeless. A bad joke. A man totally unfit for office. He was not successful, except in his ability to trounce the most ludicrous LoTO ever to have held that role, and to gull those foolish enough like @HYUFD into thinking he was appropriate to be Party leader and PM.
He also delivered Brexit and the vaccines on his watch and of course Theresa was sadly unable to defeat Corbyn.
Once we have gone through the Tory leaderships of Truss, Badenoch, Braverman and Rees Mogg even you might miss Boris!
HY, old chap. We have one of the biggest and best pharmaceutical sectors in the known universe, and that has nothing to do with Johnson. When I last looked Boris Johnson has no scientific credential. If the decision relating to the procurement was his (which I doubt he took on his own) it was a good call. The rest of the whole pandemic was a mixture of bad and very very bad. On top of that we have a man that presided over a culture of partying at No10 while knowing other people were making great sacrifices. He is without doubt the worst PM in recent history, if not the whole of history. There are no circumstances where I will miss having such a lying cretinous clown as our PM. It is a shame that you are an apologist for him, as it demonstrates that you, by association, must be as dishonest as he.
Analyst on R5L’s wake up to money - tracking a basket of essential goods says price difference between Morrissons and Aldi is now 40%. Explained by Morrisons having to service a gigantic debt.
Shop at Aldi, people.
Good morning
I heard that report as well and it is astonishing that Morrisons apparently have a 7 billion debt
Shop anywhere but Morrisons would be the message
5live also discussed Kwarteng's proposal to abolish city bonuses and it really does make you wonder if the conservative party have lost all it's instincts to govern
It may be the right thing from a business sense, but the optics are shocking and hands yet another gift to labour
It is the right thing from city workers sense. It is a bad thing for shareholders and really bad for government and taxpayers who will eventually have to fund another bailout with years of austerity.
I'm curious about this idea that bankers bonuses caused the subprime mortgage crisis.
I am even more curious about the idea that there will ever be another bank bailout.
Extreme bankers bonuses create incentives for bankers to gamble with the banks money. If they win, fantastic, if they lose its not their money and as long as you can talk the talk and know some of the right people, it is still easy to get another job.
That culture feeds through to the banks to gamble, notionally with their money, but knowing they have a government funded back stop as they are too big to fail.
Take away the controls and regulation and sooner or later we shall be back to bail outs.
Well, it's too bad the Labour government didn't do something about it then...
Of course. Not sure why you think that is relevant when they have not been in power for a long time and it is the current governments policies that will matter.
Well, the view of Labour supporters on the GFC is "it started in America".
That's not the view of Labour supporters, it is a statement of fact.
The global [key word, there] financial crisis started in America. Britain was very poorly placed to weather it because Gordon Brown had spent the previous 6 years [after an admirable initial period of restraint] pissing money up the wall, spending more than he raked in even during times of relative financial health. Personally I couldn't give a fig how big bankers' bonuses are. I don't care at all about the optics, I care about the gap between what we spend and what we earn. That should be the #1 issue for a chancellor of the exchequer to worry about. If this measure narrows that gap (and I am at best agnostic about whether it will) it should be welcomed.
Britain was hit badly because we have a large globally exposed financial sector and one of our biggest banks was in the midst of an ill-advised over-leveraged buying spree at the top of the market. Running a structural deficit of 4% of GDP in 2007 compared to a G7 average of 3% is unlikely to have been a significant factor in explaining why we were hit worse than others, no matter how much people want it to be Gordon Brown's fault.
Running a structural deficit of 4% during pre-crash times is utterly catastrophic as when the crash inevitably comes and you inevitably need countercyclical spending to go with it, then you have nowhere to go.
The fact that some other countries were nearly as bad as the UK doesn't justify or excuse what Brown did.
But it is hard to blame Brown's fiscal policy for us being hit *much worse than others* when Brown's fiscal policy was *pretty much the same as others'*. That was the point I was responding to. Also worth noting that our debt to GDP ratio in 2007 was 41% (down from 43% in 1997) compared to a G7 average of 81%. So we had plenty of space to run countercyclical fiscal policy, certainly compared to other countries, and indeed the increase in our debt to GDP ratio between 2007 and 2010 (33pp) was almost identical to the G7 average (32pp), suggesting that we were indeed able to run a countercyclical fiscal policy just like other economies.
Except it wasn't the same as others, it was via your own figures worse than others. And of course its worth noting that the G7 average includes the UK so the G7 average was itself getting dragged down by Brown's terrible performance.
Debt to GDP isn't the relevant figure, the deficit is, although its worth noting via your own figures again in the span of three years Brown nearly doubled our debt-to-GDP figure whereas G7 nations debt-to-GDP increased by much less than half.
Gordon Brown's peak debt to GDP being around 3% iirc which was on a par with preceding Conservative governments. It was not significant and did not cause or exacerbate the GFC.
Also, aiui Team Truss has determined, as Cheney said of Reagan, that deficits don't matter and that George Osborne's austerity was a mistake that hobbled Britain's economy.
Except....this was a time of unprecedented receipts. The housing market was going bananas, profits were high, and it was a time where debt to GDP didn't need to be as high given the circumstances in the economy. Simply, we were spending too much. I don't think anyone disputes that, no matter what they think the answer (austerity/non-austerity) should have been.
Yes, there is a good deal in that. But as it happened, the GFC came along and rendered it all moot. Then Osborne came along and flatlined the nascent recovery inherited from Labour, and here we are.
The GFC didn't just "come along and render it moot", the GFC was a crash that the Government should have been preparing for as it was overdue. Crashes happen, and the GFC was a classic crash, not some exogenous and unforeseeable shock.
And you repeat the myth that Osborne flatlined the recovery. Don't you realise the UK in the 2010s grew faster than the Eurozone did, both in nominal terms and in per capita terms. "Despite Brexit" supposedly harming the UK during that decade.
If Brexit and Osborne "flatlined" or harmed the UK, then how come the UK grew faster than the Eurozone or the rest of the EU? Just how much faster than them would we have grown in your eyes were it not for Osborne or Brexit, and why?
Osborne's austerity was a mistake as even the current vintage of Tories now acknowledge. The problem is that they have pivoted to pro-growth fiscal policies at precisely the wrong moment, with inflation out of control, and so they will only succeed in pushing up inflation and interest rates. Euro area growth was low because of their sovereign debt crisis and because they followed similar austerity policies to us, and because they had lower population growth.
It was not a mistake, because the deficit was out of control.
Pro-growth policies are good now because the deficit was brought under control prior to the crash, unlike in Brown's time, and so we're in a much better fiscal position than we were then.
The UK grew faster than Europe on a per capita basis too, again despite "austerity" and "Brexit" being both accused of "flatlining" growth. We had our own sovereign debt crisis caused by Brown's borrowing too, which is why Osborne needed to clean up Brown's mess.
The UK deficit is set to grow considerably under Truss, who appears to believe in trickle-down economics, something known not to work. So, deficit up, but no significant improvement in growth.
Your position of saying both Osborne and Truss are right does need an explanation Barty?
Fiscal control on the one hand versus abandoning fiscal control for a dash for growth on the other will sound like chalk and cheese to us non economic, experts until you explain this one to us.
Different stages of the economic cycle.
Brown's deficit spending blew the budget up pre-crash, taking us from a budget surplus to a maxed out deficit before the recession even hit us.
Pre-recession the budget deficit shrank every single year for a decade under the Tories.
A dash for growth now is a viable option as Osborne fixed the roof while the sun was shining. Brown didn't.
So in this analogy, what exactly is “the roof”?
The deficit.
It traditionally goes up during and immediately after a recession due to countercyclical factors, while it comes down in the years of growth. Brown instead took us from budget surplus to maxed out deficit pre-crash meaning we were terribly exposed when the inevitable crash inevitably happened.
So what are the deficit figures from 2007, 2010, 2016, and today to absolutely prove your argument right here right now?
From 2002 to 2007, pre-crash, the Budget deficit increased from a surplus of 1.4% to a deficit of 2.9% . . . a pre-crash worsening of 4.3% of GDP
From 2013 to 2019, pre-crash, the Budget deficit fell from 7.4% to 1.5%, a pre-crash improvement of 5.9% of GDP
The net difference between a 4.3% deterioration in the accounts, and a 5.9% improvement in them, is 10.2% of GDP.
More film of the omen and portent last night ((C) MoonRabbit).
"Steve Owens, an astronomer and science communicator at the Glasgow Science Centre, said (...) 'The one last night might have been the size of a golf ball or maybe a cricket ball, maybe bigger than that'."
No way was that object as small as a cricket ball.
Like HY and unlike Leon, I am a big traditionalist at heart - so instead of calling it a UFO I am calling it a dragon. They come from out the void and hide underneath the hill because before banks everyone used to bury their wealth and treasure and dragons love treasure.
The only other explanation is the importance of portents - if you are going to tell the bee’s the master is dead (just smacks of politeness to me but different if you truly superstitious) then what about signs in the sky, leaky pens - OMG 🫣
Personally, I am watching for news items about the sea boiling south of the Hebrides and communication slowly being lost with communities along the West Coast of Scotland....
Hope it's not aliens, they might ask to be taken to our leaders and then where would we be?
Hundreds of them according to the Beeb. And 500 loos and provision for hot drinks. And the means to leave the Queue for food and rest breaks and return through a system of wristbands. The British sure do know how to queue.
If you are given a wristband that guarantees your position, and you can leave and return at will to that position, the queue itself is redundant.
Issue people wristbands in order at some place, and have a notice at Westminster Hall "now serving bands 18,378 to 18,465" and so on
How do you determine who gets the wristbands and in what order?
You queue up for them?
Reminds me of when we did a day trip to Rome off a cruise ship on what happened to be Easter Saturday. Overheard a US lady on the phone to a friend complaining that she had been queuing for two hours for a ticket to the Colosseum and once she got it there was another hour-long queue to get in.
(She should have brought a wheelchair, I just wheeled up to the entrance and got let in straight away - for free. I love Italy!)
Good for you how very sensible.
And yes, as to your rhetorical question - somewhere somehow a queue is needed and it's going to be a big 'un.
Analyst on R5L’s wake up to money - tracking a basket of essential goods says price difference between Morrissons and Aldi is now 40%. Explained by Morrisons having to service a gigantic debt.
Shop at Aldi, people.
Good morning
I heard that report as well and it is astonishing that Morrisons apparently have a 7 billion debt
Shop anywhere but Morrisons would be the message
5live also discussed Kwarteng's proposal to abolish city bonuses and it really does make you wonder if the conservative party have lost all it's instincts to govern
It may be the right thing from a business sense, but the optics are shocking and hands yet another gift to labour
It is the right thing from city workers sense. It is a bad thing for shareholders and really bad for government and taxpayers who will eventually have to fund another bailout with years of austerity.
I'm curious about this idea that bankers bonuses caused the subprime mortgage crisis.
I am even more curious about the idea that there will ever be another bank bailout.
Extreme bankers bonuses create incentives for bankers to gamble with the banks money. If they win, fantastic, if they lose its not their money and as long as you can talk the talk and know some of the right people, it is still easy to get another job.
That culture feeds through to the banks to gamble, notionally with their money, but knowing they have a government funded back stop as they are too big to fail.
Take away the controls and regulation and sooner or later we shall be back to bail outs.
Well, it's too bad the Labour government didn't do something about it then...
Of course. Not sure why you think that is relevant when they have not been in power for a long time and it is the current governments policies that will matter.
Well, the view of Labour supporters on the GFC is "it started in America".
That's not the view of Labour supporters, it is a statement of fact.
The global [key word, there] financial crisis started in America. Britain was very poorly placed to weather it because Gordon Brown had spent the previous 6 years [after an admirable initial period of restraint] pissing money up the wall, spending more than he raked in even during times of relative financial health. Personally I couldn't give a fig how big bankers' bonuses are. I don't care at all about the optics, I care about the gap between what we spend and what we earn. That should be the #1 issue for a chancellor of the exchequer to worry about. If this measure narrows that gap (and I am at best agnostic about whether it will) it should be welcomed.
Britain was hit badly because we have a large globally exposed financial sector and one of our biggest banks was in the midst of an ill-advised over-leveraged buying spree at the top of the market. Running a structural deficit of 4% of GDP in 2007 compared to a G7 average of 3% is unlikely to have been a significant factor in explaining why we were hit worse than others, no matter how much people want it to be Gordon Brown's fault.
Running a structural deficit of 4% during pre-crash times is utterly catastrophic as when the crash inevitably comes and you inevitably need countercyclical spending to go with it, then you have nowhere to go.
The fact that some other countries were nearly as bad as the UK doesn't justify or excuse what Brown did.
But it is hard to blame Brown's fiscal policy for us being hit *much worse than others* when Brown's fiscal policy was *pretty much the same as others'*. That was the point I was responding to. Also worth noting that our debt to GDP ratio in 2007 was 41% (down from 43% in 1997) compared to a G7 average of 81%. So we had plenty of space to run countercyclical fiscal policy, certainly compared to other countries, and indeed the increase in our debt to GDP ratio between 2007 and 2010 (33pp) was almost identical to the G7 average (32pp), suggesting that we were indeed able to run a countercyclical fiscal policy just like other economies.
Except it wasn't the same as others, it was via your own figures worse than others. And of course its worth noting that the G7 average includes the UK so the G7 average was itself getting dragged down by Brown's terrible performance.
Debt to GDP isn't the relevant figure, the deficit is, although its worth noting via your own figures again in the span of three years Brown nearly doubled our debt-to-GDP figure whereas G7 nations debt-to-GDP increased by much less than half.
Gordon Brown's peak debt to GDP being around 3% iirc which was on a par with preceding Conservative governments. It was not significant and did not cause or exacerbate the GFC.
Also, aiui Team Truss has determined, as Cheney said of Reagan, that deficits don't matter and that George Osborne's austerity was a mistake that hobbled Britain's economy.
Except....this was a time of unprecedented receipts. The housing market was going bananas, profits were high, and it was a time where debt to GDP didn't need to be as high given the circumstances in the economy. Simply, we were spending too much. I don't think anyone disputes that, no matter what they think the answer (austerity/non-austerity) should have been.
Yes, there is a good deal in that. But as it happened, the GFC came along and rendered it all moot. Then Osborne came along and flatlined the nascent recovery inherited from Labour, and here we are.
The GFC didn't just "come along and render it moot", the GFC was a crash that the Government should have been preparing for as it was overdue. Crashes happen, and the GFC was a classic crash, not some exogenous and unforeseeable shock.
And you repeat the myth that Osborne flatlined the recovery. Don't you realise the UK in the 2010s grew faster than the Eurozone did, both in nominal terms and in per capita terms. "Despite Brexit" supposedly harming the UK during that decade.
If Brexit and Osborne "flatlined" or harmed the UK, then how come the UK grew faster than the Eurozone or the rest of the EU? Just how much faster than them would we have grown in your eyes were it not for Osborne or Brexit, and why?
Osborne's austerity was a mistake as even the current vintage of Tories now acknowledge. The problem is that they have pivoted to pro-growth fiscal policies at precisely the wrong moment, with inflation out of control, and so they will only succeed in pushing up inflation and interest rates. Euro area growth was low because of their sovereign debt crisis and because they followed similar austerity policies to us, and because they had lower population growth.
It was not a mistake, because the deficit was out of control.
Pro-growth policies are good now because the deficit was brought under control prior to the crash, unlike in Brown's time, and so we're in a much better fiscal position than we were then.
The UK grew faster than Europe on a per capita basis too, again despite "austerity" and "Brexit" being both accused of "flatlining" growth. We had our own sovereign debt crisis caused by Brown's borrowing too, which is why Osborne needed to clean up Brown's mess.
The UK deficit is set to grow considerably under Truss, who appears to believe in trickle-down economics, something known not to work. So, deficit up, but no significant improvement in growth.
Your position of saying both Osborne and Truss are right does need an explanation Barty?
Fiscal control on the one hand versus abandoning fiscal control for a dash for growth on the other will sound like chalk and cheese to us non economic, experts until you explain this one to us.
Different stages of the economic cycle.
Brown's deficit spending blew the budget up pre-crash, taking us from a budget surplus to a maxed out deficit before the recession even hit us.
Pre-recession the budget deficit shrank every single year for a decade under the Tories.
A dash for growth now is a viable option as Osborne fixed the roof while the sun was shining. Brown didn't.
So in this analogy, what exactly is “the roof”?
The deficit.
It traditionally goes up during and immediately after a recession due to countercyclical factors, while it comes down in the years of growth. Brown instead took us from budget surplus to maxed out deficit pre-crash meaning we were terribly exposed when the inevitable crash inevitably happened.
So what are the deficit figures from 2007, 2010, 2016, and today to absolutely prove your argument right here right now?
From 2002 to 2007, pre-crash, the Budget deficit increased from a surplus of 1.4% to a deficit of 2.9% . . . a pre-crash worsening of 4.3% of GDP
From 2013 to 2019, pre-crash, the Budget deficit fell from 7.4% to 1.5%, a pre-crash improvement of 5.9% of GDP
The net difference between a 4.3% deterioration in the accounts, and a 5.9% improvement in them, is 10.2% of GDP.
Why have you omitted the period 2007 to 2013?
Because we were discussing what happened in the years pre-crash.
Looking from 2002 to 2010 and 2010 to 2019 would make the deterioration in Labour's accounts and the improvement in Tory accounts even more exaggerated, but I did not consider that to be fair or reasonable.
...and in other CoL crisis news the Royal Yacht HMS Boris Johnson is going ahead despite disinterest from King Charles 3.
(The Times)
Having seen some footage recently of HMQ and Britannia, and I more in favour of a new Royal Yacht than previously, especially since the FLSOJ will have no part in it
Meanwhile the FOC date for F-35B has been pushed to the right by two years by the MoD to save money. The flegship might me more defensible if it didn't have to come out of the defence budget.
It is politically impossible to cancel it while the country is in the grip of ultra nationalist fleg bukkake. Starmer will have to quietly shelve it in a few years time under the guise of "pausing to review options about the onboard provision of pens" or similar bollocks.
Could just sell Clarence House to a Saudi royal, use the money to pay for New Britannia, Saudi Royal and Britannia hire all the sacked Clarence House staff. Everyone ecstatically happy.
Make sure pen for signing the sale deed is a Schaeffer no-nonsense on a big desk.
Putin's Really Big Desk will be available by then....
More film of the omen and portent last night ((C) MoonRabbit).
"Steve Owens, an astronomer and science communicator at the Glasgow Science Centre, said (...) 'The one last night might have been the size of a golf ball or maybe a cricket ball, maybe bigger than that'."
No way was that object as small as a cricket ball.
Like HY and unlike Leon, I am a big traditionalist at heart - so instead of calling it a UFO I am calling it a dragon. They come from out the void and hide underneath the hill because before banks everyone used to bury their wealth and treasure and dragons love treasure.
The only other explanation is the importance of portents - if you are going to tell the bee’s the master is dead (just smacks of politeness to me but different if you truly superstitious) then what about signs in the sky, leaky pens - OMG 🫣
Personally, I am watching for news items about the sea boiling south of the Hebrides and communication slowly being lost with communities along the West Coast of Scotland....
Hope it's not aliens, they might ask to be taken to our leaders and then where would we be?
Apparently one of Mr Musk's comsats. Beginning to wonder how many more fireballs we'll see, given how many comsats of his there are.
Analyst on R5L’s wake up to money - tracking a basket of essential goods says price difference between Morrissons and Aldi is now 40%. Explained by Morrisons having to service a gigantic debt.
Shop at Aldi, people.
Good morning
I heard that report as well and it is astonishing that Morrisons apparently have a 7 billion debt
Shop anywhere but Morrisons would be the message
5live also discussed Kwarteng's proposal to abolish city bonuses and it really does make you wonder if the conservative party have lost all it's instincts to govern
It may be the right thing from a business sense, but the optics are shocking and hands yet another gift to labour
It is the right thing from city workers sense. It is a bad thing for shareholders and really bad for government and taxpayers who will eventually have to fund another bailout with years of austerity.
I'm curious about this idea that bankers bonuses caused the subprime mortgage crisis.
I am even more curious about the idea that there will ever be another bank bailout.
Extreme bankers bonuses create incentives for bankers to gamble with the banks money. If they win, fantastic, if they lose its not their money and as long as you can talk the talk and know some of the right people, it is still easy to get another job.
That culture feeds through to the banks to gamble, notionally with their money, but knowing they have a government funded back stop as they are too big to fail.
Take away the controls and regulation and sooner or later we shall be back to bail outs.
Well, it's too bad the Labour government didn't do something about it then...
Of course. Not sure why you think that is relevant when they have not been in power for a long time and it is the current governments policies that will matter.
Well, the view of Labour supporters on the GFC is "it started in America".
That's not the view of Labour supporters, it is a statement of fact.
The global [key word, there] financial crisis started in America. Britain was very poorly placed to weather it because Gordon Brown had spent the previous 6 years [after an admirable initial period of restraint] pissing money up the wall, spending more than he raked in even during times of relative financial health. Personally I couldn't give a fig how big bankers' bonuses are. I don't care at all about the optics, I care about the gap between what we spend and what we earn. That should be the #1 issue for a chancellor of the exchequer to worry about. If this measure narrows that gap (and I am at best agnostic about whether it will) it should be welcomed.
Britain was hit badly because we have a large globally exposed financial sector and one of our biggest banks was in the midst of an ill-advised over-leveraged buying spree at the top of the market. Running a structural deficit of 4% of GDP in 2007 compared to a G7 average of 3% is unlikely to have been a significant factor in explaining why we were hit worse than others, no matter how much people want it to be Gordon Brown's fault.
Running a structural deficit of 4% during pre-crash times is utterly catastrophic as when the crash inevitably comes and you inevitably need countercyclical spending to go with it, then you have nowhere to go.
The fact that some other countries were nearly as bad as the UK doesn't justify or excuse what Brown did.
But it is hard to blame Brown's fiscal policy for us being hit *much worse than others* when Brown's fiscal policy was *pretty much the same as others'*. That was the point I was responding to. Also worth noting that our debt to GDP ratio in 2007 was 41% (down from 43% in 1997) compared to a G7 average of 81%. So we had plenty of space to run countercyclical fiscal policy, certainly compared to other countries, and indeed the increase in our debt to GDP ratio between 2007 and 2010 (33pp) was almost identical to the G7 average (32pp), suggesting that we were indeed able to run a countercyclical fiscal policy just like other economies.
Except it wasn't the same as others, it was via your own figures worse than others. And of course its worth noting that the G7 average includes the UK so the G7 average was itself getting dragged down by Brown's terrible performance.
Debt to GDP isn't the relevant figure, the deficit is, although its worth noting via your own figures again in the span of three years Brown nearly doubled our debt-to-GDP figure whereas G7 nations debt-to-GDP increased by much less than half.
Gordon Brown's peak debt to GDP being around 3% iirc which was on a par with preceding Conservative governments. It was not significant and did not cause or exacerbate the GFC.
Also, aiui Team Truss has determined, as Cheney said of Reagan, that deficits don't matter and that George Osborne's austerity was a mistake that hobbled Britain's economy.
Except....this was a time of unprecedented receipts. The housing market was going bananas, profits were high, and it was a time where debt to GDP didn't need to be as high given the circumstances in the economy. Simply, we were spending too much. I don't think anyone disputes that, no matter what they think the answer (austerity/non-austerity) should have been.
Yes, there is a good deal in that. But as it happened, the GFC came along and rendered it all moot. Then Osborne came along and flatlined the nascent recovery inherited from Labour, and here we are.
The GFC didn't just "come along and render it moot", the GFC was a crash that the Government should have been preparing for as it was overdue. Crashes happen, and the GFC was a classic crash, not some exogenous and unforeseeable shock.
And you repeat the myth that Osborne flatlined the recovery. Don't you realise the UK in the 2010s grew faster than the Eurozone did, both in nominal terms and in per capita terms. "Despite Brexit" supposedly harming the UK during that decade.
If Brexit and Osborne "flatlined" or harmed the UK, then how come the UK grew faster than the Eurozone or the rest of the EU? Just how much faster than them would we have grown in your eyes were it not for Osborne or Brexit, and why?
Osborne's austerity was a mistake as even the current vintage of Tories now acknowledge. The problem is that they have pivoted to pro-growth fiscal policies at precisely the wrong moment, with inflation out of control, and so they will only succeed in pushing up inflation and interest rates. Euro area growth was low because of their sovereign debt crisis and because they followed similar austerity policies to us, and because they had lower population growth.
A Ukrainian govt adviser tells the BBC that around 1000 dead bodies have been found in the newly captured town of Izyum, held by Russia for many months. He says there were more civilian deaths in Izyum than in Bucha, where the Russians committed documented atrocities. https://mobile.twitter.com/JohnSimpsonNews/status/1570341055224221696
It will be the same everywhere.
This is what anyone calling for a ceasefire is inflicting on the residents under Russian control. The Russian default setting is "Utter Depravity".
It won't be exactly the same - various liberated towns or villages with larger percentages of Russian speaking Ukrainians have reported less brutal occupation. But even in those, murders and other crimes have been documented.
I think its rather magnificent that the two things Britain still leads the world in and does to elite level - Royalty and forming an orderly queue have merged at this time .
There was a Guards Rupert on the radio saying rather pathetically that Britain could still do 'world class ceremonial' so you can add that to the mix.
Analyst on R5L’s wake up to money - tracking a basket of essential goods says price difference between Morrissons and Aldi is now 40%. Explained by Morrisons having to service a gigantic debt.
Shop at Aldi, people.
Good morning
I heard that report as well and it is astonishing that Morrisons apparently have a 7 billion debt
Shop anywhere but Morrisons would be the message
5live also discussed Kwarteng's proposal to abolish city bonuses and it really does make you wonder if the conservative party have lost all it's instincts to govern
It may be the right thing from a business sense, but the optics are shocking and hands yet another gift to labour
It is the right thing from city workers sense. It is a bad thing for shareholders and really bad for government and taxpayers who will eventually have to fund another bailout with years of austerity.
I'm curious about this idea that bankers bonuses caused the subprime mortgage crisis.
I am even more curious about the idea that there will ever be another bank bailout.
Extreme bankers bonuses create incentives for bankers to gamble with the banks money. If they win, fantastic, if they lose its not their money and as long as you can talk the talk and know some of the right people, it is still easy to get another job.
That culture feeds through to the banks to gamble, notionally with their money, but knowing they have a government funded back stop as they are too big to fail.
Take away the controls and regulation and sooner or later we shall be back to bail outs.
Well, it's too bad the Labour government didn't do something about it then...
Of course. Not sure why you think that is relevant when they have not been in power for a long time and it is the current governments policies that will matter.
Well, the view of Labour supporters on the GFC is "it started in America".
That's not the view of Labour supporters, it is a statement of fact.
The global [key word, there] financial crisis started in America. Britain was very poorly placed to weather it because Gordon Brown had spent the previous 6 years [after an admirable initial period of restraint] pissing money up the wall, spending more than he raked in even during times of relative financial health. Personally I couldn't give a fig how big bankers' bonuses are. I don't care at all about the optics, I care about the gap between what we spend and what we earn. That should be the #1 issue for a chancellor of the exchequer to worry about. If this measure narrows that gap (and I am at best agnostic about whether it will) it should be welcomed.
Britain was hit badly because we have a large globally exposed financial sector and one of our biggest banks was in the midst of an ill-advised over-leveraged buying spree at the top of the market. Running a structural deficit of 4% of GDP in 2007 compared to a G7 average of 3% is unlikely to have been a significant factor in explaining why we were hit worse than others, no matter how much people want it to be Gordon Brown's fault.
Running a structural deficit of 4% during pre-crash times is utterly catastrophic as when the crash inevitably comes and you inevitably need countercyclical spending to go with it, then you have nowhere to go.
The fact that some other countries were nearly as bad as the UK doesn't justify or excuse what Brown did.
But it is hard to blame Brown's fiscal policy for us being hit *much worse than others* when Brown's fiscal policy was *pretty much the same as others'*. That was the point I was responding to. Also worth noting that our debt to GDP ratio in 2007 was 41% (down from 43% in 1997) compared to a G7 average of 81%. So we had plenty of space to run countercyclical fiscal policy, certainly compared to other countries, and indeed the increase in our debt to GDP ratio between 2007 and 2010 (33pp) was almost identical to the G7 average (32pp), suggesting that we were indeed able to run a countercyclical fiscal policy just like other economies.
Except it wasn't the same as others, it was via your own figures worse than others. And of course its worth noting that the G7 average includes the UK so the G7 average was itself getting dragged down by Brown's terrible performance.
Debt to GDP isn't the relevant figure, the deficit is, although its worth noting via your own figures again in the span of three years Brown nearly doubled our debt-to-GDP figure whereas G7 nations debt-to-GDP increased by much less than half.
Gordon Brown's peak debt to GDP being around 3% iirc which was on a par with preceding Conservative governments. It was not significant and did not cause or exacerbate the GFC.
Also, aiui Team Truss has determined, as Cheney said of Reagan, that deficits don't matter and that George Osborne's austerity was a mistake that hobbled Britain's economy.
Except....this was a time of unprecedented receipts. The housing market was going bananas, profits were high, and it was a time where debt to GDP didn't need to be as high given the circumstances in the economy. Simply, we were spending too much. I don't think anyone disputes that, no matter what they think the answer (austerity/non-austerity) should have been.
Yes, there is a good deal in that. But as it happened, the GFC came along and rendered it all moot. Then Osborne came along and flatlined the nascent recovery inherited from Labour, and here we are.
The GFC didn't just "come along and render it moot", the GFC was a crash that the Government should have been preparing for as it was overdue. Crashes happen, and the GFC was a classic crash, not some exogenous and unforeseeable shock.
And you repeat the myth that Osborne flatlined the recovery. Don't you realise the UK in the 2010s grew faster than the Eurozone did, both in nominal terms and in per capita terms. "Despite Brexit" supposedly harming the UK during that decade.
If Brexit and Osborne "flatlined" or harmed the UK, then how come the UK grew faster than the Eurozone or the rest of the EU? Just how much faster than them would we have grown in your eyes were it not for Osborne or Brexit, and why?
Osborne's austerity was a mistake as even the current vintage of Tories now acknowledge. The problem is that they have pivoted to pro-growth fiscal policies at precisely the wrong moment, with inflation out of control, and so they will only succeed in pushing up inflation and interest rates. Euro area growth was low because of their sovereign debt crisis and because they followed similar austerity policies to us, and because they had lower population growth.
It was not a mistake, because the deficit was out of control.
Pro-growth policies are good now because the deficit was brought under control prior to the crash, unlike in Brown's time, and so we're in a much better fiscal position than we were then.
The UK grew faster than Europe on a per capita basis too, again despite "austerity" and "Brexit" being both accused of "flatlining" growth. We had our own sovereign debt crisis caused by Brown's borrowing too, which is why Osborne needed to clean up Brown's mess.
The UK deficit is set to grow considerably under Truss, who appears to believe in trickle-down economics, something known not to work. So, deficit up, but no significant improvement in growth.
Amused by your claim that trickle-down economics is "known not to work", it absolutely does work.
Cutting taxes in both the UK and the USA in the 80s led to significant growth and eventual budget surpluses in the 90s.
That the growth and surplus such tax cutting brought about was subsequently pissed away, is not a problem with "trickle down economics".
Cutting UK taxes in the 80s? Not according to The World Bank. Tax take rose from 22% of GDP in 1978 and 1979 to 26% of GDP in 1982 and it averaged >24% through the 80s. Doubling VAT may have had something to do with that.
One of the attractions of the Conservative Party to me my young self was how they bang on about being the party of low tax, give us back more of our money to spend or save ourselves, not the state. That sounds great.
But then I read up on how many of the sneaky stealth taxes were created when Tories in power like the factual example you just shown - progressive taxes did come down, but flat and regressive tax did go up. And in a sneaky way because extra in a pay packet may buy votes, unless you realise the more sneaky taxes have crept into your house keeping jug and taking it all away and more decides, as the % increase in your post proves.
The Tories should be known as the UKs high tax party really.
My prediction is that Truss will turn out to be a lot better than many of us gave her credit for. Boris Johnson is a busted flush. He is yesterday's Clown; someone who achieved a great election victory against a ridiculously weedy opponent and managed very little else of note. His deranged supporters might want him back, but they will hopefully diminish in time, and before long it will be difficult to find anyone to admit they supported him.
I do wonder whether even he has fallen out of love with "Boris" as he always affectionately referred to him.
His posts do not indicate it so far, and I would be delighted if he would join those of us who want Truss to succeed and publicly accept Johnson is toxic and has damaged the party considerably
I support her as leader but she is still 10% behind on the latest poll and this end bankers' bonuses cap now was her decision not Boris'. She and Kwarteng own it
You demonstrate my point perfectly and until you condemn Johnson then you are part of his toxic legacy
I won't condemn the party's most successful leader since Thatcher
Leaving aside the question as to whether he was more successful than either Cameron or Major, looking at the rest of them that isn't exactly a high bar, is it?
Interesting that @HYUFD describes Johnson as "the party's most successful leader since Thatcher". This is a totally ridiculous proposition. He bases "most successful" solely on his election victory over Jeremy fecking Corbyn.
Johnson was responsible for one of the biggest fissures in the Tory Party since the Corn Laws. He became an international laughing stock. He thoroughly trashed the Conservative Party's reputation for sensible governance and found himself heaved out of No10 after only 3 years for dishonesty. Other than TMay you have to go back to 1827 to find a PM with a shorter tenure. He was hopeless. A bad joke. A man totally unfit for office. He was not successful, except in his ability to trounce the most ludicrous LoTO ever to have held that role, and to gull those foolish enough like @HYUFD into thinking he was appropriate to be Party leader and PM.
He also delivered Brexit and the vaccines on his watch and of course Theresa was sadly unable to defeat Corbyn.
Once we have gone through the Tory leaderships of Truss, Badenoch, Braverman and Rees Mogg even you might miss Boris!
HY, old chap. We have one of the biggest and best pharmaceutical sectors in the known universe, and that has nothing to do with Johnson. When I last looked Boris Johnson has no scientific credential. If the decision relating to the procurement was his (which I doubt he took on his own) it was a good call. The rest of the whole pandemic was a mixture of bad and very very bad. On top of that we have a man that presided over a culture of partying at No10 while knowing other people were making great sacrifices. He is without doubt the worst PM in recent history, if not the whole of history. There are no circumstances where I will miss having such a lying cretinous clown as our PM. It is a shame that you are an apologist for him, as it demonstrates that you, by association, must be as dishonest as he.
the post starts of well enough and each sentence then gets more unreasonable than the one before!
I think its rather magnificent that the two things Britain still leads the world in and does to elite level - Royalty and forming an orderly queue have merged at this time .
There was a Guards Rupert on the radio saying rather pathetically that Britain could still do 'world class ceremonial' so you can add that to the mix.
Analyst on R5L’s wake up to money - tracking a basket of essential goods says price difference between Morrissons and Aldi is now 40%. Explained by Morrisons having to service a gigantic debt.
Shop at Aldi, people.
Good morning
I heard that report as well and it is astonishing that Morrisons apparently have a 7 billion debt
Shop anywhere but Morrisons would be the message
5live also discussed Kwarteng's proposal to abolish city bonuses and it really does make you wonder if the conservative party have lost all it's instincts to govern
It may be the right thing from a business sense, but the optics are shocking and hands yet another gift to labour
It is the right thing from city workers sense. It is a bad thing for shareholders and really bad for government and taxpayers who will eventually have to fund another bailout with years of austerity.
I'm curious about this idea that bankers bonuses caused the subprime mortgage crisis.
I am even more curious about the idea that there will ever be another bank bailout.
Extreme bankers bonuses create incentives for bankers to gamble with the banks money. If they win, fantastic, if they lose its not their money and as long as you can talk the talk and know some of the right people, it is still easy to get another job.
That culture feeds through to the banks to gamble, notionally with their money, but knowing they have a government funded back stop as they are too big to fail.
Take away the controls and regulation and sooner or later we shall be back to bail outs.
Well, it's too bad the Labour government didn't do something about it then...
Of course. Not sure why you think that is relevant when they have not been in power for a long time and it is the current governments policies that will matter.
Well, the view of Labour supporters on the GFC is "it started in America".
That's not the view of Labour supporters, it is a statement of fact.
The global [key word, there] financial crisis started in America. Britain was very poorly placed to weather it because Gordon Brown had spent the previous 6 years [after an admirable initial period of restraint] pissing money up the wall, spending more than he raked in even during times of relative financial health. Personally I couldn't give a fig how big bankers' bonuses are. I don't care at all about the optics, I care about the gap between what we spend and what we earn. That should be the #1 issue for a chancellor of the exchequer to worry about. If this measure narrows that gap (and I am at best agnostic about whether it will) it should be welcomed.
Britain was hit badly because we have a large globally exposed financial sector and one of our biggest banks was in the midst of an ill-advised over-leveraged buying spree at the top of the market. Running a structural deficit of 4% of GDP in 2007 compared to a G7 average of 3% is unlikely to have been a significant factor in explaining why we were hit worse than others, no matter how much people want it to be Gordon Brown's fault.
Running a structural deficit of 4% during pre-crash times is utterly catastrophic as when the crash inevitably comes and you inevitably need countercyclical spending to go with it, then you have nowhere to go.
The fact that some other countries were nearly as bad as the UK doesn't justify or excuse what Brown did.
But it is hard to blame Brown's fiscal policy for us being hit *much worse than others* when Brown's fiscal policy was *pretty much the same as others'*. That was the point I was responding to. Also worth noting that our debt to GDP ratio in 2007 was 41% (down from 43% in 1997) compared to a G7 average of 81%. So we had plenty of space to run countercyclical fiscal policy, certainly compared to other countries, and indeed the increase in our debt to GDP ratio between 2007 and 2010 (33pp) was almost identical to the G7 average (32pp), suggesting that we were indeed able to run a countercyclical fiscal policy just like other economies.
Except it wasn't the same as others, it was via your own figures worse than others. And of course its worth noting that the G7 average includes the UK so the G7 average was itself getting dragged down by Brown's terrible performance.
Debt to GDP isn't the relevant figure, the deficit is, although its worth noting via your own figures again in the span of three years Brown nearly doubled our debt-to-GDP figure whereas G7 nations debt-to-GDP increased by much less than half.
Gordon Brown's peak debt to GDP being around 3% iirc which was on a par with preceding Conservative governments. It was not significant and did not cause or exacerbate the GFC.
Also, aiui Team Truss has determined, as Cheney said of Reagan, that deficits don't matter and that George Osborne's austerity was a mistake that hobbled Britain's economy.
Except....this was a time of unprecedented receipts. The housing market was going bananas, profits were high, and it was a time where debt to GDP didn't need to be as high given the circumstances in the economy. Simply, we were spending too much. I don't think anyone disputes that, no matter what they think the answer (austerity/non-austerity) should have been.
Yes, there is a good deal in that. But as it happened, the GFC came along and rendered it all moot. Then Osborne came along and flatlined the nascent recovery inherited from Labour, and here we are.
The GFC didn't just "come along and render it moot", the GFC was a crash that the Government should have been preparing for as it was overdue. Crashes happen, and the GFC was a classic crash, not some exogenous and unforeseeable shock.
And you repeat the myth that Osborne flatlined the recovery. Don't you realise the UK in the 2010s grew faster than the Eurozone did, both in nominal terms and in per capita terms. "Despite Brexit" supposedly harming the UK during that decade.
If Brexit and Osborne "flatlined" or harmed the UK, then how come the UK grew faster than the Eurozone or the rest of the EU? Just how much faster than them would we have grown in your eyes were it not for Osborne or Brexit, and why?
Osborne's austerity was a mistake as even the current vintage of Tories now acknowledge. The problem is that they have pivoted to pro-growth fiscal policies at precisely the wrong moment, with inflation out of control, and so they will only succeed in pushing up inflation and interest rates. Euro area growth was low because of their sovereign debt crisis and because they followed similar austerity policies to us, and because they had lower population growth.
It was not a mistake, because the deficit was out of control.
Pro-growth policies are good now because the deficit was brought under control prior to the crash, unlike in Brown's time, and so we're in a much better fiscal position than we were then.
The UK grew faster than Europe on a per capita basis too, again despite "austerity" and "Brexit" being both accused of "flatlining" growth. We had our own sovereign debt crisis caused by Brown's borrowing too, which is why Osborne needed to clean up Brown's mess.
The UK deficit is set to grow considerably under Truss, who appears to believe in trickle-down economics, something known not to work. So, deficit up, but no significant improvement in growth.
Your position of saying both Osborne and Truss are right does need an explanation Barty?
Fiscal control on the one hand versus abandoning fiscal control for a dash for growth on the other will sound like chalk and cheese to us non economic, experts until you explain this one to us.
Different stages of the economic cycle.
Brown's deficit spending blew the budget up pre-crash, taking us from a budget surplus to a maxed out deficit before the recession even hit us.
Pre-recession the budget deficit shrank every single year for a decade under the Tories.
A dash for growth now is a viable option as Osborne fixed the roof while the sun was shining. Brown didn't.
So in this analogy, what exactly is “the roof”?
The deficit.
It traditionally goes up during and immediately after a recession due to countercyclical factors, while it comes down in the years of growth. Brown instead took us from budget surplus to maxed out deficit pre-crash meaning we were terribly exposed when the inevitable crash inevitably happened.
Do we not have a “maxed out deficit” now?
No, the pre-crash deficit was vastly reduced in the years leading up to the crash, rather than increased in the years preceding the crash.
Cyclical expenditure will fall away as Covid fades into history and as the world adapts post-Russia but the structural position is far stronger now than it was pre-GFC as the deficit was reducing not increasing prior to the crash.
During and post-crash is when you're supposed to increase the deficit, not pre-crash.
Analyst on R5L’s wake up to money - tracking a basket of essential goods says price difference between Morrissons and Aldi is now 40%. Explained by Morrisons having to service a gigantic debt.
Shop at Aldi, people.
Good morning
I heard that report as well and it is astonishing that Morrisons apparently have a 7 billion debt
Shop anywhere but Morrisons would be the message
5live also discussed Kwarteng's proposal to abolish city bonuses and it really does make you wonder if the conservative party have lost all it's instincts to govern
It may be the right thing from a business sense, but the optics are shocking and hands yet another gift to labour
It is the right thing from city workers sense. It is a bad thing for shareholders and really bad for government and taxpayers who will eventually have to fund another bailout with years of austerity.
I'm curious about this idea that bankers bonuses caused the subprime mortgage crisis.
I am even more curious about the idea that there will ever be another bank bailout.
Extreme bankers bonuses create incentives for bankers to gamble with the banks money. If they win, fantastic, if they lose its not their money and as long as you can talk the talk and know some of the right people, it is still easy to get another job.
That culture feeds through to the banks to gamble, notionally with their money, but knowing they have a government funded back stop as they are too big to fail.
Take away the controls and regulation and sooner or later we shall be back to bail outs.
Well, it's too bad the Labour government didn't do something about it then...
Of course. Not sure why you think that is relevant when they have not been in power for a long time and it is the current governments policies that will matter.
Well, the view of Labour supporters on the GFC is "it started in America".
That's not the view of Labour supporters, it is a statement of fact.
The global [key word, there] financial crisis started in America. Britain was very poorly placed to weather it because Gordon Brown had spent the previous 6 years [after an admirable initial period of restraint] pissing money up the wall, spending more than he raked in even during times of relative financial health. Personally I couldn't give a fig how big bankers' bonuses are. I don't care at all about the optics, I care about the gap between what we spend and what we earn. That should be the #1 issue for a chancellor of the exchequer to worry about. If this measure narrows that gap (and I am at best agnostic about whether it will) it should be welcomed.
Britain was hit badly because we have a large globally exposed financial sector and one of our biggest banks was in the midst of an ill-advised over-leveraged buying spree at the top of the market. Running a structural deficit of 4% of GDP in 2007 compared to a G7 average of 3% is unlikely to have been a significant factor in explaining why we were hit worse than others, no matter how much people want it to be Gordon Brown's fault.
Running a structural deficit of 4% during pre-crash times is utterly catastrophic as when the crash inevitably comes and you inevitably need countercyclical spending to go with it, then you have nowhere to go.
The fact that some other countries were nearly as bad as the UK doesn't justify or excuse what Brown did.
But it is hard to blame Brown's fiscal policy for us being hit *much worse than others* when Brown's fiscal policy was *pretty much the same as others'*. That was the point I was responding to. Also worth noting that our debt to GDP ratio in 2007 was 41% (down from 43% in 1997) compared to a G7 average of 81%. So we had plenty of space to run countercyclical fiscal policy, certainly compared to other countries, and indeed the increase in our debt to GDP ratio between 2007 and 2010 (33pp) was almost identical to the G7 average (32pp), suggesting that we were indeed able to run a countercyclical fiscal policy just like other economies.
Except it wasn't the same as others, it was via your own figures worse than others. And of course its worth noting that the G7 average includes the UK so the G7 average was itself getting dragged down by Brown's terrible performance.
Debt to GDP isn't the relevant figure, the deficit is, although its worth noting via your own figures again in the span of three years Brown nearly doubled our debt-to-GDP figure whereas G7 nations debt-to-GDP increased by much less than half.
Gordon Brown's peak debt to GDP being around 3% iirc which was on a par with preceding Conservative governments. It was not significant and did not cause or exacerbate the GFC.
Also, aiui Team Truss has determined, as Cheney said of Reagan, that deficits don't matter and that George Osborne's austerity was a mistake that hobbled Britain's economy.
Except....this was a time of unprecedented receipts. The housing market was going bananas, profits were high, and it was a time where debt to GDP didn't need to be as high given the circumstances in the economy. Simply, we were spending too much. I don't think anyone disputes that, no matter what they think the answer (austerity/non-austerity) should have been.
Yes, there is a good deal in that. But as it happened, the GFC came along and rendered it all moot. Then Osborne came along and flatlined the nascent recovery inherited from Labour, and here we are.
The GFC didn't just "come along and render it moot", the GFC was a crash that the Government should have been preparing for as it was overdue. Crashes happen, and the GFC was a classic crash, not some exogenous and unforeseeable shock.
And you repeat the myth that Osborne flatlined the recovery. Don't you realise the UK in the 2010s grew faster than the Eurozone did, both in nominal terms and in per capita terms. "Despite Brexit" supposedly harming the UK during that decade.
If Brexit and Osborne "flatlined" or harmed the UK, then how come the UK grew faster than the Eurozone or the rest of the EU? Just how much faster than them would we have grown in your eyes were it not for Osborne or Brexit, and why?
Osborne's austerity was a mistake as even the current vintage of Tories now acknowledge. The problem is that they have pivoted to pro-growth fiscal policies at precisely the wrong moment, with inflation out of control, and so they will only succeed in pushing up inflation and interest rates. Euro area growth was low because of their sovereign debt crisis and because they followed similar austerity policies to us, and because they had lower population growth.
It was not a mistake, because the deficit was out of control.
Pro-growth policies are good now because the deficit was brought under control prior to the crash, unlike in Brown's time, and so we're in a much better fiscal position than we were then.
The UK grew faster than Europe on a per capita basis too, again despite "austerity" and "Brexit" being both accused of "flatlining" growth. We had our own sovereign debt crisis caused by Brown's borrowing too, which is why Osborne needed to clean up Brown's mess.
The UK deficit is set to grow considerably under Truss, who appears to believe in trickle-down economics, something known not to work. So, deficit up, but no significant improvement in growth.
Your position of saying both Osborne and Truss are right does need an explanation Barty?
Fiscal control on the one hand versus abandoning fiscal control for a dash for growth on the other will sound like chalk and cheese to us non economic, experts until you explain this one to us.
Different stages of the economic cycle.
Brown's deficit spending blew the budget up pre-crash, taking us from a budget surplus to a maxed out deficit before the recession even hit us.
Pre-recession the budget deficit shrank every single year for a decade under the Tories.
A dash for growth now is a viable option as Osborne fixed the roof while the sun was shining. Brown didn't.
So in this analogy, what exactly is “the roof”?
The deficit.
It traditionally goes up during and immediately after a recession due to countercyclical factors, while it comes down in the years of growth. Brown instead took us from budget surplus to maxed out deficit pre-crash meaning we were terribly exposed when the inevitable crash inevitably happened.
So what are the deficit figures from 2007, 2010, 2016, and today to absolutely prove your argument right here right now?
From 2002 to 2007, pre-crash, the Budget deficit increased from a surplus of 1.4% to a deficit of 2.9% . . . a pre-crash worsening of 4.3% of GDP
From 2013 to 2019, pre-crash, the Budget deficit fell from 7.4% to 1.5%, a pre-crash improvement of 5.9% of GDP
The net difference between a 4.3% deterioration in the accounts, and a 5.9% improvement in them, is 10.2% of GDP.
Why have you omitted the period 2007 to 2013?
Because we were discussing what happened in the years pre-crash.
Looking from 2002 to 2010 and 2010 to 2019 would make the deterioration in Labour's accounts and the improvement in Tory accounts even more exaggerated, but I did not consider that to be fair or reasonable.
Prior to the GFC of 2008 the deficit was lower every year under the Labour government than it had been in any year under Major. The deficit increased dramatically in response to the GFC but not as much as out has under The Tories in response to Covid and the CoL crisis.
Your favourite, Truss, is borrowing again rather than taxing the wealthy to cap energy prices, I see.
Hundreds of them according to the Beeb. And 500 loos and provision for hot drinks. And the means to leave the Queue for food and rest breaks and return through a system of wristbands. The British sure do know how to queue.
If you are given a wristband that guarantees your position, and you can leave and return at will to that position, the queue itself is redundant.
Issue people wristbands in order at some place, and have a notice at Westminster Hall "now serving bands 18,378 to 18,465" and so on
But part of the purpose of the queue is to ration the experience by providing it only to those willing to suffer the experience of waiting for hours. Make it too easy and demand will overwhelm supply and many people will be disappointed.
More film of the omen and portent last night ((C) MoonRabbit).
"Steve Owens, an astronomer and science communicator at the Glasgow Science Centre, said (...) 'The one last night might have been the size of a golf ball or maybe a cricket ball, maybe bigger than that'."
No way was that object as small as a cricket ball.
Like HY and unlike Leon, I am a big traditionalist at heart - so instead of calling it a UFO I am calling it a dragon. They come from out the void and hide underneath the hill because before banks everyone used to bury their wealth and treasure and dragons love treasure.
The only other explanation is the importance of portents - if you are going to tell the bee’s the master is dead (just smacks of politeness to me but different if you truly superstitious) then what about signs in the sky, leaky pens - OMG 🫣
Personally, I am watching for news items about the sea boiling south of the Hebrides and communication slowly being lost with communities along the West Coast of Scotland....
Hope it's not aliens, they might ask to be taken to our leaders and then where would we be?
Apparently one of Mr Musk's comsats. Beginning to wonder how many more fireballs we'll see, given how many comsats of his there are.
I thought the starlink satellites were a lot larger than the estimated size of the object that caused the fireball.
Hundreds of them according to the Beeb. And 500 loos and provision for hot drinks. And the means to leave the Queue for food and rest breaks and return through a system of wristbands. The British sure do know how to queue.
If you are given a wristband that guarantees your position, and you can leave and return at will to that position, the queue itself is redundant.
Issue people wristbands in order at some place, and have a notice at Westminster Hall "now serving bands 18,378 to 18,465" and so on
How do you determine who gets the wristbands and in what order?
You queue up for them?
Reminds me of when we did a day trip to Rome off a cruise ship on what happened to be Easter Saturday. Overheard a US lady on the phone to a friend complaining that she had been queuing for two hours for a ticket to the Colosseum and once she got it there was another hour-long queue to get in.
(She should have brought a wheelchair, I just wheeled up to the entrance and got let in straight away - for free. I love Italy!)
Good for you how very sensible.
And yes, as to your rhetorical question - somewhere somehow a queue is needed and it's going to be a big 'un.
I'll take all the small benefits to set against some of the many disadvantages tbh. :-)
Australian racehorse trainer Chris Waller has to miss the Queen's funeral owing to Covid.
Australian trainer Chris Waller has announced he will be unable to attend the Queen’s state funeral on Monday due to “Covid-19 related circumstances”.
Waller was due to join Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Governor-General David Hurley at Westminster Abbey with senior UK politicians and heads of state from across the world expected to attend.
The Royal Ascot-winning handler was one of 10 Australians invited to attend for their “extraordinary contributions to their communities”.
However, Waller, who counts record-breaker Winx, Melbourne Cup winner Verry Elleegant and sprint sensation Nature Strip among his recent stable stars and currently houses the Queen’s horse Chalk Stream, will not be able to make the trip.
In a statement, he said: “It is an honour and I am extremely grateful to have been given the opportunity by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the people of Australia to represent the country in farewelling Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Unfortunately due to Covid-19 related circumstances I am unable to attend the funeral.
“Like so many others, I will live with and cherish for the rest of my life the fond memories I have of Her Majesty; her love of horses and animals, her passion for life and the respect she gave everyday people. My deepest condolences go out to the Royal family and the rest of the world that currently mourn.
A Ukrainian govt adviser tells the BBC that around 1000 dead bodies have been found in the newly captured town of Izyum, held by Russia for many months. He says there were more civilian deaths in Izyum than in Bucha, where the Russians committed documented atrocities. https://mobile.twitter.com/JohnSimpsonNews/status/1570341055224221696
It will be the same everywhere.
This is what anyone calling for a ceasefire is inflicting on the residents under Russian control. The Russian default setting is "Utter Depravity".
There’s a quote I saw somewhere which ran along the lines of: in war the antagonists generally commit war crimes eventually, it’s the nature of the beast. The difference with the Russian army is that they get straight into committing war crimes right from the outset.
Hundreds of them according to the Beeb. And 500 loos and provision for hot drinks. And the means to leave the Queue for food and rest breaks and return through a system of wristbands. The British sure do know how to queue.
If you are given a wristband that guarantees your position, and you can leave and return at will to that position, the queue itself is redundant.
Issue people wristbands in order at some place, and have a notice at Westminster Hall "now serving bands 18,378 to 18,465" and so on
How do you determine who gets the wristbands and in what order?
You queue up for them?
Reminds me of when we did a day trip to Rome off a cruise ship on what happened to be Easter Saturday. Overheard a US lady on the phone to a friend complaining that she had been queuing for two hours for a ticket to the Colosseum and once she got it there was another hour-long queue to get in.
(She should have brought a wheelchair, I just wheeled up to the entrance and got let in straight away - for free. I love Italy!)
I guess she'd never been to Disneyland. Everything's 'free' but severely rationed by queuing. A bit like the NHS, in fact.
Hundreds of them according to the Beeb. And 500 loos and provision for hot drinks. And the means to leave the Queue for food and rest breaks and return through a system of wristbands. The British sure do know how to queue.
If you are given a wristband that guarantees your position, and you can leave and return at will to that position, the queue itself is redundant.
Issue people wristbands in order at some place, and have a notice at Westminster Hall "now serving bands 18,378 to 18,465" and so on
How do you determine who gets the wristbands and in what order?
My prediction is that Truss will turn out to be a lot better than many of us gave her credit for. Boris Johnson is a busted flush. He is yesterday's Clown; someone who achieved a great election victory against a ridiculously weedy opponent and managed very little else of note. His deranged supporters might want him back, but they will hopefully diminish in time, and before long it will be difficult to find anyone to admit they supported him.
I do wonder whether even he has fallen out of love with "Boris" as he always affectionately referred to him.
His posts do not indicate it so far, and I would be delighted if he would join those of us who want Truss to succeed and publicly accept Johnson is toxic and has damaged the party considerably
I support her as leader but she is still 10% behind on the latest poll and this end bankers' bonuses cap now was her decision not Boris'. She and Kwarteng own it
You demonstrate my point perfectly and until you condemn Johnson then you are part of his toxic legacy
I won't condemn the party's most successful leader since Thatcher
Leaving aside the question as to whether he was more successful than either Cameron or Major, looking at the rest of them that isn't exactly a high bar, is it?
Interesting that @HYUFD describes Johnson as "the party's most successful leader since Thatcher". This is a totally ridiculous proposition. He bases "most successful" solely on his election victory over Jeremy fecking Corbyn.
Johnson was responsible for one of the biggest fissures in the Tory Party since the Corn Laws. He became an international laughing stock. He thoroughly trashed the Conservative Party's reputation for sensible governance and found himself heaved out of No10 after only 3 years for dishonesty. Other than TMay you have to go back to 1827 to find a PM with a shorter tenure. He was hopeless. A bad joke. A man totally unfit for office. He was not successful, except in his ability to trounce the most ludicrous LoTO ever to have held that role, and to gull those foolish enough like @HYUFD into thinking he was appropriate to be Party leader and PM.
And yet he unequivocally achieved more than Hague, IDS, Howard and May, so he's at worst in third place since Thatcher.
I think its rather magnificent that the two things Britain still leads the world in and does to elite level - Royalty and forming an orderly queue have merged at this time .
There was a Guards Rupert on the radio saying rather pathetically that Britain could still do 'world class ceremonial' so you can add that to the mix.
Covered under royal so still only 2.
Could have administered the covid booster to those waiting in the queue for a fabulous hat-trick
A Ukrainian govt adviser tells the BBC that around 1000 dead bodies have been found in the newly captured town of Izyum, held by Russia for many months. He says there were more civilian deaths in Izyum than in Bucha, where the Russians committed documented atrocities. https://mobile.twitter.com/JohnSimpsonNews/status/1570341055224221696
It will be the same everywhere.
This is what anyone calling for a ceasefire is inflicting on the residents under Russian control. The Russian default setting is "Utter Depravity".
It won't be exactly the same - various liberated towns or villages with larger percentages of Russian speaking Ukrainians have reported less brutal occupation. But even in those, murders and other crimes have been documented.
Australian racehorse trainer Chris Waller has to miss the Queen's funeral owing to Covid.
Australian trainer Chris Waller has announced he will be unable to attend the Queen’s state funeral on Monday due to “Covid-19 related circumstances”.
Waller was due to join Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Governor-General David Hurley at Westminster Abbey with senior UK politicians and heads of state from across the world expected to attend.
The Royal Ascot-winning handler was one of 10 Australians invited to attend for their “extraordinary contributions to their communities”.
However, Waller, who counts record-breaker Winx, Melbourne Cup winner Verry Elleegant and sprint sensation Nature Strip among his recent stable stars and currently houses the Queen’s horse Chalk Stream, will not be able to make the trip.
In a statement, he said: “It is an honour and I am extremely grateful to have been given the opportunity by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the people of Australia to represent the country in farewelling Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Unfortunately due to Covid-19 related circumstances I am unable to attend the funeral.
“Like so many others, I will live with and cherish for the rest of my life the fond memories I have of Her Majesty; her love of horses and animals, her passion for life and the respect she gave everyday people. My deepest condolences go out to the Royal family and the rest of the world that currently mourn.
Analyst on R5L’s wake up to money - tracking a basket of essential goods says price difference between Morrissons and Aldi is now 40%. Explained by Morrisons having to service a gigantic debt.
Shop at Aldi, people.
Good morning
I heard that report as well and it is astonishing that Morrisons apparently have a 7 billion debt
Shop anywhere but Morrisons would be the message
5live also discussed Kwarteng's proposal to abolish city bonuses and it really does make you wonder if the conservative party have lost all it's instincts to govern
It may be the right thing from a business sense, but the optics are shocking and hands yet another gift to labour
It is the right thing from city workers sense. It is a bad thing for shareholders and really bad for government and taxpayers who will eventually have to fund another bailout with years of austerity.
I'm curious about this idea that bankers bonuses caused the subprime mortgage crisis.
I am even more curious about the idea that there will ever be another bank bailout.
Extreme bankers bonuses create incentives for bankers to gamble with the banks money. If they win, fantastic, if they lose its not their money and as long as you can talk the talk and know some of the right people, it is still easy to get another job.
That culture feeds through to the banks to gamble, notionally with their money, but knowing they have a government funded back stop as they are too big to fail.
Take away the controls and regulation and sooner or later we shall be back to bail outs.
Well, it's too bad the Labour government didn't do something about it then...
Of course. Not sure why you think that is relevant when they have not been in power for a long time and it is the current governments policies that will matter.
Well, the view of Labour supporters on the GFC is "it started in America".
That's not the view of Labour supporters, it is a statement of fact.
The global [key word, there] financial crisis started in America. Britain was very poorly placed to weather it because Gordon Brown had spent the previous 6 years [after an admirable initial period of restraint] pissing money up the wall, spending more than he raked in even during times of relative financial health. Personally I couldn't give a fig how big bankers' bonuses are. I don't care at all about the optics, I care about the gap between what we spend and what we earn. That should be the #1 issue for a chancellor of the exchequer to worry about. If this measure narrows that gap (and I am at best agnostic about whether it will) it should be welcomed.
Britain was hit badly because we have a large globally exposed financial sector and one of our biggest banks was in the midst of an ill-advised over-leveraged buying spree at the top of the market. Running a structural deficit of 4% of GDP in 2007 compared to a G7 average of 3% is unlikely to have been a significant factor in explaining why we were hit worse than others, no matter how much people want it to be Gordon Brown's fault.
Running a structural deficit of 4% during pre-crash times is utterly catastrophic as when the crash inevitably comes and you inevitably need countercyclical spending to go with it, then you have nowhere to go.
The fact that some other countries were nearly as bad as the UK doesn't justify or excuse what Brown did.
But it is hard to blame Brown's fiscal policy for us being hit *much worse than others* when Brown's fiscal policy was *pretty much the same as others'*. That was the point I was responding to. Also worth noting that our debt to GDP ratio in 2007 was 41% (down from 43% in 1997) compared to a G7 average of 81%. So we had plenty of space to run countercyclical fiscal policy, certainly compared to other countries, and indeed the increase in our debt to GDP ratio between 2007 and 2010 (33pp) was almost identical to the G7 average (32pp), suggesting that we were indeed able to run a countercyclical fiscal policy just like other economies.
Except it wasn't the same as others, it was via your own figures worse than others. And of course its worth noting that the G7 average includes the UK so the G7 average was itself getting dragged down by Brown's terrible performance.
Debt to GDP isn't the relevant figure, the deficit is, although its worth noting via your own figures again in the span of three years Brown nearly doubled our debt-to-GDP figure whereas G7 nations debt-to-GDP increased by much less than half.
Gordon Brown's peak debt to GDP being around 3% iirc which was on a par with preceding Conservative governments. It was not significant and did not cause or exacerbate the GFC.
Also, aiui Team Truss has determined, as Cheney said of Reagan, that deficits don't matter and that George Osborne's austerity was a mistake that hobbled Britain's economy.
Except....this was a time of unprecedented receipts. The housing market was going bananas, profits were high, and it was a time where debt to GDP didn't need to be as high given the circumstances in the economy. Simply, we were spending too much. I don't think anyone disputes that, no matter what they think the answer (austerity/non-austerity) should have been.
Yes, there is a good deal in that. But as it happened, the GFC came along and rendered it all moot. Then Osborne came along and flatlined the nascent recovery inherited from Labour, and here we are.
The GFC didn't just "come along and render it moot", the GFC was a crash that the Government should have been preparing for as it was overdue. Crashes happen, and the GFC was a classic crash, not some exogenous and unforeseeable shock.
And you repeat the myth that Osborne flatlined the recovery. Don't you realise the UK in the 2010s grew faster than the Eurozone did, both in nominal terms and in per capita terms. "Despite Brexit" supposedly harming the UK during that decade.
If Brexit and Osborne "flatlined" or harmed the UK, then how come the UK grew faster than the Eurozone or the rest of the EU? Just how much faster than them would we have grown in your eyes were it not for Osborne or Brexit, and why?
Osborne's austerity was a mistake as even the current vintage of Tories now acknowledge. The problem is that they have pivoted to pro-growth fiscal policies at precisely the wrong moment, with inflation out of control, and so they will only succeed in pushing up inflation and interest rates. Euro area growth was low because of their sovereign debt crisis and because they followed similar austerity policies to us, and because they had lower population growth.
It was not a mistake, because the deficit was out of control.
Pro-growth policies are good now because the deficit was brought under control prior to the crash, unlike in Brown's time, and so we're in a much better fiscal position than we were then.
The UK grew faster than Europe on a per capita basis too, again despite "austerity" and "Brexit" being both accused of "flatlining" growth. We had our own sovereign debt crisis caused by Brown's borrowing too, which is why Osborne needed to clean up Brown's mess.
The UK deficit is set to grow considerably under Truss, who appears to believe in trickle-down economics, something known not to work. So, deficit up, but no significant improvement in growth.
Your position of saying both Osborne and Truss are right does need an explanation Barty?
Fiscal control on the one hand versus abandoning fiscal control for a dash for growth on the other will sound like chalk and cheese to us non economic, experts until you explain this one to us.
Different stages of the economic cycle.
Brown's deficit spending blew the budget up pre-crash, taking us from a budget surplus to a maxed out deficit before the recession even hit us.
Pre-recession the budget deficit shrank every single year for a decade under the Tories.
A dash for growth now is a viable option as Osborne fixed the roof while the sun was shining. Brown didn't.
So in this analogy, what exactly is “the roof”?
The deficit.
It traditionally goes up during and immediately after a recession due to countercyclical factors, while it comes down in the years of growth. Brown instead took us from budget surplus to maxed out deficit pre-crash meaning we were terribly exposed when the inevitable crash inevitably happened.
So what are the deficit figures from 2007, 2010, 2016, and today to absolutely prove your argument right here right now?
From 2002 to 2007, pre-crash, the Budget deficit increased from a surplus of 1.4% to a deficit of 2.9% . . . a pre-crash worsening of 4.3% of GDP
From 2013 to 2019, pre-crash, the Budget deficit fell from 7.4% to 1.5%, a pre-crash improvement of 5.9% of GDP
The net difference between a 4.3% deterioration in the accounts, and a 5.9% improvement in them, is 10.2% of GDP.
Why have you omitted the period 2007 to 2013?
Because we were discussing what happened in the years pre-crash.
Looking from 2002 to 2010 and 2010 to 2019 would make the deterioration in Labour's accounts and the improvement in Tory accounts even more exaggerated, but I did not consider that to be fair or reasonable.
Prior to the GFC of 2008 the deficit was lower every year under the Labour government than it had been in any year under Major. The deficit increased dramatically in response to the GFC but not as much as out has under The Tories in response to Covid and the CoL crisis.
Your favourite, Truss, is borrowing again rather than taxing the wealthy to cap energy prices, I see.
Again ignoring the economic cycle. 🤦♂️
There was a crash at the start of the 90s, however the UK went into that, as it should, with a budget surplus which was built up during the Thatcher years. So the deficit increased at the start of the 90s, but then was reduced consistently after then building up towards the budget surplus. That was economics as it should be. The deficit expanding then shrinking countercyclically.
Regrettably though, Brown took the budget surplus we had in 2002 and turned into into a mega deficit before the next recession hit. If he'd only kept the surplus as it was, not even made it a bigger surplus, then the UK would have been well placed for the inevitable next recession when it hit, just as we were the previous time.
Goodness knows where the peak for US rates is now, after this week's data showed the Fed's hikes have so far not slowed inflation nor killed growth.
UK rates are going to have to follow if we don't sterling to be renamed the Zimbabwe pound. To take those rate increases, fiscal easing and deregulation aren't just the best way for the economy, they are the only way.
My prediction is that Truss will turn out to be a lot better than many of us gave her credit for. Boris Johnson is a busted flush. He is yesterday's Clown; someone who achieved a great election victory against a ridiculously weedy opponent and managed very little else of note. His deranged supporters might want him back, but they will hopefully diminish in time, and before long it will be difficult to find anyone to admit they supported him.
I do wonder whether even he has fallen out of love with "Boris" as he always affectionately referred to him.
His posts do not indicate it so far, and I would be delighted if he would join those of us who want Truss to succeed and publicly accept Johnson is toxic and has damaged the party considerably
I support her as leader but she is still 10% behind on the latest poll and this end bankers' bonuses cap now was her decision not Boris'. She and Kwarteng own it
You demonstrate my point perfectly and until you condemn Johnson then you are part of his toxic legacy
I won't condemn the party's most successful leader since Thatcher
Leaving aside the question as to whether he was more successful than either Cameron or Major, looking at the rest of them that isn't exactly a high bar, is it?
Interesting that @HYUFD describes Johnson as "the party's most successful leader since Thatcher". This is a totally ridiculous proposition. He bases "most successful" solely on his election victory over Jeremy fecking Corbyn.
Johnson was responsible for one of the biggest fissures in the Tory Party since the Corn Laws. He became an international laughing stock. He thoroughly trashed the Conservative Party's reputation for sensible governance and found himself heaved out of No10 after only 3 years for dishonesty. Other than TMay you have to go back to 1827 to find a PM with a shorter tenure. He was hopeless. A bad joke. A man totally unfit for office. He was not successful, except in his ability to trounce the most ludicrous LoTO ever to have held that role, and to gull those foolish enough like @HYUFD into thinking he was appropriate to be Party leader and PM.
He also delivered Brexit and the vaccines on his watch and of course Theresa was sadly unable to defeat Corbyn.
Once we have gone through the Tory leaderships of Truss, Badenoch, Braverman and Rees Mogg even you might miss Boris!
Mr Johnson is a medical immunologist?
This is a bit divisive. Did Churchill win the second world war (from a British perspective - I know USSR/USA etc)? Yes. Did he fight in Normandy, the Ardennes, Crossing of the Rhine, in a Lancaster over Berlin? No (although he tried to get to Normandy...)
Did Johnson head into the lab, roll up his sleeves and say 'right, we've got the spike sequence, its time to see if mRNA vaccines work...'? Of course not. Did he appoint the right people, let them spend what was needed and keep out of the way? Yes he did.
It is fair to give him credit for things done well just as it is fair to blame for the things that went wrong. Don't let hatred or disdain for Johnson cloud that. There is enough to mock already.
That’s not the story, though, is it?
The reality is that he had to be read the riot act by some of the leading scientists and told that the country could not afford another scandalous f**k up, like we’d just been through with PPE procurement, and hence he and his money-grabbing political mates needed to stay well away from the vaccine rollout and let the scientists and procurement experts get on with the job.
Yes, there’s a smidgin of credit for his having done as he was told (i.e, nothing). But, on a personal level, not much - about as much credit as Leon would deserve for a successful birthday party which he’d been told to stay away from lest he get drunk again and spoil.
Analyst on R5L’s wake up to money - tracking a basket of essential goods says price difference between Morrissons and Aldi is now 40%. Explained by Morrisons having to service a gigantic debt.
Shop at Aldi, people.
Good morning
I heard that report as well and it is astonishing that Morrisons apparently have a 7 billion debt
Shop anywhere but Morrisons would be the message
5live also discussed Kwarteng's proposal to abolish city bonuses and it really does make you wonder if the conservative party have lost all it's instincts to govern
It may be the right thing from a business sense, but the optics are shocking and hands yet another gift to labour
It is the right thing from city workers sense. It is a bad thing for shareholders and really bad for government and taxpayers who will eventually have to fund another bailout with years of austerity.
I'm curious about this idea that bankers bonuses caused the subprime mortgage crisis.
I am even more curious about the idea that there will ever be another bank bailout.
Extreme bankers bonuses create incentives for bankers to gamble with the banks money. If they win, fantastic, if they lose its not their money and as long as you can talk the talk and know some of the right people, it is still easy to get another job.
That culture feeds through to the banks to gamble, notionally with their money, but knowing they have a government funded back stop as they are too big to fail.
Take away the controls and regulation and sooner or later we shall be back to bail outs.
Well, it's too bad the Labour government didn't do something about it then...
Of course. Not sure why you think that is relevant when they have not been in power for a long time and it is the current governments policies that will matter.
Well, the view of Labour supporters on the GFC is "it started in America".
That's not the view of Labour supporters, it is a statement of fact.
The global [key word, there] financial crisis started in America. Britain was very poorly placed to weather it because Gordon Brown had spent the previous 6 years [after an admirable initial period of restraint] pissing money up the wall, spending more than he raked in even during times of relative financial health. Personally I couldn't give a fig how big bankers' bonuses are. I don't care at all about the optics, I care about the gap between what we spend and what we earn. That should be the #1 issue for a chancellor of the exchequer to worry about. If this measure narrows that gap (and I am at best agnostic about whether it will) it should be welcomed.
Britain was hit badly because we have a large globally exposed financial sector and one of our biggest banks was in the midst of an ill-advised over-leveraged buying spree at the top of the market. Running a structural deficit of 4% of GDP in 2007 compared to a G7 average of 3% is unlikely to have been a significant factor in explaining why we were hit worse than others, no matter how much people want it to be Gordon Brown's fault.
Running a structural deficit of 4% during pre-crash times is utterly catastrophic as when the crash inevitably comes and you inevitably need countercyclical spending to go with it, then you have nowhere to go.
The fact that some other countries were nearly as bad as the UK doesn't justify or excuse what Brown did.
But it is hard to blame Brown's fiscal policy for us being hit *much worse than others* when Brown's fiscal policy was *pretty much the same as others'*. That was the point I was responding to. Also worth noting that our debt to GDP ratio in 2007 was 41% (down from 43% in 1997) compared to a G7 average of 81%. So we had plenty of space to run countercyclical fiscal policy, certainly compared to other countries, and indeed the increase in our debt to GDP ratio between 2007 and 2010 (33pp) was almost identical to the G7 average (32pp), suggesting that we were indeed able to run a countercyclical fiscal policy just like other economies.
Except it wasn't the same as others, it was via your own figures worse than others. And of course its worth noting that the G7 average includes the UK so the G7 average was itself getting dragged down by Brown's terrible performance.
Debt to GDP isn't the relevant figure, the deficit is, although its worth noting via your own figures again in the span of three years Brown nearly doubled our debt-to-GDP figure whereas G7 nations debt-to-GDP increased by much less than half.
Gordon Brown's peak debt to GDP being around 3% iirc which was on a par with preceding Conservative governments. It was not significant and did not cause or exacerbate the GFC.
Also, aiui Team Truss has determined, as Cheney said of Reagan, that deficits don't matter and that George Osborne's austerity was a mistake that hobbled Britain's economy.
Except....this was a time of unprecedented receipts. The housing market was going bananas, profits were high, and it was a time where debt to GDP didn't need to be as high given the circumstances in the economy. Simply, we were spending too much. I don't think anyone disputes that, no matter what they think the answer (austerity/non-austerity) should have been.
Yes, there is a good deal in that. But as it happened, the GFC came along and rendered it all moot. Then Osborne came along and flatlined the nascent recovery inherited from Labour, and here we are.
The GFC didn't just "come along and render it moot", the GFC was a crash that the Government should have been preparing for as it was overdue. Crashes happen, and the GFC was a classic crash, not some exogenous and unforeseeable shock.
And you repeat the myth that Osborne flatlined the recovery. Don't you realise the UK in the 2010s grew faster than the Eurozone did, both in nominal terms and in per capita terms. "Despite Brexit" supposedly harming the UK during that decade.
If Brexit and Osborne "flatlined" or harmed the UK, then how come the UK grew faster than the Eurozone or the rest of the EU? Just how much faster than them would we have grown in your eyes were it not for Osborne or Brexit, and why?
Osborne's austerity was a mistake as even the current vintage of Tories now acknowledge. The problem is that they have pivoted to pro-growth fiscal policies at precisely the wrong moment, with inflation out of control, and so they will only succeed in pushing up inflation and interest rates. Euro area growth was low because of their sovereign debt crisis and because they followed similar austerity policies to us, and because they had lower population growth.
It was not a mistake, because the deficit was out of control.
Pro-growth policies are good now because the deficit was brought under control prior to the crash, unlike in Brown's time, and so we're in a much better fiscal position than we were then.
The UK grew faster than Europe on a per capita basis too, again despite "austerity" and "Brexit" being both accused of "flatlining" growth. We had our own sovereign debt crisis caused by Brown's borrowing too, which is why Osborne needed to clean up Brown's mess.
The UK deficit is set to grow considerably under Truss, who appears to believe in trickle-down economics, something known not to work. So, deficit up, but no significant improvement in growth.
Your position of saying both Osborne and Truss are right does need an explanation Barty?
Fiscal control on the one hand versus abandoning fiscal control for a dash for growth on the other will sound like chalk and cheese to us non economic, experts until you explain this one to us.
Different stages of the economic cycle.
Brown's deficit spending blew the budget up pre-crash, taking us from a budget surplus to a maxed out deficit before the recession even hit us.
Pre-recession the budget deficit shrank every single year for a decade under the Tories.
A dash for growth now is a viable option as Osborne fixed the roof while the sun was shining. Brown didn't.
So in this analogy, what exactly is “the roof”?
The deficit.
It traditionally goes up during and immediately after a recession due to countercyclical factors, while it comes down in the years of growth. Brown instead took us from budget surplus to maxed out deficit pre-crash meaning we were terribly exposed when the inevitable crash inevitably happened.
Do we not have a “maxed out deficit” now?
No, the pre-crash deficit was vastly reduced in the years leading up to the crash, rather than increased in the years preceding the crash.
Cyclical expenditure will fall away as Covid fades into history and as the world adapts post-Russia but the structural position is far stronger now than it was pre-GFC as the deficit was reducing not increasing prior to the crash.
During and post-crash is when you're supposed to increase the deficit, not pre-crash.
I’m not defending Brown’s premiership. I’m not talking about pre-crash. I’m talking about now.
Truss wants to increase the deficit to give money to the rich. That is not what people normally mean when they talk about countercyclical spending.
My prediction is that Truss will turn out to be a lot better than many of us gave her credit for. Boris Johnson is a busted flush. He is yesterday's Clown; someone who achieved a great election victory against a ridiculously weedy opponent and managed very little else of note. His deranged supporters might want him back, but they will hopefully diminish in time, and before long it will be difficult to find anyone to admit they supported him.
I do wonder whether even he has fallen out of love with "Boris" as he always affectionately referred to him.
His posts do not indicate it so far, and I would be delighted if he would join those of us who want Truss to succeed and publicly accept Johnson is toxic and has damaged the party considerably
I support her as leader but she is still 10% behind on the latest poll and this end bankers' bonuses cap now was her decision not Boris'. She and Kwarteng own it
You demonstrate my point perfectly and until you condemn Johnson then you are part of his toxic legacy
I won't condemn the party's most successful leader since Thatcher
Leaving aside the question as to whether he was more successful than either Cameron or Major, looking at the rest of them that isn't exactly a high bar, is it?
Interesting that @HYUFD describes Johnson as "the party's most successful leader since Thatcher". This is a totally ridiculous proposition. He bases "most successful" solely on his election victory over Jeremy fecking Corbyn.
Johnson was responsible for one of the biggest fissures in the Tory Party since the Corn Laws. He became an international laughing stock. He thoroughly trashed the Conservative Party's reputation for sensible governance and found himself heaved out of No10 after only 3 years for dishonesty. Other than TMay you have to go back to 1827 to find a PM with a shorter tenure. He was hopeless. A bad joke. A man totally unfit for office. He was not successful, except in his ability to trounce the most ludicrous LoTO ever to have held that role, and to gull those foolish enough like @HYUFD into thinking he was appropriate to be Party leader and PM.
He also delivered Brexit and the vaccines on his watch and of course Theresa was sadly unable to defeat Corbyn.
Once we have gone through the Tory leaderships of Truss, Badenoch, Braverman and Rees Mogg even you might miss Boris!
Mr Johnson is a medical immunologist?
This is a bit divisive. Did Churchill win the second world war (from a British perspective - I know USSR/USA etc)? Yes. Did he fight in Normandy, the Ardennes, Crossing of the Rhine, in a Lancaster over Berlin? No (although he tried to get to Normandy...)
Did Johnson head into the lab, roll up his sleeves and say 'right, we've got the spike sequence, its time to see if mRNA vaccines work...'? Of course not. Did he appoint the right people, let them spend what was needed and keep out of the way? Yes he did.
It is fair to give him credit for things done well just as it is fair to blame for the things that went wrong. Don't let hatred or disdain for Johnson cloud that. There is enough to mock already.
In his leaving speech he claimed he achieved one of his big promises, and fixed social care.
Are we okay to work on the basis that he didn’t and ask, will we ever have a government that will actually fix social care?
@turbotubbs : I am not accusing you of being a fan or even an apologist, but attempts to draw favourable comparison between the Fat Lying Clown that recently (seemingly incredulously) held the position of PM of this great nation and W S Churchill, one of the greatest statesmen to have ever lived in the history of mankind, is risible to say the least.
Analyst on R5L’s wake up to money - tracking a basket of essential goods says price difference between Morrissons and Aldi is now 40%. Explained by Morrisons having to service a gigantic debt.
Shop at Aldi, people.
Good morning
I heard that report as well and it is astonishing that Morrisons apparently have a 7 billion debt
Shop anywhere but Morrisons would be the message
5live also discussed Kwarteng's proposal to abolish city bonuses and it really does make you wonder if the conservative party have lost all it's instincts to govern
It may be the right thing from a business sense, but the optics are shocking and hands yet another gift to labour
It is the right thing from city workers sense. It is a bad thing for shareholders and really bad for government and taxpayers who will eventually have to fund another bailout with years of austerity.
I'm curious about this idea that bankers bonuses caused the subprime mortgage crisis.
I am even more curious about the idea that there will ever be another bank bailout.
Extreme bankers bonuses create incentives for bankers to gamble with the banks money. If they win, fantastic, if they lose its not their money and as long as you can talk the talk and know some of the right people, it is still easy to get another job.
That culture feeds through to the banks to gamble, notionally with their money, but knowing they have a government funded back stop as they are too big to fail.
Take away the controls and regulation and sooner or later we shall be back to bail outs.
Well, it's too bad the Labour government didn't do something about it then...
Of course. Not sure why you think that is relevant when they have not been in power for a long time and it is the current governments policies that will matter.
Well, the view of Labour supporters on the GFC is "it started in America".
That's not the view of Labour supporters, it is a statement of fact.
The global [key word, there] financial crisis started in America. Britain was very poorly placed to weather it because Gordon Brown had spent the previous 6 years [after an admirable initial period of restraint] pissing money up the wall, spending more than he raked in even during times of relative financial health. Personally I couldn't give a fig how big bankers' bonuses are. I don't care at all about the optics, I care about the gap between what we spend and what we earn. That should be the #1 issue for a chancellor of the exchequer to worry about. If this measure narrows that gap (and I am at best agnostic about whether it will) it should be welcomed.
Britain was hit badly because we have a large globally exposed financial sector and one of our biggest banks was in the midst of an ill-advised over-leveraged buying spree at the top of the market. Running a structural deficit of 4% of GDP in 2007 compared to a G7 average of 3% is unlikely to have been a significant factor in explaining why we were hit worse than others, no matter how much people want it to be Gordon Brown's fault.
Running a structural deficit of 4% during pre-crash times is utterly catastrophic as when the crash inevitably comes and you inevitably need countercyclical spending to go with it, then you have nowhere to go.
The fact that some other countries were nearly as bad as the UK doesn't justify or excuse what Brown did.
But it is hard to blame Brown's fiscal policy for us being hit *much worse than others* when Brown's fiscal policy was *pretty much the same as others'*. That was the point I was responding to. Also worth noting that our debt to GDP ratio in 2007 was 41% (down from 43% in 1997) compared to a G7 average of 81%. So we had plenty of space to run countercyclical fiscal policy, certainly compared to other countries, and indeed the increase in our debt to GDP ratio between 2007 and 2010 (33pp) was almost identical to the G7 average (32pp), suggesting that we were indeed able to run a countercyclical fiscal policy just like other economies.
Except it wasn't the same as others, it was via your own figures worse than others. And of course its worth noting that the G7 average includes the UK so the G7 average was itself getting dragged down by Brown's terrible performance.
Debt to GDP isn't the relevant figure, the deficit is, although its worth noting via your own figures again in the span of three years Brown nearly doubled our debt-to-GDP figure whereas G7 nations debt-to-GDP increased by much less than half.
Gordon Brown's peak debt to GDP being around 3% iirc which was on a par with preceding Conservative governments. It was not significant and did not cause or exacerbate the GFC.
Also, aiui Team Truss has determined, as Cheney said of Reagan, that deficits don't matter and that George Osborne's austerity was a mistake that hobbled Britain's economy.
Except....this was a time of unprecedented receipts. The housing market was going bananas, profits were high, and it was a time where debt to GDP didn't need to be as high given the circumstances in the economy. Simply, we were spending too much. I don't think anyone disputes that, no matter what they think the answer (austerity/non-austerity) should have been.
Yes, there is a good deal in that. But as it happened, the GFC came along and rendered it all moot. Then Osborne came along and flatlined the nascent recovery inherited from Labour, and here we are.
The GFC didn't just "come along and render it moot", the GFC was a crash that the Government should have been preparing for as it was overdue. Crashes happen, and the GFC was a classic crash, not some exogenous and unforeseeable shock.
And you repeat the myth that Osborne flatlined the recovery. Don't you realise the UK in the 2010s grew faster than the Eurozone did, both in nominal terms and in per capita terms. "Despite Brexit" supposedly harming the UK during that decade.
If Brexit and Osborne "flatlined" or harmed the UK, then how come the UK grew faster than the Eurozone or the rest of the EU? Just how much faster than them would we have grown in your eyes were it not for Osborne or Brexit, and why?
Osborne's austerity was a mistake as even the current vintage of Tories now acknowledge. The problem is that they have pivoted to pro-growth fiscal policies at precisely the wrong moment, with inflation out of control, and so they will only succeed in pushing up inflation and interest rates. Euro area growth was low because of their sovereign debt crisis and because they followed similar austerity policies to us, and because they had lower population growth.
It was not a mistake, because the deficit was out of control.
Pro-growth policies are good now because the deficit was brought under control prior to the crash, unlike in Brown's time, and so we're in a much better fiscal position than we were then.
The UK grew faster than Europe on a per capita basis too, again despite "austerity" and "Brexit" being both accused of "flatlining" growth. We had our own sovereign debt crisis caused by Brown's borrowing too, which is why Osborne needed to clean up Brown's mess.
The UK deficit is set to grow considerably under Truss, who appears to believe in trickle-down economics, something known not to work. So, deficit up, but no significant improvement in growth.
Your position of saying both Osborne and Truss are right does need an explanation Barty?
Fiscal control on the one hand versus abandoning fiscal control for a dash for growth on the other will sound like chalk and cheese to us non economic, experts until you explain this one to us.
Different stages of the economic cycle.
Brown's deficit spending blew the budget up pre-crash, taking us from a budget surplus to a maxed out deficit before the recession even hit us.
Pre-recession the budget deficit shrank every single year for a decade under the Tories.
A dash for growth now is a viable option as Osborne fixed the roof while the sun was shining. Brown didn't.
So in this analogy, what exactly is “the roof”?
The deficit.
It traditionally goes up during and immediately after a recession due to countercyclical factors, while it comes down in the years of growth. Brown instead took us from budget surplus to maxed out deficit pre-crash meaning we were terribly exposed when the inevitable crash inevitably happened.
So what are the deficit figures from 2007, 2010, 2016, and today to absolutely prove your argument right here right now?
From 2002 to 2007, pre-crash, the Budget deficit increased from a surplus of 1.4% to a deficit of 2.9% . . . a pre-crash worsening of 4.3% of GDP
From 2013 to 2019, pre-crash, the Budget deficit fell from 7.4% to 1.5%, a pre-crash improvement of 5.9% of GDP
The net difference between a 4.3% deterioration in the accounts, and a 5.9% improvement in them, is 10.2% of GDP.
Why have you omitted the period 2007 to 2013?
Because we were discussing what happened in the years pre-crash.
Looking from 2002 to 2010 and 2010 to 2019 would make the deterioration in Labour's accounts and the improvement in Tory accounts even more exaggerated, but I did not consider that to be fair or reasonable.
Prior to the GFC of 2008 the deficit was lower every year under the Labour government than it had been in any year under Major. The deficit increased dramatically in response to the GFC but not as much as out has under The Tories in response to Covid and the CoL crisis.
Your favourite, Truss, is borrowing again rather than taxing the wealthy to cap energy prices, I see.
Again ignoring the economic cycle. 🤦♂️
There was a crash at the start of the 90s, however the UK went into that, as it should, with a budget surplus which was built up during the Thatcher years. So the deficit increased at the start of the 90s, but then was reduced consistently after then building up towards the budget surplus. That was economics as it should be. The deficit expanding then shrinking countercyclically.
Regrettably though, Brown took the budget surplus we had in 2002 and turned into into a mega deficit before the next recession hit. If he'd only kept the surplus as it was, not even made it a bigger surplus, then the UK would have been well placed for the inevitable next recession when it hit, just as we were the previous time.
My prediction is that Truss will turn out to be a lot better than many of us gave her credit for. Boris Johnson is a busted flush. He is yesterday's Clown; someone who achieved a great election victory against a ridiculously weedy opponent and managed very little else of note. His deranged supporters might want him back, but they will hopefully diminish in time, and before long it will be difficult to find anyone to admit they supported him.
I do wonder whether even he has fallen out of love with "Boris" as he always affectionately referred to him.
His posts do not indicate it so far, and I would be delighted if he would join those of us who want Truss to succeed and publicly accept Johnson is toxic and has damaged the party considerably
I support her as leader but she is still 10% behind on the latest poll and this end bankers' bonuses cap now was her decision not Boris'. She and Kwarteng own it
You demonstrate my point perfectly and until you condemn Johnson then you are part of his toxic legacy
I won't condemn the party's most successful leader since Thatcher
Leaving aside the question as to whether he was more successful than either Cameron or Major, looking at the rest of them that isn't exactly a high bar, is it?
Interesting that @HYUFD describes Johnson as "the party's most successful leader since Thatcher". This is a totally ridiculous proposition. He bases "most successful" solely on his election victory over Jeremy fecking Corbyn.
Johnson was responsible for one of the biggest fissures in the Tory Party since the Corn Laws. He became an international laughing stock. He thoroughly trashed the Conservative Party's reputation for sensible governance and found himself heaved out of No10 after only 3 years for dishonesty. Other than TMay you have to go back to 1827 to find a PM with a shorter tenure. He was hopeless. A bad joke. A man totally unfit for office. He was not successful, except in his ability to trounce the most ludicrous LoTO ever to have held that role, and to gull those foolish enough like @HYUFD into thinking he was appropriate to be Party leader and PM.
And yet he unequivocally achieved more than Hague, IDS, Howard and May, so he's at worst in third place since Thatcher.
Sometimes what you achieve counts against you. Just think of some of the worlds leading dictators.
Italy: Sky have a seat calculator for individual parties. A parties seats is a combination of their proportional share, plus how well they have done at bagging constituency seats within their own bloc.
On typical polling (387 mainland Italy seats only) (Bloc in brackets): FdI: 118 on 25% (R) Lega: 72 on 12% (R) PD: 68 (and could do well in the 13 extraterritorial seats) on 21% (L) Forza: 49 on 8% (R) M5S: 35 on 13% (M5S) Azione-Italia Viva: 18 on 7% (Ctr) Left-Green: 12 on 4% (L) Moderates: 8 on 2% (R) +Europe, Civic: 3 on 3% Sudtirol Volksparty: 3 on local vote
Lega, having done well on constituency bagging within the right bloc, will very likely hold the balance of power.
Australian racehorse trainer Chris Waller has to miss the Queen's funeral owing to Covid.
Australian trainer Chris Waller has announced he will be unable to attend the Queen’s state funeral on Monday due to “Covid-19 related circumstances”.
Waller was due to join Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Governor-General David Hurley at Westminster Abbey with senior UK politicians and heads of state from across the world expected to attend.
The Royal Ascot-winning handler was one of 10 Australians invited to attend for their “extraordinary contributions to their communities”.
However, Waller, who counts record-breaker Winx, Melbourne Cup winner Verry Elleegant and sprint sensation Nature Strip among his recent stable stars and currently houses the Queen’s horse Chalk Stream, will not be able to make the trip.
In a statement, he said: “It is an honour and I am extremely grateful to have been given the opportunity by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the people of Australia to represent the country in farewelling Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Unfortunately due to Covid-19 related circumstances I am unable to attend the funeral.
“Like so many others, I will live with and cherish for the rest of my life the fond memories I have of Her Majesty; her love of horses and animals, her passion for life and the respect she gave everyday people. My deepest condolences go out to the Royal family and the rest of the world that currently mourn.
Analyst on R5L’s wake up to money - tracking a basket of essential goods says price difference between Morrissons and Aldi is now 40%. Explained by Morrisons having to service a gigantic debt.
Shop at Aldi, people.
Good morning
I heard that report as well and it is astonishing that Morrisons apparently have a 7 billion debt
Shop anywhere but Morrisons would be the message
5live also discussed Kwarteng's proposal to abolish city bonuses and it really does make you wonder if the conservative party have lost all it's instincts to govern
It may be the right thing from a business sense, but the optics are shocking and hands yet another gift to labour
It is the right thing from city workers sense. It is a bad thing for shareholders and really bad for government and taxpayers who will eventually have to fund another bailout with years of austerity.
I'm curious about this idea that bankers bonuses caused the subprime mortgage crisis.
I am even more curious about the idea that there will ever be another bank bailout.
Extreme bankers bonuses create incentives for bankers to gamble with the banks money. If they win, fantastic, if they lose its not their money and as long as you can talk the talk and know some of the right people, it is still easy to get another job.
That culture feeds through to the banks to gamble, notionally with their money, but knowing they have a government funded back stop as they are too big to fail.
Take away the controls and regulation and sooner or later we shall be back to bail outs.
Well, it's too bad the Labour government didn't do something about it then...
Of course. Not sure why you think that is relevant when they have not been in power for a long time and it is the current governments policies that will matter.
Well, the view of Labour supporters on the GFC is "it started in America".
That's not the view of Labour supporters, it is a statement of fact.
The global [key word, there] financial crisis started in America. Britain was very poorly placed to weather it because Gordon Brown had spent the previous 6 years [after an admirable initial period of restraint] pissing money up the wall, spending more than he raked in even during times of relative financial health. Personally I couldn't give a fig how big bankers' bonuses are. I don't care at all about the optics, I care about the gap between what we spend and what we earn. That should be the #1 issue for a chancellor of the exchequer to worry about. If this measure narrows that gap (and I am at best agnostic about whether it will) it should be welcomed.
Britain was hit badly because we have a large globally exposed financial sector and one of our biggest banks was in the midst of an ill-advised over-leveraged buying spree at the top of the market. Running a structural deficit of 4% of GDP in 2007 compared to a G7 average of 3% is unlikely to have been a significant factor in explaining why we were hit worse than others, no matter how much people want it to be Gordon Brown's fault.
Running a structural deficit of 4% during pre-crash times is utterly catastrophic as when the crash inevitably comes and you inevitably need countercyclical spending to go with it, then you have nowhere to go.
The fact that some other countries were nearly as bad as the UK doesn't justify or excuse what Brown did.
But it is hard to blame Brown's fiscal policy for us being hit *much worse than others* when Brown's fiscal policy was *pretty much the same as others'*. That was the point I was responding to. Also worth noting that our debt to GDP ratio in 2007 was 41% (down from 43% in 1997) compared to a G7 average of 81%. So we had plenty of space to run countercyclical fiscal policy, certainly compared to other countries, and indeed the increase in our debt to GDP ratio between 2007 and 2010 (33pp) was almost identical to the G7 average (32pp), suggesting that we were indeed able to run a countercyclical fiscal policy just like other economies.
Except it wasn't the same as others, it was via your own figures worse than others. And of course its worth noting that the G7 average includes the UK so the G7 average was itself getting dragged down by Brown's terrible performance.
Debt to GDP isn't the relevant figure, the deficit is, although its worth noting via your own figures again in the span of three years Brown nearly doubled our debt-to-GDP figure whereas G7 nations debt-to-GDP increased by much less than half.
Gordon Brown's peak debt to GDP being around 3% iirc which was on a par with preceding Conservative governments. It was not significant and did not cause or exacerbate the GFC.
Also, aiui Team Truss has determined, as Cheney said of Reagan, that deficits don't matter and that George Osborne's austerity was a mistake that hobbled Britain's economy.
Except....this was a time of unprecedented receipts. The housing market was going bananas, profits were high, and it was a time where debt to GDP didn't need to be as high given the circumstances in the economy. Simply, we were spending too much. I don't think anyone disputes that, no matter what they think the answer (austerity/non-austerity) should have been.
Yes, there is a good deal in that. But as it happened, the GFC came along and rendered it all moot. Then Osborne came along and flatlined the nascent recovery inherited from Labour, and here we are.
The GFC didn't just "come along and render it moot", the GFC was a crash that the Government should have been preparing for as it was overdue. Crashes happen, and the GFC was a classic crash, not some exogenous and unforeseeable shock.
And you repeat the myth that Osborne flatlined the recovery. Don't you realise the UK in the 2010s grew faster than the Eurozone did, both in nominal terms and in per capita terms. "Despite Brexit" supposedly harming the UK during that decade.
If Brexit and Osborne "flatlined" or harmed the UK, then how come the UK grew faster than the Eurozone or the rest of the EU? Just how much faster than them would we have grown in your eyes were it not for Osborne or Brexit, and why?
Osborne's austerity was a mistake as even the current vintage of Tories now acknowledge. The problem is that they have pivoted to pro-growth fiscal policies at precisely the wrong moment, with inflation out of control, and so they will only succeed in pushing up inflation and interest rates. Euro area growth was low because of their sovereign debt crisis and because they followed similar austerity policies to us, and because they had lower population growth.
It was not a mistake, because the deficit was out of control.
Pro-growth policies are good now because the deficit was brought under control prior to the crash, unlike in Brown's time, and so we're in a much better fiscal position than we were then.
The UK grew faster than Europe on a per capita basis too, again despite "austerity" and "Brexit" being both accused of "flatlining" growth. We had our own sovereign debt crisis caused by Brown's borrowing too, which is why Osborne needed to clean up Brown's mess.
The UK deficit is set to grow considerably under Truss, who appears to believe in trickle-down economics, something known not to work. So, deficit up, but no significant improvement in growth.
Amused by your claim that trickle-down economics is "known not to work", it absolutely does work.
Cutting taxes in both the UK and the USA in the 80s led to significant growth and eventual budget surpluses in the 90s.
That the growth and surplus such tax cutting brought about was subsequently pissed away, is not a problem with "trickle down economics".
Cutting UK taxes in the 80s? Not according to The World Bank. Tax take rose from 22% of GDP in 1978 and 1979 to 26% of GDP in 1982 and it averaged >24% through the 80s. Doubling VAT may have had something to do with that.
One of the attractions of the Conservative Party to me my young self was how they bang on about being the party of low tax, give us back more of our money to spend or save ourselves, not the state. That sounds great.
But then I read up on how many of the sneaky stealth taxes were created when Tories in power like the factual example you just shown - progressive taxes did come down, but flat and regressive tax did go up. And in a sneaky way because extra in a pay packet may buy votes, unless you realise the more sneaky taxes have crept into your house keeping jug and taking it all away and more decides, as the % increase in your post proves.
The Tories should be known as the UKs high tax party really.
But it’s not just the Tories are now outed as the high tax party, the truth is even far worse than that. If next year is recession, inflation and energy bill pain for some of the most hard up poor and working people in our country, and Truss does as she says and promises and make cuts of progressive tax, this will make the richer households benefit substantially, like plans to reverse national insurance tax increase. So not only the high tax party, but shift the tax burden of it onto working households whilst richer households always do best out of Tory tax cut promises.
From 79 to 97, 2010 to now, this is the honest truth of what has happened isn’t it?
CHB calls me a Tory, but I think, despite my Tory family I might be a Lib Dem. Maybe my family found me in a cabbage patch or a hand bag - because I just don’t trust or believe Tory rhetoric anymore.
Comments
(The Times)
Theresa was sadly unable to defeat Corbyn.
Once we have gone through the Tory leaderships of Truss, Badenoch, Braverman and Rees Mogg even you might miss Boris!
28p to 34p is an increase of 21.4%
It also seems, according to Ofgem, that standing charges are effectively frozen and not going up.
So the 27% increase seems to be roughly from a doubling in the unit price of Gas, a roughly 21% increase in the unit price in Electricity, but no increase in the Standing Charge.
Which seems plausible to average out at about £2500 but it would vary heavily depending upon how much Gas you use.
Issue people wristbands in order at some place, and have a notice at Westminster Hall "now serving bands 18,378 to 18,465" and so on
1. Iran/Iraq style "War of the Cities"
2. Full mobilisation chucking all of the Far East aviation units into the fray
3. Threaten some symbolic Ukrainian military target like the Naval HQ in Odessa with a nuke
4. Referendum on AV
You challenged HY with “ until you condemn Johnson then you are part of his toxic legacy” but Truss doesn’t have to distance herself from the toxic legacy? If anything she said more than really had to didn’t she?
Cutting taxes in both the UK and the USA in the 80s led to significant growth and eventual budget surpluses in the 90s.
That the growth and surplus such tax cutting brought about was subsequently pissed away, is not a problem with "trickle down economics".
I've seen guesstimates (and they are more guesses than estimates) from various military types (eg RUSI) that there's perhaps a 25% likelihood of Putin resorting to tactical nukes.
The only measure of agreement is that it's less likely to happen than it is to happen.
Make if that what you will.
Fiscal control on the one hand versus abandoning fiscal control for a dash for growth on the other will sound like chalk and cheese to us non economic experts, until you explain this one to us.
Brown's deficit spending blew the budget up pre-crash, taking us from a budget surplus to a maxed out deficit before the recession even hit us.
Pre-recession the budget deficit shrank every single year for a decade under the Tories.
A dash for growth now is a viable option as Osborne fixed the roof while the sun was shining. Brown didn't.
Is that how it works?
Did Johnson head into the lab, roll up his sleeves and say 'right, we've got the spike sequence, its time to see if mRNA vaccines work...'? Of course not. Did he appoint the right people, let them spend what was needed and keep out of the way? Yes he did.
It is fair to give him credit for things done well just as it is fair to blame for the things that went wrong. Don't let hatred or disdain for Johnson cloud that. There is enough to mock already.
It is politically impossible to cancel it while the country is in the grip of ultra nationalist fleg bukkake. Starmer will have to quietly shelve it in a few years time under the guise of "pausing to review options about the onboard provision of pens" or similar bollocks.
Abandoning those policies and following decades of Brownian taxing and spending has resulted in stagnation, not growth.
Reverting back to the policies that did work is not going back to something known not to work. Even if you think other factors were in play, its a bit rich to say a reversion back to your last stable state is a bad idea.
The problem was that HYUFD claimed that "The SEC is the Anglican church". That can only be interpreted as meaning that it was integral with the C of E. If he would only admit he makes mistakes instead of trying to justify them ...
It traditionally goes up during and immediately after a recession due to countercyclical factors, while it comes down in the years of growth. Brown instead took us from budget surplus to maxed out deficit pre-crash meaning we were terribly exposed when the inevitable crash inevitably happened.
With enough footage from different know locations it would be possible to work out speed and deceleration, but none of us have that data (and most including me wouldn't have a clue what to do with it).
Are we okay to work on the basis that he didn’t and ask, will we ever have a government that will actually fix social care?
(The US in the ‘80s saw growth, you say, so this proves trickle down works. Except Reagan did other things: he increased government spending by 2.5% a year. And he massively increased the national debt from $997 billion in 1981 to $2.85 trillion in 1989. Meanwhile, income inequality massively increased.)
There are various academic papers showing trickle down doesn’t work, like https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w21035/w21035.pdf or this landmark study, https://academic.oup.com/ser/article/20/2/539/6500315?login=false
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3tUqRBiMVo&ab_channel=HighTory
Any normal politician would back off, recognising this is not the time (even Boris Johnson did) https://www.ft.com/content/e5dac84e-dabf-4408-8d65-1db0ecc315c3 https://twitter.com/JohnRentoul/status/1570387332951584768/photo/1
But Truss & Kwarteng seem fitfully committed to ideology over political prudence
https://mobile.twitter.com/JohnSimpsonNews/status/1570341055224221696
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/GC.TAX.TOTL.GD.ZS?locations=GB
Make sure pen for signing the sale deed is a Schaeffer no-nonsense on a big desk.
"Amidst ongoing concerns about services across the UK that will be cancelled or closed next Monday, including operations and funerals, the Scottish government has issued its own guidance.
Whilst it says that school should close as a mark of respect, essential healthcare services should continue, including pre-planned treatments, and the winter vaccination programme.
Most public transport services are currently expected to run as normal."
Our bins not being collected that day - but simply postponed till Saturday.
This is what anyone calling for a ceasefire is inflicting on the residents under Russian control. The Russian default setting is "Utter Depravity".
From 2013 to 2019, pre-crash, the Budget deficit fell from 7.4% to 1.5%, a pre-crash improvement of 5.9% of GDP
The net difference between a 4.3% deterioration in the accounts, and a 5.9% improvement in them, is 10.2% of GDP.
Reminds me of when we did a day trip to Rome off a cruise ship on what happened to be Easter Saturday. Overheard a US lady on the phone to a friend complaining that she had been queuing for two hours for a ticket to the Colosseum and once she got it there was another hour-long queue to get in.
(She should have brought a wheelchair, I just wheeled up to the entrance and got let in straight away - for free. I love Italy!)
Besides which BigDog could return.
And yes, as to your rhetorical question - somewhere somehow a queue is needed and it's going to be a big 'un.
Looking from 2002 to 2010 and 2010 to 2019 would make the deterioration in Labour's accounts and the improvement in Tory accounts even more exaggerated, but I did not consider that to be fair or reasonable.
But the general point is absolutely correct.
There would be a queue...
But then I read up on how many of the sneaky stealth taxes were created when Tories in power like the factual example you just shown - progressive taxes did come down, but flat and regressive tax did go up. And in a sneaky way because extra in a pay packet may buy votes, unless you realise the more sneaky taxes have crept into your house keeping jug and taking it all away and more decides, as the % increase in your post proves.
The Tories should be known as the UKs high tax party really.
Cyclical expenditure will fall away as Covid fades into history and as the world adapts post-Russia but the structural position is far stronger now than it was pre-GFC as the deficit was reducing not increasing prior to the crash.
During and post-crash is when you're supposed to increase the deficit, not pre-crash.
Your favourite, Truss, is borrowing again rather than taxing the wealthy to cap energy prices, I see.
And for the sake of balance
Australian trainer Chris Waller has announced he will be unable to attend the Queen’s state funeral on Monday due to “Covid-19 related circumstances”.
Waller was due to join Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Governor-General David Hurley at Westminster Abbey with senior UK politicians and heads of state from across the world expected to attend.
The Royal Ascot-winning handler was one of 10 Australians invited to attend for their “extraordinary contributions to their communities”.
However, Waller, who counts record-breaker Winx, Melbourne Cup winner Verry Elleegant and sprint sensation Nature Strip among his recent stable stars and currently houses the Queen’s horse Chalk Stream, will not be able to make the trip.
In a statement, he said: “It is an honour and I am extremely grateful to have been given the opportunity by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the people of Australia to represent the country in farewelling Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Unfortunately due to Covid-19 related circumstances I am unable to attend the funeral.
“Like so many others, I will live with and cherish for the rest of my life the fond memories I have of Her Majesty; her love of horses and animals, her passion for life and the respect she gave everyday people. My deepest condolences go out to the Royal family and the rest of the world that currently mourn.
“What a great life Her Majesty lived and what an inspiration she was, and will continue to be, to so many generations around the globe.”
https://www.attheraces.com/news/2022/September/15/chris-waller-to-miss-the-queen's-funeral
FFS!
There was a crash at the start of the 90s, however the UK went into that, as it should, with a budget surplus which was built up during the Thatcher years. So the deficit increased at the start of the 90s, but then was reduced consistently after then building up towards the budget surplus. That was economics as it should be. The deficit expanding then shrinking countercyclically.
Regrettably though, Brown took the budget surplus we had in 2002 and turned into into a mega deficit before the next recession hit. If he'd only kept the surplus as it was, not even made it a bigger surplus, then the UK would have been well placed for the inevitable next recession when it hit, just as we were the previous time.
But he didn't, and the rest is history.
UK rates are going to have to follow if we don't sterling to be renamed the Zimbabwe pound. To take those rate increases, fiscal easing and deregulation aren't just the best way for the economy, they are the only way.
The reality is that he had to be read the riot act by some of the leading scientists and told that the country could not afford another scandalous f**k up, like we’d just been through with PPE procurement, and hence he and his money-grabbing political mates needed to stay well away from the vaccine rollout and let the scientists and procurement experts get on with the job.
Yes, there’s a smidgin of credit for his having done as he was told (i.e, nothing). But, on a personal level, not much - about as much credit as Leon would deserve for a successful birthday party which he’d been told to stay away from lest he get drunk again and spoil.
Truss wants to increase the deficit to give money to the rich. That is not what people normally mean when they talk about countercyclical spending.
Is that a mega deficit?
On typical polling (387 mainland Italy seats only) (Bloc in brackets):
FdI: 118 on 25% (R)
Lega: 72 on 12% (R)
PD: 68 (and could do well in the 13 extraterritorial seats) on 21% (L)
Forza: 49 on 8% (R)
M5S: 35 on 13% (M5S)
Azione-Italia Viva: 18 on 7% (Ctr)
Left-Green: 12 on 4% (L)
Moderates: 8 on 2% (R)
+Europe, Civic: 3 on 3%
Sudtirol Volksparty: 3 on local vote
Lega, having done well on constituency bagging within the right bloc, will very likely hold the balance of power.
If next year is recession, inflation and energy bill pain for some of the most hard up poor and working people in our country, and Truss does as she says and promises and make cuts of progressive tax, this will make the richer households benefit substantially, like plans to reverse national insurance tax increase. So not only the high tax party, but shift the tax burden of it onto working households whilst richer households always do best out of Tory tax cut promises.
From 79 to 97, 2010 to now, this is the honest truth of what has happened isn’t it?
CHB calls me a Tory, but I think, despite my Tory family I might be a Lib Dem. Maybe my family found me in a cabbage patch or a hand bag - because I just don’t trust or believe Tory rhetoric anymore.